Seventy-Fourth

Apologies for the gap in posting, folks - I've been busier than usual at work. Honestly.

My painting has ground to a halt as I'm waiting on new models coming in at the end of this week, and although I've got some more sitting in a box, I want to get my two core squads painted up first before I move on to anything else. They should arrive Friday/Saturday, so I'll get started on them again next week, and update you on the progress.

I'm doing a slightly different job at the moment, I'm being trained to help cover the internal IT helpdesk for my company - normally I work exclusively taking care of problems for one of our customers, but our new manager is keen for our team to be trained up and have experience of several contracts for leave and emergency situations. I'm supposed to be training this week and next, and then covering the helpdesk myself the week after. Unfortunately things are not working out that way. It seems there are going to be some rather hefty moves in the office my company is based in, and I'm being roped in to perform some stock taking/auditing/clearing out. Obviously this is making the process of getting trained up rather difficult, if not non-existent.
Still, it should pay off in the long run, and I'm a pretty intelligent guy, so I'm confident in my ability to get by under my own intuition, if needs be.

I have re-activated my WoW account, so I'll hopefully be giving you updates once more on the ongoing adventures of Tornik and Verbatim. You may not be aware, but Blizzard has in place several themed holiday events through the year, and they have just rolled out the 'Brewfest' holiday. It's essentially the German Beer Festival, just in different colours. Most of the stuff in the holiday, and indeed in most of the holidays, is throw-away content like pretzels or beer, but this time round Blizzard have included something particularly cool, and added in new mounts which can be won by completing some themed events.

You may not know how WoW works in respect of mounts, so let me try to enlighten you. Each race in WoW has a race-specific mount; Tigers if you're a Night Elf, Rams if you're a Dwarf, Raptors if you're a Troll, Wolves if you're an Orc, and so on. You aren't restricted to using just your racial mount, as there are some out there provided by NPC factions in the game which you can earn through various ways. WoW players must choose a faction when they create their character - either Alliance or Horde, and there is currently no way to gain access to the opposite faction's mounts. Until now. By taking part in the Brewfest events, you can eventually purchase a Ram mount, regardless of your Race or Faction. It might not sound like much, but some of us are tickled pink by the idea of you Undead character riding around on what was previously restricted to the Dwarves.

The patch went live on US servers yesterday, and EU servers this morning - I'll be rushing home to get started on earning my Ram mount tonight. The Brewfest event only runs until the 16th, and I'd like to get a mount for both Verbatim and Tornik, so I'll need to get cracking.

Wish me luck!