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 :)