How to drive: Part 1

Since nobody's blogging these last few days, I'll take a turn for now.

Everyday I drive 35 miles to work, most of that on northbound I-15. Pretty much everyday I see things that make me want to carry a firearm in the car, so I can murder those that don't drive the way I want them to. This seems reasonable to me, and it would cut down on traffic for everyone.

Luckily I resist the urge to mount high powered rifles to my car, and instead I fume internally, and think of the scathing blog I should write about these people. "That would teach them!" But what am I going to write about that hasn't been covered by nearly every stand-up comedian in existence? Failure to use turn signals has been overdone. Reckless merging has been overdone. And the idiot going too slow in the leftmost lane has been overdone.

So I'm going to talk about the idiot going too slow in the leftmost lane.

How do you know if you are going too slow in one of the left lanes? You can tell because other cars are consistently passing you on your right side. In this case you should change lanes to the right, until you notice that people are now passing you on the left. This is part of a more basic rule of driving that most people ignore: stay to the right, unless passing slower cars. Part of what makes the German Autobahns a success is that German drivers "drive right". This doesn't merely mean that they drive on the right side, they stay in the rightmost lane unless they have a need to use one of the left lanes. When they no longer need the left lane, they move back to the rightmost lane available.

Utah just installed carpool lanes on I-15, and it's a great relief to traffic during congested times. However, some people think that the carpool lane serves some other purpose. Some seem to think that the lane is like a big comfy couch, just for them to stretch out on, at whatever lazy speed they want to go. Others treat it like a "party lane", where all the cool cars hang out. What it actually is, is a lane that can be used by carpoolers, when the regular lanes are crowded. Sure you can use it anytime you want to, but if there's no real traffic in the normal lanes, there's really no reason to use the carpool lane. If you are in the carpool lane when the lanes to your right are not really crowded, then you are being a dork. You are also being somewhat unsafe. This goes back to the rule I mentioned earlier: stay right, unless passing slower cars.

Now I know everyone that reads this in now going to do their best to stay in the rightmost available lane when appropriate. Thank you for your time.

Star Wars Communications Disruption

One of the best choose-a-caption's ever.

Happiness returns the the valley named after it

My nephew and his family are moving back to Utah! I'm so excited to see my little pimp grand-nephew! Oh yeah, Ryan and Ashley are great too. They were just going to surprise us all by visiting on Christmas when they had previously told us that they would be visiting Washington state instead. This is huge news for us as we now have all the kids and grandkids of my parents back within driving distance of each other.

Repeatable Music

I used to be convinced that MTV caters to people of lesser intellect. Nobody with half a brain can listen to the same thing repeated as often as music on that channel repeats. I won't even get into the content, my niece has that covered more than well enough.

So now that I've established that only simpletons are able to listen to the same thing over and over, why is it that I can listen to Tegan And Sara, Pinback, Muse, or Ani DiFranco on eternal repeat? It gets to the point that I have to force myself to make a new selection in WinAmp or on my iPods. Am I just now getting to some point, musically, that these MTV kids are already at? Is their music actually good and I just don't have the ability to grasp that? Is most of my music of minimal quality? Are there multiple places where repeating music doesn't drive you crazy (crappy music with low intellect vs. incredible music with higher intellect)?

I have a lot of music, hundreds of CD's, I've been buying them since 1987. Out of my entire collection, I would say that there are only 50 or so that I could play on repeat more than twice. And probably only 10 that I could play on repeat more than 5 times.

So I guess my question is (please comment): Have I changed, or has music changed?

What WoW race and class are you?

Undead Mage Undead are the forsaken: just like you. While it's important that you don't fall apart (physically or mentally), you might find yourself salivating in an unhealthy manner when someone comes selling cookies. Get more sleep. As a mage, you like blowing things up. Your favorite bit of technology is anything that goes, 'boom'. You live for that huge front-end KAPOW - but, after the dust has settled, you'll find yourself searching for something else to explode. Find out your real-life WoW race and class at QuizGalaxy.com

Actually, I'm a Troll Priest, but an undead mage is just about as cool.

iPwn

One of my World Of Warcraft guildmates made this video of the various WoW characters dancing, iPod style:

iPwn
It's only a minute, and it's very well done.

FYI, "pwn" is an intentional misspelling of "own". It's gamer lingo commonly used to describe that you weren't just "owned", you were freaking "pwned"! (pronunciation varies, I pronounce it like "own" with a "p" in front of it)

A poem about Instant Messenger (IM)

[17:59:48] KaRyn: can't you make IM into a poem instead?
[18:00:02] Adam - WCGS: ode to IM, a poem by Adam
[18:00:22] Adam - WCGS: IM stole my time, but time was fleeting
[18:00:48] Adam - WCGS: I try to think of a rhyme, but am no suceeding
[18:00:55] Adam - WCGS: am not
[18:01:20] Adam - WCGS: Customers want attention, it happens everyday
[18:01:40] Adam - WCGS: they think IM gives them that, but AFK takes it away
[18:01:47] Adam - WCGS: Oh man, that was good
[18:01:51] KaRyn: you are brilliant.
[18:01:53] Adam - WCGS: I'm blogging that

Tycho's a dad

Tycho's son was born on the X-Box 360 US launch day, kinda appropriate. The write-up he did was well done. You forget how eloquent Tycho can be, but when he stops dropping f-bombs for a few minutes it really shows.

Brian Regan

I have Brian Regan's new DVD on my video iPod.

I'd blog more, but the wife is calling.

Penny Arcade on Blogging

Forbes of all places, has a page showing Gabe and Tycho's view on blogging.

More iPod stuff

The case that ships with the video iPod is just a basic slip-case, good for protection, but lousy for real life use. I found that iPod Accessories has probably the best selection for 5G iPods right now. Everything iPod comes in second on my list. And the Apple store is harldy worth looking at right now. Their 5G product page is weak.

I already miss the Contour hard shell case that I have for my 60Gig iPod photo. It fits perfectly in the ashtray of my car and doesn't slide around or get in the way of driving.

Video iPod

I just bought my video iPod this morning! I'm watching my first video, "Sting - Desert Rose", on it right now.

Digital Purgatory

We've all seen "Demotivators". They're funny, but Digital Purgatory has one (look on the wall in the background) that blows them all away. You've seen the "Hang in there" poster with the kitty hanging on a branch by one paw, well check this out:
Digital Purgatory #47
Warning! There are some crude words in the comic linked above.

Blizzcon pics!

Here are the pictures that I took at Blizzcon:
Adam's Blizzcon 2005 pics.

Anaheim is great, and I guess there's some theme parks somewhere around here as well

I got to meet Scott Kurtz last night! I'm trying my best to be cool and not go fanboy on the Kurtz. We all met at the lounge in the Hilton here. It was like a continuation of our guild's Teamspeak chat; Scott entertaining all of us with stories, while we all chime in with one liners and such.

It's nice when an artist or writer (or both) that you like turns out to be so down to earth that they will hang out with you like any of your other friends. After a few people left for sleep, some of us went to a table and played poker and pool. I just sat and watched.

We have a good guild turnout, probably more than most. I wish the rest of the guild could be here with us.

In a few minutes we are meeting for breakfast, so I'm off to get some food with everyone.

Blizzcon pwns!!1!!!1

Blizzcon is today and tomorrow, and after a half day of hanging out with like minded gamers, I can say this: "I love being a nerd!!1!" I'm typing this from the Anaheim Hilton right next to the convention center, and I had a freaking sweet day today.

It started at 05:30 EDT in Long Island NY. At 09:00 EDT I boarded a 6 hour coach flight from JFK to Long Beach CA. I rented a 2005 convertible Mustang and drove to Anaheim. Things were looking up. But an hour later I hopped off the 405 because the trip was taking too long, and it was looking more and more like LA. The reason for that was because I got on the 405 northbound rather than southbound. So I turned around and headed back to cover sadly familiar ground. Just an FYI for anyone that cares, route 22 shares road with 405 for a few miles. This makes it easy to mistakenly exit at the wrong place, and end up on 22 in the wrong direction.
After all that, when I made it to the convention center, I was ready to call it a day. The driving reason for me to go in was the goodie bag. I wanted LOOT!!1!!!

But when I got in, I realized just how much I love Blizzard. They put on a first rate show. The demo's were great, they had top notch cosplayers dressed in seriously cool outfits. The female human mage was particularly well done (and she is hot). They showed us Starcraft Ghost, Starcraft Invasion (which we played), and the WoW expansion: The Burning Crusade, which we played as well!!1!!one!!!

Plus, I was able to meet Mike and Jerry of Penny Arcade, and later tonight a few of us Panda's are going to hang out with our leader, Scott Kurtz!!!1!!!eleven!!!!1!!

This is turning out to be the nicest thing I've done for myself in a very long time. I'm so happy that it feels like an acceptance speech is in order.

Online music stores

I fully support artists rights to get paid. I have purchased over 700 audio CD's and have no intention of ever stopping.

But I also feel that the audio I buy online is mine, and I have to right to use it anyway that I want. When I buy a song from iTunes, it will not play in WinAmp or many other media players.

If you are using iTunes version 5 or lower, you can use JHymn to strip the DRM from your legally purchased songs. It's arguable how legal this is, but I've lost no sleep.

And am I missing something about the music stores that let you rent music? The new Napster is the most popular music store that uses this model. I guess you have to think of it as an upgrade from satellite Radio, you pay monthly and when you stop paying, you don't get any of what you used to listen to. But if you have a portable audio device that can use this service, you are really locking yourself into a never ending payment plan. As soon as you stop paying, your player becomes almost useless. Sure you can still play mp3's, but that huge online database of music that you once had is now unavailable. Sucks to be you.

Gullible, don't be

Why do people still send me crap e-mail, or as I call it "feces-mail"? (yeah, it's not that creative of a term, but it kinda rhymes with e-mail) I just received one from a co-worker (I'm still at my old job, until the end of this week) about how all new laptops are being manufactured with a hardware keylogger installed, that keeps track of up to 500,000 keystrokes. This is purportedly so the Department of Homeland Security can keep tabs on us, without our even knowing. Sounds real scary, right?

Well it isn't. This is another case of somebody sending on feces-mail because they WANT it to be true. Snopes cleared up the situation for me in under 3 minutes.

The guy that sent this to me is a conspiracy theorist. He's not the extreme case like you sometimes meet, maybe just a 8.5 on a scale of 1-10 (with 1 being "hiding your head in the ground", 5 being a normal person, and 10 being the kind of guy that wears a tin-foil cap to keep the government from reading his thoughts). This is EXACTLY the kind of thing that he brings up from time to time as an indication that we are right on the cusp of a Orwellian style "1984" government. He likens it to the "how to boil a frog" metaphor, where you start with the frog in tepid water and slowly turn the heat up, rather than just dumping Kermit into boiling water. I think you can make the correlation to the topic of government and rights infringement.

Bear in mind that this isn't a dumb guy, he is well aware of Snopes, and he should know better than to forward a mass e-mail without fact checking it! Especially to me, I'm his #1 moderator.

Thankfully, the number of "forward this to 10 people and get a wish/have good luck for a year" crap has distinctly diminished over the last few years. I don't know if I could handle much more of that. Who really thinks that this works? What religion do they subscribe to that allows for such nonsense? And if such a religion exists, how do I get a membership list? Those are the kind of idiots that will buy ANYTHING! I could probably sell their e-mail address' to spammers for $5 per person. Honestly, how much common sense does it take to realize that there is really no higher power keeping track of how many people you forward an e-mail to? If they did, could they really be called a "higher power"?

Of particular interest are the ones that give multiple levels of payoff for how many people you forward to; 1-5 = wish granted in 2 months, 6-10 = wish granted in 2 weeks, 11-20 = wish granted in 2 hours!!! The superfluous exclamation marks are just more proof that the e-mail is TRUE!!! Do these people visualize some e-mail fairy, with their grand checklist firmly in hand, waiting for that 15th name to go into your To: field? "Hooray! Now Billy-Ray can have his wish for a 35¢ raise this week rather than in 2 months!"

On the other hand, if Billy-Ray just delete's the e-mail, this (or these?, I haven't been able to determine) vengeful entity is so pissed off that he/she inflicts poor Billy-Ray with bad luck for a year. Why is it that the circulation, or lack thereof, of some silly Irish friendship poem, barely a Limerick, can generate such a disparity in fortune?

These people also fall into that category of "hoping/wishing/fearing this is true". It's no different than the old-school paper-mail chain letters that we got in the 70's and 80's. The only difference is that back then, we didn't have Snopes.com. For the last few years I've taken the time to research every one of these "too shocking to be true" e-mails, and reply-to-all with the Snopes answer. I think that everyone should do the same. Maybe, in time, we can end this sad perpetual chain of letters that prey on the simple minded.

I used to reply-to-all to these e-mails, so everybody that got it along with me will see what I wished for. And I would always wish for the same thing: I wished to be god. That's right, if these e-mail wish givers are going to hand out wishes, then they are only handing out their own demise! I shall usurp them and remove their wish granting ability, thereby eliminating such a threat to my own sovereignty. Then comes the "fire and brimstone" stuff. You see, I'm a vengeful god, and I fully plan on subjugating you all to do my will. Have you seen the Lord Of The Rings movies? Remember Frodo's vision of Middle Earth if Sauron get's his ring back? Yeah, that's what I picture for my reign. So do yourself a favor and don't e-mail me anything that I can use to obtain easy wishes.

Thinking of these people makes me sad.

I'm changing employers

I'm taking a job offer from one of my current customers. Today I found out that NACT is paying me my PTO (Flex time) and vacation time. Since I have about 188+ hours (combined), my last paycheck that I get on the 21st will be about 5.5 times what my normal paycheck is.

I think it may be time to buy a yacht.

Watch what you say at work

Two of my co-workers go together to the gym on their lunch break. Today they worked on their glutes. When they got back to work, one of them commented over the cubicle walls that his "butt was sore". I instantly told them "I don't want to hear about what you do on your lunches together".

We all laughed.

Instant messenger is a tool of Satan

You know what I'm sick of? I'm sick of those instant messenger pop-up windows that shows who just signed on. No, I don't have an issue with it on my side, I disable that little punk first thing after I install or update my IM client. What I have a problem with is the pop-up on everyone else's screen.

You see, I don't use IM to keep up with my friends and family, I use IM almost exclusively at work. So as soon as I sign on, people (customers) around the world get a pop-up saying "Adam just signed on". And you know what, that pop-up must be irresistible, like a monkey trained to hit a button in order to get a banana, my customers all think that it's a really good idea to pester Adam with their early morning requests (I'm NOT a morning person, in fact I fantasize about drugging morning people with valium in order to make the whole world sleep in like me).

And they must think that they are crafty and subtle when their first line is "Hey buddy, how ya doin'?" Like they really give 2 cents about how I'm doing. That's just a preface to them asking for some favor that's always "real quick", when they should call our receptionist and put in a proper trouble ticket (I work in Customer Service).

This wouldn't even be a problem if it was just one customer, I'd just block them and never worry about it. But it's almost all of them.

Now I'm not saying that they can't IM me and ask a quick question. That's no my intention at all. What I want to stop is the 2-10 IM's I get the instant I sign in. It's frustrating to have that much to do in the first few minutes of being at work. Why can't these people give me 5 minutes to get the rest of my software loaded and ready to go? Is this their only chance to reach me? Do they forget about me when that pop-up window goes away? If they are that feeble, maybe I should add them to my block list anyways.

This morning it was a customer in Africa. I love these guys, they took very good care of me when I was out there training them, but it still gets on my nerves

So in review: Do NOT IM co-workers, customers, and vendors so shortly after they sign on. This should be added to some official "netiquette" rule. It's not big deal to do this to friends, unless you are asking them a work related question. In that case shame on you for abusing your friendship.

More New Orleans info

Here's a blog posted by a man who's staying behind in New Orleans to help out. Some of the posts on his blog are not for the faint of heart. The Interdictor.

My nephew used to live in New Orleans

I just got off the phone with my nephew, who left New Orleans on Wednesday. He has a lot of insight that you won't find in the media.

The first point that should be made is that there's more than just one side of this story. The people of New Orleans fall into a few different categories:
1. People who left before the storm hit. Some feared the worst, some feared the unknown.
2. People who would have left, but couldn't for whatever reason. Many people could not afford to leave, others were too ill, and couldn't move. And there could be a dozen other valid reasons.
3. People who have been through several hurricanes and underestimated the scale of this one. I have a hard time criticizing these people. In the past they have endured similar storms, and they didn't think this would be much different. When you bear in mind that areas have endured category 5's (such as hurricane Andrew) with less trouble, it would seem that a cat 4 would be bearable.
4. People who decided to stay with the intent of taking advantage of the situation and looting. These people deserve some serious punishment, but I wouldn't go so far as to say they deserve to die. Some of the armed bandits you see are these folks.

Point #2 really makes me angry at certain reporters who want to place blame for this tragedy on those who remained in the city. How arrogant you have be to make those claims! That's your small minded way of saying: "I've considered all possibilities and came to the conclusion that there's no valid reason to stay in the city". I really want to punish the people who think this way.

The situation in New Orleans is grim. The armed thug gangs that run parts of the city have become so powerful that the police cannot control them. The 80% of the city that is flooded has problems we may not consider at first. The first thing that happens when the streets flood is the sewers intermix with the flood waters, making the water that you see horribly smelly, and a serious health risk. Another problem comes from the broken levee's that let in seawater. It doesn't just let in the water, but in this case it has also let in bull sharks. Right now, these sharks are feeding on corpses of victims. The flooded streets have also seen an influx of a few Water Moccasins (Ancistrodon piscivorus or cottonmouth). These are one of the few snakes that really scare me. In the wild they are territorial and aggressive, and who knows how they will react to this new situation.

My nephew was holed up with his wife, his 1 year old son, and his wife's father in his father-in-law's apartment. The apartment building formed into a group dedicated to protecting each other. Eventually they housed a few police officers who showed up seeking refuge from the streets. One of these police officers spoke of a shootout he was part of that went very badly. I won't go into what happened, but this officer is happy to be alive after seeing his fellow police officers fall. He also mentioned that some police have been forced to resort to looting food because they have been cut off from supplies and support. Thankfully this building was in a gated community on high ground, part of the 20% that isn't under water right now. My nephew's apartment was not in the dry 20, and since he was on the bottom floor, everything they own is now underwater. They were able to take their car to a 4th floor parking garage located in the dry 20, but looting may take that from them as well.

When they decided to flee the city, the group had to stand as armed guards as they loaded up his father-in-law's Ford Expedition, and pray that the only people who saw them were unarmed or poorly armed. Any of the larger looting gangs would likely have the firepower to take the SUV and would willingly kill for something this valuable. The group had heard of the stories of people trying to leave the city, and knew that a common car-jacking tactic was to stand in front of a fleeing car and when it stops, shoot the driver and passengers if they resist. With this in mind, they resolved to run over anyone who stood intentionally in their way. To discourage this, they flew through the streets at ridiculous speeds, and thankfully, didn't have to resort to this extreme. When they heard on Saturday that the storm was going to hit New Orleans, they filled the gas tank (at pre-storm prices), and that allowed them to get far from the city before needing to refuel. When they got to (I've forgotten where they refueled), there was only 1 gas station that still had fuel. Thankfully, they weren't gouging prices in this emergency, but there was still a 2 hour line for gasoline.

Now my nephew and his family are staying in a Miami suburb with a friend. Cell phone coverage is spotty, as the entire gulf coast area is under a heavy telecomm load. Text messages don't deliver every time, and when they do, they don't always show who sent the message. I'm just happy that it's over for the ones I love, and I continue to pray for those still in that hell.

World Of Warcraft Honorable Kills

My new record for HK's in a single day:
WoW Screenshot

Here be my name...

My pirate name is:

Iron Sam Rackham

A pirate's life isn't easy; it takes a tough person. That's okay with you, though, since you a tough person. You have the good fortune of having a good name, since Rackham (pronounced RACKem, not rack-ham) is one of the coolest sounding surnames for a pirate. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from fidius.org.

More pirate fun can be found here.

How long is a year?

I can't believe I've been blogging for almost a year. My first post was just a note letting everyone know that I wasn't gonna blog, I just wanted to post comments on Kirsten's and Annie's blog.
My second post was mostly a realization that you don't need to have anything significant to say in order to blog. Something that 99% of the rest of the bloggers already knew (or didn't know, but were oblivious to how boring they were/are).
Now I throw almost any random thought up here. Who cares about relevance or continuity! And you all get to take advantage of these pearls of wisdom. You're probably all thinking: "Wow, that Adam. What a great guy!" Well, you're welcome.

Surviving the end of a failed raid

A good raid can be the most rewarding and exciting part of your World Of Warcraft experience. When teamwork and skill combine in a good raid party, objectives are easily met and your entire group hearths home without resurrecting.

But when your raid group is formed on the spot by someone with less than existent leadership skills, you are in for a world of hurt. These groups are often the type formed when an area is hit by an organized opposition's raid. At this time, the need for a raid group becomes apparent, and somebody steps up and starts the group. But a defensive raid group should never change to an offensive raid group without first setting some kind of objective.

These groups get gung -ho when they route the enemy, and the group quickly becomes a train of "HK seekers". Snaking into enemy territory chasing after the tail end of the retreating enemy, soon they meet the organized resistance that's been formed at the nearest enemy town. The newly formed battle line is fiercely contested for a few minutes, but the defending enemy has the advantage of respawning guards, and every raid group formed since the conception of WoW has had that 1 (or more) guy who stirs up the guards.

At this point it's best to call a general retreat. Since that never happens with these "pick up" groups (they always think they can turn the tide back in their favor), your smartest act is to hearth out and leave with dignity.

So lets say you are one of the folks that should have left already, and now face an overwhelming number of red names. You are gonna die, accept that and prepare for it. We are gonna leave everyone else now. If you are a support class, don't feel bad, you can't help much now anyways.

Don't run down the path you came in on, everyone else is doing that, and it only serves as a focusing point for the now "HK hungry" opposition. Find a route that nobody else on your team is taking and head that way. You don't even need to be heading in the general direction of your intended retreat. Remember that we are hearthing out, so it doesn't matter if you do this 100m further away.

If you have no pursuing fan club, then hearth out and count yourself lucky. If you do have your own train, "root em if you got em". If you can't root, at least draw them as far from your main group as possible. This way you still serve a value to the rest of the team.

If you are going to get nailed, try to find some trees or hills that you can res behind after you go down. Ashenvale and Tanaris are great for this. This will give you a chance of escape if they corpse camp you. Res behind a visual obstruction, and once they see your corpse change to bones, they will run all over looking for you, but you have a head start because of the cover you took. Now just find a safe place to hearth, and end this nightmare.

Alone time

Well, I've had a lot of alone time this last week. It's not like I wasn't a hermit before everyone abandoned me, but now I really feel alone. It's kinda sad, but mostly in a "pity party" sort of way. I'll be fine, it just takes some getting used to.

A positive thing happened this week though. An friend that I met online a while back might be moving to Utah soon. She IM'd me 2 days ago and mentioned this. It's kinda wierd for me, as she is the first (and only) person that I've met and gotten to know rather well, without ever meeting in person.

I've updated my webcomics page, and I am VERY proud of the results. I set it up with expanding lists, and the process of learning this was really fun. It's my first Javascript that does anything really functional. I'm always adding new content to it, but I'm keeping it text only for as long as I can (there are 2 images used in the expanding lists though).

Possibly my favorite new (new to me) webcomic is Copper. I just love the art.

...

First is was Kevin, then Marcus, Ryan, and now Cliff. All my bro's are leaving me :(

Alien Loves Predator

Alien Loves Predator just may be my new favorite way to spend time online.

The premise is that an Alien and a Predator are roommates in NYC. Unlike the popular comics, games, and movie, they get along rather well. The bulk of the webcomic is done by superimposing pictures of toy figurines over real world photos. One of my favorites is Abe ogling a Barbie, it just captures Abe perfectly with one frame. If that's not awesome in it's own right, the creator, Bernie, is one hilarious human being (I presume he's human from the pictures of his offspring).

I'll throw a link on my webcomic page on Monday most likely.

Spam can be funny

Spamusement

Panda Attack!

Good news! I got into Panda Attack! I don't know if this is going to be enough to inspire me to put in the time to get another character up to lvl 40 and beyond.

We had a raid last night, but I had a church meeting at the same time, and I could not attend. Turns out we lost, and the Alliance beat us back to Horde territory. I can't help but think that maybe one more healer on site might have turned the tides. Wish I had been there.

PvP vs. PA

How do I decide?!!! Do I join "Panda Attack" or whatever incarnation PA decides on for the new Dark Iron server? Oh, BTW, this is all a bunch of WoW jargon. If you don't roll in Azeroth, just ignore my macho-nerd babble and head over to someone more interesting.

For everyone still with me, I'm leaning towards siding with PvP for 2 reasons: 1. I haven't played Horde nearly enough, and 2. Panda's are incredibly cool.

Tegan and Sara

Am I insane, or is Walking With A Ghost about the catchiest song ever. Tegan And Sara's website.

This video clears up that Tegan is in fact the evil twin. We should have known that from the lower lip piercing that Tegan has had for a while. I guess that's the female equivelant of the "evil twin goatee".

The new record is 3!

That's the number of consecutive times someone has called and hung up before I could answer.

You see, my phone doesn't play a "ring" to those who call me, it play's Eric Clapton's "Layla". My family and friends are used to this by now, but strangers are always caught off guard. I've found that most people just hang up and call back. Sometimes they will even hang up after that second call.

It just surprises me to no end that some of them won't stay on the phone the 4 seconds it sometimes takes for me to answer the call. Let's run through the mental dialogue that must go on: "Layla?!? This is not the normal ring that I hear when I call others! Surely there is witchcraft at work here. I must hang up NOW before I am cast into the infernal abyss!!!!" I can assure you all that there is no telecom hellfire portal to worry about. And if there was, Nortel would surely charge too much for it to become a functional part of any major providers client damnation budget.

Every now and then I'll get a new caller who hangs on the line long enough for me to answer. I've noticed that these people are a bit more kick-back than the uptights that hang up right away. I know right away that these people are cool.

Webcomics

I threw up a new page about the 3 webcomics that I regularly read. No idea if my reader-base (Kirsten and Sam) is interested at all, but there ya go!

Lisa Hannigan has the most beautiful voice in the world.

Don't beleive me? Then I'm gonna punch you in your left ear.

Arrrrgghhh! I'm a pirate!

I'm a pirate. I really am. And I don't mean a software/movie/music pirate, everybody does that. I mean I'm an actual pirate, with boats and the proper lingo, and sometimes even the lack of bathing! Here's how this came to be.

Tom, Tommy, Tommy's friend, Ryan and I went wakeboarding today on Utah Lake, and there were a good number of other boaters there chopping up the water. I told Tom that we should bring my rifle and shoot at them to get them to leave. If we did that, then we'd be real pirates. But none of us really liked the idea of going to jail, so that idea was nixed. Then Tom said we could chop up the water like they are doing to us, and we could do it very well. And although nobody dies when we do this, it's still very annoying, and very pirate-esque.

And boy did we chop up that lake. Tommy and his friend went tubing, and I turned that lake into the definition of chop! Arrrggghhh!

Battlefield 2 - another really enjoyable game

I really enjoy playing Battlefield 2. They had the ingenious idea of integrating rewards, unlocks, and goals to strive for in a multiplayer first person shooter (FPS). Now, this isn't unique to video games by any means, Ghost Recon did this years ago with "hero" unlocks, and other games have similar features.

Why I give them credit for this, is because they are the first to do so on such a large scale (MMO). And I don't mean MMO in the sense that 64 people can play on the same server, I mean large scale in the sense that tens of thousands of people have their stats recorded and ranked (here's my stats).

Right now my global score is just under 3,000. I need 11,000 for my next rank advance and weapon unlock. The benefit of the weapon unlock is obvious. But the benefit of the advancement in rank really only matters to leaders. People with higher rank will be able to take the position of commander from those whose rank is lower. I don't play commander a whole lot, I prefer forming my own squad and playing as squad leader. But as squad leader you will sometimes notice that the commander isn't doing a good job. If that's the case, I'll apply for commander at the start of the next round.

Today I got my Basic Command badge. That's not an easy one to get. I'm rather proud of this, and grateful to the group of soldiers that I was playing with today. Without their skilled work (play?), I wouldn't have gotten this.

Saturday night (really it was Sunday morning, but I hadn't gone to bed yet, so it was Saturday to me) I got my Explosive Ordinance badge, and my Basic Transport badge! I'm so happy. The Explosive Ordinance badge is acquired by getting 15 kills with explosives in one round. I had tried to get this for weeks, but was only able to get it by using a rather devious method. While playing Strike at Karkand, I spawned at the USMC southernmost base. There is almost always a HMMWV or two there. Playing as spec-ops I loaded all 5 C4 packs on the front of the jeep, and drove towards the enemy. When I would get close to a group of 2 or more enemy soldiers, I would hop out of the jeep, and hit the C4 detonator. This would send jeep chunks all over the place, killing the bad guys, and myself as well. As I was doing all this, I also earned my Basic Transport badge (24 minutes in a transport vehicle)!

Now I need only the Knife, Pistol, Helicopter, and Aviator badges to complete my full set of Basic level badges. This is exactly what makes this game so good. It's very replayable because there is always something to strive for. After the Basic badges, you can try for the Veteran badges, and then the Expert badges. There are also many commendations that you can earn. Most of them have never been earned by anyone, so nobody outside of EA really knows how to get them all.

If you're gonna be pro-choice, why not go all the way

Sweetwater Post-natal abotion clinic

I'm not gonna title this one

So I was kinda setup to meet a woman a few weeks ago. We started by e-mailing each other, and everything seemed fine. After a few days, she wanted to meet, but I gave her my cell number instead. We had quite a few e-mails, and a few phone conversations from about that Saturday to the next Tuesday (I think). Probably about 4 hours of total phone time.

In that time I got the impression that she wasn't as interested in church as I am. For anyone that doesn't know me, I'm LDS. Religion hasn't always been such a high priority to me, but in the last year or so, I've made a real effort to attend church regularly, and now I attend pretty much every Sunday. It's also worth pointing out that here in Utah, it's kinda odd for a guy to be more religious than a woman. There were other things that made me think that this wasn't gonna go anywhere, but I won't get into those items here.

In one of those phone conversations, she wanted to setup a time and place to meet. I still don't know exactly why, but I was hesitant to meet her. Maybe it had something to do with my not being impressed with her from phone conversations. She wanted me to meet her at her work, which just didn't sound fun to me. I'd rather be on neutral ground, not sitting at her work around all her co-workers, being studied and evaluated. Well, I never committed to meet her there, and in fact I slept in rather late that day, about 4pm. She wanted me to meet her at about 5, and I had work at 6. Instead of going to her work, I went to Best Buy and bought a new bluetooth earpiece (the Jabra BT800) for my Nokia 3650.

She called me at about 5:10 as I was heading home with my new toy. I felt bad when she said that she was all dolled up to meet me, so out of guilt and fear of looking like a coward, I told her to head over to my work later that night. She showed up on what must have been the busiest night in our companies history. For about a half hour she sat there bored while I worked on 240 down T1's (3 switches with 80 T1's each). Eventually she asked if she should just leave, and I told her yes.

I hate to say it for fear of being labelled "shallow", but I was not physically attracted to her. I know, I've heard all about how there's nothing wrong with thinking that, but it doesn't change how I feel about it, there's a human being at the other end of that equation. Anyway, the next day she wanted me to meet her at WalMart to help help pick something out for a friend. That was supposed to be at 12:30, but I slept in to 2pm (I work from 6pm to 2am, and I rarely goto bed before 4am).

Later that day she text messaged me, asking is I want to "persue this any further" and "c what happens". Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but the old "see what happens" line implies something romantic. I've never had a friend ask me if I want to call them later to "see what happens", so I saw this as her way of asking if I wanted to take our relationship from a friendship to dating.

I replied with this: "I don't think we should. The church is very important to me, and I don't think you and I have compatible views of our spirituality."

Maybe it was premature of me to call it off this soon, but I honestly thought that this was the best way out that didn't string her along. I put about an hour of thought into that one reply. Well this reply brought on a flurry of unpleasantness directed at me. She eventually came out with some line about how I was insulting her spirituality. This didn't come out until the next day, so I don't think this is what bothered her at first. My best guess is she felt I was rejecting her based solely on her appearance, and she wanted me to own up to that. It also had undertones of wanting to catch me being shallow, then I'd be the bad guy taking all the blame. That's what I think from a few hours of conversations (later on), but I have no discrete reason for thinking that.

After a few text messages and a few hours, I finally sent her one asking her to call me so we could talk this all out. She has a bad habit of ignoring the questions I asked in TM's, and ranting on about how horrible I am. We didn't get much resolved in the phone conversation, even after about an hour.

What bugged me probably the most is how she kept trying to vilify me with the spirituality thing. She kept saying that I insulted her by dissing on her spirituality with my first reply "The church is very important to me, and I don't think you and I have compatible views of our spirituality." Man, I don't know how I could have done better than that. To me that seems to be about the easiest let down in the history of the world. I spent some time thinking of alternatives, but this seemed to get the point across without hurting any feelings. I didn't think that I needed to include any of the other reasons for not being interested, as this, to me, seemed sufficient. After talking through all this with her, she repeatedly reiterated how horrible of a person I am for saying something so cruel.

I can understand her being a little upset that I rejected her after only a week or so, but I would have to think she deserves some liability there. When she asked if I wanted to "see what happens", if I had answered "yes", what would the next step be? Surely it would be a date. I didn't see a need for a date, I had already experienced enough of her to form a preliminary opinion of who she is. And she isn't a bad person, not by any means. But I would have to be VERY impressed with a lady to be willing to wait months or more for her to come back to the church.

And by saying "no" to her, I wasn't saying that I was unwilling to ever talk to her again. I just didn't want to "see where this goes", if you know what I mean. Had she asked if we were still gonna call and talk, I would be more than willing. I was never asked that.

Now that you've all gotten the proper and complete 1 side of the story, are any of you willing to comment? Was I out of line with my reply? I thought that my letdown was as kind as possible, but maybe my self-evaluation isn't as accurate as I think. What could I have done better here?

Adam

Fathers day, and Mothers day

My parents are cool. They are far more interesting than most.

Unless you dad is a secret agent, I probably have you beat in the "cool dad" category. He used to race dragsters professionally in the 60's, he's been in more street fights (in his youth) than any 7 other fathers, and if you need to know some fact, odds are that he knows it.

And my mom, yeah, you lose there also. She is so kind that she makes June Cleaver look like a crack addict, and she has a work ethic you just don't find anymore.

I've never had a friend meet my parents that wasn't impressed. It wasn't until just a few years ago that I realized how good I really had it. Then I look back at my grandparents, and it kinda makes sense. My father gets his keen intellect from his dad, and his spirituality from his mother. My mom was raised mostly without her father, and that was probably the best gift he could have given her. I've really only met him once, but I'd take my maternal grandmother over my maternal grandfather any day of the week. My mom's mother was kind at heart, and may have been the hardest worker I've met. You've got to be pretty tough to raise 4 kids on your own in the 50's. I'm sure that's where mom get's her work ethic from. And mom's spirituality is all her own, she has her mother to thank for part of it, but she has fought the good fight and stayed the course.

I guess I should tell them more often how much I love them.

14 Mhz

Ok, I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, wanted the new 14Mhz Futaba controller. 2048 step servo resolution, dual processors, 640x240 color screen, 14 channels, Compact Flash memory slot, customizable shoulder switches, up to 100 model memory, etc... Then I read that it's powered by Windoze CE!!!

That's all I need, my $2000 radio get's a virus and brings new meaning to the term "crash". Or maybe I can experience a .dll conflict mid flight? I think it's in the realm of possibility to experience some horrible security flaw that would allow my new transmitter to be a zombie used by spammers to flood the world with unwanted e-mails.

Ok, so none of that is gonna happen, but a lot is going to have to change before I will trust my $1500 helicopter to a Micro$oft product. Shame on you Futaba! Shame on you for thinking that all (or even most) R/C modelers are ignorant of the horrible products put out by Microsoft.

Helicopters are cool

I vividly remember when I was a kid that I wanted to live to see (and use) laser guns and spaceships. Now I think I'd settle for a turbine R/C helicopter.... and a laser gun.

News Radio on DVD, Maddox, CD's, and Guild Wars

News Radio season 1 and 2 is now out on DVD. I have mine, do you have yours? Go out and buy a copy, it is now wrong to share the season 1 and 2 TV rips that you've downloaded.

Speaking of pirates, if you rule as much as Maddox does, you surely read his site. He has a few updates on there that crack me up. Really, if you are easily offended, don't go there.

And I'm now at 659 CD's. Only 7 to go for the next memorable milestone. Sorry, didn't mean to make you do any math here.

My Necromancer in Guild Wars is now lvl 20. I'm working on my Elementalist now. Check out my page here: My Guild Wars page.

Guild Wars

Nobody talked me out of it and I bought Guild Wars. Now I have a new way to spend time, like WoW wasn't enough. But the down side of this is that I don't spend much time playing WoW anymore, and I feel kinda bad, like I'm letting my guild down. I'll make it up to them. Guild Wars doesn't have the same allure that WoW had when it was new. It's very fun, and the graphics are amazing, but I don't think it's a long term game like SWG was and like WoW still is.

Anyways, my Necromancer is lvl 10 already, my Elementalist is lvl 7, and I have a low lvl warrior and ranger as well, both of those are still in noob-town.

More killing

Ok, I have BGK up to 55, BGH to 32, and I added a new character in every class.

Also, I deleted my Tauren on Bloodscalp and replaced him with a Gnome mage. This is just so I can play with a guy in my ward (when FrostWolf is down of course)

But I've been kicking around the idea of getting Guild Wars. I have no idea if the gameplay is any better, but the graphics are amazing. Someone talk me out of it please. I don't need another timesink.

Update on everything

Ok, no update in a while makes me rather lame. To fend off such labels, I offer you the following:

My Priest is now lvl 27. He's getting more fun to play, but he is still "squishy" (wears cloth armor), and that makes him a complete pansy, even with a shadow build. The last instance that I took him through was Stockades, and that was with a 57 rogue, so I still don't have a very good idea of how well he can heal.

My Pally is still 52, and my forgotten rogue is lvl 23. I started a Gnome mage when Frostwolf was down last weekend, and I have him at lvl 10. I'd bet that he get's only slightly more playtime than Null. Mage's are fun to play though. A lot of DPS real early on.

In non-WoW news, George Lucas made his first television appearance in a few decades recently. You can read all about it and his announcements here: Star Wars.com.

Kirsten keeps me laughing, check out her blog.

Guess what I played this weekend!

Ok, it was mostly just a lot of WoW. But I played some NHL Hitz Pro with my nephews, and I downloaded the Lego Star Wars demo and played that also. Calvin liked it as well, but he spent most of the time killing his padawan and giggling like only a 9 year old can.

Grant and Calvin played a load of James Bond on the GameCube, largely because it entertains them for hours, and it entertains me just listening to them play.

Anyways, I thought I'd put on an update that my Pally is lvl 52, my Rogue is lvl 23 (still), and my Priest is lvl 21. I spend most of my time on my Priest. My intent in creating this alt was to give our guild a high lvl healer for instances.

On Saturday I ran him through VC with a pickup group. We got all the way to the docks when our tank (a lvl 23 rogue) said he had to leave. This is rather frustrating, because I was worried about our tank being able to help with Van Cleef. We were getting by, but not with confidence. I had already resurrected a few in our group, and had been res'd once myself (@lvl 20). The worst were our lvl 16 Mage and lvl 18 Paladin. At least the Pally can tank, that Mage was truly useless. And the Mage couldn't get it through his head that he aggro'd at about 4 miles. He would keep running up to the front to loot a recent kill, and then we'd have a half dozen baddies attacking us in a place where we should only face about 3 at a time. Near the end, I stopped healing that little prick. I would res him, but only after we were safe and done looting the area.

It's times like that when I remember just how much I love my guild. Fiara (38 NE Rogue) answered my call for a new tank, and we rolled from the dock to VC in about 15 minutes. On the level of the dock just below the ships upper deck (after Smite, before the Captain), our Mage aggro'd the captain and his 2 guards. I gave up on everyone but Fiara and let them die, but Fiara came through for us, and I res'd the dead. I really wish our first tank had stuck around longer. I wanted some feedback on how well or poorly I had done as a healer, and Fiara didn't need my heals as much as a tank near my lvl needs it. Oh well, I guess I'll get a chance with Gnomer.

WoW

I made lvl 50 with Kills, lvl 23 with Sneaks, and I started a Priest named BigGuyHeals who is already lvl 11.
You can find pics and more here.

1/gank = reversing a gank

What's this? A second post for today? Odd, Adam is usually rather lazy. Well, I went home for lunch and had leftover sausage Jambalaya that I made yesterday. I also played a bit of WoW. Since I didn't have much time, I just checked on my auctions and headed to Arathi Highlands to do some mining. Well, someone else was mining the route that I normally take, so I was only getting a little bit of iron. I decided to head into the Witherbark cave in order to find maybe some Mithril.

As I entered the cave, there were 2 Orc's in there, a lvl 34 Shaman, and a lvl 43 Warrior (pictures taken after our encounter). They were working on a Troll and seemed to be on their way out, so I figured it was cool for me to just scoot past them and into the cave. Since they were surely on the way out, I was in no danger of being ganked. I mean, if I'm leaving a cave, I'm not gonna waste my time ganking an easy target. FYI, Shaman are healers, so this is a great little gank squad vs. me (lvl 44).

Anyway, I start working on a Witherbark Shadow Hunter, and change my view to look behind me. I see the two Horde finish off their Troll, and loot him, but they aren't leaving just yet. Of course they are discussing whether or not to gank me. After about 10 seconds, they both head my way, and now I know for sure that they are not gonna play nice. As soon as the Warrior takes a swing at me I face him and decide to ignore my Troll. Well, after about 3 seconds the Shadow Hunter I was fighting casts "Shadowed Silence" on me, and I can't cast spells for 5 seconds. Now I have to decide wether to try to take this Warrior with the possibility that I might not have spells, or ignore him for 10 seconds and remove this Troll.

I turned to face the Troll, and finished him as fast as possible (without using any cooldown spells). Then I turned on the Warrior, with only about 50% health. Thank heavens I have high end plate armor. My first heal was at about 25%, with the Warrior at about 60% or so. Not really sure about his exact health lvl because he was being healed by his Shaman the entire time. But he should fire that dude, because he was only healing about 20% of the Warriors health each time. I burnt my Divine Protection on that first heal, there was no way around it. The second heal was a greater health potion, but that just delayed the inevitable Lay On Hands that took me from about 15% to 100% in an instant.

My Warrior friend was at about 40% health at this time, and I'm sure he thought he had me wrapped up before that Lay On Hands. Now with a 60% health lead, I devoured that Warrior in just a few more seconds. My Seal Of Command was hitting him on almost every attack, and I was getting rather fortunate with my crits on both Command, and my regular attacks.

Once the Warrior was down, the Shaman was shaking in his leather armor. It took only about 2 seconds for him to realize that he should be running. He split, and cast a totem or Earth Bind to slow me down. This gave him enough of a lead that I wasn't gonna catch him, and on my one chance to use Hammer Of Justice, I blew it and used it while still stuck in his Earth Bind totem. He broke my stun before I could get out of his totem's range, and he seemed sure to escape. But as soon as we got out of the cave, he started weaving left and right, taking a zig-zag pattern rather than a straight line. Since the exit from that area is almost a true straight line, I just stayed on that track until I caught him. Then I taught him exactly why you NEVER MESS WITH A PALADIN THAT IS AT A HIGHER LVL THAN YOU ARE!

I knew that I had won by using Lay On Hands, and that a second encounter might be disastrous for me, so I left the area. I saw them a few minutes later with another horde (lvl 38 something) in about the same area, and just watched them from a distance. Once they killed what they were working on, they left, directly away from me. HAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!!! Tremble and Fear before the might of Airhawk Alliance!

But all gloating aside, here is what they did wrong:
1. The Shaman should have been healing the Warrior the entire time.
2. The Warrior definitely needs better armor and weapons. If it was 1v1, I would have worked him without healing.
3. The Shaman should have ran in a straight line, dropping Earth Bind totems along the way to slow me.

I still don't think that I've lost what I consider a fair match, and I've beaten several horde that were many lvl's above me. 5 lvl's is my personal best so far. From what I hear, I need to try a half decent Mage now. In theory I would never get even close to a properly played mage. With Blessing Of Freedom and Hammer Of Justice I think I could give them a good run for their money.

Swearing is great

I like to think that I am an expert in the field. I can swear like a pro, and use some advanced techniques that others may not know.

But one thing that I hadn't considered was my proficiency at swearing in other peoples tongues!

My shame knows no bounds, but I am adimant that I will repair this oversight! My study of foreign cursing begins today!

Anyone else that wants to follow along can get help here:
Swearsaurus

Loot and Gold

I'm afraid to post what I did in WoW last night, for fear that the sweet area that I "discovered" will become flooded by dorks that want easy money and decent loot. Without even really trying, I was making over 1 gold per hour, and getting some loot that I was able to sell for another easy 5g (per hour or two).

So only Thermo knows the area that I speak of. It's not great for XP at lvl 42, but the kills are easy, and you can harvest between 1-2.5s per kill. And one last hint: it's a place that most players have been to by lvl 40, but most probably just passed through while running quests, and didn't take note of how sweet it is.

January's ThinkGeek Techie Haiku Winner is:
---
Foul smelling dungeon,
Cleaving goblins with my axe.
Lag spike! Now I'm dead...
---
A great shirt: Rogues.
ThinkGeek rocks my world!

In the meantime, go visit Zombo.com.

Not yet at lvl 20

Last night as I was finishing a mission in Ashenvale forest, a lvl 29 undead priest ganked me (lvl 18). Not too big of a deal, but kinda of frustrating because she was camping just outside of the Alliance territory border, killing the lowbies as they exit and become PvP enabled. And at that place she is almost guaranteed to not encounter anyone higher than about lvl 25. Most people would skip right over that area and take the flight path to Astranaar.

So we can be sure that she is there just to kill people without the hassle of encountering anyone even close to a threat. I felt like going and getting 'Kills, and teaching her a lesson in manners. But someone else dealt with her before I could do that.

Other than that, I only made it to lvl 18 last night. I was shooting for lvl 20, but I got really sleepy, and had a few other distractions. Oh well, I may be able to make 20 tonight. Or I might just play 'Kills.

What a long day!

Sunday night was a little bit unusual, even for me. At about 8 pm I started WoW, and decided that "Bashade" is an odd name, so I deleted him (lvl 5) and started a new Night Elf Rogue named "BigGuySneaks". My Paladin is named "BigGuyKills", see the similarity? You should if you are at this Blog. I like this because it makes it easy for the guild to remember that I am an alt of BigGuyKills.

But that's not what was unusual about the night. What is odd is that I played WoW until about 1 am this morning, non-stop. I didn't stop for anything more than getting more Mt. Dew and then dealing with the results of that much Mt. Dew. By 1 am this morning I had made lvl 17 in less than 22 hours.

I know that I'm not setting any records here, but 36 hours (about 22 hours playtime) is still a long time to go without sleep. If you get to a quest or event that isn't making you focus, sleep will overtake you, and you will fall asleep at the computer waking up hours later to the "You have been disconnected from the server" message.

The server went down for about a half hour last night, so I played Null for a bit on Bloodscalp. I was shocked at how poorly I was managing him. The last time I played Null was before I had Cosmos. I wasn't making any money, I had 2 unused skill points (he was lvl 12), but he was at least rested well past the next lvl. I lvl'd up and the rest marker was about 98%. I dropped mining and took up alchemy and herbalism. But he only gets a workout when Frostwolf is down.

Back to names. After speaking with Thermo, I decided that I will do a mage in the future, and name him "BigGuySpells", or something close to that. Thermo added a female mage and named her "Thermione" after the "Hermione" character in the Harry Potter books. I thought that was rather creative.

And you know what, I really like the album "The Real Thing" by Faith No More. I just popped that in for sentimental reasons, and I was amazed at how good it is. But I'm afraid to get another of their albums, because I would surely be let down.

Guess what! More WoW!

I got very little done last night, but had a great time. I started my quest for lvl 40 first aid: Triage at Theramore Isle. That is a rather difficult test that they put you through. You have to heal a number of patients (about 16) and do that with less than 6 of them dying. The problem is that they spawn in this room at random times and with random severity levels: critically injured, badly injured, and injured. The critically and badly injured patients are easy to deal with, because you can prioritize them rapidly. It's the regular injured that get ya. They are more common, and it's easy to lose track of which ones have been there the longest. So while you are running around healing the worse off patients, you forget that the guy on bed 1 has been there longer than any of the others, and he is going to be the first to die.

I also spent a good deal of time getting a few more flight paths on Kalimdor. I took the ship from Booty Bay to Ratchet, and later made the mistake of hanging out in front of Orgrimmar too long. I really wanted to have that as a discovered location on my map, but a lvl 57 Troll thought that I should NOT have that location discovered, and he proceeded to teach me all about how 17 lvl's of difference can make a fight pretty much unwinnable for the lesser lvl person.

I also learned that you cannot swim from the Ashenvale coast to anywhere in the Stonetalon Mountains. It's a cliff wall almost the entire way, and it forces you to turn back or swim on to Desolace. I swam on to Desolace thinking that there HAS to be some place along the way where I can get over those hills. There isn't. I wasted about 30 minutes doing that.

But I did get flight paths in Talrendis Point, Astranaar, Nijel's Point, and Stonetalon Peak. I already had Auberdine and Theramore Isle. Tonight I plan on getting flight paths in Talonbranch Glade, Nighthaven, Thalanaar, Feathermoon Stronghold, and Rut Theran Village.

WoW this last weekend

Well, I made lvl 40 over the weekend. In fact, I made lvl 40 at about 06:00 MST on Monday morning, a mere 4 hours before I was supposed to be at work.
I have a nice pic on my website that shows the glorious moment.
No I just have that long grind to lvl 60.

WoW is consuming this blog

I've been using Verigan's Fist since about lvl 22 or 23. This is the prize that you get from doing the lvl 20 Paladin quest. Here I am at lvl 35 now, and I am still using it. It's makes me think that I'm missing something in the "Auction House" (AH). I've only found one thing (a 2 handed axe) that comes even close to matching this mace (and that I can use at my lvl). Thottbot has a bunch of things that I would consider an upgrade, but I can't find them.

Last night Thermo and I made our way to Gnomeragon and started those quests. We grouped up with 3 others, and entered the instance. What we learned is that you cannot go into an instance of lvl 30 elite enemies and take on the entire dungeon at once. I'm still not sure what happened, but my guess is that while I was moving along slowly and taking on small groups at a time, one or two of our group must have seen some loot that they could not resist, and in going after it, they must have set off one of those alarm-bot's. All of a sudden a swarm of about 10 or more lvl 30 elite creatures entered the gear room hot on the trail of at least 2 of our group.

My first instinct is to stand up to them, so I targeted one and swung away. That peeled only one from the pack, and while that one dealt with me, the rest of my group was slaughtered by the remaining enemies. By the time the swarm finished off my comrades, I had my target at about 10% health, and had about 35% health myself. Well, that didn't last long. When I saw that long line of bad guys coming at me, I panicked. For a second I stood my ground, like that was gonna work. I tried to heal right away, but that didn't work as I was stunned by one of them. So I tried to cast "Divine Protection" on myself but didn't have enough time to do even that.

So I released and started the long walk back to Gnomeragon. Once in the instance, we all healed up and stared back in. At the top of the gear room we realized that we could drop into the room and save a lot of time, so we did that. I survived the fall with about 15% health, like everyone else. So we all healed up again. Before I could get ready, here comes a member of the group, who I hadn't even seen leave us, with that same f&*^%ing trail of 10 or more bad guys! I knew better than to stand up to them, so I ran right away. But we hadn't cleared out the lower level, and there was nowhere safe to run to. I burnt my "Divine Protection" and "Lay on Hands" spells in an attempt to stay alive, but that didn't work.

I tried to find out why we were chased again, but nobody from the group would fess up. After resurrecting, the group split up. Thermo and I stayed together and tried to get some help from the guild before giving up. Nobody wanted to start that quest so late in the evening, so we headed back to Ironforge (IF) to check the AH. Once there, Mavrick and Kronos offered to help us, so we grouped up and went back in.

Man those guys can pound! Kronos and Mavrick show me what I hope to be in a few weeks. What had taken our first group over an hour, took our new group only about 15 minutes. Kronos got sleepy after a while, and called it a night. The rest of us were rather close to passing out from lack of sleep, so we finished one last part of the quest and ported out to IF.

I plan on finishing my last 2 quests in Gnomeragon tonight. Hope I get a group that isn't common-sense challenged.

WoW yet again

Last night was fun. I made mining lvl 125 and can now mine iron. I know, big whoop. Anydangway, I spent some time in Stranglethorn Vale (STV) working on the Tiger, Panther, and Raptor missions. I also made my way to Booty Bay at the end of the night and got that flight path.

But as you may know, STV is gank-tastic, and the entire night we were coming across horde. STV is meant for lvl 30-45 people, so I don't have a problem with lvl 50's coming in and ganking us. It's not like they are roaming Westfall or Redridge and picking on the lvl 10-25's (less than half their lvl). So I understand it when a lvl 60 comes to Nesingwarys Expedition and tries to ruin our day.

What I don't understand is why a solo lvl 38 undead priest would enter this area. We had a few horde enter the area with no chance of ganking nearly anyone. I tell ya though, when some lvl 38 idiot comes in and tries to kill 4 lvl 33-34's, I take a great deal of pleasure in teaching him how wrong he is. Few things are more pathetic than failed gank attempts.

We also had a horde come in and taunt everyone into attacking him. He was killed at least 5-10 times before he gave up for the night and we saw him no more. But I will give him one credit, he figured out how to talk to us when we didn't know a common language. Instead of just waving or whatever, he would yell out "|\| 0 0 |3 $" If you can't read that, it says "NOOBS". If he had typed it out, the language barrier would have only shown that he was yelling "Grom" or something like that. So now I know that any character outside of the English alphabet will pass through unaltered.

WoW again

Last night a lvl 37 undead Shaman was hanging out too close to Refugee Point, and I decided to make his life difficult. Thermo was on his way to meet me at about that time, so I asked him if I should take the time to kill this guy, since it would affect our plans if I did so.

He said that he wanted to help out, so I waited for Thermo, and we attacked this guy together. Thermo was lvl 27 (Warrior) at that time and I was lvl 33. The shaman didn't last long. But while we were standing there, we were attacked by a lvl 31 Raptor, and that took a lot of our attention. Meanwhile our undead foe had healed up and decided to return the favor.

With my health and mana low, I wasn't able to hold up to him for long. After he killed me, he went after Thermo and killed him.

We were only a few meters away from a graveyard, so I ran to my corpse and resurrected right away. As I turned on my Devotion aura and healed myself once before we clashed. With my mana at only 40% or so, he was able to take me easily. I tried again, and he killed me again. So the third time, I res'd a bit further away, and got fully prepared before we mixed it up. This time I had full health and almost full mana, thanks to "Blessing of Wisdom", so after a few heals, he had to run. Hammer of Justice kept him from getting anywhere, and I finished him off while he was stunned. By that time I didn't want to deal with him anymore, but Thermo had to go AFK for a minute, and guess what? We both got ganked by him.

Thermo came back, and we both res'd while he was distracted by a raptor. Seems a bit ironic that the tables had turned in quite that way, so we pounded him into the dirt and then killed the raptor. Now we took off for real and went about the rest of our night.

What was even more interesting than that was later on as we were doing the Dark Iron Dwarves missions in a group of 5 lvl 29-33 people, a single lvl 40 Undead Shaman attacked our group. It was hilarious! But even worse was that this idiot RETURNED and tried it again! He wasn't even close to a match for us. I still have no idea why he thought he could take us on.

WoW update

I kicked a lot of ass in WoW this last weekend. I got my first real solo PvP kill. You can read about it here: http://adamrules.thejacobcompound.com/games/wow/wow.html

And last night I had a guild member enchant my Maul to do +3 damage and give it a healthy blue glow. I haven't tried it since that enchanting, but I plan on doing so tonight just after work.

Lo-Pro

You should all give Lo-Pro a listen. Really a great band. When I rule the world, this will be a mandate, but for now it's just a recomendation.