Well, I made it back to Sweden in the beginning of March. I’m re-established with my family and it has been an interesting journey, to say the least.

Old Town Stockholm, or Gamla Stan as the locals call it.

I’m now in a country house outside of Stockholm, with no phone line connectivity, so: no cable, no DSL, no nothing. Only thing to keep my comfort at the moment is my Spotify Premium subscription with my favorite songs on it.

I survived the chilling end of the Swedish winter in a house heated by real fireplace fire. Co-zee!

Today I found my favorite little people watching spot here in Norrtälje, inside the library, which co-incidentally has wi-fi! I don’t know what’s better, people watching or wi-fi, wi-fi, definitely wi-fi, especially when you’re being suffocated and your lack of information flow into your head slows down. It’s nice to be ‘unplugged’ for about a month, after that, I notice that I’m becoming just as lazy as I was when I was online.

I watch TV a bit more, which is like… 3 hours perhaps a day. I didn’t use to watch TV in California. TV hasn’t gotten anymore interesting, but it’s a source of information, kind of.

Downloading some Spotify tracks for offline usage while I’m posting on my blog, mooching on free wi-fi. Wish I had a coffee, srsly.

Can’t seem to get over the loss of my friend, find myself sniffling a lot more than I used to in California. Thought it would help to say good-bye to him but it’s proving to be a lot more difficult to deal with the loss. Haven’t met anyone of my old friends yet, hope to soon though…

Oh well, such is life here in Sweden.

How are you?

Time to own some noobs with the gnomies.

*launch WoW*

Useful video explaining introverts and extroverts:

I remember when people told you to shut up and sit down, I don’t miss that age.

Anyways! I’m in the mood for some chicken soup because of the slight flu symptoms, not really. That explains the way I’m physically feeling now, like “Ugh I’m sick” and then the next moment “No I’m fine!”. My throat feels like it should be hurting, but it’s not… et cetera.

Bottom line is, these symptoms will only last for 1-2 days, and it’s way better than a full-blown flu!

Anyways, I did my duty of immunizing myself from the nasty flu that’s spreading all across America. When we called a couple of weeks ago they were all out of flu shots, like, -everywhere-. Last place we called was Rite-Aid, and that was the only pharmacy that allowed us to actually put our names on a list and reserve a flu shot.

This is my second time getting inoculated with this vaccine, and it works great I haven’t had a flu since the first vaccination. Hopefully, they have something like this in Sweden too. It’s way better to get a 5 second pinch in your arm instead of weeks of misery and feeling like you’re going to die.

Everything in America has been more extreme on my Swedish self, the thunderstorms in the US are like Armageddon itself if you compare it to Sweden’s fart of thunders. Don’t even get me started on the influenza they have here! I was one of the unfortunate once to catch H1N1 back in ’09 … I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy!

Anyways, Immunized, good, everyone should do it, unless you’re allergic to shots, in that case please don’t do it cause you might have trouble not getting allergic AND getting the flu-that would totally suck. And that would totally not be good, so don’t get it if you’re not supposed to.

Måns Forssblad
1988 – 2011

I hope I’ll get to paradise, just so all these worries, troubles and toils of the world can disappear, and I can be with you again. I love you like a brother, you’re in my thoughts always.

I like most things on TV/Movies that have the word “Star” in it followed by another word, like Star Trek, Star Wars. I instantaneously become less interested if it’s something to do with stars, like Dancing with the Stars–Was I the only person who thought that it would seriously be people, dancing with stars?

Blogging 101: images liven up blog posts.

I’ve worked in different sectors, from service to tech. Food service/industry wasn’t that bad, if you like a clown to poke you with a stick in your eye. I like working on, in and around computers. I’ve been around one for roughly 18 years, not longer than 2 days in between at any given time.

School was interesting, I wouldn’t say I’m a genius or anything, but I’m a real nice guy to work with according to my old colleagues, I’m easy to get along with, I don’t smell–unpleasant, I’m drug free. I’ve got a flawless driving record, not even a single instance of the o’l fender bender.

Oh and I’m in SoCal if anyone’s seriously looking to hire me. Send me an email or something and I’ll send you my résumé. Totally serious.

I played a ton of Star Wars the Old Republic, as some of you know. Basically, I’ve paid to play for several months before leaving the game around the summer of 2012. Star Wars the Old Republic is now offering people like me, who paid to play before the game went completely free, to come back and play and receive their new “Cartel Coins”.

What are Cartel Coins?

Cartel Coins are virtual money used to buy “questing content” (i.e. the basic activity you do in an MMO) or “fluff” such as outfits, armor, weapons… you name it. So, you pay them money, in a free game, they give you coins, to buy things in the game, kind of like all these smurf apps and farm apps for iPad or iPhone, Facebook… that sorta stuff. Don’t really care for it, that’s what the post is about …

So, I decide “hey I’d like to check that out, after all it’s nice of them to offer me some of their new fancy coins, I might be able to find something interesting to buy. How cool of them to let me try this just because I used to be a paying subscriber!”. That’s just what I’ve come to taken as standard practice, because there are so many companies that reward you for coming back or, staying loyal!

I thought that since I played (and paid) for months of game time, I would’ve accumulated a large amount of these “cartel coins”. Well I was right, there was a good-sized amount, but also a caveat; I have to pay for my subscription, to get access to those coins I’ve accumulated. “Okay, that’s fair” I think to myself. WHAM, yet another caveat: You have until December 20th to pay for your account or your coins go away!

Okay – It’s over SWTOR, you’d have to pay me to play now.

Long story short (to get the full effect of my rant, you have to listen to this and read along - will open in a new window on a desktop, probably not on your tablet, or smart phone):

• Star Wars the Old Republic is in development, I am following its every news release, hoping to one day get in the beta.
• Pre-Ordered Star Wars the Old Republic
• Star Wars the Old Republic is in public beta, I’m loving it! Eating it with a spoon! So different! OMG I got into the beta!
• Star Wars the Old Republic gets released, launch is smooth and hassle free! This is the best MMO EVER!
• The server populations are dying off, whatever I play huttball for 4 months! It’s because the game is in its early stages, more will come! They always come! …right?
• Somewhere around here, Stephen Reid (aka Rockjaw) gets laid off, everyone’s favorite Brit and community manager is suddenly without a job?
• The server merges are abound, the transferees merging onto my server received rewards because their names might have been taken on the new server, that’s fair, plus there are more people on my tiny (formerly huge) server! Win-win!
• Star Wars the Old Republic “Super Servers” announced, because the regular server merges weren’t enough because too many people are leaving to quickly so… Free to play announced!
• I leave Star Wars the Old Republic.

Mists of Pandaria is launching?

LOL Pandas

Free trial you say? Sure Blizzard, we’ve had some fun moments in the past. What’s a scroll of resurrection anyways?

I posted on /r/wowscrolls that I was interested in receiving a scroll and or transferring server’s upon my return. I instantly received a free boost to level 85 on any character and 7 days of free game time and had a blast as always, decided to stay.

Why is it that Star Wars MMOs always start great but end in a fiery wreckage? Maybe Disney could make a good MMO! (Hah!)

When I first heard that Blizzard was making a game solely about Kung-Fu pandas and Pokémon battles, I laughed and continued playing Star Wars the Old Republic. I was one of the “Oh you hate SWTOR? Why don’t you play with your pandas and Pokémon then? LOL” people. I have to admit I am feeling really stupid right now.

Mists of Pandaria (MoP) is an expansion to the (in a couple of weeks) eight year old game, World of Warcraft. MoP makes the eight year old game seem lush, beautiful and updated. I loved Burning Crusade when it was released a long time ago, and this expansion is in style with that expansion pack. It’s loaded with fun quests, and the new species Pandaren are really fun to play.

I really thought the game would be more childish, but the only difference from previous expansions are the cute and cozy factor has gone up, while the dreadful villain must die factor has gone down. It’s a nice change of pace to me, it suits my personality more than any other game at the moment.

I missed World of Warcraft Cataclysm almost completely (I was in the alpha but didn’t play the final version), so starting WoW again with two unexplored expansions makes the game feel twice as big. The cross-server LFG tool is great (if you don’t mind the bullies…), the instances are more interactive. The quests are more different, WoW still has a few get me x amounts of these and return quests, but I feel like they are trying to strive away from those types of quests and trying to make them feel unique in their own way.

If you haven’t tried it, and have thought about trying Mists of Pandaria, my recommendation is to try it. WoW has changed a lot over the last 4 years I’ve been gone. By the way, you don’t need MoP to play the Pandaren species!

Milix is back!

Oh and in other news I saw that video about The Old Republic’s “Cartel Market Place” or whatever. SWTOR, I am disappoint.

One day, JUUYG89YXPBK went out for a stroll in the maple syrup forest and met a fembot, she was on a diet and didn’t want any waffles JUUYG89YXPBK offered her.
[v-_-] #<[o.ov]

 JUUYG89YXPBK then offered the fembot a delicious cinnamon bun instead, which she loved very much, and much munching commenced.
[v^.^]> @<[^_^v]

And they lived happily ever after, because they are robots, and robots don’t die, unless you pull the plug on them, or if they are battery-powered you have to pull the switch on them or something, but you wouldn’t do that cause that would be murder, I think, I mean what if you’re one of those people who turn off their computer every night, would you consider that computer murder or computer sleep, i have no clue what to make out of this but anyway this conclusion line is getting very long, let’s just leave it for another day.

…

In order to verify my blog on Technorati, i had to make a new blog post with the code JUUYG89YXPBK in it, so I decided to be creative about it. Feel free to totally disregard this post :D