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Wednesday, February 18th, 2009
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2:11 am - random post
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what possesses me to watch people getting rick roll'd at 2 AM when I have work in the morning? something is wrong with me. =o
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| Thursday, September 18th, 2008
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11:55 am - pidgeon reputation grind is such a chore
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these are the sort of conversations my roommate and i have. if you don't understand it, it's okay; i'm not sure i do myself.
William: hi
William: I wonder what I'll need to go pick up the game today at best buy
Me: your receipt i think
Me: and money
William: I hope I saved my receipt :/
Me: and the blood of Hrasis, demoness of the 6th level of hell
William: Oh shit fool, I'm only attuned up to hell lvl 4
Me: it's a reagent used in best buy's powerful dark majicks
William: that 5th lvl attunement quest makes you run all around, and I didnt think I really needed it for anything...
William: stupid rare crafting ingredients
William: Hrasis is a rare spawn too, right?
Me: yea, the quests in this Life game are getting a little too time-consuming
William: Its from that arena event where there's like 8 different bosses
Me: yea, that's why i ordered from amazon
Me: they only wanted some cat livers
Me: by the way, we need some more stray cats
William: yeah, those easy collectible quests... even though they only drop livers once every six cats, its okay
William: I was killing those cats anyways to gain rep with the DOG LORD, so this makes it two birds with one stone
William: speaking of birds, I should start grinding that pigeon rep too...
Me: just remember that the "Rabid Cat"'s don't drop livers at all. stupid rabies
Me: oh you chose the pigeon faction? i went with the seagull faction
William: Well unless you have that special quest, and then they drop "tainted livers"
William: How could you go with the seagulls, the pigeons have much better rewards, like that Ring of the Gutter, +3 monster repel
Me: I don't really need monster repel playing melee, and the seagull's have a Poo-Encrusted Cloak of Fish-Eating that gives a 7% damage increase to fish, and that comes in handy fighting off the Murloc invasion
Me: since they count as fish
William: yeah maybe your right, monster repel is a bit buggy. When you flag for pvp it makes friendly npcs run away too
William: which is funny if a noob is trying to turn in a quest to Maid Marian and she's running away from you
Me: The NPCs in this game are buggy as hell. If you have a weapon equipped they'll run too, often emoting screams. Happened to me yesterday at Jewel
William: Yeah, I was triggering the stun mechanic when I was wearing the Warthog Skull Battle Mask the other day.
William: I'm thinking when I hit lvl 80, I'm going to reroll either movie star or heir. The + charm and starting gold could come in handy.
Me: yea, it beats grinding it all up yourself
William: Anyways, I have to log out and go back to grinding customers at the bank. Got to do it the hard way for now
Me: i hear ya
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| Friday, April 4th, 2008
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5:13 pm - excerpts from a friday afternoon
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(5:01:22 PM) Rob: at any rate, i certainly will not fly southwest
(5:01:36 PM) Sol: i have not decided yet
(5:02:21 PM) Sol: they really are cheap for some flights =D
(5:02:23 PM) Sol: haha
(5:02:30 PM) Sol: but i also do not want to die
(5:05:01 PM) Rob: to me there is no more terrifying thought than a plane crash
(5:05:14 PM) Rob: i will not hesitate to spend more for safety inspections
(5:05:25 PM) Sol: what about a plane crash with snakes that are also on the plane?
(5:05:40 PM) Rob: slightly more amusing :)
(5:05:48 PM) Sol: or what about a Space Plane crash on the moon
(5:05:53 PM) Sol: Xenu and his space planes
(5:06:09 PM) Sol: then you crash and survive, but the air is leaking, and you suffocate to death
(5:06:27 PM) Sol: if the snakes don't get you first
(5:07:13 PM) Sol: these are space snakes too. they can live in outer space. so they will continue biting you even as you are running out of air
(5:07:28 PM) Rob: is that so?
(5:07:31 PM) Sol: yea
(5:07:36 PM) Sol: space snakes man
(5:07:38 PM) Sol: bad mojo there
(5:07:38 PM) Rob: then i will avoid the temptation to travel through space
(5:07:42 PM) Rob: indeed
(5:07:47 PM) Rob: i don't want to fuck with them
(5:08:04 PM) Sol: they slither through the aether
(5:08:20 PM) Sol: they dont die of old age either
(5:08:28 PM) Sol: and they keep on growing
(5:08:40 PM) Sol: some get as big as houses
(5:08:56 PM) Sol: i heard a tale by an old space pirate once
(5:09:36 PM) Sol: said once when he was out past Tau Ceti VII, in the asteroid belt there, he and his crew crashed on a large asteroid
(5:09:44 PM) Sol: he was only a deckhand then, as he says
(5:09:56 PM) Sol: but the asteroid turned out to be a space snake
(5:10:08 PM) Sol: 3 miles wide he reckoned
(5:10:18 PM) Sol: called it the Queen of Space Snakes
(5:10:30 PM) Sol: yea man, you don't wanna piss off space snakes
(5:10:33 PM) Rob: ..... rofl
(5:10:36 PM) Sol: especially if they are stuck on your plane
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| Wednesday, January 9th, 2008
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11:37 pm - midnight musings
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ah, the first post in a new year. not that it means much to me. I believe I spent New Year's Eve playing video games with X. it's a ridiculous holiday anyway. i mock it. i mock it here. you hear that new year's eve? you have just been mocked. commence weeping.
for some unknown reason i have been reading old posts of mine, perhaps because i am just that darn introverted. regardless, it made me think about how i have changed, and how i have stayed the same. if i had to use a word to describe the change i might choose "tempered". i was more naive back then (not to say i am not naive now, just more so then). these days i have a deeper reliance on God, transcending emotion rather than almost fully based on it. the changes are hard to pinpoint, but i can feel them by seeing, through his words, how my younger self thought.
also, that which i once thought dead has been rekindled. the flame of life has been restored in me over the last year. it took much pain and healing, time and reflection, but after more than four years I think my heart is fully healed, and dead set on not repeating the mistakes of the past. that is not to say that i simply love work and life (being melancholy at times is a part of who i am), but i have come to put my hope in Christ as best I can and it has done wonders.
I think a large part of the reason I write here is to keep a record that I can look back on in later years and see what I was, to reflect on that. Well, also to perhaps foolishly pour part of my heart into a public forum. Something in me doesn't want to lose track of what I am now, this day. They want to live on, the thoughts that I have. My memory is quite poor, so I write. I wish I wrote more. It is as if i cannot even keep my own story of where i have been straight in my head. i fear i would be hopelessly lost without God to remember my life for me and look after this oft-confused sheep. Any good i have ever done i attribute to Him. Any capacity I have for emotional depth wells up from Him, He is its source. He is in every way my strength. I thank Him for every day He gives me on this world, from miserable to joyous, from confused and embarrassed to safe and secure. Every day is another gift from Him in part of this grand story He is weaving. I wouldn't miss it for the world.
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| Wednesday, December 12th, 2007
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1:41 pm - snow and hope
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Sometimes i get all pensive while i am at work. I'm sure i am not the only person. Anyway, i was feeling down today. life in Chicago has alternated between great times and times of angst.
I can't really complain about this. It is, in fact, exactly the sort of thing i was on my knees praying for eight months ago. I have known what it is is live with a stone heart and it is not living at all. So i prayed for change, for moving forward, for exiting the dungeon i had been keeping myself locked in, and for healing. Funny thing is, God tends to answer those prayers that invite Him into the most painful areas of your being. I had known this before, which is why when i was on me knees yelling in prayer into those buffeting winds that stormy Spring night, with heavy rain drenching me to the core, i knew that when the sky before me came to life with tremendous arcs of lightning in response, that i was in for some turbulence myself.
The path ahead promises to be longer than the road behind, but this is a good thing in my mind. Still, part of this trail leads me through days where almost all i can do is hang on to Christ and not let go, as if my life depended on it, on Him, because it does. And thus there are days where i sit trying to get work done for the employer the LORD has provided me with, and I am distracted in my thoughts and emotions.
One difference between these days and years past is that i do not despair as much as before. I recently read something i immediately jotted down in a poorly paraphrased manner on a post-it note. Basically, the LORD does not want us to despair, for He does not give up on us, so we shouldn't give up either. These are powerful ideas to a stricken heart.
Today, as i mentioned, i was feeling down. So i went to lunch. While out i got to walk beside the railroad tracks. the warmer air and sun had begun to partially melt the snow-covered landscape. Long, stretched rays of winter sunlight bounced off the white layer covering the dormant foliage and entered my widening pupils. I had to stop walking, several times, to take in the view. It's simply amazing how awesome God is that He can turn even this area, a mostly dead little hillside next to a large railroad track, into a thing of beauty and splendor. That is the power of our LORD. John Eldredge writes, "We need what Beauty speaks. What it says is hard to put into words. But part of its message is, all is well. All will be well."
So i went on my merry way to sit in a crowded Subway and eat my sammich. And as i sat there, i read my little devotional thing for the day, and it spoke directly to me. It talked of Simeon and how it had been revealed to him that he would not see death before he had seen the LORD's Christ. It talked of how he had to wait, how he and others before him, like Abraham, Moses, and the prophets demonstrated their faith by waiting for the Lord to fulfill His promises. Though it feels like i have lived multiple lifetimes already at the ripe elderly age of 24, i know that God times things His way, not mine. It hurts and sometimes i think i can't press on through the darker days, but Christ gets me through somehow, every time. And so although it hurts greatly at times, i will not despair, and i will wait for my God to fulfill His promises in His way, on His time, because i do not want substitutes, i do not want fakes, fillers, or anything else less than the best that Christ has to offer.
And up i get, and out the door i go, into the sunny world, with strength enough from God to make it through one more day.
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| Wednesday, December 5th, 2007
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10:57 pm - time trials
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where does time go? i have a theory it's being eaten. eaten by MONSTERS. MONSTERS with TEETH. (oh wait, that's the plot of Steven King's The Langolier's. right... scratch that idea) time is such an elusive thing. i figured if i cut back on the video games i would have *more* time and i could use said time to do things like... hmmm... well i don't know, but you can bet they would be productive things, full of value and worth and merit and other synonyms. but what do i find when i play fewer video games? i just sit around doing nothing. i watch Will play video games, or waste time on the computer, or my personal favorite: pacing (yes, pacing) back and forth in the living room, rhetorically asking Will why I am pacing back and forth in the living room rhetorically asking him why I am pacing back and forth in the living room rhetorically asking him recursive questions.
i think part of this problem stems from the fact that my "to-do" list of productive things for the most part includes activities that can only be performed during business hours, like registering my car in Illinois. The problem is, of course, that businesses do business during business hours, and I, being employed by a business, thus do business during business hours (for the most part at least). So I am sort of busy during the time other businesses are open. Ah working world, you have foiled me yet again! Thus the pacing.
the other part of the problem is laziness. it's just so much easier to sit around doing nothing rather than be productive and work on things that matter. it's easier to play a couple of hours of XBox 360 than it is to go write something. it's easier to put in a movie to distract myself than to spend time with God working through personal issues. it's easier to think about change than it is to actually change. well, that doesn't mean i shouldn't try. because i am. for a change. that is a start.
oh, and there is snow here. sun and snow can lift a heart. i only regret that we will be seeing less of the former to compliment the latter in the days to come.
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| Monday, November 12th, 2007
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11:01 am - fender-bender
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So, saturday was an interesting and fun day. the previous statement is true on the basis of a number of reasons, of which only one I intend to delve into.
The time is 1:30 AM. Will and I have just left my friend poq's apartment. We are driving along, talking, as it begins to rain. Suddenly in front of us brake lights appear. I hit the brakes. The brakes brake...and then they do not, they skid on the fresh rainwater. We collide with the stopped car in front of us. soon I am standing in cold air in the rain shaking from cold and shock.
Apparently, the trigger for this late night pile-up was a police car and ambulance with lights on about to enter the road we were on via a side road. a taxi driver decided that he should stop quickly to allow them to turn onto the road easier. however, this resulted in the car behind him running into him, which in turn resulted in myself performing the aforementioned skidding into the second car. then, ironically, the cop and ambulance safely make their turn onto the street and drive off.
I exit my vehicle to a hollywood-esque scene. The accented, likely foreign, taxi cab driver is arguing with the two sassy african-american women from the second car. the taxi's customers walk off at this point. voices are raised and insults are slung back and forth. I cannot remember them all (shock and cold, if you recall), and even if I did some would be a tad vulgar. I do, however, remember one of the women partially pulling down her pants (in the rain) and slapping her rear at the taxi driver. it might have been more humorous to me at the time had i not been very tired and cold.
so we have foreign taxi cab driver, sassy black ladies, and one giant and one skinny white man standing outside in the cold rain at 1:45 on a sunday morning. it was a bit surreal. thankfully, we determined that no one was injured and all the cars had minimal damage, nothing bad really. but of course before we could exchange information, more police cars and another ambulance come to check on us to see if we are alright. (if you recall, a police car and ambulance did see part of the accident and more than likely called it in).
so then we had to drive to the police station a few blocks away to fill out a police report, which took 30-45 more minutes. foreign taxi cab driver was not very happy and was fairly agitated, since it seemed like the taxi company was going to hit him with a fine regardless of anything else. more arguing took place as Will and I quietly looked on. mercifully, my old Wisconsin plates did not cause any more trouble.
we were finally able to leave around 2:30. my front license plate is bent up like a wadded piece of parchment, and my driving nerves are a little jarred, but that seems to be about it. thank God I was alert and awake even though I was tired, else it could have been worse. oh Chicago, what an interesting place you are.
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| Thursday, October 4th, 2007
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5:22 pm - tooth decay
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in case it is not clear, I am Falinor.
Falinor: will found some new kind of candy that is possibly the worst thing for your teeth i can think of eating besides glass shards
Rob @ Work: haha
Falinor: it is basically
Falinor: a hollow smooth twizzler
Falinor: injected with a sour-sweet, sour tart-ish PASTE
Falinor: which contains within it Nerds
Falinor: you can actually FEEL your teeth screaming out in pain with each bite
Falinor: i am not embellishing
Rob @ Work: hahaha
Rob @ Work: it's actually painful to chew?
Falinor: will amortized the cost of this cheap candy with dentist costs and figured each candy would likely cost 50 cents in dental fees
Rob @ Work: rofl
Falinor: i tried a small piece
Falinor: it's just, it's so sweet
Falinor: like repulsively so
Rob @ Work: leave it to will to find these things
Falinor: and due to the twizzlerish part, it sticks to your teeth in that dangerous way that just screams "cavity"
Falinor: the nerds provide an odd crunchiness factor
Falinor: but it's more like crunching something through a layer of clay because of the blue sour paste making it's way into the dark crevices of your mouth
Falinor: it's horrid
Falinor: it's like something from the Lovecraft mythos
Rob @ Work: hah
The candy I describe above is actually the Wonka Sweetarts Rope: "Chewy red licorice with a soft zingy sweetartfilling with Wonka Nerds mixed in."
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| Monday, September 24th, 2007
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10:30 am - the sleeper has awakened
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Ah livejournal, it has been some time since last we spake... For some reason it was much easier to write when i was still in school. Nevertheless i am still quite alive. For anyone who might still read this and wonder, "gee, is sol dead?", FEAR NOT!
So just to bring you up to speed, i shall now dictate a brief synopsis of major events that hath transpired thus far this year.
January/February: Working long hours at Epic
March/April: Disgruntled with job, unable to focus. Several epiphanies about job and life, including a very poignant one while on a trip to Colorado
May: Vacation to meet my brother in Hong Kong and spend 10 days seeing Japan with him
June: Serious job burnout; start looking for work in Chicago
July: Quit my job in Wisconsin and accept new job in Chicago
August: Stay at my parent's place near St. Louis hanging out with my brothers and X
September: Move into new apartment rooming with Will, start new job. I live in the city!
okay okay, i know that's a pretty basic overview, but to go into detail would consume a large amount of space, and while 1's and 0's on some LJ server are cheap, I figure your time is not. gotta keep the interest of the reader. you are mesmerized...dun dun dun... i mean if you have read this far already i figure i can keep you around a bit longer, right? don't you quit me now!
so what does sol do once he moves to the city? why, play games and watch sci-fi of course! what a silly question that was that i just posed to myself. what sci-fi you might ask? the answer to your well-timed question is Stargate SG-1. Stargate has been a sort of mythological sci-fi in my mind for years now. I believe it has gained this status by the haphazard way in which I first saw the show: a random episode here, some Teal'c awesomeness there, a one-liner from Jack cracking me up. The disarray of plot this causes in the thinky-organ inside my skull creates a sort of mystery mythos, as if I were an archaeologist slowly uncovering the secrets of some ancient culture (ha, get it: stargate... archeology. i...er...that was sort of a lame joke. i apologize). In addition, I missed the final 3-4 seasons in their entirety due to limited access to the sci-fi channel during college.
In any case, my friend Rob wanted to watch the show, so months ago we agreed that if I moved to Chicago, we would watch all of the Stargate franchise from the beginning. I am rather experienced in such activities, having managed Farscape and other shows similarly. In fact, at the time of this agreement I was in the midst of re-watching the entire Star Trek: Voyager series in about two months. It's interesting to do so as you end up seeing long-term character growth and series development quite clearly. Rob's girlfriend Hannah jumped on the bandwagon as well, so now we are about three quarters through the first season of SG-1. Sadly they are noobs to the whole fandom/i-am-addicted-to-this-show concept, so it is slow going. I'm eager to get back to Atlantis when they start up again.
There have been plenty of video games being released to occupy time as well. Some noteworthy titles include Bioshock and the upcoming Halo 3 and Half-Life 2: Orange Box. There are many others which I will not go into at this time. I am also playing Final Fantasy VI co-op with Will, which is pretty awesome. I am trying not to become too ensnared to gaming however, as I do intend to make some changes in my life in moving to Chicago. Finding the right balance and having the will to change yourself is difficult at best.
God's been shooting some arrows at my heart lately, coming from different sources but aiming at the same location. I'm not sure what it all means yet, but I can say I am very grateful He is still with me. I've said some mean things to Him over the course of the last 3 years and I pushed Him pretty far away at times, but that's only shown me how persistent He can be, and how much He cares. I killed my own heart to avoid pain, and that's only shown me that love is not based on feelings and emotion, but something much deeper. I tried to barter with Him and it's only shown me that a gift is better than anything you can buy or trade for.
In some ways I feel like I've been navigating the narrow road with Christ for a long time, but in other ways it's as if I had just set out across the Shire at the beginning of a grand journey. The strange thing is that I think that both are true, in that deep paradoxical way the Lord likes to use (I chuckle whenever I think about this, as i tend to see a sort of cosmic humor emanating from His smile as He does these things).
That is all for now, for although there is plenty more to say about work and life, the coffee i drank this monday morning seems to be losing it's grip on me, and i can feel my thoughts once again dancing twixt the dual worlds of the waking and the dreaming...
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| Friday, April 13th, 2007
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9:31 am - enter skynet
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| Tuesday, December 19th, 2006
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12:30 pm - interesting articles from cnn
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| Monday, December 18th, 2006
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10:51 am - the future of interaction
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a couple of interesting articles on some blog-ish thing.
this one is about MMOs and how they are coming to rule the world, and the dichotic lifestyles that are and will emerge as the technology progresses.
this one is about why we are so miserable in the 21st century and the decay of societal interaction.
and for the record, genetically-engineered land dolphins make great Christmas presents (*wink wink*)
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| Wednesday, December 13th, 2006
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10:03 am - sony is fony
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As if sony hadn't already severely damaged it's reputation with it's consumer base with it's PSP graffiti art mishap last year and those stupid and racist television commercials with the balls of string and squirrels and crap, they are at it again. but first, a brief aside...
Now, i already am not going to buy a PS3 from these sony corporate slim. in fact, i don't know anyone planning on buying a ps3. As i have heard it put before: there is no clear winner in this generation console war, but there is a clear loser. The fact is that people cannot and will not pay $600 for the ps3, even if it cost $850 to make. A single-income household isn't going to buy a ps3 for Billy when Billy probably wants the $250 Wii more anyway. Even in what I would consider sony's "target" demo, young single males such as myself, i have heard mainly outcries at the price and lack of decent games, with an occasional "though the graphics are great" thrown in. On top of that sony failed to ship anywhere close to their target consoles for opening day, so that not even all the hardcore sony fanboys could get their fix. Nintendo has shipped far more Wiis and from everything I have heard, the system is more fun. Oh and let's not forget the violence/crime surrounding the ps3 launch: a line of people waiting for ps3's held at gunpoint by robbers turned out to be a hoax by the Gamestop employees themselves, and the one i can't overlook, which was barely covered in the media, is that an 18-year old suspected of being involved in robbing 2 ps3s was shot in the head by law enforcement officers when he opened his front door and subsequently died. Oh, and they killed his dog too.
back to the story at hand:
sony has hired an advertising company to market it's failing psp by trying to create viral marketing via a fake blog complete with shameless ads and deception. The story was brought to my attention by Penny Arcade's article and comic on the matter. gfg sony, how about not making enemies of your target demographic?
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| Friday, December 8th, 2006
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8:20 am - lesson in laundry
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Bachelor action not to perfrom #352:
You happen to go paintballing in October for a friend's bachelor party. You then, like any good single man, leave the dirty tennis shoes in a plastic bag on your apartment floor until late November. Deciding that they are really dirty you decide to rinse them and let them soak in your kitchen sink for a little while. A "little while" turns into 2 weeks. You are about to have some company over in early December, so you finally get around to doing something about those darn shoes. So, against your better judgement and education in physics, you take your dripping wet shoes from the sink and put them outside on your deck, in *freezing cold air*, to "dry". Of course, warm air dries. Freezing air, however, does not. It freezes. A couple of days later you pry your tennis shoes from the deck, which are now frozen solid. And back they go into the kitcehn sink, this time to thaw.
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| Friday, October 20th, 2006
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10:56 am - sol's news feed 10.20.06
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Sol's news feed: a copious condensation of current cognizance
Experts create invisibility cloak - Able to effectively bend microwaves around the invisibility cloak, this technology could be expanded to cloak objects from other forms of radiation with longer wavelengths, such as radar, and in the next 5-10 years perhaps shorter wavelengths like visible light.
Sony reveals PS3 online service and launch titles - If you are a Sony fanboy (or girl) this might interest you. For the rest of the human race that is taken aback by the asking price of the colossus, maybe not so much. I am holding off judgment, and holding onto my wallet, until this system shows some serious power, titles, and online service. The ball's in your court Sony.
Master Chief slays entire armies of Elites, but falls to Hollywood politics - In a quick turn of events, the movie adaptation of Halo recently had it's legs severed from beneath it as Fox and Universal pulled funding for the expensive flick. The blockbuster may still be saved if Microsoft and Bungee can find new funding. Peter Jackson of Lord of the Rings fame is executive producer, with the screenplay written by Alex Garland (The Beach; 28 Days Later).
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter begins it's mission - After entering Mars orbit last month, the MRO has begun sending back data along with amazing photographs of the Martian surface equivalent to the resolution you get looking out of a Boeing 747 at Earth.
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| Thursday, October 19th, 2006
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3:41 pm - freedom from the belly of the beast
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In January of 2005, at the start of my final semester at the University of Illinois, I received a package in the mail from an online store. Eagerly I ripped open the packaging on my dorm room floor and removed the contents. What I held in my hands seemed innocent enough: a small colored box with some pictures on it. What I didn't know at the time was how completely the contents of that box were going to rule my life for the two years to follow. The front of that box read: "World of Warcraft".
Perhaps it is appropriate to give some background first...
As far back as Third Grade I can remember the start of the journey to becoming the avid gamer that I am today. I remember playing my first Nintendo games with my friend Jake from school. Oh those Mario Brothers, how can an '80's kid forget the first time they fired up that game and started jumping on evil mushroom heads and chucking turtle shells at unsuspecting wildlife. Let's not forget Duck Hunt either. Sure, I may have missed the Atari, but I still got on the boat early.
As time marched on in it's familiar linear progression, my gaming prowess increased. On a trip to visit my grandparents outside San Diego few years later, my mother sprung a surprise on my younger brother and I. There in the living room for us was a Sega Genesis, and a little game called "Sonic the Hedgehog". Oh Sonic, how can a young boy not be thrilled by your adrenaline-inducing midi files and fast-paced action? I still have that Sega Genesis and the first three Sonic games. I have Sonic music remixes on my work PC to give me boosts of energy.
And so the story continues in this fashion, through the SNES, Nintendo 64 (Ocarina of Time anyone?), PS2, XBox, PC. Gaming was my hobby as well as a way to socialize and connect via something that always interested me vastly more than, say, sports. When I entered college, after finally breaking out of my shell a bit, I still used games as a connector. Diablo 2 kept me in contact with my friend X. Dungeon Siege helped me connect better with guys in my dorm (including a friend I was honored to be a groomsman for last weekend, gratz Hans & Maggie Hong!). Halo firmly bound together friendships with my sophomore roommate Rob and the enigmatic The Will. Life indeed had reached an all-time high with friends I could call family, a healthy dose of ups and downs, and a growing faith that emboldened and enriched my life. Then the January of 2005 rose into view over the horizon as the machina of time pressed ever onward. And that box lay in my hands.
It started off simple enough. Another PC game to play, like the many dozens I had conquered before, many with friends. This game was in a different genre than the others, which added excitement. It was similar to Diablo 2 (in fact made by the same company), but bigger and better. Immediately it drew me in. Soon I was exploring the outer reaches of Elwyn forest, battling robotic harvester robots gone bad on the fields of Westfall, going on an epic quest to vanquish the pirate leader Van Cleef. I got my friend X to pick up "WoW". I gave Rob and The Will the 10 day trial account that came with my game. Soon they both had their own paid accounts. So began the leveling.
We played and played. The game hadn't consumed us yet. We still played lots of Halo, and who could forget Half-Life 2? After a few months we started new characters on another "Realm" (another instance of the world). This was a Player versus Player realm where you could fight the opposing faction's player at almost all times, as opposed to our old "carebear" server where this was more restricted. So began the new level grind as valiant warriors of the Horde.
By the mid-Summer of 2005 we had reached our maximum level: level 60. Finished was most of the exploring of the vast lands of the planet Azeroth. No more leveling and killing for experience. Now began the much more sinister "end-game" experience. I was living at home with the 'rents for the summer until my new job began in August. I had lots and lots of free time to play WoW. And there was lots and lots to do. There was "farming" (repetitive actions for in-game money, items, etc.) to be had! X and I farmed gold for our epic mounts that let us travel much faster. We farmed the level 60 instances like Stratholme, Scholomace, Blackrock Spire, and Dire Maul for better gear to make our characters better. We upgraded from "green" gear to "blue" gear. But, as any experienced MMO player knows, it all ends up with raiding.
We all joined with a bigger guild (an organized group of players) to start working on the "raid dungeons": 40-man dungeons of high difficulty whose bosses have the best gear in the game, the epic, or "purple" items. We eventually left our first guild for not being serious enough, and ended up eventually being the first founders of a new raiding guild, Hazardous, in December of 2005. Since that time i have raided between 4-6 nights a week, every week, up until October of 2006. We progressed through each tier of raid dungeon, as each got harder and harder. We decked ourselves out head to toe in some of the best epic gear and beyond that money can't buy. We focused on being the cool kids on the block, part of the elite. We had conquered unthinkable enemies and returned with their heads on pikes. Most of us eventually became officers of the guild, with additional leadership responsibilities and charged with the safeguarding of the guild's well-being. But time moved on, and as it did so, WoW got less and less fun, until one day I woke up and it was completely a job. A job I was spending more time on than at my actual job that I get paid for.
The newness had long since worn off. No new places to explore except the occasional next tier raid dungeon that was released and that we progressed through painfully slow. There were no new zones, the novelty of leading had worn off and had become a burden rather than a blessing. All my work of becoming one of the "elite" was cast aside as i saw players walking around in "green" gear wearing pieces of purple gear and better that I had worked many many months on getting. The value of my character was entirely relative, and in order to even maintain the level of "cool" required putting in 40 or more hours a week. There was no end in site. The newest dungeon came out and rather than skip over an unneeded tier dungeon, the guild decided to work on the lower dungeon instead. I argued with the officers but eventually bit my tongue and went with the wishes of the guild. For a couple of months I did this, but when we started the top dungeon finally and then backed off again, that hurt me badly (after all, how could i maintain my coolness then?) Officers were "emo" and snapped at each other, and sometimes got drunk or high while playing. As the blinders were pulled away from my eyes I began to see the self-first mentality driving most players to get new gear. The insults, the backtalk, the racist and sexist comments thrown around. Eventually it wore me down, I started "burning out" more than ever before. I made arrangements for others to take over my responsibilities as I began to fade.
Last week i cancelled my subscription to World of Warcraft. On October 26th of 2006 I will no longer be able to log on to the game and play. The peace of mind it has already given me is wonderful. I hope that my friends that are still in the game follow suit at some point soon.
No matter what people may say or think, this is a very real addiction. The game is so absorbing and time-consuming that you cannot stop when you want to. To the detriment of your work, your family, your friends and your health you end up playing every free minute you have. You literally live in the game. It is not a game you can pick up and put down. It is not a game you can pause.
I have said I may come back for the expansion pack for a while, but I think even that may be a bad idea. As put by Tycho of Penny-Arcade: The Burning Crusade expansion for WoW is coming, so named because of how the game devours human lives, leaving them a smoldering ruin. I could go on, but I think this post is long enough as-is.
My name is Artemus Sol, and I am/was a WoW addict.
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10:34 am - oh how far we falll
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American soldiers raped and killed a young girl and her family in Iraq. I can't imagine the stress of being a soldier in hostile territory like these men, but neither can I see any excuse for this behavior, ever. So sad how we end up spreading evil in the name of good.
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| Tuesday, July 11th, 2006
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9:12 am - a momentary rift in reality
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...has allowed me to send communications from Azeroth.
I seem to be doing a bit better overall. I need to reverse my introvertedism somehow (i invented that word, shut up)
It was my 23rd birthday last friday, and in a stunning example of my laziness, you will likely be able to see both this post and the post from my last birthday on the same page. Well, what can I say except that World of Warcraft is a demanding mistress. I AM NOT AN ADDICT SHUT UP! kek. Anyway, I turned 23. No night out, no party. Alone at home since I don't have anyone close in this state really. I suppose I only have myself to blame, but I think it put more things in perspective. I resigned my apartment lease, so I have one more year to find a better life here or move on, perhaps to somewhere I know I have friends already.
Well, work is going alright. Been working for several months now on a project fixing this chunk of code, and I think it's going fairly well. I am not a noob so much now, which is nice. The end of July will mark my one-year anniversary of working at Epic.
My adventures in Azeroth (WoW) have been ups and downs. After several guild mergers and deaths, I along with several friends from uiuc and earlier have been in a guild, Hazardous, for about 7 months now. We have progressed pretty far, and a couple of months ago I became an officer with responsibilities and such. It has its ups and downs too, haha.
Anyway, my ex-boss is sitting next to me so I think I'll wrap up for now. Lates PEEOPLE
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| Monday, March 20th, 2006
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5:15 pm - closing time - you don't have to go home but you can't stay here
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It seems that the grand 'ole UIUC has finally realized that I have graduate and has closed my account. As such, I have lost that email account and any mail that may have been sent to me in the last month or so (as well as all the tidbits I had saved from my four years). If you wish to reach me, i can still be found at dormeier@gmail.com.
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| Thursday, March 16th, 2006
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2:20 pm - posted indirection @ ya
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Quoted from a xanga comment i made:
I must put those dvds (LotR) in again sometime soon, as i feel similarly. It speaks to some deeper part of your self that it seems few things can touch in such a way. I must refuse to believe that such stories are just stories, for they speak a language that seems much more real than that language that humans use with each other on a daily basis: "oh how is the weather?" "fine" "how are the kids?" "Billy won the Science Olympiad award, how is your roof repair going?" "oh, pretty well i guess".
I think perhaps so much of the evil in this "world" we live in is internal and hidden, shady. In LOTR it is external for the most part. You know who the enemy is, you know they are bad, they want to kill you, you fight back. Here it's just...meh. The evil is everywhere but we can't fight it like that, not with sword and shield, axe and bow. If you try to then half the world hates you, if not more. Why can we not fight back like we feel so urged to do? Where is the evil? hiding in the shadows? manipulating politics? In a faraway country we cannot touch? It grows frustrating, then numbing, and eventually you grow apathetic, blame the world, blame god, blame your neighbors. Until something hits you, until you sit down and watch LotR or something similar. Then it's all back in a flash, but it hurts, because you know when the dvd credits end, it's back to reality, which is crap. Then it's back to being numb. It's sad, it's depressing, it's wrong, and I do not know how to overcome it at present. The shackles of the world are tight, and you are imprinted from youth to stay within the lines.
I got a fortune cookie last week whilst out to lunch. It read:
"Reality is for people who lack imagination."
I keep it in my wallet now.
Perhaps we are supposed to live in reality, I am not sure. What I do know is that doing so is almost unbearable. Reality is a numbing, killing force.
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