In my defense, rambling is in the name

*warning: very long one, it's good though*

Okay, so I've stated before that I don't pug. I find it far to stressful as a rule and just refrain from doing it, even when I really want an instance done. Now you might say that's silly, I mean, if you want something, why not go ahead and do it? It might not be the way you wanted to do it, but the end result is the same, right?

Wrong! The best way I can relate this is with a parable, Jesus used them so they're obviously good stuff.
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Imagine three young men from a poor family. All three desperately want to go to college, but none of them have the money. After all they're from a poor family, and colleges are expensive!

After discussing their options between them they decide that they have no idea how to do it, but they know their father has a degree and came from an even poorer family! Together they go and ask him what they should do. Their father offers to find them positions at his job, because although he's poor he's very well thought of, and within a few years they would be able to afford to go.
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The first son scoffs this advice. Why should he wait for what he desires now? So he goes and seeks advice from his friends. They also mock his father's advice, there's a much easier way they tell him! Join the army they say, after a short time they will pay for all your education! So he goes and joins the army, where he quickly finds out he does not fit well.

After a few miserable years they tell him he can leave and they'll pay for his college. But having spent so much time being miserable his entire outlook as changed, he hates the thought of anything organized and goes on to lead a miserable life regretting his choices.
~
The second son hears the advice, but also decides it's not right for him. So he goes to his friends and asks for their advice. They quickly tell him that waiting is not the way to go! Get loans they say, enjoy school and pay them off after you graduate, after all, you'll be doing what you love? What does it matter if you have a little less money a month. He decides to take his friends advice and off to the loan office he goes.

He thoroughly enjoys his college years, not having to pay for a thing. But after he graduates he discovers he's unable to do any of the things he had planned on doing. After all, college isn't free and those loans have piled up. He's so busy working and paying off loans that he fails to enjoy life and quickly becomes embittered.
~
The third son listens to his father and goes to work with him, after a few years of diligent work he manages to pay for his education. Because he wasn't tied down by the legal requirements of the military he's free to change jobs when a better offer came up. As a result when he has the money he joyfully heads off to college.

While his college experience isn't as carefree as the second son, he still enjoys the fruits of his labor as he studies. But the best is yet to come! When he graduated he did it without the burdensome debt of the second son. His boss happily rehires him into a new position, know from experience that he'll do a good job. In his time off he does very nearly as he pleases with his free time and money, not being forced to work overtime.
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At long last we get to the moral of the story! 1st son: Pugged all his gear but hated the experience so much he quit WoW. 2nd son: Joined a heavy raid guild to get all his gear but in the end felt to guilty to leave and plays wow but hates it. 3rd son: Played mainly with friends, took his time, made sure to enjoy the time along the way, and as a result has gear and still enjoys WoW.
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There was one, count it 1, PuG I went into that I really enjoyed. Shallah (a resto druid LW I had used once) invited me to do a heroic with his wife (warlock) and one of his employees (shadow priest), because Shallah had always come across as a very pleasant person I decided to give it a shot, we merely needed to find one more dps. Lacking any Sidhe Devils that could go at the time we turned to PuG, managed to pick up a fury war that claimed to be geared.

So everyone showed up at Setthek Halls and I get a look at peoples gear, and decide that I want an option to make it so that others can't look at mine. I was the only one that wasn't in mainly epic gear. Spriz (the fury war) was in PURE purple, the first char I've ever seen that on.

We romped our way through the dungeon. Not only did we finish the dungeon and enjoy ourselves, we made such good friends that I regularly do heroics with three of them and the second invited me to main tank Kara last night. Which brings us to our feature story!

After getting back I really noticed that Onyxia was scheduled for this Sat, and seemingly had replaced Kara for our Guild Raid Romp for the week. While being VERY excited about getting to see Onyxia I was somewhat sad not to get to try fun stuff in Kara.

This is where the keen stuff comes into play. Remember the pug? Spriz, who I've been chatting with for the last few weeks, very nice guy, asks me if I'd like to main tank Kara for him and some friends. Double checking to make sure there wasn't a Kara schedule to Sidhe Devils I accept, I figured I'd prolly end up feeling bad and hiding my gear before it was over, but what the heck?

So we all show up at Kara and yeah, while my gear has improved, I was in with nine other people in Black Temple gear just doing a kara run for kicks, giggles, and some badges. The raid leader gives me a heads up that I don't really have an off tank, just a kitty druid capable of taking some hits on Moroes and changing gear to help tank Netherspite. At this point I start shaking with a mixture of fear, excitement, and nervousness. After all, I don't wanna be the tank that got talked up and then kept wiping because the healers just couldn't keep him alive and never gets invited to anything again, and I hadn't really thought about actually TANKING Prince, I mean, that's for the big boys right?

We burn through Attunmen with ease as I hold agro on both of them, well mostly. Mages in full Black Temple gear deal an unholy amount of threat, didn't have to much trouble right of the bat, but on later bosses it was hard.

As we head towards Moroes I shake off the last of my nervousness as we all joke around and pull each others legs. We clean up the room for Moroes and they start announcing the kill order for the adds. I ask where they want me to stand so CC and me don't end up doing the Scary Sheep Dance where I keep breaking their spells. Their response? Oh just stand at the bottom and tank them all. I'm pumped, we down them without losing a peep, AND I remembered to bubble the priest out of their garrote.

We go on to take on EVERYTHING with me as MT and no wipes. Except for that one time where I accidentally pulled curator and three of his buddy groups, not much to do there but die and joke about whose fault it is. One shotted everything else without a problem. And according to the healer afterwards, the only really scary moment was when I took a crushing blow on Prince. But now I can happily rest in the knowledge that I've seen (and know I can tank) almost all of Kara, and I don't care about the beast bosses.

~joe/ishvi

Sometimes free coffee just isn't worth it

So yeah, there I was at work, just sitting on the counter minding my own business. Me waiting for work to do, my coworker also waiting for work, but with a starbucks to sooth the boredom. After a very short bit, she gets called away to talk to someone, I forget exactly who, BUT she leaves her coffee there.

Now here we're left with a serious of choices. For one I could hide her coffee from her, but she'll know it was me, and thus I'll just have to fess up (by and large I'm a horrible liar). I could add something to her coffee, but I have a very hard rule that I don't mess with peoples food. Somethings are just plain wrong. So I decided to go with the third option, help myself to free coffee!

Me and most of my coworkers are really good friends, we all share our food, and if we have tasty drink, we'll share that too. So it's not like I was just drinking out of some random chick's coffee. But still, sometimes God reminds us that it's best to ask before we take that drink.

Usually, when you have a cup of coffee, if, for some reason, you take the lid off, you immediately put it back on. Or at least I do. As a result of this habit, I very rarely check to see if a lid is firmly attached, I just pick it up and drink it. I'm now rethinking this habit:



Yeah, it looks pretty bad. But I also have other, and possibly less silly, news! Onward!

So I was working yesterday, 7A-7P, and looking foward to the second half of Kara afterwards (much of which I haven't seen yet). About 17:30 my aunt calls for my cousin, so I pass her off and go on about my day, I figure one of my nieces was acting up or something. Shortly after that, my cousin comes back and asks me if I want various pieces of furniture that had prior to this been in the front room (they call it a porch, but it is very much not one). I was quite happy to say yes to some of it, and obtain rights to offer the AWESOME couch to my bro. I get informed that that's awesome, and asked if I could pick up the futon (I think that's how that's spelled) tonight.

At this point I think to myself, well, Kara starts pretty much as I get off, but I'm sure they'll understand if I show up 20min late because I had to pick up free furniture. So I agree, and go on about my work.

Seven rolls around and I get off, by this time I had worked myself into feeling guilty about showing up lateish to Kara, so I call my aunt and ask if it would be possible to pick up the futon the next night. She happily agrees, but inquires if I'm still coming to help move the rest of the furniture?

This confuses me, I don't exactly know where I thought the other furniture was coming from, but I was guessing they'd deliver it mid week sometime? Further inquiries showed that they had visited an auction and obtained a wonderful leather three piece living room set for only $1300. But Texas weather being what it is lately, felt the need to get it inside tonight. Normally this stuff only requires two people, but my aunt hurt her back recently, and my cousin is at work 'till midnight, so it's me and my uncle.

Now normally I try really hard not to flake on WoW, especially when nine other people are expecting me to be there in all my n00bishness and would get mad at me for not making it. But luckily I'm with the SD! Who understand that family comes first before WoW. Period. So I dial Wulfa, accidently waking Orclette up along the way, and ask her to pass on that I'll be late (around 8pm I think) and to feel free to replace me if they need two. Little did I know, that I would NOT be back at my house at 8pm.

Gotta run to work! I'll finish it up later, like tonight or something, maybe at work if it's slow, but prolly not!

~joe/ishvi

So it may have been awhile

I realize I haven't posted in a bit, but hey! I've been busy! Just don't ask me what yet. Haven't come up with a good exc... err, that is, it's hard to explain. Let it be enough that I am posting now, and will try to post more in the future, maybe.

Also, here is proof I have hair, and a beard. Well, proof of a beard at least, I can promise you there is hair under the cap, and after I get back from the soon to be mentioned wedding, I'll prolly have pics to prove it.

Hmm, where to start, so much to talk about (not really). We'll start this party off with with an explanation of why I won't be doing anything involving Waco or WoW from next Mon to the following Sun. I'll be in S. Carolina! A friend from work is getting married (woo! woo!) and her aunt offered to let them use her beach house for free.

Now as the wedding is actually on the 16th, I'm sure some of you are curious as to why I'm going up there five days early, even though I'm not part of the wedding party. Well, I have a good explanation for that at least! I had the choice of either paying for a plane ticket up there, driving my car-which-is-primarily-composed-of-duck-tape-and up there, or I could just catch a ride up on Monday with the maid of honor and skip the whole driving/flying bit. And seeing as the maid of honor is my cousin, the choice was quite simple, and cheap.

Now I'm not entirely sure what I'll be actually doing for a week, but I'm sure one of the multitudes of women-getting-ready-for-the-wedding will find some sort of annoying labor for me to do. Women tend to do that. ^_~

After that I'll be back in Waco with a week to get ready for school. Woo! Eighteen hours of educational and time consuming bliss!

Now I realize that eighteen hours of school might not be the most exciting thing to many of you people, but I'm something of a glutton for punishment. I've also been working entry level non-educated jobs for the last four years and am beginning to get tired of the continual state of being broke. Plus it'll be fun to play with computers and call it education again.

I think that's pretty much it schedule wise, so now to get down to the WoW business!

Okay, so apparently there was a little confusion between some people and they (Wulfa and Dammerung included) thought I was kinda looking for a raiding guild, or at least something more active in the heroic department. Just wanna clarify to any who read my blogpost (which is apparently where this idea came from, silly bloggers) about it, that is not the case at all. While I do enjoy running heroics with friends from OOB and Untamed Dragons from time to time, my WoW family is Sidhe Devils (with a few relations over on the Silvermoon server). So don't get excited, you're not rid of me yet!

But in talking with people about this another subject came up, and that was my pretty much complete incompetency involving the holy side of paladin. Which I had to agree with them, I had no clue what was going on. From what I'd read from paladin blogs and forums, if you're specced prot, and you're not the MT, something has gone wrong.

From experience actually playing a paladin in raids, I've discovered that the previous statement is completely wrong, at least in Kara, if you have someone else who can tank a particular mob better (like warriors stance dancing through fear). So since then I've started to put together my spare sets and read up/practice doing stuff besides just protection, namely spec holy and let Dammerung get beat up so I can laugh.

More on the Dammerung, Ishvi, Wulfa, and Mooncadence party later. Within the next month. Most likely. Maybe. Depending on the alignment of the moon and stars.

~joe/ishvi