Ant Farm

Half of my coworkers were, for some reason or another, gone today at work. It made for a very busy day. Not that the call volume was heavy - in fact it was rather light. It was that we only had 3 people at any one time to handle what we normally have 7 do. One of the higher ups decided to call 5 minutes to quitting time, and try as I might, I could not find anyone still around that supported the application she had the issue with. She understood, though, and said she'd call back at the end of the 3-day weekend.

I've been thinking about my friends back at the theater for some time, and yesterday made me think about them even more, so I decided to go over my lunch and visit. Everything has changed... Most of the people I knew there had long since left. Even the General Manager had left the company altogether. What was once a beautifully maintained palace has started to decay. I felt horrible that something that I helped make so great had fallen into such a state. In a way, though, I felt lucky that I got out when I did...

3-day weekend! Woo! One extra day of rest and one less day of work-related stress. I kicked off the weekend by joining Chic's Friday Sky Hunt. I had half expected they would be done before I was able to get home, but they were hollering for people to assemble to Mother Globe. I hauled up there just in time for the pull, and we quickly took her down. Next we started hunting Steam Cleaner, who decided to show up on the first try! The last thing we needed was Faust to complete 8 full Kirin sets, so we went up to where he hangs out. I teleported up to his floor, not realizing that the door I got ported to was the one right next to him. I never knew a Mithran head could go through ceremet... We recovered and took out Faust for our last item.

Sky was followed by yet another attempt at Rostrum Pumps. Our last few scheduled attempts had been jumped by other linkshells, and our last 'successful' attempt resulted in all of two pairs of shoes and the first wipe we'd ever had on that fight. Keri won the lot for first run, and it was not encouraging. We wiped. Again. We didn't kill the antlion that spawns others in time, and soon we had 4-5 ants and the main NM ant pummeling us. I don't think we had the numbers we needed either. Brickhouse called out on the LS for people to come to FNLE and help out, and we soon had reinforcements. Mohit had an extra trap for just such occasion, so Keri went again. After much CFH (Call For Help - ie: monster doesn't drop anything) action, we finally took the NM down and got Keri her shoes. We did many other runs that night - all of them successes that we would normally have. We're not going to do that fight for a while...

We ended the evening with a quick Fafnir camp. We got there just as the window opened, and that happened to be the window Fafnir popped in. At least I got some fish out of the deal, as well as an accurate Time of Death for tomorrow night.

Tomorrow is cleaning day around the house. We're probably going to focus on the downstairs, particularly the kitchen, which is a complete disaster area. In game, we have a Kirin night. May Osodes fall from the heavens. :P

St. Valentine’s Day Monkey Business

One of my coworkers, who can be a bit gloomy at times, kept his birthday under wraps earlier last month. I can’t say much on that: I did the same thing. I’m not one to make much of my birthday: something quiet with the family and going out to eat is fine with me. On top of that, he turned 50, so I can understand not wanting his desk decked out in skeletons, under the hill jokes and black balloons.

Anyway, his wife found out that he escaped embarrassment and decided to pay his desk a visit. Just about every day, we go for a power walk or hit the nearby Costco if the weather is bad. It’s an opportunity to get up and move after sitting for 4hrs straight. While we were out, she came and decked his desk out with 50 monkeys. There were stuffed monkeys, barrel-o-monkeys, chattering monkeys, screeching monkeys, a monkey with creepy glowing eyes, even a gigantic “Monkey Love” balloon with two monkeys’ tails making a heart. I stalled us at Costco just long enough for her to get into the building, set up all the monkey business, and jet out. I was also given a digital camera to get pictures of his face as soon as he saw the huge balloon.

I tanked the kiddos, and decided to order a pizza while D took a moment to relax and get a shower. She had a somewhat discouraging day at work, and I was only too happy to give her some space to come down off her day. The pizza came in the shape of a heart – very cute.

Amelisa decided to go out to the movies with her boyfriend to see Jumper, so she ditched our static night. Not that I blame her: it IS after all Valentines' Day. That decision reminded me of my time as a Theater Manager. I can’t say I miss working at the theaters on a day like today. Valentines’ Day was one of the worst days of the year. Guys are trying way too hard to make the evening perfect. If there was even the slightest thing wrong with anything, you get this testosterone-fed alpha male monkey syndrome as the guy pushes up in front of his woman, trying to impress her. I do miss certain aspects of the theater life, but definitely not that one.

After the kiddos were put to bed, we went to Beadeaux and Qulun Dome to farm Sapphire Quadav in the hopes of getting water scrolls. The drop rates on those things are beyond ridiculous: two hours and not a singe water scroll dropped. I logged out in Sky in hopes of getting in on the end of Friday’s hunt.

Tomorrow is the last day before a 3-day weekend. Yipee! I get off work early and I’m hoping to get on in time for sky. Later, there’s gonna be a Rostrum Pumps run (v2.2, as it keeps getting pushed back by other linkshells…) and a late Fafnir hunt (read: Moat Carp fishing time).

Refried Beans (Served With a Side of Grumblecakes)

My day at work consisted of the following routine: 1) Answer a call from someone very high up on the corporate food chain (or someone who thought they were) who would be grumpy, downright mean, and demand exorbitant amounts of time to fix what would otherwise be a simple problem. 2) Take one last tongue lashing for good measure before hanging up with said person. 3) Wait an unusually long time for the next call. 4) Rinse and repeat. I swear, I did not have one single pleasant person all day, and more “High Priority” tickets in one day than I usually take in a week. This, combined with the long periods of nothing made for a day that just seemed to GRIND along.

I was only too happy to return to the chaos that is home. Colin had not been turning in his homework the past few days, so he is grounded from anything fun through next Friday (equal to the time he’d refused to turn in his homework). I had him sweep up in the kitchen while I tanked Clara for a few minutes. DeAnn got home and fixed up some dinner – fajitas and refried beans.

This, of course, meant that Clara would use dinner as make-up, and before long was covered hair to toe in refried bean. DeAnn decided to use the opportunity to give her a bath. Apparently, Clara had some ‘refried beans’ of her own to serve, for shortly after signaling to D that something was awry, she proceeded to go number two in the bath and mash it with her hands. At least D got her out before she had a chance to use those beans as beauty products.

Colin was sent to bed early as well, so we had the kiddo-less evening to ourselves. Dynamis – Beaucedine tonight, and was somewhat more harsh than it normally is. We had some rough pulls, the running team had a wipe that nearly ended in a failed run and the BLM team got stranded at one point behind an NM and his buddies. We finally were able to fight the NM fomor for Jevot’s attestation, but, as always, the NM dropped the wrong one.

I finished the application to Alamo Community College, and I’m told they will start reviewing everything after they stop taking apps. I’m hopeful.

To The Bat Cave!

I received a phone call from the seller regarding the items I purchased from him. He got a hold of his friend, who owns a FedEx store and the seller uses for all his shipping. Apparently the box sat in a corner for a few days before getting shipped off. He gave me a tracking number and it was set to arrive this evening. Sure enough, when I got home there was a large, heavy box sitting on my entryway. It was like Christmas. I checked all the hardware to make sure it was all in working order, and organized the cords for later. Now I need to find a working machine with a serial port…

BusinessCasual static was tonight. Keri and I were on BLM as usual, and Amelisa on BRD. Talon was finally able to join us on his BLM. We decided to experiment with some of the BLM solo camps and reconfigure them to work with a small manaburn party. Our strategy was based on Goblin BST pets: Amelisa would pull the pet (in this case, a bat) to the group of waiting BLMs, who would blast it with ancient magic as soon as it was in range. Our first trip was to Pso’Xja, but a BLM was already there soloing, so we went to the next hardest camp – Newton Movalpolis.

I say “hard” only as a technicality: next to KRT and one or two insane imp merit parties, that had to be some of the best exp I’ve had. Certainly the best I’ve ever had on BLM. We were pulling 10k/hr experience at one point Goblin’s Bats. The only rough part of our strategy was when Amelisa would link the Goblin along with its pet. This caused several unfortunate deaths on her part.

About halfway through our party, a group of high-level players came through and trained most of the goblins to an area and held them there, trying to skill up on shield skill. Eventually, their train included our goblin and bat. Now, as a high-level player, I completely understand the frustration that is skilling up. Guard skill on MNK is one of the slowest, hardest things in the game to grind out, next to fishing. I imagine shield skill is not much better.

But it’s common courtesy (not to mention common sense) to skill up at a place that is unoccupied. Example: if I saw there was an experience group at a location in Kuftal, and I wanted to skill up club, I don’t want to cause them hardship at stealing their mobs or me hardship having to compete. I will go somewhere else in the zone, or to some other zone entirely, or skill up some other time. These jackasses not only ignored this bit of ingame decency, but they trained their angry mob right into our camp, making targeting difficult and stealing/holding our prey. After a few frustrated words to them in /say, they left us in peace to continue their shenanigans somewhere else.

The night ended with Keri, Talon and I at 55, with Ame trailing by about 4k. We may need to hold off on experience rings and help her get some experience scrolls done to let her catch up. Dynamis – Beaucedine is tomorrow night. We’re trying, yet again, to get Jevot her attestation for the relic horn. We’ve done this numerous times, and the odds are that the silly thing should have dropped long ago. I also need to complete my application to Alamo Community College, so I’ll probably be one distracted WHM tomorrow night.

Solo Flight

Sky was the order of the night. I had gotten to sky and scouted out Despot and Mother Globe, while Eiael left his character there and took Emmaline to scout for Faust. There was no Faust, but Mother Globe did pop, so I got on the horn and called for every able bodied person who wasn’t tied up in Salvage to come help.

No sooner than we had gotten assembled and climbing the Shrine than another linkshell arrived and assembled. They pulled Mother Globe seconds before we were going to. Unfortunately for them, they were a bit hasty in their pull. They had no way of keeping their tank alive - he bit the dust in a matter seconds and lost claim. We wasted no time, and we were rewarded with a shiny new Springstone.

Rounded out the evening in sky with attempts to pop Steam Cleaner, but he decided to be a no-show. After nearly an hour of that, people were getting sleepy and we called it a night. My first solo attempt at leading sky, and I’m very thankful I had people with me who were experienced and cool-headed. I’ll do better next time: I’m sure of it.

Had a hard time sleeping, so I hopped on Xbox Live and played the Bioshock demo through. That game is creepy at night, but the story looks absolutely intriguing. I wish I could afford to pick up some of the titles I’ve been looking at: there seem to be a lot of story-heavy games for the 360. I’m a big fan of story.

BLM party tomorrow night. Talon will be joining us on his BLM for the first time, so we're gonna start scouting out more manaburn-friendly camps. Dunno if we're gonna keep trying to find tanks or just strike out as mages onry. It's also the last day I'm giving the guy I bought the routers/switches from before I report him. It has been over two weeks, but I finally got ahold of him on the phone. He said he would get a tracking number to me tomorrow. We'll see...

Home and Game Highlights

Sorry for not making an update recently. The problem is not so much that nothing is happening (though life is rather uneventful recently, thank God), but that I just haven’t had the time to make updates. So here are the highlights from the weekend:

Life at Home:

-Colin earned an award from the library and a medal for being one of only four students to reach 100 AR points. How much you wanna bet the other 3 kids are 5th graders? XD

-Clara learned how to do the Tarutaru dance. She was running around, waving her arms and clapping and generally being a very happy toddler. I tried to record it on my camera, but it was being stupid and didn’t get a very good recording.

-DeAnn and I tore through the laundry, cleaned up the carpeted areas and vacuumed the upstairs and downstairs general areas. I’m hoping to borrow a coworker’s carpet shampooer soon and get some of the stains up. On top of all the work, we still got some playtime in.

Final Fantasy XI:

-Farming: I got a good chunk of farming time in the Labyrinth of Onzozo. I was leveling Voldai, farming Cockatrice for Cockatrice Meat and the odd chest key, and got the claim on several Mysticmaker Profblix pops. Stacks of meat sell for 12k, chests pop for 4-5k and Profblix drops items, mugged and loose gil totaling about 3k each time. The Moldavite Earring dropped a few times in the process, and I made several mages’ day by inviting them to party and letting them have the earring. All I wanted was the gil anyway – I already have the earring.

All the farming let me buy all the ancient magic, tier III scrolls, and elemental staves I’m going to need, excluding water. Water scrolls are going to be a pain in the ass, because only one regular mob in the game drops them, the drop rate is so ridiculously low, and there’s always someone camping them. I’m resigned to ignore the water element until I have money and time to burn camping the AH for them.

-BLM Army: Keri, Talon and I finished up our AF on BLM with a visit to the Toraimarai Canal and fights with the Magic Sludge. Yes, fights. Unlike just about every other quest in the game, you have to do this fight once for every person who needs it. Poor Talon faceplanted when Keri and I got Sleepga’d and he ran out of ninja tools that weren’t in toolbags. The other fights went smoother, and we all officially can put our BLM gear into storage if needed.

-Leveling BLM: We went out on Friday and Saturday night to level BLM. Friday was another round of Kuftal crabs, though considerably more crowded. Keri and I dinged 53 that night, and I learned Firaga II. Saturday we went out to King Ranperre’s Tomb and dinged 54, learned Quake and donned our shiny new gloves. We’ve caught up with Talon’s BLM and then some. Since I was about 1k ahead of Keri, and well ahead of Talon, I decided to pay Vrtra a visit. Needless to say, I got eated and homepointed.

Next leveling trip we’ll have 3xBLM, and that’s when the fun really starts. If we all start casting AM, we can easily carry chain 4’s and 5’s.

-Dynamis - San d'Oria: We had an awesome Dynamis - San d'Oria run. Three 100 coins and a ton of AF dropped, and we didn't wipe. And no, I didn't aggro the yard at the last second, though I got plenty of ribbing about it for last time. :P

I’m leading a sky hunt tomorrow night for the last few things we need. If all goes well, we will have a whopping 8 full Kirin sets to burn through. I’m hoping one drops an Osode with my name on it.