Ed's Technobabble

I’m a gamer. I really enjoyed the game Guild Wars and was excited for Guild Wars 2 . I decided to install Guild Wars to get nostalgic about the game and get back into it before the new one came out. After installing Guild Wars, I get a new option: Give the name of a character on this account? Guild wars has an unique system where they make you give a first and last name for your characters. I have no clue what I named them. So I contact support and get a link to this: I know it’s small, but it says to check and see if you have any screenshots of your characters laying around. Really? A person from support finally emails me back asking for the following: What first and last name did you use when you created the account? What street address did you use when you created the account? (Please provide the complete address including city and state) What date of birth did you use when you created the account? What are all the retail access keys currently registered

Okay, I didn’t write this on vacation because I got sick. But here is the run down. For the Doctor Who fans out there. Look where we were The Tardis This is a video that I recorded all by myself! We visited the Doctor Who Experience in London. They had a bunch of the costumes and set pieces of the show from the beginning, and since we’re fans of the show, it was pretty cool. Dalek : You superior in only one respect. Cyber Leader : What is that? Dalek : You are better at dying. We also hit the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, and Harrods. Unfortunately, the inside of Westminster Abbey was off-limits to cameras. Boo! It was a great trip, but we’re glad to be home now! Well I am.

Our time in Scotland is coming to a close. We slept in a little today because we needed it! After sending some stuff back home through the mail, we hit the town one last time. Turns out we bought enough stuff that it would be challenging to send home, so we had to mail it. Who’d of thought that bagpipes would fill a suitcase . We went to a few pubs today, a tour, and a vodka bar. The funny part of today was that we went to the vodka place, because I needed a break from beer and scotch. So Heather ordered a vodka cran, and I said, I’d have one, but make it a double. The girl told me about the exuberant pricing of doubles. She also mentioned that they price the doubles high because they don’t encourage drinking in Scotland. This sounded a little off to me, because the stereotype is that they do in fact encourage drinking in Scotland. I guess there are these new rules that restrict the sale of alcohol. She also said something about having to offer water after every drink. There you hav

Started out the day going to Glasgow. Originally we were trying to decide between Edinburgh and Glasgow as our Scotland base. We’re glad we stayed in Edinburgh. Glasgow was hit more in World War Two so the buildings are newer. It doesn’t have the same feel. Also we past by the Chivas Regal distillery. It’s right next door to the sewage treatment plant. I’m never drinking that stuff again. We took a boat on Loch Lomond today. I’ll spare the “scenery was great” comments today. Don’t get me wrong they were, but let’s get to what mattered. St Mungo is a local beer named after the patron saint of Glasgow. Not only was he the local patron saint, he was a brewer of beer. It wasn’t bad at all. After our boat tour of Loch Lomond, we went to Sterling Castle. Again I’ll skip over the description. It was your typical awesome castle. \ Then at dinner, I had another local beer at the Greyfriars Bobby. I don’t remember what it was called, but the brewery was West, from Glasgow. Not bad at al

Why are all pictures of mythical creatures blurry? Today we hopped on a Gray Line bus and went to Loch Ness. The scenery was what you would expect from Scotland. On the way we stopped at Glencoe. It was really nice. The bus driver said not to encourage the piper that was hanging around because he was god awful. But the tourists love him. I couldn’t help but get him in the picture because he was in the way! He was pretty bad. We then went up to Loch Ness. Okay, we obviously didn’t see the monster, but I did see some scotch on the boat at the bar and drank some. Had a nice Tomatin Single Malt. Was pretty good! I think the funny thing is so far, I’ve had scotch that I’m pretty sure I can get in the states. That’s a good sign. The bus driver, who was also our tour guide, said the question he gets most is what’s under his kilt (answer: nothing). His words not mine: “I used to be a paratrooper, but now I’m a commando.” The second question is what whiskey is best. His list: 1. Laphr

This is a great city. The architecture is great. We started with a bus tour of the city and went to the castle. Almost exactly what we did in Cardiff, but Scotland so far beats Wales. On the way to the tour we saw the Greyfriars Bobby Statue . It’s a statue dedicated to the dog that stayed by his masters side after death for 14 years. The city folk fed him and took care of him until he himself died. We’re just walking along.. La la la la la.. Then our conversation went something like this: Why is there a statue of a dog? I don’t know. Oh, hey, that says Greyfriars over there.. Hey, this is Greyfriars bobby! Cool. The city tour was cool. Saw stuff like this: Not sure how you’d attack this castle. Riding around, we walked up to the castle and wandered around. Very nice museums and exhibits in there too. Here’s a random sample. I’ve taken over 877 pictures so far. This doesn’t scratch the surface. I really haven’t had time to review most of them. These are some that I’v

Today we said goodbye to England. The sheep outside our Bed & Breakfast will no longer share our company. Goodbye sheep! Byeeeeeeeeeeeeee. We really enjoyed our time at the B&B. There was this nice lady from England who was also staying there. She was currently working on hiking the length of Hadrian’s wall. In her words, “I’ve always told my parents that I wanted to walk the wall, and they finally said then why don’t you f**king do it already”. After talking about Scotland for a bit, the subject got back onto scotch. I was given a recommendation. I was told to try a scotch from the Skye region because of its unusual ingredients. It’s what the locals gives as gifts. I tried a Talisker Scotch. Although it’s available in the states, I’ve never had it.. After tasting it here, I will continue not to have it in the states. Or in Scotland for that matter! I told the owner of the B&B, Dave, about the Magnus beer that I had. He smiled and agreed it was good, but grinned and

Rick Steves’ Great Britain says, “Driving in Britain is basically wonderful”. Driving in Britain isn’t too bad, as long as do do what Rick Steves mentions in the fine print: “avoid what can be an unpleasant grid of one-way streets (as in Bath).” Here is the route we drove today: Driving wasn’t too bad once we got out of Bath. Almost immediately we got to see the countryside. Which mainly was sheep and cattle. The closer we got to Scotland, the more the landscape changed. We’re not in Scotland yet, but we are visiting the Hadrian’s Wall area which during roman times was the border between Roman England and Scotland. Now the actual border is slightly further north. Despite not being Scotland, many people here have Scottish sounding accents. Here is an example of a two lane road: The rest areas are not like the ones in Washington. They are little mini malls, with usually 1-2 restaurants, a gas station, bookstore, etc. They all had free wi-fi as well. At one of the stops we broug

Not sure how I forgot to mention this. When we went to Cardiff in Wales, Mardi Gras was going on. We walked around Cardiff castle before going in to check out the sites. There were all sorts of people there dressed up.  This girl and a bunch of her friends approached us (at first I thought it was going to be a coordinated pickpocket) to ask if Heather had a spare hair clip. When Heather answered, no sorry… “Oh my god, you’re from America?!?!” They went on to tell us how they loved American accents, and had Heather say all their names. It was surreal, but reminded us of a scene in Love Actually, where the American girls made the British men say a bunch of stuff because they loved the accent. They invited us to hang out with them at Mardi Gras, but we were off to see the castle. Plus it would have been odd to hang out with a bunch of 18 year olds drinking.

Rick Steves’ Great Britain says, “Driving in Britain is basically wonderful”. Driving in Britain is basically unpleasant. Rick Steves does mention in the fine print, “avoid what can be an unpleasant grid of one-way streets (as in Bath).” It’s assuring that he specifically calls out the city that we’re in as being a bad place to drive. Since my introduction to driving in Britain is in the worst place, maybe the rest of the trip will be cake. Because of timing issues on our vacation, we needed to get a car to get from Bath to Hadrian’s Wall. Unfortunately the rental car place wasn’t open on Sunday so we had to get it Saturday. They typically deliver the car to you. Except on Saturdays. The reason was that traffic was horrendous on Saturdays, and there is no way they can do that. This means we had to take a train over to the rental car place, grab the car, and find a 24 hour car park. Driving on the left side of the road is cake. Turning right isn’t even a problem. The issue is that th

One of the things that I regretted on our last trip to England was that I didn’t bring a tripod. This time I brought it. We’ve been able to take better pictures when we get to use it, but as it turns out, you don’t to use a tripod everywhere. We first went to the Abbey. It was closed for a wedding. Then we went to the Roman Baths (about 50ft away). They noticed my tripod as we entered, and the nice and friendly girl at the counter told me that I would get attacked by ninjas if they saw me use it. I did not use it once. It was very cool (uh warm). The waters in the natural springs were hot enough that there was a cool rolling fog coming off the water. The cool thing about this place is that it’s part original works from the romans, and some recreation. It all blends together to create the feel of what it would have been like during the day. They even show you the drainage stuff underground. And there are other side baths that are in other rooms. They encourage you to throw money i