If You're Reading This

This is a video that I put together of military funeral pictures and me singing "If You're Reading This" by Tim McGraw. I hope you like it, and the video should speak for itself.

   - Sapper Woody

Breaking Games: World of Warcraft "Mobile Auction House"

Even though this isn't strictly "breaking" the game, this follows my same lines of thinking of using something already in the game to your advantage.

In World of Warcraft, there is a wonderful thing called the Auction House, or AH. Just like a real AH, you list items on there for sale, and other real players buy them with in game currency, and the AH takes a cut of what is made.

Well, this is all well and good, except the AHs are only located in major cities. This presents a hassle for players who are questing far away from the major hubs.

Fortunately, a simple solution exists that players can exploit. It's called a "Banking Toon", or simply "Bank". All you have to do is to make a level one character and have them walk to the nearest major city. Then, any time your main character gets an item he wants to sell on the AH, he simply mails this item to his bank. The bank then lists the item, and gets the profit. This has effectively turned any mailbox into a "Mobile Auction House".

   - Sapper Woody

WoW Parody #2

I wrote another WoW parody. This time it's to the tune of Hoobastank's "The Reason". I entitled the song "The Reason (is Loot)".

Basically, as a background to this, for people who don't know. In patch 4.1, Blizzard introduced the ability to trade honor points gained from Player Versus Player (PvP) into justice points, normally reserved for Player Versus Environment (PvE) players. This allowed casual gamers to join BattleGrounds (BGs) and play PvP games, and then get the loot that they couldn't before.

While some hardcore players are upset about this, it really (In my opinion) doesn't change much from the welfare loot system they've had in place ever since WotLK.

Enjoy the video, and leave some comments!

   - Sapper Woody

09June11 Update: Selection and Deployment

Well, for those of you who don't know, I just got back from SFAS, or "Special Forces Assessment and Selection". I didn't do so well. I didn't get selected this time. But, I plan on trying again in a year or so.

On my way out of Ft Bragg, I had to stay in a hotel off of post, due to no vacancies in the hotel on post. Because of jet lag (and possible Mountain Dew overdose!), I couldn't sleep well that night. So I took a walk. When I came back to my room, a guy came around a corner with a steak knife in one hand, and demanded I give him my wallet. I started to comply, but for some reason or another, the guy decided to try and cut me anyway. he was partially successful, and now I have a nice cut on my face that makes me look like Seifer from Final Fantasy 8. But cutting me made me mad. He didn't walk away with my wallet that night. But he did walk away with a broken nose, a dislocated elbow, and possibly a fractured rib.

I got home to talk to my unit, and as it turns out I will be deploying to Afghanistan shortly. Probably before the fall. Obviously, I can't put dates on here, due to OpSec (Operational Security). Hopefully, I will be able to continue posting threads from Afghanistan. My plan is to start a new segment about the deployment, and life in Afghanistan.

In other news, I am working on my second World of Warcraft Parody. It's recorded, and I am just waiting on some sound bits from a couple friends before I put a quick video and post it to YouTube. I found out that YouTube counts all the views from an embedded video, so I will also be embedding the video here in my blog.

   - Sapper Woody

Bye Bye, Went the Tank Healer Guy

So, a while back I posted words of a parody that I had written to "American Pie". I finally got the music done, and uploaded the video to youtube.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEuczzPgkug

Enjoy, and leave feedback!

   -Sapper Woody

Mobile Apps: Stick Swing

I was just told about this game for your mobile device, called "Stick Swing". Its name is really descriptive; the goal is to swing your stick figure from platform to platform. Landing closer to the middle gets you more points. As you swing, the platforms get smaller and smaller. You also eventually have to contend with various wind directions/speeds, and even gravity speed/direction (A down arrow means you fall faster, and up arrow means you float more).

I played this game for about 30 minutes the first time I ever tried it out.

My high score so far is 15900. See if you can beat me! If so, post here.

   - Sapper Woody

Save the Planet?

So, the local commissary on the military post where I live has decided to "go green" by no longer allowing their grocery bagging crew to double bag items. I totally get this. Don't use as much plastic, there's not as much to get rid of / recycle. Everyone wins.

They also have those green cloth reusable bags that you can buy. In the face of no double bagging, and also wanting to help do my part to conserve resources and not pollute, me and my wife have been buying a few of those bags each time we go to the store. Eventually we will be completely without plastic bags at all.

Imagine my surprise when I got to the car after our last grocery trip to find not only were some of my groceries double bagged, but the three green "eco-friendly" bags we had bought were nicely and neatly wrapped in plastic bags for us.

You do the math.

   - Sapper Woody