Ragnarok Online Still Hates Me

Blog No. 202: Ragnarok Online Still Hates Me

Tuesday, my free day between two school days of quizzes. So I wake up early and try and log on to Ragnarok Online so that I could level up a ton before Piper and Difuentez got back from camping. However, when I tried to log on, I get an error message back, "Failed to connect to server!"

Great... The world is out to get me.

So I looked online. Apparently, an answer was that I had a faulty connection. So I unplugged and replugged everything involving internet cables, and I even tried to diagnose the problem through McAfee to try and see if they banned Ragnarok for security issues. After all of that work, what do I get?

"Failed to connect to server!"

So I thought maybe, just maybe, they have way too many people online for me to sign in, so I shall try back in an hour! When I returned at 9, I still got that error message. I returned at 10, 11, noon, 1, 1:30, 3, 5, 5:45, 6:15, 7, 7:30, 9, 10:30, 11:15, and midnight, during which time I occupied myself with guitar strumming, Brawlin, chores, cheese quesadillas, and Gilmore Girl episodes. Each time I'd logged on, I still got the same error message.

"Failed to connect to server!" as if mocking me for this constant persistence.

I told Piper of the hoops and hurdles I went through, voicing very clearly that RO is an internet demon. Piper replied, "Well they close down the game to do maitenance for a few hours."

Why thank you for telling me! I feel so in the loop! You know, out of all the FAQ articles I've torn through, there was no mention of shutting down due to maitenance. >_<

To which I verbally replied, "They do maitenance from 8 AM to midnight?"

Silence...

At least I'm not crazy! XD

Then I texted JT my dilemma, to which he replies, also, "Silly boy, they do maitenance on Tuesdays!"

"The entire day? I've tried logging on every hour on the hour I've been up today!"

"Hmmm... Maybe Ragnarok does hate you!"

So much for that ounce of hope. DX

My Civic Duties

Blog No. 201: "Jury Duty"

I woke up to a cute little baby knocking at my door! XP

Audrey knocked on the door while holding little Lennox to say that they're going to IHOP with my mom, grandfather, and some relatives from Maine. Johnny is my grandfather's son, which is how my mom and sister say it. I don't really get family trees... I was also supposed to be on stand by for Jury Duty, so I also had to pack a nice buttoned shirt and some pants in my over-the-shoulder bag.

Anyways, John, Audrey, Lennox, and I met up with mom, my grandfather, Johnny, and Terri, (Johnny's wife), at IHOP. It was the first time I met Johnny and Terri, I mean I've heard about them through my grandfather but that was about it. They were pretty cool though. They did a lot of things just by whim. Apparently, on Sunday, they had went to Yosemite National Park and did some hiking. They also talked about how they were going to go to Niagra Falls once they leave here. Johnny, too, had been part of the marines, which is why they seemed traveled and what not.

After our conversations at IHOP and a stuffed french toast plate with strawberries, all of us, minus John, Audrey, and the baby, went to Target to get some stuff. Johnny and Terri needed luggage for their souvenirs and junk, while mom and I needed around the house things, like laundry baskets and fans. Once we sat down at the Starbucks inside Target, I made a call to the Superior Court of California to see if my group number was called in. After going through the pushing of buttons, the automated system told me, "Groups [numbers I can't remember] have finished their civic duty. No call backs are necessary. Your jury duty has been fulfilled."

Cool! Didn't have to wait in line! XP

Mom took me home, seeing as my option was either to wait with her at the nail shop and get a ride to school or ask King to come over for a bit and ride with him to class. I feel as though I made the right choice. XP

So Taka, King, and I made our usual phone charade:

• I call King, ask what they were doing, to which I get an unsure answer and hang up.
• Taka calls me, asks what am I doing, to which I replied "I'm up for anything."
• Taka passes the phone to King without any notice, which leaves me to ask, again, to come over, to which I get a more definite "we'll be there in fifteen minutes."

I love how we have a system now. XP

So Taka and King came over and we played Brawl for the greater part of the day. Then, King drove Taka home, then drove us to school for a quiz! XP

FAP

Blog No. 200: Freakin Awesome Podcast

Get your minds out of the gutter!... Would you guys get that reference?...

... Well, acronym the title, (FAP), then think about what noise masturbation makes...

Yeah... Well that describes the somewhat vulgarity of the "Freakin Awesome Podcast"... What this podcast is about is the original 365MMIX crew, John and his friends and relatives on Peksquared.com, basically giving their views on new movies, music, trailers, news, and graphic novels. It's usually 3-5 people sitting around our dining room table talking into an audio recorder. In my opinion, the first one is basically an experimental one, so you'll hear loads of giggling and edited cuts.

John asked me to be part of their 6th podcast mainly because I both read and saw Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, whereas the other podcasters have not.

So there we were, John, Sear, John's twin, Anthony, and I surrounding the microphone. To be honest, I've never been quite this nervous around my grandmother's old breakfast nook since the olden holiday parties. It explains why you never really hear my voice other than me being prompted to speak. But the guys were pretty cool. I think the nerves were really just the first time podcast jitters. They really do give an informative look on some movies and what not. They not only look at the mainstream, but at the independent scene as well. You'll also hear some publicity about goings on in Sacramento, which is pretty cool. XP

So yeah... I'll give you some information about that as soon as I figure it out! XD

EDIT: It should be available, FREE, on iTunes. Go to Podcasts in the Power Search option on the right hand side. Type in "Freakin Awesome Podcast" in the title. There you'll find the 6 or 7 podcasts already up. Of course, John's art design for the podcast really illustrates the point I was trying to make in the beginning...

On number 6, it even has my name on it! WOOT! I'm on iTunes! XP

I would be more excited, but I listened to my voice and I thought, THAT is not what I thought my voice sounded like... Does my voice in real life sound pixie-ish to you? 0 _0

Draw With Me

Blog No. 199: Saturday, 7/18

Another bored day on the computer, so I went onto DeviantArt and found this:

Totally sad yet totally creepy at the same time... XP

Ink to Paper

Blog No. 198: Friday, 6/17

Note the title. Today was the day I started writing in my checkerboard journal. What you may ask? I haven't the foggiest clue... Well I do, but it involves a jumbled mess in my brain that I'd need to sort out on paper and to even begin explaining it at this stage of the game would be a doomed effort. So I'm just going to leave that part of the blog as a cliff hanger...

Indeed.

I also went on Ragnarok Online to finish leveling up in the training camp. I learned how to equip stuff and whatnot, as well as get some bows and maces, which I couldn't equip.

After I reached level 10, I was warped to this town. I called Piper and told me the directions of where to meet up with her and JT in that world. So I followed her directions to Prontera. From there, we went to a specific spot on the map where we met up with Chaz and JT's character. The reason I say JT's "character" is because he REALLY gets into the whole "role-playing" of the game. This "character" was a high priest, and he acted as such.

He started giving us directions on how to become a ninja, then I stopped him and told him that I wanted to be a tae-kwon fighter instead. To that, he said, "Oh, interesting choice my dear boy. That's usually a hard character to start out with!" In my head I was thinking, well I'm still not sure what I'm doing, let alone why I am doing this in the first place. But I figured I just go along with it.

So Piper escorted me to my destination across 8 screens of forest, dessert, and forest. From there, I talked to this computer character that told me to level up once more in order to become a taekwon fighter. So Piper and I walked just outside of the town, where after a few minutes of squabbling, I died. I was basically transported back to the save point in the southern region of Prontera, back at the start... So frustrating... Then I just trained for about an hour and a half until I leveled up once more, that was when Piper escorted me back to that village, where I became a taekwon fighter.

Then, Piper had me follow her back to where we first encountered the dessert. There we met up with JT's other character who was a merchant. He gave me a few hundred bird beaks which he had me give this computer character, who exchanged these bills for levels. This character seemed a lot more sarcastic than his previous character...

After I leveled up and gave back the remaining bird beaks, JT's character got up and said his goodbye. We both replied, "Have fun!" a quirk Piper got from me.

JT's other character waved us off and muttered, "I remember when I was that young...," as he walked off screen...

JT seems very dedicated to his role-playing. XP

Ragnarok Online Hates Me

Blog No. 197: Thursday, 6/16

JT and Piper are trying to get me into this platforming game called Ragnarok Online. For those not familiar with it, here's a basic synopsis of it in the form of a picture:

Anyways, I said, "Sure, sounds like fun!" only after I had them beg and plead for me to play. XP

So, when I got home Wednesday night, I thought I should start the downloading the programs and stuff. I went through the steps one by one; downloading the game, downloading the Valkyrie server (the free one), and open all the Ragnarok programs to patch.

That's when I hit my first problem.

I double clicked on the little Valkyrie icon to patch its stuff, but then, as it started up, an error message popped up saying "Failed to patch [Random combination of numbers and letters]."

I tried looking online to see what was the problem and the Ragnarok FAQ basically said that it was a problem in the download, that the program didn't download everything correctly. So I uninstalled then reinstalled Valkyrie. Then I opened it up once more for it to patch, then the same error message arised...

So I called it a night and figured I call Piper in the morning.

When I called Piper, she was all, "Dude, the Valkyrie icon doesn't need to patch!" -->Even though she, JT, and Ragnarok Online had said, "Open up EVERYTHING and let it patch before gameplay." But she was right! The game started up and everything went alright...

Until the game didn't want to log me in with my password... Frustrations...

I didn't understand it. It's the same password I used for my Meebo and KoL accounts! I must have typed in my password over fifty dozen times, in every variation of the password I could think of multiple times. I typed in my login and password to the online Kafra Shop over the internet and that worked! Then I tried looking at my account online and tried to change my password. Thing was, it required my old password to change it to a new one and, although I logged on to see my account with that same password, the password changer still did not recognize it. So I could log on to change my account, but I couldn't log on to change my password or to actually play the game...

After some more frustrated yelling at inanimate objects, I clicked on the link for forgotten passwords, which I only found after filtering through the FAQ, and it sent me an email. As it turns out, the password I typed in would have worked if I forgot to type in the last character of it. The password I thought I typed in only differed by not having that last character...

So frustrating...

After a few deep calming breaths, I started doing the training camp thing in the beginning of the game. After awhile, I kinda got bored. The only way to level up was to attack cute little creatures by clicking on the monster... again and again...

And again...

So I logged off and decided to look at the RO website once more to look for what class I wanted to be. Right now, I'm just a novice, but after novice I get to choose from a few different jobs, like mage, acolyte, swordsman, theif, monk, and archer. After a bit of searching, I thought that the ninja job was pretty cool.

Then I headed to bed. XP