My Adventures over the Airwaves Part 1: "This... is London..."*

I was inspired to start writing about my history with radio after a comment by Shintar about my usage of the term "Dayton Hamvention" in this post. And after far too many words, I've broken it out into multiple parts. I'm not sure how far this will go --or if I'm going to post these on successive days or not-- but we'll see.

I'm old enough to remember my parents having a radio with a shortwave band on it.

I don't think it was this exact model, as ours was covered
by a leather case that matched the leather handle you see
above. Still, between these GE models and the Radio
Shack Patrolman series of portable radios, you get the idea.

Ours was a model similar to the one shown above, and it resided in our kitchen. Dad would take the radio outside when he sat on the back patio and read while listening to 700 WLW broadcast Cincinnati Reds' baseball games, with Marty Brennaman and Joe Nuxhall in the radio booth.** 

Marty and Joe from the Reds' glory years.
From The Notorious Meddler's post on the two.

When it wasn't outside, the radio's place was atop the refrigerator so my mom could listen to the radio while she cooked.

All I knew about that little section marked "SW" was that whenever I tried to listen to it, there were no audible stations. I figured it was busted, and as long as my parents didn't think I broke the radio I never called attention to it.

A couple of years later I asked my mom about that SW band, and she told me it was for listening to radio stations from all over the world. That sounded intriguing, but I remembered my experience of trying that band in the past and I left it alone.

Then the Pope got shot.

I was at my Catholic grade school when it happened, and being the dutiful Catholic I prayed for the Pope's recovery. After the announcement on the intercom, one of the teachers --or maybe it was one of the nuns, I can't remember who-- happened to mention that we might get more information from shortwave radio rather than our local television stations, so when I got back home I tried in vain to find anything on that shortwave band. Defeated, I left it alone, but Mom told me that she'd never gotten any stations to come in either.

So that was what I thought of shortwave radio: some radio band that basically was a waste of space. My dad eventually replaced that portable radio a couple of years later with one that had VHF television audio instead of a shortwave band. To him, that was far more useful.

Fast forward 7-8 years later, and I was in my sophomore year at UD, just beginning work as a lab assistant in a Physics professor's research lab. Part of my duties involved working on the lab bench that the professor had acquired from the Department of Electrical Engineering, and to say that drilling and tapping holes in steel weren't a lot of fun is an understatement. So to pass the time, I looked around for a radio to listen to. Surely, in this room with all of this junk there had to be something.

Tucked away in one corner, there was.

The radio in question didn't have those aluminum "wings"
on the sides, but otherwise this is the model.
The S20R Sky Champion, circa 1939. From eBay.

At first I wasn't exactly sure if it was a radio at all, but the bands on the main tuning wheel gave it away. I plugged it in and turned it on, and... 

Nothing.

I made sure the radio was on the regular AM band, and still there was nothing coming out.

Another of the professors in the department saw me fiddling with the radio and took pity on me. "You need to set the switch on the right to 'REC'", he told me.

"Oh."

I flipped that switch, and like magic the radio came to life. 

"There's a small bit of wire in the back for an antenna," he added, "but this was part of the ham station we had in the building."

A what?

"An amateur radio station. The professor who ran it passed away before you started here, so we dismantled it your Freshman year." He pointed out another device next to it: 

From eBay.

"This is the transmitter, but don't turn it on unless you've got it hooked up to an antenna, or it'll fry the circuits."

I made a mental note of that, tuned into one of the local AM stations on the Hallicrafters radio, and got back to work. When my day ended, I went back to the radio and began flipping to different bands. Surely if there was any radio that might receive shortwave stations, it was this one.

Lo and behold, something came out of the radio.

It was in Spanish, but it was better than nothing. I got an actual shortwave signal!

So, knowing now that shortwave radio wasn't a myth, I did what I usually do when confronted with a problem I was eager to know the answer for: research.

I went to a bookstore at the mall and roamed the stacks until I finally found what I was looking for in the Electronics and Hobbies section. I then visited the Radio Shack at the mall and picked up another book, so I had this as my haul:

If you're old enough and into science/electronics,
you might recognize the publisher of the one on
the right, TAB Books. Yes, it still exists
as an imprint of McGraw-Hill Education.

The Radio Shack book was very light on details, but it did provide a basic framework on shortwave radio. The other one, The Complete Shortwave Listener's Handbook, was much better overall. It provided me with real details as to how radios worked, and more importantly how shortwave radio worked. I also learned that those old portable radios --such as the one my parents had-- were terrible for shortwave reception. The book also explained how the shortwave bands were active at certain times of the day (the higher frequencies in the morning/afternoon and the lower frequencies in the evening/night) and broadcasters would take advantage of those differences to change the frequencies they broadcast based on the time of day. Finally, the book recommended the World Radio TV Handbook to get access to the current listings of shortwave frequencies.

"Okay," I thought, "back to the bookstore."

I couldn't find the World Radio TV Handbook, but I did find something that looked like it might be almost as good:

I haven't kept all of them, but a few
are worth keeping for sentimental value.
As the cover says, the 1989 Passport
to World Band Radio.

In it's own way, the Passport to World Band Radio was even better than the WRTH, because there were easy to follow reviews, reviews of shortwave stations --both reception and content-- and there was a huge section in the back showing the shortwave band activity in a graphical format.

If you zoom in, you'll see some old stations such
as Radio Moscow and Radio Yugoslavia.
From the 1989 Passport to World Band Radio.

Using the 1989 Passport as a guide, I learned to surf the bands and listen in while I was working. (The professor I worked for finally tired of hearing shortwave all the time and told me to listen when he wasn't around.) I also learned that in the absence of a "real" antenna, just using random wire as long as you can make it is your best bet. So, I did what any self-respecting student would do: cut some wire from the huge spools in the basement storage of Sherman Hall --the basement that at one time was a student run nuclear reactor***-- and ran it out of a second floor classroom and down to the basement. I then brought the wire into the lab I worked at and to the Hallcrafters radio, and it was like magic. The bands opened up, and I could hear all over the world.****

The thing was, I really couldn't take that radio home with me. I did ask the department chair if I could have the radio, and he said "is there a Department tag on it?"

"No," I replied.

He just gave me a look, as if to say "there's your answer." The thing was, I couldn't justify taking it back to my dorm: it was heavy, and my (then) roommate would not have been amused.

Living on the Eastern side of the US, Radio Australia
was always a more difficult station to catch.
From the 1989 Passport to World Band Radio.

That Fall, I resolved to buy a shortwave radio of my own, and since I now had a dorm room to myself*****, I didn't have to worry about annoying any roommates. Thankfully, one of the best rated portable shortwave radios could be found at my local Radio Shack:

It's the one on the bottom left. Definitely not
the one on the right. From radioshackcatalogs.com.

That page, from the 1989 Radio Shack catalog, was right up my alley. There were shortwave radios, a CB radio base station, and some handheld CB radios. But the focus of my attention was the Realistic DX-440, a Radio Shack rebrand of Sangean's ATS-803A. It may have not been the highest rated portable radio of its era --that belonged to Sony's ICF-2010-- but it was fairly well regarded and could easily be found at the thousands of Radio Shack stores across the country.

Oh look, the DX-440 on the top of the right-hand page.
Later editions of the Passport to World Band Radio
revised the rating upward to 3 1/2 stars.
From the 1989 Passport to World Band Radio.

All I had to do was scrape up $200 to buy one.

That actually didn't turn out to be as big of a problem as I thought it would be, since I worked about 15-20 hours a week for the Physics Department as a Lab Instructor and a Lab Assistant, and the radio went on sale a lot. One week in October I found it on sale for $179, and I somehow managed to scrape together the money, got to the closest Radio Shack to campus (I think I borrowed a friend's car), and bought it before they closed for the night. 

I still have the radio; it's sitting behind me
atop the bookshelf. The strap is in storage,
but I have it too. The box is long since gone,
however. The clock is set to UTC time.

I listened to shortwave religiously in the mornings before class and when I was in the dorm on the weekends, and in less than a month later I was eternally grateful for blowing a month's worth of pay on the DX-440 because I had a ringside seat listening to the Warsaw Pact implode.

From Wikipedia.
By Sue Ream, CC BY 3.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8377443

The day the Berlin Wall fell, November 9th, was just one of a series of events that proved (to me, anyway) the relevancy of shortwave radio.****** Getting to hear the news reports at the Berlin Wall from Radio Deutsche Welle, the Velvet Revolution from the newly independent journalists of Radio Prague, the broadcasts from the invasion of Kuwait by the BBC World Service in 1990, and the failed Soviet Coup of 1991 from Radio Moscow --who defied the Communist Party and began reporting without the "official" state bias--  were all ingrained into my mind. 

*This is the version I remember:

**This was back when the Reds were the best team in baseball. Kind of hard to imagine that now, but the 1975 and 1976 teams were two of the best baseball teams of all time. It's weird, really, but if you're of the right age when a sports team was dominant you just accepted that things were always going to be that way: the Reds playing in the World Series, Manchester United winning the Premier League, the New England Patriots winning the Super Bowl, the Detroit Red Wings winning NHL's Stanley Cup.

***It had long since been decommissioned, and no, it wasn't the sort that would create a nuclear accident akin to Three Mile Island. The isotopes used were very tame, but the reactor did provide some power. So no, I'm not gonna get cancer. (At least from that.)

****About a year later I was in that same classroom with a professor and two grad students talking about something, and one of the grad students noticed the wire I'd tied to a corner of the window. "What is that wire there for?" he asked.

"Looks like someone put that wire there as an antenna," the professor replied with a look at me. 

I feigned innocence, but I knew I'd been found out. (I still miss our classes together, Dr. Graham.)

*****I'm still not sure how that happened, but while I did request a single I assumed that I was going to get stuck with a roommate. I mean, that happened for my sophomore year when the person I was to room with decided to not return to UD, and that meant I was grouped with a Freshman. THAT was an interesting experience.

******That day was also quite important because that was the day that my now wife and I started dating. That was before I got back to my dorm and turned on the radio to find the reports about the Berlin Wall; I was a wee bit distracted, you know.

#Blaugust2025

Meme Monday: Dad Joke Memes

Yes, dad jokes. Because I'm a dad, and there's plenty of jokes abound.

I'm here till Thursday. Try the veal!
From Imgflip.

From Memebase (and PunHub).

Ah, Star Trek and dad jokes. You never
know if Worf actually got the joke.
From Imgur.

Although my wife is usually a bit better sport
than this. But yeah, been there. From Pinata Farms.

My kids do make me proud about their dad joke
prowess. From Reddit (and mematic).

Sometimes, the dad joke is visual.
Can't remember where I found this one.

And yes, I was a proud dad when the kids
started making these jokes. From Reddit.

#Blaugust2025

EtA: Added the reference for the last meme.

Time Marches On

My wife and I met our son and his partner for lunch today at our local bookstore, and afterward we wandered the stacks. I espied a few boardgames that the store had for sale, and I immediately felt a bit wistful. It reminded me that the first boardgame store I visited here, Boardwalk Hobby Shop, had closed during the pandemic. The owners had decided to retire, and like I said in a previous post, I couldn't begrudge them that. 

The day before I was out as an advanced scouting party for getting my youngest a new laptop, as her current one is far too old and slow to handle Windows 11, and I needed to reacquaint myself with how the various brands and models handled.* Naturally, I went to Microcenter, and afterward I stopped by my nearby Friendly Local Game Store (FLGS), YottaQuest.

I wasn't there to buy anything --because laptop, you know-- but it was good to simply roam the store and watch the steady flow of customers into the place. Those included a couple easily old enough to be my parents, and they weren't there just because their grandkids wanted to visit,** but to actually buy something themselves. 

I took this pic last Fall, when there were
leaves everywhere. Even on a nose or two.

Time marches on, but I hope that some things continue. Such as good bookstores and game stores.

*Having spent the last 12+ years buying laptops for the kids, I've seen a lot of trends. Such as the decline of HP in terms of quality --holy hell are those laptops flimsy-- and the rise of Acer as a viable brand. I remember when Acer's Aspire line used to be nicknamed "Expire" because of how poorly powered and built they were, but HP has certainly passed them on the way to the bottom in terms of consumer grade stuff. I still refuse to touch Dell because of my own personal experience with the brand courtesy of a work laptop that refused to have it's fan spin unless it sat perfectly flat. Tilt it just a hair and the fan would simply stop working. And I won't get into the overheating problems with that laptop, either.

**That was my experience as a kid when I'd drag my grandparents to a video game arcade or a bookstore.

#Blaugust2025

Wait, What WAS Considered Beautiful in 2004?

Okay, I'll admit that I wasn't expecting to be writing this post when I sat down on Friday morning before work, but things happen.

Well, this happened:

I've been watching Angelika's videos for over a year now, and her focus on items such as clothing, art, style, and other things in MMOs and RPGs (mainly Elder Scrolls and WoW) are interesting to me. So, when she decided to focus on the standards of beauty in WoW (primarily WoW Classic), I was interested in her take on it. 

The biggest takeaway for me was how she viewed Vanilla WoW through the lens of what was considered attractive and stylish in 2004, which was when the game released. I'll be honest in that I couldn't tell you much of what was considered "in" at the time, because our youngest was a year old and overall the years 1998 - 2005 were a bit of a sleep deprived blur. 

Then, this morning, this dropped:

I haven't watched the trailer either (I haven't watched a Retail WoW trailer except for Dragonflight since Mists back in 2012), so I can't speak to it myself, but I found her critique very interesting in that Blizzard is basically "going generic" as far as the Blood Elf look. If you looked at Liadrin, you'd not know it was a Blood Elf from WoW. She just looks like an elf, not a Warcraft elf.

Of course, that's not enough, because apparently there's a big divide on the reaction to the trailer. People either adore or despise it, with not that many opinions in the "meh" middle. Which is pretty much standard for anything in Retail, but a lot of the hate is focused on Liadrin's look and how "masculine" she looks. The pictures I've seen of her simply don't look like her, masculine or not. Liadrin has a specific look to her that dates back to TBC, like Angelika pointed out, and Blizz moved away from that.

Oh well. Nothing I can do about that, but yes, the videos are worth a watch.

#Blaugust2025

That Was Annoying

As a matter of course, I don't have my video settings to automatically play. There have been plenty of times in the past when I've been doing some research or prepping for something and a video automatically plays on either my phone or my computer, disrupting everything and everyone. Of course, advertisements are the worst offenders, so I very rarely open YouTube on my phone because I won't pay for YouTube Premium and adblockers don't work on YouTube's mobile phone app. 

So, imagine my surprise when I got the Battle.net alert last evening on my phone that said something along the lines of "Adventure is Calling You Home", and before I basically swiped left and ignored it, I thought "You know what, I might as well see what ad they're sticking on people's phones first."

It was this:

I took this after I stopped the video.

Yeah, I was not pleased.

The trailer started playing straight away, ignoring my settings, and I was definitely not a happy camper. The only thing that would have made this more annoying was that there were video ads before the trailer played, which I'm surprised wasn't the case.

You know, I should have known better, but given that the Battle.net app tends to be pretty well behaved overall I was thinking it wasn't going to go full Google on me. But nope, not the case.

Oh well. Live and learn.

#Blaugust2025

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