Well, since I can't sleep, I'll postulate the Law of Conservation of Douchebags!

For whatever reason today has been, more or less, a complete waste of time. Usually, when I say this, there's a reason. I slept in, I goofed off, something extraordinary and out of my control happened...

Today however, has been odd, and I'm literally at a loss.. lol.

I woke up today and felt fairly ill. I sometimes feel off until I get some food and coffee into me. That's been usual for me since I could remember. Mornings were never really my friend. Anyways, had a cup of coffee. Started getting dressed, and then felt chilled. Fine. Put on a sweater, started heading out to work. Get to the bus stop, and my stomach turns. Make it back to the house just in time to "release" everything. Struggle to accomplish anything while making constant trips to the bathroom all afternoon. Started to feel fatigued at 5:30 PM. Managed to nap a bit... which was a mistake. I don't nap for a reason.. because now I'm wide awake at 2:30 AM local.

Awesome.

This is exactly the kind of stuff I need to put up with when I need to be effective at work.

On another note, I've been WoW-free for roughly two months. Kind of interesting to say it like that. I gave up the game to focus more on real life and work, but its interesting to look at it now as a quasi-outsider trying to keep in touch with friends in-game and keeping up to tabs with the events and occurances that happen in-game. I suppose the thing I miss the most out of WoW at the moment is bullshitting on vent with my guild. It's an odd thing. Unless you've experienced it in some way, shape, or form, bonding with a gaming group of any kind is a hard thing to explain. You've never actually met any of these people, but you consider them friends, moreso than say a co-worker. I suppose WoW stopped being a "game" for me a long time ago, and more of a task that needed to be completed on a weekly basis, like TA'ing, or experimental work - probably why I was effective at the organizational/leading portions of the "raiding treadmill".

But yeah, I miss the people, moreso than the game. I guess that's what kept me going back all these years. Although, every once and awhile, it is funny when you come across someone that you had dealings with in game that ended badly. It's even funnier when, for example, you come across it randomly. When you recognize a name, or a email address, and you make the connection and figure out that this person is the one that, for whatever reason, went absoultely "emo" over really inconsequential bullshit. Here in my insomniac stupor, I came across an absolute gem:

Sempelis, Zoi Dia Thanatos, Garona.

Now, if someone from my guild, Intrigue on Garona, happens to stumble on this they'll be confused at this point. They won't recognize the name. Why? Because in WoW, you can buy a second chance and anonymity for $25 with a name change. I'll take the time to explain. The guildies with long memories will remember.

When Wrath came out, I leveled my Priest, and leveled quickly since I had quite a bit of foreward knowledge from the beta. I knew where to go, what to kill, what routes to take, etc. I was able to cut alot of corners, so eventually that meant that being ahead of the curve on my server, finding instances at later levels, you ended up running with the same people. That's where I first met Kiexel. Yes, Kiexel. The older guildies are now probably snickering to themselves.. lol. I eventually got Kiex into the guild, where after putting my ass on the line repeatedly because he would quit the guild, due to loot issues, a total of four times. The last time he left (at this point under the name Kovacs, because, you know, he must of pissed someone else off, and cribbing names from Watchmen = original!) in a torrent of drama over a legendary mace fragment. People who raided Ulduar in WoW know EXACTLY the kind of drama I'm talking about.

The drama was legendary. He not only quit on the spot, he ranted and raved on his blog about how horrible our guild was, and how we'd never, ever, amount to anything. Essentially how we held him back, yadda yadda (insert typical "I've never really experienced real life, 18 year old bullshit here"). At that point, he dropped off the radar.

Ironically, cleaning out my bookmarks on my laptop, I came across his old blog, which of course, got deleted to hide his asshattery. A quick google search later (because I wanted to read the post again for old times sake) I wasn't able to find the post, but was able to find this:

http://sanctifiedretribution.com/

Turns out, my "friend" decided to get yet another name change (if you're counting, $75 now) and has been raiding on Garona for about two months now. Heh. Apparently he's landed a spot in a top 5 (was top 3, but seeing that I haven't really been online, nor can't be bothered to go check the multitude of "ranking" websites out there, so top 5 is a good guess). Ironically, he used another guild, Divinity, as a loot pinata to gear up to get in, but systematically trashes it on his blog. Same kind of "I need to justify my getting up and leaving to the world, but yet, I won't say a thing to the guild that carried me, because, you know, I'm much better than they are"-type bullshit. Sounds like he's happy now, well, until he gets passed over for loot. You know, life depends on getting a digital sword.

I suppose it just goes to show you, for every good person you meet through gaming, life, etc, there's an equally douchebaggy person to offset them. Probably some sort of cosmic/karmic equivalent of Conservation of Mass or Momentum - Conservation of Douchebags.

As I'm considering how to end this post, I can't help to think how ironic it is that my brother-in-law, whom I met playing MohAA and fixed up with my wife's sister, and the above douchebag are both named Joe.

What's the odds of that?