Thursday, March 24, 2005

v1.9 - And a Muffin!!

Morning folks :)

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Today''s musing is made possible by a $1.55 coffee and a FREE muffin. That''s right, I rolled up the rim and won a free muffin. I am officially 1 in 9.

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Today is the last day of work for the rest of the week. As a result there will be no musing tomorrow. I must say I am really enjoying these musings and I don''t plan on giving them up anytime soon. As more and more get added to the mail list, the more people I have available to corrupt :)

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Anyone have any big plans for this weekend? Myself I think we''ll pretty much be sitting back and enjoying the break. Other than last weekend, I can''t remember the last weekend where I was actually able to relax and not have to worry about anything going on. Sometimes we just need to be able to unplug, unwind and just plain ol'' relax. I''m debating on whether or not I want to do a serious clean up of the place this weekend.... nah, enough of that crazy talk.

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It''s Easter this weekend. You know, that time of year when that crazy little Easter Bunny comes around to all our houses (in a similar fashion as Santa) and hides dozens of eggs and gives away chocolate reproductions of himself? I mean, could any holiday icon be any more conceited? :)

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Seriously though, the thought of Easter and the meaning behind the holdiay has really declined in society these days. I remember growing up and never really knowing the true meaning of Easter until later in life. I can''t recall ever believing in an Easter Bunny as I couldn''t fathom a small bunny carrying around a Trillion eggs to hide all over the planet. Santa is one thing, but Easter bunny? Comeon!!

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Anyway, like my parents before me, I too carry on the tradition of the Easter Bunny with my children. I remember how excitied I used to get when Easter Day rolled around and I wouldn''t dare take that from my kids ever.

This does raise a fairly serious question though. Easter is supposed to be a Religious Holday; namely Christianity. I don''t want to get into the nity gritty of the holday, but I think people need to be reminded every so often.

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I''m not a religious person, but I do remember everything I was taught as a child when my parents hauled me to church every Sunday. I guess you could call it ''Going Through The Motions'' as going to church for me meant very little. Sure it was a good way to hook up with my friends and maybe hit on some cute girls (which there weren''t many), but other than that the only reason I went to church was because my Dad was bigger than me. You see my father comes from a very religious background whereas my mother not so much.

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We are programmed from the first day of School on how we should act and what is socially acceptable in the eyes of ''Society''. It is unacceptible to talk about any form of Religion in the School system, yet we are expected to say "God Bless America" (in the USA) and "God Bless The Queen" (in Canada). Twenty years down the road people are going look at those and wonder what the hell they mean. I wouldn''t be the least bit surprised if someone is already in the works of changing the words around to take out the God.

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What/Who is God? Well the dictionary definition of God is:

1) "A being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions."

Monotheistic, for those who don''t know, is the belief there is only one God.

2) "A being of supernatural powers or attributes, believed in and worshiped by a people, especially a male deity thought to control some part of nature or reality."

So every member of the Marvel Superhero line up is considered a God? ;)

3) "An image of a supernatural being; an idol."

Ok, I''m not sure if I''m way off base here, but how can an object (idol) be a god? I''m not sure how accurate this defininition is, but an image of a supernatural being should not qualify as a god IMO.

4) "One that is worshiped, idealized, or followed: Money was their god."

Money has a huge following in today''s Religion :)

5) "A very handsome man."

....

6) "A powerful ruler or despot."

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Maybe I have wandered off topic a wee bit, but hey, this is my musing, I''ll wander off topic when I damn well please :)

Seriously though, I won''t judge anyone regardless of who/what they worship. If you want to worship a stone that has a funny shape to it, more power to you. We has Humans need to believe in a higher power. We all like to believe there is something out there that is bigger than we are and has the answers to life''s problems. I have never left the continent of North America before in my life so I haven''t even had a chance to see religion in other places (ie Middle East, China, etc). I would love to be able to travel the globe and see how people live. Other cultures have always interested me and I wish to study them, learn them and understand them. Looks like I fell into the wrong profession :)

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Switching gears here, getting away from a very touch subject and something that is never openly talked about in public. :)

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This week they released a content patch for World of Warcraft. One of the fixes in this patch affected my Hunter class. There was a bug where a Hunter was able to equip both a Quiver and an Ammo Bag on their toon to get extra bonuses in ranged combat. In WoW, your ammo pouch and quiver give you +% to attack speed and other various bonuses. So be equiping both, you were getting double the bonuses. This sounds like a bug does it not? This sounds like something that SHOULD be fixed right? Well the Hunter community doesn''t think so and as a result they cried because they were getting NERFED.

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I have been avoiding my Hunter the last couple of nights because I didn''t want to be disappointed. All over the boards there were people posting these ''formulas'' calculating DPS (Damage per Second) for the class and stating that the Hunter would lose about 15% of its overall DPS. I logged in last night to test this out for myself; my conclusion was simple. Every person who said (after patch day) the class was nerfed are the people who were exploiting this bug in the game. I ran multiple tests on my own using a Combat Stats mod that comes with the CTMod Addon. I fought mobs in the same camp for over an hour using only 3 basic types of ranged attacks. Prior to the patch my average non-critical DPS was sitting around 85 dmg; last night my average non-crital dps was 95. My average critical dps used to sit around 520 on average; last night it was 630 average. I also noted that I critical a LOT more in combat which was something I had expected since I am fully trained in my Marksmanship talent. Prior to the patch, I was getting maybe 1 critical hit every 3-4 mobs; last night I was getting at least 1 every mob. This is expected because I trained my Marksmanship to give me a 40% increase to getting a critical hit and wasn''t seeing any difference. So a fix? Who knows :) There is a thread on the WoW boards right now listing all the fixes in the game that did not make the patch notes. I verified a bunch of them and indeed there are some undocumented changes.

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All in all, I''m happy with the changes they made to the Hunter. I don''t notice the DPS nerf because I hadn''t exploited the bug with the bags. I actually see a DPS increase in this case and extra criticals is always nice :)

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Well gang, as I mentioned earlier tomorrow is a holiday here so there will not be a musing tomorrow. Be looking for verion 2.0 starting on Monday :) If you have any comments or questions regarding my musings please feel free to drop by my website (listed in the footer) or drop me an email: ralic -at- shaw -dot- ca. I will answer every email I get, so feel free to drop a line my way.

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You guys are great :) Have a fun and safe weekend and we''ll meet back here on Monday. Take care.

Cheers,

Al

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