Beef Brisket

After spending a day at the beach in San Diego we stopped at Kula Sushi in Irvine for dinner, then decided to hit the Korean market next door. While I was looking at the beef briskets Liz asked me if I knew how to cook it. "No," I said, resignedly placing the packet back into the refrigerator. But just as we moved on impulse hit me and I grabbed it back out and threw it in the cart.

Back home I wondered "Just how does one cook a beef brisket?" so I decided to hit up someone I was pretty sure would know. The Man came through, suggesting that because my cut was the Flat (lacking the layer of fat along one side) I should do a beer marinate to keep it tender while cooking (the role the layer of fat normally plays when one barbecues a brisket). He also recommended I slow cook this cut in the oven, covered or wrapped in foil, to keep it tender.

Alternatively, if I didn't mind a tougher cut, I could still marinate it and barbecue, but glaze it, and glaze it, and glaze it some more. That sounded like a lot more work than I was prepared to do. Not that I'm not afraid to stand out over the barbecue, tongs in one hand, beer in the other, but I'm rather partial to the "slap it in the slow cooker and forget about it until the house smell delicious and you start drooling" method of cooking.

Of course a beer marinate is not as simple as it sounds. What kind of beer are we talking about here? Lager? Ale? Draught? Bitter? Stout? It turns out Guinness is one of the most preferred beers to use as a marinate, as are English ales. Problem is my house currently has no beer, but we'll probably go shopping later so at least now I know one of the things we'll be looking out for. I also now know how to cook a brisket, but more importantly, how to shop for one. Thanks Daniel!

Quick Review: UFC Undisputed 2010

I had a chance to play the PS3 demo of UFC '10 at Best Buy on the weekend, and I liked it. It was very quick and easy to pick up the basics, especially as it used Tekken-like controls with each of the 4 primary buttons being for left punch, right punch, left kick, & right kick. It made it very easy to string combos together while also demonstrating the infeasibility of throwing right roundhouse kick after right roundhouse kick after right roundhouse kick, etc.

Being UFC the game is more than just striking and fighters do go to the mat and can attempt submission moves. Not knowing (at the time) how to get out of a submission (or apply one) I settled for knocking my opponent the fuck out! Hey, it's UFC, right? It's not figure skating. So for the most part I was throwing combinations and going for a knock-out punch, and if I happened to knock my opponent to the mat I'd move in and hammer him with left-right-left strikes to the head until he pushed me away and the referee broke us up, or I broke through his defense, broke his nose, and knocked him the fuck out!

To demonstrate the engine's eloquence and subtlety my son took his turn and made it through the first round after cutting his opponent up (strikes to the head can cut while blows to the body leave nasty looking welts). When the bell sounded to start the second round my boy slowly backed away from his opponent while throwing several big, right hands that found nothing but air. But the fourth or fifth punch he threw finally connected and it must have found the sweet spot because his opponent went down like a poleaxed steer. One punch and Bam! (And we're not talking Margera) Knock out. Lights out. Game over. Thanks for coming.

Unlike my victories which came after several devastating head shots this was one, perfectly thrown punch that just knocked the recipient out for the count. So you can brutally beat your opponent into the mat, you can finesse your way to victory, or, as I'd find out in one of my matches, you can yield to an arm bar or some other various submission hold.

It's apparently getting quite high reviews and having played the demo I can understand why. It's controls are easy to pick up and it's probably loads of fun at a LAN party or just when you get a few mates around, but it also hints that if you're prepared to put in the time it could rival the fighting games of yesteryear for depth and complexity.

If I had a PS3 (or XBox), this is definitely one I'd be adding to my library.

How Country are you?

If you're real Country, you know what usually happens shortly after the lambs drop. If you need a subtle hint, think Barbecued lambs' tails and Rocky Mountain Oysters. What? That's subtle. Country subtle ;)

Many years ago, after getting the lambs into the holding pen there wasn't anything left for us boys to do so we decided to play Rodeo with the Ram that had been locked up in the nearby stable.

My mate climbed on top of the Ram and grabbed a couple of handfuls of wool, but the Ram just stood there, chewing some hay, probably wondering what was going on and why this fool of a kid was sitting on his back.

Now being a Ram he was not only responsible for impregnating the whole flock of sheep all by himself, but he needed to get the job done in a real short space of time. In order to tackle a big job like that all by himself a Ram needs a big set of tackle, and our Ram was no exception.

As my mate sat on the Ram's back and kicked his heels trying to get the Ram to start bucking, the Ram moved around and two things became very obvious.

And I got an idea how to get this Ram Rodeo underway.

I stretched out my foot and tapped these two things with my toe (really, it was just a tap.) and the Ram exploded. He leaped into the air and spun around and my mate went flying and as he crashed to the ground my mate's little brother and I roared with laughter.

We each took a turn riding the Ram and it didn't matter how good a handful of wool you got, each ride ended with the same result. That Ram did not like anyone touching his tackle, but who could blame him? With what the men were doing to the lambs outside maybe he thought it was finally his turn, and over the years he'd probably become real attached to his balls ;)

Imagine a dirt road, full of pot holes
With a creek bank, and some cane poles,
Catching channel cat.
I’m a little more country than that.
- Easton Corbin

Review: Warstorm on FB

Warstorm is neither your typical Facebook game nor your typical card-based war game. (It also has a browser-based version but I'm not sure how well that works.)

Unlike Mafia Wars, Farmville, etc., you don't need 500+ friends to get maximum value from Warstorm, so it doesn't require you to create a second Facebook "Game" account, spam a load of strangers with Friend requests, or fill message boards with ADD ME!!! LOL!!!. And yet in spite of this the typical comments on the official Warstorm Facebook groups are still "Add me!!!" Go figure.

With that said, it does help to have a couple of Friends who play because every now & then the game gives you a bonus 'Rare' Card. But it's not for you, it's for your friends, and in the typical FB Game spammy fashion you can't just Send it to them, you have to post a message on your wall so your Friends can Click the link and collect the Card themselves. Likewise your Friends can post Rare Card messages on their own Wall that you can click and collect. But there's a catch. You can only collect one Rare card every 24 hours. Not one Rare Card per Friend per day; one Rare Card per day, period. So having hundreds of friends spamming your Wall with Rare Card posts every day is no more useful than having just a couple, as long as they're regular players of course. (Which makes me wonder how the browser-based version works, unless you can somehow add people as your Friends...perhaps via email?)

As you play the game and win battles/duels you earn Silver which you can use to buy more Card Packs, and when you do buy and 'open' a pack you will sometimes get a Bonus card. Unlike the Rare Cards these can be Sent directly to a Friend but only to one Friend, and you can only send one Card to each Friend every 24 hours. The game does ask you to post a message on your Friend's Wall so they know they got the Card, but in this case I don't think posting is actually necessary. I believe your Friend still receives the Card whether you post a "Hey! I sent you a card!" message or not. Now while you can only collect one Rare Card every 24 hours, and you can only send one Bonus Card to each Friend every 24 hours, if you have 100 Friends they can obviously each send you one Bonus Card if they get them, but! Do you really think someone is going to send a Bonus Card to you, a complete stranger, when they have Real Life Friends who also play? Of course not. You only get Bonus Cards from opening Packs, or from buying Hero Cards via RMT, so unless you spend real cash you just won't get that many Bonus Cards to give away. Are you going to send some stranger a Bonus Hero card you only got because you spent real money? Or will you send it to your Brother/Cousin/Best Friend4Life? Yeah, I thought so.

That's a big plus to Warstorm over the other FB Games: you simply do not need to add a bunch of strangers as Friends in order to play the game. Of course your Real Life Friends still need to actually play.

I said earlier that it's not your typical card-based war game, and it's not. In MTG and other games of its ilk you build your deck then duel other players by, usually, dealing yourself a hand, then playing out the game and using your cards to the best of their ability (and your own) to defeat the other player and their cards, in a process requiring a combination of both luck and strategy. In Warstorm, the only strategy comes from the deck building itself, because once a game starts you're even more of an observer than someone playing a low level Paladin. Yes, once a duel begins you'll do nothing more than sit back & watch, and maybe hit the Fast Forward button if you want to speed up the pace a little, which I did.

This may sound boring and/or frustrating in not having any control over how your cards are played ("No! Don't give the Sword of Power to the Mage! He's going to be killed on the next turn! No! Don't Zap the Troll Hero! Target the Flying Imp!") but it's a lot easier to accept that style of play once you realize it's actually a very fair way to resolve combat. You're dueling a random player's deck, not an actual player, meaning they're not actually present to manage their own cards, so letting you control your own cards and Zap their low HP Imp instead of the high HP, regenerating Troll Hero would be giving you an unfair advantage over your opponent.

Here's an example of a Hero Card:
There's already descriptions for the bottom numbers and they're self-explanatory for the most part, although just for clarification purposes your Turn and your opponent's Turn makes two Turns, so a card which readies in 10 Turns will be ready within 5 of your own Turns after being drawn. The three numbers in the top right corner of this Hero's card mean his Squad will be comprised of 6 Units, but no artifacts or spells. A Squad is always a Hero plus 6 Cards so you may also get a Hero who commands 4 Units but takes 2 Artifacts into battle, or 2 spells, or 1 Artifact and 1 Spell. I've not yet seen any Heroes who have more than 2 Artifact and/or Spell cards.

As soon as a Card is Ready it can be used immediately to attack, heal, etc. There is no Tapping or Exhausting of cards. Your cards attack and use their special abilities (if they have any), then your opponent's cards do the same, then your cards, and so on, with the goal being to reduce your opponents Morale from 30 to 0, or destroy all of his units/cards. Morale is reduced by cards attacking unopposed, through Spells or Artifacts such as the Drums of Despair, or via special abilities like Demoralize.

When you start you'll play through a Tutorial which both introduces many of the special abilities in the game, and rewards you with cards with the same. So after beating a Squad of Mages with the Blast Ability you'll receive a Mage or two with Blast, and so on. This makes it very easy to learn how combat and the cards work, and what cards are effective counters to other cards. Unfortunately it also makes the game appear rather easy, so the first time you play a real opponent you might be in for a very rude shock.

After completing the Tutorial you can continue to play the Single Player campaign, which gradually rewards you with more powerful cards, or you can try your luck against other players. But as those players tend to already have the more powerful cards, or even RMT cards, it's advisable to build up your Squads before engaging in the Warstorm equivalent of PvP. I say Squads because if you have sufficient Heroes and Squads you can do up to 4v4 Duels, being 4 of your Squads versus 4 of those from another player. Personally I thought 4 Squads took too long (and usually resulted in my Defeat) so for the most part I'll do 2v2 where my chances of success are much greater and the battles are usually over a lot faster.

Now even though, once you hit Start and the cards start coming out, you become no more than a participant, there's still a lot of excitement from watching a battle unfold as you cheer desperately for certain cards to come out, knowing there's nothing you can do but watch the battle unfold. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Sometimes you get creamed and wonder just why the hell your opponent seems to have so many cards, and other times the cards go all your way and you're the one with a seemingly invincible army carving up everything your opponent's deck throws at you.

If there's anything negative to say about Warstorm it's that (for me) there was a wall around level 10-12 that I needed to crash through where I just couldn't defeat the next stages in the Single Player campaign, and where I likewise went from seeming to win most of my PvP Duels to just getting crushed in almost every single game. It almost seemed intended, as if to convince me to engage in RMT to advance, instead it made me want to throw in the towel. But I stuck it out, and even losing duels got me silver, and eventually I was able to buy some more card packs, tweak my squads a little more, and I started to win a few more duels. That was also when I accepted that "You can't win 'em all", which made the game more enjoyable as well.

All up I'd say check it out, at least to level 10 or so, to see whether it's your cup of tea. It's free to play so you really have nothing to lose but an evening of messing around. And even if you don't have a Facebook account you can always give the Browser version a try.

WoW: Food for thought

Raid-geared players spend their downtime running Heroics on their Mains so they can get Badges to buy Heirloom gear for their Alts so they don't have to spend as much time playing their Alts. I know, I know. Leveling their Alts, it's the same thing.

Here are some questions to ponder.

How many Heroics do you need to run to obtain enough Badges to buy the Heirloom +XP pieces? How long does that take? Factor in not being a Tank (or being able to queue with one) and spending time in queues.

If your Alt changes Armor at 40 (Leather to Mail, or Mail to Plate), factor in enough Runs to buy multiple sets. Actually I just read that Mail Heirloom Gear apparently reverts to Leather when worn by sub-40 Hunters and Shamans, while Plate Heirloom gear does the same for sub-40 Warriors and Paladins. That's a nice touch but you'll want to buy a set of Leather Heirloom gear anyway for your Rogue and Druid (two Sets if you're leveling a Caster Druid), and don't forget a set of Cloth Heirloom gear for your Squishies. How many Badges is that? 8-10 pieces at 40 each, or 320-400 Badges. And don't forget Weapons for everyone. At 65 Badges per weapon that's another 300+ Badges.

How many Runs will it take to acquire 600-700 (or more) Badges?

What about one Alt? How many Runs will it take to collect just 145 Badges?

And how much time does Heirloom gear really save while leveling Alts?

A level 1 character needs 24,067,200 XP to get to level 80. Whether you run to the nearest Mailbox at level 1 or just complete the starting area quests and get there in due time is a moot point. You need 7600xp to get from level 1 to level 5 (the average point at which a character reaches their first Inn & mailbox) and so a 20% bonus to XP by that point has netted you just 1520 extra XP, or a little more than 1/3 of the 3600 needed to get from level 5 to level 6. It takes approx. 20-30 minutes to get from level 5 to 6 so taking 5 minutes (or so) to run to the nearest Mailbox to get your Heirloom gear at level 1 saves you about 10 minutes.

But we're looking at The Big Picture® and in the grand scheme of things a 20% bonus to XP means you don't need the full 24,067,200XP to go from 1 to 80 but rather 83.3% (recurring decimal) of that. That's 20,056,000 XP, an amount which would put you a little over halfway into 77 if you didn't have Heirloom gear. That's what your 20% Heirloom gear really saves you: that last grind from 77 to 80 which would probably take an experienced Player (and if you have Heirloom gear, that's you) about 2-3 days/evenings questing, running PUGs, etc. Naturally a more casual-paced player is going to take longer to do that last 77-80 grind, but they'll also take longer to gather the 80 Badges for the Heirloom gear, so it all evens out in the end.

Plants in Aquariums

We were at one of our local Pet Supplies stores recently. Not a PetCo/PetSmart, not that I have nothing against them, just this local supplier can do better deals on Blue Buffalo and Wellness pet food than I can get at PetCo. I asked the cashier if they carried live plants for aquariums, because I hadn't seen any plants and their fish section was quite small (they don't actual stock animals, just the supplies, feed, etc.) They didn't but she did tell us that there was an aquarium store just up the road.

How we didn't know about it before I don't know, because it was huge! At first I thought it was a pet store because it was so big and it was called PTF Pets (PTF = Pasadena Tropical Fish, btw), but inside were wall-to-wall tanks of fish. But not just fish; crabs and other marine critters and even some strange things that looked like 5-legged Octopus...would that make them Pentapusses? Pentapie?

I asked the lady running the show about plants and she escorted me to a tank with a dozen or so plants floating around the bottom (are they still floating if they're at the bottom?) and I picked out a couple of lively looking sorts (Narrow Leaf Chain Sword, and Red Wendth), then asked her about the proper method of installing them in my tank, because I'd put plants into my tank before which had not survived. Then again, that was probably a combination of the Snail infestation that came along with them, and me being a Noob and not following SOP for planting aquarium plants.

Growing out of the bottom of one of the pots were these lovely long roots and yet when I asked the lady about how to plant the plants she recommended I cut those lovely long roots off. She said if I bent the roots over to bury them in the substrate that it hurts the roots and the plant, and that's not good. That was probably one of the Noob mistakes I made last time. The other was trying to bury the sponge surrounding the roots in the substrate, because...I don't know why, I just did. It didn't work, because it's a sponge and it wanted to float, even when covered by rocks.

This time around I carefully cut the plants out of their little plastic pots and carefully pulled apart and removed the foam sponge surrounding the roots, then I carefully separated the plants because while it wasn't obvious at first glance each pot actually came with more than just one plant.

There were two Chain Swords in their pot, but I'm sad to report that their roots were very brown and I didn't like the look of them (the roots, not the plant itself). I still planted them because (as you'll see from the picture below) their foliage was green and looked quite healthy, so I'll just hope for the best with those two.

From the Red Wendth pot I got over six individual plants (this was the one with the beautiful, long roots) and the boy and I carefully trimmed their beautiful, long roots back to about half an inch before planting them in the tank, too.

Oddly enough, as Pike has noted on her Blog about her fish seeming happier after a water change, my Tetras likewise seemed excited (or at least more active) with the new addition to their tank, as they now have a small underwater forest (of sorts) in which to hide and swim through. Then again, I also did a 25% water change (I have a 2.5 gallon bucket so I siphon out a bucketful of water from my 10-gallon tank then add a bucket of water), partly because it had been over a week since I'd done a water change, partly because I needed to take some water out so when I stuck my arm in the tank it didn't overflow, and partly because I deliberately stirred up the substrate so there was a lot of fish crap floating around. It was so murky that even though I changed the filter prior to the water change, it was covered with junk within minutes and water was backflowing out of the filter. After topping the tank back up to 10-gallons I rinsed even more crud off the filter (yes, again), then later in the evening rinsed it off one more time.

I checked on the fish this morning at breakfast and we still had a tank full of fish, still alive and still seeming to enjoy their new underwater forest home. If they were going to die from something brought in on the new plants, with it being such a small confined space I'd expect the first deaths to occur within hours. But they were alive this morning and they're happy as clams now, 24 hours later, so obviously they've survived the addition of the plants. Now I just need the plants to survive being transplanted into their new home.

Finally, here's a picture...

Click to make FHuge!

Tanking in CoS

I've been slowly upgrading my Tanking gear via the Auction House, with Drops (when the Tank doesn't Need them), and Badge items, but despite reading how easy it is to hit 540 Defense I'm still at approx. 480. But that still doesn't stop me from offering to Tank in a pinch when we really need to, such as on a recent Heroic CoS.

The Warrior Tank was clearly new to the game and expressed unfamiliarity with the CoS Instance, and we lost & replaced two Healers and two DPS before we finished the 10 Waves. (There were not going to be any Bronze Drake Reins dropping on this Run.) After hooking up with Arthas and our third replacement Healer and DPS we got to the top of the stairs and once again things went south in a heartbeat.

Lying dead on the floor I quickly whispered the Druid Healer not to drop group, that we'd kick the Tank and I'd take over. I knew the Hunter who'd stuck with me through this would kick the Tank if it was put to the Vote, and just like that the Tank was gone. I switched to Prot, donned my Tank gear and, to his credit, the Druid did not take one look at me and immediately drop group, although he did whisper me and ask if I had any more +Def gear.

This is it, I replied, but I do know this Instance and what I'm doing.

It's okay, he whispered back, I'll keep you up.

We restarted the Arthas encounter and everything went a lot smoother, although I did forget the third wave that ambush the party in the short corridor immediately before Epoch. That was certainly an 'Oops!' moment as I ran through to Epoch's room then stood there wondering what was keeping the others. (So much for knowing the Instance.) Back into the corridor I went, laying down Consecrate and doing everything I could as fast as I could to grab Aggro. We survived. Arthas makes for a good Tank in a pinch and Druid Healers are my favourite. I'm not saying they're better than the others, I just seem to have smoother runs when I'm backed up by a Druid.

After taking out Epoch and running the last gauntlet of Undead before getting to Mal'Ganis the Healer whispered me "OMG this is horrible!"

I whispered back, "But maybe just a little fun?" (Healers secretly love it when we overpull and give them something to do ;)

"Maybe ;)" was their reply.

We got to Mal'Ganis, Arthas and he had their chat, then I ran through my rotation and like I knew he would the Druid healed through my deficient Defense and the Demon Lord went down. But not without casualties. The Druid (or perhaps it was the other DPS) had whispered me earlier about the Hunter sucking but I'd chosen to ignore that whisper. Well the Hunter had died during the Mal'Ganis fight and he was not very happy about it, especially when the Druid told him to learn to DPS.

"You need to learn how to heal!" he retorted.

"Go die in a fire! :D" replied the Druid.

I looked at the Hunter, lying dead on the floor, and I just couldn't help myself.

"I think he already did :D" I typed.

Tanking: Perspiration, Inspiration, Perception.

After the first Heroic Random of the night I like to do a Heroic Normal. Not because I need the gear but because the Run is usually more relaxed, I get 2 Emblems of Triumph just like doing a subsequent Heroic, and I get more 50% more Gold. (I know, I know. Heroic sub-Bosses often hand out Triumphs like candy to trick-or-treaters, and Heroic vendor trash is usually worth more than Normal trash, yeah yeah. Normal is just relaxing, usually, okay?)

So I sign up for a Normal as Ret, wait a few minutes, and eventually find myself in the Pit of Saron. Everything progresses smoothly until we get to Tyrannus when the Warrior Tank starts throwing knives at him while he's flying around on his dragon waving his ePeen at us. Now pissed off and having had his say the Scourgelord refuses to come down and play. The Warrior says "bugged" (No shit, Sherlock), LOLs, and drops group, forcing us to wipe to reset the encounter, now sans Tank. Thanks for nothing, buddy.

While waiting I hit up the WoWWiki on Tyrannus and read through it. I can do this. I tell the group I'm dual-spec'd Ret/Prot and have reasonable but not fantastic Tanking gear. With DPS being easier to replace than a Tank my offer is accepted and we re-queue. Several minutes go by. No DPS. I re-read the the Boss strategy to make sure I know what I'm doing. Tyrannus is an easy Tank & Spank fight, as long as you avoid the splash damage from his dragon's ice breath and, if possible, drag him through his own mount's icy drool puddles. I'm not Def Capped (I have some +Def pieces, including this baby) but this is a Normal Run and I'm wearing almost all Purples. Nothing to it. Hopefully.

Still no DPS.

"Let's do this. 4-man it," says one of my comrades-in-arms.

And so we did.

It was intense. Really, seriously, freaking intense. My health got low at a couple of points but we got through it. Normal Tyrannus. 4-manned. Tanked by yours truly.

As Jaina started on her spiel our DPS finally showed up. Sorry buddy, you're too late. The party's over.

Next night. Halls of Reflection. Again a Normal Random PUG.

I dropped in mid-way through the opening battle, picked up what was going on (after a few seconds, it's rather disorienting to zone into the middle of a brawl) and started doing my Retadin thing. We downed Marwyn and apparently he didn't drop what one of the DPS wanted, so he dropped group as we ran down the corridor towards Arthas and Jaina. Then the Tank dropped group. I guess he didn't want to wait for a replacement DPS, even though the hardest part of the Run was already over and DPS are usually easily replaced.

After re-queuing and waiting a few minutes I offer to Tank the rest of the Instance in Prot spec, and again state that I don't have fantastic gear but it will do the job (for the content we had left, and if you know HoF you'll know we already had the worst of the Run behind us). The Healer and other DPS accept my offer and as we re-queue I switch to Prot, but when I don my Tank gear the Healer speaks up.

"Please tell me that's not your Tank set," he says.

It is, yes, I reply. Before I can add that it had done the job on Tyrannus the night before the Healer says, "F**k you both," and drops group.

"What an arse," says the remaining DPS.

We decided to hang out in the queue for a little while longer to see if we can't pick up another Healer and 2 more DPS but after 10 more minutes, with DPS coming then going (or at least their spot being filled out in the popup at the little eye on the Minimap) we decide there's no point throwing any more good time after bad time. We call it quits and bid each other adieu.

Next night. Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle. We head in with a Warrior Tank with almost less Health than me, and at 25-28K (depending on buffs) that should have been a sign. He manages to Tank the first room, then we head outside to Raven's Watch where we wipe on the first pack.

We regroup, run back in, rebuff, run out to Raven's Watch...and Wipe again.

The Warrior drops group and almost immediately a new Warrior takes his place. This guy has almost twice the health of the first guy, but the gear does not make the man and we wipe again in the very same place. This Tank doesn't wait for a second shot, drops group and almost immediately is replaced by a Tankadin. Finally we have a guy who knows what he's doing and we clear the Instance in almost record time, missing out on some sort of Speedy Kill achievement on Skadi the Ruthless by literally seconds.

Email Headers: Internet Detectiving 101

Time for some gibberish (for most of us, but not for some).
This is the full header of a recent Phishing email I received.

From wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com Thu Apr 15 07:49:15 2010
X-Apparently-To: me@yahoo.com via 67.195.8.205; Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:49:33 -0700
Return-Path: sylve@hotmail.fr
X-YahooFilteredBulk: 65.55.111.76
X-Originating-IP: [65.55.111.76]
Authentication-Results: mta1059.mail.sp2.yahoo.com from=hotmail.fr; domainkeys=neutral (no sig); from=blizzard.com; dkim=neutral (no sig)
Received: from 127.0.0.1 (EHLO blu0-omc2-s1.blu0.hotmail.com) (65.55.111.76)
by mta1059.mail.sp2.yahoo.com with SMTP; Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:49:33 -0700
Received: from BLU0-SMTP93 ([65.55.111.71]) by blu0-omc2-s1.blu0.hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.3959);
Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:49:12 -0700
X-Originating-IP: [222.94.32.217]
X-Originating-Email: [sylve@hotmail.fr]
Message-ID: BLU0-SMTP9322D8F095F0D27C44F50ECF0F0@phx.gbl
Return-Path: sylve@hotmail.fr
Received: from vlpxfrcn ([222.94.32.217]) by BLU0-SMTP93.blu0.hotmail.com over TLS secured channel with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.4675);
Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:49:10 -0700
Sender: sylve@hotmail.fr
From: "wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com" wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com
To: me@yahoo.com
Subject: World Of Warcraft-Account Instructions
Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2010 15:49:15 +0800
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0E74_01A76424.11700BC0"
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.5512
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.5512
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 15 Apr 2010 07:49:11.0296 (UTC) FILETIME=[22DEE000:01CADC70]
Content-Length: 5211

At first glance it looks like the email came from wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com but then you notice the Return Path has a different email address, from France. Sourges to be precise (I found the guy on Facebook via his email). But did Sylvain Borreda really send this email? Or did someone hack his email account?

The earliest and most reliable record of the email entering cyberspace is the bolded line, Received: from vlpxfrcn ([222.94.32.217]). Googling this IP brings up a couple of pages, almost all being reverse IP Lookup pages...except for one, a non-existent page at: http://nj.livingchina.cn (A Chinese website. How cliché.)

If you're following along at home and you clicked the actual link on your Google search page you'll see that the specific page at livingchina.cn no longer exists/cannot be found, etc.

But back on the Google search results page we can see that along with the IP there is additional identifying information. There's a phone number and an email address, and if we now Google gftaiyq@163.com we discover the apparently true identity of Mr. 222.94.32.217 aka Guofang Tao, a Real Estate broker in Nanjing, China. (Go figure.) But is Guofang Tao really our Phisher? He is Chinese, but that doesn't automatically make him a Chinese Gold Farmer/Phisherman. He's like a Tootsie Roll Pop: the world may never know, because this is as far as my Internet sleuthing skills can take us.

Can you Ninja with a Greed Roll?

After getting all my gear back (some time really early Monday morning, according to the emails in my Inbox), I reinstalled WoW, BC, & Wrath, then commenced patching, and after about 4-5 hours I was logging in to play. (Despite having DSL my WoW patch DL speeds are not terribly fast. "Why, you seem to be behind a Firewall!" the Downloader will report, as if that's a bad thing)

My first Heroic on Monday night brought my Emblem of Frost total to 30 (I got all my badges & emblems back, praise Orion!) and I promptly spent them all on the i264 Libram of Three Truths.

Tonight I queued up for another random Heroic and found myself in the rather fun (at least I think so) Culling of Stratholme. I've done this one a few times on Heroic and seen a couple of Reins of the Bronze Drake drop. Some people Pass while others gleefully Roll, so I take my queue from those who do. When people roll Need I roll Need. Other times they'll roll Greed so I'll follow suit. On tonight's Run the Drake was mentioned just once as we ran through, with someone asking if we planned to do it. (Barring running out of time I wasn't aware it was optional, but apparently it is.)

We got to the Corruptor and killed him within the 25 minutes so naturally he dropped the Drake. Someone said Gratz and the first three rolls were Passes. I sat there watching the screen for a few seconds. I didn't need the Drake. I wanted it, but I didn't Need it. The fourth player rolled Greed so I followed his lead and hit Greed as well. He rolled low, I rolled high, and with that I had myself a new Epic Flying Mount.

As the group moved on to Mal'Ganis I was almost expecting to be booted from the party for being a Ninja, but it didn't happen. The player who lost the Roll never said anything, neither in Party Chat nor Tells, and if he had I was prepared to hand it over to him, even though I'd won the Roll. Not because I didn't care to be labeled a Ninja, simply because I didn't really need the Mount. But nothing more was said and we moved on and defeated Mal'Ganis.

The first time I got the Culling of Time achievement BIL and Steve congratulated me and asked if I'd won the Drake. When I told them I'd rolled Greed like the others they were stunned. "Dude! You Need Roll that!" they said to me, but I didn't feel right Need rolling on a Vanity item when others were just Greed Rolling.

Now I'd won the Vanity item with a Greed Roll and I still wondered if I'd done the right thing. Sometimes I think I'm a little too much like Melvin Smiley.

Wii: MySims Agents

After quickly checking out a video review on my phone (you might think I'm crazy, but if you really believe we're not fast approaching The Singularity then I say you're the delusional one, so there :P) I decided MySims Agents was worth 10,000 of our 27,000 Dave & Buster points and having played it for several hours over the weekend, including watching both my kids play it (5 y/old daughter, 9 y/old son) I'm still in agreement with my earlier decision. This game is definitely worth getting, and not only if you have youngsters. Apparently you can pick it up new for $20 but we already had the D&B points so it was sort of like it was free. Either way it's good value.

The first mission, determining the owner of a dog, teaches you the basics without feeling too much like a Tutorial. You talk to people, get leads from them and make 'notes' in your Notebook, which you can review if you get lost or have to Save & Quit and can't return for a while so forget where you were at (which is more likely). You also interact with items in the game world like prying open boxes with your Crowbar, fixing/repairing/salvaging items with your Wrench, or finding clues/footprints, etc, with your magnifying glass. All three tools get upgraded over the course of the game, gradually allowing you to perform a greater variety of tasks like moving boxes around to create steps to access new areas, picking locks, repairing broken items, or analyzing items of note. All of these activities are completed in minigames by you, the player, not automatically by your avatar, which makes this more than just a simple, point & click adventure game.

You pick locks in a manner very similar to the puzzle game 'Rush Hour' and while the first couple of puzzles were easily solved, as I expected they would they quickly ramped up in difficulty. Nothing taxing, yet, but I'm only halfway through the game. (Actually I'm halfway through as far as Missions go, but last night's Mission took me several hours to complete compared to the first which was solved in barely an hour. I did do a lot of exploring and I'm sure I could do that Mission a lot faster now that I know what's going on, but if the Missions continue to get more involved I'd hazard a guess that I'm maybe only a third of the way into the game.)

Repairing broken items is a basic (so far) version of the classic PC game The Incredible Machine, and requires you to get the 'colored' parts on the board moving, using a limited number of pieces to connect batteries and wires with cogs and belts.

Analyzing items could best be described as a Molecule builder game. Sometimes you start with an empty board, sometimes you'll have a couple of atoms already in place. In either case you'll also have a 'bank' of atoms that all need to be placed on the board, some of which will only connect to 1 other atom while others will connect to 2, 3 or 4 atoms, and this is the mini-game that has been the most challenging so far.

The mini-games serve to both involve the player in the game, and make it more than just a case of walk around, talk to everyone, click on everything, now see if anyone has new dialog. Considering that's what even the most hardcore point & click adventures often boil down to, that's not necessarily a negative for those who like this type of game. If you're looking for action, you've come to the wrong town. This game requires to stop, read, & think about what to do or where to go next. And while you do have your Notebook and could just skip through the dialog ("Yeah, yeah. Kill 10 rats. Got it! Shut up already!") and consult that, unlike your quests in an MMO there is no end game in MySims Agents; the Journey IS the game, so I see no point in rushing through the game (it's short enough as it is!) Yes, it is a short game, but at $20 it's also a cheap game. Without a doubt you could rent it and beat it in a weekend if you cared to, so to add longevity they've included a 'collection' game, of sorts.

Scattered throughout the game are chests, boxes, and various 'easter eggs', and finding/opening these rewards you with clothing, accessories, or costumes for your Agent, or furniture or decorations for your Headquarters.

What's the deal with decorating your HQ?

Each of the items comes with a bonus to one or more of five attributes (off the top of my head, Science, Charisma, Nature, Sport, & Paranormal), and when placed on one of the four floors in your HQ (five including the lobby, but you can't decorate that) those bonuses increase the appropriate stat/attribute of the Team you have housed there.

The Team? Isn't this a game about your Secret Agent?

Well yes, it is, but as you play the game and complete Missions you'll meet various characters, and when a Mission is over you can recruit some of these characters, who will also have a combination of one or more of the five attributes. Some of them are fairly well-rounded and will have 1 to 3 points in 2 to 3 attributes (5 points total), some will be more specialized and will have 3, 4, or even 5 points in a particular attribute. Assigning similar characters to the same floor (maximum of 3 characters per floor) creates a team strong in one or two areas (and naturally weak in others), so placing items that enhance that team's dominant attribute will make for a team very strong in one or two areas.

But why Teams?

Because you can send these Teams out on Missions of their own, and their chances of success are based on how relevant their skills are to the particular mission, from Poor to Excellent. Successfully completing these Team Missions unlocks harder Team Missions and also rewards you with new items.

The Teams also don't just go out on their own, they'll check in with you from time to time, and often at an annoyingly inconvenient time, ("I'm walking across an I-beam 3 stories up here! You think you could call back later? No? Fine, what is it?") requiring you to make decisions possibly (still not sure if it's random or not) affecting the outcome of their Mission. For example, one Mission has your Team trying to get a Client to the movies (exciting stuff for Secret Agents, I know) and the battery on their phone is running out (so they called you and drained their battery even further. Smart Team you've got there.) They have enough power to check movie times or traffic conditions, and they want to know what to do. (Pop Quiz, Hot Shot! What do you do? What. Do. You. Do?) In my case I told them to check the traffic, so what happened? They called back to say "The traffic looks fine." Now I was worried that I should have checked the movie times in case there was a later showing, but I worried for nothing because they made it on time. Well of course they did, because they didn't encounter any traffic problems.

You're not really micromanaging your Teams on their missions. Usually you'll make 2-3 decisions per Team Mission at most, but when you've got 4 Teams out on Missions that adds up to 8-12 decisions you might have to make. Throw in that the Teams will often call in just to let you know there are no problems, and you literally can be balancing on an I-beam when a call comes in. "Everything is fine? That's great! Can I get back to trying not to fall 40-feet to my death now? I can? Thank you!"

Actually you can't die, at least not that I've found. So if you ever do fall off a rafter, I-beam, etc, you'll either land on the ground below or miraculously reappear at the beginning of your rafter, I-beam, etc. This is a MySims game, after all. It's designed for the kids, but it's sufficiently well done that it has a lot of 'grown-up kid' appeal, too. It doesn't have flashy graphics or gratuitous cleavage shots, there's occasional clipping in the animation, and it can be rather linear, but it's still a very well done adventure game that's fun for the whole family (except maybe 13-year old Jimmy who'd rather be playing Soul Caliber, and I can't fault him for that ;)

Hacked

More than once I've tried to log into WoW and got the 'incorrect password' message, and a chill always runs up my spine at seeing that, but when I re-type my password slowly (and correctly) I always get in.

This time I fired up WoW to log in and instead of 'incorrect password' I see 'Please enter your authenticator key'.

My what now? But I don't have an Authenticator!

And that's how I knew I'd been hacked.

I immediately retrieved the two emails I'd just deleted which, like the ones I've been getting every day for a month or two now, tried to warn me that I'd been hacked. When I moused over the URL in one of them it showed Blizzard's real URL. I actually had been hacked.

I called Blizzard and got "We're experiencing a high volume of calls right now. All operators are busy and we cannot take your call. Please try again later. *click*"

What the fuck???

They're so busy taking calls I can't even wait On Hold for the next available Operator?

To me that says they've got a majorly serious problem.

Here's the rub.

The password I use is not one I've used for anything but World of Warcraft.

The only person who has access to my WoW account is my wife and my 9 y/old son, and that's via my PC.

My PC is also pretty much used for nothing but WoW. Ok, there's the checking of email, Facebook activities, reading Blogs, etc, but for the most part I play WoW and that's about it.

I do visit sites like WoWWiki, WoWHead, Thotbott (or however it's spelled) but I'm also a security freak and have numerous anti-spyware programs like NoScript, AdBlock, AVG, Spybot S&D, etc.

I also doubt anyone could call Blizzard pretending to be me and satisfactorily answer my Security questions, not unless they're someone who knows me really, really well. And no, my wife wouldn't do this. That's not her style. She'd just log in on my account and Delete my characters. And she wouldn't clean out my sister's Guild Bank like this person did.

I don't have a keylogger on my computer because the software I listed above is not all that's in my arsenal, I have others, some specifically designed to find keyloggers, and all scans came up blank.

This means it was not someone close to me who hacked my account, and it (most likely) wasn't a case of me being hacked/keylogged.

In my opinion this was an inside job from someone inside Blizzard, and this is apparently what many people who have been hacked have claimed for a long time. Of course nobody has any proof because the only proof is an absence of proof (as in once you eliminate the impossible, all that remains, no matter how improbable, etc etc etc...) and that's not good enough. Not for court. It's good enough for me and for those who have been hacked but it still brings you no satisfaction. If anything it makes you wonder what's the point of playing Blizzard's game when they can't protect you from themselves.

After calling back numerous times I finally got into their automated help line and was able, eventually, to talk to someone who removed the Authenticator from my account and got me back into my account. The Rep also informed me that the hacker apparently had access to my email account, so when I got in I not only changed my password but I created a brand new email account and linked my WoW/Bnet account to it, rather than my old email.

I will be very curious to see if this email account receives any sort of Phishing emails and if so, how? If it's a brand new email account, not used for anything but accessing WoW, and so the only record of it being a WoW-related email is within Blizzard's own database...how do the Phishers know to target it? We'll see if that that happens.

Finally I logged into WoW, and this is what I saw...


That's a far cry from the character model I displayed a week or so ago...those Spaulders are the Heroic badge-bought shoulders. They're worthless as far as vendoring which is why I still had them. I also had the badge-bought necklace I'd picked up literally a day or two before but everything else was gone, including most of my badges (& I was 2 Frost badges or one Heroic away from getting my new Libram!).

I logged in and my Pally immediately began falling, falling, falling. A window popped up with Accept or Cancel but there was no message accompanying it. I wasn't going to Accept anything without knowing what I was accepting. I fell for several seconds until being automatically zoned out and re-appearing on a ledge in Sholazar Basin, naked. Well not quite naked. I still had my Badge-acquired Shoulders and a Mining Pick. As a Miner/Skinner I used to carry a Gnomish Army Knife which the Hacker vendored (for 22-silver. Wow.) opting for the cheaper Pick. They then went Mining, on my character. They sold all of my bags bar my original Pack and one other, and both were almost full of Ore & Gems. When my character raided their Guild Bank my sister put in a ticket to a GM that I'd been hacked, and eventually my account was closed down. The hacker had been caught in the middle of Mining run.

Fortunately, with Pets and Mounts now being built into the paper doll and not carried like inventory, I was able to fly back to Dalaran where I checked my bank and saw it had been stripped, too. I put in a ticket to a GM to (hopefully) get my gear restored, then with trepidation logged out to check my other characters. My old toons on Kilrog (Kwazimoto & Co.) had also been stripped. I returned to my sister's server and clicked my Bank Toon. He was still clothed but none of the Auctions I'd listed before going to bed last night were up, nor was there any Gold waiting in the Mailbox for me...or in my inventory. And every other character was the same. Many still had random items in their packs but practically no Gold to their name.

I am willing to start all over again but I'd rather not if I don't have to. Naturally I'd like to get my gear restored and get my sister's stuff back, but I have no idea how long that will take. Do I just play a low level Alt for a week until Blizzard do something? What if it takes them several weeks to restore my gear. What if they won't restore it, or only partially restore it?

And then my own security measures got the best of me. I forgot my new WoW password. And I forgot the password to my new email WoW-only email account. And to be ultra security conscious I'd used my work email as the secondary email and I can't access that until Monday. So this weekend has been a sad, WoW-less weekend.

Fortunately! The kids and I went to Dave & Busters on Friday and I ended up cashing in 10,000 points (the boy and I save them up for the BIG prizes) and getting MySims Agents for the Wii. You can apparently buy it for $20 but it's not likely we'll save up our points for the 85,000 X-Box, so why not spend some of the points on a game for a system we already have.

It's a cute, point & click-style adventure game with a bunch of mini-games (puzzles) to play as your Sim Agent gathers evidence to crack each case. There's also things to find if you're prepared to look around, like new outfits and decorations for your HQ. It's a fairly typical MySims game with lots of customization available, but the way it's presented with you as a Special Agent solving cases means you need to actually think as you play. And I like that. I'm giving it an 8/10. It's not the perfect game but it's well done and is a lot of fun :)

LFD PUG Tool

I hit 80 on the weekend and after running random PUG Normals most every night for the last couple of weeks I had a decent set of pre-Heroic Blue Gear, while self-buffed I had close to 20K Health. On a decent Run I was pulling over 1500dps but occasionally would drop down to 1200-1300 if I was having Mana issues, or running all over the place and spending a lot of time in combat without actually hitting anything.

Being an 80 with reasonable Gear I decided to do some Heroics, and that's where the beauty of the LFD Tool comes in handy. No more do you need to send a tell to someone trying to get into their PUG Heroic, only to be rejected due to a too low Gear Score (or some other prejudice). Now you just sign up and Shazam! In you go. Oddly enough I found the Heroic queue to be shorter than a regular non-Heroic PUG, or maybe it just seems like it.

I ran several Heroics and noticed that my 20K Health (24K Group Buffed) was a bit on the low side, with some of my fellow party members having 40-50K. I've fought Instance Boss Mobs with less Health than that. It was not even uncommon to see Squishy Casters with 30K+ Health. I became curious. Just what was my Gear Score? I found a website that trawled the Armory and calculated my GS. It was in the mid 2000s. That actually didn't help me because I had no idea what was considered a decent Gear Score. I turned to Curse.com and the GS Add-On which came with a bunch of stuff that I didn't think was relevant. But if you don't want all this extra crap, it said, try GS Lite.

Hmm, I think I might, I said, downloading it and installing. It wasn't as invasive as my encounter with Dominos, in fact it was so non-invasive that initially I wasn't even sure it was working. Finally I noticed my GS was on my Character's Paper Doll screen, while if I moused over other characters their GS sometimes came up, and sometimes didn't. Perhaps those with no GS didn't have a GS Add-On.

I discovered that knowing the GS of others now gave me a sense of inferior inadequacy. Woah! That guy has a 5K+ GS. HOLY CRAP! That guy has 6K+! And here I am with my mid 2000s GS running a Heroic with them.

The good thing, as I mentioned, is I can actually run Heroics via the LFD Tool, and while I don't do the insane 4Kdps of the 5K+ GS player, I am doing close to 2K+ so I'm at least doing my bit, even if it's a small bit.

And by being able to get into Heroics I'm experiencing a whole lot more of the game than I did at 60 & 70 in the pre-Wrath days. Sure, I ventured into MC and Onyxia, then later Kara, but that was just dabbling. Being able to run Heroics now means I can actually gear up and loot Epic items rather than craft them (or buy them).

I figured the first thing on the agenda was acquiring a new weapon so I started looking through Atlas to see which Bosses in what Instances dropped Epic 2H weapons and discovered Loken in the Halls of Lightning dropped a Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver. A wicked looking axe that someone clearly felt needed MORE AXES!!!

I signed up for a Heroic Halls of Lightning, ran the Instance but didn't see my Axe drop. I then ran several more Random Heroics before lucking out and getting into a random Halls of Lightning with a Warrior Tank and a DK DPS. They were the two that concerned me because either one of them could legitimately Need roll on the Cleaver if it dropped. But then I noticed they both had a 5K+ Gear Score, and when I inspected the DK he already had an Epic 2H Weapon. And here I was, tagging along with them, practically leeching off them as I tried to get Epics and upgrade my Gear.

My feeling of inadequacy was only increased when, while clearing Trash Mobs, General Bjarngrim ran in and suddenly I was dead. And so was the other DPS.

But the Warrior and the Death Knight survived, as did the Healer. And they continued to survive. This was a Heroic Boss with a couple of Adds and they were 3-manning him. At first I thought they'd only be able to survive for a little while but the Healer's HUGE Mana bar never even looked in danger of being depleted. The Adds dropped then the Warrior and Death Knight slowly but steadily chipped away at the General's 300,000 Health Bar. I've seen some cool stuff in WoW, and done some cool stuff of my own, but this was seriously impressive stuff. All I could do was look on from my place on the floor in amazement, and when they finally killed him and the loot dropped I didn't roll on it, not even a Greed roll. I felt like I hadn't contributed to the fight at all and so I didn't deserve to even get some vendor trash out of it.

After that the rest of the Run was practically anti-climactic, right up until we got to Loken. This stay we all survived. All of us except Loken of course, who went down so fast it was like he tripped over trying to get to us. I looked at what he'd dropped on his death. "Bother. No axe," I thought to myself, as I moused over the Epic item he'd dropped...and stared in disbelief.

The icon didn't really look like an axe but there it was. My Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver. Mine! I hit Need and it became Mine, uncontested. I had my Axe. My Epic Axe. My Epic Axe with extra Axes was mine. ALL MINE!

And here's a picture :D


The Armor is rather dull looking, and I don't exactly look Paladin'ish, but the Axe is pretty damn cool, even if I do say so myself :D

JE does TKD

This Saturday was JE's second Tae Kwon Do Tournament. He attended one last year where he did his Purple Belt Form, or Pumsae, and earned himself a Bronze Medal. (Each Belt category is broken up into groups of 3 to 4 kids so each kid gets a medal regardless of how well they do. This fact did not escape JE's notice and so he wasn't overly impressed at getting the Bronze Medal).

This time around he did a lot better; his technique was more solid and he demonstrated better power & control with his blocks & strikes. Unfortunately he used the wrong block at the wrong time and although he corrected himself immediately it was obvious he'd made a mistake. Despite the error he missed out on the gold by just half a point and so took home the Silver, beating out two other kids.

After lunch it was time for the sparring, and while this was JE's second Tournament it was his first time sparring.

Having competed at a State-level Karate Tournament myself in Australia I'd spent the previous couple of months trying to prepare JE for what I knew was in store for him. Watching him spar with the other kids at this TKD school I could tell he really wasn't prepared. He kicked too slow, as if he was afraid of hurting the other kid. Slow kicks can be dodged. Slow kicks miss your opponent. Slow kicks don't score points and they don't win matches. Kick faster, I'd tell him, kick harder. You need to tag your opponent, he needs to feel it, and you need to keep after him the whole time. (The sparring matches were two one-minute rounds, separated by a 20-30 second break.)

But my words and experience meant nothing to the 9-year old boy. He just wasn't prepared. But then that's also what tournaments are for: to give you experience so you can improve and do better at the next tournament.

There were three boys in JE's sparring group. Himself, another kid about the same size and build as him, and a bigger, heavier kid. (Not necessarily a more muscular kid, I think 'husky' is the politically correct term ;) who lucked out and got a Bye in Round One. So while JE and his Clone faced off, the Husky Kid automatically advanced to Round Two, meaning even if he lost his one and only match he'd still get the Silver. Lucky leetle fat keed.

As JE and his Clone faced off I could immediately tell the Clone had more experience. He moved more fluidly, gliding in, snapping out kicks, then skipping back before JE could retaliate. This tournament was certainly going to be a learning experience. The poor kid was taking body shots and kicking at air and I could tell it was getting to him. He was fighting two fights; he was fighting his Clone and he was fighting back the tears and he was losing both battles.

I was aware of the rule which said if one kid takes a beating, starts crying and refuses to continue he gets DQ'd, and I looked on in horror as the Referee did indeed stop the match and ushered JE and his Clone to their seats. At the time I didn't realize it was just the end of Round One, but that was irrelevant; if JE didn't go back in it would still be the end of the match.

JE's Master rushed over and began talking to him then looked up at me with a question in his eyes: "What do you want to do?"

Surrounding the arenas were plastic pylons and chains to keep the audience back and give the competitors and staff room to do their thing. But my son's TKD school was hosting this tournament and many of the Staff were volunteers and parents of the competitors, including myself. I even had the snazzy yellow Staff t-shirt to prove it.

I leaped over the chain, rushed to my son's side and began talking to him. "Come on, son. Don't give in. Don't let him win like this," I said, along with other semi-inspirational things like how he might not win even if he did go back out, but to at least go out fighting and not just hand his Clone the victory.

Now if that was a 20-second break it was the longest 20 seconds I've experienced, so I suspect the Referee and Time Keeper cut us some slack and gave us time to try to rally the boy.

As parents we hate to see our kids hurt but we also don't like to see them just roll over and give in, and after a lot of prodding and encouragement the boy dug deep, sucked it up, stood up, and went back out.

This time he took the fight to the Clone who, being up on points and wanting to stay there, fought a lot more defensively. But I could see that he was surprised at the difference between the tearful JE who'd retired to his corner at the end of the first round, and the more aggressive JE facing him now. The boy went after the Clone and while he still got hit again it didn't stop him this time, and he tagged the Clone a few times in return. Unfortunately the rally was too little too late and the match still went to the Clone, who also went on to dispose of the Husky kid and win the Gold.

After the match JE was still not happy. His Clone had kicked him pretty hard and despite the body armor they wear he was still hurting. But then getting hurt is part of growing up, as is overcoming that pain, learning from it, and moving forward.

"In the face of adversity, you find out if you're a fighter or a quitter.
It's all about getting up after you've been knocked down."
- Archie Griffin

Women

So the wife emails me at work and asks me to vacuum when I get home. I agree because it's my job (she does the laundry. Trust me, I've got the easier gig by far) and because a cat, a dog, 2 kids and 2 adults create a ton of dust and I haven't vacuumed for...a while...so the house needs to be vacuumed.

So I get home, clean up the dog's poop in the backyard (Trust me, I've still got the easier gig), then figure I'll chill for a bit and catch up on some blogs before I do the vacuuming. (I was gonna get to it... eventually.) But the wife wants me to do it now.

"Why aren't you vacuuming like you said you would?" she calls out to me from the boy's room. (They're in there doing something on his computer. Probably school-related. She's a good mother like that. I should probably tell her that sometimes. Does this count? No? I need to tell her in person? Okay, I will...after I finish the vacuuming ;)

"Yeah yeah," I say, with the Zenful serenity that comes from being married for longer than a decade, as I continue reading Blogs and finish typing (what I believe to be) a witty comment on some random Blogger's Blog.

Then the boy comes in. "Daddy, why aren't you vacuuming?"

Geez! Et tu, spawn of my loins?

Fine, I'll vacuum then! Wait! Doesn't vaccuum have two C's? I'm sure it does! I'm sure that's how I spelled it in school...in Australia. Bloody Americans. As if it's not enough to drop the U out of words like colour and neighbor and the D out of Refridgerator (And how come you add it in when you abbreviate it to Fridge, huh? If it's Refrigerator, shouldn't it be Frige?) you have to go and rob vaccuum of one of its C's. And you have the audacity to say Australia was founded by thieves and convicts? Bah!

Anyway, so I get out the vaccuum cleaner and start unrolling the cord when I remember the wife mentioned to me the other night that "they" are remaking Hawaii Five-O, which prompts me to start singing the Hawaii Five-O theme song. You know the one? (Or maybe you don't...) It goes like this:

Nag-nag nag-nag naaaag naaaaag.
Nag-nag nag-nag naaaaaaaaaag.
Nag-nag nag-nag nag-naaaaaag!
Nag-nag-nag-nag naaaaaaaaaag!

By this time I'm in the boy's room and he's joined in and is singing along with me so I lean over and give my wife a big, long, sloppy wet kiss on the cheek and when I'm done (it was a loooooong kiss) I say, "I love you, dear".

And what does she say in reply?

"Do the vacuuming."

Women.

Ah well. I guess I better get back to the vaccuuming.

WoW Addons & guitars

I don't use many Addons, my UI is the default UI. I have Recount, Titan and Atlas, along with a few of their components that came packaged with them, and that's about it.

When I read the Tankadin 969 Guide the fellow who wrote it gushed about Dominos and how it allowed him to create his own Hotkey Bars and set them up where ever he wanted, and it sounded cool and looked great on his screen so I downloaded & installed it. When I logged into WoW ALL of my Hotkey bars had been shrunk to about 1/4 the width of the screen and were now stacked one above the other beneath my character, while the XP bar had been moved to the top of the screen and was now a big blue bar with big blue numbers *shudder* Not prepared to spend time trying to set up and get used to Dominos I immediately disabled it. I still have it installed but I liken it to playing Guitar, specifically, playing the G-chord, more specifically changing how I fingered the G-chord.

A G-chord is played by holding down the 5th string at the 2nd Fret, and the 1st & 6th string at the 3rd Fret, and here's a picture for the mentally visually challenged.
The finger position in that picture is the traditional method of playing the G-chord, and as such is how I first learned to play it.

But there's a problem with playing it that way, as illustrated by another picture, this time of a C-chord:
From that picture you should be able to see that a C is played by holding down the 2nd string at the first Fret, the 4th string at the 2nd Fret, and the 5th string at the 3rd Fret.

Yes, this is going somewhere :P

Many popular songs are written in the same key and as such use the same basic chords, A, C, G, D, & E, or variants thereof. I'm not going to get into finger positions for A, D & E, suffice to say that switching between A, C, D, & E is usually quick & easy because of somewhat similar finger positions. My point here is that switching between C and G is somewhat more complex because the fingers need to go through very drastic position changes, especially the 3rd/ring finger which needs to move from the 6th string down to the 1st string. The 1st/index finger must move from the 2nd string/1st fret up to the 5th string/2nd fret while the middle finger has it slightly easier with a shift from the 4th string/2nd fret to the 6th string/3rd fret. If that made your brain hurt then just look at the pictures and see for yourself the position change each finger needs to make.

I was getting pretty good at playing most of the songs with my Church's Youth group, except the finger change between G and pretty much every other Chord still tripped me up. As I studied the chords, particularly G and G7, I wondered why there was such a drastic change between the finger position for the two, especially as the difference between most chords and their Minor or 7th versions required little more than changing the position of a single finger, whereas switching between a G and G7 was like going from a G to a taller C, and here's one last picture, this time of the G7 chord:
You can see how the G7 more closely resembles a C than a G, and yet to go from a C to a C7 you need do nothing more than plop your pinky onto the 3rd string at the 3rd fret. That's it. To change between a C and a C7 all you have to do is add a pinky finger, whereas to change between a traditionally played G and a G7 requires total rearrangement of the fingers akin to changing between G and C.

And that was when I realized the traditional method of playing a G-chord on a guitar is wrong. The books are wrong. The teachers are wrong. And if you're fingering a G-chord in the traditional manner then you're doing it wrong (and now I know how Galileo felt when he went against the system.)

Yes, I said it. If your guitar teacher is teaching you to finger a G-chord as in the above picture then they're teaching you the wrong way. Of course they'll never admit it because almost everyone does it like that so it's widely accepted as the correct way to finger a G-chord, but it's not. It's wrong. (It was also widely accepted that the earth was flat and the center of the universe, but the people who believed that and called Galileo crazy and placed him under house arrest were wrong, too).

Why is it wrong?

It's wrong because the difference between almost every chord and their minor and 7th variants is almost always the addition or subtraction of one single finger, whereas switching between a traditional G and a G7 requires a complete change of the hand position.

The correct way to finger a G-chord (IMHO) is not by using the 1st, 2nd & 3rd fingers, but by using the 2nd, 3rd & 4th fingers. Why do I believe this is the correct method? Because it follows the same principle of switching between G and G7 as switching between all of the other chords and their respective 7ths.

Using the 2nd, 3rd & 4th fingers to play a G, switching between the G and G7 does not require a large change in the position and shape of your hand. It requires nothing more than lifting your pinky off the 1st string/3rd fret while putting down your index finger on the 1st string/3rd fret. The middle finger and ring finger stay in the same position, on the same strings, on the same frets. And because they don't move your hand shape remains practically the same. All you've done is lifted off one finger, and put down another. And that means this is the correct way to play a G because it makes the transition between the G, G7, and all the other chords a whole lot smoother. At least it does when you finally get the hang of playing a G using your 2nd, 3rd & 4th fingers.

If you already know how to play guitar, getting used to fingering a G a new way is like learning how to touch type using the Home Keys. After a lot of practice my fingers finally realized I wanted to play the G my way and not the traditional way (but it took them a while to learn that), and it did make switching between chords a lot easier. For what it's worth I can touch type and relatively quickly, but I never did manage to teach my fingers to use the Home Keys.

Coming full circle, I liken this to learning to use Dominos or some other Addon which totally changes the layout of your UI. With change comes a rebellion, a reluctance to learn the new method. You like the old method just fine, so why change it? If it ain't broke, why fix it? I liked what I read about Dominos but when I installed it it was too different; I preferred the appearance of the default UI. Why should I learn to use a completely new UI, one that needed customizing before I'd find it aesthetically pleasing, when the current one worked just fine?

And so I didn't. Daunted by what was required to return WoW to what I perceived as a playable state I disabled Dominos and went back to the default UI. While it may not be as pretty as some of the custom UIs I've seen (and some I've seen are just amazing) the default UI serves its purpose and allows me to play the game but more importantly, enjoy it now.

I recently ran a few Instances with Paaco tanking on his DK, and as we pulled the first Trash Mobs in the first Instance and I started on my Retadin rotation, my Chat log exploded with whispers. They all came from the same character, the Healer, and they were being generated by a Macro he had installed called RankWatch. What RankWatch does is monitor the spells being used by yourself and your party members and it can alert you and/or them when you and/or they use downranked versions of spells. Without realizing it that's what I'd been doing, even though I'd been to the Trainer and had the most up-to-date levels of my abilities/spells, because a bug exists with characters with dual-spec where not all of their abilities/spells on their Hotkey bars get updated. In my case, for example, I'd learned Exorcism(8) at 73, but my Hotkey bar still had Exorcism(7), and I would quickly discover it was not the only downranked spell I'd been using. About 4-5 of my Abilities were downranked.

Up until then I'd been pulling approx. 1,100dps, with bursts up to 1,200, but unfortunately I'd also sometimes drop embarrassingly below 1K. (Noob!)

After updating my Hotkey bar with the most powerful of my abilities my DPS skyrocketed and peaked at over 1,600dps. Now the Shaman in my party may have had a little to do with that, but IMO (even though I'm a Noob and always will be) I very much doubt he can take credit for a 33% increase in my DPS. I'm sure his Totems were partially responsible, but a large part of my DPS increase still came from upgrading my previously downranked abilities. And with an increase in DPS came newfound enjoyment in what had been a gradual stagnation of Ret. I'd actually contemplated going back to Prot for questing/grinding because Ret was just not doing it for me. But now, once again, it was.

After the first run the group stayed together to run a second Random, and my Retadin DPS was still crazy high (or more correctly, no longer noobishly low). When Paaco logged for the night I visited my Paladin trainer and learned my new level 74 Abilities (I'd actually dinged 74 the night before then Noobishly logged almost straight away). I then switched to Prot and made sure my Prot Hotkey Bar had the highest ranked abilities, just in case.

With renewed faith in my ability to provide MQOSDPS I switched back to Ret then hit up the DF Tool for one last Instance. Not normally running PUGs without Paaco Tanking it was a somewhat new experience for me, and either Paaco is a good Tank (which he is), or the NElf DK sucked as a Tank (which is equally possible) because initially I suspected I was in for the typical PUG from Hell with a Tank who couldn't. After a couple of Trash Pulls the Tank blamed Lag for her inability to Tank then DC'd on us, and I stepped up to the plate, switched to Prot and offered to Tank the rest of the Instance. While my first experience as a Tank in Wrath had been a painful affair this Run was fairly smooth. There were a few chaotic moments when the Shaman used the horrible "let's throw all the Mobs far away" ability, but not one wipe, or even anything like a Near Wipe. I already knew I could bring the Pain as a Retadin, but now my faith in my ability to Tank had also been restored.

Was it that I'd noobishly been using downranked abilities to Tank in Wrath? Was it the gear upgrades I'd acquired between 70 and 74? Was it a combination of both? (Probably ;) In any case I was now, once again, an Indestructible Tankadin! and once again enjoying the game, all thanks to an AddOn called Rankwatch that I didn't even have installed.

Signs you work for Initech

I've mentioned before that I'm in charge of the office coffee club because no other schmuck will take it off my hands, and I need coffee, and as much as I like Soy Lattes I'm not doing Starbucks every day.

So I'm in the breakroom this morning and an altruistic coworker presents to me what he thinks is a great idea.

We should turn off the Keurig coffee machine on Friday afternoon so it's not On all weekend, he says to me.

That's not a bad idea. I mean it's just one little machine keeping about a quart of water hot so when someone wants a cup of coffee it's ready, but I'm sure there's some cost saving if it were turned off over the weekend instead of being left on. A minimal cost saving, but a saving nonetheless.

I also start work early. I mean seriously early. Like OMFG o'clock. So I could turn the machine back on first thing Monday morning when I get in giving the water inside time to heat up and be ready by the time the rest of the riffraff get in, and so...

Yeah, that's a good idea, I tell him, before adding, who's going to turn it off on Friday?

See because I get in at OMFG o'clock (what can I say? That amuses me. Yeah, I'm a little juvenile at times) I also leave early in the afternoon, so I can't turn the machine off when I leave or I'd be depriving some of my caffeine-addicted coworkers of their coffee. Bad things happen when people who need caffeine don't get it, and I'm not going to be responsible for that, so it's only natural that I'd ask him who would turn the machine off.

And he gives me a look not unlike a kicked puppy, which I think is a little unfair. He's the one who didn't think his idea all the way through to the "Who would do this?" stage. Why does that make me the bad guy for pointing it out?

If anything that was his queue to step up to the plate and say "Why! I shall turn it off myself!" but he didn't do that. So he has a half-arsed idea, that he never thought through, and which he's not prepared to put into action himself, but I'm the bad guy for calling him on it.

That's not the Initech moment, which if you need it pointed out is the company Peter worked for (or didn't work for, depending how you look at it) in the movie "Office Space".

On Friday I completed & submitted my electronic Time Sheet (like a good little Peon). This morning the supervisor who I helped last week (who is a supervisor but not my supervisor) is apparently reviewing my Time Sheet because she asks me to recall it because I didn't charge any time to her projects.

So I recall my Time Sheet, change the numbers around to bill some time to her projects (instead of it all being charged to the projects on which I normally work), re-Submit it, then notice I have a new email. It's from my Supervisor. As in my actual Supervisor.

It's short, simple, and to the point.

"Please submit your Time Sheet."

You have got to be fucking kidding me!

Now I actually have a decent relationship with my real supervisor so I fire off an email to him, explain the situation, and tell him I've just re-submitted it. Then I add:

"I'm glad I'm learning new opportunities but situations like these make me feel like I'm in the movie "Office Space" :P

Yeah, I actually emailed that, including the :P smiley.

"Just another manic Monday." - The Bangles.

Neilmed Sinus Rinse

The following post contains scenes and descriptions that may upset weak stomachs. Reader discretion is advised.

Inspired by the latest post on Borderline TMI I would like to bring your attention to Neilmed Sinus Rinse.
I got one of these at the family Christmas gift exchange a couple of years ago, and I'm still not sure if it was meant as a gag gift or if the giver was genuinely sincere in her espousing of its effectiveness. Given my wife's family's fondness for holistic medicines, vibrating massage thingies, etc, the cousin who claimed she used it and loved it probably actually did. (No, I don't think she actually gave me hers...) Not too sure about it myself I took it home and put it in the kitchen cupboard, where it sat, unopened, for a loooong time.

Eventually my clogged sinuses got too much for me, and when I recalled that my father used to snort a cup of slightly salty warm water to alleviate his sinuses, I figured I had nothing to lose (except snot) and a whole lot to gain...like clear sinuses.

I nuked a cup of water to just warm and mixed it with a packet of salt in the little squirt bottle, screwed on the cap, stuck it up my right nostril, looked sheepishly at myself in the vanity mirror, then leaned over the sink and began slowly squeezing the bottle.

The instructions recommend that not only do you not hold your breath while doing this, but that you breathe through your mouth to avoid putting pressure on your middle ear. And so I did. I leaned over the sink while carefully & slowly breathing in and out my mouth as I squirted warm, salty water up my nose.

At first nothing happened. Oh sure, I could feel the warm water slowly filling up my sinus cavity but it wasn't coming out my left nostril (the cap seals your nostril pretty good, and I have big nostrils) and then it happened.

No, the water didn't begin pouring out my left nostril.

It began running down the back of my throat, into my mouth, and out my mouth into the sink.

Warm, salty water. From my nose. Was coming out of my mouth.

Along with...other stuff.

It was disgusting, in a satisfyingly cathartic way.

When I'd finally squeezed the bottle to almost flat I removed it from my nostril, and now I had water running out of my nose AND my mouth.

But my nose felt kind of good.

As I walked to the kitchen to warm a second cup of water for my left nostril more salty water dripped out of my nose. Oops.

When I repeated the procedure with my left nostril it mustn't have been as blocked as the right (or vice versa) because this time around the water began running out of my right nostril. Along with...more stuff. Big, long, thick chunks of...stuff.

And when it was done and I'd blown my nose into a paper towel (because a tissue would have disintegrated) I felt great. My sinuses felt clearer than they had in a long, long time. The snot was gone, the pressure was gone, and the pain that accompanies blocked sinuses? Gone.

I used it almost every day for a couple of weeks - because every time I did there was the cathartic relief that comes with the removal of large chunks of snot - before scaling back to just a couple of times a week as I felt necessary. And except when my sinuses get really clogged up the water goes in one nostril and out the other, accompanied usually by a thick string of snot that feels so good to be rid of.

If you're plagued by blocked sinuses, forget the old "head over a bowl of steaming water" trick, that won't cut it. Instead try sending 8oz of warm, salty water up each nostril. You might be surprised at how good it feels, despite how disgusting it sounds...or looks...or tastes ;P

Awesome PUGs

Working together, can achieve awesome things.

After acquiring the Shadowforge Key then getting lost I decided to research BRD before my next attempt, and discovered there's a short cut you can take that omits about 75% of the Instance. You just need to go for a swim, in lava. If you don't unlock the Shadowforge Lock the gate on the Dark Iron Highway stays open and you can go straight through to Lord Incendius and the Black Anvil, which is where you leap off and start swimming. This is also the short & fast way to complete Attunement to the Core, which I did at the same time. I'm not sure it's required any more, but either way I still have it :)

Going this way brought me out in the Dark Iron Dwarf-infested room between Doom'rel and Magmus, and as Magmus is the last Boss before Emperor Thaurissan's room you can see how much of the Instance it cuts out. After finding the torch bearing Dark Iron Dwarves, defeating Magmus, and clearing the Mobs in the Emperor's room I decided that while I didn't have the quest I would still leave Moira alive. I don't know why, because not killing her first just prolonged the fight as she healed and buffed the Emperor, but he still went down and with his death I got both the BRD Achievement AND the Classic Dungeonmaster Achievement.

And a Gratz from Paaco who'd logged on without my noticing.

He was now 66 and with my Classic Dungeons now out of the way I joined him in Nagrand where we tackled the Ring of Blood quests. We were able to get to the final Boss before getting our faces melted, so we called for help. A 67 Hunter responded, along with a 65 Pally who offered to Tank. No offense, I told him, but I think I better do it ;)

Even with 4 of us Mogor was still not a push over, in fact he ended up killing not just the 65 Pally but myself as well. The Pally wisely didn't release, and he said he got the Quest Complete message, but after running back to his body and Rezzing the Quest now showed as Failed. So we did it again. This time we all survived.

I'd told my son that after I'd completed BRD he could play but with him now on his computer and Paaco wanting to run an Instance I decided the boy could wait a little while longer, and that's how we found ourselves in the Auchenai Crypts. The Run went smoothly enough except for one Wipe when someone got Feared into two packs and we suddenly had a whole lot more Mobs than we were prepared for. Then after returning to the Instance one of the DPS had Rez sickness. I don't know how they had it, they just did, and then they dropped group. But one DPS is quick & easy to replace and we were back up & running in no time. Paaco was a shade on the low side for Auchenai Crypts, so this, combined with completing the two quests I had for the Instance which I'd shared with him meant that by the time the Run was over he was just a couple of bars from dinging 67.

With that I handed my PC over to my boy, bid Paaco adieu, and went off to make dinner. I let the boy keep playing after dinner but kicked him off at 8pm (time for him to get ready for bed anyway :P) Paaco and I again joined forces but after talking once more to Behsten, regaining my XP bar, and turning in several quests I was now 70 and so our choice of Instances in the DF Tool were rather limited.

We wound up in Shadow Labs with a 68 Druid Healer and two other Death Knights (Paaco is also a DK). Now I lurve me a Druid Healer, so I was happy to see her, and I was even more pleased when after the initial exchange of pleasantries (Hi, hi, hi, hi, hi) the Druid announced, "Great. Shadow Labs. Probably my least favorite of all the Instances in this game."

Was that a complete sentence? Oh...my...god! Someone in a Random PUG actually typed a complete sentence!

I quickly responded with, "I'm actually glad to hear that because that seems to indicate you know this Instance quite well, whereas I do not."

"I supposed that's one way of looking at it," she replied, and with that, we were off. Paaco knows what he's doing, and the other two DKs also seemed to know what they were doing. I'm really getting the hang of being a Tankadin and the Druid knew what she was doing, and was quite chatty to boot, and not just with instructions on what to do, tricky encounters, etc.

It was a very good group considering it was a Random PUG. Quite possibly the best I've been in to date. I've had some good experiences so far but this one was literally the very antithesis of the PUG from Hell. I won't say we didn't encounter problems because we did, every Run has them, even if it's just a random stealthed Mob that jumps the Healer. But we prevailed and when it was all done and we'd all earned the SLabs Achievement, nobody was in a hurry to drop group and everyone had only positive things to say about our time together.

"Anyone up for another Run?" asked someone, and everyone was. Nobody wanted to leave, and why would they? We were working well together, we were enjoying ourselves, and those kinds of PUGs are hard to come by.

It was quickly agreed that we'd Take 5 for bio, drink, smoke, etc, and when everyone returned we jumped back into the queue. Not that we were actually queued, it was more the Druid selected an assortment of Instances and let the DF Tool pick one at Random. And it chose Shadow Labs again :P

Somehow the Druid canceled the selection (not sure how) but we were given another choice, this time Botanica.

"I love Botanica!" squealed the Druid (go figure ;), and that clinched it.

By the time the Run was over I'd decided I liked it, too. But I also enjoyed Shadow Labs because the Boss fights in both Instances were more than just your standard Tank & Spank, they had variety. They threw a few curveballs to keep things interesting.

And did Warp Splinter, Bot's final Boss, really make things interesting?

Did he what! For a Tank his fight is business as usual, but for our three DKs they were running all over the place trying to bring down the Treants the Boss kept Summoning before they could get in to Heal him. Unfortunately quite a few made it in, and just as it seemed we were wearing the big guy down...pop! He'd get Healed, for as much as 25-40K at a time, every 45-60 seconds. That's a tough barrier to overcome for a group a little on the low side. And we didn't. We wiped.

That was when we discovered a neat trick with the DF Tool when you're in a group and have been assigned an Instance. You can click the Eye on your Minimap and an option comes up "Teleport to Instance" and it takes you straight back in. I don't know if it works if you're dead or not, but as you actually get GY Rez'd sans Rez Sickness) after dying inside Tempest Keep it definitely worked in our favor. That was a good thing for Paaco because at 67 the slack bastard (that's an Aussie term of endearment ;) still does not yet have his Flying Mount :P

Back inside we rebuffed, discussed strategies, and decided that when the Treants spawned all three DKs needed to lay off the Boss DPS and go hunting. That worked for a while (and this was a loooong fight) but with Warp Splinter at around 30K the Druid went OOM, and yet somehow I stayed alive. At about 20K I was crossing my fingers (not literally. Hard to Tank like that.) until some Treants got through and delivered a 25K Heal. On top of an earlier 40K Heal this can be rather demoralizing. And yet we still stayed in the game and I still stayed alive.

Slowly we wore the big guy down while Treants spawned, and got picked off. With Warp Splinter at about 20K again one of the DKs rushed in and started laying into him and his health started dropping faster. Keep in mind this is a 72 Elite Boss and my DPS were 67 & 68. Being 4-5 levels lower means a lot of their swings were missing. Down to 10K. The end was in sight. Stay on those Treants, I whispered, not daring to even type. Like the Druid I'd been OOM myself for a while now and was relying on my Blessing of Sanctuary to top it back up enough for a Holy Shield or a Hammer of the Righteousness.

Tank OOM. Healer OOM. Three Deathknight DPS 5 levels lower than the Boss, being diverted from DPS to stop him from getting Heals.

It may not sounds like it, but this was actually a really fun fight.

I'm not saying it was relaxing and a walk in the park, far from it. This was the balls to the wall fight where you have a chance at winning, not necessarily a good chance, but it's there and you know it's possible but you need to go all out to make it happen. Is it really a game if you have to work for your rewards? Is it really fun? Hell yeah, it is!

I've killed the four Hunter Demons. I remember each fight, or more specifically, I remember each successful attempt. I remember some of the Raid Boss encounters in which I've taken part. Not all of them, they weren't all memorable. But standing there victorious with the toppled Ancient lying in front of us? Knowing it only happened because 5 people were able to work together to overcome not an impossible task but a difficult one. This is a good memory, and this is why we play. For moments like this. The rewards are nothing but bits & bytes. All we defeated was a computer program. But the memories are real. The feelings are real, and the elation and rush from 'winning' is real. Even if we did nothing more than 'beat' a computer program, it still felt good.

"Anyone up for another Run?" someone asked.

If the group consensus was 'Yes' I was prepared to call in sick (and I actually am fighting off a cold, and my Boss knows it) but the replies came back. Got work in 6 hours, 4 hours, etc., and with that we all parted ways, knowing if we ever do Run together again it will be pure luck, for while the DF Tool allows Cross-server grouping, the ability to add Cross-server Friends to your List is not yet in the game.