WoW - wotta weekend 22-24 september 2006

[leng]

Oh, well, I'll start a thread for a change.

Stayed home on friday and had a new basin installed in my bathroom. There is no way I will attempt plumbing 'cause the mess is so extreme if you make a mistake. Wandered out in the afternoon and picked up a Firefly/Serenity comic, but I think I mentioned that.

Saturday : picked up the original George Romero "Night of the Living Dead" in glorious black and white in a sale. Who could resist it for 1.99 ? Watched in on Sunday - great fun. Pity about the really naff soundtrack with no lipsync ...

Also on saturday a friend (!?) signed me up for a 10-day WoW free trial. I installed the disks and was immediately hit by a 450+Mb patch which took several hours. However, I was able to get into the game in the evening and created a Troll hunter called Faceripper. He is now level 10 and working on his beast-training quest. So far offers to group outnumber challenges to duel by about 2-to-1 and I have met one beggar with the interesting line:
"Can I have some money and are you from Sweden?"

So far I'm quite enjoying WoW but it does come over rather as EQ-lite, or if you believe EQ2 is EQ-lite then this is EQ-lite-lite. I've also created a human rogue (currently only lvl 2) and will probably try a NE druid and an undead warlock. I'll probably post a few questions in the WoW forum to avoid cluttering the daily thread.

Edit : did I mention Sunday was my birthday? Went out for a meal with some friends and had a nice time.

[Caranthir]

Happy belated birthday leng!

DNP all weekend. School pretty much the whole time. I did manage to watch Sci-Fi Friday before I crashed on Friday night though.

[Ciiera]

Friday: DNP - Worked then headed up north to meet up with Taas who had been away on vacation for an entire week.

Saturday: DNP - I was up north relaxing with the family. It was very overcast but it didn't really rain until the evening. This was our last weekend up north for the season so we were happy that we were able to get a camp fire for most of the evening. Eventually the rain did come in force and we had to go inside. It was also Taas' sister's birthday so we had a great time celebrating.

Sunday: It rained pretty much the entire day up north but to make matters worse the power went out for 90,000 people and so it made things difficult. We ended up coming home around 11am but didn't actually make it home until much, much later. We made a few stops along the way that ate up some time.

We played in the evening. We logged on and started a Poet's Palace group. It was myself, Taas, Kaien, Zoldan, Deepfred and Kril. Eventually, Deepfred and Zoldan left but Cregan came and joined us. We really had a lot of fun. We only made it to the third level of the Palace but we learned and will do better next time. We probably could have made it further but we were exhausted and it was late and we needed to get some sleep.


Happy Belated Birthday, Leng

[Lycos]

Friday: Played some WoW. After Cindy went to bed, I watched Saving Private Ryan until about 2 AM. :D I love that movie.

Saturday: Mowed grass, etc. Played a little more WoW in the afternoon. Played lots of Spiderman 2 on the PS2. My son and I beat Doc Oc and all the other bad guys. It was tough, but not too tough. Now, I let my son do most of the second part of the game, he has to get a ton of hero points to get past the point where we are now in the game. Now, we're just exploring other parts of the game that we didn't get to explore before.

Sunday: Church, a little more Spiderman 2 with Ben. Watched Ben and Mikayla while Cindy and the older 2 girls were at a horse show. Took the young guys out to Mc Donald's of course. Went to church for bible study. Bible study went pretty well. I was happy with how it went, and slowly getting into what I need to do. Came home, helped get the kids into bed. After that, watched Brothers & Sisters. It's a great show. They killed off the Dad too early. Tom Skerritt and Sally Fields were the parents. They were paired up in Steel Magnolias, they were great together then. I was hoping to see them together in this show for at least the first season. Good show though. Played a little Planetside before bed.

[Serani]

Happy Belated Birthday, Leng!!! :pint:

DNP all weekend. *sigh* WHat else is new?

Friday: Dropped the kids off at their dad's. When we got back, watched Sci Fi Friday. Then I crashed.

Saturday: Picked up our order from Angel Food (http://www.angelfoodministries.com/default.asp) then, after dropping off our food at the house, headed down to the Strip District. Picked up some Orange Seville coffee and a few other items and ran into an Amish guy who was selling pie pumpkins for $1.50 each (!!), so I picked up a couple for fresh pumpkin pie, and found out he usually carries a pie called Shoo Fly Pie. Sometimes referred to as wet-bottom. It's a molasses bottom with a cake-like crumb top. Very very good and we can't get it around here (no Amish). Anyway, he was out, but said he was there every week. I gotta go back and get me some of that pie! Later, we watched the rest of Season 4 of SG-1. (I can't WAIT until I get Season 5) By then, I was tired.

Sunday: Did some work on the finances, then watched the football game. There were a few bad calls (on both sides) and we were just stupid in a few places. Afterwards, watched a couple of episodes of SG1 and then Batman Begins with the kids. I wasn't feeling well most of the weekend. Bleh.

Still not feeling good, but I gotta work. Yay. I hope to play some tonight.

[Charinida]

Happy belated BD to the puntable cuddley Leng! Get a gnome! Soon! Show off that dance skill in WoW... ;)

Haven't been playing any online games still, lately. That will probably change when winter hits and I'm stuck inside. :D

Cable was out since Thur morn, came back late Sat afternoon... And Comcast lately has been mailing out flyers in regards to the Cable Phone... Would be pointless to get the phone if the cable is down, neh? I'll stick with my Cell...

Spent most of the time shopping or eating out. Primarily bought books. Debating whether to get Photoshop Elements 4 or go for the CS. Need to think on that one a lot more... The Barista Coffee House was nice to sit and use the WiFi, while munching on PB&J. The Dodo is packed on the weekends... Friday was quiet, but Sat was busy. They have different menus for the weekend breakfasts too (which is all they serve on weekends, which is great!). Might go there soon today, for something... A couple of them are artists... Hrmm...

Right now, my back, arms and leg and part of the hip is hurting... Sunday afternoon, carried an ancient airconditioner from two rooms, down three flights of stairs, outside to the trash bin area. Thing has gotta weight about 80lbs or so... UGH... I'm a wimp when it comes to heavy stuff... Now that the corner is clear, I can work on getting more stuff out for a new desk later on... But think it would be a bad location 'cos of the sun... Bad for the computer usage, 'cos of the glare maybe. But at least it is more airy than the current room where one of the computer is right now.

Doing some more cleaning... Have a *lot* of magazines, I'm trying to figure out whether to keep or toss... PC Mag/Maximum PC I can pretty much toss (other than the special editions, like the Audio/Video edition, or the Home Entertainment, How-To...). PC Gamer/OPM (with CDs/DVDs) and PSM, are they worthwhile to keep or sell or just trash? Things like Maxim/Stuff/FHM/Femme Fatale... Do I keep or toss. Some of them can be good references though for style/shading/posing. But that kills my purity score... Hrmm... Traci Lords...

Need to figure out which Star Trek books to sell off (there's a few I won't, esp the "Final Reflection", "Doctor's Orders", "Kobayashi Maru")... Will probably give up most of my military novels too...

Oh, speaking of PC Gamer... Think the current issue on the racks, there's a code for Guild Wars or DDO or something... Think it was an exclusive mission/instance with some glow thingy. Check it out if you get the chance to... I forgot what it was about... I didn't pick it up. :(

Need to work on the eBay store some more... Or sleep... Or...

[DirkDarkBlade]

Happy belated Birthday Leng!

My weekend was WoW free (well we talked about WoW a lot but didn't play).

Sagar and Evenstarr came to Atlanta and stayed in my recently remodeled guest room. (Either I got the cleaning done sufficeintly or they were too polite to tell me what I'd missed). We had a lot of fun. Played the Catan game and Family Business.

Sunday Draeken joined us for lunch before they had to head for home.

I plan to run after work tonight, then I plan to play.

[GravenStone]

Fair amount of WoW over the weekend, since it was raining most of the time so I couldn't do anything outdoors (and the lawn has rebounded from its summer doldrums with a vengeance as a result). Got Talbor to 24 then spent most of the rest of my time on my dorf hunter, Kragthorn. He got his pet du jour and also discovered the joys of mining/engineering - dynamite is fun. :lowlol: Hit 13 then left him parked in Ironforge to recoup doubling bonus time and window shop the AH.

[EricStratton]

HBD, leng!

Friday: Worked a bunch, played some Psychonauts. In the evening, Joy and I went to Barnes and Noble to look for some java books for me (I'm getting pretty sick of my job and if I'm going to get a new one, I'll need a java refresher) then we got dinner and dessert and went home.

Saturday: Woke up w/ Joy's cold. Brother came over at noon and helped me FINALLY put up my lamp post that's been down for almost a year. The job was quick and easy except for one funny moment in which my brother accidentally found out that the live wire had been rubbed bare and was touching the metal pole. I'm really happy to finally have that out of the way.

Saturday night we were going to go to a friend's b-day party in Georgetown but we were both feeling too sick so we just hung out at home.

Sunday: Watched a lot of football. Skins finally won, pheew. Watched the last two episodes of Rome. Good show, can't wait for season 2.

[attriel]

friday went to work, yadda yadda, took k for a walk and generally putzed around the house :)

saturday ... took k for a walk, went to the apple store that was opening at our mall and picked up a new bag and a new ipod (vid), hit home depot and got some supplies.

then went home, unhooked the old dryer vent hose and replaced it (the old 4" pipe had ~1.5" of lint. all around. leaving like 1" of hose ... no wonder it slowed way the hell down)

replaced the furnace filter

primed the wall in a few places for repaints

started de-caulking the tup

sunday: more de-caulking, painted over the primer to fix up errors, and generally did a heck of a lot of laundry (this time with all my brand new clothes for my brand new job next week)

weeee

[Greebo]

Friday: Friends came up and we went out to a club with them.

Saturday: Renn Fest, all day.

Sunday: Recovered, Met larry and rena at the airport to return their car, then played DDO.

[Sylvene]

Friday - was too tired to do anything but fix some dinner then settle into bed with a book. Was out like a light.

Saturday - picked up the thermal paste (after trying 3 different stores), the case fan, ran out in the afternoon to yet another store for the DVI - VGA adapter since I couldn't find a DVI - VGA cable and didn't feel like running to the computer store wa-ay down by the airport (where I got the thermal paste) yet again. Started installing Windows. Forgot that Windows gets stupid when there is more than 1 physical drive. Found it had installed itself on Drive H: - doh!

Had bottle of passable Chateau St.-Michele Sauvignon Blanc for lunch.

Delete & re-partition drives. Thanks to eager little fingers, installed on drive E. Decided to leave it for next day.

Sunday. Installed in correct drive, pull out DVD RW drive to see why not being recognized. Found both drives set to Master. Oops. Windows successfully installed. Drivers downloaded & installed.

Ran off for dinner party with bottle of 1995 Pere Bouchard & Fils Vosne-Romanee raided from bro's cellar (so okay, he gave it to me). Had excellent Sauvignon Blanc Nobili, Marlborough. Good times.

{edit} not to forget the excellent Sauterne we had Saturday evening after the passable SB which we are turning into cooking wine. I need to start talking to the Wine Manager at my local Whole Foods. I've come from an entirely different world of wines - European (which are mostly about vintage) & Aussie (which are early drinking). Have only small idea of what the good American ones are... they are all early drinking wines too.

[Kiir]

Friday: Don't remember much so figuring I didn't do much, think I took a long nap.

Saturday: Various errands with atty. Got some new books at the bookstore. Not much else.

Sunday: surfed the web awhile, got on DDO played with everyone had fun. After greebo and kullen logged atty and I did a few more quests and got our characters up to level 3. Read a bit before bed.

Mostly a quiet weekend.

[Zyzzyx]

Friday: Got out for a short bike ride in the morning. Worked around the house on/off rest of the day. Still working on getting the garage back into shape after raising the roof a couple weeks ago. We started putting the insulation back up. Ugh, more ladder work. Got almost halfway done.


Saturday: Longer bike ride in the morning, out for a nice easy loop with the local club, had about 10 of us on the ride. After the ride it was back to the insulation in the garage. Three car garage, with one extra long bay on the end. Far too much roof to enjoy putting insulation back up. Pink, fun, scratchy, fiberglass insulation. Actually, the scratchiness wasn't too bad really; jeans, long sleeves, and gloves; mostly bugged me around the neck of my shirt.

Late in the afternoon we headed out to the auto body shop to pick up the body of my dad's project car, a 1964 Honda S600. First off to one side of town to get a friend's trailer, then all the way across towns to the body shop. The car looks great, and should, its the third try, and over a year in the making. Got it home and rolled it into the garage next to the chassis.

In the evening we set up the old (but in new condition) 50" projector screen, garage sale buy for $3, along with my projector. Tossed Lucky Number Slevin in the DVD player and settled down for a bit. Turned out to be a very cool movie. Wasn't until about after halfway through that I started to get some ideas of what was really happening. Not sure when it came out, but if it was this year, I'll have to amend my choices in the recent movie thread.


Sunday: We all got up at 5am. 5am! And were out of the house and on the road by 530am. Why? To head out to Prosser, town about 30 miles from here, to catch the last day of the weekend's ballon rally. Was the first time I'd seen a gathering of hot air balloons, let alone be RIGHT THERE when they inflate and launch them. Was a very, very, very cool event. With the balloon laid out, they'd hold open the bottom and start inflating with a very high flowing fan. Would take about 5-7 minutes. Now you've got a mostly inflated balloon, laying on the ground. Then they'd fire the burners and it would stand up in about 20 seconds. Talked with a few of the crew for awhile about the balloons. On a hot day, when they need hotter air to get the same lift, the air temperature at the top of the ballon can get up to 250F. Think about it, water boils at... yeah. Its hot. But on a cool morning like we had (was ~45-50F) they'd only need to get the air temp in the balloon to ~140F. Overall there was about 35 balloons launching just at sunrise. Quite beautiful.

After the last one was up, we joined most everyone else in town and the area, and followed the balloons down the valley. Was hardly any breeze that morning, so they didn't get far. They'd stay aloft for just over an hour, probably only went ~5 miles, if that. We turned into an industrial area where many of them were landing, got out and talked to some of them as they were sitting on the ground, waiting for their crew to show up. It was just as neat to watch the balloons deflate. There's a 15 foot hole in the top that's closed with a separate piece of fabric, connected by cord down to the basket. This is how they can release air to descend. But when on the ground, it gets pulled all the way open, and the balloon just collapses. The 90,000 cubic feet of balloon.

Anyway, got home about 930a from all of the balloon fun. A quick brunch, and... yup, back out to the garage. By this time, Dad and I are quite tired of this, so we kinda took our time through the rest of the day, but we did get the insulation done. We tag teamed on mowing the lawn, and then called it a day. Then we all got to bed a bit earlier than usual, by now really feeling that 5am wakeup.



Oh yeah, and still DNP. Been over two weeks now since I fired up Planetside.

[Raveneye]

FRI : Picked up books from the library. "Eragon" and "Her Majesty's Dragon". Started reading the former. Watched Stargate show half-season finales (I hate that they do this) then bed.

SAT : Cleaned the house, hung out with the kids, read some more "Eragon". It's got a definite juvenille feel to it, you can tell the author was young when he wrote it, but it's still fairly decent. I'm about halfway through now and it's keeping my interest. Played some Planetside in the afternoon then watched shows we'd taped earlier in the week in the evening. "The Unit" (meh) and "Smith" (poor).

SUN: Soccer game for the boy (he did great) the FOOTBALL for the afternoon. Watched Amazing Race in the evening then played Planetside some more.

[Drax]

What an odd weekend. Friday night, made a few errands on my way home from work, the last of which being the formerly second to last of which, since it started raining torrentially. Within minutes there was standing water of 3-5" on some major roads. Fortunately I was close to home, so it made a 10minute drive ~25minutes, but I still arrived home safely. (Approx 10 tornadoes touched down in the region during that storm; fortunately none remotely close to us.)

Sat (and I'll try not to get carried away... *crosses fingers*)...
CABLE DAY! .... Um, yay?

Cable tech was supposed to arrive between 8-12. Arrived at 12:20pm. Not a biggie. In the first hour he's at the house, we 1) learn he's a subcontractor to Charter Communications, 2) his truck was his recent purchase, 3) he does not know how to open it when he locks his keys in the truck cabin (guess how we figured this out?), 4) he's very good at operating a coat hanger through the window seam, 5) we don't have cable connection active through our yard tap, and 6) he has the clearance to wire our house for cable, so that when the actual tech arrives everything is ready for the "switch-on" and then only the modem and tv remote needs be set up.

Okay, fine. Then we find out that the guy gets paid only for sending the cables through the floor into the respective room, but he likes to "wallfish" which allows the cable to be piped through a jack in the wall itself! Perfect, exactly what I wanted!

:frown:

2.5hrs later (for a 3.5hr total service time), we have two new cable jacks, one in the master bedroom (slightly crooked) and one in the office (in a backwards-ass place to have it, completely exposed in the room and can never be covered by any furniture given that the wire from the attic comes down through the friggin CLOSET!), a 2"x1" hole in the BATHROOM wall approx 3" from the ceiling, and two holes in our siding (one from the cable wire that was pre-wired into our basement when we built the house to direct it OUTSIDE, and one where the wire was sent into our garage so it can go into the attic). Our house is a friggin jigsaw puzzle on the outside.

Oh, and we still don't have cable connection as of today. We were told by the subcontractor that we would have a visit from an actual Charter tech "later this afternoon or early evening." This was at 3:45pm when the sub-tech left. At 5:15pm, I called Charter, and was told I'd hear from a dispatcher within the next 15-30minutes to discuss the next step. At 7:15pm, I call Charter to find out what the ++++ is going on. I speak to Donna from 7:30-8pm, during which I'm offerred the chance of speaking with someone "likely tomorrow since it's so late now," at which I tell her I will not be home on Sunday at all, from like 9am through 9pm (was actually 10pm, but also was home for like 2hrs in the afternoon), so I need to speak with someone now. "Oh, okay." She tells me the dispatcher, on her other line, will call be in the next 5-10minutes.... This was at 8:05pm when I hung up with her.

At 10:15pm I went to bed.

No calls on Sunday.

However, Sunday was a truly blessed day. We had the Ordination service, wherein I was ordained as a deacon. Also did the offering and communion meditations, and while I was completely nervous, I also did quite well. Several commented that I looked completely natural up there, which made me feel a little better. (For offering I read Matthew 19:16-22, and for communion 1 Corinthians 11:23-32, and after each discussed them a little.) Had lunch at my inlaw's house, then went home for a couple hours to babysit a couple church children, then went back to church for a concert of sort (Singsperation, local churches gather once per month to praise God through songs, music; great time), featuring Golden Street and a young man from an inner city church named Dashall. Awesome singer. Got home by 10pm, and went near-enough to bed.

Whew. Sorry for the novel. Good thing I didn't promise to make things short... :lowlol:

[Greebo]

It's got a definite juvenille feel to it, you can tell the author was young when he wrote it, but it's still fairly decent. I'm about halfway through now and it's keeping my interest.
The style improves as it progresses, and is better in Eldest as well.

I'm looking forward to the final book.

[Zyzzyx]

Okay, fine. Then we find out that the guy gets paid only for sending the cables through the floor into the respective room, but he likes to "wallfish" which allows the cable to be piped through a jack in the wall itself! Perfect, exactly what I wanted!
Isn't this a relatively new house? With no cable run at all?

[Aananla]

Haven't posted in a while. Work has kept me pretty busy.

My Station Pass has been canceled. Jadiir can be removed from LoW again. Money is too tight to renew for now.

Loaded Earth2150 over the weekend, which I've had for years but never finished. Trying to find my Evil Genius disk as well.

[Drax]

Isn't this a relatively new house? With no cable run at all?
Yes, the house was built b/n Sept and Dec of 2004, and we moved in in Dec 2004. We had 1 cable jack put into the living room area, so that was pre-wired. The other rooms, tho', we opted to not to, since it was $80 a pop, and we were trying to budget things out.

[Zyzzyx]

Ah, ok. Its a bitch when that budget thing comes around and bites again.

[deepfred]

succeeded in getting ozeki past 40 this weekend, he'll be 41 shortly after i log into him next. hooked up with a crew on friday who got ozeki keyed up for OoLS which was good since deepfred completely missed the place.

turns out a lot of people miss ols because of the way access works, you have to camp a few nameds who tend to be heavily camped by others wanting access, and there are a lot of platinum farmers camping them too cause they drop masters.

i understand how farming works now in EQ2, where the system - as good as it might be at avoiding farming - still has some degree of it. schmee stumbled onto this in fallen gate, where at level 35 he is old enough to make most of the zone grey, but still low enough to have the few named at the end of the zone be green enough for them to drop master chests, or legendaries at least. theoretically schmee could sit there for a good 1000 kills of these nameds without dinging 36 (especially if he killed himself a few times before hand each time to incur the debt that would slow down exp gain), at which point he would have many master for all classes to sell.

hence the term platinum farmers, cause the point is to farm items that will sell. anyway, no system is inpenetrable, and it is indeed rare you bump into people doing this, at least in the lower-mid levels.

one place you still (seem to) see a lot of it is in RE, which is where ozeki spent most of his late 30s - but it was painless enough and to be honest ozeki really learned how to be an enchanter in RE, with all the large groups of adds a group can acquire down there. i am planning on writing up an enchanter guide today on the issue.

saturday was a hoot with deep and a bunch of LoWsters, we decided to put kril thru tanking school and went to an instance in SS (the hidden stash) and had her MA, and forced her to use macros and everything, and by the tie we got out of there we had a real pro =)

then we all went to living tombs and had some fun fighting the good fight for awhile.

that kinda exhausted deep by sunday, i finally had figured out some pretty key things about tradeskilling that i'd never figured out before, and now i suddenly get it. i certainly know now how to ensure i get a pristine item everytime, which is what was really disillusioning about TSing since i would frequently attempt a combine with a rare and lose the rare because i had no idea how to get to pristine.

not any more!

anyway, deep got 57, marl got 34 provisioneer, winston got 23 warlock, and ozeki is 99% into 40.

target for ozeki this week is 44ish. i figure a couple more weeks and he is gonna hit 55 no problem. 44+ is a place where i can go real fast. and ozeki is all combat exp at the moment, he has no HQs or collection quests done, he just got a boatload of exploration exp going to CT last night for the first time.

[Draknor]

Friday was D&D night, or, rather, four and a half hours of the DM playing with his new DM helper program. I loaded up Far Cry for a half hour or so while DM was inputting characters. Whee.

The rest of the weekend was boring house stuff and chores. Watched a few movies. Doom is really not a good movie.:roll:

[Xuthia]

Thursday -- Did not play because it was class night. Class is going well. This is a graduate class in literary theory. We're still working through a blitz of early theories (from Plato to Matthew Arnold), but the students are really enthusiastic. Our university offers a combination Master of Divinity and Master in English, and six of the students in my class are in that program. It has been great to have their perspective. Looking forward to hearing their responses to some of the more recent, and controversial, theories.

Friday-- Did not play because I spent the evening watching TV and catching up on newspapers.

After no gaming Thursday and Friday night, I finally logged on Saturday. Deep has already referred to my "tank class" (heh), which was a hoot. I appreciated the training and enjoyed the looong night. Managed to hit 61 in Poet's Palace last night with Boosie, Taas, Kaien, Deep, Zoldan, and Cregan.