Random Thoughts

Last Saturday, I was playing Markel on City of Villains. I had just finished clearing a mission map and was now heading outside to find another. No sooner had the map loaded that I saw the following spammed in my event log:

WARNING: Zombie attack in St. Martial.
WARNING: Zombie attack in Grandville.
WARNING: Zombie attack in Port Oakes.
WARNING: Zombie attack in Cap Au Diable.
WARNING: Zombie attack in Mercy Island.
WARNING: Zombie attack in Nerva Archipelago.
WARNING: Zombie attack in Sharkhead Isle.

And just so you know, those are all the villain zones in the game.

The sky turned a bloody red and there was this ominous sound effect. All my global chat channels just stopped before suddenly being filled with "..." or "WTF" or "ZOMG! ZOMBIES!"

We had heard rumors of a possible zombie event in CoX, but it wasn't supposed to be for a few days. Then we just got word from people at Hero-Con that the devs were going to unleash a surprise on the servers just a little early. Well, the response absolutely priceless. I was glad I was on to experience the event first-hand.

Our villain-group even made an RP out of it!

Now I hear that there is a zombie invasion going on in Azeroth!

Time to grab the shotgun! We be killing us some zombies!

Updating this blog because Thomas is POKING me. :P

Anyway, my Oblivion mod "Benirus Manor - Necromancer's Lair" is on the Planet Elder Scrolls Top 15 Oblivion Mods (after you discount the Hall of Famers, of course). It's actual placement is somewhere in the 50s.

Okay, so the results are kinda skewed because it just looks at the exact rating rather than some relationship between the rating and number of votes. My mod is rated 10.00 and has 17 votes whereas a mod below mine is rated 9.99 and has 259 votes.

But still, my mod is on the front page, which is so cool!

I created this thing over two years ago because I thought Mr. Benirus just seemed to have a pitiful lair for a necromancer. I clearly remember the circumstances surrounding its creation: it was one summer week where we were found ourselves without air conditioning AND the Internet. I couldn't play WoW, so what did I do? I taught myself how to use the Construction Set. And this was the result.

It is a minor mod on Planet Elder Scrolls, though fairly popular. It has almost universally positive reviews and is quickly approaching 7000 downloads. Even now I am still proud of how it turned out.

Planet Elder Scrolls
Benirus Manor - Necromancer's Lair

My tween years were spent overseas. When we weren't pretending to be ninjas—climbing trees and having sword fights with large wooden sticks—or just strolling the fields and terraces that surrounded our apartment building (one of the advantages of living on the edge of town instead of the center), we played video games. The biggest was Super Nintendo.

But I also had my own computer, a hand-me-down from my dad. Whenever he upgraded his computer, I would receive the part he replaced. It was probably a 386 back then, (definitely a 486 by the time we moved on-base). I spent many hours playing and watching my dad play games like MechWarrior 2, Command and Conquer, and X-COM.

Well, my mom liked to play music over the stereo system. Actually, she still does, but back then her favorites were Andy Williams, Nat King Cole, but particularly the Carpenters. She actually played the Carpenters so much that my young brain began to associate X-COM with the Carpenters, especially since they covered a song called "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft." (X-COM is a strategy game about an alien invasion.)

Well, guess what? The X-COM Complete pack is available for purchase over Steam. I can already say that I am not going to feel right playing these games unless there is some Carpenters playing in the background! >_<

Inspirations: A 25th Anniversary Celebration

Patch details for City of Heroes Issue 13 have already been released! - Link

- Mission editor (Holy crap, yes!)
- Day Job (Neato!)
- New Powersets
- More Cimorora Missions
- Merit Rewards (Ooooo!)

AND

Blizz has ready announced the final content patch before WotLK! - Link

- New class spells and talents (Yesyesyesyes!)
- Stormwind Harbor
- Barbershops in capital cities
- Zeppelin towers outside of Orgrimmar and Tirisfal Glades
- Guild calendar
- Hunter pet skill revamp
- New profession: Inscription (Do want!)

Want patches NAO plz!

It's on my back porch! Yeah!


So anyway, this tree does not appear to be from our yard. It fell from outside the fence early Friday morning; we didn't even hear it fall. But none of it is touching the house; it's all on the back porch, so hooray for that.

I wanted to get this up sooner, but oh well. Anyway, Thomas proposed to me Saturday!

Here's how the day went:

We were going to go kayaking Saturday (much like our first date), but the weather was very overcast and we didn't think they were going to rent boats to us, so we went down to the beach instead. I'm glad we did, because we saw dolphins! They were maybe 50 to 100 feet out, and we could see just pods and pods of them as they were coming up for air. I had never seen so many dolphins off the coast like that. And if we had kayaks we probably could've gone out to meet them; and that would've been very cool!

Anyway, as we walked up and down the beach, we also saw starfish. Lots and lots of starfish. They were being brought in by the tide, and many of them were still alive. We turned them over and their little tubed feet were still wiggling. Very cool! After that, we just kinda threw them back into the water. (We were rescuing them!)

We had lunch at Chili's because smelling all that BBQ at the beach had me hankering for a grilled burger. And then we had a nap. About an hour later, he had to leave for what I thought was work. Then he came back and tried to get me out of my bed, which didn't work so well. ;)

I honestly didn't know what the big deal was. It was 7:00pm. We had our fun for the day. I was ready to relax and play a game or something. But he eventually got me out of bed and we went down to Kilwin's for some ice cream (also much like our first date).

We walked the beach again for a bit. We didn't see any dolphins and the sandbar kept the beach mostly free of shells and starfish, but the sand itself was so cool and soft. As we were leaving, he pulled out the ring (which was what he had disappeared to pick up from the jewelers because he was getting it polished and resized). It was totally unexpected. I mean, I knew he was going to do it sooner or later; I just didn't know it would be that day! He didn't get down on one knee or anything, but with all that happened, it was still very romantic. ^_^

All that remained now was to tell the moms; because once you tell the moms, soon all the family, extended family, and even complete strangers will know that you are getting married. Our WoW friends know, too. In fact, right after the moms, they were the next people we told!

My dad comes home Saturday because of some job-related stuff (good timing on that!), so when he gets here, we are going to celebrate!

Thomas's blog entry of the same day.

I started writing up a profile for my Blaster, Officer Trent. I figure that since I've been RPing with him, I might as well come up with a backstory. Nothing is set in stone yet. I'm still trying to get a feel for this guy.

Anyway, you can find it here.

In the meantime, I go to look for a CoH avatar.

EDIT: I've settled on Ghost Widow. I'm not happy with it, but it works for now. At least it's not the default Portal avatar. :o

Just a plug.

http://www.forsakenreality.com/

I found this site when I was in college. Ten bucks for a one-year subscription and I could browse and download his library of wallpapers. Because I am a sucker for good 3D art I thought, why not? Now he offer a "life-time" subscription. $35 dollars and your subscription never expires. Seemed like a pretty good deal to me.

He updates regularly. He's got wallpapers going all the way back to 2005 and in all sorts of resolutions.

I've got over a hundred wallpapers downloaded onto my computer. And since my desktop cycles on start up, I get to enjoy every one of them. If you like Digital Blasphemy, you'll like this guy.

VirtueVerse is the unofficial handbook of Virtue Server. Here players can post character stories and profiles.

The following profile is the featured article, and it is absolutely hilarious.

http://www.virtueverse.com/index.php/Ascendant

Let's have a look at this mod, shall we?

http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=OblivionMods.Detail&id=4497

The author made the unfortunate decision that people should update their votes after every update of the mod itself. While that is a good unwritten practice, making it into a written policy brings complications.

I only remove outdated votes at the author's request. One guy took offense to this. Now he makes it his duty to challenge me every chance he gets. I do not say this out of ego; on the contrary, those who know me know that I am a very quiet and unassuming individual. But fact that he began his most recent post (before I hijacked it to deliver my ultimatum) with "Ms. Admin"--under the cover of giving his opinion of the latest update to justify his previous vote--shows that he does not care about the mod at all. If he did, he would've given constructive criticism. Instead, he chose to play the Pharisee and is now trying to trap me with my own rules (or technically, the rules the author has set up).

This has nothing to do with the mod anymore. He just has to topple "the mighty admin" to prove that he's right and everyone else is wrong. Well, bucko, it is not the letter of the law, it is the spirit of the law that must be upheld. I can tolerate someone challenging my authority, but he is using the author's mod as an excuse to one-up me, and I will not have him harassing the author in this fashion. Because it is harassment, it is trolling, and I still ban people for that.

The funny thing: one would expect that it was the author who reported this guy to me. It was not. It was another user of the site who was just so sick and tired of his antics. Well, I'm sick and tired of it, too.

*sigh*

There are some days that I miss Lord Devil...

This past Monday, I got to engage in City of Heroes RP for the first time. I was running around on Trent when I received a tell: "Hey, Mick's Sister! Want to join us for a bit of RP? We're having a Mystery Night and since Trent is PPD (Paragon Police Department), maybe we can have him drop by the meeting." After I got over my initial shock (it came right out of the blue), I was intrigued.

It was a little awkward dropping into a closed meeting without a reason, and several of them made the clear (ICly, of course); but after a while, I got a little more comfortable and was actually able to contribute something more than reactive emotes. It was actually a blast!

The gist of the story is that villains have been turning up with painful, magically-induced lacerations and are being forced to do the bidding of a mysterious party in exchange for healing. Our little group thwarted an Arachnos bank robbery and Warriors attempting to steal a certain book from a museum. (I'm guessing this book is going to be important later on.) And interrogation of the perpetrators revealed that the Banished Pantheon might be behind this string of crimes. Next Monday, we get to continue the session and find out more! At the end of the night, Trent had a new supergroup!

Originally, my brother was supposed to participate in this RP, as his friend (the guy who whispered me) leads Mystery Night every week; but it completely slipped his mind, and since he saw that I was playing, he said he didn't have the heart to kick me off.

That dork! Now I feel all bad! I offered to let him step in next week, but he said I could finish this storyline. That was so nice of him, though! Now I'm really looking forward to it!

But this does highlight an important problem. I need my own account...

Being a Half-life nut, I wanted to see if I could recreate the MetroCop costume in City of Heroes.

( This is my attempt. )

Meet Trent, "Officer Trent" in-game. He is currently a Level 7 Natural Blaster (Assault Rifle/Traps). I debated making him a Villain, most MetroCops being evil bastards and all. (In that case, he would've been a Natural Corruptor, also AR/Traps.) But I wanted to try Hero-side for once.

The helmet and the jacket are a little off, but hey, it's the best I can do with what I have. :)

For his Level 20 costume, I might remove the helmet altogether.

Oh. My. Gosh!

I don't know what they did, but GIMP is no longer fussing with my tablet. I used to get this awful, AWFUL jumpiness from the stylus whenever I used it with GIMP. It was the single most annoying thing that kept me from moving over to GIMP full-time.

Now it's gone!

*happy dance*

Baibai, Paint Shop Pro 7! It's been a good run--almost eight years! And I'll miss you!

For a while, I decided that I needed to take my workout up a notch, so I finally went for an early morning jog around the neighborhood. I had a pretty good pace at first, but then my calves and feet were like "Ow!" so I slowed down. Well, the calves sorted themselves out, but my feet didn't.

I think I'm going to have to change my shoes. I've got cross-trainers now, which are okay for everything, but good for really nothing. If my other shoes don't work out, I might actually have to look into running shoes. And with the other stuff I have to buy (clothes and gear), man, working out is expensive.

Well, after a shower and breakfast, I promptly went back to bed.

I hate mornings.

I don't think we've done anything special on the Fourth in years. (Special as in "spend the holiday with the godparents" and/or "go to see fireworks.") But when my dad's away, plus various other reasons like Thomas's ex-girlfriend STILL living at my godparents' house, we don't tend to do anything special. This year was a little different.

We met more people from WoW.

Two people from our raid group recently relocated to Jacksonville, and we got to meet them--in person--for the first time. But really, that was just a bonus since Malk and Teevi only asked us if we would be interested in seeing Get Smart today; we didn't know Elyle and Ishuna were going to be there, as well. :D

Our Fourth of July fare consisted of the Orange Park Mall food court. And of course, we talked about geeky stuff only WoW people can appreciate (like the time our raid stumbled upon Squid Cyborz).

Here is the thread that spawned from it.

The beginning of this year, Disney had a special on tickets where if you shelled out $120, you get a four-day pass usable within six months from the first time you use them. Well, since Thomas had a little extra money, he bought one for me and one for himself. Today, we used our last day.

We decided on Animal Kingdom. Because the park was open until 8pm--from it's usual 5pm--we took our sweet precious time getting down there. Thomas also showed me where he worked when we were all in college. He was adamant that I had to go down one of the slides, but that didn't work out too well. The humidity makes you sweat like a pig; and when your clothes are sticking to you, your body doesn't really want to go down that slide.

Man, it was hot. After sweating so much in Kickboxing/Krav class, there are times when you just don't want to sweat anymore. But it's a good thing they have the River Rapids. We got soaked. ^^

We had been to Animal Kingdom before, but we never got to try out Mount Everest since it is one of the most popular attractions there and it was always overcrowded. The first thing we did was get a fast-pass for Everest. We came back toward the end of the day, and it only took us about five minutes to get on. Honestly, it is one of the best rollercoasters I've ever seen.

Here's a video I found that shows the ride from the front seat, but of course, it doesn't do the ride justice. Smooth ride, changing tracks, pitch black, and a yeti! Would ride again!

Was fun. I got to spend all day with my man. But ouch!

Three days of Krav + One day of walking = Legs that HATE you

My brother had been bugging us for the past couple days (weeks?) that we should all go out and see this movie.

I was really surprised by this movie. It was definitely better than I thought it would be.

Po the Panda is the son of a noodle chef, but he has big dreams. When he hears that the Kung Fu Grandmaster is going to choose the Dragon Warrior, everyone in the village gathers to watch. Well, by some fluke, Po becomes the chosen one, much to the dismay of Shifu and his students, the Furious Five.

The storytelling is very good. Po is very sensitive about things like his weight. He's not a Kung Fu master and he knows it. He doesn't want to be there almost as much as Shifu and company don't want him there, but he tries to make the best of it.

The voices were perfectly cast. The very instant Monkey spoke, I was like, "Omigosh, that's Jackie Chan." Jack Black made a great Po, but I think Dustin Hoffman stole the cake with the grumpy Shifu. I kept thinking of Star Wars, for some reason. Shifu is what Obi-wan would've turned out to be had the Jedi Knights not been destroyed after the fall of Anakin. He is the grumpy mentor. And I just want to pet him and cuddle him. ._.

They did a good job building up the villain, but I think he could've had a better ending. They spend a good bit of the movie extolling how badass he is, but the way Po took care of him did seem kinda ridiculous. Awesome voice, though. *purr*

8/10

Pixar really outdid themselves with this one. I like all their movies, but I think this is the greatest one since Finding Nemo.

I won't bore anyone with a synopsis of the plot (you can find better sites for that), but I will give my thoughts. Here there be spoilers.

I am a stubborn person. If my parents tell me, you NEED to do this, my natural reaction is to--of course--not do it. It's not that I don't want to; it's just that I want to do things MY way. Naturally, I was ticked when they signed me up for a local martial arts class. (For those of you who are unaware, I am working out and trying to lose weight so I can get in the Air Force's Officer Candidate School.)

Well, my first day of this class was actually quite horrible. I was in some shape; I ran around the neighborhood and I did sit-ups and push-ups, but I found that I simply did not have the stamina to keep up with the rest of the class. I was out of breath, I was dizzy, and I was sweating profusely. When I came out, I felt like I had jumped into a pool with my clothes on. I was that wet.

Well, since they already paid for it, I wasn't going to be a obstinate child and squander their money. Like college, they see this as an investment into my future, and I understand and appreciate that. But it just felt like I had no choice in the matter and I hated that.

That was three weeks ago.

While I still feel like I have no choice in the matter, I am not so prideful as to not allow myself to make the best of it. It is hard work. I still come home drenched in sweat (and so does everyone else in the class). But since starting, my metabolism has gone through the roof and I have lost probably about six pounds, an average of two pounds per week.

I train four days a week. Two days are kick-boxing. Two days are Krav Maga, a Hebrew form of self-defense. (Click here to read more. The Wikipedia article is brief but informative, and I think it accurately reflects my personal experiences.)

Also the great thing is that Thomas is taking the classes with me. We don't often partner with each other, but it's nice that he's there and that we can get in shape together. And no, we haven't beaten each other up yet. (Though I did take a nice sock in the jaw from another guy I was partnering with. He got a little too zealous with the elbow strikes and BAM, just under my right ear! It stunned me for a second there.)

But if I keep this up, I'll be in shape in no time. :)

Of all my WoW characters, Sohlbet is my PvP-bot, and I like to think I've become pretty decent at this whole PvP rogue sort of thing. Sure, I still make some nub mistakes and accidentally blow "Will of the Forsaken" when I want to "Shadowstep" (maybe I should remap my keys), but I know how to jack someone up if they try taking that flag.

Season 4 was released yesterday, and of course, everyone and their mother was PvPing yesterday either testing out their new l33t Season 2 gear or trying to get their hands on it. I kinda fall into the latter category, as I already have full Season 1 but I am still trying to fill in the holes from hitting 70.

Anyway, I was in Eye of the Storm, and what I usually do is make a beeline for the flag right when the forcefield drops. With my riding crop on, I can get there before anyone else, snatch the flag and make our first cap. If I have people backing me up in the center, we can chain cap and win the game (providing we don't have retards on our team who have the mentality that three bases and nothing else wins the game. Three bases is fine, but you HAVE to take three bases early on and DEFEND them and most teams FAIL in that regard. By the time we've gotten three bases, it is already so late in the game that the other team has screwed us over in flag caps; and three bases aren't going to save us then. And I've won FAR more games capping flags than I have capturing three bases.)

Anyway, we were winning a particular Eye of the Storm game. I was hanging out in the center, grabbing the flag whenever it resets. An Alliance druid (probably resto) rides up and I attack him. He absolutely does not fight back. He dies and I am somewhat perplexed. The game goes on for a bit and by chance the Alliance grabs the flag. Our team kills the flag carrier, but then this same Alliance druid snatches the flag. For some reason, I see this guy dashing toward the center and not their nearest base. I intercept him and start wailing on him. Then in the middle of beating him up, I suddenly I see him drop the flag. I stop.

/boggle

Why?! Yes, your team is losing, but cryin' out loud, put up a fight! Don't roll over and let the other side steamroll you. Worse, don't roll over and give me your flag! I would've been pissed if I were on the Alliance team and I saw this happening, but the thing is: he's not the first one to have done this and he won't be the last. I've been on my share of losing teams, and I've seen similar levels of apathy in the Horde.

If victory was not possible, I would make the other side pay for theirs. Sometimes I could pull it off, but most times I couldn't, especially when half my team either gave up in the middle of the match or blatantly ignored the other team's most glaring weakness or even our own.

I play to win. But in WoW where PvP is all about accruing honor points to purchase gear, that can be an uphill battle. Sometimes I'll throw myself into the Alliance offensive in a last ditch effort to delay them--if not outright stop them--and I have been criticized for it because it stems the flow of honor. But heaven forbid you'll see me roll over and die just so our team can lose quickly for a so-called "honor farming" match.

Sohlbet's profile:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Feathermoon&n=Sohlbet