Noxx

Just got back from a 7 day trip to South Africa (Cape Town). There are some serious water shortages so people have been restricted to 50 liters a day to try and combat and prolong the inevitable day-zero. As someone that usually takes 15 minute showers, having to take a 2 minute shower instead, was not fun. I felt dirty the entire trip. Apart from that, it was a slot of fun. Went on a day trip to several wine farms, explored like a proper tourist. Was my first time in Cape Town in 16 years or so, and the last time we went was only for 2 or 3 days. This was really fun. Glad it's over though. Glad to be back home. Excited to take a decent shower.

http://www.craveonline.com/mandatory/1110971-a-map-of-the-most-redneck-states-in-america Texas ain't even THAT redneck. I've always wanted top go to Texas. Seems like a really great place, and quite honestly i've never heard anything but good about it. I'm really keen to go. And besides that, every Texan i have ever met have been some of the best people i've met. Down to earth kind of people.

Sooo after much searching and taking various things into consideration, i think i have decided to go to Texas to finish my flying. Reason for this is mainly because there's a direct flight from here to Houston, so i can fly on an ID90 which would drastically reduce my travel costs. Prices also seem a lot lower in general there, which is also pretty cool. I guess climate wise it's also pretty similar to here.

Started doing some digging around looking for a school to attend. Started asking about costs. Looks like i'm gonna be down another $45k to finish my training. Kind of a hard pill to swallow. At least this puts me in a position where i can start working immediately after i'm done, so i guess that's a plus.

Found 3 more empty bottles and an empty case of beer too. Had to kick him out. Told his wife. She's 100% in denial. Keeps making excuses saying he drank it over a much longer period than just a week, saying he's depressed and feeling down, etc. So i told her straight up her husband is an alcoholic and he's going to end up killing himself if someone doesn't do something. Honestly speaking though, i think she's too worried about her public image to admit something is wrong. She'd much rather just see him die than send him to rehab.

Turns out the guy's a full blown alcoholic. One of our maids checked his trash this morning and found 10 empty bottles (6 whisky and 4 vodka). That's excluding all the whine and beer he drinks at night. And that's all just from 1 week. His wife is still in denial and refuses to admit he has a problem.

Friend of mine got me into CSGO. From everything i've heard about CS i knew the game was known for how technical it is, and how you need to learn the recoil patterns of guns, etc. First game or two i played i couldn't understand why people always said this, because whenever i fire the crosshair really doesn't move. Took me a while to realize that the crosshair basically means jack shit after, especially when you spray. It's really fun. Already been playing a few competitive matches. Slowly but surely doing better and better. Definitely scratching the FPS itch i've had lately. Really suits my playstyle as well. Generally i prefer slower paced, more tactical gameplay. Only "issue" i've had is the overwhelming amount of smurfs. I don't really care about playing against better players, i sort of prefer it. Best way to learn. What i dislike is when a smurf constantly [bleep]es about his teammates being bad. Like, you're smurfing. Did you really expect to find 4 other highly skilled players in a low division game? Don't spend the entire game being a toxic shit when in reality you're probably only smurfing because you're the one that needs to get carried when playing in higher divisions. Idk, just kinda silly to me.

One of my mom's friend's husbands are living with us for a while.They're moving back to South Africa soon and she already went back home while he's staying for another 2 or 3 months. So she asked my mom if he could stay with us for a while. We figured it would be fine since we have a few spare rooms open. He's been living here for about a month now and we're slowly realising he has a bit of a drinking problem. Literally drunk every night. And not just a bit tipsy, but drunk to the point where he can't walk. And tonight his wife sends my mom a message saying "I hope he's not drinking too much". So yeah, i don't see him living here much longer. Quite honestly think it's a bit messed up they'd ask to live here without at least giving us a heads up.

Soooo i'll be going back to the US within the next couple of weeks. Gonna finish my CPL and then stay on as an Instructor 2 or 3 years while i build hours. Once i have ~1500 hours i can start looking for a job at an Airline in America. It's been quite a tough choice because at the end of the day i won't make nearly as much money in the US as i will in the Middle East, but it think overall i'll just be a lot happier. I haven't been this excited about something in a long time.

Tried Wildlands PvP today. Shit was tough, but really fun. I can see myself getting into it easily.

So i spent my day finishing the rest of Ghost Recon's main story missions. The story was very good. I thoroughly enjoyed it. The ending caught me off guard and had me sort of sitting at the edge of my seat. I played about the last 70% of the game on the hardest difficulty, which wasn't always as hard as i expected it to be, but it did mean that i had to cheese some of the missions i just found a bit too hard to do. I'm excited to see what the DLC is like.

Updated my Bios today. probably should have done it when i first built the PC but i expected it to be a lot more complicated than it turned out being. That's about the only productive thing i did today.

Bought Ghost Recon: Wildlands yesterday. It's really good. Been playing on the Hardest difficulty from the start but had to bump it down a notch because it was just too hard, which is really exciting because i can't remember the last time i played a game where i actually felt a challenge like this. Also realised how much more i enjoy having a desktop over a laptop when it took me less than 5 minutes to open up the front, clean the accumulated dust, and put the front cover back on. So much more convenient than having to take the whole thing apart like i would have had to do with my old laptop.

I bought an Apple Watch today. Loving it. Been wanting one for a while and finally decided to get it.

Lately i've been thinking about moving. Last night the last of my "old friends" (as in friend i've known for longer than a year) moved away. Over the past 2 years or so pretty much every one i've known for a decent amount of time has moved back to their respective home countries due to contracts ended, or other personal reasons. And i found myself in a situation where it has become progressively harder to really meet new people. So i've been thinking about it a lot and i think it might be time for me to do the same thing, as in make a move. I'm thinking about finishing the last of my licenses in the US, finding a job there as a flight instructor for a few years, then taking it from there. Realistically the only reason i never seriously considered this was because jobs in that field pay a lot more in the Middle East than they do in the US, but honestly there are more important things in life than having a big bank account. It's something i've actually been considering for a few years now, but the one thing that has always kept me from doing it was my fear of having to start all over.

I think if i lived in a colder place for a few years again i could definitely get used to it again. I just feel like cold weather doesn't fit well here. I'm sure if i lived in a colder place for a few years it wouldn't be long before i hate the heat again. When i first moved here it took me a few summers before i could actually handle it. On a completely different note, i went out for a cigarette a few minutes ago. Saw a guy casually park his Lexus SUV in the open "field" opposite my house. He casually walks to the back, opens the trunk, and casually takes out his pet falcon. That was pretty much my signal to head back inside. I'm not about to make the morning news because someone's poorly trained falcon decided i looked like prey.

Honestly i think i'd prefer 60C over extremely cold weather. Live in general is much better suited for hot weather. There are ACs everywhere you go. In fact, even during the hottest days of the year the Malls are never much warmer than room temperature. I just hate shivering, and feeling like i can't get warm enough. I hate that my hands and feet are constantly freezing.

Today was 60 and it was absolutely miserable. I hate the winter months.

I think for some games the idea of sticking to one title and changing to a per month based fee just isn't possible. Their sales would ultimately drop so much that the monthly fee would end up being much more expensive than just buying loot crates, or the cost would at the very least come to a similar amount. You really just can't compare MOBAs and MMOs to FPS games. The market is too much different. And you need to keep in mind, in the case of FPS games (i know this used to be true for COD) a large number of the playerbase are players who never play online. I read an article about 2 years ago which mentioned only something like 39% of the people who buy the game actually ever play online. So if you stop pumping out titles and instead resort to a per month fee, you're losing 60% of your sales per year. Any idea how they're going to compensate for that 60%? Ridiculous per month fees. I honestly have no problem with micro transactions, as long as they remain purely cosmetic. I've spent somewhere in the region of $500 on Smite cosmetics. I have no issue supporting a company in that manner. I don't think i've ever spent a dime on crates in CoD, because the idea of pay to win is disgusting. I will, from a moral standpoint, never support a company or a titles in this manner. The problem lies with the gamers, not the developers. They're simply going to do whatever brings them the most profit. And there's an old saying that goes "money talks". Soon as the consumer starts saying no, soon as they stop opening their wallet, things will change. But that's the problem. People are so keen and so eager to get the newest title, the newest item, the newest whatever, they're willing to [bleep] themselves in the ass to get it. And essentially, this is exactly what they're doing. They're [bleep]ing themselves in the ass because they're making things more expensive for themselves, and killing their own playerbase.

Honestly, i don't know why my ping is that high. I don't know if it's bad internet, or something else. That said, generally ping at around the 200 mark has never been an issue in any games i've played before. My ping on smite is upwards of 200, probably close to 300, and it's never given me any issues. I've had to adjust my "aim" a bit, but that's it. Sometimes i get hit by abilities i feel i was just out of range of, but that's it. And that's when i play on NA servers. I used to play CoD with a friend that lives in NY and my ping was generally around 300 as well, and it never gave me too much of an issue either. I can definitely feel the latency. It's hard to describe, but i could see it. But with H1Z1 the problem is unlike anything i've really experienced before. Maybe i just need to turn my graphics settings all the way down and see if that fixes anything. I don't know enough of these things to know if it'll make any difference. Only thing i can think of is that, when i shoot at someone, the hits register client side but they don't register server side. That's the only way i can explain getting hitmarkers but apparently not doing any damage.

I don't want to be that calling someone a cheater just because they're better than me. That said i've seen a few very suspect things. Like one guy that literally 2-tapped me crossmap while i was running. When i say crossmap i mean i was so far away from him that my reticle covered his player model completely. I don't know if lag played any role there, whether he was just a godly player, or whether it was something else.

I don't know about that. Hard to believe when i'm getting 2 tapped from halfway across the map.

Apparently ~180 ping makes H1Z1 unplayable. Literally can't win a gunfight unless the person shooting at me has no hands. I get 2-3 hitmarkers on someone only to die instantly and have the game tell me i did no damage to them, or hit them once at most. Earlier today i had a game where i shot a guy point blank with a shotgun twice, got hitmarkers on both hits, and had to shoot him a third time to kill him. Kinda sucks. Really not sure why ~180 ping is THAT bad. I've played other shooters on worse ping and i've never it be this bad.

Bought GTA V and H1Z1 today. Really just wanted GTA V but H1Z1 was $5 so why the hell not. Only downside is my internet seems to be especially slow today. Looking at like 15 hours+ before it's all done downloading.

When i was about 5 or 6 in Kindergarten me and this girl used to hide in this tunnel sort of thing on the playground and kiss during recess. With all the sexual misconduct accusations going around these days i'm kind of nervous that i might be getting an e-mail from her lawyer soon. Every time my phone's e-mail sound plays my butt clenches a bit.