Play 20 questions with creepy computer

Ever play 20 questions?  Well get ready to lose.  Check it out:


http://us.akinator.com/#

I guarantee this AI will creep you out.  I even tried answering questions randomly and it guessed "PERSON WHO ANSWERED RANDOMLY".

You could pull some funny shenanigans with this thing.  Call up your mom and tell her you hit your head when you slipped and fell in the bathtub the other day, and now you are constantly hearing voices that tell you what people are thinking.  Then prove it to her by playing 20 questions.  Hilarity will ensue.

If Jesus played WoW

There is a raging debate as to what class Jesus plays.

He might be a mage since he can conjure bread (and fish feasts too).

He might be a druid since he can cast insect swarm and make locusts attack his enemies.  Actually that's not true.  His dad can cast it but I don't think Jesus ever trained that spell.

He might be a priest since he's got a powerful guardian spirit to watch over you when things get rough.  Well, some people call it a holy spirit. To-may-to, to-mah-to..

He might be a shaman because he's got self rez.  Although he must be playing on a really laggy connection because it takes him three days to cast it.

Or he might just be a fail paladin who mis-clicked DI.

Pregnancy and WoW

I got pregnant in November 2008, the night before WotLK came out.  (Must have been server downtime or something)  It was my first pregnancy, and I didn't really know what to expect.  I was hoping the morning sickness wouldn't be that bad.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered my morning sickness was linked not with the morning, but with playing a certain video game.  Yes, that's right.  I had WoW sickness.

All of a sudden I found myself unable to play WoW without becoming violently nauseous.  This lasted for the first trimester of my pregnancy.  It was the weirdest psychosomatic illness ever.  If I played WoW I got sick.  If I heard WoW music, I got sick.  If I watched my husband play I got sick.  And I know this sounds crazy, but if I even THOUGHT about WoW, I got sick.  Oddly enough, the effect was much more pronounced with WotLK content than old world or BC content.  I could think about running Deadmines without too much nausea but if I thought about farming Sons of Hodir faction it would turn my stomach.   (yea I know, it has that effect on everyone, right?) 

Being extremely addicted to WoW, with a new expansion having just been released, I cannot begin to tell you how much it sucked having WoW-sickness.  I managed to hit level cap on my DK and raid a bit of Naxx before the illness made me completely unable to play, but my poor mage, priest, pally, and hunter were stuck at level 70.

I could play any other video game without problems.  I started playing Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption, an old single player RPG that some of you may remember.  My husband was still raiding several nights a week and I had to avoid watching him.  I also made him turn all the in game music off.  The music in Grizzly Hills and Dalaran were the worst.  If I heard even a few notes of the background music in those zones, I would be instantly ready to regurgitate my lunch. 

Then, gradually, as the first trimester passed, I found myself able to tolerate thinking about WoW and watching my husband play a little bit more.  I was back to playing around March or April.  There were still certain things in game that would cause me to get ill, but for the most part I was able to function. 

But, to this day, whenever I hear Dalaran music my stomach still twists.  I guess the brain does funny things when you have a baby spawning inside you.

Waiting for the WoW killer

After quite a bit of game hopping this past year, I have decided to just play World of Warcraft with the occasional sprinkling of single player games like Dragon Age: Origins and Zuma.  Yes, I know, how boring, how utterly MAINSTREAM.  I should be playing some obscure Asian MMO that is so much better than WoW and is free to play, right?  Who cares if it only has 2000 subscribers and the game client crashes every time you open your inventory?  It's still better than WoW, right?

Something I've learned from playing many different MMOs is that WoW evokes some very visceral responses from people in general chat.  Play any other game, be it EQ2, Conan, Aion, Vanguard, Lotro, or Hello Kitty Online, and if you dare to so much as mention WoW in chat, you will be instantly assaulted with enough anti-WoW venom to kill a whole cave-full of ogres and poison all their little piles of poo too.  Everyone likes to hate on WoW, but the truth is almost every MMO gamer has played it, and almost everyone I've know who has stopped playing it has come back after cheating on it with some other floozy MMO.

Every time I play another MMO, I find myself comparing it (usually unfavorably) to WoW.   It is hard for a brand new game to be able to compete with a game that has had so much money poured into it to make it as polished and widely appealing as possible.   Whether it be a clumsy user interface, a cumbersome loot distribution system, broken crafting/harvesting, a barely functional auction house, unattractive or jerky combat animations, inconvenient fast travel options, or buggy gameplay, there is almost always something about a new MMO that makes me wish I was playing WoW.  The new game might have a couple aspects that are better than WoW (usually player community, graphics, and game lore) but it usually isn't enough to balance out all the negatives.

I'm still waiting for the WoW killer.

Saga of Heroes (who have a really hard time looting corpses)

I canceled my Age of Conan account and reopened my Vanguard account last week. I played Vanguard at release and it was pretty much unplayable due to all the bugs and instability. But 18 months has passed and the game has come a long way.

Tons of content and quests, so many places to explore, beautiful scenery and amazing music. The game still crashes occasionally, but it is fairly quick to log back in, unlike Age of Conan, where you had to sit through about 5 minutes of file scanning, loading, intro videos, more loading, and even more loading.

But one thing that boggles my mind is that they haven't fixed the buggy looting yet. I would think that loot is one of the most important things to fix in an MMO, and yet it is SO painfully annoying to manage group looting that I have been shying away from grouping with guildies and running solo instead. Fortunately, there are workarounds for most of the bugs now, but it is still annoying.

Here are some of the problems:

1. HOLD HANDS WITH YOUR GROUP LEADER

If a mob drops a rare and your group leader is out of range, you are unable to loot it and unable to start the roll until the group leader comes into range. The workaround for this is to ask the group leader to pass leadership to you, start the roll and then pass leadership back. But what if your group leader is AFK? Have you ever watched a gear upgrade despawn right in front of you, and been unable to do anything about it? Not fun.

2. HARVESTERS BEWARE

If a group member kills a mob while you are harvesting a node, you are either interrupted and have to start over again, or your harvesting ends early, resulting in a smaller yield. Also, if your harvesting node yields a rare and the group leader is out of range, see #1 above. Very annoying for harvesters. I harvested my first ultra-rare yesterday, and the group leader was out of range and I couldn't loot it. Fortunately, he was sitting right beside me IRL so he passed me leader and all was well. But not everyone has the luxury of having their very cute and sexy group leader sitting next to them.


3. TOO MUCH LOOT, NOT ENOUGH ROLLING

If two rares drop at the same time, you can only have one roll window up. So you have to wait for everyone to roll on the first item before you can start the roll on the second item. Not too bad right?

Wrong.

Here's why: Sometimes the roll window is buggy and doesn't appear. When this happens, the first roll never gets marked as complete, and no one in the party is able to start rolls on anything else.

Fortunately, there is a workaround for this: The group leader types /groupc, which manually ends the roll. However in a fast moving group where the leader isn't on Vent or isn't keeping a close eye on group chat, you can miss out on quite a bit of loot before the situation gets straightened out. And if the group leader walks out of range of the mob with loot, you then have issue #1 to deal with as well.

4.I'M NOT GREEDY, I'M NEEDY

Sometimes only the "Greed" button is available during the roll, even if the item is equippable by you and is an obvious upgrade. So if it is BOP, and you need it, you have no choice but to greed. If someone else doesn't need it, rolls greed and wins, you are screwed. No real workaround for this that I have figured out yet...

Taking all these looting issues into account, I am still having FAR more fun playing Vanguard than I had in Age of Conan. Age of Conan didn't really have too many looting issues - but that might be because 99% of the loot was crap and no one wanted it anyway. But that's a topic for another day...

Not ready to say goodbye

A couple months ago I noticed that Nippers, my 15-year-old kitty, was coughing and looking a bit under the weather. The vet told me she needed some major dental work, and also gave me some antibiotics for her cough.

After the course of antibiotics, her cough disappeared, and so I scheduled her for her dental work. It went very smoothly, considering her age. She was back to her normal self within about a week, preferring to eat dry kibble even though she hardly had any teeth left!

I started bringing her to work with me where she quickly made friends and impressed everyone with her wonderfully calm and sweet personality.

Then suddenly, about two weeks ago, she lost all interest in food. I stopped taking her in to work, thinking maybe she was stressed, although she always seemed bright eyed and eager to go on new adventures. She started losing weight, hiding under the bed, which is VERY unlike her, and refused to eat even the most delectable tuna and treats that I offered her.

I brought her in for x-rays, and discovered that her chest was filling with fluid, a condition that has a very poor prognosis for a cat of her age. Her white blood cell count was elevated, which could indicate infection, but could also be cancer. Her heart also looked enlarged, indicating possible heart disease. The doctor prescribed antibiotics on the small chance it might be an infection, but I think she did it more to give me comfort and peace of mind than actually thinking it would help improve Nippers' condition.

At this point, all I can do is treat her symptoms, make her comfortable, and give her all my care and love. I hope that the meds make her feel better, but only time will tell. Nippers has been part of my family for most of my adult life, and losing her is something I cannot bear to think about.

I worry too, about Rarri. Nippers gave birth to Rarri on April 27, 1995, and he has been her loyal companion for the past 13 years. They sleep together, groom each other, and he gets nervous and unsettled when she is not around.

What will happen on the day when we have to take Nippers to the vet and say our final goodbyes? Will Rarri forever wonder why I carried Nippers out the door one day and she never came back? Will he always be looking for her, hoping she will come home so they can cuddle and lick each other's faces? I think that cats can understand death if they see it, but if Rarri isn't there during Nippers last moments, how will he ever know what happened?

Some might say that he is just a cat, he doesn't have emotions, he won't know the difference. But for those of you who have lost a pet, and had to comfort the survivor without being able to speak his or her language...I suspect you would not agree.

How I met Nippers

I met Nippers on a chilly February evening in 1995. She was a scrawny stray kitty with dirty matted fur and huge ears that stuck out like big satellite dishes on her head. I put some food out for her and she wolfed it down in a few minutes. I'd never had any pets growing up, and I was a little disappointed that she showed little interest when I tried to pet her.

The following day she returned to my porch to eat the food I put out, but she was wary of coming inside and didn't care to be held or petted. After about a week of being rebuffed, I resigned myself to being a mere food provider for this cat, and decided to stop trying to make friends with her.

It was only then that she decided to adopt me.

That evening, instead of warily watching me from the porch as she ate, she walked right past the food dish into the living room. She thoroughly explored the apartment, laid down on the bed, and officially became a part of my family.