The Don’s Blog…

I was scouting around on a way to make chat commands a little more simple to understand. On my venture, I came across a website called ILoveJackDaniels.com and found a nice little gem. The good folks there have created a WoW Cheat Sheet for those who haven’t quite figured out the whole chat scene. When you use chat you can target other people, change chat channels, manage your guild rankings, add or delete people from groups, and let’s not forget the physical portion of the game. You can wave, dance, fart, growl, bark, and charge people. That’s just a few of a couple hundred. So here’s a link to the cheat sheet in PNG format. Print it out, and practice! You’ll be amazed how much more interesting the game is when you know how to do some of these simple chat commands.

Below are the best combination’s for maximum results with professions available in World of Warcraft.  I will do a follow-up on Jewelcrafting in the near future.  So follow these guidelines and keep an eye on the auction house on your server to find out what is selling and what is not.  There is always something selling…

The Best Combos:
Tailoring/Enchanting
Leatherworking/Skinning
Mining/Blacksmithing
Mining/Engineering
Alchemist/Herbalist

Tailoring/Enchanting:
From levels 1 to 20, kill every humanoid you see.  Humanoids drop cloth and you’ll need all you can get.  At level 20, go learn both Tailoring and Enchanting and do the default skills until you get to a skill of 30 on your Tailoring.  Then make Brown Linen Robes and disenchant them with your Enchanting profession.  Do this until your Brown Linen Robe option becomes yellow, then take the next Green Item that is still orange and do the same.

You are best to enchant your own stuff and sell any extra to a vendor until you reach a skill level higher than 125.  Anything lower than that has a less than great chance of selling.  Use only red enchants during this process.  If you loot a green item and you don’t think it is good enough to be sold, then simply disenchant it, and sell the remain carcass of an item to the nearest vendor.  Once you get to a skill level of 225 in enchanting, it will become pretty expensive to fund your leveling cost, so make sure you are supplementing this by selling as many enchanted items as you can.  Remember, the Auction House is your friend!

Leatherworking/Skinning:
Kill stuff.  Skin their bodies and make stuff for profit!  Anything you make that is lower than a level 25 item you are better off selling to a vendor.  You will need a skinning dagger, available at the nearest Trade Merchant, and it is a good idea to visit the auction house and see if you can find a skinning enchant and a beast slaying enchant.  Keep an eye on the auction house and see what is selling and what is not.  Some leather cloaks are used for quests and can be made and sold for a rediculous amount of money.

Mining/Blacksmithing:
Really, there’s not much to this one.  Simply find a good area to mine, and keep everything you find.  The chances are good that eventually you will need something you’ve thrown away.  Smelt it and create armor.  I can give you this peice of advice.  Find an area where there are a lot of mining deposits in a row.  Start at one end and work your way around.  By the time you get back to the first one it should be reset.  Mining instances and then coming back out to reset them is also a great way to earn.  Take your newly made armor and sell it.

Mining/Engineering:
There’s not much difference between this and the blacksmithing, except that most of then things you make and sell will only be usable by fellow Engineers.  That means a lower chance of making money from this.  Just remember that getting anywhere with this one is going to be hard, time consuming, frustrating, and possibly quite expensive.  But, if you manage to max out your skill and start selling your contraptions you will make money.  It’s up to you whether you want to gamble.

Alchemist/Herbalist:
Run around the land gathering herbs and turn them into valuable potions and elixers.  Some say this is a low-rent skill, until they are in battle and need an elixer they don’t have.  There are potions that restore your life and mana completely, elixers that turn you into a giant, or invisible, or just about anything you can imagine.  Personally, this is one of my favorites.  So if you have the time to kill up these professions, you can sell some elixers for 100g at the Auction House if there is a huge battle coming up.  Level 70’s are always looking for the easiest way to gain maximum power on the battlefield.  Help them out… and turn their need into your cash.

May 12, 1937 - June 22, 2008

I woke up this morning to a piece of news that would shock any fan of old-school humor.  George Carlin, the man who made it necessary to censor television, died last night from heart failure at the age of 71.  Carlin, who had a history of heart trouble, went into St. John’s Medical Center in Santa Monica on Sunday afternoon complaining of chest pain and died later that evening.  He had performed as recently as last weekend at the Orleans Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas.

Carlin was most widely known for his “Seven Words You Can Never Say On TV” routine.  When they were played on air at a NYC radio station, it resulted in the Supreme Court’s 1978 ruling that the government should be allowed to control what we hear and see.

“So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I’m perversely kind of proud of,” he told The Associated Press earlier this year.

He produced 23 comedy albums, 14 HBO specials, three books, a couple of TV shows and appeared in several movies. Carlin hosted the first broadcast of “Saturday Night Live” and noted on his Web site that he was “loaded on cocaine all week long.”

He won four Grammy Awards, each for best spoken comedy album, and was nominated for five Emmy awards. On Tuesday, it was announced that Carlin was being awarded the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

Carlin’s first wife, Brenda, died in 1997. He is survived by wife Sally Wade; daughter Kelly Carlin McCall; son-in-law Bob McCall; brother Patrick Carlin; and sister-in-law Marlene Carlin.

George, I don’t know if they have the internet in the afterlife yet, but I’m sending this one out to you.  You have inspired my unruly sense of humor since I first caugh your act as a kid.  I feel privledged to have once shaken your hand and seen you perform your art live.  Your filthy mouth will live on forever, my friend.

Okay ladies and gents. Here’s a follow up on my last WoW blog. I told you that Warcraft is all about supply and demand if you are after the big money. Now here’s a few distributors for you to check out. But remember, the secret is to only put one or two of each item up for auction at a time. Just like in real life, the easier it is to find or make, the less it’s worth. Keep the supply low, and the demand will be high. Then all you have to do is take advantage.

Blizrik Buckshot
Blizrik is the first goblin pulling through for us. He sells guns in Gadgetzan in Tanaris. The best thing about Blizrik is the fact that since he isn”t an engineer, most people aren”t going to check him for limited engineering schematics. Purchase EZ-Thro Dynamite II from Blizrik, head a few doors down to the alchemy merchant and purchase Transmute Iron to Gold and Transmute Mithril to Truesilver.

Knaz and Gnaz Blunderflame
Gnomes are the best! Knaz and Gnaz live in the hills in Stranglethorn Vale which is a 30+ zone. Their house is probably one of the least obvious, so you might have some trouble finding them initially. They”re due east of the skullsplitter trolls, but the mountains in the area will appear to be too steep to climb. Keep trying and you”ll eventually find a route that gets you to the (very) hidden winding path.

Knaz sells the Deadly Scope schematic and Gnaz sells the Mechanical Dragonling schematic. Of the two, the dragonling is actually more in demand on my server. Although, the purchase price is a steep 1 gold for the dragonling, you can easily turn around and sell it for 4. The Deadly Scope is a little cheaper, but it too can be sold for 3 to 4 gold.

Ruppo and Gigget Zipcoil
Ruppo lives in the Hinterlands which is a 40+ zone. You can still get to him early on, but you might die a lot if you”re too low. Ruppo, like Zan, lives in an area not obvious on the in-game map. He’’s nestled between a few hills north east of Aerie Peak.

Ruppo sells the much coveted Mithril Dragonling engineering recipe. For only 40 silver, you can turn around and sell this recipe in the auction house for around 4 gold depending on your server.

The Mithril Dragonling schematic is one of the more popular buy-then-sell schematics, so you might find you”re competing with a few other knowledgeable players. However, they tend to stop at the Mithril Dragonling schematic, where you”ll also get the Ironfeather Shoulders pattern from Gigget standing nearby.

The Ironfeather Shoulders pattern, while expensive at 1 gold and 40 silver, can also be sold for a nice profit on the auction house, so be sure to pick it up too. You can usually get away with selling it for 3 to 4 gold making this location particularly profitable.

Zan Shivsproket
He sells the Gnomish Cloaking Device schematic. Zan is particularly good because he’’s not in an area most people would just stumble on him. I never see Gnomish Cloaking Devices for sale in the auction house on my server so this always earns me some gold.

You can find Zan in the hidden mountain rogue stronghold in Hillsbrad. He’’s at the bottom of the stairs in the engineering lab. You”ll know you”ve found the right place when you see the various robots strewn around the room. Check the map for the general location.

You”ll find the stronghold along a winding mountain road. If you”ve never been there before, look for the winding path on the west side of the mountain range near the river.

Hillsbrad Foothills is a relatively low level zone, so you could make the trek at a very early level indeed. It’’s a great way to bring in some serious cash at low levels.

So if the first piece didn’t get you some cash flow, these most certainly will. I’ve tested each one, and am happy with the results. Happy selling!

I had this idea a few weeks back about building a PC case entirely out of Popsicle sticks.  A few of my esteemed colleagues and friends have expressed their opinions on the matter.  So to all of you, especially Trisha who is worried about me burning down my house, I just want you all to lay your fears to rest.  In July, right after we are done filming this movie, I am going to get started on this thing.  I hope to have it entirely done by mid-August.

So here the low down.  I already have the heat problem worked out, the thing I’m worried about is stability.  So common wood glue just won’t do when it comes to the vibrations.  If anyone has any suggestions on what I should use let me know.  But please, don’t worry about the heat.  I got this covered.

I came across this a few minutes ago and laughed my ass off. Someone put some work into this baby. Very realistic. Sometimes I wish I had one of these equipped to my Hunter.

World of Warcraft car commercial - Watch more free videos

I was playing around online and I came across something that I had seen before, but then put out of my head. It’s a little online world called Second Life. It’s a recent fad, a virtual world where everything is interactive and you can be anyone you want to be. To me, it’s something a little less boring that masturbating with a cheese grater. It’s also nothing I haven’t done before.

When I was just getting into computers about 10 years ago, I would get home from school every day and unplug my grandparent’s phone so I could hook up my 56K modem and visit the wonder that is the internet. The internet is taken for granted today as largely fast and downloads are almost instant. Not back then. Hight speed internet was just a dull spark of a rumor in my small town in the hills of Tennessee. So online gaming usually consisted of playing cheap Yahoo or Excite games. But those were not what I spent hours online goofing around with.

The object of my affection was a little online community known as Active Worlds. Sort of a dumbed down version of Second Life, it was the virtual place to be in the late 90’s. Many of you probably played it, if you weren’t still amazed at how you could send mail to another person in the blink of an eye. I had many friends inside, and we all would hang out for hours on Planet Mars in the Red Eye bar and just shoot the shit. (Where I was raised, there wasn’t much computer talk, so I had to reach out somehow.)

I sat there reminiscing over my very first virtual experience that ended up with my being a World of Warcraft fanatic. Now that I think about it, this was around the time I bought a game at Wal-Mart that I had never heard of call Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness. So I decided to check out www.activeworlds.com and see if the domain name had been sold off to some porn site yet. Low and behold, it was still up and running. Not only that, it’s thriving. So I logged in as a guest, and after a half an hour of checking out my old stomping grounds on Planet Mars I shut it off, realizing how far I had come in the world of online interaction. I was definitely beyond this. Way beyond.

But now, I at least can link my love for online gaming to one starting point. The place where the internet first took hold of my imagination and I no longer felt satisfied playing Mario Bros. on Super Nintendo. So I salute you, Active Worlds, may you entertain and bore people for many years to come.

Every player knows the best place to get gear really quick is at the auction house. Sure, sometimes you’ll end up paying more for it, but if you need it in a hurry that’s the price you pay. Now, I’ll show you how to turn the tables and make large amounts of gold by selling rare items to high-level players.

Most players who have maxed out the level cap are no longer interested in weapons or armor. They have pretty much reached the limit and have the best. So with all the quests done, they turn to the PvP and battleground side of the game. Huge wars rage on 24 hours per day in the World of Warcraft, and these fighters use everything they can get their hands on to beat the other players. This includes rare herbs for potions, rare metals for bombs, ect…

High level players have too much to do to go looking for these things. If you need something in a hurry, you’ll pay for it. Just like junkies needing a fix, they’ll pay outrageous prices to get what they need. With moderate effort, you can be their dealer. Below, I’ll give you an example to get you started. From there, visit thottbot.com or just google for rares and you’ll start to get a picture of how easy this really is.

On Raven Hill in Duskwood there are two buildings that have an upstairs floor. One is an Inn, the other is just West of it. It is a decrepit building with no real apparent value. Upstairs is a goblin alchemist who sells a limited purchase recipe for Shadow Oil. Limited purchase means you can only buy a few at a time. But you can always sell these and then come back.

The purchase price for this item from the vendor is 15 Silver. This item can go for up to 4 Gold at the auction house. That’s a profit of 3 Gold, 85 Silver. In the vicinity of a 2500% profit. Impressed yet? Now get your ass in there and make some gold.

Okay, I have a blog.  This is a first for me.  I honestly don’t know what to write.  Everything I’ve ever put to print has had a topic.  I guess since this is a on a tech website I should at least keep it in that category.  So as I sit here watching Futurama on my portable video player, I will think of something techy.

I have a few projects under way.  I finally finished writing the screenplay for my new movie this morning.  That’s techy, video cameras are involved.  I am going to build a PC Tower out of Popsicle sticks.  I am putting together a solar/battery powered portable USB charger.

I just finished a couple of articles on leveling your World of Warcraft character.  I hate techno and like Bjork.  Keep that one to yourselves.  I have too many unused computer parts sitting in various sports bags around my apartment, and I have no use for them.  Why?  Because they are too outdated to even run Windows 95 on.

Okay, that’s it for now.  I’ll try this again when I have a decent topic to write about.  I’m sure I’ll have something before it’s over with.