Oh the books.

I think this is going to be a pretty brief entry about the books I've been reading. That's the plan, anyway.

Reading is an interest that goes on and off for me. When I was very little I expressed no interest in books or the alphabet and my mom was concerned that I might have a learning disorder, but once I got into kindergarten I picked everything up just fine. It wasn't that I was bad at it, I just wasn't that interested in it. I think that has kind of stuck with me my whole life, until Harry Potter came along. The books absolutely spurred my interest in reading and I became ravenous, but only for Harry Potter books.

I would read the series over and over again, waiting for the next installment to be released. I still ready plenty for school: Hamlet, 1984, The Odyssey, Twelve Angry Men, Brave New World, and on and on. I enjoyed them too. I liked reading, but not enough to spend my free time on it. Free time was for friends and video games.

Three or four years ago I was given a book for Christmas that I had a lot of fun with: Kevin Smith's 'My Boring-Ass Life'. There was something about that book that ignited a reading frenzy in my head, and I went on a streak for over a year where I would start a book the same day that I finished one (just about, anyway). I plowed through autobiographies, historical fiction, fantasy, pre-teen novels, pretty much whatever was thrown my way.

Then someone threw a stick through my spokes by giving me a copy of Wicked to read. I hated that book so much. It brought my reading marathon to a screeching halt and I have had a hard time picking it up ever since. I reverted to re-reading Harry Potter and half-heartedly picking at new books. Serious bummer.

Andrew is a rabid reader. He was more than happy to recommend some titles for me, and he sent me off to Ireland with nine new books. They are a random assortment spanning multiple authors, but eight of the nine are fantasy novels. My favorite genre.

We decided that we'd like to have our own book club of sorts. You know, read along together and talk about what happens. So far we haven't done a very good job of keeping up with it, mostly because I have more leisure reading time than he does. I imagine that'll get sorted out once I'm there.

But anyway! The first book I ate was Night Mare by Piers Anthony. Absolutely fantastic. I am in love with this universe and I am absolutely delighted that there are multiple books in the series. Even happier is the fact that he gave me two novels in the series. I started and finished Castle Roogna within a few days of finishing Night Mare. I am stoked to read more books in the fantastic Xanth universe. It has to wait though, y'know, until I have more of them in my possession.

For now I'm going to start The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett. I believe I'm going to enjoy it very much. I anticipate finishing it before I leave on Friday, and then I'm going to start Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on the plane. I've seen the movie but never read the book and I'm really looking forward to it.

I'm very happy to be so pumped about books again.

-MJ

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Exerting great power at work.

I had a difficult time deciding if this entry should go here, or in my photo blog. Technically, the majority of what I'm going to write about relates directly to my photography job here in Ireland. However, I've done absolutely zero photography at the studio; I've been doing all computer/IT work. With that in mind, I figured that the information would be more relevant here in geek central.

The photographer took me on as a studio assistant with power over digital asset management (hereafter referred to as DAM) and anything else to do with organization and internal structuring. I'm not sure my photography skills were really important after he learned that I spent my senior year at Evergreen learning DAM. I'm not an expert by any means, a year is not a long time, but I do pretty well and it's more knowledge than a lot of other people have.

It's good to have a system. Most people don't.

Initially I was set to work designing wedding albums on the oh-so-fabulous-to-use tablet PC. It quickly became apparent that I wasn't going to get any internal restructuring done during business hours. With the help and encouragement of Andrew, (I was nervous to demand certain work hours) I told my boss that I needed to change my schedule so I could work after hours on the computers.

This proved to be quite successful, and next thing I knew I was working 2-8! It's nice to have those two hours of quiet after the studio close at six, just the computers and me.

There are three machines and they are all old and bogged down. Years of pictures that didn't need to be on the hard drives, old programs, downloads, just cobwebs strung through the data. So, I started with the tablet PC and set to comparing the photos on the C drive to the photos on the backup drives to make sure everything was stored properly.

I'm going to use this moment to talk about how I don't really care for Picasa. There's no option to store photos in their original location without duplicating them. This infuriates me. What a waste of space! And yes, the files can be manually deleted, but then that's just a waste of time. Aperture isn't the perfect program but at least it gives me the option to store the photos in their original location AND not duplicate them so I'm not getting doubles all over my freaking hard drive! GAH!

I spend a lot of time in there like that.

OK, so with that aside, the computer was full of weddings and family shoots because the boss likes Picasa and no one (until now) deletes the projects once they're finished. So yeah, lots of old photos just chillin' and taking up space on the C drives. Annoying.

Right as I was ready to reinstall Windows and wipe that sucker clean, the computer started to give me a peculiar error on startup. Right after the BIOS screen it shows a 'floppy diskette seek error' error. F1 to continue or F2 to enter setup. I got all up in that BIOS and looked up so many FAQs and tutorials and nothing that I tried fixed the problem. All of the final signs point to hard drive failure. I let everyone in the studio know, so it's in their hands now since I'm leaving in less than two weeks.

The Windows install went smoothly, and after installing the relevant drivers we were good to go. I sealed it up with an anti-virus and ad-aware program and reconnected all of the hard drives. Even though I expected to be doing a little bit of photography, I'm not disappointed with my experience. I love working with computers and I've learned a great deal about networking and troubleshooting. Now that I know how to do it it is very simple, but before I got to the studio I didn't know how to share a drive or map a drive on a computer network. Easy peasy at this point! :D

My adventures have brought me through to completion on the second of three computers in the studio. That one took a lot longer to compare and copy pictures; the hard drive was super full. It's running better now, but it still likes to restart randomly. No error, no warning, no 'wtf I encountered an error lol wanna go to safe mode?' upon turning back on. I wondered if it was a bad file or something, but after wiping it and it still does it I'm going to go ahead and say it's a hardware problem. Again, I let everyone in the studio know. Hopefully they can get someone in to pinpoint the issue so the whole computer doesn't come crashing down.

Not to mention the additional 45 minutes required to 'setup' Windows.

On Friday I finished clearing off the third and final computer. It is schedule for reinstall on Monday, mwahaha. After that's done I'm going to write up instructions as concisely as possible so other people can do the reinstalls when necessary. I didn't write anything down while I wiped the tablet pc, but I wrote step by step instructions as I was wiping the second computer. At this point they just need to be refined and carefully worded so even people that know nothing can do this. I'm doing all I can to make sure the systems function well after I leave because they were in a sore state when I arrived.

I think it was Wednesday that we experienced a special problem. The computers are all outfitted with multi-size card readers, seeing as it's a photography studio. The cameras all take CF cards, just for reference. We discovered that someone (fingers point to the previous student work experience that we had in) had jammed a CF card in past the receiving pins and the card had fallen down into the card reader casing.

See that bottom left opening? Yup, just... fell right down in there. Not supposed to do that.

We call that a problem.

Fortunately I am a skilled and brilliant person (and oh so modest too), so I was able to remove the card reader from the tower and retrieve the CF card. My boss was mighty impressed with me, but then again he was ready to start poking at the tower with a knife while it was still on and plugged in. We were good though: I turned it off, removed the side, disconnected the card reader unit, located a tiny screwdriver from the construction workers outside (it is so wacky at the studio), took off the top and grabbed the card. I wish I had taken a photo of my handiwork! It felt good knowing what I was doing, and it was all the better when the computer turned back on and the card reader still worked. Ha!

Well I think that's it for now. Just know that I'm ass deep in computer problems at work and next week I'll be talking about video games again. Yay!

-Miranda

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Minecraft and the wolves within.

So much has happened in the Minecraft world that I hardly know where to start. I believe that when I left off over a month ago I was talking about Andrew expanding our castle wall. Also, the fabulous ship that he built and the fact that the lava was glitching through the cobblestone and setting the bookshelves on fire. Yeah, that sucked. But hey, I have a lot more news this time around.

We'll start off with something a bit comical. I still don't even know how this happened. The game can get a bit laggy at times (the worlds are huge), so on occasion I'm shooting arrows and they're not firing. My best guess is that I shot a bunch of arrows, they were delayed, and then I walked into them. Talented, right? It was funny. I mean, clearly we were having repeated death issues. He was engulfed by lava. Twice.

Following the completion of my triforce above the entrance to our castle, I decided to build another beautiful monument: Kuribo's shoe. Anyone who has played Mario 3 (Andrew we need to fix this disgusting problem of yours) experienced the thrill and joy of world 5-3. Is Nintendo ever going to bring it back? I hope they do. Hear my plea! I want more of Kuribo's shoe! The opportunities for its use are rife! Maybe in Super Mario 3DS? Perhaps that's wishful thinking, but that's all I've got! Either way, this was quite the undertaking because of all of the black wool that was needed. Many squid were slain and sheep sheared to construct this boot. Eventually I'm going to add Mario's head the top, but we're working on other projects at the moment.

Back in March I experienced this rather epic chunk error. That would be our lava covered library split perfectly in half. I thought it looked pretty badass.

Some of my favorite moments in Minecraft occur after I haven't played for a few days and Andrew has gifts for me. He surprises me with 64 item stacks of red flowers, yellow flowers and as much wool as he can find. If he's had some particularly fruitful days then I get a special gift of clay or even ink sacs from squid! What a gentleman, right?

Our latest project has us building a train depot. We're in the process of connecting our homestead with another guy that plays on (and runs) the server. There aren't actually trains in Minecraft, but we're building a very nice depot all the same. It has a very tall glass ceiling, pillars, elegant stairs and an almost complete underwater viewing wall. I'll be putting in some classy couches soon. Andrew added a waterfall elevator (it takes some getting used to) that leads to an open spaced plaza. He did a nice job of connecting the train depot area with our pit digging area.

Speaking of the pit, it's coming along nicely! We're starting to get down deep enough to find diamonds (!!!) and Andrew has already dug down the edges to the admin rock. Because of all the caverns that occur that far down it's getting a little difficult to dig consistently. There are pitfalls everywhere and we die a lot while we're working on it. At this point I think he has found (and obsidianized) all of the lava flows, so at least that danger has been abated.

But back to the plaza area! It contains a lot of smooth stone, which means we've been doing a lot of furnace cooking. We have to be really careful with the smooth stone because if we misplace it, and then have to break it down to remove it, it turns into cobblestone! I think we've done well though. He included a nice grassy area off to one side and I decided to build an extensively girly garden. Girly things are bound to happen from time to time. I told him I needed some more yellow flowers to complete my colorful masterpiece and he suggested that we do some off-site exploration. He brought up the fact that we'd been so engulfed in construction that we hadn't had a chance to explore in a while, so I agreed.

What followed was extensive traveling and a rather epic cave structure. We got lost, plain and simple, and filled our pockets to the brim with loot from the caves. I guess I forgot to take a screenshot (shame on me) but we found not one, but TWO dungeons, and both of them contained cocoa beans!!!! This means we can make cookies! I am so excited! It was really only when we were ready to head back home that we realized how lost we were. Fortunately we had found gold and red stone, so he set to making some compasses that would point us back in the general direction that we needed to go. We set up camp near a familiar landmark and proceeded to get the crap attacked out of us by creepers and skeletons. The 1.5 update really seems like it includes greater mob spawning. 

Although, it could be the addition of rain (which makes the landscape dark enough to spawn mobs) creates more opportunities for mobs, and there aren't actually more being made at once. If that makes sense. Either way, we got blown up a few times just trying to cook some things. Eventually I put up some walls and started to dig for coal. It was a rough few in-game days, heh.

The most exciting recent addition to Minecraft is the wolves! This patch was released a few weeks ago and I about peed myself when I found my first wild wolf. Andrew and I loaded up on bones to feed them and then we set off trying to find some. They're pretty uncommon so we had no idea how long it would take to stumble across some. I started yelling (in game) when I found one and quickly took a screenshot. When they're wild they have these silly lazy eyes. After you give it a few bones it decides to love you and it becomes tame. It suddenly wears a collar and its eyes become friendly.

Say hello to Sir Woofington (the 1st!)! Since finding our first wolves, we have found many many more. I believe that we have fifteen each. We keep them parked in the town center (another project that is being worked on!) for the most part and only take a handful at a time when we go hunting for wool and leather. When the wolves are running free they tend to get in the way and you can accidentally hurt them. Or, if you're like me, you can accidentally hurt someone else's wolf and said wolf will fucking murder you. So, lesson learned; don't try and shoot a creeper when it's close to someone else's tamed wolf. You will not survive. 

And speaking of creepers, I took this shot while working on Kuribo's shoe. It was silly to watch Andrew baiting the thing, its tiny feet flopping around. He drew it in close enough for me to get with my bow. I'm proud to say that I'm a fairly decent shot in-game, haha! Stupid creepers.

-MJ

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100% about Nintendo. No surprises there.

Alright I'm going through my Google Reader, it's been a few days, I haven't bathed in two days and I had pizza for breakfast. I meant to get in the shower a while ago, but I had almost 400 articles to go through. A lot of them I don't really care about (there is a lot of news about smartphones and tablets), but what has really kept me glued to my screen this morning, other than a penchant for laziness and a lifelong disdain for bathing, is all of the Nintendo news that keeps cropping up!

Perhaps it all feels especially relevant to me because I'm frothing at the mouth to finally have my 3DS. It came out last month and I won't have mine until sometime in June. This is because of a certain geographical placement that I've found myself in and the added expense of shipping something not only trans-continental, but trans-Atlantic. I have mixed feelings about my situation. I am in Ireland, after all, and I guess that's pretty neat.

Ocarina of Time 3DS is no surprise, but Zelda Informer has so very many articles and screenshots to share. It is enthralling. Very recently they've been dropping more links related to the Super Mario 3DS title that is, apparently, due out this year. We will see the return of the raccoon tail, which excites me to no end. This installment is supposedly going to be a cross between Mario 64 and Mario Galaxy. Now, maybe I didn't exactly finish Super Mario Galaxy because one of the levels near the end was so brain-meltingly difficult that I died in the same exact spot fifty or so times before screaming 'Fuck this shit!' and never playing it again and this was about three years ago, but that doesn't mean that I don't absolutely love that game. So, this potential mash-up is exciting to me. Very exciting indeed.

Now, the only thing that I'm really missing is more news about Paper Mario 3DS. I love Paper Mario. It is a brilliant entry in the Mario universe. When I saw in the announcements last year that there'd be a Paper Mario for the 3DS I think I may have cried. However, I've read little to nothing regarding it since then. A handful of screenshots have been released, and there was a very small video I think from the Tokyo Game Show last fall, but I'd sure love a release date and a bit more concrete information.

With this information in mind, it's really not so bad that I don't have my 3DS yet. There aren't any games at present that I even want to play. The launch lineup was very lackluster, in my opinion. The first game I want is Ocarina of Time, and that comes out on the 19th of June, which is just about when I'll get my hands on my system. I suppose some things are just fate, simply meant to be, and the stars align in my favor from time to time.

From there I don't even know the release dates of the big hitters that I want to get my hands on, like Mario Kart, Animal Crossing, Super Mario and Kid Icarus. That is something that I miss about working at GameStop; having access to constant release dates and information was certainly handy. Oh Nintendo, I do love you so.

Over the past few weeks my eyes kept skipping over rumors of Project Cafe from Nintendo. Now, I really hate getting excited about something that turns out to be fake or just pure speculation, and for some reason the thought of Nintendo releasing some form of Wii2 in 2012 just seemed... too soon. So I withheld any sort of mental involvement or interest or excitement until I found an article that proved concrete. Well, that happened today when I came across an article that had a confirmation from Nintendo that they're projected to release their next console sometime in 2012 and it'll be shown at E3 in June. Good on you Nintendo. I hope it's good!

Oh, this article got me all hot and bothered as well; I would absolutely take a 3DS remake of A Link to the Past. Nintendo really caters to me, I am all for remakes. I know a lot of people hate them, or feel like they're cheap or the companies are just milking for profits. Maybe that's true, but they appeal to me in a big way. I fell into a, I think, not uncommon bracket for gamers. I have very recently achieved the ripe age of 25, and as such I straddled the golden age of video games. I was alive and well cognizant of life around me, and I certainly played video games, but I did not play the video games. There are a lot of reasons for this too, the biggest factor being that even though my mom could afford the console itself, she couldn't afford many games for it. For every system that my sister and I owned, we had one to three games for it. That's it. Generally the pack-in (too bad that never happens anymore) and one other obviously big title.

I commend my mom on how well she did with such limited knowledge of gaming. Plus, it was just her and we had no outside input recommending good games for two little girls to play. She knew Mario was popular, there are pictures of us receiving a Nintendo when I was 5 or 6, and we excitedly unwrap the NES with Mario/Duck Hunt, Mario 3, Barbie and The Little Mermaid. Now, you may knock those last two, but they were actually fairly interesting and damn difficult. We never managed to beat Barbie, but we saw the ending of The Little Mermaid on more than one occasion.

But back to my original point. The titles that I listed were the only titles that we owned. At some point we acquired Marble Madness, but you see what I mean. We didn't have Zelda, we didn't have Kid Icarus, we didn't have A Boy and His Blob, or countless other amazing games that have blossomed over the past 20 years into long-standing and well loved franchises. This trend continued with the Sega, we only owned Sonic and Toejam & Earl (an amazing title that we owned simply because it was the least expensive game my mom could find, kudos to her though because my sister and I love it).

It was only once I graduated high school and got a job at GameStop that I started to own many games for any one system. As such, the glorious rereleases allow me to experience phenomenal games for the first time, just like everyone else did 20 or so years ago. Plus, they usher in the golden age of gaming for everyone that was born after the games were originally released. Not everyone has access to the original consoles, not everyone has an older sibling/aunt/parent to learn from or to borrow from. I completely welcome and encourage the releases. It gives everyone a fair chance to love and learn.

OK that tiny thought on remakes blossomed into something much larger than I anticipated. I apologize.

-MJ

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Apparently this is about tablets and Minecraft.

Everyday that I walk to work I pass these really great wrought iron fences. They're thin and black (of course) and at the tops they have gold painted fleur des lis type ornaments. They're nice to look at, but more importantly they remind me of my 40K army. I painted a few little gold fleur des lis for my vehicles. I miss them. I have a feeling that my future holds a place for me to paint again though, so that's really exciting!

The 3DS launched today. In Europe, anyway. The US has another two days to wait. This doesn't make a bit of difference to me because my system is sitting in Washington AND I won't have it until June. Ugh.

I'm currently at work and doing some photo editing for a family shoot. I'm lucky in that, when at work, I get to use a giant tablet PC. I am unlucky in the fact that this computer is effed up and slow. Apparently, whoever used this machine before me was just download happy. And stupid. I'm hoping I can convince my boss to let me wipe it and start fresh. It needs it very badly. [I'm continuing this entry from home and I'm happy to update that I've been given the OK to wipe and restore the computer. Awesome!]

I remember the first time I used a tablet at all; my friend Leneah had one in high school. She really loved to draw and one time during Junior year she let me use it. I remember how horrible I was at it and wondered how she managed to control the pen well enough to make the drawings that she was so proficient at. Turns out it gets a lot easier with practice. I asked for one for Christmas that year, 2003, and received one. A tiny 5x7 tablet. I clumsily drew Neopets and mushroom scenery in Photoshop 7. Ah, memories. The next one I ever saw was the monstrous one that Andrew received as a birthday/graduation gift that following June. He's the kind of person that actually needs a tablet. I was very impressed.

After starting at OC for my Associates, I took some Photoshop classes. Once I was in the advanced class I had access to a tablet again. I had kind of fallen out of use on mine (already) and the work space was so tiny that it was frustrating to use. The ones at OC were sizable, but not nearly as large as Andrew's. Haha.

I didn't really mean for this to turn into a blog about tablets, but here it is I guess. I really enjoy using one. I don't need one, but I'll absolutely use one whenever the opportunity presents itself. Plus, Andrew gets jealous when I talk about it (which is fun and cute). Here is me using it:

Don't I look thrilled? My face may have not gotten the 

memo regarding how awesome tablet PCs are.

For lunch today I set out to find something new to eat (didn't happen) and while on my walk I passed a store called Game. I saw it last summer but had apparently forgotten about it. I most certainly didn't forget that there's a GameStop in Eyre Square Centre, but I like to avoid going in. It was so disorganized that I felt stressed when I went in last! Anyway, I popped into Game because they had crap-tons of signage for the 3DS. I wanted to look around and see game cases for Pokemon White and Okamiden. I easily found the boxes for Pokemon, but I didn't spot Okamiden. I don't even remember its release date though, so it's entirely possible that it's not out here yet. I looked around at their displays and the strategy guides and the empty box ads for the 3DS and felt... sad. Then I went, ''Do I miss GameStop?!'' and I turned and ran out of the store, almost knocking into an unsuspecting patron attempting to enter the door.

I suppose it wouldn't be entirely out of the question for me to miss it. I was there for over six years. Weird.

When we find the time in the day, Andrew and I go ahead and play Minecraft. It works best when he's on his lunch break, and that only works for me if I have nothing going on immediately after work. So far this week we haven't been able to play very often, but when he have played I've managed to grab some really fun screen shots! Allow me to share.

Andrew expanded our castle wall out quite a ways and

found some lovely new islands off the coast.

To the right of our castle's front wall he built a long low wall

that extends into a dock. Look at that beautiful ship! <3

While assisting with the construction of our ship's sails I 

spotted not one, but TWO squids off to the right of the dock!

Now I can make more black wool without finding those

ever elusive black sheep. Score!

We explored the Nether for the first time last week. It was

really freaky at first, and so very dark. I am not a fan of the

Pigmen. At all. The Ghasts make me so sad, then I shoot

them with my bow until they cry and explode.

Sometimes when I leave the Nether the Nether takes a

while to leave me.

I don't condone book burning, don't worry.

Andrew built us a fabulous library that is completely covered in lava. I painstakingly built tons of bookshelves in order to properly stock our intellectual alcove. I also made some classy as shit couches. One day I popped in to relax and all of the shelves and wool were gone. We were both very perplexed. We kind of assumed it was a server or game error, so I decided to wait until the anger wore off and then I'd build new ones. I had just placed about 20 bookshelves and was stopping to admire my handiwork, then I noticed that they were in flames. Apparently there is some sort of issue with flammable items being against a wall that has lava on the other side. So that was fun.

 Da da da daaaaaaa!

This is my latest contribution to the castle. Generally Andrew assigns me a task and I get to it, or I just hunt for sheep, but in this case I had a clear vision! Seems like a good welcome mat to me :]

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Minecraft! And some sad news.

OK, it has been way too long since I've posted here.

In the past 6 months I have, sadly, not played very many games. There were other things going on and I just didn't make any time for them. This is a decision that I regret! At home I no longer had access to a TV all to myself, so if I wanted to play my Wii I had to take everything downstairs and hook it up to the TV there. I'm a touch lazy, so I ruled out this option many times. I really need to work on that.

The few times that I did manage the arduous process I found myself playing Kirby's Epic Yarn. A couple of ventures saw New Super Mario Bros. and some virtual console titles. For Christmas I received Epic Mickey, but didn't play it. I also acquired Donkey Kong Country Returns, Mario All Stars Wii and Lost in Shadow. My sister and I had a few rousing evenings with DKC Returns, but I didn't play Mario All Stars or Lost in Shadow. My free time was dedicated to working full time at good ol' GameStop, preparing to leave for Ireland and seeing my friends as much as possible in anticipation of being out of the country.

My reasoning for not playing very many Wii games was that I planned on bringing my Wii with me and playing games in Ireland. Well, I'm in Ireland now and I haven't played any games. You know why? Because I think I broke my Wii. Now, I'm going to try very hard to not dwell on this fact because I am pretty effing distraught over it, as I'm sure one can imagine. There's an ever so slight chance that the AC cable is just fried, but there is also a chance that the Wii itself is toast. I won't know for sure until I get back home and can test it with someone else's cable. I hate not knowing. If I lose all of my VC downloads I am going to be so angry. Then I'm going to riot to Nintendo and let them know that they are unfair for not having a login system so that customers can re-download their purchases in the event of a broken system, like PSN and XBLA do. I know they're worried about protecting people and children's identities but man, I don't want to lose my money.

Alternatively, I may be able to have them fix whatever is broken and retain all of my downloads and save files. I wonder how much they charge to fix Wiis? And what the turn-around time is? Hmm..

In slightly more positive news, I at least have my DSi. And, if all goes well, I'll have my 3DS along with Pokemon White and Okamiden next month. Just in time for my birthday too! I have a very generous mother :3

Looks awesome, right? Hopefully I'm better at it than I was with Okami -_-

For my DSi I have a nice selection of games that I could be playing, but I haven't dedicated any time yet. I bought Ghost Trick just before I left the States at the recommendation of my co-worker and some reviews that I read online. I'm anxious to play it but have been very befuddled with my computer and Skype so that I can talk to my boyfriend. I love technology. I remember when I was about 11 or 12 I was on the phone with my dad who I only saw once a year for the summers. We were talking about how great it would be if video phones existed, that way we could see each other everyday even though we were on opposite sides of the country. Well, dad, the future is upon us and you don't have the internet. Way to embrace it! Sheesh.

Anyway. My DS. I love it dearly. I could play on my lunch breaks but I've been busy reading awesome and punny fantasy novels! I'm happy to be reading more, so I don't begrudge the book. It's call Night Mare, and it's by Piers Anthony. Andrew picked out a bunch of books to send to Ireland with me. We're reading them in chunks together, sort of like a book club. My days are filled with awesome <3

I had every intention of reactivating my WoW account upon my arrival here, but I've found that that's very difficult to do with no money. I'd have a bit more money if it weren't for the dollar being so horrible right now. Add the $$$ lost during conversion on top of the fee charged to me for pulling out money from a non-affiliate ATM and I am running out of money right fast. Doesn't really leave much room for a subscription fee. That is OK though because I have been playing MINECRAFT.

This was definitely me, although I didn't make it so far as to creating torches or glass before I started to have help from someone else.

Last fall Andrew told me that I should play it with him and his co-workers. I was busy being antisocial, so I told him maybe. Then in December I had a chance to play on a friend's computer and I got super excited. It definitely helped that Penny Arcade made a mini arc about it. I trust everything that they say whole-heartedly. They're the reason that I bought Katamari Damacy. <3 those guys.

So since early-to-mid January I've been playing on a multiplayer server with Andrew and his co-workers. He and I have been traversing and building and exploring and slaying and spelunking. It has been nothing short of awesome. I've been taking screenshots when I remember to because there's so much fun stuff happening. Currently we live in a monster castle that is complete with waterfall, dining hall, garden, gothic tower, floating house, living quarters, supply room, subterranean cave system, library and mob catcher. He's always thinking of new things to add, so who knows what else it'll turn into! We also have a lighthouse on the shore and we built a mine track to our old house via skybridge.

This here (from left to right) demonstrates the mob catcher, the floating house, cathedral, other tower and library. Note that the library is covered in lava for awesome's sake.

The internet at my mom's house in Washington is DSL (yuck) so I regularly encountered some issues when logging in. They were mostly funny but occasionally did cause some irritation. The most common problem was a severe chunk error.

Just monster chunks of terrain missing all the way to the bottom of the world.

He let onto the fact that we could use these errors to our advantage. That hadn't even occurred to me! Sometimes they filled in and loaded as normal, but sometimes they'd just flat out refuse to load in. In the instance captured above I happened to see some large reservoirs of iron, something that were were lacking in. So, I directed him on where to dig and where to find the reserves! After that I built a bridge to cross the chasm and went down with him to look for diamonds. I've never loved diamonds so much before!

-MJ

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Pondering on gaming.

I miss my Wii. I don't know what I would even play if I had access to it, but I miss not having it available to me. There haven't even been any particularly large urges to play video games. Look at me, taking it for granted and now that I don't have it I'm all sorry and wanting to buy it flowers.

To my knowledge, Epic Mickey and Kirby's Epic Yarn are coming out this holiday, so I'll be able to give my Wii some serious lovin' in my down time. I'm looking forward to it. I've been wondering... does it make sense to bring it to Ireland with me? There will be games that I want to play in the coming year, and off the top off my head I can't remember if the Wii is region coded or not, but I could always send money to someone in the States and have them ship me a US version. Decisions decisions. Isn't there supposed to be a Professor Layton for the Wii as well, and of course I can't forget about Zelda.

There's suddenly so much to be excited about. Maybe I should bust out my DSi.

For the plane rides I brought along Picross 3D (which, sadly, I don't enjoy as much as the original Picross), Pokemon SoulSilver and um, something else >.> Ouendan, maybe? I'd have to look, but I am far too lazy to get out of bed.

My WoWing has been extremely infrequent. I think I've played three times since arriving in Ireland. I'm doing a good job of keeping myself social so there hasn't been too much time to delve into Azeroth. Plus, I have the most fun when I'm playing with James and the 8 hour time difference is difficult to maneuver. We'll have to play a lot while I'm back in Washington to make up for it. Although, we did play about two weeks ago and now that our 3x XP is over things felt as though they were moving awfully slow. Heh. That's OK though. He should have his rocket soon and we'll just zoom around the countryside.

I've played the Cataclysm Beta a few times (once I was finally able to get it running). It doesn't run so hot on my machine though. I find this odd, because the non-beta game runs perfectly fine! Wish I knew what the deal was there. My goblin is a classy little lady, by the way. So far I like a lot of the in-game changes. They threw me off a bit at first though. The menus look a lot different.

All gussied up for a party.

Next time I'm logged into my main account I'm going to restructure my skill points. A friend changed them around (for the better, it would seem) on my WoW character app on my iPod and it just seems sensible to make the switch in-game as well. I need more experience with my Hunter.

Since the new Professor Layton comes out this Sunday, I'm considering buying it from the GameStop here. In reality, that is a terrible decision for more than one reason. The main one would be price. The dollar is horrendous against the Euro right now, and I wouldn't get a discount here (I'm pretty sure). The secondary one would be that I believe I have it reserved at my home base GameStop. I could always swap it to another game but that'd be like a cancel and no one wants that.

-MJ

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