U of C Indiana Jones Mystery

A short, completely unrelated to WoW post today.

One of my three alma maters happens to be the University of Chicago. Turns out the undergraduate admissions office there received an incredible package earlier this week. Quoted from their blog post"

"Yesterday we received a package addressed to “Henry Walton Jones, Jr.”. We sort-of shrugged it off and put it in our bin of mail for student workers to sort and deliver to the right faculty member— we get the wrong mail a lot.

Little did we know what we were looking at. When our student mail worker snapped out of his finals-tired haze and realized who Dr. Jones was, we were sort of in luck: this package wasn’t meant for a random professor in the Stat department. It is addressed to “Indiana” Jones.



As a huge Indiana Jones fan and U of C alum, I find this so incredibly fascinating! Another article referring to this and a couple more pics:

Read More...

Korean NPCs

My blogging activity is highly correlated with not traveling and working out of my office, hence another blog post today!

So I was tooling around Halfhill a while back when I ran across this NPC, Kim Won Gi. This Korean panda immediately caught my eye. I was like wait! He's not Chinese, he's Korean! (/insert Korean equivalent of ZOMG!)



Quick side class on Korean names... I think most folks know that Kim is a Korean last name (actually the most common Korean last name) but did you know that there are nearly 300 clans of Kims? I'm actually a Kim twice over in that my mother's maiden name is Kim as well. It used to be that Kims within the same clan could not marry, though I don't think they follow that anymore.

I'm a Gimhae Kim on one side and I forget what I am on the other side. I've often said that if someone held a gun to my head and said that I had to get a tattoo (because this is such a likely scenario that I've actually thought through...), it would be of the hanja (Chinese character) for Kim, which is 金.

Anyways, apparently this NPC Kim Won Gi was named a retired Korean starcraft player named Kim Won Ki. His ingame name is FruitDealer, hence the WoW NPC's tagline with the Fruit Dealer. He said his FruitDealer name came from the fact that his mother used to be a fruit vendor. Also the red and white shirt the NPC is wearing is similar to one of his professional team's shirts. Aren't they just so clever that Blizzard?

Now it looks like there is a second NPC named after a Korean. In the Korean version of WoW, an NPC named Eun-Choding has been named after the singer Eun Ji Won. There is no Eun-Choding in our non-Korean WoW world, but added in Patch 5.1 is Little Jiwon.



On a completely unrelated matter, I often minimize and maximize my WoW screen to fuss around on other things on my laptop whether that be vent or to lookup stuff online. This control+M used to be a very quick min max feature, but recently the game takes to completely reloading each time! It's really annoying and I'd like to go back to how it was before.

Anyone understand what I'm talking about? Is there something I can change in my settings or is this just the way it is now?

***Edit: I found a post referring to this on the forums. Its only a Mac issue and yes, they are aware of it, "Switching display modes may cause the UI to reload."

Read More...

The prodigal son/brother/dad returns?

Now there I was going about my business during one of our raids (most likely being mercilessly made fun of by the rest of my raid) when I get a whisper that made me go OMFG!!! As soon as I saw the toon's name, I knew immediately who it was. It was Adamas!

Now I've blogged before about our history with Adamas, the guy who brought me into the Left Claw and introduced me to Jess. And I think I've also mentioned that Adamas is the first guy I ever even whispered/grouped with in this game. He asked if I wanted help on a group quest in Darkshore back in February of 2007. Then not long after that he invited me into the guild and as they say, the rest is history.

So Adamas casually leveling a toon again after about three years away? Craziness! It was awesome seeing his toon officially join the Left Claw again. It's kind of like the prodigal son/brother/dad returns! Son, because all of the guildies are Jess and I's kids; brother, because Adamas grew up in this guild with Jess and I; and dad because he really brought us in the guild.

I was sharing our history with Adamas with the guild, that Adamas is the one who brought Jess and I into the guild and introduced us to each other. I think Sam's reaction was "So he brought you guys into the guild, then you guys hijacked it and took it over"? Well after 5+ years... something like that.

Adamas shared with me that the only reason he came back was because he knew Jess and I were still around. Awwww. Pretty awesome that someone who left the game 3 years ago still felt a strong enough connection to two people he played a video game with for a couple years.

I do wonder how things are from his end in the guild so far. I mean here is a guy who really was part of initially building this guild. And now the only people he knows are Jess and I. The rest of our guildies have known each other and raided together for a while now, so guild chat does have a very specific family flavor. But I'm sure with time he'll fit in just like our newest guildie Chase, our fifth grade healer (private guild joke here), has.

In other news, earlier today Jess and I were having a google chat conversation where we were trying to compare current raiding to when Cataclysm first came out. Here was the ensuing conversation:

K: Yeah, so it was BWD and geez what was the name of that other place? Our first raids when Cata came out?
Jess: Yeah those two and the air one. Twilight something. Twilight citadel? No. Sigh.
K: Wait. Twilight citadel? Mmmm.
Jess: Haha
K: Seems right but seems wrong at the same time.
Jess: Something of twilight? Bastion of twilight?
K: Oh hmmm. I think that's right.
Jess: heh. Given we can't remember these kind of things why exactly are we in charge?

My thoughts exactly.

Read More...

Left claw raiding update

We've been raiding for a couple weeks now between Vaults and HoF. Our first official kill was in Vaults though I forgot to take screenshots (though I guess I could do a screenshot reenaction). Anyways here is the first actual boss kill screenshot I've taken of this expansion, last week's kill of that first boss in Heart of Fear:



It was kind of strange how while I was semi horrible at the tornadoes with Alysrazor in Firelands, I rocked the attenuation on this boss. I was trying to describe how to successfully dodge them and I think I used phrases like "concentric circles" and "discs that spiral out from the middle". I don't think anyone understood what I was trying to say. But I was convinced I was making perfect sense!

Though hell, the attenuation wasn't as bad as the mind control in Phase 2. With two priests in our raid, we were pretty concerned about the priests' fear. Damn priests! We asked them to keep fear on cooldown so it wouldn't be up if they got mind controlled. I think this was especially critical on Phase 3.

Anyways, have you guys gotten the two new pets in Darkmoon Faire? I was there early this week and came across the Darkmoon Rabbit in the cave. I have yet to kill this rabbit and thus have no idea what its abilities are. I was curious whether we really needed a full raid to take it down. Once some guildies shared some of the rabbit's abilities with me, here was the ensuing guild conversation:

K: Oh. How can something so cute be so mean?
Nikolai: We wonder the same thing about you.
Jessika: (had the same thought)
K: ...

Thanks for all the love guys, thanks for all the love.

Read More...