Category: Real Life

A return to grouping, and miniature decisions

As always when time goes by I start to wonder about all of these alts I have. Sure, they’re great fun but are they really worth the hassle? Should I just be concentrating on one character (or two, one from each account). It’s due to a restlessness I tend to have and is not exactly game-related as real life has a tendency to disrupt things.

The point is I found myself cringing when I looked at the paladin adept3’s for 71-80. They’re going for 7p each and I need 28 of them. The loams are no better even if I had happened to find myself an alchemist, at 4p a piece plus fuel and raws. I do miss having all of my characters on one server so that I can take advantage of my crafters but when friends are spread all over this becomes increasingly difficult. I can’t afford to move 20 characters around for $50 each.

I decided not to play the paladin last night, and went back to my illusionist / mystic duo that I team up. The group (Ultann, Wpus and I) decided to head to Obelisk to attempt another go at the shield that has never dropped. We’ve been there at least 30 times I’d say by now, and have never seen it. It was a fairly good run, no wipes. The final encounter even dropped two items of use, a nice earring for the conjuror, and a master also for the conjuror. I have yet to see a master drop that I could make use of, but I’m hanging in there and waiting. It’s bound to happen sooner or later.

My next ‘goal’ is to start the epic for both characters, of course to do that for the mystic requires harvesting that I have not bothered to work up as much as I should. That will be todays goal until groups are formed. It would be nice to have them both sporting their epic, at least fabled if not mythical (which I have no grandure hopes of obtaining any time soon). I still need shards for the illusionist who is only sporting her T1 void set thus far.

Crafting is something I’d also like to get back into – both in game and out. Inspired by Kasul and his return to miniatures, I decided that I’d like to try my hand at it as well. I’ve painted a few in the past back when I was in school and it feels like ages ago. He’s going to help me out and send a few spare models my way, and this weekend I’ll be taking a trip to the local Games Workshop to see what I can find. Now, I’ve never really been interested in playing the games, but I do love the whole ‘before’ process. We’ll see how it goes, maybe I’ll give away the models to people who are interested.

I’ve been working out every single morning for the last week and as such I’ve been going to bed early (around 11-12EST) in order to wake up at 5:30-6am (depending on when Princess thinks I should wake up at). We wanted to do Vaults of Eternal Sleep last night but I wimped out and called it a night, read a little more of “Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro (great book by the way) and fell asleep. It was still a pretty great night.

Not too much excitement

Yesterday was Easter, and I spent the majority of it with family (which I am ever thankful for) so I didn’t play much at all. I did create a new rune-keeper in LotRO on Landroval to play (though now I need to hunt down someone from CoW who can invite me to the guild) and managed to get a few levels. Aside from that I checked the broker and did some banking in EQ2, checking on sales from various characters and contemplating betraying the coercer over to illusionist. Without a sage, it will cost me an arm and a leg. My 80 sage is on Najena, so that doesn’t exactly help me out. Ah well. 

Hope everyone has had an enjoyable weekend. Tomorrow is my birthday, so I don’t expect to be online all that much again either. We’ll see I suppose.

Another MeMe

Peter over at Dragonchasers tagged me in a Meme – a big thank you for that. 

“This award is bestowed upon a fellow blogger whose blog content or design is, in the giver’s opinion, brilliant.”

Obviously Peter has been brain washed, because I don’t fall into that category, but I’ll reply in any case! Here were the rules:

  1. When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it, including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to the said person so everyone knows she/he is real.
  2. Choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have seven friends. Show the seven random victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog. Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon.
  3. List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself. Then pass it on!

I’ll be some what skipping step two, sort of. I’m going to list some bloggers who I read every day who I find amazing and who have impacted my life in one way or another. Please don’t consider this me ‘tagging’ you though, you’re under no obligation to respond with a meme of your own, I just wanted to give a shout out and some recognition. 

The folks I know online who have influenced me, and my life in general are as follows:

Tipa – West Karana, suggested me to Beckett as a writer, and who has motivated me to grow far beyond what I ever thought possible. There’s no way you’ll ever know just how much you’ve changed my life. 

Cuppy – Cuppycake, I started reading her blog when she was writing about Vanguard, way back when. Her posts inspired me to keep going with my own. It was a long time ago. I’ve loved watching her career and her life change over the years.

Rao – Gestalt Mind, He inspired me to partake in NaNoWriMo this year, which I completed and raised $250 for. It was one of those really proud moments in my life. 

Mythokia, Malfi, Kilanna and Kasul – Four very good friends of mine, who each have influenced and inspired me in ways they probably don’t even know. Thank you for always listening. 

On to the last portion! Lets see. This is difficult because I’ve been partaking in the surveys over at Grinding to Valhalla, and I feel like my life (lately) has been one open book. 

  1. I enjoy liver (eating)
  2. I talk to my cat (often)
  3. I played / coded for MUDS for 2 years before I started playing EverQuest
  4. I don’t enjoy bars, or parties for that matter
  5. I fell in love with the Medieval Festival here in Ontario last year, and I’m looking forward to going again, I may even dress up this year. 
  6. I prefer doing my photography in black and white rather then colour
  7. I’ve never watched The Matrix before (or Star Wars of any sort)
  8. I constantly keep note pads by my desk, I have them all stored away when they’re full. So many note pads filled with random notes that make no sense to anyone but me
  9. I have a very little personal pet peeve with males who play female characters in game and females who play male characters (please don’t ask, it’s just ‘a thing’ of mine!)
  10. I’m allergic to gold – and pineapples. 

There you have it! Nothing really that unique since all of us have our own ‘stories’ to tell, but it was fun.

Another Writing Opportunity (Shameless Plug)

For those who follow this site, and who are interested in my writing, well here’s a little shameless self promotion. I do currently write freelance for Beckett Massive Online Gamer (which people are well aware of because I’m always trying to promote it) and I do some infrequent articles / reviews over at MMORPG.com – but I’ve recently taken on a new project over at MMO Bin for my good friend David. 

He was looking for writers for the site, and I decided to apply – not that I don’t already love writing where I do, but I’m always looking for more. Seems to be a flaw of mine, but hey why not. I have the time to fit a few more things in there some where. 

The site differs from MmoQuests in the fact that it’s mostly news and discussion, rather then just plain play experience (which is what I typically write about here). I’m looking at my posts there as a challenge, a different form of writing for me. Since my articles are rarely ever informative and tend to cater to my personal views and experiences in each game – and will remain as such. I’ll be writing (mostly) about EverQuest and EverQuestII for MMO Bin, my two games of choice but there may be articles on other games depending on what I happen to be playing and where my thoughts happen to wander. 

So if you’re looking for more ‘news’ or ‘discussion’ orentated articles, please check over at MMO Bin. You can read my first post over there about the constant forward progression in games and my thoughts on that topic. Looking forward to this new site addition, and who knows what I’ll learn from the experience. He is looking for a few more writers for those who are interested (or was at least at the time of my posting this) so if it’s something you may be interested in, check this post here. 

Back to your regularly scheduled program!

New Video Card time – Again

Welp, it finally happened. I was getting fed up with the video card issues I was having, and have been having for quite some time. Almost as soon as I installed my 8800 Nvidia as it were. No, I didn’t have a warranty for it and even if I did I didn’t want another nvidia sent back to me. 

My power supply is also quite low, only 450, and I didn’t know if it was a card issue, power supply, or something else. It’s cheaper to get a new power supply then it is to get a new video card (even I know that in my VERY slim  knowledge of computer bits) so I took my card out, put in my old 7600 (also by Nvidia) and put the 8800 in a different computer. Booted up EQ2 on the second PC and less then an hour later (the 2nd computer has a higher power supply) the exact same graphic issues I was experiencing on my own pc. Great. Time for a new card.

This time around I’m going with an ATI. I’ve been with Nvidia for my entire gaming career (if you can call it that). I can’t afford to keep buying new cards every single year but since my job involves playing video games I’m not left with a whole lot of options. Newegg.ca offers very nice prices, and I settled on an ATI Radeon HD 4870 – 1gig for $280 Canadian, delivered in 5 business days. 

Tomorrow I’ll go out and pick up a new power supply and then once the new card gets here I should be all set. Hopefully. Fingers crossed. 

Some times I really dislike computers.