JdotMI's LiveJournal

This week has been psychotic. And by psychotic I mean "okay, stop the world, I need a break!" Work has been nutsoid, stuff at home has been nutsoid (in good ways pretty much), and I am so ready for the weekend to be here.

So, on a note related to a previous post of mine, I'm currently totally addicted to Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword, partially addicted to World of Warcraft and City of Heroes/Villains, and wanting to be addicted to The Sims 2.

I have ideas for Mage finally! This is of the good. I need to plan before actually running it, but I may be able to do something with it on Saturday. And we need to locate satyr_mi's character sheet.

I don't have anything really interesting to put in this post, I suppose. Posting for the sake of posting? Oh yeah!

Hmm. Maybe I'll write up a game of Civ that I play and post that...

Wow. It's been a while since I posted in here! I feel like such a bad blogger, except for that part where I don't typically blog so much as babble when I write in this thing. Still, it beats the mounds of memes that I used to post all the time.

So, what has my life been like since last I posted? Let us explore, shall we?

( Weekends off? Cool! Oh wait, there was money involved in that... )

( FullTimeJob needs socialization badly. )

satyr_mi has been going crazy due to end of the semester wackiness, and group projects where his group is non-existant. That's all done and over with and so far so good. He has this week off then starts summer term up next week. Here's to hoping the job hunt goes well, too.

I got bit by the spring cleaning bug. I got a lot done, but have a lot more to do. And I really want to keep it up this time. Granted, I say that EVERY time and it never sticks. I've got a bit more laundry to do, my desk to clean, and my bathroom to clean and then all of my areas are done. I should probably vacuum the apartment today or tomorrow, too.

( I don't watch enough TV. Honest. )

We still need to go visit lilacmoon5 before she and her husband move out of state. The move date got pushed back, so we have a little more time, but I want to do it soon™. Why, yes, I do want to get season 1 of Battlestar Galactica back so that I can watch it and then season 2 and then season 3 when we buy it and get caught up. I'm weird that way. :p And I wouldn't mind getting one last Shadowrun game in, either. Or a few games of Fluxx or Dalmuti or Crononauts.

( Sims 2 addiction much? )

I almost regret to say that I cancelled my City of Heroes account. We haven't played either Heroes or Villains in months, so it was a logical decision. Of course, Issue 9 was just released today. Fortunately, there isn't anything in Issue 9 that has me jumping up and down and going "I want it! I want it!" so it's not going to get me back.

( World of Warcraft babble )

nuadha_prime needs to have a card night again soon. Granted, more people need to show up for them, but hey. ;) And I need to get him back his copy of Kingdom Come. Reminds me, I need to pick up comics. I'm a little behind. Dropping Wonder Woman until issue 13, though, so that should help. Probably going to cut back a little bit more, but not sure.


Anyrate, I've spent 30 minutes typing this up. I'm gonna post it and maybe write more later. :p

Last night was a card night at nuadha_prime's place. satyr_mi and I were dumb and left our leftovers there, though. ~_~ Oops. We played the WoW CCG, doing the Onyxia's Lair pack. It was pretty fun, but we got pummeled by Ony (nuadha_prime) pretty badly. :-p Looks like card night may be moving to a day that isn't Wednesday. Tuesday was the vote of 3 of the five there (patch day, of course we'll choose that as the night we wouldn't be busy!). He's also running a Final Fantasy inspired Savage Worlds game, which sounds like it could be a lot of fun. And my friday's are mostly free, so definitely could be fun.

Today is my last day of work at Borders until the 22nd. I'm on vacation all next week. Definitely looking forward to it! I don't have a lot of work to do today as it is, so I'm going to probably spend most of the afternoon writing documentation and going through other people's cases to see if there's anything I can close out. As it is, I know I have a couple cases of my own that can't be closed today, so it's a matter of getting as much done so the next person to get the case can pretty much close it within a day or so.

My stomach is not happy with me. I'm not sure why. I'm blaming the pepperoni from dinner last night, though. Heh. I'm not as fond of pepperoni as I once was, so who knows.

I went insane at some point and decided that I need to be doing "something" in WoW every day. Or multiple times a day. Tonight is going to be fun, because it'll be satyr_mi, carebear_flare, me, and two other people (or maybe one?) running through an instance together. Tomorrow, though, I totally lost my mind. I'm running Blackrock Depths in the morning, and then I'm going to Scholomance in the evening. And I have to go shopping at some point in between the two. satyr_mi's just rolling his eyes at me at that one, and I can't honestly say I blame him.

Well, my 15 minute break is about over. Time to get back to work!

Ugh. So, you may recall from my previous post (which was ages ago), that my allergies went haywire early this week.

By Wednesday it had morphed into full blow laryngitis. I left work early (at lunch time) because I couldn't get more than three sentences out without my voice cracking and sound ceasing to come out. Thursday I didn't even bother going in to work, and didn't have really any voice at all until about 8:00 PM. Friday was better, but not 100%. We had the Shadowrun group over this weekend and gamed yesterday, and my voice was okay fo rthat. I'm not 100% yet, but my voice is at least useable right now.

So, now I sit here, with something of a voice, allergies finally having calmed down, and not being able to use my living room until people wake up. :-p Ah well. I've become a *shudder* morning person. I'll live. ;)

Still groggy, so going to go veg out now.

It's Shadowrun weekend, which means I gamed on Saturday and then came to work at midnight. This means I am now very very tired.

satyr_mi and I traded in our old cell phones for some camera phones. I have, of course, had way too much fun with the camera portion of the phone. Now just need to find a non-expensive way to get the pictures off the phone and onto my computer. :-p Why, yes, I do have a digital camera I could use instead of the phone, but what's the fun in that? I have some really cute kitty pictures on the camera. And some pictures of margaras, who wants the pictures. Tried getting some of lilacmoon5, but sticking a camera in her face is grounds for murder apparently. :-p

I've been drinking coffee tonight. It's not helping the tired bit. :-p Well, correction. It helped while I was drinking it. Then, when I stopped, I was like "zzzzzzzzzzzzzznrk zzzzzzzzzz" and it was bad.

I ate way too much junk throughout the day. We wound up ordering pizza for gaming dinner, but I only had two slices before being full. Of course, having eaten nothing but cookies and two chicken sandwiches and potato chips and CrackSnack (aka puppy chow in most recipe books, although lilacmoon5 made it with Crispix as opposed to Chex) all day means that my stomach is on strike against the lack of real food.

I've now watched Rent five times since buying it Wednesday night. And I've listened to the movie soundtrack twice through, not counting the play time in my car.

Going back to the food thing... I am just now finally getting hungry again. Which means I'll be starving by the time I get home. This does not bode well. Maybe I'll cook up a chicken sandwich or something.

Shadowrun was fun. Although we got lilacmoon5's character killed. (Okay, vaporized is more accurate. There were little blood particles of Cary left and that's about it. And a shoe.) :-p That was actually very upsetting to me (I really don't take character death very well), but I got over it. Cool stuff happened as a result. We had already planned on pretty much retiring this set of characters anyway because we were all ready for a change.

The bad part was it happened right before we were going to eat dinner. :-p Killed my apetite completely. :-p And, well, y'all know that's saying something. :-p

I shoulda brought some of the cookies to work. Mmmm. Chaicookies.

Civ IV has still eaten my brain, but I've been spreading some holiday cheer/malaise in City of Heroes/Villains. ^_^ I'm not actually going to change anyone's costumes to make use of the Santa hat, but I'm doing the mission for the free costume change. Kalleesta will definitely like having that when she hits 30 and gets her third costume and her aura. I suppose I could re-work one of Kung Ru's costumes, but I'm not sure which one. Probably the martial arts robe costume, which I don't really like.

In CIV, I'm currently playing as Arabia. I was playing it initially to show it to Jason and margaras before we actually started Shadowrun. My continent has Japan on it, but not for much longer. I did two wars so far with him, killed my science rate, but I have enough commerce generation that I'm still flying through techs. And since my navy has started meeting other Civs and stealing their Worldmaps, I've pretty much caught up tech wise and the building of Courthouses has improved my cash flow considerably. Research is quickly climbing back up to acceptable levels and I will shortly be working on my end-game strategy.

Work is going way too slowly today. I'm so ready to go home already. And it's freezing cold in here.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Good movie. Plenty of adult humor threaded into it to keep adults entertained, plenty of eye candy to keep everyone entertained, plenty of Johnny Depp to keep the hormone squad entertained. :-p I do agree with one particular review in that this version of Willy is SO channeling some Michael Jackson freak factor. Not in the creepy could-be-a-child-molester kind of way, but in the creepy that-guy-is-just-wrong-in-the-fucking-head kind of way.

Work: Boring. It's the weekend. Of course it's boring. What else would it be? I haven't heard any horror stories yet about that thing that was released yesterday from co-workers, but I'm sure the stories will come.

City of Heroes: Issue 5 is on the test server. Statesman actually made a post titled "Balance Vision". I started having flashbacks. I was like, "Wait a minute... when did it become 'Brad ''Statesman'' McQuaid' in charge of things??? Isn't supposed to be 'Jack ''Statesman'' Emerret'???" He actually used the words "balance" and "vision" as the title of a post.

All I can think is... THE VISION™!!!!!ONE11!!ELEVENTYONE!!

(Yes, you must imagine that in a big booming !FruityMaster voice ala Cordy-as-the-big-bad in Angel season 4.)

Anyrate, I'm a bit jaded at this point. Regen got the pointy end of the stick again, but not nearly as badly as it has in the past. I actually don't hate the changes. o_O Figure that one out. Invuln got the pointy end of several sticks, and a quick visit from Lorena Bobbit as a chaser. I want to suspect that some of that was due to Geko's infamous typos, but I think it may not be. Controllers just had their kneecaps removed. No fun dancing without them. I suspect the Invuln and Controller changes (as well as a couple other targeting issues [taunt anyone? and holy shit they nerfed Hidden Justice since Fulcrum Shift will only hit 10 enemies max now!!]) are going to be bait-n-switched to a less hateful version relatively shortly, much to the well-expected annoyance of those who are actually paying attention and much to the happiness of those who just want to fellate the dev team at every given opportunity.

New power sets in this Issue! I love Sonics, both Sonic Debuff (Defender Primary) and Sonic Attacks (Blaster Primary) versions. I've got a Sonic/Sonic Defender on Test who is having a blast and a Sonic/Energy Blaster who's having even more fun. I think that Jared Infinity on Virtue is going to be remade as Sonic/Energy once I5 goes live. He's currently a low level Energy/Energy Blaster. I like Trick Shot and Archery, but the power text is all wrong on Trick Shot. Nothing yet does damage in game, but Ice Arrow is supposed to according to all the text for it. The Archery attacks are kind of boring so far, but I still like them. I do have a Trick Arrow/Archery Defender on Test as well. He will also port over to Virtue when it goes Live. I suspect Controllers will love Trick Arrow as a secondary, although, at the moment I don't know many Controllers who aren't plotting death and destruction to the Devs and to hell with the rest of the world. :-p

Oh, yeah, I expect big nerfage to come towards Sonics. There is so much potential for destruction with those sets (they debuff damage resistance, after all, and it's not just one power that does it... it's practically every power that does it) that they almost can't go live in their current state. We'll have to see how far they can push it in larger groups and at higher levels, but I smell a nerfing in the air.

Highlander: The Raven: I own it. And there was much rejoicing. And much sadness, to find out all the crap that was going on behind the scenes during the short time that series was with us. For the record, Elizabeth Gracen was dating a raging sociopath who had her convinced that Kenneth Star was after her (she knew Clinton, remember, and this was during the whole blowjobgate fiasco) and that various government and criminal agencies were trying to spy on her and whatnot. And he fed her all sorts of lies about her co-star which caused even more tension. The producers and writers all gave the impression that they felt so badly for her when it all came to light what this asshole was doing, which unfortunately wasn't until after the show was canceled. And, can I just say, I have become truly spoiled by Joss Whedon's work. Watching the interviews for this series I got the impression that there were far too many cooks in the kitchen trying to dictate this show's direction, and it truly screwed it over. Hell, the producers they interviewed all felt like they got pushed and shoved into doing things they rather wish they hadn't on this show. Just knowing that there was no cohesion behind the scenes on the show (when there is so clearly an abundance of cohesion behind the scenes on Joss Whedon's shows) was depressing. I loved Highlander and the character of Amanda. They deserved way better than this.

Lois and Clark: Season 1: I own this, too. Okay, it's not as exciting as Highlander, but it's still good fun. I completely get why they dropped Cat Grant in season 2, though. It wasn't the actress, for certain. It was the writing of the character and the makeup jobs they did for her. She looked horrid in the episodes with the exception of the scene in her apartment (dinner with Clark) when she doesn't look like a $2 whore and was in sweats and her hair is actually softened up and her makeup looked like it wasn't applied with a trowel. I've seen Tracy Scoggins in a couple of shows after this one and she looked way better in those shows than she did in this one. I mean, in the first three hours of the series she looked like a woman exactly once. How on earth they managed to make her look that bad that often is beyond me.

Buffy: Working through Season 4, in between the previous three bits mentioned above. Just finished "The Initiative". Looking forward to "Hush", as it is one of my all time favorite episodes.

I brought my Buffy and Angel RPG books to work today. Going to make some test characters during my lunch break. Remake the Lisa Stall I did before as well as make a Sarina Matrilor (templar_rose would know her. She and Lisa were inseparable back in the AD&D 2nd Edition days.) and a few others. I would like to play (or run) it at some point, but satyr_mi doesn't want to play in it. So I may put together a D20 Modern game or something.

Retail Therapy:
This weekend was/is employee appreciation weekend for us Borders type people. So, satyr_mi and I went to Borders on Friday and partook in a lil retail therapy. He bought seasons 2 and 3 of Wonder Woman, a Star Trek book and a couple CDs. I bought the D20 Modern Menace Manual, Weapons Locker, D20 Past and D20 Apocalypse. On Saturday we went to Borders Express in Briarwood and picked up another book for him and Complete Adventurer and Complete Arcane for me.

Of course, we only went to the mall because one of the pads on my glasses snapped and I had to get it repaired. Got two new pads and a nice comfy fit out of it. For free. I really should make an appointment to get new glasses, though. These are two years old now.

City of Heroes:
Got Hidden Justice's third costume completed. You can take a look at other pictures of it over at my scrapbook page. Gotta love the benefits of a paid account for that one. I also added some pictures of Countess Crey (after she kicked Kung Ru's ass), a picture of Hidden Justice's battle against Maestro, and some really cool looking shots of a Fake Nemesis.

Made a new Defender on Triumph. I think I named her Seraph's Shadow, but I can't remember. Got her up to level 2, and then proceeded to not level her up because I'm not sure what I want to take. o_O It's sad that I think these things out so much. Also played Tiny Tina a little on Triumph. Did a few missions as Kung Ru on Pinnacle. Remade Jared Infinity as an Energy/Energy Blaster on Virtue. Pretty much just messed around for the most part.

Reading:
Started to re-read the Harry Potter series. Need to be ready when the next one comes out, even though I won't be buying it for at least a week.

Buffy:
Working on Season 3 at the moment. Just finished up Gingerbread. Well, actually, I fast forwarded through it and watched a few interesting scenes that didn't make me want to turn it off and do something else. I don't really like watching that episode much. It's no Inca Mummy Girl, but it has it's share of badness.

Gaming:
Buying all those D&D and D20 books is making me want to play again. Maybe run a game, but I'm not good at running games so much. Although, now I have more ways to make characters for various systems, so it could be interesting to just make characters again. I do need to pick up D20 Future to take full advantage of some of the books, but that may be easier said than done. None of the local Borders had it. May have to actually *mock shudder* order it online. :-p

I should see if any new Buffy RPG books have come out. They take forever... There should be something by now... I got everything up to The Magic Box, or Slayer's Handbook or something like that...

Must resist urge to write up multiple versions of Lisa Stall as she would appear in various game lines...

Hmmmmmmm.......