Finding My Happy Place

The last time I did something other than be a passive observer in Retail was about a month or two ago, when I got a toon to L12 over the course of an evening. Still, it wasn't an urge to actually do much of anything, but kind of just sit around doing the modern equivalent of "nothing": fishing.

I haven't fished in Retail since that time back in 2024 that I'd speculated whether you can level while fishing in the same manner that you can gain XP by gathering ore and herbs.* It had been a while, and my fishing experiment back then was limited to one of my old Horde bank toons and a visit to the pond just outside of Silvermoon**, so I figured why not go fishing at the pond near Goldshire? 

If there's one thing I've discovered about fishing in Retail, it's that you have to pay attention to the mobs near you. You can't simply outlevel them and their aggro radius then shrinks to nothing; that'd be too easy. No, you have to find a spot where you know the mobs aren't going to be close enough to aggro you as if you were either at or slightly underleveled for the area.

Hence the pond outside of Goldshire. 

If it were Classic, as soon as possible I'd be over at the creek near the logging camp for the peace and quiet, but some of the mobs there do wander close enough to the Alliance guards near the road that I'd have to pay attention rather than simply relax, so the outskirts of Goldshire it was.

Of course, that did come with some risks. 

Such as dodging a bunch of Horde who'd decided to drop in and say hello...

I guess they wanted to have some fun too...

And then once I arrived at my spot, I discovered that I hadn't trained fishing yet...

This is after I "trained" Classic Fishing.

The old system still found in Classic WoW is really simple: line go up. Once you reach that maximum for an expansion, go train and you can make the line go up even more. This new system? It confuses me, and no amount of explanation can soothe the disquiet in my soul that says "nothing in this game matters except where they want you to be."

At this point, why don't they simply have a "Train Fishing" selection to train the skill itself, and eliminate the leveling process entirely? The cost in gold is absolutely minimal*** so why not do away with it entirely for the secondary skills in the same way they eliminated weapons training in Cataclysm, over 15 years ago?

But I digress.

Once I trained Classic Fishing, I then had to actually find the skill to add it to my bar.

It's not where it usually is in Classic.

It's in its own separate selection button. Before
anybody says that it makes sense this way, I'd
like to point out that the option above this one is
still called "Spellbook" even though those selections
have absolutely nothing to do with spells at all.

Okay, after having found the Fishing option and added it to my bar, I had to go back to the vendor and acquire a fishing pole, then return to my spot. Again, the Horde made it entertaining, because I was obviously not flagged for PvP**** but they did try to encourage me to do so by waggling in front of me. If I were truly a new player, that would have freaked me out in as much the same way as it did back in 2009 when an Alliance max toon found me while questing in Tirisfal Glades on the Stormscale PvP server and weaved around me to the point where I simply hearthed out of there. But now? Eh, no big deal. And besides, if I'd have given them a few rude gestures that might have encouraged them to follow me.

I finally arrived at the dock once more and began fishing.

I spent a good half an hour just casting and relaxing. Of course, the Horde did try to intrude a bit...

The fighting got close enough that I even acquired a Moonkin buff...

Is this a global buff that is proximity related?
I obviously wasn't grouped with anyone, so I did wonder.

And once in a while an Alliance toon just popped up next to me, curious as to what I was doing, but since I never got a whisper or an emote I ignored them, and they went away.

Were it not for the ongoing PvP just next to me, I'd say that it was fairly quiet overall, and that suited me fine. I might level this toon a bit more just so I can go over to the dock in the far SW of Westfall (assuming it's still there) and fish there, because it's not only out of the way but also far enough from any mobs that they're not going to crash my party. At least I hope so.

*Spoiler alert: you can't. Fishing does not grant you experience in Retail.

**Saying you're visiting Silvermoon is now as complicated as visiting Dalaran. If I'd a dollar every time I saw somebody I knew on BNet playing Retail being in "Eversong Woods" or "Silvermoon" and thinking they were starting a new Blood Elf, I'd have paid off the mortgage on my house. 

***See how my L12 toon without any amount of trying at all has almost 5 gold? If this were Classic, you'd be lucky if you had ONE gold by the time you went to Westfall.

****Or warbands or whatever they call it now; it'll always be PvP in my book, because it's pretty self-explanatory.

EtA: Corrected grammar.

Meme Monday: Father's Day Memes for 2026

This coming Sunday is Father's Day in the US, so I figured that sharing a few memes for Gamer Dads would be a good idea. (Maybe.)

Well, I'd like to think so. From Pinterest.

True story: I was supposed to watch my oldest when
she was a few months old and napping in her car
seat. So I took the car seat upstairs and began a game
of Sid Meier's Colonization (the original one). 
I ended up with a stiff neck because I kept twisting
it around every few seconds to see if she'd woken up.
From Meta PCs on X.

Sheesh. It's not that bad. After all, we're all gamers here.
From Bored Panda.

/snicker. From Reddit and Breaking Bad.

Okay, I laughed. From Reddit.

Then, of course, there's World of Warcraft.
From Reddit.

Same Old, Same Old

In the last little bit of time since I posted about the Anniversary servers, this happened:

June 2, 2026.

One down, two to go.

Cardwyn dinged L70 in Nagrand, leaving three untouched zones behind: Blade's Edge Mountains, Netherstorm, and Shadowmoon Valley. 

I don't think the other two toons are going to get so lucky, but we'll see. 

Listings are as of June 10, 2026.

I ought to note that unlike my experience leveling in Vanilla Anniversary servers, I basically would switch toons once they cleared a zone. So, the level you see for Linna is where she stood after finishing up Terokkar Forest. Briganaa was at L67 as well when she finished up Terokkar, but Card was a lot closer to L68 than the others are, which is how she was able to finish up leveling in Nagrand. There's also the little fact that getting some quest drops for Card were harder than others, and my exploration of finding Corki (that Broken NPC who somehow manages to get himself captured by ogres multiple times) meant I cleared out more caves than was necessary. All this meant that Card got a lot more XP from simply killing mobs than Brig did; she was just more efficient at questing than Card because she came along second and got to learn from the Mage's experience.

***

I've recently begun doing something I'd previously done on Retail, and that's just hanging around cities, watching the crowd.

And being amused by the guild names...

I still do make quips or gestures about things that pop into my head while playing, though...

The number of medical ads is too damn high.

And sometimes NPCs can't take a joke.

Meme Monday: Vacation Memes

Well, I'm not about to go on vacation, because I can now state what I've (not) been up to the past couple of weeks: Jury Duty.

I was selected as an alternate juror for our local county's Grand Jury. For those not familiar with the US Judicial System, Grand Jury is a jury composed of people who review evidence on felony cases presented by the Prosecutor's Office to determine if there's enough evidence to charge a person with a crime. This is not the actual criminal trial, that's held separately and with a separate jury; this is just a review process designed to make sure that there's enough evidence to even get to the trial part. 

As an alternate, after the swearing in, judicial instructions, and training (yes, there's training involved so we understand the process) I only had to show up if someone from the two seated Grand Juries was unable to attend due to illness or whatnot. As the person representing the Prosecutor's Office indicated, I or the other two alternates weren't likely to be called, but we were there in reserve. It could be worse, as I was already prepared to spend two weeks away from work and doing this instead, but that never materialized.

So, not a vacation, but because I had to set aside that time as a "just in case", that does affect my ability to take a vacation for the next month. (I love corporate policies. Yay me.)

What I can do, however, is post about some vacation memes.

"Hail to the night!" my ass. Actually, that does
bring up a question: if Night Elves prefer the night,
wouldn't they be more susceptible to sunburn on
the beach? For example, my son and I are really
pale and prone to sunburn, while my wife and the girls
aren't (relatively speaking). From X and Nicarao Gaming.

And what people do on vacation, because even your toons need a break from time to time.

Like fishing. From Muse Sings.

Again, lying around at the "beach".
From swordscomic.com.

Or maybe go camping. 
From Peanuts or Pretzels.

Then again, some people love to go visit the casino
and gamble their vacation away. From Gamblingnews.

But for a gamer, ganking is the real vacation.
From Ranker.

Well, okay. I'll grant you THIS is the
real gamer vacation. MMO players know this
one pretty well, judging by enough comments
and posts on forums and other social media.
From Gamerant's Instagram via mematic.

Normalcy in Goldshire

I believe I've mentioned a few times that I have some low level toons on Retail WoW's Moon Guard server. For the most part I've done some basic questing with them, mainly clearing the Starting Area and the adjacent First Zone. In the case of  questing close to Stormwind, that means interacting with quest NPCs in Goldshire.

So, when I logged into one of said toons that I'd last parked at the Lion's Pride Inn, I actually got a whisper directed at me. 

In Retail, by default if you get a whisper it pops up in a separate Chat Tab, so I didn't notice it at first while I waited for my PC to catch up with all the toons in the immediate area.* But when I did, I got an existential sense of dread. After all, the last time this happened I got some pretty explicit queries**, but I figured I ought to at least look at what was said.

That was... normal.

It was unusual in that it was an actual normal whisper. So I replied:

I think the person misunderstood that I actually was parked there due to quest turn-ins, but it could be worse.

At least somebody was looking out for the lowbies on Moon Guard...

*I've discovered that it takes about 5 seconds or so for all the toons in an area to appear on my screen when I've logged into Retail. I get the impression that the engine is polling the server for everyone in the area, and that it's not exactly a very swift response. My current internet connection is 600/600 mb, so there's plenty of bandwidth for items as simple as that, so I suspect the engine for this is a wee bit unoptimized, especially since Classic WoW does not have those problems.

**No, not the ones I actually posted here on the blog. The ones not published here were a wee bit more direct and rated "M for Mature".

EtA: Added an extra "*" to clarify a statement about toons appearing after a login.

Something I Can't Unsee

This... feels weird.

Yes, it's a short of the most recent Superman movie (2025), but what's so weird about it is that the interior is that of Cincinnati Museum Center.

My wife used to work there in both the Natural History Museum and the Cincinnati Historical Society, and we used to take the kids there on a regular basis when they were growing up. 

So yeah, I know nothing else of the movie or the scene, but looking at the interior of the rotunda like that is... Well, it's a bit much.

In case you're wondering whether they touched up the rotunda very much, here's a video of a performance of Debussy's Arabesque No. 1 on the Wurlitzer organ at the Museum Center. The pipes are hidden from view, but the main portion of the Wurlitzer is right on the border from the rotunda to the walkway that leads towards the Omnimax Theater and the Amtrak station.

As you can tell, the Winhold Weiss murals were changed from this:

From WVXU's 2023 article.

From the same WVXU 2023 article as above.

To this:

From Reddit. Here's a better set of pics from
James Gunn on Facebook. Not sure how long it'll last.

We Are the Limitation

In the era of LLMs, you can't hide.

Whatever you say will be pulled out from the internet and presented to you, so you might want to be a bit wary about that.

Of course, Google still doesn't know PC exists, but hey, nobody's perfect.

Data as of June 1st, 2026.

List of Indexed Pages, as of June 1, 2026.

As you can see, Google has completely wiped out all of the "Indexed" web pages owned by Parallel Context, as if Google decided they didn't really exist. They are presently listed as "Scanned, Not Indexed", so if you can imagine the warehouse scene at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, it's a bit like that.

Google: "Top men are working on it."
Indiana Jones: "Who?"
Google: "Top. Men."

So when Google decided to announce changes to their search interface on May 19, 2026, I made a collective yawn. It doesn't matter how fancy the interface is, if Google itself isn't finding or indexing the data, you're not going to find it on Google.

I have been amused by the fact that Google and other AI companies might just be missing a major problem with their push to make everybody irrelevant: their own data pool. 

Copyright issues notwithstanding, if your search engine's webcrawlers aren't providing you with data --and I presume that a small blog like mine isn't the only website that has issues appearing on a normal google search-- then your AI isn't really being trained as effectively as you think.

Results using a private browsing window
on Firefox on June 1, 2026.

 And just for completeness (and, well, to rub Google's nose in it), Microsoft Bing knows I exist:

Results using a private browsing window
on Firefox on June 1, 2026.

That's damning with faint praise, as I'm really sick about Copilot this and Copilot that. Even though Microsoft threw in the towel and is beginning to back off from pushing the Copilot button so aggressively, they're not exactly giving up on Copilot either. 

And remember Google Glass? The eyeglass wearable that ended up being pulled by Google because people who wore them started getting beat up by people who resented being on video without consent? Well, fast forward to 2026, and Meta, Apple, and Amazon have made eyeglass wearables a thing now. And nobody cares anymore that they're being recorded.

Given that I can go to the grocery store and (unintentionally) be following someone up and down the aisles and hear both sides of their entire conversation for 40 minutes, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I don't think any of the people who behave like this --and there are far far more of them than I'd ever have believed-- realize that anybody could record them and then use their discussions against them because they are holding a conversation in public. 

This goes on all the time, and I'm the one who gets funny looks when I put my earbuds on when I'm at the grocery store, although that might be due to me using wired earbuds more than anything else. No, I don't hold phone conversations at the store, although I have been known to call home to ask whether Brand X or Y is fine since Z isn't in stock. No, I put on my earbuds to keep the noise at bay (I have tinnitus) and so I don't have to listen in on whatever the latest gossip that some fellow customer is insisting I hear by talking loudly into a phone a couple of feet from me.

I guess it's only a matter of time before all of these wearables such as the eyeglasses become used by Big Tech to feed LLMs. And I'd bet money that even then, Parallel Context won't show up on a simple Google search.