WoW, the universe and pretty much anything else!

Fishing in Ironforge

2010-04-14T02:48:00.000-07:00

I logged back on last night for a second evening in the Forlorn Cavern, where the main body of water is, and also where you can fish without aggroing the NPCs. My journey into Ironforge was rather fraught when I got to Dun Morogh, but more of that in a moment.

I got to Dun Morogh by travelling from Booty Bay on the transporter that drops you in the depths of Gnomeregan. On my arrival I spent a good 10 minutes trying to work out where the hell I was in there, and noticed a couple of players who looked like they might know where they were going, so followed them. I finally made it to the lift and headed over to Ironforge, picking a few herbs on the way and avoiding Kharanos.

I aggroed just about everything from the entry slope up to Ironforge into the City itself. I forgot how chilly it was there, as I had removed anything that takes durability losses and put them in a bag to save repair costs, but that didn't stop the guards attacking me with their sharp pointy swords and shields. I was transported tout suite to the spirit healer at the Gates of Ironforge.

As it was a shorter (and marginally safer) run into the City, I spirit rezzed there and started the tortuous journey to the Forlorn Cavern, wasting my potions of lesser invisibility on the way. For one, you cannot use spells (blink) or a mount with the potion, so I had to (mainly corpse) run for 10 minutes until the potion cooldown expired. This got me as far as the area outside the portal room. When I rezzed there I had the presence of mind to check the cooldown, rez as far away from the guards as I was able, pop the potion and run in to the Cavern and head to the back of the cave before the potion ran out. 15 seconds is shorter than you think when running for your life!

My troubles didn't stop there. Picture this, a nearly naked level 33 blood elf, fishing in Ironforge. I am obviously there for one thing only, and it is not the attentions of the Ironforge Militia or any other player, for that matter, but I was easy prey and they took full advantage.

I was left alone for the most part, but every so often I got ganked - Alliance don't like Horde in their cities, and it seemed actually worse fishing in Ironforge than my Alliance gnome trying to fish for Old Crafty in Orgrimmar.

Anyway, I logged in last night, and all went well, at least to begin with. I got worried when a Death Knight took an interest in me. He wandered towards me and stopped. Then a warlock appeared - I think they were from the same guild, and he stopped and both of them just sat there, looking at me. I have to say the adrenaline started running, but the feeling of intimidation eased a little; they were both ?? to me and if they were going to gank me, there was nothing I was going to be able to do about it.

I couldn't believe that people sit there for that long, watching others fish, but they did. A mage appeared, which added to my state of anxiousness, and the others closed in on me a little. At that point Old Ironjaw dropped (thank god!!), and I hit the teleport button, hoping to get back to safety. The players regarding me in the Forlorn Cavern had other ideas, however, and back to the spirit healer I headed, where I rezzed and ported back to Orgrimmar.

One other thing: when you are killed outside of Ironforge you are taken to the Gates of Ironforge Spirit Healer; when you get killed inside, you are instead sent to Kharanos - a longer run back.

When I repaired, vendored the fish (the fish at that level is plentiful and therefore pretty much worthless, although I cooked it first!) and collected my mail, I went back to questing, grouped with a few SAN members and hit Scarlet Monastery twice, both of which were good runs, where I picked up three new items, including the Scarlet Key.

When I finished there I headed back to Undercity to skill up, as I hit level 34 as well!

All in all, a good (and productive) evening

April 1st Armory

2010-04-01T04:09:00.000-07:00

I have just seen the first part of Larísa's post and before I read any further, went straight over to the Armory to check out my characters.

Tahliana is now a Tuskarr Mage, with primary professions of fishing, and, err, fishing.

In recent activity she has cheesed various things, and ninja'd others!

LOL!

If you haven't looked yet, I urge you to now, before your character gets restored!

Elsewhere, other sites are getting in on the act - WoWWiki's pictures are upside down, and WowHead have changed to TacoHead!

Levelling/dying

2010-03-31T02:27:00.000-07:00

I got to 29 and am now halfway to 30, questing in Hillsbrad.

I noticed that there is quite a large range of levels in Hillsbrad, from the level 20 bears and spiders (and peasants) to level 32 murlocs and naga that are around Southshore, consequently I have been dying more often than I would like!

Frost nova and blink have got me out of a couple of tight spots, but the murlocs have given me the most grief.

I am trying to get a run together for Razorfen Kraul, and picked up the bat guano quest in UC while I was handing in something else. I am not really inclined to pug it, but I might have to; Zaevi and Twospot were around, but Two was on his alt in Scarlet Monastery, and there was hardly anyone on at the right level (either too low or too high). Larisa logged on very late last night; I am sure she would have been up for it, but it was a bit late for me, and I logged off soon after collecting some Troll Potion for another quest.

I still have some boss head from somewhere that I need to hand in at Thunder Bluff, but I am waiting to hit 30 so I can pick up the portal at the same time. No need to make the journey twice if I don't need to. The smell though is quite bad, so I am not sure how much longer I can put up with it - the bag will need a thorough wash before it is usable again!

Arugal disrobed and a rogue's wowcock displayed for all to see

2010-03-26T04:00:00.000-07:00

After multiple runs of Shadowfang Keep, the Robes of Arugal finally dropped. Twice. Aaarrrgghhhh!

We first ran SFK a week ago, with 3 people from SAN and pugged the last 2 spots. It was a good run, the Robes of Arugal dropped, and I needed, along with the healer, and lost the roll.

OK, fair enough, it happens. I understood that it is quite a regular drop, so we did a couple of guild runs. We got the Belt on one run and the Meteor Shard on another. I did a few more runs with an 80 guildie, and still the robes didn't drop.

We ran again last night with Conjaw, Zaevi and Twospot (and one other, but I can't for the life of me remember who it was, so big apologies!), and the belt dropped again. Conjaw had already said that he was happy to run again until the Robe dropped, so we ran it one more time, and finally they dropped! Big sigh of relief from me, and the Robes actually look very good on her, with no adjustments needed. Maybe Arugal wore a corset which would explain why he was so upset with everyone.

We got upset with a pugged rogue on a later run - Llarisa joined the party and we also had Anorak and Conjaw with us, so we pugged for one other for a random dungeon. Llarisa was tanking and as she was new to the role, Deadmines was probably just a good a place as any to practice. The rogue we had was from Crushridge, and was really chatty and friendly; in fact he (or she) stated that they rally enjoyed the run and it was almost as if we had another SAN member with us.

They sadly had to leave after Van Cleef was downed, and we had another rogue join us. Alarm bells started ringing during a discussion with Llarisa, when a discussion started about gearscore on their respective 'mains'.

It didn't go much further after Llarisa told him that she didn't really bother with it any more, and our pug rogue seemed to agree, but then he posted recount stats toward the end, and this was when I thought things were going to get messy.

Let's just say that he was firmly put in his place, but then proceeded to pull everything in Arugal's room, including Arugal himself before everyone was sufficiently ready. He died, trying to tank him, which was (I guess) just desserts for being a prick, and on this final run last night, the damn Robes dropped...

Not much of a whiny post

2010-03-17T08:09:00.000-07:00

Last night my mage hit level 20, which means blink, portals and a mount. The portal part meant I had to physically go to Undercity and Orgrimmar to 'learn' the portals, but it is easier to get to each of the horde cities that it is for Alliance, even with the continent split - maybe zeppelins are a better way to travel than boats.

Apart from that there is not really a great deal to discuss - I guess I could go with the flow and do a whiny post in recognition of Klep's Whiny Post Day. Tobold's post today was 'win', as one of the commenters put it, and I am sitting here racking my brains to think of something worthwhile to whine about, that won't earn me a gkick from my Alliance Guild!

Perhaps I'll just leave that for another day...

Should Blizz wave their banstick?

2010-03-12T07:02:00.000-08:00

I saw a post today from Tobold about Suzina of Kill Ten Rats admitting to buying gold to purchase her dual spec at level 40. I have read Tobold's post, I have read Suzina's post, plus the comments, which I feel were quite a mixture of arguments for and against.

One argument I have read says that 1,000 gold is too high for a level 40 character to make, so this partly justifies her feeling the need to buy the gold to buy the dual spec, another is asking why you need the dual spec at level 40 anyway when you only have half the talent points, and the rest is that buying gold is evil, as it supports hackers, etc.

The fact is that buying gold is against the ToS, and is a bannable offence. Yes, I will admit to using cheat codes in single player games, but as you get older you come to realise that the only person you are cheating is yourself, and I stopped that a long time ago (I think Donkey Kong Country on the SNES is the last time I think I can truthfully say I used a code/sequence of keys to modify the intended game mechanics).

Additionally, the idea that 1,000g is too high a sum to achieve at level 40 is bollocks. I have a level 21 lock (not listed) who has 3,700g to her name. She herbs and inscribes, and sells boe greens and blues, and I have used her to fund a dual spec for Rohain, my priest, who is level 75. It all depends on how much effort you are prepared to put in to play the game.

And I also agree with those that say that you don't really need dual spec at level 40 - level 60 is far more reasonable as you have more talent points, you have learned more about your class and it perhaps makes more sense to look at it then rather than 40.

But when all is said and done, if someone told me in game that they had bought gold, my reponse would very likely be the same; I would add them to my ignore list and raise a ticket. In the medium term it would not make a difference as she has admitted that she would start over with a new account, but in the short term it would cause her inconvenience and a small amount of cash to buy another game and set up a new account.

What do you think?

Another Guild First

2010-03-10T01:50:00.000-08:00

Last night I fully intended to level some more, my map in Silvermoon is covered in little round circles at the moment which need to be taken care of:

And indeed I did manage to complete a few of these. I was busy getting my face ripped off by gnolls, Kumquat-style, when Tam asked if we wanted to go to Deadmines. I was level 15 by that time, and so Tam was able to use the LFD tool to port us all there, instead of walking/swimming/flying, and of course, dying.

We only wiped once, on the boat. I took a picture as I was going to use it to explain that once, a long time ago, on my very first character, I dotted the marked Pirate, which caused a wipe when the whole ship's crew appeared...

I unmarked the pirate, but I think that Tam may have upset it, because the whole ship's crew appeared, and we wiped...

I really wish I had Tam's talent for explaining things like this, as I am sure after reading his version I will be laughing rather loudly!

We got a guild first though, and downed Van Cleef at the end. Unfortunately I didn't get a pic of this, but Tam mentioned he would put it on the guild website later, so you can see it there. As soon as I see it I'll put a copy here too.

Honourable Mention!

2010-03-09T05:49:00.000-08:00

I tend to spend my lunches reading WoW blogs, and am guilty of using Larísa's page of links to do this, because she has lots on there (but I still read Tobold first!).

Larísa has 3 (previously 4) what she calls 'Adrenalin Bloggers' - no idea why, but there you are! They don't appear to post very regularly, but I thought I would take a look at the one that posted yesterday (8 March), Reflections from the Pond.

I nearly fell off my chair - not only was Tahliana mentioned, but she had one of those little underliney things under her name!

In the space of one week, my blog has gone from no comments, to comments by Tobold and Tam, to actual links back to my blog. I have to say that this only has to be for one reason, Single Abstract Noun.

And I'll bet that Google is having a field day now with those three words - how long before my blog hits page 1 of the Google searches??!!!

I have to say that it is interesting to see other people's takes on their experiences as lowbie alts on a new realm with no links at all to their main characters. Yes, I guess I could probably lean on someone to help me get some of my Alliance wealth to my horde character, but I really don't want to, nor do I need to - I have picked Inscription as one of my professions, so hopefully should be able to make some decent cash before I start needing heavy duty amounts of gold.

Brief weekend update

2010-03-08T02:07:00.000-08:00

Not much to report over the weekend, although it looks like some people in Single Abstract Noun are progressing well - when I logged on last night I saw that a group were in Wailing Caverns, and I have heard that a run of SFK has happened too. As for me, I did a few quests and went for another run in RFC with Tam in his new tanking role.

I levelled to 13 and saw that a couple of my quests had gone grey - one of the side-effects of running instances I guess.

I also cleared my mailboxes in readiness to move a couple of characters to the Steamwheedle Cartel server to free up a little more space on Argent Dawn for more characters; I really want to try out the worgen and goblin races when they become available.

Something I did notice last night was that there was no queue for Argent Dawn, which is unusual for a Sunday evening - I expect that this will be the norm until the new expansion hits, as people get bored with the current content and cancel their subscriptions for now.

Guild First

2010-03-06T03:10:00.001-08:00

Wow. Just... wow!

I got up to level 10 last night on my mage, then a call went out - "who wants to do RFC?". At level 10 I really wasn't sure I was high enough level to go in there and make a valid contribution to the effort, but in fact all of us were of a similar level.

So in we went. No boosting, and we even had to use crowd control - a sadly missing element of the modern dungeon run. As you probably already know, today's dungeon runs mean that the tank collects everything up, then everyone else aoe's it down. Effective, but not very interesting.

True, most of my spells (including sheep) missed, I tried sheeping dotted mobs (after they had broken polymorph), but out of all of that, I think we only wiped twice, and one of those was when the hunter had popped out to get some more ammo!

The thing about our group was that we held together, there was no "gogogo" (well, actually, I did, for a joke!), no griping, and no silence. We communicated, fought cohesively, used our skills (such as they are at the lower levels) and got the guild first boss kill.

There has been talk of running WC and SFK soonish, and I for one am really looking forward to it - these are all places I have only ever been to solo, and (obviously) cleared the place with ease.

Oh, and I got my first comment yesterday, by none other than Tobold himself!

Single Abstract Noun

2010-03-05T02:47:00.000-08:00

It has been some time since my last post, and I will make no excuses for it; I simply have not found anything interesting in WoW to post about.

I have been vote-kicked a few more times for apparently being a failtank, and have been spending my time in the Draenei and Night Elf starting areas to get the Loremaster Achievement. In the process I got exalted with both factions, and the epic ground mounts that comes with it, and my Gnomer rep is inching slowly towards exalted too.

I have also tried to make a serious effort to get my Draenei priest to 80, so finished off the BT quests and am about halfway through HF now.

But isn't that what everyone else is doing? There was a big surge in players when the new LFD hit, but now that the novelty has worn off I am seeing less dungeon queues and less instances (if you'll pardon the pun) of queueing for Argent Dawn itself.

So I guess I was maybe losing a little bit of interest, as the guild has a better tank than me now, and I kinda feel... redundant, I guess. And maybe a little bored with WoW, thinking that perhaps now would be a good time to catch up on other things that I have thought about doing but not really built up the motivation to actually do.

Then, in the blogosphere I saw that Tam has set up a new guild on my server (albeit horde side), called Single Abstract Noun. Tobold has joined, as has Larísa, plus I reckon a few others whose blogs I read, so I thought I would give it a go.

I had 2 spare slots which I was saving for a worgen and possibly (probably) goblin when Cataclysm hits, but now I am thinking of transferring one of my existing Alliance characters across to join the others that I transferred a while ago when the free transfer was first made available.

My son has a character on my account, and as he plays so infrequently it makes sense to probably move him over (with some gold in his pocket), plus maybe one of my other characters that I haven't touched in ages, but don't have the heart to delete - probably some false sense of attachment, but I haven't hit 50 characters yet...!

I really enjoyed being part of a community that just doesn't stop talking! I rolled a belf mage (yes, female!), typed /who tobold and asked him whether an officer was around for an invite. He replied by telling me that anyone can invite, then shortly later, Tahliana became a member of what could be a very large guild indeed.

I hit level 8 before logging for the night - it makes things a little quicker, having done the starting area a few times before!

I think I could be happy here

More pug stuff

2010-02-03T03:21:00.001-08:00

It happened again.

We wiped in Pit of Saron, horribly, a few times, then I was standing in Dalaran, with that message telling me I had left the group. Sigh, another vote kick.

So I hit the LFD button again, got straight in again, and imagine my horror, when I found I had ended up in the same dungeon as before. I had a look at the other players, with this horrible premonition that perhaps I had been given not only the same dungeon, but the very same people who just kicked me.

Fortunately this was not the case. However, I did tell my new group that this was my second visit to PoS, my first visit literally minutes before when I got vote kicked for being a noob tank.

I was expecting cries of ‘leave then’ or similar from the gogogo crowd which regularly frequent these establishments, but I actually got a good-natured ok from the top dps in the group.

Much of the instance had already been done, and we were at the entrance to the cave before the last boss – the one with the big elemental.

We wiped, and I was expecting to get kicked again, following a comment from one of the party, but the response from the others was that I had told them, up front, what the score was.

I was then given a blow by blow account of what I needed to do in my role as tank, and guess what? We cleared the whole cave without wiping! The same person then went through what I needed to do with the boss, and things were going fine until he went down, then one of the other dps went down, so it was left to me, the healer and another dps to try and take him down. We ultimately failed, but I had a much better experience in this visit than the previous one.

If there is a moral to this story, be upfront before you start; sometimes you’ll be telling a bunch of asshats who will kick you, but more often than not you’ll actually get a decent bunch of people who really want to help.

Armory changes

2010-01-26T06:19:00.001-08:00

This is probably a bit late, now that the furore has died down a little, but what do you think of the changes to the Armory?

I am not sure about the timeline of what has been done and where – this is too Big Brother for my liking, but I guess that is here to stay, so may as well learn to live with it and move on.

One thing that I have noticed though is that there isn’t a decent background to set your character against. Even the default backgrounds you get on the character selection screen would be better than nothing, as I think the current look makes my characters look a little… well, lifeless, really.

I know, I know, they are only pixels, but it was the whole look of the game that drew me in the first place, the attention to even the tiniest details and the overall polish.

Or maybe I should just get a life and keep away from the Armory! Hmmm, what else to do on a rainy lunchtime??!!

Pug stuff

2010-01-21T05:40:00.001-08:00

I’ve come to the conclusion (several months down the line!) that I can’t keep up a daily blog, but something happened in WoW last night that you read about happening to others that hadn’t happened to me yet – I got vote-kicked.

It was in probably one of my least favourite places – Oculus. We got to the last boss and decided that I would be the first one to Time Stop when he enraged. Unfortunately, when the time came, I was on the deck as the emerald drake hadn’t healed me, so I got kicked even though it wasn’t even my fault!

I know I’m not the greatest ever tank in the world (still gearing, believe it or not) and I don’t hit the hardest (1200dps), but I do object when I am kicked through no fault of my own. It’s not even as if I could /w any of them, as they were all on different servers to me (the only one that was on my server had already quit the group!).

I just hope that doesn’t happen very often – at least I got some Ebon Blade rep while I was there…

Naughty naughty!

2009-05-21T01:19:00.000-07:00

I know – it’s been 2 weeks since my last post, but not much has really happened in that time, except that the kids have an inset day (teacher training) on Friday (tomorrow) so we have decided to use the opportunity as it will be the last one that is guaranteed to coincide for both of them as the eldest goes to secondary school in September.

We are taking them to Alton Towers, and I am hoping that there will not be many people there – it is the last working day before half term, so the train of thought is that most of the rest of the population will either be at work or at school, and will do their travelling Friday afternoon/evening.

So we are aiming to leave at 4:30am to get there in time for opening. I booked the tickets in advance on line, which gives us better prices, and also priority entry to the parks popular rides – Nemesis, Oblivion, Air, Rita – Queen of Speed, before the park opens at 10am (we can get in at 9am).

That means early bed tonight, but even so, getting up at really stupid o’clock is going to kill me – hopefully I can get some sleep in the car, but I want to be round the M25 and a long way up the M1 before rush hour really gets going in earnest.

Where is everybody?

2009-05-07T00:31:00.000-07:00

I have come into work, it's after 8:30am and there is no one here - it is extremely quiet, which is lovely!

Anyway, back to Monday and the Fun Day - I would say that it was relatively successful - we made a modest profit (which offset some of the losses - we lost £40 on the sweets - Alan Sugar would have had steam coming out of his ears on that one!!!), and the Chairman of the Residents Association is pleased and is hoping that we can now move things forward.

Work has been rather quiet this week; my adviser is off, and I am looking after another consultant while a colleague is on her honeymoon – all I can say about that is that it is nice to feel appreciated for a change!

All I get from the regular adviser is rant rant rant, but from the one I am looking after I get ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘good work on this’. It is a small thing, but it makes a big difference, and I have fed this back to my superiors. Maybe they will come to realise that it is not all me, that some of it is down to attitudes and I would feel happier if I was treated at least half decently more often!

On the news I see Madeleine McCann is back in the headlines – 2 years after she was left by her parents in the holiday apartment. I still have a suspicion that one of the parents knows more than they are letting on about the abduction – what right-minded parent leaves 3 young children on their own while they go off to dinner? They said that the restaurant was very close by, but that does not escape the fact that she was left unattended, and with an unlocked front door. That was asking for trouble.

In happier news my son passed his Grade 2 Violin exam, and he has just been given a violin by the Chairman of the Residents Association who bought it from eBay for a prop a couple of years ago, and it has never been used. He has taken it to school to show his violin teacher to see if it is any good. If it is, we can give the hired one back, which will save us a little money!

I have just had a text from my wife to let me know that my new keyboard has arrived, so hopefully I won’t get a repeat of the problem with a sticking space bar, and I also need to try and sort out the problem with my mouse with World of Warcraft – someone in-game suggested that there may be interference from wireless networks, and, although my previous wireless keyboard and mouse didn’t seem to suffer, I will give it a go anyway if the problem persists with the new mouse.

I get to home early today as Thursday = college, so I might be able to unwrap it and get it connected before I have to dash off!

The last few days

2009-05-03T12:46:00.000-07:00

I can see this petering out like the blog before, but I will carry on in the meantime when I can remember!

Nothing much of note really happened on Friday, except for the final Residents Association Committee Meeting before the Fun Day (tomorrow). It seems that the Secretary has stepped down to take care of personal matters, so hopefully that might satisfy some of the residents who feel that she shouldn't be on the Committee. One day I might go into more detail, but now is not really the time.

Yesterday my friend from Peterborough came to visit, and we went to Bedgebury to try out the mountain bike trail, but I think I wore him out; apparently he hasn't done any cycling for 6 months and, living in Peterborough, is not used to hills. Me, on the other hand, cycles to work every day and tries to fit in the odd 12 mile run had no problems at all. I have to say though that I didn't realise how much difference this would make, but while he was struggling to get up the hills I was hardly breaking a sweat.

He also showed me his new car - a 2007 Mondeo with lots of bells and whistles which he was keen to show off, and his new phone which he simply had to have so he could use the Bluetooth in his car!

Today we took the children to the Bouldering Academy where they did their first assessments, and apparently they did well, but we won't get confirmation until next week.

After lunch we went to Eastbourne for a game of ten pin bowling with my wife's friend as it was her birthday a few days ago, and then we went home for dinner over Robin Hood.

There has been some friction between my wife and I, mainly over the fun day - she doesn't understand why I got involved with the committee, has absolutely no interest and has made it abundently clear that I will get no support from her with anything I do in this regard.

I would continue but the spacebar on my new keyboard is sticking and is driving me potty so I'll end it here and hopefully it will be better tomorrow...

Oops!

2009-04-30T02:28:00.000-07:00

What can I say? It’s been almost a week now since my last post, and doesn’t time slip away fast the older you get? Part of it is getting into the habit of sitting down every evening to write a blog, and making sure it gets done. A couple of nights this past week I have been getting into bed and suddenly remembered that I forgot to do it, then the same happened again the following night.

Apart from all that, it was my birthday at the weekend and I have been rather busy as a result!

Saturday was spent watching the qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix, after which we went shopping, getting a last minute present for one of our friends’ children for their birthday party on Sunday that my daughter was invited to, and I had to go to the bank to get the money arranged for the fun day on 4th May. Nearly £400 in coins is rather heavy!

In the evening we went out to dinner at Genghis Khan’s in Brighton – one of my favourite places to eat. It’s quite different in that you select what you want to eat in terms of meat, herbs/spices, and sauces (including things like sesame oil, black bean sauce, sweet and sour, etc), then take it to the cooking area where they cook it for you. You can go up as many times as you like and choose whatever combination you like, so you can have several different dishes, and if you don't like one of your creations, you can just get a new bowl and start over.

And we had plenty of beer to wash it down with!!!

Sunday was my birthday, and I got jumped on by my children, not quite at stupid o’clock, but not far off – I am sure in years to come they will start to surface later than me, but while they are still young they tend to start wandering around from about 6am.

My presents were: a new snooker cue from my wife (although I had to go and buy it!), a Jeremy Clarkson DVD from my son, a Rihanna CD from my daughter, and Jeremy Clarkson books, Chris Brown CD, bike pump and vouchers from other members of my family. I put the music on my phone on Monday before I went out to play snooker in the evening, and I have tested the bike pump and of course the cue – not terribly successful with it in my first frame, but we won the two doubles games we played – more about the snooker league another time.

I ran the children to the Bouldering Academy which they have recently started, while my wife made cakes for work on Monday. That was for 2 hours, then we had some lunch and started watching the Formula 1 coverage, then my son had his St George’s Day Parade, which took up most of the afternoon, and my daughter went to her friend’s birthday party for another 2 hours. While everyone was out I took the opportunity to play some World of Warcraft, and soloed Wailing Caverns during my exploration of the Barrens on Kalimdor. I got back to the Druid at the start just as everyone returned and managed to kill the big boss and earn the achievement, then hearthed out to Shattrath to clear my bags and repair before logging off for a few hours.

Monday was back to work, but as I had cakes and a cue to get to work I had a small dilemma as my wife needed the car too, so I drove to work and she took the car away, and came back later to pick me up. The cue travelled in both directions as I had an away match so needed it for that, and Tuesday I went to work again in the car, with the same arrangement as Monday as the car was needed again.

Wednesday I was back on the bike!

And Noorul Choudhury got his marching orders from Sir Alan in The Apprentice

Tired!

2009-04-24T15:24:00.000-07:00

Work was soooo boring today - although I was late in I desperately wanted to go home about 1 hour after I got in - don't know if its anything to do with my birthday this weekend or just plain boredom, but there was hardly anyone in work today, and even then some of the staff were on half days, so it was deathly quiet today!

This evening we had another Residents Association meeting and were agreeing final details before our Fun Day on 4th May. I am Treasurer and needed to agree how much money I needed to get for floats, petty cash, etc.

Then there was a debate about one of the committee members, and whether she could make the commitment to the group, this is something that will be sorted out in the next couple of weeks I expect.

Anyway I'm really tired and run out of things to say for now, so time to go to bed :)

Wot no keys?

2009-04-23T09:53:00.001-07:00

I'm an idiot - when I went on my bike ride last night I left everything at work, except for the key for my bike lock - I just removed it from my bunch of keys and left the rest behind so that I could travel as light as possible. I knew I could get away with leaving my bag and other stuff behind as I met my wife for lunch today, and to enable me to travel just as lightly home after work, I put my bag in the car when she met me for lunch, not even considering that I would actually need the keys for when I went home!

So here I am, in my back garden, in the sunshine, making my daily blog contribution, and I can't get in until my wife gets back with the kids from orchestra. It's not all bad; after all, it could be pissing it down I guess, or 2 months earlier and bloody cold!

Lunch was good, when we eventually sat down in the restaurant (the mother of the child my wife looks after was her usual late self); it was gone 1.30 before my wife arrived at the office. I had already sent a text to advise bashing the mother with a sharp or pointy object but she suggested that might not be such a good idea as she would still have the child...

We tried a new restaurant called Mamma Mia. Up until recently it was called Dim-t (or something), but I guess people weren't too keen on the prices for what they got for their money - we were certainly underwhelmed when we went there. Now you can get a 2 course meal and glass of wine or soft drink for £6.95. I got beaten by the meal and consequently spent the afternoon waddling round the office.

Just had a text from the missus telling me that she is just leaving - good thing too as the temperature is beginning to dip.

Then I'll be able to get in, get changed and go to college!

By the way, it was the Rough, Tough, Cream Puff from New York who got the chop last night!!!

Sent from my iPhone

47 minutes

2009-04-22T11:06:00.000-07:00

What can you do in 47 minutes? Play a frame of snooker? Play more than 1 frame of snooker? Iron? Washing up?

Maybe.

I spent 47 minutes of my day cycling just under 12.5 miles - left work and did a round trip, taking in Fordcombe, Penshurst and Bidborough Ridge - it was nice to be able to get back out and do these trips after work, now that the evenings are light again, and it's also good practice for the London to Brighton Bike Ride which I taking part in this June.

It's actually not that great a time - average speed 16.7 mph (maximum 37.2 mph), last year I did the same ride in around 46 minutes, and was on course to reduce that further, but then GMT got in the way, and I don't think its a fantastic idea to ride small country roads in the dark.

Just found out that all my talent points have been refunded again in WoW - how annoying is that? It took me a while to choose them all in the first place, and that's the second time in 2 weeks - granted last week was the big patch where Ulduar was added, but did they really need to do it again? Oh well, never mind, I guess!

Apprentice tonight - I wonder who will be up for the chop this time?

Let's try again

2009-04-21T13:36:00.000-07:00

After reading Tobold's blog about MMORPGs it reminded me that I started a blog a while ago myself, specifically about World of Warcraft, arguably the most successful Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game ever, with currently over 10 million subscribers worldwide.

I looked at the last time I posted something to that blog and was a little surprised to learn that it was very nearly a year ago!

I know what happened; I started before I went away on holiday - 2 years ago (ahem!), then it fizzled out after I came back, and after all, I guess there is only a limited amount you can write about 1 game, unless you are one of those people who plays a lot and has a whole website dedicated to things like progressing your character and making money in-game.

Anyway, I will try and give this another go, but thought it may be a good idea to widen the parameters of what I will ramble on about; suffice to say it will not be just about World of Warcraft but about what I have been getting up to in general.

Today wasn't wildly exciting - drove to work for a change - I normally cycle, but with the office being out all afternoon I wasn't happy leaving my bike unattended for that length of time, so I took the car instead. It tends to be a bit safer leaving a car as they are fitted with various devices intended to stop any would-be thief running off with your pride and joy.

I know its not a Bugatti Veyron, but I love it all the same - its a Toyota Corolla Verso (mini MPV) and we got it brand new in October 2008 - our first real brand new 'family' car. We did buy a Picanto around 4 years ago but that was very much my wife's car (which she loved too and was sad to see it go).

Anyway, back to work: we had a company-wide meeting to discuss what was happening with it going forward - essentially the company is two separate ones that started working in collaboration a few years ago and have decided to now make it official by bringing it all under one name, and at the same time streamlining all the various day to day operations of the business. I have to admit that I was struggling by this afternoon with concentration, and was glad to get out and go back home!

When I got back in my car to go home I returned a call that I received earlier from someone who wanted to see me about a position they have available, problem being that it is in London. My current situation is that I am in a job that I am reasonably happy in, it is in the same town where I live, and I am now much better off financially than I ever have been. To be honest, I don't think I want to travel to London every day for a job with a company that has just opened a new operation in the middle of a deep recession. I reckon I am better off sitting tight for now, where I can be home by 6pm every day and see my wife and kids, and stay relatively fit to boot.

Now if the job was paying around £100,000 per year more than what I am earning now it might be a different story, but they are not, and I am not really that interested.

I think my laptop is on the way out - there is something definitely not right as it keeps flicking back to the other browser window I have open - maybe a restart is in order, but I am going to go back to exploring Tirisfal Glades in WoW and do some more study before I go to bed.