World of Warcraft

It took me a long time, but I finally gave in and gave World of Warcraft, the computer game a try this month. As a teenager I quite enjoyed the strategy game Warcraft II and Starcraft by the same company, but I've never been able to really connect with the roleplaying and first person character types of games, which is what World of Warcraft is.

However, Russell is a big fan of the game and has been desperate for someone to play with since his past comrades have gotten married to wives who won't let them play much anymore. He had a 30 day free trial that he signed me up for a day or two after Holly left town and I started testing the waters of the game.

It took me a few days to really get a handle on things and work out some confusion I had about how things worked, but Russell sat down and teamed up with me for a couple hours and got me all straightened out. Now I'm cruising through the game having fun and Russell and I have enjoyed a couple sessions of teaming up for some quests and adventures.

The games is quite different from what I was expecting because there are so many different things you can spend your time doing. You can go on quests, simply explore, have multiple different characters, each with different skills, or you can do a mix of a little bit of everything. Right now I've got a Dwarf Warrior, named Tierk, who is a Level 22, which I guess is pretty decent. We'll see how fancy I get get him before Holly gets back in town.

After the free trial is up it costs $15 a month to keep playing, so I think I might pay for the two months of summer remaining and then see where I stand. Once school starts I don't think I'll have time to play much and Russell said you can save your character as long as you like, so if you walk away for 6 months without playing you can just pick right back up where you left off as soon as you start paying again, which is sort of nice. So I can put it aside during the school year, maybe pay for a month over Christmas break, and then wait again until summer to pick it up again. Or, if Russell and I wanted to sit down for a "guys day" one Saturday I think I could get $15 worth of value out of an afternoon and evening of questing. Lots of options, fun game to be sure.

I think Holly was worried that I might become addicted to the game like so many people do, but for me it is more of a distraction type thing during the month I've been playing. Instead of flipping channels I'll go play for an hour and then go see some friends. Instead of going to see all the movies in the theater I can play for an hour until the urge goes away. I don't think I'll ever be one of the guys who has to gather every single thing possible, or beat every single quest by any means.

Good time waster while the wife is out of town though.

The Lost Art of Written Letters

This is an older post from another blog that I wanted to transfer over here because I'm changing the focus of the other blog.

It's no secret that in this day and age some of the great things from days of old are disappearing one small piece at a time. Surrounded by technological advances, and a new website to become a member of each day when we wake up, it seems to me that inter-personal relationships are becoming entirely dependent on some sort of technology to be maintained. To a certain extent this isn't such a bad situation, especially when it makes it far easier to communicate in a rapid fashion, but in other ways it seems to take away some of the connection you get when being someone's friend.

Nowadays a large portion of my friendships are conducted online as a member of Facebook or one of the various other social networking websites. There are friends on Facebook of mine that I haven't been in the physical presence of for several years on some cases, even when I live in a relatively close vicinity. There are days when I find this helpful because I'm sure some of them I wouldn't have a clue about if social networking sites were not available, but part of me longs to have something a little more tangible.

I'm one of those people who has multiple email addresses for various things, one for work, one for registrations, and one for personal contact. The interesting thing about this is that for some reason I have this innate dislike for the impersonal nature of using email for casual personal correspondence. I have this feeling that sometimes things from the "old world" so to speak should be retained. This is where the lost art of handwritten letter writing comes into play.

Remember back in elementary school when your 4th grade teacher told the entire class that you would each be getting a pen pal from some faraway country? I do, and I remember it being a pretty exciting thing to share letters from someone across the globe. I remember when as a class we would take time and each write a letter to another 4th grade student and put them all into one large envelope to be shipped out the next day. We were always really excited to show up to class a few weeks later and have our teacher reveal a return envelope full of letters for us.

Part of me longs for a return to the days when going to the mailbox meant something each day. It could be a letter from a friend, a postcard from a relative, or some other exciting news from what seemed like an incredible distances when only nine years old. I'd love to get more than some inane credit card offers, mailers, or magazine subscription offers when I go to check the mail. It would be great to get something worth actually reading on occasion.

If I could find a way to get the people around me to write letters once again, and not just type the words out on a keyboard each time I would think it a small moral victory. Until then however, I think I'll have to cope with getting everything in some form of digitized text.

Christmas Break, Boredom Style

After Holly had Jack on Monday of last week we had to make up our final exams and get things finished for the semester. I took my last final on Saturday afternoon and was officially finished with schoolwork I needed to do until the next semester starts.

The only problem with this is that now I have found myself in sort of a state of limbo with not much to do until school starts again. Sure, I do have Jack to occupy some time, but he sleeps most of the time and can't really go on adventures with me because the doctors don't want him outside in the cold. I could start building a new website, but I have to keep my slate free for when class starts so I don't have too much to do. I could load up on Conquer Club activities, but I'm phasing myself out of that stuff so that I only have a handful of games and nothing else.

It has left me with a bunch of small things I'd like to do but nothing I really want to motivate myself to do. Christmas will be fun with all of the presents and fun things to do, but other than that I don't really have a lot to fill my time with.

Perhaps I'll unwrap something on Thursday that will help.