Over 9000

Just how much is a proud man willing to debase himself in order to win an Xbox 360 from Mountain Dew?

• Start occasionally buying Pepsi at work, even though it sucks? Yes.
• Plan on replacing the normal household purchase of Coke with Pepsi from 10/2/05 through 10/22/05 (or while supplies last), in order to receive the specially marked sticker worth three codes? Yes.
• Convince coworkers to give him their bottlecaps? Yes.
• Ask the Housekeeping folks to glean the caps from the discarded Pepsi products of the workplace? No.
• Take a bottlecap off of an empty bottle left on top of a trash can in the cafeteria? Yes.
• Take a bottlecap off of the ground on Elmwood? No.
• Spot an empty bottle, insist that the car be stopped, jump out and grab the cap? No.

I'm not proud of it, but I'm not hiding anything either.

8 @ 57@r7

A coworker of mine got a new phone extension --1337. As we all know, this totally pwns.

For those of you not disgustingly geek-assed enough to know what I'm talking about, this is leetspeak (or "13375p34k"), the odd twisting of the English language used by online gamers. I recommend the wikipedia entry on the topic for a good summary of the major points. Anytime you see numbers used instead of letters in the middle of a word, the suffix "-xors" added to a word for no reason, and other such nonsense, back slowly away until you can feel functioning society around you again.

From a linguistic standpoint, leetspeak fascinates me, particularly its prevalence and standardization. How can so many people use the same made-up rules in the same way? I understand why a secretive "language" or code system would be used by girl-phobic basement-dwellers as they bop around pretending to be elves. It's a step above jargon, intentionally meant to conceal and confuse, that only the insiders can interpret or often even recognize. This is geek perfection.

That being said, do not ever use leet in conversation with me. I will smack you, y0u 0v3rc4ff3'n473d w4ck0.

Flippy

Not entirely sure why you would buy Zoo Keeper for the NDS, when you can play it for free all over the net, and have been able to for years. And anyway, I thought the DS was only for Nintendogs.

I may tell you to run

Today, I send you on your way to other parts of the nets.

Here's a story on the Playstation symbols, and what their common meanings are in Japan. Found on digg.

In unrelated news, Peter now has a blog. Enjoy.

And, just in case you were wondering what to do with your mouth tonight, Ginger Altoids are frackin' awesome.

Big Paper

What happens when a videogame fanatic marries an illustrator? Arguments about concept art.

My argument: The person on the left is a girl.
Hers: Nuh-uh.
Mine: Yes-huh.

After a little reading, it would appear that the "nuh-uh" line of reasoning is the correct one. But cut me some slack here -- look at those eyelashes. I'm holding out for the game to see if 'he' ends up being a girl in disguise.

We're all like this.

As the life-consuming MMORPG's and my efforts to resist them have been on my mind recently (heck, I've only posted once since first talking about it), that's what you're getting today. It's like they're frickin' following me around, waiting to pounce. Here's an excerpt from a recent email from one of my brothers:

"I picked Final Fantasy XI back up again. I dropped it about 7 months ago. Now with a lot of the nwer update the game is great and it helps that I'm not making some of the mistakes I made before. Like bad gil spending and not sticking with a class."

It's always good to hear your brother is learning from his digital mistakes. Wouldn't want him besmirching the family name in the online world. Also, why play a game that's so similar to real life? Spending money poorly and changing careers frequently have repercussions? Doesn't sound like much of a fantasy to me.

Close one

I played a dangerous game yesterday. I discussed Worlds of Warcraft with a friend. Several of my friends and relatives have fallen prey to the Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing genre, spending hours of their time running around in fake worlds with other enthusiasts. My understanding of the gameplay went as follows:

#1 - It's just like a regular videogame, but there all kinds of annoying real-world people running around bugging you.

#2 - You start off and people pick on you because you are new. Then you spend all kinds of time doing boring shit because you need to level up. Once you're at a respectable level, the newcomers ask you for stuff all the time.

#3 - Any time you do too well, the company that maintains the game sends somebody in to slap you around.

#4 - It's expensive, time-consuming, and unforgivably geek-ass.

Now, all of these things may or not be true. Nonetheless, people just love the hell out this Worlds of Warcraft game. So what's the draw? I've heard that the social aspect is fun, that you team up with your friends and do stuff, that there's a great deal of variety of diversions. Still, though... pretending to be a magical elf-warrior? Come on.

So, I quiz a compatriot of mine on the game last night. His answers were satisfactory. Almost too satisfactory.

So, you don't have to fight anybody?
No, man. I don't player-kill. And you can level up by doing quests. Like "bring me some stuff" kind of things.

What do you do?
I'm a tailor. I make armor, bags, and stuff like that. I sell it to people, or give it away.

Are there sports?
Kind of. There are places where you can join a team of capture-the-flag and stuff like that.

This all sounded fine. A lot better than the "go hunting for beasties, raid their dead bodies for currency, spend that currency on better gear, repeat" formula I expected. As he went into detail of how the various races and classes interact, something caught my fading attention: "...different languages..."

Turns out the different races speak different languages, and if your character doesn't speak them, the text the other users type come out as gibberish. As a language-geek, this raised a mighty eyebrow.

Fortunately, there's no way my machine could run the game. Otherwise, I have a real fear that some night I'd end up drunkenly setting up Atharien, the Enchanter Linguist.