Epic Music

While I have no musical talent whatsoever, I find that music and sound is something that is important to me in entertainment. Today I ended up on this songs wiki page because of its use in entrainment, as "epic music." And I like epic music. There is something absolutely satisfying about it that makes everything else awesome. Similarly from the latest Star Trek movie the main villain, Nero, was given a leitmotif tune. This epic music bled into our last D&D game and became the theme music for Nick our resident necromancer.

Zoroastrian

In High School I basically took as many AP classes as I could. My first AP class was AP World History during my Sophomore year. Before we had our first taste of a real AP test Ari, Emma, Darla, and I (I think at least) got together for a "study group." We ended up getting very little worthwhile studying accomplished. Although I believe we all passed the test pretty handily. And of the college credits I've gotten from my AP classes this class counted for more GEs (General Education classes) than any other test I took.

The first of our gems was a passage from an AP test prep book, that we then wrote on a whiteboard.

Actual quote about the Maji Maji Rebellion's use of "magic water."

The second stemmed from the question of "what were the beliefs of Zoroastrianism?"

 My answer being, "I don't know. Chill and don't kill?"

"Chill and don't kill," ladies and gentlemen, words to live by. 

The Internet

As a regular blogger (I'm very proud I can say this) my love of the internet is somewhat obvious. I think that largely the Internet is fantastic. Also, random fact: it's grammatically correct to capitalize the word "Internet."That being said the Internet-- in m household our Internet provider/service is kinda terribad. So, today were trying Timewarner Cable's Roadrunner to see if we want to switch. This does however mean in setting this all up that my Internet access and therefore ability to blog is somewhat unreliable, hence why I'm rushing this. 

I do hope this works out. Faster Internet would be fantastic.

Raiding with Meyr: Pugging

Since on Sundays I raid on WoW and I want to talk about some aspects and highlights of raiding, I figure what better day to do this than on Sunday.

Pugging. What is "pugging" or "a pug?"

Not this.

A "PUG" stands for "Pick Up Group," meaning that the group is not prearranged of people you know. It's random people, that share a similar goal for raiding or grouping together. Pugs, however, are notorious for being all sorts of bad and awful. Because you don't know the people beforehand they have the potential to majorly suck. With a prearrgaed group you know the strengths and weakness of the people you play with, you can assume a certain level of competence, and you know if they have connection issue and the like. Also, with a set group you start to get to know people and conversion blossoms.

So, why am I talking about this? Lately our Sunday raid attendance has been abysmal lead us to pug more and more people to fill in raid spots. The content were working on has 10 man groups. Lately we've been pugging between 3 and 5 of those spots. Tonight my brother and I joined a raid that was essentially a complete pug. It was interesting to say the least. Our raid leader had a brother who was undergeared for the instance. We wiped (everyone died, forcing us to retry the fight) on the easiest fight in the game currently Gunship Battle, which to show its ease had been dubbed "Lootship" (which "loot" refers to gear, much like pirate loot). The reason we wiped was because we tried to do the encounted on a harder difficultly, but it took fours tries before the leader decided "Hey, maybe we can't do this on the harder setting. Especially since we're carrying the weight of my brother." Although come to think of it I don't think she used those words per se. In the Lady Deathwhisper encounter the tank didn't trust my kiting and almost got himself killer. But still most of the fights did go smoothly, which makes me appreciate even more raiding with people I know.

Heroic

I was bored today, so I made a superhero. Using a superhero generator. Yay! Random fun on the internet. 

It's Captain Meyrific, or something.

I don't know what her super power is though. Being really pale maybe. I'm a little bored if you can't tell, Internet. I miss D&D.

Cookie Monster!

The original Brown Butter Cookie.

Original Brown Butter Cookies

1 cup (2 sticks) Butter

1.5 cups Brown Sugar

2.5 cups Cake Flour

1 tsp Baking Soda

1Tbsp Vanilla Extract

Sea Salt

Chocolate Brown Butter Cookies

1 cup (2 sticks) Butter

1.5 cups Brown Sugar

2 cups Cake Flour

3/4 cup Cocoa Powder (Hershey's Special Dark)

1/4 tsp Salt

1 tsp Baking Soda

1Tbsp Vanilla Extract

Sea Salt

Brown butter on the stovetop. Combined butter and other ingredients in mixing bowl and let chill. (Dough should have a claylike consistency) Roll into walnut sized balls and top each with sea salt. Bake at 325 F for 13-15 minutes. Makes 2 dozen.

(Revised again. 12/13/2011)

Something Different

The size here doesn't fit well with my blog-- whoops, I should have thought about that.

From our D&D campaign a couple months ago.

This by the way, is my absolute favorite cursed item ever. And this particular exchange may be my favorite thing from D&D ever

Jinxed

As everyone on this blog should be aware, I'm a geek and a nerd. I also love wearing T-shirts. So, my love of Jinx clothing is obvious. Linked on my sidebar, their website features shirts to please every sort of geek and gamer. My favorites tend to be the shirts they design for Blizzard games. I placed an order earlier this week when they released the new Starcraft designs and it came in today.

Apparently I have a thing for purple.

Crafting Stars

I've talked about Starcraft 2 before, and this is probably not the last time I'll talk about it. However, since the release last week I don't feel that I've really done it justice. I think that's because I was spending most of my time actually playing the game. So here I go...

Starcraft 2 features both a compelling single player story campaign and dynamic multiplayer insanity. I personally love the single player part, for two main reasons 1) I'm a sucker for a well crafted story (and Blizzard delivers) and 2) I'm not very good at the multiplayer/I don't like playing against other people (I don't really like any sort of PvP (Player v. Player) games).

On a similar note using the Map Editor people are starting to create and release custom maps. Meaning... new Tower Defense games!!!

Casting

I'm still deciding what I think of this template, so I may end up changing it again (and again until I'm happy with it). I like the new design elements, but I'm not sold on the colors. But, that's not what I'm here to talk about today.

Podcasting. Love it, hate it, or never heard of it seem to be the opinions of it I see from people. I personally love it-- for specific purposes. For example I can't do a lot of things while listening to people talk: homework, writing, talking, blogging, etc. However, I think some of the greatest and funniest things I've heard come from podcasting. For podcasting I also feel that pure audio is better than a video podcast because it allows you to do something else while listening and because its faster to download of iTunes or to stream online. In the past I've listened to all sorts of different podcasts, from generic geek to World of Warcraft to Ask a Ninja (I've even been a part of a robotics podcast for my high school team). However, recently I haven't been listening/watching any podcasts, because either the podcasters stop putitng the shows together or becaues I lost interest.

This summer I found a new podcast-- about D&D involving the creators of the PVP and Penny Arcade webcomics  that has brought back my love of Podcasting. This podcast is great for anyone interested in D&D in any fashion, whether you're trying to find out what its all about, or veteran players who want to learn about the changes that 4E brings. Also, while like many podcasts each part is pretty long it is absolutely hilarious. If D&D isn't your thing there are podcasts for virtually everything now.

Welcome Back, BEDA!

BEDA's back ya'll. Although Blog Everyday in April was moved to August (unofficially Blogust), our group did it in April and now we (me and the Admiral I believe) are back for more as per my 20 before 20.

So similar to last BEDA here are my rules that I'll be using:

1. I will post at least one blog entry each day in August. Starting with this one.
2. Each post must have three full sentences and be an actual post (I'm cutting down on the cop-out posts that I was guilty of in April). I am able to edit posts after posting.
3. Each day's post must be between Midnight and 23:59 PDT of each day. 

Also, I've changed up my layout pretty drastically (including a shiny Blogust Banner) so let me know what you think. 

I Write Like

I write like

George Orwell

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

I found this site today, that compares you're writing style to that of an actual writer. So I plugged in my writing from each of the BEDA stories (each paragraph that I wrote (so it wouldn't necessarily make sense but gave the program plenty of data)) Some of my other results from just some of the longer blog posts included Steven King and Kurt Vonnegut. I think its kinda neat-- and I like to think its somewhat accurate.

The End is Here

So, my birthday was last week. For my birthday my brother bought me a Battered Hilt for Meyr off the AH. So, now I'm very excited that I can get an awesome weapon for my hunter. Now, I'm off to bake some cupcakes and play some DnD. Somebody make sure that I don't run into any doors this time.

Today being the last day of April is the last day of BEDApril 2010. And I'm very proud to say that I made it!! I was able to post as a post everyday, for 30 days.

The End.

And I Shall Name Him Jim

We started our DnD game last weekend, as I have talked about for almost all this week. You see it's the only thing getting me though this insane homework-filled week. Anyways, DnD (if you don't know the joys of DnD, then a) you're not a nerd or b) you have some 'splaining to do) I'm working on becoming a better role-player, since it's been one of my favorite aspects of Freelancer. My biggest problem I'm having is making sure that the subtle difference between the character I'm playing and me actually are apparent.

 One of the quirks I'm working into for this Korin is that she calls our Paladin (much to David's dismay) Jim when his name is actually Tom. Why? Well, I really wanted someone to name their character that so I can randomly go:
"Dammit Jim, I'm a Cleric not an helmsman."
Surprisingly, no one went for that. So I made Tom into a Jim, or at least my character can't seem to get his name right. I thought about expanding it into not getting anyone's name right (like switching Boromiss and Farimiss (uh, no clue on the spellings there)), but decided that would be too confusing. So, sorry Jim it's just something about you.

On another note, I can't believe BEDA is almost over.

It's Alive

You may have noticed by now, but when I'm not working on homework (which encompasses when I blog) I've tended lately to obsess about DnD. And today is no different, I've been everything I can to give me ideas for my character, Korin Meyer (as a note, yes that is the same first name as my freelancer character, Korin "Kori" Leena).

Well, one of the DnD books on equipment has a chapter talking about mounts. My favorite mount-- the gelatinous cube. Best part you ride it from the inside of the cube. So, imagine that: essentially riding around in a giant, hungry cube of Jell-O (does that make anyone else really want Jell-O, espeically if if looks like this(which is technically Jell-O ice cream, which sounds even better to me!)).

However, you do need a magic item that creates a force-field around the character in order to avoid being flat-out devoured by the cube. But, to move the cube you actually trick it into thinking there's food in a particular direction by banging on that force-field. Personally I still think thats a neat trick.

What Flavor is Sneak Attack?

I was looking up some lore information as a spring board to develop my DnD character today, and I saw an ad on one website for DnD themed Jones Soda. Which strikes me as odd. So a quick hop, skip and Google search later. And it appears to be legit.

DnD Spell-casting Soda, is an actual product. Found here.

Although my concern would be: what flavor is sneak attack supposed to be?

Elements and that Jazz

I had my chemistry lab today. And actually I wasn't really prepared for the lab-- yanow, actually reading it and all. But, I was very presently surprised how much I liked this particular lab.

The lab was the first of many Qualitative Analysis (which means that instead of using specific measuremetns and numbers (Quantitative Analysis) you draw conclusions and connections based on observasions of color changes, prepititates forming, etc.) and I thought it was fantastic. It's not often that I really enjoy my classes, but I'm escited for when I start taking chemistry classes more suited to my interests.  As I mentioned though, this is the first of many qualitative labs, so I'm very excited for this next couple of weeks.

Also, great about qualitative-- you can't screw up sig figs. I hate sig figs possibly more than calculus.

Bad Meyr

I find that if you're not careful its very easy to get into a cycle of not thinking about these posts. Because the past two days I've totally copped out. And that's not really blogging. People don't care to read about how I'm frantically trying to make sure I don't fail. That being said, I completely wanted to write today off as much of the same. So, here's me trying to be good, since I'm in the final stretch of BEDA.

This weekend, I played DnD as I briefly mentioned the last two days. This is the campaign we were planning on started after Freelancer wrapped up, but we started early because the people we had this weekend it made more sense this way. This does mean that Freelancer is wrapping up, and that Kori will have some sort of closure good, bad, or otherwise.

Pirating

Yesterday, I hastily posted that I was home and playing DnD this weekend. And today is no different. I should be able to come back to this at some point in the future, but I am currently at the DnD table investigating a pirate ship. David should do his blog for today. I now know that he already did. [David's addition] Awesome.

By the Light!

Since I don't have any classes on Friday, last night I came back to Lancaster. We were planning on playing Freelancer this weekend turns out that we ended up starting a DnD game. We'll still be playing our Freelancer game, seeing as we have some story to finish up.

So, we decided to start a DnD game. And I decided to play a cleric with a terrible wanderlust. Since, I've never been much of a magic user I thought it would be kinda fun.