i hear the voices when I'm dreaming

So waaaaaay back many moons ago -- definitely before 8/8, since that's when I posted to my guild website; probably closer to the beginning of july, since that's when I dropped off posting here for a while and then made a "still alive" post, but definitely after june 25 -- my arm got crunchy and painful when I tried to use the mouse, so I had to stop gaming. (And then my chair was b0rked for seven weeks, which meant I couldn't really do anything at all.) Which meant stopping SWTOR for a while.

However, my arm seems a tad better. And there is new expansion. So yesterday, on the few hours of downtime between Last Rehearsal (10-1, and morning rehearsals at *all* suck, let alone on the day of concert) and Other Last Rehearsal (different piece, 5:30-6:30) Plus Concert (7), I logged in to SWTOR.

First reaction: AUGH THE CHANGES. (There are changes. It took a bit to figure them out. And my skill bars still need re-reordering.)

Second reaction: Oh hey, I still remember how to heal. Go me.

Third reaction: Augh I do not want to go to rehearsal I want to stay here and plaaaaaay ;_;

(I'm not playing today because the game plan is Movies. Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs, Cloudy/Meatballs 2, and Princess Bride. But Monday I can get back in. Still, it's never a good thing to go in to pre-concert stuff wanting very much to be back at home gaming instead.)

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FWIW, I have also resubbed to WoW, and my sister is getting me Warlords for Christmas. So yay gaming. I haven't done WoW in forever (I did a bit of Panda and then sort of had a combination of burnout plus changes to the game that were overwhelming) but I can probably figure things out.

1. Had a dream last night where ( ickiness with bugs ) And then there was a bit where I looked in the restaurant's fridge and a live T-rex came charging out. I feel that ought to have clued me in to its dreamness, because live T-rexes are not usually in fridges, but apparently not. And then there was heavily spiked eggnog.

2. I have enough backlog of Graze snacks that I switched to monthly and also delayed the next box. I also marked as trash some of the stuff that is harder for me to eat solo (in particular the stuff involving dips), regardless of whether or not I like it, because the main reason I'm doing this (by which I mean getting Graze boxes) is for stuff when I'm alone.

2b. My guilt issues re trashing stuff, meanwhile, continue to run rampant. And the most recent issue was today because I tried one of the things I'd been sent -- "booster seeds", which is sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and golden flaxseeds. Which is ~healthy~ and a good source of iron and stuff, and I /couldn't stand it/. It tasted like the sort of thing you eat because it's ~healthy~ and ~good for you~ and never mind that it's roughly as yummy as cardboard, and not even cardboard that has been soaked in pizza grease for flavor, you eat every last mouthful. And I tried a second bite, and only succeeded in getting flaxseeds stuck in my teeth. And yet I feel guilty about a) not eating the rest of the container (or stirring it into yogurt or something, never mind that I don't really do yogurt) and b) marking it as trashed, because it's ~healthy~. My brain, folks.

3. One thing I really miss when playing SWTOR? My WoW macros. Especially when I'm healing.

Because in WoW, I had a bunch of macros that said things like "if target is friendly, use healing skill Y; if target is enemy, use attack skill Z; if no target, use Y on myself" or "if target is enemy, use attack skill Z. If target is friendly but has an enemy targeted, use Z on my target's target" or whatever. So I didn't have to change targets in order to switch from healing an ally to beating up on the boss, and I could always use the easy-to-reach keys (1-6 and the shift variants) regardless of target. And I would have macros that say "in a group, do one thing, in solo play do another". Or "Use healing skill Y on mouseover target if applicable, otherwise target if applicable, otherwise target of target if applicable, otherwise myself" so that I didn't even need to change targets to heal someone else, just mouse over their little portrait in the group list. And stuff.

But I don't think SWTOR has macros, which means that half my easy-to-reach skillbar is taken up with heal skills and half with damage skills and I keep pressing the wrong one and I keep having to click on an enemy and fire off an attack and then find whoever needs healing and click on them and use a heal skill, and it's slow and not very responsive and annoying and wahhh. *sulk*

(because I know y'all care so very much /grin/)

Teal deer version: gamings are not really happening much, and partly that's due to (probably depression-related) lack of interest, but mainly due to not having a setup that works.

Here's the thing: with zero mobility, I don't have a lot of options for where to put my hands. Which means that if the mouse is in reach of (either) hand, that hand can't reach the keyboard. Additionally, the keyboard I had been using, a Kinesis Freestyle (I think?) split, stopped responding when my computer had its latest set of shenanigans, which means that I'm stuck with a standard keyboard.

I'd had the KF set up with one half of the keyboard where my left hand could reach, and the other half up out of direct reach so that the mouse was usable with my right. This was not perfect -- a lot of games tend to expect, y'know, full keyboard access -- but it worked. WASD movement, 1-6 for skills, other left side of keyboard keys used for other functions (which I tried to standardize over all my games so b would always be inventory, c opened the character info pane, r toggled walk/run, t targeted nearest foe, etc.), and mouse control over the rest of the stuff.

(It also worked for regular use, not just gaming. If I wanted to type, I could use a stick to reach the right half of keyboard keys without moving anything, or for serious e.g. nano typing I could move the mouse aside and have both hands touch typing.)

But with a straight keyboard, I've lost a lot of that. The only way to make a mouse usable for me involves having the keyboard at a weird angle so that my left hand sort of reaches (but everything is skewed badly, so my touch typing instincts are thrown off, and if I accidentally hit capslock instead of shift that's why), or else I just move myself over relative to everything so that I use the mouse exclusively with my left hand, typing via either dictation (which sucks) or an on-screen keyboard (which also sucks).

These options, in case you can't tell, all suck.

Right now I am typing via left hand and stick, with the mouse out of reach so that the keyboard is straight. This is giving me a halfway decent WPM for typing. (38, which is slower than I used to be but at least workable) The on-screen keyboard gives me about three WPM. five if I'm lucky. And is so totally not workable for gaming, for obvious reasons.

I need to get a replacement for the KF; I'm just hesitating because Expense. (I am also tempted to get a gaming keyboard, which would take some getting used to but would give me possibly better options ... but hello Expense. Also Needless.) And I kind of want a gaming mouse, but I have no clue if I would be actually able to use it. (In a literal sense. My current mouse is a vertical one, and I hold it weirdly, but I was able to try it via my sister before getting it so I knew I could use it.)

And really Expense is a silly reason to hesitate, because it's not all that much and it gives better flexibility and actual access to what I want to do, but I think part of the thing is that I've gotten restricted too much to play video games even with the right equipment, and that makes me all sad and anxious.

...but anyway, that's that. Sigh.

Game-specific updates, mainly for my own benefit:

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So I got two new games for christmas - sw:tor and skyrim - and thought I'd braindump a bit about what I think so far.

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( sw:tor )

( skyrim )