0049: WoW, and Helloween

It's been a couple of days since I last updated my LJ.

I have an excuse.

On Wednesday, I came home, and decided to play the mage I'd made on Scarlet Crusade. I actually had enough fun that I played all evening, quitting only when it was time to go to bed. By then, Jazeela was a 10 Mage. Given my recent state of mind regarding the game, that might seem odd, but I was actually having fun again. I didn't think I'd like playing a Mage, but it's a blast (no pun intended). I've held off two mobs that were each two higher than my level. That is some serious power. Nothing beats Polymorph and Frost Nova for crowd control. :)

Thursday, I signed on, and ran around with strieson's alter ego, Vernos. He helped me get a lot of quests done in Elwynn Forest, so I was finally able to get out of there. unfortunately, my latency spiked to over 320ms, and it was jumping up and down so much that I signed off in disgust. (For the record, strieson plays a fantastic paladin: runs off and aggros constantly [regardless of his ally's mana level] and runs off to mine copper as I'm aggroing mobs. Don't get me wrong, he's great to play with, and did fine more often than not, but it's really easy to notice these things when you're playing a caster.) When I signed off, I was level 11.

Last night, I played more WoW, getting Jazeela to level 13, almost 14. I was rather proud of my ability to solo the Harvest Watcher quest, which was three levels above me at the time. I finally logged off, made some dinner, and did some reading. I also decided to update my iTunes library, by converting all of it to 128kbps m4a format, so that I had a standard size. My reasoning behind this is that I hope to be able to cram even more songs on my iPod. :-D

Waking up at 6am today, I found out that I had some m4p (protected iTunes downloads) mixed in with my mp3s, so it stopped just 20 albums or so into the list (out of the metal genre's 150 or so albums). I began to convert more, but got sidetracked, posting a review of Helloween's "Keeper of the Seven Keys, Part I" on Amazon.com, and going to Helloween's web site to learn about their forthcoming album: Keeper of the Seven Keys - The Legacy.

Let me say this: Keeper of the Seven Keys Parts I & II, were released in 1987 and 1988. They had Michael Kiske as lead singer, and an awesome power metal sound. Keeper of the Seven Keys - The Legacy is coming out on Halloween this year, and features Andi Deris on vocals. It's a stupid nitpick, but there are only TWO members of Helloween today, who were in the original "Keeper" lineup: Michael Weikath and Marcus Großkopf. Neither makes a significant musical contribution to this new album (as noted by the writing credits). To me, how can you call it "Keeper of the Seven Keys" if you can't craft it in a similar vein to the original?

To me, that's like letting someone other than Robert E. Howard write a Conan story (which I know has happened, which I believe to be shite, and no, I will not ever read them), or perhaps more appropriately, like Metallica deciding that they can make "The Unforgiven" a better song (thus, "The Unforgiven II"). It is insulting. Lest I get myself too worked up over something of little import, I'll drop it for now. :)

I'm off today, for which I am profoundly grateful. Work has been.. work.. lately. Not necessarily BAD, but it's still work nonetheless. I'm going to check out that overheating issue with my car, specifically to determine the cause of the fan's apparent inactivity. Tomorrow, I do payroll, and then go to Charles' house for his birthday. It should be fun, I hope.

I wonder if I'm gonna need to pick up strieson before the party...