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.

Never Thought I'd See Keyboard Warriors in Real Life

Keyboard warriors are terrible to encounter on-line. A keyboard warrior is someone who constantly berates people through the Internet just because they can, and try to act tough while doing it. It was really present back in the day in FFXI, and it sure as heck still exists now, I imagine. Kind of like how it happened in high school, only, people don't use keyboards anymore.

Look at those tough guys. Courtesy of kumah.org.

Even in college people are still doing it, and they're not even anonymous. It's been a huge problem in the club I attend on campus, which is just a ridiculous situation all-around. A group of freshman had swept in, guns blazing, and trying to do things "their way", and then once the excrement hit the oscillation, they complained, saying "This is just one big high school!"

I'll never understand some people. When cancer begins yelling at other cancer, calling it cancer, stuff gets really silly.

/sigh

As most of you know, yesterday was Valentine's day. Mine was rather lackluster, so I hope those of you reading this fared much better than I did. It wasn't necessarily the fact that it's "singles awareness day", but because I had a talk with one of my friends yesterday about how she had just mutually broken up with her boyfriend--the day before Valentine's day. People were already going around her back trying to get her back with someone else, who was already dating someone, and what's worse, the guy's girlfriend was in on it.

I miss how simple it used to be. Valentione's day, the FFXI equivalent, was very simple and it was even slightly heartwarming. All you did was you went around your respective hometown (or, really, any of them), went to all the men and women, and tried to partner together them based on whom they had requested, and asked you to give them a half of a chocolate heart to the person you chose for them. For example, say a Hume male decided he wanted a feisty Tarutaru woman, and gave you his half of the heart. You run across a Tarutaru woman who says that she wishes she had a kind Galka as a partner, and gives you her half. You can either give her the half the Hume gave you and subsequently dash the Hume's hopes (because the Tarutaru doesn't want him), or you can go look for another Tarutaru woman who says something to the effect of "I really want a sugar-daddy of a Hume! Now go and find him for me!", give her the half the Hume gave you, and have it fit perfectly, creating a perfect couple.

Fitting in two halves of the same whole is always the best way to go about it, too--even if it's chocolate. If you have two halves that are the same size, it's boringly symmetrical. If you have two halves that are very different sizes, your heart is ridiculously unwieldy. But if you have two halves that are just different enough so that they don't match perfectly, but aren't completely different, you've found what I consider to be the perfect match, even in chocolate.

©Square-Enix

And Here I Thought The Character Creation Screen Was Final

I just ran into an old friend from FFXI on facebook, and it was weird because the name I had seen in screenshots she uploaded was different. Her name was Paliki, with blonde hair and orange highlights. Today, I saw a character uploaded onto her photo albums named Kadesia, also with blonde hair and orange highlights. I know it's the same server because of people also in her screenshots (Who could forget a Mithra named Mishymeow?), so why the change of identity? It makes me wish we had nameplates like in FFXI, where we could just go get a change and people would be none the wiser, just so we could re-create a reputation. But what makes people think they have a reputation for no reason?

I had quite a reputation on Flag, and I would never change his name. He's too sacred to me, kind of like a foster child.

{Teleport-Bangor (S)} {Can I have it?}

Now before you get too confused about what my title means, FFXI has an auto-translator function to aid the language barrier between English, Japanese and German speaking players in the game. Players like to use them for joke sentences, such as using the phrase {meat dishes} for the word "sex", or to keep with the maturity, the phrase {meat} {rod} for the word "penis".

Also, the (S) after Bangor refers to the past. I really miss two years ago here in college in Bangor. Things were a lot simpler; I was happy and I had a lot more to look forward to. Plus, I hadn't yet realised that a lot of college is just a scam for your money.

It isn't even really just about the money. Spring Break two years ago is when I had actually found the first person from college who I'd want to be around for the rest of my life, and it felt glorious to finally feel that. I had heard a lot that people you meet in college are going to be lifelong friends, but judging by first semester, I had thought it was all a farce. At least I finally did find someone, and although she and I will likely be nothing more than friends, I'm okay with that, because I'd rather have her in that capacity than nothing at all. I've met a few more now, so I suppose that scam money goes toward finding people you'll want to know for the rest of your life.

I Wish /blist Worked in Real Life

Consider this "I wish" entry a series. This would be the second in the series, preceded by the weather effects one earlier.

/blist (blist is short for black list) is a command in FFXI that lets you not see any chat, actions or otherwise in your chat log from characters on our black list. Ever. At least until you take them off.

For example, let me show you this chat log: 

Click on this to see the text. Note: >>Espadas is me talking to Espadas, and Espadas>> is him talking to me. He asked me to join a leveling party.

Click on this one, too!

 After all the traveling I did (through time and space, literally. Where I started was present day and where I was headed was in the past), and knowing where my starting point was, he thought I wasn't coming? That's a crock of shit, obviously. /blist is a handy command for people like this that you'd just rather not associate yourself with.

Imagine, if you will, you had the ability to completely remove any hint of someone's actions affecting you in any way. You can't hear them, you don't know what they're doing, what they're motioning or anything like that.

All you can do is see them.