Real Life

Still Standing.. For Now

stargrace December 11, 2007 5Comments

I live in an apartment building, 11th floor, so I can’t have a real tree. Which is probably one of those things I miss most about living on my own and not owning a house yet. My family always gets a real tree, always have for as long as I can remember. We have our traditions as well. Christmas eve is typically quiet, but still filled with tradition. Since I was small we’d walk around the neighborhood and look at the Christmas lights, just enjoying in one another’s company. Then we’d go home and watch a Christmas special, and go to bed. At 4am or so, I’d wake up my two brothers (both younger.. I’m sure they appreciated me waking them up) and we’d find our stockings by our doors. We’d play with the contents of them until 7am, where we’d start purposely making loud noises in order to wake up my parents. We always had a rule where we had to eat breakfast before any presents, so me and my brothers would wolf down an orange or something else very small, and Dad would hand out gifts.

26 years later, not much has changed. I still go home for Christmas eve, I still wake up (though a little later, around 5) early, get my stocking, and wake up my brothers. We still have breakfast before presents. Another tradition is the advent calendars you can buy, that have a chocolate count down until Christmas. My mom bought us one of those every year that I can remember, and I still buy them even though I’m out on my own.

Anyhow.. Back to EQ2

I didn’t do too much yesterday. As I mentioned, yesterday was filled with decorating Arysh’ house. Then last night in a spasm of insomnia I decided to make some purchase’ for Shadowgeist’ house as well, and spoofed that up a little. Every ogre needs a library with a torture area, right? The guild did a quick CoA run (which is an easy zone compared to all the others) and while Arysh got very little exp (think I got 7% or so) she did make out with a new pretty shield. The templar in group got a nice bracelet, Shadowgeist got a new taunting cloak. A brigand got the monk gi for looks (the white one that gives off the bare chest appearance) and a good time was had by all.

I spent the rest of the evening crafting, and got the guild to hit 52 from doing writs and turning in a few status items. Hit 72 woodworker, next level I can make T8 arrows, which is something Goudia is always looking for more of.

Winter Wonderland – and EQ2 of course

stargrace November 21, 2007 3Comments

Ok, I know the picture is pretty cruddy, but it’s taken through the living room window at 7:30am so that’s as good as it gets for now. That’s what I woke up to today. When I went to bed last night, that view, was green. This morning we were dumped with 5cm of snow, tomorrow, another 10cm of snow. I suppose winter is officially here. I am ecstatic of course. I’d show it, too, by running out and screaming and throwing snow balls and dancing around like I typically do the first snow of every year (I’m a kid at heart, what can I say) but alas, the cat has learned how to set off my alarm clock in the mornings when she wants to be fed, and I was up off and on all night.

That’s right. If anyone knows of an alarm clock (with lit buttons, and a radio preferred) where the buttons can lock, or are some place other then the top of the clock, let me know eh? What the cat does, is place herself on top of the alarm clock, and then walk around on it (it’s not large, but she’s figured out how to do this as an art form now) and she either 1. sets the clock to some random time, thus giving the potential to be late for that days activities, or she 2. turns on the alarm clock radio, and has it play at all hours of the night (again, randomly). She knows if someone’s up they’ll feed her a daily 1/4th a can of wet food. I’ve tried to break her of the habit, especially when she was trying to rouse me out of bed at 5:30am.. it’s moved to 6:30 am now which I’m comfortable with, at midnight last night, and at 4am the night before, the clock radio suddenly would blare into life, as she’s learned how to turn the dial for that too, some how. Ugh.

Anyhow, in EQ2, quested with Goudia, she hit level 74 and a bit into it. The server issues on Antonia Bayle were lessoned, but the animosity from players was not. I got Stargrace to 72 provisioner and had a lot of fun doing it. She has a lot of recipes she’s never had before. I also got Yamini an alchemist level. I was contemplating leveling her (I’m not ‘bored’ of questing in RoK yet, I’m just a person who loves to play alts) but then remembered she’s stuck in the terrible 50’s and that deterred me right fast. I took Stargrace out and did a few quests with her, moving her almost to 71. Arysh is at 73 still. I’m still having lots of fun in the game (and out) one of my old friends from EQ1 decided to open up an EQ2 account, so he’s been testing the waters on a few new characters. We haven’t gotten much time to play yet since I’ve been off playing in RoK, but that’ll change in time.

Hope this mid-week day finds everyone in high spirits.. I think I’ll go enjoy the snow!

Deathtoll and Thanksgiving

stargrace October 7, 2007 3Comments

Firstly, happy turkey day to all those up here in Canada, I’ll be celebrating it with family, both today and tomorrow. That’s a whole lot of turkey. No such thing as too much though I suppose. Last night I managed to sneak into a Deathtoll (ok, so I didn’t really sneak, but doesn’t that sound better?) raid with Arsenal, new guild that I joined. I have a few friends in it, so it makes the guild better from the start. The raid was a little messy, but it was also late, and the typical tank wasn’t there, and a healer was missing. But before long we downed Tarinax and what not, so that’s always good, right?

Of course breath of the destroyer dropped, which is an item I’ve wanted forever and just never managed to get yet. Last night was no exception, not that I was utterly heartbroken or anything since it was my first raid with them. I spent a good portion of last night taking screen shots of “spooky” places so I could work on some headers and more graphic stuff with photoshop. It just takes me time to decide what it is that I specifically want to do. I played around with a few more signatures yesterday before I left for the evening.

So happy turkey day, and enjoy that stuffing. I’ll be back to make a larger post tomorrow.

Signature Goodness

stargrace October 6, 2007 4Comments

I’ve always been envious of those people over in the EQ2 players forums who had these absolutely amazing forum signatures. I’m a fairly artistic person, besides writing I have a DeviantArt site here, the problem is I know little to nothing about photoshop or any other drawing / graphic program out there. I’ve always worked in very traditional mediums, pen and ink mostly. So I’ve got the artistic flare, but never had any means of carrying out my designs. Especially when it came to photo manipulations or anything else of the sort.

So above is the first signature I designed! I must admit, I had help. First of all from my brand new photoshop CS2 bible (which is by far one of the most comprehensive guides I’ve ever read) and also from the signature forum here, specifically their posts on resources and tutorials.

I admit, the signature may not look like much, but come on now it was my first shot! Very first. I didn’t know how to do anything, and that includes making the lighter blue boarder and having the image over lap that, which I am proud of I’ve got to admit.

Hopefully there will be more work in the future, and if anyone would like me to experiment with signatures (or desktops) of their characters, please feel free to email me high quality screen shots and I’ll see what I can do (email is posted on the top left of this site)! I’m so excited, eventually I want to be able to do pieces like Luna here. I know she does it professionally, and the quality of her work has taken years and years, but in time, maybe I can accomplish something of the same degree, and if not, well, at least I’m having a blast trying!

Oh, as a side note. This attempt was not at trying to smooth out edges, or adjust the image of the fae, but to learn a few technical things that I had no idea how to do. Specifically the boarder and making it faded slightly, applying the fae image over top, and the text, and working with layers and adjusting them and what not. So I know the image is not the best quality, and her wings are cut off (next I plan on learning how to move that image that I apply to a background.. I still don’t know how to do that) and there’s all sorts of other flaws that I can see, but hey, it’ll get better with time!