General

Aside from a very lack of sleep, this weekend went pretty well overall. I got a lot of software backed up via ISO’s (except for one very stubborn one!) and got to watch Wicked: For Good. I must say that the Wicked adaptation has got to be one of if not the best adaptations of a Broadway play I’ve seen thus so far. The only caveat is that it’s just absurdly long, so definitely pace oneself.

Next weekend will be Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, and hopefully a lot more rest preferably. I do have one more technical repair, but that should be done as early as tonight depending on how I feel. The timewarp was about as rough as usual, but being up late burning the midnight oil did not help at all fighting with technical issues. I really just want it all to slow down back to the days of old when I could casually work on whatever (or nothing) like before. Soon I really hope.

Little Ladies’ Day this year was a lot of fun – the quest itself was really quick, but the FATE involved to partake in a concert was a lot of fun even if a bit silly (in all the good ways!!) This week should be more normal as last week was heavily truncated to work in the home office for a lot of it. Not much aside from that, so y’all have a wonderful week ahead and kick lots of tails!

Nothing like major, but just lately there’s been either issues or items that need to be addressed/repaired. It’s starting to delay bigger projects since a few of them have been necessary to prioritize. RL’s usual craziness has just compounded it all.

It kind of just hit me when I heard last night that Patch 7.45 dropped; it’s been getting a lot more difficult lately to keep up with it all (and the motive to be around is diminished), that I’m kind of at a crossroad for what I want or need to do. If this was the lull of 7.55 to 8.0 then this would be a no-brainer: take a long break and come back and get ready.

I enjoy it, I really do, but yeah I really need to think about where and what to do going forward sooner than later. It may just be a long break which has happened in the past for previous MMO’s around this time as well (8th year will be next Febrary). Even the projects have been generally good and/or a learning experience with one being downright a hoot upon resolving.

I don’t know, but I’ll try to post here when I can to keep everyone up with it all as it unfolds.

Kick tails y’all!

Not really a ‘weekend recap,’ but kind of is. Overall it went well with some inanely infuriating technical hurdles that kind of worked out in the end. Nothing disastrous, just a lot of trial and error in the very early morning hours.

Saw family, and got some major RL tasks done – well one, but it was an important one. Caught up on the last of weekly tasks, and played a bit of Genshin Impact really. Kind of quiet, even with having to run around a bit. Next weekend is a lot more quiet with just planning and maybe some more blog scheduling.

I haven’t intended it to thin out to 1-2 posts as week; just need to survive this huge project and things can start to feel more like they used to.

Y’all have a wonderful Monday, and stay warm out there!

I actually planned on purpose a weekend to just take it easy and not worry about projects.

…Only for a project to happen to be done as an emergency as something needed to be repaired. The good about it is that Saturday was for the most part just that: a planned day of really just doing nothing, but then Sunday became the repair project that led to being perpetually behind on just about every other aspect of how the day was supposed to go.

So, while yes it was a bit frustrating (and costly), the overall could have been a lot worse. I’ll probably try again this weekend with a little bit of home office work that’s required on Saturday before seeing Mama K in the evening. We all did finally do the Valentione’s Day event, and that was a lot of fun – was nice to do a smol instance event again with little to no stakes. Weekly tasks went fine, but whatever warmth I felt before was dashed away again.

Might take another week off from Final Fantasy XIV to do other things – like trying to finish Horizon: Forbidden West as I think I’ve reached the final Story Quest for the base-game, and I feel like this is going to be a doozy!

Y’all have a wonderful Monday and week ahead! Y’all got this!

I was planning a morning recap the other day, but hooooooeeeeeyyy that leg of the garage project took EIGHT hours to do. Aside from that, and the result being a bit less than anticipated (they do function and look overall fine – especially the bottom shelf), the weekend was fairly uneventful. More Fallout Season 2 and I did start Starfleet Academy with mixed feelings so far. I think this weekend concludes the 2nd season of Fallout, so I’ll pivot over to Startfleet Academy for a bit logner.

With that leg of the project done, now it’s on to the larger piece and that is a lot more outside work. The temperature out is a smidgen too cold, so will have to wait a bit and honestly I have no idea just yet how to accomplish the step. So, I’ll give few weeks rest, see family, and maybe finally get the trains working again before delving back into all this.

There’s really not much else to update on; more progress in Horizon, and dabbling a bit back into Genshin Impact (a breather from Sea of Stars), and we did take an entire 8 days off from Final Fantasy XIV which really didn’t make me miss it all that much. Returning to that however and with taking a few weeks off from (big) projects, should be a good time to catch up on a bit more rest.

Y’all stay warm, it really is a doozy out there right now!

This actually might be the first full week I don’t adventure around Eorzea – like at all. We all might do the bare minimum of weekly tasks over the weekend, but for the most part I’ve been either pre-planning this leg of the project for Saturday or playing Horizon II: Forbidden West, which is now reaching the 100th hour at ~65% complete. This game is huge to say the least, but it’s been really good and a lot of fun to be going through.

Hopefully it all goes (relatively) well with this part of the project, then it should give me at least a few weeks to rest up before the next phase, and that one is a doozy.

Y’all have a wonderful Thursday! Kick tails!

While I’d have liked to have a bit more active week here, this past weekend was just sideways progress all around. Parts of it were nice and relaxing, but a lot of it was trial and error with an emphasis on error. With the temperatures being a lot lower right now it’ll be good to do some more outside work this weekend, so probably a quieter week until I can get settled back further into a weekend routine.

This’ll happen as once this project is all paced out and done with, that will really help things, but it’s just a big undertaking. Aside from that, more Fallout Season 2 progress and a bit of the usual weekly routines.

Y’all stay warm, out of the weather, enjoy a nice roaring fireplace with a hot drink, and kick tails!

Finally got some home office work in, and it felt good. This week has some scheduled appointments, but it should be fine once it’s all done. One of them being an eye appointment that is well overdue as it’s getting a bit difficult to see accurately.

It really wasn’t a hugely eventful weekend for once, but that’s going to get back to it either this coming weekend and/or the following one: there’s only so many more cooler weekends that I’ll have access to before it starts to get warmer again. The bigger part of this project will have to be planned out and ideally done before April, otherwise it might be postponed again until 2027 – this project really needs to end this year as it’s been 9 years in the planning. Once it is done though, even if it’s the biggest/only project of the year, it will conclude the first decade’s planned projects; that alone will feel line a great milestone.

Aiki, Lizz, Laureine, and I having completed all of Arcadion late last week (and into the early hours of the weekend), it’s mostly just back to the usual routines until 7.5. That’s not necessarily a ‘bad’ thing and if we did address the eternal 9002 issues (I am really hoping) then we can also get back to working on more side & fun tasks like decorations and a certain submarine that’s been sitting in the workshop for I think a year or so now.

The Leporines, meanwhile, are having a far more interesting and adventuring time while attempting to finish up a lot of side-quests within A Realm Reborn before the two of them move on to beginning Heavensward together. They still have a bit of a ways to go in that regards – primarily to a certain Mail Moogle – but it’ll get done eventually. However, there was a pause to all that over the weekend for them to finally tie the knot and make it official (to the surprise of Reinylla that she accepted to begin with!)

One of these days we’ll actually do the new Monster Hunter trial and the class quests, but I think we’re going to do that closer or well into the 7.5 lull. Beastmaster we are still curious about as well, especially Aikirees coming from her first live in Final Fantasy XI.

Technical-stuffs-wise, some audio work and system work. My oldest PC has mysteriously lost some RAM, which seems to be the fault of the sockets themselves; so that’s going to be another Saturday afternoon to go and aggressively try and fix. Worse case I can’t due to age, but it’s worth a shot. Trains still idling, but that I’ll just plan for another weekend to fix and get all moving again.

That’s all for this morning, y’all have a wonderful Monday and kick tails! Y’all got this!

The cousins went and crushed the final tier of the Archadion last night, and it was excellent. This was a solid tier as all four battles didn’t feel oddly harder than the other. It tends (at least to me and my experience) that the 3rd one of all tiers tends to be the ‘cursed’ one which is either more difficult for some reason, or just always rough to get through. I’d rank Arcadion as a whole probably 2nd or 3rd favorite set thus so far – I mean, nothing is ever going to top Alpha and Omega. Battle-wise, I’d say and easy 1st, but for story, 2nd or 3rd. Give them a go if y’all haven’t the whole tier (overall) will not disappoint.

Aside from that, been dealing with a whole lot of perpetual disconnects, which has been a battle in itself. I know the onslaught of DDoSes has probably had SquareEnix put up some sort of defenses, which is great, but I think it might be affecting players just trying to play the game. Trying something out as a recommendation, so we’ll see if that helps (really hoping). Some more net upgrades are happening next week, so we’re hoping that helps a bit too. It has(had?) gotten to the point where I was just going to hang it up and go back to Horizon: Forbidden West full time for a while.

Which isn’t to say I’m still chipping away at the titantular game and its story. Hitting the 90th hour now at max level with only 55% of the base-game done so far. It’s been a grand time there for certain. This weekend will be a lot less work-intensive so I can rest, but still more office at home things to do ideally with more Fallout Season 2 as well so should be good.

Y’all have a Happy Friday and kick tails this weekend!

This week really started off turbulent, and the incline is still slanting a bit upwards even now at midweek. Was hoping for more posts and updates this week, but between working on something else and the whirlwind of tasks that has come through, it just didn’t work out.

Even aiming for the Cousins to start Arcadion last night didn’t work out as starting the evening later than usual and some connection issues, that has gotten delayed. I think what we’ll do is just plan for the back-end of this week and just go for broke to at least start them. That way if it goes into the weekend it won’t feel like such a daunting task. One of my PC’s seems to have lost the ability to notice a bit of RAM, so going to investigate as to why. The system is approaching 20 years old, so if it’s a hardware failure, then that’s okay but not great.

As from the post last week ‘What was to be Done,’ that marked the end of EOCA proper, but not the end of the FC itself. Kind of sort of been attempting to pick up some of the pieces left in the wake of the dissolving, but it’s taking more time than I’d have liked. It is getting there and is shaping up, but might need a bit more work. I needed to grief as it was a huge part of my Erozea life, and something I’ll never forget. As for the story about EOCA, well that’s probably going to be pushed into the lull between 7.55 and 8.0.

I think this weekend will be a lot quieter in terms of projects that require legwork, as I am still sore and tired from last weekend’s big project. Even if I were to get the materials ready for the next phase of the garage project, I’d put it off another week or so to take care of much needed other little things.

Happy Midweek y’all! Kick tails! We all got this!

Well got a few additional posts done this week, which is good to get some momentum back, but still a far cry from the five I was able to accomplish before everything went off the rails.

Weekend outlook is another project that ideally will only take a hour or so depending, which then gives me the rest of the time to start to catch up in the home office. That in itself is becoming a little bit dire of a situation, let alone the poor trains that have been sitting for a few months now, and that’s really not good for them.

Hopefully soon the momentum will be back into full swing and I can start to bring about some really backlogged items here. I think Fallout will start tomorrow evening as well (assuming season 2 is out now?)

Kick tails and happy Friday y’all!

So there are holiday photos and posts incoming, but I’m still in the midst of trying to catch up on projects that have been weaved in where I can. Overall it’s been a really nice holiday and New Years, albeit incredibly busy – far more than years prior.

Finished season 5 of Strange Things, and cried something fierce: both because I’ve been watching it since it first came out when I moved to Florida and it was just a really good ending. Off to Season 2 of Fallout this coming weekend after another big project Saturday. Once these projects are all smoothed back out, then daily posts will return and I’ve missed them dearly.

Might be a really quiet week overall, but soon (if so) that should change.

Y’all have a wonderful first full week of 2026! Kick tails!

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!