I've discovered the beauty that is WordPress, and HostMySite.com is such a great host that a WordPress blog is included with my plan.
Because it's so, so easy to import from Blogger into WordPress, from this point on you'll find new (and old) Overgrad posts at blog.thathero.com.
Godspeed --
My past few days have been marked by a series of miniature disasters. Last week I bought another 50 shares of Intel stock to go with the 50 shares I purchased a month or so ago.
Late last week, Warner Bros. announced they would discontinue their HD-DVD offerings this spring. Great news for Sony, whose crappy overpriced game console makes for a great, affordable Blu-Ray player. Bad news for... well, Intel, for one, but also for anybody annoyed with Sony's storied history of seeing how many ways you can put "expensive" and "proprietary" in the same sentence.
And then the Buckeyes got smoked in the national championship game. Again. As it turns out, the analysts saying the Big Ten's down and the SEC is up are still right. At least Brandon Saine got to see the ball sometime other than the last 2:00 of the 4th quarter, and Chris Wells threw about the most brutal stiff-arm in history.
Finally, I got a friendly email this morning from Chase cardmember services. "Your payment is due" is lender-ese for "Your payment was due three weeks ago, but this automated email doesn't go out until you've incurred a late fee and some finance charges." Thanks, guys. Sorry I've been trying to starve your children by always paying my statement in full.
It's been long enough, I think, since I canceled my World of Warcraft account that I can mock the game without being knocked from my chair by Hypocrisy in some corporeal form.
By any estimation, there are way too many people - somewhere around 9 million active accounts, last I heard - paying monthly subscriptions to play Warcraft for the game to be just a trend. In my case, several friends started playing while we were still in school, and I was glad to join in as soon as I had a job and a broadband connection. The prospect of running around a huge virtual world with the guys, beating the virtual tar out of virtual enemies controlled by lesser nerds the world over, made several months of catch-up seem worthwhile.
And, for a good long time, it was. There's a lot to Nerdcraft, and we had hours of fun completing quests and picking fights. We'd stumble upon a group of morons tormenting new players, and kick them around until they ran away. We developed quite the skillset for finding the lamest, dirtiest players around, then smashing their faces until they cried and logged off.
The problem came from our lack of virtual dedication: the better your pretend armor and weapons, the tougher your character gets, and when the annoying losers playing the game (it's a game that attracts more than a few) spend 4-6 hours every day grinding for better gear... most fights are determined by mathematics alone. Um, sure, I'd love to sit at my desk for 30 hours a week clicking 2 buttons a hundred billion times so I could be that awesome. Thing is, I already have a job, so I'll pass.
I never wanted to play World of Fight This Monster Four Times A Week Until Your Armor All Matches, but unfortunately that's what the Warcraft developers had in mind for anybody who hangs around more than a few months. I should add that for every complaint my friends and I have about Warcraft it sounds like Warhammer ("Nerdhammer," to keep the theme consistent?) poses a solution. Until then, if you see one of the Warcraft commercials on TV and think "Wow, that must be the dorkiest thing ever," ..you're right!
Next spring you'll have a big NFL contract, but today you are a loser.
Thanks for sticking around, Cap'n Attitude.
