thistlechaser | They say that being able to fight while naked is the sign of being a true warrior...

...but a white mage fighting naked is the sign of a soon-to-be-dead white mage. (Just a little FFXI babble, then other stuff.) In the game, you have 30 slots to hold things. Everything you wear or use takes up a slot: Armor, weapon, fishing bait, a rock, whatever. 30 slots may sound like a lot, but it's not. So since I was going to do nothing but fish this morning, I left my armor (including things like shoes, rings, everything that has any sort of protection) at home, and since without that I wouldn't be fighting, I left my weapon at home, too.

I bet you can see where this is going!

Whenever I speak of fishing, I say that it's relaxing because "you almost never have a chance of dying while doing it". Note that 'almost never'. :) The fish will never hurt you (at least where I fish), the problem comes when someone takes on some monster they can't handle, gains a clue, and makes a run for it. If you attack something and then run, it'll chase you. High level monsters get into "safe" areas this way.

So there I was this morning, naked, enjoying a little dawn fishing, when I see a message about an orc mesmerizer (the strongest of the orcs in this zone) hitting someone. I look up from my fishing, and the damned thing is right in front of me! Eek! Luckily (for me) it was hitting some way lower level guy who had been fighting a rabbit. I'm of high level enough where I could *probably* take out one of these monsters, but naked? And without a weapon? Ha! So both the low level guy and I run... chased by the orc and the rabbit. Heh. We both made it into the city in time, him hit by the rabbit all the way and me by the orc. Though I figured he was Japanese (based on name and how early in the morning it was), I /tell'ed him and made a joke about my peaceful fishing being interrupted. Though I stuck a " :) " on it to try to show that I wasn't really mad, he apologized for it (which was nice since it was totally not his fault at all... except maybe that the orc was attracted by his fight with the rabbit and I happened to be near).

Despite that, it was a good morning of fishing. I gained .7 to my next level (so slow! So slow!), and caught a lot of fish. Luckily I didn't break my rod or lose my lure (very expensive when that happens!).

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I went to Fry's (again) today, looking for the splitter for my headphones/speakers, something to backup my harddrive with, and new blank DVDs. I found an external harddrive which seemed like it would do the trick, and though it was a lot more expensive than I would have liked (nearly $200, 80 GB), I got it. It's running now and seems to be working (but will take many more hours to complete), so YAY! Plus it'll do a weekly backup of everything on its own! So it's worth the money. (Now I wish I hadn't wasted so many darned DVDs! Especially once I saw the price of a new pack of 25 blank ones. Bah.)

The audio splitter thing looked perfect, and cost only $1.60! Alas, the size of the female holes are wrong, so it won't work. It's the right idea, and the male part fits into the computer, it's just the two female parts that are wrong. I suppose I'll go back there sometime this week and try again...

Everything else is mellow and mild, nothing major to write about. Darned vacation will be over too soon! I like sitting home and doing nothing but playing games, eating, and sleeping. I feel like such a college student! ;)