WOW update

I am surprised at myself…  3 months and not a peep from me.

In wrath of the lich king, I have avoided raiding with Drudgery for the sake of having fun leveling alts and what not.  Nataliae, my hunter, is level 73.5 .  Once she hits 77, I can start farming northrend herbs with epic flight.

Speaking of Nataliae, I was all excited to play with exotic beast mastery pets once Wrath came out.  I really want to try making a tanking pet from a tenacity one.  I instantly chose the rhino because of its AOE ability.  I was very sad to discover the rhino wasn’t very tough and his AOE did little threat.  What is the point? I asked.  Well, it would seem the Rhino had Blizz’s PvP intentional all over it.  They were making it for PvP. 

So now what??  No exotic pets with AoE.  Apparently, in the next patch, all tenacity pets with get the famous gorilla thunderstomp.  So now I can choose any other pet.  I set my eyes on the worm — the worm’s ability is an armor reduction exactly like sunder armor.  This is awesome for boosting hunter dps while soloing.  Awesome for tanking.  And will also somewhat helpful the raid.  (Warriors will be glad to not need to to sunder armor for the raid.)

I have been camping out in Silithus to get the prettiest worm — the Yellow worm.  But it looks orange in the right light.

This morning, on my fourth search, I nabbed her.

May I introduce Olive.  “Who’s a pretty worm?”

 

Mark Twain was a smart man

Hey everyone, I am back to blogging after a hiatus longer than I wanted — moving and life and WotLK took my time.

So, I am back.  You probably know that I am at war with the Accounting trolls in my company.

Today I realized a universal truth:

“There are lies, damn lies, statistics… and accounting.”

Raise Money For Breast Cancer Research

Well, if you know me, you know that one of my pet peeves is how uppity people can get over raising money for the horribly disfiguring disease, breast cancer.  I have basically had a few bad experiences.  I don’t want to say that Breast Cancer research isn’t a valid cause, but I do think there may be more pressing needs for research, like diseases that affect children.

Speaking of which, I have been shunned because I have declined to walk/run to raise money for Breast Cancer research.  Why?  I have a handicap relatet to my hereditary (childhood) asthma.

At the risk of being too brief, let me just say I finally have a comeback for these people.

“I’ll help you raise money for breast cancer if you help me raise money for an equally important cause, national erectile dysfunction awareness.  ‘Nuff said.”

 

I am, of course, being bitingly sarcastic.  And I stand at the precipice of social appropriateness.  Heck, I am way past that line.  Nonetheless, I do see both of these diseases affecting the aged population.  I want to focus on helping children with debilitating diseases.

WoW: Patch 3.0.2 hits

Patch 3.0.2 has been loads of fun.  I am bummed out that I am waiting to do inscription on my death knight.  Cuz, well, there are opportunities to make some phat cash to be had.  Minor glyphs can be learned 1 per day maximum.  So they are selling for a lot.  I am really tempted to go inscriptionist on rylaî

Drudgery:

• I am as giddy as a schoolgirl over speccing Discipline for raiding, soloing, and whats not.
• My favorite ability in the game remains Power Word Shield.  Now I can raid with PWS.  It now scales with spell power, it now doesn’t prevent threat generation, and also does with talents prevents 2700-3000, returns 45% of damage caused (not threat) and with a glyph, heals 550-600 on cast.
• Penance is the bomb digity.  With a talent to reduce cooldowns of all awesome discipline abilities, I get to cast it every 8s.  Now all I need is mind flay, which… I need one more level.  But soon.  Then my spell rotation will be complete.
• As a discipline priest, I heal as well as any caster except maybe a holy priest, and my dps has a higher burst than shadow priests (at least pre 3.02); I am not depending on VT dot for damage.   Still have a dead zone in my spell rotation of about 4 sec between mind blast and penance.
• Emergency heals (PWS, Renew, Penance, Prayer of Mending, at maybe flash heal) are my main stays now.
• OK… this is the best part… uber heals with Frozen Shadoweave

Roarn:

• Feral druid got a makeover like hunter pets.  I now how a bar set aside for prowling to fit more abilities.  We now have several long cooldowns and much more bleed effect heavy. 
• Bears are avoidance tanks now, with even heavier emphasis on agility.  I expect bear and cat gear to converge much, which I think is what blizz wants.  Stack those agility gems!
• Overall, it is improved play.  I am not enjoying it greatly though.  Frankly, I am confused by what everything does.  Mangle can now with talent slow things down.
•  Haven’t found any good glyphs. qq

Hallow’s End:

• Though not associated with the patch technically, it hits very close to it.  This is a blast.  Roarn and Drudge have the brooms.  I so want the horseman mount.
• OK OK.  As Jerry Seinfeld says, for a kid, life is a quest to get more candy.  So, I am thinking that in Shattrath, while scryer, I could nab some Aldor candy.  Why not?  I fly in on my broomstick over the guards and… denied! 
• So I was like, I will show them!  I logged on my alt who is neutral to both parties and tried to get both candies.  DENIED
• It’s one piece of candy per shattrath, folks.  Suxors.

Nataliae:

• New Beast Mastery changes and pet talents and Devilsaur pet is a blast.  He is having focus management issues.  His bite doesn’t have a cooldown and sucks down his focus.  BUT if it isn’t on autocast, he rarely goes below 70 focus.  I just can’t win.

Loot Rule #1: Tanks before Spanks

I invented a new catch phrase.

For our non-WoW playing audience, a TANK N SPANK fight is a straight-forward boss fight, where the tank, a hero who speciallizes in taking hits, manhandles the big bad boss, while all the other group members spank him with damage.

When the boss drops special items, it is time to argue of the loot.

And who should get highest priority?  The tanks of course.

TANKS B4 SPANKS, my new catch phrase.

 

Thanks for listening.

Dumbfounded and Speechless

Today I received a Diversity mousepad at work.

 

It sort of spirals out from the middle, adding more characteristics as it goes out.  Kind of like the most special things are near the middle.  I immediately observed that all the protected classes were on the inner grey circle, except for religion, which got bumped out to red.

As a man of faith, this troubles me.  Definitely, this diagram subverts the importance of practice of religion in American culture.  Once one of our most treasured ideals, it is now diagramatically supplanted by the new “Sexual Orientation” protected class.  Frankly, I am offended.  And I quite don’t know what I should do about it, if anything.

 

UPDATE

I looked up protected classes.

Apparently, Veteran, Familial Status, and Genetic Information are less commonly discussed protected classes, which are also omitted from the mousepad.  Furthermore, Age is only a protected class if you are 40 or older.  So yep, I can discriminate against you and harass  you for being under 18.  Youth of America, I am sure you knew this, but I didn’t know it was legal. But I digress.

A Whole Week!

Wow,

I haven’t blogged in a week.  Work has been keeping me busy stressed out.

So what’s new?

Top of the news, I will be going to the Creation Museum in the near future with a good friend from Equally Yoked, Angie.  Sounds like a lot of fun!

Well, I think a corporate bail out is a double tax on the middle class.  Housing prices were artificially inflated – costing the consumer mucho grande but also profitting many home owners.  In other words, the working class has brought abundant inflation on themselves due to predatory lending.  Now, they want to bail out the banks.  Again, the middle class will have to assume the burden (national debt) and work us out of this mess. 

On the other hand, if housing market bottom falls out, everyone who owns a home will be super screwed, owing like 2x the value of their home.  So there are clearly no winners.  The banks that are bailed out ought to pay more taxes or something… if it comes to that.

And work has been busy busy busy.  Tomorrow is more overtime from like 5 to 9 or 10.  So happy!

In WoW, Zulbubba and Nataliae have hit 60.  Due to a math error, I need to get Zulbubba to 62 in order to give Darkritual that coveted last level.  I want to level them to 62 right away, so Nataliae can gather herbs and hopefully get to 350 pretty quickly.  I will start making 4 primal might for my transmutation quest line.  Then earthstorm and skyfire diamonds for darkritual and the economic ladder climb continues.

Zulbubba’s enchanting is stuck at 235, stuck facing the nether essence challenge.  230 -300 enchanting grind is the worst crucible in the game.  Yeah for me.  I’ll get through it though, especially with other professions pouring goods in for DE.  Nether essence will still be wicked hard to get.

Roarn is almost revered with Consortium… for his chest busting elemental seaforium.  And extra gems doesn’t hurt.

Darkritual is posed to get friendly with Cenarion, Consortium, and Scryers off cheapo rep items.  Profession powerlevelling for the win.  Now I just need that blasted level or two!!!

The Chieftain’s Soapbox

Everyone, I have been working lots of extra hours and under extra work stress.  Which makes the Chieftain cranky.  And when the Chieftain is cranky, the tribe suffers.  So let me vent some of my frustration.

This past week I have been at war with outright stupidity.  Call it a pet peeve – but when things don’t make sense or someone is blatantly flying in the face of reason, my very male, logical self gets bent out of proportion.  In an effort to let it go, I will share with you the latest stupidity I have encountered.

I heard a radio commercial today from a mother whose child is afflicted by childhood diabetes.  The disease is devastating for all involved.  The catch? John McCain doesn’t support stem cell research, and therefore doesn’t care about her.  And, he doesn’t care about you!

What?

There are two problems with this argument.  Not supporting something that you believe would benefit you is not necessarily against you.  Second, this argument doesn’t generalize.

Second, the issues with stem cells have nothing to do with wanting to find cures.  What human being wouldn’t want to benefit his fellow mankind?  I need more proof than voting on a single issue.

The issues concerned here are governance, moral concerns, and ethical concerns.

Governance: we have a set amount of money, we should spend it where it is most promising to pay off.  Largely, the scientists argue this out, but the Government can explicitely choose or put constraints on spending if it so wishes.

Moral issues: the belief about aboslute right and wrong raises two questions: is it right to profit by abortion?  Is it right to withhold medical care to someone who doesn’t share your moral values?

Ethical issues: do we want to cause unborn babies to become a commoditized natural resource?  Do we want to make a cure at the expense of life?  Do we want to take every opportunity to cure disease?  America prides itself on diversity of thought, so why impose values on others?

If we dive into the issue, I believe we will find an intelligent discussion about these issues.  I would like to know, does McCain support stem cell research that does not harvest cells from expired babies?  I bet he does.

Let’s talk the issues, people!  Make a decision based on research.  That is my challenge to you.  Don’t vote based on an emotional appeal on the radio.

Next time on the Chieftain’s Soapbox: Short Term Business thinking.

What’s in my iPod?

I’ve been branching out, now that I have been listening to my iPod at work.

I have noticed my music collection is a little redundant.  Avril Lavigne is always good.  And then I have lots of Christian praise music, but you can only listen to a few songs unless in the mood.

I’ve picked up the Album, “Say It” by Britt Nicole, featuring the well known “Set the World on Fire.”

The Diablo III overture from Blizzard was free.  Every nerd will take free stuff.

Then, I have wanted “I’m Gonna Be” by the Proclaimers – the 500 miles song.  So I nabbed it.  Genius playlist pointed me to 1 exclusive iTunes track and a bonus track I didn’t have of Avril Lavigne, a cover of “Basketcase” live and “I always get what I want.”  Basketcase is awesome!

On the radio, I heard “I kissed a girl” by Katy Perry.  It got stuck in my head, and it reminded me of an old (better IMO) song by the same name from a decade ago… so I started looking into it.  Katy Perry’s song has like 14 covers and 6 remixes.  It’s bizarre.  The original song it reminded me of is “I kissed a girl” by Jill Sobule.  They both were only $0.99 each.  Although the content makes me a little skittish.  I know I shouldn’t like it that much.

Last but not least, I really love “In Blue” by the Corrs.  I went searching for more Corrs music, but I didn’t find much that terribly great when I sampled, so I went for “Dreams — Ultimate collection” album.  24 songs, same low price, with a variety, but without all the albums.  “All I have to do is dream” is a cover of an old 50’s (?) song.  Really well done.  That is an awesome song to dance to.

Voluntary Water Conservation

 

Power has been restored to Downtown Crescent Springs, which means gas and $0.99 Arby-Q’s are back in my town.  Traffic lights are working, although Collins & Buttermilk is not yet.

However, Butler Co (next door to Kenton Co) has an emergency water conservation, ergo as their neighbors we are on voluntary water conservation.

What does that mean?  I think the Mayor of Houston said it will Saturday morning:

“We are asking citizens to conserve water.  What does that mean?  If you don’t need to bathe right now, you don’t need to bathe right now.”

Mmm.  Que?

Pictures after the break.