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If you follow World of Warcraft at all then you probably already know about the newly announced expansion, Cataclysm. If not, then you really should check it out. Before I share my thoughts on Cataclysm, let’s rewind to Blizzcon 2008. My brother and I were talking about how Blizzard might continue doing expansions in the future. I didn’t think they could keep repeating the formula from past expansions. The talent system would crumble under its own weight. A whole new continent with each expansion wasn’t going to remain feasible. Adding new hero classes brings up all kinds of balance and overlap issues. I put forth the idea that at some point the concept of what an expansion is would have to change. With Cataclysm we’re starting to see that happen.

Blizzard really wants to go back and redo the 1 – 60 experience to bring it up to current standards. This is a good thing. They have learned much over the last five years and I’m glad to see them applying that knowledge to the old world. Compared to the Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, plain vanilla WoW seems crude, unpolished and boring. If Blizzard can make the 1 – 60 game just as good as Lich King then everyone who starts a character with one of the new races will have a reason to keep playing it past the starting zone. They may also be trying to entice yet more new users by making it so you don’t have to wait until level 60 and Outland to get to the “good” stuff.

The talent system is being simplified. Character and gear stats are being simplified. These are extremely positive moves. The new races sound cool. Wait, let me re-phrase that. The Worgen sound cool. It’s highly likely the starting zones and quest lines for the new races will rival that of the Death Knights which is one of the best experiences in all of WoW.

Even with the re-tooling of the old world, the new high-level zones and new instances this expansion does feel a bit less ambitious than the past two. I have a suspicion this is Blizzard’s strategy for keeping the expansions coming on a regular schedule. A while back before Burning Crusade a Blizzard executive said they intended to release an expansion for WoW every year. That seems like an impossibly ambitious goal now but if they cycle between “minor” and “major” expansions they might get a little closer to that goal.

So when it Cataclysm going to hit? When Wrath of the Lich King was announced the Burning Crusade was barely eight months old. Wrath was then released a little more than a year after it was announced. Wrath was about 10 months old when Cataclysm was announced last week. If the past is any indication of the future I’d say we’re looking at getting our hands on Cataclysm in the later half of 2010. Of course, that may also depend on when StarCraft 2 drops. No one really knows including Blizzard.

One more thing. Why would anyone go to a Blizzard convention and get up to the mic to ask a question at a panel and completely *waste* their question by asking about a release date? Seriously.

Warning: World of Warcraft post.

After running the same repeatable quest more than 40 times I finally got myself Exalted with the Sporeggar faction. Which means I unlocked the “Fhwoor Smash” quest which allowed me to finally get the “Mysteries of the Marsh” achievement. While I was at it I also picked up the Mini Spore Bat pet which you can only get with Exalted Sporeggar rep.

Today is Tyler’s birthday. I called him on the phone to sing him happy birthday this morning. I still remember the moment he was born. He sure has grown a lot since then.

I went to see Star Trek this evening. It was indeed awesome. Aside from what you may already know a couple of things that caught me by surprise was the both Eric Bana and Winona Ryder was it in. I didn’t recognize them at all during the movie. However, an actor I recognized right away was Simon Pegg as Scotty. That caught me completely off guard. My only complaints are that there was too much “earthy” stuff at the beginning. They managed to do product placement for Nokia and fit a Beastie Boys song in. Huh? Also, it seems that bad guys the world over are drawn to the Golden Gate bridge. Thankfully, it *didn’t* get destroyed. If I were the Romulans I might choose to attack Earth in the middle of the desert somewhere in Africa. Not right next to the Star Fleet Academy. What’s cool though is that San Francisco actually looked like you might imagine San Francisco would look in the future.

Despite those small complaints it was a great step for the Star Trek franchise. Of the five Star Trek movies I have seen this one is right up there with Wrath of Kahn.

Today was my first official day at my new job. I picked out my cube which is actually quite a spacious area. I have one full wall on one side of me which makes it slightly less cube-like. The desk itself is enormous! I have more than enough room to work in.

The equipment is awesome also. I was presented with a brand-new 15″ MacBook Pro which is faster and has a bigger hard drive than my own. They also put 4GB of RAM in it which is what I put in my own. The importance is having lots and RAM can not be overstated. Along with the laptop came an Apple keyboard, Apple bluetooth mouse, and 24 inch Dell monitor. These are exactly the things I would buy for myself. Actually, I’ve never used an Apple mouse but the bluetooth mouse looks promising which is good since my existing bluetooth mouse stopped working for me yesterday. The Apple mouse *does* support right-clicking despite the single shell. The mouse can detect if you’re pressing down on either the left or right side. There’s also a couple of buttons on the sides you can squeeze to make something happen. The default is for activate Expose’s show-all-windows view but this can be configured to anything. The size and weight of the mouse feels good. After some time I’m sure I’ll get used to the single-shell with two “buttons” idea.

Much of the day was spent getting software installed and configured. I also spent a good deal of time talking with my boss about the project and different ideas about how to approach it. Since there’s no source control management in place yet I knew this would be one of the first things we’d need to put in place. Much to my surprise my boss was very open to the idea of using Git for source control management. I thought for sure he would push hard for Subversion since it’s so well known and would be considered less risky. This guy is amazingly open to trying things that he hasn’t personally used. He’s actually in touch with current practices and takes input from the developers he works with seriously. This is the exact opposite of my last job.

I’m really looking forward to working on this project with these people. This is going to be unlike anything I’ve done before.

I didn’t get to watch any movies today but I did watch most of Reclaiming the Blade last night on Netflix streaming. However, this particular title could only be played from the web client. I couldn’t add it to my Instant Queue for playback on other devices. I was getting sleepy and had to turn it off about 75% of the way though and didn’t feel like going back and finishing it today. Anyway, it’s a documentary on the history of swords an sword fighting and the role swords have had in our culture over the years. Very interesting.

Emily and the kids come back in a couple of days. I can’t wait for everyone to be back in the house again. I miss my family.

It was another extremely busy day today but one that’s not very exciting to talk about. I got a haircut in the morning and spent the rest of the day studying Ruby on Rails. That’s the technology platform my job will be using. Today I read chapters 11 through 14. That may only be four chapters but a couple of those chapters were really long.

Switching from PHP and Java to Ruby on Rails is probably one of the most significant and positive steps forward for my career I’ve ever made. It’s not just doing the same things in a different language. It’s a whole new way of working. Rails, out of the box, provides so much of what we try in vain to achieve in the more traditional environments. Besides having a really solid application framework the built-in testing functionality is absolutely amazing. Unit testing is extremely easy to implement. However, what really impresses me is Rails’ ability to test controllers and easily examine the DOM of rendered pages. While it certainly doesn’t eliminate the need to test the site by hand using a browser there is a lot you can automate in that area. Much more than I thought was possible. Not just possible but relatively easy! I could go on but chances are readers of this blog don’t care much about the internals of Rails. I’m extremely excited to start my new job and dig into the nitty gritty of Ruby and Rails. The fact that I have the chance to learn a major new platform on the job still amazes me. This kind of opportunity almost never happens.

When do I get to start my new job? Well, HR still needs to complete their background check and drug screen. I sent a few emails today to try to get some clarification on how much longer that will take. It was only this evening that I learned the main HR person was out of the office today. Still, I could be heading to the office tomorrow. I should hear from my boss in the morning if I’ll be able to work Tuesday or not.

I also watched Hancock today via Netflix streaming. I had low expectations for this movie but was impressed by how good it really was. It starts off light-hearted but gets pretty heavy near the end. In a good way.

Also, having used Netflix streaming as much as I have this week I’m really super impressed by just how well it works. I’ve been using it on both my laptop and Xbox 360. It remembers where I left off watching something no matter what device I’m on. I can start something on my laptop and then turn it off and go downstairs and turn on the Xbox. When I start the movie on the Xbox it resumes right from where I stopped watching on my laptop. Awesome!

At one point while watching Hancock my internet connection dropped out. I restarted my cable modem and came back to restart the movie only to find that in that case it didn’t remember where I was when the internet connection dropped. Perfectly understandable. I didn’t expect fast-forward to work but it did. And it has the best user-interface for fast-forward I’ve seen for long running video. It gives you a view much like the iTunes cover-flow view in iTunes where you see a bunch of frames running across the top of your screen. The one in the middle is bigger than the rest and represents where you currently are in the movie. Frames on the left are in the past and frames on the right are in the future. This makes it easy on the eyes and brain as I quickly skipped ahead to where I wanted to go. All fast-forward and rewind for video should be like this.

I’m happy with the amount of stuff I’m getting done this week. I got of lot of closet organizers built yesterday and have done a ton of reading and studying for my new job. However, the days feel very boring and monotonous with me being the only one in the house. I definitely miss my family and can’t wait for them to come back. I didn’t think about it at the time but it was strangely appropriate that I watched The Omega Man on my first solo day. It’s a movie about a guy wandering around a huge city all by himself and here I am wandering around in my big house all by myself. Hopefully, tomorrow I’ll be wandering around an office with three other people.

Today was extremely busy for me but it doesn’t make for much of a blog entry. I spent nearly the entire day building the closet organizers from Ikea we bought over a year ago. Lots and lots of assembling.

I finished watching Bender’s Game on DVD and also watched The Iron Giant via Netflix streaming.

After dinner I read chapters 9 and 10 of my Rails book. That’s it for today.

Emily and the kids are off on a little vacation this week while I stay at home and prepare to start my new job. So what do I do with myself with no real responsibilities at home? Aside from the boring things like organizing my email and checking Facebook?

I bought new shoes. I’ve been wearing skate shoes since college and I’m tired of ‘em. They’re uncomfortable and much larger than I would like. Today I got myself a pair of New Balance 551s and I love them. They’re soft and cushy. They have arch support. My feet will be much happier in these shoes.

I also cleaned the playroom in our house. Here’s the crazy part. It’s actually going to stay clean for an entire week! Then I cleaned the kitchen and office. Those places are going to stay clean for an entire week also!

I planned out my meals for the week and took a trip to the store to pick up a few supplies. I deposited some checks. I ordered a couple of extra battery packs for our Xbox 360 controllers and a second nunchuck controller for our Wii from Amazon.

I watched the 1971 version of The Omega Man via Netflix streaming. I haven’t read the book but having seen both this an I Am Legend I think I prefer I Am Legend. The bright red blood which seems to spurt right though multiple layers of cloth was kind of silly. The mirrored aviator shades on all the “zombies” was difficult to watch without giggling a bit. It’s like after the apocalypse they all went to loot the sunglasses shop and made sure they all got the exact same style of sunglasses. The best part was the helicopter crash. Charlton Heston is riding in a helicopter when the pilot succumbs to the plague and dies. The helicopter does a fairly slow decent but when it touches the ground it immediately explodes in a huge ball of flames which is about three times the size of the original helicopter. And yet, Charlton Heston is able to crawl away from the wreckage.

I also watched the first half of Benders Game on DVD.

I read chapters 1 – 8 of Agile Web Development with Rails to help prepare for my new job next week. Ya, that’s what I do on a Saturday night left to my own devices. I study programming.

Before I can start my new job I need to pass a background check and drug screen. I’ve already submitted the personal information they need to perform the background check. Today my one goal was to do what I had to do for the drug screen.

I visited the Labcorp facility here in Alameda only to have them tell me they don’t do drug screening at that particular location. I would have to go to either Oakland or San Leandro. Even though San Leandro is technically farther away I wanted to go there because I knew the parking would be about a thousand times easier and the wait wouldn’t be as bad either. However, the San Leandro location only does drug screens between 9:00 AM and 11:00 AM and it was 10:55 AM. No way to get there in time. So off to Oakland I go.

I punch the address into my iPhone and get directions. My iPhone is awesome in so many different ways but as a GPS unit it could use some work. Much of the problem is that I have the older iPhone 3G and not the new iPhone 3GS which has a built-in compass. Having a compass is important for GPS navigation because unless the device needs to know which direction you’re pointing. Without that information it can’t tell you where and when turn. It only know where you are, where you want to be and the route to get there. It’s up to you to know which direction you’re traveling and to look ahead to see which turns you’re going to be taking.

When I use the GPS navigation in our Odyssey I rely on the voice directions almost exclusively. Constantly looking down at a screen — even if it is on your dashboard — can be unsafe and there’s a lot to be on the look-out for in the city. Not having those voice directions with the iPhone basically means I have a glorified Google Maps printout with me at all times. That certainly comes in useful but I’ll be looking forward to someday having an iPhone 3GS and that TomTom application.

Getting back to the main story, I finally get to the Oakland Lapcorp location. I had to sit and wait for 45 minutes before I could do anything though. So I pulled out my iPhone and played some Let’s Golf. I played three 9-hole rounds and came in dead last on each one. That’s on the “easy” setting too. The putting game can be brutal.

My turn for the drug screen process didn’t take long. According to Frontier’s HR department it takes approximately two days for them to get the results. So it’s looking like my chances of starting on Monday are slim. More likely I’ll be starting Tuesday.

Emily and the kids are going on a mini-vacation starting tomorrow night. They’re going to Mission Springs to visit with some friends for a few days and then will head to Twain Harte to hang out with family. I’m going to use my extra free time to catch up on some movies (Star Trek, I’m looking at you) and do some more studying on Ruby/Rails before my first day on the new job. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll finish assembling the closet organizers we bought from Ikea over a year ago. We’ll see.

Today was a good day. I finally received a formal offer for a new job which I’m actually excited about. The name of the company is Frontier Communications. They’re a phone company which mainly serves rural areas. I admit that doesn’t sound terribly cool but they’re just starting an internet initiative which is going to be doing some really cool things. I’m not sure how much I can say about the project right now but it is in the entertainment sector and I think it’s a great opportunity to do some really good stuff.

We’re at the very beginning stages of the project so the whole team will come together for the first time in the next couple of weeks. Not a single line of code has been written yet so we have a completely blank canvas to work with. We’ll be using Ruby on Rails as our software platform which is a big part of my attraction to this company. I still love PHP but having the chance to learn a completely new technology on the job is an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. There’s a lot the Rails framework does right and I’m really looking forward to immersing myself in a fully object oriented and structured MVC environment. Not to mention the cool built-in testing functionality.

As an added bonus I’ll be commuting to Emeryville which will be the shortest commute I’ve had since moving to the Bay Area back in 1997.

Lastly, I want to give a huge thanks to everyone who have supported us with their prayers, compassion and generosity. It has meant a lot to Emily and I over the past several weeks and months.

I’m going to stop doing the What Have I Done Today entries. Talk to me in person if you want to know why. Things are going well. No worries. Anyway, I finished up my Hello World application for iPhone this evening. I wrote about that on another blog: sandmoose.blogspot.com. Apparently, I created that account back in 2002 as a way to test blogging engines. I do like the Blogger engine Google has cultivated and it has my ’sandmoose’ name attached to it. Maybe I’ll try Tumblr too. The idea is to have a place for my programming related entries that is separate from this blog which is really for sharing family news with family and friends. And that Famous Michael’s thing. That’s actually the 2nd most visited area of the site. Anyway, there’s no telling if I’m really going to be able to keep up with it or not but I’m going to try.