Book of Jamez

55 y/o malcontent, something of a writer

Tag: World of Warcraft

  • Day of Waiting

    Day of Waiting

    This morning when I arrived at work the internet wasn’t working. Everything I do at work needs the internet so it stopped me from doing anything. There was a meeting I usually attend at 8 and it was patchy. I go in early specifically to get things done before the phone starts ringing at 9.

    The IT team was on it and spent about 30 minute investigating. While they were at it they soon discovered branches were down across the country that are connected to us. They came up with a fix and soon I was working on a very slow internet… which of course soon crashed. One computer on the second floor was working fine with no problems, which led them to discover the real culprit. Soon after that they got a fix out to all the station and across the company. Took a good 2 hours to get everything settled.

    The internet being down put me behind in my personal schedule, I’m very militaristic and follow a rigid schedule. I do the same things every day and get them done around the same time. I like repetitiveness and knowing what’s coming next, it helps me be in the right mind frame and get things done right and efficiently.

    The rest of the day at the office was uneventful. I made my calls, got a little sale, sent documents out for signatures and sent out a few emails. I leave promptly at 5, unless the phone rings and I end up helping a customer past 5, but that seldom happens.

    Traffic on the way home was normal – which means people drive under the speed limit and drive me absolutely crazy. I try to be patient, but if it gets to be too much I just zoom around them in my little car.

    Speaking of my car, the low tire pressure light has been blinking at me… and then it stops. it’s driving me a little mad. I filled the tires Friday with air at the Kroger and that didn’t seem to help. Not sure what’s going on there. Tomorrow I’ll stop and see if they need more air and if they do schedule an appointment to get the tires checked out.

    All day I was waiting to get home and play World of Warcraft. Today is patch day for the new expansion and it’s very exciting, new talent trees, probably some new content and just loads of excitement about it. So when I arrived home I sat down in my computer chair, launched the Battle.net app. I anticipated, and was correct, that there would be a download. So I downloaded that and made a call.

    I called Verizon. For some reason I was listed as a ‘member’ and not the account owner on my account. It wouldn’t let me update my credit card or anything else related to the core details of the account. Was frustrating last night. So I got Nathan from Verizon on the phone and he fixed it by deregistering me and making me reregister… which I did. Had to create a new user name and everything, but that resolved the problem. I was on the phone for maybe 20 minutes with him. Ten emails and texts later I was set and my World of Warcraft download was finished.

    So I clicked play.

    The cinematic for the expansion launched, I’d seen it before but I watched it all the way through. I like the animation and detail in Blizzard’s cinematics. Look it up on YouTube it’s pretty good little video. Most of the Blizzard cinematics are good, check em out if you have the time or desire to spend some time getting lost in YouTube.

    Then there was a black screen…. and all the servers are down. UGH

    I had neglected to read the notice on the Battle.net launcher and assumed it was the same as it was from last night advising us that the game would be unavailable from 7:00 PDT to 3:00 PDT… but they changed it… now it said until 6:00 PDT…. which means I’m waiting again.

    I half expected this. Most of the time during a launch they have issues and we can’t play, but I always am hopeful that this time will be different.

    So as of this sentence I have 1 hour and 59 minutes to go before they think it’ll be playable… and then it’s almost bedtime.

    I don’t know why I’m that concerned. When there is new content everyone swarms the new quest givers or areas and it’s hard to get quests done or achieve anything of note. So it’s better to just wait until the weekend and then come on and explore all the new content with less people… some of them will have moved on already.

    So as I sat at my computer…. waiting… I thought it’s been a week since I posted anything and I should really do it. This was really a lot about nothing except waiting and whining … which anyone can do. So now I’ll just wait for the game or bed time or both and call it a day.

  • Continuous Self-Improvement

    I was talking to my boss the other day about motivation, self-improvement, staff and such. We’ve discussed these topics before – I think we both agree these are important goals.

    He mentioned that he was reading the biography of Benjamin Franklin currently. Mr. Franklin didn’t finish school, he learned the hard way – because he wanted to. Benjamin would dedicate 5 hours each week to reading, not just anything either… he would read something different than what he was working on – so he didn’t just read about newspapers or how to discover electricity (they didn’t have “Discovering Electricity for Dummies back then) but things outside his regular wheelhouse.

    It’s a good idea – I read a lot actually but mostly stuff I love and work in. Insurance magazines, accessibility information, comic books… but it’s much better to expand my horizons and expose myself to something new once in a while.

    So I thought I’d start tonight to try some more continuous improvement – but not with books… I decided each day I’m going to watch at least one TED Talk.

    The tag line on TED.com is “ideas worth sharing”and I’ve watched a few over the years…

    • Amanda Palmer – The Art of Asking (a while ago, her husband talked about it on his Tumblr so I checked it out) interesting, I liked it
    • Stanley McChrystal – Listen, Learn… then lead – not what I was expecting but good lessons about leading, failing and not becoming failures
    • Paola Antonelli – Why I brought Pac-Man to MoMA video games as art, if you’ve any doubts about the beauty of video games subscribe to World of Warcraft for 30 days and see some amazing stuff… I’m sure there are other games just as beautiful

    I watched a few others that don’t stand out in my mind at the moment… but the bottom two were for tonight and I’m thinking I can watch at least one tomorrow too.. Let us see what these great minds can share with me.

    I’ll also likely pick up the biography as it sounds interesting. I had just read an article on Mr. Franklin’s schedule not that long ago and now RBU mentions it… so I think that’s a good indicator of what I should read next. Many moons ago several people talked to me about the Kite Runner in the same week so I read that, well worth it too.

    If I find some phenomenal TED talks I’ll share em here or on social media.

  • A Plea For Help

    Today I’m going to talk about my friend Jana.

    I first met Jana in the virtual world of Azeroth in World of Warcraft (WoW) while both of us were in the Warsong Gulch (WSG) battleground – WSG is a capture the flag game and you have two teams of 10. Her character was Janka – then a pre 60 rogue. With her and our trusty friends Grokus, Meltiece, Kerrig, Salthair, Robauk, Noq (that’s me) and others we ruled the pre-cross server WSG … well, sometimes the Alliance would win, but come on… they’re Alliance SCUM! This was before the first expansion when the end goals were the level 60 and … hell I can’t even remember the dungeon that mattered back then. This was back in 2005 and I was new to the MMORP world – Janka was one of my early friends there and helped me feel like I belonged.

    Throughout the years, sometimes every day, we’d play WoW together. In expansion after expansion Janka would be there with me as I explored this virtual world – we did dungeons together, battlegrounds, raids… craft materials for one another and became real friends – even though we’d never met. I even met her husband Cameron playing WoW. That was true of a lot of my WoW friends.

    Through WoW and Facebook I got to know more and more about Jana and I’d see photos of her animals (she’s a dog and cat lover and has this huge heart) and stories about the crazy things they’d do. I found out about her job and what she does for a living. WoW helped me make a virtual friend a real life friend and I’m thankful to WoW for all the friends I made there. Time and again Jana would lend me virtual gold (not of any real value in the real world) for virtual items that seemed important back then… other things are more important you find out.

    Here’s the rub…

    Jana was recently diagnosed with uterine cancer, something the two of us can’t fight off in the land of Azeroth.

    Because of circumstances in her and her husband’s life they do not have health insurance and the fight for Jana is just now beginning. Here’s a quote from her husbands blog:

    “My research indicates that treatment of uterine cancer often runs about $100,000. Fortunately, MUSC offers patient assistance. We have applied for it and should hear back early next week if we are approved and to what extent. If approved, our costs could run anywhere from $4,000-$10,000. A ridiculous amount of money, but FAR better than the alternative!”

    That’s an awful lot of money to raise just to have a chance at beating this thing. I want to help but I can’t do this alone and neither can Jana. I have faith in the people who I call friends in the world – whether I’ve met them on WoW, Facebook or even – gasp – in person that we can help Jana raise this money and fight.

    I want your help and you can do this by following these steps:

    1. Go read Jana’s husbands blog about what’s been going on so far (here is the link: http://cameronscottwright.wordpress.com )

    2. Share that blog with your Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit … friends (it’s called social networking for a reason)

    3. Lastly, you can donate towards her cancer fund – if you can give $5 that would help… if all of my friends gave $5 she’d have the money to do this (click here to donate: PayPal )

    When I have friends ask me to help them raise funds for dogs, running a race or their son or daughters school charity I give what I can if I can. It’s the right thing to do. Today I want to raise money to help a human (she’s really an orc) fight to stay alive… can you help me do that? Someday soon maybe people wont have to raise money to have a chance at staying alive – but at the moment we still do.

    My friend Jana (or Janka as she’ll always be known to me) needs help – I’m hoping you can help me help her.

  • The Journey Continues…

    My friend Jana was diagnosed with cancer and needs help – please read the article and help if you can. Please also repost.

    cameronscottwright's avatarA Cancer Journey & Plea for Aid

    Update!

    We just heard from MUSC, and are going to have to reschedule Jana’s mammogram as the Hollings Cancer Centre at MUSC wants to see her tomorrow morning at 10am. (Let us, for the nonce, assume it is a matter of good service as opposed to something to worry about!).

    The consultation should hopefully let us know what tests will be needed and how much they might cost (or at least what test are needed).

    In terms of patient assistance, MUSC is literally a life-saver! We have been approved for the maximum patient assistance! <pauses for cheers> We will need to pay the surgeon $1,500, pay $80 per office visit, and pay the complete costs for any tests (plus any follow-up treatments, medications, or visits, of course).

    So my lower estimate of $4,000 will hopefully be closer than the higher estimate of $10,000 or more (depending on the tests’ costs)…

    View original post 80 more words

  • Losing the Connection

    About a year ago, after years of poor quality service and hours upon hours of time on the phone with thickly accented “tech support” people named Jack and Fred – the household left Verizon’s DSL and phone service in hopes that my previous enjoyable experience with COX (in my nine months living in VA my COX internet went out once – for an hour – I was very impressed) cable out of Virginia would be as seamless with telecommunications giant Comcast.

    I was so excited the day they arrived to hook us up, but it wasn’t long before I was on the phone with Comcast local help line wondering what was going on. The phone and the internet simultaneously didn’t work, but the TV was unaffected. They seemed stumped each time I called and the only solution seemed to be unhooking the cable from the back of the modem and then hooking it back up – a temporary solution that sometimes only lasted 5 minutes. This was a really frustrating fix as the computers are upstairs and the modem downstairs.

    After a while it seemed like there was a pattern to when the connection would terminate and we started keeping a log of when it happened each day. Almost every day we lost the connection at 10:00 a.m., 10:30 a.m., 3:00 p.m. and around 8:00 p.m. (sometimes right at 10:30 p.m. too). This was good I thought, if they know that these outages are happening at regular they may be to come up with a solution.

    As a result I called Comcast frequently to see if they could determine what the problem was – one of these phone calls went like this:

    “Can’t you see that our connection keeps cutting off there in your office?” I asked the Comcast representative.

    “For all I know, your disconnecting it yourself everyday.” she replied

    She honestly thinks that I’m so bored with my life that I want to call Comcast every day? Seriously

    Fancy New Modem

    So Comcast technicians would come to the house, there have been several and each of them were certain they knew what the problem was and that the solution they would prescribe would fix it. The latest visit from their tech people gave us a new fancy modem… but it too is not fixing the problem.

    At this point you should be reminded that I really will do just about anything to avoid going back to Verizon, their customer service that bad that I’m willing to have spent the last year with the bad service at Comcast, mostly because at least the Comcast people would listen to me on the phone and not speak in (in broken english) from a script that didn’t usually have anything to do with my issue. My roommate is a consultant and needs the phone and the internet to work when he’s here at home – never mind that it really began to affect my game play on World of Warcraft.

    Well, I’d finally had it and we’re having RCN come on Wednesday to install their service with TiVo (which is the best, if you have never really experienced a genuine TiVo you’re missing out – it’s far superior to the every day DVR) Premiere service. I’m also getting Showtime and HBO (so I can watch Dexter and Game of Thrones when they are on instead of waiting for iTunes).  I’m hopeful that the experience with RCN will be better than it’s been with Comcast, I’m hoping RCN is as good to me as COX was… if not, I may have to go back to Verizon.

    Well, I’d better post this and go there’s no telling how long my connection will last…

  • Thanks

    I couldn’t have said at the beginning of this year that I would have anything to be thankful for outside of what I have every other year, but I hadn’t anticipated meeting Bill this year either.

    So below, in no particular order, are the things that I’m especially thankful for this year:

    • Bill (my special guy that I’d given up finding at all)
    • Suzanne and Pat (a guy couldn’t ask for better best friends)
    • Gary my roommate for the last 12 or so years
    • Jim, Ana and the DiLuigi clan – not just for my job but for all the wonderful things that they bring to the world each day.
    • Mouse my cat (she actually loves Bill too, she’s so smart)
    • Alcoholics Anonymous – really not one thing on this list would be possible without AA.
    • World of Warcraft ($15 a month for hours and hours of entertainment and virtual friends)
    • Annie’s Grilled Chicken Salad – love that
    • Family – both real and adopted
    • Comic Books
    • iPad
    • Kindle
    • Music
    • and TiVo

    Happy Thanksgiving everyone, I hope you have as many if not more things to be thankful for this year. Thanks for being a part of my everyday and showing me the better side of humans.

  • WoW Free

    On April 13th, 2005 I created my first World of Warcraft (WoW) character. I played WoW every day until the end of December 2008 – unless of course I was out of town. I played every morning before work, and immediately upon my return home from the office – unless of course there was some pressing issue or social thing I had to deal with – reluctantly. What is WoW? A MMORPG of course. MMORPG is Massively Multi Online Role Playing Game. WoW is the undisputed leader in this field and has been for a few years now.

    You create an avatar, a 3 dimensional character that lives in a virtual world that you can control almost every aspect of. It isn’t just hitting buttons to hack and slash opponents, it’s also dancing, chatting, emoting and more. Each character in WoW was as unique as the player that was playing it at home – except in the case of female night elves which were all the same (wow humor). WoW allowed you to choose between two different factions (think Russia vs US cold war). First there was the Alliance which consisted of Humans, Night Elves, Dwarfs, Gnomes and later the Dranei (the Dranei were introduced to WoW during it’s first expansion pack The Burning Crusade). And there was the Horde consisting of Orcs, Trolls, Tauren and Undead (Blood Elves were introduced to the Horde in the Xpac BC). So after choosing your race you pick a class: Mage, Hunter, Warrior, Druid, Shaman, Paladin, Rogue, Priest and Warlock; there were of course class restrictions, but that’s a long story.

    If I remember correctly my first character was a female dwarf priest, tons of male characters were hitting on me almost immediately, I didn’t feel the need to tell them that I was a guy. Didn’t matter that much, I was looking for my rl (real life) friends and couldn’t find them. Turns out I was on the wrong server.

    I then created a male gnome warrior named Lariq, he had green hair and mustache and was pretty hard to kill (OK, so I tried out lots of different classes and found this one to be so hard to kill – so I sucked in the beginning). Lariq was created on the same server as my rl friends, but I rarely saw them online when I was on. This server was a “Normal” server. When Lariq got to level 60 (the level cap at the time), I was getting bored, I wasn’t a hard core raider and didn’t have the uber gear that would allow me to go to many raids, nevertheless I was fortunate enough to be invited to UBRS and MC (Upper Black Rock Spire and Molten Core) when they were something worth going to.

    I rolled (created) my next character on a different server one I picked randomly called Kirin Tor (KT) which just happened to be an RP realm – RP is Role Playing. RP realms have different rules than normal servers, but are rarely enforced unless players complain, so they are known as whining servers… but I didn’t know that at the time. I rolled Mancy, a gnome male rogue here. Rogues start out very slowly, but can make themselves stealthed which was a lot of fun. Mancy became my new Main (what WoW players refer to as their main character when they have multiples, you can have up to 10 characters on one server and up to 50 characters total). Mancy wasn’t much of a RPer but he did love to PVP (Player vs Player) and leveled almost exclusively that way, he did however manage to hook up with a few raiding guilds here and there that took him along as DPS (Damage Per Second). I was playing Mancy almost exclusively and decided to delete Lariq, which I promptly did.. I figured I would never play that character again so I sold all his stuff and gave away all his gold (currency in WoW). Soon enough Mancy reached 60 and I once again started to get bored with the lack of new things and eventually…

    I rolled Noq, and undead mage on Thorium Brotherhood (TB) also an RP realm, I had found the RP realm folks to be much nicer in general than folks on Normal or PVP servers. Noq was pretty much a solo playing character who also loved to PVP. He was fortunate that he met some folks that made his playing more social and they hung out a lot together online (Grokus, Janka, Meltiece, Zurasha and a few others) back in the day we ruled WSG (Warsong Gulch a PVP battleground instance) and were the closest of friends, we had regular enemies from the Alliance that loved to play matches against us. Of course this was before WoW introduced cross server battlegrounds and made most of us dislike the BGs).

    I soon rolled Ailmeant, a dwarf priest on a PVP server which is a very hard place to level and got him to about 55 before getting bored with him. When BC was released I transferred him to Kirin Tor where he quickly made friends with his leveling buddy Oroblarm, a dwarf Paladin and they were both soon 70 (the new leveling cap) and raiding. I soon paid the $10 fee and had Lariq undeleted and restored to the KT server and renamed him Bubo and leveled him quickly to 70.

    WoW released the Burning Crusade expansion on January 16, 2007, and quickly broke records for how many units were sold. I rolled a BE (Blood Elf) Hunter on TB named Bubbo, BE’s tend to be a little effeminate (opinion) and quicly became the most rolled race in WoW. I played more gay on Bubbo than I do in rl, it was fun to be so campy and self-centered.

    It was the early fall of 2008 and I had been playing for quite a while and was just tired, bored and found less and less desire to play the game. Then my Pa died in November right before the release of Wrath of the Litch King (WotLK) and I missed the first few days of the release and when I came back most of my friends had leveled ahead without me, so I was soloing content again, which wasn’t all that appealing at this stage of the game.

    So I think I originally spent $40 on the game, and the monthly subscription rates were 14.99 for one month (46 months 689.54), 13.99 if you subscribed for 3months (41.97) (46 months 643.54) or 12.99 for a 6 month sign up (72.94) (46 months (597.54). I spent around $40 for BC and $40 for WotLK. I would play every work morning for about 2 hours, then when I would get home I would play until it was time to go to bed and on weekend I would play all day, from 7:00 a.m. to 12:00 a.m. or later. This is typical for players of WoW in my opinion. I don’t think it is really that much different than TV, monthly cable bills are about $70 starting out and many that I know spend hours in front of their TV never noticing the time slip away – but as a WoW addict I probably shouldn’t judge.

    Anyway, I hope it’s over now, I had a great deal of fun, met some people that I hope will always be in my life and generally didn’t mind the time I spent in Azeroth (the planet in WoW’s name). When and if another great game comes along that everyone is talking about I’d probably give it a shot, but I would hope that I wouldn’t be quite as engrossed in it as I was in WoW.