autobottrixter

Step 1: Move Java Monster from the fridge to the freezer about half an hour before drinking it.

Step 2: Chug deliciously frosty Java Monster.

Step 3: ???

Step 4: PROFIT!

So stuff. My car seems to have developed an oil leak on top of the slow coolant leak it already had, so I'll have to be keeping an eye on that. The funny thing was every time I took it in for anything they swore up and down it had an oil leak, and they never ever mentioned a coolant leak, but it was always the coolant that I had to refill and the oil level was right where it was supposed to be. Now the oil is actually pretty unquestionably leaking. It's not the quart-a-day hemmoraging that my Neon was doing late in its life, so I should be able to keep on top of it. I'll need to get it fixed eventually, but right now Andrew's car is looking at much, much worse problems, so I'll just let it be an excuse to tinker with it every weekend.

I like pretending anybody but me cares about my car.

Yesterday I decided to finally go ahead and order a blank My Little Pony from Hasbro Toy Shop to make into an Acherus Deathpony. I want to get back into painting projects, and I think this would be an excellent start. I'll likely end up buying a new air compressor and airbrush set for it as well, to get the whole glowy blue-white flame effect right. I don't know if there's enough cross-audience to tell me how well Citadel Colours work on MLP bodies, though. Maybe I should have ordered two...

After some debate with Andrew over the weekend about RP characters and some following half-serious talk with Sam about my own outlook on things I came to the rather depressing conclusion (at least before I started chugging Java Monster, making myself immune to depression) that whereas some people like RPing assholes because they're nice people in real life, I seem to RP nice, idealistic people because I like to pretend to be someone whose faith in humanity has not been crushed into powder under the weight of everyday interactions. Self-psychoanalysis through analyzing my own creative output has been a hobby of mine since high school, probably a grossly misguided one, but one I stick to nonetheless. This is probably why I'm such a wuss about tackling terrible, abusive relationship stories, because I don't like what I think they say about me, even if it's entirely my own judgement. And by that I mean why I pulled so many punches with Dariahn's backstory. Also because I like to pretend in my own little world that even terrible people have sincere if disturbed and misguided motivations.

And that's my caffiene-induced navel-gazing for this week. Cheers!

I am now on Steam as AutobotTrixter. Be my friend.

The only reason I find the Mark Sanford thing so very, very amusing is because he was being such a turd to Obama over the stimulus money. It is really, really amusing to watch him being completely incapable of keeping his mouth shut for like 10 minutes, though. I blame this on me being a horrible person.

Z-Con was awesome and fun! It was great having so many friends around hanging out and doing stuff, even if it got a little overwhelming after a while and I still haven't quite recovered from the sleep deprivation. Tomorrow I'm off work and Andrew isn't, so I'm pretty much gonna sleep 'till noon. Origins was awesome, and even though we were only there for a couple hours it prodded a little bit at that growing hunger I've had to do more gaming. Also I am obsessed with pretty dice. I'm still way more interested in the RP aspect than the number-crunching, but I find myself wanting to roll up characters for things I don't even have a campaign for or alternate characters for games I am involved in. Bloodaxe saw me leering gleefully at the updated rules for Nagai, who I am unreasonably fond of largely for having been introduced at the tail-end of the old Marvel Star Wars series (I have a long history of fondness for things from late Marvel comic runs.), and bought me the Legacy-era campaign-guide, so as soon as I get around to printing up some extra character sheets I will totally make one whether I have a place for it (him?) or not. Our apartment has had some serious cleaning done, and while it's still a bit small for entertaining on the level we tried with Z-Con, it's in pretty good shape for a modest tabletop group and/or to set up space for painting projects.

My latest random alt craving in WoW is a draenei hunter who I made solely to come to terms with my inner conflict between how much I like cats as a general rule and how overused and overpowered they've been in WoW in the past. She's another incarnation of my old well-meaning alcoholic Avalaa, white-on-white this time (she had blue hair before) and on Wyrmrest Accord for no real good reason. I was tempted to roll her up on Moon Guard because a lot of TB's Alliance went over there and I know they're still around, but in the end curiosity about the new server won out. But she's only level 5, so I can still be swayed. ;) I'll be taking her over to Dwarfland soon because I've done those quests once, years ago, and done the Draenei ones like a million times. Once she's level 10 she is totally getting one of those pretty white cats that used to scare the crap out of me on my very first character.

I also poked around Ravenholdt a little on my Death Knight there and drummed up some random RP just by being vaguely polite to another DK, but I'm clearly still having seperation issues with TB and just can't stay away from it for more than a couple hours tops. Even between getting my draenei to level 5 and saying hello to my Ravenholdt DK I had to log into TB just to make sure it hadn't burned down.

I should level a gnome, too, just to experience the world as huge and terrifying.

( So. Revenge of the Fallen. )

So yeah, I enjoyed it, much more than the first one. It's a high-concept geek (but not nerd) movie, and I can see where it would be easy for the uninitiated to get lost, but as someone who's already schooled in who's who and what's what I found it to be thrilling, if a bit cringe-inducingly juvenile at times.

Also Sideswpie's a hottie.

For all my cynicism and criticism of Michael Bay and the first Transformers movie, I find that as the new one approaches I'm actually pretty excited. I've spoiled myself flagrantly, reading io9's daily spoiler posts and an entire post summarizing some early leaks of the novelization. These have done nothing to make me think this movie is going to make any more sense than the first one, or for that matter to not think it's going to be an eye-rollingly written popcorn movie. I suffer no illusions that it will not be terrible, though I believe it will at least be a fun kind of terrible. I'm still excited.

A lot of what I'm excited about is the Bumblebee Blast Slurpees, the Snickers Nougabot Bars, the BBQ Double Stackticons. I'm excited that this week is some kind of crazy, surreal worldwide celebration of Transformers. And I only care so much that it's some completely reimagined version of the Transformers, because there's just enough there to make it real. The only real problem I've had with the movie designs is that they're associated with what I consider to be a piss-poor piece of fiction, and right now that just doesn't matter. What matters right now is that the characters and story that found such a firm footing in my imagination have taken over pop culture as a whole. Fifteen years ago I never would have expected this. Sometimes I still don't.

I have tickets for the midnight IMAX showing at Easton tonight, something I finangled a couple hours of off-time tomorrow morning for to give me a prayer of recovering in time for work. I gave in to my baser urges and bought Skids this past weekend, because despite the fact that he and his brother clearly have some sort of robot Downs Syndrome, despite expecting them to sum up everything that makes me groan about these movies, some part of me still really wanted his toy. (The dumb young character is supposed to be attractive enough to make up for it, Michael Bay! Duh!) I've got plans to see it again with a bunch of friends on Friday. And no matter how stupid I know this movie is going to be, I'm really, really excited about it.

I mean, seriously, it's about the Fallen. WTF?

I've been making Andrew watch Robotech. I've come to discover that, unlike me, he did not actually spend his teenage years amassing geek knowledge. It was only within the last few months that he even heard of Urotsukidōji. I had to explain what the deal is with Magik from the New Mutants, and why Classics Hound came with Ravage. I suppose I can concede that my facination with cultural history is not the norm. Not everybody loves reading Cold War sci-fi for the historical significance. Not everybody's ill-spent youth was ill-spent digging through used book shops for old comic books and out-of-print Lensman paperbacks. But Robotech! I'm thinking this may need to be followed up with the mindfuckery of Neon Genesis Evangelion, though I've just been wanting to revisit that one myself since picking up the Unit 01 Revoltech figure at BotCon and then wandering LAX singing "Fly Me To The Moon" to myself in an incongruous Japanese accent. Also I am ordering the hell out of that new Transformers G1 special edition DVD set, and we are watching it.

I tanked normal Drak'Theron Keep with poor neglected level 75 Meg last night, and I think I've become much too attached to Death Knight mitigation cooldowns. They're like my security blanket.

I make a point of not doing too much occupational whining here, because I am well aware of all the stories of assorted people having their employers read their internet scribblings. But my problems at the moment are more about my job rather than my employer, and anyway I only care so much right now.

I've been sick the past week. Last Tuesday I came down with a rather nasty cold, missed most of one day and all of another, finally got over my fever in time to work on Thursday and immediately developed a sinus infection so bad that it killed my voice. Stayed home Friday, went to the doctor (well, an urgent care clinic) on Saturday and got antibiotics, spent Friday and the weekend hardly talking above a whisper, tried to work today and ended up coming home a couple hours early because talking was unpleasant and painful and it's all I do. Which is great and all, but as a call center they're really fussy about unplanned absences, and I was already toeing the line - had in fact probably already gone over it - with my bout of not-swine-flu last month on top of the normal day-here, day-there of the year before. Even taking off two hours early today I was made to feel like I was doing something completely unreasonable. What exactly am I supposed to do? When speaking is paid for in a currency of pain you pay close attention to your accounting. These were not avoidable sick days, but on top of them I have to deal with the stress of waiting for the shoe to drop. Because being sick isn't bad enough, I guess. I have the fortune to have a good performance record at work, which for the time being balances out the attendance issues, but it's still a frustration I don't need when I'm already ill.

What I need to do is use this as further impetus to get my ass moving to the next phase of my career plan: Get my A+ certification and get away from constantly being tied to the phones ASAP. Because many of those sick days - like my couple hours today - would not have been incurred if I had a job with any flexibility whatsoever. I already have to be able to be tied to the phone for hours at a time, which can be a problem sometimes due to things that have tempted me to bring the word "disability" down on them. And having to talk to end users constantly is something I already find tedious because it's not really in my personality. During times like this when my chronic sinus problems are acting up it becomes literally painful. The tech support thing was a lovely halfway point from bookstore lackey to PC tech. I need to let these frustrations push me on to the next step. And I have to be open to the idea that it may not be with my current employer, because I get the feeling I would probably be able to find something outside sooner than I would be able to move to a different department.

Other than that the personal side of things has been going well. Right before leaving for BotCon Andrew picked up a refurbished 42" HDTV from his work, and that new addition to the living room pushed us to finally get the place out of its post-move entropy and make it livable. Also we got a $15 loveseat at a yard sale. And then we actually had friends over. I realized that my beautiful but ancient DVD player didn't have widescreen output, so I picked up a super-cheap one at Big Lots to fill in until we can get around to getting a BluRay one and it turned out to be region free. I am going to buy such imported Transformers DVD sets! It'll give me a reason to keep it around even after we've upgraded.

Our Naxx group is still going well, having finally cleared the Construct Quarter for the first time this weekend. I think we have the fights down and I think we have the gear, we just need to streamline things so we'll have enough time to work up to a full clear. Andrew and I make a really good Razuvious tag-team, what with not having to use Vent to time our trade-offs. It makes him nervous 'cause he's really not used to raid-tank levels of responsibility, but we managed to one-shot him last night, so I don't think he needs to worry. My guild angst has settled down a little, possibly because others have shown an interest in taking on some of the responsibilities, possibly because Andrew and I have taken up a side-project of leveling Alliance alts on a server with some of my coworkers, and possibly because I was just too damn sick to angst last week.

I am so going to go eat a popsicle now.

BotCon was just amazing fun this year, even if we ended up missing Sunday. I don't know that there's much to say that hasn't been said elsewhere, news-wise. Also all over Twitter because Twitter and I got along really well on this trip. My sinuses decided it would be a fun time to screw with me and I ended up having trouble getting my ears to pop properly on the trip out, but they more or less cleared up by the time I had to get on the flight home and the exorbitantly overpriced pressure-equalizing earplugs I bought at LAX on the way out seemed to keep it from happening again. It was noticible how much lighter the #wiigii! contingent was this year, and while I really missed a few people it was awesome seeing those who could make it. I thought the MSTF went really well, and despite the urgency it was fun hanging out in a hotel room together working on it - bonus points for Derrick Wyatt hanging out with us. Getting to see Weird Al was a thrill, and he managed to defuse the always-awkward Q&A really well. I'm looking forward to the reissue Perceptor and movie Bludgeon most of everything shown at the Saturday Hasbro panel. I'm a bit wary of the idea of everything being based on the movie style for a while, but I think that's less because of any problem with the movie style itself and more because the movie is a sorry excuse for fiction. I didn't get a whole lot of toys because I skipped prereg again this year (maybe if they get some Animated molds next year...) and we bought a new TV immediately before leaving, but I was satisfied with what I picked up.

( This is where I whine about WoW. )

It occurred to me over the weekend that what I really need is a good Transformers RP group, but I don't know that I see one meeting my ridiculous standards without starting it myself, and I don't know that taking on yet more responsibility will help anything. If anyone's got suggestions by all means say something.

My workplace network has gotten so slow at loading internet sites and it's driving me crazy. Something screwed up with the proxy settings or something. I'm not about to call my employee-support counterparts to whine that Twitter won't load fast enough.

I've realized that my wardrobe of clothes that actually fit me at this point has grown worrisomely thin, and while I don't care about going to Kroger looking like a bag lady I don't want to be at BotCon like that, so next week I'm totally buying some new clothes. I need some trouser-cut jeans in size Bigger Than I Care To Admit and a couple new clever t-shirts, stat!

I'm torn on whether to take Project Laptop (AKA Auntie) with me out to CA or just the netbook. I brought it up to Sam, who suggested I take neither, which I explained was sacrelige comparable to tell me not to take my DS. Project Laptop is huge, weighs a ton, and has unreasonable power and cooling needs, but on the other hand it has a full 1024x768 screen that would be very helpful if I decide to actually modify and upload photos while I'm there. It also has a DVD player that will play any region now that I'm running Ubuntu on it, which would be useful if the thing didn't overheat after like 10 minutes. I may have to dismantle it for a good cleaning and see if that improves before I make a final decision there. It's always a pain trying to get videos up and running at BotCon, and the Eee has some codec issues with a lot of .avi files. Also no DVD drive.

In WoW news, I got Dariahn set up for dual specs after fiddling around enough with my second DK to decide that Unholy was a lot of fun. It's really nice to be able to go out and just give things the beatdown and not be in constant fear of death like I am with Meri. Also I immediately ran a Heroic in my PVP epics and ungemmed blues from runs where nobody else wanted them and rolled my face around on the keyboard and got more than acceptable DPS. I'm starting to wonder if I really have the proper temperment for casual raiding, because I find myself more and more having less fun the more casual everyone else is. And it's sad because I really, really like all these people, and then they go AFK forever and all my buffs I worked hard to farm wear off and we're not moving as fast as I'd like through trash or regrouping fast enough after boss wipes and kills and people from the group I was trying to organize but gave up on start being upset that I'm running without them and I kind of want to just park myself in Brill and do nothing but RP. I like having a casual raiding schedule, especially with my RP schedule, but when I raid I want to be serious about it. For that evening I am a raider. I'm already serious enough about it that there are very few things I need from Naxx-10 because I have comparable badge/crafted/Heroic gear in most of my slots. I outgear most of the people there. I'm just doing it for the experience of doing it. Maybe I need to force more RP while we sit around waiting. Maybe I need to keep my DS nearby while I raid. Maybe I need to start drinking.

I still want a fennic fox.

Aaaaaargh today is kind of boring.

So Andrew and I are both feeling much better now. We took him to a clinic over the weekend and they said he had some sort of opportunistic post-flu infection and gave him antibiotics and he slept most of the rest of the day and has been improving ever since. I had my three or four days of wanting to sleep really really badly (but mostly fighting against it because I'm weird) and now I'm done. I might have had a fever on one of those days. By this weekend I suspect we'll both be back up to speed. There may be spring cleaning.

BotCon is soon! Like really soon! Eek! There's been so much going on that I don't really have much spending cash put away, but given that the dealers' room these days is 95% stuff I already either bought or passed up on at retail and 5% stuff I could have bought at a quarter of the price ten years ago if I really wanted it spending cash isn't a huge deal. I will have to try to sweet-talk someone into selling me that Leozack. Has that even been announced? I don't even know. I've always been bad at keeping up with that kind of thing. I'm so behind on the news it's all gonna be awesome surprises. It's nice to be surprised.

Everybody's going on about Star Trek, so I suppose I should too. I thought the time travel aspect, while kind of cheezy in concept, really helped validate this offshoot universe without invalidating the original. I agree with some reviews I've read that Kirk comes off as kind of an unlikable douchebag, but everything else was engaging enough to overcome that, and he did often get his comeuppance, even if he also got, you know, totally undeserved command of a starship. It still felt like a genuine, authentic Star Trek movie rather than a remake. I just wonder if we'll see these new actors show up on the convention circuit.

Now that I have Meridith at 80 and geared for Heroics for values of "Heroics" that = "Heroics with friends who have really good DPS and don't mind dragging my sorry ass through", I'm feeling a strong urge to nest a bit in WoW and just hang around RPing. I couldn't even manage Naxx last weekend without trying to RP with people. I've been reminded lately that what I tend to find most compelling in RP is relationships - not necessarily romantic RP, friendships are just as interesting - and between upheaval in the Zephyr Crew and Dariahn making some very interesting friends in Brill there's a lot of potential for that right now. Both of the Wheelers have strong protective streaks, if different motivations and inner conflicts about it, and I can see a lot of interesting RP coming of them trying to help and take care of their friends. I really think most of what got me so meh about Meridith was when she got too professional and stopped really getting personally attached to anyone but Plagos and Orloc. Maybe she needs to get out and cultivate some friendships again too.

I've suddenly decided I really want a pet fennec fox. Nobody told me there were foxes that people kept as pets!

On this day, 25 years ago, the first issue of the Transformers comic book, the first piece of Transformers fiction, was published. For a long time I've been facinated with the idea that something like Transformers could have such an impression on so many people, that something with such base origins - a toy commercial! - could have such a massive cultural impact. But as Hasbro discovered when they tried to get rid of Optimus Prime to make way for a newer, shinier leader for their Autobot protagonists, the creative minds they had enlisted to create a story and characters for their repackaged Japanese robot toys had hit on some magical formula of sci-fi fantasy that elevated it to a level they could only have dreamed of. Full of characters alien enough to be captivating and human enough to be relatable, Transformers became a cultural phenomenon.

It's incredible, too, as someone who got involved in the fandom during the darker days of the 1990s that so many people have rediscovered something in that childhood obsession worth embracing today. At that time I reached out to fellow fans spread across distant states because, while everyone remembered that little yellow Volkswagon or that tape player with the awesome voice, actual fans were few and far between. Nowadays Transformers fandom encompasses most of geek culture to some degree or another, not to mention pop culture as a whole. Whatever community I'm in, whether playing MMOs or working tech support, I find people who may not share my obsessiveness, but who share an interest. Transformers have become a major part of the common language of our generation.

Part of the longevity may be that, because of its origin as a throwaway fiction to sell toys, Transformers never took itself super-seriously. Today marks the publication of the first of what would turn out to be only one - though to many like myself, the preferred one - of a number of seperate canons. Other similar worlds have had trouble reinventing themselves for a newer audience because they've been so set in stone - This is how everything happened! - that every new story is more and more bogged down in backstory, making it harder to bring in more of an audience. Both Marvel and DC Comics have famously struggled with this problem, not to mention the light shone on the matter by the recent Star Trek reboot.

And now that I've gotten trying to sound intellectual out of my system, Transformers has been a huge part of my life. I watched the show religiously as a kid, at one point getting up at 5:30 in the morning to catch Tommy Kennedy-hosted reruns. I inherited an interest in science fiction from my father, and it was just soft enough for my young mind to really dig into. I "grew out of it" and moved on with the rest of my generation, but when I started getting into comic books during my freshman year of high school I rediscovered them through old issues of the Marvel comic and reruns on the Sci-Fi Channel. What started as nostalgia grew into an obsession in its own right when I found Simon Furman's run on the original comic and realized that Transformers stories could be serious space epics with some real meat on them. The rest is history: I edited and published a fanzine for a few years, I started going to BotCon in '95, I got involved in the online fandom as soon as I was able. And I watched the fandom grow as people caught on to what I had already discovered, that Transformers was more than a cheaply-made cartoon intended to sell toys. Through the creators at Hasbro and those tasked by them to create interesting characters and a compelling world, they had created something much, much bigger.

Had you asked me in high school back in the mid-90s what I thought Transformers would be like in another 15 years, I never would have guessed this. I never would have guessed that there would be more cartoons, a renewed appreciation for the originals, several comic book titles (some of them still by Simon!) a month, or a ridiculously Hollywood blockbuster movie franchise. I never would have predicted the BBQ Double Stackticon. But while I may be a curmudgeon about it sometimes, I really couldn't be happier that 25 years later, not only our generation but our entire culture is still in love with Transformers.

I finally finished my big epic WoW story, posted over on dariahnwheeler. I'm really happy with it in general, especially the whole long climactic scene. I'm hoping this isn't going to be jumping the shark with him as a character, because I know a lot of people were pretty fond of him the way he was, but he's going to end up being a bit more like some other characters of mine people have liked in the past, so hopefully it'll all work out.

I went to dig up the last story I wrote that actually had an acceptable fight scene, found that I had forgotten to upload it when I last moved my site, and ended up rereading my Armada story. Hee. My writing's gotten a bit lusher, but that's still a decent story. Also I'm still way too fond of pairing cheezy idealists with trauma victims. I should get back to writing Transformers stories, but...well, my reasons for that are many, varied, and I'm pretty sure covered in this blog already. The IDW continuity does show promise as a sandbox I'd enjoy playing in, though.

Andrew has spent the better part of the last week sick, and I seem to have caught it now. I'm not going to say that I have, you know, swine flu, but I definitely have some kind of flu. He was in horrible shape all last weekend, burning up and taking lots of naps. The funny thing for me is that I'm not really showing symptoms other than feeling like shit and possibly being a little warm. I'm a little bit stuffy, but I always am, and my stomach's a little off, but it usually is. But I'm sitting here at working kind of feeling like I need to go somewhere and keel over for a few hours. I took the last two days off work to take it easy and drink lots of OJ, and yesterday I took an absolutely epic nap, but I'm still feeling like crap today. Goodness knows how bad I'd feel if I didn't have a Full Throttle to suck on.

Tuesday was server downtime, so I dusted off the old GameCube copy of Phantasy Star Online I had been getting all nostalgic for and gave it a spin in the Wii. I ended up rolling a character who was functionally the same as my highest level character just to get the hang of the game again and had fun running around shooting at peeps. Yesterday I got the last Champion's Badge thingie I needed to get the tanking axe from the tournament for Dariahn so I could give dual-wield tanking a try and then proceeded to level my axe skill doing all the Forsaken starter quests and getting through my entire Revered bar for the "of the Undercity" title.

Also I feel so crappy today that since starting this and actually posting it I've given up on working and gone home to pass out. So I'm gonna do that now. Buh.

Happy First of May, everyone! 8D

This would require a YouTube link, but I am at work, so I will have to force that upon the world later.

Edit: Sadly, YouTube doesn't have it, so no embedding, but here. So, so NSFW.

I'm still not entirely finished with it, but I posted the first part of that story I've been going on about. I'll probably go ahead and post the second part this evening, because I think the story isn't very strong yet with just the first two parts. I just don't want to post too much of it at a time and get a bunch of tl;dr. It continues on in much that same fashion, with just as much if not more of the real meat of it in flashbacks up until close to the end. I've written all but the last flashback, the big long final climactic scene, and the little wrap-up denouement, and if work isn't too much of a bitch this week (ha ha right, if this morning is any indication) I might actually have it wrapped up by the weekend. We shall see!

As of yesterday I've gone a little retro and started listening to Bush's Razorblade Suitcase to go along with it. For those interested in such things. I've thus far refrained from actually using song lyrics in any stories, but I often find a song or album or even just artist somewhere that fits a story well when conceptualizing or writing it. Dariahn himself has been feeling a little more Gang of Four lately.

Also all my WoW characters have suddenly started looking like they were drawn by Andrew Wildman in my head. I don't know why this is.

Not much else of interest is going on. We got our BotCon plane tickets, doing the walk-in thing again this year. I am looking forward to it, though in a general sort of "I Like BotCons" sort of way. I haven't even really checked into the guest information because I've come to assume that the official BotCon sources can't be bothered to put much effort into announcing them because real fans only care about toys and I'll be better served checking their Twitters and blogs anyway.

Oy. That bitterness is still there, isn't it?

I'm really into Animated, the IDW stuff is good, but the new movie...everything I hear about the new movie kind of makes me want to throttle Michael Bay. Any footage I've seen of things not exploding, anything I've read about "characters" just makes me think this is going to be possibly even dumber than the first one. The first one was tolerably dumb. This...I just dunno.

Nice to see some totally random obscure-ass villian, though.

I've been lazy posting because I am working on Epic Fiction. Talking to blindmachine a couple weeks ago about longer-format writing for WoW characters got me to thinking that I didn't need to necessarily rely on others for Dariahn's character progression and movement toward my ultimate goal for him. Unlike say his sister he doesn't need other people to move toward his ultimate goal as a character, that being in his case integrating that more mature part of his personality that dissociated to protect him. It's something he really needs to deal with on his own. He was created to be a character who could be left to his own devices and didn't rely on anybody else. The story will absolutely have a Wheeler sibling scene, though, because those are awesome. It's kind of ambitious, just about every other scene is a flashback of some sort, but I think it really suits him.

I've also been reading up on A+ certification, which I have come to realize will be absolutely necessary if I want to get away from taking calls. And I really, really want to get away from taking calls. Every day my tolerance for other human beings is eroded a little further. Just like when I went back to school a few years ago I'm pretty happy with my ability to retain information, so hopefully it won't be a huge problem. I've always "tested well", as my parents called it. Also studying is a million times easier when it's something I'm really interested in learning. And then I can have a letter after my name! I'll totally have to make business cards.

I've become really fond of Twitter lately, and pretty much completely uninterested in Facebook. The funny thing is that what tends to put me off about Facebook - ads, memes - is already present on LiveJournal, but I can tolerate LiveJournal because of the general long-format nature of the posts. There's meat to it. Facebook just isn't doing it for me, but I'm addicted to Twitter. That'd be trixter if anyone wants to follow.

I've realized, as far as playing WoW goes, that I've managed to get so much good stuff from crafting and Heroics and badges that there's not much I actually need in Naxx-10, but it's still super-fun to do. Our group continues to be awesome, I finally have a headset I can wear for hours at a time without serious ear pain, the only real quibble I have is with the lack of loot goals. But at least it's better than really really wanting something that never ever drops. And knowing I don't need to keep grinding for assorted things to get ready for the raid leaves me open to more RP time.

I picked up a DSi on Sunday, thanks largely to Andrew sticking his head in the backroom at MicroCenter five minutes before opening and calling dibs on one for me. I admit, portable geekery is so deeply ingrained in me that I was only passingly familiar with what the point of the DSi was, and yet I still bought it. I managed to pick up on that point on the way home, before even opening it, while mulling over the unusual choice of blue for a launch color. Then it hit me: It's Wii blue. And the theme carried over to most of the changes to the system. It's taking the DS and applying a lot of the Wii's concepts.

But that's material for a whole review post. Maybe this weekend. Along with pics of my new glasses.

This is where I sort of grasp at things to post about that aren't WoW before I get to the meaty WoW part.

I'm trying to get back into walking. Even when I was thinner I wasn't in especially good shape, and at this point I can barely finish my old mile-and-a-third route around the block. I've trimmed it down a bit, and once I'm at the point where that doesn't cause me serious pain I'll start considering my old route again. I think the problem is that I've been so inactive that my calf muscles have not caught up with my weight gain. Also I should look into new walking shoes, because my old ones are pretty much worn through, and that's probably not helping.

( Then I give in and just go on about WoW. )

argh my wrist hurts today why don't make me raid with a wrist brace this weekend

Stolen unceremoniously from soulrockcandy, possibly because most of my characters lately are zombies and I want to sear people's brains with answers.

01. Full name
02. Best friend
03. Sexuality
04. Favorite color
05. Relationship status
06. Ideal mate
07. Turn-ons
08. Last sexual experience
09. Favorite food
10. Crushes
11. Favorite music
12. Biggest fear
13. Biggest fantasy
14. Quirks in bed
15. Bad habits
16. Biggest regret
17. Best kept secrets
18. Last thought
19. Worst sexual/romantic experience
20. Biggest insecurity