From Russia to Russia with love

There was a Financial Times interview with Russian president-elect Dmitry Medvedev published March 24. The interview is interesting and enlightening in many ways, as the president-elect sets forth a couple of key policy goals for the next few years. However, what I found most revealing was the extent of Dmitry Medvedev’s man-crush on Vladimir Putin. The interviewer asks a couple of questions about working with Putin, and Medvedev’s answers are downright fawning. Example:

FT: Let’s talk about foreign affairs. Is Mr Putin right that the west, the world, will find you, in his words, no easier to deal with?

DM: Of course he’s right. You asked whether he is right or not and he’s right.

FT: He’s right on most things?

DM: Of course. He is an experienced and effective leader of the country.

(http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f40629a8-f9ba-11dc-9b7c-000077b07658.html)

Then he added, “And I love him with the burning passion of a thousand suns!” There are other parts of the interview, too, where Medvedev heaps praise on his boss. While the interview left unclear the exact roles that will be played by each man in the coming administration, it made quite clear DM *hearts* VP, and I don’t think I have to spell out for you what to expect if they were ever found in a tree together.

Quick observation

I doubt that this holds for women, but men often make a lot of noise while peeing. I’m not talking about stream noise, but sighs, grunts, and groans. I don’t (or hope I don’t), and I find the noises gross. I want to ask the pisser, “Did you really need to piss that bad that you have to groan or sigh about it? If so, you need to pee more often.”

Bridge is cool again after 80 years

Wired has a new wiki about playing bridge that I found interesting. It wasn’t interesting because of what it offers (not much), but because of the list of people and companies that are now getting into bridge. I’ve been a bridge player since I was about 13, so it makes me glad that the game is picking up in popularity. It’s an understandable phenomenon; bridge is a fun, intricate, and social game. I haven’t had the opportunity to play much in recent years (I usually play with my cousins up at my family’s camp in Maine; I haven’t been up there at the same time that they’ve been up there for a long time), but maybe now I can convince people to learn and play using the old “all the cool kids are doing it” argument.

Things I’m Excited About

Today we have a video game edition of TIEA. I’m excited about the next World of Warcraft patch, 2.4 (full patch notes here), and not for the normal reasons. To be honest, I’m not really excited about the new badge rewards or the 5-man and 25-man instances. I don’t run enough Heroics to get lots of badges and I will never run 25-man content of any sort, much less the super-tough, Tier 6-token dropping Sunwell Plateau. Here are my reasons to be excited:

1. Blue PvP Gear: I’m excited about the new blue PvP items that can be bought cheaply if you have enough (Honored) rep with certain factions. I main a druid, and the new PvP sets make it a lot easier for me to have a decent (obviously not great, but playable) PvP set for all three specs (feral, resto, boomkin). I’ve done lots of grinding to get decent feral and resto sets, but the new blue sets will let me finish those off without more grinding. With current and new faction awards (see below), I can even build a decent boomkin set (what fun!) without too much time in the boring BGs. I am excited about this because each of these specs plays like a different class, so it’s like I’ll have three level 70 characters. I like to experiment with different play-styles but have not had the patience to level another character to 70. I haven’t experimented much with my druid because obtaining three moderately competitive sets of gear is a shit-ton of work. Patch 2.4 will make it less frustrating for me to try out different specs.
2. Daily Quests: The second Patch 2.4 item I’m excited about is the daily quest additions. There are a bunch of new ones for the Shattered Sun Offensive and you can now do 25 a day instead of 10. This adds some new solo-grinding I can do when I’m not in the mood for groups or PvP, which is often. The rep awards for SSO also fit nicely with the new easy-to-obtain PvP sets. Plus, I can make more money.

Of course, by the time I post this 2.4 is already on the live servers. Oh well, my excitement still stands, and will have to last awhile since I doubt I will get to play until later this week. Plus, all my add-ons will be broken; a further deterrent to my jumping on and playing right away. 

Back

My absence from writing has been so long that the statute of limitations on lame absences has expired, so I do not need to give an explanation. I will write now as if I have been writing all these past months.

I’ve got some new features to roll out today on the site. One is “Quick Observations” (tag = QO). I will write these as I observe things in life that I find interesting, funny, or stupid. I will probably do lots of them because they don’t take any time. The other is “Things I’m Excited About” (tag = TIEA). I get pumped about things I want to buy, upcoming video game releases, and a number of other things. I’ll write them down here to help quell my excitement a little. As a trial of sorts, I have one of each today.