The Post.

/checks forum
/forum = "Complete Bullshit"
/set fucks="0"
/srspost

I feel like Furioso. A different raider from a different time. I wanted things to stay the same, while the guild changed and evolved. My Big Crits was a place where I had authority and control and things could be done my way. T10 belonged to me, my 10man belonged to me, Da Crew belonged to me for a short while. I could do or say whatever the fuck I wanted and I had control over where the boat went. 

I came back to raiding and I was not in control anymore. I liked it at first. I could just be anonymous average raider #1937-4. You know how they say it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks? It's even harder to make him unlearn the tricks he already knows. I decided to fight the new way instead of adapt to it.

OH MY GOD THERE ARE THINGS THAT WE CAN DO BETTER AND I'M THE ONLY ONE THAT SEES THEM WHY CAN'T ANYONE ELSE. 

Important boss ability incoming, and nobody is calling it. I might as well say something. Get hand slapped. Suggest a battle res on a healer/tank 10 seconds after they die. Get called out. Try to help by suggesting a strat in raid chat. Feel ignored. Send a tell to raid leader about how to improve something. You are being ignored. After a while I just felt like I was getting in the way and not ameliorating the situation. The part of my brain that raid leads and things critically about encounters never got turned off and I don't know how to turn it off. It got so bad I literally muted myself for several weeks because I couldn't stop.

Part of the reason I play this game is because it makes me feel important/useful/smart/endowed whatever. After the first few weeks of heroic progression, I felt worthless. I couldn't stay alive on some encounters. I couldn't be trusted with important assignments. Every night felt like I was that guy holding everyone back during progression. 

Plus there is history with the guild. I was an officer, then I wasn't, then I was kinda, now I'm not. I spent one night after Rash stepped down thinking, "Do I want to stick my dick in this blender and offer to raid lead again? I obviously don't have the self discipline to regulate it, why not?" When I said, I didn't want to be an officer again, that was more me telling myself rather than stating an obvious fact.

I agree with Sarc. Big Crits does not know how to communicate in raids. People don't know how to filter the bullshit, and add constructive input on a boss. I don't know whether I contributed to or mitigated that situation. I'm guessing I just added to the pile. It seems like trivial stuff boils to the surface, and important things fall through the cracks (calling for cooldowns, stormlashes, battle reses, boss gotchas, Hey my thing that I need is on cooldown halp pls)

The era of Stoney where we had very top down style leadership is what I know, and Sarc/Jurr/Sarc is a more nuanced self regulating style of leadership where I feel like I piss more people off than have friends.

I'm sorry to everyone for how I left but the bandaid needed to come off, and especially the officers and Rash had to put up with my bullshit in raids and on the forums. I probably roused more rabble than anyone and am not proud of it. You guys are all still my friends.

Being Sat.

This week Big Crits killed the server first Will of the Emperor. I was on the bench.

I'm glad that we killed it. I'm mad that I was sitting out for the kill, and I should have been in. I was in for most of the progression for this boss, healing as my offspec. We picked up some recruit healers this week, and I was set to go to kill the boss this week as my main spec.

First night of progression this week, I was having computer issues, so I sat while I put the finishing touches on my new computer. My hard drives got partitioned really weird when I set them up, so while merging them together the boot record got corrupted, so I had to re-install Windows again. I was irked that I couldnt get in on the boss attempts and listening to mumble of people making mistakes over and over and everyone getting frustrated. I wanted to be there.

Last night was the night that Big Crits killed it, and I wasn't raiding. I was sitting on the bench. I was ready to raid at the beginning of the night, when I had to do one last restart to get Mumble working, which took 10 minutes because Windows update decided to restart my computer 5 times to do more updating. All said and done, when I logged back in it was 5 after raid time, and I was on the bench. Fuck me, but oh well we have baddies and initiates that will probably be subbed at some point.

Nope.

Oh one of the warlocks lost internet, and we need a sub. Goodie, I'll just wait to be pulled in.

10 minutes pass.

I say audibly on Mumble "Hey guys, I'm on the bench and I can come in right now"

"Hey initiate rogue, we are pulling you in for this boss"

Fucking seriously? Are you LITERALLY kidding me right now?

I shouldn't have stayed silent for that long. I should have said, right away, "Bring me in. Now." There were 5 initiates in for the kill last night, and being sat for raiders. I shouldn't be thinking about it this much but I am.

Was I being sat because of my skill as a player, because of my class, or is it as simple as me not being vocal and visible enough to get pulled into the raid? Now I'm just frustrated and questioning my place in the guild again, which I thought I had proven my skills and abilities to be a raider in. What more do I have to do?

Quarter 4 Report

Too many thoughts happening all at once, need to get them down on paper.

Fitness:

I've been taking a break the last few weeks to let my body heal up before I hit it hard again. I took an arrow to the knee in August, and last month I had a piece of bone break off inside my foot which  has made working out challenging. I get activity where I can, but I miss running a lot, and I don't want to backslide and have to make up for lost time.

Not being able to work out is actually physically frustrating, because I want to meet my new years resolution, and keep losing weight into next year. My diet has changed dramatically, and I've fallen in love with carrots as a snack. This is helping immensely. I'm still eating things that I love, just not as many of them, and I hope to add beer back into my diet sparingly next year granted I'm meeting my goals. Not just any beer though, GOOD beer; small batch craft beers ideally. Maybe start brewing again at some point.

Even with the downtime, I'm still losing weight. I clocked in at 215 yesterday which is pretty fucking fabulous considering everything. I'm hoping not too much of that is muscle loss. Getting back to the gym is going to be disappointing when I can't lift as much, but c'est la vie.

Back on the needle:

Yea.

Playing WoW again, and having a fucking blast.

I came back to Big Crits about a month ago when I knew that I wanted to give raiding another shot. I rerolled a completely new character, and cutting ties with the one I have been playing for 6+ years. If raiding ends up completely garbage, it will be easier to break away with a character I have less inertia with. It's also refreshing to rediscover parts of the game that I had taken for granted with the old. No way in hell I'm going to be farming for old gear though. The vanity part of the game is dumb.

Right now there is lots of energy in the guild, and hopes are high. Tier 14 starts next week, and we are all ready to hit it as hard as we can, going for server firsts and the like. I'm trying to balance this better with the other areas of my life now. It's already taking it's toll on my time getting prepared for the first week of raiding with all the dungeon grinding we have been doing. I'm a little behind with gear compared to other people, but I'm not worried about it.

I'm playing the game on my terms. I'm not going to be dumping more time into the game than I need to in order to meet the standards of the raiding team in terms of gearing up. All the gear I have will end up being replaced in raids and with rep rewards anyways. I've ran about 20 heroic dungeons, but the gear I want just refuses to drop. I'll just make do with what I have. I'm confident in my skill to be an excellent raider, and skill trumps gear any day all day. I have better things to do with my time anyways...

Relationships?

I have a girlfriend. I'm terrified.

This probably deserves a post all by itself, but fuck it. I'm laying out all my fears for the internet to behold.

She lives in Peru. We text everyday, and Skype almost every day. We have been officially dating for about 3-4 months. I feel like she is strong in all the things I am not, and vice versa. She visited last July and we were all over each other. We miss each other a lot, and we are both hoping that she can move to the USA when she finishes school, and we can pursue...whatever this is...

I'm fairly sure that she is in love with me, and I don't reciprocate at the moment. I'm literally a chicken shit and I don't know how to deal with it. I'm this tempest in a teacup right now figuring out if this is what I want. Is this how Erin felt during our relationship?

The questions are simple though.

Do I want to be in a relationship with someone: Yes
Do I want to be in a relationship with Ale: Yes
Do I see myself in the future with someone (kids, marriage, soccer practice yadda yadda): Yes
Do I see a future with Ale: Yes

Am I in love? Simple answer, no. Not the head over heels, infatuation love that people do anything and everything to keep and hold. I've been there, it was nice. Ultimately I got burned the hardest I've ever been in my life, and THAT is what scares me. The horrible fiery crash. Right now my brain can't stop seeing the mangled bodies left after the relationship fails, and my heart is hardened from wanting to be alone. Basically I'm a fucking wreck.

I'm afraid of failure. It's something that has always been with me.

I need more time. I need to turn my brain off. I need to sit on that boxcar at the top of the hill and just let the detritus come.

Statistics and being "Normal".

Normal. It's a word that we all seem to have a love/hate relationship with. Everyone wishes they were more normal, while also wanting to be unique.

I've been meaning to post this for a while, because it's one of my more abstract thoughts. That, and it involves statistics.

I think most people recognize this:

This is the normal distribution curve. The theory goes that this is the natural distribution of probability of observations made in nature. The average, or the norm, is right in the middle and typically has the highest chance of occurring. As you move away from the normal on either side, the probability goes down sharply. 

See those little numbers on the bottom? Those represent standard deviations. The standard deviation shows how much variation or"dispersion" exists from the average value. The normal standard deviation represents ~68% of the total values in the total sample size.

So, let's apply this theory to people. Look at the above curve and say we apply it to how attractive a person is on a scale of 1-10. So the norm would be a 5, the far right side would be a 10, and the far left would be a 1. If you picked 100 people at random, on average they would rate a 5 for attractiveness and 68% of the people would rate between a 2.6 and a 7.4. So if you were a normal person, you would be a 5.

Now, let's look at this graph in two dimensions:

So, here we are grouping observations in two dimensions. Let's take our attractiveness observation (x) from earlier and add a new independent dimension, intelligence (y). Just by looking at the graph, that most people are middle of the road attractive and intelligent. Compared to entire graph, people that are super smart and super hot (-4,-4) would be in the extreme minority, while most people would fall into the standard deviation range.

From here we can extrapolate and add as many independent dimensions as we want to measure people by: ethnicity, age, favorite color, whatever...

You end up with a hypergraph measuring all these things at the same time and defining the truly normal person: middle of the road in every imaginable aspect. This person is normally attractive, intelligent, average interests, average everything. This "normal" person isn't really remarkable in any way, and that's my point. They don't stand out, they aren't unique even in the slightest way. Why do we compare ourselves, and in some cases aspire to be this normal person? What does this measurement provide?

As far as I can understand, the normal yardstick is great so that we can measure ourselves against something. We imagine normal people but this person isn't average, they are usually better than average. If normal is 5, we envision someone maybe 7 or 8 to be the normal. Not perfect, but not a dirt-bag either. This may be a way to encourage ourselves to be better than average, to aspire not to perfection, but to be the 7 or 8 that feels like a great compromise between average and perfect.

231.

The year is half over. As Chris Farley would say, "HOLY SHNYKIES", henceforth it's time to check in.

I started this crazy notion at the beginning of the year to invest in myself. One of the things I wanted to do was get in a better physical condition, something that would be completely selfish. It's been a great transformation. I have accomplished some of the goals I set for myself, and I feel really proud of the work I have done.

The good:

-Lost about 30lbs so far. Well on track to lose all 50 by years end, so I'm going to work hard to meet and beat that goal.

-Inches and shape. My body looks much better than it ever has. I'm going to need to start buying new clothes soon that fit me better. Wh-oot.

-Nutrition. It was rough at first to get on a good nutrition schedule but I've found one that works for me, and it's not some fucking stupid all protein, or powersauce fad crap. I'm eating better because I want to for the long run. I still want to be able to eat delicious food, but just not a lot of it. This is the problem with American diets: portion control. Right now I am eating smaller meals, more frequently, and teaching my body to survive on smaller meals. This might sound sort of gross, but I noticed my success was working when I was taking smaller poops. Deal with it.

My job: This isn't an investment in me per se, but I think I have landed a whale of a job. Me gusta.

Spanish: So, I'm learning Spanish now as well and it's keeping me away from video games. I have a lovely lady helping me learn too, and she is really excited that I am getting good at it.

The not so good:

Self Esteem: I think this one will be one of those things that I may not have the strength to change. I feel great about myself, really I do. I am generally a badass. The thing I lack is that alpha attitude, and I guess that is just something that you are born with; I don't feel the need to impose my will over anyone else, but instead I like to absorb the worlds contradictions and idiosyncrasies. I'm definitely more confident tho. Props.

Women: This is a blog post in itself, but tldr, women have fucked up. You are all walking contradictions, but it's not your fault. You ladies are this big bag of emotions, with no rhyme or reason why you do things, and then you whine and complain later when you didn't get what you want. It's not your fault, you were just drawn that way. I need to figure out how to deal with you. It goes both ways I suppose.

Beer: HOLY FUCKING TEABAGGING CHRIST BEER, I MISS YOU SO MUCH. SHOON.

Has the investment paid off? Fuck if I know. Too soon to tell if anything. I may never know. Opportunity cost is a tricky thing to measure, especially when you are trying to measure your life.

Putting it out there.

I resubbed to Match for the summer. Best time to date, and I could really use some exposure to the world outside the electric grid. It's also been a while since I have stepped back and defined what I want from whomever I'm sharing a cup of coffee or whatever with.

At first I just wanted to be just as goofy and funny as possible trying to shed light on how stupid the whole online daitng thing is, but then I realized that nobody was responding to my finely crafted sonnets of love.

Here is the post I wrote to sum me up. I think I nailed it.

I’m looking for someone, maybe they are on the internet. Some of the most interesting people, and some of my best friends are there...

At this point in my life, I have been through a lot, and I have grown incredibly as a person; tragically not nearly enough. No matter what you accomplish, own, or do in life, the struggle is the parts that count. To quote the Barenaked Ladies, “Everything easy has its cost.” I know that I will always be struggling, seldom taking the easy road, and I want to find that person that wants do things not because they are easy, but because they are interesting.

I love a girl who can always be herself, no matter what is going on around her. Being yourself is sometimes rough, but at the end of the day, you can’t be anything else. Be honest with yourself, and I will return the favor. Talk, and I will listen. Teach me something, and I will show you my own weird world. Laugh with me, and I will keep the humor on tap. I’m a complete person by myself, but I want something more than that; I want to build something incredible, even if it only exists between two people.


Ultimately, I don't think it matters what I say or don't say in my profile; just paint a picture of what I feel and those who read it will fill in the gaps with their own paintbrush. It's not about what you say, but what you don't say.

Diablo 3 Love/Hate

Diablo 3 is a great game, but I have a love hate relationship with it right now. I love what it is, and I hate what it is trying to be.

I hold this game very near and dear to my heart. I probably dumped a whole summer into the original game. At the time, dungeon crawlers were pretty disposable. Once you ran through them once and got all the loot, you were done; replaying the dungeon was the same thing no matter how many times you played it. Diablo introduced random dungeon layouts and random loot, something that had never been done at that scale and production quality before.

I cut my teeth on an old Net.Hack clone called Mission Thunderbolt back for the Mac. Every playthough was different, and the turn based combat was visceral, literally beating things to death. It was the random element that kept me playing, and I still boot it up once in a while.

At it's core, Diablo is a slot machine; it introduces random intermittent rewards (loot) for a defined input (killing monsters). In order to progress, you must play the game better or get better loot in order to be more effective against harder monsters, which drop better loot. It's the most elegant gear treadmill ever designed. This is why I love the game, you can choose your own level of difficulty and involvement. The harder you push against the game, the harder it pushes back, and it's internal random number generator gives you the rewards your rat brain wants.

This is what made Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 so addicting. The intermittent reward model has been shown to be the most addictive behavior for our brains to keep doing the same task.

The new Diablo model is a little different. Now you not only have your own instance of the random number generator (I'm just going to call it a RRG - a Random Reward Generator) giving you loot, but you have an auction house linking your RRG to everyone elses RRG. This basically neuters the reward system that we have known and loved, and replaces it with a market based reward system.

The reward system in Diablo 3 is also very unforgiving. You have to kill a LOT of monsters to get loot that improves your potency against the game. The random bonuses on loot are poluted with garbage stats (gold pickup radius, health globe bonus), not to mention class specific gear and the fact that most classes want stats on gear that is dramatically different from the other classes. Playing the probability game, a lot of dice rolls need to come up in your favor to get loot with the most effective stats. In essence, the odds are stacked in the house's favor.

This is where the new Diablo breaks down for me. Now you can see the guts of the machine. You can see the beautiful shiny items on the auction house, and how vastly inferior your own gear is. You now have the option of spending your time farming gold to buy the good itemized gear on the AH, or you can drop some real life coin and go that route as well; the third option is jumping on that gear treadmill and playing against the house for gear that has useful itemization (I swear to god the next monk only fist weapon that has +Str and +Int on it, I'm going to go kill some kittens).

Diablo 3 is a pay or play game like League of Legends or any free to play MMO out there. They gave it away for free to the hopelessly addicted WoW people, and sold it to the nostalgic Blizzard gamers that love them so much. I heard an analogy that Blizzard is the Disney of the video game industry, where they just iterate on their previous successes. Blizzard's plan is to make money on the tail of the real money AH, where "game balances" will drive the economy and shift people into different item budgets.

The pay/play model is killing me. This seems to be the way of the future, where monetization gets sneakier and sneakier all the time. Externalizing costs has always been the way to make a profit and make money in business, and it has finally come to video games; to me, this business model finds the stupid people who will pour money into time savers and "cheats" to make their own game experience better. I know this has been around for a while with downloadable content, but I think we are just now seeing the consequences. Smart people play with skill, and stupid people play with their dollars. I think this kind of model will see developers and game designers chasing the time savers and cheaters, instead of the smarter people who can play within the bounds of the game. Games will get stupider and will start to resemble actual slot machines more and more, or even the old arcade games of old.

I'm still playing the game, but only to see how far I can take my hardcore toon. Once he dies, I think I am done. I rolled a WD at launch, and I can only see grind in my future since I have reached inferno. I'll try to hock all my gear on the real money AH and see if I can make a little scratch.