A Bit of This, That, and Another Thing

Site Notes:

If you’ve visited recently, thank you! You may have noticed a couple coding problems in the sidebars. These are now fixed; my apologies for the delay.

Turns out the new version (4.0.0) of Enhanced Links, which I use for my blogroll, no longer requires a php widget, so php calls inside php widgets were causing no end of problems.

Also, the Get Recent Comments plugin for the far right sidebar hasn’t been updated for WP 2.5. So the section title was showing up weirdly, even when no section title was specified. Disabling the plugin’s cache in Misc Options fixed this little idiosyncrasy.

And yes, I still intend to completely rewrite the code for the site, but that’s going to be a long-term project, and I have no timetable for it at all.

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Vacation:

Yes we’re back. Had a fantastic time visiting with my son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter in Illinois. Went to a Cardinals game and got sunburned; only started peeling last Sunday, a full two weeks after the game! Technically, I declared my vacation ended on Sunday. Now I’m either retired or looking for (probably part-time) employment. I’m visiting with my financial advisor this afternoon, so I may have a better idea on what I’ll be doing in the near-term after that.

With the end of vacation, I’ll resume blogging, hopefully in earnest. One reason I haven’t written much (besides being out of town for 12 days) is when all I’ve done in game are Sunwell dailies, there isn’t a lot to talk about. More on that in the next section…

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WoW:

Yes, still plugging away at Shattered Sun Offensive (SSO) dailies. I have two characters who are exalted—Falken and Talonis—while Osprey should get there by the weekend. After that, I still have Kestrel and Sparverius to ramp up. Trust me: having five level 70 characters isn’t as wonderful as you may think. However, four have epic flying mounts and the fifth (Sparverius) should have his by Memorial Day (end of May, for non-US readers).

On Sunday, I was fortunate enough to run Magister’s Terrace for the first time. I took Talonis, and we also had our Boomkin and Frost Mage. We had a priest (former guildmember and good friend) who’d been in many times, including heroic, and he was very patient in explaining every single pull. Our warrior tank had also been in a few times, and our ice mage once (but hadn’t finished). It was definitely a learning experience!

We did just fine until the "PvP" pull. We had a couple wipes, and I didn’t do a very good job of pulling aggro off the priest (I’m sure that will improve next time, now that I know what’s going on in there), but generally we handled the fights and first two bosses very well. Boss drops were nothing great: Leather healing boots, pally plate. The boomkin took the boots, "just in case," but we sharded the plate (shoulders, I think; maybe legs).

So then we got to the Big 6. Wipe after wipe after inglorious wipe. Our tank finally volunteered to opt out in favor of a pally tank (the priest’s wife). We did a bit better, but still wiped two or three more times before calling it. Now I truly understand why, if you don’t have at least two solid CC players, this fight has to be fought as a PvP fight. Without adequate CC (my freezing traps were next to useless in there; I’m curious if SV hunters have much better success in MrT), that fight seems almost impossible to tank. And even then, the sheep broke early and often, every time.

Even changing around the kill order, it seemed our best effort was the first one, when we got the princess down. Not sure we killed even one baddie after that. However, I can’t wait to go back–tomorrow night is looking good!

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More WoW:

Last Friday, I was flitting around Nagrand with Falken, trying to do some mining, when an acquaintance sent a /tell asking if I’d be interested in supplying some DPS for Ring of Blood. Heck yeah! But not with Falken; he’s not exactly a DPS monster, even though he’s a Rogue. So I brought in the heavy cavalry: Talonis. The group consisted of two BM hunters (the other much better geared than I, with some Kara epics, including Sunfury), a prot pally, a rogue (?), and a mage. We did well: a couple wipes on the last boss (I was the only one left standing when he was at 3%, but unfortunately I had no pet by then) but we finished in fine shape. I realized I’d never completed that series on any character. Nothing wrong with 100g and 20 Super Potions for 15 minutes of work, though!

Then Friday night, the Boomkin, Frost Mage and I were doing dailies when the mage got a call from her other guild, asking for help with…Ring of Blood! This time, I brought in Osprey. So we had boomkin, icemage, holy priest, and two ret pallies–one of whom was only level 65. We also had some backup from a firemage, who later subbed in his warrior (the same warrior who tanked MrT for us on Sunday). 

After a shaky start—this was the first time I’d used Osprey in a full group in ages, and the first time since redoing my UI to make healing "easier"—I got in the flow. When the second mage subbed in his tank (and joined the group, while the druid dropped but stayed to provide more firepower), he complimented me on my "awesome heals." Truth is, when the tank holds aggro as he did (and believe me, against that frost mage and boomkin, it can be a challenge!), healing is child’s play. All the same, I felt good about getting back in the groove.

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Even More WoW:

A few weeks ago, the three of us who founded our current guild started discussing our options for doing instances and getting into Karazhan. While we’re not the only people remaining in the guild, most of the others have moved two or more characters to another guild for progression. They’re doing well, as they should be.

So, the frost mage ended up moving to another guild as well (not the same as the other former guildies). Everything she tells us about the new guild is all win. She knows exactly the level of "casual but dedicated" we’re looking for. Being able to Ring of Blood with some of them Friday night was a good experience, and having one of them volunteer to tank for us in MrT on Sunday impressed us even more.

In fact, he was apologizing to the mage for not doing a better job for us, as great as we were! Pshaw! He was great; we were so-so at best. (I think each of us managed to make sizable blunders leading to wipes, including me hitting my "PULL" key instead of my "FREEZING TRAP.)

So, as soon as I figure out whether to move Talonis or Osprey, I’ll be moving one of those guys (and possibly more, once I’m sure that’s the right direction to go). The boomkin is also in favor of moving a character, but like me, she hasn’t decided which one. Her decision is somewhat complicated by the fact her boomkin character is currently our GM, but that can be worked around easily.

So, it seems that in the near future, we’re going to start running a lot more instances (the other guild has started Kara, but they still have lots of instance farming to do) as well as finally get into Kara. I can hardly wait!

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And Finally…

I’m going to put this out here simply, as it may have an unpredictable impact at some point in the future.

My mother-in-law phoned last night, and told us she may have pancreatic cancer. She’s going to have a CAT scan tomorrow; we only hope that if the cancer is really there, it hasn’t spread to the liver. She seemed to be in good spirits, all things considered, but of course my wife and I were pretty shaken.

My brother-in-law lives four hours from his mother, so he and his wife will drive up there this weekend. My wife was planning to go out the end of the month anyway, but that timetable’s been moved up and I expect she’ll travel west next week or the week after.

In any case, if you have any influence with higher powers, a prayer or two would be appreciated. At 80 years young, Ginny’s got a lot to live for and hopefully a long life ahead of her.