I was a funloving person, I enjoyed music of all kinds, movies of all kinds (well almost, those of you that know me, know what kind of movies I don’t like…) I liked to be spontaneous, do what I want, when and how I wanted. Laundry was an afterthought to be taken care of when I ran out of clothes. Dishes slightly better kept than laundry. The main focus being to prevent anything from growing it’s own ecosystem.

When I became a parent the first time, I had already begun a metamorphosis because I was married and trying to make myself less annoying to my mate. Sadly, that marriage didn’t last (I never quite changed enough), but the child is still always in my thoughts even when I can’t easily see her. This second time however, almost everything is different. I found a new mate, one that is very much like me in many ways, but a complete polar opposite in others. Along with this new addition to my life came two new children, and rather quickly afterward a third. So, I now have at home 3 young ladies under the age of 7. As Geoff Foxworthy said, “I live in the estrogen ocean, the giggling nekked barbie woodstock.”

I have found that by necessity my tastes in music and movies have rapidly changed. Where once my playlist would feature Stained, metallica, Guns N Roses, Seal, George Straight, Zack Brown Band, Alabama, and Beethoven, many of my once favorite songs have had to drop off the list. If I want to listen to anything with moderate to restricted lyrics, it has to be away from my children now, with zero chance of them hearing it. So, goodbye Click Click Boom, and It’s Been A While (explicit lyrics), and hello… hannah montanna.. /twitch /twitch

The weird thing is, that the more I hear it, and other young disney channel musicians, the better I tolerate and slowly begin to like it. I actually pulled up a video clip of “hoedown throwdown” off the movie.. Once I realized just how bad that would look if spotted by a coworker, I immediately replaced my youtube screen with Welcome to the Jungle to begin to appear “normal” again. (Hush you, normal is a relative term, and even applies to me.)

I used to watch movies like The Matrix, Passenger 57, Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of The Rings, Hunt for Red October and many others. Now, if it’s before 8pm It has to be something involving princesses, young pop stars, horses, little girls with magical powers (ok, I actually liked matilda before now, but not every blinking day..) or things with faery wings. Now, I understand that playing WOW for 5 years means I’m at least partly into the fantasy world much of the time, but we didn’t have any fairy wings…. (unless you count that one warlock raid set that I never got my lock up to wearing.) After 8pm, if I manage to stay up, I’m usually on the computer, not watching TV or movies. (I need to plan some movie nights with my wife, once the school term is done and she can sleep again…)

I will probably spend the next 13 years or so in this g/pg restricted movie mode, except when I can get away with adult friends and GO to the movies. (Last movie I saw in theater was Iron Man 2 if I recall, I took my wife’s little brother.) This extends even to the games I play. Running around mindlessly killing beasts, people, zombies, and demons don’t really set the right example for impressionable young girls. I haven’t even turned on my PS3 in weeks. I guess I’m alright with EVE, as you don’t actually “KILL” anyone, you just blow up spaceships, and find ways to make money.

There are days when I really crave “Adult” conversation, when I want to escape the rapid fire questions of a 6 year old. But don’t mistake me, I love my girls and wouldn’t trade my new life for anything. I wonder what things are in store for me in the years to come. As they grow, and they start trying to shock us with the new crop of edgy music and trying to watch movies for older groups than they are in because they are “mature” enough in their mind. Will our parental instincts to protect kick in, or will we quietly act shocked and enjoy watching them grow up? I know that long before I want it to be here, the youngest of my 4 will be at the point in her life that she won’t need me anymore, she will have someone else to protect her and care for her and I will have to accept that.. Granted all the prospective youngins that try to even glance at my little girls will need to be inspected, have background checks run, and be fitted with tracking collars before they can take my little girls out of the driveway. Ok, maybe I won’t be that protective… But, I guarantee that I will have the old rifle down with the cleaning kit, a few spent rounds,  and some “used” practice targets with tight groupings of holes right between the non-existent eyes of the silhouette.

I guess I’ll sign off with a very fitting youtube video.

This monster pulls a huge sword from a hidden compartment and starts to fly toward me. I urge my dragon into motion as the monster behind me appears to be forming a ball of fire in his hand. He hurls the ball of fire toward me.

<bang> <ouch>

I wake up in my bunk, I’m back in my Caracal missile boat, and now I have a splitting headache from banging my head on the bulkhead above me. I gotta lay off the late night pizzas. Hm, Good thing I awoke too, sensors are detecting what could be a wormhole in this sector of space.

Over the last year, I have had less and less time to spend on the game, electing instead to focus on my family. The enjoyment of the game has been less as well. Knowing that I should be doing other things and was letting them slide for the sake of purple pixels really started to bother me. Not at all interested in PVP, that leaves only PVE for me to do, and not having the time to raid relegates me to leveling alts/tradeskills and running heroics. Frankly, I’m SOOOO Burned out on Occulus, Halls of Lightning and halls of Stone.

I will miss the game, and my many friends in it. I have given much of my spare time for the last 5 years to the game both playing and writing. In any event, here is a short poem for the occasion.

A new adventure starting,
Filled with sun, sea and sand,
I’d like to wish you luck,
As your horizons now expand,
Its time to say Adios,
Although I’d really rather say,
Ver usted de nuevo
Cos we’ll meet again someday

This morning he calls in and has “lost” all of his sent mail for today.

I look around for about 30 seconds checking to see if he had dragged to a nearby folder or something, then I check deleted items, and I channel my inner gomer pyle again. There are about 15 messages dated today listing his name in the from section.

I chalk it up to his age, the poor guy must be at least 70 already. He’s the sort that would wither away to nothing if he ever retired and had nothing to do.

This happened about 10 minutes ago. I’ve just now stopped laughing enough to write it….

In every company there is at least one technophobe that believes electronic devices are conspiring against them. This is JD’s story. (Name changed to protect the guilty.)

I got a call from our resident technophobe saying that his outlook is either lying to him, or he’s missing some emails. For those of you that don’t have to use outlook daily, it displays the number of unread messages beside the folder name. According to the user, there should have been 35 new messages, but only 12 were showing up on his screen. I login to my remote access software and take control of his system. I see his inbox showing 35 unread messages, but there are only 12 on the screen, I also notice the inbox is sorted by date, and the line is collapsed for yesterday.

So while talking to him I casually mouse over and click the collapsed segment and (mentally in my best gomer pyle) Surprise surprise surprise! There are the rest of his messages. He mumbles a quiet sheepish “thank you” and disconnects quickly.

“You may be my friends, you may be people that have been visiting only once or have been here for years commenting frequently and becoming folks near and dear to my heart, like Dechion, Katt and Tesh, but you”re not my customers.”

When people discuss the weather, it’s to cover those uncomfortable gaps in a conversation. Both people know it, and all it ends up doing is exercising your jaw.

When people discuss religion, you are starting to tread on dangerous ground. I personally am a non-denominational Christian. There are tenets of the organized religions that I do not hold with and will not discuss here. What I will say, is that when it comes to religion regardless of which you subscribe to. Part of being a (insert religious group here) is that you believe it is THE right way. (singular, no other way will do.) By extension it means anyone not a member of said group is wrong and your job is to convince them of that. More wars have been fought and people killed in the name of God than over any other issue in the history of man.

Politics is almost as bad as religion, in some places it’s worse. Here in Texas there is a saying, “Football is a religion, religion is political, and politics is a game.” It must be so, there is no other explanation why teenagers would voluntarily commit to training sessions twice daily in the 100+ temperatures of the summertime Texas sun if it were not something they fervently (or is that feverishly) believe in. Back to politics tho, I will not state here my beliefs. In my office building, I can walk around and know instantly which way some of the people lean by the decorations of their cubicle. One lady has an Obama calendar, another guy has a NPR mug, another plays Rush on his radio whenever his boss is away. But, most people don’t display their colors openly to maintain decorum.

I’ll leave you with another quote.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. —Robert A. Heinlein

0530 – alarm goes off and i slap it to shut it up

0545 to 0600 – somewhere in here i finally can string coherent syllables together to make words. If i’m lucky, I’ve already gotten in the shower and usually will be finishing up.

0600 to 0630 – sneak quietly past the children and spouse to the computer, I like my quiet time in the mornings, great for quiet reflection.. (in my terms blowing stuff up wearing headphones)

0630 to 0730 – on a quiet day, i can continue… reflecting. but sometime in this hour the baby will usually wake up, or I have to wake up the children needing to go to school.

0730 to 0745 – run around like headless chicken looking for my clothes, eating breakfast and whatever else i have to do. and Then leave for work.

This morning, I changed things up a bit, I kickstarted the computer when i got out of the shower and found I couldn’t get logged into EVE. I went and ate giving them time to finish the patch installation downtime. It was still down when i finished so i logged into katt 4.0 and quested for a while. when I made it to work, I eventually realized that I had put on two different style black work shoes.  I didn’t want to wander around work today wearing mismatched shoes. then I found out we have an auditor coming today, and I had worn jeans.. The boss tells me to go change clothes, and I am grateful.. I get a chance to change my shoes at the same time. Yeah… I just love mornings..

It feels like ages since i last dropped in to say hello, absolutely nothing has been going on, so I haven’t had any game related material to write about. I’ve been catching the occasional blurbs from Grimmtooth, BRK, BBB and Pike. But the muses have been off elsewhere leaving me to shift for myself.

I have been playing around with Katt 4.0, (1.0 is on Kul-Tiras, 2.0 was on BBB’s Server, 3.0 on Pike’s server, 4.0 is on Argent Dawn where I got to join in with the Single Abstract Noun folks.)

Katt is doing good so far, she’s still early on in her career, and for some reason has a hard time blending in with the spacegoats on bloodmyst isle.. it must be the ears, or lack of hooves.

I did have one interesting run lately, which promptly led to respecing to full balance with my whole 9 talent points…

I had been loading the feral tree planning on doing a wee bit of tanking right out of the gate at 15. and i did manage RFC (had no swipe but managed anyway) the groups held back and managed their agro.. mostly.

The other night, I pulled Wailing Caverns. which is  a horrible random.. at lvl 17, I was the lowest of the group, ranging up to a mid run ding to 21. luckily, we had a warrior at 19 who COULD  have taken over tanking and did for a time, till he quit because we wouldn’t boot him. But… Seriously, at these levels the tanks just don’t have their stuff together yet. I actually had to ask the group to hold up and let me at least hit the things a few times before they would unload. (i’m talking to you mage, and hunter.. you know who you are)

the group ended up dissolving due to it’s inadequacies, the warrior left after only one boss and the turtle.. and needed on everything that popped up. I might see about getting one of my new SAN guildies to run me through there a few times for the caster leather that drops (or deadmines for the defias stuff so i have feral gear when i get kitty at 20).. then again, i’ll be out of that into better stuff in no time.

In other news, I’m really starting to get the hang of EVE online, I like that there’s no requirement to buy the program or any of the upgrade/expansions.. ever.. and some of my RL friends play it and we get together like old times in college.

For those of you not familiar with EVE, it is a space based MMORPG where your character is actually whichever ship you decide to leave the station in. You can do pretty much anything you want from mining, to exploring, to trading on the markets,  to outright high seas.. er deep space piracy. That said, the game has a steep learning curve. And you script kiddies out there might as well look elsewhere, it’s not moddable like WOW, and you have to actually Read The (f)Blinking Mission to figure out what to do.. there is no giant green arrow telling you what way to go. Therefore, the player base in general is a lot less jittery and trigger happy, and doesn’t sharply increase at 330 pm monday-friday..

I’m still undecided if i’m going to subscribe to EVE or not. I know that I won’t have the time for WOW and EVE.. one will have to go.. my friend gave me a 21day free trial, so i have a few more days to decide..

Star Wars V Star Trek – Both, Favorite iteration of Trek is Voyager, I just can’t really decide why I like it better…

Kirk V. Picard – I would go with kirk, but Janeway beats both of them.

DC V. Marvel – batman — meh.. superman is cool, xmen and iron man rock. so.. Marvel.

KDE v. Gnome – I don’t use enough linux to have an opinion.

Emacs v. Vi – When I was at A&M, took a programming class. the instructor had an infatuation with emacs/lisp. lisp stands for Lots of Infuriating Silly Parentheses. Was the worst programming class I ever took. He didn’t teach the language, he taught “structured programming/pseudocoding”. So we had to learn a foreign language on our own and bend it to fit the rules imposed by lisp. Emacs was the editor of the instructor’s choice so that is what we had to use.. therefore… I hates it, my precious…

Open Source V. Free software – the Gnu should be everyone’s mascot. no?

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Part 2

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Coke V. Pepsi – Coke or Mtn Dew (regular, code red, and blue)

Asimov vs. Heinlein vs. Clarke: Heinlein – I love double star, and red planet

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additional questions in the comments

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Pokemon Red V. Blue – I’m not big on pokemon, bought red so I could play around with my nephew way back when. Grew outta that pretty quick.

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makes it very tempting to give it a test run.