Tue 24 Feb, 2009
Last week was one of those interesting weeks that just kind of drags you into this weird obvion state. First troubles at work continued through most of the week, but generally started to slow down. This is a great boon as I’m already 2 weeks behind on all of my projects. The previous week my wife had just hit 80 so we were trying to get her into some heroics etc. Last week degenerated into 4-5 days of raiding as well. That left me a bit burned out… my life is funny that way.
Opportunity Knocks
This is going to seem odd, but some peoples lives just work in weird ways. Mine has always seemed to do that. If I’m not trying to juggle 15 things at once I get bored and generally feel lethargic. The last few weeks has been one rapid fire emergency after another. As of today I got drafted to replace one system with another system in two weeks.
Now… you might say, “hey… thats insane.”
You’d be right, but this is probably the most high profile thing going on in our division right now. We just got a new Senior VP and well… guess what’s her pet peeve right now?
This of course could be a complete and utter disaster, but there’s a reason I got picked. I like to think it wasn’t to watch me fail. I like to think that the guy who picked me did so because I’m really good at adapting, learning and producing quality work in a very short period of time.
Couple that with spending lots of time with probably every director, Associate VP and Senior VP in our division…. no stress people… no stress. So if you ponder why my work here slows down over the next few weeks, you’ll know. I have a MILLION things to write and no time to do it (unless you consider that time between 11:00 PM and 5:00 AM when I briefly shut my eyes time…)
Gearing Up the Undergeared
As with a lot of things, we all remember what it was to hit 80. Suddenly you have this brand new world open up to you. You can do heroics. You can earn badges. You can do this mountain of new things. Oh yeah… and suddenly you have to grind for stuff as well.
So last week was fun for me. I got to spend a good deal of time with my wife and a couple of other people who were looking to gear up. Sure my tank didn’t need the gear, but you know how much smoother heroics go when you have a stupidly over geared tank in there? Couple that with my wife having what has to be the highest overall drop rates of any person I know and my wife has been cruising through the gearing up phase.
Monday – I decided to stay home and do some heroics with the wife. I pretty much hadn’t been home in a week and a half. So it was about time to help out. She got some very nice upgrades right out of the gate. She’s bound and determined to get competitive on her DPS as soon as possible.
Wednesday – Someone invited my wife to an impromptu 10 man Naxx. So… emergency enchants and suddenly I’m coming along to help tank or DPS. We didn’t down a ton, but for a last minute thing we got all of the Spider wing and the first boss in the plague wing. Not bad for a nights work.
Thursday – Scheduled 25 man Naxx, but we were short. Oh my god were we short on DPS. Who the hell would have ever thought we’d say that? Who the hell runs short on DPS. My wife gets to fill in and gets some nice upgrade off of Grobbulus.
Friday – I carefully avoid Naxx, but help my wife out a bit with some heroics. More upgrades ensue.
Saturday – More heroics. My wife’s gear is getting pretty good actually. She’s easily at entry level Naxx gear at this point. We get drafted into doing a continuation of our Naxx run from Tuesday. Decided to start in the Construct quarter since my wife wanted to see Thaddius in a more controlled and “easy” setting. Thaddius is completely unforgiving of mistakes in 25 man. 10 Man he’s fairly easy. She got not only a nice upgrade off of Grobbulus, but she got her T7 Pants off of Gluth when nobody needed them. “But the pants I have are better I think….” Well guess what… you’ll get you T7 and Like it!!! 
Sunday – My wife signed up to attend an Obsidian Sanctum run and Archavon’s vault. The raid leader was short, but I told him, if you’re really short I’ll bring my completely undergeared and OMGLOL new 80 boomkin. Some really quick enchants and some swaps on my leveling spec and glyphs and I’m off to Sartharion. Now… the good news is that with some of the new glyphs I can really clean house on AOE packs. Being completely undergeared, I was doing about 1800 DPS on trash packs where we AOEd them down. Where I fell down was on boss mobs. Boss mobs I was only able to keep up about 1670 DPS.
Not bad considering I had hit 80 on about Thursday, but overall, pathetic. My Boomkin hasn’t even seen a heroic. Oddly I got badges of Valor before I got a single badge of heroism. Some people may consider that 1670 DPS is just fine. It is for Sartharion 25 man, but I’m a raid leader. I don’t consider it fine by a long shot. Misses? Unacceptable. But then… I told the raid leader going in, I was only doing it to fill in and I didn’t particularly feel like dragging my main out for this.
