Share and Share Alike

We're closing in on a week's worth of pre-patch --this is Day 6, given that the actual pre-patch took up the entire day-- but this is the first day I've had to really get around to leveling Briganaa to any extent.

Tuesday was a wash, obviously, but Wednesday I was swamped at work which ran late. Oh, and Wednesday was also the date for what became known as the Flight Point Raid.

The Flight Point Raid?

Why yes, I'm glad you asked.

Some of us, milling about at the starting
point in Winterspring. And that chimaera
that just loves to wander over by the FP.

 

It was a raid put together by the guild to get all of the new Draenei (and the occasional other new toon) the various Flight Points across Azeroth. From Silithus to Blasted Lands, from Darnassus to Azshara, we were summoned from place to place by a core group of warlocks and their associated clickers. Card and Az had a part to play too, as I would fly/port ahead on a toon and then help click the summoners across the continents to bring the rest of the warlocks over, then I'd switch back to Briganaa and get her a summons as well.

The presence of the L60s came in handy in case any of the high level enemies aggroed on our raid. We didn't need to kill anything, but there was a curious chimaera in Winterspring that gave me pause.

All in all, there were about 15-20 new toons that benefited from this raid, Briganaa included. But the lone drawback was that being summoned all over Azeroth meant that I didn't get much of a chance to do any leveling on Wednesday. The event was originally slated for Tuesday, but we all know how Tuesday turned out.

Thursday and Friday were spent getting my son from college and then raiding Naxx (Friday night). Saturday was spent with the youngest mini-Red's high school graduation and then a Blackwing Lair + Ony run.*

So I made it to Sunday, finally getting the chance to get on Brig and level her for a couple of hours. 

But I've discovered that there's a bit of a monkey wrench in the leveling plans: this computer is shared.

My wife and I share the desktop PC. Normally, this isn't a big deal, because I play WoW late enough in the evening that her social media habit doesn't interfere with my gaming.** But if I'm going to be boosting and aggressively leveling a new toon, that means my gaming will begin to intersect with her PC usage.

And on Sunday, it did.

In lieu of ongoing negotiations about PC sharing for this pre-patch and early TBC Classic rollout, I've been exploring what options I have. At one time we did have a 2012 laptop that was to be used by both the kids (for school) and my wife for when she wanted to look something up while she was watching TV, listening to the radio, or reading, but that fell apart years ago. Literally, as in the hinges ripping out of their spots and the case frame cracking and needing duct tape to hold together. As of now, the only other PC in the house --that isn't one of the kids' or is used for my work-- is an old 2007 Core Duo machine that runs 32-bit Vista. And let's be honest: it's not much of a solution. It struggled to run WoW back in the day, and once I replaced the graphics card it did run better, but Classic's minimum requirement is Win 7. So unless I'd be interested in replacing one obsolete OS with another obsolete OS that's a no go.

I'd been thinking of building a PC of my own for a while, but now, when I finally have the motivation to do so (and have the funding as well), there's a certain semiconductor shortage to deal with. 

So... I'm going to soldier on as best I can, negotiate for the time that I can, and just go from there.

*I also had a plumbing emergency during the day, where the water intake for the refrigerator began leaking and I very nearly missed graduation until I finally fixed it with less than a 1/2 hour to go before we had to leave.

**The kids and I have gotten her a) a tablet and b) a decent smartphone for her to use for social media over the years, and she simply will not use them. She likes sitting in front of a keyboard and computer screen, and that's that. For a brief period of time we even had a "family" laptop, and she absolutely HATED it. She likes what she likes, and there's nothing I can do about that.