Wedding fever

So I'm stressing. 4 days left. I know I haven't posted in a while. Other than wedding planning and working I haven't been doing much. I've played wow for all of about maybe 45 minuets total over the past 2-3 months. I'm hoping that once we get back from waikiki things will be better. I'm really missing the wow community. I miss reading the blogs, and following closely on twitter. Soon... Very very soon.


Posted from my iPhone!

Blue Screen of hate

So there I was. Sitting at my computer this morning, I had gotten home after a long night at work, I let my fiancee know I'm home, and I sit down to work on my Hunter Survival Island submission. I work for about 2 hours researching weapons, and what's best for what spec, PvP vs PVE. I'm mostly done, just down to my concluding statements. I had been listening to iTunes, I just recently bought Kanye West - Love Lockdown after having heard it on America's Best Dance Crew. Then the music starts skipping and repeating the same 2 seconds over and over, and my computer stops responding.

BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH

Yes. Out of no where... BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH.

I

Hate

My

Computer.

With a passion.

A deep writhing hate.

Blacker than my soul.

I lost almost my entire submission. 4+ hours of work... just... gone. HHHHHAAAAAATTTTTEEEEEEEE.

So in order to blow off some steam I log into WoW to kill things. I still have the cooking daily from a couple days ago, the one where you need the rino dogs... only I don't have any rhino meat. So I go beat up on some rhinos. When I get back into lagaron I see a tank that I've run with before and was great was avdertising for a 10 man pugged OS run. I figure... that's like 4 emblems... I only need 3 more for my chest piece. So I get in on the OS run. I turn in my cooking daily and DING exaulted with Kirin Tor also! MMMM BOOTS! So I go pick up my Boots of the Twinkling Stars from the vendor, and I've got to get it enchanted before I go on this raid, so I go hit the auction house, and pick up the agility enchant for my boots. I was checking Beimba the other day, and had found out that with Focused Aim and how much hit I was running with, I was 33 hit over what I needed to be. So I went with the +20 agi to boots, and while I was at it I got the +20 agi (I belive) to gloves, because I hat a +hit enchant sitting in my bank, but didn't need to use it anymore. So spend nearly 300 gold to enchant my gloves and boots. I hearth and get my butt to wyrmrest temple. I try doing the daily there while we wait for another healer. Which I can't do for some strange reason... I need to look into that more, but it won't count any of the kills I make, or using the device thingy in the rift. We quickly get our healer and I head down to the stone and start the summoning. We do an almost flawless run. We only wipe once on the third drake when the pat came up, someone accidently pulled the drake instead of targeting the pat. We all run back and buff up, I'm about 4-5 on the damage meters right now. I'm doing okay... around 2.1k dps.. which for me is amazing. I'm doing some really good trap dancing. I'm doing (to quote BRK) MQOSRDPS. ES proc after ES proc. Things are going AWESOME! DPS... DPS... and MORE DPS! All the drakes are down, I've got the 3 badges I need for my chest piece! Yeay! All that's left is Sartharion. I've done it once before but died pretty early, so I was looking forward to doing it and not dying.

I normaly (untill recently) I would run up, plant my immolation trap, and disengage back, figuring the faster I got back to range the better. But I read somewhere that that isn't how you want to trap dance, it takes too long to get back close to plant your next trap, you want to plant, and shuffle back just far enough to start shooting again. This has seriously helped my DPS.

So what did Sartharion drop? Gloves of the Lost Protector!!!! So in one fell swoop I get my chest piece and my gloves. I then spent another 400 gold re-enchanting and gemming my new pieces.

That felt really good. I can't wait to see what kind of increases I get from it!

It still didn't offset the upset from loosing all my work on the hunter island submission, but at least I felt a little better about the gear I got. My next purchase is going to be a Mirror of Truth at 40 emblems. Hopefully it won't take too long to get them. It only took like 40 minutes to do the run too. We BLASTED through, and if I remember right, no one died in the flame waves. I couldn't believe how well it went. One wipe, and it was over. And I was #3 on the DPS meters. It felt great to do so well.

I think that's why WoW can be so addicting for me. The addiction to feeling good about myself, about how well I was able to run a heroic, that I was doing a GOOD job. I don't get that much elsewhere in my life. Infact I don't think I get this feeling ANYWHERE else in my life, and not for lack of trying, but I think I've got blocks in place to allow myself to feel good about my life. So when I do get that feeling from WoW, I don't want it to stop, I don't want to spend my time doing other things that don't make me feel as good as that feeling of acomplishment. Just some random thoughts late at night. Maybe I'm right... maybe I'm wrong, only time will tell.

Vacation

So I've been on vacation for the last 2 weeks. I went to the Oregon coast, and it was fun, but rainy. I got a picture of me in my BRK Gorillidin T-Shirt attempting to tank the ocean. It was too cold and I didn't have enough frost resist gear so I gave up and called it. What you cant really see in this picture is the 20+ MPH winds I was trying to face, and keep the shirt from flapping so I could get a decent picture, the horizontal rain, and the amazingly biting freezing cold.

I'm working on my last submission for the Hunter Survivor Island contest. I can't believe I made it to the last round. I'm pretty happy about that. I'm working on what the best end game hunter weapons are. It's going to be a huge, hopefully informative, post that will help me win! I also started writing an RP post with my hunter for this blog. I don't know if I'll post it or not. I don't know where to go with it. I've got the beginning written, but don't know where to go with it. I've never done a just for fun RP story before. All the stuff I wrote in the past was always for a creative writing class I took in High school, and that was at least 8-9 years ago, and none of it was fantasy, it was all Sci-fi at the time, so this is a new experience for me.


I've also been having some REALLY wild weird dreams lately. I should write about some of those.... Over the past month or so I've begun having really WEIRD wild dreams. Before this, for the past like 15 years I wouldn't remember my dreams. When I was 16 I was in a roll over car wreck where I nearly died, and had vivid nightmares about my death in that car wreck, but other than that since then, maybe a dream here and there, but for the most part, nothing. I believe that with my starting counseling I've begun to delve into parts of my psyche and sub-conscious that I've never faced. Now I'm beginning to experience the emerging feelings from those locked away emotions. It's really weird, for me, and sometimes disturbing to recall these dreams when I wake up, having never really remember my dreams before. I've gotten so used to not having dreams. What do you do when you have weird disturbing dreams? Do you just write it off as a random conglomeration of your sub-conscious, or do you vest more weight into what your dreams tell you?

I hate when I loose a whole bunch of stuff that I just wrote.

So I finally got my Plunderer's Helmet on this random PuG'd UK run that I did. I've also now got 70 emblems... so close to my chest piece. Then I'm going to get my gloves, and then a Mirror of Truth. Now I don't know where to go for more upgrades... I need new Shoulder... Boots... ring... trinket... waist... neck (I've got the PvP one... but it's just cos it was WAY better than the one I had)... AND weapons. I was able to get a Titanium Impact Band from our guildie JC'er for having given him about 2k gold to help him get his epic flyers on 2 of his level 80s. I think my next big post on here is going to be a hunter leveling gear guide. I don't know where to go from here, so I'll write about what I find out and where to get it from.

So that's it for the moment. Now that I'm back I should be posting more.

Alas!!

I, against my better judgement, checked the standings of the hunter suvivor island standings. When I checked I was in the lead with 9 votes. Normally you'd think having the highest votes would be a good thing. Not so in this case. I'm getting voted off the island I fear. It's like in golf, he with the fewest strokes, wins. He with the fewest votes, moves on to round three.

Ahhwell. Such as life. At least I have this blog all to myself.

Oh, I also signed up on twitter. I'd link to myself, but I'm posting this from my iphone, but I believe I can be found at www.twitter.com/sabiba. Amazingly my name wasn't taken. Normally it is, strangely enough. So feel free to add me, send me a tweet, and I'll add you back.


Ciao.

Thoughts

Naxx!

So I finally got to experience Naxx and Saph! I joined a PuG on Thursday night and we cleared the spider wing of Naxx. It was an amazing run. We wiped very few times surprisingly with the fact that it was a PuG, and we were all doing rather well. I didn't get any drops out of it, other than the emblems, but it was very fun. Saph was also quite fun. One of my fellow guildies got to go, we cleared all of the trash and Saph without a single wipe. I was QUITE happy with the entire run. I wish I could do that more. I just don't want to give up the fantastic friends, and the fantastic guild I have, for raiding. It's not worth it to me.

Asshats galore!

On another note, I <3 Hannelore from The Egotistical Priest. She warms the cockles of my heart Hannelore's posts always entertain me. She beat me to the punch of this one. I recently posted about some of the other bloggers in the "blogosphere" in a recent post about the "asshattery" occurring lately in game. I wanted to state my agreement with BBB in his posts about people in game. BBB talks about, what his expectations are of people, and of a positive experience he had. I particularly liked his expectations:

I have set an expectation, in my mind, for other people to live up to.

And that expectation is, to my mind, very simple.

I expect people to behave in the game as they would in person. I expect people to be polite and considerate of others.

Someone doesn't have to ninja loot to get on my mental shit list, my friends.

They just have to act without consideration for someone else's feelings, or be rude or selfish.

...

But on the other hand... I have my standards for what I think is appropriate behavior. My minimum standard is that you treat other people just like you'd like to be treated.

HEAR HEAR! Preach on my BROTHA!

Every time I log in, I just want to play with people that are respectful, and know what they are doing. You don't have to top the damage meters, or be the best on the server. In fact, the best of any class are probably (from my experience) going to be the asshats.

If I had a choice between the best player of X class, but he/she is a selfish asshat, versus someone that may be in mostly blues, but is respectful and kind... who do you think I'm going to pick? I'd rather have the lower DPS, but the positive experience.

"TAKE THE PLAYER NOT THE CLASS." Quoth Blizzard.

Uh-huh.

BBB then talks about a POSITIVE experience he had, where a player was respectful, and helpful with a group quest he and his wife had. Then when the group that this player HAD been a part of came back from being AFK he helped them finish the quest, even when he didn't need to. That's the kind of thing I like to see. I wish MORE players were more respectful, but like BBB says, when you put a bunch of 15 year olds behind a monitor with the anonymity of the Internet, they're going to be asshats. That's why I'm glad my guild is mostly adults. Adults = more respectful players. I've found that more alliance are the younger "asshats" and that there are more adults playing Horde side. For the Horde!!

For me, when I come across a good player from a PuG, I like to add them to my friends list, and with the ability to add notes to players names I put "Great healer" "Great tank" ect.. That way when I'm looking for more people for a PuG I have a pool of players that I know are good to draw from. Thankfully I haven't come across too many asshats. Other than the ones in my own guild....

Hunter Survival Island

So round 2 has come to a conclusion. The summary post is here, as is the voting. I honestly don't know who to vote OFF. All of the submissions have been absolutely stellar in my opinion. I'm only just beginning my own blogging career, and I've learned a huge amount from submitting posts. I'm working on incorporating more pictures in posts to break up the wall of text, bolding important items so if someone wants to just skim the article they can get the key points, linking often to other sites for reference, and making sure not to just regurgitate other people ideas. Blogging WELL is a difficult ART. I salute the many successful bloggers out there. Blogging is a difficult and demanding job. It's not just a hobby, or a pass time. Good blogging takes research and dedication. Even if I don't make it through this round I hope that I can continue to grow and flourish as a blogger.

Cheers!

Fanboy Squeeeeeee!

So I got linked by Kestrel, of Kestrel's Aerie. I hard a hard time not squeeee'ing for joy at work and garnering weird looks from my co-workers. I did however have a huge grin on my face, and was quite bouncy. It's the first time I've ever been linked by anyone!! I also liked how he said "Risky, mixing your reality with my fantasy, but let's see what happens." That made me laugh out loud :)

So if you're coming here from Kestrel's link... Welcome! hopefully you like the place! If you have any suggestions or comments, please feel free to give them to me, I'm always open to constructive criticisms.

I'm such a fanboy! I've followed Kestrel for a long time now :) Long time reader... never commenter... his site is blocked from work :/ in fact 99.9% of everything is now blocked at work. They haven't blocked google reader... yet. Or blogger... yet. I'm waiting for the day. With everything blocked I never get to leave comments on stuff.

Well my submission for The Hunter's Mark will go live 2 days from now it looks like. I'm so NERVOUS!! When Matticus did his So You Think You Can Blog? series I thought about submitting, but I'm not a hardcore healer type. I've got a Druid that I eventually want to make a healer, and I've got the druid pair that me and my Fiancee started, and I heal her while she tanks with her face ;) but they're only to like level 18 I think, but I'm going Resto with that druid all the way. I didn't feel that I was in a place to write about healing though. I don't have a high level character that even can heal. But I really enjoyed the SYTYCB series, and have used the information provided there to hopefully improve my own writing.

I still haven't been able to log in to wow... stupid reality encroaching on my fantasy. The first time I'll probably get to is Thursday night at the earliest when my Fiancee has class. Sometimes it sucks working long night shifts, it makes it really hard to play on the days that I work. Especially when my Fiancee has had to go more towards a day shift due to having to go to school, so when I work, if I play I don't get to see her, and I want to see her damn it! ;)

I've been thinking lately that I also have been wanting to call in to the twisted nether blogcast, The Instance, and writing a letter to .BRK, the three that I really have time to listen to. I really want to start listening to How I wow, but I have a hard enough time keeping up on the three I regularly listen to. I wanted to ask them all how much time, on average, a week, do they play WoW. I'm curious what the average time that the "non-hardcore" player spends per week playing. I play, on average about 4-5 hours a week, usually on Thursdays when my Fiancee is in class. And with TNB doing a round table this week, I just might do that.

Update

So I'm still in the running for Lassirra's Hunter Island. It's now week two, I've posted my article, and am just waiting for it to get Lassirra's approval. I had some problems with wordpress, as I've never used it, and I don't know how to post pictures to a blog in wordpress, so hopefully if I make it through this round, I'll figure out how to post pictures and be able to put them in future posts.

You can find my post at The Hunter's Mark.

I've recently gotten re-addicted to reading. I read all of Terry Goodkind's Wizards First Rule in about 4 days. 800 pages. It was REALLY REALLY good, I can't wait to get the next one. If you haven't read his sword of truth series, READ IT!! I'm now starting on R.A. Salvatores' Forgotten Realms series. I've started with the Icewind Dale Trilogy, I just started it, and it's fairly interesting so far. I read one of the books about Drizzt A LONG time ago, and I'm not sure which one. I think I read it back in like Middle School maybe High School, so at least, 13-16 years ago. So we'll see what I remember. I think that's where I got my affinity for the ranger/hunter archetype.

I haven't been able to play WoW at all lately. I tried a couple times to get a Ahn'kahet run together for my Hunter Island submission, but I could get neither a PuG or a guild run going. Then Reality has encroached on my life and hasn't allowed me to get on otherwise. Hopefully with my upcoming vacation time I can get some good play time in, and work on getting more pre-naxx gear.

Unfortunately I found out from my guildie and friend that I work with that we had 3 of our core members leave the guild for a larger casual raiding guild. It makes me sad to loose them, but I wish them the best. The guild I'm in isn't really even a casual raiding guild. It's a guild for friends, that maybe raids if we get enough people. Recently Matticus made a post about Loot Council in his raiding guild and he made a statement that really struck home with me.

"Loot is the single biggest headache involved with raiding. If you are a person that values yourself over the guild, then you want to reassess why you are in this guild, or why you want to join this guild. Ask yourself 'do I want to gear to raid, or do I want to raid for gear?' Hopefully, you are a person who will choose the first option. If all you want is to raid for gear, then Conquest is probably not for you."

This really hit home with me. It made me really think about what I want out of the game. Do I want gear? Or do I want the friends that I've been running with for almost 2 years now? My friend made these same points today when he was telling me of the guildies departure since he had also been invited to the raiding guild. He turned it down. For him, being with his friends is more important than being in a raid guild. I feel the same way.

Having been reading so much, it's giving me the itch to write again. I used to write all the time when I was younger. Nothing any good, but I really enjoyed writing. I think I might do a story about my hunter. I don't know I'll have to think about it. My friend recently posted up a story he wrote a long time about about some of our guildies. You can find Chapter 1 here, Chapter 2 here, and Chapter 3 here. He's got a great sense of humor, and represents all of these guys very well! They are all such characters, and it's been great playing with them these past 2 years.