God is Good.

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

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

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

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

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

~Joseph W.

Wheee!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~ish/joe

Time...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~joe/ishvi

Wheee

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

Semicolons

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

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

Yay for semicolon controversy!

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

Fiiiiiire

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~ish/joe

The Books I Like

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~joe/ish