I went to our FRG meeting last night. Partly for the information, and partly because I know I need to step out and try and meet people. That is a big admission for me. I’m not good at it. I never have been. I got lucky in Alaska, my friends all came to me one way or another. So, I admitted to myself that I needed to make the effort. I took a deep breath, and off I went.

Things started out well. Before I knew it I was having a nice conversation about hobbies with one of the wives at my table. I got comfortable. Maybe TOO comfortable. When asked about hobbies and crafts I made the mistake of being honest.  I said I wasn’t crafty really, but I enjoy blogging, photography, image editing, and …playing World of Warcraft. POOF! she disappeared like her ass was on fire. It’s the same EVERY. Time.

WoW players, and Gamers in general tend to see this reaction alot. There is a false image of them as basement dwelling creeps with no social life.  And do you know what dawned on me? Well no wonder! Every time someone finds out that your hobby is a video game, especially an immersive one like WoW, they jump back like you might burn them. Sure as hell makes me not want to bother trying.

I don’t WANT to make the effort if I have to “lie” about myself. If I can’t be me, I can’t be bothered. And you know what? It’s THEM that will miss out. WoW is a game that thrives on social skills, critical thinking, and ability to work well with others. The things you would THINK you would want in meeting new people.

Yes, I play WoW, I blog, and you know what? I’m good at it, and I love it. I’m also a pretty good photographer, listener, and friend. I’m not going to “leave that out” in a conversation about “what do you enjoy?”. Anymore than I’ll deny having a kickass tattoo, or loving country music.  I don’t discriminate against any of them for being years younger than me, or less experienced with the army life. In fact, I could be a hell of an asset, being the kickass hooah army wife that I am, I have alot of knowledge and understanding to offer. I am friggin AWESOME as a matter of fact, and if my playing WoW, and blogging, and in general being a geekish redneckish woman keeps you from seeing it? Well your loss.

But I’ll always be the girl I am
And when Life comes falling down on me I do the best I can
And I never make make apologies cause I don’t give a damn
I guess I’ll always be the girl I am

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/Jessrage

I am annoyed as hell with the Argent Tournament dailies these days. The thought of doing them makes me not even want to log in. And you KNOW that’s saying something considering there are five pets available and I’ve only gotten Jessmyn ONE of them. That’s right. I hate the dailies more than I love collecting pets.  And don’t tell me how fast they can be done, I know. Nor do I need to know how easy they are because that’s a subjective matter. No, this is NOT an “I can’t joust!!!” thing either, I can, and I do it well. It’s just a rant.

1. Adding a group daily. Chillmaw has always annoyed me. Just on principle.  I don’t care what class can solo it, there shouldn’t BE group requirements for a daily outside the normal and heroic daily dungeons.

2. Commanders. First off, this is a phased area. How hard would it seriously be to have the stupid commanders NOT appear when you aren’t on the quest that requires them.  Second, when you DO require them, you shouldn’t border on NEEDING a group. Oh yes I can solo it, but only in the perfect conditions. Those being:

A: When there’s not another group rounding up EVERYTHING for themselves.

B:  When someone doesn’t steal the mob.

C: When noone aggros everything, dies, and leaves me with a bunch of mobs and a repair bill.

D: When there are enough people there that adds aren’t a  problem, and none of those people are doing any of the above.

Other than that, the best way to get it done is in a group. Or skip it completely, and loseWeight Exercise seals.

3. The NEW changes in 3.2 annoy me the most. Requiring exalted with the Sunreavers or Windrunners. Ok thats not bad but…wait, what’s this?

Argent Crusader Dailies and Rewards
A new line of dailies and rewards for players who have earned the title of Crusader will be available with two random seal-awarding dailies.

• New Heirlooms
• New Argent Crusade Banner
• New Argent Crusade Tabard: Ports you directly to the Tournament grounds.
• An Upgraded Squire: As any good squire should, this upgraded squire now has a mount.
• New Mount: A new Argent Crusade paladin-only charger will be available.

That is the part that sears my bacon, right there. But it’s only a title right? wrong. It actually requires TWO titles. You don’t get “Crusader” until you are exalted with Argent Crusade and ALL of your faction cities (Ambassador title).  Ok, there are baby zone quests I could do to get that, cloth turn ins of course. Or…the Tourney, at 1k rep for valiant dailies and a potential 1k more from Writs, plus the gold that so nicely adds up. Which brings me back to wanting to GAG every time I think of doing them.

So the patch I thought would make for more variety in the doldrums of my dailies…well only if I get “popular” enough.  Meanwhile my Pally needs to do all of this to get 25 sels to  get her Axe of Epic Irony. My druid is the closest to exalted with everyone, so I try like hell to WANT to do them with her. So far I’ve failed. My rogue gets that handy rep bonus, but is further away with rep. And my pally…she’s only honored with the entire Alliance.  Clearly ‘m not little miss popular. Of course that’s nothing new. I’ve always been too geeky to be a cool kid and not geeky enough to hang with the geeks. Thanks for the nightmares from Highschool blizz!

/end Jessrage

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Ok. So, I spent ALL day yesterday finding new hosting, getting royally screwed by 2 companies, finally finding one, and moving my site. Why? Because the host I have been with for the last 3 years was threatening to suspend lady-jess.com. I hadn’t been checking one of my email accounts, but did on Saturday. There was a notice that my WoW blog was moved to a “stabilization” server because it was using too much CPU. Not bandwidth mind you, and not storage those are both “unlimited”.  I was passing their 1% CPU limit. Frankly I didn’t even know there WAS one. You see, where dreamhost mentions this limit, Lunarpages does not. And they didn’t even tell me WHICH file was the problem until the 3rd day of tickets back and forth. I understand shared hosting has these limits no matter where you go but 1% is pretty extreme, and the ones i looked at did mention it.

No matter what I did, disabling my Featured Content Gallery on the front page (after they finally said that was the file), turning on WP Supercache as per their suggestion, it was still over their limit.  I did some googling this issue and found alot of angry Lunarpages customers with the same problem. The common complaint being sure you get unlimited bandwidth and storage, but if you have any real traffic you won’t get to use it before your CPU use passes 1%. Mind you this blog gets on average 200 unique visits a day. That isn’t much really. And I was passing that limit.

Here comes my next problem. I am paid through October with them. Because my passing their CPU limit breaks the agreement, if they shut me down, no refund.  That’s not good. So I decided to move JUST lady-jess, and leave my other two sites there. Since only this one was causing the problems. Cue the host shopping.

The first choice I made was justhost. That was a mistake. I ordered my package, paid for it, the transaction was completed according to paypal. I got no username and password. I got another email with my receipt, and one mentioning I should have my welcome letter. I responded that I didn’t. I received an email back saying my order wasn’t completed, but hey, I could click this link for 50% off and try again! Ok, thought I…they misunderstood, I tried explaining it again…same reply. Repeat that process 6 times.  They bounced me up to tech support, who then said I’d have a reply in the hour, but for faster service click this link for only $19.99 I could have faster support. /facepalm. I told THEM the same thing, and got bounced back to billing just to start ALL over again. I filed a complaint through paypal. Now I wait for a refund.

Then, I went to my second choice. Dreamhost. I had a promo code thanks to Siha (right column of her blog if your looking) for 50% off. Which made 1 year cost the same as the 1 month+activation I was looking at. Sign me up! Oh look INSTANTLY I have my ftp and log in info, access to my admin panel! Good first step right there. So, I set my domain to point there, I install wordpress. I drive myself and everyone in BA chat crazy trying to get this blog moved. Most of the time I couldn’t SEE my main page without a redirect to lunarpages. Til Fim told me how to dump my DNS cache from my computer. That helped for a while. At least I could see my dashboard for wp. Then came moving the database in. I used this fine tutorial for Bigdump but got caught in a horribad error that I couldn’t figure out. I don’t know SQL past “this is where my posts end up”. Matt asked me if I compressed it…which, I did not. So, I removed some unneccessary tables (twittertools, and an old gallery install), exported it again gzipped, and poof!  It imported. YES! now to set up my config to point at it. Done. WHY isn’t it working!!!! This is where I learned, that there’s an important line in there saying “prefix” The prefix for the tables in my new installation are different from the old. Fixed that, and my blog posts appeared.

Today…I got another message from the tech at lunarpages.

Hello,

We have noticed that your account’s average resource usage is now within the acceptable limits for a shared hosting package. We will observe your usage for next 24 hours and if usage is ok, we will move it back to production server.

Best regards,

Disha Kaur
System administrator team

Really? Might that have something to do with the fact that IT IS NOT THERE ANYMORE!!!?? I also ordered dreamhosts $15/month virtual private server, just to cover my butt. I’m happy to say everything worked once I figured it out, and once maintenance ends by Elune, I am playing WoW!

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