The long road.

So a few quick things, many of you know, but most don’t, but I bought a new PowerBook. Happy times ahead, it’s very shiny and pretty and it handles all the things the old one was having problems with. Once VPN and VirtualPC get properly ported to Tiger, I will be very happy. This also means that I have a spare PowerBook that I will either keep for use as a permanent portable karaoke server, or I may sell it once I no longer need it for VPNing to work.

But anyway, I haven’t been updating because I’m not angry. Yes, it’s true, if I’m not enraged, I’m less inclined to make posts. So what have I been up to? Well, FFXI, of course.

So, let’s go through my screenshots that I’d taken recently.

Here I am sneaking through the East Altepa Desert as a WHM in my Dream hat and Lord’s Yukata, when I run across a pile of dead bodies, and Cactrot Rapido running away. I kept on going…

I finally got Sky access. The Ru’Aun Gardens at night are very pretty. Of course, it’s very pretty during the day, as well.

I decided to level Bard through the dunes one day. Now, this is a long story in itself, and I’ve forgotten most of it, but it involved a lot of dying, bad tanks, being asked to main heal twice (and getting kicked when I said I couldn’t) and one very cool moment when I serenaded two other taru. I need to level Bard again, hopefully it will go better next time.

The last event was very interesting. We basically were given wooden katanas and told to beat on these ghostly samurai. It’s wasn’t too long before a bunch of people all get in on the fun, though.

I got another goal accomplished, as well. I finally got Rank 10. (Picture cropped so the text at the bottom isn’t a spoiler.) Of course, San d’Oria hasn’t been in first place since then, so no Kingdom Aketon for me yet.

Well, since I had Sky access, I finally was able to start participating in some HNM events. I went on a few pop item runs, then did a Kirin run. At one, point, he got the better of me:

I did have my shining moment, though:

(Although it never procced.)

Once again, the Ru’Aun Gardens during auroras are even more pretty than at night.

Then, I realized that I was getting close to the point where I could be a RDM/NIN and have Utsusemi: Ni. But in order to take NIN to 37, I’d need to take WAR to 18. And in order to do that, I’d need to take MNK to 10. So soloed MNK to 10, then took my WAR to the dunes, with predictable results. I did get it done, though.

For a long time, I’ve had Mannequin Feet and Legs from Garrison. I got the Body a while ago by doing the Crustacean Conundrum BCNM, and not too long ago, Uruki helped me get the Head. I still needed the Hands, though. After a few aborted tries, and one failure, (Tarutarus make pretty bad paladins when they’re not allowed to use their MP, stupid leeches) I finally got all five mannequin pieces. One day later and I had my very creepy looking mannequin.

Another week, another moral victory against Kirin:

And then today. I’ve been level 74 for a couple weeks now, the large amount of exp needed to get to level 75 was daunting (even though it was 2k less since the last patch.) I finally decided to make the final push. Today, I was able to take the following screenshot, which was very unlikely, but still cool:

One kill later and I dinged to level 75! I took a screenshot, but the oh-so-important line of “Hamusutaa has reached level 75” didn’t come out! This didn’t make me happy. I did get this one, though:

And quite coincidentally, right at about the time I hit level 75, I also hit another major milestone:

And not much of that time is idle…

So now, my next goal is to get NIN to 37, which shouldn’t take too long. I still have quite a bit of stuff to do, and a lot of Rare/EX gear to pick up. I still haven’t tried Dynamis, and there’s always Merit Points to work on. And I’m trying to get further into Chains of Promathia, a static may be starting up, but, as is usually the case with people in my Linkshell, they’re mostly CST and EST people, so scheduling things is hard.