Real Life

Eek! I’ve Been Tagged! Five Things About Me

stargrace January 4, 2007 3 Comments

Thanks to Saylah I’ve been tagged to share “five things you didn’t know about me”… wow, a difficult list to come up with, particularly since I’m… boring? Yeah that’s the word I was looking for, it nails me dead on.

1. Lived in Germany for 5 years – That’s right, I was a military brat (as the term goes) for the better portion of my childhood. I lived in Germany on the Canadian military base for five years, from when I was 7-12. I was there for the fall of the Berlin wall, and the gulf war (which was scarey). I miss portions of it, like the castles. I don’t miss moving around though.

2. Am a lefty – And the only one in my entire family and extended family except for my great grandmother who passed away, and my younger brother (who of course takes after me in some ways, artistically and the fact that we both hate to wear socks).

3. Favorite artist is Salvador Dali – I love his work. I have a calendar of it hanging close to my desk, and could spend hours lost in his work. If you’re familiar with any of it, you probably think it’s pretty messed up stuff. Maybe it is, but that’s just a portion of the charm!

4. Won an award in highschool for a class I never took – Hah, talk about luck of the draw. I took photography (which I adored) in high school, and took the grade 11 course for it. When graduation rolled around and awards were being handed out, they called my name for the grade 12 course that I had never taken (it was on-going while I had co-op and was teaching grade 12 art at the time). Imagine my surprise! My photography teacher whispered to me “I know you didn’t take the class, but you were most deserving of it”, as I was handed a huge trophy and a plaque. I guess the grade 11 class wasn’t an option for graduation rewards.

5. Dj’d for the sims online – When the sims online first came out, I was hooked (it grew boring fast though). I started Dj’ing for players on an online radio station for a few hours every day using a program called Sam2, it was awsome, I had an incredible time doing it, playing and talking to the listeners, I went by the name Lisa Love, and had anywhere from 100-500 listeners at any one time. I only did it for a month or two, but the experience of it I won’t soon forget.

 

Now that I’ve done my 5, I’m tagging Mrrx, and Wilhelm2451 Have fun ;)

The G15 Logitech Keyboard

stargrace December 27, 2006 No Comments

Santa was good to me this year, what a busy holiday. I’m safe and sound back snug in my home, with visions of… keyboards? Dancing in my head. One of my presents this year was the G15 gaming keyboard, by logitech. Which is pretty spiffy. Except. EQ2 doesn’t support it what so ever. It’s got an lcd screen, which can display various ‘things’, if any were supported. It’s also got programmable buttons.. for macro’s.. again, if any were supported.

Wait, that’s not exactly true. You CAN use them for macros – if – they use one of the three hotbars you have that come with key commands already. Ie: Those alt 1 alt 2 control 1 control 2 keys. But no more then those three. See, unlike WoW, where you can bind every single hotkey to your own personal command, EQ2 doesn’t give you that option. I know, the g15 has been discussed up one side and down the other, if it’s breaking user / game agreements, if it’s ‘cheating’, blah blah blah. But it’s just a gadget, much like any other gadget out there.

 I did find a use for it in eq2 though. Oh yes. My parse program, ACT, supports the g15 keyboard. And it will also time aoe’s for you. So on those icky raids where the mobs are tossing out aoe’s every 45 seconds or 30 seconds, it will tell you when they’re about to hit. Giving you time to back out of the way, if you’re in any way squishy, which I typically am. The keys also light up, nice for those dark nights. WoW is supported, and so is Vanguard even though the game isn’t even out yet.

I went and poked around looking for responces to why sony hadn’t added any sort of lcd support, and their response was basically that they figured the g15 was not used by enough people to bother with it. Glad to see their customers are so important. I know a good deal of people who use these keyboards, that’s the whole reason I even heard about them or have one.

It’s a fancy way to turn the pages of your hotkeys if you want, instead of hitting shift # to turn them you can bind it to a gkey, but other then that…again, there are good sides and bad sides to every argument. People are still bickering about how the paint used to come off the keys (which has since been fixed, and no longer presents an issue). It seems a little more complicated then I would have liked, I have a hard enough time learning computer stuff as is, but oh well.

One huge thing I like about the new keyboard vs. my old one, is that if I’m listening to music on winamp (since eq2 does not have an in game music player, unlike eq1.. which I miss) I can pause / change the song / start / skip etc. in game, as opposed to having to tab out to the music program I was using. Another huge bonus.

So You Decided You Needed a Break…. From What?

stargrace December 14, 2006 No Comments

Lack of posts over the past week are one sure indication that in the MMO world, not much is going on. That indication would be correct! After taking some time to look at my life (lack of one?) I decided very spur of the moment, that I needed a break from EQ2 for a little bit. Why?

 Well, I’m blessed (cursed?) with having the life of a house wife pretty much. I have no children, I stay at home, I cook clean and do all that fun stuff. I’m 25, so fairly young. The life is not a bad one. It’s not always an easy one though and anyone who tells me other wise I will swiftly give a great boot to the head. There are reasons life is the way it is right now and without spewing my emotional garbage all over my blog that should sufice.

Anyhow

I have a huge amount of free time on my hands. My boyfriend and I decided to try EQ1 5 years ago, and have been playing MMO’s together (in some degree) ever since. There comes a time though when everyone at one point or another can think of someone or themselves and know, hey… they play too much. I’m one of those people. Not even ashamed to admit it. It was getting to the point where I’d just log on for the sake of logging on, not even acomplishing anything. Granted, I still did all the things in real life that needed to get done, but even I know when too much is too much.

 So I wrote a quick note to my guild letting them know I needed a break for a bit (it is the christmas season anyhow, most of our raiding if not all has slowed to a stand still as various people are on vacation / visiting family / drunk) and have been EQ2-free for… *checks the calander, ignoring her shaking hands* 6 days now.

Are MMO’s addictive? Sure. They draw you in and can keep you there, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with admiting that. When you have the free time to devote to it (and hell, even when you don’t) it can become a pretty powerful thing in your life. So does this mean I’m giving up my MMO’ing ways? Naw. Just means that I took a step back, and decided I need to limit my playing a little more then I had been in the past. Sounds sort of weird to write about, but I’m sure there are those out there who understand exactly what I’m saying and where I’m coming from.

On the flip side, finding 15+ hours of something to do has been a huge challenge. I shopped. Worked on Christmas presents, read, did some drawing, did some writing, and whatever else I could find to fill in the empty gaps of time that seem longer some how these days. I decided to limit myself to 4 hours of play a day. Longer on weekends since… well, this is a major form of (cheap) entertainment these days for myself and my boyfriend. I’ve braced myself for all of the “WTF Get a Life!” comments, and “OMG L0Zer!” and all the rest. It’s all about the moderation.

Just a brief note..

stargrace August 22, 2006 No Comments

Account is now closed for now, but if you’d like to keep in touch or read other things I’m writing, feel free to check out the WoW Travels blog linked on the right hand side, as well as my Reveur Artwork site. With Vanguard coming out in January, and no expansions due until November, we’ll just have to see where things take me.

Little bored, little break..

stargrace August 3, 2006 No Comments

Taking a small break from EQ2, while I piddle around again on WoW, my account’s not cancelled so don’t you all start jumping for joy quite yet, anyone who knows me is aware that every few months I flip flop games for a short time. EQ2 just doesn’t seem to have anything to offer me right now. With no expansion coming until November I’m bored and restless. I’ve got a very small WoW blog that I’ve got linked on the right hand side for anyone who’s craving updates, I’ll post on either or depending on my mood. Though more and more I’ve just simply been doing other things.