Signing off

With two children under age 3, and twin boys on the way...

Well, I haven't been playing for about the last month, and once my year subscription comes out I'll be cancelling my account for the foreseeable future.

It was fun, and I'm glad I was finally able to down the final boss of an expansion prior to the release of the next, but it's time.

Hopefully, I'll have time to play again in the future, but for now, this is Kaethir, signing off.

Blip

Contrary to popular opinion, I haven't died.

But the crush of work + children + family + Oh Em Gee where did all my time go combined with a general lack of anything that pushed me to write about has been overwhelming.

In WoW-related news, EA downed Ragnaros last night.  Yeah, I know.  We also made it to Madness of Deathwing for the first time.

*gasp* *shock* *awe*.  I know.

Hope to be writing more soon!

Cheers!

Where did I go?

I have a second baby!

My son was born about 2:45 pm on Easter Sunday.

Someday, I will have time to write again.  Maybe...

Hibernation

I've kind of fallen off the map since October...   I mean, it's winter, I'm a Bear, I'm supposed to hibernate, right?

Real life reared its ugly head (lots and lots of family commitments, amongst other things), combine that with a bit of apathy at our failure to take down Arthas before the end of the expansion (well, our 25-man failure anyway... our primary 10-man group that ran at times I couldn't be available did succeed), and that apathy making me slow to worry about levelling in the new expansion, lots more family commitments, the taking up of StarCraft 2 (blasphemy, I know, to play a non-WoW game...), a few more family commitments, and getting ready to take a nice vacation to the southern Caribbean (which is, in part, another family commitment...) and I've been just a wee bit busy.

I hit 84 this week, and hope to have 85 down over the weekend, and start into heroics either next week or the week I'm back from vacation.

And at some point, I'll work on the posts I have started, or maybe come up with some new ones!

So... it might be a bit, but you should start to see me a little active again...

Hope everyone had a safe and fun holiday season!

On Babies and Crying

Days like today are what I expected when I first learned I would be a father.  The upside is that they've happened FAR less often than I expected, and I'm so very glad for that.

The suckiest thing I've had to deal with so far about having a baby is that when there's something wrong they can't tell you what it is, because they only have about four or five responses to stimuli, and really only varying degrees of one response to negative stimuli.

When they're happy they'll smile and laugh and play with things.  When they're content they'll be calm and look around and observe things.  When they're tired they'll rub their eyes.

But when they cry, sometimes there's not much you can do to figure out what's wrong, because they cry whenever anything is wrong, and my baby is no different.

When she's too tired and fighting sleep, she cries.  When she's hungry, she cries.  When she's constipated or gassy, she cries.  When she gets her foot caught in the rails of her crib, she cries.  When she has a headache, she cries.  When she has an ear infection, she cries.  When she has a fever, she cries.  When her gums or teeth hurt because she's teething, she cries.

Sure, some of those we can usually figure out - we can check her temperature, we know when she's being fed an how much, we can watch her on the monitor and see that she's in the middle of her crib.  But at her age, since she's started teething, it's kind of a roll of the dice trying to figure out what is causing her to fuss if we've ruled out the obvious.

Getting back to today... I had about 3-4 hours of sleep last night.  The largest uninterrupted period was around two to two and a half hours.  She woke up and fussed and fussed for about an hour until we got her settled enough to go back to sleep, then she slept for that two-ish hours and woke up again and refused to go back to sleep without laying on Mom or Dad's chest to prop her up a little bit.

All because of a little ear infection.

So I'm at work for the afternoon, but I'm only tackling easy stuff because I can barely concentrate enough to do anything worthwhile.  This post is about the most coherent thing I can muster.

Thankfully, she usually sleeps through the night and this is only the second time she's been sick.  I can count on one hand the number of times since she turned 6 weeks old she's not slept through the night.  But that doesn't help me feel any better today.

To all the parents out there who love and care for their children, I salute you for your effort and hope that the days like today has been for me are few and far between for you...

The 75000% bank fee...

Totally off topic...

So I had a $0.02 check that I had held on to for awhile (since May...) because I didn't really want to spend the time to go to the bank for $0.02.  But I got another check I was taking, so I took it to the bank along with me last week, cashed my two checks, and went on my way.

Then last Friday I saw two charges on my account, for $0.02 and $15.00.  Fifteen dollars for processing a check that didn't go through, and the two cents for the check itself.

I realize the $15 is a flat fee - but that's 75000% of the check itself.

Fun times.

Comings and Goings

It's fun to have a title for a post that sounds really really interesting but the post is nothing important.  Although I don't think I can afford to piss any of my (2) readers off....

Anyway, we had some trouble last week (already down a tank and then my cable went out) so we decided to extend our ICC-25 lock out for this week.  Wish us luck - while we've downed (upped?) Dreamwalker once, it's the only boss remaining that we HAVE actually completed.

In other news, this will probably be a lighter-than-usual week for me, since I'm headed off to GenCon with the wife and little one Thursday, and won't be back until Sunday afternoon.

Thanks folks, and I'll be back!

An Open Letter

Dear Insight Communications,

Normally you provide me with excellent internet service.

But when it dies right in the middle of the Dreamwalker fight we still don't have quite to farm status yet, it makes me want to wish your company would die in a fire.

Yours truly,

Kaethir

Edit: In case anyone is assuming I am making a threat, I am doing no such thing, and I understand that outages happen, I am merely expressing frustration and displeasure at the inconvenient (to me) timing of the most recent outage experienced at my house.  I am not stupid enough to make threats on the internet.

The Little Druid that Could

Awhile back I was running some regular commentary about my guild and the progress we'd been making in ICC and whatever other random game or real life thought crossed my mind.  Well... I figure since I took more than a month to write the first post of my Kitty primer I should ramble on awhile about what's been going on, starting, of course, with the most important person on the planet...

WARNING: POOPY DIAPERS AHEAD!

Kaethir's Cub

My little one was born, of course, back near the end of March.  She's grown from the measly 6lb 3oz she was at birth to a whopping 10lb 7oz as of a week or so ago...  Needs more meat on her bones, she's not gonna tank any bosses at that size!

She's doing great, no jaundice or major problems, and she's been sleeping through the night almost since the day my wife went back to work.  She's been "talking" for awhile now, smiling and giggling and generally making our lives wonderful.

Not to say she's perfect, but, well, she's perfect! She has of course the times that she decides to poop while you're changing her diaper... four times in a row... but I couldn't have asked for a better infant.  The few times she's cried there's always been a reasonable reason (gas, constipation, or the doctor sticking her with a giant needle) and so far she's just been a wondrous little miracle.

Sorry, I'm a new Dad, sometimes I just have to get mushy about her.

Movies

I don't recall mentioning much of anything about movies before, but I enjoy good Sci-Fi, Adventure, and Action flicks as much as the next person and I wanted to mention that Iron Man 2 and Avatar are both really good films that have come out in the last few months.  You should see them, or so I would have you believe.

Also, I saw an advertisement for The Expendables.  Anything with Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, and Terry Crews is going to be either really, really good, or really, phenomenally bad.  I'm cautiously optimistic.


One final note on movies and then I'll quit.  In a moment of masochism I decided to DVR Transmorphers when I saw it on Encore.  I noticed this little gem pile of awful awhile back in Blockbuster.  Incidentally, it came out a little before Transformers, which was an infinitely better movie.  I watched about 20-30 minutes of it (that I can't get back) before deciding that there was no redeeming quality to it, at all.  IMHO, and in no particular order, it had bad acting, directing, casting, special effects, music, choreography, and writing, and the plot (which seemed like some inane mashup of the Matrix and Transformers) had to have been written by a dyslexic chimpanzee.  Save yourself.

Epic Adventurers and ICC

On with the show.

When last we left our impaled imperiled heroes, Epic Adventurers had finally downed Deathbringer Saurfang in 25-man mode.  We've had a few changes to our raiding schedule since then, but we've continued to press onward.

Our progression 10-man team (which I, unfortunately, am unable to participate in) has downed Festergut, Rotface, and the Blood Princes, while our 25-man team is regularly one-shotting the first 6 bosses (through Saurfang, plus Festergut and Rotface) in one night.

We run a fun/alt 10-man run on Sunday nights, which regularly clears through Saurfang.  The group I led in this past Sunday took a couple of shots at Rotface but couldn't pull it off.

I have been learning more and more about the intricacies of playing a Feral DPS, and I've had occasional opportunities to tank even on our 25-man runs, which has been a blast for me.  I've been topping 8k DPS against Saurfang, without optimizing my gems.  I share some gear between my sets, so it's impractical to completely optimize for either, and I think I've done well with the limitations I have.

The big team is currently stumbling over the Dreamwalker.  The strategy we've been employing is to have just 2 tanks to hold down the baddies, each one generally hanging out at the point of the wall in between the spawn points on each side of the green dragon, with the melee DPS roughly divided up between the sides and the ranged DPS and heals more or less roaming around the middle, assisting wherever it is needed.  Owing to the nature of the fight, we've been running a little healer heavy.

We seem to be having some difficulty keeping up.  I'm not entirely certain where the problem is.  This is complicated by the fact that due to my reduced raiding schedule, I'm not there every week. 

It has been suggested to me that we should use 3-4 tanks, split up the DPS more, and engage the Adds closer to their spawn points.  I'm a little leery of the idea, but I may propose it to our raid leader as something to try.  I'm sure we'll get it figured out soon.

Two posts in three days?  Is the ground getting cold for anybody else?

Happy Easter!

Hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday weekend!

... and if you don't celebrate Easter, Happy Noblegarden!

The Greatest Achievement!

For all my readers,

It's probably going to be silent around here for awhile.  If I have time I'll put something together, but since I became a father early Wednesday morning that could be awhile.

Thanks always for reading, and I'll be back!

Silence

I apologize for the great echoing wall of nothing around here of late.

I've been exceptionally busy, and unfortunately that will likely continue as my baby is due very soon.

Have faith!  I shall return!

Monday's Double-you Tee Eff Moment

After braving the ice and snow to make the short trip in to work this morning, one of the folks who work down in the datacenter with me came over to talk about his new tattoo, the sight of which caused several of us to need surgery to rebuild our heads after they exploded.

When asked why, the response was, "I realized that I've loved Terry Tate longer than I've loved any woman."

I regret that I don't have a picture to show you, but this masterpiece, which apparently took 4 hours to complete, depicts the Office Linebacker about to sack one of his charges, and is located on the left side of this man's chest.

I have no idea what he's smoking, but I want to, because I need to stay as far away from it as possible.

I'm sorry if your head exploded too.  I have the name of a good surgeon...

BRRRAAAAAIIIINNSssss....

My head, it is empty of ideas at the moment and I feel a zombie-like need to devour someone else's.

That's ok, it's usually about this empty, and I'm sure something will will shake loose from the cobwebs up there soon.

Meanwhile, in the real world (*gasp*! rl? inorite?), the Colts lost to the Saints in the Super Bowl, and those of us that follow both our own religion and that of football have about 6 months of wailing and gnashing of teeth before the new season starts again.  Congrats to the Saints and the City of New Orleans - now if you could just stop building things below sea level I'd feel a lot better about your mental status.

I kid, I kid.  It was a good game and I really thought it was going into overtime before Peyton Manning threw that ill-fated pass.  Such is life!

Also of note in the real world, within the next 13 days I have the following events for which I must do something that resembles being socially acceptable, in no particular order:  Valentine's Day, my birthday, my sister-in-law's birthday, and my 1-year wedding anniversary.  And my first baby is due in just under 6 weeks.  I suppose that's what I get for going and finding a great woman to marry, but if I randomly disappear here in awhile, you can probably guess what happened.

Back here in the fabricated reality of the blogging world (I refuse to call it the blogosphere), things churn along as they always do.  My reading list has grown so large so fast, that I felt it would be overly burdensone to continue expanding the widget (or gadget, depending on your terminology) over there to the right.  It already consumes more space than I'd like it to.  Sometime in the (not exceptionally distant) future, I hope to have a working gadget which will display, for example, the 5 most recently updated blogs from my whole list, and a link to the entire blogroll.  Maybe I'm just throwing a pipe dream out there, and maybe I'll get a picture up there in my profile someday too.  If nothing else I should be able to provide a page with the blogroll.  I just have to be the little engine blogger that could. "I think I can I think I can..."

Kaethir out.

The big 5-0.

ABITT (nice acronym for not trying for one, eh?) has reached 50 posts today.

For all of you that have found your way over here and took the time to read some of the random thoughts that leaked out of my brain and into this little electronic medium, thanks for reading, and I hope you continue to enjoying my little ramblings for as long as I continue writing them!

Perhaps I will even work on my profile some, or add *gasp* pictures!

Life's Little Joys

The tree post is coming.

When I have time to write it.

Rawr @ busy-ness.

Merry Christmas!

We didn't make our 10-man run last night - our guild 25-man, which usually runs on Thursday nights, was scheduled on top of us due to Thursday being Christmas Eve.  Instead of fighting for attendance (and probably losing) we went along on the 25-man and I broke out the leafy goodness.  We went into Ulduar to get Razorscale for the weekly raid quest (and I picked up the Three Car Garage and Shutout achievements along the way).

We moved on to Onyxia and one-shotted her.  I was lucky enough to pick up a Stormrage Cover from her for my healy set, which is amazingly now approximately equivalent to my tanking set despite 95% of my badges going to my tanking stuff.

We downed the Northrend Beasts and Lord Jaraxxus before a couple of wipes on the Champions put me out of time for the night.  I picked up a Ring of the Darkmender as well.  Sometimes, I'm glad I'm not tanking!  Our guild rules would have meant I probably didn't get a chance to roll on at least one of the items I won, and there were very few tankish drops I could have rolled on.

On the blog front, I'd like to link a post from the Big Bear Butt himself...  Hilarious take on the mindset of a lot of tanks out there.  Read it and laugh, and thank me later.  I'm also in awe that he took the time to point out A Bear in the Trees.  In case you were wondering, it was mostly reading BBB that inspired me to start this little endeavor of mine.

With tomorrow being Christmas Eve and family plans over the weekend, I'm not likely to get a post up again until sometime next week.  I've only been going a couple of months, but so far it's been a fun ride and I hope anybody that's found their way here has found some use and/or enjoyment from my inane ramblings.  I'm planning on exploring some thoughts on high-end rings, trinkets, and relics soon - I have a feeling my first 100-150 or so Frost Emblems will be spent on this kind of gear... I don't know yet though, I'll have to dig into the specifics of the Tier10 gear.

I hope everyone has a safe and fun Christmas holiday!  If you're not inclined to celebrate Christmas, then I hope whatever holiday or holidays you celebrate around this time of year are also safe and fun!

Merry Christmas and see you on the flip side!

RIP Chris Henry

You may or may not have heard, Cincinnati Bengals WR Chris Henry passed away early Thursday morning.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family.

Greed vs. Disenchant...

So Patch 3.3 dropped this week and I got my first chance to run the "random daily heroic" cross-realm instance the other day.  First impression was that the interface was pretty smooth, and pretty quick.  For those of us that can do multiple roles, I'm not sure about the fact that it dumps you straight into the instance - I carry my healing gear with me so that I can change on a moment's notice, but does everybody?  I know you're supposed to be able to port back into the instance if you have to leave but I haven't had a chance to really use that yet.  Other than that (maybe), I like it.

My run went REALLY well.  We pulled HoL, and ran it quickly and efficiently.  No deaths, knowledgeable and highly-geared crew.  Loken fell like a chump.  AoE damage to the party seemed a little rougher and harder to handle, but that could just be coincidence, I'll need some more play to tell if that's really the case.

I also got to use the new option to disenchant loot as it dropped for the first time.

My first impression was that this was awesome - no more spending ridiculous amounts of money every time I need to enchant something, as I should have quite a bit of the mats available already instead of having to purchase all of them.

When I had a chance to think about this a bit, I was more subdued and a little nervous.

This has a huge impact on the in-game economy.  Players will be making less money on average, I think - everybody will now have to deal with the enchanter's eternal issue, do I greed and sell this item, or do I disenchant it, get mats, but no money?  Unless enchanters can no longer disenchant items, enchanters now have a small advantage - they can greed every item and decide LATER if they want the money or the mats.  Maybe that's not really an advantage, but it looks like one to me. 

At the same time, the auction capability of enchanting mats just disappeared almost entirely.  Enchanters can no longer rely on that as a source of income.

How does this affect the rest of the auction house?  DOES this affect the rest of the auction house?  Will there be inflation or deflation due to this?  Am I overestimating the impact?  Am I an idiot?

Don't answer that last one! :)

As far as myself personally, I will be disenchanting everything until I have a decent stock of needed mats, and then going back to greeding until I need more mats.  I suspect that a lot of players will take this track, and it will mean a decrease in gold in-game for awhile, followed by a big upward spike as more and more players stop disenchanting because they don't need the mats anymore.

As far as tanking or healing and mechanics go, I didn't notice a huge change, but I haven't had a lot of opportunity to dig into it.  I'm hoping I'll get more chance over the next week.  Most of my playing time this week and late last week just about got eaten with several different issues, but I should have some more time in the coming week.

I haven't had a chance to try the new 5-man dungeons or either of the raids yet.  I think we'll be going into the 10-man next Tuesday and I hope to have a better report for you then.

Happy patch week everyone!

It's a girl!

I can't remember if I've mentioned it here before or not, but my wife is pregnant.

And we found out today, that it's a girl!