Get on blizzards level

Hey everyone. It's Tuesday night. As always it's nice and calm, despite some morning thunderstorms, and I had nothing better to do so here I am blogging.

I went riding today. I've been doing a lot of that lately. I mean I have a motorcycle, not like I'm not gonna ride. I did some easier roads today, with less turns and hills so I could keep my speed up. I'm getting pretty good at riding; it's a lot like skiing, I'm starting to feel more confident in the tucks and lay-down turns. It's real chill.

So two posts ago or so I was talking about how interested people seem to be in virtual worlds. I will admit that I've been spending some of my spare time playing World of Warcraft out of pure boredom. Let me clarify something right quick: I am not very good at that game.

Like so many people with no girlfriends devote so much time and effort to making their little fantasy characters the most powerful in the world (of warcraft) and I'm just fucking around killing other players for fun. 

There are people that piss me off because they wanna be (or think they are) pilots when they have no fucking clue what it takes or what it means. Everyone just fucks around and acts like flying a plane is easy and they're gonna waltz into the airport, take the keys to a plane, and go fly to Atlanta. Bottom line they don't fucking know what they're doing nor do they care. Yeah that's how I am with World of Warcraft.

There are some people who are professional World of Warcraft players. People who are so adept at the game that they can produce quantities and qualities of shit and sell it for real money. While doing that, they're learning street-smarts programming so they can effectively play god of the world (of warcraft). Then once they get noticed by the parent company "Blizzard" for cheating the game for monetary benefit, Blizzard fucking hires them. If you can't beat them, recruit them. So the world is really governed by super smart, super efficient, and super nerdy guys who've gone rogue and then joined the ranks of Blizzard.

World of Warcraft is a marvel of computer programming. It should really be one of the 7 wonders of the man-made world. The fact that they literally landscaped hundreds of square miles from nothing, created several independent infrastructures, then made up rules of physics that actually work is incredible. Over ten million people play this game, which creates an active society with a fluctuating economic market. Some people are rich and some people are poor. 

Competition is derived among players, which then makes some players celebrities in the game who are talented enough to defeat everyone. Players who may not be exactly celebrities, but develop "get rich quick" schemes have the power to buy anything in the world (of warcraft) with virtual gold including slaves, who are actually other players that need money! 

Blizzard created like 3 languages so that players from different regions in the (world of warcraft) can't understand each other! After like three years of the games release, almost enough time to explore half of the world, they write more code and make a new planet! And only the most powerful players can access the portal to get there! Shortly after that, fucking Christopher Columbus of Azeroth finds a new continent, and there's even MORE shit to do!

Blizzard wrote like 10,000 years of history. And I mean this shit is DENSE. Blizzard has written a more detailed fictitious history for their world, than human society currently has of it's own. Yeah Skyrim doesn't have shit on Blizzard's level. Blizzard has recreated a universe that is bigger and better than the real one. It's amazing...

And this entire alternative universe is only 10 gigabytes! It's incredible! People have offed themselves because they couldn't handle the reality of the fact that it's just a game. No fucking wonder!

Despite it being just a game, it seems that I am the only person that treats it as such. People live out their life more in the game than in reality. With this game being as ridiculously massive as it is, it's really fun. It provides more entertainment than just about any other game I know of. Like compared to watching TV, this game is awesome.

But compared to riding a motorcycle, flying a plane, throwing a party, liking a girl, or catching up with your bros; World of Warcraft can't keep up because it's not reality. My real life doesn't suck. So I guess that's why I'm able to not take World of Warcraft seriously.

But it is fun. And like the cigarette companies Blizzard is getting billions of dollars, pounds, yen, euros, franks, pesos, etc.  But they fucking deserve it! Blizzard has more patience to create all this shit than the Egyptians did with the pyramids. Having written a few computer programs myself, I can't fathom the headaches derived from writing billions if not trillions of lines of interlocking code to create a near flawless utopia in the minds of 12 million imaginative players.

Hats off to them, really. But I'm done writing this, until next time.

Bike Night

Good evening readers, it's Tuesday night again! I am still convinced that Tuesday nights are just magical. I mow the lawn on Tuesday nights, which is the most work I have to do all week. It's great. But I learned today that Tuesday nights are even better than I thought. Here's why...

I flew today, nothing out of the ordinary besides a plane crash. But on the way home, I was riding my bike, I passed the Cycle Gear store where there was a sportbike rally! It was awesome! Sportbikes all over this place, like Daytona or some shit. So, I had to check it out.

I really discovered what it's like to be a biker. Only someone with a bike which they love understands how enjoyable it is to pull your bike in and park in the line of bikes on display, then see passersby, bikers or pedestrians, check out your sexy bike. While chatting with other bikers, I at first was surprised when I saw people walking around my bike. I did a double-take to make sure no one was getting any rotten ideas, but I remembered my bike was on display and people were supposed to check it out.

The look in this one kids eye was awesome. You could tell he was a rider at heart and wished he had a bike that he could bring to bike night just how I did. It was the way I used to look at motorcycles before I had one.

I felt like I was in the Fast and Furious or some shit. Leaning up against my bike talking with other Ninja riders while guys on custom Ducatis do wheelies and drift all over the place. This is the kind of networking I need to get into street racing. Now that I have a Kawasaki Ninja, my chances of leading a successful street racing career have more than tripled. Not really. Honestly I'm fine with just being an average Joe on the track. Anyway Tuesday nights can also be bike nights which just make Tuesday even more awesome than they already are.

I'm liking this blog-every-Tuesday-deal. But tonight I feel like I'm about to pass out. Until next time....

Quality time

What's up world? It's Tuesday night. Tuesday nights are good blog posting nights. So here we are.

I wanted to talk about quality time. It's something that is really hard to acknowledge. It's kind of like a comfortable chair; you only notice it when you really think about it, but if you lack it it's rather petty to really complain about it.

Some people live by the theory that time is money and wasted time is wasted money and thus time should never be wasted. But time is not money. Time and money are two totally different things. I can prove this very easily with two cute little sentences. You can have a bad time, but you can't have bad money. And you can waste money, but you can't waste time. Tweet that shit.

If you're spending some good quality time enjoying yourself, then no one can say you're "wasting time". Walking with you're best friend down a set of railroad tracks just to see where it goes on a summer evening sounds completely unproductive. But if it's producing a good time, it can't be wasted.

Unfortunately, most people don't really recognize quality time. No one sits down like I am right now, and actually reflects on quality time spent and how blessed life can be in general due to such "quality time". I think it's safe to say the average person has plenty of time spent happily and enjoy themselves plenty to keep above depression. But it doesn't seem like many people actually realize it. They carry on with their stressful lives and bitch about EVERYTHING. That's just how the world works.

Another topic that has come to mind just now is the thought of virtual worlds. Americans fucking LOVE virtual worlds. We completely devour that shit! There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of virtual worlds that I could very easily download to my (super fast and expensive) computer. I could explore the virtual expanses for years. Anyone could.

World of Warcraft, EverQuest, Skyrim, RuneScape, Zelda, Diablo, Second Life, are just a few examples of virtual worlds. Each of which contains several gigabytes of data that brings the world to life. Gigabytes are BIG.

Be right back, I'm getting Ramen. That hit the spot. Thanks for waiting.

Actually, after eating that I'm kinda tired now and don't really wanna continue this post. Sorry guys, maybe another time I'll finish immortalizing my thoughts on virtual worlds. Until then...

Just biding the time with a motorcycle

What's up world. It's Tuesday night, and if you know me well enough you know that Tuesday nights deeply calm me. I've written quite up a good outline on why that is in one of my previous posts. Check it out if you are so interested.

I wanted to write a little bit tonight about riding. Riding is not what I had expected it to be. I had expected it to be a toy. I was expecting a giant expensive toy for my bad-ass self to play with. I thought it'd be something like a seven year old boy getting one of those Hot Wheels looptyloop tracks; something I'd get excited for due to how fucking cool it is. Something where I'd be like "look Mom! Look at how fast it is!" and invite my friends over to come see it just to make them jealous.

Of course that's all part of owning a Ninja, but it's the actual riding part that has given me more happiness than I was exactly anticipating. I basically break down the feeling of riding into two categories.

The first is exactly what I was expecting. Riding is a sport that I could expose myself to and eventually learn, offering a good deal of expensive and dangerous fun. This includes the high intensity aspect of my riding; racing down roads as fast as I can while working on any semblance of technique I could render. It's the fun in seeing a warning sign suggesting not to go over 30mph on a turn, then slowing from 70 to 55 and seeing the pavement three feet away from your helmet. It's the fighter pilot in me. Have a fucking monster, go fast, go hard, or go home. I have such a small but efficient device that can turn me into a missile, so use it.

Then there's the second category of riding, which I was not expecting. This is the aspect that rather caught me off guard. Going fast is the whole point, but you have to go slow on most of the roads closest to me. But even when going slow, through boring neighborhood or park roads, riding is such a satisfying ordeal. I see things differently on a bike versus in a car. In a car people take the most efficient route possible and don't see shit. They see Shelbyville road to and from your house and that's it. Whatever gets them where they need to go. On my bike, it's like exploring. As long as I take the road in the right direction, I'd rather see a new road and take the path untraveled to get me places. Traveling this way in a car is a pain in the ass, on a bike it's extremely satisfying and nostalgic.

Whether it's a new road or not, everything I see from the saddle of my bike somehow flips a switch in my mind and brings a buried memory to the surface. As you could tell from this blog, I really enjoy reminiscing in good memories. It reminds me of how great my life is and my head is completely swarmed with good thoughts. It's euphoric and I feel sorry for people who never find a way to feel the same way. It's also hard to explain, but I can list of examples endlessly.

Just today, I was chasing a train down a side street like the cliche movie ride-off. Being so close to a train, I thought of how crazily excited I would have been at 8 years old (I used to love trains). Simultaneous almost every memory involving a train that I forgot I remembered came to the surface. I was riding down Lucas Road at 35mph thinking of the train set my dad and I played with for hours on end, watching trains go by from the backseat of my mom's car on the way to the grocery store, or pretending to be a train operator on my mountain bike using the sidewalk as tracks. That all stemmed more memories of childhood friends like Nick Hawkins, and the games we used to play. And it only takes a few seconds of this flow of consciousness before it feels like my head is light with everything good.

Then I pass a street sign that reads "River Bluff Rd" which directs a new flow of happy thoughts to the surface. This causes me to remember when I first rode my mountain bike to Doug's house, passing a road called "Lake Bluff" at the bottom of a hill, and wondering what a 'bluff' is. I was familiar with the fictional Tauren Capital City of "Thunder Bluff" which had quite similar scenery to the Golf Course adjacent to Lake Bluff Circle, which was from a videogame my friend Alex and I took a bit too seriously. From there I remembered many good times with Doug and Alex and even took into account how often I would ride my bike from Doug's, Alex's, and my house.

Less than a minute after passing River Bluff Rod, I came across a warehouse that reminded me of a warehouse I once drove past on the way to my first high school party. Then I remember once flying over that same house and recognized it from the air, and in the same flight flew over another party house, Dani's. Then for the third time, my stream of insight shot at machine gun speed with every good memory of parties I'd forgotten I remembered between those two houses. And then settled at a stop light with the cozy thought of having such a successful party career through high school, and pleasantly thanking myself for not letting it get in the way of college, or my master goal.

And for the time spent riding when I'm not trying to kill myself, those three paragraphs describe what's going on in my head constantly on my bike. The overwhelming amount of happy thoughts make it satisfying and blissful incomparable to most anything I've done. Even flying.

Most pilots say that when flying they experience the same stress-free mental heaven I'm describing. However, I for some reason don't. Flying is on a whole different level of satisfaction to me. I'm not one to usually go into "fate" or "destiny" as a means of logical explanation, but I think the reason I love flying enough to devote my life to it without being able to even explain to myself why, is because I'm simply meant to do it. The universe simply designates me a pilot. That is what I am. That is what I do.

It fits into place with what I wrote about "home", and that I just belong in a cockpit. I don't do anything as fluently and easily and pridefully as flying. Whether it's showing my girlfriend how to work the APU and generator on a Boeing 737NG, or talking to a Colonel in the Air Force about ratings, I display to everyone that I am clearly an aviator without necessarily trying.

In short, I can't think of a reason I would spend so much energy and effort doing something when it's not a hobby, or relaxing, or blissful like the reasons people ride, golf, paint, and why a lot fly. I feel like I do it because it's just what I do. And I won't be truly sound on the inside if I'm not doing it for the rest of my life.

I'm like an archerfish. This particular Southeast Asian tropical fish eats by shooting water out of its mouth in a narrow stream, sniping an insect off a tree ten feet above the water. This fish is similar in size and shape to the rest of the fish in the stream, and could easily just eat worms and larvae and frog eggs like the rest of the population. But it decides to shoot water out of its mouth at its dinner. Why? It's just what it does. Like lightning bugs flashing, flamingos standing on one foot, or the Easter Island Natives making statues.

And, I doubt the universe would make me an aviator if I wasn't able to become one of the worlds most successful airline pilots. I'm positive I have the ability to get a pilot slot in two years, and a lifestyle of ten hours between each city. I'm just biding the time with a motorcycle.