Since I sink so much time in to WoW, I am posting my characters yet again. Since the new layout of myspaces, I can nowactually add them to the post. Notice all my alternate characters, that's why i haven't fully brought my first character, Basora, to the top. But to me, the game needs to befun. And I enjoy levelling different characters and using their strengths to come up with different tactics.

 

So here we go:

 

Going left to right and working our way down.

 

Subpar - a undead rogue using mainly the subtlety talent tree. (Hence the name) A rogue relying primarily on stealth. Handy in the high level dungeons

 

Danowe - a orc hunter using a pet as tank, all points in Beast Mastery. I will probably respec at lvl 60 to enhance his ranged attacks and lessen the emphasis on the pet. His name is derived from Surinamese, meaning: And now we'll...

 

Banserio - a undead mage using fire as her main weapon, her damage rocks. I power-levelled her to 40 and now I am letting her rest for a bit as I have to save up money for a mount, which takes a lot of time. her name comes from Papiamentu, my girlfriend's native language and means: Get serious.

 

Regalia - the orc warrior I started with, she started out using 2-handed weapons, then I respecced to dual wield (weapon in each hand) and I am now a defensive warrior, which I like the most. Since this was my first character I derived her name from the word regalo in spanish, which means gift. As WoW was a gift to myself.

 

Basora - My current main. Started out as a party-boosting shaman (using totems), respecced to a healer-shammy and am now a damage dealing shammy, since I have been doing a lot PvP lately. The name comes from Papiamentu and means broom. Silly, I know, but  I just thought it sounded cool.

 

Knittle -  a troll priest which is a kick-ass healer. I really like playing, him. Too bad he depends on a good party and those aren't around too much in pick-up groups. He get's the most party invites though. He is a tailor, which is where I got his name from.

 

Panormi - tauren druid, relying on his ability to shapeshift. (feral) The name comes from a comic from the Netherlands/Belgium called Asterix & Obelix. In this comic there is a druid named Panoramix, so there you go. He is the most versatile in tactics, together with Danowe.

 

Brawny - My 2 handed bad-ass tauren warrior. I took the baddest looking Tauren and made a 2 handed-heavy hitter. Watch out for his heroic strike. Name should be obvious. Doens't he look bad-ass?

 

Ellestar - My newest alt, a troll shaman which is goign to be an elementalist. <- see the name-reference?

 

 

Hello my name is Jason and I have more alternate characters than most people. I am an altaholic, and proud of it!

There are a couple of salsa movies out there, but none of em quite capture the spirit of what salsa is. The most popular movie with salsa in it is ofcourse Dirty Dancing & Dirty Dancing 2. (which didn't capture the magic of its predecessor) Then there is this 1980's flick called Salsa: It's hot (which I can't seem to find anywhere) and finally, released somewhere in 1998, Dance with me with Chayenne and Vanessa Williams. The last movie had all the right ingredients. Singer/Actor Chayenne, Singer/Actress Vanessa Williams, popular Salsagroup cameos (which was DLG at that time), the innate difference between Latin Ballroom and Street Salsa. And ofcourse the love story thing, but even that failed. The theme song was pretty good, but the movie just plain sucked.

 

Then there is this obscure French Salsa movie which I found on the net. I haven't watched this one yet, but the opening scene is awesome!

 

So here's the clip breakdown. Some guy is supposed to performing classical pieces on the piano and he breaks out into a salsa mid-session to the horror of his parents & teacher. The classical part is actually a piece from Sonido Bestial by Richie Ray & Bobby Cruz, though I am not sure if they got it from a classical piece themselves. The salsa sounds good though, great job on a kick-ass opening scene.

It's good to be thankful, but sometimes you have a hard time coming up with something to be thankful about. (which is the whole point of a keeping up with what you are thankful for)

 

This month's thankful note goes out to all my teachers that went beyond their normal teaching procedures, to teach people a little bit more about something else then the class they were teaching. This list isn't complete by far, but these are the teachers that I have remembered.....that have inspired me.

 

Mrs Kolf - English. Always taking the time to explain relationships & life

Mrs B -  Dutch. Thanks for taking your job seriously and tackling it with love

Mr Soemeer - Physics. Thanks for always making our minds ponder things we couldn't understand yet.

Mr Wesenhagen - Chemistry. For the love of the subject.

Mrs S -  Chemistry. Serious fun

Mr Hassankhan - Biology. Amazing how serious can be fun at the same time. Sarcasm is the key word here.

Mr Uiterloo Biology/Physical Education. For being one of us.

Mrs Denkers - Spanish. For teaching me to deal with unfriendly people, yes I am thankful for your rude behaviour.

Mr A -  Physical Education. Rest in Peace.

Mrs K Physics/Math -  For sticking it to us.

Mrs Head of Vrije Atheneum - Chemistry. For taking the extra time off your regular (and well-paying) day-job to teach at a public school that pays shit and teaching us the meaning of the word discipline. (still need to get that lesson)

Mr K extra classes Math from AMS. A true inspiration of interactivity and learning. I never got math that good again.

 

All these people are heroes to me, even if I forgot some of their names. Their faces and ways of teaching are the stuff of heroes to me. I hope you get to teach and shape a lot more of us ungrateful children, even if it doesn't pay much, it will pay in the end when we grow up to understand life and all its complexities.

 

A genuine.....thank you.

 

From the bottom of my heart.

Hello World!

 

I am back, after a long week of mind-broadening travel.After I collect my thoughts, I'll post my trip report. But as I use this blog to vent, put my ideas on *paper*, philosophize, create a memory, I think I can handle this subject too. A very popular subject amongst men, ...women.

As an old song says, It's man's world, but it wouldn't be anything without a woman in it. I truelly believe a woman can make or break you in terms of everything. God knows I love mine...

 

But that being said, sometimes you have to cry out to the good lord: Oh my God, have I sinned that much today!?.

It's just one of those days you know. It seems like most anything I do annoys her. And for the love of God I don't know what it is I did. I gave up on understanding women a long time ago, but the action-reaction logic is still in place in regards to their behavior......most of the time.

 

The day starts of normal, then suddenly I get the sense that she is pissed at me. So me being me, I simply ask her. This is the answer: I don't know. , <-part  I don't understand, but that's probably my male brain. If i did do somethign to annoy her, it should be readily apparant right? Alas....She remains distant. Then she proceeds to proclaim that she is going out to get some sweets. I'm like cool, bring me back some too? She goes: Like what? Now mind you that we've been living together for nearly a year now, so she knows what I like, and o topp of that, I eat most anything. The only thing I don't eat are shrimps and shellfish. And that's because I am allergic to them. She proceeds to try and pound the information out of me and getting more annoyed in the mean time.

 

My mom used to say, when you sense that a woman is not having her time, let her be. Following my mom's advice, I tried to steer clear by saying: Never mind, we're gonna cook soon anyways. Now THAT pissed her of completely. So she storms out of the house, comes back 10 minutes later and slams some sweets beside me on my bureau. So I look at it and put it beside me on the ground. She turns around: What do you mean by not eating it!? So I go, I aint eating a bag full of hate. But I'll put it in the fridge if you like. She steps up, rips the packet out of my hand and put's it in the fridge herself.

 

And now she is ignoring me.

 

Normally I don't post this kind of personal stuff, but I am very sure that any of you fellas out there have met and/or shall meet up with the same problem. Remember that you have a good woman (if you amde the right choice) and stick with it.

 

Moral of the story:

Fellas will never get women, get with the program.

 

The ignoring continues, God grant me strength....Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned....now I just need to figure out what the hell it was I did.

A lot of the games that I truelly enjoy are team-based games.  The problem with team-based games is that your victory stands or falls with your teammates ability to work as a team. Those of you that play teambased games regularly onlne know that there are far more worse teams/servers out there than there are good teams, or as we call them: Noobies.

 

Now being a noobie is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, everytime you start a new game, it in a certain way means that you are a newbie at that game. Try  playing a game-genre you normally don't play, for example turn-based games. (As this is the genre that appeals to the least amount of people) And you will truelly feel what a newbie feels like.

 

The problem in team-based games is that everybody wants to be the star. For example Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. This is a teambased games of axis vs allies set in WW2. You have several classes and people don't understand that you need to PLAY YOUR ROLE. As  a medic, you shouldn't be at the frontline, because by default, the soldier is better at that. He has better health and more ammo. But everybody wants that killing spree, or most kills, or best accuracy at the ened of the round. But what people don't understand is that the soldier that got the highest killrate was the one that has a medic backing him up. As a covert ops you either infiltrate the enemy and sabotage to cause mayhem or snipe them from a distance. Most covert ops I have seen, try to go toe to toe with a soldier. Who do you think wins most of the times?

 

World of Warcraft has the same problem. I have seen many a dungeon screwed up because of lame teams or pug's as they are called in World of Warcraft. Pug's are Pick Up Groups whcih you assemble out of random people and you really never know what you are gonna get. My last pug was awesome, we cleared UBRS (Upper Blackrock Spire) in less than an hour. But there has been worse. For example, being in UBRS  for 3 hours and still not killing Drakkisath, UBRS' last boss. And taht was my 3rd run for the day and not having killed Drakkisath on none of those runs. In general runs by our guild are better organised and better coordinated because our guild has our own teamspeak channel to cover tactics and such. If you make too many mistakes, you are simply substituted by a fellow guildie. But in Pug's when somebody drops out of the group, in general it means the run is over, because it's so hard to get a group together.  A warrior or warriors is/are at the frontline, getting monsters on his ass and keeping them there while rogues attack from the back, healers & ranged attackers (wether by physical or magical means) keep their distance and fire away with their means of attack. Rogues only go forward in stealth to incapacitate some of the monsters while the group takes the rest out.

 

So much for playing your role. The problem now is that the roles can be different. A fully upgraded medic in Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory can easily be at the frontline because of the increased health, the ability to heal yourself and the adrenaline shot upgrade. But that still means his most powerfulll ability is to ressurect and heal fellow squadmates. But he can hold his own pretty much.

 

In World of Warcraft it is nearly impossible to get into a group for an instance/dungeon as a shadow-specced priest. A shadow priest has swapped most of his healing abilities for damage dealing. People in general deny shadow priests acces to the group, because the general consensus is that the priest is a healing class. The same goes for feral or balance specced druid. Resoration druids find a group much faster. But a shadow priest is as versatile as a holy priest, as this movie proves.

 

If you play a class/role that is different than the cookiecutter/stereotyped classes, be sure to play them to perfection in order to shut people up. (which they won't) This is why I like roleplaying servers in WoW, the pace is slower, but the people are in general more open-minded because of all the conversations and interactions that take place (in general) you get your point across better.

 

In short, determine your role beforehand and play it as best you can. It may mean that you won't be the best damage dealer, or the best player statistically, or be at the frontline, but you will know that the team made it through because your role in the group was played to perfection. We all can't be heroes, famous, lead-singers in the band, but you can be your best self. (Had to throw a little philosphy in there, you know me )