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Thanks. I have now earned £2.60.

Yes! YES! YES!

I've sold 4 cards!

Still haven't heard anything from my Zippi store however.

So. I haven't been here for eons but oh well. Life happened.
I passed my exams. I'm going to be an RMT!

My lava bears shirt arrived

Congratulations Merry and Kirky!

And Elomin... I appear to have been had. I will hang my head in shame.

I've started my new job and am doing well (doing IT, typesetting, copyediting and some phone work for a children's book publisher called Caboodle Books), moved into a new place without major incident and haven't freaked out once in the entire process!

My new place is a long walk and short train journey away from work, which means I'm even able to get myself to exercise every weekday, because its exercise I just have to take, which is the most consistently doable type.

This is probably more suited to the Video Games part of the forum, but there wasn't a thread of win on page 1, so it's going here instead.

I FINALLY EARNED MY FIRST HAT IN TF2!

*commencing happy dance*

YUSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

Ahem.

Sorry. What I meant to say is that I just finished writing the book I started back in February (not counting planning and outlining). This is the third book I've finished, and while there's still lots of editing, proofreading, formatting, and all that good stuff left, I fully intend to make make it the second one I'll release to the public. What really boggles my mind about this one is that I wrote the first ~47,000 words over the course of first 96 days. In these last 8, I wrote ~25,000 more. There were a lot of factors involved that pushed me and made me work some crazy long hours, but I honestly didn't know I had it in me to do that. It feels great.

And now I get to start my summer holiday on Saturday, which couldn't have come at a better time. As glad I as I am to have worked so hard this last week, I'm completely drained and exhausted and sore and just need to shut off my brain for a while.

But still... I can't believe I just did that.

My Fiancé got a new job! On his own, within the space of a month! This one also provides benefits, assuming he makes it past the probation period. I'm just so damn happy for him!

May it be one he enjoys, and can do well!

Today I helped a coworker with an assignment and as a result, I left work an hour later than I was supposed to. She promised me to buy me chocolate as a thank you for my troubles. Sometimes it pays out to be super nice to people.

So, on Tuesday I woke up and my headphones had fallen all of 2inches off my bed and managed to break. So, I went and grabbed a new pair. Last year when my headphones broke, on the advice of Heufy from DB chat, I got a pair of Steelseries Siberia V2's. On Tuesday, I had the choice of dropping every cent I had on a pair of V3's, or testing lower priced, but unknown headphones. I tried a pair of $85 Logitec g340(I think that's the model number.) and some other random no name pair that were $70, both sounded like your usual poorly made tin cans attached by fishing line, so the V3's it was.

I've had 2 days to give them a bit of a stress test in the way only a music obsessed metal head can, and hooooooooooly crap. These things are freaking amazing. So, I liked the V2's, possibly the best headphones I'd ever had, but they had a problem of causing glasses to dig into your ears until the headband adjusted to my big ass head. They had an audio scroll wheel, which amazingly, wasn't the part of them that broke, since those things are about as durable as wet tissue paper. And finally, at max volume they would distort slightly, but that's a problem with damn near every pair of headphones. Every one of those problems has been fixed.
Audio even at max volume is crystal clear. The ear cups are extremely comfortable, and wearing sunglasses today, soft enough that they bend around the glasses rather than causing any added pressure. The scroll wheel is gone, it's now not even a 2 jack connection, just a single audio jack, the 3m extension cable that is included (I now have 6m of audio extension cable XD) have a single input that splits into an audio/mic jack at the opposite end, and the mic mute switch is now located on the outside of the left ear cup. Also, I don't know how, but it seems like the bass is running on an entirely different audio channel to everything else. It rises and falls like an expensive, high quality subwoofer, entirely independent of the rest of the audio, doesn't matter if it's old school Dire Straits, Megadeth or Kamelots latest album, all with different mixing and mastering. I never even knew it was possible to do that with headphones, I mean, if it is, why are subwoofers even a thing now, apparently you can do their job with a pair of headphones.
If SteelSeries keeps this up, by the time we hit V5 they'll be selling headphones for $110 that are the same quality as $1100 headphones. I am now officially a fanboy, and while I did have regrets initially (I kind of had to spend my entire food budget to buy these and had no clue what I was gonna do.) I don't now! (Also helps I scraped up enough to buy 5 nights worth of pasta, so that's not a factor anymore.)

TL;DR I strongly recommend anyone looking for extremely high quality headphones in the $100 range (In store, cheaper online but I'm not the sort of person that can go a week with no music waiting for a delivery, I mean, look at my username XD) look to SteelSeries Siberia line. The V3's are amazing right now, but I suspect if there's a V4 at some point they'll only be a strict upgrade.

Also in tangentially related news, Blind Guardian in 7.5 more days! Yes yes yes yes yes yes, I have been so lucky the last 3 years. Kamelot 2013, GHOST 2014 (I also missed Sabbath and TOOL due to health in 2014) and BG 2015. I mean, in the 5 years prior to that, I can think of Maiden, Alice Cooper and Dragonforce as the only bands coming here of any worth, and now we're averaging one of my top 5 bands per year?
Well, back to belting out Precious Jerusalem

The Crystal Maze is returning, so that's kinda cool?

I love buskers. The sun was in full bloom, so I ambled up the main street in the city centre. A jazz trio, then a solo slap-bassist, then an electric guitar & found object drummer rock duo, then a French folk accordian player. All of them really talented and really friendly. And to top it off at the end of the street was the pavement poet - this guy who has been using donations to travel around the country, writing his poetry in brightly-coloured chalk on the ground.

Guys, guys, guys, guys, GUYS! I'm off to go see Blind Guardian. (Well, to chill at the game store and talk shit with the owner/mate and anyone else there I know while I kill time till I head to the city.)

The first power metal band I ever heard. Hell, the first metal band other than Metallica and Iron Maiden I ever heard and loved. The reason I went on to find bands like Sonata Arctica and Avantasia and even Dragonforce and thus was born my love of power metal, to symphonic metal, to prog metal. 5 hours from now the doors open to see a band that's responsible for me finding all the music that's become so important and crucial in my life.
And, due to very slim budgeting this fortnight, and putting off getting a new phone to replace my horribly broken one, I have $155 to spend, if I can even manage to spend that all in one place.
WE MUST SERVE THE FIRE!

So. Let's start with the bad, since it's completely negligible in comparison. 5 hours or so of standing up constantly, all weight on my right leg/foot. Then, due to bad directions, walk down Swanston St directly past the Nightriders. Get on a train to Southern Cross. Walk around lost for an hour, go back to Southern Cross, no more trains left but info desk open still, ask for directions. "Swanston st, near Flinders station, you'll have to walk there." So, did that, in so much pain. End result? I just took my shoes and socks off, my right big toe nail is loose... I could easily pull it off right now if I was fucking psychotic, please heal well. Somehow, no blisters on my feet though... Stomach more or less behaved, thank god, doubling my meds for 2 days and 4 gastro stop and it still TRIED to be a pain. Some drunk bogan wog fuckheads out the front of 7/11 post show right as my songs changed so I got to hear them talking about me "Look at this fucking faggot." and people wonder why so many people get their heads kicked in in the city. Also missed the first half of The Ninth Wave. Dudes came out to us smokers "Guardian will be on in 15." K, go in 2 minutes later, half way through the ninth wave. Oh, and the cold. Shaking uncontrollably for at least 2 hours.

The amazing. EVERYTHING. Show opens, after ninth wave, Hansi has a chat with the crowd. Starts making jokes "I can see you're already sweating... I can smell it. We could have had a nice show, but you Melbourners don't want that." "We promised we wouldn't drink tonight" -BOOOOOOOOO- Que a couple more Amazing songs. And somewhere in there was the announcement this was the final show in Australia, ever. Well, Hansi has a short memory or the insanity of tonight changed that. A: Sold out house, shoulder to shoulder but not a safety risk, which was nice to see. Crowd was almost as insane as me! So, 4 songs in. Hansi has a surprise for us. Tonight is all being recorded, for a live DVD. Not only do I now have a seriously high quality Blind Guardian hoodie to keep me warm and remember tonight, I'll have a DVD! Crowd. Goes. NUTS. The set list went out the window, amazing songs everywhere, basically my "best of" playlist. 2.5 hours of Blind Guardian. And this crowd man, this crowd. Valhalla comes on. The outro lyrics are a repeating chorus of "Valhalla, Deliverance. Why've you forsaken me." about 10 times... Yeah, that was a bit too few for us. We decided to repeat it for a solid 5 minutes. They tried to play us out with guitar, keyboard, drums and it all failed. Hansi grabbed the mic at one point "OK, FIVE MORE!." holds his hands up to count down. Hits 0. "VALHALLA! DELIVERANCE! WHY'VE YOU FORSAKEN ME!" few minutes later, Hansi finally grabs the mic again, and joins in, then manages to stop it by drawing one out. Next song, Lord of the Rings. Lord of the Rings finishes, Hansi is turned side on to the crowd, Out of nowhere the chant arrises. "Valhalla, Deliverance! Why've you forsaken me." He just looks at us like "What the hell." 3 songs later, 3 breaks between songs that have errupted into spontaneous laughter and 2-5minute long chants of "Valhalla!" We're not doing it the 4th time. We can see the Acoustics, we know it's time. The Bards Song is coming. Everyone strums their guitars to check tuning, Marcus has a different idea. Strum once, "Duh duh duuuuuh, duh duh da da. WHY'VE YOU FORSAKEN ME! VALHALLA, DELIVERANCE!" Crowd that isn't chanting erupts into laughter, Hansi just turns and stares at Marcus who is grinning like a kid who got caught stealing a cookie. "Ok, no more guitar for Marcus." Marcus immediately hands guitar back to tech and stands up, crowd loses it again as he takes it back." Bards song is amazing, 90% sung by crowd. It finishes. "Melbourne, you're fucking insane. Next time we're here we'll just play Valhalla, it'll be quicker."

We got so much absolute amazement. We got multiple guarantees they're returning, despite any previous statements otherwise. We got laughs, we got crowd participation in so many ways. I got bruises all over my arms from leaning on the railing so hard, swollen hands from clapping so hard, nearly passed out yelling so loud and clapping so damn hard at "And the Story Ends." I should probably be in a hopstitle right now I've trashed my body that badly.

I got to see the band that started it all for me. The music that's meant so much to me, quite literally saved my life in times of my worst depression. All because one at 13 I stumbled upon this "Bards Song." and thought it'd be interesting. And from there on found a genre of music I adored, I explored in depth, and found more genres. All because of that one random song, by this one band. I got to see them play 2.5 hours of absolute amazement. Not a single "average" song, all the hits. My face hurts, I spent 2 solid hours of tonight smiling so hard the muscles in my face hurt to do it, and I'm still doing it now every few minutes. I don't just get a Hoodie to remember it by, like my Kamelot and GHOST shirts, I'm gonna get a DVD!

That's awesome man, glad you had such a good night, (and its great to see people so passionate about music).

A long time ago I also got to see the band that were the turning point for me with music (The Dillinger Escape Plan) - the band that really opened my eyes and pushed me to find the precise esoterica that was my musical tastes. Though it was many years ago, I still remember it clearly as one of the most astonishing moments of my life - though we didn't get them for two and a half hours, that's insane!

That is so awesome, the_lone_bard. I checked wikipedia and they are the band that made songs about The Wheel of Time that I really want to listen too (I want to have good speakers, not be tired, and be in the mood to fully appreciate it).

About the Vallhalla chanting, I found a video (I think from TVTropes under Audience Participation Song) a youtube video of the crowd chanting that for a full 5 minutes.

They played Wheel of Time. At some point in the future if it makes it onto the DVD you'll be able to listen to me and about 600 other people sing the chorus over the top of Hansi. They have so, so, so many songs based on things. You're lucky if 1/10 songs on a Guardian album isn't based on some book series. I do encourage you to get good speakers, BG is the sort of band that has 1 singer, yet 400 vocal tracks on each song. I can't imagine how that gets distorted through bad quality stuff.

And the chanting was just insane. Time gets kind of distorted (I checked my phone just before Mirror Mirror, because I knew they started at about 9:45, and the last nightrider ran at 4:30, and wanted to see if I had long to wait till the 6am busses started again.. It was 12:10.) but it seemed like forever, and then all the other times probably brought it up to about a half hour of chanting.

Went to a board game night at work with nobody I knew and had a lot of fun. Yay!

56 jars of jam down, 64 to go.

Edit: Darn, only had enough strawberries for 97 jars. But still made enough for my wedding guests.

Today I passed the last exam from a course I really hate (but had to finish anyway). One more step closer to getting that damned degree.

400 tracks, that's crazy awesome, the_lone_bard. In other awesome news I went 3-0 (won all 3 matches) in the Dragons-Dragons-Fate Magic the Gathering draft I did tonight with a blue/white prowess deck. I called it "Surprisingly Aggressive" as I attacked a lot; the 3 Elusive Spellfists I had really helped with that.

I'm uncapped! That feeling when your download speed is 700kb/s not 7kb/s after weeks of torture.