Dropouts and comebacks

So republican nominee Rudy "I mention 9/11 in everything I ever do" Giuliani has also dropped out of the race, thought it took me a while to pick it up. It's funny, I remember some of the polls from like... a year ago, in which Giuliani was supposedly winning the actual presidential election.

Goes to show why you shouldn't take such polls seriously, I guess. Giuliani might have had a more universal appeal, but as most people have said, he was too "left-wing" for a republican.

On the subject of comebacks, Lost is finally returning tonight, with the first of what will be a really short season. Eight episode long, to be exact, half of what it was supposed to be. I'm calling it now, there will be a heck of a lot of frustrated people screaming "ZAMG WAI NO ANSWERZZ!!!" once these eight episodes are over. People, get over it. That's how Lost is, it always raised more question than the ones it answered.

That being said, I find myself not being quite as hyped for this than I thought I'd be. I absolutely loved the finale of the third season, but that was in May 2007, feels almost like a lifetime ago, and I've sorta lost my Lost vibe since that. I'll remain cautiously pessimistic about tonight's episode. With any luck, the episode will catch me by surprise.

Lastly, after trying to give the 5 versus 5 arenas in World of Warcraft one last serious attempt, one word sums up my feelings perfectly...

LOL

So that's not exactly one word, more of an abbreviation of three ones, but whatever. The matchmaking system is an absolute joke, and this is painfully obvious after the sublime system in Halo 3.

My 1390-rated team had to wait for around five minutes on average for one game, and when we actually found a game, what were we up against? Teams with a rating of more than 2000, and as a result, their gear level was so much better than ours that there wasn't even a point in trying to fight back. Which we did, because we're stubborn like that, but the result was depressing.

I understand not everyone is familiar with the system implemented in WoW's arenas, so here's the deal: It's a rather simplified version of the Elo rating system, commonly used in chess.

What this means in WoW is that the higher rated team (which start at a 1500 rating, mine is lower than average therefore) will always have access to better gear. The problem is that while the matchmaking system is supposed to match rating as well as gear level, it gives me the impression that it's been programmed in such a way in which after the first two minutes, it goes all "Fuck it, I'll just randomly put two unbalanced groups together and piss both of them off." Fun fun fun.

One step closer to a permanently canceled account, yes sirree.