Julio Santos

I’m finally done with High Assurance Design. The book is nice, though a little dry at times, especially when you don’t need that stuff right away (that stuff = design of highly scalable and secure enterprise software). I was tasked with writing a review for a web site on software quality, so I couldn’t just postpone the reading. Well, glad that’s over, wasn’t always fun.

What’s fun though, is that I’m re-re-re-re-reading the whole Asterix The Gaul series (in French, so that’s Astérix le Gaulois). That is great fun. I only have the first 29 (out of 33 or something) but from the reviews I’ve been reading, the new ones suck so it’s all good.

Multitasking Hurts Learning

tasks that distract you while you try to learn something new are likely to negatively affect your learning.

whoa!

I’ve been awfully quiet recently, and that’s because I’m on vacation and not doing much. Not even reading the news, or going on trips, or talking to friends. Just staying home and relaxing, not much to report there. It’s nice though.

Okay, so that’s one way to look at it, the other way to look at it, is that I’ve been playing WoW, trying to level an undead priest on a pvp server, and that keeps me busy.

This toon is my first healer ever (on any game) and it’s my first character on a wow pvp server. So far it has been an interesting experience, frustrating at time, but certainly not boring. And not being bored, is a good reason to keep playing.

So last night the priest “dinged” level 34, and that means he gets Levitate. With this insta-cast spell, I can walk one foot above the ground, which means I can walk on water too, or above water. Supposidely this is very important on pvp servers, when I’m being chased by “the other side”. If I’m being ganked (which happens several times a day), and I’m near water, I cast Levitate, run towards water, and keep running, while those bastages need to swim. Though I’m no fast runner, I can run faster than they swim. So it’s supposed to save my skin. Being a priest I only wear cloth, don’t have many hit points, and solo or not, I’m always the first target, so whatever gives me an extra 10 second to run away, is a good thing.

This is all good in theory, but in practice I wonder how it’s going to work:

- My screen is busy with buttons, macros, keymaps, etc. Levitate is one more thing to learn to activate in a split second. Somehow something tells me, I’m going to be dropping more than I’ll be levitating.

- There isn’t that much water around. Sure, there’s some here and there, and it could be useful then, but I’d say that from all the times I’ve been ganked, maybe 5% were near water. In fact, right now the toon is levelling in a desert. So, yeah :)

- I need to have special feathers in my inventory for the spell to work. My inventory is always full as it is, and I’m sure I’m going to forget to have those feathers with me at all times.

- When someone much higher level than you (10+ levels) “oneshots” you, no feather is going to help.

- Sometimes I’m still going to get killed “in” the water :-)

Man, it’s hard out there for a priest (lol)