I bought my freedom from death, six quarters, and death left me, left me alone, alive, but why? You don’t escape death, no, she chases you, and you can’t run. Your legs go weak from sympathy, your will to flee, replaced with compassion. As she aproches death fills your nostrils, Your time is now, and you forgot to make peace. but she offers you a way out… and you have to take it, mortals fear, FEAR DEATH, she smells.

I was stone cold fearless, I stopped, who wouldn’t, its death, you got to see what the appeal is. You can’t look away. I squared my shoulders, and stood proud, and ready. But given the choice of ferry man vs death, I payed a toll and live.

I’ve always been annoyed at the seeming lack of any real economy in World of Warcraft — the auction houses seem poorly implemented (no history, extremely expensive to list expensive items for extremely short times, and so on) and there is no “shop” functionality.  That said, at least it is something, and as much as it annoys me that it is so incredibly limited, it could be worse.

It just got worse.  I just discovered that for each manufacturing profession in the game, the best stuff is bind-on-pickup when you create it.  That is, as soon as you create something it is bound to you, specifically, and you cannot sell it, trade it, or otherwise move it around.

Words cannot convey the depths of my contempt for this fact.  Not only is it clearly styled to completely forego the formation of anything approaching a real economy, but it also largely restricts reasonable choice-of-profession.  You want to be a blacksmithing mage?  All well and good until you try and make the special, high-end stuff — then you can’t use it.  Should’ve been a warrior blacksmith.  Want to be a druid tailor?  All well and good, but you really should have been a leatherworker.

Tying professions to a specific class or to class-abilities is out-and-out ridiculous, particularly as it isn’t made clear during the process (i.e. the “Blacksmithing” trainer doesn’t bother looking at the young mage and saying “Are you sure?  You won’t be able to use some of what you can make, and neither will anyone else.”)

Not only that, but because the item is soulbound to the creator immediately upon creation; what is the point of learning the pattern?  You can create as many as you like after you learn the pattern, but why create more than one?  The entire money-sink is for you to learn the pattern, build one item, and then ignore that pattern forever.

I can frankly say that of all the idiocies and foolish things I have encountered over the years, this takes the cake as the single most bone-headed design that I have ever seen.

17:41 [jjj_] hello! do you run any servers?
i’m looking for someone to host some cool new web 2.0 apps…
17:41 [Eraos] Yes, I do, and no, you can’t.  Sorry.
Look into cheap VHOSTing for yourself, I would suggest.
17:43 [jjj_] no i can’t what?
17:43 [jjj_] thanks though
17:44 [Eraos] No, you can’t host the cool new web 2.0 apps
on the servers that I run.
17:44 [Eraos] No problem at all.  Good luck.
17:44 [Eraos] Strictly out of academic curiosity, what would
these cool new web 2.0 apps consist of?

Unfortunately, jjj_ went completely quiet after my query. I guess I’ll never know what ‘cool new web 2.0 apps’ I won’t be hosting… which is actually too bad, because now I’m slightly curious.

Where else could this post possibly fit, except for A Room with a Moose?

Viva Diamond Shreddie revolution, I just hope it doesn’t die off like new coke.

This round squrreeel sould his soul to the ling, they are the ones listening to me, they are the ones controlling me, you are the cow with the bell, ding ding and I will sng.

now, the base goes to the boom, the cow with the vow to milk the sow

Anyway having used facebook for all of one week I can say, while it does have its annoyances, but it is superior to myspace.  It doesn’t suffer from the  my first webpage that myspace seems to run into.  Whats that some text behind all those animated gifs?  For shame, everyone knows text is useless when tying to write.

In closing, Weird Al, Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota, Best song?  I think so, what do you think?

• CCP
• White Wolf

I can’t stomach the way that CCP has dealt with it’s customer base over the entire t20 cheating scandal, although shockingly it isn’t particularly different than how they have handled things in the past, when I look at it. Perhaps I just needed something big enough for me to sit up and say “Wow. That is so not cool.”

Extremely unfortunately, that means that White Wolf gets added to the pile as well, thanks to their merger with CCP. Which is too bad, because I really like their systems, and they have in no way annoyed me, other than their merger with CCP.

For anyone thinking of playing EVE Online, I urge you to reconsider. There are any number of things that are wrong with the game, and I could go into an exhaustive list, but I will not bore you. The thing that matters most is that if you really want to feel like a completely contemptible human being that is not deserving of honesty or attention, then go to a 24-hour convenience store and take a really, really long time to pay (count those pennies!) right before the poor clerk’s break, so that you are actually eating into their break. Afterwards, voila! You have just dealt with CCP, only it was short — it doesn’t drag on and on — and best of all you don’t have a subscription to that convenience store or clerk. You can go to another one, elsewhere.

It was probably also cheaper, and you have something to show for it.

A fun drinking game based on WWE Royal Rumble. The most interesting part, is not knowing when you might have to chug that last few sips of a drink vs opening a new drink and having to chug it.

Base rules:

Every time a Wrestler enters the Rumble, you drink
Every time a Wrestler is disqualified, leaves the ring, you drink

Now the fun part:

Everyone picks one or two wrestlers, two for hardcore, one if your not. If its an old Royal Rumble, you can draw numbers/names from a hat, to decide on your wrestler.

*Shots can replace a chug.

When your guy enters the ring, you chug.
When your guy is disqualified, you chug.

Hardcore additional rules:
If your puts out a guy, everyone else drinks twice.
If your guy puts out some one else’s guy, they chug twice.
If your guy is put out by some one else’s guy you chug twice

Exceptional Hardcore, Stephen drinks like a little girl rules:
If one of your guys puts out your other guy, you do four shots.
If a wrestler does a finisher, drink.
If an exceptional chop is done, drink.
If Ric flair woos, drink.

The first time this was done, Allan, Andrew and I watched two Rumbles, back to back, and near the end could no longer drink due to the massive amounts of liquids in our tummies.