Now that my PvP rage is out of my system, let me switch from the subject of Horde to hoard; that is, what I was gifted this Christmas. I got lots of nice clothes from my parents, a new tea-kettle, some tools, some bedding. We set mom up with a new Mac Mini which is faster and nicer than Angel's eMac (and as such has my sister in a terrible knot). Dad got lots of stuff for bottling his upcoming brambleberry wine (yum). Angela got me Son of a Witch, the sequel to Wicked which was released just this fall. She also got me the Rogues do it from behind shirt, which earns her major points that can be traded in for love at any time.

Posted at 10:15 AM | Comments (0)

You know, World of Warcraft really is an awesome game. Once you manage to control your cravings and limit the amount of time you spend in-game, it's an enjoyable hobby. There really aren't a lot of things that sour the experience. But there is one BIG THING: Horde players.

• It's the level 60 Tauren warrior that sees your level 20-something Gnome Mage questing in Redridge and decides to stop and dismount his gigantic kodo just so that he can utterly obliterate you in one crushing, effortless stroke and add another notch to his "Gnomes slaughtered" wall.


• It's the Undead Rogue who will follow you around, invisible, until he sees you battle a rather large monster. Only when you're beaten and exhausted from the battle, will he uncloak himself by garroting you from behind. Ensuring himself a risk-free kill.


• It's the Troll Mage who you were content to leave alone, who somehow spawns the monumentally idiotic idea of taking on you and your questing partner (when you're both higher level than him). Then, when he is unsurprisingly mutilated by the both of you, he calls in a retinue of level 60 guardian-angel players to correct this injustice upon his idiotic ass.


• It's anyone, I repeat, ANYONE who has the balls to play a Shaman. Anyone who can play this unbalanced class, kill players on a regular basis, and sleep soundly at night, has NO SOUL.

So, imagine my horror when my beloved Angela said that she was considering playing World of Warcraft, and that she wanted to play an Undead character. "Something is appealing about them" she said. Well, her friends and I told her that if she played Undead then we would form a guild on her server dedicated to the sole purpose of ganking her. Later on, I felt this was a little harsh, immature even. Briefly I toyed with the idea of starting a new Undead character with Angela at the same time that she did. Playing with her, side by side, decomposing togetherness.

But then I played a run through Desolace tonight with my main, Mekka; side by side with my sister's main, Caerilae. And you know what? It totally changed my mind back. Horde players are ASSHOLES. All of the above listed situations occurred, sometimes repeatedly. My sister and I spent long stretches of time as ghosts, running back to our corpses because someone decided they wanted to make our lives difficult. Excuse me guys, but there's another person at the other end of the network trying to enjoy the game the same as you. I don't mind a little PvP, but keep it classy; I try to do the same for you. Don't gank me while I'm fighting a monster. Don't kill me if you're 30 levels above me and I don't even present a challenge. Don't attack my party solo and then whine to your higher-ups that we bullied you. But my pleas are pointless: it's never going to stop. Horde players have always been assholes and they will always BE assholes, and I shall NEVER be one of them.

So I quote Tycho, and I make his words our battle cry: Fuck the Horde! FUCK those guys.

Posted at 11:24 PM | Comments (4)

Hear ye, hear ye!

I write this late Christmas Eve before collapsing in a tired heap on my parent's couch. As of 7PM this evening, my friends Chris and Denai Dixon became the proud parents of a baby girl. We've tried to spread the news far and wide, but if you've been out with family (as well you should be on Christmas Eve) then I hope this post shall find you in time. Congratulations to my friends and brand-new parents, Chris and Denai. I love you both!

Posted at 10:26 PM | Comments (3)

Nadia sent me this joke via e-mail. It's such a howler I just had to share it here:

An old Arab lived close to New York City for more than 40 years. One day he decided that he would love to plant potatoes and herbs in his garden, but he knew he was alone and too old and weak. His son was in college in Paris, so the old man sent him an e-mail explaining the problem:

"Beloved son, I am very sad, because I can't plant potatoes in my garden. I am sure, if only you were here, that you would help me and dig up the garden for me. I love you, your father."

The following day, the old man received a response e-mail from his son:

"Beloved father, please don't touch the garden. That is where I have hidden 'the THING.' I love you, too, Ahmed."

At 4pm the FBI and the Rangers visited the house of the old man and took the whole garden apart, searching every inch. But they couldn't find anything. Disappointed, they left the house.

The next day, the old man received another e-mail from his son:

"Beloved father, I hope the garden is dug up by now and you can plant your potatoes. That is all I could do for you from here. Your loving son, Ahmed."

Posted at 08:42 AM | Comments (3)

Geeky link: An animated GIF showing the evolution of our alphabet. Snazzy!

I was aware of the cheesy broadway musical, but what I was not aware of was that Wicked was first a novel by Gregory Maguire. The novel follows the life from birth to death of the Wicked Witch of the West from the land of Oz. Maguire turns the cheery black-and-white (that is, clear-cut) depiction of Oz popularized by the 1939 movie on its head. In Maguire's Oz, the Wizard is a cruel despot, employing a clandestine secret police and oppressing the rights of sentient Animals. The nature of what is good and what is evil is the center of what is in excellently written fantasy novel with well-defined characters. I picked this book up two weeks ago and burned through the 406 pages in about a week and a half. I've leant it to Angela now; first in a long line of people who wish to borrow it. But I'd encourage anyone (especially lovers of fantasy) to pick up a copy for themselves, you won't regret it.

Posted at 09:57 AM | Comments (2)

It's like a dream, you say? A sweet fantasy?
How nice, that you think I am too good to be real;
That you hold me in the same regard as pegasus and elves and dragons,
And other dreamland creatures.

I was the first to notice you? How odd,
Because you're so beautiful.
No, that simply isn't possible.
You must be dreaming. Yes, that's it.

Perhaps I'm dreaming too:
Dreaming of a smart and sensitive companion,
who laughs at my jokes and listens intently to every word I speak.
Dreaming of those entrancing eyes that pull me in.
Dreaming of a pure and totally comfortable love,
that never ever makes me feel for a moment
that I might be settling for less.

Yes Love, perhaps it's all a dream:
The sweetest one we've ever dreamed.
But if it is a dream, then don't wake up:
Stay here, and dream with me forever.

Posted at 10:57 PM | Comments (1)

Vader sings the hits. It's fairly awful. But then, everything at YTMND is.

Sarah and I were discussing mornings today on MSN. There are few things more unpleasant than being woken up at 7:00 in the morning. There are few things more wonderful if the person you love happens to be beside you. Hooray for Angela.

Posted at 03:00 PM | Comments (3)

By now, thanks to my endless campaigning, we're all familiar with the wonders of Wikipedia: the online encyclopedia of everything. But the Wiki engine is freely available, and anyone can set up their own Wiki. They could set up an open encyclopedia for World of Warcraft Lore, for example. The Linux on XBox site is a Wiki as well.

Now, there's the Uncyclopedia: 40,000 articles of cross-referenced bullshit. It's billed as "the content-free encyclopedia that anyone can edit". Suddenly I feel like being a Wiki contributor.

Posted at 11:35 AM | Comments (2)

Good morning, folks.

First off, LiveJournal users. Now that I'm syndicated, you can all get posts directly from GeekMan's World on your LiveJournal friends page. However, I don't check the syndication page for comments. So, if you'd like to comment, please follow the links to my actual website (ie: anything at www.geekman.ca) and comment here. Otherwise, I won't see your lovely comments!

I'm continuing my re-integrated Dutch Christmas tradition of including a personalized poem with the gifts I give. Typically, the Dutch poem is used to chide the recipient of the gift for a bad habit. However, I lean more towards a pre-opening tease regarding the identity of the gift. It's super fun and I hope I can convince my family and others to indulge in the creativity of it.

I'm so sick of drunk people. Just, stop, at a point. You don't need anymore. I really can't deal with your asshattery anymore. Keep that in mind. I don't think I need to elaborate. Drink, but keep classy; let it relax you; let your wit spill forth, not be obliterated.

This is my greatest fear.

Posted at 11:17 AM | Comments (3)

USB drives come in all shapes and sizes. They even have sushi. USB sushi.

Posted at 05:00 PM | Comments (2)

The X-Men 3 trailer is now online. Good, very good.

Posted at 10:02 AM | Comments (2)

Today was interesting. At 3AM Steph woke me up because our living room had a big puddle forming in it. Turns out that a pipe had burst behind a wall and was leaking all over the place. Iain woke up the neighbors upstairs to ask where the main was so that we could shut off the water. So as I tried for an hour and a half to lull myself back to sleep, I thought about how wretched the coming day, and perhaps days, would be.

And you know, it hasn't been that bad. The handy-man landlord came by in the morning to start repairs. We managed to mop up the water off the floor. Bereft of shower, needing to clean up, and assisting the landlord kept me home from work, but apparently it was really slow anyway and they didn't need me there. Finally, when the guy left Angela dropped by for a visit. So, everything's back to normal! In fact, things are even more normal now than they were before...

Posted at 07:16 PM | Comments (1)

Some interesting tidbits on Slashdot today:

Corporate greed is first up. Since hurricane Katrina, police in New Orleans have been scattered in small precincts, makeshift stations, and even hotel rooms. Bellsouth Corporation had offered to donate one of its older buildings to the city to act as a new police headquarters. However, Bellsouth angrily withdrew its offer when it discovered that New Orleans was setting up a public access wireless network to help aid infrastructure recovery and encourage resettlement. Talk about kicking them when they're down, huh? America is one of the wealthiest nations of the world and should be able to help itself readily, but it looks like some people won't help out in this time of need because of corporate greed. Sad.

The Register has come into possession of and posted online a letter sent by Condoleeza Rice to Jack Straw, British Foreign minister and acting EU foreign minister due to the rotating EU presidency. The letter was never meant for publication and in it Condi gives a rather terse rebuff to the EU's suggestion of creating a new intergovernmental body for regulating control of the root domain. America: try and stop us.

Lastly, Bryn sent me a video of the awful thing that happens when you try to change the orientation of your XBox 360 during gameplay. As Bryn says, anyone with simple knowledge of physics could tell you that this is a bad idea, but designers nonetheless must always assume that the user is stupid.

P.S - This is what Iain sees when he dreams.

Posted at 12:32 PM | Comments (0)

I learned something today: there actually was such a thing as Smell-O-Vision.

New from the Canadian federal election trail! Conservative Stephen Harper continues to play into the hands of fear-mongering Liberals by promising to re-open the debate of same-sex marriage. Furthermore, he has promised that if elected he will reduce the GST by 2% within 5 years.

...

So, did someone forget to tell Mr. Harper that in Canada a government can only rule for 4 years? Or perhaps this is the most brilliant scheme a politician can ever come up with. Just promise that you'll do something "within 5 years". That way, if you don't get re-elected and people say, "You never kept your campaign promises!" you can shoot back, "Sorry, I said within 5 years, but you didn't re-elect us, so we never got the chance to. This was the year it was gonna happen, really!" Of course, if you do get elected for a second term, then you're screwed. But after two terms as Prime Minister and lots of time spent in federal politics, you're probably ready to hang up the hat and hand over your mess of broken election promises to the next poor schmuck.

Posted at 09:44 AM | Comments (3)

You there, boy! What day is this? No stupid, it's not Christmas day for another 24 days! Today is the two-year anniversary of GeekMan's World. Yes, it was two years ago that I made my very first post. 2 years, 210 posts, and almost 13,000 hits later, I'm still with it and blogging strong! My photo gallery will be celebrating it's first anniversary on Christmas day; it's had plenty of attention paid to it over the past year. Thank you to all my loyal readers. If you've never left a comment here before, now would be a great time.

Posted at 03:19 PM | Comments (2)