Sunday, April 30, 2006

Another long absence ?

Yep, I've been getting out of the habit of updating this blog again :-(. I think I've been seduced by the lure of Godzilla's graphics a little too much. I've been enjoying the computer upgrade a little more than is healthy :-). So what have I been up to ?

Starting from Saturday, this was when I started doing some serious PC installation. I'd figured out what was up with Godzilla and was starting to put the software on that it needs. Which involves having 2 computers side by side talking to each other. That lasted until Sunday, when I took the plunge and switched my main machine over to being Godzilla. Still not quite got everything transferred over yet, I still have all my email archives on Guilmon.

I took the plunge after having a bit of a look at Oblivion (gorgeous looking game) before going back to Guilmon for World of Warcraft on Saturday evening. WoW hit Godzilla on Sunday though and what a difference ... Turning up all the pretty options meant that the fuzzy, drab textures I'd been looking at turned into pixel sharp, ornate and rather decorative outfits. And footsteps ! First time I heard the pitter patter of little troll feet, I was wondering what was going on ... Never knew the running footsteps of the characters was even in the game.

Back to work on Monday. Snore. But that means I get doing stuff that's productive, instead of being lazy playing games all day. Which can't be bad. What am I saying ? More time off work please.

Been out and about around the various raids too ... and I've been watching with interest the various politics that have been building up again around Guildlink. We've gotten too big for our own good there and we're effectively splitting in two, in order to get people raiding with each other consistently. People have been applying to one or the other raiding groups over the latter half of the week. We've had the expected people going to one group or the other but we've also had people showing the bad side of human nature by saying things like "I've been raiding with you guys for months", which is a blatant lie because the DKP page (relates directly to amount of raid time) shows they haven't. And they still expect to get into the experienced team ? I dunno ...

Bah ... politics. I think I've made Sarai mad at me because I've exposed one of her guild people for being one of the more stupid and ignorant members of Guildlink ... Ignorant in terms of not following the rules that we set out and generally being out for himself, which we can't have in a team effort. I didn't actually expose his stupidity, he does that for himself by continually doing stuff like running into the wrong place. I haven't actually named the guy in public, outside of raids, but I think that time will come if he doesn't take the hint and smarten his attitude. But his guild leader, Sarai, knows exactly who I mean.

Thursday - another indoor cricket match. Score was 108 to 75 in favour of us and from the moment we started batting (we batted second), the result was never in doubt. We had decent bowling, whereas the other team struggled there. We never had to push too hard and could just gently accumulate the runs. I got a couple of catches behind the stumps but should really have got a couple more. I like to have perfect games ;-).

Friday, I've come back to my parents' place. Unfortunately (or otherwise), I only got greeted by the one dog as Goldie is now in a place free from the pain he must have been suffering due to the problems with his back end. He'll now be chasing bonios amongst the clouds, with a happy willing slave to throw them around for him. Ben's a bit down ... he's a little quieter than usual and more in need of human company than he was before. He'll be ok though. He's quieter but still a happy little puppy. He misses his big bro though. Don't we all ;-).

Saturday ... I have less hair this evening than I had this morning. My dad's gone for broadband, so we played a little on that last night. Today, it came to converting to a wireless network. ARRRGGGG ! I remember why I distrust wireless and like wires. It seems to be behaving now but it took a huge amount of tweaking to get the modem to talk to the internet and for the computer to talk to the modem through the air. Seems more reliable now though. I'll know when I hit the Publish button whether it's stayed on air. Drawn a blank on the laptop though, it's Windows 98 only and needs to be Win98se. Spectacular blue screens on bootup greeted attempts to get it talking to the wireless kit. Ouch ! So we'll fix that over the next few weeks.

Sleep time now, hopefully Sarai will realise she needs to get angry at her guild person instead of me and actually start to value my opinions on stuff ... (I've been feeling very ignored again of late, although I have managed to get her nattering once or twice).

Friday, April 21, 2006

Return of the Sleepy One !

Yep. Been quiet for a bit ... I could have posted but I think my holiday from work broke up my blogging habit. Mind you, that breaking of the blogging habit could have been due to me visiting the parents for the weekend.

Had some things to think about last weekend. Among other things, I think I will have seen Goldie for the last time. He's been having more and more of a struggle to get around and even more of a struggle to summon up a tail wag. He still looked happy to see me when I opened the front door (at least when he managed to come say hello) but I could see the pain behind his eyes. I think mum and dad have already made the decision to let the poor old dog go gently. Ben will be devastated and I'm a bit choked up at the moment typing this.

Goldie's been a good friend over the 15 or so years we've had him. Unusually intelligent and extremely gentle, it's been a shame to see him struggle more and more with the problems with his back legs. Especially as he was a true athlete of a pooch in his youth. Everyone gets older over the years and it's very easy to forget that. It's a shame that our pets age so much quicker than we do. It's a bigger shame that the thing that Goldie enjoyed (his athletic nature) is the thing that he's struggling with.

Also in the news ! I've been spending money :-). I'm writing this post on the pooter known as Guilmon, which is getting very near to its retirement. I ordered some new bits on Monday and eventually got them through today. (Next day delivery ? Don't trust Overclockers UK to do that ...) Trouble is, Godzilla (new PC name) had a fair few teething troubles. I took my time building it and finished at about 5.30 today. I didn't have much time to fiddle as I needed to be in World of Warcraft for a raid starting at 7pm, that gave me about an hour of tinker time.

I hooked up the power, the keyboard, the mouse, the monitor and hit the on switch. Ok - the fans are going around but the hamster ain't doing much more. Oh dear. Nothing from the screen, which should have been giving me those early pictures you'll get from any PC. Tried an old graphics card, tried disconnecting various peripherals, still no joy. So I went into the WoW raid rather distracted and not really concentrating. (Still think I did better than most in there though)

I think the time away from Godzilla did me good. The first thing I tried when having the second look proved to do the trick. The problem is in the memory, one of the matched pair of Ram sticks is bust, so Godzilla is currently only working with 1Gigabyte. It's got a heartbeat now and is currently formatting its brand spanking new hard disc. I've since gone through the forum procedure with Crucial and they've answered my "I gotta problem" post. Impressive, considering the very late time at which I posted it. I'll be testing the duff one in this machine (Guilmon) tomorrow morning before sending it back. Hopefully it will knock out this one too, which will prove the duff Ram stick theory.

Long post - kinda making up for missing so many days ! If you've got this far, please spare a thought for Goldie, a rare intelligent pooch with not just a golden coat but a heart of gold as well.

Friday, April 14, 2006

Yesterday

First half of yesterday was pretty darn great. We started with having munchies with the Crazies in Bella Italia, which was eventful ... but still fun. And the pasta didn't touch the sides. Then it was bowling, probably a good job we only had one game because a lot of us were struggling towards the end. I think staying for two and going for the later showing of Ice Age 2 may have been too much ...

But - staying for that later showing would have meant I'd have missed one of the worse raids for quite a while ... Ice Age 2 was ok but not as good as the first. It had its moments but the story thread that held Ice Age together wasn't nearly as strong in this one.

To the raid ! I'm commenting here because I don't dare comment on the Guildlink website, although I have put in some oblique comments in a different thread. Anyway, instead of commenting in the review thread like I always do, I put those comments in the other thread, which lets people know that I was around to comment. Why didn't I enjoy it like I should have ?

We were very late starting and the raid leader was very slow in getting in replacements for the 7 who didn't bother turning up. That delay will be why we didn't get a chance to look at that second boss. Hopefully those 7 will not be invited on raids in the near future. It's already happened with the people who didn't turn up to the Monday and Tuesday raids.

Group selection was bad. Classes that should be together so they can help each other were spread out and the groups just didn't make much real sense. The raid leader even forgot at one point how many tanks we had in the raid group. I know pressure can do that sort of thing, maybe it's why he didn't have me as one of the original main tanks.

We were very, very slow in making our way through. So slow, that we got caught badly by the Core hounds that reappear rather quickly. Tanking was not confident enough and was being hampered by other warriors interfering with the tanks. Thankfully, for the first part of the raid, I wasn't tanking so I didn't get chance to be irritated by that. Still, the tanking was poor and caused problems for the raid group. It made me ruefully smile though when one of the various Guild Leaders we have whispered me to say that I should be tanking as the others aren't really wanting to do so. And that they liked me tanking.

I got to tank at the end though (which is what I sign up for!), I got moved up to Main Tank 2 and I haven't got a clue how the other tank felt about being demoted. Well, he wasn't doing his job too well and wasn't keeping an eye on mobs that he should have been keeping an eye on.

Despite what the various crawlers and bottom lickers say though, only getting at the one boss was a pretty poor show, we should have had at least a look at the big puppy Magmadar. I think we had a case of a raid leader taking the easy way out there to let him avoid any more leadership of the raid. I dread to think what will happen tonight, as I don't think there are any warriors there who have practice at taking on the big puppy. There's a special tactic there that just isn't done outside that fight.

Oh yeah - the arse licking from various people also irritates me. But at least by coming out and embarassing themselves like that, they've exposed that part of their nature. I hate arse lickers. They make people bad at stuff look good.

I feel better now. I've got some of the comments out that I needed to and I've got them out where it won't cause that many explosions. Maybe I'll comment sometime on the Guildlink forum, depends whether someone's arse licking (or otherwise) comment sparks a reply.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Easter Eggs

Just been Easter Egg shopping and I've come back with :

A small Mini Eggs egg for me
A medium Smarties egg for the sister
A small Buttons egg for me
A medium Dairy Milk egg for me
A medium Buttons egg for mum
A small Mini Eggs egg for me

I haven't a clue how long it wil take me to eat all of the ones I bought for me ... Could take weeks, could take months but one will definitely not survive the night.

Monday, April 10, 2006

Boingy Boingy

Is pretty much what I'm doing at the moment. After another day of trying to avoid work wherever possible, I was rushing home to play WoW again. More organised raids, this time taking on (and beating this time !) the big dragon Onyxia and then after that, being the only warrior in the Zul'Gurub jungle place for quite a while.

We did darn well tonight, Onyxia was a little stubborn but was tamed in the end. Zul'Gurub went really smoothly and my new blood drinking specification for my warrior worked really well. We didn't have that much time in there but still managed to take out a couple of the bosses.

Me happy. But I'm going to have trouble calming down beforegoing to sleep tonight. Time to put on some calming music and get a book out. Nahhh - calming music and shopping for weapons for my warrior !

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Hmm ... pizza

And Easter Eggs. Although I've managed to resist temptation so far on the Easter Eggs, despite going into Big W to pick up a card for someone and scissors for me.

Currently waiting for me pizza - it won't be long hopefully, I have to get back into game to get into Molten Core for another raid. Which means I have to eat the pizza before the run. Somehow, I don't think that will be a problem :-).

I was on there until about 4.30 am last night ... I've managed to avoid doing that for a little while but it was a little bit too tempting to play with the new toy picked up on a raid. It's the kind of toy that makes the allies go "what on earth just hit me !", including an ally paladin who attacked me earlier. I've never seen someone ride away so quickly when resurrecting after returning to their corpse. (Death isn't very permanent in World of Warcraft).

Anyway ... hope that pizza comes soon :-)

Friday, April 07, 2006

Busy again

But busy having fun. As it should be.

Had a morning of trying to avoid work, although I still did my part. Various people wanting stuff done, an annoying git who I'd quite happily pound into the floor and finance work to think about. So I went home at lunchtime.

First up, got a call for help from one of the guild and I have trouble turning those down. So in the afternoon, it was off to one instance when I should have been farming stuff to help me out later ! It was a good run, I got stuff to sell and I got a shiny new toy which will help my warrior out with tanking. Except my warrior isn't set up for tanking any more. Hmm.

Quick break for dinner :-) and then into the Molten Core for some severe hitting of big things. We had a few times when we got wiped out but I managed to keep my job done well. Died more times than I would like though. It's a bit dangerous up close in there ... (I was playing with my warrior instead of the long range mage) Anyway, we got inspired to a rather fast run through and I felt as if I played a full part. I even outdamaged several rogues, which I've got no business doing. Rogues are supposed to be the best at doing damage against single targets, which is what we're hitting in the Molten Core. Oh yeah, I outdamaged 3 of the other warriors as well, despite following all of the damage discipline rules we use. I'm doing ok.

Currently happily chilling in front of the golf because my brain always kicks up a gear when playing the warrior. You have to keep aware of more stuff as a warrior, so the concentration kicks on.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Wordless Wednesday


In honour of what I felt like when I was ill, this is now my MSN picture as well !

Monday, April 03, 2006

Into the Core ...

We took Guildlink into the Molten Core again today ... but with a difference !

Because things had reset when they weren't really supposed to, we couldn't make the attempt on the big fiery fella Ragnaros like we wanted to. So we took a beginners group in to get more people some experience in there. Which included me ... I took in Bashara as the second main tank. Big responsibility ... I learned stuff too.

How did we do ? Not too bad. I saw some things that I'd never appreciated before, mainly that the tanks get bounced around a bit again. Bashara is only a slip of a troll, so she gets bounced a fair amount. I was the first one to die - my own fault really, I dragged the giant back to where the healers had to be on top of the second mob in order to be in range of healing me. My bad.

We steadily made our way through to the first boss, Lucifron. Took us about 3 attempts here, which was what it took to get the decursing and dispelling sorted out. Also needed a crash course in how to keep Lucifron's guards attention as my job here was to look after one of those while people hit it. Didn't do as well on that as I'd like. But we still got the snakey guy tamed.

Next step, core hound packs - I learned something else here - you need to hit your mob to keep it ! Was pulling the mob off someone else who started the combat, so I needed to manually start hitting after taunting in order to get the rage I needed to keep the mob on me.

After that, the big dawg Magmadar, who makes everyone run away roughly every 30 seconds. So the job of the tanks is to make sure they are ready for that with an ability that stops them running away. We struggled on that early but pretty much had it cracked on the attempt where we took him out. And the big dawg Magmadar is a boss that's given us an awful lot of trouble in the past ...

We didn't take out any more bosses than that, people needed to start leaving. Hell, I'm pretty tired too after being in tank mode for 3 hours ... We did good in there though. Good enough to get two bosses tamed :-) And good enough to truly earn the loot that they had on them.

We'll be back in a few days, not sure if I'll be tanking again but I hope so. I have a lot to learn and the best way to learn is by doing. Need some better gear for my warrior though.

Saturday, April 01, 2006

Saturday Meme

Struggling to think of something for today, so I'm going to indulge in a little bit of larceny :-)

How did you get the idea for your profile name? I like the name Sleepypete, it sums me up pretty well sometimes ... But it was already taken, so I had to use the name of my World of Warcraft main character instead. That would be Iceangel the crazy frost mage ...

What song are you playing now, or wish you were playing? Since listening to Madonna's Confessions on the Dancefloor again, probably Jump. Otherwise, Incidentals by Alisha's Attic.

Has the death of a celebrity ever made you cry? Think I shed a little tear on Eric Morecambe as well, he was special.

Do you want a baby? Couple of years ago and my last partner ? Poor kid. Now, I don't think I'd mind too much. Would need bigger house though, wouldn't even have a pooch here cos the house is too small.

What does your dad do for a living? Chemical engineer, makes industrial coolers.

What does your mum do for a living? Nursing.

What is/are your pet's name(s)? Ben and Goldie, although they live at mum's & dad's place.

What colour are your bed sheets? Blue and white

What are the last 3 digits of your phone number? 359, 587 and 290

What was the last concert you went to? Think the last concert I went to was at university, on the Downs behind the Halls of Residence

Who was with you? People I knew from the university hall I lived in.

What was the last film you watched? Hmm - am I giving secrets away if I also say I went to the Inside Man ? Smart film, we enjoyed it and it kept the attention. Maybe a little long but I thought it was well paced. Jodie Foster, Denzel Washington and Clive Owen. Oh, it also had the Operative from Serenity and Willem Dafoe.

Who do you dislike most at this moment? Think I'd say El Tony as well, for the amount of lying he does. But Gordon Brown lies with bigger whoppers and more often.

What food do you crave right now? I'm currently looking at a chocolate brownie cheesecake that will be devoured rather rapidly after I finish this meme.

Did you dream last night? I have World of Warcraft dreams at the moment. Sad I know ... Curious how they seem to be emphasizing teamwork though.

What was the last TV show you watched? Currently have Match of the Day on but I'm paying my usual amount of attention to it. (Not much - it's football)

What is your fav piece of jewellery? Don't think I have much jewelry, although sporting trophies may count. On that, probably the bowling (cricket) trophy for being the best bowler in my first year with the men's team.

What is to the left of you? Sofa, 4 cuddly mini dogs and the pooter. (Sitting on sofa cross legged tapping into the laptop)

What was the last thing you ate? Chocolate hobnobs but in half an hour, it'll be that cheesecake.

Who is your best friend of the opposite sex? Hmm. Would be hard to choose between the IT Girl and CQ here. However, I'd love to call Miss L my best friend of the opposite sex, as I still owe her bigtime over her helping me out a lot last summer. She reawoke my competitive instinct at a time when I was struggling badly. I don't see Miss L enough though these days since she moved upstairs. Oh - nearly forgot RCA. How ?

Who last MSN'd you? Sarai the Overqueen, although that doesn't really count because I MSN'd her first.

Where is your significant other right now? Erm ... null response ;-)

Do you have a crush? Lol - often. Depends on who walks around the corner from the team on the opposite side of the wall.

What is his/her name? Lol - might detect one pseudonym from what I've written already.

When was the last time you had your hair cut? (Spits hair out of mouth) Too long ago.

Are you on any meds? I avoid meds like the plague, although I'll probably have to start going back to hayfever anti-histamines soon.

Do you have a mental disease? Heh heh heh - the men in white coats haven't found me yet.

What shirt are you wearing? I have a white T shirt on which says "Don't ask me, I make it up as I go". Bought in the USA last year.

Are you sexy? Nope :-) 13 stone and ugly. Although I'm working on the 13 stone bit, it was 14 stone about 5 months ago.

What's your favourite store? Borders for books, PC World for window shopping.

Are you thirsty? Yep. Got a pint of water next door to me.

Can you imagine yourself ever getting married? Yep. But it'll take someone with a lot of tolerance to put up with me and a lot of intelligence to keep me from getting bored. Made that mistake with my last partner, was having to unconsciously limit my thinking so as to not upset her through being too smart. Blimey that was a relief when I didn't have to do it any more.

Who's someone you haven't seen in a while and miss? Family from up norf as I haven't been back there for too long. (Illness got in the way last weekend)

Where do you work? Heh heh heh - somewhere in the Western Hemisphere, which is as detailed as I'm going to go :-)