All I Really Need is a Place for My Stuff

I have a confession to make: our house is not something that Marie Kondo would say sparks joy.

When you put two pack rats* together with three kids, you're going to have piles of stuff to move around on a regular basis. While I'd like to look at my home as a place to relax and enjoy myself, when you get right down to it, I look at a home as a place for my stuff.

You knew I was going to put this here, didn't you?
This is one of the George Carlin routines that aged well.

I don't really have a sense of decoration, either. I've seen what some people call "decoration" and I think that I can't see the walls from all of the pictures on them. On the flip side, I'm not a big fan of the minimalist look, either. I just want a place for everything, and enough furniture and decoration that don't look like they came out of the 60s/70s/80s to make it work. Despite my best intentions, I simply can't get things decorated well. Not for a lack of trying, mind you, but I also have to balance my mom and my in-laws dumping decorations and whatnot on us that we really don't need with my own distaste of the items themselves. 

My own home was built in the mid-80s, and it shows. The two story and bi-level/split-level homes built in that era all have the same general look about them; they tend to be boxy, but they get maximum use out of minimal space. The oversized great rooms and specialty areas of the houses that were built afterward simply don't exist, so my home office is set where the dining room was originally designed to reside.**

So you know where this is going, right?

This is what my homes in video games tend to look like, if I'm left to my own devices:

It's a bit blocky, but it works.

Penny would occasionally complain about
all those chests around; I ought to do something
about that one of these days. Note that most
of the furniture there came with the house.

So yeah, I'm decoratively challenged and I look at houses as a place to put things, rather than to live in them. (It's a failing.)

MMO housing doesn't make me squeal with delight as it does some people. I mean, it's great to look at when it's done well, and believe me, I've seen plenty of people who have done it well --some even read the blog!-- but that seems to be beyond my capacity. I don't have any screencaps of the home I had in LOTRO, but the front of it looked like a stereotypical backwoods shack with all sorts of broken down material scattered around in front.

In other words, I think I would give Marie Kondo a heart attack.

***

So when I saw that this dropped in Retail WoW yesterday...

From an email dated 12/3/2025.

I realized that I was not the target audience. 

That's fine. I don't need to be the target of MMO salesmanship; after all, I'm not a big spender when it comes to DLC and whatnot. If anything, that translates in-game to me not really pursuing monetary or bling-centric goals.***

To those who are reveling in the chance to play around with housing, I wish you the best of luck. I'll be reading your blog posts!

*Yes, I'm calling myself out. I may not have as much stuff as my wife does, and I do throw things out more than she does, but there are plenty of things that I know I'll keep until I die. 

**We never formally entertained people, and we've never used the fine china that we were obligated to request in our wedding lists. In fact, all those plates and utensils and whatnot are still in storage in the basement, having never been used once. I think the only thing we ever did use were the wine glasses, and those are also now in storage since a) we have a lot of "free" glasses given to us from the local wine festival over the years, and b) I can't really drink alcohol much any more.

***Despite what some people may think, I count Epic Riding and Epic Flying as bling-centric. If it becomes a requirement to do something, I'm going to push even harder against it. But that's just me.

Just Come On and Burst, Already

Okay, this is now getting ridiculous.

Multiple websites and YouTube channels --here's a link to Rock Paper Shotgun's article-- reported that RAM manufacturer Micron is shutting down their Crucial consumer division to essentially go chase AI and Datacenter work.

If you've been keeping track, Micron is the third largest manufacturer of RAM after Samsung and SK Hynix. The loss of Crucial means that there's going to be one fewer player in the RAM market, and more loss of choice among consumer PC buyers. Yes, that includes gamers, too, as we tend to push the envelope of PC performance than the average PC user, but given the spiking of RAM usage in "normal" software such as browsers, video streaming, and Office-esque applications, this is going to hurt us in the long run.

And for what? To try to get some of that AI bubble money?

Yeah, this isn't going to end well...

Meme Monday: December Hath Come Memes

Yes, it's December once more. We're 21-22 days from the Solstice, and cold temperatures have officially arrived in the Midwest.

And snow has arrived in Milwaukee, as my oldest provided a few helpful photos of the six inches of snow they got over the weekend...

I could use this as a Christmas card.

I was inspired. Hence, this Meme Monday.

Yes, I've known dogs who are like this.
From Thunder Dungeon.

Having put together some IKEA furniture before,
this tickled me to no end. From Instagram.

Ha! I should ask someone at work who lives in
Minnesota if this is accurate.
From Just Bee and Imgflip.

Yeah, I know people like this. Some days,
it's even me. From Becky Barnicoat.

Again, the lure of coffee is strong.
From 97.5 FM 'The Fanatic' in Philly.

Had to have a Fantasy influenced meme
in here. From Kyreann vis Cheezburger.

Sightseeing and Travelling

In WoW Classic Anniversary land, things are progressing:

Snapshot as of November 27, 2025.

It's been a year (or so) since the Anniversary servers launched, and I have yet to reach L60 on any of my toons. So I guess you could say that my plan of not going all-in on rushing to the end (and getting burned out) has worked. After all, I'm still regularly logging in and progressing. This time, that's mainly in Un'goro Crater these days...

Or Felwood...

Or maybe even the Dire Maul area...

I'm at that point in the leveling process where you can begin to separate some classes from others. Card, for example, is able to defeat individual elites, whereas Linna struggles with those same elites. (I'd have inserted a "Dead Linna" screencap if I had one, but I don't. I was too busy corpse running back to her body.) At times like that, wearing plate armor doesn't exactly help much.

But I do occasionally poke my nose into Retail. Mainly just to observe people on Moon Guard...

I think that thing on the left is a mount. I'd just
like to know where you stable these things, because
when I'm writing you have to consider things such
as that. I mean, can you imagine having that thing stabled
at a farm? And what would it eat? How would you care for it?

That Pally is a bit of a flashback, with the 
Sulfuras Mace and the recolored Judgement armor.
Were it not for the post-Cataclysm Auction House
(and that it's a Draenei), she would fit right in on the
Anniversary servers.

I do get lost with the post-Cataclysm changes to the Old World from time to time, but consulting a map is always the smartest option...

Nevertheless, there are things I see that still do make me stop and ponder for a moment...

Something tells me that the device on the left
is related to the Dragonflight expansion.
Why? Oh, no reason...

I can't decide if that's a trinket effect or if
those are merely images of people. If I were
a betting man, I'd figure it came from the cash shop.

Okay, I inserted this screencap here because I
was fascinated with the eye patch. That 'pirate' look
isn't something you'd expect on your average Draenei.

But if one thing is certain, it's that Trade Chat never changes (profanity warning below):

Something to be Thankful For: That Time a Local Band Taught Me About Fear

Back in my tween years in the early 80s, my listening habits straddled the New Wave Pop sound with Rock. If the music you listen to when you're growing up sticks with you throughout your life, then my life was infused with Soft Cell and Duran Duran, Asia and The Police, AC/DC and Yes.

Oh, and a little local band called The Raisins.

The Raisins had been around for several years by the beginning of the 80s and had built a fanatical local following. They'd played dozens of venues throughout the region, and were always a good bet to get a packed house.

If you'd have told someone today that corporate

rock station WEBN and PBS TV affiliate WCET

would join forces to create live shows in the early

80s, they wouldn't have believed you. But here's the proof.

I was a bit young to be allowed into the bars to see bands play, so The Raisins skated under my radar for a long while. But when I started hearing a song called Fear is Never Boring on the radio, I immediately fell in love.

Now, before you click on the music video below, you have to realize something: the video's quality is very homemade: something you'd see out of a bunch of guys throwing a "music video" together after having had a few beers. The "homage" to Jason's hockey mask (not sure where they got the thing they used), Jaws, people dressed as undertakers, the POV of a slasher movie, and the band "playing" their instruments are some of the finest amateur hour stuff. Throw in the 80s era movie projector you'd find at a local school, toss in the band's hair and short shorts, and you get the idea that this isn't something you should take at all seriously.

As for the song, it's got everything --and I do mean everything-- that identifies it as early 80s Power Pop: backward lyrics*, a nice groove, a good guitar solo, and song lyrics that have sexual innuendos/references you'd never have believed would have come out of socially conservative Cincinnati. One of the band members, Bob Nyswonger, mentioned that this song was used for a while at Cincinnati Reds baseball games, until the Reds management actually listened to the lyrics and yanked it from being played over the sound system.

Fear is Never Boring became a bit regional hit, and I thought it meant that they were big nationally (because I heard it on the radio all the time!), but the breaks never came their way. A couple of years after this song, the band broke up. Rob Fetters, the songwriter of Fear is Never Boring, took the song with him to his later bands, The Bears and psychodots**, so the song never truly went away from the area. All of the band members themselves kept busy in the local music scene, but they did reunite in 2024 for some sold out shows at the Woodward Theater downtown.

So I'm thankful for The Raisins and their quirky take on fear.

***

Oh, and I'm also thankful that the FCC finally issued my amateur radio license yesterday. One thing about those licenses is that they're public, so you can go to the FCC's database search engine and plug in my callsign to get my real name and address. That's actually a requirement that I have an active email address (and a physical address) on file that I can be reached at, or the FCC can yank my license. Ergo, you're going to have to trust me that I have an official callsign, because I'm not mentioning it here.

The FCC stopped providing paper licenses a long
time ago; I downloaded a PDF instead that I can print
out and keep in my records.

That being said, I was amused at what the callsign gods provided to me. You'd think I was a member of a federal agency or something. (And no, it's not the FBI. It wouldn't surprise me if callsigns with those letters in them are banned.)

*You can actually find someone had reversed the video so you can hear the backward lyrics. What was said at the start of the song was "My whole life flashed before I crashed".

**Yes, 'psychodots' has a lower case name. That's by design.

Meme Monday: Thanksgiving Memes for 2025

This Thursday is Thanksgiving in the US (Canada's Thanksgiving is in October), so I figured I'd put a few memes out there for this holiday.

Ha. I don't think I'll have to do this this year.
From Someecards.

20 years ago this wouldn't have worked.
Weird how things have changed. From Pinterest.

I laughed. From Play What You Want.

Oh great. A turkey version of Tiamat.
From Reddit.

Well, yeah. That's the idea. Of course, I have
been dragged into work on Thanksgiving,
so I appreciate this. From Thunder Dungeon.

This would NOT go well at my mom's house.
From Bell of Lost Souls.

Codas and Retrospectives

Every so often, the YouTube algorithm pops up something that I really love.

This time, it's the kinda-sorta Beatles song, Now and Then.

Yes, it's the last of the pieces that Yoko Ono had found on a cassette that John Lennon had been recording prior to his murder. The other two songs were in better condition and could easily be filled out by the three remaining Beatles at the time into released songs, but this last one proved to be beyond the reach of the technology of the mid-90s. Apparently George Harrison also thought the song was rubbish when they were working on it in the mid-90s; whether it was the low quality recording or the song itself was up for interpretation. Still, with new tech brought to Paul and Ringo by Peter Jackson, they were able to get a usable extraction of John's voice and finish the song.

It's by no means the best Beatles song out there, but at this stage in my life I find it wistful, a longing for people in the past that you had a friendship with and are no longer around. In its own way, it's a perfect coda for the band.

The music video for Now and Then does highlight the irreverent and funny personalities of the band, which reminded me a lot of something my Questing Buddy and I were chatting about earlier this past evening. 

We were talking about our experience raiding in TBC Classic, and before that our Vanilla Classic experiences. Her journey ended up being much better this time around on the Anniversary servers, because her guild doesn't take themselves entirely seriously. They do want to raid well, and they do push themselves, but that's more on the individual members to basically have their stuff ready to go rather than some Raid Lead wielding a clue stick to get everybody on the page*. What I highlighted was the espirit de corps of the Mage team, and how we were all a tight knit bunch and truly enjoyed each other's company. Raike would talk about her music playlists for the raid, Zwak would crack his sarcastic Dad jokes, and Haldol would somehow make it to the raid despite keeping a crazy work schedule. Raike and I would create fake music lyrics to commemorate our Mage Misadventures, and Iceboom would talk about his watercolor painting and encourage me to give it a try.** We all kept track of who died, egged each other on if they had a chance of ripping threat from the tank, and we'd talk about the most inane topics that we could come up with. Given that the three Mages ahead of me were three of the best Mages on the server, I didn't mind that I was in fourth place on the overall DPS meters. What mattered to me was the amount of sheer, unadulterated fun we were all having, and that's something I do truly miss.

I don't think that sort of connection will ever come again in an MMO for me, because it was my first time truly being part of a progression raid team and the stars aligned to provide me the best possible time in a multiplayer game. Like John sings in Now and Then, I do miss you, old friends.

*Or, as in the case of the franken guild I left, having weekly "performance reviews" of your parsing that they instituted in Wrath Classic.

**If you're reading this, Iceboom, I still have to buy some paints and get to work. Your biggest piece of advice, to keep painting no matter how lousy it looks, is advice that I've taken to heart on all sorts of endeavors.