Ding - 88

Started the Frenzyheart quest line over the weekend and dinged while doing those. I have been trying to figure out how do deal with the potential dilemma of what pet to bring to Sholazar Basin. Do I bring Plutonia, the cat (and first/favorite pet) which I'm trying to keep leveled up, or the moth (level 74) that I would be willing to loose if I got insanely lucky and found Loque'nahak. There is no doubt in my mind that if I found Loq she would not be there if I had to fly to Valiance Keep and back. So, would I be able to give up "P" or just kill her for the achievement? That's a choice I don't want to have to make. Killing her wouldn't be an option. Do I give a shout out for any other hunter that might be looking for her? I suppose I would the long shot that I could get there and back in time (fat chance of that). Take the moth you say? You haven't even taken the time to name it, you say! Well, duh. But it's only level 74 and that is too low for the basin. I got by over the weekend, and might not have any trouble with the moth, but I don't like have to always remember to switch pets if I going to the basin. Yeah, yeah, quit your whining I hear you sayin'. Enough said.

Some of the guild ran Blackrock Spire Sunday afternoon/evening. I went along because I wanted to be part for the guild. I couldn't make the Saturday ZA run, so this was the best I could do. Got the achievement and a couple of pets. Oh yeah, the best part, had fun doing it. *grin*

Second trip into WG was better than the first. We were on defense again, and lost again. Des found an unused cannon and was lobbing shells into the distance when she got attacked from behind by a DK. Now I want to know how a DK got inside the walls to begin with! Turned the gun around and started blasting it (Undead, do they have he's and she's?). Almost got it killed and it ran down the stairs and out of sight. The cannon is almost done, it's got like 10% health left. I figure the DK is going to do a full heal then come back at her. Wrong. Just a few seconds later up the stairs it comes and tries to get "behind" the cannon. Say what? Got off a blast and it dropped to ground outside the keep. By this time horde help had arrived and finished off the cannon. Des has grown fangs and wants the DK to pay. So down she jumps, calls the pet, and the fight is on. Des and cat against the nearly dead DK (is that an oxymoron?) and a warlock. DK is pulling out all the tricks to stay alive while the 'lock is dotting her up. Hit the 'lock with a viper shot, then a concussive shot and got back after the DK. She is banging away with serpent and arcane shots and moving out of melee range of the DK. At last it's health has dropped to 10% and the brain finally engages and she gets off a kill shot, but the DK is showing 0% health when all the 'lock's dots finish her off. Des is lookin' at her corpse thinking "I don't believe the piece of #$%^ is goin' to live", when the last of the serpent sting ticks off and it dies too! Oh the little victories are the sweetest. Two trips to WG, both on defense and both losses. Hmmmm, does anyone else see a trend here?

Ding 77

With no particular fanfare Des dinged 77. With the gold saved up, there was an immediate hearth back to Dalaran to pay for the cold weather flying. I did however forget to go to the trainer and spend the talent point for a couple of days. Sigh. With the ability to fly in Northrend it's now so much easier to mine, and so much easier (read less expensive) to level Jewel Crafting. Got the Jewel Crafting up to 426. Yippy!

The guild is a nice social guild that has just enough level 80 characters to try to run heroic instances, but scheduling seems to be a problem with only 3 on at the same time. The 80's are running PUG's so they are improving their gear.

Went back and finished Ramps and the next day soloed through Blood Furnace with only one death. I need to do a better job of watching my pet's health. When you (err I mean me) finally notice that your pet has 1k health left, it's too late. I have good add-on's but they are useless if you don't pay attention to them. Sigh.

So, I was wondering how Des would hold up in the Wintergrasp battleground. A 77 out with the 80's. We where on offense but we had tenacity. Whoa talk about a blur. I can't find the pet in the mass of bodies and vehicles, and hunters can't melee worth a hill of beans. Des (that is to say me playing her) has a long way to go in battlegrounds. Right now the Horde side seems to be holding an advantage in battlegrounds. Sigh.

Only three more levels to 80...

On the edge

The hunter is almost 77. That means 1,000g and cold weather flying! The open skies beckon, no longer having to ride or find a flight master, real freedom. Ok, maybe real freedom is going a little too far, but still it means that you get choices when you travel. Choices are good. With level 77 comes Wintergrasp and all the fun that that entails. Poor Des has never set foot in a battleground before. I sometime think that I'm too old for key mashing, but there is a part of my ego that says: "I can do this". Yeah, well, time will tell.

The new guild seems fine and I'm doing what I usually do. Takin' it slow and figuring out what folks are up to. Tryin' to see where I fit in. No real drama going on, so it's good for now.

Yesterday I started to see if she and JoJo (the gorilla) could solo Ramps? Got the first boss down without to much bother, but then was out of time and had to log. Gonna go back and see if I can finish Weaken the Ramparts. She has had that quest for a LONG time. Kept it around to test her ability to solo instances. Tried once before and couldn't get to the first boss. I think she was level 71 at that time. Some extra levels and slightly improved gear has helped. If JoJo can tank this will open up the older content reputation issues that Warth of the Lich King has created. But that topic is a whole post on its own.

Yikes! Tempus Fugit

OGM it's been a week and it's not like I haven't been playing. I did download the PTR 3.1 patch. I did copy the mage and hunter to the PTR. I even logged in once with the mage, set my talents and paid 1,000g to dual spec. Then I sat there and wondered what I wanted to do with that second spec. Do I want a PvP build? A PvE raiding build? Oh wait I'm not in a guild that raids (either character), so scratch that idea. So... I logged out. Bye-bye PTR, see ya soon.

Hunter bails out of the dead guild and joins another guild. This guild has people logged in! That's a nice change. Not the most chatty guild, but its only been a couple of days. Got my cat leveled to 75, then got the gorilla leveled to 75. The hunter is almost level 76 (98.7% or under one bar). Ran out of time Sunday to push her over the top.

The mage continues to stay in a dying guild. The tank left and took all of his alts. Not the first time this guy has bailed out of a guild for unknown reasons. I still have a couple of friends in the guild, but I figure that sooner or later we will all leave. It's just who decides to go first. Probably wont be me. Managed to grab a couple of achievements this week. Got The Snows of Northred which completed the Hemet Nesingwary: The Collected Quests. I'm trying to find the quest line that will start the FrenzyHeart Tribe/Oracles faction grinds. Somehow it has been eluding me. There is some quest line that I haven't done that will open this up, but darned if I can find it. /sigh

Ding - 75

I dinged 75 today. I got it when I turned in the cooking daily in Shatt. Can the Rokk smell what I'm cooking? Why, you may ask, am I doing the Shatt cooking daily? The short answer is that my cooking skill was 275. I needed to do something about that. An hour fishing in Azshara for Darkclaw Lobster and Large Raw Mightfish to get the cooking up to 300. Then it was Buzzard Bites and a slaughter in Hellfire that ran the cooking up to 325. Off to Nagrand to buy Roasted Clefthoof from Uriku. And finally kill some Clefthoof and cook Soup for the Soul.

Then the fun part, off to the trainer, and gulp! 180 gold. The good news is that I have finally gotten Aspect of the Dragonhawk.

The bad news is that I have made no headway in getting into a better guild. I need to find a way to motivate myself and get it done. Sigh...

6th Screen Shot

Yikes! I got tagged by Lienna. Its a good thing that I had been trying to catch a good screen shot to use in the top banner of this blog. The bad news is that all of the screen shots are pretty boring. You know it is just so hard to find the perfect lighting, and when you do find it you are probably in the middle of some nasty fight. No paparazzi following me around. That's me and my faithful companion Plutonia; my first and still favorite! So time to tag Maebius and Daniamlx23. Dig deep in that folder and smile for the camera!

Sad state of affairs

The mage and the hunter are both in guilds that are very disappointing. There are times when there are at most four people logged in. And I'm one of the four! Usually there is only one other person signed on while I'm playing. The really bad news for me is that I fell into these guilds by accident, therefor I have no real idea of how to find a "good" guild. When I read other blogs, like BigRedKitty, Lienna's Log, or Crittical QQ I get to see how much fun they're having and I am not. Jealous? Oh you bet! Now I have to face the fact that I will have to do things that I really don't like to do in order to find and join new guilds. Just like in real life, I have stayed at the same job for almost twenty years because I can't stand to do job interviews. So I really don't want to answer those interview questions good guilds make you answer. I could join one of those guilds that advertise in-game that they are looking for new members, but I think that I would have to be very lucky not to end up in a drama filled guild or worse. In chess this is called zugzwang. More to follow...

Hail to the Chef

I have wanted to earn the achievement Hail to the Chef since I first got to Dalaran and did my first WotLK cooking daily. I saved up my cooking awards and build up my supply of Northern Spices. Then last weekend I started buying several of the new cooking recipes then headed out to collect the materials. Each day I would knock several of them out. Finally it was down to Gigantic Feast as the only reliable way to gain cooking levels. This last Sunday I decided that I going to push my cooking to 450, get the Fish Feast and complete the achievement. I headed on out to Borean Tundra and fish up the Deep Sea Monsterbelly and Rockfin Grouper. Then I slaughter a whole lot of mammoths. All told I have enough to create ten Gigantic Feast. It's a yellow item and I should get a skill up 75% of the time. I need six to get to 450, so my math says i should reach 450 without any problems. Guess again! Ten tries and I get 4 skill ups. Pfft! So you know, out I go again to collect the necessary materials and the second time around I get my two skill ups on four tries (I had collected enough mats for six). Learn the Fish Feast and cook it up (I had the mats from all the fishing I had already done) and BAM! I have earned the title Chef.

Crash and burn

When I got up this morning I wrote about the adventures of my hunter last night. After composing an interesting and entertaining post I ran a spell check. Up popped a misspelled word and the dictionary didn't know how to fix it. I jumped on Dictionary.com and tried to find the correct spelling. Apparently I had misspelled the word so badly that the spell checker and Dictionary.com couldn't figure out what I was on about. So I throw it at Google and get some hits. I clicked a link that looked promising and .... Well the title says it all. FireFox rolls over and plays dead. Well it wasn't playing. The post was lost. I was not a happy camper. "Dispare" had in fact become despair.

I'm used to this kind of behavior with IE and Windoze, but not with Firefox and my Mac. In fact I had become lazy at home. This happens at work not at home. As a computer professional I should have known better. If you don't want to lose it, back it up, and back it up often.

Edit: 17 February 2009

I came into make some enhancements to web links and low and behold the missing post had been saved as a draft. I had seen the periodic message saying that the post I was working on was being saved, I just had no idea where. So I guess this is just Crash without a burn. Hehe!

DING - 73

My hunter dinged 73 last night. I was questing Borean Tundra at the time; didn't even notice since i had aggro-ed a couple of extra mobs. Looked up and it read 73. Had to go back through the log to see when it happened. Now days I stop questing in order to run back to the trainer and get my newest abilities, but when you hit odd numbers you usually don't get anything good. I have often forgotten to spend talent points and train, so I like to take care of it while I'm thinking about it. Its all to easy for me to get lost in the game and forget these kind of "player" things. I'm not sure if it's old age or the immersive nature of the game. I'm afraid it's the former, not the latter.

The hunter is a Beast Master. For me it's the only build that interests me. Right now the "hot" talent build is Survivalist. But what fun is that? The great hunter nerf of 2008 has really taken a huge bite out of playing BM. Since this toon is in a really dead guild (I am often the only one logged in) it's not about raiding or running instances, it's just soloing. No one to complete for the top of the damage meters. While BigRedKitty may need to be at the top of the damage meters, that is not a issue for me. While I read all that I can about BM I really don't look at SV or MM to much. I'm prejudiced in that regard. I just love the beast mastery talent. Now that is what a 51 point talent should be. Not deep freeze (poor frost mages). So BM hunter and Frost mages have both been screwed by Blizzard recently, but the wheel turns and new patches are coming. Reason for hope or despair? I say to Blizzard, take the nerf bat and smack pallies and kitties a few times, and for good measure rogues too!

Auto-save FTW!

Nat Pagle and the three hour tour

My level 72 hunter just hit fishing skill of 225. That means it's time to go see Nat Pagle in Dustwallow Marsh. The quest he gives you sends you to four different zones to "catch me a few rare fish". Of course none of the places you need to go catch the fish are anywhere near flight points, so you get a nice long ride. This time around (the second toon I have done this quest with) I had some sharpened fishing hooks to help me out. I never spent more than 7 minutes at any one location, but I spent over an hour from start to finish to complete this quest. This is one of the really annoying things about WOW that I hate. All the time that you waste just getting from one place to another. I appreciate that it's a large and detailed virtual world, but is it necessary for me to spend fifteen minutes waiting while some bird flies me from one place to another? Really?

So it didn't take three hours, but give me a break.

Hello World

And so goes the first code that anyone writes, regardless of programming language they are learning. Hello World is ubiquitous. How do I display information within this programming framework? That is one of the first things you do, learn to display information. It does not matter how many different programming languages you learn, you will write an application that displays Hello World. Count on it.

While this is not a programming language, it is something new, so the title seems fitting, if not comfortable to the old programmer (that's me). What I have to do, is leave behind the structured world of technical writing that follows application development like a sad puppy. That stuff is a guaranteed to put everyone to sleep. If someone ever figures out how to take a technical document and turn it into a pill, they will be rich. Software developers do NOT like to write documentation, but we all have to do things we don't like. Hopefully writing this blog will not be one of those things.

For reasons that I cannot explain I feel the need to start a blog. Of course I have all these idea's that I think will make interesting posts. We will see. I will be posting about my virtual life in World of Warcraft, funny stories from my past (and even my present), and various musing on current topics. Yes this is just another soap box for the Internet enabled generation to stand on and espouse their view. I hope that they will be entertaining. I suspect that I am only writing for myself, so I should be fairly easy to please, since I know what I like. Now if I can only stop myself for revising this for the tenth or eleventh time.