Ugh.

I have been felled by the deadly disease I alluded to in “House of Plague”.

I have dubbed it “Explosivomirrhea” for reasons best not elaborated.

Woe to us all.

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Howdy folks,

I just made a post on the “World of Warcraft” forums (the official Blizzard ones, not TheMook.Net ones) showing off the interface I use for the game, thought some of you here might be interested as well. Click on the pics below for the full size images.

No Target:

With a target:

Bags open:

Quest log open:

The complete list of AddOns I’m running (not all are visible in the pics of course):

AF_Tooltip
Atlas
AutoRepair
BankItems
CharacterProfiler
CleanMinimap
Confab
CooldownCount
CooldownCountDiscord
CT_BagMod
CT_BuffMod
CT_ExpenseHistory
CT_ItemBuffs
CT_MapMod
CT_MasterMod
CT_PlayerNotes
CT_QuestLevels
CT_Viewport
DepositBox
DiscordActionBars
DiscordFrameModifier
DiscordLibrary
DiscordUnitFrames
EnhancedTradeSkills
EquipCompare
FishInfo2
FlightMap
Gatherer
goodinspect
GroupButtons
GuildProfiler
ImprovedCamera
ItemRack
MetaMap
MinimapMenu
MobInfo2
Mobs2Level
MonkeyQuest
MovableBags
MozzEasyMail
MozzSmartCast
myModel
myTargetModel
NameCycle
Notepad
PerfectShot
PvPLog
QuickLoot
Rauen_PetAttack
Rauen_PetDefend
Rauen_PetFeed
Recap
sct
SellValue
SmartPet
TackleBoxSA
TalentReminder
Titan
TitanAlarmClock
TitanDurability
TitanEmoteMenu
TitanFriendsX
TitanMainMenu
TitanNameToggle
TitanPetXp
TitanPVPinfo
TitanRecap
TitanRegen
TitanSkills
TitanXPStatus
TrackerAssist
VendorBags

I love a game where YOU can decide how you want your screen to look!

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My niece was sick, explosively and projectiley (?) sick, from last Wednesday to about Sunday. Then my sister succumbed from Monday until Wednesday, fetal position and all. Last night my nephew got up at 2:00am to vomit prolifically on the kitchen floor.

It stalks me. I am not safe.

…

And now for something a little, but not completely, different:

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Tried out something interesting late last night with World of Warcraft after reading a few forum posts - I set my laptop up next to my desktop, like so:

In this picture the black keyboard standing upright beneath the monitor is USBed into the laptop; the white keyboard, mouse, and Nostromo Speedpad are hooked to the desktop (my normal setup). So, I then logged the laptop in to a WoW character I have on my sister’s account, logged the desktop in to my own account and one of my oh-so-many cool characters, and after grouping the two characters together I played my own little mini-party for a while, controlling both characters simultaneously! It definitely took some getting used to, but I had a blast - the desktop tanked and the laptop provided support. I’m not sure how fun this would be in an actually hostile area (we…um, I…were just bopping around the Undead newbie zone), and it’s not like I expect this to become the normal way I play the game (too hectic, not leisurely enough for my hippy streak) - but it was definitely a cool change of pace.

I eventually realized that 99.5% of the time I never move my hands off the speedpad and mouse, so I swapped out my desktop keyboard for my laptop keyboard, saved a lot of hassle. With some practice I was actually able to run (as in jog) both characters simultaneously, using my left hand and the speedpad for the desktop character and my right hand and the keyboard arrow keys with my right hand. Now that feels weird!

Anyway, just thought I’d share the love!

(In case you’re wondering, no, this is NOT against the Blizzard Terms of Service - go ahead and ask ‘em. I’m not using any kind of bots or hacks, only a few of the macro functions already built into the game, and both accounts are legal and paid for. It’s also not unethical, as anyone else with a laptop/second machine and a friend’s account can do the exact same thing … true, not everyone has those, but then not everyone has the one computer necessary to play at all, and I don’t see people giving up their WoW accounts in protest because some folks out there don’t have a computer.

So there.)

…

And now for something completely different:

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Um…oops.

So, I got my latest games from Gamefly last week - “Shadow of the Colossus” and “The Matrix: Path of Neo“. I tried “Shadow” first, but I kept getting a ‘Disc Not Recognized’ error, so I set it aside and played “Path of Neo” instead.

Fast forward about a day and a half - by this time I’ve beaten the Matrix game (which was a lot of fun, I had a blast!) and am looking to move on. I check the “Shadow” disc - a few scratches but I’ve seen much worse. Try it again, still errors out; wipe the disc (remember kids! ALWAYS clean an optical disc from the center out, NEVER in a circle!), still errors out; blow a little into the Xbox to make sure there’s no wayward dust, still errors out; clean the disc with Windex, still errors out.

*Sigh* Okay, it’s rare, but every once in a great while I’ll get a bad disc from Gamefly (or Netflix) - disappointing, but I’ll survive for the two days it takes them to send a replacement. I go to the Gamefly site, I log in to my account, I choose “Report a defective disc” …

… and then finally notice that it is a PlayStation 2 game I’ve been trying to play in my Xbox.

DOH!

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Starting a new category - I had a random thought today and, as I usually do, wrote it down on some convenient paper, in this case a pink sticky-notes pad. Here ya go:

“For a long time, I played SoF2 [Soldier of Fortune 2] for about 2 hrs/day almost every day - and look how good I got at it. Now, what if I had been writing for 2 hrs/day instead?”

Thank you, that is all. Move along. Nothing to see here.

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So I was watching “Grey’s Anatomy” last night (thus fulfilling my prediction of “in a few hours I’ll be lost in some vapid television show”). It’s definitely a show on my B-list (not an A-lister like Lost or Alias), but for what it is it’s usually enjoyable enough. Anyway, two of the doctors on the show were having a difference of opinion over the nature of reality - Yang is a classic “if I can’t see it, it doesn’t exist” rationalist, and Burke is of the “I’m not religious but I am spiritual” school of thought (which warrants an entire post on it’s own, but not now).

After a few exchanges on the subject the two of them find themselves dealing with a child in need of a heart transplant, and things aren’t going quite as expected, yada yada yada. Afterwards Burke explains to Yang (paraphrasing here): “That sense of powerlessness in the face of that boy’s troubles? That is why I have to believe in something beyond myself. If I didn’t, it would eat me alive inside.”

:: blink ::

What what what? That is the worst possible reason I can think of to believe in something - because it makes you feel better. What is he, 8 years old? Don’t believe in things because they make you feel better, or because your parents believed them, or because “all the cool kids are doing it”. Believe in something because you believe in something - that is, because you believe it is True, not because it gives you warm fuzzies.

I have been a Christian for roughly 22 years now - and I remain a Christian because I have spent countless hours in research and thought and examination, and firmly believe that 2000 years ago a dead man rose from his grave. (Naturally my faith and worldview encompass a great deal more than that, but without that starting point Christianity simply doesn’t stand).

Prior to that I was a generic sort of animist, with a wishy-washy belief in a very undefined “something out there” - because at that time I firmly believed that was the Truth of things.

Even before that, I was a secular humanist (though of course too young to know the term) - because at that time I had never seen or thought anything to make me think otherwise.

If I only believed in things that made me feel good, I would still be waiting on Christmas morning for Santa Claus to shimmy down the chimney with an Xbox 360 in one hand and a sixpack of Smirnoff Ice in the other!

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I’ve made some tweaks / changes / fixes to the site - nothing major, just the usual polishing -

• I’ve had an embedded ‘random quote’ for a while, which works just fine in the Firefox browser (which, if you’re not using, is definitely worth checking out … as far as I can tell, Firefox is superior to Internet Explorer in every way) — but it was destroying the page formatting when viewed with Internet Explorer. I’ve finally figured out how to force IE to view the page correctly - the quotes should now appear at the bottom of the main site home page, and just below the post Calendar here on the blog page regardless of the browser you are using.
• Also on the main site, I have changed the gold / yellow background to good old white - you just can’t beat black text on a white background for legibility.
• On the forums, I’ve embedded the same header as the rest of the site uses to ease in navigation (the “|Home| Blog|…” etc.):
  
• Changed around the order of the blog links in the left column.
• Finally, have decided on a name for the blog - “Frivolous Profundity”.

As always, if you have any suggestions or notice any errors, please let me know.

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Welcome to the first post ever* of “Frivolous Profundity”, my contribution to the bloated and ever-expanding blogosphere. What is it you can expect to read about here? Whatever floats through my fevered brain of course - musings on Life, God, and the Universe, the pursuit of Truth and the ultimate secrets of Reality, role playing games, computers and technology, movies, books, comics, conspiracy theories, theology, philosophy, video games, politics, music - in a nutshell, anything. If I think it, you might read it (whether that’s an invitation or a warning is up to you).

I know Christians who may find some of what I write offensive, and pagans who will be surprised I’m Christian; proper folks who will be shocked if I swear, and anarchists who will think me a poseur. I know priests and writers and strippers and professors and bartenders and soldiers and potheads and pilots and witches and programmers and a multitude of others - and they (you) are all welcome here to peek into my brain. But don’t be surprised if you eventually read something you don’t like, or don’t agree with, or find surprising - after all, tailoring what I post defeats the purpose of writing in the first place.

So there you have it - you’ve been officially invited to visit any time, to enjoy posts both serious and silly. Both the blog here and the main TheMook.Net site are a little sparse at the moment, but hopefully as time goes on they’ll build up. (You’re also welcome to check out the forums - they’re usually pretty active).

Welcome to “Frivolous Profundity”; welcome to TheMook.Net; and welcome to my brain.

* I’m not counting the posts below - they weren’t originally written with WordPress, I just migrated them in for the sake of completeness.

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