The people you meet

In our life, we sometimes get to rub shoulders with people who do amazing things daily.  Oh, they don't think of themselves that way, which invariably makes them even more of a delight to know.

I game with some really amazing folks from all over the world and some from right here in my city.

My pal Chris is from Nanaimo and is one of those muscular giants with a heart of mush.  Everyone has  confidence in his quiet ways; he's a leader.  He's also a listener and a man of action with a clear path to a prosperous future.  And he really doesn't know how to adequately clean a washroom; just ask his mom.

When that line was coined "your friends know when you're down and laugh at you anyway," they were talking about my buddy Eric who has a home in Montreal, but lives and breathes the information highway.  He's the one I trust when geekspeak is needed to clear things up.  I can also always trust him to shatter my far too serious demeanour when I'm being, well,  far too serious.

South America is home to more friends ... Luis, an international studies major in Cartegena, Colombia and his brother lawyer brother Cisco.  Luis and I have had ups and downs and go rounds galore over the years we've known each other, but in the end, we're still friends.  I guess history just makes the bond stronger.  Peique is a tall thin man with a heart of gold and an obsession for pizza who calls home Rio de Janeiro.  All of these men have a real zest for life and a flair for chasing the latin ladies.  Luis, though, can be convinced to do anything for a good brownie.

My pal Josh and I sometimes laugh about knowing a rocket scientist, but our other friend Josh is a physicist working for NASA in Texas, and we're not-so-secretly proud to know him.  He's got published works on nanocarbon tubes that I .. well, I can't say I would undertake it (or even understand it for that matter), but I'm glad there are folks like him out there working on dissembling the the inscrutable building blocks of our world.

The first Josh is a staff sergeant in the US air force and since I know not a single person in active duty in Canada, I find it interesting to know so many in the US.  Josh, though, is the first one I know who regularly gets to enter the doors of the Pentagon and sometimes the White House, and not at the side entrance for deliveries.  He was at the inauguration ceremonies tonight and I made him send me proof, so I share it with you.  Told him not to pass his cold to the leader of the free world.  I hope he listened.

Mists of Pandaria

If I've been quiet this week, blame it on Blizzard Entertainment.  I've been immersed in the  World of Warcraft, Mists of Pandaria.

I've been blown away by the story, by the textures and graphics, by the entire expansion so far.  

The forecourt of the
Temple of the Jade Serpent

Questing near the Temple of the Jade Serpent with its namesake

The brooding qualities of the ominous Shado-Pan Monastery gave me chills the first time I saw it

So yea .. if you're looking for me for the next while .. I'll be in Pandaria.

Mild mannered office drone by day ...

When I was a little girl, I thought moonlighting was something special .. a way to escape the humdrum, to see the world in full lunar splendor ... a kind of step into faerie where you had to be wary of food and music, lest your visit be forever.  Where dancing and singing and giggling were allowed and encouraged.

Logically, I know its not that; a second job is usually a shitty necessity people are forced to do to make ends meets the middles.  But try telling that to the girldhild who lurks within, who still insists on wrapping that ugly brown-paper package in a ribbon made of stellar starfields.

So will it surprise you to find that I moonlight as a sometimes adept, sometimes inept wizard?  I thought not.  Meet my alter ego, Riigel.  Find us running somewhere between Heaven and Hell in Diablo 3.

Of Dogs and Designs

My dog ate my December website design.

Okay, I don't have a dog.  Nor, at this point, a December website design.  But it's coming, honest!

Warning:  Gamer geekery coming.  Your eyes can light up or glaze over now, depending on your proclivity or aversion for all things Warcrafty.

I've had some wonderful company the past few days.  And a new update to World of Warcraft. These things relate to each other like a finely honed knife and a rogue hidden in the shadows.  <-- see what I did there?  Ha ha!

I've had the pleasure of knowing Eric since I was a green-behind-the-ears hunter and Gruul's Lair was uncharted territory for my guild.  His unfailing good humour was one of the highlight of joint raids with The Oasis Contingent.  (The Oasis Contingent has a history closely tied to the long-running webcomic Sluggy Freelance and I'll introduce you to the Sluggy gang at some point, probably soonish.) Of course, I didn't know him as Eric.  In game, we usually call each other by character name .. which makes for interesting times when people have multiple characters.  It's funny, but you learn to fluidly shift from one name to the next without event thinking about it.  Or, sometimes, like my pal Nick, you just call him Nick, no matter the 'toon he is currently playing.

So I've known Eric over five years now and we've become fast friends, occasionally levelling characters together and just generally making each other's day a bit more fun.  We know how to laugh and mock each other out of bad moods; always a pretty good characteristic of friendship.

I've known Frazer for the last couple of years since he and Eric are good friends.  Frazer has a tendency of disappearing from the scene occasionally, but one day he'll wander back in and pick up like he never left.  He's a delight on my guild forums, where he is known as The Grand  Vizier and Eric as the Comically Inept Henchman.  They run rampantly through my posts like a child with brightly colored crayons and bewitchingly white walls.  Except, like Calvin and Hobbes, they tend to find a way to create a crayon bazooka which they use both rampantly and randomly.

The video below is a find of Frazer's, but it could have easily been Eric who is fascinated by all Lego Mechanical creations - among other things.

So anyway, they were both out in Vancouver for the Grey Cup game and to ogle cheerleaders by the squadful, if the stories I heard are true.  Eric travelled from Quebec to the West Coast and Frazer from Edmonton for the game, so it was inconceivable that they not take a short ferry ride over to Nanaimo to come see me.

I've been preparing for the visit and ignoring the siren lure of my computer.  It wasn't easy, especially since a long anticipated game patch arrived while they were here.  We were all good kids though, and stayed away from Warcraft until after the visit.

I had a great time and feasted them suitably, even going to far as to make that most manly of all breakfasts ... a bacon log.  Frazer got a picture of it I'll have to share with you as soon as he sends it.

Eric helped me out with some computer stuff and I'll have some new goodies to show you soon.  Which brings full circle to the monthly website redesign.  And how I need to do that, like now ...

Updates

I have to admit to feeling a bit listless lately ... can't seem to settle down into one thing and am needing to nap at the drop of a pin.  I've started a post here a dozen times and just had to abandon it .. lack of interesting things to say -- not that that usually stops me, but feeling it more consciously, I guess.  I have to remember that this is my way to stay in touch with family and friends and that just getting started writing will spark the creativity again.  Who knows, I may even get better at this!

I know that energy goes down in the fall when the grey starts to settle into Nanaimo days on a frequent basis, so I've got to fight it.  I'm taking up a boot camp exercise class starting tomorrow, so I imagine I'll be in quite a bit of pain on Saturday.  Hey, if it doesn't kill me, it will make me stronger, right? 

Blizzard is on the cusp of releasing a bright new game module and I'm preparing for it with my guild.  And getting my own characters ready as well.  It's too bad I can't use game guild management on a resumé.  There are about 130 active accounts in my guild ... 400 total characters ... and I oversee their day to day gaming experiences like any manager.

Here are some articles on precisely that subject that are interesting to read.

Wired
Tankspot
Blacksend's End

Lunchcraft!

Met up with  Chris, Bev and Corey today.  Corey also goes by  Roger or Ike .. or in World of Warcraft .. a variety of other names.  He's lived in Vancouver for seventeen years, but had never made it over to the island .. so Bev and Chris insisted he comes spend a lazy Sunday.  We introduced him to one of our favorite Nanaimo restaurants .. the Longwood Brew Pub.

From left to right .. a pilsner, a Heifenweisen and a framboise for - respectively - Chris, Bev, and Mo.  Ike was drinking water and we didn't want to say that he was missing the point of a brewpub - hes's a new friend after all.

We met a couple of weeks ago on the Mal'Ganis realm where we're all levelling low levels.  Suprisingly, there was very little chatter about World of Warcraft as we chatted about island things or work that Corey was doing with databases and ICBC and then subsequent tales of computer systems gone funny.