Happy (Lunar) New Years to those of you out there who celebrate it. 2010 is the year of the Tiger and like the title says, so far so good.

I got to visit family and friends, collected some Red Envelopes, visited a temple, and bought one of those scratch off lottery tickets to test my luck. Won ten bucks! Looks like I got Lady Luck on my side this year.

Happy New Years everyone!

I’d like to thank all the readers out there who have stopped by to browse through my nonsense. Thanks to all of those who have stuck around, and continue to do so. Thanks for putting up with my ramblings, and my many “disappearances”.

Thanks to BRK for introducing me to blogs- BigRedKitty was the reason why I started blogging. Also thanks to him introducing my blog, and at the same time, giving me my first reading audience- and some long time readers.

As a Mage, reading his Hunter blog was still very entertaining, and it was really sad to see him stop. His personal blog is still as entertaining, and as funny as ever. It’s the same old BRK, just with less WoW.

Ooooh, mountains!

It has been a long and bumpy ride, but a fun one! Here’s to more years to come- keep on reading, and I’ll continue to keep on blogging.

Borderlands had me hooked at first. It was like Fallout 3 mixed with Diablo 2. A first-person shooter shoot with RPG elements, added with a loot hunting, dungeon crawling addiction. And it has online multiplayer too!

Normally I don’t play too many first-person shooters, but if you add RPG elements to it, I’m game. Too bad another game totally got in the way of my Borderlands playtime. Lvl 21 Siren LFG Rust Commons. PST!

Dragon Age: Origin was the game that made me forget about any games that I’ve been playing. I’ve pretty much completely stopped playing anything else once I created my first character for this game.

I’ve been asked many times about what kind of game DAO is, and haven’t gotten a good description of the game is. The best I’ve come up with is that it is a single-player mode for 4-man dungeons in WoW- with a story.

I should be back to posting more regularly soon- maybe after Thanksgiving, so those of you who have emailed me with a few questions, expect something coming up.

Till then… back to keeping the Blight away from Fereldin!

This was my home for the last 2 weeks

I came back just in time to enjoy the Fourth of July weekend, and now its going to be tough to get out of vacation mode, and back into normal mode.

Now I’m back in Philly, and still not fully unpacked yet. I’m currently using my suitcase as an extra closet right now, and my computer chair as an extra clothes rack. I’m too lazy right now to put away my stuff. I missed my computer! I missed the internet too! I have a lot of Anime, Manga, and Gaming to catch up on.

I heard it rained like 75% of the time here while I was away (suckers!), but right now I’m kinda wishing it would start raining again. I’ve had enough Sun to last me the rest of the summer already.

Hopefully I’ll be back on track with the site, and start posting regularly again.

There have been many many times where at the end of the day, I would have some “post worthy” content, but I would stare over at my computer for a couple minutes and be like, “eehhhhh… I’ll do it tomorrow”. This pretty much happened daily for the past 2 weeks.

Sorry folks, I didn’t just get bit by the lazy bug, I got swarmed by a whole hive of them.

I did get a few things done in the real world during the past 2 weeks though. Renewing my passport was one of them. The process of passport renewal was a huge pain in the ass.

• Get 2 mug shot pictures taken in a certain size
• Fill out these 3 forms
• Pay a hundred dollars worth of renewal fees
• Bring 10 points worth of identification, old passport: 5 points, driver’s license: 3 points, apparently winking at the worker and slipping her a 10 dollar bill does NOT count as a 2 points identification, but is instead a federal offense. Who knew?
• Do a back-flip through a hoop of fire

Getting my passport picture done was actually the biggest problem I ran into. Apparently all the photo machines of all the CVS and RiteAids in the Philadelphia have a young female worker who doesn’t know how to work the machine, so they all just tell me that the machines are broke.

So instead of paying like 6 bucks for my pictures, I had to go to some local photo studio and play 20 something bucks. Bastards.

Anyways, I got my new passport now, and in a week and a half, I will be gone for another 2 weeks. Me and my sisters decided for the upcoming Father’s Day, what better gift for pops than a gift the whole family can enjoy. Going on a boat!

So hopefully in about 2 weeks, I’ll be out on the big blue watery road.

The Honest Scrap Award has been bestowed upon me last week, and I am honored to accept this award. It is about time someone noticed my artistic and creative talents, and Gnomer from Armaggedon’s Coming was the one to notice it, and he is very much real… I think… anyways, I thank you for giving me this award.

I would also like to thank Fear.Win for nominating me for the award as well. Sorry I didn’t catch it sooner!

So this award is another one of those Meme thingies, which means one less post for me to think about! Gotta love ‘em! Of course, there is always a set of rules and regulations that come with it to follow.

The Rules

1. When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it, including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to the said person so everyone knows she/he is real.
2. Choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have seven friends. Show the seven random victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog. Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon.
3. List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself. Then pass it on!

For someone who is as talented as me in the artistic, creative, and design department, it will only seem right if I chose seven other bloggers who are as talented as me, if not more talented. I know what you are thinking. Who can possibly draw something that is better than these gems?

Yea, these are tough to beat, and even with my years of experience with MS Paint, there are much I have yet to learn with this professional painting tool. Yet, I have found at least seven others who have surpassed even me! Not only are some of them Masters of MS Paint, but some manage to master tools which are even more powerful than MS Paint (gasp!!).

The 7 Awesome Blogs

Temerity Jane

Everybody knows that TJ is awesome. She can post about everyday life, and still finds a way to make me laugh out loud. But the reason why TJ made the list, is her post on sleeping positions. Here is a sample of her work:

You can really see the MS Paint Mastery in her artwork. Look at the emotion shown on Brinkley the golden retriever. Priceless.

Out of Mana

No meme is complete without either me linking to Megan or the other way around. This one is no exception. I will go out on a limb here and even say that Meg is the Queen of MS Paint. She can manipulate ordinary images, slap on some text, and make it extremely funny. For example:

Here she takes a perfectly normal image, and manage to make it pertain to Warcraft AND make it hilarious! That is a very powerful ability she holds.

Pugnacious Priest

The Pugnacious Priest is talented designer, and she does it without MS Paint!! Using a combination of the WoW ModelViewer, and a more powerful editing tool, she has been creating very nice banners. You can take a gander at her works HERE.

Not only are they great, but she is also willing to make you one if you are looking for a new banner for your blog/guild/forum. So if you are looking for one, stop on by her site!

Musings from an Angry Bansidhe

Bansidhe is another talented designer, and you may recognize some of her works in other Warcraft blogs. Not only does she do banners, but she also does individual signatures for people to use in forums and such. You can see some of her artworks HERE.

She has been busy with real life lately so I don’t know if she is still taking requests, but if you would like to try, you can do so HERE.

Aspect of the Hare

Pike is a very artistic individual, and another non-MS Paint user. She even uses tools like pencil and paper (prounouced: pen-suh and pey-per). Supposedly they are primitive tools NOT used with a computer! /gasp!

You can see more of her works HERE. As you can see, it is possible to draw characters in non-Stick Figure form, and they are drawn very good. Makes me want to start drawing again.

Slash Hug (/hug)

Aurik landed on my list because I really like the design of his blog, but what really caught my attention was his Love is in the Air <3 post. Not only was it Aesthetically pleasing, it was very helpful. That’s not all, he is also another artist with mastery with a pencil and paper. Not only did his artwork meet my approval, Blizzard seems to like it too!

This work of art won Blizzard’s Valentine Contest! Very good indeed. You can also see more of his artwork HERE. Some very good stuff in there.

Resto4LIFE

Last but not least is Phaelia, and she has one of the best blog designs in my opinion. The colors, the icons, the images, all go together so well, and gives the blog a nice welcoming feel to it. Not only does she do a great job designing her website, she does an awesome job designing T-Shirts!

You can see all the T-Shirt designs HERE, and even purchase some for yourself, or as a gift for someone else! It is sad to see Resto4LIFE close down, it really is an awesome awesome website.

Whew… that took awhile. Now let’s see the next step…

10 Honest Things about Me

1. My first MMO is Final Fantasy XI, and my character was a Ninja Black Mage TaruTaru. Farming mobs was so easy when you can cast Blind on your target, and cast Utsusemi: Ni on yourself. I miss that game.
2. In WoW terms, that would be equivalent of a Gnome Mage with the ability to pop Mirror Image and Evasion. When the name Hachiroku, was taken on my server, I ended up making the Human Female instead of a Gnome.
3. In Portal, I did not hesitate at all when I was asked to incinerate my Companion Cube. In fact, I was told by GLaDOS, that I have set the record for time taken to incinerate the Companion Cube.
4. I did however, hesitated to incinerate the last core sphere that belonged to GLaDOS. It was also disheartening whenever I disabled a sentry turret. I was very sad when I beat the game. The cake is a lie.
5. I am a big Star Wars fan. I even still receive gifts in Star Wars form, from my family as presents for my birthday and holidays. I received all the Star Wars Happy Meal toys (minus Chewie in the AT-ST) from my little sister last Christmas. I’m very easy to shop for.
6. Because I’m a big Star Wars fan, I have something implanted in my head which prevents me from watching anything Star Trek, even though I would probably absolutely like it. I really do want to watch Star Trek, and the new movie coming out makes me want to watch it even more, but I don’t know where to start. Any Trekkies want to point me in the right direction?
7. I am extremely lazy, and enjoy sleeping. A LOT. I always try to get the doctor’s recommended 8 hour of sleep minimum. If I have to be up at 6am, I’ll sleep at 10pm. If I don’t sleep til 4am on Saturday, don’t bother waking me up til 12pm Sunday.
8. If I have to though, I have the power to stay up for days without sleep. If I need to get something done, I’ll stay up all night to get it done. I once stayed up for over 72 hours without sleep. Then I slept for a whole day afterward.
9. My favorite fish to eat is not Tuna (gasp!) but is Salmon. I enjoy Salmon in both cooked and sushi form. I do like Tuna, I just like Salmon more. Mmmm… I want sushi now.
10. One of my goals as a child was to construct my own Death Star, and take out the Sun. Scratch that, it is STILL my goal. Don’t laugh… I may let you come on my Death Star before I blow up the Sun.

So the premise of this blogtag is to go into your image folder, open up the 6th folder, and post your 6th image. Then tag 6 other blogs. Just yesterday, at the recommendation of my friend, I just started reading this Manga called 666 Satan, I kid you not. Okay, coincidence? Maybe. I open up my blog’s image folder, open up the 6th folder, and click on the 6th image.

Are you kidding me? It’s like she KNEW what the image was going to be. This image is part of my Hpwnwork Assignment post on Arena assignments. Who gave out this assignment? Yep, Megs. I hear she’s been seen disguised as a Holy Paladin lately. Don’t be fooled. She’s still a Warlock at heart.

Okay maybe I’m just a bit paranoid. I blame it on the movie, “The Number 23“, starring Jim Carey. Yea I thought the movie was pretty bad, but it makes you think…

So I took a look into my WoW Screenshot folder also (like many bloggers also have done for this tag), opened 6th folder, and looked at the 6th image. Maybe I am just being paranoid… right?

Oh yea, time to tag 6 other bloggers. Tag, you’re it!

• Banana Shoulders
• Tank Like a Girl!
• Leafshine
• Elune’s Guidance
• Too Many Annas
• /hug

December went by super fast for me, and left me little to no free time due to the holidays. That was less time for WoW, other games, and of course the blog. Still you can see the number of visitors increasing back again to what it was before the launch of Wrath of the Lich King. Now I’m pretty much playing catch-up on a few blog post that I had lined up but didn’t finish yet.

BRK remains as our number one source of traffic and we love him for that. We also got fellow Mage blogger Larisa of The Pink Pigtail Inn along with the evil Warlock Megan of Out of Mana bringing in some more traffic. Thanks!

A lot of the traffic to the site came from the searches for the Higher Learning Achievement this time. Looks like a lot of people really wanted that cool pet! I also see “Mage Glyph” getting a lot of searches yet I haven’t made a post on it yet. Maybe one will be up in the near future.

The Higher Learning Guide and the Mage Spell Hit Guide were a big hit, and I’m glad to see so many people benefiting from them. I only wished more people would comment though… C’mon peoples! Don’t be shy!

There has been a lack of posts lately, as well as a decline in readers, and the reason why is: The Wrath of the Lich King. Everyone is playing more WoW now, and have less and less time to visit blogs. I know I have a few blogs to catch up on, and my feed reader has been accumulating a ton of posts. I should be back on track… “as soon as I finish this heroic”.

Our top referrer for the month of November is everyone’s favorite Hunter Blog: BigRedKitty. Big thanks to BRK and everyone else who have linked to me.

Here are the search terms for the month of November. More searches for Soul Eater, and more for WotLK Mage stuff. I swear I’ll get on that soon. “As soon as I finish this heroic…”

My Mage Talents, Spell Rotations, and Quest Rewards posts have gotten a lot of views lately since the release of The Wrath of the Lich King. I should have an updated Talent Tree post in the near future.

Spicytunas broke 45,000 page views for the month of October. The amount of readers are steadily increasing, and there was a big jump in page views, thanks mostly to the release of the newest World of Warcraft patch, The Echoes of Doom.

Thanks again to everyone for continuing to visit the site. Maybe the site can hit 50,000 page views next month? I shall set that as my end goal for the end of the year.

Here is a look at the top referrers to the site for last month. My top referrer is Zereissen from Of Light and Fury. It is also nice to see that I have been linked from the forums of WoWHead and MMO-Champion.

Top search terms for October are listed here. Soul Eater continues to be a big search term for the site. Sorry there hasn’t been any episode updates lately. Hopefully soon that will start up again. The rest of the search terms are made up of Mage and Wrath of the Lich King terms.

The Wrath posts continue to be the most popular posts overall. The Mage Glyph post was the most popular one. I am also glad to see that my Spell Rotation posts were a big hit. My Upcoming Anime posts have also been seeing a lot of action lately, which reminds me that I still haven’t done a Fall write-up yet, and Winter is quickly approaching. So I’ll have those up soon too hopefully.