Wednesday (21 Sep) - Joining the Rest of the World

Wednesday (21 Sep) - Joining the Rest of the World

As I write this I don't know if there will be a raid Wednesday night or not. So, just to make sure I have something to report, I'm going to talk about a recent technology upgrade Judi and I made. Judi and I are pretty up to date on most things - We have three desktop computers and two laptops. Judi has her Kindle eReader and I have my Kobo eReader. We have two HD TVs, his and her IPODs, TomTom GPS, Netflix, Skype, gmail, facebook, and any number of other online resources for education, news, and fun. We're old, but we're hip (or whatever "hip" is these days) - sort of, anyway.

We also have cell phones, of course. The kind of cell phones that you flip up. The kind that can't text, get online, take pictures to send to someone, or do anything else other than make and receive phone calls. Ok, so Judi's phone can text and take pictures - but those features aren't activated.

On Tuesday we went to the Sprint store. The store clerk was very nice, even though I think he swallowed his gum when he saw how old our Sprint service contract was. He was smart enough not to ask if we were Sprint's first customer. We have a family plan that is very inexpensive and has served us well. We might have stayed that way indefinitely if it hadn't been for a couple of things. One was that traveling around in an RV gives us a better appreciation of the things we have that we either have to do without or have to pack to go with us when we are on the go. A plain cell phone doesn't offer much, so we need other devices to do those other things. Second, friends and relatives (some who are older than I am) have moved beyond plain cell phones and they couldn't text us, send pictures to our phones, etc. The real reason? - there was a jazzy new phone that had just hit the market, and we both got that "I want that!" feeling.

No, we didn't get an iphone. What we were looking at was the Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch. You T-Mobile folks have to know all about this phone. It rolled out last week for Sprint customers, and I just heard that AT&T will get their version of it in October. T-Mobile is supposed to get it, too, at some point.

Now, knowing what we were starting with, ANY smartphone would have been a huge upgrade for us. But I have to say we love our new phones, even if using it is a whole new world of exploration. The rep at the store walked us through a lot of things, most of which we'll forget and have to learn again as we go along. Probably the funniest thing that happened not long after we left the store with our new toys was trying to call each other. Who knew that we had to do a finger swipe on the little phone icon to pick up the call? We managed to figure that out ourselves. So far we've figured out texting (everyone we've ever had a phone number for has probably gotten a text from us by now), voice mail, GPS mapping, getting online, contact lists ... it's like Christmas in September. Which it is, actually, given that we consider the phones to be early Christmas gifts to each other.

I'd go over some more features, but this is surely old news as everyone seems to have a smartphone these days. Now we know why. I was also at a store on Wednesday that happened to have a T-Mobile kiosk. I thought they might have accessories that would fit/work with the new smartphone. I asked about that, and the salesgirl I talked to kind of sighed and said that no, accessories generally shipped to stores around the same time as the phones. She paused a second, and then asked, "Do you, ah, have an S II?" I pulled out the phone, and I thought she was going to pounce on it. "Can I see it?" I handed it over. There were four people at the kiosk, and they all had to get a look at it. None of them had seen the phone before. They asked a few questions, and it took about ten seconds for them to realize ... "This is your first smartphone, isn't it?" Yea, I'm still a smartphone dummy.

PS - I just downloaded the Warcraft Remote Auction House. Oh my ...

Wednesday Night - There were nine guildies signed up for Lady Hunter's raid. Lady Hunter could not make it, but we knew that in advance and her backup, the tank Fn, was in game and handling the invites. Tuesday, Fn had contacted most of the guildies that had signed up and all had said they would make the raid. But, the start time came and went, and after thirty minutes waiting we still had only six raiders, only four of them from the sign up.

A very frustrated Fn could not understand why guildies would tell him they would be here and then not show up. Wild summed up our conundrum: "It seems we now have only one functional raid in our guild." That would be the Mf raid, which had 13 sign up and spent two nights doing BWD. In one sense this might not be surprising. BWD is safe and good for VPs, guild rep, and the occasional shiny new toy. The Firelands have been nerfed now, sure, but our guild has not downed boss one in there - it's still a progression raid, and the interest is limited. The one person in the guild that has the confidence of the guild to make a Firelands raid work is Bd, but he may never be back from his hiatus from the game for all I know. It's a tough stretch we are in, but Wild hasn't totally given up yet.

In fact, we did get a raid going, cobbled together as best we could. We cleared trash to the spider Beth'tilac, and the mobs did seem easier to take down (not that they were hard before). This is Wild's third visit to Beth, and like the prior two visits we had as many raiders who hadn't seen the fight as had. We made five attempts, getting close to phase two a couple of times but not quite making it. Even with the nerf, we don't have enough practice to overcome the lack of DPS. Our makeup wasn't very good, either. We had just one ranged DPS, which made taking down the spinners a real challenge. Wild led in healing, averaging about 14k hps, with apologies to the pally healer who had to go topside into the web. The third healer, another pally who stayed on the ground with Wild, averaged around 9k hps. It wasn't really healing that was the issue, though, we just couldn't manage the spinners. With twenty minutes left of our raid time the raid leader asked for a vote on whether to pound on Beth some more or go back to trash killing for rep and maybe a BoE. Only two of us (the raid leader and Wild) wanted to keep at Beth, so we spent the last of our time clearing more trash. We did have some fun when our leader blundered into some small turtles. We were laughing at him and running away, but running away didn't help, and we wound up trying to kill them. We might have done it, too, except we managed to aggro a pack of scorpions as well. It was keystone cops time, and we wiped, but it was entertaining.

After the raid it was Hunter Fortress time. The goblin couple of Shevils and Pong got a quick start with an opening battleground of Arathi Basin. Normally we get Warsong Gulch virtually every time on these forays, so it was a nice change of pace. It was a spirited fight, but we held the upper hand throughout the battle and won it. Shevils led in damage and in killing blows (24). Pong was astounding at healing, pouring out more than 36k heals (2nd place in healing had only 15k). We had so much fun we signed up for AB specifically for our second BG. We won that one, too, with Shevils getting more than 10k damage over the 2nd place player and getting 32 KBs while dying only once. Shevils tends to die a lot since she'd rather get off that last killing shot than escape an attacker, so this was a quite unusual situation and Pong deserves a lot of credit for keeping suicide bound Shevils alive. Pong did 44k healing with #2 at 19k.

We again selected AB, but the queueing got screwed up (as it sometimes does; issues with that still persist) and Shevils wound up in AB without Pong. Shevils again led in KBs and damage, but the team we fielded this time was terrible. Two players did ZERO damage and healing, which I didn't see until the end of game stats were checked - it's hard to catch things like that in a wide ranging battle like AB. We lost.

After that it was all Warsong Gulch. Pong continued his dominance in healing with Shevils placing usually in the top 3 or so in damage. We lost our first battle 0-3, which was frustrating, particularly because of one alliance level 29 hunter who sat defending his base for the whole fight. Shevils lost one on one fights with that guy three times and was near exploding in frustration. He was very good, but Shevils was also a bit gimped since she had forgotten to pick up her ice trap ability when she hit level 28 - the alliance hunter sure knew how to use that trap, as well as a web ability that kept Shevils pinned down so his pet could have his way with her until she died. Sigh.

But after that ...

3-0 win ... 3-0 win ... 3-0 win ... 3-0 win ... etc ...

At the end of the night we had a 2-1 AB record and a 6-1 record in WSG for an 8-2 overall record. Pong and Shevils both made it to level 29 and picked up some new gear and abilities.

Bean and See sure missed out on some great fun ...