I Has Moved

As of today, I've relocated from Blogger to a new site with my own domain name --> itsfuriousbalancing.com. All future posts will now be on the new site. Update your bookmarks, if I can flatter myself with the idea that anyone has bookmarked me.

I've imported my old posts from Blogger, and it still looks pretty rough-drafty over at the new site (to me, anyway). It's evolving, but come visit.

I Has a Vision

I'm thinking about, and taking steps to accomplish, moving this blog onto my own domain name and using WordPress as my publishing platform.

I'm going to blame Allan for this one. He's the gentleman who commented yesterday on my madeleine post. We've since exchanged brief emails and I've spent some more time reading his (very well-written, erudite) blog.

I covet his footnote plug-in functionality.

No, seriously.

I must have footnotes that allow the reader to click on the footnote number, automatically go to the bottom of the page to read said footnote, then click on the "back" button to return to their place in the text.

Go over to his blog and play around with this. I realize I'm a blogging neophyte, but I hadn't seen this before. Considering my methods (or lack thereof) of writing, this could have some serious consequences for It's Furious Balancing. Lots of footnotes and other madcap blogging hijinks will ensue, I'm certain.

As to when this move to WordPress will actually occur, that's up in the air. It depends on my learning curve.

Further bulletins as events warrant.

Photo courtesy of Meme Cats

Found Things

Today is one of those lovely Saturdays when I have absolutely nothing I have to do. My time is all mine. I can knit, sleep, read, surf the Innernets, and generally spoil myself rotten. Oh, there's a few loads of laundry that need doing, and a little bit of tidying up around the house, but nothing compelling or necessary by any means. Well, making sure I have clean underwear for next week might fall into the "necessary" category, but the upshot of all of this is that I have loads of Free, Unstructured Time.

That is a glorious thing.

First up, My So Called Scarf. I love these colors. They're a bit darker than they appear in this photo. I thought diffuse morning sunlight would show them better, but I was wrong. Ah, well. If this is the worse thing to happen to me today, I am lucky indeed.

Second, a few things Found on the Internet that I just haven't gotten around to posting:

[If you click on Anti-Gravity Cat's picture, you can get him to spin around]

Hey, it makes perfect sense to me (but now I'm craving toast, with lots and lots of Calder Dairy butter). (1)

In the "What the Heck, You Never Know" Department: Kelly at Yoga Coffee Outlook is giving away a Zune MP3 Player. All you need to do to qualify is write that previous sentence in a blog post, and put a comment on her blog, etc. Details here.

I've never even read, or wanted to read, any of the Harry Potter books, but I still am sorted into the correct house (the wise, clever, learned, enigmatic ones, I am told):



be sorted @ nimbo.net

But wait! Here's more silly cat stuff:



Oh, I've got tons of these saved on my hard drive:

Cat pics (except anti-gravity cat, whose origin is unknown) courtesy of Meme Cats.

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(1) Sweet Jesus, they have Calder Dairy Ice Cream and home delivery in Washtenaw County. ::faint:: If you haven't had Calder dairy stuff, and you live in Southeastern Michigan, you must try it. Calder Dairy is, without a doubt, home of the Best Dairy Products in the Known Universe. Hey, I'm a grain- and milk-fed Midwestern girl -- I know my dairy products.

A Not-so-Brief and Somewhat Sordid History of Laiane Wolfsong, Ranger of the Storm Lord (Part One)

[Note to my readers -- There's a lot of "gamer" jargon here, and I can't define all of it without going off on some very long, digressive tangents. I try not be purposely obscure -- It really is a whole 'nuther reality with its own language.]

Yesterday, I received my copy of The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. I got to thinking -- this will be Laiane's fourth MMORPG incarnation, and her sixth gaming incarnation. EverQuest; TES III: Morrowind; EverQuest II; TES IV: Oblivion; Vanguard: Saga of Heroes; and now, Lord of the Rings. I've been Laiane, or she has been me, for 6 or 7 years. I think a history is in order.

My online gaming obsession started shortly after I met The Husband. We were still living in our respective apartments in Ann Arbor when he bought me a copy of EverQuest (and a copy for himself shortly thereafter). I went through a variety of characters. For a while, I thought I had found the "perfect" class for my play style -- the Necromancer -- and I harried the world of Norrath as the Dark Elven Aamaterasu Solreaver, who summoned the undead to do her evil bidding.

Then I went to see a movie.

[Insert foreshadowing-type music here]

It was the first of The Lord of the Rings movies directed by Peter Jackson. When the initial scene of the Last Battle of Elves and Men was on the screen, I started crying (I tell you, I cry at anything sometimes). Someone had finally gotten it right. Someone -- someone who obviously loved Middle Earth -- took the time to do the movie properly, the Way It Should Be Done. (1)

In any event, when I saw the character of Legolas Greenleaf, Archer of the Woodland Realm, I thought -- in addition to "that's a hunka burnin' Elf luv" -- I want a character who can do THAT. "THAT" being defined as uber l33t archery skillz.

There are those who love the tank classes, the knights in shining armor defending their party from the foe. There are those who love the role of the healers, the clerics/druids/shamans who are always welcome and needed in groups. (2) Other players are drawn to the fire-power of a wizard, the versatality of the bard, or the subtleness of an enchanter.


Photo courtesy of Meme Cats

Then there are those of us who want to kill stuff quickly, from a distance, and have it drop dead before it has a chance to get in one good whack of its own. Add some tracking, foraging, stealth movement, and serious close-combat DPS (3), and you've got yourself a Ranger.

When I created Laiane (4) , that long, long time ago, I didn't know I would love the Ranger class so much. She was just another character slot that I was experimenting with; but Laiane reached 55th level in EverQuest before I retired her, far surpassing Aamaterasu (who was abandoned somewhere in the mid-30's and, as far as I know, is still camped at the gnome pirate outpost on Velious, hunting snow cougars).

I was a Ranger when Rangers weren't cool. Rangers were the "paper tanks." We died a lot. There were a multitude of Ranger jokes about the ease with which we Took The Big Dirt Nap ("A Ranger walks into a bar... LOADING. PLEASE WAIT"). The people who played the class didn't play to become powerful characters, for the most part, but because we had an affinity for the Predator-Hunter archetype.

I'm disappointed that I can't find a screenshot of my EverQuest 1 Laiane. All I had were some forum signature blocks The Husband helped put together for me.

[Oh, yes, I remember the day when I really, truly made GrandMaster Fletcher (250), and got my trophy. /sigh]

I stopped with EverQuest 1 shortly after the Lost Dungeons of Norrath expansion. It was at that point when I realized that I couldn't progress much further in the game without devoting an extraordinary amount of time acquiring AA's (5) -- and when I realized you couldn't get a group without 100+ AA's to your name, and that if I wanted to progress I would HAVE TO group.

I have many opinions about enforced grouping, and none of them are good. For anyone who cares to make the utterly specious argument about "Why play a MMORPG if you don't care to group?" argument, I'll tell you right now that you're a moron. There are many players who love to interact in a large, dynamic, persistent online world with hundreds (if not thousands) of others, and not necessarily group, and we tend to be much smarter than the likes of you.

[To be continued at some point in the future. One game down, five to go!]

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(1) Those of us of a certain age shudder to remember the animated Lord of The Rings film that came out in the late 1970's. Ralph Bakshi? It was like a combination nightmare of all the bad fantasy ever written and H. R. Pufnstuf.

(2) I'm having an EQ2 /guildchat flashback, from Crystalmind, "I'm a Libra with no one to heal!"

(3) DPS = Damage Per Second. Numerical shorthand for "How quickly you can kill the pixalated orc before it kills you."

(4) "Laiane" -- rhymes with "rain" -- is a variation of the name "Lain" from, of course, Serial Experiments: Lain. I find it amusing that the anime Lain exists in "The Wired," another name for the global (computer) communication network, aka "the Internet." There's a lot more philosophical, nature-of-reality, separation-or-lack-thereof between the Wired and Reality weirdness in the anime. Go read the Wiki article.

(5) Achievement points, I can't for the life of me recall exactly what AA stands for anymore, but it was an alternative leveling system IN ADDITION to regular leveling. You could put EXP into levels or AA's, and buy special abilities with your AA's. When I left EQ1, I had six, count 'em, SIX, AA's. In order to get to the magical 100+ level of AA's, I would have had to do EXP grinding groups every night for 6+ hours for a month or more. No. Thank. You.

Yes, that's my Emma. I'm enjoying a slow day at home in pre-celebration of my birthday tomorrow. The only reason I'm piqued is because I'm having a Bad Pain Day. Perhaps a hot bubblebath is in order.

I am a Good (Feminine, Singular) Citizen -- It's Tax Time!

I know how to say that in Russian (the "good citizen" part, that is), but, alas, cannot remember the Cyrillic alphabet. You're just going to have to trust me on that one.(1)

I've just checked the numbers on the return with He Who Wishes to Claim Cats as Dependents, and have e-filed the whole mess on to the Infernal Revenue Service. I take great pride in doing our taxes, but I do whine about it to a certain extent. I want my pats on the head, I suppose. Thank God for Turbo Tax.

Photo courtesy of Meme Cats

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(1) I've taken classes in French, German, Russian, and Japanese, with varying and widely disparate degrees of success. Learning to write the Cyrillic alphabet was a hoot. It took us a few weeks to get to the point where we could "sight read" Cyrillic (class met once a week in the evenings; that's why it took a while).

Ash Wednesday (a Day Late and a Dollar Short)

I go to mass once a year, on Ash Wednesday.

You see, I have this theory. I have a lot of theories. Since Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, the season of atonement, the chance that God will smite me – the biggest sinner in existence – as I walk into church to ask for forgiveness, is very slim. "Hi, God, I've been a bad girl and I'm here to work on the salvation of my immortal soul." Ka-WHAM [or whatever sound effect works for heavenly smiting]. Bad press for the Church, let me tell you.

In terms of religion, I identify myself as a Pagan-Buddhist-Catholic, or a Buddhist-Catholic-Pagan, or a Catholic-Buddhist-Pagan, depending on the time of year and my inclination. I'm not even a "good" Catholic. I don’t go to mass every Sunday and I don't think I've been in a state of grace since 1987. Technically, I shouldn't be taking communion at all; but I remember Father John, the priest who taught my catechism class, telling us that the priest doesn't ask for your Catholic ID card when you go up front for the Eucharist. I guess we're on the Honor System to some extent.

But this was all yesterday. I've been freakishly busy at the office and just in general, and I feel like I've been run over by a truck, not even having time to post my Ash Wednesday theory until the day after Ash Wednesday:

Found Objects; or Ditzing Around the Internets on a Lazy Sunday

critical mass (n.)
1. The smallest mass of a fissionable material that will sustain a nuclear chain reaction at a constant level.

2. The amount of matter needed to generate sufficient gravitational force to halt the current expansion of the universe.

3. An amount or level needed for a specific result or new action to occur: "The sudden national uproar over drugs and drug abuse has reached politically critical mass in Washington"





Flo vs. The Piano