Bluebirds and Red Herrings

So, a session of Patrick's D+D game tonight. A little research, a little trading, a little bandit-killing, and a bit of gift economy. Never look it in the mouth!

( game summary )

Eh...

Eh. I think I'm going to quit EQ2, since it's been a month since I played it and I feel more inclined to pick up Guild Wars or WoW and try it out than continue in EQ2, and even more inclined to play some of the single player games I've been accumulating.

I just couldn't reliably find groups doing anything interesting, and soloing was too tedious (because of all the corpse runs) after the combat changes, although to tell the truth it was getting there before the combat changes too.

Now if I can remember my station name and password, I can stop paying for it. c.c

Headphone headache

When I got my I-pod, it came with these horrible little ear-buds. They had styrofoam covers you could put on them that made them too large to fit in my ears and quickly got lost anyway, and without them they were hard and irritating and made my ears bleed, just like the glasses I don't wear would if I did. Except inside, instead of outside, since they were rubbing against the inside parts instead of hanging off like glasses do.

So I switched to the ancient sony headphones that came with my old walkman. Those worked well for a long time, but eventually wore out -- the wire or connector or something got a bit wonky, and they started cutting in and out as I walked.

So I replaced them with a cheapo pair of headphones of similar design, that were exactly what I wanted -- normal ordinary over-the-head headphones that rested against the outside of my ears. They cost $2.99. They only lasted about 3 months before breaking, though, in the same way as the sony ones had -- the wire or something wore out and they started malfunctioning.

Anyway, they suddenly got really bad this morning, and I was desperate to replace them... but most places I thought were likely to sell headphones were closed, and I ended up going to downtown Bellevue to the CompUSA there. They had a whole rack of headphones...

...and exactly one pair that didn't (a) stick in your ears like the ipod earbuds, (b) hang off your ears like glasses, or (c) have huge poofy sound-dampeners. The price was $20, but I was kind of desperate, and they had a lifetime warrantee, so I figured I'd send them back for replacement when they inevitably broke.

Opening them up and trying them out, though, I discovered what the extra money had bought -- the ear-pads swivel, there's a crazy blue elastic strip that makes sure the over-the-head ridge sticks up half an inch from my scalp, looking really stupid under my hat, and there's a volume control halfway down the wire. That last is pretty useful, since changing the volume on an iPod isn't convenient at all (since it needs to be locked to avoid random button pushing while in my pocket). I could live with the others.

But they also squeeze tightly against the sides of my head something fierce! It's not comfortable at all, and there doesn't seem to be any way to adjust it. Ugh. x.x