Top 5 Lists – Stay With Me, Go Places

Last Night I Dreamed I Returned To Azeroth

Posted on 4 January, 2024 by Ridley

I like lists. I’m a sucker for lists. So…we’re gonna do more lists. Last night, for some reason, I fell asleep thinking of World of Warcraft. Specifically, I was thinking of my favorite raid fights. WoW isn’t like Final Fantasy XIV, which is about story and characters. WoW is all about game play and it’s something that they did very well. They may still do it well, but it’s been a decade or so since I’ve played, so keep that in mind. I played the original game through the first four expansions (up through Mists of Pandaria), so there may be better fights in the more recent expansions, but I can only go with what I know. First, a few honorable mentions:Opera Hall (Karazhan) A very silly, chaotic fight in one of the best raids in the game. Be sure to pay attention to the dialog between the NPCs. Onyxia (Onyxia’s Lair) Like most fights, this was impossible until suddenly it wasn’t. Onyxia was a one-boss raid, but it was very well balanced and a lot of fun when you did it right. Or when you failed spectacularly. Valithria Dreamwalker (Icecrown Citadel) An unusual healer-focused fight where you don’t kill the boss, you heal the captive dragon. Way better than the final fight against Arthas IMO. Thorim (Ulduar) Another candidate for best raid in the game, Thorim was the most interesting fight in the raid. It was a split-the-party fight and I am a sucker for those. C’Thun (Ahn Qhiraj) The first of the Lovecraftian final bosses, this was a deeply unfair fight but I had to admit it was different an interesting.Here are the five that I remember most fondly from my time playing. Gothick The Harvester (Naxxramas, Vanilla/Wrath of the Lich King) Naxxramas was a weird one. It was originally released as part of the original game but then withdrawn when the first expansion came out, and then re-released in the second expansion. I know this post is about individual fights and not entire raids, but Naxx was probably my favourite raid. It had 15 boss fights, and they were all good. Each one of them was memorable and they all felt like challenging but fair fights. The Gothick fight probably had the most interesting mechanics. The raid was split into two separate rooms. The first group had to fight wave after wave of opponents and then Gothick, being a necomancer, would turn the corpses into undead in the other room. They monsters were slightly easier as living creatures, which mean you could kill them faster, which in turn meant you could wind up overwhelming the second group. Once the minions had been dispatched, Gothick himself would join the fray and zip between the two sides and make life miserable until the barrier between the two rooms fell and you could clobber him. It was in some ways the most typical of Naxxramas fights in that, if you just beat on the boss without considering other things, you were doomed. You had to coordinate 40 (vanilla)/25 (WotLK) people in a fairly delicate dance to keep either side from getting buried, and it was immensely satisfying to finally beat. Garrosh Hellscream (Siege of Orgrimmar, Mists of Pandaria) OK, I’ll be honest, it’s not that great a fight. It’s incredibly busy and very punishing, but it’s not really fun. I suppose it’s an appropriate end to an expansion, but it’s not really as interesting as, say, Illidan Stormrage in the Black Temple. However, it was a personal grudge match for me. The writers did a fantastic job of really pissing me off and wanting to kill Garrosh. You see, I played a Tauran shaman (Taurans being huge bull-people, like minotaurs but goofier). Garrosh killed the Tauren lead, Cairne Bloodhoof,, in a duel. It was probably an accident as someone poisoned his blade, but the thing about Garrosh was the he was exactly the kind of guy who never should have been made warchief of the horde. It was in-character for him to kill allied leaders because that’s just the kind of guy he was. Plus, he created an order of “dark shaman” which, speaking as a shaman…”dark shaman” is not a thing. It’s like being an “anti-druid” and going around killing every plant you find because you’re just that evil. His “dark shaman” were abominations and their existence got under my skin more than it should have. So, for the raid, I transmogrified my gear into the traditional shaman starter kit look and when we finally took Garrosh down, I had a four-macro speech I recited over his body decrying everything he’d done. My guild thought there was something wrong with me, which was very perceptive on their part. Anyway, it felt good to kill him even if it wasn’t the greatest fight. Spine of Deathwing (Cataclysm, Dragon Soul) To be fair, this one may not have been the greatest fight, but it was a good one. The raid takes place on the back of a dragon. The dragon is too heavily armored to harm, so your job is to remove some scales from its back to allow a giant weapon to fire on it and presumably kill it (“presumably” because it doesn’t quite work). There are several damage gates where you have to do X amount of damage in Y time or you’re boned. It’s also a movement fight. The trick is that you don’t want too many people on one side or the other of the dragon’s back, or it will roll in that direction and throw you off. You are ALWAYS moving. Which is great fun for everyone except shaman. We had no instant cast heals at the time, so my ability to do anything useful was very, very limited. We tried over and over and over and kept failing and, to be honest, it was my fault. Sean’s druid and Jenn’s paladin (I think Sol was gone by this point) could heal just fine, but I was useless. Finally, we tried something a little weird. Instead of focusing on healing, I would be their battery. I would keep their mana topped off so they could cast more and heavier heals. Weirdly enough, this wound up working. I always built my character for mana regen anyway and that included maximizing the regen…

Believe The Hype: Five Things That Were As Good As Advertised

Posted on 18 June, 202318 June, 2023 by Ridley

If you’re anything like me, you may have a deep resistance to anything that has received a little too much hype. “You’d love this! It’s just your sort of thing! It’s a classic!” and so forth. Perhaps it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, but it’s been my experience that most things that have been pumped up that much will disappoint. It’s all about managing expectations. Side note: I think this is the genius of Mike Myers movies. The previews are among the most leaden advertisements I’ve ever seen for comedy films. However, I usually find myself enjoying his movies to some degree, and I suspect this is due to the fact that my expectations were so low. There are exceptions. So, in the interest of positivity, I thought I’d share some of the things I was told I would love and I did, in fact, wind up loving them. Watchmen (comic book) Along with Frank Miller and Klaus Jansen’s The Dark Knight Returns, this Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons book was immediately recognized as an event that would change comics forever. I was primarily reading funny indy comics like Flaming Carrot Comics, The Trouble with Girls, Normalman, and The Tick at the time and had no interest in checking out a (relatively) mainstream book featuring characters I’d never heard of. I don’t remember why Sean suggested I read it (probably because he’d just introduced me to the Grant Morrison run on Doom Patrol and I was suddenly very into this sort of thing), but I plopped down and read them all back to back. Given the density of the writing and the long prose sections, this took a while. Then I read ’em again because…oh my. It’s unfortunate that Watchmen really did change comics because the approach of treating the heroes not as selfless do-gooders or mustache-twirling villains was unique. The “heroes” were just people, which was much worse. The deconstruction of the idea of “hero” was so complete that comics didn’t really recover it until Morrison’s All-Star Superman. OK, so it was influential, but was it good? Yeah, it was riveting. If you can get past the trademark Moore rape scene (don’t care if that gets spoiled), it’s a fantastic mystery/thriller from page one and, more than any other book, works as a “graphic novel” in that it is a completely realized story over a limited number of issues. It was every bit as good as advertised. Portal (video game) I never played any of the Half-Life games, so I was only vaguely aware that this existed when it was released. But, on the forums, you couldn’t get away from it. Imagine the worst of the Monty Python and Rick and Morty fans tossing references back and forth and you’re still nowhere near it. “Instantly meme-able” is great for pop culture awareness, but was the game as good as the quotes? According to literally everyone, the answer was “yes.” So, I looked into it a little. It was a nice short game with lots of interesting physics puzzles based around the idea of pairs of portals that allow you to step through one and emerge through the other while conserving momentum. It’s just you and perhaps the most deeply unreliable narrator in the history of narration, trying to complete a series of tests. Neat! And then, you complete the last one and…well, there’s more and that’s all I’m going to say. The puzzles start simple and turn diabolic as the game goes on. The sense of humor makes “dark” look like a Sanrio character. And holy cow, the end credits. Anyway, Yahtzee Crenshaw of Zero Punctuation, who rather famously hates everything, reviewed it and wound up with rather strong feelings about it: I’d heard it was good. I honestly think it’s the best game I’ve ever played. The Good Place (television) I don’t watch a lot of broadcast TV and haven’t for a long time. That’s not a statement meant to convey any superiority; I engage in plenty of screen entertainment but it’s just not normally network television. So, I hadn’t seen any of the ads for The Good Place when I started hearing about how I very much needed to watch it. Nicole bought season one on one of the streaming services and we plopped down for the pilot. My first reaction was “how the #$%%^ did this get made?” The setup was so far from any sitcom I’ve seen before or since, and it was pretty irreverent for a network show. Kristen Bell and Ted Danson were obviously having a blast doing setting the stage for what was an absolutely genius twist at the end of the pilot. So, now we have a mystery that’s also a screwball comedy with additional random silliness flying everywhere because, with this tableau, you can do pretty much anything you want. Season one was all about trying to figure out what the heck had happened and the payoff is absolutely stunning. In fact, it was so perfect that I haven’t watched seasons 2-4. This is partially due to what we’ll call “the Arrested Development effect” and partially down to just how complete and self-contained season one was. It didn’t need any expansion. My understanding is that they do stick the landing in season 4 and I’m sure I’ll get around to it at some point, but for now, I’m just going to bask in the memory of one perfect season of television. The Matrix (film) This was always in my wheelhouse. There was no way I wasn’t going to see it. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t absolutely sick to death of people telling me how awesome it was. It would “change my whole view of reality,” said people who hadn’t read Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles. It was dark! It was cool! It had martial arts, gunplay, leather, sunglasses, hacking, and something approaching a philosophy. It had HUGO WEAVING DOING A CARL SAGAN IMPRESSION! Yes, I recognize that the whole world was built on one of the most ridiculous ideas you could possibly imagine. Let’s move past that, please. Thus, I had an awful lot of built-in resistance when I finally went to see it. All of which crumbled in the first ten minutes. Everything I’d been told was right, but what they hadn’t conveyed was just how tight…

Five Blogs and Newsletters

Posted on 17 March, 20187 June, 2022 by Ridley

This might be a silly one, but I was reading one of the blogs I follow this morning and it struck my just how much better this site was than most of the ones I follow. So, we’re going to pretend like RSS is now limited to no more than five feeds. Who do I follow? Read on! 1. The Dish by Keith Law – Law is best known as “the only reason baseball fans maintain a paid subscription to the ESPN web site,” but his range of interests is impressive and match mine almost perfectly. He doesn’t write about baseball on his blog; instead, he writes about food (both cooking and dining), board games, music*, movies, and books. He’s a prolific reader so there are are book reviews a-plenty. Most every Saturday, he adds a list of links to important and interesting stories from the previous week. If I had to stick to one blog, this would be it. 2. Morning.Computer by Warren Ellis – Following Ellis can be a bit of an adventure as he moves around a lot. He has some sort of presence on most platforms, but his activity varies widely. Wherever he is, he’s worth following. He’s best known as a comic book writer (possibly the best comic book writer), but he’s written novels and he does an odd bit of lecturing on The Future as well. All of this is fascinating, but he’s also the best book reviewer I’ve ever encountered. He writes about books in a way that makes you want to read them. The frustrating thing is that he often writes about books that haven’t yet been released in the U.S. (and sometimes never are), but that’s part of the fun. 3. jwz by James Zawinski – Computer programmer (Mozilla, Netscape, etc.), and owner of the DNA Lounge nightclub in San Francisco. The subject matter ranges from music, current events, and questions regarding technical issues he doesn’t want to spend too much more time trying to solve himself. His takes are invariably interesting, well-considered, and extremely direct. 4. Charlie’s Diary by Charlie Stross – This blog is all about the longreads, and, unusually, the comment section. Stross will post an extremely detailed hypothetical and ask for reactions and for people to poke holes in it and it makes for fascinating reading. He doesn’t half-ass anything, so by the time he posts, it’s well worth reading, and his readership is up to the task. He gets political from time to time, with some of the best takes on Brexit I’ve read. 5. Whatever by John Scalzi – Considerably breezier than Stross, Scalzi treats his blog more as a diary so there are many shorter, personal posts on it. It’s very much like following a personal friend, albeit one who is the target of some weirdly obsessed white supremacists. Not the best blog for information, but always an enjoyable read and goodness knows we need some of those. I’d love to put Bree Newsome on here, but she doesn’t blog. Twitter seems to be her primary outlet and I have a column in my Tweetdeck devoted to her just to make sure I don’t miss anything. Gail Simone is another who is an absolute gold mine on Twitter, but she doesn’t seem to have an outlet elsewhere. This makes me think that blogging and RSS feeds are increasingly the province of the last generation and I’m dating myself by maintaining one. Ah well, I can live with that. Based on the recent protests against gun violence, I get the sense the next group of adults have their shit together better than my contemporaries. * Bonus points for his list of top singles from the 2000s featuring Gorillaz “19-2000” (Soulchild Remix) which was also my selection.

Five companies I won’t do business with

Posted on 21 December, 20177 June, 2022 by Ridley

I’m feeling grumpy this morning, so this is a good list to tackle today. 1. Uber If there’s a poster child for everything that is wrong with startup culture, it has to be Uber, doesn’t it? Their CEO was a garbage truck of a man who referred to this company as “Boober” because, well, use your imagination. Surprisingly, their corporate culture is sexist as hell. They don’t pay their drivers. They evade regulators by booking them to phantom cars. They try to bully cities into providing them special exemptions from regulations so they will have a competitive advantage over cabs, and when they fail, they leave the cities and claim to have been “forced” out. They’re a terrible, terrible company and, frankly, I’d rather walk than use Uber. 2. Hobby Lobby Hobby Lobby went to the Supreme Court to fight for their right not to provide mandated birth control coverage for their employees, based on their strong religious convictions. Hobby Lobby invests in birth control due to their much stronger conviction in making bags of money. I’ve seldom felt less welcome in a store, so I’ll do them the favor of avoiding their business. 3. Chick-fil-A You probably all know this one. 4. Papa John’s Even if there weren’t a dozen better options for cheap pizza delivery, Papa John’s has a terrible record on employee benefits and wages. Papa John himself blames his company’s poor sales on…protests against police killing black people. Even if they sold a decent pie, no thank you. 5. Urban Outfitters I’m not exactly in their core demographic anymore, but they still belong on this list. The big problem with Urban Outfitters is that they shamelessly rip off their designs from individuals. Screw them. I’ll buy the same thing on Etsy, even if its more expensive. Bonus: Walmart (sort of) I bet you expected to see Walmart on this list, didn’t you? I don’t like shopping there, but in extreme situations, I will. I hate their business model, I hate what they do to local business, there is no shopping experience that’s less pleasant, and they have a history of abusing the living daylights out of their employees. But…they actually pay their employees better than many retailers now. I don’t like doing business with them, but there are cases in which I will.

Five holiday songs that don’t drive me nuts

Posted on 29 November, 20177 June, 2022 by Ridley

Let me preface this by saying I worked in records stores for five holiday seasons. “Burned out” doesn’t begin to describe it. Nonetheless, there are a few that still give me happy feels even after hearing them a few hundred gazillion times. 1. “A Snowflake Fell (and it Felt Like a Kiss)” – Glasvegas One of those “the next big thing bands that wasn’t” (and that’s a long, long list, isn’t?), Glasvegas borrowed liberally from the best of the Jesus and Mary Chain. This is a vaguely holiday-ish song that’s much prettier than it had any business being (especially since it was released on the same EP as “Fuck You, It’s Over.”) 2. “2000 Miles” – The Pretenders Even though I’m an 80s person, I was never much of a Pretenders fan. This song, though, stands head and shoulders above most holiday offerings. It’s catchy and it isn’t cloying. Faint praise, maybe, but it has never made me cringe and that can be said of very few holiday songs. 3. “Christmas in Hollis” – Run-DMC Fun holiday songs are the worst. The forced frivolity is magnified to unbearable levels during the holidays, but if anyone can pull it if, it’s Run-DMC. It’s miles from their best work, but I always grin when I hear it. It’s the antithesis of Paul McCartney’s song-that-will-not-be-named-here. 4. “Just Like Christmas” – Low I like their sound, ok? Most of my Christmases growing up were spent in Kansas and this song makes me think of cold winds on prairies even though its not about that at all. 5. December (entire album) – George Winston Solo piano versions of standards sounds about as trite as it gets, but this album is THE gold standard for holiday records in my opinion. When we’d play it in-store at the record store, we’d sell out of it every time. Utterly sentimental and absolutely timeless.

Five things for which I’m thankful this year

Posted on 24 November, 20177 June, 2022 by Ridley

1. Nicole – I mean, obviously, but still, I don’t think I can express how much joy she brings into my life. Even my old invisible friends weren’t so closely attuned to my peculiar wavelength. She’s also a good deal more beautiful than my imaginary friends. Turns out, she’s better than I could ever have imagined, and I’ll do everything within my considerable power to make sure she never has to doubt how much I love her. Oh, and we can cook together. Never underestimate the importance of being able to share a kitchen. 2. My family – Again, this seems like a given, but I’m constantly amazed by how fortunate I am in this regard. My parents, my aunts, my cousins, and most especially my sisters have given me so much, so much more than I was aware of growing up, that I simply wouldn’t be who and what I am today without them. 3. My friends – The ones nearby, the ones who are distant, and even (though you’ll seldom hear me admit it) the people I get to work with. You know who you are. Yes, you. Thank you. 4. The pets – The cats, Tricksie, Winjamin Failclaw, Red Velvet (sorta) and the snails, Dazzle, McKenzie, and the Professor. When I first moved to Austin and I was flying solo, one of the worst things was coming home from work in the dark, opening the front door, and being greeted with silence. Of course, I don’t have the problem now, but having a menagerie like this make the home so much home-ier. 5. The RNG of life -I have it pretty damned good. I worked hard, and I’m pretty bright, but neither of those things guarantee anything. I’ve had opportunities and I’ve dodged some bullets and I’ve had a whole lot of help. My life is good and which is pretty much all I can ask. My grandmother always said she’d rather be lucky than good (she was both, at least when she was playing poker) and I think she was on to something.