Time is on my side.

Time is so weird.

When I was working, I felt like I had partitioned my time into buckets and that things had to happen during those designated times. Work happened during work time, and I would use my off time for whatever I tagged as off time activity whether it be catching up on podcasts, playing video games, reading, or whatever else I could think of. Sleep happened whenever. That non work bucket felt like a catch all, and I was just doing stuff to pass that time that I had allocated to it. There were things that I wanted to spend my time doing more than others, but I was content with how much each bucket held and how I had decided to allocate my non-work time. There never is enough time sadly.

Now that I am unemployed I still feel like there isn't enough time, but I am getting much more accomplished and much more miserly with what I will spend it on. Things that I used to do in my non-work time seem very useless now. I will skip entire podcasts that I used to listen to beginning to end when I had a job, skip to the meat of a video game without doing all the stuff around the edges. I am reading more and working out a shitload, and actually looking forward to it. I will whip up a dervish applying for jobs, doing stuff that has been on my to-do list forever, and catching up with old shit that needs to be done. How I look at my "free" time has changed drastically, and I hope that I can keep that point of view when I finally land a whale of a job.

Working out especially has gotten a ton of attention. I'm after results, and already I can feel myself getting stronger. The goal is to lose about 50lbs by the summer. It's one that is a little out of reach, but it will be great to see how close I can get by the end of this. Lifting has been great, as a friend turned me on to a simple, effective lifting schedule. I am adding cardio stuff on as I think I can handle it, but my lower legs get really sore if I start jogging for more than a couple minutes; I had shin spints back when I played football, and I would rather not overdo it and develop them again. Researching new workouts will be the next step.

I'm tracking my diet much closer than I have in the past, and putting myself in situations where it would be hard to violate my intake rules.

I'm not sure if this is just me getting older, and valuing my time more, or if it is a paradigm shift of who I have become over the last month and last year (Seriously, fuck 2011. Complete shit show.) I don't really care too much about things outside my personal bubble. This self improvement kick has gotten in my blood, and everything that doesn't make me a better person gets cut. Some things that have taken the sidelines are even giving any thought to dating. I want to be the best me that I can be, because I have learned that however awesome I am and I know I am, my confidence sucks. I need to feel like a better person, and that will help me feel better about who I am on the outside; many people have told me and I already know I am spectacular person in my heart and mind.

Self Investment

The heart of investment is putting resources into something and hoping to get a higher return that what you put in the first place. This could be time, money, affection, thought, whatever. Last year, I spent way too many of my resources for other people, and I did not get much back, or as much as I was expecting.

As I look back at my life over the last few years since I graduated with my masters degree, there has been a lot of me overextending myself and investing in others expecting a positive return on my investment. There are a lot of people whom I squandered my time and money needlessly; I was chasing expectations that seemed reasonable at the time, but in hindsight not the best use of my resources. I didn't get nothing for something per se, but I think I ended up getting much less than I wanted out of it.

The past few years, I have been a very complete person I think. Sure there were areas for self improvement, but I chose to invest in others because ultimately, my needs are met, and I want to make others happy. There is no such thing as a selfless act; by making other's lives better, it made me feel great in return. I took a lot of people to dinner, spent money and time on others, spent my downtime thinking about others and what they were doing/thinking/were they thinking about me too? One person in particular was a complete and total bust, where I got much less out of the experience than I put in.

I started thinking about this today after I started a new workout routine, enjoying things for myself, and starting to plan the next part of my life; all of this has been implemented over the last month. I thought, what if I took all that time and energy and worked on myself. Could I realize the expectations I have of myself, if I directed all that effort inward rather than into others? What is my personal ROI (Return On Investment for all you non finance people)?

Ultimately I am not a selfish person. At some point, I would get negative satisfaction by directing my energy inward. I want to be a great person, not for myself but for others; more specifically one very special person in particular whom I would very much like to find in the near future, but I can't really worry about that right now. I got my own shit to do.

My goals for the next three months:
-Eat better, and less. I have rediscovered cooking as I have more time to enjoy my own time. I make a couple good meals over a week and dine on delicious leftovers as the week progresses.
-Work out, and do work son. This goes with the first goal, lose weight, and try to be a good lookin' gentleman and not be so much of a fatty. I've always had a belly and weighed more than I should. This needs to change, for myself.
-Travel and get out of my basement more. I am planning on going to Peru for Nate's wedding, and I want to go to Hawaii and see Ty and Cyrus and experience a little of island living for a bit.
-Play some damn video games. One of the avenues I over invested in the last year was through WoW. I'm going to shift my focus from playing that game into other games that I have been wanting to check out and neglected from not having the time to diversify.
-Read/Listen to Moby Dick, and some other classics. Moby Dick seems to be an important book and is referenced so much in American media and culture. I want to discover that world for myself and get into it.

I has plan.

Attention Whores

You know what grinds my gears?

This shouldn't bug me but it does. I ran into some of the more rude people I have come across in a long time at my brother's Christmas party. My little brother still hangs out with a lot of the people he went to school with from elementary through high school, and I met a few of them last night.

There was one girl in particular who was pretty stuck up and rude. I talked to her for about 5 mins about how she lived in LA, and she was a bank manager, and all about her, when she abruptly stopped the conversation and went out with her friends for a smoke. Granted yea it was a party, and people are talking and working the room but this chick was like a light switch. As soon as there was something else in the room to take her attention, she pretty much turned her back and not so much as a give a polite "Nice to meet you" or "I'll talk to you later". Even if you don't mean those things, it's still polite or nice to acknowledge that you were speaking to a person a moment ago.

This was fairly early on in the evening, so it kinda put me off on everyone else there. As the saying goes, birds of a feather...

I kinda watched everyone else from then on and I saw how much attention whoring was going on. Everyone was just saying and doing ridiculous things in order to capture the most attention from the room as possible. My favorite line of the night was "Could you feel my back pocket and see if my wallet is still there?"; while probably effective given the crowd that night, it's just a stupid line. At one point, some drunk chick dug out one of my brother's bright orange jump suits and paraded herself around and loved that all eyes were on her.

Is it just that easy to get everyone to pay attention to you? All this made me wonder, am I just not doing it right? I don't give two shits about having anyone pay attention to me, but the magnitude of everyone last night was just way off the scale. Am I just shooting myself in the foot by not being the loudest asshole in the room if there is a girl I want to impress/get to know/sleep with?

Safety Net

It's been no secret to those that know me that I have been pretty unhappy at my most recent job. About 6 months ago I left a warm, comfortable, and cozy job working for Tri-State and ventured out to take job working in Boulder, CO. While the new job taught me a lot about what I want to be doing with my career, it ended up being a casualty of that lesson. The work wasn't what I wanted to ultimately be doing, and it conflicted morally of what I want the world to be like.

So, like a lot of other people in the world, I am without employment. I'm not terribly upset, but it's nice to sleep in and be a do nothing some days. Other days I get really bored without a desk or cube to inhabit. I think it is helping me though. Having no responsibilities really lets me sit back and think: where do I want to go, what do I want to be doing, and who do I want to be with. I had a couple ex attacks, but I think they stem more from being by myself for too long than actually caring much about her.

My goal is to find that place/thing within about 3 months. I probably don't want to jump at the first thing that comes along, but being too picky may backfire. 3 months seems like a good amount of time before I start dipping too hard into my savings, and plenty of time to think about what I want and who I want to be ultimately. Finding someone to spend time and sharing my life with will probably be on hold while I figure all this shit out, but I won't turn my taxi light off entirely. I have to go pimp myself professionally and personally pretty hard in the next year it seems.

Holy Paladinning in Dragon Soul

So right now I am refining my play style and gearing for Dragon Soul raiding. Got the basic power auras rolling, getting some gear, but I am still in the dark in terms of what secondary stats I should be getting.

I think that paladins are moving on from spirit\haste build of the previous tiers now that we have a new toy to play with, Holy Radiance. The initial HR hit heals for a lot, but I am really underwhelmed by how much the HOT ticks heal for. Being that Dragon Soul has a ton more raid damage and fights that people are stacking up for, I don't feel bad at all leaning on my HR button for a majority of my healing.

So now I look at my secondary stats and scratch my head. I see other paladins going towards mastery, and I really want to go that path too but I feel like that would be pigeonholeing me in a really awkward place. The absorb bubbles will look good on the meters, but I'm not sure that it is actually doing much heavy lifting at all. I need to be able to figure out my "absorb efficiency" to see how much those absorbs are saving people's lives.

Mastery seems like a great stat to smooth out the healing needed by the raid, crit is awesome if you are rolling hot dice and like big numbers, and haste gets that healing our much faster. I am not sure there is a right answer since each stat complements another in some way. Crit can give you bigger mastery shields, but more unevenly. Haste lets you "crit" and "shield" more as you are casting more spells per minute. Mastery "looks" like you are healing more. It's this weird three legged stool / Triforce that makes everything complicated.

Which is good. Stacking one OP stat would be boring. =D

I think I want enough haste to GCD cap on Ultraxion. After that I think I am going to move into crit and see where that goes. Crit ultimately will make bigger heals which will beget bigger mastery absorbs. If healing gets too spikey, I can move more into mastery.

Ensidia Shot First.

As far as I am concerned, this tier of raiding was over before it started. Ill gotten gear, boss exploits, and bugging out of encounters; this is all I have heard regarding T13 heroic raiding so far. The raiding community has shown just how far they are willing to go to get their name on the front page of wowprogress.com, and I think the whole community is disappointed in how guilds have conducted themselves in order to get ranked kills. While there have always been exploits and bugs, this tier just seems to amplify and bring all this to the forefront with the breadth of how much foul play is happening.

There are some guilds that are worthy of their rankings and did things the right way to get where they are, but the vast majority of guilds have gotten their hands caught in the cookie jar, or done some other dirty deeds to get their rankings up.

Hagara has some encounter breaking bugs right now that probably make the fight a ton easier. Big Crits killed her on Heroic (World 10 woot) and used a strategy involving classes that can move while casting in order to make the fight easier. I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, or the intended way of killing her on heroic, but it still stands out in my mind that the fight was cheesed somewhat; while not as blatant as other guilds (Shattering throw comes to mind.) it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Nevertheless, our guild killed her dead before many many other heroic guilds.

Does it even matter though? The race was corrupt from the start. Many of the top world guilds were out of the race before it even started because they did things they knew were against the spirit of competition. Big Crits is currently ranked #14 in the WORLD. It's a perfect storm that benefits us greatly and spirits are sky high. Does all this diminish our acheivement? I don't know.

Raiding. Leading. Again.

About a month ago, I got that itch again to start raiding. I missed it, more importantly, I missed the people that enjoy raiding. The people that make new friends constantly, tell geeky jokes, make bad sexual innuendos and double entendres. You know, fun people. Not like all those stuck up people you meet everyday in real life.

Ishraaq, our fearless Da Crew chief approached me about leading another firelands run. Something simple, something 10man, something for mains/alts/those not raiding enough. I agreed to lead it. This has now morphed into a 25man Dragon Soul run with expectations attached to it. Yikes.

Let's talk about Da Crew for a second quick. Da Crew is our "casual" raiding rank for people just not up to snuff with the standards of the main progression team, but still wanting to raid with good people. The problem is that casual is a very grey word. Back when Big Crits was formed and the guild was starting to pick up steam, there were a lot of people wanting to be a part of the guild, but did not have the time/desire to raid in a progression environment. Couple this with the fact that pugging raids on Sen'jin horde was AWEFUL, Da Crew started joining up and became a casual group of people of whom the alts of the main raiders, and the casual folk could play and have a good time getting some phat purps.

Now, in my opinion, looking from my ivory tower of progression raid leader was that Da Crew never really found it's place in the guild. Was it a place for just the raider rejects? Was it a place where more social raiders could have a place to be? Was it a place where raider alts could come and snatch gear from mains? Are Da Crew raiders just in fact second class guild members and second class raiders? At one point or another, all the above could be true. This has always been a struggle for the people who wear "Da Crew" label.

I am interested in having more nights free than more nights raiding, because I will be unemployed shortly, and I would like to have some time to establish myself wherever I end up next year (Spoiler, I am moving out of Colorado). I am also single, which I need time to date and meet new people when the time comes.

So in coming back to raiding, I am not immediately interested in a progression schedule with progression commitments. Am I any less skilled at the game? I doubt it, maybe a little out of practice, but I'm not worried. So I want to take Da Crew under my wing and make them into the best raiders they can be, on a shorter time schedule. In comparison, the typical Da Crew person raids less than half the hours of the progression team in a week, and that's even not a lot of hours given most progression guilds raid 20+ hours every week.

I'm interested in where this will take me, since I have always pushed myself to be a US or even world class player. Will Da Crew be able to find it's voice and it's place in the guild, or even the WOW community as a whole. I am very optimistic.