[WoW] Update

I'm still working on an in character introduction of what happened to Hooff, and whats going on, but thats taking a while. For once I have a lot of ideas and am having trouble getting from ideas -> story. Usually I have no ideas... and thats what makes me have trouble writing a story.

Here is the down and dirty update.

I've gone Horde.

My old Sinister Blades gang reformed on another server and went Horde. Unlike the other times they've tried to form, we seem to have reached critical mass, and fusion has started. I made a priest alt on the server to see how things were and found that I really missed being in a tight-knit guild. So I bit the sword and server transfered, and faction changed Hooff. Hooff is now a Blood Elf Paladin. Its weird seeing everything from the other side.

I've had to try to work Hooff's server transfer into the story. I think it'll work well, though I don't know if I'll have enough material to keep both the Alliance-side and Horde-side stories going.

Speaking of Horde side, downed all the way to Sindragosa 10-man normal on their first night of raiding. I wasn't able to join them but I was able to join then for night #2. We spent the whole night wiping on Sindy. We got her down to 20-12%, a few times down to 9%. The night of wiping was fun. Its been a long time since I've had to watch my mana, make sure my positioning is good, heck its been a while since I've had to learn strategy. I'm sure we'll be able to get Sindragosa down eventually, just need more practice and maybe tune up our strategy a little. It seems like the tank dies whenever I'm not spamming heals. During phase 3 I have to duck behind an Ice Block or else I will die from Buffet Magic stacks, this is usually when the main tank dies.

Hooff

Onaara,

I have some sad news for you. Elder Hooff had a terrible accident. A few days ago Rhonin ( of the Kirin Tor I'm told ), requested a meeting with Hooff. A new gnomish device was invented, one that could transport beings through time. Traveling through time is not unheard of ( the Bronze Dragonflight do it all the time), but to have a device that enables mortals to travel through time is amazing. While clearly it was dangerous, the worst anyone was expecting was that the old dranei would fall out of the sky somewhere ( which to paladin is trivial).

Something went horribly wrong. As Hotplate put it, this is what happened: Rhonin, Hotplate, Waash, even QB, a representative from the Horde as well as the Alliance, along with the Gnome Toshley ( from Toshley Station ) were there to supervise. The first test was simple, send Hooff 5 minutes into the past, in the other side of Dalaran. After the device was activated instead of disappearing ( and later reappearing ), Hooff started to phase in and out. A blood curdling screen rang out, and then a flash of blue then red appeared and Hooff was gone. Toshley contacted the receiving team, but Hooff wasn't there. They then tried to figure out where he was. Rhonin called for mages to scrye, try to locate where Hooff ended up. After the mages reported that his presence was felt nowhere on Azeroth the search was widened to Outland. Finally when all else seemed to fail, the Bronze Dragonflight was involved, to try to locate where in time Hooff may have possibly ended up. Chromie reported that it was very unlikely that Hooff was lost in time as there was no disruption in the flow of time. Even the infinite dragon flight could not mask a disruption.

Rhonin declared that Hooff was simply lost, a victim of technology ahead of its time.

I'm sorry to have had to break the news to you.

- Huntry

-------

Hot,

Heard from Huntry today, she's taking the news of Hooff's passing as well as can be expected. He was like a father to those twins. I expect to hear from Onaara soon as well, she may even come home for a while. Zoee and I have restocked the manor, in case people show up.

I corroborated the story you told them. I hate keeping secrets from them but I guess its for the best. They can't do anything to help anyway, they might as well get some closure from it.

- Waash

-------------

Bob,

I told the young ones the story you told me to. Waash corroborated the story and it seems like everyone is satisfied with the explanation. Care to explain what I really saw in Dalaran?

- Hot

Housing Update

Fiance and I have been in the house for about 2 weeks now. We've settled in pretty well. The unpacking has slowed down to a crawl. I think this is because we've unpacked enough to live day-to-day. Its amazing how little of the stuff we brought we actually use every day. There's some stuff that would make things more convenient ( doors on the bathrooms, clothes in dressers instead of a pile on the couch, Fiance's shoes, etc), but we're making do. I think tonight will be more of a hardcore unpacking night. We may possibly have people staying over at the end of the month and I don't know if they'll appreciate our certain level of unpackedness(that a word?).

We seems to have reached a compromise in the battle of the server closet. Some background, one of the bedrooms was converted into a den by the previous owners. The closet doors were removed, so there is a space there. Fiance wants to put a cabinet for "office supplies" while I want to put the servers, and server related equipment there. We found a nice modular cabinet/dresser system at Ikea. Our basic idea is to have a tall cabinet in that space for all the assorted equipent (except the servers). The servers themselves will be on top of a smaller, matching dresser thing, out and to the right of the opening. Haven't worked out the measurements but it should work out.

We also got an idea for the dining room. There's a big empty wall that used to contain a large bookcase ( by the previous owners). We don't have THAT many books, so we thought some more modular would be good. We're thinking basically stacking 3 of those modular cabinets on that wall, in different configurations. Then maybe a painting on top.

4.0.1 the Money Maker and Class Breaker ( kinda )

4.0.1 Hit last week and there has been blog after blog written about it. Many much better written than this one. With that in mind, here's how 4.0.1 affected moi.

Fiance and I moved the Monday before patch day. This means that we didn't have internet again until Wednesday night. Because of this I completely missed out on 24-hours of post-patch mayhem. This was both good and bad, good in that we were able to get enough stuff unpacked to be able to live BEFORE I totally got sucked into WoW. Bad because I missed out on a huge amount of glyph business.

Class Changes

In short, almost all my toons, especially the 80s, underwent huge changes. As of yesterday some still don't even have their specs rebuilt. This is mostly my fault, I've spent far more time making glyphs than actually rebuilding the toons.

Bob, Warlock

Destruction
The destruction rotation is very complicated. Much more complicated that the previous rotation. The old rotation went something like this:

Opener: Life Tap, CoE, Immolate, Chaos Bolt, Conflagrate, Incinerate.
Maintenance: Keep Chaos Bolt and Conflag on cooldown, refresh Immolate as needed, lifetap every 30-40sec to keep the buff up and get mana.

Now:

Opener: Bane of Doom, CoE, Soul Fire, Immolate, Chaos Bolt, Conflagrate, Shadow Flame, Corruption, Incinerate.
Maintenance: Keep Chaos Bolt, Conflag, and Shadow Flame on cooldown, refresh Bane of Doom, Immolate, and Corruption as needed. If Empowered Imp procs then cast Soul Fire. On top of all that use Soul Burn->Soul Fire three times somewhere in the fight. Spam Incinerate otherwise.

The opener has 9 spells, you're keeping 3 on cooldown, refreshing 3 dots, watching for a proc and weaving in 3 big cooldowns. I'm slowly developing the feel of it on a target dummy. Its complicated, and I find myself watching the dot timers and my action bars. On a target dummy the rotation is involved, in a real raid where you have to move around, it would be very difficult, at least at first.

The good part about all this, is the DPS. I'm pulling in 6K when I do the rotation well. Thats pretty crazy considering I was only getting 3-4k pre-patch.

Demonology
With dual-spec being lowered to 100g, I went ahead and got bob a second spec. I've always wanted to try Demonology, its the most utility oriented class, plus who doesn't want to turn into a big purple demon?

The rotation is much easier, but the DPS I was getting was only around 3.5k. Its entirely possible that my gear isn't suited for this spec or that I just don't know the "proper" rotation. Either way, I'll have to work on it and see how things progress.

Hooff, Paladin

Paladins ( and Hunters ) have had the biggest change in terms of class mechanics of the patch. Pallies now have "Holy Power" think mini rogue combo points. For Retribution, the rotation isn't that much more complicated, but it changes the tempo of the class quite a bit.

Rotation: Crusader Strike(CS), Filler, CS, Filler, CS, Templar's Verdict. Filler being Exorcism when Art of War procs, judgements, holy wrath ( which now affects all enemies but stuns undead/demons). Its made the class feel slower, more rigid. Whereas before it was priority and you hit whatever was off cooldown, now you have to wait and try to build up holy points (with crusader strike) as fast as possible to hit with a heavy TV. I have to keep myself from trying to hit the abilities as they come off CD.

Unfortunately melee DPS seems to be down accross the board. I don't know if they've fixed it yet, but that was the scuttlebut on wowinsider and mmochampion.

Holy
I haven't got the courage up to try healing on Hooff yet. The heals have been shifted around and new ones added. Flash of Light is now a big, fast, expensive heal. Holy Light is the slower, small heal. Divine Light is the big, slow nuke heal. Except for the names changing, its not a huge change. Then there's the Holy Power mechanic. Holy Shock is still instant, with a CD, and it heals for a decent amount. It also produces 1 holy power. Word of Glory is instant, has no mana cost, but consumes all your Holy Power. The more holy power the more it heals. So this leads to the scenario where you want to use Holy Shock all the time to build up HP to get mana-free healing using WoG. There's also Light of Dawn, which is a Cone type AOE heal.

I haven't actually tried healing with this new toolbox so I don't know how anything feels. My old playstyle heavily favored Holy Shock + Flash of Light combos so that should be easy enough to convert to Holy Shock + Holy Light. Remembering to use WoG will come with time. From what I've heard, the mana pools are so large ( from the SP->Int conversion) that using Flash of Light won't drain your mana much at all.

Hotplate, Death Knight

Blood Tanking
I haven't even respec'd her yet. I forsee that it shouldn't be a huge change for me, since I was already blood tanking pre-patch. There might be new abilities, or name changes but it should be ok. With that said, I haven't built up the bravery or inclination to try tanking with her yet.

Frost Dual-Weild DPS
I just spec'd her into dual wield DPS yesterday. To be honest I really just like seeing a character go to town on a monster with two weapons. With 2pcT9 dps with a bunch of tanking gear, plus a tanking 1hander, I was pulling 2.5k DPS on a target dummy. Pretty low, but to be expected considering my gear and inexperience with the spec.

Waash Druid

To be perfectly honest Waash has spent the majority of the time creating Glyphs. Though I did get around to specing him back into tanking. I even tried tanking a few heroics. The biggest change? Swipe now has a 6sec CD. Thats an eternity for an ability that used to be spam'd with no cooldown. It makes getting AOE threat much much more involved. Now I still use swipe on every cooldown, but I have to be smarter when I use it. For example, during a pull I have to make sure that first swipe gets EVERY mob, so that I can get some initial threat. After that I'll throw a mangle on the first target, then tab-target a lacerate on each mob until swipe is back off CD. Eventually either every mob will have the complete set of debuffs or they'll be dead.
I'll mix in Maul if I'm falling behind in threat and/or I have plenty of rage.

Onaara Shaman

Probably the least affected toon. DPS is exactly the same as before. Healing did take some getting used to, but mostly the same spells, just different named. No more Lesser Healing Wave. Healing Wave and Greater Healing Wave (new) have the same cast time, but different heal and mana costs. With the SP->Int conversion I have a huge mana pool now. I rarely have to drink, and even spamming chain heal barely dents the mana bar. This will probably change at 85, but at 73 its awesome.

Glyphs-mas

Even with the 24-hour late start, glyphs have been selling. I had about a guild tab full of icethorn going into the patch. This was by chance from when I used to do glyphs before my last hiatus. Those herbs came in handy. Once I got my auction addon working ( ZeroAuctions instead of QuickAuctions), I looked around. Most glyphs were going for 100+ some weren't even on the AH. I set my fallback to 200G ( just in case ) and made all the expensive glyphs I could. I chewed through those herbs in a few hours. Everything was selling. I made 8k that first night, which was nothing compared to the 20-30k other people were making that prepared.

I'm still creating glyphs, I predict that it'll still be easy profitable for another few days. Once most of the glyphs drop below the threshold I'll have to make a decision on whether I want to continue or just get out and enjoy my profits.

Paddling News

Winter Off-season has hit for paddling. It's hit pretty hard. Because of the weather, its hard to get out on the water more than once a week, sometimes none at all. There were some highlights though.

PIFA 2010

PIFA was a big success. It was my first time going. I stayed for all of the first day ( Saturday). The usual suspects were there, Fiance, Uncle, Auntie, Victor, Mica, Princess, etc. One of the Keiki's put on the gourd helmets, which helped to attract attention. MN was leading the charge getting everyone signed up for the intro paddle the following weekend. All in all we got about 6 pages of emails/info for people interested in trying it out that day. If we even get a percentage of that to show up at the intro-paddle its going to be huge. I heard that over the 2 days we got over 13 pages worth of emails.

Intro Paddle 10/02/2010

The most intro paddlers I've seen at one place ever. By last count there were 50 people there. Because of time constraints we didn't do a double-hull, just had all 4 going out constantly. There was rarely a time where a canoe was sitting on the beach. Fiance, and all the other steersmen were very busy that day. Uncle did his introduction speech and paddling basics. It was longer than normal, probably cause there were so many people that he put in quite a bit of culture into the course. There wasn't near enough Wa'a to take everyone out at once so people had to take turns. IKOCC provided seats 1 and 6, the rest were intro people.

True to Uncle's word, we were having a nice luau when a Regatta breaks out. Some of the intro paddlers, a group of 6 to be exact, wanted to go out again, this time racing. This started it off, soon every canoe was lining up and putting on a small sprint race. When I saw the 5 guys going out again, I grabbed Rog and Fiance and got a crew together to race against them. Needless to say we killed them, but the intro people in our canoe loved it.

I think we've stumbled into something to get people even more interested in joining the club, and racing in general. These little mock sprints are short enough ( and exciting enough) to get people going. But they're also short enough that they don't feel discouraged when they're being left behind. Something like deanza to the bowling pin and back would be wayyy too long and take too much time.

[WoW IC] Back into it.

Dearest Sister,

Greetings! Its been a while since I've had a chance to write. This was
partially because the past few months I haven't had anything to write
about. I've been pretty quiet the past 4-5 months. Stayed at an inn
and just tried to live the normal life. Even got as far as putting my
armor into a crate, because I thought I "wouldnt' be using it any time
soon". Well that changed quickly.

A few weeks ago the little termors and rumblings I've been noticing
have gotten worse. I don't know if you notice these quakes in
Ironforge, ( it being deep in into a mountain maybe that makes them
MORE noticeable? ) but you must have heard the talk. There's talk that
the end of the world is near. That a huge shakeup is due and that some
sort of Cataclysm is about to happen. No one seems to know when, but
they all know its coming "Soon". I didn't pay it much mind, even the
quakes I eventually got used to.

Unforunately, as is usually the case, I started getting cabin
fever. I've never been able to stay in one place too long. Since we
were children, neither of us have really spent more than a year living
somewhere. The lure of fortune and adventure was just too much, and so
about 2 weeks ago I bid farewell to the innkeeper and set off yet
again.

I've learned a lot in the past 2 weeks. The shaman master in stormwind
has taught me quite a bit, both in the art of healing and melee
combat. I've needed every ounce of knowledge. I've been traveling to
quite a few new places. I've spent the majority of my time at this
huge mountain. It was the kingdom of the Dark Iron Dwarves ( cousins
of the dwarves from Ironforge). Unfortunately they're not very
friendly, but there is an elemental infestation. I've joined up with
other adventurers to help keep back the evil living there. I've gone
in many times, usually with random people, usually with mixed
success. Being able to effectively heal has made me more valuable to
the war effort. Seems quite a few people know how to hurt, but not to
heal.

One of the commanders mentioned that I might be powerful enough to be
of some use in Outland. I remember Elder Hooff talking about it a few
months back. I'm excited to go, from what we've been told the fight is
going well there, but slowly. Wish you were here.

I'll write again as soon as I'm able.

- Onaara

Too Hot

CPU Temps on Squirrel

My new obession seems to be temperature and heat. More specifically
how how my cpu and hard drives are running. I noticed a few days ago
when Squirrel ( Q8400 w/ stock cooler) was encoding some video in a
very hot apartment, the temperatures hit 86C. That's crazy. I let it
finish the encode, but vowed not to let the temps get that high
again. This is especially worrysome because the chip isn't even
overclocked ( unlike my Athlon64 @2.3Ghz, stock 1.8Ghz).

I think the culpurit is the stock Intel cooler. Its just not up to the
challenge. As far as I know the Q8400 isn't known for being
particularly warm. It runs at 2.66Ghz with 4MB of cache. The only part
in the rig that could be producing crazy amount of heat is the ATI
4870 ( which itself has a massive cooler that exhausts to the outside
of the case). I'm thinking I want to replace the stock cooler. For $20
- $50 or so I can get a really good cooler that will keep the machine
nice and frosty. I haven't even tried to overclock ( mainly cause its
fast enough for what I need and the temps were a bit high). With a
better cooler the temps might be low enough that overclocking would be
nice. Plus it would boost my folding and transcoding a bit.

At first I'm only planning on replacing the cooler on Squirrel. Dug
doesn't get used near enough to warrant a new part. It's kind of a
shame really. But I can't really blame Fiance for not using her
Quad. There's so much stuff stacked all over her desk, that just
getting to her computer would take a while. I keep mine relatively
cleared off just because I want to be able to use my machine.

HDD Temps on Frisket

Also recently I found a linux utility, hddtemp, that reads out the
temperature of the hard drives. On a whim I checked the temps on
Downy. Those are running at about 40-45C, considering there's 5 HDs in
that case I would say thats pretty good. The Antec300 case seems to
really help with keep the temperatures down. Makes sense considering
there's 2x120MM fans blowing straight onto the drives, a 120MM
exhausting hot air out the back and a monster 140MM fan exhausting air
out of the top. With that kind of airflow, the drives should be ok.

I checked the temps on Frisket, which only has 3 HDs total and those
temps were in the 55-59C range. Much higher. I think this is
attributed to the fact that that machine is still on my old desktop
case. The case itself was ok back in the day, but if I'm planning on
turning it into a true server class machine, I need a better
case. With that in mind I ordered another Antec300 case for the
server. This time its the "Illusion" version. which just means it
comes with front led fans, so I don't have to buy them seperately.

Subie again...

Why I hate living in an apartment.

Went out to Subie this morning, on my way to work. Saw a shiny mark,
about the size of silver dollar. I thought it was bird poop, like
normal. Closer look it was a scratch. Not just a small normal one, it
was pretty deep and it looked like it went through the paint into the
actual shell.

This isn't the first time Subie has been accosted in this parking
lot. The side is littered with little dings and scratches, mostly from
incosiderate fuckers that can't understand that maybe other people
actually give a shit about their cars.

One particular incident comes to mind. Fiance and I were walking to
her car to go on a jog ( back when we did such things). On the way
there I see 4 mexicans hanging around the car. Worst, one of them was
SITTING on the hood. Maybe more like leaning, but there was butt to
hood contact. Me being the chicken shit I was ( I'd like to think was,
but possibly still am) didn't say anything. I'm actually trying hard
to be better at this. I've gone out of my way to face confrontation,
instead of scurrying away. I even went and got a manager because a guy
was being unruly during a movie.

This is a perfect example of people thinking they can do whatever they
like. They have no concept of personal property. They don't care if
they sit on their car so why should anyone else care? People wonder
why the "rich" like to segregate themselves away in gated communities,
this is one of those reasons. Logic follows that if you're in that
situation then hopefully you're of the same mindset, ie: I won't fuck
with your shit if you don't fuck with mine.

PS: Does them being Mexican have anything to do with them being
dumbasses? I don't know, they were Mexican so I'm describing them as
such. If they were black I would have said "4 black guys", if they
were filipino I would have said "4 bastards". ;-)

Back in on the Crack

Yesterday I reactivated my World of Warcraft account. Why? Mainly cause I needed some stress relief from the house and paddling. Paddling itself is winding down, and I can feel my body just needs more rest than it used to. I think some time playing games will really help me deflate after this season.

Minutes after reactivating my account I hopped into a Halls of Reflection PUG. I was healing, and it did not go well. Partly I'm sure was my forgetting where all my keybindings were and how everything is. I was even experiencing some lag at certain points... which was strange.

I hopped into a Sunken Temple run with Onaara also. That went better. I slowly had to remember how to play a resto-shaman. It went well enough that I dinged 49. Did some questing and got to within 700xp of level 50. Went to bed, then finished it off early this morning. I'm now at level 50.

New Server

Low Power Server?

Was talking to a fellow mdadm/server/RAID5/packrat about what he has
planned for his current and next server. His significant-other is
starting a new endeavor that requires she have a redudant,
fault-tolerant system to keep all her documents on. He of course
though that a Ubuntu based RAID with automated backup would be perfect
for this.

Reuse

He decided that based on her storage needs, his current server would
be more than adequete for her needs ( with some minor reshuffling
towards data backup than maximum capacity). He will take his RAID5,
composed of 5x500GB drives, and turn it into a RAID1, with hot
spare. 500GB is more than enough space for her needs, and the other
two drives can be used for cycled backups. He would have a nightly
backup of the RAID onto another 500GB, and this would be cycled on
some schedule. I'm going to suggest he create something like
rsnapshot, which would enable him to have versioning as well as
backup.

With this repurposing, it enables him to think about what he will do
for his next, bigger, badder RAID server.

... Less? Power

He apparently has been thinking of building DOWN his server. He's
noticed that he doesn't use much of the server's processing power on a
day to day basis. With the amount of electricity a dual-core (not to
mention the quad-core I was planning on getting) uses up even at idle,
a more efficient system could lead to significant savings.

I originally was planning on upgrading the "new" server to a quad
core, probably an AthlonII X4 630 or similar. Its a cheap chip, with
decent performance for the money. Yes some dual core intels are
faster, but I like knowing I have 4 real cores. The reasoning behind
this upgrade was Air Video, the fact that it does take up some power
for live-conversion almost necessiates a powerful machine. Plus I'd
like to be able to run Bittorrent and possibly other services on the
machine.

With a lower power machine I would save quite a bit of energy. With
the possibility of moving into a house, saving electricity will be
even more important. But at the same time, I'll lose the ability to
have a power server. It can probably still do the software NAS
functions, samba sharing, as well as bittorrenting. Air Video
live-conversions would be too taxing for the little processor. This
could be possibly remedied by farming out the conversion duties to my
quad desktop ( much like how its done now ). It wouldn't be too bad,
since I don't think I'd really get in the habit of turning the quad
off.

Prices

The prices for Atom based boards are about comparable to a decent sale
at Fry's for the quad-core Athlon. I've seen the Athlon II X4 630 +
motherboard on sale at Fry's for as little as $70. The Atom based
boards on newegg are closer to $100 for processor and
motherboard. Another potential savings would be on the power
supply. With such an efficient processor, more of the PSU's power
would go towards the drives, meaning I would be able to use less
powerful (400-430W) PSU's instead of the big ones I use now ( 500W+).

Either way, first things first. I need a case for that
server. Regardless of the processor, those drives aren't being
properly cooled.

Contract Signed

Contact Signed

Got an email yesterday from the realtor. He has the signed contract and is forwarding it to our loan guy. Fiance dropped off all but 1 of the documents loan guy needed to get to the underwriter. She was missing her W-2 from an old old job. That came in the mail yesterday also, but not until after she'd already made the trip to drop off the other docs. Guess she's making another trip to drop it off.

Open Escrow?

I don't really know if this means we've opened Escrow and thus have moved into the "Contingency" portion of the process. We haven't given our deposit check ( is it even a check I don't know) so I'm guessing we're not. But we'll have to see.

Next up, we need inspections up the wazoo to make sure the house isn't hiding anything weird under the hood.

Even closer...?

Just got a call from our Realtor. He has the signed contract.

New House?

Fiance and I have been looking at houses for about 2 weeks now. We've been looking at places online, and if the pictures look good, we decide to drive by. We drive by to see the outside of the house, and the neighborhood on our own. That usually will narrow the field pretty quickly. After that we'll schedule an outing with our real estate agent to actually take a look at the inside.

We took a look at 2 houses we really liked last tuesday. The first one, we loved the outside and the area, but the inside turned out not so good. The rooms were small, and over customized. Disappointed we headed for the next house. This house I wasn't too excited about the outside. This was because the last time we saw it was at night. Seeing it in the daytime made quite a difference. Once we got inside it was great, the rooms were spacious and the layout was nice. The backyard was huge as well. We really liked it but wanted to be cautious.

After much deliberation we decided to take another look and then put in a bid. When in contact with our realtor, he informed us that a strong bid was placed on the house on FRIDAY. This house has been on the market 50 days. We decided we didn't want to try to fight for the house and gave up. As the day wore on, we talked about how much we like it. About 20 minutes later we decided to put in a full-price bid. We thought the house was worth full price, so might as well give it a shot.

Fast forward to yesterday. We get a call from the realtor that our bid was VERBALLY accepted. Meaning that there's a very good chance we got the house. Its not for sure that they've accepted it, but we're hoping.

I'm trying not to get too excited, especially since we don't have the contract signed yet. But its hard not to get excited! I'm already starting to think about how I want the server rack to be...

Air Video.. more like Air Awesome.

Shortly after getting my iPad I went searching for the "essential"
apps for it. I came accross a review for a program called Air
Video. In a nutshell, it is a Client/Server program that lets you
stream your videos wirelessly from your computer to your iPod
Touch/iPhone/iPad. It does this beautifully. With this application I
don't have to worry about pre-loading my devices with movies, as long
as I'm within my own network.

Internet Streaming!

Another, experimental, feature of Air Video is that it can also stream
outside of your network, over the internet. At first I didn't think
this would be THAT useful. When would I ever really want to be
watching movies on the go? Especially since my iPad is Wifi. It turns
out it is very useful. Having the ability to access and watch every
video on the server from my iPhone is amazing. Any time I'm sitting in
one place for potentially more than 10 minutes, I pull out the iPhone
and watch something.

Live-Conversion

This of course can all be done using DLNA server/client, much like
MediaTomb. The killer feature for this solution (other than the
aforementioned internet streaming) is the live-conversion its capable
of doing. It will stream any format the iPhone is capable of playing (
h.264, etc). It shines when it finds a video that the iPhone cannot
play, such as .wmv, .avi, etc. It uses ffmpeg.exe to on-the-fly
transcoding to the proper format. I can literally request to play any
video in my collection and Air Video Server will transcode it as I
watch.

Its even smart enough to figure out what device you're trying to watch
on and how the bandwidth is. This information is used to figure out
what resolution to output to the device. This means that theoretically
an iPad with great bandwidth would receive a high resolutoin image,
while an iPhone on a congested network (such as ATT's 3G) may receive
a lower quality one. It even does this on the fly, so if as the video
goes on, the bandwidth gets more congested, Air Video will
automatically downscale to a lower quality image so that there's no
interruption in the video. Depending on how drastic it needs to be,
there may be a momentary stop in the video to change streams.

Speed

The Air Video Server component is fast. It is multi-threaded so it
will use up every core my system has. I'm currently running it on
Squirrel, which is the Q8400 quad with 4GB of ram. It pegs all 4
processors at 100%. This is probably overkill for one live-conversion
thread. The faster the processor, the "farther-ahead" the converstion
can be, on top of real-time. For example, with this system, assume
that we start at the beginning of the video. If my machine can
transcode at 2 seconds of video per second, then at 30 seconds of
watching video, the NEXT 30 seconds is already done and waiting to be
sent over the wire. If somehow the load on the server goes up, it will
be 30 seconds before I even see any kind of stutter (because of the
buffered video).

As I said, a quad core is probably very overkill for
one live-conversion stream. But what about multiple streams? Air Video
can handle streaming video to multiple devices. Not only that, it can
stream different videos to different devices concurrently. The only
limit ( I've found) is how much resources the server has. My record
has been to stream 4 720p (source) videos, in .wmv format, to 4
devices. These devices include an iPod Touch 1G, an iPhone 3G (on
Wifi), an iPhone 3GS (on Wifi) and a 16GB Wifi iPad. Each stream was
clear, with no stuttering. I even did some high speed scrubbing on
each and saw no performance loss. *I'll be adding an iPhone 4 to this
soon, and will post a picture.

Ease of Use

This program is definetly designed for the mac, and mac
users. Everythign is as simple as possible. There are no configuration
files, everything is very straight forward. It even makes a valiant
attempt at configuring your router for internet streaming (through
UPNP). They even provide a server "PIN", which you can enter on your
mobile device to reference your server. I have a hunch that this pin
is merely some numerical transform based on your external IP and port
number. For advanced users, putting the IP and Port would probalby be
more straight forward and easier to debug. But for normal users this
PIN makes everything very simple and very intuitive. Those kinds of
little touches are all around the application. This is the kind of
thing that makes this otherwise good application into a great one.

Cons

The company that created Air Video (inmethod) is very much an iOS
design house. The software doesn't run on any other mobile
platforms. This is only really a con if you don't have an iPhone. Its
such a nice piece of software, it'd be great to have it on Android as
well. Though I will confess to having a bit of smugness knowing that
our Android friends don't have access to it ;-). I'm sure there's an
equivalent app for Android, but is it as polished and easy to use as
this? I dunno.

The server software only works on OSX and Windows. Again, only a con
if you need it in Linux. For me this was a bigger issue than not
working in Android ( since I don't have any android devices). Both of
my file servers ( downy and frisket) both run a flavor of Ubuntu. It
would be awesome if I could run the Air Video Server on one of these
machines, to keep everything self contained. Two issues prevent me
from doing this; the software not running in linux and the horsepower
needed for live-conversion. The older server ( downy ) is a 1.3Ghz
Athlon T-bird with 768MB of RAM. Handling the CRC and file i/o duties
of a software raid5 tend to keep it pretty busy. The newer server (
frisket ) is a 2.3Ghz Athlon64 with 3GB of ram. It is quite a bit more
powerful than downy and has plenty of ram. Unfortunately Air Video
states that it requires at least a Core2Duo class processor. I've seen
people run it on Pentium D's with no issue. So at least a dual-core
for live-conversion. Probably significantly less for straight
playback/streaming.

Conclusion

The price for all this functionality? $3. Amazing. Technically its
free if you get creative with your folder structure. But for 3 bucks
it was well worth it.

The Great Linux Grinding Noise

My linux box at work as been giving some issues lately. A weird sound was coming from it. I thought it was probably a fan. Because its a work machine, I decided against rooting around and fixing it myself.

Today it finally made enough noise that I couldn't stand it anymore. I put in an IT ticket and they came out to fix it. The guy turned it on, saw that it was the video card fan, and then just unplugged the power. This solution makes the perfect sense because:

1. Its linux, thus rarely run 3D applications.

2. Its quick and cheap ( 5 mins of his time, no material costs).

3. Fixing it "right" would have been at least 20 minutes of his time, and $10 for a new fan.

4. Its unlikely to overheat, given that its in an climate controlled office.

Would I have done the same in his place? If I was exactly in his place, with his job, yes I would have. If this was one of my home machine I would have RMA'd the card or bought a new fan. I'm just like that, I hate knowing that something isn't quite working.

Either way my linux box is up and running again. Silently.

Jury duty

Waiting around in jury duty. So far they've shown that inspirational video that they tend to show when they want to get people to do something they know no one wants to do. Honestly it worked decently well on me p, I almost wouldn't mind if I had to serve. Almost.

Paddling

Our paddling Ironman season ended a few weeks ago. It ended in a bang. We've been medaling in every race we've been in up to now. ( 2x 1st and 2x 3rds ). The last race of the season was Iron Champs here in Mission Bay, San Diego. We had a really good chance of doing well, it was home water, we knew the course, and we were rested. Unfortunately in our hurry, the rigging on Maho'a was done incorrectly, ( the front 'iako's shim was backwards, causing the front of the Ama to be lower than normal). This plus the bad advice SCORA gave ( hug the rocks? Really? ). And some pretty bad conditions ( turbulent water + small channel + way too many canosed ) contributed to a Huli ( capsize). We got out of it ok, there are some crazy pictures that I can repost later.

Now we are winding down our sprint season as well. Up next is 9-mans. I won't be racing because my swimming just isn't good enough for me to be able to jump in and out of the boat. Maybe next year.

Ubuntu 10.04 64-bit + Adobe Air + Tweetdeck

To install Tweetdeck ( or any Adobe Air app) onto Ubuntu is pretty simple, thought of course it requires a few more steps than in Windows or OSX.

Install Adobe Air

1. Get the BINARY (.bin) file for Adobe Air. You can get it from:

http://www.adobe.com/products/air/

Make sure you get the .bin, as the .deb is built for 32-bit (i386) architecture.

2. Find where you downloaded the .bin, and give it execution permission:

chmod +x AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

3. Run the .bin

./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

It will ask you a few setup questions, nothing too difficult. The defaults seem to work well for me.

Install Tweetdeck

1. Go to www.tweetdeck.com

2. Click on the "Download/Install" now. If everything went well during the AIR installation then it should magically all work.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

After straightening out the issues I was having with booting from the last entry, I was able to get everything configured just how I liked it. The next day a new version of Ubuntu comes out, and I'm tempted to start over again.

The new version is an LTS, which means something like Long Term Service. I've had good experience with LTS editions before, downy, the previous server, still runs on the last LTS release ( 8.04 Hardy Heron ). This release, 10.04 Lucid Lynx, will hopefully be just as good.

My impressions so far, the new eye candy is nice. Previously I installed the server version of Ubuntu, which starts with a very bare system and lets you install only the packages you want to install. I liked this for the server, mainly because of the limited horsepower and memory I was working with. Eventually I did install a desktop interface on it, just to make early administration easier.

This time I decided to start with the desktop release. One of the factors was location, this server ( at least for now ), will live in the bedroom, next to Squirrel. This effectively makes it a desktop. I even have my older Dell 1701 17" LCD hooked up to it. I figured it would be nice to have access to a linux desktop, if nothing more than to have a secure workstation to do our banking on.

The new theme is more purple than orange. The change that seems to have polarized the community is the moving of the windows controls from the right ( default in windows) to the left ( default in OSX). This has been called everything from a revolutionary leap forward in HID ( Human Interface Design) to an affront to all things good about Ubuntu and Linux in general. Personally? I haven't decided if I like it on that side or not. A good thing about Ubuntu, it can be moved back if you don't like it.

Frisket + Ubuntu 9.10 + 2x2TB Drives Adventures

So, I recently I installed Ubuntu 9.10 on Frisket, on an old 500GB PATA HD I had. This was in preparation for creating a new, bigger server. Ubuntu installed fine and I was able to configure it.

Jump start to today, where I'm trying to install the 2 TB Hitachi hard drives I bought last week. First of all, Frisket seems to have a weird quirk where it always lists SATA drives before PATA drives. This thoroughly confused GRUB for Ubuntu, it kept trying to boot one of the blank 2TB HDs. I tried messing with grub to save the install but that wasn't working either. Finally I decided to just get a fresh start and reinstall.

The reinstall seemed to work fine until I tried to reboot. Upon reboot it seems to hang with "GRUB" and just sit there. Googling was a big useless, mainly because the keywords are very common.

Update:

Mysteriously... I reinstalled grub, it had no effect. Turning off the computer and leaving it for an hour some how lets it boot. I'm now creating the RAID1 out of the 2x2TB drives. When I get the 3rd 2TB drive, I'll convert the RAID1 to a RAID5, which I've heard is completely possible.

Update2:

Resyncing the raid1 ( so named.. raidy) is going at 70MB/s, so it should be done in about 6 hours for the whole 2TB. Compare this to the 4MB/s that downy was capable of. That took over a week to resync. Its pretty amazing. Frisket is now toping out at 109 MB/s, which drops the time to about 4.5 hours. Crazy.

Update3:

After setting up the MDADM RAID1, I can no longer boot again. Same "GRUB" problem after POST. I created a ubuntu forum post because I'm out of ideas about what's happening.

Wow Hiatus

If you couldn't tell from the lack of updates, I have canceled my World of Warcraft subscription.

Why?

Because I wasn't having much fun anymore. I'm far from a type-a personality. I can meander around on my own for extended periods of time. But at the same time, I do like working towards some goal, lofty or far-reaching it may be. After getting my level 80's geared up in triumph gear, I reached a point where, without raiding, I didn't really have anything to work for. I could grind for weeks for slightly better ilvl triumph or frost emblem gear, but I had no place to actually USE it. That realization really cut to the heart of why I was playing. I was preparing for a time that wouldn't/couldn't happen. I don't have the time to devote to seriously raid, even at the casual friendly style that Wrath is known for. I barely have time to sleep. It really took the wind out of my sails.

Leveling Onaara helped a bit, the excitement of new abilities, and a new playstyle kept me very occupied for a while. But at around level 46-48, the only thing I could look forward to was getting into Outland... for the 5th time. Once that was over it would be Northrend, then it would be back to heroics. It just didn't feel like something great to look forward to.

Also, work and paddling have really taken a huge chunk of time. I now have basically an hour or two on friday and possibly 3-4 hours on Saturday to play WoW. Thats just not enough time for me. Add to the fact that I have a stack of PS3 games that are collecting dust.

Maybe its time to change the name of the blog yet again?

WoW Break?

This weekend was a bit strange in that I had a few hours on Saturday that I could play WoW but I didn't. Part of me rationalized it by saying that my forearms were very sore from paddling so a few hours of using the mouse would not be a good idea.

The strange thing was that I didn't miss playing it. My shaman has hit the dulldrums of levels (48-58). Neither starting a new toon or powering through it sound particularly appealing. A lot of what made WoW so much fun was the social aspects of the game. Now that I'm effectvely solo questing all the time has really diminished the game for me. One can only level and get better gear for so long until you start to question why your working so hard in the first place. Assuming I get Onaara to 80, gear her up in restoration as well as enhancement sets. What's the point? I don't have the time to seriously commit to a true raiding guild.

Maybe it's time to cancel the suscription, check back in before Cataclysim starts.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Overwhelmed

Things have just been steadily getting more and more busy. With everything going on at work, home and paddling, today really overwhelmed me. I started down the dark path I used to frequent.

I had to take 30 mins, even though it was really late and just quest. I only did 1 quest but it was enough to give me just a little breathing room before bed. It's amazing how necessary hobbies are. Specially when other activities that you used to think of as hobbies suddenly feel like another Job.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Still here

I'm still here, just a combination of being very busy at work and technical issues ( Mozex + Firefox 3.6.2) have left me struggling to update. Here's a quick update on how things are going with Onaara.

Up to level 46! Onaara made it to level 40 a week or two ago. It was a pretty big mile-stone. I would describe it as "When the game really opened up." I bought dual-spec, so now I'm Enhancement/Restoration, which in principal I already was before the dual-spec. Except this time I'll have the talent points to back up the gear change.

Dual-Spec
As I mentioned before, I bought dual-spec, to go Enhancement/Restoration. I have already been healing dungeons with a gear change up to this point. But I figured it was time to actually spec into it, hoping that some of my mana issues would be straightened out.

Enhancement
Dual-Wield I've finally got dual-wield. This was probably the main reason I started the shaman in the first place. I wanted a character that could dual-wield and just go nuts on an enemy. The shaman doesn't disappoint. With Windfury on my main-hand and the melee haste totem, she goes pretty nuts. Mana was an issue in dungeons though, because things didn't last long enough that I had to constantly pick up and drop totems ( which cost quite a bit of mana). Even with Water Shield and Mana Spring totem out.

Improved Stormstrike Correction, Mana WAS an issue, until I put 2 talent points into this gem. Every time I hit with Stormstrike ( which I do off every cooldown) I get back 20% of my mana. This plus Water Shield and Mana Spring totem, I rarely have to drink now. I haven't had a chance to take it into a dungeon yet, but I think it will go well. I'm considering going into the resto tree and picking up 5/5 Totemic Focus, which would reduce my mana cost for totems by 25%. I have it on my resto tree and it really helps.

Restoration
Chain-Heal I received chain heal at level 40 also. My first true, honest to goodness, AOE heal. Or at least thats what I thought. In its most basic form it heals 3 people,the first person being healed the most and each person after that the effectiveness goes down 40%. Unfortunately the spell has a long cast time, doesn't heal for very much, and doesn't feel very mana-efficient. In the amount of time it would take me to cast a chain-heal, I could cast almost 2 lesser healing waves. Those two would probably heal for more, and I could control who gets them. Currently I only chain-heal in conjunction with Nature's Swiftness, to make it instant cast. Maybe in higher levels of gear, chain-heal will be more useful ( I always hear about people advocating not chain-heal spamming, so I'm guessing it becomes much more attractive later on), but as of now it's my least used spell.

Huntry to Onaara Re: Hi!

Hey Sis!

Greetings from... Stormwind. Yeah I got back in town a few days ago. I took the Gryphon service back, it costs more than the tram but a bit more scenic. Bubu wasn't a big fan of having to make the trip on a smaller, chase Gryphon. Do you believe they charged me an extra 1g for Bubu! This Wildhammer clan sure does know how to turn a profit, I should take notes!

Ironforge was nice, yes it really is underground. Its actually really warm there, not surprising considering there's lava flowing underneath your feet. I think the dwarves like it that way. It wasn't uncomfortably warm, the constant snowfall outside kept everything pretty temperate. I stayed at the Inn close to the Ironforge Central Bank and their Auction House. They have some extended stay rooms in the back. I do miss having some padding on the chairs, it seems dwarves don't believe in having cushions.

On a brighter note they do love pets. I think its because dwarves have quite a few hunters also. They loved Bubu. I'm pretty sure he got better treatment in some places than I. Dwarves love bears.

As for the Glyph business, its slowing. At my highest I made about 1000g in a day. Now its dropping to about 200-300g on a good day. Uncle Waash sent me a fresh batch so I've been going through those. I saw a few that you might need, so I'm attaching them with this letter, I'm sure Uncle won't mind. There must be a few other Glyph businesses running, I sometimes see the same 3-4 names undercutting my auctions. I'm not particularly worried, I've earned quite a bit up to now. We should have enough to cover any upcoming expenses. Hooff told me that Hot still hasn't trained for her Artisan Riding. I guess she doesn't feel like she's missing it. If she is, she hasn't mentioned it. Not that Hot really talks much at all. She's always been very quiet, just kinda stares at you with those frosty blue eyes. Its a toss-up between her and Bob for most stoic.

Speaking of Bob, Hooff mentioned that Bob told him, that I should tell you, that the family bank will pay for your Riding training and even training for Erin! I'm sure she'll appreciate the armor and everything she gets. I have sneaking suspicion that Bob didn't really tell Hooff to tell me, to tell you, but whatever, the point is you're set for Riding training!

Hooff also showed me the armor he got you before he sent it off, amazing how it fits me perfectly also. I figured you wouldn't mind me borrowing your gear when you're done with it right? *snicker snicker*

Hope to hear from you soon,

- Hunt

Letter: Onaara to Huntry

My Dear sister Huntry,

Hello Sister, I hope this letter finds you well. How is your business trip to Ironforge? I hope the Glyphs that Uncle Waash sent you to sell are moving. How are the dwarves treating you? Is it true that Ironforge is underground? It must truely be a sight to see. I hope to one day travel there myself.

How amazing are these mailboxes, no matter where I am, it feels like I simply have to drop a letter into a mailbox and some gryphon, somewhere will ensure its arrival. It almost seems to shrink the distance between us!

If you run into Hooff the Elder before I, please extend my gratitude for the gear he sent me. He must have gone through great lengths and expense to acquire them for me. The chestguard has the buzz of enchantment, and the mace seems to have an eerie white glow about it. I'm sure Bob had something to do with that. I don't think he likes me, he's always so quiet. I get along with Kragner his Voidwalker well enough though.Its amazing how well a demon from the twisting nether can play cards. I'm rambling, please let Hooff know that I will make good use of the armor here in Duskwood.

Currently I am staying in at the Scarlet Raven Tavern in Duskwood. Its a far cry from the Inn we stayed at in Azuremyst Isle. Remember when we used to joke about having Ghosts and Ghouls under our beds as children? Well here its a possibility. I've only been here a few days but I've already seen a few ghosts, and even combed ones hair! Don't ask how I did it, I think it was some kind of enchanted brush or something.

The Night watch here has asked me to help out with some problems they've been having. They're woefully understaffed. I mostly try to shuttle food and supplies between Darkshire and Night Watch outposts on the Western edge of Duskwood. The soldiers are always happy to see me, I think its because they know once they hear Erin stomping her feet and trumpeting her trunk, they'll have their lunch soon.
I did find a gravesite that was a bit disturbing, the entire area had such an air of lonelyness. I asked some officials in town about the grave, and they told me a sad tale about a fallen hero, risen as an undead, roaming the graveyard. Hopefully I won't meet that spirit on my deliveries.

I think I've rambled on enough for one letter, until I see you again.

Give my best to Bubu,

- Ona

Heirlooms and Enchants

Heirlooms and Enchants
Personally, when leveling I rarely ever enchant any of my gear, at least not until I get into northrend. The reason being that, they don't seem particularly worth it. The enchanting mats are expensive, the gear you enchant will inevitably be replaced very quickly, and the enchants themselves are somewhat lack-luster. Spending 40-100g to get +3 or +4 of something on a piece of gear I'd use for a level or two just isn't practical.

This changed with the advent of Heirlooms. Heirlooms effectively negates the last concern, since theoretically it will be used from level 1-80. Because of this suddenly spending 100g on an enchant doesn't seem so unreasonable, provided the benefits are worth it. To this end I started looking for an enchant that would be beneficial for Onaara, wasn't too difficult to obtain, and was relatively "cool".

Enchants

All heirlooms count as having an iLevel of 1. This means that only pre-bc ( Vanilla) enchants will work on heirloom items. This has not always been the case but as of this writing, this is current. There are no obtainable enchants for the Heirloom Shoulders, so that piece is ruled out. The best choices for enchants for chest pieces are:

Greater Stats ( +4 all stats )
Major Mana ( +250 Mana )
Major Health ( +100 Health )

Of those three, Greater Stats seems the most useful. Unfortunately the formula for that enchant seems to only frop off 5-man or Raids in BC. In fact, its basicaly a world drop and thus not realistically farmable. The +3 all stats enchant on the other hand, Bob already had so I decided that was the better option.

While the +3 all stats to chest would at least be useful, and not very difficult to obtain, it was not "cool". I wanted something a bit more flashy, maybe something with a proc. Looking through wowhead, I ran accross an enchant called Crusader. A previous post, Scarlet-cide, says a little of what I went through to get hte enchant. All of this lead me to the conclusion that... I need an heirloom weapon.

Heirlooms

As I mentioned before, at level 40 my choice for heirloom weapon(s) is clear. 2x Venerable Mass of McGowans. But from now until 40 my choices have been muddled. I originally wanted a 2-hand weapon, purchaseable with Stone Keeper's Shards, that would work well with Onaara and Huntry. I've found that there is no such weapon. The only Shard-purchaseable, melee, 2-hander is a sword ( which Onaara can't even weild). There is a decent, 2-hander, Axe available for 65 Emblems of Heroism, but the prospect of spending 65( Bloodied Arcanite Reaper) + 2x(40)(Venerable Mass of McGowan) Emblems seemed completely unreasonable. To this end I decided it wasn't worth stalling and just bought a Venerable Mass of McGowan. I will use that with a Shield or offhand until I can dual-weild at level 40.

On a related note, since Alliance on my realm was finally able to capture Wintergrasp over the weekend, I decided it was time to spend some shards. I decided to get Aged Pauldrons of the Five Thunders. If I hope to be able to heal instances, I'm going to need some dedicated caster gear. Hooff bought both pieces of Heirloom gear, and Bob enchanted the Mace.

Leveling Wall

The Leveling Wall

I found that while leveling an alt, I tend to hit walls. I don't mean I constantly run into the side of castles or inns ( though thats been known to happen as well). I mean that there will be times where I, for seemingly no reason, completely run out of motivation to continue to level. Whether I'm able to overcome that wall, or something makes me overcome it, usually will determine if the character keeps progressing or stagnates.

Level 18-22
This is the first major wall. I've hit it on every character I've created, except for the first. The first because the game is new and you have no idea whats going to happen next. When leveling Hooff he stayed at this level for a few months, while I went back to leveling Bob. Waash didn't get blocked very long because his playtime was dictated more by when Fiance wanted to play Zoee. Hotplate started at 55, so she never hit this level range. Tempered, Classy, Huntry and now Onaara are all currently within this level range ( give or take ). Tempered and Classy are likely to stay at this level, I just don't have any motivation to level Horde-side. Huntry became my Glyph-Girl, though she does get some play-time every now and then. Onaara still has a chance, if I can get some motivation to get to 26 or so, I should be out of danger.

I think the reason people hit this wall is because this is the level range where they get out of their starting areas. This means that my Draenei get out of Azuremyst and usually head to Darkshore or Stormwind. This means leaving the logically placed, nicely clustered quest arrangement of BC and back to the sprawling quests of Vanilla. I can't even begin to describe the pain that was Duskwood, or worst, Westfall.

Level 45-55
This wall seems to change slightly, depending on when the character went through the level range. Quite a few factors keep the wall hovering around this level range. Previously, Level 40 was when you received your first mount ( now its 20). This meant that usually you would do your best to grind up to level 40, to get that mount. After getting the mount and using it for a few levels, you don't have anything "cool" to look forward to, until Outland. Now, its basically the same, except you get your epic riding mount at 40. Dungeons are also a problem, for the early part of this range you can run Zul'Farrak. That can get you to 50 no problem. Unfortunately after Zul'Farrak, dungeon choice gets sour. Maradon is an exercise in pathfinding, Dire Maul is deserted. Blackrock Depths, which still run by quite a few alts, is huge and if you don't have a tank that knows what they're doing, can quickly become a wipe-fest. Questing is no better, at this range you're a bit too high for Tanaris, so Un'Goro is a possible choice. The problem with Un'Goro is that, depending on your luck, you can get ambused by multiple high level mobs as well as a few roaming elites. Plus the quests tend to be drop-collection quests which get old quickly. Once you outgrow Un'Goro you need to make the 30 min run to Winterspring, hoping to finish off those last few levels until Outland.

Level 64-68
At this stage, the excitement of reaching Outland has faded. The quest make-up is a bit better, unfortunately odds are you still remember most of these quests from the LAST time you ran an alt through Outlands. At least the gear and dungeons are decent. Though expect to relearn a lot of CC abilities, or hope to find a tank that outlevels the instances you're running.

Level 75+
You would think that this range you would have no trouble getting the last 5-6 levels to 80. But by this point you feel like you've just ran Northrend on your main/alt, so everything feels like you've just done it. You still have 1 or 2 unlucky pieces from Outland, and you're pretty sick of the leveling in general. The prospect of some nice, shiny epics start dancing in your mind and all you want to do is knock out these levels. If you look too much at what your character "will get at 80", you'll end up stagnating and never reaching 80. Waash is still stuck in this level.

How do you get past the wall? Honestly, I don't know. I usually take a break from what I was doing. If I was questing, I'll run some dungeons. I'll try playing an alt. I'll try playing the AH. Sometimes I'll try playing a different game. After a while, you're not so burned out and leveling becomes fun again. Why play a game if it isn't fun?

Scartlet-cide

Scarlet-cide

Let me get this out of the way first. I don't like farming. I've never been particularly patient at any repetitive activity. Even something like creating glyphs, with a host of addons that make it trivially easy, I still only do once in a long time. I do not like to farm, I will not eat green eggs and ham, Sam I am.

Idle Hands
One day recently I found myself in a situation where I had, some internet access, some free time, but not the ability to play World of Warcraft. So what do I do? I READ about World of Warcraft. Its sick, I know.

Enchant
Anyhoo, I got onto the subject of what enchant I should put on Onaara's weapon(s). Looking around, I found that Crusader works well with Heirloom items, and eventually when I dual-wield, the buff will stack. Checking on Bob, I noticed that I do not have the enchant. The AH is of no help ( none available). A quick browse of WoWhead shows that it is a low-percentage drop off a very specific mob in Western Plaguelands. Good News is that they are low-level mobs, easily farmable by Bob. The bad news, its a specific mob, and the drop rate is less than 1%. Reading through the comments is a bit encouraging, people mentioning that they have gotten it in as little as 20 mins. Another poster mentions that Blizzard has buffed the drop-rate.

Those poor mages..
The mobs in question are Scarlet Spellbinders, they congrigate in a tower on the north side of WPL. Riding there on Bob,I find a spellbinder or two on the road leading up to the tower. All are two-shot(sometimes one) easily. I part myself up on the top of the tower and wait for respawns. Thats where I still am today. I haven't spent any sizeable amount of time farming this enchant. I imagine it'll take at least an hour or two. So far I've killed maybe a dozen spellbinders. They just don't have a chance when my machine-gun-imp is set on aggressive. I just have to be careful not to let one die without causing some damage to it, or else I am not able to loot it.

The Scarlet Crusade should start recruiting heavily, they're about to lose quite a few magic-users. How many Scarlet Spellbinders need to die before the enchant is in my hands? As many as there needs to be.

*queue Highlander music*....

Money making

Spent the majority of the night making glyphs to sell. Waash makes them and Huntry sells them. Yes, they've both taken time off from adventuring to run a glyph business. While at the rate I go I'll never hit the gold cap, inscription will usually make enough to cover the toons repair, gem, enchant and crafting costs.

Brain-dead Strategy

The best way, at least for me, to make money is do to a lot of little things. This can be taken to the extreme where you have 10,000 auctions all trying to make 2-3g each. I prefer a bit sainer approach. I tend to just cherry pick the 2-3 different fields that will make me money. I do have a high level Tailor, Scribe, Miner, Alchemist and Jewelcrafter so if you don't have these, this may be more difficult.

Disclamer: While I do dabble in playing the AH, I'm not very serious at it. I make enough to have a healthy reserve, in case I want to buy something. This is what I personally do, and they don't make huge amounts of gold, but they make enough for my needs.If you want to get serious with playing the AH you'd be better served going to a dedicated gold-making blog. I'll have links at the bottom.
Inscription
Make Glyphs. Use an addon such as QA2, find which glyphs are selling for quite a bit and create those. Sell a few at a time. I tend to cherry pick the ones that are selling for 20-30g, and just make those. You will get undercut so expect to be able to sell 5-10 at a time before having to cancel and repost. Fortunately the deposit is so small, its still worth it.This won't work if you happen to get a "Goblin" on your server. They love to drive the prices down. Fortunately i'm not very hardcore about the AH so I just stop posting for a while.

Epic Offhands. The epic offhands are still useful as starter Epics for a lot of magic-using classes. They sell decently, one at a time.

Tailoring
Cloth cooldowns. Make them on every cooldown, and specialize in one of the cloth types. This will be removed in 3.3.3 so do them now, and sell the cloth.

Netherweave Bags. Check the price of bags, then check the price of a stack of Netherweave cloth. Add the cost of Rune thread to the price of a stack of Netherweave. Thats how you know if they're worth making. Usually I can make 2-3g a piece. I post about 6-10 at a time.

Alchemy
Personally, I'm a transmutation master. This means that I'm all about transmuting Epic gems. Every epic gem transmute is guranteed to make you SOME gold. If you proc extra gems, then you've just made even more gold.

Potions and Flasks, unless you're specialized in those, are not worth making. The mats most times will cost MORE than you can get for the crafted flask.
Mining
Smelt Titansteel. The CD for this will be removed in 3.3.3, which will cause prices to free-fall. Do them, and sell the titansteel now.

Jewelcrafting
This synergizes well with Transmuation Mastery of Alchemy. You make money selling the uncut Gem, but you make even more money if you cut the gem and sell it ready-made. Bold and Runed Cardinal Rubies make a lot of profit.

Enchanting
I have yet to really make gold enchanting scolls with this.The cost of mats and a vellum ( which your Scribe can make for you) ensures a pretty slim profit. You can make a decent amount of gold spamming Trade LFW if you have some indemand recipes.

Herbalism/Skinning
Goes without saying, grab every herb, node and animal skin you can get while questing or doing daillies. Sell them on the AH. Free money. Why is it free? Cause you were there anyway, you didn't go out and farm them.

You can however, make a decent amount of gold my making Large Prismatic Shards. If you have the Void Shatter pattern from Isle of Quel'Danas, check to see how much a Void Crystal sells for. Then see how much a Large Prismatic is selling for. If its more than half a cost of a Void Crystal then you can make a profit.

End of Guide



That's not to say Onaara didn't level. She was able to gain a quick two levels. She's finally got a second heal (Lesser Healing Wave) and a mana regen spell (Water Shield). Both should help tremendously when healing. In fact Water Shield should be handy even in Enhancement questing. When I ran out of drinks while questing I had no recourse but to sit and wait for Out of combat regen.

Another great perk of reaching level 20 (well 21 since Onaara dinged while in the middle of a long series of quests), was that she now has a mount. A purple Elekk to be precise. Everyone meet Onaara's trusted mount Erin.

Onaara Progress Report

Worked on Onaara quite a bit this sunday. I had some free time while Fiance was volunteering at the Humane Society.

I've healed a few times on Onaara, Shadowfang Keep a few times and half of deadmines. I've learned that it is very possible to heal a 5man when not specced for it. I've also learned that you really need healing GEAR to heal an instance.

At this level I only have one true healing spell: Healing Wave. It has a 2 second cast time and takes a moderate amount of mana. With my mana bar just now topping over 1k I've had to really worry about overhealing and mana conservation, things I never have to worry about on Hooff. I've had to be creative, timing casts to compensate for the 2 second cast time and being very stingy about making up for DPS mistakes. I don't have a choice, I just don't have the mana to spam heals on every party member.

I've been picking up upgrades to both Resto and Enhancement from the dungeons I've been running. This include a decent staff, belt and leg pieces. I was able to heal Ragefire Chasm without much trouble. Deadmines was a bit more of a challenge but still very doable. Healing Shadowfang Keep on the other hand was an exercise in ... the best word I can use is asshattery.

Fail: Shadowfang Keep (warning, quite long)

Onaara zones into the instance, already in progress. In front of me I can see the other 4 party members, on the other side of a large portcullis. I greet the party, and start looking for a way through the obstruction. Eventually I find a small door near the portal. I make my way through the building. This being my first time in the instance I make at least two wrong turns. When I finally get within range, everyone but the tank is on the floor, and the tank is dropping fast. If this was in a heroic on my paladin, I would now regale you with how I used beacon, FoL and assorted other light-enfused tactics to bring the tank to full health in the span of a GCD or two. But it is not, so I had to sit there and cast one healing spell... the two second cast Healing Wave. When the cast bar has but a sliver left to go, the tank drops. First thing the tank says is "Where the hell is the healer?".

"Just got here" I reply.

"Oh sorry" he mutters. Normally if no "Sorry" was said I would have seriously considered leaving. From my experience, a wipe is when people start to show their true colors. I decided to stay, and see how things went. Part of me wishes I had left at that point.

As the dungeon progresses, I notice that I'm going OOM quite a bit more. I have to drink almost every pull, especially considering the tank and DPS don't give me a chance to drink before pulling the next group. Not only that, a hunter seemed to take it upon himself to keep pulling more enemies to the tank.

On our second wipe, the tank decides he/she has had enough and drops group. The group decides that the druid will tank until a new tank can be found. The druid then proceeds to "tank" in Night Elf form, with a spellpower staff. I ask her why she doesn't just go to bear form. "We can all fight." was the reply. I facepalm and proceed to tell her that NO this will not be happening and that people will die because I run out of mana. Looking back, I don't know where my bottomless reserve of patience for this group originated. Another wipe was the result of this ingenious plan. Had a tank not materialized within seconds of this wipe I would have dropped group.

The new tank, a dranei pally, was much better than the old, She could keep aggro, ( though she seemed to be adverse to throwing a consecrate down), which mean less party damage, that really helped with my mana issues.

Around this time I noticed that our old druid "tank" was needing on everything, even things that she could not equip. I asked her about it, and she said that she needed on it cause she never got anything. I told her that you only need on upgrades, everything else is greed.

Her reply was "I'm different, I'm new".

With the calm of a zen master I replied "Well now you know, so don't do it again."

She replied "ok sorry". Three minutes later she announced that she was bored and had to go, and promptly dropped group. I wish I had taken a screenshot of that epic conversation.

A new DPS was found, a mage if I remember, and we soldiered on. At this point 3/5 of the original group has been replaced, including myself. Whats left is 2 dps, a hunter and a rogue? I think.

We continue on, and get to some steps where we encounter a pack of mobs. We are doing decently until another pack of mobs comes running in and wipes the group. The (non-hunter) dps says that Onaara pulled hte other group.

I ask, "How exactly do I pull from just healing?".

Someone else says "Well, healing does produce aggro."

I reply "True enough, but unless I physically get too close to the mobs, I can't pull with healing aggro".

The tank replies, "The hunter accidentally shot the other group in the stairs, no biggie. Oh and Sham shut up if you don't know what you're talking about."

This sparks a short argument which devolves to Sham mentioning certain vocal musings that are uttered by the pally's mother during certain sexual acts. At this point a kick-vote is triggered for Sham, and I happily vote.

We get to the final boss, and the last original member of the group, has to leave. They D/C and we decide to just 4-man the boss. The boss drops without much fanfare, loot is divided and we collectively breath a sigh of relief.

I'd like to say thank you to the Ms. Replacement Pally tank, Ms. Replacement Mage and Mr. Replacement Warrior for making sure we all get our bag of treats. Even Ms. Original Hunter, you weren't great, but compared to the other originals, you were decent.

Shameless Screen Shots:



This Onaara doing the Belf disguise quest. Always one of my favorites. Random tidbit: the first time I did this on my paladin. Some horde were actually attacking Azure Watch. I think they they were very confused to find a belf girl that they could not communicate with. Would have been epic if the disguise allowed me to communicate with them though.






At level 16, I received Ghost Wolf form. Well actually it was level 17.5 when I received the spell, having completely forgotten to train for a level and a half. Still, it beats walking around everywhere. Plus I can technically auto-attack in ghost wolf form.

Onaara

A little late but please welcome my new baby shaman Onaara. Female Draenei Shaman, with two heirloom pieces, chest and shoulders. Played her two nights and she's level 14. She's been alternating between 2hander and 1h + shield. It all depends on the stats and weapon damage. Still trying to decide if it's worth buying an heirloom 2-hander for levels 15-40. At 40, she can dual-wield and will be using 2x Venerable Mass of McGowan 1-handers.

I didn't think that having an heirloom weapon would make much difference but it seems to. Especially in the early levels, having a good weapon makes the difference between easy killing and a corpse run.

Once Onaara hits 15 then I'm gonna queue her up as a healer hoping that that should help with leveling and getting gear. If she ends up getting decent gear that way then that may make an heirloom weapon unecessary.

Edit: She just hit level 15.

I was looking around wowhead a bit to see if u could find a decent 2hander available for Stone Keeper's Shards. I figure its not really worth it to spend Emblems for a 2hander but it was worth it to use shards. It turns out the only mildly stat-appropriate 2hander is the sword which Onaara cannot use. I guess she'll just have to stick with quest rewards and drops.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Stabby

Fiance, sister-in-law, and I headed to he swap meet today. As usual I spent moat of the time carrying bags, "giving opinions" and generally just stayin out of the way. We ended up at a booth selling knives. A particular knife caught my eye. Opening it reveiled that it was spring loaded, meaning that it deployed with a very satisfying "whip-click". I decided that I didn't need a knife and left to fin the women.

On the way back we ended up near that booth again. That same knife caught my eye but a few minutes with it had me wanting something with a serated edge. Finally I found he knife I would eventually buy.




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Shaman

A recent WoW.com podcast talked about Shamans, namely enhancement Shamans. It was so convincing that I am now planning on leveling my own Enchancement ( and probalby dual-spec'd Resto ) Shaman. With Huntry being stuck at level 23, I'm a bit aprehentios about starting yet another toon ( not to mention having a Horde Rogue at 17 ). To aid in this, I've decided that I'm going to use the "extra" emblems and shards on my level 80s to use. I know for sure that there are quite a
bit of Stonekeeper's Shards. Since I don't see myself getting into PVP or Arena any time soon, I might as well spend them on some useful gear.PVP Heirlooms for PVE content may not be optimum, but the XP
increase will more than make up for it.

To this end I've decided to gear up my shaman with one of the
following for each slot. I included PVP items mainly because all three of my level 80 characters have more Stone Keeper's Shards that they know what to do with, so they might as well be put to good use:

Shoulders:
Stained Shadowcraft Spaulders - 40 Emblems of Heroism
Champion Herod' Shoulder - 40 Emblems of Heroism Prized Beastmaster's Mantle - 200 Stone Keeper's Shards

I already have the Stained Shadowcraft Spaulders from when I leveled Waash. I may just use those until the stat allocation annoys me enough
to buy the Mail piece. As an added bonus, the stat allocation for the mail pieces are good for Enhancement Shamans as well as Hunters. So Huntry can make use of these as well.

Chest:
Champion's Deathdealer Breastplate - 40 Emblems of Heroism

As far as I know there are no PVP chest pieces available, so this is the clear winner. This can also be used by Huntry eventually. Bonus, its also a mid-drift ;-).

Weapon:
Sharpened Scarlet Kris(1H Dagger) - 200 Stone Keeper's Shards Battleworn Thrash Blade(1H Sword) - 200 Stone Keeper's Shards
Venerable Mass of McGowan(1H Mace) - 40 Emblems of Heroism
Balanced Heartseeker (1H Dagger) - 40 Emblems of Heroism

The choice of weapon has been the hardest. Partly because using an heirloom weapon does not generate the +10% experience bonus that the
shoulder and chest pieces do. This allows me to put the decision off without feeling like I'm missing out on extra XP.

Of the 4 possible choices, it gets complicated depending on which
factors I choose to give more weight to. The factors I'm considering include effectiveness for this toon, reuseability, and cost. I want
the weapon to be effective for this toon, or else why even buy an heirloom weapon? I also want the weapons to be reuseable. The next three classes that I have an eye towards leveling include this
enhancement shaman, a Hunter, and a Rogue ( possibly a Worgen Rogue for Cata). Theoretically I could buy one set of gear that would work well with all three classes. Sidenote: I will also want to dual-spec
to restoration, to aid in getting into dungeons, but that will probably require gathering a whole other set of gear.

My last consideration is cost. My toons have varrying amounts of "old emblems", namely Heroism, Valor and Conquest badges. If they havent' spent them by now, they probably don't need any gear that is purchaseable with those emblems. Those can be converted to Heroism badges in order to purchase the heirlooms. I hesitate converting the current Triumph emblems down to Heroism because all the toons still have gear they need to purchase with those badges. With that in mind, all the toons also have quite a few Stone Keeper's Shards. Those are
gathered from participating in Wintergrasp, and from killing Heroic bosses when Wintergrasp is owned by your faction. Bob has somewhere
around 350 shards, Hotplate about 450, and Hooff a staggernig 600 shards. I'm not too interested in PVP, so I doubt I'll use those shards for that. Other than gem patterns, or vanity mounts, the shards
are up for grabs.

If I were to go strictly for maximum effectiveness for my Enhancement Shaman, the choices narrow. At level 40, a shaman can dual-weild. At
that point 2x Venerable Mass of McGowans becomes the best
overall. They have theright stats, and are both slow weapons. Pre-40, the shaman would best be served with a nice 2-hander. At 40 EoH each, those maces are expensive, and aren't going to be used until level 40,
so I would like to postpone buying two until absolutely necessary. For a rogue, the stats are decent, +agi, +stam, +ap and some crit. The
stats are decent for a hunter also, unfortunately hunters cannot use Mace weapons. Eventually I think I will get at least 1 Mass, maybe even two if at level 40, my other characters have emblems to spare.

Purely based on cost, I would go for the Sharpened Scarlet Kris, its cheap, using Shards, passable for a shaman, good for a rogue, and useable by a hunter. The fast weapon speed makes it sub-optimal for a
shaman but not terrible, specially considering the quest reward alternatives.

The Balanced Heartseeker is a nice weapon, but expensive, and not too much nicer than the PVP alternative. Also, after reading through the
comments it seems that the Battleworn Thrash Blade's proc is very low and its lack of raw stats is disturbing.

Looking at the possible 2handers for pre 80, none seem particularly suited to Shamans ( or Rogues/Hunters) for that matter. I think the happy medium may just be to get a Venerable Mass of McGowan now, and get another at 40. Or get a Sharpened Scarlet Kris now ( cause its cheap) and get one or two Venerables at 40. Either way.. this should
be fun.

Ulduar Easy Mode

Ulduar Easy Mode

Bob finally saw the inside of Ulduar. This was for the weekly raid, this time to kill XT-002 Deconstructor. Ulduar has been nerfed quite a bit, this was evident from the very first boss. To activate the easy mode of Flame Leviathan no longer required players to kill all the
towers of the Keepers. It could now be started by an option when the event is started. We rode straight up to FL and one shot him.

The trash to XT was always a pain for Sinister Blades. Until we
perfected our "One tank hold everything while one mob is peeled away" technique, we would wipe more on trash than XT him/her self. Our MT for this group felt that we would be fine... and we were. He tanked everything and everything was simply AOEd down. XT went down in one-shot with me being #2 dps with 6.5k (evil grin).

We were informed that those who wanted could stay to do Kologarn. I offered to switch to Hotplate to help tank the adds leading up to Kolo. The MT said we should be fine. They had me simply banish one of the elementals and we got through the trash without much difficulty. Kologarn actually wiped us, from an unfortunate eye beam/adds/positioning shot. Our next try got him down.

Its amazing how different Ulduar is. I remember doing the raid on
Hooff. Everyone had to be at the top of their game. 100% attention or it would be a wipe. Now a rag-tag PUG 9-manned it in 1 shot.

I want to try ICC.

Huntering

Wow-ed-out. I logged off WoW last night at about 9pm. Not because I had something better to do, but because I was bored. The thought of doing yet another Heroic made me want to turn the computer off.

Originally I thought I could get away from the grind of chain-heroics by leveling my baby hunter. It went well for about 20 minutes, but I quickly remembered why I stopped leveling her in the first place. I didn't want to level anymore. While the mechanics were new ( my first hunter), the resource management was incomplete. I ran out of mana constantly, but had no way to recoup it, short of sitting and drinking after every second pull.

I ran stockades through the Dungeon Finder. The run itself was going decently well until the tank DCed. She never came back. Her friend insisted that she would be right back, but after 20 minutes of trying to pet tank ( Bubu the Bear and the lock's Voidy), we wiped and just called it. I was looking forward to getting that satchel of useful items too.

Thoughts on Huntering:

Playing a hunter was fun. Its very similar to a warlock. Find target, send pet, dps target and hope it dies before you pull aggro on the pet. I did notice that having mana as its depletable resource seems very awkward and a mistake. It would make more sense to me if hunters used an energy-based system like rogues, or even a rune-like system like DKs. It seems very awkward that all of a sudden your gun can't shoot anymore because you've run out of magic?

Will I continue to level her to 80? Not sure. I don't hate the class ( like I hated leveling the warrior, sorry Tempered), so its feasible that I may play her again. I don't LOVE the class like I did with the pally. It seems similar to how I felt about the Death Knight, fun but uncoordinated. Unfortunately the hunter doesn't have the luxury of starting at level 55. For now she'll have to be content with being a level 23 Hunter with 20,000g in her pockets.

Ended up in the emergency room on friday. Was having issues breathing
and pain in my chest. Normally I'd just chalk it up to something weird
and just give it a day to go away before seriously considering getting
medical attention. But with what happened to the fiance a year or two
ago, I decided it might be good to go to the hospital.

We arrived at 3pm or so, and were seen right away ( in triage trouble
breathing, chest pains trumps almost everything else ). They rule out
me not getting enough oxygen and start doing some testing. Long story
short, it wasn't a heart attack, stroke, PE or clot.

Eventually they sent me home, convinced it was a simple gastric
imbalance of some sort. I guess it ended as well as it could have. Now
to wait for the medical bills.

Tanking Burnout

I've recently stopped tanking on Hotplate. My recent lack of
time/inclination has drawn me more towards healing/DPS. Tanking has
just proven too stressful.

When you're the tank, responsibility for the group falls squarely on
your shoulders. If you slip up, tis almost a guranteed wipe. An
amazing healer can't do too much if the baddie runs over and wants to
say Hi.

Tanking honestly just took more effort, responsibility, and brainpower
than I was willing to put in for a 15-20 minute run for emblems. If
the environment were different ( say a guild raid, or even a run with
multiple guildies) I would be more than willing to tank. Even now I
will still occationally tank, but I prefer to DPS.

The wait times for DPS, while much longer than Tanks, isn't that
bad. I queue up for the dungeon finder as soon as I log on, then I'll
go to the Auction house, browse a bit and send things I find to my
other alts. If I have time, and the am on the correct alt, I'll start
to do a daily or two. By then the dungeon finder will pop and I'll be
good to go.

While trying to DPS on my DK, I came to the sad realization that my T9
tanking gear was still better for DPS, than my dedicated DPS set. This
creates a weird situation where I DPS in tanking gear ( looking like a
complete scrub), and get matched to higher-level heroics based on my
Tanking gear. I've been thoroughly stomped on the meters, with my
paltry 1.5-2k DPS vs some 4k-5k DPS, DPS.

State of the WoW

Its time once again to catch everyone ( by everyone I mean me, and my one follower, thanks sweetheart =)), on what I've been doing in the World of Warcraft.

Hotplate, DK Blood Tank/Blood DPS:

Hotplate has 2 pieces of her Tier9 tanking gear. She really only has 2-3 pieces of blue quality gear left. She remains the quickest way into a heroic. Rarely do I have to wait longer than 10-15 seconds before dungeon finder grabs me a group.

With the higher iLevel gear, the DPS have also started to get much higher. Usually this isn't a problem but I've noticed an increase in frequency of dicks. Seems like the better geared the DPS, the more they expect to not have to worry about fundamental ideas like, letting the tank grab some aggro before nuking. Its gotten so bad that I've taken a break from seriously running Heroics with this toon. I'll usually still do the first heroic random for the Frost and Triumph badges, but after that I'll log into another, less stressful toon.

Hooff, Paladin Holy/Ret:

With the burn out associated with tanking, Hooff has got quite a bit of play recently. He also has 2 pieces of Tier9, Holy gear. The wait for healing is quite a bit longer than Tanks, usually in the order of 5-6 minutes. Thats not bad at all considering DPS have to wait around 15 minutes to get into a group.

I've found healing quite a bit less stressful than tanking. There's quite a bit more room for error. As long as I keep the tank up, if a DPS drops cause I missed a heal then its not a huge problem. Plus in general, people seem to be quite a bit nicer to healers. Maybe its a throwback to when healers were much more in demand than tanks or DPS. Or it could be that everyone is just used to having a girl as a healer, and used to being nice to them. Either way, I'm not complaining.

Hooff was also able to get a new weapon, http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50210 which is admittedly a caster DPS sword. It was better than Firesoul, his previous weapon, which also was a caster DPS weapon.

Quackingbob, Warlock Destruction:

I've just started trying to get into groups on Bob. With my other two toons, I would usually queue up and wait to get into a group. THe most I would do before getting the invite would be head to the AH and do a quick scan, or possibly straighten out my mail/bags/bank. With Bob, this isn't the case. Usually I will queue up, and then go about my business and let the dungeon finder interrupt what I was doing. Usually this business involves making cloth on my 3-day cooldowns, or scouring the AH for enchanting mats. Since I don't usually do dailies anymore ( the rep I can get with tabards, and the gold I can get from the AH), I don't have an easy filler-activity for bob to do.

Because of the long wait times, and lack of filler. I haven't run bob through heroics near as much as the other two characters. This is really a shame because theoretically Bob has the highest DPS potential of all my toons ( because the others are hybrids, while bob is pure dps).

Even with all this, Bob got his first piece of Tier9 last night. The tier 9 shoulders replaced the shoulders he got from Naxx a few months ago. Also a few days ago, Bob won a new weapon in Pit of Saron. http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50227 Its a healing dagger, but it was better than the Spectral Kris that Bob had before. Yes, Bob got a healing weapon for DPS caster, while Hooff got a DPS caster weapon for healing. RNG can be a cruel mistress.

Future:

I would really like to get a new 2hander for Hotplate. She isn't having too much trouble keeping threat in 5-mans, mainly because of Rune Strike being macro'd to her Heart Strike and Death Strike abilities, but a higher DPS weapon would really help if I ever get into raids, or even in the harder heroics ( Pit of Saron and Halls of Reflection). It I'm lucky enough, I might get her Quel'Delar, if I can find a Battered Hilt that isn't going for 15k+. Honestly I'd love to be able to get Quel'Delar for all 3 of my toons.