Still alive here.

So to speak.

On Friday, 13 October 2006, at 01:49 (that’s a.m. … yes, with all of Friday ahead of me and I had yet to hit the sack), after 29 months of playing, Rugiel reached the level cap of 50 on City of Heroes.

I suspect at least one person reading this might be interested to know that. I’d welcome a comment from said person(s).

Discussion Thread
Response (GM H------n)	08/22/2006 03:05 PM
Hello,

We have received your bug report[1] and will be transferring your ticket to our
Quality Assurance (QA) Team for further review. Once your report has been
reviewed and logged, your ticket will be moved to “Closed” status without a
response[2]. If you wish to update your bug report, please update this incident
to re-open your ticket.

I apologize for the frustration and any inconvenience resulting from this issue.
Unfortunately neither the support team nor QA team will be able to put this
character or your teammate back into the Task Force[3] or grant any rewards you
may have received upon completion of the Task Force[4].

*blink* *blink*

1. I never submitted a bug report; I submitted a petition. I know the difference between a bug report and a petition: the former doesn’t get a response, the latter does, and I wanted a response. There was never a bug report from me.
2. (Boldface mine) In other words, shut up and go the hell away? All I wanted was an answer to the question “Why do you say the Positron Task Force will be ‘automatically disbanded’ if it drops below four players, when it only takes three to start?” (Plus,

   At this time, this aspect of gameplay is functioning as intended by the Development Team.

   Gods, I hope not. This leaves aside the fact that ‘automatically disbanded’ is left vague, considering that the Task Force in question had been going smooth as butter with only two players playing.)
3. I was kind of hoping, but I can’t say I’m surprised. All right, I get it — I have to start the TF again. That’s fine by me: it means more XP.
4. This after I stated again and again that we never freakin’ got to the end of the Task Force. What rewards? Immunity to Clue Bat™, anyone?

Note to self: update LJ icon. I ditched the topknot way long ago.

And on that note, here’s what I look like ( all dressed up ) and nowhere to go.

Okay, first, it’s not supposed to be raining anywhere in Southern California in the middle of July, especially when the previous day saw the mercury break 100°F in over half the counties. But anyway, let’s get past that. It rained. What’s important is where it did not rain, and why.

See, my mom and some of her friends have decided one of them is going to host a get-together for whoever can make it once a month, or they’d never see each other otherwise. Sunday was my mom’s turn, and her rendezvous location of choice was Mason Park in Irvine. Well, as it turns out, as the gathering-people arrived in rain-soaked cars, they kept relating stories about how hard it was raining everywhere else. Even my brother got rained on because he left the house an hour after we did. Yet the park remained dry and warm (really, really warm *sweatdrop*) all day.

Those of you who attended Wayzgoose in 2004 are probably thinking, so when was Murphy’s Law abolished and can I have some? Believe me, I would tell you if I could. Me, I’m still mystified.

In other, completely unrelated news, thanks to Double XP Weekend, my main character finally hit level 45 of 50. (That’s two levels in two days, folks. For me, that rate of level advancement is positively breakneck.) What this means for me is that a) no zone in the game is off-limits anymore, and b) I can no longer ‘outlevel’ contacts and their story arcs.

Amazing. Just amazing.

Surprise! Yes, the one regret I have about terminating my WoW account is that I have no more access to this linguistic resource. If there’s someone out there kind enough to compile the following translations (OK … technically, back-translations) for me, I’d be enormously obliged:

1. Orc, Orcish, and Draenor in Orcish (e.g. an Orc to a Night Elf)
2. Tauren, Taurahe, and Azeroth in Taurahe (e.g. a Tauren to an Orc)
3. Troll and Azeroth* in Troll (e.g. a Troll to a Tauren)

* Yes I know that’s sort of cheating. Deal. :-)

OK, if anyone knows a place I can stick videos for free, such that they are available for public download (preferably with file sizes announced in large, friendly warning digits) à la PhotoBucket but without getting changed in format all to sh*t, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY tell me.

This was an entirely in-class project. Altogether it took me approximately four hours (plus about ten minutes’ lost work when the machine I was working on just … blipped off) from conception through construction and editing to final rendering. Note that there is a small section lost in translation to Flash 8. >_<

Not to gank off TV show end-tags, but, I made this.

[Edit: file has been moved from FileHD to Photobucket. Yes, Photobucket now stores video! Unfortunately, it seems to require Macromedia Flash 8 to play them …]

This letter is to serve as notice that the above referenced loan paid in full.

I’ve been sending this slightly ungrammatical piece of good news to people for a week and a half. I feel pretty good.

P.S. Bless ye future homeowners that sign thy forms in blue ink. :3 (Hint, hint.)

From cn_frog:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?ForumName=wow-realm-silverhand&ThreadID=210445

Yeap, this pretty much cements my decision not to play World of Warcraft anymore. I can’t say there was one particular moment when I fell out of love with it … it was just a few days turned into a week, and then into three weeks, and pretty much every time I mouse down to my shortcut bar I get a mild sort of punch-gut feeling so I click on the CoH icon next to the WoW icon instead. I was handed a big clue the other day: hanging around EB in the mall, I heard a clip from WoW’s upcoming expansion pack (“raised the level cap to 70!”) and, instead of getting excited, I felt queasy.

My only defense is to apply the root judgment test: am I having fun playing City of Heroes/City of Villains? Hell yes. Have I had fun the last, scant few times I played World of Warcraft? … sorry, no.

I’m paid up until April, actually, so it shouldn’t be too rude of a shock when I drop off the face of Azeroth. This gives me plenty of time to — as I intended — hand off all of my material goods to friends and guildies. I suppose I am sorry to go; but paying $77 a year for a game I don’t enjoy is just criminal.

It was a really cool birthday/week/thing, but I get to “forget” a few next year. Sometime around the middle of it. *cough*.

By the way, if you are ever in a hurry to get a cake and can’t or won’t get one baked in time, I highly, highly recommend ( this place ).

People who remembered my birthday without being reminded:

• My mom
• My aunt
• My brother
• sekl
• wayens
• 

People who remembered to mention my birthday today:

• cn_frog
• nweismuller
• 

People I, quite honestly, was startled to find ( missing ) in the above lists:

• alenxa
• kelson
• maldis
• andrea_wot
• 
• non_seqvitvr

There seems to be a lot of ill feeling going around. Several people I care very much about have expressed their displeasure, in greater or lesser degree, at the foulnesses of human nature directed at them. I wish I could do something to help, but I am woefully limited to being here for them, lending an ear to listen with and a shoulder to cry on …

This is what I get for trying to fight fires in Steel Canyon.

(No joke. 177,360 damage.)

Okay, sekl gave me a preview and, with Serenity coming up, it was ( too good to resist. )

So, I met Mercedes Lackey online today.

She plays City of Heroes. Her character (at least this time) is Waitron9000, a lv14 Martial Arts/Reflexes scrapper.

I don’t normally bother with the missions in one of the new zones, the Hollows, because after a few preliminary tries I found it annoying as hell. My character on Pinnacle, however, is a Troll escapee, so it seemed appropriate to run the missions in a Troll-heavy zone.

I was receiving a mission from one contact when, as usual, I spotted an interesting-looking character and right-clicked Info to see if she had a bio. She did, a very funny one (a prototype robot waitress turned heroine after an attack on her restaurant revealed her AI interpreted “customer satisfaction” as “wipe the floor with Hellions”). Just after I pointed it out to my teammate, she whispered to me that she liked my bio. She invited my supergroup to an RP coalition, offered her skill as a scrapper, joined our team, we ran a mission … and then, during the post-mission chitchat, she reveals that her player is Mercedes Lackey.

FLOORED!!

By the way, she’s a very good player — doesn’t draw excess aggro, knows how to prioritize mobs, participates in ready calls — and has a published story in the monthly game comic. Obviously, I basked. It was awesome.

Being unable to read friends’ entries because they are clearly labeled Half-Blood Prince spoilers: grr

Update 25 July: Finished the book, read the entries. You people scare me! I am unable to envision myself analyzing J.K. Rowling to the extent you all do. I mean, lists?? Holy shit. I am so intellectually intimidated now.

Remembering at 6:05pm that class is at 6:00, not 7:00: boo

Remembering as I take the offramp that, in the scramble to race out the door, I forgot my book at home: boo

Being done with the midterm 11 minutes after arriving 25 minutes late to a 140-minute class: yay

Looking at a handful of correct-looking VB instructions and being required to find and fix the “error”: boo

Remembering to declare variables when handwriting a program structure from scratch: yay

Having an hour and a half to kill between lecture and lab: boo no, wait yay

Killing that hour and a half with a classmate — driving to Camelot, playing Raiden III, and driving back: yay

Getting the opportunity to sit next to aforementioned classmate in lab and borrow his book for the open-book lab midterm: yay

Final score: boo 3 yay 5. It was a good midterm.

Update 28 Jul: Got a 92%. Turns out I misremembered a previous quiz question and got that answer wrong on the midterm. Oy. But considering how I felt about correct-the-code section, 92% is better than I expected to get.

sekl and kelson started it.

Good news: the cost of travel to see Chris is less than the $400 (and I’m not talking $399.99 here, either) I had allotted to it.

Bad news: I get to spend that money about five months earlier than I expected to. Guess that just means I’m gonna have to restrain myself from buying a ton and a half of souvenirs while in Texas. Heh!

All the same, this is working out really nicely. First, I get to see Chris whether or not he has to ship out (yes, he was recently informed that no deployment may be necessary. And then left him to his own devices as to the why and wherefore. As sekl said when I snarked on ‘military intelligence’: “Tell me about it!”).

Second, I don’t have to miss any of my Visual Basic classes. Initially I thought I was going to have to negotiate an absence with the prof, but now I don’t have to. This is thanks to a brilliant idea from my mom: Why don’t you leave on a Thursday and come back on a Tuesday? That way you can spend a weekend with Chris too. Thanks Mom! What would I do without you?

And third, traipsing out to central Texas in the middle of Helliconia Summer season should give me a little much-needed perspective on exactly how hot SoCal gets in the summer. I don’t want to jinx it but today has been, ironically enough, deliciously cool and overcast — if only every day was like this! I was dying yesterday with two fans going …

By the way, I’m going to try my hand at putting together at least part of a D&D 3.x character sheet before the midterm next Wed. Looks like we gotta know enough to code a program from scratch! :-S

I’ve been paying much closer attention to my breathing lately. That, combined with the fact that I got out of lab extra-early last night and got some much-needed extra sleep, seems to account for today’s heightened ability to think and do stuff. Yay!

My mom has a funny story about when she was little: one day her singing teacher said to the class, “We haven’t ‘breathed’ in quite a while now,” and she — ever the literal one — immediately started making gasping-fish noises and clutching at her throat.

Also, my aunt really likes the show 24, so much that once she asked me to come by her room now and then and “remind [her] to breathe.” I did poke my head in a couple of times that hour and said, “Remember to breathe!”

Well, looks like now I need to take my own advice. For some reason I haven’t been breathing properly since … I don’t know when — a few days now. Short, shallow, infrequent and irregular. Exactly the opposite of how humans are meant to breathe. Which would probably explain why I’ve been feeling tired and stupid, too. Not enough oxygen to the brain.

This morning I leaned back in my chair and tried to reverse the process: a few long, deep, slow breaths. I felt myself starting to hyperventilate. Great, I thought, now I’m acclimating to bad breathing. Don’t let this happen to you! Pay attention once in awhile to those things you never pay attention to — like breathing — and make sure you’re still in practice. ’k?

“Saving lawyers from the Devouring Earth. Why are we doing this?” —Kavda, on Justice, to Rugiel, on Protector, when informed about the purpose of the latter’s mission.

5EXS575

On an old white passenger/cargo van. I only got a few seconds’ glance at the plate, leaving me with the impression that there might/should have been a 1 somewhere, but the impressions of a repeated letter (S5) and a clear interpretation (“SEXISTS”) were stronger, so I’m going with the pattern above.

On a completely unrelated note, the wonderful cayzle has once again not just mentioned but featured my blog on Cayzle’s Wemic Site, and has even made it part of his permalinks(!) sidebar, which fills me with delight and gratitude and a terrible case of stage fright (’cause I don’t really update as often as he says I do).

On the other hand, he brought up the fact some time ago that the way I write wemics, they refer to themselves as lions and lionesses — but didn’t say whether that was good, bad, or funny. He did say “vent,” which can’t bode well. The suspense is killing me!

It came it came it came!

It came yesterday, actually, but I was too busy giggling over how fast it autoconfigured itself onto our wireless intranet (GameFAQs in the garage!), and trolling through widget after widget (note: link useful only to Macintosh owners) for Dashboard, and installing World of Warcraft — dang, that thing installed fast! From Install World of Warcraft to Patch has finished installing probably took no more than a couple of hours, and that’s with the delays caused by having to pay attention to City of Heroes. Or maybe it just felt fast; I really don’t remember how long it took to install on Tenochtitlan, but it felt like forever.

Plus — and this is the really scary part — I now have the option of being on City of Heroes and World of Warcraft

at

the

SAME

TIME.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhehehehe!!!!! <poing> <poing>

Oh by the way. My Auction House sales did, in fact, push my funds over the 50-gold threshold. Halfway to a mount!

Eek. Three weeks of writer’s block … not good. I’ve occasionally thought of trying to rationalize my falling-behind as righteous indignation (“I mean gosh, even published authors get some species of feedback on their writing based on book sales! How can I tell what my audience wants when I have no audience?”) but the fact is I’m just dry. A week or so ago I started trying to write up Tirral’s story and got about three paragraphs into it before I realized I was writing it in third-person POV instead of first-person, like I was supposed to. Argh.

I also have a partially-finished section of Corpus Delta I probably should be working on, but I’ve already opened it up twice, stared at it for about three minutes, and realized I have no idea where I want to go from where it is. I fleetingly considered posting what I do have and asking for suggestions, but then the thought of three-month-old, completely uncommented In Thunder, Lightning, Or in Rain intruded and reminded me that that way lies only madness.

I’ve also probably been playing too much City of Heroes. Sadly, non_seqvitvr’s account seems to have been frelled beyond repair by Issue Bug Four, but I still bop around five or six servers with Chris and some friends in Florida, and recently I met a really sweet guy on Liberty … when I could (should) be writing, even though all of my current storylines seem to be stagnating.

On a side note, though, ’s World of Warcraft account is in pristine condition, and boy am I glad neither he nor I had decided to quit our Silver Hand guild yet, because I would never have finished my three insanely difficult Scarlet Monastery quests without his and a couple other guildies’ help. So yay, my quest log is down to three or four quests, my bank account is up to about 45 gold toward an 80 gold mount, and I still have five or so levels to save up for it. With any luck the phat loot I ganked in the Scarlet Monastery will sell in the Auction House and kick up my mount fund to 50 gold or so.

There are other interesting things going on at my house (of which I shall not yet speak, lest I jinx them); I recently ordered and received Elaine Cunningham’s The Magehound to satisfy my recent obsession with wemics; and wayens kindly bestowed upon me a Warcraft novel at our introduction to rathermercurial, which I shall read anon.

So.

Three weeks of writing to catch up on. Hooray. It’ll happen, I’m sure. Somehow. cayzle, you are an inspiration. Gosh, I should write up some crap and post it, just to get it out of my system. It’s not like anyone is going to see that garbage, right?

Oh yeah, speaking of not writing. Last Thursday my work keyboard died a horrible twitching death (which is to say at one point it started autorepeating the letter b and would not stop until I unplugged it … and eventually just refused to work at all), so yesterday afternoon I swung by the Apple Store by South Coast Plaza and got myself a shiny brand-new keyboard. Which led to much ogling of the PowerBook laptops. The 12" ones with a 60G hard drive and a built-in excuse to shop for a new USB micro-mouse 2-square-inch touchpad.

Mmmmmm PowerBook. |-9

One of which I’m going to pick up today go order online at the Apple store after work. Don’t tell Omeyocan.

Update 10 June: see correction above. It shipped today, so I might receive it early next week. Don’t tell Omeyocan, anyway.

1. A ladder, lying on its side in the middle of lane #2, pointing in the opposite direction of traffic. Fortunately there was enough room in the carpool lane divider for cars to swerve around it.
2. Remembered at the last second that I had my sunroof on vent mode; closed it exactly in time for an extra-hard splash to drop from the sky. (Precipitation pretty much stopped after that, leaving me with a muddy windshield. Sheesh.)
3. A slew of plastic and possibly fabric bags that looked like they contained clothes, strewn across lanes #4 and #5. Not my problem at the time, as I was merging onto the 91.
4. A black VW Bug completely covered in white filigree — decals or paint, I couldn’t tell.

It’s no Off-ramp of Doom™, but I’ve never seen so much debris at once on the freeways (yes, this includes #4).

4XML404.

On a black Mercedes.

Entry #7: More stuff to tempt cayzle: an entire piece written from a wemic’s point of view (I hope I did a decent job)! This is also logically linked in from A Brief Guilt Trip.

( The Wemic’s Tale )

Administrivium: The hyperlink “Entry” above now takes you to an index of all entries posted to date.

Two in one! What a deal.

Here it is: I don’t not care if I don’t get comments on my writing. (Translation: I care! I do care! Maybe more than I should …)

I hardly expect a book review on everything I write, as delightful as that would be. But a word or two would be manna from heaven. Just a little something to show that you’ve looked …

that I’m not filing all this stuff in the LJ equivalent of dev/null/.

Thanks for understanding.

Entry #6: Here is part three of the Corpus Delta series. (There may be a part four next week. Don’t hold your breath.)

( A Slow Night Falling )

Last night, I swung into a gas station before getting on the freeway on my way from class. As I was settling up against the trunk to wait for my tank to fill, a white-shirted guy popped cheerfully out of nowhere to my left with a few colorful boxes in his hands. I needed no further proof that my head was full of fried ramen by that point than the ensuing conversation …

Guy Hello there! Do you work alone?

Me [blink blink] I’m sorry?

Guy Do you work alone?

Me Uhm, no … I’m not sure what you mean.

Guy [sounding a little desperate] I just want to know if you work alone …

Me [starting to get paranoid] Er, I work with other people …

Guy No no, do you wear cologne.

Me Oooohhhhh! [apologetically] … No, not as a rule.

Guy [laughing] Not as a rule! That’s the best one I’ve heard all night. Thanks a lot! [shakes my hand, leaves]

… do I work alone. Who do I think I am, Mr. Incredible?

Entry #5: Here is part two of the Corpus Delta series.

( Convocation of Duty )

Entry #4: Something a little different. Here is the first of three parts of a piece unconnected to anything else.

( A Glimmer of Light )

A little administrivia:

• “An Uncommon Encounter” has been retitled to “In Thunder, Lightning, Or in Rain” and edited slightly so it wraps up a little more logically (I think).
• All entries have been pulled out from behind cuts and relocated to my website. Clicking on the faux cut links now spawns a new window.
• Plans for Pride of Place include chopping out and expanding Csim’Yabil’s and Tirral’s tales so they tie in via hyperlinks, to keep the first-person POV theme consistent.

Entry #3: This one should be right up cayzle’s alley — it’s the next chapter of Pride of Place (at last!).

( A Pound of Cure )

Entry #2: This vignette is also set in the same continuity as Press Start, as a prelude to the opening chapter.

( Saturday Morning Special )

Posted at sekl’s request.