So The Doghouse is back in the ring. Thank god. I was getting sick of that extra click after I had gone through the ring and landed back here to get to Brian.

Speaking of returns can I ask about someone who hasn't? Where is John? I'm sure he's busy but has anybody, (besides Dusty, of course) heard from him? I've seen him on DAoC a couple of times which is more than I used to for a while. The conversations go something like this however:

You send "yo" to Homi
...

Maybe that's just returning whatever slight he thinks I gave him when I started playing. Of course besides the "hey, how's it going?" there's not much you can talk about in DAoC. "Wanna go hunting together?" "Well since I'm level 38 and your level 2, I don't think it would work." He did start a new character though, but by that time I was too high to level with that character.

Maybe I'm just egotistical. It may have nothing to do with me. Every time I say hey he could be in the middle of a huge fight. No...Must be me.

Waiting for the flying pigs and the whole hell freezing over thing.

I was thinking that I'd cut out the DAoC talk. I'm taking a guess that everyone got enough of it and since only a few of us are playing, it bores the hell out of everyone else. I think I can come up with enough to talk about out of my own life without having to spend time going on about a video game. Then of course I laugh because I remember my life is bleak and empty. Then come the tears. But I'll manage and you'll all thank me for it. Then we can wait until Jin starts playing and she can go on and on about it.

Besides, if I continue, in a few years I'll read over it all and have to kick my ass for being such a geek. - asmyth82 10:50 PM - ____________________

Matt, here's your reason to play DAoC:

DaynaH8sU: i would do that if i killed someone who just killed a newly ressed person
DaynaH8sU: but if it was a good fight, i blow usually

- asmyth82 9:08 AM - ____________________

So I have today off. It's not even a "I don't wanna go in today so I'm not going to" day. It's an actual, honest-to-god, cancelled day. I can't decide which I like more. the casual feel of a day you know you're not missing anything or falling behind, or the "stick it to the man" feeling of not bothering to go in. Screw it, I just like the "not doing anything" feeling.

Of course I should use the time to finish up the load of work that's been dumped on me. The essay, the booklet, the poster, teh multiple other assignments that bore the hell out of me. Will I actually get any of it done today? Even I don't know. Depends on what's on TV.

After Matt cancelled the game last night, I used it as an excuse to jump into DAoC. Matt, I can understand if you aren't feeling well, but you're only feeding the addiction. Leveled twice, if any of you care and also changed my colours. Since I had chosen the name Krulk, an obvious rhyme on Hulk, I went all the way with it. All my armour is now green, save the pants, which are purple. When your opponent is wearing purple pants, you may as wel give up. You can't kill him, his dignity is already dead.

Purple pants with green shirt, boots, gloves, and hat. Definite fashion statement. The statement is I can't dress myself. - asmyth82 8:27 AM - ____________________

And now a weather report from Bizarro World.

It's been a mild winter. I'm not one to complain about it, mainly because I hate shoveling snow. But I was expecting not to see any more snow since it was, and is, spring. So what happens on the first day of spring? Major snowstorm, whiteouts and all. And here I was expecting nothing more than a few spring showers and some mud as the worst the season had to offer weather-wise. Right now I'm staring at my backyard, which is covered in a few inches of the white stuff. I actually had to break out the boots, which had just recently been stored away, to await the next winter. It seems it has arrived early this year.

If this is spring, I'm not sure I want to see what summer has in store. - asmyth82 11:59 AM - ____________________

I had to be bitchin' cool at some point on this earth.
You were male in your last earthly incarnation.

You were born somewhere around the territory of what is now know as modern Tibet, approximately in the year 1475.

Your profession was: artist, magician, fortune teller.

A brief psychological profile of you in that past life:
Bohemian personality, mysterious, highly gifted, capable to understand ancient books. Magician abilities, could be a servant of dark forces.

A lesson that your last past life wishes you to learn in your present life is:
The timid, lonely and self-confident people are everywhere, and your problem -- to overcome these tendencies in yourself and then to help other people.

I'm lazy, that's why.
I'll change Jin's link on the left at some point. Maybe right after I post this. Maybe not for a while. Why? Didn't you read the title?

And that's all I have to say at the moment. Sad, isn't it? - asmyth82 3:11 PM - ____________________

I'm not a big fan of Wednesday. Never have, doubt I ever will. Sure, these days I can sleep in, but then it's rush rush rush. The work level has stayed at about the same amount or perhaps gone down slightly. It's that final stretch and then who knows, I may be able to take a break. Who am I kidding? My life is kept mainly as a break with some work thrown in here and there for a change of pace.

Here's something I'm sure you've never seen before:

Others see you as
fresh, lively, charming, amazing, practical, and always interesting.
someone who is constantly the center of attention, but
sufficiently well-balanced not to let it go to their head.
They also see you as kind, considerate, and understanding,

someone who'll always cheer them up and help them out.

Why is it you never see results like "You're an ass and people hate you" on these tests? - asmyth82 10:22 AM - ____________________

Ahhh, what a day, what a day.

And I won't even go on incessantly about it.
Last night I went from level thirteen to level fifteen is DAoC. I may follow the leader when deciding what and where to hunt, but as soon as we're on the battlefield, you follow MY damned orders. Or you die, which the group last night demonstrated. They should have listened to me. Moving on...

It was half price! I'm only human!
I also checked out Penny Arcade as I do every day and ended up finding mention that their Year One book was on sale. So, despite having earlier decided I wouldn't use it unless it was an emergency, I pulled out the credit card and bought a copy. So $19.00 or so...plus shipping...convert it into Canadian funds...mortgage the house...I should be able to pay off the credit card bill is six or seven years. :-) Not really, but close. Basically I take the final total of anything I buy online and double it. My payment for my DAoC three month payment plan came to sixty so the theory holds. Damned loonie.

A watched mailbox never delivers.
My copy of Hiram Key should be here sometime in the coming week. Then give or take a week or two after that and I should have it read. It'd be sooner but there are other things that need taking care of. School, for example. It's getting down to the crunch. Then it's done for the year. Which leads to my next point...

Hire me or I'm screwed
I applyed to Stream International for a part time job in their call centre. I'd be a part time customer interaction agent. Gotta like any job that lets you be an agent. the money would be better than what I'm making now and that would be a big help to pay for school, my RRSP contributions and whatever else needs paying for. If I got it I'd be able to take my friend up on his idea that we go to Mexico for a week. He basically said we'd sit at the bar yelling for more booze. And Lord knows I could use a vacation. But I may end up having to figure out a way to pay tuition for next year. I really don't want to resort to a loan.

Though if I win the lottery tonight, I won't have to worry about it. I'd also be able to buy and sell your sorry ass. - asmyth82 7:00 PM - ____________________

I know I haven't posted in days but it isn't because I have no content worth posting. It's because I have no will to. Normally I post and note I have nothing going on in my life worth posting about. Now that I do, I don't want to talk about it. It must be due to the way I was brought up. Our troubles weren't to become gossip I was told. What I will say is that it involves two, seperate matters involving family members, none of it good, an leave it at that.

Strangely, oftentimes things don't seem as important years down the line. We shall see.

Maybe that means I'll tell you sometime about discovering I had a long lost sister at the age of thirteen. - asmyth82 6:17 PM - ____________________

Well, I feel stupid, but at least I still have my pants on this time.

So I spent the past few days worrying about this project that problems just threw themselves at, as I knew they would. So finally got things worked out. And how much time did this take me after all that worrying? Not countign a reboot, all of ten minutes. I should've stuck with my patented apathy.

Irony is ironic

I'm sick of hearing about Odin, Baldur, Thor, Valhalla, Midgard and the like. I've never known any teacher to stretch what is basically "Baldur stood there, got hit with a twig of mistletoe, died," into a two hour class. For God sake, enough! Now to play DAoC, where I'm a viking turned berserker troll is midgard...gah...

No really, I'm only going to the kitchen for a snack. I'll be right back I swear.

It seems lately my "bbiab" or "bbl" in the chat room is turning into "I'm leaving now, deal." I said I'd bbiab around 11 am or so and it turned into me not coming back online. Partly my fault, but mostly another person in the house skipping school and going into a Counterstrike killfest.

Who the hell would bother searching for "OpenRPG cheats"?

I, like most people, have gotten some very odd search referrals. Sure I've gotten some where they're looking for me directly, (which, come to think of it, brings up the question why since anybody looking for me directly is most likely a member of the ring or has a link on their blog,) but others are just weird and sometimes scary. "goblins chained" comes to mind. Why they want anything about goblins being chained, be it a how to manual, (you know one has to exist somewhere online,) to D&D players with some sick fetish. So this has given me an idea. I will on occasion toss in some random words unrelated to what I'm talking about and see if anybody winds up here by using them or a combination of them. Amish porn.

All contents and ideas herein owned by Smythco Corporation. Patent pending, patent pending, patent pending! Unless you wanna give me money, then whatever. - asmyth82 9:21 PM - ____________________

Have you ever found that when you have a plan for doing something such as, say, a project and you've left it right to the last possible second, that any plans you make will go in the toilet? I had planned to finish (read start) a project this weekend and was sure everything I needed was right at hand in the house. That's when reality set in and I realized somebody up there hates me. I needed a wine bottle. Couldn't find one. Now let me explain something about my house. In it you would be able to find a bottle of almost every kind of alcohol known to man. maybe not every brand, but at least a bottle of every kind.

Next I needed to scan some images. Now I have one of those all in one dealies. So that means either a) it'll be a perfect time for my scanner to go down or b)it'll run out of ink. Luckily it only ran out of black ink. Pick up an ink cartridge. Turns out it's the wrong kind, even though the package says it works with my printer. This is annoying.

At this point I say "screw it" - asmyth82 7:48 PM - ____________________

The first step is admitting you have a problem. The second step is finding someone to sue.

I'm addicted. I thought it was just a way to pass a few hours, but after logging on to DAoC at 7 pm yesterday and logging off begrudgingly at 2 am, I realize now it's a problem. It was just so easy to fall into it.

I joined a good group where the only problem was I was the highest level. We went after willows, then arachites, and finally great tinglers. Since they were red and purple to me, I basically carried the team. Lots of leveling all around, though I'm only halfway to 14, and we went on a mora slaughter. Someone would accidentally draw five of them in and I'd hack through one by myself, run over to the next a group member or two were fighting, hack it to bits, run to the next, repeat until done. Next time we group up, we're going after werewolves.

Hopefully I'll have the strength to resist until I get more important things done.

Simpsons geek? I knew that already.

A+	Your Simpsons Trivia score: 105% You are truly a Simpsons geek. Your knowledge of Simpsons trivia is impressive, indeed. Excellent.

Find out your Simpsons Trivia grade @ Space Monkey Mafia dot com

Is anyone else not surprised this is all I had to write about? - asmyth82 11:24 AM - ____________________

Well that's it. End of my break. I was able to relax somewhat, but there's nothing like taking a break from everything to cause things to pile up. At least I can't claim I was bored.

Had a few extra projects added to the pile. Luckily, only a few are due in the coming week. I'll finish one, but I know another is coming up midweek. Had a few added from nonschool sources, which seem to be the ones I'm enjoying most. I've caught myself a few times getting so involved with working on them I realize I've totally ignored the really pressing ones, ie. the ones my grade depends on.

Spent yesterday at the print shop. Very cool seeing so much expensive equipment, plus the projects being worked on. Some of the info I already knew, but I let them go through the entire speech, they seemed to enjoy the teaching role.

My deadline schedule:

School
Get off my back! The stuff will be done when I get it done! Dammit!

Dev folks
Stuff is underway. Got the preliminary emails done and the site I'm doing is coming along, save for the front page which I'm scrapping and redoing.

Real Life Friends
Mike, you should really do your own part of the project. You're just lucky I'm such a nice guy and agreed to do the pencil work. The drawing is in your email inbox. You can thank me later.

I know none of them are actually reading this, I just like talking to myself. - asmyth82 6:22 PM - ____________________

So I said I'd post a pic of the calzone golem we fought in D&D Sunday night. I know I've never bothered to do that, nor have been bothered to draw anything we've come across. I just liked the whole idea of a calzone golem. Must be the Italian part of me. Anyway, here it is. I even bothered to throw it on it's own page. Not a big deal. Hell, no deal at all, but that should stop geocities from not allowing the image to be seen after one or two clicks. - asmyth82 12:34 PM - ____________________

Here's a lesson for ya...

DnD night.

No more dungeon crawl, but with only Cit, Alyn and Alia present, that meant a change in plans.

The party went back to the bar to talk to Rich about the quest. After appraising the rings, Cit had found out that they were only worth about 50 gp each. Why was Rich offering 125 gp each person for them? The party decided to keep quiet on the fact we had them and try to discover what was so special about them. At first he wouldn't talk, but we were able to talk him up to 250 gp each person since we had lost members from our party. Alia told him his math was wrong and it should be around 1700 gp total. That started a whole tirade of insults and the word "wench" being thrown around. It was then offered that if Alyn or Cit returned the rings, we would each get 500 gp. Nobody returned Cit's high five. Alia, however, would get nothing. Alia stomed off, (more than once, I might add.) Rich had mentioned a safe, which got Cit thinking. Let Alyn and Alia keep Rich and the bartender, Otto, busy upstairs in negotiations, while Cit searched out the safe and stole everything within. Alyn, of course, nixed that plan.

Cit had been offered the original 125 gp: wasn't allowed to take it. Was offered 250 gp due to the loss of party members: wasn't allowed to take it. Was offered 500 gp but Alia would get nothing: wasn't allowed to take it. Alyn took charge of the negotiations. In the end, Rich received the family rings. What did we, the party, get for our hard work in the long dungeon crawl? Alia got an apology for being called a wench.

But hey, Cit could still rob the safe right? Nope. Four city guards walked in and sat at the bar. Sigh.

Lesson one: Never let a boy scout negotiate.

At that point, Cit started feeling pain in his foot. We rushed off to the alchemist/baker. The door was unlocked and the kitchn was a mess. The basement door was blocked by a chair. Downstairs was a golem. A golem made of calzone. I'll post a pic once I'm done the drawing. Alia shot at it, only to hit Cit. Luckily, he made his reflex save. Alyn hit the golem and took heat damage. Cit hit the golem with a crit. hit and Alyn took 1 point damage from hot sauce/blood. Alia hit the golem for 8 damage and Alyn once again took damage from the hot sauce/blood. The golem died at that point.

In the bedroom, the party found a man tied to the bed and beaten. On the desk ripping up books was the familiar of Vortigern. You remember that bastard right? The first villain we ever faced. The one I said upon our loss: "Great, next time we face him, we'll have to deal with the lich he'll have turned into." The Dm replyed "What makes you think you'll run into him again?" Continuity, that's what. Cit had run into him before the whole rose tattoo thing and waking up halfway around the world.

Lesson two: Always trust a thief's intuition. - asmyth82 11:25 PM - ____________________

There's healthy, and then there's this

Looking, as I usually do, through my stats, I find another visitor directed to me by a websearch. What were they searching for?
Why, the phrase: "goblins chained"

Sometimes, I'm afraid even to ask. - asmyth82 7:54 PM - ____________________

Friday was supposed to be a party night. Huge party. I was all set to go. I had been planning to for days. Then around three that afternoon, I started feeling sick. Not cold sick, not flu sick, just that feeling like my body telling me "This is not the night you wanna go out and drink heavily." Damn.

So what did I do? I sat and played DAoC all night. I ended up losing 3 bulbs due to incesant dying. Things were looking hopeless until I was messaged by a fellow guild member, a healer thank god. She joined the party I was with and I ended up leading the group. This is where being too nice for my own good kicked in. I got messaged by a seer. He asked if he could join the party and that he could heal. So I checked his level. He was a level 4. Now my group was in Gna Faste at this time, and for those of you who don't play, (and yes, I know you're thinking I'm a freakin' loser right now,) the area around Gna Faste is not the best place to hunt if you're level 4. I went there when I was lvl 4, clicked on the first creature I saw, and said "OK. I'm outta here." I then proceeded to run away. So I gave the kid credit, (I consider every lower level a kid, as well as horrible players. That way I allow some leeway for their sucky ability/playing skills.) Here he was at lvl 4 in a place totally populated by purples, (to him.) So I let him join. I got some WTF? from a few other group members, including the healer from my guild, but I just stated that we were going to help this guy level a bit since he should be able to do that quickly as long as nothing attacked him. Sure enough, he was leveling quickly though since he was at such a low level, he was basically useless for anything. We met up with a hunter who soon started in with the "Kick the guy out, my exp is sucking!" He and our other healer, (who was pretty crappy at everything. No buffs and he couldn't keep us alive very well,) left rudely just as the lvl 4 hit lvl 5 and I ended up telling the guy I had to boot him from the group because he was crapping everyone else's exp. At least he could go send his ability points.

So what was left of our group, me, the healer from my guild and a runemaster or something, went out on our own, laughing every time the hunter who left so rudely died, which was often. (That healer was useless.) So that was basically it until I leveld. I went to Galplen, sold my old useless armour and bought some new stuff. I was pondering buying some new armour that I didn't desperately need when I got another IM. "Excuse me sir, but could you spare some money for some armour?" Panhandlers in DAoC! Almost exactly like real life. So I turned around and look at the guy who had asked. Level 1 or 2. Now at that level, I had gone out and killed everything I could to earn money to buy my armour, something I think adds to playtime and teaches you to fight. Once again, howwever, I was too kind for my own good. I flipped the guy a gold piece since I knew there was no virtual booze he could waste it on and left thinking if he'd only asked me sooner I could have given him my old armour, some of it quest stuff. Ah well.

I've packed my bags and relocated to Geekville. Permanently. Bah. - asmyth82 7:38 PM - ____________________