I’ve hardly been playing WoW at all in the last few months, but I figured I’d write something about it. Between starting to get bored with the game and having much better things to do in real life on the weekends when I’m off work I haven’t played much. I’ve already preordered the collector’s edition of the Cataclysm expansion though. Mostly for all the extras in the box, not so much the in-game pet. I wish I had started early enough to get the CE for the original game. I did get it for The Burning Crusade, but for some reason I never for Wrath of the Lich King. I think it might have been due to financial issues at the time. But I’ve seen it around for $150-ish so I might pick that one up at some point anyway.

I doubt I’ll be doing any raiding in the expansion, maybe occasionally at off times at most. I’ll probably be doing some actual casual sort of playing for a change :) Exploration, achievements, things like that which don’t require a big block of time to do. And likely some PVP with friends in my guild. From when I first starting playing until half way through the first expansion, my main (and only character) was my hunter. Then I rolled a priest and that has been my main pretty much since then. Lately though, I had been playing my druid more, and then actually did things with my hunter again. I’m thinking that my first 85 is going to be my druid, and then my hunter. No real plans for leveling after that. At the moment I have something like six 80s on my main server, and a couple more on other servers. A little insane, really. I don’t play most of them even when I do play the game. It was nice to level them up and see how much I like playing them all, though. I’m slowly leveling two more characters to 80 that are currently in the low 70s. One 60 I have (from recruit-a-friend leveling, I didn’t actually play it much) I’m planning to delete and reroll as a Worgen with the expansion, and the other 60 is my bank alt which may or may not get leveled at all. Without a great girlfriend, I’d probably have them all at 80 by now (other than the planned reroll), and melted eyes to go along with it.

I’m looking forward to a more casual sort of playing :)

For the record, my current list of characters:

Terenas (it’s been really handy to just be known as “Dard” on any of my characters there) Dardelyn (80 Priest – Holy/Shadow) Dardia (80 Druid – Balance/Resto) Dardremar (80 Hunter – Survival) Dardremis (80 Shaman – Elemental/Resto) Dardzuul (80 Death Knight – Frost DPS/Blood DPS) Dardique (80 Mage – Frost/Arcane) Dardlet (70 Paladin – Retribution/Holy) Dardelek (71 Warlock – Affliction) Dardzen (60 Warrior – Will be deleted to reroll as Worgen) Dardina (60 Rogue – Bank Alt in my own Bank Guild)

Korialstrasz - Kethali (80 Druid – Resto)

Hyjal - Nazdeek (80 Shaman – Resto/Elemental)

And some other assorted low level characters on those last two and other servers.

Yes, that’s too many level 80s :)

Since I got my phone shortly before going on vacation, I never bothered to check into rooting it until yesterday. Telus seemed like they were never going to get the Hero updated to Android OS 2.1, still stuck on 1.5 – which limited me for the apps I could install, and other OS features. So mostly following the directions here (I had to use a different RUU image from what they said), I’m now using VillainROM 12 and so far things seem to be fast and smooth. It was a pretty easy process, nothing crazy to do at all really. I might try out other custom ROMs, but I like how this one is pretty much the same as it uses HTC Sense (which I think is nice).

This week I finally entered the world of smartphones :) I upgraded my prepaid Motorola Rival A455 to a regular contract for the HTC Hero, Android powered. It’s a really nice phone. I didn’t really want to get a Blackberry (which most of my friends have) or an iPhone (a couple of them have one of those). Telus is slacking and doesn’t have an updated version of the OS yet, but hopefully soon.

Come to think of it, pretty much all of my friends have a smartphone of some sort. Voice+data packages these days don’t really cost a lot, and even the cheapest plans have quite a few features and options. There’s no reason not to get one! ;)

After many years of wanting a Mac – pretty much ever since I first started reading about OS X (earlier versions didn’t interest me), I finally have one! Last week when Apple updated the Mac Mini, I ordered one with the money I had been saving to buy one. Took less than a week to get here, and arrived this morning.

Almost all of the apps I use on my current Windows 7 general-use computer (my newer one I built specifically for gaming, and basically do nothing else on there) have either the same or equivalent apps for OS X. And often better options. I think the only thing lacking is a version of Quicken Cash Manager, but I guess I’ll just use that on my Windows gaming system. Just a matter of setting things up and playing around with it to see how stuff works. Getting used to it, but I have a lot to learn I’m sure.

Also, a few months ago I bought a ReadyNAS and currently have two 2 TB drives in there – no extra storage with the second drive, just redundancy. As I have spare cash and drives go on sale/get cheaper, I’ll pick up a couple more to get up to 6 TB in RAID 5. I’m only using about half of that space right now with mostly TV shows and some backups/files, but when I move my music there from my external 1 TB drive I’ll start running low on space.

My days off will actually be changing from Thu/Fri to Fri/Sat very soon, in a couple of weeks. It was supposed to do that a few months back, but a transfer of a person from days to nights screwed that up. This time it should be fine. Eight years there and I finally have every Friday and Saturday off. Great timing really, now that I have been seeing someone for a little while, and she has weekends off :) I’ve been quite happy since starting to date her. Holidays in a month or so for two weeks, I’m sure I’ll find something fun to do.

I do have another level 80 in WoW now, making it the 6th one on my main server (I have two more on other servers). My shaman, which was actually the second character I created after my hunter that I kept around. I only had him as high as 69 before this current expansion, didn’t get to 70 until months later when I was bored. In the last couple of weeks, I leveled from 75 to 80 in the mornings and afternoons. I haven’t been raiding at all in the last month, for RL reasons mentioned above :) I was mostly bored with it anyway. Now I just have two more characters I plan to get to 80 before the expansion – my 70 warlock and 70 paladin. I have a 60 rogue and 60 warrior, but I doubt I’ll level them. I’m not a fan of melee dps or tanking. My rogue will likely stay as my bank alt (with his own banking guild), and I’ll probably delete the warrior in the next expansion to make a Worgen warrior and start from scratch. I want to see the new content, and maybe it might be more fun if I actually level all the way instead of from 60 where the recruit-a-friend leveling stopped.

Wow, long post, but I didn’t really post much in a while. Other than all the usual geek stuff, I’m happy about having a great girlfriend :)

And I see that WP 3.0 is out, dare I upgrade yet?

I was able to bring my hunter to the first wing of ICC10 this weekend, and cleaned up on loot. Along with another alt of someone that went, she got plenty of good stuff too. I didn’t get my bow, but I did get [Frost Giant's Cleaver], [Bone Warden's Splitter] and [Hauberk of a Thousand Cuts]. It’s also cool that both of the weapons have the same model, so they match :)

My main goal was to get new weapons, so I was mostly successful. I just need to return to try to get that bow. Also, one more Wintergrasp Mark of Honor and I’ll get the last piece of PVP gear I need (that doesn’t require arena points/ratings). Done!

It’s official! My nights off are going to be Friday and Saturday starting with the next schedule to be posted (currently I have Thu/Fri off). Hooray!

I finally got around to setting up a Tax-Free Savings Account. I probably should have done that last year when they were first offered. Oh well.

In less than 15 minutes, I went from reading an article on Jello Biafra, heading to Wikipedia to check something on Faith No More, and a few tabs in Firefox later I’m reading things on the Seven Year’s War, and things that happened around that time. Then I realized what I had actually been reading in the first place.

• http://thequietus.com/articles/02543-jello-biafra-of-the-dead-kennedys-interview
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FaithNoMore
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BattleofMogadishu_(1993)
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MohamedFarrahAidid
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpecialActivitiesDivision
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconventional_warfare
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Army
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intolerable_Acts
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SevenYears’War
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_Country

Quite the progression of reading…

On another note, I seem to be lacking an option to disable Markdown – which is awesome, but those Wikipedia links added some pointless italics in there. I’m sure I used to be able to turn it off on a post-by-post basis.

Since I’ve been too lazy to post much of anything lately and I’m not in the mood for any sort of paragraphs, I’ll at least put a few things in point form :)

• I finally levelled my druid in WoW to 80, and Boomkin dps is awesome.
• I got bored a couple of weeks ago, made a third WoW account (and reactivated my second one) with Recruit-A-Friend, and power levelled/granted levels to get something like 6-8 characters to 60. I’m not quite sure on the exact number, my mind has melted from the instance grinding. At least my death knight got Deathcharger’s Reins out of it.
• My hours are changing at work starting today, shifting two hours earlier. So I’ll be starting at 9pm and getting off at 5am. Good for work stuff, maybe not so good for RL stuff :( I’ve actually been doing things in the evenings before work lately. This is only for the two people that work out back in the warehouse, not the rest of the night crew.
• Trying out Windows 7 on both of my computers currently, seeing if I think it might actually be worth paying for this time. Initial impressions are good, I really like how the file sharing works with the homegroup stuff. It’s about time, I’ve always had issues sharing things on my network here. Probably partly caused by different versions of Windows on most of the computers.
• Finally picked up a new hard drive for my gaming computer – no more crappy old 120gb IDE drive that I had lying around, now I have a fast 1TB SATA drive in there.
• Holidays are over for this year, that sucks.
• Hurricane Bill was a disappointment. It barely even rained. Of course, the other side of the province might have disagreed.

I don’t know if there was more I had in mind, but I’m tired. Off to bed!