Blogomort

2008-05-10T11:33:00.000-07:00

It's been quite a while since I updated. Since my late update, I have:

Transferred Meeloo to Earthen Ring and joined Alea Iacta Est.
Joined a fun family-oriented guild on Turalyon with Chel and Normbo (Hi Suika!)
Leveled Normbo to 60 and went to Outland with Lahf.

Most of my WoW time has been spent levelling Normbo with Andy (Lahf) and it's been a nice change of pace to play a Melee character. I enjoy it and it's nice not having the pressure as a tank and just concentrate on DPS.

In non-WoW news, I got a new job and am working from home starting up a west coast office for IFS (www.imsi.com) and my good friend John Perkins. Wine has been being tasted and consumed at a good pace. I really am liking wines from the Rhone, especially Cabernet Francs. I need to drink more of it! One at the tasting last night was very green peppery, which was really delicious. I'm interested to see how the premium California Cab Francs that I bought a couple months ago compare.

That's all for now.

Eve, not WoW

2008-02-02T23:49:00.001-08:00

I've been playing Eve online for the past week. The graphics are nice. The game is hard. It's just much more open-ended and less structured than WoW. I like playing with other people, though...have to see if Matt, Erich, Jon and Paul keep it up, because it could be a really fun thing.

Haven't been playing WoW at all. Wonder if the guild misses me. Probably not.

Hard worker

2007-12-27T09:30:00.001-08:00

Hard worker, originally uploaded by johnkistlerwatson.

I'm working from home today (due to alleged impending snow). Frances is playing with her Grandpa Ronny, who gave her this carpentry set for Christmas.

Best night evah

2007-12-27T08:44:00.000-08:00

Last night was one of the best WoW nights I've had in a long long time. I got on, just intending to quest solo, hoping to raise the last bits of cash for my epic flyer. Instead this is what happened:

Started questing, did my dailies, headed to Netherstorm.
Got invited to a guild PUG for ZA.
Downed the bear boss in ZA (my first time)
Mentioned I had 80 gold to go for my epic flyer.
Got given 85 gold by Deloused, a guildie.
Bought my epic flyer!!!
Flew from SMV to Netherstorm direct, super fast. Who needs the damn taxis?
Did quests (zoom, zoom!) until I had enough to pay Deloused back the 85 gold.
Turned in heroic badges for a sweet new off-hand.
Bonus healing is now at 1670, unbuffed!

Best...night...evah.

Food tomorrow (and wine)

2007-12-24T21:35:00.000-08:00

Breakfast: Heidi's delicious scones with Eggs Florentine and braised mushrooms.

For Christmas dinner, we're having a prime rib, cooked by my father-in-law. Also mashed potatoes and spinach salad with a chipotle vinaigrette. For wine, we're having a nice Barbaresco that I will open up and decant as soon as I awake in the morning.

Epic flyer, here I come!

2007-12-24T19:10:00.000-08:00

I did my expert flying training today, all 5000g of it. Whew. Now I need to get the 200g to buy the mount. I'll get it in a day or so, for sure.

I also ran Heroic Botanica today for the first time. I died a lot, due to aggro management issues on the 4 and 5 pulls. Twas fun, however!

Almost there

2007-12-24T11:57:00.001-08:00

Only 300 gold until I can afford both to train for my epic flying mount and purchase one. I'll have it before Hawaii, at this rate!

surprise Kara

2007-12-15T11:15:00.000-08:00

I jumped on last night expecting to check out the Calendar and my auctions, then head to bed. As soon as I logged on, though, I got a message from Sweetroller (a druid in the guild), asking if I wanted to come to Kara. They were going to try to clear the whole thing in one night. I came along for the first 5 bosses and it was really very fun. Just as I think I'm getting sick of the whole raiding thing, I end up having a great time. I even got some loot...a purple wand from the Opera event (Wizard of Oz) which was a decent upgrade.

ZA again

2007-12-09T21:45:00.000-08:00

Went to Zul'Aman with a bunch of people who had been in for 5 hours. We spent most of the time exploring, which was entertaining and expensive. :) They had taken down the bear boss earlier. We wiped many times exploring new territory, but didn't do any bosses.

Been a while

2007-12-09T13:21:00.000-08:00

I have now been to SSC, which was interesting. It totally brought my computer to its knees, though. I only got about 7 fps during the fights. I think I'm going to upgrade my processor soon.

Since I last wrote, I've also downed Prince and started doing the daily cooking quests, which are fun. I still haven't gotten any t4 gear or done any heroic dailies. Ah well. From discussions during SSC last night, it sounds like the guild it going to try to move away from grinding Kara so much and start working harder on 25 man content and ZA. This will be a nice change of pace, since I feel like I know Kara pretty well at this point. Only one boss that I haven't killed at this point.

I've also been working on finishing quests. I think I only need about 2000 more gold and I can get my epic flying mount. Woot! Maybe another month and I'll be ready for it. Possibly right before we go to Hawaii, or soon thereafter.

Catchup

2007-11-28T20:05:00.000-08:00

What's new. Let's see. I've started training up my fishing and cooking, so I don't have to beg for stuff any more. It'll be a long haul, but I'll be glad to have it done. The only debate is whether I would be better off spending the $25 and moving Chel over to the new server.

Went to Kara a couple times, including downing Netherspite, which was a first for me. I just have Prince and Nightbane and I will have been present for all the bosses being killed. Hopefully one of these days the timing will work out and I'll be there for a successful Prince outing. I got some new Bracers last night, which is nice. A decent upgrade from what I was using before. Nothing spectacular, though.

First wine related post

2007-11-21T10:12:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to write a tiny bit about the wine I had last night. I opened up another bottle of the Monkey Prize from woot and watched the WLTV video about it while tasting it. It's very sweet, pretty smooth and quite yummy. I wouldn't call it "fine wine", but I certainly enjoyed it with the basil and salami pizza we had for dinner. I'm glad I bought a case and a half of it when it was offered, since it's consistent and I always enjoy it with dinner.

Kara and WLTV

2007-11-21T10:10:00.001-08:00

Went to Kara last night with G2. Got through Curator again, no drops for me, as usual. We had a bit of trouble with Romulo and Julienne in the Opera, but we got it sorted eventually. A good run, solid and fun.

Also, notice the new link to Wine Library TV over on the right. Thought I'd enter the contest, as I've been watching Gary quite a bit and find him extremely entertaining. Maybe I'll even start blogging a bit about the wines I've been drinking, as well as WoW.

Zul'aman

2007-11-19T15:01:00.000-08:00

I got to go to Zul'aman last night and it was quite something. It was really cool to see a new instance again. On the other hand, it was really hard. :) We did manage to get to the first boss, after a few wipes. Even the trash mobs are quite tricky and require quite a bit of skill. The last pull before the first boss is probably trickier than Attumen in Kara and certainly requires better gear and a stronger team.

We made 2 attempts on the first boss and failed. At that point, the boss reset and was going to require us to re-clear all the trash, so we called it a night. We did get the 20-slot bag quest reward for downing the first boss, though since once the boss reset we could just walk over and pick up the quest item from a table next to where he used to be standing (I'm sure it was not intended to work that way by Blizzard).

quick Kara

2007-11-18T00:49:00.000-08:00

While I was doing other things (werewolf, gaming, poker), group 2 cleared Kara through Prince. Tonight, we picked up Illhoof (my first time doing that). I'm bummed I missed Prince, but hopefully we'll get him next week, although Thanksgiving is certainly going to throw a monkey wrench into things.

I also did my daily quests and ran a Sethhek halls with guildies.

I've been using the new auctioneer addon and although it has a ton of good information, it seems to do less to help you make money easily. I still need to play around with it some more and read some documentation, I think.

patch day

2007-11-13T23:24:00.001-08:00

Spent most of my time updating addons, but also did my Ogri'la dailies and some other Blade's Edge quests. It's funny, but the Blade's Edge Ogres now all consider me to be the queen. Not sure why, maybe being Revered with Ogri'la?

One of my quests glitched tonight when I tried to turn it in. Basically, the quest-giver had the yellow ? over his head, but he didn't have the quest in the dialog box for me to turn-in. Opened a ticket, but didn't hear from a GM before bed time.

Lots of good changes with the patch. My dps is way way up, making questing a lot more fun and also devaluing almost all of my alternate set of gear. I sold most of it off, because my dps with my healing gear is now a lot better. I also really like some of the interface changes, especially being able to select mini-map highlights of all sorts. I can't believe it took them that long to implement.

blah

2007-11-10T20:58:00.001-08:00

Well, went to Gruul's for two pulls tonight, both wipes. Now, in Kara, but got d/c'd and the auth servers are down so I can't get back in. :( Who knows if I'll be playing any more tonight.

Slabs for rep

2007-11-07T10:46:00.000-08:00

Went with a little guild PUG last night into the Shadow Labyrinth in Auchindoun. I've been with some PUGs which can't even get to the first boss in SLabs. Our group breezed our way through the whole instance, only wiping once on the 2nd boss because one of the hunters ran out of ammo. Doh! The group consisted of me, a warrior tank, 2 hunters and a mage.

I still need 2-3 runs through Slabs to get revered with the Lower City and have my heroic key. I'd like to have that done with in a week or so.

Kara regression

2007-11-05T23:07:00.000-08:00

The past two nights, group 2 has been reformed and we've gone into Kara. We actually managed to get Attumen down last night. Moroes has proven to be a lot harder. The group has probably 3-4 people who are new to Kara and probably new to raiding as well. So, it's been a learning experience for them, and a high repair bill for everyone. We failed to get Moroes down again tonight, made one attempt at the Maiden and failed that, as well. The only good thing that's come of it is that I hit exalted with the Violet Eye and got my ring.

There is no Kara scheduled for the rest of the week, which is pretty frustrating for me. I feel like I've really taken a large step back in the past couple of weeks. I don't think that joining Moonfirespam's new guild would help any, as they can't even get enough people together to raid, as far as I can tell.

Twotoedjoe was back tonight, but he specced ranged dps. This is bumming me out a bit, as we could really use a strong off-tank in Kara. But, he needs to do what he enjoys doing. No one can tell him he should do one thing or another.

My only hope at this point is that some of the newbies get really motivated to gear up and kick ass as raiders. Then group 2 will have a chance at progressing, rather than regressing as we seem to be doing now.

Personal Drama

2007-11-01T09:57:00.000-07:00

The only thing notable to chat about from last night's WoWing was a little spat I got in with some dude I was in a Headless Horseman group with. He started out being very cool (much cooler than the rest of the tools in the group), but when we wiped, he started bitching about how the healer (me) had messed up and not healed people when he should have.

Now, I'm always willing to admit when I've made a mistake. In this case, however, I got aggroed by some random wandering ghosts in the middle of the fight. One thing you have to know about priests...when they start getting wacked by multiple mobs, it gets pretty much impossible to heal, since each hit has a high chance of interrupting any casting. In order to remedy this, I generally Fade to take the aggro off me. It didn't work (since no one else had any aggro on these particular mobs). So, the next line of defense is to cast a shield on myself (please note that while this is happening, I'm not healing anyone and I'm using up mana). This will work for a while, and it did. However, my mana was drained enough that when the whole group started taking damage, I no longer had the mana for spot heals. A quick shadowfiend starts to remedy this, but it takes some time to kick in. While I was gaining enough mana to start spot-healing, the whiner died and the rest of the group unfortunately followed quickly thereafter.

At any rate, it was one of those things that happen that can't necessarily be prepared for and wipes do happen (the HH is not a trivial fight unless your group has uber DPS). But, pointing the finger at me as the cause of the wipe is not productive and frankly it pissed me off, so I chewed him out for it. One thing led to another, I dropped group and eventually ended on his ignore list after I told him to f*** off and die. :)

Now, I know I shouldn't have let him get to me (other guildies have said he's a known Ninja, so he's just really an ass in general), but when someone's knee-jerk reaction on a wipe is to blame the healer, it just really gets under my skin and I have a hard time not defending myself.

The only other things I did last night were to do my daily quests and to chat with Decayed about the guild meeting and the people who left. Sounds like group 2 might get started up again next week.

Guild Drama

2007-10-30T10:40:00.000-07:00

I didn't actually do very much in the game last night, just some auction work and Meeloo's daily quests. However, I found out that the group 2 raid organizer, Moonfirespam, left the guild and took his buddies with him. I guess he had a bust-up with the GM, Decayed, about people signing up for raids and then not showing up and wanting to punish them for it or something. I don't know the details, but our raid organizer has left with a few of his friends.

The upshot is that the group 2 raids are now being organized by a different guy, Dragonscale. He's been the raid leader most of the time, so it should be fine, as long as we can get the people together to go. This week, Wednesday night.

In the "making money for my epic flying mount" category, I got a random recipe drop that's going for 1500 gold on the AH (don't know if it's selling for that) which I put up for 1000G. I also managed to finally sell one of the damn cards I bought, so some profit is starting to show.

Shade and $$

2007-10-29T14:51:00.000-07:00

We took down the Shade of Aran in one shot (yay!). We tried Illhoof and failed. We tried Prince and failed. Many gold were spent in repair bills. I wish we had a more consistent group to do this with. Our tank is learning, but he needs gear and needs practice with the fights.

I took my level 4 druid to Thunder Bluff to act as my auction house mule. I gave him a stake of 500 gold and a few items (including those damn cards that I can't sell). He's got some inventory and about 490 gold now. We'll see how quickly he makes it back and starts showing some profit.

wierd night

2007-10-25T09:11:00.000-07:00

Kara last night was just plain wierd. It started out pretty normal, as we downed Attumen and Moroes quickly and easily (or so we thought...). But things started getting wierd when we hit the Maiden. Group 2 has never wiped on the Maiden. Ever. We proceeded to wipe 5 times before we finally got her down. I don't know if it was the new main tank, or everyone being a bit lazy and sloppy, but it was just not at all smooth. The main problem seemed to be positioning, as her chain lightning was arcing all over the place *and* I wasn't able to dispel her holy fire easily like I usually can.

At any rate, we eventually did get her down when Moonfirespam stepped back, stopped DPSing and added a 4th healer to the mix. He threw down some HOTs on the tank and we all managed to survive to the end.

That's when things got odd. As we were getting ready to clear our way to the Opera, trash mobs started respawning on us. From behind. Moroes-linked mobs, who shouldn't respawn after we down Moroes. When we finally got to the Opera, we were unable to enter because "Moroes is still alive". Uhhhhh.... We got his loot!? We tapped a keg next to his dead body?! At any rate, several people opened help tickets and we sat around for 20 minutes waiting for someone to help us. Eventually we got some help, but the best the GM could do was to have us all leave the instance for 30-45 minutes and do some sort of "soft reset" of the instance. It's not precisely clear what that means, as two different GMs told us two different things. Maybe Moroes will be alive again, maybe he won't. Certainly, all the trash mobs will need to be re-cleared. Blech.

So, all in all, a very strange evening in Kara. On a good note, I've managed to sell off almost all of my auction house buys, except the cards I bought, which are low-volume, high margin items. I think it could take a few weeks to get rid of them. I'm almost at break-even already, even with the outstanding stuff to sell, so I don't feel like I've done too badly.

At least we got the shade

2007-10-23T09:10:00.000-07:00

Group 2 downed the shade of Aran last night. We brought in a "ringer" from another guild, since I guess the sign-ups were weak. Cannibalsnax is an uber mage from another guild and he helped us out. I was bummed that TwoToedJoe didn't get into the raid, as we really could have used a backup tank in the group, more than another dps. Even with our ringer, we failed to take down the Prince, even with 5 or 6 tries.

Kara resets tonight and we'll probably easily down the first 5 bosses tomorrow when we run it. I don't know if the first 5 are just significantly easier than the rest or if we've just done the fights enough to know how to keep them under control. I will say that the Shade fight and the Prince fight involve a lot more thinking on your feet and are a lot less "turn the crank" than the first 5 fights, so it might have something to do with that. Hopefully practice, the return of our regular group make-up and some general gearing up will get us there eventually. I'd really like to have Kara on "farm status" for group 2 by the time patch 2.3 comes out and Zul'Aman opens up.

rediscovering the AH

2007-10-22T09:17:00.001-07:00

When I first start playing WoW, I had a great time playing the AH. I use the Auctioneer addon extensively and used it to buy low and sell high (most of the time). Occasionally I'd make a bum purchase, but I think that's to be expected. I guess when I started playing my priest in earnest, and when Blizzard made it so that you had to be a high level enchanter to disenchant high level items, I kind of gave up on playing the AH.

Well, the other night I rediscovered the fun. It's nice playing the AH when you've got 600 or so gold to work with. I can make some larger purchases and hope to turn them around for a tidy profit without worrying about running out of funds, since there is very little on the AH I can't buy at this point if I feel it's a good deal.

On my first night back on the AH, I already made a boneheaded purchase by trying to corner the market in Greater Magic Essence (I think that's the one). My fundamental error was blindly trusting Auctioneer to give me perfect information. It said that there were very cheap items available. I looked, and sure enough, compared to what I had scanned, there were a lot of cheap lots on the AH. This should have been a red flag right away. One cheap lot means someone is underpricing. 50% of the items being "cheap" probably means that Auctioneer has data which is not complete. I proceeded to try to corner the market (mistake #2) and bought up all the "cheap" lots. Long story short is that I'm taking a bath on them. I think my total losses will be less than 10-20 gold when I actually manage to dump everything I picked up, so it's not a hard lesson, but it's one I won't forget, since I hate having to truck around 5-6 stacks of worthless (to me) enchanting materials that I paid too much for.

Anyway, even with the mistakes I've made already, I'm having a blast playing the AH again in between Kara runs. Hopefully I'll get my methods tuned up and have an epic flying mount in no time! (I currently have about 600 gold and probably another 2-300 in stuff that I'm trying to sell). I think I started with 650 two days ago.

Update from Wednesday

2007-10-18T09:46:00.001-07:00

Nothing too interesting. I did my daily quests and some other quests in Nagrand. I also received my Whitemend Hood from Romulox and starting accumulating materials for my Whitemend Pants.

Tonight, mostly likely no WoW, as we're playtesting boardgame prototypes at Ben's tonight.

monday/tuesday

2007-10-16T23:22:00.000-07:00

last night: daily quests then bed
tonight: first 5 bosses in Kara. Not as smooth as some nights, but pretty smooth. No gear dropped for me.

I sent the mats to Romulox for my Whitemend Hood. It's close to 1000G in materials. Got the last primal might donated by TwoToedJoe. We had a good chat tonight. Turns out he has a PhD in chemistry, so we have a connection there. Nice to see I'm not the only over-educated WoW player around.

Dailies, Crafting

2007-10-15T10:48:00.000-07:00

Started doing the Ogri'la and Skyguard dailies in earnest yesterday. I also crafted my first Spellcloth (for a guildie) and did my usual Primal Mooncloth crafting. I now have 10 Primal Mooncloth banked, as well as 2 Primal Mights (from the AH). Soon, soon I will have my Whitemend's Hood. Well, as soon as I feel like ponying up the cash for rest of the Mights and the Primal Nether.

An evening of frustration

2007-10-14T19:51:00.001-07:00

Last night, I caught the end of the guild's first guild-only run into Gruul's Lair. This basically meant that I got only 1/3 the total repair bill as the rest of the guild. We failed to get the High King down. In my opinion, our gear as a whole isn't really up to the task yet.

After an hour of flailing in Gruul's Lair, group 2 headed to Kara. We took down the Shade of Aran pretty easily and worked our way up to the Prince without much trouble. We then beat our heads against the Prince for a couple hours, but never got him down. We did get him down *below* 1% on one of the attempts, but an elemental dropped right on top of us right at the end and we just couldn't quite get it done. We wiped when he had about 4000 hp left. Tuesday, we start afresh back at the beginning of Karazhan for our usual cake-walk through the first 5 bosses.

Thursday night

2007-10-13T13:28:00.000-07:00

Forgot to post yesterday. Thursday night I skipped out on gamenight (due to exhaustion and lack of gamenight participation). I played a small amount of WoW...did a quest or two and ran Underbog with some guildies. I had some lingering Sporeggar quests in UB, so I finished those up.

I forgot...

2007-10-11T10:22:00.001-07:00

to mention that the guild didn't run any Kara last night at all. I assume due to lack of healers. Had a talk with Moonfirespam about scheduling and learned that he's planning on alternating Mon/Wed/Sun and Tue/Thur/Sun as the raiding days. This week was the Mon/Wed/Sun schedule, which was a bummer, since I was unavailable on Monday or Wednesday this week, due to D&D and Werewolf. Ah well. There will be plenty of Kara for me, I'm sure.

Werewolf & Beerfest quests

2007-10-11T09:26:00.000-07:00

Not much playing time last night. In fact, if Portland Werewolf hadn't ended early, I wouldn't have played at all. We had a low turnout for werewolf for some reason and a couple people left early. So, we called it about 9:15. My only WoW playing was to do the daily beerfest quests, allowing me to buy my little pony keg. I also crafted my primal mooncloth, since the cooldown had elapsed. I want to get a Whitemend's Hood crafted for me by a guildie, but whew, those primal mights are expensive (100G each on the AH and I need 5 of them. bleah). Seems like my best bet to get out of my green hat, though.

Probably no WoW tonight, as it's gamenight.

Raid and Beer

2007-10-10T09:38:00.000-07:00

A very successful first 5 in Kara last night. No boss wipes (I think one full wipe on a mis-pull of trash on the way up to Curator and one half-wipe on a mis-pull on the stairs before Moroes). Attumen, Moroes, Maiden, Opera (little red riding hood), Curator in a about 3.5 hours. It was a fantastic group and we had a great time. After every boss, Twotoedjoe tapped his brewfest pony keg and we all got as drunk as we could before the keg ran out.

While we were tearing up the first 5, group 1 was struggling through the same content. We were getting the update from Machinegun whose brother is in group 1 and he gave us the wipe update. They started 2 hours before us, but they were still working on Curator when we quit at 11:20. Since they are generally better geared than we are, I'm guessing that their class makeup wasn't quite right.

I got two drops, some bracers which are not a healing upgrade, but are a stam upgrade and a new healing cape which I spent 250 dkp on (little red riding hood's cape, I think).

Tonight, no WoW, due to the Portland Werewolf gathering.

No Prince for you!

2007-10-08T08:53:00.000-07:00

Or Shade of Aran, either. The Kara group was not set up well to do the Shade or Prince. We only had 2 healers and if one of them went down (which happened a lot in the Shade fight), then the other couldn't keep everyone up. Additionally, we didn't have a warlock to banish the elementals, who proceeded to chew up the party pretty quick near the end of the fight. Suffice it to say, we didn't finish any bosses last night. They're going to try again tonight, but I won't be there, due to real-life D&D at Erich's place. The raid leader (Moonfirespam) has said that he won't run it if they can't find 3 healers, so my guess is that group 2 won't actually do any Kara tonight. We'll be back on Tuesday for the first few bosses again after the reset.

BGs and Mech

2007-10-07T19:24:00.001-07:00

Last night, I did a bunch of Arathi Basin, then a run through Mech. Mellow and good, all in all. Didn't lose a single AB, either. Tonight, Kara, and maybe Prince finally.

Quests, Instances

2007-10-04T09:20:00.000-07:00

Last night, I did a few more quests in Zangarmarsh (more opened up when I got to be friendly with Sporeggar). I got a whisper from someone asking me to heal for Steamvaults. Since I need the CE rep, I said sure. The group was not very good and when we wiped on the first boss, two people didn't run back, but waited for me to run and res them. I chewed them out for it and then one of them said "well, you didn't heal us, so we're even". I told them to f*** off and left the group. My first heal pulled aggro on all the mobs in the fight, causing me to spend all my time keeping me and the main tank alive, rather than healing the rest of the party. So, of course they died and we wiped. IMHO, the tanks fault for not keeping aggro (at all).

A few minutes after I dropped that group, I got a request to heal Shadow Labs. I said sure, since I need Lower City rep, too. I told them I didn't have time for the whole thing, and they said ok. We made it through 2 bosses before I had to leave, pretty successful, I think. The 2nd boss in Shadow Labs is really fun, mind-controlling the whole party periodically and having us beat each other up.

No WoW tonight due to gamenight.

Kara again

2007-10-03T18:50:00.000-07:00

The guild went to Kara again last night. I am in group 2 for the guild, but we still sailed through Attumen, Moroes, Maiden, Opera (yay, 1st guild group to do Wizard of Oz), and Curator. We had a few glitches, but pretty much one-shots on the bosses, which is pretty nice for a new group with a few people who had never been to Kara at all. A few good healers and a great tank and super DPS will get you a long way. I got a great drop of an awesome healing Mace (Shard of the Virtuous). A solid night, all-in-all.

Return to questing

2007-10-01T23:25:00.000-07:00

No raids going on tonight, so I decided to go back and start doing all the quests I missed on my way to 70. I made about 60 gold in 3 hours in Zangarmarsh, just questing. I think I'm almost done with all the quest lines in that zone. Soon I'll hit Terokkar and clean up there. After that, probably Nagrand. The questing is soon going to get annoying and difficult with my holy priest.

Found out that my old guild from Turalyon has broken up. I imagine that my leaving, along with the loss of the raid leader, probably put a bullet in its head, although it was already falling apart before that.

On a non-WoW note, blogger doesn't work very well on my old G4 Powerbook. I hope I can replace it soon.

Gruul's Lair

2007-10-01T10:57:00.000-07:00

The new guild joined forces with another guild last night to attempt Gruul's Lair. We got the first big boss down to 5%, but after 3 hours of attempts, we decided to call it and try another day. This is the first raid I've been in with 25 people. It was chaos, to say the least. I chalk most of this up to the fact that it was our first attempt, and that most of the people hadn't done any 25 man raiding before. I'm sure we'll get better.

Our main trouble was transitioning between focusing on the various mobs as the fight progressed. Especially for me, my healing assignments were not particularly clear and even when I thought I knew what I was supposed to be doing, finding my next healing target was not easy. I often had to run through the fight to the other side, dodging various and sundry AOE attacks from the mobs, to get to where I could heal my next target.

Anyway, it was a fun learning experience and I'm sure we'll down him the next time.

WoW updates

2007-09-27T08:58:00.000-07:00

Since I never update my blog, but I always talk about World of Warcraft, mostly to people who don't care, I thought I'd put my WoW stuff up on my blog!

Tuesday, I transferred my level 70 Holy troll Priest, Meeloo, from the Turalyon server to the Antonidas server. My main reasoning for this is that Turalyon is an east coast server and Antonidas is a west coast server. I live on the west coast and hence there should be more people to play with. This meant I had to abandon my old guild and I feel bad about that. To tell the truth, though, the attendance for that guild was horrible and I just wasn't having any fun with it. I moved to the Antonidas server specifically to transfer to a guild that I found there that raids on my time.

[note: there is a market for a web-based tool to help people find the perfect guild in MMOs. The current method sucks. Basically, I had to scan the Blizzard message boards for guilds that are recruiting and tie that back to the server time (which Blizz doesn't publish, as far as I can tell). Then I had to create a level 1 character to log on to the target server, "cold call" a guild member and start chatting. Painful and slow. Someone with some gumption (and who doesn't play so much WoW) could build a Monster.com for MMO guilds and rank in mad cash from the ad revenue.]

So, the transfer process was completely painless (except for the $25) and fast. I'm now a member of the Forsaken guild. I have run Karazhan two nights in a row. I jumped in right after Attumen on Tuesday night, and we one-shotted Moroes, Maiden and the Opera (little red riding hood). Last night we one-shotted the Curator and the Shade of Aran and did the Chess event (took two tries). This weekend we're planning on doing Gruul's lair on Sunday evening. I am having a ton of fun. The guild is very mellow and the guys seem low-key and really helpful. I'm not fond of the DKP system, but I don't care enough to fight it. I got my 2nd Kara drop last night, and it was a very small upgrade.

That's enough for now. I'm hoping to put up a little post with every evening of play.

domain monetization

2007-07-24T10:48:00.000-07:00

I've been pondering how I could start monetizing sleazyweasel.com, a domain which I've owned for quite a while now. I'm thinking that I should start putting some sort of blog up, where I discuss various and sundry nefarious business practices that I've run across. I am quite aware that this is not at all original, but I don't really care. I would also get people to submit their own stories, which I could post (of course, relieving me of much of the work). As a final couple of steps, I put up some google adwords ads, maybe buy some interesting keyword searches on google adsense (or maybe the msn equivalent) and see if some dough rolls my way.

Delicious Thai Food

2007-06-05T15:56:00.000-07:00

Today for lunch, I had fantastic Thai Food from Baan Thai (1924 SW Broadway). The service was slow, but the food was excellent. I had the Cashew stir fry, mild and it was just delicious (and plenty spicy). I will be going there again, you can count on it.

Mediocre Thai Food

2007-06-04T12:24:00.000-07:00

Just had lunch at a Thai food cart near my new office. I had green curry with chicken. The sauce was excellent, but everything was overcooked. Bleah. In a town with so much good Thai food, I can't waste my time with mediocrity. Ah well.

2007-02-15T09:24:00.000-08:00

Gluten Free Bean Bread

1 1/3 C warm water ( 110-115 degrees)
3 eggs ROOM Temp. ( soak in warm water for 15 minutes)
3 T olive oil
1 tsp vinegar
1.5 T honey
1/2 cup onion puree
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 C dry milk
1 1/2 cup brown rice flour
1/4 C potato starch
1/2 cup ground flax seed
3/4 or 1 cup millet flour *
1 1/4 or 1 cup pinto bean flour *
1 tsp Xantham Gum
4 1/2 tsp rapid rise yeast
2-4 T poppy seeds

we have made with more or less millet flour and pinto bean flour. Both worked ok. I think more millet made it a bit lighter.

We use a breadman bread machine with a gluten free setting.

Add all wet ingredients to bread pan, then add dry. We grind all our “flours” fresh using our handy Sumeet grinder. We need to use a spatula and “help” with the mixing phase. Bake for 1 hour.

This is a hearty, full of fiber, complete protein gluten free bread. It is still dense and needs to be toasted for optimal taste.

For the dairy free crowd, I think you could substitute some protein powder for the milk.

We are also considering making a “sweet version” and substituting applesauce for the onion.

Portland, Oregon (97215) Conditions & Forecast : Weather Underground

2005-12-15T09:21:00.000-08:00

This is, IMHO the best weather site out there.  I pay my $5/year to get rid of the ads and it's worth every penny.  They are always adding more features (google map enabled local weather stations is the latest).  I likes it.

It's over!

2005-07-17T06:43:00.000-07:00

I broke my fast with a grape and a handful of blueberries. They tasted fine, but not any better than normal. I'm a little disappointed. I hoped that food would taste like ambrosia (the mythical one, not the marshmallowy one). Ah well.

"Get in my belly!"

Weight: 170.5

Last night

2005-07-16T21:28:00.000-07:00

Just one more night to get through and it's all over. Tomorrow morning, I eat!

Watched "Whale Rider" with Heidi tonight. I liked it quite a bit. I wonder how the Maori feel about it. I'd recommend it to anyone looking for something a little different.

Weight: 171

Morning, Day 9

2005-07-16T08:21:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the ultra-brief post yesterday night. Both Heidi and I were extremely tired and weak and I just didn't have the energy to do more than I did. I'm still tired and weak this morning. I'm very very glad it's the last day. I'm really sick of the whole process.

I watched The Return of the King extended edition finally yesterday. Man, was it long.
Here's my super-brief review of the 3 extended editions:
1) The Fellowship of the Ring - Still a very solid and well done movie. I still love it, although I'm getting a little tired of it, since I've seen it so many times now.
2) The Two Towers - The extended edition was way way better than the theatrical version. I really liked it a lot. Perhaps the best of the three.
3) The Return of the King - If it weren't for the overlong drawn out ending, this would have been great. As it is, the long sequence at the Grey Havens kind of ruins the rest of it. I wish they had done the scouring the shire, instead of the boring stuff at the end. In the end, the weakest of the three.

Weight: 171.5

ps Happy birthday Mom!

Evening, day 8

2005-07-15T21:07:00.000-07:00

One

More

Day

Morning, Day 8

2005-07-15T08:16:00.000-07:00

As the smell of bacon wafts up from below, I sit on the couch with my daughter watching "Madeline" and submitting my post for the morning. There's really not much to report this morning. I'm tired and didn't get enough sleep, but what's new? It finally feels like summer: the sun is out and it woke me up way too early. I'm hoping to watch 'Return of the King' today since I didn't get to it yesterday (too much 'Pirates').

Weight: 173.5

Night, day 7

2005-07-15T00:32:00.000-07:00

Just got back from gamenight. It was a good time. We played Blokus, Shadows over Camelot (good guys won), several games of 'Werewolf' and one odd game that Hager tried to explain to us but no one could really figure out. I'm feeling pretty high energy, but my insides are also kind of cramping up, which is quite uncomfortable. I hope to sleep in late tomorrow. Only 2 days and a night left!

Weight; 175.5 (!) (I drank a lot of water today?)

Morning, Day 7

2005-07-14T08:25:00.000-07:00

I slept in a little bit today, until almost 8. That's a nice change. I did have a dream that I ate 15 chocolate chip cookies last night. :) I'm feeling weak but ok this morning. Pretty typical at this point. I'm hoping to watch The Return of the King extended edition this morning. It's once again gray and cool this morning. Hopefully it will clear up later.

Weight: 175

Evening, day 6

2005-07-13T21:13:00.000-07:00

I'm really tired tonight. I took a walk with Heidi after "dinner" (i.e. after Frances went to bed) and it was really hard. I ended up very short of breath by the end of it.

All in all, however, it wasn't a bad day. The sun finally came out and I enjoyed an hour reading in the backyard.

3 days to go!

Weight: 175.5

Morning, Day 6

2005-07-13T07:49:00.000-07:00

It's day 6 already. Time is starting to move briskly again, which is nice. I feel fine this morning. Once again the weather looks gray and cool which isn't ideal but it's certainly better than blazing hot! No distinct plans for today except to play some more Pirates! and take some walks.

Weight: 176

Evening, day 5

2005-07-12T21:09:00.000-07:00

A pretty good day today. I took a walk, I went out and bought a video game (Sid Meier's Pirates..I highly recommend it) and played it for a few hours. Watched some TV with Heidi. The hardest part at this point is definitely not the food cravings, but just the endurance of it all. I really miss meals and food. Meals have this way of punctuating the day which is missing when they're not there. The whole ritual of eating is something I've gotten accustomed to over the years. :)

I've been spending a lot of time playing around with a new java web framework called 'click' (http://click.sourceforge.net) which seems interesting, but I can't tell how well it would work in a real life application. I like a lot of it's concepts and the way it's built for the most part and it's luckily a lot more simple that struts so I could modify it if there were something I really didn't like too much.

5 days down, 4 more to go. Over half way there!

Weight: 178

Morning, Day 5

2005-07-12T07:26:00.000-07:00

Kind of tired this morning. I probably need some more potassium. Other than that, time marches on. Almost to the half-way point. All of this makes me seriously wonder how much food the human body actually needs on a daily basis...

Weight: 179.5

Evening, day 4

2005-07-11T21:37:00.000-07:00

Feeling great. Now that my potassium levels are up, I'm actually doing very well. Heidi and I took two walks today and I mowed the lawn. I also sat in the sun in the backyard and read comic books. It's almost starting to feel like vacation!

Oddly enough, my calves are very sore. Heidi says hers are too. Very odd.

Weight: 180

Electrolytes

2005-07-11T10:04:00.000-07:00

It's becoming very clear that my electrolytes are kind of messed up. Heidi told me to take more potassium and eat some salt. I did and I'm feel much much better. Much less shaky. More energetic. Generally much happier and relaxed. Hopefully the blood results will confirm that tomorrow and give us some more specific information about what I need to be taking to keep my body happy.

Morning, Day 4

2005-07-11T07:35:00.000-07:00

Very very weak and shaky this morning. I slept pretty well last night. Hopefully I'll feel better once I get some water in me. My brain is still quite clear, despite not having eaten anything for over 3 days.

Weight: 180.5

Evening, day 3

2005-07-10T20:08:00.000-07:00

Feeling pretty good at the moment. If I go up and down stairs, I start breathing pretty hard, but if I stay put I'm ok. Heidi and I took a walk this afternoon which was good but hard. Going up hill was quite a challenge. I'm heading to bed early tonight. 3 days down, 6 to go!

Weight: 182.5

Food cravings

2005-07-10T10:21:00.000-07:00

Mom asked me to post about what foods I'm craving. So, here it is: salty greasy food. Yummy melted cheese on nachos with pork sausage on them. Bacon and sausages. That's about it. I don't crave veggies at all, or even fruit. Lentil soup would be great, too.

Anyone who might be reading this, please feel free to post comments so that I know you're reading. Mom said people are reading it and talking to her about it, but I had no idea. So comment!!!

Morning, Day 3

2005-07-10T07:54:00.000-07:00

Very weak and shaky this morning. My heart feels like it's working very hard, with my pulse somewhat elevated. It made me uncomfortable and unable to sleep very well through most of the night. Aside from that, I feel fine. No headaches to speak of and really not much obvious hunger. My brain feels pretty clear and mostly unaffected.

Didn't post last night because I felt pretty lousy and tired. Yesterday I watched three movies: The Fellowship of the Ring (extended edition), The Score and Meet the Fockers. I haven't made any progress on catching up on my magazine or comic book backlog.

Weight: 182

Morning, Day 2

2005-07-09T08:27:00.000-07:00

I feel very good. I'm a little shaky, but my energy is excellent and I feel relaxed and rested. A little hungry, but not that different from an average Saturday morning. I had a good night sleep (about 9 hours). So far, so good.

Weight: 184

Evening, Day 1

2005-07-08T21:40:00.000-07:00

I feel tired and weak, but not too bad. I've had intermittant waves of shakiness. I'm also pretty cranky. Nothing extraordinary to report at this time. Tomorrow is supposed to be the bad day. No headaches today, which is a pleasant surprise! Watched a movie: "Lone Star" with Heidi. It's a very good movie. I would recommend it highly, even if you're not starving yourself.

Weight: 187

Afternoon, Day 1

2005-07-08T16:20:00.000-07:00

Very hungry. I've had a few spells of low blood sugar, but nothing terrible. It's good to be home from work so I don't have to think any more. I can definitely tell that thinking burns calories. I think this is probably the longest time in my memory that I've gone without food. Scary, really.

Morning Day 1

2005-07-08T06:22:00.000-07:00

Nothing exceptional to report. Didn't get a lot of sleep last night, as usual for a Thursday night. Probably about 5 hours of quality sleep. A little hungry, but nothing out of the ordinary at this point.

Weight: 189.5

Fasting Day 0

2005-07-07T23:56:00.000-07:00

It's the night before the fast begins. I guess it's already begun, since I'm not eating anything right now or before I go to bed. My last meal: chips and pico de gallo from Ole Ole. Played some games at Greg's and came home. It's just about midnight and I'm heading to bed. I feel fine :)

Tomorrow at work I should be fine until sometime after lunch. My prediction: I get a massive headache about 3:00. Let's hope that's not true.

Oh..for the record, at Greg's we played Game of Thrones (Erich won with Lannister, I did not with Baratheon) and a quick game of Clans, which Erich won using the "kill all clans" strategy (helped by Greg's sleepiness and not understanding the game). Perry was also present.

Weight: 190 lbs