Ten Years

Hard to believe that it's been ten years since so much about America has changed. There are things today that we never thought would exist, never thought that they would be so much a part of our lives that we just... let them go.

Increased security at airports. Terror alerts. Patriot Act.

I realize last year I didn't blog about the day. But the two years before that I did. And the year before that as well.

I'm not going to repost it. It's searchable on my blog if people are interested, under 'September 11'.

Ungh, leveling blues...

I never thought I'd say this. Never ever. But I'm... burnt out on leveling right now.

There. I said it. I SAID IT!

Make fun of me if you wish, but I've hit outlands with my enhancement shaman... and I just can't do it again! I think the problem is that I keep having to stop there. I have my new DK that I pushed through outlands and is now in Northrend. I have my new druid that I pushed through outlands with D's new toon and is now in Northrend. I have a hunter that I pushed through outlands and is now in Northrend.

I really really want to play my enhancement shaman... I just don't want to do the quest/instance grind to get through outlands. My other option is to try to realm-transfer Karika and respec her enhancement for a while. Maybe also Kathe and respec her healing. I don't want to do that, because I think one of the things that helps me learn a spec is to level AS the spec. And ... well, I won't be doing that. But just don't think I can do it.

Karika is a level 80 resto shaman right now. Kathe is a level 80 bear right now. It would be a big change on both of them to abruptly change. But I could do it, I guess. *sigh*

Otherwise, things are going great. The game is still going good. The Nook is still delicious.

We're fostering a puppy. She's abso-friggen-lutely adorable! Even Chewie plays with her! Yoda is a grump. So he doesn't.

Work is going great. D is working with me at my second job, as a vet-tech! So that's good. :)

Scans on him went well recently. No masses, no regrowth, no recurrence.

Aaaand... that's that. For now.

Oh wow, the obligatory 'been a while' post.

So... it's been a while!

I no longer admin at Unsung Heroes. Instead, D and I have our own place up at agrajag.rpg-works.net 1138 -- it's a split themed game, Old Republic and Rebellion Era.

It's doing swimmingly! 20-25 people on per evening, sometimes more. Most are individuals, we don't have as many alts on our game (most people just have two). We usually get over 150-200 noms a week. Which is pretty good, I think.

Some of the things we had tried to implement on UH but couldn't are now implemented, and working well, I think!

We filed for bankruptcy. Our house was foreclosed. D's brother is getting out from the hospital after having been split open with a MRSA infection.

Hypocrisy still irritates the heck out of me. I do one thing, one singular thing, and it's OMG WTF BBQ. Someone else does something, lots of somethings, continuously, and it's meh, no big.

I'm coming up on a year at my current duo of employment places. So far so good.

And that's really life in a nutshell. I'm back to playing some WoW, when I'm not RPing or running plots on Generations (our game). D is playing Rift. Big surprise there - the next MMO! He can't wait for Skyrim or whatever the next Elder Scrolls game is called.

Bunnies are still fighting, but we're working on it. Silly bunnies. You should be friends!

And... hrm. I can't think of anything else. Isn't that sad?

A real post... Unsung Heroes

A game. Of course it's about a game! Silly.

My computer crashed and burned, so I'm on the old laptop. Work is going splendidly.

And life continues on.

We have a 8x7 corral in the living room for the bunnies, since we couldn't figure out how to cordon off the entertainment center and all the wires. Or the baseboards. :P

Fiver and Hazel are still fighting, though Fiver is indeed neutered now. Maybe slowly they'll stop... or rather, Hazel will stop. The little turd won't leave Fiver alone!

And the game... goes well. Boon is a wizard there too now. The game is flourishing. When I started, there were maybe 10 people on the game. Now we average probably 25+ individual players. We have maybe 35-40 PCs logged in (some are alts) every day.

It's ... fun. Work at times, since with a big playerbase now, everyone needs something. But fun. :)

It serves as a nice creative outlet for me. And a social game.

I have two great old (three if you count an NPC) favorite characters of mine there. Keisha Vorr, Kithan the Squib, and Yamuzi the Laboi.

*sigh happily*

Anyhoo... more to come, maybe. Not that anyone cares. :)

What... the... hey?

So, I check my blog and I find out my last post had 18 new comments, all with strange characters, with one comment reading: 'if the quantity is not a lot, I will hand carry it', or something to that effect.

So... I'm sorry, but I have to switch over to moderated comments only. Because I have no idea what people were using the comments section of my blog for, but I don't like it.

Sorry!

Fox News

Save me. We now have TV. And Fox News.

I've seen more of Bill O'Reilly and Glen Beck than I ever wanted to, and it's only been three days!

Stories and Writers Block

I have several stories. And lots of writer's block to go with them!
I've read where people say that you just need to sit down and get the words out, no matter how bad they sound. I can't quite wrap my brain around that concept. If it doesn't read right the first time, I assume it's trash and just junk the whole thing.

My bad, I suppose. Ah well, we'll see where this new set of stories winds up.

As for other things... new job interview completed. Let's see where it goes. Whee!

Cold Turkeys and Sunny Days

Just the facts, ma'am!

Surgery a success. Tumor removed. Bit of bone removed. Original ligaments kept. Knee stable. Medial gastrocnemius muscle transposed to cover resection site. Half the staples already out. Weight bearing again. Pain levels decreased overall. Annoying pins and needle feeling in entire foot that doc says is nerves responding to the inflammation. No chemotherapy on the table. Stopping all narcotics to try to get off of them completely.

Now the rest of it.

Life has been ... wow. Just a big bundle of wow. Good. Bad. In between.

Finished all the paperwork to try to get a Missouri License. Lots of red tape, and over 500 dollars! 300 for the Missouri State test, 80 for NAVLE score transfer, 10 for Wisconsin license 'good standing' letter, 10 for transcript from school, and then 160 to renew my Wisconsin license to make sure that I am in good standing.

Now, we just need to figure out where we're going, where I'm working, what I'm doing, and ... everything.

We have a lot of pets (5 'traditional pets', 2 'cage pets'), so finding a place to rent may be tough. Two small dogs, three cats. Two rabbits. One of whom I was planning on neutering the week after I got fired. Then I got fired. So he's not neutered. Which I don't like. But right now, really can't afford to pay for him to get neutered and I somehow can't see my former employer being the type to let me bring him in and neuter him myself. So it's going to have to wait. Until I have a job, or we can afford it.

In the last three weeks, we've been to 6 doctor's appointments. We're very good at getting D into and out of the car, knowing where to park and how to drive a wheelchair. Of significant disappointment is that the wheelchairs at the mall 1: don't have leg lifting apparatuses, 2: are only obtainable down a set of stairs (hello, I need a wheelchair. Just go down those stairs. What?) and 3: have a long red pole attached to them so you can't actually sit in them in the theater.

It has been very warm here. In fact, almost as warm here as it was in Florida when we were there! Which either means it's very very warm here, or Florida was unseasonably cold. Given that it was snowing in northern Florida at the time, I'd opt for the latter. Still, it means it's warm enough that the snow is starting to melt, and hopefully, we'll be crutch-free soon and can start taking walks with the dogs again.

I know this is a bland and boring update. Not at all fun or exciting to read. But I don't know anymore that I have things to say that are fun and exciting. Least of all for others to read! :)

On another random note: We got three helium balloons while D was in the hospital. On day 2 of having the balloons, one of them was already dying. Now, we're here, three weeks out. And the other two are still going strong. Explain that?

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day ... I'm too lazy to look up what Valentine's Day used to mean. I only know what it means now.

Some people will say it's a day devoted to consumerism. I disagree. Sweetest Day on the other hand... ungh, don't get me started!

We should do this every day for our spouse, our partner, our significant other... for our friends, parents, siblings. Tell them you love them.

Enjoy the day with them.

Sit down and have a quiet chat.

Make the day special without having to do anything special. Love isn't candy. It isn't cards. It isn't flowers. It's in a gentle touch. It's in a friendly voice.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Last Two Weeks: A Timeline

1/27/10: Dustin goes in for his bi-yearly scans for his synovial sarcoma. The last four years, they've found nothing. This time, they find something.

1/28/10: I get fired. (sorry, the correct term is 'let go')

1/28/10: I get a reply from an email about a job I sent out an inquiry about in November.

1/29/10: I discover that my books don't sell for very much. But sell them I am.

2/1/10: I get a job interview in three days for the job I sent out an inquiry about in November. The biopsy reports of the 'something' comes back: synovial sarcoma.

2/3/10: Two doctor appointments: the plastic surgeon who will be in charge of putting Dustin's leg back together after the orthopedic surgeon is done removing everything that the cancer is touching. And then we drive to Missouri.

2/4/10: An evening interview with the doc at the clinic. It lasts three hours!

2/5/10: A morning spent at the clinic with the doc. I leave after lunch because the temperature is rapidly dropping and it was slushing all morning. He asks if I'm interested, but he needs to know about Missouri licensing before he can offer anything.

2/6/10: We have farm-fresh eggs for breakfast. Dustin gets sick as a dog.

2/7/10: We're now both sick as dogs from the farm fresh eggs. But we have to drive back home.

2/8/10: We recover from the farm fresh eggs.

2/9/10: We fly out to Florida for vacation! We jump into the heated outdoor pool! It's in the 50's outside, but the pool is 75 degrees.

2/10/10: Busch Gardens!

2/12/10: The heated outdoor pool... wasn't heated. It was 65 degrees. We discovered this after we jumped in.

2/13/10: We fly home.

Next up:

2/16/10: Surgery. They're removing part of the bone, hopefully retaining his medial collateral ligament. They're going to try to do a muscle flap with his medial gastrocnemius muscle and a skin graft from his thigh. He'll be in the hospital for hopefully no more than 5 days, during which time, we will hopefully be meeting with an oncologist, a physical therapist and a psychologist/counselor.

I have yet to hear back from the guy I interviewed with, after I gave him the info on a Missouri license. By now, however, he's at a conference and won't be back for a week. Additionally, he was very much the type of guy who would say 'We aren't interested anymore', if he wasn't, without any delays. So I'm not that worried about it.

I have other things to worry about.

Bloggage

As some may have noticed, not only did my blogging about WoW drop off rapidly, but eventually I stopped blogging altogether!

Egads.

But I'm going to try to be back and I'm going to be working on revamping this blog. I'm contemplating making a NEW blog, but I already have TWO that I ignore. Having THREE that I neglect would just get me in deeper with the ASPCB. American Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Blogs. Or something.

Yeah. Lame. Sorry.

So, here's my official notice... this blog is going to be reworked. Somehow. Somewhere. Someway.

NaNoWriMo

I'm going to be doing it again this year, but not entering it on NaNoWriMo...

For starters, last year I only got 25k words done in the book I was writing for the event, mainly because I stopped about halfway through the month for some reason. But I want to finish it, so I'm starting it up again... and I think that's against the rules. :)

For seconds... in July, for no reason what so ever, I started to write a new story and in a month I got it up to over 50k words. It isn't finished, by a long shot, but there it is.

I know I can do it. I just haven't been.

Well, even though I'm not in on the contest, it's a good imperative to push me into writing again. It also helps that because we're down to one car, and Boon and I have to share it, I'm at work two and a half hours before work actually starts... so I have nothing to do BUT write. So I will.

I brushed off the old manuscript and I'm going to reread it for a day or so - mainly to get back into the personalities of the various characters that I have written for the story. Should be fun. :)

Been a while...

Wow. It's been a while!

My main has pretty much switched to my restoration shaman. We're clearing TotC, Ony, etc, etc. Fun fun.

What have I been doing, I hear you ask, that would have taken me away from your eager reading of my delectable blog?

Or something.

Aion is one of those things. Borderlands is another. Star Wars text-based RPG's the third.

I have finally tried clique with grid. And it's nice when I don't forget that I have it. And it isn't nice when I have to open up clique to take off right and left click, so I can do group things like changing leader or even leaving the group! I still haven't found a way to quickly enable and disable clique so I can do things like that. Not to mention clicking on someone to open trade if they aren't in my immediate party, (/tar , /trade is what I have to do right now), etc, etc.

Aion is a pretty game. There are a few things about it that I'm not liking, but as well, in reverse, I go back to WoW and I go 'grr, so irritating. *X* is so much better in Aion!'. I seem to be liking the DPS classes there, and my cleric is not so much. Granted, when I was the cleric in a GROUP, it was much more fun. But when it's the two of us, not so much fun.

However, my Asmodian Sorceress and my Elyos Assassin are scads of fun.

Borderlands is a very fun RPS... RPS you say? Role-Play Shooter... RPFPS? Something like that. It's pretty fun, has quests, objectives, loot, all sorts of fun things. I play the Siren - because she's the only girl! But she's fun... with her phasewalk explosion. *giggle*

And then there's the Star Wars RPG. Some of it is nostalgia, I will admit that, but it's still scads of fun for me. I'm a GameMaster on the game that I'm on, so I get to make plots for other people (read: I get to do evil things to them, consequence free for me! ;) and .. *giggle* In the last week, I've been called 'scary evil'. *cackle* The sign of a good admin, people see you post something or @mail them something and they get nervous what you're going to do next! :)

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.

A Keiji in Naxxramas

I know that previously I had taken Keiji into Naxx with a PuG. But this time it was different... this time, it was a guild run.

Two days. All bosses. Only trouble was KT (and Heigan, but then again, when isn't there trouble with Heigan? We still one shot the Dance Master.), where we had some issues with positioning and tank death. But we persevered and down he went.

I finally got a shoulder upgrade (woot for tier!) and some nifty boots.

Unholy tanking... still a problem with the Bone Shield, the cooldown being a smidge too long for comfort. Perhaps they should offer a glyph that reduces the cooldown on it?

But otherwise, I believe I did well. It helps that we had some awesome healers and awesome DPS. But I am happy. I finally got Keiji through Naxxramas (10).

Next step... ULDUAR! (I jest, I jest!)

Mimiron is a PITA

I was on vacation to New York for a little while there, which doesn't completely explain the lack of blogging, but it does explain some of the lack of blogging! It's hard to blog about a game you can't actually play, especially given that much of my blog inspiration comes from in-game issues.

Our 10-man Ulduar progression team is stuck on Mimiron. We finally made it past phase 3, which has been the sticking point for us for a while now, and then had half the raid wipe in phase 4 because they didn't see the red runes of death beneath them. After that, we couldn't get past phase 3 again.

I don't get the whole clumping up thing, to me that seems like you're just asking to have your entire raid wiped out in one second. I get the whole 'need to be together to prevent the boss from bugging out during laser barrage', but can't we clump up when that starts?

The 'nice' thing is that our allied guild that we do 25 man runs with is also stuck on Mimiron.

Is it wrong to be glad that our allies are also stumbling? Or just normal? :) I'm not CHEERING that they're not progressing, but at the same time, I'm also glad that they aren't beating us out!

And in other news, MRSA is in da house! Albeit, this is not a cheer thing, as much as a 'you've got to be kidding me' thing. Black clouds, people, black clouds!

PvP: Failures in Teamwork

There are lots of different strategies for the various battlegrounds that we have in World of Warcraft, from the old favorites of Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin and Alterac Valley, to the newer ones of Eye of the Storm, Strand of the Ancients and Wintergrasp, to the new one on the horizon.

One of the common factors in whether or not your side wins, besides when one runs afoul of a premade, is when a team works together as a cohesive unit, even if you don't win, you do far far better than when everyone is soloing.

This is something that the Horde in the Rampage Battlegroup seem to be able to do, regardless of it is a PuG or not.

Be it because they actually DISCUSS things before hand (blasphemy, I know), or be it that they realize that four rogues working together will own just about anything that comes their way (oh God, that WSG game SUCKED.), or that a disc priest, paladin combination is nearly impossible to beat and therefor they can do whatever the hell they want... be it what it may, the Horde have mad leet communication skills and the Alliance do not. Which always seems backwards to me, given the names involved.

Those few times when you do have a leader attempting to actually lead, it's like trying to herd kittens through a field of butterflies. They either ignore you, or ignore you, or bat at your heels while purring. Or viciously attack in badly written English.

Or if/when the attack plan doesn't go as intended, they start to bitch and moan and complain, rather than help modify the plan to fix what was wrong, or deal with the unexpected. Because this helps everything.

Simple things... "Need healers on FC", "FC coming up West", "EFC going down East", "Don't go Tunnel", "Go Ramp", "Inc. BS", "Inc. TP", "I'm tank, going in on Drek"... can be the difference between success and failure... and often are. Yet people do not do this. They rush in, or solo defend, or solo run the flag, or solo try to get the flag back, and then whey they die, or fail, they blame everyone else for sucking.