Imagemania!

Revenge of the Air Conditioning

This summer has been a hot one in Memphis; I don't know whether or not it has been the hottest summer since I've lived here, but between the news and walking back and forth to my car, it wouldn't surprise me. We had triple digit heat for nearly four straight weeks with the heat index reaching as high as 130 degrees, simply put, it's been fucking hot (today it will only be 90 degrees, perhaps I should have broke out my winter coat). So with that going on, the air conditioning breaking anywhere will make for some miserable times (the Memphis area has reported 18 heat-related deaths, almost one a day due to the heat). My problems started on the way back from the BBQ, I was about halfway between Memphis and Nashville when I noticed I wasn't getting A/C, I figured I was just pushing the car too hard and tried to fiddle with the dash to no avail. At any rate, it was nighttime by this point and I was driving 90 down the interstate so I just rolled the windows down and went on my merry way. Once I rolled into Memphis and was going at a slower speed the A/C seemed to kick back in and I didn't think anything more about it.

The next day, which I took off, I had some errands to run. Once again the A/C seemed ok; I was getting cold air at any rate, so I proceeded to run my errands, get groceries, etc. My last stop was Taco Hell; I had just spent time in the grocery and was hungry, so naturally fast food. While I'm sitting there I can hear the car in front of my making a squealing noise...or at least I thought it was the car in front of me, as it turned out, that was my car. At this point I start to panic, my engine has always been a fairly quiet one and I wasn't getting a check engine light, but something was clearly wrong. I noticed the A/C starting going out again, so I played with the dash dial a bit and the noise went away went I turned the heat on (oh the irony). So at this point I'm starting to think there is an issue with the A/C, I can get cool air and the check engine light isn't on, so it must not a critical issue, I'll get it checked out when I get paid again. Fast forward a week and I get to work only to observe smoke coming from my engine, now I really freak the fuck out. So I pop the hood and sure enough, the smoke is coming from the area my A/C is located in. I wasn't entirely certain what the problem was, as it could have been a few things, but one thing was clear, my belt system was connected to the A/C unit and if that was locking up, then my belt might snap while I was driving. I couldn't ignore the issue any longer and at lunch I drove it to my mechanic, during this drive the check engine light finally came on.

I get the car there and tell them what's going on, they suspect the A/C compressor has locked up but they decided to run a diagnostic to be certain (i.e., we're gonna make some kind of money off this guy). Since I didn't care what the issue was, I wasn't getting in the car again until it was fixed I had them take me home. When I got home I pulled up AutoZone's website to get a general idea what a new compressor might cost, for my car, the prices were coming in around $200, I cringed, but things could be worse. I got a call about two hours later and it was indeed a locked A/C compressor, it was at this point things got worse. The mechanic told me the price of a new compressor would be $439 and he was going to have to overnight it (talk about a price mark up, cha-ching!), and because of where the unit was in my car, they were going to have to take half the front end apart to get to it, labor $500, I also had to pay for the diagnostic, new freon and some sort of disposal of old freon, final estimate $1,200. Oh, and they wouldn't be done until the next day. Fuck. Next day rolls around and I get a call, started out great, the mechanic says he quoted me too high on the compressor, it was $419. /facepalm At any rate, I got there, everything was fixed (the check engine light remained on, was 3-4 days later when it went off) and I had A/C again, but my bank account was pissed. Obviously this was going to happen eventually, but fuck, it was about the worst timing possible.


XP Bitches!

Moving on, one of the things that came out of the BBQ was a need for the Obsidian to start taking Abyssea seriously as reports were starting to surface that folks were not only XPing there, but that the XP/HR was blowing everything out of the water. Our first attempt to do an Obsidian XP party was during the BBQ and sadly it didn't go very well, seems there was more to it than showing up and killing mobs for an hour. We tried to kill Crapaudy (or Crapdaddys as I like to refer to them), and it just wasn't working as we didn't know enough about the system to make things happen.

Our second and subsequent attempts have been infinitely better, most of us have capped out 4-5 jobs (just two for me) and we've only done 6 of these XP runs. The key to it all is getting the lights, our strategy is to mix magic and normal attack kills at the start to cap out azure and pearl light. Azure light is easy to get to 30, you just need to have nukers with a sense of timing. Pearl light is a bit trickier as it's not 100%, this one you simply have to have patience with because it may take up to an hour to get the 30 lights needed to cap. Once capped it's an all out offensive where we focus on kill speed and managing diminishing lights.

We have tried our hand at Ruby and Amber lights, but trying to force these lights seems to cut into efficiency. Our last run we just focused on killing quickly and over the course of 3.5 hours I pulled in 15 merits. Saturday's run would ultimately see me finish the day getting 17 merits, but the last two were earned while we hunted for NMs to work on quests.

Gearing Up

I love getting XP this way, I've always hated meriting, but at the end of the day I want the gear in Abyssea more and there is simply an amazing collection of gear to be had. Some of it is easy to get, some of it absurdly hard, but a lot of it is just flat out better than most other gears.

Ninja

Ninja got a ton of customization out of the new gear, more -PDT gear, more MDB gear, more Evasion gear, more Ranged gear and more Enmity gear.

For most of the new weapons, if they weren't involved with the Magian Trials, then there wasn't much to see, however katana was one of the exceptions. The Hochomasamune has a slightly higher DPS than a completed Sekka, but five more points of base damage, so it would be a main hand weapon. That DEX +10 is simply sick and will allow a NIN to change up their WS gear a bit (I'll get into more detail in a moment). Early testing on the Fast Cast has shown it to knock off about 3 seconds from Ni recast which is pretty significant if it's found to be factual.

The Iga Erimaki neckpiece isn't awe-inspiring as some of the other new items, but it is a NIN only piece and it would work great in an evasion tank set-up which often suffers from lack of accuracy.

Juogi and Anguinus Belt in a WS build are just insanely awesome pieces, add in a Hochomasamune and NIN WS will go from "lulz" to "eh, not so bad", which is a huge step up. The drawback here is you lose 10 STR (and 10 DEX if you don't have the katana), and there's no way to really make up for this loss. I suspect there will be a large increase in damage despite that, but until I have all three pieces (or ever have), I can't say for certain.

The Ocelot Gloves replace Dusk Gloves and I can't get these soon enough, I hate having decreased movement speed. The Ocelot Trousers make a fantastic addition to Enmity and Evasion tank build and giving those builds some DD ability with the ACC and Haste.

If nothing else, the Missile Boots have a cool name, but they actually do have more, especially in a slot that NIN doesn't have a ton of Ranged options for.

The Terebellum Mantle is a Gunner's Mantle without the negative stats and makes a fantastic addition to Ranged sets.


Black Mage

Unlike NIN, the new gear for BLM wasn't really about customizing, it was about maximizing.

The Augur's set is like Nashira +1, and any piece would be nice, but the feet really jump out at me, they are just an outstanding piece for BLM.

If your MACC is solid then you would have to be a complete idiot to pass a Yhel Jacket up. I'm salivating just looking at that pic, that's just an insane amount of boost to nukes!

Once the BLM community started seeing this piece, those without it immediately became gimp. Now I won't pretend to be one of those preening, prissy little BLMs and call folks without it gimp, but it is an outstanding piece and not overly difficult to get, so not having one is kind of silly.

The Goetia Chain is the BLM specific piece offered in this expansion and it should be a fantastic piece for when your BLM is having MACC issues.

I may have to prostitute my mom to get a Hirudinea Earring, but it will be worth it. Having an Aspir/Drain piece in an earring slot is awesome as you won't lose anything there on Dark Magic if you macro it in.

Outside of body pieces, there hasn't been much standing gear when it comes to refresh, the Serpentes pieces help resolve this issue some by offering a tic in the hands/feet slots.

Actually Getting Things Done

One of the things I had resolved to do with this update was tackle some things I had been putting off, mainly missions and maps. The maps were all CoP maps and for obvious reasons they had never been worth the trouble (level capped areas that I never go to and would require help to get said maps). With the level restriction taken off the CoP areas, getting these maps suddenly became very easy. I now have all the maps in the game except two of the Sea maps (which I will get in the next update), it's a silly goal, but I've always wanted to have a complete map set for some reason and I'm almost there.

The missions were a different type of beast because I was going to need help. Like the Prommy maps, I was putting off Apocalypse Nigh until I could safely move through those zones. So a couple of weeks ago I talked a bunch of people into helping me get this done (along with Tammyrose who had not beat it either), fight wasn't a smooth as I was hoping it would be, but we prevailed and set the record. So Magnetic Earring mine.

A few days before completing AN, Rues sent me a tell about one of the ToAU fights (that fucking Yag NIN). I was reluctant at first as I had wanted to put an Obsidian group together to finish this, but I never got the impression those who needed it were serious about completing the storyline, so I agreed and joined up with them. We burned through the missions, 5 levels really do make a difference. On the same day I finished AN we also did the Alexander fight and went 1/1 on it with a couple major assists courtesy of Mav and Jess. So Jalzahn's Ring mine.

With ToAU beat I could move onto the Odin Prime and Alexander Prime SMN fights. Last night was my first run on Odin and now Aesir Torque mine.

I still need to finish the Moogle and Shantotto expansions as well as the most recent WotG city quests. Not too particular if I finish the expansion missions before the update, but I really want to get the WotG quests done so we're ready to go when the update arrives.


Magian Trials

As I mentioned in my last blog post I worked on Magian Trials during the BBQ, the one I spent the most time on was for the Eva Sekka. I had finished all but one trial on the -PDT katana before the BBQ, but I needed level 80 to wield a Sekka, so there was no rush to complete this. It would take an XP run in Abyssea before I dinged 80 and once that happened I spent the following weekend in the Necropolis laying waste to Skeletons. While there I also did the first two trials on Uzura.

During the BBQ I mostly worked on one trial and that was the Dragon portion of the Eva Sekka, which I must say was a general bitch to complete since I decided to go off the beaten path and work alone in Riverne. Not the best of ideas as I could have just teamed up and killed Puks in the Woodlands in a fraction of the time, ah well. At any rate, I had planned to do the next two Trials with Q since he would be killing vermin for his last Relic trial. I figured we could kill diremites until I got 200 and then we'd move to a place with more abundant vermin. What I learned about diremite is that they are a bottleneck trial. You see there are only two places in the game where they pop for XP, Pso'Xja, which has no wind weather, and Aydeewa, which does have wind weather. Oh, and their repop times are 16 minutes to boot. Because of this, diremite are overcamped, which is great for a mob of ninjas killing them en masse, but sucks for Q as he needed TP+killshots. So that part of the plan wasn't going to work and we parted ways. Finishing the diremite took three Windsdays and some wind weather; there were always people down there and on the trial so it went quick. My next step was to head out to Attohwa Chasm where Q was pillaging and join him in the slaughter. I headed out there Saturday and was by myself for a bit, Kreoss joined me on Firesday since he also had vermin on his dagger trial and we knocked out a huge chunk of his trial and some of mine (wind weather). We then went to Abyssea and proceeded to get a massive amount of XP. After that it was almost Windsday again and this time I pulled and Q killed, when all was said and done, I needed 18 more kills. The last trial was colibri and this was nothing short of crazy. You see, like the diremite, there aren't a lot of place to kill colibri, but there sure are quite a few trials requiring them, so teaming up was the only practical course of action. Because of this teaming up, it took me two Windsdays to know out this trial, the first one we killed 149 colibri, the second one I only needed 88 colibri and got that with 8 game hours left on the clock still.

So there you have it, two Sekka complete. It's like have an Earth Staff and a Wind Staff rolled into one, while still having an awesome DPS. I think my next Sekka will focus on the INT/MAB katanas because they are going to be stupid easy to complete and I want to give myself a bit of a break before going down the MDB path. That said, no more trials until subjobs are leveled.


Nature is Weird

What you are seeing there is a photo taken of Saturn's North Pole. Yes, folks, that is a natural hexagon swirling around the polar cap of a giant gas planet. The center of that is large enough to fit the Earth comfortably inside the walls of the hexagon. It's as bizarre as it is cool.

Running Down a Dream

So I haven't updated my blog since the BBQ, partly because I've actually been busy at work since the my last update and partly because so much has happened in that time frame I'm not sure where to begin. I'll begin with my quick rundown of the BBQ itself (yes more shit happened that I'm not covering and yes I had a blast).

Obsidian BBQ

What can I say that Qtipus didn't already cover in his blog? Well...for the most pair my hair didn't do anything batshit crazy the whole time, not sure what it is about the way I sleep, but more often than not I wake up looking like I belong in a punk band. Also, the drive there was literally a 42 hour marathon. It started on Tuesday, I woke up around 10:30 AM my time, showered, packed, watered the banana tree (and one of the cats by mistake), checked to make sure I had my token maybe 50 times, etc. and I left a little after noon to meet up with Qtipus. Now I knew we'd be driving most of the night, but I figured we'd be there and sleeping within 24 hours at the very worst, what I didn't count on was just how many stops at Wal-Mart we'd make (and subsequently all the Mudflaps we'd find). For me a road trip is all about how fast I can make it, an eight-hour drive for me consists of one stop: gas, food and a piss break, I go into robot mode, Q looks for robots lol! At any rate, we arrived at our destination around 2PM local time, Q had managed to get some sleep (at a rest stop while the sun was coming up), Kreoss got quite a bit of sleep, and me...well I dozed off a few times, but my body won't let me sleep for very long in a moving vehicle (god forbid I ever decide to go to Japan or something). So when we got there I was dog tired, but, as one might expect, meeting up with everyone got the adrenaline flowing and it was another nine hours before I was too tired to continue functioning.

The next day I was the last to get up (I think), someone made breakfast, pancakes I think, but I'm not a morning person and that includes eating, so I can't say what went on for the first hour or two I was up. When I did get up, I noticed it was Earthsday in the game, thus I found myself killing dragons for my Magian trial, and this would inadvertently be a running joke all weekend. Most of the day was spent playing video games, chit-chatting, etc. One would think a summit of the Obsidian leaders would lead to long, drawn out discussions about Final Fantasy XI and how to best run events and such, but one would be wrong. We did talk about our characters, in-game goals and Obsidian related goals, but for the most part, FFXI was more about something we all had in common not something we obsessed over. That evening we ate at a Japanese Steakhouse, and let me say, the food was fucking awesome, especially the rice, that could have been all I had to eat and I would have been happy. When we got back to Mt. Cranky it was almost Earthsday again, most everyone went outside to look at the stars (for those who don't know me, my original ambition in life was to be an astrophysicist), but the Magian trials were calling and the sky being unlikely to yield anything new, I stayed inside. Thirty minutes into Earthsday and Q decided he'd had enough of me and my damn trials by demanding I join everyone outside. I figured it was best to not be anti-social and dejectedly put the controller down.

Saturday was our one and only LS event, it was an Odin Einherjar run. It's a bit different doing something like that with living, breathing people in the room, which was kind of cool and I wish we had done something larger (like a CoP Dyna run or something). After Einherjar we left for Baltimore to go watch the Orioles lose...ahem, play. For the most part this was a fun time, except the asshole sitting on my right (not Kaelis, he was on my left), fucking jackass kept leaning forward and blocking my view! By the 8th inning I was getting vocal about this, but even though the jerkoff was trying to lean back (I'm assuming to avoid any confrontation), he kept creeping forward until he was blocking my view again. I know the seats were kind of small, but ffs, sit your ass down like a normal human and not the fucking Hunchback of Notre Dame! You jackass!

On Sunday we had the actual BBQ, which once again I found myself doing Magian trials (now before you give me shit, please observe, Kaylea went to Dynamis). Unknowingly, being inside was probably a good thing given that everyone else came in with a sunburn. During this time inside I received a few tells about the BLMs making a mess of things, being the micromanaging asshole that I apparently am, I decided to investigate and find out what the problem was. Turns out some people had suggested they do things differently without me there, this pissed me off. It still pisses me off. Did I mention this shit pissed me off? While it essentially reinforced what I've been saying all along (i.e. BLMs multi-tasking is not the best way to go about things), it also showed that left to their own devices, people won't stick to the plan and that's what upset me the most. Simply put, I don't give a shit how it was done in the past, when it comes to playing BLM in Obsidian these days, it's my way or the motherfucking highway. For those of you who like to bitch about the way I run my ship (and should you be reading this blog), you're not in charge (and thus free of taking the blame for anything that goes wrong) and you're way has been outdated for a long fucking time now, just give it a rest already because shit ain't changing!

Monday was the last day everyone was together, and it wasn't for long as half of us were leaving at noon. Kreoss and Kaylea were flying out, while Kaelis and Erimentha were hitting the road. Because of this, I drew the short straw and had to stay behind and guard the fort (ok, I volunteered to stay), needless to say I did virtually nothing, even in FFXI all I really did was chat. By the time Qtipus and Suraph got back, I was bored out of my skull. We started the evening out watching Monday Night Raw, but that morphed into three hours of South Park Tower Defense, which was a hilariously fun game. When done, we packed our shit and got ready to depart in the morning.

Tuesday promised to be another marathon drive, but it wasn't nearly as long, myself and Qtipus covered the same amount of ground in about half the time (and actually found the Transformers we were looking for). Unfortunately we didn't cover it fast enough and I knowingly put my character in the hands of Qtipus so I wouldn't miss Einherjar. Now, needless to say, I expected things to be fucked with and they were (Q sent my gil to my mules, rearranged my furniture, changed my HP to Raboa, moved gear and items all over the place and he even found time to log into every mule and clear my inboxes forcing me to walk each mule back to the delivery box to return my main character's gil), but the thing that he managed to fuck with me the most about was actually nothing at all. You see Q made a casual reference that some of my gear had been hidden on my mules, this in turn led me to look at each of the mules, which eyeballing them yielded nothing out of place. Me being too obsessive to let this rest (and failing to recognize Q really was fucking with me), I pulled up my Altana Cubby and proceeded to run down my inventory list (which I update weekly with my inventory and what character it's on) and verify everything was where it should be. All told, I spent about three hours looking for shit that was never out of place to begin with. Thanks Q, I could have been doing Magian Trials...

At any rate, more stuff has happened since then, some of it I'm very happy about, some of it is shit only I could care about, but that's for a different day. And yeah, the title has nothing to do with this post, I just like the song.