'Manners police' hit Japan metros

This article is about a week old. Yes please, I would like the etiquette police to begin patrolling my mass transit system, please.

Badly behaved commuters riding on Yokohama's public transport will soon be risking a dressing-down.

Weekend Warcraft

Lately I've been trying to focus on group dungeon running. This is quite a trick, particularly as a fury spec'd warrior. Tanks and healers have a much easier time of finding groups, because they hold an awesome responsibility. Really tanks and healers are the engines that make group adventuring run in WoW.

Today, I wound up taking the Underbog. This is not what I'm good at. My character, Shadrachgrey, is designed to inflict lots of damage quickly. He is not designed to keep bad guys' attention and survive while doing it. Since Underbog is a bit below my level (68 at the time), and we couldn't find anyone else, I gave tanking a go. It worked out okay, I guess. It was pretty fun, and I don't think my inexperience caused too much trouble.

This was a non-guild pick-up group (PUG), and one of the group members apparently loves his guild too. He mentioned that they have a 'never leave the group' policy. After a particularly hair fight, which we all survived, he said that we were all invited into his guild, if we wanted. I don't think there were any takers. He was a very smug fellow, and I can't help but imagine a guild filled with guys like that. Thanks, but no thanks.

This experience did show me that tanking can be fun. I expect at some point I'll respec to 'prot' (in other words, redesign my character's abilities), for the series of big dungeons at the 'end' of the game.

4C System

This is a cool genericized adaptation from the Marvel Superheroes game from the late '80's and early '90's.

While there are pdf's of the original around, this contains all the important bits, without the Marvel brand.

Easter Raid

The guild had an Easter morning raid that wound up laying waste to Southshore. I don't have a microphone, but I was able to eavesdrop on Ventrilo and answer back using in-game raid chat.

It was a good time. We even killed their cows. More trickily, we also killed their flightmaster. The raid group only had a couple 70's, myself (at 67) and the rest were low to mid level toons.

I pulled some Halloween costume wands out of the bank to add some more festivity to the occasion.

Hatebringer

A couple of weeks ago, while in the Underbog with some guildies, this beautiful blue dropped. I was the only warrior in the group, so it was offered to me. When I accepted, I thought it was a one handed mace.

Shadrachgrey has been almost exclusively dual wielding for months, with a brief, and unsatisfying exploration into two handed maces many, many levels ago.

After the group disbanded, and I went to arm myself with the new toy, I realized my mistake. However, since my guild mates had so graciously given the mace to me, I felt some requirement to at least try the thing. After all, it's bind on pick-up, so I couldn't pass it along to anyone.

I suffered through leveling my two handed mace skill, put some gems in the slots, and must admit, it's working well for me now. The screenshot won't show it, but the Hatebringer pulses. And, come on, it's called Hatebringer. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I say.

This configuration doesn't take full advantage of my fury spec, so when better weapons come, I'll surely switch back to dual wield. In the meantime, I'm having a blast. With Hatebringer.

Two Thoughts for the Day

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7305023.stm

Just as it is too early to declare the Iraq adventure a failure, it is far too early to declare success. I agree that it’s been a relatively successful several months, and there are reasons for optimism. Violence has declined, and the government is becoming more stable and capable.

What follows is some self indulgent processing. It wasn’t written to be read, it was written to help me think.

Lately I’ve been pondering the tension between respect for the Tao, the infinite harmony of the universe, and my belief that the universe is essentially uncaring and we are self determined beings.

I clearly see that bad things happen to people for no reason. I also see that hard work often leads to success; oftentimes success is only found after long battles that seemed pointless midway through.

This reminds me of the importance of the journey; if the battles are purely distressing, if the journey is miserable, perhaps the adventure should be abandoned, at least on a personal level. This ties in with the Buddhist path of ‘right livelihood.’ It also ties in with the thesis of “First Break all the Rules” by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman. Connecting the right employee with the right job is the essential skill of management. From the employee’s side, finding a job that fits right is an essential component to happiness and harmony.

Placed in a goal setting context, it is important to choose goals that will be satisfying to attempt. If the journey is positive, it matters less if the outcome is achievable.

Warcraft Screenshots

Warcraft cats don't mind the water.













This the most recent shot of Shadrach, with Greydog the black wolf and Wolpertinger.












This pic is several weeks old. It's from the guild parade, when we all took flight across Outland.

Otter in Lake Washington

I saw an otter today, paddling around in Lake Washington. I've never seen an otter down there before, and I run past there pretty often.

A Few Words about Prostitution

There is nothing morally wrong with a man hiring an expensive prostitute.

There are a number of ethical problems worth noting. The first depends on the relationship this person has with his wife. Some marriages have allowances for this sort of thing. While I don’t know the data, I believe most marriages in the U.S. do not include allowances for additional intimate relations of any kind.

From a political standpoint, the largest quandary is that the governor of a State should be expected to uphold the laws of said state. Such a governor is also expected to obey federal laws. There are many laws on the books that are patently ridiculous, and it’s not reasonable for anyone to stay in compliance all the time. I tend to believe that our nation’s laws regarding prostitution, for the most part, fall into this category.

I feel a need to point out that not every prostitution law is created equal. For example, no good comes from street prostitution. Everyone involved is at risk of violent crime, disease and general exploitation. On the other hand, controlled environments such as those found openly in Nevada and Amsterdam and often discretely advertised as ‘incall escorts’ in the U.S. should be permitted.

Not only should it be permitted, we would do well as a society to move beyond that taboo altogether.

Yes, Mr. Spitzer was stupid for engaging in illegal (though hardly ‘criminal’) activity as the governor of New York. If he lied to his wife about this activity, he has shown a remarkable lack of character.

However, we as a society are doubly stupid for adhering to a value system that assumes that visiting a prostitute is ‘wrong.’

Warcraft Roleplaying

The Earthen Ring server is technically a role-playing, or RP server. In reality, very few of us stay in character while out questing. On a whole, role playing is gladly accepted, though rarely perpetuated.

In my own head, however, my characters have strong personalities and histories. This comes from playing the Bioware games of the last decade, specifically Baldur's Gate and Knights of the Old Republic. Both of those games allow for vastly different interactions based on decisions made by you on behalf of your character. Since those games are strictly single player, there is no chat interface, and conversations occur using a 'choose your adventure' format.

It is easy enough to translate that into WoW, primarily through the design of your character, and through the choice of quest lines. For example, Shadrachgrey is somewhat of a barbarian and feels out of place in Silvermoon City. His rep there is low, and he generally avoids Blood Elves. He'll take their money, mind you. Shadrach is all too happy to do mercenary quests, and to let the blood flow. Politics are not his concern. Keeping his bellly full is his concern. He has great affinity for Thrall, and orcs in general, and he has a sweet fondness for tauren.

On the other hand, my druid Sasquatch has a more gentle soul. He is fascinated by the Blood Elves (reflected by my journey there to do the starter quests in Silvermoon), and wishes to help the Forsaken find some sort of peace. He is, however, deeply disturbed by their insistence on creating a new plague to kill humans (Shadrach didn't mind so much, even though the undead make his skin crawl).

Now that Shadrach has spent some time in the Outlands, he has returned to Azeroth for deeper training to help him sustain his long term maneuvers. Like any good special forces type soldier (or warrior) he must be self sufficient. I had let his cooking, fishing and first aid skills slip, and it was becoming difficult to heal quickly between battle.

WoW Screenshots with Context

Here is a great picture of Sasquatch. I believe this is off one of the Thunder Bluff hills.








This is another of Sasquatch pic from Thunder Bluff, but in a very different setting. What are those two doing in the background?!








Here is a recent pic of Shadrachgrey. You can see he still has those immense pauldrons on his shoulders. Those took many hours of service to the Defilers to earn. Yesterday I traded them out for some Outland blues. That helmet is one of my favorite pieces of gear. I hope he doesn't outgrow it soon.

I'm having loads of fun with Shadrachgrey these days. It's refreshing to tear shit up the way that fury warriors are trained to do. With the Sunwell Plateau content coming up soon, and Wrath of the Lich King shortly thereafter, I'm trying to get him to 70, so I get to play along with all the big kids.

I'm trying to make a point of doing more instances with guild mates. It's a very different game, which requires very different play from soloing, running battlegrounds, or teaming up Iresine.

Comic Book Geek Pondering

All good comic geeks know, there's an endless mine of 'all-star team' topics to explore, and they're all endlessly satisfying.

What would it be like if you took the main powerful characters from all the main continuities?

Superman, Captain Marvel (Shazam!), Wildstorm's Apollo, Thor...you could also include Wonder Woman and Silver Surfer

Am I forgetting anyone? The characters on this team have to be able to fly, preferrably into outer space (can Captain Marvel do that? I think he can.), and they have to be virtually invulnerable and able to kick ass and tear shit up.

When the Warren Ellis started The Authority, it was the sort of book that this hypothetical book would have to be. Big battles, lots of explosion, gnarly bad guys who deserve what they get. Earth, and multi-verse shattering stories. That's what this would have to be like. Who else could challenge this group, united?

Energy and Transportation

The continuous climb in fuel prices isn’t really a bad thing, especially when placed in the context of global warming. As prices rise, usage should fall, and the environmental impact should be mitigated. I understand that this has a negative affect on the economy, but for the most part, it’s something we should suck up and adapt to.

However, there are some sectors who are being unduly punished by the continuous price increase. These sectors, by their very nature, use fuel, often very large amounts, in the service of the greater population. These groups should protected, or, at the very least, be offered tax relief.

I’m referring primarily to truckers and farmers. They should not be expected to carry the burden alone.

Always Go Left

I have long had a ‘always go left’ policy for exploring potentially confusing areas, both in video games and in real life. According to this article, I’m not the only one. It is so much an ingrained part of our nature, that police will often dedicate more resources to searching areas to the left of an escapee’s last known location. This strategy, apparently, yields improved results.

I can think of two uses for this information: when designing anything requiring the natural flow of people, whether a supermarket, airport, work cell or video game, encourage people to flow left, or counterclockwise. When fleeing from the police, go right.