Ramblings of a learner

Ze end has come!

2010-11-18T09:46:00.001-08:00

Welp, this will be my last post here. I finally got a blog working on my main site sonofwau.com. So all future updates will be there.

Just a word of warning about the site, the RSS works, but not for chrome. I don't have safari to test that, but I assume since IE and Firefox work that Safari will.

As for the old posts here...I'll probably move them over to the new blog slowly. At least the important ones, wow ones and really random ones (like the ones where I whine about not posting enough) I might not move.

Anyhoo, new post up at the new blog. And...

~joe/ish out

Whee

2010-11-10T13:44:00.000-08:00

Okay, my website is now up and running. The only problem is the RSS isn't quite working yet...But there is an awesome first post there!

~joe

Oh noez!

2010-11-01T08:50:00.001-07:00

The end cometh soon! It looks like I finally have my website almost ready to actually blog on, which means I can consolidate it all in one spot! Woo!

For reasons I find somewhat hard to explain it'll be very happy to blog on my own website. =D

In other news...not much other news. School goes on, work goes on, I play random games for a few hours in between school and work...Yup, life is good.

Hopefully you'll see more posts coming soon!

~joe

Bleah or Yay

2010-10-26T14:59:00.000-07:00

So I can run 2.1mi in 29min. I'm not entirely sure if I'm happy about this or saddened by it. On one hand that's a lot more than I could do earlier this week...on the other hand that's a long way away from 1.5mi in <13min (the end goal).

Also to clarify not all of that is running. 4min walk, 8min jog, 4min walk, 8min jog/run, 3-5min walk back to the apartment. Next week is 4/9/4/9/3-5. And then the week after that (finally) will be 4 walk/13 run/3-5 walk. After I do that for a week I start picking a day of the week and try to improve running speed.

The ideal goal would be to do a 5k sometime next spring in <20min. Failing that I wanna do it in <25min. I mean, Rusty can do one in <30 and if someone that old can do it a youngster like me should be able to whip it out in no time.

Also: overall blog changes coming soon! They'll be shiny!

Stats de Joe

2010-09-29T17:07:00.001-07:00

So, in response to a pseudo challenge from Dammerung and just because Rusty keeps posting his here is a rough breakdown of what I do:

5mi bike ride in the morning (five miles kinda sounds impressive, but it's not.

23 pushups in one minute (my wife wasn't there to insure that I was perfect form but I think I was)

1.5mi run/walk in ~20min

I'll probably start posting other sorts of stuff now too. But until then: school takes lots of times, the whole real life thing outside of school takes lots of time, and Civ5 is amazing at filling in that in between portion.

~joe

WoW and Time

2010-08-31T04:23:00.000-07:00

Ah how things can change in a year. This time last year I still thought of myself as a WoW player (though a very passive one). Two years ago and I was a heavy player!
And now? Now I rarely think of it, unless someone brings it up in conversation. And even then I don't miss the game. I miss the people, but not the game itself.

What brings this up? Well, I decided to clean up my blogroll. While a number of them were just gone (like Nas's blog), others I just didn't care about anymore. Actually I think pretty much all the ones I removed were by people who weren't posting. Except one where the link was broken and had gone unfixed because I didn't care.

Why bother with a past that I don't care about, and practically no one who reads this cares about? Well, that's because I'm a sucker for things nostalgic. Give me enough time and I will miss even the crappiest of jobs, or even friends (though I've had blessedly few of those).

Hmm, I need to update my google reader for Scott's new blog, dang people and their blog moving! *shakes fist*

Anyone curious about the rambling nature of this post? Well, mostly it's 'cause I'm at work and have no work to do. At all.

Oh! One last call out, if anyone reading this is really familiar with linux holler at me. Working on setting up my computer with Suse and having some issues with it.

Adios!
~joe/ish

P.S. If anyone has beaten Starcraft 2 on hard holler at me. I'm stuck on the last protoss mission.

Comments on relationships

2010-08-25T06:30:00.000-07:00

Sooooo, it's been awhile since I've posted here. So I thought I'd throw in a random post! A friend of mine recently asked me: "I have heard a variety of opinions about what boundaries a couple should set on their physical relationship while they are "dating." What are your thoughts?"

Here's is my reply (warning, it's something of a rough draft):
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Person I'm Replying To,

Sorry about taking so long to reply. I've been busy with a few things the last few months and kept forgetting, except when I was busy.

Personally I think physical limits are rather subjective as to the relationship. With me and Hannah we didn't hold hands for the first month, and tried to always stay in public or around friends when hanging out.
I believe in general you won't run into any problems so long as you don't look for a line or border. While that may sounds wrong at first let me explain the thought process behind it.

If you have a line you will walk right up to it on a regular basis. And once you're right next to the line you will really want to step over it. Once you step over it you'll usually rationalize it, and redraw the line. And when you're not with the other person you won't be right up against the line, and you'll feel really good that you have boundaries set on your relationship to keep you safe. It can also cause you to become very tempted to judge others.

The thought process I would encourage isn't based on a line that shouldn't be crossed, but rather two polar opposites. The world is made up of gray, there is rarely a distinct line between what is good and what is bad, almost every good act has some bad aspects to it, and the reverse is true as well.
So instead of trying to imagining that there is some line in the sand between good and evil, imagine that you're climbing a hill. At the top is perfection, spiritually and physically, and at the bottom is anti-perfection. Instead of finding a comfortable ledge to hang out on, keep climbing towards the top. Will you slip? Yes, but not as far as if you were just standing on the ledge, and since you're in shape from all that climbing you'll regain what you lost faster.

Okay, so practically how does this work? On a regular basis evaluate why you're making the decisions you're making. Are you putting your arm around her because you love her and want to show that or comfort her, or are you putting your arm around her because it feels good. The action is the same but the cause is different, and because the cause is different the actions that come after will be different.
If you are merely trying to show your love sex will very rarely be a reasonable avenue, flowers and home made food do it much better. If you are doing it because it feels good, well, I've met someone that doesn't think sex does/will feel good, and so that's a reasonable path to take.

Now this will lead to limits, but it will not state them. Also, it's not always bad to do something just because it "feels good." But it does mean you need to be very careful how you tread, especially when that good feeling involves someone else.

I hope this helps you somewhat. I know it doesn't give a definitive answer to your question, but I don't necessarily believe there is one. Everyone's relationships are different, and everyone's beliefs are different. And unless you feel called by God you shouldn't (in my opinion) judge other people by your standard (remember, some people believe it's wrong to eat pork).
If you have any other questions or need a clarification on what I said please feel free to write back. I'll try to get back in a more timely manner (like, within 24hrs).

Sincerely,
Joseph
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Any thoughts on my thoughts?
~joe/ish

Awesomeness comes in pairs

2010-08-19T05:35:00.000-07:00

So I have happy news! The first is I rode from my house to work (2.5mi) this morning in 7min! This is awesometime.
As best I can tell this is due to my fixing my gears (now I can get up into my top ones). Soon, hopefully Saturday, I'll have road tires for my bike, supposedly that helps a lot.

Happy news #2! I have my mancala game working! At the moment it doesn't have the best of graphics, but it'll install, and run. Switch between players, keep score of wins/ties, say when someone wins (and reset the board), keep you from trying to move empty places...And many other interesting features!
Or at least some other features. Hopefully soon I'll take away the move buttons and have people click on the actual numbers (or better yet the series of dots!).

That's about it for now.

~joe/ish

Calling all Bikers!

2010-08-13T04:03:00.000-07:00

And not motorcyclists, I want real bikers. The ones that use their feet (and some fancy machinery) to get them from place to place. Preferably commuting sorts, though anyone with experience is free to pitch in. Or those people with strong opinions, they're okay too. However, if you have no experience, have no strong opinions, and are easily cowed by words...DO NOT COMMENT! Or go ahead and comment, really not to worried about it.

Anyhoo, here's the deal. Right now I ride 2.5mi to work, and sometimes 2.5mi back (lately it's been in the 100s so my wife has been giving me the truck on our lunchbreaks).

A problem? I ride a well used mountain bike on pavement. From my understanding I couldn't be much less efficient, unless I got a trick bike. Either way it's not that big of a deal, only 2.5mi. However, rather soon (in Dec) there is a decent chance I'll be living further away, at which point I'd want a real bike.

Also, I kinda want something I can carry stuff on. Like, grocery runs and such. And I don't think I've ever seen a hookup for one of those back things that you strap stuff to for a mountain bike.

And now to the point: Does anyone (I'm looking at you Dax) have advice for what to get? Or personal experience that says street bikes aren't really that much better on streets than mountain bikes (I would find that hilarious)?

Any other general bike commuting advice would be appreciated as well. Oh, and right now I use a $10 walmart satchel to carry stuff to/from work, so I'm open for suggestions for that too.

Adios!
~Joe/Ish

P.S. And did you notice what I did with the post?

Orphans of Success

2010-08-11T04:31:00.000-07:00

So I flat stole that title. Bite me Jason Peters! That or come join me for a cigar and bourbon.

On to things that make sense. First off I'm due to start the fall semester in a whopping 12 days. Go go work and full time school! I am looking forward to it though, I'm hoping to have some interesting and challenging classes.

Besides, after I graduate things get hard. I have to find a real job. And do real work at it. Though hopefully I'll be able to grab one in Waco.

Oh, and I beat StarCraft2! All in all a very fun game. They totally revamped the way the single player works, and it's totally awesome. People called Dax should play. And others as well if they're still alive and kicking. Like Malcolm, but I know he's getting pretty up there in years. ;)

And finally, hmmm, well that's about it. I take my final for philosophy today, which is cool. And not just that I'm getting done with it, my philosophy class itself was pretty stellar. My teacher did an excellent job of presenting both sides to every argument.

Oh! For those of you curious about Jason Peters, or more curious why I brought him up today, he wrote an excellent article here. As best as I can tell it's fairly bi-partisan in nature (not the whole site, but that post in particular), and I'd say fairly spot on.

Hi ho silver! And away!
~joe/ish

p.s. Anyone here played Agricola?

Updates and things

2010-07-26T05:37:00.000-07:00

So for my many fans and readers I have updates! And by many I'm pretty sure I know all of you somewhat personally. Except Malcolm. Him I know not! And as a reward for finding out how he found my blog/who he is, you can name/givemeatopic for my next blog post!

First of all school...Finished Gov/Tech Writing with A's. And now I'm working on Music Appreciation (pretty much impossible to fail) and Philosophy (right now I still have hope for an A, but I'm really going to have to pick up the studying pace).

The reason for music appreciation being so easy are the tests. There are 10 of them, all of which are multiple choice, all of which are open now, and will be until the end of the semester. And all of which can be retaken as many times as I wish, until they close (at the end of the semester).

Philosophy on the other hand is a whole different beast. First of all it doesn't have a traditional school book with everything nicely grouped and page headers and theories that are easy to find... No, he uses a novel. This means I have to actually understand the concepts he's talking about, and not just be able to find them.

And even though there is a fair chance I'm gonna get a B in philosophy, because I'm not used to teachers who care about their students actually thinking about what they're taught (at least not in 1301 classes everyone has to take), I'm still fairly glad I chose it instead of one of the other options. School should be about learning us how to think anyways, not how to recite someone else's opinion.

Also, I rediscovered my love of Civ3 these last two weekends. Which saddens me somewhat because I'll be to busy to play for a looong time. And I have a really good game going. Playing on an England map I own all of the Scottish mainland and a fair portion down into the English lowlands. Once I discover tanks I'll probably finish steamrolling the last of it (someone fetch me pictures of steampunk tanks!).

And away!
~joe/ish

This sums it up rather nicely:

2010-07-26T05:31:00.000-07:00

I mean really?

2010-07-14T08:29:00.001-07:00

Some people amaze me: http://tinyurl.com/24wmts7

Although honestly I, like many of my coworkers, am suspicious of the honesty of the mistake.

~joe

Life, the Universe, and Everything

2010-06-30T06:21:00.001-07:00

Arg! School is evil! I've got just over a week left on my first summer semester. Then comes summer 2, and with it Philosophy and Music Appreciation.

Sadly these are the easy times. This fall will see me working 20hrs a week or so while taking 18 upper level hours. Ideally this will see me graduated by this time next year.

In other news I finally got into Diablo 2. Suvon tied me up and made me play with him, turns out once you get past 30 it gets pretty awesome. Also my wife started playing with me not to long ago, so that's pretty interesting.

And finally, I may have asked this before, but does anyone know of really good two person table top games? Preferably not uber competitive like chess. Ideally something cooperative that has a point (legos don't exactly have a point or campaign to them).

And away!

~joe/ishvi

Blog fail

2010-06-17T14:33:00.000-07:00

That's what you call a blog fail.

persuasive letter

2010-06-17T14:11:00.001-07:00

asdf

Because it's awesome

2010-06-04T06:54:00.001-07:00

These are actual google walking directions from Southampton, UK to Edinburgh, UK

No Explanation Needed - Redux

2010-05-26T12:30:00.000-07:00

Needs No Intro:

2010-05-26T10:30:00.000-07:00

Lets play a new game everybody!

2010-05-01T16:47:00.001-07:00

And we'll call the game: Waiting for the Starcraft 2 Beta to download.

Also, both me and my wife love Arcanum. She'll turn gamer yet!

And that's about it.

~joe/ish

Corrections are needed

2010-04-13T09:05:00.001-07:00

I saw a post on Two and a Half Orcs I felt the immediate need to correct. Before anyone gets any ideas. Dammerung and Wulfa do not, in fact, live in apartment, despite what they might wildly claim.

You can now go back to your regular scheduled…stuff.

Thank you,

~joe/ish

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Seanchan > everybody else except maybe the borderlanders, at least as far as countries go

2010-03-25T06:08:00.001-07:00

Also: Playing R:TW on hard is waaaay different then easy.

First, I’m almost imperial and I still haven’t conquered Gaul.

Second, those small armies I was running around with? Ha! I now have two armies, both with upwards of 1k men and I’m getting ready to start a 3^rd one once I hit imperial and get new units.

Third, can I have some of your denarii? I’m po.

Fourth, the brutii and scopii get better temples then us Julii, it’s not fair!

Fifth, the Spanish will be dying as soon as the Gaul are “pacified”.

Sixth, Woooo! (more details on that later)

Lastly, anyone have any experience with installing wine on openSuse(11.2)?

Prince of the Ravens

2010-03-15T09:00:00.001-07:00

Well it turns out the large D is worth something after all. I need to make a correction to my last post. I was calling each unit battalions(6-700), but in fact they’re closer in size to a company(60-100).

So in fact…Most of my armies are really more of battalions, and small ones at that. I don’t think I have a force over 500. Well, I take that back, I have two that might be over 500, barely. Though they’ll all be seeing some major growth since it turns out if you have over 50k denarii you start running into corruption in your generals, and I have upwards of 90k.

~joe/ish

Rome: Total War

2010-03-15T06:36:00.001-07:00

So Dammerung/Malkais/The Large One posted about R:TW the other day. I thought I’d add my general thoughts to it.

First off, it’s pretty fun. It provides a nice tactical game, and lets you wonderfully slaughter badly balanced forces. (See: 2 battalions of heavy cavalry on a flat plain vs 3 battalions of sling throwers and 5 bat. of light infantry vs 1 bat. of light horse archers)

Second, it’s the first RTS game I’ve played where terrain could *really* hide troops. I mean, like, you’re walking along and BAM you have two battalions on your flank that just came out of nowhere and are slaughtering your Velites(like archers, only they throw spears). (See: 3 bat. medium infantry, 1 bat. Velites, 1 bat. heavy cavalry (general’s guard) vs a freaking buttload of gaul on an insanely wooded mountainside).

Third, influence? It makes towns happy. And makes people happy. And makes the senate like you and vote you into positions. Other than that? Junk. It’s one of those things that’s useful for those crappy relations that you’re never, ever going to give an army to so they just sit in town.

Fourth, the greek phalanx thing. I hate them. I can’t break them with a charge of cavalry, they’re hard to kill with arrows, and I tend not to have archers, and they’re hard on infantry as well. The only thing that makes them tolerable is that they can’t really charge, just walk slowly forward, or backward.

Fifth, cavalry. I’m not a *huge* fan of cavalry as a rule, namely because they’re not as much use when in towns. I do, however, really want one bat. or so in every army. Why? They can run people down while they flee. Breaking an army is great, annihilating an army so that you don’t have to worry about it again is awesome. My poor infantry just don’t run fast enough.

Sixth, my usual army makeup. You’re probably not that interested, but as a rule my armies will have 2-4 bat. of medium infantry and some sort of ranged unit, either velites or archers, Or horse archer mercenaries in one lucky case, and the heavy cav that surrounds my general.

Seventh, momentous battles. One of the best parts about RTW is probably the glorious defeats. For example, when you’re moving a battered group of cav or infantry and you get ambushed by vastly superior forces (best one yet was 25 light cav vs about 350 peasants and light inf). Retreat of course isn’t an option I’ll take. So what do I do? I harry them! I ended up taking about 200 down with me before the last remnants finally were slaughtered or fled. While that isn’t as good of a ratio as some battles, the fact that I managed to do that much was pretty nice. Had they been horse archers I think I could have won.

joe/ish

I Blame....That Guy

2010-03-01T09:04:00.001-08:00

So here we are again. I may well post more than once a month at some point, who knows! Ducks could fly, pigs could swim, and elephants could gather together and bind the Tellan warren around them in such a way as to live immortally and wage eternal war against the giraffes.

Well, Dax decided to ask some questions, so that will set the tone for today’s post. How’s married life? Any kiddos on the way? How far down that honey do list are you? And….discuss!

Hmm, married life. Well, it’s married, and different. Some things are quite what I expected, the costs, the fact that I don’t seem to have any time, and the fact that I’m eating far more. Though I didn’t expect to get my first gray hair so soon! (I have one! She said I do!)

Other things I didn’t expect so much, and I don’t know why. First, we seem unable to communicate some times. It’s amazing how hard it can be to say “hmm, there’s a fair chance I’m wrong, so I’m not going to continue this argument over <insert some topic that totally doesn’t matter at all>”. So far I think just about every argument we’ve had has been over things that don’t really matter and we honestly agree over we just can’t understand each other.

Overall? Totally worth every pseudo-argument and lack of computer games. Though I do have her playing risk with me now on the PC AND Wing Commander: Prophecy (I might have mentioned that one before).

Any kiddos on the way? Well, that depends on how you define on the way. If you’re asking it from the same point of view as “Is Starcraft 2 on the way?” and “Is Diablo 3 on the way?” then yes, quite a few are on the way. If you’re asking it like, “Will Dammerung’s hairline recede further this year?” then no, we aren’t buying a baby carrier yet. Though when we do buy one I plan on rigging it up to fly, have shields, and launch up to eight small fighters with which to pacify other small children.

How far down that honey do list am I? I’m pwning it greatly. The only thing I have left, that I know of, is the need to build a cabinet between our two wine cabinets for a little more storage and plate holdage.

And….discuss! I won a game of Risk last Saturday, first real game for me to play in years and the Blue Empire rained chaos and destruction from Europe until all was pacified and brought to heel. Except South America where my wife ruled, them I merely disarmed and gifted large estates.

In other news…I’ll post again later!

~joe/ish

Ah, How The Mighty Have Fallen.

2010-02-01T05:36:00.001-08:00

So here I am once again, with only one post in a whole month! I think anyways, I haven't honestly checked my own blog for awhile...I'm such a sad little blogger. (/wrists)
    In happier news I've been kickin' butt at my job. Last week I over doubled the tickets completed for any other tech! Though one of them honestly probably did more work than me, just she had harder tickets that take more time.
    The funny part about this? I can't read my book between tickets anymore, nevermind that I was doing the most! Which is understandable honestly, they don't pay me to meet a quota, they pay me to work. But on the flipside here I am and I have nothing to do, and no-one to call, for the moment anyways.
    Oh, I started play Red Alert 2 again, somewhat, I've played a few skirmishes which have honestly been just comp stomps, I need to turn up the difficulty from easy, or play on harder maps.
    Wanna know something cooler than that? I got a copy of Wing Commander: Prophecy! AND my wife wants to play it with me, so long as I don't play way ahead of her and start to "advise" her every little move. What can I say, I'm a helper!
    But other than the super coolness of playing with my wife it also means I won't devour the game like I normally do, so more game for longer!
    I promise I'll get some photos of the dining room/wedding up at some point, just don't have any yet to post. =D
    Welp, time to go root around to see if theres someone I can call about something, laters!
~joe/ish

A new decade! (Don't believe the title, the post isn't about the new decade)

2010-01-06T09:49:00.001-08:00

So as Dax pointed out it's January and time for another post. Maybe after I get internet I might start posting more than once a month...who knows what crazy things are possible!

    Alrighty, now what new things have happened since my last post...Well for starters I graduated with my associates in computer programing. I think I mentioned it in my last post, but it hadn't actually happened yet. Oh, I also found out that I graduated with honors, and they had bagpipes and snare drums at the ceremony! Man I love me some bagpipes and snare drums. Makes any party better.

    Then my parents came up for Christmas, that was pretty fun. Got to see people, such as my new nephew who's awesome and FAT. Man he's tubby, but it's great, ya know why? Fat people are happy people! My nephew is very much so, quite content with whatever happens. And I made fudge for said family which was apparently pretty tasty.

    So what happened after Christmas you ask? What great deed was done on the 27th of Dec by chance? Why I got married of course. =D =D =D So yes, much rejoicing there.

    The ceremony was beautiful, our poor minister actually started to cry when he started to do the wedding itself. It a very "aww" moment. The flower girl (aka Orclette) also wasn't a huge fan of actually throwing the petal down, she just sort of played with them and carried the basket. As far as pictures go they'll end up on facebook at some point, or at least some of them will. Personally I'm far to lazy to actually post them in more than one spot.

    We did our honeymoon at Lake Brownwood state park. Beautiful park, very nice stone cabins, ours had a view of the lake as well as the insanely beautiful sunrises over said lake. Downside? I started puking around 1am Sunday night/Monday morning and kept it up roughly hourly until some point Monday evening. After I started to get better my wife started with the runs, which thankfully only lasted a few hours (like, 8-12 I think) but still left her feeling really crappy.

    So we ended up cashing in our figurative chips and coming back on the 31st instead of the 1st like we'd planned, but it was still nice. Got some of the apt set up and woke up for the new decade, kissed, and went back to sleep like a good little married couple, we were both still pretty pooped.

    We've spent most of our time since then getting the apt set up and everything organized and put away. We're still short a bookshelf but we're just about completely put away. Oh, and we still need to hang pretty much everything that goes on the walls.

    Last but only possibly least I managed to switch shifts with one of my co-workers! I was working 10a-7p while Hannah worked 7a-3p (which made both rides and seeing each other a pain). BUT now I work 6a-3p so we're pretty well set up the awesome. Fo'shizzle.

    Welp, that's it for now without making this post waaaay to long, so here's to trying to post more often!

~joe/ish

Can we say idle?

2009-12-03T11:15:00.001-08:00

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?

2009-11-10T08:09:00.000-08:00

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

2009-10-20T05:50:00.001-07:00

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

2009-09-03T07:45:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-07T06:52:00.001-07:00

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.

2009-07-28T17:34:00.001-07:00

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!

2009-07-27T08:54:00.001-07:00

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...

2009-07-08T09:48:00.001-07:00

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

2009-07-06T09:03:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-25T08:23:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-25T07:13:00.001-07:00

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

2009-06-22T07:39:00.001-07:00

    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!

2009-06-16T07:42:00.001-07:00

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

2009-06-16T06:39:00.001-07:00

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!

2009-06-03T11:12:00.001-07:00

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

2009-06-02T05:19:00.000-07:00

Yay for uber downloads!

2009-05-29T23:38:00.000-07:00

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

A fun day indeed

2009-05-29T06:27:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-27T06:20:00.001-07:00

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!

2009-05-16T22:03:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-13T19:44:00.001-07:00

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...

2009-05-12T06:15:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-12T06:10:00.001-07:00

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:

2009-05-11T15:51:00.001-07:00

So I wonder if I can text updates?

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Test

2009-05-11T15:47:00.001-07:00

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...

2009-05-11T14:54:00.000-07:00

   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

2009-04-23T13:17:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-14T10:30:00.001-07:00

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!

2009-04-01T09:14:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-02-25T03:48:00.001-08:00

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

2009-02-13T14:37:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-19T04:58:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-19T04:30:00.001-08:00

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!

2009-01-16T15:31:00.000-08:00

   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

2009-01-09T14:41:00.001-08:00

   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

2009-01-04T20:02:00.000-08:00

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

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-25T09:50:00.000-08:00

As much as I hate to say it, Merry Christmas! I suppose I'll be fairly non-scrouge for a little bit. Though it's kinda hard to not channel my inner ebenezer when I signed up to work 7a-7p, on Christmas day.

So I'm sure I speak for myself, the 13 nurses, 2 doctors, other unit clerk, communication tech, both house keepers, the triage tech, the MEC (Minor Emergency Care) staff, the registration staff (6 or so people), and all four patients when I wish you a merry Christmas from my work.

Though on an unrelated I managed to do a full clear of Naxxramas tuesday with my new guild. All four wings, the undead dragon, and Kel'Thuzad. And only two wipes that were my fault!

One was when someone mentioned I forgot to loot my boots and I ran back to do that, and the other one when I was learning the fight on Kel'Thuzad.

I saw the incoming explosion on me and didn't know to keep away from everyone else, so I stepped next to another healer....who went boom and died. We were still doing a decent job of staying alive when I put my camera behind a banner, couldn't see anything, and didn't "stay out of the" crap "on the floor". The remaining healer couldn't keep all 7 tanks/dps alive.

Welp, Merry Christmas, and I might even post again between now and New Years! You never know...

~joe ebenezer

I'm it!

2008-12-18T03:33:00.000-08:00

Welp, thanks to my good friend Grai, it looks like I have to post again. Dang people and their niceness. So Grai was tagged by 3B, who was tagged by Ratters, who was tagged by Phinn.

Now how were they tagged? Phinn dug up a list of who commented first and thank them for it.

So here goes, I started posting back in May no one commented for almost a month....Turns out you kind of need to, you know, tell people you're there if they're going to read you. But the next month I figured it out and first props go tooooo: Phinn! Followed closely by a bunch of other Sidhe Devils. Thank you all for getting me addicted to reading comments.

Other people who have commented a lot and keep me motivated to post:

Doodle

Dax

Dammerung

And I'll resist tagging 3B since he's just been tagged.

The rest of ya'll can consider yourselves tagged, now get with the postin'!

~ishvi

Wooo! Wooo! Chugga-chugga chugga-chugga

2008-12-11T04:05:00.001-08:00

Welpers, that time of year my friends. I'll start my last final in two hours and head to NM shortly after that, which means a couple things.

NM of courses is where my mom resides, and where she is also graduating with her bachelors! Woooo! Oh, AND she's turning 50! The fact that she's lasted this long with the four sons God gave her is an acomplishment in and of itself.

Thing number one: I'll be driving for 10-12 hours straight (my pitch hitter for driving broke is foot and hasn't acted right so it's not healed yet, and people with moonboots don't drive cars). This means I'll be getting tired.

Thing number two: It's holiday season, and I'll be on the road with a LOT of other people, who will also be getting tired.

So, what do these two things entail? Welp, one I may be out of pocket due to a lack of places to plug Katherine in at, and two I have prayer requests! (who guessed it!)

Okay, prayer point number one: That I'll be safe on the road. I have a tendency to get a lead foot, especially on long drives, I really want to make this one without a speeding ticket. I also really want to make it there without injurying myself or anyone else. So a prayer for safety would be greatly appreciated.

Point number two: That I will be refreshed. I really don't want to arrive there and be to tired to do anything, or so grouchy no one wants to do anything with me.

Point number three: That I would find a way to serve, and do it. So often people go on vacations and do nothing. They just sit around and are waited on hand and foot, I'm as guilty as others, but it's so much more fun when you can find something to do, and do it. Every day. God called us to be servants, and I believe one of the major causes of discontent is when people don't willingly serve others. But that's another blog entirely.

Point number four: Everything previously listed, and harmony, for my brother riding with me. Growing up we fought like ~~cats and dogs~~...Hmm, can't think of anything that fought as bad as we did. It wasn't uncommon for us to have to be pulled apart before we physically hurt each other. We've gotten much closer as time has passed, but there is always room to grow closer. Especially when in the car for 10+ hours.

Point number five: It is a vacation and I pray that I'll be refreshed. I'm coming back, unpacking, going to bed, and then getting up for a 12 the next day, so I really want to be refreshed.

Well, I think that about covers it, if you get a chance to pray for me I'll appreciate it.

Who needs titles?

2008-12-10T14:32:00.000-08:00

Much like everyone else I get lots of stuff in my email, though thanks to good friends I don't get to much trash, and every once in awhile I come across something nice. Well this time I got something really keen from my dad, but I really hate forwarding anything.

However, now I have a way to deal with this now! I have a blog! So without further ado I will present the poem thingie, it's really good.

A Different Christmas Poem

The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light,
I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight.
My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,
My daughter beside me, angelic in rest.
Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
Transforming the yard to a winter delight.

The sparkling lights in the tree I believe,

Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.
My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,
Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep.
In perfect contentment, or so it would seem,
So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.

The sound wasn't loud, and it wasn't too near,
But I opened my eyes when it tickled my ear.
Perhaps just a cough, I didn't quite know, Then the
sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.
My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,
And I crept to the door just to see who was near.

Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,
A lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.
A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old,
Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold.
Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,
Standing watch over me, and my wife and my child.

'What are you doing?' I asked without fear,
'Come in this moment, it's freezing out here!
Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve,
You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!'
For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,
Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts.

To the window that danced with a warm fire's light
Then he sighed and he said 'Its really all right,
I'm out here by choice. I'm here every night.'
'It's my duty to stand at the front of the line,
That separates you from the darkest of times.

No one had to ask or beg or implore me,
I'm proud to stand here like my fathers before me.
My Gramps died at 'Pearl on a day in December,'
Then he sighed, 'That's a Christmas 'Gram always remembers.'
My dad stood his watch in the jungles of 'Nam',
And now it is my turn and so, here I am.

I've not seen my own son in more than a while,
But my wife sends me pictures, he's sure got her smile.
Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag,
The red, white, and blue... an American flag.
I can live through the cold and the being alone,
Away from my family, my house and my home.

I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,
I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat.
I can carry the weight of killing another,
Or lay down my life with my sister and brother..
Who stand at the front against any and all,
To ensure for all time that this flag will not fall.'

' So go back inside,' he said, 'harbor no fright,
Your family is waiting and I'll be all right.'
'But isn't there something I can do, at the least,
'Give you money,' I asked, 'or prepare you a feast?
It seems all too little for all that you've done,
For being away from your wife and your son.'

Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret,
'Just tell us you love us, and never forget.
To fight for our rights back at home while we're gone,
To stand your own watch, no matter how long.
For when we come home, either standing or dead,
To know you remember we fought and we bled.
Is payment enough, and with that we will trust,
That we mattered to you as you mattered to us.'

Gooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaal!!!

2008-12-01T15:17:00.000-08:00

Woot! A job! I has it!

I went to my interview today, smashing success all around. Really nice bosses, so lemme sum up the outcome, I may post more later:

Hours: 20-40 a week (my choice)

Schedule: None!

Pay: $12.50/hr

Happiness: Much

~joe

Not gonna retype it...

2008-11-21T18:17:00.000-08:00

The title says it all:

http://www.sonofwau.com/the_coalition_for_getting_things_done_in_a_timely_manner_and_obtaining_free_donuts/guidelines.htm

My blog for the day. Well, my second blog. It's spiffy, come back and comment here.

~joe

p.s. I'll post something WoW related soon, lots of cool stuff has happened

Fun times

2008-11-21T11:14:00.001-08:00

Okay, gonna have to hand out some more information for this blog to make tons of sense.

So, everyone knows I've been looking for an internship right? Preferably a paying one with awesome hours. Well not living in a big town it makes it somewhat hard to find a internship, much less one that pays. And you can just forget them working with your school schedule.

But sometime last week (maybe the week before) I was chatting up the lab instructor at MCC and lo and behold she knew just the thing.

One of her former students works at a local company that makes programs for insurance companies and is constantly bothering her to go work there. This company had hired her as an intern, paid her, and even paid her for time spent in class. And continues to pay her to take time off work and go to classes!

As I have worked with her (my lab instructor) before she said she'd ask her friend and find out of they were needing interns. So she emailed her friend and we waited. A few days later she emails back and says that they don't usually post spots for interns, people just apply and are accepted/rejected, and if hired space is made.

She says to go ahead and e-mail her something telling her about me. Not necessarily what all languages I know, but more of a general outline of where I've been and where I'm going sort of thing. Mainly they wanted to know if I'd be consistent or leave at the drop of a hat.

So I put together a thing hoping it makes me look cool and uber without sounding proud and moronic. This is not something I do particularly well, I usually talk myself up to being godlike or make myself sound like scum of the earth that no one would ever want to hire.

E-mailed that to my friend Tuesday, which she e-mailed on to her friend on Wednesday (I still hate how that word is spelled), and I settled down to wait. After all, who honestly looks at hiring people right before year end taxes?

Anyways, found out today that it got sent on up the hierarchy for further inspection! While I realize this doesn't mean I'm hired or accepted or even smell nice, it does mean important people are looking at my name. Which is sometimes a good thing.

Yay for passing the first gauntlet!

~joe

Hum de dum

2008-11-20T07:51:00.000-08:00

Was working on my website and ran across this. Horridly sappy, but cute.

http://www.beanbagcentral.com/ccosas/promise.html

~joe

It's that time...

2008-11-18T11:10:00.001-08:00

So it's getting to be that time of the year again... Holidays and winter break. So many good things, so many bad things, and so much white space.

What do I mean by this? Well, I love Thanksgiving, it is quite probably one of my favorite holidays of the year. It combines getting together with people, cooking, eating, and thanking God. I mean really, how much better can it get?

Semi-sadly I'll be working 7a-7p this one though. Not horridly sad because I'm doing it for a good cause and I really do love my coworkers. Plus the majority of the family I love and want to spend time with is in NM and lots of people I don't know are coming over. You know the "weird" ones.

But winter break is coming! 18hrs of school grinds exceedingly thin and I sooo looking forward to my break. Even if it does mean I have to put up with bloody Christmas music.

Don't get me wrong, I love Jesus, I'm glad he was born, and I love lots of the hymns and praise music regarding the event. But I really, really, really, really, really, really hate anything related to: snowman, reindeer, sleighs, caroling, and all other stuff like that.

Oh, and if I manage to get this internship I'm applying for I'll only be one class short of graduation and it's possible I might be able to prove myself good enough with C++ to skip that class and just sub something else in, thus graduating in the summer and making live much easier on me.

WoW related content:

On a happier note I know I'll be able to hit 80 over the break. Lots of great people have written blogs about how leveling to 80 is not a race. And I agree to that to some extent... But I'm the sort of person that when climbing a mountain wants to be on top first. This may be e-peen (whatever that means) of me, but it's my personality. I like racing, even if it's against myself.

Now does this mean I'm gonna be mad if sixteen people make it to 80 before me? Heck no! Grats to them! I'm already behind two people in my guild in actual exp, and many more in trade skills (the big 2B made 410 on engineering before I managed to crack 390 on mining). I'm thrilled to see people make progress, even if I don't get there as fast, or ever.

Oh, and while everybody else has said it I feel the need to as well... I love you Blizz, WotLK all I expected and more. The quests are more interactive, the lore is just as cool, and my armor doesn't make me want to use the belly cam to avoid looking at it.

Welp, I'm off to finish making myself sound like the world's coolest intern so someone will hire me. Talk to ya'll later.

~joe(ishvi)

p.s. If I come across as overly competitive sometimes that's just me being overly excited. Tell me to calm down and go away and I usually will.

p.p.s. I'm better at pool than some other people

Ack!

2008-11-05T16:27:00.000-08:00

Oh, umm, I'm supposed to post? Ack! So nothing new really, homework, Ishvah made 68, moved 3107 pounds of brick, digging dirt next week... So to make up for lack of content I offer you, in the standard currency of the net, a video:

Cold weather sucks

2008-11-04T11:07:00.000-08:00

see more puppies

This is me when the weather gets cold.

Movies? Books?

2008-11-03T11:53:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I was updating my myspace profile today and it got me to thinking... What do I look for in movies and books? Out of all the possible things to read about and watch, what draws me?

The short answer? Epic ones. Movies where a few stand against endless to save many, or just one. I also adore stories of redemption. Where someone who did great wrong comes back and saves the day.

The best example I can give would come from the second book of a long series that would take to long to explain, so I'll give the second best one from Lord of the Rings. It's where Boromir tries to steal the Ring from Frodo, Frodo gets away, and then Boromir goes to save Merry and Pip. Here's a quick excerpt:

"Then Boromir had come leaping through the trees. He had made them fight. He slew many of them and the rest fled. But they had not gone far on the way back when they were attacked again, by a hundred Orcs at least, some of them very large, and they shot a rain of arrows: always at Boromir. Boromir had blown his great horn till the woods rang, and at first the Orcs had been dismayed and had drawn back; but when no answer but the echoes came, they had attacked more fiercely than ever. Pippin did not remember much more. His last memory was of Boromir leaning against a tree, plucking out an arrow; then darkness fell suddenly."

The other major aspect I really enjoy is love. Now love is a tricky aspect, I don't just mean sappy girl falls for loser boy and everyone ends up happy after a series of completely avoidable misunderstandings. I can enjoy (or at least sit through) those easily enough, but the ones I adore are stories of when two people are forced to marry, either via someone actually forcing them or in order to save something (someone's life or prevent a war), and then end up loving each other.

For example a princess marrying the general who kidnapped her in order to prevent a war that would have decimated her country, and then the general loving her enough to go through great lengths to protect that country even when he didn't have to.

The point of this post? Not much, except maybe to get some titles of good books for me to look at next.

~joe(ishvi)

p.s. Also, I really, really hate love stories that go into explicit details of sex and junk like that.

p.p.s. I also enjoy funny movies that aren't retarded. Almost everything involving Will Ferrill is retarded.

p.p.p.s. Also tell me what ya'll enjoy reading/watching.

What fun!

2008-10-29T09:20:00.000-07:00

Shocker! I actually have something worth posting about! So I was idling around last night, kinda putting off schoolwork and working on the latest pre-WotLK event when the cry went up for Kara people, and it looked like they might be a tad short. Plus one of the two people who really wanted to get their dps toons into kara pre-xpack would have to switch out to the their tanking mains to do anything. So I offered to tank it, after all it's quite enjoyable and I'd have a shot at the axe from the event boss.

So this is where stuff starts to get crazy, Fal starts throughing out invites and getting people organized. Shortly we had nine people standing outside Kara ready to go in, and Fal did something monumentally nuts, he passed me raid leader. Apparently neither him or Blu wanted to play raid leader so they let/made me take a shot at it. Craziness! So with nine absolutely craz...err, wonderful people and a promise of a 10th we headed on in.

We dropped Attumen without a hint of a problem, bam dead. The 10th chick joined us and off we went to Moroes. Moroes fell with only one death, but it was only Blu so no one worried and we moved to Maiden.

Here I took a back seat for a bit, you see last time I had been here with Elysse she had tried to tank it and things had sadly not gone so well. So I threw on healing gear to let her have some revenge. I honestly with I hadn't switched to my healing gear, it was a complete waste of time, Maiden died in 1min and 2sec, without a single death and only one repentence. So we marched on to Opera and smashed the Big Bad Wolf in 1min 6sec and still deathless. Our healers were awesome.

So on we moved to upper Kara, deciding to save the event boss for later. So we slapped around Curator, and guess what? Still no deaths! So we moved on to Illhoof, we didn't have a warlock but we decided it wouldn't be a big deal...and it wasn't! Down Illhoof went, and on we moved to Shade. Here we switched out Minn (who had to go) with Windstar (who had just logged on). We did Shade the good old fashion way, standing in the room with him, and off'd him without any real trouble, though I did do a horrid job of picking up elementals.

This left Chess (which we downed on the first go) and Prince, who also died without a hitch. And last we dropped Blu and our Lovely mage Zaanah as they both had work the next morning, which let Janelle and Papersmith come in for the event boss and Netherspite. The silly event boss died easily enough, though it was pretty wierd kiting it, the bugger didn't like to follow straight lines.

To finish off the evening we popped over to Netherspite...which I didn't explain very well. And as a result of the bad explanation on my part we had a little bit of difficulty (the boss healed back up to full after the first banish faze), but ultimately it died, yielding some nice loots for people.

Now for the really good part? My first time leading a raid (though people were helpful and constantly giving advice and telling how stuff should be done) and we didn't wipe once. In fact we had four people who never died at all. One of whom was the main healer and there the entire fight! Cudos to the healers and dps!

Oh, and of course the wacky story of the evening...Blu accidently threw a steady shot into a group of elites between Moroes and Maiden...which we downed easily.

Welp, that's about it, so I'm gonna go do homework. Hopefully everyone else had as much fun as I did.

~joe(ishvi)

Yay for school!

2008-10-28T09:56:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while I sit back and think, 'man, I really hate time'. Not just converting time or recording time, but the fact that it doesn't move on a consistent base. One day I time might be passing at a 50% efficiency, meaning 120sec to every minute, and then the next day it's at around 200% efficiency (30sec to the min). And it's not just dependent on if I'm having fun or not! Or if I'm busy or not, some days just go faster than others...

Oh well, time marches on and things pile up...I'm a few weeks behind in my PC hardware class, a week behind in programming, about 10 hours behind on housework that I want to get done (and that has to happen before Thanksgiving), and now I'm having to start looking at what I'm doing next semester. Oh, and I need to find myself an IT job, or at least a paying internship.

That's most of what I'm up to, besides the time I've been spending on WoW (which I'm about to cut back). See the problem with WoW is the time I spend actually doing stuff on it isn't that great, it's the time I spend sitting there staring at the screen wondering what I want to do. Oh, and I think I may just stop reading web comics, those things suck sooo much out of my life it's not funny. Well, I mean they are funny, and have good plot lines (some of them), but they they're such a horrid time sink. I accidentally spent about two hours this morning reading Schlock Mercenary archives...which I've read...multiple times.

It really sucks to sit there and clearly see that your worst failing in life is apathy. I mean I don't even have a cool vice, like you know, being a pimp, or spending all my time being godlike on a game or sport. I just sit there, thinking of all the things I could easily do with my life. Anyhoo, I'm off to do some homework now, I'll try to make a less angsty like post later on.

~joe(ishvi)

p.s. bah, and I just remembered I have to make pumpkin pies this week

2008-10-23T14:22:00.000-07:00

Best event to ever come from Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=35588927412

~joe(ishvi)

Tankadin funness!

2008-10-23T08:06:00.000-07:00

So as those of you who play WoW know patch 3.0.2 recently hit, and with it much goodness. We don't have to worry about uncrushability with raid bosses anymore, stuff has less hitpoints, there is yet another craft skill to painfully consider leveling, and of course huge class changes.

I could spend time and effort researching all the class changes and detailing them...but most everyone who reads my blog knows FAR more about the various classes than I do. So I'm going to settle myself with just pointing out some of the awesome goodness that has recently cropped up in paladin land.

First point I wish to make is that all of our offensive spells are now instant casts. No not being able to throw my shield like unto Captain America while being beat on by a mob. No more not being able to use Holy Wrath because of the horde of undead beating on me...even though it's only useful when there IS a horde of undead beating on me. There is so much happiness here it's hard to explain.

Secondly our stamina increases our spell damage, which increases our threat, which makes it that much easier to keep people from dying after certain druidic hunter priests pull an extra room. And in case you were wondering 3B, I don't ever plan on letting that one go. It also makes it easier for when my brain wanders off and I try to tank without putting Righteous Fury up first...

The third point I have is that they changed Blessing of Sanctuary. Now first I was peeved about this, they changed the flat dmg reduction into a percentage and removed the damage you did when you blocked... Half the reason I used that blessing was because it provided easy extra threat for blocking things. But then I actually tried the new one out... Instead of doing damage for threat every time I blocked I got back mana, 2% of my maximum mana to be exact. And I don't just get it back when I blocked, I get it back when I block, dodge, or parry. What does this mean? It means if I have 5-6 mobs on my I. Cannot. Tap. This makes me very, very happy.

Fourth big thing they did is give us Hammer of the Righteous(HotR). This is a wonderful skill that puts out a massive amount of threat on three targets, AND doesn't break CC like consecration does. Do you know what this means? I can have a mob sheeped/shackled/trapped right next to me and still control up to three mobs! No more having to QQ about people wanting to use CC (previously it made tanking rather annoying).

The last thing I'm gonna talk about is actually kind of a gripe. When they removed uncrushability they had to find a new way to make us suffer...so they removed 20 defense skill from our talent tree. While this isn't the end of the world it did leave me scrambling about to find 48 defense rating so I'd be back to uncrittable and able to tank again. I'm not really complaining though, it's still much easier to remembering to keep holy shield up so Moroes doesn't crush my bum.

Welp, that's it for now. Back to homework and waiting for my 16GB flash drive to get here.

~joe(ishvi)

Shinies!

2008-10-22T12:53:00.002-07:00

Yay for homework! I got to do some of the fun stuff today, added some more onto my website. Mainly I hand coded the germany section under the front page, pretty dandy.

I did have one problem though, when I put in the footers they showed up just below the body of the page. I want them to display down at the bottom of the screen, dunno if that's possible or not.

Anyways, if anyone has any tips and suggestions please feel free to give them! Eventually I want to make it the uber site that makes others weep. Someday...

~joe(ishvi)

p.s. WoW post coming soon to describe the WoW goodness going on

p.p.s. If anyone knows how to build a blog type function into a website that would be AWESOME.

I blame...something

2008-10-21T06:39:00.000-07:00

Okay, so maybe it's been a tad less than once a week updates. But we're not going into that now! We're going to talk about more interesting things, like girls, and computers, and homework? Anyways, regardless of content we will have something!

Well, okay maybe we're not going to talk about girls. I don't have one, I can't afford one, but they're pretty dang spiffy! Unless of course you consider computers girls, at which point we will be talking about them. So I'm still working on my website, hopefully put some more time into it next week. Already know a few things that I need to fix.

Also need to put some more work in on my linux box, I have it installed but nothing really on it. Well, I have WoW installed, but it doesn't run.

Speaking of WoW... I recently started dual-boxing (sort of) to level my druid and my brother's warrior. It's awesome. I really don't know what all to say, with almost no effort we're at lvl12. Most of the time spent has been running around NOT doing leveling quests, like class quests and junk. If I get all the homework done I want to get done, and house work, I may see if we ding 20 this week, honestly wouldn't take more than a few hours of honest leveling.

Which brings us to the subject of homework, oh how I loathe the easy stuff. I have no trouble sitting down and pounding out some hard intricate piece of code for a professor just because he said it can't be done. I also have no problem doing monotonous stuff at work, I mean, I'm in a hospital, that's a large part of what we do. But for some reason I can't bring myself to do easy homework.

Most of this stuff wouldn't take me an hour a week, but I find it near impossible sometimes to sit down and do it. Oh well, supposedly I'm "building character" and "proving my work ethic". I suppose I'll post more on stuff later, like how awesome protadin is, or why 255.255.255.87 should be the standard subnet mask, or maybe, just maybe, I'll figure out how to put a blog on my website and do that!

~joe(ishvi)

For Dammerung

2008-09-29T10:00:00.000-07:00

Okay, so Dammerung just linked me a post about blogging (here) while I was writing my blog. I naturally stopped to read it, I'm ADD like that. If you want to read it you can, if not I'll try and sum it up a little for ya, please bare in mind I didn't like it: Conversations are bad, blogs are for making statements. Also it uses far to much language for my taste, considering that it's supposed to be a business blog, please take into account though that I only read two posts and neither of those weren't exactly happy ones.

Now I feel like responding, because well, I suppose I got my back up some. Been in a fightin' mood lately. He makes four large points that I care to talk about. First that blogs don't have to be conversations. Second that comments can be detrimental. Third that people commenting were leaving bad advice. Fourth that he's trying to run a business and comments don't matter.

First, well he has a point, the giant successful blogs, like 3B's, usually aren't very conversational. 3B is well informed on his topics, and blogs to inform other people about them. Banana Shoulders is much the same, and I'd assume BRK is too. They're run by people who, lacking the internet and games, would probably be found in local government. Local politicians who have lots of experience in their field, or perhaps speakers who go from business to business teaching people how to do what they do.

Second he says that blogs aren't necessarily supposed to be conversational. Well, I kinda disagree here, and hear me out. In my opinion blogs are about communication, they're kinda like forums, only more spread out and everyone gets to make their posts look pretty. You share information, and people give feedback. I guess what I'm saying is that if you remove you comments you are commiting blogger suicide. You no longer have a blog, you have a newspaper article, online. You've removed the social part of it. At best, if you have an email where people can get ahold of you, you're an online version of Anne and Abby. There is nothing wrong with this. But it's not a blog.

As for his third point, well, yeah, it happens. It's like being the host of a computer lab and 'volunteers' giving advice to people, they leave confused and with a bad taste in their mouths. After all, they went to you for clarification, and came back more confused. Welp, ya got a point there, other than monitering your blog carefully and deleting any stupid comments and hoping those people didn't come back, nothing else to do but remove comments.

His fourth point I find somewhat amusing. Quote: "I'm trying to run a" wonderful "business here." (Yes I changed a word in there). Welp, you're running a business, not very professionally, but it's running. I see this post as something like an irate manager taking away an often used comments box and leaving a sign saying "I took it away because I'm trying to run a wonderful business here!". No problems, but perhaps not the best way to do it. But then again, I don't run a business.

Now for reply to Dammerung. This post honestly has nothing to do with mine. Your first comment was that my blogs need to make sense, his post has nothing to do with that. Then you posted the article, which has to do with why his business blog stopped allowing comments. And that deals with an entirely different problem. His issue was having to many comments on a business blog, and mine is to few comments on a private blog. Perhaps you need a new article to fight for you? I seem to have slain this one.

~joe/ishvi

Goooooodmorning

2008-09-29T08:40:00.000-07:00

So it's Monday again, so I shall post again! I actually have some fun stuff going on. Finally got my site up here. It's certainly not winning any awards yet, but it's there! Hopefully I'll get some more stuff added later, like links to my characters in armory, and eventually this blog. Oh, and if I ever get around to writing a program to make TOE charts I'll put it up there as well.

What else is new, got some fun antics planned for tonight with my wow buds. Wulfa knows something is coming, and 3B might have a inkling that somethings coming, we'll see. :D

School is going well, got some programs to work on and such. PC hardware should be fun tomorrow, taking a computer completely apart, motherboard out and all... Then I just have to get lots of homework done.

Just so everyone knows, I hate internet classes, I really do. If you know the subject like the back of your hand they're great, if you don't... Well professors are rarely the most accessible of people, they usually keep odd office hours and are hard to get a hold of outside of class. Take away that class time and it's near impossible to find them. Plus I have *shocker* self-discipline issues. I know ya'll never would have guessed that one.

Well, that's all for right now. Please add comments for what ya'll would like to see on the new website, give me something to work on. Oh! And I'll be adding a cheap review of what I think the patch is going to do to paladins soon. Hopefully before the patch itself.

~joe/ishvi

p.s. If anyone knows how to add indentions with blogspot please tell me, it's bugging the crap out of me.

Excitement!

2008-09-27T04:07:00.000-07:00

Fun times are coming! Soon I shall have me own website! In the coming days I'll be migrating to www.sonofwau.com (hopefully). I have the domain reserved, I have the hosting obtained, now I just need to get it activated and set up with a blog type thing.

There are a few reasons why I really like this, and I'll go into more detail later on, gotta jet for work in just a sec here. But yeah, my own domain. :D Very happy

On another note I dps'd Lower Kara last night, while I'm not sure if I did good dps or not I came to a conclusion that I kinda figured I would before but ignored... I hate retadin. Not retadins, just when I play one. So yeah, I'll prolly start shopping the gear here in a bit.

Switched out with Sux after Opera, I was quite happy though, he managed to get his T4 gloves. Woot! Go Sux! Other than that nothing horridly exciting, I died a lot. Then died some more. Oh, and Morthog mentioned that he should take his pants off when tanking Maiden, maybe that'd tick her off. Well, that put the idea in my head... So off when the pants and boots and I dps'd on her pantsless, sadly I don't think anyone noticed. Welp, away I go!

~joe/ishvi

The Start Of Organization

2008-09-22T04:21:00.001-07:00

So I may have been a little unorganized lately. And it might have lead to some posts turning into bad essays. But I plan on that changing! Hopefully that will be changing now, got some spiffy plans which may or may not happen.

First I plan on being much more self disciplined, I have a bad tendency to put stuff off until it HAS to be done, and then throw myself at it with a passion. This doesn't always turn out badly, but self discipline is good, so we're gonna do it. Plus it leads to horrid conversations where I end up having to confess that I only brush my teeth like, every other week... Anyways!

Second I want to start being more organized. Hopefully this will help with getting stuff done in a timely manner, and if nothing else will help me pretend to have time management. So you can expect to have at least a digest every Monday. No more of this saving up a months worth of news and dumping it on you in one post, hopefully.

Third I have regular plans with a friend from work and his family to come over and cook for them, which is AWESOME. I love cooking for people, it really makes me feel warm fuzzies. And it keeps me sharp with my cooking skills, which I'm very glad for, already have coworkers bugging me about when I'm gonna start cooking pies for work again. =D

That's it as far as plans that I have right now, I mean, I suppose I could put out my weekly schedule, might actually do that, but at the moment we're stopping here. Gotta go shower, get dressed, and you know, brush my teeth.

~joe/ishvi

It shall not happen!

2008-09-19T13:35:00.000-07:00

I shall not let a month slip by without a post! Surely such a tragedy would cause my readers, if I still have any, to, well, stop reading? I dunno, maybe they'd gang up and hang me or something.

Sooo, new stuff in the life of Joseph/Ishvi... Ummm, school? Community finally coming back? Ooo, we'll talk about community, school reminds me I have homework to do.

Okay, so as many of you probably don't know, I started going to college lifegroups (Kinda like bible studies but more focused on felloship, I think the best way to describe them is like this) when I was 12 or so. We had just moved to Waco and the awesome church we were going to decided to multiply. A little less than half of the "regular" church and most of the college group going with one of the pastors to start a more church planting focused church (ACC), and the rest staying at Highland.

My two oldest brothers (Moon and the chubby orc himself) and I went to the new one, while our parents and remaining brother stayed at the old one. But anyways, all this to explain why I ended up at a college lifegroup at 12 or so, and have been there for the last 8 years.

For most of those 8 years I expierenced some GREAT community, I'm talking stuff straight out of Acts 2, we ate together, had fun together, anything that was worth doing, we did as a lifegroup. But over the last few years I'd started to drift away, not get busy with other stuff mind you, but just kinda stop going. After all, everyone I knew to start out with had graduated, I would name old appartments that had HUGE memories from back when I started, and all the new crowd would just kinda look at me funny.

Buuuuuut all this changed! As most of you know I went to Germany this summer to do childcare for a mission conference, turns out one of the girls who was helping out with the older kids had an awesomely active section (group of lifegroups) and invited me to come along. Again, all that explaining was pseudo-necessary to explain why I was so excited to say yes and go along. I spent two weeks hanging out with the kids of people I hadn't seen in several years! We had good times, shared good jokes, talked about their kids (who were AWESOME), and best of all, I was reminded that I was the origenal Broseph.

The name Broseph came about largely because I LOVE to hang out with people, Don't care what you're doing. I've happily cleaned people's houses with them, cooked for them, gone shopping with them just to fellowship! I. Love. People. So I became known as Broseph, a term one of them carried to San Diego with them and used as a term of endearment for people, but none of them knew it was mine! This was evident when he had to explain to one of his church plant buddies why he called me the origenal Broseph.

So I've been getting to hang out with people again, it's awesome. Spent last Sunday night hanging out eating pancakes with a bunch of people from my lifegroup, it was great. Oooo! That reminds me of something!

Okay, so we all know God provides (If you don't talk to me, Moon, Wulfa, or Dammerung and we'll happily explain it to ya), but sometimes he does it when we REALLY don't expect that we need to be provided for. I say this of course because I have example!

Okay, was watching a friend's house for him this last week, his g-ma (good christian woman that had cancer and while kinda expected still sad) died down in Florida and he had to take his family down to the funeral, and then stayed a little longer when a relative gave his family tickets to Disney Land. They were due back late Wednesday night, so I put some venison in to marinade so they wouldn't have to cook Thursday, also I love cooking AND I'd get to hang out with them before/during/afterwards. So I marinade, and off to class I go in the morning, after a quick talk informing them I'd be back later to cook said meat so not to plan for dinner.

Get to class, call my mom like I normally do, well, sometimes my dad but anyways. My dad answers, this is by far not odd, but the crying in the background was very odd. I ask what's wrong and get told one of my homeschooling friends from growing up had died in an accident the night before. While I hadn't talked to Keller in some time I still think of him as a friend. He was one of the most energetic, active, and completely looney people I know, knew (I hate grammar).

Needless to say this shocked me, I mean, who expects 24 year olds to die? Normally my reaction to this sort of thing is to tell people who will want to know but might have been out of the loop, do whatever needs to be done, and then go catatonic somewhere thinking of good memories. But God wasn't gonna let that happen! I had promised to make dinner for this family, and what a Wauson promises to do we do, or at least try really hard to do, and in my somewhat depressed state "My friend died, can I not cook?" sounded like a really crappy excuse. So I showed up, I'd already texted my friend earlier and had forced myself to feel better so I didn't drag them down, so I had a short talk with him before I started cooking.

It's amazing how cooking dinner for a family of five (5y old, 2?y old, and 9?y old) just makes you feel good. We laughed, joked around, ate some awesome food, and then I went home feeling great. Still sad my friend died, but remembering all the great times we had and how he was having such a better time in heaven right now, lucky dog.

Anyways, this post has gone WAY longer than I wanted it too, but who knows, maybe someone will actually read it down this far!

~joe/ishvi

In my defense, rambling is in the name

2008-08-20T12:35:00.000-07:00

*warning: very long one, it's good though*

Okay, so I've stated before that I don't pug. I find it far to stressful as a rule and just refrain from doing it, even when I really want an instance done. Now you might say that's silly, I mean, if you want something, why not go ahead and do it? It might not be the way you wanted to do it, but the end result is the same, right?

Wrong! The best way I can relate this is with a parable, Jesus used them so they're obviously good stuff.
~
Imagine three young men from a poor family. All three desperately want to go to college, but none of them have the money. After all they're from a poor family, and colleges are expensive!

After discussing their options between them they decide that they have no idea how to do it, but they know their father has a degree and came from an even poorer family! Together they go and ask him what they should do. Their father offers to find them positions at his job, because although he's poor he's very well thought of, and within a few years they would be able to afford to go.
~
The first son scoffs this advice. Why should he wait for what he desires now? So he goes and seeks advice from his friends. They also mock his father's advice, there's a much easier way they tell him! Join the army they say, after a short time they will pay for all your education! So he goes and joins the army, where he quickly finds out he does not fit well.

After a few miserable years they tell him he can leave and they'll pay for his college. But having spent so much time being miserable his entire outlook as changed, he hates the thought of anything organized and goes on to lead a miserable life regretting his choices.
~
The second son hears the advice, but also decides it's not right for him. So he goes to his friends and asks for their advice. They quickly tell him that waiting is not the way to go! Get loans they say, enjoy school and pay them off after you graduate, after all, you'll be doing what you love? What does it matter if you have a little less money a month. He decides to take his friends advice and off to the loan office he goes.

He thoroughly enjoys his college years, not having to pay for a thing. But after he graduates he discovers he's unable to do any of the things he had planned on doing. After all, college isn't free and those loans have piled up. He's so busy working and paying off loans that he fails to enjoy life and quickly becomes embittered.
~
The third son listens to his father and goes to work with him, after a few years of diligent work he manages to pay for his education. Because he wasn't tied down by the legal requirements of the military he's free to change jobs when a better offer came up. As a result when he has the money he joyfully heads off to college.

While his college experience isn't as carefree as the second son, he still enjoys the fruits of his labor as he studies. But the best is yet to come! When he graduated he did it without the burdensome debt of the second son. His boss happily rehires him into a new position, know from experience that he'll do a good job. In his time off he does very nearly as he pleases with his free time and money, not being forced to work overtime.
~
At long last we get to the moral of the story! 1st son: Pugged all his gear but hated the experience so much he quit WoW. 2nd son: Joined a heavy raid guild to get all his gear but in the end felt to guilty to leave and plays wow but hates it. 3rd son: Played mainly with friends, took his time, made sure to enjoy the time along the way, and as a result has gear and still enjoys WoW.
~
There was one, count it 1, PuG I went into that I really enjoyed. Shallah (a resto druid LW I had used once) invited me to do a heroic with his wife (warlock) and one of his employees (shadow priest), because Shallah had always come across as a very pleasant person I decided to give it a shot, we merely needed to find one more dps. Lacking any Sidhe Devils that could go at the time we turned to PuG, managed to pick up a fury war that claimed to be geared.

So everyone showed up at Setthek Halls and I get a look at peoples gear, and decide that I want an option to make it so that others can't look at mine. I was the only one that wasn't in mainly epic gear. Spriz (the fury war) was in PURE purple, the first char I've ever seen that on.

We romped our way through the dungeon. Not only did we finish the dungeon and enjoy ourselves, we made such good friends that I regularly do heroics with three of them and the second invited me to main tank Kara last night. Which brings us to our feature story!

After getting back I really noticed that Onyxia was scheduled for this Sat, and seemingly had replaced Kara for our Guild Raid Romp for the week. While being VERY excited about getting to see Onyxia I was somewhat sad not to get to try fun stuff in Kara.

This is where the keen stuff comes into play. Remember the pug? Spriz, who I've been chatting with for the last few weeks, very nice guy, asks me if I'd like to main tank Kara for him and some friends. Double checking to make sure there wasn't a Kara schedule to Sidhe Devils I accept, I figured I'd prolly end up feeling bad and hiding my gear before it was over, but what the heck?

So we all show up at Kara and yeah, while my gear has improved, I was in with nine other people in Black Temple gear just doing a kara run for kicks, giggles, and some badges. The raid leader gives me a heads up that I don't really have an off tank, just a kitty druid capable of taking some hits on Moroes and changing gear to help tank Netherspite. At this point I start shaking with a mixture of fear, excitement, and nervousness. After all, I don't wanna be the tank that got talked up and then kept wiping because the healers just couldn't keep him alive and never gets invited to anything again, and I hadn't really thought about actually TANKING Prince, I mean, that's for the big boys right?

We burn through Attunmen with ease as I hold agro on both of them, well mostly. Mages in full Black Temple gear deal an unholy amount of threat, didn't have to much trouble right of the bat, but on later bosses it was hard.

As we head towards Moroes I shake off the last of my nervousness as we all joke around and pull each others legs. We clean up the room for Moroes and they start announcing the kill order for the adds. I ask where they want me to stand so CC and me don't end up doing the Scary Sheep Dance where I keep breaking their spells. Their response? Oh just stand at the bottom and tank them all. I'm pumped, we down them without losing a peep, AND I remembered to bubble the priest out of their garrote.

We go on to take on EVERYTHING with me as MT and no wipes. Except for that one time where I accidentally pulled curator and three of his buddy groups, not much to do there but die and joke about whose fault it is. One shotted everything else without a problem. And according to the healer afterwards, the only really scary moment was when I took a crushing blow on Prince. But now I can happily rest in the knowledge that I've seen (and know I can tank) almost all of Kara, and I don't care about the beast bosses.

~joe/ishvi

Sometimes free coffee just isn't worth it

2008-08-10T04:02:00.001-07:00

So yeah, there I was at work, just sitting on the counter minding my own business. Me waiting for work to do, my coworker also waiting for work, but with a starbucks to sooth the boredom. After a very short bit, she gets called away to talk to someone, I forget exactly who, BUT she leaves her coffee there.

Now here we're left with a serious of choices. For one I could hide her coffee from her, but she'll know it was me, and thus I'll just have to fess up (by and large I'm a horrible liar). I could add something to her coffee, but I have a very hard rule that I don't mess with peoples food. Somethings are just plain wrong. So I decided to go with the third option, help myself to free coffee!

Me and most of my coworkers are really good friends, we all share our food, and if we have tasty drink, we'll share that too. So it's not like I was just drinking out of some random chick's coffee. But still, sometimes God reminds us that it's best to ask before we take that drink.

Usually, when you have a cup of coffee, if, for some reason, you take the lid off, you immediately put it back on. Or at least I do. As a result of this habit, I very rarely check to see if a lid is firmly attached, I just pick it up and drink it. I'm now rethinking this habit:

Yeah, it looks pretty bad. But I also have other, and possibly less silly, news! Onward!

So I was working yesterday, 7A-7P, and looking foward to the second half of Kara afterwards (much of which I haven't seen yet). About 17:30 my aunt calls for my cousin, so I pass her off and go on about my day, I figure one of my nieces was acting up or something. Shortly after that, my cousin comes back and asks me if I want various pieces of furniture that had prior to this been in the front room (they call it a porch, but it is very much not one). I was quite happy to say yes to some of it, and obtain rights to offer the AWESOME couch to my bro. I get informed that that's awesome, and asked if I could pick up the futon (I think that's how that's spelled) tonight.

At this point I think to myself, well, Kara starts pretty much as I get off, but I'm sure they'll understand if I show up 20min late because I had to pick up free furniture. So I agree, and go on about my work.

Seven rolls around and I get off, by this time I had worked myself into feeling guilty about showing up lateish to Kara, so I call my aunt and ask if it would be possible to pick up the futon the next night. She happily agrees, but inquires if I'm still coming to help move the rest of the furniture?

This confuses me, I don't exactly know where I thought the other furniture was coming from, but I was guessing they'd deliver it mid week sometime? Further inquiries showed that they had visited an auction and obtained a wonderful leather three piece living room set for only $1300. But Texas weather being what it is lately, felt the need to get it inside tonight. Normally this stuff only requires two people, but my aunt hurt her back recently, and my cousin is at work 'till midnight, so it's me and my uncle.

Now normally I try really hard not to flake on WoW, especially when nine other people are expecting me to be there in all my n00bishness and would get mad at me for not making it. But luckily I'm with the SD! Who understand that family comes first before WoW. Period. So I dial Wulfa, accidently waking Orclette up along the way, and ask her to pass on that I'll be late (around 8pm I think) and to feel free to replace me if they need two. Little did I know, that I would NOT be back at my house at 8pm.

Gotta run to work! I'll finish it up later, like tonight or something, maybe at work if it's slow, but prolly not!

~joe/ishvi

So it may have been awhile

2008-08-08T06:33:00.000-07:00

I realize I haven't posted in a bit, but hey! I've been busy! Just don't ask me what yet. Haven't come up with a good exc... err, that is, it's hard to explain. Let it be enough that I am posting now, and will try to post more in the future, maybe.

Also, here is proof I have hair, and a beard. Well, proof of a beard at least, I can promise you there is hair under the cap, and after I get back from the soon to be mentioned wedding, I'll prolly have pics to prove it.

Hmm, where to start, so much to talk about (not really). We'll start this party off with with an explanation of why I won't be doing anything involving Waco or WoW from next Mon to the following Sun. I'll be in S. Carolina! A friend from work is getting married (woo! woo!) and her aunt offered to let them use her beach house for free.

Now as the wedding is actually on the 16th, I'm sure some of you are curious as to why I'm going up there five days early, even though I'm not part of the wedding party. Well, I have a good explanation for that at least! I had the choice of either paying for a plane ticket up there, driving my car-which-is-primarily-composed-of-duck-tape-and up there, or I could just catch a ride up on Monday with the maid of honor and skip the whole driving/flying bit. And seeing as the maid of honor is my cousin, the choice was quite simple, and cheap.

Now I'm not entirely sure what I'll be actually doing for a week, but I'm sure one of the multitudes of women-getting-ready-for-the-wedding will find some sort of annoying labor for me to do. Women tend to do that. ^_~

After that I'll be back in Waco with a week to get ready for school. Woo! Eighteen hours of educational and time consuming bliss!

Now I realize that eighteen hours of school might not be the most exciting thing to many of you people, but I'm something of a glutton for punishment. I've also been working entry level non-educated jobs for the last four years and am beginning to get tired of the continual state of being broke. Plus it'll be fun to play with computers and call it education again.

I think that's pretty much it schedule wise, so now to get down to the WoW business!

Okay, so apparently there was a little confusion between some people and they (Wulfa and Dammerung included) thought I was kinda looking for a raiding guild, or at least something more active in the heroic department. Just wanna clarify to any who read my blogpost (which is apparently where this idea came from, silly bloggers) about it, that is not the case at all. While I do enjoy running heroics with friends from OOB and Untamed Dragons from time to time, my WoW family is Sidhe Devils (with a few relations over on the Silvermoon server). So don't get excited, you're not rid of me yet!

But in talking with people about this another subject came up, and that was my pretty much complete incompetency involving the holy side of paladin. Which I had to agree with them, I had no clue what was going on. From what I'd read from paladin blogs and forums, if you're specced prot, and you're not the MT, something has gone wrong.

From experience actually playing a paladin in raids, I've discovered that the previous statement is completely wrong, at least in Kara, if you have someone else who can tank a particular mob better (like warriors stance dancing through fear). So since then I've started to put together my spare sets and read up/practice doing stuff besides just protection, namely spec holy and let Dammerung get beat up so I can laugh.

More on the Dammerung, Ishvi, Wulfa, and Mooncadence party later. Within the next month. Most likely. Maybe. Depending on the alignment of the moon and stars.

~joe/ishvi

Wow, almost done.

2008-07-25T11:53:00.001-07:00

Wow, so I'm almost done. I've been in Germany two weeks today, it's crazy, feels like two days. I'm soooo missing the kids already, they're some of the coolest I've ever met, but well, I love kids in general, they're TONS of fun. Already got everything packed up, just waiting for the bus ride tomorrow, which will lead to the nine hour flight, which leads to a layover and a flight from Chicago to DFW. Should land in DFW around 2100 and be back in Waco by 2300 (hopefully).

Man, it never ceases to amaze me how fast you become attached to kids, and them to you. I feel so insanely popular, there are about 20 kids that will scream "Hi Mr. Joe!" every time I walk by, it's really fun. It's also crazy how many of their names I remember! Not that I can match any of them with their parents, much less know their parent's names, but hey, the kids are cooler. ^_~

I'm also going to miss being around this group of people, it's like a little slice of heaven. Everyone is nice and loving to each other, just imagine a huge (300+) family reunion only where everyone actually enjoys being around each other. It's more fun than I could ever ask for, I can't wait for the next time, I totally plan on attending then too. Either helping with the kids or being one of the random admin people who run around and do spot helping here and there.

I will admit that I am tired though. My stomach started feeling off earlier this week and I haven't had more than a couple really good filling meals since then, mostly I've been just eating a few bites of whatever food and eating bread and water. God's really given me grace with it though, I've been able to keep up with the kids (mostly) and still have energy to bless the people I'm working with, largely due to how much they're blessing me. I can't believe how much grace God gives some times.

Okay, now a short break from the really cool stuff to talk about WoW (which is still plenty cool, but not quite as cool). All non-WoW players feel free to skip down to my sig, nothing more getting posted non-wow. So I looked at the beta notes, and I do realize they are still at the beginning of the beta and everything can still completely change, but WOW. Someone out there took pally and decided they were going to be bestest buds. The only annoying thing is I'm going to have to watch my spell rotation more now, they turned the CD on Holy Shield down by 2 sec so we can now become totally uncrushable (so long as the mob doesn't dish out more than 1 atk per sec). But sadly with that and a few other changes I don't think it's actually possible to keep ALL my threat spells up at the same time, which leaves lots of theory crafting as to which is more important and where.

Also I'm totally pumped that Shrinn and Grai's-alt-whose-name-I-can't-remember joined Sidhe Devils. Shrinn is crazy cool and peppy and Grai is a wealth of pally knowledge, which was sadly lacking before, some crazy notion that druids could tank as well as paladins or something like that, and he isn't stuck up about knowing most everything about paladin. So we have to more people, which also makes it easier on me trying to get peeps together for 5-mans in general, heroic and regular.

I have new goals too! Want to get at least a non-heroic healing gear set for my pally, and wanna get my rogue to 70 so I can play dps too, then I'll be the full meal deal! I'll post more on that later, but for now I visit the forums then hit the sack, loooooong day tomorrow.

~joe/ishvi the very, very blessed

Lookie lookie! I'm in Germany!

2008-07-16T09:20:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody, I'm enjoying the heck out of Germany at the moment. Second full day of watching 3 year olds, it's a BLAST. Feeding them isn't the funnest thing in the world, but after that comes naptime! My personal favorite. Only 4-1 kid-teacher ratio at the moment, so it's pretty easy to handle, come monday though one of our workers is leaving, making it 6-1, so hopefully they have someone else lined up for the spot. My co-workers are all fun. The food is AWESOME, minus the fact that all vegetables not in food in the process of pickling. And for those curious, German beer is the best.

Hope everyone is enjoying their Kara runs. I plan on getting back in on those once I get back, but in the mean time drop lots of shinies and get cheese. Welp, gotta run, borrowing the internet from a friend and they're done eating now, but I'll see ya'll later. :D

~joe/ishvi

Dia del casos

2008-06-20T18:54:00.000-07:00

Oh man, full day yesterday, where to start... Well first we'll do a general overview, sounds like a good place to start anyways, we'll see. First off I did my dailies, nothing really cool there but I managed to nab two Badges of Justice. :D After that I managed to get a pug for Black Morass. Then it was back up to SW to try and get a croc, sadly didn't get the pet. ;_; Then came the first set of farming for the day! Had to gather 16 Heavy Clefthide Leather, 8 Primal Earths, 20 Knothide Leather, and buy a Primal Nether. Then a random pug through SV, only one wipe! And wrapping up with a really fun run through Botanica. :D

Alrighty, now to break those down a little more. First the dailies, finally worked out a routine to do all the ones I think are worth it, which makes it muuuuuch easier. Once I get geared I'm planning on stepping it down to just the four that give me a chance at justice badges, but for now I'm happy doing the 18 easy ones.

Then there was the nice pug through Black Morass. Excluding the fact that the shammy healer liked to keep me at <50% health it was close to awesome. I was yet again shunned by my D3 pants, but I did manage to get revered with the Keepers of Time which got me my new pants and sword. And thanks to the price of mats on the AH it lead to the afore mentioned farming run for leater and primal earths. Look a loooong time to get it all, but I managed to scrape together eight stacks of ore in the process, which is always nice.

Not to long after that I was picked up for another pug, this time through Steamvaults. While there was one wipe in this one, I think it went smashingly. Didn't take very long, got experience with the layout of the area, AND as an extra bonus I got to see two pieces of the hunter D3 set get sharded. Wulfa almost beat me about that.

And last but not least a really fun Botanica run. Lots of fun and dancing, not many deaths, AND an epic recovery during which we lost what I remember to be several people before finally getting everyone back to life to kill the boss. Sadly I don't think anyone got the pieces they needed, but much rep was gotten all around and good times had by all.

Something of an extended post, I got started writing this bugger around 9am and here it is 8:45pm and I'm finishing it up, oh well. Sorry if it's to rambly, I'm tired, shall post later!

~joe/ishvi

On the subject of...well, stuff

2008-06-18T05:48:00.000-07:00

Well, as most people know, I recently hit 70. And as some of you may know I bought a epic flying with my accumulated fortune instead of buying high end tanking gear and trying to start doing stuff. So now I'm tasked with getting gear in order to maybe set up something nice and large, like MgT or Kara, however, from looking at the best suggestions I've been able to find, namely here, I've gleaned that most of my gear I'm going to have to go into instances to get. Which leaves me with two tasks, #1 to get shiny gear to tank with, and #2 to get shiny gems to put in the gear once I get it. Sadly this means I have to do two things, pugs and dailies. While dailies aren't bad at all, trying to get a pug together is a complete pain in the rear section. Currently I'm doing really nicely on the gold end, and I've gotten two of the pieces I'll be needing for my tank set.

Have I mentioned I hate pugs? I mean they serve a great purpose, but finding a good one takes so very, very long. And usually someone ends up having to leave for RL before you can finish it. Which leaves me with two options, one leave my guild to join one with a more regular instance running schedule (hahahaha, not happening) or figure out a way to plan instances with other guilds besides Sidhe Devils. While I really like that second option, I have no idea how to go about doing it. If anyone happens to know if something like this exists (preferably on Kael'Thas where I play) please post in the comments, or if you have any ideas. I mean, my guild is awesome besides awesome, but one of the reasons they're awesome is they place RL before the game. Which means those dang married couples just don't have as much time to play, and the ones with kids claim they have even less! Which I suppose I completely understand, I know from watching a series of friends' kids that kids are FAR cooler than WoW overall.

Also, I want to give my thoughts on the epic mount vs gear as far as the moment you hit 70. If you have the gold on hand I highly suggest the epic mount unless you have people waiting on you, if you're more than 500g short I'd say get your normal flying and get the gear. The reason for this is that once you get your epic flying doing dailies and herbing/mining become soooo much easier. Not that I've ever done dailies without an epic flying, but I imagine that they'd be an incredible pain. However, I really do not believe it's worth putting of getting gear for the amount of time it takes to get that flyer will feel much longer if you can't really do instances while you wait.

Welp, it's back to the grind so I can afford to pay that tyrant of a JC his exorbitant fees. *hides from 3B*

~joe/ishvi

I'm so happy, so very happy~

2008-06-15T19:12:00.000-07:00

Okay, so Saturday morning I start a thread on the Sidhe Devils forums and tell Wulfa to try and round some peeps up for some sort of KoT run that evening. I wasn't very sure it would happen, but figured hey? What's the worst that could happen? Well, as luck would have it we did manage to get peeps together and totally cleaned up in OHB. We only wiped once, and it was a rather funny wipe, as I really have no clue what happened. Somehow or another 3B's priest managed to get hate before I ever did, which resulted in Nas doing an AWESOME job trying to keep him alive while I cry and fail to take agro for more than a few seconds, all the while Nas is taking some damage. Then 3B finally bites it and it comes after me with a vengeance, while Nas is busy trying to get herself back to not "mostly dead". Anyways, long story short we wiped, came back, and totally kicked the Epic Hunter to the wall, complete bum kicking. Afterwards I logged, went to bed.

Then came this evening, long busy day at work, but finally, after much business, the greatly loved discovery ding of 70. Woot! Hallelujah and such! Many thanks to the various people who have helped me off group quests, or tried to anyways. Also thanks to Doodle for following me around for the last few mobs and healing me before I ran off for the discovery ding (which I still think is awesome. So now I just need to get geared up for uncrittable and uncrushable and also help Wulfa get goldies for her flying epic as well. Anyways, got work in 5hrs (go go 3am shifts) so I will post later about all the joys of 70. Oops, just realized I forgot to train, oh well.

~joe/ishvi

Old Hillsbrad Foothills :D

2008-06-13T02:19:00.000-07:00

Well, despite Dax's firm wishes I'm taking a shot break to blog some fun stuff. Largely because it's been a few since the last post and I feel the need, nothing at all to do with taking a break.

Anyways, happy news folks: I tanked my second instance! Through a misunderstanding last night not everyone showed up at the right time for RF: Steamvaults, so people opted for something smaller so I could tank and Dax could heal. Shortly after we all managed to get down there Doodle showed up though, so we had a slight re-arrangement ending with Dax playing his hunter and Doodle with the haelz. We had a blast, minus the few deaths due to mobs fearing people into other groups of mobs (once), me spiking damage (once), and me moving outside of the haelz range to pick up a mob (once) (what? don't run across the map to grab mobs?). Not so sure Doodle is crazy fond of us tankadins, but he claims to have had a good time anyways.
N00b tank:1 OHB: 0.

I also ran across a set that claims to be uncrittable and uncrushable with strictly pre-kara and non-heroic gear, need to set up a spreadsheet and check the math on that one, if so that's awesome. Plus 3B said he and Cass found some tankadin sites and would post them to the forums for me to peruse, woot! Nothing like other people being nice and helping you with your research, though I suspect he has ulterior motives for me getting up to speed on the tanking. If you're steeping so far as to read this 3B, yeah, I know about you and your "Mr. T" obsession.

Seems like there was something else, but I can't think of it right off the bat. I suppose I'll be back later on today if I can remember what it was, and if not I'll be back to announce my 70 ding.

~joe(ishvi)

So I need to post more

2008-06-06T18:11:00.001-07:00

Alrighty then, as some of you may know I play a Human Paladin on WoW on the Kael'thas server. That being said I dinged 65 today. Happy days! Many thanks to Tikky for helping me do a bunch of group quests in Terokkar Forest, including one I didn't know about, also to Dax for helping me off one gigantic spider, seriously, it was big. Which of course finished up all of my Terokkar Forest quests... This means I get to move to the next area, Nagrand, which is a very odd area. For starters, it's green, I mean, this is the sort of place you wouldn't mind moving, green grass, blue skies, lots of wildlife that isn't actively trying to kill you, and, well, fertile. I mean, this is the sort of place you think convinced people to move west and build homesteads, I feel the desire to petition Blizzard to give me a plot of land, a good horse, and a plow for me to raise veggies, I wouldn't even mind handing out quests to random people who insist on standing on my table in the undergarments doing some sort of odd dance.

That being said I didn't get much past 65 as I got distracted by a post over at 3B's place. Hard to cover it all, it was a long post, but mostly about the civil war and stupid people in America (wha? Nuh-uh!) Anyways, iff'n ya wanna read up on it you can find it at his spiffy site:
http://thebigbearbutt.com/2008/06/05/offtopic-i-am-enraged/

Also, went through went through my second and third BC instances last night courtesy of Nas and Squirrelz, later joined by Eustacius, with Wulfa. It was a blast. About halfway through the Underbog I relegated myself to healing, not that we really needed it, but trying to dps was making me sad, and risked pulling more agro. That being said, I believe I did a wonderful job of healing, right up until my brother turned on the TV and Squirrelz contracted some sort of deadly wound that keeps ticking worse until you hit full health or die, he died. To my defense it was extremely funny, though not as debating contour vs convex vs concave (if you weren't on, you don't get it). Anyways, we ended up going through the Slave Pens as well (Nas and Squirrelz rock) which netted me a spiffy chest piece.

And last but not least, I shall be posting more! It will be good for me and such, lots of stuff. Maybe I'll even post opinions for ya'll to disagree with!

~joe

Further Updates

2008-05-26T06:22:00.000-07:00

Alrighty where to begin, well, we'll start with my cast. Finally got a half arm cast put on last week, makes typing much, much easier. Also makes it easier to move around and all sorts of things, still hurts like a bugger though.

Okay, now to explain where this name comes from. Beriah, Ishvi, Imnah, and Ishvah were four brothers in the Bible (for those WoW players out there look for the rest of these to pop up in the near future). While there's nothing really special about them, their father was Asher, the son of Jacob and Zilpah (Zilpah was Leah's maid who she had given to Jacob so they could have more sons). Mainly I adopted these names because there are four of them, and all sound good. Also they're the nephews of Joseph.

And finally an update on my Germany trip. I have $2300 of the $2700 I need to go, so I should have no problem raising the rest of the funds, God's really been great in this matter. Now I just have to get myself ready to corral a room full of three year olds for two weeks. :D

Fun week

2008-05-14T12:54:00.000-07:00

Okay, Monday I sprain/break my wrist. Tuesday I go see Expelled an get my stuff from Scarlet Monastery. Then today I go see Iron Man. What oh what can tomorrow bring?

~joe

p.s. more after I find an easier way to type.

My Body and Me

2008-05-10T18:18:00.000-07:00

Okay, let me make a few things clear in regards to my health, since people seem to have trouble remembering what I tell them.

A: I have TB Infection. This means I have the bacteria in my body to create TB Disease but it hasn't actually developed yet, also I can't transmit the disease to others yet. TB Disease is the horrid infectious disease everyone gets panicky about, it's possible that I can develop it, but very unlikely as I'm now on the antibiotic to kill it (more about that in a later post).

B: I had some moles looked at by my doc, she thought it looked like melanoma. We decided to take one of them off and biopsy it. The results came back negative for melanoma, my doc then gave me the choice between pursuing it further or just watching for further growth. Due to a lack of insurance I'm going to go ahead and wait a bit before looking into it further.

Okay, I think that about wraps it up, if not I'll try to get around to posting more later.

~joe