Glancing out the kitchen window this morning I saw some rather pretty branches covered in frost. Naturally, I grabbed Scout and went out to take a few pictures. Unfortunately these were the only ones to come out 'alright', and by the time I went back to hope for something better, it was all melted and gone. :(

I'm not sure if my neighbours noticed me snapping shots over the fence, and if they did, I hope they understand I wasn't peeking in their window! >_>

shawn wants me to write a WoW update, and given that I have not much else to write about right now, and lots of homework I'm avoiding, here's a WoW update!

My first impressions of the game, before I even saw a login window, were frustration, annoyance, irritation, and the irate desire to punch puppies. I'd been incredibly spoiled with the ease of Guild Wars, or had somehow blocked out whatever hurdle I'd had to climb, cross, or circumvent at the time.

The issue wasn't actually a fault of the game, however, so I couldn't really send dog-poo parcels to Blizzard - I'm saving up a nice, smelly stash for party-poo-packages to Atkinson and Conroy (the two men Australia holds responsible for the potential games block to Australia later this year).

No, the problem (aside from these two men raining on my parade) was that I only have a whopping 10GB of bandwidth allocation a month, which means downloading a game like WoW over a regular connection would have me on dial-up speeds for the rest of the month. The last part of the game I downloaded, for reference, was 6.5GB - I'm not sure how much the entire game is, but, there's no way I'd have been able to get it all just by letting it run its course by itself.

Thankfully, my ISP - Internode - has a bunch of unmetered links where I can download these things directly without nibbling into my bandwidth allocation. Unfortunately this means hunting down the necessary files and installing them 'manually', one by one. I'm no dummy, but I did find this confusing and frustrating, and I was tempted once or twice to give up - because I hadn't invested more than a passing interest in a trial account at that point.

It turned into a game in and of itself, Installing WoW.. one of those quests where you turn in a reward only to find there's MORE. I'd get one patch installed and 'oh look, another patch to download!', and off I'd go looking for the next file. Internode, for all its usefulness, only had a long list of files that included patches in French and German and God knows what else, so it wasn't a matter of downloading everything on the page in order, I had to hunt down what I needed.

In the end - as of last week - my WoW directory was about 30GB of files and patches, and my HD - which only had 60GB, was so full that my download of Wrath of the Lich King stalled and I had to start over again - I think I mentioned this in another entry on my Murphy's Monday. I've since figured out what I don't need and backed it up elsewhere, but OMG WTF?!

So, yes, my first impressions of WoW were 'not impressed'. It would have been much easier if I lived just about anywhere else in the world.

But moving on.

On my trial account I made myself a Night Elf because that's what people seem to do. I figured I'd launch into the most gimmicky character to see if I could get over the stupid ears - though they were the least of my appal by the time I got through my first couple of quests. Night Elves (the girls at least) run like TODDLERS. And if you leave them standing still for too long, they do a little bounce on the spot for the sole purpose of jiggling bits 'back into place'.

I haven't really embraced any night elf characters since. Limited character customisation, coupled with limited camera angles to view said character made the race not especially appealing, though I do like that start area and imported a human to play with one of Rae's characters there.

The environment is a whole lot nicer since I beefed up my desktop - such as it is - to 3GB of RAM instead of 1GB, and there are some absolutely stunning views! Perhaps not as intricate or 'realistic' as Guild Wars, that has some incredible landscapes, but the 'other worldliness' of WoW is really lovely. It definitely feels like 'another world', while Guild Wars has enough connection with 'our world' that, honestly, I don't think the environments can be fairly compared. I love GW for its realism and attention to detail - crazy as fawk monsters notwithstanding - and I'm enjoying WoW for it's fantasy elements - especially those night elf areas.

I hadn't finished my trial before Rae remembered she had an Invite-A-Friend 'thingie' and I swapped from that account to create a new one - so she could get some kind of mount or other (?) - and, dummy that I am, rerolled a night elf on another server. Uther wound up being the new 'home base', after starting on Steam-somethingorother- Cartel-orwhatever.

I barely got off the first boat so hadn't really seen a lot at that point, but I'd thought the other players were really, really nice! I couldn't go anywhere without some random person giving me a buff, and there I was too much of a noob to figure out who or how to thank them. But Uther was even friendlier! It was crazy nice, though maybe there wouldn't have been so many nice people around if I hadn't started playing during some Spring festival type thing attracting egg hunters in bunny ears.

Still, that is probably my favourite part of the game so far - and I've moved on a bit since then - how randoms will launch a buff or enchantment at me then vanish into the crowd.

The recent summer festival had a lot of horde coming into the cities, and I learned the hard way that clicking a horde character to check its health after being beaten up by twenty alliance means I've targeted myself and one hit later am hunting Ironforge for my missing body. After that res (and with lesson learned), some 70-something character chased me out to give me a heal then ran away again.

I think in this respect, I definitely like the social aspect of WoW over GW, because you only see other characters taking care of each other in combat, which is just the dynamics of the game. In WoW, apparently lending a buff is like saying 'hi', and even if I can't talk to Horde characters, I've lost count of how many have waved and flirted with me. :D

Not surprisingly, I have alt-itis here too, though there's a bit more of a commitment involved with levelling. After my lack-of-connection with the toddler-running-style of night she-elves, I opted for a human rogue, because... well, I figured I'd stick with a character if I modelled one after my favourite RP persona - aka, Knox. So, she's a rogue, a miner, and an engineer - because damnit, she's the sort to build herself a hog. Probably a bit more than I should have bitten off to chew as a first real investment in a character - especially since I completely bollocksed up the talent points (OMG so hilarious to discover there's a scroll bar in that window!) - but she's been heaps of fun! I love pick pocketing! \o/

I also decided at about lvl 37 that she needed a cat, and not a horse, for a mount. She's just not the sort to ride a horse - yes, game decisions made for RP characters are lame, but I am what I am :p - and by 38 she was Exalted with Darnassus. I thought it would be harder, but really it was just time-consuming. I understand it's been made a lot easier sometime before I started playing..?

Hunter-type characters are more my style, and I have a few non-starters and one finally moving forward, which will probably be my next character to progress, but I've also got a priest muddling about, the Most Adorable Gnome Ever, and a dwarf called Gryme (grimey). However, all these character have to wait for the moment because Knox turned 55 recently and now I'm gallivanting about with a Death Knight - which is oh so much silly fun. She's moving through Outlands and has made plans to destroy a giant Fel robot that keeps killing her partner in crime. Not yet, though; at 63 she'd just be toe-jam.

Apparently there are flying mounts around the next corner, too, though I'm sad to realise that the reason I haven't seen anyone riding them yet isn't because they're so rare, but because they can only be used in two parts of the game. Still, she's picking flowers and selling them to save up for the skill and whatever crazy-looking creature she gets to ride.

And, I guess that's about where I'm up to in WoW so far. Apparently I haven't hit the 'real content' yet, so I'll see how that goes when I get there.

It is entirely possible I might be looking forward to this:

This entry brought to you by the fact that I have a lot of homework and only just started my first coffee of the day.

An accidental mis-click had me landing on my archives page just now, reminding me that until a couple of weeks (okay, months) ago I still had loudtwitter posting my daily digest of tweets to my LJ and that, for a couple of weeks (okay, months) that was the only content to be had in my LJ. Twitter updates and pictures of my dogs. Later, pictures of fungus, and soon enough no pictures at all. There have been a few entries ranting about study, but nothing especially interesting has been written in this journal for... a long time.

Worse, I've been commenting in other journals and communities a lot less - though I don't think I've ever been a prolific commentatrix.

So, it then occurs to me that more than half my friend list probably has no idea who the hell I am. :(

And I can't think of anything to say about myself to justify being followed by most of you. Not that I'm not glad you are (<3!), but you're all so much more interesting than a single, 30-something student living in the arse-end of the Universe.

I'd like to make my journal more interesting, but don't know where to start! Is there anything anyone out there would like me to write about? Anything you want to know about me?

I'm happy to keep trundling along quietly, but I'd welcome any suggestions for making myself more interesting to read!

What a day of extremes!

Yesterday I was gifted with Wrath of the Lich King - <3 4 rae - but hadn't downloaded the.. whatever it is that makes the game work. Unlike Guild Wars (which is way better organised in this respect) I couldn't even play the game once it had been 'added' to my account, so I set about downloading it overnight.

Thank God my ISP offers game downloads direct from their site so I don't eat through my whopping 10GB of bandwidth a month, else I'd get this 6.5GB download and not be able to touch a damned thing until the next month!

I had an assignment due this morning, and the plan was to get that polished and send it in then spend the day celebrating with the murder of monsters. \o/

Only, come morning, the file had errored due to, of all things, lack of disk space.

My drive? 60GB. :( My other drive? 80GB? Space left on that particular drive: 5GB. I didn't even think to look before starting the download, and it errored with about 500MB left.

Cranky and without my coffee I set about deleting or moving everything I didn't need to make some space. I tried to resume the download but it wouldn't let me, so eventually just deleted that as well and started fresh. (it's half a day later and still downloading now).

Of course, TWO MINUTES after I deleted and purged it (cleared my recycle bin too) I find out a nifty little trick for recovering an errored download and resuming it. /facepalm

If anyone doesn't know this already, here's a trick that might save you some frustration. I don't actually know for sure if it works because I didn't get the chance to try, but maaaybe it's worth sharing:

Move the errored file elsewhere (move, not copy). Start the download again, in the same place, then PAUSE after a few kilobytes. While it's paused, move the original file to replace the new file, then RESUME the download. Like I said, I don't know if it really works, so if someone has tried it and it doesn't, please let me know.

I'm a bit of a dummy for not thinking of it at the time, and blame it on the fact that I hadn't had my coffee yet. Suffice to say, the timing was just perfect for setting me up for a very bad Monday.

It really was a Murphy's Monday Morning, too. Everything went wrong and I got to the point where all I could do was laugh at the black hole of luck I'd fallen into overnight. Even my assignment was submitted a few minutes late.

With no muse and no inspiration to do.. anything.. I decided to take my laptop (my glorified calculator - Dell Latitude D600) and my portable brick drive in to the New Norfolk computer store - PC & Print. I'd been chatting a bit with Tim via Twitter and already knew that he had some RAM to suit that he'd be glad to be 'rid of'.

My bag? It probably weighed between 15 and 20 kilos, and carrying it up the hill to town gave my knees the wobbles, but I made it in one piece and the trip was SO worth it. Tim and I had a few laughs, and some guy came in for a chat while I was there. I've almost convinced Tim to be my new roomie, but there's still some work to be done on that front. It'd be nice to have a geeky type move in - at least I'd have someone to talk to about my Geek.

So, it turns out that having such antiquated technology as my crappy laptop, my crappier portable drive of noise making, and my slightly crappy desktop is that computer stores are only too glad to get rid of old crap that's actually an improvement. For example, today, I scored 80GB drive to replace the 14GB in my brick portable drive, another 512MB of RAM in my laptop (yay for 1GB of RAM!) and a 160GB drive to sneak into my desktop in a space I didn't realise I had - ALL FOR FREE!

Part of this is because Tim is a really nice guy, but mostly I think he's just glad to be rid of stuff in his storage taking up space because he can't sell it. So, my being too poor to upgrade means I can benefit from his housekeeping! \o/

My bad morning improved by leaps and bounds, but it still was such a bloody Monday.

hahahahahaha -tears-

My mother uses something similar for the insides of her 'Hunza Pie', which is nothing like a traditional Hunza Pie, which apparently uses potatoes instead of rice.. and a whole lot of other different things that make mum's Hunza Pie nothing like a traditional Hunza Pie.

I don't have pie dishes or the patience, yet, to try making pies, but after seeing a few dinners around my friend list based on 'parmesan rice', I kinda felt inspired to try this.

Hammond was subjected to the first attempt, which was not dreadful but was kinda 'bad' because I over-cooked the rice and steamed the veggies whilst the mushrooms were cooked separately - the strange boy doesn't eat mushrooms. -shakes head- It didn't taste 'right', but tonight I think I got it, because I was cooking just for myself and could stir fry all the veggies together with the mushrooms. \o/

So, I used rice, a few slices of zucchini, 1 fresh asparagus, 1 fresh silverbeet, 1 fresh spring onion, garlic, 2 fresh mushrooms, and feta cheese.

The zucchini, asparagus, and silverbeet were all chopped finely and set aside in a bowl - my dinner bowl, to save on dishes >_> - and the spring onion and mushrooms were set aside together, also finely chopped. Put the rice on after all that because I'm lousy at timing these things (went to feed the dogs for something to do between times), then used sesame oil in the wok to lightly stir-fry the spring onions, mushrooms, and garlic (I cheat and use crushed garlic out of a jar). Once the mushrooms looked browned through I added the other veggies and turned the heat way down (OMG I LOVE GAS!), stirred a bit, then put the lid on so it steams in the oil and juices.

Yay, rice is done, drained, and rinsed, then poured into the wok with the veggies for lots of stirring. Oh yeah, at some point I chopped up some feta from the block of cheese too, and that got sprinkled and stirred in as well.

All done and ready to serve! Works great as a meal for one, innards of a pie, or a side dish. \o/ You can also swap out mushrooms or add bacon, which mum likes to do for her Not-Really-Hunza Pie.

So, I left my house today, for about 20 minutes. Naturally, I found some fungus and photographed it.

It was on the way to the market, I wasn't actually looking for it!

Quite a lot of pictures today - sorry.







( quite a few fungus shots actually )

Also, I have a cat.

( and I love him lots )

..here are a few random shots taken one morning circa last week. I guess they're a couple of nice 'winter sunshine' shots.

















ETA: Found some more while I was rummaging.


You might notice how much I love photographing this tree. >_>


And how much I like photographing fungus. :D

Because I had some trouble getting out of bed this morning.













My sleepy face is very sleepy.