Crappy Music Day

Yes, its that time of year again. When some twit who no one will stand up to puts on horrible "holiday" music that would never sell at all if not for its "festive" aspects. I mean, come on, seriously everyone agrees here right? The music fucking sucks without exception. Doesn't matter if you normally listen to rap, rock, lolemo music, or whatever. This is the time of year when we can all come together in agreement over how ridiculously horrible Christmas music is.

Anyway, on to FFXI. For a long while I was looking to pick up a scroll of Carnage Elegy, but they cost a ton on the AH and Draco and I have both spent days (almost a month) trying to farm the damn thing. I think. . . night before last or around there, Draco managed to get the drop, and sent it over to me, so I owe him big time. Between the links and the fact that it took FOREVER to just get the damn thing to drop, it was really rough to try and get.

As a result, I'm looking to level bard again, and I do need to get my hands on those last two pieces of AF (body and hands), and work on the Opo-opo Crown and then finally a Minstrel's Coat to finish pimping out my bard, none of it is really necessary and I don't really need to pause my leveling for any of it. They can be taken care of as things go on, and I should be able to manage 75 in no time, which opens up new opportunities for meriting.

I've also been sorta half looking to get my hands on a Soboro and get dancer up to 37 for a very fun combination of SAM/DNC. For me, it would likely be perfect. I'd be able to support the group through healing tons, possibly also tank a little, and to top it off still be capable of doing some considerable damage. The only thing that would suck is that imps would absolutely destroy me even more than they already do, and I think we all know how often parties go after imps. Oh well, at the very least it'd be freaking disgusting for soloing random things and for coffer key raids. Hell I'd probably wind up soloing most of my keys after setting that up.

Anyway, off to get breakfast. At my grandparents house in San Diego, would MUCH rather be at home but it can't be helped.

Ten Year Olds in University

I haven't really hidden the fact that I've had problems with my housemates up in Toronto, but it has gotten way worse. Initially, I didn't have any problems with this one guy, but now he thinks hes the greatest thing ever and doesn't need to pay attention to what anyone else says. . . so basically hes ripped off part of our bathroom door and likely damaged his room (which we all have to pay for unless we burn his ass, which I'm going to do). He has also created numerous issues with noise and just acting like a ten year old in general, even going so far as to try to provoke me while I'm not even in the country via facebook, which was a good laugh but its a clear sign that its high time he gets out of a respectable university and starts begging for change, because quite honestly thats what he deserves. Not sure how the hell he got in.

Chances are when I bring up the problem, I will be the one moved, but if I can essentially prove that he has damaged the house. . . he might get removed from the school entirely. To be honest, I want to burn this guy. It would be so satisfying to see him kicked off campus after all of the shit he has pulled, and maybe I'd be a bad person for genuinely enjoying ruining someone else's life, but hes well on his way to putting a significant dent in mine, so, him or me I guess.

Anyway, I've mostly been playing Guild Wars because its easier to pick up and put down whenever I want to, and with finals and getting back to California its been a little rough finding time to just sit down and play, but I think I'm slowly getting back into an FFXI mood, though some minor drama mongering has put me off a tiny bit. I will likely continue with RDM, I still want it up, but I'm at the stage where I just need to get any motivation at all back, and then move up from there to whatever comes next.

Oh, also: California is colder than Toronto? lolwut? Seriously though, 33 here, 37 there, kind of disturbing. At least theres no snow I suppose, and I've got my cat and a TV and real food (something other than pasta). Parents have done some yelling, and forced me to follow suit, but its MOSTLY been nice, and its certainly better than having some 19 year old who thinks hes 10 slamming his keyboard because he sucks at Half-Life. I can't wait to see the look on his face when he realizes that I wasn't joking about having a chat with some UTSC staff

Why red?

Been leveling Red Mage lately, wondering exactly why its red and not green or something. Someone also asked me why I was leveling RDM, which kinda surprised me. Its a semi-useful situational sub to have for WHM, to be sure, but honestly I just felt like leveling it. Also, Galbatorix's Phalanx II made me a little jealous, it seemed extremely sexy and useful.



Currently sitting at 26, dinged earlier today before I went down for a nap. The party I got was kinda. . . . not so hot, but we powered through it and at that level it doesn't really matter anyway. Just not as smooth as I would have liked.

So far I really like the job but its been rough keeping up with resists. It has felt kind of like BLM, where I was having a lot of trouble having my spells not get resisted even though I had pretty much the most INT gear I could get. Because of that and mostly only really having debuffs that're useful (DNC take care of healing pretty much exclusively in the lower levels now, because theres so many of them and because there are so few WHMs) I've felt like I wasn't really a good use of a party slot most times, but even so things seem to be going ok, and around 33 things will begin to change dramatically.

I've also been really unsure what kind of gear exactly I'm supposed to wear. I feel like a WHM, except everything is the holy breastplate, and by the way if anyone reading this is a WHM who wears that, go kill yourself. I mean I get that RDM is supposed to be a hybrid but gear wise that turns into light DD gear because all the mage stuff thats even vaguely useful is either all jobs or the 'pure' mages only. I mean it doesn't really matter, I just feel weird wearing lizard gear into the late 20s because theres nothing worth upgrading to unless I wanted to look more pretty and go with beetle.

Thankfully school has more or less ended until next semester with the exception of finals, which is mainly why I'm moving significantly on RDM, but it also means that my housemates are around constantly so its been kind of a game of seeing if I can guess when they'll be loud and act like retards so I can fall asleep and then avoid them waking me up 2 hours later. Its also been rough actually trying to keep a reasonable sleep schedule. I'm a pretty light sleeper typically, I mean not that it matters since these idiots literally slam things around at 5 AM (like punching walls slamming) so even if I could sleep through the more minor stuff, that would wake me up pretty quickly, but a lot of the time they either keep me up or wake me up shortly after I fall asleep. . . . . I'm really looking forward to going home for a few weeks. There're a number of things I want to do and people I want to see (like my cat), but at the moment it looks like I might have to go down to southern california for christmas yet again which pretty much assfucks any plans I had to do anything even remotely relaxing over break. At any rate, I gotta get through finals first I guess.

Progress. . . . ?

Managed Rank 8. . . . last night? I don't remember, my asshole housemate in the room next to mine keeps cussing at his computer because he sucks at games and dies a lot so I haven't really been able to get that much sleep despite telling him to shut up on more than one occaison. Anyway, yea. Rank 8, pretty nice, but I've got 10 in my sights.



As mentioned previously, I've been going through the CoP missions. . . ya know the more I see him the more I feel like Bahamut is a little pansy. I mean, if the Mammets were kicking his ass a little, surely he can't be THAT mean.



Beat up the Mammets pretty easily second run we went through on it. Oops, lolNIN is in this picture. Maybe I should have censored the names. . . . nah.



Also kicked Diabolos' ass, wasn't too hard, but it kinda blew that we had to run down there for it twice.



Best cutscene ever. I'm sure there are already MANY rule 34 related images around on the net somewhere.



Also kept leveling BRD though I've stopped recently because farming up the level 59 elegy is a pain in the ass and I don't really feel like spending the money on it yet, but with my source of income going through the roof thanks to the re-nerfing of 2 handers, that might change soon.



Lastly, Imac was around a couple weekends ago and there were a few fun moments, this being the primary highlight.

Miserable Failures

So a while ago I joined up with a group moving through Chains of Promathia missions, and it was going MOSTLY ok, and a few of the people on the runs are actually quite smart, but eventually it got kind of. . . . . .

There is one central character in all of this bullshit, and I'll just call him lolNIN until he pisses me off enough that I feel the need to reveal his name. The short version is he is a complete moron who never prepares for anything at all and needs to have his hand held through every single thing no matter how trivial.

First instance was prep work for Mammets. For those of you who don't know, the prep involves a lot of running around, and if you're a retard (or just lolNIN) it takes FOREVER. Amazingly, I was lucky enough to be paired off to DUO the entire thing with this moron. He is a level 60 NIN. He is rank 4. He needs ports for every step the entire way.

The prep also involves fighting an ant lion that regains all of its HP if it returns to its spawn point, which it attempts to do every time it uses an ability. It took about 5 minutes of saying "MOVE THE FUCK AWAY FROM ITS SPAWN" and it got all of its HP back about 6 times before this retarded lolNIN could figure out that he needed to move. Several call1's were also involved. After that, whenever it moved back and we couldn't turn it, I had to spend about 2-3 minutes again spamming that he needed to get away from the spawn before he moved. After about half an hour he finally figured it out and it only took a couple notices in /p before he moved.

Please note that nothing in this is an exageration. I really did have to spend about 5 minutes getting this jackass to move away from the spawn, and it really did take about half an hour for him to figure out why DESPITE KNOWING THAT IT GOT ALL ITS HP BACK AT THE SPAWN POINT.

Eventually, after being about 2 hours late thanks to this guys inability to do his rank 5 mission, we got to Monarch Linn. We go in for the first run, seems to be going ok, we had three NINs (or two NINs and one lolNIN depending how you count). How I did not see this coming is beyond me, but the lolNIN got the mage mammet, and IMMEDIATELY pulled it right in between the other two NINs so that any AoE would pretty much hit everyone. At this point I figure that maybe hes just trying to fuck this up, but apparently he really is that stupid. After a few pointed comments in his direction we went again, told him to just shut up and go hump a wall with his mammet, and we won.

A few days later, we go to Pso'Xja to farm chips to get the pass for the Diabolos fight, and not 2 minutes after he and I zone in he spawns the two golems from the thing that you get the. . . . blue? bracelet from and is promptly assfucked. Of course, he decided not to follow me, so I can't do anything to make up for his idiocy until I run back and raise his sorry ass.

Now, we're on Ouryu, and while we lost the first fight (and had to warp because everyone was retarded and spammed their mistmelts on the first time he went up until they had none left), lolNIN amazingly managed to not fuck up anything major that I noticed. Course, now that we're on our way back to run it again he and everyone else in our party except me managed to split up into two groups, both aggro hippos, and both die, so, don't give him too much credit.

Gonna write a non-rant bit later probably once I have enough free time to fiddle with pictures.

Not good enough

No one is perfect.

That isn't going to stop me from being incredibly pissed about this idiotic WotG PC delay. Thanks, I have no drive whatsoever to go and play the game so I can watch everyone around me enjoy new content while I have to wait. . . what is it now, 5 days?

Also, people at EB Games are douchebags. Not really news to anyone I'm sure, but its worth pointing out.

For the Lulz

LolRDM. . ?

Alright, I have a question to ask the FFXI community as a whole, or possibly specifically those who play RDM.

Why are half of the RDMs great players who pay attention, while the other half just suck completely beyond belief and cannot be bothered to actually play the game when they get a party?

Heres an example: In my static on Sunday, we initially had a RDM named Skelly. I had a bad feeling about him before the party started because he felt it was neccesary to spam a shout for people to join his linkshell in freaking Bibiki Bay. Shockingly, he sucked ass. I could give you specific examples of how he sucked, but really, I can sum it up by saying he was essentially afk 90% of the time and wasn't saying anything about it, not that it would have been alright if he had. Eventually, a mob pops on us, links, kills half the party, and Draco on WHM is the only one who attempts to sleep it, because guess what? Skelly has porn to watch, why the hell would he try and help the party or even pay attention? What a strange notion, this whole "playing the fucking game" thing.

Skelly the shittacular RDM is by no means an isolated case. I had another that went afk without saying anything in a party I had with Sicfreak on my BRD. The difference here was they went afk. . . and stayed afk for about 12 hours. Sic had a party there later and they were still there /healing in the same damn spot. Maybe they passed out? I don't know, and I don't care. You don't seek when you're really tired.

Yet, on the other side of things, we eventually got a replacement for Skelly, because he was embaressed to be revealed as the gimp moron he was. The replacement was another taru RDM named Tuzabuza, and he brought out the full potential of RDM. While Draco had to leave shortly after, if he had been there, he could have afk'd the whole thing and been gimp like Skelly and the party still would have gone smoothly. Tuzabuza took care of everything and had MP to spare. All in all, an extremely excellent RDM.

Tuzabuza's excellence however is not an isolated case either. There are quite a few excellent RDMs, and while I can't remember his name, I had a japanese RDM in one of my BRD parties that made BRD pulling extremely easy because if ballad wore for a short time while I was off pulling, he always had me covered and we didn't suffer because of it.

So why is it, that half of the players can play this job so well while the other half don't even try and are probably the most depressing samples of FFXI players in the game?

Anyone?

LolEndgame

Easily the best laugh I've had in a very long time. I think Galb meant to say he couldn't figure out what it meant, but either way, it was hilarious.



I trio'd all of my weaponskill points with Draco and Galb a couple nights ago, and then yesterday while I was seeking SAM I saw someone shouting for the WSNM, so I joined up, got the kill, helped someone get Gimpulse Drive, and then enjoyed my final GKT WS until relic, if I ever pursue that.



Draco mentioned it in his blog, and honestly anyone who reads mine probably reads his, but, Draco, Galb and I joined an Einherjar link, and while we haven't won a run yet, the first run was quite promising and I think we'll be good as long as we filter out the retards, like the mob we got on Tuesday in our second run that wound up basically just sort of aggroing everything and then spreading out so the rape would be nice and slow over time.



I also joined Spirit of Evolution, which is kinda snazzy, but mostly only because Draco tanks it usually, so I WHM for him. The first run I went on was Jeuno, which was kind of a trial by fire since it was so nuts in there, but we did Windurst yesterday and that was kinda fun, but sorta meh for two reasons. First, its really hitting me that theres no way in fuck I'm getting any relic for a while. Second is the following and its implications.



This is one of the newer members of the link. Joined when I did, apparently. As you can see, hes a WHM, also a taru. Now, if you know your item icons, you already can kind of tell this guy isn't exactly the top of his class so to speak. Beyond that this guy is just fundamentally gimp, it bugs the shit out of me that no matter how much I try, how well I do, or how awesomely useful I make myself compared to this dink who brings fucking phalanx rings on WHM to dynamis, I will never, ever have priority on relic over this guy as long as we attend the same number of runs.

Yea, yea, equality and all that. Great. But you know what? Its bullshit that someone can bust their ass and be many times more useful to the entire group (see also: lolDracoTank) than most other people attending the run, yet when it comes time to see who gets what, they're just as good as this moron wearing probably the worst WHM setup I've ever seen while still having a Noble's. The guy even tried to act like wearing pseudo-tanking gear as a freaking WHM was justified. FFS you're a taru WHM, 20 defense from rings isn't going to slow your fall as you get assfucked by that NM. Get over it and do your damn job.

Here're the stats on the particularly lulzy pieces of gear he was wearing for those of you who don't memorize the images.









Oh, also we got some jackass RDM in Dynamis-Jeuno who almost never refreshed and lied about his sister's car running out of gas so he could afk for like an hour and watch some movie, and then when he "came back" he kept watching the damn movies. Then, just as icing on the cake, I /sea him after dynamis and the prick is seeking his 75 NIN, and his only search comment is "BRD burn only". Please, just, go kill yourself. Now, if possible. I'll tie the noose for you.

Events, Meripos

I guess I'm 75 for real now.



Got my first merit last night. Came a lot faster than I thought it would. Second one was quick too even.



We broke about 5k off of my third, and once I get that, I'll be getting Devotion pretty much just because Draco wants it. I'm hoping to get that 5k in Besieged before this evening so I can surprise him with it and have it for Einherjar and Dynamis.

Yea, Einherjar and Dynamis. While I only really have one pearl for them so far, I more or less joined three linkshells yesterday. One for Einherjar, one for Dynamis, and a third for Sky when I get access as well as Salvage/Assault + other events when I can get access to them. I'm kind of really excited to be honest, I can't wait to see how it all works, and eventually snag some cursed gear (fucking cursed dalmatica is WAY too expensive). I also 'upgraded' my WHM's gear, which at the moment just amounts to buying an ether ring, but I'm going to snag a pair of blessed trousers as soon as I get the cash as well. After I get that I'll probably just take a week to wrap SAM up.

With SAM out of the way, it really becomes a question of how quickly I can blitz sky access. I'm not concerned with getting anything beyond that just yet, though obviously once its done I wanna work on completely wrapping up that series of missions, I've gotta just get to sky access first. After that, I could go on and on about what I'd like to get done, but if I manage sky access within 2-3 weeks I will be more than happy to sit with just that for a while.

I also need to determine what kind of income I may get from Einherjar and later sky. By the time I have it, it may not be horribly important since I'll have already gotten my Hagun and I already have my Noble's, but I'm certainly interested if it winds up meaning I don't need to spend much time elsewhere.

I'm not sure how I feel about the job at the moment, but depending how things go I may wind up taking BRD up next. It is already at 41, and Ringthree mentioned they were kind of short on BRDs, so I'd certainly get my use out of the job. My only real complaint with it would be having to pull, which kind of bothers me since I still don't understand why the hell BRDs pull. Oh well. I guess it will sort of depend on how much patience I have for the job when the time comes, because my problems with it before have mostly been the monotony of it, and I really don't do the constant manic running around of trying to put 4 songs up and then pulling fast. Ah well. Sure as hell wouldn't hurt to have leveled.

I want to be. . . the very best. . .

Yep, a pokémon reference and its NOT about pankration.



Draco and I duo'd our BSTs a bit and MAN was it fun. Duoing solves everything that is hard about soloing BST pretty much. It was really easy as long as we stuck together and paid attention to what was going on. The only real trouble we ever had was finding another mob to charm, as for some reason things were taking quite a long time to respawn.

The bottom line is, if you can find someone to duo your BST with, and you don't hate the job, try it. Its REALLY fun.



Lastly, Draco failing miserably. To be perfectly fair, this was at around 4 or 5 AM his time, but it was still lulzy.

Operation Hexa Strike. . . . Swarm

So Sundays are normally NIN/WHM/THF static with Galb/Draco/me, but today we wound up not running it, and instead there were a few fun things that were accomplished.

Firstly, and actually about midway through the evening, I got a little weapon skill that I've been wanting for a LONG time now.


Immediately after that, Draco Fmtwo and I ran off to meet up with Galb, and then on to Palborough to make 4 runs at Operation Desert Swarm which was. . . man. . . it was my first experience with it so my view of the drops is a little skewed, but I'll let the screenshots speak for themselves. Oh and we split the loot by the way, but the way it played out we didn't really need to in order to make it even.

First up, Fmtwo's orb

Then Draco went

Followed by Galb

And finally, mine

Apparently, thats some insanely good loot, but honestly I really wouldn't know. I've never done these. All I know is I made 330k or so easily and had fun owning with friends while doing it. Quite a nice evening.

Oh, and because I haven't in a long while:

Stupid People, Canadia, Renewed Interest

Been a bit since I last posted (whined), so theres actually something to talk (complain) about. Firstly, my method of making money is currently ~37.5% as effective as it was a couple months ago. Of course, the only reason this has happened is because of undercutters being morons and boning themselves and everyone else up the ass, which in turn leads me to the conclusion that there are very few people out there who are not idiots.

However, beyond all of that (whining), as you may or may not know I'm currently attending university up in Canadia (Toronto specifically). Beyond being significantly less than happy with my social life on many levels, its been pretty nice up here so far, though it would be nicer if it got colder and if I had my desktop, which is theoretically en route, might even get here today for all I know. Due to the fact that the university I'm going to apparently barely even offers computer science, and because of my transfer credits, for the moment I'm taking classes that I couldn't care less about (history, astronomy). On the upside, I have Monday and Friday off, which leads me to my renewed interest in some parts of FFXI.

For the moment it looks like the next job I'm going to level will be PLD, but it'd be static'd so that probably won't be eating up too much time. That being said, it looks like the WHM/NIN/THF static will start moving again as well, so I'm not sure whether I want to just do meripos/capping SAM + money making while neither of those is going or if I want to throw a third job on top of those two. The only real problem I'm facing in game right now is really how I am going to deal with my last few equipment upgrades for SAM, which is mostly just a hagun. NORMALLY that wouldn't be so rough but because of the undercutters I mentioned before, I know make money roughly one third as fast as I used to, and when you need to go well over a million to buy the gear you need. . . its not pretty. Keep in mind this is ignoring the fact that I also need to start looking at some minor upgrades for THF (its pretty decently equipped as it is so I ought to be fine) and then in the future PLD as well.

The bright side is, my money making abilities SHOULD get better as prices rise again, however the fact that prices are hitting this low mid-week is scaring me. Maybe I'll just go buy them all up. . .

Housemates + Roommates

This is probably only going to be relevant to anyone who is in college. However those of you who are, should read this.

It is 4:40 AM right now, on a Sunday morning. I live in a house with 5 other people. Two of them don't seem to understand that other living things exist. They have been loudly partying since 10 PM.

Stop fucking acting like you morons are the only people around. You know who you are. You are the people who don't give a shit about how your actions influence other people, and you force other people to make problems for you before you act like anything above trash.

You are scum. Inability to consider what your actions do to others is the one reason that is good enough to justify removing you from the gene pool for the sole purpose of improving the lives of every other single fucking person on the planet. On any level. Flunking frat boy at college who parties until 5 AM or a criminal who steals because he thinks he is all that matters, you're the same worthless shit.

Go ahead, by all means, enjoy yourself. But as soon as you start doing it at the expense of those around you, you become worthless. If you were the only person on the planet, cool, go do whatever, but guess what. You're fucking not. We're all here, whether we like it or not, and we don't like the smell of your farts as much as you seem to, so shut the fuck up and put down the booze.

lolwiki

http://www.bluegartrls.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=23599
http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=289981
http://digg.com/gaming_news/Regarding_FFXIClopedia_s_recent_move_to_Wikia

Soooo. That was where I went. y halo thar KI.

Kinda sad that people pull that kind of shit but I guess I shouldn't be that surprised. It just seemed like the wiki community was the one last little bit of sanity left where you could go and almost NEVER get flamed (though I'll readily admit there were some users who were douchebags and never really got banned).

Oh well, on to KI I suppose.

Life > FFXI

So now I'm up in Toronto and I've tied up most of my loose ends, but now there are a few things that I'm looking into that are going to be loads of fun.

I haven't even managed to log on to FFXI over the last week or so, but I've decided that I'm going to develop a little text based game based around a universe I designed a few years ago. This is going to be a lot of fun for me, and probably wind up being an excellent game as far as text-based stuff goes (think Colossal Cave Adventure except more modern, plot driven, and maybe a little more user-friendly as far as interface goes). I'm really excited to get to work on it, and for the moment all I can do is write up the story for the first little bit, but soon I'll be able to start coding. I'm hoping to have the final version of the first game done and out by December, but, no promises. Probably more details later as they're solidified.

Reality and updates

The summer has been a lot of fun, but I'm being slapped around by reality now that school is fast approaching. While the school I'm going to has arguably the most idiotic and poorly designed system for anything and everything that I have ever encountered, its my job to work through it, and it hasn't been going that well. For example, I have to pay for tuition and all that, but, they don't really give me any way of actually paying them. Furthermore I don't even have anywhere to live yet.

The whole thing is shitty and its stressing me out a ton, and I think its making me be even more of a douchebag than usual. The other thing thats getting to me is I don't know how much I'll be able to actually play once I am up there. That specifically isn't what bothers me, its that I don't know if I care. In a lot of ways I need to move on in life. Not neccesarily from FFXI, but I need to get into another relationship, and I need to work, and both are going to happen up in toronto. Realistically, with those two combined, I really don't see myself having the time to play FFXI, especially since in the past, while I have devoted a sufficient amount of time to girlfriends I'd really like to put a lot of effort into my next one, so chances are I will wind up spending any and all excess time I have on the relationship. As a result, I may wind up as one of those people who mostly just crafts and farms, and almost never levels. I'd really rather it didn't come to that because I define progress mostly as job levels, but I'm going to have to face reality pretty soon here.

Anyway, enough life crap. 65 SAM, Gekko, wtfpwn on imps. Really fun to play around out there and make the NINs look like idiots (/gasp, a NIN not tanking well? maybe they shouldn't be considered tanks in most situations). Not much else going on though.

75 Get

Took me something like 5 years, technically. I may not like the job, but, there it is. First 75.

Also, I thought I took screens of the level up but. . . guess what. My computer actually crashed on the second to last mob, and when I restarted I forgot to start up fraps again. . . so I have nothing. Gotta love it.

The Mood

Well, its been a long time since I wrote anything, and not because nothings been happening. Tons of shit has been going and, and thats actually probably more why I haven't been writing. Stuff with Toronto has been a complete bitch lately, EXTREMELY stressful and kind of depressing. Basically housing is full and I have to find my own place, which is going to be a royal bitch, but I have to, and I will.

As far as life goes, I also got a laptop, which is kinda cool but for some reason it lags with FFXI just as much on the highest graphics settings as it does on the lowest. Still trying to figure that part out, but with time it'll work itself out I guess.

In FFXI, a lot has happened. I may forget some stuff, but, I'll try and run through as much of it as I can. One of the biggest ones would be that I finished the promys, however I can't seem to get anything going with hitting the aqueducts for subligar, so for the moment its actually rather pointless. I also got my whole SAM AF set, and am currently SAM62, getting close to 63. My Thief hasn't moved much unfortunately because draco had to move, so he hasn't been online in like maybe 2-3 weeks now, but I'm beginning to feel like everything that I wanted my THF for, SAM can do better. Mostly simply due to the fact that SAM can actually take hits pretty well, and can dish out damage solo WAY easier than THF can. As a result I've been kind of torn about which I want to use for money making because it really is an issue of speed vs. treasure hunter. I've also been screwing around with some lower level jobs, mainly PLD, mostly because I got kinda tired of having 20 or 40k to get one level, and one of my highschool friends started playing, which has been a lot of fun.

Hes surprisingly fast at leveling, just yesterday got him 18 and his subjob. I'm hoping that down the road a little bit we can level together, but pretty soon I'm going to be EST and hes gonna stay PST, so timing may be nasty, and on top of that I plan on working out quite a bit in Toronto and getting an internship or something if I can find one relatively nearby, so I'm really wondering how much time I'll have to actually play.

Anyway, back to trying for 63.

This is why we can't have nice things!

http://www.blacklooks.org/2007/07/resident_evil_5.html

After reading the post in the blog linked above, I have realized something extremely important about my childhood, maybe around when I was 10 or so.

Back then, around 10 years ago, my family had a macintosh with a monitor taller than it was wide, and a reeeeeally old dell, like one of the first ones they made. There were two main games that I played that I can remember, one on each. The first was a racing game that, whenever you crashed the car, also crashed the computer for the macintosh. The other, was SimAnt, for the dell.

Today, I would like to talk about how racist SimAnt is. In the game, you play as a black ant (clearly meant to represent Africans) and you try to conquer a yard and a house and fight against the evil red ants (Native Americans?). This is OBVIOUSLY completely racist and the game should be pulled from shelves. Maxis should also be sued into oblivion. You lead the black ants en masse to invade and destroy the red ant's home, trying to wipe their kind from existence. The game CLEARLY actively encourages genocide against Native Americans. Additionally the AI wasn't all that smart so it also insinuates that Native Americans are less intelligent.

As a result of playing this game as a child, I required 4 years of intense counseling to stop myself from attempting to conquer all of North America. It was extremely dangerous and I am shocked this game has not yet led to any such actions.

THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS!