OC Fair: Cooler, cheaper, even more fun.

Funnest? What the **** kind of word is that? It's as bad as ****!!!

We've been to the LA County Fair and the OC Fair several times over the past few years, and while it may be treason for us to admit it, Liz and I greatly prefer the OC Fair.

The LA County Fair. Kinder? Simpler? Funner? I don't think so.

Hotter. More expensive. Dustier. Yeah, that's more like it.

We rocked up to the OC Fair a little after noon on Friday, shortly after the gates opened. Liz asked the Attendant for Preferred Parking and he said we didn't need it. So we paid $5 for General Parking and parked right next to the Preferred Parking section, which would have cost us $5 more if we'd insisted on paying for it. Parking at the LA County Fair? $10 for General, and $15 for Preferred.

Admission was $24 for all four of us (+$5 for the Bunny if she'd been 5 y/old). For the LA County Fair it would have cost us $36 just to walk in the gate, and $48 if we'd had to pay for the Bunny, plus $15 for Preferred, which we would have paid for.
OC Fair vs LA Fair = $29 vs $51
Round One to OC Fair (2 parents + 2 kids = $34 vs $63 = Ouch!)

Temperature in Costa Mesa in late July? Mid to high 70s. Pleasantly warm.
Temperature in Pomona in early September? High 80s to low 90s. Hot and sticky.
Round Two to OC Fair

The assortment of rides are the same, as it's the same crew at each Fair, but at $1 per ride (for Friday when we went, I have a clever wife who plans these things) versus the $2 or more at LA County Fair. Fuhgeddaboudit!

Round 3 and a unanimous decision to the Orange County Fair!!!
Now in its last week for 2008.

* * *

Saturday after in-laws picked up the kids we just bummed around the house. Liz thought about rearranging the upstairs to accommodate a fourth PC (the Bunny is frequently kicking me off mine so she can visit Noggin.com) and finally realized what a logistical nightmare it was. Despite the fact that I was going to get a big screen TV out of it (as in 45" big) I made Liz see just how much rearranging would need to happen to accomplish what she had in mind. Finally she settled for clearing off the desk in JE's room then went online to pick out a new PC for him.

I was complimenting Fry's but after visiting their own and Best Buy's websites Liz found a good price on a full system at Best Buy, which included a printer and a 17" wide-sceen LCD. Not just your run of the mill LCD but a wide-screen. Oooh! The sale ended midnight Saturday so Liz bought it online as an in-store pickup item, the plan being for me to pick it up the next morning.

Sunday morning I was browsing Best Buy's website when I saw my video card was on sale. Newegg have them cheaper, but there's shipping to factor in, compared to the No Interest plan (for using BB Credit Card) and the points from their Reward Zone, so it wasn't hard to convince Liz to let me Buy It Now! So when I picked up the boy's new PC I also got my new video card. Then I spent an hour or so getting everything set up in his room, including making sure Vista was working okay. We wanted the boy to be able to just sit down and turn on his PC and start doing his thing.

Liz attempted to install Age of Empires:Asian Dynasty (one of his favorite games) but she kept getting an error that aborted the install procedure, and she was getting a little pissed off with Vista (ok, even more pissed off than usual. She's not a fan of Vista). She went back to her PC to research AoE & Vista Installation Errors and thought she found the problem. Meanwhile I played with Vista for a few minutes and worked out how to turn off the annoying permissions thing that Vista has turned on by default.

"Hi, it's me, Vista. I know you double-clicked the Install icon on the CD that you just inserted, but I wanted to let you know that the program you're trying run is trying to run, and I just had to ask, do you want me to Allow it to run?"

Yes, if you don't turn that Alert off in the User Settings (I can't remember exactly where I found it, but it wasn't hard to find or turn off) Vista will quite literally ask you every single time you try to run a program if you want to allow that program to run.

With Age of Empires being a Microsoft game I called the MS Games helpline, only to find out they're closed on Sundays, then I looked at the box and discovered the problem.

"Dear!" I called out. "This is the Asian Dynasty expansion! Where's the actual Age of Empires game?"

(It's a good thing MS Games is closed on Sundays :P)

We started to install AoE and Liz started to get a little hot under the collar (again) when AoE informed her it wasn't compatible with Vista. Fortunately AoE lets you continue with the Install (as it bloody well should) so I told Liz to click Continue. I didn't care if AoE wouldn't run under Vista, I just needed it on JE's PC so Asian Dynasty would detect it and complete its own install procedure, which it did. And it looks really sweet at 1440x900 on a widesceen.
*Insert Homer Simpson drooling sound here*

Then I spent another half hour trying to get the Wireless Network card set up, to no avail. So the boy's PC is not on the network and doesn't yet have internet access. I gave up on his PC and settled down to installing my new video card and after a couple of teething problems had it up and running and damn! It looks good! Well, that card itself looks good, but I'd forgotten how good WoW could look with the graphics cranked up. And with 80+ FPS running around Org, no less. Very, very nice.

Afterwards we all got together for dinner to celebrate one of Liz's aunty's 80th birthday. By the time the festivities were over it was past 10pm by the time we got home, and very late by the time the kids were in bed.

* * *

After the kids were in bed I got in a couple more hours of WoW. (Yes, I'm running on less than 4 hours of sleep, but that's somewhat normal for me.) WoW looks so much better with the graphics maxed out like the designers intended :)

I've been leveling a Blood Elf Priest lately (I got my Mage to 61 and figured I'd park him and accrue some rested XP) and I've been having a lot of fun with the Priest, even in a Healer capacity. Healing is usually a very stressful "ZOMG! We wiped! Stupid Priest! L2Healz!" experience but I've got a bit more experience under my belt now than when I last played a Priest. I've also written a couple of Macros to help me out and found one or two tricks that make Healing (at least at a lower level) somewhat easier.

Earlier Sunday I ran Ragefire Chasm with a Rogue and a Warrior. The Rogue was 15, I was 22, and the Warrior was 29. This was actually a good break back into Healing because it reduced the number of Health Bars I needed to watch to three (inc. my own). We cleared almost the entire Instance, and had just one Boss to kill (with a few Mobs between him and us) when the Warrior said "Got to go" and began Hearthing.

I watched incredulous and sure enough, he finished the Hearth and bailed on us. I looked at the Mobs between us and Bazza, the final boss. At most we had a three pull. The Rogue had Sap, I figured we had a decent chance of doing this. So did the Rogue, so we did. It helped that even though the Mobs were Elites, they were 6 levels lower than me. PW:Shield helped, too, as well the wicked Gravestone Scepter Wand for mucho DPS. I ended up Tanking (& Healing :) because I did so much more initial damage than the Rogue that it was impossible for him to pull Aggro off me, or hold it if he had it. We took down Bazza then parted ways.

Later in a cave in Ashenvale I hooked up with a Warlock for an Escort Quest. Right at the end of the quest we got ambushed by several Furbolg, and amazingly we pulled through. I was OOM, down to double-digit HP, and had to quaff a potion just to stay alive, but stay alive we did. Those are the best times, where you're challenged far beyond your normal safe zone, but you still pull through. Those are the moments that really make this game fun.

If I keep playing a Healer I need to steel myself though, it's going to get even tougher until I hit 70...unless I solo all the way. But apparently End-Game Healing is actually easy. We'll see :)