O Captain! My Captain!

   Before I begin tonight's post, I'd like to dedicate it to a great man, Robin Williams, who tragically took his own life today. The joy you brought to our lives will never be forgotten.

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

                         But O heart! heart! heart!

                            O the bleeding drops of red,

                               Where on the deck my Captain lies,

                                  Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,

For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

                         Here Captain! dear father!

                            The arm beneath your head!

                               It is some dream that on the deck,

                                 You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,

The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;

                         Exult O shores, and ring O bells!

                            But I with mournful tread,

                               Walk the deck my Captain lies,

                                  Fallen cold and dead.

~Walt Whitman

    After missing another week, I'm back. That's the thing about summer. Time tends to get a little weird and scheduled things start to get away from you. At least, that's the way it is for me.
   Regardless, I am enjoying my last few official days of summer. Thursday is "vet day" for the marching band, and then band camp starts in earnest next Monday, so we're basically closing the book on the summer of 2014, here. I'd say it was a good one.
   Last week I went to see Guardians of the Galaxy and I cannot stress how great this movie is. As far as superhero movies go these past several years, I wouldn't quite call it Avengers level, but far, far better than Thor or even Captain American. Absolutely a new favorite. I found it to be a perfect blend of comedy and action-personally I prefer a little more drama/seriousness, but I couldn't help but fall in love with this movie. I won't spoil anything, of course, as it just came out. Suffice it to say, that line at the end needs to be a movie. If they can pull off the Guardians of the Galaxy, I think they might just be able to get away with it. Besides, it happened in the 80's, let's see history repeat itself!

   In other fairly big news, today I launched my first solo podcast Pokecast-a podcast focusing on news from the popular Pokemon series of anime, video games, and TCG. Episode 1-Bulbasaur is up on the RSS feed. You can listen to it now on the Nerds Under Fire site, or wait and subscribe when it is approved by iTunes. During our first episode, I discuss the new mega-evolutions announced for Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire as well as the new Pokemon Center website, and more! Be sure to check it out and leave feedback at nerdsunderfire@gmail.com.
   I think that will about do it for this post. When we next meet, we will have both a trailer and launch date for Warlords of Draenor, so stay tuned for that. Have a great week!

Tacos,
Gladdstone

Return of the Gladdstone

   Hey guys! Wow, it's been a while since I posted. I'm really sorry about that, things have been simultaneously super busy and insanely boring at the same time here, and it's killing me. But now with things winding down a bit, I have a little more time to be posting.
   So to get you all caught up on what I've been doing the past two weeks, we'll start in WoW (because Blizzard). Monday or Tuesday of last week, I got an email in my inbox from Blizzard. I think to myself "Oh, a newsletter or something, let's see what they have to say..." WRONG.
   Guess who got their WoD beta invite?
   Awwww yeeeaaaahhhh.

BOOM

   So anyway, after completing the obligatory flipping of shit I immediately logged onto Battle Net and downloaded all the extra crap I needed (leaving less than 4gb of memory on my hard drive. I guess it's about time to do some spring cleaning). Several hours later, because my internet connection is terrible, I was logging into the WoD beta, and then promptly booted out. I struggled with that for about two days before finally getting in. I decided, because my main is on the Alliance side, I would check everything out on the Horde side so as to preserve the fun on my mains a little bit more (not like it won't be fun on my troll shaman still, but ya know). I chose to roll myself a level 90 orc warlock, because I've always wanted a warlock but never really put in the work for one. I figured maybe if I played a level 90 one in the beta that would give me the kick in the pants I needed to finally level one. Which it did, and I am now leveling Finwik, the gnome warlock.
   Anyway, after dealing with all that "how the hell do I play this class?" shit and getting a bit settled, I wandered around for a while trying to figure out how to get to the new content. About an hour later, I finally thought to turn around from the Warchief's Command board and noticed two gargantuan NPCs. Yeah. So I got the quest and went into Draenor and let me just say, everything about this shit is awesome. Everything looks fantastic, you can search your bags now and that is the absolute greatest thing ever, and the new quest log is just fantastic beyond words. I can finally look at the map and keep an eye on what's going on around me. The only thing I would still like to see with the interface is the ability to drag the windows around the screen so I can see certain areas and have more windows open.

Smell that? That's me soiling myself.

   I won't ramble on anymore about that because there is other big news to get to, which is the launch of the new Hearthstone adventure Curse of Naxxramas on Tuesday of this week. I nearly shit my pants in excitement and proceeded to complete all three bosses in just under 2 hours (I'm not very good). I still have both class challenges and the Heroic to do, but I've been saving those for this weekend. To be honest, I may not even be able to do the Heroics because I've been watching streamers like Amaz do them, and it took even him a solid 2 hours to beat Maexxna on Heroic, so we'll see if I can nail down that cardback ever. Suffice it to say, though, Curse of Naxxramas felt absolutely incredible to go through, and if Team 5 keeps up this quality of work for the (long) life of this game, I will be playing this game until the day they shut down the servers and the zombies take over the world.


   San Diego Comic Con is going on this weekend, so you can probably expect a giant news roundup on Monday from all of that, hopefully including some video clips and whatnot. I've never gotten to go, personally, but maybe one of these years that will change.
   I think that about covers everything I wanted to talk about for now, so I'll just leave you all with one last note for Java. Fuck you guys, I do not, nor will I ever want your goddamn Ask toolbar. No one wants it, no one uses Ask, just stop trying. All you're doing is inconveniencing your customers for a few dollars. #rantover.

Tacos,
Gladdstone