A kinda... lightish red

I just saw this news post on the Nintendo site, and it made me think of Waynne =)

"Pretty in Pink - A new colour of DS Lite joins the range, and we’ve got a brand new microsite to show off all its pretty features"

C'mon, you know you want one ;)

Lunchables

The suggestion this morning by Hannes that we go through to Kalkies for fish and chips at lunch was initially met by skepticism from me. A Kalk Bay harbour fish and chips place sounded really dodgy, and I was not disappointed on that front when we did finally arrive there. The food was really excellent, albeit a little oily. "I don't think I've had this much oil in one sitting in a long time" was BB's comment, and had me thinking of stories of kiddies drinking from the sunflower oil bottles. Loei was lucky enough to be hit on by the waitress when she slapped his arse and said "No bums on the table!". I think that means she likes you, buddy. Blushing like a schoolgirl only makes them more interested. As we were finishing up, the guy at the table next to use really drove home how high-class an establishment it was by pouring himself a glass of wine from the papsak he had brought along. No corkage, I guess, if there's no cork.

But really, an excellent outing, for an excellent Friday.

Changes (not like Tupac)

It really is starting to get to summer now. Dubious mornings followed by pretty hot days are forcing me to wear my zipoffs more often than not. Not that I'm complaining, even tho I have always preferred winter to summer.

Work has got me writing documentation again, albeit for a short while and interspersed with coding. It does make for a nice change, and at least this lot is low stress.

Julie left for Jozi this week Monday. The weekend was largely taken up by goodbye events for her, starting with drinks at the Planet bar in the Mount Nelson on Saturday evening. It's a really nice place, albeit rather expensive. A nice occasional outing place for pretending to be civilized. Sunday morning saw me fetching Julie for CT station where she put her car on the train, since Al has done something to his car. He wasn't specific and mumbled a bit, so I'm not sure what, but he was driving it the next day, so who knows. Breakfast at the B&B in Harfield was the reward for the lift. Sunday lunch was at Montebello off Newlands Avenue, which was enjoyable despite the slightly slow service. The burger I had was really good, especially after I scraped off most of the FLAMING hot home-made chutney.

It looks like Al is leaving Cape Town for a while. He's not exactly sure when, but it will probably be sometime this month (edit: actually it seems end of November is more likely). Our Thursday D&D game will be poorer for it (read: non-existent). Also, Lucas might get Greg to take his room... we will have to see how that goes ;) At least that way I won't be missing out on lengthy lectures about The War ^_^

[WoW]
60 is definitely the place to be. There is so much more content available to me now, and so many divers think to do. I was kicked out of my PvP guild (Happy Tree Friends, the one with the pink tabard) at lvl59 cos they were doing a massive cleanup, and now I have joined Disabled, a pretty decent PvE guild. I've run Zul'Gurub twice, and will probably run it again tonight.

I have three pieces of my Feralheart set, which was quite a damn mission to upgrade to from the three Wildheart pieces I bought. I still need to do a couple of instances over and over and over to get what I want for it.
[/WoW]

Chibineko

My first few days back at work have been very documentation-filled. As was mostly expected, although I have done even less coding than I thought, which was not much to start off with. I’m used to documentation, having done a bunch of it for ISO purposes at a previous company, but the OB format I am still getting used to. Thank goodness Chelle is one of our primary document producers ^_^ I just ask her when I get stuck with something.

Kieran joined our Tuesday Shadowrun game last night. Finally, I get another magic user to talk to! The smelly Troll Adept totally doesn’t count. And complete bonus that she is a young Japanese lady =) Also, Kieran might be just what we need to get some actual roleplaying done, rather than constantly having Yancke going off on a tangent. He promised to stab anyone who went off-track with Chelle’s letter opener. He ended up having to stab himself 3 times, and only threatening anyone else once. That once was also James, the DM. And he still tries to claim it’s not him that’s the disruptive influence.

[WoW]
I hit lvl 52 yesterday, amongst much celebration and spending of gold on talents. In the process, I also managed to farm sufficient [Glowing Scorpid Blood] to get my [Darkmoon Faire Storage Box], finally! While killing the Scorpok Stingers, I also dropped a [Journeyman’s Backpack], another 14-slot container. And when I finally found a rogue to open the lockboxes I had been hoarding, I found ANOTHER! Fantastic! Now all of my bags that I carry around are 14 slots, and one of my 4 bank bags too. The other three are 12 slots. The next bank slot will cost me 50g =/ Not sure if that is worth it juuust yet.

Looking at the other Darkmoon Faire rewards, I see one of the epic Necklaces gives +22 to all healing (amongst a bunch of other fantastic stat upgrades). Now, it takes 1200 tickets (which I estimate at 6000 Scorpoks), I have to be lvl55 to even do the handin for it (so 3 lvls away), and I can only wear it at lvl60. So, is it worth it? Or should I farm for a [Darkmoon Faire Storage Box] for my other characters rather? I think I will start off with farming for the boxes first, since I can do the amulet in 2 months time, when the Faire next comes to Mulgore. 2 months is a long way away tho…

PvP rewards are looking very tasty too. I’ve got the [Scout’s Tabard] and the [Insignia of the Horde] already, next up the cape, then the pauldrons. Sp many things to do, so little time! My guild, Happy Tree Friends, is a PvP guild after all, so I should do my best there. Of course, hitting 60 and doing premades with them would be ideal, so maybe I should just grind. If I get bored of Hippogryphs and Scorpoks for the Faire, there is always Argent Dawn or Timbermaw rep to grind.
[/WoW]

zomg 3 in a row!

I am now back from PE, and not too mentally scarred by the double 8 hour car trip with Yancke, or by meeting Yancke's family. However, some things about Yancke make a lot more sense... his entire family is mad! As Lucas said, 'Well it looks like Yancke turned out pretty all right after all, all things considered'. Or something like that, I paraphrase for humorous effect. His mom was actually really cool, I enjoyed chatting to her =) Dad and bro were not terribly chatty, so I didn't get too much of a feel for them.

Colleen's party on the Saturday was a liiitle bit of a mixed bag. The beginning was terrible, with these retarded metalheads heckling and laughing from the sidelines as Lucas, Si and myself danced. It picked up a lot as the night progressed, and soon enough a large portion of the 100-strong crowd were dancing at various points =) Sadly, the metalheads made the floor a couple of times when the other DJ was playing (you guessed it) metal, making the whole experience unpleasant for everyone. Well, whatever, they suck and I probably never have to see them ever again. Which makes me happy. With any luck, they will not want to come back for the next party, since there was very little thrash metal played, despite their constant requests for some 'motherfucking thrash, like Lamb of God'.

There was not much to do during the day with Colleen at work and Yancke supposed
to be writing an essay (but actually playing AI DotA mostly), so I had to entertain myself. I ended up watching a lot of movies, including Hoodwinked (such potential, but crap), Shaun of the Dead (awesome), Sky High (amusing but blatantly Disney), Aeon Flux (pretty, but not good), Cassanova (very funny, I like Heath) and Lord of War (fantastic, and not disturbing at all - this might make me a bad or insensitive person). What can I say, the video store near to Colleen's (very very nice) house in Walmer was having a 2 for 1 special =) I also went to the game arcades in both Greenacres and Walmer malls, and got in some Metal Slug 5 & 6, and clocked House of the Dead III, using about 12 or 13 credits. Half an hour of awesome gameplay for R13? Totally worth it.

So all in all, a pretty awesome trip =) It would have been much better were Colleen on holiday or if I had more friends with me, but I am still very glad I went =D It was very cool chatting to Colleen again after so long of nothing but GChat convos.

However, getting back to my WoW character was pretty fantastic too. However, the realms have been FUCKED on and off since I got back. Not good, they better fucking give us a free day for this shit. What, are Blizz too poor to afford decent hardwire? Or hire people rather than monkies to run the show? Grates my tits.

After a long long DotA hiatus, I finally pitched at a lan on Friday night. The rust on my play took quite a while to abate slightly, but I had a really good time, and so will make a bigger effort in future. At one point, the DotA clanmembers who were there wanted to run a practise team match against the rest of us, 'just a quick game for practise, it won't even count and will be over quickly'. They sucked SOOOOO badly, it was fantastic. We (the n00bs) all played fantastically, and despite them still winning, we made them bleed every step of the way. Not what they were expecting =) Yancke, in his inimitable way, told them that if they played like that at the tournament next weekend, they were FUCKED. We laughed, quietly, on the inside =) Such satisfaction.

Another gaming hiatus was broken today, with Beth and Garrick coming over to play Soul Calibur. That I am thankfully not rusty at =) Or if I am, everyone else is just as rusty. Oo, I am looking forward to the Tekken tournament at schpatcon =) That will 0wn.

Yay! US public holiday tomorrow, which I am taking =) So, WoW until late tonight, sleep tomorrow.

Destroying arguments since whenever

I just had to repost this from Firegolem's blog, especially after reading Zenstar's post about the Crazy at Stones. Classic =)

The more things change, the more they stay the same

Reading through my last two blog posts, it seems to be a crazy mirror of what has been going on. DotA has been completely superceded by WoW, but the amount I play has certainly not decreased. Every day. It is unbelievably good.

Also, I mention that Colleen was coming down to CT in March. Next week, I am going up to visit her =) My first trip to PE, and my first roadtrip ever where I will be a licensed driver. Yancke was making vague noises about joining me for the trip up to visit his family, but that was a while ago and I'm sure he's forgotten. I shall have to remind him, a halving of the petrol bill will be most welcome. Icon has left an unpleasant dent in my pocket.

Dragonfire was this weekend, and proved most enjoyable. The Shelagh was down, which was fantastic, and it was a lot of fun playing with her again. She is an exceedingly accomplished roleplayer. Robyn also came down, but not to attend the con at all. She rocked up on Saturday for a teeeeny amount of time, and then her and her b/f bailed to go do touristy things. Meh. Sed, Si, Ada and myself were invited to her parents' place for dinner that evening, which was a very pleasant evening of catching up with Robs, and Sed as well who I haven't seen for aeons.

In further parallels (this time from the second to last post), I was quite sick last week, for three days. Crap, cos I felt like shit. Cool, cos I got to play WoW all day =)

Other events since the last time I posted including getting and losing a girlfriend, my grandfather dying, passing one of my MCSD exams (SQL), a work paintball event and Waynne's bachelor party.

Oh, and anyone who has an active blog that cares, please let people know that I am posting again. I don't want to spam everyone with emails or IMs or whatever. Viral information spread is better, and cooler-sounding.

I will be adding a WoW section to all of my posts, at the end so those not interested can skip. They will be appropriately labelled. Also, no complaints if there appear a plethora of posts that contain solely WoW content =P

[WoW]
My main, Grothar, has just run Uldaman for the last time ^_^ The 2h mace I wanted off Archaedas, the end boss, just dropped. [Rockpounder] is mine at last! Whee! Now on to ZF, and maybe Mara again, actually killing the princess this time, unlike my first abortive run thru it.

My tailoring alt, Kaeljin the troll shammy, has just twinked his tailoring up to 150, and now needs to be level 20 before he can upgrade his tailoring max, so he'll need to be speed-levelled at some point.

Then in a shock move, Gus at work has just deleted his 60 hunter and 47 lock, citing his complete addiction to the game as the reason. He will be missed =( With all my other stupid friends playing Alliance, thus robbing me of the opportunity for easy party play (thanks guys), I am now more or less all alone on the Horde side of Haomarush. My horde friends include Tai at 56, Sed at 24 and some other guys at work hanging around 20-something. Ah well, I guess it's solo play until I can level up to 60 and start instancing with my guildies. Gus did manage to wangle me into his guild just before he left, so that's pretty cool at least =)

Well, I guess I'll just have to wait for Chelle and Alex to organise ADSL and WoW to get some decent party action in. Until then, enjoy the Alliance, mofos. We'll be coming for you someday.
[/WoW]