Programmer, Analyst, Learner, Leader, Gamer

We tried a little TOOO hard this week. We went with my folks, Ray & Carrie, Drew & Kelly down to Hagg Lake. They went fishing and we went hiking. The trail is just over 15 miles around the lake. We ended up hiking 9.7 miles, for 20240 steps, at 2.9 mph, burning 1475 calories. The trail was awesome. In some parts it was a little annoying because we had to hike on the road over bridges, but the majority was crazy thick woods and very rustic trails. Parts of the trail were 1 foot wide and we had to hike heal/toe while dodging low hanging branches. Once we got to the 9.7 mile mark we eventually called over walkie-talkie to get a pickup on the other side of the lake from where they were. We had some fruit and hit the road. We’re both sore today but it’s well worth it. Next week we’re going to shoot for another 4-5 mile hike not something as big as this week. Honestly it’s not even the distance that’s killing us, it’s the challenge of the elevation changes of the hikes we did this week and last week. UP AND DOWN UP AND DOWN, my legs are killing me. Thanks to the boots though, my feet feel fine.

Went on another Dire Maul East run with Me, Ray, Sean, Ariarmnes, and Decaydolf. This run didn’t go so smoothly honestly because as usual Sean was casting his shock spells, meleeing, and overall complaining half the time. There were also points where he just wasn’t healing at all and caused deaths (mostly to me and/or ray). It’s funny how a run can go SOOOO smoothly when Sean is not the healer but whenever he is it’s a shitfest. On top of that he called the group a “pickup group” and when someone caused a near wipe and we had to summon him and Ray from the front door to the party he refused to take the summon and tried SEVERAL times to run to the party. I’m getting sick and tired of his bullshit. On the flip side Ray got a new breastplate which improved his AC and STR a lot which will help with his tankability.

Next week is the battle for the last 2 elder positions. I know who my 2 candidates are and I’m going to assist in making sure they acquire the positions they deserve in the guild. The rest of the candidates we might make lesser officers in the guild, but I’m going to advise Thrarr that we work on unifying the council of the elders and get officer policy and procedure down before introducing more officers into the mix. I’d like to get a Skype call going between all the officers once we have the positions decided upon. 5 people in one Skype call and we’ll get some good discussions going.

Tonight went down to listen to the Cocktail Mix at 6 hosted live at Bettie Ford’s. Gustav of course was there and said hi to him, chatted a bit, and sat back to enjoy the live tunes created live on the spot by DJ Suffix. The crowd was a little weak, the drinks sucked (which is not normal for Bettie Ford’s), but overall it was still great. The crowd was an odd mix of older after work types who I wouldn’t usually classify as people who listen to that style of electronica. I said goodbye to Gustav on the way out, got a 94.7 water bottle, and Gustav gave me a headsup to lookout for the next SWR concert which is slated for June 28th.

Today was finally the first official guild leadership organized instance run for our guild. We’re going to start doing runs like this regularly to get people geared up, keyed, and otherwise start working together as a guild. We need to work together on 5 man groups then when we are solid with random different groups then work on 10 man instance raids. I had a good long discussion with Ray today about the responsibilities of being the guild’s main tank. He’s going to respec defensive and we’re going to start molding him into that role. We will do our 2nd run this Saturday and both tonight and Sat Ray will of course be the main tank. He did great tonight. Hopefully Saturday will go just as well.

So Brian is has been busy all day working with me and Rhonda seperately, translating what I say and translating what she says. Apparently we speak a different language when it comes to design. In her mind “design” is the design of the content to invoke feelings. In my mind “design” is the layout of the site. Yes these are both aspects of design and I know that Rhonda’s world is the content but on the flip side I was focused on layout and that was spinning Rhonda around. He’s working through the “lost in translation” problem we are having and who knows maybe we’ll come to some understanding soon.

So I had a big 3 hour meeting today with Jacob and Rhonda telling them my frustrations with this whole website redesign. I’ve made a great workable product and I want the design that’s going on top of that to be awesome, sexy, hot, usable, and all out kick ass. So we went over design, design concepts, WC3 standards, and lots of things that I think they half got. In the long run they said “just go with the Lallo design” which is pretty much where the site is now. But the graphics need to be redone, they are very dirty and need to be applied to DNN. I dunno it’s nice that I got my point out in the open, but I don’t think they got it. I think they just threw their hands up and said “do whatever”. We’ll see how it goes I guess.

So there’s this campaign for those who support Terry Porter’s purchase of the Portland Trailblazers: http://www.supportterry.com/. So I was asked to do a little side project. That form on that site sends and email to an email account that a peice of software I wrote goes out, downloads the email, then stores the emails information in a database. Then that same piece of software reads the database to generate several HTML files and uploads them to a private URL that the investors and project people behind the Support Terry campaign can read all the feedback that people are saying about them. Just a little thing but it’s nice knowing I was even slightly part of getting the Blazer’s back on track.

So we kicked it up a notch this week. We hiked a whopping 5.1 miles, 10550 steps, 3.1mph, for 640 calories burned today during the hike. The trail was awesome though very steep at points. We got on the trail at the Japanese gardens, hiked to the Zoo, then did a round about hike up over toward Burnside, then back down to the Japanese gardens. We really broke in our boots and were thankful for them. The Cliff bars worked great and I love my new hydration pack. Can’t wait till next week’s hike.

So I’ve killed hundreds, probably thousands of Timbermaw, grinded through 2 1/2 levels and I’m finally Neutral to the Timbermaw. Why oh why did I kill so many in Astranar when I was younger. I really should have been more careful with my faction. More hours of grinding ahead, but hey at least I’m 57 with all this grinding faction. Better then doing it at level 60 when there’s no XP reward for doing all of this.

So Jacob, Brian, and I had kind of a crazy and passionate discussion. I went off on Jacob about white text on a green background as well as the concept of green text on a green background. I explained to him that we can do whatever they want with the design of the site but not break STANDARDS in web design. Jacob some how didn’t get it but I think after throwing my coffee all over the desk, shaking violently, and telling him just to go away because my opinion didn’t matter I think he finally got it. So we’ll see how things go. I’m focused on a new project Brian gave me that’s keeping me focused today. Thanks for that.