Heh, ok.

Well, to follow up on the SoG phenomenon... I finally did get my verification email. I was one of the lucky 10,000 who snagged a free key during the 80 second giveaway on the 8th. After much pain and confusion, I also managed to get the client downloaded on the 9th. Supposedly, it's installed and ready to go -- although I can't know for sure until the servers come up on the 12th. I get to play on the 13th, but hopefully the update servers will let me patch early anyways.

I missed a couple days, so let me fill in the advent calander entries:

Dec 9th was small bits of chocolate day.
Dec 10th was Arabian coffee day.
Dec 11th was Kiddie Dough day.

I have to expand on the Kiddie Dough thing. It comes in a small tub, about the size of a double shot glass. The outside says it's made in China and packaged in Hong Kong. It also says it's NON-TOXIC. That's good. The ingredients list is simply 56g of modeling clay. It's also good that this clarification is there.

I would eat this stuff.

When you open the container, you find a blob of dark orange goo, that's about the colour of overcooked carrots, or perhaps pumpkin pie filling. The texture is about as soft as overcooked carrots, but spongy so it can be molded and hold the shape you give it for a while. It's a little softer than the kind of clay I'm used to, and perhaps a tiny bit softer than Play Dough.

The second thing you notice though, is the smell. It smells like a mounds bar. Mostly coconut, I suspect coconut oil is the main ingredient besides dirt (or whatever they use for the clay part). It's not a machine smell, nor the kind of pseudo-rubber smell that I remember Play Dough having. This stuff really does smell tasty.

I'm imagining there will be very confused pre-school and kindergarden kids in Hong Kong, if this stuff is used widely. As a teacher, you'd give this to your kids and tell them to play with it, but not eat it. But it smells very good, and trying to keep them from eating it will probably be difficult. Later, you'd give them food that might well look and smell similar, and have to tell them to eat it but not play with it. Confusion seems unavoidable.

On the WoW front, My druid is level 16 and I've moved him to the undead n00b area to run though all the low level quests. No experience (worth mentioning), but I want my standings with them improved at least to friendly so I don't accidentally kill myself.