Time...

    It's interesting how really quick statements made by people you don't know can sometimes really affect how you think. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, so bear with me or don't. I certainly make no promises that this post will be WoW related.

    Earlier today I was browsing around on some blogs and ran across one that had obviously finished in the not to distant past. Usually I just skip these but I decided to read her (I'm vaguely guessing) final post just to see how she finished it. Most of the post was fairly standard but down at the bottom there was a paragraph that got me thinking.

    "There are many forms of happiness and fulfillment, I feel like it'd be a shame to miss out. I'd hate to think that at the end of my life, when I finally see God face to face, he'd pat me on the head and point out all the things that he had in store for me that I couldn't see---"you were doing it wrong.""

    It really got me thinking about why I do what I do. For example, why do I play video games? Well because I enjoy them. Why do I read books? Much the same, they provoke my thinking and let me drift in different worlds (I may come back to this point later). But more then that it disturbed me, and I couldn't figure out why.

    I mean, does God have certain lines of fun planned out for us? Does he demand we "diversify our" fun/joy "options"? I personally don't think he's that picky about what we spend out time doing. Now that sounds bad. That sounds REALLY bad. But let me finish, while I certainly don't think he cares what we do, I most heartily believe he's DEEPLY concerned with WHY we do it.

    Am I arguing semantics? I don't think so. Let me give you a quick example of when the why matters very, very much. Let's say you're rock climbing up a 2000ft sheer cliff via ropes and pulleys and you loose your footing. Suddenly you're dangling 1000ft above hard rock, an obviously fatal fall. So you cut the rope.

    I'll give you two situations. First: You're rock climbing by yourself. What you did was completely wrong, you might still be able to save yourself and I'd put your giving up on a level with committing suicide. Second: You're rock climbing with other people. You're the last person on the rope and you can see that top pulley and see it slowly coming out of the rock. There's simply to much weight on it, but if you sacrifice yourself, it will hold the others above you and allow them to live.

    See what I mean? The exact same action. You committed yourself to death either way, but the key difference is why you did it. Now, do I believe the way I spend my time is wrong? Not exactly.

    You'll remember the parable of the talents in Matthew (and Luke). The master gave them the money and left. Two of the servants returned the money and said "Here's your money, and here's some more we made while we had it." He rewarded and complimented these. The third servant returned the money and said "Here's your money, I know you're a hard man so I hid the money to make sure I had it to give back to you." The master cursed this one, calling him evil and lazy.

    Where I'm going with this is the reason the master was mad at the third servant, other then the insults. The third one didn't do anything with the money out of fear of the master, because of that fear he cost the master an opportunity. Had the servants reasons been honestly different I think there would have been a different response from the master.

    For example had he not invested the money because he honestly thought he'd end up losing more on the market then just holding on to it. Well, he might be construed as stupid, but not wicked and lazy. After all, he analyzed the market to the best of his ability, and decided it would be a bad idea to invest it.

    Now how does this effect me? Well it might not that much. I need to sit down and think about how I spend my "free time" (when I say free time I mean the time I spend having fun after all the work that needs to be done or has to be done is done. how I determine the amount of the free time is a totally different matter).

    So let's look at the different types of things that are important in my free time. First glorifying God, as this is my primary reason for being here it belongs in all of my time. Second investing in others, the Bible constantly refers to us as a "family" and "body" so I believe it's important to minister (and sometimes the joke off the back of a laughy taffy is ministry) to others. Third the amount of fun or joy I derive from the activity, the psalms say there is a time for everything, including laughter, and should I not get as much fun/joy out of every minute of my fun/joy time then I'm being wasteful.

    Which just leaves the question, why do I play/read the things I do? Do I simply do it because I've gotten joy from it before? Or do I do it because I believe that I can get the most joy out of it? Right at the moment I don't think it will change that much, but we'll have to see.

~joe/ishvi

Wheee

    Last week at work before my two week "vacation". I call it a "vacation" because technically I'm off from work, but I'm also driving to SC and back...with a two year old...who has yet to show herself to be of the "quite serene" variety. Oh well, it'll be fun.

Semicolons

Apparently I splice my sentences with to many commas. So one of my coworkers suggested I use semicolons, here's an awesome quote about them:

"...do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college."
-Kurt Vonnegut

Yay for semicolon controversy!

Personally I abhor the things and avoid them whenever possible, but what is your thoughts on them?

Fiiiiiire

    Yay for world events! So yesterday afternoon I decide to start working on Vishni's (the Trollbane DK) flame warden title, plus the large amount of free gold and xp for just running around, and dying in Org/UC a few times. So I started down in Westfall, worked my way down to BB, then back up until finally I got up BElf land, where I got a random invite from a player.

    I do a quick search on their name, figuring it would be some lvl1 gold seller, but it was actually a lvl80 pally! Curiosity got the better of me and I quickly accepted. Turns out he and his lvl80 warlock guildy were doing it as well and figured I might want a little help running into Silvermoon, or at least a little company. Goooooaaaaal! It's always better to run around the world in the company of others, 'specially when yer guildies are being all clamshelled and non-talkative.

    So off we went and finished the last two on EK, then it was off to Kalimdor! They took a quick 10min break and we met up in the port on the east side of Kalimdor, forget the name of it. Oh, and another guildy of theres, a rogue, joined us at this point. There aren't words for how much more fun it is to run around in a merry pack of 4 rather then as a lone ranger.

    But anyways, we got up to TB (yay for diseased cities!) and it was hilarious. On the way in we managed to avoid all but I think three guards, super easy. Got our fire and decided to run out straight through! We got to the bottom of the lift with a good 20-30 town guards coming after us. It. Was. Uber.

    We ended skipping Org as the rogue (who was only 63) didn't want to die a lot and the other seemed short on time. But I think it was easier to solo then do as a group anyways. But all I have to do now is the outland ones, kill Ahune, and make it into Dalaran for some juggling, should be finished this afternoon!

    That said my uber warlock of awesome-sauce made it to 19 this morning, dinged doing the festival dailies. But after doing a couple WSG's the other day I decided against sticking around, so I'll prolly just get my quests collected and make my brother-that-didn't-used-to-but-now-does-play-wow to run me through.

    Hmmm, come to think of it, if I could tempt Moonsong back to WoW, we'd have a full party with just my immediate family... To the tempting machine!

~ish/joe

The Books I Like

    2 Samuel 23:8 - These are the names of David's mighty men: Josheb-Basshebeth, a Tahchemonite, chief of the captains. He was called Adino the Eznite. He killed eight hundred men in one encounter.

    Now doesn't that just make you want to name your kid Josheb? Admittedly I don't really want my kid to go out and kill 800 people...But if God DOES call him to war I certainly want him to be the sort of man who could take down 800, by himself. So why do I bring this up? Because it's a perfect example of one of the reasons I like the books I like.

    (1) It needs some sort of heroes. Now I don't mean super man, or the fantastic four, or wolverine. While they all certainly did super human things, well, they're super human, is it really that impressive compared to a regular man taking down 800?
    Real Life Examples: David's Might Men, the battle of Thermopylae, the Alamo, and the battle of Mogadishu.
    Fictional Examples: The Chain of Dogs (Deadhouse Gates), the last march of Manetheren (Wheel of Time), and several points in the Silmarillion.
    Bad Example: The British battle at Singapore.

    (2) I don't know that I've liked any without well thought out histories. How can I truly empathize with someone's plight or cause if I know not the reason for it? Without proper historical backing absolute fiends can look like saints.
    Examples: The Middle Earth books, the Wheel of Time series, and the Malazan Book of the Fallen (actually several books).

    (2a) A few books have managed to do without a good history and still pull it off. However, I believe that this is only forgivable in thought provoking books.
    Examples: Starship Troopers (the book, I heard the movie was horrid) and another one I can't think of the name of, but basically a highschool survival training thing goes awry and they get trapped on another world for several years and form their own society.

    (3) All the normal good book stuff, good english, well written dialog, and a compelling reason for the story.

    This of course only covers things I expect out of fictional books. Real life books, such as Blue Like Jazz are held to a completely different standard.

    Well that's about it for today, I may write some more later about how WoW is going.

~joe/ish

Title Fail!

    Heh, so the earlier post was a wee bit odd. I started writing about what new is going on in mah life and I felt inspired and scribbled that, and then forgot to change the title. Okay, we'll start out with RL and then move to the gaming/book world.

    So I'm almost done with insulating my g-ma's roof. Only got 6 rolls left to put out, but I got the far eves on both sides of the house. That was (I believe) the worst part, I spent most of the time crawling around in a position something like a pushup stalled halfway between ground and fully extended, while rolling out insulation in a hot attic. The rest of it should go very smooth.

    I also recently moved in with my bro and another guy in a itty bitty cottage, I'll try to get some pics of it or something soon, quite cramped. But it's awesome! Constantly seeing people, hanging out and such, except when the guy's kitten decided my net was a comfortable place to sleep....I swear, cats all want to kill me in my sleep! Oh, and losing space and having to use a cottage involved me shrinking down to one monitor. ;_;

    Well that's about it for the important stuff, so now on to the non-important fun stuff! First for books! I finished The Gardens of the Moon (Malazan Book of the Fallen, Vol.1) and am currently working on Deadhouse Gates (Malazan Book of the Fallen, Vol.2). Man, these are good books! If you're a fan of broad, epic tales these are books for you! Parts of it can be a little raunchy, but he does a very good job describing them as *bad*. Very good, very epic, highly worthy of a read if you have the time.

   Oh! And for all my FF:T fans out there, remember the crappy translation it had? Not all the time, but certain parts were just *horrid*. Well the PSP version fixes that! I'm borrowing a friend's PSP and FF:T and am loving it, really fun.

    Last and probably not quite least: WoW! Currently I'm working on a human warlock named Prt (I meant to be trying Port, but screwed up and it gave me the name, didn't feel like redesigning the character just 'cause of a pseudo-crappy name). So far I'm enjoying it, we'll see as I level up more, but at least at the moment it's fun.

    I'm also kinda still playing my DK over on trollbane to harass Suv with, but I've mostly gone over to just playing on Anvilmar. There's a lot to be said for playing on the same server as the people you house with (and around). So if you're kickin' around feel free to stop over on Anvilmar and say hi to Prt (or Udacha the DK that exists to give Prt her bags).

~ish/joe

Recent Updates For The Rambler

    Ahhh, hear that? Are you sure? It's very apparent to my ears. I hear it everywhere I go. I remember when I first heard it, nearly drove me nuts! But as time progressed I started to enjoy it more. It's always there, though often I can ignore it. You still don't hear it? Why it's the song of change! Can you not hear the different tones and sounds? The flute of physical change? The drums of emotional change? The pipe that heralds in new sonatas of change?
    Perhaps your ears have blocked it out. After all, it's so loud when we're younger, it seems so much more quite as we age. But it's still playing, no matter how much things seem the same, the always change. Sometimes it's large changes, perhaps you bought your house, or proposed to someone, or said yes to the proposal. Sometimes it's small, you decide to re-arrange the furniture, make a new food, or simply walk across the room to say hi to a stranger.
    No matter how large or small the change, the music goes on. The sound goes on, the pipes sing to us, the drums pull at our feet. Whether we like it or not, they will pull us onto the dance floor. Or perhaps we live on the dance floor, and we just forget sometimes that we're supposed to be dancing. No matter how much we enjoy the status quo, no matter how deeply we enjoy the current song, it will change. The Lord of the Dance watches over us and directs the dance. This simply leaves one question to be answered... Will you dance?

~joe will post a less rambly post later