All posts by Duf

WoW is a huge, complex game. When you first start playing it seems overwhelming, the game is literally a world upon itself. Entering that world is almost like living someplace new, you have to learn how to get places, how things work, the places you want to see and the places you want to avoid. Now since I am almost a 1 year veteran of the game, I have a pretty good handle on things, but even now there are new people constantly coming into the game that are just trying to learn the ropes. These people are easily identified in the game, they are the ones asking questions that are considered “noob” in the general chat. Depending on my mood, sometimes I will post sarcastic silly answers to their questions. For example, someone said “Where do I find the panthers?” My reply, “In Pantherville of course, right across from Tigertown…” Other times I will simply ignore the newbies as I have other pressing matters of my own to attend to. Then sometimes I get inspired to help one of them, as I remember how much of a pain in the ass it was when I was learning. Last night was one of those times, I took a 17 year old noob through a quest to get his level 30 warrior weapon. I did this quest myself months ago and knew it was very long and tough. I signed on my high level character and ripped him through the entire thing in about an hour and a half. He was very grateful for my assistance and asked if there was anything he could do to repay me. I simply said “Enjoy the game…” as I fired off my hearthstone and disappeared.

Keener found this awesome WOW blog site.

This weekend I am playing in a vball tournament. I haven’t touched a ball since September. Ali is running a 5k solo that same day, very cool.

I didn’t think things could look much bleaker for the Eagles but yesterday the news comes down that Westbrook has a Lis Franc sprain in his foot which can be a horrible thing to rehab from, requiring up to a year in certain situations. I remember Duce Staley had one of those and it screwed him up for a loooong time. I can’t believe how badly things have gone for the team in the span of a year, it’s unreal.

This morning as I turned onto a side street during my commute to work I did a double take as I saw a mini-van to the side of the road with it’s hidden police lights flashing. The van evidently is the latest weapon in the massive Collier County police force arsenal. The van had someone pulled over. The van looked like it would be driven by a stereotypical soccer mom, complete with the magnetic pink ribbon on the back, very sneaky.

To say the Eagles game was bad would be a gross under statement. It was pathetic, embarassing and just plain ridiculous. It was about as lopsided as it can get. With all the injuries and the TO fiasco I was already ok with the team going downhill but I didn’t expect it to drive off the side of a 1000 foot cliff. That is exactly what they did last night. For this first time in a long time, I am ready for the season to end early. Here is my little mini-rant on the Eagles message board.

One of the games I have running on my chipped xbox is Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. This game is FANTASTIC. In this game you control Hulk. You basically destroy everything. It is one of best console games I ever played. You beat up buildings, you pick up cars and throw them at helicopters. You can pick up a truck, rip it in half and use the remnants as automobile boxing gloves. I can’t explain how much of a stress reliver it is to run around in Hulk’s skin, wrecking everything in sight for no other reason than you just can. If you are a video game freak and don’t at least rent this game, you are doing yourself a disservice.

At lunch I had to stop at the vet to get the special food our diabetic cat eats. At the vet they had a crate with a bunch of kittens in it. They were very cute as the played in the cage, hopped around and climbed the sides of the crate like a monkey. Then I remembered how our cats were once little cute things and how they have mutated to their present state. Spook is now a big fat ass with chronic, disgusting dandruff and does very little but sleep and spit up hairballs. Buttons is even more of a mess. She once was very heavy but her diabetes has thinned her out to the point where she feels light as a feather. Another by product of the disease is chronic gum disease that results in her teeth literally rotting in her mouth, emitting odors that make you think she is coming at you ass first. This weekend I noticed that one of her front fangs is now sticking out perpendicular, evidently it fell over. Most of the time Buttons has a look on her face like she got whacked by a 2×4. Surely a result of the multiple seizures she has endured. However she plods on, still able to carry on her basic cat duties. As cute as those kittens were, nothing will be able to convince me to get another one after my recent experiences with the latter stages of feline existence. 3 of our 5 pets could drop dead tomorrow and I would not grieve for more than a few minutes.

The weekend flew by. On Saturday, Ali was hosting a Pampered Chef thing at our house. While she was cooking Saturday morning I was a whirlwind cleaning machine, getting the house ship-shape since some of the guests would be people I work with. I didn’t want them to think I lived in a pigpen. The plan originally was once the people showed up, I would hole up in the bedroom with Nicki to keep her from making a loud barking, growling scene. However after a few minutes of carrying on, Nicki settled down so I hung out with all the women and drank beer and ate the food Ali made. It was cool.

Later Saturday after the party I told Ali we should have next to nothing to do on Sunday and should be able to have a laid back day. Well Sunday morning I got the bug to go get the christmas tree. We planned to do it next weekend but then I realized that doing so would first, be the day after Ali had a race and I had a volleyball tournament and second, it would only give us a tree for 2 weeks prior to the event, too short of a time period. So after we did our run, we headed out to get 2 trees, one for us and one for my mom. We decided to hit Lowe’s this year for the tree instead of Home Dept. Last year there was a mix up at HD that almost resulted in our tree leaving on the roof of someone else’s vehicle. However, Lowe’s was worse. Evidently they had been swamped with people because the tree selection was very small. Plus Lowe’s only had trees outside, no accessories and no register in the tent, meaning you had to go inside and wait in long lines to buy the tree. I was also annoyed to find that they had no tree stands for sale except 2 or 3 of those old style ones from the 60’s. We picked a nice little spruce for my mom and then I picked up another one that was pretty fat and looked cool at first. However when I picked it up I noticed the top of it was broken off and had a spot with a bit of a hole, I was bout to drop it back to the ground but Ali said she liked it. It instantly stuck with her as the Charlie Brown christmas tree that noone else would take so she wanted to take it home. Ok whatever, but it looks more like a bush. The person they had manning the tent had as much Christmas spirit as a terrorist, using short 1 or 2 word responses to any questions asked, ho, ho, ho. Then we had to go into the madness of Home Depot after all to get a stand. I bought the exact same model stand that I threw out the year before, I figured I just had a defective model. It is the swivel-straight type of stand. We stopped at my mom’s and put her tree in her stand and watered it for her to decorate when she got home from work.

I had to cut a bunch of the lower branches from our Christmas bush to get it to fit in the stand. After trimming the branches, it was still tooo fat so I had to get out the chainsaw and hack off some diameter of the trunk. Cutting all the those branches, further shortened the appearance of the tree, making it even more bush-like. We loaded the tree up with lights and ornaments, the tree topping star which normally sits high above the tree, instead was nestled among other branches so it would stay in place. Our tree definitely won’t be on the cover of any magazines but it’s our tree all the same and at least it didn’t wind up going to the island of misfit Christmas trees. You can see pictures of the tree/bush, our outside Xmas lights and the new furniture we got last month here. I realized that the stand I threw out last year actually probably worked just fine. After reading the directions for the new one I purchased, I found out you had to pull out the little lever to swivel the tree. Last year I cursed as I would press and press on the button but it wouldn’t swivel. Dumb me.

Again this year, my Christmas spirit is not up to par. I didn’t even feel like putting the train under the tree. Maybe I will reconsider and get it out later but I just wasn’t feeling it on Sunday. Ali and I usually do our Christmas lists on Amazon and people just buy off of that. However this year it has been a bit of a downer. Amazon has a ton of other businesses that sell under their site. Many of these things on our list are actually products these vendors sell instead of Amazon. When Amazon sends you something that is a gift, it is in generic box so you can’t tell what is inside, keeping the gift surprise intact. However these other vendors do not do this so we are getting boxes that have the product identified and we wind up knowing exactly what we are getting. I like the surprise element of the holiday so having that mostly sucked out is disappointing. We plan to wrap the stuff anyway and act like we didn’t know we were getting.

Tonight would be the night we would be going to dance class. However we are not going this month per my desires. I have to admit I feel a bit guilty about missing it but I don’t think it is because of a desire to dance as much as the feeling I am disappointing Ali and the dance teacher. I remind myself that I commited to a month and I did what I said I would do. I told Ali we can do more after the holidays, which we will, but I just don’t want it to be an every week of every month sort of thing. I still practice the steps we learned with Ali.

I am still angry that ESPN classic stopped showing the Jack LaLanne show. I wrote to them to complain. My evenings feel a whole less motivating now.

After starting 0-6 in my FF league I have roared back to win 5 of 6 and this week’s game could actually get me into the playoffs which was a pipe dream weeks ago. However I am not in a good spot. My team is up 8 points but my opponent has Matt Hasselback yet to play. I can only pray the Eagles beat the hell out of him tonight. Eli Manning basically f’d it up for me. He has consistently been good for 15-25 points for most of the season, yesterday he put up stinkin ZERO points, what terrible timing.

Don’t ask me where this came from. Ali and I were out driving and for some reason we decided to go to a hotel room to find Fran Tarkenton. We knocked on the door and are surprised to see Joe Gibbs answer the door. Coach Gibbs said Fran was in the shower getting ready. Joe sat back down and continued reading the sports section of the paper. There was some awkward silence but then I told coach that I was a hardcore Eagle fan but I still respected him as a coach and thought he did a great job. He thanked me for the compliment tersely and went back to reading the paper. Ali then started to engage him in conversation and he was more friendly with her at first. Then for some reason Ali started to try to sell him some sort of pills for his arthritis. I could tell Gibbs was getting annoyed by the look on his face and he took out a bottle of pills, shook them and said “these pills work fine for me..” Right around then, Fran came out in a sport coat, button down shirt and what appeared to be one of those polyester scarfs that were popular in the 70’s. Fran was nicer than Coach Gibbs and we talked to him a bit. I found myself talking more about his days on That’s Incredible rather than his football days. Fran said he had to get going and we said goodbye. Joe gave us a strained farewell greeting as he gave us the clear feeling he was annoyed by our presence.

End of dream.

On Monday on my last day off, I got inspired to put one of my planes up in the air. I hadn’t flown in a long time. It was windy and my initial launch attempt went bad. I threw it up and before I could get on the controls and correct it, the plane cut hard left, went through the bottle brush tree and hit the ground, snapping the propellor in the process. I was disappointed that it looked like my flying was over before it began.

I took the damaged plane inside and just for the hell of it, looked to see if I had any spare propellors. I was surprised to find one and I installed it on the plane and went back outside to try it again. This time I went farther out into the back yard and I gave it a little less throttle. I got it up in the air, but it was real squirelly in the air and shortly after I got it up, the radio receiver came unstuck from the plane and was dangling underneath it. If a cable unplugged it would be the end of the plane, so I carefully brought it in and landed it. I reattached the receiver and threw it back up. The plane still was all over the place. I brought it back down and noticed something. The connector that attaches to the aileron was hanging on by a thread. Holy S. If that would have let loose in the air the plane would have corkscrewed into the ground. I took the plane inside and reattached it with 2 little screws. The following flight was much more stable. It was still windy but I flew into the wind and used it to get the plane to a high elevation and then throttle back and just cruise. It was fun, a fun that I have pretty much forgotten about. I need to fly more.

My buddy at work is the one that opened me up to the xbox hacking stuff. I knew of it before but after reading that doing so required you to solder components to the board, I steered clear since my soldering skills are weak. I had a Sega Dreamcast that I used to run hacked stuff on. It was great, I had a library of several dozen games. Well after my buddy successfully “chipped” his xbox, and he told me of the wonders of copying and running games straight from the internal hdd, I was game for it. I bought the stuff and gave it to him to install. What I got back was a machine that has increased in leaps and bounds in it’s capabilities. I can copy games, run them from the hard drive, ftp to and from the xbox, run a media center application and still run conventional games as well. I literally have enough games to keep me occupied for endless days of video gaming madness.

I have turned commenting back on to see if the flood of blog spam has subsided. Feel free to post your feelings on future entries.

Just got my hacked xbox back. It is a nirvana for console gaming. Now I just need to pull myself away from WoW to play with it a bit.

I was all ready to go into my 5 day hiatus roundup when an event happened this morning that pissed me off and saddened me to the point that it trumps it all. At Ali’s work there has been a family of ducks that we have watched grow up from little babies to adult ducks. Most days we see them waddling accross the parking lot or yard to get to a bird feeder they have outside the building. Even though they are adult birds now, several of them still stick together and march single file all over the place. When we say the word “ducky” to Nicki, she knows exactly what we are talking about and she looks for them.

This morning as I turned left into Ali’s work, we saw a horrible sight. One of the ducks was lying dead in the road, right in front of the stop sign. I was instantly enraged and disgusted that some asshole either wasn’t paying attention or didn’t care enough to slow down to allow the ducks to pass. It was right at a stop sign of a road where the speed limit is only 25 to 30 mph so I have no idea how someone couldn’t avoid a big duck in plain view. My heart sunk as I saw 2 of the other ducks on the other side of the road just looking at their fallen sibling, waiting for it to get up. They just stayed there and watched, it was so sad, we both felt horrible. As I unloaded the bike from the car I was swearing up a storm, reaffirming how disgusting the human race can be, to not be able to step on the brake pedal for 5 seconds so an animal can pass, it is ridiculous. After I dropped Ali off, I stopped at the edge of the lot and looked at the dead duck and the cars coming up to it and swerving around. I thought how the poor thing didn’t need to be steamrolled under another idiot’s tires. After sitting there for a brief moment. debating, I hopped out, walked over and scooped the duck up with my hands and gently laid it in the grass by the road. It was a horrible feeling. I called Ali and told her I moved the duck and she said she had already called animal services and they would come out and take the duck away. Eventually the other ducks moved away, realizing that the fallen animal wasn’t going to get up. I don’t know if it was my feelings of sorrow that transferred, but the other ducks looked sad, in a duck sort of way.

My 5 day Thanksgiving vacation was quite nice, I enjoyed the time off. We started off turkey day getting up with our normal work day alarm clock to get up for our Gobble Gobble 4 mile run. Unlike the 5k we ran a couple weeks prior, I was not 100% confident if Ali could grind this one out without stopping. Jumping up your distance by 25% in 2 weeks time is an ambitious goal. The race was well attended. Before the race I had a nervous bladder and had to hit the mens room. Unfortunately the bathroom facilities were very inadequate for the amount of people there. The line for the mens room was 10 deep, the line for the womens was at least 30, so I decided I would be fine and skipped it. However 5 minutes before the race the urge was worse so I ran back and waited through a shorter line and was able to relieve myself and get back a couple minutes before the start.

This race had a unique group competing, the youth D.R.I.L.L. team. It is a military style drill program for teenage boys run by the county sheriff’s department. Before the race it was impossible to miss them as they all wore identical t-shirts and shorts and counted out loudly as they held stretch positions. It was really cool to see and hear.

This time we were more towards the front of starting pack so as opposed to passing people, we were the ones that got passed more often. Our intial mile pace was fast for us, but it is tough to run very slow at first with all the adrenalin kicking you along. We were amazed to hear the drill team behind us, chanting continously as they ran. It was a good diversion from running. We settled into our pace. Things went smoothly until somewhere between mile 2 and 3, where I could tell Ali was really struggling. However the DRILL team by that time had caught up to us and hearing them chant and chant really helped Ali along. I wondered how the chant leaders could come up with all this shit to say without missing a beat. As they passed us, I could not believe that on top of the chanting, there were two kids in the front of the squad carrying flags, above their heads! Holy shit. They all ran in unison, like a well oiled machine, it was very impressive and motivating. We found ourselves running to their cadence. The kids got Ali through that tough mile and once we hit mile 3, the finish line was close enough that it pulled us home. As we hit the line the clock was just turning 42 minutes, a great time for Ali. She had set a pre-race time goal of somewhere around 45 minutes which she smashed. In fact, we ran the 4 mile race at a much faster pace than the 5k. I was so proud of her. The week prior at the track she struggled to do 2 miles but in a race environment she doubles it, a tribute to the power fo competition. After the race we went over to the DRILL team and Ali told them how motivational their effort was. The kids responded with a very polite, “Thank you ma’am.” More kids need to go through a program like that, imagine the difference it would make in their lives to have that sort of discipline instilled into them at a young age. After the race we grabbed a few post race snacks and headed out to pick up my mom for our official dinner.

Ali prepared a nice spread of food. It is a tough proposition to coordinate the various food items to get done around the same time. All that prep came down to us devouring our meal in 15-20 minutes and then I happily volunteered to clean up as my part of the process. We got to catch some of the Macy’s parade and then some of the dog show afterwards. It felt good to have Thanksgiving at our place, albeit with 3 people. I took mom home and then when I got back, Ali was zonked out asleep from our run and the food prep. As she napped I watched some more football and found myself dozing off repeatedly as well. The day ended with my feeling content with the 2005 Thanksgiving experience.

On Friday I decided I would tackle the xmas lights outside while Ali mowed. What was fun at first, drug on and wound up being a lengthy chore at the end. Each year I forget how I rigged the lights in certain areas and have to rethink the process again. Plus this year I added lights around Nicki’s area. I had ideas about putting additional lights in additional areas but after 3 hours of working on it I wrapped it up, feeling very wiped. I think the end result looks pretty good. I’ll try to get a few pictures of it.

On Saturday we went to Home Depot to get a bunch of stuff from a list we had been building for a few weeks. When we got back we spent a good chunk of the afternoon spreading dirt and mulch, planting mums and putting wire fencing around the deck in Nicki’s area to prevent snakes and critters from getting under there. Saturday night we went out for a quick dinner at Applebee’s and then saw the new Harry Potter flick. I enjoyed the movie like all the other Harry Potter movies. Ali said there was a lot of stuff from the book that was greatly condensed for the movie but even so, the flick was still well over 2 hours long.

On Sunday Ali had to work. I started my day by by hitting the track to do a speed mile where I push myself to see how fast I can do a mile. I pushed myself hard but it still took me 7:35 to complete the mile. I was very winded and it took me most of the next walking lap to get my breath back. I vaguely remember being able to do a 7 minute mile at some point in my life so missing that mark was a bit of a downer. I’m old. I spent some time banging out any household stuff that was left to do so I would have basically a free day on Monday to do what I wanted (play WoW). Ali got home to catch most of the Eagles game which was unimpressive at best. Mike Mcmahon is a great athlete but he is less accurate than Donovan, which is tough to be. The Eagles, who were a pass happy team for most of the year have now transformed into a run first team to minimize McMahon’s burden. They managed to scrape by and beat the lowly Packers at home. It was not a good win but it was their first win in a month so I’ll take it. I think the league really has to do something about the officials calling all these penalties. It really is taking away from the game. Late in the 4th quarter of the Eagles game, on a play where Farve threw what appeared to be a game ending INT, the referee called a total bullshit late hit call on the Eagles. The Eagles player was diving and hit Farve a split second after her released the ball, it was IMPOSSIBLE for the defender to avoid hitting Farve yet the official throws the flag, in a critical, game changing situation no less. I was furious, screaming at the TV. I have seen this scenario repeated throughout the season and just can’t believe they continue to call it. There is no way a defender can go from full tilt towards a QB to throwing on the air brakes to stop the contact. The league needs to wake up, I understand they want to protect the QB but with the current rules they may as well put flags on him, it’s that bad.

We got our camera model of the Treo on Friday, finally. I dug into it, installing apps. One thing I noticed with most good Palm apps, they aren’t free. I dropped another 60-70 bucks installing additional apps on the thing. However it continues to impress me. I installed Voice Dial software that does an incredible job of voice recognition with no training. I can tell it to dial a certain phone number or tell it to dial a name which it looks up in the address book. Ali and I both tried it various times with various scenarios and it didn’t screw up once. It is a great feature when you are trying to dial from a car. I installed a movie player and copied Monsters Inc to the SD card. The version of the movie was compressed for phones so the quality wasn’t great but I can play normal PC divx movies on it as well with the only limit being having the available space on the SD card. I took a stupid picture of myself and associated it with my address book entry so when I call Ali from my cell phone she gets the dumb picture on her screen. Yesterday I threw on an IM client that allows Ali to hop on instant messenger anytime, anywhere and shoot of a message to one of her “buddies” I have only scratched the surface of what can be done on the device. It is just awesome stuff.

A month ago I commited to Ali to go to a month of ballroom dance classes that are held at one of the city rec centers. This is something that Ali has talked about forever and something I have avoided equally long. Ali loves to dance and is very good at it. I don’t enjoy dancing. Even though I am coordinated in most athletic endeavors, dancing is very tough for me. For some reason my brain short circuits trying to put steps together. However I have been gritting it out for the past month, every Monday night from 7-8. I’ve even been practicing outside of class a bit and I’m able to do most of the basic steps ok now, but I am far from being good. It’s a struggle for me every minute I am doing it, but I have plugged through it. Our instructor is very nice and the handful of other people in the class have been supportive. Last night was the final class of the month. Our instructor wanted us to sign up for the next month, which I resisted. First I commited to Ali to do a month of the classes, which I did. Second, it is a major pain in the ass to get home at 9pm every Monday and then have to haul ass to get stuff done for the following day. I told Ali that we can do more classes but I did not want it to be a 12 month a year thing. Our instructor was disappointed that I wanted to take December off however I told her that I would keep practicing. I think she thinks that I won’t be back but I plan to do it more, just not hardcore, I don’t enjoy it enough to do it that much. My drive to do it is more driven by not wanting to suck at something more than any hidden desire to be Fred Astaire. At this point I am confident enough that I could take Ali out on the dance floor and at least display some semblance of dancing. I know Ali appreciates my effort and as I said from the beginning, I know it is a good thing to experience things outside the box of your comfort zone.

I hope you and yours have an enjoyable Thanksgiving Day. Ours will begin at the crack of dawn. We have a 4 mile race that starts at 7:30 am. After that we pick up mom, go to our house, and make a feast that we will consume in 10-15 minutes. Then we will clean up, mom will get antsy and I will take her back home. After that, hopefully I will get to catch some of the football games.

Thanksgiving always was an important milestone in the year when I was a kid. It was the starting line for the immense anticipation that preceded Christmas. It meant that I had presents, days off from school and time to play all waiting ahead for me. Going to grandma’s to eat off the gold lined plates and gold plated silverware was a familiar favorite activity. When we arrived I was always greeted warmly by my grandfather who would shake my hand, slap me on the arm and sometime hug me as well. Before we ate, grandpa would always say a quick prayer that began differently each time but always ended the same way “… for without you Lord were nuthin…, Amen” I miss him.

Over the years Thanksgiving mutated into more of a pain in the ass. As an adult, Thanksgiving meant I better get my ass in gear and start buying endless presents. It meant a whirlwind day of going to 3 different homes for 3 different dinners as a result of my now extended family situation. I wound up hanging around some people that annoyed me and as I moved more into adulthood, the pure gluttony of the event disgusted me more and more. Soon, I was relieved when the event was over with and didn’t look forward to it rolling around next year.

Since we moved to Florida, Thanksgiving has mutated once again. The only family we have down here is my mom so there are no large get togethers. The year round great weather makes the holiday season sneak up on you. Even though it is 80 degrees outside, it is time to celebrate the holiday before you know it. Our celebrations have been steadily less involved as time has gone by. Hell the last 2 years we didn’t even cook, we just went to a restaurant, had some turkey and went home. We both commented on how quick and easy that was, how convenient it was to pay some cash, get served and don’t have to clean up afterwards. However for whatever reason, this year, I don’t want to do that. Thanksgiving isn’t supposed to be about convenience. So after we run, we are having mom out (against her will) and making dinner. Mom didn’t want us to drive her all the way out because it was “so far”, which I scoffed as crazy. 16 miles isn’t far and it isn’t like we see her every week, or even every month for that matter. This year I want something more traditional, I’m not sure why, but I need it.