Incoherent Thoughts

Let's try this posting thing again. As usual, you'll probably skip over the entry if you're not interested in FF11. xD;

I've had a lot of small stuff to do recently, stuff that I should have done long ago. All those long lists of stuff to do was kind of oppressive, and made me not want to level much anything. After all, that time could be better spent catching up on the small stuff... There's been various little quests, some NMs to camp, and most of all a couple annoying BLU spells to get. Since last week I've been slowly trying to get everything done, and am actually nearing the list of stuff I can do by myself. Now that's something! =D

( Accomplishments of late )

I really, really like playing Blue Mage I've found. Even with all the spell-farming. Maybe because of all the spell-farming. It gives leveling another goal than just getting more and more exp. So far, I'm buried in spells to get on BLU. And while I'm certain that it won't be quite so busy on that front later (levels need more exp to get, and spells aren't getting any more frequent, the opposite in fact) but it still gives nice intermediary goals on the way to 75.

Maybe, when I'm done with one more quest and getting that Blastbomb, I'll finally try out Dark Knight too...I've been meaning to do that for ages.

Happy birthday me and so on. You know it's your birthday when your email inbox is full of "happy birthday" messages.

Something really weird happened last night while playing Final Fantasy XI. I was idling on Black Mage in northern San d'Oria, and when I came back from AFK, I noticed I'd...gotten a party invite. xD;; Not only was I idling with no flag up, I was also in a party already (we were having a dinner break). Made me go a bit wtf... I checked later, the person who invited me wasn't even a BLM trying to come up with a manaburn, no. Not even a low-level party in Valkurm desperate for some healing and willing to invite a BLM to do it. They were a DNC/MNK, so a straight-out DD, and the party was in Qufim. I mean..seriously, wtf? xD;;

As usual, there's not really anything else to write about. My life. Have you seen it? I think it must be hiding from me.

Ugh..my dreams from last night bother me. I don't remember much, just that I saw two with post-apocalypse themes. Or maybe the first one was right during it, or at least during a long fall to chaos. It's been a while since I last saw dreams that linger with me as long as these do.

Played FF11 too long yesterday. Kitty wanted to make a party with my PLD and her BRD, and we ended up making one which mostly broke up after a couple levels, and then a second one that took us to 18/19. The second one would've even continued if we'd wanted to, but the DNC had to go and Kai (our WAR) wanted to try his hand at the summer event since there was a lot of downtime (Kitty had to go eat dinner). Ended up helping him get his yukata (summer event reward), and escorted him first back to Valkurm to get the OP, then through Konschtat to get his Dem crystal to Jeuno. xD; Well, it never hurts helping others, especially in this game. We even tried to make a Qufim party afterwards but it broke up soon with our THF DCing, DNC having to go, and COR deciding to go as well since he was there only to help out the THF. =D; Even so, this whole process took..what, 12 hours? Played way too long.

...I guess I did reasonably well, even though it was my first experience playing in a full party. And in such an important position too! But I did manage to keep the vokes pretty regular (it has a 30-second recast) and judging by how long the second party was willing to stick with us, I can't have done too badly. There were a couple instances when the mob almost got to the mages, but that was generally in the instances I needed a lot of curing and voke came up a second or two too late to keep its attention on me. Although there was this one fight where I was seriously distracted for some reason, didn't manage to keep up my voke cycle, and let the WAR (Kai) drop down to half health. Oops. .___.;;
Not to mention the Qufim party, a real nightmare. I felt bad about it, but I couldn't keep voking the mob regularly in that party. I was a level under the lowest level recommendation, and very squishy. I had to spread hate a bit to keep alive (if I died with the worm at quarter health, that wouldn't be good), but I still felt really bad about it. Especially since the THF kept grabbing hate. :/ Lesson learned, no more Qufim parties on PLD until after a couple more levels. I feel like apologizing to the THF in person, but I guess that'd be just silly. =D;

Eh-heh, I guess I should finally post something. =D;; Certainly been much longer than I thought it has been.

Final Fantasy XIV! :O ( Cut for rambling )

This week was mostly spent waiting for actual scans of the FF14 article and obsessively going over it in an attempt to glean every hint from the info given. xD;

Sunbreeze Festival has started in Final Fantasy XI. I haven't really had the time or interest to even think of participating in the event yet. Tomorrow at the very least I'll play some, since Sunday is mine and Kitty's FF11 day. Last time we played we spent hours and hours just fishing on the Mhaura-Selbina ferry. xD; Well, and killing some select monsters that appear on it. We even got attack by pirates twice, but didn't get the items we need from them. Bah, should go again to wait for more pirate attacks...we've had that particular quest active for ages, it'd be really great to finally get rid of it.

My sleep cycle is waaaay out of 'normal' again. Woke up closer to 8...that is, PM. If I continue like this, thankfully I'll get it to within 'normal' range by next week, when I kind of need to be up during the day. But figures this would happen right after I get rid of not being able to sleep. Of course it would.
Well, not that it matters any, other than on those rare days when I have stuff to do.

Went shopping today, before going to sleep. Why's it have to be so damn hot here? D: And I read somewhere that it's going to continue until next week, too. Not pleasant. I have no clue what made me think moving this much south was a good idea, it's been hot for ages and it's certainly not helping with the sleep issues.
Anyway. Was quite surprised to notice that a regular book store here sells manga in Japanese. O.o; A few anyway. They only had Loveless volumes 6 and 7. But still! That's..so surprising. There's enough of a market here to have even that much? Well damn. Bought vol 6, since that was towards the end of my trip and I'd already spent most my money. It's really better to have everything in the original language, isn't it. So much more depth in the non-translated version, and you can be sure no translator bound by company rules has gone mucking around with the meanings. That happens more in anime (interesting point, by the way. Are manga fans just more vocal about their likes, or are anime seen in western countries as too much associated with children to avoid overt censorship?) but doesn't mean manga is entirely clear of it.
Also bought The Tales of Beedle the Bard. It was only a couple euro anyway, and I kind of forgot all about it until now. =D;

Played Final Fantasy XI aaaaall of last night. Didn't mean to. But I did some crafting and then got the idea that I want to level Ellanore to 20 and get her subjob unlocked. So I grabbed Kitty and off we went to Valkurm. Used up one Emperor and one Anniversary charge (in fact, I still have the latter in effect, since Kitty's internet went poof and it was late enough that it wasn't worth it to wait for it to maybe come back) and gained two and a half levels (to within a couple hundred exp of level 19) and one of the three subjob items. It actually dropped from the first mob of appropriate type that we killed. xD Gotta love the Treasure Hunter effect.
Not quite high enough level yet to take on Damselflies for the second drop (or maybe we are and are just being overly cautious?), but will be soon. And Kitty will PL me for the last item. So I think next time we can play I'll get that objective done. =D

Final Fantasy XI screenshot post time. Discovered that I'm closing in on 2000 screenshots taken in total. Figured it was about time I tried catching up to that. xD
These are from May and thereabouts.

( Qufim, Kazham, and a trip to the past )

That makes 49 screenshots in this post. A bit more than usually, but I wanted to get our first visit to the past posted, and this made for some considerable progress in catching up. =D;
Next up...another visit to the past, yet another attempt at the dragon battle in nation mission 2-3, and seeing more of Ranperre's Tomb than I ever wanted to see.

Where does all the time disappear?

( Final Fantasy blabber )

Been some time since I properly listened to Nightwish, hasn't it... I don't much like the new singer, but the Once album is pretty damn good. =D

Too hot to do anything else. So you get a screenshot post again, this time suspiciously close to the last one...maybe I'll catch up one day yet.

( Tons of screenies, several days IRL )

Hey, only about 400 screenshots to go through and decide which ones to post! =D I usually post about one screenshot in four, so that'd make around 100 screenies to post before I'm fully caught up...

I got bored of updating waff (guh, FF11 basic playing guide, why did I ever decide to write such a thing?!), so you get a FF11 screenshot post.

( Something forgotten, something new )

43 screenshots this time, from March to..actually, I don't know when. Not too long in RL-time though, as we played rather much around that time. But still, that much closer to catching up with these! Next up, we have a very annoying goblin, some black magey destruction, and finally unlocking Paladin.

Another day, another missed opportunity to call a place. The problem is that you can call only between 10-11 AM, and no way am I calling anywhere without breakfast. And knowing my sleeping habits, waking up early enough is proving to be a bit of a problem...

I seem to have become addicted to updating waff. Even though I should be reading to entrance exams or something..instead, I just write various more-or-less interesting pages. Hey, at least I'm finally getting things done for it! Like the moogle page, I'm pretty proud of the Vana'diel and Crystal Chronicles sections at least. Of course, I haven't even attempted writing sections for the early games yet..I just can't remember enough of most of them to write anything. Like FF5, I just sped through at the same time as I was playing other games. Or FF6, which I've played in short spurts when I remember I have it. The result is that I can remember hardly anything of either game.

Didn't mention it, but I reached MNK lv 20 a couple days ago in FF11. Retired it shortly after for now. I wasn't really intending on leveling it that much, but it turned out to be so much fun...
Maybe I should do a screenshot post again. It'd really be preferable to write this stuff the same time with the screenies, as it is I end up writing most stuff twice, pretty much. Hmmh.

Notifed my ISP of moving. As I suspected, they'll take ages to switch it. Told me they won't reconnect until the 16th, which pretty much sucks. Probably getting mom's mokkula for those couple weeks, but that won't work in Linux as far as I know... *sigh* Just when I was excited to be able to access all my stuff again.

Screenie post tiemz. ( FF11: New Year's and up to March )

34 screenshots, and I'm up to March. Getting some hopes of catching up finally...

Still in the process of trying to catch up with the Final Fantasy XI screenies. So yeah, a screenshot post time.

( FF11 Screenies, last week of December: A couple quests and a mission. Chocobos! )

33 screenies, and I've finally reached this year! x___X Wrote some Jenare!posts earlier too, they're at Thoughts From the Otherworld like usually. Although I couldn't remember what we settled on as happening on Valentione's Day, so I couldn't post as many as I wrote...the Valentione's Day post got on the way, and I want to post them in order.

FF13 demo, FFa13 trailer, and the FFv13 trailer from last year? Geesh, yesterday was busy for some people.
..for me too. Woke up a bit late, I'd promised to Kitty I'd be up by noon since her RSE week started then. Ended up oversleeping by a bit due to this strangest dream, and then we started playing. And playing. And playing. Aside from a few pauses, the longest an hour long, we kept playing until around 1 AM. At no point did I /shutdown, just idled. Man, really gotta try to play less. @__@ Although I had an excuse yesterday, the RSE-hunting took unexpectedly long (we got one piece of Kitty's RSE in the time it took us to get two and a half for me), and leveling our subjobs (BLM) was getting kinda urgent so we did that too... Well, at least we made some progress. One more level on RDM (I think? Must've leveled at least once since we spent so long down in Shakhrami this time, even though the mobs were getting a bit weak for us) and four levels on BLM, that's really some progress there for someone who only does duos instead of partying. (and by the way? Manaburns are godly on the exp, even with just two people)
In a couple more days we gotta go to Shakhrami again to get my last piece of RSE...then we'll be finally done with that place, and good riddance.

..got sidetracked. FF13 demo? Looked pretty good. I haven't had the time to read reactions much, although I can totally see the kind of people who complained about FF12 battle system complaining about FF13 too. And completely ignoring that it's the same fucking system presented a tiny bit differently, once again.
Agito keeps looking interesting. I still think I'll get the Japanese version, unless it's launched at about the same time everywhere. Considering that it's SE..probably no such luck.

( FF11 screenies, late December: Christmas event and Jeuno )

...how many screenies was that? I guess they're enough for now. I still didn't get away from December's screenies though. The very last week of it left.

Egg-hunt Eggstravaganza 2009 started today in FF11, and that means gathering initial eggs, these eggs marked with letters. You need all sorts of combinations to get event items, for a total of fifteen different ones. ....yeah. The combinations all require 3-8 eggs each. That's a whole load of eggs I need. It complicates matters that you can only get one egg per Vana'diel day if you don't want to pay for them (I need to save gil for other matters so currently I can't pay for them), so this is gonna take long. Good thing this event isn't ending anytime soon.

( Rambling on )

Easter in RL, huh... I hate these multi-day things most of all. Always have to try to remember which days you can go buy food on, and remember to buy enough for the days you can't. Ugh, keep your cruddy feast days out of my life. D:

Well hello there SE, you fucking money-grubbing bitch you. Not is it enough to make me pay for a downloadable add-on for FF11 this month, you also want me to necessarily buy that security token. What's the ONE thing players are always clamoring for in FF11? That they're ready to do anything for? More storage/inventory space of course. And what do you get as a bonus for buying the security token? Any guesses? ...double inventory space, inventory space that grows by te same amount as the normal inventory when you expand your normal inventory by in-game means. Fuck you, SE. I know I was going to get my hands on that security token anyway, but just fuck you. That action makes it pretty much mandatory for everyone to get the 10€/$ security token, even if they don't want it.

( Shortly about the FF11 April update )

Looks like I really won't be going to Helsinki in April. It was already pretty certain (since I'm stuck in Joensuu and the train tickets would be literally double the cost than from Tampere) but this hammered it in.

Read a manga yesterday, randomly stumbled across it when I was searching for something to read. I ended up reading it the whole night. It's a manga with no excessive humor in it (I don't think it had even one intentional joke?) and is of 5th graders of all things. Starts with the main charas as 5th graders anyway, the latest chapter I found was with them on 8th grade. It's...really awesome. The two main characters are transsexual, and it's just about them going about their lives, trying to figure out life. Taking a look at another manga after that was almost painful, seeing that whimsical nature in most even remotely popular manga and comparing it to that. It's..painful, too.
It's called Hourou Musuko if you want to take a look. What's most surprising is that I found it on Manga Fox, it's the fifth most popular manga there. And the comments on it, while there's some not so amazing ones too, are generally respectful and even mature. I was really, really surprised.

Hey, see how long my resolve to update every other day held. =D;