The staff of one of the brands we’re a dealer for is made up of a bunch of hilarious SOBs. Most of the time I hate dealing with brands and suppliers because they are a huge pain in my ass, but these guys are awesome. They actually follow through with things, and they’re über-friendly (and English-speaking), and one of them is about my age and the two of us ganged up on the older guy one day and made him get a MySpace.

So anyway, I like these guys. And I just had to order a bunch of parts, so I called and the younger guy took my order and told me no, I couldn’t have any of the things I wanted, and then read it back to me with the opposite of everything I actually wanted… which means I’ll get them in a timely fashion exactly as requested.

Just now, I got the UPS shipment notification for this order, which has a list of everything included. It reads:

LV Windshield, Luggage Rack, Rear Fender, R Rocker, Vin Cover, Veteran’s Pendant of Conquest

I just about horked a mouthful of water all over BOTH my laptop and the work computer. Made. My. Day.

Blizzard has instituted an insanely improved recruit-a-friend program for World of Warcraft, with really awesome rewards for both the recruiter and the recruit. (Cool mounts, uber-tripled-XP, summons…)

[Insert angst here about how I just recruited two people to WoW within the last month, but don't get credit for them under the new program. AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH. Nerf recruit-a-friend?]

Anyway, if anybody has been considering giving WoW a try, I can hook you up with a 10-day free trial, and we’ll both get some bennies if you sign up for the game. Just shoot me an email (laurel at politicsgunsandbeer dot com) with your name/preferred email address, and I’ll send you the invite.

Oh yeah - we ended up on the Stormscale PvP server, Alliance side. Thanks to everyone who offered me a new home. :) 

I’m a World of Warcraft geek. Granted, I’m not the geekiest of the geeks, but after a three-year off-and-on relationship with WoW, I have my night elf hunter (mining/engineering) up to level 68. (That’s 68 out of a cap of 70, for ye non-residents of Azeroth.)

Said hunter is on the Dethecus server. I chose that server because Mike played on it, and he chose it because his best friend played on it. Now, neither of them are there, and that makes me a sad, lonely little night elf.

Because I don’t know anybody on the server, and because I’m not the most hardcore player ever (those two kind of feed into each other), I have spent most of my time between 0 and 68 questing by myself. There are many instances I’ve yet to venture into, many group quests I haven’t bothered with, and so forth. I’m pretty undergeared. I could probably learn a thing or two or ten about how to play my character better. I’m sure my #1 instruction in a raid at this point would be “Don’t get everyone killed” - and I’m okay with that. 

 As I rapidly approach level 70, I find myself faced with the same quandary as when I once hit 60: I’m not really the PvP type, and random endgame questing always seems kind of pointless, so I either need to be on a server with people I enjoy doing stuff with, or not bother playing at all. If I’m going to invest time in the game after “beating” the level grind, I would prefer for it to have a social aspect. 

So, here’s the deal: I’m willing to transfer my character to a new server, if somebody is willing to have me. I do prefer PvP servers, because world PvP seems more realistic (yes, you can laugh now) even if it annoys the hell out of me. 

Commence recruitment! (Or else I’m so throwing myself off the top of Ironforge.)

Q: Have you identified a root cause that can lead to failure?

A: There is not a single issue that we can point to as being a problem.  We test the product extensively, including accelerated life testing, but the nature of the console itself is very complex, as it’s a consumer electronic product that contains more than 1,700 different components and 500 million transistors. There are a variety of scenarios that can cause a general hardware failure.  Only the indicator (the three flashing red lights) is always the same. 

Translation: The root cause of the problem is Microsoft made it.

…The xBox 360 just went tango-uniform, in case that wasn’t obvious. Three-flashing-red-lights-ring-of-death. Fortunately, Microsoft is aware enough of their shortcomings (and by aware enough I mean sued enough) to extend the one-year warranty to three years for this problem. So, we’re covered. Just annoyed.

This post brought to you by a MacBook. *Pats her trusty Apple product*

About 35 minutes left in the Wii auction… So the browser refreshing has reached a fever pitch.

To attempt to distract myself, I’m playing World of Warcraft.

I promise I’m more balanced than I look on teh intarnets. :)

I’m a strange person. I have an addictive personality… sometimes. I don’t get addicted to any of the “normal” things. It is beyond me how somebody could get addicted to smoking, or drinking. I’ve never done either heavily, but I’ve also never felt even remotely attached or habituated to either. I could never touch another cigar (which I prefer to cigarettes, though I’ve had the latter too) or glass of alcohol, and I wouldn’t feel like I had some sort of void in my life.

Even my desire to play World of Warcraft, arguably the worst “addiction” I’ve ever had, ebbs and flows. Sometimes I’ll be terribly drawn to it, other times I’ll go months without logging on.

But - give me a LiveJournal friends list, or an eBay auction, or an RSS feed, and I swear to Jehova I will hit “refresh” on that sumbitch every 30 seconds for hours. It’s like muscle memory. I have MySpace, Facebook, and LJ all bookmarked in my Firefox bar, and I’ll click on them even though I just clicked on them and know there is nothing new. Maybe this makes me more compulsive than addictive?

Anyway, my latest thing is eBay, because Mike and I decided to sell our Wii. We never really play it and they’re selling well on eBay right now since they’re apparently impossible to find in stores. So even though there’s still over a day left in the auction, I’m still sitting here every five minutes refreshing the damn thing to see if we have any new bids. Fuhhhh-reak!

A funny note about the Wii: I couldn’t wipe the hard drive because I wanted to leave the retro downloaded games on it, so I just went through and deleted all the personalizations I could find. I realized I’d put a picture on it at one point, a picture I’d taken for an Arfcom thread about “What you look like when you’re looking at Arfcom” or something like that. I couldn’t find my camera cable, so I tried using the photo feature on the Wii to get the picture off the SD card so I could email it to myself. I got it off the SD card, but that’s as far as I made it.

So in said picture, I’m chilling on the couch with a Sam Adams, Arfcom pulled up on my screen, with a shotgun leaning up against the side of the couch. Anyway, I couldn’t figure out how to delete the picture, so I figured I’d come back to it…

…and I just remembered I never went back to it, so I’m pretty sure it’s still on there. And I’m not unboxing that damn thing to try to delete it.

So if anybody wants a Wii, feel free to buy mine, and as a special bonus you’ll get your very own, never-before-seen-by-the-public, awesome sauce picture of me in my natural environment: intarnets (close enough to politics, right?), guns, and beer.

Firefly/Serenity fans, playing Halo 3: Be on the lookout listen for Easter eggs. That’s all I’m gonna say. *wink*

A big fat hat-tip to pretty much everybody on the old LiveJournal friends list; these links are all from them.

• 300 in 15 Minutes - effing hilarious.

• The Landlord - a short film by Will Ferrell. Also effing hilarious.

• 300 Pikachu style. Let it be known that I hate Pokemon with a firey passion, but damn if that isn’t a well-done video!

• Women may make their own sperm. This raises a really interesting question, in my opinion - how healthy would a fetus created with all-female genetic material be? I don’t know enough about genetics to tell whether or not there is a likelihood of issues or not, but it seems like there will have to be significant research into the necessity of gender diversification before this goes forward. Obviously healthy clones have been created, so would the same thing apply here?

• Crocodile severs zoo worker’s arm. WARNING: Photo at the link may be disturbing. Also, eww.

• Penn and Teller screw with hippies. Yet another win for P&T - I highly recommend their episode of Bullshit! on gun control, too. A+++.

• Ziggurat Con! The very first gaming convention to be held in a warzone. I’m going to take info on this to the local game store and see if they’d be willing to donate some materials to the cause. Awesome! (Additional link here.)

Alright, off to get cleaned up a bit, retrieve my truck from where I left it last night, and have some beers downtown with Mike and Paul. More later!

I just found out there are ways to run World of Warcraft on a Linux machine.

Since WoW has been the only true snag between me and Linuxy goodness… Perhaps the time has finally come.

/nerd

By decree of Laura and myself:

The word “panty” and all variations thereof are hereby banned.

With that said, an update on the chonie snatcher:

I don’t think I fully recognized the fact that he’s that guy until earlier today. You know, the dude you say things like this about:

“Did you hear about that guy in like, Ohio, that had sheep pornography? How weird is that?!”

This time, it’s “Did you hear about that guy we know who now has 200+ articles out there on Google and hit the AP wires for stealing five trashbags full of women’s underpants?”

The picture I have of my first legal shot on my 21st birthday has him in it. Weird.

Ammoman.com…

…is getting a big thumbs-up from me. I ordered that .223 on Sunday, and it’s already en route via UPS. They’ll get my business again.

Wii

We got a second Wiimote. I’m not a big fan of playing Wii tennis with two people, because it really limits your view along the sidelines of the court. Oh well, maybe I’m just cranky because Mike beat me. On that note, I’m going to go play some more. :p