Wulfgyr's Land of the Rising/Midnight Sun

Joss Whedon + Eliza Dushku = Potentially Awesome New Show!

2008-05-16T20:37:12Z

First solid news I've heard about Joss's new show starring Eliza Dushku- Dollhouse. Looks like Amy Acker will also be in it! Awesome!

http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/05/whedons-killer.html

So... last night's episode of Supernatural

2008-05-16T15:42:49Z

Totally worth it, just to see them singing Bon Jovi... too funny.

But now I have to wait until October for next season! AAAAAARGH! Why is life so cruel!?!??!

A recipe...

2008-05-15T23:49:17Z

As we were putting away dinner leftovers tonight it came to our attention that somehow we had gathered a large variety of bread in our house this week and that we wouldn't be able to finish it all before it went bad. I decided to devise a brilliant recipe to take advantage of all this bready goodness!

Dice bread into 1" cubes.
Put layer of whole wheat bread into greased casserole dish
Cover with layer of gravy and a layer of shredded cheddar cheese.
Then add a layer of rye bread
Cover with layer of gravy and a layer of shredded cheddar cheese.
Then add a layer of white bread
Cover with layer of gravy and a layer of shredded cheddar cheese.
Then add a layer of cubed hot dog/hamburger/hoagie roll buns
Cover with layer of gravy and a layer of shredded cheddar cheese.

Bake in a 350 degree oven for 35 minutes.

Allow to cool for 10 minutes, casserole will set up after cooling.
Slice casserole in 1" thick slices and serve on French Bread slices.

OK, I didn't say it was going to be a GOOD recipe...

Or I could just make croutons or bread pudding perhaps...

Saw this on Penny Arcade

2008-05-15T18:05:49Z

It is imaginative, impressive, disturbing and fascinating all at the same time. Be warned at points the audio gets a bit loud.

MUTO

Who's that bird, running around with you???

2008-05-15T14:11:43Z

OK, thanks to the last poll and guild member votes I named Nitesong's pet bat Drusilla. I tamed a boar and named it Spike, but even with it's great utility in the BG's the boar just didn't click. So in the tradition of running deep into enemy territory to tame... I went to Mulgore and tamed Mazzranache the rare pink tallstrider. Since the bat is named Drusilla I thought I'd go in the tradition of naming the pet after a character from Buffy. So here's the list, vote for as many of them as you like and Friday evening around 8pm I'll close the poll and name the bird! Thanks!

View Poll: Who's that pink flamingo?

Hey xanthos32 !

2008-05-15T00:45:05Z

Shout out to xanthos32!

We'll make great pets...

2008-05-14T15:52:07Z

So a week or so ago schneenet posted about how she picked up a Webkinz so she could play online with her niece and nephew.

I looked into the Webkinz (www.webkinz.com) and found that they were pretty much a cross between Beanie Babies and Neopets. You buy a little collectible stuffed animal (between $10 and $15 MSRP) and it comes with a code. You enter the code on a website and you get that stuffed animal as a virtual pet. It has it's own room and needs to be fed and played with.

In addition you can answer trivia questions and play games to earn Kinzcash which you can use to buy virtual stuff for you pet like furniture and food. Essentially, like Neopets, it's largely a timesink game.

Unlike Neopets there are many "multiplayer" minigames. You can have a friends list and if your friends are online you can challenge them to games of checkers and "Battleship" type games, pool and more.

They've made efforts to make it kidsafe as well, the online chat isn't typed, but your comments are selected from pulldown menus and are fairly generic in nature, so that kids can't give out personal information.

One of the fastest ways to earn Kinzcash is by taking quizzes many of which contain math questions, history/science questions and logic problems. So it's educational but provides good motivations for kids to do them.

The one aspect that I like is an in-game collectible dice game. Each die has a pet's face on one side and then various icons on the other sides that represent attacks, defenses and moves. There's a racetrack on the board and each turn you roll the dice and use the attacks and defenses to try and remove your opponent's move dice. Once both players pass on "attacks" then the remaining move dice are resolved and the pets move that many spaces on the track. First one to 20 wins. It's an addictive little game. If they'd release a non-virtual version of this game I think they'd do pretty well with it. Some interested game mechanics in it.

So if you're looking for a good kidsafe Internet activity this is worth looking into. Likewise if you're into the virtual pet scene with lots of cuteness, this may be worth investigating. Just a caveat. When you register your pet it says you get a year of playtime. Now whether at the end of the year you'll have to pay some subscription fee or just adopt another pet (you can have multiple pets- you won't lose your first pet) I don't know. I haven't really looked into it that far.

ABC fall schedule info-

2008-05-13T20:15:03Z

So for any fellow Scrubs fan, YAY! They will get their final season proper, just on a different network.

And for any of you BBC fans (I'm thinking slashspouse and cereta here because they told me about this show...) looks like a US adaptation of Life on Mars is coming.

From Imdb news:

Frustrated by a writers' strike which forced it to postpone many of its development plans for the fall season, ABC announced that it will only air one new drama in the fall, David E. Kelley's Life on Mars, a time-travel tale about a police officer who is plunged into 1970 America from the current time. ABC will also air the final season of Scrubs, which was dropped by NBC. It is produced by ABC Studios, formerly Touchstone TV, a corporate sibling of ABC. Also making the lineup for the fall is the new Ashton Kutcher reality series Opportunity Knocks.

I R Smrt. I kin reed book!

2008-05-13T18:39:42Z

Recently it has come to my attention that there is a book club in our office. Now, anyone who watches The Office knows that if there is a club in your office that reads books or otherwise celebrates the "finer things" in life, that these people are the movers and shakers and the real core "power" of the office hierarchy. So of course I wanted in on this...

The month I joined they had just decided to read "Delicious Conversation" by Jennifer Stewart Griffith.

Now at first glance, this may not look like a great piece of literature. In fact you may, just by reading the summary of the book, pre-judge it as a piece of fluff fiction, one that isn't even well written as far as fluff fiction goes, and believe that it's likely a steaming pile of crap. And you'd be right.

Well a couple of the members were reading Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen even though it wasn't a selection of the book club. They thought I'd be interested in reading it and one of them loaned me the book. They wanted to just have the three of us get together and discuss it. Now this, is more like it as far as book club reading material goes. An entertaining read, if a bit predictable in places (and unpredictable in others), it is very good storytelling and actually gives the readers some interesting topics to discuss. Of particular interest to me was the fact that many of the circus behind the scenes stuff in the book was inspired by anecdotes the author found while researching what circus/carny life was like.
I recommend this book for anyone looking for an enjoyable read with a bit of meat to it.

A couple of weeks ago I attended the first meeting where we selected the next book to read. Attendance for that meeting was a bit light as many people had other stuff to do, errands to run and the like. But the people who did attend were the more "literary" minded folks. The end result? The books to read for the May meeting are "1984" and "Animal Farm" by George Orwell. It was thought that since Animal Farm was relatively short it would be fun to read it to compare and contrast the two. Perhaps not coincidentally a few of the book club members dropped out of the book club for the summer...

jegie was kind enough to pick up both of the books for me this past Saturday while she was running errands for C's birthday party and heading into work for an hour or so. So I've started reading 1984 for the first time since I read it in high school. Perhaps I'm just a more mature and experienced reader... or perhaps "Delicious Conversation" has given me a baseline definition of "utter crap" but at any rate I find myself REALLY appreciating Orwell's writing style. I've always been into the Dystopian future concept which helped me thoroughly enjoy 1984 when I first read it. But now I'm really getting hit by some of Orwell's writing style. Very good stuff.

June's selection is Marley & Me by John Grogan. I plan to pick that up after the 22nd which is when we discuss 1984 and Animal Farm.

It's nice to be reading again. This is the first serious reading I've done since the last Harry Potter book came out.

Now THIS is a party game!

2008-05-13T16:08:59Z

Well C's Bday party is over, now we have to get ready for Z's Bday party this summer... I've just found a great party game idea:

http://iesb.net/filmgeekz/content/view/600/

I'm an altaholic...

2008-05-12T18:31:06Z

I'm sure xanthos32 and iloose2 will appreciate that I found this cartoon...

http://www.crispygamer.com/comics/ding/page0021.aspx

Fights Like a Girl update

2008-05-12T13:56:51Z

Just a quick update on jegie's World of Warcraft guild Fights Like a Girl. The guild is now up to 65 members, which is reasonably rapid growth considering the guild has only been around a few weeks, only allows female characters (though there are some male players in the guild) and doesn't "blanket" advertise over the open chat channels but instead contacts individuals one on one for recruiting.

An amusing anecdote about the weekend. I was playing my hunter Nitesong this weekend. She has her pet bat, now named Drusilla, and was wearing her cool pink tabard and was level 13 and hanging out in Darkshore. A level 15 warrior came up and he challenged her to a duel. Now normally, 90% of the time that I'm on with one of my male characters and I'm challenged to a duel, I just decline because usually I'm more interested in getting something else done. But honestly, when your guild name, "Fights Like a Girl" is right over your head for everyone to see- well I decided turning down the duel wouldn't be prudent. So I accepted. We backed off as the duel countdown commenced and immediately I threw my hunters mark on him and fired off a serpent sting by the time he had charged me. My bat then flew into action and I quickly pulled back to get a couple of more shots in on him with my bow. At this point I remembered that I had just recently started using a bow for the first time and my skill level wasn't up to par yet, so it's quite possible I wasn't hitting as frequently or doing as much damage with the hits as I could be. By then he had caught up with me so I engaged in hand to hand and hit him with a Raptor Strike. I saw my health was low but his was under half as well. I took the time to fire off Gift of the Naaru to begin a gradual heal on myself but it allowed him a couple more shots on me. I looked up to see that both of our health meters were at just a sliver. I watched the cooldown on my Raptor Strike closely and the second it completed I attacked again and won the duel.

Now, as a courtesy, whenever I duel someone I say "Good duel" and will usually heal them if I have bandages. It's generally good form to be a good sport, especially if you initiate the duel. So I said "good duel" but before I could begin bandaging him he ran into the inn and logged off. Completely exited the game.

I think he finally understood what the name of the guild means. :)

Here are Teo (baheena) and Mizore having a little fun at the bank in Stormwind City last night. I came around the corner and saw them and it made me think of Ghostbusters. I had to get a screenshot!

Happy Mother's Day!

2008-05-11T17:18:38Z

So this morning at breakfast C decided to wish jegie a Happy Mother's Day. She did so by saying:

"Happy Mother's Day Mommy! RAAAAWRR!"

And the winner is...

2008-05-11T17:16:10Z

We have a winning name for Nitesong's pet bat and the winner is:

I tallied votes from guild members that were on last night and I got 3 votes for Drusilla and 2 votes for Fourthmeal and no votes for Deflator.

Of course now this means I have to go tame a boar and name it "Spike".

Happy Mother's Day!

2008-05-11T14:33:21Z

Happy Mother's Day!

I hope C and Z behave today...

OK... we have a 3 way tie!!!

2008-05-10T02:37:08Z

Well I closed the poll a little later than I expected thanks to a virus scare on my PC's (and having to run Spybot and install AVG and run scans of both...)

The result is a three way tie between Drusilla, Deflator and Fourthmeal.

The guild is supposed to be running some Warsong Gulch PvP action tonight, so hopefully there will be a good number of guild members on. I'll take the results of the three way tie to the guild members who are on tonight and see what they vote for as the tie-breaker.

I'll post the results tomorrow. Thanks everyone who recommended names and voted!

wulfgyr @ 2008-05-08T19:23:00

2008-05-09T00:24:16Z

OK, here's your chance to vote on a name for Nitesong's pet bat. Since I don't have a massive list of LJ readers I'm going to allow people to vote on as many of the names as they like. The name with the most votes by 8pm Friday night will be the winning name! In the event of a tie I'll take the vote online in the game to whatever guild members are online at the time for the tie-breaker.

So without further ado...

View Poll: It's time to play NAME THAT BAT!!!

Science! World of Warcraft!

2008-05-08T15:21:25Z

For those of you who are into Science and also into World of Warcraft... winweiquaker posted about a Science conference regarding virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft... and this conference will be held - IN - the World of Warcraft, specifically on the Earthen Ring server. That's right, a virtual conference IN a virtual world. They have even created their own guild named SCIENCE in the game. All you have to do to attend is create a Horde character on that server and contact one of the guild officers. You can get more details here:

http://convergentsystems.pbwiki.com/

A bat is a bat is a bat... by any other name...

2008-05-08T00:24:50Z

I have a Draenei hunter named Nitesong that I created to level up and play in jegie's guild Fights Like a Girl (female characters only).

I decided I wanted an interesting pet and settled on a bat from Tirisfal Glade, the undead starting zone. With Inger's help I was able to make the trek and tame the bat last night. I love it! But I just can't think of a name.

Here's a pic:

Here's info on that particular type of pet:
http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/mobs/mob_vampiricduskbat.php

So I've decided to ask my LJ peeps for help in coming up with a name. I'm going to list the potential names that I've come up with so far. If you have another idea for a name just post it in a reply. Then tomorrow about this same time I'll gather the complete list of potential names and post it in the form of a poll. By this time Friday evening I'll look at the results and name my lovely pet accordingly!

I'm also planning to get a second pet, but haven't decided yet on whether to get a boar (for level 19 PvP purposes) or a tallstrider, namely Mazzranache ( http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/mobs/mob_mazzranache.php ) or Strider Clutchmother ( http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/mobs/mob_striderclutchmother.php )
In case there's an idea to name them as a pair of sorts.

Here's my potential list so far:

1. Eris
2. Merlot
3. Phobos (and name the other pet Deimos)
4. Drusilla (and name the other pet Spike)
5. Batitude

Again, if you have another idea for a name please submit it here.

THANKS EVERYONE!

ohnono a meme

2008-05-01T15:02:36Z

Lifted from cereta

If you would be so kind, ask me the seven questions below. Just copy and paste them into a comment, replace the blanks with anything you want--personal, silly, surreal (e.g. 3. Donkeys or sandcastles and why?), or deep--and I'll answer honestly as I can! Then post this in your own LJ and see what kind of things people want to ask you!

1. What do you think of _____________ ?

2. When did you last ____________?

3. __________ or ___________ and why?

4. What did you ______________?

5. What's your favorite ______________?

6. How would you ______________?

7. Who would you most like to ________ ?

wulfgyr @ 2008-04-25T21:38:00

2008-04-26T02:44:19Z

I recently heard about Johnathan Coulton who was a programmer that quit his job as a software developer to become a songwriter. He started a project where he'd come up with a new song every week. His tunes have developed quite a following, kind of like folk music for geeks.

Here's one of his well loved tunes that someone put to machinima from World of Warcraft. I love this tune and it's been stuck in my head all day. If you like this song I also recommend another tune of his called "Re:Your Brain"

WHAT!?!? YOU WANNA BATTLE ME!?!??

2008-04-21T15:59:37Z

Busy busy weekend. We had 3 of jegie's cousins come down from Milwaukee on a surprise visit (we heard about it Friday afternoon that they were arriving Friday night). So we hustled to get the house in some semblance of clean. We also grilled out like crazy and stocked up on beer because... hello? Three Irish guys from Milwaukee...

Well jegie's great aunt joined us for dinner as well and all three of the cousins were suddenly altar boys who don't drink (at least not around their great aunt). So now we have over 20 beers in da fridge, and at the rate which jegie and I drink beer that equals about 10 years worth...

But it was fun seeing everyone and dinner turned out pretty good if I say so myself.

Sunday I took Kalisti, my gnome warlock from jegie's guild, "Fights Like a Girl", into the Warsong Gulch battleground. Two of our guild members were on at the time (Teo, who is baheena and Mizore).

For those of you unfamiliar with World of Warcraft's PVP battlegrounds (which describes me a couple of weeks ago) Warsong Gulch is the first one that you can enter and is basically a game of capture the flag. And generally the Horde wins. Who knows why, but it's usually the case. So needless to say I was completely startled when I exited Warsong Gulch on Sunday with an Alliance victory and more honor points and marks of honor than I expected to have. I shared my disbelief on the guild chat. I went ahead and joined a second game. I noticed immediately that the Alliance side had a level 10 and a level 14 in the waiting room. Oh great. We definitely weren't going to win this one. I mentioned that on guild chat and Mizore said, "How would you like to have a level 16 Druid?" I noted it would be great to battle together.

Well, against all the rules of nature the Alliance won that game too! Holy cow! Only this time when the battle ended and I was ported back to the War Room in Stormwind, Mizore was waiting there! So we entered the third battle as a group (which means you'll be in the same game)

The third battle had a pretty shaky start, each team grabbed the other's flag. The Horde turtled up in their flag room and piled on to anyone who tried to enter. On the Alliance side Mizore was running the flag, and I don't think there was a moment where Mizore wasn't on the move! Awesome job of keeping the flag away from the Horde. This probably went on for about 10 minutes before finally we got a group of us together to storm their flag room and break through their turtle defense. Flag hang for the Alliance! The next Alliance flag hang was fast and furious! And the final flag hang was hard fought but finally won!

I had a blast and it was great going into the battleground with Mizore. We used voice com on the in game channel, but I'd like to try it again with Ventrilo, which I hope will be a bit clearer. I'm looking forward to the day that we'll have more members of the Fights Like a Girl guild entering the battlegrounds as a team and laying down the smack!

YOU'RE GOING TO DIE!!!!!! What's for dinner?

2008-04-17T15:52:41Z

So in baheena's journal I read about a Canadian dish called poutine. It's pretty much a heap of french fries and fresh cheese curds smothered in gravy. Yeah. Like the frickin' Rosetta Stone of happiness!

I got to thinking about Poutine and similar dishes, like the local Haystack (sausage/bacon, hash browns, toast/biscuit, eggs, sausage gravy) and Horseshoe (Burger, fries, cheese and sometimes chili) and how a steady diet of that would ensure that I never make it to retirement. Then I thought, "If I was on death row... I'd totally load up on unhealthy food!" But the more I thought about it if I was going to die and could order a last meal, what would I want my final culinary experience to be?

So here's what I'd want as my last meal:
appetizer- Sushi, including the potentially lethal blowfish variety
soup- French Onion
entree- Maine Lobster and butter sauce
Filet Mignon, rare
side- Brown and Wild rice pilaf
Steamed asparagus in hollandaise sauce
dessert- Green Tea ice cream
wine- A good domestic Merlot

So what would you want for your final meal?

World of Warcraft Armory

2008-04-17T13:49:33Z

I like the World of Warcraft Armory and what they've done with it.

Here's the entry for jegie's new guild Fights Like a Girl.
http://www.wowarmory.com/guild-info.xml?r=Blackwater+Raiders&n=Fights+Like+a+Girl&p=1

It only shows 8 members and there are 13, but because the recruiting was done in the newbie areas, there are members who are under level 10 and the Armory doesn't track characters under level 10. But you can see the character demographics breakdown of the guild, the guild bank (if it has one) and the bank log so you can see the activity in the guild bank. You can click on individual characters, see what equipment they are wearing, get recommendations for upgraded equipment, see their talent trees... it's pretty informative.

Here's the entries for the other guilds we're in:

Sheep the Star
http://www.wowarmory.com/guild-info.xml?r=Blackwater+Raiders&n=SheepTheStar&p=1

Hordiculture
http://www.wowarmory.com/guild-info.xml?r=Blackwater+Raiders&n=Hordiculture&p=1

I took Kalisti into Warsong Gulch last night at a competetive level for the first time. The Horde spanked us (no surprise there) but I was the fourth highest ranked Alliance player for kills and honor during the game. Pretty cool considering I was one of the more modestly geared characters in there. I wasn't even wearing a necklace or any rings/trinkets and only two blue items. At least 2 or 3 of the other players I inspected were wearing mostly blue gear and some of it was stuff they had purchased with honor points and battleground marks of honor. This weekend is the Warsong Gulch holiday weekend which means bonus honor for playing in Warsong Gulch. I intend to take advantage of that as much as I can.

I'm going for 30 marks of honor from each Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin and Alterac Valley which I can turn in at level 60 to get an epic PvP mount.

WoW joke

2008-04-15T16:38:44Z

For those of you unfamiliar with World of Warcraft, in the game you can do the /silly command to have your character tell a joke. Each race/gender combo has 3 or 4 different jokes that they can cycle through. Some are pretty corny a couple are amusing. There's a human male joke that is a bit long winded but kind of a cute nod to fantasy geekdom. Someone went though the efforts to do a machinima animation to this joke and I stumbled across it on YouTube. Enjoy: