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Welcome to my LiveJournal. This will be a place to document my in-game, as well as RL activities. If anyone knows how to add pictures to intros like this, please let me know.
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Sep. 1st, 2007 @ 06:00 pm Greetings!
I would like to take this opportunity to welcome the new group of people visiting from KI. I would like to save everyone some time by saying a little bit about myself right at the top here.

My real name is Frank Swanson, a proud resident of New Jersey. Despite all the crap we get, it's really a nice place to live. I'm 38 years old and a bit overweight. I blame genetics. I don't mind posting a picture of myself here because it's the internet, and I'm sure you've all seen worse things out there.

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Jun. 29th, 2006 @ 02:30 pm Sea Mentoring
Current Mood: pleased
Last night was rather fun in a unique sorta way.  My sister was returning from a month abroad in Italy so I had to pick her up at the airport.  Her plane was delayed a substantial amount so I didn't get home until after 10, and I was unable to get an Ameiter Dynamis run together.  Instead, I started the night by helping a bunch of people through their 2nd to last PM5-3 fight (Sin Hunters).  Unlike last night I didn't screw up by using Shock Strike vs. Judgement Bolt, so we won easily.  

After that came the fun part.  Eirias had lent a helping hand with 5-3 and mentioned something about exping.  I still need some organs to complete my Obi collection so I offered to duo some sea mobs with her as BLM.  At the time I thought her BLM was at least 70+ so we could duo some Om's for good exp and organs.  When I found out her BLM was only 67 I rethought my strategy a bit.  She had been in sea before, killed a few mobs with a party, but had never experienced the wonderful world of BLM Solo there.  So I took this opportunity to enlighten her and teach her how to solo in sea.

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Jun. 16th, 2006 @ 04:47 pm Post-Op Exam
Current Mood: happy
I went in this morning for my first big Post-Op exam.  The doctor just needed to check how my vision was coming along, and to make sure the flap of eye he cut away and reapplied was healing properly (which is why I can't touch my eye for a month).  He said that I had 20/20 vision, which was remarkable for the morning after.  Most patients need 2 to 3 days of healing to reach their optimum vision.  This means I might even be able to reach 15/15 vision if I take good care of my eyes and make sure to follow my care instructions to the letter.

WOOT!
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Jun. 15th, 2006 @ 04:16 pm LASIK
Current Mood: ecstatic
For as long as I can remember I've needed glasses to see. I can't bring up more than a handful of memories before I started wearing glasses. So when a month ago my doctor said I developed an allergy to my contacts and it would be very hard to wear them anymore I became extremely upset.
If you wear disposable contacts, even if they feel completely comfortable throw them away when you're supposed to!! Don't make the same mistake I did!
I had grown very lax with my disposal schedule. They felt fine, so I left my monthly disposables in for 2 months at a time sometimes. Huge mistake. Apparently developing allergies to contacts account for 15% of all those who have to stop wearing contacts, so it's a lot more common than I ever imagined.

I had been looking at laser eye surgery for years, but always put it off just a little longer each time to make sure the science was perfected. Well it seems I forced my own hand this time. It was either wear glasses from now on, which was very uncomfortable for me, or get laser surgery. I chose the latter.

A few miles away from my house was a LASIK Vision Institute center. I stopped down for a free consultation the week before and they said I was a good candidate for the LASIK procedure. I made my final appointment for today.

I took the afternoon off work and had my uncle drive me down, along with Bony as company and support. When I arrived, they performed the same tests again to make sure nothing had changed and that I was still a suitable candidate. The tests confirmed that everything was still ok. So they put a little scrub hat on me, the surgeon told me what to expect, and led me into the procedure room.

If you are squeamish about medical procedures, please stop reading now.


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Jun. 13th, 2006 @ 04:07 pm More CP fun
Current Mood: amused
Since Bony has been in town I've been trying to continually think of fun, unique stuff to show her. She has never been to Cedar Point, so I figured it was time to rectify that. We took off Monday night and stayed in the Hotel Breakers so we'd be right on the property the next morning. It was a good decision since we then got to enter the park 30 minutes early. Walked right on MaxAir then got in line for the Dragster. We were actually in the line for the line for the Dragster, so when it opened we went right up to the station. A 15 minute wait for the Dragster is incredible and was completely worth staying there the night before. I had told Bony this ride was fast but I guess I should have told her shirt as well. When we were launched out of the gate the wind blew her loose shirt completely off her shoulders and almost gave everyone watching an interesting show. Somehow she managed to grab her shirt and pull it back up before we reached the camera.

The rest of the day was just your average Cedar Point trip. No pictures this time since everything is pretty much summed up in my last CP post. Project 2007 seems to be developing a little more and I do wish I had remembered to take pictures of that. The land around the pylons has been flatened out and now you can see a definate track shape in the layout of the pylons. Also some circluar clamps have been installed on some of the pylons foundations, not sure quite what those are for yet.

I plan to go back again a few more times this year. Next time will probably be with my little cousins, whom I had promised to take to Cedar Point once their school was out. Time to start getting plans for that together!
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Jun. 11th, 2006 @ 03:25 pm Draculs'a Ball '06
Current Mood: happy
I am not a goth, nor do I dress the part. However I do enjoy some of the music associated with the term and when my friend told me another Dracula's Ball happened to fall on a weekend I had off work, I couldn't resist.

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Jun. 4th, 2006 @ 12:35 am Mexico

This weekend marked my first trip to Mexico. Bony is finally out of school for the quarter and invited me down to her little corner of the globe. This will also be my first time meeting her parents, who as I understand speak very little english. As it turns out they both spoke much better English than I spoke Spanish, so things went rather smoothly.

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May. 30th, 2006 @ 01:54 pm Memorial Day Weekend '06
Current Mood: cheerful

Quite a fun weekend indeed, and it didn't even have anything to do with FF!  Somehow, someway, which I can only explain through divine intervention, I managed to procure 3 days off from work in a row.  I used this opportunity to head up to Cedar Point and Geauga Lake with a couple of friends.  I'm a huge fan of rollercoasters and thrill rides, so going to these places is always a blast.

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May. 3rd, 2006 @ 01:09 pm Private First Class Mercenary
I guess getting paid to do other's dirty work for them is the way to go. In the land of Aht Urgan, mercenaries are called upon do all sorts of ugly tasks such as clearing caves of land worms, rescuing prisoners from Mamook, and escorting retarded idiots through a cave full of monsters. Yes, us mercenaries see all types.

However our efforts do not go overlooked by our boss, Naja Salaheem. With enough hard work, blood, sweat, and lots of cash flowing in to the bank, there is the promise of moving up in the ranks.


Wildcat PFC Primal reporting for duty ma'am!

Though I have a question.... why was the Shadow Lord's theme playing when she was telling me about my new duties?....
Seems this is the calm before the storm....
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Apr. 29th, 2006 @ 06:29 pm Adventures with H.E.L.M. in Aht Urgan
Current Mood: Adventurous
My entries have been nonexistant of late not because I didn't have anything worth noting, but that I've been extremely busy both in-game and out. With ToAU now released there's a whole slew of new quests and missions to partake in. Add all that on to the stuff I still need to do in the regular game and that makes one busy Primal.

I've been spending a lot of time trying to make money for my Dynamis runs. All of my gametime over the past week has pretty much been dedicated to it. I decided to blaze some trails and go H.E.L.M.ing in the new expansion areas to see what I could find.
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Apr. 12th, 2006 @ 07:04 pm Forums- The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
Current Mood: cynical
I love visiting the various FFXI forums. Might even go so far as to say I haunt them. It's really not too much of a stretch when I say very few threads escape my attention on the Main boards, Black Mage boards, and Valefor boards. Why? Because I love this game and I can't get better if I don't learn as much about it as possible. Doesn't matter if it's reading about how to solo new Limbus areas or whether INT affects magic resists (If anyone believes that, I have some nice oceanfront property to sell you in Colorado.), I'm there. If I feel I have something valuable to say, I'll say it, but most of the time I just keep to myself and read what everyone else posts. That's the good part.

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Apr. 9th, 2006 @ 07:06 am Loyalty and Integrity
Current Mood: angry
Let me preface this entry by saying there are 2 values I hold in very high esteem- Loyalty and integrity. I believe once you establish yourself with a group or a purpose you stick with them through thick and thin. You treat these people like you would wanted to be treated and never put yourself above anyone else.


( The good parts. )Tonight should have been a good night; It had all the makings of one. While I had to stay at work a little later than I expected, it wasn't tough work. However it was exceptionally funny to see the disgruntled faces on some of the parents' faces when their children's voices (Children's choir event) were drowned out by the Eastern Native American Convention's dance and singing (lots of screaming. Very loud screaming) 4 floors below.

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Apr. 6th, 2006 @ 06:34 am Hurray for Return to Vana'diel!
Current Mood: excited
I'll let the picture speak for itself.


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Mar. 31st, 2006 @ 09:23 pm Sea God Chart v1.1
I really enjoy making colorful and useful tools like this. Just a small way to give back to the community I guess. I fixed the background errors from the original version and made some additional changes. As I become more and more fluent in Photoshop I'll likely add some more pretty effects and get it properly organized. I think this is the one I'll release to the public after I get my name and a title on it. Or I might just go ahead and finish v1.2 up while I'm at it.


I removed the detail from AV and covered it with a effect mask in this version. I like it better since it gives AV that enigmatic look. Yea everyone knows it's just an aern-type but I wanted to preserve the feeling that almost nobody can understand the true form of this monster. AV is the kind of beast that makes Kirin sleep with a nightlight on.
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Mar. 30th, 2006 @ 07:30 pm Successful Bastok
Current Mood: good
It's about damn time. Today started off looking really bad. While I'm at work, Enno is usually kind enough to get the ball rolling for my Wednesday sponsored Dynamis runs with Ameiter. I've been wanting Dynamis-San d'Oria for a while because I need Silverpieces for my next upgrade. So 5 hours before the run is scheduled to start, Enno starts shouting and recruiting. Then after about 3 hours of her publicly shouting in Jeuno, Davricle begins shouting for HIS Dynamis-San d'Oria run. When Enno asked him, "What the hell? You've seen me shouting here for 3 hours." He responded "I don't care, we want San d'Oria." That's pretty shitty. So about 10 minutes before we were scheduled to begin, his LS enters and locks us out. Strike 1.

Every city except Jeuno was taken by now, so we decided to relocate there. We had to reorganize, wait for people to arrive, but in general we were mostly at the Trail Markings getting ready to go in. Then who shows up but SOAP (Ultima's mini-Dynamis LS) and dives in with 1 person to hold the zone until others could arrive. Fyi, their main Dynamis LS- DynamisX was already in Dynamis-Buburimu. Strike 2.

At this point I'm extraordinarily frustrated. I don't really know Davricle so I don't know if he's usually an ass or not, but I had a decent amount of respect for Ultima. I don't know if they felt justified in taking the zone since I'm only a small-time LS, if they just had their panties in a knot, or what. I was going to talk to Fodder or Cujo but anything that would have come out of my mouth I would have regretted later.

Nearing my wit's end, I did another quick search of the other cities and noticed Bastok was clearing out. So I asked the group to move a 3rd time for Dynamis-Bastok. Amazingly most of them were happy to move once again, possibly motivated by the desire to do anything after being screwed over twice already. Well after all this moving and frustration, it looks like things paid off.


The group did absolutely amazing. I could name names, but I'd have to list probably 26/28 people there. We were able to pull the last trigger NM, but couldn't get it down before time ran out. I was kind of disappointed with that because a lot of people stuck with me in the hopes we'd get a clear. Even though all my runs are technically farming runs, I was really hoping to get it for those who needed it.


Also as a sidenote, I saw this at the last Dynamis-Bastok I did with NuDawn-


Has anyone ever seen this before? This is a Bastok NM move. I've never seen a regular mob do this in all my time in Dynamis. It'd be like regular Orcs using Fanatic Dance (Charmga), or regular Yagudos using Doom. Ewwww.
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Mar. 28th, 2006 @ 11:25 pm Jailer of Faith
Current Mood: optimistic
Well today was another Sea Raid. I was unable to attend the start because of work, but from what I hear it was pretty successful. They started out by getting a DRG Ix'Aern pop, which dropped the Deed of Sensibility, then tried unsuccessfully to farm M Ghrah Chips for a Fortitude pop. By the time I got on they were ready to try something different, so we decided to go for MNK Ix'Aern. We got lucky and found the ??? on our first try, but we had forgotten to bring any HQ Aern Organs with us. We killed the aerns in the room, not really expecting to get an organ, but we got one anyways! Yay! You can trade 1-3 HQ organs at a time to the ???. 1 pops just MNK Ix. 2 pops MNK and a RDM (or WHM... I forget). 3 pops all 3. The drop rate for both the Vice and Deed, as well as Ix's difficulty seems to increase with the number of organs traded. We got unlucky with this NM and it didn't drop anything. Boo.

Last thing we decided to try was a Jailer of Faith. This guy is no joke and we only had 1 WHM. Casts all Earth-based spells like Stonega IV, Stone IV, Quake II, Breakga, Slowga, as well as all the super fun Euhvi moves like Morning Glory, Viscid Nectar (Most potent Slow effect in the game. Sets Utsusemi:Ichi timers to 1:30), Vertical Cleave, etc. It took us a while since Icefire was dead 90% of the fight and many others couldn't stand long against its crazy offense. I feel bad for Ice though- Every time he'd get up, he'd get knocked back down; Must have died 4 or 5 times. Eventually we won though, and got both Virtue and Faith H2H weapon. So now we have our first Tier 2 Jailer pop items. We'll need a hellava lot of people out there to take him on.



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Mar. 28th, 2006 @ 05:22 am Sea NM Chart
Current Mood: accomplished
With the help of some other resources, I have finally completed my visual Sea NM Chart. This one is different from others in that it is picture based, not text based like a spreadsheet.
I'm still learning my new Photoshop CS2 that I bought. Sooo complicated. >_< Takes like 15 steps just to draw a simple arrow. The gradient color fill I used as the background fits perfectly with the whole Sea God thing, with the center radiating from AV.



Next step- updating the LS's front page!
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Mar. 23rd, 2006 @ 04:24 am The beginning of Aht Urgan
Current Mood: okay
I haven't had many FFXI updates in a while so I figured I was due. I haven't had time to play much since I've been working continuously after NY, and this weekend is shaping up to be really bad as far as work goes. Go go 13 hour shifts!... >_>

Originally when I signed on tonight I had planned to level WAR a bit, but as usual I got sidetracked. While in Windy dropping off some stuff in storage I saw the NPC for the Lure of the Wildcat quest. The quest is obviously involved with the expansion coming out, so I decided to give it a go. There is 1 quest per city and 20 NPCs per quest (not counting quest starter in each city). That's 80 NPCs you need to talk to complete all of these quests. Each city gives you a different Invitation Card.



Nobody knows what they do yet, but here's my guess- Every time you complete one of these quests the NPC tells you to stop by Sahleem's (sp?) in Aht Urgan. Each of these NPCs is also a representative for a different Merc Corp from there. I'm guessing there's NPC(s) for each group in Aht Urgan, and you need that group's corresponding invitation to start their quests. You might even only be able to progress along one quest storyline at a time. Some people think you might need the invitations to get access to Aht Urgan in the first place, but based on NPC dialogue I don't think that's true. Less than a month until we find out!

Not much else interesting in FF recently. Got another Elemental Magic merit. While leveling NPCs with Chindy (just trying to cap Sahyu's exp before expansion now that she's 65) I had Tzee Xicu the Manifest pop in front of me, nearly giving me a heart attack. It was like 5 in the morning though, so there wasn't anyone else on to help kill it. Sure it's a lesser HNM, but it's always painful to let a free NM go. Especially something with an awesome [and extremely rare] drop. Ah well.
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Mar. 21st, 2006 @ 01:25 pm Movin' on up... eventually.
Current Mood: optimistic
While talking with my boss yesterday I learned that sometime in the future he will be hiring an assistant. I'm already doing a bunch of policy writing, organizing paperwork, placing orders etc. in my downtime so it's not like it would be anything new. It's always nice to have a boss that gets ecstatic when I make a spreadsheet with borders and color. It won't happen until at least July when the new fiscal year begins but it's something I'm seriously considering. It would be a nice pay raise, but more importantly it would be a regular 9-5 M-F salaried job. No more 11am-1am shifts! I know I'm qualified for the position in all aspects except some of the indepth mechanical stuff, like fixing air conditioners, elevators, water lines, etc. Most of that is handled by outside contractors though, so it shouldn't be that big of a deal.

When the position opens up I'll be putting my application in and hoping. The "Promote from within" policy here is also very very helpful. Guess we'll see in a few months!
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Mar. 20th, 2006 @ 01:05 am French Silk Pie
French Silk Pie

1 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
9 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa, sifted
1 cup pasteurized egg (such as Egg Beaters)
1 prepared graham cracker crust
1 cup whipped cream (optional)

Because no cooking is involved, pasteurized eggs are recommended to prevent the possibility of Salmonella.

Place the butter in a large mixing bowl and beat in the sugar a little at a time. Mix in the vanilla, cream of tartar, and cocoa. Yes, it is a lot of cocoa. Add the pasteurized egg 1/4 cup at a time, beating 3 minutes after each addition to ensure proper mixing with the sugar. Don't skimp on the mixing time here, it actually does make a difference how long you mix it. Scrape the sides of the bowl often.
Pour the mixture into the prepared pie shell. If you use the Keebler pre-made crusts, you can fit the batter in 1 of their large crusts, or 2 of their smaller ones. Cover with plastic wrap (or simply invert the plastic covering that came on the crust) and refrigerate 3 to 4 hours until set.
Optionally, you can add whipped topping, sprinkle with grated chocolate, or add semi-sweet chocolate chips.

Estimated mixing time- 45 minutes
Estimated cooling time- 3 hours.
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