Mania’s Arcania

It’s a good week for random lists, what with the holiday and all. And since I just had to re-install all of the MMO games that I play (which took many, many, many hours, let me tell you), I figured I would list them here for your amusement and edification.

• World of Warcraft (of course!)
• Asheron’s Call: Still the best game on the market after WoW, to my way of thinking. AC1 enjoys many of the features of WoW, including a very solo-friendly experience and relatively low system requirements. But it has a feel all its own. Nothing compares to the sensation you get when you enter an Olthoi dungeon – the hot purple darkness filled with the quiet chittering of hundreds of Olthoi; the moment when they notice your presence and all turn and run at you, an angry black tide of acid-dripping mandibles; the sheer joy of laying waste, killing Olthoi after Olthoi in a seemingly endless influx of terrifying insects. And then looting all the corpses, of course. *grin*

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Saturday morning, the one and only hard drive on my home computer went kaplooey. I spent all of Saturday securing a new drive and fighting to install an OS on it and all of Sunday trying to get set back up and recover what I could from the old broken drive. In the end I was able to save most of what I care about, including all my in-development files for this blog, Petopia, and my other hunter pet projects. The only really important thing I lost was my personal e-mail. (All the e-mail for this blog and Petopia I route through GMail, so it’s all safe.) Still, that was something like three years of messages from family, friends, and business contacts so I am … reeling a bit. And I still have some recovery left — I need to install World of Warcraft and all the other massively-multiplayer online role-playing games that I play, for instance, plus all the smaller utilities (like the WoW Model Viewer and my HTML editing tools). Anyway, if you don’t do normal back-ups of your important stuff — well, you might want to take this opportunity and do one now. *grin*

Egad! Time just flies when you’re working hard! I had no idea it had been so long since my last post. Things are beginning to lighten up a little for us, although I’m unfortunately not making any headway on getting us moved. Still, I ought to have time to post some info here that’s come in over the past week, maybe respond to some of the new comments, and I’ll also see if I can get an update done on Petopia. We’ll see how the week goes. :>

I’m afraid I haven’t had a lot of time for Petopia or for this blog the past week or so. We’re in the final stages of QA on our first game and with just the two of us it’s a bit busy. Plus I’m also trying to get us moved cross-country in the near future. So I just haven’t had a lot of time. With that in mind, I thought it would be polite to let you know that I probably won’t be posting here or updating the site very much at all for a short while, and I am likely to take even longer than normal responding to e-mail. I’ll be back as soon as things lighten up a bit for me, and I’ll do my best to keep the site updated with any really big or exciting changes (although to be honest I don’t expect much until the next big patch). Thanks for your patience!

Don’t get migraines.

I haven’t gotten to the Ghost Saber screenshots or the new nether ray on the PTR yet this weekend. I had some unfortunate news about my mother, who has just recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. I’ll probably work on the screenshots today, though — they should prove a nice distraction.

Remember to trim the overly long and sharp toenails of your bearded dragon before you put said dragon into a stressful situation and she tears your hands to pieces trying to get away. Otherwise you may have difficulty both posting on your blog and playing WoW for the rest of the afternoon.

A Pepsi exploding in your refrigerator can really put a crimp in your morning.

So despite all my good intentions — to jump right into updating and expanding Petopia this weekend, to catch up with e-mail and PTR info – I instead have found myself … cleaning the apartment. I hate it when the cleaning compulsion kicks in, because there isn’t much I can do about it except clean. And to be fair, it’s needed — neither my husband nor I are exactly home-makers, and there are areas of this apartment that haven’t been touched since we moved in a year ago. Large areas. Like the living room. Plus, I tell myself, since I will now be here 24/7, since there is no cleaned-by-other-people office to escape to, I should probably make sure I have a decent working environment. But it means that I’m going to be sniffly (from the dust) and sore all weekend, and I won’t get a start on all the piled up Petopia tasks until tomorrow most likely. Bah!

… is probably what some of my co-workers are humming to themselves today. Or rather, my ex-co-workers. Yes, today was my last day as a corporate shill. I am no longer part of the 9-to-5 (or more accurately, 10-to-7) world. I have left the Evil Empire! And to be honest, I hope that only a few of my old team are toasting my demise. I genuinely enjoyed working with them. It’s a great team and a good project, and I am confident that they will do just fine without me. But I wanted to strike out on my own — or mostly on my own. My husband and I are starting up a small business together.

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