I'm Not the Only One

I suspect Farmville will be the topic for the next few posts. My apologies to those of you not interested in Farmville, but, since I think they're some of the funniest posts I've ever written, I don't feel that bad about it. Besides, as predicted, the crush is fading and I am settling into a calmer pattern of planting and harvesting. When the maturation cycle of crops is 1-4 days, it tends to speed up the emotional progression of the relationship, as well. Like using rats or flies to study genetics. You can monitor a hundred generations in a relatively short period of time. I've now planted and harvested about 4 crops per day since last Friday. It's emotionally draining to care that much that fast, let me tell you.

I now have a flock of chickens, and at least one of most other things. I have decided not to buy animals. I like them very much, but they tend to be the kind of things you find. I'll save my money for crops and possibly some buildings. I do have two gnomes and I find them amusing enough to collect. I hope I can get one for every month.

It has been fascinating to visit my neighbors' farms and see what they do. Everyone farms differently. Right now, I seem to be the most mutable, probably because I don't have giant buildings or massive herds in the way.

I was visiting The Flash's farm this morning. She is fond of sunflowers, that one. She's also planted green hellebores, a St. Patrick's Day special worth a lot of coinage and XP (that's experience points for the non-gamers). She's playing for high stakes but doing it in a calculated fashion with small, concentrated plantings likely to get fertilized by friends and increase her XP. I've always told her to be President, but now I'm thinking Secretary of the Treasury. She has the self-control to be a good one.

My lamb, on the other hand, has yet to make me her neighbor. I will publish her full name on FB as retaliation if she continues to ignore me. Not her real full name, but the one I've made up will haunt her for the rest of her life. I'm not Mean Aunt Robynn for nothing.

While searching the web for a Farmville manual yesterday, I found the website for the creators of Farmville and numerous other social networking games found on FB. I learned about 30 million people play Farmville, and it is the No. 1 Internet game right now. Not surprisingly, this site has a blog. One entry in particular caught my eye. It was about Farmville economics. Someone other than me wondered how to maximize your profit in coins and XP through planting crops. Not only did this someone wonder, he did the math, with some results that may only be interesting to farmaholics, but I'll post the links anyway:

http://blog.adamnash.com/2009/08/22/the-personal-economics-of-farmville/

http://blog.adamnash.com/2009/08/23/the-personal-economics-of-farmville-part-2/

Apparently, this blogger was even contacted by one of the game creators asking questions. Kudos to him. What these posts taught me is I don't care about maximizing my coinage and XP. I just want to play in the virtual dirt.

I wish they had buttercups. Apparently, they had turtles available once, but the odds of me getting a turtle at this point are pretty slim. I can hope.

Anyway, I will soon be back to normal posting topics and save Farmville for maybe once a week updates. Those of you who don't farm can tune out, and those of you who don't write can tune in.

Those of you who don't care...well, why are you reading this blog?