Sunday October 12, 2008

Ow damn my hand (contd.)

Opposable thumbs are such a wonderful thing.

I wish I was able to use mine without pulling off my bandage (bad) or pulling on my wound and making it hurt like hell (worse).

*sigh*

I hate feeling helpless.

Saturday October 11, 2008

Ow damn my hand

Note to self: saying "it sure would be nice to get some kind of non-life-threatening injury, like a sprained ankle or something, to be able to stay home from work for a bit" out loud is dangerous.

Because some evil god will be listening in.

In the specific, I was washing dishes this morning and a glass broke apart while I was washing it. Cut a pretty big gash in the back of my hand, right over the thumb. Hurts like hell, wouldn't stop bleeding, had to actually go to the emergency room.

And end result, yeah, I can't really work with my hand bandaged up like this, as I can't really move my thumb... can't really cook either, or type very well, or wash more dishes, or button up my jacket without the wound hurting, etc, etc.

I got lucky, it could've been vastly worse, but... grrr.

Now to research how to get bloodstains off a carpet...

Tuesday January 15, 2008

No Ghost Wolf for me

So I'm levelling a hunter (she just hit level 52 last night).

As those who know me might know, I'm picky about the look, names, and so on of my characters - I even put effort into getting my bank alts nice clothes, I levelled my primary bank alt (also a hunter) to 16 so I could tame Mazzranache and Echeyakee, and so on.

So it should come as no surprise that I'd already planned out what pets to get my hunter as she levelled to 70. Considering what she looks like (white-skinned, white-haired Draenei), my first choice was obvious: Humar the Pridelord, the only black lion in the game. Took me a few days of camping the spawn point to get him once I got to the appropriate level, but he's been with my hunter ever since.

Knowing exactly how much of a pain it is to keep several pets levelled at the same time (my first - now abandoned - hunter, an all-black Tauren whom I'd planned to tame Echeyakee with, got attached to The Rake in the process of levelling, and then trekked all the way to Teldrassil to get an owl), I skipped through Petopia's list of pet skins, hunting for something that looked nice, would match my hunter in looks, and was in levels as close to 70 as possible.

For my second stable slot, then, I'd planned (and still am planning) to tame a black owl (probably Gutripper, although she's painful to tame - the next closest alternative would be to save this quest until I hit 70, so I can spawn the Windroc Matriarch on command, but that cloak's too nice to wait to get it), since I've been wanting an owl for a hunter pet for years. (Took me a while to settle on the color - the owl skins are all pretty - but I figured I'd keep reverse-matching my hunter's coloring.)

For the third one... well, I'd planned on taming the Grimtotem Spirit Guide. Low-level, yes, painful to level, yes, but I really liked the transparent look and color changing. The taming process was really complicated, but it tickled the perfectionist player in me.

Given that it required a helm with a meta socket to tame, I'd planned on waiting until I hit 70 to tame one so I could do it without inconveniencing other people too much. (Although I could've gotten such a helm much earlier than 70, it would've required people 4-manning an instance - either normal Sethekk Halls over and over and over, or heroic Hellfire Ramparts / Blood Furnace - just to get me a Primal Nether, and... no. Heh.)

I guess I should've been faster in levelling, though, because a stealth hotfix went through that made that particular wolf untameable.

This after a Blizzard employee had said that while unintended, the ability to tame it was considered a "fun use of in-game mechanics" and therefore they had no plans to remove it.

Sigh.

I guess I'll go tame myself a color-changing ravager (I wonder if the name AngryLittleRainbow would be too long for a pet name...), or grab a sporebat just because they're pretty (utterly useless, though - bleh). Or just keep the stable slot free for learning skills come the next expansion.

Monday October 29, 2007

Guild go boom

Dear Guild Leader Self-absorbed idiot,

in what universe, exactly, is "oh noes, let's /gdisband" an appropriate reaction to the fact that the second-best raiding guild on the server has the same amount of bosses killed as this guild does, and therefore they might overtake the guild and kill Illidan first?

Continue reading "Guild go boom"

Friday October 26, 2007

About paladin buffs

Right. For the paladins in the audience, I have a question...

I know about PallyPower, and I know what it does.

My question is: would it, or any similar mod that you know of, automatically rotate through the classes and the buffs that are assigned to it, so you can just bash one button repeatedly until everybody is buffed and the mod informs you of it?

Or does the trained monkey person sitting at the keyboard actually control which class they buff / rebuff by clicking a different button for each class?

Because I've honestly lost count of the amount of times I've been acting as a tank in a raid or group and clicked off Blessing of Salvation, right after it was buffed, only to have it immediately rebuffed. It's not random, it's not an accident, it almost always happens.

"Okay guys, rebuff."
*30-min BoSalv goes on*
*BoSalv gets clicked off*
*30-min BoSalv goes on again*

(I eventually just gave up and waited until we entered combat to click it off.)

If it's an addon that redoes it (semi-)automatically, fair enough. If it's not, I think I've just lost a little bit more of my faith in humanity - because you really must not be paying attention to what the hell is going on to chain-rebuff BoSalv on somebody who's been assigned as a tank.

Tuesday October 23, 2007

Quick recap of the last few weeks

Yes, I know I don't post much. Shush!

First of all, a couple of images:

Now if only I hadn't died halfway through the fight...

Pretty bronze dragons like me!

After missing the Tempest Keep attunement run (due to my boyfriend's computer croaking a few hours before it was scheduled, and me lending him my laptop so at least he could go), I finally got attuned to at least Mount Hyjal (and now just need to kill Rage Winterchill for Black Temple attunement).

Granted, I'd be happier if this hadn't come at the expense of progression for the guild (the only reason we went to Tempest Keep instead of them going to Black Temple to kill Reliquary of Souls was they were short on rogues for the evening)... eh.

Also, though I don't have a screenshot (I forgot to take one, for once, heh), I managed to get my hands on a Sinister Squashling a few days ago. And my boyfriend got his today, too. Whee. (We're both a bit obsessed with collecting vanity pets. Just a tiiiiiny bit obsessed. *cough*)

I do sympathize, though, with the guildie who wants The Horseman's Helm for his warrior alt and still hasn't seen it drop even once after several days and a couple hundred runs of the place.

Continue reading "Quick recap of the last few weeks"

Friday September 21, 2007

It just figures

So the guild situation finally came to an end. It had been brewing a long, long time, and while I can't say I'm sorry that it's finally over... ugh.

To make a long story short: I got into the guild as a feral druid, and they've always known I wanted to stay feral (tank / dps, offhealing without respeccing if necessary). I took a break from World of Warcraft for a few months, came back, was still in the guild, all was well and good... except while I was away, they happened to implement rules saying that every "healer" class (priest / paladin / shaman / druid) had to be healing-specced unless allowed otherwise.

Continue reading "It just figures"

Wednesday September 19, 2007

Of blue and purple gear

It seems this weblog is quite likely to turn into a mostly World of Warcraft related weblog. My real life, at the moment, isn't really that interesting, and there isn't that much to talk about; on the other hand, if you listen to the people I know, you'll be told I talk about WoW far too much.

And I guess I do. But I enjoy the game, and the class I play, and the theorycrafting aspect of the game - so why wouldn't I enjoy talking about it as well?

So I'm giving up and creating a World of Warcraft category, as doubtlessly, this is only one of many WoW-related posts to come.

Carrying on...

I would consider my main character - a level 70 feral druid - quite well-geared, for the gear sources I have access to. The officers in the guild I'm in (all but one of them, who's on my side and doing his best to try and point out to them exactly how stupid they're being) seem to disagree, questioning why I don't have more epics. They also appear to think that player skill isn't worth much in terms of who is "allowed" to be feralspec, and that I should just respec healing so the people they've told they can't spec feral won't whine.

Lovely attitude, isn't it? Would almost think this was a level 60, pre-BC raiding guild wanting all their druids to spec healing because feral isn't "viable". If this carries on, I might have to find myself another guild - but while I'm in it, I'll be doing my damnedest to change their mind.

The extended entry has - mostly for my own reference, just so I can bring coherent examples to them should they whine about my lack of purples to my face instead of forgetting the names of items and scrambling for Wowhead - a list of equipment I have for each slot, both in bearform and in catform, and whether there's an accessible purple upgrade for it or not. I don't know how interesting this could be for somebody who's not in my situation, but I can't be the only one with a stupid guild...

*grumble*

And they even have a feral druid in the officer council. I'd be surprised he's not telling them off for being stupid, but I have a strong suspicion he's one of the sources of the stupidity. Sigh.

Continue reading "Of blue and purple gear"

Sunday August 05, 2007

Absence

Computer still dead. Not the RAM (if I perform a RAMectomy, it still doesn't boot), not the HD (it doesn't boot from CD either). Gah.

That explains why I've not been posting much, by the way. The only working computer I have access to belongs to boyfriend, so I can't really use it very much - and when I do have the use of it, I tend to do more important things (like check my email, on which I'm terribly behind in terms of responding... if you're waiting for an email from me be patient, I'll get to it!)... and when I don't, I rarely feel like spending the time I have available for recreation making a blog post - would rather play a game. (Though lately I've not been feeling like playing my current online game of choice - Lord of the Rings Online - because there's absolutely nothing to do there... I'll most likely go back to World of Warcraft, which had plenty of things still for me to do before I left it, not to mention the ones that got added in the meanwhile, and not to mention the new expansion which just got announced. It's a real pity, LotRO has huge potential to be a great game... it's just unrealized right now, and I can see nothing changing with the next patch - and the game will probably die from lack of subscribers before the potential is realized. But that's a longer rant for another post.)

Saturday July 28, 2007

Damnable bureaucracy

I'm finally in the process of rescuing my data from the evil clutches of my dead computer, and of course, the first thing I move over is my Opera folders (the upside of never managing to convince boyfriend to switch to Opera and stop stubbornly clinging to IE: when my computer dies and I need to use his, I can just copy over the email / bookmarks / etc files and just take over the install). And the first thing I do after that, of course, is to check my mail (especially my "reserved for important things" email, which keeps getting sent spam and trojans now - clearly somebody I shared the address with wasn't as smart as I thought, sigh).

Nothing much, but among the clutter, I dig up an email from the university I did my master's at - a notice that "the official graduation papers for the Master's in Writing for Television and New Media for the academic year 2004/05 are ready".

At this point I'm cheering, because they said they would be ready, oh, last September, and hoping the "academic year 2004/05" is a typo (because I did the master's in 2005/06, and if the papers that are ready now - in 2007 - are for the '04/'05 class, I really am losing all hope).

Then I read on, and the email happily tells me that I can go pick up the thing, at my convenience, at the Student Services office of the university - all the way in bloody Turin. Which would've been a pretty long and annoying trip to take even if I were still living in Italy, which I'm not. Augh.

This is particularly stupid because this master's was a long-distance program in the first place, only requiring a computer, internet connection and DVD player to attend, with the exception of the entrance exam (which took place in Milan) and the final exam (which took place in Turin, and which I had to plan a trip for, complete with hotel stay). And they said they would send the papers to us.

The email included a phone number to call "for any necessity", and I will most certainly call it - but the fact that the email mentions the necessity of me bringing both an official stamp (which costs money) and identification makes it sound pretty impossible for the papers to be retrieved in any way that isn't me going there in person. Sigh.

I guess I'll have to plan a Turin trip for my next visit to Italy. D:

Saturday July 21, 2007

So about that Harry Potter book...

Word of warning before I begin: spoilers for "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" abound throughout this post. I'll hide them in the extended entry, so nobody (assuming anybody is actually reading this already, which is a big assumption :P) can get accidentally spoiled - just don't click through to the full entry unless you've read the book or don't care about spoilers.

This also gets really rambly towards the end. I tried to keep it coherent, but there's just too much that annoys me, and I've had way too little sleep last night, for me to fully succeed.

That said...

I don't really know how to put in words what I think of the book now that I've read it. "It was a huge disappointment" doesn't really feel right, because you have to have high expectations of something to be disappointed by it, and I knew it was quite unlikely that J.K. Rowling would manage to rescue her writing and plotting abilities from the downward plunge they've been doing for a while now. "Not worth the hype" is probably a better way to describe how I feel: for being the end of the Harry Potter series, this book, although decent in its own merit, falls flat in several respects. Hell, it almost reads like fanfiction in some parts.

One of the things I dislike the most, overall, is that after I turned the last page I was pretty much left thinking "...so?" - that through the 607 pages of this book, J.K. Rowling hadn't even managed to do what should be the chief aim of any fiction author: to make the reader care about the characters and what happens to them.

Continue reading "So about that Harry Potter book..."