November 2014 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Opening the Mines

November 30, 2014 by Belghast

AggroChat #33 – Crafting, Puzzles and Raven

Last night we had a special guest on AggroChat that may turn into a more permanent addition, but for not we are playing that by ear. Raven is a friend that I initially met through Twitter but we all have become close to through our time spent in Final Fantasy XIV. She has been awesome with offering to fill in with her characters whenever we happen to need them for our guilds semi-regular shenanigans. With Rae’s recent absence from the show I had been kicking around the idea of bringing on another person, and thankfully Raven showed some interest in doing it. Hopefully she had as much fun as the rest of us did, and she brought some interesting takes on the topics we discussed.

Last night was a massive meandering show where we talked about some of our favorite puzzle games at length even dredging things up like Tetris Attack. We talked about the Road Not Taken, which is quite possibly the most depressing puzzle rpg ever. We talk Super Smash brothers, and do a horrible job at trying to guess Ashgar’s favorite character. We talk about Kodra’s experience playing Dragon Age Origins and how he is ultimately playing a completely different game than I ever managed to play. We fall into a giant Final Fantasy XIV crafting discussion, since Raven is the pocket expert on the topic. Finally I discuss my frustrations with Molten Core 40 man LFR from this past Tuesday and how it really does make players not ever want to do 40 man again.

As I am writing this post I am still editing away on the episode or more so the audio is rendering. We ran really long, but at this point I am not quite sure how long. We might have ultimately recorded our very first two hour long episode… this may or may not be a good thing. I think everything flowed extremely naturally with our newest guest host, so hopefully that can be a thing that happens more often. Even if not I am extremely grateful for Raven filling in and offering her views on the completely unprepared list of topics. Our complete and total lack of organization would throw some people off, but she took to it like a champ.

Opening the Mines

My initial goal upon reaching level 100 was to be able to get geared for the impending opening of the first raid, that happens this Tuesday. As such for the better part of a week I have been well over the 630 required cap to get into raiding. Additionally I have been helping out various players that needed another dps or tank for doing their own heroic gearing. Now however I am taking a bit of a step back and working on some of my alts. Right now my goal is to get each of them to the level where they get their Tier 2 Town Hall and with it a mine and a profession hub. Since I have an army of level 90 characters, this is going to take awhile but it should allow other tradeskill materials to start flowing in naturally on all of my characters. As such I worked up Exeter my blacksmith and miner first with the hopes of eventually using him to fuel some of my gear on my warrior. That said by the time I get around to making that gear I might already have epics in those slots. In any case I now have his T2 Town Hall and T2 Mine so he is finally self sufficient in the creation of truesteel ingots.

Next I am opting to work on my leatherworker/skinner Worgen Druid Belgarou. I noticed that most of the smithing patterns also require leather, so as such I need someone that can bring it back in large quantities. Last night while recording the podcast I worked on getting the druid through the opening sequence at the dark portal, and now I am working through the various early areas of Shadowmoon Valley. Unfortunately this character does not have an heirloom weapon, and the lower attack damage is noticeable. My hope is that I can limp by with enough gear gained through the various treasure hunts in the zone. I am also having to relearn how to play a feral druid… which feels a bit strange these days. It feels like I only really have one attack button, and a bunch of optional attacks. That said I should probably research that class further, because my survival seems to be lacking at times.

Exciting Guests All Around

Now comes the time to be extremely vague. This morning I am recording the next episode of Bel Folks Stuff, and for those who have not been listening to them.. it is where I grab a personality in our community and talk to them about the various things that are important to them. Previously I have had Gypsy Syl and Rowan Blaze on… and this guest is going to be just as awesome. The thing is I am honestly a bit nervous about it. Syl and Rowan I have gamed with or at the very least hung out on voice chat with… so were both super familiar to me. This guest is someone I have the utmost of admiration for… but have never actually cross paths with in any games. I am sure it will end up being fine, as when I close the office door and go into serious recording mode… I seem to never have a shortage of anything to talk about. That said I think you guys will be absolutely pumped over who I have for a guest this time.

Similarly my hope is to turn this episode around much more quickly than the previous ones. I sat on the recording with Rowan for a good month, and as such it ended up kinda bizarre as we talked about a few issues… that were resolved or at least changed during Blizzcon. Right now I am tentatively planning on having this third episode of Bel Folks Stuff out if at all possible by this coming Friday. That should give me time to edit and fiddle and get things ready for the public, but hopefully still keep it from sounding outdated like the one with Rowan did. I don’t have that huge of an installed listener base yet, but this is mostly something I am doing for my own sake and enjoyment rather than for any sort of internet fame. Then again all of the things I do are mostly for my own entertainment.

The Month is Over

This morning I am thankful that the month is done. This was hands down one of the hardest challenges I have done on my blog. There were so many mornings that I was completely finished with the post and starting at the above logo not sure what to write about under it. The first few days were rather easy, but after that I kept struggling to find something else to say… that also somehow related back to my post. I think I mostly succeeded but there are times when it really is difficult to count your blessings. I think I wrote some really solid blurbs during the month, some of which that maybe even surprised me a bit. That said I am more than happy to close the book on this little chapter and move on to the next thing whatever it might be. Thanks for riding along with me on this journey.

Craigslist Saga

November 29, 2014 by Belghast

Thanksgiving Revisited

For years we have had a second tradition surrounding the Thanksgiving holiday. My wife’s father and step mother are snow birds, and for those not familiar with the term, it means they travel south for the winter. Namely they have been living full time out of their RV for over the last decade, and when it starts to get cold they pull up and roll out. As tradition this has been a few weeks after Thanksgiving, so we started having a combined Thanksgiving and Christmas celebration with them on the Saturday immediately following Thanksgiving. Once upon a time this was a massive potluck dinner, and then some years in the past we have had BBQ and smoked bologna, essentially something different than the traditional holiday faire.

However a few years ago we decided as a group that what we were actually eating was not terribly important, but instead the fact that we were getting together. My wife’s dad and step mom are getting up there in age, and even if we brought all of the food… there was still a considerable amount of set up time on getting the rest of everything ready. As such we have just started meeting at the local Pizza Hut, that has a big banquet room that we can get for such occasions. This allows us each to order our own meal… and I tend to have boneless wings and fries myself, but still hang out and chat and do all of the actually important parts of a Thanksgiving meal. As such I am trying to knock out a blog post this morning so we can get ready and get on the road before too much longer.

Craigslist Saga

If you have read my blog often at all you will know that I have a proclivity for trying to purchase things from the local Craigslist whenever possible. I absolutely detest being the person who takes the initial depreciation hit on an item. So if I can find a reasonably priced and not too heavily worn item from Craigslist… I will happily do so every time. Some examples are that I got my Chromebook that I have used the hell out of from Craigslist for $100, and I quite literally use it every single day at work for note taking. I also got a PS Vita for $100 and a PS4 for $250 both of which have performed admirably. To be truthful the desktop I am writing this on right now, also came from Craigslist and I have been exceptionally happy with it overall. The only downfall is that the GeForce 750ti I have in it is underperforming on a handful of newer games like Dragon Age: Inquisition.

As such I had been passively watching video card prices over the last few weeks, in anticipation for a potential drop in prices during the Black Friday / Cyber Monday madness. At the same time I never actually expected to find something off Craigslist but last Wednesday there was a post for exactly the card I had been looking at. After buying nothing but GeForce cards for the last several years, I was interested in trying an AMD Radeon because at least on paper it seems like you can get far more bang for your buck. I had been looking at the r9 290 because it seemed like a good price point for the performance. However on Craigslist I found listed a r9 290X 4 Gig card, something that is normally around $400 for $150. At first I was hesitant since that seemed like too little money for that kind of card.

After talking with the guy for a bit, he simply upgraded out of it and is now running a pair of GeForce Titan Black cards… which are like $1000 a piece. Basically the guy has way more money for these sort of shenanigans than I could ever dream of. Yesterday afternoon I met the guy to pick up the card. I am sure he thought I was insane as I “smelled” the card but really there is only so much you can do to determine if a card is healthy. When a card has overheated past a certain point the PCB smells strange, and the fan itself seemed to move freely without seizing, and none of the chips on the bottom side looked damaged in any way. So I parted with my $150 thinking it was a gamble, but one that might pay off extremely well.

I get home and everything seems to be going swimmingly, the card fits perfectly, and I have just the right connectors for it and plenty of clearance for the fan itself. I had checked online and saw lots of people talking about how hot the powercolor r9 290X was running, but was not entirely prepared for the reality. Under relatively light strain playing World of Warcraft it was sitting in the 90c range and finally tripped the heat sensors and rebooted. There is some strangeness with the fan controller, as it seemed to not be performing well enough by default. After some reading however it seems like I have too small of a power supply to really support the card. The literature from Powercolor says that it requires a minimum of a 750w PSU, and I just have a 600w so that could be causing some of the low fan performance issues. In any case there are some things I can do to try and get better air flowing to the card, but in the meantime until I test these theories I am back to the tried and true 750ti. I don’t think it is a complete bust, because the card seemed to be performing really well… it just ran insanely hot. A lot of folks online have stated that you really need an aftermarket cooler for this card, but not really sure I want to resort to that yet.

No Luck with Nefarian

Last night I continued my trip through the previous expansions raids with a trip into Blackwing Descent and Bastion of Twilight . These were the raids that I was actively raiding when I left WoW for the first time. We had cleared up to Cho’Gall in Bastion and were working on Maloriak in Descent when I decided to quit the game. As such my knowledge of the instances is rather incomplete. I was able to limp my way through most of it soloing the encounters after figuring out the trick to Chimeraeon. When it came to the final battle with Onyxia and Nefarian, I hit an impassible wall. When Nefarian floods the room with lava, I seem to take entirely too much damage to survive through a combination of his shadowflares and the lava. I’ve duoed this fight with a healer before and it went well enough because we could each take a platform, and then the healer could keep me alive as I swam to the third platform. However doing all of this by myself just did not seem feasible.

Bastion of Twilight on the other hand was a complete and total Roflstomp, and I managed to pick up a BOE transmoggy bit for my priest or warlock. Additionally I managed to pick up a fairly wicked looking axe… Shalug’doom the Axe of Unmaking. This causes other issues however because I am quickly running out of bank space to keep all these awesome transmoggy bits. I feel like we desperately need the Diablo 3 system for transmogs, where if you get an item you learn its appearance and then can apply that appearance to any other item without having to hold onto that item forever. It has been long rumored that they were working on it for World of Warcraft, but at this point I need it like yesterday. Another interesting thing of note… it seems like all of the sets of gear you could previously buy with Justice and Valor points… have been converted to gold. So you can just walk straight into Icecrown Citadel for example and buy an entire set of Tier 10. You can go to Stormwind/Orgrimmar and buy MOST of a full set of the first two tiers of Cataclysm gear as well.

This Blog

This morning I thought I would take a moment to talk about this blog, and why I am thankful that it exists. I’ve always been a fairly verbose person, and I used to use the various gaming forums as my outlet for this desire to write about the things I care about. I was a regular on the Argent Dawn forums in World of Warcraft, and previously was active on various EQ and DAoC forums as well. I had always attempted to adopt the personality of a “white hat” the folks trying to build consensus and put a positive spin on things rather than attack other players. In 2009 I was introduced to the World of Warcraft blog community, and thanks to the support of Blog Azeroth… I created a blog of my own. Originally Tales of the Aggronaut was intended to be nothing but a Warrior tanking blog, but that didn’t last terribly long before I was talking about my raid and my guild, and my frustration with the game.

I went through some pretty massive lapses in posting, and each time that happened it was because I was too frustrated with something going on to actually put it into words. I didn’t think folks wanted to hear about me, and my hopes and fears… so I simply stopped writing for periods of time. In April of 2013 I embarked on a “Grand Experiment” as I have called it. My goal was to blog every single day, regardless if I actually “had a post in me”. It has been through this that my blog has really helped me. By necessity, Tales of the Aggronaut stopped being about “things” and started being about me as a person and as a gamer. It is also through this that writing every single day about my thoughts regarding the world has been extremely therapeutic. I’ve tried really hard to keep a mostly positive outlook on everything that is going on, and the constant reinforcement each morning has helped me the person behind the screen to remain far more positive about the world as a whole. For that and for my readers I am thankful.

Icecrown Revisited

November 28, 2014 by Belghast

The Force Awakens

While I was getting up and around this morning apparently this was released. For months and months there have been all manner of fake trailers floating around the internet, but finally today they release a real teaser trailer. I am guessing this is perfectly timed for the thanksgiving/black friday movie theater rush… as all these people realize they are tired of seeing each other and being in the same house. I have had mixed emotions with the prospect of more movies. For starters I really did not like the “prequels” that much. They were cool in the aspect that we got to see a lot of nifty things that were previously only written about, and even more things were flat out invented for the screen. But the movie stories themselves were just not that good, and the whole “jesus christ jedistar” sub plot seemed silly. Disney however is well known for protecting the hell out of their licenses and their future marketability… so when they bought out lucasfilm I started to worry a little less.

Then they announced the director was going to be J.J. Abrams, and I started to get a little more hopeful. For those unaware he is the man behind Lost, Fringe and the Star Trek reboots. The later of which is what is causing issues for the Star Wars purists. Granted I have never been a massive fan of Star Trek, it was always one of those things I watched because there simply was not enough science fiction programming on television during my formative years to be picky. Essentially I’ve never felt the Star Trek setting was believable, in that we could never actually join under one banner as a planet, and more importantly could not actually go out into the stars and be a mediator. We are entirely too divisive as a species for that ever to really work. Star Wars on the other hand was this beautifully chaotic universe where everything is pretty much in a constant state of “effed up”. This was believable to me as a kid, and it featured the Jedi… which is pretty much the pinnacle of my knight in shining armor complex.

The thing is I feel like the Star Wars universe could use a bit of a reboot after the horribleness that was the prequels. That said I don’t think that Disney is going to allow JJ to completely blow away a couple of decades worth of source material… that is highly profitable for the notalgia peddlers. What I think we will see is more of a reimagining of some of the constructs. You can see this in the form of the trailer. The X-Wing series fighters feel leaner and more aerodynamic, the Storm Trooper armor feels smoother, and the Dark Jedi lightsaber feels more brutal in the form of some crazy claymore looking thing. I am looking forward to seeing more details leak out about this film, but I am frustrated that we will have wade through over a year of hype before actually getting to see it.

Icecrown Revisited

Last night after a series of heroics I decided to continue my path of clearing old raids for fun. At first I picked up where I left off last night and did the Mount Hyjal raid in the Caverns of Time. This was easy before, but has gotten progressively easier considering I now have a spammable throw attack as a warrior that stacks deep wounds on the target. Generally speaking the first hit takes them down in health with the deep wounds dot eventually finishing them off. Since I also know where the mobs spawn, the first 16 waves went extremely quickly because I could simply stand on the spawn and thunderclap each new wave as it came into the world. The horde base however is still frustrating with constantly having to run back into the base to take down flyers. That said the entire raid maybe took 30 minutes to actually complete.

From there I used my engineer hacks and teleported straight to Icecrown with my original intent being to run Icecrown Citadel. That said I had forgotten that the engineer port takes you directly above the Crusaders Coliseum, so for shits and giggles I decided to run that place on heroic difficulty. Overall it was still rather easy with the only annoyances being the PVP battle, and having to take mobs in reverse the normal order… aka burn everything but the tree druid… and then the tree druid. Anubarak was still a bit of a challenge because he deals a lot of damage still while siphoning your health. Thankfully I was able to shield wall up, and reduce the incoming damage enough to take him down.

Storming the Castle

From there I moved onto Icecrown proper, but since the Belghast character had not actually cleared normal 25 man Icecrown… I had to set down the raid difficulty. Hopefully next week I will make an attempt on heroic and see if it goes as smoothly. The two points I was most concerned with were the Airship battle, and Dreamwalker. Airship turned out not to be a big deal at all, as the scaling in damage meant I could take down the airship before I actually needed to jump across. In fact the mage spawned like normal… and I jetpacked across… only to be standing on the wrong boat as it went down. Fortunately I guess at some point they implemented a teleport that takes you back to your boat, so I was able to get back there without taking a death.

Dreamwalker on the other hand was a completely different problem. For those not familiar with the raid, this is a goofy fight that works backwards from almost every other encounter. This is the moment the healers shine, because they essentially are your “DPS”. Dreamwalker is a dragon that starts at 50% health and during the course of the battle you have to heal her up to full. The problem being… I am not a healer, nor do I really have any heals at all. I feel like this is the sort of thing a paladin tank could handle without much issue. I made a valiant attempt at using bandages to heal up the dragon… and in truth there is a point during the add rotation where you can get an entire bandage applied. Had I brought enough bandages I could have probably solo’d this one without much issue.

However there is a way to glitch out the fight, that I am not sure if it is intentional or not. The fight involves the spawning of these portals to the emerald dream. From there your healing is greatly increased but the fight will reset if there is no one in the “real world” with the encounter. So I learned that if I take a portal, it will glitch the fight, reset it and open both the door at the front of the room, and the door to Sindragosa. So essentially I was able to simply skip the other problem fight for soloing, which allowed me to unlock access to the Lich King. I have a feeling that none of these encounters will be quite so easy on heroic mode, but for the Lich King proper I was pretty much able to ignore all of the fight mechanics and burn him directly while standing in the crap that used to oneshot players. My passive healing abilities as prot warrior seemed to counteract any damage I was actually taking. The concerns about not being able to solo old raids for fun after the stat squish… seems to have been unfounded.

The Internet

I am in the age group that folks refer to as the “internet pioneers” the generation for which the internet became an ever increasing reality. I was in High School when things started changing, and during our college years we latched onto each new piece of technology with both hands. The problem is that everything has become so common place that we stop to appreciate just how magical this grand interconnectedness really is. It is because of the internet that I am here talking to you every day, and because of it that I get to hang out with people from around the world in a nightly basis. It is because of the internet that I met my wife, and we ultimately married, and because of it that I have my job as a web developer. On a day like today, when the stores are absolutely insane… it is because of the internet that I can stay within the warm comfort of my own home and shop the exact same deals online, and likely have them on my doorstep tomorrow if I really wanted to.

The real reason I am thankful for the internet is it allows someone like me who has issues dealing with people on a regular basis… to live a very rich and relatively normal life. Dealing with folks in person wears me out in ways that I will never be able to full explain. Up close and personal interaction just drains me… and while I loved every minute of Thanksgiving yesterday… I was more than ready to go home and not see anyone for awhile. The internet however acts as a bridge allowing me to be still social but in a way that is far more comfortable to me personally. For all of this and more… I am thankful we have an internet, and it is populated with just as many awesome people as it is horrible ones. I’ve made it my mission to try and gather up as many of the awesome ones as I can.

Happy Thanksgiving

November 27, 2014 by Belghast

Behind the Times

There are times I am just extremely far behind the curve. For weeks I had been seeing pictures of my friends characters with a little orange bird on their heads named Pepe. I thought this was absolutely adorable since one of the things I have enjoyed so much is the way that certain pets in Final Fantasy XIV will come rest on your shoulder. Turns out that this is a bit of a hack and not really pet interaction. For those not already indoctrinated in the ways of Pepe… he is a bird that will appear in one of the trees of your garrison. Apparently he can appear in either the phase 1, 2 or 3 version. I’ve started typing “/tar pepe” to find him and mark him with a symbol so that I can find him either.

In any case if you mouse over him you will see a gear icon meaning that he can somehow be activated. If you click on him, he will ride around on top of your head for an hour as you go off adventuring in the world. While adorable… it actually gets a little old since he is super talkative tweeting up a storm while you run around. It doesn’t seem like he actually interacts with what you are doing… like I thought it would be awesome if he chirped a certain way each time we killed a baddie or something. In any case it is a nifty easter egg found in your garrison, and one that I find myself using quite a bit. There is something fun about being this armored badass, with a fat bird on top of your head.

Happy Thanksgiving

While the origins of the American thanksgiving tradition are somewhat suspect… it has always been a favorite holiday of mine for its sheer simplicity. It is a day where we are supposed to reflect upon the things we are thankful for, while sharing that time with our family. There is just something so pure about sharing a meal with someone, and it has become my favored way of meeting with someone. Over the years however Thanksgiving has turned into a sort of “Christmas Launch Party”, and this year my wife said one article was even referring to Thanksgiving as “Grey Thursday”. Black Friday has become this temple of holiday shopping excess and a three ring circus has sprung up around it constantly pushing further and further into thanksgiving in an effort to somehow earn our dollars. This year it seems like most stores will be open Thanksgiving night to start the Black Friday festivities. We had to go grocery shopping for our meal prep and Target looked like this claustrophobic bunker, with new priced to sell product stacked up in giant piles all over the store.

I guess I get it, because if I were a store I would be doing whatever it took to get your money before you can spend it elsewhere. As Americans we have become addicted to sales and clearance, which makes sense because our buying power has stagnated over the last decade. The part about Black Friday that frustrates me is that it is essentially a scam, played upon us by the retail industry. The items they sell for Black Friday are generally speaking not the same caliber as the items that they sell every day. So while they might be selling a 40 inch television for only $150… it is sure to have some gimping feature like the fact that it can only display images in 720i or lacks an HDMI port. The stores are giving you those cheap prices by selling you cheaply manufactured products. The part that frustrates me the most is that it seems like the majority of things are not actually going to people who will actually use them. Saturday morning I will be able to load our local craigslist and see half of the products offered as door busters being sold there as folks try and make a quick buck by flipping them.

All the while for me at least Thanksgiving is still a day about reflection and a day about sharing a meal with the folks who are close with, or the folks you wish you were closer with. This is going to be a rough thanksgiving for me, because this will be the first one without having a grandparent to visit. This past year my last grandparent passed away, and she was the glue that held together my mothers side of the family. Without here there, all of the thanksgiving traditions were in danger of completely dissipating. Thankfully my Cousin has stepped in and between her and us we are pulling together a grand thanksgiving feast. My wife has been making this and that all morning, and I am convinced we are going to have way too much food. We are taking care of the deserts and appetizers and are by ourselves bringing like a dozen dishes. In any case this is a year I am really looking forward to, because I am hoping we can forge out a new tradition of family and food out of the ashes of the old one.

Classic Content

Last night was extremely enjoyable. I started the night with Wulf and Damai doing our daily group garrison assault quest out in the blackrock pits. This was a bit insane because without a healer… we kept trying to pull as though we had one and getting into trouble. After that we made a trip into the Everbloom to knock out a few of the Garrison side quests. This went significantly faster than the previous times we had been in there, in part because we ended up skipping quite a bit of trash. After that and turning in all of the side quests, we randomed a dungeon and got the Iron Docks. I had not actually done this one before on heroic, but overall it went pretty smoothly. There were a few dicey places where I was trying to play while responding to texts from my wife about outfit finds… but in any case we muddled through without issue. It was around this point that I decided to step out of the group. The actual raid off tank has not been getting in on many of the runs, and as a result could use the gear far worse than me. I figured for the good of the raid, it was best to pull him in.

In the meantime I ran off to Black Temple in the hopes of getting Illidans shield for transmoggy goodness. I was pleasantly surprised to see just how easy it is now to solo everything. At level 90 there were a few places, especially the reliquary of souls that caused issues. However I was able to straight wreck the damage reflection face without issue. In truth most of the trash was so far below me that it didn’t actually aggro. I could walk almost freely between bosses, so the entire thing went extremely quickly. On the way back out however I killed most everything because I decided the reputation gain was worth while. After that I popped over to Tempest Keep in an attempt to get the mount, and between it and a Serpentshrine Caverns run that followed collected an entire set of Tier 5 warrior gear. That was one of the tiers that I never actually had, because for the most part our raid blew up before getting through Lady Vashj. It isn’t exactly my favorite set of gear, but ANY transmoggy bits that are unique are worth having. I had a great night running old content, because I have so many memories of running the places legitimately that it just feels awesome to be able to wreck them.

A Loving Family

Today seems like it should be the culmination of my month of thankfulness, considering this is actually thanksgiving day. I was completely uncertain what I would write about until yesterday I saw a tweet from a friend on twitter. “My dad told me he will never love me as his daughter. I’m so heart broken right now.” I have always taken for granted that a loving family is just a default thing that everyone has, but I guess in truth that is not always the case. While I feel like that father is right up there with the worst human beings to every exist on the planet… I am thankful that I have a very loving family that is always ready to embrace me when I need it. I have an extremely complicated relationship with my family. I’ve never felt like any of them actually “got me” as a person, but at the same time I have never once doubted their love for me. Thanksgiving is one of those magical days where you can instantly become close to all the people you have not seen since the last Thanksgiving. That is the way it is supposed to work, and it pains me that not everyone has that sort of relationship with their kin.

My thanksgiving wish for you all is that you find the family that makes you feel warm and safe and wanted. Family is one of those amorphous things, that doesn’t directly mean blood relations. If you have a horrible genetic family, then I challenge you to branch out and go find the real family you have always been wanting it. My wife’s family for example this way of adopting complete strangers into their intimate family gatherings. Everyone is always welcome at any of the massive family shindigs, and there will always be more than enough food to feed anyone that arrives. If your biological family doesn’t love you the way a family should, then go off and make your own family out of your friends. Everyone needs a happy core to build their life around, and while I am not as close to my family as I could be… I have never questioned that they would be there for me if I needed it. For that, I am extremely blessed and extremely thankful.