reina

So... we got our new windows, but they're not totally done. It looks like they need some finishing work. So we don't have any idea when the guys will come in again to finish it. Jon and I are all sleeping uneasily and it blows. :D

On the OTHER hand it's left me a lot of time to be inspired for gaming. I swear, wtf is with me lately? ALL I want to do is RP. *boggles*

I started another RPoL game which is Realm based and with a very amusing premise... The group is a mixed Exalt one, with the daughter of Sesus Nagezzer being supported by a splinter Sidereal group to reform Realm government, possibly even take the Throne. Splinter because the Sids are actually employing Solars in hiding to protect and aid her task, something I don't think the Bronze would do, and the Gold are too busy with their Cult to bother with.

Another PC is also her Dragon-blood husband to be. I may actually be starting this Realm game with a wedding gala, too! Heh!

Somewhere between all the writing and research yesterday (and early today), I got to squeeze in a PSU break. Clark and Jim finally have access to the game again. :O Actually, what happened is that Sega screwed up their billing database so horribly that they're now offering people to play the PC/PS2 version of PSU for a whole free month, while they figure things out. So they didn't actually *fix* the problem, just allowed people like my poor friends to play again. :P

Incidentally, or so Clark told me, anyone who wants to try PSU (or return to it) can try PSU free for the month. More importantly -- for me, at least -- I finally got to tackle Maximum Attack G with a full party! Yay!

Just did a few changes to the node layouts. So exciting, huh? :P

I decided (after editing Talliska's journal to do the same) that I'd only display categories on the teaser, and put the tag list at the very end of the full node view. Makes things look less cluttered, though it doesn't actually reduce db queries, since I have to traverse the terms *anyway* to pull out the categories separate from the tags. But that's to be expected.

Also I tweaked the code so the author/date/categories will only display for blog entries. (Pages are static, and events have their own dates on them anyways.) And I went into contemplate and edited the node template for events so it wouldn't use <h3> any more.

Now I really want to play Talliska in DR, but I keep futzing around with the journal instead! =_= And making things like this (a placeholder page, helped me practice basic CSS) and this (made with Nucleus - I'll stick a PSU screenshot in the layout later to make it look more interesting.)

Late last night Jon and I tried PSU Max Attack G again. The Ruins were recently added and boy, did we get our asses whooped trying the S-rank mission! It was just the two of us, since Clark and Jim's accounts are both screwed (argh) and my sis was too sleepy.

Man, we REALLY got owned. o.O And I was a little bit annoyed by it 'cause we slogged through something like an hour and 30 minutes of constant waves of enemies and breaks to return for healing and Scape Dolls (I must have used like... 30 of em total) only to die close to the end. It was in VR Ruins Block B... just this one room with seemingly endless waves of Deljabans and these tall SEED-forms with a big, nasty claw in one hand and a photon blade in the other (forgot the name).

The big ones were powerful enough to cut Reina down in 2 swipes, and she recently hit level 115, Fighgunner 18. Crazy. I still think we could've made it -- IF we didn't run out of Scape Dolls in that room.

I ran more ED today, which... went all right, I think. It was just slow and delayed, and Valeriya hardly got any play, which made me sad. She still got to drag Kamal along though. Hah, it amused me to write him there, like some sort of angry tiger on a leash.

The pacing kinda got shot by my lateness and slow posts and such, so hopefully I can get things going again next week. Grey and Kraken are going to play Milena's convo with Iesan later in the week (probably Friday.)

Other than that... Soul Collectors is slowly shaping up in terms of players. I've got: a Dusk Abyssal, Dawn and Eclipse Solars and a No Moon Lunar. (The Eclipse is the only completed sheet so this roster may change later). I'm still wondering whether I gave too much for the chargen. :/ I probably did, but it's too late to change it now, sadly. So I just have to hope, HOPE! that the others will be reasonable.

I forgot to link this, it's a guide to S-rank Maximum Attack G. Later on, there'll be another area added, the Ruins, which will change the end of the mission. But, for now this is accurate.

And here's Reina's new outfit! Basically, Sega rolled in the PSO outfits and so I built her a new look out of a female hunter and female ranger getup. I can't remember the stupid PSO names so I won't use them. :D Anyway, she's wearing hunter/ranger clothes, and looks pretty badass, both of which are appropriate for a Fighgunner. :D

(Heh, you can also see that I'm running PSU on 1024x768 now, and high end graphics.)

I should stop being distracted by PSU for now though. ^^;

Finally... I have most of everything installed right on Saboteur. *pets him* Seriously, I'm glad. Stress makes me really ugly... and I don't just mean physically. I get really *mean* and I get whiny and full of entitlement issues. I'm not really proud of it, given my age. But one thing I've learned about getting older is that it doesn't necessarily make you wiser or more mature. :P

So, in all I've got... Intel Core 2 Quad 2.6Ghz, 4GB memory, ATI Radeon 2600 video card (yeah, it's more like a mid-range, but it's not bad at all :P), 2x500GB hard drives, running Windows Vista. Most everything we've installed on it worked ok except having to figure out what the right cables were for the second SATA drive. :P Oh, and my webcam, only the sound works right now but the video doesn't. Should be able to figure that one out soon though... I hope.

I finally got the Forest of Illusion mission for the first time! :D I'll write more about it in a bit but I'm going to play some more with Clark and Jim (and others? I wish ;.;)

Update~! Clark and Jim and Jon and I played a run of the Moatoob Boost Road missions. After I told Clark about Forest of Illusion, though, he got it in his head that we ought to increase our chances to trigger the rare mission to occur. So basically what we did was, at every lobby, disband the party and have each of us check each mission counter in the lobby separately. The chance for a rare mission is checked per party per counter, so... having everyone count as a separate party multiplies the chances.

In all, I ended up playing Forest of Illusion 3 times tonight. :O And twice were times that I personally found the mission at a lobby. Either I was just extremely lucky, or the Forest mission is a little bit TOO common... I wonder?

Ooooo, I found a 11* spear board in PSU! ^__^ It's a Muktengek!!! EEEeeee! I'm squeeing like a fangirl over a weapon in a MMO! This is really dorky! *blushes*

But it's just kinda nice to be surprised with a cool drop when you're not even actively looking for it, you know? (I got it doing the Moatoob Boost Road with Jon, Clark and Jim.) I didn't have the materials for the Muktengek board right away, so I traded Clark my Muzzlefever (10* machine gun) for 3 Catilium and 3 Mot Walna. It would've probably cost me 2 mil just to buy those materials, so I think it's an okay trade!

I've been fairly lucky with S weapons, though, now that I think of it. Reina's collection includes:

A couple days ago, Holly Bell sent the FINAL final version of my Reina commission. She's a really nice person, and a growing talent worth supporting, IMO. I've thanked her so many times already. :D

I've posted the finished piece on my journal here: 3 Views of Reina. I still had to reduce the picture size quite a bit because of the width. I may try and crop to get the details on each pose later, but I'm lazy right now. This is the largest size I've got in the gallery at the moment.

While I was out earlier I ended up buying OTEP's The_Ascension. I admire Otep as an artist, she is seriously hardcore in a genre (metal) that is largely male dominated, *particularly* in vocals. Also, her "confessional" style of writing takes a lot of (proverbial in her case) balls to express as raw and unabashedly as she does through her music. I think I have a decent, expressive voice, and can put a fair amount of power in it when I'm not shy, but I doubt I could be THAT intense.

Not that intensity of that type is always desired... but, damn. I kind of want to be her. And kinda not, because her life must have been hell to be able to express herself in that way. Otep >>> me. :O