HOW ON EARTH CAN ANIMALS DEAL WITH THIS.

Friday was meant to be a special day, a day of happiness, merriment, and good times with my sister and mom.

I should've known it'd be a disaster at the start.

See, we were going to the zoo. See some animals up close, enjoy the day, and spend some time with my mom and sister.

I ended up getting up for the day at 7:30 AM. I normally get up at around noon. In other word, I'm already equivalent to the waking dead.

Just kinda lacking on the hunger for flesh. I do have one funky zombie gait, though.

Anyways, we eventually left. Along the way we stopped at McDonald's for breakfast.

It's sad when I can say this was the best part of the trip. Why?



THAT is why. A supreme union of pancake, syrup, and sausage. The McGriddle. It is probably the most effective product produced by an fast-food company.

Considering I get up close to noon, I almost never get them. I thank all that is holy whenever I get one.

After ingesting a blessed breakfast, we continued on. During the ride, I tried to catch up on some sleep.

Key word is tried. No actual headrest meant I didn't have a place to put my head. Well, there was the seatbelt I was using, but that didn't work.

We eventually got there, despite my inability to take a nap. We started going in, and spent about 10-15 minutes being in line. But it was fine, no worries.

We decided to check out the aviary first, and it was nice. I snapped a bunch of pictures, avoided getting pooped on, and everyone still had high spirits.

My baby sister needed a diaper change, but what can you do? We went on to another animal exhibit, an Asian one, I think.

Saw a lot more animals, tried taking more pictures...

By now, the heat was really bearing down. See, Florida is known for a few things.

Disney World.

Old people out of freaking nowhere. And Red Lobster.

Most importantly, the fact the entire state is an oven.

Seriously, here are our seasons for Florida:

Summer
Hell on Earth
Summer
Fall/Whatever Mother Nature Decides To Randomly Do THIS Time

We went to the zoo at the worst season of the year. In other words, it was hot.

I'm surprised none of the zoo animals die of heat stroke, to be honest.

Eventually, I split up with my family and found refuge in a restaurant that had A/C. Spent about $3 on a drink so I could cool off inside.

...and not look like I was just lounging around because it was hot. Which I was.

I finally got cooled off enough, and went to find everyone. It's on the way there I noticed something:

Zoo's sure can suck.

The things are built for 3 types of people:

* Kids
* Parents of Kids
* Really Old People

The kids can see all the animals they've probably never seen before. They can maybe ride all sorts of rides. The parents can be certain the kids enjoy themselves, and join them, too.

The old people can see all the animals they've forgotten, which they will likely forget by the time they leave.

Anyone else will probably be bored to death.

All those animals? You've seen them before. Maybe not up close, but you've seen them before. For a kid, it's exciting to see them. Everyone else?

Oh, a tiger. Woo.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if they actually did something.

Wait. They walk! Gee, that's fun!

Well, no, because they only walk for 5 seconds before lying down and pretending to be dead again.

Honestly, if the place wasn't a zoo, I woulda thought they were all stuffed. Most of them just sleep.

Normally in a way-out corner, too.

What about the rides? Well, they're built for children.

That means most people over 14 will never want to ride such a thing willingly. The things are literal kiddie rides.

So, tired + hot + bored = me begging to go home.

Mom says we will... after she's done with a few rides for the baby.

I could wait, so it's no problem.

Except, you know, the whole waiting three hours bit.

Yeah, mom was pretty gung-ho about giving the baby a fun day.

I can't really blame her. Just because I was basically very, very cranky didn't mean she should put everything on hold. It was their day, not mine.

Anyways, we finally did get home, but I was in a pretty foul mood. I still couldn't fall asleep, but being home eventually had me mellow out.

I still feel bad for nearly ruining the day for her, though. I think I might have at least spent the day better if it wasn't so hot, though.

Next time someone asks me to go to the zoo, though, I'm getting a damn weather report.

E in Triplicate.

Another E3 has come and gone.

Well, mostly, but it's pretty much over, anyways.

E3 stands for the Electronic Entertainment Expo. It's considered by many to be the biggest gaming event of the year. A few years back there was no doubt to this, as E3 could pass for a small town, complete with prosti-uh, booth babes.

Now it's smaller in scale, but the big game companies still make huge announcements there, so it's importance hasn't really fallen at all.

Anywho, now it's time for the things I found noteworthy at E3:

There's this new Metroid game coming out for the Wii, which the series is essentially about this chick who wears a battle tank fighting freaky aliens and life-sucking orbs with fangs.

Ehh, just take a look.

Anyways, it's interesting in that it's being developed by Team Ninja, a group responsible for Ninja Gaiden.


It started out as a platforming game, like pretty much anything on the NES.

I'd spell out the NES for you, but it's a freaking Nintendo console. Ask your kid or nerd brother or something.

Anyways, Ninja Gaiden went from that to:


I'd put something else up, but this was the only picture that didn't have fountains of blood.

More importantly, Ninja Gaiden is known for being HARD.

Like, open the door and die hard.

Huh, that sounds like a movie Bruce Willis would be in when he's 80. I can see it now... "Are you an old enough dude to save the nursing home?"

...oh, E3.

Anyways, this means that there's a very good chance this Metroid game will be extremely difficult. Metroid isn't exactly easy in the first place, but man, I'd still want to play this.

There's also a new Mario game, a sequel to Super Mario Galaxy... that I still haven't played.

If you care about Nintendo at all, Mario games are almost like required reading for a literature class. With this new Mario coming up, I really need to get the first Galaxy.

A multiplayer Mario game is coming for the Wii(Everyone knows what the Wii is, I would hope), as well. I'm kinda mixed about this, since I don't actually have anyone to play against at home, and no online play means it'd be pretty much just me playing it. It could still be fun, though, so who knows.

Then we have Golden Sun DS. Golden Sun was a nice duo of RPGs for the Game Boy Advance that had an interesting battle system and and some puzzles that were different that what I've seen. Seeing this series come back is gonna be great.

Sony showed up with The Last Guardian, which is made by the same group that made Shadow of The Colossus, one of the coolest games I've ever played(Hint: It's nothing but boss fights, but made of awesome). The new game looks like the Attack of Godzilla Furby, with you playing the little kid that is it's friend. Something tells me it's still gonna be great, though.

Patrick Stewart is lending his talent to a Castlevania game. Considering it's about people fighting the undead and dark minions of Hell and/or Dracula, my money is on Captain Picard being Dracula himself.

Hey, a guy can dream.

The best is for last, I suppose: Final Fantasy XIV. This sucker's gonna be the next MMO for Square Enix, and it's all but in story a sequel to Final Fantasy XI, the game I still pledge my life to.

I'm excited and scared at the same time. While this is, without a doubt, freaking awesome, there's a good chance that while FFXI will at least be running until there aren't enough people to support the servers, it won't see anymore significant content beyond partial updates. I mean, I could be wrong, but since the Playstation 2(The original and still-used platform for FFXI) isn't exactly a spring chicken anymore, and if Square Enix is going ahead with this, who knows what'll happen to the game I'm still playing. They do promise a year's worht of content, but when it looks like that's three updates, you can see where I'm concerned.

Gloom and Doom aside, E3 gave a lot of things to look forward to. I could've put more stuff in, but I'd be here all day.

Another day, perhaps.

Tires don exits.

Well, in true me fashion, I completely missed out on posting a couple days ago.

I got lost on the road of life(Disclaimer: Said road may be composed of a single chair in front of a computer and game consoles).

Anyways, I'm here today to talk about some more FFXI stuff. Shocking, I know.

Specifically, endgame. This is a term associated with MMORPG events at the higher levels that require a larger amount of coordination that normal for most players.

There may be other definitions, but for the purposes of this, we'll just say we don't give a damn about them.

This can be divided into three categories, at least for FFXI:

Casual endgame: Casual only in terms of relation to other areas of endgame, Casual endgame requires some coordination and organizing, but as long as people have a basic idea of what to do and leaders are competent, this part of endgame can be cleared by pretty much anyone as long as they aren't completely stupid. Most of Dynamis, Limbus, and some other things like Sky fit in here. You already know about Dynamis, but I'll get into Limbus and Sky at a later date.

Ground: This deserves it's own category, but I'll save what Ground's all about until another day. All you need to know right now is that it turns FFXI into a full-time job.

Hardcore Endgame: This is the area of endgame where mistakes of almost any sort will screw you over so bad you'll wonder if you somehow cosmically went to prison and dropped a bar of soap. We're talking Dynamis Lord, Jailor of Love, Proto-Omega and Ultima, and just really hard bosses in general. People can't just have a basic idea of what to do: they need to know exactly what to do, and be ready for it, or everyone pays for it.

There's some overlap in some areas, but that's the gist of it.

Which brings me to Einherjar. This event is basically pure hardcore endgame, but with a 30 minute time limit.

The basic idea is that you enter a large room with a bunch of monsters. Three guesses what you need to do to win.

Here's a hint: It involves doing something to the monsters that is illegal in most of the real word, but isn't sexually questionable.

They do it a lot in war, I hear.

Anyways, I suppose I better anecdote my last run to make this more relateable.

The group I work with for this is really made up of two groups: The Linkshell(That's the term we have for MMORPG guilds) I work with, and another group called Haze.

Haze does Ground.

Can you see where I'm going with this?

Yes, Haze decided that Ground was more important than Einherjar. This isn't normally a problem, since a game like this really causes people to need priorities.

But not normally at the expense of the other group you decide to work with.

I'm not saying Haze are bad players or anything, but when you work with another group, the idea is that you don't treat them like they aren't important. That just causes problems in the long run, which could cause the team-up to fall apart, like so many super-villian team-ups.

...that may have been a bad way to word it, what with comparing our group to megalomaniacs.

Anyways, Haze shows up and we all get set to do Tier 3.

The main goal of Einherjar is to fight Odin.


...wait, wrong guy.


Anyways, to get to Odin, you need to do a few things:

First off, there are nine chambers that you can fight in before Odin. Of these chambers, nearly everyone must clear at least three.

Of course, it's not that easy. One lucky person(Read: sucker) must have cleared all 9 chambers before anyone else can go in to Odin.

The nine chambers are also seperated into "Tiers", with 3 chambers a Tier, making 3 Tiers total.

You also can't get into a higher Tier unless a chamber from the lower Tier before it has been cleared.

You also can only do a single chamber every three days in real life.

Yes, boys and girls, it can take over a month to go from starting out to getting to Odin, and that's if you win all the time.

Even more fun? All that progress is lost the second you fight Odin. It doesn't matter if you win or lose, you have to start all over.

People generally have characters sit out on Odin runs so it takes only two weeks to reach Odin again instead of nearly five.

Anyways, the nitty-gritty of Einherjar's Tier fights are what follows:

The monsters have to be killed in order to clear the chamber. There are actually several waves of monsters, and killing enough of them causes a super-hard big boss monster to appear.

Said big bosses are hardened veterans who lost an eye during the Cold War and went to try and make a crazy military state before some greenhorn who uses cigarettes and loves boxes of the cardboard persuasion decided to-

...wait, this isn't Metal Gear. Damn.

Anyways, the boss monster is hard as heck, and because of the time limit, it's imperative that they and the other monsters go down as fast as possible.

A few problems, though. First, whenever a monster is pulled, it almost always brings along a bunch of it's buddies.

You could always hold a monster with Sleep spells, though, right(Which put the monster to sleep, natch)?

Well, you can, but the most used method of Sleep would be the spells used by Black and Red Mages, which are based on the Darkness element.

Guess what's normally pulled in Einherjar? Why, Darkness-resistant/immune monsters, of course!

Basically, a form of Light-based sleep is a must in Einherjar, which means a lot of Bards, White Mages, and Blue Mages.

Another problem is that of the monsters that appear, nearly all of them are annoying as hell. They either can kill people quickly in the blink of an eye, or they debuff the group so much that kill speed slows to a crawl.

Then we have the "special" monsters. These appear once every chamber, and are a normally a priority to kill. Some will drop a chest full of items that can be invaluable for the battle at hand, others weaken the monsters in the chamber. The general rule is to drop what you're doing and kill it. This can cause problems if the monster you were fighting runs wild, so it might be smart to handle that first.

Anyways, we ended up getting a lot of bats. Now, some bats are just single, big bats. This is good, as they don't tend to do too much besides kill people a bit faster.

We also got little bats, which are another thing entirely. Those little assholes tend to reduce the attack power of the group like mad. The bats in Einherjar also tend to reduce the accuracy of everyone, too, as well as deal damage to everyone. Lots of fun(Not).

Then came the Clusters. These are basically a grouping of living explosives that have a tendency to explode, yet continue fighting afterwards. We didn't all die against them, but we had a lot of bodies hit the floor.

Finally, the normal monsters were finished with Wivres. Imagine a cross between the defenses of a bomb shelter and the fury of the dinosaurs. That would be these guys. Annoying only because they like to not die quickly.

The boss was a Cerberus. You know, hell-spewing three-headed dog? Guards the underworld? Is basically a puppy for Hades?

Well, it's a pretty nasty boss monster that like to kill a lot of people and paralyze everyone else. Because of this and time problems, we didn't manage to win.

The main reason for losing was simply that we had too many monsters to fight, 41 in total. We might have won had we gotten a different monster other than the little bats or Clusters, but even then, I doubt it.

It takes a lot of planning a coordination to do what we do there, but even then, there's still a chance of losing out because of luck.

Endgame is fun. Like a fork to the eye.

Let's try again.

It's been awhile. Two years, actually.

So, how's that Obama?

Sorry, but it appears my chronic laziness really hits me in a lot of places.

Anyways, a lot of things have changed over the years.

The place I worked at closed down, and I haven't gotten a job since.

My mother had a baby girl, a miracle in itself.

She also is now in a divorce, which has done bad things to the family's overall morale, to put it lightly.

I still haven't gotten a PS3, but I do finally have enough money for one, so that'll be soon.

I have 5/6 relic items from Dynamis for my Red Mage on FFXI.

I'm currently doing a lot of endgame.

I no longer party on Red Mage for merits, since the latest expansion finally allows me to play how I want and still get EXP.

....there's probably a lot of other stuff I forgot, but I'll get to it sometime or another.

Anyways, keep an eye out, as I plan to post at least once a week.

I'll probably have another post later tonight about this one event I go to, but for now, I'll be seeing ya later.

Na, na-na-na-na-na-na-na...

So, I got that PS2 I ordered.

A week ago.

And I'm just now setting it up. I'm freaking lazy sometimes. Such is me, I suppose.

It's not oranges and sunshine setting everything up for FFXI, either. It took about 2 hours to reinstall all the software onto my HDD(Which you must do if you move your HDD to a different PS2). That's not even counting all the updates, which I am installing now.

I had 15,450 files to scan through to check for the update. Takes forever. And I'll have to do it all over again if the connection craps out.

Oh, yeah, and I'll have to redo all of my macros, too. Pain in the ass.

And now we have this.

By the end of the year, I'll be buying a PS3....

Freaking A, man. I hope I like being broke.

To be an Interloper.

FFXI post, so ignore at your own expense, if you must.

So I went to my first Dynamis today. For those of you who are still new to FFXI, Dynamis is a special battlezone that high level players can enter, provided someone pays the 1,000,000 gil entry fee.

On a side note, Goblins can be greedy bastards. I'm surprised there isn't one called Moneybagsnix.  Monopoly, I tells ya.

Anywho, the gist of it is that the zone is filled with these walking statues that you are supposed to kill. If they were alone, great.

Too bad they spawn helper mobs when they decide to fight you. So not so great. These helper mobs do drop items when killified, though, so it's not as if they are that pointless to fight. Of course, one could say that it's that it's not pointless to fight monsters that want you dead, but you get what I mean.

So, the main goal of Dynamis is to kill some specific mobs, which serve as the keys to spawning the grandaddy statue of them all. That statue is your primary target. Kill him, and you get a funky key item with which will help you get access to all the dynamis areas, since you can only go  to 4 areas at the start.

Of course, what's a giant undertaking like this if not for some kickass rewards? Those helper mobs I talked about drop a few different things. They drop crappy weapons, which can be turned into the most powerful weapons in the game(Provided you get enough ancient currency and supplies to upgrade them, which both drop from said helper mobs).

Then there's the armor. High level, job-specific equipment that is, for the most part, some of the best damn armor in the game. Unlike the weapons, which take forever to upgrade, and cost hundereds of millions of gil(IF you buy all your currency and supplies), these pieces of armor, known as Relic Armor, are as-is. If they drop, and you win the lot, they're yours, and ready to use as soon as you get it.

You can understand that everyone and their brother wants these. BADLY.

Anyways, back to my first run(Dynamis - San d'Oria, if you must know). We all went in, got prepared and junk, and started pulling the statues one at a time, taking care of whatever helper mobs popped. We did pretty good for nearly the first half of the run.

Then we ended up pulling a statue, and about 24 of his friends decided to join his cause, including the first mob we needed to kill to pop the grandaddy statue. Thankfully, everyone was on the ball, and we managed to hold them all(IE: put them all to sleep) while we picked them off one by one. There was one death, but we handled it all pretty well.

Then we met the summoners.

One thing about summoner mobs in Dynamis. If you don't keep their avatar buddies asleep at all times, they tend to murder a ass-load of people in one hit.

That pretty much was what happened to us. Except it wasn't all of us(more like me and every other Red Mage and Black Mage), and we thankfully managed to kill all the summoners before we all had our faces in the dirt.

Too bad, 15 minutes later, we all had our faces in the dirt. Joy.

Remember that small army of 24 that we managed to handle without much of a problem? Well, it happened again.

Except there were Black Mages and Summoners this time around.

And all our sleepers got killed.

I, myself went from full HP to nothing in about 3 seconds. It's a new record for me. I should be proud.

So we all managed to get back up, recover and whatnot, and decided to try and pick them off without making a bunch of us-corpses again. We did all right at first.

You know where I'm going with all this, right?

Black mages and Summoners, blah, blah, blah, Black mage didn't get slept, we all die, etc, etc.

We decided to try a different approach. We cleared an area of mobs, away from the giant army of death, and such, and thusly had someone drag the entire death army in one direction, taking a death in the process, while one of our tanks picked out the 2nd mob that we needed to kill to spawn the grandaddy statue.

Somehow, we managed to kill it, despite the fact it was a Summoner mob, and as a result, spawned the grandaddy statue.

Now, we had a problem. Grandaddy statue had a lot of help. Too much for us to take on normally, and we had a few people who had to leave during the run.

Once again, we had someone take one for the team(You know, dying?), and brought over Grandaddy Statue over to us.

Yes, I capitalized that. Shut up.

We had a small problem, though. He had two Summoners backing him up. So we slept them all.

And I got a face full of mad Grandaddy Statue fist, since my sleep spell hit him, too.

However, through some miracle, we managed to defeat Grandaddy Statue and his cronies.

I was still dead, but hey, I won by association.

Anywho, got raised, got the funky key item saying I won, and we decided to continue to hunt down mobs for junk.

Up to that point, we had a few Relic Guns, as well as a couple Relic Great Axes.

But only one piece of Relic Armor.

For WHM.

When we only had two of them on at level 70+. Ugh.

We didn't have much time left, as you can only stay in Dynamis so long, but we got to farming some mobs. We had two Relic Armor's drop. One for Warrior.

And one for Red Mage. I was happy. I had 3-4 other people to compete with on the lot, but I didn't mind.

I was beat out by one person. 2nd place. No biggie. There's always next time.

But then our guy handling all the treasure said that the dude who beat me in the lot was marked for receiving currency. We had a "Armor or Currency" system, as a measure of fairness to all.

While the dude who out-lotted me was arguing he didn't mark himself for currency, it started to sink in.

I'm supposed to get that armor. Of course, that's if the guy who was still arguing about the whole thing decides to pass on the armor.

Oddly, enough, he left the area.

While arguing, still.

After passing on the armor.

If I had urine in my bladder, my pants would be wet right now.

I got the armor. I am the proud owner of a shiny new pair of Duelist's Boots.

Just in time, too. 5 minutes or so later, we get booted from Dynamis, and I feel like I'm on top of the world.

Currency was handed out to those who opted currency(Oddly enough, I had to pick some up on behalf of my White Mage friend who had to leave after our first full wipe), and we all went our seperate ways.

All in all, an excellent first run of Dynamis. I do feel for the guy who passed on the armor, but honestly, I can't say I saw him say he wanted the armor(Before it dropped and he lotted for it, obviously). From the looks of it, neither did anyone else.

Still, it's not like this'll happen again. Right?

.....right?

Click, click, click, click.....

So, my PS2(Playstation 2, why do I spell this out?) decided it no longer needed to work properly.

It can no longer read disks of any sort. This would be the PS2 version of stabbing yourself in  your eyes.

You see, I play FFXI on my PS2. So you might be wondering why I don't seem filled with  uncontrollable, raging anger. A simple reason for that: while my PS2 can't read disks anymore, it can still use the HDD(Hard Disk Drive; acronyms are fun!) that FFXI is installed on. So while I  am mad that I can't play any other PS2 games at the moment, my MMO addiction is not messed up beyond repair.

So, three options for me:

1) Snoop around the 3 local EBGames for an old-model PS2.

2) Order an old-model PS2 online.

3) Put out a mortgage and buy a PS3(Yeah, you don't get help on this one).

Now, some of you may wonder why I don't want a brand new PS2. Those do exist. Problem: The new PS2s don't support the HDD.

No HDD means no FFXI. That's a bad thing, mmm'kay?

Actually, I already know I'm going to get a PS2 over the interweb. Gonna do it tomorrow. For $99. Plus tax. Plus shipping.

Honestly, $99+ isn't that bad for me.

But could someone, anyone tell me why this thing had to crap out right after I spent $210+ on a Nintento DS, some games for it, and a disc scratch repair kit? I mean, come on!

Although, I probably should been clued in on my console's state of health by the incessant clicking noise when it was trying to read a game disc. I only thought it was old. Not broken.

Shows what I know, though.