Signs of the Apocalypse, Part Whatever

I guess I should be happy that Google can't really figure out if this blog exists, because AI bots are starting to become a real problem. 

(As if they're not one already.)

Yes, the number of indexed pages on this blog
actually went down over the course of the
past month. I guess Google kind of lost
the plot. Graph as of February 17, 2026.

Tech engineer and Raspberry Pi enthusiast Jeff Geerling experienced problems due to AI swamping his GitHub and AI agents causing disruption in the open source community:

And the popular LINUX distro, LINUX Mint,* had their forums swamped with AI bots back in January, nearly bringing down the entire system:

These are just two that I'm aware of; I'm almost certain there's more out there that I haven't observed yet.

This bubble can't pop quickly enough.

*I found out about LINUX Mint while researching a LINUX OS to install on my mom's old laptop that doesn't support Windows 11 yet is perfectly fine for use.

Meme Monday: Introvert Memes

I am an introvert.

I mean, if you couldn't have figured that out after years of blogging --and enjoying the fact that less than 50 people read the blog regularly-- that I'm an introvert, well, I'm sorry to disappoint you that I'm not an extrovert.

After 30 years of marriage, my wife has figured out that just leaving me to do my thing in the evening, with me occasionally popping into the TV room to see what she's watching, is the way for us to operate. Sure, I play board games with her and I have some occasional RPG games with a game group, but my hobbies tend to not be of the face-to-face variety. 

So, in honor of all of us introverts, here you go...

Yes, this is me at parties. While I can interact with
people well enough, my brain is freaking out the entire
time. From Thisismyrandomlife via The Minds Journal.

This is me to a 'T'. I had an awkward interaction
last week and I simply.cant.stop.thinking.about.it.
From Thunder Dungeon and X.

This is also me. The skills are similar
to that of stalkers, but the result is one
of active avoidance of certain people. It
is not a requirement that we don't get along,
as I also do that so I don't have to interact with
people I do know and like because... reasons.
From X.

Yep. I'm not fond of spontaneity. In my experience,
things get awkward far more often than not. 
The plot of Martin Scorsese's After Hours is
pretty much why I would never go and embrace
spontaneity. From The Minds Journal.

Yes. This. From Sarah Andersen.

Yeah, my introversion is very much on display
when my friends group wants to go and do things,
whether IRL or in WoW. When you dread that
"XXX Invites you to group" pop-up, you might be
an introvert. From The Minds Journal.

A Short Visit

Fellow blogger Kamalia, of Kamalia et Alia, posted yesterday about wanting friends to hang with her at her house for a weekly quest. Since she plays solo for the most part, she'd prefer it be Battle.net friends, but if that wasn't happening she'd be open to grouping.

Well... that intrigued me a bit, so I asked a few questions in the comments, and then one thing led to another, and...

Surprise!

Yes, I pulled out my first max-level toon from 2009, Quintalan, for the visit. It's been a while since he's been out and about, as he's wearing his Tier 9 armor and wielding Quel'delar, but I thought it appropriate that he be the first toon to visit.

Kam showed me around...

From the foyer...

To a parlor/reading area, complete with a floating
book. That book tickled my funny bone.

Cardwyn: "Hey, me too!!"

And it wouldn't be Kamalia's house without several
Tauren-themed rooms.

She even had a laundry area put together, which
given I was actually finishing up a load of
laundry at the time, this was perfect.

This is the kids' room, complete with bunk beds.
And Ancient, if you're reading this...

All in all, she's done an amazing job of decorating.
But if you've ever read of my admiration of her
innate sense of decor and fashion, it's not a surprise.

We went to the edge of her property, complete
with tallstriders. No hawkstriders around, alas.

I had to admit that I wasn't sure if Quintalan even
had flying in the Old World, but at least the 
Community Center is reachable by ground mounts.
From there I could take a portal to Orgrimmar.

I took a lot more screencaps than I posted here, but this should give you a feel for what it was like visiting Kamalia's house. I told her that if she just needed a body to hang around every so often, I was more than up to the task. After all, I'm not raiding or anything, and it'd feel good to reconnect with more of my blogger friends in-game.

Sir, He's Dead Already!

Well, my Hardcore experiment didn't last long.

My reincarnation of Neve didn't even get out of Eversong Woods. She got caught by multiple respawns in the Scorched Grove at Level 8. Briganaa at least lasted into the second Draenei zone, Bloodmyst Isle, but one of her Fire Totems inadvertently pulled multiple nearby mobs and she died at Level 14. 

This was, ironically enough, about 1/2 hour
before the fatal blow.

The Blood Elf Paladin Quintalan still survives, but he's Level 7 right now. His long term future is in doubt, because he has a tendency to overpull even when I specifically don't want to.

He's also into being a therapist, for some strange reason.

***

While there are still around 20 or so layers' worth of players out there, the Old World (except for the Capital Cities) has emptied out. You can find gold farmers around and there are people leveling, of course, but the swarm has moved on to Outland. 

I had to turn off the nameplates for NPCs to show
just how few people are at Light's Hope Chapel.
A week ago, this place was still packed.

My Questing Buddy has already reached L70 --I think she reached it two evenings ago-- and I'm sure she was just in the vanguard of that first wave of toons rushing to the end and now on their attunements. Most of the rest of our friends' group are around L62-63, although I do see a lot of people I've put on my Friends' List sitting in the mid-L60s at the moment. I guess that's overall not much of a surprise, as the raiding content opens on February 19th, less than a week from now. I guess we'll see how that goes and whether the player base continues to engage with the game, especially since the Tier 4 raids are launching in their post-nerf state. I can easily see this backfiring on Blizzard, because if the raids are too easy some people will get bored and lose interest, but more people overall might get a chance to raid from the get-go, so.... I guess we'll see.

I presume that the results of this experiment will influence the difficulty of subsequent raid tiers.

***

For me, what will be most interesting is how guilds handle the reduction from 40 people per raid to 25 (not counting the bench). If history is any guide, people are likely forming into cliques already, and that could prove disastrous to guilds and raid teams going forward. Hell, it could prove disastrous to even friends' groups. I guess we'll see how this all pans out. 

Farewell, Greg Brown and Bob Weir

Who is Greg Brown, you might ask? (I know I did.)

He was the founding guitarist of the band Cake, who happened to have penned this little ditty:

He eventually left to found the band Deathray before Cake's third album was recorded. He was one of those musicians who had an outsized impact, even though there's not that much in the way of actual recorded content by him. 

It was announced on Monday that he'd passed away after a brief illness.

***

I wasn't planning on writing anything on Bob Weir until Greg Brown's passing, mainly because I came to listen to the Grateful Dead much later in life.

While a lot of people of Generation X (and later) became enamored of Pfish, of whom Trey Anastasio unabashedly had a bromance with the Dead, I didn't get into Pfish that much. My experiences with the Dead were kind of limited to what was played on Rock (and then Classic Rock) FM stations in the 80s. You know, this stuff:

I knew of Bob, kinda sorta through these pieces, but also through this other song off of In The Dark:

After Jerry Garcia passed away in 1995, Bob and the rest kept the legacy of The Grateful Dead alive by The Other Ones, The Dead, and finally Dead and Company.

It's kind of strange how John Mayer, who is a bit of a polarizing figure among my generation, was embraced by Deadheads as part of Dead and Company. But you know, the Dead and their fans have certainly been on a long, strange trip, so I guess it's rather fitting that John and Bob would somehow make this all work. 

I never saw the Dead in person, because while they were a much better band to watch live (and high) it was never on my radar. And now, with Bob's passing back in January, that's never going to happen anyway.

The Reincarnation

A couple of days ago I made a decision.

For some strange reason, I didn't get an initial
screencap. Oh well. Yes, this is a new Briganaa.

I decided that one way to combat the desire to rush to the end with four toons and do all the things was to start over with a toon that was most definitely blitzed through the process in 2021 and do it right this time in 2026.

After all, I have 9-12 months to go up 10 levels on 4 toons. So what's one or two more toons?

"Two. No more than two." --Gully Dwarf saying

As of Monday evening, my Questing Buddy was already at L68, so she basically went almost all the way to L70 in 4 days, most of that by spamming dungeon runs. By comparison, I'm happy to just be noodling around in the Old World, not rushing through anything. When I was asked when I was going to go over to Outland, I replied maybe in a couple of months. By then, everybody will be raid-logging, so I'll have the zones to myself.

That's not just hyperbole, as there's well over 20 Layers going in the evenings, which is kind of nuts.

This is what Nova World Buffs was able
to identify as separate layers on February 9, 2026.
The maximum number of layers they can observe
is 20, but given that this toon didn't have a layer assigned
meant there was ABOVE 20 layers active at this time.

***

If Blizzard wanted the WoW Classic community to put more money in their coffers, offering unlimited paid boosts was apparently the thing, as there were tons of L58 - L60 Blood Elves and Draenei out and about in the Old World prior to the opening of the Dark Portal. There were so many out there that I'm sure I was very much in the minority leveling a toon from scratch instead of simply boosting and heading out to Outland when the clock struck 6 PM EST on February 5th. 

This was right on top of of the Battle.net shop.
"Inspired by" my ass; they knew exactly what 
they were doing. This is as of February 9th, 2026.

Of course, Retail has Classic beat on the boost department, as unlimited paid boosts have been around for quite a while. 

I actually had to hunt for it in the Cash Shop, as it
was underneath the Pets, Transmog, and (in-game) toys.

However, the upcoming release doesn't have any new races or professions to power level or boost through paid services, so... I guess Classic's BE and Draenei invasion is "taking one for the team" in Q1 2026. 

I'm kind of prepared for the first time someone asks me why I didn't boost either of my toons. While it would be completely accurate to state that my budget won't allow it --$60 per boost is waaaaay too expensive for my taste-- my stock answer will be "If I'm not going to raid, why should I pay money to not play the game?"

Q: "Why not run dungeons?" 

A: "I don't run dungeons to power level. I run it to have fun, and my fun is not 'How fast can I make the thing go away', but to actually enjoy the scenery, the music, and the people while killing the baddies."

Q: "You'll be left behind if you don't."

A: "I was left behind the moment the Dark Portal opened and I didn't load up on a ton of quests to turn in like all the other min-maxxers. Unlike 2021, I was ready for the separation this time. I have accepted that."

***

You'd think --at least I did-- that my WoW friends wouldn't have prodded me about joining them in Outland like they did after the release of the Anniversary servers in November 2024, but nope. I had to have that conversation already once, and I expect I'll have to do it again once they reach max level and they start attunements for raiding. I expect them all to go and raid (my Questing Buddy will likely go all the way to Sunwell), but I've had my fill of raiding. In my experience, anybody who tells me they're a laid back and chill raid group are either self delusional, going to backslide into semi- to full-on hardcore raiding, or will get stripped for their best players by more hardcore raiding teams. I've played that game already and I'm not about to get emotionally invested only to get my heart ripped out again. 

(Or worse, watch a guild get torn apart by drama because people can't treat each other like adults. Or maybe that is the default behavior for adults these days. I sure hope not.)

Hmm... I kind of hope there will be a TBC Classic Era server or two, so that people like me who will stick around after the mob moves on can actually do some end-game content without any external pressures.

EtA: Apparently I can't spell 'pressures' right. Corrected.

Meme Monday: Valentine's Day Memes for 2026

Yep, it's that time of year again. I'll try to provide links if I can find them to the creators' stores, so if you want some of these cards you can order them from them.

From Celestial of the East.

From Goddasaurus on Imgur.

Have to have some Warhammer 40K Valentines.
From Idiot of the East and Sparrows and Lily,
although the link seems to be broken now.

From Someecards.

From ammatice via Pinterest.
They apparently have both a DeviantArt page
and a carrd.co page.

From Sparrows and Lily, which apparently is
yet another broken link. Alas.