Twitter! vs. Therazane

IRL
I am now @jimaxyn on the popular micro-blogging site Twitter, which then posts onwards to my Facebook page. Come say hello.

Otherwise, I'm mind-numbingly tired. When 5 hours sleep a night is considered a good night, you know there's an issue. M y youngest is fighting off a cold, and grizzles contantly, so no one in our house gets any sleep. Starting to go a little tiny bit crazy.

WoW
Griiiiiind. I'll be using the holidays to grind rep with Therazane and the whole Hyjal Mullarkey. It's slow going, but I'll get there. Add in the Greench daily, I shall be otherwise engaged for most of the holiday.

Slim Jim vs. Patch 4.3

IRL

Little man is 6 months old! Holy crap, the small green thing that Charlie pushed out is now a far less chunky little grinning thing of 6 months (He was nicknamed the chuckling doughball when he started smiling) and of course he's not green anymore. Can't believe it's been that long. Downsideis though, he's started teething. We're not getting a lot of sleep. I've had recourse to the sofa a couple of nights.

I haz Skinny! Dieting, normally an area for others to point out 'advice' to me, is now my area of expertise. I've been on Slimming World, and I've lost over 2 stone. My former 16 Stone 4 is (hopefully) going to break the 13 stone area tonight at my weekly weigh in. It's weird, I've been relatively successful at it, and it's been relatively easy. Those of you who know me know I can't resist snack food, and that 'All you can eat' was always seen as a challenge, not a type of buffet.

Ubuntu One has been odd recently, but maybe I'm just not syncing long enough to make it work properly. Probably the latter. But hey, when it does work it's awesome. Looking forward to two Queen Adreena tunes hitting my cloud and then my phone so I can enjoy the delights of their interpretation of Jolene (It's fantastic, go check it out)

WoW

Patch 4.3 has arrived, bringing with it the end of Deathwing. I'm sure I'll get a crack at Neltharion at some point in the near future due to my awesomeness (And the Raid Finder) and by awesomeness I mean I'll sell that damn Mekgineer's Chopper and go buy me some purples, and the daily random Cata Heroics give me other options for buying shinies.

One thing the patch has brought is the new revamped Darkmoon Faire. It now exists on an island, which can be reached via a portal in Elwynn and near Thunderbluff. There are loads of new and interesting quests and the monthly quests of note related to professions, each rewarding +5 professional skill. Let's say I'm pleased there's a fishing quest as 5 points in a month is probably triple what I'm getting currently. All my toons have hit flat spots in their fishing. Let's also be candid about the profession itself, it's pretty dull. The fountain part of the achievement is pure grind, and the turtle is just plain mean, like that F*&king chocolate cake in cooking. Some people pay perfectly good money to be tortured, and good for them, glad they've found something to get their juices flowing, but I am not into that sort of a dungeon, I'm into dungeon instances so why is Blizzard being spiteful. Anyway, I reckon there's some grand design, and they have provided me with thousands of hours of entertainment, so go figure, eh?

Anyway, get out there and do quests and stuff.

Have fun

Brewfest!! vs No sleep 'til .....ever

IRL

All work and no sleep make make James flake out.

Xander hasn't been sleeping, and so neither has anyone else in the house. We are all poorly with cold, but none so much as Charlie, she doesn't have a cold, she's just looking after the rest of us. Daniel, being a toddler, has formed a brittle composite of clothing and snot by simply wiping his nose with his sleeve, which is endearing for all of 5 seconds, Xander just dribbles from his nose and grins, which is a lot cuter, and I just sniff a lot, which is starting to annoy even me. I wish Xander would take to a bottle, so I can give Charlie a day off. This would be handy as we could go somewhere and leave the boys with the MiL. Me, I'd just be happy with a good couple of hours left alone in the house, then off to the pub with Charlie, who is due a pint in peace, and time away from the house.

Work is becoming more stressful with the lack of any news on the contract front. We've all had our contracts shortened to December the 30th. This could make for a really shitty Christmas. I REALLY hope not, but the CV's been updated and we live in hope.

WoW

Brewfest is here! As usual, the loot table has been shined up and rolled out. A chance to farm one trinket, and maybe a mount and a pair of awesome one hand maces is upon us, dressed in the thin veil of a WoW holiday. I love these farm runs, especially when you get a group that will farm it 'til the cows come home, occasionally swapping one member out for another treasure seeker. I've been levelling my toons like crazy to get them in for this. It turns out it level 84 only, so it's been nce to get Jimbelle into the Coren Brewfest encounter by her cute button nose. Next, Elly (Ellyllaidd) and Muffy (Myfanawy) are getting the levelling treatment. At the very least I want them all at 84 for the Headless Horseman at Samhain/Hallowe'en. It's not a million miles away

I bought the WoW Scalper guide, and am starting to collate the AH data necessary. We'll see what fruit are borne by this in time. As always, go to Zuggy's site for a great gold guide. --->

Job-based uncertainty vs. No play time

IRL

Work is getting interesting, but not in a good way. The firm I work for has gotten rid of their central European helpdesk, and now we have local helpdesks. Good on a couple of levels, we have control, if you want a job done properly... etc, but it's an uphill climb with new and dull and (in some cases wildly inaccurate) procedures. The added cheek of all this is there have been hints that the bank will be cutting staff. Other banks are doing it, and so like sheep, our bank has to too. I have two kids and a mortgage, so I hope they're not cutting staff, but I also think it's time to start looking for something else, as I suspect it's going to be a fairly unpleasant process for the IT department to be slowly hollowed out by the parent bank homogenising the investment arm.

We will all be singing the company song (In French) soon :(

Family, volatile things aren't they. I've been getting lectured about how I deal with my eldest. In fairness, I do tend to expect more than a little from him, and should just let him be 3. However, I do become hostile when my MiL starts chipping in when I comment on the housekeeping in my house. She's got a flaming nerve. However, she's unlikely to apologise, so that won't ever get redressed. It's back to treating her in a manner fitting her behaviour. My parents are in town for a week, and it's been lovely catching up with them, although can't enjoy the Pineau they brought with them (Damn diet) for a little while. If you ever get the chance, go to the Charantes region of France (West coast, half way down, where Cognac is from) and get a bottle of Pineau, it's GORGEOUS. No other words for it.

New toys!! Got the HP N36L microserver, it's a wee stubby cute cube of black plastic. At £250 and then a £100 cashback, it's worth getting as a PC, or media centre base. Give it a butchers.

WoW

Not been up to much recently, made Jimbelle my main, and trying to get back into the swing of playing as a Warlock. It was a relief to run Throne of the Tides without a single clue what I was doing - lol. Tailoring is providing decent revenue stream, but need to get my enchanting up to spec, although one thing hasn't changed since Vanilla WoW - Enchanting is difficult and expensive. I hope the Firelands recipes can provide some decent gold, or at least some nice bits of kit. So far, nothing for my Engineering Gnome Mage worth a look in, but Jimbelle's an enchantress and tailor, so I hope she can whip something up from all this.

Anyway, usual stuff, see Zuggy's gold guide for gold tips worth paying for (Link on the right)

Be good, or be careful.

Children's Parties vs. Guild Runs

IRL

Little people parties are fun. The food is great too, but not if you're dieting. Yes, this will be my 5th meeting of Slimming World. I'm loving losing weight, but I can't shake the image of Marjorie Dawes in Fat Fighters on the Little Britain sketch show. "Dutht!" I'm just short of a stone in weight lighter, and my knees seem happier. Old trousers fit again (Huzzah!) but back to the party. My eldest went as a rogue (The cad/scoundrel sort, not the dual bladed sort from WoW) and he looked every inch the rockstar. He played with the birthday girl and others for the whole time he was there, was a barrel of laughs, and I had a lovely time chatting with some of the parents.

Boblbee: The hunt is on. I'm after a Boblbee Megalopolis backpack. I first saw one in Dark Angel, and I've wanted one since. Now I've been given the go ahead to get one, instead of trying to build my own in the style of Jorge from Halo: Reach. Either way, it's winning! Bidding on one, and watching the others, we'll see.

WoW
Grinding the crap out of the Firelands now, I wants me the Marks of the World Tree tokens for rep and goodies. Dull, but at least rewarding. Otherwise, got my Firelord robe and gloves and now working towards improving my trade skills with my other toons. Dreamcloth is in short supply :)

I'm thinking of giving up doing guild runs, they never happen, there's always a problem. So I'm pugging it from here, methinks.

As usual, buy a gold guide from Zuggy, link on the right. -->

And be good, or if not, be careful

Manalicious vs Manalicious

IRL

Bikes. When most people think of me and bikes they think of motorcycles. Last weekend I was in Halfords buying Daniel his first proper bike. I've lost patience waiting for him to give up pushing himself along on his little front wheel driven trike, and so it was time to sort him out a proper bike, with stabilisers.

This weekend gone, I realised something, I hate sand, not as much as I used to, but it's still on the list. How I ended up at the beach in Frinton and Walton this weekend is a mystery, but had a lovely time just wandering up and down the sea wall and making sandcastles with my eldest son, while the other one slept in his pram like he had an 80 quid bar tab the night before. That wasn't a mystery, as I'm really starting to enjoy time with the family.

IRL & WoW
On the train this morning, I went looking for the brilliant Manalicious site. I've currently 'Maining' my Frost Mage, Nubbin. I went to http://www.manalicious.com, looking for the Mage blog site http://manalicious.wordpress.com . Here's a tip, if you're straight, and on a packed train with a big-ass laptop screen on full brightness, don't go there. The lady next to me was quite shocked, and I was trying to subtly and tactfully employ the tried and tested "F*ck-f*ck-Alt-F4" method of getting away from that site. For the few seconds I saw it it appeared to be a site for transsexuals and those who enjoy their unique mix. Good on 'em, I say, but a bit embarassing on a packed commuter train. Learn from my mistake, got to the very nice manalicious blog if you need to scratch that Mage itch when you can.

WoW
Currently grinding rep with Hyjal Avengers/Earthen Ring/Guild to buy new goodies. In fact I got the Valor point bracers from the vendor last night. Bracer enchants seem t be getting more expensive, so it may be time to start sending disenchantables to a suitable alt. My long suffering Warlock is my enchantress of choice, but I also have a serviceable shadow priest dwarf, and he helps me out every now and then. My other alts aren't just sitting around, my jewelcrafter and blacksmith Myfanawy is making up plate sets for disenchantment and/or selling, and collecting gems from, and generally ending up back with, Nubbin. I've been considering getting Gwyllt back out of mothballs, as there seems to be a glut of dead spiders being left lying around the Molten Front, and I hate to see good leather going to waste. It's the same with Tol'Barad, dead spiders all over the shop, but others have got wise to this, so you have competition.

Find yourself somewhere where many beasts are killed over and over. Near the southern island in Twilight highlands is a spot where many dragons get killed as part of a quest, so worth passing every now and then to see how're tricks.

Anyhoo, be good, or be careful. Usual Zuggy link on the right. Enjoy.

Friend tree needs pruning vs Protect the World tree

BLOGGER:

IRL

Real life is a bit of a misnomer at the moment. I've been either working, waking up at stupid o'clock, running instances in WoW, and generally running around with no quiet time. Busy is best with me, certainly, but this is becoming surreal. I'm loaded on energy drinks, just left the house of a relatively important person after helping him and his charming family with their IT issues. I used to work with his wife, and through her and some other friends, met her husband. What a totally nice guy. Granted, what a nice family. It's a delight to work for people like that. Now I'm back on the train home to Witham, 2 many DJ's, with DJ Fresh and Queens of the Stone Age playing on the iPhone whilst I type this. Reading Linux Format, and dreaming up my next mad project. The next one requires my 16GB USB sticks, Boxee and a small form factor PC in my front room. Yes, It's time to take all the DVDs (I own) I've converted to a digital format and make them available to my telly.

Wedding crashed - My mate Rich got married in Bournemouth this weekend. I couldn't be there to see him off, but I'll come back to that. Grats, Rich and Jay Waldy, live long (Together) and prosper (Together). I couldn't be there due to a 'Friend' filing me pretty low down his list of priorities. After message after message, voicemail, Facebook, every method I had to hand, nothing. I know he's scatty, but I had nowhere to sleep in B'mth, and so missed my mate's wedding. I felt ignored and neglected on Friday. I came home in tears, and the lazy bastard still hasn't phoned. I removed him from Facebook. Not really his problem really, but hurtful, nonetheless. However it made me think. I have people I consider friends who don't contact me, didn't congratulate me on the birth of either of my kids, never comment on my photos of my kids (Even though I comment on theirs) and generally don't bother. I'm considering pruning the Friend-Tree, a few of the limbs have become atrophied, if not diseased.

After that, I had a brilliant weekend with the Mrs and the kids. She was looking after me a bit, letting me have more WoW time but finding stuff for me to do and keeping me amused. She's a real treasure. We all went swimming, the Mrs, Daniel, Xander and I. It was funny watching Xander try and make sense of it all. He seemed to like it.

WoW
Patch 4.2 finally dropped. w00t! Been grinding dailies in the Firelands, but unfortunately, the battery meter says I need to publish or wait. Damn waiting - Check Zuggy's gold guide -->

laters :)

Alexander vs. Guild Dramas

IRL
My second son was born on the 25th of May, 8 pound 8 ounces, and naturally, and both Mother and son are well. I was savagely shell-shocked for a few days but I've replaced that with the more traditional 'Very Tired'. All is well, Alexander Brendan Ambrose is a cute little chubster baby. Not a fat thing, but nicely padded. I have to balance work schedule and home schedule, but hey, every dad is doing it. Mummy is tired as Xander requires a lot of feeding, and Daniel, his big brother, is demanding more attention. Hard work, but it'll be fun.

WoW
Guild drama indeed, left one guild due to a difference of opinion about the guild bank, and an officer who would never get away with that tone in real life. If you're reading: Yes, you're a rude cow, get over yourself. I moved to two other guilds when an RL friend asked when I was coming over to his guild. Slowly I'm moving more and more of my toons to it, but even then, my friend has suggested there may be another guild to go to soon due to issues with this one. (Throws hands to the sky) Why? Why can't you have a handful of likeminded gamers in a guild without it reverting to a shitfest at the drop of a hat? Anyway, Nubbin is 85, and loving the Cataclysm instances, gearing up nicely.

Be good, and if not, be careful :D

Crabs! vs. He could arrive at any moment

IRL
I'm reliably (And VERY frequently) that our next son could arrive 'any day now'. This is the equivalent of going to DefCon 2. We are on high alert. I have pointed out that, at least to start with, and if Daniel's anything to go by, Alexander won't give a monkeys for a decent amount of time. I am then reminded of what comes with a new birth, and no, I don't mean the afterbirth, something far easier to get rid of: Parents.

Yes, we are about to bring one new person into the house, then get lumbered with many 'old' people popping over. My sister even said my eldest nephew was born the day after he was, just so she could get a day's peace. Considering this as a tactic.

WoW
Crabs! I don't have crabs, but my hunter is considering taming one*. He has King Krush, a brilliant Ferocity pet, but as my hunter's been questing with him since he got him, Krush is now 81, but my other pets, namely my Tenacity pets, are low 70's. Pyreshell Scuttler here I come! Not sure which cunning pet to go for though. The real pity is that Spirit Beasts are a ferocity family, not just a skin for existing families.

*Got him this lunchtime, I must say I'm impressed so far, and his swimming action is hilarious.

As per usual, go to the link on the right and buy a gold guide from Zuggy, please.

Level 80! Fina-(Rude word)-lly vs. The impending Child

IRL
There seems to be a general feeling of let's get this done before... at the moment, impending childbirth of my second child.

Obviously, Goddess willing, this will go smoothly and we shall see Alexander, albeit covered in goo and viscera, quite soon, healthy as an Ox and sharp as a lemon-juice coated razor.

Charlie, my other half*, has gone a little bit mental organising things around the house. This is normal for two reasons: She's nesting, a normal stage of late pregnancy where women make sure the home is ready for the child (And drive Daddy insane with demands since the stone age); and secondly, we've had two consecutive four day weekend. The latter being Beltain, and our King after next deciding to honour an ancient tradition and getting hitched this time of year.

*Charlie and I were supposed to 'Jump the broom' (Get married) this weekend, but I settled for a close second and got her pregnant instead - lol. Instead, I'm making a new tradition to make a secret contract to her and/or the kids which is written in an envelope and sealed until Beltain next year (Beltain is the old name for Mayday, and is the time of agreements, contracts and marriages)

I must wish Kate and Wills best of luck. I'm not a royalist, but he seems all right.

I did laugh when I heard about the Pippa's Bum appreciation society on Facebook. Yes, the royal sister-in-law's backside did steal the show for a couple of minutes, credit due.

WoW
Free of my former guild, got to say I didn't have the measure of one of my peers, and am glad to be shot of her. Moved one toon into a startup guild, and one into a well established Guild. Happy with both. The katter suffers froma recent recruitment drive, but the bumholes will fall by the wayside soon, I can assume with some experience in this matter.

Yes, the let's this done before....espirit de corp bled over into WoW and I decided to drag my first char, Jimael, skinning and shooting to level 80. He must be close to five years old now. I will probably be in the ranking for slowest progression ever.

It was nice to end on Post-Partum Aggression. Felt like a major milestone when I got Level 80 toast, and Snows of Northrend popped up too. Sweet!

The next major mission is replacing the Shaman Heirloom shoulders. Yes, I looked silly, but that extra 10% XP is not to be sniffed at. Time to get the Tsunami Shoulders, but Deepsea Scale is a bitch to get hold of. This is largely due to the Whale shark scaring me silly (That thing in the background of the screenshot is a giant Mollusc building about the size of the middle of Dalaran, yes the shark is frakking huge). I was one of the kids traumatised by Jaws, and so Vashj'ir gives me the heebie-jeebies big time. I'm looking into other ways to get what I need, though. The AH hasn't been too kind, with them going for 20G a piece and I'm trying to get 20. Only another 7 to go then - lol.

Wish me luck, with the scales and the new boy :D

PS as usual, please click on the link on the right for Zuggy's awesome gold guide -->

Minecraft, pregnancy, sofas and Ubuntu

IRL

Odd couple of weeks. The Mrs is still (Thankfully) pregnant. As this is soon drawing to a close, we have the 'nesting' stage. We both agree we hate our sofa, we're off to a three letter named bedding and sofa place to buy a new one today. This will probably be grindingly bad, but hey, it'll be nice to sit on a decent sofa when I get back from work.

Work. Again this is odd. We will be doing phone support for the London office soon, and so we're getting another member of the team specifically to answer the phone. I must admit I thought we'd all passed that point in our IT careers where we have to be phone-monkeys again, so there is some trepidation evident.

Ubuntu. Yes, the easy to use and easy to install Linux distro is now into 11.04 beta 2 stage. I recently downloaded the server and desktop versions and am trying to build a 64 bit server with a GUI, Virtualbox (A bit like VMWare) so I can host a number of machines and environments from one box. I've also recently setup FreeNAS. This has been awesome! I'm so impressed. Easy, free and well featured.

WoW. I've been playing Minecraft so much that I haven't actually played WoW in any real form for about a week. I have been hanging around Tol Barad to pick up free leather from the spiders, so it's not been a total loss. Speaking of which, go and buy a gold guide from Zuggy. You'll thank me later..... (Link on the right)

Long time no see

IRL

Hey, sorry I've been quiet of late, my life has been mental since last I posted. We've had baby scares, lack of sleep, job changes, bank account fun and games, accountancy fun and games, the list goes on.

At the end of May I stopped working for my previous company. Apart from some very nice people in the company, there was not a lot of love lost there, on both sides I'm sure. I kept doing the same job, but as a contractor. More money, but more paperwork, and liaising with other people. So far so good, but the nth level of paperwork has not been achieved yet. Expenses and fun stuff like that haven't been factored in yet. So a tense but interesting, and far more lucrative path thus far. More to follow apart from my first trip (1) on Eurostar (2) away, for a whole weekend, from my loving family since my son was born and (3) to Brussels. All a bit odd, damn hard work and long hours expected, but should be a good laugh as we're going out there with the whole London IT team from my company and meeting the local and Dutch teams.

Baby scare! Charlie was advised to go in for a growth scan because the baby we're expecting (We're going with Alexander if all goes well) in May was small. Turns out he's quite big, which although good, Charlie wasn't entirely thrilled at - LOL. Poor thing, she's getting to that stage where she's getting tired, and nesting hasn't kicked in yet, but I can see it's first signs. She's radiant and gorgeous at the moment, and has been her usual real trouper self throughout.

Banks and accountants! I now have three bank accounts and one accountant. Need to get that to two accounts, but one bank were so nice, but the other was insisted upon by my accountants. The latter is more useful to me (The accountants handle what I'm paid etc and save money for my taxes etc) but the former is a sister company to my private account, and they were so nice to me during the setup (I was bricking it) and since. It's a shame I have to leave them.

WoW

Levelled Gwyllt to 85, and have started the hard climb to getting him geared, but have also started levelling the professions and thus the toon levels of my Herb/Alchemist Drewydd (Boomkin Druid) to 82, my Tailor/Enchatress Jimbelle (Affliction 'Lock) to 81 and my Smith/Jewelcrafter Myfanawy (Pally Tank) to 81. However all my toons are benefitting from each other's preofessions and the lvl 78+ high ilevel gear since Cata. Although it is a bit sad that the gear I hammered my way to getting for my 80's is now so much kipple. But hey, as most people have levelled their one or two only toons to 85, the 80 replacement gear is cheap and readily available.

Gold! Lots of it. I've been mining heavily with Gwyllt and now with Nubbin to supply Myfanawy with ore, bars and gems. However most has been going out via the auction house. I've paid for flying on most of my toons, and even paid for two lots of the 280% flying, so the auctioneering has been going very well.

....and on the subject of gold, if you don't have enough, why not check out Zuggy's gold guide, link on the right :)

Life is good....hang on a minute, scratch that, life is brilliant.

IRL

W00t! I got a new job. Well, actually I got the same job but am now a contractor. This means I get the money I earn each day, minus taxes, expenses etc etc. Not half of it, and then taxes, no expenses etc etc. Somewhat of a relief. I've spent nearly 5 years at my old company, and I will miss some of the people there. But what the hell, I got a better job, laters!!

WoW

It's getting close to crunch time for me, I really need to swap out the PSU in my actual gaming rig. I've been using a way worse PC for WoW, and it's a bout time I should be playing with 6 cores of purest AMD Phenom II evilness. The annoying thing is that the PSU is ready, bought and paid for, collecting dust on a shelf. The 'Round-towit' supply has dwindled, so I need to get a 'Round-towit' big time.

Otherwise, loving the Cataclysm mining, and the vast sums of gold I've made at the AH from it.

Not really grinding much, but tooling around Uldum doing a few quests and grabbing ores. I need to get my focus back on to get to 85. Once there, Heroic time!

As usual, head over to Zuggies for gold gathering advice. See the link on the right.

Be good, and if not, be careful.

The yoke has been lifted / Quality WoW time

IRL

After a year of waiting, my contract has finally been sorted, and I begin doing the same job I have for over a year, but (nearly) directly for the company I work for. OMFG. A weight has been lifted from me. The sword of Damacles I've been under for the past 5 years has gone. w00t! I haven't enjoyed my self this much at work since....never. It's frikkin' awesome!

The next step is to get the Mrs off her terrible evening job which is a massive time sap, is badly paid, and has spectacularly bad tech support (This leaves me fuming, as a fellow techie, that it's being done so below and behind the call of duty) The upside of her being badly paid is I should be able to sort this out for a lot less time for the same money.

The only downside of my sudden good fortune is having to organise the paperwork. They're after all my company particulars and to be frank, it's daunting. I have some organisational issues (ie I'm a total spaz at organising my self, hence my sporadic blogging - lol)

But, it's alllll gooood.

WoW

Really not had a lot of quality time to play this week. It's Wednesday already and somehow I need to pull the entire (Give or take 3) Dungeon Elders out of the ether. It'll be interesting. Tomorrow is the guild run night, so hoping we can do at least a few of them so it gets easier next year. (I would have put a link in there for the achievement etc but WoWhead appears to have gone pear shaped)

Tip: First two quests at the Argent FP north west of Dalaran is a skinners paradise. Simply aggro and damage each of the Nerubians that appear once, kite them to the guards, and they do all the work. You make 1K XP at 80, and each one is skinnable. I just sat there, zapped each one and filled my skinning bags in nothing flat.

My guild are all coalescing at the 85 stage, and 85 HC dungeons are becoming a regular occurrence. I really need to get my game on and level Gwyllt. Another upside, the new Luck of the draw buff has been buffed to 15% (5% for each PUGger up to three) up from a flat 5%. The new guild rewards look awesome, but are a bit late as I've levelled 10 alts to at least 80 (Except one at 71)

It looks like this week will be mainly spent in Vashj'ir skinning eels and loving the swim form buff. There's is nothing like being the fastest weird looking manatee/torpedo there, but the speed can lead to aggroing armies of mobs.

Anyhoo, usual stuff, go buy Zuggy's gold guide (Link on the right) pur-lease! and enjoy yourself.

Arrrrgh! I thought it was 78 (and) Plague!

IRL

The whole house seems to be one long recurring cold. With me stressing about my contract changing over (Hopefully...hopefully) in the next few days, and grinding WoW my health isn;t briliiant. I can tell because my lips splits when I'm run down. However, there is some good news, I found a large amount of my old music collection on an old hard drive and so have righteously pillaged it. Again, as usual there is an offset, the playlist outsized my iPhone by a whopping 16.8GB!! Time for something a little more....robust. It was lovely finding all those tunes I'd forgotten I loved, and falling in love all over again.

Weird family stuff. Mum's Granddad may have founded a tailors firm. His name was Richard 'Dickie' Williams. Mum said the firm was called Dickies Tailors. Although I checked the Dickies Wiki and they mention a Williamson, so I suspect it's not the clothing range of Awesomesauce that is Dickies. I SO wish they'd bring back their Mechanic boot, it was superb.

The next boy....it would appear our name choice is Alexander. I like it, she likes it, and she's agreeing to keep one of my father's names as a middle name - result.

WoW

I thought it was 78 - FFS!! Silly me, I thought the start of Mount Hyjal was 78, so I got all exited and then discovered it's 80, like everything else - Meh! Not really overly enamoured of doing all that Argent Ren Faire thing again, altough it could get me kit. Aha! No, the Mosshide boots I have are actually better than my level 80 gear, lol. So now I have a super-tough Feral Druid in 276 iLevel gear but with a iLevel 60 relic, go figure. I've been running heroic Outland dungeons which has been fun, but looking forward to doing Vashj'ir as a manatee of doom (Swim form Druid with the glyph and the Vashj'ir blessing that makes you REALLY fast) I might even convert to Herbalism to really mop up as a gatherer. Anyhoo, soon be home. Then I'll really go to town (Random Normal Wrath dungeons here I come)

Go buy Zuggy's guide, tell 'im Jim sent ya! ---->

Regular everyday normal guy

IRL
Another week or two and life continues apace. I'm waiting on something at the moment, once that happens I'll come back to you with details. Otherwise all good, our forthcoming child will be a masculine child! Mother to be (again) is well but tired alot.

WoW
Gwyllt is now 76!! I'm gearing him up slowly, but it's not easy- more to follow.

More soon

Revenge is sweet (And imaginary)/Official Status and Guild Fun Runs

IRL

Work has been hectic of late, less staff and everyone returning from Christmas, their IT problems with them, if they ever went away before - lol. However I work with a great team of guys, so I'm luckier than most. Sleep has eluded me of late, but it'll return. One of my best friends sent me a wedding invite, which got me thinking about my current status with my beloved, betrothed but no legal bound other half. Then I got to thinking about sorting the boy out christening-wise, thanks to a lovely christening amongst my other half's friends, who are just really super nice, and pleasant, and inclusive. I feel a bit guilty I'm wary of them, but that is what you get like if you've been bullied. I'm probably not going to be entirely trusting, but hey, I'm getting better by degrees. I would still like good old fashioned revenge on those arseholes at school, but have resigned my self that I'll only stove their heads solely in my own head. It makes for good viewing, as Eddie Izzard would say, "In my mind"

One place I can take names and kick asses is my other beloved: Azeroth (And the environs thereof) but I'll come back to that in the WoW section below.

Charlie, my other half is pregnant, and as such is slowing down a bit. She's more tired day by day. I wish I'd already made the jump with my contract so se didn't need to work at this terrible phone job she does. SHe's doing it to help us both out, and I really appreciate it, but I hate the company she does it for with a passion. THere seems to me to be too few liceses for their VM server, or they can't manage it properly. Either way, she can't alwys log on, and so doesn't get paid for sitting there waiting for their slow as all hell technical support to do a simple release.

I've discussed at length my love of Essex, National Express and T-Mobile. However, I do love where I live, I just wish it had more facilities and less chavs. As for the other two, I'd like them a whole lot more if I felt I was getting anything remotely like value for money, or at least the servie I expect from them. I mean, I get more 'Network lost' messages than I get emails on 6 accounts. Go figure.

WoW

A mixed bag of late. My bestest guild: Civil Society has had a long time member leave due to his love of raiding and potentially a lack of love for WoW. Shame, he's a nice bloke, but the guild marches on. I reckon we could go with a recruitment drive, especially new toons/combinations. Of which, my Gwyllt (Pronounced Gw-ith-d like wist with a G on the front and a lisp on the s making it 'th') is rolling up to 72. I've yet to put him through a Wrath Dungeon, but I hope tonight's Civil Society Fun Run will do so.

Last night's endeavours found me buying an armful of recipes from Feralas and taking advantage of my location to do a batch of archaeology digs while I was there. Mainly as there were so few people on that late (9PM GMT equates to 'Good night everyone' from more than a few of the guildees)

Hopefully tonight will be different....

Multi-toon levelling

WoW

Levelling more than one toon can seem a slow process, but you're aiming for breadth not length here. What you should remember is every bar on each toon is like all the bars added to gether on one toon without having to go back and start again. For example. I have taken my Auction toon, Nubbin (Frost mage gnome) and got her to send gold to my alchemist Druid, Drewydd. He has trained up his alchemy and herbalism. I have got gold to my Scribe, Ellyllaidd to train up herbalism and inscription. Drew went to Vashj'ir and sent Elly a bunch of Azshara's veil for ink making. Elly made lots of Fortune cards. She has also made some fresh glyphs for Gwyllt, my Feral Worgen Druid.

Everyone benefits. The Deja Vu effect can be a little off putting though. The next thing to do is get my tailoring affliction Warlock Jimbelle up to speed with the needle and thread again to make bigger bags. Abyssal bag is nice, and now relatively cheap.

The real problem is the "It'll take 5 minutes" now becomes half an hour as you need to do it on 5 toons. Be warned this is very easy to do and annoy loved ones with the new easy fishing and cooking dailies in Stormwind (And I assume Orgrimmar) Avoid multi-tooning these!

ANyway, just a swifty to keep you in the loop. More later.

As usual, link to Zuggy's great guide on the right ---> Go and buy it!!!!

Merry New Year!!

It's a line from Trading Places, which has been known to make me laugh, every now and then.

IRL

It's been mental, the boy has missed out on his trips to the nursery, so it's been a bunfight in the house, with him gunning his engine all the time. He's even learned to growl like me - aw SO cute, if a little disturbing watching my mini-me 'do a me'.

The Calendar year is over, and here's another one. Hopefully it'll be a more profitable affair than last year. A combination of no pay-rise, no overtime and ever rising taxes and travel expenses, we're slowly getting more broke every month. I have a hand signal to those responsible for all this - let's say it involves curling in my ring finger, little finger and my thumb, but not the others.

The other bane is my train provider. The misleadingly named National Express. There have been engineering works they now call 'Service Improvements' and all this following the Christmas period, a time of year that seems to have a lot of train failures, regardless of the weather. As for these 'improvements' - having used these trains for 10 years I'm still trying to spot the improvements amongst the increasing number of failures, apologies and late returns home and late starts in the office. My boss doesn't have a go at National Express, no, he has a go at me. However if I start my day early enough to make up for the poor service I'd not have a life, and pay them 5 grand for the trouble. All in all, I'm disappointed in a service that gets worse and costs more. I wish there was another viable option.

WoW

I've slowed down a bit of late. Tired of seeing the purple bar, so I've been levelling by doing (a) Nessingwary Quests in Nagrand (b) Daily Fishing and Cooking quests in Stormwind and (c) a spot of Archaeology until the bar changes colour, then HS back to SW to get myself rested. I need to start levelling my other toons to give Gwyllt a spot of R&R. I've been avoiding Cata to a greater extent. Although levelling a Worgen is Cata-centric, it avoids the meat and potatoes of the expansion,: Hyjal, Vashj'ir, Twilight Highlands and so forth.

I'm doing Nagrand until Northrend, sod the lore, I want to be running through the snow on all fours. So I will level Mining, Skinning and, of course Gwyllt until I can get on the paddle-steamer out of Stormwind. I might do the fishing and cooking quests in Outland, and may even stretch to getting Scryer rep but we shall see.

Been rocking the AH, using tips from the eminent Zuggy. Give them a go with the link on the right -->

Anyway, happy new year, make the most of it. See you out there.