A Somber Christmas

While I inexcusably glance at what I’m told is the news, I see average Joe’s fighting to get loans and survive credit and background checks, only to watch ‘our’ government throw money away to hog-ish companies that will give their echelon raises before the overall economy will ever see a cent, and I just shake my head when when no one seems to know where the money exactly went to.  Anyone else reminded of that scene in Armageddon when Bruce Willis is talking to Billy Bob about drilling on an asteroid?  Sounds more believable than what’s happening right now anyway.

Harry Stamper: What’s your contingency plan?
Truman: Contingency plan?
Harry Stamper: Your backup plan. You gotta have some kind of backup plan, right?
Truman: No, we don’t have a back up plan. This is it.
Harry Stamper: And this is the best that you c – that the-the government, the *U.S. government* can come up with? I mean, you-you’re NASA for cryin’ out loud, you put a man on the moon, you’re geniuses! You-you’re the guys that think this —- up! I’m sure you got a team of men sitting around somewhere right now just thinking —- up and somebody backing them up! You’re telling me you don’t have a backup plan, that these eight boy scouts right here, that is the world’s hope, that’s what you’re telling me?
Truman: Yeah.

Thank-you again, imdb.com.

So…millions of people need loans, go through the motions to try and get approved  and if they are very lucky (almost to the point of not even NEEDING the loan in the first place) they might get it for some thousands of dollars…but several companies that claim to have failed so terribly solely due to greed, are given BILLIONS of dollars and we don’t even know what they spent it on.  Well, other than bonuses to stock holders in order “to get them to do the jobs for which they are well paid in the first place.”  To break this down simply, these companies were paid billions of dollars to pay their high ranking officials on top of their usual millions, if not billions already…and when asked where the money actually goes they refuse to tell the public.  “The public”, ie their sole source of income outside of the most recent Wallstreet Welfare drama.

So, as I turn the ‘news’ off in disgust, I look around my messy area, (still have to finish a few Christmas gifts by-the-by) and think: 

I’m fortunate enough to have time to make gifts for my friends and family in place of spending a lot this year.  What about the people that don’t have time OR money?  I feel bad enough at the amount of gifts I bought this year is down compared to last year, and I know to some that might sound snooty but the gifts I’m giving are far from top of the line.  Dollar stores and Goodwill made up the bulk of gifts this year, and I’m making the rest of them by hand.  I know it’s rough out there currently, but even with that in mind I almost feel guilty that I didn’t get more for the people I care about. 

And then you have companies saying they suddenly need an extra fifty billion and in exchange for that sum, promise to only use one of their twenty private jets. 

 And then someone actually gives it to them.

Christmas, She’s-a Here!

Well, looks like snow’s-a comin’.  It hasn’t started to fall yet, but it’s due any time now.  Skilling took a little jab at other weather persons and said “If you were expecting the snow to mess up rush hour on your way home today, you didn’t watch our program because this snow is moving right along schedule.”  You tell em Tommy, friggin’ weekend weather men ain’t got the cahones to tell it like it is, you tell em Tom!

Then he showed the map of what’s expected, and he paused it during the morning rush hour and said “And this here is…well this is just a mess” with such a straight face and professionalism that it made me laugh just typing about it.  But that’s enough about The Weatherman for one night.

After hearing his predictions for the night I, for some reason thought about decorating outside with lights.  Be it the fresh snow to get me in the Christmas season, or lack of fresh air getting to my brain due to all this central heating as it’s some 10 degrees outside, I was on a mission.  So I sent my Dad outside to get the lights.  (It’s cold out there!)

So now I sit and wait.  Can’t do the lights yet as I got a plan for them that involves the supposed foot of snow we are expecting here.  Hopefully it’s not the wet and heavy snow, but just snow, then ice after it falls as that would be excellent for what I have in mind.  Just gotta wait a few more hours for it to be about half done falling…

As for crafts, I made my girl friend’s friend and ex-boss a shrinky dink key chain.  Thought of and completed it in under two hours.  I did plan on making him something, especially after his fiancee’ got all druggy emo on my girl friend a few days ago.  (“I’m not addicted to drugs!  I just smoke pot!”  Well if that isn’t sound logic…)  Start out as a shrinky dink key chain but the hole I made ended up being a smidgin too small and my girl friend ended up breaking it while trying to take it off the chain itself.  So I turned it into a coin.

As for the rest of the crafts…eh.  Time is running low, methinks some gifts will be belated.  I finished the main gift I had planned for awhile now for my little lady, but I had another planned that might have to wait for her birthday in February.  I feel like I could have done so much more for people this year, bah.  Probably need to do one final round of gifts before wrapping time.  If I can afford it anyway.

X-Men Origins Impresses

Took a break from painting sun catchers and cross stitching to check out what Comcast is telling me is news.  Blagojevich, blah blah, Ellen and Britney sings carols, Tom Cruise isn’t nutty anymore, new X-men movie?  There’s something actually interesting.

Heard about this one, supposedly has Wolverine teaming up with Gambit to take on Deadpool, and based on the video I like.  X-men 3 had it’s moments, few and far, but it had it’s moments.  Two was all right…the first one was the best,  but again only in moments.  I guess you could describe the whole series by saying: “Special effects and nostalgia do not an epic movie make.”

I had to look up Deadpool because I’ve never been a big comic buff, my dad was really into Marvel and mostly Spider-man (got my sister into SuperBall…who changed drastically into Penance semi-recently.  I liked Ghost Rider back then as in typical male fashion skulls, motorcycles, chains, and fire are all badass.  I was also much younger then, but I still defend my appreciation to the guy, something the makers of the movie sharing his name certainly did NOTdo.)…that was a long run on.  Anyway, Deadpool sounds like he’s pretty cool.  Gambit looked a hell of a lot like a mix of a My Chemical Romance music video spliced with Clockwork Orange and a mop of hair.  Also I thought this guy was French?  Didn’t sound like it/didn’t show him enough to know in one watching of the preview.  But all in all the preview did it’s job; I’m interested in seeing the movie when it comes out.

My House Is A Freaking Sty

I decided that I was making gifts this year awhile ago, and only recently have I actually started on them.  Very quickly this tidy place has turned into just…ugh.  It’s not the ‘crazy cat lady on Animal Police’ level of dirty, as everything under these random messes *is* clean and doesn’t have dead animals stashed like trophies to some unknown idol in the corner of the room, but it certainly is an eye sore that’s almost enough to motivate me to organize the place.  I’m spending the day finishing as many projects as I can to finally quarantine my work area.  It started by the couch, then my computer desk…then the infection spread…

Making Christmas Gifts, Finally

After quite a while, my gifts are finally underway.  So far I’ve completed two gifts, and spent the past few hours on the third one which has a bit left to go, but the fingers are going to be in pain tomorrow.  Much like when ‘breaking in’ your digits while gaming on your system of choice, my fingertips are achy from several hours of forcing a blunt needle through several layers of fleece.  I do not own a sewing machine, and while I prefer to make all things by hand (even making whipped cream by wisk instead of electric beaters) after today, if I ever plan to make more of these things and sell them on Etsy or something, I’m very willing to at least borrow someone else’s machine to do them. 

Or offer both hand-made and sewing machine options.  The items would generally look the same but hand-made items would be twice as much as machine made ones, as the time involved is quite high.  Several hours of pointer-finger numbing work is enough to make anyone ponder about better, faster, and less painful options.  I can’t say exactly what I’m working on lest the receiving person stumbles upon this, so all I’ll say is the deviantart user Clearkid has a tutorial for it, and it is quite helpful.  (The link there is your spoiler warning, potential person that may receive a gift from me.  And no, Joe, that’s not for you in case you are wondering…though I doubt you are as this is nearing 300 words and you probably just skimmed to the link anyway, ha.  GL in Naxx tonight, told you I wouldn’t get in there…and my ISP decided to shut off for like an hour just before raid time…yay.)

Oh, and while I was sewing I had Colbert and Daily Show on in the background, and just now watched the recent Daily Show interview that talked about blogging that said blogging is all about emotion and spontinaity, which is far from what I’ve done in the past.  Generally I think of something I can try to make interesting and then work at it a few hours until I’m happy, then hit Publish and spend the next hour editing things that just don’t sit right with me.  Hell, my articles for Hammer took me a good two days each, so I’ll try to do more posts like this that take less than an hour, woot. 

Note to self:  Schedule time to be spontaneous.

Wintergrasp and Faux Scars

Wintergrasp, zomg!  Blizzard *can* make a decent pvp area!  Color me surprised.  (Though in all fairness I will say it might not always be their fault, as it could very well be all the retards I get stuck with from the other servers.  The players from my server seem to know what they are doing, so props to you all on ET)  So far my ‘best moment ever’ in there was just yesterday:

It was a pretty even fight, occasionally we’d get the Tenacity so I know we were outnumbered but all in all it was a solid match. It came down to the wire for sure, 1:30 left when I respawned and their final door was damaged but not down.  I mounted up and hoped to at least distract the defenders from our vehicles as I knew the siege weapons wouldn’t go fast enough to get me there on time. 

I rode up to the final courtyard and ran through a tank that was inching it’s way to the door.  A good twenty horde were all pounding the hell out of anything that was red to them, so I stayed ’stealthed’ within the tank’s shape, unsure really how to help the situation.  Less than a minute to go, the tank is slowing closing the distance to the door, ranged sieges are still firing, Horde’s honor count is going up faster than gas prices a few months ago, and time is ticking down.  The tank and I reach the stairs at the bottom of the door, either his Ram ability was in range, or the catapults behind us did their part, the door crumbled just as we started climbing the stairs.

The tank is low on health but keeps moving, I’m still ‘hidden’ but the AoE’s Horde are laying down are taking their toll on me as well.  Down to 20  seconds now, the tank makes it up to the Orb of Winning (or whatever the hell the thing is in the middle) and I bolt out and start ‘using’ it to capture the objective.  The tank was close behind and was soon destroyed.  Luckily I’m a gnome, and the way the rubble of it fell it actually covered me up again.  Half a bar to go.

Some how, probably due to tab-targeting, a pally sees me and just before he gets close enough to hit me, someone stuns him.  I saw he had me targeted, spinning in a Mortal Kombat daze just feet away.  I honestly don’t know how long the stun on him lasted, or even what caused it,  but (probably more-so for the pally) it seemed to last a really long time.   But luck or other teammates prevailed, and the capture went through with exactly six seconds to go until we lost.  The first words in the raid pug chat was “Wow” and “how the hell,” but shortly after that they were all cheering and “grats”-ing.

Then later on we did the 10 man instance, I tanked it, and two (what I’m told are T7) plate armor dropped.  I thought it was cool because I was in the running to get the pieces, only I didn’t notice it is also class specific, and I was the only warrior in there.  So I got chest and glove pvp items to boot.  Woot!

As for RL, that pesky thing, I think I had a ’sleeping dog running’ moment yesterday morning.  You know how they twitch like they are running now and then when they sleep?  Well I remember my eyebrow itched or just felt like it needed to be, so I did, and I remember doing that in a twilight-state.  I’m not sure how long I dipped in and out of consciousness, but when I finally made it the bathroom to wash the sleep out of my eyes, I had about an inch long red ’scratch’ on my eyebrow.  It didn’t hurt, but it was deep red and looked badass.  I walked around like Squall for a day, and it was a present I gave to myself for sleeping!  Double-Woot!

Rant: Oh Noes! Gamer Freaks Out On WoW! No WAI!

New expansion’s out.  I guess it’s that time again.  Yet another person has fainted/spazzed/died/thought-he-could-fly after playing a game for a pittance amount of time.

Probably Due to Someone Ninja-ing His Ore

Now, while common sense dictates that when you have millions of gamers playing the same game, let alone all the video games out there, that *one* person is gonna freak out eventually.  Sadly, we’re gonna be pelted with yet another Jack Thomson-like barrage of garbage saying games warp the mind and increase the players violent tendencies.  To anyone that actually believes that crap: Go Die In A Fire.

FIRE.

Seriously, *only* twenty-four hours?  That’s slightly better than the one kid from Asia that ‘wanted to be with his WoW friends’ after twenty hours and jumped off a roof.  (Note:  He forgot his flying mount)  How he couldn’t have just…you know…not left the game and kept playing with them is somewhat puzzling.  Perhaps it was a Tuesday and the servers were down for maintenance?  While we all have been there, writhing with hatred for the evils that delay us from hitting our virtual morphine drip, I doubt we have ever said “Dude, the server is DOWN.  I’m totally sad bro…you know what?  I’mma jump off my freaking building because I’m so very right in the mind” and then hurl ourselves towards a crushing demise.

Stupid “Intellectually challenged” people are still going to be challenged while they play games.  People that like to shoot other people, are still going to feel that way while andafter they play video games.  If you start to feel sick, it’s probably a good time to stretch those atrophied legs of yours and make yourself a bowl of Ramen.

Remember kids:  Ramen Prevents Seizures.

Boo

Sorry for lack of updates folks, time kinda got away from me.  Don’t know how November flew past me, but after this week almost seemed to blink past, I thought I should at least post something small. (I tend to not post anything if I feel like I don’t have anything to post, as I’d rather have no updates than really weak time-wasting ones.)  A friend of mine told me I was sick for thinking up this limerick so I thought that sounded like something post-worthy.  (Also, I’m gonna try doing short updates more often, as I tend to Wall ‘o Text my posts but over longer periods of time.)

There once was a necrophiliac named Brine,
Who’s intentions were far from divine.
He create his lovers from leather,
Made of corpses sewn together,
And once complete he would shout “Dinner time!“

A Gamer’s Guide to Voting

Electoral College, votes, partisans…what the hell are they going on about?  As today is *the* day, and I just thought of this when I woke up to CNN on TV, I figured a short and humorous guide to Election Day with in-game terms would be a nice post.

 
How does the election work?

There are two teams in this political battle, Red and Blue.   Each side chooses one Boss level mob and one healer/buffer mob that they think will have the best chance to pwn the other team’s choice.  This year the Red team chose McCain and Palin, while the Blue team chose Obama and Biden.

After these pairs are chosen, each team publicly announces their spawn with a global shout called “The Nomination” and from this point on the two pair’s first goal is to ding faster than the other one.  The only way to do this, is to do random five-mans and the occasional 10-man raids with people they have never met to grind out Reputation.  If the people they group with like how they perform, they get added to their friends list and possibly even send them some gold as a sign of their appreciation.

As the pairs quest and raid on their mission, they occasionally run an arena 2v2 against the other team and debuff the opposing pair by using Taunts, Mocking Blows, and even the occasional Cheap Shots.  These match ups are not for actual arena points, just practice battles.  Some friends of the winning side might troll the losers on the forums, but this just boils down to a flame war that ends up getting locked, and does not adversely affect the outcome of the election.

 
Election Night

This is a Special Event that only occurs once every four years, and only lasts one day.  This is what the two teams have been training for.  The ultimate goal is to win by numbers, but not necessarily by popularity.  (Much like those elitist snobs that raid 24/7.  They are all jerks and know it, and no one wants to be around them, but in the end they get the job done and have epics and their huge epeens to stroke to compensate for their lack of anatomy and significant other in real life) 

The entire game is turned into a massive Capture and Hold style battleground.  During the time leading up to The Election Day event, the two teams were hopping flight path to flight path to cover the entire area and interact with as many players as possible.  If they used their skills and talents correctly before today (almost all Boss Nominee mobs are Subtlety and Balanced spec’d.  Minus the previous Bush/Cheney duo, who were Destruction and Marksmen spec’d, respectively…), then all the people that they have interacted with will help them during the battle.  This of course leads to a massive RvR scenario and both sides clash against each other in a glorious way that only Tolkien could describe.

As the two Boss mobs and buffers give Battle Shouts and Orders on the field, their minions dutifully do their part to aid them to victory.   While this battle is being waged, in order to keep things as orderly as possible, a group of battle commanders (Electoral College) oversee the combat and after some time has passed give the go ahead and light a signal flare to mark which side has one the individual battle.  Late game rushes can still occur to claim lost objectives, but this is not very common.

Once the majority of lands is claimed and the night grows long, The Election event ends.  The Election Harolds (anyone on CNN) proclaim the victor, and the winning side all get a week-long buff to their Morale and Vitality.  The losers get a blow to their ego, and have to pay for their durability loss.  The special event is complete, and the winner will take control of the capital city (and it’s loot) in January.

 

Note: Don’t take this too seriously, this was all in good fun and something I did to keep the mood light (as politics can quickly turn a conversation hostile).  Best of luck to both McCain and Obama, and hopefully you can relax after the election ends…at least until one of you get voted in anyway ^_^

Longshot, We Hardly Knew Thee

Well, it seems fitting that the server I started out on and complained that I didn’t get RvR procs in over eight hours ended up being a Low population server, so I took advantage of the free move and now my main Cultivator is on…Monolith?  Or Ungrim…I forget, heh.  But it told me Longshot was already taken on that server, so I’m resorting to my secondary WoW hunter name (I was a fan) and now she’s Trickshot.  I also had a chance to grow some stuff again, it’s been awhile as I’ve been playing Destruction almost since a week or two after release.  Just wasn’t meshing with the classes, and went back and started enjoying it again, good ol’ Shadow Warriors.

Also, I read this post and thought it was funny in a very bad way:

The Witching Hour: The loot chest that appears when players complete this Live Event Public Quest will now appear in the victors’ warcamp, and will remain there for ten minutes. This ensures that all victorious players who have a right to claim loot from the chest will be able to do so

The Herald

Wow.  I haven’t leveled up at all fast yet so I haven’t seen the rvr PQ completed (Tier 1 was a ghost town, tier 2 seemed to be full of idiots rushing the enemy and killing them in the areas that it didn’t count in and wouldn’t let them simply get closer to us for it to count.  Also the enemy was dumb and never charged us when we gave them the opportunity, so I left after a half hour of waiting for those tards to get it right, meh), but I know how long it took to get started, so I can only imagine the situation that could have caused that hotfix.  A long, hard battle that was prolonged by the enemy players constantly getting in the way.  Victory was finally claimed late into the PQ, you get a gold bag loot roll, only for you to be killed at the last second. By the time you get back to the chest that’s probably in the middle of the RvR lake, it’s gone.  Well, maybe when it resets in an hour or so you can get your purple quality Witching Night mask, ha!  Man, I would have been PISSED-the-hell-off if that happened to me, sheesh.  Thank god it didn’t, but man…poor guy that lost that loot, eh?

And Happy Halloween to all of you!