Full Quest Log, Empty Party.

I just checked my quest log on my main character in WoW.

23 of 25 quests are active right now.

I have 3 or 4 gray quests to clear out. Probably a good way to help get my levels.

Fun Kitty.

I just tamed King Bangalash from Stranglethorn Vale on Bloodhoof using my hunter.

Took ONE try and I took no damage.

The trick is to start at max range with a freezing trap between you and them. That way, you have a clean 15 seconds before they get to you.

Fun times indeed. Now I need to figure out a name for the bugger.

Closer to bigger carry bags.

My tailor in WoW (Telorin, Human Warlock, Bloodhoof) is now level 27 and getting closer to being able to get his tailoring up to 300 from the current 225 cap.

I started this little crusade when he was level 20, so I'm making reasonable progress. I need to get him to 35 to get the next stage of Tailoring.

I'm glad I can mix up my play a bit with more characters. Training one hardcore is a bit tiresome alone.

So much for that thought

Someone got it at the 30 minute mark.

Better luck next week.

Gone Fishin'

I make this post in the first 15 minutes of today's "Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza"

Hopefully I can get the 40 fish needed for it before everyone else so that I can get the super fishing rod.

One can always hope.

First Epic Drop in WoW.

I just got my first epic item drop as a Bow of Searing Arrows.

Dropped from a Bloodsail Warlock (or Swashbuclker, can't remember which).

Of the people I've told about this, one has never seen someone get an epic item before level 50, and another has never seen someone get an epic item outside of a dungeon.

A pretty good haul for a level 38 character that was taking on level 42-43s

New WoW stuff.

Ok, there is some new stuff in WoW this week, including stuff that has broken basically every addon I use.

So far, about half of the addons I use have updates. I'm just waiting on the other half.

Good fun.

First snow.

We had our first real snow of the season this morning.

It took almost twice as long to do the papers as it normally does.

Figures it'd happen on an extended maintainence day for WoW.

Remembrance day.

Remembrance day is tomorrow and I will be at the ceremonies in Thorburn, helping out with the sound system and taking photos.

I'm not sure if there's going to be a paper to deliver or not, but I'll know by 7am.

May those who have fallen never be forgotten.

Things NOT to do in a WoW Instance.

Things not to do in a WoW instance without checking with the group first:

• Run off on your own
  
• Target new things that haven't gone aggressive yet
• Open chests without getting the roll
• Rolling for a "Bind on Pickup" item that doesn't work with your class.

Just to name a few.

I had one guy in my party be guilty of the first two and got me killed twice.

One would be suprised

After playing WoW for a few weeks, I've come to realize that putting the stuff you get from your professions on the auction block (as long as it's white named or better) will actually get you a lot more money than selling it to the in-game vendors.

After my first day of getting a gold off of it, I'm switching over to using the auction house more.

See you on Bloodhoof people. If you don't play yet but want to, e-mail me and I'll see about getting you a guestpass (10 free days of play) and we can get going with it.

All ye who play on Bloodhoof.

Alliance:
Telorin - Human Warlock, Tailoring Enchanting
Chojiro - Dwarf Hunter, Skinning Leatherworking

Horde:
None yet

Boomstick time.

Ok, I started a World of Warcraft character and have gotten hooked. The dwarven hunter I have is now level 15 with a pet spider at level 14.

BOOMSTICK FOR THE WIN!

Getting closer to being on the happy side of the credit line

I figure I have a collection or two before I have my credit cards down low enough that I'm not hanging on the edge due to interest and fees.

I hope I can clear the line cleanly enough that I don't have to worry anymore and can start paying down my laptop right away.

Fun and Dice Rolling

Well, this weekend, we had a little D&D session, got to what's left of a town.
My dwarf is now:

• Hungover
• Doped up
• Magically knocked out

It's better than him being dead, that's for sure.

I'm going to get a check done tomorrow on the wireless networks downtown, see what ones are open and what ones aren't. After doing the back of beyond run and finding over 100, I'm a bit worried.

Changed plans.

Instead of getting that toshiba, I switched to get an acer.

It would have just ended up taking too damn long to wait for the toshiba to get in, and I got tired of waiting. It is easier to just get one from the shelf instead of ordering in.

I hate delay.

Continuing to wait even more.

I ordered the new laptop on September 15th.

It is now October 5th.

It still hasn't shipped yet.

I'm still not pleased about this. They're probably going to get lynched.

Mixed news.

Good news: Router's here and installed. Working great.
Bad news: Laptop still hasn't shipped yet.

I know why my laptop got delayed.

With the big rash of sony battery recalls recently, I decided to see if my laptop was affected, and low and behold, this press release said that it is.

Now I get to wait for it.

A new router has been ordered and shipped. I'm trying to figure out if it'll arrive today or monday.

Continued delays and other things.

The laptop is delayed due to supplier issues and may not be here until next week (which will be a pain in the ass). At least I know.

A friend of mine asked me to download a series for him. It's progressing and will probably be done by the end of the week.

The router still hasn't been replaced yet, and that will be next week as well, since it costs over $100 to get and I don't have the money yet.

Money's still tight for paying the bills too, so that complicates matters further.

At least I can still get the second wireless antenna for my laptop.

Continuing to wait.

I've got the following things I'm waiting for:

1. New router to replace this sub-standard one that I got as a holdover.
2. New laptop that I ordered a week ago friday.

Luckily, the first one won't have to wait more than another week. The second, however, I have no control over.

Big mess going on.

Ok, rundown.

1. The laptop which was supposed to ship friday didn't. I don't know when it will.
2. The router we got to replace the WRT54G v1 was a WRT54G v5 and is not performing well at all. I don't have the money available to replace it with a real router (read: WRT54GL)

I hate this. It's annoying as all hell.

Oh and my dwarf in our D&D campaign is gonna die fast.

Router hell.

Yesterday my WRT54G version 1 died.
Power supply issue.

We got a WRT54G version 5 to replace it. I've overloaded it twice in the past 24 hours.

I'm looking into replacing it with a WRT54GL but don't have the money (yet). I'll keep the v5 and use it as a wireless access point or something similar.

There's another $100 down the tubes. Good thing I have money coming in.

Delays in the new laptop.

I got informed today that there will be delays in getting the new laptop. From the looks of things they haven't charged the card yet and won't until they are ready to ship it.

I hope they don't end up with multiple delays. That'll just piss me off.

Nummy Treasure

After a mad dash in our D&D campaign, we finally got to sort our our nummy treaure (ph4t l3wt, whatever) and get it divided.

There is some useful stuff, and we're not really loot whores, so we won't have one character hogging all the gear.

New Laptop

Specifications:

• Intel Core Solo M 410 (1.86GHz)
• 1GB of RAM (expandable to 4GB)
  
• 80GB hard drive
• DVD Dual-Layer Super-multi burner
• 15.4" widescreen
• 802.11G Wireless, 100mbit wired
• Firewire, 4 USB 2.0

It'll be fun trying to smuggle it home.

Virus fun and a new laptop.

I had a guy on the street recognize me and ask me about a problem with a popup coming up advertising an antivirus program. Having encountered it before on my neighbor's computer I knew that it was a virus itself. He is going to go get the machine wiped clean.

I've also seen a new laptop I like. It's going to be a big upgrade from the current one (although not in hard drive) so I'm going to probably be using it more than my current one. I may even change my current laptop's role to something else.

Wireless messes

I've done several walkthroughs of the downtown area where I live, and have been disgusted at the number of open wireless access points in the area.
One of these days I'm probably going to go write up a news article about the concerns of wireless and get it into the local papers.
That way I may get contracted to help set people up with secure wireless.

I'll probably just rent out a space at the library or somewhere in the area to teach a class on it.
Good thing I can find the tools I need for it.

Still waiting.

I'm still waiting on the new version of the jabber server that I'm currently using. The big thing it adds is support for gateways to AIM, MSN, ICQ and Y!M.

Depending on how I can proxy things, I may enable that on my server.

Writer's block is a pain.

For those of you who don't know, I have a few active stories in writing.

Well, they were active until I got to a certain stage between two major points in them and got stuck. Trying to get past these points is a major pain, especially since I know where I want to go, just not how to get there.

Man it's annoying having characters who are so emotionally passive. It's so hard to write for them when things get to the point where emotional aggressivness causes instant progress.

Paper route progress.

Last week I picked up a 5th route, bringing my total papers per day up over 100.

Collection week is this week, and I get to figure out the new route and who to collect from. If I get a problem customer I will be hardball with them. I don't have time to deal with that.

I may write up an article about wireless network security for them, and see how busy it makes me.

Annoyances.

There are a few things that annoy me.

1. People who blame a computer program that is working properly for their own shortcomings.
2. People who misinterpert a program design function and call it a bug.
3. People who don't give any useful information when claiming there is a bug in a program.
4. People who blatantly blame the wrong thing for their problems.

These are just the tip of the berg when it comes to annoyances.

The fun of D&D.

Last weekend, my friends and I started up a Dungeons and Dragons campaign.

Characters (so far):
Elf Fighter
Human Cleric
Dwarf Fighter (me)
Halfling Thief

Stats so far:

• Critical Misses (hero): 2
• Critical Skill/Spell failures (hero): 1
• Critical Hits (hero): 3
• KO/Kills taken: 1
• KO/Kills dealt: about a dozen. (Only Kobolds and Goblins so far)
  

I'll be posting weekly stats, and will probably set up a kill counter site which will keep track of kills by character.

Trying to figure stuff out.

For some reason, it appears that I have more people on my route than I do papers to deliver. Additionally, I have to deal with one of the people I deliver to having an apartment number that isn't noted on my delivery sheet.

If that person calls to complain, I will discuss it with my contact at the office.

Yay for holidays throwing me off.

The labour day holiday today has succeeded in throwing my whole rythim out of whack. Not only do I have a really odd wake-up time now, but I didn't have any papers that needed to be delivered today.

With 2 people left to get money from on my main route, I should be fine for this week's bills.

New stuff going on.

I'm now into my third collection week for the paper route (about 6 weeks) and I'm doing fairly well.

Starting next week (tuesday since monday's a holiday) I am getting another route added, which will bring my total number of papers up over 100 per day.

Fun stuff.

Gonna get good take.

Lucky me, the take for the paper routes is about $300/month. It means I'll be able to get my bills paid now.

I hope that next collection I don't miss anyone.

Another collection week coming up.

This is another collection week on the paper, and I have to manage quite a few more papers this time around.

I'm going to be writing up a notification sheet for people, and give it out in the morning papers with information on calling if they think they're supposed to have paid the paper company directly (instead of having me collect)

Great fun.

And we're now in the big run.

Now that the first two (almost three) weeks are done, I now have all of the routes I'm supposed to have. The four routes I have total about 80-85 papers, which I can get done in under 2 hours now that I'm not spending a full hour getting lost.

My sleep schedule is fucked though.

First collection day.

Well, the first collection day for the papers was a pretty good success. I have a few people I need to check on in the morning.

A couple of people weren't ready for me, but will be tomorrow.

So far so good.

Collection Day

Well, it's the second Wednesday on the paper routes. Tomorrow is the first collection day for the paper.

Because of the number of people who pay the paper company directly, I don't have to collect from everybody (probably about half of the people on my route I have to collect from).

Might as well get started on preparing the paperwork now so that I have it tomorrow.

First week almost done on the paper route.

I've done the first week of my new paper route, and have optimized the path I take to get all 40ish papers of the current two delivered in under an hour.

Judging by that, I should be able to get the full four routes done within about 1h45 providing that the papers aren't an inch thick each.

The next batch of papers need to be out by 8AM atlantic, so I'm gonna go get a powernap.

All kinds of messes.

I pick up a second route on the paper tomorrow morning. Luckily, for the next 2 weeks, we don't have to have the weekday papers out until 5PM. I'm going to ask about one of the houses on the route before I start delivering this time to help prevent confusion regarding that one house I had problems with on saturday.

In the meantime, one of my larger hard drives is misbehaving, so I'm running a thurough chkdsk on it. I'm not looking forward to a 200GB hard drive with surface scan. I'm glad I'm starting the scan when it's almost time for me to go to sleep. Hopefully it'll be finished by the time I wake up, that way it'll be usable in the morning.


I hope....

And the first day is done.

I just got home from finishing my first day on the paper route, and I must say, I did pretty well. I managed to complete almost my entire route without problems.

I only had one house I couldn't find, but I had it narrowed down to 2 houses, so I delivered one to both.

I'll sort it out some other time.

Countdown.

Starting within about 7 hours, I get to officially start my paper routes.

I'm not planning on getting any sleep tonight. I'll probably be finding little things to do while I wait for the papers to arrive, so that I can get started (and finished) as early as possible.

I'll be able to gauge how well I'll be able to do these four routes by the time I get the first two started.

Wish me luck, I'm going to need it.

Adjusted Route

It turns out that one of the routes I'm taking over has the person preceeding me leaving early.

I get to start the new route in the morning to have the papers delivered by 8AM.

Here's hoping I can be up at the right time.

Paperboy~

Lucky me, I get to start delivering papers for the Evening News tomorrow.

To the hundred or so people who will be getting papers from me (about 50 of you next week and 50 more 2 weeks from monday) I hope to be as consistent as possible so that I can keep you as customers.

This will mark the end of a 2+ year break in me in the working world.