Welcome to Tempest's Eye!

So... where to begin? I suppose you're all fairly curious about what I'm doing here... and who you can strangle to get Spleafnet up faster so that you get your info back.

Before you ask, no, I don't have any idea when Spleafnet will be back up. I don't even know the whole story behind their downtime, though mostly what is coming across is that they're incompetent and unable to live up to their claims of 99% uptime (more like 40% uptime for the past month).

I'm fairly confident that I won't lose any data. Fairly. Even if I do, the majority of important info is backed up anyway, so don't worry about it.

However, I know that you need your info NOW and can't wait a single minute for it, much less an unspecified number of days. So, what I've done is taken the most commonly used data, the level list, gear list, and quest list, and posted them on here. They're under the 'Guide Info' tag, and rather bare-bones, but they'll do in a pinch. I don't ever intend to move a large quantity of guide info here; it's just in case of a downtime like the current one.

Note that some of the quest level requirements are uncertain; my backup was older than I thought on those. I'll put them back in once Spleafnet is up.

Of course, if I'm not using this site for storing guide info, it does bring to mind the question of 'what exactly am I doing with it?'

I'm planning to use this as my blog, in essence. I was never happy with Spleafnet's blog - it felt clunky and hard to use, I had to manually code the comments feature myself, and archiving was a complete pain. So I'm just moving it offsite, to here. This way, you've got a backup source of data in case of Spleafnet being down, and I'm still able to post without depending on Spleafnet not being in 'scheduled' maintenance.

And, of course, since this site is hosted by Google, on the absurdly low chance it ever goes down, you're going to have a lot more to worry about.

Anyway... as for the site itself, I'm still experimenting with the layout, although you'll likely notice a similarity to the way my Webs site was laid out. At least, if you were around back then (you're like, seriously OLD). I don't have any past experience with blogspot, but it seems to run fairly well, and it certainly has a lot of customization options.

For one thing, the comments system will work a lot better than it did on Spleafnet, and it no longer requires an awkward account system. Not to mention that it actually has an RSS feed - that should be handy for those of you (like myself) who use RSS for practically everything. And there's some sort of 'follow' feature if you have a google account or something like that. I have no clue how that works.

I'll keep experimenting with the site and features in general as time goes by, so we'll see what I screw up can find.

As for content itself, I'm not planning on changing much from what I normally run. I do plan to be a little less on the no-advertsing rules, though. Not that I intend to start advertising other sites, but I may throw some links around when it helps support the purpose of my entry.

I'll also try and be a bit more regular in my updating schedule; I'll aim for a minimum of one entry per week; two would probably be ideal. We'll have to see what happens.

I was just planning this as an introductory post, so I'm not actually going to cover much content today. Although there certainly has been a lot going on, what with staff changes, W-H beginning to run ads (again), the usual pack drama/changes, Band's fascist hat going MIA, and the advertising board being used for art (I'll probably cover that another time).

I do want to take the time to mention Band's thread on Firsts. I was going to do an entry about it myself, but it'd be kinda redundant now. Band has all the major points anyway. It's unfortunate the thread ended up getting locked, but it's still a good read.

And, as demonstrated by the last few posts on there, allow me to make a reminder to the general community: you will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, manage to be a bigger asshole than Band. You can't do it. It won't happen. Don't even try.

Also, I was the first custom to have nail polish. >.>

I might actually be the only custom with nail polish, come to think of it. I haven't seen any others... I'll explain how I ended up with nail polish on my custom... sometime. It's a long story that I don't think I've ever (fully) explained.

I hope that serves of a suitable example of the idioticness (I declare that a word!) of firsts. Thank you, and goodnight. Watch out for that rogue hat.