Well, for some fucked up reason I'm still playing WoW.  The good thing is that I'm not playing nearly as much every day (about 2-3 hours a night on work nights).  My focus has been on Arena PvP with my Hunter.

Last week I was approached by a Druid friend of mine about setting up a Drain team just like the one Team Asia has run to an impressive 39-0 record this season.  The setup is myself (MM hunter), FG warlock, Disc. Priest, Holy Paladin, Resto Druid.  So far we have done fairly well, especially considering that we had zero preivous experience with either the setup or eachother.  We're far from undefeated but we've climbed to 1752 so far and expect to continue steadily to a 2k+ rating within the next couple weeks.  Games are getting smoother as we go along and learn the in and outs of the setup and eachother's playstyles.

Last night was at first a positive night for the team but quickly turned negative.  First of all, we have two pallys on the team with drastically differing gear.  The *main* paladin is in full S3/S2 gear with all the S3 vindicator's pieces.  The *secondary* paladin is wearing mostly S1 and Kara/ZA gear.  The secondary paladin was the first one on the team and is a close friend of the druid and the lock.  The primary paladin was picked up primarily because of his gear and his friendship with the priest.  Last night the primary paladin displayed a ridiculous lack of maturity when asked kindly to sit out a few games so that we could ge tthe secondary paladin in, so that the secondary pally could get points from the team this week.

As soon as we invited the secondary pally to the group the primary paladin logged off without saying a word.  Now, after voicing no concerns or protests while we discussed getting the other pally in for games, this guy proceeds to log back in during our first game in his absense and quietly /teamquit.  When asked by the druid why he did such a thing he said that "he didn't realize he was going to be removed" and that he "was not just some asset we could use whenever we wanted then discard."  What the fuck?  Does anyone else see how royally fucked up this kid is?

Anyway, we won the first few games without him then we went up against an extremely talented gladiator team made up of mostly people in my guild.  They farmed us for 31 points in 3 games and we called it a night.  I think we learned some things from those three games though so it wasn't entirely negative for us.  Personally, I'm trying my damndest to get better at supporting my healers and helping them keep melee off them through use of frost traps and scatter/conc shots.  I've got the frost traps down to a science I think but I'm still kinda sketchy on the shots.  Most times I have too much shit going on to remember to babysit the healer but this isnt as much of a problem for us as it is for most teams since we have a druid to fuck up a melee's world with cyclone/roots spam.

Apparently my return to Nathrezim has caused a mini-drama bomb to go off in my raiding guild of nearly six months ago.  I was asked by an officer of the guild if I minded helping them in Hyjal one day and I had no problem with that as I was busy and had plenty of freetime that night.  As soon as I was invited to the raid, a hotheaded druid in the guild exclaimed in raid chat, "NO GQUITTERS IN THE RAID!!!!"  At this point, keeping in mind that I was helping them truely out of altruism, I decided to drop group and return to my previously scheduled slacking.  A good friend of mine in the guild said this druid posted in thier member forums that night that he was afraid he had split the guild into factions of pro-qubits and anti-qubits.  However, according to my friend, the number of the people who really give a shit that I'm back and that I was asked to help is quite small.  I have been asked to help out again but declined without hesitation.  I have no desire to raid and certainly no desire to raid with people who have such a childish approach to this situation.

I still find myself wondering about Blue Garter and how things are going there.  I miss hanging out with some of the members, for the short times outside raids that we did.  If I had any more self-control I would still be there now.    I think that I accurately articulated my reasons for not raiding any more in the thread I posted in the member forums.  The only thing I regret is that my intentions of xfering my hunter with the guild ended up falling through.  Choosing between which group of friends to play a game with is never easy.  In the end, I chose the group that initially got me into the game and with whom I played longer.  This choice most likely will result in a net loss in "phat" epics and will also result in my friends from the other group feeling insulted.  Its a choice that had to be made though and I'm not going to beat myself up about it.

I guess I'm a bigger asshole than I thought I was.

Whatever, bridges may be burned but the path ahead is clear as mud.

I don't know how much longer I'll be playing WOW.  I have already made the decision to cease raiding and am now seriously contemplating quitting the game altogether.  Fact of the matter is that WOW is a raiding game first with PvP treated by development somewhat tangentially.  While I do enjoy PvPing I can most certainly see a point in the near future where it will become stale through lack of content/progression and I'll want to quit or end up getting the bug to raid again.  With this being the case I am thinking quitting might be a better course of action than focusing on PvP right now.

Lets take a look at the two scenarios I'm predicting as equally probable should I continue playing WoW solely for PvP:

A.  I PvP for a few months, get a high rank on a couple toons and oodles of season 3 honor and arena gear on all three.  Season 4 gets delayed or w/e or I'm just bored with there being nothing productive to do in game but arena so I decide to show up to a few raids here and there.  No problem right?  Wrong.  Knowing myself I would likely just end up seriously raiding agian, especially if Sunwell is realeased soon, and yet again I'll be spending far too much time each day playing the game.

B.  I PvP for a few months with the same scenario outlined above occuring and it drives me to quit.  At first glance this doesn't seem like such a big deal.  I get a few more months of casual enjoyment from the game and then move on.  However, I could instead start searching for my next obsession and working on that (I know myself well enough to know that whatever hobby replaces WOW will become an "obsession"). 

The problem is that its not nearly this simple.  Most of my friends play WoW and for the most part that is my only interaction with them.  Were I to quit the game I would likely have to find some friends out in the real world and do real world type shit with them.  Not only that, but I really don't wish to cease interacting with the friends I've met in WoW on both Mal'Ganis and Nathrezim.  I rather enjoy the company of both groups of people even if all we're doing is bullshitting in Vent.

As some of you in BG have probalby already guessed, despite my previous intention to xfer my hunter to mal'ganis along with the guild, I recanted on that and xfered him back to nathrezim.  The primary reason I've done this is to eliminate any possibility that I'll ever raid again.  I have no self-control and could easily be persuaded back into raiding and I really don't think that'd be good for me right now.  Now that 22 seems to be able to raid again and Bongo is usually available, I don't feel I'm doing a grave disservice to the guild in doing so.  No, I'm not going to start hardcore raiding with my old guild or any other guild for that matter.  I'll likely just help some friends with 10 mans, arena and grind honor like a good little scrub.  My rogue is still on Mal'Ganis and I still intend to tinker with him until I finally decide to stop playing so I'm sure I'll see you guys online from time to time.

Oh, btw if you're reading this russta grats on the boots finally.  I thought for sure you guys would have 2 full sets of warglaives before they dropped.

IT HAS BEEN NINE YEARS SINCE WE'VE SEEN A NEW KISS ALBUM. ANY PLANS TO GET BACK INTO THE STUDIO?

Gene Simmons: "The record industry is in such a mess. I called for what it was when college kids first started download music for free -- that they were crooks. I told every record label I spoke with that they just lit the fuse to their own bomb that was going to explode from under them and put them on the street.

There is nothing in me that wants to go in there and do new music. How are you going to deliver it? How are you going to get paid for it if people can just get it for free? I will be putting out a Gene Simmons box set called "Monster" -- a collection of 150 unreleased songs. KISS will have another box set of unreleased music in the next year.

The record industry doesn't have a f---ing clue how to make money. It's only their fault for letting foxes get into the henhouse and then wondering why there's no eggs or chickens. Every little college kid, every freshly-scrubbed little kid's face should have been sued off the face of the earth. They should have taken their houses and cars and nipped it right there in the beginning. Those kids are putting 100,000 to a million people out of work. How can you pick on them? They've got freckles. That's a crook. He may as well be wearing a bandit's mask.

Doesn't affect me. But imagine being a new band with dreams of getting on stage and putting out your own record. Forget it."

And his opinion on Radiohead's genius marketing strategy with In Rainbows is even more indicative of his brainpower (or lack thereof):

BUT SOME ARTISTS LIKE RADIOHEAD AND TRENT REZNOR ARE TRYING TO FIND A NEW BUSINESS MODEL.

GS: "That doesn't count. You can't pick on one person as an exception. And that's not a business model that works. I open a store and say "Come on in and pay whatever you want." Are you on f---ing crack? Do you really believe that's a business model that works?"

While browsing slashdot at work, thouroughly bored and exceptionally tired thanks to staying up until 2am last night for Kara and Arena I came accross this: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/core/Content/displayPrintable.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/11/14/scisurf114.xml&site=30&page=0

If you do not wish to click on the link to the article I'll attempt to summarize its points.  Apparently a devout surfer dude named A. Garrett Lisi who just so happens to have a PhD in physics has found a theory of everything that purports to combine the Standard Model with Gravity.  Anyone with even a layman's knowledge of physics can understand how amazing this would be if it were determined to be accurate.

A very important factor of this man's theory is that it makes testable predictions regarding the existance of 20 new particles. 

jabervon on /. explained this ToE far better than I could ever hope to so I'll shamelessly copy/paste his comment on that site below:
"(I am not a particle physicist or a mathematician of the right sort, but I can kind of follow this sort of thing)

Okay, the context is that you've got particles, and they're fundamentally all the same, but they're "turned" in different ways. Think of a ball with 3-color LEDs inside: you can rotate it around three axes, and move it in three directions, and you can also cycle its color and change its blinking pattern. Particles are like that, except that the topology is weird: it's not back to the same orientation until you turn it around 720 degrees, instead of 360 like normal objects. The "gauge group" is the rules for how you can change things. For example, the total color of the universe is white: if you turn something from red to blue, you have to turn something else from blue to red; but you can also create a pair of a green and a purple (anti-green). They write all these rules up in math, and it's tricky because a lot of the features vary continuously (that is, you can rotate something an arbitrarily small amount). And due to the interaction of the rules for one property with the rules for other properties, there are only certain combinations of properties that you can get. They work out all the combinations that you can have and those are what you see as "different" particles that your experiments show. Of course, we don't know what the rules are, and we're trying to figure that out from what combinations of properties we've seen and which ones we're speculating are impossible. And it's hard and takes a lot of calculation to figure out what a candidate set of rules would even mean as far as results. And people are looking at known results and trying to describe them better than "we've done a billion things, and a billion things happened".

Now, the math of rules for how things can interact turns out to be sort of limited; there are basically 4 normal cases, which are boring, and then there are a few exceptional cases, which are interesting. Of these, the hardest to prove stuff about is E8, and it's just now becoming clear what combinations it allows. It's like one of those puzzles where you press a corner and lights change, and you have to turn off all the lights, but it's got dozens of corners and dozens of lights and every time you press a corner a bunch of things change at once, and there are different kinds of corners and it also matters exactly what angle you're holding it at, so there are hundreds of things you can say about each move.

And the mathematicians working on E8 recently said, "well, you can get positions like this and not like that", where "this" and "that" are big complicated lists. And this physicist read that paper and said, "hey, those lists are familiar; I made similar lists of particle interactions". So the proposal is that particles work like E8 in what kind of rules they follow. And it's a really nice theory, because E8 is essentially the most flexible set of rules you can have without it falling apart into just anything being possible (and some rules or properties just not mattering)."

If you want to read the paper itself clicky clicky on this: http://arxiv.org/pdf/0711.0770 (PDF format and very fucking challenging)

After I watched half of Grindhouse while the guild finished up black temple we ran ZA for the first time.  The instance has what I perceive to be a very light and fun atmosphere, which is in my opinion perfect for a 10-man.  I'm certainly more impressed with ZA so far than I ever was with Karazhan.  I'm not saying that Kara was a horrible instance or anything but I will say it was too long and too trash-centric to be completely enjoyable.  That and I could never like a fight like prince, which even if people refuse to admit it, was many times based entirely on luck.

So far, I really enjoy the ZA group I've ended up in: "unicorn village."  The name was a toss up between that and "qubit's wife" and I can't decide which I preferred.  The group seems quite laid back and chill which is exactly how it was designed to be I suppose.  I'll continue to attempt to contain my child-like excitement over finally seeing some new content after a much-to-long lack thereof so as not to annoy my fellow unicorn villagers.

As far as what we killed and what dropped, we had to knock it off a bit early due to some RL constraints and went 4/6, one shotting all but one of those.  Some nice tanking loot dropped for Tib and I got a beautiful piece of org-loot with which to piss off casters: www.wowhead.com/?item=33494.  Suffice it to say I really wish I had that staff on my warlock as it is quite amazing.

I'm hoping to run karazhan this week to speed up the rush to 60 badges that I need to obtain www.wowhead.com/?item=33484 which is an upgrade for both PvE and PvP.  After that there's nothing I really NEED on my main with badges though I'll most likely pick up the AP trinket for pvp. 

           For many, life is spent hopelessly searching for meaning or at least for a plausible explanation for the socially acceptable meaning enforced by one’s community.  It seems most of mankind is content to rationalize away the absurdities and illogical nature of the more common explanations.  With this rationalization complete, one tends to shut down any thought processes that could breed skepticism and open-mindedness and simply live according to his newfound meaning (usually in the form of religion.)  I however tried to live according to societal expectations and failed miserably.  Due to some mental defect I was completely incapable of curbing skepticism and applied critical thinking skills and some simple analysis to Christianity.  As a result of this analysis I came to the conclusion that religious explanations for my existence are patently false.  Furthermore, many of the rules and regulations of Christianity are not only pointless but also harmful. 

            What is the meaning of life?  Ah, the most trite and tired question in human history but also the most important.  Mankind has spent obscene amounts of time and resources seeking the answer to this question and even more enforcing a particular answer on others.  Wars have been waged and communities have been wiped out in the name of religions that purport to have the question solved.  Most of these religions give an answer that negates both the possibility that the religion could be wrong and any and all hope that other religions could be right.  Mutual exclusivity is a central point to religions; I am right and you are wrong if you will. 

            An even more important factor of the religious answer is that it is one that puts mankind in the spotlight.  Who wouldn’t like to believe that there is an omnipotent, omniscient being that made everything just for you?  It would be nice to believe that the entire universe was concocted as a playground for me and my fellow man.  Further inspection of this only reveals it to be a common mistake.  Take for example those that once thought the earth was at the center of the solar system and universe.  Any educated person now finds the idea of a heliocentric solar system absurd and yet many still have no trouble believing in an anthropocentric universe. 

Mankind is hopelessly self-centered and will rationalize any explanation that puts him front and center, no matter how asinine that explanation is.  Historically such explanations could only be replaced or modified and rarely destroyed.  In most cases the replacement/modification is just as anthropocentric and in cases where it is not scientific proof is required.  At this point however, just like with the abolishment of the heliocentric universe, the new scientific idea is rarely sufficient to snuff out anthropocentrism.  Rather, the religious organization involved will modify its beliefs and its interpretation of its literature in a way that supports the new ideal.  One simply needs to study the history of the Catholic Church for evidence of massive modification of belief and interpretation in a major religion.

Now that I’ve removed the possibility of religion providing the answer to life’s meaning due to the self-serving absurdities inherent therein I will now give my answer.  The tone of the previous paragraphs probably gave away the surprise anyway.  What is the meaning of life?  The short answer: trick question.  The answer I give most people so as not to get into endless and ultimately pointless debates: there isn’t one.  My personal “meaning” to life is voided so one could ask what is the point of living, writing this crap, doing ANYTHING?  Well, for me at least, suicide is not an option so I have to continue living.  As such, I have two choices- A.  Do nothing but mope around, listen to Morrissey and write shoddy poetry and how life is hell. B.  Participate in activities that lessen the inherent pain of existence.  I chose B and sadly I have come to the realization that although few would admit it, most of my peers chose B as well regardless of their views on religion. 

The fundamental purpose in most people’s life is to eliminate boredom and in some sense thought.  I’d be willing to wager that 99.99% of people would never admit this fact.  They’d loathe the implication that Sunday mass and bible school were simply ways to bide the time.  To them I say open your eyes and really examine your life.  Why is it that every single person I’ve ever met has some sort of hobby or time-sink?  Most of my closest friends choose video games, some choose television or sports or even fixing old piece of shit cars.  Certain members of my family even chose religion as that certain “something to do” to keep boredom at bay. 

What happens internally when you are doing nothing?  What is that thing that western society loathes most?  Thought.  When you are not engaged in activity such as conversation or television or gaming, chances are you are thinking.  I don’t mean thinking in the common, popular sense of the word.  Not the thought required to come up with what you’ll say in response to your buddy’s latest inquiry as to your opinion regarding some quarterback.  Not the thought required to press the proper key to initiate a macro during a boss fight in a video game.  The thought of which I speak is the thought that burns, the thought that cuts you deep.  Spend enough time in a dark room with no radio blaring and no television to numb you and you’ll see what I mean.  These are thoughts that cause you to question everything; life, love, happiness, god, existence.  These are thoughts most avoid with their petty hobbies and sports team obsessions.

Why would we bother talking about things that matter anyway when there is just so much fucking entertainment to discuss?  1984 was dead wrong, not because Orwell was insane or stupid or sensationalist, but because he underestimated humanity’s tendency to self-inflicted ignorance.  The “Big Brother” isn’t watching you, he is ignoring you.  Why?  Because he’s already won by providing you with so much to watch and do that most people will never get on with doing anything that truly matters.

Tonight, after your raid, television program or sports event I implore you to just turn off, tune out and shut up.  Not indefinitely, that’s most definitely fatal 99% of the time.  If you’ve been living off the IV drip of entertainment for too long the withdrawal after only a few days off it will be excruciating.  Just for one hour, sit in a dark quiet room and just think.  Spend some time with the person you may not know as well as you think: yourself.