I didn't think anything would pull me away from Asheron's Call anytime soon. Well, I guess I didn't get pulled away - more like I was pushed away. All the client hackers and uber chain leveled people have finally killed the fun of AC for me. I won't be selling my two primary accounts there since Patryn and Dread Nighthawk will never be owned by anyone but me, but I am considering selling off my pre-patch gsa and other accounts. Since I'm hesitant to say that I'm gone for good from AC, I'm holding off on the clearance sale.

In any case, I've been playing Dark Age of Camelot since it was in stores on the 10th. Several of the Asheron's Call guild guys came over with me and we reformed the Joy of Villainy guild there. It’s definitely a much slower game, but it's fun and something different. The game is heavily based on D&D where mages can't wear armor, archers can't fire toe-to-toe and melees can't cast spells. It is also heavily grouping/fellowing dependant for rapid level gain. So, thankfully with the JoV guys around, its still fun enough to hold my attention for now. We're on the Palomides in the Hibernia for those of you interested.

Anyhow, that's the quick update on my current gaming status since a couple of you have asked.

- Nighthawk

What can I say, our site has been about as interesting as watching paint dry over the course of the past few months. If it werent for Nighthawk, one could only assume we were kidnapped by angry monkeys.

Ron has been MIA since forever, and I have been both buried by work, as well as completely disinterested in gaming for quite some time. UO is a distant memory, EQ I never even bothered with, AC I only played in beta, AO has proven itself to be a repetitive and time consuming turd, and a natural hesitation to buy anything that even remotely puts a penny into Lum's pocket (DaOC) somehow strikes me as just plain wrong.

Where have all the good games gone? Max Payne was fun for a little while, but you can only empty so many clips into a computer controlled badguy before it loses its luster. If only you could loot their regs and steal their house key afterwards... -Greybeard

You would think with the recent attacks on the US that the nation's airports would be at a heightened level of security. Apparently, you would think wrong.

Right here in my home town at Atlanta's Hartsfield Airport we have the classic example of idiots in action. A 63 year old man walked through security checkpoints and made it all the way to his gate where he realized that he still has his handgun in his pocket. Realizing that he had both made an error not leaving it behind and finding that the security at the airport had failed to catch such a blatant weapon, he reported the incident to the authorities immediately.

They promptly showed their thanks for his help and honesty by arresting him.

I feel safer, don't you?

- Nighthawk

This was written by Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald and it's easily the best article I've seen in regards to the attacks on the US on Tuesday. The article link is gone, so I'll quote it here if only for the reason that I wish I'd expressed myself 1/10th as well :

We'll go forward from this moment
It's my job to have something to say.
They pay me to provide words that help make sense of that which troubles the American soul. But in this moment of airless shock when hot tears sting disbelieving eyes, the only thing I can find to say, the only words that seem to fit, must be addressed to the unknown author of this suffering.

You monster. You beast. You unspeakable bastard.

What lesson did you hope to teach us by your coward's attack on our World Trade Center, our Pentagon, us? What was it you hoped we would learn? Whatever it was, please know that you failed.

Did you want us to respect your cause? You just damned your cause.

Did you want to make us fear? You just steeled our resolve.

Did you want to tear us apart? You just brought us together.

Let me tell you about my people. We are a vast and quarrelsome family, a family rent by racial, social, political and class division, but a family nonetheless. We're frivolous, yes, capable of expending tremendous emotional energy on pop cultural minutiae -- a singer's revealing dress, a ball team's misfortune, a cartoon mouse. We're wealthy, too, spoiled by the ready availability of trinkets and material goods, and maybe because of that, we walk through life with a certain sense of blithe entitlement. We are fundamentally decent, though -- peace-loving and compassionate. We struggle to know the right thing and to do it. And we are, the overwhelming majority of us, people of faith, believers in a just and loving God.

Some people -- you, perhaps -- think that any or all of this makes us weak. You're mistaken. We are not weak. Indeed, we are strong in ways that cannot be measured by arsenals.

IN PAIN

Yes, we're in pain now. We are in mourning and we are in shock. We're still grappling with the unreality of the awful thing you did, still working to make ourselves understand that this isn't a special effect from some Hollywood blockbuster, isn't the plot development from a Tom Clancy novel. Both in terms of the awful scope of their ambition and the probable final death toll, your attacks are likely to go down as the worst acts of terrorism in the history of the United States and, probably, the history of the world. You've bloodied us as we have never been bloodied before.

But there's a gulf of difference between making us bloody and making us fall. This is the lesson Japan was taught to its bitter sorrow the last time anyone hit us this hard, the last time anyone brought us such abrupt and monumental pain. When roused, we are righteous in our outrage, terrible in our force. When provoked by this level of barbarism, we will bear any suffering, pay any cost, go to any length, in the pursuit of justice.

I tell you this without fear of contradiction. I know my people, as you, I think, do not. What I know reassures me. It also causes me to tremble with dread of the future.

In the days to come, there will be recrimination and accusation, fingers pointing to determine whose failure allowed this to happen and what can be done to prevent it from happening again. There will be heightened security, misguided talk of revoking basic freedoms. We'll go forward from this moment sobered, chastened, sad. But determined, too. Unimaginably determined.

THE STEEL IN US

You see, the steel in us is not always readily apparent. That aspect of our character is seldom understood by people who don't know us well. On this day, the family's bickering is put on hold.

As Americans we will weep, as Americans we will mourn, and as Americans, we will rise in defense of all that we cherish.

So I ask again: What was it you hoped to teach us? It occurs to me that maybe you just wanted us to know the depths of your hatred. If that's the case, consider the message received. And take this message in exchange: You don't know my people. You don't know what we're capable of. You don't know what you just started.

But you're about to learn.

-Nighthawk

Saw this on Neal Boortz's page and it struck a chord with me :

“We live in a wondrous time in which the strong is weak because of his moral scruples and the weak grows strong because of his audacity.” - Otto von Bismark

I took the day off from work to goof off in AC and leisurely do the day-to-day stuff (in game and rl) I rarely have time for. Little did I know I would be sitting around all day watching the most horrific events imaginable on TV. Hell, worse... I could never have imagined anything that bad...

Shock.

Pain.

Anger.

I can't fully express how much the events yesterday affected me and I wasn't even directly touched by the disasters. I can't begin to think about how the people are feeling who had family on those planes or in the buildings. I can't fathom what they are going through. My heart goes out to them.

If there is a hell, bin Laden is surely going there. The sooner, the better. I'd happily volunteer to send him on his way...

- Nighthawk

A couple of years ago I was invited by a local chickie to go down to Dragoncon to speak on a panel about online gaming. Let me give a brief backround on dragoncon if you don't know what it is. It is the largest sci-fi, comic, etc type convention in the US. Basically, it's a nerd and geek convention. I'd been once before and swore I would never go again because I'd had such a horrid time.

Anyhow, I was invited to speak on a panel of a few people about online gaming and such. It was just interesting and ego coddling of an invitation to get me to consider it. After being invited for the past two years, I finally end up down there this past weekend. I have to say that the only semi-normal people in the whole conference were in the room I was in. No strange people in stormtrooper, robocop, no women in "look, i'm a girl in latex to get attention", etc type costumes. Just people with questions.

On the online schedule I got top billing somehow even though Atheena ran the deal. Even more importantly there were several moments where I got to take a stab at OSI for fucking up the first huge and most immersive MMORPG. Of course I was labled the designated "murderer" among the panel which I'm not sure is a good thing, but I held true to character and surely played the part. Hell, they actually seemed to have a full grasp and appreciation of my sarcasm and vulgar style of humor. Go me.

Overall it was a fun experience. It was far too short, but the audience was a good one which certainly added to it. I of course left the second the thing was over short of stopping to talk to a fan of the site. But, I can now actually say that I had a pleasant experience at Dragoncon...

- Nighthawk

I'm bored at work and I start poking around Newgrounds for some flash stuff to pass the time. Lo and behold I came across Ron's M:WTF in the Portal area. Was pretty disheartened to see it's rating of 1.92, but more importantly I noticed that the guy who submit it was posing as a WTFMan. Strange how "budd" would try to pull that off since no budd is mentioned anywhere in the movie or on wtfman.com.

Anyhow, just thought that was odd.

On a side note, I know I've gotten away from posting things of a more online gaming nature. The reason for that is that most of you don't play AC, so you wouldn't be interested in what I would have to say on the only game I'm playing. So, either I bore you with stuff you don't care about or I bore you with no updates. Guess which one is less work for me...

- Nighthawk

Got this from one of my daily joke emails. Thought it was interesting enough to share :

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, and purple.

Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them use to burn their houses down - hence the expression "to get fired."

Canada is an Indian word meaning "Big Village".

There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.

Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2, but the last signature wasn't added until 5 years later.

"I am." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.

The term "the whole 9 yards" came from WWII fighter pilots in the South Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, it got "the whole 9 yards."

The most common name in the world is Mohammed.

The word "samba" means "to rub navels together."

The international telephone dialing code for Antarctica is 672.

The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.

Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots.

Until 1965, driving was done on the left-hand side on roads in Sweden. The conversion to right-hand was done on a weekday at 5pm. All traffic stopped as people switched sides. This time and day were chosen to prevent accidents where drivers would have gotten up in the morning and been too sleepy to realize that *this* was the day of the changeover.

The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.

Dr. Seuss pronounced "Seuss" such that it rhymed with "rejoice."

In Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart never said "Play it again, Sam."

Sherlock Holmes never said "Elementary, my dear Watson."

More people are killed annually by donkeys than die in air crashes.

The term, "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye" is from Ancient Rome. The only rule during wrestling matches was, "No eye gouging." Everything else was allowed, but the only way to bedisqualified was to poke someone's eye out.

A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.

The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.

Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt.

Money isn't made out of paper, it's made out of cotton.

Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.

- Nighthawk

So, some lucky guy won $141 million in the California lottery. The winner hasn't come forth yet, so the story on CNN was talking about how the store owner who sold the ticket was going to get .5% of the payout as his share. $705,000 ain't bad for a Taiwanese immigrant who just happened to sell the winning ticket.

Anyhow, what aggrivated me wasn't that, but what he SAID. When asked what he would do with the money he responded, "First, I'll probably put it in the bank."

Did he think he was gonna have to show up with a briefcase to get paid in cash or something? Like we thought he was going to stuff it under his mattress. Of course you're going to put it in the bank.

Blah... my patience with stupid people has worn thin...

- Nighthawk

I was talking to someone in IRC the other day about how slow the site has been recently, its constant downtimes, etc. Figured I would quote my FAQ from May 30th to him as an explaination and here is what I saw :

Why has your website been so slow recently? - Our old provider (digiweb.com) got bought out but Interliant. Basically, they rule. Since I'm the only active one posting, I'm not really looking for another host.

First let me say that I'm happy the fucker is dead. I can't think of many people on the planet that deserved death more than Timothy McVeigh.

What I do have a problem with HOW he died. Basically, lethal injection is where they give you several drugs. One puts you to sleep and the others make sure you don't wake up. The most painful thing he felt was the prick of the needle. That, my friends, is getting off light considering the man was responsible for the worst act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.

I'm of the strong opinion that if you're going to be put to death, you should die in the same mannor in which you killed. Stab someone? Your executor is coming with a knife. Shoot someone - a gun. In this case I would have loved to have seen Tim ducttaped up with C4 and told him it would go off "sometime". Or better yet, put him to sleep, tell everyone he died just like they did, and then wake his ass up a couple hours later and work him over for days.

Basically, death was too good for him.

- Nighthawk

I dunno about you, but putting a flamethrower on your car seems a bit extreme to me. Not to them. Hell, according to that CNN article, the first buyer was a Police Superintendent.

" My personal feeling is that it would definitely blind a person. He will never see again," says Blaster inventor Charl Fourie. Well no fucking shit! That happens when you melt someone's eyeballs. This guy is even seeking an international patent on this.

I'm all for defending my life and my property, but setting people on fire isn't the first method that comes to mind. But that's just me, I guess...

- Nighthawk

Wanted to take a quick moment to mass-answer the questions I most frequently get in email and in IRC.

1. Do you do the Flash work on WTFMan? - No, Ronald McDonald does every single bit of Flash animation for WTFMan.

2. Who originally did the stickfigure flash movies? - Someone on sohu.com. Dunno him nor can I read the chinese on the website or in the movies, but I think they were worthy of being linked.

3. When will M:WTF2 be released? - I don't have the slightest idea. Yes, I know Ron annouced that he was working on it back in Feburary, but he's obviously been busy with rl (moving, etc). I'm sure that when he gets around to finishing it, it'll get posted same day. It'll be done when it's done.

4. Why has your website been so slow recently? - Our old provider (digiweb.com) got bought out by Interliant. Basically, they rule. Since I'm the only active one posting, I'm not really looking for another host.

5. Do you play UO? - For the love of GodNO! I don't care about UO, I don't care if something funny, bad, GM related, etc happens in that game. Any emails about it are deleted.

6. Fine, what do you play? - I've been playing Asheron's Call since Nov 1999. No change in a long long time...

7. Why haven't the other WTFMen posted more? - Don't know, don't care. My only guess would be that they don't have anything to post, so they don't. Real insightful, huh?

8. Do you still have that IRC channel? - Yes, #wtfman is still there, but it's inactive as hell. Most of the time it's so quiet if someone talks I tell them to stfu because they ruin the silence.

Someone sent me this. I liked it, so I'm posting it.

1. Learn to work the toilet seat. If it's up, put it down. We need it up, you need it down. You don't hear us complaining about you leaving it down.

2. If you won't dress like the Victoria's Secret girls, don't expect us to act like soap opera guys.

3. If you think you're fat, you probably are. Don't ask us. We refuse to answer.

4. Don't cut your hair. Ever. Long hair is always more attractive than short hair. One of the big reasons guys fear getting married is that married women always cut their hair, and by then you're stuck with her.

5. Birthdays, Valentines, and Anniversaries are not quests to see if we can find the perfect present yet again!

6. If you ask a question you don't want an answer to, expect an answer you don't want to hear.

7. Sometimes, we're not thinking about you. Live with it. Don't ask us what we're thinking about unless you are prepared to discuss such topics as navel lint, the shotgun formation, or monster trucks.

8. Sunday = Sports. It's like the full moon or the changing of the tides. Let it be.

9. Shopping is not a sport, and no, we're never going to think of it that way.

10. When we have to go somewhere, absolutely anything you wear is fine. Really. You have enough clothes. You have too many shoes.

11. Crying is blackmail.

12. Ask for what you want. Let's be clear on this one: Subtle hints don't work. Strong hints don't work. Really obvious hints don't work. Just say whatever it is you want!

13. We don't know what day it is. We never will. Mark anniversaries on the calendar.

14. Peeing standing up is more difficult. We're bound to miss sometimes.

15. Most guys own three pairs of shoes. What makes you think we'd be any good at choosing which pair, out of thirty, would look good with your dress?

16. Yes and No are perfectly acceptable answers to almost every question.

17. Come to us with a problem only if you want help solving it. That's what we do.

18. Sympathy is what your girlfriends are for.

19. A headache that lasts for 17 months is a problem. See a doctor.

20. Foreign films are best left to foreigners.

21. Check your oil.

22. It is neither in your best interest nor ours to take the quiz together. No, it doesn't matter which quiz.

23. Anything we said 6 months ago is inadmissible in an argument. All comments become null and void after 7 days.

24. If something we said can be interpreted two ways, and one of the ways makes you sad or angry, we meant the other one.

25. Let us ogle. We're going to look anyway; it's genetic.

26. You can either tell us to do something OR tell us how to do something but not both.

27. Whenever possible, please say whatever you have to say during commercials.

28. The most ANY man can see is only 16 colors. Peach is a fruit, not a color.

29. If it itches, it will be scratched.

30. Beer is as exciting for us as handbags are for you.

31. If we ask what's wrong and you say "nothing," we will act like nothing's wrong. We know you're lying, but it's just not worth the hassle.

- Nighthawk

So, I'm taking a bit of a break from pvp in AC because of a 3rd party program called Gear (and a similar program Speedhack). These programs have been used in UO, EQ, Counterstrike, Quake3 and now my beloved Asheron's call. Basically it makes your client do everything uber quickly and thusly you can do things in game that are normally impossible. The affects on AC is that people run at ungodly speeds, cast short range spells from off radar and such. Pretty much it ruins the game if you play for PvP... like I do.

Its been pretty publically abused in AC for about a month now but no fix, no patch, and only the obscure reference to "we're working on it" from the dev team. One of the devs that plays on the AC PvP server, Darktide, understands how game destroying such a hack utility is to our world, but the rest of the dev team has such a problem on the back burner.

Counterstrike and Quake3 patched gear out, so I would hope that the AC Dev team could/would do the same. Of course, the pvp population for those two games is 100% while ours is much less, but even with that in mind you would think that something that so drastically affects their game in any sense would have their undivided attention.

Blah... it's such a good game too its a shame this had to happen to it. Aside from Devilmouse, I have lost faith in the Turbine guys. I guess this is what happens when you hire a carebear to run a development team.

- Nighthawk

One thing the Chinese can do right is make cool Kung-fu animations. Here's a collection os the Xiao Xiao stick figure fights.

- Nighthawk

I wish I knew who originally wrote this, but this definitely should have been what our "apology" to China read like :

Apology To China....

The United States of America apologizes to the People's Republic of China for allowing our slow, lumbering reconnaissance plane to be hit by your poorly trained, hot-dogging fighter pilot, while flying in international airspace.

We're sorry we have to fly surveillance missions to monitor a country that has nuclear missiles pointed at us.

We're sorry your pilot didn't follow international standards of fighter intercept protocol.

We're sorry his aircraft recognition skills were so poor he didn't realize the EP-3 aircraft was propeller driven and flew his aircraft through its propeller arc, destroying his aircraft and nearly killing 24 American crewmen.

We're sorry your fighter pilot's survival training and equipment was so inadequate that he couldn't survive until your poorly trained and equipped navy could find him (they turned down our offer for search and rescue assistance).

We're sorry you violated international law and arrested the crewmen of an aircraft that legally diverted into your airfield under emergency conditions caused by your pilot's actions, after being led there by one of your other pilots.

We're sorry you violated international law and boarded a state aircraft.

We're sorry the world is now seeing you for the enemy of freedom, truth, and democracy that you really are.

We're sorry you see yourself as a superpower when in reality you are a third world nation (the average Chinese worker earns less than $.10 a day).

We're sorry you are losing so much face over this.

We're sorry that you were able to steal some missile and nuclear secrets from us.

We're sorry you haven't learned from the Soviet Union's collapse and failed to embrace democracy and capitalism (compare tiny Taiwan and mainland China; same people, same culture, but Taiwan's capitalistic economy is a powerhouse and China's economy is still mired in communism).

We're sorry for the future Chinese military deaths that will occur when we retaliate for your roughish behavior.

And most of all, we're sorry for the Chinese people who suffer its leaders' incompetence.

Some of the people who emailed me about my last post had a real problem with me making reference to a nuclear attack on China. Those of you who took that seriously need to get a grip. Only a suicidal idiot wants a nuclear war to break out. It's called overstating to make a point. If you didn't comprehend that, please stop reading this site - you're not intelligent enough to qualify for our humor.

Want to know where my animosity towards China comes from? Here are a few tidbits of information :

• The Panama Canal is a big deal. Its the easiest (and most common way) to get back and forth from the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. We gave the canal back to the Panamanians who promptly turned around and leased BOTH ENDS to China. Hmm... China is now poised to setup critical military facilities at the Panama Canal, only 900 miles from the United States. The best news? Thanks to our treaty with Panama, we had a bit of control over this happening - but Bill Clinton signed off on it allowing their deal to proceed.

• Several of our spy planes have been "bumped" by china's fighters. This is just the first time that both planes with damaged to the point of being unable to continue flying.

• China requesting an apology when they were obviously the aggressors shows their utter contempt for the US. During the couple of weeks that the plane ordeal was going on, interviewed Chinese suggested things like, "We should go to war so we can kill all Americans."

• Thanks to the past 8 years of democrats in the presidency, our military is at its all-time weakest. We've kept the same number of active military (appx 1 million), but the female "non-combat" portion has raised from 5% to nearly 30%. So, while on paper we look to be the same, we're not.

• Including the active military, reserves and even the draft, the largest our war-ready-military could swell to is about 6 million. China's active military is around 9 million, 11 million on active-reserve (that train several times a year) with another 20 million in reserves. That's 40 million people they have available for war.

• China still practices some of the most fucked up acts on it's own people. To test biological weapons they whiped out a village of 25000 people. In some areas, if a family has more than 1 child, the "extra" child is taken outside and bayoneted to death. If the family hides the child, they can be put to death.

• China has recently purchased a fleet of Mig fighters and torpedoes that can go up to 260 mph specifically designed to take out aircraft carriers.

I've been keeping an eye on this whole deal with the american plane in China. Basically the rundown is that our plane flying in international airspace smacked into a jet from China that was coming out to give them hell. Granted our plane was a spy plane, but international airspace is well... not China's. Come out and take a look, but don't run into our plane.

Now their jet and pilot are missing and they want us to fold and apologize. If not, they're keeping our plane and some 20 of our men that had to make an emergency landing on a Chinese island.

Not only do I think we shouldn't apologize, but I think we should simply tell them, "give us our fuckin plane and our fuckin men or taste an a-bomb."

Apologize. Pfft.

Fuckem.

- Nighthawk

Just when you thought that it could get no better than killing an entire guild of Koreans with pre-cast flamestrike and hally combo's, along comes Nascar 4. I can attest to the fact that although they leave no loot for you afterwards, there is nothing more fulfilling than putting someone into the wall on turn 4 of Daytona at 190 MPH. (Just ask Dale Earnhardt) Although its still in the development stages, here you can see my WTF-Mobile up close and personal.

So if you play Nascar 4 and happen to see a car with a giant clown head coming up fast in your rear view mirror just remember that there usually arent any wandering healers in pit row.

-Greybeard

Just a quick note that the above "Quote of the Day" is a link now that leads to older quotes. As we put up new quotes, the older ones will go in there. I don't remember all of the quotes we've had, so it's slim pickens for now.

The current quote I saw first on Lum's page (no link for you fatboy), but since I could not contain myself from absolutely laughing out loud, I had to share. Its just funny on too many levels to not find endlessly amusing.

- Nighthawk