fast forward to february. i had just busted my ankle, played most of the single player games i had, and needed something to do. for $15 a month i figured wow would be a good way to consume that time. and it was. some of my old friends were still playing and it was great to catch up with them. the game, in many ways, became secondary. it was more a way to keep my mind from wasting when i was sick of reading or consuming media than anything i truly enjoyed. when i was able to be a real boy again, i stopped playing, even as a new patch with fairly interesting content was about to be released.

november rolls around and i again need to kill some time. not for any reason but to save money. see, when i leave the house my wallet tends to open like a porn stars legs on gang bang day. just how i am. i can’t go out and not want to enjoy the hell out of myself, but i can make myself stay home. $15 for a month of entertainment is nothing compared to spending a couple hundred dollars in a few hours.

i have to admit though, the addiction is almost setting in. there’s enough stuff to make me actually think about what i’m doing and want to get better at it. right now for me it’s playing the market on the auction house for the most part, but there have been a lot of other improvements to the game as well.

looking for raid is awesome. i used to be a hardcore raider but just don’t honestly care enough to do it anymore. sure i’m going to min/max in my own little way, but right now i just want to go in face roll the content and see what there is to see. lfr difficulty is perfect for that. it can be infuriating when you’re in a group where a few people just don’t “get it” but i got to see the fights, the cinematics,  get the gear, and for the most part, have fun.

the idea of more conquest points from random battlegrounds is great as well. i’m not good enough, nor do i care to be, for arenas and on my server the folks setting up rated battleground groups have expectations that far exceed “guy just wants to have fun in a semi more structured environment”. it’ll take me a lot longer to get the better tier of gear and i’ll likely have no access to the highest tier of gear, but i’m alright with that. it’s nice to know i’m not at a dead end when i’m finished obtaining the honor gear. there will be further progression for me.

but the post is called feeding the addiction. so here’s my suggestions for how to continue doing that. how to make the game more accessible and fun for me (and i assume others). i play a hunter some of these ideas will be hunter specific. the support classes can deal with that.

• you can do 7 dungeons for 100 valor in a week but still have to log in daily to you your battleground for 100 conquest. change this. i realize you can still earn 50 conquest for each bg win after the first. make it after the eighth.
• make as many things as possible unlocked by or bound to account (at least on a per server/faction basis). this includes mounts, pets, reputation, achievements. hell i’d even go so far as to say you should earn valor and conquest for your account rather than your toon. i probably didn’t have fun doing the same dailies over and over again to get to exalted on my first toon. why the hell would i want to do it again? i obtained a spectral tiger. i want to ride it on all my toons.
• hunter exclusive: i want more, possibly unlimited stable space. there are x number of rare spawns that i can tame? i want to tame all of them. sometimes choices are not fun.
• the next dailies hub should be more like sunwell plateau than molten front. i had fun seeing everything open up as the server worked on it. I am taking no satisfaction from having to trudge through more than a month of the same old grind to unlock everything.
• remove the need to be in a raid for old raid zones or allow me to convert myself to a raid. asking a friend to log off and get on an alt so i can turn a party into a raid is not fun.
• add a penalty like the deserter debuff for those who leave or are kicked from a lfr group. you shouldn’t be able to ditch one group and simply jump into another. if you get booted, you have to be doing something fairly horrible to get 13+ people to say you need to go. both should be punished.
• archaeology needs to suck less. getting more fragments helps. allowing people to pick which fragments they want to focus on will help. any piece of gear that isn’t for max level when it’s released should be an heirloom and function as one. it doesn’t need to give bonus xp but it should scale with level.
• hunter exclusive: tame feral druid. we don’t have to be able to keep them, but like a priest we should be able to mind control them.
• hunter exclusive: camouflage doesn’t have to be good as a rogue or druid stealth but we certainly shouldn’t draw MORE attention from other players when we move. “hey look at the silly hunter who thinks he’s stealthed” is said far too commonly in bgs. maybe it could last several minutes (breaking on damage dealt or received as it does now) and we could get 1 second of truly stealthed movement for every 3 to 5 we stand still.
• an extension of recruit a friend. you gain extra xp or rep anytime you’re in a party with someone who is on your real id friends list. 1% per friend up to 5% maybe? the game is about community after all, right?

my account dies in 10 days. i’ll be moving onto skyrim for some time after that, but is there more wow on the horizon for me? perhaps in 5.0 when the pandas (and pokemon) come out to play. we’ll see how they make the game better…for me.

not sure if i mentioned being all gimped up (i could easily check if i did, but i will not out of sheer laziness), but i was. turns out climbing a foot high mountain of snow and falling forward while your foot sinks into said mountain is not the best for your ankle or your deltoid tendon, whatever that is.

you’d think i’d of posted more seeing as it was my job for nearly 5 months to sit and do nothing, but i didn’t. sadly if i’m not doing anything my brain doesn’t work. weird but true. the first month of my gimpcation i didn’t have a single original thought. i sat and consumed media and nourishment, but my brain did not try to comprehend it. i was incredibly boring. more so than i’m being right now even.

so here’s some random thoughts:

drop dead diva: i just tweeted this. during the gimpcation i was exposed to commercials for a show called drop dead diva. since it had commercials, i’m guessing it’s on a network of some sort, but i’ll be damned if i could tell you what it is.

the premise according to the commercial is that a model dies (she’s blonde and i imagine is supposed to be attractive, but didn’t do it for me) and is then reincarnated into the body of a fat woman. and she lives happily ever after. i guess.

i guess i’m just sort of wondering why, as a former model who knows how to be in shape, she doesn’t start eating right and exercising? it bothers me that i just know there’s a scene where she pigs out on brownies or ice cream or both and is happy because she never got to do that when she was fuckable.

as a fat person, it bothers me that it’s ok to be fat. aside from being unattractive, it’s unhealthy. there are far too many shows these days that celebrate being fat. sure, a few of them are to encourage folks to lose weight but the show wouldn’t exist if there weren’t giant fat people in the first place.

fat people should be mocked, not coddled.

google +: first off i refuse to call this google plus. it’s g+. three syllables is far too much these days.

next, after playing with it for a while i have to ask, what is it? as far as i can tell it’s facebook + twitter with no character limits. it’s weird to put both people I know and people i don’t into circles. almost stalkerish.

haven’t (and likely won’t ever) play with “hang outs.” it’s a nice idea in theory and i can see it being useful for professionals to have a random webchat meeting, but doesn’t that already exist? i’m just not that into the idea of sitting at my computer being stared at by my friends who are sitting at their computers.

the user interface is nice and the app (for android phones) is functional, but aside from that it’s nothing special at all.

will it catch on?  sure. will it do to facebook what facebook did to myspace? no. google’s not even going to try. they just want a social site to search so they can say they have social search and they want ad revenue. pissing off the facebook guys is just a bonus.

besides in the end all these social network sites do is make it easier for the aliens to sorts us when they come to take over after their intergalactic battle. go go google aliens!

lack of fantasy baseball: this is the first year in ages i am playing no forms of fantasy baseball (or any fantasy sport for that matter).  oddly it’s also the year i’ve had the most time to watch and analyze baseball. i’d likely be killing my league right now after 4 months of watching the sport non stop from the first day of spring training on.

that said, it’s been really nice to watch a game just to watch it. almost like a vacation. i haven’t had to worry about what pitch pitcher X on team Y threw to batter A on team B. haven’t had to root against my mets because i had the other teams starter going against them. and i don’t need to give a shit about the backup backup catcher on any team because as usual my first 2 catchers went down.

i’m really debating bothering to go back next year.

mcdonald’s: why will mcdonald’s give me more catsup than i’d ever use (if i even liked the stuff) but want to charge me for a cup of delicious sweet and sour sauce? that’s fucked up.

well, that was less interesting than it sounded in my head (at least the redhead was hot).  gotta get the rust off. be back sometime.

this is the box!

so i was in the back freezer grabbing an ice pack for my ankle (that i forgot to bring upstairs) and saw some ore-ida extra crispy easy fries.

“i wouldn’t mind a snack. ready in 4 minutes in the microwave? that’s not much of a time investment. even if they’re horrible it won’t be so bad.”

often times, conversations with myself go pretty quickly.  i’m really easy to convince when i’m kinda starving at 2 am. so i decided to make the fries. about half way through making the fries i also decided to document the making of the fries and post it here on the interwebs where i like to put things that no one will ever give a shit about but may stumble upon accidentally and instantly regret.

so here we go.  here come lots of pictures of french fries that get made in the microwave!

look at the inside of the box.  it’s lined with the same stuff a hot pockets pocket holder is lined with. which incidentally is the same stuff that used to be sold on infomercials back in the day. or at least i think it is. i also think it was called micro magic. and it worked. kinda. if you used a lot. and wrapped what you were cooking totally.

technically i cheated and this is after they are cooked...

the instructions state to line up the fries next to each other (which as you can see above i failed at). and then you press the top, which is lined with the mico magic, on top of the fries and hope it presses them into the bottom (also lined with micro magic). so i did…

again, i cheated. this is after they came out.

and then you put them in for 4 minutes. the box warns you not to over cook them. i’m not sure what would happen if you over cook them, but why would you want to ruin french fries? even if you think they’re gonna be crappy. so 4 minutes may be too much if you’re using the japanese nuclear plants to cook your fries. otherwise i imagine you’ll be all right.

then you get french fries!

they don't look so shitty!

the verdict? i give them 7 out of 10 inanimate objects. for something i randomly found in my freezer that i microwaved in 4 minutes in the microwave, they didn’t suck at all. they even were a little crispy on the outside as well as soft and fluffy on the inside. some delicious pacific sea salt and a spare container of mickey d’s sweet n sour sauce made these a lovely 2 am snack.

worst part about these fries is that they consider what’s in the box 2 servings. i don’t know about you, but when it comes to fries i order 2 large knowing people will want to pick at my fries and still get pissed when they ask. that amount of fries is in no way, shape, or form a shareable amount, even if you are a caring person.

don’t know what they cost (they were free for me!), but i’d say anything more than $1.50 and you’re better off finding a 24 hour mcdonald’s to fix your fry craving.

espn.com has a beat the streak game. i’m not very good at it, never had a winning streak of more than 5, but i sure as hell have had a long losing streak. basically it’s gambling without gambling. they put up props and you pick, person with longest streak of wins gets to tell his friends and family he had nothing better to do for a month.

the props are interesting though, you can usually tell how things are going in the sports world. if your prop is “loses by single digits” you can be pretty sure you suck. another sign is the “win or tie” prop. it comes into play in soccer and golf, ya know the sports no one gives a shit about. the “or tie” basically says “we’d be shocked if this guy/team can even stay close.”

ladies and gentlemen i give to you “tiger woods: win or tie”…

hahahahahahaha!  that cheating bastard (and i mean at golf), crybaby, cocksucker fucking sucks!

it took a week to get a first appointment. you’d think they’d be interested in fixing me. this appointment was pretty much a get to know you type thing because despite the fact that the therapy is in the same office as the doctor it’d be silly to share files. in fact, i had to fill out all the “new patient” paperwork that i filled out when i first visited the doc. even handed it to the same person.

after therapy (which went well), i was told they’d call me to set up more appointments. i was then told it might be best to call them for faster service.

so i did. around 3:20pm today when i woke up.

i got the out of office message. the out of office message states office hours are monday to friday 8 am to 5 pm. i had just woken up, so i thought maybe the clock i was looking at never got changed for daylight savings (or are we on standard now?). even if it hadn’t it was still 4:20. so i listened more and heard that if it wasn’t an emergency i could press zero.

a girl picked up.

me: hi, i’m a patient of dr. x. they told me to call to schedule some appointments for therapy.
girl: oh, the office must be closed. office hours are between 8 and 5, you should call back tomorrow.
me: oh, i’m sorry.  i must be confused. is it after 5?
girl: it’s 3:20
me: so i’m not insane?
girl: no, you’re not. maybe the phones are tied up, try again.
me:  great, thanks.

i kept getting the message. looks like i lose at therapy appointments.

sorry for that boring story. it was one of those things that sounded almost entertaining when i started typing but just turned out to be sharing mundane details.

testing the wordpress android app as well as the swiftkey keyboard beta. i love swiftkey and the beta seems to be working out well. as for the wordpress application, well if you see this (actually, if i see this because you don’t know to look for it) then it may be a good thing.

the idea behind it all is to maybe get around to updating more often, so let’s hope it works! or not if you hate me.

i should sleep at some point. bye!

*tap* *tap* *tap* testing
need to see if this thing works
can you read me now?

less than 24 hours later, the twitterverse was greeted by this message:

look at her do what i told her like a good little former speaker. i love participating in government!