December 2013 - Tales of the Aggronaut

To a Nunnery

December 31, 2013 by Belghast

Junktown Trader

Yesterday did not end the way I think either myself or my wife intended it to. Since I had been vehemently opposed to getting out Saturday or Sunday, I knew I would need to make amends and run around yesterday. Namely she had been wanting to hit a bunch of the areas Goodwill stores to see if she could find this one specific type of pant that she liked… that Old Navy no longer makes or sells. I also wanted to check out a new game store… and by new… it just celebrated its first anniversary but this was the first time I had been to it.

Thrillhouse games was pretty sweet to be honest. It was pretty small and had limited stock but it was quite literally the first time in a decade I had seen packaged Turbografx 16 games on a shelf. I asked about the two consoles I have always wanted to own. Turns out they had a NeoGeo AES when they shop opened but it sold about a year later for $500. Additionally they have had in a few TurboDuo systems, but they go pretty fast. I looked around the store but sadly saw nothing I absolutely had to have. I am mostly in a mode of looking for a place to buy reasonably priced DS/3DS games… and while their prices were extremely reasonable I just didn’t see anything in their stock that I actually wanted.

After hitting a Salvation Army store, we shifted focus to an alternate mission. My wife has been looking for two things where we go… firstly a new cabinet for the bedroom for her to store her jewelry and scarves in, and second antique pendants to be made into necklaces, or even completed jewelry. I on the other hand have been on the lookout as always for anything nifty and LEGO, and more lately I have been looking for any sort of geeky coffee mugs. I currently have a Star Wars mug and it is my absolute favorite… if my wife doesn’t watch me like a hawk I will rinse it out each day and reuse it. So she has been wanting me to find more coffee mugs that I like using, so mostly I have been looking for any geeky movie tie-ins or comic book stuff.

While we didn’t end up buying anything we had a good time sifting through the memories of other people. Oklahoma has tons of these “Antique Malls” that are basically just junk stores neatly cordoned off into rentable stalls. They tend to go into any large building like a Wal-Mart or grocery store that is in a crappy part of town, and as such is “low rent”. They chop them up into vendor booth and then charge rent. What you find in them is essentially anything the people can get their hands on. In one of the booths we literally saw a single lollipop with a 25 cent price tag on it. Most of the stuff seems to come from estate sales. Rather than purchase the stuff I found interesting, I have just started taking pictures. The next bit of the blog is me posting a picture or pictures and talking about it.

Tiny Kitchen

I just thought this thing was amazing. I am guessing it is an artifact of the 50s or 60s since it is almost entirely metal construction. Any later than that and I expect you would start to see some plastics involved. What is interesting about it is this is doll furniture, but on a scale sized for larger dolls and not so much for Barbie sized ones. The detail that went into it is just insane. Like every little dial is screen printed on in high resolution. Which makes me wonder if this is a product of the 60s and not the 50s. The craftsmanship that went into this is just mind boggling, especially when considering just how small the piece is. This was a really expensive toy in its day, and I am sure it was not something the average kid could have even imagined playing with.

To a Nunnery

The previous one… I have nothing but respect for the craftsmanship… this one however I simply do not get. There was this entire shelf of tiny nuns. Why on earth would someone need an entire shelf of tiny nuns? Is this a thing that people collect? I am trying to wrap my head around how someone started down this path… and obviously they were made by the same person. There was an entire virtual convent on this on shelf, with nun-cooks and nun-teachers and all sorts of things. Maybe in areas of the country with catholic schools… nuns are looked on as sweet doting aunt like figures. For me even though I was raised catholic… nuns kinda freak me the hell out. The really odd thing here was… they were individually priced. You would think if you were selling this item that you would want to try and move the entire shelf together. I can’t see as this being a “fast seller”.

Rotten Fruit

No real reason for this one other than the fact I thought it was kind of ugly. One of the things you see a lot of in these places is what I can only charitably call “folk art”. I do not discourage anyone’s choice of expression, if you want to pick up a brush and paint something that matters to you, then I salute you. This pear has never mattered anything to anyone. This is the trite kind of thing that people paint expecting to sell it to someone looking for something red, green or yellow for their home decor. So not only is it somewhat ugly, it is completely devoid of meaning. It doesn’t even really qualify as still life since the pear is kind of just floating there suspended in a blood red sea. This is far from the worst I have seen but the thing that really bugged me about it is that the pear is just squeezed into the frame as an after thought. It drove me a little bit nuts that you had works of space on one side of he pear but nothing on the top, bottom or right. I kept wanting to try and center the pear since the object was way the hell too big to be a piss poor attempt at the “rule of thirds”

Freaky Indian

I was walking from cubical to cubical rifling through their goods when I damned near jumped and screamed because this thing freaked me the hell out. Similar to the shelf full of little nun figures… I cannot think of a single occasion where the gift of a life sized Native American man would ever be appropriate. Granted I realize we live in Oklahoma… aka Indian Territory, but man there is never a case where I would be comfortable in the same house as this thing. I don’t get dolls in the first place, and I am so happy that my wife does not have a collection of those freaky china dolls with their dead eyes… but this would just be over the top for me. I would keep putting a sheet or blanket over it. All the while I was in the booth it felt like the damned thing was watching me. I am sure someone out there is dying to have this thing in their house, but count me out. It does make me wonder where exactly it came from. I feel like it is intended to be a doll and not some sort of a mannequin.

Wall of Photographic History

This photo is not that good, because I was trying to take it on the downlow. This wall of cameras was a few feet away from the booth full of people running the place. I never know for certain how they would feel about someone snapping photos, so I try and do it without drawing too much attention. As a result I used my phones crappy “digital zoom” option to take this photo standing down another one of the isles and out of site from the junktown overlords. I wanted to end this on a positive note, since a lot of these were me boggling that anyone would ever buy such a thing. This wall was like a tour through photographic history. It got a little nostalgic because they had a version of my first camera sitting there on the white shelf.

Growing up my dad was a professional portrait photographer and was constantly doing weddings, senior pictures or little league ball teams. I essentially grew up in the darkroom, so me not being a photographer was never really an option. I have a love and deep nostalgia towards cameras because they remind me of happy times with my dad. I don’t do it as often as I should, but I have even called him up on the weekend to see if he wants to go on a photo shoot. While each item was for sale, it was more impressive to me as a collection. This represented a lot of work collecting “ancient history”. I would be interested to see if the seller has a collection themselves and these are just the castoffs that didn’t make the cut.

More Junking

I doubt we will make it out today, but we both had quite a good time sifting through other peoples stuff. Granted we didn’t walk away with anything but going to one of these antique malls is like visiting a really weird museum. I figure we will do some more of this as we each search for our own things. I did manage to find some Legos but they were priced more than I was willing to pay for them. This was just one town and two different stores, and there are probably a dozen of these locations surrounding us each loaded up with similar Malls and Flea Markets. Not to mention you can drive in any direction from the Tulsa metro area and find little towns with similar locations. I figure this is going to be a thing we do more often.

Enter the Shado-pan

December 30, 2013 by Belghast

Who Needs Sleep?

It is amazing just how quickly your sleep schedule can be thrown off balance when you are on vacation. Generally speaking I wake up at 5:30 in the morning and tend to go to sleep around 11:30 to midnight at the worse. Since being on break for the last week I have managed to shift that to getting up around 10 am in the morning and having to take Nyquil to be able to have a hope of getting to sleep at 3 am. Sleep has never been something that came easy for me, and in High School I even took a series of sleep studies to try and figure out the source of my frequent bouts of insomnia. There would be days I just didn’t sleep at all, and as a result it became progressively harder to function.

The problem is because of my weight the doctor wasn’t actually looking for insomnia but instead he was dead certain he would find out that I really have sleep apnea. Clearly he didn’t listen to me at all, because I told him I simply could not sleep at times. So I got hooked up to all these machines, with electrodes super glued into my head… put in an unfamiliar room and told to sleep normally. Apparently I had to sleep six hours for the test to be valid… I don’t think I slept at all. As a result I have never attempted too investigate what is actually wrong with my brain that keeps it form shutting down at all.

I am jealous of my wife, because she can take two naps in the same day and still manage to get a full nights sleep. Me on the other hand if I doze off for 30 minutes during the day I am screwed and will not be able to get to sleep at all during the night. I have another week before I go back to work, so during this time I am going to work on trying to train my body back into a normal schedule. This morning I woke up at 9 am, so it is happening gradually. I just know 5 am next Monday morning is going to be pure hell if I don’t act now and try and do something proactive to fix this.

Enter the Shado-pan

Yesterday morning shortly after blogging I did my recent scan of the auction house and found another one of the extremely amazing Fist of Fate weapons. These things really are ideal for leveling a combat rogue or enhancement shaman, as they quite literally cannot be beat before 90. Since I had a pair of claws… I decided I had to go get my favorite claw graphic ever. During Zulgurub era the coolest you could think as a melee was the matched set of claws. One dropped from the tiger boss, and the other from the panther boss, and to my knowledge I have only known one person who actually wielded the set during the time they were viable weapons. Vexa looked amazing with both of them, and even more amazing when the weapons would proc and she would turn into this awesome were-tiger.

During Burning Crusade they introduced a set of rare vendor purchased claws that had the same graphic. So immediately after equipping the second Fist, I made the trek out to Dealer Jayden at Stormspire in Netherstorm and purchase the Nexus-Claw. In the above shot you can see me wielding the set and looking otherwise badass. Sadly the lookalikes don’t proc, especially when transmogged… but that would be a nice change for the future. If you transmog something it would be awesome if it also transmogged the proc graphics. Who doesn’t want to be a badass looking werepanther? Honestly the trinket that I am loving is the one my paladin has that turns me into a random troll tribe. I feel like I am one of the few people out there who is not sick of troll instances. I have a special love for Zul’gurub, Zul’Aman and was supremely disappointed that we never had a Frost Troll raid in Wrath of the Lich King.

Yesterday I had another one of those days where I simply did not want to leave the house (much to the chagrin of my wife who is getting more than a little bit stir-crazy). As a result I worked my way through my normal leveling path, taking off and going to Kun Lai as soon as I could, and then again transitioning to Townlong. I am currently 89 and working on the totem of rage quest series in the second Shado-pan hub. My hope is this evening to finish leveling to 90, but we may or may not have a flex raid. I have a feeling we are going out into the world today, as my wife wants to hit some stores. My hope is that Monday things will not be terribly busy as most folks will have had to go back to work today. I still have another week off, so plenty of time to faff about and finish leveling the rogue.

Accidental Achiever

December 29, 2013 by Belghast

Outside is Evil

Yesterday we recuperated from the whirlwind shopping trip around Joplin Mo. It was a pretty glorious day to be honest, because we were both in hibernation mode. We talked for a bit about getting out, because it really was a lovely day. But when it came to actually getting up and doing it… we both failed the willpower check. Personally I am completely fine with this notion, that we both stayed in, ate three meals in, and overloaded on relaxation. I hung out in my fuzzy blanket cocoon on the sofa and she upstairs in her loft of power (that you all will remember once it was my game loft).

I have a feeling that once summer happens the roles will switch with me inhabiting my office and the loft and she the downstairs, but it is cool that we have our own places and are still within vocal range of each other. I played a ton of World of Warcraft, attempted to play a closed beta I got into… but suffered from severe graphical issues that made it completely unplayable, and snuggled with my ferrets each and every time I passed their cage.

Accidental Achiever

I rarely if ever set out to master a tradeskill in a game, but instead it is a thing I usually do out of an odd sense of commitment more than anything. Lately I had been on a mission to level my rogue so I could get a transcriptionist up high enough to be able to start making living steel. I want the 30 bars that it takes to craft my Sky Golem pretty badly. So yesterday I was not paying much attention was I was pushing my way to 600 alchemist when immediately after getting it, I also got the Master of All Achievement. Sure enough… now that I think of it… I do have a max crafter of every profession. The only disappointment is you get exactly nothing for it… except for 75 achievement points.

This is a pretty massive undertaking if someone was to actually set out specifically to do this achievement. I think it is worthy of a crafting tabard, mount, or at the very least a title. I feel like this is a pretty massive oversight on the part of blizzard. Then again crafting is kind of its own reward. Being completely self sufficient feels amazing. Additionally you end up needing to hit the auction house far less often because your army of crafters can make damned near everything you would ever want made. It is a pretty great feeling knowing that you can make an entire set of gear for a friend, as I did for Scarybooster yesterday. In a matter of moments I had a starter set of gear for level 85 ready for him, and I did the same thing for my rogue Gloam.

A Vicious Sneak Thief

Speaking of my rogue, I am roughly halfway through Jade Forest and as of yesterday am about halfway into 87. I should finish up and ding 88 before I finish the area, and will likely skip Valley of the Four Winds entirely and go straight to Kun Lai Summit. When I am trying to power my way through to 90 the path I tend to take is to milk every last drop of experience from Jade Forest, transition to Kun Lai immediately after and then transition to Townlong as soon as you get the quest starter to go there. Finally this ends up with you either dinging 90 in Townlong or doing so just inside of Dread Wastes. Granted this is complete shit for your quest completion, but I figure it also gives you a lot of “questing to make gold” time if you so choose it at max level since xp gets converted up to gold.

Granted I have yet to actually do that one of of my 90s… since as soon as I hit maximum level I start going through the paces of trying to gear out the character and such. I am such a sucker for getting my characters those purples and am willing to sit through all manner of horrible LFR experiences just to do so. I should however have most of a set of timeless leather stocked away and ready for this guy when he needs it. I will just have to figure out how best to get the weapons. This time around I will likely just craft him a set of 463 agi swords and call it good until I can get something decent from LFR. Once I finish his leveling the characters I really need to work on are Belghast, Exeter and Belgarou as they are woefully behind Tallow and Belgrave in gear levels. Oh well… the faffing about with my characters never seems to end.

Gloam the Conqueror

December 28, 2013 by Belghast

Handbag of Fury

As mentioned yesterday we headed up to Joplin to go shopping and took my mother in law with us, since she wouldn’t tell us anything she actually wanted for Christmas. The goal was to take her shopping and hopefully find something along the way. This process involved me getting drug to a bunch of stores I would never actually visit on my own. I brought my 3DS with me, but oddly enough I never actually used it. I mostly piddled around on Twitter, Tumblr, and occasionally guild chat via the WoW Armory application. I did pretty well for the first three or so stores, but after that I started hanging out in the car while they were shopping inside.

I am sure by doing this I missed numerous things that were photo worthy, but the highlight of the day was the above handbag. It quite literally has a set of brass knuckles built into the clasp. I am not sure if this was really intended for self defense, but it certainly would hurt like hell to get hit by that. I tried to convince my wife that she needed it but she was un-swayed. I am not sure how we ended up together, because if it were my choice there would be skulls on everything. Hell I play a Deathknight… that class is all about beating down things while wearing skulls. My wife on the otherhand wants none of that nonsense.

I keep finding these awesome scarves with cute little skulls, and she is completely uninterested in them. She is not exactly a girly girl… but I guess bedazzled skulls is a bit too far in the other direction for her. Both her and her mother found several things during our trip, which is good. I found a few interesting clearance Legos, but decided not to pick them up because really I would have just been picking them up for a few interesting parts… and had no interest at all in the thing they were intended to build. These were originally 90 dollar sets that were selling for 40, but that still seemed a bit pricy to purchase just for a handful of nifty thingamajigs.

Gloam the Conqueror

When I finally got home from the whirlwind trip of shopping madness I built myself a fuzzy little cocoon on my comfy sofa and settled in for some World of Warcraft. I did my normal crafting cooldowns crawl, making sure everyone had created their trademarked rare daily craftable, before settling in on Exeter my Paladin Blacksmith. The first goal of the night was to farm up the rest of the Motes of Harmony needed to craft two Ghost-Forged blades for my rogue. While I was trying to get a hold of Fists of Fate, I was unable to do so and gave up on that mission settling for the two crafted blades instead. I still think it is almost criminal at this point that Motes are not bind on account, since I seem to have way too many on some characters and never enough on others… but I have settled on a decent way to farm them.

I badly photoshopped a map of The Dread Wastes to indicate where I go to farm motes. There are supposedly better drop rates elsewhere in the world, but I find this to be my favorite spot. Firstly no one is ever out here… granted by me saying this there will automagically be tons of people out there next time I need motes. Secondly and quite possibly the most important reason… all this stuff is level 90, easy to kill and gives Black Prince reputation. Most of my characters need this badly to be able to progress their way through the cloak quest chain. Especially now that I have the repair mount, this is an awesome place to go mindlessly kill things and make tons of money doing it. Additionally the mobs die pretty fast once you are in timeless isle gear and you can make a big loop of the island and by the time you reach the other side everything is completely full spawn again.

Finally I got my 40 motes and crafted the blades, enchanted them with windsong and was up and running on Gloam. I have to say having the crafters to built a starter set of gear for Pandaria eases the transition. You hit the ground running and are able to slaughter pretty much everything, even on the super squishy classes like the rogue. I made my way through the first few sections of Pandaria before sleep claimed me. My goal for the day is to make it through all of Jade Forest. Not really sure if this will happen or not as today is supposed to be the last “nice” day for awhile, and I have a feeling I will get drug from my cocoon and out into the world. If that happens no promises on how far I will make it on my goals.

Redragon Perdition

At this point pretty much every MMO gamer is familiar with the Razer Naga and most are also familiar with the Logitech g600. They each provide a different take on the concept of the large number of button MMO mouse. Each has its strong points and its weaknesses. The Razer for example, I have had three of them die in exactly the same way after about two years. Similarly I recently had a g600 kick the bucket after about the same two year threshold, granted the g600 did not die so spectacularly. The Nagas started “jumping” in that the cursor would mysteriously accelerate at high speeds in one direction or another. The g600 on the other hand started missing mouse clicks. One of the actions you do more than any in an MMO is holding down both the left and right mouse buttons to move forward. The g600 would stop registering that my right mouse button was clicked and as a result I would stop forward movement.

When I was looking on amazon for a replacement, I noticed the Redragon Perdition, that literally looks like a combination of the best features of the Naga and the g600. At the time it was a little over $20 cheaper than either of the other mice so I figured I would give it a chance. The reviews were really favorable and it featured a naga like shape but with g600 style buttons. The mouse itself was a little late getting to me, as it was shipping during our recent ice storms. However when it arrived I was pleasantly surprised by the built quality. This is after all in theory a chinese knockoff of a Naga and g600, but it is a very good one. One of the problems I have with both the Naga and the g600 is that they don’t feel nearly as good as the old Logitech mx500 gaming mice. These had a really great slightly rubberized pebbled texture to them, that just felt nice in the hand.

Much to my surprise the Perdition has almost this same texture. Additionally like the mx500 it has counterweights that can be removed from the base of the mouse to give it a solid feel in your hand. I find weight mice easier for me to use since I have extremely large hands. The perdition also sports a truly insane 16400 dpi resolution… which I immediately had to scale back as it was insanely twitchy. If you have ever wanted to play a game by barely moving your hand at all… then that might be the resolution for you. Additionally the software that it comes with lets you customize pretty much everything about it, including creating damned near any possible color of LED light, and controlling the “throb” motion.

So far I am a fan, I have gamed normally with it for roughly two weeks and it still feels great. My only complaint so far is that middle clicking the mouse wheel requires more effort than any other mouse I have had. Luckily I don’t really middle click anything but in my browser window to open new tabs. However if this is a hotkey you regularly use in your keybindings, just be warned for my sausage like fingers… it takes quite a bit of pressure to get it to register a click. I like the shoulder button quite a bit because it is comfortable to hit with the side of your finger, but not as prone to accidentally hitting as the third mouse button was on the g600. If you are in the market for a new mouse and not opposed to taking a gamble on a chinese knockoff… I highly suggest you check it out. I really am enjoying it so far.