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

When Life Hits you in the Head

Well, the news broke a couple of hours ago on Monday that one of my coworkers and acquaintances for a decade or more had passed away. I'd not heard much from him over the past decade or so, but he was always kind of private that way, so I never worried about him or anything.

But I wasn't expecting that I'd hear today that he'd passed away from advanced dementia at the age of 67. 

I never realized he was that much older than me; I always thought he was about 5 years or so older, but...

This is going to take some time to process. 

#Blaugust2025