Wednesday, July 20, 2005

v8.3 - Ground Control

Ground control to Major Tom Ground control to Major Tom:
Take your protein pills and put your helmet on
Ground control to Major Tom: Commencing countdown engine''s on
Check ig-nition and may God''s love be with you

This is ground control to Major Tom, you''ve really made the grade!
And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear,
Now it''s time to leave the capsule if you dare

This is Major Tom to ground con-trol, I''m stepping through the door
And I''m floating in the most peculiar way
And the stars look very difeerent today

For here am I sitting in a tin can, far above the world
Planet Earth is blue and there''s nothing I can do

Though I''m passed one hundred thousand miles, I''m feeling very still
And I think my spaceship knows which way to go,
tell my wife I love her very much she knows

Ground control to Major Tom:
Your circuit''s dead, there''s something wong.
Can you hear me Major Tom?
Can you hear me Major Tom?
Can you hear me Major Tom? Can you ...

Here am I floating round my tin can, far above the moon
Planet Earth is blue and there''s nothing I can do

{slurp}



Morning Folks,

{slurp}

Well, we finally have full confirmation from my new landlord we will be getting the keys this Friday! We had already begun switching over our utilities and booking the truck, so it is good we won''t have to go back and cancel these changes. I''m starting to get pretty excitied about the
move. Our house is a maze of boxes and shit laying all over the place. If it wasn''t for the fact we were moving, someone may look at our place and wonder what kind of people we are.

{slurp}

It is offically Hump Day today. This week at work has been a real kick in the ass for me. Monday wasn''t too busy, but Friday was the last day for one of the guys who worked here. Now we are short staffed despite what my boss says. You take a team of what used to be 9ish people and drop that back to 4, there is something seriously wrong. Not to say the other 5 are gone for good, they have just been placed on various customer sites to perform system administration duties (minus the guy who quit).

{slurp}

A fellow co-worker showed me a job posting yesterday afternoon as I was about to walk out the door. The job was for a placement agency to work for our company. The job description was very very similar to my job with the exception it was on-site at one of our customers. We were trying to figure out which customer it was and think we have a fairly good idea. The problem isn''t that we need a person on-site somewhere, the problem is the pay is almost double what I make today at the low end. To start, $50-$70 an hour! Yes, I''m feeling a little bit pissed off because of this. I am very tempted to quit and then apply for that job. :)

{slurp}

Enough about work. I don''t sit here in the morning so I can dwell on work and write about it.
This is my time to escape from this world and dive into a world of imagination and creativity.
I''m thinking of asking my boss for a couple days off for this move coming up. Since we will be
going down there on Friday to get the keys, we will be taking several loads of boxes down as well. The offical move day isn''t until Sunday, so my goal is to move as many boxes as my little Camery will carry before then. Since I only rented a 17'' truck this time (last time it was 24''),
I need to ensure there will be enough room to for everything in one trip.

{slurp}

Other than work and moving there isn''t a hell of a lot going on in our lives. I''ve been gaming
a little bit here and there when I get a chance, but the majority of my time has been spent cleaning up and packing. I''ve decided to abandon my DAoC pipe dreams completely. I tried to play it twice on the new Classic servers only to be seriously disappointed and let down by the entire
situation. The last time I tried to login was on Friday I believe and I tried for 33 minutes without getting online due to the server being too full. At that point, I decided I wasn''t going
to go through the BS of the game any longer and I''m just about ready to uninstall the damn game
off my PC to free up some more space for other games which are 10x more fun. Hell, Pong is 10x
more fun than DAoC to me.

{slurp}

For now, I''m going to stick with World of Warcraft and level my little Gnome Mage to 60. I have no real goals other than that and I''ve been sitting back taking it pretty easy when I do play.
WoW is a much more relaxed game than DAoC. I find myself able to sit and play the game without much effort or frustration. Death in the game is a joke, money is starting to come a lot easier with the levels and farming for cash to buy something could be easily done in one evening if you get a few drops you can sell for good money on the Auction House.

{slurp}

Speaking of game cash, I read a very interesting article yesterday about people known as "Gold Farmers". For those who don''t know what a Gold Farmer is, they are people (sometimes companies)
who play online games and farm for gold. By "Farm" I mean kill mobs over and over and over and
over and over and over again. Some of these companies are fairly big and they pay their employees next to nothing to sit in front of a computer screen while a bot application goes out and controls the toon making it kill stuff and loot it. When the character''s bags are full, the toon is run back to a town or merchant to sell by the person monitoring the toon and then repeats the
cycle. The article had a few interviews in it where a manager of one of these companies said he bought his first house by selling game currency for real world currency. He paid the full amount for the house in cash.

{slurp}

Of course this isn''t anything new out there. This has been around since the birth of multi-player games like Diablo where you could interact with other people in a changing environment where
you could level and gain equipment. People selling everything from rare items to game currency
for real world currency. I can''t sit here and preach this because I''ve done it myself (buying and selling). I sold one of my DAoC accounts a long time back for $350(US) on eBay. Katie has sold a couple of her DAoC accounts on eBay and has made some good cash off them. I have bought in-game currency via these online gold sellers. I''ve done it in DAoC and WoW. I know it sounds
crazy and unfair; and it is. Basically, if you have the cash you can afford anything in-game.
Again, I won''t preach the message to ya''ll about the moral wrongness of buying and selling of virtual items. Most gaming companies do not allow you to buy and sell their virtual property. Of course there isn''t a heck of a lot they can do to stop it. Personally, if you can afford to buy this stuff online to make your in-game experience more enjoyable for you, that is all that matters. Some would disagree, some would agree. Bottom line is this: Gold Farmers are only succesful because people buy their virtual game items. Otherwise these guys would be out of business and the people would be sitting around wishing there was a way they could buy in-game currency
for real world currency. :)

{slurp}

Well folks, that''s all I have for today. Tune in tomorrow for something completely different!!

Cheers,

Al

No comments:

Post a Comment