Owie

Last night was my first night raiding after being gone from WoW for a month. Sure I had played Monday night, but that was questing, not “srs raidz”. Lucky me, I remembered the Flame Lev fight in Uldar, and didn’t perform too horribly. it was a bit of a tight finish, with some “oops” moments from a few of the new people, but overall not too horrible. Then we went to Razorscale. Owies. Many, many owies. Multiple wipes, and much repairing. A couple of /facepalm moments, and so damned close at one point. Alas, killing Razorscale was not to be, so we went to VoA instead.

The last time I went into VoA was back in Jan/Feb when we were raiding it on regular guild raiding nights. I’d never -seen- the new boss, or read any strats. Two wipes, and “oh so THAT’S what happens” later, boss downed. Then over to Archavon. Did I mention we were racing the countdown to Wintergrasp battle start clock? Downed him, looted and raced out just in time. Yey team! We still had 30 minutes left on the raid, so it was off to OS. No drakes up, but nice kill.

After the raid was over, I switched over to Siana and grouped up with 4 others to go smack down Heroic Violet Hold. Siana actually got some new boots in there, and it was fun running with some new people and some old friends I hadn’t played with in a while. I know I screwed up Sia’s shots, but was still doing decent damage. So overall it started out a rough night but settled down quite nicely.

Now if I can just wake up after staying up way too late finishing a book… /sigh

Oh WoW…

Last night I finally stepped back into WoW after a month-long absence. It felt… weird, actually. It was like nothing had changed, yet everything was different. Very odd feeling. I did finally remember to respec Siana like I’d been thinking of doing. I understand Survival. I even got it down mechanic-wise. But it didn’t -feel- right to me, so back to Marks I went.

Wrenn is still a nice happy afflockette, although I might check into the new shiny spec-of-the-week whenever 3.2 hits. Right now, tho, I’m good with affliction. Now the jousting? Not so much. It’s become a running joke, almost, with me just not “getting” it. Apparently, the month-long layoff helped, because I actually didn’t do too badly with it. Granted, it was easier with a pally friend taunting the valiant off me an onto him while I charged and smacked, but I was starting to do not too shabby on my own. Yey me! And before my friend Woebe logged in, I’d done a couple of dailies, so I was getting more money, which is good cos I go back to raiding tonight. Yey raiding!

Plans are still being made for Dragoncon. I keep patting my bright pink “ticket confirmation” card, and checking the guest list every day to see who else is been added. Leonard Nimoy and Patrick Stewart are coming, which made my brain pop. A lot of the B5 cast is going to be there, some of whom I’ve not seen in person. Ben Browder and Claudia Black from Farscape are going to be there. And today through Twitter, Adam Savage of Mythbusters announced he was coming. I kinda sorta went squee-happy for a while. It’s bad when yer customers are looking at your office door funny and your employee has to explain “I think something good happened. I’m not sure. But she stopped making the noise so everything sounds like it’s okay now.” So now instead of anticipating how much free time I’m going to have to wander and people-watch, I have this nasty feeling I’ll be trying to plan bathroom breaks and how long I might have to be standing in various lines.

Note to self: get gel shoe liners. You’re gonna need ‘em.

Weekends are good

Well the idea that I had that I might slip back into WoW this weekend died without even a whimper. Instead, I spent the weekend knitting and watching TV. Oh and randomly snarking. Jared loved that last one (not). (Sorry, sweetie.)

The knitting was for a good cause tho. Friends of mine are expecting their second child, so I’m knitting on a baby blanket. It’s pink. Those who know me take one look in the knitting bag, say “…It’s pink”, then look at me in confusion. Pink is not a color I have much to do with. Purple, green, even red (and of course blue), but not… pink. Thus the rampant confusion and constant asking if I’m alright. Fortunately, as soon as I say it’s a baby blanket, they relax and life moves on. Then I bring out the other (pink) yarn for the booties, and it starts all over again. Thanks, John, you’ve made me confuse about every single person I know and it’s making me giggle.

The other thing I worked on was finishing a project for my friend, Anne. Tomorrow, I’ll be shipping it to her, and as soon as she gets it and I’ve determined that she does like it, then I’ll post pics. Til then, she doesn’t get even a hint of what it is. Mwhahaha!

Next up in the knitting line is a naughty project for my friend Melissa. Since it is naughty, sorry, no pics will be posted. ::grin:: After that, it’s back onto the stole/wrap that I’ve been working on for what feels like forever, and see if I can get it done sometime this century. Then, who knows. Maybe I’ll get back into trying socks again.

Tonight, I’m going to try to log into WoW as soon as I get rid of this headache. Oh and eat something. Food would be good since I missed lunch due to Jared’s insane eye doc taking @%%@#!% 3 hours to look at him. Missing lunch sucks. /sigh

Katamari, how I miss thee

Katamari Damacy US Release Box

Oh Katamari Damacy, what a wonderful game you are. A simple premise: push a ball around the enviroment, causing things to stick to it, making the ball get bigger and bigger things can stick to it. When I got the first game shortly after it came out, I was bemused at first, then quickly obsessed. The same thing happened when We (Heart) Katamari came out. Pretty much by now, I’ve played all the Katamari games other than the one on the Xbox 360, and I still love them. Playing the Katamari games puts me in a “happy place”. There are other games that give me the same “happy place” reaction: Diablo 2, Flower, Final Fantasy 10 and 12, with some hits from 11. But for whatever reason, Katamari is my “I need a quick fix of feel good, gimme the controller!” game.

Part of it is the silliness of it all. The first time people played the US game, there were quite a few posts on various forums asking “Seriously? Oh dear lord, did Namco release something this badly translated? Cos this King or whatever is saying some really weird crap.” Then the people that could get copies of the Japanese game translated and posted, saying “Believe it or not, it’s not Engrish. This is just how it is.”

The King of All Cosmos gets tanked. Whatever excuse he comes up with, please, we all know better here. He gets tanked and on his happy “Wheee!” moment, rampages through the sky, taking out all the stars and planets. Oops. My mom always joked that she had a kid (me) so she could get free tech support whenever she needed it. Apparently the King had the same idea, cos he sends his 2 centimeter tall son (the player) out to go make right what the King made wrong. Roll stuff up! Roll lots of stuff up! And if you get it X big in Y amount of time, awesome! we’ll turn it into a star!

Okay that’s all well and good, but now you get to the part that I love: the rolling. It’s not a static environment you’re going through here. This is a living, moving, fleeing, attacking, shrieking environment. I admit it: when I get big enough to roll over the people in the world (did I mention you’re rolling on Earth? Mwhaha), I giggle when they shriek and their arms and legs are flailing off the side of the katamari. Each element you roll up makes it’s own sound. All the humans are slightly different. There’s multiple types of housecats, and each one is slightly different. The butterflies have a sound they make. Tacks, jacks, tuna cans, bento boxes, they all make a distinctive noise when they get run over. And when you get big enough, some elements, animals and humans at the forefront, will flee from you for fear of getting rolled up. And some, a little more aggressive than others, will attack. The cows? Not so much with the attacking. that bull, tho? Oh yeah, until you reach a size to snag him, he’s gonna attack you if you get near.

Once you’ve completed a katamari and the King’s turned it into a star, you can go through the collection screen and look at what you’ve picked up new. Each of these objects has a description. And when they say “Buildings” catagories, we aren’t talking about “Building (Small)” and “Building (Large)” here. We’re talking “Hoshino House”, “Takahashi House”, “Nissan House”. There’s tons of buildings, all named. Office buildings, stores, homes, you name it. It’s weirdly insanely detailed in a way.

Katamari in rolling action

And then there’s how everything looks. All the games have bright colors, heavily simplified models, almost a weird Lego feeling to them. But they’re charming. They’re fun and funky. They make me smile. (It’s prolly also the wiggling legs sticking out from the katamari, but we already know I need help in that respect.)

And the music: I love the music. No, that’s not right. I ADORE the music. I have the soundtracks from the first two games and play them often, probably annoyingly often for the boyfriend’s taste. Mwhaha. The music, like the game, is quirky, odd, and bouncy. In the first game, each stage has it’s own song, but in the second game, you can choose which song you want to be playing for each level. Usually I just leave it on whatever is “suggested” for that level.

So why the hell am I singing the praises of a game that first came out in 2004? For a couple of reasons:

1. It was the best $20 I ever spent on a PS2 game.
2. It’s got a new release coming out soon.

Yep, a new release. A demo got released to the Japanese Playstation store, and Phil gave me the directions on how to get a Japanese Playstation account. Oh sweet sweet demos! I resisted the impulse to try and search for more demos of stuff I know are never going to get released into the US and went to play with the Katamari Tribute (or how it’s being called in the US, Katamari Forever) demo.

It’s only two levels and rather short ones at that. One was to use the katamari like a sponge to soak up water and the water the enviroment, changing it from sand to green and lush. You had 5 minutes to water 800 square meters, which was easily met. The other level a basic katamari level to pick stuff up and get from 10 centimeters to 20 centimeters in 5 minutes. Again, no biggie. The controls were the same: still nice and responsive with a new addition of what they’re calling a “Prince Hop”. Flip the Sixaxis controller up and the whole katamari bounces. Prolly a nice way to try and get you over some of those sticky bumps you might not have been able to get over in previous games. There’s also a “gravity well” bonus: roll into a tall purple column of light and suddenly you just need to get near stuff and it’s sliding over to you to stick to the katamari. The music was a similar vein to what they’ve had in previous games, with one of them being a remix of a previous song.

And then there’s the  graphics. Glorious 1080p, and a hint of the new visual effects that you can play with in the full game. The water level was the standard Katamari graphics, just much much shinier than I’ve seen. /happy sigh The other level, tho, used an effect so the whole world looked like it was drawn and painted. It was fascinating and I can’t wait to see the rest of the effects in the full game.

So yeah, I prolly went on way too long about a game, but dammit, I love me some Katamari. When this comes out, the PS3 is mineminemine and no way in hell am I letting it go for at least a week. Can’t wait!

When panic attacks strike

Once upon a few years back, a hurricane barreled through Atlanta. Hey, this is the South. Barreling hurricanes are something I’m used to. Most of the time, by the time they hit whereever I am living inland, they’re pretty much just one hell of a pissy storm. I’ve grown up with them, look outside, shrug, and go about my business. Hell I’ve driven in them plenty of times. Which is why, when the power went out that morning at 5am, and I was due to get up at 6am and be on the road to head south to Florida to visit friends after not having had a vacation in 18 months, I shrugged, got dressed, threw my bags in the car and hit the road. Just a hurricane! No biggie! and the friends in Florida had said they were fine, the city was fine, and to come on down! Yey vacation!

Around 15 minutes later, I’d wondered if I was insane. By then I was sitting in my car on the left shoulder of the interstate, trying to not freak out, as cars went whipping by me in the driving rain. 30 seconds before that, I’d been facing them as I’d come to a stop, after hydroplaning and spinning the car 540 degrees. (The concrete retaining wall? Yeah it didn’t look any better the second time I saw it go by.) I’d managed to get the car reversed and into the shoulder next to me before the oncoming cars reached me. Thankfully, due to the early hour and there were so few people insane enough to get out in weather that was that bad, there were hardly any vehicles on a road that was usually starting to see traffic increase about that time of day. It took me almost 2 hours to get out of Atlanta that day, when it should have been around an hour. The fact I was only going 35 miles an hour for the most part, and trying to not freak out the whole time was a large chunk of my delay.

When I got south of Atlanta, the skies cleared up, and by the time I reached the Florida state line, it was promising to be a stunning day: full of sunshine and light breezes. When I reached my friends’ place, I allowed myself the luxury of completely freaking out, and was informed I would not drive my car anywhere while I was down there. I had a lovely time, and drove home fine at the end of the week. But after that experience on the way down, I found I had a new problem: if it rained, I started to have a panic attack.

Most of the reasonings for the panic attacks, I put down to me not trusting my car anymore. It was getting older, wasn’t in bad condition, but was starting to do the odd thing or two that cars do when they get to a certain age. Nothing that screamed “OMG! GET RID OF THIS DEATH TRAP!”, but it had “betrayed” me, fishtailing when I least expected it, and continuing to do so in the smallest storms. When I finally got a new car, a rainstorm happened a week later. It was when I was muttering about having to turn the radio up cos the rain was coming down so hard, I couldn’t hear the music at the level I’d had it at, that I realized that I wasn’t having a panic attack. I’m cured! YEY!

And then yesterday happened and I realized I’m not. We had a bad rainstorm here, one that had water rushing around trying to find any open grate to drop into the sewers, except they were all full with water that had gotten there before it. Wind? Eh, not really. It was pretty much all about the rain. By the time I left the store, it had slowed down where I was and was about typical for a “shower” instead of a “storm”. No biggie, so get in the car to head to the boyfriend’s job and pick him up to go home.

Somewhere between my store and his office, the panic attack started. By the time he got in the car, my vision had tunneled so all I could see was what was directly in front of me. I was trying my damnedest to not completely freak out in the car, because until he gets his license renewed in the next week, I’m the only legal driver. By the time we got to the apartment, the sun was trying to come out and the rain was gone. But I still ended up on the bed, curled as tight as I could, finally shaking and crying, with him hugging me and trying to deal with a freaked out girlfriend.

I’ve driven in rain lots since I got my newest car about 3 years ago now. I’ve had hints or “eep!” moments with maybe-possibly-an-attack-nah-it’s-gone, but not anything like this. I have no idea what set it off. The only things I can come up with was I was tired (having shortchanged myself in sleep the night before), and there were a few people that still don’t understand the concept of stoplights and one-way streets in the downtown area as I was trying to leave. Maybe between those two, not knowing if someone was about to do something that might hit me, and starting to really feel the effects of staying up too late, it might have triggered the attack. All I know for sure right now is that I have a really great understanding boyfriend and two adorable cats that insisted on trying to amuse me. That and I need to take out frustrations later tonight with some quality Katamari Damacy time. Or Prince of Persia. Either’s good. Mmmm….

O Hai!

So yeah, a while back I had a WoW blog. It was a nice little blog, met some fantastic people, and had a great time with it. Then I picked up, moved 2 states over to a much smaller town, helped start up and am now managing a store instead of being a graphic designer in The Big City. It’s got it’s perks: no more 1.5-2 hour commute, all the books I want to read, people I like being around. It’s also got it’s drawbacks: no anime stores, no Krogers or Publix supermarkets (god how I miss them), and the occasionally frustrating situation of trying to find [name food item] without getting odd looks. As a result, I’ve gotten “creative” about trying to find things that I want/crave and get substitutions in place.

Like bagels: In Atlanta, I had an addiction to Einstein’s Bagels. Feel free to tell me that so-and-so’s was better, but dangit, I loved Einstein’s. They were something that made me oh so happy on days that I knew were going to go not so fun for me. For my birthday this year, I recieved a KitchenAid stand mixer. A truely excellent gift and one that I’ve been very pleased to use often since I got it. But the first recipe that I wanted to try on it? Bagels. Result? Oh dear god nomnomnomnomnom! Perfect flavor, perfect chew, perfect everything! There’s not a bakery in town that makes them, and there’s nothing at the grocery stores here that can come close. So, I make my own now.

So what does that have to do with “once upon a time ago, I had a WoW blog…”? Well a couple of weeks ago, I started having less and less time in my life, so I stopped playing WoW for a bit. And right before that, I’d really slacked off blogging about WoW, so between the two events, I decided that I’d revamp my blog. More Nightravyn, less WoW.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m still heading back into WoW (hopefully soon), and I’m still gonna talk about WoW on here. But now it’s not a “WoW blog” per se. It’s a gaming/anime/manga/knitting/computers/random mutters/art/cats/family/life blog now.

Come on… did you REALLY think I was gonna quit gaming? Ha! /cackle and starts plotting return to nuking everything in sight in a few days or so

Poking the new site

Bear with me while I continue to hammer out the new kinks. It’s a work in progress!