Making my way through the Broadway plays in New York

Guest post written by Michelle Caudill

I go to New York pretty often on business and it also doesn't hurt that one of my sisters lives there too and I'm able to stay with her for longer weekends even after my coworkers have left. Every chance that I have to do that, I like to stay and watch a Broadway play with my sister. It's our little bonding experience and I've even lost count of how many plays we've seen before.

I was looking up some info on which play I wanted to see on my upcoming trip in a few weeks and I ran across some info on miracle ear aids. After I looked through it a little bit I decided to go and get tested for hearing aids. I ended up getting fitted with some in the end.

After all of my research, I decided for us to go and see the War Horse play because I've heard so many amazing things for it. My sister somehow got some tickets for us to go and see it and I can't wait!

Hurray! An update! And on Voidwatch NMs!

Cait Sith Wants You!

While I have no obtained a "kick ass" job, I have been offered a job at Walgreens, so ends the job hunt so perhaps there will be more drawing and/or posting. (Or at least more than once a month). But to the point, I've been having lots of fun with Voidwatch when I log on. Below the cut are a bunch of screenshots I've taken from Voidwatch! Perhaps I'll make a proper post about these sometime soon, but not yet.

Busy Busy busy!

No, I did not die in some horrible wreckage from my plane ride, but I have become super busy with classes, trying to find a job, etc. Unless I suddenly win some super big scholarship or get a kick ass job, I'll be posting even less, if that's even possible.

But anyway, just wanted to say that I didn't die... and here's a bonus, somewhat old, sketch that I will likely finish and color if I have the time.

Portia Drawing

I figured I'd leave you all with a picture I've been working on for a few days that I doodled during the update!

Without further adue.....Portia from Wings of the Goddess missions!

First colored and completed picture in a while, enjoy!

And just for fun, here's the initial doodle from my sketchbook

September version update!

FFXI's version update, primarily featuring the level cap increase and all sorts of goodies, spells and gear has arrived. ....Which I hope explains my absence from blogging once again. I swear I don't have a problem or addiction. Honest. I am not playing as I make this post, nope.

As an avid fisherman, I hope it's not sad that I'm just as excited about the Ebisu fishing rod graphic change as all the BLM updates. It is not sad at all. Right?  To those who could care less about fishing and have no idea what I'm talking about, the graphics for Ebisu were exactly the same Lu Shang, which is like the equivalent of getting an Aegis only to have it look like a plain old Koenig shield. But moving on.....

While leveling Black Mage with some LSmates. my AF+3 finally kicked in on Blizzard V for the first time. I was very pleased with the results, though at the same time sad it was only on a stupid exp mob.

Forever will the rest of my nukes feel inferior.

And of course who can forget the fun of running out and learning new Blue Mage spells. Took me nearly 2 hours to learn Harden Shell, but totally, totally worth it. Shame it's limited to Unbridled Learning though.

Bludgeon, Bludgeon, Bludgeon!

Next post will probably be about some Blue Mage Charged Whiskering fun! Stay tuned!

Let's pop some Land Kings!

This still irks me a bit, going to Behemoth's Dominion and having it completely empty while you pop Behemoth and King Behemoth. Though it does mean you can goof off and have more fun though instead of screaming "[Insert stream of obscenities here], WE DIDN'T CLAIM NID! SPAM CLAIM IF IT GOES YELLOW!!!!!" over voice chat at 2 in the morning.

Uh oh! Synergy Furnace aggro! HANDLE IT!

It's ok! We got this furnace link under control!

When did he start summoning frogs!?

After killing some of these... whatever they are, puppies? We decided to play with an angry dragon!

Some genius Spike Flailed him. Unfortunately no one died.

Despite not particularly liking the old HNMs being forced pops, I have to admit, it's much more fun fighting them when you didn't sit there waiting from 3am-6am waiting for it pop. (Now you just have to wait an hour for your friends to gather!)

Managing my Finances

Guest post by Jewel Cole

I have had to learn the importance of saving money. When I was in college, I took my fortune for granted. I was able to pay for school with scholarships and also had enough money at the end of the day left over for beer. When I left college and entered graduate school, I was in the same situation. Now, I have gotten married, am no longer in school, and have a bottom-level job that has forced to learn the importance of saving money. While tough at first, once you get the hang of couponing, saving, and searching for the best deals you begin to gain a sense of pride. Not only have I learned to save money at the grocery and retail stores, but I have also learned to save money on household utilities. For example, I recently looked at my cable bill and decided to go to directstartv.com and was able to reduce my household overhead. I have also switched gas and trash companies and saved over half of what I was spending. When you realize you have cut your costs and save money, you feel much better about spending a little on yourself.

What are these non-video game...things?

I don't know whether to say it's fortunate or unfortunate that this summer has been busier than usual. I've actually visited... friends *Gasp*. Who knew a gamer could venture out into the unknown real life realm. Only with other gamers of course.

My fellow gamers and I ventured to New York City last weekend to do battle with the almighty Hurricane Irene. The wench was reduced to a measly Tropical Storm by the time we were through with her! She completely weakened our traveling capabilities and limited our touristy options heavily, but what can you do when mother nature is PMSing?

Someone get Mother Nature some tranquilizers, she's feisty this year.

At the very least we played some old fashioned rage-educing board games like Monopoly. Monopoly is depressingly unrealistic now though; you're done when you run out of money you're done. "I landed on boardwalk... eeeehh, I don't feel like selling my own hotels, just put it on my credit." Though at the same time, it's always amusing making bank off of people landing on your houses and hotels while you're stuck in jail.

DO Collect $2,000 for your friend landing on Boardwalk though

I also went bowling for the first time last weekend. My scorecard...board... thing... makes it look like 3 different were bowling as "Rayna". And yes, we did use our game names on the scoreboard. NERRRRRRRRRRRRRRDS. And proud of it.

The final score was "We all suck at bowling without even drinking anything."

Trying to make up for lack of posting, so tomorrow there will be a guest post about finances and savings! Because you need to save money if you want to buy all those awesome video games!

Abyssea questing is a bore

Sorry for the lack of posts. I've been relatively boring lately as always. Been questing in FFXI and totally slacking on drawings. However, after doing some quests Abyssea - Altepa, I finally did stumble upon something worthy of a post.

After completing the quest "Brygid the Stylist Strikes Back" you receive some panties a stearc subligar as a reward, which can have refresh +1 and some hMP+ if you're lucky. Amazing idle piece if you can stand idling in the things; at least most mage armor has coat-tails and such...

And since it's all jobs, you can look silly anytime!

Yeah, I'm lucky. hMP could have better though.. You jelly?

It's also slightly depressing how well it goes with Thief AF3 Armor.

 Look, ma! No pants again!

 SUBLIGAAAAAAR REFRESH. You sick, sick people SE. /em stabs eyes out.

Arch Dynamis Lord and Xarcabard Shenanigans

So the linkshell I'm in now made our first attempt at Arch Dynamis Lord not too long ago. Here's how we did:

And then we died laughing like a bunch of idiots.

It didn't really help that the strategy we were using seemed quite flawed. It called for summoners to use Perfect Defense at the beginning of the fight, which wore off at around 60%. Very shortly after it wore, he spawned two clones which both used some terrible TP moves immediately, smashing our faces in, resulting in the screenshot above. Could have used Perfect Defense for that! We'll get you next time!

Regular Dynamis Lord after was stingy but regular mobs weren't. Towards the end of our time, some gloves dropped that I've been wanting that no one else needed!

Just because no one else wanted, didn't keep them from fake lotting then passing.

But of course I was an idiot and only had one inventory slot, which got filled up by a Shrouded Bijou no more than a minute before the gloves dropped. I raged not because of the lost drop, there will be plenty more in the future, but because of my sheer stupidity.

I tossed junk I should have earlier in a moment of rage.

Feel totally free to laugh at my misfortune.

Not dead! (yet)

Disappeared for a while because I was visiting a friend. (I went outside my house, shocker!)

Just a quick update to say I'm not dead, thankfully.  I wish a few specific Greyhound Bus drivers were for completely missing the bus stop I was at not once, but twice and ruining my nice trip home. And according to other people that were at the stop, this isn't the first time it happened at the stop either. Apparently drivers just have a tendency to skip the stop. I only arrived home about 3 hours later than expected, but only because of my friend who was visiting bringing me to a main greyhound station where I could actually GET a bus headed home. Long story short, some bus drivers need to go die in a fire, Greyhound is getting an angry letter, and I am likely to never even consider Greyhound again. (Unless it's a short distance between two major cities with no transfers.)

But anyway, regularish updates will come again soon.

After much trials and annoyance...

LEVEL 85 ALMACE, YAAAAAAY *Flails arms around like a crazy person*  And I actually got it last night, but I've been busy. Thank you all who helped get this far. I<3 you all.

*Drops it* NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooo!!

So of course I had to Zorro the crap out of some stuff! Never knew that the icon for aftermath changed depending on the level. Not much but it gets bigger and brighter, and I inadvertently took perfect zoro steps while taking SS of them.

Step 1: Slash something ugly.

Step 2: Slash the same ugly thing again.

Step 3: Slash the same ugly thing again and make shinies.

Also I have no idea why it kept saying the WS in echo and putting out random numbers... at first my shit was glitching and the WS just wouldn't go off. It made me sad. Anyone have idea what the heck is wrong with this? I haven't heard of this happening before...

Now for Apademak Horns... oh boy!

FFXI Security tokens should dispense Asprins

You know, like one of these old things?

Ok, maybe not the Wario one. Creepy.

Why? The 4 1/2 hour emergency maintenance on FFXI was extended another 3 hours. The extension isn't what is so frustrating, it's nothing new for SE. I just wish that they'd just preempt their screw-ups and scratch the whole day off for maintenance. All these stupid extensions and spaghetti code crap makes me want to bang my head against the wall. Maybe I could find a helmet in the garage so I don't hurt myself. Sure I might look stupid, but who cares.

But you know what's really stupid? Not wearing a helmet one when you ACTUALLY really need one. Earlier this month, during a protest against helmet laws in upstate New York, one of the motorcyclists crashed and died. And not one of those racing crashes where a helmet wouldn't have saved you from the burning wreckage. The man's motorcycle spun out of control and he toppled over the handlebars of his bike.

Police say Contos would have likely survived if he was wearing a helmet.

But at least the man died supporting what he believed in. R.I.P. Phillip Contos.

While I find this terrible and deliciously ironic at the same time while thinking "He had it comin'", I still respect his decision to not wear one. Even though I think him and the other people in this protest are idiots for not wearing motorcycle helmets, I agree with their message. You should wear helmets but if someone wants to be a flaming idiot while riding, let him! (Assuming it's only going to put themselves in danger.) Let nature do its worse.

Obviously helmets aren't going to save you from everything under the sun. But hey, It's cooler to be alive then dead, right?

Picture Summary of FFXI's July 12 Update

Well, pictures with commentary, so sue me.


First they fixed old things.

Summary of "Resolved Issues"

The second check mark was spurred by the final note on the list,  "The issue wherein using magic directly after resisting a status ailment caused the word "Resist!" to display at the beginning of the magic casting message." This had been there so long, I thought it was weird, but intended. Unless I'm reading this wrong.

Changed things to make more sense.

Self Explanatory for White and Black Mages of Abyssea.

Including a new Key Item category JUST for Abyssea. Finally. Also includes changes to various JA, specifically the distances on Collaborator and Accomplice. Now you don't have to be IN the mage zone to steal their hate! IT FINALLY MAKES SENSE.

Added new things. (For better or worse...)

Should erase the LS if it's Welfare though

A command that lets you yell through all the areas of Jeuno. Yay. And other stuff. Like another Sam JA. How long is their JA list now?

And finally broke some more things.

Don't hate on my poorly doodled ghostie.

And that's why an emergency maintenance happened. I will not feel sorry if people who abused this to kill a bunch of Havana or other undead NMs manage to get banned.

Oh, and here's the actual version update notes: July 11th Update.
And some DAT mining which includes a very...interestingly colored Flan: Wild Dragon Chase

Babies are tiring

Fact. Even when they're not yours. Though they ARE surely 100 times cuter when they're not yours, so it's alright. But since babies aren't video games, unless you're playing The Sims or something, let's get back to business.

Yesterday's Steam daily deals were kind of meh. Didn't have any of the games and there wasn't anything all that special that I can remember over today. Oh, there was Mass Effect that I've heard awesome things about, but once again can't really do a review on a game I don't have, so yeah. Though today's sale was much better.

There are quite a few games on here that I don't have but, once again if I could pull money out of thin air. I'd probably be playing Sam & Max, another point and click adventure game with lots of comedy. Maybe Neverwinter Nights 2, kinda like D&D which I've always wanted to try out but not brave enough to express it outside the internet. Might consider Duke Nukem because, well, it's Duke Nukem, and Terraria just because some of my friends are and tell me I should. Read: Duke Nukem and Terraria so I can be part of the cool kids club.

Only game I have that's on the sale today is Portal 2, which I've already done a review on here. But to recap: It's a fun game, you should totally buy it while it's half off. Single player and Co-op mode are both amazing. And it has an achievement ticket for today. I haven't done it yet due to energy sucking baby, but here's a video of someone else showing how to get the Talent Show achievement:

Audio Surf on sale again! (Also how to get the Sunburn Achivement)

Well, not again during this sale, but Audio Surf is constantly going on sale is what I'm getting at. I personally think it's because it's a fun game but I could never bring myself to spend ten bucks on it, but anything less than $2? Sure thing. But anyway, first things first, quick summary of the game, followed by how to get the achievement for the summer sale.

So if you're just interested in the achievement and not the basics of the game, just scroll down to the big bold text.

I'm so good at matching colors.

Left 4 Dead fun!

Today Left 4 Dead 1&2 are on sale for 75% off. If you take a quick look at the game, you can automatically tell it's another zombie shooter game. But that doesn't make it any less fun! The games have very similar controls, I WONDER WHY? I digress.

So what's the basic game all about? In both games you play through different maps as a group of 4 survivors. For the most part, you fight through typical boring old zombies that just run at you and fling their arms at you, inflicting piddly amounts of damage. (Though not so piddly when you have a hoarde of them on you.) But among these, there's what we call special infected. And they are special indeed. Each has their own unique.... skill I guess you could say. Skills that make you want to rage hard at times. But that's where the fun comes in of course. Some puke on you, some latch onto you so you can't do anything while others.... just rip your damn face off. You have to make your way through these zombies through buildings, farmland, and such to get from one safe room to the next, finally ending in the "finale" where you fight off large hoardes of zombies while waiting for some sort of rescue.

Each safe room has some silly graffiti to lighten the mood.

But how do you fight 'em off?! Certainly not with your bare hands, right? Especially not the ones that puke on you, ugh. In both games you get to choose from a variety of guns for your primary weapons. In the original game, you only had pistols, which magically have unlimited ammo, as your secondary weapon. Next is a choice of molotov or pipe bomb, both of which are found lying around, all ready to use for just such an occasion! Lucky you! After that you get your standard med kit to heal up wounds. Who knew being thrown into a brick wall, breaking all the bones in your body, could be cured by simply wrapping some medical tape around an arm and leg. This crap is magical. And last but not least, you get to be a pill junkie, finding pills lying around can temporarily boost your health to let you run faster. Left 4 Dead 2 is pretty much the same, but adds a few more options to each of these slots.

Quick, get her some pills, the safe room is right here!

If your health gets depleted, it's not immediately game over, which is a pretty neat concept, but instead one of your teammates can help you back up on your feet. You'll have a lot of temporary health and should use a med kit, but at least you're not dead yet right? If you don't use a med kit and go down again...hey you're still not dead, but when you get picked up again, your screen will be black and white which makes it harder for me to see things personally, and WILL be killed next time your health reaches 0. Three strikes, YOU'RE OUT. But if you're not too close to the end, your friends can help you out of the closet and you'll be back, good as new.

Careful, Elis! I'm Black (and white)!

This game is great for multi-player, able to support up to 8 players in each game. But wait, didn't I say there's only 4 survivors? You know those terrible infected that you hate so much? You get to play as them! And not the boring kind either, you get to puke and attack your friends on the opposite team! Though I highly recommend even amounts of players, at least in the first game.

Despite being a mostly point and shoot zombie game, there's quite a bit of witty dialouge and the game does a great job of giving each character in the game their own personality and humor. As Zoey, a young college girl says to the old Vietnam veteran, "Hey Bill, it's your favorite! Stairs!" Each will have their own lines that they say at different choke points and events in the game, such as alerting a hoard or calling for rescue, which adds quite a bit of humor to the game. And of course, fans make their own humor, for 1 and 2 respectively.

And just found this one today:

And that was longer than expected! Hope it was helpful though?

Monkey Island Mayhem!

The sale today just reminds me of yet another game that I need to finish playing through. This game being The Secret of Monkey Island 1&2: Special Edition. It's a pretty fun and silly point and click adventure game. The original game came out in the 1990s, but the special edition here includes re-mastered music, full voice acting, and a new contemporary art style. But if you're one of those that loved the original game and want to stick to it, you still have the ability to switch between the two styles at your whim. And what I love most is the hint system they've added to help through puzzles; over-thinking in puzzle games gets me every time.

Basically, you play as Guybrush Threepwood...

And you have the stupidest beard, I've ever seen!

...and you're on a quest to become a pirate! Along the way you solve puzzles, battle other pirates (with wit), and save the beautiful governor, Elaine Marley, from the evil clutches of the ghost pirate LeChuck.

There's not much I can really say at this point, not because I haven't played the game, but because in my opinion it's one of those games you just need to play. The game play is similar to other point and click adventure games. You have walk commands and talk commands. You can pick up a variety of items and combine them to solve puzzles. Pretty much the same type of actions and interactions as other point and clicks, with a few little twists.

 So it's a pretty good deal, the game and it's sequel in two different styles in a bundle for only $7.49!

Decent sales today, but nothing TOO amazing

Alright, so I'll make this quick since it's been a lazy 4th of July and such.

On today's list the only game that I have is Fallout: New Vegas. Once again, this is an action role-playing game. While it's pretty fun, I haven't played it all that much personally. I have difficulty with games that are kind of open ended because I'm super indecisive, but if you're one of those people who like their video games that leave a lot of choices up to you, then this would surely be a fun game for you.

I also remember playing the R.U.S.E. BETA. Now I don't know how much was changed from the beta, but the game was pretty interesting and fun playing online with friends. It might be worth a shot if you're a fan of real-time based strategy games.

Assassin's Creed and other goodies!

This is going to be another short post, but mostly because I've only personally played one game on the deals list today. This game being Assassin's Creed, which I don't even have installed on my computer.

Ok, that first comment might have sounded like a negative comment but wasn't meant to be. Ok I lied, it was. But I'm only speaking for the first one when I say this. As the title suggests, you play as the assassin, where you can climb on, or interact, with almost everything in the game. You can also kill pretty much everyone in the game as well. This alone makes the game pretty fun and really really interesting, Especially since there's a number of different ways that you can assassinate people and jump/climb around things.But the problem is that the missions and such in the game get extremely repetitive, spy on someone, assassinate another, get old very quick despite the neat gameplay. In the end, I found myself doing what I used to do in Grand Theft Auto, which was stop following the mission/story line and just go around pointlessly murdering people for the hell of it. Unlike Grand Theft Auto though, the graphics were pretty damn amazing.

Screenshot of the second game, taken from steam. I told you I didn't have the game!

Personally, I'd only recommend this first game as a rental. On the other hand, I've heard amazing reviews from friends and other sources about the other two games in the series: Assasin's Creed 2 and Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and would probably be purchasing these if I had the money to do so. And, if you buy the Assassin's Creed bundle, you basically get the first game free, so I'd definitely suggest that if you're interested in the good two ones.

Other games I've heard good things about but can't really speak first hand about that are worth checking out and on sale today are Torchlight and the Dragon Age franchise.