Ayarane Project

Part 1 of Blastoise’s gear came today (mobo, CPU, RAM, SSD and PSU) arrived today… and there was something extra in there: RAM for Dinah! Amazingly, it’s far easier (as in, doesn’t stub up my hands so much) to upgrade RAM on a MacBook than it is on a Windows laptop. Go ninja go ninja go~

Dinah now packs 4GB, the limit of what she can handle. How much more awesome that makes her remains to be seen, but for what it’s worth, said RAM was super-cheap. Really, it costs me more to order my pizza on raid nights. :P

Next up is Blastoise’s case. Yes, this sexy-ass thing. I don’t say this often about, well, anything, but I would totally hit that. All the more fitting that Blastoise gets to wear it. It’s practically his Maximillian. >:D It just left the Arizona warehouse this morning, and odds are it will probably hit tomorrow. That just leaves his video card and then I can make with the building. :3 Let’s just hope the video card doesn’t take too long to get here, or else Yggdrasil will have to step in for Thursday’s raid– as I saw on Sunday, old man Iggy can hold his weight, but he sometimes has a senior moment in which his framerate just goes to crap for a few minutes. (It IS, however, hilarious to imagine Iggy borrowing Blastoise’s helmet and spear to fight in his place. XD)

Now, something for the builders among us and/or who buy into this computers-as-characters: How does it register for you when you do a rebuild or a large-scale upgrade? To make it easier, let’s phrase this in RPG terms:

Is it like FF4, when Cecil becomes a paladin? Basically, a level reset but with better stats and stat growth. (I suppose Disgaea’s transmigration system falls under this, too.)

Or is it more like FF1, where you keep your levels but you get a huge stat infusion and improved stat growth henceforth?

I would think the latter is more plausible if you reuse many parts from the previous body, but the former would apply if you don’t reuse anything (or only use, like, one or two things).

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Games. I has them. After seeing Skyrim spammed all over the internets and podcast streams, it was my brother who finally sold me on it when he brought the PS3 version over for Thanksgiving. I caved and looted the PC version, slapping it on Yggdrasil first (but I imagine it will look ten billion kinds of sexy on Blastoise). In a drastic change from my usual practice for RPGs with build-your-own-avatars, I rolled Hynderia (who made her first appearance in my character pile as a Draenei Warrior in WoW and was intended to stand in for Hikaru as the latter would have been impossible to adapt for WoW). Females represent, dood! I mean, all the gameplay I’ve seen has been one ginormous sausage party save for the scantily-clad NPC ally chick, let’s get some armored ladies in here. >:D

I also finally popped in Disgaea 4. And, uh… you know you’re in for a boatload of win if the first thing you hear is Troy Baker (as Valvatorez, who veers closer to the Ghaleon end of the scale rather than Snow) joygasming over a sardine. XD
The “HD” sprites are made of awesome, too, though with my crappy glasses I can’t tell all that much. (Yeah, that’s how badly I need a new pair.) As usual, my generics are clones of Across/RT doods where possible. :D

Add me on the PSN (Ayarane) if you want to laugh at my tiny Trophy connection or something… if your username isn’t something immediately recognizable, just make sure you indicate who you are or you get ignored as a random creeper.

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On a more frivolous final note… I don’t have a title/prefix to use for Blastoise’s next form. Maybe I’ll just go with a version number. This is his 4th body, so…

Hello November. Yeah, it’s time to rebuild Blastoise!

But… I’m going to delay it until right after Thanksgiving, because OMG BLACK FRIDAY/CYBER MONDAY sales and such. The sum of the parts I need is about $1200 right now (a little higher than what I would like, and the inclusion of a new case is mostly what pushed the total above $1000), so I figure if I wait until the holiday sales kick in, that plus the inevitable releases of the latest minor iteration of parts should (theoretically) take the edge off. At worst? I’ll have piled up a little more rewards points to generate Amazon eCerts. :P

In other news: while I did mostly space out for Halloween (mainly because I was doing that Super Mario World-themed pic for NSFW), I did get a big bag of Reese’s PB Pumpkins. :9 Thus I am not candy-less!

I’m also nearing completion on my “.hack//REPLAY” YouTube project. Long ago I was the first on YouTube to capture the Phase boss battles from the original .hack games in any capacity, and it seems I’ll be the first to capture a (95%+ unedited) full playthrough that ISN’T a) chopped up into 10-minute blocks and b) of questionable video quality. Holy crap I love my capture box and it was totally worth the wait and additional cables to get it working properly. :D
Am I doing a similar series for G.U.? I dunno. Putting aside that it’d be 50% me nerdraging at “Tinkerbell” Atoli… well, for one thing, I’ve been putting off playing Disgaea 4 so I could finish capturing/uploading REPLAY, so if I do a REPLAY version of G.U. it probably won’t be for awhile.

Ramen: Considering Blastoise’s imminent rebuild, November may be split Lazrigees Academy/Avatar month. Dinah never got an armor upgrade even though it’ll have been a year since she went MacBook. >_>;

Because you think that, after looting a MacBook and an iPhone, I’ve completely turned to the Dark Apple side, right? Hell no. With desktop machines, it’s build or GTFO! Much as I whine about those damn front panel wires and my hatred of Intel motherboards, I like building way too much to give that up.

I’ve picked out most of his new parts– pretty much everything except the video card. Leaving off a separate sound card because onboard doesn’t suck so much anymore. It looks to be a bit of a splurge (about $870 in parts before the video card), but… dude, this is Blastoise, the flagship of Altima Network and my box of awesome. He’s worth it. >:D

CPU: Intel Core i5-2500 ($210)
Mobo: Asus P8Z68-V Pro ($195)
– Mmmm, USB 3.0 and a crapload of USB ports… and I get to keep my Firewire… *Homer drool*
RAM: Corsair Vengeance Blue 16GB ($105)
Video: ???
HDD:
– System: Crucial 128GB SSD ($192)
– Secondary: WD Caviar Black 1TB SATA ($70)
Optical: LG Super Multi Blue ($0, Reused from previous body)
PSU: Corsair Enthusiast TX750M ($110)

Ah… the video card. This would be a no-brainer, except… remember that Blastoise is running dual monitors. Even though games are bound to his primary rather than stretched across both (which would be weird and fugly), doesn’t his card have to split the payload between both, or have I been duped by nerd crazytalk all this time? >_>;
Though most of the time my gaming is WoW/City of Heroes, I have been tip-toeing into, you know, “modern” games that would prefer I have something better than a mid-range GPU, so BIGGER IS BETTER LOLZ and such. This would also explain why I’m going to shove 16GB of RAM in there right off the bat. (Man, remember way back when 1GB was a lot?)

I said before that I would really like to reuse my case, but… I don’t see it happening. Eyeballing the motherboard, it looks to be taller than the one Blastoise is packing. I’ll crack him open to check before I order up the parts, but odds are I’ll have to get a bigger case. Booo!