The Power of the One Ring to Neuter them All

Summers winding down and back to school is right around the corner. This past Saturday my daughter had her soccer banquet. The league she is in is spectacular. I have been very impressed with the way it is run. At the end of the year they treat the kids to a carnival like day at the field where they play - tons of food and those bouncer things. Although I am not sure if a hot dog/bouncer combo is a good thing, the kids seem to have fun. I think my daughter is past the bouncers though, being a tween and all. It is tough to text when little Jimmy is bouncing around next to you spewing hot dog bits.

Anyway, today's blog will be the telling of the tale of us heading to the soccer field. It starts with us sleeping in, at least in my wife's mind. You see my daughter's team wasn't in the championship game which was to start at 9:30am, with the awards to be handed out after the game which would be around 10:30am. We got up and scrambled around the house. I decided that since it was going to be a hot day I would spray on a small amount of AXE to keep me smelling fresh (remember the antiperspirant article from last week). We left the the house about 9:15am and before getting to the park we had to stop at the local Starbucks to grab a couple of coffees. The wife and kid stayed in the car while I ran in.

At this point I need to throw a bit more detail into this AXE business. We have all seen the commercials, guy sprays this crap on and goes out, guy gets swarmed by chicks, makes for a happy guy. Now I was never one to actually believe the commercials. They were way too far fetched until now. Lets return to the Starbucks shall we.

In I walk, up to the counter and I place my order. The girl behind the counter was blond, visually pleasant and petite. She asked for my order - Venti Caramel Macchiato, Grande Caramel Macchiato extra hot. I always order mine extra hot. I hate it when the coffee gets to you and its already lukewarm. Damn you Stella Liebeck.

This is where it got weird, she started to talk to me. Nice hat, is it Michigan State? What you doing today? I know, customer service, stroke the customer's ego, get them coming back crap. This was different, this girl has never talked to me when I have come in before. Was it the AXE? OMG - the gay barista started to talk to me with that twinkle in his eye. Was the AXE jamming his gaydar? Not that there is anything wrong with that.

I knew I had to get out of there fast. I raised my left hand, the power of the wedding band would protect me. They cowered in terror (at least that was how I saw it) so I could make my escape. I returned to the sanctuary of the car. I was safe. From there it was an uneventful day at the soccer field.

To think a visit to the Starbucks could have been a life or death experience. Now many of you that play WOW have done a cooking daily. Many of you, no doubt have opened your Small Spice Bags to find your Northern Spices and possibly some - Old Spices. You take these Old Spices and toss them at other player characters and they end up having a buff that says, "they smell great". Wouldn't it be awesome if and when you threw these old spices at a player character that all characters in their vicinity were temporarily mind controlled and were drawn to the toon that had the buff? It would be hysterical (in my mind), of course you would have to put a cooldown of a couple hours in there, or no one would be moving around Dalaran - other than to have no control of their toon as it chased down a guy that "smelled great".

Oh the rants on Ventrilo this would cause. I remember the Shattrath undead craziness after a patch (can't remember which one) and the Ventrilo rants it caused.

Have a great week.

It's a Monday

It's a Monday. You are asking yourself, "What is he doing blogging on a Monday?" Normally, I would be in a fetal position, rocking back and forth at work, but today... I should jump right into it, I want to get done before my lunch is over.

My son is going back to college in a week or two and he hasn't even registered yet. So that is a bit stressful. My x-wife calls me about his birthday coming up and she wants to get him a car. Not a new car, a hand-me-down from her mom. However; I can hear the chi-ching of money leaving my pocket when it comes to re-working the insurance etc. She asks me what I think and I tell her that I would prefer if she assists our son by giving him whatever she was going to spend on the car, so he can make his college payment. Then there is only the stress of figuring out how to pay for the next installment. She agrees and she proceeds to contact our son to make the money transfer arrangements. Done.

I called my son to say that I got word that the money was transferred and that he needs to get up to the college this afternoon to pay. He informs me that his grandparents (my parents) are not at home. You see he doesn't have a car - Chicken and the Egg story can be inserted here. Anyway, I told him I would call my parents and make arrangements for them to take him to the college tomorrow.

This is where the blog really starts. I dialed my parents cell number. Ring, ring, (insert 20 rings here)... You see my parents are almost in their 80's and my dad wears hearing aids. So it is either he can't hear the phone or he is looking for a place to pull over. You see, we can't use a cell phone while driving or we get a ticket, and he hasn't figured out the whole newfangled blue tooth thing yet. Even though it wouldn't work because his ears are full of hearing aids. Oh wait, he's answering (here's the conversation).

Dad: Hello

Alts37: Hi Dad, where are you, what you doing?

Dad: I am at a funeral (realize the sound in the background is the 3rd verse of Rock of Ages)

Alts37: HOLY CRAP Dad, I will call you back.

I hang up.

OMG - it rang at least 30 times, my dad wears hearing aids, I am sure it sounded like a 747 taking off in that funeral chapel. I feel SOOOOOO bad.

What is it with people with cell phones. When I go to the movies I think I have my cell phone off before I even finish purchasing my tickets. There is a time and place when you don't answer a cell phone (nor have it on) and that is at a funeral. UGH - Some peoples parents.

Advertising Claims

OK, I ran out of antiperspirant over the weekend so I went out to get more. Before I get into my issue I have a question.

Normally, you place the antiperspirant on your under arms. Not being a hairy guy I usually place said antiperspirant on the haired area of my arm pit. If you are a hairy guy where do you draw the line in antiperspirant application? I digress

Anyway, I am at the store and I am weighing my antiperspirant options. I settle on the "Degree Adventure Series" for 2 reasons. It is the "white stick" - not the blue, green or clear gel that feels like glue and usually causes me to smell like rotting fish within a couple of hours. The second reason - the package was the coolest IMO.

I got my purchase home. I opened the cap (I like to be surprised when smelling it for the first time), and it smelt (is that a word - other than a small silvery fish that my dad likes to eat) - Adventury (I know that isn't a word).

So I put it on. Not bad, good feel, not tacky. I thrust my arm pit into my daughters face as she was mid instance (Utgarde Pinnacle I think) for her reaction. The desired effect.

Then it happened with no provocation. My arm pits started to leak. Like Niagara Falls I might add. What the hell. It's suppose to be antiperspirant. It got to the point where I had to change my shirt and underwear (my boxer's waistband was taking the brunt of the sweat soaking up duties).

What is it with this antiperspirant? It's like PvP gear on a PvE server - apparently it improves your GearScore number, but it doesn't do anything for you. Like "Resilience" although the term could be twisted around to mean that the antiperspirant would actually work, but it doesn't.

Well that is the Monday Special Edition. Have a nice day.

Counseling Required?

What a week. It has been pretty busy at work, my daughter got home from up north and threw the house into chaos and I realized when I was cutting the grass yesterday that it had been about 3 weeks since I did it last. Where is the time going? Cataclysm will be here in a few months and I am totally unprepared. Additionally, I had a couple of incidents this week that makes me ponder a trip to the "shrink". First the incidents:

Earlier in the week "The Wife" called me at work and asked me about the dinner situation. Considering what I had been eating prior to her returning home with our daughter, I had not really put much thought into it. I told her I would stop at the grocery store on the way home and pick something up. Let's just say I picked a bunch of stuff up, checked out and headed out to the car.

So here I am in the parking lot bent over putting the groceries in the car. Completing that I stood up and paused staring over the roof of my car at another couple walking through the parking lot. Not just an ordinary couple. These two were probably around when the dinosaurs walked the earth. Now I have seen old couples before but there was something weird (have you noticed that the "i" before "e" except after "c" rule totally doesn't work for the word "weird" - hmm weird) about them.

They were holding hands, smiles on their faces and they were almost skipping through the parking lot. It was almost as if you could hear the music from the Viagra commercials in the air. Then I noticed that the gentleman was carrying a produce bag. There was a SINGLE BANANA in that produce bag. WHO BUYS A SINGLE BANANA? OMG I thought. A wave of horror descended over me at the thought of what they were going to do with that banana. I had to get out of there.

So now I am at home. Still reeling from the vision of that banana, pressed to the side of the produce bag. Almost as if it was calling out to me, "save me", I shook my head and started to prepare dinner. A little bit of BBQ'ing later and I had dinner done. I started to plate it for the family. I like plating the meals, I think if I didn't get stuck in the career I have now I would have liked to be a chef. I noticed however; that the whole meal was round. I had:

• Parisian roasted potatoes - ROUND
• Kernel corn (as opposed to "on the cob" - OMG banana flashback) - ROUND
• Brussel sprouts - ROUND - and hated by the whole family except me
• and finally Sirloin medallions - ROUND

What is this? What is the meaning of the symbol of round? Does it mean I have to get on the phone with Robert again? For those of you that read my blog a couple of weeks ago, I just finished listening to the DaVinci Code audiobook.

When I look back at these situations I have to ask myself, "Do I need counseling?" Maybe I just need a bit of a lay down on the couch. I think maybe I just need to give my brain a rest. Sort of like an Al Bundy vacation. I don't go anywhere, I just set up my white picket fence around the couch and sit there for awhile.

It is going to get worse too. Cataclysm is coming out in a few months. I read WOW.com daily (not trying to dis any of the other blogs) and the amount of information regarding changes is rather overwhelming. Sure if you have a main toon you can focus on what is going on with them and it is pretty easy to track. But remember, I am Alt37 and by the time Cataclysm hits I will have no less than 15 level 80's. Many of which are duel spec'd. I am pretty sure I WILL go insane.

Well that's it, I am done. My coffee cup is empty and it's time for a refill. I got my daughter farming up stairs, so I don't want to disturb her. Maybe I will go and sit in the backyard under our new canopy and watch the rain. I can start my mental vacation now.

See you next week.

Black Coffee

This morning I am having black coffee.

The reason, well let me give you some background information. My daughter has been away for 3 weeks at my in-laws up north. She gets to fish, swim and drive their boat around. Lucky kid. The way it works is my wife takes her up (I go sometimes depending on my work schedule) and stays for a long weekend (This is what she classifies as a holiday from her work - you see, she likes her work and likes to take time off missing as little work as possible. I don't get it either.). During the time my daughter is away we can actually keep the house tidy, amongst other things because we don't have our tween running around giving us the "talk to the hand" attitude. Any way, as time advances forward my wife starts to miss the daughter, sure we text her all the time - "stay away from the boys" etc. but it isn't enough, so this weekend being the weekend she was to come home my wife took an extra day off work to go get her (and stay for the 4 day weekend instead of 3).

Well when this is normally scheduled, and I am to stay home, I usually prepare what I would like to call, "meatapalooza". Where the weekend BBQ'ing is just meat or meat by-products (aka hotdogs). This week I saw it coming, so I am not trying to get sympathy that my wife abandoned me. I was just so busy at work and all, I just didn't have time to plan out the menu. Thursday when I came home from work and I started to look around for food and noticed the pickings were pretty slim. I decided to try and get through the weekend without buying groceries (Except Friday night - I took my son to "The Expendables" movie and we ate at a pub. A critic here called the movie "Dumb as Mud - but extremely enjoyable". Imagine that, a critic actually understanding that a movie can be just entertainment and not something with a deep meaning attached to it.)

Getting back to my anti-meatapalooza, this is what I lived on this weekend.

• Lots of Bruschetta - we have a garden and we grow the tomatoes, onions, basil, garlic. It was freaking yummy. However, the equivalent of 3 loaves of Bruschetta is bad.
  
  
• Mr. Noodles - Many, I am thinking at least 8. For those of you that do not have the Mr. Noodles brand near you. Think of the instant Raman Noodles for like 25 cents a package. Yes extremely healthy eating there - please Jamie don't hate me, but if you want you can come over and start a revolution at my house.
  
  
• Pirate Cookies - Mr. Christie, you make good cookies. mmm... peanut butter and oatmeal
  
  
• Beer
  
  
• and finally - black coffee. I normally have it with milk and sugar but we were out of milk and I didn't feel like going to the grocery store.

I think the whole purpose of this article is to show that you don't have to do what is considered normal when the wife goes away for the weekend - well OK the beer wouldn't ever go away. However, the same goes for WOW. This weekend I kind of did stuff that was out of the ordinary for me as well. My son started it last week when we were doing old content. I spent a lot of time working on fishing and cooking skills and farming materials for potions and stuff. If you are in a raiding guild it may be good for the crew to take a week off to do other stuff. Remember if it starts to feel like a second job, then it is time to take a break and do something else for a bit.

I know not as funny as last week. Yes and I did put a shameless plug in for the best diner on the planet. I drove 6 hours (one way) just to have lunch there once. Oh and to buy pickles too - the sweet hots rule.

Have a good week. I can't wait to see my daughter.

Retro Week

I am trying to adhere to my vow to write a post at least every two weeks. This week was tough. What should I write about? Would you believe that my son inspired me? For those of you that know my son, you probably dropped your coffee cups in your lap and are now trying to figure out how to sue me. You will have more of a chance getting money out of McDonald's again than me.

Anyway, enough said about frivolous litigation. My son has been trying to finish many achievements before the Cataclysm release. He has been working on the Dungeonmaster, Loremaster and a few others. He asked me last night if I could assist him, considering he doesn't have any of the keys for the heroic Burning Crusades instances. I must say doing those instances was a lot of fun. I even needed quite a few of the achievements. Apparently when Blizzard brought in the achievement system they didn't realize my priest had run Heroic Ramparts about 50 trillion times.

Tonight we are going to finish another 10 or so instances. I will be having a yard sale from the plundering at an Auction House near you.

Real Life Retro

This is my usual weekday morning.

My alarm goes off about 6:50am, I snooze it and begin rocking back and forth sobbing about how crappy my life is. This goes on about 4 times until I desperately need to get up so I can get to work on time. Sometimes however; I do drift back to sleep for those agonizing 9 minutes that some sleep study guy determined was just right. Those nine minutes toy with your emotions. Anyway, as I was saying, sometimes I do fall back to sleep. When this happens I usually have a dream. I can't seem to have dreams during the night when I have, well all night to enjoy them. I have them during those 9 minutes of hell.

This is the dream I had the other day.

I found myself on second base. It was an evening game, it felt like late July. The air was humid, the sounds of the cicadas calling out for their mates. I must have been dropped into a very important game, the crowd was large and loud (and by large - more than the 5 people that showed up to my little league games). The were undulating in that lame "wave" that people seem to want to do when they are a part of a large crowd. I was doing the dance, taunting both the pitcher and the catcher. "I'm going to steal third", I was saying in my head.

At that moment, there was a pitch to the batter. Strike! The catcher fell for the bait. He hurried his throw, it sailed over the baseman's head. I was off. Full speed in two strides. Like a North American Bison. I was barreling towards third, the coach waving and screaming me on towards home. I rounded third, I saw my prize, the pentagon, the home plate. Now I am not about to go on a Robert Langdon-esk rant about the shape of home plate. Needless to say I was almost there. I started to slide - not the wussy foot first slide, but the manly diving slide. It seemed like an eternity (remember I only have 9 minutes - maybe this was the same inspiration Madonna and Timberlake had for their song). Then I felt the rubber of home plate. I made it, the crowd erupted, I guess we won. My team mates rushed to me striking my back and congratulating me, it was one of these pats on the back that jarred me from my snooze time slumber.

I awoke, sweating, heart racing, out of breath, I felt as if I was about to experience a heart attack. It took a whole other snooze cycle to bring myself down from that dream. I then laughed and thought to myself, "what a looser." You know you are out of shape when you can't even handle "DREAM EXERCISE".

So yeah, what can I say, off to work in the yard. Apparently I need a lot of exercise.

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.