New telly needed I think …

Current one is doing some rather strange things with the shape of the picture, as well as making some rather suspicious burbling noises occasionally …

Ah well, had it for quite a while now and it’s had issues for most of its life (loud buzzing on turn on that disappears quickly)

Will have to :
See when I can get one …
See if I can get the shop to take the old one away …
See what’s out there.

Of course, I’d want to be a bit more lucid for telly buying than I am now as well. I’ll be attempting to have my first proper dinner since the weekend in a few minutes, maybe trying to eat properly again will help me kick out this cold.

PS Telly’s been reasonably behaving itself since I switched it to the fuzzier PAL setting instead of the sharp RGB.

Hmm. I did summon up the energy to get to the corn…

Hmm. I did summon up the energy to get to the corner shop … and I shoulda bought more tomato soup 🙂

One big cup and I started feeling a bit better for a while. Coughing is back now though but I’ll know that I’ll be able to come home tomorrow to another cup of tomato soup.

Now what will that do to my motivation to stay at work tomorrow !

More bug

Hmm. Let’s see what I’m having at the moment :

Persistent chesty cough.
Very dizzy.
No appetite whatsoever.
Fever/chills. (At the moment, heating is on and I can barely feel my finagers to type properly)

Not even got the energy to summon up to get to the corner shop to get me some soup ! Or maybe I have. Just been curled up halfsleeping on the sofa in front of the cricket highlights. Trouble is, I can’t send myself to sleep outside of normal sleeping hours.

What I’m wondering at the moment is whether this bug will stop me from going up norf to see mum on Mother’s Day. Think it might do. I can do the trips into work okay, but 3 hours in the car may be a bit much at the moment, especially as the last proper meal I had was either Saturday or Sunday. (Can’t remember)

Heh – less whinging, more looking forward to getting rid of pesky bug.

Dizzy …

Definitely in the firm grip of a bug at the moment, which is one reason I’ve been quiet.

I have the chesty cough, which is ok until I start doing my typical overcough, which rattles my brain so much sometimes it feels like my head is exploding.

I think I’m also seeing the effect of being able to hear again through my right ear. After getting used to not having that ear work properly, I’m adjusting back again. So I’m pretty dizzy …

Anyway, that’s it for me for now. Back with more when I’m feeling better.

100 posts !

Hey ! Milestone time :-). And I want to put this post in now because of the negative one that’s gone before it. Time to look back on what I’ve blogged. That’s really why I’m doing this blog, to remember what I’ve been getting up to over the last few months. Besides, I have something else in mind to blog later today.

November :
This is when I started writing this blog and what do we have … Ahh … saying hello, what I get up to and complaining about my laptop. Which is really slow. Oh yeah – strange positions on the kitchen floor. Shoulda used my gloves to keep the leak under control better. Oooo – this is the month Civ4 arrived. The first and only game to distract my attention away from World of Warcraft for a decent amount of time. I also introduced one or two of the characters I have the pleasure to share the world with, the IT Girl and Miss L. We don’t see Miss L so much lately though and the IT Girl hasn’t been too well.

Bacon sarnies. Can’t beat ’em, can’t get thin on a diet of them. More Molten Core, plus complaints about my ISP. Also managed to cheat something into telling me that my blog should be the colour it is. Result !

December :
I’ll come clean here and say that December wasn’t a good month for me. I had a lot of things building up on me, stress with the mortgage and more stress from being very overtired. So I said a few things I wish I hadn’t. Back to seeing what I did post …

Yey 🙂 New toy – webcam. Haven’t used it as much as I could have. Xmas party – always good for a laugh and this one was no exception. And I managed to tag along wherever Miss L went all night. Wasn’t looking for sympathy honest, even though I did damage my back that morning due to the bitter cold. Hmm. Commenting about the outfits that the WoW people have given the girls. I have an even more revealing one now for my main character … Darn good item too. Fire, poison, magic, frost proof hanky. Toast. I love toast. Must remember to get the butter out the fridge before going to bed.

Uhoh – I just saw the first of my world hating posts. Ah well. I said what I said back then and probably agreed with it at the times. I still agree with it but for different reasons. At the time, I hadn’t seen the need for tightly controlling who goes on raids but after seeing the passengers we have at the moment ? I’m all for it again.

Christmas and the tree. Don’t tell my partner – she forgot to pick up that tree when she left. Mine now. Muahahaha ! Had two Xmas’s this year, up norf with the family and with CQ for the second family. You’ll know most of them from the blogroll. Hmm. I quit WoW around this time. That didn’t last long.

January :
Star Wars Marathon. I like Star Wars but it could have been rather better. Well made but doesn’t really satisfy the scientist in me cos of the universe it’s in. It works well for stories though. First Old Game Appreciation Society post here, although it was a kinda pre one. Massive ‘who am I’ meme and another ‘who am I’ about university. A flirtation into a couple of other games (didn’t last long). Back into WoW, with some good, fun, successful runs with the guild. First match report and this time it’s a good one. We buried the opposition. Birth of Flameberry in WoW, a character who I’m highly unlikely to play much more because of stuff that happened in game. She was named in honour of Cloudberry, who stabbed Guildlink in the back.

Ha ! Celebrating a diet milestone by going out and getting a pizza. That’s sensible.

Shopping is dangerous … And hunting dragons can be too. Visited the parents, which doesn’t happen often enough. Showing off my wish list for a pc. Did I mention that shopping is dangerous ?

February :
Wowser – first day of the month and we’re up to Scotland to see the launch of 7000 tonnes of pride and hard work. And then a complaint about a credit card … Still not got a Chip and Pin card from Halifax. That’s ok though, I defected to Marbles and I’m highly unlikely to use the Halifax card again. Cricket again, our turn to get swept away by the Drifters. Olympics started – good on ya Shellie Rudman ! History repeating itself part one this month, with people moaning about not being picked for raids. Haven’t I put something about that below ? Oooo – finance. (makes sign to ward off evil eye).

Miss L moves on ! Boo hoo. And I exposed my personality to an unsuspecting world. Learn anything people ? Posted my first Thursday Thirteen and we had the earthquake schism in Guildlink.

March :
Woo hoo ! One chapter of my life gets put to a close here, with the removal of my ex’s name from the house deeds. Time to move on properly. Started the saga of the garden. Originally I got promised I’d have 6 months to pay the guy but I’m getting daily phone calls at the moment asking for money. Waiting for a couple of loans to come through. Started feeling grotty, haven’t really stopped feeling grotty due to bad ear. It’s improving though, I’m back to about 50% in my right ear, so at least I can navigate.

Heh heh heh – more WoW frustration. It’s amazing the difference a quality team makes. You can sometimes get away with that but not when half the team is incompetent or a waste of space. Mixed month for WoW, we’ve had good runs and bad runs. The good runs have made it worth it. As has the chance to listen to the Overqueen. Always a pleasure because of the tone she sets.

And that takes us up to today ! Blimey this is a long post, I’ll have to do the next one of these at 150 posts.

Ooo dearie, dearie me …

After the demolition that happened last Monday in Molten Core, we had the mistake of underestimating it again …

Or rather, we had a few too many passengers again. You can normally get around those in a 40 person instance but not if they’re doing stuff like distracting mobs away from the tanks or not giving the tanks the healing they need.

But that’s not the worst of it, right at the end, we had some idiot look at the loot that the boss had at the end. That shouldn’t happen because of a system called Master Looting, which means that only one person can see what loot the boss has. That’s a really big sin that, as the loot in the Molten Core is hot stuff, with strict rules on who gets it and who has to wait. Basically, you earn points the more times loot drops and only get loot if you have more points than anyone else.

Ok, that’s cardinal sin number one. Cardinal sin number two is that the guy put “need” on an item he couldn’t use !!!!!

1 – I think that fella will not be invited to raid with us again. New person, should have picked up on the rules because we were a few hours into the run. Plus, he looked like one of those people who bought his character on Ebay.
2 – Someone else probably won’t be invited to raid with us again because he threw his teddies out the pram over not making the team. What’s he expect if he doesn’t sign up ?

I imagine poor Sarai (raid leader and Overqueen) is banging her head against the wall at the moment. Think I might be getting my hunter to the standard needed for these runs rather quicker than I’d like … We’re running out of trustworthy hunters ! (got two, hopefully three in the guild though)

PS Bugged, think I got the cold that’s going around. I’m currently bouncing between hot and cold and my muscles are complaining (partly due to yesterday). Fingers and hands are freezing though.

Bah – enough complaining. Will get some sleep in a bit when the effect of Mini Eggs & coffee has worn off.

Thursday Thirteen – match report

Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen Things about The Game

1…. The two sides were Small Swings and Leather On Willow.

2… Team Selection leading up to the game was fun … 1 player dropped out, the reserve had to disappear, so I needed to call in the second reserve.

3… We lost the toss and were asked to bat first.

4… We scored 93 and were probably 20 runs short of a good target.

5… I had trouble coming to terms with the ball again … (I either hit too straight or too square)

6… Different tactics by the opposition meant my normal sharp stumpings were taken out of the game.

7… But I did get 3 catches from behind the stumps.

8… We got hammered by their star player. We just couldn’t stop the guy scoring …

9… I got two miracle catches off the walls that I had no business whatsoever taking. (I need new glasses)

10… I bowled a bit better and only did one beamer. Improvement …

11… They scored 108 to win the game. Boooo !!!!!

12… I pretty much got away with injuries, although my calf muscles did try to explode on me afterwards.

13… We had fun 🙂

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!
1. (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

Arg Leadership ! Take it away

Found out this morning that I might be captaining the indoor cricket side on Thursday …

Well, hopefully I can slope shoulders that off to another fella who is better at it than me. (Still affected by my ear, but return of The Bounce Factor means I’m dealing with it better)

Anyway, Thursday’s going to see the return of The Brain, coupled with the return of the bruised and battered fingers. The Brain can bowl rather quickly. Think there’s dents in the wall still from when we played with a harder ball. It also sees the introduction of The Tall Guy, who I’m eyeing from a crooked neck position (yep – he be that tall !) wondering what it’ll be like to keep wicket to him. We also have the Pitied One playing, so I’ll have to put on my special smiley mask when talking to him. (He’s the Pitied One because the poor fella is going out with my ex). And then there’s the Old Fogey and the Unsung Hero.

And then there’s the Eternal Cripple (me !). I’m hoping that the Old Fogey will take over the reins for the actual game on Thursday as I’ll have enough to think about with keeping wicket.

Looking forward to trying to turn a match report into a Thursday Thirteen …

Revenge is best served hot ?

More World of Warcraft. Gonna have to try and find some alternate subjects to talk about soon but things went rather well for the team tonight. Apologies if I’m boring people with all the WoW stuff !

Anyway, after the trials of the weekend, things started looking up yesterday with the first taming of Onyxia since Guildlink lost two of its biggest guilds. And that taming was probably the most perfect take down yet. We outdid that tonight though, the Molten Core team went through 6 bosses in 3 hours 42, which is an all time new record. We only got wiped out once during the entire session as well … Fantastic stuff. (And I got more loot too)

Being able to do that is a testament to the quality we have in the new team. Sure, we still have one or two passengers but we managed to take down most of the bosses without anyone getting killed, which is pretty special. Even with taking in a lot of new people, or even because of that, we’re fitter, faster, stronger and far more disciplined a fighting unit than we ever were before.

And I got more loot too. Yey ! But we got to hear the Overqueen on TeamSpeak as well, which we didn’t get yesterday due to illness. It’s always better when you’re hearing stuff over TS. I’m going to have to get back into the habit of turning my microphone back on so I can join in with the laughing. And the way we do Molten Core, there is always a lot of laughter due to the tone that the Overqueen sets but at the same time, we’re also doing a good job of professionally demolishing of the instance.

Hmm. Onyxia again tomorrow and around that I’ll be continuing to powerlevel my hunter, Finlay the orc. Level 26 so far, in 32 hours of game time. Hoping to get him up to level 60 quickly, so I can play with the big bombs.

Hmm – bit different

Another World of Warcraft post, this time a happier one.

We took on Onyxia today, which meant a full 40 person raid, with the better players in. That’s the ones who have gone through a rather long quest chain to get themselves the key to Onyxia’s lair.

We struggled a couple of times before with Onyxia but this time, it went down like absolute clockwork. That’s one thing about the newer, shinier Guildlink, people may not have the same initiative but we seem to have got rid of the dangerous wild cards. (We now have people who are a bit too tentative, instead of the suicidal)

Amazing how much smoother it can go with a decent core team … Molten Core tomorrow, that’s another 40 person run. We’ll still have passengers in that, but passengers affect 40 person runs a lot less than they affect 20 person runs.