Down the Bog

So after I got my new video card (a while back now) and I subscribed to World of Warcraft and played for another month or two. I then took a break and last month I returned for one more month but I was so absolutely bored with it that I’m pretty sure that my online life in the game has come to a complete end.

For those in the know about World of Warcraft I got to level 40 but for the last couple of weeks of my subscription I just couldn’t motivate myself to play because the game play seemed to be so brain numbingly repetitive!

When I first started playing it had a real something about it in that I felt like I was really a part of this online, living, breathing world and it seemed to have been put together so well. That didn’t change but I guess that I’ve just grown completely tired with it all and the mystery for me is how do certain people become so addicted to it that they have it take over their lives?

They seem to literally eat, drink and live it their every waking hour. I know that some people have very addictive personalities but surely continually playing the same thing over and over again is the thing that kills the brain off from wanting to do anything else.

I think Michael Jackson’s death was a pretty tragic affair for his family and friends to deal with. Only fifty years old and gone. I’m forty-eight this year and I’m hoping as much as I can that I’ll be around for a good number of years yet. I’m trying to take steps to do this by taking a lot more regular exercise and through that alone I’ve lost nearly thirty pounds since the beginning of the year and I’m determined that this will be how I am from now on. Keeping fit and avoiding too much excess weight.

I’m a bit puzzled that so many people have been wrapped up by Jackson’s death other than saying “Wow. So young and so sad”. He was a great performer, great singer and I watched him live in 1988 and I thought the whole thing was fantastic. But was he a good role model for example? His whole weirdness with regard to the alleged surgery on his face, the way he acquired his children just everything about him. For whatever reason he was not a normal guy and although we can admire for sure his once musical and performing ability I’m just not sure there was anything else to be admired.

Well, I finally did get the sand for the kids and our youngest daughter, Abby in particular has really enjoyed having it to play with.

Mind you, it’s not been without it’s problems. Originally I put it in a sandbox down in the basement with a large tarpaulin underneath it and for a while it was okay. But then Abby felt the need to start moving the sand further and further from it’s home and gradually the range of the sand was all over the basement. So after several plea’s from Nicola I moved the sand up on to the deck outside and for a while that worked until Abby just felt that the confines of the deck inhibited her sand playing abilities. Gradually the sand started to be moved in through the patio doors and after several more plea’s from Nicola (or were they orders?) I moved the sandbox onto the drive alongside the house.

Now Abby has more limited access to the sand and we have more control over where it goes. She still enjoys it though and I still have a clean up to do but so far it’s staying outside.

I went and tried to buy some sand for the kids to play with yesterday but didn’t realise it would be so difficult. I went into The Home Depot and thought some regular sand in the building dept would be fine but looking at it, it appears to have silicon added (don’t know why) with a warning to not let children near it and dangers of future breathing problems if inhaled. Who’d have believed it? Certainly not me. I just thought sand was sand was sand. You know, fine or gritty maybe but just sand.

So they didn’t have anything suitable on that day and I’ll have to widen my search I suppose. Our youngest daughter loves digging up our soil and moving it to another part of the garden and I’d like to direct her toward maybe her sand pit instead but first it needs to be filled. I’ll have another look around today.

So I finally made my decision and subscribed again to World of Warcraft but found pretty quickly that my measly and ancient Geforce 5200 video card struggled to make the game enjoyable for me so I’ve now ordered a new video card from Newegg. I’ve not used this company before having previously ordered my computer stuff here in Canada from Tiger Direct so I’ll see what the service is like.

For those in the know I’m waiting for a Powercolour X1650 Pro 512 MB to arrive and yes I know that my system is an aging AGP one but I’m trying to extend it’s life for as long as possible as I don’t have the enthusiasm to buy and rebuild a new PC at the the moment. Or have the funds either!

So anyway hopefully my package will arrive soon and I’ll be back to a bit of daily WOW for the next month then again maybe I’ll wonder why I ever bothered. I’ll let you know.

Oh dear. On my last post I really meant it when I said that I was back from my unintentional blogging holiday and it now looks like I’ve gone and taken another one. But this time…this time I really am back and it’s time to knuckle down a bit.

I’m in two minds at the moment because I really can’t decide what to do. My daughter and her fiance bought me World of Warcraft at the end of last year. They were big fans and felt that if I got myself into the game that I would be too. I’d previously signed up for a free ten day trial but hadn’t actually played it but now I had a copy of the game and had no excuse.

World of Warcraft or WOW is what’s known as a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). It costs something like $15 (US) to play per month although the first month is included with the purchase of the game and I found it to be quite addictive. I played throughout January and tried to resist renewing the subscription for February but couldn’t help myself. I had to play some more. But by the beginning of March I felt ready to give it a rest and save some money.

We’re now coming to the end of April and I’m getting the urge again and I want to play. So far I’ve resisted but I’m getting weaker and maybe I’d be playing right now if my computer’s video card hadn’t recently died. I was pretty dismayed because I only got it last August and no doubt it has some kind of warranty but living here in Canada means that I have to send it back to the manufacturer rather than the retailer and it just seems expensive and complicated. (That’s probably what they rely on to save themselves a lot of money)

I’ve currently got an older video card in at the moment that is fine for normal usage but isn’t capable of running recent games and certainly not WOW.

Now the thing is after I stopped playing WOW a couple of months ago I haven’t picked up any other games to play. The interest doesn’t seem to have been there so what should I do? Splash out on a new video card just to play WOW when I know that I’m only going to return to it at random intervals and hope that I’ll end up playing other games or see this as a sign to resist the evil addictiveness of WOW and stick with the hardware that I’ve got that means that I can’t play it?

Admittedly I have bigger issues in my life yet this seems to be spinning in my head right now. I really ought to get a life!

Oh boy. My last blog entry was on the 17th of January of this year and somehow I lost my way with this particular little project. Talk about writers block!

Mind you, we’re still in 2008 so I’m thinking that it’s not too late to fire up this blog and get it back on track again. I enjoyed my previous time with it and I’m going to view the time off in between as , well as simply a holiday recharging my batteries before thrusting forward with new wordly wisdom., Yup, and if you believe in the wisdom bit then you’ll believe in anything!

Looking forward to blogging again.

As a once divorced person myself I found this news item quite an interesting read. It’s a UK survey claiming that 59% of women and 51% of men don’t love their spouses.

Those make astonishing figures but I’m always a little careful to take surveys that seriously even though they are meant to be representative of the population. But certainly it’s no surprise to see that couple’s are struggling because the divorce rate is so high and presumably there aren’t any figures concerning unmarried couples with long-term relationships and the break up rates that affect them.

Still, anyone who’s been in a relationship of any length knows that it can’t stay perfect all of the time and that there can be periodic difficulties. I think that the secret there is to realize this and appreciate the value of always working at the relationship when we feel able. Sometimes it’s not within us to do this because of our mindset at the time but there has to be the resolve to get past that and rebuild because a relationship lost is normally gone forever as one or both partner’s will inevitably move on.

I have one failed marriage behind me and I’m not proud of that especially as we have loved children from that marriage. I’m now married for the second time and reading such astonishing figures like this remind me of the importance of always working at the relationship and not risking letting it slip away.

I’ve just been looking at some Youtube videos online and when I do that I quite often take a look at the comments underneath to see what other people make of the video clip. If there’s one big, enormous thing that I cannot stand it’s when a contributor leaves a comment in text speak. It’s lazy and ignorant.

Text speak originates from text messages with cell phones where because the length of the message is limited and typed on a phone pad it’s become the normal thing to abbreviate the words. So something like “see you at eight mate” becomes “c u at 8 m8″.

But why oh why oh why oh why are there idiots out there who with a full keyboard and computer in front of them insist on using such text language for others to read when they leave comments? Don’t they realize that any sensible person will disregard what they’ve said because it’s so awkward to read? It’s as bad (if not worse) than when people do write with proper words but have never heard of paragraphs. Then the reader is confronted with a large amount of text that is just one big blur in front of the eyes.

Just because someone is typing on an internet forum or whatever it happens to be it’s no excuse to not make a proper effort in ensuring that it is reasonably easy for other people to read.

Here we are then comfortably into 2008 and it’s been a while since I last blogged. I don’t know why it’s been so long but December certainly was a busy month for us (as it is for everyone) and it’s amazing that we’re nearly half-way through January. I sense another year of my life slipping by much too quickly!

We said goodbye to our broken Dodge Caravan today as it got towed away to the metal scrap dealer. I almost felt emotional when the guy with the tow truck said that this time tomorrow it will have been though the crusher. Okay, I didn’t really feel emotional because that would be silly but I certainly miss not having the vehicle to use. It was so roomy and now we just have a regular family sized car that moves us around but not much else. One day we’ll get another nice mini van.