Better Half

I would like to thank all the dedicated readers of this blog. I know I do not blog as often as I would like, but thanks for hanging out with me and all my craziness.

Today I want to talk to you about the most important woman in my life. This would be my wife. She writes this awesome blog about wow stuff from a rogue's perspective. I believe I have shared some of her fan fiction concerning our characters, how they met, fell in love, etc.

Well, the real story of Therigwin and Daraia began before we even met. We both had a connection to a Christian Camp in Michigan, Camp Barakel. My family has been working at that camp for many summers and attended it as campers as well. My wife worked up there as a teen as well. It was during that summer that she met my brother and future sister-in-law. They came away thinking that I should date this girl, even though I was in a relationship at the time with another girl.

Time passed and I found myself at college and not dating anyone. And I met my wife through the drama department. Now I had my eyes set on another girl, but she was not who God had planned for me. We worked on a couple of plays and dramas together, helping out the local Christian High School back staging, cueing the actors and helping with the set. All the kids could see the chemistry between us, but we did not, we were just good friends.

I remember we went rollerskating, and I did not do that well, but my wife helped me out. It was at that event my brother and sister-in-law found out that I had met the girl from Camp. They told mom and dad and everyone started praying.

Well, I was still fixated on this other girl in college, but she turned me down for the formal winter banquet. This was the "valentines" day banquet the college put on each year. So, all my friends were going and I really did not want to go by myself, so I asked her. She said yes and I got the best shock of my entire night that night of the banquet.

My wife is what she calls a "low maintenance" person. She doesn't wear much makeup, keeps her hair in a ponytail, etc. Your basic good looking woman that doesn't demand much.

Well I still remember how beautiful she was that night. All her girl friends had done her up to beyond what she normally was. It took my breath away and I got this thought in my head, maybe this was the girl I should look at for my wife.

Over the next 3 weeks we did various dates and the more I learned about her, the more I was falling in love with her. I asked her to be my girlfriend at the end of that third date. She said no. Man what a blow to me. She told me I was on rebound and I was not truly interested in her and told me to be just friends with her.

Nothing like a challenge to get you more interested. Well I told her she was wrong and asked her what I could do. She knowing that I was very much into Knights, fantasy, and all that stuff, she told me that I had a quest, if I could figure out the one thing she would be my girlfriend. She figured it would take me a year to figure it out. So over the next few days I tried various things, from poetry, flowers being snuck into her dorm room by her roommate for me, starting daily devotional with her, and pretty much romancing her entire dorm. They all wanted her to date me, but she was firm, I had to do this one thing for the quest before she would be my girlfriend.

That one simple thing to do, was to kiss her. She believed I was too shy to try that, and in truth I was very shy and insecure. As I have shared in the past, my previous girlfriend from highschool was a mess and used physical interaction against me to manipulate me. She was really messed up and I did not want my new relationship based on anything physical until we were closer to being married.

Well, I remember the night that I overcame this fear and whispered in her ear, "Is it a kiss?" and saw the hope and panic in her face. I attempted to kiss her 3 times that night in her dorm, only to be interrupted by people walking by, including her "dorm manager or dorm mom". So I grabbed her hand and we went for a walk. We walked over to the seminary on campus where there was a pond and willow tree. Standing under that tree, I looked her in the eyes, bent my head down and kissed her. We prayed after that asking God to direct our relationship. It took me 1 week to complete that quest and win my wife over to be my girlfriend.

A couple months into the relationship, I realized that I loved her, really really loved her and I told her. She said that was nice and she just wasn't ready. Oh the heart break. Then one day while we were walking around campus talking about "The Corner on the Truth", she blurted out, "I Love You". I was the happiest man alive. I remember the exact spot on campus she told me, though the landscaping has changed since that time, I will always remember where she confessed her love for me. She was scared that it would not last over that summer, but it did. We both went to two different camps to work, but visited each other during the summer.

Our love grew and I found out of a tradition of how the guy proposes to their spouse in her family. It was by presenting a teddy bear. We were working on the fall drama again. She was the backstage manager and I was in the sound booth. My parents were coming up and I was trying to stall her as much as possible to make sure all was ready. She was a wreck worrying about her responsibilities and the play. Well the seminar was where the stage was at and I had my parents put the teddy bear all dressed in armor with a pouch around his neck in the spot we shared our first kiss on a blanket.

I was walking her over to the seminar when I said, hey, whats that over there. She thought it was a couple, but I dragged her over there. Now she knew that eventually I was going to be asking her, because we had already picked out her ring and I had ordered it, she just did not know it would be so soon.

I remember her words so clearly..... "I hate you" "I love you" "I hate you" ya, she was a bit stressed. We dug out the ring from the under the armor and I got on my knees and asked her to marry me. She said yes and the rest is as they say history.

So now we turn full circle back to the beginning of the story. Camp Barakel. That is where my wife is presently with my sister-in-law at a Women's retreat. She has been gone since Friday and while I am glad she gets to get a break from the family and renew her spirit, I really miss my partner, my helpmate, my love. She will be back later tonight and then we will celebrate our youngests 5 year birthday.

One of the things I did for her when she was gone was completely redo her UI and I will now share her previous UI and her new one.

Previous -















New -

Charming... Very Charming

Today's Blog is on a mod that I believe is a must for anyone that is party leading or raid leading.

I think it is key to either have macros or an addon for you to perform the following two tasks -
Mark Adds with Charms (Icons on the head)
And perform Ready Checks.

I stumbled apon this mod a while ago, called Target Charms.

This is a very versatile mod allowing for custom size, shape, moving, hiding, etc.

If you look at my UI from prior posts you will see a Ready? button for the ready check and the icons listed just above my action bar for quick access of marking targets.

Well, that is all I have for today, time for me to get back to my job that pays the bills.

My UI Part 3 - 5 Man Content Style

I dare you again, click the picture and see what awaits you.

Yes, I am starting this blog very late at night or early morning. Been on a tech call for work (love being on call, NOT) so before I head to bed, I wanted to start this blog. We will be going over various elements in this ui, as this is a special configuration just for the new 5 man.

Insert Time Lapse Here

Ok, it is now lunch time and I am at work finishing up this blog entry.

As you can see I am using Xperl Unit Frames Mod to display the party frames and my frame and target, etc.

But what is that thermometer in between my target of target frame and my target?
That is a brand new threat mod, called Tidy Threat. It is nice and small and will fit in there nicely, also works great with the default blizzard frames.

You may also notice a bar in the bottom middle with icons and the shield is highlighted. That is Outfitter. I only turn on that bar when doing ToC 5 man so I can quickly switch out my jousting stick for my tanking weapon.

Well, lunch is over, so I will have to blog more about my UI on a later date.

UI Mods Part 2

No new picture today.

You just look at the one from the last blog - http://tank4thelight.blogspot.com/2009/08/ui-mods-part-1-solo-play.html

Today's quick bit will be on a viewport mod and a settings mod.

Viewport mods change your screen real estate by adding graphics to the screen. On top of that, they can also modify the viewable area of your character.

What does that mean? Ok, say I wanted to be able to scroll back and see EVERYTHING that I could see with having mods turned off. Ok, take that box, now put it into the viewport. This allows me to place all my controls, mods, etc off the viewing area or view port. In theory, I could make my setup so I could record videos and have none of my UI as I could crop it out in the video editing.

Anyway, I use Sunn - Viewport Art with art pack 1 and 5 for my characters.
Now again, you have the option of having it lay the graphics on top of the screen, or making an actual view port. I have chosen to make an actual view port. So it lets me see the same amount of play area without having it covered by the graphcs. Infact, I have my chocolate bar set to invisible and use the Sunn Art behind it.

Now the other mod I want to talk about is TweakWOW
It has a bunch of little tweaks that are normally UI Console commands that you can now configure. This includes setting the max distance for your camera to be even farther out (my primary reason for using the mod).

So this gives me maximum distance and viewing of the area, while getting my ui out of my face, so I can see what is going on while tanking.

Tomorrow, we will cover some more of my interesting addons.

UI Mods Part 1 - Solo Play

Today I embark on sharing my UI for Wow 3.2

Click the Image... I dare you.

BUHAHAHAHAHA.

Anyway here is my UI. I am presently non grouped and flying in my main speck as a tank. Over the next couple of blogs I will include shots of my UI in my two specks grouped and ungrouped with other mods popped open. My previous Blog, I covered Chocolate Bar as the main mod of focus.
And if you have looked at some of my past UIs I have posted in various spots, you see that I have pretty much established my look and feel.

So we got rid of FuBar and I am now using ChocolateBar.

Now again, this is going to be a series, so let hit a section of the screen at a time.
First you may notice I have my map open and it is not taking up my entire screen. In fact, I can size it, make it transparent, etc. This is all courtesy of Mapster. It works with Mods like Questhelper as well. It adds the coordinates and everything.

Ok, let me now cover my new strategy for ChocolateBar.
I have divided Chocolate Bar into six areas.
The top left deals with my location, guild and friends, and quests.
The middle deals with raiding, grouping, combat, etc.
The right deals with time, sound, whispers, and my active/inactive lockouts.
The bottom left deals with UI stuff and Atalas.
The bottom center deals with performance and errors.
The bottom right is my cash, bags, regeants, and repair status.

Well that is all there is for today, except here is a list of all the mods I am running right now -
!BugGrabber
Acheron
Achieved!
Ackis Recipe List
Ampere
Atlas
Atlasloot Enhanced
AtlasQuest - Fan Update
Auctioneer
Bejeweled
Broker uClock
Broker_Bags
Broker_CalendarEvents
Broker_CPU Memory
Broker_Currency
Broker_epgp
Broker_Location
Broker_Recount
BugSack
ButtonFacade
ButtonFacade: Caith
Capping Battleground Timers
Chinchilla Minimap
ChocolateBar Broker Display
Combuctor
CowTip
CurseProfiler 2.0
DBM-Sarth-ShadowFissureWarn
DBM-VictorySounds
Deadly Boss Mods
Deadly Boss Mods - Burning Crusade mods
Deadly Boss Mods - LibDataBroker
Dominos
Dresser
DualSpeccer
Elephant
EnsidiaFails
epgp (dkp reloaded)
EPGPLootmaster
EWOlson_RealName
Fishbringer
Gem Quota
GuildBankSearch
GuildCheck
HeadCount
Hit Assist for casters and melee
InspectEquip
Learning Aid
LibDataBroker-1.1
Livestock
Mapster
MikScrollingBattleText
Misspelled
Omen Threat Meter
OmniCC
Outfitter
Overachiever - achievement tools and tweaks
Peggle
QuestHelper
RatingBuster
ReadyCheckAnnouncer
Recount
RecountGuessedAbsorbs
RepairBroker
Reputation Monitor 3.0
SatrinaBuffFrame
SharedMedia
Sunn - Viewport Art
Sunn - Viewport Art Pack 1
Sunn - Viewport Art Pack 5
SustainedTps
TargetCharms
tomQuest2
TotemTimers
TrinketMenu
Volumizer
VuhDo
WIM (WoW Instant Messenger) v3
X-Perl UnitFrames
ZOMGBuffs

Therigwin's UI and Mods - Raid Style

UPDATE - Here are updated links to my UI and MODS -
UI Mods Patch 3.2 Part 1 - Solo Play
UI Mods Part 2
UI Mods Part 3 - 5 Man Party Tank
So welcome to my crazy World of Warcraft User Interface. If you click the picture, you will see it in all its wide screen glory. So let me go over the various mods you see in this particular screen shot.

The first most import mod in this screenshot is one that reconfigures the graphics rendering area (or game play area). It is Sunn - Viewport Art. It allows me to make that border around the screen and the large area at the bottom, but I do not loose any screen realestate because it screens the normal screen into the new defined Viewport.

The Next important Mod is FuBar. Yes, I am still a good old user of FuBar. I could use Fortress or go back to Titan, but have chosen to remain in the FuBar camp. I have set the transparency on Fubar to max, so it blends right in with the art from the Viewport mod. So going over my FuBar mods real quick starting at the top right, working accross row one, two and then to the bottom.

LocationFu is the first one you see. It shows where you are at and if you hover over it gives recommendation as where you should go, etc.

RegentFu is the next one in the line. It keeps track of what is needed to buff people and other regents you may need to use.

Next to RegentFu is QuestFu. If you recall from my previous blog post, this is one I was considering replacing since it doesn't appear to be getting any developer attention. It offers some nice things, but you can visit the mod site to read up on those.

Next to that is BugSack combined with !BugGrabber this keeps track of UI errors so I can report to mod authors, plus keep playing without the pop up boxes telling me there is a problem.

Now we have Recount control. This toggles showing the recount window that is down in the lower right hand corner that shows our SV Hunter cranking out the damage last night. Recount is the damage, heal, agro, keep track of the combat log parser mod. Kinda like wowstats in game.

Ok, the next mod on FuBar is my mod for another mod. It is MSBTFu All it does is bring up the Configuration for Mik's Scrolling Battle Text. That mod is what you see on the main screen. On the left is incoming damage and heals. On the right outgoing damage. In the upper middle, mana return, buffs and debuffs. In the middle bottom, you the message letting me know Shield of Righteousness is Ready. Best Scrolling Combat Text mod out there in my opinion.

Next to that is BigWigs. Some use Deadly Boss Mods, I am sticking with Big Wigs. I just like how it works.

Then you have the most important Instancing Mod - Atlas. Shows maps of the instances and where the bosses are located.

Next to Atlas is an oops on my part. It is the Icon for Omen. Notice that Omen is also on the bottom bar of Fubar. How did that happen? Well many of the mods are going over to using the LibDataBroker Method. This allows them to be plugged into many other mods. In order to get some of them to show up on Fubar, you need Broker2Fubar. So Omen does both, so I forgot to disable it in the Broker2Fubar mod so it would only show up once. Now, for those that do not know what Omen is, look next to my Recount box in the lower right, and you will see the omen box and how much threat each person has on the mob I am targeting.

The next icon over is ButtonFacade. This allows me to apply a different look to any button boxes that it supports. I use it for Dominos and ItemRack, which I will cover later in this article.

Next is RaidTracker. This is the who went to a Raid attendance tracker and what loot was handed out. It helps me plan on who to bring to the next raid as we have a large standby list for 10 mans right now.

Ok, still on the top row, head way over to the right to an icon all by itself. Incubator is supposed to tell mob respawn timers. So far for WotLK, it has told me nothing LOL. So I may get rid of it.

Did I mention Sunn Viewport Art? Oh ya, I did, this is the FuBar plugin for that which is next.

Then you have ClockFu and VolumeFu. Nice controls to see the time, make the alarm and stopwatch appear and adjust the volume of the game. I believe that they are defaults with FuBar.

Wow, top line is done and you are still reading!!!!

Second line we start out with DungeonDiFu. This allows me to change it from Normal to Heroic to even EPIX mode. Yup, the Devs have an unimplemented Epix mode in the game. You can use Epix Mode right now to prevent people from entering any instance to stop that oops, I already did this and get everyone saved to completed instance or raid.

Next we have GroupFu. Clicking on it will cause you to roll. It will keep track of all the rolls and will announce it for you if you want.

Now this is a cool mod that is next. InstanceInfoFu tells you for all your characters what Instances you are saved to.

Ok, Now we have GuildFu. Shows the message of the day, who is online, their officer and regular notes. Very handy when keeping track of EM members.

Next is the Combat Logger mod called LoggerHead. This is what turns on combat logging so I can upload it to WebWowStats.

Next is Elephant. This is an in game chat recorded. I use this to post the Sunday Bible Study from in game to the website. It is also used to keep track of past whispers, officer chat, guild chat, etc.

Center of the Second Row, you see the word Tank with a shield icon. This is Broker ItemRack which provides quick switching of gear configurations in ItemRack. I have a few plug ins for ItemRack. One is ItemRack Titles and the other is ButtonFacade_ItemRack. Again, this all allows me to switch gear sets quickly and this is what I used to replace ClosetGnome.

OK, over to the right now for the last two FuBar Mods on the top second row. First is WIM and the next one is All Played.

WIM is a mod that handles whipsers like an IM program.

All Played show information about where all your players are located and how much you have played them along with total time played on the current character.

Wow thats a lot of mods... and that was just the top part of the screen.

Ok, I am going to skip the bottom line of FuBar mods and go right into the center area and explain what I have got setup here.

I already mentioned Mik's Scrolling Battle Text, but I have not mentioned Comix. That is the Swoosh graphic you see. It is just a silly mod to entertain me. The only useful thing from it is when a mob hits 10% it says "Finish Him".

Next we have my unit Frames mod. I am using Xperl currently. On the left side is the raid boxes along with a raid monitor. Center is my box, my target's target in the dead center so I can make sure they are targeting me and then my target next to that. For the most part everything you see is all Xperl, from the Big Debuffs, the buffs, etc. The only exception is the Holy Shield Icon next to my unit frame. That is placed their by SatrinaBuffFrame which allows you to setup custom buff frames and put them whereever you need them. I have one setup special for Holy Shield and the some more for the Four Horseman's marks.

We already talked about Omen and Recount, but the box above that is my tooltip. I use CowTip to modify the look and location of the tooltip.

The only other mod that is not seen because the tooltip is over it is the Reputation Monitor. This is a very nice thing if you are grinding rep.

Ok, down to the lower portion of the UI. I use the standard Blizz Chat Frame, nothing special there.

Next is PallyPower. If you are a paladin and you raid, get this mod. It allows the raid leaders to assign paladin buffs to all the classes.

Next that is my button mashing central. All done by Dominos and skinned by ButtonFacade. This allows the moving and resizing of Action bars, loot windows, etc. Also using OmniCC to show the cooldowns on the buttons.

Below the buttons is HealBot. The best all in one healing, buffing, and decursing mod out there right now.

Now if you see my Trinkets with a Crab and Rabbit in them. That is TrinketMenu, allows for quick switching of trinkets and using trinkets.

Livestock is next. It is the Horseshoe, Winged Shoe, and the pet box on the screen. It allows for summoning a mount, flying mount and pet, all random.

Under the livestock icons is a Ready button. This is part of TargetCharms. If you see the raid icon at the top of the screen it is part of this mod. When a party or raid leader, it pops these up on the screen for easy marking and ready checks.

Under the Ready Check button are some plug ins for Tankadin2. The first button keeps track of Righteous Fury and reminds me to recast it. The next box tells me Ardent Defender information and does the avoided death raid warning messages. Next to that is the main Tankadin window that gives me all sorts of stats, including if I am crit cap, total avoidance, DR, etc. The author of Tankadin is working on making it useful for all tanking classes.

Above Tankadin is Emote Menu. It is a nice menu of all emotes in the game and good for spamming love, hug, poke, etc.

My Minimap is done by Chinchilla. There are added icons on it for Atlas, TrinketMenu.

Ok, and then more buttons (Action bars) from Dominos.

One mod you see in action in my chat window is Sustained TPS. Lets me know how much threat I am putting out.

Ok, bottom row of Fubar. We got Omen, AtlasLoot, Dominos, ExperienceFu, FactionFu, Xperl, AtlasLoot again. Atlas Loot show in Atlas what loot drops from the bosses, provides all sorts of other information about in game loot from world drops, tokens, etc. ExperienceFu lets you know when you are going to level, etc. FactionFu shows your factions and allows you to quickly switch which you are tracking.

In the middle is FuBar_MiniPerffu, basically a performance monitor.

Ok, right hand side, Fubar DurabilityFu, lets me know when to repair and does auto repairs if I have that enabled.

We round it out with MoneyFu and BagFu.

Wow, that is all my mods...... That you see.

Other mods that I use that are not seen right now are -
RatingBuster - Gear comparision mod.
ReadyCheck Announcer - announces in raid the results of ready check.
Totem Timers - For my shammie.
QuestHelper - for questing and flight timers.
Mapster - Great map mod that you can configure to see where you need to explore, but still see the entire map.
Learning Aid - For when you learn new stuff and want to easily drag it to your action bars.
GuildCheck - Lets me know what happens with guild roster changes.
Fishbringer - Helps with letting you know what is needed to fish in the area.
Dresser - A better Dressing Room
Combuctor - Awsome Bag management mod.

There are a few more, but none really worth mentioning, besides, I have been writing this for the past 3 hours, I want to play wow, so see ya in game!!!