Posts Tagged ‘world of warcraft’

Stop Psychoanalyzing Me!

Sunday, May 10th, 2009

I seem to invite people to psychoanalyze me. The simplest things I say or do seem to indicate some deep psychological thing ™ I’m apparently not aware of or am deluding myself over.

I can’t figure out why the heck people keep doing this to me. It’s so annoying. For example:

  • “Oh, I enjoy Japanese Animation — Anime.” Two types of analysis comes from this: A.) I am some poor idiot who was ill-prepared for adulthood and thus cling to my cartoons like a life-preserver. B.) I’m some kind of repressed nymphomaniac who gets off on animated porn. (It all depends on whether they think anime is all kid’s stuff or all porn.)

  • “I play World of Warcraft.” Psychoanalysis: I’m a raging video game addict. Apparently I’m at high risk for skipping work to play the game or even trying to play it while I’m at work. Even worse is when someone drops by unannounced, catch me playing, and a simple “Yes” to “Playing World of Warcraft?” and it somehow implicates me for a raging addiction.
  • “I have allergies to most soaps, so I don’t do the dishes.” Psychoanalysis: I’m lazy.

    Explanation: I get allergic contact dermatitis from most liquid soaps if I have to be in contact with them for longer than it takes to wash my hands. I get similar reactions to certain brands of triple antibiotic ointment and certain molds found on Oak leaves. Several skin reactions have had to be treated with rather unpleasant injections.

How exactly am I supposed to respond to this sort of thing? Seriously. Most of the time any effort made to refute, defend, or absorb/deflect winds up somehow further proving their analysis. Even silence or walking away seems to support their stance. They’re either Dr. Phil or they think any possible reaction I give is completely uproarious. Even a facepalm or rolled eyes.

Unfortunately, I’ve even developed the habit of attempting to “pre-defend” myself… which makes it even worse. That is, I try to explain my reasoning when I present the issue at hand. (Especially on message boards.)

A good, recent example of that: I posted on Monster.com, asking for advice on whether mentioning I play World of Warcraft on my blogs and Facebook could actually hurt my chances for hiring. For some stupid reason, I felt I had to pre-defend myself. I got my answer from one of their career coaches and I’m satisfied, but now it’s attracted someone who’s doing the psychoanalysis thing again. (e.g. “ZOMG! Because you said the game isn’t a problem and you have a full social life you’re a raging addict!”) *facepalm*

While I know I shouldn’t care about what they say (I have no intention of even bothering to reply to the bozo on Monster.com)… for once! Just for once! I’d like to do something novel and have what I say taken at face value. Just for once.

Pretty please?

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The Safety Dance

Friday, January 16th, 2009

Went to 25-man Naxxramas last night, completing the Spider Wing and then started on the Plague Wing. Went well, until we reached Heigan.

Heigan’s room itself is divided into quadrants radiating out from the stage. As you’re fighting him, some sort of liquid is erupting through cracks in the floor, leaving just one of those quadrants clear at a time going in the order of quadrant 1, 2, 3, and 4 before repeating in reverse order. (i.e. 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1)

Phase 1 has the melee slowly moving him across the room in this order while ranged showers death on him from the stage. Phase 2, Heigan teleports onto the stage, sending ranged to the floor to avoid a quick death. The entire raid then has to do the dance until Heigan comes down from the stage. Then, it begins all over again.

I had the brainstorm to color code the safe areas with a smoke flare to help people better see the safe areas. We didn’t color code, but we did drop flares in each area. It seemed to help some of the raid members, but well… not so much for myself.

I know the order, I just lag and either fall behind or don’t see the safe spot in time and run right through it. My frame rate was up where it belongs… but for some reason I experience just enough latency in Heigan’s room to make it difficult for me. Thus, I can’t make it through even first dance across the floor. Cue 16 minutes of torture as I wait for the surviving members of the raid to take him down.

I was so frustrated last night I forgot to loot my Emblem of Valor before taking the port to Dalaran and logging.

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Naxxramas

Monday, December 22nd, 2008

This is a post about World of Warcraft. If you don’t play, you probably won’t know what I’m talking about. ^_~

Grobbulus

Well, my guild went to 10-man Naxxramas tonight. Lets just say it went way better than yesterday’s attempt at the timed run in Heroic Caverns of Time: Stratholme. Now, that’s not to say Stratholme is difficult, my regular group and I all have our drake mounts and now just do it to race our previous times. It just stymied the group I was in.

Anyway, back to Naxxramas. The previous raid cleared the Spider Wing, so it was now time to choose another wing. First pull, not even 2 minute in… and we wipe. Turns out our raid leader, Seaotter, had it set to 25-man instead of 10-man. *laughs*

So we regroup and begin clearing to Instructor Razuvious. First attempt fails due to adds; someone got too close to some mobs in the back of the Instructor’s area. Second attempt went fine. Not feeling like we have the firepower to continue the Military Quarter, we retreated and decided to try the Abomination Quarter. The river of ooze and crawling ooze monsters were – by and large – our biggest enemy. The river of ooze is this – almost benign looking – shallow channel filled with green, glowing ooze. When you fall in or attempt to cross, you lose a fair amount of HP and mana. The ooze monsters are a little further down and are slowly crawling in three columns across the path. They won’t attack you, but if you touch them it instantly kills you. (We took to calling the area where the ooze monsters are crawling across the path “Frogger.”)

We clear just the path to Patchwerk and prepare to pull him. I’m eyeing the mobs we didn’t kill and thinking “Oh, I can see them all aggroing when we pull Patchwerk.” Primrose sent me a /tell about the same time with the same thoughts, which I then passed on to Koori. We pull… and I Feign Death as all the mobs move in. Wipe-O-Rama while Prim and I laugh our heads off. I literally could not stop laughing.

We resurrect and regroup… this time we’re sure to clear all the other monsters. As for Patch, it took forever to kill him. We did eventually drop him, no problem… he just has a LOT of HP you have to burn through to bring him down.

While it wasn’t an upgrade, I did grab Hatestrike to spare it from being DEd. If I can locate something nice to duel wield with it, it might be a replacement for my Whale-Stick Harpoon… but for now, it’s in my bank.

Finally, we tried Grobbulus. It didn’t go as well as the other bosses, mainly due to the logistics of the fight. He leaves poison clouds, requiring that he be kited around the room. Periodically, he’ll send out ooze monsters that have to be dealt with and also makes people a “bomb.” People who are the bomb have to move away from the raid so they don’t hurt any other raid members. We got him low, but just couldn’t keep it together long enough to kill him. So as of right now, we’re going to try hitting the Spider Wing a few more times to get a little better gear for our core raiders and see what happens.

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The Death of a System

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008

I got an internship with Second Life, working on an experiment for one of the professors at my college.

While I’m seriously geeked over the prospect of an internship in an MMO, my time over the past few days in Second Life has taken my video card to the brink of death. Yesterday, it bled over into World of Warcraft when my minimap and pet were turned into pixels for several minutes after I logged in. I really didn’t think there would be a problem because at first glance Second Life has similar system reqs to WoW.

So, I had two options: A.) Burn the money on a new video card or B.) Get a new computer.

Lets see…Buy a new video card when: The current video card is dying, the heat sink on the north bridge spontaneously fell off so I probably have heat damage (which is probably half the reason for the graphics problems), and now the hard drive has been clicking intermittently. Yeah, new computer it is.

Not happy with the factory-built systems I have been finding, I decided it was high time to build my own. So, $830 later, I have parts coming from Newegg.

Here’s the specs/parts:

And finally, since I’ll have access to XP Pro once I can get back to my programming classes, I ordered an OEM version of XP Home to tide me over.

So, in roughly three days, the poor UPS guy should be planning my homicide. *laughs* (He seems to be deathly afraid of Luna!)

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The Dilemma

Friday, August 29th, 2008

My computer has been acting up lately. Not just the minor errors that you just close the window and try again, but the kind where it becomes all but unusable.

I’ve tried everything I can think of:

  • chkdsk /F
  • Virus Scan (3 different ones no less! AVG, Avast, and Webroot Antivirus)
  • Spyware Scan (4 different ones)
  • HijackThis! logs
  • Defragment
  • Disk Check

Each and every scan comes up clean. The only scan I couldn’t do (which still grinds me) is a ram analyzer. It’s a program I had to burn to a CD and then run during boot-up. I discovered that my boot order is strange: it doesn’t boot the removable disks before the hard drive. So that test won’t work, not without figuring out how to force my Compaq to check the disks first.

I’ve added memory and then taken it back out. Tested with only one stick and then swapped it for the other. It’s been especially bad in World of Warcraft, which I’ve had to uninstall and reinstall several times because various game files wind up corrupted or simply damaged. All my friends, even though in tech jobs, have run out of suggestions.

Of course my mom, despite claiming to be as computer illiterate, does everything she can to help me. Naturally, she’s the one to point out classes start soon and my computer is basically worthless. Will I be able to do my homework? Oh, crap!

She’s also the one to come up with the ultimate solution, “Give up and just look for a new computer.” And then almost as quickly says, “Just no more Compaq’s.”

I mutter something about maybe building my own. She points out what I’ve always wanted to, that it has to be easier by now, and that I’d be getting what I want.

Moms really do know best.

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No Date; WoW is still wowing me.

Sunday, March 9th, 2008

Well, Brad called and chickened out of the date.

He said there was nothing he wanted to see, but then asked if I wanted to drive all the way to Greenville (30+ minute drive one-way) to play Final Fantasy and listen to him play his guitar.

Umm, no.

So, I told him that we’d try for another time. But to be honest, I’ve lost interest. (Actually, to be really honest I think I lost interest after the 2am phone call.) The “come over to my house and play FF” for a first date just put the last nail in the coffin.

Anyway, logged into WoW and played until I was level 9. Found out I can’t send or receive mail either, or do much with the bank. *frowns* I hope my Battlechest gets here soon. Not having tells, mail, or bank access really sucks.

I’m more impressed in this game than ever.

Much later, Theresa and Brandy hunted me down in game and surprised me. ^_^ I thought they were on a raid and suddenly they’re right in front of me. Talked a bit, Theresa invited me into Seventh Cavalry, and got some Hunter advice from Brandy.

Overall, it was a great night.

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More drama

Saturday, March 8th, 2008

What the heck is it with me and drama?

Oh, more drama at work. I had to train a new temp Thursday and lets just say, she’s one of those people who would find a conspiracy against her in “Good Morning!” Very petty, didn’t want to listen to me, and then throws this huge, over-the-top drama trip on me when I started to show irritation at her and then became angry with the techs and quality control people. (e.g. I’m angry, thus it must be at her.) Ugh. Ended up being hauled into the managers office over that one. Now she thinks I’m her bestest friend.

Then, yesterday, I had to train on Cell 1. I can’t keep up with that machine and apparently they want me to run it while the usual operator, Brad, is on vacation. Went okay, he’s a geek like me and a classic Final Fantasy fanboy. Cool, I get to discuss FF8 – 102 and my favorite characters. So about halfway through the night, Brad asks me out “sometime.” Okay, I’m game for a little fun so I give him my number. We get out of work at 11pm. He calls me at 2am. *grumble* Rambles through everything he did until he got home to call me. *irritated sigh* I just want to go to bed. After 8 hours of working with me, having the courage to ask me out, now you’ve decided you’re nervous? Finally says he wants to take me out for a movie. Saturday. This evening. Not sometime, today. *frown* Okay, I don’t go to the theater anymore, so I have no idea what’s playing. I tell him I’ll watch anything. Silence at the other end of the line.

I finally suggest that he pick something out and give me a call today.

Totally regretting agreeing to going out sometimetoday. I understand he’s nervous, but if he’s going to be this shy, he’s seriously barking up the wrong tree.

Kadiri -- Icecrown ServerAnyway, up to level 7 in WoW. Started hunting in the upper-level newbie area, had my first kill-stealer, and just relaxed in general. I still have to finish that stupid spider-egg quest. (Wow, at first I didn’t think there was anything KOS in the newbie area. *laughs*)

I’m currently playing a 14-day trial version that Matt gave me. Anyway, after Brad called, I decided I needed a little social interaction after all. So I looked up this guild called “Seventh Cavalry” and see that nearly everyone is on. Went to send Joyleaf and Koori a tell for kicks and discovered that I can’t send tells on the trial version. *laughs* Figures.

Anyway, gotta get homework done so I can go out with Brad tonight. *grumble-sigh*

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WoW is amazing!

Thursday, March 6th, 2008

Wow, World of Warcraft is a fast-starting game. I’ve already completed several quests and have another couple for when I log in probably tonight or tomorrow morning.

In just a couple hours of play, I’m already level 5.

I’m not telling anyone my character’s name or server until I’m at least level 15. I need to play the game myself, not be twinked to all end. (Though I didn’t realize until the icons started blinking that someone buffed me at some point.)

I will say I rolled a Night Elf hunter, short blue hair. Oh, and I just scared the crap out of myself climbing that stupid tree to find my trainers. lol THAT is too much like Kelethin for my tastes.

Anyway, yes, I am definately here to stay. ^^;;

@ Theresa: I hope you’re right, because I think this is what I needed. I can’t afford to slack off school.

@ Tiffy: OMG! Hi!! Oh yeah, it kind of surprised me how fast the actual game started. I was expecting some of the same things from EQ, talk to the trainer first, then find my way to the newbie grounds, yadda yadda yadda.

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