I’ve been asked to collaborate on a book! So although I haven’t boned half the stripper/porn star population of America, like Tiger, I’m taking an indefinite hiatus.

I love you all!

NA-1 is down receiving the new patch for Darkfall.  I’m so excited!  I can hardly type this for constant reopening of the client to check for possible server uppage.  I promised I’d put up a post about fun reads while I waited so here it is:

The Xanth series by Piers Anthony — I’ve been rereading this 35+ book series lately.  It’s fluffy adorable fantasy based in a magic land that looks like Florida (my home state).

The Dark Tower series by Stephen King — I read this every year as it is my most favourite set of books in the universe.  I heard a lot of people disliked the endings of the newer books but I thought it rocked out super hard.  Stephen King is SO THE MAN, DOG.

The Myst Readerby David Wingrove — This is one of the few books-based-on-a-video-game that I’ve actually liked.  The three books in it are amazing.  I read this every couple years as well; I just love Catherine.

The Real Princess Diaries — This is a blog I found…somehow.  I really don’t remember how.  But it’s six kinds of interesting and sometimes pretty hot.  NC-17 for sure, though.

She Obeys — Yet another blog I found and don’t remember how.  This one is much safer for work and Chloe has a writing style that I just dig.

The Superficial — A website about all the creepy, stupid, and ridiculous things celebrities do.  I’m not a huge fan of celebrity news but the guy who writes this site makes me laugh daily. 

Geekologie — Sister site to The Superficial, it covers nerdy news with the same flair.  I love these guys.

So there you have it: some shit I’ve been reading and felt like passing on to you.  Oh my god, I’d better check the patcher again.

The Darkfall patch is coming.  Tonight (well, tomorrow morning but since I won’t have been to bed yet it will still be tonight for me), in fact.  I’m trying to watch my *SQUEES* and Qs.

I am so super stoked about the magic changes, the AI restructure, the melee and archery buffs, and the new house type.  I am hoping that since I was very polite and didn’t find a house deed in any of the squintillion chaos chests I opened that my first after the patch will contain a Keep Deed.  I am in sore need of a keep so that we can remake our EVE corp in Darkfall.  My hope is that if we have a Keep, I can convince our current alliance leader to let us ally with them so we can be the coolest named clan AND be with our amazing new pals.  I’m not sure why that would work, but my Female Logic™ says that it should.

I should get back to my melee grind (I swear to god there must be a soft cap; I don’t care who denies it!) but I’ll put up a post on my current favourite reads–on the Net and IRL, ’cause I KNOW YOU GIVE A SHIT–tomorrow while I squirmily wait for this patch.  

And maybe after I’ll work on Bruno’s sweater some more.  The pitiful eyes he gives me when he has to venture into the snowy backyard to tinkle with hardly any fur on are really starting to get to me.  Also, remind me to post the picture of my Bantu Knots.  My hair is sorta long enough to do them and so I’ve finally achieved my goal of looking like the semi-black version of Jane in Liar Liar.

For those of you who follow my Twitter or Facebook updates, this is old news.

Something was up with Comcast internet for us.  Everything was crawling and we had 300 – 2k+ ping in Darkfall.  We called and they tweaked and it came back so they finally sent out a guy (who had to call in another guy) and it turned out to be a bad modem.  The second one in three months.  After getting the internet issue sorted, earlier this week my video card bit the dust.  This is the third video card (after two motherboards) that’s gone out on me.  I think I must put off some sort of expensive-and/or-inconvenient-computer-bit-ruining field.

Anyway, I’m finally back in business; now I’m just waiting on that other shoe…

Someone made me drink a buncha brandy this evening so this post is going to be disjointed and pointless.

NEVERTHELESS.

I had a ton of fun tonight.  Zealot’s (the alliance Pain Train is in with Black Shields and Blood Thirst) town was raided by a previous allied clan.  I’m not sure what their beef is except they must be SO CRAZILY JEALOUS.  I totally got smoked in the first five seconds but I got a mount and a 1H and shield and tried to help after it was apparently over (Yeah, I suck but you can’t fault my dedication!).

Later, Jesse and Drem and Ken and Dan and I wandered around hitting mines and harrassing AFKers and random defenders in towns in Darkfall’s massive world.  I love getting the special ore from mines that don’t belong to me.  It’s like Christmas without the tree to clean up or presents to buy.

I also got a PvP lesson from Loc Legend.  I dunno if I mentioned him before but he’s another at the top of my Cool Motherfuckers from Black Shields list.  I believe I horrified him by my PvP UNprowess but he was patient and nice anyhow.  Plus he can take a joke like no other.  I heart his guts, yo.

All in all, Darkfall is super fucking win right now.  Though transfers are tomorrow and I dread to think what Friday will bring for me (death, dismemberment, and DRUNKEN DEBAUCHERY?!) I’m loving this game.

Also, I love you.  Yes, you.  The one in the back with the weird tic.  You’re adorable.  *kiss*

It’s always mortifying to arrive at the bank, attempt to open it, and instead find yourself astride someone else’s mount.

Darkfall’s been pretty enthralling lately since Jesse got us into Pain Train.  I’ve made a couple new friends in the alliance (though it seems like a lot of them aren’t partial to new people or girls h up their testosterone-aimed games).  My favourite so far is Dremlock StraightRocked.  We’d actually met him a couple of weeks before when Dan, Ken, and I were out on a new player hunt in Human lands.  Now, I’m not always the best shot but I’m usually quick to spot people and ninja-eyed him while we were running through the woods high-fiving each other on our last two newbie conquests.  We hauled ass over to him and started prying the top off our can of Been-Playing-A-Month Whoop Ass.  He turned around and within four minutes crushed all three of us.  He messaged me to say we’d probably picked the wrong newbie and all I could say was that at least we’d died bravely.  *grin*  Anyway, he’s an ultra cool guy and teaches me PvP tips and takes me along to sieges too.

On the PvE front, we’ve been hanging out in PnT’s city crafting and exploring the surrounding areas.  One of my favourite aspects of Darkfall is that you don’t know much about a mob unless you’ve fought it before.  It’s terribly exciting to ride up on a bear or spider or four-armed abomination and attack without knowing how difficult the fight’s going to be or what it will drop or what you’ll get from skinning.  “Oooh, let’s kill it” are currently my most uttered words (followed closely by “MotherFUCK, I died” and “Where are the Swiss Cake Rolls?”).

Travis bought me Fallen Earth to try out and that’s been taking up most of my day time.  It’s an mix of FPS-type combat and normal MMO questing and crafting.  I’ve made several Dark-Tower-themed characters and, of course, a Gankis Khan incarnation.  I’m not terribly fond of how tedious the levels are but the story has been interesting so far.  It’s hard to make the transition from Darkfall to Fallen Earth so I spend a good portion of my play time irritated that I have to keep moving out of first person mode.  It’s always fun to hang with Travis, though; we’re all about the highbrow shit talk.

Unrelatedly, my scarf knitting has come to a screeching halt as I woke this morning to find the puppies had opened a velcro-closured messenger bag (WITH WHAT THUMBS I WANT TO KNOW), shredded all eight skeins inside, chewed up (and must have swallowed ’cause I cannot find them ANYWHERE) a set of circular needles with cable, and demolished Robert’s scarf that was half knit on said needles.  I cried when I saw the mess.  Guess I’ll be starting on the puppies’ sweaters earlier than I’d meant.

Perhaps that was their plan all along.

An uninteresting and horrid facet of my fucking ridiculous procrastination issue is that I don’t do things unless I have ALL the tools I might need to do them (and I especially love it if I have to run out to buy them ’cause then I’ve expended all the energy I was going to use to actually do something on buying supplies for it and put it off ’til tomorrow).  For instance, it’s difficult for me to do the dishes if we don’t have dish soap, dishwasher detergent, JetDry, scrubby sponges, and one of those brushes that dispenses soap when you push a button near the handle.  I don’t know why those are so important when my dish-doing is usually comprised of a rinse and place location in the dishwasher.  But I just don’t feel right if I don’t have every single item on my list ready.  JUST IN CASE.

“What the fuck does this have to do with Darkfall?” you ask.  Good question and watch your mouth or I’ll wash it.  First off, it totally explains my lack of posts.  I haven’t been doing anything interesting ’cause I’ve been getting all the tools I might possibly need to play.  This entails getting stats up so I don’t die in two hits (my god, I’m so tired of seeing Brownies and even more tired of seeing people coming to chase me away from their Brownies).  I’ve been leveling my tailoring and then making ass-tons of Cloth Armguards to get my Trueforge Armor to 55.  I’ve also been leveling my magic and picked up Earth magic, Spell Chanting, and Witchcraft.

Moving on!  As it turns out, a good friend of ours from EVE is playing Darkfall as well.  Jesse is BADASS and hella fun, though I think sometimes our filthy humour and mouths quietly horrify him and make him glad he lives far away.  It also turns out he’s in a superamazingholyshittheyfuckedme clan who happens to have kicked out the nubcity clan we’d joined in the beginning.  I’d only heard the story from the Supreme General of nubcakesclan, inc. and it was gratifying to hear that we weren’t the only ones who thought he was a directionless douchebag who never divvied up loot.  Anyhow, we’ve been hanging with Jesse a ton and he’s shown us cool new places to farm, taken us to hamlets to steal their mine contents and harass their citizens, and generally been a kick ass pal.

So there you have it.  Aside from the knitting I’ve been doing, this is how I’ve spent the past couple weeks. 

God, I love this game.

*climbs up on her MMO soapbox*

Unauthorized third-party programs are against the TOS in most games, Darkfall included.  Often, though, and especially early in games, detection can be rudimentary and rules aren’t always enforced.  But, as should be obvious to anyone who can read, general acceptance does not equal licitness. 

It’s generally accepted that young adults will drink before they’re of legal age.  If you’re caught, however, you’ll still be punished.  Carrying pot around is usually against the law but in many states there are bigger issues so it’s overlooked.  Does that make carrying pot in your purse legal?  Does it mean if an officer felt like taking you to jail for possession you could avoid it by crying that you’d gotten away with it before and to look at all the other people doing it?  No.

It floors me how many people I see talking in the Race and Trade channels in Darkfall about macroing their characters to swim circles in the ocean, gather resources, and level up magic or melee (I’ve even seen public channel requests for assistance setting up the programs that run these macros and posts on the official game forums citing macros as the best way to have fun).  I’m even more flabbergasted by how many claim that because Aventurine hasn’t banned them, personally, these cheaters are not breaking rules and, more pitiful, that everyone else is doing it. (I just don’t understand those motherfuckers who feel that they’re above the law or that they’re somehow less responsible for the hideous state of whatever game they’re playing because they’re “not using hacks or cheats.”  Hello, that’s a bot you’re running, dipshit.)

Using unauthorized third-party programs to run macros is no different than duping items or using a speed hack.  They are all a serious detriment to our gaming experience and often lead to the atrophy and finally death of the community that keeps a game alive.  Whether you agree or believe the reasons behind fair, the TOS protects both players and developers and insures your favourite game has the best chance possible at success.

You wanna hear an embarrassing story?  Too fucking bad.  I’m gonna tell it anyway.

So, I was rolling into Shoal to meet up with Ken and head out on an epic exploration expedition.  I just needed to grab some shit for spells and I was good to go.  I was busy checking things off my mental list when I realized the bank was about 50 yards away.  A perfect place to hop off my mount so I could rummage around in my bags for reagents.  I can see there’s a guy standing near the bank but he’s hella far off so I know I’m safe.  However, as I’m pulling my mount in (there was such little green left on the progress bar I couldn’t even SEE it) that motherfucker hops on my mount and rides away!  I don’t even know how he got over to me that fast.  It was craziness.

I wasn’t too upset about the actual mount loss.  I had enough money to buy another or I could have farmed for some steedgrass.  But, oh my lord, it was so mortifying to have my mount stolen in the middle of town.  I bet everyone saw.  I swear I could hear snickers as I shuffled dejectedly to the bank.

The moral of the story here, friends, is that distances are closer, people can run faster, and your mount is always in more danger than you think.  Watch yo ass!