Awkward Dragon

Just about everybody has that friend they love to hate. It's usually not just you, either; it's a group of your friends. It's almost like you keep them around just because you happen to dislike them so much that they make you laugh. I have one in real life, and I'm the only one of us who will dislike them to the person's face. Meanwhile, the rest of the group don't. She left campus a year or so ago, and every time she says she may come back, people rejoice on Facebook (where she announces it) and then laugh their butts off in real life and joke to each other about it.

It's really cruel if you think about it. If they weren't doing this (and instead were straight with her), she may not come back, find out she wasted thousands of dollars going to a school of people who hate her, and would instead do something worthwhile. And I'm not saying to have her not come back because I hate her (the only reason anyway), it's because it's just being unnecessarily nasty.

In the linkshell I used for social times (I also had one for game events, since most social linkshells don't do events except for 2 person adventuring) had people like that as well. The only problem with doing that sort of thing in linkshell chat (as opposed to whispering to someone in-game using the /tell command) is that when you go to the list to view whom is currently on-line, the list is lagged behind by about a minute. So someone who you didn't think was on might be on when you send a nasty message over linkshell about them. In this case, it was directed towards a member whom had a ... very hard time trying to stay alive during a certain event because he made stupid decisions (such as doing too much damage, which makes a target more likely to attack you, or standing in the wrong spot where he could be hit by attacks that effect an area, such as a cone shape in front of the monster). Paraphrased, somebody had said something to the effect of "*member* can't seem to stop getting screwed in the *expletive* by Bahamut and his {staff}."

Yeah. *HIS* staff. Image courtesy aleczan.com.

He logged in just in time to see that, said hello, and dropped his linkpearl.

I've Got Plenty of Energy; Japan Doesn't

Ahh ... Spring break. Full of beer, topless women, sand in your shorts and getting arrested.

...

Or sleeping, if you're a normal college student. That's what I did for the past two weeks; sleep, eat, sit on the Internet for hours watching my favorite gaming vlog on YouTube and sleeping some more. The only times I left the house were to help my handicapped mother do the groceries, and when I went outside on the 19th to watch the supermoon.

Contrary to my uneventful Spring break, a lot happened in the world. Japan had a 9.0 earthquake, Libya had a major revolution, and FFXI's servers had to be shutdown because of the energy crisis in Japan, which was linked to the previously mentioned earthquake, and a tsunami/volcanic eruption/nuclear meltdown (that's a mouthful, huh?). It's been shutdown since the 13th, and there's been no word yet on when it's actually going to be put back up.

The thing is, I've heard reports of people wanting to unsubscribe their accounts just because they've been down for a week--because of a national energy/humanitarian crisis in the country of their game's origin. Do they not realise that they were essentially told by the energy companies in Japan to shutdown the servers in favor of a more essential use of the limited energy they have? The infrastructure of the electricity system in Japan had been basically doing rolling blackouts to save energy, so even if Square-Enix didn't shutdown their servers, they'd be turning off for hours at a time, several times a week. What's the point if you're doing a major event, and at the boss's hit points are at 1%, and all of a sudden *BAM*, server shutdown? I wouldn't want to deal with it. Just go outside or play something else.

This is all, of course, not mentioning the whole thing about them not wanting their employees to be at work. They have families and they're worried about them, and I'm sure at least one employee had a death in their immediate family to deal with. Why aren't people on the Internet nice sometimes?

But it's strange how your personal life can conflict with the world around you, huh? I wish something would happen, and millions across the world in Libya and Japan wish things would stop happening.

If I Did Dynamis All Week, I'd be Just as Exhausted

Dynamis had to be one of the few things that took ages way back that was just exhausting to do.

Dynamis is a series of events that are parallel universes of the present time in FFXI. There's a Dynamis area for every major city, including other places, such as that glacier area I had mentioned earlier that had hundred foot high snow drifts. The alternate reality is based around The Great War, in which the opposing side, the Beastmen, had succeeded in taking over Vana'diel. As such, instead of friendly shopkeeps and children greeting you at the auction house, you're instead greeted by insanely powerful foes that would rather eat your innards as opposed to selling you merchandise, or giving you directions around town.

Don't you just want to pinch his cheeks?

During midterms week, I've begun to fry. It's not just classes, either. Even social situations are becoming too much to handle. I recently stopped going to a club on campus that I've been going to for the last two years, because people don't realise when they should shut up. There's one thing people are missing nowadays in club; tact. You know what makes a functioning group? When you don't talk about stuff that isn't conflict as though it was conflict. It makes me want to tear out my enlargened Tarutaru ears so I don't need to listen to it anymore.

Do your friends a favor. If you're going to call somebody on something they "did", then make sure it's actually worth mentioning. I'd hate to see a building go up in flames because people thought a maniac was inside causing trouble.