With a little prodding from my nephew Ryan, I've decided to start my own company doing web and graphical design. I'm calling it H&H Designs. The name is a tribute to my father's first race car shop: H&H Speed Shop. A few years ago my brother Tom told me that he uses H&H Systems as a fake company name for online questionnaires, so I started using H&H from time to time.
I'll probably post a few logo idea's here and see what the 3 of you that read this page think.
2006-11-30
2006-11-17
Onyxia last night
Crap, it's already 04:30. Where does the time go?
Last night our guild ran Onyxia. We called in a few friends that had left the guild in the last big blow-up a few weeks ago. These two left on fairly good terms, but I know that they expected a mass exodous to go with them. Raiding just hasn't been the same since that last blow-up. We were probably a month away from downing the last boss in Black Wing Lair (BWL), and now we can't even finish Molten Core (MC) every week.
Anyways, Onyxia is a gimme, and after 2 failed attempts these two people left, stating that they were out of time. I would have said the same thing, or something similar, and I wouldn't expect anyone to believe it. It really looked like the raid was going to fall apart as even more people left, but we were going to give it one more shot, as hopeless as it may be.
I happened to be on my Mage, because we supposedly had enough healing and wouldn't need my Priest. Well, for this last attempt I decided to 2-box my Mage and Priest. I was doing it almost as a joke, but I figured if my Mage died I could switch to healing and if the Priest died, no big deal. I never planned to be attempting to focus equally on each character in the fight, that's nearly impossible to do during Onyxia.
I totally didn't expect to down her, because once a group fails at something a few times, the spirit of the group is just defeated and typically they can't win at that point. It's human nature, and raiding in WoW can sometimes boil things down to the basics of how we as people function. It becomes less and less about gear and skill, and more a factor of who has the desire and drive to make things happen.
Let me deviate from the story a bit and explain the groups involved in a raid. First, there are the officers, such as myself, who manage everyone and try make things happen. In a raid of 40, we have about 2-4 present. Second, there are the class leaders who are in charge of their specific group, be it Warriors, Priests, Hunters, or whatever. About 5-10 people in each raid are class leaders. And third would be the guild members who are the body of the raid, making up the remainder. Different outcomes depend on the different disposition of the three groups. When the officers lose the ability to lead or even control, things go sour and it's obvious. When the class leaders have lost their drive, it's less obvious, and doesn't lead to failure as surely or as quickly. Also, a few good class leaders can easily make up for the officers shortcomings. And lastly, when the guild members who form the bulk of the raid lose their spirit, it's sometimes difficult to see what exactly is wrong. It's even more difficult to correct this. I still don't have a fool-proof way of picking up the body of our group and getting people to perform. What seems to work one day, will fail the next time. Sometimes it's like herding cats. You get a few immature punks in the group that want to crack jokes nonstop, and soon everyone is screwing around. That's when I play bad cop, and I get mean. Verbal abuse DOES work people. But it has to be used only in extreme cases. If you do it all the time, people disregard your anger as a personality flaw rather than a call for them to correct themselves.
Tonight we had a case of the third group losing it's drive, and we mis-diagnosed it as a class imbalance issue: "Not enough DPS". It wasn't a case where the bad cop could fix it. I definitely didn't know what to do, and that leads me back into my story. I was going to control two different characters, on two different computers, at the same time.
I've done this before, but on my own, when other people weren't affected by my performance. In this case, I was playing my Mage, BigGuyCasts, one of our top 10 DPS characters in a guild of over 350 characters, and I was also controlling my Priest, BigGuyKills, our #1 healer (name is somewhat ironic) in that same raid. Yes, I'm a bit proud of my accomplishment with my Priest, and no, I wouldn't be half of what I am if it weren't for the other people I play with.
So during this third attempt, where practically nobody thought we would succeed, at the end of the battle both of my characters were alive. My Mage was 7th in total damage done, and my Priest was first in total healing (having done 25% of the healing in a group of about 9 healers, the next nearest had done about 16%).
This was a case of the body of the raid losing it's focus, but pulling through at the end. I still don't know exactly how it turned around. My guess is that the two groups of leaders, about 10 of us, took their game up a notch and covered for everyone else who had lost their edge.
Well, I know that none of you really care about all this. I'm just really proud that we were able to recover from 2 failures and end the day on a good note. And I guess I need to look deeper into why these things happen, as well as how to recover better and faster.
Last night our guild ran Onyxia. We called in a few friends that had left the guild in the last big blow-up a few weeks ago. These two left on fairly good terms, but I know that they expected a mass exodous to go with them. Raiding just hasn't been the same since that last blow-up. We were probably a month away from downing the last boss in Black Wing Lair (BWL), and now we can't even finish Molten Core (MC) every week.
Anyways, Onyxia is a gimme, and after 2 failed attempts these two people left, stating that they were out of time. I would have said the same thing, or something similar, and I wouldn't expect anyone to believe it. It really looked like the raid was going to fall apart as even more people left, but we were going to give it one more shot, as hopeless as it may be.
I happened to be on my Mage, because we supposedly had enough healing and wouldn't need my Priest. Well, for this last attempt I decided to 2-box my Mage and Priest. I was doing it almost as a joke, but I figured if my Mage died I could switch to healing and if the Priest died, no big deal. I never planned to be attempting to focus equally on each character in the fight, that's nearly impossible to do during Onyxia.
I totally didn't expect to down her, because once a group fails at something a few times, the spirit of the group is just defeated and typically they can't win at that point. It's human nature, and raiding in WoW can sometimes boil things down to the basics of how we as people function. It becomes less and less about gear and skill, and more a factor of who has the desire and drive to make things happen.
Let me deviate from the story a bit and explain the groups involved in a raid. First, there are the officers, such as myself, who manage everyone and try make things happen. In a raid of 40, we have about 2-4 present. Second, there are the class leaders who are in charge of their specific group, be it Warriors, Priests, Hunters, or whatever. About 5-10 people in each raid are class leaders. And third would be the guild members who are the body of the raid, making up the remainder. Different outcomes depend on the different disposition of the three groups. When the officers lose the ability to lead or even control, things go sour and it's obvious. When the class leaders have lost their drive, it's less obvious, and doesn't lead to failure as surely or as quickly. Also, a few good class leaders can easily make up for the officers shortcomings. And lastly, when the guild members who form the bulk of the raid lose their spirit, it's sometimes difficult to see what exactly is wrong. It's even more difficult to correct this. I still don't have a fool-proof way of picking up the body of our group and getting people to perform. What seems to work one day, will fail the next time. Sometimes it's like herding cats. You get a few immature punks in the group that want to crack jokes nonstop, and soon everyone is screwing around. That's when I play bad cop, and I get mean. Verbal abuse DOES work people. But it has to be used only in extreme cases. If you do it all the time, people disregard your anger as a personality flaw rather than a call for them to correct themselves.
Tonight we had a case of the third group losing it's drive, and we mis-diagnosed it as a class imbalance issue: "Not enough DPS". It wasn't a case where the bad cop could fix it. I definitely didn't know what to do, and that leads me back into my story. I was going to control two different characters, on two different computers, at the same time.
I've done this before, but on my own, when other people weren't affected by my performance. In this case, I was playing my Mage, BigGuyCasts, one of our top 10 DPS characters in a guild of over 350 characters, and I was also controlling my Priest, BigGuyKills, our #1 healer (name is somewhat ironic) in that same raid. Yes, I'm a bit proud of my accomplishment with my Priest, and no, I wouldn't be half of what I am if it weren't for the other people I play with.
So during this third attempt, where practically nobody thought we would succeed, at the end of the battle both of my characters were alive. My Mage was 7th in total damage done, and my Priest was first in total healing (having done 25% of the healing in a group of about 9 healers, the next nearest had done about 16%).
This was a case of the body of the raid losing it's focus, but pulling through at the end. I still don't know exactly how it turned around. My guess is that the two groups of leaders, about 10 of us, took their game up a notch and covered for everyone else who had lost their edge.
Well, I know that none of you really care about all this. I'm just really proud that we were able to recover from 2 failures and end the day on a good note. And I guess I need to look deeper into why these things happen, as well as how to recover better and faster.
2006-11-09
2007-01-16, the day I dissapear
That's the street date for Burning Crusade, the first expansion to World Of Warcraft which lets me level my characters beyond the current cap of 60 to level 70. So you can expect even less than usual from me on that day. I've already pre-ordered it, and splurged for 1 day shipping.
Not sure how I feel about the expansion. People in the beta are saying that the basic drops from the first dungeons are better than some of the more accomplished people's gear. It really leads to a bit of discouragement when you know that "trash drops" form simple instances are going to replace the epic gear that you worked so very hard to get. A lot of people are not playing as much because of this, and my own addiction may even be wavering.
But all this comes from my keyboard a mere 20 seconds after seeing the post on the official website. Excited enough to post so soon after seeing the news, and excited enough to post twice in a day when my two prior posts were over two months apart.
Yeah I know, I make no sense.
Not sure how I feel about the expansion. People in the beta are saying that the basic drops from the first dungeons are better than some of the more accomplished people's gear. It really leads to a bit of discouragement when you know that "trash drops" form simple instances are going to replace the epic gear that you worked so very hard to get. A lot of people are not playing as much because of this, and my own addiction may even be wavering.
But all this comes from my keyboard a mere 20 seconds after seeing the post on the official website. Excited enough to post so soon after seeing the news, and excited enough to post twice in a day when my two prior posts were over two months apart.
Yeah I know, I make no sense.
You probably don't want to read all this
Blah, blah, blah.... I don't want to type in here. So why do I? Bored I guess, maybe I want to make this thing work again like it used to. I think it's good to have a place to thrash out ideas and feelings. That sounded less feminine in my head.
So I'm on my backup PC right now, here's why. A few months ago I had a power outage during a storm. No big deal, the backup PC went down as expected, and my main PC stayed up as expected. So did my internet and a few other things. All this because of the 500VA APC UPS on the floor next to my PC. The UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply) is basically a battery that keeps providing power to whatever is plugged into it for as long as that battery has a charge. It also makes sure that the power going through it never spikes up or down. Upward spikes in power are handled with simple electronics that never allow the voltage to exceed a set amount (why do I always try to put two M's in amount?). Downward spikes are handled with capacitance and the aforementioned battery. Anyways, back to the story (I know it's a great story so far, and it's gonna get better folks).
So I finish up some rant about DKP or guild drama or our raiding schedule or whatever happened to be the topic in WoW at the time, and was about to close down my main PC, when the UPS battery ran out of juice and powered off. No big deal, it gave me enough time to finish what I was doing after the power outage, so I was happy. A few hours passed and power came back on. The backup PC cycled on, but the main PC didn't. This is where the story really takes off guys.
So I had a mystery on my hands. Well, mostly I just wanted to not deal with any of this, but I forced myself to. My first thought was that it's the power supply (PSU), motherboard, or CPU. My next thought was that these are all kinda spendy, and I don't want to throw that much money at the problem. So I took out the PSU, and drove to PC Club to have it tested. They said that it was putting out proper voltages, but would need to run a bench test to see if it's putting out enough amps. Well, if it's putting out the right voltages, I'm sure it's fine. I'll just replace the motherboard because that's surely the problem. So I took anther 2k from my 401k, and paid rent, bought groceries, and picked up a new Asus A8N-SLI Premium.
The motherboard got here a few days later and I installed it that day. Hit the power button and NOTHING. I just wanted nothing to do with it at that point. But I knew that most of my bills were paid and that I easily had enough money left over to buy a new PSU, so I drove to CompUSA and bought a new Antec NeoPower 550. I was a little upset that the NeoPower series had switched from 120mm to 80mm fans, but I bought it anyways.
Got home, installed the PSU, and it powered on! I was so relieved. And just in time for Molten Core (MC). WoW was acting a little strange at times. Of course it wasn't the computer's fault, I had that all fixed, right? Well, it turns out that about every few hours, the game completely locks up. I replaced the CPU with the one from my backup PC, and it still faults. I'm at a complete loss as to what this could be. I've replaced EVERYTHING that could be doing this. Except drivers. Seriously, I just realized that as I was typing.
See, not matter how girly it sounds, it IS good to have a place to type out what you are feeling.
So I'm on my backup PC right now, here's why. A few months ago I had a power outage during a storm. No big deal, the backup PC went down as expected, and my main PC stayed up as expected. So did my internet and a few other things. All this because of the 500VA APC UPS on the floor next to my PC. The UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply) is basically a battery that keeps providing power to whatever is plugged into it for as long as that battery has a charge. It also makes sure that the power going through it never spikes up or down. Upward spikes in power are handled with simple electronics that never allow the voltage to exceed a set amount (why do I always try to put two M's in amount?). Downward spikes are handled with capacitance and the aforementioned battery. Anyways, back to the story (I know it's a great story so far, and it's gonna get better folks).
So I finish up some rant about DKP or guild drama or our raiding schedule or whatever happened to be the topic in WoW at the time, and was about to close down my main PC, when the UPS battery ran out of juice and powered off. No big deal, it gave me enough time to finish what I was doing after the power outage, so I was happy. A few hours passed and power came back on. The backup PC cycled on, but the main PC didn't. This is where the story really takes off guys.
So I had a mystery on my hands. Well, mostly I just wanted to not deal with any of this, but I forced myself to. My first thought was that it's the power supply (PSU), motherboard, or CPU. My next thought was that these are all kinda spendy, and I don't want to throw that much money at the problem. So I took out the PSU, and drove to PC Club to have it tested. They said that it was putting out proper voltages, but would need to run a bench test to see if it's putting out enough amps. Well, if it's putting out the right voltages, I'm sure it's fine. I'll just replace the motherboard because that's surely the problem. So I took anther 2k from my 401k, and paid rent, bought groceries, and picked up a new Asus A8N-SLI Premium.
The motherboard got here a few days later and I installed it that day. Hit the power button and NOTHING. I just wanted nothing to do with it at that point. But I knew that most of my bills were paid and that I easily had enough money left over to buy a new PSU, so I drove to CompUSA and bought a new Antec NeoPower 550. I was a little upset that the NeoPower series had switched from 120mm to 80mm fans, but I bought it anyways.
Got home, installed the PSU, and it powered on! I was so relieved. And just in time for Molten Core (MC). WoW was acting a little strange at times. Of course it wasn't the computer's fault, I had that all fixed, right? Well, it turns out that about every few hours, the game completely locks up. I replaced the CPU with the one from my backup PC, and it still faults. I'm at a complete loss as to what this could be. I've replaced EVERYTHING that could be doing this. Except drivers. Seriously, I just realized that as I was typing.
See, not matter how girly it sounds, it IS good to have a place to type out what you are feeling.
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