Some Links

Double O Podcast Special Edition

The rumours are true! Oestrus and I got together last night and recorded a shiny new episode of The Double O Podcast!

With Mists coming out in a few weeks and both of us anxious to be raid ready as soon as possible, we thought it would be fun to interview a Realm First – Level 80 feat of strength holder (and remember! While the grind to 85 was accomplished by many in under 15 hours, the grind to 80 took a solid 48 hours, if not more, making the achievement even more impressive).

So! For a tad over an hour, we chat with the awesome Serrath (who, in addition to being quite knowledgeable about productive and healthy gaming marathons, is also a really fun guy. You can’t help but want to be friends with him.) about how to get to 90 as quickly as possible, without risking our health or our sanity.

If you haven’t heard it yet – the Holy Paladin Roundtable

I promised a link and I didn’t deliver… I hang in my head in shame.

Hopefully you’ve all (yes, including non-holy paladins… the awesomeness of the Light must be experience by EVERYONE) found your way to the show, maybe via Twitter, maybe via another blogger. But just in case, just in case you haven’t, before Mists comes out, treat yourself to the sweet delight that is The Holy Paladin Roundtable.

If you prefer a more visual link, consider clicking this:

Big thanks to Walks for the gorgeous collage! (ps. It’s almost scary how much I look like myself and like my character in that image!)

Mists is almost here, have you found your guild yet?

My guild, Occasional Excellence, still has a few spots open on our roster. We’re a high efficiency guild, raiding 2 nights (or 7 hours) a week, but making the most of every second. (And you know that if they manage to satisfy an impatient, detail oriented, perfectionist like me, they’ve got to be good people!) We do 25s, we’re all adults and we were killing Heroic Madness before it was cool.

We’re especially looking for a resto shaman and a shadow priest, but we’d welcome most dps classes (except maybe hunters and ret pallies because everyone plays hunters and ret pallies these days).

Our standards are pretty high, so the application process can be demanding, but, trust me, it’s worth the effort! We’ve got a solid team, a highly organized leadership and a very positive raid environment. And while we only raid 2 nights a week, there are a lot of optional events every week for those who just can’t get enough.

Sound like a group you’d be interested in? Find out more on our website: http://occasional-excellence.com/.

You can get in touch with me via email as well, and add our guild on Twitter: @OExcellence
(Our Twitter page is still a work in progress, but I’m hoping to make it more active soon)

And even if it doesn’t sound like a group you’d be interested in, I highly encourage you to read our About Us page. (I wrote it and worked hard on it, so I want to show it off ^_^)

’till next time!

*returns to the offline world*

Blog Azeroth Needs Some New Mods and Other Topics

I’m not really resigning as a Blog Azeroth mod, but I realized that I can’t keep up with the Shared Topics anymore. And as a whole, we’d love some fresh new faces to help greet new members, encourage blogging events and answer questions. If this sounds like you, head over to this thread at Blog Azeroth (you’ll need to be logged in to see it).

I’d be especially happy if one of the Shared Topics regulars (I’m looking at you Aliera, at you Oathblade, at you Dragonray, at you Amerence, at you rest of you who participate often in Shared Topics – now’s your chance to make sure Topic get queued in a timely fashion and recaps get posted every week!) volunteered for the spot.

* * *

In other news, I have to admit that I have very little motivation in keeping up with this blog. Part of it is my working 60 hours a week, but most of it is that I just don’t want to make the time to update regularly.

Don’t be sad, though, I doubt much will really change here. I’ve been posting once a week or less for well over a year anyway. I’m just making it official. I’ll post when I have something to talk about, but I’m resigning from feeling the need to maintain the blog.

I am feeling the motivation to update my personal (otherwise known as Shrine-to-Myself) blog, so if, for whatever unfathomable reason, you take pleasure in reading me writing about myself, I’m hoping to blow some life into that corner of the internet. I would have done it sooner but each time I have something to write I tell myself: “No! You can’t update that until you update the WoW blog!” Which, most of the time, ends in neither blog being updated.

Maybe this way one of the blogs will be updated.

I Was Due for a Proper Blogroll Update

It seems that my last blogroll update was from January, so about 6 months ago. No, wait, that’s exactly 6 months ago. Or it was yesterday when I started writing this post.

Time flows faster on the internet. Since my last blogroll update date, we’ve had bloggers leave us, we’re have retired bloggers make a return and we’ve had new bloggers introducing themselves. We’ve even had new bloggers to the scene who’ve already retired. That’s how fast time flows on the internet.

Personal links

That’s right, I’m starting with my own links first, egomaniac that I am. Under the paladinning section, I added my non-raid gear post and the Holy Paladin 101 I wrote for Top Rosters. I also tearfully cleared out a few posts that were too outdated to be of any use. That’s the sad side of playing a class that gets revamped every patch: your hard work never lasts long.

Please Welcome Back

After sorting through the Paladin and the Retired folders in my RSS feeder, I discovered that two bloggers have returned from the nether for our reading pleasure.

Caer Morrighan has had her arms (and timetable) full with motherhood, but has still managed to give us some of her famous and much anticipated Crib Sheets for paladin dps, priest healing(!) and a healthy variety of Cataclysm raid bosses.

Ruthra from Holy Shock has also made a comeback, writing about Holy Paladins as well as other topics that cross his mind.

Please Welcome

When three major names from the Protection paladin community, Anafielle, Theck and Meloree, joined together for a blogging project, I thought “this is too good to be true!”. But I was wrong, it was true. And the end result, Sacred Duty is going strong with regular, informative posts on paladin tanking as well as thought-provoking commentaries on tanking in relation to other aspect of the game.

Another new Protection blog (which also has a great magey half) is D/E the Tank with Orv and Nymphy. They’ve got a lot of resources for new and leveling tanks as well as some extra fun for those of the mage persuasion.

On the Holy side of the paladin blogosphere, we’ve got Heavy Wool Bandage written by Glorwynn Lightbraid. Her voice is one of a kind, and she covers the ground that tends to be forgotten by the majority of holy paladin bloggers: healing in low level instances. There’s a lot more than leveling guides though, so take your time and browse through her pages.

Another Holy blog that has made an appearance is the interestingly titled I am McFluffy, he doesn’t update too often, but maybe if we nudge up, we’ll be seeing more of him.

Kallixta’s Notes is a Holy blog that has actually been around for quite some time. She chronicles her adventures through all the sides of Warcraft, from raiding, to leveling, to RPing to farming.

And last, but not least, Word of Glory is written by the lovely Lynesta. She’s another who doesn’t update often, but when she does, her posts are well written, her topics are relevant, her guides are helpful and she’s overall a lovely voice to read.

Got a Paladin blog?

If you know of a paladin blog I’ve missed, let me know! I’ll list all blogs that meet the following criteria:

1) Blog must have at least one regular paladin contributor (they don’t necessarily have to write about paladin-related stuff)
2) Blog must have existed for at least two months, or one month if updated 3 or more times a week.
3) Blog must have been updated within the past month (some exceptions might apply, but they’re really exceptions)

I’m not political when it comes to my paladin blogroll so if you’re not listed, it’s either because I’m a tad out of touch with the current blogosphere, or of oversight due to human error (I know it’s hard to believe, but I do succumb to that on occasion ;D).

EDIT: And here are some more paladin-flavored blogs for your reading pleasure!

In the tanking department we’ve got Sheep the Diamond by Stubborn who doesn’t write about tanking much, but when you stop by his blog, I can guarantee that you’ll find pages and pages of insightful, thought-provoking posts.

In the healing corner, we’ve got Gina’s Healbot.net, which I swear I have no idea how I missed her blog. (I mean, we’d even chatted on twitter a couple of times! Clearly I’m in the clouds these days.) Each one of her guides (and she’s written a lot of them!) is perfectly planned out and incredibly easy to follow. Head to Healbot.net for paladin and priest healing guides, fantastic 10 man boss guides and discussions on healing.

Double O podcast Episode 2 is up!

Check out the second episode of the Double O podcast!

I’m really, really excited about it. Ok, I know I’m always excited about our podcasts. But our topic, gaming addiction, is one that’s very close to the field I’m trying to specialize in in real life (substance abuse and dependence pharmacy) so I was particularly enthusiastic and I think it shows. I didn’t have to chop as many silences out of my speech as usual.

We also had a special guest, as close to an expert on the topic that exists right now, our blogosphere’s own Lady Erinia. She’s a wonderful, knowledgeable speaker and I hope you all enjoy her presence on the podcast as much as I did.

I know the intro music fades out a bit too fast. I’m using Audacity now, instead of that nasty Traverso that bailed on me last time. Audacity is fantastic in a lot of aspects (like not crashing after my every action), but effects are bit more annoying to work with. By the time I was finished snipping and ready to add the music, I was too fed up to figure out how to get the perfect sound. Next time will be better!

A Point on Addiction and Insight

On the podcast, I made a mistake that I want to clarify. If you’ve heard the podcast, you’ll be scratching your head because I cleverly chopped out that part along with any references to it. But I did originally say that to meet the criteria for addiction, you need to have tried to quit (or wanted to quit) and failed.

While this is part of the criteria, how the diagnosis of addiction works is that there are 7 criteria (including wanting/trying unsuccessfully to quit), but you only need to meet 3 out of the 7.

That said, I think that with gaming addiction, in order for it to be an addiction, there has to be some level of insight (meaning you’re aware) – addiction is a very extreme condition – but given the stigma associated with both gaming and addiction, it is very possible to know there’s problem, but not want to admit it.

Anyway, I hope we came across as non-judgmental and easy to understand on the show, and still managed to be somewhat entertaining despite the serious and sciency topic.

Want to be a guest on the show?

We’ve been getting a lot of requests from people wanting to be guests on the show. That’s awesome! We love having guests!

I haven’t run this through Oestrus yet and will do that before I make any official statements on the podcast webpage, but my answer for now to anyone who’d like to be a guest is to suggest an area of expertise you have and that you think would make a good theme for an episode. We like to have specific topics (and we especially like controversial) for each of our shows, so let us know what you want to talk about.

Note too that our podcast is bi-weekly so, while we’ll probably love to have you on the show, it might take a few months before we can accommodate everyone.

Cuba, sí

*image from http://www.lonelyplanet.com/cuba

Tomorrow night, I have to hop on a plane and head to a country with very minimal internet access. I know. It’s tough. There I’ll have to look at amazing scenery, prance around a beach in a bikini, eat endless amounts of free food and drink as much free booze as a I can handle. It’s a tough, tough life.

So I’ll be internetless for a week, which means no email, no answering comments and no Twitter. Try not to miss me too much.

But! I got a number of internet thingies done before I leave, so if you need your Bossy Pally fix (my ego knows no bounderies ;D), be sure to check my Holy Pally 101 post at TopRosters (which, in the end, took the appearance more characteristic of a guide rather than a real 101). Leave as much love or criticism as you wish, but be patient since I won’t get around to answering until next week.

And if you’d rather hear my suave (and by suave I mean squeaky and offkey) voice, the first real episode of the Double O podcast is ready for your listening pleasure. We had a lot of fun recording it. We use an article from Kotaku as a starting point to talk about our experiences as being women and being gamers. Men are welcome too, of course.

The editing process for that one ended up being a nightmare. My editing software kept crashing, and when I finally managed to reach the end of the podcast (after no less than 6 hours), it wouldn’t let me export the file to a more…useful…format. As I was tittering on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Fimlys came to my rescue by suggesting I play the file on my computer and use Audacity to record it.

It was one of the moments where the light shines on you and you hear naked baby angels singing.

“Audacity record sounds from computer” was what I typed in Google. Had to jump through a few hoops (Windows Vista apparently does not approve of recording sounds from your computer), but in the end, I finally had a podcast.

Last week we got some feedback about awkward silences, so I was very aggressive with cutting them out. I….also….tend to….talk with…a lot…of….pauses. So I cut in there in hopes to make myself sound less verbally challenges. The end result isn’t perfect as some pauses probably should have been left in, but, hey! there are NO MORE awkward silences!

Notice anything different around here?

I’m excited to say I made a few changes to my blog! There’s more to come, but I’m tiredandstillhavetogetreadyforthemove
andpackandmyfingershurtandyouknowhowitis.

Huge, huge thanks to Faith for drawing this fantastic banner! You should be able to find more of her work on her facebook album. I believe she does do commission work, so feel free to drop her a message! (ps. THE GAME!) Big thanks as well to my guildie Hempia for all the work she put into the banner too!

I updated my sidebar with more links to posts and links to other paladin blogs. I’m not finished updating my paladin blogroll yet because I’m tired and feel like my fingers are about to fall off (where did all these great blogs suddenly come from?), but if you know of a regularly updated paladin blog that I might probably forget, feel free to leave me a link. I should get around to it eventually.

Ideally I’d like to add a few pages to lump my sort of useful posts and my shameless self loving ego posts in one place and clear my sidebar of all the orange text, but I think that’ll have to wait until after I move.

OMG I’M MOVING ACROSS THE COUNTRY ON TUESDAY! FOUR AND HALF HOURS TIME ZONE HOP! EEEEEKKKKK!!! So so so so not ready for this!

Ok, I’m going to go panic and run around in circles some more. Thank you again Faith and Hempia for the great banner!

BYYYYYEEEEEEEEEE

Burnout is teh suXor

I know I’m behind on answering comments and emails. I know I haven’t done the Shared Topic writeup this week. No one’s complained yet, but it’s frustrating me. I want to do get stuff done. I’m supposed to be an efficient person, dammit. I want to get stuff done but the moment I try, I get this overwhelming nausea. I managed to get back on schedule with school stuff. It took all my self discipline but I managed. Anything “optional” just completely destroys me.

I hate using my blog to whine, it’s the exact thing I promised myself I wouldn’t do, but the last two weeks or so, I’ve felt nothing but frustration and guilt when I try to blog. I guess it has to come out somehow.

I keep seeing holy pally misinformation floating by on Twitter and I’m all “OMG YAY BLOG TOPIC!” and go to write. Then I throw up and then I start crying out of frustration.

Things, be they in real life, on the internetz, in game, that wouldn’t usually bother me upset me like crazy. And now I’m wondering if this is the real me and my happy, goofy self was all an act. Maybe I’m actually a psycho woman and my personality is just coming out.

God I hate burnout.

Know what else I hate? Not being able to eat much. I miss food so badly. I have this gorgeous Easter basket I won. It’s full of chocolate. Chocolate that I usually love but that makes me throw up these days. Every now and again I get this little hint of hunger. I excitedly run to the kitchen and manage to get two spoonfuls of oatmeal or yogurt or applesauce in before the nausea comes rushing back.

Oh and this new fainting thing is pretty detestable as well. My cat is great about it though. When he saw me sprawled out in the kitchen at 5 am this morning, he was all “FLOOR PARTY!!!” and chilled with me on ground until I could drag myself back to bed.

This. semester. cannot. end. soon. enough.

But it’s not all bad these days. I’m getting ready to move out West for my summer clinical rotation, which should be pretty nice. I’m getting second thoughts now: Am I going to find an affordable place to live? Is my internship going to work out? Will I run out of money? Yet for the most part, I’m excited. It’s been awhile since I’ve taken off with my backpack on a semi-spontaneous adventure and the wanderlust itch is killing me.

Here are some pictures of the town I’m moving to:

Doesn’t it look amazing?

Anyway, I expect to get my sanity back within the next two weeks. Hopefully I’ll still have a few readers that haven’t been scared away by my whining. Between now and then, if you’ve sent an email or left a comment I haven’t answered, I’m not ignoring them. I really appreciate you all, but I’m not quite myself these days. Or maybe I’m too much myself. Or whatever.

Looking for something to do this Friday Night?

EDIT: That was so much fun! Hopefully I didn’t make too much of an arse of myself… Huge thanks to everyone that showed up!

I’m really excited to announce that barring any technical difficulties, I’ll be on the Twisted Nether Blogcast tonight! I’m a huge TNB fangirl, so I’m quite giddy at the moment. (To whoever recommended me: <3!)

Feel free to stop by the live chatroom and say hi! The show should start at 8 PST.

In other news, I think this will be the first week in about 6 months that I won’t be taking part in the Blog Azeroth Shared Topic. I actually kind of feel bad about it, but I’m exhausted this week and don’t have it in me. The Topic itself, World of Awecraft, is fantastic though, so I still recommend you all check it out.

Another fun event to take part in (and non-bloggers can participate!) is a Blog Noblegarden Egg Hunt organized by Angelya of Revive & Rejuvenate. It involves hiding and finding eggs on participants’ blogs, check out her post for more info!

And I guess that kind of ends my classified section. I know I’ve been promising posts that are actually somewhat useful (and I feel uncomfortable when I get linked to as “a paladin blog” yet I haven’t talked about paladin stuff in forever), but with the end of semester burnout and tons of papers due, all I want to do is goof off. And since this is my blog and I can do what I want with it, goofing off it shall be.

I have been going through old paladin posts and updating them, though. I figure I have enough posts now for it to be worth sorting them better and creating some links pages. I expect to be finished, um, sometime before next year.

ANYWAY, I hope to see a fun and exciting TNB chatroom tonight!

Love is in the Blog

Singles Awareness Day is a week from now and the Love Is In The Air event is starting up in the game. Are you guys finishing up the stupid candies achievement for your Purple Drake? Thank goodness I got that last candy on the last day! While the event is very cute, I got a lifetime’s worth of it last year. I don’t expect to be getting my hands dirty again any time soon.

Wait, wait, you say there’s some new items this year? Among others, a Toxic Wasteling pet and a Heartbreaker? Ok, I suppose I’ll head over to Scarlet Monastery Shadowfang Keep  a few times.

But really, I’d rather do a different kind of Love Is In The Air achievements this year. I’d like to take the event to my blog. Love is in the Blog!

With me being Ms Hardened Singleton Extraordinaire, you’d think I’d hate Valentine’s/Singles Awareness/Male Judgment Day, however you choose to call it. You’d think. But I don’t. It’s actually one of my favorite holidays. It’s the one time of year where I have an excuse to be a sappy shmoock and drive my friends, my colleagues, my acquaintances, random strangers on the street crazy with displays of affection.

Since this is a WoW blog, I want to use the next week to spread a little WoW love. Or raise WoW singleton awareness. Or get in touch with my sentimental side. I haven’t planned it all out yet, but I’m excited to announce that love will be in the blog.

EDIT: Just thought I’d mention, I’m totally not claiming copyrights on the idea (and as far as I know, it could have been done by people in the past). If anyone is at a loss for blog ideas this week and wants to join in on the theme, I’m all for it and will even link back to you.

I need some opinions!

I think we can all agree that I need to work a bit on visual side of my blog. Unfortunately, I lack any sort of eye for judging visual appeal. I’m the kind of person who gets dressed in the morning and has to ask my (male) housemate if my clothes match. So you can imagine how lost I am when it comes to making websites pretty.

Fortunately, Faith, the daughter of a guildie of mine, came to my rescue and offered to help me with my banner.

She drew this amazing picture of my character :

Isn’t it gorgeous? And I’m still in awe over those boots. Those are so me.

What I need is an opinion on whether or not it would fit well in my heading banner. Does it have the Bossy Pally feel? Does it suit my writing style?

(Note that it’s not coloured yet, but will be if I choose to use it in my banner.)

While I know I absolutely love the drawing, it’s difficult to tell from the inside if it really represents my writing.

An alternative position for my character would be to have her on her side, ankles crossed with the spoon laying about the whole length of the body. She’d have one arm resting on the spoon and her head resting on the other hand.

Which also sounds amazing.

So…what do you guys think?