Cooked Goose and Almond Joy

One of my coworkers (a contractor as well) was let go today as he left for lunch. He could be a nice enough guy, but he just didn’t take any pride in his work. I, and several others besides, had been working with him constantly on his incident tickets: getting all the needed information, contact information, accurate and concise description, going through all the necessary troubleshooting… It just seemed like after about 2-3 weeks on the job, he stopped caring altogether. There were complaints about his tickets, questions on his reasoning for absenteeism, and a bad habit of lounging sleepily in his chair. I guess all these things kinda hit all at once: he had fallen asleep and snored for nearly 30mins yesterday after I had left for the day, he got two complaints on his tickets today and emailed the boss saying that he was going out for the rest of the afternoon because he was up all night doing some home improvement in the bathroom and “felt like crap.” In spite of all this, I feel bad for the guy. I mean, he is a bright, intelligent guy – all that was required was to try. Once the news had hit the rest of us, it was best said that he “cooked his own goose,” referencing a quote from our ‘ISCSC Famous Quotes’ board that I will have to explain another time.

We started early in game tonight. We gathered one last time in Newton Movalpolis and went after the pet bats. The experience had really started to fall off now, and once Amelisa dinged 56, we decided to try out a camp in Aydeewa Subterrane. This would put us against Qirirn Entrepreneurs (Rat People – imagine a furry Jar Jar Binks with a longbow). They were a little over our level. Our resist rate sucked, which made for really long fights. What saved us from dying was the fact that these mobs were rangers: they attacked with ranged attacks only. These attacks are not only rather slow, but don’t interrupt casting magic. We’d throw up Stoneskin to negate damage for a time, blast it with a volley of spells, Ame would lullaby it and get it to sleep while we rested for MP. The going was completely safe, but slow. The silver lining was that, because the fights were so long, we were able to catch up on our skill ups that we’d been missing while growing fat on fast experience the past few sessions. Before the night was out, we’d made a decent chunk of experience, and all but Talon had capped skills, and he only missing a level of dark magic skill. Many of the Qiqirn dropped almonds, which are ingredients in a nifty mage food that we might try out sometime.

DeAnn and I have been neglect in our house duties during this past week, so we’re probably going to camp Fafnir in game tomorrow night, if we log in at all. I’ll give notice to Talon and Ame on the forums of the change in plans. The dirty clothes have become self-aware and are plotting against us with the mountain of dishes and the scuzzy sinks and toilets. >.>;

A Bit Batty

Had a rocky start of it this evening in game. Though we’re officially linkshell break, there’s mounting pressure for people to attend HNM camps. I have to admit that Fafnir has grown on me, especially with the need to get fishing done. But the pressure to attend HNM’s mirrors the pressure to attend events during the regular schedule, if not more contentious. It’s all political: who’s LS has the real bragging rights, the good drops and the big bank items. I’ll put up with it to a degree, but last night we decided that we were going to level BLM instead tonight.

Well, pressure to camp mount on poor Talon and Keri, Amelisa felt very abandoned over the whole change in plans, and I was left in the middle trying to stay my hand from calling an end to our short-lived little group. I asked Keri to speak with Ame while I had a talk with Talon, and after we got ourselves straight, decided to level on our off week. We’re now all in accord that this little static is an @1 priority over any event when it is planned, and that we’re to give notice to each member when we can’t make it, either on the forums, in the BC linkshell message, or both. After all, this is ultimately for the good of Soulfire, even if they don’t like us not being there now. In a short amount of time, we’ll have a lot more BLM firepower and one more BRD, of which we’ve always been in short supply.

Our second hurdle for the evening was the fact that every camp was taken by a BLM soloing. Since early in the Treasures of Aht Urgan expansion, the popular method of party creation is now something called TP burn: Get a healer, refresher and lots of damage dealers and spam TP moves as fast as you can. No one skillchains anymore. This has made the BLM obsolete in modern experience parties. As important as they are in endgame applications, they simply cannot level like normal jobs now. As a result, most turn to manaburn parties (like ours) or soloing on pets (the strategy we modified and use). All the easy to access camps were taken, and it was a few deaths before we finally were able to settle at a spot. The experience was amazing once we got there, with only one or two dicey spots. We decided that, when we get aggro, to sleepga all the mobs, quickly kill the bat, and logout for a few seconds to make the links despawn. This worked out really well.

We’re going to level again tomorrow night, and we’re all of the understanding that we’re going despite the HNM camp that will inevitably give us a hard time for not showing up. I wish the people who get bent out of shape would chill and see that it’s for their own good that we do this now…

That’s not a President, that’s a dwagon…

I wasn’t the only one who had the day off. The daycare was closed today, as well as the school, so it was just me with the kiddos today. It was such a beautiful day outside today, I decided to take Clara, Colin and one of his friends to the Frisbee golf park. I let the kids run around on the playground and toss the Frisbees around before we tried a few holes. Frisbees everywhere. The kids could not aim at all. The Frisbees landed in trees, in the rocks, passing pedestrians and animals. I had to warn them to be careful around people.

I campaigned on and off during the day and between juggling the kids and a much needed nap. When I did finally sit down for the evening, it occurred to me that I hadn’t checked the forums in a while. Amelisa had posted that she was going to be late logging on tonight, so I cancelled static in place of Fafnir camp. And I’m glad I did. We got the claim. Yes, we actually got the claim. Though we were expecting Nidhogg (someone must have miscounted the days), we were ecstatic to have Fafnir. After a moderate battle, we were rewarded with a bunch of bank items, Andvaranauts (gilfinder bracelets), Aegishjalmr (niiiiice PLD headgear), and the abjuration for the Hecatomb Cap. Turned in all the fish from this past weekend, I’m now over 7200/10000 for Lu Shang’s Rod. Getting there! ^_^/

Since we cancelled static, we’re gonna try for Tuesday. I have a Scroll of Burst that really needs to get out of my inventory and into my spell library.

Weekend Intelligence: Presidents' Day Weekend

I’ve decided that from now on, barring a really slow and uneventful weekend where I have nothing better to do than blog (yeah, right…), that I’m going to just give the highlights of the weekend in one entry.

It must have been the vision of our forefathers that Americans could have as many three-day weekends as possible. It's the American way! ^_^/ So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights!

House and Home:

Saturday was a particularly yucky day outside, so we decided to stay inside and get the kitchen cleaned up and all the junk mail that’s been piling up all sorted out. Colin was still grounded, so he was obliged to do chores that were asked of him. Which he did like a champ. DeAnn asked him to clean the cat box. While he was trying to get the sifting container high enough to empty into the trashcan, he knocked the trash over, cat poop and all. Instead of complaining about it, he got some rubber gloves and picked it up all by himself in less than stellar outside weather. The whole issue that started the punishment was over his work ethic, so I considered the grounding over after that point. He done good.

Sunday saw us up and about late in the afternoon, we just barely caught the 1pm service at church. I’m glad we did. The message was on the necessity of community. Now I’ve been somewhat of a lone wolf for many years now. I just don’t like large groups of people and such. There were several years where I was completely content to not go to church and be involved at all. But even I was taken aback by the accuracy of the message. Hard to put what I heard back into words without slaughtering the idea, but let’s just say it was something a lone wolf needed to hear.

In Game:

Saturday night was a busy night for Soulfire. We kicked the night off with an early hunt in sky to pick up some random pop items before we popped some Kirins. No Osodes, unfortunately, but the linkshell bank got some nice things, and an abjuration for Crimson Cuisses (aka: Fasty Pants) dropped. There’s an even longer list of people for that than Osode. We stopped Kirins just in time to make it to Dragon’s Aery and watch someone botclaim Fafnir. Nikolai, Emmaline and Kerith helped me catch Moat Carp while waiting. I’m really lucky to have people help me out with this. I really appreciate it.

We ended the night with some Campaign runs in party. The dynamic in a party is very different from campaigning solo. As a WHM, people expect you to cure and raise them. And rightly so; you are, after all, playing a job that specializes in that aspect of the game. Too bad campaign really doesn’t reward those actions. To get the most out of campaign, you have to figure out how to keep yourself alive and deal out as much physical damage as you can. This is hard enough for a WHM, much less a WHM that has a party of people expecting you to help them stay alive so they can get experience and notes. Campaign battles are still relatively new, and I hope SE has plans on changing this aspect of the system to be more friendly to all jobs, not just damage dealers.

Didn’t play much during the day on Sunday – we got a late start. Dynamis – San d’Oria was largely uneventful. A few 100 coins dropped, bringing our sponsors that much closer to completing their relic weapons. Monster Trousers (Beastmaster Relic Pants) dropped in the last 2 mins of the run, so now I’m 2/5 on Beastmaster.

If only I could find the time to level it. I’ve been so busy with Black Mage. We went back to the bat camp in Newton Movalpolis and Amelisa got her level and Mage’s Ballad II. Aiming to go back out on Monday. Maybe I'll do some other things on Monday, too. I do have the day off...