Month: July 2017

Needed Break

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Needed Break

This is a weird post and I am not exactly sure how to write it.  I find myself contemplating a break from blogging, or at least greatly ratcheting down the amount that I spend writing.  It feels like for awhile now I have been too little butter spread across way too much toast.  There are so many times I sit down in front of the keyboard in the morning and I have no clue what I am going to talk about, and somewhere along the way a post comes out.  The problem is…  it isn’t usually a very good one.  When I first started blogging I was full of ideas that I felt like I had to get out of my head to keep from bursting.  However the rate at which those ideas regenerated was way slower than the time in which it took to drain the well dry.  Partially it is that I don’t think what I am doing is all that interesting anymore.  I am no longer playing any one game serious enough to be a reasonable source of information about it, and I am not playing enough games to really be any sort of interesting review source.  I’ve fallen into this pattern of largely playing whatever I happen to be playing on a much more casual level than I used to, and as a result you see long strings of posts about my activity in Destiny, Diablo 3, Final Fantasy XIV and occasionally World of Warcraft.  None of which is filled with that much useful information,  nor do I really feel like I have enough personality to carry it off anymore.

I am not really sure what this means, but it all feels like I am forcing the daily blog to be a thing right now.  In truth my blog was never really known for the quality of content, but more the quantity and I guess on some level that is a little bit depressing.  Talking a lot without saying anything meaningful is not exactly my favorite thing.  I know that I don’t want to do anything like nuke the blog from orbit…   I am more the sort to simply let something rot on a server forever rather than delete it.  The problem that I am having is that I wish I could blog with regularity…  but also only do it when I have something worth talking about.  I am not entirely certain if I am capable of doing something…  but doing it intermittently.  My life tends to be a series of routines, and once one is abandoned it tends to be gone forever.  I am hoping that I can figure out how to blog when I actually want to be blogging rather than out of some sense of obligation or devotion depending on which day it is.  It is my hope that by backing off from forcing myself to do this every morning…  that I might be able to get some of my creativity back.  I have this weird problem with when something feels like a job… it ruins the fun for me.  There was a period of time when I used to love development…  and now it is largely something I do to get a paycheck.  Similarly I used to love sitting down in the morning and baring my soul for you all…  but over time that too has started to feel like a job.

Here is hoping I can figure out a way to keep doing this blog…  but recapture some of the fun.  Regardless from this post forward we are entering a new phase of my blogging.  If I have something to say I will say it.  If I don’t however I will just peacefully drink my coffee in the morning and do something else.

Stormblood for the Holiday

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I had a very long weekend for the holiday and spent most of my gaming time with FFXIV. Our Free Company is still very active and it feels so great to have tons of people around and looking to group. I spent a good share of time helping folks knock out story dungeons or just getting faster queues for roulettes. Yes, even as a healer my roulette queues are almost instant right now, while the poor DPS are waiting and waiting. I would love to see the data on the effect adding 2 new DPS classes had on queue times. I suspect it isn’t as drastic a change as we might think since many folks are happy with their chosen role, but I’m sure it did make things at least a bit worse. There’s so very many red mages now.

One of the goals I had for the holiday was to complete the two EX primals that are available. I got halfway there. It only took a couple attempts to get a Lakshmi clear, but I’ve been trying Susano over and over and over to no avail. I am hoping that once I clear it I’ll be able to get into the farm groups that actually know what they’re doing, because I’m so sick of watching the other healer (it’s almost always the healer) stand in the group with the lightning and kill us all. I’d really like to get the weapon from him, since it will be at least 6 more weeks before I can get a weapon upgrade anywhere else.

The big excitement really came yesterday when the first wing of the Omega raid opened up. As is now standard in FFXIV, it had 4 bosses with the token loot system used in Heavensward’s Alexander raids. I got pretty lucky and won items off the first 3 bosses on the first try, so I only had to run V4.0 a couple extra times to get all my gear for the week. I ended up with a belt, a pair of gloves, and 1/2 of a hat. Not bad. I’m hoping to farm Lakshmi a bit so I don’t have to depend on jewelry from Omega as much and can focus on “left side” tokens. Loot aside, the raid was super fun and I’m quite happy with it. I’m curious to see where the story takes us, but I think I already like it better than Alex. I loved the music and a lot of the fights from the Alexander raid, but the story left a lot to be desired. Omega seems to fit in much better with the overall plot of the expansion.

Stormblood has definitely been keeping me busy so far. I am hoping now that most of our raid group is at 70 that we’ll set up a regular raid night again and work on clearing the EX primals and Omega. I’ve been flirting with burnout a bit, mostly because I’ve been running a lot of things on my own and pugging is bad for my mental health. If I can do fun things on the regular with my friends I’ll be a much happier Grace.


Stormblood for the Holiday

July 2017 Gaming Goals

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A belated post for my July goals since I was too busy playing games over the holiday weekend to blog about playing games!

Review of June Goals:

WoW: Level one more class to 110. Done! I ended my temporary return to WoW with only the Shaman, DK, and Warrior below the level cap.

Subnautica: Rebuild my sweet sea base empire. Done? I’m going to call this a win. I didn’t build quite as fancy a base as I did in my earlier playthroughs, but I did build two of them and that should count for something.

FFXIV: Play Stormblood. Done! Yes this goal was a gimme but I don’t care. I didn’t want to stress myself out with goals I just wanted to enjoy the expansion for a couple weeks.

I actually completed all my June goals! I guess the secret to success is having really easy goals.

July Goals:

FFXIV: Clear both EX primals. I got Lakshmi this weekend but Susano still eludes me. I want a fancy weapon and maybe a doggo.

Advance at least one of my Anima weapons at least one step. Hopefully an easy goal but I’m being intentionally vague with it. My SCH weapon is on the light farming step, while my AST weapon is on the “do a bunch of dungeons in order” step. I should be able to finish at least one of these, especially with a certain friend who has been encouraging me to do these silly things.

Level my AST. After leveling roulette last night I’m at 65, so this should be easy. I am very curious to see how different the healing feels compared to SCH. It will be easier to compare the two when they’re both 70 and equally geared.

Figure out how to buy a house. My FC is moving to the new housing district when it opens, and I would like to continue living in the Mist. That means I’ve got to buy my own place. I’ve been saving up, so hopefully I can afford it when everyone abandons their property to move to the new zone.

Diablo 3: Complete the basic season 11 journey with a necromancer. This will be a somewhat short timer since the season doesn’t start until near the end of the month, but completing the 4 chapters should be easy.

Complete the challenge rift every week. I’ve done the first 2 so far and they’ve been quite fun and not too punishing so hopefully I can continue.

Master all the crusader set dungeons. I have been slowly working on this since season 10. I just finished Roland’s set dungeon last night so all I have left is Akkhan’s. I just need to finish farming the set.

I have some actual goals this month for a change! Hopefully keeping them focused on just 2 games will help me meet them. Wish me luck!


July 2017 Gaming Goals

Goodbye Bella

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Having the “Fourth” holiday happen in the middle of a week always throws me off.  For example I got up yesterday and never once considered sitting down to blog…  until about 10:30 my wife asked me something about it and if I was going to call it “the weekend”.  In truth I have felt a little out of it for the last week or so, mostly because a whole bunch of things have happened.  Firstly we had the whole “dog adopted us” thing, which caused us to completely screw up our sleep patterns.  For months now our Eldest ferret has not been doing very good, so there has been a daily routine of cleaning up after her.  Monday evening when I got home from work, I went to check on her and found that she had passed peacefully during the day.  We sort of knew it would be soon because we had been feeding her this nutrient soup, and Sunday night she refused to eat any…  and also refused to drink much in the way of water.  In some ways finding she passed peacefully curled in a little ball in one of the warm beds is a relief…  because its like she drifted off to sleep and just never woke up.  Whatever relief I am feeling however is outmatched by the general sadness of knowing she is gone… so it is a truly mixed bag of emotions.  At the same time we have been trying to double our attention on her cage mate who had been watching after her as the signs of aging got worse.  The challenge with ferrets is that they are extremely wiggly creatures… and as a result I have tons of blurry photos of them scampering and playing…  but not a whole lot that are nice and relatively still.  The above image is of a much much younger Bella and I managed to snap a few shots where we can actually see her face.  She was my girl, and would follow me around while I was doing whatever…  until I would finally go pick her up from the play pen.  Feeling more than a little broken at the moment.

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You aren’t going to get much in the way of a traditional post out of me today.  I just don’t feel like talking about gaming and such.  So I will just leave you with another photo, this one shows Shiloh as well and is one of the few “scamper” shots that actually has Bella in focus.  In my four decades of life I have had to say goodbye to a lot of animal friends…  and it never really gets any easier.  In fact finding these photos this morning meant scrolling through a bunch of shots of Little Shit and Chloe as well…  and that sorta tore open its own old wounds.  I guess that is the challenge of the digital age…  you have a mountain of available photos available at a moments notice…  even if those photos are sometimes hard to look through.  Bella came to us with her name… and she was a rescue from someone who could no longer take care of her.  The original owner said it was short for Bellatrix as in Bellatrix Lestrange from the Harry Potter novels…  but I sort of think it was the worst possible name for her.  Firstly she was a blondish/white ferret…  which might have fit Narcissa but not Bellatrix.  Secondly she was one of the most loving and cheerful ferrets… and not at all similar to her cruel namesake.  We kept it because she seemed to respond to it, though I imagine she was responding more to our voices than a specific name.  She was our little escape artist, and I am sure at some point during my blog I have written about the fact that she figured out how to leap out of a marshall farms play pen…  leading us to zip tie plastic cardboard signs to the top to keep her from gaining traction and flopping over to the other side.  She had not been much of an escape risk for awhile though, and mostly just wanted to snuggle at all possible times.  She loved being carried around… and often helped me go fetch this or that around the house.  I am trying really hard to pour extra attention on Shiloh because I am sure she misses Bella…  but also because it helps me as well.  Bye baby girl.