Rambling galore

 After hanging out at the Like house again I was reminded of something: I already have a job opportunity and have for years.  *Edited* allows me to be an independent business owner without most of the hassles of being an independent business owner.  It's a legit way to make some cash and eventually a living.  Edit has a whole load of products to sell, I just take it upon myself to find people to buy those products and voila, I get money for it.  The products are good quality, I've seen a number of them in action and will see more if I can get myself running and they're pretty much just your basic necessities in life.  It's mostly health/beauty stuff (vitamins and shampoo!) but there are all sorts of partner stores to shop at through Edit, like Sears, Dell, Barnes and Noble, etc.

If anyone has any interest in helping me out with this, or taking part in Edit itself and being a business owner, let me know and I can explain how it's all legit and how to get started.  E-mail me at Sireaglestrike at gmail.  I'd explain it all on here, but I have trolls on here as well as I do want people to sign up under me if they get into this, hehe.

Edit: I think some random person found this post and told me online advertising is "against the rules", little does he know at most like 3 people read my livejournal...

 Really, who would've thought a "battle mahjong" anime would've been so interesting?  There's such a strong cast of characters in the anime, probably why I liked it so much.  Of the 5 girls on the team, the two "main" girls are probably the weakest personalities, but then they still get the ultra badass come-from-behind moves so they're still fun to watch.  And the main girl (Saki) has the quiet wins, unlike other battle manga/anime where the main character thinks everything through, she just does it all through ninja mahjong magic skill, sitting there with a little grin as opposed to panicking over everything before pulling out the win like other stories do it.

But man what a great cast for the main team.  You have tacos who orders the token male around, is very excitable, obsessed with tacos (hence the nickname) and can kick some ass in mahjong in streaks.  The 2nd girl is the weakest link arguably, but even still she's an interesting character as she's the team captains sidekick.  The captain is 3rd and she's just all sorts of win.  She has the "mentor that plans everything perfectly to get the best results" to her as well as secretly being extremely skilled on her own in a game and also orders the token male around like a dog, has massive connections and gets things done in an enjoyable manner.  And then you have the final two girls, the "main" girls who play like opposites, Nodoka being the by-the-book logical player and Saki being more the "flow/feeling" player, both exceptional at the game in their own way.

And then the other teams got a lot of love when it comes to backround information.  Every team had 2-3 members that got some good backround stories told and what they've been through to get to where they are and their life situations.  And since the other teams are 15 people you can pretty much fill it out with your anime stereotypes, the loli child girl, the rich snob, the cat girl, etc.  The best part about the other teams is that it really through me off about how the story was going to go.  They told so much backstory and had so much "I must win!" going on I wasn't sure who was going to win and be brought back for the next arc, it seemed like there was so much build up for the characters they just HAD to have more than that first arc, so something would happen to keep some around for the next arc.  Unfortunately I won't know if they'll be around for the next arc much and it'll be forever until I find out, but it was a great way to keep me wondering as opposed to figuring out how the story was going to go halfway through and just watching it play out.

Laid down to try and take a short nap and opened my eyes to see my brother stealing change from my jar of change.  I went up and took a stack of the coins he had back from him.  He claims he only took a dollar from me, but I took about 2.5.  Now I kinda feel bad though.  Most likely my brother was only taking money to go buy some cigarettes, nothing for me to feel bad about there really, he shouldn't be smoking.  But it's also possible he was going for some food, there isn't much in the house that he can make since despite taking culinary classes he can't actually cook anything.  And that's when I start to feel bad, because I really consider my brother useless and I just feel bad for doing so.  I've lived the majority of my life (since high school at least) under the expectation that at some point in my life when my parents no longer could I'd be taking care of my brother since he wouldn't be capable of taking care of himself.  Now I'm currently setup horribly for this, but that's another issue entirely.  My parents seem to believe he's plenty capable of working a job and taking care of himself, but I honestly don't believe he is.  I think he's far too emotionally immature to handle anything but the most forgiving of supervisors and I don't think he's medically disabled enough to find a job with such a supervisor easily.  So with that part of me wants to help "pamper" him, I mean we live a fairly cheap life, we both do nothing but play WoW and surf the internet, but apparently his money is so bad he has to steal money from me and I just went and stopped him from being able to spend just a little money to get to do more with his life.  I understand and get that I don't deserve to do anything special with my current life situation and I'm able to accept that, but I'm not sure he's intelligent enough to get that.  My brother has had a pretty shitty life as far as I'm concerned, I guess I kinda hope he's as stupid as I believe him to be just because that means he's not like me and able to remember all the bad things in life and dwell on them at times.  And while this line of thought seems to make me want to return the money to him...I'm not going to do that...just going to feel bad about it.

I get far too emotional about my family, I'm not sure if that's simply normal or something about my relationship with my family, though.

So I got into the Aion open beta and I'm enjoying it so far overall.  But currently I'm a level 10 Assassin and the only thing I get to do is grind solo quests for 6-9~ more levels, then group quest for another 6-9~ levels and THEN I might be able to get into the "bulk" of the game.  I'm not usually that big on grinding quests and I do so in WoW mostly just because I know all the quests and can take them all out quickly and easily as well as every level I get gets me a new talent point to spend and every other level gets new abilities.  In Aion I don't think I get any new skills for 3 more levels and "talents" don't even come into the picture for another 10 levels.  So it feels even more like just grinding.  It'd be better if there was more of a storyline, and there is no doubt, but a lot of the quests are simple grind ones, kill 5 Slinks here, gather 6 crystals there, etc.  So it's hard for me to stay on and grind grind grind for long hours, but I also feel like I need to to get to the end of beta and experience more of the game.

 It has potential to be enjoyable for me, but I won't know until I get a glimpse of what end-game might be like.  Assassin is fun, I'm enjoying it, it's getting a lot better as I get more skills and figure out a good rotation for them and I only see it getting better.  The flight is fun and I can't wait to improve it and get into some aerial combat.

But I'm also unsure if it'll be long lasting.  PvP is supposed to be the majority of end-game and I'm not sure that works for me.  Sometimes I want to sign on and do something easy, which is what WoW is best at, you just need to roll a hunter.  If I were to actually do something with my life, my desire for activities that require less effort would increase, so I guess we'll see how things go with how Aion PvP works and such.  And it'll also depend on how the community is in the game.  Currently since it's open beta everyone is playing the game, including all sorts of retards.  But there's the chance that launch will get rid of most retards and leave a more "hardcore" community that then works with the "PvP" aspect to create a community of mostly good, smart players.  Since that's usually how people consider things work, that a game that is easy brings in more stupid players as well as PvP weeding out carebears/baddies, the combination could make Aion have an enjoyable community, it'll take a few months to see if that's the case, though, imo.

And then there's the playtime.  I have all the playtime in the world and I'm not sure constant PvP is something I can do at all times, I like to jump between various things.  In WoW I'll PvP on my priest, then run an instance on my mage, then kill some mobs on my rogue, raid on my pally, etc.  Lots of variety and changing things up to keep things interesting.  Aion sounds like it's almost all PvP once you reach 25+ and while PvP is almost always dynamic, it can still get boring.  So Aion is a big "we'll see" for me.  It doesn't help that the only people I really know interested in the game is my friends FFXI LS, who I only kinda got along with and I may not even be able to get in with.  My WoW friends don't seem too interested in the game so I'd have to either jump in with random BG players or find them on my own.

I'm now back under 200lbs.

Jury Duty today, at least supposed to be, still have to call again in an hour to see if I'm REALLY coming.  I'm interested in doing my civil service, though I'm certain I'll be cynical and hate it after feeling like I did nothing all day, heh. 

 So I've come to realize I had a pretty retarded amount of leg strength back in high school.  I kinda knew that but now that I'm getting into shape without that bonus I'm feeling the pains that most other people deal with in regards to getting in shape.  It's fun and all, but I wish I had my leg strength still, lol.  If I could have put some good mileage in and actually ate correctly I could've been a strong runner back in high school.  Sadly I was doing half of that going into senior year...

Running is going better, doing it in the evenings when it's cool.  I can't finish the entire distance in one go during the day, but I'm fine at night.  Back is no longer an issue, doing crunches/back exercises 1-2 times a day and with some new shows having no issue there.  Point for my army friend who told me to get new shoes to fix my back issue.

I'm down to 210, but not going to get much lower until I can refix my eating again.  I've been drinking so much (water) and not eating much else I'm losing taste for water, which sucks because I don't have anything else to drink aside from milk/soda but neither is a good thirst quencher.  But oh well, taste will come back in a bit, just need to stick to only eating two smaller meals and keep my willpower up.

I'm still really bored.  Going through a bunch of old games I used to play way way back in the day.  None keep my focus for long, I've been getting into the show Bones and I watch an episode or two, play a game for 10-30min and back to Bones.  I check the classifieds every few days but not seeing anything decent.  I've sent out a few messages on a dating site but I'm pretty sure I have a bad approach/profile, since I'm bad at selling myself, so haven't gotten any promising responses.  I'm pretty sure "I'm doing nothing with my life" isn't very appealing too, heh.

Julie got married.  I wasn't invited.  I don't even know what I did there, heh.  

Made it the full distance around the neighborhood in one run.  By my estimation it took about 7:30 to run this distance, which should be just about a mile.  Considering my pace at the end my "normal" pace seems to be at 7min pace, which is nice and exactly what I was hoping for.  Just need to get used to distance and not speed + distance as I progress.  Going to see if I can do the whole distance tomorrow too, though I doubt it.  If I can't I'll take two days off then just see how many days in a row I can do the full loop in a row.  Depending on how that goes I'll either go and figure out a 1.5mil loop in Clover Hill, or just do 1.5ish loops of my neighborhood (boring but easy to figure out).  Somewhat soon I may need to look into getting a watch to time my runs.

Dieting is going well, it's a lot easier to not eat "dinner" than I thought it'd be.  I'm betting my next weigh-in will let me hit 215 if I can keep things going, may even go below it.  It's really humid out these days, my 7am run felt like it was too "late" and I just may need to keep my current schedule and run at 5-6am each day.

I had breakfast with my old friend Ben on Thursday.  My hope/plan was to get some good advice from someone in business (Ben is currently self-employed in mortgage brokering) about what to do about my life.  I need to find some type of occupation and I still can't figure out what I want to do on my own.  So I was hoping he'd be able to help me out in finding if I should be going back to school for a 2/4 year degree or what type of place I could apply to that'd give me acceptable room for advancement without a degree.  He gave me a couple ideas that I'll need to look into, but most of the time was spent with him telling me to go to Church and that'll solve all my issues.  But I really don't think if I went to Church and then told a girl "I have no income, but I go to Church every week, want to get married?" that she'd be too excited about the idea.  I'm pretty sure having a source of income is going to do me a lot better, so I wish that could've been the focus of his advice.  I also have a much more casual and laid back belief system than he does, so I don't think I could even meet a girl I'd agree with at his Church, which he was trying to push me to go to.  I still might go this morning, but I'm not sure how likely that is.  I have to decide in the next 3 hours whether I'm going this week.  If I went, it'd mostly be to see Kim, but I'm not sure how well that'd go out.  She's a housewife now so I'm not sure how much she'd have about getting a job and there's a chance she just reiterates what Ben told me about Church.

Ben did say he had a buddy in Cantonsville (I think?  It's just a bit before getting to Baltimore) that probably has an opening for me.  But that's a 45min~ commute one way everyday and I'm already going to be going through a big loss of "me" time going from unemployed to full-time employee, I'm not sure another 1.5 hours lost each day will be that good.  It's something to consider though.  My issue now is one that I often face.  Every year or so (lol >.>) when I hit this phase of wanting to actually work I hit the "scared" phase of things which slows down my advancement towards getting a job.  Especially when I don't see any jobs that jump out and make me think "Yeah, I'd like to do that" on any of the websites/classifieds that I look for jobs in.  Hopefully my lack of interest in any gaming and my extra energy from being in "shape" now will keep me going until I can find at least a decent job for putting on my resume.  Part of me wants to just make a big jump.  Move out to a new place for a job, force me to move on with my life.  That's a bit of a risk, and scares me because I don't like change much, but it also might be exactly what I need.  Unfortunately the only person who might be willing to let me move in with him is Chris, who is newly married, heh.  He also didn't offer me any position or sound like there was one where he works, which is some non-profit place that pays him jack for doing about 3 different jobs at once, so I doubt that'd work out.  Maybe I should try to talk up my cousin, I believe one is a lawyer, maybe I can work on his law office, though I don't think that would actually have any room for advancement unless I was working on becoming a lawyer.

Oh well, as long as I'm getting into shape I've still made progress and going to be better off, so as long as that holds true the rest will eventually come. 

 Anyone with decent running knowledge able to help me explain my current situation?  I went for a run today, 2nd one in about 2.5 weeks since my back injury.  My back hurt a little bit and it made my form a bit odd, but wasn't in constant pain like my last run.  Anyway, I ran great.  My neighborhood makes a macaroni shape off a bigger road and my route goes across the macaroni and then down the main road and my house is about 200m back down the macaroni.  Previously my longest run at one point got me just before the intersection with the main road, today I made it to the main road and 200-300m further, a pretty nice jump considering I haven't been running much at all.  I wanted to keep running actually, but my legs were losing power but I didn't feel lactic acid in them much.  Previously my legs would get really heavy and be in pain because of lactic acid and I'd slow to a walk for a little to recover that and continue.  But my legs felt fine, they just didn't have power.  They felt light the whole way but I couldn't really push myself on them.  Anyone know what this issue is?  I'm guessing the lack of lactic acid is from a combination of my legs being very rested because of my lack of running and the introduction of vitamins and minerals to my diet (via a multivitamin) but I can't really explain the lack of leg strength now.  It would make some sense for my legs to still be lacking in strength and this is just a completely new thing to me because the best part of me as a runner was my exceptional leg strength which I no longer have, but since it's a new feeling I would like a second opinion.

Of course, I don't really expect an answer, as the only two people I think read this don't really know me that well as I never talk to them, and while one of them does run, I'm not sure they really know much about running theory and training.  If it happens in another couple runs I'll probably post about it on BG, there seems to be a decent running group on there but haven't checked into it much as I'd rather get back into running than simply live in my past of being capable of running.

On an earlier note, I think a ton of crunches may help my back issue.  Need to try doing them two or three times a day to give it a big boost, as that's my weakest looking part and has never been a strength of mine.  Even when I ran my teenage ass silly on a daily basis I never managed a 6-pack, lol.  This includes my early freshman year effort to break the gym class record for crunches in a minute and trained a ton.  I broke the record (set by Amy Franciscovich iirc, who probably was part of the reason I felt the need to beat the record, hehe) but still only could see my abs if I constricted them.  Hopefully with effort put into my diet I may be able to achieve this feat, but it's still a ways off.

 Only 5lbs down since last update, but that's not too bad considering the situation.  Two weeks ago my father needed a boat washed and waxed and while I was doing that I was lazy and decided to be jumping in and out of the boat instead of using the proper ladders.  This hurt my lower back, which has been fairly sore ever since.  It's very slowly improving, at least I assume so, it got a lot better after 2-3 days and I can't REALLY tell but assume it's been getting a little better each day since.  It's kept me from doing much exercise, I have run once, last Tuesday but each stride gave me a sharp pain in my back.  I'm going to run with the assumption that's not a pain you should just "push through".  However the run itself was pretty good, it was short, but I almost ran the entire loop at a solid pace.  I'm going to try running again in another day or two to see if it hurts less and try to get to running twice a week even if it hurts my back a little.  Being able to at least maintain my current fitness is necessary since my progress is so slow while it's going.  And my running will naturally improve a bit as I lose weight, my legs won't have to try so hard with less fat on my body.  I'm happy I've still lost weight though, it's showing that I'm getting my eating in line with what my body actually needs, instead of eating out of habit/boredom like I used to.

I'm going through a bit of a lonely spell, I'm bored with WoW, quit FFXI again and don't really have any games to play.  I play Starcraft with some old WoW buddies at times but that's about it.  There's only so much time I can sit and enjoy watching anime in a day.  I've made some attempts at finding some people to hang out with around the area but none have responded so far.  I cannot blame them, I do an excellent job making myself not look attractive, but that's just how I am.  I'm not going to sell myself as some amazing guy, because really all I am is wasted potential until I find a goal.  I can't even think of a degree to get with an offer of my father paying for the classes to finish out some degree.  Of the two or three people that might still read my LJ, someone get a job opening and offer it to me, lol.

It's probably a bad choice of mine to have gotten into Clannad again, as it put me into this phase pretty solidly.  It's a romance anime about a guy who is considered a "delinquet" because he doesn't really care about school.  Originally he was a great basketball player but a fight with his father messed up his shoulder making him unable to play, so he's fairly bitter towards his father and school in general because he doesn't know what to do with his life.  However he's still a nice enough guy and helps out a number of girls in their endeavors (one with re-establishing the theater club, one getting elected student council president, etc.) and he reminds me of myself quite a bit.  Granted I was never as unselfish as he is in my interactions with girls/others in high school, I'd like to think I was mostly a help during those times.  So I see it as a bit of a fantasy story about myself.  He's also really bad at making the first move and historically I have been too.

If only I could find someone in the area who was at least somewhat interesting to talk with and made me more active in a day.  I sent a girl I had done this with a year ago an e-mail (after a year of randomly stopping our communication) to try and see if she'd be up for doing that some more, but I'm assuming from her lack of response after a week that she's moved on, hah.  Sucks too, cause the afternoon we spent together we paced all around downtown Frederick for a couple hours and had been talking about bike-riding together.  Such things seem too boring to do alone, but with a "two birds with one stone" aspect to it I'd be game for doing it.  Oh well.

 Down to 225lbs as of a couple days ago.  Not bad for being 243 a couple months back.  Running is going better.  Making it around the neighborhood with only one walk phase.  I keep the walks at a decent pace, so that it keeps my heart pumping and everything.  A few more weeks and I may be able to run the entire neighborhood in one go.  Then I get to choose between going into Clover Hill for a much longer loop or going around my neighborhood twice.  I like the Clover Hill scenery better, so I may choose that.  That'll be a big jump.

I really need to work on my eating.  You're supposed to "eat healthy and exercise" to lose weight, but I've been closer to "exercise and only eat a little bit".  Eating healthy involves going over to my fathers more, as he cooks real meals (real big ones...but real meals with vegetables and rice and good stuff) as well as going to the store for my own food.  Example of my eating atm: Dinner tonight was burnt waffle fries...yep.  It also doesn't help that my mother is back off her healthy fix so there aren't weight watchers and low calorie snacks around as often for me to use as breakfast and dessert, but oh well.

I missed Chris' wedding.  I feel bad about it, a bit.  But I think it's just going to be something I regret later in life.  I tried to contact him about details in a variety of fashions and he couldn't be bothered to respond (or he's already got joint accounts to everything and retired all my ways to contact him, lol) and so I realized what the wedding was going to be.  Me driving 9 hours, sleeping in a hotel, to go to a wedding and reception, wishing Chris well and being happy for him while spending most of my time talking to people I've never met or old friends that are "more successful" than me about my life of "doing nothing", then spending a night at a hotel and driving 9 hours back.  Basically 3 days and two nights to say "Congrats man" to Chris and he should know by now...that's not my type of gesture, heh, I'll just say it next time I do get in touch with him.

In other news, I'm back on FFXI.  Not sure how long I'll stay.  A friend paid for the month so that we could do WotG missions together and I could help him out.  I enjoy the game a bit more than I used to, but without friends to do stuff with, it's still rather boring.  I have friends on and that I can talk to, however they've been playing the game the whole time and pretty much already have groups for everything they do in the game setup.  I can't really get into those groups and so I can't play with them in most activities.  If my old friends Star/Sida would return I might have a chance, but apparently they hate each other now.  I'm hoping at least Star returns, but he doesn't seem too interested in returning, nor me.  I caught him posting on BG while being offline my AIM, I wonder if he's avoiding me or just everyone.  Safer bet being the latter, but I'm not ruling out the former.

WoW is somewhat boring me.  I transferred to Cho'gall and got into a terrible guild of angry kids at first.  Left them and I'm now in a better guild, but I have yet to raid with them.  They nerfed paladins some more because retribution is OP in PvP, but the nerf completely ruined my attempts at protection PvP.  I used to be able to sit at 2150 or so with my resto druid friend, who also came to Cho'gall.  But after the nerf we got destroyed by 1800 MMR teams without me having a chance at killing their healer.  It was really depressing and mostly frustrating that they killed it so much.  I enjoy being the "underdog" and being that rare case of being able to pull an odd combination off.  For Thief in FFXI I was one of the top damage THF's and beat all the cookie cutters in damage.  In BC I was the protection paladin which only had a cult following as AOE tanks (and I was prot the whole way to 70 and then to 80) and so in WotLK it was moving to the protection paladin in arena.  They're making it easier for me to enjoy my alts with the mount changes, but I just can't get into it as much.  Wonder how much of an effect returning to FFXI has had on my opinion of WoW.  I came back to FFXI to a number of friends I talk to somewhat often and a few people I don't mind playing with.  In WoW I'm on a new realm and aside from two people that came to the realm with me everyone is new and unknown to me.  Just a few months ago in WoW I had a number of people I enjoyed playing with, but half of them quit and most of the other half went to another realm.  Oh well.

I'm losing weight, which is my current personal project.  Going to more heavily consider what to do after I've reached decent fitness afterwards.  I plan to call up Ben Colvard and see if he can hook me up with a job, but I don't want to do it until I'm in shape, sort of as proof that I've "reformed" as I haven't spoken to the guy in years and he's always been cool with me.  His wife, who I was arguably closer to, apparently runs marathons now or some crazy shit after having two kids.  Even more motivation for me to get back to running.  Both her and YiOu are into marathons now after not running during high school years and I'm sitting on my ass gaining weight.  I don't intend to ever run marathons, but I want to get back into it and say confidently that I could beat them in a 5k.

 Depression really isn't worth the time.

 A little over a month ago I weighed myself and was 242lbs (without shoes).  I just weighed myself now and I'm 233lbs (with shoes).  This is a great improvement, especially considering the fact that I have still been lazy when it comes to working out and most of this drop in weight can be attributed to just having some self control when it comes to eating.  I've been holding off on snacks and desserts and trying to make sure 6 hours are in between meals, more if I can stand it.  Working out has been...fairly poor.  I feel myself having more energy, which is giving me even more sleeping issues than normal, but all I have been able to manage is to do some inside exercises, though it's still gotten my heart pumping and my legs sore.  If I can fix that and start to get out and run again at a regular rate I don't think the lower 200's is impossible for me to reach by Chris' wedding.  At the end of my freshman year of college I was at 205lbs and still ran a little bit and did some sports at a semi-competitive level (clubs) so that's not a bad weight to be able to hit.  At that point I can probably work towards getting my running back to high school levels and I bet I'd look a little better applying for a job when I'm not a total fatass like I am/have been.  Though that's not my main issue with being unemployed, that's also part of my total laziness.

5 weeks or so to go until the wedding.  Though I have almost no information on the thing, just when/where.  I talked to Chris a couple months ago and he said he was looking into lodging for the guests at a special rate (wedding is at a summer camp so they have lodges people stay at for those) but he hasn't called me back about it for a long while.  I imagine he's busy though, so I can wait until the last second, heh.  If all else fails I can go back to my original plan, sleep in my car.

On a completely unrelated note, I keep getting an AIM error about not having MFPlat.dll, I did a little bit of googling but all the sites I picked up I'm not sure I can trust as they all offer "free scans" and then the thing you download for this "free scan" is called a "registrybooster" which signals my spyware/trojan flag and I want nothing to do with it.  It's been getting even worse lately, AIM has died 4 times in the last hour and a half.

 So I watch an anime.  I enjoy it, it makes me happy.  I finish said anime, excellent ending.

Now I'm depressed, I'm now done with that anime.

...lol...QQ...lol...

 I have serious unresolved emotional issues.

 Do you think it shows I'm obsessive about gaming if I'm thinking about getting a job to buy a PS3 and FFXIII when it comes out?

Edit: It comes out for 360, so I don't need to buy a PS3, woo.

Can I fast for a day?  I don't think I have the willpower, we'll see!  It's only been 4 hours since I woke up and I'm already not going strong at all.  I'm praying that my body switches to burning fat for energy and I stop feeling so hungry and weak, but I don't know if it works like that.  I sure have enough energy stored away I should be fine for a year or so... 

So Tom made some attempt to burn the house down, like...right now.  6am and I already have imsomnia issues and now there's a nice burnt smell all throughout my basement and I have to be up in 25 hours to be ready for work.  This is just going to be awesome, I can sense it.

He was cooking like 3 things of rice on the stove and a steak in a toaster oven or some shit.  No fucking clue why.  He seems to either be purposely trying to get rid of all of us or he has serious mental issues he obviously isn't getting nearly enough help with.  At the moment I have absolutely no idea which one it is...I doubt I'll ever find out.

Back to sleep, or some attempt at it.

I really miss FFXII, they need to get a good PS2 emulator working or something >.>

Cleared ZA tonight.  Actually got to main tank Hex Lord and Zul'Jin.  I'm still wearing blue shoulders!  Was our first clear as a guild and I believe 3rd ever clear for a horde guild on our server, with the other two guilds having disbanded.  It's too bad we don't have enough for 25-mans.  We can clear ZA with Kara/Badge gear but don't have enough to get into the rest of T4 content and into T5 content, haha.  We'll be working on ZA timer and doing Zul'Jin some more, had a screwy mess up with my taunt macro (which didn't work the first time we attempted bear boss, but without ANY changes worked fine the next attempt) and if not for my mistake, we would've gotten 3 timers down easy.  We were about 3min slow on getting the Dragonhawke boss down in time and lost at least 5min on the bear boss mini-wipe.  Still a long way from getting the 4-chest timer clear, but I hear that's supposed to be for T6-level players and we're not even T5 level lol

Otherwise I'm playing my 5 alts, 24 druid and the rest are 30-39.  Taking things real slow as to make use of the rested exp, while instancing for certain pieces of gear I'd like for the next PvP level cap.  If I could get into grinding out exp I could get at least a couple of them to 70 well before WotLK, but FFXI completely broke my grinding patience, so I can't really do that.  I'm pretty happy with how I've done so far in WoW considering I've only been 70 for a month and a half or so, with only doing raids 3 nights a week.

In real life news, Iron Man is tomorrow at 12:30pm, going to see with a college buddy.  I'll be honest...I don't know his name.  I just sat next to him in my computer course at FCC, and we traded AIM SN's and talk occasionally, haha.  He apparently is married and the wife is coming.  So I'm going to hope she uses his name at some point so that I can figure it out.  Until then, it's just "hey!" for him...yep.  He also mentioned a $35/year job that I apparently could get, as no degree is required.  I think it's the same job he currently has, which sounds awesome.  So going to find out information from him about that hopefully and see how things go.  $35/year sounds really nice, like I'd be able to get FFXIII when it comes out nice.

Was talking to a buddy of mine and I'm happy with how my FFXI career has ended.  I'm still one of the most famous (controversial lol) players to have played on Shiva, mostly in the love or hate realm with people, just as I am in real life and with the smaller group being love.  But I'm also considered one of the most knowledgeable thieves across all servers and I completed the longest quest in the game.  While I wouldn't mind to still be playing the game with some friends...without those friends, the game is a complete snorefest (especially when I lack the patience to grind anything solo).

WoW will be very different from FFXI.  Much bigger community, a lot harder to make a mark.  But I don't really care to anyway.  I've already found my guild of intelligent adults who play the game.  Most are good, quality players and have much more experience than I do.  While I'd love to get some of my FFXI friends into the game/guild, no point in hoping for it much.  I plan on just hiding and being mostly quiet (since I can't be totally silent...ever...) within the guild and experience the game like that.

Oh yeah, the last week I've been helping my father with some construction.  His girlfriends daughter wanted her bedroom remade or something so he tore it apart and is remaking it.  I'm supporting him in doing this.  I haven't done any construction work in at least 10 years and wasn't exactly gung-ho about it then.  So this is a somewhat nice experience to go through.  I'm trying to soak up as much information as I can, as some of this information could be useful if I ever have the guts and get the confidence to do such things for a future house of mine.  I'd still need to do alot more work with my father to get to that level, but who knows, maybe I will.

I had this idea for a big homage to 23 for my birthday, but my computer was still 12 hours from being alive and so I never got to doing it then.  Lets see what I had going for me:

I turned 23.
1 + 9 + 8 + 5 = 23
4 = 2^2, 16 = 2^4, 2^3 is between those, 23!  (don't think this is stretching if you haven't seen the movie)
My best friend is 23 weeks older than me.
His sister's birthday is 23 weeks after mine.
Sadly Carrie's birthday is 22 days before mine.  YiOu's is 21.  But if you go in backwards consecutive order the next is 23!
It's been 2-3 years since I kissed a girl, 23!  I was originally just going to say 23 months, but that's like 6 months off so this is less of a stretch.
23 has the same number of syllables as Matthew Bryant.
I had 23 Windows Errors today trying to install Civilization IV on this computer.
My Priest is level 23.
The last line used 23 spaces.
The last anime series I watched had 23 episodes (Clannad)
I currently have 23GB of HD space used.
My computer case came with 3 fans, I took 2 out, 23!
When I turned 18 I had planned to buy a lottery ticket because of the things you can legally do once 18, it's the only thing I wasn't against (buying cigarettes, buying porn, going to a strip club...)  It has been 5 birthdays since then and I still have not purchased a lotto ticket, 5 = 2+3, 23!
In my first raid since getting my new computer my guild downed the first 3 bosses in ZA on their first attempt, missing the 3rd timer by 2-3 seconds (23!) and thus getting 2 out of 3 timer bonus', 23!

I really wish I had seen the movie recently so I could see all the stupid stuff they did to keep referencing 23.  I'm not about to look for all the 32's and 46's around me to see it all though.  I already went stupid with ideas for 23, cause I'm tired and this is two days after my big brainstorming attempt for a post about this topic.

On a more general note, I now have a brand new computer working fine.  Aside from the Civ IV's errors I've had no problems.  At least not since I so intelligently switched my power supply off of 230V (omg 23 x10!) to the American voltage.

Boy does WoW looks so very very different going from the lowest settings you can possibly use to the highest.  Fire looks pretty damn nice with high settings, the Dragonhawke boss in ZA was actually a whole lot easier with these settings.  I seriously thought that the WoW patch I had missed did a bunch of graphic tweaks because of some of the huge differences.

After a bit of more time enjoying this nice new computer I'd like to get out and get a job.  It's actually a good time to attempt this as I'm not used to my keyboard/mouse and since I'm not nice and comfortable here, I'm far more likely to be up for doing something else.  I need to drive my car occasionally, about an hour a day, supposedly, for it to not die.  First idea that popped into my head (since obviously working wasn't going to be it) was hanging out with Julie, but my paranoid senses tingle that she doesn't want much to do with me when we talk, I think it'd be awkward considering our time not speaking so I have yet to say anything about that.  I'm sure she'll read this at some point and I'll get an affirmation that I'm correct.  Granted I'm suspecting that affirmation will be silence so it's possible she doesn't even read this anymore...hmm.

I suck at getting jobs.  I am obsessed with excuses, so much so that I throw them out even when they're not necessarily necessary and it ends up getting me in a worse position, I think.  I really need to work on lying to get a job, at least my mother says so.  I'd rather just leech a job off one of the weird people that pay attention to my livejournal.  I kinda want to call Ben and leech a job off him, but I haven't talked to him in a very long time and I respect Ben and don't want to be seen as using him.  And I also don't really want to do much other than just hang out with him occasionally, not really interested in Mt.Airy youth groups, or the college group of 2 years ago.  I like Ben and Kim, I wish I had kept in better touch with them, but I guess you could say my shame made me go into hiding from them.  Shame from dropping out (twice) and basically doing nothing since then.  I don't like hearing about it from other people cause I give myself plenty of shit for it.  On one hand I don't care and I feel justified in why I haven't done anything (I have no clue what I want to do with my life) on the other hand I still do care about what my friends and some others think and I am both paranoid and pessimistic when guessing about their thoughts, lol.  I'm the harsh and honest one, my friends aren't, so I don't really...trust they tell me their honest opinion a lot of the time.

I'd love to keep rambling, but as true as I am being to the original title of this journal, I am a bit tired, as God didn't let me sleep in on my birthday and the guys fixing the AC didn't let me sleep much at all last night.