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.