How to deal with World of Warcraft addiction (Part 2)

If you are not in any of the categories presented in Part 1, then you are free to unleash your addiction and enjoy the game! There are still some pointers that can make your life more fun. The most important one being the opposite sex!

While I was addicted to warcraft, I thankfully was not in any of the hardcore categories. I was not married, I had finished my studies, no kids and I was doing really well at work. I was a happy addict! And I had a girlfriend... A girlfriend that played nice at start as she "respected my new hobby and my wanting to have some time alone in the game". Things were perfect.

But girlfriends can sometimes be human beings as well. She started feeling really bad when my 40man daily raids consumed my time after work till late at night. Well, she was right but we are addicted, remember? I knew for sure that this addiction will most probably fade so I decided not to let her protests ruin my way to have fun. Of course she eventually left. This is perfectly ok since if you have an average or more looks, a respectable work and some other qualities, girls will never be an issue. But there is another issue that is called getting laid! 

Being sexually fed is an important aspect of a man's life. It keeps the balance. If you get laid you are almost normal though your addiction. And you don't sound or seem like a sexual hungry jerk. So you have to find a way to get laid without having the high maintenance cost (time-wise) of a "proper" girlfriend. Paying for sex is out of question. So we are left with one option. Our friendly cute female guildmates! Well she doesn't have to be a guildmate and I will write an article on how to detect a female behind the keyboard in the near future.

I am not here to teach you how to flirt. I hope you know how to do it since (I hope) you were once a normal person that went out regularly. You will need that skill anyway when you are free from hardcore gaming. OK?

Females that play world of warcraft are divided into two categories. In the first one we have girls that are gamers. In the second one -and the larger by far- are girls that decided to enter the game in order to either "see" their boyfriend more or thinking that having the same time sink activity with him will make them have great time. Well, for starters never but never introduce your girlfriend in this game. Lucky for us, not everyone follows this advice or they think that their relationship is so perfect that they can withstand anything.

There are always exceptions but most of these girls are easy pray. I am sad to say it but if a girl decides to play the game just to keep her relationship she will get laid with you. Girls that talk all the time about her boyfriend are the easiest targets. Because they talk. And they need the talking. And if they need talking you will get what you want. That is for sure.

During my addiction (it didn't last much more than a year) I got laid with 3 different females. All guildmates. All swearing at their devotion to their bf at start and then bringing their laptop over my place to seem like online while being AFK in my bedroom.

This is not the way to live for long of course! But it is definitely a way to survive your addiction period! 

Happy hunting!

IT professionals have lower carrier ceiling? (Part 1)

Being an IT professional is a really nice thing. Well, at least for me. I really love almost anything that has to do with the IT and being part of this "family" makes me feel good. I like IT peculiarities. It is a job that is never static. Well, the job itself can be static but you always can and should be keep yourself up to date. At least at your field. IT peculiarities do not stop there. There is always this love-hate relationship with the business analysts or marketing departments. There is always the feel of ownership to the project you spent so much time on. And then there is this peculiarity called carrier development.

IT people always feel they have this glass/invisible ceiling to their career development. This ceiling is not invisible at all. It is called -most of the times-  business analyst or project manager. All employees have a ceiling. You have to be on the top otherwise. But in our case this ceiling seems a bit lower than usual. Why is this happening? Who is to blame? The "arrogant and ignorant" guys at top management? IT personnel themselves? Or is it a weird conspiracy against us; the geniuses?

IT departments have one more peculiarity. They almost always have to be managed by people that do NOT do the job their subordinate do. Or in some cases, by people you have never done the job. You cannot be an IT manager and write code or maintain a system etc. If you did that (as part of your job) sometime in the past, you have to stop doing it now. Top management is never keen to having a "hero manager that still does the dirty job of <insert something here>". Or, to be more precise, they do love this guy as he is both still productive and satisfied with his promotion, BUT they will invariably put someone as "advisor" (aka superior) to do the managerial job you should be doing.

So why IT people find it that hard to be a manager? In my opinion, the main reason is our superiority complex. We do things that others cannot understand. We are given nicknames like "wizard", "genius" just like that. And we like it. And maybe we are right to feel that way. Especially the older professional who did their thing in an environment where resources really counted, code generators were non-existent etc. How can a wizard now do the "puny" duties of a manager? Well this is our mistake and whoever feels that way (and being more that 30yo) deserves his ceiling :)

To be continued...

How to deal with World of Warcraft addiction (Part 1)

So, you are addicted to world of warcraft? This article is not about how to stop being addicted but how to survive it till it fades somehow. WoW is an addiction that will eventually fade. So don't worry too much about it. The thing is, though, that you have to take some steps because you don't want your life ruined or seriously set back, right? So here are some golden rules! I might sound a bit like a parent but believe me, If I write here something you must not do, I really mean it.



In this article I am referring to people aged 17-18 and more. For the others, I hope your parents will deal with it


1. Do not let yourself fail in any exam or paper because of wow. It is OK if you miss some raids. Even some loot! But gimping your education performance might cost you much more. World of warcraft will go away one day much sooner than you!


2. If you happen to be married and the wife is a good one, do not make her leave you or ruin your marriage. You will surely regret it when your addiction starts to fade.


3. If you have a kid do NOT let it "grow by itself" because you have raids. It is smarter to play with him/her intensively before raid time. The kid will be happy and you will be happy as you will see it sleep from a sweet exhaustion. 


4. Never but never let your raiding activities severely affect your work performance. It is ok to go to work with red eyes but don't let yourself being kept back just for this. It does not worth it.


OK, that was the hardcore part. And maybe the most boring. In Part two we will see a more fun aspect of your addiction!

Yes I do play WoW

Well, I am one of the millions that plays World of Warcraft (I am not that special after all). In this blog you'll read articles about it. It is not going to be technical. There are many others that do that job very well. 


I'm gonna focus more in life in wow. Ok sound like oxymoron since wow players are known to have no life! Well some of we do (or we think we do)!

Facebook talk.

Smoking is prohibited at work (even in my country) and we, smokers, have to seek our heaven (aka smoking place) somewhere outside. Good thing is that I live in a country that we actually see the sun most time of the year. So, being out smoking is a nice break from work. The other good(*cough*) thing is that in my country most of the employees smoke (that means the minority controls the situation - go figure) and that means you meet with other people, share thoughts, say jokes etc.


There are times, though, that I find myself alone. This is great as well since I enjoy my smoke thinking of various things. That afternoon I head some people talking about posting their vacation pictures at facebook. So, this is what we'll talk about today!


Facebook is what trend is all about (among other things). Before facebook there were other community but none reached its growth rate. I wondered what makes facebook such a success. I opened my account, for instance, because most of my friend did. I didn't choose facebook, or preferred it from another community site. So I am not a valid source to ask.

Asking around, I got a small amount of different answers. Most of them was "because my friends had already an account". Wait a minute here. If most of us had friends already in, how the heck did all of this started? Well my job is not finding out that answers, and although I promise I might dig this subject and post results in the near future, I decided to focus on another question.Why are we using facebook? I read that facebook now has more pictures than flickr! Come on. WTF? So I kept digging. Now I could see more variety to the answers. Some of them wanted a way to get in touch with old schoolmates, pals from military service etc. Others find it cool to have many friends and like reading their news, status changes and seeing photos. Others find it a good place to find a man/woman.

Now, do we need facebook to do all these? I mean, come on. Before facebook we would pick the phone and call someone to catch up, or even go out for a coffee. We could exchange pictures from our vacations when we meet each other. The last one does not even need a comment. If you don't know other ways, well... you are either too young or insecure(sic). 

But if we have like 430 friends how would you ever meet or even call all of them? Well, you don't. Naturally you cannot maintain such a huge circle unless your profession demands it. So, one could say that this is exactly what facebook is good for! Well, yes. You could say that.Most of it is useless info -in regard to what you actually care for- but it doesn't hurt to be there.

We said info? Nice word. Info is the reason this kind of sites live. Founders/owners have so much info. And the kind of info that is invaluable to marketing departments. And much cheaper than organizing a marketing research. So the owners provide us a "place to meet" (this sound scary) in exchange for our personal data. Maybe exchange is not an accurate word since it is in our discretion whether we share these or not. But trend, demands it!

Facebook is one of these things that could never end well in my opinion. Too much power or too much info often leads to inappropriate management decisions that will hurt its users first, but eventually the company itself. I don't wish to see that happen since I enjoy the positive features of this phenomenon but history has taught us this. We'll see.

What it takes to make money on the internet?

Today I came across an article at Gizmodo about a 16 year old kid who earned his first million. You can read the story from the link above since I will not repeat it here. That made me think a bit about what it takes to make money like this nowadays.

We all know the .com companies explosion some years ago. Every kid/adult/old individual could make money as long as spend some time in web development or any e-business in general. That was the time we first saw e-business classes in bachelor and master education levels. That was a golden era to earn money in the internet.

Things are different now. In my opinion only exceptional people can earn money selling services in the internet. That means either ideas are starting drying out or simply people turn their attention to .... advertising!

Ads seems like a win-win-win situation for both web sites owners, intermediates (as today's story boy, current project) and of course companies. You don't have to be the most famous web site in order to get some revenue. But as all things in life, the intermediate makes most. This kid realized that and now run a quite successful company. The kid did not need to have a master or PhD in advertising, psychology (I'll be back education<->money interaction in another article). He didn't even have to have someone explained that to him. He just knew it from experience.

So, is this kid exceptional? Well, yes he is. He may have copied his method to generate money from someone else but who cares? Why haven't you, me anyone else done that? Because we are not exceptional. 

P.S. By the way, hi! This is my first post!