Are dreams a visit to a parallel world?

Okay, I used to wonder if dreams were really a visit to parallel worlds.  My dreams were always about locations that didn’t exist in the real world.  They were imaginary locations that I’d never visited, seen, or read about.  I used to get them on a regular basis.

Recently however, I have been doing some heavy gaming online and as a result I’ve found that my dreams are taking shape with certain aspects of the game.  Here are some examples:  In my dreams I’m starting to become concerned with how much space I have to carry stuff.  The other day I had a dream in which I was trying to figure out if this one rectangular bar that I found would stack.  In some of my dreams, I can see the names of everyone in the dream hovering above them.  In another dream, I was being attacked by something and wasn’t concerned since I knew that I could heal since I could tell how much damage I was taking and knew I could heal before I died.

Okay, so this to me is proof that dreams are mearly a process by which your brain is sorting out the events of the day and possibly trying to make sense of the information.

How many characters do you need?

Okay, not really how many do you need but rather how many is it reasonable to work with.  My first character was a druid.  Granted, not easy as a starting character but I think I have the hang of it now and I’m very happy with the druid.  I’d been doing a lot of soloing and small pickup groups.  In the pickup groups I’ve filled both tank and healing roles.  Heck, I’ve even covered both.  I’m now at lvl 43.  My wife got into the game and she and I both started mages.  We quested together and stuck together and lvl’d together up to lvl 17.  While this was great fun, it didn’t leave my wife with a character with which she could lvl on her own when I wasn’t available.  So she started up a second character, a hunter.  She worked on the hunter for a while and then when I got on, I returned to my druid.  Well several times I’ve heard her getting frustrated by some mob that is beating up on her in a cave so I came over with my druid and flattened the cave so that she could finish her quest.  Ever since, I’ve been spending a lot of time assisting her buy either hanging around and keeping her alive or plain flattening the mob that are attacking her.  Her hunter is now at lvl 18 and I’m not making any progress with my druid.  I don’t mind too much because it’s fun to help out and see her lvl but I’m starting to wonder if I should start up another character and catch up to her so that we can quest together again.  I figure I could work at a priest.  I don’t know if I can catch her.  Especially since a priest is so squishy.

So, do I

1. Stick with the druid and wait until she has lvl’d up to my size.
2. Get my mage out and convince her that we don’t need to keep the mages together anymore.
3. Start a priest and race to catchup to her.

Warning: Epidemic Virus Alert

(note: Please read disclaimer at bottom of this message.)

Warning!

It has come to my attention that there is a virus that is spreading at an alarming rate through out the global networks. This virus infects the host computer and starts to take over the resources of the computer. A sizable chunk of hard drive space is consumed initially although the observed rate of consumption drops down to almost a trickle, most likely to avoid detection. This virus will utilize a sizable amount of RAM including dipping into the RAM from your video card. If you have a video card which shares your core RAM, it will take a larger chunk of your core RAM. At times it will reduce the available CPU power leaving you still operable but at significantly less power.

The virus tends to stay dorment until certain executable files are run. At that time, it loads its self into memory and then will call out to one of several handling servers across the world. The virus is advanced enough to grab extra files from one of the servers and morph it’s capabilities so it is impossible to tell exactly how far it has advanced by the time you read this. While active in memory, the virus remains in almost continual communication with one of the servers relaying various bits of information that it gathers from both your keyboard and your mouse movements back and forth.

The virus spreads through very clever social engineering in which the victim acquires and installs the virus without realizing the full impact of their actions. Once installed, the actions recorded from the keyboard and mouse movements are then leveraged in the next social engineering invasion.

It is rumoured that over 8 million systems around the world have been affected already.

On the good side, it appear that the virus is not destructive and there are no accounts of the virus destroying existing files on the system. The makers of the virus have also not taken extremes to hide the virus and have left it mostly contained to a single folder. It is uncertain at this time what reprecussions will reveil themselves if any attempts are made to delete the folder. No known anti-virus tools at the time of this writing are currently capable of either detecting or removing this virus. It has been thought though that one of the virus creators may have left some removal scripts embedded in the virus. If you are looking for these scripts or want to attempt to remove the virus by removing the folder you are on your own. As I am writing this warning, I am noticing that I’m experiencing the symptoms of this virus.

Oh… wait…. the virus is launching a warning. I have to go now… I just saw a Horde Shaman attacking Sentinel Hill in Westfall! Must engage in PVP!….

(Disclaimer: This is not a serious alert. It is at best a reasonable attempt at humour and should not be taken seriously. World of Warcraft is an online gamming product created by Blizzard Entertainment.)

You little Whelpling!

Did I mention that I game? In World of Warcraft there are cute little non-combat pets that you can find that can follow you around and add coolness to your character. One of the ones I find most interesting is the Black Whelpling. This is a rare pet drop in the Badlands. Apparently 1 in 1400 kills can produce one of these. I spent a few hours grinding the mob that should drop these and didn’t find one yet. On the other hand, I did advance half of a level and managed to pick up some good vendor trash.