You'll notice the blinds are pristine above a certain point. This has everything to do with how tall my baby is.

At the beginning of November 2008, Big Bear Butt posted a picture of his workspace. A little later, Matticus asked Kestrel to show off his work/play area and then did the same himself. Since then, some others have done the same:

• Casual WoW
• Lady Jess
• The Stoppable Force
  

In an effort hop on the bandwagon, I will do the same. Without further ado (click to enlarge:)

Some details about the picture:

• Monitor: This is a Samsung 24" 245BW from Costco. The angle of the picture makes the monitor look like it's slanted, but I assure you, that's not it's normal state.
• Computer: Off to the right is my computer, a Core 2 Duo with 4GB RAM and an 8800GT resting in an Antec Nine Hundred. It's really quite a nice case, not over the top, yet still an attention getter with all the blue fans.
• Keyboard: Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000. Far and away the best keyboard money can buy, for half the price of those stupid G15s.(I'm a programmer, what can I say?)
• Mouse: Logitech MX 518 Gaming Mouse. I use the G5 at work, and I don't like the scroll wheel. This mouse actually has a really nice scroll wheel.
• Speakers: Altec Lansing VS 2420 2.0 Speakers. Altec Lansing always has great speaker quality, and these pump out decent bass even without a subwoofer.
• Microphone: This is really just a Rock Band mic with a microphone stand. Originally I bought the stand so I could play guitar and sing at the same time in Rock Band, but I pretty much immediately started using it as a Ventrilo mic. The quality is amazing considering it's a freebie with Rock Band.
• Whiteboard: Essential. I use this to organize guild info, write down quick notes whatever I need. The drawing was colored by my nephew. Current info on the board: Planning Recruit-a-Friend pairs with the wife.
• On the wall: There's a map for Zelda: Twilight Princess from the Collector's Edition Strategy Guide for the Wii. Right below that is a push pin holding three things: a badge from an anime convention from three years ago, my Blizzard Authenticator, and a Footsteps of Illidan card that I won from the Twisted Nether Blogcast.
• On the screen: I run WoW windowed, but covering most of the screen. I used to run full screen, but I like it better this way. I can see vent without having to alt-tab or have another screen, and I can adjust WoW to whatever size suits the situation. I run Spartan UI and in the photo, I am sitting in between trash pulls on my way to farm Anzu.

All in all, I think my overall setup is a little simpler than most. But it's easy to maintain. I invite any blogger who hasn't already to show off where they play, and please post a link in the comments!

Maybe I'll be on that blogcast someday...

I'm listening to the Twisted Nether blogcast right now, and I thought I would provide an update about my computer.

It seems that for some reason, the first sector of my main boot disk was marked as a Unix storage disk. This made it impossible for the boot loader to find Windows for some reason. Also, the only way to fix it is to either a) hand edit the boot sector with a special tool or b) perform a low-level format to the disk. Guess what I did?

I got a new hard drive and installed Windows on that. I left the old one as it was, but I plan on backing it up and hopefully restoring the old disk with all my settings. I am good to go for leveling, so that will probably take top priority for now :).

So expect me to say I dinged 74 tomorrow. I'm already pretty far behind some of the one-character people in my guild. It makes me worry about when to start raiding, but from what I can tell, it would be as soon as we have 10 80s in the appropriate slots.

Possibly the most malicious software on the planet. (some exaggeration implied)

Apparently the bootsect.exe is not strong enough to eliminate the contagion that is GRUB. And from what I'm told, doing a flat out reinstall of Windows won't do it either. Neither will any amount of Abolish Poison or Remove Curse. No, I have to boot into Linux again and tell GRUB to GTFO from there. You'd think that with such an open philosophy, Linux would make it easy to switch back to Windows should the desire arise. Well, they don't. They have this certain expectation that their product is better (and maybe it is, but it isn't more useful, not for me.) This expectation that "once you Ubuntu, you'll never adieu." Well they're wrong! And their accursed partition-level boot loader is holding my computer hostage until I can exorcise it from my hard drive.

I like the idea of Linux. Some of the implementation details are screwy though. More on WoW when I can purge my computer of the infection that is GRUB.

Tenacity pets are overrated as tanks, apparently.

After some unsuccessful questing the hour after release, I logged on after work yesterday with about half a bar toward 71 and little rested experience. I finished about four hours later with about 5 and a half bars toward 72. I'm not the farthest along in my guild, but I am trying to get there at a reasonable pace. If I didn't go to work today, I could be the first Druid on my server to 80 (Yeah, we're kinda slow.) Last I looked the highest character on the server is a 74 Mage.

There's already at least one 80 in Europe. Crazy people over there.

I did actually consider skipping work to try to be the first Druid on my server to 80, but after they got rid of the titles, there's no real reason to do so, other than the pressure of getting two other characters to 80 and raid ready as soon as possible.

Also, I did decline a guild run to the Nexus, which I think was a mistake, but I hadn't gotten any quests for the instance yet and I wanted to wait until I did. The group fell apart because the closest thing they had to a tank was an underlevel Gorilladin. Next time I get asked, I'm going.

I got off WoW at about 11:00, but I stayed up to 4:30 building my new home theater PC. I decided to go with Ubuntu and MythTV, rather than a Windows-based solution. The problem was that I couldn't get Ubuntu to work properly, kept getting "Failed to initialize HAL!" Eventually I decided to put Windows on, but that REALLY didn't work out. Apparently XP Media Center needs to be activated before you log on the first time, but Windows can't interface with the PC's ethernet port without installing the drivers. Back to Ubuntu. I fell asleep during the install, but I finished it all up after waking up this morning. No HAL errors anymore! Before I left for work, I set it to download updates and drivers.

That covers my night pretty well, so I'll leave it at that. I plan on hitting 72 tonight, running an instance, and getting my home theater properly configured. I don't watch cable, so the PC is pretty much there as an HD input for my TV (it's running DVI to an HDMI port on the TV.) It was pretty cheap to put together. If you have an HDTV and no sources of HD input yet (maybe you just upgraded your TV,) consider building (not buying) your own home theater solution. It's well worth it.

Out to Lunch

I would have a real post here (trying to write every weekday!) but work was busy today and I am busy upgrading my wife's computer and my computer to 3Ghz Core 2 Duos.

Ta ta!