Enthusiasm

It was nice to have an even bigger BBQ today. Most of all it was nice to see Adam. It’s amazing how much he’s developed in growth since I’ve last seen him. His face especially is becoming more scultped and less “kid” like. He still talks and acts like a big kid, but that’ll grow out of him in time. It’s good to hear he’s doing well with school, his job, and actually gaining some responsibility. Sat back and chatted it up, drank some Te-kill-ya and played Wii. Good times!

Prince was easy. After 2 attempts with bad infernal luck and 1 attempt with 2 melee dying early, we then on a 4th attempt completely destroyed prince with a very smooth ride. The video will be up in a few days.

Netherpite took 3 attempts for everyone to really understand the fight and finally on the 4th attempt it was perfect clockwork. Toward the end we had one death but other than that it was a clean victor with plenty of healing, dps, and proper usage of the beams to go around.

Prince and Netherspite are down thus completing Karazhan minus 2 optional bosses. I couldn’t be a happier right now and I got my Light’s Justice which is what I wanted to get on the first kill of Prince (Symbolic in a way). Thus begins the journey of farming 2 groups through Karazhan, building up the strength of our members, and eventually moving onto 25-man raiding. High King Mulgar is on the horizon as well as Illhoof and Netherspite.

Yes I finally made a Dolphin UserPic for use when posting about my current employer, Dolphin Software. I love it here and I know I haven’t written about this job yet due to complete lack of UserPic goodness, but now that I have it, expect more writings about my awesome job.

Currently I’m working on a really awesome product mainly for INL (as a company that works for the government doing stuff with chemicals that I probably shouldn’t post about on my journal). I really don’t know what all they do, but by the list of chemicals and parts they have in their database it seems like they do a lot of intersting stuff. Anyhow long story short working on a completely redesigned from the ground up application that is build in VStudio 2005 that connects to an ASP.Net 2.0 Web Service and does data pulls, works with data on a local client, then syncronizes data back to the CPWeb Database back through the web service. It’s pretty awesome stuff and I’ve been working on it for about a month now and I think I’ll be working exclusively on this project for the next couple of months because I think we’re going to push this product on HP since they will be interested in it as well. After that more clients of ours and then it should start becoming another core product for the company.

The thing I love most about this project is that I’m spearheading the whole thing. I designed the windows app, the web services, the local cache database, and everthing inbetween. Mark really put a lot of faith in me giving me such a big and important contract RED line item. It’s nice to be appreciated and trusted.

There is a high level of consistency in our guild achieving in raiding now. Tonight we took 3 people who had NEVER been to Kara before and we were able to clear Attumen, Moroes, Maiden all in 1 shot (didn’t even reset Moroes once), and then 2 shot Romulo and Julianne (heal at the last moment). The new people to Kara did a great job in both DPS and doing what they were supposed to. On the flip size we were rather IN-consistent with the number of people online. All last week we had 25 people on every night. Tonight we had 15-18 people on all night. In fact I chose to bow out of raiding tonight and ended up raiding anyhow because Juan was a no show. I’m not upset about this or anything but I AM confused at the level of drive people have to be running 25 man raiding and 2 Karazhan groups and yet again tonight we strugged for an hour to form 1 Kara group.

Note to self, Venn was very cool and bowed out to let Baliku come in and get some gear. Venn was on time for the raid, one of the few who were on time, but Baliku got on late and wanted in to get gear. Venn who has all the gear from Kara except stuff off Prince elected to bow out for Baliku.

I put up a vote on the guild boards on what the GUILD thinks we should do with the next stange in progression. It seems the guild wants to run 2 Karazhans 2 nights a week and Gruuls on a 3rd night of the week, although the votes are spread all over the place, but it seems for the most part people DO want to be doing Gruuls one night a week. The votes are still coming in but it seems like that is what we are going to shoot for. I’m not sure if we are ready, but if the guild is willing to put in the effort and the time/energy of wiping then I’m up for it. We just need to get the trash pull down mostly. My guys have surprised me before so who knows maybe once we figure out the pull we’ll be able to make some serious impact on the fight.

I’m feeling very conflicted right now with the guild. We’re starting to hit the top end with the size of the guild, but now that we have enough to do a lot of great things I’m having a problem pleasing everyone. I log on and I’m asked to run A. Karazhan, B. Blacked Urns runs, and C. Mawcha’s Epic run. I ran the Black Urns runs, then Mawcha’s Epic run. I’m spending the next week reflecting on how I best need to lead the guild through this next level of transition. I don’t even think I’m going to raid this week because at the very least this week we are not doing a 2 run Karazhan simply because we need to think things out. We are on the cusp of seriously giving the 25-man’s a shot while also running 2 Karazhans.

Hung out with Kerrie today, although medically I wasn’t feeling good at parts today. Spent a lot of time getting excited about her business and went back to my folk’s place to show them what she’s been working on. They were excited about her pieces and to quote my mom “there isn’t a piece here that I don’t love”. I can’t wait till she starts at the market because I knew her business is just going to explode.

Instead of spending more time wiping and frustrating people we decided that we’d go decimate AQ20 tonight. A varying group of 12-18 people journied to the sandy desert of Silithis and entered the ruins of Al’Quiraj. This was a fun event and nice to get screenshots of every boss in there alive and dead. It was an extra special good time because Chindako returned today and was able to enjoy the goodness. I think I’m going to combine the kills from ZG and AQ20 together to make one montage video.

Things didn’t go as well as planned tonight. Although Group A again 1-shot Shade of Aran and we had a couple of attempts on Netherspite, we kinda hit a brick wall. The wipes on Netherspite I think frustrated people and when we got to Prince, we just didn’t have the focus and drive and after 2 attempts we called the evening. Group B again wiped a bunch of Moroes and Maiden. After much discussion from the officers we decided to hold of on 2 group Kara for a couple of weeks.

Last night saw the 5th installment of the Harry Potter series. It was a great film. Keep in mind that I didn’t get to read the book, it was a fantastic film. The whole film kept up the pace and a ton of things were happening. There was very little time at all for the usual Harry Potter junking around and they did a great job right at the beginning with showing the fear and reality of Lord V upon the wizarding world. The ending was kinda shocking and I’m glad noone ruined it. Although the feeling of sadness was replaced somehow by the feeling of a cheap StarWars scene remake by Luke, Darth Vader, Emporer, but rather Harry, the bitch, and Lord V. Fight scenes were great, action was great, and of course as always the frackin’ book surrounds the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. All around, great movie especially Harry’s last words to Lord V. at the end, good closing words from Harry too.

After we got out of the theatre we were greated with a massive thunderstorm outside. It was great to hit Starbucks and enjoy the lightning.