It's Not Exactly Being Unshackled, But...

...four of the toons in Operation Spread the Love are at L42 or above.

These are the levels as of August 20, 2025.

Oh, I still like to play Azshandra, but when I play a Rogue I tend to spend more time sneaking around and getting into places than actually questing. Plus there's the additional issue of Rogue-hate out there, because some members of the Rogue Brotherhood simply have to behave like asses.

"A lot of Rogues suck, but you're okay," I was told in a Scarlet Monastery run the other week.

I should just take the compliment as it is, but it does get me down a bit knowing that some people simply take delight in torturing others just for shits and giggles. I was whispered out of the blue in Arathi (or Southshore, not exactly sure which) by a player if I wanted to go to SM: Cathedral. I was wracking my brain, trying to remember if I'd run an instance before with the person whispering me, but I didn't look a gift horse in the mouth and said "Sure!"

During the long run up to the Scarlet Monastery I found out that the group was partially through the run and originally had another Rogue in the group, but said Rogue stealthed up to the front of the altar inside the Cathedral and attacked the end boss, causing all of the mobs inside the Cathedral to attack at once. The Rogue then dropped group, their mischief complete. 

I had a few choice words for such behavior.

So, when I behaved like a normal person and didn't act like an asshole, the rest of the group was appreciative enough that they were fine with another Cathedral run since I came in halfway through.

***

That whole whisper out of the blue to run a dungeon is by far the exception rather than the rule for my experience in the Anniversary servers. Typically, if I want to run a specific dungeon, I'll begin making my way there before I'll even make myself available by either LFG chat or the in-game tool. This is especially important if I get into a run as either as a Warlock or a Mage: the Warlock for the summons, and the Mage to make food and water for the group. I can't tell you the number of times I've gotten into a group on a Mage where I've been making food and water for people throughout the first third of the dungeon. My response to that is to either make all the food and water prior to making myself available, or make food and water while going to the dungeon entrance.  

I also just figure that it's the polite thing to keep people from waiting. I'm personally fine with not having instant summons to dungeons like in later versions of WoW, but I also know I'm in the minority. Dungeons that are hard to get to, such as Maraudon, Scarlet Monastery (for Alliance), Gnomeregan (for Horde), or Shadowfang Keep (for Alliance) are ones I make a conscious effort to be at least well on my way there before I make myself available for a pug run.

***

Overall, the past couple of weeks in-game have gone pretty well. The pace of leveling has picked up again, as you can see by the results, and I weathered the cost of all of the mounts at L40 and all of their training costs upon reaching L42. 

Yikes, L42 had a nasty amount of training cost for some of these toons.

While my original plan was to get people to L50 by August, I think it more likely that late September-early October is a reasonable goal. So we'll see how it progresses.

EtA: Apparently I can't count. There are four toons at L42 or above, not five.

#Blaugust2025

At The End of Everything be Sure to Buy the Merch

There was something that was supposed to happen yesterday, but I can't remember what it was...

Hmm.... Not exactly.

No, that's not it. Something else...

Kind of funny how this is likely going to upstage

that other announcement yesterday. Then again, Microsoft
owns them both, so I guess it doesn't matter to them.

Maybe? It is video game related...

I don't know about that. Midnight in Goldshire
is a wee bit different than Midnight in other places.

Oh yeah, that was it: something was supposed to happen at Midnight.

Or something like that.

Under the headlines of "I'm not sure they know their audience," This appeared in the WoW Classic tab this evening:

Mists Classic, 20th Anniversary Servers, Retail Midnight. Same difference, I guess.

But what got me was that email I got this afternoon, even before the "Adventure is Calling You Home" email:

I guess Blizzard knows their audience, but... Meh. The universe is ending; buy the merch! And buy the top end package for the housing exclusives and Early Access!

Unfortunately for me, I apparently never bothered to post about Retail's impending player housing --because I checked under "Retail" and couldn't find it-- but if I had I'd have said something along the lines of Blizzard making some aspects of housing dependent upon the Cash Shop. Well, the Expansion Price Tiers isn't the Cash Shop, but it's close enough for me. 

To be honest, I'm surprised that Blizzard isn't abandoning the lower price tiers entirely and just having everybody pay $100 or more for the expac. After all, look at what Nintendo is doing for the prices of their new games on the Switch 2, and WoW is deliberately orienting the contents of the various packages that if you want to be "serious" about raiding or collecting, you'd better shell out for the top end price.

I don't really have a leg to stand on here, it's just that what I spend money on is different than what others in MMO spaces do. Like on raw materials to make another one of these:

No appendages were lost in the construction
of that end table.

#Blaugust2025

Have We Crossed the Rubicon Yet?

There was a joke --probably found in a Dilbert comic back in the 90s-- about how management felt that if they made everybody redundant the company could maximize their profits.

Back then, watching coworkers get replaced by overseas labor*, it certainly seemed like this was what Corporate America had in mind. The ultimate goal, however, was to use automation to replace the need for actual employees. Think of how robots moved into assembly lines back in the 80s, improving both quality and the need for extra workers, and you've got the idea.

Well, with the advent of Generative AI tools such as Chat GPT, Corporate America is going all in on using such tools to supplant actual workers. Unlike the robots of years past, this is aimed right at the white collar employees, but not just the ones in so-called "high cost" countries**, but all white collar employees. 

If the AI ingests buggy code, will it learn to write
buggy code? Blizzard is asking for a friend.
From LinkedIn.

If you told a C-Suite person that you could replace about half to 3/4 of your workforce with generative AI tools, they'd leap on it. "Imagine the cost savings!"

But those within the corporate world that are embracing Generative AI aren't thinking about their own jobs. Why would you need people in Finance if you had Generative AI to handle the budget and understood Finance Law? Why would you need people in bookkeeping if all you had to do was let AI manage receipts and pay requests, make judgements as to whether the request was legitimate, and make the proper payouts?

Or, why would you need people in a Legal capacity if AI had ingested all of the law in a locality and could make judgements based on both that and your company's contracts? Generative AI could even review case results and inform you which court to file a grievance in to maximize your chances at a favorable result. Generative AI could review all of the legal cases throughout a country (the US, for example) and determine how best to word your submissions to a court. And in which locale.

In a customer service job, an AI would be immune to social engineering attacks, as an AI customer service representative would stick to only what they are allowed to work with. Customers won't like it, but an AI being immune to any form of social engineering would likely balance out any public relations problems. 

For all of those gung-ho on AI in Corporate America who also manage by spreadsheet, I'm not so sure that they're aware that their own job can be replaced by Generative AI. All that has to be done is have someone prioritize the data ingested into the spreadsheets and just let the AI handle the rest. 

Imagine Bain Capital being just about a half dozen people at the top and Generative AI managing everything else, how would you tell the difference from the real thing right now? To the grunts or the people who buy the products that their businesses are selling, it would likely seem the same. 

Soulless investment firms aside, about the only thing that Generative AI can't do at the moment is sell something. Not the point-of-sale systems, mind you, but being an actual salesperson selling cars. The sales process itself is pretty well known, but people will likely prefer human interaction in a face-to-face environment over an AI. 

But who knows? Maybe that will change over time, but that also requires the risk of teaching an AI to dissemble or subtly lie, and I'm not so sure we want to cross the Rubicon there. Generative AI already "hallucinates" when it attempts to provide you with what it thinks you want, but intentionally lying for a separate agenda is a different thing entirely.

As for the end game, I suspect the sheer volume of investment dollars thrown at AI the past few years will eventually implode as such a bubble is unsustainable without a real return on investment. And let's be honest: a ROI I'm talking about is "I want to see profits next quarter" rather than "I want to see profits in 5-10 years". In a very real sense, Corporate America's short-sightedness may ultimately help employees in the short term, because investors expect to make a ton of money in return and they typically don't have the stomach to wait a decade for it to pay off. In the long run, however, most MBA work will be able to be run by Generative AI, so the same Finance Bros and Tech Bros who are all in on Generative AI may find themselves without a job themselves. Those same people had better start dreaming up what they want to do after they discover that Generative AI ate their lunch. 

*And then watching that first round of cheap labor from the 90s get replaced by even cheaper labor in cheaper locations in the 00s and then the 10s.

**Yes, that's what employees in the U.S., Western Europe, and Japan/Taiwan/South Korea are called in corporate-speak.

EtA: Corrected a misspelling.

#Blaugust2025

Meme Monday: Bosom Memes

Oh, it's not going to be that bad.

Honest.

I think.

Anyway, there have been some bosom-related memes in my pile that I really figured I ought to post. Rather than letting them out via Miscellaneous Mems, I figured it's easier this way.

From Pinterest.

I've had this one for so long I honestly don't know
where it came from.

From Dalmuin's Deviant Art page.

To be honest, I'm fine with the Blood Elf aesthetic,
since they're proportional. From Noxychu via Wowhead.

Umm... I think this distraction attempt won't
work with.. uh... with... What were we talking about again?
From Imgur.

I can honestly say I've never seen a shirt similar
to this out in the wild, but I'm also certain I'm not
part of the generation this t-shirt is marketed toward.
From... Uh... I actually don't remember from where.
Redbubble, maybe?

#Blaugust2025

"I Guess You Like Killing Dragons"

This is something that periodically pops up when I play MMOs, and I have to wonder whether it's unique to me or more of a general reaction.

When I'm in a PvE group environment, such as a max level dungeon, instance, or raid, the question of  "What are you here for?" will occasionally pop up. In raids, that is an inevitable part of handling loot, especially in the "old style" of not having personal loot as found in Retail WoW, as no matter what method used people will want to obtain loot.  In other cases, people are merely being social and asking a pretty general question as an ice breaker. 

There's even a good chance that people have some quests they want to finish, such as the numerous quests that take a person back and forth to Blackrock Depths, or they want to help someone with a special questline, such as the WoW Classic Era Paladin or Warlock mount quests. 

But I'll use as an example an Onyxia raid from last year that I got talked into going by a couple of people in my WoW Classic Era friend group. This Ony run came after their guild's weekly Blackwing Lair raid, and for those people not familiar with the Onyxia raid, it consists of a couple of trash mobs and the dragon, Onyxia, herself. It's a fairly quick raid if it's done well. But this particular time, they had barely 20 people there out of a maximum of 40, and that as definitely pushing the envelope as far as how few people you can take into Ony and complete the raid. 

So I figured why not and asked for an invite. 

After joining the raid, I joined their Discord for coordination purposes and the Raid Lead sent me a link to a website for their Soft Reserve system, Softres.it. I didn't really need to look at the list of items to know that Onyxia doesn't drop a lot of loot for Mages. For the most part she drops one piece of Tier 2 gear (the Helm), and the only other items of interest would be the 18 slot bag and (of course) the Head of Onyxia, which you can turn in for an okay reward for Mages but you do get to have your name announced as everyone in your capital city gets the "Rallying Cry of the Dragonslayer" buff. 

I just gave a brief glance at the options there and decided to pass on reserving any loot.

This didn't go unnoticed.

Before first pull the raid leader said they were one short on people reserving, and after a short pause, there was a "Cardwyn, you're not reserving anything?"

"No, I'm good," I replied via chat. 

"You're sure?"

"Yep."

"I guess Cardwyn likes killing dragons," someone quipped.

I'd begun typing a response, basically saying that the helm I was wearing (a turban, actually) from Upper Blackrock Spire is better than the Tier 2 Helm, but.. saying that was simply taking too long and they were ready to go, so I let it slide.

There's a reason why I turned off
the Show Helm option in MMOs.

But I'm sure that more than one person looked at my gear, which was a mix of Blue and Green gear, with the only Purple pieces on it being the hand crafted Robe of the Archmage and the ring I got from having an Exalted reputation with the Stormpikes in Alterac Valley, and said "WTF?"

That's the thing, really: the raids with actual upgrades for me --in the lower WoW Classic Era raids, anyway-- are in the other raids: Molten Core (MC), Blackwing Lair (BWL), and Zul'Gurub (ZG). To be honest, I'd be better off running ZG a few times to get some basic raid pieces and then go to BWL, but I'm sure people jump right in to BWL without a thought once they hit max level and get attuned to the place.

***

The concept of someone joining a raid or other group content when they don't need anything, gear-wise, seems to be such a foreign thing that it flummoxes people.

I was once kicked from an instance run of fellow raid members back in Vanilla Classic WoW because I was in there for fun and not a guildie. One moment I was in the group and the next I was kicked, being told in Discord* that since I was in the instance for fun and not a guildie they were going to give my spot to a guildie who needed the instance run. If I were given the option I would have stepped aside, since everybody involved was on the same raid team, but being booted without giving me a chance kind of stuck in my craw.

For a long time I felt that the person leading that instance run was trying in a not-so-subtle way to try to push me into joining the guild that I raided with, and I resented the passive-aggressive manner in which he was trying to accomplish his goals.** As time has gone on, however, I now realize that this was just a symptom of the encroaching hardcore direction that both the guild and raid leads were heading, and one that I became increasingly at odds with.

I realize that saying that you play for fun
can be wielded as some sort of  excuse for poor behavior,
but I've been on both sides of this argument and I can say
that the try-hards are worse. From Reddit.

Doing things for fun is just a statement that you enjoy what you're doing. It's not an excuse for not caring, or trying to validate bad behavior in group content. Unfortunately, however, "fun" has somehow gotten a bad reputation in gaming circles, which boggles my mind. 

This isn't work, after all.

If your gaming has morphed into work for you, or you begin to look down upon people who are there to enjoy themselves, maybe it's time to re-evaluate what you're doing. 

*It was a post raid instance run, so we were all in Discord.

**This person is the same person who pulled me aside after a Classic Naxxramas raid to tell me how to "improve" my DPS, despite he not being my class lead, nor a raid lead, nor playing a Mage for anything other than one of his many alts. This unsolicited advice annoyed the hell out of me, given that I knew what gear I needed to improve and I couldn't make the gear drop if the RNG Gods were not interested. Given that my class lead was really happy with my overall output, as he had his own trouble with getting gear, I valued his input far more than these "suggestions".

#Blaugust2025

What Goes Around

1982 was a bit of a seminal year for me.

The 1981-1982 school year was my 7th Grade. I was knee deep in puberty, I'd been playing D&D since the Fall of 1981, and I'd dove headfirst into reading Science Fiction and Fantasy beyond just Lord of the Rings. Movies from 1982 still rank among my favorites: Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, Conan the Barbarian, Mad Max: The Road Warrior, Rocky 3, and Fast Times at Ridgemont High.* I was a year away from discovering Metal, but the popular songs of 1982 are still lodged in my head all these years later.

Among some of the big hits of the year, such as I Love Rock and Roll** and Eye of the Tiger, was a song from a studio band called The Alan Parsons Project:

It got up to #3 on the charts in the US (higher than I thought it did, to be honest) but after that it kind of faded from view except for the fans of the band and their concept albums. I always liked the song, as I could tell it was a bit deeper lyrically than the average pop song of the era, but I never got the album to find out how it fit into the larger sonic picture. 

A couple of years later, the intro piece to Eye in the Sky, Sirius, began being used as the introduction music to the NBA's Chicago Bulls games. Sirius became synonymous with the Michael Jordan era of the Chicago Bulls, so that when they hear that synthesizer intro basketball fans immediately think of #23. 

I find it surprising that, decades later, people have rediscovered The Alan Parsons Project through reaction videos and, much to their surprise, that Alan Parsons is "that guy who wrote the Chicago Bulls Theme".

For some reason, the official channel never

put these two songs together as they ought.

It's been 43 years since this song came out, so I guess that it's time for newer generations to rediscover the music of the past, just like how my generation rediscovered the Big Bands of the 30s and 40s.

*Sorry, I don't like E.T. (more of a reaction to how popular it was than anything else) and I didn't really care for Tron. The Thing wasn't my type of movie so I never watched it, and I didn't really watch Blade Runner all the way through.  

**Yes, I know, the album was released in 1981, but the song was released in 1982, so it counts in my book. I could just as easily have chosen Rock the Casbah or Jack and Diane to fill in this spot, but some 8th Grade girls used to play I Love Rock and Roll ALL THE TIME during lunch and recess. Looking back on it, I'm still amazed the nuns let them get away with it.

EtA: Corrected some grammar.

#Blaugust2025

Thirty Plus Years in the Making

I recently became reacquainted with an old friend of mine, Master of Orion. I don't mean the newest version out there, but this one:

From 1993 with love, although I'd bought my original
copy in 1995 or so at a used video game store.

Yeah, it runs on Steam via DOSBox, but you have to tweak the configuration settings a bit to get it to a decent size. Graphically speaking, it's still in ancient times, so setting the config file to Original means it's very small in modern monitors and Full Size means it's far too large for old resolutions. I set it to 1024x768, and it seemed to work well enough.

It's very raw in parts, especially with the diplomatic UI, but otherwise it is still an engaging game. If you're used only to modern 4X space games, such as Stellaris or Galactic Civilizations, MOO 1 is probably a bit plodding for you, but for me it hits all of those beats I loved in the genre. You don't have to have all the tension all the time to find a game engaging and fun.

It's still in the early to mid game here, but I've grabbed
all of the planets near me before the Silicoids could
get them first.

Still, there are quirks that highlight just how far gaming has come. For example, the Humans you see on screen are all male, while the Mrrshans (cat people) are mostly female. It does suffer from a bad starting point syndrome, but that's what you get when you start with a randomized galaxy. At least the games don't take that long --it only feels longer until you boost the speed in DOSBox by a bit-- so you can knock out a game in an afternoon.

I'm just glad that an old friend like this is not only still around, but able to run on modern equipment. 

#Blaugust2025

The Curse of Player Choice

With a title like that, oh yeah, I went there.

If anything, I'm a fan of player choice. You want to allow your players to do things not on rails, so they can come up with creative solutions and basically feel like they have some control over the direction their avatars can go. Even if that control is an illusion, it's often best to feed that illusion rather than tear away player agency from the beginning. 

Some games, such as sandboxes, are perfect for providing player choice. 

I finally ventured a Minecraft day's travel away
from my original base(s) and... built another home that's 
a lot like the first couple. Big, blocky, and with
plenty of lights so a baddie can't spawn in the shade.

Although ironically enough the first (or in the case of the Minecraft house above) the third house ends up looking similar no matter which game you play...

My first house in Conan Exiles, and as you can tell
I had been steadily upgrading it along the way.

My similar attempts at architecture aside, the games allow for a large breadth of creativity. If there's a single "best" way of doing things, I haven't found it yet. At least in the single player version of these games I don't have to worry about opposing players making my life a living hell, so gives me some free time to expand my horizons. While dodging enemies, that is.

***

In MMOs, however, creativity and player agency are frequently not quite so free and available. Since I've never played the game, I'm not going to explore EVE Online here.* If EVE players want to discuss player agency in their game in the comments I'm happy to read them, but it would be foolish of me to opine on something I have no direct experience with.** I'll instead talk about the various MMOs that I have played, which are mostly WoW clones. 

A lot of WoW clones have the outward appearance of player choice --instances to run, raids to do, PvP, quests, achievements, explorations, pet battles, etc.-- but only rarely do they actually have an impact on the game world itself. At best you can change your in-game housing, but outside of that the most you can play around with is your clothing and your titles.

And mounts. Can't forget those.

If that's a brontosaurus, does that mean that Goldshire
is actually Bedrock and I'm in The Flintstones?

Still, you're not going to see player created forts in Redridge, for example, that could be assaulted and destroyed by a Horde guild. You can't create little hidey-holes in the middle of nowhere so that you have a safe place to spend the night. And if phasing doesn't exist, everything eventually respawns in-game.***

This is done for several reasons, but the most obvious one to me is that if players are able to shape the game world in a WoW-clone MMO, the early adopters will have an incredible advantage over anybody who comes after. Think of all the people in ArcheAge who got the prime real estate when the game first released, and people who tried the game a few months later never had a shot to get any housing in a lot of the "older" servers. It's bad enough that progression raiders who don't rush rush rush to the end in WoW (or purchase the top tier expansion to get Early Access) will be far behind their fellows in game, so having the ability to affect the game world would enable those hardcore players to carve out swaths of the game world only for themselves.

I'm pretty sure that WoW would never have lasted very long if all the hardcore players tried to be assholes to the rest of the player base by effectively putting up giant "KEEP OUT!" signs everywhere.

Yes, I'm old enough to have watched the
Little Rascals/Our Gang serials on television.
From Redbubble (and The Little Rascals).

***

Given the lack of ability to directly affect the game world, the WoW clones I've played have had to rely upon other things to provide that illusion of player choice. Instead of buildings in the game world, providing the players with various activities plugs that gap suffices. It's only when you eschew those activities and strike out in the direction of finding your own fun that you realize that you can be somewhat limited in what you can do. 

Sure, you can only be limited by your imagination, but if you want structure to that imagination, you're likely going to rely upon third party addons, such as those used in the original Hardcore WoW modes or Role-Playing assistants. This is one of those situations where the third party addons don't help you raid better, but they enhance what you can do in the game. They're tools, just like those that help you organize your bags and bank space, but it does certainly seem that Blizz' focus on addon reduction in Retail WoW has left these type of addons alone and intact for the time being. 

Some people, such as YouTuber Nixxiom, have advocated for Micro-Blizzard to incorporate Role Playing addons into the base game's toolset in the same fashion that there are now official Hardcore servers in Classic WoW. There are likely other addons that people could use to expand their capabilities to shape the game world to their liking, but I honestly kind of like leaving this aspect to MMOs to the players themselves. By preventing the players from being their own worst enemy by shaping the game world to their liking, MMO developers at least give their games a fighting chance at survival. 

*And to be honest, you could put Star Wars Galaxies here as well. Calling Njessi. Njessi, white courtesy phone, please.

**I know that shooting your mouth off is what the internet is for, but I'm not going to go there. This time. 

***Even phasing is limiting, as people who are on different phases will not be able to directly interact with each other in the phased zones. I rediscovered this back in Wrath Classic, and I really didn't like it.  It felt like I was being pushed into completing story beats just so that I'll be on the same part of the story as everyone else, and if you know me I really dislike being pushed into doing anything, whether it for social reasons or for work. (For the record, I still haven't completed the entire Wrathgate Event in Wrath Classic on any toon.)

#Blaugust2025

Accidental SWTOR

I was just reading some articles first thing in the morning before work when I stumbled across something odd.

From a Slate article about Chili's Restaurants of all things.

I did a double take and said to myself, "I can't possibly be reading that right. Just what are the odds that a brand name for tablets found at a chain restaurant are named the same as a planet in SWTOR?"

It was then that my brain caught up with me and I realized that I was thinking of Ziost, not Ziosk...

From Swtorista.

Ztill, it'z not everyday you zee zo many 'Z' wordz in a name, you know...

#Blaugust2025

When You're Too Meh for a Midlife Crisis

I sometimes wonder what my midlife crisis would look like. 

Yes, before you point out that I'm north of 50 so I technically should have had my midlife crisis a decade or more ago, I'm aware of that. But I also know I didn't really have a midlife crisis either, so...

Would it be a fast car, like this Mercedes I discovered at my son's apartment parking lot when we picked him and his partner up for Gen Con?

It was SO out of place compared to all of the
rest of the cars in the parking lot.
Fun Fact: I looked up the price online and it costs
close to what our current house cost back in 2002.

Nah. If I had my choice of car, it'd likely be something from the mid-90s to the mid-2000s, although I'd not say no to a mid-80s Ford Mustang or Pontiac Firebird.

These were made locally until mid-1987.

The thing is, that era of cars are in high demand from people my age (or a little older), so even the thought of buying one to try to fix it up is kind of cost prohibitive. 

The pricing bubble has also afflicted another hobby of mine, audio, because I'd like to have picked up an older 1970s era receiver, but again a ton of people my age have gone into that and driven up the prices.

Such as this Pioneer SX-780, made in 1980
(the manufacturing run was 1978-1980).
From Oleg's Vintage Audio.

Then again, my trusty old NAD T751 receiver could stand a cleaning and repair job, so maybe it's for the best to stick with the NAD and my Pioneer VSX-2000 that is still chugging away in the basement.

Or I could go the route of a friend of mine and start up an AD&D campaign of my own...

Such as module S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.
From eBay.

But I'm happy playing in his campaign at the moment. No sense in stealing his thunder.

Maybe I could just take that period of my life when I actually did progression raiding in Vanilla Classic and say THAT is my midlife crisis, and then we'll call it a day. That's probably the easiest answer. 

EtA: Corrected the NAD receiver model.

#Blaugust2025

Meme Monday: Back to School Memes for 2025

I can laugh at these, mainly because I'm long since past those days. My oldest is going back to university to pick up another degree, this time in Music Therapy. Luckily for her, all of her music credits and gen ed credits transferred over, so she only really has a couple of years' worth of psych classes and hands-on work, and then she'll have another Bachelor's degree. 

From sixpackmom.

From Imgflip.

From Knowyourmeme.

From Giphy and Seventeen Magazine.

From No Guilt Life.

#Blaugust2025

Another Link Gone

On Thursday, Jim Lovell passed away at the age of 97. And with him went a critical part of our connection to the Space Race of the 1960s.

People now remember Jim Lovell courtesy of Tom Hanks' portrayal of him in the movie Apollo 13, but he was already famous in the aeronautics and science community for his participation in Gemini 7, Gemini 12, and Apollo 8, the latter of which became the first manned spacecraft to orbit the Moon. 

Jim was more than those NASA missions; he was a Navy pilot, a test pilot, and an Eagle Scout. 

From Tom Hanks' post on Instagram.

I think that Buzz Aldrin is one of the few remaining astronauts still alive from that era; when he passes a door will have truly shut.

Godspeed, Jim Lovell. You'll be missed.

#Blaugust2025

Catching Up With the Joneses*

I still remember the day we got our first color television. 

It wasn't all that long ago --okay, it was 44 years ago, so sue me-- but it was also long after most of my peers had a color television in their house.

We'd always had a television as long as I could remember, but they'd all been black and white. Given the lack of money my parents had, I understand the economics of the situation --black and white TVs were much cheaper than color televisions-- and I suspect my parents got a hand-me-down TV or two over the years. The television circuitry were vacuum tube based**, and looking back on it I wonder just what my parents were thinking when they left said TVs on rickety carts that looked like were going to collapse at any time. 

It looked a bit like this, although this TV cart
is a lot sturdier than ours was. From AtariAge.

I'm not sure when Mom and Dad decided to finally buy a color television set, but the day they did it was memorable for me because it was the day that the episode of The Incredible Hulk called Prometheus Part I aired. I remember that because when Dad was setting up the television that was the show he was using to check the color settings, and it's not every day that David Banner is there next to a big ol' meteor.

From hulk.fandom.wiki.

It feels very odd now, looking back at television sets from back then, and comparing it to the sort of television that we have in our houses now:

No, it's not our house. Do you know how hard
it is to find a "generic" looking house with a modern
television inside? So many of them look like
homes for people much wealthier than myself.
From Tom's Guide review for the Sony Bravia 3.

It's been 45 years for me from that first color television set to today, and it feels like I'm looking at a Sopwith Camel versus a Lockheed-Martin F-22. There are times when I wonder just what the next 45 years will bring, but I also wonder what will happen to us in the next 45 years. Okay, I'll likely have kicked the bucket, but I meant we as a species. If people tell you they know what will result from our impending singularity, they're likely incorrect. I don't think anybody really knows what will happen, and pretending they do is like putting lipstick on a pig. People may tell you what they want to happen, for good or ill, but that ain't worth crap. There's already speculation about what our current level of generative AI is (or isn't), but it isn't what I'd consider AI to be. It's just a better form of search with the "side benefit" of AI lying to us. 

Oh, I'm sorry, it's "hallucinating", which is a fancy way of saying you're making shit up because it might be what we want. So in that respect, generative AI is as good as the average politician. But let's hope that generative AI is at least as useful as that old color television set, whose analog reception was relevant up until 2009.

*Ironically enough, we did have a neighbor in our old neighborhood --prior to our move in 1976 to my parents' current home-- with a last name of Jones. Sometimes you can't make this stuff up.

**When I was little, I used to warm my hands on cold days in winter by putting them over the vents in the back of the set by bringing a chair over and standing on top of it to reach the back of the TV. If you've ever been in the vicinity of a vacuum tube radio or television, you know that they get pretty warm over time. 

#Blaugust2025

Giddyup

It's amazing how quickly you can rocket forward once you gain access to the Scarlet Monastery instances.

Yeah, I need to work on getting Cardwyn 
a Robe of Power. It should take me an evening
to accumulate the materials.
This is the status as of August 7, 2025.

Yes, I've gotten five toons to L40, and four of the five have mounts. My Questing Buddy was looking at the materials her guild would need for AQ40, and she figured that they'd need about 400 Nightfin for their use. To help her out, we worked out an arrangement where I'd fish for 20 stacks of 20 Nightfin, and she'd pay me 10 gold per stack. Right now, Nightfin is going for about 16-20 gold per stack, so I cut her a discount --she didn't know this until now, assuming she reads this post-- and provided her with all of the fish over the course of 3-4 weeks. However, I didn't take into account all of the training I'd have to do on 5 toons once I hit L40, so I had less gold at the end than I thought.

But that's not a big deal, since I've been fishing the past few nights to get my gold supply back up. 

I'm thinking that I'm going to stick with these 5 toons going forward, and if I get the chance I'll work on the Shadow Priest along the way. Once these toons start reaching 60 I'll double back and tinker with the rest, assuming there's time before the TBC pre-patch. 

I've discovered that I really enjoy more classes than strictly the Mage and Rogue, which surprised me a lot. I think that the lack of complexity in Vanilla Classic works in my favor, as I'm able to relax and enjoy things without stressing out so much or requiring the soon-to-appear single button attack in Retail WoW. 

So, I ain't dead in the water yet. 

Oh yeah, I suppose I ought to mention the elephant in the room: the WoW Classic Anniversary Servers allow a player to enable Dual Specification once they hit L40. That sounds great in theory, but I really don't have any desire to configure Dual Spec for any of my toons anytime soon. The DPS toons --Rogue, Mage, Warlock, Hunter-- don't really need it, and the Paladin I intend to keep as Retribution anyway. Plus, to me it's a gold sink right now, so I'd rather save my gold for training which is infinitely more useful. 

Onward and upward, I suppose...

#Blaugust2025

It's That Edgelord Thing

Something that's been bothering me about the "new" login screen for Retail are the faces that the Humans make when you select them. 

I honestly have no idea who approved those facial expressions, but compared to the "old" versions those facial expressions tend to be all angry for some reason or another.

For example, here's what Cardwyn looks like in Retail in the login screen:

But here's what she looks like when she's not selected:

Pretty much a normal facial expression.

And if you watch her cast in Retail, that "normal" expression is what you'll get:

Now Linna, on the other hand is not only angry in the selection screen, but also is angry when attacking:

But compared to Classic Era (I used Era because I wanted to quickly attack something near Stormwind without worrying about it dying instantly):

I simply don't get it. Why have your toons look all pissed off? Because Blizz wanted them to look edgy or something?

I mean, have they seen what Goldshire looks like on Moon Guard-US?

It's kind of hard to look edgy when you've got mounts and gear and whatnot like that around, and I'd bet that's what it's like (only 10x more so) at the endgame watering holes.

I just look at it as a pure miss on Blizzard's design part, changing how players look for no really good reason, especially when, say, the Blood Elves look much more pleasant:

It could be an Alliance vs. Horde thing, since Kaldorei look similar to Humans in the anger department:

As for me, I think I prefer the non-committal version found in Classic WoW. They're not as emotive as teenagers, and I prefer my MMO toons to look more adult and mature in nature. 

#Blaugust2025