Is when she confirms her uberness

I know I said I was retired, but this was too much fun to not share....

About three months ago, the uber gf says "keep friday 7/31 clear".

At that time, (A) I was still raiding and (B) my guild was not raiding on fridays, so sure honey, I'll keep the night clear. What's it you've got in mind?

Nuttin'. Just keep the night clear. Its a surprise.

Ok.

Then a few weeks later, an envelope from TicketMaster gets magneted (*) to the fridge.

What'cha got in the envelope?

Nuttin'. Don't look in there. Its a surprise.

So week after agonizing week, every time I loot her fridge (no innuendo implied) I see this envelope flappin in my face.

The anticipation builds up. Quite a bit. So I get to thinking, and say to her....

You know, I could probably look through the browser history or google around and figure out what your little surprise is.

Probably. Don't tho. It's a surprise.

Grrrr. FINE! But you're killing me!

Good. That's my job.

A little more anticipation-filled time goes by.

My guild starts to raid on fridays, so I post my planned absence on the guild forums. Nothing's gonna keep me from finding out what this surprise is.

So the date gets closer and closer.

Then I have my big raid retirement a week before the surprise day.

And then on the day of 7/31, I have the worst day ever. Well, not ever, but it was a pretty shtty day.

When evening time comes and the uber gf gives me the GPS coords for the surprise destination, I'm in the worst mood ever. Well, not ever, but it was a pretty shtty mood.

AND I STILL DONT KNOW WHAT THIS FREAKIN SURPRISE IS YET!

So I drive, following that awful annoying voice of the chick on the GPS navigator, and we...fight isnt the word, because none of my anger was with her, but she was cool and let me vent and grumble and yell at the world and whoever I was bent out of shape with (boss, family, landlord, in no particular order).

I kinda cool off, but not really, but she says cool the whole time....

BECAUSE SHE KNOWS WHAT'S COMING IN FIVE MINUTES ONCE WE GET TO THOSE CURSED GPS COORDS!

So I find a parking spot, ready to just rip the damn envelope open and look at the tickets.

And then we turn the corner and I see a giant tent with this on it....


Symphony orchestra playing the songs from key video games throughout the history of gaming with a giant visual display of clips from the games up above the stage.

And we're sitting 2nd row, center.

I can't even describe how cool it was.

If you like Warcraft, which you probably do since you're reading this site, you likely know (A) the three theatrical trailers for the different WoW releases, (B) the song from the loading screen in WotLK.

The philharmonic orchestra plays a selection of the music (with matching video playing on the screen above them) from the trailers and other Blizzard-supplied clips, and they whip out a choir from a local college to do the vocals.

Like a kid in a candy shop.

Even games I never played were fun to listen to, the power of the full orchestra sitting 5 feet away from us, watching the games up on the screen, listening to the crowd go wild.

Some Highlights:
1) Fat kid from audience that they then stuff into a "gamer sized" (bullsht) medium tshirt so he can become a live piece in a game of space invaders.

2) Songs from Zelda. Nuff said.

3) Scrawny 13 year old kid playing guitar hero aerosmith on expert setting, acting like he is a total badass up on stage.

4) This Guy. Live. Fastest piano fingers I've ever seen. Blindfolded. Playing Super Mario Bros and Final Fantasy music.

5) Local jailbait dressed up as characters from Final Fantasy, Princess Peach, and some other random skimpily clad video game-inspired outfits. Oh, and some "dudes" dressed as Link from Zelda too.

6) There's a ton of other stuff, but since I'm retired from blogging (kinda) you'll just have to go read the website.

If Video Games Live comes through a city near you, I highly recommend you go, its a unique experience.

And if your gf can pull off a surprise as cool as this one, you might consider granting her a title like uber as well.



(*) Yes, I made it up. It means "temporarily affixed via magnet"

Amava.....out!

EDIT: minutes after I wrote this post, I went to my rss reader and saw Daxenos Open Letter to Amava, and died a little inside. Thx for the post, you made me smile big time. Ok, so the dying inside thing was a bit of an exaggeration.


Here's the long awaited "farewell" post. And I'll try to do it with my favorite wall o' text style (jump to the mushy emo stuff if you don't want to hear the full story)...


Starting this week, I've retired from raiding and WoW blogging. The blogging retirement has been informal for a while, so lets make it offical with this post.

And too bad there isn't a 401k or pension to cash in on, but I suppose the payout is with the most valuable of resources: time.

Why the change?

The change stems from three big factors, in no particular order:

1) The Hunter is just no longer fun in raids. None of the raid specs has a rotation that feels natural or intuititive. Ulduar is very pet unfriendly. The end result is a need to continuously stare at cooldowns for whatever priority shot is available next, and continuously micromanage my pet and hope my fellow raiders dont blow up any Mimiron mines and one-shot the little furry guy.

On relatively stationary fights (think Iron Council), my DPS output is excellent, so you know the potential for the class, my gear, and my skill level is there. However, on high mobility fights like Hodir or XT hardmode, its as if I didn't even bring my bow to the raid, autoshots barely ever fire and you can kiss your 4 piece tier 8 bonus goodbye because you're never going to stand still long enough to cast a steady shot. I tell ya, the second you find a cosy fire, the ceiling caves in and you have to cancel your steady shot mid-cast.

And then I wont even get into people who analyze DPS performance on Freya. In your raid, do you ever see DPS nuking her while she's still got massive HoT's rolling because there's still 4 waves of her minions left to go? Yeah, that data goes straight into the damage done reports, but gets instantly healed the moment the spell strikes. And lol at anybody who says "i'm activating my trinket". Sure, I believe you. I do. No really, we all believe you. But I digress, that's not a Hunter thing, but rather relates to #3 below.

Bottom line, none of the Hunters I raid with say they're having very much fun with the class lately.


2) The summer schedule is interfering with family time. Prior to the summer, my daughter would be in bed before raid invites, so I'd be able to properly tuck her in and have quality bedtime rituals that will hopefully give memories that will last her lifetime. With the summer's arrival, her schedule changed and she's awake later now, so I've had to miss some of this.

Prior to this schedule change, the biggest family impact was to my time with the uber gf. Amazingly, she's got the patience and caring to support me through 3 or now 4 nights of raiding per week for the last year and a half, which I'm truly thankful for. Hell, shes so awesome she even helps me farm saronite for the endless supply of arrows 4 raids per week burns through.

But now raiding is taking me away from all the people closest to me, and that is unacceptable.


3) My guild and I have diverged in our views of what makes a high performing team. What kind of communication, what kind of feedback, what kind of leadership, what kind of command presence during combat, what kind of coaching fixes under-performance, what kind of individuals should make up that team.

It'd be fun to write a scathing post chock full of drama. When I go back through my volumes of unpublished material, I find I often went that route, and its likely at the heart of why I stopped posting because I don't want to bad mouth anybody. Whether we agree or not is irrelevant, but how we conduct ourselves is.

I did my best to share my ideas on how a team should work via conversations on vent, text chat, guild forums, even one visit in-person with my guildmaster (Coincidentally had to make a business trip to the city where he lives. We had prime rib and beer and talked about So You Think You Can Dance. It was fun). Not everyone, but enough of the vocal players of the guild have views that are dramatically different from my own, enough so that we are no longer compatible on the same team.

So the best course of action is to remove myself from the situation before things become toxic for all the people involved.

How does it feel?

When you take the three items above, it is a pretty obvious decision to make: stop raiding.

You ever read or see Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Ring? You remember when Bilbo has to give THE ring over to Gandalf? And he has that moment of hesitation, where he knows what he needs to do, but there's something inside him trying to make him stop? And then he does it and drops the ring on the floor and walks away?

The feeling he expresses at that moment is the only way I can describe the sense of relief at sending the email to the GM saying I'm done raiding.

I'm sorry if it puts the team in a temporary bind as they look for players, since they've actually had to cancel a raid recently, and had to cut one back to just a few easy-mode optional bosses to finish a raid week that should have ended with General V, Yogg, and Hard Mode IC. But again, I digress.

The guild deservedly has a fantastic reputation on our server, and has a strong track record of success. Plus, the GM has a very public spot in the WoW community, so attracting players is not quite the challenge that a run-of-the-mill guild is faced with.

I hope to read at WoM about continuing success through the few remaining Ulduar hardmodes, the new Coliseum (soon), and what ever lies beyond. It remains a great team, so I expect nothing less.

So what now?

Stopping raiding and blogging is in no way a slow-down to my WoW action.

Still love the game, and quite frankly, removing the social constraints of locking in 3-4 nights per week actually makes me want to play the game more.

However, I'll be playing it in 100% casual mode.

EDIT: Funny that Daxenos wrote his Open Letter to me today, because I've actually been holding onto his ideal for enjoying the game at a casual pace and not letting that sense of urgency dominate the play time as it seems to always do. When it feels like I'm in a rush to get something done, I'll put it down and do something else, just on principle. Go go Tango lessons!


Gotta go AFK, no problem.

Want to go see an outdoor play at the little park across the street from my house that only runs on raid nights, no problem.

Uber gf wants a quick piece, no problem.

Want to watch So You Think You Can Dance on the actual night it airs so that you don't need to invoke a cone of silence of all media channels for the day or two following an episode lest some radio DJ spill the beans on who got voted out, no problem.

Uber gf wants a not-so-quick piece, no problem. Well, at least no schedule problem :-)

Here's what I suspect is in my WoW future:

1) Amiva the Insane: I've been working on the rep grinds for Insane in the Membrane achievement for about 6 weeks now. Projecting out the remaining requirements and my own schedule, I'm estimating I'll ding Amiva the Insane during the October Darkmoon Faire.

The real question is am I completely off my rocker and going to follow up with Moodyswinger the Insane? The jury is still out.

2) Alts: As part of The Insane, you need to pickpocket 1405 (yes, you read correctly, fourteen hundred and five) junkboxes. Only a Rogue can do it, so I levelled one up to 68. And wouldn't you know it, I actually had fun.

Why was it fun leveling this alt as opposed to some other toons in the past? Because I have no end-game goals for this girl. If she took a year to get to 68, I wouldn't have cared a whiff.

I'll probably end up with like 10 level 80 toons by the time I'm done with this game. Or maybe just 3.

3) Casual Raids: I might find myself in an off-night naxx raid here or there. Or a VoA or an OS. Who knows, after everybody out-gears Ulduar, maybe I'll go back in there for a night.

But nothing scheduled or repeating.

4) Gold: I'm nearing 50k, earned via a combination of gathering high level herbs and ores, daily questing, selling the looted stuff from close to 300 dire maul runs (part of The Insane), and also buy/craft/sell value-added manufacturing of crafted goods.

I've got a very loose goal of hitting 100k before I quit the game, but that just sort of happens along the way, so no pressure, which is nice.

5) Battlegrounds: I love healing BG's on my druid. She's maxed out on No-Arenas-Required pvp gear right now. When the new arena season starts and the next tier of pvp gear becomes available from BG's, I'll probably hit the queues again like a crazy man.

6) Healing Heroics: I healed a few VoA's. I didn't like it one bit. I healed a few heroics. Its kinda fun. My favorite thing is letting an aggro-hungry Mage die when he refuses to (A) assist the tank and (B) stop with the nukes if he's close to the tanks threat level. I think its up to the healers of the world to teach people proper threat management via stopping fixing stupid mistakes, and I'm doing my part, one Mage at a time.

7) Rep Grinds: I dunno, I just kinda like zoning out and grinding sometimes. Its relaxing. I recently did the Explorer's League one-and-only daily quest for the 137th time, dinging Exalted and putting me at 38 factions.

Next up will be Ravenholdt, but only after roughly 1300 more junkboxes pickpocketed, which will be 39 factions.

40 is the big one, with "the Exalted" title. If I continue down the Insane path, it'll be Shendralar that dings me that. However, I need to loot 40 more librams for that. Took me close to 300 Dire Maul runs to net those first 42 librams, so who knows how long this mutha will take.

I might take a quick diversion to do Cenarion Circle as my 40th, and the Guardian of Cenarius title that comes with it. I like multiple simultaneous achievement dings, so I'm leaning towards this one next.

After that, I'll start jumping into every Black Temple and Mt Hyjal raid I can find to get Asstongue Deathsworn and Sands of Time exalteds.

Then maybe I'll take a look at more old-world raid reps, which I really don't know a whole lot about. As long as I can solo stuff on my druid tank with my Hunter following, I can solo my way to most of these.

8) Fishing for Profit: I fish a lot. I've been providing the fish feasts to my guild since fish feasts were introduced to the game. Some guildies chip in some fish here or there, but most of it comes from my pole (ewww).

Well, its time to fish for me now. Stacks of the ingredients for fish feast go for close to 50g if you time your auction right.

And I kinda want a turtle mount.

I also want that damn sewer rat, but it's not very lucrative to fish in there.

Anything else on the video game front?

If anybody knows a good current Realtime Strategy Game (like Warcraft II, or C&C, or Dune 2 from back in the day), drop me a line. I've got some room in my schedule for another game :-)

Or if any of my readers (you know who you are) wants to play some Rock Band, we can probably make that happen.


 

That's all, folks!

So this is goodbye. /tear

Last night was my first raid I was sitting out from.

While lazily taking an alt through Blades Edge Mountains, I saw the game generated announcement in my chat window that some guild just dinged the Realm First Algalon kill.

If it happened even one day earlier, I'd have felt jealous or envious or some other less-than-constructive emotion. But last night?

It echoed my relief at being off that treadmill.


Over the past nearly 2 years of blogging and 1.5 years of raiding, I've met some fantastic people and had some outstanding times with TagTeam/Kishi Kaisei during TBC, and in WotLK with Conquest.


Thank you all for reading, commenting, playing, and coming along for the ride. The experience has been memorable.

More Insight on the Missing Rush

I've been doing lots of mental exploration lately about WoW and Raiding, and most specifically the missing rush of adrenaline that comes with progression kills.

The last BIG BIG Rush was Sarth+3, many many months ago.

Before that was a BIG Rush with Malygos.

And before that was a Rush when KT died in Naxx.

And then Ulduar was released. Fresh new content to push through. Should be pretty exciting, yes?

Well, it is exciting, but as I've shared in some other posts, it feels like its missing something. Many of the progression kills, even ones that required numerous wipes to master, just sort of happen and then you go loot the boss without so much as an elevated pulse.


There has been some good ones.

Our first Flame Leviathan kill, shortly after the servers came up on patch-day. I'd call that one pretty thrilling, in large part due to beating out the lag before all the majority of the server started raiding and crashing the instances rather than the epic feel of the event.

Mimiron was definitely a satisfying kill. Even the second kill evoked some dancing and fist-pumping celebration.

But what about all the others?

My most notable example: XT took us a few nights of learning attempts. Our progression kill was before they nerfed/relaxed his enrage timer, plus we weren't using the "bring him to one side, thus eliminating two of the four streams of incoming adds" strategy yet, so it was very challenging to master all the environmental factors plus keeping up with is enrage timer. No rush though, just loot like it was a farm raid.

And all the other progression kills? Similar. Wipe, learn, kill, put on Chef's Hat, take screen shot, loot, move on to next trash, notice you're still wearing the Chef's Hat, switch to DPS helm, prep for next boss. No rush.

So what is it?

I'm happy with our rate of progress on default-difficulty boss kills.

We're currently working on Yogg-Saron, having a pretty good handle on Phase 1 and had many good learning attempts on Phase 2.

We'll be onto Phase 3 and its insane DPS requirements soon enough, completing the full-clear of default difficulty.

Then it comes time for Hard Modes.

Which I think is the kicker. The thorn in the side of the adrenaline rush.

Yes, we killed the bosses. But did we really kill them?

Sure, our raiders are wearing the loot that only comes from a dead boss, so surely we killed them.

But it feels empty. I personally could care less about the loot. It is a necessary evil required for progress, but I'm here to bask in the glow of mastering the execution of complex encounters. I can mentally view each piece of gear our raid upgrades as one baby step towards being able to handle hard modes, but that only keeps the motivation for just so long.

Its tough to enjoy it if you know that when you come back for Hard Mode the fight that you just thought was a challenge will feel like a walk in the park.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

I'm happy with how Blizzard designed the dungeon. Algalon, the real final boss is only available after killing all the Hard Modes of the other bosses.

Its unclear to me whether that is during the same raid ID, or if you just need to have the achievements of each of the other hard modes to activate him.

Doesn't matter.

What matters is that they've provided ample motivation for guilds to keep pushing Hard Modes until they're mastered.

Sure we killed Sarth+3D. Several times. But we definitely never got that on farm status, and after a few kills, most people lost motivation to keep wiping for "just a vanity mount".

So we gave up before I'd say we mastered the encounter.

I hope that the alure of Algalon keeps the guild driving to complete the Hard Modes and then continue to improve until they're on farm status.

We may never achieve that goal.

It may be too hard for the caliber raiders we have including myself, it may be too hard for the caliber leaders we have, it may be too hard for the number of hours we raid per week, it may require decisions of raid composition and bench warming that are too hard for our team to make.

But being on the path towards excellence, dying trying to make it happen, never giving up (until the next dungeon in the rat race is released), means way more to me than farming some loot off of default difficulty knowing something greater is out there.

For The Alliance Quickies

Yesterday I dinged the For The Alliance achievement for killing all the Horde leaders.

So I share some quickies with you....

/trade LFM for the alliance - Logged in and saw the usual routine in /trade, some coconut is putting together a raid on Horde leaders. But I had a few hours to kill and my only real "goal" was to do some Jousting dailies and check the AH. Only one guildie on at the time and he was actually signed up to do it already, so I figured "what the hey".

Fountain Coins - Small aside. When you're in a raid group and cannot do any questing, fishing for coins is a not tooo unreasonable use of your time.

Staging Area - Meet up in Astranaar. Brings back old memories. When originally leveling, I had Amava hearthed to Astranaar for so much longer than would make actual sense. I was questing all over Azeroth, but would always hearth back to Astranaar and actually physically click on one of the beds upstairs to lay down before logging. Ah, the memories. Noob.

Yelling, Saying, and Emoting - One sure way (or rather, three sure ways) to ruin the element of surprise is to /y, /s, and /e (or any of the built-in emotes that don't require use of /e). Although the opposite faction might not be able to translate your words (kek), they will see the fact that you are nearby. Loose lips sink ships.

Don't Aggro The Guards - We assembled just outside the side gate to Orgrimmar with the instruction of "dont aggro the guards". I was fearing that this is when the PuG attempt would all start to unravel, before it even began. All it takes is one coconut to pull a guard and then hell breaks loose and we become a disorganized mob and fail. Kudos to the team for showing enough discipline to hold still and wait for instruction to commence the attack.

No Fuss - Not a whole lot to say, somewhat uneventful however lots of adrenaline. Most of the uncertainty was whether the PuG would collapse and we'd waste our time. Getting lost here and there added to the excitement.

The Route - Assemble outside Org. Kill Thrall. Port to Theramore and run to Thunderbluff. Brief moment of panic as half the raid got split up by taking wrong elevators. Kill Cow leader. Portal to Shatt and then portal to Isle of Quel Danas. Fly to Zul'Aman. Kill Blood Elf. Portal to Ironforge. Fly to Chillwind. Get lost trying to find sewer entrance. Get lost inside Undercity. Kill Undead boss. Hearth to Dalaran and check email.

Escorting a Friend - My friend was actually dualboxing the raid, playing his healer and /following his rogue. Traveler's Tundra Mammoth, FTW. Made transport of his toons so much easier.

War Bear - And I now have a Bear mount that I'll probably ride for a few days and then return to my Cobalt War Talbuk which remains my favorite mount. Something about the tall narrow shape and the hoof sound fx I like the best.

Better late than never - Some would say I was 6 months late dinging the achievement, and to them I would say "suck it".

The Number Nine - Nine honor kills. Yes. Nine (9). Only nine hk's in the process of killing all four Horde bosses. Talk about an organized resistance.

Leveling a pet and some RP

Its nice that we have a larger stable than during TBC for all our hunter pets. Even nicer to now have Call Stabled Pet capability to switch pets when you switch dual specs, if you so like.

I've been running Marksman for about 2 weeks now. I'm very much liking the rotation/priority. My only beef with it is that every so often, I'll end up with Chimera, Arcane, and Aimed all reaching the end of their cooldown at the same time. Means that, for instance, Aimed shot will sit for 2 GCD's during which it is ready to be fired but is lower priority and so sits. No big, but I like complaining.

Lots of forums and EJ's and Pikes say that a Wolf and the Furious Howl attack power buff is king among MM pets.

So I figure I'll leave Memphis the Raptor as my Survival pet, and go ahead and find me a wolf.

Finally, I get to raid with a dog!

And its time for some Role Play.

I can't just get any dog. No, for me, I need to go on a mission to rescue a pup from evil and give him a nice home and teach him things like "sit", "stay", and "sick balls". The kind of pup who lusts to tear the faces off of bosses during the day, and curl up on the couch with me and watch some American Idol at night.

So I set off to Mulgore. Seems those cows from Thunderbluff have been mistreating their animals and Amava is going to try to set things right.

Found the lowest level (5) Coyote puppy I could and offered him some cookies.

He was reluctant at first, but I eventually earned his trust.

And wouldnt you know it, badda bing badda boom, he's level 75. Man, these kids sure do grow up quick.

Now its time for a name.

Wanting to stick with the Native American vibe in Mulgore/Tauren lore, I went to look up various tribal translations of the name Coyote.

As it would turn out, none of them felt right when translated to Night Elf lingo.

However, a common theme in Native American legend and myths is the portrayal of the Coyote as the Trickster (aside: often depicted with disproportionately large junk, so big in fact that our little trickster sometimes wears a backpack to carry his mule. pure win) who is a master of deception, usually using his guile to get into somebody's pants (again, pure win).

And after spending a few hours to level him up to 80 grinding rhinos and elementals in Storm Peaks, the name stuck.

So lets all welcome Trickster the Coyote to the Stable. Tonight's his first raid, so we'll see how things go.

A New Idol

Do you mean your moody druid finally swapped out her last greenie, some silly mangle-enhancing quest reward loot that sits in the Idol slot?

Nope, I mean American Idol. All my friends in the guild make fun of me for taking wednesdays off of WoW to watch Idol, so as punishment, you all get to read about the finale here.

Here you go, some Idol Finale quickies:

1) When Fergie performs solo, I can't help but look for an Adam's Apple. No question she's hot, but it wouldn't surprise me for a second to discover twig and berries tucked around back.

2) WTF was with that Steve Martin banjo song? Me and the uber gf were debating about this one. She thinks its a serious song, I think its a parody about putting out on the first date hidden behind a fascade of seriousness. Either way, it was horrible. If you're going to bring Steve Martin, you better whip out some old school King Tut or something. Born in Arizona, moved to Babylon-a...

3) Norman Gentle, FTW. Outstanding delivery of the fake "what a surprise, I'm not prepared....HIT IT" routine. I'd totally go see him on an off-the-strip Vegas show or something. Then again, his schtick would probably get old after 15 minutes, but w/e, I loved him last night.

4) The uber gf called Keith Urban and Kris Allen's performance the Devil's Duet, because I mean really, staring into some dude's eyes while you're both singing about wanting to kiss a girl? All aboard the crazytrain, next stop, Broke Back Mt. I'm just sayin'.

5) From day one of the season, I was calling for Adam Lambert to bring some AC/DC. He's just able to do that kind of screaming/singing sort of thing. So when they whipped out KISS, pretty damn close. I'm generally not a big fan, but I must be a huge sucker for theatrics, because this performance was awesome for me. Even when I was scared Gene Simmons was going to break his hip while trying to smash his guitar, it was pure win.

6) Regarding #1 above, I'd still do'er.

7) Does anybody out there understand the appeal of Rod Stewart? Just how drunk WAS he during the show?

8) Cindi Lauper and Allison Iraheta duet was cool. They're both pretty wacky chicks, which only makes it more enticing. Hey, Cindi! Your knees are about 3 feet apart and the camera is staring straight up Grand Central.

9) Seacrest making fun of bikini girl's new fake rack was pretty close to the hilight of the evening for me. At first I was thinking "something looks different, but I'm not sure what?", and then he calls her out on it, and I was on the floor laughing. Kara's awkwardness after she almost flashed beav was icing on the cake and totally redeemed everything I hated about her all season.

10) I just don't understand Carlos Santana. No doubt he's got mad skillz, but the boat left and I wasn't on the boat. Maybe I'm just not a guitar guy, although I loved Slash's guest week. In Santana's defense, he did look totally badass on his little pedestle with white jacket and hat.

11) Sht, I cant remember the song right now but some white guy came out wearing a hat and a sport coat and a peace t-shirt and no shoes. His vibe and energy was so f'ing cool, it's probably the closest I've ever come to wanting to fill out a three way between me and the uber gf with a dude. And I usually hate goatees.

12) Lionel. Love his fiesta song even after like 25 years, he rules. But I couldn't help but feel bad for the guy. I mean, really. Your daughter is Nicole Ritchie, dude.

13) When the Peas came out to save Fergie from her lack luster solo, she suddenly stopped looking like a pre-op trannie. BEP are awesome, and the performance was outstanding. They should have put it later in the show, IMO, because Steve Martin totally killed the buzz this created. I want those zebra striped dancers to come with me to business meetings when I have to deliver bad news, just to lighten up the mood.

There you go. 13 quickies of the flat-out best Idol show I've ever seen. Good times, even if the wrong guy won.

Oh...

14) What's the first thing probably ran through Mrs. Allen's mind...."well, its been nice knowing ya." How long you think that marriage will last through the stresses and temptations of the rock star life?

Sht, Simon said it himself early in the competition "you may have brought out the wife a little early". Granted, he meant that Kris should have kept the wifey hidden for a little while to let the girlie voters fall for him, but if you notice, they never mentioned the wife again from that moment on. They just said "Kris's Family" when they panned the camera past his posse.

Oh, and one more...

15) Proof positive that America's racism < America's homophobia. We're enlightened enough to be able to see past skin color when electing our President, but put a little nail polish on a dude who won't openly announce, confirm, nor deny his sexual preferences, and buh-bye.

Not to take anything away from Kris, because he had some amazing performances during the competition, but Randy Travis's open homophobia was disturbing.

F'ing Boo-Ya

I knew something was wrong, and I couldn't have come out of blog-hiding at a more perfect time.

WoW Insider - High Level Ranged Weapons Getting Buffed

The article even features a pic of the butt-ass-ugly Kologarn gun that I carry around. Auryia, you stupid cat lady, gimme a new bow, soon. I'm so sick of using guns.

WoW Insider, quoting Ghostcrawler, says that (A) Hunter dps is low because Blizz f'ed up the whole ammo change they were planning but failed to implement so the wep damage is being buffed to compensate, and even mutha'f'ing better, (B) they also recognize that Hunters are still a little low beyond that and plan to change it over the next few weeks.

On one hand, this plays even further into my QQ about how volatile the state of the Hunter is, as we'll be changing more and more.

But on the other hand, maybe they're giving the class a little potential.

To quote a wise man (me. from just a day or two ago)...

"I don't want to be imba or easysauce, but I do want to be competitive and have a reasonable number of attacks that interact with one another in a logical way."

The Ghostcrawler quote might as well have read (note: hypothetical fake quote)...

"We became concerned at the drawn out period of silence amongst the Hunter blog community, for instance, Amava became all emo and didn't post for weeks. Well, his/her return to blogging inspired us to stop making Hunters suck dck for every point of damage they deal and you'll see them be a bit more competitive pretty damn soon. Stroking his/her ego is what we strive for here at Blizzard.

Knowing his/her hatred for guns in-game, we're also adding a unique piece of code that increases the drop rate of the Cat Lady Bow considerably if a player starting with A and ending with iva is in the raid.

We humbly apologize if this buff feels like yet another change in a long line of annoying changes, and we dearly hope this doesn't bring evoke another completely justified, pouty, emo fit from our beloved blogger who makes the game as awesome as it is."

Yeah, that's what he should have said :-)