Variation on a favorite

If you’re not outraged terrified, you’re not paying attention.

It’s like pulling teeth

I’m taking Speech class online this term, and for our first assignement we had to write a speech introducing ourselves using three aspects of our culture. By “culture”, the instructor means any and every aspect of your life. On one hand that makes it easier to write, but on the other hand, it makes it more difficult. How am I supposed to choose just three aspects of my personality to describe myself? I’m more than that.

I thought about this for about three days, but it never got any clearer. I started several times, only to delete it and start again. Finally I’d had enough and shoved my finger down my mental throat and puked out the required five paragraphs. We were supposed to write it as we would normally speak; this is how I speak, minus the tongue-trippings and if I had a few seconds to mentally organize my thoughts. This is what I wrote:

My name is Chris Mathewson. I’ve been searching my whole life for my own culture, and while I’ve made some discoveries, I’m growing more and more certain that what I would consider to be my culture is undefinable. Being an adopted child, my natural heritage is unknown, uncertain, or so dilluted as to be indistinguishable. On the other hand, however, not having a specific cultural heritage has allowed me to be open to a wide variety of different cultures from around the world, as well as develop my own unique system of beliefs and customs.

I believe that a person’s spirituality is a completely personal experience. It should involve years of study and discovery on one’s own. Just as people are unique in other aspects, their beliefs should be just as unique. That’s why I’ve stopped labeling myself as belonging to any religion. I’ve gone through years of introspection and have a pretty good grasp on my own spirituality. Just like my heritage, my spiritual beliefs are sampled from many, many different faiths, cut and pasted into an amalgam that is unique from anything else.

My tastes in music, movies, and other forms of entertainment are just as varied. There are only a very few musical genres that I genuinely dislike, while my list of favorites ranges from classical music like Beethoven and Tchaikovsky to fast-paced, guitar-driven heavy metal like White Zombie and System of a Down, with a myriad in between. I also enjoy a variety of movies, some that make you think and others that are filled with the crudest of humor. These varying forms of entertainment appeal to different aspects of my personality and imagination.

Albert Einstein once said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” The imagination is limitless and I enjoy stretching my mind as far as I can. I read fantasy novels like The Lord of the Rings, watch movies like The Matrix, and partake in my own meditative exercises that force my mind to think outside the accepted boundaries of our known reality. One of my favorite pastimes is contemplating the concept of infinity, and how our reality fits into it.

Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I’m constantly examining my life, evaluating it, and altering it depending on how I feel it is evolving. Though I see what my life should be like, I can’t always make the necessary changes, either because of environmental reasons or simply because of my own laziness and lack of will power. There is a lot of room for improvement in my life, but I’m fairly confident that my perceptions of myself are mostly accurate.

I know. Pretty bad, eh? Hopefully my instructor will see it as a “good first attempt” and be merciful on me.

I wasn’t able to talk about as much as I probably might have liked, were it a blog entry or some such. But I think the things I did talk about serve as the foundation of the other aspects of my personality, culture, etc. These things are why I believe in the things I do. These are the things that I was born with.

Perhaps at a later time I will examine more specific aspects of myself and delve more into why I am the way I am.

So while this exercise was more painful than a tooth extraction, it served to remind me that I can’t stop evaluating myself and improving what is already there.

Action Jeans!

I so need to get me a pair of these…

Share your iTunes library between multiple computers

For quite a long time, I was trying to manage two iTunes music libraries; one at work and one at home. I listen to music probably 7 out of 8 hours a day at work, but fairly rarely at home. But when I did listen at home, I didn’t have the same playlists I had at work, since many of them are dynamic, based on play counts and ratings.

I found a remedy a month or so ago, and now I can listen to the same library at work and at home. It works wonderfully.

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WoW, I’m back!

So I’m going to try playing World of Warcraft again.

In the past, my problem has always been alts. I’ll play a character for a while, then start a new one to try out a new class or race. I’ll play that one for a while, then start a new one. Rinse, repeat until I’ve got 9 characters that are all between levels 10 and 20. And then of course I get bored with those characters because I can’t do anything fun with them. They’re all stuck in the same areas I’ve been playing in for months, and I’m tired of it. But I can’t get out of those areas until I’m higher level. It’s a vicious circle.

But this time, this time! I’m going to focus on just one character. I’ve thought long and hard about what race/class combination I wanted to play and finally decided on a gnome rogue.

The reasoning behind my choosing a gnome should be obvious.

It took me much longer to decide on the rogue class.

I’m a damage dealer. I’ve played MMOGs long enough to know that very well by now. Some people prefer to heal others, some prefer to be the meat shield and the center of attention in fights. Others, like me, prefer to stand back (or close, depending on your class) and let those numbers fly. I’m sure my preference for inflicting severe amounts of damage stems from some psychological issue, but I won’t get into that now.

Through my own experiences with the classes in World of Warcraft, I whittled my choices down to three: Hunter, Mage, and Rogue.

My highest level character, Drajha, is a level 42 hunter. She was a great character to learn the game with because hunters are very good at fighting alone. I’d sat at least 90% of all the experience she gained was solo. Hunters are a powerful class. Along with her pet, Drajha could kill things several levels above her, even in the 40s. Having already played a hunter in to the 40s, I didn’t want to spend all my time doing the same thing. Plus, hunters can get a tad boring. For the most part, you just send your pet in to attack, and stand back firing arrows at it. The creature, not your pet. At least, that’s the way I played.

The Mage class is fun. They get all kinds of nifty spells, and a lot of big nukes. Ernst, my level 34 gnome mage, was a blast to play, and even more fun to roleplay. Downsides, though, are mages’ downtimes – having to wait for their mana and health to regen. This isn’t usually a problem in groups because you can ration yourself, but remember that I’m a big soloer. One other downside is that mages don’t get to go shopping for sweet weapons. I like shopping for daggers and swords. Mmhmm.

That leaves me with the rogue class. I’ve already played a rogue to level 27, and another to level 16. With Drev, my level 27 rogue, I think I went mostly with Subtlety talents, and some Assassination. He was fun, due to various circumstances, I stopped playing him. Rogues in WoW are a LOT more fun to play than rogues in Everquest. In EQ, a rogue wasn’t much more than a backstabbing machine. Which is fine and good, but it made the class fairly flat. Rogues in WoW get a lot more useful skills, while still being a damage-dealing powerhouse. Downsides… rogues can only ever wear leather armor, and soloing gets more difficult as you gain levels.

So after carefully weighing the pros and cons of each of these three classes, I decided to go with the rogue. Sneaking around and picking pockets is fun, and they can do some serious damage. Plus, of the three classes in the running, it’s the one I’ve played the least.

I’ve started my new rogue, Clancey on the Sisters of Elune server, and I’m up to level 8 already. Right now it’s kind of a struggle to get him higher level, because quite frankly, level 1-15 or so are a drag. After 15, the class begins to grow stronger and you start to get some worthwhile skills. I’m going to force myself to stick with this character, to show myself that I can.

Because I know I can.

First planet with water is spotted outside Solar System

This is huge: Astronomers on Wednesday announced they had spotted the first planet beyond the Solar System that has water, the precious ingredient for life. The watery world, though, is far beyond the reach of our puny chemically-powered rockets — and in any case is quite uninhabitable.

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