Ad libbing, tanking

So listening back to my first attempt at audio blogcasting I was less than impressed.  I need to throw in something in addition to just a dry read of the text.  So last night I did just that.  I included some other commentary outside the scope of the blog post.  I also am not going to edit out my various f up’s, you’ll get a chance to hear the difficulty I have with speaking from time to time.  It add’s to the charm.

  So what I am doing is going back to the blog post and adding the audio link, if there is one, after the fact. So if you want to hear the audio you will need to check back on the post after it is released.  I will throw the player link at the bottom of the post typically or, just add the feed to your Itunes.  Yesterdays audio is up, somehow it runs over 6 minutes long.

In my virtual life, I have taken up a new responsibility in the game, tanking.  What is tanking you ask?  A tank in a MMORPG is a player whose prime responsibility is making sure that he gets the hell beat out of him.  A tank is typically heavily armored and possess a number of abilities that generate high amounts of threat against bad guys.  They use this threat to keep the monsters hitting them instead of hitting other members of the group.

A tank is a an absolute requirement of a group and having a bad one can spell disaster.  If a tank does his job, he is the main character that is taking damage, making the job of the healer much more manageable as he only has to concentrate mainly on keeping the tank alive.  However if a tank is unable to maintain “aggro” (aggro = the attention of all of the bad guys) then all hell can break loose as various party members can take massive amounts of damage very quickly.

Up until this point I have shyed away from tanking because I didn’t want the responsibility of it over my head.  I get stressed out enough playing as a healer which has similar amounts of responsibility. Well I finally gave tanking a shot.  So far it has gone surprisingly well. I have tanked three instances and we didn’t wipe on any of them. (wipe = everyone in the group dies)  The instances I’ve done are rather straightforward which is enough for me at this point.  In advanced game stages tanking can get pretty complicated.  You need to do certain things at certain times to be successful. 

Another advantage of tanking is you are always in demand, everyone needs you.  It’s a good way to get some high level gear rather quickly.  My tank is my warrior character. He is aptly named “Ironduf”.  This was the first character I ever created.  I’m sentimental about him.

This weekend does not have much of note on the docket.  I have various things I would like to get done around the house, nothing much of note is coming to mind.

Ali said she was finally get ready to cut her hair.  I welcomed the news.  For some reason Ali has always seemed to combat me when it comes to her hair.  I know what looks good on her yet she would discount the opinion of her husband as nearly worthless which never makes sense to me. 

 Well anyway she is hoping to go back to a style/length similar to what she had when we met, a layered cut about shoulder length. She also used to have blonde highlights which I liked.  Unfortunately I don’t think she finally saw the light and realized that maybe she should take her husband’s advice when it comes to what looks good to him. Instead I think the impetus came when my mom saw a picture of Ali with her old hairstyle and commented on how cute it was.  I guess I just need to have mom make style suggestions for me via proxy in the future. 

When we first moved down to Florida she had her hair just about perfect.  This style is conveniently captured on her drivers license photo.  All she has to do is show it to her stylist.