I saw this meme on tumblr, and since I don't have a tumblr (I subscribe via RSS) I'm doing it here. I hope it spreads in the WoW blogging community. The meme is as foloows
Pick up the nearest book to you. Turn to page 45. The first sentence describes your sex life in 2012.
Alright then. Let's do this. The closest book to me wasStarcraft: Ghost - Spectresby Nate Kenyon. The first sentence (that begins) on page 45 is
Its alien rage ate away at her brain, a nearly mindless urge to destroy.
We'll have to see how 2012 plays out, but I'm definitely excited. What about you? If you do this, try and leave a comment below and tweet about it. If you're an adamant tumblrer, here's a link to where I saw it.
In game
Ummm...I don't know if I have one. I don't think I have a place that is the one place that I just like to go hang out. If I had to pick a place that I particularly liked, it would be the Twilight Grove in Duskwood. I leveled through that zone a couple times before I ever actually explored it and was amazed at what I found when I went there. I definitely have some favorite zones.
For classic WoW, I definitely loved Ashenvale the most, even if I was initially afraid of it. The music and the locations are just my favorite. There are some fallen trees that you could get on that went over the road that I loved to climb on. I still haven't actually leveled there since Cataclysm came out (I'm way behind on things) and am eager to check it out, even if it will make me sad. Duskwood. For Outland, I love Nagrand with its scenic beauty the most. In Northrend, the Grizzly Hills were my favorite. I love the Furbolg. The music for the Grizzly Hills was what really got me excited for the zone before Wrath even came out. In the Cataclysm content, I'd have to say that I like Vash'jir the most. The zone has great history, views, and it's just so big and mysterious.
Out of game
My parent's house has this one room that I absolutely love. If you never looked in it you'd probably just think it was a closet. It's a narrow room, probably 5 ft wide by 7 ft long. It has a narrow entrance at one end and at the other end the room narrows into a little alcove that has window. On one wall there is an old desk with a couple shelves above it and a light attached to the bottom of the bottom shelf to light the desk. This cozy little room has always appealed to me, and I spent a good amount of time studying in there.
In the future, I'd like to live somewhere that had one room that was no more that 10 ft by 10 ft, with windows covering half the room and bookshelves covering the other half. There'd be a window seat in front of the windows with pillows on it, and possibly a small, simple desk somewhere. It would be my favorite room.
When I have a house someday, I want it to have a bunch of small, intimate, specifically designed rooms instead of a handful of large, general purpose rooms. It's probably because I'm such an introvert.
I have this desktop because I abso-fucking-lutely love Shadow of the Colossus. There tons of really great SotC wallpapers out there that can be found just be doing a search for "shadow of the colossus wallpaper". That particular wallpaper is the first result if you search for that.
I keep strange things on my desktop. There's WoW, Starcraft II, and Dustforce (it's the one with the broken image). Then there's Google Refine, Mumble, Picasa. In my pinned items there's TeXnicCenter, Eclipse, and R. The folder in the top left holds reference documents for TeX and R.
I guess that's it. Bye! Come back real soon, ya'll!
I use that picture often, but it's only because I love it so much. The video below is actually relevant today.
Rude People
In Zul'Aman on Sunday, we had a hunter in the group who was a 'go guy'. It seems now that he was urging us to get a speed run for the bears completed, but there was no way that was going to happen, especially since it's the first time that I've run the dungeon since...probably May or so. "Puuuuuuuuulllllll", "GOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGO", and other such things were all that he said. I once noticed that he had abandoned our current target to run forward just to wait at the next boss.
Why would you do this? Why would you be like this? We hadn't discussed going for a bear run, and we certainly weren't close to being able to do it. When we wiped on the third boss, he insulted the Death Knight in the group's gear and rage quit. This Death Knight actually had excellent gear. Maybe he was doing poor DPS, but I wouldn't know. As is customary, I called him an asshole after he had left the group.
People who just aren't even trying
I was in a Grim Batol NORMAL on my priest a while back and the group wiped several times on the first boss because they were just plain ignoring the fight mechanics. They would let the special trogg die right next to Umbriss, making him enrage and then the group would wipe. We wiped three or more times to this. I was very nearly ready to quit the group.
Offensive People
It should go without saying that I have no tolerance for those who use racist, sexist, homophobic, or other such offensive language. I will not pay fifteen dollars a month to put up with you and will call you out on it and attempt to have you kicked from the group, and failing such, will voluntarily leave that group.
I also don't care for vulgarity. I don't know you. You don't know me. Why would you say these things? Manners, people.
Trade Chat
One of the first things I tend to do is type '/leave Trade' so that I don't have to put up with that. It not only has to do with the stupid and awful stuff people will say there, but also because I just don't like to have all that text filling up my boxes. I'll selectively join Trade if I have a particular need to use it.
Players that I admire. That's a tough question. There are definitely players that I recognize as being exceptional, whose skills I respect. But do I admire any of them? There are people that I admire who play World of Warcraft, but it's not necessarily because of how well they play.
I admire other bloggers for being able to do the types of things that I never would want to do such as leveling, loot, and boss guides. I admire theorycrafters for slogging through the mathematics of this game to help us find our optimal gearings and rotations. I admire the strategists who are the first to clear content for figuring out and disseminating the information about how to best tackle an encounter.
I admire several of the people that I follow on twitter for standing up for what they believe in and calling out the assholes who would dare challenge them or keep them down. I'm non-confrontational to a fault.
I admire my dad for his unwavering commitment to the jobs he's had. He's 71 and is only retiring this year. I admire my mom because her biggest flaw is caring too much. I admire my brother because he has never stopped trying to find that thing, that profession that will make him happy, even though he's had a difficult time of it.
I guess I lied when I said there aren't people that I admire for how well they play. For many years now, Sarah has been healing me and she's always done a fantastic job of both healing and working with fight mechanics. I've never once been dissatisfied with her performance as a healer. Just yesterday (Sunday) in Zul'Aman, when I let one of Jan'alai's bombs get me, she saved the attempt with a clutch Lay on Hands. When I've been healed by other healers in the past, I often find myself wishing it were her.
Lastly, I admire you all, dear readers. You're all attractive, funny and intelligent. RAWR.
For me a weekday starts at 6:35 AM, which is when my alarm goes off. I'll lay in bed and read twitter so that I can wake up my brain without getting out of bed. The amount of time spent doing so is highly variable, and depends on how much everyone that I follow's insomnia was acting up. I'm generally out of bed somewhere between 6:50 and 7:00 AM. The first thing I do is shower. After showering, I brush my teeth and shave before I return to the bedroom to get dressed. Once I'm dressed and have everything I need, I'm out the door to work somewhere around 7:30.
Work is nearby so I'm generally there, upstairs, and at my desk in 10 minutes. First, I check my work email and begin another day. My work consists of pulling reports for people out of our databases as well as fulfilling certain daily, weekly, and monthly tasks. I spend a good amount of time waiting for SQL queries to run, which affords me time to do things such as check the internet and twitter. I have a one hour lunch that I usually take at 11:00 and I leave work between 4:00 and 4:30, depending on when I arrived and if I really want to finish something before I leave that day.
Fred and George
When I get home I greet my cats and then I get to fully check my internet. There are many things that get blocked by our work filter that I can't check while I'm there. On some days, Sarah works until 8:00 so I'll spend that time writing blog posts and whatnot so I can spend time with her once she gets home. Throw in chores and dinner and TV watching and that's usually all I have time for in a day. I usually go to bed between 10:30 and 11:00.
I don't usually find time to play WoW on weekdays, but I'm finding more time to do so. In my free time I'll also do some statistics work for my upcoming blog posts. If I'm really in the mood, then I'll do some Java coding on various projects that I'm working on. I do spend most of my time relaxing.
Over the weekend, I try to get ahead of my blogging for the week, writing posts to be scheduled during the week. I'll also try to catch up on my WoW playing and my playing of other video games. Sometimes there will be other things on the internet that I'd previously failed to read, so I'll read those too. The weekend is mostly for relaxing. I finally get to sleep in, and that's wonderful.
When I was younger, my worst flaw was shyness. I was always afraid to talk to new people, make friends, go somewhere where I didn't know anybody, etc. However, when I was young, I changed schools fairly often. I went to 2 different elementary schools, 2 different middle schools, and 1 high school. I was also sent to all manner of summer camps. So making new friends was something I had to do quite often. This wore away some of this shyness.
My sophomore year of college, I was forced to confront another fear, public speaking. I took a class called Introduction to Advanced Mathematics. This class wasn't taught in a lecture format, but rather in a slightly watered down Moore method. In Moore method teaching, the instructor lays out proofs that the students are to prove, and class time is spent with the students at the chalkboard presenting their proofs. My following math courses were all taught in this method. It was initially daunting, but I grew to absolutely love it. In fact, one of my chief complaints about grad school is that NONE of the classes were taught this way and I sorely missed it. Being lectured just isn't a good environment for me to learn.
Lastly, as a graduate student, I was require to teach two lower-level mathematics courses each semester. This wore off the rest of that public speaking fear to something that I can fully confront.
As I grew older and my shyness wore away, another flaw began to rear its ugly head, sloth. My lack of alacrity has posed many problems for me in my life. It's the reason, that I do poorly in language and history classes, despite the fact that I love language and history. It's the reason that I didn't go to as good of a graduate school as I could have. It's part of the reason that it took so long for me to get a full-time job. It's the reason that I'm so messy. It might be part of the reason that I keep this blog, I can both avoid work while convincing myself that I'm being productive.
Being in a relationship has helped to improve my sloth, since I have someone to be accountable to, but it's still pretty bad.
I'm afraid to go talk to this person that I need to talk to; I'll do it later.
Edit: WHAT THE ASS? I'll just have to upload this to YouTube instead of my G+. Will be fixed at some point. Ass.
This is my cat, Fred. This is what he does when I try to play the piano. He is a butt. Also, Google Video? This came in from my Google Plus account and whatttttttt? There is some outdated code out there.
I'll admit, I'm only starting to get into the extended WoW blogging community. For years I've read WoWInsider and I have followed it from its journey from wowinsider.com to wow.com to wow.joystiq.com. But I'm starting to gather a collection of WoW blogs and blogs of WoW'ers:
The Guardian Tank: Eldoric over here is a fantastic guy who loves to tank. He runs a podcast out of there that I've actually been on twice.
The Border House: The Border House is a place for those who belong to marginalized groups and their allies. They have truly excellent articles that you won't find anywhere else.
A Sunnier Bear: I love bears. Bears Bears Bears Bears Bears.
And more: like I said, I'm just getting into the WoW blogging community, so if you don't see something here, it's either that I haven't gotten around to it, or I'm horrible at remembering things.
I also love twitter. I follow lots of people on twitter, all of whom I think are awesome. Some of those people have started blogging recently (or will), here are the spaces that I'm watching out for:
Very Lemonade: From Kickflip Feminism on twitter. This blog currently has no entries, but if her twitter is any indication, I expect to enjoy what I will be reading here.
When it comes to non-gaming/non-WoW blogging, there are several things that I love to read. You should check these out as well:
Day eight of the 20 days of WoW Blogging challenge requires that it's participants reveal ten things that you don't know about me. So here we go.
In college I scored a 27 out of 100 on the Putnam mathematics exam. This actually a very good score. In a similar vein, myself and a teammate (Thomas Przybylinski, great name) won a statewide math competition despite the fact that all the other teams had four people. Enough bragging....
I just need to code a UI and I'll have a working desktop version of Thrill Digger.
I used to just lay my toys out and look at them. I'm told this is 'sad'.
Tremors and The Brave Little Toaster are counted among my favorite movies.
I once used a walkie talkie to listen in on a cordless phone conversation. What I heard was my mom talking about how her sons weren't into sports.
On my elementary school bus, I was called 'booger boy' by a couple girls older than me.
When I worked at a movie theater, I once slapped the manager (male) on the butt. A year later, a coworker (female) pinched my butt several times when I was leaning over the counter to look at the candy display. Also, when the assistant manager commented on how I had made friends with another coworker so quickly, the manager commented that I was "Doing her in the butt." This was not true. #lolbuttslol
I took judo one semester in college. It was really fun.
I once told a girl at a summer camp that I didn't have a crush on her because I was too anxious about what would happen if I told her I did like her.
My freshman year of high school, my parents (read "mom") called the school and asked if the principal would talk to me about why I never have friends over to the house to visit or wanted to go visit friends at their homes. One day, I was called out of math class to the office. I was really confused about what was going on, since I never got into trouble. I went into the principal's office and was greeted by the principal, an aged Monsignor by the name of Father George Tribou. We talked for a while and he asked me about why I never had friends over. I told him that I just never really felt like it and that I was perfectly happy just being at home, doing my home things. I explained that i did have friends at school, but I just kept them there, so to speak. He understood completely and told me that there were tons of other boys just like me and that I wasn't weird at all because of it, that I was perfectly normal. He relayed this information to my parents and we never really talked about. He died later that school year because of complications from a stroke. I've always cherished that talk we had.
Bonus item: Sarah and I have considered dancing to this song at our wedding.
The seventh day of the 20 days of WoW blogging challenge wants to know, "How did your blog get it's name?" Well, a long time ago, Sarah wanted a pet name. After much thought, I gave her the name of my favorite number, φ. φ, pronounced 'phi', is also called the golden ratio, the ratio of width to length that allegedly produces the most appealing rectangle. It's a Greek letter that produces the 'f' sound. Mathematically,
Some of the unique properties of φ is that
and
φ is a lovely number that shows up in many places, such as pentagons and the Fibonacci sequence, and it frequently appears in the natural world, too. For these reasons and more φ is my favorite number, so I made it my pet name for her.
Later, she wanted a pet name for me. She asked me if there were any other good Greek letters to use for my name. After some thought, I came up with τ, pronounced 'tau'. τ is another letter that is used for the golden ratio, although less frequently.
The first characters we leveled together, the paladin and the shaman, were named 'Phi' and 'Tau', respectively. When we transferred servers, those names weren't available so we changed then, and 'Tau' became 'Tauf'. My guildies started to call me 'Taufmonster' and so the name became my twitter handle and, eventually, the first part of the name of this blog.
The other part, 'log', came from "captain's log." I chose this because it identified the blog with myself, and I felt it scanned well. So that's how my blog got it's name. The subtitle, "More than you care to know.", comes from the obvious fact that I will often blog about stuff that seemingly nobody would ever possibly care about.
The images for this post were created by using the Online LaTeX Equation Editor, a fantastic tool for making images of equations.
My desk is almost permanently messy. I considered cleaning it up before taking the pictures for this post, but I felt that would be disingenuous. I do periodically set out to clean the thing, but that is rare. I think I'm going to do so after I finish writing this post.
My desk is in our 'guest bedroom'. It is called that because to the left of my desk there is a bed that nobody has ever slept on. I also have a comfy black office chair. In the corner (not pictured) are several board games. Also in the room, the cats' litter box, which often provides wonderful odors. Since my office (guest bedroom) is somewhat out of the way, I don't spend as much time in here as I might otherwise.
This is the main portion of my desk. On it you will see several items including
my monitor stacked upon some statistics books,
a coin jar,
an empty glass with an empty bag of baked Lays in it,
my wallet,
a pair of tweezers,
trash,
lots of stray papers,
a hand towel,
scissors,
plush microbes,
and Legos.
On this, the other portion of my desk you will find
more math books,
two ceramic things with assorted items in them,
bongos for DK Jungle Beat (best game ever!),
more math books,
LotR Pez dispensers,
more paper,
a cat bed with the tag still on it,
a lava lamp,
a clock radio,
Proto Man
a printer that isn't configured with a Star Wars poster that needs to be hung on top of it
and more trash.
This is gross, I need to fix this. The really sad thing is that it was much worse a couple days ago.
Note: I didn't actually end up cleaning this mess after I wrote this post. Shame.
I don't actually remember what caused me to start a blog. I had a livejournal back in late high school and in college, although I kinda want to forget about it. I hardly used it, and the stuff there wasn't substantive. I also didn't participate in any of the communities, so that's probably why I didn't use it very much. I started using twitter back when Sarah and I lived in our apartment and I started to blog at some point during that time as well.
Part of the reason that I started the blog is that I have this problem. I call it 'getting stuck inside my head'. Other people might call it 'normal'. If you've read a fair number of my entries (for any value of 'fair' > 1), they cover a wide range of topics. An idea will stick in my head and it is almost impossible to get out. I have an analytically-oriented mind that obsessively tears things apart and collates the information. I factor the numbers on mile marker signs when driving!
So I started this blog as a type of thought dump. I needed somewhere to expel these things that my mind get's far too obsessed with. Over two hundred posts later I'd say that I may have succeeded in that capacity. For my World of Warcraft posts, I think I tend to cover things that just aren't typically addressed in what I normally see going around. But we'll probably get to that later.
I suppose the final reason that I started to blog was because I've never really been a writer. I always preferred analytical courses in school as opposed to reading and writing oriented courses. I figured that blogging would help me develop better writing skill. I didn't want to just work on my grammar, I wanted to work on my ability to convey ideas with the written word.
Blogging wasn't ever really about getting famous, although I definitely welcome any and all readers. I've heard several times that if you start a blog strictly to get followers and be popular, you'll probably not succeed at it. You have to have an internal motivation to keep you going. All the bloggers I follow really seem to have that. I like to think that I do.
This October I'm starting a yearly blogging initiative NatOctoBlogMo, for National October Blogging Month. The name is a variant on NaNoWriMo (National November Writing Month), and the idea is similar. The goal of NatOctoBlogMo is to promote small blogs and get more people to write them. The requirements of NatOctoBlogMo are simple.
Participants should post at least 1 blog post per day.
Participants should post a constructive, conversation-contributing comment on at least 1 blog post per day.
The first requirement is all about setting a goal for yourself and meeting it. The second requirement is about encouraging and participating in the blogging community. Receiving comments on your blog is one of the greatest motivations to write more. The goal isn't to get people to just write for a month and then fall off the map. The goal of NatOctoBlogMo is to start them on something they can enjoy for a long time. It's for them to make new friends and build the blogging community. Commenting on other people's blogs will do exactly that.
Do you have a blog that you haven't updated in ages? Do you have a great blog idea that you always wanted to get started? Get started again. What constitutes a blog post doesn't have any requirement. If you like to draw, you can post a drawing a day. If you like to write fiction, work on short stories. If you write music, post a small clip each day. You can do whatever you want.
If you don't already have a blog there are tons of places where you could make one:
If you have a twitter, then use the #NatOctoBlogMo hashtag whenever you make a post and use it to keep track of what other people are doing. Let's make this a great Blogtober!
I'll be blogging about gaming, math, my life, and amateur game design.
