Moving sucks

Well all kinds of things have been going on with me. Sadly I don't really have time to tell you about them, as I need to be moving to my new apartment in the Twin Cities. I'm not 100% sure when I'll have regular Internet connection again. I might have it as soon as tomorrow, or it might not be until August.

My move isn't even close to the biggest thing on my mind these days, but it is the thing I need to be focusing on at this time. So I bid you adieu until I'm settled into my new place, and I have Internet again.

Ye gods what have I done

Last night I took Chipple into Karazhan for the first time. It was in fact my first PvE raid of any type with any character ever. While I have a long way to go before I can call myself a raider, I at least have now been on a raid. It was quite fun, and I can honestly say I'd like to do it again. I'm sure upon reading this Dan will rub his hands together and cackle in a sufficiently evil manner (or possibly mutter "excellent" in a Montgomery Burns like fashion).

Our raid consisted mostly of people who had little to no experience in Karazhan (and most of the people with much Kara experience were on alts). I guess we were a bit melee heavy as in addition to our prot warrior main tank, and feral druid off tank we had two fury warriors, and ret paladin. Chipple and another frost mage were the only ranged DPS. We had a holy priest, resto shaman, and a resto druid rounding out our healing. Our holy priest was also our only significant source of crowd control. We downed Attumen the Huntsman in one go, Moroes proved to be a much harder fight, but we were victorious on our fifth attempt (and we maintained good spirits during the attempts). We made two goes at Maiden before we reached our predetermined cut off time.

Due to circumstances and lucky drops Chipple walked out of there with two pieces of epic loot. Attumen dropped the Handwrap of Flowing Thought and I was lucky enough to win the roll for it. Moroes dropped a Nethershard Girdle and the other mage passed on it (as did the holy priest) so with no one else interested - epic number two for Chipple.

Also as tradition dictates: w00t for post 90.

I don't even know where to start with this one.

I've got no words to describe this. . .

I'm not sure if I blame Rick Astley, WoW, or just the Internet culture in general.

Oh Noez! The WoW Screenshots!!

This post could also be called Fast Mounts are Fast. Seriously getting Chipple her epic flying mount made me question how I could stand to have flown anywhere before. Not that the regular flying mount you can get at level 70 isn't very nice, because it is extremely useful, but damn is it slow. Slower, in fact, than the epic ground mount you can get at level 60, but that 3rd dimension of movement is so worth it.

As mentioned above, and as depicted in the picture I've acquired an epic flier for Chipple. A Purple Riding Nether Ray to be exact, and I love it. Well worth the grind to get the required gold (and in the case of the Nether Ray the required reputation with the Sha'tari Skyguard). Although I did cheat a little bit, I raised a bit more than 4200 gold myself, and Dan was nice enough to loan me the final 1000 gold. Thank you Dan. Thank you Dan. And did I mention thank you Dan.

Aside from the loan, the other thing that really helped me earn the required gold for the epic flier was patch 2.4. This patch raised the number of daily quests that a character can do per day from 10 to 25 (and also introduced the Isle of Quel'Danas and all the new daily quests found there), which made making money in WoW significantly easier for a level 70 character (given enough play time to actually complete these quests).

With this latest WoW accomplishment achieved, I promptly set to work rebuilding my gold reserves and purchased an epic ground mount for my hunter Steinthror. So Dan is going to have to wait for at least one more day before I start building up the money to pay him back, but since he knows where I live I doubt he's too terribly worried.

Of course now I need a new WoW goal. Well I have to pay Dan back, but that's not going to take very long. It might be time to start giving some of my alts a little love, as they did get neglected a bit while I was grinding gold to pay for my flier. And there are still plenty of factions left Chipple needs to improve her reputation with. I guess my immediate goals will probably be get her exalted with the Scryers , and raise her enchanting up to 375 (currently sitting at 335).

On a WoW related note, I recently (a month or so ago) got around to founding the vanity guild I'd been wanting to since shortly after I started playing WoW. So I leave you with a picture of Raffles, Guildmaster of <Gentleman Thief>. Anyone requiring or desiring an explanation can go here.

I can't really add much to this

I ran across this little YouTube gem on the PAA forums. I think it pretty much speaks for itself.

Well BOO! the embedding on that clip has been turned off. You can still see the cats on a tread mill by going directly to YouTube, but no fancy embedding for us. I guess I could replace the video with some other video of cat(s) on a tread mill, but I've opted for a different species playing on multiple tread mills instead. (Not that I think there are many people left on the Internet who haven't already seen this, but it is still one of my personal favorites.)

What city and state please?

I find, that for me at least, it is the little things that build up over time that prove to be the most frustrating aspects of my job. Were I to enumerate the behavior of customers that really gets to me (relax beyond this one particular example, I'm not going to do such a silly thing) I'd have a list of a thousand different little insignificant peculiarities of human nature. I cannot think of a single thing that would make this hypothetical list that the majority of people who have never worked in a customer service related job (especially one conducted primarily over the phone) would not dismiss as laughably trivial.

Truthfully they wouldn't be wrong, taken out of context, in isolation, not one of these behaviors would rise above the level of minor annoyance. But when you start talking about hundreds of calls a day, five days a week, it doesn't take long for even a small percentage of calls to build up from hundreds of little irritants into one frequently encountered major annoyance. Informal chats with my coworkers lead me to believe I'm not alone in these feelings. Everyone of us has a slightly different list of things that annoys (or in a few select, and extreme cases angers) us, but the impetus for this post is a pretty universal source of aggravation (at least I believe it is among my coworkers).

Broadly defined the most common customer behavior that is guaranteed to cause me irritation is not listening. The specific example as seen in the title of this post is the directory assistance customer responding with anything but a logical answer to the question, "What city and state please?" The most common "incorrect" response to this question is the customer's desired search; I ask for city and state, and my customer responds with John Doe, or Random Business, Inc. I've lost count of the number of my coworkers who at one point in their career have mused, "just once I'd like to ask a customer what state the town of John Doe is in." There are variations to this namely answering half the question and giving either just the city or just the state as an answer. If the customer's desired listing is uncommon enough, a state will often be sufficient, on the other hand a customer looking for something like "Robert Smith" is probably going to need to provide a bit more information before a successful search can be performed.

I suspect with the other side of the coin, giving only the city, often has more to do with customers assuming the operator is located in the same state (if not the same city) as themselves and/or in the case of larger cities the customers frequently just assume the operator will know the correct state. In a case like Seattle that works out fine, the only Seattle in the United States is the one in Washington (or another example the only place in the US you'll find a San Francisco is in California). Consider however that nine different states can lay claim to a Boston, Phoenix can be found in five, there are eleven different states with a city named Dallas, seven different states have a Manhattan, and three different states have a Milwaukee (and if you count Milwaukie, OR you can bump that up to four). I could easily continue but I trust my point is clear. A note for the curious I'm basing these numbers solely off what gets recognized as a city in the directory assistance database used by my employer. A cursory search of Wikipedia gives slightly different results.

The only real cost of this behavior is the inefficiency being forced to repeat a question to a customer causes. And while those few seconds add up after a month or even a day into a not insignificant amount of time I could have spent helping an additional customer, for the offending customer the direct effect is minimal (although enough prior customers engaging in such behavior can contribute to the amount of time my current customer spent waiting for me to answer). Well that and possibly my sanity, but I question the sanity of basically anybody working for even a moderately large corporation. Alright enough complaining about unchangeable realities of my job. I now return this blog to its normal state of me ignoring the ever increasing amount of anime I've been meaning to talk about.

To Quote Homer Simpson, "Praise Jebus."

I had no real concept of just how much I use my computer right up until it stopped working yesterday. At about 6:30pm yesterday I restarted my computer, it failed to boot up, and I was rudely greeted with the following error message:

"Windows can not start. The following file is missing or corrupted \windows\system\vgaoem.fon.

You can attempt to repair this file by starting Windows setup using the original setup CD-ROM. Select R at the first screen to start repair"

Let me just say the use of the Recovery Console is not very intuitive. I mucked around trying to figure out how to fix this until about 9pm. At that time I took a break, went and got some food, and skipped off to the campus of the local university to apply some Google-fu to my problem. The Internet didn't fail me, and when I got home at about 10:30pm I was able to quickly replace the file. And when I restarted my computer - I got a dreaded Blue Screen of Death. My particular error was:

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

At this point I probably should have just gone back to campus and looked the damn error up on the Internet, but no - I like to do things the hard way. A few hours of frustrating tinkering later I came across a repair installation option in the Windows Setup. I gave it a go, and at approximately 2:30am I restarted the computer, and wonder of wonders it successfully rebooted.

Except it wasn't finding the drivers for my video card. Well no problem, I downloaded the latest drivers from the Internet, installed them, restarted my computer, and the drivers were still not found. Still not a problem, I uninstalled the drivers, grabbed the CD-ROM that came with my video card, restarted my computer, the video card was detected, I installed the drivers from the CD-ROM, I restarted my computer, and the drivers were not found. I spent another three hours trying different variations of uninstalling, and reinstalling the drivers from both the CD-ROM, and the most recent version from the Internet, and I became quite intimate with both Windows' Device Manager, and Hardware Updater. My success was sadly limited. Eventually I got the computer to stay at the screen resolution I like, once I even got the video card to run WoW, but after every restart I was back to where I started which was namely one of the following two errors showing up for my video card in the Device Manager:

This device is not configured correctly. (Code 1)

This device cannot start. (Code 10)

I finally went to bed somewhere in the neighborhood of 5:30am. I woke up again at 9:30am, and continued my fruitless attempts at successfully reinstalling the drivers for my video card. I started contemplating trying to reinstall my old video card, I also pondered the possibility of buying a new video card, and finally my line of thought centered on trying to reinstall Windows XP. I started looking up information on what would be involved with such an undertaking, which quickly evolved into a search for how I'm going to back up the files I really don't want to loose (and cannot easily replace). This finally brought my attention to the System Restore function of Windows. This seemed like a pretty good thing to try before doing something as drastic as trying to reinstall Windows, so I gave it a go, and at 1pm exactly the process was completed, and it worked. My computer lives again, my video card functions, video files once again play on my computer, WoW successfully runs, dog chase cats, cars, and bark at mailmen, and life as I know it has returned to normal.

I repeat the words of Homer Simpson, "Praise Jebus."

Sadly Familiar Behavior

Before I delve into my latest tale of my sadly predictable behavior regarding sleep, let me set the stage a bit with some background information. The weekend of Easter (I forget if it was Saturday, Sunday, or Monday) I on Chipple crafted my final piece of the Shadow's Embrace set; which was the goal I’d been focusing all of Chipple’s attention on in WoW for more than one month. Last Tuesday patch 2.4 went live. When I got home from work, I logged onto WoW, got the patch, and like basically everybody else found almost all of my mods no longer worked. I sat in front of my computer thinking to myself, “I really don’t have anything I’m trying to do with Chipple right at this second, and I don’t want to play without my mods, and I really don’t want to spend the time to update them right now.” So I logged out of WoW, and started watching some anime.

I started off with a few episodes of Pretty Cure Max Heart, but eventually moved on to starting two new series: Rental Magica, and KimiKiss ~ Pure Rouge. Rental Magica is about the escapades of a company called Astral that rents out magicians and other magically inclined individuals to people who require some supernatural assistance. As you can probably guess from the name KimiKiss is a romance anime based on a dating simulation game. After work on Wednesday I didn’t log into WoW at all instead I continued watching mostly Rental Magica, and some KimiKiss. On Thursday I finally updated my mods, and spent some time playing around on WoW. I also finished off the final four episodes of Rental Magica. This brings us to Friday my last morning shift before having the weekend off.

A brief aside here. I’m sure I’ve said this before, or at least I’ve described my sleeping habits enough that this probably won’t surprise anybody, but I stay up later than I should when I work 6:30am - 3pm shifts. Since I get up around 5:15am I should really be going to bed at 9pm, but generally I’m up until midnight. I mention this mainly to illustrate why it isn’t terribly shocking that very nearly the first thing I did upon getting home Friday was fall asleep on my couch. I woke up somewhere in the neighborhood of 8pm, and logged onto WoW and played until a bit after Midnight. I then started watching KimiKiss. I watched four or five episodes and was through 13 of the 24 episodes. It was now somewhere around 3am I did this odd combination of going to bed, but also started burning files onto DVDs. Basically I’d start a DVD burning, and go lie down on my couch where I’d fall lightly asleep, but wake up when I heard my DVD burner open up. I’d then start another disk and repeat the process. I think I was on my third disk when I finally stayed asleep through the burner opening up.

I woke up at 10:28am. I remember this because I looked at my clock, and my first thought was, “well I guess I can’t get breakfast at McDonald's today.” I’m not really sure why that was my first thought, I’ve probably eaten breakfast at McDonald's five time in the last year, so it’s not like this is something I do on a regular basis. I goofed around on an alt on WoW until about noon, got myself some lunch, and burned a few more things onto DVDs.

At about 2:40pm I left to goto Matt’s for his BESM campaign. The actual gaming portion of the evening got started sometime after 6pm. It was a really good session (not that any of them have been bad sessions, I’ve enjoyed all of them, but this one was especially fun); Dan, Paul, and I each had one really awesome idea during the course of the evening. Another aside here this time to talk about the BESM campaign. In Matt’s chaos campaign we’ve dubbed the current world we’re running around in the anime world, and we’ve picked up a magical girl NPC (which is fitting since we got a cyber-enhanced troll NPC from the Shadowrun world, and a halfling cleric NPC from the D&D world). Matt has also tossed in a few references to my last BESM campaign. Namely Obo, and the bag of never ending homework.

Originally Obo was the main character of the comic The Path, which is the comic whose setting I used for my last BESM campaign (and promptly advanced the timeline 150 years, and altered the tone well beyond anything recognizable in the original comic). My Obo started out as a Buddha like figure, but evolved into a GM device for inserting comic relief, plot hooks, and useful bits of information. Every time the PCs encountered him he was in a different guise - the head of a monastery once, a cashier another time, etc.. He was also responsible for giving Matt’s character the bag of never ending homework. Matt’s character was a high school student, and it only seemed fitting that he should have to continue his studies while running around a fantasy world collecting magical artifacts. The name is a bit of a misnomer as the bag didn’t create an endless supply of homework, but was really just an inter-dimensional link between where ever Matt’s character was at, and his school back on “earth.” Obo arranged for his class work and homework to be delivered through it, and returned to the school once Matt’s character placed the completed work back in the bag. Matt must have liked the idea, as he inflicted it upon the magical girl NPC.

The basic details of the current plot in Matt’s campaign would be our group of inter-dimensional travelers had stumbled across something utterly ancient, and alien beyond human understating buried in Antarctica on the anime world (from Matt’s descriptions of it I keep picturing a huge robotic looking thing - 20 stories tall if I recall correctly, but the theme and tone he is clearly, and successfully, portraying is Lovecraftian in nature). We were trying to get it dug out of the ice, without waking it up, and moved to the nearby inter-dimensional portal leading to its realm.

It woke up. One truly epic battle ensued. We were succeeding in destroying it, but it became apparent to us that upon its destruction it would explode with the force of, as Matt phrased it, a few nuclear bombs. Dan’s wizard had the idea to create some Portal style portals between the about to explode alien monstrosity and the inter-dimensional portal leading to its realm. So we got it out of the anime world before it exploded, but we were unable to get the inter-dimensional portal closed before the explosion happened. Fortunately we have a sentient NPC ship capable of traveling between the dimensions (we call it Bob) we could hide in, unfortunately we knew from prior experience with these things, they can hurt Bob. This is where Paul’s great idea came in. One of the magical items we picked up in the D&D world was Lyre of Building. One of the neat uses of a Lyre of Building is protecting a structure from damaging effects including such powerful effects as disintegration. Paul’s character used the Lyre of Building to reinforce Bob before the massive explosion. So instead of being thrown through inter-dimensional space-time in a heavily damaged, and unconscious Bob, we got thrown through inter-dimensional space-time in basically unharmed Bob (his sensors were fried, but easily repaired). However we were still lost, and adrift somewhere in the multiuniverse. This is where my idea came in, as I realized our magical girl’s bag of never ending homework was linked to the world we had just been blown off of. With Bob’s sensors repaired it was an easy task to follow that link back to where we started. That is were we ended the session.

Now back to my tale.

We finished up with gaming around 11pm, and proceeded to play some Super Smash Bros. Brawl until after midnight. Paul and Matt continued on after that, I played around on the Internet. Paul and I left Matt’s well after 4am (somewhere around 4:20am I think). I arrived back at my house just a few minutes after 5am. I thought to myself hey since I was thinking about breakfast at McDonald's when I woke up, I’ll stay up until 7am and actually eat breakfast there today. So I start watching KimiKiss again. I didn't just stay up until 7am, I finish the series all 11 remaining episodes. It was now around 9:30am so I went to eat my breakfast at McDonald's. And I noticed that Across the Universe was available to rent at the Redbox there. I got home a bit after 10am, and I watched Across the Universe (really, really good by the way). Once that was over it was somewhere between 12:15pm and 12:30pm and I was still feeling like watching a movie, so I put in Hott Fuzz (if you haven’t watched that, you should really put it atop your “to do” list).

Now it was roughly 3pm Sunday, and I’d been awake since 10:28am Saturday. Did I go to sleep? Nope I started watching another new anime called Kekkaishi. This is a 52 episode shōnen action series with a supernatural theme. I continued to watch it until I fell asleep sometime after 6:30pm. I woke up at about 1am. Did I go back to bed? No that would be reasonable, and intelligent, I started watching Kekkaishi again. I did this until about 8:30am - 9am Monday morning (at some point in there I did pause to watch the movie Smokin' Aces which I found to be kinda meh) when I decide that since I needed to take the movie back to the Redbox at McDonald's I might as well eat breakfast there again. I came back from breakfast and again started in on Kekkaishi. I continued this until about 1pm when I needed to get ready for work. All in all I watched the first 35 episodes of Kekkaishi (basically 14.5 hours of anime).

That is my tale of foolish behavior. A few general notes on anime. In addition to those I’ve mentioned above, I’ve finished Oh! Edo Rocket, Clannad, and Spice and Wolf. I loved all three, and with any luck I’ll have some more to say about them soon. But now I’m going to see if I cannot finish off the final episode of Rosario + Vampire before I have to leave for work today.

Baseball: Best Game Ever, or Greatest Game of all Time?

Few things make me think of spring here in Minnesota quite like late-March/early-April snow, and baseball. I like only one of those things, but got both today. Happily the Twins won their season opener, which does take some of the sting out of the snow.

My activities this last weekend will be a likely topic of a future post (hopefully tomorrow, or maybe even later tonight). Not for any particular notable event, but mostly to serve as a cautionary tale of continued foolish behavior on my part (and further evidence of my complete lack of willpower).

Gary Gygax

Gary Gygax died on Tuesday. The world is a less interesting place without him in it. I think had I ever met Mr. Gygax I'd have liked to say something like this to him:

Thank you. Thank you for D&D, and thank you for role-playing. Thank you for the hours of enjoyment this hobby has given, and will continue to give me. Well played sir, well played.

If I were feeling particularly fanboyish I'd probably have added something about how much I love the Greyhawk campaign setting.

A Second Confession About My Job

Every time I look up a name that happens to be the same as a character from a comic book, I have to fight off the desire to do a dance of joy right on the spot. Tonight I looked up Jimmy Olsen.

I am a very big geek.

I took a mighty tumble

My knees hurt today. Not as much as I was afraid they were going to hurt yesterday, but they still hurt. The reason they hurt, as the title of this post suggests, is because I took a mighty tumble yesterday. Picture yourself walking out my front door, you’ll see in front of you the street on which I live, and down and to your right is a sidewalk. In one direction this sidewalk heads out to the public sidewalk running along my street, and in the other direction it runs along the side of my house to the steps leading to my side door. At the corner where the front of my house meets this little sidewalk is a relatively low spot in my yard. So this last weekend and early this week when the temperature was above freezing it was a natural place for the water from the melting snow to collect. The temperature has since dipped back below freezing, and this pool of water has become a patch of ice. A fact I failed to take into account as I was walking to my car on my way to work yesterday morning.

I was at the point where I wasn’t going to be late for work, as long as I did nothing but walk briskly to my car, and drive straight to work without any stops or detours. When I hit the ice at the corner of my house my feet slipped out from under me, and I feel forward. My knees took the brunt of the impact, followed pretty closely by my hands, and finally the rest of me. I am somewhat amazed that when I landed on my knees I slide forward into what I can only assume was the one exposed bit of dirt and grass in my entire town resulting in dirt and grass stains on my pants. My first reaction was to roll over onto my back and think, “ouch.” The second thing I did was check to see if I could bend my knees without an unreasonable amount of pain - I could. Then I noticed the stains on my pants at which point I knew I was going to be late for work - I was. So I got back up, hobbled my way back inside, changed my pants, and made attempt number two at walking to my car. This time I avoided the ice, and arrived at my car without further incident.

This was not the mightiest tumble I’ve ever taken. A few years back I slipped on some ice and sprained my ankle. Now that really hurt. While that fall would be my mightiest tumble, it certainly isn’t the worst fall in my immediate family. That distinction goes to one of my younger brothers, the middle child, for those who’ve heard the story this would be the one whose butt I shot with an arrow. However that is a story for another time. Anyway again a few years ago (although not as far back as my ankle) this brother of mine managed to fall off a second story landing outside of an apartment above one of the bars in my hometown (yes alcohol was a contributing factor). That he a) isn’t dead, and b) has proved to be basically physically unaltered I’m going to chalk up to a miracle. He certainly did sustain some serious injuries, was hospitalized, and it is only years later that I can look back on this and find it kind of funny (rest assured I found no humor in it at the time).

Physical injuries both minor and major aside, I was considering WoW a bit this last week and I realized that for the first time I have a main character. This is the first time in a MMORPG that I can point to a single character and say this is who I’m focusing the majority of my attention on. I cannot say that about any of my characters in City of Heroes/Villains, and prior to Chipple hitting level 70 I couldn’t say that about any of my characters in WoW. I've certainly had characters I spent more time with, but I never before in my mind differentiated between Chipple, my warlock Cominius, and my hunter Steinthror. In honor of her main character status I give you a picture of her on her flying mount (as well as pictures of her on her other land mounts).

I find this funny because Chipple was never intended to be a permanent character much less a main. Chipple was created during the fairly brief period of time after I signed up for the 10 day free trial, but before I decided that I was indeed going to buy this game (two or maybe three days later). I wanted to try out a mage, and I wanted to try grouping with a friend (which my time on City of Heroes had taught was much more fun than soloing). I had mentioned to Dan and Paul that I was giving the WoW trial a go (at a BESM gaming session) and I still remember they both looked at me, Paul looked over at Dan, and then looked back at me and said, “he’s got better guild connections.” At some point around this same time Dan also sent me an e-mail mentioning that he’d just started a warrior alt who I would be able to quickly catch up to in level.

So I rolled a mage on Dark Iron, but since I was still in the, “oh I’m only going to use the free trial, I’m not going to buy this game phase” I wasn’t thinking terribly seriously about naming this character. I hadn’t tried rolling a female toon yet, I wasn’t impressed with any of the names being generated randomly, and then I thought of Chipple. I will only say it is a personal reference that amuses me greatly. As a brief aside I just went and googled Chipple and on the very first page of results I learned that there was a professional baseball player named Walter Chipple whose entire career spanned 18 games for the Washington Senators in 1945. I also learned that chipple is a sexual slang for something you can go look up yourself if you really want to know. Both of those facts amused me, neither is what Chipple is referencing. Now as to why I didn’t delete Chipple and reroll a mage named Cominius (the name I’ve been using for most online activities ever since I played that character in college) I have to blame Dan. Right around the time I was hitting level ten, he mailed Chipple four netherweave bags. I hadn’t yet gotten around to rolling another character on Dark Iron, and I wasn’t really familiar with the implications of the bind of equip mechanic as yet. And since having lots of bag space is just so damn convenient for a new character I never replaced Chipple, and instead used Cominius as the name of my warlock.

That is enough for today. Hopefully sometime this weekend I’ll post my thoughts on Oh! Edo Rocket, and Lucky Star both of which I’ve finished off, and both of which I enjoyed greatly. I’ve also received move three from Erik, so I need to get him my response and I should toss the moves up here for everyone’s personal kibitzing pleasure. I leave you with one final picture of Chipple - an oldie of her in her mid 40s on her original land mount. Also woot for post 80.

I've got the sound, but do I have the fury?

I feel like there are about a hundred different things I'd like to talk about, and no way that I'm going to fit them all in. So let me mention a few things in passing with the (probably in vain) idea of addressing at least some of them in more detail in a later post (it could actually happen).

I finished off Sky Girls last week. I found it to be a solid, enjoyable mecha series. While nothing about it really grabbed me, made me want to run out, wrestle people to the ground, and shout "WATCH THIS" at them, I still have no problem encouraging people to give it a try. "Refreshingly straightforward" probably sums up my thoughts on Sky Girls more than anything else. There are no genre altering plot twists, no surprise villains, no secret organizations pulling the strings - just enjoyable mecha action. The fact these mecha were piloted by cute girls instead of angst-filed boys probably didn't hurt my opinion of it either.

I'm through the first story arc of Spice and Wolf. This series certainly started off slowly, but as the first arc progressed things did pick up nicely. Craft and Horo are very interesting characters in their own right, and watching their relationship develop has been quite enjoyable. My impression of Craft is he's a skilled merchant who is just a touch too cautious for his own good, but his dealings with Horo seem to be putting just the right amount of daring in him. As for Horo, she is a wonderful character. For a wolf spirit/harvest deity she is surprisingly human - very wise yes but also very fallible, confident and powerful but also emotionally vulnerable and even painfully lonely.

This is not your typical fantasy story, as stated Craft is not some stock fantasy archetype like a warrior, but rather a simple merchant; his big dream is to amass enough money to buy a shop in a city so he can settle down and stop being a traveling peddler. Outside of Horo's existence magic has been nowhere to be found, and even with Horo the flashiest bit of magic we've seen is her transformation into her wolf form - and that has only happened twice or perhaps more accurately once and a half since the first time we only got to see Craft's reaction to the transformation (it scared him witless). The main story arc revolves around economics with nobles, kingdoms, and rival merchant houses plotting and scheming to make money off a pending alteration to the purity of one kingdom's silver coins. For an anime the depiction of the economics gets pretty in depth maybe not quite "Moby-Dick's descriptions of 19th Century whaling" level in depth, but still I feel at times like I should be taking notes.

Oh what else: I've started in on Oh! Edo Rocket and it is ridiculously fun. When I try and think of a way to describe it I keep coming back to the fact it reminds me of Excel Saga, but only coherent with an actual plot. I'm not entirely happy with that comparison as I am at best ambivalent towards Excel Saga, while I am loving Oh! Edo Rocket. I would have to say that in every way that being silly is a good thing - Oh! Edo Rocket is just as silly as Excel Saga, and in every way that I found being silly a detriment to Excel Saga - Oh! Edo Rocket is actually logical and serious. The setting is Edo in 1842 (as the anime is quick to tell you Edo in 1842 was in the midst of numerous onerous restrictions on things deemed frivolous - like say fireworks), and the basic premise is a woman asks a fireworks maker to make some fireworks capable of reaching the moon for her. Anyone familiar with the anime will understand the magnitude of the understatement I’m about to engage in - there is more going on in this anime than I’ve just mentioned. I doubt I could do it justice were I to try and describe everything going on there, I think this is clearly a case of experiencing it for oneself as being the best policy.

I’m still watching Rosario+Vampire, I’m not sure I could even explain why. I know I haven’t made it through an episode yet where I haven’t thought, “now that is an excessive amount of fan service.” For some reason it actually makes me think of History’s Strongest Disciple Kenichi. There are some similarities: Kenichi is the last anime I watched to feature a truly noteworthy amount of fan service (although nowhere near the level of Rosario+Vampire), many of the defeated foes in both go on to become staunch allies of the main characters, the female leads in both could kick the male leads’ collective asses, and while I wouldn’t really call Kenichi a harem anime the main character does pick up more than one female admirer over the course of the series. Where Kenichi differs from Rosario+Vampire (and most harem anime/manga I’m familiar with) is Kenichi (the character) actual grows and becomes more competent and mature (and since it is a martial arts comedy I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention stronger and more skilled). I doubt Tsukune is going to be much different at the end of Rosario+Vampire from how he was at the beginning.

Clannad and Shion no Ou both continue to be among my favorite anime I’m watching. I’ve been periodically pestering Dan to start watching Shion no Ou so I’d have somebody to talk about it with. Dan if you are reading this be warned I’m going to add Oh! Edo Rocket, and Spice and Wolf to the list of things I periodically pester you to start watching. I continue to make my way through Pretty Cure Max Heart, and I have only a few episodes left of Lucky Star. Sadly I haven’t gotten back to Dennou Coil yet. On that front I think it is actually an attempt by me to be responsible. I have a strong feeling that once I start watching it again I won’t stop until I’ve finished it, and because I’m only through 14 of the 26 episodes I’ve been hesitant to start watching it again since I haven’t had a window were I could comfortably devote the nearly five hours it will take to finish the series off.

I could continue on about anime for awhile yet, but time for a new topic instead. Despite what it must look like given the above paragraphs, my assessment last month that I’m making a transition away from WoW towards anime may have been premature. I’m starting to get the hang of being a level 70 character with Chipple. I’ve got my flying mount (sorry still no pictures), and I’m making slow, but measurable progress towards better gear. Assuming I keep up with the necessary farming of elemental motes, I should be making myself some Frozen Shadoweave Shoulders this weekend. I still need to get Chipple into some level 70 instances, and get her keyed for Karazhan (although given my current work schedule I just don’t see myself becoming a regular raider), but the tasks before me seem slightly less daunting.

I’ve also been spending some time working on a Tauren druid named Berenek on the server Zuluhed, because that is where my friend Erik plays (I’m sure I’m not spending nearly enough time there in Erik’s estimation). Speaking of Erik, I continue to wait patiently for move number three in our latest e-mail chess match.

Matt’s BESM campaign continues to go well. He’s seems quite happy to sit back and see where we (the players) take it, and speaking for myself I’m quite happy to see where we can get it to go. In my last post I mentioned that my character Cynthia had managed to retrieve a surprising amount of data from the memory banks/brain of our apparent main foe. It turns out this info is more memories and personality and less raw data, so Cynthia threw together a small robot to attach this personality to so we’d have something to interact with while obtaining what we’d like to know. Matt has portrayed the partial copy of our foe’s memories as being a bit morose, and more than a little bitter over the loss of its magical abilities. Its complaints on the latter topic lead Cynthia to retort something to the effect of (and I mention this mainly because Matt found it amusing), “I just grabbed the information we needed, it’s not my fault you don’t keep your magic in your brain.”

My character Kell continues to survive Ellery’s Eberron campaign, although after our last session, mostly by the grace of some amazing dice rolling. D&D has long had the idea of the “natural 20," meaning you roll a 20 on a 20 sided die, as being the best thing to hope for during combat. This has been true regardless of the version of D&D you happen to be playing (and outside of a few skill systems in the pre 3.x /d20 era rolling high on a d20 in any situation has generally been a good thing). I picked a very opportune time to get one during our recent combat with a mind flayer (technically a vampiric mind flayer but whose keeping score). Had I not rolled that 20 on my grapple check, my character was about 99% likely to have his brain eaten (just a little something mind flayers like to do). Near character death experiences notwithstanding I continue to have fun with Kell.

With that I think I've touched on most things I’ve been kicking around. So it is now time for me to go knock out a few dailies and farm some motes of water.

Once More unto the Breach

To say I've thought of nothing else but singing monkeys since Saturday would be hyperbole, but it has been in the back of my mind. Yesterday I heard the radio advertisement for a second time. I listened to it with palpable anticipation. My original recollection was slightly inaccurate, the commercial ended, ". . . order your flowers by the 10th, and receive a free CD of romantic piano music, and a chance to win a singing monkey."

At least I think that is what it said, it's not like I had any trouble understanding anything else this lady on the radio was saying, but I just cannot completely wrap my mind around the idea of winning a singing monkey. Some part of me just refuses to believe that is what she said, despite having twice heard her say it. That said, I find myself a little sad I don't currently have a significant other, because I think I'd like to present her with a singing monkey (whatever that is) on Valentine's Day. I fully realize such an act would likely result in my hypothetical lover becoming my hypothetical ex-lover, but damn would the bar story be worth it.

In addition to pondering silly advertisements, I devoted most of my free time this last weekend to role playing. On Saturday Matt ran his BESM campaign. Cynthia very nearly went down the dark path of torturing a prisoner, thankfully Paul's Jedi stopped her. That aside, Cynthia did have a few moments I was pretty proud of: hacking a 24th century military grade computer system on an abandoned moon base was rather awesome, as was the invention of a shrink ray to facilitate the transportation back to their home world of the numerous D&D monsters we kept finding in stasis as we explored the interdimensional portal network our enemies seem to be using.

Like most most role players I love those rare instances where I roll the best possible result on my dice, just when I need to do so the most. Cynthia had one of those joyous occasions on Saturday. Our aforementioned prisoner was more mechanical than biological so Cynthia designed a machine to forcibly download the information stored in his memory. As it was being hooked up, he countered by activating his hitherto unknown self-destruct and total memory wipe ability. I held little hope that Cynthia would be able to use/modify on the fly her invention fast enough to get any information from him. I rolled a twelve (as good as it gets on 2d6) on the electronics test, after applying Cynthia's insanely high mind score and excellent electronics skill the test result added up to 24 (even after the penalty Matt applied to the roll) which is the target number BESM assigns for improbable tasks (BESM's highest difficulty class) . All of this means we got the information we were looking for, and while Cynthia may be a 14 year old girl she is clearly technology's daddy.

Sunday saw the resumption after a nearly year long hiatus of Ellery's Eberron campaign. I'm still trying to remember exactly what character goals I had for my changeling Kell. Still it was a fun session, although it served to really reinforce my preference for point based role playing systems. After two years of BESM (plus some random GURPS and Hero action) I find the game mechanics of character creation and advancement in d20 (and really any level based system) to be incredibly restrictive. Sorting through the seemingly endless number of D&D's core and prestige classes for that magic combination that will approximate the admittedly nebulous character concept I have has been an exercise in extreme frustration. My advice for anyone playing D&D (or any other class based system) is look over the classes, and find one that makes you go, "ooooo," and build your character concept around that. Don't create a character concept, and then try and find a class that fits it.

Wait What?!

Let me preface this by saying my time on WoW (and equally so my time on the Penny Arcade Alliance forums) has not done my vocabulary, grammar, or spelling any good. Not that this story really has any connection to WoW, but I thought I'd just throw that out there.

So at work we usually listen to a radio station out of Watertown, SD. Largely because it is one of the few radio stations that we can actually get reception on inside our call center. That said I find it to be a pretty decent station - for a commercial radio station - they generally (but not exclusively) play a mix of rock running from classic to modern. I have on occasion found their song selection somewhat odd - I've twice heard them play Weird Al's "I Want a New Duck," but today was the first time I've ever done a double take while listening to this station.

The surprising bit of audio was actually an advertisement for one of the grocery stores in Watertown. It started out in a pretty typical manner for local radio advertisement - namely the person reading the script, sounded like she was reading a script. She extolled the virtues of giving your significant other flowers on Valentine's Day, and reminded the listeners of her store's well stocked floral department, then she uttered a phrase that is going to stick in my mind for the rest of my life. . .

". . . and sign up now for your chance to win a singing monkey."

And the only thing I could think to say was, "lolwut?!" Thank you WoW.

Seriously this was a Lewis Black - "if it weren't for my horse. . ." level phrase here. I'm half convinced I misheard it, but I'm not entirely sure I want to hear the advertisement again, because I think I'd be disappointed if it turns out I did hear it wrong.

A Mystery Revealed

It turns out the mysterious package was a very nice chess set sent to me by Erik (thank you again I really like it), along with his opening salvo in a new chess match. He has opened with 1. d4. A Queen's Pawn Opening, a very popular, very solid, and slightly conservative opening staking white's claim to the important center squares. My response to this was 1. ... Nf6. How terribly hypermodern of me, it would appear I'd rather not play a Closed Game, but I instead want to steer this game towards some sort of Indian Defense. In any event, I haven't exactly ceded the middle to Erik, but I've opted to contest it with methods less direct than 1. ... d5.

I was tempted to try out a Dutch Defense, which would make a certain amount of sense for me given my proclivity for both the English Opening, and the Sicilian Defense, but in the end the chance to try my hand at a hypermodern style proved too tempting. Plus I have to think Erik might just be getting a little tired of seeing Semi-Open Games, and Flank Openings from me to start throwing Semi-Closed Games at him as well. Still I am much too enamored with asymmetry in chess for Erik to ever get too many Open or Closed Games from me.

I think part of the reason I favor these types of openings and defenses is due in large part to a desire not to surrender the choice of match being played. If you are playing black and respond to 1. d4 with d5, or 1. e4 with e5 your opponent is still free to try and shape to the match towards his preferred opening. So I tend to look towards the Sicilian as a response towards 1. e4, and something other than 1. ... d5 in response to a Queen's Pawn opening. The same logic applies to my choice of the English Opening when I open with 1. c4 that pretty much means that's the game that is getting played; whereas if I'd like to use a King's Gambit or say Ruy Lopez I have to open 1. e4 and hope my opponent complies with me. Obviously this isn't perfect, chess matches do transpose from one opening to another on occasion, but it is my weapon for keeping as much control of the match as I can regardless which color I'm playing.

A Mysterious Package

There is a mysterious package waiting for me at home. I found it left on my doorstep by UPS as I was leaving for work today. I had enough time that I could have opened it up, but if it proved to be something cool I wouldn't have had enough time to properly play with it. So I simply took it inside where it waits for me to return home from work to see what it is, and who sent it to me.

 My behavior of late suggests I'm shifting out of MMORPG mode and into watching anime mode. Which isn't to say I'm in any danger of ceasing to play WoW, I just seem to be spending more time watching anime than I have been in recent months. I suspect it is a result of getting Chipple to 70. It's a nice milestone, and also a good place to rest a bit before getting serious about the grind of improving her gear. 

Misumi Nagisa

As I suspected I would, I've started watching Futari wa Pretty Cure Max Heart. Just like it's predecessor it is good light hearted, magical girl fun. I've noticed one amusing byproduct (amusing to me anyway) of the magical girl powers the main character's possess. Allow me to illustrate. Please note picture of Misumi Nagisa to the left. As an unrelated aside the cutesy teddy bear looking thing is Mepple, most magical girls have some sort of cute companion (often a talking animal) and he is Nagisa's.

Cure Black

Now compare this to the picture of Cure Black. If you can spot what I'm getting at right away, then good for you. However I'm guessing one example isn't probably enough.










So let me move on to example number two. Next please observe the picture of Yukishiro Honoka, and then the picture of Cure White. Again as an aside the cute companion is Mipple. Honestly the cutesy companion is one of my least favorite tropes of the magical girl genre. I probably wouldn't mind Mipple and Mepple that much if they just didn't end every sentence with "mipo" and "mepo" respectively.

Yukishiro Honoka

Cure White

Some of you may be spotting what I'm talking about, but the final example should
really bring it home. In Pretty Cure Max Heart a new heroine is introduced. So please take a look at the pictures of Kūjō Hikari (to the left), and her alter ego Shiny Luminous (on the right). I believe the amusing power should now be quite apparent. If you are guessing their transformation must include the application of magical hair mousse for increased volume, then we are on the same page. Extremely silly? Yes, but it is still what I think of basically every time I watch these characters transform.

Kūjō Hikari

Shiny Luminous

Aside from pondering the hair care regiment of magical girls, I've started in on a few other anime as well. I am just over halfway through Denno Coil (sometimes written as Dennou Coil). This one is extremely engaging - interesting characters and an interesting plot. I imagine I'll be finishing it up pretty soon. I'm sure I'll have more to say about it once I've finished it. For the curious the girl in the picture is Okonogi Yūko one of the main characters from Denno Coil. The strange looking pink things are called Satchii; they are basically antivirus software that patrol the Augmented Reality environment of the city Denno Coil takes place in.

 I've also started in on Rosario + Vampire (the first four episodes). This seems like a pretty fun series. Nothing really new here; it's a harem anime. The male protagonist is a normal first year high school student who gets mistakenly enrolled in a high school for monsters, and wacky shenanigans ensue. Naturally this includes the unintentional collection of a harem of beautiful supernatural female students (thus far a vampire, succubus, and witch). This anime has more fan service (of the panty shot and other sexual eye candy variety) than anything else I've watched in awhile. That fact isn't really anything either good or bad, but was a bit jarring at first.

A Confession About My Job

Every time I have somebody ask me to find a number for, or I overhear some operator looking for the last name of Underhill, I have to really struggle not to suggest they try looking for the name Baggins instead.

I am a very big geek.

Let's call it 1-2 with a Walk

Suggesting the possibility of some sort of law of conservation of shipping time my SATA cables arrived a day later than the shipping estimate I was given. I'm relieved to be able to report victory in the installation of my new DVD drive, but it was far from crushing. Getting my computer to recognize the existence of my new optical drive was a chore. One would think that with three open SATA ports, one would at most only have to guess three times which port to turn on before the computer found my new hardware. Not only did my first three iterations through my computer's set up fail to get my new optical drive recognized, but for some reason my computer stopped finding the hard drive connected to the fourth SATA port. That resulted in fair amount of salty language on my part. Eventually the repeated turning of port 0 (the port my hard drive is connected to) off and back on resulted in the seemingly spontaneous return of the recognition of my hard drive. Once that problem was resolved, I turned on the remaining three ports all at the same time, and finally - for reasons I cannot explain - the existence of my new DVD drive was recognized. One final trip through the set up to turn the two unused SATA ports back off and I was good to go. For future reference my DVD burner is connected to SATA port 2.

So Tuesday night Chipple hit level 70. The process of getting her some good gear seems even more demanding and daunting than the process of leveling her to 70 was. I guess my next few steps with her will be earning enough gold to buy a flying mount, improving her reputation with the various factions, getting her keyed to the various instances, and maxing out her tailoring and enchanting skills. Once I stop being lazy I'll get a screen capture of her, and put it up. Although I'll probably at least wait until I've got my flying mount before I do that.

Going further back in time we last gamed on the 12th. It was a fun session, of course they have all been fun sessions. My character went on a date (of sorts), that was amusing. I guess after some of the situations I put Matt through in the last BESM campaign, the date was a bit of karmic justice (although it is worth noting it was self-inflicted karmic justice). Perhaps of more importance to the campaign we captured the apparent villain, not that we have a much better idea of what is going on, but we really haven't had much of a chance to question him yet. I do find, upon reflection, that I'm a bit surprised by how ruthless my character can get when confronted with opposition. All-in-all Cynthia is proving to be quite fun, and I always look forward to our next session.

1 - 2 and threatening to go 2 -3

My new video card arrived yesterday. I wasn’t expecting it until Tuesday so the early arrival was a nice surprise. Installation went much more smoothly as compared to my new DVD drive. I haven’t actually played around too much on either WoW or City of Heroes to see if I can detect a noticeable improvement in performance. I have experimented a bit with running WoW at a higher resolution, and was happy to note my new card handled that with ease (whereas my old card didn’t much care for me doing such things). Otherwise I’ve caught myself thinking things like, “I believe that images are much sharper now that I’ve installed my new video card.” However I wonder how much of that is real and how much is self delusion, but in any event I’m pretty happy with my new card. On the new optical drive front, I’ve ordered what I believe are the requisite SATA cables, so come Tuesday I should be ready for round two of its installation process. I hope to be able to post about my crushing victory later that day.

I finished off Pretty Cure last week. I don’t really have anything more to say about it beyond what I’ve already posted. I will reiterate that it is an enjoyable magical girl series, and well worth watching if you like that sort of thing. I’ll very likely be checking out the second series Futari wa Pretty Cure Max Heart.

Last night I watched the first two episodes of Spice and Wolf. I’m not sure what to make of this series yet, but I do think I’ll be watching episode three when it is available. The setting has a Western European, early Renaissance feel to it. The story seems to revolve around a traveling merchant named Craft Lawrence, and a Wolf Spirit/Harvest goddess named Horo who decides to travel with him because she feels the villagers whose fields she has been watching over have forsaken her. After two episodes not a whole lot has happened, but the premise remains interesting to me, so I’ll keep watching and see what develops.

Stupid things I do

I’m pretty sure I’ve touched on this theme before. This last Wednesday saw my latest example of enjoyable anime + disgusting lack of willpower equaling foolish behavior. Wednesday night I wrapped up my playing of WoW around 10:30pm. I needed to wake up around 7:45am – 8:00am the next day in order to leave for work by 8:30am so I could arrive by 9:00am. I didn’t really feel like going straight to bed so I decided to watch some anime. I have a pretty large backlog of series I’ve either been meaning to start or finish, and I decided I should check off one or two episodes from one of those. After a bit of deliberation I opted to watch some Suzuka (the linked review has some very valid points about the anime, although personally I found the characters to a bit more likeable than the reviewer so I’d grade Suzuka somewhere around 75%). I had watched the first episode of Suzuka last April and the second episode sometime last summer so I started off with episode three.

The next thing I know it’s a bit after midnight, and I’m thinking to myself, “Alright I’ve got to go to bed after this episode ends.” Then as I’m starting the next episode I’m rationalizing to myself, “Well once I’ve finished this episode it won’t even be 1am yet so I’ll still get seven hours of sleep.” A few episodes later I’m telling myself, “OK so I’m up too late, but I can watch one more and it will only be 2am, that’s still 6 hours of sleep.” A couple of episodes after that and I’m thinking, “What the hell am I doing up after 3am?” A stronger person than me would have gone to bed at that point; I kept right on watching. Sometime after 4am I went back to rationalization, “I can watch one more and it will be 5am and I’ll take a three hour nap before work, I’ve done that before, so I’ll be fine.” By the time 6am rolled around I was simply chastising myself, “This is stupid, I’m stupid, I’m weak, I should have gone to sleep hours ago, this is not the behavior of a responsible adult.” Naturally I kept right on watching more episodes. As it got closer to 7am I simply did the math, and decided, “Well I can finish the series and still have time to shower before I have to leave for work.” At about 7:50am the credits rolled on the final episode and the only question left to me was do I lie down and close my eyes for 10 minutes or do I shut off my alarm and go take a shower. I opted for the shower.

I doubt I’ll garner much surprise and even less sympathy when I say work on Thursday sucked – a lot. I think 10:30a – 11:00a was the worst; I had a very hard time not falling asleep, and concentrating on anything displayed on my computer’s monitor was somewhat tricky as my vision tended to get blurry. The sugar and caffeine from the ridiculous amounts of Mountain Dew I drank that morning started kicking in after that, and the rest of my shift passed without incident.

Surprisingly I didn’t go straight to sleep when I got home. I found I had a package waiting for me, the new DVD burner I had ordered as a replacement for the malfunctioning one that currently resides in my computer. I made a valiant effort at installing it, but was rudely stopped short when I learned I hadn’t done anywhere near enough research before I ordered this bit of hardware. My new DVD burner uses a Serial ATA connection; the old drive it is replacing uses Parallel ATA. Hopefully when my new video card arrives next week I won’t find I made a similar stupid oversight (I do at least know both my old and new cards use PCI Express).

Once I put my computer back together I decided to watch some more anime. This time I thought I’d play it safe and watch a movie (it was only about 7pm at this time but you can never be too careful). I watched Whisper of the Heart, a very excellent Studio Ghibli film (but aren’t they all). I had forgotten just how much I like that movie, and once I finished it I really couldn’t help but continue right on to its pseudo sequel The Cat Returns. Not too long after that I finally settled into bed for some much needed sleep.

Post Christmas Woes

I have an e-mail address with Yahoo Mail. I’ve had this e-mail address for years (at least since 1999). For awhile after college I used it as my main e-mail address, but eventually I moved on to another provider. I still use it as my e-mail address for all online business I perform. However since it is no longer my main address, I tend to only check it once or twice a month, or anytime I order something online. Today I happened to do just that, and as I was paging through the accumulated spam at I noticed an e-mail from Right Stuf that made me quite angry.

I tend to do almost all of my Christmas shopping online, and most of that through Amazon.com. I don’t generally have a huge list of people to buy for, mainly just my family, but fairly late in the shopping season this last Christmas I decided since Dan, Matt, Paul, and I had been gaming together for close to two years (and with Matt and Paul longer still) I should get them something. I opted for gift certificates. My first mistake was not thinking of this sooner, my second mistake was not getting everybody gift certificates from the same location. Instead I decided I’d tailor my choice of provider to better suit each of them, and add a small personal touch to the gift. Matt was pretty easy I just grabbed a gift certificate at the local music/book/comic book/collectibles/role playing/sports memorabilia/hobby store, and mailed it off to him. With Paul I compromised just a little bit, I had originally intended to get him a gift certificate from ThinkGeek, but something about the process (I don’t even remember what anymore, but I think it was time constraint related) dissuaded me so I instead got him a gift certificate from Amazon.com. For Dan the choice seemed obvious - I’d get him a gift certificate from Right Stuf. I have never been a huge customer of Right Stuf, but I have purchased things from them before and never had a problem. More importantly I know Dan is a pretty frequent customer of theirs, so on December 18, 2007 I placed my order for a gift certificate.

On December 19, 2007 I get an e-mail from Right Stuf informing me that in order to protect themselves from fraud they cannot ship a credit card order to an address that is different from the credit card billing address without me jumping through some hoops. I’m not thrilled by this, but I can at least understand their need to protect themselves from fraud. I’m given a few options, and the easiest one for me is to fax a copy of my credit card, and driver’s license to them. So on December 20, 2007 I send them a three page fax. Page one is a fax cover sheet listing my name, e-mail address, my order number, and the reason I’m faxing. Page two is the actual photo copy of my credit card, and driver’s license on which I included my e-mail address, and order number. Finally page three was a brief letter expressing my feelings on the process which pretty much boiled down to, “I know you have to do something to combat fraud, but your chosen tactic is rather inconvenient, and convenience is the main reason I shop online.” Later that day I got an e-mail back from Right Stuf customer service saying basically we’re sorry you found the experience to be inconvenient, but look on the bright side now that you’ve sent this information to us, you won’t have to do it again the next time you order a gift for somebody from us.

Today I found that on January 4, 2008 Right Stuf resent the e-mail telling me they cannot ship a credit card order to a different address without some further actions by me. I spent a few minutes stomping around my living room swearing to myself. Once I’d calmed down a bit I call their customer service number. I find out the order has been canceled because they never received a copy of my credit card and driver’s license. I asked how that is possible since I received an e-mail back from them after I faxed them a copy of my driver’s license and credit card. The lady I was talking to wasn’t sure how that could have happened, but did see that her manager had indeed sent me an e-mail on December 20th apologizing for the inconvenience. She’d have to talk to her manager to see what could be done. So about 30 minutes later Right Stuf calls me back and says, sorry we don’t know how it happened, but we lost your driver’s license and credit card information, and we still cannot send out your gift certificate without that information on file. They suggest they send the gift certificate directly to me, and I can turn around and give it to the intended recipient myself. I tell them fine. So Dan, belated Merry Christmas, you can except a Right Stuf gift certificate from me in the mail sometime next week.

So what have I learned from this? I’m too damn nice to customer service - I imagine if I’d let a little of my general annoyance and anger over the situation leak out during my two phone conversation with them I’d have gotten something other than an apology (would a discount on the gift certificate have killed them). I’m never buying a gift for somebody on Right Stuf again, but I probably would buy something for myself again, if they had the best deal on it. Finally I should do my Christmas shopping earlier in December so I have time to deal with annoyances like these.

Well woot for post 70. Sorry Matt you are going to have to wait for another day for a post about gaming this last Saturday.

A few topics with nothing to do with each other

I'm going to start this post out with an accusation (and a wild accusation at that, which really is the best kind). I'm currently ill, and I completely blame my friend Paul for this fact. Allow me to present my reasoning: Saturday I felt fine, Saturday night I talked to Paul, Paul complained about having the flu, and Sunday morning I woke up sick. The kicker here is I spoke to Paul via WoW. That's right my fiendishly clever "friend" used his obviously demonically granted knowledge of the intricate series of tubes that comprise the Internet to find a way to use it to transmit a biological virus to me.

Well played Paul, well played. The next time I'm GM my retribution will be fierce, but not immediate. After all we all know that old Klingon proverb about revenge.

All joking aside, I actually do have a cold, although it's origin is almost certainly my place of employment (and serves as pretty compelling proof that I'm not washing my hands enough while I'm there). However the truth is nowhere near as amusing as my little hypothetical explanation of my illness. Ponder for a moment the havoc that would be caused if biological viruses and bacteria could actually be spread over the Internet. I find the idea both fascinating, and terrifying. Ready for it to be worse? Add to your consideration this common (and more often true than many would like to admit) little statement, "the Internet is for porn." If you care to dispute that, I direct your arguments to Avenue Q.

Rapidly shifting gears this last Friday I and my whole office received a depressing bit of news. I've talked about my work situation with friends and family, but I've never posted anything here, but back in November my company was purchased by another company. Aside from getting a new insurance provider, and a new 401(k) manager things didn't really change too drastically for my call center. I understand the buyout process was significantly more stressful for the people working at our corporate office in Minneapolis, and a number of people there did end up loosing their jobs, but my office was spared most of the stress and all of the layoffs. That was until this last Friday. A coworker of mine, a very nice lady, got the news that her position was being terminated. She took it pretty hard, and really we all did here. It's not like she was being fired for cause, she just had the bad luck of working a position that after the buyout, merger, and ultimate restructuring of my company was no longer needed.

To finish things off of a completely different (and happy) note. Episodes 4 and 5 of The Guild have been out for a while now. If you haven't already seen them, for shame, and enjoy.

Could this be tradition?

At the risk of starting a tradition, New Year's Day once again seems like a good time to reflect upon the state of the blog. I find that as I'm rapidly closing in on one and a half years of blogging I'm pretty happy with how this blog has turned out. I'm pleased to see that for my first full calender year of blogging I've hit my target average of four posts per month exactly (if I factor my five months of blogging from 2006 my average drops to 3.9 posts a month which is still pretty darn good). I had three very prolific months: January (7), February (10), and September (7). On the flip side I had four bad months as well: March (2), May (0), October (1), and November (2). I'm a little curious about just why I got so distracted by other things during October and November in both 2006 and 2007, but trying to break that trend gives me a little goal for the new year.

I'm glad to see the question of what direction I was going to take this blog has been more or less answered (perhaps it would be more accurate to say I've become more comfortable with the direction I have been taking basically since the beginning of this experiment). First and foremost I write this blog for my own amusement and edification, but of nearly equal importance I use this blog to communicate select details and interests of mine to the small group of my friends who regularly read it. I am quite happy with the result of the intersection of those two aims. Unlike last January I have no evolutionary dead ends to reflect upon - no commentary on celebrity deaths, nor pointless enumeration of the songs in my iTunes for me this year. I find I am, in general, quite satisfied with the topics I'm writing about. I still occasionally feel like I'm only mentioning some anime in passing, or end up feeling bad that too many of my comments about various anime I've watched can be summed up as "I watched this, and it was good/bad." I'm not sure that is necessarily a bad thing however, obviously I want to be saying more about my topic than just it was good/bad, but at no point have I ever set out to write a full blown review of anime (or anything for that matter) such as you would find on a website like Anime Academy. I do think it is a little odd that despite never having wanted to make this blog all about reviewing anime, I end up feeling bad about not writing actual reviews of the anime I feel like talking about.

As for going forward I'd like to see me write a few more posts about the books I'm reading, and the movies I'm watching. A few of my most recent posts have touched on those very topics, so that is a trend I hope to continue. I'd like to improve upon the reporting of what I've been up to. I'm pretty good about chronicling the basics of my role playing hobby, and I think I devote as much column inches as I care to regarding the time I spend on MMORPGs like WoW, but I made it down to the cities a number of times this last year for various different things and those trips saw little to no representation here. I'd also like to try and branch out every now and then and experiment a bit with the sort of posts I make. I've pondered a number of different things I might try: including a stream of consciousness post (I actually started writing one once, but ended up deleting it), posting the odd short story (that would actually require me to write a short story which is something I haven't done with any regularity since high school), and having a bad poetry day.

I think that meets my quota of introspection, time to talk a little anime.

Yesterday I finished watching Night Wizard. It is a thirteen episode action adventure anime based on a Japanese role playing game. The characters are interesting enough, I'd have preferred a few of them be just a little more fleshed out, but none of them were terribly two-dimensional. The plot is solid, nothing really cutting edge, your basic urban fantasy setting with demons attacking the Earth and a secret group of wizards charged with defending it. Add to that a quest to gather seven magic jewels, and a plot twist towards the end of the series that was adequately foreshadowed and follows the internal logic of the anime and I'd say it was worth my time watching.

There are a number of different ongoing anime series I've been following of late. Two of which have me extremely excited, but naturally I'm going to start off talking briefly about a third series I recently started. Taking advantage of the lapse of a North American license I started watching Futari wa Pretty Cure in December. I've made it through 32 of the 49 episodes. It is enjoyable magical girl fun. No real innovations going on, it is pretty much like watching Sailor Moon, but with much better animation, less annoying characters, and a better sense of continuity from episode to episode (although it is still pretty much a monster of the week show). If you like the magical girl genre, then you could do far worse than watch Pretty Cure. If you are interested in checking out some magical girl anime, then Pretty Cure would be an excellent start (although Card Captor Sakura would be better still).

Moving on to the two new series that really have me excited. The first of which is Shion no Ō. The series starts off introducing the eponymous character Yasuoka Shion an eleven year old girl on the cusp of becoming a professional shogi player. We quickly learn that when Shion was four she witnessed the brutal murder of her parents, the killer was never caught, and Shion hasn't spoken a word since that tragic night. The murder mystery is played against the backdrop of Shion's life as a professional shogi player, and I find the interplay between and the gradual revelation of connection between these two seemingly disparate things extremely fascinating. The characters are first rate - gloriously complex with numerous layers and facets. The episodes have been an interesting and enjoyable mix of unfolding mystery and suspense with each leaving me more anxious for the release of the next.

The other anime that has really caught my attention is Clannad. The anime is based on a visual novel developed by Key, and adapted for animation by Kyoto Animation (the studio also produced The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, so count me among their fans). Key and Kyoto Animation are also responsible for Kanon (Key the visual novel, and Kyoto Animation the anime) about which I had plenty of nice things to say back in April. The characters are the main draw for me here - I find them to be incredibly likable - the more I watch them, the more I want to learn about them. Thus far Clannad has be a bit lighter in tone than Kanon, a little less melodramatic, but the emotional impact of the developing plot has been every bit Kanon's equal. With few exceptions the episodes leave me feeling peaceful and content, juxtaposed with a growing desire to watch the next episode.

On a final note, much like last year, I started the new year off with a bit of browsing on Engrish.com. That I find this picture so amusing is proof that my time spent as a guild member of KotW on Dark Iron has corrupted me.