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"

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.

ZO-Mutha-f'ing-G, Breaking, HOT HOT HOT, Breaking News - MUST READ - GOGOGOGO!!!

I just read this beauty.

Forget Ulduar.

Forget Dual Spec.

Forget One Hour Flasks.

Forget sweet awesome really hard hard modes that'll feed on my tears.

Forget whatever the hell they're going to do the Hunter class.

Forget influential entertaining informative bloggers who may or may not be leaving wow, and may or may not be using said departure as a publicity stunt for a top secret project.


Forget all that stuff. The important breaking news is in....



I can haz chef's hat.



And to think I was debating just yesterday to redeem all my accrued Dalarans and make some phat cash.


If the announcement ends up being April Fool's Joke, I'm going to enrage like the Incredible Hulk, lift my computer over my head, fling it through the window, jump through the jagged glassy broken window following it, lift the broken computer case over my head again, fling it through the nearest car windshield, reach through the broken windshield and open the door, use the smashed computer case to bust open the dash board, hotwire the car, and drive it and the broken computer off the bridge down the street and into the lake. Oh, and before all this, I'll make sure my WotLK install disks are in the drive so they get destroyed also. redeem the dalarans and sell the spices.

Quicky-Butter Jelly Time

Sorry for the title, sometimes "inspired" and "twisted" get mixed up in my head.

Quickies:

1) Do not Misdirect Explosive Shot in a raid setting. You'll pull aggro via the dots a fraction of a second after the mob appears to be headed over to your tank/MD target.

2) Beast Mastery still has a place. Banging through the Northrend dungeons for "The Elder" title, no tanks around. Send one of the hunters to respec BM, go fully into talents that boost pet survivability (not DPS). Bubbles can handle just about anything normal mode dungeons have to offer. Challenging, because real tanks do lots of fancy stuff us DPS'ers never really see or appreciate, but a Gorilla can serve in a pinch.

3) Watching your favorite hunter discover #1 on the fly, that's just pure entertainment. Especially when the team is on-the-ball and successfully adjusts and the fight continues on.

4) Long live T5 two-piece bonus (see #2). Quite frankly the single most useful two gear items a Hunter can acquire. Definitely worth going back to SSC for, and maybe fishing up Lurker for an achievement while you're in there.

5) Getting two titles in the same day is confusing. Which one do you wear? I've been longing for Chef Amava, but Elder Amava is in style for the next couple weeks, especially when the uber gf smugly points out a mysterious and unwelcome grey hair that seemed to sneak its way onto my head. Already?

6) Bored people in WoW need to find something else to do.

7) While BM still has a place, that place is clearly not the damage meters. We bring in a tank for the last run. Prot Pally showed us what real damage looks like. Well, truthfully, the SV hunter with us showed what REAL damage looks like. /sigh. Granted, I was spec fully for sturdy pet, but I digress.

8) One sign that you're bored in WoW, and therefore need to find something else to do....jumping into the fountain in Dalaran to block fishermen from clicking their bobbers. Seriously? /shoo

9) Until I get my hands on Surge Needle Ring, my +hit rating is gonna continue to dictate and consume every single gem I bring into battle. If I level another toon high enough to kill Worgs, I just might need to make that guy a skinner, and go farm the hell out of worg haunches. Then I can eat Worg Tartare (+40 hit), regem to be 40 points below hit-cap, and claim more fortunes on the leather market.

10) WTF is up with Eternals and Crystallizeds on Ner'zhul? No matter how low I price them, they barely move on AH. Various stack sizes, various times of day/week, various forms (eternal/crystal), various elements (air, fire, earth...). Fire sells, but is rare when gathering. Shadow sells, sometimes. Life and Earth? I'm running out of bank space for stacks of these puppies.

That's what she said

The raid environment in Conquest is pretty intense.

I have no idea where we stand in the Hardcore-Casual spectrum, but I'll go out on a limb and say that while not full-on hardcore, we definitely tend in that direction. Somewhat casual hours (10-12 hours raiding, unless we kill everything in 6), but pretty hardcore approach during those hours.

And the resulting raid atmosphere is one of efficiency, performance, focus.

Not a whole lot of room for joking in there.

Vent is kept relatively clear for the GM and Officers (although there's one or two non-officer coconuts who chime in way too much during boss fights, but that's just my opinion).

Sure, we've got the ongoing Choo Choo Train thing to keep the smiles on, and nobody gets yelled at for slip ups. But the sort of raid we've all sought out in Conquest has a very professional feel to it, and we've done a great job fulfilling that.


But vacation and holiday time is another story, all together.

Tuesday night was the first night of unofficial vacation raiding. I think we had 19 people available to raid. Why not give Naxxramas a try.

Was certainly a bit trickier than doing it with 25, and the boss fights took a few minutes longer. Had to pay more attention to mana endurance, which is not a bad thing, honing the skills and whatnot.


But the atmosphere was noticably different. Maybe everybody was drunk on egg nog, or just giddy with thoughts of presents and elf bowling.

All well and good, we're "accidentally" pulling 2 or 3 more packs of mobs than usual during trash, which actually took some tapdancing because we were short handed (mabye up to 21 or so during the course of the night)

And then it happened. We kill boss some-such. And the RL says....

Wow, that was way harder than usual.

Normally, we'd leave that one right where it is and move on. Professional raid atmosphere and all.

But not on slap happy vacation night.

Somebody chimes in with the natural spike to the RL's bump and set...

That's what she said.

Wakka, wakka!!!

We all have a brief chuckle and it kinda dies there, like it should.

Of course, within a few seconds of the lol's dying down, RL happens to say...

Why so long?

And another character cant resist the setup...

That's what she said.

And the lol's and /rolleyes are getting a little more active.


And then, to seal the deal, seconds later, we're fighting Gothik (I think. The one who hops between his alive side and undead side. I wonder which side likes the frosted miniwheat side?)...

RL.....

Gahhh! There's something on me! There's something on me!

WHOLE RAID.....

THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sounds pretty corny on digital paper here, but every mic that was keyed was filled with roaring laughter. Not the phony typed out lol crap, but real honest to goodness laughter.

Probably laughing at how stupid the whole thing was, but its our $15 bucks, and we'll laugh at the dorky jokes if we want to :-)

And the RL "threatened" to enforce normal communication rules and buzz kill the whole event, but instead he "chose" to die 18 times to ghosts while clearing trash.

A fun time had by all !!!!

Merry Christmas!

Amusing WotLK Quickies

WoW on my mind lately. Too wordy. Too many posts. I suppose that's what I do when I'm emotionally avoiding shopping for the holidays because (A) I dislike materialism for the sake of materialism, (B) it reminds me of how little I actually know my family and that I live so far away from, (C) again with the materialism, (D) can't we just, i dunno, sing carols and eat a ham together, basically have some quality time, and not blow money out the window on junk none of us want? A couple presents for the kids/grandkids? Rock On!! A massive pile for junk for everybody? Bleeeeaaaahhhh (see below).

So my obsession for my hobby (currently WoW) ticks up while my desire to even drive past a Walmart, Standard Generic American Suburb Shopping Mall (/shudder), small locally owned boutique, or just about anywhere else, drives deep below zero.

To lighten the mood, a couple of quickies I find Amusing in WotLK:

1) I was a bad raider the other day.... I died in the fire on the Four Horsemen. Totally lost focus and just stood there and died. I actually hope nobody wasted any mana on me, because it was entirely my fault. However, when our Death Knight turned me into a Ghoul? I started laughing so hard I blew a bubble out my nose. I sorta ran over to Blummexau, did a couple of the Ghoul abilities on him/her, and then died again. Still laughing. Then got a tissue.

2) While we're talking about Ghouls.... I just love the noise that Ghouls make when you raise them. Best example I get to hear lately is Knights of the Ebon Blade daily quest where you have to kill some Paladin-looking guys on an island in far western Icecrown, and pour a potion on the corpse to raise the Ghoul. And they make this "bleeeaahhhhhh" noise.

I can't help but make the noise IRL at the same time. I find it amusing. I'm not sure the uber gf does or not? But she usually laughs too, most likely at me making nerdy video game noises, and not at the actual WoW-generated nerdy video game noises.

3) Choo Choo.... This one takes the cake. I've always been a fan of the /train emote. Its so silly, so frivolous, exactly what I like in my recreation time.

However there's some new item available from a toy store in Dalaran. When you use it, you set up a train set on the ground, and anbody nearby goes into an uncontrollable fit of "Choo-choo" emotes. On and on and on. Apparently there's two or three people in my raid that have these, because its endless.

And its driving our Raid Leader insane. Which I can (A) empathize with because as RL I always hated that piccolo dancing thing, and (B) laugh my ass off at because he's gotten so aggravated with it that he offered $500 (Canadian) for the name of whoever is dropping the trains.

HINT TO NEW LEADERS: When you let the ppl you lead know something minor, that doesn't really affect the outcome of the mission, annoys the bejezus out of you...you're only encouraging them to do it more!

The single best part of the train set is the one lingering Choo Choo at the end. I think its the Male Gnome, but whatever. There's one that plays right at the end, about a second after all the other choo choos are done, and its all raspy and awkward and so. frikin. funny. I cant help but laugh every time I hear it.

Even the people who say they hate the train admit that this one is funny XD

4) Lunch Lady.... A guildie of mine was leveling up cooking and I saw the Lunch Lady achievement flash on the screen. Of course, any Adam Sandler fan would have to chuckle at that one. I thought it sounded cool, so I wanted to see what I'd have to do to get it for myself. And I discovered that its for 25 cooking recipes learned, something I did back in Darkshore or maybe Ashenvale when I was a wee lil Night Elf.

But I got to thinking....why isn't the Lunch Lady achievement for a really hard number of recipes to collect.....and come with a damn title. I want to be Lunch Lady Amava.

Wait, #3 wasn't a quickie

Oh well. I fail at quickies.

Granted, none of these is as much fun as a Yoda or Mr. T or Governator impersonator in your raid, but they do bring some smiles.

Quest Givers IRL

The uber GF and I met up for lunch the other day.

Sitting there at the restaurant, she sorta nudges me to indicate another patron without directly and rudely pointing at the guy.

She says, "There's something about that guy that makes me want to go turn in a quest to him."

So I turn and look, and lo and behold, he's got a solid black baseball cap, with just a bright yellow "?" on the front.

I'll bet. Just watch out for what follow-up quest's he's got in mind.

Very cool to see people embracing WoW and not trying to hide their involvement like the Plague.

We go back to our lunch.

Then as we're leaving, the gf goes back to the table to leave a tip, and walks past the guys.

Watching from across the room, I see her talking to the quest giver and his friend, presumably about WoW.

As we're driving away, we get to talking about the encounter.

When you're playing WoW, what sort of visual image do you form in your head of what the player at the other end of the keyboard looks like?

If its a guy, is your immediate visual image of some nerdy teen, pale complexion (very little sunlight reaches mommy's basement), acne, spare tire belly, surrounded by empty snickers wrappers, mt dew cans, and hand lotion bottles? Do you picture young? Old? Indifferent?

If its a woman, what kind of image do you conjure up in your head? Is every brief absence actually because the rest of the sorority girls are having a pillow fight wearing teddies with feathers flying around the room and your teammmate just had to /afk to jump in on the fun? Or do you picture Large Marge the Truck Driver who can beat anybody at an arm wrestle, out-drink a pack of Tibetan yack herders, and snubs out cigars on the hairy mole on her bicep?

How about this Quest Giver and his friend?

For them, its forever confirmed that the chick on the other end of the keyboard is indeed a hottie :-)

Emotes Galore

Here's all the /emotes in WoW.

/massage ???

Hook a brother up!

Epic Riding IRL

Farming for 4 Cobra Scales and 8 Primal Airs to make Nethercobra Leg Armor: 3 hours

Snapping and buying the last Cobra Scale and 5 Primals: 150 gold

Shopping for 1 fancy gem and 1 Primal Nether: 25 badgers

Using your shiny new pants to win at WWS in a Tier 6 progression night: Priceless

Taking a Cowgirl on her first pony ride before the raid: EPIC

Praise where Praise is Due

I dunno why, but this weekend had me pondering the genius over at Blizzard.

Sure, there's some stuff we like to complain about, and some things we'd like different about WoW. But generally, Blizzard is spot on. We complain, we whine, but we keep going back, not very unlike the relationship between crack head and crack dealer, only without the negative connotation many people associate with crack.

I shall now spew forth a few of the observations from this weekend that impressed me:

1) Balancing Gathering Professions

Spent some time this weekend on a level 60 toon who had not even trained any professions yet. Went for an oldie but a goodie: herbalism/mining. Then went around Azeroth, trying to overlap zones that would offer similar levels of herb and mineral nodes. Azuremyst Isle, Darkshore, The Barrens, Stonetalon Mountains, Arathi Highlands (ah, the memories), The Hinterlands, Tanaris, Felwood.

At each step of the way, when I was reaching the minimum herbing level that would allow me access to the nodes in the next zone up the list, I was simultaneously within 2 mineral nodes of also being able move to the next zone for mining as well.

Not sure if this is coincidence, or what, but at each and every transition from one zone to the next, the two gathering profs were completely in synchronization (note, not numerically equal, but rather synchronized relative to the nodes in the next zone. Herbalism was consistently 30 points ahead of Mining, up to 300 Herbalism which kinda matched 260 Mining, and then smelting Thorium nearly covers the difference to get both profs up to the Master level).

During my travels, I was generally just spamming the Find Minerals, Find Herbs toggle macro every 1.5 seconds, so I don't think it was any subliminal move on my part to only migrate towards the one type of node that was lagging behind the other.

Perhaps I'm giving too much credit, and its as simple an algorithm as "spawn equal numbers of herbs and minerals", but I was impressed with the balance. But then again, due to the random mining skill ups from smelting that have no equivalent in herbalism, it cannot be quite as simple as that.

2) Motivating Customers to Buy an Expansion

Sure, with any expansion pack, you'd hope that the new content would be the only thing you'd need to motivate players to upgrade. But history, and current events, show that there's more to it than that.

With Burning Crusade, Blizz ushered in a massive economic and player stats inflation. Basically saying to the customers "buy the xpac or you'll (A) get totally pwned by some dude in level 60 Outlands quest greenies, and (B) be relatively broke other than by selling Old World junk to fancy Burning Crusaders who are powerleveling some aspect of their game."

I'm not sure how the economic inflation one will play out in WotLK. Sure, the new mini-van gold sink indicates roughly 400% inflation over TBC, but that's largely a response to the massive bank accounts many players have accrued while twiddling our thumbs waiting for the expansion, and not truly a measure of the earning potential they anticipate for players during the Lich King.

We are, however, already seeing the move they made with gear. Gear progression will be much more linear as you move through the low 70's than it was during the low 60's. Beta reports seem to indicate that T4 gear will last to around 73-74, and some T5 / Badge rewards will last perhaps as long as 76-77 (different pieces having a longer life than others, naturally).

So what did Blizzard do to us instead? They totally over powered us for The Burning Crusade. You don't have to buy the expansion pack, all you have to do is allocate the talent points they refunded you. And now you can pwn just about all the BC content you want.

The result is, anybody who does not buy the WotLK upgrade is going to get very bored very fast. The novelty of crushing through the formerly hardcore end-game is fun for now, but is going to wear off soon. If you upgrade to WotLK, you're fine. If you dont, its gonna get old in a hurry.

Kudos on finding a new way to motivate customers without making us feel like all our raiding efforts were invalidated from a gear perspective.

3) Plague

I've got a love/hate thing going on with the Plague. I hate it in that I head to IF to train Artesian Mining. Talk to the Trainer, get infected. Blow myself up. Corpse run, and I'm back in business, having wasted about 5 minutes of my time. I hate it in that I'm standing in Shattrath City, go AFK to make some noodles, come back and see my spirit standing at the Spirit Lady. There is a totally annoying aspect to the Plague thing.

But, I do have to give Blizzard a shout-out here. I think they've actually created an authentic feel, set inside of a virtual fantasy world with no actual life-or-death consequences, of what life is like during the Black Death.

Cities are littered with corpses and skeletons. Bring out'cha dead! Bring out'cha dead!

NPC shops are "shut down" due to Plague (aka, the guy is dead).

Go to turn in a quest, and the quest guy is dead (ok, this one is just pure annoyance and ended up costing me 50 gold on sunday, mutha f'ers).

When you're in a city, you see some infected slob coming towards you, you cover your mouth and run the other way. Watching people scatter after I've become a Zombie is pretty comical.

The normally active hubs of travel (flight masters), commerce (AH), and communication (mailboxes) have become disaster areas, which I'd imagine is very consistent with spread of real life disease.

Anytime you take a portal to Shatt, party members happily remind you to "mount up quick and fly away or you get plague".

Annoying aspect aside, I think Blizzard has given us a very realistic climate of plague, with a twist of fantasy (floating necropoli, zombies, and the like).

Enough

Ok, Blizz fanboi, stfu and get back to QQ'ing about something or stroking your ego.

The human mind sees what it wants to see

A hunter, a rogue, and a warrior walk into a Cathedral.....and the bartender says"why the long face?" /har-har-har

Three screens in front of me. My attention focused at the Hunter in the middle one, and only picking up peripheral views of the rogue's screen on the left and the warrior's screen on the right.

I suddenly get this really strange feeling, like a naked streaker had just run through the SM Cathedral.

But this is an instance. There's not supposed to be other players in here. WTF?

Not sure whether my eyes are playing tricks on me or not. I mean, afterall, the human mind will see what it wants to see.

So I scan across the three monitors.

Starting on the left, ok, the rogue's screen. I see a fully clothed Hunter, with her fully clothed gorilla next to her, and a fully clothed rogue and warrior following her. Ok, score one for the Freudian team.

Next up, hunter's screen in the middle. Samey same, everything's in order and everybody's got clothes. Two points for Freud.

And then, look to your right, the warrior's screen.

And there you see, a fully clothed warrior, with a naked gnome rogue sort of standing inside her, and a naked night elf hunter standing in front of her. Freud, sac'ed on the 1 yard line! In De Face!

WTF?

That's a pretty funny bug, if you ask me. It stayed that way until we left the instance.

And in other news, Amava doesn't strip, its the only RP facet of her personality. Its just not her bag, baby, not that there's anything wrong with it. So she was appalled.

And I was confused over whether nakey night elf chick is hot or scary. Still not sure.

Resurrection Sixty Nine

Shammy has a non-combat rez.

Druid has a combat rez. Plus reincarnate, which is a self rez.

Lethal combination to be leveling as a duo. Run into any situation totally blind, just leroy the whole way. Between the two of us, somehow we'll find a way to avoid a corpse run.

How's about this one...the Shammy dies and the Druid forgets to rez her until after combat.

So then its time to find a mob at maximum range, load up some Moonfire and start casting the combat rez while the mob runs in.


Or when the shammy dies right as the mob is near death, mob has a few dots on it and gets to low health and runs away, druid starts casting rez, mob dies from dots, druid is out of combat. Player wonders whether casting continue. Player receives answer as shammy gets rez'd out of combat, since the casting of the rez started while in combat. Nice!


Or the battle at the top of the troll temple to get the Sacred Mallet, which will ultimately become the Mallet of Zul'Farrak to summon the godzilla boss for the carrot trinket.

Shammy dies mid-fight, Druid rez's. Fight goes on, but we're hurtin.

Druid dies, and shammy kills off last mob. Shammy exits combat, rez's the druid.

You rez me, I'll rez you, all in the same fight. Its like a resurrection sixty nine :-)

This one made me smile

This one made me smile too big to pass up on. Its stolen directly from Rohan from Blessing of Kings, who was quoting a WoW forum posting...


Random signature seen on the WoW forums (credit to Building of Uldaman):
Dear Blizzard,

Paper is fine, but Rock needs to be nerfed.

Thanks, Scissors

I think I now know what Undercity smells like

This story is not WoW related.

It is however, a tale of an event among the top five nastiest things that's ever happened in my house. And I live in the House of Nasty, so that's sayin something.

This story pertains to this blog simply because I was doing a Scarlet Monastery boosting run with two real-life ladies (booya) when it happened, although the event itself has nothing to do with WoW.

As I said, not WoW related, but if you could smell what happened, you might have said "wow, that's nasty."

Our story involves a dog. Three dogs to be exact. Well, technically three dogs were present, but only two feature in this story. And to make the vaguely WoW-oriented connection to this story stronger, I was fighting Houndmaster Locksey on or about the time that the nastiness ensued, and he himself travels with three dogs.

But I don't think his dogs have ever done what I am about to describe. Or else we'd get a "Righteously Nasty" debuff as we entered the general vicinity of the boss.

Wanna get grossed out?

Big time?

Then read on.

Just remember later...I warned you to leave. Go!





Ah, you stayed. I see you think you have a strong stomach. L.O.-mutha-f'ing-L. I thought I did, too.



We start with a little non-gross background before we lead in with the nastiness....

Imagine you are a tiny little Yellow Lab puppy.

Little fuzzball. Soft feet slipping on smooth floors as you try to scamper about turning corners chasing a bouncy ball. Wrestling with your brothers and sisters, and generally doing cute puppy things all day long. Fighting for position to get a drink of mama dog's milk.

And then the time comes for you and your brothers and sisters to all find happy new homes who will love and care for you. So you get to say bye bye to your litter-mates and head on out with your new family. No more mama dog's milk.

Supposedly there's a timeframe that is best to wean the pup off of of nursing. Nurse for too long and the dog will have issues taking to solid dog food. Teat-block the pup too early, and an interesting habit can form.

I've no idea what is going on inside the pup's head, but as it would turn out, dogs that wean too early often eat dog poo.

There, I said it. They eat dog poo.

What's that you say? Gross? Awwww, come on. With all those warnings and build-up? And all you've got for me is "they eat poo"? You suck!

Oh, no, my friend. Do read on.

Enough background. Fastforward a few years from your premature weaning, and you're now a happy pup. Who perhaps carries some baggage from your youthful trauma. And you're watching as some people play WoW.


So I'm happily getting boosted through Scarlet Monastery. Lots of XP, lots of loot, lots of fun watching mobs get one-shot.

Then something smells funny IRL.

Yuck. One of the dogs farted. With three dogs and three people in the house, there's rarely a truly fart-free moment, but this one was especially stinky.

As with any encounter with gas, you smell it, then you pretty much cant help but laugh, because, I mean really, its a fart. They're funny. Then you realize it smells nasty and you stop laughing. Then the smell dissipates, and you laugh again, because they're funny and you no longer have a nasty smell assaulting your senses.

The cycle is as reliable as the tides in the ocean.

But this one was lingering a bit too long for the laughter to return.

And smells righteous. No run of the mill toot.

After an unreasonably long linger, I turn around and take a look at the dogs to make sure everything's alright.

And low and behold, Mr. I-Eat-Poo apparently found a tasty treat in the backyard, ate it, came inside, got a sick stomach and barfed on the floor.

Partially digested poo. Inside my house.

The smell is indescribable. Actually, it smells pretty much exactly like what you'd think it smells like. Only more so. And the gag reflex it induces is powerful.

Back in my days in the volunteer fire service, I've walked into rooms that have had decaying deceased human remains in them for up to two weeks. That smells like flowers compared to this. Sweet, sweet roses.

But it gets better, folks. Remember, I told you to leave earlier. You chose to stay.

To add to the unbelievable desire to wretch my guts out from the nastiness, as I walk over to the pile to clean it up, one of the other dogs trots over to the mess, and begins to chow down.

I sh1t you not.

I mean, eating poo? That's completely normal (no its not, but for the sake of this story, pretend it is).

But eating poo vomit? That's down right nasty.

So I light candles, burn matches, spray half a can of lysol. Take my shirt off and tie it around my face in a make-shift gas mask.

Nothing cuts through this smell.

Nothing.

I get it cleaned up, and try to burn my nostrils out so that I can never smell something like this again.

Back to Scarlet Monastery.

And what do I hear?

The splash of a new pile of barf hitting the floor. And, since I only heard it happen, and didn't see first-hand, I'm not sure if it was Mr. I-Eat-Poo, or Ms. I-Eat-Poo-Barf who threw this new pile.

Shirley, you must be kidding me.

Clean it up. Back to the WoW.

Splash. Number three.


I don't think there's enough therapy on this planet to take this smell out of my memory.

Thank g0d friday is garbage day because I'd have to burn the house down if these triple bagged sacs of trash stayed around for even a moment longer.


Hey, I warned you. Down right nasty.

Big Red Daddy

Spent saturday out in the rain with my daughter and gf. We went to an amusement park, not quite raining, but some what ominous looking. I had been given free tickets on friday, good only for saturday and sunday. So, why not. We drove all the way out here, its not raining as of the moment we pulled into the parking lot.

As soon as we handed over our tickets and got our hands stamped, the skies opened up.

But the three of us weren't about to let that ruin our parade. We continued to have a blast going on rides, soaking wet, eating funnel cake under an umbrella, soaking wet. The water didn't stop us from having fun all day long.

Long story short, saturday evening, I was exhausted.

Shortly after getting home, I passed out for a nap.

And, being equally tired, my daughter asked to go to bed a little early.

So, the gf got her all set, read some stories, and was ready for lights out, when the lil'en say she wants daddy to sing a song.

So over comes the gf, shakes the sleeping giant, and begins to rapidly describe the past hour's activities.

As it would turn out, that was perhaps a bit too much information for my still-sleeping-ears to take in. Shall we say disoriented and a bit overwhelmed?

After the fog cleared, and she cut to the chase and let me know what I needed to do, all was well. Rockabye baby, twinkle stars, and what not. Peacefully sleeping child.

A while later, she says to me, "wow, when I woke you up and started telling you about bedtime, you got all confused and angry and turned all big and red like Amava does."

Funny, because I'm not spec'ed Beast Master IRL.

Big Red Daddy, FTW!!!

Tag, I'm It

Loronar at 35 Yards Out tagged me.

Full disclosure. I'm usually one to opt out of the blogging wildfires that sweep across the land. I've seen a bunch of these crop up, and haven't fully followed them. But on blogs I read daily, I have been scrolling to the bottom to see if I was tagged, out of respect for the authors.

That said, here's where I was at various times in history:

September 11 Attacks: September 11, 2001

The city of Buffalo, NY is a funny one for somebody who grew up near NYC, and therefore had ingrained since birth that all cities should look like NYC. Buffalo has dozens and dozens of buildings, ranging between 5 and 10 stories. Relatively small, I'd say. Then, there's this one building. Its the big one. 40 stories tall. And has a very visible, high contrast, primary color logo of a major international bank at its peak. That's it, just one big building. Sticks out like a sore thumb.

So, on a day that there's a report of an unknown number of airplanes crashing into large, visible buildings, in what was at the time an unknown number of locations/cities across the east coast, you pretty much don't want to be in the giant building with the target on top of it.

I heard the news on the radio, then somebody whipped out a small portable TV and we watched the footage.

Although no corporate-wide instruction came out yet, I told my team to evacuate immediately. Most of them wanted to stay and make sure their work was saved and checked into the remote servers and stuff. Very responsible people, outstanding to work with. I grabbed one by the shoulders, and said "GET THE F$%K OUT. RIGHT NOW!" and we all left.

I was a volunteer firefighter at the time, so the story and relief efforts for the families of the FDNY were a big part of life in the following months and years.

Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster: January 28, 1986

I was in grade school. Hugely into airplanes and flight and outer space and all sorts of stuff like that. Some kids like dinosaurs, I liked NASA. Some kids read Go Dog Go, I was reading WWII: The Airman's War: Life in a B-17 Over Europe. Naturally, I was pretty excited that we were given the opportunity to watch the launch on TV at school, which was a pretty rare treat.

This particular launch was also of importance to me, because it was the first to include a member of the Teacher in Space Project. My father was a science teacher, I had been following along with his application process to join the project. Who knew that overeating and underexercising would prove to be a good thing, since it disqualifies you from being selected for a NASA mission.

Hurricane Katrina: August 29, 2005

I don't really have a particularly close connection with this one. I watched the news, was appalled at the complete incompetence of our government to provide timely and effective help for the people impacted by the disaster, but then again, it was just another cluster fu$@ in a long chain of clusters fu$@.

And I don't know about you, but when I see the disaster footage, the thing that really gets to me is seeing the animals. Cats, dogs, farm animals, wild creatures, all clinging to roofs and tree tops to keep out of the floods, starving and exposed to the elements. That's always a tear jerker.

Reagan Assassination Attempt: March 30, 1981

I was a lil kid at the time. Lil kids growing up in the overprotective environment of American suburbs don't really understand the concept of assassination, so while I was vaguely aware that something bad happened, not really a significant moment in my life.

John Lennon's Death: June 8, 1980

Even lil'er than when the Reagan thing went down, so yeah, I'm gonna have to go with no on this one too.

Kurt Cobain's Death: April 5, 1994

Never a big Nirvana fan. A strange part of me both lol's and cries at the memory of this one.

Earlier that year in highschool, one of our classmates killed himself. The kid was a bit of an outcast, not really accepted by any of the social cliques in the school. There was some small uproar over the tragedy of his death, but the school more or less kept on keepin' on.

Then Kurt. And you'd have thought the world had come to an end. People tried to organize sit-ins and memorial services and stuff.

WFT? Some popular musician living in a far off part of the country eats a bullet and you're all up in arms, but your socially unpopular neighbor and classmate goes down the same path and you barely notice? Get some perspective here, ppl.

John F. Kennedy Assassination: November 22, 1963

My closest connection with this one was the Seinfeld episode where they recreated the event, replacing killers with NY Mets baseball players, and bullets with loogies.

Random thought: battle animations

Playing a Hunter, my standard solo action involves sending in my pet, allowing between 1-2k threat build up, depending upon how aggressive I feel, and then opening fire. Sometimes Aimed Shot, just because I love the ricochet sound fx played by Critical Alert, or more sensibly with a serpent sting and a steady/auto rotation.

Not a whole lot of fun visually in this routine. Perhaps the best part is watching my Ravager Condoleezza scuttle about when she does a Dash, usually when she's 90% of the way to the mob already, lol. Wasted Cooldowns, FTW!

However, playing my now level 28 Protection Paladin, its a bit different visually.

The best is when she's facing off with mobs that are substantially larger than her.

This morning, fighting in Ashenvale, against the Satyrs in the northeast.

They're pretty big, but not unrealistically so. Rotate the camera so you kinda look up at them for full effect.

And when my Pally dodges or parries, it just looks so cool.

And the shield? Sweetness.

Her body positioning, posture, arm movements, shield blocking, all look pretty realistic. Well, I have no idea what "realistic" means, since I've never witnessed any real sword & shield combat IRL, but it at least matches my imaginary vision of what that kind of combat should look like. Maybe too static, as I doubt someone in a real life situation just stands there trading blows, but we're dealing with a certain fantasy aspect here, ppl.

And its a good thing its visually appealing, because unlike the Hunter, whose visually boring fight lasts 4 shots, with the Paladin, its 30 seconds of beautifully animated battle sequences, just to kill an equal level mob.

Real Life Elemental Shaman Rite of Passage

In WoW, a leveling toon is wise to sleep at an Inn. Nothing beats the bonus XP you get while rested. Well, used to be that nothing beats it, however the new recruit-a-friend program gives even more, but forget that for the moment.

Once you hit 70, not quite as important to sleep at an Inn, but my experience this weekend pretty much convinced me that Blizzard needs to give some boost for a good night's sleep, regardless of level.

Went camping IRL.

Only one night. This should be easy.

Coupla fishing poles, a bag of marshmallows, some steaks to char on a stick.

Four kids between 3 yrs and 9 yrs old.

Two dogs between 1 yrs and 5 yrs old.

Two adults between 32 yrs and 39 yrs old.

Good times ahead. This should be easy.

One thunderstorm between 36 hrs and 48 hrs long.

To be fair, it was more of a teasing thunderstorm than a sustained one.

See, the sun would shine brightly, blue skies, birds chirping, kids laughing, tails wagging.

Seconds later, the darkest of dark clouds would roll in, the winds would kick up, and rain drops the size of grapefruits started falling. Kids definitely not laughing. Tails tucked way down between drenched, furry legs.

20 minutes later, the sun shining, blue skies, birds chirping, kids laughing, tails wagging.

Repeat this hourly for two days. Anytime we got the fire going again, enough to dry out the surrounding fire pit and allow the fire to get big enough to cook on or dry out clothes, then wham-o, down she pours.

'Cept for night time.

Then the sustained rolling thunder was simply unreal. The ground was shaking.

The lightning bolts were visibly hitting the ground and the lake 200 feet away.

Both incredibly spectacular and utterly terrifying at the same time.

I kept telling myself that an Elemental Shaman was undergoing some rite of passage, and the heavens were opening up to celebrate.

Soaked to the bone, trying to keep the kids and dogs something close to calm. Maybe 2 hours sleep total, scattered here and there in 15 minute increments.

Bottom line:

(A) we ultimately were able to cook the steaks. outrageous.

(B) at the end of the trip, my daughter's first camping experience ever, which at moments was a huge nightmare, she says...

"Daddy, I like camping, can we do it again?"

Sure thing, peanut, anything for you :-)

Alts + Beer = Fun in Kara

Finally got the other officers in the guild to agree that it would be good to form up a team of the 10 highest performing toons in the guild and make some serious push into ZA.

Of course, the summer being what it is, we only had 5 of those folks show up.

So we formed an alt raid for Kara.

And we drank lots of beer.

And had a blast.

Guild's main tank respec to Fury.

Holy priest tries out Shadow for first time since level 55.

Somebody's Bear alt tries tanking Kara for first time.

Another persons Priest alt sees if she can keep us alive.

For giggles, here's what Curator looked like.....

Completely Frivolous Computation

Never satisfied with things until I've totally overdone it, I went back into the BRK Bingo card generation statistics and played around.

Using some basic discrete math, I calculated the odds of randomly generating a valid BRK Bingo card at 0.17%

Unsure of how correct my calculations were, and full of some spare time and CPU cycles, I decided to run a simulation and see how things play out in the "real world".

Wrote a little Java program that would randomly generate boards until it created a valid board, and then report some basic data about the trial.

Then wrapped that whole routine in a loop so it could be repeated many many times.

Bottom line, after running a batch of 10,000,000 simulations the program reported that it nailed a valid board on the first try 16,848 times, or 0.168% of the time.

Pretty damn close to the 0.17% my calculations predicted. The difference is most likely explainable by either too small a sample size of ten million, or the fact that the Java Random Number Generator is not perfect, it is a Pseudo Random Number Generator, and thus can tend to have non-random sequences, although the amount of error is generally accepted as statistically insignificant.

Going one bit further, I wanted to see if I was lucky or unlucky in that it took me about 30 minutes of clicking F9 to generate a solution.

On average, during the 10,000,000 simulation batch, a valid board was generated after 586 trials.

Thinking back to my 30 minutes of clicking, I'll estimate that I spent 2 seconds per click. This is a giagantique estimate, based upon the fact that the 30 minutes had some small interruptions and the fact that I was not spamming the button, but was instead trying to go slow such that I wouldn't fail to recognize a valid board, since my spreadsheet had no "back" button.

30 minutes * 60 seconds / 2 seconds per click = 900 boards.

So I estimate that it took me 900 boards to get a valid one. Somewhat more unlucky than the 586 average that I predicted, but not so far out as to have me worried about getting hit by lightning in the near future. I could to a standard deviation analysis, which will probably show me that 900 is right there in the comfort zone, but I think I'm done. And the 900 is considerably more lucky than the worst-case found during the simulation of 9,364.

That should just about satisfy my curiosity on this topic. Time for that hogie.

Maybe I'll try out a batch of 100,000,000 simulations, which will take roughly 2 days, or maybe even bite the bullet and run a 1,000,000,000 batch over 18 days, just to see if I can keep the process uninterrupted for that long.

In case you're a raw data junkie, here's the output for a variety of sample sizes, adding an order of magnitude each time.

Completed execution of [1] simulations...
Elapsed time (HH:MM:SS.mmm): 00:00:00.20
 Minimum Trials until Valid Board : 846
 Average Trials until Valid Board : 846
 Maximum Trials until Valid Board : 846
 Number of times I got it on the first try       : 0 (0.000%)
 Number of times I got it in less than 100 tries : 0 (0.000%)

Completed execution of [10] simulations...
Elapsed time (HH:MM:SS.mmm): 00:00:00.10
 Minimum Trials until Valid Board : 24
 Average Trials until Valid Board : 521
 Maximum Trials until Valid Board : 1,112
 Number of times I got it on the first try       : 0 (0.000%)
 Number of times I got it in less than 100 tries : 2 (20.000%)

Completed execution of [100] simulations...
Elapsed time (HH:MM:SS.mmm): 00:00:00.110
 Minimum Trials until Valid Board : 3
 Average Trials until Valid Board : 600
 Maximum Trials until Valid Board : 2,382
 Number of times I got it on the first try       : 0 (0.000%)
 Number of times I got it in less than 100 tries : 16 (16.000%)

Completed execution of [1,000] simulations...
Elapsed time (HH:MM:SS.mmm): 00:00:01.222
 Minimum Trials until Valid Board : 2
 Average Trials until Valid Board : 581
 Maximum Trials until Valid Board : 3,690
 Number of times I got it on the first try       : 0 (0.000%)
 Number of times I got it in less than 100 tries : 142 (14.200%)

Completed execution of [10,000] simulations...
Elapsed time (HH:MM:SS.mmm): 00:00:15.422
 Minimum Trials until Valid Board : 1
 Average Trials until Valid Board : 593
 Maximum Trials until Valid Board : 6,530
 Number of times I got it on the first try       : 26 (0.260%)
 Number of times I got it in less than 100 tries : 1,508 (15.080%)

Completed execution of [100,000] simulations...
Elapsed time (HH:MM:SS.mmm): 00:02:26.492
 Minimum Trials until Valid Board : 1
 Average Trials until Valid Board : 583
 Maximum Trials until Valid Board : 6,881
 Number of times I got it on the first try       : 192 (0.192%)
 Number of times I got it in less than 100 tries : 15,566 (15.566%)

Completed execution of [1,000,000] simulations...
Elapsed time (HH:MM:SS.mmm): 00:23:09.501
 Minimum Trials until Valid Board : 1
 Average Trials until Valid Board : 586
 Maximum Trials until Valid Board : 8,573
 Number of times I got it on the first try       : 1,652 (0.165%)
 Number of times I got it in less than 100 tries : 155,395 (15.540%)

Completed execution of [10,000,000] simulations...
Elapsed time (HH:MM:SS.mmm): 03:44:24.375
 Minimum Trials until Valid Board : 1
 Average Trials until Valid Board : 586
 Maximum Trials until Valid Board : 9,364
 Number of times I got it on the first try       : 16,848 (0.168%)
 Number of times I got it in less than 100 tries : 1,554,695 (15.547%)