The last few days/weeks have been busy for most people. For me, they’ve been filled with work, social events, issues at home and a general need for downtime in which it’s either just me, my PC and some uplifting music or my bed and a good book.

Let’s see, where to begin…

May as well begin with work as it is where I seem to spend most of my time these days!

I love my job. People think I’m odd, but I look forward to going to work, to see what new challenges await me. And they often do!

You see, I’m a relative newcomer to the security industry… having been primarily involved with systems administration, web development and design, ANSI development and some minor DBA work before this… And when I joined, I was initially there to look after one of our anti-virus products more than anything else. Except, me being me, I had to go and stick my nose into other things and jump feet first into the firewall tickets and try my hand at log analysis…

Now, I spend most of my time abusing my workstation’s processor and memory, building pivot tables, running SQL queries and pulling reports from client log files, trying to make head or tale of what I see before me… is this a botnet I see before me? A portscan perhaps?

Management have also gotten me involved in some of the research and development projects, which makes for some interesting times as I sit and research topics that I may have glossed over before or never even thought of.

I work with a good bunch of people as well. On the AV side of things, I have Reshan to lean on when my own knowledge of F-Secure fails me. On the Checkpoint side of things there are many talented and knowledgeable people, like Matt, our technical manager and primary Checkpoint trainer, Gary, Clive, Marcel and Teper. All of these guys have helped me when I’ve gotten stuck with an issue and have been patient enough to explain it to me without treating me like an idiot.

We all work hard. And we play hard as well; Matt provides music during the day and we often take breaks for coffee or cooldrinks, go stand in the bar area and play a round or two of pool, throw some darts or discuss World of Warcraft, something many of us play, though Marcel and Reshan are supposedly rehabilitated… We’re trying to rope them back in though. Those breaks afford us a well-deserved mental break from the stresses of concentrating on some rather intricate configurations and mystifying security incidents.

Between work and play though, we end up working long hours, seeing to the demands of clients… I think most nights the tech team leave work well after 6:30pm, if not later.

For folks like Matt, Gary and myself, it’s then time to drive home and log into World of Warcraft, to our guild, “Thunderwalkers” on Dath’Remar, US Oceanic. That keeps up busy until the next morning when our work cycle begins anew.

Beside “Thunderwalkers” though, I still belong to “Awakened Guardians” on US Stormrage, where I have most of my characters and play a role in guild management by running their website and forum which I host under this domain.

We’ve gotten together a few times offline, as the photo to the right shows. Interesting to put faces to names and voices…

Aside from my usual routine of work and play though, I also have the dubious honour of living with 4 women who keep me on my toes. Sharlene and Cari have stayed with me before, as two of the original tenants that moved into the commune shortly after I did. The two newcomers, Renee and Tarryn, have brought their own chaos to the party.

Some folks joke with me that I must be a very lucky man to live with 4 women… My response usually surprises them… It’s certainly not the ideal many would think, as there have been some spectacular blowups and unspoken issues… but for the most part it’s peaceful and it’s company… Something I’d gotten used to since I moved out of my bachelor flat and moved in with other people in a sharing arrangement. It’s taken some getting used to, but for those that cannot afford to get their own house just yet or cannot stand the idea of being alone 24/7, it’s not that bad.

It’s actually quite nice to come home, sit with someone and have a cup of tea or coffee, hear about their day, relate your own experiences, etc. This is great most of the time, but I’ll admit there are some days when I am feeling less than sociable and all I want to do is make myself some supper and go lock myself in my room, put on my headphones and forget about the world outside.

Something I need to do again is get back into my photography. I’m still working through a backlog of photos for Sheelagh’s wedding, my company’s last year-end function and several other spools I’ve had lying around and finally had developed.

And I’ve found some new subjects to photograph as well… just need to make the time to go and take some proper shots that aren’t shot with my little HTC P4350 smartphone…

The shots below were taken one evening when Rob was up from Cape Town and we’d gone to see Alien vs Predator 2… we stood outside the movie theatre area in Brightwater Commons and were treated to this colourful little display, though the accompanying music was badly distorted through very tinny and bass-intolerant speakers.

Makes me realise that I really need to get back into things again… I haven’t managed to beat shots like these and some of them are well over 3-4 years old now.

Time to get back into the habit, I think…

Ah, yes, the storm and subsequent demise of my ADSL modem and laptop. And MPH.

I’ll start with MPH… I’ve never been to a car show before and certainly never anything like MPH, so thank you Rozz, for a very different and entertaining Christmas present.

Didn’t get to see all that much of the car expo itself, but the ‘theatre’ part of the show was brilliantly executed by the hosts and their accompanying stunt drivers. The banter between Hammond and Clarkson was a welcome familiarity for those that have watched any Top Gear at all, and I think poor Sasha Martinengo didn’t stand much of a chance of stealing any limelight from those two.

There were some stunning driving/stunt sequences, some amusement in the form of the soccer match with cars, the hosts driving their own inventions and the half-a-car race, a rather different take on bull fighting with a very flexible female matador and a bakkie as the bull, mixed in with some of the best looking cars available today. A petrolhead’s dream come true, I think.

The whole thing was marred a bit though, by the travesty they called seating. I think no matter what shape or size you are, those seats are just uncomfortable, especially if you’re a little taller than most and your knees end up crushed against the seat in front of you.

Anyway… it was still a good time though. Good times with good company… it’s all that counts really.

We left MPH, only to be greeted by a magnificent storm and downpour.

The next day wasn’t much better. Though for the most part, it wasn’t stormy. Or so I thought.

There I was, happily sitting on my bed, playing World of Warcraft on my laptop, headset on, chatting to friends, when ZAP! … Everything went dark. Ok, not surprising, considering the mains tripped on the distribution board… flicked the switch and we had power again. Except that somethings didn’t come back up. Things like my brand new Netgear ADSL modem and my laptop. And there was the smell of ozone and electrolytes in the air to confirm my suspicions.

Ah well… It’s meant that I caught up on some of my reading this week, though I have ended up working late to get some research, etc done that I normally would have done from home.

In the meantime though, I’ve put my old Telkom ADSL modem back online and built up a small PC from spare parts. Nothing great, but it’s enough to run XP and Office, browse the ‘Net and listen to MP3′s. I got a new Netgear as a replacement but not in a rush to install it just yet as without the laptop, I don’t really need the wireless just yet. And frankly, my housemates can wait a bit before I put them back online again… maybe this will encourage them to pay me for their usage.

Hopefully I get the laptop back this week coming. Apparently they’ve replaced the motherboard, and I’m hoping I didn’t lose any data of the hard drive.

For anyone that works in the IT industry, the old saying, “no rest for the wicked” could not be truer… You work your allotted time at work and perhaps a little more than necessary (I know I do, as does Rob and Rozz) and then go home and generally do one of two things… either sit down in front of a PC again to play games or surf the ‘net or try and switch off in front of the TV or some other distraction.

Usually I watch some anime or whatever is playing on the TV for a bit, research a little and maybe update this blog a bit, browse deviantART for new wallpapers or inspiration, then try get an early (or earlier than usual) night, knowing the next morning I need to be up before most people, a) to avoid traffic and b) to get a head start on the day’s tasks.

Lately though, I’ve been doing upgrades on my forums, from phpBB version 2.0.22 to 3.01, fighting with South African latency while uploading a million and one small files to my internationally hosted server, creating backups (just in case, you know!) and trying to puzzle through the documentation to see where I am going wrong…

Or building an old server up into a general workstation for the girls at home to use, as Tarryn is starting her new job soon and will lose her old laptop, and frankly, I’m a little wary of letting anyone other than a work colleague, that I trust, use mine. Last night I managed to get a majority of the work done on the server, but it was painstakingly slow-going as it’s an old Pentium III, with 512MB RAM and two SCSi 20GB drives… Windows XP runs on it… or should I say, it ‘jogs’.

I’ve loaded all the chat programs they could want on there… MSN, GoogleTalk, Yahoo… and most importantly, antivirus. AVG is perhaps not the best, but hell, it works… And I made each of them their own limited privilege profile so they don’t have to stress about anyone else reading their mail from the dating sites they’re so fond of frequenting.

Need to sit down with Tarryn as well, sometime, and teach her Adobe Photoshop. Think the poor girl has jumped into her new job without really knowing what is expected of her… if she’s going to be doing design work, I think she may be in over her head…

Other than that, now that my one set of forums are upgraded, I need to tackle the other one. And then figure out how to integrate all the other php packages  such as phpRaid, etc back into the new boards…

When I will get a chance to play again, I don’t know… we’ll see what happens end of the month. By then things should have settled a bit more. Right now, all I seem to be able to manage is getting home, feeding myself, showering then collapsing onto my bed, watching a few episodes of anime (recently finished “Eureka Seven” and “Fate / Stay Night” and about half way through “Ergo Proxy“) then drifting off into an uneasy sleep, only to wake up a few hours later, feeling like a truck has hit me…

I’ve been stationed at ABSA for the last few days, standing in for one of my colleagues while he is off on paternity (and annual) leave. I’ve also flown down briefly to Cape Town to attend and photograph Sheelagh and Andrew’s wedding.

Flying to Cape Town was a bit weird for me. For the last 9 or so years, I’d been used to travelling up from Cape Town to Johannesburg or Durban on vacation or to visit friends and family or for work. Now, I’ve reversed the destinations… and I must admit, Cape Town no longer feels like home to me. I felt very much like a tourist in a place I used to call home… me, the person who swore he’d never live anywhere but at the coast.

I landed Friday morning, was picked up by Louise who took me to go get my supplies I needed for the wedding (18 rolls of 36 exposure 35mm film and spare batteries for my Canon EOS 500n), then spent some time with her and her family until meeting up with Rob for lunch after which I spent the rest of the afternoon with him and some of our mutual friends, Andrew and Mervin, that work with him at Tellumat. That evening, after picking up Lou again, we met up with some guild mates from Awakened Guardians at Century City for some drinks, etc and finally wandered over to Cattle Baron to meet up with some of Lou’s friends.

Saturday morning, bright and early, I was in Cavendish Square, photographing Sheelagh and her Mum- and Sister-in-Law-to-be during the various stages of their hair-styling. Then we bundled into Lisa’s (Sheelagh’s best friend) car, went to go fetch dresses and bags and headed off to Monkey Valley in Noordhoek to get  started with their makeup. After a while I decided it was prudent to make myself scarce so the girls could change and get dressed and went to go check my surroundings for the shoot, judging light levels and backdrop inclusion from various angles.

The ceremony was very nice, the bride looked stunning, the groom looked nervous (though that may also have been due to some stiff breezes swaying his kilt) and everyone was very happy for the newly-wed couple. We took some group photos on the lawn and then the bride, groom, best man and bridesmaids wandered down to the beach with me for some shots their.

In retrospect, the path we took was not the best one (coming down was ok, climbing back up was not as easy) as the loose beach sand made climbing some of those dunes rather… well… interesting at times.

We finished up at 11pm that night after the traditional cake-cutting and first-dance photos and I left for home, wishing the newly-weds all the best, promising to visit in Australia sometime in the future.

The next day, aside from sore muscles, I spent relaxing, chatting to Rob, listening to music (I introduced Rob to the group ‘E Nomine’) and catching up a little, talking about his planned move to Australia to be nearer to his daughter, my goddaughter, Timeah.

Before long, though, it was time to pack up and head to the airport. We stopped briefly along the way to get something to eat and unfortunately, cut it a little too fine as with some unaccounted for traffic, I ended up getting to the check-in counter 2 minutes too late to check in… I begged, pleaded… everything short of threatening, but they were stubborn and would not let me check-in.

So I got put on standby for the morning flight. Fortunately Rob had not yet driven too far so he was able to pick me up again and I spent the night there.

I called several people to tell them what had happened, including Matt, my technical manager, as I was supposed to be back at ABSA in the morning.

Bright and early, I was back at the airport and then my ordeal really began. For unbeknownst to me, all the Johannesburg and Pretoria people that had been on vacation were there trying to get back home as well… Suffice to say, I did not get onto the 6:30am flight. Or the 9:15 one. Or 10:20 one. Matt arranged for Reshan, one of my other colleagues, to stand-in for me at ABSA, so at least that was taken care of.

Eventually, they squeezed me onto the 1:00pm flight and I arrived home, very agitated, annoyed and heartily sick of airports just before 3pm. Matt, was kind enough to pick me up and drop me off at home where I promptly collapsed and swore not to get onto a plane for another few months, at the very least.

Yesterday was back to ABSA… back to a semblance of normality. Here until the 18th, after which it’s back to the office and my new favourite pastime… log analysis.

Well, transferred to a new server and playing with some new guild mates in the guild, Thunderwalkers, but you get the idea…

For many months, I haven’t played this old fella… he’s been getting a little mouldy and probably was growing roots, sitting in Honor Hold in Hellfire Peninsula, Outland’s first region you enter into.

The catalyst behind this resurrection is one of my work colleagues, Gary (known in game as Trygor) and his lady, Kati (who plays Vulpine), who run a guild on Dath’remar, Oceanic server. They wanted me to level a new character there and help them, as I have more experience in the game than most of the guild members, but I don’t have the heart to re-level a toon from scratch anymore. With one level 70 already on my hands, and this toon not far behind, it was simply easier to do a paid character transfer over to the Oceanic server from Stormrage, than struggle from the beginning again.

Funny… when I was on Stormrage, I had little or no interest in levelling Nyctan. Now, I enjoy the challenge of trying to match the accomplishments of my rogue, as a feral druid.

If you’re looking to play with some casual players, who like to just play, without the pressures of raiding, or expectations that one has to be the best his or her class can be, then come visit us on Dath’remar server and send a whisper to myself, Trygor or Vulpine if you want to join in the fun.

Beware of Trygor when he begins serving drinks though. His “Mark of the Wild” branded Mojo is pretty potent.

Sure, it’s not E3 or any of the other overseas gaming conventions… but my word… it’s impressive nonetheless.

The plan for the day was to head through to rAge with Rozz and Nick (Kellia and Ulat from my old Affliction guild) but Rozz ended up going through alone earlier and I followed by about a half-hour… the drive through to Northgate (just up the road from me) was uneventful, until I tried to find parking. 3/4′s of an hour later I eventually gave up on the idea of trying to find parking near the Coca-Cola Dome and parked underground… on the other side of Northgate. My legs and feet are still complaining…

Anyway, I eventually got to the Dome, stood in the queue to get my ticket and started wandering around. I found it rather amusing that the first thing I saw that caught my eye was the female Night Elf Druid statue at the BT Games stand. Clearly I’m more addicted than I thought… though that purple hair does stand out a mile.

Anyway, getting back to my tale… Lo and behold, the first familiar face I run into is my good buddy, Craig, videotaping a presentation about Assassin’s Creed (I want that game so badly, it’s not even funny). Chatted to him for a bit before he headed back to his Xbox 360 stand then resumed my meanderings. Shortly after that I ran into Rozz who then proceeded to act as tour guide for me. We went to go see Louise (a.k.a Chronic) at the Intel stand where she was Tournament Director for the weekend. Poor girl was looking somewhat flustered by the time we got there.

On with the tour… I got to see the new Playstation 3… nothing spectacular in my mind, but still a pretty piece of hardware. The Wii… now that looks cute… some fun looking games. But by far, I think the star of the show was the Xbox 360. Sure it’s been around a bit longer than the other 2 platforms but damn, I have to admit that Microsoft have done a good job on this one. Halo 3, the other big attraction (they even had a Master Chief actor marching around), looked pretty damn good, even though I’m not the biggest fan of FPS games. Transformers caught my eye though…

Let’s see, what else… ah yes, the obligatory expo bag to collect brochures and cards in. Well, mine has a bit more than that in now. I subscribed to Popular Mechanics while at the show, getting the latest issue free and a cap. I got a copy of the new look SA Computer Magazine (SACM now)… and somewhere in there are my entries into several competitions. So if Lady Luck feels like being nice to me, I could walk away with… let’s see… a HP Laptop, the Xbox 360 Elite, a copy of Halo 3, a portable movie player… but who am I kidding… not with my luck.

Ran into some guild mates from Affliction (Sythenia and his lady) and Awakened Guardians (Jakalas, Papillon, Kiteena, Malystra, Serpentza, etc) there as well. We ran around for a bit, looking at all the things we could not afford (Oh to be a rich man!) before they went off and I looked up Rozz again and kept her company for the rest of the afternoon.

Had a look at the AnimeWorX stand as well as they seemed to be hosting a mini-comic con as well. Saw a lot of anime that I would love to get my paws on… but it will have to wait for a bit. However, I think I need to get AWX to book Ghost in the Shell : SAC2 and Solid State Society for me. Was quite amused to see some cosplay going on as well.

Oh, the one negative thing I have to say about the show… the pricing of their drinks and food. R8 a tin seems a bit steep for me, and R8 for bottled water is even worse. Or R30 for a hotdog that is more bread than anything else… the only real value may have been in the pizza’s from the mobile pizza van, but they were so damn slow it was painful. That and the fact that they seemed to screw up more orders than get them right and often the end product was burnt.

All in all, though, it was a good day, which I enjoyed with good friends. I will definitely make a plan to go again next year.

For an insider’s viewpoint on rAge, head on over to Craig’s blog entry.

Granted, I haven’t started any of the real hard work yet, rather, I’ve been studying their products, getting to know the staff, building my PC and subsequently my virtual PC’s to run and test the products.

I’ve been made to feel very welcome by all involved and have met some very interesting people. Amogst them, I’ve found some kindred spirits that share my passion for certain things in life: photography, esoteric studies, music, even gaming. It was very amusing to find that at least two of my colleagues are playing or have played World of Warcraft.

Next week the pace will increase somewhat… but I’m ready and looking forward to it. For all the obstacles that I felt were in front of me on leaving the old company, I feel the path ahead is now the right one.

I first heard the term WoW-verse used in a podcast called WOWCast, where the hostess, Alachia uses the term to describe the metaverse that is the World of Warcraft. For those that don’t recognise the term metaverse, refer to the novel “Snowcrash” by Neal Stevenson.

The reason for this blog section, is a need to validate, somehow, the time I spend in my choice of metaverse.

Why I come home, cook my dinner, chat briefly to my housemates about issues of the day or hearing their work warstories, then log into WoW and live my virtual life, in an attempt to escape my real life.

Alachia’s latest podcast discusses this issue in depth, and she brings up many really valid points for the virtual life. And she also discusses what to do to balance that virtual life with the real life. VL vs. RL…

I play World of Warcraft on the US server Stormrage, having started playing in February 2006, thanks to my best friend, Rozz, who bought the game for me as a belated Christmas present, so that I could play with her, a dream we’d had since the days when her and her then boyfriend ran the local South African Blizzard RTS servers for Warcraft III, Starcraft and Diablo II. She even bought me the Diablo II game and expansion and I did play, but never online as I could never afford to have broadband until January 2006.

I remember the days preceding the arrival of the game in the mail… She’d call me or PM me online, and ask me what class I was going to play, what professions I was going to take, etc.

Having come from a roleplaying background, something I’d done since college days, and having read fantasy and science fiction since my early teens, I was keen to try my hand at a druid, one of my favoured roleplaying classes from Dungeons and Dragons. Admittedly, my choice was also biased toward the druid due to the fact that Rozz’s main ‘toon’ was also a druid, hence she could help me and guide me as I played.

I was also really keen to play as a skinner and leatherworker, the idea of a druid, a man of the wild, living off the land and crafting from the land, quite prominent in my mind. At the time, I was still very much under the impression that druids were more like their Diablo II:LoD counterparts. Rozz, however, soon taught me otherwise and suggested I change to herbalism and alchemy, again something she could advise me on and as I would probably end up being the healer in any group, I’d need potions as well.

At the time, Rozz was already a high level druid, starting to get involved in guild raids and busy farming herbs for potions and trying to earn enough gold to get all the things she needed to be a ‘successful’ player. So I rolled Nyctan, my male night elf druid, and started levelling, and she helped me where she could, either coming to my rescue on difficult quests or financially with gold donations. Slowly but surely, I made my way to 10, then 20… and hit a wall.

So I took a break from my druid and rolled my rogue, Ksenia, a female night elf rogue.

Why a female, you may ask?

Sure, I heard it all before…

G.I.R.L – Guy in real life…

M.M.O.R.P.G – Many men online roleplaying girls…

I never roleplay my female toons. I’m not THAT into roleplaying. But, in using an old excuse, one used by many of my real life male friends that do play online with me, ‘if I’m going to stare at something for hours on end, I’d prefer it to be something I enjoy looking at’.

I do love my little rogue. She’s a very pleasant break from the norm. And I put a lot of time and thought into her creation.

I modelled the character off the main character from Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell : Standalone Complex series, Major Motoko Kusanagi. While the female night elf is not the most anime looking of toons, I took the blue/purple hair from Motoko, her hand to hand combat style, mobility, agility, etc and chose a rogue as the final character that fit that mold. As with many things in WoW, unless you were there first, most of the big names from fiction or mainstream media are already taken. So ‘Motoko’ was out. As was ‘Kusanagi’…

So I turned to another source for names. My friend, Rozz, is of slavic origin, and I’ve always been fascinated with slavic folklore, from the rusalka to the vodyanoi, their naming conventions and I also happen to find many slavic women to be exquisitely beautiful. So I chose a name from that background. Ksenia.

Later, I would use more names from that background. And even one from Hindu folklore, Dushana, one of the demon rakshasa, for my warlock.

So I played my rogue. And my friends that had bought at the same time as I recieved mine, shot ahead on their toons, Rob on his mage, Andrew on his paladin, Sean on his warlock. Then Sean and Andrew both rolled hunters and replaced their mains with these ‘alts’, playing until all hours of the morning.

And I took my time, doing my own thing. Skinning anything in sight. Doing leatherworking… My ‘old’ dream I’d had for Nyctan, now transferred to my rogue, a self-sufficient, hard-hitting, tough survivalist.

It eventually got to the point where Rozz asked me which ‘toon’ I was planning to make my ‘main’… the druid or the rogue. I think I bowed to the pressure of wanting to be more like her, so I continued my druid, leaving the rogue behind for the moment.

So, Nyctan made his way painfully from 20 to 30, 30 to 40… and finally I got my mount, specc’ed Balance tree for moonkin, and suddenly I was rocking again. At the time, Rozz’s guild was fracturing and she was going through a tough time. Now, I’ve known this woman for many years now, so when it comes to her, I’d drop everything to help her. Eventually her guild split and those that split off, formed a new guild, Affliction, and she asked me if I was willing to join and be power-levelled to 60 to help fill sorely needed healer spots in raids.

And so I left Awakened Guardians, at a time when they were ready to make me a guild officer for things that I’d done for their forums, etc. Admittedly, I could have left in a better way, but I guess at the time I wasn’t as close to them as I have since become. I joined Affliction and Rozz and one of the guild masters, her friend and now boyfriend, Nick, helped power-level me to 60. And I started raiding.

Raiding… new places. New bosses. New loot… new gear. Great.

Raiding… pressure to perform, repair bills, lots of screaming and shouting and negative remarks… Not so great.

It’s had it’s highs and lows. Right now I’m happy not to be raiding. Specifically raid healing. Hell, even feral tanking was a nice break from the monotony of healing.

When I wasn’t on the druid, I resumed levelling the rogue. I also got bitten by the PvP bug and was trying to gain ranks and honour in order to get gear, seeing as I was not likely to get raid gear on my rogue anytime soon. And, in the time that I did PvP, with our South African latency, I managed to work my way up to Master Sergeant. I would have liked to go higher, but I was not about to take time off work to PvP AND raid AND sleep…

Eventually, I got tired of my druid. So tired, that I petitioned my guild to allow me to change over to the rogue instead. But I think the idea of them losing a raid-specc’ed, epic’ed out restoration druid that could off-tank when needed, to a rogue in blues and greens that would need Molten Core runs for fire resist gear, Zul’Gurub runs for other gear and rep, before being ready to go back into Black Wing Lair, Ahn’Qiraj 40 and Naxxramas… well, let’s just say it was too much effort.

So I distanced myself from my druid, slowly but surely. And then I moved to Johannesburg from Cape Town and was without broadband for a while. And then The Burning Crusade came out and I made a decision. I was well behind everyone else at this stage, so I made a post on the Affliction forums, stating that I was retiring from raiding for the foreseeable future to resume playing the game on my own terms, on my rogue. I removed my rogue from Affliction, moved it back to Awakened Guardians, my original guild, where I had been helping their pre-60′s group, called the Omegas, led by another friend of mine, Louise, playing her hunter, Shadane.

And I’ve played, sometimes solo, sometimes in duo teams with my friend, Rika, on her retribution paladin, Bracye, where I generally end up rogue tanking and hauling her out of trouble and bandaging her paladin… a standing joke between us as she sometimes forgets she can heal, let alone ‘bubble’.

And as of tonight, I’ve made my way to 68… in fact I’m about halfway to 69 now, I’ve explored most of the Outland maps, power-levelled my druid’s alchemy and cooking with all the mats I’ve sent to him from my rogue… I’ve helped kill a fel-reaver… I’ve gotten my first dungeon set 3 piece, my Assassin Shoulders…

And we’ll continue the story from here… Right now, my bed calls. I have to be up in 5 hours time.

G’night.

Well, work has been, well, interesting at times. The joys of corporates : politics, backstabbing, favouritism, brain-trusts, ducking and diving…

I’ve met an old IRC acquaintance at work though, so all is not lost. Makes things a bit easier when you have someone to chat to during the day.

Other than that, life at the Big Brother house, as we’ve come to call our little commune, has hopefully settled down finally. We’ve had an interesting past few weeks, having to ask one of the girls to leave due to her abusive nature towards the other housemates, her alcohol problem and her cat. On top of that, one of the other girls’ ex-boyfriends has made an appearance and threatened us all with violence, phoning us on the house phone, stalking her, forcing his way onto the property, etc.

Let’s see, what else. Ah, yes, I’m back online playing World of Warcraft, now in The Burning Crusade, with my little slicer and dicer rogue. Been listening to a lot of game related podcasts from the folks over at WC Radio. Ah yes, that was other thing. The iPod. I love my little iPod. It’s my precious!

Hmm. Ok. Think that’s about it. Ah yes…

It’s Easter Weekend this weekend so hooray for public holidays and long weekends. Time to relax, play some games with friends, watch a movie (I think 300 is on the menu), drink some Amaretto, lime and lemonade, turn up the volume and unwind.

Catch you on the flip side!

Other than work, which has been at once challenging and interesting, I’ve finally settled into my little hole in the wall in a commune, set up my PC and hi-fi and unpacked my books.

I’ve had a braai / WoW:TCG evening with my Warcraft Guild. Met some old friends and made some new ones.

I’ve met my new housemates, Jason, Kerry and Lindsay.

I’ve also been robbed… I fell for the old ATM scam and had my bank account cleaned out.

Right now, work is keeping me occupied most of the time. Will update more later.

• Consumables can no longer be used in forms. This includes bandages, potions, thistle tea, food, or any other reasonable item that any other class can use.
• Primal Fury and Blood Frenzy rolled into 1 talent.
• Imp LoTP has been reduce to 2 points, with each point doing exactly the same amount as before (making this a nerf, only healing 4% at full points).
• Improved Starfire is now Celestial Focus. 5/10/15% chance to stun with Starfire for 3 seconds and chance to resist pushback by 25/50/70% while casting Wrath.
• Dreamstate now correctly lists MP5 instead of MP0.
• Barkskin no longer reduces the cast time, but the cooldown was doubled to 2 minutes.
• Nurturing Instincts lowered from 50/100% to 25/50%
• Improved Leader of the Pack changed from 3 points at 2/4/6% to 2 points at 2/4%.
• Weapon procs no longer fire for a druid in feral forms.

Items:

• Thistle Tea is restored back to “Classes: Rogue”

—

It’s official. Blizzard hates Druids. *cry*

Someone replied along the lines of “I’d still love to know where druids carry all these pots and things when they’re in feral form…”

And aside from some snappy comebacks that may lead to some bad mental images, I think it does pose an interesting question.

Feral form druids and gear and pots… if you discount the theory that the act of shapeshifting moves parts of your body mass from one reality to another (this could include gear, etc), does it essentially mean druids are naked when shapeshifted? And if that is the case, why do you retain gear bonusses?

A few years ago I read a set of fantasy books that discussed this whole issue. Specifically, what happens to a great big bloody sword when you go from being a humanoid to an animal form. (For those that have read some David Eddings, you may remember that discussion in Garion’s shapeshifting lessons in the Belgariad)

Personally I like to think that your gear shifts with you, as part of you, and imbues your form with the properties of your items. I can imagine a cat’s claws becoming more wicked and harder or more steel like, matching the properties of a claw weapon or dagger. Likewise with the bear, gear adding more bulk and strength, a thicker hide, heavier bones, all adding up to more impact per blow, etc.

Following that train of thought, why then could you not use pots? Maybe not physically, but then as imbued spells, as with the other imbued effects as part of the metamorphosis from one form to another?