The best opening line ever

And the Devil looked down on the face of God and he smiled...

Intro

I've done this the better part of all my life, writing that is. When I was a kid I would carry a note book around and a smooth writing ink pen with me everywhere. I was famous for it at school. Bullies would avoid me in case I "wrote about them". I'm not sure why that would have been a threat worthy of granting immunity from bullies but it was.

So anyway, the basics. Male, 35, of European descent, born in South Africa, traveled to New Zealand when I was 5 and grew up there. I spent most of my working life in the hospitality industry running bars and restaurants, usually for a pittance and with the added bonus of getting no respect for being extremely good at my job.

So I decided to go back to school and study for a computer qualification. I graduated in 2000 and I've been working at the New Zealand Herald as a systems administrator ever since.

I've been a Geek all my life but its only recently that I have 'come out' so to speak and found the confidence to express my love for all things Geek. So this is my first post, one of many. I know I will move on and move up and I have in the past lost a lot of things like diaries and PDA's. This gives me a third party method of keeping all my random bullshit in one place.

Fuck I hate Clerics...

I have to post this. This is why I love Southern Armada. This is a little post from the Oggie Tank AKA Mewkus. I did not write this but I believe it is worth keeping alive as it illustrates beautifully the Love/Hate relationship between a Tank and their Healer.
NOTE: Having now played a tank in 2 games I now fully appreciate this and understand it - SH 26.08.08

a little story about my first encounter with a guilded greydax.

i log on late because work sux. keepr sends me an abusive tell to hurry my ass east in BoT because oreen is up. i get there and nerasa is doing his usual finesse pulls and trikkie is copping his usual beatdown from a CoD mob.
group cleric is greydax. i join and say hello. i warn greydax to keep me alive or i will hate him forever. "purple club" was the reply. great. fuck i hate clerics.

anyways i grab my buffs and we rez trikkie because i let the CoD mob kill him (i love "forgetting" to taunt sometimes) and get ready for the pull. nerasa gets him solo with 4 pops standing around him (damn that boy is good). oggie charges the bastard and BANG, first hit he gets a stun proc. fuck i love my weapon setup. aggro is locked in, too easy. even trikkie landing tash in the first half second of engagement doesn't drag him away (why do chanters and shammys always cast their highest aggro spell on the fucking pull???)

watching the damage roll by. damn i kick ass. more stun procs, rage proc, this bitch is mine for aggro now. health gets low, berzerker frenzy! no need to panic, i still have a few k hp up my sleeve. down to 1 bub, ok no CH message yet. 10 bucks the fucking cleric (fuck i hate clerics) is messing with my head and doing a silent CH. they do that sometimes just to piss me off. dirith is the worst. caniella does it too. even phaith does it to me.

did i mention i hate clerics?

ok sliver of life. the bitch forgot to heal. keepr is probably too busy cybering half the server to think about using her oggiehealage5 AA skillz to pull off a last minute save. OMG! OGGIE DOWN! he's in the purple. the screen changes to view to a top down view of a crumpled oggie. the words YOU HAVE DIED flash on my screen. the formation of a string of extremely foul curses surges to the forefront of my mind and BAM! oggie is on his feet again wailing away as if nothing had happened.

stunned silence. oggie sits back and stares in disbelief. the ranger begins to crack up. the group begins to chant "purple club, purple club" and greydax is chilling up the back with a smug look on his face as if the smartass little punk planned it all along.

first ever group with greydax. first pull. first heal cast. not just a purple club, but utterly plucked from the gaping jaws of death. i could see the grim reaper getting annoyed as i escape his dreadful embrace.

fuck i hate clerics

Goddamn it

Sixteenth of December.
I am internet less till then. Apparently thats the absolute fastest Telecom can install my DSL.

They Suck.

My offsider has been playing with a new backend for our website at www.domain-admins.com and when he is done I will be redesigning the front end and we will be relaunching the site. The new site has got all sorts of good things in it. Its database driven, works with PHP, has a built in blog ability, is all css configured etc.

So I think once its up, this blog will move back to Domain-Admins and I will convert the old blog to the new site.

Ever Quest Raids Southern Armada The End

19/11/04 The end.
Wow.
Both literally and figuratively.
Southern Armada is moving to the World of Warcraft.


The Glory of SA will now shine in Multiple games. We have membership in Everquest2, Everquest1 and World of Warcraft. SA will survive multiple games I think, simply because we are all older players and into it for the fun as opposed to the PhatLewtz or the being L33t.
There are still some staying to continue on in EQ. There are some going to EQ2 but the bulk
of us are moving to WoW.


It all came down to a post on the guild Message Board by the Great Bear Our leader Kezlar. He essentially said what everyone was thinking. He had had enough, it wasn't fun anymore and the on going lack of people showing up to raids was telling him that was true for a lot of other people.


That basically opened the floodgates and we all simply poured out.
GOD broke EQ for a lot of us. POP was superb, a lot of fun, GOD was awful and sucked all of the fun out of the game. Its nice that SOE apologized and flew lots of people to see them so they could say sorry. But after that nothing changed, there was a big burst of publicity and then SOE went back to its usual dead silence.


I would have been angry once, but not anymore. They have just lied, broken promises, nerfed, failed to communicate, insulted the player base and generally acted like they don't have a clue once too many times. Even those in a coma can awake from their sleep and say enough.


Thanks for 5+ years of EQ. Its been a blast and I will leave this web-log up for some time to come yet.


There are many very good people still staying in EQ1 and I believe they will rebuild and continue on very successfully.


Ulaa has gone to sleep.


She sits dreaming on the shores of the Plane of Tranquility looking out over the entrance to the Elemental Plane of Fire. She is in Lich form, gently bobbing up and down, with her faithful pet standing at her shoulder.


There she will sit until one day, maybe, I may venture back into EQ.
I want to continue doing these gaming blogs however.
Its been a hell of a run. Its been nearly 6 years.