From what I gather, the new Transformers movie sucks and it's not even worth watching.

Awesome. Saves us money on the IMAX we won't be going to watch now, I guess. :/

Three neat WoW things this week.

1 - Our guild has downed the Keepers of Ulduar! Vezax and Yogg-saron are on notice. I have to admit, raiding here is one of the coolest things I've ever been a part of.

2 - ( Ding! )

3 - ( Egg hatched!! )

That was the weirdest First Day Of Summer - Wedding Anniversary - Father's Day - ever.

Caluwen has been accumulating Ulduar gear for a while, but I hadn't gotten around to putting some of it on since I didn't want to break my 2-piece T7 bonus. It's only 5% extra damage to Lacerate, which helps threat, but... meh, it's something.

Then Tunic of the Limber Stalker dropped the other night, and I realized the bonus was totally not worth it any more!

( Tank gear )

EDIT: Here's a pic... Cal's not a rogue, honest.

( DPS gear )

Traveler's Tundra Mammoth GET :D

( pic! )

Comes with 2 vendors, 3 leather seats, and cupholders. (wet mammoth scent is not quite as hot as new car scent though)

No more having to walk 20m through Western Plaguelands just to get to Scarlet Monastery. Now they can ride in style! :D

The past two weekends in exceedingly brief review!

Animazement: Like last year, we only hit the con for one day this year. I like the con and I like how it's going, but it's hard to justify paying for a full weekend at a local con where we see everything we're gonna in about an hour and a half. Or maybe I'm just getting old!

Regardless, it was a sweet con. I'm glad to see the con get a new convention center... but cosplay is already stretching the new space to its limits? I have to admit, I never really found myself enjoying stage cosplay -- hall cosplay ftw :U Or maybe I'm just spoiled by doujinshi cons!

Waraji wasn't -quite- as chaotic as usual, for the better. Good times, good times. ~.~

Memorial service: Wednesday we drove up to Raleigh to hang with the 'rents. Thursday we flew up to Hartford, and spent the rest of the day at Uncle Scott's. It was good to spend a bit more time in CT!

The entire drive up to Island Pond was rainy, but the inclement weather abated once it came time for Grandma's service. A lot of tears, a lot of memories shared. We will go on with our lives, but we will never forget.

It was wild having nearly all of the family in the same motel, though I would've liked to stay a bit longer. We had another event to get to!

Lauren's and George's wedding: Wow, just... wow. The Umstead Hotel is extravagant. I was really impressed by how well everything went at the wedding. Lauren and George looked great together and I'm sure they will have many happy years ahead of them.

Jenn found this, I had to share.

Total Eclipse of the Heart: Literal Video Version

(I actually had to go back to the original to see if the creepy eyes were there too. They are. @_@)

Select Realm Maintenance 5/18/09 05/18/2009 06:01:08 PM PDT
We are currently performing urgent maintenance on the realms listed below. We estimate these realms will be playable by approximately 8:00 PM PDT. Thank you for your patience.

Guess that's how your first Nexus run will be, folks. :/ Sorry.

Edit:
They just changed the post. :P It now reads:

Select Realm Service Outage 5/18/09 05/18/2009 06:01:08 PM PDT
We are currently investigating a service outage which may be affecting the realms listed below. Thank you for your patience while we work to resolve this matter.

That was the last "free" weekend of the month. I accomplished very few of my goals for the weekend; if it weren't for hanging out with friends (online) and family (offline) I would've been fairly disappointed!

Next weekend is Animazement. This will be the first time in the new civic center, I understand. Being downtown, I suspect parking will be about $4 an hour. It'll aggravate me moreso knowing that I'll probably be fighting people for spaces too.

Add in the logistical nightmare of trying to get people together for a trip to Waraji. It might be a good idea for folks to tally their tab beforehand, so all we do is toss in money and go when we're ready to ship out.

The following week, we're heading up to Island Pond, VT for my grandmother's memorial service. We'll be flying up Thursday morning, then heading right back to Raleigh Saturday morning for a friend's wedding. Wanted to stay longer, but the memorial was scheduled for just over 24 hours away from the wedding, severely curtailing our travel options.

Lots of travelling, and serious deadline at work (made even shorter by the necessity of the above trip). But friends and family are involved, so -- like this weekend -- that will make the logistical difficulties worth it.

Live action Bubblegum Crisis is on the horizon now?

It could be awesome. (I mean, heck, it's got a better chance of getting into a new movie than Stan Bush does.)

The cynic in me says that it probably won't be awesome, though.

Six Countries Unite to Make Live Action English Bubblegum Crisis Movie

Stan Bush, famous to G1 era Transfans as the writer/singer for "The Touch" from the animated Transformers: The Movie has remade his classic song [...] in an attempt to get it added to the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen soundtrack.

No.

Just no. ._.;

I can't watch the video that's attached to the article, but... I kinda don't want to. I still want to keep some modicum of respect for the man.

needs moar Black Lab kthxbai

Unbearably HoT recently posted a flowchart which makes feral dps simple. Like, really simple. Really effective. Go check it out!

http://www.unbearably.net/2009/04/29/simplified-cat-dps-cycle/

If you liked Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, please spend 30 seconds and vote for it. We might have a chance at saving it from cancellation!

E! Online has its "Save One Show" poll going on now, at http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/watch_with_kristin/b120751_save_one_show_play_game-changer_round.html . This is the "turbo-charged finale round" so even if you've voted already this year, please go check it out. ~.~

I don't put a whole lot of stock in interweb petitions or anything, but it's E! Online, and the creators of T:SCC specifically suggest this one, so that's gotta count for something.

I made it here alive :U

I'm actually about three blocks down the street from the perennial Holiday Inn Executive Center, home of the first few Katsucons and Nekocons. :D Drive up was pretty uneventful.

I'd also like to give a >:| to bean for "innocently" letting me borrow the WoW programming book written by the guy who wrote the PerfectRaid and Clique addons. Jerrrrrk! I might have actually caught up on the other three books I'd brought along under your oh-so-subtle suggestions :/ (Xenocide, Survivor, and Mass Effect: Ascension)

arrrgh

A day and a half of work and then I should be on my way home. Unless it becomes two or more days of work, which will make me mildly agitated. e_e;

PS, BEAN was that another palahnuik book on your dinner table? i hate you

Thanks to everyone who posted comments regarding my grandmother. I really do appreciate it.

Yesterday I turned 32. So... thanks to all the well-wishers, also!

I know I have changed a lot in the past few years. LiveJournal has helped, surprisingly enough. I've seen all sorts of brilliant and hilarious personalities here -- people I want to be more like. (So give yourselves a pat on the back!)

One of the qualities I wanted to work on was conciseness. In face-to-face conversation I tend to ramble a lot. When I post I try and go back over and edit my words, paring them down as much as I can. More words just mean more chance of miscommunication. (I've seen a whole lot of that on LJ!)

But that also means I post less -- sorry about that. I've had my share of emotional highs and lows lately, but few that are worthy of committing to the permanent record. And even fewer can be condensed down to a few sentences.

Suffice to say that things are going reasonably well. Progress is slow on preparations for the new member of the family, but other than that, good.

Take care, folks :)

My grandmother passed away this morning.

She moved north shortly after Christmas. I regret that I didn't try harder to speak with her. I can't stress that enough.

She'd spent a lot of time in medical facilities for the better part of a year now. The doctors said there was no more that could be done for her. As with many... all they could do was lessen the pain.

I hate using past tense.

Geraldine Christie (1925-2009), RIP.

shizukun, weren't you a fan of the Hanshin Tigers? I might be misremembering, but anyway...

You learn something new every day, and the thing I learned is: never toss statues of Colonel Sanders into the river. It's bad luck!

Man, it took them 24 years to find the thing? In Dotonbori? I thought that river was shallow as heck. :o

(the firewall at work here says tokyomango is nsfw. this link looks fine on the RSS feed, but apologies if it ends up being bad D:)

Vent chat can be pretty hilarious at times. Half of us are punsters and the other half groans at us.

This week's winner comes from kuribo_power. We'd just gotten done beating Gluth and I went AFK to get a drink. There's a few enemies in the next room with area-effect explosions, so when I came back, I noticed I had much less health than before.

I said the first words that came to mind: "... why did I get half life?"

Kuribo, not missing a beat, responded, "'cause The Orange Box is fun and it's a pretty good game..."

I'll try and post some content about real life... someday... but in the meantime, some stats on our arena fights this week.

Does anyone else even bother tracking arena stats? We are slaves to saronitestatistics... Right now I'm screenshotting the summary screen for each battle, and then going back to type the info in, but there's got to be a more efficient way.

( WoW arena stats )

I wasn't sure I'd like the new Swipe mechanic they gave to druid cat forms in WoW. I mean, really, if it's anything like bear form's Swipe, it wouldn't hit hard enough to be useful. When would I ever use it?

( Huge screenshots forthcoming! )