Happy Birthday Boon!

Today is several things...

Talk like a Pirate Day.

Boon's Birthday.

Saturday.

But equally as important... it's 4 years. People who know what I mean by 4 years understand the importance of that. People who don't... it's a long story.

But Boon... HAPPY BIRTHDAY! And maaaany more!

How do YOU heal?

So, tonight in guild chat there was a debate about how people heal.

There's mouse-over, there's clique, there's grid, there's healbot, there's keybindings, there's a combination of any of the above!

The conversation delved into that a healer with grid/clique will out-heal a healer that uses the regular UI.

And I (and Boon who uses no healing addons) who use ONLY Grid more as an organizational tool than anything else, had to disagree.

Yes. I'm a "bad" healer. I click on my button on my standard UI bar, and then bring the mouse over to the grid box and click the box.

But I will maintain that I will heal just as fast as someone who is using grid/clique.

Because honestly - you can only heal as fast as your heals are off cooldown, and GCD is cooled down.

Can I see how a DRUID healer would be slowed down without using something to help, considering the nature of instant-cast hots? Yes. But when you play a class that doesn't have a lot of instant cast spells... by the time I CAN cast another spell, I have it ready to be cast.

So sure - you may use less motion than I do - but I'm still healing just as fast. ABC baby.

Does it honestly matter HOW I heal, provided I do the job, and do it well?

When people start to randomly die because I fail as a healer, I'll go ahead and change.

I use grid because it lets me see if people are in or out of range, who has aggro for pre-emptive healing and what class they are and how hurt they are at a glance.

So... how do you heal, and what pros and cons do you feel it offers you?

September 11th - 8 years later

Last year I blogged on my memories of the day.

I was talking to Boon this morning and I remarked how for us, Pearl Harbor is something that we don't actively think about, or remember the date of, at least not as anything but 'When did it happen again?' - and this morning I even got it wrong. I thought it was December 14th. It's December 7th.

It made me wonder ... when will that time come for us? Will it ever come for those of us who were old enough to be affected by it? Will this always be a day that makes us tear up, even in some small way?

Those who were alive during the days of Pearl Harbor, those who were affected by it... they'll never forget that date. To them, every December 7th is a day to remember. A day to wear a flag pin or a red-white-blue shirt, or if they're blogging, to blog about it.

Is September 11th that day for us? The first few years, in preparation for the day, I'd get together with some of my classmates and we'd make a basket full of red-white-blue ribbon pins and leave the baskets around campus.

Then when that stopped, I would wear a red-white-blue shirt - a white shirt with a red-white-blue heart in sequins on it. Or one of my 9-11 T-shirts.

Now, I'm not. I could technically say I'm wearing red-white-blue because my pants are cream colored, my work top is red, and my shirt is blue. But I feel very unpatriotic. Some of this is due to the fact that I'm bad at planning. So even though I knew this day was coming, I didn't think to plan on what I'd wear, or try to find or make a pin, or anything.

So I'm a very bad 9-11 remembrance person. :(

Where is the cutoff on who the generations that lived through it are and the generations after it?

Do students who were in high school, or middle school... consider the day the way those of us who were adults do? Or to them, is it just another day where something bad happened to some old folks?

How many years must go by before the headline of today isn't something about 9-11?

Will it ever do that?

With the advent of the internet, videos, audiolinks, images - can be found everywhere. It's kept alive - and perhaps it should always be kept alive - because today I can click on a link that will show me exactly what was on TV at the time of the attacks. Because I can click on a link and listen to President Bush talk about the attacks the evening OF the attacks.

It doesn't die down. Perhaps it's good... it isn't something we should forget. But perhaps it's also bad. If we don't let it finally rest, can we ever heal?

Where HAVE you been?!

I can hear you all clamoring for the answer to that question.

The answer is quite simple. I got burned out. Still am burned out. We were pushing Ulduar hard. It seemed like all there was before me was endless grinding and grinding and grinding to try to get badges so I can upgrade to the gear we'd need in Ulduar.

And then the patch hit that took away my pretty pretty Martyr. *mewl* I miss my Martyr. So suddenly I had to deal with DPS that was so much lower than it was - where before I was competing with the top DPS in my guild, suddenly I was struggling to stay ahead of the tank.

Ok ok ok. SLIGHT exaggeration there. Very slight. Like... this >< much exaggeration.

So I took a break and dove headfirst back into the thing that got me started down the road to meeting Boon, and some of the best and worst friends of my life. Text Based RPG. Yes. It's still out there.

The 'Golden Days' may be over... but the games are still out there. Some of them better than others. Some with people who are better RPers than others.

And with this odd little habit of people doing the internal monologue thing in their poses.

See, I 'grew up' in the field of - you pose what you are doing, what your facial expression is, your stance, your everything. You don't TELL someone what you're doing.

For (brief) example:

Kikidas looks over at Boon, her lips turned down at the corners. The skin between her eyes draws in and her fingers slowly clench into fists.

Now.. you read that and you see EXACTLY what I am doing. It is up to you to draw conclusions as to what I am thinking - the way you would if you were seeing that in real life.

Kikidas could be pissed at Boon for what he said. Or what he's going to do. Or upset for some other reason that Boon is bringing up, but not at Boon himself.

But you can only guess based on what you can see of the interaction between the two.

The bad example:

Kikidas looks over at Boon, frowning as he talks about her sordid love affair with Bargrave oh so many years ago. Her fingers curl into fists as she contemplates the horrible ending where Bargrave spurned her for Disrida, that succubus tramp. Her heart is still broken.

There is just way too much information in that pose that, if we were being true to the soul of text-based gaming, you just shouldn't know. Unless Kikidas or Boon say: "Hey, do you remember when Bargrave spurned you for Disrida and broke your heart? Isn't Disrida such a tramp?" how could you possibly infer that information from Kikidas frowning and clenching her fists?

Granted... there is a time and place for internal monologuing in poses. I use it RARELY myself for comedic relief.

For instance:

As Bodaz speaks of using mice to experiment synthesizing a new hormone that would allow Dekir's people to live offworld, Kvasira looks down at her fingers, flexing them against her clothing as she listens. Where's PETA when you need them?

There's no such thing as PETA in the Star Wars universe, so it isn't IC information being given. But it makes people laugh in out of character chat. :)

So that's where I've been -- that and on Champions. Erm, I don't know the full name. It's the new incarnation of City of Heroes.

I have, thus far, gotten a ton of compliments about the way my characters look. Granted, some from Boon, so that doesn't count, but some from other people, too.

And of course, my account is being shared by Vialora, who has a thing for vivid purple and green -- which kind of hurts the eyes. I think his power is to be so blindingly clashing that people can't see him out of self-preservation.

So, because I think my characters look cool...

Gaia, Sibuna, Nightdream and Blue Lace -- okay, that last one isn't cool as much as just... what can I say, I was having fun. :)

You may need to refresh the page if it shows N/A for character picture.

So... that's where I've been. I'm back on WoW part time, leveling my disc priest, and probably going to be playing more of my resto shaman than my retardadin. And maybe my warlock.