A most promising weekend

This weekend has some great potental!

On Saturday, I'm going to a get-togtether with a lot of my old fraternity buddies from 1998, and these things always have a way (booze) of developing into some pretty fun parties. They inevitably turn into anecdotal orgies, where we basically sit around, drinking, reminiscing, and repeat the mantra "those were the days". Yay!

Then, on Sunday, it's time for the granddaddy of them all! Yes, you guessed it, Wrestlemania 21! And I am soo psyched! I got around 8h of wrestling to catch up on, so I even got something to look forward to on Sunday morning, when I'm lying in the couch, feeling sorry for myself. Brilliant!

Oh, and to make things even better, today is my last day at work, before a two week vacation!

Oh, oh, and to top it all off, the guy I contacted a week or so ago about a job, replied that the currently have two positions open, and that I should send in my CV.

I'm walking on sunshine, oh oh, and I feel good.. Yeah!

Worth waiting for

After a grueling 41 levels, and a little over 8 days of play time, I finally managed to raise the 90 gold needed for my mount. And boy was it worth it!

If you've ever questioned the sanity of all the low 40's jumping around outside the AH, just wait till it's your turn, and you'll understand how they feel. Rock, rock on!

On a related note, if I was a GM, I think it would be pretty fun to spy on people around level 38-39, and watch the monotonous grinding effort they put in to raise the necessary fundage.

To put things in some kind of perspective, and I'm pretty much shooting from the hip here, but all my skills training and equipment that I bought before level 40 might have amassed to around 60-70 gold, so I basically needed to make all that money, again. And fast. Four words; rock elementals, Bad Lands. I probably ground these guys for 6-7 hours, and must have made around 5g per hour in stones and stuff. Meh. I might post something more on this, once I get my thoughts organized.

Anyway, this is what you've all been waiting for!

The money shot

Wrestling insight

In a state of semi-drunken stupor tonight, I suddenly realized why there often exists a different title belt, alongside the heavy weight championship title. This is my story.

I was watching the second half of TNA's Destination X from a few weeks ago, and I'd just seen a rather bullshit fight between Kevin Nash and the Outlaw.

The next bout was for the X Division Championship match, between AJ Styles, Prime time, Ron "The Truth" Killings, and Christoffer Daniels.

Truth be told, I sometimes do other things while watching wrestling; poker, warcraft, whatever, but something about this match caught my attention. Then I remembered the previous X Division match from Final Resolution 2005, between AJ and Daniels, which was probably one of the best fights I'd seen in ages (I'd even go so far as to recommend it to people who are curious as to what wrestling is all about). To cut to the chase, I watched the fight intensely, and it was pretty damn good.

I actually want to rant and swear in this post, so I'll skip the kind of drivel I usually insert for coherency, and instead do an incredibly skewed historical recap, and try to bitch some about what I don't like in today's wrestling.

25+ years ago, wrestling was about people beating the shit out of each other. This was when people like Wahoo McDaniels and "Cowboy" Bob Orton would pound on each other for a while, and somebody would eventually win. Yay.

20 years ago, wrestling evolved into something more technical, when people actually used good holds and counters on each other, and fights seemed more like actual battles, with both participants trying their best to outmanoveur their opponent. Vintage Ric Flair type matches, that could last for up to an hour, and end in a draw. The wrestling per se was probably among the best ever, but it wouldn't really capture the soon to be blood thirsty crowd.

It was sometime around here that the body builders started to appear on the wrestling scene, but they where still so rare that they were considered a novetly item. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I have the image of Lex Luger joining the Four Horsemen, and I remember thinking that these guys are going to be unstoppable.

This was also the time that the just plain fat fucks started arriving in the WWF. Some had a cool gimmick, like the Big Boss Man, Bam Bam Bigalow and Akeem "The African Dream", and other where just plain stupid, like Earthquake or Tugboat.

At this point in time, I'd like to insert a tiny disclaimer. I was 10 at the time of watching these guys, so my memory might be slightly subjective.

It would probably be pretty enlightening to watch wrestling from cirka 1985, give or take a few years, and see how the WWF tried out different genres on the audience, to see what they liked. Why the Hulk Hogans and Ultimate Warriors always won over the Brad Harts, the Randy Savages and the Ricky Steamboats.

From around 1992 to 2002, I have something of a wrestling dark age, and basically don't have a clue as to what's going on. Somehow I manage to survive.

And cue today.

The WWE is basically about being a big (6"6' seems to be on the lower end of the scale), and powerful (everyone is 250 pounds+, and I'm not really going out on that much of a limb when I say that I suspect they're quaffing the roids something fierce), with no real skill to fall back on. Fights are just plain slugfests, with the most technical move usually being a power slam, some simple suplex, or a clothsline. Not that much to get excited about, really.

It's kinda fun to watch the WWE, TNA, and in some regard, ROH, react to one another. The latest craze seems to be about bringing in legends from say 20 years ago, and have them show up in some decisive moment. And almost every single time, it ends in some kind of pathetic anti climax, where it becomes painfully obvious that the 50-year old hasn't really been honing his wretsling skills for the past, oh, 15 years. Randy Savages appearence in TNA? Oh, please..

And, ofcourse, professional wrestling is one smoking pile of nepotism. I just can't find any other way to explain why Jeff Jarrett, Tripple H (even if many of his fights are good, they always have to end in some stupid controversy) and JBL just don't lose their titles. Which somehow brings me to my insight.

The whole point of the alternative titles (be it the X Division or the US Championship), is just a way to say "fuck that" to the heavyweight belts. Let those guys keep their belts and wave their dicks around. It really doesn't matter.

The fans want to see some good wrestling, where the outcome is actually uncertain, and not some shit where you before hand can say "oh, in 12 minutes, the referee is going to be knocked out, and Jeff is going to hit his adversary with a guitarr, game over".

And this is what the other belts offer. People like AJ Styles and Christoffer Daniels are some pretty bad ass atheletes, and a lot of their moves just look wicked cool. I can only imagine what it must be like to actually be there live, chanting "this is awesome", "holy shit" and "TNA". What a rush!

They give the fans what they want, and the promotions get to keep their stupid champions happy, for whatever reason they have.

On a side note, it is sad that John Cena might somehow be moving up to the heavyweight fight. And it must be said that the WWE cruiserweights all just plain suck. Maybe it's just that those guys really look small in comparision, that makes it silly, I don't know.

I seriously recommend people to download some of the TNA stuff from PWTorrents, and check it out.

And I also think it's pretty obvious that semi-drunken was actually an understatement.

Mouth breathing idiots..

A recurring theme over on the FoH-boards is that 99% of the regulars on the offical warcraft boards are inbred, mouth breathing retards.

Now, I've tried to stay impartial, but today was the last straw, and now I say, fuck it, everyone on the WoW-forums is an asshole.

I just got my mount (a big post about this is coming up, don't worry), but I noticed that I, being a gnome, dismount easier than other races, which is frustrating when running through swamps etc.

So, I posted a question on the official forums, asking if this was working as intended.

Aaaand in about 10 minutes, I got pretty much all the stupid answers that I could have come up with in 5 seconds, ranging from "reroll", "that's unfair", "maybe your mount thinks you're a bug" to "it's afraid of getting rusty".

Just fuck off and die, ass munchers. kkthxbai.


Edit: And I guess my question is never going to get answered; it's now been pushed back to page 5, mainly that's to some turd burglar spamming the forum with "my server is down, fix it now" messages.

To whore, or not to whore

The bizarre world I live in, just got a little bit stranger.

For my incredible contribution to the company over the past 9 months, I've just been given a sizeable amount of stock. Ok, it isn't a vast amount, by any means, but anyway. I've been given 1250 shares (the current market value is $25.10 a share).

I can cash out in 4 rounds. The first round being in January 2006, when I'm entitled to sell 500 of these shares. And then another 250 each year after that.

If it wasn't for the 70% tax I'd have to pay, I'd probably consider whoring, and sticking around..

On a related note, isn't it strange that someone who earns less than I do, gets to keep more of the profit? I'm not against progressive taxes on regular income, but on stuff like this, it just seems wrong.


"People who make dumb analogies are like morons."

A test of character

I believe that you can make a good assessment of a person by examining the type of candy he choses when at the supermarket.

I haven't started splitting people into categories yet, but my tests seem to indicate that people who like violfiskar seem to be pretty decent human beings.

Hrm..

So, I bought my gymcard yesterday, and suddenly I don't have an excuse for not getting out and running for the next 12 months. Scary.


Person A: Any rogue who would take this over a caster to main hand is both greedy and retarded.
Person B: No.. I just think your a retard for making that comment. I dont give a shit if it has caster stats.
Person C: That's not the question: the question is "is it the best rogue dagger by more or less of a margin than it is the best caster's mainhand?" And the answer is: no, you would be retarded to default this to a rogue.

My take.

Hoptemistic

Those of you that have been carefully following my imood, have without a doubt noticed that it's changed from "weird" to "optimistic". Why? you might ask. Well I'll tell you.

Last year, around June, just after the Xbox release, I began to realize that there wasn't really any more planned work for me, and that the company's future as a whole was uncertain, at best. So I started contacting the few games companies in Göteborg. The companies either packed their bags and left town (you bastards, Dice), went bankrupt (This Side Up/UDS), or just plain said they didn't have enough bling bling to hire a superstar like me (yes, this is how I treat a no).

A few months later, I got in contact with the cheif technology guy at Massive (Martin), who was planning on moving to Göteborg, and starting up a small games company. He didn't want to hire anyone until he had funding for 2+ years, with a staff of 4-6 people, and this is where I'm at today.

Aaanyway, last week, the girl in accounting left a note on my desk. I naturally thought that I was getting fired, so I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that she had xeroxed an article from the latest issue of a Swedish games magazine, that said that one of the companies I had spoken to before had gotten a new, big deal.

I quickly searched through my mail, and found our correspondence neatly stashed away in a folder called "private/next job". Ok, I'll admit it, subtlety isn't my strongest suit.

This morning, I got a reply from the guy saying that he was flying from Australia to Tokyo tomorrow, and he'd be back next week, and he wondered if I could mail again then. I quelled the urge to tell him that I was actually on the toilet with my laptop, and instead started getting my hopes up. I then realized that I was an hour late for work, and that the batteries were getting low.

W0t?!

I don't think I can do Friday night's wrestling justice by trying to explain just how amazing it was. You had to be there, quite frankly.

The feeling of togetherness when we shouted "woooo" in true Ric Flair style when the backhand chops landed was the coolest thing evar. Evar!!

Like most people, I'm a little upset that Twisted Retard was disqualified, and that Aids Atom retained the championship, but hey, he's bound to get another shot soon.

Back to work then..

Oh my god

1) I'm in Göteborg tomorrow
2) There's wrestling in Göteborg tomorrow
3) There are tickets available to said wrestling.

Guess what I'm doing tomorrow night?

I'm so excited, I don't know what to do.. Maybe I'll just go ahead and fix all the bugs?!

Where have all the tag teams gone?

This is somethings that's been bugging me for quite some time. Where have all the dedicated tag teams (mainly in the WWE) gone?

When I was a wee lad, and thought that wrestling was the coolest thing on earth (well, I still do, actually), many of my heroes were tag teams.

I mean, greats like Demolition (here comes the Axe, here come the Smasher, they're Demolition, walking disaster, tra la la), The Hart Foundation, The Road Warriors (I think the time they stabbed Dusty Rhodes with one of their spikes was the first time I'd ever seen blood in wrestling). They got me all tingly inside.

Today tag teams are mainly ad hoc, "hey, guy A doesn't like guy B, and guy C doesn't like guy D, so let's put together a tag team match with A+B vs C+D", and it gets pretty boring. There's no real gimmick, no cool two man finishing moves (seriously, how cool isn't the Doomsday Device?), and it gets trite pretty quick. Even if I watch both Smackdown and Raw every week, I can honestly say that I don't know (and don't really care) who the current tag team champions are. And this is a pretty sad state of affairs.

TNA is alot better in this regard, and has some pretty cool tag teams. TNA is probably just plain better wrestling all round, but I think it suffers a lot from not having the brand names and recognition that the WWE has. Sure, I'm pretty tired of seeing Ric Flair lose, seeing Shawn Michaels bleed, and I'm bored to hell with basically all of JBL's matches, but guys like Randy Orton, Batista and John Cena still do it for me, somehow.

More on this subject later, as I apparently have an Xbox version to build now..

It's bike season again!

Hooray! Most of the recent snow and ice have melted away now, so I could once again take my bike to work.

I just luuuuv my bike.

And it has so many advantages; I can sleep ten minutes longer in the morning, I get home ten minutes earlier in the afternoon, and being able to cycle home for lunch means I can have insanely long lunches. For teh win!

A little naïve

"Magnus,

Kan du fixa de sista buggarna som finns kvar.

Tack,
Chris"

Yes, oh boss of infinite wisdom and insight, all it takes for me to fix all the remaining bugs in our hack-and-slash, uncommented, blindingly stupid pile of shit that is our code base, is that you say please. Next.

Streamlining

It's funny when things you're used to using everyday suddenly break down and stop working, you sometimes realize that the appliance wasn't really as life threateningly important as you first thought.

About a year ago, my cable operator changed their encoding system, and my pirate card stopped working. I thought I was going to die, going from 80 channels to 8. But somehow I survived.

Yesterday, the TV in my bedroom suddenly switched itself off, started smelling of burned electrical parts, and refused to come on again. It did make rather annoying clicking sounds instead, but this wasn't really what I was after. I immediatly thought that the apocalypse was upon us, but lo and behold, I'm still here.

And it was actually a pretty nice break, grabbing the laptop and sitting in the sofa for a while, watching CSI and playing poker.

Although, not being totally amish, I think I'm going to have to buy a new TV anyway..

I'm le bored

This has got to be a new record. I've been at work for 45 minutes, and I'm bored out of my skull. Bummer.


> My friend who plays a druid said they are going to be getting evis in a upcoming patch? If this is true rogues will be pretty much usless. Is this a true fact?

> Tell your friend he isn't supposed to drink the bong water.

A little Friday afternoon humour

I have no idea if this essay is fake or not, but it just cracked me up. Check out the other ones too, by the way..

Tonight's a sushi night..

So, I was chilling, having breakfast, and my brain was busy chatting with my taste buds, trying to find out if I desired anything special. And then, bam, it hit me. Sushi.

Sushi's pretty straightforward to make too, although it's not really something you want to whip out of your ass when you got the munchies real bad. The 45 minutes is takes just to get the rice ready can really be a killer if you don't want to wait.

I just love the craving for a certain kind of food that can hit you, right out of the blue. Mmmm.. *Homer-like drooling*


On a totally unrelated note, I'm pretty scared by the number of female toons in my guild on my RP-server, and by the amount of hugging going on. Something just isn't right there.

It finally happened..

I needed to find something on the web, so I open my browser, and go to google. Only to find that I've typed www.thottbot.com by mistake..

Computers are weird

I'm sometimes fascinated by both how advanced, and at the same time, utterly stupid computers can be.

It's actually pretty amazing that I can sit on the toilet with my laptop, and watch a live webcast from a wrestling event on the other side of the world. At the same time, it pretty much sucks ass that my svchost.exe (a program that I haven't got the slightest clue to what it does) crashes every time I shut down Windows, which causes Windows to send an error report every time I start up.

Oh yeah, and my Windows-button, which has been mysteriously not functioning for the past two weeks, just decided to make a special guest appearance and start working again! Hooray!