Status Report II: The Statusing

Status so far as Aeth heads for Glory of the Hero:

• Chaos Theory - Done!
• Respect Your Elders - Done!
• Volunteer Work - Done!
• Better Off Dred - Possible, but tricky.
• Less-Rabi - Possible, but tricky.
• Abuse the Ooze - Done!
• Zombiefest! - Untried.
• Experienced Drake Rider - Definitely going to need a group for this.
• Ruby Void - Arcane mage Needs Group Badly!
• Amber Void - GROOOOOOOOOOOOOOP!

Oh, and From Hell's Heart I Stab at Thee.

The last was more or less a fluke.  There was a small (9? 10?) person group that a guild mate put together to try for this, so I jumped in.  We did 3-4 attempts, and at one point, managed to get the whale shark down to something like 94% before we all died in a horribly gory frenzy of blood and entrails.

Figuring out we knew what was going on, we jumped back in for another attempt, sure that we knew what was going on, and that we'd nail it this time.  I switched to fire spec on Aeth so I could scorch and move and "tank" the shark in a pinch, and we were off!

Two minutes into it, we were making some good progress - it really did look like we knew what we were doing - when my wife comes in, plops down on the bed next to me, and says, "I just got off the phone..."

Now, I'm not the most sensitive, empathic guy in the world.  I can be rather dense some times.  OK, a lot of the time.  In this case, however... everything in her tone, her posture, her words were clear even to me.

"Hey," they all said,  "Yeah, you, knucklehead. Put down the laptop.  Forget the stupid game.  Remember that whole 'love, cherish, honor' thing you promised a couple of decades back?  Yeah, this is what you were babbling about.  Now get hoppin', bozo!"

Which, in a rare fit of sanity, I did.

I think I saw Aeth become shark chow about 4.2 nano-seconds after I took my hands of the keyboard.  Didn't even take the time to say anything in chat.  I felt bad, but... a dozen strangers vs. my wife?  Sorry, guys.  House isn't on fire, but it's a RL emergency just the same.

Turns out that we have a close friend is going through a really, really, really rough spot, in multiple areas.  We kind of had an inkling of it, but this evening was the first time said friend had an opportunity to talk to my wife and lean on her shoulder about it... and afterwards, my wife needed to debrief and lean on me in turn.

So, a while later, I hop back on and find myself floating in the briny deep.  I scroll back through the chat log to see who it is that I need to apologize to for bailing on them without notice, and... holy cow!  They did it!  There's the guild announce for the achievement!  Wait, what's my name doing there?

Quick check of the achievements tab... and yes, there it is.

They not only downed the whale shark, they managed to do so on the attempt that I had to bail on. 

Apparently, they did have it nailed down.

Way to go, guys!  Thanks for carrying me :-)

And Now For Something Completely Different

RPG inspired perfume oil blends from Black Phoenix Alchemy.

Me? Dwarf.

Rogue.

Lawful.

Yeah, I know. It's me, though.

Storybook Love

This is for the woman who, 19 years ago, agreed to share my life. I doubt that she ever anticipated that being my wife would someday include lying in bed, making snarky comments about my character's shoulders while watching me defeat internet dragons. There's a thousand other things that have happened in our life together that neither one of us ever anticipated, though, so all things considered, what's a few dorky shoulder pieces and a couple of internet dragons between friends and lovers?

Shari - my princess, my queen, my friend - thank you for your tolerance, your patience, and all our years together. You, my love, are made of win.

It's A Small World, After All

I've been thinking about updating the blog and adding a little bit of color. I'm generally a plain-Jayne type of guy, but even the stark wasteland of black text on a white background gets to me, eventually.

To that end, I was browsing through my screen shorts folder, when I came across this beauty:

Yes, that's Aeth, Flintlocke, and Doc. While I'm a great fan of Fargo's comics, I was particularly tickled by this particular shot.

You see, in one of those odd twists of fate, I used to work for Dave's brother, long ago and in a galaxy far, far away [1]. While I never got to meet Dave, it amuses me to think that my avatar, in some manner, got to meet his avatar, in a game that he writes for and that I write about.

It's a strange world, indeed.

[1] Metaphorically, in a literal sense. While it was actually only a few minutes across town from where I work now, my employment there eventually led to my name making it into a SF book as that of an alien infiltrator. So, yeah. I know some really cool people. I'm still not sure why they bother to hang out with me...

Summer Doldrums

They've hit, and hit hard. Well, it wouldn't actually be accurate to call them "summer doldrums". More like "summer holy sweet Aunt Fanny, I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off!"

The net effect is to reduce my time in Azeroth, though.

In short fits and spurts, I've managed to get Aeven through the Storm Peaks, which includes (IMHO) some of the best quest lines in WotLK. Given that I've only been managing to play for an hour or so every couple of days, just before bed, I've been avoiding running random dungeons - if I'm going to go into an instance with a band of strangers, I want to (a) have enough time to give folks a good run, and (b) have enough energy to keep alert and not fall asleep in the middle of things.

What's been keeping me from playing this summer, you might ask? Well, three kids. A pending kitchen renovation. Solving some particularly sticky problems at work. Playing a role in the skits our church is putting on for Vacation Bible School this week. Oh, and a lot of work on the capital improvements committee of a non-profit organization I work with.

Sleep? What's that?

Yeah. WoW is fun, but sometimes, that Real Life game just reaches out and grabs all your attention, you know?

Level up!

Not Aeven. Moi. As part of my effort to not be a complete couch potato this summer, I did... well, this:

That's our new gew grape vine arbor. Took about 2 1/2 hours to do - digging the post holes, leveling the supports, etc. The top pieces still need to be tacked down, but otherwise, it's complete.

Ding!

"You are now a Level 11 Homeowner."

"You gain 1 strength".

"You gain 1 stamina".

"You have learned a new pattern: Grape Vine Arbor"

After leveling up my Homeowner self, I had a few minutes to log on and get Aeven those last two bubbles she needed to get to level 74. I was kind of tickled that I was able to end my few minutes online this evening at a really nice stopping point: with King Mrgl-Mrgl going "Oh Noes, the Tadpoles!"

It's a great place to stop, because it means I'll have a good excuse to show off the baby Winterfin murlocs to my wife and kids again. We love those little guys. My "beep" noise on my laptop - and I swear I'm telling you the truth, here - is the baby murloc gurgle. I intentionally abandoned the Winterfin quest line on one of my characters just so I could come back and play with the tadpoles again, whenever I wanted.

I didn't shell out for a sparkle pony. I'm not interested in the Remote Auction House. Special loot cards from the TCG make me go, "Meh". If Blizzard were to start selling ilvl 300 epics, I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure that my reaction would be a resounding and loud yawn.

On the other hand... it frightens me to think of how much I'd be wiling to pay in order to get a Winterfin tadpole as a non-combat pet. I'd probably whip out my wallet so fast that it would leave scorch marks. I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure that I'd club Al Gore with a baby seal if there was even a chance of a Winterfin tadpole showing up somewhere along the line.

Seriously. Cutest. Quest. Ever.

Feeling Guildy

So, if you look at Aeven's armory link this morning, you'll notice something different: she's got information on her "Guild" tab now.

I've been a member of Council of Fate on Kirin Tor for a while now... more than a year, certainly. Ever since a couple of folks (Whisper and Elrock, IIRC - correct me if I'm wrong, folks!) helped my first character kill some giants in southern Winterspring. They are a truly wonderful bunch of folks, and over the past few weeks, I was really missing interacting with everyone in guild chat.

There's a couple of reasons why I didn't immediately get Aeven in as an alt on the guild rosters. Mostly, I'm an amazing slacker. I'd log in, see that there were a few folks on line and that they were all in Ulduar or something, and think, "Oh, I'll bug them later..." and forget to do so. Plus, there's the fact that I wasn't sure that Aeven would even turn out to be viable. I might hate playing a pally, or get disgusted with playing another Dwarf, or find out that leveling in venfor gear was just Too Stinking Hard and call the whole thing quits.

So, my getting Aeven into the guild is both (a) a refutation of my general slacker-ness, and (b) an acknowledgement that I like Aeven, and I'm going to stick with her as far as she can go. Oh, and (c), that I've got an awfully nice bunch of online WoW friends that I was missing quite a bit. I think it's that last one that really tipped the balance, though.

Leveling: took Aeven all the way up to the brink of 43 in Dustwallow Marsh, then over the top thanking the Scarlet Monastery Armory.

Yes, I know, I said I was heading for Desolace. I'll let you in on a secret: slacker I may be, but it's a defense mechanism. against being obsessive-complusive. As in, "I'm going to ride by that quest giver. I don't need that quest. I'm going to Desolace, uh-huh. No, don't look at me like that... I know you're having trouble with deserter agitators, I've been here before, but... would you stop looking at me like that? Sheesh! OK, OK, one quest. I'll do one quest for you. Oh, it's part of a chain? Man, don't cry, you know I won't just leave you hanging..."

And BAM! Before you know it, I'm running errands for Tabetha and finding unpopped spider eyes for the crazy old guy who lives in the swamp. It's like some sort of weird co-dependency relationship, really.

Anyways... running the Armory went well. I've decided that Blessing of Sanctuary is my new, special friend. Put that up, switch to Devotion Aura, make sure Righteous Fury is up, and Aeven's all set. Pull mob #1 using Hand of Reckoning, switch to mob #2 to lay down Judgement of Justice, pop Consecration, and start whacking on mob #3. Re-apply Consecration as needed, hit the other mobs with JoJ when it's available to keep them from rabbiting.

At that point, I think, I can pretty much just stand there and make rude gestures, and the mobs are going to stay on me. Well, no, not really, but I was holding them pretty consistently at 2k-3k threat. Aeven managed to do 161 dps overall, mostly thanks to trash mobs - her dps on Herod was much lower, but if I understand things correctly, that's more or less the way it should be. As long as the big bad nasty is trying to eat her face off, instead of smooshing the squishy dps, she's an adequate tank.

A nice, smooth, fast run... though I have to admit, I didn't check the gear in my party. Everyone else may have been horribly overgeared, and just good at managing their aggro, or a veteran of vanilla WoW running their 14th alt through SM:A. So, jury's still out, I think - either I'm turning into a decent tank, or I'm completely fail and just getting carried by good groups. I'm going to have to start paying more attention to party gear and see if I can't get a better indication of how Aeven's doing, overall.

A Study in Sleep

So, not a lot to report. Aeven's managed to claw out the last few XP she needed to make it to level 40, hurrah! So now she can wear plate, though as I've mentioned before, that's really going to take until level 45 to achieve. Bah.

It's getting to be time to run the last few wings in the Scarlet Monastery and look at Ulduman. In between, I think I'll take her over to quest in Desolace... I avoided that region while leveling my priest, but for some reason, it seems to the the kind of place that's appropriate for Aeven.

I had been hoping to pick up a couple of levels this weekend, but life got in the way. Yesterday evening, I found myself bedding down in an unusual situation for me: electrodes attached to various portions of my anatomy, wires running everywhere, and two - count 'em two - monitors of some sort stuffed up my nose.

Yep. I was in the hospital for a sleep apnea study. Apparently, my biological self is so made of fail that I may well need mechanical assistance in order to lie unconscious and do nothing.

Man.

Add in to that more than a little bit of fear. "Oh, this is just a simple test to see if, you know, you stop breathing in the middle of the night. When you'd otherwise be completely unaware of just how close to death you're coming. Nothing to worry about, eh?" The test itself? Pshaw. The possible implications? Just a little bit terrifying.

The geek in me was singularly pleased to see so many wires, random pieces of hardware, parallel port adapters and what not lying on the table next to my bed yesterday evening. Oddly enough, that was comforting - it reminded me of the spare room in our home, where the random pieces of electronic gear are different, but the overall quality of computer geekiness is the same. It helped, really it did. While the test itself was annoying, and ironically enough, exhausting - you try sleeping on your back in an unfamiliar room, when you really just want to roll over - it really wasn't much of anything.

What it did accomplish, though, was to leave me up at 6 AM this morning, feeling as if I hadn't really slept at all. So, that's two days down the drain - one evening of no WoW in the hospital, and a day of skipping church and trying to catch up on my sleep so I could actually function as something other than a low-budget zombie imitator.

So I've had two days characterized by not-so-wonderful followed by exhausted rest, a near crippling lack of caffeine, and a lack of time online. Hardly the way that I wanted to spend my weekend, but there you have it. With a little luck, though, this evening will be a chance to relax, and perhaps make a bit more progress with Aeven.