I just wrote an email to my boss, and included ":)". Which I realized after hitting 'send'.

WAAAAAH, I have been corrupted.

('s not that it'll be a problem, my boss writes internal emails little punctuation and no captial letters, but it's ... I used :) in a work email!!!!!)

is here.

I just *died* laughing.

(and I think I should be scared of the Holmes/Watson stories to come...)

now it's getting interesting

:)

there is something very ... surreal... about watching scientists whacking off an elephant or a rhino.

(did you know that you can't stimulate an elephant's penis, because it'll just whack you in the face, so you have to massage the prostate to get semen out of them? Well, now you do, even if you never *wanted* to know this. :))

In case you're wondering, I'm watching a documentary on trying to save various species of animals via artificial insemination. It's very fascinating...

(hey, the penis of a rhino has wings that unfold in the vagina of the female! Isn't that interesting? ok, ok, I'll stop now)

I took a screen shot of my WoW Interface.

Warning: big.

(there's a bit of a quality loss from converting it to .jpg and making it smaller, normally, text is not fuzzy)

I actually just hit the screen shot button because of the text of the mob I was fighting made me giggle, but it's actually a nice look of what my in-fight screen looks like. The cool-down timers should be smaller and Omen should be a bit nicer aligned next to my unit frame... otherwise, that's what my WoW looks like.

For people who know what I'm talking about:

If I'm in a party, the party screen is on the left, above the micro menu. If I'm in a battleground/raid, the raid groups are there instead, stacked upwards, and in a BG, the BG map would be in the right bottom corner, where the mob-info is now, below the cool-downs.

My hot-keys are bound to the first 10 keys on the bottom to the right on the minimap, and to the 6 above (yes, I mouse-click Bestial Wrath, Last Stand, Intimidation and the trinkets. Same for Feign Death - I used to have it key-bound, but after playing another class, I often ended up FDing by mistake all over the place, including the bank or the auction house, so it's now unbound).

Additionally, the Num-keys are bound to the 3x4 square of buttons to the right - Tinnit has various mounts there, but if I dualbox, these are the keys that are only bound to the character that is on follow, so I can easily access their spells from the main character.

On the left, I have 5 groups of 3x4 buttons - I got that idea because that's how I finally found a nice way to bind all the shaman totems, and I like the grouped layout a lot better than rows.

People who play hunters can go look for 2 things in this image of a fight that ... are not optimal to the situation. 3, actually, but the last would be something that is missing. *g*

*Interesting* ad.

(don't watch at work, or where you might have to explain it to someone very young... or your parents)

Yesterday, I got Tinnit to level 80.

For those that don't play WoW: I've reached the top level. Also, you can probably stop reading now. *g*

For those that do play: I ended up levelling nearly exclusively with Rested XP, because I also spent a lot of time levelling up a Draenei mage together with Li, who's playing a Draenei shaman who is, frighteningly, a lot like her. This means that my character gets kicked a lot. *g*

I ding'd in Sholazar Basin, after finishing all previous zones (I have the done-all-quests achivement for all except Zul'Drak), but without having done instances. I actually kept that last Nesingwary Quest in my log for about 25% of level 79 just so I could ding turning it in, since I reached 70 in Nagrand in the middle of that Nesingwary chain, and I wanted to, well, keep to the tradition.

I had an indecent amount of fun levelling with a gorilla (he's called Fandrahl. Yes, after Staghelm. Tinnit says that the way he scratches his butt reminds her of the Archdruid. *cough*). I really only got him because I needed something until Level 72, where I was planning to get a rhino. I still like rhinos, but they don't come close to the gorilla. I'll re-evaluate after the upcoming changes, but for now, for grinding/levelling/farming, it really is a wonderful pet. I'm tempted to try and see how many Outland instances I can solo with him now.

I'll probably continue with the quests in Northrend (they're just more interesting than the Outland quests ever were, I stopped questing in Outland once I hit 70), and also start to jump into Lake Wintergrasp PvP.

In a few days, I'll do a picture post ... it's been ages since I did one, and I have quite a few screenshots lying around to be posted. Also, I. demanded I entertain her with one.

So. Time to get dressed and switch gears from my play-mind to my serious-bznss-work-mind...

*waves at everyone*

I just went to my room after a very interesting day here - I really really dig what we're doing. I mean, I knew others really liked this workshop, but the material in our qualification database has just said that it's about time management and how to deal with stress, but it's really about much more, including why people react like they do, and that there are really only 5 ways you can deal with situations.

I'm very much looking forward to tomorrow, and I also hope that I'll soon be able to do part II of the workshop (even tho that'll be 3 days, and I'll miss my cats like crazy *g*)

He also had a very interesting argument about why he thinks that single mothers/fathers and same-sex parenting is both equally bad, and the arguments made a lot of sense - this is something I'll have to think about for awhile. ... actually, I'll probably be pondering quite a lot of what he said.

Ah, well, I'm off - I actually regreat I didn't bring a bathing suit, they have a whole wellness area here that looks great, but I didn't read the hotel description clearly enough... bad me!

I'm off until tomorrow evening on a life-balance seminar - everyone at work gets sent to these, and now it's my turn.

Question before I leave:

my co-worker is getting her own computer at home, and wants to use it to download mp3s. Now, I get all of mine via Usenet, which is overkill for her, so... how do you all get your music?

Bonus question for the German/Austrians: where can she get German/Austrian music including alte Schlager, or stuff like Erste Allgemeine Verunsicherung?

Also, not too obviously "hay i r pirrrate" methods would be nice (I don't think she wants, say, the iTunes store... although feel free to give me links to where you can leagally buy mp3s, too, she might use it for some)

Thank you all, and *wave*

(arg - of course, right when the huge WoW-patch hits, I'm not here. *wail*)

have a link.

One of my recent posts was a 'bleh' about our last elections, in which both Haider's BZÖ party, and his old party (he split the BZÖ off after internal strife) managed to get 38% of the votes together (11 % BZÖ, 27 % FPÖ) - these are pretty right-wing, generally anti-immigration parties, with leaders who love to fight dirty and play on people's fears.

(and I promised someone a post about the political background of the election, but I've been distracted by WoW, work and the cold I caught last week. Sorry!)

The ironic thing: about 2/3 of all BZÖ voters said that they voted for BZÖ not because of what the BZÖ stands for (most people aren't that clear about just what they stand for), but because of Haider. So theoretically, the BZÖ is now changed so much, you could almost argue for re-elections.

Apart from the political...

I'm extremely disguested by many comments on his death - I took a peek on some of the comments around LJ, and saw headlines like "A Good Day for Austria" - most of the ones on LJ were from Germans (thank you for your informed opinions on our political reality, guys), but I've also seen some forum comments on derstandard.at that were... O.o (along the lines of "well, he didn't really need his *left* arm that much" to the information that his left arm was nearly completely ripped off).

Yes, I'm about as diametrially on the other side of Haider as you can politically be, but ha-ha-funny comments about the death of a person are never ok.

and now I'm going to bed, before I further think about how to strangle people via the internet.

I'm taking the time while the WoW-EU servers are offline for weekly maintanance and working my way through oodles of open tabs in Firefox. And somewhere in there, I found a link to a WoW machinima that had me giggling madly:

http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/02/14/wow-moviewatch-summing-up-valentines-day/
(via WI, because otherwise YouTube asks you to log in).

This is *NSFW*. It's called "First of May", and features Wow-toons without their normal undies doing ... well, go watch *g*.

On the *whoa* side, there's a huge spoiler for WotLK, and you can see the relevant cutscene and a description of the following questchain here (careful, the link itself contains a spoiler). If you want, the site also has detailed transcripts and movies of the whole questchain, but I didn't look at these - I want to do them myself!

Drawback to all of this: I now really really want WoW-fanfic. I mean, I've been kinda wanting to read a Thrall/Jaina story for ages (I really like Thrall best of all the faction leaders), or even a Thrall/Grom one, but now... argh! Why is there no WoW-fanfic (that is not terribly bad/bad porn)? There must be *some* fanfic authors playing WoW!

(I also think that you could probably write something interesting about Arthas' interest in Sylvannas... )

I just found this, and laughed myself silly:

Fake Trailer: Sarah Palin, Head of Skate

(that rather does put the Austrian election results into perspective, yes *g*)

... *Bleh*

So, I'm alive, just not very into things I'd communicate about.

I still play WoW, and I started dualboxing (= running 2 sessions of WoW with 2 accounts, playing 2 characters at once) a few months ago. And now that Blizzard is offering a refer-a-friend deal, where you can level together with someone on a referred account three times as fast, I jumped at this chance to finally quick-level all classes that I've been meaning to try. The XP-bonus is only for 3 months, so I'll mostly be playing WoW for 2 more months - after that, I might surface for a bit. Unless the expansion is out by then, of course...

Otherwise, I'm mainlining books set in ancient Rome. I've tried the first book of the following series: Roma Sub Rosa, Marcus Didius Falco, SPQR. I enjoyed all of them, and settled on the Roma Sub Rosa series to read first. They're all mysteries, set in Rome around the end of the republic, some a bit earlier, some a bit later. The summaries on Wikipedia have some slight spoilers, btw.

One of these days I'll get around to giving mini-reviews to all the books I read as I read them, and also working through books I read in the past...

On to the linkdump section: just stuff I found (often from my friendslist) and liked:

From Boredstop:
pictures of ordinary things, photographed in a very very suggestive way (potentially NSFW)
single picture that looks harmless ... but is not, once you think about it (NSFW after you get it)
really cool photographs that ... I am not sure how to decribe, so go look (this one, SFW)

From YouTube:
this is a Protect-Yourself-From-AIDS spot that I linked before, I think, because it was kinda cute (but possibly NSFW).
this is the heterosexual version of it, which I found so-so
this is the kinky version of it, which is ... O.o
I overall find them funny, but I've seen comments from others who had problems with them. My bottomline: they're memorable enough to get the message across.

ScienceSnark!
"Richard Lenski is a biologist who recently found evidence for the emergence of new traits among E.coli bacteria, in a fascinating experiment which he has described in a paper in PNAS. His results look a bit like evolution. You will note that his paper includes the original data. Andrew Schlafly is a startlingly predictable right wing christian activist who runs Conservapedia. Schlafly read Lenski. He got angry. He demanded the original data. It was pointed out to him that the original data was in the paper. He demanded the original data again. With menaces. Their email exchange follows. It's utterly hilarious." - what the post says - it *is* hilarious.

Found via Unfunnybusiness, and rather interesting to see their pov:
NY Times discovers 4chat/trolling/lulz, and talks to some of them. (linking to the unfunnybusiness post for the additional links)

Cute-squee!
Man sings dogs to sleep

Book-Recs!
calico_reaction is responsible for a lot of my book purchases lately. If you know you at least partially share my taste in books, check out her recs.

Dragostea din tei - the Opera version

a very well-written post about bad aldult roleplaying - mindcontrolling scenarios. Made me giggle madly (post locked to members of the comm, sorry)

And, last one, for cat-owners. I found this via the Way Of Cats blog, which I quite like: the Litter Robot II.
It's an automatic litterbox - and I love it. I've always been leery about the ones I had seen around online, because the whole rake-that-combs-through-the-litter was guaranteed not to work for my cats (Izzy would simply see it as a toy to chase). I ordered one pretty much on a whim, and it does have a 60-day money-back guarantee in case you have a cat that just won't accept it. Mine did immediately, which I found wonderful (ok, the fact that I didn't clean their old box for 4 days before it arrived may have helped). I kept it turned off at first and just cycled it twice a day manually, but now I keep it on all the time, and it really cut down how much litter I need. Plus, it's much easier to clean (*and* looks a bit like the death star. *g*). The price is about what I spend on books every 2-3 months, and considering that I have heaps of unread books already, I'm just not ordering new books till October. So: heavily recommended, especially if you have more than one cat.

That's it - time to push my mage/warlock combo from 54 to 59. *waves*

After going without for a year now (because I never got around to re-installing Trillian after I updated my computer), I've just - well, reinstalled Trillian.

I am now again reachable via ICQ, AIM and Y!Messenger, but I have no idea how to reach most of you. Granted, I imported the contact list from last year, but most of you are weirdly named, and some contacts on that list were several years old. So if you want me to add you, comment with who you are on what network, or just poke me if you still have me added? (I could get a MSN accout as well, but I don't know anyone who uses that - so far).

Further note: I'm currently not getting LJ notifications (my normal email had been receiving them for years without problems, suddenly *bam*, no more. And switching to a gmail account didn't help. *has no idea what's up*). I can see comments people leave me in the messaging center, but since I hardly ever post myself, and just participate in discussions elsewhere, that sucks.

I just found this video: Where the Hell is Matt. It's ... just something that made me smile.

and not just because I had a moment wondering if this is something Xander might end up doing

(also, I need a copy of the song, I really like it)

is that you're prone to stumble onto really weird stuff.

...

like a picture of a guy doing a delphin.

(the only thing I'm thankful for is that it's a small and blurry image)

ok, I'm sorry I'm mostly dropping links to stuff or blabbing about WoW lately, but this... *snicker*

Internet Intervention

You do need a bit of knowledge about the various big websites/memes to get it, but even if you miss a reference or two, this is enourmously entertaining.

(my favorite part was the present. And if you don't know what TubGirl references, just ... *don't* google it, ok?)

Phil Collins singing Old MacDonald

with various famous people providing the animal noises...

*giggles*

I really like the things ImprovEverywhere do. Their latest project: The Moebius, a timeloop in a starbucks.

Also check out their past stuff, for example Frozen Grand Central.

(in other news: I'm alive, I still read books/fanfic and play with my cats/WoW. *waves*)

http://community.livejournal.com/friends_of_lfg/1388.html
http://community.livejournal.com/friends_of_lfg/9624.html

they know what it references...

well, after dragonaph did one here, I really needed to do one as well, as I have some interesting pictures of her characters (and some of characters by liriel_, sashatwen and koorifumi. Some text not really safe for work. *cough*

( Pictures from Azeroth )

Tags: wow

I have here a newly created WoW character, and I need naming help.



She's a tauren: they're essentially a rather peaceful, nature-based society who worship the Great Earthmother, live on great grassy plains, are really good at herbalism, and have druids and shamans and warriors.

She's a warrior, and she'll get herbalism and alchemy as her professions (she's going to be a bank-alt at first, although I'd like to have an alchemist, so I'll eventually level her to 20 or 35).

I'm rather imagining her as someone who's awfully nice and kind and sweet and somewhat innocent, who loves flowers and if she didn't have 3-fingered clumsy hands, she might be doing needlepoint work. She just happens to also be rather big and rather strong.

I really really wanted to name her Snowdrop, or Snowflake, or possibly Buttercup - but of course, all of these are taken. So... anyone have good suggestions that I can try for her? I'd like it to be English, nature-related would be a plus but not a must, and if it's something that's white, and something that brings something fragile to mind, all the better. Outside-of-the-box would be good, because lots of names are already taken.

Help a poor gentle cow?

There's a larger picture of her behind ( this cut )

and yes, 'Milka' is already taken. I checked. *g*



(I really should get around posting all these other embarressing pictures of [Bad username: dragonaph"]'s characters informative and harmless WoW-screenshots I have...)

Tags: wow

an ad that will break your brain


In other news: Finished Season 1 of Heroes tonight - I'd been saving it for the weekend, because unfortunately, Heroes is the kind of show where I start watching and then can't stop.

I'll watch all of what's out of season 2 next weekend.

I love a show that makes me yell "shitfuck" at the screen (and I wonder where the hell I picked that word up? I hate it when I have no idea where my curses come from). I love the characters - pretty much all of them (granted, some a bit more than others).

C, I'll have to disappoint you: I love the show, but I'm not sure I actually want to read fic for it. ... ok, I lie, I think I could go for some MrBennet/Claude. But outside of that, I'm not sure I want to see other stories about these characters than the one I see on screen. Maybe that will change, but right now, the show joins the handful of others that I really don't need fanfic for.

ok, between yesterday 8 pm and noon today, I watched the first 16 eps of Heroes. Hello, new fandom, let me drown in you.

(I like that so far, I like everybody - well, ok, except Sylar)

However, question: I was looking for a meta community, so I could catch up on meta, and the only one I found was heroes_meta, which is extremely un-useful, as they only post quotes from people with links to their LJs, but not links to any specific posts, so trying to find meta to old episodes is impossible, as I'd have to scroll through all their LJs to find them.

I'm utterly boggled by this deeply stupid way to run a meta comm.

Also, I still would like a normal meta-comm, that links to *posts*. Anyone have any ideas?

(ok, I can go read TwoP's episode discussions, but TwoP is not my favorite place...)


In other news, I had my cousin staying with me last night. She's 14, and I've always clicked less well with her than with her older brother, who's 16 and into fantasy and computer games and WoW, so there were always a lot more shared interests, although I think I got along quite well with her, too. However, after our conversation yesterday wandered towards sex and realized we both know exactly what kind of porn her brother watches (bondage lesbians), she told me that she did have one kink that she looks for.

And... it's yaoi. And slash. *g* I was "YAY"! And I think she was quite happy to find that there really are other people who see even RL things with slashy goggles.

We don't have a fandom in common, as she's mainly into Invader Zim currently, but she is quite busy reading stuff at adultfanfiction.net and surfing around deviantArt. And she does know enough other fandoms that we could talk about them (she was totally floored that I liked Legolas/*Gimli*. And rather boggled that people wrote Squidwarts *g*). I told her to get a LJ (although without giving her my ID - easy to do, I have a second one that I use to read comics and a few friends from work).

I'm full of glee to see that there is another fan in the family, someone who does read a book or watch a movie and goes "but what if..." or "but what will happen now". Of course, I'm not sure if she'll end up a life-long fan, or if she'll fall out of it along the way, but for now... well, it makes me go *wheee*.

How to be made of fail:

1. take a well-known fan, who wrote lots of very very good fanfiction, and lots of good meta
2. who died last April
3. and plagiarize their fic
4. and their livejournal entries
5. *and* their replies to comments left to those LJ entries
6. and when caught, claim that there is a prefectly logical explaination: you were asekd by said fan before her death to do it (but of course you can't provide any proof, and you've already OMG! said too much)
7. make a OMG I'M A MARTYR post in your LJ.

[insert witty exclaimation about this here]

I've been meaning to post this since I read it ... wed?

Pratchett announces he has Alzheimer's

*weeps*

(earlier article about his mini-stroke)

we had our company christmas party yesterday, and I actually went (well, it was in Vienna this year - if it's outside of Vienna, I don't bother, since I'm car-less and not interested in spending the night). It was fun, in the "let's observe others" way.

Sadly, I did not win one of the 2 *gorgeous* laptops that were the main prizes in the raffle (I think that's it in English - you buy tickets, and then a few of them get chosen as winning ones) - a Siemens Fujitsu one that costs over € 2.000,-- (around $ 2,300.--), is extremely slim, sleek, black and with battery only weighs a little over a kilo (2-3 pounds).

One of the women sitting at my table actually won it, so I got to oogle it and even hold it for a few seconds. *wistful sigh*

We also had our company band playing - although they sounded better if you were in the other room and a lot further away. *g* I left around midnight; the party probably went on quite a bit longer: there always is a part of the crowd that stays up all night.

But it's a nice opportunity to ... um sich das Du-Wort anzubieten (the equivalent of getting to first-name basis, you babaric people who make no distinction between formal-you and informal-you), and it fun checking who gets tarted up, who gets drunk and starts inappropriately touching others of the same sex, who starts flirting wildly, etc. *G*

Today, I'm organizing. Files on my computer, granted, but still... I have aournd 40.000 image files on my computer (that's not counting scanlations), and they really really need to be weeded out, and sorted into proper directories (most of them are in 'unsorted', 'unsorted2', 'xunsorted' and '_unsorted'. Now, they are properly filed in Artist (plus subfolders), Screenshots (plus subfolders), Cats&othercritters, Fanart (plus subfolders), LOLCat, Icons, Kink (plus subfolders)0, and the ever popular 'still unsorted'. I checked - I still have images that I saved in 1995.

I am done with sorting the icons (easily found via 'sort by dimension' *g*), and now I'm thinking of making one huge post, displaying the 500+ icons that I've saved on my HD for whatever reason, for no other reason than to show off the funny/cute/weird/snark.

We'll see how motivated I can get - or if I get lost in sorting other stuff.

I just found this linked on CuteOverload, which is my daily "awww" before I start work:

Cat cafe soothes Tokyo's busy feline lovers

And ... I can't be the only one who's seen Weiss Kreuz and immediately thought of a cafe where the Weiss boys lounge around at least partially undressed and you can pay to come in and pet them?

I'm sure *someone* will write a fic about this? Possibly with Schwarz in there somewhere?

Or at least someone will write a story where this cat cafe is the new hiding place for Weiss?

*looks hopefully in the direction of the WK-writing people*


(if you don't know weiss kreuz: I wrote a crack_van summary once)

since Li just posted her info, I realized that I should mention to everyone that I have been on Skype for awhile now.

You should be able to find me as "ariunderscore". If not, yell. *g*
(I'm on only sporadically, but sometimes forget to turn it off. So if you call and I don't reply, it's because I'm not actually there)

I'm still alive, but spend most of my free time in WoW (I totally blame dragonaph, because if *she* didn't level her chars so much, I wouldn't have to play catch-up all the time!)

I may do a WoW-post later, but I've been meaning to post links to a number of things (partially so that I can close their tabs in Firefox). So, for your entertainment, I present the following:

Vids:

It's ok to be gay: HP, my most favorite "they're all gay" songvid. And posted before HP7 and Dumbledore's outing, too. Makes me laugh every time I see it. Sure, not technically the most brilliant, but it's damn fun.

I checked out the other vids done by the creator (Ariel333Lindt), and she has a lot of HP crack. Check them out if you have the time, but if you want to try only one more, try the Harry/Draco "Can you feel the love tonight". If I had been drinking while watching, I'd've sprayed something over my keyboard.

She's also done a very nice Loveless vid Strange love (Ritsuka/Soubi). If you don't know the anime: yes, Ritsuka is 12, yes, Soubi is 20, yes, it's rather creepy (in a mind-fucking and interesting way). Have some more info.

The original version of the songvid first vid. Even more colorful gay. Watching this made me kinda want to dress up in sparklies and a tiara, too.

What What (In the Butt). Not really my kind of music, but some of the images (the chocholate starfish!!!) made me snigger. Found the link on fandom_lounge on JF.

For something more educational: The meaning of American Pie. Every since I understood enough English, I wondered what the fuck it was about. At least now I have some idea about references

Geraldine: this vid has been linked on my flist before, but I'm linking it again, so there. I think it's damn well done. If you don't understand French, the text at the beginning is "One morning, Gerald found he has transformed into a female in his sleep", and then the 'j+1' etc. stand for the days passing.

Waking up with a cat. So, so, so incredibly accurate. Also, cute as hell.

Not Quite Barbie: I can remember when Aqua's Barbie Girl song was played all the time - but I had no idea Weird Al had done a spoof of the song - or rather, 3 small spoofs. I found them while searching YouTube for WoW vids, and then snickerd like mad.

As Good as I Once Was: ok, another WoW video. But it entertains me! There's a lot of WoW vids, and a lot of them are bad, or set to horrible music. This is ... rather cute.


On the fic side:

Weiss Kreuz in Rome! and sequel!

Benton Fraser meets Sir Conrad Weller (DueSouth/Kyou Kara Maou) - ok, normally anime/non-anime XOs break my brain (which is understandable, I think: the first such XO I found was a Duncan McLeod/Subaru Sumeragi story, and the mental image that pairing game me still makes me >_<), but this one is just *perfect*.


... damn, I thought I had more fic-stuff to link to. Where did it all go? (or maybe it's that I've not been reading much, lately, outside of fantasy novels. Hm... maybe I talk about some of them...)

... amuses me greatly.

Here's an article on it.

I'm off to watch people implode now.

I had to take Asche to the vet today - she had heavy ... uh, stuff on her teeth, the dictionary says it's dental calculus? - and she had a gum infection.

She just came home, and isn't too well. She now only has 2 teeth left, and the vet said that she bled excessively after the rest were taken out, and now she's totally out of it.

I had to lock Izzy away to keep her from slapping Asche, and have to watch her closely because she'll try to move from place to place but is still so out of it that she keeps falling down.

At least, now that most of her teeth are gone, she'll hopefull not have problems with them again.

*eyes small heap of cat with worry*

Can I write "Incident, problem and change management", or do I have to write it as "Incident management, problem management and change management".

(You can do the former in German, but I'm blanking on whether or not that is permissable in English)

!!!

WoW is ALL MOVIES

I love well-done stuff like that.

Tags: wow

sashatwen is also playing WoW, and is levelling a troll warrior (currently at 17). So Ethoran and Jhuuna met up with her, and we immediately decided that Zzora is Jhuuna's little sister, and took pictures (and mine are nicer than dragonaph's. *sticks out tongue*)

( Jhuuna and Ethoran meet Zzora )
( misc. others )

Why playing WoW with a fellow fan can be fun (Aph and moi play while talking over SkyPE)
I don't quite remember the exact text because it was over 10 levels ago, but here's an approximation (and translation):

Tinnit and Byll are cleaning out the Excavation site in the Wetlands. Suddenly, two dwarf paladins run up, and start doing the same.
- oh, look, 2 dwarves! both paladins!
- they must be brothers
- or gay
- or gay brothers in love with each other
(we settled on gay lovers, and then met them several more times)
(we clean out the dwarf grave site in Wetlands, and I loot a large slimy bone. I mention this to Aph)
(we run to the flightpoint, and see a single dwarf paladin run past us, with one of the really frown-y faces)
- oh, look, another dwarf paladin
- all alone
- he looks unhappy
- do you think he'd be happier if I gave him that slimy bone?

Tags: wow

Since dragonaph started playing WoW a month ago, I've been levelling with her. We play on EU-The Sha'tar, a RP PvE server.

My dwarf hunter is now 41, and is levelling with her night-elf hunter (who's 43), and my troll mage is at 25, while her blood-elf paladin is 25 as well. She also has a dwarf rogue at 19 (I think), and I'm currently debating whether to level up a warlock or a priest to play with her (either a draenei priest or a human warlock).

I've been taking some screenshots while we've been playing together, and finally got around to editing down to postable size. Still, warning: large images.

( Tinnit )

( Jhuuna )

I really think Jhuuna and Ethoran should create a guild, just so we could have it listed under our names: "Make Love, Not PvP". *g*

I find questing together with someone is really great fun, and it does go quite a bit faster than solo levelling. Two hunters can take on a *lot*, and as a mage, I enjoy the knowledge that Ethoran can resurrect me if Jhuuna dies on me.

I also did my first instance: Ethoran and Jhuuna did Ragefire Chasm after we were several levels higher, and I did Wailing Caverns with a pick-up group - ok, granted, I did bits of WC, because we were a paladin, 2 warriors, a shaman and me as a mage, had one ninja looter, one tank who couldn't tank and one shaman who couldn't heal. There were always at least 2 fights going on, and the first leader (the paladin) quit very quickly, and after 2 more wipes, we had another guy quit and I gave up (the 2 warriors went off to find a new group). I enjoyed it, but I'm used to being conneted with SkyPE while questing/fighting, which makes it a lot easier to coordinate.

I wonder if WC couldn't be done by Jhuuna and Ethoran at lvl 25 now, if we had a 3rd person with voicechat who could heal...

( and while I'm at it, pictures of other characters I have )

I've mostly been ignoring Sims2 and fanfic/fandom for WoW this last month - it can't last, because while I am on vacation for one more week, after that, I need to cut back, and to start paying attention to other stuff. But I do hope Sashatwen and Li stick with/install WoW, and we manage to get a group together who can meet regularily and level together. I think that would be *great* fun, like a mini-guild, with complementing jobs, etc.

(anyone else possibly interested in WoW, or if you have it already and I know you, interested in rolling on EU-The Sha'tar? *g*)

Tags: wow

I just wanted to reinstall Paint Shop Pro, and discovered that JASC has been bought by Corel, and to install the latest trial version, I have to register a Corel account.

I don't wanna!

So: anyone still have the install file for the trial version of either PSP 7 or 8, and is willing to share?

(alternatively: any suggestions for an alternative free/shareware program that I can use to easily crop and resize pictures, and allows a bit of fiddling in terms of colors/sharpening/etc? Nothing too big, I mostly want to crop/optimize screenshots from Sims2 and WoW)

here is an utterly priceless vid from Dragoncon, of a panel where furries are mentioned by Michael Shanks, and then he and Lexa Doig have to explain the concept to Christoper Judge.

here is a transcript of it, but do watch the clip, the reaction is... *giggles insanely*

I've been playing WoW since Feb, and enjoying it a lot, but more in a "play around with lots of alts, and experiment with stuff like cooking and fishing" way - as opposed to hardcore levelling.

Last weekend, I converted dragonaph to WoW, and she's the power-levelling type, which has done quite a lot for my motivation to start levelling just one (or two) characters faster. It's *really* great fun to play with someone else, even if we have moments like "where's my pet - oh, over there - oh, shit, it's bringing 3 new mobs!" or "hey, that thing over there - isn't that your dead pet?" - "what? oh, ups..." (yeah, we're both hunters).

(It would make sense to pair her hunter with another class, but all my other Alliance toons are essentially bank-alts, and between levels 10 and 12).

Now, if only liriel_ would get a new graphic card installed and got WoW working on her computer, we could maybe all roll a new character (Horde, this time, so Aph can see the other side), and really only level them as a group. Li really liked Warlocks, and Blood Elves, and if Aph plays a hunter again, I could be a mage or a priest...

Ok, it's past my bedtime, I need to go. 3 more weeks until my vacation, 3 more weeks...

Tags: wow

I can create JournalFen accounts: if you're interested in moving over there (or want a backup account there), and I kinda know you (and thus know you're over 18), I can create you an account.

You need to leave an email address and a desired username in the comments (I'm screening the comments to keep email addresses private).

Click here to start reading about it. (sorry, am at work, can't go hunt down a better link)

(HP Fanartists this time, apparently)

Grrrr.

ok, they probably won't.

But I had to.

Spoiler... well, a bit for the epilogue, but I'm taking one bit of description about someone, and am very meanly applying it to a relative of him.

( click here for another insane photoshop merge )

I just want to say: this is *totally* rheasilvia's fault for having a problem with said bit of description.

The last time I played video games, they were the Nintendo Game and Watch series (I played all of the games pictures on the page, and owned 2 of them), or knock-offs of these.

Early last week, I bought a Nintendo DS, and am enjoying it quite a bit. I'm mostly playing Phoenix Wright, which is fun but a bit too easy. I also have a handful of other games, but I haven't gotten as far into them yet. I'm definitly not into Jump'n'Run games, but I like adventure and RPG ones.

Since I'm enjoying the DS, I'm now oogling the PSP...

Spoils someone from the epilogue.

( Because, frankly, it *had* to be done )

(warning: brain-breaky)

rest of the scans up, too

There's also summaries posted in spoil_me_dh if you don't want to read the book, but want to know what happens.

*watches people go insane on spoil_me_dh*

ETA: list of who dies

for those of you who are impatient or don't want to ruin your eyes reading the photographs of the pages:

summary of the first 17 chapters (you need to join the comm to read)

scans still unverified, but faking these pictures would be damn difficult.

(and hey, I'm enjoying them)

Also: if these are real - I've already seen a *lot* of spoiler icons and LJ usernames. If you wanna remain unspoiled, stay off LJ (and ok, probably the rest of the internet)

Wow, that was fast.

Half the book (up to around page 400) is online in the form of photographs taken of the book's pages. Apparently, the rest will be out once they're done watermarking the images.

So, spoiler-phobic folks should probably stop using the internet right now.

*wants to go home to read skim, but is at work*

*pouts*

Note to self:

do *NOT* watch a documentary called "How to Commit the Perfect Murder" while eating (it's just a model of a body, but I've now seen more of the inside of the body than I wanted to...)

But it's a good documentary, if you like that kind of stuff


(ETA: oh, ew. That's more maggots that I ever wanted to see. ESPECIALLY IN EXTREME ZOOM!)

Ah, spoilers are starting to float around.

The current thing that makes me giggle is that the reason the "hacker" (he claims he managed to hack a computer of a Bloomsbury employee and thus found the draft) gives for spreading the spoiler: "make reading of the upcoming book useless and boring" to further help prevent "youngs of our earth" being converted by the books “to Neo Paganism faith."

(I've fallen out of the fandom and will be checking out spoilers for this book, but - for those of you who read it - I kinda liked the middle bit, especially since it could lead to lots of insane wankage, but the last sentence kinda sounds ... not that plausible, especially the (for fun and profit!) addition.)

Oh, and here's the link for those of you who want to know what's floating around.