Can we say idle?

So apparently I have this blog, where I post things. I tend to remember it because people post comments, and then I go and read the comments and go "Oh! I have a blog, I should post the crazy awesome stuff that's going on in my life there."

 

So for starters, hmm, less go with the less cool stuff first. Okay, I still love my job, but I'm still getting used to all the quirks, so it still takes thinking power, but that's just fine, keeps me from getting bored. And when I do get bored, say no one calls in for over an hour, I can do homework, browse the web, facebook, play retromud, or just crack open a book and read. All at my discretion. Because my boss trusts me to do my work when it's there to do.

 

Umm, better news than that is that I'll be graduating with my associates on the 12th! (Application development for those of ya'll who don't know. That's a fancy way of saying computer programming.) This will be a very, very happy thing. I still want to get my bachelors, but I'm going to take a semester or so for reasons to be explained in the next post.

 

I. Am. Engaged! As anyone who is familliar with this blog or me will know I've been courting Hannah for a few months now and I proposed on the 16th of Nov. And she said yes. =D

 

This is a very, very happy affair. So we're going to get married on the 27th of Dec (holler at me if you happen to think you'll be in Waco, TX around that time) (or any time really). If you want pretty pictures go sign up on facebook and throw a fiend request to Joseph Wauson, there's really not to many of me on there. Welp that's about it for today. I'll see about posting sometime before next month. Later ya'll!

 

~joseph/ish

So What Have I Been Doing Lately?

So my good friend Dax decided to ask that. Silly man, does he not peer over my shoulder as I go about my day to day life? Well, I think he might, but that's neither here nor there. Unless it is, at which point we'll have to have a talk about halfway to that other place.

More the the point though, I do believe I can answer that question with a reasonable amount of clarity.

I've been busy. You know, with stuff.

Mainly I've been courting Hannah (the highlight), just started leading lifegroup (if you don't know what that is just comment and I'll explain it next post, which I'll try to make fairly soon), just started my new job (which freaking rocks), and not to much else.

I'll try and elaborate on this later, but at the moment I should probably get back to trying to work.

~joe/ish

p.s. Oh, and I've been aging

So I've been a touch busy

    Man, sure is a lot going on these days. Ummm, where to start. I'm back at Prov in the ED, and they understand that it's temporary while I look for something else. Classes are going good. Spending lots of time with Hannah, which is awesome. Oh, and I'm getting ready to lead lifegroup with a couple of people, which is going to be good, and scary, really scary, but good. 

    I'm quite sure there are other details involved, but I can't think of them. So ttfn ya'll. =D

~joe/ish

p.s. Oh, and I'm officially not playing WoW anymore, even deleted all the copies I had off my comp and junk.

Wow

So I really haven't posted in a month eh? Man, a lot has happened since then, and not much. It's a weird world, what can I say.
First off I no longer work at Texas Life. They let me know early in Aug that they wouldn't be continuing the internship and wouldn't have a full time position for me. There are good and bad points about this.
First we'll start with a bad point, I need a job. And seeing as I'm in a relationship I *really* need a job. Not to give me a sense of security (that's one of the things God is there for) or to provide for my needs (again with the God providing that), but for God to use to provide for my needs. If that doesn't make sense then HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA PURPLE MELONPOOLS ARE APPLES!
Second we'll do a good note. I don't think I was being very spiritually productive at my work there. I believe God will provide me with a position where I will be better capable of blessing others.
And I'll get into other stuff later, class is near over (we're doing review that I know), so yuppers.
~joe/ish

Work

    So, bit of a real life update for ya'll. Just found out that my internship will officially be ending on Aug 31 and we will not be extending it. Sooooo, if anyone happens to know of a supremely awesome job in the Waco area I'd be thrilled to hear about it.

~joe

God is Good.

    Today has been an excellent day, from the start to now I think I have enjoyed it very much, and would only change one or two things (I could have started it better). However, despite me getting out of bed on the wrong foot God worked His goodness and now, after 21 years and one very exciting day, I can happily inform you that I, Joseph W, have a girlfriend (sort of).

    I say sort of because really we're courting, not dating, so I'm not sure the exact term, but the end result is more or less the same. So you might ask, what's the difference between courting and dating?

    As best I can describe it is that in courting the main focus is on marriage. Not that people don't date with marriage in mind, but with courting the entire point is to be married. It also advances somewhat slower than dating. IE: We're not going to go all love-y dove-y on each other, then find out we have completely different ideas on how to raise kids, and end up just hurting each other.

    Also in courting there's a lot more accountability involved as compared to most dating. What does that mean exactly? Not exactly sure, except that both of us are very committed to being pure, and we both recognize that without watching ourselves closely (and getting others to watch) it's far to easy to slip up and possibly ruin the relationship.

    Well, that's about it for tonight, so you people have a wonderful evening.

~Joseph W.

Wheee!

    So now for a nice little update on the status of mah characters. Hmm, where to start...

        Ishvi: Got to play in the Ulduar vehicles for the trash clear last Thursday. Despite stepping out before we got to the boss (another guy really, really wanted in) he had a TON of fun. I really like that place. Oh, and he also finished out his tank set. Mmmmm, tanking sweet tanking. He's not up to par for Ulduar by any means, but he can tank Naxx and OS (not sure I remember all the Naxx ones, but I know OS well enough, not *that* hard.

        Vishni(77DK/Trollbane): Poor girl must feel deserted, I haven't even logged in to her for a few weeks. She was trucking along for a good bit. Blew through outlands like it wasn't even there. Got the achievements for the Borean, the Fjord, and the Dragonblight...but then she hit 77. And with a fair amount of pressure she went and got regular flight (the 60% one) and cold weather flying. After doing one group dailies we were so fed up that we logged off...and haven't gotten back on yet. She'll probably get some love once 3.2 comes out and she at least moves as fast as her horse.

        Vishni(70Shaman/Kael'Thas): Well this poor girl is being forced to go back and pick some herbs, once she gets it up to Northrend levels she'll start leveling again, but atm she's mostly waiting for a server transfer over to Anvilmar where she'll join two of my brothers toons (a lvl75DK and a lvl71 hunter) and start working her way to 80.

        Prt(20Warlock/Anvilmar): Pretty well abandoned. I've tried and tried, just can't get into warlock. She made it up to 20, but is now pretty much a bank toon.

        Päronskaft(6Warrior/Anvilmar): First time I've ever actually played a male draenei, and also my first real attempt at playing a warrior. Currently lvl6 he will probably level very, very slowly. Because honestly he's guildless and that makes playing him a PAIN in the behind, if I didn't want to play a social game I'd spend $10 on lemonade tycoon and stop shelling out money to blizz every month. Still, he's seeing the light of day on a decent basis. Well, for the two weeks he's existed he's been played twice, which is pretty good for my trial toons.

        Minyades(19Priest/Anvilmar): Currently very close to my favorite toon, largely because I only play her with my brothers. Prot pally, rogue(hunter once we catch up with the little one he rolled there in a few levels), and her(currently holy because since we quest together the extra dps from shadow isn't as useful as the healing).

        Vishnah(69Rogue/Kael'Thas): I love leveling as melee dps, I blow through things at an astonishing rate. And Vishnah is great for that, plus he has inscription leveled so he'll never have to farm freaking-stupid-retarded-horrid-hateful-less-than-fun Sons of Hodir rep. The problem? Parties. Namely I suck soooooo horridly at chasing mobs down that it's just plain sad. Though it is vaguely possible he might see a touch more of the light of day. I like competing, and you can't really compete as a healer, and the healers get mad when you compete as a tank (Pfft, you can pull three mobs? I can pull 30!). But all in all I don't think I'm going to put in the time (IE: stop playing my other toons) enough to actually get him leveled, and then geared.

    And that's a lot of characters to try to keep track of (though Prt doesn't really count), but it's still six characters I have an interest in, and I certainly don't have enough time to see to that interest.
    The solution? Well, Minyades gets first priority. I play her with my two brothers and that's really the reason I play WoW at all, if they quit I'd be out shortly after. Second to that comes Ishvi, I like heroics, and I like raids. So mainly on Sat/Sun nights (the only times I'm fairly certain I have free) I've told my GM that I'll prolly be available to raid and plan to try to do so. Third: Well, it's a mashup between Päronskaft, Vishni(shaman), and Vishni(DK) in more or less that order.
    The result? Hopefully I'll start bein' a touch more productive about things, and Suvon gets a little less/delayed Ishvi love (the DK got rolled there to eventually tank heroics for the bum).

~ish/joe

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

Fandom!

    Ah, the previous generation had the trekkies, which they not-so-kindly shoved into lockers. My hope? It appears the trekkies might be replaced with people infected with twilight-itis (inflammation of the twilight). Why? Because it'd be funnier shoving vamp wannabes into lockers, after all, aren't vamps supposed to be super strong?

    Also, well, not much also. I kinda suck at playing my warrior, but work is going awesome! *rambles*

~joe/ish/vish

p.s. I wouldn't actually shove anyone in their locker. And I probably wouldn't laugh if someone got shoved in a locker while I watched, it'd depend on the circumstances.

Patch Day

Yay for uber downloads!

Masquerades: Officially all they're cracked up to be.

A fun day indeed

    I think I'm going to really enjoy today. Here's a rough break down of my schedule:
        - Get off work at ~2pm, go run buy insulation, mountain dew (for while we're working), and beer (my payment to my helper(who is of age))
        - Pick up my bro and lend him my car at 4:30/4:45
        - Get picked up at 6 to go eat food somewhere
        - Head down to Temple for a masquerade at around 7-7:30
        - Come back from Temple
        - Start putting in insulation around midnight or 1am
        - Crash like a log

    "Wait, did he just say masquerade?" Why yes I did! Me, a buddy of mine, and a friend of hers will be carpooling down and daaancing (I assume) while wearing masks! Not only that but I didn't have to find/make one! Luckily they decided to make their own and offered to do mine while they were at it. Hopefully I won't  end up with a ballerina/trolloc mask.

    The only major question I have now is... Do I want to buy R-13 rolls of insulation or go ahead and pay for the R-19 insulation? The R-19 is roughly twice as expensive, but how much more effective is it? Oh the questions we get to ponder.

    Welp that's all the time I have for now, so I will let ya'll go about having fun anticipating the next post! Though you have to admit I've been doing them fairly regularly these days.

~joe

Entitlement

    Woo! So I randomly actually looked at the blog/twitter thing for a comic I read and he mentioned a blog post on entitlement. This somewhat intrigued me as I really didn't have a clue what he was talking about. I mean, entitlement? Just didn't clue in at all.

    ( http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/05/entitlement-issues.html (go read it and come back(really(this is a nesting joke none of you are going to get))))

    Then I went and read the article, very nicely done. I will worn anyone who goes to read it that he does say b**** (twice I believe), but he uses it in a fairly accurate way. He's talking about how people expect people artists to produce their books of a superb quality while maintaining a schedule that fits the reader. Much like a dog breeder expects his, ahem, female-dogs-of-a-breedable-age to produce litters of puppies on a schedule that suits him.

    Anyways, on less breed-ish terms I made level 71 on my DK yesterday. Managed to finish the rest of the gnome quests in the borean tundra as well, which just leaves DEHTA and one short group over around a quarry south of Amber Something iirc. But it's been a few months since I've done the Borean, so I dunno. After that I figure I'll head over to the Howling Fjord before I go to the dragonblight. Oh, and this is all on Trollbane, some loser named Suvon made me roll toons over there.

    In other news....Hmm, I need to post about my newly developed housing situation, but I am at work now, and I should probably, you know, work! Later ya'll.

~joe(ish/vish)

Dancing!

ZOMG dancing is awesome! I went to a dance today and kinda thought it'd be okay. You know, learn a little of Tango and hang out with people.

Turns out they weren't just doing Tango, they also had separate lessons for the total newbs, like me. So I learned some Fox Trot, some Waltz, some Tango, and a touch of other stuff, like Swing and Mambo.

The waltz is officially the coolest thing that ever happened. The Fox Trot isn't bad, but I want to die waltzing, and not just 'cause that would make a cool story.

Anyways, time to try to sleep now, but I'll try and remember to blog more later!

~joe

How He Loves Us

Here's the lyrics to that song:

Verse 1:
He is jealous for me,
Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,
Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.
When all of a sudden,
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,
And I realise just how beautiful You are,
And how great Your affections are for me.

Pre-Chorus:
And oh, how He loves us so,
Oh how He loves us,
How He loves us all

Chorus 1:
Yeah, He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves.
Yeah, He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves.

Verse 2:
We are His portion and He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes,
If grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.
So Heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss,
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest,
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets,
When I think about, the way…

Chorus 2:
He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves us,
Oh how He loves.
Yeah, He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves.

Verse 3:
Well, I thought about You the day Stephen died,
And You met me between my breaking.
I know that I still love You, God, despite the agony.
...They want to tell me You're cruel,
But if Stephen could sing, he'd say it's not true, cause...

Chorus 3:
Cause He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves us.
Whoa! how He loves us.
Whoa! how He loves.
Yeah, He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves.

Stupid email...

    So I hit tab and then space and sent off the post prematurely. So to continue:

    On the bike thing (going up and down a hill):
        1 mile, ~8 minutes

    On the treadmill (flat lining the walk):
        1 mile, ~18 minutes

    And that was it, I was going to go further on the bike, but when I got off after that one mile I literally almost dropped to the ground. I think next time I might walk half a mile first (to warm up), then bike, then walk the other half. Or maybe turn down the resistance on the bike, we'll have to see.

    Anyways, the general plan of my routine is something like this:
        M-W-F : Walk/Run/Bike (cardio goodness)
        T-Th : Try change my upper body figure from being a slim Pillsburry doughboy into something a bit more manly
        Sa : Racquetbaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall (also throughout the week if people wanna play, but that doesn't happen much)
        Su : mah day off

    Welp, that's about it. So I'll chat ya'll up later.


~joe is loving blogging from work!

This Morning

    Thanks to stupid Dax and his blog I've been noticing certain flabby parts of my life more often lately. Soooo I got up and went to the gym this morning. The Y should not be crowded at 5:45am! There should be no witnesses to my pitiful attempts to exercise!

    Well, in the spirit of Dax, whose blog I shall continue to read merely for more pictures of Denali, here's my record for the day:

So I wonder if I can text updates?

--
==================================================================
This mobile text message is brought to you by AT&T

Test

    So I was looking around for a way to *always* be sent an email when someone comments on a blog (couldn't find one). But! I did find a way to send an email to blogger and have it update. So here's where we test that!

~joe hopes this works

Programming...

    While I realize that most people who read this blog probably don't program, I had an awesome idea and felt the need to share it. At my current job I, well, program, but the thing that always frustrated me was the way we get paid. Not the amount by any means, get paid well for Waco, but the fashion, namely, hourly.

    Hourly wages always annoy me. If I work my butt off I get paid a certain amount, if I work a regular day, same amount, if I stand around and count ceiling tiles for most of the day...you guessed it, same amount. I suppose it all kinda balances out in the end, but it frustrates me. So the solution? Pay for work completed!

    For most jobs this has some issues. First: If I work retail and people don't come in and buy, IE: No one wants a hamburger on your shift, then I kinda get screwed, and everyone fights over the busy shifts and refuses to work the slow ones. Second: Most people don't have projects they have to complete on a regular basis, usually it's more along the lines of "go straighten those shelves" or "stand at this assembly line for the next eight hours". And who wants to go through the trouble of figuring out the monetary worth of straightening shelves?

    So it's not perfect for everyone, but it works nicely for my job! At my work everything we do is in "projects". Some department will decide they need something changed, and then submit a project request to my boss. My boss will look at the request, look to see who is busy, and assign it to someone based on whatever. My thought? Have a que!

    Now is where I start relating this to games. In WoW in order to do a quest you have to have a certain level AND a certain rep requirement (though sometimes it's just friendly) to do something. For the *really* good rewards you have to have faction specific rep. So how would this work for programming? Assign people "levels" (IE: how capable are you with your program) and "rep" (IE: What departments do you work for) and let people choose there own projects.

    You'd also have a few rules, such as: You can't pick up more than x projects at a time, or: If you don't finish a project on time you lose the "reward" for finishing it (or some sort of measurable loss for slacking). You'd prolly need more, but an interesting idea no?

    Oh! But you ask "Why would you help your co-workers, aren't they just your competition?" Well why do you see waiters helping other waiters? Because they know they'll need help as well. And if they do some huge favor for them they'll usually slip them a few dollars. You could do the same for programmers, that or maybe when the project is ended they could let the other guy have some of the exp. 

    Someone not helping out? Or not reciprocating to people helping him? Those sort of people are already here! And with this system, they'll weed themselves out, maybe faster than they do now.

~joe

The Conversation Of Race In America

Ahhhh. I love the smell of debate in the morning! So my sister made a post over on her blog about "The current conversation of race in America". I largely understand this to mean, "What do people talk about when they discuss race, in America?". Which of course brings up all the wonderful questions about race and racism.

One of the points she brings up is about various ethnic groups getting riled up about stuff after "the hell they've been through". Now this is something I would argue vehemently against. Not that there were people of various ethnic groups that were put through very close to hell on earth. There is no denying that Africans were treated much worse than animals on their route to the colonies, or that they were treated much like animals at the colonies. And if you put some effort into it you can find that the romans raided various people and used them as slaves as well. And no one can forget the roughly 6million jews that died in Germany in the span of just a few years.

There is certainly no arguing those points. What I would argue, is that no black american (I don't see how they're any more african american than I am scottish american) today has any claim to being abused in the era of slavery, and a shrinking minority of them have any claim to the heavy racism that followed after. As for hispanics being treated as a sort of second class citizen, well I haven't seen any of it towards legal ones (but honestly I don't spend much time in circles where I would). And if illegal immigrants are treated as second class citizens, well, honestly can they expect any better?

Now I'm not saying that everything is lovey dovey and we should just forget the past. It's important to remember our heritage and know what made our ancestors the people they are, and thus the people we are. However, I also don't think that I should feel bad for something that my ancestors may or may not have been involved in (at this point I'd have to do some pretty heavy research to find out).

That's it for now, but please feel free to make comments or responses. Though if you're one of the non-existent people who read my blog and I don't know, please post your blog after you make a rebuttal.

~joe

Latest news

So, what new in the life of Joe. Umm, not to much.

Sunday I finally got around to installing Windows 7 on my comp, it runs like a dream. I've had the dvd to install it for quite some time now, just hadn't sat down until Sunday to do it. Though it might have been Saturday, I forget exactly.

Sunday also saw the insanely fun time of doing nothing. Now I know that sounds weird, but it really was great. Me, my bro, and two of our friends just sat around for close to seven hours, played scrabble, a few card games, and generally did nothing and were bored together.

How is this fun? Well when was the last time you just sat around doing nothing with friends? With people you felt so comfortable with that you were content merely being bored with them. Maybe I'm just odd, but I certainly enjoyed it.

Monday was awesome, I spent a few hours and managed to repair a pair pants that others had declared hopeless! Man, it's been awhile since I sat down with a needle and thread to fix something. I had forgotten how relaxing just doing some simple sticking is, though sewing blue jeans is kinda annoying, I managed to prick myself with the back of the needle a few times while trying to jam it through several layers.

Other than that work has been good, getting kinda scared, gotta ask my boss on Friday if she's gonna keep me on after the semester ends. Welp, that's about it.

~joe is listening to Minstrel Boy by Thomas Moore

OMG!

I am a horrid failure, I let a month pass without posts! Forgive meeeeeeeeeeee!

On an idle note: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUWTF22JToY

Your commander thing commands you to click! On a side note, hopefully here pretty soon I'll have my website working right and will be moving the blog over there...hopefully.

If any of you know how to do the language for a blog please oh please point me that direction. I'm guessing php or css are the way to do it, but haven't found any sort of guide to get me started yet.

Also, if someone happened to buy me the coolest pet in the world, I'd love you more!

Lots of spiffy stuff has been happening lately, but I haven't blogged any of it! Hopefully I'll start getting it up here more regularly.

I. Am. Legend.

    Or something like that. I decided Sunday that I was gonna start getting up at 4:45 instead of 5:30 so I'd have time to run before work. Well...Monday and Tuesday didn't happen. At all. Well, I did pseudo run up all 8 flights of steps to the floor I work on, but it's not the same, just makes my feet hurt.

    Anyhoo, so I woke up this morning, watched some Bleach, and finally decided it was time to go be productive, so out the door I went.

    Now, I haven't run in over 8 months (I think) so I was aiming for basically walking a mile, but I decided to go ahead and see how far I could run before I had to stop. How far did I make it? A little over half a mile! Woooooo!

    That said, we'll see how much I cry when I wake up to run tomorrow (tonight is one of my evening classes). Welp, time to go finish getting ready for work, AKA more Bleach and finish stuffing stuff in my pockets/checking to make sure I have my badge/USB. 

Later ya'll

    Joseph W.

My Body and Me

Welp, I haven't quite posted in awhile. I blame other people. I mean, have you READ Grai's recent posts? How am I supposed to compete with that!

Oh well, remember back when I started this blog? I think it was the 3rd paragraph or so where I mentioned the fact that I had TB. Welp, time has passed, and today I took the last of my Isoniazid (the antibiotic given for TB). Wooooo! Woooo! Woooo!

Life is good my friends. Not only am I fairly healthy (I have allergies, but hey, Waco's near famous for them), but Wednesday I started my first real project at work! Now the project itself isn't exactly momentous, but it makes for a very nice milestone, now I'm a real worker.

That's about it for now, but I'll try to get back into a more regular posting habit. It'd be somewhat easier if I could do it from work, but oh well.

~joe/ish

Caaaaaaaaaash

   So here's a quick heads up on mah cash situation. I decided I wanted to try to be a little bit more business like about how I deal with my money in game. Not that I want to be like Ebenezer and hate people without it, but just not as wasteful in the spending, and more productive smarter in the making of it. 

    To that end I started liquidating my unused items via the AH (Auction House), this put me up to about 3.6k gold. I decided to make an investment and try to actively make money. I bought 218 eternal earths for ~ 6.25G each and made them into rings to disenchant. This made roughly 287 infinite dust, 29 GCE, and 5 shards.

Here's the outcome:

Investment:

Roughly 1362.5G (I need to keep better track next time)

Base Product:

109 Stoneguard Bands (got a guildie to make them and forced him to take 50G for the work)

Manufactured Product:

287 Infinite Dust

29 Greater Cosmic Essence

5 Dream Shard (Which I kept)

Outcome:

287 * 4.5G each = 1291.5G

29 * 25G each = 725G

Total = 2016.5G

Return On Investment:

1.43 (Total result / (investment + processing cost))

    Now I realize that I used decimals so you might be tempted to think those numbers are exact, but they're not. I basically bought all the eternal earths on the market that were

    So I made ~600G in about half an hour, the selling took longer, but I usually just count the time actively spent making it.

    I plan on trying to find some other stuff that's cheaply made and resold, but atm enchanting is my on high level skill, so we'll work with that. Further reports on a later time!

~ish/joe

Hmm

    Okay, so I started reading Greedy Goblin about a week ago just to try and make some cash. For those who don't know he's a fairly popular WoW blogger who has amassed a fairly insane amount of gold. And I'm trying to be a little less dependant on farming and dailies for cash.

     The reason I bring this up? Well he made a post about a conversation he had, it was pretty funny, but he went and posted another one, which wasn't so funny. I mean, he really was kind of rude to the person asking him. This bothered me at first, but later when I checked back for some reason he had removed the post saying he was going to post about it today.

     Fastforward to today, here's the post. Go read it real quick. Okay, on one hand I kinda still think he was rude, but on the other hand he has a really valid point.

     I've taken a communication class, and my mom has her bachelor's in communication and I recognize all of the ploys he's talking about (go edukayshun!). I've run across that sort of thing, though usually not that polished a lot. Usually from random strangers asking me to run them through VC or Stocks.

    Now I have absolutely no problem with running guildies through. Heck, usually I offer to do it first, just because it's fun. But even if they asked me, that's why we're in a guild, happy to oblige. But total strangers? Another story.

    The point of this? I'm not really sure. I guess just to help people understand that you can say a firm no to really nice people without needing to feel rude. Was he perhaps a touch ruder than needed? Maybe, but he also helped that person understand that he was asking a silly question, which he might not have.

    Welp, that's about it, cash post coming soon!

~joe/ish

What fun!

    Okay, so classes started this week, and I forced myself to be there on time, and even had the book for most of the classes. Of course I did check with the professors first, but I usually just wait. 

    Soooo, last semester I disliked the vast majority of my classes. A fair amount of that had to do with the teachers, but the classes themselves just weren't interesting/challenging. I mean I did have some good moments in Intro to the Internet (which surprised me) while doing some of the html assignments. And intro to databasing was more interesting than it sounds, but the others were mostly a drag.

    Here's a recount of school for this semester:
Programming Fundamentals 2 (3 hours, intro to C++): Awesome teacher and interesting class =D
Intro To Web Programming (3 hours, javascripting): Awesome teacher (same as the last one) and a fun class with a co-worker as a fellow student =D
Internship (4 hours, aka work): What? You're paying me to go to get credits? FTW!
Advanced Database (3 hours, online, mostly using Access): Nice teacher who, while having deadlines when stuff must be done, will let us work as far ahead as we want. Including letting us take the final when we want. Can we say finishing mid Feb?
Network Security (3 hours, 1730-2145 Wed): Fairly fun class, read the chapter before class, he talks for ~1-2 hours about said chapter, you labs, you go home. Grade is completely made up of three test OR you pass the compTIA Security+ cert and get an A, regardless of scores. Can we say hopefullyfinishingbeforeApril?
System Analysis And Design (3 hours, mainly project management, 1800-2100 Thu): Odd teacher, but he does seem like he honestly wants to get us all jobs before we finish the semester. Not at his place exactly, but through class projects hook us up with local companies. 

    That's most of what I'll be up to besides work, which happens 7-11 M-Th and 700-1330 Fri. Except when I go in for extra, or tell them ahead of time and do something else. Mainly I just need to do 20+ hours a week. I'm aiming for a solid 24/wk with bumps upwards as time goes on and I get more acclimated to school/work. Or get more poor.

    Now that the real world is accounted for we move on to a recount of the WoW stuff:
Vishni (66 Shaman): Currently enhance spec, but planning on moving to elemental come 80. Currently moving along nicely towards 80, hopefully get into Northrend sometime this weekend.
Ishvi (80 Paladin): Ishvi is very strongly holy atm, but the last two raids I've logged on around had WAY to many healers, so he may see some ret action depending on how long it takes Vish to get up to 80. Hopefully she'll be my dps toon and Ish will stay heals until he can dual spec tank/heals.
To all my other characters: Look forward to being bank alts for a very, very long time.

    I think that about wraps it up. So I'll be talkin' to ya'll later. =D

~joe/ish

p.s. See! I can write short posts!

The New Year: Part 2

     Now comes the non-WoW part of the new year. The part where I take a look at what I've done, what I'm doing, and what I plan to do. Now while I sit back and relax to tell you how it might be, go make me a sammich. No? Well then sudo go make me a sandwich! Why thank you!

     So where was I the start of last year? At work, kinda aiming halfheartedly towards a nursing degree. I had signed up for a couple classes for the spring, no real passion to go though, just the certain knowledge that I had to do something. So we go through that semester, I get my butt handed to me in one class (A&P_grade = 'C'), and manage to do a decent job in the other (Microbiology_grade = 'B').

     Why did I do so poorly? Oh quite a few reasons: I wasn't really interested. It really didn't make any sense. I worked lots of night shifts. I started play WoW again towards the end. And I'm really bad at rote memorization.

     I also volunteered to go do child care in Germany for two weeks for a mission conference in July. Not really important here, but comes into play later on.

     So here comes the summer, I was ready for it! I even had a plan to keep me busy and away from playing to much WoW. I was gonna (sorta) work for one of my doc friends helping him clear property to (eventually) build a sort of missionary resort dealie. This was also gonna help me get some funds together to play for my mission trip.

     So I went out working with him, and he's a great man of God so I started talking to him about what I'm doing in life. How I'm kinda wanting to do nursing, but most of that has to do with the fact that I adore my co-workers, no real love of the work itself, and no real natural talent in that are. Other than usually being pretty good at taking care of people. After we talk and pray about it some we both kinda come to the conclusion that I was just doing nursing for my co-workers. All of my natural skill/talent leans towards computers. 

      About this time is when is when my plans started coming down. First the government decided that I owed them something in the neighborhood of $25,000 and they weren't going to force me to pay it immediately, but they were going to confiscate my $813 tax rebate and continue taking any more I had until I paid them back. This was a problem because, well, not only did I not have the money and needed that rebate, I also did NOT owe them $25,000. Or any money at all.

     Cherry on the cake to that? My arm broke. Me and my friend were out clearing brush trees (DIE CEDAR!), namely chainsawing and burning them. Well he decided to start a patch on fire that was still up against the other stuff, planning on just moving the brush in as the fire consumed it. Or something like that. Anyways, I kinda raised objections, though I really didn't put enough force into them, but he did it anyways. The end result being it got out of control, he screamed at me, I ran over, helped him move one of the larger trees that was sorta on fire about to go up in flames. It caught on something, then got uncaught sending me about three feet in the air off an embankment and instead of falling on my nice large rump, I put my hand down to catch myself. Craaaaaaaaack.

     So there I was, nothing to do but play WoW. Short a LOT of money for my mission trip. And really, really bored. So what did I do? I played WoW and got a lesson in humility by having to ask people for money to the tune of roughly $2,000.

     Now I realize that missionaries do that sort of thing all the time. Heck, I've given money to them plenty of times, and I'm sure you have as well. But asking people for money? Yeah, I had a bit of a pride problem with that. Namely I always had enough money. Never asked people to pay for my meals, always tipped well, and always could pay for someone else to eat as well (though it might mean I ate Top Ramen for the next few weeks). Bit of a pride issue there.

     Anyways, God provided the money in time (like always) and I got to go on the trip. Woo! Which is a good thing too, it really reminded me how much I need him on a daily basis, not just Sundays and sad-days.

     Came back from the trip just in time to get ready for the school year. Pellgrant paid for everything plus a little (it ended up buying me WotLK =D) so I didn't have any financial issues in that regard. 
     
      The rest of the year kinda went smoothly. The only hangup being when I drove to my parent's house for my mom's graduation/birthday. Yeah, found out about 100 or so miles out of Waco that my front left brake was riding metal on metal. Made for a very prayerful trip to Las Cruces.

     But I made it there without any problems! No tickets, no major mechanical failures, no one peed in the car, and I didn't fall asleep/starve to death on the way! Buuut there was still the matter of getting my car fixed before I drove back (I know God is infinitely kind and merciful, but I don't usually feel like testing him).

     I was in luck though! A good friend of mine hails from El Paso. You wonder why this is lucky? Her dad owns a car shop! Yay for reliable mechanics! Got over there, got it fixed, found out I had WAY more problems than I thought I did, but still affordable!

     Well, I say affordable, theres a pride story in that one too. You see, I could pay for it right then, but that would leave me barely making it back, and no paycheck for two more weeks. This would be a far less than optimal situation, especially with that month's bills to pay.

     Usually I'd just borrow money from my Dad, he's great like that. But after having all the family down, helping pay for stuff, and graduating in general, funds were kinda in short supply there too. Not that he wouldn't have helped me, but there's a good chance he might have to put stuff on credit cards, and debt is icky, and if I won't put myself in debt how could I ask someone else to do it? Soooo, time to call people!

     But God has supplied me with an ample number of friends, good ones at that! So I called Jolene, who honestly counts more as a sister than a friend, and asked if I could borrow $274 or something like that. Namely the exact amount of the bill, and pay her back on my next paycheck. Her response? She gave me $300 and wouldn't let me pay her back. Dang women!

     Oh! And I got my spiffindefiliss internship! Which is actually where I wrote most of this, gotta do something on my lunch break after all. Welp, just about time to get back to work. I'll try to sit down this weekend at some point and describe how wonderful my job is, but that'll have to wait. This post is to long already!


~joe(ishvi)

p.s. sorry for the extended length and bad formating. I made it over a series of lunch breaks

A new year! Part one

     Ah, a new year is upon us. For many people this means many different things, new years resolutions, last party before the next semester, or just an opportunity to sit back and look at what we've accomplished.

     In this first post I'll cover what I've accomplished in WoW, I'll cover what I've done in real life tomorrow, or maybe Tuesday.

     Where was I at the start of last year? I was fiddling around on my rogue on Silvermoon, kinda hanging out with some old friends, making a few new ones, just generally wasting time, not even trying to accomplish anything. 

      Well, that changed shortly afterwards when my brother invited me over to play on Kael'thas with some of his blogger friends. Wanted me to transfer characters and all. I thought he was kinda nuts myself, I mean, really? You read these peoples blogs and you want me to change servers to play with ya'll? Neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerd alert!

     But reservations aside I hoped over to 3B's site and read the guild charter, and was actually pretty intrigued. I mean, it sounded like a pretty good set up of intelligent people acting like adults. However I was not to be swayed that easily! It's fairly easy to put down a beautifully sounding charter on paper, but acting one out can be much more difficult.

     So I decided to roll an alt, you know, just a quick something so I could say I tried and then go back to my rogue and friends-who-were-slowly-not-playing-anymore on Silvermoon. Rolled a human pally, why? Well, I'd heard paladins could solo insane amounts of murlocs with very little trouble and that appealed to me...but also the RP behind them.

     Now, I don't RP, pretty much ever. I do however associate with my characters. While I may not be them myself, I have to be able to see something in them that I would want to be around. This is why I've never gotten a warlock past level 20-something. I honestly don't think I'd hang out with someone who had a succubus at their beck and call, even if they never did call it. But a paladin? I'd so hang out with a paladin, he heals, he smites undead and demons (I really don't see much of a difference), and he protects what is important to him, the people.

     Anyways, so I roll a toon, apply on the guildportal and start playing. Well whaddya know? The people acted pretty much the way the people I hang out with act. Nice, friendly, and a few people I can jab in the ribs with sharp sticks in return for jabs (that goes for you Aloix/Ash if ya'll still read it). Oh, and they're helpful, need help with an instance? They'd almost fight over it sometimes! To many people sign up for something? They would fight over who sat out, and I mean they wanted to sit out so other could get their giggles.

     This inspired me, I mean, playing was fun again, for more than just the game. So in a fairly short, not record setting by any means, but fast for me, I made it up to level 70, my first toon to hit max level. That's where the fun stuff started happening.

     First, I had researched how to tank and what was needed, after all I didn't want to come off as a complete idiot (though I know I did at times). But, well, do you know who writes guides to how to tank as a paladin? Main tanks. I don't know of a single guide out there on how to offtank something. So when I finally got into raids I had no idea how to not be the main guy, but no actual experience (or much of the needed gear).

    Second, well, my personality in normal 5-mans started coming out. I like doing stuff, I like doing it in waves and quickly, being spontaneous and off the wall. This might have gotten us wiped a few times. Just a few. So I ended up getting compared to the famous Leroy Jenkins. A lot.

     But eventually I did manage to get to doing a good job tanking though. No where near the level of a certain tank we all know and love, but I could get the job done, usually anyways.

     However time passes and with the new expansion coming out last Nov I had a chance to do something I had never done before: actually do new content as it came out. Is it important to do stuff right off the bat before other people do it? Nope. Should you put important stuff to the side so you can be the first one to do that mob? Heck no! Is it really fun to do it when you can though? Oh heck yeah!

     So I started looking for a raiding guild, but I was hampered by something. You see, not only are the Sidhe Devils an awesome group of people (and the new guild would have to live up to them) but I heartily believe that RL comes first, and that's part of what made live with the SD easy. If RL stuff hits the fan theres not a person in there that will try to guilt you into playing the game instead of taking care of whatever needs to be done. Family always comes first.

     But I waited long enough and good things came! While in NM for my mom's graduation and subsequent birthday (go you mom!) I ran across some people who thought I'd fit in with them and we gave it a shot. It went beautifully, the raid times matched pretty well for me and off we went.

     Since then I've cleared 10-man Naxx, almost all of 25-man Naxx, and 25-man Sarth. Were we server first? Nope. Did I have a lot of fun doing it? Heck yeah! Did I possibly spend to much time to do it? Eeeeh, maybe.

     Anyways, that catches me up to where we are these days, and it's far past time for me to hit the sack. But I have one last question before I go. Just out of general curiosity, why do you play the class you play? Is it the class mechanics? The RP? The fact that it's the one you got leveled and you don't want to bother leveling another? Just out of curiosity.

~ishvi/joe

p.s. Sorry about the long unorganized post, I started writing it while tired, and just kept going