Monthly Archives: January 2006

Know your audience

Looks like the World of WarCraft will be celebrating Lunar New Year. I expect whining about Blizzard catering to “Chinese Gold Farmers” to commence on the forums in exactly negative two days.

I find it interesting that this holiday happens to come after the news that racism has come to Azeroth. Some misguided players believe that all non english speakers are Chinese gold farmers. They have resorted to a “screening” process that involves proving that English is your native tongue. This proof is demonstrated by typing one or two sentences with correct grammar and spelling.

Of course, this process is entirely dependent on whether or not the screeners know that a semicolon is not a part of your lower intestine.

Having played World of WarCraft, I predict that this practice will lead to a dramatic decrease in the number of groups, and perhaps eliminate groups entirely.

OMG!!11oneone

Woohoo! Open federation for google talk. What does this mean?

One protocol to rule them all. Or, at least the first steps along that path.

In theory, provided that all IM services used the same protocol, you could log onto Yahoo! and chat with someone using Windows Messenger.

At the moment, I require six different accounts to chat. That’s a little out of hand. I have AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Messenger, ICQ, GTalk, and World of WarCraft. Worst instant messaging client. Ever. But I do need it to talk to certain people.

With open federation, chatting would be like sending an email. It wouldn’t matter which service I use.

In addition to convenience, I think that open federation would lend a sense of legitimacy to instant messaging. Something sorely lacking when one thinks about the perceived “life experience level” of the average chat participant.

(i dnt no wht ur tlkng abt lolol. asl?)

So bring on open federation. It’s about time.

Over 25, and gaming. . .

Not exactly all encompassing, but a good “primer” to the types of gamers that are out there. I feel I’m somewhere between “Devoted” and “Hardcore.”

I'm just a bit. . .

So, perpendicular storage for hard drives. Hitachi’s got the “Schoolhouse Rock” explanation for you. Regardless of the medium, the message, “more storage capacity on hard disk drives,” is good news.

Oh, hey

Clerks 2 is coming. I’m looking forward to it. I was once a register monkey, so it’s fun to see people on the big screen doing things that you’ve seen in the real world.

This movie is of course, hyperbole. The real world is not. What is frightening is that I’ve actually experienced some of those things when I was working retail. The problem with the job is that it brings you in contact with an inordinate number of people.

People who work retail do one of two things when they realize this fact. They either quit, or lose faith in humanity.

I started the job with “antifaith” in humanity. That is, faith in people to do the wrong thing in any given situation.

I only worked on weekends and I saw plenty of that.

People (I hesitate to call them, “parents”) leaving children in the store unattended. Kids shoplifting. Grown men crying over Microsoft Train Simulator. Parents buying seven year old children “M” rated games.

The usual.

So, having quit that job years ago, it brings me great pleasure to watch fictional characters living retail. This trailer looks like they’ve moved on to food service.

I worked food service for approximately two hours and quit.

Not enough money in the world.