AND THE LACK THEREOF*

*we put the "mmm" in communism

about

This is the personal blog of Tim. Here, Tim writes on anything he has enough inspiration to finish a post on. That usually ends up being matters of science, pop culture, technology, religion, and philosophy.

This blog is around nine years old, which is over a third of Tim's current age. Back in 2003, it was called "Of Tim: Tim's life - or lack thereof", and it was as bad as you might expect the blog of a freshman in high school to be. Tim hopes that his writing is a little better, these days.

Tim welcomes any input that you, the dear reader, might have. Comments are very much appreciated, especially if you have a dissenting opinion. If you'd like to learn more about Tim, you might want to see his facebook or google+.

Also: Tim is a very avid consumer of various sorts of music. You may be interested in his playlists!

^^
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FINE! FINE! Stop screaming at me to post! Sheeesh! Alright, here's a not so quick recap of my life during this wonderful break. Heeheehee

I really needed this time of rest. I've been getting plenty of sleep, finally, and I think I can hold out till the winter break. Hopefully. I fear the coming of school, but, such is life. I've finally been able to hang out with Daniel a bit. He spent the night over here, had fondue with my family [mmmm] and then I spent two more days at his house, while my parents are off to go get our new car from Kentucky. [we bought our new Subaru Outback of E-Bay]. In the midst of all this, my brother, Rachel, and I have finished the entire second series of 24. In case you don't know what 24 is, it's a real time show that is 24 episodes, each one hour long. I won't tell you what happened in the show, but, I will say, that's the most addicting and awesome show I've ever watched. We watched all of the episodes in about 6 days. Great stuff.

The Halo LAN party Daniel's hosting again will rock. I got Jonathan to come, so he's been training up and learning about Halo, with, of course, some help from me. I REALLY hope he holds his own, he's not a gamer, and he's going to a party with a dozen of us gamers, but, there are plenty of people for eazy prey out there, hopefully. He's only got till Saturday to learn how to play, but, he seems willing enough. I was surprised he decided to join us, in any case.

A side note: January 12 will rock. I'm not at liberty to say anything, though. WOOT!

Okay, next topic: presents for Christmas! I got 100 bux in Best Buy gift cards, Elder Scrolls 3, the RotK soundtrack, a Jars of Clay CD, a new wallet [my old one went through the wash 3 times this month. heehee], a watch [snort], and some other small things, like candy, and stuff. It was a cool Christmas! The RotK soundtrack, especially, is amazing. I love the music for LotR!

Ah well, these two weeks have been great. Happy New Years, all.
>.<
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WARNING: This is a lot of ranting.

I dunno what happened, but come 9:00, a mood swing came upon me and I feel like absolute crap. I have an idea why, and I feel like rambling. It's 11:45, and I would talk to a friend over IM if I could, but, none are available. Despite the fact that Christmas break finally arrived, I lie here incredibly anxious. About what? Absolutely nothing. For some reason, I started think about my past. 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. My equivelant to the "Dark Ages". Most of you don't know that much about me, and I am to blame for that. I don't tend to share much about my past. Most of you probably don't know I was born in Mississippi. Or that I had white hair when I was 4. Or that I have 2 brothers, and 2 dogs. Little stuff like that. But this part of my past defined me in a way I really couldn't expect at the time. How could one game do that to a person? You might be amazed.

The name of the game: SK, short for Shattered Kingdoms. That genre of games is defined as a MUD, a (M)ulti (U)ser (D)ungeon. These games are text only - no pictures, or sound, just words on the screen. But those words mean so much. The game is defined as an RPG, a Role-Playing Game. For those of you who don't know, these games are the most addicting, they have the largest player base, and they just get better and more addictive with time. In them, you play a role, in a sense, you act out as another person. These games vary, from modern, to futuristic, to medieval, fantasy, star wars, you name it, it's there. SK happened to be fantasy.

My dream come true, when my best friend Daniel introduced it to me in 5th grade. I don't blame him at all for my getting addicted, because neither of us knew exactly what the game was. For the most part, at the time, we just played so we could gain levels and get our characters real strong and powerful. Very innocent. But somehow, it grew more and more fun. I'd get on after skool, on my old dial up modem, and hog the phone line for 6 hours. Then my parents would kick me off because they realized I had been using up the phone line all day, and the cycle repeated itself. Come 6th grade, I homeschooled, and we had moved into our new house. We remained on dial up, but they resolved the solution with two cell phones, which helped them, but not the people trying to call us. By then my life consisted mostly of my schoolwork, SK, and my 4 or 5 friends that also homeschooled.

Everything continued as normal, until the summer after 6th grade. I discovered the wonder of "females" in my reality world, and realized that being the addict I was, no such thing would ever be meant for me. But of course, you can get married in SK. Here lay my true downfall, as it were. Now, in the game, I played a rather respectable character known as Salaria. He was a priest, as well as the high priest of his "diety". I took a lot of pride in him. But when this wonder of "females" came into my life, I realized, I need to get rid of this addiction. So, after two hard years of work, I just deleted him. No turning back. Cold turkey. I didn't look back for another 6 months.

But, a month or two into my 7th grade of school, I became restless. Girls weren't paying attention to me, despite the fact I'd given up SK. And, one bored weekend, I created another character. It stayed perfectly innocent, killing for levels, etc., until a month or three later. I decided I'd try and find my good old character a girlfriend. Now do understand, I had no intention of doing what RPG gamers called "MUD Sex", which is, if you don't understand that, is basically cyber sex. And I never did, I feared it like the plague, and thus I avoided it completely. But I got him married, and I was happy. But the problem is: by this point, I was back up to playing 4 hours a day. Once the summer came, approaching 8th grade, I created 2 more characters. And played them all. One particular character, I wanted to get him a girlfriend. Here I describe why this game is so disgusting.

I WAS that character. In every aspect, I made him like me, and made him what I wish I could be. Now when I made a character exactly like me and my desires, I was prone to be attached. So I became attached. But then when I actually treat that character's feelings as my own, then it becomes much more problematic. He felt pain, I felt pain. He felt rejected, I felt rejected. So when I stumble upon a potential female I could mate him up with, and she isn't really very accepting, well, I didn't take it too well. I'll just leave that I got sick for a few days with no illness in particular. So when, at this point, my very health, besides the fact I never ate, is in danger, would this not wake someone up? Apparantly not.

Now, with nothing to do except sleep, eat, and SK, I played 18 hours a day. Removing days I went to my friend's houses, and days I had to work with stuff, that leaves me about 50 hours a week minimum, on average about 75 hours a week. Calculate 75 hours a week to an entire summer, using 4 weeks a month, and stratching out to the beginning of 8th grade, that's WAY over 1000 hours, almost to 1200. 1200 hours, one game.

I never really planned on quitting. But Daniel, Jesse, Emma, and I went to Word of Life that summer, for a week. This is a Christian camp, that teaches Christian principles. And when they tell you, that you should be living your life for God, I kinda thought "Wait a second. I'm not doing that." Spending And thus, I shrugged my shoulders, and went on. Daniel, however, realized what we were doing. All day and night for a game? A game? A week after camp, he quit. He strongly encouraged me to do so, as well, but I didn't until a month after. But that month I continued playing was absolute horror. I was addicted to the game, but the addiction just wasn't satisfied, but it's not like you can play more than 18 hours a day. So I just went on. But then I realized "Wait a second. A: This isn't pleasing God. B: This isn't pleasing my best friend. C: It isn't pleasing me. D: It isn't helping me, God, or anyone else." With a good bit of help from Daniel, I stopped.

I deleted all my characters with a one day notice to all my fellow players. I kept contact with two of the people I played with, however. One of them, Jaqcueline, whom one of my characters married, was never addicted in the first place, and only continues playing in her small amount of spare time, but she bothers less and less. The other, whom I'll call Shabbu, just grows more into the game. I can't talk to him anymore, because he is always busy RolePlaying with his fellow players. The affect of the game.

Before the end of 8th grade, I did go back, once. "Shabbu" convinced me to go back once. But I just wasn't interested. This, I would consider, a miracle from God. A moment before I entered the name in, I couldn't wait to start playing again. That same hunger was in me from before. But I played for 2 hours. I logged out. And I just forgot.

I hate thinking back to that time, ashamed of what I did, or, what I didn't do. I wasted so much time, so much of other people's time playing it. I still feel it's effects reverberating in my life. The only good thing I retain from it is literary skill. My vocabulary was widened a HUGE amount, as well as my writing skill.

I still wonder, sometimes. Did those players know they died to a 12 year old? When I told my player friends my age, they told me: "I thought you were 21...."

Thank you for taking the time to listen to my rant.

Note: That 1200 hours was only one summer. I spent approximately 4000 hours of my life on this game. 4000 hours, or 167 days, or 24 weeks. In exact timing, I played 23 weeks, 5 days, and 16 hours.
O.o
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My apologies, I haven' posted recently, due to the lack of my computer. PSU died, again. [Yes Benjamin, that means your friends at AnAndTech were correct.] Jonathan has his laptop here, so that will be my medium henceforth until my PSU arrives.

Oh my. I just discovered AIM on these Macs. That's wonderful.

Not much has happened in my life that I can really remember, though I am screwed for German. I daresay I might not pass that class. I'm doing fine, A's and such in all my other classes, but, German....grrrr. I've actually started trying, too.
O.o
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Quick post from skool. Gonna go over to Ben's tonight, Sam, Weilin, Jared, and Zach will be there, so it should be fun. I'm bringing my Xbox and renting a copy of Halo so we can LAN. I'm bringing some ther random food-related items, too.

I did do all those push ups and crap, and I'm disgusted at how out of shape I am. The way I used to do it, is I'd do like 50 or 60 sit ups in a row, the do 20 or 30 push ups, and just repeat the process until I kinda died. I could only do a total of 75 crunches and 40 push ups. That's not too cool. But I suppose I'm better off than I could be.
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Well, tonight has been full of chatting to all my friends and such, it's been very pleasant. Ben's having a party tomorrow, so that should be lots of fun! Haven't gone to anyones house in a long while. Which brings me to my main worry of th day.

I believe I'm getting a bit....fat.

It really disgusts me, but, I realized this today. It horrified me beyond anything else, so, no more lunches for me, and I am gonna start working out at night again.

In 6th grade, every night, I'd do like 100 some push ups and 150 sit ups. It got me in shape, and I loved it, but, working out for 6 months, 3 years ago, isn't very helpful NOW. I'm gonna get back into it, and hopefully, it will sotp this rather horrifying process of being out of shape. Hopefully I can actually get into a rhythm. Hopefully.
O.o
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I'm posting from skool, at the moment. I use my study halls to go to the Math Lab, which has some 20 G3's in here. [For those of you who don't know, G3's are mid-range macintosh computers] Anyways, I've been pretty bad about posting. Time hasn't been very kind to me as of late.

Wednesday was the same old deal, nothing of great importance, though it does mark that it's less than one week till RotK! ^^ I can't wait. I downloaded a lot of Halo movies that I lost a while back in my format. It's been very amusing to watch them. ::sigh:: If only I had the skill to mod an xbox. Oh well! Maybe if I ever decided to bring up the money for the chip, I could. But for now, I just remain a Halo phreek.

Today is Thursday, which is thoroughly dissapointing, becase I could have sworn yesterday was Thursday. Which means today would have been Friday....except its not. So I have to endure today and tomorrow of skool. That will be.......difficult.

Random note: I despise one button mouses. Every mac in this skool has a one button mouse, and it's awful. Death to them all! These mouses are optical, but, that's not very special anymore.
O.o
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Short post tonight, but I've got stuff to be doing.

Went to skool with a wonderful 7 hours of sleep. I rearranged my room, probably for the final time. Gota homework and sleep to get to, so I'm off.
O.O
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Yes. You may notice the new title. This one will be used sparingly, but it fits my situation ALL too well. We'll start on Friday.

So I went over to Sams, we played games, we had fun, and at 2:00 PM on Saturday I went home. I decorated my house with CHRISTMAS STUFF!!!! for 3 hours, then Daniel came over. If we've ever beaten a game to death in one night, we definately did it last 'night'. We started play Return of the Kind at 6:00, we beat the game by about 1 AM, then leveled all of the characters and unlocked all of the levels and crap. Seriously. 13 hours straight of one game is like "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH". Yes, we went to sleep at 7:00. And woke up at 8. One hour of sleep. ONE HOUR OF SLEEP. ONE HOUR OF SLEEP!!!! Yikes.

I took a 6 hour nap earlier, so I'm a little better now.
O.o
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Oh, I forgot to mention one thing. My survey has finally fallen apart. People took it twice, or took it when in a position of spite against me. Do understand something: I expected crappy ratings, but I KNOW that I'm not the ugliest person on this planet. Apparantly 6 people think differently. That really, just, disgusts me. I was going to take this survey seriously, but, too many people have decided to crap it up. I considered making another one, but, it too is destined to be rigged.
O.o
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Wow. Combine:

-2 snowballs [one down the shirt]
-Severe dissapointment
-Colette [:P]
-4 hours of sleep
-Bio test
-Semi-crappy treatment
-Me being awful at lying

= Crappiest day at skool known to man.

I'm still happy though. But wow. this truly was the crappiest day of skool so far. Nothing interesting happened. It's Thursday, though, which is cool. yAy for crappy days. Not really. I'm very hungry right now, but I'm not tired. At all. Which rocks. It feels like Friday. But it's NOT. Only one more day till the weekend.

I spent 4 hours last night talking to Ben about all manner of Theology, mostly about Jesus. I dunno what impact it had on him, but I kinda know exactly what I believe now. I did before, but I wasn't sure how to transmit that. It was cool, though.

I ripped three Christmas CDs onto my computer, so I've been enjoying them thoroughly. I'll rip one or two more today to give me a wide selection. Christmas music rox.

I need food.
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Tired, my eye hurts, I'm just plain uncormfortable, but that's small stuff. Nothing really happened today, though I broke out the Christmas music, and I've begun the process of converting it all to MP3's onto my computer. It will take a long time, but Christmas music ROX. I haven't begun my homework yet, but that's in the process. Jonathan's back again till Friday-ish, so that's cool. He's probaby collecting stuff that arrived in the mail. He said it was a legal break, but somehow I doubt it. Nothing serious, though.

I'm crapping up everything in skool, I hope I don't fail this marking period. Ugh, such crappiness on my part. I missed a quiz-guade assignment, so at best I can get, oh, 70%. That SUCKS. A LOT. And it was completely wasted too. Suckiness. This was a somewhat crappy day. Took a nap, earlier, so I'm a little dazed.
O.o
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Much better. I got some sleep, ate some food, so my brain is back up and running. The only thing I remember about yesterday is that when I woke up, I looked at the clock, and it said 6:45. Thinking that I was living in California, but hadn't changed the time, I thought "Oh. I have another 12 hours of sleep ahead of me." And that's it.

As for today, it was ok. We were dancing in the snow during lunch, but Boon kicked us out of the Quad. It was awfully amusing. I'm screwing up in a LOT of classes, and fearing the upcoming progress report. ::sigh:: I'll get my grades before the Break, but here's what I'm expecting I'll get...

Bio - B+ or A- ::sigh::
Math - B- or B
PE - A or B, whatever...
German2 - C+ or B-
DDP - A
Global History - B or B+

Basically, CRAP. I fear terribly. I'm hoping I can do some miracle work, but, I doubt it.

Random conversation that I thought was hilarious:

Me: Dude. That's COOL like the other side of the pillow.
Alex: OMG! I used to flip my pillow over all the time!!!
Me: Same here, but I guess I'm not such a hot head anymore.

I am SO the master of puns. Another random thing I said...

Me: You're as hot as my AMD Athlon XP 1800 on a summers night.
Alex: Is that hot?
Me: That's about 48 degrees Celsius. Or 140 degrees Farenheit.
Alex: SWEET!

This is all joking, you know.

Fun day. I spent some of it setting up a DVD rack for my mom and dad. They finally decided to get a rack for their huge collection. Nothing happened, though. Good day.
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What a blurry day. Running on 4 hours of sleep and no food, I took a nap and ate a lot of food when I got home. I don't really remember anythiing. But I'm tired again, and my homework aint finished.

Added another comic to the links section.

Not much went down today, but even if something did, I couldn't remember it now. I really should go do my homework.