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“That’s what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age.”

This random Dazed And Confused quote is dedicated to Charlie.

Christmas in Germany

White Christmas in Germany. Over the next few days I’ll be posting a few pictures that Victoria took with her disposable cameras during our Germany trip. Sorry for the image quality, did I mention that they were disposable cameras? I didn’t want to carry around my clunky Powershot G1. And luckily the prints came out looking a lot better than the digital versions.

Scroll back to December 04 for last year’s pictures.

Flood Aftermath

Below is an email that Victoria sent to various relatives and friends after the flood, and that she would like me to repeat here:

Hi Everyone,

Happy New Year! I hope you are doing well and had a relaxing holiday. If you happen to be watching the Bay Area news and possibly the Sacramento news then you would know that the lovely town I lived in, Napa, flooded over the weekend.

I am happy to say that I officially am a Napa Resident for I now have a flood story to tell. I live in a bottom floor apartment in Riverwood apartments which is built right along the river. The only thing that separates me from the Napa River is a bike path and my patio. At 4am on Saturday, Dec. 31, Matthias and I awoke to the Napa Police Department driving up and down the street along my apartment complex telling residents to evacuate. For the first time in my life, I actually had to think about what I would bring with me (along with my roommate’ stuff, who was in Spain at the time).

Matthias and I got in my car to see what was going on and if we could tell how far the river had risen. We only drove a mile from my apartment and found the street had flooded. As we checked the river, it looked like the river had another 20 feet across and about 3 ft high before it would come into my apartment. We decided to stay.

Later on in the morning we watched the news to discover that we could not leave my apartment. Main highways were closed. If Matthias had stayed in Marin on Friday, we would of had to spend New year’s eve apart. I am so thankful he was with me.

The sun broke long enough for us to take a walk down to the nearest bridge and pick up some movies at Blockbuster. To my amazement and grace I looked over the bridge at the River to see it had flowed left…instead of right. If the river had drifted right it would have completely flooded my apartment.

The Napa river had grown from 100 feet across to 2000 feet across. The average depth of the river is 6 feet. On Saturday, it had risen to 30 ft. And here I was in my apartment with a first class seat watching Nature take its course.

Matthias and I enjoyed a great New Year’s Eve staying in at my apartment watching The School of Rock movie, making dinner and playing dice. On and off we would look out my patio window to watch the River.

Now it is Monday Night. Earlier today I took a walk down the bike path. It’s one of my favorite things to do in Napa. I’ve been walking and watching the river for almost 2 years now. Today, I had to walk through a little mud. The river had returned to its normal self. As I walked the bike path, I noticed that some parts where the river had flooded to the right. Reminding me how easy your life “as what you own” could be swept away and to know…change is always flowing right near you. As I walked, I though of the people who made a home living along the river. Some of their clothes hung on the trees. I thought of New Orleans.

Do you remember the Brad Pitt, Robert Redford 90′s movie “A River Runs Through It”? Well, with Grace and reason, a river runs by me and through Napa, CA.

Take care,
Victoria

P.S. (What I would have taken? I decided on all my photo albums, my 10 years of journals, and a suitcase of clothes–favorite pants, t-shirts, LOTs of socks – hey you never know.)

Now Playing: Ultima V Lazarus

I distinctly remember playing Dungeon Siege multiplayer at the Legend offices and exclaiming “Oh my god, could you imagine an Ultima game with this engine? It would be so amazing!” The forest environments in DS looked very good, and the relative disappointment of Ultima IX was still weighing heavy at that time. And now, after almost 5 years, it is here: Lazarus, the complete port of Ultima V to the Dungeon Siege engine. The first of its kind that ever got finished. For that alone I give kudos to the team.

Before we go any further, you have to understand that Ultima V was my first ever Ultima game. I must have been 14 or 15 at the time, and was playing the Amiga version that I had bought(!) at Karstadt in Essen from my hard-earned allowance. My English wasn’t nearly as good as it is now and I didn’t understand everything perfectly, the graphics were bad even for that time, and Ultima VI was already out for the PC (showing me what the series promised for the future). Still, I was enchanted. Had the cloth map spread over the chair next to me to trace my progress through Britannia. Kept a journal of all the information I had gathered and kept a list of where every character in the game lived (you never know when you had to find somebody again). And played for days and months without end.

It is with this background that I reinstalled Dungeon Siege on the computer and added Lazarus. And it is with this nostalgia that I am giving Lazarus an extended try. Because quite frankly, if it wasn’t for all the memories and the knowledge what this mod could possibly be I would probably have dismissed it as Yet Another Mod(tm) and moved on. I mean, who has time to play all this stuff, anyway?

Ultima V Lazarus is definitely good, and I’ll upgrade that assessment to “Great” if I get sucked into playing for a fair amount of time. So far I’ve only managed to leave Iolo’s hut and make it to Britannia, and reactions have been mixed. The nostalgia and the atmosphere that goes along with it are still there. I love the music, I love visiting the old towns. All NPCs are there and have expanded conversation trees. The introduction with the Shadowlords is still evocative. But the graphics, which seemed so great when Dungeon Siege came out, look dated now. And I still can’t see the sky, which was a complaint in the original game. The new artwork created by the mod team is serviceable and never destroys the mood, but it doesn’t hold up to commercial games. It’s telling when I can spot the Poser model in the opening sequence as soon as it appears on screen.

Maybe it is because I have played this game several times before that I don’t quite get sucked into it anymore. Instead of exploring a new, exciting world I feel like I’m on vacation in some part of the country that I lived in years ago. It’s fun to revisit all the old places and memories, but it’s not the same as back then. I also notice that I lost a lot of patience since the first time I played games like these. I tire of the conversations rather quickly and just want to “see stuff and kill things”. I know that’s a terrible thing to say and kind of misses the whole point of playing an Ultima game. But what can I say, I’m older now and have less time for this stuff Of course I’ll still keep playing.

You can download Lazarus on the official Lazarus homepage. If you ever played an Ultima game in your life you should definitely give it a try. The music alone (which is available as a separate download) is worth the visit. So, once again, a big congrats to the team that made this possible as a hobby project. Let’s hope for more finished conversions in the future, especially the Ultima VI project.