Thursday, November 26, 2009

Thanksgiving

It's that time of year again where we take inventory of our lives and give thanks for the things we do have instead of complaining about the things we don't have. This year has been a particularly hard year for many, financially, emotionally, physically, and spiritually, but yet we survive to continue on. The fact that I have survived another year is enough for me to be thankful. Other things I am thankful for are as follows:
  • My Family: I love my family, and am closer to them than anyone else. I am thankful for their returned love, and continued support.

  • My Health: Although I'm not in the greatest of health, I am thankful that I don't have the health problems that others have, and that I am able to function without much problem.

  • My Friends: This includes those friends, old and new, that I know in person, and those I only know by name via various clubs, online games, blogs, etc. Though we don't always agree on a lot of things, you're still my friends, and still very much a part of me.

  • My pets: Especially my Best Bud in the world, Dalamar (Poopins), and the two "junior buds", Raistlin and Frito (Beezer-bud). It is those times I'm feeling my lowest that these three are stuck to me like glue (moreso than normal. They are gifts, and ones that I am eternally grateful for.

  • My Education: I am thankful for the chance to further my education and make something of myself. Also, I am thankful for the greatest teachers that anyone could ask for, and the pleasant smiles of Patti, the receptionist, that always make my day.

  • Food, shelter, clothing, and the other essentials: This is a given. There are so many right now that have so much less.
Thank You, God, for giving me all these things, and thank You for being there for me, even when I am not there for You.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

New Header

This is just a brief post to point out the new header. I got tired of looking at just plain text, and in my boredom at school yesterday, I did some photoshopping work, and wa'la. The only problem was that I didn't have the cutout of Llaihr (my DK) available yesterday, because some overzealous computer lab monitor deleted more than user profiles last week, so most of my saved work (at school) was gone. So I went home and got a couple of good pictures, and re-did it today. :) I am satisfied with it now. :)

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Do You Believe?


As Christmas approaches, I hear the same question that is asked of people every year- "Do you believe in Santa Claus?" This elicits a variety of responses from different people. Some say, "Santa Claus is just a myth, a fairy tale, made up to make children behave." (is he a benevolent boogy man that will give you coal instead of nice gifts if you are bad?) Other people claim that Santa Claus is the quintessential "spirit" of the season, and he is real in the hearts of those who believe. Then there are the true 'children' at heart who hold onto the hope that the "jolly old elf" is in fact a real live being.

Until recently, I held to the second theory, that Santa Claus is the spirit of giving, and lives in and through me. Then again, I'm the eternal optimist when it comes to hoping for and believing in good things. Every Christmas, I concerned myself with making others happy, especially those less fortunate than myself, even if I didn't have much to give. I don't care much for receiving gifts, and meager Christmas holidays are still happy, knowing that I made someone else's Christmas happy.

Just recently, I was doing my grocery shopping at WalMart, and I found myself thinking about the upcoming season, thinking about what resources I had to buy gifts for those few close to me, and browsing through the DVD section for ideas, when I turned caught a slight movement out of the corner of my eye. I glanced in the general direction, and nearly did a double-take, for standing not 15 feet away was an elderly gentleman with full white beard and dressed in red. (no, it wasn't a Santa suit, but Red Jacket, and dark red slacks.) He noticed my glance and nodded in my general direction, which I acknowledged in return before returning to my browsing. About five minutes later, after I had my general list ("Gone With the Wind" for my 'Mooey', the New Star Trek movie for both my friend Lisa and my Dad, and a season of Buffy for someone else, plus a few other ideas for others) and I turned to leave, and nearly bumped into the elderly gentleman. I looked at him and apologized, and he, despite it not being quite Thanksgiving, smiled, winked, and wished me a Merry Christmas before turning back to his own shopping. So now, I am left with the question, was it REALLY Santa Claus, or was it just a friendly older gent, who had already gotten into the spirit of the Christmas Season? You may say it was the latter, but the eternal child and optimist in me believes that it was the REAL Santa Claus (especially since I didn't see him there or anywhere else in the store afterwards).

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Thought Provoking Music and Video

This is an old song done by Simon and Garfunkel juxtoposing the peace and serenity of "Silent Night" with an actual Vietnam War era news broadcast filled with war, and strife. Sad to say that we haven't come very far from that and the world is falling farther away from God and the peace He would bring.

THEN


NOW

My all-time favorite (secular) Christmas song



I Believe in Father Christmas ~Greg Lake (Emerson, Lake, and Palmer)

"They said 'There'll be snow at Christmas.'
They said 'There'll be peace on Earth'
But instead it just kept on raining
A veil of tears for the virgin birth.
I remember one Christmas morning
A winter's light and the distant choir.
The peal of a bell
And that Christmas tree smell
And eyes full of tinsel and fire.

They sold me a dream of Christmas
They sold me a silent night
They told me a fairy story
'Til I believed in the Israelite.
I believed in Father Christmas.
I looked to the sky with excited eyes.
Then I saw him and through his disguise.

I wish you a hopeful Christmas
I wish you a brave new year
All anguish, pain, and sadness
Leave your heart and let your road be clear.
They said there'd be snow at Christmas.
They said there'd be peace on Earth.
Hallelujah, Noel,
Be it Heaven or Hell,
The Christmas we get, we deserve."

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Upgrade time!!!

Before I get any further into this post, I am not talking about WoW or armor upgrades, but the next best thing (or better) Computer upgrade. For the past couple of years, I have been working, playing, etc on my last upgrade, a Toshiba laptop, which replaced my old Dell system. Recently, it has gotten a bit more tedious to handle, mainly due to the lack of a proper number pad, and HD space has become more limited as well. Just recently, a friend of mine who teaches computer science at another local technical school asked me if I knew anyone who was looking for a refurbished Dell XP pro system, as he had 3-4 that he was working on. I said I had been thinking about it, but due to lack of funds, had been putting it off. He said since I was a friend, he'd take $100-150/month (which I'd be paying for out of my Work-study checks) until it was paid off, and then invited me over to look at them. So, this afternoon, I hopped into my car and drove across town to take a look, and I was blown away by whay he had to offer. The one system, I instantly fell in love with (ok, that's an understatement. I drooled a nice puddle onto his living room carpet.) This system (I can't remember the exact model, but it's relatively new) literally blew me away. It has 2gigs memory (upgradeable to 4). He put a brand new top-of-the-line CD/DVD burner in it, a brand new GForce 5200/512k video card in it, and is going to add another hard drive (hinted at maybe a Terrabyte) as well. However, thats not all. It's got a 5(?) channel sound card with full surround sound (imagine playing WoW with those babies), a brand new HP printer, and a UPS to boot. He is selling it to me at cost, since he gets business discounts on all parts he buys, so all totalled, it will probably come to $400-600 (that's including a brand new monitor, btw). He wasn't able to give me a direct quote right off, because he hadn't been able to calculate what he'd put into it since he had been busy fixing and replacing other people's systems, but he'll get back to me in a week or so with the total. I told him I'd have his first payment by the first of next month, so soon, I should have a new puter. I still haven't decided what to do with the laptop yet. I'll either loan it to my neice so she can play WoW until they get the other one I gave them back, give it to my friend to sell as part of my payment, or just keep it in case I travel, and want to play WoW on the road.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

oops

My apologies to any who left comments on my recent posts. I decided I didn't like the way intense debate set up comments (or the way it wouldn't let me log in to moderate) so I removed all code, and in doing so, the comments posted via Live debate vanished as well.

DJS

Back to full-time studentdom (for at least a semester)

So, today I was informed that the tentative schedules for next semester were available for us students to pick up from our respective department heads. Since there were still five minutes left until class started, I took Heidi up to meet Mr. Rowe (she had no idea of who Tim "Brown" was) and get our schedules. I asked for mine, and Mr Rowe looked at me with a perfectly straight face, and said "Dave, we kicked you out, why are you still here?" and then laughed and gave me my schedule. Initially, I was scheduled for only two classes, but he asked if I wanted to add more, and after a brief call to financial aid, he added two more. So I'll be a busy bee next term, and my WoW time will be cut even further. At least I don't have the commitment of a raid schedule to worry about, so that will be a plus. Another plus is that the "gang" I got adopted into this semester (Frank, Scott, Heidi and myself) will be in all our classes together, so that will be fun. Upon looking at the program requirements, I will only have four more classes left after next semester, so I should be able to graduate next fall. (I'd say next summer, but I doubt that I could take intermediate accounting I and II during the same semester.) The only downside I see to taking a full load is that I will have more work, which means it might be harder to maintain the 4.0 I have to date, but at least I'll try.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Who's the Tank?

Ok, some of you may have seen this before, but it's new to me. WoW take on the classic Abbot and Costello "Who's on First" act. Enjoy

Just another evening

So, tonight I took some time to play my pally, Sylverylle, over on Kael'Thas server. I got him to level 40, running all over Desolace and doing quests there. It was a nice, relaxed evening, to say the least. At one point, I was doing the Centaur quests, and had gotten to the point where I had to get an advanced target dummy to complete the quest. Since none of my toons on that server are engineers, I went to check the AH, and lo and behold... there were none. I asked in guild chat if someone could make me one, which led to my friend, Shaun, hopping from toon to toon to get the necessary materials to make it, and then meeting me in Undercity to give me the item in question. He was on his hunter, Savagelupine and impressed me with his many pets, including all three northrend spirit beasts and one of the worms. This led to a brief discussion about hunter pets and the desire to acquire Aotona when I eventually level my hunter Amerylle, now only lvl 19, high enough.
The casual quild chat and banter in Sacrilege. , slightly reminiscent to "pre-endgame Eternity Matters" was refreshing, to say the least. I haven't gotten to know too many of my new guildmates yet, but it's a gradual process. One, Apukazaam, lives about 20 miles away, in Union City, PA and there is another family that lives in Lancaster, PA. While it's not a Christian guild like EM was, it's laid back and relaxed atmosphere is a pleasant change, and its diversity makes it more interesting. I like it there. :)
As a side note, when I transferred, I went from being once third-best-geared tank that I was in EM to being the best geared toon in Sacrilege. Interesting transition.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Christian WoW guilds

I have been doing a bit of research over the past few days in hopes of finding a replacement for EM. Unfortunately, there are no other known Christian guilds listed anywhere for Eldre'Thalas server, but I was able to find the following information (some copied from "Christian Gamers Alliance" forums, and some I found on my own)

List of Christian World of Warcraft guilds



USEurope


if anyone knows of any others, please feel free to make a note.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

New Directions?

So, yesterday, after some careful thought and a bit of prayer and introspection, I dropped the hastily erected walls that I had put up around myself last week, and made first contact with EM's guild leader since the whole blowup. I told him that if we could both agree to be civil with each other, and not engage in any further bashing (either in-game or out) than I would have no problem picking up what friendship was left and continuing there. As I said before, I harbored no hard feelings toward anyone, which was true, I just let my anger get the best of me. I apologized for the errors in judgement on my part, and hope that he accepted it in the spirit in which it was meant. I haven't yet apologized to his wife, but that's mainly because I haven't really had the opportunity to, and it might be best to let her cool down a bit before approaching her anyway. Suffice it to say, that I regret that I unleashed my anger on her in the way that I did, and if she is reading this, or if someone who is reading this could pass this on to her, know that I am sincere in my apology. To the rest of EM~ Well, I deeply regret the drama that resulted from my little outburst. Many of you, who have been my friends, remain my friends, and have even shown me that in your concern. I thank you for that. To those who are harboring grudges, for whatever reason, I can only hope that you will get over it eventually, and move on instead of saying the hateful things that you've been saying. "As you've said to me, it's only a game. Get over it."

All that being said, I'm most likely going to be cutting back a bit on my WoW time. I'm getting into the tougher content in my classes (it's not easy learning new stuff at 42 years old, and it often eats up a lot of my brainpower) so I'm shifting a bit more of my focus onto my schoolwork.
I also signed up for the Beta testing of the Star Trek online game, and if I get into that, will probably shift some of my game playing toward that, to see what it's like. I'm hoping that with the shift in focus, I'll lessen some of the WoW burnout that I've been having for the past few months. We'll see.

Friday, November 6, 2009

The First Butterfly

Just last night, I reconnected with an old friend and penpal from when I was attending Edinboro University back in the early nineties. Sarah H. was not a student at Edinboro, but rather at Texas A&M university that I had gotten to know via an online digest called "Elfinkind Digest". She and I had called each other a few times, and maintained contact with each other until I had moved to Harrisburg area, and then for some reason, contact was lost. I don't remember how exactly I had come across her name yesterday, but I saw it, the light came on, and I messaged her to see if she was my old friend. The response came back that she was indeed the same Sarah H. that I had known back then, and the reference to the blind girl I was dating at the time was the clincher.
At any rate, way back then, Sarah had sent me a taped copy of an LP that she had by the Boone Girls (Debbie Boone and her sisters), called 'Glass Castles', and on it was a song that I had instantly fallen in love with, and I asked her about it, and she directed me to where I could find it. The song was entitled 'The First Butterfly', and I will share the lyrics here. enjoy.

The First Butterfly

"In the land of caterpillars
With its dandelion pillars,
For the worms there was no world beyond their town.
They didn't know a bird could fly.
They'd never seen a summer sky.
Their eyes were always facing down.
Their lives were fastened to the ground.
(In the Land of caterpillars with its dandelion pillars)
But one young caterpillar saw
That they were blinded by their law.
He spent his lifetime showing them the sky.
He said he'd fly just like the birds.
Some said 'Take me!'
Some said 'Absurd!'
Yet 'Someday, I will fly.' he said,
'But first I'll have to die.'
(In the Land of caterpillars with its dandelion pillars)
Then they led him to a fallen leaf
To see the caterpillar chief.
Who questioned him and sentenced him to die.
So he meade him spin himself a tomb,
But nature changed it to a womb.
And he was born again to fly,
And be the world's first butterfly.
(In the Land of caterpillars with its dandelion pillars)

Butterfly, butterfly,
Won't you please teach us to fly.
You told us that you would someday,
But we thought it was a lie.
Then the wind breathed out a sigh
And filled the air with his reply.
He whispered as he fluttered by,
'You only have to die.'
A Man lived very long ago,
A Man of sorrow, A Man of woe
He came to open up our earthbound eye.
What once was His cocoon
Is now a dark and empty tomb.
The day He went to die for me,
He showed me how to fly, you see.
He showed me how to fly.

Butterfly, butterfly,
Won't you please teach us to fly.
You told us that you would someday,
But we thought it was a lie.
Then the wind breathed out a sigh
And filled the air with his reply.
He whispered as he fluttered by,
'You only have to die.'
'You only have to die.'"

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Perspective


Recently, I parted ways with my old guild in World of Warcraft. It was not a friendly parting of ways due to major differences of opinion that neither side wished to concede or come to agreement on, hurtful things being said and done by both sides, etc. You get the picture. I'm not saying I am not at fault for a lot of it, because I have a tendency to make a decision on something and stick to my guns defending my point of view. I had seen a lot of problems, and made the "mistake" of speaking out about it. This led to an immediate and hostile verbal thrashing which was lacking in self-control from one of those in charge. In an attempt to prevent drawing everyone else into the argument, I took the initiative to move the conversation to a more private forum, and presented my defense. I was called many things from "Liar" to "untrustworthy" and made to feel guilty about my own personal choice to put my education first before gaming (whether this was the intention or not, this is how it came across.) There was also a major miscommunication regarding a close personal friend, which (after much heated argument on both sides) was settled as just that, a miscommunication (though, personally, I still have problems believing the other side of the story as presented after the fact due to various factors that I won't go into here.)
Another part of the much heated debate was my recent transfer of my main character, Llaihr, to a different server with a Faction/race change to Horde/Blood Elf (hence the slight title change and icon change on this blog). To set the record straight, the transfer was done so I could play the game with a friend that I hadn't seen in over 20 years and had just recently reconnected with online. I hadn't been enjoying playing my DK for a while, and had fallen out of the loop due in part to concentrating more on my studies, and almost constant back pain that kept me from playing the game for long periods of time when I had the time to play. While I enjoyed raiding, the added stress caused by ever-increasing expectations imposed by those running the raids, and the fact that raiding required prolonged periods of time sitting at the computer, which was hard on my back (I could not get up and stretch or walk around if it got to be bad enough), so I withdrew the commitment to raid (this was stated at least 2 months prior to the transfer, when I stopped raiding on a regular basis.) The invitation from my friend provided the opportunity to both enjoy the game with someone of like mind (he's more of a "lone wolf" type just like myself) and to enjoy playing my main character in a more relaxed environment. I still don't get on as much as I'd like to due to the back problems, but at least when I do play, I am free to get up and move around if I need to without worrying about ruining someone else's game for making them wait.
Anyway, things have calmed down (for now). I still remain friends with a few people in the guild, others who got to know me personally and "claimed" to be friends I am not so sure about (IMHO, a true friend will listen to both sides of the story before making a decision, and will not alienate one friend in favor of another~ but again, that's what I was taught, and thus, just an opinion.)
Looking back on it all, there are a few questions. Maybe a few regrets.
Could things have been handled differently? Yes, on both sides of the issue.
Am I sorry for what happened? I am sorry for the way things happened, but not sorry for sticking up for what I believed in. If given the chance to go back and change it all, I would still stick to my guns. There are things wrong, but as a friend told me, "you can't shine a light into the darkness and expect the blind to see." If the other party does not see the problem, or just ignores the possibility that a problem could exist, then pointing out where there is or may be a problem is pointless. I guess I still have a few things to learn yet.
When asked if I harbor any ill will toward anyone, the answer is no. I am hurt, I am still somewhat angry, and I don't wish to have anything to do with them for a while, but I am a forgiving person. I hold no grudges (it's not worth it). Someday, I will allow myself to forget that it happened, as the wounds are allowed to heal, and will accept whatever friendship is offered, but for now, I turn my back and walk away.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

A letter to Satan

Someone just sent this to me, don't know who it was, but I liked it, and thought I'd share.

reBlog from Rachel M: Soliloquy

I found this fascinating quote today:



It depicts a herd of lemmings rushing towards a cliff from an old video platform game called "Lemmings". It's a spoof of an actual banner for a "Christian" guild in an online video game called World of Warcraft.Rachel M, Soliloquy, Nov 2009



You should read the whole article.

Cool World of Warcraft gear from Jinx.com

My Personal Playlist


Get a playlist! Standalone player Get Ringtones