Random Friday updates

It's Friday afternoon... I try to do as little work as possible on Fridays so that I don't screw things up and have to work and fix it over the weekend. Hence, here I am blogging!

Random stuff...

Picked up some new equipment for my computer. I'm upgrading from my old 20" LCD to a new 24" widescreen LCD, adding 320 pixels of horizontal width to my screen. The FFXi chat box looks kinda silly at 1920x1200, with the longest chat line only coming halfway across the screen.

I also picked up a new set of 5.1 speakers to replace an older set of 4.1 that I could never hook up properly. The change in sound is significant! I didn't realize that there was so many subtle tones in FFXI's music. Lots of little extra sound effects too. That's why I was asking last night during Salvage if the music was the same as Nyzul Isle... to me it actually sounded different, a lot more detail xD

What else... picked up a new optical audio cable since one of my older ones wasn't letting enough light through. Strange that the most expensive cable I had bought in the past (simply cos there was nothing else around) was the only one to stop working. It's kinda annoying how optical cables vary in price so much... I managed to find one for $9.99, but it was much longer than I need... oh well!

Anime

Spring 2009 season starto! I'm just finishing up last season's series right now... Finished up Marimite, Gundam 00 S2 so far. Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo is still going on since that's a longer series, and some series have fallen off the plate.

For this season, I'm downloading the first episode of everything again and trying it out before deciding what to watch... so far, on my "will watch" list is:

- Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood - A retelling of the original series! Who hasn't heard of FMA? xD This time around it seems like they're doing a lot more emphasis on the comedy of what will end up a dark series.

- K-On! - Slice of life high school comedy/drama. Four girls in high school putting together a band. Episode 1 looks pretty fun so far, so this series has lots of potential

- Eden of the East (Higashi no Eden) - So... just imagine that you're a girl on vacation from Japan... you're in front of the Whitehouse, admiring it when the scary police start to question you. Suddenly, a naked man comes streaking by and into your life, then a terrorist bomb goes off in Tokyo just before your flight back takes off.... yes, it's another crazy series xD

- Valkyria Chronicles - Based on the PS3 game, this anime is actually doing a really good job of replicating the art style of pencil-shading that was used in the game. I'm playing the game while watching the anime, and so far, the anime version tells a much more interesting story with little cute details that aren't in the game.

- Shangri-La - Global warming gone wild. Carbon credits have taken off and become a weird trading market identical to stocks. The world is flooded with heavy-handed government/military organizations vs. refugees who are... erm... against reforestation. Oh, and a girl who has a boomerang that can cut through tanks. Another weird series!

FFXI

Random FFXI update... MMM is giving me an annoying time. That stupid Dhamel NM doesn't want to go down sometimes, with fights that either end in 10-15 minutes, or don't end at all as it spams Healing Breeze... I'm getting really annoyed with this. Big thanks to Connie who comes along to help, but even with his help we don't always win >.<

Salvage last night... another interesting system with lots of possible high-level strategies and on-hand tactics. Last night was the first time I was actually paying attention to what had to be done and what we were doing... we actually got a Marduke level 15 body piece (congrats Dexie) so it wasn't a completely wasted run. DNC works really well for Salvage since I'm nearly fully effective with just Job Abilities unlocked.

Soooo... supposed to be mission Friday tonight... we'll see how this goes. From what I'm hearing, we may be stalled since the stupid ACP missions require dumb luck just based on drop rates. Since we can't control that, there's a possibility that we'll end up stuck farming all night... we'll see what happens... (and who shows up)

Next few weeks... probably wanna do some WotG stuff for people, get people caught up, then look at helping people hammer out Zilart of CoP missions. Post a comment if you have missions you wanna do :P