Thanksgiving 2013

Thanksgiving Sprout would like to say a few heartfelt words in thanks.

First of all to the Godmother of Alternative Chat fame (or possibly infamy depending on your stance on flying mounts on Draenor) who offered a stable and friendly home to Sprout and her associates.

Then to all those wonderful people I’ve encountered through playing WoW and through blogging about it. To Seph without whom I may well never have taken the plunge into writing on such a public medium. Also to Saga, Tome, Matty, Navi and Cymre who were some of my first readers and commentators when I finally managed to go public. I suffer rather badly from anxiety and to say my self esteem is low would be an understatement. Recently in particular things have been extremely bad, to the point where I’ve struggled to do anything socially at all because I’ve felt the “mask” is paper thin, that everyone else can see the flaws within. Just knowing there are people out there within the blogging community who don’t think I’m total waste of space helps and so thank you again to all of you, readers, commentators, lurkers and ships which pass in the night. Prinnie also warrants a special mention because no matter how bad I’m feeling, her posts can usually manage to raise a smile so thank you (and believe me, it’s hard for Sprout to thank Goblins!).

I also want to thank Amerance for hosting the first Blog Azeroth Thanksgiving two years ago which was the catalyst behind my twitter account and I’ve learnt so much from twitter (including the fact that you can lick your own nipple*).

Thank you also to Mr Harpy who has the patience of a saint for putting up with me, even if he is a photo bombing bouncy green haired pest.

In closing, words can’t quite express just how grateful I am to each and everyone one of you. Thank you once more.

*I’ve been told this is common knowledge, clearly I skipped all the interesting classes at school.

My latest Distraction

Inspired by a comment left by the Dancing Hare, I thought I’d dabble in SW:TOR and much to my surprise I am actually enjoying the story so far. It’s weird because I hated the gated fixed leveling zones in WoW but yet here I find myself sinking into the story telling rather than focusing on the fact that everyone playing my class experiences the same beginning. The fact that I’m playing solo probably helps, wanting to play say a Worgen and then being stuck for 14 levels when you want to quest with someone who refuses to play a Worgen got frustrating fast. Not sure how long the “ooh” factor will last but then since I really really really want to kill the guy who keeps giving me quests, I suspect I’ll be enthralled at least to the point where I either get to slaughter him or the game designers disappoint me by making him turn out to be okay after all.

I’m also playing through Dragon Age: Origins as a Mage yet again. I could pretty much do my harrowing in my sleep by this stage. Although what normally happens is I burn out by Ostagar and run off and make a new character but this time, I’m determined. I have goals in fact. I will actually finish the damn game, seduce Leliana and make Alistair marry Anora.

On the flip (WoW) side, I’ve found myself missing Sprout to the point of starting to sketch gnome faces, trying to decide whether a plushie would work best with a painted felt face or one built out of embroidery and fabric. Not convinced I actually miss playing the game though.

Kismet: Luck or Fate

This is a post which was originally going to be a bit of a rant, however much to my surprise, it’s turned out as the opposite. Whether that’s due to luck or fate, you can be the judge.

I recently realised that all my comments on other WordPress blogs were disappearing straight into the spam filters and didn’t take long to figure out the culprit…. Akismet. Experimentation suggested it wasn’t my email address causing the problem but my Blog because if I tried posting with just a name and email address, things worked fine. This was further supported by the fact that google short links would work for around around 12 hours before they too hit the spam folders.

I flicked around on the web and found story after story of woe. In fact after reading my 15th or so negative report, I was actually considering renaming my blog as clearly harpies are frowned upon. However Mr Harpy (the sole voice of reason most of the time in our house) suggested emailing them to explain the issue and so, grudgingly we did. I have to admit I wasn’t expecting a reply and this was definitely supported by the number of people posting about Akismet and the nigh impossibility of getting yourself unbanned.

Which brings me to today, in between people telling me “oh I found a comment of yours sitting in my spam folder”, I got an email from a nice gentleman called Mark.

Hi,
Sorry for that – I believe it is fixed for you now.

—
Mark  

A spot of random testing later and yes, it seems that it has been fixed and fairly quickly too as it took them less than 48 hours from the issue being raised for them to get in touch to say it was sorted.

So it’s time for Happy Sprout to make an appearance and yes, I’m ever so slightly addicted to this Chibi-maker.