Blaugust

Petulence

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World Go Boom

For the last several nights there has apparently been a shit storm happening on the Blizzard network, or more likely the networks they use as a backhaul.  The frustrating thing about a DDoS attack is that at least on some level, if it is a large enough one there isn’t a whole lot you can do other than triage.  Most successful attacks don’t actually target the servers of company, but instead the connections just upstream of the data center.  If you can somehow manage to get that provider to start blocking the ip ranges that are attacking you… and most of the time they are not nice clean IP ranges, but instead random rootkit/malware infected bot machines…  the attack often times moves upstream again making the effect inconvenience even more companies.  The real problem in this whole situation is that bot networks are dirt cheap to use, because virus infections of all those folks who only use the internet for “the facebooks” are prevalent.  The rumor has it that this particular bot attack is spawned by some of the players who were recently banned from Overwatch for hacks and cheats.  Now as is shockingly commonly the way among spoiled internet brats, they are throwing a massive tantrum in the form of an attack directed at Blizzard and their customers.

Now for the most part the last couple of nights have been chill for me personally.  It seemed as though initially so long as you were not running raid content and as a result switching server clusters… you really didn’t encounter much issue.  I for example happily leveled my way through Pandaria, and it was not until about 8pm last night that I started to encounter issues.  I have to admit it was a little nostalgic seeing the “World Server is Down” message, because it had been so long since that was a regular occurrence on the Argent Dawn server.  Because we were the first Role-playing server sorted alphabetically in the list, we became the target of a lot of protests and down right petulance from players simply wanting to wreck our fun time.  More often than not it was spawned by a similar set of spoiled internet brats, namely in the form of players on the PVP server Blackrock.  Any time their server would go down they would come over and flood our server with level 1 Gnomes “protesting” and as a result bringing our server down as well.  Those same players would likely be the type that are currently DDoSing the network, but back then that sort of attack was not really possible.  I am sure there were plenty of otherwise good people who got swept up in the madness, just like what happened during the “warrior protests” that also targeted our server.  However the bulk were likely simply lashing out at the “lol arpee” server because we made an easy target.

Storming Draenor

Petulence

The servers however eventually recovered and as a result I was able to say goodbye to Pandaria and move on towards Draenor.  I spent a silly amount of gold last night upgrading all of the caster heirlooms I have to level 100, so that I could use them on my Warlock, Mage and Priest… all of which have yet to push through to level 100.  It seemed like gold well spent given that I would likely be playing all of them shortly.  In the grand scheme of things, percentage wise it was not that big of a hit to the total amount of cash that I had laying around.  Additionally questing through the Draenor content is going to make back a good chunk of it given that I will be selling my gear instead of wearing it.  If I find myself desperate for money there are lots of characters that I have not touched tons of quest content on.  In any case I picked up Grimoire of Supremacy that lets me swap my Felguard for a permanent Infernal which seems pretty awesome.  I think running around with an infernal is the ultimate player fantasy for a lot of folks that end up going Demonology, and I remember how much fun it was when I helped my friends complete that quest in Felwood to get their first.   The only negative is… that it seems to have removed my ability to summon these various demons as their short term “fire totem” like variety that was a decent dps boost.  I have a feeling that while fun for running around, that I might eventually swap back to using one of the other talents.  I managed to stay awake long enough to get through the Tanaan Jungle intro quest, and am now in the process of setting up my garrison.  I am hoping that tonight I can make a serious dent in the leveling process, and maybe move into Gorgrond.  Mostly I am making the big push, because I know that Friday night will begin another Diablo 3 season, and I will begin switching time with that game.

Thalen Reads The Rhesus Chart #Blaugust2016

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Don't be silly Bob. Everybody knows vampires don't exist - Dominique O'Brien
Today, we're going to catch up with a review of a book that I read most of a year ago, but wanted to talk about here. Let's check out The Rhesus Chart by Charles Stross.


For this one, we're going to need to lay down a little ground work as it is the 5th book in a series which started in 2004. A lot has happened over those years which I'm not going to go super deep into, but I at least want to talk about the setting and the state of the world and the main character when this book starts.

Charles Stross, for those not aware, is the gentleman who created the Dungeons & Dragons monsters known as the slaadi. These frog-like devotees of true chaos would not be terribly out of place in the Laundry Files, which are set in a world mostly identical to our own apart from the fact that magic exists as a branch of applied mathematics. The protagonist, Bob Howard, is a computer scientist who was recruited into the British organization (The Laundry) that deals with the supernatural after his master's thesis "nearly summoned up an undead alien god in Wolverhamption."  Many of the supernatural beings of myth exist, though often in a form rather different (and more disturbing) than popularly imagined.

Over the years Bob has faced zombies, unicorns, Santa Claus, an evangelical church dedicated to resurrecting a being from beyond, and more. He works under a manager who is in fact a being called the Eater of Souls summoned into human form. His wife also works within the Laundry as a "combat epistemologist" and violinist with a company-provided instrument with utterly terrifying offensive capabilities.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend reading The Rhesus Chart on its own; a lot of what makes this series work so well is seeing Bob develop over time from a fairly typical IT guy in a government bureaucracy into a guy who's seen and done some terrifying things (and is now middle management in a government bureaucracy). In many cases dealing with that bureaucracy is more challenging than the explicitly supernatural aspects of the series and is what grounds the series solidly in the real world. This is a setting where, after facing and driving off a horror from beyond, Bob then has to justify the expenses incurred in doing so to his manager.  That said, the important stuff is explained as you go, so you don't have to know anything from the previous books to pick this one up.

This is also a series not afraid to get very dark. Bob has seen some shit over the years, and in the background since the first book is the specter of CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN. As technology advances and Earth's population increases magic becomes easier to perform, on purpose or entirely by accident. Eventually, a critical point will be reached and the stars will come right. It can't be stopped, only prepared for. Quite a lot of Bob's development over the series has come with more knowledge of what the world's governments are doing to try to be prepared and it is, in Stross's own words, 'deeply scary'.

So why, with all of the other strange things that the Laundry has dealt with over the years, is everyone so adamant that vampires don't exist? Especially since, as we quickly discover, they do. Vampirism spreads via a fractal data visualization rather than a bite in this case, but the effects are pretty much what we're used to: burned by sunlight, craving for blood, increased strength, mind control abilities, and so forth. And a group of bank IT professionals have contracted it.

From there, Bob becomes involved thanks to a decision on the part of the Laundry's management that the organization needs to get creative and innovative by imitating Google's 20 percent time, but with vetted projects and without any working hours allocated to it. Bob's chosen project is to develop a data mining system to prove that vampires don't exist. Instead, it turns up a rash of odd deaths that lead straight to the aforementioned newly minted vampires, one of whom is in fact his ex-girlfriend from many years back. If this seems to be a very unlikely coincidence, there's a reason for that.

Part of the reason nobody believes vampires exist is because vampires are both extremely territorial and very serious about remaining hidden from the rest of the world. Think the Masquerade, but instead of vampires poncing around being Princes and Sheriffs and such, they murder each other at the earliest convenience. Bob has been drawn into a complicated conflict between a pair of very old vampires which is finally coming to a head.

As I said before, I recommend starting at the beginning with The Atrocity Archives and working your way through the series to get to this book, but if you like urban fantasy and want to see a more British and more Cthulhoid take on it than, say, the Dresden Files, this is definitely a book worth checking out.

Rubber Band Thief

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A Game of Fetch

Rubber Band Thief

This is Kenzie and she is a mess.  I am not sure how else to describe her, because she is unlike any other cat we have shared a home with.  She can be the biggest butt ever, and a bit of a bully to the other cats…  but she can also be the sweetest and most adorable animal you have ever seen.  She sort of vacillates between being an angel and a devil sometimes within the same moment.  She likes to help with the laundry… and as you can see here sometimes crawl under the upturned laundry basket.  She also gets super obsessive about certain things… for example I really like Red Velvet Muffins from QuikTrip…  and apparently so does she.  I can wrap up one of the muffin wrappers in several layers and she will go spelunking through the trash can in search of it.  When she finally gets it… it is not like she eats it but more certainly rips it to shreds.  Another similar obsession is twist ties and rubber bands.  We go to the cleaners fairly often and for whatever reason they like to rubber band together sets of wire hangers.  I am not sure exactly when it happened but Kenzie started stealing these rubber bands from the closet and running off with them.  In fact our living room and bedroom are filled with little caches of rubber bands that she mysteriously “loses” and can then summon up at pretty much any moment when she wants one.  I have a feeling if we ever moved out the couch there would be a sea of rubber bands and twist ties laying back there waiting to be rediscovered.

Over time this obsession started to morph and I am not completely sure when it started.  Instead of just playing with the rubber band she started returning back to wherever we were at and dropping it next to us.  When she first did this I decided to go ahead and toss it away again and see what she would do, and from there…  a new game was born.  We have a cat that plays fetch, in the truest sense of the word.  She will bring us something… and want us to toss it… and then she brings it back and we do this over and over until she gets tired of it.  When that happens one of two things will happen… either she will “lose it” and by lose I mean know exactly where it is at all times but decide to stop returning it.  Either that or she will just lay down beside me ON the object and want attention.  This second cessation of fetch generally means that she just wants a break and will resume fetch in a little bit when she starts nudging the object again.  So as a result the highlight of my evening was more or less spending an hour and some change playing fetch with Kenzie, quite possibly the longest running game yet.  It was extremely important because my wife was in the bedroom with the doors shut off attempting to bond with Luna, someone I have not really introduced you to yet.  As a result I am trying to be elsewhere so that both Kenzie and Allie have a stable and friendly source of attention, and as a result while I tired of the fetch thing about thirty minutes into it… and while my reaction time slowed significantly as I tried to level my Warlock…  I kept at it because I knew Kenzie needed someone constantly paying attention to her.

Pandaria Is Maddening

Rubber Band Thief

As far as the gaming I was doing while playing fetch …  I continued to push my Dwarf Warlock up through the levels.  At this point I am sitting at 88 and somewhere in the Townlong Steppes quest chain.  I said that Pandaria was maddening and that is mostly because we are in this awkward transitional period of time… where you cannot actually purchase the flight book off the black market auction house.  That means you can level an alt and have it fly happily from level 60 until 85… then have this awkward block of 85-90 where you cannot fly, and pick up once again in the 90-100 content.  This is a prime example of one of my complaints with World of Warcraft content, in that often times they seem not to take into account the ramifications of changes.  Removing the Black Market Auction House until legion… also probably unintentionally blocked players from being able to purchase the level 85 book for flying.  The easy fix would have been to simply change the level you can purchase Pandaria Flight from the trainer in the Shrine to 85, and do away with the book.  However instead I am stuck in this limbo as I try to level a new army of alts to the current level cap of 100.  I realize that I could always purchase boosts to 100 and be done with it… but even though I am taking every shortcut possible, I still enjoy the act of leveling and questing.  The mob density in Pandaria just makes that whole process a bit of a slog.

The one thing I am super thankful of however is that while each individual zone is a fairly linear process… they have added quests that unlock zones rather than having to quest your way through one to get to the next.  That way when you ding a level you can check the Adventure Guide to get the quest to move on to the next area.  This admittedly really speeds up the leveling process, and while I once had this ideal path through Pandaria that mostly still works…  it is sped up by no longer needing to clear to a specific quest to unlock the next area.  My next big decision however is what to do when I ding 90, and if I want to spend the gold to upgrade my caster heirlooms from 90 to 100.  I am highly considering it given that I have two more cloth wearers that have yet to hit 100, so it is not like they won’t see a lot of use in the coming months.  Essentially where I am standing on the whole leveling game is that I have my Priest, Mage and Monk that will be sub 100 now that I am zeroing in on getting that Warlock up there.  At some point once I get some gear at level 100 I will probably take a lengthy break to finish farming up the remaining cloth that I need to push my tailoring up to a reasonable place for Legion.  As to why I am suddenly motivated to play all of these alts…  I guess in theory it is because I am constantly seeing new appearance items and creating a stable of appearance farmers for the various armor types.  Prior to the Warlock I did not really have a cloth wearer that I enjoyed playing… and as a result don’t have much in the way of cloth appearance gear.  After all… the true end game is looking awesome.

WoW 7.0 Highs and Lows: Costumes and Choices

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Alright, we’ve had a bit of time to adjust to the giant pile of changes introduced in WoW’s pre-expansion patch, time to figure out how to feel about it. I’m finally ready to look past the strange newness and shocking lack of buttons on my bars. Time to share some thoughts!

WoW 7.0 Highs and Lows: Costumes and Choices

Transmog

This was the first order of business for me when the patch launched. I spent essentially 2 full days of my normal playtime just going through all my characters and unlocking appearances. For some folks this would be a simple matter of logging in to each alt and then getting on with life, but some of us with fashion mania had bags and banks and entire guild banks full of greens and various salvaged items that needed to be equipped to learn each appearance. I am very very happy that this is over now. I’ve gone through and made new outfits for about half of my characters now, and looking forward to working my way through the rest of them.

Unlocking transmog across all characters, and clearing out all that bank space has been amazing. I still have major complaints about this system, though. The requirement that you have to be able to equip the item and it has to be the highest armor your class can wear is infuriating. I have a very small amount of sympathy for folks who think a mage wearing plate is immersion breaking, but in a game with so much nonsense and so many silly pop culture references I don’t really think that argument holds much water. Let me wear whatever I want. At a minimum let me learn any appearances I find, no matter what armor class, so I don’t have to rerun old dungeons and raids on 11 different classes every week. Finally, having the transmog window available any time is pretty nice, but it feels useless and annoying since I still have to go find the ethereals to actually change anything.

Options and Addons

Speaking of tracking down the ethereals, let me tell you how much I hate that they moved the option to hide helm and cloak from your interface options to the transmog vendor. I hate it a lot. It seems like such a small thing, but it directly affects how I relate to my character. Also, under the old system I could just set that option and forget it. Under the new system, every time I get a new hat or cloak I have to go transmog it again. On the flip side, I do love that you can hide shoulders now too. Just please let me set this as an option, or let me change my transmog from the collections window instead of having to track down a vendor or buy a silly expensive mount.

There are of course other changes that don’t relate to fashion. The new graphics look nice overall. The longer draw distance is pretty sweet. I am, however, firmly in the camp that is unhappy about the changes to max camera distance, but since I am not worried about hardcore raiding anymore and it doesn’t make me feel nauseous I’m trying not to get too worked up. This seems in line with the overall design approach of this patch, which seems to be all about removing choices and streamlining everything into a perfectly smooth, featureless shape that still vaguely resembles World of Warcraft. Sometimes the effect is pleasing, but sometimes I end up in a frothy rage because things like bag sorting options have been removed from the interface and relegated to the dominion of addons. I am having trouble wrapping my head around how you can remove features and call something an upgrade.

Bottom line: the shiny new stuff is pretty great, but the annoyances are still annoying after a few weeks. Here’s hoping I eventually adjust. I want to go into Legion excited about the new story and content, not still sore over things broken and taken away.


WoW 7.0 Highs and Lows: Costumes and Choices