T’weren’t nothin’
Root canal is over and done with. Through all of the horror stories and memories I had of family members lying in bed moaning in pain after a root canal, the whole thing was anti-climactic. The only part that hurt was paying for it once it was over and done with. My dental insurance didn’t cover the whole thing.
My co-workers, being ever-so-cheerful, started going on and on when I got back to work about, “Yeah, well, wait until all the shots wear off. THEN you’re going to feel some pain.” The shots wore off about 2 hours ago. There is some throbbing, but I’ve hurt myself worse while asleep.
I don’t know. It could be the simple fact that I hurt myself so frequently that things like this just don’t bother me. More likely, the technique for performing this procedure has vastly improved over the years and it is not nearly as traumatic as it used to be.
I can feel it to be sure, but I wouldn’t say it hurts. I just finished eating lunch and I didn’t have any difficulty eating. There is no swelling, so no chipmunk jokes or Godfather references are available to my co-workers.
I think they are definately disappointed.
I didn’t OD on EQ2 this weekend like I did last weekend. Much of this weekend was spent studying and preparing for my exam that is coming up this next Saturday. I took 2 practice exams and failed both. The first I failed quite miserably. The second one, I failed only by a couple of points.
The annoying fact is that I am not missing questions because I don’t know them. I am missing them because some of these questions are designed to trick you. One of the questions that I missed was as follows:
Your mother recently upgraded her old PC from Windows XP to Windows Vista Home Basic edition. After seeing a friend running Aero, your mother decided that she wants you to upgrade her version of Vista to a version that supports Aero. You buy the upgrade pack and start the installation. In the process, you realize that her graphics adapter will not support the Aero interface. Upon completion of the upgrade process, what is the first thing you should do?
A) Purchase and install a new grahpics adapter.
B) Update her graphics driver through Windows update.
C) Check the manufacturer website for a newer driver.
D) Register with Microsoft.
Granted, I just scanned the question, thought about it from a technician point of view, and answered it that way. However, the answer was D. When I went to the explanation page, it said, “You were asked to update the OS to a version that supports Aero… not get Aero working. D is the correct answer because the next step of the upgrade process is to register the software.
My only thought was, “Any technician that got hired on to do a job where they knew why the person wanted to upgrade and then approached this situation in this way would QUICKLY lose a customer.”
Oh well.
During study breaks, I did pop into EQ2 a bit. Saturday was a short crafting day. I leveled my provisioner and jeweler and took Rao out harvesting for about a half hour, but nothing more than that.
Sunday, after taking a new practice exam and scoring much better, I decided to take a break from studying and have some fun.
I fired Raynar and Fuzzlewump up and headed off to Lesser Faydark and began questing there. I knocked out quite a few of the quests over on the Greater Faydark side and did 4 Kelethin writs for Fuzz (Ray can’t take them being evil and all). Fuzz was also able to complete a couple of the quests from the Fae Court in LFay just in the course of the running around I was doing. The end result is that another experience gap has appeared between Ray and Fuzz. I keep getting them even and then they separate again. Right now, there is about a 20% gap in there.
My guild buddy sent me a tell while I was off hitting LFay and we met up to run through the Meldrath instance in Steamfont again. It was a rich night in there. All but one of the bosses dropped an exquisite chest. The last dropped an ornate. I upgraded one of my weapons and my friend got his hands on quite a few items that he can transmute to work on his skills. I’ll have to take a screenie of Ray wielding his new spear. Freaking thing is huge. It kind of reminds me how the old Primal Spear looked from Sleeper’s Tomb.
Once finished there, we hit the instance in Klak’Anon. Technically, we shouldn’t have even tried. My guys were 53, his defiler was 56 and his pally was mentored down to 56. These mobs were almost exclusively triple heroics 58 and above.
Still, we did well. We had a couple of bad pulls that nearly resulted in a messy situation, but we were able to come out of it just fine. Towards the end, when we destroyed the power cells and got that boss, we ran into our first roadblock. That AE that dude fires off was destroying us. We wiped on him twice. The third time, we decided to change strategies just a bit. I changed from concentrating on my brigand and just timing my nukes with Fuzz to going mostly to auto-attack on Raynar and chain nuking hell with Fuzz.
Third time was the charm and he went down… freaking FAST. He only got that AE off twice. It was a good fight. Of course, after 2 wipes and us actually contemplating waiting until we were a little higher in level, he dropped a wooden chest with monkey crap inside.
The rest of the instance was a cake-walk. The last 2 named, the King and the big wall-hangy robot thing, both died easily and we got our reward and left.
Once that was done, I decided to finish off my Dwarven Work Boots HQ that I had been dragging my feet on. It was only 27 levels trivial. I was up to Rotweed in Stormhold and was very lucky that he was up already when I got there. I ran into some trouble getting the update from the mature antelope. I know where to find those and never have to wait for them to spawn, but they just wouldn’t update. I finally got it and took the supplies to that halfling in Thundermist Village. While I was waiting for her to update, I went and started the PGT HQ and got partially through that by the time the update popped.
One of the great things about having 2 accounts with toons spread out across levels and locations is that I never have to hunt for someone to mentor for a turnin. So, I moved toons around, mentored, and got my turn-ins done.
I’m not sure how much playing I’ll get done this week. I’m at zero-hour for my test. I have to do some hard and fast prep-work for my test this week, so my gaming will most likely be limited to checking brokers and maybe a harvest run or two.
Oh well. At least Ray and Fuzz will get their vitality built back up before next weekend. That’s always nice.
