2:42pm: It's so cute I'm getting cavities
This is what happens when you mix Bejeweled style gameplay with kittens. Lots of kittens.

6:04pm: It's almost kind of winter
So, its warm. Unseasonably warm. Has been for days. A couple of weeks, maybe. The power bill reflected it, our usage was down significantly from the same time last year. The snow (or lack of) reflects it. It's really something. I'm wearing a spring coat in February, consistently.

I guess in a lot of ways it beats the bitter cold super snowy weather, but if its already this warm now, what is the summer going to be like? I'm not sure I want to know. (Then again, last summer was largely cool and nice, unless you were trying to grow vegetables.)

The plan this year is to have a tomato garden, but I'm not sure where to put it. The best spot in terms of looks is shady, and the best spot in terms of sunlight would look really strange given that it's at the side of the driveway near the road. Have to find a spot in the backyard that gets reasonable amounts of sun.

At work, I'm crazy swamped. I'm usually not crazy swamped, so I'm not used to it. I'm kind of the "new development/R&D guy" at work. I usually have one project, maybe a side thing. So I'm focused on one thing for long periods. Yesterday I worked on FOUR things in the same day, and today there was four more. It's crazy. Also a lot of meetings.

This kind of pace, it's hard to tell if I'm getting anything done. I think I am, but it's a lot different from what I usually do. I guess we'll have to see.

Also, now that it's been nearly a week since the warcraft business... some days its easier then others. I look back at it and wonder what the hell I was thinking, spending so much time on it. But I also had a lot of fun, and did things with fun people. Sometimes I miss it. Sometimes I don't. Mostly its taking some getting used to, I get home after work and my evening isn't eaten up by the game. I can sit down, watch TV, chat with Liz, and think about what I want to do (or do nothing).

I think in some ways its kind of a mourning period, becuase of how big a part of my life it was for so long. But I'm sure that I'm better off.

The downside is that right now I barely want to play at all, but I still have friends I want to play with. Hopefully given some time, I can get back into it on what they call a "casual" basis. That is, I play now and then with people I want to play with, focused on having fun rather then being at the high end super raider type that has to down every boss on hard mode and collect uber loot.

This year, I'd rather have a tomato garden then more WoW loot.

7:33pm: A crazy 24 hours that ends well
It didn't start well. Yesterday I was kicked out of my World of Warcraft raid guild, for really dumb reasons. They lied about why to the members and accused me of things I didn't do. It got ugly. Here's what I had to say about it then. You can tell, I'm a bit angry over what happened.

I didn't sleep last night, really. As the night went on and today happened, I came to a realization. I play far too much anyway, it affects real life, and suddenly not having a guild that I'm committed to is in fact a blessing. I can spend less time in WoW, and more time on things that matter more. Like Liz. And friends. And other hobbies. And sleep.

The adjustment has been pretty hard so far, I'll be honest. We're talking about people I spent years playing with, and its suddenly over. It's a shock, and its not easy to break. But now I see that I need to do it, and that in the long run I will be better off if I can follow through and not just fall back into the same trap.

There are other raiding guilds I could apply to, to try and start again. I'm not going to. At least not for a while. If I ever do, it needs to be what they call a "casual" guild, one focused on having fun and not on winning server firsts and such. That just becomes all consuming.

So for everybody who sees me for the next little while... in the short term I may be moody, easily angered, and such. I'm sorry. In the long run, I think you'll like me more after I've gotten through this.


(It's also caused some odd reactions. I have the distinct feeling that this happened not randomly, but as a gentle nudge to get me back on the right path. I know that doesn't make any rational sense, but I can't shake that feeling that God, fate, or whatever you want to call it, was looking out for me. Believe me, it's downright strange for an atheist to feel that way.)


edit - Thanks Liz for tolerating me until I could sort this out, Liz and Aaron for helping me sort it out over the course of the day, and worldofwarcraft for your great advice on how to enjoy the game without it being a job again.

6:25pm: Holy cash, Batman!
A while ago, Blizzard opened a virtual pet store. Wow has lots of pets for people to collect that don't do anything, but they don't generally cost money and are found in game. These are just straight up purchases. I figured not many people would buy in.

If you bought one of the two pets, Blizzard would donate $5 to the Make a Wish foundation (they kept the other $5, which as far as charity promotions go is actually pretty generous). Today they made that donation, $1.1 million.

Doing some quick math, that's $2.2 million in total sales. 220,000 people bought them. And that's one of the two pets available.

So first of all, that's quite a big donation to Make a Wish (which they've done things for in the past, and here).

Second of all... 220,000 people bought a completely frivolous pet? Geez. I was way off on that!
(Then again, Liz' Death Knight did just get a new companion...)


I don't remember if I posted it on LJ, but I remember being touched when the little boy in the second set of links died from cancer. It was a thoughtful moment, at that time I kind of envied religious people because it made it easier to think that he was going to a better place. Accepting that it's just over for a kid like that was so fundamentally unfair that it's hard to take without some comfort.

11:10am: When browser security gets tougher, find another weak link
Majority of exploits are now using PDF and targetting Adobe Reader. Flash has had this issue too. Because it's installed almost everywhere, it's actually better then a browser exploit (other then one in Internet Explorer, anyway). Everybody pretty well has Flash, and most have Adobe Reader. You don't need to target a specific browser, and people have a tendancy to trust them.

They also have a tendancy to be VERY out of date.

4:05pm: Too many channels
At first, I thought having the Olympics on 3 networks at once (4 when OLN is showing something) would be a good thing. More sports, right?

Well, not really. There isn't enough sports to go around, so the amount of innane talking has DRAMATICALLY increased. I can flip through all four channels and find that none of them are actually showing sports, or two of them are showing the same thing. It's highly annoying.

At least back when only one channel covered it, they kept the talking heads under control.

9:22am: Finding the good ads
As is usual for the day after the Superbowl, lots of complaints in Canada about the shoddy rebroadcast and lack of good ads (CTV seemed to be running nothing but Olympics promos).

Luckily, for some reason in the Maritimes Rogers didn't override the CBS HD feed. So until we went to bed late in the 4th quarter, we got the US feed and thus all the US commercials.

Standard CBS (we don't have HD in the bedroom) was your standard recycled Canadian garbage.

8:39am: It's funny because healing really is like this

12:16pm: Can't you at least create plausable lies?
Ah... users.

We get a request today, for people who want a simple feature added to a system. No problem, boss asks me to look into how much effort it is.

Problem: I have a vague memory of already doing it. So I look, and sure enough I did it.

We figure it wasn't published. Nope, it is.

Then we figure it wasn't published externally. It is.

This was all done four months ago, so it's not like they shouldn't have noticed by now. (The item in question is blindingly obvious if you're using the system, it's not an obscure button.)

So, we point out that it's already there. They then claim that they had an "old version of the system", and that it's fine now.

The system in question is a web page. There is no "old version".

Sigh. Lying to IT when we know you're lying so easily just makes you look dumb.

5:57pm: The fine art of cheese
I like cheesy movies. Usually. There is a very fine balance when it comes to cheese. XKCD charted the phenomenon here.

For example, all of the Mummy movies are pretty cheesy. The first two? Good cheesy. Those are pretty enjoyable if you're looking for entertainment. Something went horribly wrong with Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, though. That was on TMN recently, so Liz and I recorded it and tried to watch it.

Liz lasted 20 minutes (we then switched to something else, I forget what). I kept the recording to watch when she wasn't around, and I put it back on today. I lasted for the first hour, then I couldn't take it anymore. It's on the wrong side of cheesy into "ugh" territory.

Sometimes there's no discernable reason for this. I turned that off, and put on Legend of the Seeker instead. Now, that is also highly cheesy, and rationally I don't even think it's the good kind of cheesy. However for reasons I can't explain, I enjoy watching that more.

TMN has given us a lot of things to watch, lately. You Don't Mess With The Zohan was another cheesy movie we watched, it was pretty entertaining. Based on some promos, Tooth Fairy could be on either side of this. If nothing else, seeing The Rock in fairy wings makes for a hillarious commercial.


In other news, I had a sleep study done last night, which is the test for sleep apnea. I'll get the results in 6 weeks, maybe.