Don't Be An Ass - Generic Template

Following is a more generic version of my previous "Don't Be An Ass" post. This version is applicable to a broad spectrum of current human events.

Taking a cue from Wil Wheaton's motto "Don't Be A Dick" I've decided my motto is "Don't Be An Ass." I'm just about annoyed with extremism in any form and lack of respect for honorable cultural traditions.

To one who takes offense at cultural traditions of honor and greeting: you ruin your own chances for affecting cultural change when you get over-rabid. Chill out and be more Dahlai Lama. Laugh and enjoy life in spite of; love the time that you are in, here, now. That's how you win.

Focusing on injustice and berating your "enemy" only makes you bitter and friendless - it doesn't change anyone's mind, quite the opposite - you cement the polarization and isolate yourself when you make yourself out to be an enemy instead of a compassionate friend.

Lead by example. Drop the negativity. Drop the criticism of others. Love others right exactly where they are in the journey of life. Pave the way for improvements to come behind you - smooth and even roads make far better advances to human culture than walls of brick and stone. This journey is bigger than you and me. Are there cultural traditions that say you should not be there? Break tradition - do it anyway with joy in your heart and happiness on your face no matter what reaction comes, and so continue to smooth the path for those to follow in your steps.

Live Free. Free to be who you want to be. Go for it. Step into the water and BE. What's stopping you? The person you just screamed at for ___________ (performing a cultural gesture of respect / admiration / affection / honor)? Wow. Just wow. Lay down the brick & mortar - we don't need a Berlin Wall between "sides" - trade it for building cross-cultural bridges to understanding and encouraging human growth. 

While you were standing there spitting obscenities, some of us went around your road block and went on ahead without you. Learn about the meaning behind another culture's gestures - and then accept and reciprocate with grace.

Don't Be An Ass.

Don't Be An Ass

Taking a cue from Wil Wheaton's motto "Don't Be A Dick" I've decided my motto is "Don't Be An Ass." I'm just about annoyed with extreme feminists (and all extremists actually but lately the feminism kick has been plastered around with annoying crap from all sides being bandied about).

As a female who works quite happily in a male-dominated field, thank you very much, I say to extreme feminists: you ruin your own cause when get over-rabid. Chill out and be more Dahlai Lama. Laugh and enjoy life in spite of; love the time that you are in, here, now. That's how you win.

Focusing on injustice and berating your "enemy" only makes you bitter and friendless - it doesn't change anyone's mind, quite the opposite - you cement the polarization when you make yourself out to be an enemy instead of a compassionate teacher.

Lead by example. Drop the negativity. Drop the criticism of others. Love others right exactly where they are in the journey of life. Pave the way for improvements to come behind you - smooth and even roads make far better advances than walls of brick and stone. This journey is bigger than you and me.

Live Free. Free to be who you want to be. Go for it.  What's stopping you?  The guy you just screamed at for holding the door and now he's crying? Wow. Just wow. Lay down the brick & mortar - we don't need a Berlin Wall between "sides" - trade it for paving a pathway to understanding and encouraging human growth.

While you were standing there spitting obscenities, some of us went on ahead without you.

Don't Be An Ass.

Reliability

Existential crisis:

Why have I pursued drafting & engineering all these years? I began to question myself recently and at first I feared that after all these years of yearning, striving, and finally achieving, that I had done it only out of stubbornness to follow my teenage vow of rebellion against my parents.

I was quite alarmed to think that I had perhaps wasted my time in pursuit of a vain goal. But as I continued to think on these things for days, weeks, and months, I rediscovered the origin of allure.

Control, rules, order, precision - these are the qualities that govern technical drawings. And this world of order is astoundingly beautiful to me. Everywhere in my life I have always sought order and logic, and viewed intuition  and feeling with a skeptical eye, not trusting in concepts born of emotion.

Even as a child I sought order and structure. Where there were rules, I was adamant that everyone follow them exactly- even to the point of being loyal only to the rules, not to my friends. If a friend broke a rule, I was the first to correct them or tattle. (I was not a likable child!)

The detail laid out in drafting, instructions that could be followed and relied upon, with no room for deception or hypocrisy or doubt - it was a comforting world that appealed greatly to me as I ran from the terror of superstition.

So here resides Logic and Order. This is why I love drafting and engineering. Rules must be followed. Consequences are immediately apparent. Emotion is superfluous, entirely unneeded.

I can count on a technical drawing to speak to me logically, to communicate instructions in detail. Rules live here that can be followed, and that also can be questioned and subsequently explained. There is reason behind every line, every letter. Extraneous information is eradicated. I can rely on engineering drawings (or corrections are absolutely welcomed when they are flawed).

In retrospect, I do not wonder that I find such great comfort in that.

Images sourced from Flickr, no known copyright restrictions: [First] "image from page 873 of "Appleton's dictionary of machines, mechanics, engine-work, and engineering" (1861)". [Second] "image from page 807 of "Modern mechanism, exhibiting the latest progress in machines, motors, and the transmission of power, being a supplementary volume to Appletons' cyclopaedia of applied mechanics" (1892)"

For my friend who left Oklahoma years ago, here is a familiar cicada song, courtesy Wikipedia.

These guys sing to me of summer. Their song heralds bare feet in hot grass, dry stream beds with puddles hiding wily crawfish, wild grapevine swings, resting on the grass with the Milky Way glowing faintly across the blackness overhead, lightning bugs along the tree line, and halo'ed sodium lights, cold lemonade in a thin walled wave-bedecked glass. This chorus is the song of bliss.

Girls, Creativity, and Misguided Societal Pressures

Two posts on Facebook that I reshared hit me in a eureka moment - combined into one important concept.

Constantly making verbal observations to a young girl that she is pretty is not a compliment. Instead this is subtlety telling her that her primary value is her looks: her appeal as a mate so that she can attract a suitable male to support her, ostensibly because she is incapable of supporting herself.

And in turn, when she internalizes this idea at a young age, she becomes angry inside at both the message of her being inferior and incapable of self-support (which her own heart and mind know as untrue!), and also for having suppressed her own entirely human and natural scientific exploratory interests of childhood at the behest of parents, other relatives, or peers.

At worst, out of jealousy she then becomes cruel in turn to her peers that haven't been subjected to the same indignity, criticizing their lack of self-consciousness when they are far more interested in frogs and kittens than in catching the attention of a boy, and thus spreading a horrid viral mental disease of female domestication. In some circles, this female passive-aggressive behavior has been identified as bullying.

Look, it is okay to be pretty. Good grooming is important to both females and males; grooming reduces disease and fosters social bonds so that we can function in society. But handsome looks are far secondary to being capable, intelligent, and creative.

Tell her how smart she is. Answer her questions about how the world works, about animals, insects, reproduction, and the color of the sky. And if you don't know the answers, take her to the library or help her use Google search. Praise her curiosity.

Don't set too close limits. Let her push her boundaries, even at the risk of danger. It is far more satisfying (and more beneficial to our species overall) for a human to live a short dangerous life filled with exploration, than a long safe one ensconced in a locked castle.

College Decisions

Enamored of paper and pencil and gadgets and gizmos since childhood, when I was about 12 years old, I decided I wanted to be an architect. I found out some ten years later I liked structural or mechanical design much better.

I had a small scholarship I never used because it wasn't enough to pay for everything and feed me too.

I still wish I would have followed my friend to the Army. She is a mechanic now. And she has unused college money that she has no desire to ever use - she just wanted the on-the-job training.

For purchasing two $60 textbooks and honing my skills on the computer I'm doing far better than the useless associate degree I got 8 years ago.

Message to students: if you think you "have" to go to college just because that's what you've been told a bazillion times, ask yourself why. If it's just about earning more money and you have to take out loans to do it, explore other possibilities before you go into debt that is going to overreach the income.

And if you're going for a two-year degree, do not take business administration or anything generic like that. Huge waste of money. It should be a crime for two-year colleges to even offer that "major." If you can only do a two-year program, focus on a marketable skill.

Or start with a two-year skill program so you can actually earn a living while you then pursue the real four-year college degree. If I could go back in time:

1. Go Army the day I turned 18, learn a trade
2. Work full time and actually earn enough money to pay rent & buy food
3. While simultaneously attending a real four-year college as a night student, fully paid by Army benefits
4. Be the engineer I wanted to be

Education Reform

There has been a buzz about online college classes, and the potential for education to be self-directed. I was going to save this post as a draft and continue working on it, but I just saw that Big Beacon is having a twitter discussion about Engineering Education Reform tomorrow June 11, 2014.

I was just listening to episode #54 of Engineering Commons today and the discussion resonated with me. While I did not get to complete my engineering education for financial reasons, I did pursue less expensive options that from my perspective had little to no value for their cost.  I learned more on the job, and by purchasing textbooks and teaching myself, than I ever did in any tech school or college.

Eureka moments and skill mastery have nothing to do with education. To paraphrase, education is just teaching math and theory with no guidance on how to use this information. (I believe he said "Exploration is stifled.")

My initial thoughts as I listened to the podcast were along the lines of 'things you learn in school just don't tie into real life' - theory vs. comprehension. A good direction that came out of the discussion was that perhaps educators need to be more like mentors, and draw the theory courses from online sources where the most highly skilled theorists can sell pre-recorded course lectures, but the in-person professor can be freed up to provide a more relevant guidance model to integrate the student into real work.

More thoughts on this later - wanted to get this out there in time for tomorrow's twitter discussion.

Chapter Titles of my Life

Chapter 1: Hellfire (age 0 - 12)
Chapter 2: The Awakening (13 - 18)
Chapter 3: Tequila Times (19 - 25)
Chapter 4: Dutiful Doldrums (26 - 42)
Chapter 5: Embarkation (43 - )

Affirming Preference of Classical Architecture

Commentary regarding The Architect has No Clothes at OnTheCommons.org argument against modernism.

The first profession I ever aimed for was architecture. I took drafting classes, I won a design award for my house plans, I was enamored of the field. But then I subscribed to Architectural Digest and saw white cube after steel box after pale rectangle. And I lost interest.

No one was building the palatial mansions that I had admired in Tulsa all my youth. Their time was over, so the message read. No more pillars ensconced with grape leaves and flower clusters. Ornate amaranths were scoffed as outdated and overdone. Iron and stone were passe. Sleek, shiny glass and steel were esteemed above all else. I was horrified at the prospect.

I wish I would have seen a discussion like this when I was young. Discouraged, I turned to mechanical engineering as the integration of parts to a purpose is beautiful in an intricate scale.

I do hope young architects will champion the classical side of architecture with more ornate classical beauty, and also green incorporated. Trees are a must for me. I don't want a home in a subdivision because there is no soul there - no old trees.

Note: I found this article via the news aggregator in calibre (free ebook management software) called "Give Me Something to Read" - and I highly recommend this aggregator.

Geekdom (Cross-posted from G+)

What follows is my response to Felicia Day's question on Google+ regarding an article about "fake geek girls."

I first saw this discussion two days ago and it has taken me this long to put together my thoughts, this being a very personal subject matter to me, that makes me cringe and even hurts my heart a bit.

For me, growing up a geek (in the 80's) wasn't about obsession with anything, it was about rejection from the popular kids. It was being one of the weirdos: the ones that had the most pimples, the fattest, the shortest, the tallest, the gay ones, the smartest ones, the one that believes he is from Mars, the one with the fringe religion parents. All of us had problems making friends, and we kind of drifted together into our own little group that hid in the drama room at lunchtime.

We didn't participate in sports, well, we had one who was a champion bowler ... but no kind of sports participation at school. But we were okay with who we were and loved our lot in life. We each had our own niche interests, all of them divergent, but we had our individual loves, and we learned about each other's geeky fascinations (bugs, books, science fiction) with genuine interest and reverence.

To me, the spread of the internet has simply given the rest of the world appreciation for the things we already knew and loved, but that "they" didn't hear about back then because there was no pretty face to report on these wonderful hobbies and interests of ours, and they never would have had a conversation with any of us.

Now they have a sleek interface and attractive pictures to see when a geek topic comes up, and voila, the subculture is no longer a pimply fat kid jabbering excitedly, trying to communicate the depth and wondrous story of Iluvatar and the Ainur (Lord of the Rings has a huge back story for anyone who doesn't know). But now due to the masterful touch of cinema giving the story a beautiful face, more "regular folk" have gotten acquainted on the surface with Tolkien's works, and so a greater exposure means a greater number of people get curious to know more and search out information, and thus someone who might not have otherwise ever read even one of Tolkien's books might become a new Tolkien geek.

Until a year or so ago when I saw this subject being debated, I didn't know that I didn't qualify as a geek unless I had infinity level obsession with a hobby. And then I felt sidelined, rejected, and wanted to go hide in a back room again, where my identity wouldn't be judged. I had forgotten about it. This article brought back those feelings once again.

To the author of the article: I don't care if you feel like "our group" is getting watered down. There is enough room here for anyone who is here with an open mind. With "geekdom" being more accepted, I'm just happy I don't get looked at like an alien just sprouted from my head when I open my mouth about my interests and hobbies anymore like I used to, or when I say "we don't really watch football - we're usually watching something on History Channel or a SciFi Channel show" (meaning my kids and husband included). (And no, I don't like to spell it SyFy. Ugh.) I used to have to keep those things secret from co-workers, like there was something wrong with me.

Can we not get defensive about the words "geek" and "nerd" please? Can we please let in whoever is a little bit weird, even if they were a cheerleader at one time, IDC ... If they can listen to me rave about Tolkien's linguistics without their eyes bugging out of their head, well, that's good enough for me. I'll be happy to listen to their interest in, say ... crocheting yarn necklaces and the history of spinning yarn. And I'm not going to require that they be able to do advanced pattern techniques in order to let them call themselves "geeky" about crocheting.

I think the internet has made the world more aware of geek interests just by inherently existing on a geek framework. We have more attention, and so we have more people who want to identify with us either because (1) they've always felt outcast and are now discovering a group of friends in-game or on a forum or such, or (2) because they discovered they are interested in a topic that is considered geeky and they suddenly realize that 'hey, this is really okay!'

And maybe I'm a little afraid that the tough softball girl is going to threaten to kick my rear again if I stick my head up too high defending myself and my weird friends. But dang it, I'm a grown-up now, and I WILL defend us now! Anyone with a little bit of weird is welcome in my book - anyone who will celebrate weirdness equally with me and my friends.

Rain

Something about the rain...  It's cleansing. Refreshing. I can feel the earth drinking it in. I'm strongly anti-superstition and only think of spirituality as a pretty tale in which we dress our fears and longings, so this is more poetry than belief. But I do so love the rain, and I feel such gratitude when it pours down from the sky and quenches the grounds thirst. It refreshes my soul.

I can breathe in deeply and exhale fully when the air is rain-drenched. My heart feels relief - a lightening of her burdens. I can almost hear the plants sigh with happiness, stretching and crawling and groaning, awakening from their slumber, relishing the cleansing shower.

Yes, rain. You are welcome here.

Reading the Harvard Classics

As I make my way into the Harvard Classics, I'm three books in and starting a fourth. The first three I downloaded through the Amazon store directly. Much to my chagrin, I discovered these were just raw scans - not cleaned up at all. Missing letters, jumped lines, out-of-sequence text ... not pleasant to read at all. But I got through them.

As for the content of the work themselves, I greatly enjoyed Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography. Much more interesting than I expected. The next two were more dry and moralistic, not nearly as engaging, but informative nonetheless. William Penn's "Some Fruits of Solitude" is wordy but provides some insight on the moral instruction of the day. Likewise, "The Journal of John Woolman" is repetitive and over-lengthened with unnecessary words, but this seems to be the standard of the time. However, I found this one much more interesting than "..Fruits" simply because the author was instrumental in spreading his conviction against slavery throughout the New England Quakers, influencing a great number of persons during the years immediately prior to the American declaration of independence.

Woolman wrote extensively of his low-key pleadings with his peers for freedom for all men, the argument being that plain living (such as prescribed by the Quakers) makes for more equitable treatment of others (therefore making slavery incompatible with the Christian man), as piling on wealth and giving in to vanity can only be made on the backs of others hard labor. Think Apple / iPhone for a modern comparison.

His message of moderation, humility, charity, consideration and awareness of one's fellow man still speaks to us today.

Now once I finished his book, I was ready to crack open the next set of three. I started by loading three books of the Harvard Classics at a time on my Kindle, so in continuation of such, I loaded the next three when I neared the end of the first set. However, this time I went to Project Gutenberg for properly formatted works.

It was a great pleasure to open Marcus Aurelius' Meditations and see clear words, clean pages, formatted chapter titles, hyperlinks - ahhhh. So much better! Beautiful, in fact. Thank you pgdp.

Now reading the famed emperor's words, I begin to understand the historical respect he holds and yet am surprised at the simplicity of the wisdoms. Reading through this "bookshelf" is promising to be an entertaining adventure for my brain.

Automotive Repair

I've just recently been reminded how unusual some of my pursuits are. When I was just out of high school, within a year's time I helped with:

1. Replacing a 302 V-8 engine in my 1977 Mustang II (first car)

2. Changing a master cylinder

3. Restoring a Buick Skylark from the ground up

4. Changing an alternator (my guy friends had to be the muscle to hold it tight with a crowbar while I tightened the mounting bolts)

5. Installing a car stereo

6. Replacing a U-joint in my 1972 Oldsmobile convertible

7. Towing by chain and completely restoring an Impala (was that a 1964?) that was so far gone it had grass growing in the floorboards

8. Replacing a starter solenoid

And these are just the projects that I can recall. I remember days spent wandering the junk yard, searching for and pulling parts off old cars to help the guys with their restoration projects.

And then of course much more recently was my dabbling in cell phone repair, where I went in with no knowledge whatsoever and managed to score highest out of a group of eight including soldering. I had never soldered anything in my life, but I had watched over a friend's shoulder many times, so I was just up to the challenge, and it sure seemed more interesting than answering phones. And it was. Granted, I was the slowest tech on the floor, but I am such a perfectionist I can't let a repair go out sloppy. Anyway, I digress ...

To me this was all great fun, but I often forget that it's unusual for a girl to have had such experiences, so when I get into a conversation with a girl who has not had such experiences, my stories often get an amazed response. It's quite gratifying.

Dog Update, and SMH

We choose a new vet based on a couple of recommendations from people we know, when we got our puppy, and I liked the new vet, so I took Lucky in last Friday. This vet immediately said the odor was typical of yeast. He recommended with wash her first with dish-washing liquid such as Dawn to get rid of the thick nasty stuff in her fur, and then wash her with prescription shampoo that he provided.

Friday night I got in the shower with her (in my lawn-work clothes) and scrubbed her down. The difference was amazing immediately. She's a different color - the right color. And last night (Tuesday) I treated her again with the medicated shampoo. I am so impressed. And she is wagging her tail and energetic again. He also prescribed antibiotics, an oral yeast treatment, plus ear ointment for yeast. She has a follow-up in two weeks.

Should have sought a second opinion a long time ago.

Anyway, on another note, I do a bit of reading during the day at work when it's slow. I like to read news mostly. I used to read MSN news sites, but the frequency of grammar and spelling errors drove me batty. I switched to CNN because the spelling is noticeably better.

Look, I know I make my own share of errors here, and if I catch them, even when reading months later, I like to fix my mistakes. I don't expect much from blogs. We don't have editors to review our work.

But on news sites and even in scientific work, I have found spelling and grammar errors. I suppose that it is endemic to the age of the internet. We have increased the speed wherewith news can make it to the end user, and it seems to me that with this ease of getting news to the masses, the quantity of news published has also increased. And with greater quantity, quality suffers.

Either editors are overwhelmed, or no one is actually editing stories.

CNN usually has high quality, error-free news, but we are all human and something will slip through occasionally. Here's a find from yesterday's news at CNN:

Aigh! The little old librarian with the grey bun in me is shaking her head.

Living Your Faith

Today a friend posted a quote on Facebook which has me on a philosophical bent. "It is not so much what you believe in that matters, as the way in which you believe it and proceed to translate that belief into action." - Lin Yutang

Hypocrisy is such an integral part of the human condition. We all struggle with it every day in our own lives, whether we open our eyes to it or not. Are you living what you're speaking? Or are you just pointing fingers and finding fault with others?

Criticism of others surrounds us daily: in the news, at work, at home. Is it necessary? Is it harmful? Turn away from the unnecessary, spurn the harmful.

Consider your faith. Are you living it, every moment?

Milestones

I've recently realized that my mother is twice my age. This little mathematical milestone is crossed by most other people when they are in their 20s or 30s, but not me. I am 41. Yes, my mother is 82. And 41 years was her age when she gave birth to me.

I can't imagine having another child at this age (even if I still had a uterus, which I don't - hooray). My kids are both in their teens now. I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I love them like crazy, and I like them as people much better than I liked them as little dependent children. I do not understand mothers who are sad for their babies to grow up. Me? It's been pure joy with each step: when they could wipe their own butts and fix their own lunch and go do stuff on their own. I don't have to wait on them hand and foot anymore, thank goodness! I will be even more thrilled when they have their own jobs and can get their own places and pay their own bills!

Maybe it's just another one of those things that make me different from a lot of females. And I've always been proud to be different, that is certain. My career (feels like my life) has been sidetracked for the last 16 years - I'm chomping at the bit to get back in the game.

Negative Ads Backfire

Surely I'm not the only one out there that is instantly put off by negative commercials. There's a radio station or two around here that criticize other radio stations "You won't hear this song on _____ because our music selection is bigger" or "You won't hear {short clip of heavy metal thrash song that I happen to like} on our station like you will on _____, just good music." And my immediate reaction is to give the radio a dirty look and change the station.

You know, just because you are playing a song I like, doesn't mean you should trash your competitor. I like the stuff they play, too. You just happened to catch my fancy with one or two songs. Don't get all uppity and put other stations down. You just pissed off a listener - err, scratch that, I'm not listening anymore - I just switched channels.

Contentment

Okay, yes, I have not posted anything to my blog in months. Biggest reason: I got a new job, so I'm usually too wiped at the end of the day to even think about writing. Second reason: most of my computer time gets eaten up by Facebook (evil monster lol). Since I haven't been playing Guild Wars at all, except to get on and say "hi" here and there, or to accept that AWESOME gift from Revan (Thank you Thank you Thank you - guildmate of ours for years - he gave me a mini rollerbeetle - the miniature Black Beast of Arrgh), so I've been playing little Facebook games as a distraction.

Anyway, probably going to try out the upcoming Star Trek Online with hubby - we're planning on getting the pre-order so we can try it early while it's still in the beta, and if it's good, I suppose we'll play. What with my work schedule I may just be a weekend player, but we'll see. If I can spend an hour on Facebook every evening I imagine a really good game could pull me away from there.

Anyway, just sharing a word of wisdom I needed to hear last night from the cartoon series The Avatar: "Life happens where you are." - said by Uncle (General Iroh) to Prince Zuko. Embrace the moment. Don't deride the place/time/circumstances of where you are - make the most of each day.

Lime Slices

Just now I sliced some lime for the onions I'm sauteeing to go with the chicken fajitas, and it's funny, I used to only buy limes to go with tequila. So when I slice lime, my mouth starts expecting a shot of the old gold that was a common companion in my early 20s.

But when I bought some lemons to go with the fish we had a week ago, I bought extra since the kids like to eat them, and I also grabbed a few limes since they are always asking me to buy one but I can't ever think of a thing to do with them (excepts shots of tequila) so I usually say no.

But this time I thought - eh - why not? It's a fruit and it's something different. Just can't buy them all the time as I don't want them stripping their enamel by eating them all the time, so yeah. Anyway.

And then tonight I was stirring the onions I had on a slow steam, covered, and had salted and peppered (white pepper), and remembered the other ingredient I like to sprinkle on the onions (learned in those days when I was a cook for a living of sorts): lime juice.

So here, lime slices, the subsequent aroma, and the resultant train of thought.

I ate a slice of lime - sans Jose.

DDO Free to Play (and D&D hysteria)

Recently I came across news that Dungeons & Dragons Online is going to a free-to-play model. In all my excitement I have been spending time at their website reading up on classes and races and all those goodies that go along with a D&D style game. For some reason I looked up the original D&D on Wikipedia - oh, I remember, I saw an article about a lawsuit that Wizards of the Coast brought against a guy distributing D&D books online. Good ol' Wizards - always out to protect their profit. They're about as controlling as Metallica.

Anyway, as I glanced over the article, I saw the picture of the D&D board and the arms of the folks sitting around the table just scream "NERD!!!" in such a huge fashion that I had to stifle a giggle. And at that point I suddenly remembered, flashback version, how I used to hear stories of how D&D was satanic and if you play it, you are invoking demonic powers and evil magic. Now I am just dumbfounded at the thought. Remember all that hysteria?

The point those superstitious folks missed was that within the human existence, there is greed, avarice, theft, jealousy, honor, duty, justice ... And the overarching story of D&D is the time-honored tale of good vs. evil - that we humans have choices to make and that we can battle evil and conquer the demons that stand in our way (and often learn something about ourselves and our own personal moral choices in the process).

Kids used to play Cowboys and Indians; kids used to play Jedi and Sith (that's newer); kids used to play Pokemon (oh wait, did we remove the bad guys from that play? No one ever pretends to be Team Rocket ... sigh) .... and D&D is just a bunch of friends sitting around playing pretend (knights+sorcerers -think Arthurian legend- vs. monsters) with the human condition as the backdrop.

The monsters and races of Dungeons and Dragons were adapted straight from J.R.R. Tolkien's world - his Lord of the Rings and other works (I am still finding my way through the History of Middle Earth; I'm on book five). I didn't realize until now how extensively he interwined European legends of all sort into his expansive mythology. He was effectively taking all ancient legends and expanding and relating them. It's amazing.

But back in the 70's those college kids that read Tolkien's stuff were enthralled and wanted to play pretend in that fantastic world. And the old miniature military stategy war games were a good medium from which to launch this more grown-up/complex form of play - Gary Gygax started in wargaming long before publishing D&D.

So I never actually played the real pen-and-paper D&D, but by the time Neverwinter Nights computer game came out back in the late 90's, based on the D&D rule books and character classes, etc., I was excited to try it out. I ended up getting stuck in the solo play of that game and didn't want to start over, and the multi-player left a lot to be desired, so I abandoned the game.

Then D&D Online came online a few years ago, but it has been a subscription-only game at $15 per month since its inception, so that kept me from trying it (I don't mind paying a purchase price for the install, but to keep paying a monthly fee is annoying - makes me feel obligated to play - which rips the joy right out of it). But now that they will offer a free-to-play model with a cash shop for optional purchases, I'm psyched.

All these choices ... What will I be? Oh the exhilarating bewilderment!