Author: Jer Clarke

Tried to log into Warcraft today and this is the message that was waiting for me (along with the presence of the server I use on the referenced list). I love the way a comment like “visiting this continent may result in disconnection” is so obviously oxymoronic, and yet completely serious. Would you mess around in a world like that? Would you take the risk just to see what’s up with the Big-K?

A sampling of weird things that come to mind when I read this:

“But Kalimdor is my home!”

“Where will all the Horde go?”

“Did I log out when I was on Kalimdor?”

“Does the zeppellin still work?”

“Have I become a crazy person?”

Windows Users: You can ignore this, you have bigger problems.

Mac Users: Microsoft has shown what an asshat it is yet again by finally giving up on even the premise of offering a decent video player for MacOSX. This would have happened a lot sooner, of course, had it not been for their stupid proprietary WMV video format that doesn’t work on anything but the Microsoft Media Player and which people, for some reason, continue to use. This halt in development is of course good news, as the Mac version of the Windows Media Player was almost as buggy as it was abhorently slow and unweildy, lacking anything even resembling a feature, let alone any effort at performance or efficiency.

The fun part is that, like with their Mac version of Internet Explorer (which they gave up on in the same way as soon as Apple released their Safari browser which was 10x better than IE), all it took for Microsoft to throw in the towel was for someone way smaller with less resources to rub a few brain cells together and make something better. In this case its the Flip4Mac plugin that just lets you play the WMV files in QuickTime, where they run smoothly and flawlessly like they should have in the Microsoft program. I 100% recommend this download as indispensible for Mac users who watch videos online, as well as for it’s metaphorical value in reinforcing why Microsoft shouldn’t be trusted to do things properly ever.

Linux Users: Keep up the good work, if Apple keeps jerking it’s customers around and upping the DRM I’ll be among you by the time I buy a new computer.

(Article about it. Thanks to OneGoodMove.org for the tip.)

Wired.com says that maybe playing World of Warcraft is good for you.

Unlike education acquired through textbooks, lectures, and classroom instruction, what takes place in massively multiplayer online games is what we call accidental learning. It’s learning to be – a natural byproduct of adjusting to a new culture – as opposed to learning about.

I hope so, otherwise I’ve been wasting the last few months.

p.s. My new name is Jin’rul. Any players out there can send me in game mail on the Thorium Brotherhood server (RP).

p.p.s. It turns out all I have to do to get some conversation going in the comments is not post for a long long time. Sheesh.

p.p.p…. Just in case, World of Warcraft is an online roleplaying game (one you play with other people sharing an imaginary world over the internet) that is so good you probably shouldn’t start playing.

In all the hours in all the days in the over two years I worked at Opinion Search I think one of my biggest fantasies was to call people and just ask them the questions I felt they would want to answer. The kinds of questions that would make them feel good about themselves and help them learn their value. I wanted to thank them for the work they did and tell them that we all appreciate it.

This short film has a little of that in it, although it’s also a little bit sad. It was written by Miranda July, who also made Me and You and Everyone We Know (trailer link), which will make you happy and sad simultaneously, and which you should probably see immediately if you haven’t yet.

(The short film is at salon.com so you’ll probably have to choose “watch an ad” or whatever to get a day pass, it only takes a second and it’s worth it.)

Good try Paul, but you lost to anger and resentment. Maybe there is a lesson here.

[note: I found this image in the Gazette a while ago, I guess i’ve been saving it for a special occasion]

EDIT January 2011: This post is about a Canadian election long ago and my frustration with how it went. It is not about social and racial strife between English and French Canada. If you came here searching for hate you will find a ton of it in the comment section, which became a honeypot/flytrap for shitheads when this post started ranking highly for search terms like “Fuck Quebec”, “Fuck Quebecers”, and my favorite “Fuck Stephen Harper”. Angry, wounded people started showing up and saying horrible things to each other, which just attracted more of the same. The comments are now closed to new submissions, but I’m keeping the existing ones there as evidence that we are still a troubled nation.
Peace and love to all the people of the world, be they Canadian, Quebecois, or anything else. Canada is a land of beautiful diversity and Quebec’s distinctive culture should be a pride and joy to all Canadians. The antidote to hate is understanding, lets try to work up as much of it as possible within ourselves.

The Gazette today (don’t bother going to their site, they hate you so just take my word for it) reported on a poll stating that the Conservatives are (assuming the accuracy of polls) only going to fall two seats short of a majority government, slotting them almost definitely for at least a minority, even given a massive Liberal fallback as witnessed in the last election. Further, it seems the Bloc stands a serious chance of becomming the opposition.

This is fun because I’ve always wondered what it would be like to live under Conservative rule. I mean, I was too young to really feel the pinch when Brian Mulroney was around and anyway, he was just a lamo-halfway “Progressive Conservative”. It’ll be great to see the deficits and social regression we can bring about with some serious Big Cee Conservation of Canada’s social democratic values! Seriously, so what if what is now the conservative party is really the “Reform” party with a new color pallette, they aren’t just a bunch of gun-toting Albertans anymore, they’ve got unreasonably disgruntled nihilists bumping them up too.

Thanks NDP, your devotion to what I believe in has brought us to where we are today. You were so convinced that your parlimentiary bellyaching wasn’t being heard you decided to hit refresh on the whole thing and see what happens. What were you hoping for? A conservative majority puts you in the position of Ralph Nader giving advice to the Bush administration while a Conservative minority could only leave you worse off than with the Liberals (I mean, are you actually expecting more concessions from people almost diametrically opposed to what you believe in?). Did you really think you might win a minority? Get over yourselves. I still stand by the policies and principles of Canadian New Democracy, but I’m sure as hell not wearing my pins this time. You fucked it up Jack, time for a change is right.

My protest is going to be voting Liberal. I was going to give it to the Marijuana Party (the only one with a platform simple and consistent enough to really get behind) but the whole election has exploded out of control and messing around just isn’t an option anymore. The fact is that this whole process should never have been started, so I’m voting for the way it already was. Paul Martin is a wanker and the Liberals are sneaky jerks but the Canadian voting public are proving to be the worst threat of all. Of course Harper is the icon of their stupidity, but it is them (you?), not him, who are willing to let him take over the country. Try harder, Canada.