Why Would I Write

  • Dota is Life

    I’ll never be a professional Dota 2 player. Maybe if I went back in time and committed myself to the game. Just maybe. But for now, I’ll stay a regular pleb, struggling to win matches against people in the same skill bracket as me. I don’t have the mechanical skills that professional players have. I don’t have the skills of each hero or costs of each item memorized. I don’t know how much damage each skill does, what its cooldown is or how much mana it costs at each level. Let’s not even talk about farming patterns or last hitting skills.

    It’s not the end of the world though. I have fun playing the game. I enjoy all the banter and trash talk that goes on between my friends and me. It’s how we bond. It’s like talking shit over a couple of pints. Except that it’s much cheaper and we can do it over the comfort of our own homes. Sure, sometimes it gets stressful, especially when we’re on a losing streak. But you can’t win every game you play, so I just accept it. I win some, I lose some.

    It’s like life. Not everything goes your way. Even if you’ve planned something down to the finest detail. There are elements of randomness that can throw everything away. A lucky rune or Roshan respawn. An accidental feed. Accidentally activating your Black King Bar too early, and not having it ready in time for the next fight. There’s a million things that could go wrong. Just like how there’s a million things that could fall into place for no good reason, and you end up winning off it.

    Sometimes one mistake is all you need – to win or to lose. It’s unpredictable. You’re on a team of five people playing against five other people. Human beings do the most random shit, sometimes you can’t even understand their decisions. But it’s just a game, and we all go along with it. You make the most of it. You can play to the best of your ability and adapt to everything else that happens. Sometimes it’s good enough, sometimes it isn’t.

    The best planned projects can end up failing, and sometimes last-minute work gets you your client’s approval. Mistakes can turn into opportunities and vice versa. Timing, opportunities, and communication. All essential skills both in-game and in life.

    Enemy split pushing you? Try to get a successful gank off and force them to retreat. Enemy five-man pushing you? Split up and take multiple objectives, forcing them to retreat. Game is in a stalemate? Catch them off-guard and force a high ground fight.

    Work got you feeling down? Get a new job, ask for a new role, take a break. Feeling broke? Watch your budget, don’t overspend, save more. Don’t have enough time to do something you like? Spend less time on other things so you can make time for it. There’s always a solution to everything – but it’s not always going to be easy. You’re going to have to make sacrifices in life. That’s just how things are.

    Sometimes you want to play the mid role, but there’s somebody else on the team who picked mid first. That’s fine, just pick another hero and go to another lane. Learn to adapt, overcome. There’s nothing wrong with playing another role. Sure, you don’t get to hog the limelight, but you’ll get your chance another day. There’s always another day.

    It’s just like life. I’ll never be a professional Dota player, but at least I’ll be a professional at something else, and I’ll be making more money than I ever will playing the game (I’ll eat my words if I ever qualify at The International Kappa) – and that’s all that matters.

  • Until They Come Home

    Same shit, different day – I thought to myself as I woke up to the sound of roosters yelling their lungs out. It was the first thing I heard every morning, as far as I could remember. That’s what life is like for a prisoner right? Wake up, take a shit, go for breakfast, head out to the fields with the rest of them, work until sundown and head back to my cell to sleep. Wake up and repeat the same thing the next day. And the next day. It was an endless cycle.

    Today was no different. Life in prison wasn’t like in the movies (at least not the ones I’ve caught glimpses of during my walks past the guards’ break rooms). There was hardly any abnormal activity. Nobody planned any break outs, nobody formed any gangs or shanked each other. We were all very docile and peaceful. We came to terms with our life imprisonments very early on in our lives. As far as I knew, the majority of my prison-mates were like me – born and bred here. We didn’t get a fair trial or any hope of being let out.

    So like everyone else, I just kept my head down and did my duties. Talking was frowned upon, so we kept our mouths shut and kept to ourselves. We only chit chatted at night and during our meals. But conversation was limited as we didn’t really know what to talk about. Being prison babies tends to have that effect. We couldn’t talk about what we did in the outside world because we hadn’t been outside before.

    I had resigned my life to the this place, working to the bone for the rest of my life. “If you get out of here, what’s the first thing you’ll do?” That was one of the most common questions we’d ask each other from time to time. The answer would always be “I don’t know.”

    So, like the rest of them, I’d sometimes wonder what life would be like on the outside. Past the fences, over the green hills and rolling plains. What would it be like to run free under the sun, rolling around in the grass? Breathing in the fresh air and not worrying about having to work again. Would it smell different on the other side? Would the air be cleaner? Will water taste sweeter? Nobody who left ever came back to visit to let us know what it was like.

    The bell signaling the end of the day rang out. It was time to head back to my cell. Wind down a bit, and relax my sore muscles before I shut my eyes. The night was cool tonight. Great weather to sleep in. Some of my cellmates were already in dream land.

    Using my horns, I dug a hole in the ground and made a pillow of hay. This would be my bed for the night. I lowered my belly into the hole and tucked my legs under my body. My neck and chin rested on the pillow and I closed my eyes. Thoughts of the outside world drifted through my mind again. “The grass is always greener on the other side,” a common phrase I’ve heard all too many times. Maybe one day I’ll find out. One day.

    Writing Prompt from Reddit: You are in a prison camp setting, looking through the eyes of the male protagonist. He has lived his life in this camp. You realize, only at the end, that he is a cow.

  • The First Boot

    No matter how many times I go through it, the first time you turn on your computer after making some changes to its hardware is one of the most nerve-wracking experiences you can have. When you plug in the power cord and turn on the machine, you always hope that the computer boots up fine. In my experience so far, it’s probably been less than 50%. There’s always something that doesn’t go right the first time. Yesterday I decided to upgrade my desktop by replacing the motherboard, processor and RAM. It was a pretty straightforward procedure. The hardest part was probably attaching the I/O shield to the motherboard because for some reason my ASUS H270 Prime Plus came with a lot of excess metal that had to be folded before I could set it on properly. After that was screwing the board onto the case and then plugging the power cables into it.

    I decided to screw everything back properly, confident in my skills, before the first boot. Powered the machine on, the lights on the board lit up and the CPU and PSU fan spun so I thought it was all good. Nope, the screen stayed black and the motherboard was beeping continuously. Weird, but a beeping motherboard means something was wrong so I unplugged the computer, unscrewed the PSU to have a closer look at the processor. The cooler was on tight and I was 100% I put the processor in correctly (it’s pretty much idiot proof these days, with the specifically cut nook to guide you). I decided to re seat the RAM stick and looked around the board for any other abnormalities. I then noticed that I had forgotten to plug in the top chassis fan. I plugged it in, plugged the power back in before screwing the PSU back into the case and viola! It booted successfully. I did a quick run through of my BIOS options and started the boot into Windows 10. No issues at all.

    Oh, interesting thing about Windows 10 – you can actually change your hardware without having to do a reinstall of the OS. I’m not sure what Microsoft did to make it work, but in my experience it has been a flawless transition. It was pretty much like sticking a hard disk into a new computer and have everything work perfectly. I’ve read online that this isn’t the case most of the time but for what it’s worth, it worked for me. I’ll update this post if there are any issues in the future.

    Don’t forget to link your Microsoft account to your Windows 10 product key so you can reactivate it again after you change your hardware. My reactivation didn’t work when I tried to use the built-in Windows 10 activation feature so I had to get in touch with Microsoft support. The tech rep controlled my PC remotely and helped me to activate it (after I showed him proof of purchase of my new motherboard) and gave him my product key. That bit was annoying, but I didn’t have to do anything much so it wasn’t too bad.

    The stock fan on the i7 7700 is kinda noisy, so I might change that in the future if it bothers me but other than that I’m happy with my upgraded PC. I even managed to run a 720p 60 FPS stream last night without any lag. This means there’s no reason for me not to stream again, woot!


    Feel free to drop by for some low level dotes. It’s always a fun time!

    Other than that, I’m learning to use a 60% keyboard which I picked up a week ago. The Anne Pro is a pretty good alternative to the Vortex Pok3r if you’re on a budget. Some might even prefer the Gaterons to Cherry MX switches – but that’s a personal preference (as for me, I have no complaints). I’m still not used to pressing Fn WASD for directional movements at the moment, but time will tell.