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Geekery

So now that I started playing Magic again, I’ve had the actual urge to go back and finish cataloging the last year’s worth of cards, which have been sitting in somewhat sorted piles in a corner of the downstairs room. The way they’re stored is in folders with 9-card sleeve pages in them, and I use a printed out checklist to keep track of which cards we have. (Part of the goal of all this was to try and collect at least one and no more than four of every card ever printed.)

The old way I used to make these checklists was to take the official checklists from the WotC and drop them into Excel, format them there and then copy them into Word. Well, that stopped working when I tried it. And that whole method was a pain in the ass, anyway, so I decided to install MySQL, PHP and other stuff onto my Powerbook, dumped all the card data into a database and made a web page that I formatted with CSS to make look like I wanted.

I managed to print out all four of the sheets I hadn’t done yet very quickly. They don’t look perfect, but now, doing further sheets will be much easier. And I also have a working PHP/MySQL install on my laptop, which is fun!

On a completely separate, yet equally geeky note, you are all ordered to watch Serenity. Of course, the hard-core of you have already seen it last night or today, but I’m not going until tomorrow afternoon. But, yeah…. go! Unless you’re trapped in the middle of Montana or something.

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Puppy?

What was I just saying yesterday? How there was that one last thing that had been sitting undone in FFXI that was taking forever? That’s right, Fenrir. I got an invite from Funnyginman, a Dragoon in my Linkshell. They needed a Black Mage, and were fine with me only being 65. (They just needed someone to Stun and magic burst, I guess.)

Party setup was NIN75/WAR37, DRK75/NIN37, DRG75/THF37, RDM75/BLM37, WHM70/BLM30, BLM65/RDM32 (me). So, as the only person who actually knows his way around Horutoto and Toraimarai, I guide them to Full Moon Fountain. We went in and were doing great, the DRK and I were alternating stuns back and forth. Then, the Dark Knight went down, turns out he forgot to actually use Utsusemi: Ni before fighting. (oops.) The White Mage Raise II’ed him on the fly, but not too long after that… Howling Moon and 4 of us go down… and the other 2 aren’t far behind. And all during the fight, I was only good for stunning. I couldn’t land anything unresisted.

Three minutes later, we all pop out, dead in a pile. Well, we have an idea…

I return to my homepoint. (I’m now only 85 exp into BLM65… heh.) I switch to RDM75/DRK37. I run through the shortcut, because I have that quest done, raise the White Mage, who then Raises everyone else. The Ninja warps back to town to get his evasion gear, (and I warp back to get my RDM AF, I accidentally grabbed my BLM AF… stupid “Warlock’s armor” and “Wizard’s armor” are so similar in name. We eventually reconvene (after guiding two other members back the long way) and go back into the fight.

The second fight.

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A busy day in FFXI

I’ve been spending even more time in FFXI than usual, but I’ve been getting even more things accomplished.

Woke up today and headed to Kirin again. We beat two in less than three hours, which is pretty darn good. It probably had something to do with the large number of Black Mages we had up there. But hey, Red Mages can nuke, too:

(Of course, that was right as it died, and immediately afterwards, Scionith Mijin Gakure’d and made it go boom.)

The big thing to come out of the fights (at least for me) was that a Wyrmal Abjuration: Legs dropped, and I had the winning bid. I was pretty sure I was ahead of everyone on points that was interested, so I was so happy when it dropped.

Of course, I now have 10 points left… I bid myself down to 0, and got the 10 points for the two Kirins today. It’s a good thing there isn’t much left I want… until I get BLM up to the high levels… oh, wait. That’s right, Black Mages get even less from Sky mobs than Red Mages.

Parallel to this, waking up today, I noticed that, for the first time in a long while, San d’Oria was in first place. What did this mean? I spent all 78,000 of my Conquest points. (A Kingdom Aketon, a Royal Knight’s Belt and a Signet Staff) I did this right before I got my Cuisses, so running around San d’Oria with both the Aketon and the cuisses on for 24% movement speed was fun. But anyway, I wandered down to the Federation of Windurst and submitted my application for citizenship.

So I lost all my outpost warps, and I had “memories sealed away.” (The game’s way of explaining away how you can manage to do the same bit of overlapping storyline twice.) I waltzed my way through the first 2 ranks’ worth of missions, then came to the big stumbling block: The rank 2-3 dragon.

It’s a level 25 capped fight, so even though I’m level 75, I can’t overpower my way through like I’ve been doing and am likely to do for another 3 ranks. But I’d seen a video online of a RDM25/NIN12 soloing the fight, so I figured I’d give it a shot. I bought a bunch of top-notch level 25 gear and consumables and went into the fight…

And proceeded to run out of time because I didn’t damage it fast enough, got petrified twice and paralyzed once.

I grumbled and watched the video again. That person didn’t get hit by petrify or paralyze! I must have had some dumb luck. I tried again, this time with more mp regen instead of ethers, nuked more…

Victory in 7 minutes 30 seconds… half of the allotted time. And I didn’t even need any ethers or potions… the food was enough. I went back and got my Rank 3, and now I need to get store all this gear and consumables… and slyly slip ‘s Emperor Hairpin and Winged Boots that I borrowed for the fight back into his account.

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Overplayed non-music

Over time, I alternate between listening to the radio and listening to my CDs. I’ve been listening to the radio for a while now, which means there’s a few overplayed songs that are starting to get on my nerves. Usually when one starts playing, I have an alternative station that I switch to.

Yesterday, my number one most annoying song of the moment came on: Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl”. So I switch radio stations… and do a double take, ’cause the other station is not only playing the same song, but at almost the same spot.

I’m thinking it’s about time to start listening to CDs again.

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Bumps!

So a few people who I’ve seen since getting back from Dragon*Con have already heard me raving about the Dragon*Con TV Bumps. Well, they’re online now! They say it’s all of them, but I seem to recall at least one that wasn’t in the list, perhaps there’s a second batch, or I’m just imagining things.

By far, the best one is this one, but there’s a few really funny ones in there, too.

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Oh yeah, Dragon*Con

I never posted when I got home, huh?

So I guess my last post was in the middle of what would be a very long day separated by two hours of sleep. After getting my luggage back in my room (and switching into shorts from the pants I wore on the plane) I wandered back to the food court, where we ended up spending most of the day. I managed to wander down to the Exhibit Hall and Art Show, bought some random stuff that I could’ve bought anywhere but was just there right then. Wandered back to the Marriott lobby, which was the other place we spent a lot of time. Found out I had managed to completely miss that there was a “Dealer’s Room” in addition to the “Exhibit Hall.” Blame my anime convention experience on this one, where the two terms are interchangeable. Tried sticking around as long as I could, but the sleep deprivation caught up to me and I went back to the room and crashed. At some point in the day I realized that I had missed the 7pm Peter David panel, which saddened me greatly.

Saturday was a similar day, but with a bit more roaming around on my part. I found the Exhibit hall (and bought some random Magic singles). That night we went to the Steak & Ale for dinner, where there was a group shot taken which I didn’t bother taking because other people would, and got lost in the restaurant. The rest of the day is a blur, which probably means we spent it in the food court and the Marriott lobby. Getting back to the hotel, as we were about to go to sleep, Back to the Future came on the TV, which meant, of course, that we had to watch it. It’s a law, you know.

Gaming Room (OMG that thing was huge, more space in that one room than most cons have for all their function space) where I entered and won a 9th edition Magic Draft, and played a few Looney Labs games and later an unfinished game of 7th Sea, because I had to wander off to get in line for the Serenity panel. The panel was amusing, mostly for the fact that the four actors were vehement in not spoiling the movie, and sort of exhausted because they had done this two times before already and were not anticipating any sort of “good” questions. That night we gathered in and Tannim’s (don’t know if he has an LJ) hotel room to watch the Masquerade on the hotel TV. Much Anachronism was played by all, and I think that was undefeated, mostly helped by his uncanny ability to roll double sixes.

Monday was a shorter day, and less people were around. I know we spent almost all of it sitting around, and I managed to copy most of JLU from (what I didn’t get I got via when I got home or via BT). My flight back was less harrowing, but just as uncomfortable… why do I keep getting stuck in the middle seat?

I also managed to get the con sickness, which wasn’t evident until last night, but is very noticeable now. Although I think it’s more fun to blame for it, it was probably just the travel and the close proximity to people, etc.

Oh, and one last thing. For Jokersama. For Kermix.

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Dragon*con update

Coasting on two hours of pseudo-sleep, if I can keep this up, I can crash and be on some semblance of a normal schedule. Ran into in the airport, he was on the same flight as me. He was kind enough to store my luggage while I got my badge, where I randomly ran into . Wandered to the food court, met up with most of the ShirtNinjas, and sat there for two hours jabbering. In the process, got my room key.

Afterwards, got my luggage from Lionel’s room, and trekked down to the Holiday Inn, where I am now, about ready to head back up.

Yay free wireless Internet.