Thistle-Thistle-Thistle-Thistle-Thistle-Thistle Chaser! Chaser!

Frantic, frantic! I was away from work for the first half of the day to take the kitty to the vet. Not just the normal vet, but the cardiac ultrasound guy! (It's a yearly thing for my kitty, she's got a heart problem.) While it's an expensive as heck thing, it's so cool to see! You can see her heart beating on the screen! And when he zoomed in, you could see the valve opening and closing! (And all in nice black and white, so it's not like I had to see blood or anything.) Very cool and interesting! Good enough results, too: She's not gotten any worse. (It's not expected to get better, the best we hope for is "not worse".) So yay!

Got here, had extra (but not unexpected) work waiting for me. Also need need need to catch up on the flist before the end of the day (cannot go into the weekend behind! I come in on Monday to too many already!).

Since I had a little time before going to the vet this morning, I had intended to catch up on anime. Darned moon was good in FFXI, so instead I fished! Heh. At least I don't hate fishing! I need the money from it so badly. (I love crafting to death, but it's the lack of money that keeps me from doing it more.)

I had a "funny" FFXI experience yesterday: In the game you do quests to get fame. The highest fame you can get in a city is "hero level", which is what I currently have. This means I don't have to do anymore quests. For some odd reason, I felt like doing more of them this week. First I cleared up the easy ones I had left to do, then yesterday I decided to do a harder one.

I jumped on a chocobo and rode out into a jungle, intending to clear off signposts (at some NPC's request). Dismounted, cleared off the first one, paused to admire my work. Distracted, my internal dialogue started up:

...oh look! There's a tiger! They're so cool looking! (They look like giant grey sabertoothed tigers.) And look, it's coming right at me! Isn't it funny when their random wandering makes it look like they're coming right at you... hey, why is it going into attack animation..? Eek! Ack! Aie! *die*

So blech, on a quest I didn't even need to do, I died! But it was still funny, I had just stood there as something that wanted to eat my innards walked up and did so! Hee. (Luckily Aire rode out and raised me, and then it happened! Our eyes met! We fell in love! Le sigh! <3 )

Back to flist reading!

Thistle-Thistle-Thistle-Thistle-Thistle-Thistle Chaser! Chaser!

Frantic, frantic! I was away from work for the first half of the day to take the kitty to the vet. Not just the normal vet, but the cardiac ultrasound guy! (It's a yearly thing for my kitty, she's got a heart problem.) While it's an expensive as heck thing, it's so cool to see! You can see her heart beating on the screen! And when he zoomed in, you could see the valve opening and closing! (And all in nice black and white, so it's not like I had to see blood or anything.) Very cool and interesting! Good enough results, too: She's not gotten any worse. (It's not expected to get better, the best we hope for is "not worse".) So yay!

Got here, had extra (but not unexpected) work waiting for me. Also need need need to catch up on the flist before the end of the day (cannot go into the weekend behind! I come in on Monday to too many already!).

Since I had a little time before going to the vet this morning, I had intended to catch up on anime. Darned moon was good in FFXI, so instead I fished! Heh. At least I don't hate fishing! I need the money from it so badly. (I love crafting to death, but it's the lack of money that keeps me from doing it more.)

I had a "funny" FFXI experience yesterday: In the game you do quests to get fame. The highest fame you can get in a city is "hero level", which is what I currently have. This means I don't have to do anymore quests. For some odd reason, I felt like doing more of them this week. First I cleared up the easy ones I had left to do, then yesterday I decided to do a harder one.

I jumped on a chocobo and rode out into a jungle, intending to clear off signposts (at some NPC's request). Dismounted, cleared off the first one, paused to admire my work. Distracted, my internal dialogue started up:

...oh look! There's a tiger! They're so cool looking! (They look like giant grey sabertoothed tigers.) And look, it's coming right at me! Isn't it funny when their random wandering makes it look like they're coming right at you... hey, why is it going into attack animation..? Eek! Ack! Aie! *die*

So blech, on a quest I didn't even need to do, I died! But it was still funny, I had just stood there as something that wanted to eat my innards walked up and did so! Hee. (Luckily Aire rode out and raised me, and then it happened! Our eyes met! We fell in love! Le sigh! <3 )

Back to flist reading!

Can't we all just get along? (FFXI)

The big ranting post from whren makes me sigh and shake my head. This whole "Japanese players are evil, the whole game is tilted in favor of the Japanese players, etc" issue annoys me so much.

Am I the only person who believes that that we, the NA players, are in fact more like "guests" on their game? They played it for how long before it was released in English? A year? More? The game was created in Japan, yes? It was released there first, released in the Japanese language. English was secondary. It's quite clear where the priorities are.

Is that unfair? Maybe, but what in life is fair? Hollywood releases blockbuster movies in English first -- is that fair to non-English speaking countries?

It really annoys me when people make that post like the one last week. The subject line was something like "Wake up, people, /checking without asking is no longer rude! This is OUR game now!". What right do the new kids on the block have to come in and try to force change onto the older players?

I guess for me it comes down to a MUSH-like mindset: If I joined a new MUSH, I would never, ever, ever expect the game to be changed by me. Even if I joined with 100 of my closest friends, I would not expect things to change for me. Why do NA players act differently? Swarm in, want to take over and change everything? Sure, we pay membership money as well, but that gives us the right to play on the game, not take it over and change it however we want.

(I'm posting this in my LJ instead of one of the FFXI comm groups because the majority of random stranger NA players will disagree with me. I don't care about them, I'm interested in what people I know and respect think.)

Can't we all just get along? (FFXI)

The big ranting post from whren makes me sigh and shake my head. This whole "Japanese players are evil, the whole game is tilted in favor of the Japanese players, etc" issue annoys me so much.

Am I the only person who believes that that we, the NA players, are in fact more like "guests" on their game? They played it for how long before it was released in English? A year? More? The game was created in Japan, yes? It was released there first, released in the Japanese language. English was secondary. It's quite clear where the priorities are.

Is that unfair? Maybe, but what in life is fair? Hollywood releases blockbuster movies in English first -- is that fair to non-English speaking countries?

It really annoys me when people make that post like the one last week. The subject line was something like "Wake up, people, /checking without asking is no longer rude! This is OUR game now!". What right do the new kids on the block have to come in and try to force change onto the older players?

I guess for me it comes down to a MUSH-like mindset: If I joined a new MUSH, I would never, ever, ever expect the game to be changed by me. Even if I joined with 100 of my closest friends, I would not expect things to change for me. Why do NA players act differently? Swarm in, want to take over and change everything? Sure, we pay membership money as well, but that gives us the right to play on the game, not take it over and change it however we want.

(I'm posting this in my LJ instead of one of the FFXI comm groups because the majority of random stranger NA players will disagree with me. I don't care about them, I'm interested in what people I know and respect think.)