Month: February 2006

Heh – the thing that distracted me rather successfully can be found at [url]http://cascadefailure.comicgenesis.com/d/20060130.html[/url]

Check it out ! Normal service now resumed, although the picture I have on my laptop and PC desktops probably helped.

I’m a bit frustrated by the end of today’s Molten Core run … I didn’t quite get to the point where I switched my mic off (I tend to mutter things that shouldn’t be overheard!) but was very, very close …

I think one of the sources of my frustration is that my two top characters are the mage and the tank and it was the tanks that were causing us problems at the end of today’s run. Trouble is, I can’t tank and mage at the same time. It just gets frustrating when you know there’s something eating away all the healers and you know that someone isn’t doing something about that. For the main fights, you can see what’s happening through target management. You can also see when people aren’t doing their job … and we get a few of those.

The other part of my frustration is that even though we have lots of competition for places, we still get lazy people who don’t pull their weight. Ony of my mage jobs is to cast that thing that makes people have more intellect (almost said “smarter” but it only does stats of a character, does nothing about the person playing). Seems like I’m often the only mage (of five!) who actually does that part of the job. Wonder what the other mages will think if they don’t get picked in preference to someone who does do that job … May have to go on strike for a raid or two, although the raid leaders already know I’m concerned.

Rant about freeloaders and the skill-challenged over, time to do something that’ll distract me away from this irritated mood I’m currently in.

Addon – the thing distracting me out of the irritation can be found at http://cascadefailure.comicgenesis.com/d/20060130.html. Check it out ! (I tried to put the link in a comment but my html skillz aren’t up to that yet)

Life’s broken down into the people who have and the people who have not.

Thing is, a lot of the time, the people who “have not” are the people who have not figured out that they need to work for things. We have an issue on WoW at the moment where people aren’t getting picked for raids. They then complain, sometimes very loudly, about not being picked. I don’t think they’ve figured out that bitching like that earns them no respect whatsoever and will usually knock them down the list. If it’s coming from someone in my guild, then it’s a source of deep embarassment.

Added to that, are the people who aren’t allowed to even sign up for raids … We got through 6 bosses in Molten Core today and we should get through the rest (except one) tomorrow. You don’t do that unless your technique and teamwork is good. In my case, it means removing curses very quickly at certain times, keeping certain mobs under control by turning them into sheep (yes really!!!) and by holding off on the damage I do until I’m sure I won’t distract the mob away from the tank. The biggest problem the non approved people have is that last one – the holding off on damage. Even the “experienced” people have that problem, which they shouldn’t really. Things actually get more dangerous for the damage dealer as you play more. Better equipment means more damage, means more likelihood of pulling the mob away from the tank.

We also still get people asking questions that could be easily answered by looking up the *!*”%!£”% question !!!!! Which doesn’t tend to get much respect and less of an answer from me.

The situation may improve over the next month or so. What really needs to happen is for Guildlink to get more raid leaders. That will allow multiple runs to go into places like Molten Core, which means 80 people get to go instead of 40. Trouble is, I don’t think we have 50 people with the necessary technique to be regular raiders, so diluting the team with the idiots will lead to frustration for all. We shall see. If I was interested in being a raid leader, I could actively select which characters I wanted in my raid. But I’m not interested in that kind of grief or hassle. Besides, it would probably keep me away from my favourite healers (Sarai and Cloudberry – Souleater doesn’t count as a healer) as they’re also raid leaders.

PS Blogger seems to be doing weird things. It’s not counting comments properly and it ate the two Six Nations posts I put in last Saturday.

Trouble is, making people laugh through a little bit of insanity doesn’t really do much for the physical problems :-(.

Think I got some of the overstretched finance people smiling today though – which was a good change from them being rushed sick :-).

Should be a good few weeks for sport on telly. Yep – it’s that time again. Sports that no one watches come on to the telly and people are glued for a fortnight.

There’s a few of these events – World Cup, Olympics – and this time it’s the turn of the Winter Olympics. I’m looking forward to it – the problem with a lot of sport is that it gets repetitive. There’s only so many ways a skier can go down a slope or a runner can do a 100m race. However, the Olympics are always something special. Athletes prepare and train for this one opportunity that comes around every 4 years, so you get the best of the best slugging it out, hopefully at the top of their form (always sad when injuries interfere). For a chance to see a sport at its best, take a peek at Olympics.

Oh yeah – I’m really looking forward to London 2012 and I want to see at least one full day of Olympic action live.

(currently watching the run up to the Winter Olympics opening ceremony while waiting for my dinner to burn).

Did I mention that female athletes tend to be pretty hot ? Nah. Wouldn’t have been thinking that. Although the 2 Brit bobsleigh girls are pretty cute. Oh ! There goes the dinner bell. I’ll pop in another Blog instalment tomorrow if I can :-).

‘You posses many spiritual gifts, including the ability to heal.’

Get your starry ass over here and HEAL ME!!

cq

🙂

Saw this on CQ’s blog and couldn’t resist …

You Are The Star

You represent the ultimate in truth and purity. Insightful and illuminating, you provide guidance for others. You also demonstrate unselfish, unconditional love. You posses many spiritual gifts, including the ability to heal. Your fortune: Your future is looking brighter by the day. The near future will be a time of both hope and healing. Luck is about to come your way, perhaps the best luck you have ever seen. Life is about to get a lot easier and much better!

That’s with just “Pete” though. With “Sleepypete” I come out as the High Priestess – mystery and secrets yet to be revealed. I think I prefer the Star :-), although that’s partly because of the luck bit. Thing about luck though, if you tempt Fate, she’ll bite you on the bum. So I’ll keep my head down there.

Gotta admit, I’m a bit of a strategy buff.

I like to win. And winning can be done either by being bigger, faster or stronger than the other guy or having a better technique. Because I’ll only get bigger if I’m fat and strength is out because of how injury prone I am, I either have to go for speed or the better technique. I have the speed, or I will do when I get down to nearer 12 stone. I got recorded at 11.5 seconds for 100 metres once, when I was 16. Which isn’t too bad. I’ve learned better running technique as well as an appreciation for spiked shoes since then.

Nope. If I’m to win, it has to be through better technique or a smarter strategy. I like devising strategy, I seem to be rather good at it. Although I’ve not wanted to run a team for a while, I’ve had decent results when I have been a team captain, including some wins when we had no business winning … I’ve also punched above my weight with sports like karting, where you have to be light to go fast. I couldn’t quite put up the times to match our regular karter, but I did get his respect. And our team of 4 got a trophy too 🙂

So what’s the twist ? I suppose you could say that one twist is that I’d like to be the best I can be at whatever I want to do. I firmly believe anyone can do that, although the physical stuff may be a little beyond me.

Another twist comes from what I’ve just been watching – highlights of the Volvo Ocean Race. Yacht racing doesn’t just involve strategy against the other people in the race, it involves getting the best out of the weather. And that really does interest me … Knowing what you can get out of the boat and knowing how far you can or should push it. Several of the Volvo competitors (most of ’em!) have fallen foul of pushing things too far, breaking their boat. But if you don’t push it … you come second because the other guy is pushing harder. And I like to win.

I’ve never been sailing … And would love to. I’ve never had the opportunity but I’ve got a lot of respect for what I see on programmes like the Volvo Ocean Race highlights, as well as getting an appreciation for it from accounts in several fiction books I’ve read. Plus there’s Philip, who joined the place I work at the same time I did. Philip took part in the Sydney Hobart yacht race a few years ago. He’s gone through another few jobs since though … Will have to try and find some proper fact type books about sailing.

What I’ve always said though, is that you never know a thing unless you’ve tried it … and sailing is something I’d dearly like to try.

Game tonight 🙂

Was having a bit of trepidation about this one because we’ve got some history between us. The Drifters are a good side who are very interested in winning … And they have the side to win the league too. I’d originally dropped out of tonight’s game due to a bad back picked up in the cold in Glasgow last week but got back in due to several people dropping out.

We bowled first and didn’t do quite as spectacularly in the field as in the last game. I got two wickets from behind the stumps, a caught and a stumping but should have had at least one more stumping. Ho hum. My bowling was dangerous in the wrong way too. I have good days and bad days with my bowling. My shoulder feels mechanically sound but it tightens up in just the wrong place for accurate bowling. I probably need an hour or two of net bowling every week for a couple of months to get my action back in the groove. My back survived the game though 🙂 Not so sure if I’ll be saying that tomorrow though.

Anyway – before I digressed, The Drifters batted first and put 132 on the board, which is a good score. Not unbeatable but challenging to most teams. Too challenging for us ! They had good bowling, which we couldn’t really get on top of (literally!) and we got restricted to just 44, with our last pairing putting up a negative score.

We did play well though and enjoyed the game. If you can’t win, that’s what you have to do. We didn’t disgrace ourselves, despite the one sided scoreline. Play hard but recognise that sometimes you come up against a team that’s simply better than yours.

Had me dinner, currently watching Sky Captain. Great film 🙂 Well worth watching again.

Superbowl’s about to kick off – how long will I last …

Unknown but I’ll definitely try to make it to half time :-). Highly surprised by Scotland beating the French earlier, big turn up for the bookies. Only saw about half of it because I was watching the cricket highlights on Sky. I didn’t want to watch the Scots get a drubbing.

It’s been a good weekend for my main World of Warcraft character – she got new boots and a new belt … Darn good stuff too. The second best gear in the game. Needed to earn it though, which we definitely did by having a record breaking run through the Molten Core. We did it the quickest we’ve ever done it, with only 2 bosses causing problems for the group. The rest went down easy.

We’re definitely getting better at this. We’re not totally there yet as we still have people dying when they don’t need to and people not pulling their weight as much as others. But getting through the whole of the massive Molten Core instance in 2 sessions means that enough people are pulling their weight for our group to be incredibly effective.

Doh ! Superbowl just kicked off and I’m missing it … More tomorrow 🙂 I might have a match report – if someone drops out. I put myself to first reserve because my back didn’t appreciate the Scotland trip last week.