Happy Friday?

As everyone has heard by now, Michael Jackson passed away yesterday. After 13 years of marriage, and 18 years together, a secret I have kept from my wife has finally come out. I am a huge Michael Jackson fan. yes it is true. It is something I didn't actively keep secret, it just never came up. She never questioned the CD's in my collection. I guess thought it was a hold over from Childhood. So I give you what I think is the #1 video of all time, and I even loved the Alien Ant Farm remake. Check it out. Enjoy the video. Dude will be missed.

Soap Boxin again...

Just a quick note, and comic from Slate. I saw this this morning and couldn't stop laughing. My political views are fairly well known, I a California (San Francisco), Left-wing Nut-job, who loves the gays, hates guns and wants the Mexicans to take over America! (Description from my right-wink nut job friends, not a self description) Anyway, I have often said the ones that scream family values, and morals from the highest mountians are often covering for their own indescretions. Thank you Mark Sanford, for once again re-affirming my beliefs. Do as I say, Not as I do!

Finally Raiding Again!

Finally back into Ulduar again last night and we pretty much steam rolled the place. I mean the first 5 bosses anyway. Considering I have not been in Ulduar except for quick FL and Razorscale kills for easy loot almost since 3.1 dropped it went pretty well. I topped the meters in overhealing and mana regen. Ok nothing to be proud of but the fights for a undergeared resto shammy are not easy. The only major flub was on Kologarn, when I just stood and watched the eye-beams eat me. Ex Ob started a DKP system last night, which the guild is pretty split on. Me...I love it. As someone who the RNG hates I love the fact that showing up and performing well guarentees loot for hard work. I relied on pitty loot through Naxx, as We had full cleared the place and I was still wearing this trinket, and had no t7 or t7.5. I just can't win a roll.

Aside from a few achievements I got a totem I have coveted since 3.1 dropped. Ummmmmm Uber Chain Heals FTW! And I only had to spend half my DKP...which in hind site was probbaly pretty dumb. I was the only Resto Shammy in the run.

Skills to Pay the Bills

So since my raiding has been so sporadic lately I have been trying to find stuff to keep me occupied in game. My latest obsession is the achievement "Skills to Pay the Bills". The fishing was easy (lolwut?) and well bandages, super easy. how can you level without skilling first aid? I mean they just hand the mats to you as you level. But the cooking, it is killing me. I am still stuck at like 100 cooking. I don't have the patience to go back and farm all the foods, and I can't seem to find anything on the AH on my server, even though I am willing to back a dump truck full of gold up to the seller and let him have his way with it.

So I think this week I will bite the bullet and farm low level foods. Maybe I will work on the explorer title while I am at it. If I can break away from my new druid alt. Man Wailing Caverns, and Shadowfang Keep are fun! I can't wait for 3 more levels so I can run Scarlet Monnesterey again!

A Fathers Day poem...

Happy Fathers day to one and all!

Last year for Fathers Day my son, the good boy that he is bought for me the Kegerator you see in the image here. It may well be the best gift I have ever received. I sometimes wake up in the night and walk out to the kitchen just to hug it. Other than making cold draught beer available to me and friends at any time, it has helped out hugely with my other hobby, brewing beer. No more sanitizing bottles, no more cleaning, and capping and all that crap that is a chore when it comes to homebrewing.

This year for fathers day all I got was a card, a great card mind you but just a card.

So stolen unabashedly from said card for all the dads out there, a Fathers Day prayer...

Our Lager,
Which art in barrels,
Hallowed be thy drink,
Thy Kegdom Come,
I fill thee mug,
At home, as in the Tavern.

Give us this day, our foamy head,
And forgive us our spillages,
As we forgive those who spill upon us
And lead us not into inebriation,
But deliver us from hangovers.

Barmen

3.2 Patch notes are up.

In before the QQ.

So I haven't even finished reading the patch notes, but I have to run to a Dr. Appt and need to leave work.

The first major point I would like to make is this...

"Any dungeons that previously dropped Emblems of Heroism or Valor, such as Naxxramas or Heroic Halls of Stone, will now drop Emblems of Conquest instead. Emblems of Conquest can still be converted to Valor or Heroism."

Wow. How many Ulduar guilds will be QQ'ing this week? All that hard work, and now Naxx guilds will get equal gear!

Well speaking as someone that has moved from hardcore raiding 3+ days per week to raiding once every 2-3 weeks I am happy, now off to my carebear noob life.

Fishing...And a whole slew of Shaman changes inc.

I have been holding off on posting anything this week, because I have been hoping to be able to post some great fishing achievement. It has not happened. Beside missing the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza this week due to the boy's birthday party, the Dalaran fountian is being a total bitch! I have needed 1 silver coin and 4 gold coins for going on 4 weeks now. I have spent hours at that fountian, turning down raid and heroic invites and nothing. It is mocking me!

In other news Shaman changes inc!

Of all the stuff Blizz has posted this week, from the Shaman Q&A, and the Resto changes the thing I am most excited about is the new totem interface. Man I can't wait until I can drop all 4 totems with a single button, on 1 GCD. Right now I use a macro (I guess all shammys do) but it requires 4 presses, and 4 seconds. So on boss fights it is drop 2 totems, I think it is Flametongue and Stoneskin heal heal, Healing totem, and Wrath of Air (I think). Then heal heal heal. How sweet will it be when we can drop all 4 at once, Totemec Call just before they expire for the mana refund then drop them again all in one GCD!

I really don't perceive totems lack of mobility as a problem, I REALLY like the mechanic of stratigic placement, even if sometimes I have to get dangerously close to the bosses hit box to optimal placement for a fight, and hey nothing is as funny than seeing the raid panic when I run in at the boss with the tank. There are screams in vent "WTF are you doing Skraps! Get away!"

Amazing fishing luck.

Since the wife and the boy got out of school, it seems they spend the whole day waiting for me to get home from work and do stuff with them. This puts a serious crimp in my WoW playing. It seems the only time I can get guild free play time in is when "So you think you can dance" is on and Mrs. Skraps is watching it. (she has an excuse, she is a dance teacher)

This makes raiding damn near impossible, except for the odd OS/Mally raid that takes less than 30 minutes.

What does one do when their raid time is cut into 30 minute chunks? Go fishing of course. Since WotLK came out I have made an effort to get fishing to max level. during the BC era I only ever managed to get it to the 275-300 range, so now I am just 10 points away from max level and the fishing daily has been an amazing source of income.

In the last 10 days I received 2 Runed Stormjewels, one Solid Stormjewel, The Jeweled Fishing Pole, and the Strand Crawler. Now if anybody told me they got all that in 10 days I would call shinanigans, but it happened. Maybe the random number generator has finally decidet to show me a bit of love!

In addition to all the love from the fishing daily I also got this nifty little pet from the Dalaran sewers, in 3 casts, and a couple of nice achievements.

Hopefully tonight I will be able to get the last 10 points while the Mrs. is watching Sytycd.

Weekend Adventures

So this weekend marks my return to the ocean. I have been an avid scuba diver for years, but for the last year life has made getting away for a weekend to dive impossible. Well in 4 weeks I am taking the boy to Mexico for a dive vacation and felt it was very necessary to get him back in the ocean for a practice dive before the trip.

Now I don't know if anybody reading this knows anything about diving in general, or California diving in particular. California is fairly technical diving, and much like tanking or healing (see the WoW refrence there hehe) very gear dependent. In California, you wear a 7mm wetsuit (almost 1/2 inch of neoprene) a ton of lead weight my fat butt in a drysuit carrys almost 50lbs of lead, plus the cylinder, when full weighs almost 40lbs. Then there is all the other odds and ends of the gear, fins, mask hood, gloves, boots, regulators, lights etc. etc.

All in all scuba, while amazing is a lot of work.

This weekend the boy and I went to Lovers Cove in Monterey California. In almost 10 years of diving Monterey I have never seen a day with better conditions. When we arrived at about 10:00 am, the fog was burning away, there was not a wave or swell to be seen in the ocean. When we geared up, and dropped in it was the single greatest dive I have ever had in California. With all the sun and warm weather the kelp beds have been growing like mad (almost 2 feet per day). The dive felt like flying through a forest. We only hit about 30 feet, but the sea grasses growing on the bottom, and kelp rising to the surface made for amazing views.

This is what California diving is all about.

p.s. I forgot my underwater camera at home, I could kick myself. This weekend was a photographers dream.

As of yesterday my son is a High School Student. Ok not really, he isn't a high school student until the fall, but he graduated from 8th grade yesterday. The ceremony was on a Thursday, at 10:30 am. The only thing I can figure is they did not want any parents to come, because really who isn't at work at 10:30 on a Thursday?

The ceremony was short, and sweet. I learned why my son has such a good grade in English, and why he went out of his way to please her. I tell you, if teachers looked like that when I was in school...well I don't know if I would have done better or worse due to all the day dreaming, but I certainly would not have been able to stand in front of the room and present anything.

Well for all those students out there, have a great summer.

Follow up.

Following up on this post over at Fat Chicks Tank:

Years ago when it was announced that the Alliance would be getting Shaman when BC was released I was angry. I just couldn't see how the Alliance was going to fit into the lore behind the WoW Shaman. I always felt the Shaman was a more "primitive" class. Not primitive as in lets cut that outsiders head off and eat his brains, but primitive as in more down to earth, tribal based society, and the space goats sure as heck did not fit into my tribal motif. Now I also did not think the holier than thou Paladins fit the whole horde idiom either. I liked the situation as it was. Sure Alliance had arguably the best MT healers in the game, we countered that with the best raid healers. The class differential made the factions unique.

Almost what? 3 or 4 years after the introduction of Alliance Shaman, I have come to an entirely diffrent conclusion. The Alliance Shaman, while a more advanced culture technically, have an excellent back story in Shamanism, the co-mingling of "The Light" and the elemental forces of Shamanism work for me. I only got my alliance Shaman to level 30 or so, mostly because I wanted to see the starter/lore quests, and because I already had a 70 Shaman.

I feel a sence of brotherhood with the space goat shaman that I have never had with my alliance counterpart on any other class. When flagged as a warrior, hunter, mage, or rogue I have always been hunted down and mercielessly killed by my Alliance counterparts. Never once outside of a BG or Wintergrasp has an Alliance shaman made an attack of opportunity and killed me just because I happened to be flagged.

That, my friends is brotherhood.

Again! I have no son!

Riding close on the heals of the infamous "Dad, I think I liked the new Star Trek movie better than Star Wars" my son has said today that Ninjas are better than Pirates. What is this crazy thing called life coming too when your own child can be so grossly misinformed as to believe Ninjas > Pirates. He didn't even go for the argument "When was the last time you saw a ninja with wenches?" and he is 14! I thought wenches would top sneaking by now.