Merry Christmas to all my readers, friends, and their family! I hope everyone has a safe and enjoyable holiday. ^_^v

A few months ago, I found this site after reading a news article that mentioned it (not going to say what was in the article, because its kind of depressing and seems morbid to me). justin.tv is kind of like youtube but you are able to do live broadcasts instead and show off people your own channel! There are all sorts of different channels, but I tend to like watching the gaming channels myself.

Here are some of my favorite channels:

FFXI Related:
https://www.justin.tv/hairk
https://www.justin.tv/calvyno
https://www.justin.tv/icetrack

WoW Related:
https://www.justin.tv/claudian — Really funny because of the voice commentary he (and sometimes his sister) adds! Plus he has a really cool sounding voice that I’m partially in love with.

Sometimes I broadcast, too, so you can find my channel here:

https://www.justin.tv/calaera

or just watch here! :o

After thinking that the Moblin Maze would never come out, I finally found it was up and running and decided to try it out first with just Orophen and then with the rest of my LS. Doing it as a duo was incredibly hard. Orophen and I were 75 BRD and 75 RNG and then we tried again as 75 RNG and then 63 BLU. We were first beaten up hardcore by elementals and then by some other mob. It was really sad and frustrating, because I was slightly hoping for a place to duo or trio with my friends.

Anyway, we went into it the next day with Hiroshiko being a level 60 something SCH and had a much easier time with a full party. There was even a HUGE crate inside that had some medicine in, which would have been nicer if it showed up more often. The eye patch comes from the MMM, and you only need 10 marbles for it! Though now I need to save up marbles to get the other tabula and runes so that I can try to level up my crafting skills… I just wish getting marbles was easier since I had mistakenly thought you could re-enter your maze as many times as you wanted in the day and not just once for 30 minutes a day. Kind of lame, but I guess I can see why S-E did it (which is still lame).

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I don’t really care for the PSP (I honestly think its shit next to the DS in terms of handheld gaming), but this game is tempting me into getting one or at least borrowing my brother’s so that I could play with it.

By the way, I’m totally loving the laugh of her’s. Its totally how I imagined it to sound and am so happy that Megumi Hayashibara is voicing her to boot! <3

Since 2000-something or so, I had enjoyed playing games on my cute little rig. It was and still is a very sturdy machine, not having the system failures that the other machines in our household have had over the years. Sadly, it is an aged machine that was starting to choke on FFXI when it used to run it so beautifully years ago.

I’ve wanted to upgrade my rig for awhile now, but money (like with anything else) was an issue. I didn’t really NEED to upgrade, it was more of a want. My sister’s computer, however, had finally eaten the dust about a month ago and it was a good reason as any to pick up parts during Black Friday this year. So while my faithful friend has taken me through all my years of college by not only entertaining me but helping me with research and the writing of my papers… I had to bid farewell as I sent her down the hall to my sister’s room and now welcome my new baby whom I have fondly named Shantotto.

The specs aren’t the top of the line, but they are much better than what I had before and are more than enough than for what I typically do. Here are the specs:

– Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz 6MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor
– OCZ Reaper HPC 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2
– GeForce 9800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3

The end result was remarkably beautiful! I downloaded and tried the FFXI Benchmark 3 (which in the later years of my last PC’s life, it totally killed it), and I got well over 8k before I just closed it. I also cranked up most of the settings on high, with the exception of shadows which I left on normal. Putting it on high did this stupid layered effect which made me want to orz more than anything else. Watching the benchmark and then going into the game with my new PC was almost like playing a new game! I could actually see the sky! I was pretty astonished to see that the sky was so pretty with clouds in the sky. I could even see people MOVE and animations which I had to start turning off a little more than a year ago.

For the fun of it, I even reactivated my WoW account and was tickled with how awesome the game looked with pumped up settings. It was mind boggling to see flowers, butterflies, or even fur on the flying mounts! It has definitely made playing WoW more tolerable, since I am no longer as slow as a snail. ;o

Speaking of WoW, currently playing as a Shaman Draenei. I wanted to wait for Orophen before touching Hunter, and am kinda of frustrated with my Rogue BE. Its certainly much easier playing Shaman this time around, and after a few hours of gaming I’m already level 15 and am mucking around that stupid bloody island of… blood. Ick. At least it doesn’t make my eyes bleed nearly as much as it used to.

But why write when I can actually play and get myself off of that accursed place… again. D;

After beginning a journey that started many years ago, I never imagined myself finally reaching to this area. It seemed like a pipe dream then, and now to be here and closer to completing CoP is not only amazing but it brings back so many memories of the journey to this point.

I started out just wanting to get Promyvions done and then thought of getting sea done with friends, watched it fall apart, and then brought back together again with a different set of people who are still very dear friends or loved ones. Even though I completed it after all the adjustments that supposedly made things easier, it was still quite a bit of work to get it done since many times we had to deal with different schedules, real life problems, leveling jobs, and other problems that could have dissolved our group due to long wait times.

Last Saturday, I actually cried when we finished Chapter 7 and found ourselves in the midst of mutated sea creatures and pink fluffy clouds. It was hard to believe we were there or that I had gotten that far not with random strangers but my friends who have stuck it out even when I was a rambling bitch.

We started off Saturday’s events not during our usual time but later in the day due to a hair appointment that would have interrupted the events if we had gone earlier. I gathered the boys early for the runs when I returned, thanking the heavens for the creation of text messaging since it means I have my boys on a chain that I can yank at any time I please. We took down the NMs before the BIG fight of the chapter, with a little trouble here and there thanks to my hastiness and such. At least we had no deaths and great fun was to be had by all (except Hiroshiko who most likely wet his pants during the incident in Carpenter’s Landing).

When Mekare came on, we were all getting ready to fight Tenzen. Unlike missions past, we all decided to go all out. We nixed the BLU jobs and decided to go as the highest jobs we could or the jobs we had that could deal the most damage against Tenzen. Our set up was BRD (me), WHM, BLM, WAR, RNG, and MNK. It went by smoothly, although I could have sworn Hiroshiko was going to pass out at any moment with how many cures he needed to toss out during the short battle. It was very straight forward, with me using SV and Troubadour and people tossing in 2hrs when appropriate. I kind of wished we had Tenzen’s head on a pike after the battle, but eh… I guess having sea is supposed to be better.

After we toured sea a bit, got the map, and I had my head chewed out by UFOs that wanted to suck my brains out of my toes and have my pigtails become their new mustache… we topped off our night doing Assaults so that Orophen and I could finally get Potent Belt!

I just hope the next time we go to sea, someone won’t decide to let me become guppy food…

Last weekend I found there was a lot to be thankful for after our Thanksgiving Holiday. I have my health for one (which could be a LOT worse than it is), a job, friends and family, and probably the best year of games that I had experienced in a long time. Most importantly, we finally beat that damn airship battle and we’re now just one step closer to getting sea.

The second attempt we tried, we did a dry run and it went pretty well. We reviewed our tactics and tried again with the hopes of coming out victorious this time around since we had managed to pace ourselves well. We went in again thinking this run would be our winning ticket, but for some reason… Mammets went horribly bad. Not just in a “Oh, well, we can probably salvage this.” but in a “OMFG ABORT! ABORT! ABORT MISSION!” fail. We think we mostly failed because the Mammets synchronized themselves to all be in staff form at the same time and basically nuked us to death. It was really horrible but I think I was more mad that Orophen was the last man standing.

Our second real run of the night, we revised our tactics again and then went in and everything went much more smoothly. We had at least two wipes during the fight, and after those wipes it usually happened towards the end of the fight with Omega and Ultima respectively. And both times? We raised and went to full health before letting my brother, Makai, just AM to death. It was kind of funny and really awesome, and all so very sweet that we were finally able to finish this mission after waiting for so long.

Funny enough, Hiroshiko was in such a panic over the other battles he zoomed past the CSes and was unable to watch what happened afterwards. I took the longest out of the five of us, and actually cried a little because it was just so great to finally get that burden off our shoulders.

This upcoming Saturday, we will be attempting all of Chapter 7 of CoP. We are doing everything that night, and cross our fingers that we get things on the first try so that we can finally get ourselves to sea. After that we just have to get Hiroshiko and Makai sky, finish ZM, finish ToAU, and get everyone caught up on WotG. o/

I have this weird there where lately… I want to blog, but find I can’t get the energy to do so or have nothing to write about. I blame the lack of energy due to my recent illnesses, and being bogged down with miscellaneous work related things. I also have been doing more console gaming as of late, which is kind of weird and yet relaxing at the same time. Also anticipating the release of Chrono Trigger DS this Wednesday and, of course, Thanksgiving (USA)! I hope my readers in the US have a wonderful Thanksgiving! I’ll be mostly busy the day AFTER Thanksgiving with shopping and doing a re-run of the airship battle. Thank goodness for the short work week coming up!

Goodness gracious. Besides passing the five year mark in Vana’diel, I have been quite busy with other things. Some good, some bad, and some quite expensive!

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With Halloween just days away, I wanted to try out the Harvest Festival and then WoW’s Hallow’s End. I’ve noticed that unlike previous events, FFXI has recently made finishing holiday events much easier. It doesn’t make you want to hit your head on a wall by chasing NPCs to give them treats or following a ghost that can see you and make you start over and over again until you get it right. Naw, instead you get to kill bats and then a giant Floating Eye while turning your back on it every once in awhile to make sure you don’t lose your Enlight. It doesn’t even take long to do, which is even better! I just wish the latent effect didn’t go off every so often, but I guess that’s the trade off you have when its a low level item that has something drooltastic like latent Refresh.

Hallow’s End is kinda so-so since I’m not a high level to go finding the Headless Horseman or anything special but put out fires and get a nifty mask, a pumpkin I can put onto myself or toss onto other people, and a rickety old broom that lets me fly around. Oh, and candy that lets me fly around and be as transparent as a ghost! Actually, WoW is currently more aggravating than anything with the current World Wide Event that has the cities and towns overrun with zombies. Yes, that’s right. Blizzard turned the entire game to a huge Resident Evil fest! I was actually in a panic to try and escape the zombies in Stormwind without getting infected. It took me three tries before I got it, with the last try having me freaking out when even the flying mounts were attacking the undead plague.

My venture back onto WoW was sort of random, and I actually felt overwhelmed trying to get back into the swing of things. Unlike FFXI, where you can just go back in and expect most things to be the same as you left it some odd time ago (job functions and the like), WoW was a total mind blown ‘dur… what do I do?’ trip for me. The newest patch had me staring dumbfounded at my talent trees (merits for FFXIers), wondering how the heck to access this and that, and what have you. Then again, I have been playing FFXI for years and WoW for not nearly as much or as often… and it seems like I am driven out of that game not for personal reasons this time but because of fear of getting zombified.

Which, I suppose, is fine and dandy. I need to raise more funds on FFXI for the LS Bank, and am starting to become interested in leveling SCH or some other job on the side. I am honestly torn between SCH and DRK at the moment, and maybe WHM just to finish it off since I really only have 15 more levels to go before its 75. The only problem is trying to find the time to do it with Orophen since we’re a little strapped for time with some projects and obligations we have outside of our gaming lives. More so with me since I need to get re-certified in child CPR and firstaid before my certificate expires!

Oh, yes, some updates on doink!

– I got really tired of the old layout and put up a temporary layout until Derrick is ready to work on my new one. We’re kind of busy with a little side job with my work at the moment, so the new doink! layout is on the back burner until we got those paid jobs done.

– I’m hosting my friend/LS-mate/pretend younger brother’s blog on my site! Check it out at benediction.mreh.net!

– I have about four more pages of posts to convert tags and categories to. Its a tiring process and I can only do so much of it at a time before I go crazy…

– I’m considering hosting more blogs on mreh.net if anyone else is interested. Of course, it would primarily be FFXI related if I went with it, but WoW and other such games are welcomed too.