We had a raid of some sort scheduled last night – some instance in Wintergrasp.  But our raid was scheduled for 10 minutes or so before the battle for Wintergrasp began again.  Which meant we had no time to do anything before we were all kicked out of the instance.

We attempted to defend Wintergrasp…but few of us had any idea what we were doing.  I’d never even been in the zone before.  I was amazed when they kicked me off my flying mount shortly after entering the area.  I haven’t done any PvP in months.  A large number of us do PvE almost exclusively.

So, eventually, we lost control of Wintergrasp.

Since we couldn’t raid the Instance we’d hoped to, we did the Obsidian Sanctum instead.  That was fun.  20 of us trying to kill a giant dragon.  It reminded me a lot of the old Onyxia fight…

We wiped on our first attempt, but managed to kill him on our second attempt.  Wasn’t terribly difficult once we got the hang of things.  Apparently that was supposed to be a 25-man fight, which surprised me.  We didn’t have much trouble and there were only 20 of us…  And a lot of us aren’t even very well geared…

Still, the fight was a blast.  It was great fun to actually get to raid again.  And I walked away with a shiny new trinket.

As expected, I hit exalted with the Kalu’ak last night.  I bought myself a fancy new fishing pole and a pet penguin.  Neither of which is going to have a tremendous impact on my gameplay…  I’m not going to be doing any more damage or staying alive any longer…  But I’m happy with them none-the-less.  The penguin is absolutely adorable, and the fishing pole gives me an extra +10 to fishing and lets me breathe underwater.

We tried to do a heroic run through Violet Hold last night, but got our asses handed to us.  The trash mobs were fine, but the first boss was just too much for us.  I don’t know if it’s the entire group that’s too gimp for heroics, or if it’s just me…  Regardless, I’m having a hell of a time getting through heroics.

We did wind up doing a normal run through Halls of Lightning last night, which got me a good amount of faction with Wyrmrest Accord due to the tabard I’m wearing now.  And it was Terri’s first time in that dungeon, which was fun.

I’m feeling closer to human today…  Less stuffed up, less congested, less spacey…  Still not back to normal, but not as awful as yesterday was.  Hopefully I’ll be feeling even better tomorrow, and might be able to enjoy some of the New Year’s festivities.

Terri was sick for most of Christmas week.  She started feeling lousy on Monday and just kept getting worse.  When Christmas actually rolled around she was barely able to taste anything, which made all the feasting a little disappointing.  She’s finally feeling better now, a full seven days later…

And I’m just starting to feel ill.  I kind of thought I’d already been sick with this cold, since I felt kind of lousy just before Terri got sick…  But I guess it must have been a different bug.  Or maybe I’ve got a different bug now and Terri has something to look forward to.

Regardless, I feel like crap.  Started feeling kind of crappy Saturday, felt like hell yesterday, and I don’t feel any better today.  Which means I’m absolutely thrilled to be back at work.

I would have called in if I had any choice in the matter, but I don’t.  We’ve been slowly working on getting remote access set up for one of our clients.  They’ve got an employee who lives several states away and needs to be able to work off the server.  She’s up here locally visiting family for the holidays, which means this is the only time we’re going to be able to work on her laptop directly.  So I have to get Terminal Services up and running on the server, and get their Cisco programmed for VPNs.  And, of course, there’s nobody else here who can do that.

It really sucks to be indespensible.  Actually, I’m not sure that’s the right word.  Indespensible isn’t the problem…  Competant is.  I should really be able to send someone else to do this kind of stuff.  I shouldn’t be the only person on payroll who is able to configure a Cisco VPN or get Terminal Services up and running.

Anyway…  Yesterday, while feeling like crap, I managed to get exalted with the Ebon Blade.  It doesn’t really do much for me…  I’ve picked up a nice cloak, gloves, and belt – but nothing amazing.  I just wanted to get to exalted with them because I like the storyline surrounding them.  And the quests were a lot of fun too.

I should be getting exalted with the Kalu’ak today, assuming nothing goes horriblly awry and I’m able to do my daily quests today.  There’s actually a reason I’m trying to get exalted with them, I really want both the penguin pet and the fishing pole.  And I’ll be happy to get them out of the way…  They’ve only got the three daily quests to run, and it’s gotten very repetitive.

I’ve started working on my Wyrmrest Accord faction, because they’ve got a few nifty items at exalted – like a new flying mount.  I would have made a lot more progress on my reputation yesterday, but the heroic dungeons I tried to run just did not work out.

I finally got a normal run through Halls of Lightning done, which was nice.  That was the last Northrend dungeon I needed to do on normal difficulty.

Then we tried to do heroic Halls of Stone, and it went very badly.  We didn’t have any trouble with any of the actual bosses, but the Bronzebeard encounter was horrible.  We tried and tried and tried again, and just could not complete the encounter.  We could keep Bran alive for about 5 minutes, and then it all went to hell.  Repeatedly.  We worked at that encounter for something like two hours before finally giving up.

Later last night we tried to get a run going for heroic Nexus, which should have been more our speed…  But the rest of the guild had a raid scheduled and grabbed both our tank and one of our DPSers.  The loss of the DPS isn’t such a big deal…  There’s always more DPS available…  But we couldn’t come up with a new tank, so the run had to be called off.

That’s been an ongoing frustration lately…  No, there’s never enough tanks or healers to go around.  This isn’t a new thing.  It is true of pretty much any MMOG out there.  But lately our guild has become very focused on raiding Naxxramas.  There’s a raid scheduled for almost every day of the week.  Which means that any tanks and healers in the guild will be tied up for most of the night in Naxxramas, making it nearly impossible for the rest of us to get anything done.

This wouldn’t be nearly so annoying if there was more turnover in the raid group…  If all of us DPSers got our turn in Naxxramas…  But that isn’t happening.

I understand the reasoning…  They want to bring the people with the best gear, and the folks who already know the fights.  This gives them the best chance of success.  Which gives them the best chance of getting better gear.  Which, ultimately, means that I’ll have a better raid when I eventually get to attend…

But the folks who went on the raid last week have better gear than me, and know the fights, so they’re more likely to get to go this week.  Which means that they’ll be even better geared.  It’s a vicious cycle that means I won’t get to go on a raid until someone gets bored with the 10-man or they come up with enough people for a 25-man.

It’s nothing new, really.  We had this same problem with Karazhan when Burning Crusade first came out.  The folks who hit level cap first and get into the first couple of raid groups are basically garonteed a spot for as long as they want it.

I guess, if I wanted to be more positive about the whole situation, I could view it as the perfect opportunity to level my alts.

The holidays are, for the most part, behind me now.

Sure, New Year’s is still to come…  But that isn’t nearly as obnoxious as Christmas is.  Folks stay up late, make a lot of noise, get drunk, make some promises, and then go to bed.  They don’t ring bells incessantly outside of stores…  They don’t insist that you need to be cheerful…  They don’t play annoying music…  They don’t beg you to buy more stuff…

So, as far as I’m concerned, the worst is behind me.

Christmas was relatively decent.  I didn’t get to make monkey bread because the margarine mysteriously disappeared…  But I did make eggnog french toast for breakfast, and we had ham and pie and stuffing and potatoes and all sorts of good stuff for dinner…  We opened presents, and Christopher seemed to like everything he got.  I got a couple days off from work, which was very nice.

Last night we watched The Day the Earth Stood Still on Netflix.  And today we went to see the new remake of it.  Having seen both of them, so close together, I can definitely say that I liked the original much more than the modern remake.

This is not to say that the remake is crap…  I thoroughly enjoyed both of them.

Keanu seems born to play the part of Klaatu.  His vague, wooden, detached delivery seemed perfect for this stranger in a strange land.

The spacecraft were far more interesting in the remake, and Gort was truly terrifying.

I also much preferred the logic behind the aliens’ actions in the remake.

But, on the whole, I found the original to be a much more satisfying storyline.  Largely, I suspect, because if I was Klaatu I would have wiped out the human race as it was presented in the remake.

In the original, Klaatu spends several days on Earth, getting to know the inhabitants.  And he never really makes any kind of judgement on humanity…  He leaves Earth with an ultimatum – peace or oblivion – and then leaves us to make up our own minds.

In the remake, Klaatu meets with some other alien guy who’s been stationed on Earth for years and has decided that humanity needs to die.  Klaatu doesn’t make that decision, humanity doesn’t make that decision, some alien field-agent decides.  We don’t know why or how he comes to his conclusion…  But he’s pretty sure humanity needs to be wiped out.

Klaatu files his report, kicks off the doomsday device, and goes about his business.  He really doesn’t get to know anyone on Earth…  Sure, he winds up spending some time with a nice lady and her kid…but it’s a matter of hours, not days.  And the humans all around are doing their damndest to kill Klaatu.  They just keep shooting at him, and Gort, and his spaceship, and everything else in the general area.  Not exactly acting terribly civilized about the whole thing.

Ultimately I didn’t see where Klaatu had any evidence that humanity would actually change.  Frankly, I didn’t see where Klaatu had any evidence of anything in particular.

The original movie neither condemned nor saved the human race – it left us with a choice.  We, the human race, had to choose whether we could live peacefully or not.  It seemed to suggest that we, the human race, could use logic and reason to overcome fears and superstition.  It seemed to suggest that we could be more than violent savages.

The remake condemns humanity as a bunch of destructive savages…  The choice is out of our hands, the alien field-agent has already made his decision before Klaatu ever arrives.  And ultimately we are saved not by our own actions…  Not by overcoming our worst tendancies…  But because Klaatu has second thoughts.