I needed to go to the pet store today, but I got there too early and it wasn’t open yet. So to spend the time, I figured to walk around Target for a while. They’re a licensed Sanrio distributor. And I’m feeling blue, so you can’t go wrong with Hello Kitty to help cheer you. So…

There was a nice set of plushies in various poses, but I have a weakness for pretty Asian women, so I liked the Japanese style on this one.

There were some other plushies and things there, and a few “35th” items, but I have to say, some of these newer products are getting a little too gaudy. The colors are totally garish, and the outfits and poses are unappealing. Note to Sanrio: a lot of appeal (IMO) of Kitty is the pure simplicity of her. Don’t forget that foundation.

And I’ve been wanting to buy an aluminum water bottle for some time, but never seem to remember when I am in a store. I drink a lot of water, and lately you hear all sorts of news about the dangers of plastic water bottles. I saw two Kitty bottles, but one was just way too small. This was a little bigger, but not as big as I’d like, but I guess it’ll do. It says 0.6L, but I’m metrically impaired, so I have no idea. I’d guess about 14 ounces.

And then… I was wandering the bedding aisles. I really wouldn’t mind having a set of Kitty sheets. It’s not like anyone ever shares my bed :P But in Target, all the stuff is for Twin sized beds, and I have a Full. I’m sure if I looked elsewhere I could find a set of Full sheets, shams, and stuff. But this fleece blanket caught my eye.

Oh and Target loves to cater to impulse buyers like me. On one end-cap was a display of awesome looking chocolates. And for a chocolate lover like me, it drew me like a fly to honey.  I haven’t tried them yet.

I did buy some other stuff, but mostly male necessities, and there’s no reason to post those, right? But when I got out of Target, it was still 8:45, fifteen minutes until Petsmart opened, so I went to Panara to have some breakfast. I dunno how popular these are elsewhere, but there are quite a few locations in New Jersey. They’re an artsy “lifestyle” type of place, like Starbucks. And like Starbucks, they’re expensive. But unlike Starbucks, their food is actually very good, and probably worth it (can you tell I don’t like Starbucks?). Each store bakes their own breads daily. So I ordered an egg, bacon and cheese sandwich, and this is what I got:

ONE skimpy slice of bacon, and barely a slice of cheese. Sheesh. Well, it was good, but probably not worth $8.

I’m tempted to delete my last post, but I won’t. I just want to be able to convey some of the concerns which I have, and which apparently I am not alone in having. Others seemed to have expressed these, mostly in-game.

I don’t want to bash on the publisher Aeria, and I don’t want to bash on the developer, Sanrio, and I don’t want to bash on the GMs of either of those organizations, so please don’t take it that way.

I was just in-game trying to work up some more money, and am still (even after playing SEA and ID) unsure what the best way to make money is. Mining and stunning monsters usually gives items that sell from 1-3 gold a pop, so even at 50 a stack, that’s no more than 150 gold for a full stack of stuff. And we all know, the stuff you sell now is the stuff you will immediately need for the next quest.

A single piece of Iron Ore sells for 4. You need four piece of Iron Ore to make two pieces of Fine Iron, which sell 6 gold each, so four Iron Ore net you 12 gold if you turn it into Fine Iron. But those four Iron Ore would sell for 16 if you sold them as raw materials. You will lose 4 gold if you turn them into Fine Iron.

To unfortunately compare this to other games, most refined products usually sell for more than the raw materials.

I do hate sounding like I’m whining or complaining, although there are times when there’s just not much else you can do, other than air out your gripes, vent your feelings, whatever. So, this is kind of long, too.

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Home from Atlantic City after seeing Heaven and Hell. Great show. All of these guys are living legends, and without exaggerating, there’s probably at least 100 years of combined musical experience among them. Geezer and Iommi have been in Sabbath from the start (altho there was a gap in Geezer’s membership), Dio was with Rainbow from the start, and Vinnie was been with Sabbath when Dio came on-board.

Although they didn’t headline, a local (PA) band named Halestorm opened.

Took some pix, and tried to take a vid, but my cellphone camera (Palm Centro) isn’t really that fantastic, so everything came out pretty lousey. CJ took some pix, but it’ll be a few days before I can get a copy of those. I’m not even gonna bother with the vid, cause it’s all blown out, light and music.

But here are two pix for you to enjoy. Or even if you don’t enjoy, here are two pix anyways. One thing I am impressed with is the respect they all give each other on-stage. Dio doesn’t take the spot from Iommi, and Iommi gives the stage to Dio, and all of them recognized Geezer’s and Vince’s solos. You can see Dio in front here on the first pic.

Then Dio backs off for Tony to play a solo.

It was an age range, from the “too old to rock and roll, too young to die” group to the 20somethings. I wanted seats, so I got balcony seating, but the majority of people in the balcony were pretty dull. All the energy was in general admission on the floor. The women sitting in front of me even turned around and told me to cool it. Well. Aren’t we the mature lass?

Got body-checked when Vince tossed his drum-sticks up to the balcony. It was IN MY HAND, and the guy next to me slammed me. I still have the mark. Couldn’t get any of Iommi’s picks, tho, they were too light to be thrown up into balcony. Tried to scour the floor afterwards, but that offered no joy.

And finally, we didn’t gamble either. We checked out the craps tables (three of them) at the Showboat, where the House of Blues is, but man, talk about no energy there, either.

Kinda excited. Going to Atlantic City this weekend to see Heaven & Hell at the House of Blues.

FWIW, this is basically the same band as the Dio-fronted Sabbath. Dio did three albums with Sabbath, but at the moment I can only recall Heaven and Hell and The Mob Rules. I guess they can’t call themselves Sabbath? So I guess this is more of a “reunion” kind of thing. Apparently the only person not playing is Bill Ward, who chose not to participate.

I had wanted to go see them at MSG this past Tuesday, but the logistics just didn’t work out. The doors opened at 7pm, and so we would have had to catch a 5pm train into NYC. That would give us no time to eat before the show. Either that, or we’d have dinner and that would mean we would miss the opening act, which was Coheed and Cambria. I would have liked to see them, but what can you do?

So we opted for the Atlantic City show instead, which apparently does not have an opening act. Oh well. So to kinda get me in the mood, I looked on YT for some 2009 videos:

Check Iommi, he’s got awesome stage presence. He’s a fantastic guitarist, but he’s not arrogant. Iommi is the only member of Sabbath who’s been with the band from the beginning to now, he could definitely have a case of ego, but it doesn’t look like it.

This sounds nice, The Adventurer’s Journal, where you can blog from in-game. Since they have e-mail from in-game, it only seems natural (to me) that we should be able to blog from in-game as well.

I guess by now it’s no secret that I have my fingers in pretty much any version of HKO that’s running. And that does include PH; I was either able to get around their d/l restrictions via a proxy, or else they just removed the d/l restrictions.

Anyways, gloot.net is (was?) offering a free DVD of the game client, but you either had to pick it up, or they’d mail it to you, provided you were in Singapore. Well, pretty much counts me out.

But Starrfire7 and her sister were nice enough to help me. Ghost traveled to one of the locations, and Starr actually mailed it. You might have seen some of the other people posting their packages. Mine was the last to arrive. Tee, who lives about 500 miles south of me, got hers before the weekend, so I spent all weekend stressing (and even went to the PO to harass them).

That red thing is a Hello Kitty ruler, I’ll be bringing that in to work for sure. The white piece of typewritten paper are installation, etc, instructions.

Here is the reverse of the CD sleeve.

I do have to say that gloot did a very nice job producing this.

Finally, one last surprise gift:

It’s a “back off” sign you hang in your rear window when you get tailgated. And I hate tailgaters. Although from a pretty women like Starr, I’d prefer if it said “kiss me” instead.

Oh, and on the back of the envelope is the trademark Starrfire7, err Little Twin Star stickers.:

Thank you so much for thinking of me, and taking the time and effort to send me these things. If there’s ever a favor I can do, let me know.

I did post this on the forum, but I’ll blog it about anyways *shrug*

The Filipino version of HKO starts their Founders’ Beta on August 17, and you can find the download infor, either ftp or torrent, from their announcement page:

http://www.levelupgames.ph/2009/08/hello-kitty-online-founders-beta-starts-on-august-17/

I did apply for their Founders’, and was even accepted, even though I bluntly told them I was from the US. I think I said something even like  “feel free to reject my application”.Unfortunately, the download site is locked to PH only, and I can’t access either the ftp or torrent. And if they block the downloads, I wonder if they’ll block the game itself? Yea, I tried a proxy, but it was really really slow. So I don’t think you’ll be seeing me there. Say hi to everyone for me. Especially Abby, if she happens to be there  :(

Like a lot of people, I like to collect certain things. But instead of collecting Disney or Pokemon, I seem to have rather a odd collecting bent.

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Aeria, the NA publisher for HKO, recently tweeted (and posted on their facebook):

http://twitter.com/aeriagames/status/2906774482

Basically they’ve opened registration for beta sign-ups. Check the tweet above for the link to the sign up page. They have a simple quiz, which no fan of HK or HKO should have a problem with :P

And am I the only one to think that their choice of words, “Happy?”, sounds kind of  snippy? Or am I being (as usual) overly sensitive and should just keep my opinions to myself?

I’m kinda vain about my hair. Perhaps obviously, since I’m even making a blog about it :P But not overly so. I’m not the kind of guy who primps and preens anytime there’s a mirror around. But I do like to keep my hair nice. Shampoo and conditioner at least once a day. No chemicals! No blow-dry!

I’m personally partial to long hair. It’s been quite a while since I had my hair cut, cause I was gonna let it go. But it was in that annoying middle stage, and right now, it was just easier to get it over with. And since it was kinda traumatic, I figured blogging would also be good therapy. I’ll have to see if I can find pix of when I used to have hair literally to my arse, if you’ll pardon my tongue.

I’ll put pix after the break so you can prepare yourself to yell eek

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I’ve mentioned that I started to play The Lord of the Rings Online again. So far it’s pretty good. Not as bad as I imagined. Everyone is pretty casual. I unintentionally wiped our party the other day, cause I just keep forgetting where my hotkeys are. Nobody was too upset.

Anyways, it’s the summer festival. It was supposed to end on the 21st, but for some reason they extended it to the end of August. I hadn’t planned on partcipating since I figured there wasn’t enough time, but this week I decided to buckle down and get the festival horse.Here is my “old” blood bay horse.

And the new festival horse.

It’s a little bit flashy, don’t you think? But that’s the idea, it’s a special reward! You have to turn in your old horse to get the new one. Or you could buy a second horse, but at 4g, that’s a little steep to indulge. (yea, 4 gold is, or was, a fairly decent amount of money).

Do you like calzones? I love them, but they’re so huge and just loaded with cheese, I don’t eat them very often. Gotta have them absolutely fresh and hot from the oven. You can re-heat them, but it’s just not the same.

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Have you ever had, or heard of an Italian hotdog? Well, unless you’re from NJ or have visited (and eaten) here, you might not. It’s definitely a NJ thing, but I dunno if anyone outside of NJ has ever had one.

Basically it is a hotdog (or two), with peppers, onions and potatoes inside a roll made out of pizza dough. And darn if it isn’t mighty tasty. There are a few variations, but that’s the basic recipe.

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I dunno why I did this. I kinda woke up this morning and it just popped into my mind. Is there something wrong with me?

Anyways, don’t be offended :P Y’all know I love HKO, but just I couldn’t get this image out of my head.