Image via WikipediaToday, I had to be up at Oh-God-hundred to take my son to a school music function. While I was waiting for him to comb his hair and put on the deodorant (fortunately for me, he had forgotten, so he didn't have the opportunity to come stick his armpit in my face in glee like he did a few weeks back), I checked over the Star Trek Online forums. The latest new episode is coming out today, and I wanted to check out the patch notes. I came across a thread on the scheduled maintenance Cryptic was doing today in preparation for the release of the new quest. Anyone who follows the forums of any MMO knows there is one sure thing they'll see besides trolls. It's people who complain about how long it takes for a new patch, server, or update to be installed, thus requiring the MMO company to take the game temporarily offline. No matter when the downtime happens, it's going to be in the middle of someone's gaming time somewhere on the planet. That's the nature of living on a rotating sphere--and no, I don't want to hear from the Flat-Earther people, thank you very much.
Not surprisingly, there were some people QQing about the fact that they had to wait a couple hours for the maintenance to complete. I decided to reply with my list of things to do while waiting for the server to come back up. Here are 15 things you can do while waiting for an online game that is down for maintenance.
1. Read the forums
2. Take a nap in anticipation of gaming all night
3. Clean your socks that have been gathering in a stinky pile in the bathroom because you've been too busy gaming to wash them.
4. Clean the pile of dirty ramen noodle bowls in the sink because you've been too busy gaming to wash them.
5. Clean the toilet that has sadly been neglected for months because you've been too busy gaming to clean it.
6. Contemplate the meaning of life.
7. Contemplate a volunteer opportunity with those who are unfortunate enough not to even have a roof over their heads, much less a computer and video game time.
8. Contemplate a volunteer opportunity with those who are stuck in the hospital due to extended illnesses and thus can't be here to game.
9. Contemplate the fuzz in your navel.
10. Catch up on all the news you've been ignoring for the last year playing this game, like, say, the uprising for democracy in Libya.
11. Go cook some real healthy food instead of ramen noodles.
12. Clean the collection of 3 month old empty coke cans off your desk. The ants need something fresh to crawl through.
13. Clean the cat/dog/people hair off your keyboard.
14. Give some attention to your beloved, your kids, your family, or your friends.
15. If you have none of those listed in 14, go read the book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie to get some.
