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What’s going on in here?
I suppose I owe the world - at least the tiny part of it that may or may not read this blog - some small explanation of where I’ve been.
Simply put: Life happened.
Taking it a little further, and to quote the Fresh Prince, my life got flipped turned upside down. Sadly, there is no tale of how I became the prince of a town called Bel Air. Or any other town for that matter.
As I mentioned before, shortly after being dumped by my girlfriend of four years I moved to Alabama when the company I worked for was purchased by a man who lives here. The move soaked up most of the little cushion I had put away.
Those of us who were offered continued employment with the company were told we were chosen to remain employed because we were “the cream of the crop” so to speak. The man who purchased our company regaled us with promises of a huge corporate office, complete with a built in coffee shop. We would all be the directors of our own departments, free to operate things as we saw fit.
The financing for all this was already in place. In the meantime however, we’d have to stick it out in this tiny leased space above an insurance agent’s office.
Very soon after making the move, it became apparent that nothing was what it seemed. While we had all been forced to lie and hide from our coworkers (many of whom were close friends to us) the fact that the company was moving, the new owner had in fact been lieing and hiding from us the fact that the company was very quickly running out of money and had absolutely no promise of any future at all.
Yet, he said nothing and let us all uproot our lives and move anyway.
The realization that we had all been fooled hit us on the first payday that rolled around after moving. We were asked to provide a dollar amount that we could live off of for the next seven days, at which point the remainder of our salaries would be paid to get us caught up.
That was at the beginning of September, and although we didn’t know it at the time, it was the last money that any of us would see from that company.
We were continually lied to, being told that money was in the bank and we’d have checks tomorrow. The next day the money was gone. The money will now be available in five business days, but then it wasn’t available.
There goes the last of the money I had saved up. Just because my company isn’t paying me doesn’t mean I can stop paying my bills.
Myself and one other person lucked out and were offered jobs by a third party who happened to be working with our company. It’s not exactly the industry I want to be in, but desparate times call for desparate measuers. I’m being paid the same salary I was before so it will do for now.
I was still managing a bit of WoW time in amongst all of this, but then my power supply in my PC bit the dust. This was my own fault though as I was still using the same old 500W model I’d had for at least three years. It was pushing three HDDs, an Athlon 64 X2 4400+, Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS and a BFG Tech 9800 GTX OC2. It was all handling beautfully until about two weeks after adding that new video card when it finally gave up the ghost.
I do have a work laptop but it’s not worth trying to play WoW on a laptop. Especially since I’m spoiled by my dual 27″ LCDs and the laptop only has a 14.3″ screen. And that’s not to mention the fact that in all actuality I shouldn’t have been playing anyway. More pressing matters and such.
I just got my PC back up and running the other day after receiving my new Antec TruePower Quattro TPQ-1000. Oh, and while I was at it went I went ahead and splurged on a new case. I went with the Antec Twelve Hundred after having ordered one to build a server for the new company I work for. It’s an absolutely amazing computer case (and it’s on sale at Newegg - there’s even a combo deal with the power supply I bought). I highly recommend it.
So I reactivated my account and upgraded to Wrath, then logged in last night to much fanfare from my old guildies. That was nice. Such a good group of folks they are. I wandered around like a lost puppy for at least an hour. Then spent another good hour playing with addons (I had decided to delete all my addons and start fresh). After that I finally found my way to Northrend and did a few quests, upgraded all of my tradeskills to Grand Master, looked around the place for a while and said good night.
After logging in, I felt an almost overwhelming sense of being behind the curve. I feel like there is so much that I have to relearn now. It almost makes me not even want to play anymore since I’ll be the noob for at least a couple of weeks if not longer depending on where my current life circumstances take me.
At the moment I’m looking at jobs in the New Orleans area. I will be stopping by there to visit some people and for an interview on my way to Florida for Thanksgiving. Wish me luck!
Watch out Northern Alabama
I’m here.
I’ve had a few days to settle in. Get used to the commute to and from work (1/5 the distance of my old commute in Florida). Check out the local mall. Sample the local cuisine. Etc.
I’ve been back and forth to Florida so much over the past couple of weeks that I’ve only officially spent like four whole days here in Alabama. It’s hard to make the judgement call this early so I won’t. I’m just here for now taking it all in. We shall see.
Recruit-A-Friend Team 1 (Horrible/Strange) has completed their run to 60. I ran to Outland immediately upon hitting 58 in Eastern Plaguelands. Well, honestly I was about 40-50% into level 58 from extra quests I had completed. Anyway. It only took 6 quests in Outland to get the team to 60 from that point. Crazy. This also means that my lowbie Warlock, Overtime is now level 60 as well. And since he was already 33 before I granted him any levels, and you can grant a total of 29 levels, that leaves 2 extra levels to grant to someone else.
What’s that you say? What am I planning next?
How about Rogue/Priest?
Yep. Recruit-A-Friend Team 2 consists of Rapid the Undead Rogue, and Important the Undead Priest. And when they have reached level 60 I’ll take a short break to level my Blood Elf Mage, Asplode to 29. Then grant him the 2 spare levels from my Shaman and the other 29 from my new Priest.
At this point I’ll have 2 level 60s that I barely know how to play, 2 that I only vaguely understand and 2 more that I should know fairly well.
The 2 that get the free levels to 60 (Warlock/Mage) will be a mystery to me when I start playing them again. I’ll take them to a trainer and spend 100g or so training all of those new spells, then try and figure out the most logical place for them on my hotbars. Then I have to scrape together some gear for them (I already vendored off all of the warlocks level 30 gear and haven’t even begun to start shopping for level 60 gear to put on him).
The Shaman and Priest (the two secondary ‘healbot’ type characters who follow the Hunter and Rogue respectively) I will only have a moderate understanding of. I will have played them to some extent all the way from 1 to 60 so I won’t be as lost as with the Warlock and Mage. However, with triple experience you only get 1/3 of the practice time with a character to begin with. Add on top of that the fact that they are on auto-follow the whole time with some macros to help out their travelling companions with healing and a tiny extra bit of damage, and you can see why I won’t really know how to play them.
The Hunter and the Rogue I should be able to more or less play like a typical newb who just hit 60. I’ll be a bit behind the curve with the whole ‘1/3 of the usual played time’ thing, but I think I can manage.
And when that is all said and done. If there is enough time left on the 90 day Recruit-A-Friend period. I may. JUST may. level a Warrior/Paladin combo.
But that is REALLY pushing it. I mean, I do need to eat/sleep/socialize/go outside once in a while. Plus I have that whole day job that pays for my two WoW accounts and internet connection and such.
Tags: Leveling, Multiboxing, Real Life
Signing off
I’m about to turn my computer off to get it packed up for the move. I have the cable guy scheduled to meet me at my new place on Tuesday morning so hopefully I’ll be back then.
It’s raining on and off so the packing is going slow at the moment. At least I have all weekend to get it done.
Until then, take care.
Tags: Real Life
Moving
I’ve been preoccupied lately getting ready to move.
My company is being relocated to the Muscle Shoals/Florence Alabama area at the end of the month. Unfortunately, not everyone who works there new it. Because most of them were being let go.
There were about a dozen of us that had been quietly invited to relocate with the company. We’ve been having after-hours meetings for weeks discussing the move and many other details about our company. Who else do we want to invite along, who should we definitely boot, how should we better handle situations that haven’t been handled so well in the past.
See, the company I work for hadn’t been doing so well. Mostly due to problems with the leadership (read: greedy, unscrupulous owner with terrible business sense and shady business partners). So a consultant was brought in to see if we could get pointed in the right direction. After about 8 months, that consultant ended up buying the company - at a bargain price no doubt.
Among the first steps in the long term plan is to purge about 75% of the employees and relocate. The previous owner loved to throw bodies at problems whenever they popped up, so we were severely overstaffed. Most of the layoffs are already done (there were a handful who were asked to stay until we move) and we are down to about 40% of the staff we used to have. And all of the work is still getting done.
So that is the main reason for the lack of action here. I have been busy tieing up all the loose ends here in Florida and making weekend trips to Alabama to find a place to live. Secretly.
I payed my deposit and signed a lease on a townhouse last weekend. I’m going to start packing and disassembling everything this weekend. I may make a quick trip next weekend to score the key to my new place and get the utilities turned on.
In the mean time, we did manage to kill Fathom-Lord Karathress. We had just killed Leo (with only 22 people in the raid to boot) and since we had never bothered to even go look at Fathom-Lord or discuss strategy before, the guild leader wanted to call it an early night.
I convinced everyone to carry on for the few more trash pulls it takes to get to Fathom-Lord (well, most everyone wanted to do it anyway, I just had to convince some of the other officers that we would be fine). The other officers and I briefly go over the strat in O chat and we give it the old dry run. Kill order is Hunter, Shaman, Priest, Karathress. When the hunter summons his pet it immediately gets away from the hunter tank and choas ensues.
“No big deal. It was a dry run. You all see how it works though? Ok, lets do it one more time.”
Frayed Tether of the Drowned
Leggings of the Vanquished Champion
Leggings of the Vanquished Champion
Leggings of the Vanquished Defender
Tags: Fathom-Lord Karathress, Leotheras the Blind, Progression, Real Life, Serpentshrine Cavern