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.

MA-5 SPECIAL ELECTION TODAY

WARCRAFT AND RELIGION (p.s. I'M BACK)

First, I apologize to anyone who has spent the last months waiting for another post. Recently I have been feeling something--not quite writers' block, the feeling that you have nothing to write about, but rather a feeling that what I was thinking at the time wasn't worth writing about. After all, I don't lead a very interesting life. I work, I take classes, I play games, I spend time with friends, I expand my mind by reading. I haven't felt a deep need for something more, and most of all the prior activity seemed to be something to divert myself from middle-class ennui, which is probably the only thing that really sucks about being a white, middle-class male.

I came home from UMass Amherst and gotten a job at UPS to pay for night-school classes at closer-to-home UMass Lowell. I will not elaborate on this much (maybe in a future post). I will say, that since I'm only working part-time, with shifts lasting only four or five hours, I have what might be considered too much free time. This I have spent on two things.

One, I started playing World of Warcraft again, after leaving my account dormant for months. Only a few months after installing Burning Crusade and restarting again, my level 60 priest, Omni, joined another guild and reached level 70. My original goal of having a top-level character of every class has now expanded slightly, since all of them now much reach 70 rather than 60, but at least now I won't have to crate a shaman on another server just because of the restriction of PvP servers to characters of one side.

Two, I read many more things that caused my dislike for organized religion to solidify. I have continued to read the Truth For Youth comics and had another half an article written (will finish it soon and post it next) but also started to read blogs such as Atheist in a Minivan, Daylight Atheism, and the NoGodBlog on American Atheists' website. I picked up Sam Harris' The End of Faith in paperback, and found it fascinating. I also hope to read Dawkins' The God Delusion and Hitchens' God is Not Great. Also, there is the simultaneous hilarity and horror of the many quotes, written by actual fundamentalists on the internet, collected daily, on the website Fundies Say The Darndest Things. It keeps my attention, as much with the sheer depths to which religious people can sink, as with the witty comments and rebuttals written by its regulars. Finally, I am seriously considering joining the Freedom From Religion Foundation, since news stories I have been reading about politicians and their f**th seem to threaten my laissez-faire view of religion.

Somehow, these two things came together recently. Being level 70, Omni tends to spend a lot of time wandering around Shattrath City, the only major city in the expansion-only realm of the Outlands. One day, while standing near the center of the city, I encountered a number of Draenei sitting, facing another Draenei, who was standing, about to make a speech. Apparently Grand Anchorite Almonen was about to deliver some kind of sermon. Perhaps out of some role-playing spirit within me, and because of the fact that I was playing a priest, Omni sat down and listened. For about five minutes, I listened in on how the light within us all leads us to do good things, and how those who embrace this are blessed, and whose who turn are condemned to wander blindly. As the sermon ended, each of the anchorites listening rose in turn and intoned, "May it be so." And in the same role-playing spirit that led me to sit down, I likewise rose, spoke, /clapped at the speaker, mounted up and left.

Someone reading might seem to think that I'm on my way to becoming a theist. I don't know who, but I'm sure some fundie must think that I have some innate desire to worship god that is manifesting in this way. Not at all. My belief in a powerful omnipresent controlling force in a game is in no way related to belief in an omnipresent controlling force in real life.

Primarily, my belief in the light does have some supporting evidence. It can be proven that not only does it exist, not only that it grants powers, but that these powers are measurable. It is clearly delineated in my spell book: Greater Heal, rank 7, costs 710 mana, and heals from 2414 to 2803 hit points to its target. It measures, in a sense, how much belief and focus will yield how much result. There is nothing even remotely comparable in organized religion. There is no measure of how many prayers, how many candles lit, how many days fasting, will result in the miracles the faithful are purported to be able to do. Most likely this is because there is no correlation, and because prayer has no real effect, as scientific studies have borne out.

But the larger point, the one most of you probably grasped, is that it's just a friggin' game. The rules of the world are intelligently designed, by programmers in Blizzard's development department in Irvine, California. And unlike the rules laid out in holy books, they are available from multiple credible sources, clear and unambiguous, measurable, and independently verifiable.

Hopefully, I will be back to writing something at least once a month from now on.

AND SO WE ZERG RUSH, IN THE NAME OF THE LORD

The Christians have done it again. They've gone a step creepier.

While perusing NoGodBlog, the blog for Atheists.org, I noticed a link to a Nation article. I get The Nation at home, and wondered why this particular article had slipped through the cracks. Rather than hunt down the magazine for its article, I did what any lazy netizen would and followed the link. The story, entitled "Red-Diaper Babies," detailed a new movement among evangelicals called the Quiverfull movement.

While it's nothing new that traditional christian doctrine is explicitly counter-feminist, this particular version of the "restore the role of head of household to the men" rhetoric added something new: an exhortation to women, "Have as many children as you possibly can!" The movement idolizes women who raise more than six kids, and the article mentions women who have eight, ten, thirteen children.

Again, nothing new; Christians have been anti-contraceptive since the Pill became widespread, and it's not uncommon to see Christian families who have many many kids. When our nighbors, the Clancys, moved in down the street from us, they had two children. It's been 10+ years, they have five kids, and will soon be moving into a bigger house.

What I read next was what freaked me out. The reason for all this breeding? To vastly increase the Christian population to create an army of Christian Soldiers. The movement's name, Quiverfull, comes from Psalm 127: "Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate."

And then my geek senses kicked in.

I'm not sure who reads this blog besides my brother, so an explanation is probably in order. In the massively popular computer game Starcraft, there is an alien race known as the Zerg. They are a voracious swarm of insectoid aliens, all of whom are controlled by a single entity, the Overmind. The Overmind drives the Zerg to find new species to assimilate and to increase their numbers. A person playing as the Zerg plays best by building in numbers. You may not have the advantage of weapons, but your numbers are unmatched. This strategy is epitomized in the most basic unit, the Zergling. For a minor expenditure of minerals, you get two of them. They can be spawned early, quickly, and in vast numbers. It's so effective, that, to play against a Zerg player, and not plan for the Zergling Rush, is tantmount to suicide.

Let's just quickly compare:

ZERG: Their minds are not their own. They are controlled by the Overmind.
QUIVERFULLS: Their bodies are not their own. Their reproduction is dictated by God.

ZERG: Can spawn as many as 400 zerglings on a single map (difficult, but possible).
QUIVERFULLS: If 8 million evangelicals have 6 children or more each, estimates say, there will be 550 million of them within a century, "assuming Christ does not return before then." (Riiiiight.)

ZERG: Instinct drives them to take over the known universe.
QUIVERFULLS: Jesus drives them to take over the known universe.

ZERG: "If ever your flesh should fail, that flesh shall be made anew." --The Overmind, Original Zerg Campaign, Mission 2, "Egression"
QUIVERFULLS: "Our bodies are meant to be a living sacrifice." --Rick and Jan Hess, A Full Quiver: Family Planning and the Lordship of Christ

ZERG: Took over the planets Char and Tarsonis, and ran rampant on Chau Sara, Mar Sara, Antiga Prime, and Shakuras before all four worlds were "cleansed" in various ways. Slaughtered what they could not assimilate.
QUIVERFULLS: We shall see.

And then I imagined Morpheus, from the movie The Matrix, explaining to Neo that all humans are nothing more than glorified batteries for the infernal machine. Except now, Neo was a quiverfull child. And instead of batteries, they were bullets in some Christian war against anything and everything that opposes them. How do you say that to a child? "You are nothing more than a 9mm in God's glorious Uzi."

And then I thought...of Muslim suicide bombers. They could also be thought of as little more than shells in the artillery of GodVsGod. "Kill yourself for the glory of Allah."

And then, strangely enough, my thoughts turned back to Starcraft. Another Zerg tactic is to infect a Command Center, built by the Terran faction, and use it to produce a horde of Infested Terrans, which can commit suicide for a lot of damage, across a small radius.

So, the key point? Christians are only slightly less bloodthirsty than Muslims. Okay, maybe not. I can't write any more. I hope I can actually dispel these thoughts enough to sleep tonight.

CONGRATULATIONS

My high has just ended. My hit of electoral MDMA has faded (lasted longer than I thought!), and now I must comment.

Congratulations to Deval Patrick, the second black governor in the country, and the first Democratic governor of my great blue state of Massachusetts in over 16 years.

Congratulations to newly-elected senators Brown, Cardin, Klobuchar, Casey Jr., Tester, Whitehouse, McCaskill, and Webb.

Congratulations to the woman in the commercials in Tennessee, who may or may not have been responsible for Harold Ford, Jr.'s loss at the hands of senator Bob Corker. (Call me.)

Congratulations to the over two dozen newly-elected Democratic representatives, and the many newly-elected Democratic governors.

Congratulations to Nancy Pelosi, who it seems all but certain will be the first female, and first Italian-American, Speaker of the House. Madam Speaker, don't let us down.

Congratulations to Donald Rumsfeld on your long-awaited retirement.

Congratulations to Robert Gates on your new job. Don't fuck up.

And of course, Congratulations to all who worked towards this fantastic outcome. See you all in 2008. Stay sharp!

NOR'EASTER 2006: INSIDER'S REPORT

I'm a little late in telling you about this, since it happened last weekend. Last week was Nor'Easter, a LAN party sponsored by Intel and various other companies.

For the uninitiated, a LAN party is where a bunch of people pack up their computers, bring them to some room large enough to accomodate a few dozen Dell-wielding gamergeeks, network them all together, and play some games. And Nor'easter is not just any LAN party, it's run by the LAN Party Association of New England, or LPANE. It's the biggest lan party in New England, with total space for 250 preregistered gamers. And it lasted a total of 36 glorious hours, from 9 pm Friday to 9am Sunday morning.

Leading up to the party, I was a little concerned that I wouldn't have anything to play. According to LPANE's Polls, the top few games that people wanted to play were those I didn't have. Battlefield 2, for example. After finding it on sale at CompUSA for $10 cheaper than the WalMart near my house, I figured, "Why not?" and tossed it in the cart with the can of compressed air and the Cat6 cable that were the reason I had ventured to the store.

Looking back, I can conclusively say that I spent WAAY too much money in preparation for this one party. About $100 on games: Battlefield 2, Call of Duty 2, and DEFCON, none of which I ended up playing at the party. $200 on a new flatscreen monitor, since I didn't want to lug around my heavy 19" CRT. When I got there, I found out that someone there had the exact same model that I had just upgraded from. Incidentally, I had met this guy previously, working as a ski instructor at Nashoba Valley in nearby Westford. He got more of my hard-earned cash, as I bought $50 of computer memory from him. The 25-foot Cat6 networking cable was a bit of a waste too; although LPANE had recommended bringing a 25-foot cable, it turned out that I was seated right next to an ethernet switch, thus I wouldn't need a cable longer than 6 feet, something I could have taken from the Linux box in my room.

Oh, and as mentioned in the previous post, I was building a DDRHOMEPAD. Another $100 for supplies. I was naive to think I could possibly finish that thing before the party without using any power tools.

Anyway, The event was being held at the Intel campus in Hudson, Massachusetts. Although I had left at 8 PM and the drive is a half-hour at most, there was still a line as people were waiting to check their computers and start setting up. I hadn't reserved a seat, so as they checked me in, I was randomly assigned one. I headed inside, set up, and did what any gamer would do: compare rigs with the guy next to me. Then, I started showing off my collection of vintage games and interesting mods.

About 90 minutes into the party, I still hadn't played any games. I was perfectly capable of it; my connection was fine, my computer hadn't mysteriously died on the drive over, but...no one was really playing anything interesting.

There was, of course, Counter-Strike Source. An incidental acquisition included when I bought Half-Life 2. CS:S happened to be the second-most-voted game in LPANE's polls, so there should be no problem finding people to play that. My problem was, I had been playing for maybe a month or two. The game had been out for over a year, and it was the logical extension of the original Counter-Strike, which has been out even longer.

Ergo, everyone was better than I was at it.

That is, they knew not to waste time on body shots and go straight for the head. The server we played on would tell you how many shots you had fired had hit your opponents, where, and for how much. While I had hit with 6 bullets, for about 75-90 damage, often they would score over 100 damage with a single shot to the head. It's one thing to be sniped at, but quite another to be emptying an entire clip into a guy, and have 80% of those shots miss, only to have his one bullet go right where he wanted it.

About 15 minutes of that and I was bored again. So I tried some Warcraft III tower defense with the guys next to me. Fun, yes, but with only 3 people, it got boring quickly.

Later I tried SourceForts. Based on Half-Life 2's Deathmatch mod, it was Capture-the-flag with the added twist of having to build structures out of blocks to keep your flag protected and/or make entry into your opponents' base easier. It ept me occupied for a few hours, but again, It slowly fizzled from lack of players. Everyone else was busy playing Battlefield 2, which, after one game, I had decided was not to my liking.

And then I heard the laughter. Across the table, there were four guys laughing their asses off. At what? I watched in anticipation, hoping to find out. They saw I was watching and invited me to play. What was it? A card game, called Apples to Apples. The premise: There's a deck of green cards (descriptors) and a deck of red cards (nouns). On each player's turn, that player turns over the top green card, and each other player has to pick a red card in his hand that best fits the descriptor on the green card. Whoever revealed the green card decides which noun fits best, and the winner keeps the green card. Whoever has the most green cards at the end of the game wins. By itself, not much to speak of. But factor in that these four guys, Vince, Glenn (they started calling me Glenn #2), Ian, and Supreet, had a very sick, sarcastic, and tasteless sense of humor, and sooner or later, I was reeling with laughter, as we described "Ground Zero" as "deep," and "Falling Off A Cliff" as "graceful." Maybe you had to be there to enjoy it, but it was great. I ended up hanging with the 4chan Party Van (as they called themselves) for the rest of the party.

I ended up staying until 7am sunday morning. I was planning to stay the entire time, but by that point, almost everyone was starting to pack up and leave. I hadn't slept all that night, I probably shouldn't have been driving, and I missed work that day, but all I could think on the drive home was: It's worth it. It was worth everything.

PROJECTS

A few months ago I had the bright idea that I wanted to build something. And being a gamer, It had to have something to do with gaming. I only had two ideas, and I think I went with the worse one.

Which was that? I decided I wanted to go with D. Gee's instructions for building a DDRHOMEPAD. (No, the entire thing is not technically capitalized. Yes, I like it better that way.) The site had detailed instructions, photos, a parts list...a cinch, I thought last Tuesday, as I traveled to Home Depot to buy supplies. Unfortunately, parents were out of the house for the week, which means: no access to power tools. No table saw, no jigsaw, but I could use a hand saw. Cutting five squares of plywood could have taken 5 minutes, but due to my weak gamer arms, it took an hour.

No problems when I tried to cut the sheet metal that would cover the plywood, except that it ended up a little bit curved since it's not easy to cut a 12" piece of metal with inch-and-a-half tinsnips.

Then I tried to make the plates of clear plastic that would top off the buttons. In the interest of full disclosure, funny story. I had gone to the Home Depot in Nashua, NH to buy my materials. The plans called for lucite sheets. I asked the guy where I could find lucite, and he says: "What's a lucite?" In hindsight a perfectly reasonable response. He could have specialized in something else, like...bathroom fixtures. But it was funny at the time.

I went on to explain it was a clear glass substitute, like fiberglass, and he redirected me to Aisle 16. No lucite, but there were sheets of Lexan, the kind of material used in those Nalgene water bottles we see so often nowadays. Works for me.

I had not bothered to ask how the hell I was supposed to cut it. I checked the directions and they suggested repeatedly scoring the sheet of L[uciteexan] and then breaking it over a table. It seemed a bit crude. But, what the hell. I had forgotten, however, to remove the plastic wrap on both sides. <> Dammit.

Then I figured I could saw it if I used a light blade. Dumb move. I had not gotten an inch into the Lexan when it started to crack.

The real problem, I think, was that I was not breaking the Lexan evenly. By placing the Lexan between the table and what was left of my plywood, then applying pressure down with both hands while kneeling on the plywood, I could make a clean break. Unfortunately, by this time, I only had enough to make 4 panels -- this recipe used two per button, so I needed eight. And guess what? Out of all the items I had bought, the 2'x4' Lexan sheet I had bought was the most expensive.

It was at this point I decided to hold off until I could get some professional assistance. Besides, I needed to use Dad's drill press, and I couldn't figure out how to reconfigure that ShopSmith all-in-one thing he uses (it was set up as a table saw at the time).

I haven't even gotten to the interesting part, which involves soldering wires to a disassembled Playstation controller and to pieces of sheet metal which would act as the contacts.

The other project I was planning on building? A MAME cabinet. Get a cheap but relatively powerful computer, install MAME, then build an arcade-style cabinet to house it. Bit of a lofty undertaking, and probably harder than the DDR pad. But it wouldn't involve working with sheet metal or Lexan. Since I recently upgraded to a 19" flatscreen LCD, I now have a CRT lying around. Probably not as big as most arcade screens (27" on most 2-player standard cabinets) but a hell of a lot cheaper ($200 when I bought it, as compared to a Wells-Gardner K7300, which sells for $700--refurbished!-- from happcontrols.com.). Next, buy USB gamepads, take out the circuit board, solder the contacts to some arcade buttons and joysticks, insert the gamepads into the computer inside, and voila! You got yourself an arcade machine.

I thought this would actually be a better project than the DDRHOMEPAD, for various reasons:
* This would apply to many games. There are thousands of ROMS that I know exist, and probably more than that. Probably an infinite number. (It could be modified so the joysticks and various buttons applied to a PS2 or XBox controller instead of USB. Thus, console gaming in an arcade shell.) By contrast, the DDRHOMEPAD would work for but one game: Stepmania. (A game that arguably emulates around 15+ games, but games that are functionally indistinguishable.)
* Again, no sheet metal or Lexan. Maybe a sheet to cover the monitor. And the margins of error in measurement for the arcade cabinet are arguably larger than that for the DDRHOMEPAD.
* Even after I'd finished building the DDRHOMEPAD, I'd still go to the arcade to play DDR, because there is such a thing as being a Score Whore: It gives me pride to know that no one has beaten my only Machine Record #1 on the In The Groove machine at FunWorld in Nashua (Funk Factory, medium difficulty, 97.59%) for at least a few months.

As for the MAME cabinet, there aren't any arcades nearby that have the wide range of games I'd be able to emulate. All the fighters, shooters (with a USB light gun), and, if I decide to implement a racing wheel, drivers, designed between the rise of the age of arcade video games (late 70s, early 80s) and the point where everyone started switching to 3d systems with proprietary hardware (mid-90s or so). Just one example: At the Brunswick Zone in Lowell, there appeared one day a NeoGeo machine with a Double Dragon fighting game. My brother and I each played a few rounds, then we left the arcade. We never saw it or a similar machine again. I downloaded the ROM a while back, and found out just how much of a horrific piece of crap that game really was. But I'd still play it again once in a while. All arcade players have a game like this one. It's not very popular, but for some reason, you played it a lot and still will, for all the memories it brought back. For me, it's that Double Dragon game. And also Zero Point.

Why did I decide to build the DDRHOMEPAD, then? I was thinking that a DDRHOMEPAD might be an easier thing to bring for a LAN party than a MAME cabinet. (I've already begun thinking about some kind of wheel assembly involving a wooden base that can be removed when you need it to move, and put in place when it needs to be stationery, a base that can be folded up and placed in a small cabinet in the side...but I'm getting ahead of myself.) But I think bringing an arcade machine to a LAN party might be more fun. Which brings me to the topic of LAN parties, which I'll cover in my next post, probably later this week.