Signs of a newly formed habit

I’ve been feeling a bit *blech* lately.  I wake up feeling like I never went to bed and then end up being lethargic all day.  Work has been nuts so I don’t have much time to sit still, but I just feel like I’m moving much more slowly than I should.

As a side effect of being so busy at work and then being so worn down when I get home, I hardly exercised at all last week.  I ate like crap because it was easier to pick something up on the way home than it was to cook.

And truth be told, I hardly even thought about it.

Yesterday, the veil of exhaustion started to lift.  I’m still run down.  I ended up being an hour late to work today because I slept through all 3 of my alarm clocks.  Yup, I have 3 of them.  I woke up at 8:30 and did that panic rush to get ready and sat down at my desk at 9.

Fortunately, I work so much OT that I don’t claim that my boss looks the other way on the rare occasions when I am late.

At least part of the reason I overslept was because of the fact that I am starting to emerge from the fog.

I left work at 4 yesterday because I didn’t get a chance to take a lunch.  I got home around 4:30 and ate some dinner.  After eating, I sat down on the couch to relax a few before working out.  I promptly fell asleep.

I woke up at 7 in a complete fog.  I desperately wanted to work out, but my guild was running a retro raid that I really wanted to attend.  They were doing the Fire and Ice quest and I had spent a good chunk of time this weekend wrapping up my Speak like a Dragon quest so I could go along.  I already had most of the runes, but I needed the ones in the Obelisk and I didn’t even have access to the front door.

It took a couple of visits and a bit of time, but I finally summoned the creator, got my shards, and finished up by getting the shards in solusek’s eye.  A little running around and I had the quest for Fire and Ice.

Not knowing if or when they would do this questline again, I decided to log on rather than work out.

There were some quest bugs along the way.  When we reached the zone instance in Thundering Steppes, for instance, all 4 groups got zoned into different instances.  Since most of the force was mentored down, we just let all 4 groups run their own instance.  I think 1 group unmentored to do it, but my group and the other 2 just did it as we were.

We went through to rezzing Vox… which was funny because we killed her first.  She was up, so what the hell?  By the time the quest updated, I had gained AA #179.

Once we wrapped up, it was 9:30 for me.  I got asked if I wanted to do a quick Anathema run for the daily double.  I agreed with the statement that I hoped we would set a speed record because I needed to get to bed.  Before the clock flipped over to 10, I had turned in both the single and double quest and was camping out in the guild hall.

The whole time, there was a voice inside nagging me about not working out.  For the first time in over a week, I felt halfway human again and “needed” to exercise.

At 10:15, I was in my workout clothes and chugging away on the Bowflex working up a sweat.

It was a great workout and I’m definately feeling it today.  Of course, that also means that when 11 PM rolled around and I was through with my workout, my heart rate was up.

I sat on the floor, closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing in an effort to bring my heart rate back down.  After maybe 10 minutes, I felt my pulse slowing down and my body working its way down to a level where I could get some sleep.

I got up, threw my sweaty clothes in the hamper, and went to take a quick shower before going to bed.  It was then, and only then, that I remembered I had pulled my sheets off yesterday morning to wash them and hadn’t yet made the bed back up.

Putting sheets on my bed is like wrestling a rhino hopped up on Red Bull.  The mattress is oversized and thick (but extremely comfortable) and the sheets always seem to be just a hair too small.  It’s kind of like trying to stuff an elephant into a pair of jeans.

By the time the bed was made, I had a fresh sweat built up and my heart was going again.  I jumped in the shower, hosed off, dried off, and climbed into bed.

And couldn’t sleep or even keep my eyes closed.

I ended up flipping the light on and reading until just before 3 in the morning.

So, as you can clearly see, I was late to work today PURELY because of the Speak as a Dragon quest.  Yup… sounds right to me.

My boss, however, is having a difficult time following that logic.  He’s still struggling with the question, “What exactly is an MMO again?”

It could take some time for me to exonerate myself of any wrong doing.

Another busy day

Things are just crazy right now.  It is hard to find the time to post.

Things are still active in EQ2… lots of shard runs, new HQ’s completed, new instances defeated, and new raids attended.  One of these days, I’ll find the time to do more regular posting.

Bass-friggin-ackwards

Since we finally got a new dirge into the guild, I felt that maybe I would finally have a bit of freedom to play around with my AA’s and maybe, just maybe, find a loadout that would maximize DPS for my group.

I spent hours this weekend reading through the AA lines trying to figure out where I could drop lines I didn’t really use and boost lines that would benefit my group.  I tried doing searches for dirge AA line suggestions, but there is little actual help out there to be had.  Mostly I found whining, crying and bitching at every link I went to.

Annoyed at the state of the various message boards, I decided to take a shower to clean off the grime and then go back to trying to figure it out on my own.

After quite a bit of time reading the lines and watching my stats as I shifted AA’s around, I decided that I finally had it.  Not only did I think this was a good build, I thought it was a GREAT build.  If I was right, the DPSers in my group would notice a significant increase to their parse.

Proud of my achievement, I let everyone know to pay particular attention to their parse and let me know if they noticed any difference.

The first thing that happened is I got criticized from dropping Bladedance.  Well, “criticized” is a harsh word.  I didn’t get criticized.  I did, however, notice a slight edge of panic as several people asked, “No more Bladedance?!?”

The funny part is that I have slowly been weening people off of bladedance.  Initially, I removed my macro announcing that it was being cast.  When people would expect it and ask, “Did you cast Bladedance?” I would tell them that yes I had but I had just deleted my macro.  Slowly, over time, I would decrease the number of times I would actually cast it until, eventually, I wasn’t casting it at all.  It has been weeks, if not months, since I have actually used Bladedance, but people are still CONVINCED that I have to have it at all times.

The first test came on a raid.  It was a raid that involves a lot of being stiffled and tossed around, so it wasn’t the best test ever.  I did, however, notice a difference.

We have 2 swashies in the guild.  One of those 2 is the top parser on 99.9% of the fights in both a raid and in a group.  The #2 parser, and the only person that sometimes replaces him in the top spot, is a coercer.  Our second swashie, who is rarely in my group, doesn’t always make the top 5.

On this raid, when I was expecting my new AA spec to send my group through the roof, our top DPSing swashie, who was in my group, was landing around #3 on the list nearly every fight.  Our other swashie, who doesn’t always even make the list, was the top spot nearly every fight. 

Granted, she was with our new dirge, but he and I have compared gear, CA’s and everything else EXCEPT AA’s.  My gear is better with the exception of the fact that he has his mythical.  We both have an equal number of masters in our buff CA’s.  He has one I don’t and I have one he doesn’t.  He has about 35 fewer AA’s than I do.

And his group was out-damaging mine.

Last night, we went out grouping.  During the first few minutes of the group, the swashie sent me a tell saying, “I don’t know.  I think my DPS has actually decreased over what it used to be.”  Later on, he said, “Now it looks like it is back to normal.  Maybe I was imagining the decrease.”

Keep in mind here… by my best estimation, there should have been a MARKED increase in DPS by everyone.  I have an AA line that is supposed to increase the effectiveness of all CA’s and spells of those in my group.  Before re-working my AA’s, I had 4 points into that ability which set the modify percentage at around 20%.  With this new load, I maximized that AA and the percentage jumped to about 55%.

My understanding is either WAY off or I just suck in general.

I’m leaning towards the latter.  Fewer expectations that way. 

Ah, nuts

I had a bout of nostalgia last night.  I had a deep down urge to hook up the very old Sega Genesis and take a spin through some old games.

I actually don’t consider the Genesis all the old or the games old school really, but I know for a lot of people, it is and they are. 

I had the fantastically unpopular and poor selling CDROM attachment for the Genesis console and it turned out that some of my favorite games for that system came on the CDROM.

That machine has been with me for years… enduring many moves and seeing countless hours of use.  Some time back, I quit playing it very often so I quit hooking it up.  I always kept it around though because I knew I would want to revisit some of those games at some point in time.

Last night, the urge hit.  I opened the box and dug that old faithful machine out.  I untangled all the cords and hooked it up to the television.

As I poured over the stacks of cartridges and CDROM’s, I contemplated which game to play first.  Finally, with a smile, I pulled out the CDROM for Lunar.

I opened the CDROM lid, placed the game carefully in place, closed the lid, and hit the power switch.

The television blinked to the familiar gray-white that indicated the Sega was about to take over, the CDROM gave a flash of red… and then nothing.

I checked all the connections and power cords and verified that the cartridges still work, but I was unable to breath any life into that old CDROM.

Fortunately, the games that were my favorites from the Sega CD years were re-released on the PS1 years later and I picked those up.  To the best of my knowledge, my PS1 still works.

The games were slightly altered for the PS1 though and just like anything else, there is just no substitute for the original.

With any luck, I’ll be able to figure out a way to repair that CDROM.  If not, I may be the first person to ever cremate a console system and scatter its ashes at sea.

“Good” timing

Yesterday was my father’s birthday.  I got home from work and called to wish him a happy birthday and to chat for a bit, but I got his answering machine.  While leaving a “witty” message, the damn machine hung up on me.

I called back and left a more normal message and the machine actually let me finish.

Everyone’s a critic.

I got online a bit late and was immediately invited to a Crucible instance.  Now that some of us have finished the Darkmail Gauntlets, we are trying to help others along.

We worked our way through the Crucible and saw lots of crappy to mediocre diety food drop from the various chests.  Still, it was a fun clearing and really close to flawless.

When we got to the last named, we killed him pretty easily.  We got him pulled and controlled and kept the book spawns to a minimum.  He gets down to 5% and my phone starts ringing.  I dash through the apartment to grab the phone, but I can’t find it.  The ringer is taunting me by accoustically being everywhere and no where at once.  My memory is in on the joke completely refusing to remember where I left the damn thing.

From across the apartment, I hear stunned exclamations pouring through my speakers.  “Damn!  That is freaking NICE!  I’ve never seen that drop here before.”

Over and over, on and on the awe stretched as I frantically searched for my phone.

I finally found it, snapped it open, and said hello as I dashed back through the apartment.  I arrived just in time to miss the loot timer, so I didn’t see what dropped.

I turned my attention to the conversation with my father.  It was a very pleasant conversation and I was pleased to hear he had experienced a wonderful birthday.

We spoke for about an hour.  By the time I got back to my computer, the chat message for what had been in that chest was long gone and I couldn’t find it in the guild tool.

Something amazing dropped… amazing enough that some of my better equipped guild mates were moved to open expressions of awe and amazement.

Either that or it was a wooden chest and they were just messing with me.  We love pulling pranks on each other.

Like when that monk master dropped over the weekend and, while our monk was going on and on about what an incredible upgrade it was for him, I “needed” it and then held it for ransom when I won the roll.

We’re assy like that.