And May the Lords of Kalimdor have Mercy ...

So, being the nerd that I am, I figure I should explain a bit about my crack addiction. Not actual crack, but rather my anti-life: games. It started back in my one failed year of college, I was browsing the Sony Online Entertainment (SOE), looking at games like EverQuest (EQ) when I came across PlanetSide (PS). It caught my attention for a reason, not just because it was Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO), but because instead of a role-playing game (RPG) it was a First Person Shooter (FPS).

I won't go into the details about the game, you can look them up online anytime. But I did sign up for Open Beta and was accepted with my mongrel of an old machine. Beta was alright, but when it came time for Commercial Release, I was all over it. It rocked. Started on the Johari server, y'know, for us West Coast people, as a Vanu, tech loving purple bastards. But after making it to Battle Rank 12, I decided to try one of the other factions. I joined the Konried/Emerald server, the East Coast, and made a New Conglomerate, and ended up joining the Fratres in Arma with my character Ottoman.

Great outfit, that'll come later.

Months progressed, and after almost two years and the introduction of the battlemech system, we decided that with World of WarCraft upcoming, we should maybe switch and get some fresh air. About 10 of us got into the closed beta, then the open beta, and then we pretty much all switched over to the Commercial Release on the day. I was a Night Elf Hunter named Syuu and FIA provided for me a truly exceptional gaming experience, even though they had more time to dedicate to the game than I did. Regardless, I took a leave and left, coming back every once in a while.

Well, now the Burning Crusade expansion came out (okay, so it was a while ago), and I felt my addiction calling to me. Then on Tuesday we were talking about BC and WoW at work, and I bought the expansion on Wednesday.

Lo and fucking behold, someone had "hacked" my account. They didn't go to extremes, my password is/was simple. Which has led me to believe that it's someone I know. On the FIA forums someone else re-registered my name (the site has gone through it's third upgrade via Chief) even though it had been almost a year since I had last played. I got my account back thanks to the secret question and answer and phone number, all of which have now changed.

But everything I had done for Syuu, everything the Guild and Chief (Quintis) had done was almost for naught. Who the hell gives an Elf a fucking shotgun?! Stats be damned, it's a bow, or at the very worst a crossbow. Well, unfortunately FIA has all but disbanded, and the remnants have moved on under a new tag, Ronin. Currently I'm whipping out all of the things I remember about people so they know this false "Ottoman" is truly false.

Truffle did some looking at our ISP addresses, the new guy is from NY, I'm obviously Canadian, which has always been one of my strong points among FIA. Y'know, the ONLY Canadian in the guild and all ... kinda like how at one point FIA in WoW had about four female players. Real girls too, not just Hoots using a female avatar like he used to ...

Regardless, since it was hard to contact Duke/Quintis, I moved onto a new server and rolled a Blood Elf mage on Farstrider, in the hopes that ShadowPuppet (now Sprydle in WoW) is there. Except I think he's still Alliance. Gotta check.

Running out of time, gotta jet to work, back to fill in my WarCrack addiction post later!

System Of A Down Discography

When your System Of A Down decides to have a Suite-Pee you Know no Sugar will be for good Suggestions against the Spiders spawned from the Ddevil that Soil my War? So your Mind creates a Peephole for CUBErt and his Darts so he can P.L.U.C.K. them.

And as the Toxicity rises, your Prison Song becomes pure Needles that perform the Deer Dance with rubber bullet kisses for a Jet Pilot named X who loves Chop Suey! So you Bounce in the Forest at Atwa because Science is pretty Shimmy especially against Toxicity that the Psycho did during his Aerials.

I didn’t Steal This Album! But Chic‘n’Stu did with their Innervision that produced Bubbles that went Boom! Buying Nüguns with A.D.D. for Mr. Jack while sing I-E-A-I-A-I-O exactly 36 times in front of Pictures isn’t the true Highway Song so Fuck The System and your Ego Brain if you want to survive the Thetawaves and play Roulette to Streamline your car.

Now you Mezmerize for the Soldier Side Intro since it’s easier than B.Y.O.B. or taking Revenga against the Cigaro man who’s on the Radio/Video and when This Cocaine Makes Me Feel Like I’m On This Song you watch a Violent Pornography that answers your Question! Then the Sad Statue in Old School Hollywood gets you Lost In Hollywood.

Finally you Hypnotize and Attack the Dreaming people who Kill Rock‘n’Roll and Hypnotize for Stealing Society is a Tentative thing that eats U-Fig and the Holy Mountains are in the Vicinity of Obscenity because She’s Like Heroin on a Lonely Day with the Soldier Side.

Once again, the Bold Italics are Album titles and the Bold are Album tracks. System Of A Down is produced by Rick Rubin, who just brought you Minutes to Midnight.

Linkin Park Discography

Double Post Bitches!!

In my Hybrid Theory I got a Papercut that took me One Step Closer to being With You while rebelling against the Points Of Authority that are Crawling or being a Runaway but By Myself I realize In The End I found A Place For My Head that I had Forgotten while searching for the Cure For The Itch as you were Pushing Me Away.

During your Reanimation you went through the Opening of the new Pts.Of.Athrty which Enth E Nd your [Chali] had Frgt/10 what it was like P5shing Me A*wy so you could see the Plc.4 Mie HÆd with an X-Ecutioner Style that was H! Vltg3 against [Riff Raff] that were Wth>You on their Ntr\Mission for a Ppr:Kut or to be a Rnw@y for My "<"dsmbr when [Stef] was By_Myslf finding a Kyur4 Th Ich that was 1stp Klosr to Krwlng.

But as the Meteora falls I was Foreword enough to say Don’t Stay because I was Somewhere I Belong and not Lying From You or trying to Hit The Floor because it’s Easier To Run and Faint while doing a Figure.09 for Breaking The Habit and From The Inside you know Nobody’s Listening to your Session that’s gone Numb.

And when you’re on your Collision Course you can’t keep your sentences straight or that Dirt Off Your Shouler/Lying From You is hard while I’m a Big Pimpin’/Papercut from Jigga What/Faint is worse than being Numb/Encore because they love Izzo/In The End your Points Of Authority/99 Problems/One Step Closer are just totally fucked.

We’re approaching Minutes to Midnight so I Wake and remember that I’ve Given Up my sleep to Leave Out All The Rest so I can Bleed It Out while seeing the Shadow Of The Day and recall What I’ve Done as I keep my Hands Held High so I feel No More Sorrow on Valentine’s Day that’s In Between the people In Pieces which are The Little Things That Give You Away.

Like the Finger Eleven Discography, the Bold Italics are Album Titles of the Linkin Park discs while the Bold are all of the tracks on each.

Corporate Challenge.

"I'm a Corporate Whore."
"And how."

Err ... wait ... well ... wait ... yeah.

The 2007 Corporate Challenge officially kicked off on Friday May 25th, coincidentally my brother's birthday and the opening day for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Coca-Cola didn't enter, my bosses stated that it was the beginning of our busiest season, and they couldn't let that many guys off work and this and that and every other excuse.

That's probably for the best, I'm not sure I would get WCB coverage when I wipe out on the Terwillegar mountain bike trail. So despite not being a part of a team, I nonetheless went to the opening ceremonies that were held right across from Northlands, just off of 112th Ave. All because I ended up getting volunteered to help the ATCO I-tek team with their opening ceremonies rap song.

I can't rap. But that's okay because Stuart rapped. I biked. Except I was expecting an actual stage to bike across and figured I'd just zip across the stage and then bunny hop right off. Imagine my surprise when the "stage" was just grass. Great. But there was food, I saw SNC-Lavalin there and was quite tempted to bug them, and on top of it, I was made an honorary I-tek member.

But only for the duration of the challenge.

I did all of that before work on Friday, and then decided to heed the call to volunteer at WEM on the Saturday for the Unknown Challenge. Problem was, it fucking started at 8:30AM, and when you work until 5:30AM ... well ... Denny's coffee isn't too bad. I wasn't the only one to heed the call, Andrea and Chloe were there, and Crystal who had asked for our help. I hadn't seen any of them since last year. ... wait ... was anyone else at Akkiko? No, just Andrea. Okay, so I lied. Get over it.

And last year I was bald. Now I'm not. Threw Chloe for a small loop, and Crystal. So we all signed up (not at once, Andrea was there at 7 or 7:30 apparently), I had my name misread about a dozen times, and I remembered that I should have signed in Hiragana instead of the scribbles I once pretended to call "english", 'cause holy man, it throws people for a loop. So remember when I was made an honorary member of the I-tek team? Well, they gave me a shirt.

So did the Volunteer people. My coke shirt was dirty, so I changed into the I-tek shirt they gave me, and when I did that, that team went all "wait, you're volunteering, but you're wearing an I-tek shirt ... won't they think you're cheating?". But, with another shirt, I changed ... and as soon as I changed I realized I did so in front of the rest of the volunteers. Man, good thing I'm not too ashamed of my torso. Both scars have started fading.

Chloe and I were sent to Challenge number 3, the Murder Mystery room, in which a one way ticket to chaos and back (quick, name the song lyric I just butchered!) was held. Chloe is quite good at being an evil line person, while I switched constantly between registering new teams, taking the list of names to Chloe and riling the teams up.

"EPCOR huh? Hoo boy, you should have heard the smack-talk I-tek was throwing down about you guys."
"ATCO Pipelines huh? Man, EPCOR was talking trash about you guys, saying you should be like I-tek and just hide"
"ATCO Gas? Pipelines said something about your mothers while they were here. Pipelines that is, not your mothers."
"ATCO Electric? Well, Gas says you smell, TransAlta called, they want the rights back for the light-bug, and SNC told me they were going to buy you out like AltaLink."

Surprisingly only two teams got all pissed about the order they were put in, and another team failed to grasp the concept that when 177 teams are roaming around the mall, a 20-minute wait to get into the room could last forever. Hats off to UMA for letting the girly company with an extremely long name that didn't even fit on our registration sheets (and their name ended with Council) go first after they were whining like babies just to shut them up. I've never seen a team so proud of being whiners before.

After the events ended, we cleaned up and left, wandering around the mall, wondering what to do. I made it to the other side when Stuart told me they were all meeting where I had originally started for lunch. Fuck. Along the way I'm pretty sure I made things awkward, but I hadn't had caffeine in me for several hours, and what I did have left and took my energy with it. That was a fun drive home ... NOT.

So it turns out that I-tek placed 6th or 7th or something ... they didn't get any medals. Hah, I guess they chose the wrong lyrics for their rap song. Thankfully I'm busy next Saturday shooting a moving tree named Goertz with paintballs, but the week after that I'll probably go down to Terwillegar to see Stuart wipe out.

Man, what a supportive friend I am.

...

Hey, if I wipe out, he's got to as well.

Whoops, Past the Minutes to Midnight.

I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to post a follow up to my last post, specifically about what I thought about the album. Well, better late than never right?

I want to point out right now that when I copied the music onto my computer the tracks copied with completely different names. For example, song 4 is listed on the CD jacket and booklet as "Bleed It Out", but when ripped to my computer, it was suddenly titled as "What I've Done". That song is listed as track 6 by the jacket and booklet, but is now titled "Little Things That Give You Away" (track 12). Odd, no? But oui. My drives have had problems when it comes to properly getting information from CDs before, so I simply used WMP to search for track and album information.

Lo and behold, Microsoft believed there were over a dozen bonus tracks hiding on the CD somewhere, including a version of QWERTY, the track they use on LPTV for their episode intros and outros. Leave it MS to screw things up. Moving on, for the whole two lurkers out there who take the time out of their day to read this blog ...

... Steve ...

It really is a good album, with a mix of song types for all to enjoy. Maybe it's just me, since I seem to enjoy nearly every sort of music out there. My favorites include Wake, Given Up, What I've Done, Hands Held High and No More Sorrow. The rest are all good, but these to me are a cut above.

Also, I think this is the first time I've heard Chester Bennington swear on a studio track. Mike swearing isn't anything too new, just listen to Fort Minor.

Besides, at the very least you can bring your Linkin Park Discography up to date.

Many Minutes to Midnight

So last night (Sunday May 13th a.k.a. Mother's Day) was the Worldwide Launch of the new Linkin Park album, titled "Minutes to Midnight". The band was in New York for the interview, and throughout they played 6 new songs, "What I've Done" included. Now, I've heard a lot of their stuff, from their three albums, the mash-up with Jay-Z, their Underground works, live DVDs and more but I have to say that I think their new album is going to rock.

Maybe even old school.

More on this tomorrow, when Minutes to Midnight is available in stores.