Limited Potential

Its quiet so far at work today, but only because its our email server that's on fire. >.>; So I thought I might be able to get in some recent happenings.

First off, congratulations are in order to my sister-in-law Heather and her hubby, Tristan, on their newest addition. Rory Shaun Overson was born by emergency c-section at a whopping 8lbs 4oz and 20in long. That's enormous considering the mother. Don't want to go into the shenanigans that is military medicine, but suffice to say I'm glad they are OK. And because a surgery was needed, Tristan's deployment has been indefinitely suspended while he tends to his recovering wife. Baby is a lottle banged up, but nothing serious from what I hear, and mother is tired but happy and with good pain meds. LOL

Colin has been having issues getting out the door in the morning. On Monday, he missed the bus because he was dawdling while eating his breakfast, then hid downstairs until we were up and about to avoid letting us know he'd missed the bus. -.-" Then he missed the bus again on Wednesday because he didn't get out of bed. Getting up at request or to an alarm, clothing oneself, fixing oneself a bowl of cereal and walking a quarter of a block to the school bus stop are all things that are not outside the realm of capability for someone who is almost 9. These are things he can do! He doesn't want to do them, and that really ticks me off, especially when mornings are already chaotic.

We've also been knee deep in potty-training for Clara. I know, I know, that's not very punny. She really likes Dora the Explorer, so we got her some Dora pull ups. One evening, after she'd gone in her pull up, D told her that she peed on Dora, and just about made Clara cry. Then she took her pull up and tossed it in the toilet... >.>; That's something, right? She gets the idea that her waste goes in the potty, but she I don't think she has learned to tell when she needs to go.

The big version update was Monday night. This always means that I don't get to really game for the next 2 days. >.<; This update involved the implementation of the highly anticipated level sync feature, something that promises to make leveling low-level jobs much easier. The system works by limiting the higher level members of a party to the level of a member determined by the leader. And it lets people do this without needing to keep low-level gear on hand by limiting the stats and potential on the gear as well. This makes it very easy for high-level people to party with friends at a lower level. But the fact that the update was some 80Mb and that 100,000+ users worldwide were trying to download it all at the same time prevented me from getting to experience this first-hand that night. I spent all of Monday and part of Tuesday updating the PCs and the XBox 360 with the latest version. Ended up doing simple farming on Tuesday night, trying to save up for a Serket Ring.

Wednesday we decided to try out the level sync option and level with Crazygirl on her BLM in the ruins. She's Lv69, 5 lower than we are, so that put us back at the sweet spot for experience there. We easily got 8k over the course of the evening without using an experience ring charge, and we had a lot of AFKing and breaks for children and drinks. Overall, I like the new system, but I think it leaves a little to be desired for gear. You see, you don't have to keep level capped gear anymore, because the system modifies the stats on the gear to make it less powerful. The downside is that they decided that some stat modifications were going to be negated altogether; things like magic accuracy, magic attack and convert HP to MP. Things that are the staple of all the good BLM gear. -.- Thanks SE. Regardless of the slight setback, it was still very good experience, and it brought CG a little closer to our level. ^^

Might try out Limbus tomorrow night. They reduced the entry fee that during the update, too, so we might be able to actually afford it.

Lack of Intelligence

No. There is no weekend intelligence. Its slow-roasting over the fire that is Cisco Unified Messaging when Microsoft Exchange pushes an update that is not pre-approved by Cisco. I'm not going to even try to recall all that happened this past weekend when this week is already half over.

I just haven't had time to write much. I wake up and go to work until I come home, chase a potty-training toddler around to exhaustion, direct a spastic ADHD boy to do house/home work, get about 30mins to really decompress and go to bed. I think I eat somewhere in there, too.

Through all this, I've found that I put a very high value on personal time. It's gold to me. The fact that I seem to be losing it to or spending it on everyone else but me leaves me feeling robbed. I think I need a vacation...