The Laptop and World of Warcraft

On the I-295 loop around Jacksonville, Florida. When I sent in my loaded macro yesterday, I set my ETA for 08:00 this morning. Don't think I'm going to make that.

No biggie. I'm headed to a distribution center for a do-it-yourself chain in Kissimmee. The load can deliver anytime before midnight. The wisest thing to do would have been to get it down there early, get another load and keep on peddling. But, much to my annoyance, I I discovered last night not only that even I require sleep on occasion, but that I kinda like it.

So far this morning I've had two things on my mind. These same two things will probably be on my mind all week.

First, but not paramount, subject regards my efforts with the laptop over the weekend. I finished backing up the hard drive (with fingers crossed) and installed a fresh copy of Windows XP. Then I updated the drivers. Installed the amps software and Korg M1 and Wavestation software. Also loaded up the StealthPlug thingie, hoping I could play around with the amps. No go. The new sound card worked fine at first, but stopped working at some point when I installed all this other stuff. The StealthPlug (which lets me plug my guitars into my laptop) seemed to be bringing in a signal fine, but wasn't passing it along to the amps programs. And the Korg software wouldn't work properly because you have to register it online first before you can use it (which I couldn't do because I couldn't get the laptop to connect to the Internet through either Wi-Fi or direct Ethernet connection ). Argh! Around 21:30 last night I gave up in disgust. I'll work it out next weekend. I didn't get everything squared away, but I still feel like I got an awful lot done.

The other thing on my mind is my World of Warcraft guild. I don't talk much about my gaming because I don't want to sound like some loser whose life evolves around a video game (so unlike a normal American who's parked in front of the TV every night). But yes, I do play on the weekends. Quite a bit. It's a welcomed escape from the wreckage of my life. Some people go to a therapist. Some people go to the beach. I go to Azeroth and smite evil-doers.

Well, in the game there are guilds. This is like a club made up of people who play together and help one another. There's a large social component here. My guild's name is Sinister Crue. It's been dying for awhile now because the core group of people who formed the guild, the nucleus that was the guild's dynamic, all left for greener pastures. These were all high level members who left for higher level guilds that could better serve what they wanted out of the game. I understand that. But what they left in their wake was a shell of a guild that had only a handful of active members; most of whom felt abandoned and wandered off themselves. So on most nights when my dear friend Victoria and I are playing, we're the only guild members online. Hell, the guild master the person who manages and technically maintains the guild, wasn't even an active member, but spent most of her game-time playing alts that were in other guilds.

Well, I've seen other guilds die in other games. I didn't want to see this guild die. So I came up with some ideas and suggested that I might be a better choice for guild master. Not because I'm imminently qualified, but just because I'm an active member (one of two). And, well, a lot of my ideas for saving the guild would require me to be guild master. And I sort of wanted the job, whereas it had just fallen into the lap of the current guild master.

Well, on Sunday we talked about it and she made me guild master.

I won't bore you with the details of how I plan to save a guild with 105 members, of which 2 are active. But I see it as a challenge. Just trying to bring the guild back sounds like fun to me. I'm obsessive enough to take the job seriously, but realistic enough to keep a distance from it. It's a puzzle to be solved. Besides, any job with the word “master” in the title is bound to be interesting.