The Recycle Bin

Last week was fairly crazy with the typical array of work, cleaning out the future nursery, and the kids’ soccer games (in other words, the family life mix). Needless to say, gaming time has been pitiful of late, but on a positive note, I actually I was able to take in some quality TV time (is there really such a thing) with the World Series, and plenty of football (college and the NFL).

World Series
Congratulations to the Cardinals. Great coaching? Maybe. Poor showing by the Tigers? Sure. Did the best team win? Hard to say, but I have to believe that this series shows that you just have to be hot at the right time. I am not really sure where this one ranks in the history of World Series upsets, but I doubt many people outside of St. Louis game the Cardinals much of a chance to pull off an upset. Little did anyone know that St. Louis’ pitching staff would post a sparkling 2.05 ERA, which certainly helped Tony La Russa’s bunch pull off a great showing.

Vick lights up Cincinnati
The Falcons and Vick have been on fire, and as much as I would love to jump on the bandwagon, I have a hard time believing that they can keep up the pace. I am a true homer, but are we actually witnessing Vick transforming into a QB (beyond the typical hype)? Mark Bradley of the AJC thinks that is the case.

Carson Palmer, the first player drafted in 2003, is considered a quarterback in the classic mode – tall, polished, a thrower first and last. On Sunday, the first player drafted in 2001 threw the ball better than Palmer, who admittedly threw it well. Vick passed for more yards and more touchdowns, completed a higher percentage of his throws and had a much higher passer rating (140.6 to Palmer’s 106.9). There were many reasons why the Falcons won this rather large road game but, these being the Falcons, all reasons must start with No. 7.

Nine days ago, Vick had never thrown more than two touchdown passes in an NFL game. He has since done it twice – four against the Steelers, three more against the Bengals. The Falcons try to pretend they didn’t redo their offense after being pounded by the Giants, but occasionally the truth trickles out. “I’m glad we’re changing,” Vick said. “Well, not really changing. But doing some things differently.”

Whatever the characterization, the effect has been stunning. Greg Knapp has stopped calling dinky West Coast plays and is catering to Vick’s conspicuous strengths. These past two weeks the quarterback has gotten outside the pocket and flung the ball vertically. (Forget that horizontal garbage.)

As a Falcons’ fan I have to hope that Vick is finally turning into a quality QB. Now if we can only turn the defense back on.

Dawgs take one on the chin
I guess it was not as bad as I expected. In fact, the Bulldogs almost managed to shock a ton of people, but you just cannot escape so many turnovers. I am sure there were some bright spots, but they were hard to find from my vantage point. Besides, when you lose to the same team 15 out of 17 years, it is hard to find a bright spot. Things could get ugly with Auburn and Tech on the horizon (and I am assuming that the Dawgs are better than Kentucky).

WoW
I spent a little time with WoW. My mage is now sitting on level 14, and I am actually getting comfortable playing here and there with random folks. In fact, I have actually been able to help a couple of other newbies, which is surprisingly gratifying. I am enjoying the game, but my next big decision will be to spend $29-60 on a headset and continue to pay the $14.95 monthly fee.

The football spreadsheet that many seem to enjoy is back with a 2007 version. I’m sure it is probably a fine game, but like many people are turned off by the Out of the Park Baseball interface, I don’t like playing games that feel and look like a Microsoft Office product. A demo is available, but I won’t bother with it based solely on the screenshots. Your mileage may vary.

Another glorious weekend of SEC football is on the plate.  Well, except for the glorious part.  Tennessee/South Carolina looks like a decent game, with an interesting Spurrier/Fulmer backdrop, and Georgia/Florida always makes for a good story line.  The only problem is that neither game shapes up to be much of a contest.

Last week I was a perfect 6-0, which brings the total to 51-11 on the year.  On to the picks…

(7) Auburn – Mississippi
It would be safe for one to assume that the Tigers will crush Tommy’s former team.  This is really not much of a match up, and no chance for Ole Miss to get up for this one and pull some sort of upset along the lines of the Arkansas debacle.

Kentucky – Mississippi State
In a clash of too bad teams, the Wildcats will pull even to 4-4 on the year, while the pitiful Bulldogs will continue their lackluster (dare I say embarrassing) showing this year.  I wonder how much longer Sylvester Croom is going to be given to turn this puppy around.

(8) Tennessee – South Carolina
I think some people are going to think there will be some sort of Spurrier factor in this one, but the truth of the matter is that the Gamecocks are far, far away from having talent to match the guys in orange.  If South Carolina does pull off the upset, we will have to debate if Spurrier is really a genius or if Fulmer is a fool.

Vanderbilt – Duke
Vanderbilt pulls one step closer to .500 (and a bowl bid), while Duke continues their run of ineptitude.

Florida International – Alabama
Nothing like a healthy dose of a cupcake to get the Tide’s offense rolling, rolling, Roll Tide!

Louisiana-Monroe – (13) Arkansas
Another piss-poor game on the SEC slate.  Not sure why they bother to schedule these things, but they do, so souie!

Georgia – (9) Florida
Another year, another loss to the Gators.  I think the line is about 13, but I have a nasty feeling in my stomach (and I am not talking about the chips and coke-rum from last night), that the results are going to be more like 13-34 in favor of the bad guys.  One can always hope for an upset, but that seems highly unlikely.  But one can hope.

Go Dawgs!

I figured I would continue to write about my experiences with WoW; hopefully this is entertaining, if for no other reason than getting the perspective of a newbie.

I gave my priest mining and herbalism professions because I figured a dwarf should mine for gold (or gems or something), and I had seen enough silverleaf and peacebloom that I figured picking herbs would be an easy way to make some money.  Besides, it just seemed like gathering rocks and plants in between my travels would be more entertaining than crafting items.  Of course I could be wrong, because I have been wrong about a lot of WoW things lately.

I am almost afraid to write that I never thought that I would actually spend time in a game mining for gold, but things change.  In fact, I swore that I would not waste my time mining for gold, but last weekend I spent a few hours just traveling looking for minerals and herbs as I was going from point A to point B.  The end result was that I collected enough items to give the Auction House a try.

If you have never used WoW’s Auction House, it can be a little intimidating.  Where do you start?  How much should you list an item for and should you list a buy out price?  What is a good deal?  How are required deposits calculated and how are final auction expenses determined?  And so on.  I could probably find most of this in the manual, or on one of the many helpful sites I have come across, but I had not read anything about the Auction House other than some general information, so I did not really know what to expect.

Of course you cannot learn with out trying, so for my first auctions last Saturday night, I figured I would list my items somewhere between what a vendor would give me and a little less than the suggested start price (in most cases 2-3sp for my goods).  I did not search for items to see what the going rate was for the items I wanted to unload, which I later learned was a mistake; I should have did a quick search before putting my items up for bid.  For my first haul, I received the following per item (full item stacks, medium length auction, includes final price after auction house expense) – peacebloom 2.30sp, earthroot 4.79sp, and copper bar 2.78sp.  The earthroot and copper bar were priced much too low as I found out in my next round of auctions.

Last Sunday night I setup a few more auctions, this time searching for the going rate, and also providing a reasonable buy out amount.  By reasonable I mean that I put my prices right in line with current auctions, if not a little below.  I received the following per item (full item stacks, medium length auctions, includes final price after auction house expense) – silverleaf 3.25sp, peacebloom (no bids), earthroot 24.55 (a 500% increase over the first auction), and copper bar 71.65 (a whopping 2,500% increase over the first auction).

The bottom line is that in addition to the game mechanics, there is a whole economy to learn.  It is really good stuff, and for low level characters, the Auction House can be a useful way to earn some quick coin.  After all, why not mine or garden (or even skin, although I have not tried that one yet) while you are out questing?

I just thought this quote from Vick was so interesting, that it had to be posted.

“Winning this game today put us in position to where we can move forward with some confidence,” said Vick, who also rushed five times for 40 yards. “The drive in overtime, we put it all together. Players have to step up. Jerious Norwood started it off with a great run [11 yards], and I kind of took it from there.”

Vick may be a team guy, but he never sounds like one. Vick’s final statistics were nice, but not great: 18 completions on 30 attempts, good for 232 yards, 4 TDs, 2 INTs. If you throw in Vick’s 40 rushing yards, on 8 attempts, Vick was 28 yards shy of 300 (total yards). Nothing to sneeze at, but not worth all the ESPN hype that will be generated as a result of the Falcons’ overtime victory over the Steelers.

I just wish that Vick could put together this type of game on a consistent basis, but it seems like we never know what we are going to get next. Last week I said that I see Atlanta going 7-7 with swing games against Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. All things being equal, the win over the Steelers gives the Falcons the potential of 8-7, so this Sunday’s game at Cincinnati is extremely important to having a successful season (9-7 looks better than 8-8). Of course if Philadelphia keep playing so poorly, the Falcons’ schedule may be a little easier than I predicted.

Just got back from the kids’ soccer games, cooking out some great food (chicken, hotdogs – Nathan’s famous of course, and some veggies), and realized that I have not gotten in my week 8 picks. In the interest of time, no reasons or summaries will be given.

(15) Arkansas over Mississippi. Georgia over Mississippi State. (8) Auburn over Tulane. South Carolina over Vanderbilt (Commodores are improved, but the Georgia game has to be a fluke). (7) Tennessee over Alabama. (14) LSU over Fresno State.

Texas over Nebraska. Hook ‘em!

Go Dawgs!

Here is a very funny take on real life player rating in computer games…from a real life player. Ethan Albright is mad and he is not going to put up with it anymore from John Madden and his EA Sports goons!

Or I should say, not so much WoW gaming. One of my biggest fears going into WoW was signing up for a subscription service, only to run into dry spells of 2-3 weeks with absolutely no time to game. Such as been the case until last night. I am not even sure, but I bet I am past my free 30 day trail, which means the last couple of weeks were spent paying for a service that I was not using. For some reason that really bothers me.

Last night I decided to take Faltutin, my level 8 gnome mage, to level 10. I figured I would complete a couple of quests, and maybe do a little exploring, but in the process of exploring, my feet keep taking me to the eastern portions of Dun Morogh. I made a side trip to Gol’Bolar, which was not too smart because I got overwhelmed by a group of Troggs. That sort of sucked because it took forever and a day for my ghost to make it from the Kharanos graveyard to the quarry to recover my mage.

I also learned that random beast encounters in the wild are not always the smartest adventures for a mage. Oops, dead again; repeat long boring process of graveyard to corpse recovery.

I think I ended up in Loch Modan (or there abouts), running from a couple of dragon-something-or-another humanoid types, and killing some spider things. I know, real descriptive. The spider things were great because they left behind all sorts of goodies to help me build up my available coin.

One thing led to another, and before I knew it, Faltutin was level 10. Ah the joys of new spells. I love sitting back and blasting the crap out of beasties. Good stuff!

Besides gaming with Chris for a few minutes several weeks ago, this was the first time where I felt like I was actually having fun. Not just fun, but a damn good time. So far my experience with WoW has been along the lines of ‘take it or leave it’ – still not seeing the big deal if you get my meaning, but instead I have been playing for the purpose to level up. I may not be there yet, but last night I genuinely had a good time exploring the world, killing some spider-things, seeing my character progress (besides leveling up), and overall just enjoying the WoW experience.

I backed into tickets for last weekend’s fiasco against the Giants. It seems like there is a lot of finger pointing to go around, but what is really wrong with the Falcons? Vick is not accurate, but when his receivers drop passes in the endzone, it has to affect his confidence. Do the receivers drop passes because Vick throws so many balls at their knees and above their heads, so they are completely caught off guard when the ball actually hits them in the hands?

I do not know if a site keeps up with dropped ball statistics, but I counted at least 3-4 passes that should have been caught, including Jenkins dropping one that would have put the Falcons up 14-3 at the half.

Jeff Schultz thinks Mora should shoulder the blame

“There is a tendency in times like these to blame the quarterback. While you’re throwing your beer can at the TV, it’s easy to forget this is the same Michael Vick who four years ago won a playoff game in Green Bay, who two years ago led his team to the NFC title game, and who has played in three Pro Bowls in as many full seasons.

There is a tendency to look at the obvious, like receivers who can’t get open, or drop the ball when they do, or suddenly think they must be good because their paychecks say so.

But this is not about players. It’s about direction. That starts and ends with coaching.”

Schultz makes some great points, and if you can make it through some of the crap blog posts, there are some real gems to be found in the readers’ comments.

In the past I have waffled on Vick; I love him, and I hate him. While Vick is an amazing entertainer, his QB rating is just not very good. At this point in his career, Vick has a career passing rating of 75, which just plain stinks. If you say that Vick is a different type of QB, on the surface I could buy that argument, but take a closer look at what that means. If you say Vick is running QB, it is worth noting that he has 3,221 rushing yards, compared to 9,707 passing yards. That amounts to about 206 total yards/game. I do not have time today to look to see how these numbers stack up to other QBs, but a damning statistic has to be Vicks propensity to fumble the ball. In 63 games, Vick has put the ball on the ground 51 times, resulting in 25 turnovers. Vick clearly puts the ball on the ground way too much. [nfl.com source for statistics]

I am not sure what the heck is going on with the Falcons, but Vick has clearly regressed under Mora. I hope they get it figured out soon, because the Falcons’ remaining schedule is brutal. The Falcons are capable of wins against Detroit, Cleveland, Washington, and Tampa Bay. I do not think they will beat Baltimore, New Orleans, Dallas, Carolina, or Philadelphia. That would put their record at 7-7, with Pittsburgh and Cincinnati as swing games. It could get ugly in a hurry.

My gaming world continues to move along at a brisk pace. Our World of Warcraft guild is running raids (sometimes more than one) daily. Many of our old members are finally hitting level 50 and the collapse of another large guild added a few level 60 characters. There was a time when I was the only level 60 priest in the guild. Not anymore. We have so many level 60 priests now that there’s even a shadow priest in the guild. For those unfamiliar with the game, priests generally become holy (healing) or shadow (spell damage dealing) priests. Many guilds don’t like shadow priests because they don’t have a clear role compared to mages and warlocks, who also deal spell damage. But if you have enough holy priests, there shouldn’t be a problem.

The only other game I’m playing these days is, you guessed it, Out of the Park 2006. Everyone over the OOTP forum seems to have moved on in anticipation of the patch known as OOTP 2007. I keep asking myself why I still like this game despite the poor management of the product and still unresolved issues. I guess my love of text gaming baseball overrides the silliness of developers and their companies. The guys in my league are all baseball gaming fans first and OOTP 2006 does make general manager fans smile with some of the options. It is painful to use and you’re never quite sure what each sim will bring. When it works, it does work very nicely.

I won’t post the league’s site link, but I am truly amazed at the talents of OOTP 2006 fans. One fan’s mods are really showing us what the game could be if SI could see the forest for the trees. He created an OOTP 2006 draft utility, a waiver wire page, a last export web repot, and a development report for this league. I am not sure how transferable these utilities are to other leagues (which is why I am not posting the league site) but if I find out they are, I’ll post more information.

I am writing this in stunned disbelief as Georgia just fell at home to Vanderbilt, 24-22. Yes; the Bulldogs lost to Vanderbilt. At home. For homecoming. Lost to Vanderbilt; and no, Ray Goff was not strolling the sidelines.

WTF is wrong with this team? There are no words to describe this hollow feeling. Losses to Tennessee, Florida, and Auburn are one thing, and a loss to Tech really sucks. A loss to Vanderbilt is just unthinkable. Seriously. Un-f’ing-believable.

If you look at the box score, and not the score board, you would assume Georgia won. Georgia led in almost everything that mattered, first downs (21-17), total yards (370-290), passing yards (238-188), rushing yards (132-102), time of possession (33:25-26:35), and Georgia even won the turnover battle 2-1. Of course, none of this matters when you come out on the bad side of a last second field goal, which cost you the game 24-22. Stunned disbelief is the best way to describe my emotions right now.

Go Dawgs! No so much.

When I was a kid and my Dawgs took it on the chin, my dad would tell me not to worry, the sun would still come up. Here is to hoping the sun shines tomorrow, because it looks fairly bleak right now.

Last week was a major ouch for my predictions and for the Bulldogs. I was a lowly 3-4 on the week, with misses on Auburn, Vanderbilt, LSU, and of course Georgia. Going into week six, I am now 41-9 on the year. I think this week is much easier to pick, and the Dawgs should bounce back fairly easily.

Southeast Missouri State – (17) Arkansas
The Hogs think they are all that after their shocking upset of Auburn. Good for them. No chance of a near miss this weekend.

Jacksonville State – Mississippi State
The Bulldogs of Mississippi finally get to look good at home. Not sure who will suit up under center, but regardless, State will triumph at home.

Mississippi – Alabama
Alabama has no offense, and Mississippi has no team. ‘Bama wins, but it is hard to predict which Ole Miss team will show up, so this one could actually be close (remember the Tide has no offense), or it could be a run away victory as the Tide rolls, rolls, rolls to victory.

(2) Florida – (11) Auburn
This is the most important game on the SEC slate this weekend (other than the Georgia game of course). Dawg fans need Auburn to win, but can the Tigers bounce back. Maybe. Most likely not, but I going to pull for an Auburn win in the face of a loss to Florida. The Gators are the pick.

Kentucky – (14) LSU
The Wildcats are improving, but the Tigers from Louisiana are going to win this one fairly easily.

Vanderbilt – (16) Georgia
So we are all down after the Tennessee debacle, and now everyone is saying that we are going to struggle against Vanderbilt. No way. Vandy may be improved, but Georgia wins big.

Go Dawgs!

Sorry for not posting much this past week.  Things are very busy in Johnson game-land.  Our World of Warcraft guild has close to 100 members now and we’re experiencing growing pains.  In a “be careful of what you wish for” scenario, becoming this large of a guild now makes it much easier to run the end game raids.  The bad news is that four or five officers just aren’t enough to run a guild this size.  We promoted three members to the “Cavalier” rank (officer in our guild) Friday night with an elaborate ceremony in Stormwind.

I feel like such a big nerd now.

All of the buzz is about the upcoming expansion pack.  I made a rare visit to my local Gamestop to pre-order a copy of the Collector’s Edition.  I don’t really care about the content.  This is simply my homage to a game that has entertained me so much over the past year and a half.  The store manager let me know that they already had over 60 pre-orders for the Burning Crusade, by far the highest amount this year for any game.  I could see the drool forming at the corner of his mouth.

Blizzard is going to make a lot of money on this expansion.  A lot.

In other news, our Out of the Park Baseball league is running with no problems to report.  I finally saw some activity in the technical problem forum at the OOTPB site.  Not sure if the paying OOTPB 2006 beta testers (that would be everyone who owns this game) will get another patch.  But my boycott of SI products will continue until this thing is fixed and playable to my satisfaction.  It just boggles the imagination how a game so immersed in player development could have such a poor player development reporting system.  There’s a reason that BOSI was such an important utility for earlier versions of the game.  It had lots of neat stuff, but the ability to track player development was easily the neatest.

Oh how I miss a real player development report!

I am heading out of town for a mini vacation, so this will be the super short edition (i.e. quick picks).  (2) Auburn over Arkansas, (4) West Virginia over Mississippi State, South Carolina over Kentucky, (10) Georgia over (13) Tennessee, Vanderbilt over Mississippi, (9) LSU over (5) Florida, and Alabama over Duke.

The Tennessee game scares the heck out of me.  The Dawgs have plenty of defense to stop most teams, but can the offense put up enough points to win?

I almost picked KY over SC, but while I went with the safe pick, I have a strange feeling that the Wildcats are going to pull off the minor upset.  The SEC Shame of the Week Award will go to Mississippi State – they will embarrass the SEC.  I mean they should not win the game, but they are going to look bad in this one.

Keeping my fingers crossed for Texas this weekend.

Go Dawgs!

As I continue my WoW experience, I thought I would put down a few more notes for your reading pleasure.  I have been spending most of my time with Tuldar, getting him ready to have a pet.  I think I just have one quest left and then I can pick out a pet, which should be a good opportunity to switch back to Kaldur (dwarf priest, L7) and Faltutin (gnome mage, L6).

One of the pleasant surprises for me has been that I can spend 15-20 minutes playing (exploring, working on a quest, trying to level-up or find some items to sell for cash, etc) and put the game down.  I am not sure if this trend will continue at later levels, or if the commitment is much longer (i.e. 2-4 hours to complete a quest).  For now, this works great for me; I can play for a few minutes after supper, and then for a little more before going to bed.  I think using my laptop is making the experience almost like a portable system, which has been a huge plus.

Last night was the first time that I actually felt like I made a mistake (or a decision) that could have a lasting impact.  Tuldar, is now a L10 dwarf hunter, so he gained access to the hunter talent tree.  As I was looking at the different options, I accidentally clicked on Deflection.  What a waste; I really wanted to take Aspect of the Hawk, which seemed like a more useful talent for my current level.  I have read that later in the game I will have the opportunity to change around talents, but it will cost me some money.  So for now I have used my single talent point on what I consider an unnecessary parry skill.  Oh well, so it goes.

Last night I also ran into what I will call my first jackass experience.  I was looking for an ice claw bear as part of the final pet taming quest.  I finally found one, started the taming process, only to be interrupted by some JA that decided to take down the bear.  The thing that really sucked was that this person was some L60 fruity elf-type.  Really, what was the point in spoiling my fun?  Going into the game, this was (and still is) one of my preconceived notions about the game – random anonymous online interaction is just not that fun because there are too many JAs online.

I have also found myself doing something I swore I would never do – mining.  I decided that Tuldar should take up mining and engineering for his professions.  They seem to go hand-in-hand, and in the long run I think this combination will save me some money on shots, rifles, scopes, etc.  Supposedly, it is also a decent way to make some gold early in the game.  I started to do skinning and something else (seemed very hunterish), but I think the mining is more dwarfish.  At any rate, I have found a couple of copper veins, and smelted my haul.  I still cannot see myself spending time with the purpose of mining, but as an afterthought to my exploration, it was not such a bad experience.  I guess in a week or so I will write about my mining; I do have to admit that I feel damn silly admitting this here, but I thought it was worth sharing.

I have started reading a few sites to gain more info on all aspects of the game, which is extremely deep.  There is a fine line between reading spoilers (or step-by-step guides), and reading about necessary information to help provide for a better gaming experience.  The last thing I want is to have the game scripted (i.e. if you select this race/class combination, you need to take these skills, professions, talents, etc).  Like I said, I think there is a fine line here, but it is telling that I am starting to enjoy “reading” about the game.