girliegeek

Remember in Harry Potter how Hermione was an ambassador for SPEW (Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare)? Well I sort of feel like I need to do the same thing for those loveable little murlocs. Murlocs get alot of grief, I find, simply because they don’t speak English, are slimey, and walk with a hunch. But is that really a reason to dislike an entire race? It’s racism I tell you!!

Murlocs are very social creatures and make their homes in clustered villages made up of lots of little huts. You’ll never find one alone so if you encounter a murloc, you are sure to be greeted by 5 of it’s friends as well. Having some alone time with a murloc is almost impossible so it’s better just not to try.

It is my assumption that we attribute the murlocs’ lack of intelligence to the language that they speak. Nerglish is near impossible to learn and has a rather unpleasant sound to it. As of yet, I am unsure if anyone has even come close to a translation of the language but I sincerely doubt that a full Nerglish-English dictionary would even be possible to make.

We can gain alot from the murlocs if we try to understand them. Murlocs are very skilled artisans, creating intricate stone idols and various other carvings in wood and coral and even the teeth and bones of undersea creatures. It is unlikely that you’ll encounter many of these treasures because the murlocs don’t drop them often and you’ll be hunting for hours to find anything of the sort. However they would be more than willing to give shells, seaweed or fish to anyone who would like it or not.

Now I’d like to pay tribute to a few of the more famous murlocs that we all know and love. I’m sure you’ve been lucky enough to have encountered them in your travels through Azeroth at one point or another.

Mmmrrrggglll - Level 9 chief of the Grimscale tribe on the coast of Sunsail Anchorage.

Murgurgula - Level 11on Azuremyst Isle.

Slark - Level 15 Rare in Westfall.

Cookie - Level 20 Elite the ship’s cook aboard Edwin VanCleef’s ship in the Deadmines.

Gelihast - Level 26 Elite boss in Blackfathom Deeps.

Burgle Eye - Level 38 Rare in Dustwallow Marsh.

So there you have it in a nutshell. They’re not that bad are they? See, Slark here is even kind of cute if you look past the rows of razor sharp teeth and slime coating.

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these If you’d like to participate, please visit the Monday Melee page at Fracas’ blog.

1. The Magnificent: Name someone you absolutely adore, and tell us why.

I adore my sister. She’s little, cute … well she looks like me basically. But I really adore her because she’s funny, smart and supportive. What more could you ask for in a little sister?

2. The Muddy: Tell us something about life you just don’t “get”.

I don’t get why some people truly believe that they are better than others. Why can’t we just settle for different? I like different. It’s ok to be different. It doesn’t mean I’m better than you just because our interests differ. I find that there are many of the mindset that because they like to do trendy or similar such things that they are better than those who prefer to march to their own beat.

3. The Magnetic: Name something or someone good (or bad) you’re drawn to and you just can’t help it. Tell us if you want to change this or not.

Haha I think it’s safe to say I have a bit of an addiction to video games. I just can’t seem to stay away! I think it’s because I get to play as someone else and get to step away from being me for a while.

4. The Mainstay: Who or what is something you just can’t live without? Why?

I couldn’t live without my laptop. It’s my connection to my family and friends at home and it’s how I am able to be creative by blogging and find an escape in games.

5. The Masquerade: Tell us something about yourself we wouldn’t already know.

I know how to knit. Didn’t see that one coming did you? I’ve totally made scarves … not good scarves … but scarves!

6. The Mettle: Tell us about a time you showed courage in yourself, or tell us what you wish you had the courage to do.

I had the courage to leave home even though no one else wanted me to. Yeah, they punished me for it. But it’s my life and I followed my heart.

This graph from GraphJam suggests that you probably didn’t!! Liars

Graph by: Nathania Johnson

John Chow is in a slump. His earnings for April are the lowest he’s seen all year so far. Wanna know how much he made in April? Or course you do. $29,569.05. Yup, you read that right. And this is a slump?! God I would love to have that slump! Go to his Blog Income Report - April 2008 so see a breakdown of all the numbers.

Would you like to know what sets John Chow apart from the rest of us? His mindset. That’s right. He wants something, believes he can make it happen, and gets it done. That’s the difference.

Now, I don’t blog purely because I want to make a profit. I blog because I like to write and I like the communication in the blogging community. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to make some sort of profit from my site. And so far, I haven’t made very much. The odd click from Adsense is all I often get and that won’t even be enough to pay my hosting fees. Despite that, I am constantly looking for ways to improve my blog for any readers out there, as well as learning how to become a more effective writer and blogger.

I faced a major set back a few days ago when I accidentally deleted my entire blog’s contents. Oops! However, it has provided me with a good opportunity to start fresh and build my blog up again. I find it a little funny because it also came right around the time of the PageRank updates which took me from a PR0 to a PR4!! I am VERY excited about being ranked a 4 out of 10 by the Google gods and I do hope that I’ll be able to live up to the expectations.

You might also want to check out John Chow’s post about his recommended money making tools. It’s a real asset to anyone looking to take that step into blogging for money.

I participated in a massive meme/link exchange months back and now seems like as good a time as any to post the updated list. I get soooo many links from participating in this so if you’re not in on it already, I highly suggest you get a move on! Here are the rules, I’ve broken the list down into a few sections since there are so many links.

Click on the Big Bang Links tab at the top of the page to get to all the links.

Happy linking!!

Finally, after what seems like an eternity, it’s finally here!! My boyfriend (who I refer to as L33tz0r here) works at GAME so I wasn’t worried about not getting the game. But on Monday night, we went and lined up at his shop to pick up our copy of the game. We were sooooo excited!!

I think I’m in love. It looks awesome. The music is awesome. The characters are awesome. I was a fan of all of the other GTA games so it comes as no surprise to me that I really like this one too. Of course, like any game, it doesn’t come without it’s share of faults. It froze once which I easily corrected by pressing the PS button then canceling the option to quit the game and going back into it. Everything has been smooth sailing since then and it hasn’t frozen a second time.

On thing I’m not a fan of is how the cars seem to almost float around. They are really light and jump all over the place I am finding. Well, I found that when I first started playing. It’s one of those things that you just get used to and learn how to drive so that it doesn’t happen. On reflection, maybe it was just me driving too fast haha!!

Other than that, I can’t find any other faults as of yet. I am really, really enjoying it! Although I would enjoy it alot more if I had my own copy since only one of us can play the game at a time which is annoying. But buy a second copy would solve the problem since we have 1 PS3 upstairs and an XBox 360 and PS3 downstairs. Yes … we are geeks.

A few months back, my boyfriend and I decided to sell our WoW accounts because the game became much more of a pain and much less of a game like it was supposed to be. It took me a good week to find a site that I felt was legitimate but we finally settled on Toonstorm which turns out to be a great choice!

If you are thinking of selling your account, I highly recommend using this site. It does take a while to input all of your gear and details, however they try to make it as easy as possible. After using a form to list all gear and stats, you go into a live chat with a representative who gets some more details from you such as PayPal email and the like. THEN after that, someone from Toonstorm actually calls you on the phone to verify that you want to sell and that the PayPal address is correct.

Once everything was finished, L33tz0r and I were still a little skeptical about whether or not they were going to pay us. I checked my PayPal account in a few days and the money was there! With the money, we were able to buy new copies of WoW and start completely fresh. We had tried just not logging onto our level 70 characters for a while but were always tempted back. Now that we sold our accounts, we were truly able to start over. Instead of playing 5 hours a day, we play maybe 1 hour a day and only a few times a week. The game is fun again!! I think I’d like to raid again, but I’m going to take my time getting there and I won’t get so immersed in it.

If you’d like the chance to win some cash this Saturday, pop over to Zero and Up and follow the contest instructions. It’s easy I swear!! Zero and Up have some really great, useful posts for anyone who is interested in blogging and attempting to profit from it. I highly recommend subscribing to their site! And not just for the chance to win some money!!

Since all of my posts were wiped out I suppose I’m going to need to re-write this post if I want to win the contest at Fuelmyblog … and I DO want to win!! The contest ends the day after my birthday and I don’t have an Mp3 player ^^ … see I deserve it!!

Anyway, I signed up for Tsheets and was immediately impressed at how simple it is to use and how useful it could be. The company I work for uses Excel to track employee timekeeping … I can just imagine how much quicker and easier using Tsheets would make things for us! It keeps time literally at the push of a button and since it’s online there are no annoying databases and things to keep updating. I would highly recommend using this service to any business that tracks the in and out time of it’s employees. Hell, there are even options to track holiday and sick time too! The guys at Tsheets really did think of everything!

As part of the contest, Matt and Brandon at Tsheets want to know what I do during the first 5 minutes of my working day … I hope my boss isn’t reading this!!

Minute 1 - Arrive in the office, probably 10 minutes late and sputter some excuse about the bus.

Minute 2 - Make myself a cup of tea, making sure to leave just enough milk in the jug so that it’s onlf half of what the next person needs. Snicker to myself.

Minute 3 - Plop down at my desk, boot up my stupid old computer. File my nails while I wait. Every day I vary what I do while waiting so I don’t get bored. Sometimes it’s gossiping, slurping my tea loudly, or doing the rubber pencil trick.

Minute 4 - Immediately log into Facebook to see what my drunken, idiot friends did the night before while I had to go to bed early to get up for work. Keep my work email open so that I can tab over to it if my boss walks by.

Minute 5 - Prepare myself to do as little work as possible in the next hour by opening useless work documents such as spreadsheets and database files to tab when the boss comes. Check celebrity gossip with Perez Hilton, my blog stats, and the local news to see how many people were shot last night here in Manchester.

So yeah. I deleted my entire blog contents by accident. I know, I know. You can come over and spank me later. Right now I’m desperately trying to remember where things were and what I had posted about that needs to be here.

Hope you understand!! Check back in a few hours and I’ll have some content up for you. Unfortunately I don’t think I’ll be able to get anything back so I’ll be basically starting from scratch :’(