Updates

I got really really lucky last night. Went to PoA to get that update for the Hoola Hat and on the very first kill, it dinged the journal. I sincerely think it was making up for the HoF run of updates, that took the last known mob in the dungeon to ding the quest.

Had fun last night. Got the update for the Hoola Hat, and did the Wisdom of the flock quest. Tried to find the starter for the rank insignia, but to no avail. Will need to get an exact loc of where to find it. Besides running through PoA, killing a few names, did a Vaults run.

Now I can knock Vaults off my list of zones I have not visited. Yay. So, how did AA go last night? I started the night with 9% into 74 and finished the night with 70% into 75. Kick ass =)

Now I also am at a loss on how to get Scott's computer to stop crashing. Not crashing anywhere but EQ. And it doesn't matter what he is doing, he will crash. The other thing, is that his text is goofy. It looks mostly right, but boxes will begin appearing. Scott did say one thing, he can almost tell when he is going to crash as that is when the text goes really really goofy.

So I don't know. I have a ticket open with SoE. I hit reply to the email yesterday, apparently you have to go through another link. So I will send all the info again today. I really wish the email would have stated that. But if they cant figure it out, I think I may just do a complete reinstall of EQ2. Which totally sucks, but eh, you do what you gotta do.

Its Spring

Well, you can now tell it is spring, and it is not the weather determining that. The determination comes when your son (or in some cases, daughter) come home from playing all day, with two knees that are so scratched and banged up, you just know.

Trenton was at the sitters yesterday (spring break time) and he was playing basketball with the other boys. It was nice enough that he was wearing shorts. Shorts, basketball, and concrete drives, do not mix. The poor boy's knees are just torn up. Wearing jeans would have made it a little better, but then we would be out a pair of jeans, as the knees would have been toast after that fall.

As I said, it is spring break this week. Trenton was extremely excited about it. He gets to go to the sitters and play with all the boys (and scrape his knees up). Nathan, on the other hand, is very upset that he doesn't get to go to school. But, with preschool, wouldn't you be sad as well? I know I would, lol.

It has been so nice here. I want to say we have been outside since Saturday morning. On Sunday we went to the park with Brendan and family. Spent over 3 hours there. It has been just so much fun, and so nice. I can clean my house, it stays clean because they are outside. I have the windows open for fresh air. I put the boys to bed and I swear they are asleep within one minute of me saying goodnight to them. It has just been so nice these past few days. Today is good temperature wise, but it is supposed to be rainy and stormy. Nothing yet, just cloudy.

EQLand: You know these quests. Good idea. I finished up the two Swords quests that are in atm. I also finally finished up Sol Ro. Got a great portion of the hoola hat quest done as well. I need the PoA and SoS updates, and then the solo nest instance. Going to try to get that this week.

Last night, I ran around and finished up, Interception I believe is the name. I did three in Felwithe. Interception, Shereths Missing Book, and the portion of Shield of the Magi. Went to work on Mushroom eating gnomes...but the guy was not up. I also started the Corruption in the Faydark Series. I did all this solo, and in about 90 minutes. Gained around 35% aa. Pretty good I say, lol.

I also did a little tradeskilling here and there. Krys is up to 183/350 Trans. My Carpenter is now level 58. And I dinged my weaponsmith to level 51.

We ran OoB on Sunday real quick for Scott, and we finally got him his boots. Yay. He is talking about doing a Crypt run tonight if the boys go down nice and quietly. lol. Now Krys still needs the wrists from there as well. So here's to hoping.

Spring Break

Poor, poor Nathan. He is so sad that next week is Spring Break and there will be no school. Trenton, on the other hand, is very excited that there is no school, lol. I can see both sides. Nathan is in preschool, and of course, preschool is very fun. I think he sees it as playing. While Trenton is in 1st grade, he sees it as a week with no work and all play.

Nothing new going on in Family Land, I really though I would have something to type about, but apparently the boys have just been normal boys. Although, last night I decided not to log in EQ and I went and laid in bed and watched a movie. About 30 minutes into the movie, I hear these little footsteps, so I glance into the hall. Could have sworn I seen a little blond head. But nothing. Over the next 15 minutes I keep hearing feet shuffling. Finally caught him. Trenton. Told him to come here, and asked him what he was doing. He says he was just checking on me to make sure I was okay. Awwww. But in reality, he was waiting for me to fall asleep so he could sneak into bed with me, this is know. So I told him to go ahead and climb in, and he got this huge smile on his face and was asleep in about two minutes time.

EQland: Well I finished that second quest for the Swords of Destiny line. Boy those three sub quests were a pain in the ass, but I did get really lucky, because when I zoned into Wailing Caves, I was the only one there, and Lord Ree was just sitting there waiting for me. Yay!

While sitting there working on this quest, I kept seeing in channel Labs raid looking for healers. I honestly did not want to go in there with Zym, so I kept watching and soon there were asking for DPS. So against my better judgement (I was really tired) I decided to go, thinking if I could last for two named's I would be good, and have at least one more AA.

Backstory: I tried to go on a raid in TT (cannot remember the name of the zone, sorry) and the MT and the MA were Freaki and Mystique. Bad raid, really bad. My armor fell off on the first named. It was really screwed up.

So, here I zone into Labs, and who do I realize who the MT and MA are? Dear god. Three deaths on the first named pull. /disband Come to realize why the other raid failed as quick. Those two cannot keep aggro on the mobs. Now I realize these are epicX4, but....keeping aggro can't be that hard. I mean, I did a pickup raid with Zymeria in this zone, and the tank had zero issues with aggro. Zero! Maybe, I am viewing this wrong, and they are trying to tank these things in Mastercrafted with adept 1 spells. Who knows, lol. Just it is now on my 'Things to remember not to do' list. Pickup raids with Freaki and Mystique. /nod

Movies and Time Sinks

Well I watched The Lake House last night. I thought it was really good. I just love Sandra Bullock. I cried at the end of course. And I did call the bus accident as being him. But I really thought it was done fairly well. My only problem was that after the movie was over, I had to sit and think, well if he didn't die, how can she still be there waiting for him, because you know, the time line would have changed, but then I thought only his time line changed, or maybe everything from that point forward changed for her. I don't know. But, of course, it is just entertainment, and shouldn't be analyzed. :p

Time Sinks are not fun! The second quest for The Swords of Destiny line is about to drive me nuts. I am at the part of the three sub quests. I finished two of them last night, and will probably get the third one finished today at lunch. And then after that will need to camp Lord Ree. WTF? You know, I did nothing but this quest last night. Was sitting in Antonica when I logged in at 8:30. Ran to the down below and started this thing. I went to bed at 11:15 and that was where I finished. Almost three hours for all that jazz. The sub quests were horrible. I started in New Tunaria (I woke Scott up a few after I went there) at about 9:30. So almost 2 hours for three sub quests and still not done. I may or may not finish this up tonight. I probably should just so it is over and done with. I also seriously dread doing this with Zymeria now.

Goals for EQ2

Krystalea (and Zymeria):

I need to get at least Krys to 100 aa's before the expansion. Now they haven't announced it yet, but it is coming. So I need to set goals. Now if Zymeria gets there, that will be a bonus, but I am not at all concerned about her at the moment.


Get final Sol Ro quest done. Krys only. Zym has finished Inny.
Get second quest in the Swords of Destiny (and sub quests) done. Zym needs to start.
Claymore Line. Krys is on Step 6 and Zym is on Step 9.
The Ivy Shroud line of quests.
Should start thinking of doing The Cloak of Flames.
Mark of Awakened. Krys is to the Trials and Zym just grabbed the quest.
Hoola Hat - Zym and Krys have both just started. Those chains are certainly the death of me.

I also need to think about zones that I have never been too.

Nizara
Castle Mistmoore
Mistmoore Catacombs
Sepulcher (Bonemire)
Vaults (Barren Sky)
Any Raid zone. (Zym has been to a portion of Labs. Up to the third named.)

Tradeskill goals should be simple enough. I do my tradeskilling at lunch and in the mornings when the boys first get up. Krys, Zym, and Zephina are already at level 70. So here is my list. Should be simple enough (minus T6)

Attalyne to 70 Carpenter (at 55 right now)
Myrinna to 70 Weaponsmith (at 50 right now)
Arzania to 70 Woodworker (at 20 right now)
Krystalea - Transmuting - 350/350 (at 175/350 with 15 powders waiting to be combined)
Zymeria - Tinkering to 350 (at 18/350) Loams. Too. Damn. Expensive.

Okay I think that may be about it for now.

Oh, and Krys finally got her staff. Rune-Carved Bone Staff. Yay!!!!!!

I just lost my post. It was a long one as well. Dammit.

Okay here is the jist, because I do not feel like rewriting it.

School pictures came in on Friday, and the boys look awesome. I was really impressed with the quality of the pictures. If I had a scanner, I would scan and post them. They are wonderful.

Saturday, Scott and the boys went to The Bass Pro Shop with my dad. They had a really good time, especially looking at all the fish in the aquarium there. Poor Nathan wanted to go fishing in there, lol. Trenton, also picked out a boat for Scott, hehe.

We had dinner with mom and dad there as well, and then we went to the video store where the boys proceded to pick out two Pokemon movies. That was the most quiet that has been in the house, while the boys were home. It was delightful. Scott and I were able to get a lot done with zero interruptions. Hell, Trenton was even explaining parts of the movie to Nathan.

Scotts computer was acting up again. So many errors, and 5 minute start-up time. So we took the ATI card back and purchased an Nvidia 7600GS. In the end, it turns out we needed a bigger power supply. So he now has a 430w power supply. Why could that not have been the first question from any tech support line. Would have saved a lot of time.

EQLand: Ran around this weekend. Finally got my ring from OoB. Signet of light and darkness. Yay. Also dinged aa72 on Krys. Did nothing on Zym. Zephina hit 70 Jeweler as well. Been working on Attalyne and she is now level55 Carpenter. The guild also dinged 25. Getting there.

I did decide to reset my AA's and went with Manaburn. My god that spell is fun, but I do see where it would have it's problems. All in all, I am having fun with it.

I may be back later to work on this more, I have typed up a bunch of goals for Krys for EQ. And Then lest not forget the Trenton realizing what April showers bring May flowers means, lol.

It is too nice outside

And let me tell you, it does good to wear those two little ones out.

On Saturday, we went to the Burpee Museum here in town and caught a look at Jane, the most complete adolescent T-Rex ever found. Was pretty cool. The boys were really ecstatic over it, especially considering they had just gotten done with a book this week talking about the people who dig up the bones and how they do research on them. Apparently, our little museum, has also found a Triceratops. They had a shoulder bone on display. That thing is huge. I am going to try to keep a watch on that and see how much of the Triceratops they are able to recover. I think that would be a cool display.

I think we spent about an hour and a half there, mulling around looking at things. The only other part of the museum that really grabbed the boys interest was the part with the animals native to our area. That, and they had two live snakes in there as well. The part the fascinated me the most was the history pertaining to this area. We used to be covered in snow and ice (go figure) and that is what shaped the terrain and wore down the mountains. We also have found Mammoth bones and such around here, as well as a few dinosaur bones in the area. That is so very cool.

As for the rest of the weekend, these children did nothing but play outside. The time had no effect on them, as we had worn them out so much that they were asleep at 7:30 Sunday night. The only thing the time change affected was that Trenton yelled at me on Monday morning that it was still nighttime and that he was not going to get up. Hmmm, let me think about that okay?

Scott's comp is acting up again, or it really could just be EQ this time around. He keeps going LD. It's to the point that is about to quit playing. I told him, that I think he might want to delete a few files, let them re patch and if that doesn't work, that he should go for a complete reinstall. And make sure you do that reinstall, before you go to work, because even with cable, it takes a good 12 hours to download everything. Considering the only CD's we have are the original purchase and everything else we have done has been by download.

The other night it was time to go to bed. So I tell the boys to go to the bathroom as I get their water cups. I head into the kitchen, Nathan heads to the bathroom, and Trenton I believe was already in there. Well, no one turned on any lights, why I have no idea. So I filling the cups and I hear two screams, followed by Trenton laughing and Nathan crying. So I run over there to see what the deal is. Apparently Trenton was using the bathroom (with the lights off /boggle). As Nathan was entering the bathroom, Trenton was turning around and they scared the crap out of each other. So, Trenton is laughing his butt off, and Nathan is bawling saying "Trenton scare me" over and over. And here's mom trying not to laugh and comfort the little one, when Trenton all of the sudden pipes up with "Oh my god, Mom, did you hear me scream like a little sissy boy?" That was it, pass the little one to dad and head out where he can't hear me laughing my ass off.

EQland: Okay, Krys and Zym still sitting in the same spot. I did do Unrest the other night and didn't get anything out of it. Which makes me sad, as the run was with Zymeria and The rune-carved bone staff dropped and it was an ffa roll, and I really really want that staff for Krys. :(

Dinged 70 on my jeweler. Now on to my carpenter. I am really really not liking T6, especially for the roots. I don't want to harvest, but I am going to have to bite the bullet and go out there and do just that.

Crash

Whenever you hear a loud crash and the house shakes, you should know that it is never a good thing.

Last night, Scott and I were in the front room watching House (gotta love the DVR) and the boys were in our room, supposedly watching cartoons and playing pirates. When all of the sudden we here this really loud crash and the floor and windows rattle. Now our house is older, but we honestly thought it might of been from the industrial park near us, but we were still curious. So we get up and adventure into the bedroom to check on the boys.

Upon entering the room, there is Trenton laying on the bed, my sconce is laying next to him, and there are two wonderful holes in my wall from where the sconce had been. The look of terror on Trenton's face said it all.

Upon asking (several times) exactly what happened, he finally decided to tell us. You see, the sconce, when Trenton is standing on the bed is eye to eye to him, and being the 6 year old boy that he is, he thought it would be really cool to see if he could karate kick it. Unforunately, when he tried this, his foot kinda got stuck in the fancy loops on my sconce, which then made him lose his balance, at which point his butt slammed into the wall and the force of his fall, he pulled the sconce out with his foot.

Scott and I just kinda walked out of the bedroom, told him to go hang out in his room while we talked. The both of us just shaking our heads. What to do? Well, grouding won't work as they are stuck in the house anyways, taking the playstation away wont work, he hasnt played it in a while. Scott suggests writing his spelling words several times, but I say no as then he will begin to hate his words and that would not be a good thing.

I call Trenton into the front room, and we talked to him about being curtious to things that are not yours. Theres a time and place to karate kick things, and in the house is not one of them, yada yada yada. Finally I tell him, I want him to think about what kind of punishment he should get, as Daddy and I were at a loss on what to pick. Gave him 5 minutes.

Now this whole time, this child has looked like any little boy would when getting in trouble. Not upset, just mad at the fact he got caught and really wishes it was over with.

Before his 5 minutes were up, he comes in the front room, with tears starting in his eyes. He tries to tell me all calmly what his punishment should be. "I think," /sniff /sniff "that I should" tears start pouring here, and he starts the suck in his breath thing, trying to talk "lose back room night." By now he is in full crying mode.

Now, back room night, is the boy's fun thing to do on the weekends. At 8pm (normally bedtime), we head to the back room, pick out a movie, get some popcorn, and they get to watch a movie in the dark eating popcorn. 9 times out of 10 they fall asleep halfway through, lol.

Well, I decide that back room might be too harsh, as well, its 2 days away, and I honestly don't think this one fits the crime, as he has been really good this week. So, our decision was that the time has to fit the crime. So he now has 4 additional chores (hurt the house, clean the house) and then of those 4, two he will keep permanently, as it was about time to add to the chore list anyways.

Nathan was so nice to Trenton this whole time, lol. He kept coming up to me and going "Twenton say sorry." and would then follow Trenton around, trying to tell him it was okay. That was too cute.

EQLand: Here was my night last night. Log in Krys, bah. Log in Zym, nah. Log in Arzania, nope. Log in Krys, bleh. Screw it, gonna go watch Lost.

I am hoping this weekend to get back into Unrest and get a ton of screenshots. Can you tell I like this zone? hehe. I also do have a couple little dings. Zephina made 68 Jeweler, just waiting for vitality to come back, should be an easy run to 70. Krys made 170 Transmuting. Zymeria got the new provisioner recipe from Unrest, but I need more whiskey, cant wait to try that one out.

Manaburn

I would really like to discuss Manaburn and if it is viable or not. As I have not chosen it as an AA ability yet, but for some reason the SK in my group last night determined that I was not as good of a wizard as I could have been because, well, I did not have Manaburn. As for reference this comment came up after Torkler, so I will use his fight for my "numbers".

See in this group I was in last night, even if I did have MB, I would not have been able to use it. Group makeup: SK, warden, mystic, illusionist, monk, and myself. For most of the night I was fighting every inch of my life for power. I was down power and more power, hit canni, hit manastone, hit essences, and so forth. I was putting out a steady bit of DPS, and then hitting Catalyst/Ice Nova at 40% and continuing after with my other spells. No aggro, except once.

Torkler was the most mana intensive one. Now I can't tell you that I was using this mana due to group makeup (which I really do think it was) as I have never had mana issues like this before, but, well....

Okay, I don't have a parser and I should really invest in one, but here are my approx numbers for the Torkler fight. I really tried to explain this to the SK, but alas, it didn't work. So bear with me a minute here, as I rack my good ole brain.

Three glacial winds = 12000
One surging tempest = 8000 (I cant remember how many ticks this spell is, so for my sake going with 8 @ 1000)
Three Iridates = 3000
(Ack I cant remember the spell name, its the icicle debuff) 3x = 1500
Four Ball of lavas = 16000
5 sunstrikes (yes I use this very quick casting spell =p) = 5000
Incapacitate 2x = 4000
Protoflame (he never died, so pulling a number off the top of my head for this) = 2500
Ice Nova = 12500
grizzles/char/dementia (ill buff/proc) = 5000 (and I think that was the low end, as at one time all three hit at once for almost 2k)
And I sure I missed something more in there. Maybe a 5th BoL or maybe I did hit IN twice (I think I tried but was resisted).

So what does that equal? About 70000. And I really seem to think that is on the low end.

Now I have approx 7500mana. So manaburn would equal about 37500.

That's half of the damage I did on my own without it. Now, in this fight with Torkler, my mana went down with his health. Torkler @ 75% health = Krys @ 75% mana, and so forth. So if I were to wait to cast MB till half health I would hit for 18750 plus half of above (35k) = 53750 damage. Too much decrease and now I am a duck in the water with no mana to continue on with, save busting butt to health drain myself back up. If I hit MB at the beginning of the fight, you would have 37k in damage and one dead wizard.

So in my belief MB is really not as great as it sounds. Will I get it in the end, probably, but there are other abilities that are much better for me to spend my points on at the moment, to give me better steady DPS, then straight out burst DPS.

So, tell me. Right/wrong/indifferent? Show me more things, maybe I really am thinking all wrong on this ability, but maybe not. I am very interested in the different schools of thought on this one.

Woot!!!!

Al'kabors Spellborn Robe!!!

Hot damn! Now Krys totally looks hot. And to think I almost left the group as were have major problems getting down to the last guy (still haven't figured out why).

But YAY!!!

That is all.

The Estate of Unrest

Well, last night I swore up and down I was going to go to bed and get some sleep. I was so very tired. But as Scott had decided to stay up and not take a nap, I decided to at least stay up until he went to work. But, of course, it never works out that way.

Upon logging into EQ2, I was hit by a channel request of looking for healer and 2 more for Unrest. O.o Do I want to do that? Then Modex logged in. Asked him what he was doing and if he wanted to hit Unrest. He said sure and I sent the tell.

Get in group, zone in, and the leader says, btw hope everyone has about 4 hours to complete this. /jaw drops. Man it is 8:30 and I want to go to bed, but screw it, already committed myself, and I have been so looking forward to this zone.

Unrest. Kicks. Ass. I loved it. The puzzles, the layout, the nameds, and the rewards/loot. Over teamspeak, I kept telling Modex such things as: Omg, look at the house, it looks the same. And the hedge maze. The beetles, and the jack-o-lanterns and the ghouls, Yard Trash. We're clearing yard trash. Then of course we work our way around. Ah look the gazebo. The place to pull and avoid all the trains.

Then we go to the house. Remember pull from the left, as you don't want Torkler. (heheh) We do the puzzles, yada yada. And then the central room is opened and who do we lay eyes upon? Torkler, lol. Then of course, you go upstairs as well and clear among other things. Head to the basement. Damn, you still have to move the bookcase to get downstairs. The fog in the basement and then having to attack the doppelgangers of your group, rocked. Then we are clearing in the torture room and who should our lovely eyes see? But the festering hag of course. The number of times you could see her cast in the EQLive Unrest and in the trains, man, so cool.

The ending rocked as well. 9000k status earned (900 of it to the guild) and the class armor chest. Totally cool.

SoE, you did a really really good job on this zone, and I really hope to see more zones like it. That totally rocked!!!

Fine! I will fix it myself

So, I get home on Monday night, and call ATI. Guess what? Customer support was already closed for the day. Flipping nice. So, I start google'ing(hmmm) and searching and find that the errors I am experiencing, can more or less be fixed with using the new catalyst 7.2 drivers.

Upon installing said new drivers, I get another error message, stating that I need to upgrade to .NET framework 2.0. No problem, just go to windows.com and download. So do that. After restart, I start getting an error regarding MOM.implementation. WTF???? Screw it, I am done. Log in EQ2 and see how Scott runs, and he seems fine. Crashed once, but all in all its okay.

Till last night. He crashed about every 20 minutes. So at 10pm last night, after he goes to work, I decided to see what I could do. And seeing ATI has no support (I don't want to wait for email, I am impatient) I go to microsoft and do online support. They tell me I need to contact Emachines. Fine.


Contact Emachines. What a nightmare that was. Damn. The guy spent 20 minutes asking all these questions, and told me to solve my problem, do a system restore. Umm, even if I do a system restore, I still have to upgrade to .NET framework 2.0 and install drivers for the video card. So you think I might end up with the same problem again? Anyways, I was pissed off at this. By now its 11:30 and I am frustrated and in tears and determined to fix this damn thing come hell and high water.


So, screw it. Did a little more google'ing (hmmmm) and decided my course of action. I did the system restore. If you want to believe that. Then before installing anything, I went to microsoft, went for the .net installation first. Oh do this first before downloading .net. Okay. Did that. Did .net install. Ran windows updater and had two fixes for .net to install. Done. Okay, before I mess with anything, lets restart. Restart, no errors, rock on. Create system restore back-up. :)


Next, video card. Go to ATI, download drivers, install drivers. All good so far. Restart. Then on restart the computer does some funky prepare to install, and installs something, and then states that there is new hardware (WTF???) and installs (ready??) the monitor. /boggled.


Okay. WTH, lets do another restart. Reboot like normal, and no error messages. HOT DAMN!!!! Okay, for gits and shiggles, restart again. Again, good restart and no errors, Woohooooo. Now its 1 am and I am dead tired, but again, YAY!


Now lets just see what happens tonight when Scott logs into EQ2.


Exercise: Monday, good. Tuesday, no clue what happened, but no. Wednesday, had to cover phones, so didn't get home until 8.


EQLand: Not much going on. Just been screwing around and have made zero progress on anything. :)