2011 was a pretty good year overall, I would say. I can’t really remember much from the first half of the year, if I’m being perfectly honest, nothing too exciting to report there other than losing some weight. Yay.

However! The last half was pretty great: new job, new doll (in celebration of new job), news that favorite band (Garbage) are recording a new album, saw Hanson twice even if one of the shows was meh, and I’m sure there is something I’m forgetting.

In terms of goals for this year, I’d like to finish the weight lose goal I started last year. Not that much further to go, but we all know how lazy I am. Speaking of being lazy, I would like to finish that stupid book I started writing God knows how long ago. That’d be nice!

I’m saving up for a new apartment which puts my England vacation savings on a bit of a hold. But I look forward to picking out dishes and a couch. Exciting times. I haven’t picked which area of the city I want to live in as of yet, although I would prefer to be near the light rail. Not having to drive to work would be awesome. Not that my commute is all that long now.

Anyway, this year I want to read more books, go to some concerts, build up my nest egg and other boring stuff. Oh, I also want to go to Disneyland. That’s not so boring!

I love these two girls. But I haven’t spent much of any time with them in uh, years really. For instance, I had forgotten that Sachiko only refers to Megan by her nickname “Zen”. And since Megan’s piece was in first-person I can’t really say what she would refer to herself as, in her head at least. Aloud she calls herself “Zen” too.

Anyway, the point is I want to expand on this story of theirs I’ve created but I am so out of practice! I am not sure where to even start the, I don’t know, novella form of the story. I think it’d make most since to start from near where the first short story did, I also am thinking first-person might be the best option.

I’m fairly certain I’ve forced both shorts onto everyone who is currently reading this blog post.

The thing that is so horrible about the pre-sale is that there is NO demo, NO live site anywhere that shows this new VB, and you are basically paying for vaporware. Some argue given the software’s history you are purchasing on faith, except the vast majority of the team that made VB what it is are now gone. One former member’s twitter post about watching a train wreck doesn’t really build one’s confidence in the future of the company.

Basically Internet Brands wants me to spend $180 (or more) every couple of years in order to have access to the most stable vBulletin version. IP.Board costs $150 plus renewals, however unlike VB they have this history of honoring previous license agreements. So even if they changed ala VB if you bought your board before the change nothing will happen to your agreement with the company. I find this so ironic because one of the primary reasons I choose VB over IPB was because I felt Jelsoft (which for all intents and purposes is no more) was more of an honorable company than IPB.

To be frank IPB didn’t handle their going from a free script to paid solution very well. Not very well at all, in fact. And yet it seems as this years draws on VB keeps sending new customers their way. Indeed, nowadays it seems Internet Brands is the best thing to have happened to IPB.

But converting isn’t easy. As an end user I am far more familiar with VB than any other board software except maybe phpBB albeit the phpBB 2 series. Not to mention I have no real idea how hard or easy it would be to skin IPB, although I can’t see it being any more of a pain in the ass than the current VB. I’d have to make a new style for version four anyway.

This whole situation is so disappointing. Thank god I renewed VB right when I did because this announcement came out not even a full week later. So if I feel inclined I can download VB 4, but then when next October rolls around I’d have to cough up the $180 to continue to receive updates. I suppose that means I have a year to decide/get used to the idea of converting. Even so, I was semi-looking forward to the new VB. They had some nifty improvements planned, just not nifty enough to justify the increased cost. And a lot of the features they were pimping weren’t even things I cared for, like SEO links and removing valuable info from the HTML title of threads (like the Page 1, Page 2 stuff).

It is becoming more clear as the days wear on that Internet Brands doesn’t give two sticks about their customers.

ETA: Someone has broken down the new pricing plan.

I just want to sew some damn pillows! *shakes fist*

Sometimes I think of making the Westlands only, well, the Westlands, but the benefit of doing it as a module and just adding the civs onto the base ones outweighs the desire for “realism”. I do plan to eventually add custom (well, custom as in not from Civ ) music for the leaders, but since I listen to my iPod while playing I don’t really think about that that often. What I really need to do is focus on finishing up the civilopedia and all the language the leaders use.

Talk to the hand

I added two new leaders to the Westlands mod for Cairhien and Whitecloak nation (haha). I made them a little more aggressive than the other leaders on purpose, and the result is I am in war a lot.

However, I really would like to add another civ to the mix, but making the Aiel seems a bit difficult: They don’t use swords OR horses, and the latter would remove a heck of a lot of units. Not that I use any of them, really, not a huge horse fan, but the point still stands. It also makes me think of making a non-modular version which would remove all non-WOT civs. That of course would be more “realistic” but also a major pain in the ass. I originally went with the modular version to avoid having to deal with those huge XML files.

The other issue is that there just aren’t that many nations to do. Or, I should say, that many city names known to us. Making up names for WOT crap isn’t easy, and I struggle to just figure out what to name their unique units because of course they couldn’t just call the stupid things “canons” and “guns” oh no we have to get poetic and call them “dragons”. But having every nation call their UU the same thing is boring, so, I have to get poetic in turn.

Anyway, the Seanchan will be the next civ I add. All the city names will have to be made up except for maybe two, and that’s assuming we know the capital name (is it Seanchan? I have no clue), otherwise, I can only think of one city name off hand. And I’m not going to go look up more info right now because I’m not making it right now!

Two weeks later at work, my ear starts to hurt. It felt like the inner ear was swelling up, although it wasn’t nearly as bad as the past Sunday. Even so, I wanted to kill my ear.

Mother was of no help, she didn’t even have any old wives tales to give me for a cure. She did suggest it might be swimmers ear from getting water in my ear from the shower.

So far, ear has not been in pain for awhile. I hope this time it lasts. I do think my mother’s wild guess about swimmers ear might have actually been correct.

For Christmas I got my mother a compact computer desk, because she really needed one. We got it almost all finished except we were missing these two thin bars that go on the back. So small, but those two things kept the desk from being shaky so…that following Saturday we came by, picked it up, and went back to Target with it. Oh yes, I got it at Target.

Now we have an exchanged one, which I had to pay .20 for since this store had higher tax than the one I bought it from (hardy har har) and we put it together. We are almost done when one of the wheels snaps off. I asked in desperation “do you really need wheels?” The answer was silence, so, we returned that one too.

At this point I wanted nothing to do with Target furniture. Off to Ikea!

Ikea furniture can be a bitch to put together, but it had all the pieces, and the wheels didn’t snap off. Maybe they have better factories in China.

I am pretty happy right now (headache aside) for reasons only Kate and a few others can appreciate:

YoSD Lin