QContinuum

I know people have been waiting for me to do my write up on Mist of Pandaria. I used to do regular write ups on World of Warcraft dating back to BC. There are a few reasons why I quit writing as much. One is I just haven't playing as much and two is most of the people I played with are no longer are playing. This doesn't mean WOW sucks and isn't fun anymore it's more a combination of moving on with life and the desire to do something new after many years of playing it. Many I used to play with have finished school and have careers. Some are married. Things change. The other day we were standing around comparing Tera, SWTOR, Guild Wars2, etc and WOW. The consciences was WOW is the best overall MMO/game especially what they can do with quests and story lines. Even though that is true some are playing Guild Wars2 or some other games because it is different and refreshing. Some just don't have the time anymore to get to a gear level they want to be at when they play the game.

There is less then a week until the launch of the Mists of Pandaria. The in game Theramore Scenario happens only this week and is a game changing event. Before you read on I want to warn you that I am going to reveal details about the story of the fall of Theramore. I will be giving details revealed in the book Jaina Proudmoore Tides of War. If you plan on reading the book, which is a fantastic read then don't read this until after you read the book! The book is much better than my outline below.

After reading the book I was very excited to see the Scenario in the game. Last night I played through it from a Horde prospective and I was very disappointed. Not only did it not tell the story at all but it was just boring to play through. I don't know if they are going to release something else to tell more of the story or not. The book was fantastic and in the book this is a very big event that destroys any tentative peace between Horde and Alliance and sets up Garrosh Hellscream as the number one threat to the world. In Mists of Pandaria there is all out war between the Horde and Alliance. Baine Bloodhoof, Vol`jin, Sylvanas, and the rest of the Horde leaders follow Garrosh only because they feel they have no choice. The book really focuses on Baine and Vol`jin struggles to keep their people safe from Garrosh.

Since my wife pre-bought got me Guildwars 2 with free beta access for Father's day this was the first beta weekend and the last before the release of the game. It turned out to be a big event at the house/LAN center. I was only able to join the fun for part of the time Friday night but it was almost non-stop for the rest throughout the weekend. I played a Asura (http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/races/asura/) Necromancer (http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/necromancer/) I did not get to play that much but what little I did the game seemed to have a lot of potential. The interface is WoW'ish and the game has no monthly fees to play. They plan on making their money with expansions and selling in game items. Also things like realm/world changes they charge for.

Ever since I first heard about the project, I was very excited to buy and play around with a Raspberry Pi. I wanted to come up with a fun project utilizing the Raspberry. I decided to set it up as a server on the Internet and see how many years I could keep it running without a reboot. For me, setting up a server with uptimes running for years is no trick. I decided to spice it up and run it using 100% solar power that I generate at my house, with no connection to the grid (not even for backup).

Check it out at http://pi.qcontinuum.com/

QContinuum started out as an ISP (Internet Service Provider) in 1995. I was working at a research lab in Research Park at the UofU running Digital Micro VAXs. We used terminal servers for serial based terminals, scales, blood analyzers, printers, and just about everything else. When I first got on the Internet in 1994 and realized they were using terminal servers (serial connections) for IP networking I was fascinated. Besides the Internet concept was so cool the idea of sharing everything around the world. Back then the World Wide Web had not taken off and the Internet was for the most part email, newsgroups, and file sharing. Anyway I just had to be a part of it so I started my own ISP.

To start out with I never had formal computer training and did not even play on with computers until I was married. I always kept my day job through the history of QContinuum. Most of my computer experience at the time was programming in Fortran and running VMS on Micro VAXs. I knew about a little about different Unixes but every time I started reading about them the commands seemed at the time confusing and not intuitive. Someone had introduced me to Slackware Linux and I had successfully installed the floppy distro. I got Xwindows running and Mozilla which I was using to browse the Internet. At the time it was much better then Windows 3X running winsock.