The Running Joke
You’ve probably heard of the “Running of the Bulls”. A WoW guild this week did a “running of the beef”, where around 100 of them created level 1 Tauren (Minotaur) characters; they then ran them as a herd from the peaceful grasslands of their Mulgore homeland all the way the the forbidding, lava-spewing, Blackrock Mountain (an area where a level-one character has no business being). As anyone who’s played the game up to level 45 can confirm, Stranglethorn Vale was the worst bit 🙂
I’m really into this sort of thing – a bit of business which isn’t part of the game, which will net no experience points or loot, and yet was certainly hilarious for the participants. Virtual worlds need more fun like this! There are YouTube videos – search for AIE Bull Run.
Starr and I are a bit socialized out. We really appreciate our friends inviting us places, but we haven’t had a quiet evening at home in days – so tonight will be Azeroth and TV. (What with my <4 hours of play time per week, I think I'm safe from WoW addiction.) Dave and Jodi (ptownhiker & fixitup) were kind enough to invite us to see Pirates 3 last night at one of those dinner movie theaters. There were a lot of fun bits in the movie – plenty of times I laughed out loud – but eventually, the movie just didn’t make any sense. I’m training myself not to mind movie BS as much as I used to, but I still insist on internally-consistent movie BS. I have the terrible feeling that the writers scripted 3 hours of action and double/ triple/ quadruple/ quintuple/ sextuple/ septuple/ octuple-crosses (I’m stopping before the film did) and then suddenly realized that they were going to have to end the flick at some point.
Can’t say it was a wasted evening… it’s not like the movie was lousy, and the company was excellent.
On a quick note, they previewed The Golden Compass before Pirates. Now, the books impressed me little, and I wasn’t planning on going to see the big-screen version. However, there’s some fair acting talent on board, and the visuals in the preview were gorgeous. I may just go for the eye candy.
Bringing new meaning to the term “press gang”
Friday at work, we had “Dress Like a Pirate Day” in an attempt to do “Talk Like a Pirate Day” one better.
The whole gallery of pictures is behind the link. It was a lot of fun… we certainly flummoxed the shop owner for a few moments.
My co-workers were amazed to learn that I can throw together a passable pirate outfit from my closets with 30-minutes notice. Thank you SF and fantasy fandom 🙂
(Oh, and I did finally find some Harlock desktops to throw onto the screens of the two stations I use.)
Arr.
Tomorrow is Dress Like A Pirate Day at work, in late celebration of the new Disney movie.
I was intending to let my computer be part of the theme, until I found out what an incredible scarcity of Captain Harlock wallpaper / desktops exists on the web.
Bleh.
Crack open the rum
Aye, the sun’s long over the yardarm for her special day, but shiver me timbers, it seems a fine idea to be wishin’ kittykatya a late Happy Birthday on Talk Like A Pirate Day!
Cleaning the attic of my brain
Two interesting tidbits of geek stuff crossed my desk this morning; first, there’s finally a really nice, configurable, Matrix code screensaver for Mac OS X. Too bad all my machines migrated to SETI@home some time ago. Second, it looks like the new AIM for Windows beta has early video chat support, and may soon be compatible with Apple’s iChat AV. That would be wonderful news, seeing as the video chat support in Yahoo! Messenger for OS X is… weak.
I’m now the navigator for kittykatya‘s pirate crew, yarrgh! I wonder if Tom Monaghan still has the letters of marque issued to the SS MacKeigh by the court of Riversmeet (I think)?
Christmas was very good, and in my case, spread over all of December. I got to see a lot of people who are important to me, and yes, I got a lot of neat stuff – to deny that I enjoy people giving me gifts would be hypocrisy of a high order. I know some people who feel that it’s better to spend the whole year being good to their fellow humans, rather than to concentrate it on a single season; I can’t argue with the sentiment, but I feel that we always need times of special celebration.
Still don’t know for sure what I’m doing New Year’s – we have several plans, but they all depend on things out of our control. I had hoped to finally meet subbes face-to-face this week, but I just don’t know right now.
Another Roanoke Valley Saturday
Yesterday was quite productive, I got four other people in my office to Talk Like a Pirate.
dot/Hack definitely has raininva and myself sucked in, I’m up to seven hours of play, and I’m not sure how many Rain has. The “game within a game” aspect appeals greatly to my interests in metareality, and I’m pretty impressed with the emotional range of the characters – not something that most of my PlayStation games do much with.
Our Kellan Colt promotional figures for Shadowrun: Duels came this morning, so now we have a truly complete set of Series One. I’ve noticed that there’s already a FAQ posted on the official site with clarifications and errata. What did we gamers do before the Internet?
Rising Star has a staff meeting this afternoon in Blacksburg, and I’m looking forward to discussing ideas for the Emcee skit with rattrap and yubbie. I know that there will be other, less entertaining issues raised at the meeting, but I have a great deal of faith in RS and the people who make it happen. I see no reason yet to change my opinion.
Thoughts on a Tuesday morn
My head killeth me. I’ve had a cough for days, and though all the other symptoms of my New Year’s cold are gone, the nagging cough burns in my chest and sets my skull pounding. Concentration today is an interesting challenge.
I think vond and kittenchan should come back to the USA, but that has nothing to do with what’s good for them; I just like having them around 🙂
I’m beginning to understand the attachment Amiga users have to their unsupported, out-of-date machines. I was given an old unused Apple Newton for Xmas, and I’ve become quite fond of it. Not only do I finally have a digital address and date book, but the other day I passed an afternoon with it reading Jules Verne’s “From the Earth to the Moon”, writing a journal entry or two, and playing a version of the old mainframe Star Trek game. Sure, it doesn’t slide invisibly into my hip pocket, but I don’t lose it at the bottom of a bookbag either 🙂
raininva has done an incredible job with the apartment this last week, the living room is unrecognizably nice. We’ve already got two discrete gaming areas worked out. Looks like we’ll be up and running this Friday night – MechWarrior for sure, possibly Settlers of Catan, Chez Geek, Illuminati, or selected PlayStation 2 games as well. If you’d like to come by, we’d love to see you – drop us a note so we’ll be able to estimate a number of warm bodies.
And a special thank you to healerkou – this week, you did something that made me a little happier about a personal project. Too bad I can’t ask you to sign up, but it’s a bit of a drive from your digs to southwest Virginia. BTW, is the last syllable of your screenname pronounced “coo” or “kau”?
