Monday, December 18, 2006

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow..

I don't pvp much, but this certainly looks fun =p

NOOOO WAYYYY

ZOMEGADEMONCHAOS. There may yet be hope for the Dodo. To think, it only took a massive historic power outage.... Next step: WoW?? Maybe if we found life on Mars.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

_____ : It's what's for dinner

To the people coming to the nice little BBQ here in Houston:

What would you like to see Kung Grill? So far, we have chicken, beef, beef burgers, corn, potatoes.
We are thinking about maybe some Salmon or Pork ribs.

Just think of some other foods that you wanna try and Kung will grill it. Be reminded that if you request a food then you MUST eat it. Itching for some grilled Bald Eagle? Well, if somehow I manage to get some and grill it, you better eat it.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Tier 2

I have finally picked up my first piece of Tier 2. It started with the Tier 0 SNES. Afterwards, I was able to do the Tier .5 upgrade to PS. Then I picked up two pieces of Tier 1. One was at half price (Bought used PS2, complained it was broken, got new replacement PS2), and the other one was free (exploitable MS tests FTW!). Now finally, I have purchased a brand new Tier 2 Xbox360 from a member of the evil empire who will remained unnamed. This person also promised a free copy of Gears of War to seal the deal.....how nefarious.

Apparently, also included in the bundle is Viva Pinata. This game masquerades as a children's game, but I got the inside scoop from unnamed member of evil empire.

These pinatas seem cute but DO NOT BE FOOLED. They are actually vicious cannibals who devour each other in a battle for survival of the fittest. The fittest then get to have incestuous relationships with their fellow brother and sister pinatas to produce pinata offspring. You would think that the best pinata would retire to a luxurious existence surrounded by beautiful pinata cousins, but NO. They get sent to the execution house also known as children's party. At this "party" they are strung up by their necks, then brutally beaten by blunt objects repeatedly until their bodies explode. These "children" then greedily gather up the pinata's internal organs, and hungrily devour them in a violent ritual, often times getting high and causing untold destruction.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

A Brief Poll

As most people know, there will be a Raid of Houston going on this New Years. Lots of people should be coming, so I am just trying to plan out what sorta activities we will be doing. Here is what is set in stone atm:

January 1st: Hunt down various gentle woodland creatures from Randalls/Walmart. Visciously skin them, grill them, and devour their corpses. Kung will serve as master of the grill. Expecting about 14-15 people here, so it should be a good time. If any druids object, too bad. I personally do not drink, but I am sure some of you do, so whatever you all want, lemme know so I can pick it up.

January ??: Have dim sum at the Kim Sum next to my house. Probably need to get there a bit early so we won't have to wait too long.

That's about all I have that is set in stone. Other things to consider:

Kemah Boardwalk: This place is pretty nice, has some nice views but mostly, it's just a shopping district with some very nice restaurants. It has some rides and stuff as well.

Space Center Houston: Oh yay, Space the final frontier. These are the voyages of the blah blah blah. This place is pretty interesting for first time visitors, but it's a bit too kiddy museum-esque. This will probably be an all day affair if we decide to go as it's FARRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr (Mmm, Deviate delight) away.

Galveston Island: Fun place, lots of beach and surf. However, this is the dead of winter and so, going to the beach may not be the best of ideas. Also, very far away.

Museums and stuff around Houston Area: Any of these are fair game. Most of them are fairly nice. Personally, I really have no gift for artistry, nor do I know how to truly appreciate it enough to enjoy Art Museums.

Sightseeing in Houston: Ummm, see this, take a good look. Done? Good, you've seen Houston, Congrats.

Board games/Card games/Video games: We have lots of fun party games to play, including Taboo, Pictionary, Cranium, etc etc. Card games: Mafia (Random, Senseless Killing, so awesome), Bang! (Random, Meaningful Killing), maybe some others. Video games. I am gonna pick up an Xbox360 and Patronus will be bringing some of her games so it should all work out.

Please lemme know what you all wanna do ahead of time so I can plan it out and stuff (Sheep Star, Sleep Triangle, Sap Circle, Kill X, etc etc). If there are other places or events you all wanna go to (Bowling, Achery, Basketball, Movies, Giving Me all your money) let me know as well. Hopefully this will be a blast for everyone and maybe we can make this some kinda annual event.

With no power, comes no responsibility...sweet

Apparently, there was a miscommunication of some type and it turns out that I am actually NOT the Best Man for this upcoming wedding. Papaya's brother, SourTomato, will actually be the Best Man. This makes sense, since he is the brother and all. I am actually just a groomsmen. I won't have to sweat over making a speech anymore....though that might be for Papaya's benefit ^^b

Friday, December 08, 2006

Reservation: Confirmed

Yay, Patronus has confirmed her flight for Houston. Looks like it's shaping up to be a nice little gathering. Change your plans Grapes, change them NOW! =)

Thursday, December 07, 2006

sunortaP: noitnettA

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Edit: Well, apparently, the peer pressure tactic is working and Catnipped is now trying as hard as she can to get tickets to come on down to Houston. While her penny-pinching asian conscience is still nagging at her to not purchase those tickets, I am sure the elaborately spending American cultural influence will prevail. Come on Grapes, I KNOW you wanna come on down too now =p

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Aftermath

As expected, the servers were down for much longer than initially stated. I think overall, the patched introduced some very good concepts:

The Good:
Arenas: Haven't tried, don't PvP so no real opinion
New Talents: For the most part, the new talents were very good. I didn't actually get to experiment too much except on mage.
Empowered frostbolt is a tremendously awesome talent. I was criting so much with spells, it was rather surprising.
Water Elemental seems like a very good "offtanking" pet sorta deal. It actually does very good damage with the waterbolts it was tossing (~500 average, ~800 crits) and has surprisingly decent tanking ability.
Additional Bank slots are now capped at 25 gold. This is just awesome as storage has always been a problem.
Balance druids got a major boost in this patch. I was watching Molridia in action, and only with a paltry amount of spell damage (~110), she was doing ~400 wraths (700 crits) and ~800 Starfires (~1300 crits). Plus the INSANE mp5 from Dreamstate (10% of intellect) helped keep her mana from going down rapidly. I believe we may have to rename the "Oomkin" to the "Pwnkin".
Purchasable "book" skills: The skills that were previously only available through books are now fully trainable from trainers. I am SOOO glad I didn't pay those ~200-300 gold buyouts for the new skills.
Armor upgrades: Most plate pieces had their AC significantly boosted. Items that add to defense, also had this increased by quite a bit. While I think this is because the formula has changed and you need more defense to mitigate criticals, it's still a solid boost.

The Smern (Bad):
Threat Reduction nerf: I am not sure if this is a bug, or if 20% less threat is just THAT significant. But I was easily pulling agro off the MT with frostbolts. I could usually start dps with 1 sunder and if the tank continued sundering, I could dps the entire time (crits included) and not pull agro. However, last night in BRD, I would start dps at 3 sunders, and if the first hit was a crit, I would instantly rip agro off the MT. This happened many many times.
Hunter Agility->RA normalization: 1 point of agility only gives 1 ranged attack now. This was actually quite a severe change as now, my hunter who previous had around 1100 RA has been dropped down to ~ 980. This makes items like tarnished elven ring not nearly as good as they used to be. +Agility enchant effectiveness is also effectively cut in half.
AQ20 loot: The only real reason to run AQ20 was for the class books. The loot for the most part is pretty lackluster. I am hoping Blizzard ups their loot tables.


The Ethereal Tabard (Vomit-inducing):
Addons: As expected, this patch broke just about every addon. While some have already been updated, many very useful mods remain incompatible: Gatherer, SmartAssist, SmartBuff, Lockbox, Decursive, Itemsync, Theorycraft just to name a few.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

FFXIII

No, not a typo, here is the trailer for FFXIII. Finally, a female protagonist main lead. First one since FFVI. (No, Fanfare Fantasy X-2 does not count)

Respec

Since the 41 point talents are made available today for WoW. Here is how I plan to spec my characters:

Cattie: Not as mana efficient as my previous build, but I do regain Ice Barrier and Improved Blizzard. Empowered Icebolt should make up for the lost damage/crit from losing arcane instability.
Lans: Lose Blessing of Sanctuary, but overall healing capacity is much increased
Lilis: Everyone is saying how nerfed warriors are gonna be, but I actually like this talent build a lot more, the only thing I really lose is 10 defense
Velius: No aimed shot...whee. But since aimed shot resets the autoshot timer, probably only get one of these the whole fight anyways.
Xhandra: Should be Just as effective as before
Tishani: Probably massively less direct damage than before, but much much stronger DoTs
Nadiya: Reading up on the new Balance Talents, I would really like to try a Moonkin druid and steal all the casters' spell damage gear. Molridia, give this build a try and lemme know how it works out =)

Monday, December 04, 2006

RAID!!!

It's worth mentioning here that the "Veggies" will have a meeting this year to Raid Houston! Ender, Lemon, and Tochi? (I am sure it's a fruit or veggie in some ancient dialect) edit: Tochi are already signed on. Hopefully also coming will be a few members of the newly formed OOM squad on WoW. It's gonna be around New Years and should be a good time. I am hoping this entices fellow members: Grapes and Catnip into signing on as well. A fun time would be had by all. There is plenty of bed/sofa/floor/cardboard box space for everyone!

Once we are all gathered, the plan is to Raid Houston. This probably includes just lounging around and playing video games, but still, other more active pursuits may occur: We will first clear the trash mobs to the local Walmart. Afterwards, we will "take a 5 min break" since it was soo tiring. Then after a prolonged 20 minutes of downtime, we will engage the Walmart boss known as BXox063. The main strategy will be to pull it away from it's adds, WeeWee and the PiEs3. I am hoping to call upon Catnip's expertise in this encounter.

That is just one of many different encounters, all fruits and veggies are welcome.

Thursday, November 30, 2006

Cold Snap

Why is the weather so strange here? Last night, it was a comfortable 71 F outside. I wake up this morning and it's 40s. Forecasts say the temperatures will drop below freezing later in the day. What the heck? My one hope is that it starts snowing and we all get the next week off and can sit home and play Xbox 360 all day long while looking up random Clay tidbits....like SOME people who will stay unnamed. Did I forget to mention that said SOME people also just got back from Hawaii for Thanksgiving break AND received a FREE Xb0x360 for "evaluation" purposes? Those MS people get all the benefits.

The best I can hope for is if my boss decides I should get some free barrels of crude oil to test our refining software. Yeehaw, so much better than Xbox...At least I can set them on fire to stay warm. Can your Xbox do that? I think not!!

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Karazhan

Some people have requested this movie. It basically details some of the encounters in Karazhan. Shows the "Wizard of Oz" encounter in the opera house and the Chessboard room. The opera house fight is especially cool since all the characters are there and each have their own trick.

Cowardly Lion-> Can be feared indefinitely
Scarecrow -> Vulnerability to Fire
TinMan -> Can be hit by frost based attacks to cause "rust", slowing it down by 10% and stacks up to 8 times
Dorothy -> Summons dog to fight as well as tossing around water bolts (water kills wicked witch at end, hence the water bolts)

After you kill all 5, the wicked witch spawns. The witch fight looks really cool with the whirlwinds spinning you up into the air.

Monday, November 27, 2006

Not so Potluck

What was "supposed" to be a potluck, turned into a dinner/movie type of deal. Last year, we actually had enough people to have a potluck. This year, we only had 6 people and being the lazy person that I am, I didn't want to cook a turkey (easiest thing in the world) just for that. We just decided to go to Fuddrucker and then watch Casino Royale.

One of the first things that struck me was early on in the movie, we see Bond driving around and the camera slowly pans up his shiny new car (Strangely, doesn't look like a "Bond" car). The logo slowly comes into view and it's a.........Ford? Since when did Bond drive around in a Ford? I can see it now, "OMG, I Sooo want that 2006 Ford Taurus "Bond" edition!!!" Of course, the REAL bond car is unveiled later in Montenegro.

I really need to get to the bahamas. I mean, where else can you find bikini-clad women riding around in the surf on horses while little happy children chase after them. The scene was just so ridiculous in my mind...There is a reason why cowboys ride horses in jeans and NOT shorts. It's called chafing. Even with a saddle, it still causes bruises. This lady was essentially naked and riding saddle-less.

Another interesting observation is that James Bond is probably just Wolverine in disguise. In one of the earlier scenes, his face gets horribly scratched up while trying to save a jumbo jet. In the next scene, you see his face and it seems to have open wounds and scars everywhere. However, in the next scene on a train, his face is absolutely perfect. No signs of scratches or scars anywhere! According to Blupnutmm (registered nurse now! Grats!), being defibbed is not the most pleasant feeling in the world and the person would suffer from some serious side effects for a while after the zap. Bond however, gets defibbed and is back playing poker as if nothing is wrong within minutes. As much of a WoW addict as I am, I don't think I would be able to just jump back and start playing again after a defib...well okay, maybe for Naxx or something.

Overall though, the movie was great. I loved how witty the dialog was between Bond and Vesper. It actually seemed like they were discussing on some equal level instead of the usual male-dominated Bond dialog.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

So Touching....

This is possibly the best movie of all time!! Shame on you Mol for killing all those poor innocent turtles for their scales!!!!! -_-p

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Treeform dance

I thought the moonkin dance was out of control...but this.... Might I remind people that this is supposed to be a freaking TREE. How the heck can a tree twist like that without breaking itself.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

TBC Crafts

Found some cool information here about the new stuff that can be crafted in TBC. I think the best thing ever will be the portable Mailbox. Considering I use my mailbox almost like a bank, this would be just like having a mobile bank. So awesome!!

Friday, November 03, 2006

Guitar Paragon

ZOMG.... This is just crazy, this song lasts almost 10 minutes.....I know my wrists are gonna be sooo freaking tired when I get GH2.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Change of Surroundings

My guilding experiences in WoW have been a very mixed bag at best. While I have met lots of very nice people, the endgame organization of these guilds had a lot to be desired. As such, after much thinking, I decided to try my hand at applying to a "raiding" guild. After much research, I decided to try to get into Ethereal. Two of my friends from WoW were already in it and it offered a good mix of casual game play with strong organization in Raids. I didn't know which of my billion alts to apply with since the guild was rather full on just about all classes...except druids.

To my surprise, I was actually able to get into the guild as........my Hunter. This came as quite a shock as the hunter corp was listed as full on the website. This is pretty exciting as my hunter was actually the least played, but ironically best geared of my characters at level 60. Hopefully I will get to pull MC for the new guild as I found that to be one of the most exciting parts. Otherwise, hunter is pretty boring in raids: Shoot, Aimed Shot, Shoot, Shoot, Multi Shot, Shoot -> Repeat. Maybe throw in a Feign Death midway if agro is getting out of hand.