Bit the bullet and joined Slack Attack last night. I think it’ll be good. There’s definitely a desire to put all the crap behind us and move forwards, which will be fun. ‘Cause, you know, it’s a game. It’s supposed to be fun. I’m not going to pay $15 a month to be maudlin. 
So my WoW guild had a schism this past weekend. I logged on on Saturday night after being away for most of the day and most of the guild was gone. There has been some ongoing melodrama on the forums lately and apparently it got to be too much. I finally read through the forums and, honestly, don’t think I want to be in a guild with either of the main people involved. The new guild is called “Slack Attack,” which strikes me as a nice little ‘fuck you’ to the former guild leader, as well, which bothers me. I’ll probably join the new guild later this week because I do like a lot of the people who have moved over…I’d prefer to stay, but KS doesn’t seem to be going anywhere for the immediate future. The gl is talking about changing servers and is selling off the bank stuff. Plus, it’s not like I really *need* the guild at the moment. I’m not doing endgame raids (yet), but it’s nice to have a regular group of people to hit up for my-level instances and such. We’ll see how it goes. If there’s any momentum back with KS, I’ll be back.
That said, here’s this week’s screenshot. I took it last night before leaving, so I had a last picture of me in my KS tabard.
Late in posting, I know, but there you go. Groovy shovel, eh?
Our cats are so freaking cute, I can’t stand it some times. I can’t remember if I’ve blogged about it, but our air conditioner has been out again for about the past week. Thankfully for us humans we still have Susy’s Room with its independent wall unit, but the cats have been loving the heat. I’ve had the breezeway open the past few nights (seeing as it’s cooler outside than in at that point, and having the breezeway open is like opening a huge window) and the cats have moved themselves out there. I walked out of Susy’s Room the other day and saw this:
Guess who has a new mount? This guy! He’s a lovely brown riding kodo who I can’t describe to my wife. “Well, it’s sort of a dinosaur-lizard thing. Like a stegosaurus without the plates, because that’s where the saddle is…” Heh. She thinks I’m nuts.
Edit: I realized after posting this that I was remiss in not publicly thanking my guild for helping me raise the gold for my mount. In particular, I want to thank my good friend Mortificia (who is now taunting me with his flying mount) and the ever-helpful Zalaga/Kirin.
I know that I live in Florida, which is essentially one giant swamp. I accept that. I am even somewhat mentally prepared to live in Florida when the air conditioner breaks down for the second time this summer. I’ve got a plan, even. However, the plan has one teeny, tiny, minor little flaw. What happens when the power goes out? Like it did last night. All night.
Last night has to be one of the most uncomfortable nights I’ve spent in…well…probably my entire life. I remember a few similar nights a few years ago, after the hurricanes (Charley, Ivan, etc.) when we were without power for about a week, but that was in September. Last night? Last night was not a September night. In fact, we’ve been having near-record highs the past few weeks, I think, and I know it was hot as balls yesterday during the day. Fortunately, we have the enclosed garage room with its own a/c (a little wall unit) where I can live until the main a/c is fixed. We have an attic fan in the main house, so at nights and in the mornings when it’s cooler outside than in, I can get a breeze going and cool off a little. Plus, we’ve got ceiling fans in almost all of the rooms at this point, as well as a couple of portable ones that can be moved around as needed, so it isn’t completely unbearable. In fact, we had a storm move through last night that probably dropped the outside temperature by a good ten degrees in about a half hour. Unfortunately, that storm also knocked out the power.
There I was, moderately cozy in the garage room, playing a little WoW. It was about quarter to ten and I was thinking about heading to bed. I had just killed the last mob of the evening and was about to head home and sell the crap that I had harvested when *poof*. No more power. Lappy still ran just fine, but that’s because he has mighty battery power. The DSL was off, so poor Waradwen was abandoned in the middle of the Arathi Highlands. Fortunately everything around him was dead and should remain so until the server realized I had disconnected, so he probably wasn’t in too much danger, but still. Suboptimal.
I fumbled around the house for a while before I found a flashlight. I walked around the house and made sure that I turned off all of the fans that I knew were on (like the attic fan), then settled in to the garage room to wait out the power outage. It was still substantially cooler in there than in the rest of the house, and with the rain still beating down outside I couldn’t really open any doors or windows. I found my cellphone and called the GRU hotline to report that the power was out. The automated voice told me that they already knew about the outage and a “crew was going to be dispatched,” with an estimated repair time of 11:38. Sucked, but tolerable. I tried to sleep a little, but it was so stagnant that I couldn’t really drift off. Finally, about 11:15 I decided that I had had enough of waiting, so I called GRU again and got the same message. I was a little concerned that the message still said that the repair crew was “going to be” sent out, but the repair time was the same. I decided to jump in the shower and cool off until the power came back on, when I could go to sleep.
I discovered a great setting on our shower head where the water comes out in a really fine mist, which feels fantastic when it’s 90-ish degrees in the house. I even went so far as to fill up the tub with cool water and tried to fall asleep soaking in the tub, to no success. By the time I finally climbed out of my shower/bath it was 11:45 and there was no sign of the power coming back on. I called GRU again, to see if there was a new repair estimate and was pleased to hear a different message than the previous one. Now the automated voice reported that repairs were underway, but declined to provide a repair estimate. I was so tired at this point that I managed to finally fall asleep, expecting to wake up freezing cold because the power was on and the little wall a/c was set to max. Not so much.
I woke up for the last time at about 6:30 this morning and decided that I’d just get up, rather than toss and turn in the overheated garage room for another hour. I got dressed, fed the chickens (who seemed to have weathered the storm just fine), kissed the kitties (who are *loving* the heat in the house), and headed out. There were eight GRU trucks lining 12th road when I pulled out of my driveway. I don’t know what happened, but it was clearly a pretty serious problem that knocked out our power last night. I treated myself to breakfast out and a drive in to work rather than a bike ride, and have been checking to see if the power was on at the house by calling and waiting for the answering machine to pick up. It finally did, at about 9:45 this morning, so we were without power for approximately 12 hours.
As you can probably tell by this rambling narrative, I’m pretty exhausted. I’m going to work for a few more hours, then head home early and crash for a little while before I do some other stuff later tonight. Stay cool.
I think I’ve decided on what I want my tattoo to be. I’m planning on getting it sooner than I had mentioned earlier, for reasons that I may blog about later. It finally occurred to me last night that the Viking imagery I’ve previously discussed dovetails very nicely with the raven motif, so here are the two candidate images I’ve chosen:
I like the first image a little better, but I don’t think it works quite as well on my shoulder, which is where I think I want the tat to be. That seems like it’d be better across the top of my back, where I wouldn’t be able to see it.
The two images, incidentally, are stolen from elsewhere on the internet. Both are purported to be similar to those used on Viking flags. The first I’ve seen both as a flag and on the front of a sail (where it looks freaking amazing!) and is more of a battle flag image. The second is supposed to be more similar to the flag used by Leif Erikson on his voyage to Vinland.
Thoughts? Suggestions?
Thought I’d get a little further this past week than I did. Oh well. I hit 39 Friday night or Saturday morning and am halfway to 40, but decided to slow down and focus on some other skills for a little bit. My main weapon for the past 20 levels or so has been a two-handed mace (well, two, actually, but I’ve had the current one for about the past two weeks, so I have a nice, high proficiency rating with it. The other weapons? Not so much. I’ve had a decent dagger sitting in my bank for the past few weeks, waiting for me to be ready to use it (had to be level 39 first) and I bought a one-handed mace at the auction house, so I’ve been trading them back and forth as I grind, bringing my skills up.
Also, I finally made it to the Swamp of Sorrows and got my artisan alchemy training, so I blew a bunch of money on recipes. As soon as I collect the mats, I’ll be able to make myself a philosopher’s stone and do some transmutation. Woot.
Enough nerding out. Time to do some more work. I’ll type to you later.
I’m in a good mood this morning, and I can’t really explain it. I didn’t sleep well last night. Since Emma’s out of town, I’m eating fairly poorly. I’m certain I’m not getting enough exercise. The weather is pretty ugly, with it being overcast and drizzly all night. *shrug* Whatever it is, I guess it’s working for me. I actually feel moderately cruddy but am still in a good mood. Maybe I’m just happy it’s Friday.
I’m even feeling fairly charged up about work, which makes almost *no* sense whatsoever. We’re mired in some pretty nasty weeds right now, to mix a few metaphors, and it seems like we fix one problem to find two more new, worse ones on the other side. The current major problem is that our Southern blots aren’t working correctly. Sweet Jebus, Southern blots! How much more fundamental can you get? Our signal-to-noise ratios have plummeted in the past few weeks…I think that both sides are a problem. That is, we’re getting weaker signal for our bands *and* we’re getting more background noise. Both in- and out-of-lane background, for the two of you who know what that means.
At any rate, it’s frustrating. I think I’m going to spend the next week or so getting my hands dirty and really trying hard to solve the problems we’re having. We have an undergrad who has been doing most of the Southerns this summer so I can focus on some other experiments, but we’re having enough problems that I think I need to step in. She had lovely results while Jixiu was still around, but since then they’ve gone downhill. I don’t think it’s a buffer issue, because I’m using the same buffers for my LMPCR which is going reasonably well right now. I’m not as good as Jixiu yet, but I’m not bad, either, so I think our buffers and equipment are okay. That leaves technique, basically, as the problem. We spent all of lab meeting yesterday discussing the problems and I think we have some tweaks to the protocol that will help. I’m going to run a few Southerns myself this next week and we’ll see how they turn out. I’m optimistic.
Things are going well at home. Emma is out of town until Saturday, in Kansas City at a family medicine student and resident conference. She went a few years ago and had a really good time so I hope she’s having fun again this year. Her program didn’t get the best of residents in this recent class — it’s not that they’re bad, they’re just not quite as good as Emma and her group for whatever reason — so I think they’re going to try and recruit harder this year. I suspect that Emma will end up as one of the Chief Residents next year, which will be good and bad. I think it’ll be good for her because she really enjoys being in a teaching and supervisory role and I think she’s really good at it. It will also mean more responsibility and time which will be bad for both of us. Perhaps not “bad”, but harder. More time at work = less time at home.
I’m rambling, so I’m going to stop now and get back to work. My centrifuge must be almost done by now, so I should go attend to that. Happy Friday morning, my friends. I’ll type to you soon. I’m planning on eating Chinese take-out and playing Warcraft all night, so come find me on Arathor. I’m getting close to level 40 and that mount…
PS: Before I forget, I wanted to clarify something I wrote the other day. Emma didn’t really yell at me for playing Warcraft. She had just had an extremely frustrating experience at Walgreen’s and snapped a little. Not a big deal, not a fight. I just thought it’d be funny to write that we had our first fight over Warcraft, but I might have been mistaken. Okay. I’m off. Laters.
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