Month: April 2006

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).

Losing a Dog is losing a member of the family, very sorry to hear 🙁

And why build a PC when you can buy one ready done? (Partly kidding cos I understand custom specs – but boy is it a lot less effort – just plug in and turn on :-))

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.

HAppy Easter, darling….

and don’t eat all those eggs at once!!

btw – you missed an excellent blogparty the other night :-))

cq

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.

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.

Hmm. I may well be listening to somebody shepherd me through the Molten Core at that time :-(.

It is with great pleasure that Her Majesty invites you to the first Royal Blog Party at Craziequeen’s Palace on Thursday 13 April, commencing at 10pm BST (British Summer Time).

(massive grin) That pizza barely touched the sides … I don’t have them too often nowadays (weight watching) but the shop around the corner always makes high quality pizza.

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 !