Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Choo Choo Northrend Express

My enhancement shaman alt, Lorentz, just hit 75 the other night. Which makes him about half way done Northrend. The funny thing is though, he's not even done Dragonblight (and he didn't do the Fjord!). By done I mean finished the quests.

Once I hit 75 I ran on over to Zul Drak for a few moments just to knock out the ampitheater and that wanted elite giant fish guy. Got myself 2 new weapons to replace my matching fist weapons (the ones from UK and Nexus) from those quests, and headed back to Dragonblight to finish the Wrathgate quest. Just gotta head back to SW now with his shield then (a few conversations later) I'll be able to do the Undercity attack again.

Northred really is flying by though, and I'm happy for that. Those BoA shoulders + rest experience really do make a huge difference.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't mind the leveling process. I just prefer to get it over with. Unless that is, I'm leveling with someone. In that case I enjoy doing the quests and having fun with them. Its just that doing it alone is so...lonely? I'm not sure what to say about that really. Well I guess that kinda makes sense. At max level (assuming you don't completely suck at the game) you can attend raids with other people. You can do heroics. Even PvP (ok, you can 70-79, but lets be honest here...it sucks). A lot of the time when leveling you see a few people only in passing. Finding a group for anything can take forever....assuming you can get a group at all. Its just a strangeness about it that turns me off lingering around the leveling train.

In order to level with somebody you would have needed to have made that decision a long time ago in that toon's life. Its practically impossible to find a random person in northrend (or anywhere in WoW) that is on the same parts of the same chains as you are. And even if you do find someone to quest with that day, what happens the next? What if the other person logged on earlier and played without you? Now you have to find someone else.

I'm not saying that I'm a lonely person. I'm just saying that since I don't level with anyone, I don't have a desire to hang around in the leveling stages. Maybe its that whenever I did level with someone, it was the fun in "hanging out" with them that made me want to wait for them to log on instead of leveling solo to rush up to max level.

Or of course, maybe I'm just thinking too hard about this :P

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Purplez, Breakz, and Technolust

Sorry everyone, its been a busy week. Much stress was had at work. On a positive work-related note, I got my ASP.NET calendar working how I wanted. I had to get it to highlight days that had events in the SQL server for. Then also show the details in a hoverover div.

On the WoW side a good amount happened too. Last friday I finally got my first piece of gear from Ulduar! I managed to grab the leather head piece from heroic Auriaya....and when I wear it I feel like my Druid is a character from Sailor Moon or something. I would link the item and some pictures, but I'm not at my personal desktop atm.

That night we ended up making some progress on Hodir, getting him to 25% on our last attempt (which happened to be the same attempt where we didn't die prior to enrage). Not that bad for my guild.

On the weekend it was another story. Well, most of the weekend I spent with my friend who came to visit me for saturday&sunday. She left prior to my sunday ulduar-10 raid, which I was excited for. On the saturday they downed everything up to Hodir, minus the IC. We went straight for Hodir....and spent the next 1.5 hours dying on him. Some players didn't understand the concept of moving to stay alive. On one attempt this mage died 3 times (brezed 2x obviously). That same mage also never broke 2k dps. In fact, the majority of the dps never broke 3k. I could do better than some of them in pvp boomkin spec with resto gear! /sigh

So once we FINALLY didn't all die on Hodir and hit his enrage timer, he still had 25% left. So we left him and went to Freya. We spent about 45 minutes on the trash and managed to get 2 elders down. I died so many times from random things its not even funny. DPS breaking CC, mob goes straight for me, spam heal myself, no one takes the mob off me, I die. Or how about the pulls where I would put 1 rejuv and 1 LB on the tank as he runs into the pack of mobs, and all of a sudden 3 of them run at me....with no intervention by anyone. When I played mage that would be a time I would frost nova to save the healer! In the end, we killed not a single boss.

Because of this frustration, I'm taking a break from raiding with my guild. I just can't stand it these days. The majority of them really are great people. Its an adult only guild too, so I don't have to deal with the problem that a lot of guilds have being immature children. I just can't stand raiding with them some times.

Oh well, it'll give me some more time to do some work around the house.


The big thing that I've been working on the technology side is the planning for a multitouch table. I've got some big plans, and I really hope that I can do this. Its going to be a lot of work. The main things I'm working on for it are finding out where I can find infrared (850nm specifically) light sources (I've found some good online retailers, but seeing if I can find local), how to program the UI, how I want to make the UI, securing a projector (I have access to one to test my designs with), and lastly a webcam with a ir bandpass filter. The rest is fairly trivial.

To learn more about this stuff, check out http://nuigroup.com

Since I had to spend all day at work today in a "diversity training" meeting thing (I don't know why...apparently everyone in this building has to including myself [IT] and maintenance) I was working on writting down my ideas for the UI and what I want to do with it. I was even working on the database design for how to store some of the information.

Now to learn OpenGL....

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Bored Druid is Bored

EXTENDED DOWNTIME ARG

Honestly, I wouldn't have a problem with the down time if they actually gave a realistic end time. If I was told originally that it was going to take this long, I would have started something else a long time ago. But the problem is I don't want to start something to do it for only a tad, then go back to WoW (seeing as I was waiting for it!).

ARG

:( I just wanted to relax after work :(

All this down time has made me miss horde though. Maybe I'll make a horde toon for me to play when I'm bored. I've got a druid (duh), a shaman at 73, a pally&rogue both at 58, DK at 60 (does that really count? :P ), and a mage at 71. I've played a warlock to low 20s before. I refuse to play a hunter because I hate pet management, especially to the level that hunters have to deal with. Any suggestions?

[edit] Extended again until at least 9:30 PDT (12:30 my time)....THATS IT TIME TO DO SOMETHING ELSE [/edit]

Monday, June 1, 2009

There Should be a Licence to Use the Internet

So while I was on the computer, my sister came up to me asking how to save her word document to a USB key. I explain that you have to plug it in, then go File -> Save As, and select the USB key from the drop down list. Easy enough.

No apparently that was too difficult.


EQUALS MASSIVE FAIL

So when I get to the laptop, the first thing that I notice is that the USB key (aka Nerd Stick as I call them) is plugged into the ethernet RJ-45 port.


Best part: I got yelled at when I pointed out that she made a stupid mistake.

Lets assume for a second that one does not know much about computers, but you have a brain that functions. You take this device that you know is a "usb stick" and that if you can plug it into the computer you can save your files to it. So you take a look at what the connector on the "usb stick" looks like, and try to search for something that kinda looks the same.

Looking at the usb stick you notice that its pretty rectangular. On the laptop (which in this case is a Dell Inspiron 1525) you see a few "slots" on the sides. There's some that it can't go into (ie VGA, s-video, etc), some that are far too small (ie mini-usb), and some that it might fit into. These would be 4xUSB ports, a HDMI port, ethernet, and modem. The ethernet and modem are pretty square though, and you have a rectangular thing, so it'll probably fit in one of the other slots much better. You try one port which happens to be the HDMI with various orientations with no luck. You do the same for what is the USB port. After flipping it over, it plugs in, and Windows starts talking about how its found some new hardware. Success!

NOW WHAT WAS HARD ABOUT THAT

Seriously, I've been told my entire life that my generation is the "generation of technology and information!!!!" but I have yet to see that. All through out my life I've seen examples like this one above. Its just sad.

Not even a little sad. Massive fail sad.

What do you guys think about the current generation and their ability to use technology? I think its so sad that, continuing with my rant about Facebook, the Internet really should have some sort of "basic training" or a quick exam in order to pass. You must be at least this not stupid to be allowed to use a computer.

/sigh

Facebook really has become a bloated POS

I feel that I should copy what I posted on Facebook the other day here. I hope its not THAT hard to read; I did type this up at 1am in bed so keep that in mind when my sentences don't make any sense. I've editted and expanded it to help correct my mistakes :P



So the other day when I logged onto Facebook I stopped and looked at the site. Lately its been pissing me off, but I was always in too big of a rush to look at all the flaws that I find in it. When I stopped to really look at it, I've found that it really has become a bloated POS that has reached this point due to the general idiotic population. You know the people that I'm talking about. The highschoolers that "are cool", the 20-something-ers that never grew up, and those people that when you talk to them, you wish that the internet required a licence to use akin to driving.

You see, I've been using Facebook since before it was cool. I had it when nearly everyone that I talked to had never even heard of it. That said, I was introduced to it by someone else. Specifically, it was my then-not-yet-(now ex)girlfriend (who I despise to this day, but that's beside the point). Back then it had a purpose that it did well. I could send little messages to my friends quickly, and they would get them. I could share photos that I've taken instead of having to email them out or publish them on some photo sharing site that blows ass. I could even type notes out (like this right here), if I wanted to speak my mind a little.

But of course, then Facebook got popular, and the site had to change.

They added more and more "features". As I take a look at today's Facebook homepage, I see crap. Its actually really really bad. Although they have made some good design changes of the revisions, it is still REALLY BAD. Looking at the homepage, the biggest one is the complete waste of space. The main center column (and main purpose) of the frontpage is the update minifeed thinger. To the left and right of that middle column is crap. Now I understand that they made the site an absolute width (instead of making it relative to the viewer's resolution), but then they go and make the main column even skinnier. HUGE amounts of wasted space under the useless content in the left and right hand column. That is poor design.

Then what about all the crap on the frontpage? The first thing that I have to do when I log on is block a bunch of quizes because it is useless information made by some person that has no idea what they are doing. And of course to top it off, the Facebook programmers didn't add an option to block all quizes right there....no I have to block them individually. Or how about all the crap on the right hand side? I don't care if someone "became a fan of funny faces", or that it is suggested that I add to my friends list people that it thinks I know (and clearly must be friends with). It is "features" that they add that have no real value.

Its because of all the stupid people, and the decisions made by the administration that have joined Facebook that it has gone the direction that it has. All the moronic people that think that it is a good idea to have some of this crap, which clearly the administration changes their product for (biggest proportion of customers) when actually, a lot of the features do absolutely nothing of value.

The original site that I joined way back had a purpose. Although I can still do a lot of it, there is now a ton of shit leaching off the useful part of Facebook that makes it hard to continue to see the benefit of using their service.

This reminds me of Windows. The core of it is alright...it serves a purpose, and it does it pretty well. Its only recently (hint hint vista hint hint win7) that the thing has so much OOO LOOK SHINY that is suppose to make it "better" when its really worse.