Recent Entries

Don't Mind the Frothing, It's Probably Not Contagious

Posting this here, as I don't want to actually get involved in the wankfest, but aaaaargh must say something somewhere *froth* Basically, WoWInsider posted a short interview with a GBLT-positive guild on US-Proudmoore. There were a surprisingly large number of positive comments, but of course the inevitable internet wankfest occured (complete with Godwin!), and in among the back and forth, there was a special little comment that got looked over in the general melee, and made me seethe with rage.

( internet stupidity and my unposted reply to it )

....There, that feels a little better now. I almost want to go roll and alt on Proudmoore, because that guild sounds full of win and awesome, but I have too many alts, and I don't think I could leave my awesome DotA gals ♥

lulz

So, just a quick gem from my stats homework - someone, in a test of Murphy's Law, dropped almost ten thousand pieces of buttered toast and recorded which side it landed on. Statistics say that Murphy was right, and toast does land buttered side down more often (62.11% of the time)

Useful Discoveries of the Evening

1) The PS3 can play AVIs off of data DVDs. No more hunching over my little laptop screen!
2) My tv remote works on both televisions (likely because they're the same brand)

This makes up for dealing with arguably the club's biggest asshole - not J (surprisingly!) but George. He doesn't come by much, but he came for the icebreaker tonight, and Christ, I don't have the words to describe how much of an asshole he is. He gets his kicks fucking over as many people as possible.

Things That Are Awesome

-Spore
-Leverage (And, related - Hustle)
-Ghost in the Shell: SAC Solid State Society
-Brewfest
-This girl

Webhost Stupidity

Man, I kinda want to punch whoever set up the club's hosting plan (I think I know who it was, and I won't _actually_ punch him, but it's tempting). I know my host for T-T.org here can be problematic sometimes (usually about billing - never had tech problems), but seriously, I'm getting roughly ten times the features for the same price the club pays. I was trying to install Gallery, so we can have some online photo albums of events, and discovered that I couldn't install Gallery2, because trying to add a second MySQL database (the first is used for the forums) failed because "The total cost of the resources you are trying to purchase exceeds your credit". So I went back to Gallery1 (less awesome than 2, but still awesome), and then discovered I had to install an image processing library myself, because the host has no image processing libraries installed - I don't think it has any Perl modules installed at all.

I did finally get it all working, though, and it has reminded me of two things - 1) I have gotten really rusty at webstuff and 2) despite that, I still enjoy working on webstuff, and the satisfaction that comes from fixing all the problems with something.

Concentration

A late-night post because while I'm tired, I can't sleep. A little bit of QQ here, although I feel entitled as 1) this is my blog and 2) I haven't done all that much whining here recently, except about how much I hate my job. I was reading through some of my old entries, looking for something, and I started thinking about how it seems like my creativity has become all but non-existent lately. I know I was never one of those people who posted tons of fic or whatever, but I do have a sizable collection of fragments of things, almost none of which have been written in the last two and a half years. And part of my problem, I think, is that along with feeling increasingly zombie-like, all the time, I've also been losing my ability to focus on things. One of the reasons I haven't been blogging much is that while I have things I'd like to talk about, I can't string the ideas together in a way that's coherent (heh, even this post is getting a little garbled). It's frustrating, because it makes me feel useless, and so far, there's no medical reason for me to feel this way - I've had a ton of tests done, and everything has come up totally normal. The next step is trying out a few possible meds to deal with the tiredness, one of which is used off-label to treat ADHD, so I'm hoping that works out.

...I'm not even entirely sure why I'm posting this. While frustrating, I'm not actually massively upset about this (particularly as it will change nothing, other than making me feel more like crap) - guess I just feel like talking.

State of Gaming

Because the only other thing I have to blog about is school, and there's not much to say about that - genetics is win, biostats is easy, everything else is alright. So, gaming it is!

Earthdawn: Managed to escape almost certain death with only a Horror mark and an ancient ritual written on metahuman skin >.> The ritual may help us accomplish our goal of sealing away one of the nastiest Named Horrors in the world, but it may be all lies. We haven't killed J's warrior yet, but only because we need the meatshield.

Shadowrun I: has been canceled in a fit of fanboy rage over the newest book, to be replaced by...

Mage: We haven't actually started playing yet, but I'm excited. We've got a pretty cohesive group going, aside from perhaps the mixed martial artist (J, again).

Shadowrun II: We finally got through the first adventure! And also witnessed the opposite ends of the fixer spectrum - Predator's gang contact, Jorge, and Harlequin's high-class fixer, Byron (yes, he looks somewhat like the Byron. And hangs around gentlemen's clubs).

World of Darkness: Soon to be a Hunter: The Vigil campaign! My character's lab has been infested with evil rats who are stealing lab equipment and brewing things in the fume hoods at night :<

World of Warcraft: Hit 70, started raiding. It's fun! Not much else to say than that XD

A very belated thank-you & in search of advice

I meant to post this about two weeks ago, but I finally finished crafting and gemming Alixia's Frozen Shadoweave Set - I wanted to thank everyone who helped me out with it <3<3<3<3

Also, I finally finished the Cipher of Damnation questline, which means next on the list for the Champion of the Naaru title is heroics. However, I've never tried any of the really hard heroics, and I have nooo idea if my gear is up to spec - any knowledgeable mages who can help me out :)? Amory page is here

Entry tags:

con report

Anime Evolution '08

Mostly just an excuse to post the photos, which are here, as I am way too unfocused (and have been for most of the year x.x) to do a nice blow-by-blow recap, and it would probably boring as all hell anyway. I ended up going to barely any events because all the ones that looked like they might be interesting were at times where I was getting really tired, really hungry, or both. So I spent a lot wandering around looking at the costumes and having photos snapped of me (everybody digs Leon!). The cosplay was pretty average - nothing really terrible, not too much really great - there were a few gems there, which I tried to get photos of. The one 'con' event I did go to were the two Academie Duello workshops, longsword and rapier, which were both really fun - I'm really tempted to sign up for lessons there, but it's pretty expensive :<

Dealer's Room swag:
-Tokyo Babylon 1 & 7 in English
- Fruits Basket 12-15 in English (slowly catching up!)
- CCS doujin "Honey" - a Tomoyo-Sakura friendship story, and a shorter Touya/Yuki romance story. The art is super-cute, although it's pretty short.

...Yeah, not a lot. The dealer's room was actually pretty well-appointed, but I've seriously cut back on my merch-buying, and all the series I want stuff for are super-old in terms of anime and nobody carries stuff for them any more (hence why I snatched up the CCS doujin)

A Garden Tale

So I haven't talked about my garden recently - time to change that!

At the beginning of summer, I had my doubts anything was actually going to grow. We had a really long, cold, wet spring, and a lot of the stuff I planted looked all sad and wilted in June. However, we've had some really nice days in the last few weeks, and it's exploded with growth - the downside to this is that it has also exploded with weeds, because I am a lazy slacker :< This year was sort of an experiment, too, as it's the first time I've ever done a garden entirely by myself. I've learned a few things for next summer - more compost in the soil, plant tomatoes farther apart, figure out some way to keep the strawberries off the ground so the ants don't eat them all.

The last two weeks have marked the first major harvests from my garden - I had a few strawberries in July, but less than a handful total. My tomatoes are starting to ripen (and nothing beats home-grown tomatoes picked ripe off the vine), and my zucchini have gotten massive.

Jon and I cooked the one above up today, along with some steak I had in the freezer. We did half of it fried (egg/milk dip then cornmeal/flour/salt and pepper dip), which was tasty, but a little too greasy when paired with the steak. The rest we turned into a sort of baked parmesan zucchini-thing. The topping is breadcrumbs, parmesan cheese, oregano, chopped basil (also fresh from the garden!), fresh crushed garlic, and some salt and pepper. They turned out really tasty, even though I added a little too much salt - all the seasoning was a nice complement to the less seasoned steak. Unfortunately the topping is really crumb-y - I was hoping when I baked it the cheese would melt and make it all stick together, but no such luck. I think next time I'm going to add either a more melty cheese, like some mozzarella, or some beaten egg to the mixture to get it to stick better.

Food

I love brownies so much, but I still can't seem to get the hang of making them nice and moist - my latest batch went really crumbly (still tasty, though). Maybe next time I'll just make batch of batter and eat it uncooked >.>

I also stumbled across this really awesome website about bento lunches, which makes me want to go to Daiso and get a cool lunch box and make myself interesting lunches. I'm not sure I really have the patience for it - I rarely have the patience to cook 'real' dinners as I don't have a microwave to make things fast or a dishwasher to clean lots of cookware in - but I know I should, as I end up eating at 7-11 way too often (most of the pre-made food from our deli is kinda crap)

Entry tags:

shadowrun

Meet the Team

So I finally ran my very first game ever last week - the first (hopefully of many) Shadowrun session with this particular group. So by way of introduction, here's a quick run-down of the team members:

Harlequin: Human social adept, and the team's face. Cultured, handsome, and above all, better than you. Team member most likely to get killed by a pyschotic immortal elf for stealing his name.
Life Goal: To ~~be loved~~ get filthy rich and retire.

Ace: Human elf-poser rigger and mechanic. Has long blond hair and a gold lamé bomber jacket. Can drive almost anything (or so he'd have you believe).
Life Goal: To own his own airport.

Predator: Troll cybersam. Obsessed with late 20th and early 21st century science fiction. Spends much of his time running around with an optical camo suit on, and a monofilament sword. Team member most likely to get the rest of the team killed doing something silly.
Life Goal: To become the Predator (or at least as close as plastic surgery can get him).

Jenkins: Human technomancer. Arrogant know-it-all, and the team's matrix wiz kid. Team member most likely to get killed by the rest of the team for being too irritating.
Life Goal: ???? (Profit?)

iPhansi: Seattle-born South African elf (in SR, there are black people in Johannesburg), and a Zulu shaman. Could make a fortune sitting around enchanting all day, but has dedicated herself to iradicating the nasties of the spirit world - in Earthdawn terms, she'd be a 1st circle Nethermancer/Horror Stalker, and questor of Death.
Life Goal: To stop the next Scourge.

For the first session, I ran one of the pre-built into adventures, which worked out okay, except the troll is a killing machine, and I didn't do enough prep and kept having to look things up in the book >.> It's an encounter with some gangers in a Stuffer Shack (basically a 7-11 on steroids), and ended with the troll forcing one of the gangers to buy him a new Slurpee after his first one got shot in the fight (the team's only casualty).

A Strange Life

So I'm pretty sure I got drunk-dialed by my mother earlier this afternoon. She called from NC, and rambled somewhat incoherently at me for about ten minutes, largely about how much she missed me and how I should come to a family reunion again one of these years (I avoid them whenever possible), and I was left with the distinct impression that she was well into a bottle of wine or something.

Anyway! I keep meaning to update, but apparently I have the attention span of a goldfish on speed, which is to say about two seconds. Unwired is finally out, and it's freaking awesome, but I will keep my nerding to myself, as I don't think there are any other SR players reading this XD; Played some D&D 4th Ed, and had more fun than I thought I would. It's become a bit MMO-like, but I think generally in good ways.

In the real world, the weather is finally summer-like, and I've got the first few strawberries from my garden, which have been delicious. Work is still crazy and people are getting stressed out and cranky, but we're hiring new people right now, which should help. Started doing fall course selection today, and wound up wanting to beat my head against a wall in frustration, because apparently the UBC Biology department is full of stupid (although I realized this when they didn't blind-copy the recipients on the major acceptance email - the list of e-mails was longer than the body text). I have a week before I register still, though, so I'll get it all sorted out. I'm trying to go for an English Lit minor, which means of course lots of classes with only one offering time, which complicates things. Ah well.

In Other News

I now have a 52oz insulated Slurpee mug, and the strawberries in my fridge have turned, and will assault me with propaganda should I open the door (as they are dirty red Commie bastards).

Gah.

So apparently J doesn't understand the concept of 'no', and showed up to game tonight anyway. Almighty GM apparently doesn't care enough to actively drive him away, but I'm pretty pissed. J is a disgusting excuse for a human being, and dealing with him is starting to take the fun out of gaming for me.

PS

Dear Catalyst Games Lab, please stop taunting me with Unwired previews. It looks sexy and awesome, and you guys said it as going to be released in the second quarter of '08. And, well, it's the middle of June now.

Also, while many of the posts on Dumpshock make me wish I had a machine to punch people through the internet with (typical fanboy attitudes of 'because I like it, it must be right, and anyone who disagrees with me is an idiot), I am occasionally reminded of how awesome it, when I come across things like geneticists debating the method of expression of metatypes.

Solutions II

So, pre-genned characters were e-mailed out, and J threw another hissy fit, this time via e-mail. I'd repost, but it's not that entertaining and drama-filled for those who haven't witnessed some of his previous behavior (all of three people reading this, tops), and almighty GM apparently basically told him to GTFO. This totally makes up for being crazy understaffed again at work today.

Solutions

The managers came down from their offices on high and decreed that there shall be a firing in the grocery store this week. And there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth by the firee, but it was done, and there was much rejoicing through out the produce department.

In other words, Problem Child is no longer a problem, and apparently caused a bit of a scene on the way out, which I missed. Now if we could only get J to stop showing up to game, life would be good indeed XD

In brief WoW news, I hit Outlands on my mage this week, so in my excitement, I've been spending more time staring at my computer screen than I probably should, especially because Outlands is a pretty weird place, and the surreal is getting to me. On the other hand, Outlands also fulfills my desire to run instances all the time, because I can find groups for the Blood Furnace and Ramparts pretty much all the time. So I've run Ramparts four times, and Blood Furnace twice, in the last four days XD;

Life, the Universe, and a Meme

Work: Problem Child is still causing problems. Latest utterly classy act: going on a half-hour long rant about how immigrants shouldn't be allowed into Canada and everyone should speak goddamn English - while the really sweet ESL Chinese immigrant cashier was in the room. The whole department wants a firing at this point.

Gaming: We wiped again in SR (surprise, surprise). Current plan of action is to run a more story-based game, with pregenned characters, which everyone likes - except J (again, surprise, surprise). He threw a big hissy fit about the implication that the GM made better characters than he did (he does), and that he wouldn't be able to just run around killing shit all the time (which isn't entertaining and gets the rest of us killed), and we're all hoping that he decides to never come again. In Earthdawn, we killed the Horror that marked us all, and with the help of V the Illusionist/Troubadour Resistance leader, broke into the Imperial prision and freed our friends, who were not in very good shape at all (there was some nastiness with an eyeball >.o). But we have escaped safely and are now preparing for our next adventure.

Garden: Despite the cold, wet weather, my strawberries are doing great, and I will probably have my first crop in another week or two. My squash, on the other hand, which were supposed to be super-easy to grow and cold-tolerant, are looking small and sad. Tomatoes are an unknown right now - still hoping for some warmer weather out here.

Meme:
You are in a mall when the zombies attack. You have:

1. one weapon.
2. one song blasting on the speakers.
3. one famous person to fight alongside you.

Weapon can be real or fictional. Person can be real or fictional.

1) I'm going to go classic and say 12-gauge pump-action shotgun, narrow choke, loaded with buckshot.

2) This one's hard - I am an industrial music fan, and 90% of industrial music is suitable for kicking ass and taking names, but I think either KMFDM's 'Witchhunt' or Rob Zombie's 'Dragula' XD Probably Witchhunt if I had to pick just one.

3) Predictable, but Leon Kennedy, because he knows zombies and all sorts of cool Secret Service shit.

Work

I know I don't usually blog about work, but this last week has been crazy-town.

Saturday: We have a new girl in the department. We'll call her Problem Child, as that is what she is - shows up late, impossible to get her to do anything, wanders off and talks to people in other departments for half her shifts. She spent the first fifteen minutes of her shift talking on her cellphone, and I, not having had a good day up to that point, was a bit short with her about how she needed to get her ass in gear. She flipped out, and the ensuing rant included the line 'Do you wanna take this out back? I'll take you on'. Seriously, who the hell says something like that?

Monday: A Murphy's Law of days - one opener calls in sick, Problem Child calls in 'too stressed out to work'. One of the afternoon people thinks she's closing, and comes in two hours late. The closer himself is forty-five minutes late. The tubing of our cooler system pops off, and sprays water all over the floor. I slice my hand open with a box cutter (not very deep or anything, but it was pretty annoying). It was a laugh-or-cry day - we mostly chose to laugh.

Today: Saturday's incident is firmly in the hands of the managers, and I got a promotion. Small one, with no real increase in power, but it's nice to know that the managers think that highly of me.

We'll see what new adventures tomorrow brings...