It's supposed to snow tomorrow. I suppose I should find my gloves and such.

There are some days that I really miss L.A. weather.

My teeny little apartment seems terribly empty right now.

+ ssheire and dumbpeeps
++ fweebles and spratt (all the way from Canada)
+ Lemon tart for breakfast
+ French cafe for lunch
+ Successful navigation of downtown and the Mall of America for tourism
+ Yummy dinner with Feuillantine Praline Chocolate Cake for dessert
+ Watched Clue
+ Watching Robin Hood: Men in Tights
+ Tamarind candy

I'm not really seeing a downside here.

*waiting in line at GameStop to buy Rayman: Raving Rabbids*

Clerk to Customer: Yeah, charging is the only way to keep out the asshats and the cheaters. I mean, look at Battle.Net

Me: Money doesn't keep out the asshats. Look at WoW.

Clerk and Customer both stare at me briefly and continue conversation. Customer leaves.

Clerk to me: You said that with such conviction that I'm almost convinced you play.
Me: I do.

Clerk and all the other customers in the store stare at me - all three of them guys, of course. Clerk pauses for a bit semi-shocked. We discuss which servers we're on, Alliance vs. Horde, etc. Somehow, he comes around to asking me about gear and raiding.

Me: I'm in T5/ZA/badge gear at the moment. I was raiding six days a week to get it though. I'm down to just a Kara raid right now. I'll probably pick back up once Wrath hits.

Other customer: You raid?

Me: Yeah.

Other customer: *just kind of stares at me blinking*

Clerk: *looks at other customer like he's an idiot* Dude, girl gamer.

Me to Clerk: Girl Gamer. ROUS. It's all the same, apparently.

Other customer: *turns bright red*

An Interview with Dr. Oliver Sacks.

So, I pulled out some of my BPAL bottles, which I haven't touched/smelled/played with in awhile and suffice it to say that my skin chemistry has changed somewhat substantially. These are the ones I've tested and had to scrub off so far... probably more later (in a new entry).

Um, so, anybody interested in some BPAL? ( Special! Just for you, nice lady! )

With my recent name change, I managed to cause everyone to defriend me. I tried to let people know, but if you've been defriended/friended by someone named tammy, it's part of me still playing pick up from that.

Feel free to re-friend or not, entirely up to you. I've kept you all around this long for a reason.

psst, Molly, life gems.

"Susan Blackmore studies memes: ideas that replicate themselves from brain to brain like a virus. She makes a bold new argument: Humanity has spawned a new kind of meme, the teme, which spreads itself via technology -- and invents ways to keep itself alive"

For the first 2000 stories posted to HealthcareScoop.com during the month of May, the site will be donating $5 to the Susan G. Komen Foundation. More info.

So, go post a story and donate $5 at the same time!

Feel free to spread the word. :)

Last night, we’re running Under Bog (or maybe it was Slave Pens) and I’m being all super-healy when a pat(rol) comes up behind me and starts whomping.

Now, those of you who lived through this will not recall that I said anything (since we were on Vent, I could have just said, “Yo, incoming.”).

No, instead, I took the time to type

'BEHIND ME'

Obviously, Vent would have been faster. Not that it ended up mattering, I didn’t die. I threw down a magma totem and a stoneclaw* and jumped off to one side while they sat stunned in the fire (until Warrior-friend & Pally-friend killed them).

When I started playing WoW (a year and a half ago maybe?), noob-shammy-me went through Dead Mines with friends. I don’t know if they remember but I vividly recall trying to type ‘help’ prior to dying one of more than one times. (It wasn’t like my million elevator-related deaths in Gnomeregan, but it was enough to be ashamed).

I was attacked and tried to type four letters. What happened?

Well, I didn’t type help.

In fact, I think I managed to type…

‘H’

Or possibly H and a mangled mush of other alphanumeric characters.

Either way, a year and a half ago, I couldn’t type ‘help’ to save my life. Literally.

I distinctly remember someone asking me what in the heck I was typing and having to explain that ‘H9o834lkj’ was ‘help’ in Cahuarano (not really). I also remember saying that the next time, I would just type ‘H’.

Yesterday, I typed, instead of talking, managed to throw down some protection and dps, and walked away relatively unscathed. Now, I suppose this means I’m not a noob, right?

Yeah, no. I’m still a noob. I’m just a Level 70 noob with a righteous flying mount who is finally coordinated enough to type and play at the same time. It only took me a year and a half to get there. Now, I just have to learn to type and play and talk at the same time… and chew gum… and eat.

The thing with WoW is that the learning curve is as steep as you want it to be. If I want to just do my thing and quest, I can do that. If I want to do my thing and quest and do 5-man instances, that’s a little more work. If I want to raid, that’s more work. If I want to PVP, then I’m just on bad drugs and should get some help. ;)

Anyway, brain dump ahoy. It’s just really interesting to me when I think about the progression. I saw the same thing with IRC and IM – learning to catch subtle cues in written communications that were just as subtle as gestures and facial expressions. Now, I think I mostly get it even if it’s between the lines.

So even as I’m forgetting everything I learned in graduate school, I’m learning more important life things like how to tell people that I’m being attacked. Realistically, I think that’s probably more valuable on a day to day basis.

*Personally, I'm a huge fan of the magma/stoneclaw combo, but I've really not seen people use stoneclaw much at all. This puzzles me since it's really the only crowd control shammys have. It works pretty effectively with crowds of 3 or less. With 4 or more, the stoneclaw tends to get killed a little to quickly for my liking but it still buys me a little bit of time.

My Mom would like to take a creative writing class online. Any suggestions?

I know there's more of a few of you reading this that have insomnia of some variety. I know this because I've stayed up all night talking to at least a couple of you when I had insomnia myself.

There's a good article in the NY Times today on insomnia. Maybe good isn't the right word, but it's the first article I've seen that actually seems to *get* it.

I don’t use the word manage with insomnia, though people like this word. I don’t manage this beast. I live with it. I live around it. I bed down with it every night, gingerly, cautiously, careful not to provoke it. I do my best to placate it, domesticate it, dull its claws, avoid its fangs, knowing that at any moment it can pounce on me and tear me to bits. But manage it? I wouldn’t say so.

Still not striking and also posting publicly to show I'm not striking.

This Box Will Change Your Life

Today, demonstrate the arbitrariness of human timekeeping. Isn't it odd that half of humanity should sleep while the other half are awake? Call someone you know across the ocean in the middle of the day and share this insight with them.

Is MySpace Good for Society? A Freakonomics Quorum

Two little words — “social networking” — have become a giant buzzphrase over the past couple of years, what with the worldwide march of Facebook and headline-ready stories about Web-assisted suicides. So what’s the net effect of social networking?

We gathered a group of wise people who spend their days thinking about this issue — Martin Baily, Danah Boyd, Steve Chazin, Judith Donath, Nicole Ellison, and William Reader, — and asked them this question:

Has social networking technology (blog-friendly phones, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) made us better or worse off as a society, either from an economic, psychological, or sociological perspective?

My favorite quote:

It’s easy to look at a lot of elements of today’s society and cry foul. It’s equally easy to look at the new technology that we don’t understand and blame it as the cause for all social ills. It’s a lot harder to accept that social media is mirroring and magnifying all of the good, bad, and ugly about today’s society, shoving it right back in our faces in the hopes that we might face the underlying problems. - Danah Boyd, Ph.D. candidate at the School of Information, University of California-Berkeley, and fellow at the Harvard University Berkman Center for Internet and Society