That's Just Wrong, Page 17

Yes, another page for my book, That's Just Wrong.

Believe it or not, it's about one of my favorite websites, Pogo. That's http://www.pogo.com/ for anyone that doesn't know! I guess first of all, I need to explain a little about Pogo.

Pogo is a game site. There are a ton of different kinds of games from solitaire games to games like pinochle, different kinds of bingo and even piecing together puzzles. One of the things I love about Pogo is the variety of games. While we all have our favorites that we like to play, I also love they they are coming out with new games frequently. Some are duds, but I seem to like a bunch of them. Now, what do you get for playing Pogo?

One thing you get is tokens. Tokens are like their points. Some people have hundreds of thousands of tokens, some people have millions of tokens. What good are tokens? Absolutely no good. You can't trade them in for money, you can't trade them in for membership dues. They are pretty much worthless; just for show. By the way, membership dues are $40 a year and that gives you access to all games in Pogo and you get to play them with no commercials.

What else does Pogo offer? Badges! What are badges? They are rewards for completing a challenge or for playing enough of a certain game to go up in rank. The badges are nothing tangible. They are little check marks under your name and basically it shows that you either play Pogo too damn much or not enough! They mean absolutely nothing and are worth nothing.

But, one thing that Pogo offers is their weekly challenges. They will pick two different games, and set some kind of challenge in each game. It could be that you have to win so many tokens, or games or hands or reach a level or something. If you complete the challenge, Pogo will award you tokens and will give you a badge, both which mean absolutely nothing. Sounds like fun, huh? It does get people to try a lot of different games.

Well, I love playing games and the whole badge thing just plays into my CDO (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, but in alphabetical order the way it should be.). I just enjoy playing the games.

Now the bad part of Pogo; the chat. Each game room that you are in has chat available, either public or a private chat. I'm not an online chatter. Once in a great while I'll hook up with one of my real life friends like Maura in Florida or Ruth in New York and we'll try to catch up a little while playing. Or, when I was traveling, Ron and I would play games and chat. Other than that, I'm not much of a talker. I'm just there to play games.

However, some times conversations get just ridiculous, or people turn nasty or just the regular rantings and ravings of angry unhappy people. Pogo offers the option to mute anyone in the room so you don't have to see what they are babbling, or you can shut chat off altogether.

The new challenges for Pogo are released on Wednesdays, and you have until the following Tuesday to complete the two challenges and earn your tokens and badges. Which remember, mean nothing! So many people love the idea of badges, myself included, that Wednesdays tend to be pretty busy in Pogo. I was playing one of the games on Wednesday and I couldn't help but notice one player kept saying things like "I am staying logged on, but I am at work so I have to get some work done". Then when she'd come back, she'd announce that she was back.

Unfortunately, a lot of people seem to play at work, and yes, on a slow day in the office, I've been known to play a game or two. The bad part came when she started to complain that the challenge was going to take her forever to finish as she had to play the game in between patients! Hello? Did I read that right?

Finally, I couldn't take it and I had to chime in "in between patients"???

She came back and said yes, since she was a nurse. HELLO? She missed my sarcasm when I stated that I was glad I was healthy since this bitch obviously has no clue how to properly prioritize her life. Worry about worthless tokens and badges instead of caring for patients.

So, here is my advice to anyone who can read this.

Take your vitamins, eat healthy, get lots of sleep, drink lots of water, and keep up with your exercising. With health care workers like this, none of us can afford to get sick.

That's just wrong.