My life is a sitcom...

After waking today NOT sweaty and finding out the furnace broke sometime in the night (can we turn off the heat every night, please?); after the doorbell ringing at 9 in the morning with a small but bulging box that must have weighed 90 lbs, at least (getting that up the stairs was fun); after Max's comical attempt to open said bulging box - what is the latest?

Tyler has been on a quest for a few days to find a new MMO (since Lego Universe shut down.) What does he find? A Dragon Ball Z MMO! Perfect for him, right? Only problem? There are 3 versions of the game...Korean, Chinese and Taiwanese. Hmm. Well, every game is set up pretty much the same way, right? How hard could it be to figure out how to install one of these three versions.

After explaining that he won't be able to read any of the menus, or character chats or probably even chat messages from other players, Tyler still wanted to give it a try. One language version wanted the Korean equivalent of our social security number. After trying a bunch of random combos, forward progress was stymied. On to the next version. You want our country specific cell phone number? What is the country code for China again?

No, that won't work. Next! Oh, there is an English language add on for this version of the game? Cool! But it doesn't translate everything. 5 hours to download? Wow...what are they using, 1200 baud dial-up modems? *snicker* Sorry, geek humor.

5 hours turned into 2 days of failed downloads with retrys, but we finally got the game installed and working. So far, Tyler loves it. Problem? Now Max wants it installed. Here we go again!

The language barrier hasn't been an issue, so far. Tyler found a forum post that mentioned which server all the English speaking players log on to. He did ask if I could find a "look up guide" online that shows the English translation of the various characters/words he is seeing. Umm...you mean a Taiwanese to English dictionary? That would be a BIG book, I think. Sorry son, there aren't any quick look-up guides for that.

I wonder how a request to add conversational Taiwanese or Chinese language classes to our small town's public school offerings would fly. Ha!

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