ALFRED E. SMITH MEMORIAL FOUNDATION DINNER

Both McCain and Obama were there. Both were funny, but Obama killed.

McCain first...



and then Obama.



Although I've been for Obama since John Edwards dropped out of the Democratic primary race, if I had been undecided before watching this, Obama would have clinched it. For me, ties go to whoever's funnier.

INITIAL THOUGHTS ON WoW PATCH 3.0.2

I just finished downloading and installing the patch (took 2 fucking days on Verizon DSL D:< ), and haven't played yet. This is only my initial reaction to what stood out from amidst the many minor talent and skill tweaks, writing each point as I read the relevant patch note.

MAIN GAME MECHANICS
* Achievements. "Explore the map completely" should be one. I'd go for that.
* Hit and Spell Hit, Crit and Spell Crit, and Haste and Spell Haste have been merged into three stats. This is an attempt to reduce the number of items required to cover one class's disparate talent trees. For example, certain items are now equally useful to a Moonkin druid as to a Feral druid.

DRUIDS
* You can now Entangling Roots indoors. Underused before, for that very reason. Smart.
* Feral Charge can be used in Cat form. I don't even wanna THINK about how broken that's going to be in conjunction with Prowl.
* Feral Swiftness indoors. Yay.
* Nature's Grasp now a base skill. Once again, I guess no one was using it. I probably still won't.
* Druids get an non-cooldown rez!

HUNTERS
* Two more stable slots, for a total of 5 pets.
* Pets get their own talent trees? Someone's been busy.
* Viper aspect changed. Half damage, but each shot regens based on weapon speed.
* Disengage now makes you jump backwards. I can't wait to see someone accidentally fall off a cliff because of this.
* "If a hunter tames a pet that is more than five levels beneath their own level, the pet will then have their level increased to five levels beneath the hunter’s own level." But will Keahrde's lv.56 owl be retroactively raised to 65 because of this?
* The pet loyalty system was eliminated. Does that mean we no longer have to feed them?
* Scattershot is a Survival talent now? Boo!

MAGES
* Blast Wave adds Knockback.
* Evocation cooldown reduced to 5 minutes. Somehow I think it STILL won't be enough.
* No new spells?

PALADINS
* Some Blessings are now Hands. No doubt this will cause confusion. However, It appears now that a paladin can cast both Salvation and Might/Wisdom on the same target.
* Seals and Judgements have been completely revamped. So much for stacking Seal of Light and Judgement of Light for extra healing. Now There are Three Judgements, they're instant, Seals are no longer consumed by any of them.
* Summoned mounts are now free. Warlocks, likely the same.

PRIESTS
* Holy Fire now faster cast, more powerful, has cooldown.
* Holy Nova is cheaper.
* Lightwell renew now only breaks if any one attack hits for more than 30% health. It might actually be useful now.
* Prayer of Mending can crit now.

ROGUES
* Dagger and Fist Weapon spec merged.
* Dual Wield spec is now available at lv10.
* "Energy regeneration should now be smoother." What does this mean? Instead of +20/2sec, it will be something like more ticks for less energy? +5/0.5sec? +1/0.1 sec?
* Mace spec no longer stuns. THAAANK YOUUUUUUU!!!!!
* No longer brew your own poisons. Poisons are now available from vendors.

SHAMANS
* Flametongue has switched from +FireDmg/Hit to increasing spell damage.
* Earthliving weapon increases heals.
* Windfury now replaces Rockbiter? Seriously?
* Windfury totem now increases melee haste instead of extra swings.

WARLOCKS
* Demons no longer need to be trained. Poor Spackle Thornberry, put out of business by the devs.
* Doomguards now 20% more HP.
* Fel Armor no longer increases healing on you; retains +spell damage. +Healing on you now on Demon Armor.
* Felhunters get a special attack: Shadow Bite.

WARRIOR
* Mace spec, again, no longer stuns.
* Major disciplines (Retailation, Shield Wall, Recklessness) now down to 12 seconds, cooldown reduced from an hour to 5 minutes.

OTHER STUFF
* Inscription now available.
* Vanity Pets and mounts no longer take up item slots? So my kitty is now essentially a spell?!?
* Quests can be shared at any distance. About time already.
* /cower has an animation. Maybe now any Horde that see me use it may back off. But somehow I think the opposite is more likely.
* My AddOns are all broken AGAIN, No doubt.

JIBJAB: TIME FOR SOME CAMPAIGNIN'

courtesy of Andrew Sullivan's blog:

Send a JibJab Sendables® eCard Today!

Whoever voiced McCain in this one sounds like the same guy who did the Soldier in Team Fortress 2.

SOCIAL NETWORKS: LET'S TRY THIS ONE MORE TIME...

I have not been a big fan of social networks. MySpace quickly degraded into a cesspool and Facebook isn't faring too well either. Even the kind of network one would think I might be all over -- one focused on gaming, whose name I can't remember and whose bookmark I can't find -- suffered the same fate: I created an account, checked it a few times, then forgot about it the first week.

There's a saying in the Unix world, a response to the allegation that Unix and its derivatives aren't user-friendly: "It is user-friendly, it's just not as promiscuous about who it calls its friends." I feel the same way about random contacts on social networks. Even if we've never met in real life, never talked in some corner of the internet...we can still be called 'friends'? If it were 'contacts' I might be more willing to add everyone and his mother to my contacts list. But unless we've had some kind of connection, 'friend' is not quite appropriate.

I bring this all up because the whole join-a-social-network-and-then-forget-about-it thing has started again. This time, it's Atheist Nexus that's the culprit. We'll see how long this one lasts. My page is here.

I DIDN'T DO A DAMN THING FOR THE FOURTH

Actually, not really NOTHING; I did have lunch with my brother at Burger King, which has become a weekly ritual for us.

But I didn't wear a flag shirt, I didn't have a barbecue, I didn't watch any fireworks.

Does that make me unpatriotic? Or just lazy? Ah well.

FAREWELL GEORGE

George Carlin
1937-2008

"If I had my choice of how to die, I'd like to be sitting on the cross-town bus and just suddenly burst into flames."

"Thanks to our fear of death in this country, I won't have to die...I'll pass away. Or I'll expire like a magazine subscription. If it happens in the hospital, they'll call it a 'terminal episode'. The insurance company will refer to it as 'negative patient care outcome'. And if it's the result of malpractice, they'll call it a 'therapeutic misadventure'."

"When I die, I don't want to be buried, but I don't want to be cremated either. I wanna be blown up. Put me on a pile of explosives and blow me up. Or throw my body from a helicopter. That would be fun. One stipulation: wherever I land, you have to leave me there. Even if it's on the mayor's lawn. Just let me lie there. But keep the dogs away."

"The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What's that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating...and you finish off as an orgasm."

FIREFOX 3 IS OUT TODAY

And they added exactly the feature I needed: ability to save all tabs on close. No longer will I have to kill the process from the task manager to avoid reconstructing my 25-tab setup in a new session.

The tab scrollbar is pretty sweet too.

Mozilla promised that they would make Firefox3 use less memory, I can see some improvement already. As I closed Firefox 2 to update, I had 20+ tabs open and the program took up around 160,000K. Firefox 3 has cut that nearly in half, down to 87,800K.

On an unrelated note, Mozilla is hoping to set a record for most software downloaded in a 24-hour period coinciding with Firefox3's release. So if you were thinking of switching, now's a good time. This geek recommends it.

HE COACHES THE BLACK MESA EMPLOYEE BASKETBALL TEAM

So I've been watching the NBA Finals. Normally, it's something I wouldn't care about, except:
1. Massachusetts resident.
2. Celtics.
3. Lakers.

So naturally it's unavoidable.

While watching, I couldn't help but notice something...interesting...about Lakers coach Phil Jackson.



Doesn't he look kinda like Half-Life 2 villain Dr. Wallace Breen?

Mmm...Nah. Not that much. Still, I can't seem to shake that first impression.

WISH I THOUGHT OF THIS

www.youvebeenleftbehind.com

The premise: six days after The Rapture(TM), the website will send out emails to everyone on a subscriber's address list, informing them that they've been left behind.

"We have set up a system to send documents by the email, to the addresses you provide, 6 days after the "Rapture" of the Church. This occurs when 3 of our 5 team members scattered around the U.S fail to log in over a 3 day period. Another 3 days are given to fail safe any false triggering of the system."

Many questions come to mind.

How dense do they think we are that we won't notice that a significant number of people are gone for six days?
What would happen if two or less of the operators get raptured and keep logging in to keep the system going?
Could a bit of coordinated mischief cause a false positive? Malicious crackers and script kiddies could have a lot of fun here.
Why does it only let you inform 62 people at once? I guess fundies wouldn't want to associate with that many unsaved people. Even so, would you have to get a second account for more people?

But most importantly, why didn't I think of charging fundies $40/year for a glorified (no pun intended) FTP server/mass-mailer that will likely never be used? I bet the guy who thought this up could easily have charged $20/month and evangelicals would have dutifully paid.

So here's my proposition for a similar premise: Customers can pay $5 to add an email address to the list. And the mailer sends out this:

Dear Friend,

If you're reading this email, then the Rapture hasn't happened yet. But a concerned Christian, (insert the name of whoever signed this email up), wants you to know that there's still time.

(and here we have some stock give-your-life-to-Jesus boilerplate)

from your friends at RaptureMail

Daily. Or better, for a higher price, you can pay to send the email every 6 hours. But the real beauty is that the spammed knows who's ultimately responsible and can "thank" them accordingly.

GAME OVER FOR MIKE HUCKABEE

I knew from the start that Huckabee could never have won the presidency. Even if he had gotten the republican nomination, any one of the Democrats - even the ones that dropped out, Edwards, Kucinich, Richardson -- could have beaten him easily. And if at any time things started to go his way, we could have pulled out the video clip of Huckabee saying:

"Hi, I'm Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, wanting to say 'Congratulations Canada on preserving your national igloo'."

to a fake reporter on the Canadian show Talking To Americans.

But fortunately we didn't have to use that clip.

Here's something the rest of you may not have noticed...

Who made Huckabee? Many might have noted that Stephen Colbert claimed to have made Huckabee, with the "Colbert Bump."

Who UNmade Huckabee? I think it's another Daily Show cast member:

"I firmly believe, after Bill Clinton -- Bill Clinton alone is reason enough not to elect anyone from Arkansas president for a hundred years."

Lewis Black, The White Album, recorded 1999

I'm glad you guys trust Lew.

LISTENING TO MUSIC (or, trying to) Part III

Recently I borrowed from my brother, who himself had borrowed it from the Fitchburg State College radio station, a copy of the soundtrack to the documentary Rise: The Story of Rave Outlaw Disco Donnie. Disco Donnie was a major figure in the New Orleans club scene, and he was also the first person to be indicted under the RAVE (Reducing Americans' Vulnerability to Ecstasy) Act, which allowed club owners to be prosecuted if anyone was caught using rave drugs in their clubs. The money raised from album sales would go to funding Disco Donnie's defense as well as to EM:DEF, the Electronic Music Defense Fund.

While the CD has its share of big names (The Crystal Method, Leftfield, Josh Wink) and a few great tracks from lesser-known artists ("Freak Frequency" by Vigi & Flip, "Hip Hop Phenomenon" by Tsunami-One, "I Feel Good" by Charles Feelgood), it also feature a few clips from interviews from the film. The one that caught my eye in particular was one entitled "Jesus Preached PLUR (Peace Love Unity Respect)".

It's short enough that I can post the entire thing here:

"Jesus...Jesus preached PLUR, you know, Jesus wasn't, like, a white guy, sitting around, you know, like, being perfect...I mean, Jesus was a North African, you know...he had long dreds; he wandered around and probably smoked bud. He, uh...preached PLUR. He wanted everyone to love each other."

Now, to break this down in detail. Leaving aside the obvious problem of overloading a simple statement with Likes and YouKnows, my main problem is that the central point of the argument is false. Jesus did not preach neither peace ("Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." Matthew 10:34) nor love ("If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." Luke 14:26) nor unity ("For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law." Matthew 10:35) nor respect (the part of Mark chapter 7 where Jesus refuses to exorcise a woman's daughter, calling the woman herself a dog). These examples are just a few of many that show that Jesus isn't exactly the role model this person thought he was.

Of course, the Bible contains verses that could allow one to make a case either way. I just felt like playing devil's advocate here for a brief moment.

The conception of Jesus as a cannabis-smoking north African nature-worshipper spreading a message of peace among men seems to me like it might make more sense than a Yahweh-fearing Hebrew with little positive to draw from the Old Testament. It's not outside the realm of possibility that making Jesus a Jew was nothing more than a Retcon to serve the early Christians' purposes. (After all, as Greta Christina pointed out, all religion is fanfic.) So this portrayal by this ditzy-sounding clubgoer is just another instance of seeing Jesus how you want to see him; seeing him in a way that advances your own beliefs. In this case, that of PLUR.

I think all I'm trying to say, though, is this: I agree with your message, but not how you're saying it. I can see your rationale for doing so, since so many people agree, wrongly, that Jesus was a bringer of PLUR. If you're trying to get people to your side, you might not want to use Jesus to do so.

Thinking about this distracted me from the main point of the article, which was supposed to be about electronic club music, but somehow moved onto another topic completely.

A COINCIDENCE

I might have mentioned before that I write music. Today I was playing around with an idea that I think I might make into a full song when I noticed a coincidence.

Originally, I couldn't think of what to save my files as, so I had to hastily name them before I could save them. Most of them have the name I eventually gave them.

A few of them describe the genre they fit into: "NuTrance" "HouseBeat" "ReturnToDrumNBass".

A few describe what I was trying to evoke by writing them: "Questing" "Ominous" "Drift"

Some of them just reminded me to come back and finish them: "RhythmWorthDeveloping" "BuildOnThis" "PossibilityExists"

Eventually I settled on a 3-digit number (for keeping track of them chronologically) followed by a brief description, usually the genre.

And on 2/14, I reached track #214.

SUPER BOWL, PRESIDENTIAL RACE, AND WARCRAFT POST #4

Dad's Jambalaya, as usual, was fantastic. Favorite ad was the Diet Pepsi MAX ad with Chris Kattan making a cameo near the end. And regarding the game itself, WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?

Next subject.

I wish I could have voted, but I was sick with the flu that day, and I probably could and should have braved the cold to vote.

My state of Massachusetts went for Hillary Clinton, which is not surprising since my neighbors in the 5th district already have no qualms about voting for the wife of a former high-ranking politician.

I was planning to vote for Edwards until he dropped out, at which point I backed Obama, along with Ted Kennedy and John Kerry. But I could live with Hillary for president.

And Mitt Romney took Massachusetts in the republican primaries just before dropping out. I'd like to imagine he's the least evil of them, but no, all of them are quite evil indeed. More on that in detail another time.

Next subject.

Now, it's at this point that I realized that I haven't written too much in detail about World of Warcraft since well before the expansion was released. And with another one on the way, I might as well before I suddenly have a lot more to write about.

Blizzard is becoming a bit more like Microsoft as time goes on. I didn't realize this until Blizzard released, as part of their base UI, a module called Floating Combat Text. This module was an attempt to integrate a popular user-created mod, Scrolling Combat Text, into the base UI.

I, for one, don't bother to use FCT, because SCT is much more customizable. FCT displays all events (that Blizzard thinks needs to be tracked) in either green text or red, depending on whether they're good or bad, and they only scroll up the screen. SCT offers customizable events, which can be made to display in any color; and the ability to send text notices to one of three panels, which can be scroll up, down, at an angle, or along a quadratic path so that they flow like water from a fountain. Maybe it's a bit less memory intensive to use FCT than SCT, but I would rather get a memory upgrade. (One more excuse for buying tech.)

It was not until this one case that I noticed this is not the first time this has happened. A few other features, that were not part of the original UI and that were first done by the mod community, include quest objective tracking, display of multiple action bars, and target-of-target frames. The fact that these are now part of the base software reminds me of the case of Internet Explorer being built in to Windows 98 and later incarnations.

Omni the lv 70 human priest hasn't been doing much except daily quests, in the hopes of eventually buying an epic flying mount. The only daily quests that I've been able to find that don't involve a lengthy pre-quest-line are those for PvP and for Cooking. The nice thing about the cooking quest is that in addition to a chunk of change, you get more food to do more cooking with. Sure, you may become overloaded, but that's what alts are for.

And the PvP quests have finally given me an excuse to check out the new Eye of the Storm battleground. Believe it or not, I still haven't set foot in Arathi Basin. Sooner or later, once the random quest ends up sending me to AB, I'll go, but until then, I'll keep hoping the Alliance can win Alterac Valley once in a while.

Keahrde the dwarf hunter is also 70. Two down, seven to go. The only objectives I have for my lv70 characters are to maximize whatever trade skills I chose for them and to get as good a blue weapon as possible, maybe an epic if the opportunity arises. Keahrde's almost through fel iron and moving on to adamantium. Not sure whether to go for the Wrathfire Hand-Cannon or the X-54 Rocket Ripper...

Asmira the human paladin is 68, with at least half a level of experience, so she can now log out anywhere and still be running on rest experience. After spending levels 60-61 as a retribution paladin and constantly wishing for a better and better weapon, I decided to go back to the original "blockadin" spec she had for most of the pre-expansion leveling. It's a bit slow, but there's virtually no down time between battles.

Rashida the night elf druid is 64. Not much I can say about her except that she will probably be the next character to get to fly, simply because it's so much cheaper to get Flight Form (and it's available two levels sooner).

Jorbin the human mage is 61. If only jewelcrafting were cheaper to level, I'd be making all kinds of neat trinkets with him, but such is not the case.

Sasuk the human warlock is 50. I'm hoping his felguard starts becoming more useful in a few levels, but for now it's not doing enough damage to keep aggro. I'd hate to spec out of full demonology simply because it's not working.

Finally, Exadab the night elf warrior is 40, Qledwa the dwarf rogue is 32, Vesper the night elf priest I created specifically for shadow spec, is 24, and Tolaria the draenei shaman is 13.

I stated, a long time ago on another blog (still up on JoeUser if anyone really cares) that I had 6 objectives, and all of them still stand, though some are slightly modified.

1. Reach lv60. Now that the level cap is 70, this is more than taken care of, and after only a few Karazhan runs, Ive got a few purples as well, so Omni's slightly pimped out.
2. Full devout set. I finished this a while ago, and a few of the pieces have since been traded for Virtuous. Now the goal is probably to collect the full Hallowed set, which is the Outlands dungeon equivalent, and it's easier to achieve since there are only five pieces (two of which I have already), as opposed to Devout's eight.
3. See the world. Completely fill in the blanks on my world map. Flying mounts make it even easier to get those odd places in Outlands, but I still need to get a better look at the new islands where the Draenei start sooner or later.
4. Master all the professions. This will have to be split between 6 characters but it can be done: Omni's an Herbalist/Alchemist, Keahrde's a Miner/Blacksmith, Asmira's a Skinner/Leatherworker, Rashida's a Tailor/Enchanter, Jorbin took up Jewelcrafting, and Qledwa is an Engineer.
5. More 60s. Well, 70s now, and so far I'm on the right track.
6. Epic mounts. Omni is epic mounted, as is Keahrde, and Asmira just recently finished her Charger quest. Rashida is next in line, but she might be able to get Flight form first. As for epic flying mounts, I'll focus on getting one for Omni, but the rest will have to settle for normal ones.

Back to the game.

GO PATS!



Remember, this is Super Bowl #42 -- The super bowl of life, the universe, and everything.

GAMING IS MY RELIGION

This article was originally written for a college writing course, the focus of the assignment being on Culture and Identity. I reprint it here because 1) it got a 98% and 2) it was a lot of fun to write. Enjoy.

Although I describe myself as an atheist, I don't really consider it a full enough description of who I am. Atheism describes what one is not: neither a believer in supernatural entities, nor a follower of religion. However, there is a certain force in my life that has filled the niche that most people find in the rote and ritual of faith: computer and video gaming. It might seem preposterous that an activity associated with slackers and geeks can take the place of a system of belief, but it's been something that's shaped my outlook on life.

For as long as I can remember I've been a gamer. My dad probably didn't intend for me to travel this path, but he was the one who first showed me the way. I was three when he showed me First Letters and Words on the Commodore Amiga he used to do work on at home. It captivated me enough to convince him to buy other games for me. From that led to more learning-oriented games, through Math Rescue and the Carmen Sandiego series, to the ones more purely for entertainment, the Commander Keens and Wolfensteins and Duke Nukems.

The early 1990s was the heyday of a relatively new concept in computer games: shareware. Rather than release the whole game, companies released part of it, which people could then do with as they pleased: either charge for it or give it away, either on diskette or on BBSes. This gave companies the ability to put out new games at a more rapid pace, since if no one was interested, companies could move on to other projects. If interest grew enough, companies could finish their shareware games, which people could then pay for. The company most responsible for popularizing this concept was Apogee Software. They had many disciples, of whom id Software, Epic Megagames, Microprose, and Psygnosis were but a few. They were my priests, and every few months, they had a new story to tell. Commander Keen! Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure! Major Stryker! Duke Nukem! Jill of the Jungle! X-Com! Novastorm! Each name holds a few memories, of moments wasted in the holy light of pixellated images on an old CRT.

While my parents never let me own a console, I had no shortage of friends that did. I must imagine that my friends never understood why, out of all their toys, the one I liked best was their Sega Genesis or their Super Nintendo. I never was very good at games that required a controller (and I'm still not very good with a gamepad), but I enjoyed watching them play. Better for me, since they usually were much more skilled. How boring, you might think, to watch someone else play video games! Not for me. There was a rush of excitement at finding out what lay just out of sight. What happens on the next level? and the next one? and the next? I didn't have to be the one at the controls; I just wanted a good view. It still excites me to explore somewhere new, in real life, as in games.

Since this was before the internet, I had little no no way to find like-minded gamers. When people asked me what I liked to so, and I told them I liked computer games, there was always a barely detectable odd look. I don't think they thought I was a weirdo, just that they didn't understand. I remember having what I can only fathom is a similar reaction when hearing from my 7- and 8-year-old friends that they had recently gotten their first communion. They knew exactly what it meant, but it was completely alien to me.

As a result, my social circle, which revolved around other people whose primary interest was gaming, remained small. My first and most stalwart companion in this regard was my own brother. My dad worked as a software engineer, and as the result of coming in contact with a lot of discarded tech, he had managed to get each of us a laptop. My brother and I played games via null-modem cable. What this meant was that we actually had to run a cable, several feet long, from my room, down the hall, to his, and plug it in to both our computers. The cable was just long enough that if we both moved our laptops a few inches to the side, we could connect them together without creating a tripwire across the bathroom door. Once we connected, we spent many an hour blasting the hell out of each other in Duke Nukem 3D and Worms 2. Neither of us had a big enough allowance to buy our own games, so we often pooled our money to get the requisite forty dollars. It created a feeling of kinship between us that I haven't been able to duplicate anywhere else. I've never felt a great attachment to many people, except for the few I've been able to sit down and play a game with. I can't even remember the names of most of the people I hung out with in middle school, but after playing a few rounds of Unreal Tournament with the guys in Intro to Programming Languages class in high school, their memories will always be with me.

It wasn't until late in high school that I felt like a part of a much larger community. I first became aware that there were a lot more people who played games, when my house started getting freebie issues of Computer Games Strategy Plus magazine. I also came to realize the sheer volume of it all--there are this many games, and all of them are this good? This magazine came with a monthly demo CD. Each of these CDs was my most prized possession until the next one arrived. I never felt like I needed something else to do with my spare time, because CGS+ delivered!

Through the games on this demo CD, I discovered games that could be played over the internet. At first I only dabbled with this, but once I reached college, my love for online gaming became so much deeper. It turns out that UMass Amherst's Computer Science Talent Advancement Program (CompSci TAP), to which I had been admitted, was a haven for gamers. I had talked briefly with people I had played online with, but now I was living with kindred spirits. Though I was living in a dorm I would move out of two years later, I felt like I was home. Home, where people understood. Home, where there were people I could talk to.

It was while I was in college, in this home environment of primarily gamers, that my vocabulary began to change. We would pepper our speech with AIM shorthand, pronouncing them as if they were words. Someone said something funny? You would hear someone say, between laughs, "lol" or "rofl."Someone acts like an idiot? He would be called a "noob." Someone gets defeated, outwitted, cut down to size, or one-upped? We would have said he got "owned." I still regularly use these last two in everyday speech.

The peak period of gaming for me was in those two years I spent at UMass Amherst. World of Warcraft was unleashed in November of 2004, and no one on the hall was left untouched by its wrath. If any one thing was responsible for making me leave Amherst, Warcraft was it. I spent hours every day exploring a vast world, gathering experience, fighting battles, and occasionally skipping classes. Some of my friends built up their characters and deleted them, as if they were disposable. I never quite saw it that way. I felt that Omni, my raven-haired, dark-skinned human priest of the light, was too much a part of my soul to callously throw away, or worse still, to sell on eBay, because he wasn't fun to play any more or because he wasn't powerful enough.

Unlike many other games I had played before, World of Warcraft kept track of how long I had been playing all of my characters. How addicted was I? In total, I have spent a total of over 125 days playing, out of two years. Taken all at once, if I had started playing on New Years' Day, and continued playing, all day and all night, without stopping to eat, drink, or sleep, I wouldn't take a break until around Cinco de Mayo. If I had been a religious person, attending a two-hour sermon once a week from birth until age 21, I would have only spent a total of 91 days in church. This is the length and breadth of my devotion, and that's only for one game. There were many that came before it, and there are still more yet to come. Gaming has given me a sense of wonder, many new friends, and a lot of memories, and I wouldn't have it any other way.