Meme Monday: Quirky Memes

While I was working on the deck this weekend, I caught myself doing one of my quirks: talking to myself out loud. Apparently the majority of people have an inner monologue that they converse with, but I have an unfortunate tendency to respond to my inner monologue aloud when nobody's around.*

That got me to perusing my meme pile for memes that fit the description of geeky quirks.

OMG yes!
From Titbits and Teacups, and from Nerd Quirks,
which is sadly no more.

I could also use this on a book memes
post, but I figured it works here too.
From ifunny.co.

I have been known to do this.
From @MisterD78UK.

And yes, Reading Quirks does exist as an Instagram
feed. Almost makes me want to login to Instagram to
read all the rest.

*Or I think nobody's around. 

Some People go on Vacation to Rest...

...but I end up working on projects instead.

I'm not exactly sure why I derive such enjoyment from working on a project, but I do. Maybe it's that my job is a case study in never seeing anything truly finished*, or maybe that I'm naturally biased toward working on things with my hands, but when a job finishes up there's a wave of satisfaction that washes over me, if only for a little while.

Of course, things are never that easy. About halfway through a project I get an itch to start another one, and that presents a problem. Sure, the new shiny idea does capture my attention when I'm in the middle of something else, but it also means that I've forgotten why I was excited about the original project in the first place. If I can get through these urges, I can see a project through to completion.

As far as the deck goes, yes, I have felt those urges already.

Still, I've been pushing onward.

My workstation on the porch. I thought the
deck was completely attached to the porch,
but having seen the framing underneath, they
are actually separate. Go figure.

Thankfully I bought the miter saw quickstand, because I wouldn't be able to finish this deck project otherwise. The reviews talked about how light the Ryobi miter saw is, and if that's light I'd hate to lift the "normal" weighted saws.

I finished the last of this current batch of wood, but this also involved doing some other work on the deck.

See where that exit to the north is? That's one of the two locations where I'm going to replace the stairs. As you can tell, there's only one post there to attach a stair railing. Since you need two stair rails, that meant either I was going to put in a post now or wait and do it next year when I actually work on the stairs.

I chose the former. Do it now while the area under the deck is exposed so I don't have to take out boards later. 

Painter's tape is a wonderful invention.

I used painter's tape to attach a level, so I could work it without needing an extra pair of hands.

What's hidden by the support board are extra screws attaching
the post to the ledger board.

No, your eyes do not deceive you, that post is taller than
it's compatriot on the left side. I decided it was smarter to
install a longer post and then cut it down rather than
risk installing a post that was too short.

So now, with 2/3 of the rows replaced, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I have 3-4 leftover 16' deck boards that I'll use when the last batch of wood arrives, and once those are all installed I'll be done for the year. I think I'll use this Winter to let my back rest.

*If you work in IT, you know what I'm talking about. Sure, there are "projects" that end up being "completed", but I'd say only 1 out of 10 projects I've worked on ever crossed the finish line to my satisfaction. There's far too much horse trading going on trying to keep the bugs and disruption to a minimum versus finishing within a (so-called) reasonable time frame.

A Truly Remarkable Life

Sometimes I have this urge to post multiple times in a day, after having not a lot to talk about over a week.

Kind of just figures, right?

Several years ago, I was aware of a WoW player named Mats Steen who'd passed away back in 2014 from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, and his parents were surprised when several of  Mats' WoW friends showed up at his funeral. The events were picked up in a story first presented for the NRK (in Norwegian) in Norway in 2019, but translated and presented on the BBC in English.

It was a touching article, and a reminder that the friends we make in MMOs impact far more people than we may never know. People like Mats are the reason why I play MMOs: not for the shinies or the achievements or the story, but for the people. I'm afraid that too many players lose sight that it is people that make these games special, and not just your buddies on a raid team. It's all about the friendships you make along the way. However, I thought that was that, and the memory of Mats faded over time.

Then I was surprised to see this pop up on my YouTube feed on Tuesday:

From BBC Channel 4.

About a minute into the interview, I realized that yes, I remembered the story of Mats, but... What is it with the animation?

Then I realized that someone (Benjamin Ree) had made a documentary about Mats, and his main, Ibelin. I quickly searched for The Remarkable Life of Ibelin and found the trailer on YouTube:

How did I not know this was coming?

The documentary releases on Netflix in the US on Friday; I was concerned it might be only watchable in Europe. It's already garnered a bunch of awards and nominations at Sundance and other film festivals, so that's a very good sign.

And yes, I checked and we have enough tissues so that when I'm ready to watch it, I can.

More Silence on the (Guild) Banking Industry

I figured I ought to provide an update on the Great Blizzard Bank Heist. Kurn dropped yet another YouTube video Monday evening,

Basically, Blizzard hasn't done much of anything, despite Kurn trying to stir the pot to at least get some visibility on the matter. She's also tried to get some visibility by going to Bellular Gaming, Wowhead, and Blizzard Watch (among other people) without so much as even an acknowledgement response. Blizzard saying nothing I pretty much expected --anybody who has had to try to navigate Microsoft's helpdesk knows how frustrating that can be-- but I at least expected better from Michael Bell and Blizzard Watch.

The Retail WoW community in general has collectively shrugged and moved on in the same way that people not directly affected have moved on after Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton.

Other than that, I don't have much to add. I guess there's a big patch coming up in the next day or two which also includes some changes to the banks, so... Uh, good luck with that.

Meme Monday: New to MMOs Memes

We've all been new to an MMO, right? Whether it's WoW, Final Fantasy XIV, SWTOR, LOTRO, New World, or some other game, we've all been the newbie to the genre. So this is dedicated to those first few months that we've spent figuring this genre out.

Trying to figure out what MMO to play is always an
adventure, and not necessarily the good kind. And no,
I don't know what game the scantily clad elf is from.
My guess is BDO. From YouTube.

(And if you understand MMOs now, let me know. I still have a curve ball thrown at me every other week, and I've been  playing since 2009.)

Emblematic of all games, but MMOs in particular,
it's hard to understand the lingo and systems
while you're getting acclimated. From Reddit. Again.

Keeping new players engaged is a real
problem, and weaponizing FOMO is starting
to get a bit old. Once it gets past a certain
point, game companies are going to have to
figure out something else, because the cynicism
will overhwelm any sense of FOMO.
From Reddit. (Do I detect a trend?)

Yeah, this sort of thing happens all the time.
From Pinterest.

Interacting with other players can be good, 
but some MMOs encourage toxic behavior
by design. From Reddit (once more).

Some games are highly customizable with addons, 
which... becomes a problem. Then again, a lot of
MMO players turn off the music and sound and
focus on the addons anyway. From Reddit.

And finally, you knew there was a Starter Pack about MMORPGs...

I feel like they're picking on WoW Classic and
Old School Runescape here. From Reddit.

Making Sense of Incomprehensibility

Sometimes I wonder just how traffic flows on the internet.

Oh, not the technical version, mind you, because at one point I could tell you precisely how networking via TCP-IP actually worked*, but I meant in terms of why traffic flows to a specific location.

If you know the name of this character that Peter
Falk is playing, you might want to go schedule
a colonoscopy. From Tenor.com.

I keep up with the Meme Monday posts for a couple of reasons, namely to push myself into posting more often by having a regular column and having an outlet for my snarky sense of humor. However, another reason to post Meme Mondays is that --by and large-- more eyeballs look at those posts than any of my other ramblings on this blog. That shouldn't be a surprise since those posts have the broadest appeal as opposed to the gamer-geek centric fare typically found on the blog.

Still, I can be surprised by what takes off and what doesn't.

When a post takes off within gamer space, that's typically driven by eyeballs on a post itself. What I mean is that traffic goes directly to that post because it got a bump from somewhere out there in the blogosphere, such as the times when a post from PC would get a mention on the now-defunct WoW Insider. The first time that happened, on the series of posts I made comparing Blood Elves and Draenei back in December 2011, caught me by surprise. All I knew at first was that our traffic had spiked from a dozen or so views to 2000 or more, and I had no idea what the hell was going on. It was only after I dug into the data that I realized almost all of the traffic was coming from WoW Insider, whereupon following it back I discovered we'd gotten a mention in their weekly blog spotlight column. The traffic eventually reverted back to normal levels, but for a week or so PC got a nice boost.

This sort of behavior has happened from time to time, based primarily upon getting a mention in other blogs or websites with readership far greater than our own, but it could also be due to pertinent data appearing in a post. Such as Souldat's post on How to Effectively Tank the Lich King from 2010, which remains our single most viewed post on the blog. It didn't get a spike in viewership, but it had a steady number of views for several years. That it used to get on the main page of Google Search results didn't hurt.**

That being said, by and large the majority of spiky traffic that does come to the blog goes to the blog's main page rather than a specific post, which tells me that that traffic isn't driven by the gamer geek ecosphere.

Here ya go; the last three months' worth of traffic.

While I can guess what might have driven some traffic --the spike at the end is likely due to the magic words "Discworld" and "Kickstarter"-- a lot of those spikes come from way out of nowhere. I can't assume that a single post drove traffic to the blog, because the spikes in July, September and October show up during my "dead time" between posts. Blaugust is also no help, since you can't look at an individual post and say "yeah, that's brought people here". There's also the undercurrent of web crawlers and whatnot that will flow through all of your website creating a higher base level than what I'd call the true number of regular readers.

***

I've always known that the internet is a fickle beast, but blogging over the past decade and a half has reinforced those opinions. I still laugh at people --typically business types and marketers-- who think that "making something go viral" is just what internet creators do. "We need you to create a viral video for this" is a query I've heard on occasion***, as if you can snap your fingers and views will magically appear, but it's the sense that some people who "get" the internet and can manipulate it to their own ends that drives me batty. 

The internet doesn't work like that; what goes viral and what doesn't is pretty much an unknown. So I'll just continue to wonder just what the hell it is that occasionally makes PC's viewership spike.

*If you gave me an hour or two I could refresh my memory on all of the details beyond the basics of hubs, routers, setting up a local LAN behind a firewall, etc.

**In case you're wondering, the advent of Wrath Classic and the opening of Icecrown Citadel did not result in a corresponding spike in views. I presume everybody ran to Wowhead to find out what the currently accepted strat is for the Lich King fight. Since I never actually got to raid ICC, I couldn't tell you whether the current meta matches what Soul had written down over a decade ago.

***Never directed at me, thankfully.

Adding to the "To Be Read" Pile

I knew that Sir Terry Pratchett's novels were popular, but I underestimated just how popular they are.

As of 5:05 PM today.

This is kind of bonkers, but it also underscores the popularity of Discworld.

I never read any of Sir Terry's work, even though I was very much aware of it, because I've been a bit intimidated by it. I'm aware that there's a lot of puns and humor in the novels, and my concern was that I simply wouldn't get the humor in them. Kind of like watching Red Dwarf, I know there's humor there, but a lot of it simply flew over my head because it was so British that I didn't get the context.*

Or maybe trying to understand some of the Monty Python's Flying Circus social commentary, particularly with (then) current political and celebrity characters appearing as caricatures. To me, I simply had no grasp of the context at all, so it could have been humor surrounding Warren G. Harding and the Teapot Dome Scandal for all I knew. The Parrot Sketch? Sure, I got that one. The Ministry of Silly Walks? Yeah, because every country has a blasted bureaucracy. But a lot of Terry Gilliam's cartoons? Eh, not so much.**

But given Sir Terry's popularity, underscored by the support for the Discworld RPG, I think I might give the series a chance.

Yay, one more book (or is that set of books?) for the TBR pile.

*Before you ask, yes, I gave Red Dwarf a chance. My brother-in-law loved the show, which is how I was introduced to it.

**Although I did see a graphic of Edward Heath in a couple of them. I know him not because of The Beatles' Taxman song ("Uh oh, Mister Heath"), but because I attended a question and answer session with Mr. Heath when he was in Dayton for something or another back when I was in college. Let's just say that Mr. Heath does not suffer fools very well, and I'm glad I decided I wasn't going to ask him a question even though the opening was there.