Rumours of My Demise...

It's always struck me as something of an odd phrase.  Not "the rumours of my demise are incorrect," but "greatly exaggerated."  Which would be like: "the rumours of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.  I didn't explode in a ball of fire; I actually choked to death on a rather small piece of cheese."

Which means that anyone who uses the phrase must logically be a zombie!

Where was I?

So I didn't post at all last week.  Bad Its.  But, I have a pretty good reason for it.  I wasn't playing WoW.  No, I haven't burned out.  See, my desktop has been getting less and less stable  over the past few months, and it came to a head a few weeks ago when I did an Arcatraz run.  My UI ran out of memory six seconds into the Lady Delrissa fight, leaving me to auto shot the whole time.  And then, almost immediately after engaging the final event, the machine rebooted.  I got back just in time to watch the last mini-boss go down.

I didn't feel it was fair to keep instancing when I couldn't even stay up for more than 20 minutes at a time, so I stopped instancing alltogether.  I also stopped doing dailies when I couldn't even make it up to Blade's Edge from Shattrath without having to restart WoW.

So I didn't write anything last week because I honestly had nothing to write about.  Well, OK, I did, but I just didn't feel like it.

But on Tuesday my new machine arrived!  And yes, I have shamed my ancestors and descendants for generations to come by buying a Dell, but thus far it's working beautifully.

Plus, I now get to play WoW at 1920x1200 with everything maxed at 60 fps on a 24" monitor.

It's quite fun.

So, with a non-crashy machine to play on, I've dived head-long into the Midsummer Fire Festival.  Over yesterday and today, I took Its out to every bonfire, honouring/dousing as appropriate.  I also snuck him into each of the Alliance capital cities to get my [Crown of the Fire Festival].

If you're curious, Ironforge was the hardest, Darnassus was second (although the fire itself is just in Rut'Theran which is a complete cakewalk to get to, there's a bonfire in Dolanaar which means going all the way through Darnassus to get to it,) Stormwind a distant third with the Exodar a complete push-over.  Seriously, it's no wonder the Blood Elves were able to sabotage the ship; they'd be more secure if they fired their security staff and hired a bunch of fuzzy baby hampsters!

It was actually really fun trying to get into the cities without dying repeatedly.  Stormwind was really entertaining; I managed to find a way up on to the ramparts.  From there, I managed to get to the little back-alley between the main drag and the bank without dying.  Feigned to lose the guards, mounted up again, and rode straight to the flame.  By the time I got there, the guards had given up on me!

I felt sorry for the silly humans, so I did a dance for them.  Then this pally showed up.  I think he wanted to take a crack at me and steal me lucky charms get some honor points.  Sadly for him, I'm an Engineer, so I hit my Gnomish Cloaking Device, hopped into the canals and hearthed to Shattrath.

Right now, I still need another 150 or so blossoms to get the shoes; I've already grabbed the shoulders and robe.  I've also gotten myself a little pet dancing fire dranaei thingy:

I also managed to get a group together tonight to get my first stab at Ahune.  I have to say that I can't remember having this much fun in a boss fight... ever!  It was hectic, lots of movement, cool sound effects, and I got to DPS my little heart out.  I'll post some tips for Hunters wanting to take a shot at him in a bit.

The cape I wanted dropped first try... but the other hunter won it.  Story of Its' life, really.  It seems like awesome gear only ever drops if there's someone else in the group that also wants it.

In other news, Its also finally got his [Beast Lord Mantle].  After I don't know how many SV runs, the first time it dropped, the other hunter won it (see, told you it was the story of his life!)  However, it dropped for the second time ever yesterday.  And there was another hunter.  But this time, I won the roll!  Hooray for me!

I also finally got my pair of  [The Sunbreaker]s (shouldn't they be called "A Sunbreaker" if they're non-unique?) enchanted with +20 agi, giving me a really nice pair of raiding weapons.

Now, if only I could find some Cobrahide Armor Kits on the AH...