Down and Out

I’ll tell you the worst thing about business travel. One word, cords. Chargers for the laptop, cell phone, palm (Foton doesn’t do Blackberry), iPod, PSP and/or GBA, et al. Cables for the laptop in case the mofo hotel doesn’t do wireless, USB cords, firewire cords and heaven help you if you need presentation equipment.

When will it all end?!?!

Anyways. Back at work, I return the conquering hero with buckets of money (to materialize someday in measured increments) and I even brought back a treat for you, loyal AFK Gamer post camper.

Bums.

Recall my envy of the carefree bum lifestyle. While I was traveling, I ninja’d a few bum photos to add to my collection. And when I say ninja, I do mean exactly that, because if a bum catches you taking his or her photo, you’re in trouble, my friend. At the very least, they’ll yell at you. The NYC bums will do worse — they’re hardc0re.

Clickable thumbnails:

Pantsless Bum

This fella might have been wearing really short shorts, but, for obvious reasons, I didn’t check.

Industrious Bum

This guy is possibly the hardest working bum in all of America. He pushed his fully loaded contraption all the way up a steep hill to the nearby recycling center to get his daily pay. That’s a full day’s work, which makes me wonder: how could a more conventional job be any more work than that??

Traditional Bum

A traditional cardboard sign, Vietnam vet down on his luck, bum. Just think … we could be creating a whole new generation of down-on-their-luck vet bums in the Middle East right now. Great.

And finally …

Yelling Bum

… yelling bum. I couldn’t figure out what his problem was, beyond possible mental illness, that is. But, he was damn angry about something.

I discovered another downside to the bum lifestyle during my recent studies: lack of proper dental care. I don’t mind smelling up the place, but my teeth have got to look good. Keeping all of my teeth and having fresh breath are priorities for me.

You gamer kids out there, heed this warning: these bums could be you. Neglecting your schoolwork, skipping a semester or two of college to powerlevel or farm gold, losing your job because you’re getting too hardc0re, all those are crash and burn situations. Don’t let it come to that.

End of the lecture.

Speaking of bums, upon my return, I logged into World of Warcraft to check on what the bums I’m guilded with have been up to. Hardly got the chance to catch up before … SERVER CRASH. Now isn’t that special.

Lucky for us, not everyone had arrived at our chosen farm instance yet — no harm, no foul. Everyone gets back in, we load up for bear, we commence a-killing, we get about halfway through, almost to the first boss, then … SERVER CRASH. Oh, how I’ve missed you, Warcrap.

Now, there’s wailling and gnashing of teeth. Anytime there’s a double crash, we always worry that the whole system is about to come crashing around our ears if we reclear. Again.

We’re not so stupid to hope that a GM would respond to a petition that we lost loot, or the instance got bugged, or we have to reclear trash. If Foton tells some assbag paladin to fuck off in /say, there’s a GM all over that within minutes, but the other stuff, there’s no GMs to be found.

(Not that that ever happened. The assbag might have been a warrior, I forget. That fucker’s on The List now though, I can tell you that much.)

Whatever, we finished the night up with no further crashing so we figure, ok, problem must be solved now.

Next night, we meet up with one of our allied guilds to do one of the big boy instances. We spend about an hour inside, almost troublefree, other than I had to explain the facts of life to this god-complex rogue after he continually drained our priest’s mana. Did he learn? No. So fuck him, the priest let him die a few times and he was little more … mannerly … after Death #3.

I mean Christ, hasn’t he ever wondered what the fuck a warrior’s job is? I know aggro control is iffy in Warcraft, but turn off the fucking attack if need be — vanish, dodge, rogues have about a million options for ditching aggro. Trash fights aren’t so marginal that we need to unload the specials and mana into every damn mob.

Crimony!

We arrived at the first big boy mob, we discussed strat, fresh buffs, mana’d up, the whole deal. The raid leader was typing out his last instruction before engaging and BOOM … two-thirds of the raid went offline, leaving the rest of us to look around nervously, thinking, “ummmm?”

And a half hour later, “ummmm?” Do we call it? Do we stay or do we go? No word on the WoW boards because those are fucked to hell also.

So we called it … as did every other major guild that night from the looks of Ironforge soon after.

Oh, the joys of endgame raiding with 30+ players, mobs that hit like a truck and stingy loot tables. Missed all that, too.

6 thoughts on “Down and Out

  1. Hey, welcome back man. In my head the pants-free bum was singing “The Old Grey Mare”, but that may only be because I’ve been watching too much Simpsons.

  2. Welcome back.

    I was one of the victims of the crash, took them about three hours to get our server back on it’s feet.

    Last time I visited my hometown, I got hit up by a bum who just said, “I need some money for beer.” I gave him a buck – at least he was honest.

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