The multi-monitor stand I got was the wrong one.  Its arms were designed for up to nineteen-inch monitors, and my monitors are all twenty-fours.  I mentioned this on Friday’s post after the poetry.  I sent a message to the company I purchased it from on Sunday (I am a professional procrastinator, something I’ll tell you about later), but did not receive a reply back.  The base appears to be the same as the larger model which supports up to twenty-six inch monitors.  Yesterday I got paid, so I went ahead and ordered this larger unit.  I then sent a second message to the company I ordered the original from asking for an RMA to return the one I could not use.  For that message I got a quick reply with an RMA number.  I guess the folks supplying that stuff can’t handle complicated queries like what I sent on Sunday.  Anyway, the new stand should be here early next week and I’ll be shipping the original back tomorrow hopefully.

Yesterday was, as far as I know, my last day of work as a contractor for my current employer.  Saturday will be my first day as a direct employee of said employer.  I got an email early in the week saying my on-boarding process was complete.  The original offer letter stated tomorrow is Day One, which would be true if I worked on Fridays.  So Saturday will be my first official day of work as a direct employee.  Benefits, good, pay cut, bad, but such is the way of things.

In the virtual world, I have entered a new place.  I was chatting with EverQuest friends about the different games out there and specifically about graphics.  EverQuest has the competition beat hands down for content, but the graphics for the game is, well, eight or nine years old.  Its biggest competition, World of Warcraft, has beautiful graphics.  So beautiful that there are an uncountable number of WoW clones using the same kind of graphics and a very similar User Interface.  EQ has updated its graphics exactly once, and that was before I started playing in 2003.  One of the most fervent wishes of many EQ players is that Sony (who makes / runs EQ) would offer a higher quality, eye-candy graphics option.  It would require they create a new graphics engine for the game and re-do an immense amount of artwork, but it would draw a lot of people to the aging game which, in my opinion, should be Sony’s flagship product and treated much better than it is.

Anyway, in the process of this discussion one of my friends mentioned a game called Perfect World.  Being the curious sort, I downloaded it and gave it a shot.  It has a strong anime feel to it both in the appearance of the characters and the way they act.  Much like many (most?) anime martial artists, they can do a jumping thing which borders on flying.  They can jump and then jump again (yes, that’s right, the second jump is launched in mid-air).  They can do aerial somersaults.  If they do a double jump, they can do two somersaults before reaching the ground.  Doing a “somersault” on the ground is a martial arts-style flip.  The jumping is helpful but I haven’t found a use for the flip yet, although it is cool to watch.

As I was mostly interested in the visual appeal of the game, I created a female cat-girl kind of thing.  The race is called “Untamed” and the class is “Venomancer.”  This is a strong pet class in the game.  Venomancers can have up to ten pets, although they can only have one out at once.  They also cast spells; so far I have been using a direct damage (“nuke”) spell a lot.

The game is not terribly different from other WoW clones I have tried.  In spite of this, it’s managed to hold my attention for most of a week now.  My little venomancer is now level 11.  She would be level 12, but I made a boo-boo yesterday:  One aspect of the game is characters get a little help which the game calls a genie.  To me, they are faeries, but it’s a Japanese game so I’ll go with genie.  These can do various things; so far mine can nuke things I tell it to on command once per combat or twice if the combat goes on long enough for her to recover her magic power.  I discovered yesterday one way to level up genies was to “infuse” them with experience, which I thought was coming from an item.  However, the item wasn’t actually being used for the infusion, the experience going into the genie was coming from my own experience points, so I went from nearly-12 to barely-11.  Ugh.

In EverQuest, meanwhile, I have shifted my focus a little.  I was working on tasks and, as such, managed to finish all the tasks in one zone.  Now I have shifted to just grinding experience for awhile.  I really want to get Boom and Dan to level 90 and get them working on AA points again before I start into the quests again.  They’ll be stronger and their mercs stronger with them, making the tasks a little easier to do.  I have high hopes Boom will hit level 90 in the next week or two; Dan will take a little longer but I am hoping I’ll get him there by the end of the month anyway.  I think it’s a long shot, but I am going to try.

That’s all I have for this week.  See you tomorrow.