Friday, April 24, 2009

Oh the places you'll go...

I could not think of a title so that is the one I gave this article. I still have no managed to land a job, though I am sure there are many people who have been looking longer than I so I should not complain. In the meantime, I am still working part-time not nearly making enough money. Not much to say about the job hunt unfortunately. The one interview I had fell through unfortunately. It would have been an amazing job, but I was not the best candidate.

But life goes on. I am still applying to more positions daily in the research, human resources and other fields, but the people hiring are being very stingy with their pocket books. They will not just hire anyone, so I have to give a lot of information in my cover letter to ensure they know I am the perfect person for the job. Not to say I am lying or anything, but I feel that it is important to show that one's specific characteristics and skills can be applied to job X as well as job Y in a different capacity. I would say I am very good at making these applications, but that would imply that I got a job.

As you may or may not know, the new patch for World of Warcraft came out a week and a half ago and there have been some bugs. I have been having trouble logging into my characters (just one actually and conveniently its the one I want to play the most). This time has given me the opportunity to tidy the house and whatnot. I recently transferred servers to find a raiding guild that is more my style. I think I have found such a guild and I am enjoying raiding with them. Hopefully they will feel the same way. Its quite a gamble swapping servers and leaving your friends behind for a chance at a raid spot. Hopefully the will take this into consideration :).

We have been tearing through Ulduar right up until Mimiron. This is probably the first really difficult boss fight in Ulduar and I am glad they put it into the game. The problem is we are being (excuse my French) cock-blocked by this guy due to some strange bug (or is it?). He is supposed to spin around the room (Like Lurker if you recall from SSC) and shoot lasers (pewpew) at anyone in his path. They hit for 16k which is enough that you do not ever want to get hit by them. What seems to happen is that if one person gets hit by a laser, he does a little jig and shoots the rest of the raid. This happened on many many of our attempts. The only way we could figure out to stop it is to move very preemptively and stop all dps. We basically back off and put our hands in our pockets for the duration of the spin. It works, but people are still failing to silly things (myself included) like bombs or rockets or whatever.

To be fair to myself and my fellow raiders, this is one of the most demanding encounters as far as situational awareness goes, that I have ever seen. I saw all but 2 bosses in the previous expansion and none are as intense as this fight. You have to watch the ground for bombs (if you step in them its about half your health), the ground for rockets (which you have 3-4 seconds to get out of), the cast bar on the boss for an aoe insta kill, the middle of the boss for the spinny attack and the middle of the boss again for his small aoe abilities. Whew. It really may not sound like a lot. Glance at your feet, the boss, the middle and thats it right?

That is right I suppose, if all you ahve to do is sit there and do nothing but look. But you have to dps/heal/tank. This means your attention has to simultaneously be on your rotation, your feet, the enemy's cast bar and the middle section as well as listening on vent for instructions. Whoever says playing video games is easy and is just playing around has never played this game. Play a few arena games at high levels and you will understand that this game is more in depth than most people's lives. Mine included, excluding the happening in the game obviously.

So why, might you ask would you play a game like this which has no monetary reward (unless you arena in the tournaments) and in fact costs you money and time and massive attention? Because once you kill that boss for the first time and everyone yells in your ear and you get the achievement...its very difficult to explain, but the harder the boss, the better it feels. And thats what keeps me raiding and spending hours each week farming consumables and repair money and maxing out my professions and doing everything I can to increase the likelihood that we will kill a new boss.

So I am really tired and felt like ranting about wow and the job hunt etc. I will report back soon (with a Mimiron kill of course). Peace and chicken grease.

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