The Totally Fucking Awesome Adventures of Professor Keider D. McAwesome

Previous computer has failed me. That'd be fine if it weren't for the fact that this new one failed me as soon as I turned it on for the first time. Both of them seem to have problems with graphics cards that basically crash the system as soon as FFXI loads (occasionally some websites with lots of flashy stuff also kill it). So until I can find something under $500 that can last me at least a few years and isn't a 360 or a PS3, I'm pretty much unable to do anything except browse the web and talk on vent. Hopefully someone feels like sticking Keider at Cerb or something since there's not much else that account can provide.

In the meantime, any time I would've spent playing FFXI will now be spent playing Brawl and Mario Kart, so go get my friend codes for those and play me instead of doing whatever else you were doing.

SSBB: 1547-4921-4435 (ROCKY)
MKW: 2363-6097-8824 (should say Jon, which is Lind, but we share it)

Also if EarthBound comes out on VC (which it's supposed to according to the internets), go buy it.

Okay, I've been out of the habit of taking pictures of loot pools and mildly interesting screenshots for far too long, and I swear it's gonna end after this update. Like really fucking pinky swear and shit. But in the mean time, I did manage to snag a few pictures that might be enough to actually count as an update. I'll just post those anyway and make it seem like they were impressive.



x4



First of all, that Adamantoise was totally awesome. Some small group wiped to it because of adds, then me and Abh were like "sweet, let's do this" and Abh died at like 80% from adds. I got it down to like 55% when Serp showed up, then he raised Abh and got both of them killed right away, so pretty much at least 75% of that entire fight was just me and Rocky. Also Wiggs and Isi (Serp) showed up at 1% for morale support. Very fun fight, although I definately wouldn't have been able to do it without that group keeping adds off of me (but not Abh or Serp, which was hilarious). Also Jailers and Ix's need to drop more torques and capes because we ain't getting shit from them. Plus Khim is gay (I already mentioned this years ago).

Aside from all that stuff, not too much has happened outside of some nice Salvage loots. Wiggs finished Usukane today and Clyde got a Macha's Coat (think we're at 5 coats, though only two are done, plus the one we gave to Disco way back when would put us somewhere around 6/bigfuckingquestionmark), also Ty finished Skadi legs.

At this time I'd like to delve into a previous post I made some time ago:

"We finally got a Deimos's Cuirass and of course Wiggs beat my lot, made his Ares's Cuirass the other day. I don't feel too bad because in actuality it's a lot more useful for him than it is for me. I'd rather have Head/Hands before Body actually, but I'm not expecting anything from Big Bhoot or Zebra Zachary for a while." - Keider from May 7th, 2007

Although Big Bhoot did put out for Wiggs once when I wasn't there, and Lind got his Skadi mask from Zach (again, when I wasn't there), so maybe there's some amount of hope for people that aren't me. Also gay is that the Soulflayer doesn't want to drop anything either, and we're actually getting close to completing a bunch of Morrigan sets so that's pretty lame.

====================================

Now we're moving towards the part where I start talking about Smash Bros., so if you don't want to read about that, you can pretty much skip the rest of this post.

First of all, it's extremely fun. I pretty much end up playing at least an hour or two a day even if I'm otherwise doing stuff. There's also an absolute ton of shit that I wasn't expecting at all (shit like the fully orchestrated Tetris theme) and the adventure mode was bitchin' (mostly because unlike everyone else, me and Lind did co-op like Kirby Super Star). The few complaints I have are almost entirely cosmetic (I want PK Rockin' damn it), though some are more specific (where's Roy? why can't I play as Ridley? why the fuck is Jigglypuff still in the game? I miss Fourside). Regardless I can't stop playing at all, even though none of you fags ever want to play online. So for the most part I spend my time either clearing challenges or doing the With Anyone matches. My only beef with those is that it's always full of Ikes/Marths/Toon Links/Sonics/Pits/etc. and there's always one faggot playing Pikachu who just spams that Thunder move.

Of course I stick mostly with slow characters, particularly DK and Ike, although never Ike on With Anyone since there's always an Ike or two in each fight already, and everyone seems to think DK sucks even though I win 90% of the time as him. Also Ganon and Bowser seem easier for me to control, and Ness and Kirby don't suck so bad so it's pretty fun to play as them again. The only character that I used to occasionally play as that I pretty much can't do shit with anymore is Samus and that pisses me off a lot, but I'll probably try to figure her out again sometime. I also like hearing about people who have so much trouble with Ike and pretty much only play him because he looks cool, while it definately took me 30 minutes to figure him out entirely since I lean towards slower characters typically.

Also the Serp is Gay stage, plus the Pyramid of Power and Flamingo Island stages Lind made. Gotta say I'm pretty disappointed that the Stage Builder is so limited, both in tools and use. Lind wanted to have at least some sort of water available in Flamingo Island and I was hoping to have Serp is Gay more compact and less boxed in (more fall-through platforms and such, or just straight up backround decorations for some of the letters. The biggest problem of course is that I can't play any of these stages online, and that's basically why we made these in the first place (or at least Serp is Gay and Flamingo Island). I wouldn't mind that too much except the CPU is also pretty stupid on custom stages for some reason (for example, they spend a good chunk of time on Flamingo Island walking into the giant stone head or the big tree instead of jumping over them). If nothing else though, they at least look sorta neat.

====================================

I'm running out of stuff to type so I'll probably finish here. I've added my Wii console number and Brawl friend code in my little LiveJournal profile guy for anyone who doesn't have it (all two of you). I also need to decide whether I should blow 24 Khroma on an Usukane Haramaki that I won't use or a Morrigan's Robe that I won't benefit from whenever I get those 35s. Leaning towards Usukane personally, not that it matters either way since I'll probably pass both of them for a while until other people who can actually use both of them get theirs first. Also I need one of those instant 75 scrolls for RDM because leveling is gay. And I guess subjobs too, bleah. Guess I should mostly work on merits because I've got like 50 total and I should be around 300-ish or so, but oh well.

As you probably didn't hear because I never post on this and no one really cares, myself and half of Virtus formed a new LS called LateNite. Short story is basically half of us were sick of having Disco be in charge of things you generally don't want a retarded person being in charge of, also a massive influx of garbage players that constantly aggro/die/wipe without supervision. Of course there was a fair amount of confusion for the people who stayed with Virtus, but since 90% of those people are the same ones who inspired us to make our own shell, I don't really care to explain shit to them. Some of the comments being made are fucking hilarious though.

It's definately a whole lot better now. It feels like we've got a lot more energy also, like if we used to eat cigarettes all day and now we've switched to... food or something. For one thing, I don't ignore LS chat because it's not full of shitty jokes and retarded questions and statements. Two, we don't wipe to shit anymore because tanks don't know how to hold hate or keep up shadows. And now all of our melee actually do damage instead of just two or three of them. I could go on with all the amazing things that actually function correctly now but you get the idea.

When we were coming up with the name of the LS, we tossed around a bunch of ideas before Abh suggested LateNite. I forget a bunch of them but it was something like this:

AwesomeCity
AwesomeTown
TeamAwesome
AwesomeSquad
TeamKeider
FalconPuuuuuuuuuuuunch
FunkMadness
Countdown
Zeal
CappedParry
Aftermath
CoconutGun
ShowMeYaMoves
Gankin

The list goes on but I forget what they were, so I'm having Deced remember all of them. Try to guess who thought up each one! You'll be pleasantly suprised. Also we decided that blue-green was the least likely color to be taken and gayed up by some faggot linkshell. And our frontpage won't just be a picture of one guy with a shitty relic either, probably gonna have a big Lind-themed thing of us doing awesome stuff, with maybe the whole LateNite Show with Keider McAwesome theme going.

Anywho we've been doing a whole bunch of stuff, mostly spamming Byakko to get people Haidate they've been missing for years (we're like 2/11 on pants though, but 11/11 on E. Feet!), did Bahamut and Omega last night when Bastok/Ouryu were taken. A couple Fortitudes also in the last few days with no dice on torques. I thought someone had a JoL set around but that was probably a while ago. Also a bunch of Salvage, Serp got Morrigan's Robe, Lind finished Marduk, not much else. We've been having shitty luck getting stuff to pop/drop but meh. Need to do more /kneeling to stuff before it dies to get what we want.

Smash Bros. comes out in two days and it will be glorious. If I don't get Tala back by then, I'ma gear up my MNK with evasion+gaiters and hope for the best against KV. I'm not expecting a whole lot but it'd be awesome if I could pull it off. Even more awesome if I had anyone else's THF but that ain't happening it looks like. At least even if KV doesn't put out I'll still be playing Brawl regardless, and the Serp is Gay stage will be glorious.

It's been like 3 months since I last wrote in this, mostly because I've been too uninterested, mostly because no one reads this ever and I didn't feel like writing. Regardless let's see if I remember where we are right now (keep in mind this is 35s/finished pieces, not just the latter):

Lind: 4/5 Marduk 4/5 Skadi
Else: 5/5 Morrigan 2/5 Marduk
Dias: 5/5 Usukane 1/5 Skadi
Serp: 4/5 Usukane 2/5 Skadi
Abh: 3/5 Morrigan 3/5 Marduk
Kei: 3/5 Ares 2/5 Usukane
Wiggs: 3/5 Usukane 2/5 Ares
Azuran: 2/5 Ares 1/5 Marduk
Raldo: 2/5 Skadi
Moppy: 1/5 Usukane
Deced: Passes on shit always

Outside of Salvage, not too much has happened aside from Tala's account being hacked and moved to Kujata (which should be resolved by now) and my MNK getting to 75. Really hoping they can move him back before Smash Bros. comes out, otherwise I'll be missing out on a good couple of weeks in which to camp KV.

On that note, Smash Bros. was supposed to come out next week, but they pushed it back a month. I wouldn't mind it except I have to avoid a good chunk of the internet in order to not spoil the game for myself, or rather not spoil it any further than what I've already seen (which so far is just basic stuff like Luigi being in the game, things everyone expects). Also I need to avoid Ty because he's all about spoiling shit.

There should be a version update sometime either this month or the next, one of the things that was mentioned at a fanfest a while back was WAR getting some sort of forced counter JA (or was it something like how Provoke works in Ballista? I forget) and DRG getting some more wyvern stuff. Honestly if the only thing they did in the next patch was give wvyerns the Stay command from BST I'd be perfectly content, since all I need is for Rocky to get the fuck out of AoE most of the time. Sure enough, other DRGs feel we're in need of like 500 buffs to bring them "on par with SAMs" and shit like that, which further maintains my belief that I'm still the only person on all servers who actually knows how to play DRG (or rather the only one who knows how to play it and actually DOES play it, since I'd be suprised if Serp/Dias/Ty/whoever wasn't capable of doing what I do if they cared).

Nothing else comes to mind, so here's where this post ends. Never forget the Flying Man.

Okay, priorities. There's been a whole lot of stuff going on and it's been a while since I've last posted. Probably because I've actually had lots of stuff to do in-game and out, but regardless, the absolute most important thing in the universe comes first, and here it is:



Alrighty, now onto other significantly less important things:














Probably should've taken more pictures, oh well.

My MNK is 72 now, equipped with the Legendary Black Belt of Legend. I'm way too lazy to exp on it by myself however, especially since the need for it has diminished. I'll finish it sometime though, and when I do I'll probably merit like crazy so I can at least have the satisfaction of having capped merits on my mere three 75 jobs.

Bunch of random crap like Ouryu and Bahamut, meh. Also Einherjar, which is kinda neat but kinda boring too since we just do Wing 1 since people still don't have clearance for Wing 2, and we usually only go once a week if that. At least we beat DL recently and got a Shadow Ring for Serp, we were kinda overdue for killing him so it's good that we actually went and did it.

Last week I managed to see KV pop and was able to get an Ace's Helm for Merc out of it. Ended up killing him for the next 4 days after that, even with the presence of other shells wiping while holding/zerging and got two more for Wiggs and Sidd, also a couple of claws. Didn't pop for a while after maintenance so I'm taking a break for a while on him. I still can't understand why no one else holds it the way I do (which is virtually flawless aside from Double Earth, which I usually can handle with a WHM present), or why most of the other LS on Midgard don't make their melee sub NIN to this guy. Good thing they don't though, we'd be missing out on one or two of the helms we just got and I can't have that. Also a Xolotl once that dropped nothing.

For some reason I have yet to get bored with Salvage, despite how our group completely dominates it. We manage to kill all the NMs and the Chariot in Arrapago/Zhayolm/Silver Sea with 10-20 minutes to spare each time but rarely get any of the 35s we've really been gunning for (well more like Usukane and such, particularly for Serp). Don't have pictures but we also got two pairs of Freya's Trousers, a pair of Deimos's Cuisses, and a pair of Macha's Slops (Trousers for Lind and Raldo, Cuisses/Slops for Ling from the same run). Waiting for the inevitable post on BG where some guy posts our strategy for Zhayolm on getting both Poroggos and the boss everytime and is hailed as a hero despite our having created the plan months prior to his great revelation. I only say that because there's been several strategies that we've created (and occasionally posted) on BG that have been overlooked that later some other guy realized was true and announced it like he was the first to come up with it. BG is useless now anywho so meh.

Not much else I can think of (or at least for new and/or interesting stuff, assuming what I wrote already WAS new and/or interesting). I'd talk about Smash Bros. but it'd mostly just be about how awesome it is and how excited I am for Brawl. No one aside from Lind seems to share the same level of enthusiasm as me, and I can attribute that only to the fact that the rest of you don't have souls.


Good day, sir or madam.

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I hate exping, or rather trying to exp. I don't remember the last time I got an exp party on my MNK but I do remember that it probably sucked. It gets to the point where people who were in the 30s or so have passed me in less than a month (although out of fairness, these are the people who level a ton of jobs and then go "yeah I retired that" immediately after getting 75), and right now there's only a handful of people I'm still ahead of because they're just as lazy as I am.

But that's not why I'm posting. I'm posting because no one expected some of the things that happened in the world of Salvage recently, things that make people join hands and sing love songs on the radio and so forth. Plus there's some other crap and I've got nothing to do right now:

 






Clearly we've been doing a lot of Long-Armed Chariot. The thing is, the only 35 we can ever get from Bhaflau is Hikazu Sune-Ate. In fact we've gotten 6 pairs so far (5 finished pieces), right now the only person who might be considered a regular but still doesn't have them is Moppy. It's nice to be capped on a specific piece, especially since those boots totally own and take like two minutes and 5 cents to make. Of course this now means we'll rarely need to pop the 2F Rampart in Bhaflau, and that sucks because it's the easiest one to pop. Mad Bomber never spawns for us and the 4F gears are annoying to say the least (we usually only bother with them for LBC now), plus the whole deal with NMs not popping and definately not dropping.

But enough of Bhaflau and its shitty non-boots luck, because the good people over at The Internet found all of the 35s in Zhayolm in one frogtastic week, and it just so happens that the drop rates on those pieces are higher than that of most other zones (or at least Arrapago and Silver Sea). Of course now we actually need to kill Armored Chariot, which means going back to Arrapago after like 3 months of staying the fuck out of there (after 3 months of living there). Also we need Silver Sea cards for the 6F Poroggo, but at the same time we definately just did like 800 Silver Seas and tossed all the cards. Good thing people still want stuff from there, plus boots for me! Can't turn down a good deed for The Keider.

We killed KV once because some guy in PlusOne accidentally posted ToD on the KI DRG forums and I definately snagged it. Also a few Kirins, for once we had enough people to melee it and even more suprisingly, we got W. Legs (didn't screenshot it, the same one also dropped an N. Body). Also some JoL that I didn't get to screenshot because I'm always pulling adds, Lind got a Novia Earring though.

The main reason why I can't ever level MNK is because I can't get enough time to myself to seek or actually stay in the parties I get (unless it's in the dead of the night, of course there's no invites then). Right now I'm apparently needed to bring some table to my grandmother's house, when I get back I'll inevitably be required to do something for someone that I probably won't be needed for (but people will insist I show up). As such, I blame my MNK's current level of 68 on every single person on the planet except for myself, especially those dicks who don't invite me when I get the time to seek.


Can't blame me for trying, anyway.



PS. KV popped and Europe's Finest teamed up with some loser shell to wipe, watching 80 people try to hold KV and die all over the place makes me not care that my MNK isn't getting exp right now.

It's true I've neglected this thing for about a month, and in actuality I don't have much of an excuse other than being lazy as fuck. That and there isn't much demand for the Keider Journal of Excellence, except in a few rare cases (I haven't forgetten who you are, single person who asked for an update). Regardless there is in fact one piece of news that totally owns:

 
Now that that's out of the way let's look at all the other shit that probably happened:










 

There was a point where I considered having something like Fraps or a Windower script constantly taking pictures of shit ingame so I don't miss any gems (and I've missed a fair amount, kind sir or madam). Of course it might lag a little to constantly screenshot the game, plus the Windower script would probably end up messing up my chatlog (from command spam) or crash the game (from excessive looping). Not unlike my idea for just leaving a microphone on while I play any instrument in my free time, the biggest problem of course being that I'll have to use a huge ass chunk of memory to do this and I'll have to dig through all the pictures of my moogle spinning to get to the good stuff. Also I'm lazy so fuck that.

Anyway aside from the excessive time spent in Silver Sea Remnants (two 35s and a bunch of LACs to cover the abundance of Pephredo Power), I haven't been on too much. Need to finish 4 SL Assaults to get Captain for me and Lind, plus a bunch of missing ones for Dias/Serp/everyone else. Patches came and went, mostly good news about. My WAR doesn't need a Ridill so bad anymore, my DRG just straight up got even better, and my MNK was semi-retired for like two weeks (Serp needs to give me back my Fumas). Also leadership in the LS has changed somewhat, Disco has mostly backed out of the scene and everything's in the hands of Serp, Ty, Wiggs, and Boka.

I think I'd comment on more but I honestly don't feel like writing about FFXI right now (what a tease, see you in a month), fair amount of RL things I need to stay focused on and they're pretty well wrapped around my mind. For the most part I only updated this because someone asked me to. I'll keep at it if I get more requests, although it works better when I have stuff to write about. I blame a lack of material on everyone who plays on Midgard except me for being boring and not presenting me with a list of awesome adventures, mostly involving me getting awesome shit. 


YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE, REST OF THE SERVER
(and parts beyond, why not)

Okay, so I definately haven't updated this in a month aside from those two posts about Salvage maps that my single digit number of faithful readers may or may not have found interesting. I also took a little break since there wasn't a whole lot going on in LS events, things picked up by the time I came back though. My only regret is not having all the screenshots I want because there's a shitload of stuff to remember but I forgot most of it. Here's the list of things I remember:

- MONK AT 67 AND VERY SLOWLY RISING YEAH
- Ouryu x4, nothing special on that
- Bahamut x1, beat without melee zerging (Bahamut's Staff for Abh)
- Justice x3, no torques
- Nidhogg x1, N. Legs to Clyde
- Fafnir x1, E. Hands for me and A. Hands for Dias
- Wyrm x234859, beards abounds but no belts
- KV x1, no dice
- Kirin x2, N. Body for me
- Dyn - Qufim, clear for some people
- Dyn - Xarc, MNK for me (5/5) plus RDM for Jax and lots of other crap
- Some people did Limbus and got stuff probably
- Seigrune's Feather from Einherjar (Wing 2 for Kei, neat)

And now for the Salvage stuff (Chew you might wanna skip this part):

Dias: Usukane Somen (was missing 25)
Kellar: Marduk's Crackows (was missing 15, believe it or not)

Hikazu Kabuto x1 (Wiggs)
Hikazu Hakama x2 (Serp, Moppy)
Hikazu Sune-Ate x2 (Wiggs, Ling)

Serp and Moppy are done with their pants too but I usually like to post when 35s drop since those are the most important piece, plus Dias and Kell have had their 35s since before this post so just announcing that they've completed.

Now despite remembering most of that stuff, I still remembered to take a bunch of pictures so I'll toss those out too why not:


Sort of a cop out on those pics but I don't see anyone else offering to take them for me.

Definately seems a lot smaller, but I figured no one cared to see the four identical Ouryu loot pools, plus I was either not in the alliance for half of the stuff in the list or I wasn't there at all. Regardless there's a shitload of Usukane going around and Clyde definately levels way too fucking fast.

I honestly can't say I have anything on my mind to talk about right now, mostly just wanted to post this so people had another 5 minutes of something to read while they're bored, much like how I might occasionally get something good to read, though sometimes it happens every weekday.

SO I'MA TALK ABOUT SALVAGE

Mostly I've been going with the 6 man crew consisting of me, Lind, Serp, Dias, and two other people from LS that we'll pick up randomly. Since we've been doing Salvage forever and we know how to anticipate nearly anything we generally get a lot done in each run (all NMs in Arrapago, 4-5 NMs in Silver Sea, 2.5 Ramparts in Bhaflau, located Poroggos in Zhayolm, plus all the bosses). Occasionally we'll take more than 6 but I personally prefer fewer numbers myself. LS Salvage continues as well, though generally most of the LS is still somewhat unfamiliar with all the zones (except probably Arrapago). Hopefully I can get these maps finished soon and that should help the learning curve.

About the maps, I'm thinking if I get a different version of Photoshop I'll be able to convert the PNG into DDS without the colors being gay like in my previous post. Since I don't have any other version, Dawn is trying this for me to see if CS+ or CS2 or whatever the fuck they are will work. If they do she'll upload whichever version works on her FTP and I'll have the DAT files ready soon after. In the meantime I really should be working on my Zhayolm maps but I'm lazy as fuck and I'm really hoping I can get these DATs going first before I bother making a map that chances are no one will read outside of the game. Keider Prize still stands and it's looking like Dawn's gonna get it but we'll see. I really fucking hate computers though.

I declare this an acceptable post and I'm too excited about this two-handed weapon update dealie to care right now about writing. Oh yeah and Megs if you're reading this check your PMs on the site if you haven't already.

END TRANSMISSION

Having trouble turning images into a .dds file without having some of the colors messed up slightly. Here's the original: 
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y137/stevie_jay/arrapago1.png

And here's what happens when I make it into a .dds:
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y137/stevie_jay/arrapagocrappy.png

Here's what the .dds looks like in-game:
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y137/stevie_jay/mapattempt.png

using Photoshop 7 and this plugin: 
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/photoshop_dds_plugins.htm

anyone who solves the riddle of the slightly off coloring gets a free Keider prize; alternatively one could also take all the PNG versions of these maps and turn them into DDS for me and likewise obtain a free Keider prize (find the maps at http://keider.livejournal.com/6478.html)




^ -- posted all this in Valor private section but no dice, probably gonna have to ask around to get the solution but I figure I might as well try here too, also the Keider prize is totally sweet so tell all your Photoshop clubhouse friends to help me out

Been working on my Salvage maps again, mostly revising the stuff I already made (Bhaflau and Arrapago) and adding some new maps as well. Changes since last time:

- Added Arrapago 6th and 7th
- Added Silver Sea 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th
- Rewrote some of the note lines (most notably Rampart notes)
- Changed some of the colors to be less confusing
- Changed NMs (or Rampart-related mobs in Bhaflau) to a larger icon to stand out more
- Added Armoury Crates to all zones
- Removed Cards from Archaic mob drops
- Updated cell changes from the Salvage patch
- Other crap probably


Stuff I still have to do:

- All of Zhayolm (lazy because of Poroggos)
- 6th Floor Qiqirn Treasure Hunters in Arrapago (conditions are unclear)
- Demonic Pugil cells in Arrapago (not listed anywhere for some reason)


I'll be working on turning these into .DATs for in-game use tonight and I'll have those uploaded. Wiggs will be hosting these .DATs on Killing Ifrit after I've finished them entirely (means all NMs and cells accounted for in all zones) and I'll be hosting them here as well. Posting the images for now since people might actually want to look at them, plus I want feedback on them (actual criticism, not just "LOOKIN' GOOD KEI"), so please please please post any comments you have on them here because I love feedback.