Emptying My Head Edition

Well it's Sunday and and I promised a couple weeks ago I was not going to let another 4 weeks go by without writing something. Problem is, I don't think I have enough on a single topic to write a complete article. So I decided to dump out all the stuff that could not be tweeted about. Damn that number of character restriction.

Ok, here we go.

HST

In Canada on July 1 (Happy Birthday) they rolled out the dreaded HST. They said it was a good thing, it will help consumers and small businesses. Well I am a small business and I think there must be something I am missing. Anyway, not going to rant about that. Where I live in Ontario gas was about $0.97/L on June 30th. On July 1st it went up the 8% to about $1.04/L (to accommodate the HST change). However; 2 weeks later it has dropped back down to the $0.97/L.

So what I see is that prior to HST coming into effect gas should have only cost about $0.88/L? Do you think they were gouging us. hmmmmm

Education System

Apparently you don't need to know anything to become a chemistry teacher. I guess I am over-qualified. Strike that off my to-do list. Enough said about that.

Bacon

Everything is better with bacon - but you knew that already.

Rough Morning

You know its going to be a rough morning when you look in the cupboard and have to decide between no coffee or instant coffee. You choose instant coffee.

Not Knowing Your Pecking Order

This one will be a little longer to put out there. Let me set it up for you. I have a daughter who is a WOW fanatic (Although those Twilight blood sacks have been eroding that lately) and she is mostly responsible for my pen name. You see, she is in charge of character creation. If I want to start another toon I tell her the race and class and she does the naming and creation. I am up to 40 toons now. Might have to update the pen name. I keep telling her to leave room for Cataclysm, I will need at least a few spots for the new races.

I have great friend and business partner that is well endowed with computing skill (I hope you didn't think I was going anywhere else with that.) and he has written a few excellent WOW mods (found here). Due to his said mod writing abilities he secured himself a Cataclysm Beta Key.

So now the story unfolds.

We are working this past Thursday and the friend says, "Why don't you bring your daughter over on Saturday and we can have a BBQ. She can play the beta for awhile." "Sounds good.", we discuss the menu and I give my daughter a call.

Ring, Ring... Ring, Ring...

"yyyyeeeessss..." I hear, "were you still sleeping", I say.

"yyyyeeeessss..." she says. "you know it is 2 in the afternoon." "yyyyeeeessss..." You see we leave the kid home alone during the summer (although my parents live next door, and her brother is still sleeping downstairs in his room until about 4:30pm in the afternoon - he raids all night - and not panties, so you see, she has some supervision if necessary).

"We are going to a BBQ on Saturday."

"No I am not.", she says, "I have a sleep over at a friends." That is on Friday I reminded her, we will be going later Saturday afternoon.

"No - why would I want to go to a BBQ. Where is it?", she queries.

"It' s at Jason's place.", I say. "Why would I want to go to scary Jason's house for a BBQ?!?", she screams.

"He has a Cataclysm Beta Key."

"WHAT TIME ARE YOU PICKING ME UP!!!!!!", she shrieks.

At that moment in time. I was not sure if I was the "coolest dad in the world", or second fiddle to the guy my daughter thought drove around in a white van handing out candy.

Needless to say we had a wonderful time. Hamburgers, roast potatoes, prosciutto wrapped asparagus, salad, homemade chocolate ice cream (he has his own ice cream machine in case candy doesn't work), beer (almost forgot the beer). My daughter got to experience both starting areas, getting each of the new races up to level 12 in about 5 hours. LOL - I have some friends that take about 6 weeks to get one toon to level 12 let alone 2 toons (She's a pro).

As our evening concluded I was confident I was still the "coolest dad ever". At least until she asked me when I was going to get my Beta Key.

Doh! Working on that.

Sorry - RL got in the way.

Well I was wrong, the life of a WOW blogger is not a small flat on the Seine with the Eiffel Tower as your back drop. Sipping espresso, or a dark European beer while you stare at your replica Frostmourne on its epic ice shard stand through the smokey haze of your lemon grass incense (I don't smoke but had to have the smokey haze). Contemplating your next article.

It's actually staring at your computer screen not believing it has been about 4 weeks since your last article, gulping lukewarm coffee from your Tony Packo's Cafe mug, eyes watering because the dog is under your desk with a gas problem. Four weeks, where has the time gone? Well it was the four weeks of day job hell, the perfect storm of everyone on the planet wanting work done the same few weeks of the year. It happens every year. It's the daughter's grade six graduation (never got a grade six graduation - I think I am jealous). It's the wife and her grand dad going in for surprise operations (Is a surprise operation a good thing? They will be fine.), the back yard project (which went surprisingly well and under budget). And finally, the purchase of the Logitech G19 Keyboard and the massive learning curve of re-educating my fingers where my healthstone button is when I am on that alt or when another warlock is nice enough to give us one in a raid.

I have managed to play during these last four weeks, but with less focus. Summers here and I am torn between playing or tanning my pasty white behind. Fish here, daily there. I was 5 days behind in doing any of the Ahune daily instances. Only one toon got their scythe and only one other got the pet. One nice surprise was a ICC10 raid I managed to get into. You see, I am apparently on the cusp of the dreaded GS cutoff for getting into those raids. I usually do the /wave at the Dalaran fountain only to be told that my GS isn't high enough (this particular toon - 5400GS). Yes I know - I already did the GS rant. But this raid leader let me in. It was a guild run I think, with only a few of us tagging along as oddballs. They treated us as equals when it came to rolling on gear, nothing was "reserved" (we aren't talking the escargot in butter sauce at the cafe down by the Seine here), they seemed to be learning the instance. They were happy they got as far as they did, and we set a time to try and finish the instance before the reset. I actually got an invite through the calendar thing on the minimap (first time). I would like to give a shout out to the guys and gals in Devils Rejects - Malfurion for an enjoyable time. I hope we go a long way in finishing the ICC 10 tonight. I guess the devil rejected them for being nice.

Time to scoot, I have to go wield my mighty Frostbroom and sweep off the patio and finish the rest of my chores before my wife gets home from work. I might even have another cup of lukewarm coffee while I contemplate my next blog which I promise won't be 4 weeks from now.

Hats off to the Wow.com writers and all the other bloggers that do this full time.