Wednesday (11 Apr) - This is not about Warcraft

Wednesday (11 Apr) - This is not about Warcraft

Perhaps it's a sign that World of Warcraft's Cataclysm expansion has gotten stale and, frankly, mostly uninteresting. Or perhaps it's because Baseball season is here and there is a convenient Major League ballpark twenty minutes away with seats reserved for the entire season. Or perhaps it's because the current retro project in progress is so much fun. Most likely, it's because of all of those things.

What is this all about? It's about discovering that I am going days without having anything much to say about Warcraft. Sure, Happy is still doing his thing with the Auction House. But he's always done that. What has changed, though, is that his alliance operative, Lost, barely checks the Auction House, usually only a couple of times a week, and then usually only when Happy is looking for something specific. The alliance family as a whole have retreated into obscurity. Wild still raids, so for at least two days a week there is something to talk about. JB does her lfr's, but there is little more to that than collecting valor points and hoping something of use will drop. Even then, she no longer scrambles to get them done right away, and has yet to bother doing them so far this week. Mists of Pandaria is coming, but before it does Diablo 3 will arrive. But neither are here, yet. This is the first time, for me, that an expansion has completely dried out before the next one was upon me. That is one major downside to the lfr. In Wrath, Wild worked to kill the Lich King right up to the day Cata was released. That goal consumed Wild. Wild has killed Cata's Deathwing uncountable times in the lfr. Yes, Wild wants a normal mode kill, too, but ... if it doesn't happen, it doesn't seem like the loss it would have been if Wild had failed to drop the Lich King.

Since there is so little Warcraft news, what is there to talk about? Well, there's Baseball. The San Diego Padres, my home team, has a 1-4 record in the very early going of the season. The season is 162 games long, you know, 81 of which are here in SD. I've been to three of those five games, all losses. The nights in SD are cold and windy right now. I love going, though, even when the Padres fans are outnumbered in their own park by their opponent, which was the case when the Dodgers were in town. I still love going. Parking is expensive ($20), so last night (Tuesday) I took the trolley for $5. The game went 11 innings and I didn't get home until 11:30pm. I still love going.

I am also spending a great deal of time on a personal project that's also related to baseball. It's also a lot about my past, too, since baseball has been a constant companion and passion of mine since I first discovered a love for it as a 13 year old at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Naval Base. I am a stats geek (can't you tell from my posts on dps and hps, etc?), and baseball is heaven to stats geeks - especially stats geeks who's greatest real life baseball exploits came on slowpitch softball diamonds. And yes, I have all my stats from those many seasons as well.

The project I am working on started out as a cleanup of a bunch of boxes full of old baseball stats sheets I'd created and kept all the way back to that 13 year old boy. Years and years of manual, painstakingly created seasons of baseball played first on paper, and later by computer, from the company Strat-o-Matic (SOM) Baseball. An earlier post covered the cleanup. What was left were the minimum necessary records to turn all of my paper seasons into computer records I could manipulate on a database. In those paper years, playing a full 162 game season with every team was a monumental task. I didn't have the patience for that, nor did I have enough friends to play that many teams. We settled for seasons of 20 or so games and usually 6-12 teams. When I couldn't coerce friends to join my leagues, I played multiple teams myself, sticking with short seasons so I could compile the stats and bask in all those numbers. My current goal is to recreate all those paper seasons and to turn those short seasons into full 162 game seasons. A further goal that is waiting it's turn is to take on all of the Sporting News (TSN) online seasons that I played in, beginning back in 2005. I'll probably start to tie those in once TSN turns over the online game to SOM. I intend to get back into online baseball once that happens.

Speaking of online baseball, there was once a young fellow (well, younger than he is now ;-)  ) who played TSN online baseball as well as Warcraft. Skinnemuva posted this:

"skinnemuva
Rookie

Joined: 11 Apr 2007
Posts: 224

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Display at Top Great stuff 11 Apr 2007 19:03     Send private message Reply with quote
I just got done going through the last three or four pages of this over the last week or so at work (the best time to read Very Happy ). I loved it. I have a 59 NE Druid that is balance as well.

I am almost to 60, but have been holding out because at 59 you really dominate the PVP battle grounds as a balance druid. You should really give them a try. Most people in my guild have been reluctant to try as well, but I have got a few of them to come with me and they have since converted. You won't be disappointed!"

That was posted on 11 April, 2007 - a five year anniversary of sorts, today being 11 April, 2012. And what a strange coincidence this is, since I didn't know that date was skinnemuva's first post on my forum blog until I looked it up thirty minutes ago.

Despite the claim of not liking baseball, here was skinnemuva on a baseball forum site. One day we'll see a ball game together, or at the very least compete in a SOM online baseball season. Stranger things have happened. After all, I once thought Wild would never, ever pvp. Look how that turned out.  

My digging about the past through my old baseball seasons turned up other memories about my days as a computer programmer, and some of the really, really old computers I once used. Remember the Atari? I created a boxing game on that thing using cassette tapes for storage. True.

I've strayed from the original discussion, but that is probably a relief for the readers. Better hope the Wild Family finds more to do in game or we'll all be subject to more of this. Carry on.

PS - Hmm, maybe next I should look up msheaf1's first stumble upon my old TSN forum blog.  ;-)