Coffee and Tabasco Cheezits AKA “The Perfect Lunch”

{ February 10, 2009 @ 1:02 pm } · { EQ2, Life, Randomness }
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So, I’m sitting here eating the daily dose of tabasco flavored cheezits and sipping the remenants of my mornings coffee.  Nutrition?  What can I say, I’m a sucker for taste.

Last night’s run through Maiden’s was fun… because it had been a long time (like 2 months) since I’d been there.  I’m also enjoying how casual my playtime has felt lately.  It’s nothing for SS to clear 95% of the instances in the game, so now it has just become a grind to get that rare piece of loot from Named-X… Raid participation is always fun too, and being near the top of the parse keeps it interesting… there are constantly 4 others fighting for the top spot, and snagging it at least once per raid is quite rewarding, especially being a warlock as I’ve always heard “Warlocks really only excel on AE fights…” Psha I say!

Oh, and I gave into peer pressure… I ordered Guitar Hero World Tour for PS3…  since EVERYONE has it now I had to.  I have to be able to say “Yeah, I can play that on hard…”  right now all I can say is “Only played for 30 seconds at wal-mart.  In fact, I think I might stop there on my way home today and play for a bit, haha.  My order should arrive Monday, if not sooner.  That is, unfortunately, the one flaw I can find with Amazon.  Yes, I am an Amazon Fanboy….  I buy through it.  I sell through it.  I don’t buy ANYTHING before reading reviews left on product pages…  ahem, back to the flaw… sellers are not required to provide tracking information!  Amazon sets an “expected arrival” date… but that’s it.

Okay, back to work.

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Altaholics Anonymous

{ February 4, 2009 @ 10:03 am } · { EQ2 }
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It seems like all of Second String is playing an alt right now.  So….. I started an alt too. Snapples, lvl 25 bruiser, is now the little brother of Snappe.  I figure, most of my friends refer to Snappe as Snapples anyway, so the name fit.  I’m also greatly enjoying playing a different type of class.  Mobs die a little more slowly on the bruiser, but I have a higher survivability rate than when I’m on Snappe…  I played a monk to 65 (when that was the max) in EQ1, so I’ve always really enjoyed the playstyle and fun you can have with Feign Death!

Tonight we’re hitting up Palace of the Ancient One.  This is pretty exciting because, as far as I know, nobody in our guild has even entered the zone.  Maybe someone has just for disco, or to play around get killed… but other than that /shrug.  Even if we only get 1 named down (hopefully at least 2) we all know what type of gear they drop… Most likely anything that drops WILL be an upgrade for someone.  That’s always rewarding.

Well, since I’m not as verbous as some people, this is where today’s update finds it’s ending.

Walking in a winter wonderland!

{ January 29, 2009 @ 11:05 am } · { Life }
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No, I’m not talking about doing Crucible the other night with Second String… I’m talking about the snow/ice storm that’s hit us.  When you hear 1.5 – 2 inches of ice accumulated over 2 days, you think “Pft, that’s not much!”.. but when you hear it’s knocked out power for over 1 million people??  Yeah, it’s been pretty nasty.  Roads are bad, and there’s absolutely no Dept. of Transportation here in Arkansas, therefore what falls stays until it melts.  That’s not to say the city isn’t putting out sand and salt, but that will only help so much.  So, I’m back at work today, but it still seem slow.  We’ve had my parents and brother staying with us since Tuesday night when they lost electricity.  We were fortunate enough to not lose power at all, sure it flickered once or twice, but never went out completely.  Oops.  Things gettin busy around here, more to come later.

Travenro The Skygazer – we knew him all too well.

{ January 27, 2009 @ 9:22 am } · { EQ2 }
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Now he is dead!  Which means… Snapples got his Mythical!  Wewt!  Huge thanks to Crimson Dragons and all my buds in Second String!  We rocked it.  Single pulled Travenro, fumbled with Silverwing until we understood the strat, then moved on the Phara Dar and single pulled him.  All in all, it was an awesome run.  Heck, we’ve had nothing but awesome runs lately.

On another note, it’s icy outside!  I stayed home to work remotely and now the power is flickering (it is at work too) but hopefully it doesn’t go out.  Then I’ll be without ANYTHING to do… (/goes to charge the psp)

So that’s it.  All of SSG1 is now Mythical.  90% of the CD core raid force is Mythical… Can’t wait to see what happens next!

Today is the day!!!

{ January 26, 2009 @ 9:55 am } · { EQ2 }
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Yeah!!! Hmm… wonder what will happen?  Oh yeah, Travenro the Skygazer is gonna die!  He’s the last update I need for my mythical too!

What a night…

{ January 24, 2009 @ 12:24 pm } · { EQ2 }
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So last night we went back to VP not entirely sure of what to expect… except some fun!  We had high hopes of continued progression, but like I already mentioned… we weren’t sure what that was going to look like.  See below for the outcome.
1. Taskmaster– Dead (first pull)
Updates – Coercer
2. Milyex Vioren– Dead (first pull)
Updates – Brigand
3. Xygoz – Dead (first pull)
Updates – Dirge
Updates – Swashbuckler
4. Cinderwasp Queen– Dead (first pull)
Updates – Warden
5. Qunard Ashenclaw– Dead (first pull)
Updates Berzerker
6.Hoshkar– Dead (first pull)
Updates – Paladin
Updates – Templar
Updates – Mystic
Updates – Defiler
Updates – Conjurer

On to the 3rd wing!
1. Travenro the Skygazer
Updates – Warlock
2. Silverwing
Updates – Guardian
Updates – Bruiser
Updates – Illusionist
3. Shade of Khalan Dar
Updates – Monk
Updates – Ranger (1 of 2)
4. Shade of Phara Dar
Updates Ranger (2 of 2)

That’s right, we went from Druushk all the way through 2nd wing first pulling everything.  Not bad for our first time through.  Only a few guildies had been that far before, so this was quite an achievement.  Grats to everyone in Crimson Dragons that got their Mythicals and especially grats to my  Second String buddies…


Castillion
Worknemangel
Rhesus
Sinnir
on all your new shinies!!!

Nexona down!

{ January 23, 2009 @ 12:02 pm } · { EQ2 }
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Nexona is dead! Crimson Dragons did it!  It was awesome!  Such a clean pull too!

Nexona Down!

Nexona Down!

Okay, enough exclaimation.  Seriously though, few failed pulls, and then success.  Funny thing was our successful pull took less time than the previous and we only got her to ~50% on that pull!  The guild really seems to be pulling together and it’s obvious the leadership is getting serious about things.  Not to say they weren’t before, as I understand it there has been a significant amount of -redefining- occuring behind the scenes.  Second String came in right as some others were leaving, more specifically a key raid leader.  At least that’s my understanding.

What’s next? I’m glad you asked!

1. Taskmaster
Updates – Coercer
2. Milyex Vioren
Updates – Brigand
3. Xygoz
Updates – Dirge
Updates – Swashbuckler
4. Cinderwasp Queen
Updates – Warden
5. Qunard Ashenclaw
Updates Berzerker
6.Hoshkar
Updates – Paladin
Updates – Templar
Updates – Mystic
Updates – Defiler
Updates – Conjurer

On to the 3rd wing!
1. Travenro the Skygazer
Updates – Warlock
2. Silverwing
Updates – Guardian
Updates – Bruiser
Updates – Illusionist
3. Shade of Khalan Dar
Updates – Monk
Updates – Ranger (1 of 2)
4. Shade of Phara Dar
Updates Ranger (2 of 2)

Yeah, not much right? Well, fortunately we’ve got 4 raid nights scheduled, all for this instance!  Guilds on farm status here can clear it in 2 nights.. start to finish… Well, we’re not there just yet, but I figure we can maybe do half of 2nd wing tonight and half Monday.  Then at least get a good ways into 3rd wing the next 2 raids (Wednesday and Friday).

I hope, because Travenro the Skygazer is my last update for my mythical!!!

Thursday:: Between rupture and rapture

{ January 22, 2009 @ 8:06 am } · { EQ2, Life }
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So it’s thursday… yes it is.  After a few hours in VP last night we got Nexona down to about 54%.  We’re getting close!  We’re still getting all our ducks in a row.  This has got to be the most complex fight I’ve seen so far.  There is a lot of responsibility spread accross the raid and timing becomes an issue.  Got some computer parts in last night to work on another pc for a friend.  I’ve had his pc at my house for nearly 3 months now, but there was an issue of it working half the time and me trying to correct strange errors in XP, and then it not working (motherboard died) so I needed to order new parts just to get it back to a workable state.  Anyways, just waiting to hear from him now if he wants to salvage any data from the HDD, I hope not… I just want to reformat that bastage.

Oh yeah, vp pic:

EQ2 Veeshan's Peak

EQ2 Veeshan's Peak

On another note::

We launched (semi-officially) secondstringinc.com yesterday!!! Check it out.

3.5 Floppy – They still make those?

{ January 21, 2009 @ 8:49 am } · { Life }
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Last night I went to my parent’s house to work on their computer. It wasn’t a huge fix, it just needed to be reformatted. The only issue is that the motherboard is about 4 years old and requires manufacturer drivers to recognize the SATA HDD outside of an operating system (during XP install at least). No biggie, I’ve done this process at least 25 times. Wait, where’s the diskette with the drivers? 1 hr later I had managed to trudge my way through all the pop ups and spyware and found the only link on the entire internet to the appropriate drivers. Download, restart, F6 F6 F6… ok that worked… now Quick NTFS… ERROR ERROR ERROR… Okay, let’s try that again. I read online it could be a ram issue, so I figured I’d slow the ram timings down just to see if that helped. Changed CAS Latency to 3 from 2.5 and decided to do the standard NTFS formatting. FINALLY.

So, after 2 months procrastination their computer is usable once again.

Did I mention my brother and I got to try out the new SKATE 2 demo during the install process? I love games where you get points for nearly killing yourself. I think a quick review of that game will be grounds for another post.

After smashing face on the PS3 for about an hour, eating cookies, and talking about the current state of the economy and whether or not we should refinance now or in 6 months… we decided to head home. After all that you’d think my night would be over, but it wasn’t. I jumped on EQ2 just to see what was up and found that NONE of Second String G1 was online! (Tay was on Danniel) but my friend’s list was bare… unusual. Hope everyone is still alive! Anyhow, I was about to log when Stormraven asked if I wanted to join a group for a quick TSO run. We ended up doing OOA, and cleared the whole thing with only 3 deaths (my own). I decided to go all out without holding back just to see my parse vs longevity of life. Apparently there seems to be something at work behind the scenes.

if(warlockDPS > 4k && numOfMobs >= 3){ warlockDeath() }

Okay, that’s all for now.

P.rogrammed R.andom O.c.currence

{ January 20, 2009 @ 3:13 pm } · { EQ2 }
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So, I figure if Castillion can blog, so can I.  Last night I was late getting online, but the rest of Second String was raiding with the guild so I hung tight for a bit.  After they had finished cleaning house in PR they shot me an invite and we were off.  Anep and I finished up our Dark Mail Gauntlets HQ.  I was pleasantly suprised because I had misread the effect as only +5 casting speed and neglected to see that there is also +5% base damage!  Now, I’m still trying to see if these will be a definite upgrade from my Elucidated Manaweave Gloves, I mean… if it weren’t a proc, definitely – but it’s hard to say.  Only the parse will tell. So, that’s about it for now.

After further contemplation, I think I’m leaning the Dark Mail Gauntlets being an upgrade.  The +75 spell damage will add to my parse even though I’m losing +3 spell casting throughout a fight… to drive the point home further, with the Shiney Metallic Robe putting me at 100% spell casting at least 2 times a fight… is ~1.5% throught the whole fight really worth it?  (I’m no mathematician, but losing 3% for 5% part of the time has got to equal out to less than 1.5% for the duration of a fight…/shrug) Darn procs.