I’m sure this has nothing to do with a guildie whose Scion had $500 $2800 worth of damage done to its bumper by hitting a raccoon… only to be informed he needed to get his car def capped if it couldn’t even tank a raccoon.

The Sidhe Devils Night Crew is a bit wacky.

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Because BBB asked for it

Spoiler alert for anyone thinking about it: Acer Aspire One AOD-150 + Kubuntu + Wine + WoW = a non-working WoW setup.

Wednesday night, after fiddling with it and failing pretty much all day, I gave in and finally bought a copy of Windows 7 Home Premium at the reduced education cost – it had been previously running the Windows 7 RC, it needed a legitimate OS anyhow. By midday Thursday I was reinstalling Windows onto my netbook using my mom’s new $700 Pentax camera, plus the 16 GB SDHC card from my DSi, as a cobbled-together USB drive. Oh, and I booted the Win7 DVD using UNetbootin, because my setup wasn’t epic enough yet.

So after maybe an hour or so, I had a fully-functioning netbook with its own proper OS again, and it would’ve been entirely capable of running WoW had I remembered to evacuate my WoW setup from Kubuntu. Whoops.

Oh, hey, no biggie, I’ll watch Persona: Trinity Soul instead. … Wait, you mean I left that on the Kubuntu drive as well? Damn it! Oh well, I can just download them from home.

Wait, what do you mean it’s going to take a bajillion hours to download from home? Oh hell, now I have to find new things to do. Good thing I planned for this eventuality and brought Persona 3 FES and Persona 4 home with me. So I spent pretty much the rest of my vacation playing those two, as indicated on my Backloggery.

Which led to me and Cas discussing Persona 4 on Twitter and concluding that even though she has the best followup in the game, Chie Satonaka cannot Galactic Punt Ameno-sagiri.

No matter what the picture that goes with this post may tell you.

Hope everyone had a good, or at least tolerable, holiday, and it’s good to be back.

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What I do when I’m not playing WoW: an anecdote

Man, I haven’t gotten to use one of those images since the 90s.

Anyway – this site, along with all my others, will shortly be migrating to a new VPS hosted by Linode. What does that mean for you? Not a whole lot, except that for a while this site might be unavailable, you might see repeated items show up in the RSS feed, and for a while the whole site might be pretty fugly.

You have been warned.

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Warning: Construction Ahead

One of our near and dear Devils, Julie, has been diagnosed with breast cancer, and is due to start treatment on November 9th. We’re hoping to show our love and support for Julie, and have put together Raid for the Cure, a cross-factional event taking places on the Kael’thas (US) server.

What is it? An event for both the Alliance and Horde, a cross-factional march to show support for someone going through a trying time and to encourage donations to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure charity, so that maybe someday events like this won’t ever have to take place. Pink Mageweave Shirts will be provided for walkers of both sides, and we’ll have some representatives from Sidhe Devils on hand to ensure the walk goes smoothly (i.e. security detail).

This is not a race, despite the pic above. It’s more about solidarity for a cause.

When and where is it? The event will be held on Saturday, November 14th, at 2PM Central Time (Kael’thas’s server time). Participants for the Alliance side will start in Shadowglen near Darnassus, participants for the Horde in Camp Narache in Mulgore. Members of Sidhe Devils will be available to both factions to hand out Pink Mageweave Shirts to those who’re showing up from other servers to participate.

How do I participate?

1. The most obvious way, of course, is the march. Both sides will work their way towards Crossroads, meet up and head for Ratchet, take the boat to Booty Bay, and boogie down with the pirates in a giant sea of pink shirt and dress-sporting toons. Afterwards there will be a drawing (offline) for…
2. … the raffle! In order to raise money for breast cancer research, we’re holding a raffle. Various prizes will be coming from the WoW community, with the grand prize being a guest spot on the “Sidhe Devils Gone Wild” podcast. If you want to enter the raffle, it’s simple enough: go to the Raid for the Cure website (set up by Sidhe Devils for donations, but administered by Susan G. Komen for the Cure, and make a donation using a valid email address. Afterwards, email a copy of your receipt to tigerlordgm AT yahoo DOT com with the words Raid for the Cure Raffle Entry in the subject line. That’s all it takes – you’ve donated to a fantastic cause, and entered yourself in the drawing for fantastic prizes. One entry per person, no minimum donation necessary. Even if you can’t make it to the march, we encourage you to donate to this great organization.

BBB has a lot more details on his blog, including exactly when and where people should meet up for the run.

See you there!

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Gaming vs. Cancer: Sidhe Devils present “Raid for the Cure”

• Have just about completed moving the alts I have any interest in playing over to the Sidhe Devils on Kael’thas. My warrior made the trip today, while my warlock made the trip earlier and is forced to (*shudder*) spend some time as a gnome, because he can’t be a damned werewolf yet and I just don’t really like humans. Soon… soon!
  • Fun fact, on this note: faction transferring gets you every flight point in Northrend that doesn’t need to be unlocked. He who had never left Howling Fjord suddenly has FPs in every part of Northrend, excluding (as I said) ones that have to be unlocked – Sons of Hodir, Shadow Vault, and so on.
• Been playing my rogue a lot, too. I’m leveling her up to 60+ so I have a pocket pickpocketer (see what I did there?) and, as a personal challenge, am leveling her in the battlegrounds. It’s a little bit slow at times (do not ever seek a Warsong Gulch after 1AM server time unless you feel like getting roflstomped) but at least it’s fun. And sometimes, the achievements just roll in:

  
  
  

• And yeah, my big thing, as shown to the left side of the blog (if you haven’t visited, you really should), is that I’m currently working on Insane in the Membrane. It’s time-occupying, but it’s really not hard, and after awhile grinding through Dire Maul repeatedly just gets to be automatic. I think I’m killing ogres on muscle memory at this point. It’s why I need a rogue.

  • Getting exalted with Shen’dralar is actually proving easier than freeing Knot enough times to get goblin rep. At this rate, even if I turn in a crapton of Ogre Tannin for ogre suits, I’m STILL going to end up exalted with the book nerd elves well before I do the goblins. I’m going to end up grinding pirates or Venture Company mobs anyway, I can already see it in my future.
• In real life, I’ve been planning my Halloween costume with my roommate (it’s awesome), and preparing songlists for his big birthday bash in November. I also just celebrated my own birthday (much drinking of the alcohols occurred, and then my roommate and I attended a kickass Jay-Z concert), and have rounded the corner into 27. So far, it feels a lot like most of the years previous. I also need to do an update of my game progress page, as a lot of things have been updated or finished, and primarily if I’m at a console, I’m busy failing miserably at Demon’s Souls for the PS3. It’s Nintendo Hard (and even that might be too mild a term), and yet I haven’t found myself wanting to ragequit it and sell it back or trade it to a friend.

  Yet.

So what’ve you been up to?

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In progress

That pretty much sums my weekend.

Friday and Saturday, Cincinnati put on its usual Oktoberfest Zinzinnati bash, and it was good. Sadly, I missed out on the food (on account of not being hungry) and the commemorative mugs (because everywhere I went to seemed to be out of them), but later on shots were had and a dancefloor was torn up. There were some interesting moments all the same, like the toothless crazy old guy who only seemed to appear out of nowhere (and always right next to us) when they were playing a Michael Jackson song, and convincing someone to buy me a beer – because I was too lazy to get up – by making it rain. Note: $4 were made to rain, and a beer was had.

Sunday started off with brunch, and with the Bengals miraculously not bungling a win against Green Bay. Green Bay may want to have a word with their groundskeepers, given how often I watched their receivers just flat-out slip and fall over. Did someone wax the grass? Also, they may want to talk to Grant. Did someone wax his hands?

Tough luck, Packers.

Sunday night I logged into WoW, just in time for some Sidhe Devils Brewfest fun runnin’. Brews and sausages were consumed, achievements were completed, rams were raced, dark dwarves were mutilated, and dwarves jumped on me.

And then, there was an unfortunate jumping accident, and Jess and I formed some kind of weird dwarf-draenei Voltron-style hybrid.

After that, it was time for some instance runs! First, a couple shots at Trial of the Champion, which was new to me since it was added while I was gone. Apparently Iron Dwarves use horses for surfboards, corroborating this report, but I take offense at Death Knoob. Would a real Death Knoob dual-wield a lance and mug? I say NO! But me, well, it’s Brewfest, so I jousted my heart out, and drank while I did it.

Also, I think I’ve found Stormwind’s prisoner problem: they’re celebrating Brewfest inside the Stockades as well as outside. No wonder security is so lax…

And last but not least, a screenshot of soaring high over Naxx, perhaps suitable for desktop wallpaperification. Click for the full-size version, much like every other pic.

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Real life Oktoberfest shenanigans, and in-game Brewfest Sidhe-nanigans

Friday:

Saturday:

Sunday:

Monday:

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A long weekend, in four pictures

• I don’t know why but I’ve been bitten by the urge to buy a home. Probably a condo, as I’d like to stay in this area and that seems more likely to be in my budget range. However, before I can even think about doing that, I need to refinance my car loan – the initial interest rate was utterly atrocious because I had no credit whatsoever, and surely I can find a better rate by now – it’s been a year. Surely.
• More people have gotten married off – a lot of people seem to be doing that of late… best wishes, Cassie and Jim, and thanks for the fantastic wedding. The roof of a museum definitely takes the cake for best place I’ve been at for a 20-minute wedding, and the reception was no slouch.
• Some progress made on HPWP. Definitively finished off King of Fighters XII, Treasure Planet, and (since it ended…) the Champions Online Closed Beta. Started Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box, Mega Man Star Force 3: Black Ace, and Shadow of the Colossus. All good picks on my part, if I do say so myself.
• Weekly D&D nights have turned into … well, a different game every week, with a rotating “person in charge.” Our former DM (George) is now going to be running Millenium’s End, which I know next to nothing about; one of our players (Zach) is running a board game night; another player (Vince) is running a Pathfinder campaign, and I… have absolutely no idea what I want to do. Gack! I had been joking to Zach that I might try running people through the World’s Largest Dungeon, but I can’t find a place to get my hands on that 880-page (!) monstrosity. I’ve got no ideas!
• I’ve been bitten by the bug to get a “real” laptop. I have an Acer Aspire One netbook at the moment, but it has a tiny rattling noise from being carted around in my bag that I fear is probably a screw of some kind loose inside the case. Doesn’t seem to show any negative effects yet… but it’s only a matter of time. That, and the tiny screen bugs me a whole lot more than I anticipated it did, as does the utterly shitty touchpad on the Aspire One.
• A friend of mine from M3 is starting up a Persona-based MU* and lemme tell you friends, I could not be more excited about that. Actually very excited about the re-releases of Persona and Persona 3 for PSP, though I have to wonder where the heck the inevitable Persona 2 re-releases are – we only got one part here in America (which I still have, along with P1, thankyouverymuch), and surely we could get both of them over here now…?
• Oh, and I’ve been madly gobbling up every piece of FFXIV-related news I can find from Eorzeapedia and FFXIV.ZAM, and again, excitement meter is capped out. I just hope I haven’t fizzled out by the time the game appears next year… of course, I’ve been avoiding the rampant speculation on the forums and really subsisting on Square Enix’s slow IV drip of news, so it’s more of a steady excitement.
• And last but not least, graduate classes have started again, what with it being fall. I’m taking a “computation and logic” course which frankly scares the shit out of me, because the undergrad version of this same course was my worst experience in all of my undergraduate career, and I barely squeaked by with the minimum C. Of course, this appears to be more straightforward logic, which – well, logic is my strong suit, at least symbolic logic. My focus in my philosophy degree (trivia: I have a philosophy degree) was logic, and I helped goad a professor into introducing an advanced logic course into the curricula. Shame it didn’t work out.

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Life continues apace

Remember how I told you I was a pretty avid console gamer? Well, yeah, about that…

I have a small problem when it comes to videogames: I never seem to finish them. My attention is caught, I plunk down the cash (or, more recently, massive amounts of Gamestop trade-in credit) and bring it home, I play the game for a night or two, and… nothing. Some rare games get me to come back to them repeatedly, but overall I seem to lose the drive to finish things in place of the drive to buy the Next New Thingâ„¢.

So, now, I am putting a challenge before myself: I’m going to finish what I start. Enter this site’s new page: Hey Phil, Whatcha Playin’? It’s a pretty straightforward page, divided into three sections:

1. Currently Playing, for games that are currently receiving a moderate-to-large amount of my gaming hours,
2. On the Shelf, for games that I either haven’t started, haven’t invested more than a few hours into, or that I have played for a while then put back down for whatever reason.
3. Finished! Which should be self-explanatory, no?

And, to make it a little more challenging on myself, I won’t be adding to the collection by spending any cash at all, until I’ve finished everything that is currently unfinished. If I want to get something new, there are two exceptions to this rule:

1. Store Credit, by trading in things I’m no longer playing, and
2. Rare Finds, such as if I manage to find Xenosaga III or Yakuza 2 somewhere.

That’s it. No spending money on new console or handheld games until I finish the ones I have. Let’s see if I can do it! I’ll update periodically on this (you didn’t think I would do something that didn’t provide me with periodic blogfodder, did you? Pshaw) and welcome comments as well as recommendations (because it’s probably pretty obvious from the list what kind of games I like).

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Finishing what I start

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Roar of the Atlantic surf