Two of the most popular games you could find on the local BBS was Tradewars and Legend of the Red Dragon(LORD). Both of which remain popular to this day. Legend of the Red Dragon can even be played online through your browser if you happen to find one that is open. All you need to do is Google for either one.

Tradewars is fairly easy to find and it is in its original ASCII form. You can still play it via telnet. I understand that there was a MMORPG of Tradewars in development at one time but I do not know if it is still in progress. You can probably find out more at their website. There was an attempt to make a browser based game that was similar, but it never really took off.

Legend of the Red Dragon also still can be played in its original form. But you can also find a game that is similar to it and just as fun in a browser based role playing game.

Legend of the Green Dragon is fairly similar to Legend of the Red Dragon. The idea is basically the same. Adventure to slay the dragon. However that is about as much as you can find that is the same.

You can still find some of these old text based games online if you just look for them. Or maybe you can find something that is similar in a browser based game. Either way, you can bring back some of those old memories.

Grinding for gold is the most basic and most common form of gold farming. Since this is the most basic form of gold farming it does get a lot of attention from all sorts of players. However most players never end of grinding out the amount of gold they should. It’s very easy to farm up to 250g/hour now with the Burning Crusade. The mobs drop a lot more coin, the items that drop vendor for a higher price.

On top of this you will be getting greens, blues and epics that will be selling for an even larger price then before. You can sell your items for a lot more gold because the average drop rates coin itself has been increased. This means there are a lot more players out there with money to throw around.

Knowing the correct places to farm and know how to farm are key assets when it comes to playing World of Warcraft effectively. Many players make minor mistakes when it comes to farming that it puts them far behind the rest of the competition.

Downtime is one of the most major mistakes players make when grinding gold. Downtime is the amount of time during grinding that you spend NOT killing other mobs. This includes running to the next mob, sitting for a drink, chatting to your friends, not chain-casting your next spell (casting the spell as soon as it’s available) all of these things will drop your gold per hour rate. The most common downtime is sitting down to eat or drink. Every class has a favorable “Grinding spec” and if you plan to farm for gold for a certain amount of time, it’s well worth the money to re-spec to.

Every time you take a seat to drink or eat, you are knocking anywhere between 15-30 seconds off of your killing time. Let’s say you can kill 5 mobs in a row without having to sit and drink or eat. That means, every time you kill 100 mobs you are spending 10 minutes on your butt. That’s a pretty large amount of time, and most classes can’t even make it 5 mobs with some of the specs.

For instance, my Mage was Fire Spec for a while until I realized I was only getting about 3 kills on average in before I had to take a drink. I switched to frost, which is a premiere grinding spec and it got me up to 8 kills before I sat down. This is a great rate because I nearly cut my downtime to 2/3rd of the rate it was.

So next time you go out grinding, remember that downtime is a key penalty to the gold rate you pull in. You can easily double your gold rate over night by choosing the right spec for your character.

This is by no means the only way to create your WoW fortune. But it might get you more than what you were normally getting. There are other ways to get gold as well. One of them can be found here.

At one time I thought it was causing a high server load. But it wasn’t the problem. The CMS was actually the problem. It was being attacked and compromised almost daily. Between that and the large numbers of players I had on the game at one time it was getting some heavy server loads.

Unfortunately, this caused some people to find other places to go. Many of them have not returned. Some have.

I would like to think that the game I run here is unique compared to other servers. I have tweaked it a bit to make it a little harder. I have also tried to tweak it to make it a bit more fair. Not easy to do and I’m sure I still have quite a bit of work to do to it.

When I get some time, I also try to create new content for the game. Currently I am working on a new village. Last time I tried it, I screwed everything up but oh well. That’s part of the fun.

Sometimes people will leave the game. From frustration, boredom or something else entirely I’m not always certain. But the vast majority of those who do leave end up coming back.

I would like to think that people stay because of the unique content and the players themselves who make up the game.

If you haven’t had time to check out the game, try it out. You may find that you enjoy it. Just find the link to the right and join up today.

Maybe I can get a couple of the regular readers and players to post a comment about the game.

Mammoth Lakes is in the Eastern Sierras of California. Not far from Bishop. Many people from Los Angeles come to ski there on long weekends. It is only a short 3 hour drive for me from my hotel.

The drive there isn’t all that great but it does take you through Montgomery Pass in Nevada. Fortunately for me there wasn’t any snow or ice on the road at this time of the year.

I arrived rather early for me. About 10am.

The rental of ski’s and the lift ticket for the day was fairly reasonable. It was about $108 for everything I needed. Skis, Poles and Boots with a 1 Day Lift Pass.

Of course I had to purchase a few other things but we won’t get into that.

Being as old as I am and completely out of shape, this was going to be an interesting day.

I took the lift up and decided I would stick to the Green slopes since it has been many years since I have even attempted to ski. I think 1990 was the last time.

I quickly found out how out of shape I was. My legs and feet were aching with effort. Had to make a few stops. But I did make it to the bottom without having a fall. Of course I was so worn out that I had to take a break.

I did this twice more. Taking a break between each run. Figured I better just stick to the Greens.

On the Third run, I did a dumb thing. While making one of my turns, I placed the wrong pole down on the snow. Since it was the wrong pole I turned into and onto it.

This caused my ski to ride up the pole.

Have you ever tried holding a pole with a 190lb body running up it? Me either. It was my first time.

Skiing up my ski pole caused it to jerk me to the ground. This wasn’t a pleasant experience. I’ve never done the splits before.

Gratefully, I didn’t do the splits this time either. But it was almost as bad. I ended up face first in the snow. One ski pointed up. The other down.

I know I can do that. My hip told me so. It complained but performed the feat. As did my Knee on the same side.

Took me a moment to untangle my legs. I’m sure it was amusing. I got a good chuckle out of it after the spinning down the slope stopped. Unfortunately, no one was nearby to share my amusement in my misfortune.

Got to the bottom once again without further incident. Took my break. It was a little longer this time. My thighs were starting to ache from the lack of prior use and current overuse.

Finished my break and took another trip back up the slope. By now I am fairly confident in my skills once again. Got my one crash out of the way. Zip down the slope without incident.

Of course, I’m old remember, I took another break. Sat down in a chair in the lodge and took a nap this time. Didn’t really mean to but that’s what happened. Woke up about an hour later with some massive burning in my thighs. Looking at the time, I decided I was done and returned all of my gear.

Now, if you have had an amusing time reading this, I’d like to point out some things about Mammoth Lakes.

Mammoth Lakes is a great resort town. Quite a few things to do and see. Of course there is Skiing. But there are other things as well. What they are, I couldn’t really tell you. But the community is rather large with many rental units.

The slopes are very well groomed. With lots of lifts. I think the longest I waited in line for a lift was about 2 minutes. There is one Gondola that leads to the top of the mountain but I didn’t take that one because I would have had to take slopes I wasn’t interested in skiing.

I did a bit of skiing around Denver and some in Austria/Germany. I am sure they have changed since I was there but I would highly recommend Mammoth Lakes if you are interested in skiing anytime soon.

Been here for a week or so on a business trip.

We were coming back from a day out at the job site. Fairly late. I think it was about 2am or so.

We have to pass through an open range to get back to the hotel. The area this spans is about 20 miles. It is a fairly long drive. Especially at 2am.

Our regular story telling was keeping us conscious on the trip. When shortly down the road we encountered a herd of wild horses. Fortunately none of them were on the road but it made us think and pay attention. Many of them were along the side of the road and could have darted out in front of us at any time.

Slowing down we passed through the spooked herd of Horses. All of them scattered. None of them ran in front of us. They appeared pretty scared. I know we were certainly concerned.

About 5 minutes later we started seeing cows along the side of the road as well. About the same time we started seeing them on the side of the road we noticed a white cow in the right lane. Slowing down, our headlights pointed out another cow in the left lane. We still weren’t too worried. There was plenty of room between them and we were slowing down.

As we got closer another shape appeared in the middle of the road. It was just as big as the two cows that were already in the road. The only conclusion is that it was a black cow. Standing almost directly across from the white one.

Now we were worried. We didn’t have enough time to stop without hitting one of them. The shoulder of the road is fairly soft and on the right was a small group of three cows. Not a good option.

Obviously going straight wasn’t a good option either. Nor was trying to dodge to the left. We did the only think we could think of. Brace for impact.

I think we were both slightly scared. Even though we are driving a large Chevrolet 2500 Desiel truck, it would have been a bad accident to have.

As we got closer and closer the cows looked up. They weren’t moving. Just looking. Blind more than likely.

The two nearest us were pointed in opposite direction. I think that is what saved us as there was just enough room to pass between the two cows in our lane. And I do mean barely enough room.

I could have slapped the one on the right if I had my window open and hand out. I’m sure Robert could have done the same with the one on the left.

We escaped without hitting either cow. I’m still not sure exactly how. But I’m definitely not going to look a gift cow in the mouth. At least we can’t be accused as Mooderers.

After passing through the gauntlet of cows, we turned around to shoo them off the road for those coming behind us. Most of them were driving smaller vehicles and it would have been much worse for them if they had hit one of those large moving hamburger repositories.

Don’t go against the robot masters.

Where is Will Smith when you need him?

It worked on my test file but just not automatically.

Oh well. Let you know as time goes by.

I added a few things to the posts. Mostly the ability to add the post to several different social services. And I have added the ability to imbed videos from youtube into the blog as well. That should be interesting to see how well it works. I will have to find something that is interesting to post just to test it out.

IBM, Google, Microsoft, Verisign and Yahoo have joined the corporate board of the OpenID Foundation, giving a boost to the group’s efforts to simplify the process of signing into Web sites.

The OpenID framework allows people to use a single user name and password to sign into sites that support it.

– Washington Post

I have had an OpenId for almost a year now. I have also started requiring it to post comments on the blog. Not that I get anyone to post comments but it might cut down on the spam.

If you are interested in what OpenId is youc an visit MyOpenId for more information.