WoW: Beat Kil'jaeden and now WotLK

Quick World of Warcraft catch-up post. Last Monday, three days before the expansion came out, we beat the final boss of the game on our last pull of the night (and almost certainly our last chance to beat Kil'jaeden before the expansion). Although Sunwell was massively nerfed, Kil'jaeden was still a quite difficult fight. Now playing the expansion and my mage is up to 74. The first level 80 was a French Warlock who grinded a particular set of mobs the entire way to 80, playing for 27 hours straight after release and having a non-partied healer heal him for those 27 hours and gain 0 experience.

Amazingly, this time beating the game (with 3 days left), was much more time than the last time we did it when we killed Nefarion and then new content was released the next day. Even more amazing, nearly 3 years later, around 15 of the 25 people in on that earlier kill are still playing in our same guild today (although some after long breaks and some on different main characters).

Any Laptop Recommendations?

Well, my laptop's hard drive died yesterday. While I could think of replacing it, it has some other troubles too and so I kind of don't think it is worth it.

Anyone have any recommendations for a new one? Really don't need anything special - only real requirements are nice, full laptop size keyboard, and can run firefox and putty and such; expect I will stick with Windows. Cheap good too given my limited needs for it.

Election Map

Go here and click on "Voting shifts" in the upper left. The map is color-coded by shift in vote to the Republican or Democratic presidential candidate from 2004 to 2008. My point in linking this map should be pretty self-explanatory and I found powerful - at least it is fairly contained. Btw, Massachusetts and Arizona's shifts are probably explained by the home-state candidates (Kerry in 2004 and McCain in 2008) so probably ignore them.

Obama Wins

Congratulations to Obama and hope for a new day in the USA. The image of Jesse Jackson with tears just pouring down his face really got to me as did the ecstatic look on the faces of many others. It is only a step but still a big step against racism. A bunch of other races didn't go so well (Stevens apparently reelected, Prop 8 in CA passing, others) but still a really good day.

Oh, also, I wanted to compliment John McCain on a really nice concession speech. Could have done without Palin and the crowd yelling, but McCain himself was pitch perfect I felt.