Awlbiste's Thicket

Closed For Business

2008-11-01T23:38:00.003-05:00

It's official. Until further notice I won't be blogging here anymore. I appreciate all the people who have put me in their readers and commented, read and linked. I couldn't find an easy way to cross-post here from my personal blog so I won't be doing that (but thanks for voting on my poll!).

I am, however, posting very regularly on my personal blog, and even participating in NaBloPoMo! So I encourage everyone who is interested to hop over there and check it out. And if you'd like to follow me on Twitter, I have one of those too.

Reader Question

2008-10-12T19:42:00.002-05:00

So I was wondering if I should figure something out where I could crosspost to here from my personal blog. Is that something people would be interested in? Or would you just unsubscribe/skip past my posts? I put a poll over on the side!

So come over and vote.

Update

2008-10-08T19:49:00.002-05:00

More or less totally moved over to my personal blog. (Again, warning if you don't like a (probably) more adult blog. As in, I swear. A lot.) Also finally gave up and just joined Twitter. Feel free to add me!

Personal Blog

2008-10-03T13:06:00.003-05:00

If you're interested. I don't know how many of you read those types of things but I'm going to be keeping a personal blog now over here. I've wanted to teach myself more about selfhosted WordPress for awhile so now I have the opportunity. You might see posts here sporadically but considering I know I won't be playing WoW for awhile I'm not sure what I'd write about.

I'm definitely still reading everyone else's blogs so don't worry. Oh, and a disclaimer: it's a personal blog so if you're easily offended, don't like swearing or can't handle sexual innuendo maybe don't read it.

/hugs to all.

I Moved?!

2008-10-02T20:04:00.001-05:00

Kinda. My personal blog is chilling out over here, but should be somewhere else soon so I'm not gonna mess with feedburner yet.

Things a la TJ

2008-10-02T13:44:00.003-05:00

I'm bad at making lists of things, or even coming up with 5. So let's pretend I can think of 5 things for each topic but if I don't um, up yours?

5 Things I Could Have Written About This Week:

1. Hilarious conversations held with my mother
2. Analysis of people waiting in medical clinic waiting rooms
3. The horrible way people drive
4. Things I yell at the horrible people driving
5. Why I have certain songs stuck in my head

5 Things I Actually Did Instead This Week:

1. Went to the doctor
2. Tried to get a key copied and failed
3. Checked my frequent flier miles, frequently
4. Frowned at my cat
5. Made charts, and graphs!

5 Things I Should Have Done This Week:

1. Gone to math lab
2. Painted the kitchen
3. Upgraded my text messages
4. Gotten a job
5. Gone to bed earlier

5 Things That Need to Be Accomplished by This Time Next Week:

1. Paint the kitchen
2. Go to the math lab
3. Set up appointment at college
4. Fill my allergy prescriptions
5. Retake the math test, knowing I don't need to take math classes anyway

5 Things I Will Do This Weekend:

1. Sleep
2. Figure out enough things to say to hold a telephone conversation longer than 30 seconds
3. Walk to the park and take a bunch of pictures
4. Watch movies
5. Think of thing #5

ruh roh...

2008-10-01T23:10:00.003-05:00

I amuse myself so easily. New boy gave me space on his hosting, and I was tempted to move everything over to self-hosted WordPress but I'm just not up to all that work really. So I brushed up on my super simple html and made a bunch of random junk. The current incarnation is right here. (Yes it's meant to be ugly and annoying, you'd have to be us to think it's funny.) If you get the broner reference you win a cookie.

Chatlogs are Never Funny

2008-10-01T00:06:00.003-05:00

Except this one. So anyway I'm getting away from WoW-blogging for now since, der, no WoW to play so... If you hate hearing day-to-day stuff (that may be mildly offensive) remove me from your readers. Except don't because I love you all. Anyway. The new boy (whom I ever-so-affectionately call Shirts) linked me this youtube this morning:

After which the following conversation was held.

ro_octopi: i want a robot
ro_octopi: get me a robot pls
Shirts: I want a robot too
Shirts: maybe like someday I can just have a robot instead of an actual kid
Shirts: fkin
ro_octopi: yes
Shirts: going out of town
ro_octopi: hahah
Shirts: put it like
Shirts: in the dishwasher or something
ro_octopi: i'd totally have robot babies
Shirts: yes
ro_octopi: good plan shirts
ro_octopi: let's do it

So it was settled. The robot baby must be had. Our robot baby. And it could just be conveniently stored in the dishwasher when we left home! Most excellent. Epic, even. Later tonight plans were solidified for our mechanical child.

After discussing the capes our crime-fighting (crime-causing?) duo would have I asked if our robot baby could have one too. Don't want him to feel left out, you know?

ro_octopi: can our robot lovechild have a cape too
Shirts: yes
Shirts: it can be a transformer
Shirts: that can become a cape
ro_octopi: cos he'd feel left out
Shirts: can we call it steve?
Shirts: or jeff
Shirts: to help it blend in with the other robot kids
Shirts: cuz it's going to have a weird accent
ro_octopi: german
ro_octopi: no
ro_octopi: dutch
ro_octopi: dutch robot
Shirts: dutch
ro_octopi: YES
Shirts: heart u
ro_octopi: YESSSSs
Shirts: somuch
Shirts: dutch robot baby
Shirts: named jeevet
ro_octopi: jeevet von robotstrausen
Shirts: YES

There you have it. The tale of Jeevet von Robotstrausen.

Maths

2008-09-24T12:30:00.002-05:00

Lack of WoW + real life ordering stuff + new boy = bad blogger.

Sorry guys! I really appreciate all the comments on the non-WoW related things and all of you who haven't removed me from your readers. /hug

Avast

2008-09-19T00:16:00.000-05:00

Did ye see t' new pirrrate movie matey? It be rated 'arrrrr'!

Ahoy mates it be International Talk Like A Pirate Day! Best be puttin' on yer pirate hats and gettin' out the grog. If ye happen t' be plannin' on gettin' yer outfit today be the best day t' start, mate.

Yarrr!

WotLK Release

2008-09-15T11:30:00.002-05:00

So November 13th eh? I was really hoping it would come out in January again to be honest. I thought I'd have more time to do my getting-life-in-order things so I wouldn't have to miss too much of the beginning of Wrath. But now I know for sure that I'll be missing 1-2 months at a very minimum and that makes me a super sad panda.

I think I'm likely one of the few truly bummed out about an on-time, or earlier, than expected release date for the expansion. /sigh

Finally!

2008-09-11T13:21:00.002-05:00

From Bornakk:

Providing a smooth and enjoyable experience for all players is always a priority for us, and we are continually re-evaluating our policies and programs to do so. As the state of the game has matured substantially since the inception of Paid Character Transfers, we will now be allowing PvE-to-PvP transfers on a full-time basis to provide players with more mobility and freedom to easily play with their friends.

Oh man. This is going to prove for some hard decisions. I still have some friends on my native server I'd love to play with but they're both Horde and Alliance. Argh!

Link.

/party?

2008-09-06T15:47:00.000-05:00

Happy birthday to me. That is all.

Back... Sort Of

2008-09-02T10:07:00.001-05:00

I'm still on a WoW hiatus and I still don't have the internerds with any regularity but the move did go well. I'm back in my home state (Minnesota) which I have missed very much.

I'm not entirely sure what to blog about anymore since I'm not actually playing WoW. Hmm...

Blog Hiatus

2008-08-29T15:19:00.003-05:00

So as I mentioned before I'm going to be moving. Actually I'm leaving tomorrow at 8am EST, so you won't see me for a little while at least after that. I may (small possibility) be able to take the laptop to Starbucks or wherever and check email/blogs/comments and update. But I really don't know how often nor how long I'll be without internet. This might be a week or a few months.

I'd like to thank every single person who has read, commented, linked and enjoyed. Everyone from Blog Azeroth and the community has been great. I'll miss being a part of this whole thing, even if I'm only gone for a short time. You have all been awesome!

I'll be here til 8am tomorrow so if there's anything pressing that anyone has to say just comment or email (link on the sidebar). /hugs for all!

Girls and Gaming: Is It A Big Deal?

2008-08-28T13:07:00.002-05:00

It started here, moved here, from here. This was posted in the comments, as was this, and sparked entry comments here and here.

So I'm compiling my comments from these various places so they're all right here out in the open. Why should you care? Well maybe you shouldn't honestly. But as a girl and a gamer I feel I'm quite qualified on the matter.

Posted to Mithrilina's entry:

I've been on both sides of the issue, and to me it tends to boil down to the age of the people you play with. Younger males often do give off the "OMGWTFBBQ a girl" reaction, and pre-BC I was the only female in a hardcore raiding guild so I've been the butt of jokes (and consequently grown a VERY thick skin about all this).

However I've also been in guilds (and am currently) with an older crowd including many women and many married men with families (who, as a general rule, tend to know how to be nice to women). And being female is just a non-issue, so much so that nobody really notices or probably even cares.

Then again I'm of the school where I don't announce my gender or make a big deal of it because it's an online game, how does it matter one way or another?

Posted to Brajana's entry:

Eh, my subtitle is “A Girl in a WoW-blog World”, quite honestly there was no forethought into, “well I should put girl so people know.” It just sounded good to me. I suppose I could just have easily said “A Person in a WoW-blog World” or “A Druid in a WoW-blog World” or whatever. Then again my blog isn’t actually *about* anything besides general day-to-day things, sometimes I mention my boyfriend if it’s applicable, etc etc.

I’m quite used to being called male, in fact my real life name is gender neutral and I’m quite often Mr. Awlbiste (more so than Ms. actually) on my mail.

So I see where you’re coming from but at least for myself my blog subtitle just came from no serious though about advertising my gender. It just seemed to flow well.

And my response to Bear is what made me decide I should have just written a blog entry about this whole issue on my own anyway. But I've already said it all in my comments at various places. So here's my comment I posted to Bear:

This is an issue I’m conflicted about. I don’t care whether someone calls me “he” or “she”, I truly 100% don’t even care. I probably won’t even correct them (and generally don’t). I’ve been playing online games and participating in online communities for the majority of my life (which granted hasn’t been *that* long but still) and it’s just not something that has ever bothered me.

I’ve never hid my gender purposefully, but I’ve never gone out and made a big flippin’ deal about it either. Guys game, girls game, so what? I just don’t believe it needs to be an issue whatsoever. And before the comments of, “well thanks to other people you don’t have to.” I’d like to mention I was the only female in a hardcore raiding guild for 2 years pre-BC so I know what it’s like to catch flack for being female.

Then again, as I mentioned on Brajana’s post my own blog has the word girl in the subtitle. And I see nothing wrong with just casually mentioning “I’m a female who plays WoW.” Yes, I do in fact play with my boyfriend, but I was playing WoW before I met him anyways.

But I most certainly *do* see something wrong with people who use their gender to gain tangible benefits, be it gold or in-game items or blog comments. Most decent bloggers do not do this because it’s frankly stupid and eventually the rest of us notice you’re just throwing your gender out there to get things and don’t actually have anything worthwhile to offer.

Anyway those are my thoughts. I should probably have just made this a blog entry… maybe I will.

So there you have it. I read many blogs written by women, I've read those who advertise, those who don't, those who won't speak on vent, and those who shout it loud and proud. Who I absolutely will never read are those who seem to think that just because they are women they are special and unique and don't actually need to offer anything to anyone because just the fact of being a girl gamer is good enough. None of the women you'll see linked to or discussed here are those kinds of gamers.

Character Music?

2008-08-28T00:45:00.002-05:00

So the Blog Azeroth Shared Topic is basically pick a song for your character. Well, I don't play in character so this just isn't how my mind works. I was going to try anyway but failed. So because I'm bored here's some music I like anyways.

And just for Sondicus: (I suggest not hitting play if you're in mixed company.)

If All Your Friends Do It...

2008-08-25T19:26:00.002-05:00

I'm generally not huge into memes but Kestrel, Anna, and Game Dame have done it so why not.

The Big Read is an NEA program designed to encourage community reading initiatives and of their top 100 books, they estimate the average adult has read only six.
*Look at the list and bold those we have read.
*Italicize those we intend to read.
*Underline the books we love

Well I'm lazy so I'm just going to do the bold part, you choose how you do it on your own blogs. Feel free to count and post your number in the comments.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (I guess not the *complete* works...)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

73/100 if I counted correctly. Now you.

Bags Are Packed

2008-08-24T12:16:00.002-05:00

...I'm goin' home. Well, sort of. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm moving back to my home state (Minnesota) in a little less than a week- the 30th actually. I'm not sure when I'll get internet hook-up and I'm not sure when I'd be able to play WoW anyway between finding a job, finding a new place to live, trying to go back to school, etc etc etc. So my account ran out today and I'm not renewing until I have everything settled at the very least, and I'm not entirely sure when that will be, it's possible I won't even be able to see opening Wrath.

I'm really not that bummed out about it to be honest, I've been somewhat blah about WoW for the past few weeks once I got everything pretty much done on my Druid. In any case the past couple of days I've been trying to finish up every single quest in Outlands and I got quite close I think. I didn't get the Trials of the Naaru or the kill Gruul/Nightbane stuff done (though I'm not sure if that counts against us for achievements or not) and I didn't do anything that was connected to a daily quest (besides SSO stuff). I also kinda went through my junk and tried to get as close as possible to 5k gold so I'd have somewhat of a buffer for the expac:

So now I'm set in case I'm not able to play again for a few months, hopefully I don't have to wait that long however. I'll be gone at least a few weeks from the WoW and blogging scene while I get everything in order, starting Friday when I have to pack up the computer though.

(This isn't the last post, I just like this picture.)

Just In Time Too

2008-08-21T13:56:00.000-05:00

After a thorough investigation, we have found this account to be eligible for restoration. The details of the characters and/or items restored are contained below.

Character: Awlbiste
Realm: Draenor
Money Restored: 1700g 00s 00c
Item(s) Restored:

[1] Earthstorm Diamond
[10] Greater Planar Essence
[10] Greater Planar Essence
[9] Primal Life
[1] Primal Mana
[5] Primal Might
[1] Skyfire Diamond

Finally...

Request for Comments

2008-08-18T11:53:00.004-05:00

So here is my request: I would like you to view this anonymous WWS (which I shall link below) and comment on the healing section if you would be so kind. Specifically I'm looking for a) 2 or so things each healer did wrong and b) 2 or so things each healer did right. No right or wrong answers or anything I'm just looking for opinions to better myself and perhaps our other healers. It's "just Kara" (Aran/Illhoof/Prince/Spite/Nightbane) if that helps your review at all. Also, the damage you see from the healers is likely from Spite where we had a few mistakes and were very close to the timer so we just did some wacky stuff to avoid a second attempt.r

SO! Here is the WWS.
a) 2 (or so) things each healer did wrong
b) 2 (or so) things each healer did right
The healers are Dew (resto druid), Nimbus (resto druid), Terpsichore (IDS priest).

EDIT: As Brierly noted in the comments it might help to know each healer's stats. Dew has 1850 +heal and ~230mp5, Nimbus has 1430 +heal and ~180mp5, Tepsichore has 1680 +heal and ~170mp5.

Thanks!

Third GM Ticket

2008-08-16T23:08:00.003-05:00

Since my account was hacked, I've put in two GM tickets trying to get some form of response about my stuff that's missing. Tonight I put in a third. My account runs out on the 24th and I'm likely not renewing it until after I move (on the 29th). I don't think I'm ever getting my stuff back.

My account was hacked on July 26th at about 10:30pm EST. I submitted a ticket as soon as I realized some items were missing (~1200g, 10 greater planar essences, ~15 primal life, ~3 primal water, 5 primal mights, an earthstorm and a skyfire diamond) that same night. I received a form letter saying "it was being looked into" and heard nothing after that. I put in another ticket on about August 4th and was again told it would be looked into. Nothing after that. Just want to know what's going on.

I had one character left before I used up all the allotted space for a ticket.

MIA

2008-08-13T02:50:00.003-05:00

I haven't really had a strong desire to play much recently, which means I haven't had a ton to really blog about. Still reading everyone that isn't 100% beta (though the number is sadly dwindling) so you will perhaps still see my comments around. Tomorrow it looks like I'll be getting to do Kara again with the guild (yay!) so hopefully that goes well and I might have a post to make about it.

Anyway I'll leave you with a youtube:

Old, but The Grind episodes are easily my favorite machinima.

I May Have Screwed Up

2008-08-08T01:21:00.004-05:00

Noah_B says (2:02 AM):
I almost resubbed my account just to post on the forums... After checking them, just now, I wasn't at all impressed with the trolling/post quality over the past few days. So, unless I reroll cool WoW blogger - like yourself - Im considering contracting genital warts and sharing it with some prostitutes.

This is Sond. We played WoW together way back. Waaay back. No, further back than that. Anyway, not wanting the poor prostitutes to get his HPV I decided to let him guest post here if he actually gets off his ass and does it. So possibly, maybe, expect some stuff from him in the future. I take no responsibility for anime-related photos however.

Standard Edition UI Post

2008-08-05T16:49:00.002-05:00

Everyone is doing them these days so I figured I might as well show off my nothing-fancy UI.

1. (a) Pitbull. This particular frame is my Target, generally to the right of it is a smaller Target's Target frame.
(b) Pitbull again. This is my Player frame. I've since removed the show buffs feature below the frame since it's entirely unnecessary.
2. (a) Prat. Pretty simple out-of-box, haven't done anything to it.
(b) Blizzard's own combat log feature. I've filtered it out to only show my heals and buff/debuff gains/losses and I messed around with the colors a bit.
3. HoTCandy. I'd go so far as to call either this or DoTtimer essential resto druid addons.
4. Bartender 3. Amazingly customizable and it's less of a memory hog than Bongos. I do like Bongos (and it is admittedly much easier to set up) but the memory saver is the clincher for me.
5. Quartz. I couldn't find a good screenshot to photoshop it in here but I love this addon. It also has a weapon swing timer (not as useful for me) and various other spiffy gizmos you can't see here.
6. Grid. Other people are going to tell you they had to do blah blah blah to get it all set up and etc but for my purposes this works pretty damn well right off the bat. It shows me who has aggro, who has rejuv/regrowth on them, who is out of range, if they're dead/feign death, etc etc. Between Grid and HoTCandy I always know what I need to know.
7. ElkBuffBars. Buffs go here and debuffs go below the current Grid location.
8. Mappy. I like the square map and the fact that you can resize it and move it anywhere. Also being able to hide virtually every minimap button (that Fubar doesn't take care of) is a godsend.
9. Fubar. And various Fubar plugins. I don't like to have 9000 of them personally but some people do, so that works for them.
10. Quest_fu. Just a great quest-tracker, nothing much else to say about it.

Addons you can't see:
Cartographer. I'd call this one of the addons I literally could not live without. Pre-explored maps (as in, all the areas are shown filled-out), boss loot tables, showing guild members who also have it on your map, all good things.
WIM. An instant messenger look-alike for tells, so much easier to keep track of them this way.
Clique. I'm still an old-school click and press the hotkey style healer but I do use Clique for decursing and abolishing poisons.
RatingBuster. An amazing gear rating addon that summarizes and helps you compare different pieces of gear. I've found this especially helpful with the 2.4 regen changes in deciding the regen on different things.
Skinner. I mostly got this for the bottom bar you can see behind my chat windows/bartender.
Omen. I really don't need to explain this one. I generally don't have it showing when I'm healing but if I'm curious as to what the heck other people are doing to pull aggro I'll click it on.

So yeah that's what I have going on. Nothing amazing, my computer is pretty old and my monitor is definitely not widescreen so my options are somewhat limited but I make it work for me which is what matters.