Month: February 2006

Another World of Warcraft post …

We’ve got an issue with Guildlink where we have people complaining that they aren’t getting picked to go to the big Molten Core instance. However, when you give them the opportunity to go, they’re not signing up ! Crazy. If they don’t take the opportunity when it’s presented, pretty soon the opportunities won’t be offered.

I’ve done my bit, I’ve signed up as a person who’d like to go to the first (i.e. learner) run and have declared that I won’t be going on the second (i.e. experienced) run. Conveniently enough, I have an indoor cricket match on the first day of that second run, which keeps me out of it. Otherwise, I’d have had to choose whether or not to sign up to both. Despite a lock-in thing, I can do that, because I have the two separate characters. And I’d be happy to, because my experience would be helping out that first run, which will have a bunch of new people in it.

However … It seems like a heap of people who could sign up aren’t … I don’t know. It strikes me as selfish freeloading. They think that by going on the experienced run, they’ll have an easier ride through to getting the good loot that drops from the boss targets. I think that’s it. Another thing that it could be is that there is a second run being set up as well, which could be getting in the way. The second run is a 20 person run into that Zul’Gurub jungle place.

I hope the learner run gets off the ground, however at the moment there are only about 10 sign ups for a 40 person raid. Need more people ! I’ve done my bit by signing up and I think I’ve got at least 2 more experienced people to sign up through making them feel guilty. Ha !

This time it’s the Scottish Kerr pair, in the ice dance. They both did a terrific job and looked like they had fun. They deserved to have fun, it was a flawless performance.

Will they get medals ? Nah. They’re not Russian. In ice dance and figure skating it’s not about what you do on the ice, it’s about who you are. Ah well. They’re both winners as far as I’m concerned. They did Scotland and GB proud.

PS Curling gets even strategic sports fanatic me falling asleep as bored.

Trying to figure out which one I am at the moment.

I feel tired, even though I got a decent amount of sleep over the weekend. It’s not physical exertion, because I’ve not been running around that much. I don’t think it’s mental exhaustion either, because I’d managed to limit my online time over the weekend as well. I was online a bit but only because I was bored. (And one of the raids was short, so I helped out)

Maybe I need to find myself another hobby … Kinda like, get myself tired out properly instead of only half tired through pooter games. Must get the golf clubs out of the airing cupboard.

So that’s what I need to do, find a direction to go in and devote my energies towards that. It’s always easier to summon up energy when you have something (or someone!) to direct it towards. Outdoor cricket season will start in a couple of months :-).

Currently watching part 1 of the new version of The Poseidon Adventure. This one looks like it has a similar collection of stars to the first one. Already seen have been Adam Baldwin (Jayne from Firefly), Rutger Hauer, Peter Weller, Steve Guttenburg and Bryan Brown. Ok, maybe not so high profile stars as the first one.

Stuck for something to scribble about today, so I’m going to break down the rules of the indoor cricket. Think I promised to do that a little while ago.

Ok – the indoor cricket at work is 6 a side, 12 overs a team. The 12 overs are broken up into 3 batches of 4, with each 4 over set having one pair of batsmen. Losing a wicket doesn’t mean the batsman can’t bat any more, it means -5 on the score.

How about the bowlers ? Everyone bowls 2 overs but you can choose when you have people bowl. One of my favourite tactics when captaining was to try and spot which batsmen couldn’t handle a certain bowler and get that bowler against that batsmen. It works too 🙂

It’s kinda small in there so how do you get big scores ? Hitting the walls gives a bonus. Side wall in batsman’s half – 1 extra. Side wall in bowler’s half – 2 extra. Side wall then end wall – 3 extra. End wall – 4 extra. End wall without bouncing – 6 extra. But if you hit the ball onto the balcony or the roof, you’re out mister.

Fielding is fairly obvious, fielders spread out, with a wicket keeper and a bowler. I usually stand behind the stumps to try and get stumpings but some bowlers are either too quick or too wild to be that close. Mind you, we have Brian, who bowls quick enough for me to be wanting about 3 times the distance to the stumps, compared to the short 10 feet from stumps to back wall.

Games only last an hour but it’s a hell of a rush to play in them. I think I enjoy these short games more than the outdoor games. However, it’s not been so good this year because of the balls we’re using this year. Think the ball I bowled really, really slowly (as a variation) sums it up. It bounced head high … And when I change to offspin, the normal place that goes is rib high. The balls are pretty squishy, which means they bounce strangely and don’t come off the bat too well. When my shoulder lets me*, my sneaky plan for domination will be to bowl really, really slowly to see how many of those head high bouncers will happen. You can’t really do much with those as a batter …

*Due to a dislocated shoulder eight years ago, I have a long term shoulder problem. It’s ok 99% of the time, except for when I want to actually bowl with it … The problem is a little restriction near the vertical, which destroys the smooth rotation of the arm through the bowling action. Sometimes it’s fine, other times I have no length accuracy whatsoever. I’ll figure something out to stop it being a problem.

Had fun last night with the people from the guild. We were having a look at a few people that we don’t know too well, seeing what their skills were like. I got brought in at the last minute because the place they were going has a quest that gets you into the big Molten Core place.

We had Zalzar as our healer, Fubb as our marksman, Towwy as our mage, Clagnuts as our rogue and Bolbit, Bashara (me!) and Fourak as our warriors. Bit top heavy on warriors but we needed to have a look at them. We had a couple more come in as well to take a peek at, including Ratharyn. I was impressed with Clagnuts because he got damage in without getting much damage taken in return. I think he was concentrating on my target and I should be pretty difficult to get aggro from. (I have one of the better weapons in the game and it’s heavily enhanced by enchantments and talents)

Towwy was going nuts :-). He was seeing how our warriors coped with mages that do incredible amounts of damage. I think he had far too much fun.

All in all, a good fun run and it restored some of my faith in World of Warcraft raiding. I’ve since signed up to the Onyxia run tomorrow because it’s short of people. Still need lazy time but plans for cinema tomorrow seem incredibly nebulous, so I’m going with the sure thing. Plus they’re still a bit short of people for the run. (Ooze isn’t as popular a raid leader as Sarai, he isn’t strong enough to tell people off)

What am I up to now ? I just watched the Liverpool v Man U game. Poor game but a good result. People should play the game to win, instead of playing to get people on the other side sent off. Terrible injury to Alan Smith, I reckon his ankle’s broken.

Nabbed from Craziequeen’s Blog 🙂 Here’s my results :

Curiouser and curiouser said Alice …

I’d actually agree with a fair bit of it too. I often think people are talking about me when they’re not and because my confidence level can skyrocket or plummet, I often think they’re talking about me in a negative. Hence the paranoid results …

I can bounce between high confidence and depression, which is where the Schizotypal comes in. If my confidence is high, I firmly believe I can do everything I put my mind to and will nut my way through that brick wall whatever it takes. However, if my confidence is low, then I have problems getting myself to do anything and I become unable to handle the various long term injuries I have. Sometimes I switch between confidence and depression like a light switch and it can usually takes a trigger to get me back on form again. However, because I’m very bad at telling people when I have a weakness (I almost always lie when people ask if I’m well), I can’t tell them I’m not too happy.

Avoidant comes from the disparity between my intelligence in technical areas and a lack of ability to keep up with conversations. I’m often 10 seconds or so behind a conversation and tend to get quiet, which makes me feel left out. Other times though, you can’t keep me quiet. However, with the concentration and focus level I put into the WoW stuff, I’m often putting up a running commentary without really realising it !

Finally, Obsessive Compulsive – aye, I got that for sure. I have extreme trouble throwing things out and get locked into patterns. I have lots of habits like still putting my right batting glove on before my left, even though it’s more awkward to do it that way. I develop patterns of doing things because I believe I’ve figured out that the way I have is the most efficient. I have difficulty understanding how other people do things differently sometimes. My analytical abilities also let me pick up other people’s faults easily, which is one reason I’ve had trouble keeping quiet over the last couple of days Warcraft … (things got messy yesterday) And most importantly, I have difficulty accepting the necessity of change, even though change is for the best.

Interesting test this one and it has enough questions on it to get some decent granularity of results. Not sure if I’ve learnt much about myself than I knew before but posting it here may help people understand me better 🙂

The lovely Miss L leaves the project …

So that’s one less person on the floorplate who by simply spotting her around makes me smile. It’s not all bad though, she’s just going up one floor to the project that lives there. So if I’m lucky, I’ll still see her around.

Pub tomorrow 🙂 But more WoW tonight. Somehow, I’m starting to talk myself into playing it over the weekend when I told myself I’d be giving it a break …

PS WOOOOOOOO HOOO ! We have an Olympic Medallist in the women’s skeleton. This is a sport where people put themselves on a skidplate and go head first down an ice course at up to 80mph. Silver medal for Shelley Rudman. Fantastic result for one of our less experienced athletes in her first Olympics.

Yey 🙂 I got some and couldn’t resist reprinting it here. The original author is Cloudberry, who was running the raids over the last couple of nights. Just putting a couple of snippets here.

“On Venoxis, Bashara was MTing. I think he did amazingly well for a first timer and only died because the healers simply went out of mana. I think if I had put both shamans into the healer group here, we could have had kept Bashara alive with the second mana tide though.”

I was playing as Bashara in these runs, who hasn’t been seen by many people in Guildlink because they usually see me as my mage, Iceangel. Yep – I died on the Venoxis fight but we took him down 🙂 So I wasn’t complaining 🙂 It’s part of the job to stay in the fight for as long as possible and, if necessary, die for the team so the team can finish off the boss.

“Special acclaim goes to Bashara this time for showing great tanking skills, learning from encounters really fast and showing intelligence on reacting unsuspected situations – future Molten Core MT here? “

Yey ! Think someone likes me. (MT stands for Main Tank and is the person who’s supposed to take as much damage as possible so that the softer armoured characters can avoid damage) I’m hoping that politics weren’t behind some of that though, as there’s been some comings and goings with Cloudberry’s guild over the last week or so and the highest profile goer was the Molten Core main tank.

Back to being the mage tonight. Better get me dinner first …

Is what I got at the moment …

Probably because I’m trying not to get annoyed at a guild member (soon to be an ex one). I want to focus on the more important stuff like a fairly successful Zul’Gurub run today. After going in yesterday and thumping three bosses (impressing the raid leader with my tanking along the way), it was the turn of a couple more bosses today before the instance resets.

I must have impressed Cloudberry (da raid leader) because she put me as the main tank alongside the main tank from her guild. And I haven’t got that much good gear … The “spider” boss is pretty interesting. She goes nuts and has special scripting that has her going after the healers. She web traps the warrior that keeps her at range, which means a backup warrior (me !) has to pick her up and take her back to the main warrior.

We got her down though. And we got the fish boss as well, although he ate a few of us while trying.

Yep – definitely not trying to think about the idiot who thinks that he can jump ahead of the rest of the people who want to raid the end game instances by ignoring the approved list. An approval list is there for a good reason, it says that players need to be at a certain standard before being allowed to go into the instance. If they’re not at that standard, they’re a danger to themselves and the rest of the group. The standard isn’t so much about the gear they have, it’s how good the player is at their class. My gear with my warrior is pretty ordinary, but I can make up for that with the way I’ve customised the character and my tanking technique. Cos I’ve read how to do it :-).

The fella who’s likely to not be in the guild this time tomorrow just keeps on making the same mistakes over and over again and he strikes me as a typical immature know it all schoolboy at the same time. Even though you want to help people improve, you have to admit sometimes that there are lost causes who you can’t help. And I feel like that’s a personal failure when that happens.

Mind you, we also had players tonight who had broken items when the person who dies most often (me ! as tank) was getting on just fine. You need to repair your gear before going into a run, especially if your raid leader tells you to …

Work’s going fine at the moment, although they’ve scarily given me more exposure to the finance world … Scarily for me or scarily for the project ? Muahaha ! I listened to an after rant report from the IT Girl though. As in, she got ranted at for someone else’s mistake. And that’s bad. But the someone making the mistake is highly likely to get ranted at when he’s back in. Muahahaha ! The IT Girl is in a bit of an unfortunate position because she gives the impression of being able to do everything and is keen to do everything she can. Which means she gets asked to do everything … Including the stuff that other people should be doing. Keenness should be a virtue, not a source of stress.

Time to catch up with the telly that was on while I was in Zul’Gurub with tanking tunnel vision !

Copied wholesale from something I got sent earlier (modified a little for my answers)

Welcome to the winter 2006 edition of getting to know your friends. What you are supposed to do is copy (not forward) this entire e-mail and paste it into a new one. Change all the answers so they apply to you and send this to a whole bunch of people, including the person who sent it to you.

The idea is that you will learn a lot of little things about your friends that you probably didn’t know already.

1. What time did you get up this morning? Awake 0700, moving at 0850

2. Diamonds or pearls? Diamonds are more sparkly ?

3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? I think Narnia. Might have seen another since but can’t remember it.

4. What’s your favourite TV show? The Gadget Show because it has Suzi Perry on it.

5. What did you have for breakfast this morning? What’s breakfast ?

6. What’s your favourite cuisine? Pizza

7. What foods do you dislike? Foods that are too mushy or are hassle to eat.

8. What is your favourite crisp flavour? Ready salted, although I don’t eat crisps too often now. Ok – Niknaks purple bag. PS This question has made me hungry.

9. What’s your favourite CD at the moment? Probably Alisha’s Attic Vaults cd 1 still.

10. What kind of car do you drive? Puma

12. What characteristics do you despise? Misplaced Arrogance – gotta agree there

11. Favourite sandwich? Ham tea cakes

13. Favourite item of clothing? Clothing with no holes in the wrong places. Jeans, t shirt, leather jacket.

14. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would you go? Kennedy Space Centre on the way to the Moon.

15. What colour is your bathroom? Blue and yellow (I haven’t repainted it since moving in)

16. Favourite Brand of clothing? I avoid clothing brands that put their name on the item as they’re not paying me to advertise their stuff.

17. Where would you retire? Caribbean probably – cos of the cricket. Might not like the heat there though.

18. Favourite time of day? Getting home from work.

19. What was your most memorable birthday? Can’t remember many of these …

20. Where were you born? Birmingham

21. Favourite sport to watch? Cricket

22. Who do you least expect to send this back to you? Dave, Clare and Wendy – They’ve already filled it in…

23. Person you expect to send it back first? Marc

24. What fabric detergent do you use? Persil

25. Were you named after anyone? No

26. Do you wish on stars? No

27. When did you last cry? 17 – just before going into an exam. (Tears weren’t due to the exam !)

28. Do you like your handwriting? Nope. Can barely read it.

29. If you were another person, would YOU be friends with you? Aye – Unless I’d rubbed me up the wrong way.

30. Are you a daredevil? Yep. I’ll risk stuff, although I do wear a helmet when batting now.

31. Do looks matter? Only to those who don’t look at the personality beneath the looks. Are they worth knowing ?

32. How do you release anger? I get aggressive and try to release the aggression on sport. I try to redirect the anger/aggression into driving myself harder.

33. Where is your second home? Lincolnshire with the parents.

34. What class in High School was totally useless? Foreign languages. Make them speak English ! Muahahaha. (heh – kidding)

35. Do you use sarcasm a lot? Yep. When I can, although sarcasm tends to be destructive and I prefer to use constructive humour.

37. Favourite movie? Sky Captain

38. What are your nicknames? Now – Sleepypete or Ice.

39. Do you untie your shoes when you take them off? Yes – makes it easier to get them back on.

40. Do you think that you are strong? Reasonably – can hold my own in cricket but I suffer from injuries too much.

41. What’s your favourite ice cream flavour? Vanilla.

42. What are your favourite colours? Red, blue. Yellow for cars.

43. What is your least favourite thing about yourself? Easily distracted, absent minded.

44. Who do you miss most? The dogs.

45. Do you want everyone you sent this to send it back? Muahahaha – maybe 🙂

46. What colour pants are you wearing? Dark blue, unless you’re going by the American definition in which case it’s black.

47. What are you listening to right now? 3 phone conversations and 2 people (inc me) tapping a keyboard. Wonder what the other person is doing …

48. Last thing you ate? King Size Twix.

49. If you were a crayon, what colour would you be? Rainbow

50. Last person you talked to on the phone? Mortgage people

51. What is the first thing you notice about the opposite s*x? Hair. Unless I’m sitting down or they’re way taller than me – then it’s breasts.

52. What’s your favourite drink? Coke (diet)

53. Do you wear contacts? No but I have glasses on through most of my waking hours.

54. Favourite Day(s) of the Year? Christmas, days out of work and the day I bring the donuts in to work (sometime near birthday).

55. Scary Movies or Happy Endings? Happy Endings but endings that are definite. I.e. not a Spielberg multiple ending.

56. Summer or winter? Cricket season.

57. Hugs Or Kisses? Hugs, although anyone I know who I spot with Iceangel is in danger of a good tickling.

58. What Is Your Favourite Dessert? Chocolate fudge cake – must resist …

59. What Book are you currently reading? The Apocalypse Troll by David Weber.

60. What’s On Your Mouse Pad? A crappy black IBM mouse that gives me RSI.