Season 8 of Arena:  As most of you who PvP know, once a new season opens, the last season’s gear becomes available for sale without requiring Arena Rating.  This is good for those of us who like to PvP in battlegrounds, but don’t do arena much.   There’s controversy though about it.  Some say it’s “welfare epics”.  You know what, screw that.  I still work hard for those honor points to buy the gear.  I’m not a raider,  I am casual.  I rarely do dungeons.  I don’t have time to raid every night like some do.  I enjoy the battlegrounds, and so the gear I can get is a good reward for all the time I do put into BG.

Icecrown Citadel:  Recently I did do a random dungeon and landed in Forge of Souls, and had a lot of fun.  I’m really going to try this year to do more dungeons and maybe even some raids.  Now that the final wing of ICC is open maybe I will start doing more randoms and see what happens.  I need to gear up though.

Buffs and nerfs: Lots there, I’ll let you read the notes about that.

The official patch notes are as follows:

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- World of Warcraft Client Patch 3.3.2
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The latest test realm patch notes can always be found at

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

The latest patch notes can always be found at

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/

Dungeons & Raids

-  Halls of Stone
Brann Bronzebeard has been getting into shape and now feels comfortable walking faster when escorted.

-  The Forge of Souls
The Devourer of Souls will now cast Mirrored Souls less often.
The Spell Reflect ability has been altered on several creatures. It now has a cast time, only has 2 charges, and has a 75% chance of reflecting spells.

-  The Nexus
Anomalus will now use the Create Rift ability only once, down from 3 times.

-  The Old Kingdom
Elder Nadox now only gets one Ahn’Kahar Guardian during the encounter.
Jadoga Shadowseeker now only ascends once during the encounter.
Several enemies between the Befouled Terrace and The Desecrated Altar have been removed or had their pathing altered.

-  Pit of Saron
Players can now zone back into the instance if they are dead while encounters with Krick and Ick or Forgemaster Garfrost are in progress.

-  Utgarde Pinnacle
Skadi the Ruthless can now be removed from his drake with 3 harpoon strikes, down from 5.
Svala Sorrowgrave now casts Ritual of the Sword 1 time during the encounter, down from 3.

-  Vault of Archavon
Toravon, the latest boss to join the Vault’s giants and masters of the elements, is now accepting challengers in 10- and 25-player formats.
-  The Violet Hold
The time between a boss being defeated and a new portal opening has been decreased.

PvP

-  Arenas
Season 8 has officially begun featuring all-new rewards!

Druids

-  Talents
-  Balance
Earth and Moon: This talent now increases the druid’s spell damage by 2/4/6%, up from 1/2/3%.

Shamans

-  Talents
-  Elemental Combat
Shamanism: This talent now provides 4/8/12/16/20% extra spell damage to Lightning Bolt/Chain Lightning, up from 3/6/9/12/15%, and 5/10/15/20/25% to Lava Burst, up from 4/8/12/16/20%.

Warlocks

-  Talents
-  Affliction
Shadow Embrace: This effect can now stack up to 3 times, up from 2. However, the periodic healing reduction effect has been reduced from 3/6/9/12/15% to 2/4/6/8/10% per application.
-  Demonology
Demonic Pact: The damage bonus granted the warlock by this talent has been increased from 1/2/3/4/5% to 2/4/6/8/10%. The buff granted to a raid or party by this talent remains unchanged.
-  Destruction
Conflagrate: The damage-over-time effect of Conflagrate has been increased to 40% of the spell’s total damage, up from 20%.
Empowered Imp: The pet bonus damage provided by this talent has been increased to 10/20/30%, up from 5/10/15%.
Improved Shadow Bolt: Damage done by Shadow Bolt increased by 2/4/6/8/10%, up from 1/2/3/4/5%.

Warriors

-  Talents
-  Protection
Shield Slam: The damage scaling from block value for this ability now diminishes faster and diminishes starting at a lower block value. The difference should be negligible for players in high-end tanking armor. In addition, the threat caused by Shield Slam has been increased by 30%.
Warbringer: This talent no longer allows Charge and Intercept to break roots or snares. Intervene remains unaffected.

User Interface

-  The party leader is now referred to as Guide in chat when a group is formed via the Dungeon Finder.
-  Fixed a bug where players with Raid Assist capabilities were unable to perform a Ready Check.
-  Fixed a bug where the first couple of tutorials were not displaying upon logging into the game.

Items

- New strength-based melee DPS rings are now available from representatives of the Ashen Verdict.
- Tier-9 Sets: The Aspirant vendors at the Argent Tournament grounds have worked out a deal with merchants in Dalaran so that all item level 232 set pieces will now be available on armor vendors in the city. Set pieces which require trophies will still be available for purchase only from vendors at the Argent Tournament grounds.
- Tier-10 Balance Druid 4-Piece Bonus: Fixed a bug to allow for this bonus to properly trigger.
- Tier-10 Elemental Shaman 4-Piece Set Bonus: Redesigned. Successful Lava Burst casts now increase the duration of Flame Shock on the target by 6 seconds.
- Tier-10 Tank Sets: The gloves and chest pieces for warrior, death knight, and paladin tanks have had their stats adjusted slightly to provide additional armor value.
- Tier-10 Warlock 4-Piece Bonus: This bonus should now correctly be applied to the warlock’s pet.

Technical Support

- The cvar ‘processAffinityMask’ controls which CPU cores are available for the World of Warcraft client to use. Previously the game client was limited to 2 cores as a default which players could override in the configuration file. In the past this provided a performance boost on some CPUs and operating systems. We have identified several systems that are experiencing severe performance issues with this restriction and have removed it. Players who would like to restore the old behavior can do so by updating the Config.WTF file by adding: SET processAffinityMask “3″.

It’s now one week until Blizzcon.  I’ll be in Anahiem, CA for four days, and I can’t wait.  It’s been confirmed that Ozzy Osbourne will be playing the final concert at Blizzcon, so this makes it even more special.

What else?   I’ve joined a gym again, working out to try to tone up, lose weight, and get rid of the flab.   I’ve joined with my best friend, and we’ll be working out together, so hopefully this time I’ll stick to it.  I really need to lose the weight and get into better health, considering I have diabetes now.

Can’t think of a lot else to talk about right now, it’s late and I should be getting to bed.  I promise to update again soon.

Well, I’m now in my 4th week of classes online.  So far, I’m doing well. Let’s hope I stay that way.

I’ve added a new link to the side over there.  Go check out the WoW related comic: World of Warcraft, Eh?    It’s very well done and it’s hit the list of my favorites.

Speaking of links, I’ve added another one of those tottaly useless things to my list of Social Networking things that I almost never update.  I’m on Twitter (link is on the right ->).

What else.  Been playing WoW with my best friend when we can. Our Tauren bros have hit 36 as of yesterday, our undead locks are still sitting at 31.  My main (80 tauren druid) has been working on rep here and there.

Redid my PC to run Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit.  The speed difference is incredible.

Oh, I finaly found out why I never could get my PC’s ram overclocked to factory specs.  I have a Dell XPS 720.  The 4 gigs of Corsair Dominator ram are supposed to be factory overclocked to 1066mhz, but it’s never been.  Today I was poking around with the nVidia performance control panel, and found out, one of the memory modules is different from the rest.  3 of them are indeed 1066mhz modules, but one of them is an 800mhz module.  The timings are different from the other 3, and the SPD profile is different too.  No wonder every time I tried to bump the fsb clock speed up to OC the ram to 1066, it would lock up.  I contacted dell, and after going in circles with their LOVELY tech support tier one person who knows less about PC’s than a 1st grader (I mean comeon, how hard is it to listen to the customer who knows what they are talking about instead of trying to insist they try some things that are pointless in the first place), I have them sending me a replacement module to match the others.   Just to clarify,  she wanted me to take out the three other modules, leave in the one, and try to OC it.  WHY?  If it’s not going to OC stable with all 4, what is the bloody point?  I sure as hell am not going to run only 1 gig of ram, OC’d or not.  Ah well, at least she finally listened and they’re sending me the right one to match the others.  Later on, if I don’t upgrade to an i7, I may just drop 8 gigs of 1066 ram in here.  The mobo supports up to 8gb, and Vista 64 will see all 8.

Well, that’s about it for now I guess.

Now, for the rant portion.  I saved this until AFTER I got my phone back, in case some jobbite somehow stumbled upon this and my iPhone got held up in limbo in retaliation.  Would they do that?  Who knows, but I wasn’t taking the chance.

So, as you recall, my phone broke when I dropped it a little over a week ago and the screen shattered.  When I took it to AT&T the next day – a Sunday – they said they can’t replace it and that I would have to talk to Apple.  The salesperson put me on the phone with an iPhone rep from Apple, who told me what my options were.  No matter what my options, it was going to cost me $200 for a replacement phone, since it was a physical damage and not a warranty issue.

So, #1, I could go to the nearest Apple store and have my phone replaced there.  To me that really wasn’t much of an option because the nearest Apple store is two and a half hours away, in Sacramento.  Not to mention the fact, I would have to make an appointment beforehand with their “Genius Bar” to get it replaced.  Genius Bar?  How pretentious is that?  And why the fuck would I have to make an appointment?  How hard is it to walk in, show them the phone, which obviously needed replacing, and have them go to the storeroom and bring out a new one?  It doesn’t take a fucking genius to do that.

Option #2:  I could  have them send me a box, which I could ship my phone to them to be fixed, which would then be sent back to me and take about a week turnaround.  I didn’t quite like that option, so I was given another choice.

Option #3:  I could pay a $30 fee for an advance replacement, where they would send me a new phone and I would send them back my old one.  Total time without a phone:  2 days.  Better than a week I decided.  So I took that option.  It took a $400 hold on my credit card to make sure I sent back the old phone, but that’s pretty standard.  I gave them my info and waited for Tuesday to roll around for my new phone.

Tuesday came, Fed Ex dropped off a box at my door.  I thought it was a bit strange I didn’t have to sign for it, so I went out and got the box from the doorstep, and took it inside to open it, finding….an empty box and instructions how to pack my phone to be shipped for repair.   I wasn’t mad yet, thinking ok, maybe the phone was being sent separately.  I called Apple to find out what’s going on.  The rep I talked to sent me to a manager right away, who told me that “we don’t send advance replacements for physical damage, only technical issues”.  OK, so at this point, NOW I was furious.  I told him that they had already put a hold on my card, so I expect a phone.   He said that they would not send me an advance replacement, period, and that I would have to send my phone to them for repair.  So I asked him what about the $400 hold on my card?  He said that the CSR that did it made a mistake and he couldn’t remove the charge until the phone was repaired.  After much going back and forth about the advance replacement, the manager finally made me this offer.  He would remove the charge from the card, and cancel the repair order.  He would then schedule a new repair order at no charge to me.  Yes, a free replacement on my phone.  Well free is better than $200, so I agreed.  He shipped me a new box (I didn’t quite understand why I couldn’t use the box they already shipped, but he kept insisting that it was tied to that repair order), and Wednesday I had the box, packaged my phone, and shipped it back.

Thursday, I checked the repair order, and they had the phone and was working on it.  Well, by the end of the day, I’m seeing “replacement pending”.  Pending?  what happened to just fixing it and sending it back?  I figured maybe their website wasn’t up to date.  I waited until Friday.  Friday came, and no phone.  I called.  They said that it was being tested and would most likely be sent out Monday.  After more complaining (yes I complain when someone doesn’t do what they said they would, especially when it comes to my technology), they ended up sending the phone out Friday.

The fun didn’t end there folks.  Today comes, and I check tracking on FedEx.  My phone was delivered.  Delivered?  Wait, nobody came to my door.  After calling FedEx, apparently the courier took it to a business by mistake, and they had to go get it back and bring it.  So, here it is, around 10am, and I finally have my phone.

Dear god this was one major pain in the ass.

There’s more, but I’m too angry to write.

RE:  Burritios

Dear sir or madam,

Lately, I have been getting frustrated with the way you people tend to make burritios.  First of all.  I realize that it’s cheaper to use thinner tortillas, but come on,  you can’t get through an entire burrito without the fucking thing busting through at the end in your hand, and getting all over your lap.  Can you PLEASE start using some sturdier tortillas?  I’d like to actually get through an entire meal without having to use a god damnned fork to eat the filling, as it’s all over the wrapper.

And this brings me to my other pet peeve.  Is it too much to ask for you to teach your minimum wage teenagers to learn how to fill a freaking burrito evenly?  I’m getting tired of starting at one end, with meat and/or beans, and then getting about 2/3 of the way to the end, to find the rest is nothing but sour cream, cheese, and lettuce.  Haven’t you heard of equal distribution?  Come on now, I like sour cream, but not as the primary filling!!!  I want it across the entire length of the burritio, not as some creamy surprise at the end.  This ain’t a dick I’m sucking here, it’s a burrito.  (and no I’m not gay, I just liked the ANALogy).

Last point…can you also teach them how to wrap a burrito to not freaking fall apart before I take the first bite?  Nothing is more annoying than unwrapping the sonofabitch at delbelltacodenwhatever, and having the entire thing fall apart faster than a watts government housing project.

Am I bitter? Am I going to stop eating fast food mexican?  Nope. I like the stuff. Just please, fix the shit, ok?

Sincerely yours,

A disgruntled burrito eater.