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! ---->