Sleepypete's Pillow

Blimey … what a day in WoW that was …

The earthquakes started around lunchtime when one guild decided they were leaving. Fair enough, they had a lot of dangerous people in there and a raid leader who basically wasn’t doing the job properly. They threw their teddies out the pram bigtime when our Revered Leader and Overqueen defended one of the Mercenaries (my guys) over what he said on Wednesday’s failed Onyxia run. He swore over the voice comms because someone was being insanely dangerous. Ah well – the dangerous person is not in Guildlink any more. He was part of the triangle that led to Valhalla leaving.

Then a little while later, the Withering guild announce they’re going as well. So we were left in a big hole, with a big raid due later and plans in absolute chaos … Heh. So they thought ! Several hours later, we were back organised again (that’s why we revere the Overqueen) and had a full balanced raid group going into Molten Core. Which was the first time for many of the people going in.

How did we do ? It helped that we got epic loot (da good stuff) really early and that the loot went to new people. That helped settle people down, reminding them why we were there. We died a few more times than we’re used to but that’s fine … Lot of new people. We still got 3 bosses down, which is fantastic for a run with so many new people.

So, Guildlink’s lost a few people. We’ll miss them sure, but I personally won’t miss the cluster of extremely dangerous players that have gone as well. That’s dangerous in terms of being stupid and indisciplined and causing problems for the raid. We’ll bounce back, we’ll grow stronger. We’ll definitely keep enjoying our relaxed attitude to raiding. As we did tonight. Lots of good stuff tonight and we’ll be back for more tomorrow.

Time to move on, wave goodbye to the elitist people who will now try and rub in what fantastic players they are. We’re better off without them. As long as we have the Overqueen, we’ll do just fine. (We better look after her !)

I am still successfully not buying choccy – not that you guys are helping much!

And it ought to be illegal to put creme eggs on the counter where you pay!

Maltesers are good. And Tesco’s have a 2 bags for £2.20 offer going … Highly dangerous. Muahahaha !

No hobnobs, I’m afraid, dearheart..

but I have Malteasers left from when I fell asleep during AeonFlux! 🙂

my TT is up 🙂

cq

Thirteen Things about Sleepypete 1… I’m hopelessly addicted to computer games. 2… I’m hopelessly addicted to all kinds of games but mostly those that test skill. 3… I have injured every single part of my body. I have had more than 10 broken or cracked bones, not including damage to all of my fingers and both thumbs. 4… But I enjoyed every minute of the circumstances ! 5… I think modern stuff tends to be a pale imitation of what’s gone before. 6… But I love my modern toys. Email forever ! 7… I would love to meet Karen and Shellie of Alisha’s Attic. 8… I have had 2 long term relationships that both came to nought. Third time lucky ? 9… I’m seriously into sci-fi, current favourites are Battlestar Galactica and David Weber. 10… I sleep, therefore I am. 11… I have called my computers after Digimon characters, with the next phase being named after Godzilla. 12… I’d follow anyone for the promise of Chocolate Hobnobs. 13… Mini Eggs make me hyperactive. Which is why I eat them before cricket matches. Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. Mrs A’s 2. Craziequeen’s

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PS Aeon Flux is recommended as a stylish, hmm … interesting film. Having Charlize Theron in there helps :-).

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.