Out of My Cold, Dead Hands

In TBC I proudly carried my Khorium Destroyer, crafted for me as a gift from my lovely wife, Cheesi. It was the tank gun back then...kind of a rite of passage into the ranks of the meat shields.

When WotLK came around, I crafted myself an Armor Plated Combat Shotgun the second I hit 80. Great tank weapon when you start your heroicing.

That's a long stretch of time to be carrying nothing but a gun. Veneretio recommended a while back to pick up some thrown weapons for a trash set, but I never really got anything in TBC or early WotLK that I wouldn't be embarrassed carrying in a raid. Thrown weapons back then were pretty much built for rogues, so they were great for trash threat. Plus, throwing has a much shorter cast time than shooting (that was a big deal pre-Heroic Throw, but even now it's helpful to have a secondary option in the event that the pulls are happening quick and HT is on cooldown).

Not too terribly long ago, I coughed up some emblems for the Blades of the Sable Cross, the first really accessible replacement for an Engineering tanking gun in a very, very long time.

There was nothing wrong with the Blades. In fact, they were quite nice. It just felt weird to not have a gun. It was hard enough to take off my goggles, but losing my gun, too? I felt naked...couldn't walk through Tinkertown without getting dirty looks.

Last night during our ICC cleanup (didn't get Festergut, but made some progress on him), Stinky fell and Tatia said she/he/it dropped a BoE: Rowan's Rifle of Silver Bullets.

Thanks, Blizz, for making sure I don't have to bring knives to any more gunfights.

It's Not Easy Being Cheesi

Even though she spends every day:

1. Dealing with mouthy, hormonal teenagers.
2. Cleaning up after people who don't quite understand that "in the vicinity of the garbage can" is not quite as good as "in the garbage can."
3. Running after the Baby Tank, who, like a good Warrior-in-training, charges all over the place shouting even though she's supposed to be "disabled" and "immobile."
4. Putting up with my moody, obsessive-compulsive, and self-destructive behavior (I call it the price of genius).

She still managed to hit the big 8-0.

Gratz, Babe.

Now poison up. We've got some crap to kill.

The Perfect Pet

This past weekend I started to feel a little guilty about running off doing raids and heroics while Cheesi was still grinding out the last few levels to 80. I decided that I'd go and get her a new friend to keep her company while adventuring.

I asked her what she wanted, and she selected the Teldrassil Sproutling. Little did we know that this was, without a doubt, the perfect pet for her.

So what would a Gnome Rogue and a toddler tree have in common? Two things in particular:

1a. Cheesi is short.
1b. The Sproutling is shorter.

2a. Cheesi's attention span is short.

2b. The Sproutling's is shorter.

Also, I have crab. So...umm...anybody who was in Naxx with me yesterday should probably get checked out.

Ugg. Tank Happy.

See that? Over on the left?

That's my face right now. Has been since yesterday.

Why?

The lovely Cheesi bought me a new computer as a combined Father's Day, Birthday, and Anniversary gift.

This is a big deal. I've been growing increasingly infuriated at the amount of lag I've been getting, especially in Dalaran (less than 1 fps is bad) because of the machine I've been playing on.

The new one makes the old one look like a glorified abacus.

Now, I can reinstall Cartographer and Questhelper (scrapped due to memory usage) and maybe even knock out the Fishing and Cooking dailies in a reasonable amount of time. Plus, I might even be able to do something crazy like, I don't know, run Tweetdeck in the background while I play.

I was downloading the WoW client most of the day yesterday from the website (oh, dear Lord it takes forever) while playing the Sims 3 and running Tweetdeck all simultaneously. I think I even had iTunes running part of the time. No performance issues noted.

Excited Mis? You betcha.

Guess who's gonna be reconfiguring his UI tonight with all sorts of new toys.

Thank you, Baby. Love you.

Gotta Green

My virtual world has been invaded.

As I walked into my house last night after a long day at work, I discovered that both of our computers were full of characters wearing cloth armor that appeared to be designed by H&M or some other store in the mall out of which, if I entered, I would promptly be escorted and sent to the nearest Target.

None of the NPCs can be properly tanked, although you can apparently draw aggro if you're getting frisky with the maid and your girlfriend/wife finds out.

It's all so confusing.

~*~

So yeah, we've got The Sims 3 installed on both computers which allows Cheesi (who is a major Sims addict) and the kids to play.

Cheesi and I played the original Sims, The Sims Online, and The Sims 2 (her more than me on that one). I enjoy them, but Cheesi absolutely loves them. She'll spend days designing a house down to the smallest detail.

I remember one night soon after The Sims 2 came out. Our house at the time had a dedicated gaming room with a couch in it. She was sitting at the computer and I dozed off on the couch after playing some PS2. I woke up at 5:00 am to find that she was still building the same house she was working on when I fell asleep. She had not taken the game out of build mode that whole time.

So, at least for the next couple of days, I'm afraid that I'll be hanging out on the couch while all the ladies in the house take turns playing with their new toy. Not a big deal, really. A little break from WoW can't hurt and it gives me a chance to watch a movie or two that they wouldn't want to see anyway...specifically movies with boobs and explosions.

I still plan on posting and flooding other WoW blogs with pointless comments as I usually do. Gotta keep myself busy somehow.

Weekend Shenanigans

I ran Heroic Culling of Stratholme for the first time on Friday. Overall, it went well and we just had a couple of hiccups. The bosses were not anything to write home about, but the trash was really obnoxious. Oddly enough, it wasn't the elite trash that was the problem, but the non-elites that roam about and pick away at party members while they're trying to cast. Everything that dropped was cloth caster gear aside from some Pally shoulders. Willy, who is finally back, got some upgrades and the ring that dropped went to the Shaman we Pugged. It was well-deserved, as he did a great job and helped us melt the bosses down ridiculously fast.

I only did one dungeon while I was leveling to 80, so I'm seeing most of the WotLK dungeons for the first time on Heroic...something of a trial by fire. During the run on Friday, I was very pleased with my single-target threat generation. I did a little Recount analysis afterwards and decided I'm still not using Revenge enough. I'm getting much better with Heroic Strike spams, though, thanks to some reshuffling of my action bars. The Revenge issue should be easy to fix now that I'm aware of the problem.

Elsewhere, I finally became a Champion of Gnomeregan. I was going to take Darraxus's advice and avoid turning in the seals until I was exalted, but I was close enough and ran off to knock out some really low-level dwarf/gnome quests which got me exalted with Ironforge and within 2K of Gnomer. Nice break from the daily grind. Exodar's next.

Cheesi also played a lot this weekend and made it to 76. She's doing a good job knocking the rust off and getting back into the swing of the whole stabbity-stab Rogue thing. It's more fun for me when she's online, too. I'm looking forward to running some heroics/raids with her.

Number 2: Accomplished

I am now "Misneach of Stormwind." I had dramatic screenshots ready to go for this post, but Blogger's being a jerk. Text only will have to do for now.

I know some of you are scoffing at me, particular those of you with your "Realm First Night Elf Rogue to use a Heavy Frostweave Bandage while standing on the geographic center of Storm Peaks" titles, but this is a big deal to me and that's all that matters. So there.

My next step in the Tournament is to become exalted with and a Champion of Gnomeregan. Somehow my rep with them is lowest among the Alliance races. I fail to see how this is possible, considering my intimate knowledge of one of their kind. Seriously, that's gotta count for something.

Final semi-related point on the topic: I really wish my new Squire would carry some of my crap. Isn't that their job?

Happy Birthday Cheesi

Today is Cheesi's RL birthday. If you see her online and you're on Bloodhoof, wish her a happy birthday. If you try and ask how old she is, though, you'll probably be met with an ambush or a backstab or something. Your pockets will likely be picked as well.

You've been warned.

Why the Funny Should be Saved for GChat

I would give my left arm to have had this interchange with the lovely Cheesi over guild chat so I could screenshot it and post it here (Yes, when we're both playing at the same time we type to one another rather than talk in RL. Don't judge us).

Instead, it happened during a text message conversation wherein I was asking her to convince me not to spend money on a new electronic toy that I don't really need.

Me: I'm thinking about doing something stupid. Talk me down.
Cheesi: Uh oh. I don't know how many times I have to tell you. Keep your penis out of the coffee pot.

This is why I married this woman.

Cheesi

As I mentioned earlier, my wife is a gnome rogue named Cheesi. As promised, here is the origin of that name:

When I started playing WoW, she was determined to not become a WoW Widow and created a druid on my account to try it out. She enjoyed playing the game and decided to get her own account so that we could play together.

Around that time, her grandfather's health was fading. She travelled to Tennessee to visit him and met his dog, Chiisai, which is (romanized) Japanese for small. This carried with it a bit of irony, as Chiisai was a Great Pyrenees who was the size of a riding lawnmower.

Upon her return, while she was waiting for her druid to get transferred over to her new account, she created a little gnome rogue and named her after the dog. She played with the spelling a bit and came up with Cheesi (pronounced with a long i). Even after her druid made it to her account, Cheesi eventually became her main.

She's quite good at the rogue class, causing all sorts of havoc in battlegrounds and, in the BC days, giving me fits trying to keep my threat high enough for her to not pull aggro.

Cheesi's been on hiatus as well and is still on the road to 80, but she's getting there.

PS: Women of Bloodhoof, before you decide to

• /target Misneach
• /flirt

watch your back.

Literally.