On Canceling My WoW Account At 3 Something in The Morning

I woke up at three this morning thinking about one thing. Not the economic catastro-fnck in which we're all about to wallow. Not the book I'm supposed to be writing. No. I woke up thinking about how I was going to kill Baron Rivendare in Stratholme. When you wake up at three in the morning, and the first thing you think about is a role-playing game, even one as awesome as World of Warcraft, it's time to disable the account. (For awhile)

At the age of forty-two(1) I should be doing something besides slaying imaginary monsters, shouldn't I? Writing! Writing! I tell myself. The only overhead involved in writing is time, paper, and thought. Those come pretty cheap, even these days, yet I can't bring myself to commit to writing anything "kick-ass". I can't commit to jack-squat. It is this intrinsic laziness on my part, this absolute procrastination, this ridonkulous nerdic half-assedness that keeps you, dear reader, denied the pure genius that I, Dan Manning, might excrete from my brain-wrinkles if only motivated to do so.

That is the reason that I, Dan Manning, have cancelled my World of Warcraft subscription. The world needs greatness right now. This week, Barack Obama hit his head on the side of an airplane while waving to the press. I've cancelled the President's Weekly Radio Address from my iTunes, and I never actually listened to any. It's been what? three weeks since he took office? Turns out he is not the Messiah; he's just another guy in a suit.

The world needs a hero, and I, being the narcissist that I am, have come to the conclusion that out of the six-billion people(2) on this earth , I am the hero that this great nation, nay, the undeserving world itself, needs.

How many of us heroes have been distracted by Bread and Circuses? How many of us have given up reading only to watch another episode of "Mythbusters"? (Or "Destroyed in Seconds", "Southpark", or "Spongebob Squarepants") How many of us geniuses, thinkers, philosophers and scientists have watched one too many episodes of (INSERT FAVORITE TELIVISION SHOW HERE). Those half-hours can't be retrieved. That time is truly wasted. Our journey between cradle to grave is finite. Time does not wait for the dreamer, the idle, or the American Idol voter. Time does not give the Beanie-Babies collector a second chance. Those focused on hate, triviality, NASCAR, "This American Life" or Facebook have chosen to invest that time, that precious, unique, non-refundable block of time without reflecting on what they have lost: time.

What am I trying to say here? Oh yes. My World of Warcraft subscription. It drops off at 4:09 PM Thursday. Mark that down folks, that is the day the world gains a new Shakespeare. That is the moment a genius will embark on a story so heartbreaking, so inspired and true, so infused with the very universal essence of life itself, that all wars, hatred, prejudice, racism, strife and awkward silence will be lifted from this weary world.

Or I'll watch more television. Not sure which.
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(1)42 being the answer to the question of Life, the Universe, and Everything according to Deep Thought. It only took the supercomputer, created by the hyperintelligent pan-dimentional beings, 1.5 million years to figure out

(2)many of them more educated; many of them more motivated, determined, and focused; some of them better looking; many with a lower BMI; many who rely less on Wikipedia and spell check; many with lower voices, less wrinkles, better haircuts; many more modest, talented, and loving; many more deserving; more caring and empathetic

Fun Fact!

The first sentence of the Declaration of Independence is 71 words long:

"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

Praise the little baby Jesus: Tetris for the Wii. Finally

http://www.tetrisparty.com/

generic blog post, with apocolyptic twist

Had a single call today, an old woman with an old PC that needed a reformat. The PC was so old I couldn't locate the ancient drivers for the ancient modem (she uses {GASP} dial up), so I chucked the entire thing and gave her a less old gateway for the same price as a reformat. (with XP vs. the evil windows ME).

I called her and told her she was getting a hell of a deal, which she was, but I did a good thing today, because resurrecting that rickety old PC with Windows ME on it would have been a crime against humanity.

Otherwise, I played WoW, worked on my latest Sci-Fi masterpiece, and stayed out of the bar. Oh yeah, and I listened to the World of Finance crumble as the Congre$$ failed to pass the bail-out plan. How much Raman Noodles can I pack into our storage room? And what's the best firearm for home defense? This sh!t is getting scary.

generic blog post

I had a lot of work this week. Monday I dropped a machine off at the Landscaping place with the anti-abortion signs all over it. Then I set up an old laptop for somebody who had a machine fail on them. Later in the week I set up a brand new MAC for that same business. Then I had an emergency at an insurance place: UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME. That’s a Blue Screen of Death at FULL POWER! Of course, I fixed it. I made an attempt, and failed, to clone the Hard Drive against future failures, but it wouldn't clone. I can clone every hard-drive in my house, but not the paying customers. So we reviewed her back-up strategy bla bla bla. But yesterday, yesterday was the Crème de la Crème of workdays. I worked all day, spreading my technological awesomeness from Greenville to Downtown GR to Jenison. My awesomeness knew no bounds, and I didn't finish work until NINE AT NITE! That's way past my bedtime.

Today I renewed my World of Warcraft subscription, and I will never let it lapse. I love that game! Why should I deny myself this simple pleasure, when all of humanity seems to be on the precipice of destruction? (I'm exaggerating on purpose.)

weekend troubleshooting report

Today I have my coffee. Deb came home from work this morning with the dreaded and mysterious "check engine" light. I checked the engine, and yes, it was still there. Having exhausted everything I know about new engines, I took it to Valvoline Instant Oil Change, where they checked and topped off all the fluids, put the computer thing-a-ma-jig on it to read the codes, and cleared it out. The code was for "gasoline evaporation" or some such nonsense, they said sometimes if the gas-cap isn't on it can cause it. I've never heard of such a thing, but they cleared the light out and it didn't come back on. How much did they charge? NOTHING! Friggin' Awesome.

I have a laptop to fix. I used Microsoft's "Windows Memory Diagnostics" program, a program you can burn to CD to check for memory errors, and yes, it found an error.

All this before 9:30 AM.

Maybe I should bathe . . . naw . . .

160 miles of awesomeness

Yesterday I dug a rotten old tree root out of the ground with an axe. I burned an old wooden swing-set the girls outgrew last year. I drank Coronas and sat in the sun. I worked on a short story I'm going to send out. I played World of Warcraft. I puttered around the house.

Today I had SIX stops. I spread technological goodness all over the city, from Grand Haven on Ada to Kalamazoo Avenue to Rockford. 160 miles of awesomeness without even leaving "town".

The van had a flat tire, had to take the tire in for repairs. My internet connection was off and on all day.

I ran 4 miles.

All in all, a pretty sweet day. And the basketball tourney final is tonight. woot I say. woot.

Parental Controls for 41 Year old Man . . .

Today I had to put parental controls on my own World of Warcraft account to keep myself from playing it constantly. Not sure if it will work or not, but so far I've stayed off it.

Returned 1 machine, picked another one up and fixed a network due to sweet, sweet spring lightning, the very act of God that puts money in my pocket. Go Nature!

Sunday: The day of Easter Bla Bla

The sky is clear, but the air is cold. And that cold air busted me up when I tried to run today. Friggin' winter, go away already. It hangs around like a visitor that has overstayed its welcome. Deb was in Flint Friday and Saturday. We held the fort down reasonably well. Today she got home. It's Easter, so we went out to eat at Johnny Carino's. I had spaghetti.

I finished reading On Writing, by Stephen King. Damn good book. It gave clear advice from a guy who has made a boat-load of money writing books.

I bought a new machine for work. I'm starting to get SATA drives, and my 400MHZ Gateway with the IDE controllers can't cut the mustard. I have a converter that works half the time but the transfer rate is for shit and it takes forever to rescue a client's first season of "Desperate Housewives" iTunes files. So I got a new machine.

My March Madness bracket is in the can already, but as of this writing, Brian is on top by three points.

I keep telling myself, spring warm-up is just around the corner, but I'm starting to have my doubts.

I'm still working on my newest bestseller. I'm 90 typewritten pages in and counting.

Rush's "The Fountain of Lamneth" from "Caress of Steel" is a mere 19:58 minutes of geeky fantasy-rock goofiness, but it is still pretty good. I got the iTunes on shuffle.

Well, if you've read this far, I've got to give you credit for hanging in there. This is a hefty blog post, and I appreciate you reading this last sentence.

Oh yeah, Billy Thorp's "Children of the Sun" just came on. I must stop typing now and commence air-guitar. There is nothing more pathetic than a 41 year old man doing air-guitar in his tiny office.

world of warcraft . . . not going to get you laid . . .

Thanks mark for the link to this image.

really long blog post about stuff

Today I did many things. I installed AV software. I exported contacts and calendars. I taught basic networking and backup procedures. I uninstalled bad software. I uninstalled bad software that had cost this company a lot of money. I replaced that software with .CSV files. The RFC dealing with Comma Separated Values is RFC 4180 and is found at this address: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4180. All of this makes me sound like a smarty-pants, but those of you in the know know better. a CSV file is a text file. Text files are cool.

Then I networked network printing goodness, which, as all of you know, makes its own gravy. Then I had two hamburgers and a regular order of fries at a new place I've discovered, McDonalds. Then I drove home. Then I went to the gym and ran on the treadmill and did some sit-ups and lifted a few weights.

Later I'm going to drink wine and watch TV with the missus. Before I do that, I'm going to work on my bestselling novel. After all that I'm probably going to go to sleep. While I'm asleep I'm probably going to dream about stuff, but I won't remember that stuff when I wake up because I rarely remember my dreams, and that's too bad, because I probably dream all kinds of cool stuff, like I have super powers or something. If I had super powers, I'd fly around and right wrongs. I'd fly around in my 2002 Ford Taurus, ending wars and bringing down a healthy can of whoop-ass on a lot of rich bastards. ("waterboarding isn't torture? then you don't mind trying it out for yourself huh?") I'd cure cancer and grow limbs back on all the people, and fuse spines and cause corn to grow in places like Darfur. I'd turn all land-mines into pumpkins and all automatic weapons into those plastic tubes you spin around, and they whistle? You know, those orange and green flexible tubes, and the only reason they are there so kids can spin them around and they whistle? The problem with those, at least when I was a kid, is that eventually we'd get bored and start wailing on each other with them, and that hurts. Almost as much as hot-wheel tracks. Ever get beat with a hot-wheel track? Those orange pieces of plastic about a yard long? That hurts like a m0thrfckr.

My friggin' dog is outside barking. Ginger is a beautiful dog, but she's the last friggin' dog we'll ever own because I'm getting semi-old and I'm sick of messing around with the dog, but of course, whenever I see her I immediately start baby-talking to her, and I'm pretty sure if anyone hears me they'll think I'm a crazy person.

I downloaded the movie NETWORK on the tivo, and I'm looking forward to seeing it. I saw this crazy paranoid video called THE ZEITGUIST on Google Video and now I'm all conspiracy theory in the head. But not really. I still don't buy the "911 was an inside job" theory, even though it is true the neocon fascists used it to invade Iraq. That's okay, I'm so tired of being outraged I'm not outraged anymore.

Well anywhoo, nothing happened today. Goodnight and good luck

set phaser on AWESOME!

Blu-Ray Laser Phaser! - video powered by Metacafe

Thanks Mark!

This is a good one:

Mario villains scarf

Check out this awesome Nintendo themed scarf. She only made one, otherwise, it would make a great gift.
























Found at http://www.boingboing.net/2007/09/30/mario-villains-scarf.html

what awesome game was he playing?

from cnn.com:

Man dies after 3-day gaming binge

BEIJING, China -- A man in southern China appears to have died of exhaustion after a three-day Internet gaming binge, state media said Monday.

The 30-year-old man fainted at a cyber cafe in the city of Guangzhou Saturday afternoon after he had been playing games online for three days, the Beijing News reported.

Paramedics tried to revive him but failed and he was declared dead at the cafe, it said. The paper said that he may have died from exhaustion brought on by too many hours on the Internet.

The report did not say what the man, whose name was not given, was playing.

The report said that about 100 other Web surfers "left the cafe in fear after witnessing the man's death."

China has 140 million Internet users, second only to the U.S.. It is one of the world's biggest markets for online games, with tens of millions of players, many of whom hunker down for hours in front of PCs in public Internet cafes.

Several cities have clinics to treat what psychiatrists have dubbed "Internet addiction" in users, many of them children and teenagers, who play online games or surf the Web for days at a time.

did you know the "do not call" thingy expires?

That's right.

If you registered for the national "do not call" list, it expires in 5 years.

But don't worry, you can go to https://www.donotcall.gov and register again.

The website, being a government website, doesn't have the word RENEW anywhere, because that would be way too easy.

There is a VERIFY button, and a REGISTER button, but of course, no RENEW button anywhere.

I used the VERIFY button to see that my number would drop off the list in June of '08.

I just REGISTERED, and now it doesn't drop off until 2012.

That is my public service announcement for this week. May each and every one of you have a somewhat satisfying day.

reading and running for the betterment of humanity . . .

4100 pages in 45 days equals about 91 pages a day. That’s where I’ve been, reading the entire seven books in the Harry Potter series. I am a dweeb. The story moved, except for the last book which was about three-hundred pages too long, and it really dragged in the middle. I’m glad I’m through with it.

You can read all about the awesomeness of my reading at: dan's book reviews.

Other than that, I’ve been fixing computers and setting up networks. And I’ve been running and or jogging. Lots and lots of running: for me anyway. I’m running 4 miles three times a week. Yes, that’s it, I’m bragging, and I’m not ashamed to admit it!

You can see the awesomeness of my running at: workoutdump.com

the Harry Potter movie marathon

Today I fixed a scan.msi problem, some HP printer update jagged up a computer in a law office. Then I showed them how to do a backup, since the last backup they had was dated somewhere in 2005.

After that, a new Vista laptop with docking station. I hate docking stations. A docking station on a laptop is like an airplane drink-cart duct-taped to an Olympic sprinter. It’s a big, stupid Steven-Hawking-Wheelchair on a ballet dancer. They are stupid, I hate them, and that’s all there is to it. But I will gladly set them up for money.

And then we enjoyed the Harry Potter movie marathon. We got the last two DVDs in today, and we watched them both, back to back. Those movies are LOOOOONG.

Oh yeah, and Karl Rove quit today. That fat bastard.

after having a thrombo . . .

Today I installed a wireless network at an accounting office downtown, dropped an ancient HP pavilion with windows 98 goodness off at a welding shop, fixed a PC in a JCPenny’s heating and ventilation area (you wouldn’t believe the air-handling units they need at a mall anchor store), the guy at the Apple store told my my mac-mini is pretty much crashed, when I got home I managed to crash my bench server with a client’s files on it, recovered same files after having a thrombo, put the files back on the client’s laptop, and returned it no problem. I cut the weeds and grass growing between the cracks on the driveway, rebuilt my bench server with an additional HD to back up the backups and now I’m trying to unwind.

ironic-ish?

This morning I used my TIVO to fast-forward through a commercial for TIVO.