My Top 10 Favorite Halloween Candy

10. Peanut M&M’s

9. Snickers Mini’s (once I steal..err…get them from my kids I put ’em in the freezer)

8. Blow Pops ; Any Flavor minus Sour Apple.

7. Bit O’ Honey :  Awesome Treat…bad on dental work.

6. Fun Dip : Nothing wrong with dipping Sugar Sticks into Powedered Sugar!

5. Pixie Stix : Also noting wrong with colored sugar in a convenient straw package!

4. Gold Mine Gum! : Felt I was Indiana Jones when I got these back in the day! Flavor lasted 10 seconds.

3. Dubble Bubble: LOVE it!!! Will pop 4-5 at a time…

2. ValoMilk :  Made in Kansas City! Ultimate Sin. (btw- I redesigned their packages…)

1. My number 1 is  Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups!

Happy Halloween!

Change

I don’t want to seem like I’m not happy with our guild, it’s slow progression even with the nerf but it seems that for some of the guild members, they are simply there to be in a guild vs. helping it out, participating, listening to the officers and my instructions on what we require for raiding. Phrozen and his wife have made attempts at assembling a solid group for Kara. Last night I checked the forums and only 2 people signed up. Our guild calendar had 3 people signed up- 1 of which Sindan said he couldn’t go and the others were the same who signed up on the forums (Phros’).

I’ve had several meeting about signing up. Participation, add-ons (2 articles) and being there for the guild when you SAY you will. I know this is a casual guild but it’s not THAT casual that you can show up anytime you like for raids THEN get all pissy when it’s filled up or when we don’t have enough people to go. I ask little of the guild members except mutual respect, follow the guidelines and participate. Simple.

After the Lich King comes out I will sit down with my core officers and talk about the direction we want to take. My initial thoughts are to CLEAN HOUSE. i.e. Kick those who are too lazy to research boss fights, 1000 excuses not to use add ons, broken mics, late to scheduled raids consistently, wall-flowers (those who do nothing to add to the guild). OR make an entirely NEW guild of high content raiders. Highly structured, organized raiding guild where the requirements are set high and level of play is high. The GM would be one of my Alts or one of the current ranking Ambassadors or Field Marshals. I would partake in this as I do want to take my gear and certain toons to the next level.

Please POST your own thoughts and ideas in the feedback/reply section of this blog.

Thanks!

Essential Add Ons

Per our meeting the other night here are the links for the add-ons we would like you to have if you plan on raiding with us in Kara and beyond. If you choose not to use these you may not be able to attend our raids, it’s up to you. I posted a week or so ago on how to upload them to your system please see that post as a reference.

Threat Meters: Use- shows an active meter going up/down on a target mob-npc and it’s current threat. If you bypass the tanks aggro/threat the npc will attack you and most likely you will die a horrible disgusting death OR worse yet, cause a raid wipe and your name will be cursed until someone else causes a wipe. The purpose is clear enough, stay UNDER the threat so the Tanks can do what they do best…get slapped around and live to loot about it. Listed below are the ones most popular. (Note all these add-ons are being pulled from Curse.com) Also…even though the 3.0 patch has a similar Threat meter ingame it’s very weak and not very accurate nor does it show everyones Threat (just if you are about to over take the threat).

OMEN Threat Meter Diamond ThreatMeter

KLH ThreatMeter

Group Calendar :  as mentioned before the new patch introduced an ingame Calendar but after using it and seeing how it does not have a lot of neccessary features AND you have to “invite” people to participate we decided to 86 it and go with the Standard of Calendars. You MUST use this if you plan on doing anything structured with this guild.

GroupCalendar

The last addon we highly recommend are raid centric and boss encounters. There tend to be two factions who like one over the other. Deadly Boss Mods and Big Wigs. Try them both and see what you like but you must use one or the other for raiding.

BigWigs Bossmods DeadlyBoss Mods

Helpfu adds on like Questhelper, PerlFrames, Cartographer, Auctioneer, Bartendar are very useful and I’m sure there a lot more I’m missing.

Enjoy!

All My Friends Are Liberals.

Tis true. I can only think of 2 friends (whom I speak with on a regular basis) that would be considered/called/view points of a Conservative. The rest are nearly all die-hard, band wagoneering, hates Bush, thinks Obama is the 2nd coming of Christ (of those we have my friends who don’t believe in ANY gods and/or religion they are agnostic or aetheists). While I can see why they are so desperate to find a Political Personal Jesus like Obama the reality of it is he’s simply and I say this with no cynicism, he is simply a Politician. Obama speaks eloquently, black ice smooth and has a demeanor fit for a Professional Poker Player but he is NO different than any other Politician out there in regards to personal agendas, greed, power and being backed by Big Business/Lobbyists. Same goes for McCain- to me (now I’m being cynical) they are one and the same and nothing like the same will change for years to come. It wil take a popular revolution to change the ‘system’ of our very corrupt government…  I am not going to vote for either one on November 4th, 2008.

I refuse to vote for the hypocrisy these two candidates and their running mates reperesent. Obama is NOT change– only thing different about his is that he is a Muslim/African/American. “McSame” says it all. I still see America as being a very racist country despite the past 15 years of Political Correctness bullshit. I’m a racist based on my personal experiences. I judge others based on their actions and words. The media (both sides- liberal and conservative) use their power to influence what you and I think– and at this point in time in the Presidential race they want you to think Obama will win by a wide margin– based on numerous Polls. I don’t think so. America is still racist and they will come out and vote that day despite the media’s agenda of electing their Poster Child (Obama) of a New Era. This race is also about RACE — has everyone forgotten the History of this country in just over 9 months? I LOVE my Country and being a Native American know first hand the History of racism and I also know it’s great people and the freedom one has here and I would never take it for granted in any degree.

In my ideal world race would not be an issue, ideological and theological would be ideals that could be discussed without passion but with logic and common sense. Our government would be limited to basic social services and defense. Education would be the upmost and top priority of local and state goverments. We wouldn’t “police” the world but focus on our own people and NOT CARE what other countries think of us as that would not benefit us Americans in the long run. Not isolationist but more of a “take care of us FIRST” mantra : education, political reform, revamping of taxes… I could really care LESS what France-Germany-Canada (lol)-Mexico-Russia thinks of our own laws and policies. Unfortunately my ideal world only exsists in my head and dreams.

I try not to talk Politics with my personal friends as that has a time and place and most of our conversations revolve around popular culture and our similar interests. I do speak Politics with my wife Alo but that too is limited because of my wanting to refrain from getting more and more cynical about Politics. She will be voting for Obama as I was going to…but then I did my own homework and research about his views & history and my eyes were opened in that he is simply a Politician.

Recap!

This weekend in WoW for the Old School was everyone getting used to their toons as well as enjoying the Hallows End Holiday. So far Wootbeer, Ivan got them Helm from the Headless Horseman and most everyone who did the quest got the rings and trinkets. We are still waiting for the Mount to drop, I hope one of my toons gets it! We are all also getting used to the new talents and garnering the achievement point systems, which in itself is fun to do. Be sure to checkin in with the INN Keeper everytime you log on for the elusive “Toothpick”.

I wasn’t able to attend to the guilds Zul’Aman run on Saturday night but from all accounts it was fubar. Few people read up on the instance including the leader. We also had some gung-ho members who were still in Greens…..ummm no. While we all appreciate one’s wanting to go to high end content if you are not geared for it you need to NOT go and upgrade. Nothing personal but it is a complete waste of time for all involved and can be costly to ones bank account and patience. So lastnight I started a weekly meeting with the Guild Officers about current events, progressions and addressinig issues within the guild. I think it went well and we also promoted “Yarrow” to a Field Marshal ranking. Congrats! Points made in the meeting;

• Using all the guilds tools for raiding; Vent, Add Ons, Gear Check, Calendar. If you don’t use these you will not be invited to attend raids.
• Be On TIME. USE our calendar* (we are planning on using the original add-on group calendar as this new one Blizzard provided sucks ass).
• Leaders of the raids NEED to take control of the raid, you are appointed for a reason if you cannot take your role as a leader please tell me. The person(s) with the most experience of a specific raid IS TO BE the leader regardless of rank/class.
• Please note- as guild officers (Ambassadors and Field Marshals) you may need to do your own research on Dungeons/Instances/Boss Fights.

I will post more updates from our meeting as they happen!  Thanks!

The little casual guild that could.

Took the guild just over 4 hours total since the patch to clear Kara. I took some pix and will post this weekend. Our next immediate goal is to hit up Zul’Aman. Yes, we are just NOW starting it but one has to remember we are not a hardcore WoW guild in that that’s all we do.  So now I will be reading up on it! Love this kinda homework. To our guildies who plan on attending this Sat Night @ 10 pm please do some research for the boss fights & quests.

I also posted this on the new Guild Calendar ingame (patch) and will be planning Achievement Runs to focus on areas of interest like Explorations, Dungeons and Professions– your ideas and suggestions are more than welcome! Post here or in our forums. (or pst me)

Have a good weekend!

30% makes all the difference!

Last night we grouped up for a 99.9% guild sponsored Kara run POST patch 3.0 and WOW…I mean WOW. Either we are that much more effective or they took down the hit points by 30% as they stated they did for upper end game Dungeons like SSC and BT. We 1 shot all bosses except Nightbane (2 shot that bitch) all under 2 hours. It was simply amazing and fun. Tonight we plan on full clear then onto SSC this weekend. I need to read up on that… great job guild! (even if they gimped it by 30% or we’re 30% more effective.)

AutumnKnight respec’d to 100% 61 point HOLY and is a healing machine, however I noticed more than a few times I needed MANA- (during Nightbane)- so I will see about boosting my mana pool. Current bonus for AK is just over 1025 heal/damage and with the change to the bonus being “Spell Power” I think she is better for it and versatile for both PvE and PvP. I had her run a EOS after Kara and garnered 3 more Achievement Points and wasn’t killed as fast…Good times indeed!

I love my gamer wife & tips for wife aggro.

This weekend our resident good guy Logtar hit 70. It’s an achievment that is to be proud of because he did so without rushing or skipping content. Sure some of us helped him along the way, he’s a guildy. Sure I sometimes I ignored his pleas to come help him kill Horde who have been camping him for hours. I didn’t personally help him do much once he hit 60’s– but that was so he could get to know his toon. It was for his own good. Too many people, me included RUSH to level without enjoying the Journey. Journey is among my top 10 80’s Rock Bands…fyi. Logtar seemed to have enjoyed it and with minimalWife Aggro. Wife aggro or Significant Other aggro are chief reasons why so many people quit, get disgruntled or plain quit something the ENJOY doing. They are made to feel guilty playing, made to feel stupid and pressured….Not many people (yes, I’m generalizing– suck it if you don’t like it)…not many people ENJOY life and what it provides, gaming is one of the few pure joy entertainment venues one can do in the comfort of their home AND be social and interact with others. PLUS it’s ULTRA cheap..go to dinner or see a movie in a theater…shit…2 Pops and 1 Popcorn (Large) equals ONE Month of WoW….Specifically MMO’s, most wives, gf’s seem to forget that it’s not just YOU sitting in front of a screen mashing buttons…you are among 20-40 OTHERS sitting in front of a screen mashing buttons. That action of button pushing bonds you to others, creates friendships and makes your time in game FUN. Where else can one pillage a Horde town, kill Maiden, 3 Cap in WSG & Get drunk (ingame) within hours of logging in?

My wife is a gamer, she’s been playing vids for years now and while she is bored with WoW (until the expansion where one can change hair and makeup) she respects the time and effort I put into my WoW guild and toons. She  hears the Vent chat while she is on the computer blogging, hears me cuss under and over my breath and she loves that I’m enjoying something. I am blessed to have a NON-condescending ball buster hypocrit wife and for that I am eternally grateful. Alix wrote a wonderful article on aggro from their female partners some months back- here. Check it out it’s a good read. Again, I readily admit I so very lucked out to find a gamer girlfriend—fiance—-wife. Blessed am I.

I will say that one does have to balance the time you spend online with time offline and paying attention to everyday responsibilities. Stuff like work, cleaning, hygene, communicating and basic everyday life has to be balanced with your gaming**

**Unless you live with mom and dad or mom in the basement and don’t have a love besides self-love or in high school– then you only have to do two things. Chores and Grades– the rest of the time you should be geared up in T6. Amirite?**

If your significant other is still a smart @ss about playing WoW, ask her to play with you (ingame). Buy her the game or do a trial (she gets 10 days for free PLUS if she does like it you can have her as a referral for your very own Zebra Mount!) How cool is that?? I bought Alix the Burning Crusade Collectors Edition off of Craigslist for a mere $20.00. If she refuses to play with you, ask her point blank…”What do you enjoy doing?”. Take her answer and think before you speak…here I go generalizing…(suck it)…if she replies with any of the following you must…repeat..MUST reply in kind…if you want to remain together….

• I enjoy spending time with you! (your reply: I love spending time with you darlin! Let’s go look at quilts!)
• I like to shop; shoes, clothes…(your reply: hand her your CC or debit and hand her the car keys)
• Reading and blogging– (help her with topics like take her to the 1/2 Price bookstore or Borders”– or if your brave- buy her a copy of Dr. Laura Schlessinger “The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands“.
  
• I want to out dancing! – GO!!!! Fuck WoW, get dressed and go dancing! Take a woman out dancing and you are guaranteed to get some later! Trust me.
• I don’t know…I just want you to spend some time with me…this is NOT an answer– ask her the question again or rephrase it. You need to nail down what she likes to do. Find it out and do it. Women like men of action.
• I want to go out with the girls! By all means encourage this! This gives her the time to bitch and whine about you to her friends who in return bitch and moan about their husbands– it’s very much like an all girls guild but their common goal isn’t to do Kara under 4 hours but to see whose life/husband is the most fucked up…hopefully you aren’t the one. If you have kids, this is most excellent as you can releave her of the kids and give her a break and can talk with adults.
  

Once you try these, let me know how it goes. In the end it’s about what you both want and need and taking care of balancing it all. If your girlfriend/wife still is busting your balls about your gaming- stop gaming. We will keep you in the guild but move your status to “inactive” rank. If you are gone for 3+ months we will assume you are no longer interested in WoW and have become a dance instructor at the local YMCA THEN you will get kicked out of the guild.

Gratz Logtar!!!! /Proud

Here are some great articles on wife aggro. First my wifes on HELIUM.

Here!

Urban Dictionary

Tee Shirt

WoW Insider

And and EXCELLENT article here!

Not bad…

I believe it was a successful run for our new players in Kara. The Sok’s (Colleen & Jeff) seemed stoked to be there and Jeff got some very nice gloves (healers) to add to his gear. Yarrow got the Crossbow from Attumen and our new addition Priere (prounounced Pree) got a non-boss drop. We only wiped once on Attumen! It was also a 100% guild run. The group consisted of me healing on AK, Sindan, Arance, Colleenvysok, Jeffvysok, Dragnort, Tyiako, Priere, Yarrow, McGerk= 2 Priests, 1 Drood, 2 Hunters, 2 Locks, 1 Rogue, 1 Pal & 1 War.  Odd ball group but it seemed to work just fine, especially on the AOE pulls in the dining room/stairs, not ONE death on AOE’s. (woot).

Moroes is on borrowed time- we got him down to 13% but failed on DPS, while locks are (seem) better at AOE this is where we needed Phrozen and Phreezins DPS. It didn’t help our shackles were getting broke by chance, bad luck or someone accidentally hitting them. We tried 6 times but called it for the night. I think we all had  a good time as the atmosphere was relaxed an everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves– and everyone was on vent 100%!

Continuation is tonight at 8pm server time. Priority spots goes to those from the first night *usually* however due to my brain fart, thinking yesterday (lastnight) was Wed. – it will be first come first served…or we could make a 2nd Kara group. Well see. Thanks to everyone for a good initial run.

Kara is on WEDnesdays & Addons 101

Let’s start a new schedule for Kara. Wed nights at 8pm server time. With only 4-5 weeks before the expansion coming out let’s see about getting the new 70’s involved. We will still need the Main heals (AutumnKnight) and Main Tanks (Ivan or Woot or another experience player) to fill the roles as to not wipe but I would like for those who have never been a chance. If you are new and want to go please read up on the encounters and what’s to be expected of you. You can click here and here. Some basics are as follows;  Get ON VENT. I run the server for raiding and socializing, please use it. The vent info (address, port and password) are located in our guild information tab. Mods; these are add ons that must be used in order for the raid to be successful, especially if you are NEW. Deadly Boss Mods, Omen and KLH Threatmeter. If you are not familiar with how to use these or load here’s a quick 101. After you download to your computer you will need to Unzip/Extract the contents. You will need to extract these into the Plug-Ins & Addon’s folder.sample:   Directroy “C” Drive ——> Program Files —–> World of Warcraft Folder ——> Interface folder —-> Addons (is where you extract the files to.)

Once you add them (making sure you did so with WoW OFF) restart your WoW program. If it loaded correctly you will see a “Add Ons” button on the lower lefthand side of your Characters Page. Click it to see what is On and working. Keep in mind, certain adds will slow your system down so it’s really a trial and error to see what works best, however the ones I named are used by MILLIONS of people so they are coded pretty well. You will notice your interface screen different, click on the new icons and play around with the settings, also keep in mind some add ons only trigger (turn on) when you enter a dungeon or group up. Add ons are your friends and essential to being successful in WoW.

Warning: If you do not use the mods for Kara and wing it by not reading up on the encounters, not on Vent and you cause multiple wipes you will be replaced. Exceptions to this rule of not using mods are: you are anal retentive about what’s on your computer or your not allowed to load 3rd party software, your name is Tyiako or you simply have computer issues. I do not expect you to TALK in vent but I do expect you to LISTEN. A mic only costs about $8.00… we use vent to explain boss fights, give eachother shit about pulls, mana burning a boss and basic communication.  The threat meters are just that, they visually show you on a list of the amount of threat the boss/mobs your fighting, if you over take the threat on our Tank, odds are you will die or cause a wipe. Some guildies like our dynamic duo have a hard time keeping their crits to a steady stream even with the mods. (Phreezin & Phrozen)- they know this, I know this, the guild knows this but there’s nothing we can do about it less they have infinite ice blocks with zero cooldowns.

Please also use our group calendar mod. This is our primary tool to schedule instances, kara, events, parties and runs. Click here for the add on.

Hope to see you all this week! Oh and one more thing– anytime WoW has an update the add ons will need to be updated as well. Just go back to the curse site and read when it was last updated, the popular ones tend to be updated within hours of a patch release.

~ Wookieluv/AutumnKnight/Wootbeer/Wook/Devo/SeanCassidy/Husker/Pinkney/FoxyBish

Favorite Fast Foods & Sammiches

Last night I was talking with Alo and my son about foods, it seems Pringles is on a flavor kick introducing 6-8 new “limited” releases of chips; Dill Pickle, Cheeseburger, Cheese Sticks, Honey Mustard, Onion Blossom, etc. Then we moved onto discussing what are our favorite genres of foods; snacks, desserts, fast food, semi-fast foods, sit down rests etc. We got on the topic of if you only could eat ONE Top Brand Fast Food Chains food for the rest fo your life what would it be. The “Top Brands” choices were;

• McDonalds
• Burger King
• Wendy’s
• Taco Bell
• Kentucky Fried Chicken
• Long John Silvers
• Arby’s
• Subway* (not necc. fast food..)
• Hardees
• Jack in the Box

Alo and I picked WENDYS in seconds and decided with all the choices and it’s “freshness” it counts for a lot. My son picked Taco Bell…..*puke*. A very very close 2nd was Arby’s for it’s freshness, curly fries, potato cakes, chicken cordon bleu plus it’s variety of semi- healthy sammiches. The one we all agreed sucked the most; Burger King. I think the demise of BK was about 10 years ago when they changed their cooking oil to something different, they have the absolute worst tasting fries in it’s genre. (McDonalds is #1 for fries imo).

We moved onto the eateries of Sandwich Shoppes and for Alo and I there was NONE better than Panera  Bread Co. Soups, fresh breads, cookies, muffins, awesome salads makes it among the Cadillacs of Sandwich places. – 2nd for both of us went to MmmmMmm Toasty Quizno’s. Hot fresh and toasty sandwiches dripping with cheese, sauteed mushrooms and the ability to load up on wonderful horseradish sauce! My son went with Jimmy John’s and I love it too but it can’t touch the previous mentions. Not suprisingly “Subway” came in last for all of us, I’ve had too many bad experiences with Subway; stale salad, greenish tomatoes, hard bread, tiny amount of meats but most of all the environment and customer service is terrible. Fly’s landing on the food, hair on my sandwich, makers with attitudes and seeing “Jerrad” the former fat fuck now with a pompous attitude in lame commercials. Did you know HOW he lost all that weight at Subway? He ONLY ATE the Veggie 6″ Sandwich. Eating lettuce and bread for over a year…of course you will lose weight…..duh……he didn’t eat the Club, the Turkey Bacon..he ate lettuce.  Our Honorable Mentions of Sandwich Shoppes: Planet Sub, Scholtzkies, Mr. Goodcents, Lenny’s and Kings.

Asiago Roast Beef Sandwich from Panera

Arby's Curly Fries

Jimmy John's

Important GUILD NEWS!!!!!!!

ALL Guildies/friends please click here– I’ve decided to explain what happened in a formal letter.