lolWoW

Apparently someone complained about people putting their blog on TTTO and then talking about WoW.

Personally I think it's stupid to begin with, and it irritates me a bit when I go on there to read stuff about FFXI (and the entire point of the thing is to list blogs about FFXI) and then half the people are talking about another game or even something else even less related to FFXI. Occasional stuff is, ya know, whatever, but people repeat it and some days its kind of stupid. The front page is getting cluttered as it is within single days now.

A person responded to the guy who complained and claimed that there isn't a lot to post about for most people (about FFXI).

What this person should have said is that they have moved on from FFXI and are doing other things, but are either to lazy to remove their no longer relevant content from TTTO, or don't want to give up the exposure that the site brings.

As far as the particular person goes, I don't give a shit and it doesn't matter. No idea who they are, don't really care, but I'm tired of finding my water replaced with vodka.

Personally I'd be content with some kind of feature to prevent certain blogs from appearing on what shows up when I visit TTTO while logged in, but whatever. No one is paying Wyred to filter lack of judgment.

I cast the magic that makes the things do damn near anything

Random, just because its an awesome song:



Anyway, I've kinda looked at what I enjoy doing in FFXI a bit and, more and more, I'm thinking that what I really enjoy is being the mage. Specifically the very back-line ones that die fast and use MP. Melee is great and everything but. . . I'm not sure, I just don't get as into it these days, maybe I never really did, I don't know. I've thought about selling my SAM stuff, but people still want me on that sometimes and SAM/DNC is quite a lot of fun.

THF. . . eh, selling off THF gear would be heresy. Chances are I'll cut down on gear for both SAM and THF and hopefully have just the necessary junk. BRD also needs to be whittled down some, which is unfortunate because I'm sure once that hits 75, people're gonna be wanting it out, even though I'm better with my WHM than I'll ever be with BRD (though I have hit my groove a few times pretty hard).

I'm also thinking about picking up SCH next and demoting NIN to only doing anything when Draco is around to duo. SCH at high levels seems REALLY cool, and pretty fun, in addition to being versatile as anything out there. On top of that, I'd like it at 37 anyway for WHM; sublimation makes a very nice addition to WHM overall. Maybe I'll start it once BRD 75s, or immediately after the update so that 7-10 and beyond takes even less time. The only part I'm really hesitant about is dealing with the dunes, but I think I'll be able to figure out a way around that, somehow.

Also, the freaking hockey season needs to start. NOW.

I'm not going to write an entry about Level Sync

Because everyone else is going to and I'm tired of going to TTTO and seeing 5 entries about the same thing (PW media frenzy anyone?) that offer nothing new whatsoever and just say things that've been said on every forum thread or blog entry about the damned topic. I'm also tired of seeing people do more than one entry a day, but that's something else entirely.

Shit, now that I actually go to write about something that isn't the level sync bit I can't think of much.

I think I've mostly decided that I'm going to do RDM and NIN next, and probably ignore BRD in the short term. The RDM situation in my dynamis linkshell at the moment is a little spotty, but then so is the WHM situation so I'll probably just stick with being the WHM, because its what I'm good at for now. Its also a hell of a lot easier and I get RR3, so, no complaints.

My reasoning for RDM is. . . well, honestly, I just think its a cool job. I can solo stuff with it and it gets some really cool looking gear (I don't care what anyone else says, AF body + mahatma pants looks cool). It is also kind of like WHM except a lot more flexible and functional. I'll have WHM for things that need WHM, and if hardcore healing isn't really needed, I could just use my RDM and do other stuff too.

For NIN, honestly the primary motivation is soloability and its functionality in low-manning things. I do not really plan to use it in a party, mostly just duoing and soloing, probably with draco. With the new level sync thing it'll probably be quite easy and relaxing to get something nice going too.

Today I did my first tier 2 einherjar run, and it was Versus' first too. We did really, really well overall. I was a little sad that we didn't win, after getting the boss down to 21%, and knowing that bats and spiders really wasn't the scariest thing we could get (even maybe one of the easier combos), but then I realized we had gotten the flan, and that we had only two BLMs. So, all things considered we did an EXCELLENT job and we had some really good insight into what changes we might benefit from after the run ended. I'm extremely pumped that I'm with a group doing einherjar that is actually winning instead of just dinking around on T1s losing over and over.

We also did two KS99s, which I really wanted to be a part of (ie. use an orb) but I /random'd a 45 when we were picking orb holders, so tough. As it turned out, the first person who went (actually might have been our leader, I wasn't on the run because we had too many people) lost their orb because. . . I don't know why, but they lost. The second one was a success, but no speed belt, and that was the end of it.

Then we had Dynamis - San D'Oria. Or we did until some japanese shell went in and over-lapped with our time which was already scheduled an hour later than we had intended originally. So instead we did Dynamis - Jeuno and well. . . it kind of sucked. We got something like MNK MNK BLM THF, and wiped 3 or so times. Wipes shouldn't be happening in Dynamis - Jeuno, especially that number of times, so I started kinda brainstorming solutions with a couple other members, and I'll probably bug our leader about it a bit later and see if we can improve ourselves any.

Thief v. 2.0: The Weeaboo Thief

So now that I've finished thief, one big question is "what now?" I've thought about it, and people have asked me. . . but I'm not completely sure.

I've got Red Mage at 59, Paladin at 41, Bard at 70, and most of all White Mage, Samurai, and Thief all need merits.

However, I've also been considering Weeaboo Thief, more commonly known as Ninja. It has a lot of things in common with Thief. For instance, there's no discernible reason for me to actually want to play it. It is hard, and while I suspect I'll manage to do a better job of it than most Ninjas do these days, I don't expect to enjoy it. Both jobs are also not all that capable of taking many hits (or dishing them out until much later).

I guess part of the motivation comes from wanting to be useful, on top of being able to solo stuff. There's also a tiny, extremely suppressed part of me that likes the traditional Japanese style of things (shapes/colors), however thanks to all the retards who can't talk about anything but anime I can't enjoy that stuff without feeling like a moron.

I'd also like to level Black Mage some if SE actually delivers on its promise of making mage + melee parties more viable again in the September update, but honestly for the time being I'm just going to assume they're completely full of shit and it'll just shift things to screw a different group over (I wonder if its Bard's turn?). Either way I look forward to the update if only to see what happens.

At any rate I have a history of saying (thinking) many things and not necessarily going along with them (at least not immediately), so we'll see what happens. For the moment I'm trying to farm up my elemental Ni spells for Ninja, and so far I've gotten the first four REALLY fast, and then nothing for like 4-5 hours. During a full moon too, so I'm tempted to just go buy the last two, even though I have this bizarre. . . I don't know what that prevents me from buying things I can farm, simply because I don't want to spend the money unless its a huge pain to farm or a low amount of money (less than 5k).

To close on an incredibly cute note: my cat has been meowing to get into my room for a while but I don't really want to let her in because she just wants to go out again a little after and I'm allergic to her (bad times on the bed), so she just poked one of her toys under the door and is now trying to stick an arm under the door to swat at it. I think she went and found it, then picked it up and brought it to the door to do that, because I threw it across the house yesterday.

An End

I finally did it, 75 Thief. It happened maybe a week ago, but I didn't quite feel like writing about it, so I put it off until now. I guess part of me feels like this should be more significant to me than it is, but, its been. . . . I suppose satisfying, but the primary thing is that a large chunk of my motivation has disappeared. I don't think its entirely because I finished off thief, but a part of it is.

Regardless, this is what I started, and now (besides merits), it is done. I made my account on December 24th, 2003, and chose to make a mithran thief from San D'Oria. I had the same model as I do now, right down to the size. Now, here I am, my third 75 finally gets finished. I do not know why I enjoy thief, honestly leveling it was a pain in the ass and often not enjoyable (though 74 to 75 was the most fun thing I've done in a long time simply due to a combination of daggers, sushi for the first time, and lolibri). It doesn't get great invites, and its not something that you'd jump to include in a small group of good jobs to have on an event.

It doesn't do the greatest damage, it doesn't have any amazing abilities. . . why do I like it? Do I even in actuality like it, or is it what I think I ought to like, and I simply convince myself to without ever having a reason at any part of the process?

I don't really know, though I was definitely happy to be breaking 1000 damage by a good margin with Trick Attack Dancing Edge on Greater Colibri while getting 75. Either way, at this point I've at least convinced myself I enjoy the idea of it, so I'm proud that I've completed this. Leveling thief to 75 is not easy, and doing it while not sucking and leeching off of the other 5 members of your party is even harder. I am proud that my thief is 75, and I am proud that I'm not gimping it up like most thieves are.

Do I consider myself one of the better/best thieves out there? Hell no. There is a lot I could do to put out a bit more damage, and I admittedly dismissed the idea of using sushi out of hand until recently out of blind disgust for the standard melee mentality that is currently in place. However, for some reason. . . I feel like what I've done getting to this point with thief, and what it is now is more significant than anything else I've done in the game. There's no logical reason for it, that's just how it is.

It feels very weird, after 5 years, getting this job that I've cared about and been interested in the entire time really to 75 finally. I guess that's what I'm trying to say.

The one thing that bothers me now is, part of me thinks that this is something like the fake ending in an RPG where the story really SHOULD have ended, but they wanted to let the player play around with all those spiffy end-of-the-game items they picked up in the final boss's dungeon, and then find completely broken max stat weapons in side-quests after all meaningful parts of the story have ended. Those never really feel right to me.

Well, enough of that I guess. The reality of it is that I ought to quit being sentimental about a number and keep making memories. Debating the contents and motivations of my thoughts with myself isn't terribly effective anyway.

(|Huh!?|)

I don't even really know. Pretty out of it right now, too tired.

Lots of crap happened, some of which I'm not going to talk about because it needs to be in a post of its own, but some of it:

My dynamis shell's co-leader mistakenly invited feiwong. After a few of us let our leader know who Boktai was, I had the pleasure of breaking his pearl. He sent a number of us /tells and said some things in /say, and I have screenshots of the stuff that was in /say or /tell'd to me, but I'm going to send those to Wyred once I stop being lazy about cropping them instead of posting them here.

That being said, I'm terrified because feitard is going to find my non-existent myspace page and somehow use it against me! Oh no!

I also decided to sell off all my gear that isn't for SAM, WHM, THF or BRD in an effort to focus more on my highest jobs so that I can finish them off and THEN worry about lower level stuff.

Lastly, I joined Versus. Its a pretty interesting group, I find myself comparing them a lot with my dynamis shell for some reason, not really because they're similar or anything just kind of like I dated the dynamis shell first and versus is the new chick I'm hanging around. Its pretty nice, no one seems like a lootwhore or anything, which isn't something I can say about at least one person in the dynamis shell.

We apparently do Jailer of Love tomorrow, which is kinda lol for me because. . . I have noooooo idea what to expect, but thats kind of the fun part I guess. The first thing I did in versus was WHM for back to back Kirin fights, which was one hell of an initiation, given that I had no idea what my job was and I basically just joined the parties I was told to join and filled whatever role seemed the most appropriate. I mean, its kind of a no-brainer as a WHM, you get told who is tanking and you cure everyone, the tanks in particular, but it was still adrenaline filled and pretty fun in that it at least felt like a challenge.

Anyway, thats all for now, though I need to do a big post soon. I'm fucking tired.

Public Service Announcement: White Mage

Yes you can gimp it up and still do your job fine. Should you? No. Knock it off and put some effort into the job like everyone else does.

And what the hell is up with Prot/Shellra V? Particularly Protectra V, why in the hell would you ever merit that? You get 68 defense from a fully merited Protectra V, and 55 from Protectra IV. I know absolutely no tanks who would ever prefer 13 defense over getting 250 MP every 10 minutes. Seeing WHMs merit Protectra V and Shellra V together over Devotion makes me sick to my stomach. Why would you ever spend 220,000 experience on 13 fucking defense?

As far as Shellra V goes, at best you go from getting ~21.9% magic damage ignored to getting rid of ~27.4% the stuff. Lets say, best case scenario, you've already finished EVERYTHING else, you have Devotion capped, and you're trying to decide between Shellra V and Martyr. Are there going to be big nasty NMs where you would want 5% more magic damage reduction? Sure. Ok, how about an instant 29 MP (Stoneskin) cure for ~500 HP every 10 minutes?

55 damage ignored out of 1000 from Shellra V's benefit vs. Shellra IV. For Shellra V's usefulness to keep up with Martyr, the total collective magic damage dealt to everyone with your Shellra on them over ten minutes would have to be NINE THOUSAND AND FUCKING NINETY MAGIC DAMAGE BEFORE REDUCTION. Fifteen magic damage a second. Does this ever happen? Sure, I haven't done HNMs, but seriously? Does it?

The only remaining argument that you can make in Shellra V's favor is that it gets put on 6 people, and that Martyr is single-target. I'm praying that no one really thinks thats a good basis for picking Shellra V over Martyr, but I figure there're always going to be idiots. . . so. . .

WOAHSHI

500k entry cost for dynamis FUCK YES

Does this mean I have a hope in hell of getting a relic now? Maybe.

No, really, does it? No. But I'm still happy.

In before butthurt relic holders cry about how their relic is more legit because they paid more for it.

Public Service Announcement: Red Mage

If you do not want to sub WHM and cast Silena DO NOT TAKE INVITES TO FIGHT IN CAEDARVA.

I am fucking tired as hell of asking for silena on BRD, get your shit together, find another job, or tell the DDs why they don't have songs up half the time. I'm tired of spending 8k every half hour because you're too lazy to cast a very fast spell.

This message has been brought to you by: (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|)

Also, stop subbing scholar. Seriously, you're idiots.

1/1 on Airship. . .

No pics, because I did it on my desktop, which no longer has fraps, but fuck. I'm pumped.

Souel is awesome, and Xcaliber likes boys.

Onwards to sea!

Also bushinomimi, BRD66, PLD41, RDM58 almost 59. Woo craps happening!

Is it just me. . .

. . . or is it always the gimpy domaru or full hachiman SAM in campaign that pulls hate from a mob that has 20ish people on it and then starts running away and kiting it around the tower or whatever area.

Has anyone else noticed this?

Public Service Announcement: Paladin

Grindan Gaems

To be honest I can't even remember when I got each level but I think I've gone from 44 to 48 and change on RDM so far. At the moment I'm 3k into 48, but I'll probably ding again tonight if I can stay up. Hell maybe I'll hit 50. That'd be kind of depressing actually.

Why the hell am I leveling RDM like this? Honestly I don't know. I just sort of decided that I want RDM at 75 and now its going to get done. I'll inevitably fall short and get sick of it (hopefully after 60), but for the moment I'm riding out my momentum and hoping I have what it takes to just burn the damn thing to 75. Maybe after or during that I'll find the motivation to do similar things with THF (72) and BRD (65).

It'll be great, I can go from being a princess on RDM and BRD and then raging with righteous fury against princesses and gimp THFs while trying to cap my THF.

Anyway, for the 5 of you who actually read this crap, how are the Public Service Announcements? I've thought about doing one for each job and if they're good enough, going through another cycle, but I want to put a lot of effort into them and make people laugh, so if its just going to get old after another couple I'd rather not bother.

I would very much like to get people to laugh (and maybe make a few people realize that they're doing something stupid. . .).

Conversations with teh Draco

So Draco has always been kind of anti-end game, and doesn't like people who obsess over gear and spend all their time up in sky or things like that. However lately I've noticed hes been talking a lot about end-game gear and trying to get a group going for assault and salvage and nyzul and all this junk, so I was talking to him a moment ago, and heres the conversation:

Draco: No kidding
but yeah i'm just plotting out what the best for each of my probable 75s is, and then seeing if I can overlap
From the looks of it, PLD and DRG will share a fair amount

me: so I guess you've officially broken down now huh

Draco: I'm just putzing

me: sure you are

Draco: We'll see how things go
I keep calling it a perfect world pipe dream so I don't get obsessive
but I don't have much else to do but collect shit

me: "I'm not gay, I just like anal sex"

Draco: I bought every damn thing already
Fuck you lol

Public Service Announcement: Thief

Why hello there Billy, it looks like you've gotten your Thief all the way up into the seventies! That's swell!

You've got your War Gloves, and you even noticed that TPing in Rogue's Culotte is gimp! You sure are moving forward Billy.

What's that Billy? You've upgraded your daggers you say? That's great, let's see what you got.

Wait, what the. . . Billy, what the fuck is this shit?

More critical hits? No, fuck you Billy. Fuck you right up the ass. Heart Snatcher is a piece of shit. Toss it now.

I don't give a shit that you spent days unlocking it Billy, you're a fucking retard. Toss it.

Wait, no, hold on. You're off-handing a Thief's Knife? And you're taking these to Frankie's merit party?

I'm sorry Billy, but you're being reassigned to WoW. Now get the fuck out before I find my belt.

This message has been brought to you by: Every god damn hour I've spent seeking my Thief because of the countless gimps who play the job making everyone think we're less useful than other jobs.

I'm looking at you Katoke. You and everyone like you.

Public Service Announcement: Samurai

Guys.

Hey. Guys.

Domaru sucks. Stop it. No, seriously, its a piece of crap, stop wearing it.

Keep your haubergeon, and if you're high enough to think about the domaru and don't have a haub, find another job to play.

This message has been brought to you by: RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE

It doesn't even look good! If I see another SAM wearing okotes and a domaru I'll probably get my account suspended "helping" them understand how retarded they are.

Dynamis - Bedroom

On the one hand, lots of stuff happening, but then it doesn't feel like too much for some reason. This weekend actually should be rough since I have plans to leave my house twice within two days (amazing!). Other than that though, just a nice relaxing week or so getting some important things done.



Got my second to last drop for the Opo-opo crown a few days back. We got it on the first kill, amazingly. The reason this was particularly note-worthy was we got Draco's on the first kill as well.



Did my NPC's G1, though I have another one I have to do for her now. Honestly its a bit of a pain, takes a while to get these quests done.



I got an O-hat! Ok sweet my Thief is ready to exp-wait fuck Sirocco. Dammit. I need to convince myself to forget about all this R/E junk that would make my Thief great and just level the damn thing to 75.

For now at least, its Paladin time though.

Pictures, with a side of lulz

If you only care about the comedy, scroll down until you see the screenshot that consists of a whole bunch of orange text, that'd be it.



Unfortunately this ones already out of date. My PLD is nearly 29 now, can't wait to put on my eisen/kampf gear.



Got one of the more useless pieces of relic on Thursday. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to have it and appreciate the drop, but. . . lets be honest. Its not exactly something most people would be happy to catch a WHM wearing in a party.



Got my first level of Devotion, mostly for Draco. Its pretty fun, I don't regret picking it up. I need to cap it off now unfortunately. . . oh well at least I have SAM to do that with now.



75 SAM! That makes two.



I also got Diabolos randomly, which means I have all summons. Ironically, like the day after or two days after I picked Diabolos up they announced the Ixion thing, and even though I know now that he isn't a summon (yet), I still cried.



Got my Minstrel's finally! I think I mentioned it, but Saruka helped me get the drop. Draco also camped it with me quite a bit. Go go BRD end-game gear at 62!



I also picked up an Assault Jerkin recently, which I really don't deserve. This should be Draco's or Saruka's. But we should be remedying that shortly. . .



Ah the lulz. Anything more I could say about that conversation will only detract from the hilarity, so please, enjoy.



Ah, Cutaru. I just thought this seemed appropriately. . . cute? With her (his?) ass up in the air like that. Ironically, soon after taking this screenshot I found out that Cutaru is in my Dynamis shell. What a tweest!

Wait, what?

So I finally got around to installing photoshop and cropping up all my screenshots into what I want posted. I even organized them all so they're nice now. I go to upload them and. . . what? Photobucket got hacked?

So I can't upload them for the moment. Honestly I'm not sure what exactly happened to photobucket, I had JUST gotten a party on PLD as I noticed so I couldn't look into it much.

Anyway, improving Dynamis runs like I promised. Chat. Talk to everyone, get them mentally involved. If they're thinking about chatting with you and still doing their job, they're not thinking about whatever drop they haven't gotten yet or the fact that they've been there for 3 hours. Doesn't matter what you talk about, make a stupid joke. Just get a chuckle out of them or something. If your members are feeling good and not getting angsty over a mistake someone made or the drops or some other retarded drama, Dynamis is a lot more tolerable. The most important thing is to try to involve everyone unless they repeatedly act as though they don't want to be. Make them feel like they're part of the group even if its their first run. ESPECIALLY if its their first run. Get to know them all, even if only just a little.

You want people to have fun attending your runs, and lets be honest the game doesn't really facilitate that on its own most days.

Anyway, thats about it until photobucket comes back online.

PS: STOP FUCKING UNDERCUTTING KAGINAWA, FUCK

Thievery, Merits, and a second 75

So I want to post screenshots, I have a ton of them, but theres just one hitch. No photoshop. I have CS2, and I can install it any time, but I'm like. . . . I think 1 gig away from a full hard-drive at the moment and I'm too lazy to find stuff I want to delete/put junk on a DVD. Too busy dinging 75 Samurai I guess. Whoops, that was for later.

Saruka got 75 Thief though, which is awesome and I feel great for him because hes pretty much in the same situation I am. We've both been Thief for about the same time period (5 years) and are only just now close to capping it, and in his case, finally capping it. I actually hadn't realized that I have as much in common with him as I do until recently, its been a lot of fun screwing around killing stuff with him.

I've also worked on merits some, and thought about what I want to get. Until the last few days, I had only ever gotten one merit, and it went right into Regen. However I got three in the last few days and picked up the first level of Devotion, which Draco has wanted me to have for quite a while.

However the real interesting thing that I was thinking about was what I was going to do overall with my merits in the short term, and specifically how I might use them as a tool for improving a job as I'm leveling it. Namely, Paladin. The main thing that I have thought about improving is HP or MP, because those would be pretty much universally useful. However what I was thinking was, in the interest of Paladin, going full 8/8 on MP. I know, I know, most full-time Paladins reading this are probably thinking I'm nuts or stupid. There are a few factors here. First, I don't plan on tanking in end-game. I have White Mage and probably Bard as well for doing any of that junk, and I don't think I'm a particularly good tank as a player anyway. I am better suited for a support role. Second, looking at Paladin from the perspective of someone who more or less intends to use it only for leveling up, and then random raids or missions where my friends need a tank, HP isn't that important. Point for point, in that situation (to me at least) it makes more sense to go after MP. On top of that, I look at how most of the jobs I level and enjoy are mages (I know two of my three highest are melee, but overall I'm a mage player), and from what I can see it makes the most sense to go after MP.

To top it all off, I finally got Samurai to 75 in this ridiculously fun party that I got to sub Dancer in. We had three Samurai, a Thief, a Red Mage, and a Ninja, and the Thief only ever got to engage the mobs when they pulled a link, because we were killing so fast. We got a good 30k, which allowed me a healthy 10k buffer, which I'll probably be too lazy to extend. So now I don't have to merit on my White Mage, and a shell member (Djohn) is slowly nearing 75 with his own White Mage, so its great that I have another option.

I'd go into detail about what I want to merit on Samurai but the only real interesting dilemma I've thought of is Meditate versus Third Eye. Everything else seems pretty obvious to me, and thus not very interesting. At the moment I can't really decide between Meditate and Third Eye because on the one hand Meditate turns into more hate generation, which I don't really need, and I'm honestly not very good as using Third Eye all that often, even though I have toyed with the idea of tanking with Samurai rather frequently, especially after Dancer was introduced. At any rate I'll probably do Meditate simply because its more useful than only five seconds off of Third Eye, and coupled with Shikikoyo its reasonable to see myself using and wanting even more TP than I already get.

Anyway, I'm either going to nap or go walk to an awesome family owned donut place near my house for breakfast, but the next entry will be something that at least interests me; a way to improve your shell's Dynamis runs without making any in-game adjustments.

Dynamis - Kitchen

Joined another Dynamis shell. . . Elminster runs it, its pretty cool. Aside from a blatantly obvious gilbuyer (SH+1 + a key ring belt full time in dyna windy after not knowing if the airship in sandy went to windurst as a level 70 THF - oh and he got a relic drop) and some people who say things they shouldn't / act like they're on a power trip most of the time, its a great shell. Excellent PLDs, and a number of cool people.

I WHM'd of course, which was a lot of fun since the first party I was in (5 DDs and me) was very relaxing and enjoyable, and then they threw me in the tank party which at first was scary as hell since I wasn't quite ready for it, but once I figured out how things were going mostly it was easy. The PLDs did a wonderful job and made it quite easy for me to keep them alive.

I've also been doing ZMs, I never really realized how freaking easy they are. In the last little while we knocked off ZM4 and ZM5, kicked the crap out of both of them despite getting slapped around by the zi'tah headstone NM a bit. Can't wait to get sky access, there is a particular shell I would like to join, though I'm going to have to be careful about my work schedule and joining various shells like the dynamis one and this one.

Anyway, SAM partay. Maybe I can get 75 this weekend.

Lolwut

Yea I left for a while, more so this blog than the game. Left the game for a month or two to do better in classes, did worse, so. . . I don't know.

Anyway, update day. Pretty sweet, lots of stuff, but most of them are things I want to see in game or screenshots of before I really form an opinion so not too much to comment on beyond feeling as though my SAM likely has some different goals now gear-wise.

SAM is 73. THF is 70. DNC is 37. RDM is 4. . . 43? Either 43 or 42, I don't remember.

SAM has actually been a lot of fun. I don't know what is up with the missed WS crap but for some reason its been happening less despite no gear changes, but when it does happen its like 3-4 in a row and then no misses for a while. Not really sure whats up with that, but I can only really move forward at this point.

Some douchebags jacked the price up on Shinsoku randomly, I've been trying to pick one up but I'm not paying 200k for something thats been 110k for a long time.

Lastly, I started making egg fried rice. This is excellent food and any retard can cook it easily, heres how you make it:

- Make some rice (I prefer brown personally, healthy), and refrigerate it the night before if you can though I don't think its completely necessary.

- Prepare the vegetables/meat you want to use. Personally I like to go with broccoli, carrots, and corn but red bell peppers and pretty much any meat work well too. cut them up fairly small, its best to be able to get a little of everything in most bites.

- Throw the rice in a wok or large pan with high sides, add some vegetable oil, maybe like 4 tablespoons or something, I just pour a bit in. the idea is to get it on all of the rice

- You have two options with the eggs: you can either do them separately (what I prefer because I make a big batch and my wok isn't all that huge) or you can do all of it in one pan. If you do it separately, just make scrambled eggs with salt/pepper and whatever else you'd like to add to them in a separate pan, and when they're more or less solid throw them in with the rest and continue to cook them. Try to get the individual pieces of egg relatively small. If you're doing it all together, at some point during the cooking, whenever you're most comfortable (I go shortly after I've put all the other stuff in) move everything but the eggs off to one side of the pan as best as you can and pour the eggs in, just make 'em scrambled right there. You might be able to just dump the eggs in without moving anything aside and cook it all together but I've never tried it and it might be kind of difficult.

- For the rice and vegetables, just stir fry them pretty much (which is to say heat the pan they're in and move them around with a bamboo or wood spatula until they're cooked). You'll want a little bit of soy sauce, depending on how much stuff you throw in other than the rice it will vary. Try to experiment with how much you use. You can also use other sauces, I'd imagine teriyaki or oyster sauce would work but I've never tried either personally.

tl;dr: Stir fry rice, meat and vegetables. Make scrambled eggs. Mix together.

Hockey players are the best, period (2)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRdRYq2CpjE&feature=related

Well, despite being a tech guy I can't figure out how to directly put the damn video into this, so theres the link until someone posts a comment on how to do it, not that anyone reads this.

But anyway, I noticed this video because my team (San Jose Sharks) just traded for Jody Shelley, who is in that. Basically, a leafs player autographed a stick for Shelley during the game, and threw it over the divide in the glass. What other sport could you possibly see this kind of friendliness in during a game in? Football? Fuck no. Baseball? Maybe, but probably not. Basketball? I doubt it. This is the one thing that makes hockey better than any other sport will ever be; the culture is just so ridiculously awesome that it is beyond description.

Another example, and I'm sorry that it involves the Sharks again but they're really the only team I watch, was when the Sharks were playing. . . maybe the Coyotes. . . I don't remember, but it doesn't really matter. A couple fights started up after a play, and in one of them, the opponent's player got injured a bit, and was laying down on the ice. Jeremy Roenick (pretty big name in hockey, generally speaking), who was the sharks player in the fight, was the one who called for the opposing teams trainer. Thats right, he wasn't throwing punches or trying to hurt the guy more. He STOPPED, let go of the guy, made sure he was laid down ok on the ice and called for a trainer. This is all right after they were throwing punches at each other.

This is why hockey players are so fucking awesome. They're not out there to kill each other, and its not as violent of a sport as people think. Fights on the ice are almost always about one of the people owning up to a mistake they made that hurt or could have hurt another teams player. They're about accountability. Not hurting people. Got that all you idiotic mothers who stop your kids from playing because "OH MY GOSH ITS VIOLENT"?

Hockey culture is win.

Soboro, Stir-Fry, and. . . S. . . s. . . reformatting

So, as you can see in the picture, I got a Soboro. Its nicer than I had expected. Its not godly, by any measure, but its still quite nice I think. As you can see in the picture, Val was having a bit of fun harassing people about their (in)ability to spell things correctly. However, there were two other things that happened during the run. One was epic, and one was epic fail.

Lets start with the epic part. Towards the end, people started leaving and being pricks, so eventually we wound up with just 12 people, and our 'main' tank was afk (part of the epic fail). We wound up fighting one anyway, and its second self-destruct raped Enc, who was our 'second' tank. He immediately re-raised and voked it, and tanked it from like 50% until we killed it. He had 221 max HP I think during 90% of that. So, yea, Enc is now easily the most badass PLD I know, which is actually saying a LOT since I hang around Draconum a ton. Though I did pull hate off Draco with Regen III once, so. . .

On to the epic fail. On the second or third to last run, the 'main' tank Linkstrife said he had to hit the grocery store, and that it'd only take about one cycle (as in he'd be back a little after the next ??? popped, but before the one after that). We killed one, wiped, and waited like 2 hours total for him to come back. The other thing is, we would have been DONE at that point anyway if he hadn't brought out his second account to get one, and while he claimed otherwise, a few of us think he ALREADY GOT ONE FOR HIS MAIN. So, after a while we just said fuck him and left. He stayed there until or past like 1:30 AM or so (CST?) that night according to Val, so he was afk for a lot longer than "20 minutes or so".

Anyway, real life. I've been trying to get a wok for a while, and yesterday I finally got one. It is unfortunately xbawks hueg, but all of the other ones were tiny, so whatever. I made some vegetable stir-fry last night with a few things, and man was it ever filling. I haven't eaten vegetables in. . . forever. But yea, I wish I had a digital camera so I could put a pic of it up on here, it actually looked really nice for something I made (IT HAD COLOURS!). All part of an effort to kind of round out my diet so I can be healthy, since last semester I sort of ate almost nothing but pasta and lost 40 lbs. as a result, and I'm not going to say I was super thin or anything (6 feet tall and was like 180-200), but I'm not really fat either, so suddenly going and dropping 10 pounds a month just wasn't looking like a healthy thing.

Also, I got some stupid viruses on my desktop that turned into losing my net connection for 24 hours a week or two ago, so I've been trying to reformat it and because of a combination of about 3 impossibly irritating things, I can't normally reformat without a floppy, but I'm using this opportunity to put ubuntu on there as well, and my friend says I can use that to reformat, so hopefully that will work. The only thing that sucks about it all is I just realized that I don't have photoshop any more, so I'll have to downlo-I mean. . . ask my. . . family. . . for one of the copies from uh. . . home (actually now that I think about it, I actually am going to do that, I'd forgotten, but my parents bought CS2 and such, dad used to work for Adobe so he probably got a deal on it).

Anyway, off to make breakfast. . . recently discovered the joys of simple buttered toast.

Freakin hell. . .

You know when you just kind of get off track and one mistake or problem creates another one and it just branches out until you're pretty screwed overall? Happening right now, kinda depressing. I know I need to just put my head down and work, but that has always been my one problem. I can't just strap in and turn on easily. Whether its because I make excuses, or am lazy, or what, I don't know, but it always happens and its the ONLY thing between me and the top of the class.

First problem was that my housemate is still a fucking douchebag, and even a hour or two ago was slamming and cussing at his computer, which has consistently either woken me up or made me unable to sleep, and that combined with the fact that the beds here are absolutely horrible and extremely difficult to sleep on, its virtually impossible to get a decent sleep schedule going. This has in turn caused me to miss a couple classes in the first three weeks because I've been on the verge of passing out, and to avoid the embarrassment of passing out in the middle of class I just went home and slept. In turn I was unable to do the first assignment in one of my classes (bye-bye 5% of my grade) and haven't done too much of the reading in my other classes.

The result? Well, I am trying to just straight force myself to get this work done and finish as much as I can as soon as it is assigned, and also get this stupid fucking excuse for a human kicked out of residence for being an all around douchebag.

This crap is creeping into the rest of my life too though, but I'm finding it easier to remedy it there. I've always been a tech/computer person, but I've also got a fair bit of intuition with story-writing, though at the moment its mostly just picking out what is wrong with other people's stories. As a result, coupled with my love of games I've been trying to aim towards a career in game design (not programming them, but literally designing the game/plot). Lately I've come across nothing but people saying there aren't any openings, and pretty much all discussion of it that I've seen ends there. This got me thinking about whether or not my goals are even vaguely realistic, and the whole thing is just depressing. At the same time, I understand and acknowledge that this isn't the kind of thing I can just decide and plan out on a whim, and in reality I have no idea what its going to be like 2-3 years from now when I graduate and really start working on a career, but it still gets me down.

Lastly, with FFXI I've been feeling severely unmotivated. Yea, I really want to get X, Y and Z but really. . . do I even have time to utilize sky access if I got it? Sea access? Any of that sort of thing? Hell, even just another 75 job? I'm trying to get myself into a relationship and I think its extremely likely that FFXI will take an extreme backburner seat when that happens, so whats the point of enduring retards in the dunes? I guess it might just be a result of the overall negative attitude that I've got going right now, but damn. Even my entertainment is kinda dying off here. I guess on the flip side I'm trying to get myself to listen to Canadiens and/or Leafs games as well as Sharks games (hockey for all you lolamericans, since any Canadian who doesn't know who the Canadiens or Leafs are whether or not they like them ought to have their citizenship revoked), so that might help me enjoy things more and motivate me to head out of my room some time to watch games, maybe a bar, I dunno.

Anyway, feeling a little better now but. . . theres still kind of an argument going on in my head between the new me (post-depression) and old me (depression). New me knows the game and beat it, several times, but it still takes a while to do, and the old me is still stuck in the same old loop. . . it feels like I'm playing therapist for a friend again, but its me, weird feeling.

Anyway, back to my reading.

Hockey players are the best, period

So Thatsmypunk bugged me at 6 or 7 AM again, heres the result.

Ovechkin on a Segway

I asked why he was riding a Segway around D.C.

"Have fun," he said. "Why do I have to stay home? No. It's good. Watch beautiful city, watch girls...."

"Have you seen any girls?" Backstrom asked.

"No," Ovechkin replied. "Girls, where are you? I can't find you."

I've never been an Ovechkin fan or a caps fan, but man. I sure as hell am now.

There're a million awesome things about hockey, this kind of thing is just one of them. . . . freaking hilarity.

What am I doing?

I've gotten a bit caught up in wanting to level too many things at once again, and its costing me a bit. Part of it is that for some reason I just cannot establish any kind of sleep schedule. Honestly if I had that taken care of I'd be doing fine and be enjoying things a whole hell of a lot more, but as it is my brain is all over the place and I'm writing in a blog at 5:53 AM after getting. . . . I dunno, see I'm not even sure I actually fell asleep between 2 and 4 AM, I think I was close but not quite there.

Honestly I'm not quite sure why I can't get a schedule down. Maybe I'm being stupid with late night gaming. Maybe the mattress sucks. Maybe I think too much when I'm trying to sleep. Maybe my housemate is loud at the wrong times of day (shockingly hes been better, but I still want to burn his ass at least once).

Looking back at what I've just written, I'm kinda surprised how quickly I went from "I want to level all my jobs" to "I can't sleep". Just goes to show how out of it I am these days. . . .

Far as FFXI progress goes, I've made it to 36 on Red Mage, which isn't bad I guess but. . . I dunno, honestly it doesn't feel like I've accomplished much.

Anyway, back to trying to sleep before I head over to tim hortons and buy breakfast. . .

Back up north. . .

Well, I leave for Toronto this Friday, which kinda blows, I was enjoying myself here, but there are some upsides to Toronto as well, despite the fact that I'm going to immediately have to deal with the housemate situation pretty much starting the second I enter the house.

Oh well, at least now I can actually use my Wii. Hopefully I'll take some pictures of how I'm doing it and put a little thing up for people to read since its actually a really useful tool to get for a college student since its a pain to carry a TV around when you're already hauling a laptop and/or desktop. To be honest, it is lagged a little bit since USB isn't nearly as fast as a direction connection and it has to change the signal but like I said, its better than hauling a TV across the continent, or even just to and from storage every year. Just wish one of the stores around here had the Paper Mario game for the Wii, went shopping for it today and came up empty (still got some good headphones though).

I've also managed 60 BRD, and have purchased and/or farmed all songs up to 63, along with all useful instruments, and currently have pretty much the best reasonable gear I can get. Just bugs me that it takes so long to level, but, I think I may be able to stick to it and manage 75 in the next couple months maybe. I might wind up seeking out a soboro and leveling DNC instead just because SAM/DNC seems so awesome in theory, but I'd like to finish BRD if only for utility purposes. Its something kinda laid back without being melee that I can take on runs and things without having to worry too much about gear and "WTF I MISSED AGAIN". Well, technically theres resists, but now that I have + wind and singing from AF its kinda. . . I dunno. Just never seems to happen.

Weird, I feel like I have more to write about but I can't think of anything. Really just been playing Disgaea, leveling BRD, eating, and slowly killing myself with chocolate. Oh I did discover that I randomly lost like 40 pounds during first semester, not that I really care beyond that probably being a really bad thing. Oh well, probably got most of it back over the holidays anyway. Oh, and Seether's Fake It is an awesome song.