Yesterday was awesome. I went to an amazing party at ravengraxton's house. The food was so good, and we had a gigantic squirtgun/water balloon fight. Plus the fireworks were totally the best.

The neighbors on his street were all crazy, 3 police cars, and then a fire engine showed up. None for us. Then some guy was angry from across the way and asked us stupid questions "Are you guys lighting off fireworks?" Apparently the wind had blown some of the cardboard and crumbs and stuff from all over into his parking lot, so he took it out on us... when he could have just asked us "can you sweep up when you're done?" since really thats what it was about. Oh well.

Dogs were pretty good, Cedar and Turbo are getting along pretty well now. Though Turbo wanted to eat Cedar's food, and Cedar wanted to eat Turbo's food. They seemed to share toys and tolerated eachother's presence. When we were all eating dinner, of course they wanted all the scraps, but that's dogs for you. Turbo isn't afraid of fireworks or loud noises, and he was really laid back about it all. Cedar LOVED THEM, or at least appeared to love them and was all wagging and excited and wanted to get them. Dogs got glowsticks around their necks, it was cute. :3

The only not awesome part was when Turbo escaped by nosing the door open, after our squirtgun war, and gallivanted around the neighborhood. His bell came in handy, though none of us managed to catch him even though we could hear where he was at... apparently his weakness is trailer park children. The kids from the trailer park neighborhood, about a block or two away, were the ones who caught him for us. Haha.

Y'know, when other people in the group ask for one fandom to be blocked because it has about... What? 20 people in it when others have 1-5? It might be a good idea to think about blocking it for more than a week. It's not just dominating the chatroom. It's dominating the RP.
And here I was, thinking that the RP was for fandoms to mix together and jumble and everyone be one big, happy... Thing. Guess I was wrong, and now watch as I sit in the corner of unknown characters and apply for yet another.

You. The awesome RPer who plays the quiet, bestial and slightly disturbed character. You're an amazing RPer, really, I've never seen anyone come up with so many witty and yet so very unnerving remarks.I adore your RP, I really do.

However... Why do you act like your character OOC? You frankly sound like some sort of psychopath. Our chat isn't at all censured and usually revolves around various sexual acts and the smoking of marijuana, but we're really not interested in hearing about people getting their faces beaten in with hammers, or how you broke the neck of a small critter. Cut it out, please.

Hi all! Not a warning, just curious if anybody knows if Spinelicker is around? I commissioned her for a traditional badge at last year's Anthrocon, and I know she finished it because she posted it to FA. It was great! Unfortunately, she appears to have disappeared off of FA and I haven't been able to get in contact with her by commenting on her page or sending notes.

I really, really want that badge-- it came out great. I hate to pester her, but I haven't sent any notes in a while and I'm not about to post randomly on her personal LJ about it unless I absolutely have to. It's simply that I know she's been around at cons and the like, so I know she hasn't totally dropped off the face of the earth.

I'd be thrilled if somebody could put me in contact with her or something! It's only a matter of shipping it out, after all. Thanks.

I once ranted here to everyone about a little attention hog named 'Missy' who continually tried to announce herself as mod of the game I run. I spoke to her and she gave me her word she wouldn't do that anymore. It was all nice and good for a time until she started doing similar things as before.

Missy hasn't been acting as a mod anymore, but she has been doing some game grubbing. Having secretive chatrooms and AIM sessions with the other players, excluding me. Not to mention, she's been posting things at her journal about how she has big plans for the game... Big plans she's never told me about. You know, me, the game owner. The other day, we had a big event going on and she went off to post entries and such relating to it when I told the players not to do so until after it ended.

It's getting quite frustrating because I am seriously beginning to suspect she is trying to usurp the game from me.

I know most of you think the answer is to boot her and at this point, I feel like I'm going to have to. Or at the least give her a final stern warning. I just don't want this issue to cause the game to collapse and die from the fallout... The game is special to me and the others, but she's a very loud, very obnoxiuous wanker. Hell, if I do boot her, expect her to come here and vent about it. >_>;

But, seriously, I just feel like ranting/talking about it here might somehow help. In a way, it did the last time I posted about it, so... Any comments/advice, guys?

I admit it: I'm RP starved. My RP buddy has some kinks to work out with her real life, meaning I'm left to worry about her and find something else to do while she's away.

But that's not what I'm ranting about, don't reach for the 'IRL before RP' gun just yet - I know, and it's my mantra - on with the post.

So I try neopets. Obvious fail. Then, I run into an RPer on dAmn who, on reading my stuff, decides he has to RP with me. Or marry me, but I digress.

( Cut for rant and tangential creepiness. )

tl;dr: I find a pretty cool RP and, without warning or discernible reason, get kicked with a rather brusque message. Poster wonders if they should cry moar, or if they found a jackass.

ETA: The aftermath was what made me wonder: I sent a note saying 'if you want to quit, just tell me, that's fine, but it was kinda halfway through' which I get no response to. I catch up with him on dAmn and he completely ignores me when I ask if we want to carry on, so I decide not to press the issue as he's clearly not interested... It's just the way he said it makes me think I 'wronged' him. I'd have no problem if he just said it, it's nobody's duty to R with another and all.

Sequel to this rant from yesterday:

You really need to get a clue. This is not an excuse for your attitude:

"Yeah, I admit I'm kind of an abrasive person. But that's just who I am, and I think you guys should be more tolerant of that. I can't change who I am."

Because 'I'm just being myself!' is totally a good explanation for telling someone they were a traitor for not being able to be online for the weekend.

Dear fellow player on this MUD I like,

( Did you seriously just ask me that? Seriously? (maybe minorly trigger-y?) )

I'm starting to worry that coming back to the game may not be as awesome as I had thought.

I had a lovely time hanging out with Allison today. We hiked around and watched vampire movies that were actually pretty darn entertaining!
Here's a video I shot of my budgies. The green one is Cricket, blue is Snowflake. I apologize for the blurriness. The noises in the background are Mega Man 9 being played.


Oh, I should probably state this for the record: I apologize if anyone is ever offended by the content of my journal. Nothing I write is ever meant to be taken personally. I'm an honest person and I know some people have trouble with that. But I'm also friendly and I pretty much like everybody so you know if I say something, it's never personal with me.

Though if you don't like my opinion, then... I'm not sure what you're doing here. *lol*

Oh god drunken iPhone lj posting. Thank god for word prediction

When you talked to two mods separately, explaining the reasons you're leaving the game (no motivation/lack of time), we each said the same thing: thank you for explaining, and we understand.  You hadn't posted in over a month and your posting before that was sporadic at best, so we figured you were going to get nixed in the next board clean up.  Having it addressed directly was a pleasant surprise. 

You asked for a chance to post a farewell and explanation to the players. Hence, we kept your account active. You also offered to write the character into a better place to be picked up by someone else later - a very nice gesture you haven't followed through on, but that's okay. 

What's not okay?  Pretending those conversations didn't take place and plotting with another player for the next story arc.  Also not okay: ignoring the admins' "please contact us" request.  If you found your muse (it was behind the couch the whole time!), great.  Post.  Regularly.  If not, GTFO. The clock is ticking, honey.  Make a decision or it will be made for you. 

I like you. Playing with you is easy and fun, our characters have chemistry, there's lots of the good kind of drama and little of the bad kind, but one thing is getting a little out of hand.

It's an AU game. But you don't seem to understand how far this AU-ness extends. See, I know in canon Death Eaters were automatically associated with 'evil, dastardly deeds, danger, and general badness' but this is AU. The Death Eaters won. They won a long time ago. They've since changed from their early days. They are a large frikkin group which, aside from a few core members, are about as frightening as a political activist group. Yeah, they still do bad things, but the general public views them as little more than an over-stuffed, pompous social group.

Which is stated explicitly on our game information.

So when your character is openly calling mine a danger to her family because he's a Death Eater, the truth doesn't matter. Eventually, he's going to start thinking You're probably not as loyal to the Ministry as you claim to be. This should probably be checked out. Right now he just thinks she's crazy, but it's getting harder and harder to avoid the obvious consequence.

*dances madly!*

After spending half a day tearing my four-year-old laptop apart, getting to the LCD screen, and taking out the little power inverter board, I finally got this thing working! Well... with a little help from the fam, and also after soldering and insulating an extension for the power wires to the backlight.

See, the problem was the power inverter for the monitor backlight, the little device that turns DC current into AC to power the fluorescent light in the back of the laptop. When that thing goes out, the laptop's backlight stops working. It'll turn on for a little while, then go out. The solution to that problem is either to replace the inverter board, to replace the backlight, or to just get a whole new LCD screen. Or, for that matter, to get a new laptop.

The inverter board cost me only about $20, including shipping, and got here ridiculously fast. The only problem with it was, it was the right part according to Dell, the manufacturer, but it wasn't the part that shipped in the laptop itself. The board is stubby and fat, where the original was long and skinny. So, we had to improvise a bit.

It seems to be working just fine, with the extensions in place, and properly grounded. Hopefully it'll stay that way for long enough, but I really need to get a new laptop someday, sooner rather than later. I'm working on it, but my cup doth not runneth over right now. This was well worth the effort.

I am BACK and thank you to those of you who helped out while I was gone. :D I'll be sending emails as soon as I can. I've been in a cabin that did not have any form of the internet and cellphone service was unheard of. It did contain some really humongous wasps, bees and spiders ... and a large fuzzy spiked caterpiller which Kim stepped on. 0.0 She has about twenty tiny bruises on the bottom of her foot - not punctures... it just looks weird. They're an array of tiny bruises. I had a GREAT time (without even the slightest desire to be online. :D )

Bad thing is that I don't think I got a lot of sleep on some of those nights because I started having fears of finding spiders and rattlesnakes in my bed. :D

You can support the comics here And yes, buying books helps too! If you'd like to suggestion some donation wallpapers, please do so!

Summer Movie List:

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - Desire to See if possible
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs - Probably more than any other version and I want the movie posters for it! ALL of them!! - Strongest Desire to See since we can take Kim. :D
Aliens in the Attic, formerly They came from Upstairs - Not High on the List, but it looks cute, dollar theatre.
G-Force- Not High on the List - DVD
Harry Potter- Not High on the List - If we have the money, early morning matinee.
G.I. Joe - I think it's going to be HORRIBLE - Dollar Theatre
Shorts - Robert Rodriguez. :D I love how he goes from Rated R to G so fast.
District 9 - I LOVE this type of movie. :D
Ponyo - boo.. August movie, thanks soooo much Disney. - DVD
The 9 - Another love of this type of movie.

You.

You, who tend to hardly ever be around, and when you do turn up, mostly you just hang out in the OOC chat and hardly bring your characters out.

You, who always wait to activity check to post for all your characters, all their entries sounding generic and bland, and could easily be exchanged for another.

You, who have a good number of characters already, afflicted with the problems I mentioned.

Yes, you.

Why the hell are you looking at picking up a new character?

I really don't understand it. At least wait until your computer is fixed, because...damn.

Alright. Long time lurker, first time poster, yadda yadda yadda, you know the drill.

( Cut for possible weird fetishry. )
tl;dr: No, I don't want to have sex with you, GTFO, learn to spell.

Unrelated: I'm looking for new IRC/MSN/YIM/AIM RP groups. Any suggestions?

Using the phrase "I'm just being honest" is not carte blanche for you to be a raging bitch to everyone else in chat.

Especially when you manage to bring someone to the point of tears because they have to go away for the weekend. For their job, no less. (Especially classy: "I'm going to be busy while I'm in Philly." "And I'm totally sure Philadelphia has no wireless AT ALL.")

And when I pulled you into modchat to try and get you to lay off, you basically implied that I was infringing on your right to speak freely. Sweet Jesus, you're a bitch.

Dear player,

Do you remember the character creation session for this game? The one where we all got together and figured out what everyone was going to play, then made up characters together?

When you made up your character, you jumped through a bunch of hoops to get the power that lets you store magical energy in material objects to use later.

And yet, you somehow missed (even with everyone creating their characters together in the *same* room at the *same* time) that just about none of the other characters - including your own - can use that magical energy for their powers.

In other words, that power that you just had to have? Yep, pretty much useless to everyone in the group - including yourself.

Would it kill you to think once in a while?

~Your GM

Yes, it's nice to have someone around who knows a bit about certain fields of science when you're in a steampunk RP.  Science can do some really cool stuff sometimes.  Really.  And it's useful to have someone around who knows what they're talking about.  However, when you can accept that the world is a bunch of city-sized islands floating in the sky, with monodirectional gravity even though they're not orbiting a planet, and space that loops back on itself no matter which direction you go, and then turn around and try to lecture me on how MY magic system should work just like whatever you just read out of your physics textbook?

No.  Just no.  I'm here to have fun, not to listen to a lecture, and I especially don't feel like listening to one when you're trying to apply it to a force that DOESN'T REALLY EXIST.  I know this rant is likely the result of getting no sleep at all, but really, man, if I'd wanted to hear a physics lecture, I would have take the summer course.

I have three chapters done which is officially one more than the farthest I've ever gotten in ten years of writing.

Starting with the middle and then last chapters have actually really helped. Man, it is so hard being this awesome.

I have known you for years, now. We're close friends. I consider you one of my best ones. But lately, I've been wanting to shake you like a British nanny.

So you're the admin of a sequel of an RP that's now three years old. I was in the original from the start. We did a lot of plotting together and I even came up with a ton of things on my own. It was great! But eventually, that RP fizzled, especially when the admin of the time lost interest. You and I figured out the sequel together. Granted, you definitely came up with the main idea, but I like to think that I helped work out a lot of loose ends that you didn't think of.

But I liked you better when you weren't an admin.

( If you're being like this because it's not a sure thing the pairing you want will work out, I will personally cuntpunt you. I hope you aren't that petty.  )

TL;DR: Old RP dies, sequel is thought up, new admin seems to be against any sort of changes to her original plans. New admin has been treating me like I've done her some terrible wrong. And a part of me really wants to just give up.

Had to get all this off my chest. I'm sorry for the textwall o' doom.

My current "Shepherd and Spider" playlist:

"Raindrops Keep Fallin on My Head," Ben Folds Five
"Underground," Ben Folds Five
"Flying Into a Star," Astral Projection
"Gakotsu ni Nacchimatta Kamina no Oyaji ni Yoseru Aika," Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann OST
"Fantasie Sign," Yoko Kanno
"The EGG and YOU," Yoko Kanno
"Flying Teapot," Yoko Kanno
"Tip Taps Tip," HALCALI
"Anata ga Ita Mori," Jyukai
"Sobakasu," Judy and Mary
"Hikari -PLANITB remix-," Hikaru Utada
"God Knows..." Hirano Aya
"The Wonderful Star's Walk is Wonderful," Yuri Misumi

why yes i enjoy anime soundtracks how did you know

WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT ATC EXCHANGE COMMUNITY IDEA?

I'm still going to do it. This week has been a bad week for me, for various reasons, so it probably won't be until next week. Sit tight!