Joe Lieberman is a tool, WoW is life, 42

You know Joe Lieberman is a grade A, yard gnome looking, shit eating grinning, idiot.  Why should one flip flopping, smug asshole have final say on health care reform in this country?  It’s ridiculous.  In general this entire health care reform agenda has become one huge cluster f.  Now the entire focus seems to be it HAS to be done by Christmas, regardless of what mutated creation comes out of the process.  The bill is surely so jammed full of bullshit by this point it’s actual value has to be questioned.

The entire process has been really disappointing.  The pledged openness when it comes to the legislative process has evaporated.  Instead the bill is being worked on secretly in locked chambers where all sorts of secret handshakes are certainly taking place.  Lieberman who originally claimed the public insurance option was a deal breaker had backed the idea of extending Medicaid benefits downward to cover people 50 and up which would have been a decent compromise.  Well someone must have written Joe another check because now that as well was pulled off the table. 

The funny thing is even after the Senate craps out their version of the bill, a whole new round of bullshit must ensue as the House and Senate try to come up with a compromise between their proposed legislation’s.  God our government processes are such an incurable mess.  Joe Lieberman is the poster child for this cluster f.   

It’s funny since I am still a registered Republican but also have donated to the democratic party I have been deluged by emails from both sides of the fence.  Last night I got an email asking for donations to help make sure Lieberman doesn’t get reelected as well as one from the GOP asking for cash to help fight the health care plan!  The funny thing is the democrats asked for $5, the Republicans started at $50.   

World of Warcraft is a game.  However it is a game that involves millions of people around the globe.  As a result many of the real life tendencies of human beings are carried over to their virtual existence as well.  Last night was a perfect example.

Yesterday the game turned on their Christmas content.  As part of this content there were a number of quests to complete, one of which was to get the ingredients to make some ginger bread cookies.  The two ingredients needed were milk and eggs.  A lot of 5 milk can be bought from a vendor 20 feet from the quest giver for 1 silver 50 copper (think of this as $1.50)  The eggs are an item that drop from killing low level birds.  You could get the amount of eggs you need in less than 10 minutes if you went there and killed the birds yourself.  So in total you could get these quest items for $1.50 in virtual money and 10 minutes of time.

Well just like in real life, most people in WoW are generally lazy.  In the game there is an auction house where players list items to sell to the highest bidder.  Well it is also where the workers make huge profit off of the lazy people.

The first thing I did was more of an experiment than anything else. I went and bought a few milks from the vendor and then listed them on the AH.  I listed the milk that cost me $1.50 for 5 on the auction house at 5 gold each. (or the equivalent of $500)  I wanted to see if anyone was stupid enough to pay me that much money for something they could have bought for pennies at the vendor right down the sidewalk.

I laughed out loud when I saw this message pop up.  I sold about 4 or 5 milks in the span of an hour, unreal.  people were too lazy to even bother to figure out where to buy the milk.  They preferred to overpay tremendously in exchange for the convenience of  having the item in the auction house where they pay and have the item instantly show up in their mailbox.

When I got that message I was busy farming eggs like mad.  In total I collected about 200 of them.  Once again I listed them on the auction house for a HUGE mark up from their normal selling price and once again the minions didn’t disappoint.  I sold a ton of eggs, making myself a nice chunk of change in the process.  Lesson learned, make something easy for people and they will overpay for it.

Later I was in another area that had quest items for an Xmas quest.  I was on my horde rogue and was feeling ornery.  I spotted an enemy warrior riding around not bothering anyone collecting quest items.  I could tell he had much better equipment than me so a one on one confrontation would have been pointless.  However that didn’t stop me from being a royal pain in his ass.

Instead of fighting him I would “sap” him, a skill rogues have that basically incapacitates the other player for 10-15 seconds.  I would do this repeatedly and follow up with various / commands that would shower him with annoying insults. 

It didn’t take long until the warrior was furious.  He was circling the area constantly, trying to flush me out from my stealth mode, unsuccessfully.  After tormenting the guy another horde rogue showed up in the area.  I told him we needed to kill this warrior which we did.  To add insult to injury, after the warrior dropped I used another undead ability and cannibalized his corpse.  The other rogue piled on the embarrassment by impaling the warriors corpse with a banner,  just to rub it in.  I spent over an hour just screwing with this guy.  Ali can testify  how hard I was laughing a few times at just how annoyed I made this guy.  It was great fun.

Getting back to the people are lazy thing.  I actually participated in my own theory last night.  I had to make cookies for the office xmas party last night.  Instead of making them from scratch I told Ali to simply buy the break apart, premade mix which eliminates 80% of the work.  Now of course if you compare what we paid for the premade stuff to the cost of raw ingredients there would be a HUGE difference.  Yep, I’m one of them I guess.

Hey I’m 42 today, yay.