Fat of the land

Totally outrageous rip off for a name.

I have gained several kilos extra during the few days of Christmas goodies. Ok, granted, that my flu only a few days before helped it a bit, and my bad habit of sitting behind the computer instead of taking a walk.

The main reason is, naturally, the lack of activity. Main culprit is the fact that the dogs have been ill. And WoW.

I think the most popular western New Years resolution is to lose weight and get fit. I'm not going to fall for that, because the New Years resolutions are in vain at best. It's completely artificial to 'start a new life' on that specific date. As the saying goes, today is the first day of the rest of your life. 

So every day is as artificial starting point as the other, right?

I completely forgot that as I yesterday took our second youngest dog for a normal walk. Our normal walk means about 7 km (4.35 miles) on both road and gravel, now covered with less than finger's width of tightly packed snow.

The air was crisp, slight freezing temperature, the sun was nicely shining from a cloudless sky and the dog was full of energy after being confined to indoors and home yard for so long. Off we went.

The first half of the trip was exhausting. Not because of the walking, but because of the dog having more energy in it than I ever could. She went here and there and back and forth, but knowing that she had to check the local news thoroughly I decided that we had no hurry. The trip that normally takes us about an hour and some now took over one and a half hours.

Boy was I finished after the adrenalin rush from the sudden activity ceased. And boy was the dog tired! It must have been very straining both mentally and physically to the poor thing, as she slept almost the rest of the evening.

All in all, it was a good start. To make it stick, I have to find out something to work for. Like the half a marathon last autumn. I know there is another half a marathon early summer coming... 

I might get well enough for that. And by that time, the dog's competition season is starting.

Off to mark the competition to my calendar!

Recap of all things

Again a short lapse of not writing. Somehow I've already gotten into a state where I feel guilty when I don't log into the blog for a few days. In fact, I could see that from my twittering: it grew solidly during the weekend...

First of all, I had the flu of the year: high temperature, so high that I woke up shivering uncontrollably. Call to the nurse and rest of the week off from work. Knowing what a pile of ...work there would be, this wasn't exactly the optimum solution.

First thought: time to play. Second: I cannot sit at the computer, I faint. Plus wife had her day off... No play for a day. Except some Spore, entered the space age. The first age in the game I find myself not so much amused.

Then the long haul. The .wtf repairs earlier paid out, and now that I started using Carbonite more I found out the shortcomings of it more precisely. Granted, it's not such a resource hog as GuestHelper, but boy, does GuestHelper's route planner work! It's way better than the one in Carbonite and GuestHelper updates the routes more readily according to the toon's whereabouts than Carbonite. So I switched back with Laiskajaakko.

In fact, I have some material for a few posts already because of the longer playing last week. Thursday and Friday went nicely by the 'puter, I dinged a couple levels with Pupunen and a few more with Laiskajaakko, entering Winterspring again and... well, that's for another post. This is just a recap.

I was quite well on Saturday, so I attended to my friend's birthday party in the evening. His band also performed there (see http://www. ahmametal.com for more info) and I really had a blast. This trip to civilisation reminded me why I should live in a city: to see more like minded people -and old friends!- and be a part of the community I used to be. Then again, next morning at home I remembered why I don't want to live in the city. The peacefull surroundings and the four huge dogs really make the difference!

The dog's, by the way, are better: only the male is still having symptoms of the kennel cough, for which we'll be extending his antibiotics. Should be over in a week or so. The foot is healing very nicely, in fact frighteningly so. I'm saying this because when the foot heals, he will want to run. Which he shouldn't do because of the cough... 

The younger ones are full of energy and the pup is the rascally demonspawn again, tearing all paper and cardboard she can find to shreds within seconds. A box here, turn your head and it's in 1 cm x 1 cm pieces. That's her. Very untypical Irish Wolfhound. I suppose we should file a complaint to the breeder about her fault of being overactive... :P

That's for recap. Off to write the additional posts.

Cheers and Holidays!

Off to vet again

As if the cut, sedation and suturation wasn't enough, our male (4 yr just a few weeks ago) was very inactive and down yesterday. The reason: high temperature, alarmingly high in fact. This resulted a quick change of driver as my wife took off with the dog as soon as I came home. To clarify this: my car is the only one in our home able to carry our dogs. The other one is too small... even for one!

The current situation with the wolfhounds is as follows:

1. Duana, 7 months, has gone through the kennel cough. One set of antibiotics was enough.

2. Fiona, 1yr 3 months, is currently on the antibiotics. The medication ends today or tomorrow, and she is fine.

3. Zaida, 4.5 years, is on medication for the cough. She is recovering nicely, though a bit inactive still.

4. Ness, 4 years (only male in our pack), has two antibiotics administered to him, suturated hind foot and acts like he was on drugs constantly.

What makes this setup a pain in the behind is the fact that the youngsters are well and full of energy. Because Fiona is still on meds, she cannot play, whereas the pup, Duana, is full of energy, fine and dandy, AND SHE KNOWS IT! So she's running around the yard, trying to get the others to play with her and she is annoying the daylights of the others. Really, she's gonna have some roughing soon.

All I wish is that the darn cough would go and we could all rest. And of course that the tendon would heal completely so that we could start the longer walkies in the beginning of next year, latest. After all, Ness is the European Champion in Lure-Coursing 2008, so he's a championship grade athlete. Our dogs are top athletes, all of them, very untypical Irish Wolfhounds if you ask from anyone who knows them.

Anyhow, I stole some time for WoW while my wife was at the vet. And I kinda feel guilty for it, 'cause I would have much rather been with them. But with the kind of pack that we have, one of us must be around during working weeks as much as possible: the kids still have homework and there are some chores that should be done. Well, the dirty laundry get washed by the machine, so I can sit at the computer, right? :P

What I did? Quested with Laiskajaakko, with the help of Carbonite. I'm starting to bend back to Quest Helper. Don't ask me why, because I cannot explain. It's a feeling I get from Carbonite, that it's forcing me to do this and go there. I haven't found a way to skip a quest on the queue yet, though I haven't read any documentation either.

Didn't make a level, but closed on one for certain. I'm not sure, as I don't have the exp bar available and I have FuBar hidden when I play. He may ding next time, or then not.

And after the two quests I have in STV, I'm done with it. Ok, I have Laiskajaakko at lv49 in there, doing only greens, so it's high time to move on. 

Oh, yes. To recap Ness' situation: the fever -and the additional medication- came from the sedation: as he still had the kennel cough infection in his respiratory organs (lungs mainly), the sedation 'helped' the microbe growth during the time he was out. Which resulted that the microbe strains that were even slightly resistant to the other antibiotic got the better of the competition and voilá, began a new cycle of infection.

If the current medications don't work... it's a very, very dire situation.

Hoping for the best. Forgetting the worst.

Worst weekend ever

Well, not exactly, but the beginning and the end of it left a very bad taste in my mouth. It all started from Friday morning, when our youngest dog seemed to be very weak and not well. She had just finished her medication for kennel cough, which had proven to be successful. However, she developed the symptoms anew, which caused some concern because the latest information we have for Irish Wolfhound health study (in Finland) shows that 3.7% of the deaths during the last year were caused by kennel cough. This darn dog version of influenza (caused by para-influenza virus accompanied by bacterial infection in the respiratory organs) is deadly serious business for Irish Wolfhounds!

All things concerned, we have been lucky to have such wonderful vets around the area we’re living, and the medication was changed and renewed. She is now, after a couple of days, the same rascally youth she is. Irritating one, really.

WoW-wise, I just checked AH with Pupunen and rushed some STV quests with Laiskajaakko. Turning off the exp-bar has been one of the cleverest things I’ve done with him, because dinging is really unexpected and surprising this way! Needless to say, I dinged, not once but twice, thanks to Carbonite’s route plan.

Saturday was ‘dedicated’ to leisure activities with the girl/boyscout leaders of our local scout companies. We have the customary ‘grown ups party’ at the end of the year, accompanied with some extra activities. This year we went for a pony riding… a whole 2 hours on a pony in a forrest trail is starting to show only now, as my legs are sore and back is feeling funny. But the overall experience was nice, the pony –just barely bigger than our dogs (well, twice the size… ok, more like thrice!)- acted well enough and the weather wasn’t the worst possible.

In the evening we had a ‘party’, if it could be called that, and I came back home in the middle of the night instead of staying at the cottage. I really started having a headache and it wouldn’t have been nice to anyone if I had stayed. The ones who stayed had it better without me.

Sunday started late and went by shopping for Christmas. I had just started to quest with Laiskajaakko, when our son started yelling that there was blood on the floor. The dogs had just been out after their evening meal, and one of them had cut his leg somehow. Just above paws there was a gushing wound and off we went to a vet again. It was late already, on Sunday evening, about 23.00 or something, when we got there. I was feeling a bit ill myself, sneezing and sore eyelids, but dogs first.

The vet had to tranquilise our lure-coursing champion to be able to operate the foot. As it turned out, something had made a cut on the wrist of the back foot, cutting one ‘minor’ vein and damaging one major tendon. However, the tendon damage was minor issue, as the cut had been very clean: there was a very small slice of the tendon cut off and it was still supported by the the tendon’s cartilage. So the vet decided to leave the slice in –I agreed with her on that one- and then she sutured the cut.

First of all, our dog had to be awaken by an injection. He woke up very slowly and we got him to the car – seemed like miracle at that point - and out at home. But at home I noticed that he was getting drowsier and drowsier, which suggests that the dosage of the tranquiliser wasn’t quite right. My wife put a blanket on the dog, so he wouldn’t feel cold as one usually does when sleeping with medication.
All in all, we came back home at around 1:00 am. I really hated the clock in the morning (at 5:30 am), when I had to wake up for work. All other dogs were there to greet me except the male, who moved very cautiously and very sleepily, still. Thankfully he got out by himself and got to relieve himself while the others went around the yard. I think it’s the way of the dogs to leave the sick and weak alone, because everyone was avoiding the male.

So here I am, writing all this, feeling crappy physically and for the weekend, and hoping to get online to play. Not today, maybe tomorrow.

If only I could solve the problem with the WoW framerate, which has deteriorated after the WotLK patch. Considerably, I would say. Almost to the same level what it was before I updated my vid card.

Was it the patch or is there something wrong with the settings? Before the patch the game ran nicely at almost full settings, now it’s gagging at mediocre settings. Even in unpopulated areas, and this makes me nervous.

Any ideas?

Thursday mayhem

It seems that the Three Stooges -Laiskajaakko, Förgelös and Bishopgeorge- have found a weekly slot to do their magic in the World of Azeroth. Like Förgelös so cleverly put it:

To boldly go where no group has gone before with such crappy gear!

And that is really truth. Our toons have below average gear compared to the level they are, mainly lower level greens and severely lower level blues. Only one who has kept his gear up to the quality is Bishopgeorge, who is a 'wonder-boy' on his own.

The evening started with bad tidings. Our dogs, our wonderfull Irish Wolfhounds have gotten ill, and we've been taking them to the vet one by one. Now the third one, our 4.5 years old bitch got a fever of about 41 deg C and my wife rushed her to the vet as soon as I got home. I logged in with a bit guilty feeling for not accompanying her, but then again, this was her choice: someone had to stay home to take care of the other three and our kids. Case closed.

Bishop had informed that he would be late, so I had ample time to repair my UI. Somehow, something had gone awfully wrong with the last update I made and the actionbars stopped to respond to anything. I could activate the skills from the spell/skill book only, but not from the bars! The icons would show the cooldowns but wouldn't respond to clicking nor bound keys...

Off with the bad .wtf, in with the new. At the same time I added a new one (addon-addict me!) called Carbonite, thanks to the suggestion from Aurdon from ISheepThings.

So, the .wtf removed I logged in and selected the core addons I knew would work. And logged in to set up the UI. I had to do a couple of UI reloads to get all the addons I wanted for Laiskajaakko to work, but in the end Carbonite proved to be a memory saver: I left Cartographer, Tomtom and Quest Helper away and still had the luxury of them all! I only wish -after the Zul'Farrak- that it had some set of instance maps available... If anyone knows how you can remove the ingame minimap I would appreciate the information, because unlike other minimap replacements, Carbonite doesn't seem to do that.

So, off I go with Laiskajaakko in Southshore. *Mental note: change to god-forsaken hearthstone to somewhere more appropriate.* Carbonite suggests: Take flightpoint to Ironforge, return quest. And I do. That bleeding thing shows me the route in Ironforge, too, with zoomable minimap! Neat.

In Ironforge I take few minutes to manage my own bank and guild bank, only to notice that our one tab GB is full. Full of trade goods for the tradeskills to be used. Full of nice gear with generous Guild Enchants by Bishopgeorge. It's time to recruit people to enjoy the benefits, don't you think?

But not this time. Off to Menethil, cross the sea with a nice drenai warrior (/wink, /lick, /cuddle, all that warrior love) to Theramore and flight to Feralas. That was the closest FP I had, really, never been wandering across the Thousand Needles before. As I noticed, I hadn't explored 10k Needles either, so I decided to get the achievement on the way. What a lovely feeling it was to get that ding when I entered Shimmering Flats to collect the Gah'zilla quest for the [Carrot on a Stick]-quest!

Gadgestan, new FP and there was Förgelös waiting for me. The joy, the party and on we went to collect more quests for Zul'Farrak.

Sadly I have to admit that my questlog is cramped and full, so I barely got all the quests from G:stan for ZF and nothing more!

Laiskajaakko venture to ZF and entered all by himself. There was one request to join another group, but all was decided in the guild forums already: we would take on this alone. Even though we were already over an hour past our decided starting time.

The group entered pretty soon. The entrance of ZF is pretty straight forward, even for the three of us, and we found ourselves soon enough tackling with the first 'boss', the lizard tamer. Well, the wipe resulted from Laiskajaakko's enthusiasm: I entered the cave and launched the encounter. The second run was solid and even though the tank fell, the boss went down.
Also the High Priest troll went down, even easier than the tamer, and Bishopgeorge got nice gloves as a drop.

We had been in the instance already almost the designated time, and both wife and dog had returned. Wife aggro warning was ringing all around the house, when we entered the pyramid stairs.

What fun that was. Laiskajaakko was mostly disappearing amongst the troll mobs: I could only guess his whereabouts when I hit Thunderclap!

Well, down we went, but with our guns blazing.

Like stated in the beginning: We went boldly to a place where no group had gone with so crappy gear and under manned. But we had fun, fun, chit-chat and fun.

I'll end this report with another famous quote:

We'll be back.

Weekend all busy

What a weekend.

Friday came and went, mostly on preparations for the Saturday. Spent majority of the day on a training course for boy/girlscout leaders about plays and games for the kids. During the training I was -in the games, of course- the following:

- a Princess
- a Monster
- a Stone
- a Bat
- a Snake
- a Pirate (HARRR!)

and I was forced to do the following

- hide
- seek
- slide on the floor
- run
- jump
- draw
- sing

and all that in 5 hours including lunch! Honestly speaking, I was finished when I got back home.

On Sunday our dogs had a Lure Coursing competition. Considering the fact that we have been neglecting the long walks in the woods for some time now, the competition went quite well. Our male was third. The points of the finalists were quite high, so I'm very pleased on his performance. I have to write about LC more sometime, as there are some real peculiarities in there. Well, as far as I have heard, the whole dog-kennel-scene is filled with peculiar aspects of human behaviour...

What is really peculiar about the typical lure-coursing competition is in fact the way people handle their dogs. Considering that the dogs run twice a zig-zagging track about 600-1000 m long, they are generally not prepared for the activity. If you think of a human athlete preparing for 800m track, he will be warming up, stretching and concentrating. The dog athletes are generally taken to the track and let loose.

After a race, a human athlete will cool himself down, use some recovery drinks and foods and stretch and relax. Dog athletes, on the other hand, are walked to the car and stuffed in to wait for the next lap.

For us it's somewhat different. Our main concern is that the dogs are fit, well and willing to compete in full in the next competition, too. This means that in competitions we treat them as top athletes: we do a long walk with increasing intensitiy before the lap, and we cool them down with similar walk -decreasing intensity, naturally- after the lap.

This is repeated for the second lap, the finals.

All in all, the day is all walking and jogging with the dogs. We have once had a pedometer with us and it showed after a competition day that we had walked wbout 9.5 km during the day. No wonder we're as finished as the dogs as we return home!

I've seen during this competition season a few dogs lose their interest in the competing. They have been the dogs who have been taken to the track without proper warming up and have been put into the car after the race, without cooling them down. In the next lap they have been stiff, sore and most probably also in some muscle pain from the earlier strain. The most peculiar thing is the fact that the owners of the dog blame the dog for the poor performance, instead of taking the time to evaluate the situation and checking what was done (and what could be done otherwise).

What does this have to do with MMO's? Not much, except that if there is a wipe, it's not necessarily the healer's or the tank's fault. It's always good to start from yourself and change the way you work before launching on others.

Point taken.