Catching Up

Sorry I haven't been around much. I sold my soul to Blizzard and have been playing lots & lots of World of Warcraft, thanks to a surprise gift card from an unexpected source. I have in the past had difficulty treating myself or deciding what I want. Not this time. I opened the envelope, saw the card and couldn't get it activated fast enough. We immediately started downloading all the patches and the Cataclysm expansion. It had been over a year since we played, so it took several hours to get all the files downloaded. (Luckily, I learned this last time and had zero expectations of playing that first night. We set up the downloads and watched a couple of movies.)

We decided to start new characters and try to level them together. As of last evening, I now have a level 32 Goblin priest (shadow, naturally) named Sereknity (dorky, I know, but I wanted something knitting-related). I love everything about playing a goblin except the transportation (motorized trikes, which are cute, but loud). I'm getting close to the point where I can get a wolf mount from Orgrimmar and then I'll be happy. (John is playing a warlock, and they automatically get a horse, so he's already set.)

Other geeky fun
After watching the crazy prices for years, we found a pretty good deal on season 1 of Star Trek and I'm really enjoying it. I watched it in the 70s, mostly under duress because we had one TV and it seemed like the males in the family dictated the TV-viewing a lot of the time. I didn't become a geek until I was in my mid-twenties. Watching it on my terms is fantastic.

Before the holidays, I also got a great deal (better than shown now, although these prices aren't bad) on the first 6 Trek movies and the Star Wars trilogy with the original theatrical versions, which is the only way I'd consider owning them. (Han shot first, dammit. Stop messing with my childhood memories!) Firefly will always be my favorite, by a narrow margin, but I love the other two. (Pic found online - if anyone knows the source, I'd love to credit it. Update: friend Kristin IDed the source - a meme called either "Nerd Rage" or "Troll Quotes," a collection of which can currently be seen @ know your meme.) We've stalled on watching the Trek movies at #5, which is our least favorite. But we'll get through it eventually.

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Crazy

I'm not addicted to Farm Town. I can stop whenever I want. Just let me plant one more row. (Just like knitting! Sort of.)

This image is of my farm early this morning. I was too tired last night to plant it all, but I did get some commemorative art work done in the bottom left plot before I fell over. (I try to only plant in the evenings because of the growth cycle. Yes, I have thought about it this much.) The dollar $ign will stay -- this is a gulch after all! (Atlas Shrugged reference FTW!)

It's been a lot of fun, and because I have so many friends that play, that makes it even better. I was "hired" to harvest a couple of big farms* right off the bat, which gave me a significant stake, allowing me to plant my entire garden and get the ball rolling.

In turn, I've tried to hire all of my "neighbors" who are just starting out, at least once, to give them the same leg-up. If they aren't online when it's time, I've found a forum I can go to & request help, rather than going to the dreaded Marketplace, which is full of beggars. Plus, the forum people leave my trees alone (I like them for color).

*There's a real false economy in the game. It starts out okay enough - it costs (in-game) $ to plow every square, and varying amounts for the seeds. Then there is the growing period (4 hours to 4 days (a day is 20 hours)). Then it's harvest time. If you harvest your own crops, you make X. But, if you hire someone to do it, they get a 25% cut PLUS you make 25% more.

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On an unrelated note, word to the wise: temper tantrums are not attractive and they don't make people like you or want to help you. After a while, it doesn't matter what your real-life problems are, people are going to quickly move past pity, to annoyed, then peeved.

Online, some people exhibit all the behavior patterns of a troll, even if they aren't intentionally doing it to create drama and tension. I don't know if this makes a person a troll or not, since it's not on purpose. But it's definitely not the way to win friends and influence people. In my mumblemumble years participating in online forums, I've developed a list of things that don't work, and make you look silly:

1. Constantly demand that an entire site be reprogrammed to match your preferences. The fact that other sites do it a certain way doesn't mean it's the only way, or the right way. Some site owners are innovative and are capable of thinking outside the box.
2. Keep bringing up the same shit, over and over, after you've been told "no, it's not going to happen."
3. Refuse to use the tools that are in place to help you avoid dealing with people you don't like. (It's called managing your own experience. Firefox extensions (like AdBlock or MyImageHere) are a prude's best friend. They're also the friend of people like me who are not prudes, that still like managing their own experience.)
4. When people disagree with you, accuse them of being trolls or being mean to you.
5. When it becomes obvious that you are in the minority, or that people are not coming around to your view, demand that a topic be shut down or deleted. Better still, just declare that the conversation is OVER. (We saw a thread like that somewhere a couple of weeks ago, and it was hilarious.) At some point, type this in ALL CAPS.
6. When that doesn't work, start insisting that everyone else is a loser for being online and not doing something real. (Because, friend, you're online, not doing something real, right at that moment.)
7. Start ad hominem attacks by calling people names based on their user names or avatars, or going through their profile and finding something to use that has nothing to do with the discussion.

The above may be slightly related to events that happened on a forum yesterday, but they're really universal. I've seen every one of these happen (there are more steps beyond #7, but you get the point - I didn't even touch on Godwin's law): on a scrapbooking forum, a cat forum, a wedding-planning forum, a Buffy the Vampire Slayer forum and, yes, Ravelry, time and again. If you find yourself exhibiting any of these behaviors, it's my advice that you turn off the offending browser page/tab and either find something else to do or go for a walk.

A lot of times before it progresses to #7, someone will flounce. That is, announce that they're taking their ball and going home. But usually... they don't. They cannot stay away.

Another thing they might do is get mad and start deleting all of their posts, so the discussion looks lopsided and weird. To that I say: BLOCKQUOTE, people. If you're in an online discussion and what you're responding to is crucial to your post, copy it, paste it in your post, and mark it so it's obvious it's a quote. Some sites have tools for this. If they don't, put quote marks around it and italicize it or something. You'll thank me later.

PS: If you're viewing this via a reader or anything besides the blog page itself, you might be missing some of the formatting. Facebook, for example, does not display the post formatting.

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Making Seek & Find Bottles

Sort of a tutorial. There are others out there -- I linked to at least one when I did Crafty Fun Fridays (old blog) -- but I've been in a picture-taking mood, so you get my version as well. I've been meaning to make some ever since I first posted, and have been stashing small items with the project in mind, but never got around to it. A few weeks ago, I went to a baby shower where one of the games was a bottle like these (except it was a giant baby bottle and filled with baby-themed items). Long after the time was up, the guests were turning the bottles back & forth, trying to check everything off the list.

For Christmas, I wanted to give these to my niece and nephew, hoping that I hadn't waited too long and that K, my 10-year-old niece, wouldn't think them too childish. They actually enjoyed them, and I have a few lessons learned to share along with the photos I took during the making.

Gather Materials
Clear plastic bottle with wide mouth. (I used a large Aquafina bottle.) Drink the water, remove the label, rinse and make sure it's dry as a bone -- bottle and lid.

Cheap/stale rice. No sense using the good stuff; it's not going to be eaten later! (I got 3-lb. bags for $2 ea. at Big Lots.) This size bottle took about 2 lbs. each.

Small toys (more on that later).

Glue (I used Gorilla Glue, because it's what we had.) You don't want the kids opening the bottles and spilling rice everywhere! (Plus, many of the toys are choking hazards.)

Tools: scissors & funnel

Optional: Permanent markers to color-code bottles, if desired; cards to list items; rubber bands; hole punch (for cards)

About the toys
Gather a bunch of smallish non-perishable items (Close-up). Some regular household items will also work.

Lessons learned: the tiny diary-size key was too small and couldn't be found in either bottle, by children or adults. The bee bead turned out to be the exact color of the rice and was also not found by children or adults. Truly white items (like the dice) worked out okay. Too long items (like the huge paper umbrella) aren't a great idea (but the flamingo was fine). I don't recommend foam items (like the leaf).

If you're going to make a list, make sure all the items fit through the bottle opening first. The monkeys had to be forced in (because I'd already made the lists and laminated them!). Keep toys away from tiny tots until they're safely sealed inside the bottles!

Snip a corner off the rice bag, and using a funnel (plastic or an improvised paper one), pour a few inches of rice into the bottle.

This picture shows another lesson learned: rather than stopping at one point and shoving all of the toys into the bottle like I did, add one or two every inch or so. You'll have less work trying to get things redistributed.

The amount of rice in the bottle dictates the difficulty level. I wouldn't go higher than this point, but if you wanted to make it easier, you could stop about an inch earlier.

Glue the cap onto the bottle. As mentioned previously, I used Gorilla Glue. To do so, I moistened the outside of the bottle, where the lid would screw on, with just a bit of water on my fingertip, and applied 3 tiny drops of glue on the inside of the lid. When the lid was screwed on, it distributed the glue enough so the bottles couldn't be opened. (The kids were trying to do so within minutes!)

You could simply say "there are twelve (or ten, or fifteen) items in this bottle; find them." I went a step further and made up little color-coded cards and laminated them (using some old ID tag sheets), attaching them to the bottles with rubber bands.

Finally, I used permanent markers to make dots that matched the stripes on the cards so the kids could match up the bottles to the cards if they became separated. I didn't designate a bottle per child; I figured they could just swap them back and forth until they were tired of them. As it was, my niece grabbed the red one, and nephew J. grabbed the blue one, and they were perfectly content to each "own" one, and share later.

Want to try? I'll send this bag of ten assorted items to a commenter. I usually only get one response, if any, but just in case there are more, I'll draw a name from the comments on Wednesday afternoon. You'll just need to find a bottle, rice, glue, and any additional items you want to add.

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The Cake is a Lie (Or, I'm a total geek)

Current song obsession:

I didn't play Portal -- the first-person stuff makes me dizzy & nauseated -- but John did. I watched him for awhile (before I got woozy), then he showed me the closing credits. It's only recently that I've decided I just love this song. It's on my iPod, to add to the already-eclectic mix. (If you play Rock Star, it's available as a selection -- probably have to download it? (I don't have the coordination for any game like that so I don't know the specifics.))

I will probably always love any media that talks about "doing science." (Obscure Lost Skeleton of Cadavra reference, perhaps? That's why I like it. ) For the record, I understand that the cake is Black Forest, which is probably my all-time favorite (if it's done right).

For my own gaming action, I'm deep into Viva Piñata 2. Just my speed. (WoW is on hold because of the monthly cost for 2 accounts, plus time.)

In addition, I think I'm developing a little girl crush on Felicia Day, because it was this video that reminded me of the Portal theme. I didn't even finish watching it before I asked John to share his MP3 version of it with me. Then John sent me a link to The Guild, and I sat up late and watched every one of the ten episodes (and will get it on DVD, along with Dr. Horrible (which she is also in)). She has a blog, too. (In my defense, John found the video at the top of this paragraph on the blog and sent me the link. I'm NOT stalking her. Promise.)

Oh! My acorn keyring is already here! Look:
So well done. I can't do my split keychain (where I detach the car key so I can warm up my car and have it locked) with it, because it makes the whole thing too long. But... don't care right now. Really.

Source: Iron Oak Forge via the Just Acorns group on Flickr.

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Ouch!

I have weird ears. Decent hearing (when I'm paying attention), ridiculously narrow ear canals, according to the E-N-T doc, and Miniere's disease (okay, that's the inner ear). Also, my iPod earbuds hurt. They do not fit in the normal way, and actually hurt quite a bit if I wear them that way.

So, I'm looking for alternatives. Preferably under $20, even better if they're less than $10. Suggestions appreciated. Simply put: I need something that a small child could comfortably use.

Midsummer Festival (WoW)
I've been slowly leveling my undead (shadow) priest on World of Warcraft. I reached level 50 yesterday. It's slow-going when you have a guild of two and a pretty intense fear of dungeons. Just hitting all of the horde bonfires during this festival will get me pretty close to the next level. I hit a couple of allie bonfires last night, which was fun (double experience).

This festival beats the Easter celebration (whatever they called it -- oh, wait -- Noblegarden) into the ground. I think it would be fun to join a group and hit as many alliance fires as possible.

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Spore Creature Creator

John has been eagerly awaiting the release of Spore (due in September), and was really excited to get his hands on a mini release of the Creature Creator last week. The full version of the creator was released yesterday ($10 -- totally worth it) and he's made some pretty impressive creatures between the two.

I don't know how long this story will stay up, but ShackNews has done a story on the new app and on the recreations of popular game creatures page, his Purple Tentacle is shown first.

I need to get him to upload an video of the ant he made: it's pretty fantastic! Edit: done. Check it out!
The animations are done by the program, which bases them on features of the creature. (heh -- creature feature!)

I've not been nearly this creative. Zero knitting, sewing, stitch-marker-making. Watching movies (Wargames yesterda), yes. Sleeping, yes. Tonight I cast on (again) for my first sock. This time, with help from the supplier of the yarn (Cheryl at NB Yarns). Wish me luck!

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