ObjectDock, WofLK, Ruby Tuesday

I've been playing with a "new" tool lately for windows. It's Stardoc's
ObjectDock. Well, at least I thought it was new. Once I went to the web site, I thought it looked a little familiar. Now I'm remembering where I've seen it before; OS2! Does anyone out there even remember OS2? Remember, I said I like to be on the bleeding edge of technology? Well that was the bleeding edge way back in 1994! Wow. I guess I am old!

OS/2 Warp was a great OS. It just couldn't cut in to Microsoft's market share even back in 1994. The world just wasn't ready for OS/2. I played with Warp for a while, but I never upgraded it to Warp 4. It was just too expensive, and not functional enough for what I needed it to do (play games). What I wouldn't give to get my hands on a copy of Warp 4 now. I bet it would run really nicely in a VM on just about any run-of-the-mill computer.

But back to ObjectDock.

I started looking at RocketDock because of a LifeHacker
article I read on it. Yeah, it's OS-X like, but it actually has some nice features that the default "Start Bar" doesn't have in Windows. First, I have near total control over the configuration. I say "near total" because it was some of the limitations that pushed me to ObjectDock. The primary one was that you couldn't make a stacking tray item without updating it every time you restarted RocketDock. (If you know how to get this to work in Vista, I'm all ears). ObjectDock will load a stack of icons from a folder quite easily. There are a few bugs to work out on it, but I'd give it a 3 out of 5 stars.

Gaming

Well, Wrath of the Lich King comes out in about a month. I've been playing World of Warcraft and the Burning Crusade for some time now. My main (on Rexxar) is a 70 Gnome Warrior Engineer named "Garden". To be honest, I was surprised that name was available. Garden is the GuildMaster for the Lolli Pop guild. Yeah, well, I was on a Wizard of Oz kick that day. I have another 70 in Lolli pop; Gooddryad. I would say she's my primary alt, but that wouldn't be true. You can have 10 "toons" on a server, and, well, I've filled up my space on Rexxar. I'm an altaholic. (And all my Horde are on Ysera; Tekki is my main Hordie).

There is a reason for my great desire to play so many different types of toons. I'm constantly curious, and It's interesting for me to try out different ways of doing the same thing. For example, hunters can solo quite well, because of their pet. Warlocks, also can solo well. However, it's hard to solo as a priest. You get your butt handed to you on a plate quite often. As for pet-less soloing, rogues, druids, and shaman would be my choice. I have soloed with a mage and warrior, but it takes MUCH longer and can be more frustrating that it is fun.

I've been working mostly on my Alliance 70s lately, because I want to get ready for WotLK. That expansion will push the level cap to 80 and add much new land to explore. It should be fun.

People have asked me how I got into WoW. I'll leave that to another day. I'm just trying to pace myself with this blogging.

By the way, if you follow me on Twitter (twitter.com/PhilStratton), I went to Ruby Tuesday today for lunch. They've really changed the place. New menus, new décor, everything. It looks good. And the Bison Bacon Cheese Burger was GREAT. It was well done, but not burnt, no pink (pink is bad for hamburgers) and done quickly. I'll wait on final judgment until I've been there a few more times, but as of right now, 3 ½ stars, at least.