Month: September 2004

Yes, I’ve been meaning to update for a while now. I owe an entry on my class reunion last week, and a picture of my mom’s puppy attacking the older dog (which is on my laptop at home, so you don’t get that now.)

The class reunion was very interesting. In many ways, the five hours I spent there mirrored the four years I spent in high school. Barring the short period at the beginning when there wasn’t really anyone I knew, I spent most of the evening with a small group of people (which was just a sampling of the actual group from HS who actually showed up), while wandering around having short conversations with almost everyone, because I knew most of the people there, but about half of them not that well. I had a couple of interesting conversations, got the exact same response from every single person when I told them I worked at Yahoo! (Oh, really?) and was constantly hounded by the husbands of two of the women from my Japanese class, who were obviously trying their hardest to get everyone to have a good time. This plan involved trying to get me drunk, evidently. They didn’t succeed. Oddly, a lot of the guys there had shaved heads, either hiding baldness or as a fashion statement.

On to other things, I got Chains of Promathia last week after a painful delay, then promptly installed it, and really haven’t explored any of the new areas, only a little bit on that day, and a little bit yesterday. Also yesterday was perhaps one of the greatest days in FFXI for me so far. Not the greatest, but it’s up there. Not only did I get my Castle Oztroja coffer key, I got the coffer itself. Warlock’s Tabard get! Then, I managed to help someone else to the Batallia Downs stone monument, as well as getting it myself. 10,000 gil get! Then, I hung out in Garlaige Citadel, hoping to get through to the stone monument there, managed to sneak through both gates when someone was going through, got the monument. 10,000 gil get! Then, I went back in to the citadel, and planned on logging there in hopes that the coffer would be around when I logged back in. But it had spawned in the short time when I went to get my monument. Warlock’s Tights get! AF Armor Complete! Now, all I have to do is level to 60, and I have my entire pimp suit. I also leveled cooking to level 42, and I’m making so many apple pies that I will never have to buy them again.

Chains of Promathia has been delayed in shipment by most major retailers. There is considerable confusion going around, but the most common answer is “the hurricane disrupted our supply lines”. Retailers are saying everything from one day delay to three weeks. Which, of course, means it will be a few days or so.

This also makes North American players even more irate, because the Japanese players have been running around in the new areas for almost a week now, and we’re having to wait even longer. Also, this change wasn’t mentioned until today… the day of release. You’d think if the supply chain was disrupted, they’d have known about it a little further in advance.

I made it back. Real entry to follow. Tomorrow is Chains of Promathia. Hooray.

So, I made it down to LA safely. Again. A big milestone was passed while I was on the drive down, sort of. My odometer was at 099800 or so when I started the trip, so I knew it was going to roll over at some point in I-5. Of course, my odometer is broken, as I’ve mentioned before, and the car is actually at 69800. But anyway, as it approached, I pulled into the slow lane and got my camera out and shot a bunch of pictures of the rollover. But as you can see, some problems arose. Well, at least this is photographic proof that the odometer’s busted.

My mom got a new puppy, as I may or may not have mentioned. She’s an energetic little thing, and I tried taking some pictures of her, but she moves so quickly and doesn’t sit still for much that I didn’t get any good shots. I also wanted to get a picture of her attacking our old dog. He doesn’t seem to care as much as he should, and she never leaves him alone.

I got a haircut today, in anticipation for the reunion tomorrow. Afterwards, I went to the game store I used to go to occasionally, and found that the sister of one of the guys I went to HS with was working there. I’d seen her at AX for the last two years and thought she looked familiar. I mentioned the reunion and she said her brother hadn’t said anything, maybe he’ll end up going. I doubt it.

What was even weirder was, as I was about to go in, I thought “wouldn’t it be strange if someone I knew was working there?”

Before I go back and say what’s happened the last week, I just have to vent how things keep lining up. Saturday is my 10 year high school reunion, and I’m going to that. I already knew I was missing the Champions of Kamigawa prerelease (the newest Magic expansion) on Saturday as well. But I was planning on driving back up on Sunday for the Chains of Promathia preview event. Until I realized just now that it’s also on Saturday. Because there were two events, I just mentally assumed that they were on Saturday and Sunday, but they’re not, they’re on Friday and Saturday. So I miss that, and I miss out on finally meeting some of the Linkshell fellows who were going to that.

It never fails that there’s three things I want to go to on the same weekend, and every other weekend there’s very little else going on.

So last week, I had the first half of my dental adventure, which involved in getting half of my face numb and getting a filling and half of my teeth cleaned above and below the gumline.

Saturday was another anime con in SF, this time the JTAF2. I visited briefly, ran into cochrane and sweetmegumi, who were very busy, lyricaldanichan, who I always manage to miss but not this time, and bobthetrout, who was waiting in line every time I saw her.

Still grumbling…. today was a really annoying day at work as I had to finish up everything to be ready for my absence, and then I finally did the math and realized that Sept. 18 is a Saturday…

@#@#$@!

Okay, I’ve been meaning to post about this, but I keep forgetting. I found this as one of the daily picks at Yahoo! a few weeks ago, and the hits just keep on coming. This guy takes actual spam subject lines, then makes “poorly-drawn cartoons” out of them. Make sure to read from the bottom up, as there’s a few where the sequence matters.

Warning, much Magic geekery to follow:

For the last few days, the Magic: the Gathering world championships have been going on, and they were in San Francisco. This is a pretty big deal, as it’s like the Olympics and wanders all around the world, and isn’t even in the U.S. that often. So on Saturday, I carpooled up with two of our regular play group. The main event wasn’t really the interesting part, however. The event we went up for was the Japanese Fourth Edition/Italian Legends sealed deck. I won’t type in my full cardpool, although there was an Armageddon in there, and it’s black border and in Japanese, so that’s kind of nice. I typed up the deck that I played. It was seven rounds of swiss and there were a hundred people entered. I ended coming in third, after intentionally drawing in the last round at table two, and I got 21 packs of Mirrodin, Darksteel and Fifth Dawn for my trouble.

The tournament itself was very fun. Because most of the cards were from Fourth Edition, it was very much like playing when I first started (which was in Revised). I had a game that started with my opponent playing Shanodin Dryads, I played Drudge Skeletons, then they played Hurloon Minotaur… it was very old-school. Also, for the first time ever, I was on the receiving end of a Mirror Universe. One guy in the tournament even had Channel + Fireball.

There were other things going on as well, people I know played in side drafts, team sealed decks. I also watched the gunslinging going on, and hovered over while Mark Rosewater won with Darksteel Reactor for the first time. I also saw the 3d cards done by that Japanese artist… those were amazing in person, the article on them doesn’t do them justice.

The weather was also amazing. The event was at Fort Mason, so there was a great clear view of Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge, and pretty much the entire North Bay was visible.

I had my dental examination today. As it turns out, I’m a freak who never had wisdom teeth, and never will. The pain is likely caused by… gum disease. And I have a cavity in one of my rear molars. And I need to floss more.