Wow December 10th, 2007
It’s been a year and a half since I’ve posted. I’m sorry.
I guess some updates are in order!
Let’s start at April 2006, the last time I posted. These are the Cliff’s Notes versions of what has happened to me since then.
I graduated from ASU with honors. I made Chancellor’s List the final semester in college, while under the biggest workload I had at college (18 hours of HARD classes) while playing Battlefield and WoW 30-40 hours per week. I worked the entire summer of 2006 at YMCA Camp Hanes, unsuccessfully starting my career. I applied for 275 jobs in 2006. I was still playing World of Warcraft religiously at this point, at least 40 hours a week (no joke). I was a hardcore raider and made it to the top of my server with my warrior. I also ate fast food every.single.day and gained a little bit more weight since I graduated from ASU. I was up to about 275 pounds at the end of 2006, approximately 70 pounds more than my freshman year at ASU.
Early in 2006 (before I graduated from ASU) I applied for a position with computers at the City of Winston-Salem. I applied for multiple positions actually but this one is the topic of the story. Throughout 2006, I kept getting random calls from the City saying I had made it to the next phase of this and that. In August I find out that the job is with the Winston-Salem Police Department. I go in and fill out a 25 page application which requires the most information I’ve ever had to come up with about myself, including my neighbors, my neighbors addresses and phone numbers, and every single residence I’ve ever lived in among other things. A police background check is unbelievably intensive. Even non-sworn positions for the police department require the same background check as the officer positions. In October I get a call saying I’ve made it to the Interview stage.
I go in for an interview and do very well in it. The police deparment is pretty crazy from what I had seen at this point. Keep in mind that I had been sitting at home playing WoW all day and working when the YMCA Camp needed me during all of this, applying for 1-10 jobs per day with no success. The police department then commenced the phase 2 background check which is calling approximately 15 of my relatives and friends and asking them very specific questions about me and my lifestyle/work ethics. I go in for a follow up interview for the police department and answer about fifty extremely personal questions about my lifestyle.
I sit at home for months. I applied for the job in April of 2006 and had the interview in October. By December I still hadn’t heard back. I sat at home and played Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence all the way through, Shadow of the Colossus till the end, Final Fantasy XII through the end, and at least 1 other game through the end that I can’t remember. I had taken a break from World of Warcraft and raiding during the fall and winter of 2006.
In early January, I get a call from the police department: I got the job!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I get super excited and then have to take a drug test. I pass it easily, but then the interesting part comes: I have to take a federal-level polygraph test to get my job. False-positives or any sort of anomaly on the test means I don’t get the job. That’s right, if I don’t lie and it says I did, I still don’t get the job. I worry myself sick over this thing. I go for the polygraph and they hook up all sorts of tubes and shit to me. I take it and pass it. PHEW!!!!!!!!!!!
So I start my job in January 2007. While trying to troubleshoot my computer, I accidently rip the pins out of Tabetha’s CPU trying to get the heatsink off. I give her mine and that leaves me without a computer for a couple of months (the longest I had ever been without a computer since 1995).
My job is freaking crazy. I learn more about computers in the first 3 months of my job then I’ve learned in all 4 years at ASU. I learn a ton about the Windows OS and about domains and domain controllers. I learn how to troubleshoot network problems in Active Directory domains, I become a master of Dell laptops and desktops and I realize how little I knew about computers before I got this job.
I bought a 2005 red Dodge SRT-4 in June of 2007. The dealership sold me the car with a fucked up clutch assembly but I didn’t notice because I don’t have a lot of experience with manuals. I tried to get them to fix it since it hadn’t been a month since I bought the car and they refused. I had to hire a lawyer to threaten them with a lawsuit to get my car fixed. They finally settled by fixing the far for $400 instead of $1,500. I was satisfied with the result even though it should have been fixed for free. I would like to take the time to say that Flow Saturn of Greensboro, North Carolina are the cheating bastards who ripped me off on my transmission. I hope Abrigodebomba is at the top of Google so anyone searching for these conmen will see this. Other than this sour experience, I love my car. It’s insanely fast (sorry, but your new Toyota V6 isn’t fast) and has brought me great joy in driving to work everyday. I do miss having enough money leftover each month to buy a Playstation 3 every 30 days though. I had to have a reliable car and the way I see it I might as well buy a fast one before I have 10 kids (yes, 10).
In June of 2007 I proposed to my now fiancee Tabetha. It was pretty badass, you should have been there. I was like hey there’s some rabbits over in the grass. Then she came outside on the deck and bam, bling in the face. She said yes and we’re getting married in April 2008!! We’re having a small wedding (like 15 people small), then going on a honeymoon in Denver, Colorado, and then having a reception for our families when we return.
I started playing World of Warcraft again since The Burning Crusade expansion came out. I level my warrior and priest to 70 and create an Arena Cage-fighting team called The Strike Team, named after Vic Mackey’s team in The Shield. We fight for months in the arena every week and become one of the top teams in our Battlegroup. My priest and warrior started out with really shitty gear (as did my brother’s mage, who was also on the team). We basically turned chicken shit into chicken salad. By the time I quit WoW for good, we were ranked 150th out of thousands upon thousands of teams. Many weeks we would go undefeated by raw skill. During the summer of 2007 I quit World of Warcraft for good, much to the chagrin of my arena team, but to the utter joyment of Tabetha. WoW was a huge part of my life for years and to quit it all of a sudden was very odd. I found myself wondering what people do who don’t play MMORPGs.
When I got my job in January 2007, I went on a lifestyle change (if you call it a diet, it implies it’s only temporary…I learned that in Health during my senior year at ASU 
). I went from eating 5,000 calories per day down to 1,000-1,500. My body went into starvation mode and I didn’t lose any weight for about 3-4 months despite my efforts to lose weight. I had to lose weight. I was 210 pounds during my freshman year at ASU and I had grown to a disgusting 275 pounds by eating so much.
Then one week I got on the scale and was 10 pounds lighter.
My body exited its starvation mode, and in the following months I lost 65 pounds.
Right now I’m down to 210 pounds, the same weight I was in high school or freshman year at ASU.I’ve also gained about 5-10 pounds of muscle (which is way more than you think) which I am enjoying greatly!!!
Recently I’ve bought and completed Bioshock for PC which will undoubtedly be Game of the Year for 2007. Nothing can touch it. There is such a thing as videogame perfection and this is it. I’ve also played and beat Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode 1, and Half-Life 2: Episode 2 for PC. I never played HL2 when it came out originally so when The Orange Box released I was in for a major shock. Fucking amazing game. The episodes 1 and 2 are incredible as well. Portal and Team Fortress 2 are so funny and fun that The Orange Box became my hobby for a month.
Halo 3 launched and was disappointing. Good game, but not great. The gameplay was good but the graphics and story sorta sucked ass. After playing Bioshock that tends to happen though. I’m currently playing Mass Effect for XBox 360. Cool game, but not as polished as Knights of the Old Republic. I’m certain that by the time Mass Effect 2 comes out the kinks in the game engine will be ironed out.
It is pretty amazing how cheap computer hardware is now. You can buy a monster CPU for $150, 2 GB of ram for $30, and a powerhouse videocard for $120-$210. With the recent release of the nvidia GeForce 8800 GT this effect of cheap price with powerful results has increased at an alarming rate.
Again, I apologize for the severe lack of posts from myself and hope to keep contributing to the Internet even if it’s simply a record of how a group of people’s lives change through the years. Looking back on earlier posts on Abrigodebomba is like jumping on a time machine and I hope to continue this awesome feeling forevers.
