Joel’s Scattered Thoughts

I thought that this article made a good point. Ready Check: Progress raids and You - WOW Insider

There are two main ‘classes’ of raid, progress and farm; progress raids involve conquering new content, such as facing (and killing) a boss for the first time, whereas farm raids are easy rides through familiar territory, with clean kills and quick epics.

Currently we have everything in Kara up to (and including) Shade on farm. What I’d like to do is get the farm content done in one night. Last week we did up to Curator in just over three hours, so getting to Shade should be doable. We’ll see.

I bought the epic flying mount riding skill on two of my toons Saturday.

I’ve been doing my daily quests on a semi regular basis and I’ve had more luck at the Auction House since fixing my settings, so Arthemis on Quel’dorei was able to get her mount. Since she had reached Exalted with the Skyguard some time ago, I got her the Silver Ray. After riding around with my paladin and crusader aura, a plain old epic mount with riding crop seems slow. (grin)

Back on Andorhal, I’ve been using Flint’s tailoring cooldowns to made Primal Mooncloth and selling it on the auction house. I’ve been doing this on a semi-regular basis for about a year, so I decided to splurge and buy him his epic flying skill too. He has little rep with any of the factions for the fancy mounts, so I got him a plain Swift Green Griffon. I don’t know if he’ll ever get a chance to ride it though - I’m still not interested in playing him.

The plan is to get the Cenarion War Hippogryph as my next epic flyer. Jaimie and I plan to have matching mounts for our warrior/paladin duo. This is going to require another 8-12 runs of various Coilfang instances, which isn’t a big deal as I still need to save up another 5,000 gold or so.

Motivation: Commit a Habit to Paper to Break It

You have to write down your goal. Write a start date. Write an end date (30 days is a good time frame). Write down exactly what you’re going to do. Write down how you’re going to be accountable, what your rewards are, what the obstacles are, what your triggers are. More on these below. Main thing: put it on paper and stick to the plan (don’t file the plan in your inbox, you piler you!

I’ve found this works remarkably well to keep me motivated. What I’ve done is mash up the Franklin Virtue Chart and Seinfeld’s motivational calendar into something that works for me. Now I need to bring it out of the few areas where I apply it into other places where I could use some improvement.

Bad habits cannot just be thrown out the window, but gently coaxed down the stairs step by step and then out the door.
—Mark Twain

The Badge Pick Order: 2.4 Edition - Warriors - TankingTips.com gives a nice breakdown of Badge loot and the order to get it in. I still haven’t completed normal Magister’s Terrace (first time due to lack of crowd control, second time it was just too late at night when we got Kael). I’m not totally sold on passing up the Gnomergon Auto-Blocker trinket.

Just a few notes for me.

To import a shapefile from Farmworks to Arcview (BMG Nutrient in particular) switching from decimal degrees to UTM in arcview 3.1
1. Export as shapefile from Framworks (Usually done by BMG)
2. Create a view with units as decimal degrees
3. Add the exported shapefiles as themes
4. Convert the themes to shapefiles (step 3 and 4 help avoid some errors)
5. Use Arcview’s projection utility
a. select converted shapefiles,
b. Coord System is Geographic GCS_North_American_1927
c. Units Degree
d. Next
e. No to saving coord system
f. Projected
g. WGS_1972_UTM_Zone_14N
h. Units Meter
i. Next
j. No
k. Next
l. Finish
6. Close Project
7. Open Project, add new shapefiles

WoW Forums -> GUIDE: Shaman Elemental Gear for Raiders II

Why do I raid lead? Because I enjoy it. End of entry, close your browser and go home.

Okay then, why do I enjoy raid leading?

The first reason I enjoy raid leading is because I’m raiding with a great group of people. They come to raids on time, they have their consumables with them, they listen to directions, and they’re a fun bunch of people. If we had Illidan/Kael on farm and I was playing with a bunch of jerks I wouldn’t have nearly as much fun. The people I raid with are great but I could raid with them without being the raid leader.

I like being able to influence the whole fight. Prior to this, my raiding experience was on a holy priest. As a healer you don’t get to see a lot of the fight (especially in pre-BC raiding). You focus on your heal targets, keep them up and that’s it. As a raid leader I not only get to see the whole fight, I have to know what’s going to happen next, what’s going right or wrong, and be able to direct people appropriately.

I like being a key player in the raid. As I’ve mentioned, my main toons have been tanks and healers because of what they offer to a group. Being a raid leader adds an extra layer of usefulness. Without a raid leader to coordinate and guide the raid, the raid isn’t going to happen.

I like the power! I like being the one most responsible for a raid’s success or failure. Trying to figure out how to give a concise description of a boss fight so that everyone knows what their role is is a fun challenge. Organizing fights based on that night’s raid composition provides some interesting mental exercises. The buck stops here.

Raid leading is challenging, but it’s also a lot of fun. Sadly, I don’t expect this fun to last. If Wrath of the Lich King doesn’t come out this year, I’ll probably stop before the end of the year. Currently my exit strategy is when I stop having fun raid leading, I’m going to keep doing it for 1 month or until someone can be found to take my place.

The Compound Return Marathon: Which Retirement Strategy Will Win? - Get Rich Slowly is something I should look into. To date I’ve been a like Conservative Carrie, but looking at the numbers that approach is not sensible. I really don’t think I can do $10,000/year, but I might be able to do half of that if I really work on my expenses.

A number of people have commented on the lack (or perceived lack) of tanks and healers for PUG groups. I have a 70 protection warrior, a 70 holy priest, and a 70 paladin who has gear for both healing and tanking (though I prefer tanking on her). Heck, if someone needs DPS I can bring my hunter. Why don’t I do more pick up groups?

I have no strong objection to PUGs in principle. I don’t mind playing with people I don’t know. Despite all the fun-suckers out there, there are a large number of good people who play WoW. I can live with running into the occasional jerk. Having a group of random people sync up and work well together is a lot of fun. Meeting new people can be great. There are plenty of opportunities for me to join a PUG group.

That being said, I haven’t joined a PUG in weeks, edging up into months. Why not?

First is simply time. On a normal weeknight I might play for up to five hours, 1-2 hours when I get home from work and 3 after the kids are in bed. For those first two hours I pretty much have to be able to drop what I’m doing at any point, so I do my Auction House scan, do as many dailies as I can stand, or generally putter around. I can’t run an instance during that time. Therefore the time I might be available for running PUGs is a maximum of 3 hours per night. If I need that time for farming mats, or getting gold, or grinding rep I’m not available to PUG.

This moves me on to my second reason for not doing PUGs. When I log in in the evening and actually have the time and inclination to run something, it’s rare that there isn’t a friend/guild member looking for a group. Why would I spurn someone I know for a random stranger? I have no lack of premade groups to join. It’s more fun to run with friends or at least with people you’ll probably get to run with again. There is a sense of camaraderie. You know what jokes are appropriate and which topics to avoid. If someone’s having an off night (or wins every single drop), it’s not a big deal - you’ll have your own chances to screw up and win big.

Third comes the sheer economics of PUGing. Last night I ran Heroic Sethekk to help get our 70 druid his epic flight form. We tried to skip a few too many mobs, screwed up on some pulls, and so on - nothing unusual for a new instance and a different than usual group makeup. My repair bills were about 25g. I didn’t have any gear drops and my total coin/grey drops were about 8g. It cost me 17g to do that run, not counting the gold I missed out on getting by not spending that time doing dailies. This was with a good solid group of people I know. I can’t imagine that most PUGs would wipe much less and the time commitment is roughly the same. Every time I PUG I can count on it costing me roughly 20g with a good group. Even if loot drops for me there is a far greater chance of a ninja looter with the lack of accountability in a PUG.

So why would I PUG? It takes time I don’t have, keeps me from spending time with friends, and costs me money. I’d like to meet more people but I already have about all the online friends I can keep up with. Our guild isn’t looking for new recruits. What’s in it for me?

Identifont - Identify fonts by appearance, find fonts by name is a useful tool. When I used it the site was awfully slow.

Another amusing review of Outside (the referenced article The Myth of the Media Myth: Games and Non-Gamers is also worth reading.)
I’ve been outside. It’s overrrated.

I liked this quote:

Parents always think kids are wasting their youth, and always have done [so] down through the millennia,” says Tom Forsyth of RAD Game Tools. “‘That Ug, always holding things. His front paws will develop in funny ways. Why can’t he walk on all fours like normal proto-hominids?’ And so, whatever the kids spend the most time doing, that’s always what parents think is a waste of time, and what is corrupting their lives. It doesn’t matter what that is. If all they did was homework, parents would be worrying that their kids aren’t becoming well-rounded people. And, in fact, parents do this - enrolling math nerds in karate classes and the like. There is no way to win - parental paranoia ensures that kids are always doing the wrong thing.