Happy Thanksgiving

It may not be a British holiday but that doesn’t stop me being nice to people celebrating the holiday. I’ll be spending my evening trying to get a group for Zul’Farrak, I’m in quest limbo at the moment running here, there and everywhere trying to get to the next “batch” I can do all in one zone. I remember 30-50 being the hardest bracket when I got my Priest to 70, now I only have 5 levels till hitting Felwood I find I am grinding to a halt. I may end up in Felwood earlier than planned, we shall see, I don’t exactly have my leveling progress and zone list planned at this moment, I’m just doing what I can and hoping that it doesn’t take too long.

Work, I haz it!

No time for posting today, having an absolutely manic time at work playing with barcodes not working properly. This is serious stuff. Hopefully normal service will resume tomorrow.

Would more people read this if I have the word “NAKED” in the title?

Just a thought.

Anyway, life has come up and bitten me in the ass this week meaning that I am unlikely to be able to play until the weekend. Mondays are not traditionally a gaming night anyway as my wife and I meet up with friends for the evening every week to hang out and enjoy pleasurable company, not that we find each other that repulsive we have to get out and see other people to enjoy said pleasurable company. Tuesdays are normally a slow evening for me as well, I take time out to watch Stargate Atlantis which keeps me away from the PC, sometimes I play for a bit afterwards but due to how this week is going I am saving all that lovely rest XP for a blowout come the weekend. Tonight (Wednesday) and tomorrow (Thursday) I will also be out for varying amounts of the evening which is going to prohibit my gaming time. I have a feeling I will have some catching up to do come Saturday.

But wait! Surely Friday as the weekend beginneth I can start the spamming of scenarios and quests for my Tier 3 progress…well no. This is actually the worst of all the days. You see, every month I organise a LAN party style event for friends. We spend all night geeking it up and playing various games with each other over a wired LAN. It’s all good fun and everyone gets a kick out of it. November’s just happens to be this Friday. Lo and behold though, then the weekend arrives! Woot? Well, I have a lot of stuff going on this weekend as well, I’ll be out at 7am Saturday morning, home for the afternoon and out in the evening. Not a day designed for keeping pace with many of my guild mates. However, Sunday could prove to be back to normal service.

I don’t begrudge the time away from the game though, I can review my history with WoW and see just how long I spent each and every day in that game and be happy that things are not this way in WAR and I had more stuff going on a taking away my free time when I was playing WoW too. Wrath of the Lich King comes out this week and I can see all those people still addicted to it craving this latest pack of “Grind-in-a-box” (TM). It’s a great game (not without its flaws) and I can say that I did enjoy the time I spent there (was certainly a lot of it) but even though I get the odd touch of nostalgia and think of going back, I don’t think that I will relive any of those experiences that made the game for me as the vast majority of the people there are not playing anymore. People afterall make an MMO not the MMO itself I feel. If you have a good community then you can cover over a multitude of failings (goodness knows I spent long enough in SWG mainly due to the community after SOE butchered that game). A break from gaming all the time is good and refreshing and means I don’t get too caught up in it. Luckily my guildies are keeping me on the straight and narrow by offering helpful advice to stop me returning to Azeroth.

Roll on 1.0.5 and my Magus getting the love she deserves and we’ll see just what I can do to rip things up in game. Until this patch arrives I can afford to be happy in a more casual playing style.

I haz monies!

That’s right, paypal have pulled their finger out and fixed their mistake. All hail the power of email and moaning at their customer service.

Paypal, Schmaypal!

Before Warhammer Online there was of the course the venerable old game of Warhammer, played by nerds the world over. I’ve been involved with the tabletop hobby since I was a wee lad of 12 and have never strayed too far from it. I recently decided to get rid of a large number of the models that I had, many can attest to the quantity I had and many of them didn’t really ever see the light of day. So, I converted this excess of toy soldiers into cold, hard cash.

This has allowed me to develop new armies (one for 40k and one for Fantasy) and play these rather than having a never ending horde of stuff. I have the required storage for it all as well. So, the last thing that I sold was over 2000pts of Fantasy Dark Elves. I put these up on everyone’s favourite tat bazaar Ebay and got a nice winner. So, he sent me the money via paypal and I sent him the goods. Now, Paypal has this clever idea whereby they basically freeze your assets until you get positive feedback from your buyer or 21 days with no dispute transpires. So, I send the loot, I gets the feedback, positive of course. So, I log into Paypal and guess what? Yup, my funds are still on hold, being the reasonable gent that I am I email them asking them where the hell is my money. I get a nice email back in broken english from somewhere in the Ukraine saying that Paypal has a bug whereby it’s not releasing payments with the feedback. I have to wait out the 21 days and everything will be ok.

This of course leads me to today. The 21 days expired yesterday, October 30th, so I log into Paypal this afternoon to check up on things and lo and behold, everything is still on hold…..gah. This is not an insubstantial amount of money and I have plans for it hehe. So, off goes another email to paypal asking them what in the seven sphincters of hell is going on. I’m looking forward to their reply.

It wasn’t bad enough that my Ebay fees came to £20 last month but I can’t even get hold of the proceeds from my auctioneering. It’s kind of like in WoW where someone buys your crap and you have to wait for an hour to get your hands on the gold when the mail is already sitting in your mailbox.

I think next time I’ll just get them to send me a cheque and I won’t use Ebay, unless you’re making your sole living off it the fees are ludicrously expensive.

My Mom always said to feed a cold…

Which seems quite accurate considering just how hungry I’ve been during the time I’m sharing my body with this cold virus. A recent piece of personal revelation has also led me to a more pragmatic attitude, although I feel like crap, if moaning about having a cold is the worst of my problems then I really should actually count myself lucky. Many people go through far worse.

But here I am at 11am feeling like I could eat a 24oz Steak without breaking a sweat, it’s the same in the evenings when I get home, I am starving. Whether this is just my body’s way of saying “give me energy so I can beat this intruder to a pulp” I don’t know. After all, I’m no doctor. Still, this week has seen me be hungrier than I can remember being for a long time. The good news is that I am feeling slightly better. The sore throat has gone but the nasal “Angell Falls” is in flood and my head still feels like it’s been crammed full of angry bees. My wife is dutifully caring for me in my reduced state so I have to give my thanks to her for putting up with my endless lethargy.

Hopefully this will mean that once I’ve struggled through the working week I can spend some time over the weekend recovering properly (i.e. only moving between bed and PC with meals and snacks provided to order).

“It’s Worse Than That, He’s Dead Jim”

And that’s pretty much how I feel at the moment. Man-flu comments non-forthcoming but I got that “You’re going to be ill soon” feeling in my throat Sunday night, that became a sore throat yesterday which then has matured into an “I just stuffed a duvet into your head” feeling this morning. All that combined with things going a little pear-shaped at work means I’m busy and feel like crap at the same time. Trying to get your brain to work when all it wants to do is get the lights turned off and snuggle under the bed clothes is a feat in and of itself. It’s a shame that life doesn’t come with a “Cure Disease” spell, I could certainly make use of that.

Strepsils, Soothers and Lemsip are my constant companions right now.

Drugs FTW!

Apologies…

..for the past few days. Wednesday I lost the will to post and yesterday I spent most of the day in meetings at work. I know that I could post something in the evenings, but I think it’s funny that I’d be taking time away from playing the game to blog about it and by playing the game it gives me things to blog about, talk about a catch 22.

Clairvoyance, I Haz It!

Apparently…

So, have you ever had one of those days where you wake up and know exactly how the day is going to play out? I had one of those mornings. For my work I have to carry around a mobile phone (that they provide of course) and it never gets turned off except in places where that is compulsory (you know, like the cinema). As I arose from the catatonic stupor I often find myself in during the period between sunrise and midday I knew that the work phone was going to ring. Lo and behold I just about make it into the bathroom to perform the usual and *RING RING* we’ve lost one of the connections to our customers. This is at five to eight when I haven’t even had breakfast yet. I get washed, get dressed and throw my lunch in my bag. Hastily cram one of my wife’s breakfast bars down my throat (like eating tar) and leave for work.

Luckily by midday everything is OK again and my visions of being in the office until the small hours is dispelled. Still, I find it odd that I knew something big was coming scant moments from its arrival. I have various explanations for this but still, why can’t things just stay proper and save me the stress!

Still, I work in a chocolate factory so it can’t all be bad!