shopping Archives - Tales of the Aggronaut

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.

AARP: Loved by Children Everywhere

December 24, 2013 by Belghast

Star Trek Fashions

I am getting a far later start this morning in blogging. I warned my twitter followers that my morning post would end up being an afternoon post, but since this gets syndicated on all the platforms… apologies to the rest of you who were expecting a post early. Why did it get delayed you might ask? Well we had to get up and around and get some last minute things done. Thankfully the activities gave me what I refer to as “blog fodder”. Be warned I am not exactly going on chronological order here, but bear with me.

Firstly… I know that geeks are sexy, or at least that is what the media keeps telling me. That said… when did it become cool for women to look like Star Trek: The Next Generation? I realize that the recent movies were blockbusters of serious magnitude. I did now however expect Star Trek fashion to trickle out into the mainstream. The above shirts are from Cato, one of the places we stopped this morning looking for various sundry items. Actually we went there to buy an item they no longer have… but that isn’t really important. What is important is I cannot get the image of a Star Trek uniform out of my head when looking at these shirts.

To the right is a similar dress that I found earlier in the season at Target. If you follow me on twitter or G+ I am sure you saw me post it. If not here it is in all of its TNG glory. If Data were female she would totally be sporting this dress. Then again the more I think about it… none of the women on TNG wore dresses at all, but instead got the unisex jumpsuits everyone else wore. I guess you would have to go back to the classic series or the reboot movies to find dresses at all. The trend however may not be entirely limited to Star Trek. I cannot see the t-shirt on the right without thinking Boba Fett.

Granted these could just be hallucinations as I have spent more time of late in clothing stores than I would ever care to. My wife has been on this mission to look “more put together”, and she has gone through a similar physical transition as I have losing almost 50 lbs. I completely support whatever goals she happens to have, but I find myself extremely bored most of the time and when I get bored my mind wanders. As a result I am probably just trying to make these things into something more palatable. I have been having to draw on my art school background in helping her pick out things that “go together” without strictly matching. I keep having to remind my wife that the experience is not nearly as exciting for me as it is for her.

AARP: Loved by Children Everywhere

Another jaunt of this morning while we were out and about was to go by and get our hair cut. For me it had been extremely long and I was looking rather scruffy. To be truthful I cannot tell you exactly when I last got it cut. We went to our normal place and signed up on the list, waiting for a friend of ours to get free. Personally it is worth the wait for Mandy, who is extremely popular… in part because I can simply say “make me look presentable” and that means something to her. She translates well, and I find the ability invaluable… and since I tend to go extremely late I always feel like I need to leave her an extremely good tip.

While waiting there, I got to watch an entire family getting their hair cut. The parents didn’t really look old enough to have three kids, but honestly that was the least of my worries. You would think if one parent was getting their hair cut, the other one would be in the waiting room corralling the kids. This however was not on their radar at all. They sat back talking to the beautician and bellowing command rather ineffectually at their offspring that were roaming around the waiting room and generally running amok.

I don’t remember exactly which of the kids began this, but they found their way to the basket of magazines sitting beside my wife and I. Each of them picked out a magazine carefully, and when it came time for the youngest girl she took extra care. She rifled through the basket tossing aside several magazines before arriving at her prize. When she took up she held lovingly clasped in her hands a copy of AARP Magazine. The look of beaming pride on her face only made the scene all that more hilarious. It was all I could do to keep from laughing.

The magazines however didn’t hold their attention long. It was only a matter of minutes until they were back running around the waiting room in a big circle. I am not sure what exactly happened but next time I looked up the littlest one was sitting in the floor crying. I am guessing that she could not keep up with the rough housing and got knocked down. It was only when there were tears flowing that the absentee parents finally paid enough attention to bark additional orders at their kinder. I realize I am a non-parent, and I am that way by choice… but I would like to think that if I did have kids I would actually pay some manner of attention to them.

Home At Last

I am finally back home and wrapped back up in my cocoon. Since the weight loss I have been inordinately colder natured, and as a result I now have a fuzzy blanket wrapped around my backside and another fuzzy blanket laid over top of me. It makes it a pain in the ass to get up off the couch but man is it nice and toasty warm. This of course is along with my flanel pants. and thermal henley… I am maybe overdressed for the fact that we do have heat. I am not sure what is on the radar today. I have various sundry betas that I could be playing, or I could just hop into World of Warcraft once the servers come back up. I am assuming they did maintenance today, however since it is Christmas Eve I am not sure if that would be the case.

Speaking of Christmas… I will be posting tomorrow like normal, but if you are too busy with your own family to read my blog… I want to take the time right now to wish you all a very Merry Christmas. Most of the time I feel like I am talking to myself here, but I am constantly surprised at just how many loyal readers I have. You all mean the world to me, and while I would probably keep blogging even if I had no audience at all… you make me feel far less crazy in this endeavor. I hope you all have a great holiday tomorrow, and that you are blanketed by loved ones. We will be travelling a bit, but will not be terribly far from home. Here is hoping the next few days are joyous… or at the very least tolerable.

I Hate People

December 23, 2013 by Belghast

Plans are a Crutch

I had these plans yesterday of running the last part of Siege of Orgrimmar, but didn’t actually do that at all. I queued for it at one point, but after seeing it would take an hour I bailed and gave up. After being iced in for several days, we were out of a few things… not the least of which was toilet paper and paper towels. The above picture is to show the extent of the icing… for years I have gotten in the habit of raising my wiper blades so they don’t get frozen to the window. As you can see it is like everything had been sealed in plastic to preserve it for eternity. If nothing else I knew I had to clear the vehicles so we could leave if we absolutely needed to.

It actually did not take as long as I expected. I went outside in my pajamas and started my jeep, then went back inside to take a shower and get ready for the morning. When I got back out the heater inside and engine had managed to warm the ice up enough to where I could start breaking it off rather easily. Roughly 20 minutes later I had cleared my Jeep and was headed back inside to let my wife’s vehicle warm up. I could barely feel my fingers… but it was at least clear. When I cleared my wife’s vehicle I had the foresight to actually wear gloves.

We made it out of the house pretty easily, and I have to say this is the weirdest ice storm I have ever experienced. Everything is absolutely coated in a layer of ice… the trees, the vehicles, the grass, anything elevated even slightly off the ground. However the roads are almost completely dry. It is like the perfect ice storm… all of the pretty with none of the consequences. Granted some parts of the city are out of power as the ice snapped powerlines… so they would definitely question my assessment of no consequences. All in all however it could be been and likely should have been much worse.

I Hate People

I mean this in the nicest possible way… but I hate people. When you put me in a room with more than a half a dozen people a severe fight or flight instinct triggers. Now imagine how that instinct multiplies when you put me in a busy store during the holidays filled with hundreds of people. I am generally pretty good at swallowing down that feeling, but the more stores you expose me to… the more of an asshole I become. I am thankful that my wife realizes this because by the time we reached the last two stores of the day I am sure I was an absolute bear to be around. We had several things still to pick up on our list, so while we were out and about… and since we were both going a little stir crazy we decided to try and knock as many things off the list as possible.

Target was both the worst and the best place we went all afternoon. It was the worst because it was inanely busy and as I rounded the corner near the seasonal area… the instinct kicked in harder than it has in years. There was this huge zombie-like shambling mass of people migrating back and forth between toys and electronics. I gave up on any notion that I was going to go check the Lego isle and got out of there as soon as possible. It became a logistical exercise to even navigate my shopping cart through the narrow passages left by gawking customers. I suddenly realized why a lost child just sits down and cries… because at that point I seriously did feel like surrendering to the hopelessness that was all of those people pressing in on me.

That was the worst part… the best part however is just how efficiently they were managing the checkouts. They had roped off the area in front of the cash registers and while this caused the line to snake all the way down to the pharmacy area, it did make it move faster. They had a worker acting like a traffic cop to funnel people down the little shoots and to the next waiting cashier. Additionally they gave us a 10% discount as an apology for the whole credit card fiasco. Since we were actually hit during that event… I felt like we had more than earned it. Last weekend my discover card was off in Oklahoma City and Norman making purchases without me… and we are assuming since we still have our credit cards… it is tied to the whole Target event.

I probably would have gone postal at some point during yesterday, but we went to eat at Monterry, a Mexican chain restaurant we go to regularly. When I say regularly… I mean it, because the waitresses know our order by heart and often times fight over who is going to wait on us. Yesterday we had Daisy, who is extremely awesome and has the same pen fetish that my wife does. Over the time we have been going there, we have become rather social with them… and eating there act like a reset of my buffer. It was a happy place that helped me cope with the madness that was stores like Old Navy. Still by the time we ended our tour at Big Lots, I was so far past going that I am sure I was acting like an ass.

Relaxing with Friends

Yesterday before the madness began, I noticed that my good friend Vernie had managed to hit 90 on his mage. I did my normal song and dance about how awesome the Timeless Isle was for catching up, but as a very squishy class it seemed that soloing out there was just not something viable. We made tentative plans for me to grab one of my characters and help him get some gear after I got back from the holiday craziness. It was shortly after I got home that he logged back in and we did just that. At first I tried to use Exeter my paladin, but I quickly realized that I already had gotten the weekly chests when I swam him out to get the chest in the pirate cave. I grabbed Belgarou my druid, because I knew I had not really played him in a few weeks.

It turns out that this was a great call as I ran out of leather some time ago and could greatly use a run to replenish it. We faffed about the island for several hours and in the process we managed to get him Helm, Chest, Bracers, Belt, Gloves, Back, Legs, Ring and Trinket. Which in itself was a pretty amazing haul for our first outing. He had not really played since Cataclysm, so there are a ton of systems that simply did not exist back then. The big one is the LFR system, so as we hunted for gear on the island we queued for Mogushan Vaults. The queue was surprisingly short and we managed to make it through the three boss raid in extremely quick time.

I guess the game did not want him to have an unrealistic view of how the LFR system worked, because when we queued up for the second part of the raid… it went horribly. Someone pulled the boss too quickly, the tanks had no clue what they were doing… and we wiped. Moments after the wipe the raid just disintegrated in a matter of seconds. I told him that sadly that was also extremely common. While we waited for that raid to officially die we went out to Dinosaur Island… or more properly Isle of Giants. We had zero luck in both pets and eggs, but we killed quite a few and I got some more leather. I am not sure if it was in the first raid or the second… but at some point Vernie managed to pick up shoulders.

During the course of our faffing about he managed to go from 450 something to 474 and if we can get him a few more upgrades he should be able to start doing Throne of Thunder…. which I think is one of the more enjoyable instances of the expansion. After we finished the second raid, that went surprisingly successfully. Elegon managed to eat a half dozen people to the “floor boss”, but all in all we pulled out a win. Will of the Emperor was a wipe at first, namely because the tanks didn’t really know what they were doing. However someone luckily explained to them and we managed to pull that victory out as well. All in all it was a really fun night, and I was happy that we got Vernie a ton of upgrades in the process. Once again Faffing about pays off.