I’m thinking about writing an entry about some of the User Interface modifcations (UI mods) I’ve downloaded for World of Warcraft, but figure I should start with this entry first so I can refer back to it. General computer security is an important thing to consider before downloading anything online or even entering information into a web form!

Spyware and Key logging “trojan” programs on your computer are a serious security threat when it comes to the privacy of your personal information online.

A few rules to help you keep clean of these trojans:

1. Use a different browser than Internet Explorer wherever possible. Some sites won’t work without IE, but many of the spyware that comes from websites was developed specifically to exploit Internet Explorer weaknesses. Considering over 80% of all web traffic is done through IE, it’s a good investment for them. I recommend Firefox, as it’s also a pretty zippy browser for complex pages. It’s fast and it comes with certain securities built in that IE lacks upon install. See the link at the top right of this page to download Firefox for free.
2. If you play games like RuneScape that don’t need a software purchase and a local installation to run, don’t download “hacks” or programs that are meant to enhance your experience. If it’s an official program, suggest the author submit their software to Tucows or some other large well-known repository, and download it from there later. You could be installing a key logger or the program could straight out ask you for your password and then pass it on to the maker of the software!
3. Any web link you get from an email that brings you to a page where you’re supposed to enter sensitive information like your credit card, bank info or passwords, don’t do it! Banks and other service providers would NEVER contact you that way.
4. Download Lavasoft’s Ad Aware SE - the free version if you’re using your home computer. Then, make sure all aspects of it are updated (when you first download it, there may still be updates you need to download immediately after installation) and then let it scan your drives. This may take a while if you, like me, have large drives. It’s worth the wait but you might want to let it scan overnight if you’ve never scanned before.Remove *ALL* of the things that Ad Aware SE finds. You may have to right-click the list and choose “select all” before proceeding if you have a long list. I had a friend with over 700 items in this list the first time we cleaned his computer up.
5. Download Spyware Search & Destroy (these can both be found in Tucows directory) and do the same things as in step #2. I find that these two programs work nicely together to keep my drive clean, with my doing weekly scans.

And as is standard these days, get a virus scanner that runs on your machine all the time it’s on, and make sure the virus scanner keeps up to date. I personally use Norton with its LiveUpdate feature, but you may prefer something else, or your computer may prefer something else ;) I’ve had virus programs severely slow down my machine’s performance and even crash it, while on other machines that virus program works just fine. Do what works, and what doesn’t cause you headaches.

Keep your computer clean. It’s an important step in protecting your personal, private information from those of unscrupulous internet users!

New Guild… Already!

Well, I sure didn’t stay in my second guild very long. Long enough to party up and kill my guildmates over and over in a dungeon instance (SFK I believe), and then the next time I logged in, my buddy Jkoll had switched to a “new and great” guild which he invited me to as soon as I dropped the old one.

So, now I’m in a guild called The H E R D. Instead of saying “hello” when guildies log in, we moo. It’s kinda fun actually.

I like this guild much better than either of the others I was in, and I have only been in this one for a few days now. I find that there is more friendly banter between guildies and less inane stuff like mouthy 11 year olds and people who like to give the play-by-play of a football game on their TV IRL.

Also, the regular guildies that are on when I’m on “get” my sense of humor. I’m weird, I like to come out with stuff that is attached to what is being said only in the strangest way. I don’t have any direct examples right now but there were a few instances where I made my silly strange comments in all the guilds I’ve been in and this one is the only one that had someone respond intelligently - all the rest of the guilds, my humor was met with complete and utter guild line silence.

I’m happy to say that I was promoted from New to Herdsman within 48 hours of joining the guild. That was cool too, I feel more connected to the group even though I haven’t even partied with any of them.

Cooking, First Aid, Fishing

A big thing I had clarified recently through this new guild and my new guildmates was that some of the Professions are skills that ALL players are able to train, and therefore I have three new professions to work on building. I had read through the Professions information on the World of Warcraft website before joining the game but I didn’t seem to “get” that Cooking, Fishing and First Aid are professions that everyone is able to train by default, before they even worry about selecting their other professions.

So, I’ve been getting caught up with my cooking and fishing skills mostly - having to venture all the way back to beginning areas to find the Chunk of Boar Meat and Stringy Wolf Meat for the first recipes, and doing most of my fishing right in Thunder Bluff (mid bluff). I find that fishing is a great time-spender while I’m in the queue for WSG, and the higher my cooking gets the more fish I can cook, and my pet likes fish… so it all works together.

Wailing Caverns

I ventured into WC dungeon last night with my lvl 28 hunter and its lvl 28 pet, with a fellow hunter (lvl 30, lvl 30 pet) who I had done some killing with before. He invited me to join him so I headed over and we tried to finish one of the quests there. We didn’t get it done, we’re going to go back in tonight to try to finish it off, but BOY did I come out with a lot of goodies from that dungeon.

My party partner apparently didn’t clear out his inventory before heading into the dungeon, and therefore he only had enough slots free for the gems we were picking up for the quest itself. I didn’t know this until he had passed on three or four Uncommon items and let me win the rolls as a result… I suggested that even if he couldn’t personally use the items he could auction them and get some cash for them, and that was when he let me know he didn’t have any open slots.

Okay! Fine by me! I was getting rid of anything that wasn’t worth as much as those uncommon items (all greens, no blues) and taking all the Uncommon items. Then this morning I put everything up for auction and I’ll see when I get home from work how many of the items sold.

Tonight we’re going to go back into the dungeon to try to finish off the quest, and this morning I spent a bunch of time clearing out my inventory as much as possible again because with how many uncommon items we were finding last night and how little of the quest we got done, I know there’s a lot more loot we’ll be coming out with tonight. I like loot, it sells well and lets me buy cool equipment I wouldn’t otherwise run into.

But at any rate, that’s what I’ve been doing lately. :)