Star Wars Galaxies and “CHICKS!”

I’ve posted before that my foray into the massive online gaming wasn’t World of Warcraft but SWG (Star Wars Galaxies). I’m a huge fan of Star Wars. My wife’s Christmas present to me this year was a trip to the Star Wars Celebration IV in Orlando this summer. We’re also attending San Diego’s ComicCon this summer– which she also gifted for me for Christmas as well. Having a supportive and enthusiastic wife & best friend in your geek’ness and nerd ness is a rare thing indeed. I am very lucky. She never bust’s my balls about my gaming. Never gives me the ‘eyes’ or aggro when I’m making Magic decks, killing Ewoks or mining Titanium Ore in WintersGrasp. She’s wonderful!

Got off on a praise wife tangent.

So, I got an email about 2 weeks ago from Sony Online SWG, saying I can play free for a month. All I have to do is log in. Short history with me an SWG. I started playing SWG 2 months in from the Flurry server began. This was the very beginning of SWG and in it’s infancy was a fantastical game with true depth and wonder. I sound like a commercial but if you were a vet like me (now) you know exactly what I mean. This was over 6 years ago. I joined a few guilds. Made a ton of friends and enemies. Enemies on the forums and in game because I didn’t role play. i.e. I had a guild of Hunters and Bounty Hunters with a good amount of Creature Handlers. In the game on our server, there was an unwritten rule that a “Bounty Hunter” – think Boba Fett – should not hunt same faction Jedi. In SWG you have 3 factions. Imperial, Rebel and Neutral. My line of thought was if you are a Jedi and I’m a Bounty Hunter then you are fair game regardless of faction alignment. My mantra on that was ‘fuck it & deal with it’.

This mantra spread to a dozen or so like minded players who saw my forum posts. I would get contacted from ostracized players– those who did kill Jedi without following the ‘rule’. They’d get kicked from their guild or not get buffed* (Professions like ‘Doctors’ or “Combat Medics” would be able to buff you- enhance your stats for a short period of time. Without buffs you were fodder for those who had buffs.)

I set up my own doctors and buff houses. I made my guild a sanctuary for those who weren’t following the unspoken BS rules of Bounty Hunting.

In SWG 4-5 years ago– not sure now…Jedi were ‘rare’. Super rare. You had to ‘grind’ your way down a ‘Profession Path’- 13 or so. Each profession took a lot of time and ingame credits (money). Everyone supposedly had the ‘force’ within them, they had to ‘find’ it via the grinding. When you ‘find’ your Jedi– it’s called being “Unlocked”. You then are able to create a NEW toon, free of charge. SWG only allowed you ONE toon per server. That no longer exists. My unlock was the 3rd on the server. =)

So, here you spent HOURS and MONTHS grinding away. You unlock. You become a padawan Jedi. The catch is you can’t let anyone know who is not your friend. The first Jedi had something called “Perma Death”. It is exactly what it means. If you ‘died’ ingame your toon was lost forever. No restart. No ‘clone’. Nada. Your time of 9-12 months grinding and you die to a Rancor. That’s your problem. This was TRUE hard core gaming. Then a bunch of whiney Jedi on all servers complained and a couple of the Jedi were actual real life Lawyers who threatened to sue Sony. True story. Sony relented.

The next phase of Jedi when perma death was 86’d was Bounty Hunting. Being a Jedi and ‘showing’ your force to people was something you simply didn’t do. You had to grind away your Jedi levels ALONE. No help. IF you did you ran the risk of getting on the “terminals”. Terminals are like ATM machines in the cities or towns. These terminals are a database of “Jedi” or “Bounty Hunter Marks” of who was ‘seen’ using the force. The game generated these automatically if you were within a certain ‘range’ of someone, anyone ‘Live’. The amount of time being seen raised your bounty. Thus, the Bounty Hunters of the game had new quarry. People, not just NPC’s but Jedi. It was never an easy task killing a Jedi. They always had the advantage unless there was a TEF. TEF’s are like a radius flag, an AOE. example.  Jedi Joe is fighting a BH (Bounty Hunter) one on one. The BH groups with 3-4 other BH’s. Those 3-4 other BH’s can NOW join in on the fight. Thus…the term ‘ganking’ derived from SWG. Look it up.

Back to me.

My guild specialized in ganking. Upper level Jedi would 2-3 shot you. You would drop in 5 seconds. Even the most skilled BH’s couldn’t come close to Master Jedi levels. StaxRipa was the servers best. He was able to kill Jedi who were AFK or low to med levels. My friend and I, Sokym, Accamim, Skuba and others would hop into my created 8 person vehicle, we coined “The Gank Bus” would find these Jedi on the terminals and coordinate attacks. The first 50 or so Jedi’s we encountered stood their ground because on their radial map they only ‘see’ one vehicle as a ‘red’ dot. They had no clue I was toting around 5-6 other BH’s. I’d come up on them as they’re grinding then send them a ‘tell’ (message). Something along the lines of “You ready?”  I only killed ONE Jedi who was AKF. That’s another story but his name was “Daniel”.

If the Jedi ignored me I’d wait for any movement. My gankers waiting for my signal. If said Jedi didn’t move and did have a “AFK’ above his name we’d move on. IF he did move it was on like Donkey Kong. My online adrenaline would pump. My profession was a Doctor. Not a BH. My job was to heal my friends. We start off with our timed ‘snares’ and ‘root’ abilities so he couldn’t run. They (Jedi) have a ‘force run’ which means they sprint like a cheetah going over 300% speed for about 15 second with a 30 second cool down. If they could get that off we’d have to chase them down with our speeder bikes. That happened alot as the Jedi put there skill points into defense and avoidance. I would say we contributed to that. =)

So, we would end up killing the Jedi. Since perma death was gone the penalty for dying as a Jedi was losing experience. Imagine you were a level 79 Warrior and you were killed. You spent the past 1-2 weeks getting ONE level, when you died you would lose 2-3 levels…now your level 76. This happened to Jedi. A death meant weeks of grinding lost. If a BH died or Doc for that matter we lost nothing. =D Don’t hate the playa hate the Devs. Jedi killed in this fashion– benefit, if you can call it that– would then be ‘wiped off’ the terminals and have a clean slate. Though we spread the word of WHO it was we killed was a known “Jedi”.

Word spread like wild fire and genital herpes that this rogue guild was killing both Rebel and Imperial Jedi. They even had a special meeting among the Imperials (true story…) guilds forming an alliance amongst warring guilds of the same faction to bar us from their cities (city ban) and vendors. My name was on this list “WookieLuv” among 1/2 of my guild and other BH’s. It was awesome. A friend sent me a screen shot of the meeting. Instant Classic.

This went on quite awhile til they changed the TEF rules, the “Combat Upgrade” debacle and overall the game of SWG became simplified*  *see WoW. We turned our skills to hunting and looting. Our services were supplying top end resources to top producers including our own. Me: Architect, Accamim (aka Trippy in WoW) was a Weaponsmith. Sokym…well he always was a hunter type not a crafter, ever. =D

Now, you can log in an be a Jedi in as fast as you can mash buttons. Still have to ‘level’ but the game itself isn’t the same.

So, I logged in a week or two ago and remembered they added a “Magic the Gathering” element to the game. A SWG TCG (Trading Card Game). Taking hints from MtG and WoW- they also added “Loot” cards you can redeem ingame for items that are actually useful. I did this last night — learned the tcg training, redeemed some loot cards I was given for this free month. It was fun again. I also played about an hour of WoW. =D

I may give SWG 3.0 another chance. Having your own At-At house or Sandcrawler House is too much for my Star Wars love to pass by. My wife chuckled at me when I said I missed this game. She corrected me with ‘how can you miss it if your playing it now…’

True.

And now for some sexist cretin posts of geeky hot gamer women. All photo’s below courtesy of:

BusyGamer.com

Friday (err…Tuesday) Comic: Daredevil (Frank Miller)

Daredevil the blind lawyer. The guy who uses little sticks to fight with. In red. His taste in women are legendary. The movie with Ben Affleck sucked donkey dick. He ruined it. He sucked. Elektra sucked. The casting for that was half assed. You can always tell what “Marvel” flick they want to make a blockbuster by it’s STAR & Directors. This flick was a pos. Afleck has about as much ‘presence’ on screen as he did in “Dazed & Confused”. Limited, boring and mono tone.   I bring the movie up as that’s the most people have seen about Daredevil let alone ‘know’ him and his back story.

The only thing this movie did right was pick the series / story line up which was done by Frank Miller. Frank Miller of 300, Spirit, Sin City and soon one of my all time fav series RONIN – got his proverbial feet wet by Daredevil for Marvel. He, revitalized it much like Chris Claremont did for the Uncanny X-Men in the late 80’s early 90’s.

The story involved Bullseye & Elektra going after KingPin. Plain and simple. The art and layout were impactful and of course you can’t have a great book without the writing. Frank Miller wrote the series of the heart and best story line DD in the under 200 issues and prolly ever since.  It’s grittyness of writng and storyboards are plain as day when you read the series. Marvel took note and gave him all scripting, penciling and editing for a large chunk of the KingPin/Elektra/Bullseye (series).

I highly recommend you pick it up in it’s original form not the trade paperback compilations unless that’s all you can find. Call up your local comic shop and have them get the packs together for you. You won’t be disappointed. Issues 158 thru 191. You may be able to get some cheap, dollar bin.

First Frank Miller

First DD

Last Frank Miller DD

HuskerNo

Not sure how tall WoW Gnomes are…maybe I’ll Wiki it later. My ‘Husker’ toon is currently level 48 Frost Mage. Dinge’d last night doing the VD quests in SW and IF. I aske’d my wife last night, “Which toon should be 80 next?” I started to read off the list of non-80’s and go to Husker and she exclaimed ‘HUSKER!!!’  .   I said not Arikara? Not Pinkney *banker*??

“No, Husker!”

So I smile and began another 80 run. This would* be 3 80’s in a couple months time. I started of SeanCassidy at 30 something, then started WookieLuv at 71. Wootbeer was 70 but that was like 4 months ago.

I know little about Mages. I know they’re usually top DPS. They will tend to steal aggro from the Tanks if the Tank isn’t paying attention. Mages tend to be of the extremes personality wise. Either very selfish and egocentric or very friendly an open. I, would consider myself both depending on my mood and where you are in WoW. My cynicism runs deep but my memory can be easily displaced by simple common courtesy. i.e.  in a pug someone says “Hello!”  simple as that. On the flip side if someone in the pug starts to make fun of others I get all venomous on them (in my mind) until they cross the line of making the other feel really bad.

So. This leveling may go a little faster (not as fast as a healer or tank) but the portals, making water and my sure expertise at leveling (now) will ensure a quick and meteoric rise to 80. I like to set goals. Let’s give me til Feb 28. End of the month.  I understand there are some out there who can go from 48-80 in less than a week but they are those to which have no life. Those are people with any combo of the following:

• No job
• Goes to School
• Lives at home
• Has a very helpful guild
• Plays an extra-oridinary amount of time in WoW
• Multi Box
• Has an love for Alterac Valley

I would say I fall into the last one. AV. I did have a very helpful guild but not in a sense of leveling. Not to say those in the guild now wouldn’t help, the cores online have never refused me and in turn I’ve never refused them. Just that now my core guild have been finely tuned to be very independent of each other. They have real lives outside of WoW. They don’t have time to raid from 6-10 pm 3-4 times a week. Nor do they want to. If they did they’d leave. And have. I could ask former guildies for help with Husker for ‘runs’ but I always feel like I’m putting them ‘out’. And on multiple occasions that I have asked specific people, they simply ignore me. QQ

I never go back to those who ignore me. Why bother with fucktards like that. =)

So. Here I go again! It is so true about the journey being the best part. Husker is also a miner and engineer so those are already taken care of in regards to supplies. Now I’ve got to read up on the proper way to play a frost mage. (leveling).

The TKC Women (British & European Edition)

What seems to be an eternity (3-4 years?) I visit a local KC Blogger at TonysKansasCity.com on a regular basis. I tend to be a creature of habit.

What makes him different from others in the local blog’sphere is he rarely takes himself seriously. He is both humble and an complete douche bag all in the same paragraphs. He multi-tasks. He likes to focus on Politics- with his aim on our KC Mayor Funk & his Mayoral Wife Gloria. Pretty much all things Kansas City. He has balls the size of Alabama Watermelons with some of his posts. Things he says I’d only think of for fear of being fired, shot at or worse…. For that I am a fan of his. Not a fanboi but a fan and a regular reader, though I do skip the Mayoral bashings as it simply doesn’t interest me. KC Mayors’ past have all been sub par and since I’ve been around for almost 15 years in KC have yet to see any real change in the Public School Systems which as everyone knows is my thing.

Anywhoo– this post is about the women he puts up on his blog for eye candy. He has similar tastes as I do with women except I don’t seek out the hottest jug shots of England chicks (U.K.). I do see he likes to post certain ladies over and over again. That is what this post is about. The women of TKC (Tony ‘s Kansas City). I go back mostly to discover new babes to gawk at in a SFW environment.  This is the first of maybe a 2-3 part series. First up are the “Page 3” girls…

Right from the start you can tell he has an eye for blonds. Most mexicans do. My ex wife is a blond (fake). I’ve dated all type of women but I’m most attracted to my wife (+3). Before my wife (BMW) I leaned toward dark haired or brunettes. Tony, seems to be all about Big boobed, English women. From scanning his archives here are the Big Boobed English Women (BBEW) that he most posts.

1. Keeley Hazell

2. Danielle Lloyd

3. Gemma Atkinson

4. Lucy Pinder— while she’s not “Blonde” she’s a Tony fav.

European & Foreign Ladies of TKC

1. Bar Refaeli

Easy, Like Sunday Morning…

I’ve said it once, twice & thrice. WoW is easy. Super easy. Like. For sho easy. Like the one girl in 9th grade who went to Marian HS (All girl Catholic School) who I met at some party. That easy.

I think now is the best time for anyone interested in playing WoW to do so. Get a 55 DK going and by weeks end he’ll be 80 with 1/2 set of purps. Join a raid guild and finish off the sets. The only thing that will take time is your professions– and that of course is eclipsed by what you choose and your gold. Of which can easily be bought online and appears to be at an all time low.

They misewell make this a console game or a version for the Nintendo DS.  Anyone who tells you that WoW is hard and such is simply ig’nant. It’s still a fun game, don’t get me wrong, otherwise I’d have quit long ago. There are still challenges (not this server) left for many a raiders and tons and tons and tons of achievements one can get. Among the easiest – sides ordering it is the accumilation of Gold. Do the dailies and your set for a while. Do repetitive quests and BOOM new mount, flying mounts here and there.

My suggestions for those who have done it all- (on this server*) here are some suggestions incase you are wondering “What Next?”.

1. Make a new toon. Try a class of character you’ve never thought about, like a female dwarf warrior who combines herbalism with tailoring.

2. Make a ‘twink‘ (no homo) toon. Twinks are optimized toons with levels ending in 19, 29, 39, 49, 59, 69, 79- all for the purpose to see how much money and time you can time sink into and show off your large blue penis with. (epeen). They have the games best of best gear and are built for PvP. I had one. Blue Penis and all til I said fuck it. *see UZO

3. Do the 3 female professions. Cooking, Fishing & First Aid. Cuz we all know women are really good at those things. Max it out. Cap it. Top it off. I do recommend at the very very least First Aid. I’m waiting for a 4th female prof. – the art of guilt. Whereas your female counterpart makes you feel guilty for playing WoW, spending too much time with your ‘boys’, not putting the seat down at 3:45 a.m., not listening at the proper moment, things like that. ***disclaimer: my wife does none of these, cept maybe the 3:45 a.m. one which I can totally understand. Who wants piss on their backside???

4. Go opposite faction. aka going both ways (yes, homo). Make and Alliance/Horde toon and join the guild that ganked you the most and tear it down from the inside out. Get to be a high ranking officer within said guild and create drama. Be a passive aggressive type and blame others and pass the buck. It’ll be fun. Trust me.

5. Get neekid and do WSG.

6. Ask really dumb questions in Trade Chat. Like reeeally dumb questions but keep yourself from breaking your role. Act sincere. Then slowly reveal you are actually a female. See the mood changes and let the whispers entail. It’s priceless…human behavior, let alone testosterone high school angst behavior who think women actually play WoW. (sans: Colleen, Alix, Santha, Cinmoon, Torente, etc.)

7. Do the achievements. As much as you possibly can. This in itself would potentially keep you playing wow for years on end. Literally, some take a whole calendar year to complete.

— I have more but I’m getting bored.

_____________

WookieLuv update!

He/I hit 80 Saturday this past weekend. My promise to my daughter and wife came to fruition and of course I had some guild help along the way – mainly with morale support. I pretty much spent Saturday playing WoW and hanging with my family. I was able to get 4 purples and several achievements. It was a boon for Wook and he thanked me afterward. Looks like I might join a raid guild to catch him up on what’s new and current. I was also 15 second from getting the free mount drop from Strat, the other 4 peeps had the drop. I have a feeling I’ll get it this week.

Friday Comic: Micronauts

Micronauts #14, #15 were part of a 3-Pack combo I bought with my allowance while on a family road trip to the Amana Colonies. This was the summer of 1980. It was these two books that officially ‘hooked’ me on comics. A throw back to Star Wars with all of it’s characters and not so Star Warsy too. Maybe it was the Farrah Fawcett hair of  Marionette or the C3PO (Biotron) & R2D2 (Microtron) robot’s who pretty much saved their asses in almost every issue. I don’t really know. I DO know that the character I wanted to be was ACROYEAR

Being a mere 9 years old and super impressionable on movies and comics I collected these with fervor only limited by my weekly allowance of $5.00. I stopped eating candy, not entirely but reduced my in take of large plastic Pixie Stix, Big League Chew & my all time favorite Fun Dip (Stix) so I can spend my earnings on comics. Since comics were relatively cheap at $0.40-50 cents each I was able to get my fill. I visited Dragon’s Lair every Saturday morning after cartoons. Dragon’s Lair is still alive and kicking which is in direct relation to it being an original comic book shop. I even had my Father let Bob (the owner) know it was OK for me to purchase “EPIC” and “Heavy Metal” as they were and still are considered “Adult” theme publications.

Micronauts gave me a story line that took off where Stars Wars ended. It’s core characters were misfits and came together under duress. It wasn’t your typical comic in a sense that it blended the back stories of a gestapo like S.S. machine headed by Baron Karza and his body banks (think Matrix & Auschwitz) where he would do experiments on his enemies. Pretty heavy stuff for 1980. It also created the “Microverse” with it’s own rules and laws of physics which in itself creates all new ways of looking at our world. Deep there too huh?

I believe the first 50 issues were the best. You can usually if not always find these in the, ironically 50 cent- 1.00 bins at the local comic shops or whenever there is a Con going on. I tend to pick up more of the same copies in various conditions, I’m still looking for VF-Mint 1-10.

They tried to ramp up more updated versions of Micronauts but always to a low reception and poor sales. They had their time in the spotlight in the early 80’s and I don’t ever see it being better. Just like music, (imo) writing is the key to success in books/comics/– the better writers of today’s comic book world are writing their OWN stories.  “TICK”

!”

All Covers above came from COMIC VINE, a fantastic source for Comic Book Lovers.

The waitress at Tanners (119th and 69 HWY)

Not our waitress. If it was this post would be moot.

I didn’t bother to read your name tag…do they even have name tags? To those 4 who read this blog and aren’t in the KC Metro and Greater area we have a small chain of Bar & Grills called “Tanners“. It’s accolades are only local. It’s a “Kansas Jayhawk” leaning sports bar with the requisite TV’s, Specials, Pool Tables and the lot. Typical imo.

They do have some decent burgers and specials are below normal averages.

This small rant of no real significance is about the staff. This is not the first time I’ve gone there for lunch/dinner and had issues.

This time I met my wife for a ‘quick’ lunch before she jet sets to Dallas for a day. Our waitress visit’s us a few mins after we settle in. (good). She mentions the special as told to do so (good). We order water and she leaves. About 5 mins. later she takes our order. I get the BOOGA Bacon Bleu medium, wife gets the special, Open Faced Roast Beef – Served with Mashed Potatoes & Veggie of the Day. It’s almost 1 p.m. We got time.

15 mins pass. I look around and see our waitress I’ll call “Bell” is hugging some customers one by one. She chats a good 5 mins by the door. I see other orders go out. Not sure if they were here before us. Another 5 mins pass and now she’s chatting it up with another table. Never going back to ‘check’ on our food. My wife notices my edgyness and impatience *see Patience post* She turns to the bartendar but I stop her mid sound in throat.

A small blond – let’s call her Tiffany, walks out of the back with our order. Our waitress is still chatting and now sitting down with some fellas. Food looks great! I ask if it had been sitting back there and she blinks here heavily mascara eyes and words trip out of her mouth as I just asked a direct question. She replies with a “Nope, they just came up.” She blinks deliberately at me for a good 3-4 seconds. See, most of the JoCo waitresses are not here for tact, logic, common sense, they are here to look good serving OK food. Nothing more. Nothing less.

If one interrupts their inner chi of looking good/strutting you will be the highlight of their 4 hour shift. As I’m talking with my wife I see Bell walk to the back and in hushed tones the two discuss what a prick I am. Luckily I already have my meal infront of me. Bell comes by and does one of my 3 rules you don’t do when your serving me (no homo). She asks how the food is. I haven’t even touched the food. I say “Looks Great, but is there a reason why the food took nearly 30 mins?”. Blinks ensue. Mouth Open. She’s trying to formulate a sassy but not so sassy response because how dare a customer question her!?!

Mouth still agape. (never used that word ever in a structured sentence). She says “30 minutes really?” “Sorry”. Still staring at me wanting me to brush off the small incident I reply with “It’s ok, I was just wondering”. She gives a shrug and says sorry once more. I bend my fork into a “L” shape. My wife says “It’s ok we have our food now…”

I see her go back to what looks to now be a summit of bimbos by the back area of the bar. Hushed whispers and glances. She comes back, walking in confident strides with our ticket.

“You only waited about 23 minutes, as soon as you gave me your order I put it in the system.” “It was at 1 p.m.”. I look at my phone and look back up and reply with a “I see.” She then touches my shoulder and apologizes once more with no effort concealing her hate for me. She must think mooks who are ‘touched’ by her will simply forgive an forget.

It’s now 1:49.

I chuckle to my wife as our server almost skips back to her post of girls in waiting to see what I said. I gave no such pleasure. It’s not worth it. Vanity based girls are only interested in themselves and it’s fruits of labor of looking good. Tips. And flirting.

I leave $2.00 cash. I refuse to leave a signed tip for fear of Debit Card retribution. I’ve had similar instances at Tanner’s where the bimbos double dip. The bill was $14.something.

My 3 rules of servitude in an eatery are:

1. Do not ever interrupt the customers conversation. Politely wait for them to stop talking. This is easily done by simply standing there quietly. If you do interrupt I will continue to talk even if whomever I’m talking to is now focused on the server.

2. Don’t ever ask If I want change back. If you do ask you won’t get but loose change IF I even have any.

3. Always keep drinks filled. Empty cups mean your not paying attention.

3A. If I’m done eating remove the damned plate(s) from the table ASAP!

I can state these rules for several reasons besides being a timely prick. I waited table for a number of years. I’ve earned my wings slingin blue plate specials and tap water and getting no tips from cheap ass customers. Dealt with mean spirited hostess and cooks who piss in your soup.

OK. That’s my rant of no consequence for the week.

Running in Place

It’s a slow grind getting back into shape. Much like leveling a toon in WoW. You see a lot of progress your first 1-25 levels. Then you hit the 30’s-40’s and things get a little boring, same thing over and over. God forbid leveling 50-60’s…by that time you are well into your professions and farming like mad.

Now come the 70-80 grind. Oy vay. Although that tends to be a fast 10 levels provided you know what your doing. You also need help. My help in losing the fat is my wonderful wife. She’s my muse.

We are averaging one day – rather- night a week where we work out. Our goal is to do this 3-4 times a week. We’re getting there kids. So last week we ran on the elevated track around the gym and last night we did the treadmill. I ran 2.1 miles– mostly jogged and walked fast in just under 30 mins. Worked on my mid section and focused on my abs and lower back. I’ve had chronic back issues over the past  15 years- basically being fat and not doing stuff….I want a super strong back. I’d like 98 million dollars too but this seems more like something I can accomplish in the next year.

It’s funny as I was jogging, in front of the parade of mills, spinners, climbers are 12 TV’s with their own stations. We tend to always come on the night the ‘BIGGEST LOSER’ is on. Talk about inspiration. LOST and American Idol were also on but one can’t watch Idol without sound, and LOST is…well…a fruitless attempt to even watch it. It needs it’s own Cliff Notes just to watch an episode. I’m a Evangeline Lilly fan. How can you not like high cheek bones? My wife has super high cheek bones!

I’m trying to decipher what they’re saying on BLoser but it seems like one couple didn’t even try to lose weight that week and was kicked off. Is that how the show works? It made me wonder how can someone let themselves ‘go’ like that. Then I looked down and realized that I let myself go. Not to 300-400 lbs but it’s relative.

For me it comes down to complacency. You get used to things, easy things. Work is work and of work why would I choose consciously to go work out when I can sit back in my bed and watch TV or level my Night Elf? We tend to choose the easier path until something significant happens. Or not. Since you live with yourself 24/7 you don’t see the changes immediately but over time the complacency blinds you to what is really happening. Your shirts are tighter, pants are tighter so you buy the XXL+’s. You can’t move as much but why bother? It’s so much easier to just quit and make more excuses to not do something active and positive.

My excuses currently fall in the ‘tired’ category. I try and do other things when I don’t go to the gym. I still climb the morning 72 steps to the 4th floor at work, 5 times a week. I do my 20 pushups in the morning, 20 in my office…yeah go ahead and laugh…and I can’t wait for my assistant to walk in on me as I’m grunting and farting as I’m on my last rep…then at night I do 20 more pushups. I hate the elipitcal but will do that at least  once a week at 5-6 min pops. I’m also consistent (sans 2 days) of calorie counting on my apps (iPhone) and keeping my calories intake at under 2k– avg is around 1600 calories per day. I’m finally getting that routine which is ever so important when you change things around in your daily life.

This morning I weighed in at 236 lbs. Up two from last week….but I will bet 50g that it will be under 234 by nights end. I may have hit a plateau as far as losing pounds quickly but my stamina is up big time. I’m only lathargic after eating certain foods and the fact I’m consistently UNDER 240 lbs makes me a very happy camper. I’ve also gone down 1 pant size. Was 40 now a 38. 30’s are good in my book. I bought jeans last week as a celebratory gift and though they were a tight fit they did fit. My wife was very pleased to see my ass. Flat as it is she was laughing at the tightness around my supple strong thighs and she took the liberty of slapping my (flat) ass a few times. It felt good. She calls them ‘skinny’ jeans..but they’re not tapered down at the bottom which then would make me a faggot. They’re simply straight legged jeans….which happen to be tight in my thigh area and (flat) ass area…the connotation to being the ‘skinny’ jeans fad was what I’d like to call a misuse of the word. I would never wear the trendy ‘skinny’ jeans, even if it was to save some Seal Pups. Fuck that.

Not me.

Patience

Last night I was on Wookie and as I do my quests I ‘Q’ up for pug dungeons, my normal thing I do. I get into a couple, grind up some xp and upgrade some items along the way. The last pug I did for the night was Halls of Stone. Our Pal Tank is very green and wet behind the ears. It’s obvious as he accidentally pulls 3 3-4 mobs at the same time. I wait for the ever so unfair but fair feature for allowing a vote to ‘kick’ another. It never came.

We all rezzed.

He repeats the mistake but with half of the 12 npcs gone we –nay– HE aggroed’ the big metal patrol guy, so..we wipe again.

I wait once more for someone, anyone to initiate the kick. There are drawbacks for doing so. First and foremost it’s a tank. A sub 80 tank at that. Finding pugs on a consistent basis being under 80 is a crap shoot. Hence, me going about my questing. Tanks aren’t a dime/dozen nor are healers. I would venture to say, sub 80 there are less tanks than heals. So, with running the risk of a wait time that could exceed 10-20 mins, I guess no one wanted to risk that, let alone me.

We rez.

This time around I ask ‘Is this your first time tanking?’

Silence.

We eat/mana up, buff then I see that there are no real leaders in the group (me excluded). So I speak up and ask again if he’s new. I then go on to explain how to correctly ‘pull’ mobs and that I will MD him and pull since his way of taunting is to wide. He finally opens up and says he’s been here before but never as a tank. Halls of Stone (HoS) isn’t the best place to learn tanking 101 sub 80. But it does give opportunity to learn. So I ask the rest of the guild if it’s OK that we slow down. They all were good with this.

I still lay the agreement based on my comments above of the alternatives.

We slowly make our way to the 2nd to last boss — rather the waves. Our tank announces his chest, helm and gloves are all ‘red’. Red means the items or armor are ‘broke’, which in turn means the stats like life, strength, agility etc. are now useless. Over time unless it’s a Heirloom everyone has to ‘repair’. Apparently our tank forgot to do so prior to the run.

As I sit there sighing I realized that I’m witnessing my own progression in WoW. Difference being I wouldn’t publicly admit my dumb ass ness. He asks if he can go repair, another says the same thing and the other has to take a shit…or ‘bio2’. I smile.

10 min. later we all reconvene to the hall of the final boss. Kill it then I get a very nice tell from the healer. The healer is the girlfriend of the tank. She apologized to me and thanked me for not being an asshat, as prior to this run they would boot him from the group, she would then follow. I was, I guess the only one with patience and stepped up to the plate to offer advice. They have been playing for about 6 months and are both guildless because they simply take longer to learn things. I thank them for being THEM. I wished them well and if there ever on Azshara to give me a shout.

They left the group and I sat there in the instance feeling like I did something decent ingame. My MO is to simply leave the group after the 2nd wipe or if one of the healer or tanks leave. I don’t have much play time to fuck around like that. I tend to have 2-3 hrs a night, if that. This time around it was well worth  the TIME spent. This is what gaming is all about to me.

WookieLuv got Lucky?

WookieLuv my under- loved, geared, appreciated Night Elf Hunter turned 77 last night which meant I hearted to Dalaran and within 1 min of dinging I got cold weather flying. Hopped on my Red Gryphon and headed back to the Basin. I had my monitor set to hold up 2 screens. One showing me where the Elite Loque’nahak spawns and one for my WoW screen. My first pass and 4th spot I see him! My wife was watching TV next to me, we rented Drummer, a Chinese/Taiwanese Foreign film….and I said “Ohhh babe!! I found her!!”  She said “Oh?”. I ignored her “Oh” and jumped off my gryph. I had previously released my FireHawk 10 mins earlier. Being a 76 Elite her (I call anything of beauty ‘her’) hitpoints were around 16k, I wondered if I’d survive the LOVE/TAME/HUG. The lore of the beast is actually a HIM.

I did!!!!!   In only 10 mins of searching I found and tamed a pretty rare beast! Apparently it spawns twice a day. 6 hr timers. It was a thing of beauty and my love tapping almost got me to zero HP’s, I had 1k left.

I haven’t named her…I’ll think on that tonight. Any suggestions are welcome.

More links about a year old pet =D

Thotbot Petopia WoWhead — I found her at the spot to the left of “Wintersgrasp” on the map.

I still have my beloved “AlixAndria” cat (Frost Saber) from WinterSpring and will never ‘release’ her. Mwahahaa. Ha. Ha.

So all in all 1 level and 1 new exotic rare (to me) over the weekend = goodness.

–Btw the movie is called “Zhan. gu”. A good flick to rent. Wife fell asleep but we did have a long day. =D