May It Please the Court

Okay, I can now mention what I've been up to --or what I was supposed to be up to-- this past week.

I was selected for two weeks of Jury Duty.

In the US, all adult citizens who are active voters are thrown into a potential pool of jurors, and if your name comes up, you spend anywhere from two to four (or more!) weeks in jury duty. 

There's several types of jury duty, from the two main types at the county level as well as the special selections for major cases and those from the Federal courthouse. (If your city has a Federal District courthouse, that is.) At the County level, there's Grand Jury, which you are a member of for about four weeks at minimum reviewing criminal cases as to whether there's enough evidence to try the accused, and Petit Jury, which covers actual criminal and civil trials.

Over the years, I've been selected for Jury Duty three previous times: Petit Jury in the mid 90s, Federal District Court in the mid-00s, and as part of a huge pool of potential jurors (200+ people) for a First Degree Murder case in the mid-10s. For that first round of Petit Jury, I was an alternate juror on a criminal case and then a juror on a civil case. I was slotted to show up as a potential juror for a Federal case, but the parties settled at some obnoxious hour of the night (I think it was 2 AM when I received the phone call that my services were no longer required). For the Murder One charge*, my stance on capital punishment caused my dismissal from the juror pool. Before you say "oh, that's nice, just say you're against the death penalty and you can get out of it", I can tell you that I spent the next 30-45 minutes like I was being worked over by a couple of cops to get me to confess. The prosecutors basically wanted to make absolutely sure I wasn't just trying to get out of doing my civic duty, and it was... NOT PLEASANT.**

This time around I was back at my old Petit Jury summons, so I arranged with my employer to make sure they were aware I might be out for a few weeks or more, and readied myself for his past Monday.

To my surprise, I wasn't required to attend, so after my dismissal I just started up work as usual.

The next several days were the same: unless you're already attached to a case, you do not have to go to the Courthouse.

And tonight I received the following news:

Wow.

I was not expecting that. I fully expected to have to check in sometime over the next week --well, except for Thanksgiving Day, that is-- but I guess the case docket isn't very full right now.

And while I'm not superstitious, I sure hope I didn't burn all of my good luck this year having the easiest jury duty service ever.

*For those not familiar with First Degree Murder, it's premeditated murder, and it carries with it a potential death sentence.

**When I finally was released and went home, I casually mentioned to my wife the name of the defendant --who was present the entire time while I and a half dozen others were being grilled-- and she said "HOLY SHIT! You were going to be on THAT case??!!!" Turns out she'd been following it closely in the news.

Meme Monday: More Satanic Panic Memes

Because I dredged that episode of my life out of the corner in my mind where it slept, I figured I'd revisit some Satanic Panic memes.

From Reddit. You'll see a lot of these from there;
it's like therapy for old time RPGers.

I don't need to rehash the whole thing --it's all over the internet, so have a fun time hunting-- but let's just say that D&D and Heavy Metal music and all sorts of rebellious activity by kids back then were all gathered up and lumped into the "Satanism" camp. Throw in some court cases brought against some people due to "found memory hypnotism", and... Yeah. The Panic.

But hey, here's a multigenerational Starter Pack
for you. From Reddit.

Yeah, I can relate. From Reddit (and that other platform).

Anything to make them feel justified, I suppose.
From Reddit.

Yeah, it kinda was, and the people who believed
it then are also the people who believe fake news now.
From Imgflip.

Sometimes what set off people's Satanic
Panic detectors was weird. Some people
gave Lord of the Rings a pass, others didn't.
From Reddit.

But evidence of good things to come out of
tabletop RPGs such as D&D were denied by
the true believers. Such as my parents.
From Reddit.

And one last item about the Satanic Panic...

But you can buy the t-shirt from Etsy!!
From Etsy.

EtA: Corrected grammar.

What is Even Happening?

If the previously concluded election didn't prove we lived in interesting times*, I opened my email this morning to discover this:

I use Outlook for my email. So what?

Yes, the New York Times is covering WoW's 20th anniversary.

For independent confirmation that yes, the NYT is doing this, here's the cover of Sunday's Arts and Leisure section:

Any excuse to visit a bookstore...

You can see Vin Diesel on the cover, South Park, a very stylized Tauren who's more Minotaur than Tauren, a generic-looking Orc (sorry, NOT Thrall), and a Red Flight dragon. I get the feeling the artist is busy shouting "FOR THE HORDE!" somewhere...

But between this acknowledgement of WoW's continued existence, we also have had celebrations of the Granddaddy of RPGs, Dungeons and Dragons, and it's 50th anniversary. You know that D&D is finally big enough when it gets the Time Magazine special issue treatment:

I got it at Target --of all places-- about
a month or two ago.

I'm just not ready for this pop culture acknowledgement of our geeky pastimes. 

Poltergeist is kind of appropriate for
all of this. From tenor.com.

I still remember the Satanic Panic, and I know that there are still a significant number of people who still believe that all things RPG are Satanic (my own family included). People who think that those times are gone have never interacted with the Satanic Panic crowd; if given half a chance, they will attempt to assert their own morality on everybody else because they simply can't understand the concept of "mind your own business". Oh, they understand it, but only when it applies to them, not other people. They feel like they're doing the "proper thing" by attempting to impose their morality on others, because they want to share in the path to Heaven with everybody; the concept that religion and faith are a personal matter for other people as well as themselves just doesn't compute.

This. From Medium.com.

Here's to another anniversary in 10 years!

*As the saying "May you live in interesting times" implies.

Just How Fresh is it?

I wasn't that enthusiastic about the prospect of new so-called "Classic Fresh" servers, since I was already fine with hanging around on Classic Era. The nicest thing about Classic Era is that it's (theoretically) not supposed to change. There is absolutely no rush or FOMO or anything in Classic Era, because it's simply not going anywhere. There's nothing new coming to the servers, so if you want to take years to finally get around to raiding Naxxramas, that's fine. If you want to gradually get to Rank 14 in PvP, sure, take your time.*

That's the thing about Azeroth in Classic Era: sure, it's static, but it also means the entire place is relevant. (Yes, even Azshara.) You don't have to worry about broad areas of the game being cast aside and not played by 99% of the player base because it's not part of the latest expansion, because there simply aren't any expansions.

My Questing Buddy and I have discussed at length the only weakness in Classic Era: the lack of TBC Era or Wrath Era servers. If you've read this blog during the period of TBC Classic, you know I have issues with The Burning Crusade expansion, but to be perfectly honest the issues were less with the expansion itself but more with my interactions with my guild and its transition into a hardcore Meta-driven raiding guild.** If we'd have been given the opportunity to keep our old toons in TBC Era, I would have done it if for nothing else than to give me a chance to enjoy TBC on my own terms without the external pressure to be something I'm not.

As far as my Questing Buddy goes, she loved how the Warlock played in TBC Classic, but probably even more than that she missed her Draenei Priest, who became her main in Wrath Classic.

So when I logged into Classic Era the evening after the 30th Anniversary video release, I should have known she had opinions on the matter.

"CARDY!!"

"hey there"

"There's gonna be new Fresh Servers that go to TBC!!!"

Yeah, you could say she was excited.

***

I'm somewhat less enthusiastic, because I don't intend to give up Classic Era. If these servers become --or transition to-- TBC Classic Era servers, I'd be fine with that. I suspect, however, that they'll move on to Wrath Classic just like the current progression Classic servers do. And since they're Fresh servers, I won't be able to transfer my original Cardwyn over either. I would have to do all the things she'd done, and I'm not sure I really want to. 

But in the end I did agree with my Questing Buddy that I'd spend about half of my WoW time in these new servers. I suspect that among our friend group I'll be the last person to L60, because I do dawdle a bit when I don't have a goal in mind. 

*You can't de-rank in Classic Era due to inactivity; that was part of a change to the PvP ranking system put in place in Era presumably to combat the issues with a lack of people playing Era servers when they first appeared. The changes made also make it harder to get to Rank 10 and beyond, but I've learned to cope with that. After all, I never got past Rank 9 in original 2019 Classic.

**I think the biggest loss for me in that TBC Classic period was how that naked pursuit of hardcore playstyles wrecked relationships in the guild. I should have never accepted a raid leadership position, because I was exposed to the conflicts within guild leadership which manifested in a fracturing of the guildies. That I was one of the Leftovers, the leveling Shamans abandoned when the Dark Portal opened, didn't help. I would have been much better off staying separate, within the confines of my old guild Retail Orphans, and tried to hold onto Cardwyn as my main instead of volunteering to level a Shaman instead.

For Bhagpuss

Yes, it really is. My youngest sent me a recommendation of this song by Haley Heynderickx (the last name is correct) and the first thing I thought of when I began listening was that Bhagpuss ought to hear this:

There you go, Bhagpuss. Happy Friday!

These Aren't the Toons You're Looking For. Move Along...

I haven't been writing much about any adventures in MMOs lately --okay, for the past couple of months at least-- but to be perfectly honest, there's not much to report. 

Okay, last weekend was Alterac Valley
weekend, so there's that...

There's also been my Questing Buddy and I sneaking into the 20 person raid Zul'Gurub to farm Bloodvine...

Like a god is going to listen to me...

Or just hanging around at Darnassus, watching the Trade and LFG Chat and doing some buffing of people as they go by.

I have to admit that guild advertisement for
"Vanilla" (in the chat window) was pretty damn good.

One thing I've not been doing much? This.

This was on my login screen the other day.

That's pretty much the extent of Classic's participation in the anniversary events, and Classic Era has none of that going on at all.

I suppose I could have watched the video today, but I really don't see any reason to do so. The only time Blizzard cares about Classic Era is when they want to "improve" things without consulting the player base, or when they update Season of Discovery and break things in Classic Era as a consequence. The widely rumored official Classic Fresh servers are likely to have been announced, but given that I've already got toons on Classic Era I'm not sure if I'd bother with going to a new series of servers at this time.

In the meantime some of the people in my friend group have migrated to mainly playing Retail since you can solo almost everything in the game now --yeah, they don't like pugs, and they don't push Heroic or Mythic content. Even my Questing Buddy has been playing Retail a bit with her husband, while another member of the friend group has poked their nose into Cataclysm content a bit.

As for me, the deck took priority, and now that I'm done with that I'm just going to chill for the most part. Well, if the Horde calls me "That fucking crazy ass Mage", I'm fine with that too...

We were stomping them pretty good in this battleground.

Maybe I ought to play a bit of Baldur's Gate 3. I haven't touched that game in months, so I'm still in the Shadow Touched Lands. Well, I also have some studying to do, because there's a test I'd like to take sometime before Spring, but whenever I sit down with the books in question --yes, there's more than one-- I end up falling asleep. I really need to read at lunchtime or something...

There's probably somebody who reads the blog
who recognizes this small part of the book.

EtA: Corrected grammar.

Meme Monday: MMO and RPG Drinking Memes

Before you ask, yes, I can drink some alcohol.

Not a truckload, mind you...
From Ridiculous 70s Memes and
Smokey and the Bandit.

SOME alcohol, not a lot of alcohol.

I have to ration my drinking to fit within my carb counts, and I also have to keep a close eye on my blood sugar level because drinking does have some weird effects on that blood glucose level.

But that doesn't mean that my characters can't drink.

Heh...

There have been days these past couple of months
that I think my toons have been drunker than I've
ever been... From Reddit.

Having played a Mage, I agree with this
whole heartedly. From Pinterest.

This is why I don't drink (much) during
a D&D game. My PCs, on the other hand...
From X (and no, I don't mean Xavier University).

Uh... Otay. From Memegenerator.

And you can't have memes about MMOs without
invoking Chuck Norris. From Memedroid.

Time to Rest the 'Ol Back for the Winter

It is finally done.

I finished replacing the deck boards. That includes the last board behind all the plants and the "mini" boards at the corners.

I highlighted what I meant by mini-boards
in red circles. They're very small compared
to the rest of the planks.

But all's not completely finished, because I'll be spending up through mid-winter putting the rotting boards and the leftovers in the trash.

I'd imagine that my allergies will improve once
all of those boards finally are out of here.

However, I don't need to do anything else about the deck until Spring, when I'll be looking at revving up for replacing the stairs and railings. (And the skirting. Can't forget the skirting.)

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around
it being warm enough here in November to go barefoot.

Running the Gauntlet

I'd been watching the Great Blizzard Bank Heist from afar, figuring it really didn't impact me at all.

"Monster Lizard Ravages East Coast!"

After all, Classic Era doesn't have guild banks, and my toons in Cataclysm Classic aren't in a guild. I was about to say that neither were my Retail toons when I remembered Puggers Anonymous, the guild that Rades created back in the day.

I knew that Rades had left some toons in the guild for storage purposes, and I will never remove them as long as I'm around, but I also wasn't sure if Rades had actually created a guild bank or not. I never really used guild banks for my own alts in Retail*, although in Classic Era I have been tempted to create a guild just so I can keep the whispers of "hey, wanna join a guild?" away.

So I decided to login to take a look.**

First, I had to run the gauntlet of Blizzard-foisted "Gear Updates" to allow me to "catch up" in what my gear ought to be versus what it actually was. Given that Balthan was in the L30s circa Mists of Pandaria, and his gear was likely quest greens and the occasional blue, it would have made sense to take the Gear Update.

I didn't take the gear update. I was perfectly happy exactly as I was hanging around Ironforge, thankyouverymuch.

Before I even got to check the guild bank, I was inundated with what I will politely call "stuff".

What's New? How about that overly cheery
Chromie, for starters? Or the new character models.
Or pretty much anything after mid-Mists.

Then there was a Wrathion pop-up:

It went by so fast while I was trying to read the What's New
that I ended up having to login on another toon to
get this graphic once more.

I remember him. He was that post-Cataclysm egg you saved out in Badlands. (I think.) Funny how they grow up so fast, yet the passage of time in game seems to be so tightly compacted. If I were in charge of writing in WoW, the first thing I'd do is spread the timeline out. 

Anyway, in case I didn't get the memo, there was also this quest pop-up:

Again, I had to take the screenshot from another
toon because I simply ESC-ed out before
I realized I ought to get a screenshot of that.

And then there was this:

You don't say...

Given that my last talent changes were a DECADE ago, I would expect that they've been reset. Blizzard has this thing of making change the standard operating procedure, because nothing can ever be just good enough as-is. And no, I don't want to teleport to Stormwind. The last toon that I had that was at max level was in 2014, and I've no desire to go through any of the last 5 old expansions, much less the current one. Just let me check the guild bank. Sheesh.

I also discovered that despite my best intentions, Blizzard is constantly hounding me to spend my talent points:

You can't click X to get rid of it, and no amount
of finagling will allow me to remove it. The annoyance
level is right up there with the "DO YOUR DAILIES!" crap that
people would push for in TBC Classic and Wrath Classic.

Given that I've been known to go several levels without spending talent points in Classic and Classic Era --eh, it's not a big deal unless you hit the "big" levels such as L20 and L40-- this constant nagging would get old really fast.

Still, I managed to finally clear my screen enough to go check the guild bank:

In case you're wondering, Balthan has exactly
172 gold on him. Yes, I'm poor even in Retail.

So Rades never bothered to create a Guild Bank for Puggers Anonymous. 

*Almost all of my Alliance toons were part of whatever that old guild on Ysera-US was called, but my bank alts and my Horde toons were guildless by the time I pulled the plug on Retail in 2014. I have since checked online afterward and discovered that all of those Alliance toons were eventually kicked out of the guild. Or the guild disbanded. Whichever.

**I also had a short conversation with Kamalia in the comments of her most recent post in Kamalia et Alia, while I tried to puzzle through how a returning player from years away would work in terms of picking up an old toon and trying to play once more. Maybe after the conversation I shouldn't have been surprised when I logged in, but I certainly wasn't expecting all of this to be thrown at me at once; I felt like I was in some Bizarro World dodge ball game.

EtA: Corrected grammar.

Meme Monday: Games with a Reputation Memes

It should come as no surprise that I've come across a bunch of memes over the years where games have earned a certain reputation, good or bad. There's the low hanging fruit, such as GTA 6 vaporware, and the complete disaster of certain releases (I'm looking at you, No Man's Sky). So, for this Meme Monday, I thought I'd dip into my bag of games that have acquired a certain reputation.

Admittedly, Cyberpunk 2077 eventually got much
more stable and, well, complete with the extra content,
but it took a while. I don't think Fallout 76 can compete.
From Reddit.

D&D 4th Edition was extremely divisive to
the player base, the fallout of which directly
led to Paizo's Pathfinder RPG and gave a boost
to the Old School RPG movement. My opinion
was always that D&D 4e would have been better
off as an RPG without being tied to the D&D name,
so it's nice to see someone else with that opinion.
from Reddit.

Ubisoft and bugs. 'Nuff said.
From ifunny.co.

Yes, I know, nudity doesn't exist in WoW.
However, WoW does have that reputation
--courtesy of Goldshire-- that it's a naughty
naughty game. Just try not to think that the
female toon on the screen is probably
a guy IRL. I know I can't. From quickmeme.

How My Brain Works Without Coffee, Part 57

I was perusing my YouTube feed, and nestled in the Pete Rose stuff* and electronics videos** was this from Michael Bell and Bellular Gaming:

Sorry, just the screencap.

"Hm..." I thought. "Isn't Beledar the name of a character from a David Eddings series?"

Oh, wait. That's Beldar. Eh, close enough.

*Because I'm from Cincinnati, as was Pete, and because I'm from Cincy of course I must be interested in all things Pete since he played for the Reds in their heyday of The Big Red Machine. The reality is that there are days when if feels like I must be the only West Sider (Pete's home turf) who didn't like him very much. Yeah, he could hit, but he was a big asshole, his kid was a big asshole, and the Reds were likely held back during his tenure as manager in the 1980s. 

**Yes, another of my hobbies. This time the videos included methods on cleaning relays. My old Pioneer receiver (bought in 1987) needs some cleaning, and when you click on one of these videos you get inundated with others.

The Cheeriest Spooky Theme Around

I've been hunting down Halloween music for giving out candy tonight, and one piece that keeps coming up in my searches and on the local stations is Charles Gounod's Funeral March of a Marionette.

Gounod wrote it to make fun of a critic of his --and by all accounts the critic instantly realized the piece was about him-- but it wasn't particularly "Halloween-y" back then.

Then along came Alfred Hitchcock.

Were it not for ol' Alfred using Funeral March of a Marionette as his theme music for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, we probably wouldn't even have this piece in the Halloween lexicon. 

Still, I wonder just how many kids nowadays have ever seen an episode of the series from The Master of Suspense; it's not nearly as iconic as The Twilight Zone, which has marathons on some cable channels around the Christmas and New Year's holidays, or The Outer Limits, which was revived and had another run from the mid-90s to early 2000s.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Meme Monday: Quirky Memes

While I was working on the deck this weekend, I caught myself doing one of my quirks: talking to myself out loud. Apparently the majority of people have an inner monologue that they converse with, but I have an unfortunate tendency to respond to my inner monologue aloud when nobody's around.*

That got me to perusing my meme pile for memes that fit the description of geeky quirks.

OMG yes!
From Titbits and Teacups, and from Nerd Quirks,
which is sadly no more.

I could also use this on a book memes
post, but I figured it works here too.
From ifunny.co.

I have been known to do this.
From @MisterD78UK.

And yes, Reading Quirks does exist as an Instagram
feed. Almost makes me want to login to Instagram to
read all the rest.

*Or I think nobody's around. 

Some People go on Vacation to Rest...

...but I end up working on projects instead.

I'm not exactly sure why I derive such enjoyment from working on a project, but I do. Maybe it's that my job is a case study in never seeing anything truly finished*, or maybe that I'm naturally biased toward working on things with my hands, but when a job finishes up there's a wave of satisfaction that washes over me, if only for a little while.

Of course, things are never that easy. About halfway through a project I get an itch to start another one, and that presents a problem. Sure, the new shiny idea does capture my attention when I'm in the middle of something else, but it also means that I've forgotten why I was excited about the original project in the first place. If I can get through these urges, I can see a project through to completion.

As far as the deck goes, yes, I have felt those urges already.

Still, I've been pushing onward.

My workstation on the porch. I thought the
deck was completely attached to the porch,
but having seen the framing underneath, they
are actually separate. Go figure.

Thankfully I bought the miter saw quickstand, because I wouldn't be able to finish this deck project otherwise. The reviews talked about how light the Ryobi miter saw is, and if that's light I'd hate to lift the "normal" weighted saws.

I finished the last of this current batch of wood, but this also involved doing some other work on the deck.

See where that exit to the north is? That's one of the two locations where I'm going to replace the stairs. As you can tell, there's only one post there to attach a stair railing. Since you need two stair rails, that meant either I was going to put in a post now or wait and do it next year when I actually work on the stairs.

I chose the former. Do it now while the area under the deck is exposed so I don't have to take out boards later. 

Painter's tape is a wonderful invention.

I used painter's tape to attach a level, so I could work it without needing an extra pair of hands.

What's hidden by the support board are extra screws attaching
the post to the ledger board.

No, your eyes do not deceive you, that post is taller than
it's compatriot on the left side. I decided it was smarter to
install a longer post and then cut it down rather than
risk installing a post that was too short.

So now, with 2/3 of the rows replaced, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I have 3-4 leftover 16' deck boards that I'll use when the last batch of wood arrives, and once those are all installed I'll be done for the year. I think I'll use this Winter to let my back rest.

*If you work in IT, you know what I'm talking about. Sure, there are "projects" that end up being "completed", but I'd say only 1 out of 10 projects I've worked on ever crossed the finish line to my satisfaction. There's far too much horse trading going on trying to keep the bugs and disruption to a minimum versus finishing within a (so-called) reasonable time frame.