Joel’s Scattered Thoughts

Tales of the Past III By Martin Falch is a very well done, story heavy Warcraft movie. I highly recommend it.

Andromache my AOE grinding paladin has now dinged level 70! I was a few bars short when I joined the fine folks at The Train for a run of Crypts. I didn’t manage to ding over but I AOE ground a last few mobs in Nagrand and she’s done leveling!

Merry Christmas to anyone out there reading this today. The daughter dragged me out of bed a bit after five am to open her stocking. She then got her brothers up so the whole family was opening presents at 6 am. We have a family thing this afternoon and then the rest of the holidays are mine to enjoy myself.

I’m leaning towards a build such as this one for my warrior at 70. Warrior (11/0/50) - World of Warcraft. (Almost) everyone swears by Cruelty but I’m not really willing to spend the 5 points there. I may play around with builds that include it at 70. I would consider dropping two points in One Handed Weapon Specialization for the Improved Taunt.

On a side note, I did some solo questing on my warrior yesterday trying to catch up to the rest of the group. Dang but solo questing on a protection warrior sucks. I don’t think I’ll level a protection warrior again. With my protection specced paladin the ideal situation is to round up a half dozen or so mobs at once and have them beat themselves to death against my defenses. With my protection warrior fighting the same mobs as those I beat easily on my paladin I can beat one - if another shows up, I’m toast. My paladin also has a number of “Oh Crap” buttons - bubble, lay on hands, even just a plain heal or a potion. My warrior has one potion and that’s it (unless my half-hour cooldown happens to be up and I remember to use it).

Warriors beat paladins on flexibility when tanking - my warrior can move mobs around for best positioning, easily pick up any mobs headed for the squishies, briefly neutralize casters, and so on. Given equal skill levels and gear, I would prefer to have a warrior for tanking a boss and a paladin for tanking trash. For questing, there no question that a prot paladin beats a prot warrior any day of the week. If I decided that I HAD to have a warrior for endgame again, I would level my warrior down the arms tree and respec at 70.

EDIT: I might also go for a build like this one Warrior (14/0/47) - World of Warcraft dropping Tactical mastery for improved heroic strikes. Or get improved one handed weapons with only 1 point in the heroic strikes? There’s also the possibility of swapping out the improved heroic strikes for cruelty. This comes after reading You’ve got talents - though I love my silencing shield bash for maneuvering caster mobs.

John Scalzi has guest bloggers for this month. David Louis Edelman has written a very thought provoking take on the Bourne movies. This kind of runs parallel to some things I’ve been thinking, but I’m going to have to think some more before I can come up with a coherent post.

BigRedKitty has a BM Talent Spec Collage up on his site. As always with his work, it looks good and I would recommend it to any hunters that are looking for a guide.

Here’s how I’ve varied from his spec. The big one is that I chose survival instead of marks as my second tree. Right now my hunter is used primarily for solo play. Having the longer and stronger traps pays out more than having a little more DPS for most of the mobs I’m facing. Should I start running instances on her with a steady group, I still would lean towards keeping survival for the better crowd control. If my steady group was short on DPS, I would switch to having my secondary tree be marks.

In the BM tree, there’s not a lot of cases where I have chosen different talents. I have swapped improved revive pet for animal handler. In a pinch I can drop a trap and freeze or slow mobs, then rez my pet quickly enough to help. Also when playing with my wife, her pet can keep the (elite) mob busy while I revive my pet for another go.

Note to self - when ArcView starts screwing up out of the blue, don’t panic. Empty the local temporary files directory and try again. Doing this first will save a LOT of time.

Free They Might Be Giants Podcast For Kids | Geekdad from Wired.com might appeal to my kids.

Engineers having fun: Eject! Eject! - WOW Insider looks like something my dear wife might have fun with while she’s waiting for her raids to start.

Big Bear Butt Blogger: Raid Song of the Week #11 - The Highwayman is one of my daughter’s favorite poems. Nothing like a gruesome mutual suicide for love to soothe a six year old to sleep. Mind you, for a while there the best way to get my youngest to sleep was to sing him Cruel Mother, a song where a young lady kills her two children. I think I need sheltering from psychic harm more than my kids do. Won’t someone think of the parents?

Winter’s Veil Bark from WOW Insider looks tasty. This looks like a recipe that that kids would have fun making.

The tools:

1. Microwave or stove-top.
2. Two microwave-safe bowls, or two saucepans.
3. Two spoons.
4. Preferably, a mortar and pestle (if not, an old plate or mixing bowl).
5. Small-medium sized cookie sheet or cake pan.
6. Wax paper.
7. A metal spatula.

The mats:

1. One box of baker’s white chocolate, equaling about six 6-ounce squares.
2. 1 cup (6 ounces) of semi-sweet chocolate chips (about half a standard bag).
3. One box of candy canes, about 12-14. Peppermint candies can also be used. When crushed, it should equal roughly a cup, although the actual amount used is up to you.

The first step in preparing your bark is to crush some candy canes. This part is fun, but also very sticky, so if you have kids in the house, log some sibling or parental moments and put them to work! After you unwrap them, break them up a few at a time and grind them using your mortar and pestle. In the absence of these handy tools, you can place the pieces into a mixing bowl, and use the bottom of a smaller mixing bowl to grind up the candy. I’ll let you guess which method I used!

Next, unwrap the white chocolates and place them in one of your microwave-safe bowls. Using about 70% power, melt the chocolate, stirring it until it is smooth and lump-free. Repeat with the chocolate chips in a separate bowl. If you are using saucepans, set your burners to low or minimum heat, and stir the chocolate until melted and smooth, then remove from heat.

Pick up your spoons, and dig into the candy cane bits! You’ll need to mix roughly six spoonfuls into each bowl of chocolate. If you’re using saucepans, be careful when using metal spoons not to scrape the bottom of the pans.

Now for the artistic flair. Grab your cookie sheet or cake pan, lined with wax paper, and start spooning in the two chocolate mixtures. Remembering that you are aiming for a fairly thin layer, about 1/4 of an inch thick, alternate the chocolate globs. Do not be disappointed if it looks unprofessional at this stage.

Once you’ve spooned all of your chocolate onto the pan, try to resist the urge to mix or spread it. Instead, coax the chocolate into the corners by shifting the wax paper. Drag the tip of a metal spatula, cake/pie serving tool, or even a toothpick, through the chocolate. Use swirling motions, and be careful not to stir it too much. Watch as in some areas, the chocolates will blend; too much blending will ruin the visual effect, as well as the taste of the two chocolates.

When you are satisfied with your swirling, take the remaining candy cane bits and shake them on top. While many people grind their candy canes very fine, I like to leave some slightly larger chunks for visual variety. At least, that is the story that I, with my mixing-bowl mortar and pestle substitute, am sticking to.

Speaking of sticky, because we are using wax paper to coat the pan, you should not have much trouble with clean-up. Provided that you run your bowls or saucepans and spoons under some hot water once you’ve spooned out the chocolate, dishes will be a breeze.

Simply place the cookie sheet into the fridge and chill until solid. Then, lift the wax paper off of the pan, and the bark from the paper. Break the bark into pieces; don’t try to cut it into neat squares. Store in the fridge in an air-tight container until game-night.

Ancient Game Binge: Achi | Geekdad from Wired.com looks like a good game for when the kids are getting impatient while waiting. It would be easy to improvise this with a sheet of paper and a pencil or pen. Now if I can just remember the rules when the time comes…

LEGO Holiday Train | Geekdad from Wired.com looks like it would be a lot of fun. It’s not going to happen this year - maybe next Christmas?

Writing macros, a series of lessons (7 of…) « Priestly Endeavors - a WoW Blog

These sound tasty, but these cheesecake cupcakes seem easier to make.

Oven preheated to 300 degrees F

Pans: 6-cup cupcake/muffin tin; cake pan large enough to hold the other pan

Other: 2 cup bowl or measuring cup, microwave safe. 2 qt (or larger) bowl plus electric beaters (unless you need to work out aggression - then just plan on beating a long time with a spoon or whisk.) Six paper cupcake cups. And a pitcher of water. Oh - a spatula and a spoon. Or two spoons if you don’t have a spatula. Ummm, and a small towel or washcloth.

Ingredients:

Shell:
1/2 package of graham crackers, crushed into crumbs
4 oz butter, melted

Filling:
8 oz neufchatel (or cream) cheese.
1/3 cup sugar
1 egg
1/3 bag ( size 8-10 oz, so that’s approximately 3 ounces) chocolate chips (semisweet or dark, your preference)

Put the paper cupcake cups into the cupcake pan.

Mix the shell ingredients thoroughly, and divide equally between the cups. Press on bottom and sides so as to form an inner cup - tamp firmly. Bake for 10 minutes, remove from oven and set aside.

Reduce heat to 250 degrees F

Put cheese into bowl. Add sugar and cream it. (For you non-cooks, just work it all together using a lower speed on your blender till it’s smooth.) Add the egg, and mix thoroughly.

Now put the chocolate chips into your smaller bowl/measuring cup, and melt it in the microwave. That means: 10 seconds, stir, 10 seconds, stir… till it’s melted. Beats the heck out of a double boiler. Where was I…

Temper the chocoloate and return to the batter. (Again, for you non-cooks. Add two or three large spoons full of batter to the chocolate and stir, then put this back in the main bowl. This will allow the chocolate to get stirred into the batter with re-solidifying into chunks OR cooking little chunks of batter too early.) Stir thoroughly.

Divide the batter between the cups. (That means pour equal amounts into each cup. Each is going to end up half to 2/3 full.)

Put your small towel or washcloth into the cake pan. Put the cupcake pan into the cake pan next. Put the pan into the oven, and then pour water from the pitcher into the cake pan, being careful not to pour any into the batter. You want to add enough that it comes up about equal to the height of the batter in the cups. This needs explanation, bear with me…

What you’re doing is a trick to help your batter cook evenly. The water forms a thermal blanket for the batter - the towel is allowing the blanket to be under as well as beside the batter.

Bake for 20 minutes. Turn off oven and set timer for another 30 minutes. THEN remove pans from oven. (HINT: remove cupcake pan from cakepan instead of trying to carry both at once. This will prevent hot water splashing you or the cakes.) You can eat it now, or you can move the individual cups to the refrigerator - depends on your willpower, I suppose.

Two minor variations. 1) beat the batter on high for 3-5 minutes and it’ll add air which will make your cheesecake less dense. 2) Use sour cream instead of chocolate. If doing this, cheat — put a tablespoon of preserves (of your preference) in the bottom of each cup before baking the cups - the heat will also melt this so it’s an even layer.

I really doubt that my hunter will ever see the inside of Karazhan. She’s basically a duo character and spends her time grouped with Jaimie’s Diannia. BigRedKitty’s Gear Up for Karazhan post is a nice list of gear that I’ll have to look into getting for her. What I like about this list is that it’s non-instance gear.

Who knows, someday some Kara group may need DPS instead of a tank or a healer.

Working my way down BRK’s list

• DONE Crystalforged War Axe

Then there’s his list for pre-heroic hunters. I need to get a bunch of the enchants, given that my hunter is my enchanter.

I like Priestly Endeavors’ way of setting focus in his post Writing macros, a series of lessons (5 of…).

/focus [noexists,target=target][exists,dead,target=target][modifier:alt,target=target]

which (if I’m reading it correctly) translates into:
/focus **set focus target
[noexists,target=target] **If I don’t have a focus target, set focus to my current target
[exists,dead,target=target] **If I have a focus target, but it’s dead, set focus to my current target
[modifier:alt,target=target] ** If I press alt, set focus to my current target (dropping any previous focus target - nonexistent,dead or alive)

Now I need to figure out a way of working this into my hunter macros

Yet Another Warlock Nerf: Useful Warlock Macros for when my little lock starts to level. Mind you I actually got him up to level 26 this weekend. Jaimie and I play team dot-fear-win (shadow priest and warlock) every now and then when we get tired of doing quests for gold on our hunters.

Most of his macros are PvP focused but here are a couple that I thought might be useful.

Destroying Shaman totems

/petattack [target=Tremor Totem]; [target=Grounding Totem]; [target=Earthbind Totem];

Announce summon in raid/party

/script local C; if(GetNumRaidMembers()==0) then C = “PARTY” else C = “RAID” end
SendChatMessage(”Summoning %t to < < "..GetMinimapZoneText().." >>. Please assist.”, C)
/cast Ritual of Summoning

Girl Meets WoW: Your Guild Forums Need a Thanks Thread. Really there’s not much more to say. Mind you, this means that one of these days I need to actually set up a guild site…

I haven’t seen this written up anywhere else, so I figure I’d do a quick post on pet foods. As far as I know the only two pet buff foods are Kibler’s Bits and Sporeling Snack. Note that you do not feed these to your pet, you use them in the same way that you would use a potion. Kibler’s Bits increases the Strength and Spirit of your pet by 20 while Sporeling Snack increases the Stamina and Spirit of your pet by 20. What this suggests is that you would feed Kibler’s Bits to your pet when you want it to DPS and Sporeling Snack when you want it to tank. A strong use for these would be to tweak a general purpose pet to serve the role currently needed. Note that this is a slight buff one way or the other - it won’t turn a tanking pet into a DPS pet or vice versa.

Either of these could be fed to a warlock pet to help with mana regeneration (though I would imagine the 5 second rule applies). If your felguard has trouble holding aggro pass him some Kibler’s Bits to increase his DPS. If your voidwalker keeps dying give him a Sporeling Snack. I think the Kibler’s Bits would be the meal of choice for a succubus. For an imp either one could help.

Using these in battlegrounds/PvP will burn through your supply quickly. The buff goes away when the pet dies. I haven’t noticed if it persists when you die first and then re-summon your still living pet.

Cool Tool: BookGem looks like something I’d use. I once made a lovely book stand out of some metallic strapping. The trouble is that I loaned it to someone and never got it back. I tried to make a new one, but I was never able to get the proportions exactly right again.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.