I came out here and realized that I have severely neglected this poor blog. Sometimes I think I should just keep these posts short and spare my friends the horrendous walls of text. Which I may do in the future, but I can't today. So let's begin.
First, on the Real Life side of the computer I have taken a new job. I am now working with an old friend of mine at a company that sales/refurbs point of sale devices. I have been at the job for 3 weeks and I am completely ingrained into the web development of the company. I like the smaller team size and I see this as an opportunity to be more of an "impact player" in my area of expertise. Unfortunately, my timing of starting landed me right in the midst of releasing an ordering system that required me to work extra hours outside the normal business hours. So this last weekend I spent 20+ hours at the office testing and putting the finishing touches on the "MYPOS" system (where POS does not stand for what I would like to call "Piece of SH#$"). Haha, I laugh every time I see that.
Unfortunately, all that extra time had cut into my latest endeavor of gearing my warlock. Warlock? You're probably asking what is all this talk about a warlock? Well, I have taken a turn in the game. I have shelved the druid and decided that I would work on making my warlock my main. Though I am behind the gear curve with the guild on this guy, I have made some serious gains over the past 2 weeks. My lock is now at a hit rating of 16.73% (I still need another stinking .27% for that cap of 17%). I can hit it by swapping out a gem for the +hit gem or crafting the cloth belt. However, getting hit capped is just once step towards raiding with the guys. I don't want to step right in and start raiding at my hit capped carrying an item level of 339 when everyone else is 350+. So that begs me to wonder, what is a good item level to start raiding with? I have no idea, so I have thrown that question out to my friends and guild. If you have any suggestions, check out my toon Uthben on Kel'Thuzad and let me know.
I'll probably go back and play around with the druid and run some heroics on her, but as for raiding, I am sticking with my lock.
Showing posts with label WOW. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WOW. Show all posts
Monday, March 28, 2011
Friday, January 28, 2011
Still Behind the Curve
Man, I thought I would really have some more posts this week, but there's been some crazy stuff going on in real life. So let's start there.
First, we had a really big snow storm here last Thursday and that stranded me at the house with our 7 year old. We got 9 1/2 inches of snow in 12 hours and the small town of St.Peters outside St. Louis wasn't (and still isn't) prepared to remove that much snow that fast. And to add to the complexities of commuting, I had an interview scheduled for that afternoon closer to downtown St. Louis. I got an email that morning asking if I was still available for the interview. Geesh... what to do? Do I show some determination and go? What do I do with the boy? I mean the interview is with 4 people and is scheduled to from 2 - 5? Anyway, long story short, I went to the interview and called the highschool girl across the street to watch the boy. Hell, her school was cancelled and she could use the extra coin. The interview went well and didn't end till after 5:30pm. I was wiped decided to have 2 fingers of Dewars when I got home, thus limiting my PVE abilities for the evening. So I farmed some leather and called it a night.
The next day my brother called and wanted to stay with us over the weekend before heading back home to OKC. That killed the whole weekend for playing WOW, but watching the Packers win their way into the Superbowl with him was worth the tradeoff.
Come Monday, the kid's school was cancelled again due to icey roads. Crap, these kids are going to be making up snow days during their Spring Break. Poor kids. Halfway through that day, my wife called me at work and needed me to come home to relieve her from the stress of watching our son. Actually I think it had more to do with her going over to her friend's house to color her hair (god, I'm glad I don't have to help her do that anymore) and drink some carbonated depressant. I didn't mind that it screwed up my game time because I was still tired from the excessive celebration of the Packers win.
Tuesday started a whole new challenge in that we (my wife and I) had talked in the past about a service dog for our son. See our son is Autistic and he has some challenges like behavorial problems and running from us. Anyway, for some reason she decided she would start this process on this day. Ugh... I wasn't ready. This is a very long process and a HUGE undertaking. The application takes 6 weeks and on top of that, you need to raise $13K. Yeah I didn't mistyped that (I wish I had). But we know 2 other families who have benefitted from their kids having a service dog and I think it may help.
On Wednesday I got a call from another recruiter and we talked about another position for which I would be a good fit. At this point in my career I'm being real selective where and who I work for. I didn't get a Masters just to continue to write code so I'm making a judged attempt at improving my career on a long term basis. Unfortunately, Wednesday nights are tied up with my bowling league and the game is going to have to wait another day. Which brings us fast forward to ...
Thursday! On this day, a friend of mine called me and said he had passed my resume onto his employer and sure enough, I had a phone call that afternoon for an interview. WOW! This week has been packed with alot of stuff. I took the evening away from the game to get a 4 mile run in and to relax.
Hopefully, tonight I'll be able to logon to the game and just mess around. I'm not sure I'm ready to deal with PuG headaches after all that's happened this week, but if I do, I'll make sure to blog about it.
So there you have it. A week of WOW and gearing delayed by real life. And guess what... it's suppose to snow again next Monday. :)
First, we had a really big snow storm here last Thursday and that stranded me at the house with our 7 year old. We got 9 1/2 inches of snow in 12 hours and the small town of St.Peters outside St. Louis wasn't (and still isn't) prepared to remove that much snow that fast. And to add to the complexities of commuting, I had an interview scheduled for that afternoon closer to downtown St. Louis. I got an email that morning asking if I was still available for the interview. Geesh... what to do? Do I show some determination and go? What do I do with the boy? I mean the interview is with 4 people and is scheduled to from 2 - 5? Anyway, long story short, I went to the interview and called the highschool girl across the street to watch the boy. Hell, her school was cancelled and she could use the extra coin. The interview went well and didn't end till after 5:30pm. I was wiped decided to have 2 fingers of Dewars when I got home, thus limiting my PVE abilities for the evening. So I farmed some leather and called it a night.
The next day my brother called and wanted to stay with us over the weekend before heading back home to OKC. That killed the whole weekend for playing WOW, but watching the Packers win their way into the Superbowl with him was worth the tradeoff.
Come Monday, the kid's school was cancelled again due to icey roads. Crap, these kids are going to be making up snow days during their Spring Break. Poor kids. Halfway through that day, my wife called me at work and needed me to come home to relieve her from the stress of watching our son. Actually I think it had more to do with her going over to her friend's house to color her hair (god, I'm glad I don't have to help her do that anymore) and drink some carbonated depressant. I didn't mind that it screwed up my game time because I was still tired from the excessive celebration of the Packers win.
Tuesday started a whole new challenge in that we (my wife and I) had talked in the past about a service dog for our son. See our son is Autistic and he has some challenges like behavorial problems and running from us. Anyway, for some reason she decided she would start this process on this day. Ugh... I wasn't ready. This is a very long process and a HUGE undertaking. The application takes 6 weeks and on top of that, you need to raise $13K. Yeah I didn't mistyped that (I wish I had). But we know 2 other families who have benefitted from their kids having a service dog and I think it may help.
On Wednesday I got a call from another recruiter and we talked about another position for which I would be a good fit. At this point in my career I'm being real selective where and who I work for. I didn't get a Masters just to continue to write code so I'm making a judged attempt at improving my career on a long term basis. Unfortunately, Wednesday nights are tied up with my bowling league and the game is going to have to wait another day. Which brings us fast forward to ...
Thursday! On this day, a friend of mine called me and said he had passed my resume onto his employer and sure enough, I had a phone call that afternoon for an interview. WOW! This week has been packed with alot of stuff. I took the evening away from the game to get a 4 mile run in and to relax.
Hopefully, tonight I'll be able to logon to the game and just mess around. I'm not sure I'm ready to deal with PuG headaches after all that's happened this week, but if I do, I'll make sure to blog about it.
So there you have it. A week of WOW and gearing delayed by real life. And guess what... it's suppose to snow again next Monday. :)
Thursday, September 30, 2010
ZAP! KA-POW! BANG!
Well, ok the transfer wasn't that noisy or rough, but I did run into a few hiccups.
First I found out that there is a gold limit on the character your transferring. Level 80 characters and only be transferred with 20K gold, level 70-79 can only take 10K, and the amounts drop after that. I guess the old saying is right, "You can't take it with you." Fortunately, this miserly and crafty old gamer had a trick up his sleeve. I decided that I would send the difference of my purse to the 2 other alts that I transferred with me. Problem solved, right? Wrong because I still had too much. What to do, what to do?
Then it struck me. Silly druid, buy things off the Auction House that you'll definitely need. So i took the remaining surplus and feeling like the federal government, I spent it on items I knew I would need to continue my marketing ways on my new server. So I loaded up on Arctic Fur and Frost Lotus and logged off. I was ready to begin the transfer... or so I thought.
After logging into the Account Maintenance section of WOW, I found out that there are some stipulations that have to be cleared up (in addition to the character level/gold cap) before you can transfer servers.
I knew that having mail remain in your mailbox will automatically prevent you from transferring a character, but I completely forgot all about arena teams. So here I go and log back into the game to see what arena teams I was still on. I know what you're thinking, "Bacon, you don't know what arena teams your on?" And answer to that is a big, fat NO. I haven't done arenas in close to a year so I don't remember what teams I am or who even is on those teams with me.
So my druid finally loads and sure enuff, right dar I am the owner of a 2v2 and 3v3 teams. There's no one else in the list but me and according to the WOW site, I have to disband these. But the so not user friendly site that WOW is doesn't provide the command for how to disband said teams. UGH! But I am not to be deterred and using my other online friend, Google. From a quick search, I find out that a simple /disband 2v2 will disband said arena team. Hooray!!!
So having severed all ties from Altar of Storms, I am no free to move onto my new home.
First I found out that there is a gold limit on the character your transferring. Level 80 characters and only be transferred with 20K gold, level 70-79 can only take 10K, and the amounts drop after that. I guess the old saying is right, "You can't take it with you." Fortunately, this miserly and crafty old gamer had a trick up his sleeve. I decided that I would send the difference of my purse to the 2 other alts that I transferred with me. Problem solved, right? Wrong because I still had too much. What to do, what to do?
Then it struck me. Silly druid, buy things off the Auction House that you'll definitely need. So i took the remaining surplus and feeling like the federal government, I spent it on items I knew I would need to continue my marketing ways on my new server. So I loaded up on Arctic Fur and Frost Lotus and logged off. I was ready to begin the transfer... or so I thought.
After logging into the Account Maintenance section of WOW, I found out that there are some stipulations that have to be cleared up (in addition to the character level/gold cap) before you can transfer servers.
I knew that having mail remain in your mailbox will automatically prevent you from transferring a character, but I completely forgot all about arena teams. So here I go and log back into the game to see what arena teams I was still on. I know what you're thinking, "Bacon, you don't know what arena teams your on?" And answer to that is a big, fat NO. I haven't done arenas in close to a year so I don't remember what teams I am or who even is on those teams with me.
So my druid finally loads and sure enuff, right dar I am the owner of a 2v2 and 3v3 teams. There's no one else in the list but me and according to the WOW site, I have to disband these. But the so not user friendly site that WOW is doesn't provide the command for how to disband said teams. UGH! But I am not to be deterred and using my other online friend, Google. From a quick search, I find out that a simple /disband 2v2 will disband said arena team. Hooray!!!
So having severed all ties from Altar of Storms, I am no free to move onto my new home.
Friday, September 24, 2010
New beginnings
I've left out blogging for some time now and it appears that it's time I come back. Alot of things have happened that led to my discouragement with the game and taking a break from blogging. Fortunately, things are taking a turn for the better. The game is starting to get interesting again even though Cataclysm isn't given a release date. And my interest in blogging has been resurrected by reading The Big Bear Butt blog. Upon reading TBBB, I realize that writing a personal blog has more to do with just having fun telling stories about myself and other adventures than progression in a game. While I'll still talk about some progression (because in the end it's hard not to, especially after achieving some feat requiring a team effort), I will leave the progression talk to the event and not so much about who sucked and who rose to the occassion.
But back to the main point of beginning anew.
First, let's start with a brief background on what's been going on. First, we had some core raiders drop to an inactive status and at this point we're not sure if or when they're coming back. Our guild is pretty casual in that we have alot more invested in our personal lives than making it on the game every night. For me personally, I have a child with special needs and somedays he tends to be "more special" in his needs than other days. So we had some people go inactive because of kids, vacations, job changes, school changes, and other changes that I don't have room to list here.
Second, the departure of one particular player pushed me into the role of a tank aside from my prime healing duties. So in filling out my tanking gear, I found that I can be a viable third/backup tank. Of course this caused a problem in that I wasn't expecting to enjoy tanking as much as I did. Matter of fact, I liked it so much that I was looking forward to tanking more than healing. I know that's a good thing, but I'm a much better geared and skilled healer than tank. So while I may not get many chances to tank in a raid of the final days of Wrath, I'm going to carry the enthusiasm over to Cataclysm.
Thirdly our server, Altar of Storms (AOS), has been the worst place to fill out a 10 man raid. Once Blizzard implemented faction transfers, the Alliance on AOS was doomed. The current ratio is 1 Alliance to 3 Horde. I know it's probably worse on other servers, but then again AOS has a registered player base of less than 7k people. So your chances of running into a horde on AOS is VERY likely.
As for raiding and PVP on the server, there's only one consistent 25 man Alliance raiding guild left and about 4 - 10 man guilds. And only 2 of which have gotten Kingslayer. So pugging a 10 man raid is just a nightmare and takes up to 30-40 minutes to find someone without a raid ID. As for PVP, it's not uncommon to zone into Wintergrasp and see a tenacity greater than 8. NUFF SAID.
Therefore, the remaining active players in our guild had a vent meeting last Sunday to finalize plans for us to transfer servers. We decided a server with a higher population and better Alliance ratio was needed. I for one am pretty happy. We can finish out the Lich King and after Cataclysm is released, we can level in peace without getting ganked every 5 minutes.
But back to the main point of beginning anew.
First, let's start with a brief background on what's been going on. First, we had some core raiders drop to an inactive status and at this point we're not sure if or when they're coming back. Our guild is pretty casual in that we have alot more invested in our personal lives than making it on the game every night. For me personally, I have a child with special needs and somedays he tends to be "more special" in his needs than other days. So we had some people go inactive because of kids, vacations, job changes, school changes, and other changes that I don't have room to list here.
Second, the departure of one particular player pushed me into the role of a tank aside from my prime healing duties. So in filling out my tanking gear, I found that I can be a viable third/backup tank. Of course this caused a problem in that I wasn't expecting to enjoy tanking as much as I did. Matter of fact, I liked it so much that I was looking forward to tanking more than healing. I know that's a good thing, but I'm a much better geared and skilled healer than tank. So while I may not get many chances to tank in a raid of the final days of Wrath, I'm going to carry the enthusiasm over to Cataclysm.
Thirdly our server, Altar of Storms (AOS), has been the worst place to fill out a 10 man raid. Once Blizzard implemented faction transfers, the Alliance on AOS was doomed. The current ratio is 1 Alliance to 3 Horde. I know it's probably worse on other servers, but then again AOS has a registered player base of less than 7k people. So your chances of running into a horde on AOS is VERY likely.
As for raiding and PVP on the server, there's only one consistent 25 man Alliance raiding guild left and about 4 - 10 man guilds. And only 2 of which have gotten Kingslayer. So pugging a 10 man raid is just a nightmare and takes up to 30-40 minutes to find someone without a raid ID. As for PVP, it's not uncommon to zone into Wintergrasp and see a tenacity greater than 8. NUFF SAID.
Therefore, the remaining active players in our guild had a vent meeting last Sunday to finalize plans for us to transfer servers. We decided a server with a higher population and better Alliance ratio was needed. I for one am pretty happy. We can finish out the Lich King and after Cataclysm is released, we can level in peace without getting ganked every 5 minutes.
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