2010 is rolling appon us fasst and its freally hard to believe that I have been out of highschool for close to 10 years now.  Seesh next year Ill be 30.  The only fasination that number holds for me is the PT test at work will get a little bit easier as I wont have to do nearly as much.  I am starting to get myself back into shape again and will start running every day.  I was doing a mandatory Saturday PT but that had been canceled till after the holiday season as alot of people wasnt showing up due to leave ect.  I myself was always showing up due to I think I have a better understanding of what mandatory means than alot of my co workers.

On a friends recomendation from work I have picked up the Wheel of TIme series by Jobert Jordan.  So far I have made my way thouhg the first 3 books and Im now just over half way though the 4th.  I looks like Im going to have to hit up the base library for books 5 though 8 and finish with barrowed books for the rest.    I didn’t realize that the base library was free and Ill probably start barrowing books from there as I really enjoy reading.

I’m from this point forward going to make a better showing of up keeping this blog.

The mount itself is fairly strait forward it consists of a back plate and a yoke for the head stock of the guitar to rest in. Mounting it to the wall was easy as well for I didn’t even need to find a stud for the kit came with wall anchors so all Ill need to do is patch the hole up with spackle for when we move out. I already need to spackle two holes up form my first attempt at hanging out TV so I need to go on and get some anyway.

Now the big reason I wanted a mount for my guitar is that it makes it far more accessible for when I want to practice with it. Instead of going to another room I just pick it up off of the wall. I love it and my guitar just looks plain awesome on the wall.

I have once again picked my guitar back up again and currently I’m going full force int learning to play it.  I have discovered that it hels to have it close by so I can strum on it when ever with out having to go into Jody’s and mine bedroom to get it.  Expecally now that we live in what amounts to a two floor condo with the bedrooms occupying the second floor.  For my fathers day present Jody is getting me some books and a wall mount for my guitar so I can just hang it near my desk and take it down when I want to play it.  Im currently having a rough time with parts of nothing else matters.  But if I can get the first 15 bars of the song down well enough then I will have Jody take a video of that and I will post it here for people to watch and listen to.

So far the new assignment is pretty cool.  I like how laid back here it is after the constant go go go of my last assignment this is a pretty big change of pace for me and the almost 2 hour lunches is extremely nice.  The only bad part of being here is the humidity but I’m adjusting to that.  When I first started running here it felt like I couldnt breath as the air is so heavy here but Im getting use to it so its getting better.  Im planning possibly starting to run every day again pretty soon as I would like to lose more of my gut and bring my run time down some more even though on my last PT test I ran my best time ever of a 11:05 mile and half.

I need to get the oil changed in the cars.  Jodys I can take pretty much anywhere but mine since I run Royal Purple 5w30 its pretty hard just to take it into some place and have them doi it.

Well Im going to start posting more here now that I am settled once again and I don’t feel like my world is about to turn totally upside down.

Nothing Else Matters

This weekend we attempted to make beef jerky, but the dehydrator that we got from sears in Santa Maria sucked ass.  We had it plugged in maybe 10 hours on Sunday starting the first batch and the trays started to crack.  Jody took it back on Monday and we ordered a new one from Sears .com which should be here in 7 to 10 days.  So I had to freeze what was left of my meat which was two small sand witch bags full.  The little bit that I did get done though turned rather well and from the sounds of it Jody will probably be buying me a roast to turn into jerky probably every payday or so.  Which is fine for by me as I really enjoy myself some Beef Jerky.  I will say I was tempted to make some in the oven and almost bought the racks but since the meat can be frozen,  Well just forget about it as I know our girls will not be able to keep their little paws out of the cracked open oven door that is required to do it in the oven.

In WoW I hit 80 on Monday as planned so my dwarf is officially signed up to Raid with the guild once again.  I was actually supposed to raid last night but with the power going out for 9+ hours or so that kinda killed that idea.  I ended up dumping a ton of gold into some gear as mostly I had a crafted epic gun and a bunch of quest greens and a few blues thrown in.  I’m working on replacing the gear that is to subpar with some BOE blues to go raiding and run heroics with, that way my DPS won’t be as subpar as it could be.  I should get to raid tonight if there isn’t another massive power outage again.  I might be able to run a heroic when I get home but that is uncertain as we have commanders call today but that should be over by 4:30 this afternoon so I should be logged in and ready to go by 5ish that would give us about an hour to kill before we have to be ready for the raid which starts at 6:30 or so and goes until 10ish.  I still hoping that my wife starts to level her shaman so that this weekend or maybe later this week I can restart my Death Knight and play with her.  Basically my plan is to vendor my current DKS’s gear and send the money to my hunter.  Reroll the toon and play with my wife from 58 onward.   I know I currently have around 900gold on my DK and he really doesn’t need much so that would be all gravy for my hunter for a while and then on my hunter start to save up for epic flying skills for my DK and will probably need to save gold to help Jody get her epic flying skill.  At lunch today I plan on finishing up my gear loadout and maybe going and looking for the rare cat a little bit.  When I get home this afternoon Ill need to talk to Rob and see what we are raiding tonight and start the process of reading strats to learn what I need to for the boss fights that we will face tonight.

Before the power went out yesterday I dropped a stack for gold for gear and gems today I need to drop a little more for training and more gear so Ill be all set.  I really need a new pair of bracers as Im still using my old level 70 PvP gear bracers. 

Tuesday night I got to raid for the first time in almost a year.  I have to say Naxx is a lot of fun we cleared the spider wing and started on the abomination wing.  We did relatively well I think Globus gave us some problems be we did eventually down him.

Wednesday night we tried to get me into some heroics but that didn’t seem to want to happen so instead I ran around doing quests and bought more gear off of the auction house.

Thrusday night I ran heroic Violet Hold and Penicial.  Afterward I ran around doing some mining and more quests as I dropped my gold supply to very low levels and wanted to get it back up to around 1k gold again.  I have to say doing daily quests still makes the gathering of gold rather easy.

Friday Night I went and played D&D with friends once again.  Kraus my wizard is now level 3 and finally I was able to do some damage with him.  We went and killed some bandits and a vampire.  This of course after I learn that our rouge is my niece and the ranger is something close to me second cousin.  Damn elves we get around rather well it seems.

Saturday I mostly lounged around the house .  I was in a lot of pain has I pulled something in my right hip and was limping around anytime I got up to go get something.  It was one of those times I wish my kids understood the phrase “Go get Daddy a MT Dew.” 

Saturday I respeced my hunter to a Survivalist more or less to keep me from wasting tons of time looking for that cat.  Did I mention I have droped a ton of gold of gear gems and enchants the last few days?  Yeh I had to regem a lot of my gear of the spec but I really like what my hunter does now in terms of damage.  If the fight is a strait up tank and spank raid buffed Im putting out over 2000+ DPS.  So Im very happy there.  Last night I also had to buy the mats in order to get my frost resistance gear made.  Plus I had to buy some gems for them and one more gem to replace my 32 ap gem with a 16 agi gem.  My build values agi over anything else as I have a talent that give me 15% more agi.  So yeah Im stacking agi as much as I can.  In a lot of ways it reminds me of when I very first started to raid with my hunter back in the days of molten core.  Back then I stacked agi like crazy as well got my agi all the way up to 800 or so raid buffed.  Now raid buffed Im over 1400 maybe closer to 1600 with about 30% crit rate.  The other thing I have learned is that hit is very important thing to have.  So now Im sporting 9.01% to hit after you put in my gear and talents.  Over all I feel I did really well in the raid last week bringing my DPS up to the point of putting me at 4^th on the DPS chart behind a mage and 3 death knights.  Jody didn’t play much at all this weekend so my death knight is mostly on hold at the moment.  Im going to go on and do the starter area really soon to at least get the knight going and be waiting for when she finally hits 58 and we can go into outland together and  level her shamy and my DK.

Monday my ID died. I couldn’t to a whole hell of a lot as I turned the issue of me not being able to log back into my computer over to our network geeks and they took most of the day in getting back to me with a fix action. Witch by noon I figured out for myself and went down to the MPF and got a new ID made. It was nice as they was wanting me to wait until the 5th or some such nonsense instead since they wasn’t busy I was able to get in just after lunch on Monday. So now I have an ID Card that will last me another year as it seems that’s about how long it takes me to wear one out. Then later that afternoon I was heading home to change for PT pulled up to my house and push the button for my Garage door to open well the door didn’t go up and I turned around and went back to the office to inform my supervisor who thankfully was still playing ping pong with his supervisor out in the high bay. But that ended up being a god send as I really didn’t want to go to PT that day and there was a contractor here that needed some help so I was able to give him a hand instead of going to PT. After work I didn’t get to play any wow as instead I went and played Dungeons and Dragons with some friends. I like getting to play D&D as it allows me to get out of the house and go be social.

In D&D I now have a level 2 elf wizard who just got a pretty sweet staff as it gives +1 to all cold spells and I was able to take a feat that gives me an additional +1 to cold and acid spells. Since those are my two main damage types that’s extremely nice to have. Also it gives me a +1 to my to hit rolls which makes it just that much easier for me to hit with my spells.

Tuesday unlike Monday’s sitting around boredom fest I was busy all day running answers to questions I had about projects and what not down. For the most part Tuesday was a pretty good day I was busy and time just seemed to fly by and I was able to do a lot of stuff.

Tuesday evening I was able to start once again heading for 80 on my dwarf hunter. Currently as of this writing I’m sitting at 77 most of the way to 78, my plan is to hit 78 tonight hopefully 79 tomorrow and 80 by the end of my 3 day weekend. (Thanks MLK) My hunter is coming along nicely enough. I did tame the ghost cat that spawns from the figurines in Auberdine and I dig the changes for hunter pets leveling. Now I no longer have to level the cat form the low teens to my level they auto level the cat to 5 levels under you. But I am currently having massive agro issues as its pretty easy for me to pull agro off of my pet since none of my pets are the same level as I am.

Well shit since I have to rewrite this from memory I’m not really sure what happened on Wednesday. But I think that’s the day that I up and decided that I was done with being pissed off at work. Mostly I have come to the conclusion of the fact I hate my job. It’s not really what I do it’s the people I do it for. My job satisifctaction is at an all time low right now mostly because this is the second time this year that I have taken a block of time off and come back to find no one has helped me out and done anything for me, but for the most part I’m chalking that up to the fact that some of the people in this unit are just lazy and the others are too busy.

Before I continue into what went on yesterday (Thursday) I will say I have smartened up and started to write this in word instead of an email least this way when I add to it I can hit save pull my ID card out of the computer and walk away.

Thursday not a whole lot did happen mostly it was a slower repeat of Tuesday for me. I did hit level 78 on my dwarf and I think I’m on track for being level 80 on Monday. I should hit 79 tomorrow. Sunday I go play D&D at 4pm so but I should have enough time to get most of the way to 80 and then on Monday hit 80. I might actually get to raid on Monday but I’m not counting on it. For the most part my Hunters gear is crap. I’m still using shoulders that I started leveling with as well as the gloves, and the rest of my gear is quest blues and greens. More than likely though it will be late afternoon Monday when I hit 80. We’ll see how it goes though so far I’m questing in Icecrown and the mobs there are harder than I’m use to.

Anyway we just got back from Canada this week. It was an ok trip I got to play a lot of video games and hang out with Jody’s Family and my girls. When at her Uncles house I downloaded the World of Warcraft Wrath of the Lich King 10 day free trial and started to play that. The day I got it I realized that I couldn’t level my hunter past 1 xp point away from 71 so I started to level a Death Knight.

Death Knights are pretty cool. They remind me heavily of paladins without direct healing spells. But they totally chew though content like crazy. The other nice thing about them is that you start at level 55 and at the end of the Death Knight Starter Area you have an epic mount a full set of blue armor weapons and all the talent points up to the 58~ish level.  One thing that I have noticed since returning to WoW is that gold seems to be extremely easy to come by at this point.  My death knight has just over 900g and my Dwarf Hunter has just over 800g on them. The Death Knight started with 0g and my dwarf started with just above 75g. Still that’s a lot of gold to be made in just over a week now. As well my Death Knight is sitting at 66 and my dwarf is sitting at 72~73.

The other thing is at least on my account we won’t be paying for it for a while as we have a World of Warcraft rewards card that had enough points on it to give me at least 2 months of free game time. As well I cast a scroll of resurrection on my wife’s account and I’ll get another 30 days of free game play from there as well. SO in all it’ll be about May ~ Juneish when we actually have to pay for my account. To help pay for this I have agreed to cancel my Gamefly account for a while as there isn’t a lot of games out that I really want to ply on my 360.

I have played most of the major releases for this holiday season and frankly I wasn’t really all that impressed with most of them. The best two games that I played was Gears of War and Fable 2. I loved both of those games but really the rest just seem to be rehashes. Midnight Club was fun but honestly how many times do we have to do illegal street racing in a video game? Likewise how many times are we going to visit World War 2? I know it was a popular war for the self sacrifice in the war but common it’s a little played out at this point we really need to find something new to do as I feel the whole world war 2 shooter is getting massively played out.
Haronix bought country music to Rock Band this past month I bought the country pack for the game just haven’t played it yet as I was unable to take any of my RB2 instruments with me to Canada. Hell if I did bring them more than likely Air Canada would have lost them anyway.

That sucked by the way when Jody, The Girls and myself arrived at Victoria we found out that Air Canada had lost our luggage. Probably because of the fact that we only had about an hour and half layover in Vancouver before our flight for Victoria left. Did I mention that our winter coats was packed away in our luggage? Along with my 360? Yeah it sucked big time luckily Jody had her sweater and her Uncle brought some stuff for the girls like blankets and such but me I had only the jeans t-shirt and combat books that I wore up there. So yeah it was pretty cold up there. Thankfully Air Canada got our bags to us the next day but still.

Once again though I have gone with another trip to Canada with only seeing her Grandma’s Place and her Aunt and Uncles place. Now I know I’m a pretty simple guy and that for the most part I’m content to spend time playing video games and not really heading out. Just every so often I would have liked to go out and see stuff but with no car that could haul everyone I fell that I was forced to stay in one place the majority of the time.
I got to sport a goatee for about 3 weeks which was nice as I think I look pretty good with a goatee vs clean shaven. But hey rules are rules so the night before I had to come back to work I shaved it off and I sit here once again clean shaven. But I know that Jody has a few pictures of me running around of it so I’ll see about posting them up here.

Christmas was ok.  Jodys family went over board on geting the girls stuff and now we are going to have to ship stuff for them home as we probally wont have room for it in our luggage.  Anyway Im just happy to be off work and away from the base for the most part.  While I miss my family its good to be away.

Well its official I lost the staff stripe because I have integrity.  I’m not going to go into it its water under the bridge Ill retest in May and make it next year end of story not going to go any farther into it.

 Jody picked me up the AC/DC Track pack from Wal-Mart on Tuesday night.  I really enjoy AC/DC’s music and there are a lot of fun tracks in that track pack that I really enjoy playing.  But there are a few where I enjoy the song but can’t play it due to the hammer on and pull off wankery that was added to the song due to the songs being live versions of the songs. (Highway to Hell for example)  I still really enjoy playing Rock Band though and I plan on bringing it with me to Canada when we go.  Just not sure if I’m going to bring the mic and drums or not so right now it just might be me on my guitar (controller) rocking out into my headphones.  I finally got over 1 million fans in the game and I’m very proud of that accomplishment.  Yes I consider it an accomplishment since when you hit 970k or so fans you then have to 4 or 5 star every song you play to get more fans.  I’m considering starting another band and playing though the tour all over again as I know my shredding skills are getting better.

Speaking of guitar and shredding.  Currently I’m learning cords on my real guitar.  So far I have my E major A major and working on the G Major.  A friend of mine from work has recommended that I do that pattern as it will sound good together and it will help me learn to just make the shape and go without looking at my hand, and the more I change chords the quicker I will learn play them.  I’m bound and determined to learn to play my guitar.  I may not be able to play it very well but I’m wanting to learn to play the thing well enough that when I play a song like Hells Bells or Enter Sandman that it sounds like the song.  Jody said if I can learn to play 10 songs then shell consider it worth it to buy me a better guitar and since I’m a geek gear is always a good incentive for me.  I wanted to learn a Christmas song before our trip but I don’t think I can do that as most of the Christmas songs require a little (a lot to be honest) more skill than what I currently possess but I will have one learned before next Christmas.  Just strumming the thing though relaxes me and causes me just to chill so for that I consider every ounce of effort I put into the instrument well worth the effort.

JamPlay.com I can’t say enough good things about this site.  I have been using a pair of instructors to help me learn the basics and so far these to above all the others for the style of music that I want to play most has been a very large help for me.  Electric Guitar from my understanding is a little easier to play due to the fact that the play action (how far and how hard you have to push the strings down) is a lot less than that of a steel string acoustic guitar.  But still for someone that has never played any sort of musical instrument ( 6 weeks of band in 8th grade doesn’t count) before its quite the challenge.  I spend a lot of time listening to music that I one day would like to play.  Currently I am learning one of those songs AC/DC’s Hells Bells.  But I m learning cord progressions so that one day I can sit down with my guitar and just jam away and it sounds like something pretty cool and not just note fret note check my fingering strum that sort of thing.  Jody has told me more than once it’s not going to come over night and I understand that but I’m attempting to put in a bit of time every night.  On some nights I’m more successful than others but still I try.

I at one time a few weeks ago was thinking it would be cool to go see Metallica in concert down in LA but after doing the research into it I found out that the tickets for their shows is got for around 100 dollars apiece. I  can’t afford that much for a concert that I will have to drive to get a hotel room for and drive back not to mention the price of a pair of tickets.  I was really hoping the cost would be around what I paid to go see Disturbed(Best concert I have ever been to other than Garth Brooks) a few years back or even God Smack(God that concert sucked) last year.  But 100 bucks common guys.