Happy Monday y’all! The weekend was good overall, but just felt.. sped up? Like, almost everything that was planned on getting done, did get done, but in such a turnkey it didn’t feel good. As predicted as well, the new Arcadian matches are delayed probably for another week with it all.

Going into the holiday weeks, it’s looking pretty good. I have a couple of items to get this evening to finish it all up, and then I can just worry about finishing up work before the holidays. What’s a little bit annoying is the fact that both Christmas and New Years are on Thursdays, the office is pulling a technicality and not closing on either Friday – for the last seven years I’ve been trying my darndest to explain the importance of R&R, but it’s becoming an over exhaustive fleeting battle at this point.

Sans the new Arcadian, we did do the new Starlight festive event, and place some ‘classic’ festive music on at HQ, but right now is just trying to keep up with weeklies/dailies and the daily DDoS attacks, for in which I cannot understand how/why these are so severe for a game this big. Like… even World of Warcraft during Wrath of the Lich King I can’t remember ever being knocked off due to such a thing. Guild Wars 1 or 2 neither had this, and the other handful of online games from both Blizzard and elsewhere in the past I just can’t recall this ever happening. Supposedly it did in WoW early on, but was squelched pretty quickly.

Just… *sigh* maybe we’ll hear something eventually explaining the situation. Would at least help explain why it’s so bad. I guess just in the meantime it’s one more thing I need to schedule into the evening routines until it finally ends. It makes me wonder how 8.0 and beyond will go with this. Getting kicked off only to come back to a 3K+ queue due to one of these is not going to make for an enjoyable time…

I know, shouldn’t end on a downer, just something that’s been growing into a major bother with everything else happening. It’ll be a good and fun week ahead, and I hope y’all have a wonderful one as well! Kick lots of tails and lots of love.

The last full week of the year is upon us. The weekend was productive, and non-breaking of things; it didn’t go as planned per se however. The original plan was to just rest up a smidgen and get a little bit more 7.4 preparations in, but what happened instead was more catching up on tasks in the home office and holiday planning. So, good things still, but the catch-up is very real still. Lacking a solid day of writing isn’t helping things here either.

Next weekend is my big holiday one before the actual holiday, and with 7.4 coming out on Tuesday, will have to address some things prior that have come up. I got thrown a fairly odd curve-ball in relation to work that I’m still having to consider as I suspect it’s going to come up before the end of the year (or the department review) which could affect the future of just about everything I do. Not that’s necessarily supposed to sound ominous by any means, but there’s some weight to this decision making that echoes my first tenure in this industry, and was ultimately one of the biggest reasons I left initially.

Best not to dwell all that much on it right now, however – I’ve got a lot more experience and journeys under the ears at this point, so the outcome shouldn’t be the same again. Regardless of that, let’s make the last full week before the holidays and end of the year be stellar.

Happy Monday y’all! Kick tails! Here we go!

Last week went off the rails again, and still perpetually behind on planning practically anything for the foreseeable future. However, this past weekend was nice; the folks visiting Saturday evening – it was shorter than usual but nice nonetheless. The next time I’ll see them is Christmas and then New Years right thereafter.

Aside from the visit – most of the weekend was in a perpetual state of chasing catch-ups and not succeeding as well as needed. In the process, breaking another Linux system (albeit temporarily) once again. As much as I like Mint, the sheer amount of research required to do some of the more technical things is incredibly exhausting sometimes. I’ve been leaving myself a lot of text documents on the NAS though for when/if I need to reference these hurdles again in the future.

Last full week before Patch 7.4, and we’re basically ready for it, but just concerned with the amount of work hours how the first week is going to go. Ideally we’ll finish the MSQ the night it comes out and then plan getting to the new Arcadion (it’s going to conflict with the traditional holiday Rum Cakes baking). I know we have an ample amount of time to do these until 7.5, and this is the last tier of tomestones until 8.0, but would rather see the story sooner than later to avoid any unintentional spoilers.

Once I stop have self-inflicted technical issues (getting there!), planning out more story-driven posts will come back once again, and I am so looking forward to it.

Y’all have a wonderful Monday and week ahead! Kick some tails!

I hadn’t been planning on being absent for this long. It’s been a bit too overwhelming, even for me. The major issues that I was discussing back in August got addressed: new roof, all of the Windows 10 to 11 or Linux has been dealt with too. The bigger problem was hitting 6 days a week of work to deal with a large project that wasn’t planned or laid out well enough. This on its own caused a nasty bottleneck for everything else, for in which now we’re dealing with that fallout. By the end of this year, either this will be addressed fully or I’m arbitrarily taking back my personal time. I didn’t return to this industry for a 3rd time to do what I did in the 1st tenure that caused me to leave in the first place.

That being said, and with all of that happening, I did finish Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3, Hazbin Hotel Season 2, and all of Helluva Boss. These were all great seasons, and I do recommend them. Wicked Part 1 was superb of a watch too. The audio server project is still making additional progress by the week, and my skills using Linux have increased (even with breaking a couple of systems in the process – oops). So it’s not all been a whirlwind of insanity, but I do miss sleep. Office got a nice small overhaul as well when the new systems went in, and it’s a lot more cozy in there too.

I’d like to get back to posting daily here, and I got enough to do so, but I still haven’t had enough time to sit down and plan getting back into that just yet. The little blurbs I was doing are probably manageable right now, but I need a few hours over a weekend to sort everything else out.

Eorzea-wise. I just announced the dissolution of EOCA’s discord at the end of the year. It’s a really somber feeling, but it’s way overdue. The FC will continue onwards, but my retirement of doing cartography for Final Fantasy XIV is all but done. The fact that I was part of the community for so long and with so many warm regards was such a honor and a privilege. It would never have lasted as long without so many wonderful folks and friends who supported me through it all. One of these moons, I’ll finish up the story about EOCA, but that rough draft is pretty… rough to say the least, and some things have changed since then.

Aside from that, barely keeping it together with such a loss of personal time. Aikirees and I are hanging in there, as are the cousins but it’s really been dialed back (Miss Lizz is happy about the extra nap time, however). Hopefully soon we’ll be able to get back to taking care of more side things as opposed to just weekly tasks. Doing some of those weekly tasks is getting harder as it feels the community in certain parts is feeling far more cold than it ever has, even so now looking back on almost 7 years of playing.

Let’s see, Horizon: Forbidden West is still moving along as well, 50% completion according to the in-game statistics, with 70 hours invested. I’ve been having a blast but certainly taking it really slowly. Started Sea of Stars again on PS5 as well – it’s just too good and definitely a recommend for a great story RPG with minimal grinding. That might be it for this long post for now; still have lots to thimble through and organize here. The Vieras’ adventures still continue in the background with Reinylla slowly approaching Heavensward now.

I’ll wrap it up there before I ramble on forever. Y’all have a really wonderful Monday and week ahead. Only 31 days left of the year now, let’s make them absolutely stellar!

The rough was dealing with another roof leak, which was found & plugged as best as possible during a rain storm, and then losing nearly all of my work time in the process.

The good was just about everything else. Family evening was really wonderful, and getting everything else done went fairly well but just not a lot of downtime – just consistently moving between tasks. Some server work got done, but still have to add a few more that I queued up over last week, but that I can worry about this weekend.

It’s going to be a very long week ahead. Y’all kick tails and have a wonderful Monday & week!

I’m going to open with this article from the wonderful folks over at MassivelyOP and my only remark to it (and for anyone, and I mean anyone) who knows me is this, and forgive my vulgarity: Good. Fucking. Riddance. I have been very loud about how I absolutely loathe the modding community in Final Fantasy XIV, and seeing this coming to an end is nice to hear. Not Sorry.

With that rather out of characteristic vulgar quick-rant out of the way – it’s still pretty chaotic on the RL side, with me certainly bringing more work home for the weekend. Not as much, however, so I’ll hopefully be able to dedicate a little bit more to relaxing – there will be some server work too, which is always fun to do. Biggest hurdle now will be addressing what needs to be done, and very quickly, soon thereafter we get over a machine being down.

Hopefully everyone’s Friday goes wonderfully, and y’all have a weekend to match!

My concern about how this week kind of ballooned overnight with the project escalating into something far more obscene. My bigger concern is if any of this will overtake part of this upcoming weekend, which already has plans involving family. The work/life is really starting to kilt to levels where I left the industry the first time and that’s not good.

Hoping to swerve the course at least a bit today and tomorrow in hopes of it being a bit better. Ended up pulling yet another skilled injury the other day (if you know me, this is par for the course) which has made things a little bit more comically slower, but it is recovering just fine. Hoping dearly that this will all come to some sort of head right before Labor Day Weekend.

As for Labor Day Weekend itself, I might have mentioned visiting ‘home’ where Aiki and I started out in our adventures through Eorzea, but that might just depend on how things are going. The Rising Event comes back the 27th, which means the long ‘lost’ Aryiah will be visiting after being absent for almost a year. It would be nice to hang out at the Moonfire cruise ship sometime over this upcoming weekend (or Monday) with some/all of EOCA, but realistically I keep seeing that idea fleeting with everything upcoming.

Hopefully I’m incorrect to some capacity, but just have to see. There is a level of guilt that I’m continued to be reminded about throughout – it’s been linger a long time now, which hasn’t helped things, but not anything I have time to really address (or even explain) at the moment. Just have to keep moving forward.

Anyrate, y’all have a wonderful Friday Eve! Y’all got this!

While not necessarily a negative, but there has been some work ‘bleed over’ into the weekends due to an overwhelming amount of work going on. It wasn’t overburdening, but just part of the weekend ordeal.

Overall, it was a pretty decent one – got some tasks taken care of while dealing with the usual weekend routines and maintenance. The NAS has been cleaned up and reorganized as well – including remote access, which has helped in regards to getting into it from work.

Started to watch the new season of Wednesday since I caught up for now on Strange New Worlds. I think this part of Wednesday is fairly short, so once that’s done, I’ll head back into Strange New Worlds. Some media server work in there for good measure and a little bit more crafting progress around Eorzea. With Moonfire Faire happening, it’s taken a little bit of all our time up.

The next couple of weeks are probably going to be absolutely chaotic, working on a semi-big project, but hopefully won’t take away too much from here, or personal life – we’ll see.

Happy Monday y’all! Kick tails! Y’all got this!!

I.. uhh.. Sorry y’all, kind of been distracted and pretty busy. Everything is well, and the past weekend was good. Patch 7.3 was cleared in its entirety at this point in time and was a pretty enjoyable experience overall with really only one semi-sour spot happening. So all in all, I’d give this Patch start the best of Dawntrail thus so far.

Got to get back to it, but happy Wednesday! Halfway there now, and y’all enjoy the Moonfire Faire! It looks really fun (I mean, it always is) so head on out to Costa del Sol for some fireworks, new party barge and goodies alike! We’ll check it out over the weekend.

Kick tails!

Midweek and I am so behind on rest; very much no rest for this Viera.

Just more long days, but the cousins got their chance to head into Patch 7.3’s MSQ last night and thankfully finish it. That’s not to be taken as it was disliked, quite the contrary, just due to weekly planning it would have off-kilted the rest of the week.

Aiki and I are up tonight to blaze the Trail of 7.3, which then just leaves the new raid for the tail end of the week. Weekend then will just be clearing up all of the items we normally do, but missed throughout the week. As for the weekend, probably a nice and actually for once, relaxing one.

Happy Midweek y’all! Kick tails!

Kind of a quick one, but this past weekend was a really good success. The system upgrade/change to Linux went almost near darn perfectly, so now it’s just refining settings and learning a lot more about it now. Even got a few Windows games to run within it just like they would normally do so under Windows itself.

Watched more Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and kind of just meandered around Eorzea, so it was a pretty good balance of productivity and relaxing. Not as much sleep as I would have liked, but the accomplishments with the system more than makes up for it.

Happy Patch 7.3 Eve y’all and Happy Monday! Kick lots of tails this week! Y’all got this!!

Happy Friday y’all! Almost the end of another long and weary week. Hopefully everyone’s has been going well!

Usual weekend routine coming up, but along with that going forward with another system overhaul (hence the farewell notion). These usually are kind of a bittersweet process, and this one is not different as this system in particular has been running pretty much the original of itself since I built it right after my life’s hard reset over 10 years ago.

So, even with it being a good transition to continue operating, it is kind of also sad to see it’s current form go. Depending on who’s reading this, that might either sound silly or relatable – guess it just depends on how it’s looked at, and either way it’s fine. Ideally done to a point before dinner Saturday as well, and that should be doable.

Not much else really planned but being around Eorzea a bit more, possibly some Forbidding the West time depending on how I feel. The big 7.3 patch next week (and it looks CHONK) should be good, as long as I can keep my frustrations with the player-base down to a minimal that is.

Kick tails today, and have a wonderful weekend y’all!

Kind of a delayed start to the reset week last night, but for good reason – was working on a small semi-emergency project in the home office that just took a bit longer than I was anticipating. I have no idea why I do that still as every project always goes way over time-budgeted.

Probably going to pull the trigger and initiate the next task this weekend, but try to weave it between miscillany tasks around Eorzea and the Saturday Dinner Evening routine. It kind of has to be done by said dinner, otherwise it may end up being a repeat of last weekend, which I absolutely do not want to happen again for a very long while (or Labor Day weekend, whichever).

Not much else, just going through the days. Still trying to get a timeline for the rest of the year at least penciled out, but with Hurricane Season looming, it could end up making it look like a bowl of spaghetti again like last year.

Time will tell, but in the mean time, y’all have a wonderful Wednesday!

Now that I’ve gotten a bit of rest and reverted back to the weekday schedule, hope everyone had a lovely Monday!

The weekend was 50/50, well probably more 75/25 (good vs rough). The NAS showed up early so I was able to get that together, which was actually really good since that took a lot longer to set up than I had anticipated it to. Mostly on the settings side: the actual getting it up and running was a breeze. It’s something I should have done years ago after Vladimir passed away. Better late than never for certain, but with this, I can continue to either go Windows 11 (Rufus or not) or Linux Mint depending on scenario – and I only have 2 devices left thankfully. However, I fear the Home Office overhaul is coming up sooner than later.

The rough patch of the weekend was trying to outroot a syncing issue across devices, that just didn’t make any sense and I spent way too much time into the early morning hours trying to fix it. I never really did, but I ended up with only 3 hours of sleep because of it, which caused a huge rush of frustration at myself to stay awake. It was really trivial in the overall scenario of things, but when my determination goes into something, sometimes I have a hard time stopping until all conclusions have been exhausted. I think I would have been less frustrated if I wasn’t working so much these days.

Started watching the new season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (season 3 as of this writing), and it’s so good to be back! Missed the show and it’s been a blast thus so far! When it’s all said and done I’ll be a bit bummed to see it go, but Starfleet Academy does look pretty good from the trailer.

OmOneko has been 100% completed: all achievements, all routes, and all endings good, bad, and indifferent. I really enjoyed the entirety of it and really am excited to see more of this world’s universe in the future. Some of the indifferent endings were pretty comical, and boy howdy the bad ones are very much that. Team Clawdia all the way and no one can stop me. They also have two soundtracks from the game(story?) available, for in which of course I’m going to get those and have them on the media server – they’re really good.

That should cover it for now, last week before Patch 7.3; let’s make it an awesome one, and y’all have a wonderful Tuesday!