What's that riding your everything?

It isn't anything at all?

More often I have had this song pop up into my head, in fact it's been an ever constant ear-worm for me the last seven or so years of my life. It's a bit bitter sweet to listen to this song, mostly because it brings back memories of the past, and because it also helps me to put certain events in my life into perspective.

Today is day two that Gramps has come back from the hospital, and he is actually doing pretty good, aside from waking up cranky. The two of us sat on the porch today and as we spoke to each other I was inspired to write what I am writing right now (that was a mouthful) from the song above.

First, what is the song about? To me, it's about how we all carry around our own baggage and that the only thing that is really holding us back is ourselves and gravity. It talks about how we allow past events to shape how we are right now, and that we are better off to let those things go because good things will eventually "fall," into place.

Yeah, I have used this picture before, but it's the only one of Gramps actually smiling I have.

For me, I have had a lot of personal ups and downs in myself, and have spent a great part of it constantly fighting my own depression, and that is something my grand father is trying to work through right now. His outlook right now is a bit bleak, however I keep reminding him that his life will get better and that even if he is not able to see it, people do care about him. I reminded him that he has one person that cares the most about him sitting right next to him.

"No one gives a damn about me," he said to me earlier and I told him how that was not true, because if it was, he would not be here right now to be feeling the way he does right now. Depression is a bitch to deal with, it really is. What helped me defeat it, or at least put it into check was physical exercise, and surprisingly, writing this blog.

See the opposite of depression is actually expression. Lately that is what I have been doing with this blog, expressing my thoughts and feelings with complete strangers on the internet.

Back to the song, I think it also points out that life continues to move on without us and that we should not really dwell on the present and just move on with our lives.

As a close I want to ask you guys, the people who are reading my blog, what are your experiences with depression, what are the things you have done to keep it at bay? Feel free to comment below and let me know.

Thanks for reading.

Be sure to follow me on twitter, there's a link below.

Follow @benlaakkonen

Why I have not been posting that much...

Okay, so the last time I posted anything on this blog was over two weeks ago, and in internet land, that's a long freaking time. Part of it was that I was being lazy, the other is because I have been dealing with an ever increasing personal load on myself in terms of responsibility and emotional toll on myself.

Prologue:

It was the 20th, the day before my grand fathers surgery. Got up in the morning, made him some coffee and gave him his medicine, he read the paper a bit and went back to sleep. I stayed up all day and night in anticipation for the surgery. Gramps normally skips breakfast and lunch because he's stubborn and keeps telling me "I have never eaten breakfast and rarely ever eat lunch," thus leaving dinner about the only meal he will eat. That night I made up Vodka Chicken with Linguine pasta. He liked it. I cleaned all of his sheets while he was in the shower after dinner, got him covered with warm blankets and such. Like I said, he went to bed, I just stayed awake the whole time waiting for the time to get him out of bed and off to the hospital. We left the house at about Five Twentyish and arrived at about ten minutes to Six. I sat in the waiting room for at least three hours waiting to hear how Gramps made out, and eventually got the news he did great and that he was in a room recovering so I went home and did the only thing I could; sleep. It was Tuesday, the 21st when this all happened.

The Saga begins:

Now it's Wednesday, I wake up feeling a bit better, but over all a bit worked over. I got a call from Gramps at the hospital where he asked me to bring him his cell phone, so I did. When I got up to his room on the fifth floor I was a bit confused because he had a cute girl in his room and I thought to myself "This can't be right, we don't know any cute girls," so I went to the nurse's desk and asked them which room he was in, it was the one with the cute girl in it. So I dropped off Gramps phone, and chatted with the cute nurse a bit, but kind of pussed out in terms of missing a perfect opportunity to hit on her. That's another post though.

About three hours later I get a call telling me they are discharging him and to come pick him up, so I did. He seemed fine on the way down from the elevator to the car, but by the time I got him home he was severely weak and a bit confused as to where he was. On the way home he kept asking me, "Where is home?"

When we finally pulled up in the drive way it took me about 10 minutes to get him out of the car because he could not move very well, but when I finally managed to get him out I had him sit down at the table and gave him a semi-fresh cup of coffee and I made him up a plate of left over chicken to eat for lunch. After that he wanted to go on the back porch and smoke a cigarette, so I helped him out there and sat there with him for a bit while he just kind of stared off into space. He asked for some ice cream, which I fetched for him and had to stop eating it because he said it made him cold. By then I wanted to put him in his bed and let him take a nap to regain some strength, he was shivering from eating the ice cream apparently so I tucked him in with at least four blankets and left him to his nap.

At Nine o'clock I heard Gramps get out of bed and  call me to grab his phone for him. At first I thought he was just tired, but then as I looked at him and saw the sweat on his brow, and felt his heart pumping erratically in his chest I knew something was up, and took Gramps back to the hospital. I stayed with him til about 9 A.M on Thursday, the 23rd. Which was about when he told me to just go home and get some sleep, which was something I have not really done a lot of lately. I passed out until about 4:30ish before I got up and went to check on Gramps, turns out they moved him from the South Hospital to the North, so I had to drive even further into town to go see how he was doing.

I got there at Five o'clock and ran up five flights of stairs to get to his room. No cute nurses this time though. He was watching the Andy Griffith show on TV, so I just sat down and watched it with him for a bit while he attempted to argue with me about almost everything. He also did not seem to understand where he was because he kept asking me odd questions like "Did we pick up all the tools from the yard before coming here," or "Will I still be able to go up the stairs in my house?" Pops also showed up a bit later, so we both visited with Gramps for a bit, leaving at about fifteen minutes to Seven to make the MCARA meeting.

The meeting was about an hour and a half, and it was interesting, saw some people I had not seen in a while was just wiped out a bit. I made it through the meeting though, and drove home. I tried staying up but by midnight I crashed. Only now waking up, writing this contrived blog post.

Today's Friday, the 24th. What's going to happen today? Hell if I know, I'll keep everyone posted though...

I find it funny how I find a song for every occasion...

A Systematic Appoarch to getting better at WoW...

You're joking right?

Being good at WoW is not as hard as you think it is, in fact it only involves completing a few tasks a week, and knowing one simple site that can do a lot towards moving you to your goals of having better gear and maybe the ability to stop standing in the fire.

What is the site I am talking about? Openraid.

When I first started going there I had no idea how to use the site, and I kind of just stopped using it for a bit because I had found a ToT group that was willing to "carry," my sorry as for a few weeks. Til one night I was asked to tank MSV and I failed miserably because I am not a tank and I did not know the fights. The girl who was the leader of the ToT group happened to be there for the MSV and was being a total bitch and I just got fed up with her shit and ALT F4'd. The next day I was removed from her ToT group.

Enough of that, that is really what got me to get off my ass and to start using the site. See it's really easy to use. All you do is go to the chat room, wait for someone to post a raid you're interested in, and then whisper them with your iLvL and btag and you're in. Now I started using the site back in 5.3, and here we are in 5.4 so there are even more options available. Mostly in the form of ToT normal. Look if you've got a bunch of 502 or 528 LFR gear, doing some ToT will be highly beneficial to you. Mostly because you're getting end game experience, and mostly because if you have not raided, or even done flex, it will take you a long way towards not being bad. 

My recommendation is to use the site to get into a ToT, or maybe even ToES and MSV. Just do raids even if you don't need the gear, also, try to do a heroic scenario every week as well. At least that will give you a 516 weapon. Another suggestion is to go hang out on the timeless isle and farm Burdens of Eternity. They drop off of mostly rare monsters and when you use them on the token armor pieces they take them from 496 to 535. That's what I did at least, farmed the shit out of burdens as well. Get a couple of 535 gear and you can start on flex real quick. 

It's not going to happen over night, but if you plan ahead for the week, and get done what you had on your plan, eventually over time that planning adds up and you are finally getting into SoO normal and actually getting gear. That's about where I am right now at least. It took me months to get to where I am right now in the game, I did not just end up there by accident. 

Now the reason I am writing this is because I still see a lot of people running around without their capes or with really low gear and I would like to fix that. Getting the cape in 5.4 is considerably easier than the last patch because you have even more LFR raids to get your drops from. There's no excuse for you to not get it in a month instead of three. The way I used to handle really long que times was just alt tabbing and watching something on Netflix periodically checking to see if my que popped. I ran LFR every week though, until I finished my quest, and that's what you have to do too. It may suck, and it may take a lot of time, but you can do it. It's easy.

TL; DR/DC

Step 1. Go to Openraid.
Step 2. Find a raid.
Step 3. ???
Step 4. Loot!

How to Not suck as A Fury Warrior (An Aside about WoW)

Okay, so I am going a bit off here and talking about another game that I cannot seem to get enough of; WoW.

My character's name is Etrin, and I have been playing since about February of 2013, and in that time I have accomplished a lot of things.

At one time I was the #2 Fury warrior on the server, which really did not mean much, I was just the only other person to finish the legendary quest line other than Dusen. Now I am more like #7 on my server horde side. Which kind of sucks, but that's what I get for not playing for two months.

Enough background, however, onto the real meat of the post. How to not suck as a Fury warrior and how to be successful in WoW.

First off you want to make sure you have at least 7.5% hit and expertise. That will go a long way towards having decent DPS, that and you also want to have the right enchants on your gear. Most sites will suggest you get Dancing Steel for your weapons, which can be a bit expensive if you're a Fury because you need it for two weapons. The way I got around this is I would buy the considerably cheaper Windsong enchant and put it on my lower level weapons. If you want to be conservative or even realistic, save Dancing steel for the 540+ weapons (though I placed it on a 536 LFR weapon, which you can do, it just costs more money).

Another thing you want to make sure is that you are gemming your character properly, or that you have gems in the first place. Now I understand it can be a bit expensive to buy gems for lower level gear, but in the long run it will pay off because of the over all gains you make from having the socket bonuses. What I have seen is people just stacking crit, which is great, but you can do a whole lot more if you span out into the combo gems like the orange 80 strength + 160 crit, or the 160 crit + 120 stam kind of gems. I use mostly the Inscribed Vermilion Onyx for my red/yellow sockets and the Piercing Wild Jade for my blue/yellow sockets. For my Meta socket I use the legendary Capacitive Primal Diamond (324 crit + Capacitance), but if you're not far enough along the quest line then I recommend you either a Reverberating Primal Diamond (216 strength + 3% crit damage) or an Enigmatic Primal Diamond (432 crit + 10% snare reduction) depending on your preference or whatever is cheaper at the time. Yes they are expensive, but really you should be using them on gear as low 502. It's a good habit to have, trust me.

More importantly, do not forget about enchantments, despite how expensive they can be. If you want to have any form of progression with your character, make sure you're enchanting all of your gear. The more time and money you invest in your character, the better things will turn out for you in the long run (especially if you have raiding as goal in the long run). You want to have a shoulder, chest, wrist, hands, pants, and boots enchant at all levels of gear. For your shoulder you want Greater Tiger Fang Inscription (200 crit + 100 strength), Greater Stats for your chest (+80 all stats), Strength for your wrists (+180 strength) Strength on your hands (+170 strength), Angerhide for your pants (285 strength + 165 crit), and Pandaren Step on your boots (180 mastery + minor speed increase). Maintaining these enchants can be expensive, but if you ask around in your guild, or try to make friends with an enchanter, then it can really simplify the process (and make it cheaper). If you're really strapped for cash though, que as a tank a few times and rush through a few regular heroics.

You also want to make sure you are using the right rotation for the type of weapons you are using. For me I found using Heroic Strike 90% of the time with 2h's was best for dps, but when using 1h weapons, Wild Strikes works best most of the time. You also want to make sure you are using Berserker Rage and one of your shouts (Battle or Commanding, depending on whether or not someone has the stam buff, I usually use Commanding, but it is up to you). Here are some pictures of what my rotation looks like (feel free to laugh at how bad it is):

Talents also help, and having the right glyph's as well:

*Writers update as of 01/09/2014: I've had a new set of talents I have been experimenting with for the last couple of days, I replaced Dragon's Roar with Blade Storm and Blood Bath for Storm Hammer and have noticed a considerable increase in the amount of damage that I put out. Also, I have been seeing more hits of 1 million plus lately since I made the switch. So kindly disregard what I had up here earlier, this is the new and revised scheme that I use and I recommend that you use it as well.

All of these things can come together and if you keep at it, you too can stop sucking at WoW.

Here's a video on the subject: 

Happy New Year (A bit late)

Okay, so I realize it's now the second, and maybe I am a bit lazy because it took me this long to actually write something this year, but here I am writing right now.

My New Year's eve was pretty uneventful, I spent it at home, by myself, watching Super Natural. Yep, that's it. I did not go out any where and get white girl wasted. I was home.

New Year's day was not as bad, but I still managed to spend the whole span of the holiday completely sober and mostly by myself.

Did it suck? Not really. Being by myself and not drinking kind of works out for me because if I had gone out, I would have most likely caused a shit ton of trouble. So while in the short term it does suck for me, in the long term I think I am better off for not going out.

In other news, I have come up with a really generic and almost cliched new years resolution of losing my fattiness and becoming one of those dudes you see on the front of a magazine with six pack abs and perfect hair.

I'll do it while playing WoW as well. Dun be jellos.

Music to bring in a new year:

This song reminds me that despite how much I fuck things up, we all end up in the same place.