status change

I think I've come to the point where I'm finally ready to admit it.

I'm a Casual. Not even a Casual Raider, but just a Casual. Not temporarily, as I once insisted, but permanently, at least for the foreseeable future.

How many of you are surprised? Perhaps you're wondering why I'm announcing it like it's a big deal. Didn't I already know that was the case?

Well, one has hopes, and one also has reality. Here I was, fondly awaiting the day I would transfer back to a US server, join a raiding guild, and raid three-ish nights a week for fun and profit. I hemmed and hawed about work and gym schedule, always keeping an eye on my weeknight raiding availability. But, as I happily discovered a while back, I have other hobbies I enjoy, like cooking and weightlifting. Not to mention I have spending money, which means I can actually go out with friends when I want to. As you can imagine, these sorts of activities cut into WoW playing time, especially the time necessary to gear up and prepare for raiding. If I'm not willing to put in that prep time, then I can't be a good asset to a raid team. Which means...no serious raiding.

Fortunately, changes to end game procedures mean that, should I find myself more free time as my schedule starts to cement itself, I may actually get to go into raids (assuming I can at least expend the effort to do dungeons for appropriate gear). And, if I don't, a server and guild change will ensure that I have an active guild in which to participate while I quietly do my rep grinds and achievement hunting.

There's just one more thing. I have to request that my name be made available on the new server. If the request is denied... what then? There are a couple of variants that might be acceptable (first of all Redcow, because who the hell would name their toon that), but could I handle a change like that??

miscellany

Hey guys! The FFW emails have gone out, so I hope everyone is working hard on their blog post gifts for their recipients :) I am making this the masterpost, and I'll continue to re-advertise it as gift posts begin to trickle in!

My winter holiday is fast approaching (going to Florida on Xmas Eve OH YEAH *pelvic thrusts aggressively*), so I'm trying to plan out my end of the year posting schedule and goals  for the coming year.

Of course, I'll be working on my own FFW gift, and hopefully posting a very nice one! (You'll love this...immediately after sending all the emails I forgot who ended up getting me in the draw, so it will be a surprise EVEN TO ME.) I hope you won't mind me reposting a holiday parody fic I wrote in a previous year because, not to peel own banana, but I'm really proud of it and it still makes me giggle.

I have a LW post percolating in my creative coffee maker, and there will OF COURSE be more of the current story that Dah and I are working on. Alas, the next few chapters are all on me, so the delay is entirely my fault. In addition to that, I'm hoping to pull out one or two extremely old pieces of fiction that I wrote when first fleshing out the personalities for my various toons. Of course, the blog will not become entirely fiction (although it seems to have skewed that way), as I will also be posting the usual rants, screenshots, and wacky experiences. Fear not, though, as I recently caught up on my personal blog posting schedule, which means good things for the future! It can be done!

In non-WoW gaming news, I recently got myself a 3DS and tried to play the first Animal Crossing game. What followed was a series of increasingly troubling interactions with my questionable benefactor (Nook's Cranny who came up with that), hilariously infuriating searches for neighbors waiting for packages but had decided to wander off into the trees, and the extremely upsetting realization that when a honeycomb falls out of a tree YOU SHOULD NOT TRY TO LOOT IT.

After filling my tiny house with the usual clutter (mostly seashells and flowers stolen from neighbors' yards) I moved on to Pokemon X, where I was DELIGHTED to learn that after choosing name you can choose a NICKNAME which is the best thing that has ever happened. Let's exchange friend codes *_*

WELP THIS IS AWKWARD

After an unwanted but sorely needed hiatus, RCR is back in business! I'm safely relocated to Seattle and have a shiny new red laptop. Even the city welcomed me; look what I found on my first day out exploring!

It's a sign

I'm still looking for a full time day job, but until then I have a place to stay and some freelancing to work on. There's also WoW, and with that, the return of my creative streak. Yes, that's right, Dahakha and I are back in business and working hard on the next steps in the sad, sad Pandaria story! We're hoping for a big push in November (not necessarily NaNoWriMo but at least some more motivation).

I don't expect to be raiding anytime soon, but I am preparing to switch servers and guilds to find something in my new time zone. Are there perhaps any west coast guilds who might welcome a friendly tauren? :3

Finally, I need some addon help. My go-to raid frames have always been Grid, but it appears to only want to show me all druid hots rather than only the ones I've cast. Is there a way to fix this, or do I need to make a switch?

byeeeee

Let's meet at Geek Girl Con!

Hi friends! Are any of you going to Seattle's Geek Girl Con 2013? I'll be there (in costume!) so let's hang out!

I'll be attending the Friday night kick off party at the Tap House Grill with a friend. Pretty sure we won't be in costume for that...

I'll also be attending Saturday in a trio costume (from Teen Wolf...don't judge me) so be on the lookout for Cora and Derek Hale and their bouncy friend Stiles. I have my program all drawn up, so if you wanna talk scheduling get at me!

Guess who I am. Hint: not Stiles.

IRL Ding!

Congratulations, you have reached level 26!
Your Strength has increased by 10.
Your Intellect has increased by 300 kanji.
Your Spirit has increased to handle the constant stress of job-hunting.
You have gained a new ability [Complicated Hand-written Japanese Resume].
You have gained All the TV Feels (Rank 3).

And now we gif

This year was a really weird one. I went back to language school, intending to leave Japan afterwards.

School was actually great. I made friends and can now read a newspaper without crying.

It was also really rough. I had no money for activities and no time for gaming or writing. Losing the writing hurt me the most.

Surprising everyone, I came up with an acceptable thing to do with my life. It involves staying in Japan. Sorry, family.

I began the complicated and stressful process of getting my resume in order and applying to jobs.

So far, all of them have turned me down.

I won't tell you to give up on your dreams, or change them. But it can be rough trying to get to where they are.

I won't apologize for my constant emo whining on twitter. Tragedy is the source of comedy, at least in my case.

Thank you very much for continuing to follow me despite the distinct lack of posts this year. I appreciate each and every one of you, and I look forward to having the time to finally put all this pent up creative energy to use in the near future. :)

Keep positive. Keep moving.

It's not filler if you like reading it

Nah I take that back, it's still filler. But I hate to see my blog get dusty and boring - by which I mean I have no intention of closing up shop, I'm just getting my butt kicked by real life! It actually sucks; after the podcast and feeling really fired up to write, suddenly I found myself knee-deep in professional Japanese resume-writing. Which, I needn't remind you, is not my forte.

Hire me to do professional business for your company I have many useful skills

Working on those moon-rune documents kept me out of WoW for quite a while, but I've popped in here and there to tend my farm and try to push through the Dominance Offensive dailies so I can finally catch up with whatever it is that Dah wants me to see. (no spoilers please >_>) All I know is that the quest to go into the mine and kill those spirit traps underground was designed by a cruel and unfeeling dev.

Aside from that, I've been battling pets, although I'm WAY behind knowing what to do. Similar to pokemon, I just pick the cutest guys and use them to kill all the other guys. I have gotten some GREAT advice from twitter, however, so I hope to one day be someone who gives reputable advice instead of making suggestions like "have you considered using the fluffy kitty?"

I do not want to battle the other fluffy kitties

I was really enjoying leveling Weipon, and recently hit 88, but I realized that if I got too ahead in my leveling I would end up with a bunch of half-finished quest notes and no recollection of actually doing any of the quests, which would squash later writing! Instead I decided to hit up the Darkmoon Faire and aggressively watch Dubenko from the sidelines.

Let's see how long you dodge those rings after I get at you

So to reiterate, I'm not  going anywhere. A new LW chapter and the continuation of the main Pandaria story are forthcoming! Posts might be much more irregular in their scheduling, but the spark of creativity lives on! Frankly, I'm just glad that I have so many opportunities to share my new gifs with you! It may have nothing to do with WoW, but collecting and sharing humorous gifs is one of my hobbies, so I hope you know that I'm not just trying to fill post space, but rather bring you the latest and greatest of internet hilarity!

And now, the most recent search terms:

"a totally sweet blog"
    YOU'VE COME TO THE RIGHT PLACE
"adventure time birthday party ideas"
    I'm thinking Lady Rainicorn/long-Jake streamers, snacks shaped like residents of the Candy Kingdom, LSP balloons, and everyone has to imitate Tree Trunks' voice
"aysa cloudsinger porn"
    NO, NO, BAD INTERNET, NO, BAD
"im soo full of butt toots spongebob"
    Me too, Spongebob, me too
"sloth whisper song meme"
    I have no idea but if you find it will you let me know? I'm a diehard member of the sloth fandom :B
"cow of the wild fanfiction"
    Shit yeah, get on over to the Series page
"dragon which is red but big"
    I don't know that being red precludes being big, so you have lots of options
"indicator raptor explosion"
    :|a this sounds like a goblin experiment gone wrong
"quilin"
    YES! Look at those majestic bastards!
"what is red cow with high heels facebook logo"
    I'm curious about this red cow "with high heels" (I didn't publish that picture anywhere...) but currently my fb picture is a velociraptor statue wearing a knitted cap
"janeway muscles"
    Mmm yes I have just the reaction gif for Cpt Janeway's muscles:

"i had a dream about red cow i taking a it to home"
    I don't know if I should feel flattered or deeply concerned
"jessha reach"
    !! Minor character love <3
"did the girl jump from the bridge at the red cow"
    I couldn't find anything about a bridge at the red cow but I certainly hope not!!

And just because it's been making me laugh for a million years:

Is it the scarf? The expression? It's the scarf, I think.

GOLDEN WEEK

Vacation vacation! Mainline all the games!

But first....I got locked out of the server. Again. I reopened my ticket from a few weeks ago to let them know that the system check done on Blizz's end was giving me Battle Net Error #105 (it flashes so quickly that it took a LOT of failed logins to read the number). This time around, I was directed to an already-locked forum post in which the only recommended fix was player-suggested and came with a blue caution: "We do not actually endorse this method."

Anyway, that fix didn't work. Later, I got another CS response informing me that my issue was resolved because something related to ATT service, which I don't have. I still couldn't log in, and reopened my ticket, and this time they told me that since I'm in Japan they don't actually care about any issues I may have. I'm trying real hard to be nice to you, CS employees of the world, but....!!

I eventually found a workaround from another thread, and since then I've been playing, playing, playing! I cranked up the music, because it's been a while since I listened to the actual in game sounds rather than a podcast or TV show. The Pandaren inn music is really the greatest. I even did some dailies on Aka, which hasn't happened in weeks! Much twitter rejoicing was had.

First, Dah took me to get my special firesuit

I finally got Weipon to level 85 and rushed to Jade Forest, all ready to have my HEART BROKEN INTO PIECES. Since I first did the questline leading up the Temple of the Jade Serpent, I've been really impressed by the impact of the final scenes. Well, you read the story, you probably know exactly how much. Finally getting to do it on the character I had intended to experience it was really intense! Even better, now that I'm questing and taking notes on all the fun scenes that can play out, I'm starting to think about the future of the story!

you are my favorite, yes you!!

I wanna be super close to you *_*

look upon my noble visage. dang, i am so good looking

NNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Thank you very much to those of you who replied to the podcast post! Due to crappy RL schedules, we won't be recording until this coming Saturday,  but since I don't intend to do anything very fancy with the audio, it should be uploaded quickly. If you have any more burning thoughts, be sure to get them to my inbox before then!

Rant for free, or buy the full version and rant without ads!

I need a moment to complain about completely unrelated game stuff. This semester, for the time being at least, I am finding the time to log into WoW a few nights a week to do some leveling. The resurgence of my favored gametime means that I spend less time dicking around on my phone apps (plus, the home button is hit or miss these days and I can't really afford to repair it). Still, every once in a while I like to fool around on one of a few brightly-colored games, and my most recent crush is called "The Tribez."

As far as app games go, it's pretty simple. Build stuff, gather resources, build more stuff. Quests give your objectives to build more stuff and gather more resources. Good stuff. I turned off push notifications because I don't need more reasons for my phone to buzz at me.

AND YET.

The game still sends me silent notifications. That's fine - at least, it would be if it were actual useful information like "Crops are ready to be harvested" or what-have-you. But it doesn't just stop there. The game sends me threats, tries to cajole me into playing when I'm just trying to check the time or the weather or send a text. "Bad guys set your buildings on fire!" "Your villagers have grown bored!"

SHUT. UP. YOU CANNOT GUILT ME.

Because this is my blog, I get to tell you how angry this makes me. I go to class, I go to work, I exercise and hang out with friends and even occasionally clean my room. Oh, and I frequently use my phone for PHONE-RELATED ACTIVITIES. Now, sometimes that means I'm trolling instagram, but it's my free time and I get to decide how I waste it. So to get these snide little popups chastising me for not playing a stupid little game? GO JUMP OFF A BRIDGE. Shame on whoever wrote them, and double shame because they make me want to ignore the app even longer instead of convincing me to play (and maybe spend my hard-earned dollars on in game perks!)

NO. JUST STOP.

Ok now I shall share with you a happy game story. Last semester, we did a lot of self introductions - every single class in the first week, in fact. By the third class or so, everyone was sick of it. The teachers tried to come up with ways to make it more tolerable, but that mostly amounted to "tell us ANOTHER unknown fact!"

Well, anyway, at one point I went with "I like to play video games." A girl sitting in the back, who I have since become friends with, immediately sat up in excitement. After class she approached me shyly.

"So you like games? Which ones do you play?"

"Well, I like playing computer games the most." I briefly, awkwardly described WoW to her. "So what games do you like?"

She immediately pulled out her phone. "Right now, I'm playing this one all the time!" She showed me a puzzle game and let me play a level. Since then we have also heavily abused the camera function of her DS.

We don't talk a lot about video games when we're together, but I'm so grateful that we could bond through a shared interest!

c'mere, gamer friends

Last, but not least, please don't forget to leave Dahakha and I a little something something to talk about on our upcoming one-time-only audio post! Please!

please give us something to talk about or we will be lonely :D

Dahakhabeko's One Time Fun Time podcast!

Hey readers! Yeah, all three of you! I know you're reading all this fanfic Dahakha and I are posting, because that's what this blog has been all about lately. Every comment on each chapter is like a wonderful nugget of chocolate, but we want to talk more with you! Perhaps...you might like to talk to us too?

Who: Dahakha & Akabeko & AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION. If you've never commented, now is the time! It's ~fun and easy~ to do!

I would like, if I may

What: Ask the authors! Do you have comments or questions about any of the stories posted here? Are you curious about the characters, storyline, collaboration or writing process? We want to hear your thoughts, be they short, long, deep, simple, or any number of other adjectives! If you need a refresher, check out the Series page.

When: TBA (in about a week, or when it's clear no one can think of anything else to say >_>)

Where: Why, redcowrise, of course! (I do not want to figure out how to do a live show!)

Why: Because I'm asking nicely! Also wouldn't it be a nice change of pace to non-stop GRIPPING FICTION??

How: Comment on this post, or tweet us @redcowrise!

My platform: the internet is too damn slow

After a round of Tuesday restarts, I suddenly found myself unable to log in. Considering the semester just started and I expect things will get busy pretty soon, I was really bummed to not be able to log in when I actually had free time.

browsing thru my gifs and thought "wow what luck this is perfectly accurate"

Anyway, not wanting to write to CS right away, I first went through a checklist of DIY checks and repairs to see if I could find, and hopefully fix, the problem. For those of you following my twitter, you already know that plan failed and I ended up emailing CS for help. Based on the results of the various tests I did, their response was that my connection was too slow and the servers were more or less telling me to give up. They told me this problem would likely be fixed the following week, and to email them when I could log back in to get the days lost credited to me.

well done, CS, not only were you right but you were very nice

One of the suggestions you're likely familiar with was to delete the WTF, Interface, and Cache folders. Well...the suggestion is usually to remove them by placing them somewhere else. Of course, in my fit of rage, I straight up deleted them.

when it comes to computer troubles, i sometimes cut off my nose to spite my digital face :/

After a week, I figured I would be able to log back in and opened Curse, figuring I would update addons before opening the game. Imagine my surprise when "no addons were found."

WHERE GO??

The good news is that WoW connected with no problems!

did u miss me, babbies?

The better news is that since I'm too lazy to clean my recycle bin, I was able to restore the folders and get my addons back!

i wish i could be so graceful with my victory dances...

a herd of cows

I'm loath to break up Dah's upcoming series of fiction posts, but since the next installment isn't quite ready for publication, I'm here to bring you pictures of COWWWWWWS!

pet me

Kitano Tenmangu is a big shrine near-ish my house that is popular with students looking for academic success. The grounds are covered in plum trees, which should be in bloom now but are taking their sweet flowery time. There are also cow statues and figures everywhere, which you can rub for some extra study luck. They just had a very cool event with geiko and maiko serving tea and looking fabulous, but instead of going and taking pictures I lost my phone in the surrounding festival stalls and spent the afternoon panicking until I went to the police station and discovered someone had turned it in to lost and found. OPPORTUNITY: LOST. Still, faith in humanity: somewhat restored.

Anyway the last time I went, having not lost my phone I was able to devote some time to photos. This was followed by ~shopping~ and I found some great new red cow paraphernalia! MY COWS LET ME SHOW YOU THEM.

ARTSYYYYYY

take your time why don't ya it's not like i'm WAITING or anything

aaaaaaa

uuuuuuuun

lonely plums

the cutest moo

"akabeko"

Aka and her big sis Kurobeko

chillaxing on my bookcase with tweedle dee and tweedle dum

I also got the red keychain in the bottom right,  but that's for year of the bull TECHNICALLY