Everything is different, but the same...

Everything is different, but the same... things are more moderner than before... bigger, and yet smaller... it's computers... San Dimas High School football rules!

{Dynamis - Beaucidine} on Sunday seemed exciting to me; new zone, new paths, new gear drops, etc.... Hell, even city-runs used to seem exciting to me. Maybe it's because I finally now have all of my Dynamis city clears... maybe it's because I have now experienced the Icelands... maybe it's because I don't really have any AFv2 gear that I really want/need at this point in time... But whatever it was last night {Dynamis - Bastok} was more boring than watching shit fossilize.

The only thing that was really keeping me awake was chatting with people on Vent about how boring the run seemed. lol Well, that and laughing about how Treu was bitching me out for getting BLU AFv2 Legs free-drop to me. :-P I suppose Somajan's {/assist} macros helped a bunch during that first hour (samples include: "For a good time call Vangaurd Militant 8675309", "What is your name Vanguard Defender?", "What is your quest Vanguard Vindicator?" and the one I liked best of all "Achoooooooo!"), but then a new main assist came in and everything dulled-down again.

I guess there just wasn't much talking going on in LS-chat. And people didn't really seem all that excited about various AF that was obtained. We still got something like 18 pieces and 2x 100 currency pieces. People SHOULD have been excited, and yet they didn't really seem like it. /shrug whateva. BRING ON XARC!!! :-D

In other news, a new admin post on lolFail's forums site showed up yesterday afternoon entitled "Announcement: Breaking Linkpearls (PLEASE READ)". :-(
So, immediately, I {/panic}.

I still need gear! (D Legs, D Head... would still like to get some A Hands and an Osode or 10 too)
I still need gil! (to pay for various cursed items as well as black belt items)
I still... hell.... I still wanna hang out with a bunch of the people in this LS!

Apparently this was the same reaction of many. Several people were sending me /tells all last night saying how worried they were about being booted. People asking me to check their "attendance %", their "lifetime attendance %", their current amount of points... People saying how it'd be so unfair that they get booted because they've put X amount of hours into outside farming and yet haven't really gotten any items yet. People comparing themselves against other members to try and gauge their probability of getting their pearl broken. People asking why I thought I might get the boot cuz they thought I was actually a sack holder. (All I do is take attendance people. Anyone can do that. ... Wait. I mean: I'm valuable! This is a tough job! I'm irreplacable!!!)

I suppose I'm glad that at least ONE person actually had the same feelings as me and wasn't just worried about gear/gil and said he'd actually miss hanging out if he got kicked. :)

Well, whatever happens, I guess I should still be happy. Hell, I got a D Body and a Haidate in a matter of months! Treu got 2 pairs of W Legs (one for him and one for Screamin). Dude, that's major accomplishments right there! So, if I'm still in, then cool, I can still hopefully get some more gear to help pimp-out my MNK. If I'm out, I guess that'll at least give me more time to focus on CoP and Assaults and Salvage and the ton of other things I still need to get to.

/crossesfingers

Fox has one of those new reality shows at eight, 'Fast animals, slow children.'

So umm, YEAH!

Salvage went about as smoothly as I had expected it to on our first run: about as smooth as a baby's bottom... that has been put through a blender set on "chop" for 5 to 10 seconds. (I'm not positive, but I'd imagine that that's not "smooth" at all.)

We got so pwned it was almost laughable. Almost.

I don't understand why some of the people on our run were expecting to actually like cruise thru the floors and kill NMs with ease, when some of us had never even been on a Salvage run. Oh, and it didn't help that cells were being dished-out to people kinda slowly. And that some cells were just lost because everyone passed on them, eventhough not everyone HAD them. And that we were kind of rushing through everything and didn't get the cells we needed to progress to the next floors. And that instructions seemed to be changed on-the-fly which caused more problems than they resolved. And that there was a lot of YELLING which I think just ended up causing more frustration among our group. And that we split up on the first floor and were killlin mobs kinda slowly. And that.... oh geez. I'll just stop there.

I don't have time to write much this morning, but a word comes to mind when I think about the run last night: clusterfuck.

Simple solution: it's gonna take time, experience, and more planning in order to accomplish anything in Salvage. I think everyone realizes that now, so now that we got served, everyone can lower their expectations for the time-being and hopefully our next run will be a little easier-paced.

Despite all the negativity in this post, I'm still tryin to keep an optimistic mindset on our Salvage group. :)

Re-elect Mayor Goldie Wilson. "Progress" is his middle-name!

Progress Progress Progress Progress Progress

(1) Expanded Mog Locker to 70
(2) Merit: Kick Attacks 4/5
(3) Merit: Counter 2/5
(4) LolFail payout from last week: over 600k! (I can almost TASTE that Blackbelt. It's actually within sight now that payouts are this huge.)
(5) Dynamis - Beaucidine: My first Icelands run. Got the clear! Got PUP Body (free dropped to me) and then inadvertently started a fairly large, and somewhat awkward, argument between several LS members as to how "I now had to level PUP since I have an AFv2 piece now" (yeah, I was totally kidding) and some ppl laughed and some ppl took offense and how PUPs have to take all this crap from non-PUPs and they don't know how it's a sweet sweet job and blah blah blah... After my "i gotta level it now" comment, I pretty much just stfu cuz I think a couple ppl actually got mad over it. lol
(6) Sky: we sold a couple items already for this week :)
(7) Salvage: YUS! We finally got a linkpearl set up (GigidyGigidy, and coincidentally it's the same color yellow as my HellsBells pearl), got our members together (Khrone, Treubond, Ratman, Hybridkiller, Hulcalan, Drayco, Caol, Mactatus), discussed jobs, times (Tuesday 10pm, Thursday 10pm, Sunday 3pm), some rules, yadda yadda yadda. Yes, Salvage is actually happening! w000000000000000t!!!

In summary: closer to capped merits; closer to blackbelt; closer to Usu gear. My long-term goals in this game are happening!

I'm a Mog. Half man, half dog. I'm my own best friend!

[GM]Dave kills me.
http://bannable-offenses.blogspot.com/2009/02/i-warned-you.html

If it wasn't bad enough that you're single, suddenly society makes you out to be some form of freak.

Maybe you like being single.

Maybe you're waiting for the right person to come along.

Maybe you're busy leveling up your ranger.

ahhhh, good stuff. XD

Today's Secret Word is...

Thundercunt!

Yeah, our LS has had our own little memes throughout our somewhat brief history so far: "Team Mexico", "we're disbanding the LS because [insert random made-up excuse]", "I just broke [player]'s pearl ... cuz I felt like it", "pulling a Sush" (falling asleep at your computer), anything referencing Pandas, YouTube video lists (for when you're bored), etc... But last night Treu made some off-kilter comment about how he was upset that some schmuck was buying Ancient Beastcoins off the AH for 9k and immediately selling them for 9.2k, to which he referred to the player as a "Thundercunt". Much hilarity (and name-calling) ensued. Nomar has now dubbed Treu with this as his nickname, to go alongside my nickname of "tattooface". XD

While farming last night, I noticed Shiiga's SMN gear. Niiiiiiice stuff. AF+1, AFv2, ZNM head piece, Yinyang, etc... It was pretty slick to see someone have a free Garuda out for a while while Ballad was active. :-D I'm jealous, but now I have someone to look up to while leveling my SMN.

So! My progress over the past month or so:
(1) {Salvage} access O - w0000t!!! I joined a random group of people (5 of us total) and did The Black Coffin ToAU Mission. Turned out to be, like the Lost Kingdom fight, a LOT easier than I had initially expected. We rocked it out with out any difficulties whatsoever (well, 1 guy DID die right before we beat it) and we weren't even all that organized. We had said that we were gonna take out the RNGs first (which were on the outsides) and then work our way towards the middle... but when the fight started, it seemed that pretty much everyone just went 1-on-1 with someone. lol
(2) PUP O - I unlocked Puppetmaster a little while ago, primarily because I was bored and wanted to do something a little different. One day while I was trying to deathport back home from Sandy, I pulled out the automaton and tried to die... and the automaton just kept whooping butt. I ended up leveling before I actually died. Couple days later I took my PUP outside Basty just to do a little water crystal farming for my gardening... and ended up getting PUP up to 12. lol I just couldn't stop! It's actually kinda fun to play and I'd get all giddy when I SC with my automaton. lol
(3) {Dynamis - Windurst} O - did a run here with HellsBells DURING the SuperBowl... timing of that run sucked cuz I missed out on 2 parties (but I was exhausted from getting back a couple hours earlier from another Colorado ski trip anyways) but I'm glad I stayed home and went on the run... cuz I FINALLY got my clear! So, tomorrow's run is Sandy, but Sunday night we're doing Beaucidine. My first Icelands!
(4) Mog Locker expansion - expanded to 50 and then to 60. Yeah, I thought I fully expanded my locker when I initially opened it... apparently not. Another what... 18 days or something til it'll be at max-capacity.
(5) Finally got back to doing a little more leveling on my SAM and progressed up to 43. Also obtained my SAM AF weapon.
(6) {Genbu's Kabuto} O - cuz noone else really wanted it last night. lol
(7) Besides all of that, I did a bunch of random questing around Whitegate as well just to gain a little more ISP and Imperial Gold. /shrug Again, I've been bored lately; sky is becoming a lil too monotonous.

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise

Woke up this morning (i have about 1 hour til i need to leave for work and only about 6 hours til i need to leave for the airport for my ski trip this weekend... and i still haven't packed yet!) and saw that this was posted to the HellsBells forums last night:

==============================================
Author: Rob
Title: HB Officer
Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2009 12:49 am
Post Subject: Einherjar Discontinued
Message:
Effective 1/28/09, we will no longer be running Einherjar due to lack of interest. Points will be frozen until a decent member base is formed that would like to continue with HellsBells Einherjar.
==============================================

Bummer.
I was hoping to start making more time for this now that I got my haidate, but it appears I'm too late. But I did see this coming. Up until a couple weeks ago HB's Einherjar runs were free to attend and then they decided to start charging people 5k gil (or more if necessary numbers didn't show up) because apparently it hadn't become a self-sufficient event and was just leeching off of the HB Dynamis bank account. Some of the people that I noticed that showed up to these events had sub-par gear so it didn't surprise me that they were too cheap to toss in a measley 5k for a run, so I'm sure even fewer and fewer people were showing up to the runs.

oh wellz. It was fun while it lasted I guess. I had only made it to a handful of events, but I guess it was still a good experience just for the fact that it was something different from the monotony that is sky farming.

I think I'd still be interested in attending runs, but a major problem for me is that I can't come on Wednesday nights before their Dynamis runs. I'm pretty much busy every Wednesday night until 9 or 10pm EST... and that's gonna be the way it is for about 80% of the calendar year. ; ;

Maybe if they changed-up the schedule more people would be willing and able to attend?

Close your mouth, please, Michael. We are not a codfish.

The past several days since I've become a very happy camper (got my haidate) some randomness has occurred that really doesn't need to be remarked upon... but I might anyways since I don't really have anything else to speak of. /shrug

I've been pretty happy with how this LS has progressed. Back when Treu told me about a group of his friends "that were quickly pwning {sky}", he had the patience and decency to blitz me, and a few others, through our ZMs so we could get sky access. At that time, I was a pretty stressed-out gamer cuz I REALLY wanted to join this group and quickly attain various pieces of "god gear" (Kirin's Set pieces, abjurations, etc...) that would help pimp out my MNK. Back then, it was clear to me that I would need this gear as a stepping-stone to be an effective member of our future Salvage group and obtain my long-term goal of "full Usu".

I was stressed-out primarily because I was constantly worried that these guys would all get their gear quickly and then disband the LS (or move on to {sea} or something) before I got the gear I really wanted/needed. Especially in December when it kind of seemed like people were getting their gear and then leaving right away. And when it seemed like Sush was getting fed-up with keeping track of attendance and drops and points and all that administrative nonsense that is necessary to make sure everyone is getting what they've earned. That's when I decided to take some of the burden upon myself and created my LolFail Tracking spreadsheet. Creating the spreadsheet and actually maintaining it adds even MORE stress to my gaming-life (do any of you really understand how much of an effort it is to try to keep track of who's participating and who's leeching and who's just flat-out passed-out at their keyboard...?) but it has apparently become well-worth it because the LS is now BOOMING again.

People are getting the gear they want. We are selling pieces like hotcakes. Hell, we've even had plenty of items just drop and lost because noone wants them anymore! Just this past month we've dropped A Legs, A Head, E Feet, Suzaku's Scythe, D Hands, Seiryu's Sword, M Hands... we even had 2 D Hands drop off of a single Suzaku and both were abandoned. Yeah yeah, some of this gear really isn't worth it, but it's just awesome how we used to have a waiting list for some of this gear (and how we had buyers for some of it)... and yet we still just drop it cuz everyone that wants/needs it already has it. There's even gear that drops and people are just taking it because they MIGHT want to eventually level a job that could use it.

Obviously we still have waiting lists for the more prestigious items (W Legs, D Body, N Body, Osode, Haidate, etc...) so we're not going to be giving up on {sky} anytime soon. Plus we still seem to be making some decent gil just selling these items now.

So yeah. I'm in good spirits... despite not getting an Osode for myself yet. :-P

Kirin was apparently all hopped-up on crack last night... and sold all of his gear drops to pay for his fix. We got up to his room and another LS was there fighting him and it just seemed to take FOREVER for him to die. (We actually thought that these guys were just n00bs and didn't know what they were doing.) After about 45 minutes of us watching them (and I have no idea how long they were up there fighting before we got there) they take him down.... and get NOTHING. Well, I think they said they got an ingot to drop. But that's it. Then comes out turn... and we wipe to Kirin. {/sigh} Well, actually, it wasn't really that Kirin was putting the smackdown on us; it was more because one of our WHMs 2-houred before he/she was supposed to and then we started dropping like flies. Oh wellz. Our 2nd Kirin run proved a little more successful, but still only resulted in getting W Legs for Xzavier ('bout damn time X!) and NOTHING else. Stupid coked-out, broke-assed Kirin.

Other than that though, nothing really worth mentioning.

I guess people are starting to visit the spreadsheet more often now. Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. But whateva. At least they know everything is logged and they can correct any mistakes we .. er... _I_ have made. (Thanks again Mars! If you hadn't said anything, we might have missed out on the point for that one Suzy kill.)

In conclusion (cuz I REALLY gotta get some lunch and get some work done today) I'm astonished and really happy that this LS is still going strong. Yeah, it may seem like we're constantly making adjustments to the rules, but we're just trying to make it fair to everyone and make sure everyone gets what they want and need while making sure that they've earned it.