Wayback Machine, Work Attack!, World of Warcraft

Well, I uploaded a set of pictures that should rekindle some memories for a couple of people.  Like OLD OLD photos.  Ok, well, about 8 years old, just guessing though. 

One of those photos makes me intensly sad – it’s a picture of me standing up with a muscle shirt on.  Jesus H Christ I’ve become an old fat fuck.  I didn’t realize how bad until I compaired that photo with one from Heather and Nick’s wedding.

Jesus…

One of these days I’ll get around to fixing that problem.  *SIGH*

I have a whole stack of photos I’m slowly scanning in.  One problem is that a lot of photos have been mixed together from various sources, so I’m having a bit of a time trying to get them all sorted out what goes where.  I can, for instance, easily find the ones that belong to Halloween 1999 – the year of The Maze ;-)  As I get groups of ’em scanned, I’ll post them on here.

My actual plan is high-res scans of all my photo albums (well, that’s only like three albums).  After the move I realized that some of them had gotten a bit damaged.  I have access to a scanner, and a computer (and lots of post-processing software if I so desire).  Rather than risk loosing them, damaging them, etc. the next time I move, I’m going to build up some permenant archives and throw ’em in a lawyers trust or a safety deposit box.  If the project actually works the way I want, then eventually I’ll borrow the family albums and slowly scan them in.

And slowly is a key word here – I scan in about, oh, an average of 5 or 6 pictures a day.  I’m really not that interested in cranking through them all in one setting.  Might as well spread it out and do it between other tasks.

Oh, and I added one REALLLLY old picture of me from High School in there for kicks 🙂

So, for quite a while I didn’t have any work.  Well, ok, any ACTIVE work.  Problem was, I had jobs coming up, but no definite date. 

And then it happens – I get a contract on the first job, and then they all start going from planning to active.  Crap. I hate it when this happens.  I tried very actively to prevent it – trying to convince customers to set a date now rather than later.  Even better, I’m quoting more work in the middle of this.

It’s not more than I can handle, but, it would only take a couple more jobs to swamp me to the point where I’m going to fall behind. 

The current work roster:
    Website for a comic book publisher
    AutoCAD drawings for a plant in Alabama
    Build electrical panels for the same plant
    Install updates to an Oven at Spirit
    New Programming for an Oven at Spirit
    Two Computers configured with VMWare
    A trip to Kenosha, WI for at least a week
    A website for an online nick-knacks shop (Probably – haven’t got a contract yet)

Well, at least I’m working :-)  Bills get paid much easier when I’m working!

Pretty much everyone knows I’m a World of Warcraft geek.  I tend to go weeks without playing, then play for a while.  This last week I made the “big push” to finally have my character at level 70.  Cool – I now have a level 70 character.  Big deal – Lance has three level 70 characters, and two that are getting close.  (That by the way is a picture of MidnightMoo, my 70 hunter.  Looking down the barrel of the biggest damned gun I can find in the game.  Yes, I play a female cow.  Yes, I’m a geek – I bothered to take a picture of my character.)

WoW is a bit of a love hate relationship.  I enjoy playing it, but, I hate looking at how much time I can pour into the game so easily.  I also pretty much avoid guilds (the only guilds I’ve been in are family guilds, or one that was Gamer Zone related.)  Why?  Because then people expect you to play all the time.

WoW is mostly a single-player experience for me.  For social playing, well, I just play with Lance (or at one time with Heather).  Now that I’m a high level character, I decided to join a guild.  The first one was a bust – not enough people, so the stuff Lance and I wanted to get into wasn’t available.

The second attempt at joining a guild was more interesting.  I HATE the social aspect of the game most of the time, mainly because people take this game way too fucking seriously.  I mean really, this isn’t a job.  This isn’t life or death.  No one is gonna die in real life if the priest misses a heal in a raid.  The fate of nations does not hang in the ballance here. 

But damn, you play with some people and you’d swear that wasn’t the case.  I play well with Lance because if we die, we die – we usually laugh about it quite a bit if we do.  If I miss killing a target and Lance dies because of it, no biggie.  But I’ve heard people back in the Gamer Zone days just go BALLISTIC when someone messes up.

So I join up with this second guild and the first run we go on isn’t going well.  The game glitches, and the warrior is knocked through a wall into never-neverland.  We wipe out multiple times.  People made mistakes.

And no one even got the least bit riled up about it.  We were all laughing and having a good time. 

Now THAT is how the game should be played.  No stress – just a nice bit of escapism played with other people. 

It’s strange for me to say this but – I’m kinda proud of my stupid little character.   MidnightMoo is now level 70, and is starting to have the “Big Toys” in the game that you can get.  I’ve ran a couple of dungeons with the guild, and now have better toys to play with.  Instead of a horse (well, actually, I’m a Tauren (Cow) – Taurens don’t ride horses.  Taurens ride something that looks like it’s a cross breed between a dinosaur and a buffalo.) I’ve now got a flying mount to ride on.  Amazing how much effort you can go through just to achive some really stupid goals in that game – and how good it can make you feel to achieve them on a day where everything else is going wrong.  (Which is the inherent danger in World of Warcraft – when the world sucks, you can easily climb in it to get a quick fix of making things go right.  But it’s like drugs – you can climb in there, and stay there… and wonder why you didn’t get anything done the next day 🙂