Jeff and I broke the air-hockey puck at work yesterday. It is a somber air-hockeyless time.

It was a special lightweight triangular puck that was much more exciting to play with than the heavyweight round pucks. Bank shots become unpredictable and, truthfully, randomness is the spice of games.

The puck didn’t break immediately; it was something that occurred over a few days until the final break. We first noticed there was a problem when it sounded different. The way the table we play on is constructed, the goal “buckets” don’t retain the puck very well and, more often than not, the puck flies out of the retrieval hole across the room, rattling and bouncing all the way. We play so regularly, the sound it made as it bounced was just “the sound.” When that sound got low-pitched and hollow on one of its trips across the break room and upon examination, there was a faint crack in the plastic. Not much, but this was the beginning of the end.

We’re not the only two that lpay with this puck either, so when we found the puck yesterday, the sound was worse and there was also a seam in the sticker. The sticker was practically all that was holding it together. As we played, the sound got worse still until Jeff made a shot at my goal and it split in two pieces! The smaller chunk went right in my goal and the larger piece flew off the table.

“You get an eighth of a point! I’m counting it, but that’s all you get.” Jeff tried to protest, but I immediately fetched the larger piece and served it. He scored the rest of point and sent an email to our facilities manager:

Subject: Man Down

Tom,
        I regret to inform you that on this day during an intense match of skill and power we have suffered a casualty in the heat of battle.  I am uncertain of whom is to blame, but I will blame Steve as he is not composing the email and can not currently defend himself.

Tom is a great guy so he immediately came over and gave us hell for it. Jeff and I play nearly everyday at around the same time and Tom catches us in the break room often and jokingly tells us to get back to work. Hopefully that puck will get replaced soon – playing with those ordinary pucks is bland and not really fun.

So I’ve cancelled my WoW subscription. I knew it was going to happen. Hell, I’ve cancelled it twice before now and this is number three. In the cancellation form, there is a space for additional comments, so I decided to start writing. Apparently the form won’t accept anything over a certain character limit because every time I tried to submit the form, I got some odd behavior. (Oh believe me, I tried different browsers, toggled javascript on and off – no dice).

I figured the third-best thing is to post what I was going to send to Blizzard and Activision to Pie-Hole (with the second-best somehow getting this to their customer service department). Without further ado, the letter follows after the fold. Read the rest of this entry »

…and I like it! You may not have noticed the little Meebo Me! widget on the right column there, but if I’m logged in to my meebo account (which I whole-heartedly endorse – every time they release a new version, it gets better and faster, and more intuitive to use), I see a little popup window peek up and say meeboguest123456789 has logged in.

It makes me happy to see people visiting this page, and even happier to see comments appear on posts. If you happen to see I’m online, type in the little box there and send me a message. I think it would be fun to chat, even if it’s just a “hi.” Occasionally, I’ve been pro-active and sent a message to whatever random visitor has shown up, but I never got a response.

You should shoot me a message through the widget! I may be working at the moment, but just hang out for a bit and I should get back to you soon if not immediately. You can even edit your name so instead of a semi-random string of numbers, you can name yourself for later.

This last week, Ame made a ham for Easter. It’s just the two of us, but she still picked out a ham weighing just over 20 pounds. Making a ham isn’t like making a turkey though. If you buy a 20 pound turkey, there’s a nice amount of meat, but it’s totally doable for two people to eat over a few days. With only the bone as the inedible part, a 20 pound ham is a daunting amount of food. I’d swear it’s gotta be 15 pounds of actual meat.

This ham.

Jesus.

Ham.

Forever.

Infinite.

Ham.

Dave from work has been kind enough to take about half of The Endless Ham home with him to his wife. They are very appreciative, but an infinite amount still lurks in the refrigerator.

The Ham of our Fathers.

Aleph Ham.

Some friends of mine play World of Warcraft and it is something in which they really get invested. If you’ve been living under a rock for the last 6 years or so, World of Warcraft (WoW) is a computer game people play online with millions of other people around the world.

Players make characters of all kinds and take them into the game to all sorts of things – I won’t expound upon them here, but if you’re curious, visit the official website. Doing things earns points called Experience Points (XP). Amass enough XP and the character earning them “levels up” in tiers and gets more powerful as well as gains access to more abilities. The game currently has 80 of these levels, so it can take a fair bit of time to get to this far.

For a quick shortcut for what the game world is like, start at Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books, add more fantastic races of beings like humanoid cows with an American Indian bend, toss in a tiny bit of steampunk for what passes as high-technology. The lore upon which WoW is built upon is not the same as Lord of the Rings of course, with other computer games and books fleshing the story out to provide a rich background.

Some players role-play (RP) as part of their play and pretend to be part of the game world as a significant character. There are some servers dedicated to this play style so those who don’t wish to devote their time to this can choose not to. Take Player-vs-Player (PvP) Realms (the in-game term for server) for example. WoW is a massive war between two factions and on PvP Realms, the game greatly rewards players of opposite factions killing each other . As such, this can lead to a very competitive game experience. All’s fair in love and Warcraft (hurr!).

My friends are kind of in the middle. They play the game to get ahead and they don’t RP, but they do consume the lore and get involved in the hero characters’ stories. I still believe they take it a little more seriously than is practical though. I was told a story about how, due to a dramatic turn in the storyline of the evolving game world, they believed they wasted 75 levels of development and thought the game would permanently kill their character. They told me they literally wept and felt despair – not for the fact their character might be killed forever, but that it was completely justifiable for the game to do so because the twist of the story was about a massive betrayal my friend’s character was wrapped up in.

I don’t mean to betray my friends’ trust here. I love them, but damn. I play WoW myself, but when a dialog pops up with a quest description, I skip all the text and read the reward section. Then, just like all the other hundreds of quests I’ve started, I just hit ‘Accept Quest.’