Currents of Time

It appalls me some days, the emails that supposedly professional individuals deem sendable.


Anyway, THINGS!

My brother greeted me over AIM the other day with, "I pulled a tubule out of my arm." And he continues to describe this, how he'd thought it was just some weird, tiny scab, except he couldn't pick it off, so he grabbed a pair of tweezers and pulled and puuuuulled and it just. Kept. COMING. So I'm picturing, like, this super long thing coming out of him and, really, feeling kinda creeped out, and then he finishes with, yeah, it was almost a whole centimeter long. ... Geez, dude.

My father had a bout of posterior vitreous detachment, which, I can't remember if I mentioned it or not, my mother experienced a while back. In both cases I had to talk them into going to see a doctor about it, because yes it is usually harmless, but you know, there's this thing called retinal detachment and it's kind of a big deal.


FFXIV ver2.0 launches on the 27^th and they are still planning on having an open beta round. Guys. Kinda running outta time, here! Oh, Squeenix. BUT. I am pretty excited for it. New Eorzea is ... so, so different, but oh is it pretty (stop letting me forget to post screenshots, guys). And I want to know what's happened in the five missing years. And I want to know if people will ever remember us. Also I want to know if we're supposed to remember this stuff? Or did the aether burn our brains, too?

Speaking of FF MMOs, I am saddened that no one wants to play with us. It's not too late to change your mind!


AN ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO HOW MY STATE IS PRETTY. :3


Edit:
Heeey, FFXIV ARR character creation benchmark!

I've attended too many voice actor panels! Mom was listening to Terry Gross on the radio, and she has some voice / actor on, and I already knew all the answers to the questions she was asking. GET TO THE HIJINKS! (and then she did, and all was good)

Anyway, it's cold today. And it was apparently cold yesterday, but I wouldn't know, because I somehow spent the entire day asleep, because fifteen hours (UNTIL 5 PM) is a perfectly reasonable amount of time to be unconscious. And then being tired about eight hours later? Also normal. I am tired today, too. What the hell is wrong with me this time? Maybe I am just trying to hibernate through the season.

So, anyway, normally with sub-zero temperatures we'd have a fire going, buuut...

( So, here's the Christmas entry )

AND THAT WAS THE CHRISTMAS POST!

Since then, I have not done much other than work and sleep for-freaking-ever. And play a little on my shiny PS3. FFXIV starts billing tomorrow, but I remembered to set everything up, there.

The Doctor Who Christmas special was kind of disappointing, I have not had a chance to watch Top Gear (FOR SHAME, JECCA), and Sherlock was goddamn amazing except when it wasn't (which was, at least, the minority of the time, and which I am working on mostly undoing by deciding to reinterpret things).


Also this afternoon my parents and brother tried to get me tipsy, but it didn't quite work because wine is awful.

(My brother is taking a wine class at school, and for his homework he had to do a little wine-tasting thing, so we were all sitting around sipping wine for like an hour. I didn't finish any of my partial glasses, but I still ended up consuming more than I had in all the rest of my life. Unpleasant!)

The free 14-day trial for FFXI is back!

Joooin meeeeeeee.


You know you're curious.



Other related info.


Maybe I will come back to this entry after 10! For now, hey, at least LJ is working properly again.

Alternately: SE's Beautiful Billing System. sadjfhkdjgh

( Whoops, meant to cut this. FFXI DRAMA! )

Other things: I apparently magically developed an allergy to sunlight (OF ALL THINGS) sometime during the winter. Yes, we have finally worked out why I have been so damned itchy lately. It is sunlight. Why. I had thought for a while that it was a reaction to different laundry soap but then that was disproved, and then I thought it was my bedding and that was disproved, and then I thought oh shit it is my pills except then I remembered I was scratching at my arms the day I got the prescription so okay no it's not that, either... I had noticed it got worse after I'd been outside, but didn't become an issue if I wore long sleeves or if it was raining or whatever. And then one day I wore sunscreen and - huh. No itch. And then one day after that, I forgot it, and next thing I know, I'm doing my whole AAAAAUGH MUST REMOVE THE FLESH IT ITCHES IT ITCHES clawing-at-arms routine. Not happy about this, but at least I finally know the cause.

Also, half my coworkers are being massive jerks and possibly trying to kill me or something, and corporate continues to make bad, employee-stressing decisions. Had a minor meltdown after work on the 3^rd (no doubt the whole XI-account business related to that some, to be fair). I have really got to get out of here. C'mon, self. Start job hunting, already. Please?

Not sure SE was entirely aware of what they were naming some of these attacks...


ANYWAY. D-did I just land myself a spot in an Expansion Pack Missions static?


eeeeheeeheeeheee! I HAVE NO PROPERLY GIDDY ICON! I need to steal Rana's or something, I like that one. ...But I am going to overload myself with FFXIV icons if I keep this up, so maybe I hadn't better... What was I talking about? OH, YES. NEW LINKSHELL, YOU ARE THE BEST AND I LOVE YOU ♥ ♥

(If I don't watch it, I'll probably start adopting some of the emotes in real life. I was already doing the arm lift/curl thing, but it's still a bit weird now every time I catch myself doing it. FFXIV, I don't even play you that often, leave me alone. ... ha, though, hilariously, the weather in-game is doing a spectacular job of imitating the weather here. RAIN. Rain and rain and rain and the rain rain rain came down down down and I'd actually noticed it before reading the news announcement about it, apparently it's going to be a part of some sort of story line? Interesting! I did kind of like the reassurance that it wasn't just RAIN EVERYWHERE following me even into the computerland.)



THREE DOCTOR'S MEETINGS TOMORROW. Two of them before noon. I am a lunatic. (Well, when you know you're gonna have the day off from work, anyway...)



Man, I think I mark remixes differently in the music field every single time. I can't figure out if it annoys of amuses me. I suppose it could be both.

Went to the doctor again. They've put me on druuuuuugs. I have mixed feelings about this, but will spare you the paragraphs of doom. Also, side effect warnings are always hilariously alarming. (At least they are small enough pills that I will be able to swallow them? Advil gives me trouble a fair amount of time... I can't even swallow the round ones at all.)

And then I came home and spend hours making an Excel sheet of all my random gear in FFXI. What it is, what level it is, and, most importantly, which character has it. My god, do I get sick of shuffling through my three girls trying to find that one stupid item that I know I have. (Beeecause making an Excel sheet of it all is easier than just sorting it so you have Hisi and then GEAR MULE and OTHER STUFF MULE...? I wonder which character would do which... I mean, Kihara hoardes everything and Ayarei tends to only hang onto things that she'll actually have a use for... Damn my tendency to sort items onto them based on their characterisation rather than anything resembling practicality! AND HEAVEN FORBID I EVER SELL ANYTHING.)

30 Days of Video Games

( Day 23 - Game you think had the best graphics or art style )

So, I toggle between web browsers depending on what I'm doing. (And, since I'm inordinately lazy, if I have multiple accounts, I keep myself logged into a different one on each browser.) One of these browsers is Google Chrome! It is not excellent, but it is not terrible, either. However, apparently it has eaten Facebook or something? I have looked for ways to fix this but have not found any. Has anyone got any ideas? Here is what it looks like on Chrome. (And now you all know which browser I use for "FFXI on Facebook." Whee!) (Actually, since I almost never check FB using Hisime's account, I am not entirely sure when this started. Sometime in the last month or so, I know that much, at least.) Cache-clearing solved it. Took me am embarrassing amount of time to find it, but now it is functional again. Yaaay!


Anyway, this probably doesn't matter to any of you, but because I'm super cheap and my phone is pay-as-you-go, I'm going to start being (read: trying to be) on Skype more / at all. I am JeccaAM there. So if anyone ever wants to poke me that way, now you can!

I have only met one directly, but you know those people who faint dead away at the sight of blood? Even just a little bit, like from a minor nosebleed? I have always wondered how they go through life. I mean... what do you do if you have the nosebleed, and seeing blood makes you pass out? These are the things I wonder about when I stand at the sink with a washcloth smashed against my face.

TODAY'S MEME ANSWER IS TERRIBLE AND DEPRESSING, by the way.

30 Days of Video Games

( Day 09 - Saddest game scene )

I was clicking around the internet this morning trying to find if there's a set of official lyrics for "Answers" (that song I was rambling about in yesterday's entry) out there yet (it seems not, still) and ended up in a forum thread where someone linked to this trailer video and, DAMN IT, SE, I want to play that game! Where are you hiding it? :<

I mean, I presume the storyline will get there eventually, but, man... (What really bugs me is that I CAN JUST SEE THE EDGES of a really, really interesting and great story buried in there somewhere, but it comes soooo slowly and just, there is so much wrong with that game still.)

WHATEVER, I STILL HAVE VANA'DIEL. (VERSION UPDATE IN MAY WHOOOO finally getting the server merges out of the way and reopening the worlds, geez.)

... haha, not-so-funny story about the upcoming merges, which I am not sure I have even mentioned, partly because of this story! Phoenix was spared any of the drama last year 'cause we had one of the highest populations, but after the merges, we had the highest of the lowest populations... So we're on the board this time. S'UP, TITAN.

Anyway, most of us are irrationally attached to our servers in FFXI. That's important for you to know because, the night my cat was lost and I was stuck in New York freaking out and being upset (it didn't help at all that when my then-roommate called to tell me what was up, she was in what I thought to be either drunken or sobbing hysterics and unable to speak, so once we'd finally narrowed it down to SOMETHING BAD, I was like, Jesus, she's simultaneously screaming and hyperventilating, was someone KILLED, did the building burn down, has she been raped??? So I was already freaking out before we finally got to the "I LET THE CAT OUT AND HE DISAPPEARED" part), after I'd done what I could (which was basically nothing), I went clicking around the web on my PSP trying to take my mind off things and of course the first damn thing I come across is SERVER MERGES and there is Phoenix on the list and I was like ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME, FIRST YOU TAKE MY CAT AND NOW YOU TAKE MY SERVER and was one untied shoelace away from complete mental meltdown for a few seconds. Fortunately, I did a little more reading and discovered Phoenix is fine, we're FINE, we are just getting company.

BUT YEAH! That is my story about the upcoming server merges! Exciting.

SO I BASICALLY DON'T PLAY FFXI FOR A FEW WEEKS (busy + cat drama) and then the planet gets grumpy and my game gets taken away for power saving and all of a sudden it is like. CONSUMING MY THOUGHTS. And then Friday's going to roll around (servers back online! Because SE loves us and is cutting off their air conditioning and reducing light usage!) and I'm going to be like, "eh, whatever" and not log in for like a month (especially since I'll have packing/moving to do next week)? BUT RIGHT NOW I am all OH MAN FINALLY BEAT MAAT WANNA LEVEL WANNA LEVEL WANNA BEAT MISSIONS WANNA EXPLORE AREAS AND GO ON ADVENTURES AND WORK ON QUESTS AND LEVEL AND KILL THINGS AND AAAAAAA

Also my brother's been talking to a few of his friends at school and we're considering a summer plan for taking a bunch of level 1 jobs and leveling them up and up and up as high as we can over their break, just for the heck of it. (Hey, we'd be at 4/6 already! It's not hard to find 2 people.) (... heeey, if anyone wants to pick the game up for the summer, you'd be able to get pretty far in both levels and storyline!)


I thought about turning this entry into "Why Promyvion Freaks Me The Hell Out" because that has been lurking around in my brain for the last few months, but I don't know if I can really put it into words? It's just sort of a visceral fear, which probably sounds stupid. Promyvion is actually - I really don't like to go into the zones by myself, even though they're almost kind of pretty and the music is amazing, and even though there's basically nothing in them that can kill me, what with the level restriction lifted. And also no one would understand what the heck I was talking about, anyway. (IT'S NOT EVEN NOTHING WHAT THE HELL IS PROMYVION ACTUALLY, ASIDE FROM "EMPTINESS"? Half of it is probably just my brain running away with it.) Abyssea kinda gets to me, too, actually. Not as bad, but maybe that will change, given time. (I think it's mostly because of the whole THE SKY IS GONE thing, though I guess the post-apocalypse bit doesn't help, either. But it's in another reality! And so what if that reality is trying to Red Sky us now? IT'S NOT HERE YET SO I DON'T NEED TO GO CRAWL UNDER MY BED AND HIDE. ... not that that would do any good against the Abyssean hordes, but shhh.)


And found another bit of amusement on the increasingly bizarre forums! I don't particularly like what I've heard of Ke$ha, though I will admit most of her stuff is catchy as hell, but I really, really like this rewrite of Tik Tok. Though it doesn't quite line up and not that I have already tweaked it in my head so it works better, or anything, no, of course not..., IT IS AMAZING AND I LOVE IT.



...Ooh! My BotCon registration confirmation (finally) came in just now! Just under 48 hours. Haha, oh, FunPub, you're so far behind the rest of the internet... It's cute, when it's not wildly frustrating.


AND THIS ENTRY IS BASICALLY MY LIFE THIS LAST WEEK if I also mention that I am trying to fight the urge to rewatch Avatar (airbender, not blue aliens) (animated series of awesome, not live-action movie of failure). Not because I actively don't want to rewatch it (BECAUSE I DO), but because I really have other things I need to be doing with my time. (... like lurking the FFXI forums, I guess? THAT ONLY TAKES A FEW MINUTES. DON'T JUDGE ME.) (If I weren't scared of the fandom, I'd probably just lurk there, instead, but the bits I've seen from over here scare me and I don't know where the sane places are and apparently I don't care enough to go digging, so, instead I just avoid it all. ... basically I have a really hard time getting into new fandoms these days, largely because of laziness on my part.)

(Okay, so, see, due to some stuff in another department in the store, some of their employees are currently being stationed in other departments for the week - and hopefully ONLY this week - and since they're all full time employees, we lower-ranking ones are suffering an hours cut. So I have ALL OF THE FREE TIME this week. And am bored. And annoyed that OF COURSE this is when the servers would be down, now that I finally have time / energy to do things, and blah. Also I forgot to go to the post office again today WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME.)

You heard it here first, folks. Well. Unless you heard it here first. In which case, shhh.



... okay honestly I just wanted to use the subject line. After almost 8 years of "Final Fantasy XI is dieiiiiiing[sic]", that I can now in all honesty say it (and still not actually mean it!) entertains me a bit.



So,the whole truth, then: Japan's had some troubles of late. You all know this. Because of it all, power conservation is a big thing. So SE is shutting down the servers for both XI and XIV for about a week (at current estimate, anyway). From what I've seen, most everyone's been totally cool with this. Actually, SE isn't billing for XI in April because of this, and I see a lot of people saying they wish they'd bill us and donate the money to relief. (I'd be all for that, too, actually.)



(The other joke, though not from my own head, is:

"I wonder how many FFXIV players will take it as an excuse to just not come back lol."
"Both of them."

... Sorry, XIV. You're very pretty, and I'd love to see you succeed, but the massive failure that has been your life thus far still cracks me up.)

EVERYONE'S* CARDS ARE GOING TO BE LATE, I AM SORRY. I FAIL.


I AM GETTING MY BRAIN BACK UNDER CONTROL, AT LEAST. GOD, WHAT TERRIBLE TIMING. I spent all of yesterday cleaning every room in the apartment (there are only four, if you count my room and not my flatmate's - I am not going to clean her room - and the bathroom is itsy-bitsy, so it wouldn't really count if it weren't so much darned work), and it was apparently exactly the sort of mindless work I needed to start pulling myself out of the funk I got mired down in earlier this month. (I was right that it wasn't SAD-related, at least. SMALL VICTORIES. I take them where I can.)


* Actually, one of them has a decent chance of arriving on time (possibly already arrived? I don't know, and it doesn't really matter), because I got it made and mailed before things went completely sour. And I did get one in the mail earlier this week, but it's got to go through customs, so it'll be late (edit: or it won't. SAME DIFFERENCE), but it's in the mail.


Also, thank you rionaleonhart and thebaconfat! Your cards arrived... sometime in the last week and a half (way to check the mailbox diligently, self!) or so! They totally made my day. ♥



But because I'm still a bit stuck and because I've been retreating towards fandom, and because we've got a chain in progress, anyway (damn that Transformers entry and the Rudolph song, or this would be number 6), MORE Final Fantasy CRAP.

FFXI (including all four full expansions and the first three add-ons and their bonus item, though not the more recent three) is on sale at Steam for $5. JOIN MEEEE. (... but wait until January 2^nd, because that way you can cancel your account before February first and not get billed at all, because they only give you 30 days free and if your thirty days expire in the middle of the month, you get billed for a full month at the start of the following month if you aren't diligent about remembering when you need to cancel your account.)



Also I made a journal for my FFXIV character. This brings me up to, um. Nine journals that only ever see me role-playing with myself. I THINK I NEED AN INTERVENTION.

... the ninth one totally doesn't count because it's all three of my XI characters in one place. And I simply don't use two of them anymore, so really it's only, like, six or something. Four, actually! Since I use the group FFXI journal loads more than the individual journals.