New Job

After three years of opening mail, working Saturdays, and dealing with bull that I could go on about (but, for all your sakes, won't), I finally did something to relieve myself of the situation. With the changing circumstances in the department, a new set of positions opened up, and so I successfully applied for one of them.

Thus far, I'm enjoying my new job, though I'm still in the training stage. Eventually, I'm pretty sure that I'm going to find something I dislike about the position, but for now, I'm just glad to be done with opening mail.

A Second Blog

For a while, I've wanted a place to discuss my thoughts on controversial issues, but, in consideration of my friends, I didn't want to use my main blog for this. So... I now have a second blog, for those interested.

Life comes at you fast...

I now have a girlfriend.
Her name is Kat Wendt.

It was unexpected...
It happened fast...
I think she's wonderful...

^__^

...Really?

Dude, okay, seriously...?

A Fantasy, Yet Real, Community

I don't often think about my days of World of Warcraft, anymore, but there are things I do remember about it. Recently, I was going through Wikipedia and again read over an article about the Corrupted Blood incident, and I read about how some researchers thought of it as an interesting model and even requested statistics from Blizzard Entertainment about it. I began thinking about it afterwords and contemplating the aspects of WoW, and perhaps even MMORPGs in general, as a community, often more in depths than many people probably realize. The following are just a few examples.

One interesting thing is that, not only is it culturally different as a mass of gamers, but that, in the game itself, things are culturally different, depending on circumstances. When you begin the game, you are placed in a specific server, and each server has its own set of people. From beginning to end, I remained in the server, Drenden, which, when I began, was a relatively small and unknown server and gradually grew over time to being of a decent size when I left. From one of my guild mates, who was giving advice to a fellow raider who wanted to transfer to another server, there are differences between how people behave in another server. Our server was considered a relatively good one, at least on the forums, and a quick scan through some other server forums could give evidence of this.

Inside the servers, there are various different realms you can enter, and they also differ in how characters act. For example, when you begin in early realms, such as the early stages of the human storyline, there's a small village called Goldshire outside the human capitol, Stormwind, in Elwynn Forest, which is famous for hosting duels more than any other city or village I can think of in the game. It's often frequented by both lower-level players just trying to move forward in progression and upper levels players that like to show off their might in the said duels. In some areas, even, one half-entertaining, half bizarre phenomenon was something known as Barrens Chat.

Another interesting factor is that, while there are things that are unique to the game, there are also portions which resemble real world elements. For instance, in WoW, there is actually a market where both goods and services are traded, which also means that there is an economy. There are even negative comparisons to the real world. People actually operate illegal businesses in the game for real world profit by having a series of players farm various areas for gold and selling it online for real money. There is identity theft, where people will spam fake links across forum boards that, if opened, will install programs on the user's computer that log their keystrokes. By doing this, they learn the user's username and password, and they log onto the characters account, sell all their gear, and mail the gold from it to their own characters.

In the game, there are a community of people who like to greet each other, chat, band together for quests, etc. There were a series of people from various realms who liked to frequent the off-topic forums, in which topics like politics, religion, and popular culture were often discussed. Various characters became famous/infamous for their behavior and were widely liked or disliked by the community.

There was a Player vs. Player (PvP) culture to the game as well, where people openly participated in battle with other players outside the usual arenas and battlegrounds, and some servers were actually made just for this sort of thing. Beyond just the gameplay, there were elements of the competition between Horde and Alliance where the players actually began to act in manners that could be seemingly compared to racism, usually (though not always) in a friendly role-playing way, though.

This is perhaps just a small portion of what can be related in WoW, but perhaps the most important in developing the unique aspects of the community is something that makes the game highly complex. In the game, you're able to make a name for yourself, depending on your skills, level, and gear, but, in the field of social interaction, you are not merely an image on a screen, but an actual person to other people you play with, and once you recognize that this same aspect holds true for every other player that wanders the field, from the lvl 1 illegal business spammers to the end-game raiders/arena competitors, you come to realize how it is possible that the community of World of Warcraft actually makes the game feel like another world.

Shoe Repair Frustrations and Surprises

The shoes I have worn for a while now, since after my return to the dance hall, were not actually the first pair of dance shoes I've owned. My original dance shoes were a gorgeous Allen Edmonds pair, which, to date, still remain my favorite shoes.

What happened originally is that, while I was at the dance hall, the front of the sole of one of the shoes broke open. I intended to have it repaired, but, at that time, I still didn't know Omaha and kept delaying trying to find a shoe store. Eventually, when I stopped going to the dance hall, I came to just ignore them altogether.

However, I recently noticed them on my floor again and took an interest in repairing them. I now knew how to navigate Omaha, and so I looked up various shoe repair places on Google Maps before heading out and dropping my shoes off.

Originally, I was told that my shoes would be repaired within a week, and that it was a simple just of sowing the sole back on. I called a week later, and I was told that the soles were falling off the shoe, and I needed new soles. He promised me a lower price for my new shoes, originally about $75 for the repair, now $60, and that he was going to use something called "Sole Guard."

I was told the shoes would be ready by that Friday. I called that Friday, was told they were finished, and headed down to collect them. When I arrived, they showed me the shoes, to which they had ever so lovingly applied... rubber soles. Sole Guard is not an adhesive, as it had sounded over the phone, but an actual rubber sole.

I handed the shoes back and said that I wanted leather soles on my shoes, for dancing, and was told the shoes probably wouldn't be ready for a week.

I called a week later, and they said the shoes weren't ready, due to glue problems, but they would be ready on Monday. I called Monday, they said to call the next day.

By this point, I was somewhat frustrated, and so I headed down to the store on Tuesday to tell them that, if my shoes were not yet ready, I would be taking them back and heading somewhere else. When I arrived, on the day they told me to call back, I found the store...closed...

I went down on Wednesday to do what I intended to do Tuesday, and the store person brought out the shoes. The front portion of the sole had not been attached, even...

The store owner was very apologetic about the whole deal, and he promised me a 'good deal' (i.e. discount) for the mix-up, showed my the shoes and the material they were using, etc. I decided that, since the shoes were in their final stages of repair, it would probably be just as long of a wait if I took them elsewhere, and this place I already had reason to demand a lower price. Thus, I allowed them to take back the shoe, and then they decided...when I gave him my phone number for the THIRD time (honestly, do they even look at their notes?)... they wrote the number right on the sole...

Needless to say I was unamused. However, I called later to ask when they would be done and was told in an assured tone they would be ready by Saturday. I came in Monday, and the shoes were ready (finally).

This is the point where I was happiest: the guy looked at me and said that he had a story for me. At first, I began to suspect that my shoes would be again delayed, but, thankfully, he only told about everything that had happened and that, as a consequence, the repair job... was on them. They repaired my shoes for free. He showed me the job and, after I did some brief shopping to give him time to clean them up, let me have the shoes.

And these are the shoes. Needless to say, I am exceptionally pleased and impatient to try them out this Friday.

Apologetics

"Few people come to believe because of an argument, no matter how logically the case for belief was argued."
- Gloria Gaither

It's actually somewhat difficult to define my position when I hold this quote in high regard. I'm not sure if this is surprising to some people, but I actually spend a good deal of time thinking about my beliefs and the arguments of those who criticize them. I've been thinking about making this post or a post like it for some time, and finally decided just to do so. If I offend anyone with the message that follows, I apologize for offending you. I never mean to anger or upset people with what I believe, but I realize that I cannot take the position I do without contradicting that of another.

The quote, though, seems to contradict another position of mine, and that is I believe in being capable of making an affirmative argument for Christianity against its critics, this being done in a manner that cannot be genuinely discredited by even the Atheistic community. By this, I do not mean a manner of defending my beliefs so that it merely helps to ward off my own doubt, but also to be done in such a way that, through logical and historical evidence, I can make a case for Christianity that is directed at a secular community, utilizing their rules.

I am not sure, but I sometimes feel that the secular community believes that, if Christians were to genuinely and honestly research their origins and what they believe, they would come to disbelieve it. I was somewhat affected by this, and, at one point, was even afraid of learning about it because I felt I might lose my faith and turn away from Christianity. However, I also believed that, if it was true, then the evidence should support it.

As I continued my journey, then, I was relieved by what I found. Not only did I find that there was strong historical and logical evidence for Christianity, but I also saw some of the arguments against Christianity that I knew of previously and granted some degree of reverence deteriorate, such as the problem of evil.

The journey was not without changes, however. I was originally raised as a Young-Earth Creationist and believed that it was the only belief compatible with the book of Genesis. Today, concerning the theories of the origin of the universe, I am, for lack of a better term, agnostic, though most sympathetic to the theory of Old-Earth Creationism. I do believe that the creation of the universe is compatible with the Genesis account, but I do not limit my perspective to any one position on what that is, as I don't believe we can absolutely know so simply how God chose to do so.

Another change is that I have gained respect for the scientific community. While I am not a proponent of the evolutionary theory, I nevertheless no longer consider it an unintelligent position to take, and many times, find their arguments more in line with the available evidence than some of the creationist arguments I have seen. Aside from that, I found that a good portion of the scientific community actually embraces theology and recognizes that science and religion are not primarily at odds.

Now, in reference to the quote at the beginning, here is my position. I do not believe that I can, and I do not wish to attempt to, argue with someone until they believe. I don't consider faith to be based off arguments (though perhaps justified to a secular community by them) but rather a personal feeling and conviction that something is true. I believe that arguments can discredit criticisms directed towards Christianity, but, ultimately, there is something more that leads people to accept it.