Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

A good weekend, just way too short. (Aren't weekends always too short?)

Good things, in a list:

- Watched the first seven episodes of Lost. Wow. I always forget how great the first season was. I've never gotten further than two or three seasons in, so I'm hoping to make it all the way this time. I know a few spoilers (including how the series ends/what the island was all about, if I'm correct about what I know), and the theme just works for me so very well. Do I need to put it behind a spoiler cut? When it's more than ten years old? Better safe than sorry, I suppose. If I remember correctly (don't correct me or confirm!), they did indeed end up having all died in the plane crash and the island was a purgatory sort of place. I love that idea so so so much!

These first episodes were genuinely creepy! The sound effects were so well done! When the monsters(?) shake the trees, there are odd metallic/industrial noises in the effects. It's just so jarring and odd and I love it to death.

- I'm afraid I have to just give up on Farscape for the near future. I tried watching it again this weekend, but it's just not a show you can multitask during. While that means it was a really good story, I cannot just sit there and stare at the screen and do nothing else. (Side note: I really want to see the new Jurassic Park movie in the theater when it comes out, but I don't know how I'll be able to sit there for two hours doing nothing else! Hopefully that I'll be in a theater will make a difference.)

- I got good RP, yay! More than that, I found a mature, experienced RPer, which is becoming more and more rare. RPers keep getting younger and less experienced (*cough* Really! It's not me getting older!), so it's getting harder and harder to find a good match for me to write with.

- The FFXIV benchmark came out this morning, and I was able to confirm that my new machine is indeed a monster. YAY! While there are a few people with a higher rating than mine, I'm perfectly fine with that. I'm usually in the "can barely run this" group of people, and now I'm near the top of the rankings. My new worry is that it will get stolen: I live on the ground floor, with a window RIGHT THERE next to my desk. Anyone could break in while I was away and steal it. :/ Unlikely, as my window faces our "quad" (grassy area where kids play and dogs crap), but it could still happen.

- I finally lost weight. After three weeks (gained a pound, stayed the same, gained pound) I lost five this week. That means in four weeks I lost five pounds. While isn't good (for me), it's better than the previous weeks had been. I'll take it. (I try not to worry how quickly the clock is running down. After surgery, you lose the most weight in the first six months, which are gone. Then the next six months it slows down but still happens. After a year, you're seriously going to be struggling to lose. I'm at 7.5 months, so my time is slipping quickly away.)

- I actually caught up on sleep this weekend, which was nice. Unfortunately my upstairs neighbors woke me at 4 AM this morning YET AGAIN, so I'm currently functioning on less than four hours sleep, which is not at all nice. Mumble grumble neighbors.

Edit: I feel like 2015 is my slowest year ever for reading. The book I'm reading now is really good, nearly perfect, yet... I lost my drive to read. Rarely in my life have I had a time where I just didn't feel like reading, so this is very strange. I've only finished eight books so far this year, so I'm pretty confident in saying that I won't be making my 50 book goal this year.

When I'm in the car, I'm listening to NPR. There's always interesting stuff to learn through them.

While driving to lunch, one of their hour-long shows went off-topic to announce an exiting story: Hillary Declares 2016 Run, Files For Divorce. The story had really interesting info on how this would impact her campaign and such. (You can listen to it or read the transcript at the link.)

They ended the story with:

"Though the news is still being developed, one thing is certain: This is an April Fools' prank."

Seriously? I can put up with "jokes" from websites and random people, but a news show should not run fake news as a joke. Not only did it piss me off because I got all excited about it (her officially running, not the divorce), but what if someone turned off their radio mid-story and missed that it was a joke? You should be able to trust a news source when they run a news story.

I suppose that's better than the evening news yesterday. They ran a story about how McDonalds was now going to be serving breakfast all day in some areas.

In unrelated, yet good news: The MMO content I mentioned this morning that I spent five hours yesterday trying to beat? Beat it tonight, woot. Took three more hours and a bunch of tries (with a party of randoms, but a party who stuck together through it all so we learned to work together). That means I got to see all of the end of the storyline for this expansion.

One of the cutscenes? More than an hour long. And there were more than a dozen other cutscenes in a row, adding up to almost three hours of cutscenes and wonderful, shocking, great, amazing storyline. Three hours. That's a whole movie worth of cutscenes! FFXIV is an amazing game.

Now I just have to hold out two months and change for the new expansion and more storyline. Don't know how I'm going to do it. :)

Huh. I have a bunch of FFXI and WoW icons, but no FFXIV ones.

I don't like writing about diet/weight nonstop, but it seems the only news I have to share lately. However, I'll make it brief. I lost three pounds this week (WOO). Yesterday my schedule got messed up (had to stay late for work meeting), so I ate a "bad" lunch (not just a deli sandwich with bread, but a large one instead of small -- I bought it telling myself I'd save half for later, knowing full well that was a complete and total lie). Felt like crap the rest of the day from eating too much.

In sleep news, stayed up too late RPing last night, but oh was it good and totally worth it. :D I suspect my RP is going to take a turn into the dark and depressing, which is A-OK with me. Skipped using the CPAP machine because it was so late, and slept wonderfully -- best sleep I've gotten in weeks. Even short on hours, I feel a lot more rested today than usual.

Still no word on the insurance covering my surgery or not. They said it could take up to 15 business days to decide (starting this week), so that puts us awfully close to the surgery date itself... Worry worry.

I did that 40 minute phone call with the nurse. Was boring and pointless, but mostly painless. Mostly stupid covering-their-asses questions like "Have you ever been so sad you didn't want to get out of bed?". First off, no. Second off, if I did feel that way, I sure as heck wouldn't tell you as that would likely red flag me on surgery.

Off to work! Have a good almost-Friday everyone!

It's been quite a nice Sunday. It feels like fall. It's so nice and cool! Our high was 68, and there's a nice very cool breeze blowing. Even better than that, the days are getting shorter. I know I'm the odd man out on this, but I hate it when it doesn't get fully dark until 9:45 PM. I like it dark in the morning when I get up, and I'd love it to be fully dark by 5 PM. It's 8 PM now and only starting to get dark out, but what an improvement that is over the past months! It gives me hope. :)

I've been thinking about that for a few days now, why I'm not like most folks and don't like longer daylight days. All I can come up with is that it feels right to get dark by 5 PM -- that it getting dark was the sign to come home when I was young, that it was dinnertime and time to come inside.

Not to make net jokes, but: "The sun! It burns!" It hurts my eyes. (People with blue eyes are more sensitive to the light and get eye damage a lot easier from it.) The dark feels peaceful to me. Wonderful. There's nothing like having it be dark outside and my whole apartment dark, other than a desk light on. A pool of light in the middle of the shadows. So nice and calm and restful and cozy.

Anyway! I hadn't intended to go on and on about that. The second happy thing was a video Phinny linked me to. It's titled How World of Warcraft Could Save Your Business and The Economy, though it could be any MMO, not just WoW.



This fellow speaks so well! And it's so nice to see someone acknowledge the skills that gamers have. I wish more business folks did.

And lastly, my icon! *points* I had intended to use it only for my book posts, but I love it so wanted to use it before that. :)

I've been playing WoW a few years now, way long enough for FFXI to be out of my brain and WoW fully replacing it. Or should be. So there I was, happily skilling enchanting on Clove, when suddenly it became time to train for a higher skill cap. "Level 75 required." ARG! How do I forget that skill cap is tied to level EVERY SINGLE TIME!

I hate leveling. I bet people laugh when I say that, since I have 8 85s, 1 84, and level 70 Clove, but I really, really do hate leveling. I don't enjoy questing, I wouldn't mind instancing if not for the other people, and archaeology is slow and boring. But darned it all, I need to level so I can craft!

How I miss the days of FFXI, where a level 1 could be a max level crafter and I was a crafting god and the richest person on the server. Blast from the past! Let's look at my old army of crafting mules!

There's one person missing from that, my clothcrafter: Damask, elvaan from Windy. And I think I'm missing a lot of jobs/classes from that, too. I think I left the game with double that number of maxed classes... Man, that sig sure does make me smile. I worked so hard on all of them. Crafting/playing the AH is so my thing, no matter the game.

Anyway! So now I'm leveling Clove. It's too late for him to get the Professor title (I did 60-70 through nothing but dailies, hardly any digging at all), but I can pound out five levels though. At least the Northrend levels were made shorter. (And yeah, Northrend is the only place I'm willing to quest, but questing as a clothie worries me. What if something hits me!)

In RP news, eeeeee! Holy cow, such good RP tonight! And bonus: That "wanted" feeling! Thistle ICly and me OOCly got an invite to join a guild. :D Unfortunately it wouldn't work ICly (they wanted Thistle to come work for their company), but they were nice and great RPers. It's like getting a job offer for a job you're not going to take -- it's nice to know someone out there wants you. :)

Between that and the really outstanding RP (to think, I almost passed it up because the guy's RSP current setting was 'smells like armpit'! but it turned out that fit the character perfectly well). They invited me to come RP with their guild anytime, too. They offered to set Thistle up in a shop ICly, but he's fine working at home (and home is private and he doesn't have to worry about anyone else being around or keeping an eye on Penny), so he said no.

I know I've written this before (heck, I nearly write it every time I get great RP), but it always amazes me how great good RP makes me feel. My chest fills with warm feelings and I feel like I'm walking lighter.

A very, very good night. :) And hopefully 71 for Clove before I go to bed! Hope everyone else had a good day, too!

Edit: What was I saying about Clove not getting Professor? o.O

Look at him go!

Thank you, Twitter, for having "In the Navy" trend and remind me of something I've been meaning to post about for days.

A few days back, I saw a meme about music in someone's LJ. One of the questions was "What was the first CD you owned?". After having a snicker over that (why do so many memes seem written by kids?), I got to thinking about it. I've never been much of a music fan, but I remember the first album I ever bought.

I think it says something about the person I became.

I have no idea how young I was, but my mother was watching Phil Donahue (old talk show) and The Village People were on. From wiki, on The Village People: "Originally created to target disco's gay audience by featuring popular gay fantasy personas,[1] the band's popularity quickly brought them into mainstream."

I saved my allowance for weeks to buy their album and I played it so much my parents eventually bought me headphones. My mother did ask me some indirect questions about why I liked them (I didn't know at the time, but it was about them being gay and she worried at my interest), but I didn't get it. I do wonder at the foreshadowing though. Was it just coincidence? Or was it some kind of early start for things I'd later believe in? Did it have an effect on me? I knew nothing about gay issues at the time, so I can't say I was drawn to it because of that, but it's still an interesting thing.

And a related subject: When it comes to fandom, I tend strongly towards slash. I have nothing at all against het couples, it just rarely pings for me. There have been two strong exceptions to this:

Bill/Laura in Battlestar Galactica. They make my heart warm. An older couple (yay!), so clearly in love.

Simon/Alisha in Misfits. (And boy do I need to make a post about Misfits soon. Best TV series I've seen in a long time!) Like Bill/Laura, you can see (and feel!) how much Simon loves her. It makes me smile, makes my chest warm, makes me sigh like a teenage girl. You can see the love in his eyes, in the way he looks at her, the way he touches her. (Related: Must see what else this actor has been in.)

I love love. I'm not seeking out a relationship in RL, but seeing well done in a show or RL couples I know? It makes me so happy inside. :)

Edit: And semi-related, vorrick pointed out that that 55 Gallon tub of lube on Amazon has gone from two available down to one. I hold some small hope that my LJ post is behind that sale. ;) Fes up! Which one of you bought it?

Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriage, was decided on in California courts today.

"Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples. The Constitution simply does not allow for laws of this sort."

Prop 8 declared unconstitutional! Of course it will be appealed yet again, but for today? A win for love! :D

Go ahead, boggle with me! I've not read HP fanfic in years. I haven't seen the last movies. I'm not into the fandom at all anymore. I have zero interest in reading fanfic from it.

Then I came across a post on my friendsfriends page. I've never done this before, but credit for everything between the two lines goes to themountaingoat. Below is her post, copied from her LJ, full credit to her. Her post is what sold me on trying the fic, and I know I can't write it better than her, so here goes. themountaingoat's post:

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I spent most of Saturday reading Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. HOLY SHIT! It may be fan fiction but it is still a work of genius. Well written, intelligent (apart from a few goofy moments), thought provoking (even if it is guilty of a couple of straw men here and there) with a far more complex plot with more complicated characters than J K Rowlings' books. Of course it totally riffs off the original and pokes fun at all the stuff that did not make any sense (like Quidditch) but it is so radically different that it could be argued that it should be considered a work of art on it's own merits.

The basic premise is that in this version Petunia did not marry Vernon Dursley and instead dumped him for an Oxford University professor and so Harry Potter grows up in a highly educational environment and becomes a child prodigy who has studied maths, science, philosophy, psychology, politics and much more to a university degree level and is also a huge fan of Lord of the Rings and all the SF classics. So this Harry is a completely different character by the time he reaches 11 years of age, however everyone else remains the same at the start of the story but because of the way things unfold they react and change over time in a completely believable way because of more or less interaction with Harry. For instance Harry considers Ron to be too stupid to be his friend so he never spends time with him. Hermonie becomes Harry's intellectual rival. And with his grounding in SF Harry immediately recognises the pattern of this story he is in and realises Voldemort must still be alive and Draco is a pawn of his father so he resolves to redeem Draco and use him for his own ends.

This Harry is perhaps less likeable, even as he uses logic and rational thought to deconstruct the magical world and get the better of all the teachers. It would have been really easy for the author to write this Harry as a total gary-stu but he does not get everything go his own way, not at all. In fact his methods of rationality often gets him into very deep trouble. Although he did not grow up living underneath the stairs and his parents provided every opportunity for him to learn they were still emotionally distant from Harry and so he does not make friends easily and has very different psychological problems to overcome.

There are many scenes which are genuinely laugh out loud moments. We get chapters written from the point of view of character's other than Harry such as Hermonie, Draco and Professor McGonagal which make for a refreshing change of pace. Something which elevates this above 99.9% of all other fan fiction is that it pokes fun at the whole fan fiction sub-culture. For example one girl has a crush on Snape and her heart flutters when he tells her to stay after class and see him. Usually in fan fiction this would prompt something really icky but here Snape crushes her dreams saying he does not return her affections and tells her to stop it immediately. With all seven books of the original series complete the author has the entire source material to go at and he uses it in very different ways, for example the Deathly Hallows get mentioned and other plot elements and characters from later books are introduced early for comic effect.

I am about half way through the 78 chapters that have been written so far and the author (enigmatically known as Less Wrong) is still on the first year at Hogwarts. He releases new chapters as and when he can, usually every couple of weeks or so. Not sure if he will write up all seven years of the story or if this Harry will defeat the Dark Lord in half the time it took the original Harry. But then when the rules are this different anything could happen, maybe Voldemort will win, or maybe Harry really will become the next Dark Lord and have to be defeated by the other characters. It genuinely could go anywhere and that makes this interesting and worth reading.

The first 63 chapters are available in a neatly typeset PDF.

New chapters are released on this website (they don't look anywhere near as nice but they do come with author notes).
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I'm only six chapters in, and boy does it make me happy that there are so many more to read! This is AMAZING. Really, really amazing. This Harry is so much more interesting! The whole "book" is! It has laugh out loud moments, and the writing is really, really good. See how many 'really's I'm using!

Even if, like me, you're not really interested in HP anymore, it's very much worth a read. I've been reading all afternoon and loving every moment of it.

I'm reading it here instead of on fanfic.net.

You know, tonight was actually really, really fun. Not that I'm going to become a raider or anything, but I enjoyed it. :D

( Don't read if you're not interested in details of a visit to the Ice Cream Center (or other ICC related things) )

I can't stop grinning. :D

There's a difference between knowing an animal is scared and holding the cat in your arms, her body rock-hard tense and flinching at every soft little noise. I know how scared Ellie is all the time, but today a workman had to come into the apartment (her first new person she's seen other than the vet eight months ago), and it was a bad time for her. I had wanted to have her be locked in the bedroom for the visit, but the guy was three hours late (ugh) so I let her out. I had to scoop her up and hold her tight so she wouldn't get out the door. (Why these apartment people never close the door while they work...) Having her hugged to my chest, I felt every flinch she made. The noises she reacted to were so soft (to me) -- the workman putting his stepstool down on the carpeted floor, him stepping onto the metal step with a booted foot. Each one made her whole body flinch. It made me understand her fear so much better than just knowing it as a fact in my head.

WoW is suddenly busy, ICly and OOCly. Yesterday I got one name freed for my new paladin (Reed, who I keep calling Reef by mistake. Hi kaelash!). While seeking out a name for the paladin, I discovered Clove was under level 10, thus could be freed. Not a good paladin name, but I also wanted to level a warlock...

Problem was, no free alt slots. I had one mule left (to buy things from a phased area for me to sell). I don't need more gold, I keep telling myself that, so I deleted it and requested that Clove be freed. Now I have the warlock, too!

...only to discover I have zero cloth heirlooms. I had enough honor to buy shoulders, but there's no chest piece for honor that I could find, so I'm back to doing jousting dailies for the champ seals to buy it. UGH. At least I already had 30 seals all on the alts who have the achievement to unlock the vendor, so I picked the one that I thought the quests would be easiest on (DK). Turns out either I suck at DK (1000000% possible) or hunter is a lot better nowadays. I just got done doing all this on Clover the hunter, it's harder and slower on Haken.

And yes, I now have Clove and Clover. I'm already confused.

In the IC end of things, it's been like blast from the past for two days now! All the old great people I used to RP with! Greyspell, Embersong, and tonight Neru! So much goodness. :D

And now for a bit of seriousness. As most people know, I have zero problems what any two (or more) consenting adults might want to do, RL or ICly. So long as everyone involved is of age and agrees, knock yourself out. However, the other side of the coin is that you shouldn't be exposing non-involved people to what you're doing. Someone needs to tell Matty the slave about this. He was walking in the middle of Silvermoon with that RSP. You want your kinks? Want to RP being a slave? I have zero issues, none at all, it's none of my business. But an RSP like that is out of line. (Edit: Rereading the RSP, I know there are much, much worse ones out there. I'm not sure why this one bothered me so very much. Even on second or third rereading, it gets my hackles up so badly. Maybe the utter lack of quality combined with the subject matter. )

Dear Drow DK, Just stop it. I don't know what the hell you're supposed to be, but stop being it. Really. No love, Thistle