Posted by Donald on Aug 25, 2009 in
00News and Notes I didn’t mean to have four days off from work but it worked out that way. It made it interesting coming back today, classes start again today so Maggie’s with me. She’s both excited about and dreading her classes. I didn’t dread things until later in the semester then it was how much unfinished work I had.
Helen stopped by for lunch today and it was really nice to see her. She brought in the huge super-club from Blue-Boy’s Sandwichshop. It was great. I only wish Helen and I had more time together, that would have been nice.
Lots of updates from the Warcraft world. With blizzcon out & done this past weekend everyone’s buzzing about the new stuff. I only care about the World of Warcraft updates. I am really looking forward to the ‘remaking’ of the old-world with the cataclysm that’s coming. I am pretty sure that for them to make the improvements they want for other future expansion remaking the old world was totally needed. Especially flying mounts, only the outland cities had any thought to dealing with flying mounts, makes sense it was where they were introduced. (…and so restarting a day later…) Helen and I got to play for a while last night while Maggie watched “The Music Man”. We had a good time, I killed everything in sight and she followed me around dragging everything in. We finished up by getting killed by a human paladin when we flagged for PVP in the plaguelands. At first Helen was yelling at me about it, but after we got killed again by the same guy it was funny and we had a blast laughing it up.
Tags: family, warcraft, work
Posted by Donald on Dec 18, 2007 in
00News and Notes I had a stream of people coming by last night… ok well three, and one was Maggie coming home. so it wasn’t really a stream but I was looking forward to playing some WoW and didn’t get on until 10:30pm. I got to play for a little bit before Helen came home and then had to pay bills and take care of things, and then I went back to playing… and then it was bed time. No time for relaxing…
I had fun though, in a fit of inspiration (In the Alterac Valley battleground) a bunch of people were grouping up to jump the boss of our group (the Horde), so I ran into them and mass feared them. They scattered everywhere and all of the bosses in the room began attacking them as they were running uncontrollably. It made the normal chaos of a battleground even more chaotic.
What I’m really interested in getting though is the DoomGuard. It’s a demon you can summon that automatically just begins running around and killing people. Hehehe, I want to summon it in the bank area of a major city and watch the chaos that ensues!
On another note, Helen and I are taking motorcycle lessons this weekend. With the Van down we’re looking at it as a we to get around without having to depend on cars. I hope this turns out better than my last miserable experience in taking lessons. Gotta get my jacket cleaned…
Tags: family, motorcycle, warcraft
Posted by Donald on Sep 20, 2007 in
00News and Notes I was reading over a site that tracked characters in World of Warcraft… My oldest character was first seen on July 5, 2005. Which means I’ve been playing for over 2 years now, or just that I’ve been screwing around for a really long time.
Link to the Record
Me at work…
Tags: games, warcraft
Posted by Donald on Sep 20, 2007 in
00News and Notes The rains have mostly gone, but the ground is very soggy in places. I worry about the back of the house where the AC drain comes out. That area is extremely wet with standing water in low places.
Pooks & I went out to a trivia night thing with a bunch of ppl from work. We answered questions and ate a ton of wings. I was pretty drained from the day though so by the end of it I was ready to take off. We had a good time though.
I set up a feedburner feed for my warcraft journal. It seems like a cool thing, we’ll see how well it works and if it generates any traffic. I want to keep up my writing on that blog too, I enjoy writing the mini-histories of my characters in WoW. The feeds allow a central location for people to “subscribe” to the updates to the journal. It will be cool to see how and if it works…
Tags: friends, rss, warcraft
Posted by Donald on Sep 17, 2007 in
00News and Notes After a long relaxing weekend it’s kinda tough to be back at work, but it’s not that bad. I feel more relaxed than I have in a while about work, I’ve been making some decisions about that. More on that later.
I had a good time Sat. night playing WoW with Helen and Mark. We all got together with some low level characters and went around doing various quests. It was fun even when we all died.
I finished shelving all of the books we had in our new “library”. I really think we need another chair in there though. It was enough work though, just getting all 12 volumes of the Interpreters Bible and the 10 Volumes of the Myers Expository on the New Testament (yes 10 very heavy books on just the New Testament!). So I don’t feel to bad about trying to arrange furniture after that.
Tags: books, relaxing, warcraft
Posted by Donald on Aug 22, 2007 in
00News and Notes I got home from work early yesterday. Helen and Patti were there working on their things, so I went ahead and zoned out playing warcraft and began working on some rendering things. Maggie got home and the girls began working on making chinese dumplings, and then Marlon (a kid from our neighborhood who I pay to mow the lawn) came over bringing homework he needed help on. So we had all five of us sitting around the table, the girls working together in like and assembly line to make dumplings and me helping Marlon with his algebra. It was fun and exhausting all at the same time. We stayed like that for a while moving through dinner and then Maggie working on her homework too. The girls eventually went off to wal-mart and Marlon and I finished up.
I was able to get to re-stringing my guitar after that. It was fun and a little stressful because I was worried about breaking the new string too. After a lot of tuning I finally got it right (and figured out more about the little electric tuner I borrowed from Maggie (I was having trouble reading the screen)) and was playing again. It’s cool. I really like the new string I can’t tell if it’s just expectation or there really is a difference, but the new string sounds “nicer” than the old one. Maybe b/c it’s not just the cheap string that came with the guitar but a really nice one. I had fun with it once I got it together and it gave me a cool sense of accomplishment. It’s old hat to any long time guitar player, but this is the first time I’d ever had to replace a string. It gave me a cool sense of having moved ahead of where I was.
I finished up the night with practice at the kitchen table with Maggie slogging through American History. I don’t know how history books manage to make history boring, but they do. I stayed up a little late to play some more warcraft and help a guy get a special sword he wanted. Fun and a little mindless.
Tags: algebra, homework, warcraft
Posted by Donald on Jul 3, 2007 in
00News and Notes So bleh Patti’s having problems again…
Bleh.
In other news, a couple of cool studies, done for IBM, about leadership in online games… http://www.seriosity.com/downloads/GIO_PDF_web.pdf (short Version) and http://www.seriosity.com/downloads/Leadership_In_Games_Seriosity_and_IBM.pdf (Long Version). They are both good reads if you are interested in the subject matter.
I’ve had fun working on the “blog” of several of the characters from World of Warcraft. It should be pretty cool and nicely in line with something I enjoy anyway. Fiendhammer’s Journal…
I’m starting work on a couple of my other sites as well. Trying to make them into something that generates a little bit of revenue. We’ll see how things go. So far I’ve got two customers for my simple hosting setup.
Tags: blah, games, warcraft
Posted by Donald on Jun 25, 2007 in
00News and Notes,
3D The server my home area is on (where I do my computer work) is getting rebooted and some new hardware put in so I’m waiting…
That was so last week, so I’m actually finishing this blog post today…
So Pooks’ is getting job options from clients, I’m still working on my stuff, and I’m back to playing WoW like a mad man. Part of that is that I’ve made two characters and I had been using them both for seperate professions ( mining& blacksmithing for one and enchanting and tailoring for the other…) hmmm might need another blog for me to just talk about WoW lol.
Anyway I made some WoW changes that are really taking up time.
I have been spending time building scenes for my 3D renders. That takes time in setting things up. The are like lego’s that never quite snap together just right. It makes it time consuming but hopefully having it done will mean I don’t have to do it again. It’s also failry easy to work with scenes instead of figures b/c scenes have much lower polygon counts and so are easier for the computer to handle and so easier for me to put together quickly.
I’ve been thinking about taking up guitar again, but doing that will mean I have less time for my other activities. Pooks and I joke that I get a new “hobby” every week and stick with it for a few days before jumping to the next one. Even today I caught myself thinking that I could make an illustrated Book of Hours, before saying “No” to myself. It’s annoying sometimes… It makes me feel un-focused.
With the renderings I have a slightly different problem in that I’m not quite sure what to say. So It’s hard to make a comic book when I have no story. I can think of situations just fine, but an overall combining “story-arc” has been much harder to think of. I’m also just not sure of how far to go with it or what I want to happen to the characters.
… to jump back a little to being un-focused (except seemingly about WoW) I think part of it is that I need a little more ‘life’ in my life. I just do work and home. I tutor physics on the side, but I am seeing that I need a little more. It used to be church for me, but since I haven’t been recently, that’s left a hole I need to fill in a more positive way. Probably with a new hobby 
Tags: 3D, family, warcraft
Posted by Donald on Feb 28, 2007 in
00News and Notes I was thinking about that book, “Slaughterhouse Five” by Kurt Vonnegut, last night. I was thinking about girl baby names, and one that I like is Lauren. Mainly b/c I had a crush on a girl in high school named Lauren and she liked “Slaughterhouse Five”. In it there is a scene where the dad/main-character finds his son with porno mags, showing “Montana Wildhack”, in the bathroom. He takes them away, and starts looking at them as well. Later on when he is abducted by aliens for their zoo, the aliens capture the porn star, Montana Wildhack, to live with him. I was thinking about that in terms of the American Idol scandal concerning the images of Anatolla Barba(NSFW – Not Safe For Work). I wonder if she will end up in an alien zoo with an optometrist.
I like the name Lauren.
for a boy I like Zade. It’s a family name.
Helen and I are stuck wondering if we should have kids. I have gotten advice going both ways. I’m not sure which way I want to go with it.
I’m also kinda not sure what I want to do with my life in the coming months, going back to school, learning guitar, or trying motorcycling again. I look around and see a crap-load of things that need to be done around the house.
I’ve been sick the past weekend and so I put in a lot of WoW time. I went from level 50 to 53 in 3 days. I got a cool mask/helmet that makes me look creepier. I also went through and got rid of some characters I just wasn’t playing. I had a fun time playing the Alterac Valley 80 player instance, 40 vs. 40 is just fun! I helped fight all the way to the furthest north graveyard, before real life called and I had to go clean or something.
Tags: children, family, slaughterhouse five, warcraft, what-to-do
Posted by Donald on Jan 4, 2007 in
00News and Notes Still playing WoW. I got a riding wolf now, I have made one payment on my house in Animal Crossing Wide World and I have gotten my friend code for it too!
Getting the riding wolf was a long expensive procedure where I had to grind away at getting stuff to sell and selling it and doing it over and over again. 87 Gold for a wolf. It was a lot of work. I’ll post a screen shot later on.
Maggie has outpaced me in Animal Crossing. Animal Crossing is a video game for the Nintendo DS that places you in a new town paying off a mortgage to a raccoon. Stupid Raccoons. So fishing, collecting fruit, collecting shells and fossils and running errands for other residents allows you to get “bells” (the money of Animal Crossing) so you can pay off your mortgage and also get things to improve your house. It’s a very popular game and a lot of fun just exploring a little world. The real fun started when me and Maggie linked our DS’s and went to each other’s towns. I felt bad because my house looked bad, peaches all over the floor and nothing setup nicely. So I spent some time last night cleaning my virtual house and planting flowers around it. Hmmm…. so now I’m doing this in the virtual and real worlds.
I spent my day off on Tuesday cleaning the front garden. Somehow I like gardening. I weeded the flower beds. Whoever was here before us simply mulched over a rock bed so I was digging through rocks as well. I dead-headed the flowers and edged around the beds. I think I want to get a mower soon so I can get the grass cut. I think that some step stones would look good in the front as well and I want to do a stone border around all the flower beds.
By the time I got done I was really sore, but it felt good to be working outside. While I like working with computers, working outside is cool b/c I can always see the progress I have made. I was sweating and the sun was burning my skin, but it was good. I spent time praying and thinking while pulling up the weeds. It was great.
I’m back at work today and a thick blanket of fog was covering the city, it’s pretty much lifted now though.
Tags: animal crossing, games, gardening, housework, warcraft
