everything will be alright

Been meaning to share some pics here but keep forgetting, but not tonight. Here's a few pics from the most recent MMO I've been spending time with:

( Rift screenshots +11! )

Will make an actual post again some day soon, promise. :) Now, though, well past my bedtime!

What a glorious, glorious weekend it has been, indeed. And it's still Sunday! Ok, I do have to go to work and prep for a trial in the morning, which isn't going to be a long one but still have to get ready, however I'm still all :D from yesterday.

Friday wasn't that bad, really, work was a pain - I got sucked into a much longer court appearance than I thought I'd have, eating up all of my morning and requiring a quick after lunch appearance for a decision, then the afternoon was just mreh - but the night was alright. My sister came home for the night so we got to hang out a little, then we had a raid in LOTRO on E which was a bit messy but we got the job done. Key to note here, we did the first 2 of 3 raid bosses, as it was super late by the time we finished those two, and left the last (and hardest) for Saturday night, which is what we always do.

Saturday started off very well too. I woke up and called my cousin, who'd called me Friday after work to see if I wanted to hang out, and made arrangements to meet up. We hung out last Friday night and played some co-op Left 4 Dead which omg we have so much fun, it's ridiculous. And we play on our huge new TV at the house in Salmon Cove, which is nice to visit every now and then on top of it, hehe. But yes, he called me this time which rocked, and he picked me up around 1:30pm. First we popped into a local high school to watch a bit of a junior high girls basketball tournament - Terry used to coach basketball (he's a teacher) and one of his friends has a daughters who was playing yesterday, and he said he's stop by to see her play. It was kinda neat, I haven't done that kinda thing in ages, getting out in that kind of an environment I mean, so I enjoyed it too. We only stayed for a half hour or so, and then we called to order a pizza, picked it up (the high school is about a 10m drive away so we had time), then after a quick pop into Wal-Mart where I picked up two new 360 games - Borderlands and Kane & Lynch 2, since we were almost done with Left 4 Dead, was looking for L4D2 but alas - we headed to Salmon Cove. Where, after eating the pizza and getting ready to game, we found out I'd left the Xbox 360 adapter at home in Carbonear, whoops. >.> So there was a quick jaunt back here to get that, then back again, haha, and then we gamed!

We played some Left 4 Dead, doing the last episode we'd never tried before - each episode is like a mini movie, complete with a poster of your characters and rolling credits when you're done XD - and after about 2 hours we'd done all five chapters in it, and we survived! The goal is to make your way through zombie infested areas and, at the end of the last chapter, survive a massive surge until your rescue arrives and then gtfo. Terry never did finish the first two of the four episodes, dying after I was already on the helicopter/boat (the boat one omg, he was literally jumping for the boat when he got nom-nom'd, we aww'd and then we lol'd), but he made the last two on the airplane/AMV. Such a fun game, and I need to find Left 4 Dead 2 sometime so we can play that too. Not having that, though, we moved on to Borderlands yesterday, which we started around 5:30pm yesterday, and before we knew it, it was 7:30pm. We're playing it in co-op split screen mode and just, wow. It's a shooter/RPG hybrid, where you choose from 4 basic classes and level your character, there's even a skill tree to invest points in after you hit level 5 (had a hard time explaining the concept to Terry, kinda, but it's something I live and breath in MMOs and was so happy to see it there!). We chose the same class, the Hunter, as we both wanted to snipe and such, and we had it down pat - we'd see hostiles off in the distance and synchronize our sniping to take them down before they knew we were there. XD So much fun, omg, though I'm considering hopping on this week some time to level another class, maybe a melee one, because when we get into the thick of it up close we're running about and strafing and it gets kinda chaotic. XDDDD We'll see though, having a lot of fun with it, and it looks like this game is going to hold our interests for awhile.

After that, I came home and picked up some supper with Dad, and then settled in online for the night. We had the last raid boss to take out, if you'll remember, and I had to make some food before the same. It was a rough start, kind of - we didn't have nearly enough kin members signed up to do it. This has been a real problem of late, and last weekend there was lots of talk about throwing in the towel, or changing things a lot at least - recruiting more, canceling things if people don't sign up in advance, that kind of thing. But we decided to stick it out last night and scraped together enough people (12 needed) to run the raid, and away we went! It was also rough starting off, since some of the play styles of the non-kin players didn't mesh that well with ours, but eventually we fought our way to the top of the tower and started the boss fight.

Now, I'll pause here to talk about the raid a little bit. Yes, it's only a game, I know, but this raid... this raid has been around for, let's see, I think it's over a year now. It's been a pretty frustrating one, to say the least, and I've been trying to beat it since, oh, last January or February, I reckon, back on Silverlode on my characters there. No one really expected to beat it on the day it came out or anytime too, too soon, really; these things take time, as you learn strategies, teach them to people, etc. But yeah, we never, ever came that close in my other kin, and we tried, and we tried, and we tried, and we tried, and... you get the drift. To the point that, even after having a static group of 12 people to give it their all week in, week out we still couldn't get it down, it lead to some of us breaking away and moving to another server. I didn't move, not completely, but it's pretty fair to say I raid on the new server now and hardly, if ever, on the first. My wife and I rolled completely new characters on this new server, leveled them to the cap (65 currently), geared them out, and started running this same raid on the new toons.

So, last night, there we were, fighting the good fight once again. We had a rough time at first, mainly with people not paying attention after we wiped and releasing themselves - there's a way to have one person revive and rez all of us without having to release and run allllllll the way back up, which is a 5m+ run, but we just could not do that for some reason, which was frustrating. We have it 4 or 5 tries, with a few actually coming close - the fight is basically the Lt. of Dol Guldur riding a nazgul, and you hit them both together until the nazgul hits 150k morale, then the Lt. hops off and you deal with them both. A few times we got the nazgul down but died fighting just the Lt. Each and every time we effed up the quick rez thing, and some people were going to leave, but we tried it one more time. And... omg, we won. We beat the Lt. Which probably doesn't mean that much to most of you reading this, but it's just... wow. Such a monkey on my back for so long, for a lot of us, and it's now lifted. It took over a year of trying, leaving (effectively, anyway) our kin, making entirely new characters, leveling and gearing them, and... it's done. Words cannot express how happy I felt when the boss went down, omg, they should've sent a poet. ;_; And, not only that, but my toon ended up with some armour loot; I rolled 2nd highest, actually, but the person who rolled highest was out of kin, and when he heard it was our kin's first kill, he passed on the armour for me so it stayed in kin. Such a gracious, amazing thing to do, can't thank him enough and told him I'd help him with whatever I could anytime, because yeah, wow. So not only did we take him down, which was more than enough to make me :D all night, but I got some gear out of it too, holy crap. It was just such a thorn in my side for so long, but yeah, so so SO glad to have it gone now, you can't imagine. :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

Alright, I just had to get that out there, and woo, yay! What a weekend, seriously, just amazing. And still have today to let that all sink in, once I finish with work anyway. Speaking of which, need to get showered and head out and do that before it gets too much later, but yeah, just had to type all this out first. I was going to last night but after the post mortem chat and hanging out it was after 4am my time and I was just too tired, happy but tired, so I elected to just pass out for 8-9 hours and now here I am. Yay, great weekend! :D Hope everyone else had a great one too!

Warning: this is gonna be a big ol' post about MMOs and my thoughts on the ones I used to play, the ones I do play, and the ones I want to play. Feel free to skip it if you're so inclined; I'll even tuck it all behind a nice little cut for y'all. :) I know, I know, I owe everyone a big post on my Christmas trip and I still need to finish that 10 day meme that got cut off by my flight back home, and I will, soon. But for now, this is what's on my mind.

( MMOs ahoy! )

So yeah, that's all I have to say about that. Wow, if anyone (myself included) is able to actually read all of that, I'll be surprised. XD tl;dr: I have spent a LOT of time playing MMOs and am conflicted with my present situation, and am looking forward to a change in the future. :)

Wow, I spent over an hour on that and still have so much more I could add/change about that, haha, but no, need sleep. Didn't mean to be ranting on this long, whoops. *hops into bed!*

Not a lot to update on, really, even though it was a busy weekend. That's largely because it was busy in the digital sense. There was a lot of LOTRO and not much else, really.

Friday afternoon after work I decided to hit the city, since my copy of Final Fantasy XIV arrived on Wednesday and I couldn't get in before then to get it. I wanted to go in with my cousin, see a movie, have supper, make a night of it, but all week long he wouldn't call me back. Mreh. The friends I usually hang out with and stay with left Friday morning for Florida for 3 weeks, for a cruise / vacation there, so couldn't meet up with them either, so instead I just said shag it and drove in and out again that night. I swung by EB Games to get my game, then into Chapters for the new Rolling Stone (Mad Men cast on the cover ftw!), had supper at Scamper's, and then came right back out again. That night I got to hang out with my wife and others online for awhile and I made an early-ish (for me anyway) night out of it since I was pretty tired.

Saturday was more of the same, pretty much. Installed the new game and futzed around on that a bit, then back to LOTRO where I crafted all day pretty much (and all the night before), then we had a kin raid late at night. It was a decent first stab at it, I suppose, for the first almost entirely kin-only run, I know I can speak for myself and that my toon is nowhere near in the shape I want it to be, haha, but it was enjoyable. Better luck next time, etc. Then I crafted way into the wee, small hours, way way later than I've been up in ages, so late I don't even want to repeat it here. XD

Today I slept it late, then more LOTRO. Crafted my butt off all afternoon while watching Doctor Who and finished what I started Friday night, which was pretty darn quick to basically master two professions, haha. Go me! And then we were supposed to raid tonight but no one really showed aside from 3/12 of us, so I called it a night and here I am. Other people were looking for my class but mreh, I don't really need anything out of the raid we were going to do, I just wanted to support the kin, but you can't do that if people don't sign up / sign up and don't show. No biggie, just a little annoying when I think of how I crammed all this crafting into one weekend, made a ton of food (not just for tonight, it'll last longer, but would've been useful tonight), and then nada. I know, no one had a gun to my head to do it, I wanted to, but that's just the way I am I guess.

I also popped into work after supper, to see how my billings are doing, and it's not very good. August is almost like it didn't even exist, ugh. So bad. I do have an upside, or a potential one, in that I gave my assistant a whack of stuff to bill early last week and I think she did so but didn't put it in the books, so going to talk to her early tomorrow and see if things look better after that. Here's hoping, and I also scoured all my files tonight to see if there's anything else due for a billing and found a few more, so that should help. I just need to be better, be stronger, be ... I don't know, more dedicated to my job, I guess. Yeah, it's been stressful lately, but I've just gotta put up with it and deal. Times are getting tougher thanks to some horrible luck lately (I thought we were going to have an adjuster look at our house tomorrow but I was wrong, it's about the insulation that was just put in and someone's inspecting that to make sure it's done so we can get a rebate on it - adjuster better get his/her ass into gear soon though >.<), so it's time for me to step up to the plate.

And on that note, it's off to bed so I'll be as well-rested as I can be to deal with what I know is going to be a busy day tomorrow and a busy week. Hope everyone had a good weekend and that you have a good week too. :)

Ok, it's technically Sunday afternoon but still, the coming down part applies. Or, well, to be specific it's more accurately going up that's got me feeling down, heh. I knew it was going to happen but I guess part of me hoped I'd been able to break even or something, but no, according to the same Wii scale I always use I was up 0.3kg this week. Which isn't a lot, it almost negates the 0.4kg I was down last week so it's not a complete backslide or anything, but it still sucks and it's still demoralizing.

Of course there's no one else to blame but myself - I ate very poorly this week, which I can partly blame on being in Court every single day of the week (save Monday which was a holiday) and having to eat on the road. I probably could've eaten better but I'm an expert at convincing myself that I've "earned" or "deserve" less-than-healthy food due to the stress and strain of being in the middle of a trial or something equally as taxing on me. I also over indulged this weekend when my sister came home, which involved picking up more snacks than I usually would for a weekend and even a late night (~10pm, not uber late but still) 6" sandwich from Subway on Friday night, and it all adds up.

The good news, though, is that I am out of snacks, heh, and this is something I can nip in the bud by, you know, not eating like a pig this week and not buying any more junk food. Depending on how my office hours look (I think I'm mainly in the office all week, with the exception of a court appearance tomorrow and Friday) I'll hopefully be able to get home in time a few evenings this week and actually work out for a change. That'll help since I've been coasting by and losing the little weight I've lost so far solely by restricting my junk food intake and not by actually working it off. I'm taking this as a good kick in the rear to get my butt back into gear and to start working for what I want instead of just hoping for it to happen, and hopefully by this time next week I'll be back on the right side of the +/- result.

( Cut for LOTRO stuff 99% of you don't care / know about XD )

My plans for today basically involve grabbing a shower as soon as I finish typing this and then popping into the office for a few hours to catch up on things. I've got a stubborn client who actually calls me at home, repeatedly, and just does not get that I cannot work 24 hours a day. >.< Or, well, I could, but I don't want to completely overstress myself and have a heart attack, which they don't seem to get. *sighs* So I want to get the work done for them so they can leave me the hell alone, and I've gotta prep for tomorrow as well, which won't take very long at all but I still want to do it. It should actually be a nice week at work, at least relative to the last few, which will be a welcome change. Other than that, I'll try and play a little Red Dead Redemption - which, by the way, is amazing - and maybe read a little before hopping in game to meet my wife for a bit before going to sleep.

Hope everyone had a nice weekend! :)

So, wow, what a start to the weekend I had last night. It was a long, difficult week, for sure, culminating in Day 1 of what was scheduled to be a 3 day trial but will end up being 5+ for sure. That actually went very well, I think, and it continues on Tuesday and Wednesday, with me having Monday off for May 24th. I'll end up going into the office to prep for Tuesday and Wednesday then, but it'll be nice to have a day in the office with no distractions to get some work done for sure.

The only downside to yesterday, and the weekend so far, has been my allergies. They've been acting up something fierce, which sucks; we don't get much nice weather here and now that we're getting some I can't really go out and enjoy it for fear of making the annoying symptoms - sneezing liekwoah, runny nose, sniffling - 1,000,000 times worse. Instead I'm barred up in my room with the fan on blast, ugh. Let's be honest, though - I've got lots of Xbox and PC distractions to keep me occupied, heh, so it's not the end of the world, but part of me feels bad for not really getting out to enjoy the rare nice weather. Mreh.

After work I came home and did a little deeding in LOTRO before heading out for awhile. I ended up picking up a little, basic XM radio device - a big part of this was me discovering that the XM radio in my parents' car had E Street Radio and wow it's amazing. And getting the device and subscribing meant I could also listen to any of the music stations online for free in addition to the paid service features, so that sold me. It came with a home kit and a car kit so I can listen to it anywhere I go, along with the internet, and there's even a Blackberry version of the internet software so I can listen to it on that as well, which is nice. :) I picked that up and some Subway, then headed back home.

( Cut LOTRO musings for those uninterested. :) )

So it was a great night, though omg I ate way too much and took a big dip into my weekly points overflow, whoops. Gonna have to be careful today, but since I slept in so late that shouldn't be a huge problem. I'll basically have a nice supper, after having had cereal when I woke up, and as long as I don't go overboard later tonight I'll be fine. Tomorrow's my usual weighing day so here's hoping last night doesn't throw that completely out of whack, heh.

Alright, off I go to get in some quality Red Dead Redemption time before supper. Hope everyone's having a great weekend! :D

First off, a meme stolen from my beautiful bride, believeitup:

( Song a Day Meme: Day 1 )

It was such a busy week at work, holy crap. I had a fair bit of court in the city, all day on Wednesday and the majority of the day yesterday. Thursday was jam packed with appointments, all kinds of them and different types of law, so I didn't know whether I was coming or going, ugh, and I was very very frustrated and depressed at the end of the day. On top of it all, the stupid broker / company we're dealing with re: the financing for the house are idiots and we ended up extending the closing date on the house to next Wednesday to accommodate their last-minute demands for more financial disclosure. So, so frustrating, and we may end up having to postpone it again. Thankfully the vendors are patient and not buying another home that's pending on this sale or anything, or else we'd be in trouble, but yeah, so much stress this past week. So glad the weekend's here.

It's been a nice weekend so far; last night I didn't do much, which was nice in and of itself. I hopped around on all my characters in LOTRO, checking mail and such, before settling in and leveling my Guardian for awhile. He's about 1/2 way to 63 now, I think, and I bounced around to cook and do other things before finally agreeing to do a pick-up group attempt at one of the newer raids in the game. Sara came with, which was nice, and it was a lol-tastic affair, so many, just... I don't even know. Some people just make your head shake in amazement, and not in the good way, hah. We hung in there, though, and did the entire raid, and I even got a new piece of gear for my little Hobbit minstrel, which will be good towards the set bonus at least (the piece he has on is actually better). It was nice, but once it was done it was late late laaaaaate and I went to bed shortly after that.

Today I've been lazing about, and have the Bruins/Flyers game on. Boston's up 2-0 after the first, an amazing start despite Marco Sturm being injured on his first shift and gone for the day. At least Savard's finally back. XD Philly will wake up in time, they're much better than this, but should be a great, physical series. Here's hoping Rask can outplay Boucher in net, though. :)

Alright, the second period's about to start, so time to stop typing and to focus on the game again. Hope everyone has a great weekend! :D

It's been a nice weekend so far, pretty laid back. There's been a fair bit of LOTRO; Friday night we raided but did an old school one that we've not done in ages. It was fun and a nice change of pace, and we had Saturday slated for an all-day attempt at the newest raid, so it made sense to mix things up and do something easier instead. Plus, one bonus to doing the older content was completing it gives you a token that can be used to give your raid a benefit for 3 hours that actually helped us with the new content, so win-win. After LOTRO I headed for bed and read a little more D&D stuff before passing out.

Saturday was more of the same, pretty much. I got up, watched the Boston/Buffalo game, and eventually got in game for the raid. We had everyone who wanted to play sign up with their times of availability, since this we knew it was going to take a LOT of chance to even have a shot of winning, and we wanted to take as many kicks at the can as possible to at least learn more about the raid / formulate some strategies and whatnot.

( Cut for in-depth LOTRO-y stuff! :) )

Anyway! Sorry about that detailed explanation for those of you not into LOTRO, oops. XD Actually, I think I'll add a cut. *does so!* Suffice it to say it was a long day but a positive one, and we're going to try it again much later tonight, though I've work in the morning so I'll only be able to commit a few hours to the cause.

For today I'm hoping to get a little console time in before the hockey starts up again. I've got way too many games that I haven't played at all or much, and that's a shame. I even picked up Final Fantasy XIII while in the US, and I am kinda wanting to delve into that, but I know if I will then that'll be all I do for awhile, haha, so holding off on that for the moment until I know I can devote a huge chunk of time to it, maybe next weekend, we'll see. I can play more Dragon Age: Origins, the gift believeitup gave me last Christmas, or Fallout 3, which she gave me the Christmas before. >.> Or any number of games I could list off to you here, there's a stack by the console itself that I can see if I just turn my head to the left, before even looking to the shelf behind me, oops. >.> So, yes, gonna go do that, maybe read more of the Player's Handbook too, we'll see, the day is still young!

Hope everyone had a good weekend and that you have a nice Sunday too! :)

I discovered tonight that while riding my Wii!bike in one of the Wii Fit games, your Wii!pet that you've entered can chase you along. In this case, Simon chases me around, which often results in me jerking the wheel to avoid running him over, and Wii!me falling off of bridges and cliffs. Very fitting, somehow.

At least my Wii!wife was on the course and directed me the last flag I had trouble finding, that was nice too. :)

We got our first real snowfall today, and it's still falling. There's been about 20cm or so I think, with another 10cm forecasted for overnight, with lots of wind. I was planning on going to the office for awhile but the roads are still kinda messy so I'm taking a pass, for now anyway. Maybe after supper if they get cleared up a little, but I doubt it now. I'll likely hop in LOTRO and watch more football and then it'll be time for bed. XD

It's been a nice weekend so far. I got my main character to the new level cap of 65 fairly early last night and got to mess around with some of the main storyline quests after that, along with playing with believeitup and another friend at some of the newer skirmish content, which was nice. I still have three others to get through it all, and need to work on my main even though he's at the cap, but now I can at least relax about trying to catch up to the other players in the kin to get our main to 65.

Only another 12 days until my trip to Sara, omg. I cannot wait. I've one more trial between now and then, which I need to start prepping for, and a bunch of paperwork to clue up, but it's certainly doable and there's a light at the end of the tunnel now, getting brighter every day. Really it's only 11 days until my last day of work on that Thursday, then I go to St. John's for a Christmas party that night and fly out at a nice, decent time of 12:45pm on Friday. :D

Other than that, not much else to report. Listening to a lot of Avett Brothers lately, especially a couple of their live albums that I have, so much fun. And been reading more Harry Dresden novels, which is also nice, I let my reading slide for a long time there and it's nice to get back on the bandwagon again. Hope everyone had a nice weekend too! :)