Speed Runners Gonna Speed Run

My YouTube feed is starting to calm down from the WoW Forever hysteria of the past few weeks.

I won't say that people are any less excited about a new version of World of Warcraft, but the initial rush of YouTube and blog posts seems to have calmed down quite a bit. Still, one of my observations that the game may change but the community doesn't seems to remain accurate...

And...

The speed running crowd certainly seems to be working things out right now, which kind of defeats the point of WoW Forever. Those seeking to monetize the optimized leveling process, such as Zygor, are prepping their tools for a release alongside (or shortly after) WoW Forever releases. 

If nothing else, the WoW community does not disappoint.

Okay, let's be honest with ourselves: speed running was definitely going to happen. There's no two ways about it, really. The concept of speed running has been baked into video game culture for decades now, and it is so ingrained into MMOs such as WoW that any attempt to slow the speed runners down has drawn lots and lots of gripes by the larger WoW community. Concepts such as time-gated content, staggered raid wing releases, and abilities (such as flying) locked behind reputation grinds are all there to combat speed running and protect the community from themselves. 

I guess someone ought to create a WoW Forever bingo card based on when they observe certain classic WoW community behavior in WoW Forever, with others providing a Shocked Pikachu face when it happens:

Use it or lose it, I guess. From all over the internet.

Instead of the Center Square being free, it could be a behavior which is effectively free: Saying "I'm bored" in Trade Chat. 

Oh well.

FINALLY

Their Googleness finally fixed the Blogroll:

As of September 30, 2026 at 8:49 AM EST.

That is all. Back to your regularly scheduled doomscrolling.

Only Two Years Younger than an iPhone

 Seventeen years ago, the first post on Parallel Context appeared. 

That was long enough ago that the graphics that Souldat* linked to in that first post no longer work. Hell, the site warcraftrealms.com itself resolves to warcraftdb.com these days as it effectively shut down in 2023.**

Oh, and if you ever wondered, Souldat was biased toward the Horde from the beginning as his first post made pretty plain. Given that I now play Alliance most of the time, it certainly feels odd reading that first post again.

Anyway, PC has been around long enough that it ought to be applying to colleges right about now. I certainly hope that it has a decent safety school selected, because the cost of attending a university isn't cheap.

*He used Murtaugh as his handle back then, and changed it several times over the next several years as his main changed.

**Links not being maintained are a big reason why I make local copies of pictures and/or other graphics these days; that way I know there will be a working graphic when I return to a very old post from the future. I suppose I could spend a month cleaning up old links and trying to figure out what ought to go there, but I'd rather get it right the first time.

Meme Monday: 'Go Touch Grass' Memes

If you've been a gamer long enough, you've had a parent or some other authority figure tell you to "Go outside". Or "Go touch some grass." I was reminded of this on Saturday, when I was literally touching grass as I was doing yardwork.

So, in honor of parents or other authority figures providing you with direction to not sit in front of a screen all day (and all night), here's some "touching grass" memes.

(And not a single one involves weed, either!)

I don't use my phone for gaming (or own a Switch),
so this would be me. From programmerhumor.io.

I feel for ya, doggo.
From Memedroid.

I don't play League of Legends, but I'd imagine
that a subset of WoW players are like this.
From Instagram.

Ha! "Me to touch grass!" is right
up there with "You no take candle!"
From Memedroid.

I have to admit it's a clever way around the
issue. From HyperX.

It depends. Can I get revived easily while
I'm outside? From Memedroid.

You Only See It After The Fact

I attended the visitation for my friend last night, which was cathartic. I hadn't realized just how many people he knew, because there was quite a line of people to see him, but I also ran into several other members of my amateur radio club there. Yes, I'm quite aware that visitations and funerals are for the living rather than for the dead, but still it was good to be reminded that we have other people who count on us and connect with us. 

Speaking of connecting, I made a point the other day to get my annual flu and covid shots while I was picking up my medications at my pharmacy. While I'd known the people at the pharmacy for years, they'd been strictly professional in all my interactions with them. I'd occasionally wondered if they actually recognized me --a strange concept considering I'm a redhead with a (now gray) beard. Well, when the woman providing the shots took me into the little private room, I discovered that not only did they know me quite well but they were happy to see me whenever I made an appearance.

***

That got me to thinking about a couple of recent instance runs I had on the Anniversary servers. 

The first one, on my Hunter, was a run through the Underbog*. The tank and healer were from the same guild, and the healer was max level, so yay for us. But still, for the most part I was trying to stay out of trouble. Which, as a Hunter, meant not having my pet pull aggro from the tank nor trying to be a jerk and hitting the enemies hard enough to pull threat myself. Yes, Hunters have that reputation, and I'm quite aware of it. 

Of course, I did miss that I had the wrong buff on when we started (Aspect of the Pack). Sure, it makes you run faster, but when you get hit you get stunned, so... Yeah, not a good idea. 

When the Healer mentioned it, I apologized and switched the buff to the correct one. "I think every Hunter, myself included, has done that before," the Healer replied, which made me feel better.

"And here I was trying to make sure that Growl was off," I added. "Oh well."

I think that a little kindness there went a long way, and I appreciated that.

The second instance was a Sunken Temple run on my Horde Mage, Neve. After my failed attempt to get into ST the other week, I wasn't sure what to expect. However, the Druid tank was up front in that they hadn't been in ST in years, so they might need some guidance in finding their way around. Luckily, another party member pulled up some of the more intricate parts of the instance on ChatGPT (I guess going to Wowhead would have worked too), so we had that part covered. Since our tank was a Druid and I know Druid tanks quite well because I first met my Questing Buddy while she was on her Druid tank, I knew to wait and get a chance to see how they'd do at handling threat before I went all in on my DPS. 

Okay, so I'm casting Blizzard right now; sue me.
Typically I focus on a caster/healer and make sure
we kill them first, or at the very least I can counter
whatever healing or damage spells they put out.

That didn't exactly work as intended, because I kind of got excited a couple of pulls in and pulled threat. "Sorry about that," I said, "I'll slow my DPS for a bit so you can keep threat." 

"That's okay," the tank replied, "I don't speak English well."

Honestly, I had no idea why that mattered in terms of me slowing down my DPS, but I kind of shrugged and did my best to keep myself from pulling threat. I mean, that's my job: do damage but don't be an asshat; do crowd control** and make things easier for the tank and healer; provide food and water for the group, and make sure everybody has the buffs they need.

In case you've forgotten, Sunken Temple (formally known as The Temple of Atal'Hakkar) is one of those Classic instances that can take an entire evening to clear if you're very thorough, or if you're not quite at the right level for it. Just like the other four massive Vanilla instances, Blackrock Depths, Blackrock Spire, Stratholme, and Maraudon, you'll just have to take your time and relax.

So I did.

I mean, I was constantly drinking to get my mana back, so I was fine with the pace. And to be honest, about 1/3 of the way through our group got into a groove and then we were able to speed things up just a bit.

Still, I was floored when the tank said in group chat, "Yr good Mage, you don't go all in on aoe when I pull."

"Thanks," I replied. I thought about making an additional comment, but that was kind of embarrassing. I mean, I'm part of a team, and I look good when the team looks good.

When we finished, both the tank and the healer said in group chat that they added me to their Friends' list. Again, a little kindness went a long way.

***

If there was one thing I'll always remember about my friend, it's that he was always there for you. He encouraged people, enabled them to do their best work, and celebrated with them when they achieved their goals. He was living proof that behaving like other people mattered and were worth cheering for paid dividends, both for the people he affected and himself. I don't know if he ever got to see how many people's lives he'd impacted, but I'd like to think he did. 

*Yes, it's Underbog, not "Underdog", the cartoon from the 1960s. Although I have been known to say "Never fear, UNDERDOG is here!" while in that instance.

This is a poster by Ian Glaubinger.
Note the evil Simon Bar Sinister on the
bottom left, and Polly Purebred on the right.

**Apparently not that many Mages actually do crowd control like you're supposed to. My Questing Buddy has informed me on numerous occasions that the Mages in her guild simply don't do any of that stuff. Or even bother with things such as removing curses from party/raid members, leaving that job to other classes. I have no idea where that mentality comes from, but I consider those "lesser" things a critical part of actually playing a Mage. 

EtA: Corrected intent in a sentence; it could have easily been misread.

When Words Aren't Enough

(Okay, I'm ready to post. At least I think I am.)

Like most hobbies, amateur radio has it's own slang.

Some of it I already knew prior to getting my license, courtesy of being a shortwave radio listener for decades. 73s means "best regards" or an equivalent, and is said at the conclusion of a conversation. QSL, which in question form means "are you receiving me?" or in a statement means "I am receiving you." The terms originated from the (ancient) past; 73 came from the telegraph era and QSL from when most hams communicated via Morse Code, and there's a whole host of terms that originated back then and are still in use today.

73 was also used as the name of an amateur
radio magazine. As you can tell with this cover
from January 1973, declarations of ham radio's demise
have been around since forever. From eBay.

Other terms don't require knowledge of Morse Code, thankfully, but can seem somewhat arcane by themselves. An amateur radio operator's mentor is known as an "Elmer" which originated from an article in an amateur radio magazine whose author was mentored by a man named Elmer, so hams kind of appropriated the name as a term for a mentor in the hobby. A "boat anchor" is an old piece of radio equipment, typically powered by vacuum tubes. Given that those radios weighed a ton and were hard to move around, they got the moniker "boat anchors" to reflect that.

Now THIS is a boat anchor, and one that I did
play with back in my college years, but alas it was
claimed by a professor. This Hammarlund HQ-180AC
is also as heavy as hell. From The Radio Attic.

And then there's a Silent Key. 

As you can probably figure out, the "key" part is a nod to keys used to tap out Morse Code, but the term Silent Key is a respectful way to refer to a ham radio operator who has passed away.

Last week, almost a year to the day that I took my first amateur radio class, one of the three instructors in the class became a Silent Key. 

The last time I saw him was a Saturday in the Spring, assisting with taking down the antenna tower at his home's backyard. He was planning on selling the house, and so he asked for help in taking down the tower and getting it out of the way. It didn't take us long to get the thing down, thankfully, and afterward he showed us how he set up his shack in the basement. 

I fully expected to see him at our next club meeting or at least hear him on our 2m repeater, but a couple of weeks after helping out he stopped logging in to our weekly net. I was told that he likely was busy with the move and probably looking at a vacation, but the longer the silence the more I began to worry. Then I heard unofficially that he was sick, so I reached out to him via email and sent him some words of encouragement. I didn't receive a reply.

A month later word spread throughout the club what the real reason for his absence was: cancer. I was told this in confidence and I kept it until now, since it is merely academic.

He was in his 80s and had lived a full life, and he'd recently remarried in the early part of 2026 after his wife had passed a while ago. But cancer really doesn't care about your hopes and dreams. And you'd think that knowing he had such a wonderful life would make this easier, but it doesn't. Not really.*

If it weren't for him and the other two instructors, I'd not be a ham right now. I'd also not be part of the club that I'm in, and I'd not have a larger circle of friends now. He was such a friendly guy, and he was patient with me as I struggled with some of the more advanced concepts on the General exam. 

I believe the best way to honor him is to pick up his torch of mentorship and pay it forward. I'm not sure how exactly, because I'm not secure enough in my knowledge to be an instructor, but I can be there for people and assist them as they need help. I surely hope that will be enough.

This graphic can be found on several sites, so I'm not sure
who created it. The Morse Code "silent key" is below the
artist's rendering of an actual key. 

*I also discovered this past week that two people I worked with back in the late 90s and early 2000s, who are both about my age, had passed away this Spring. The first one had cancer and was told that it was fatal, so he told people before he died, but the other I have no idea what happened. There were no clues in the obituary, but the photo that they used for the memorial... I couldn't look at it for more than a few moments without seeing the dead look in his eyes. I... I wished I could have reached out, but our paths hadn't crossed in over 20 years (different jobs and social circles), and I didn't even think about seeing what he's up to until recently.

Meme Monday: Stardew Valley Memes

Yes, I've been playing Stardew Valley again. Maybe this time I'll stick around past the two year mark, but we'll see about that.

In honor of my courting of a redhead (probably Leah this time, as my wife is an amalgamation of Leah and Penny), here's a few Stardew Valley memes...

Unlike some people, I don't mind Pierre
that much. Still his "Closed on Wednesday" stance
early in the game pisses me off. From The Gamer.

I gotta be honest: I'm probably "the kid" in this meme.
It never occurred to me that people would actually
put Lewis' purple shorts in the potluck soup.
From Reddit.

I'm not sure why, but this made me laugh.
From Awkwardzombie.com and Kate Tiedrich.

Yeah, romancing Harvey kind of dredged up some
uncomfortable surprises. He's still overall a nice
guy, though. From @sonniegaming on Instagram.

I lived in a dorm in college that this reminded me of.
Well, minus the fireplace and the nice kitchen. From Reddit.

Yeah, I know. I figured it out, and so did everybody
else who played the game. Still, would YOU
want to be the one to tell Pierre? From
@StardewValleyBut-I-Draw3 on Pinterest.

EtA: Added references.