I wrote a letter today

I wrote a letter today.

By “wrote a letter,” I mean that I sat down with a notebook and a pen, and hand-wrote a letter. It’s been a long time since I’ve handwritten a letter, other than short notes for work or in greeting cards… things like that. But today, I decided that I wanted to reach out and make a physical, tangible connection with one of my oldest and closest friends.

I’ve never had the best penmanship, but I think that it has to have regressed. I think that my friend will be able to decipher it well enough, but I am not proud about the quality of my handwriting at the moment.

This is the first real letter that I will have hand-written and posted in years (I plan on buying a stamp and dropping it off at the post office tomorrow morning, since it’s already a bit too late to make the last pickup). As the many forms of social media have taken over our communications, “writing a letter” has almost universally been replaced by “sending a message electronically.” Email, Facebook’s different messaging options, tweets, text messages, and smart phones have soundly relegated physical notes and letters to the bargain bins. Letters are the quiet minority, an old-fashioned medium from days of yore. People like my parents still write letters occasionally (although I’m pretty sure that most of their correspondence is electronic at this point), and official letters are still sometimes created and mailed in physical form, but it seems that the vast majority of interpersonal communication is done via satellite and the internet.

Using the post office for communication certainly has its disadvantages. I’m not sure how it works in other countries, but in the U.S. there is almost always an overnight waiting period, minimum, between the time that the mail was posted and received – even within the same city – while electronic messaging is relatively instant. Mail also uses paper, a resource that costs money, and letters require the effort of forming the letters of the alphabet, by hand, into legible words and sentences that can be read and understood by the receiving party. Admittedly, this is no small effort for people like me, for whom penmanship was never a strength. Additionally, a letter currently costs $0.44 to mail in the U.S., and while that’s a paltry sum compared with the costs of most other products and services that we purchase, it has become a largely unnecessary expense, given the advantages and availability of “free” electronic communication.

However, letter-writing has its advantages as well – or, if nothing else, it has its unique features. For one thing, hand-writing is generally a different process than, for example, composing with a word processor. When I write blog posts or compose emails*, I tend to write, read my work, edit, cut and/or expand, reread, rework, etc. until I am satisfied that I’ve said what I want to say. With hand-written letters, editing is tougher, and, unless I commit to writing, editing, and then rewriting a letter, I have to be somewhat more focused as I compose the actual text. This forces me to concentrate on how my sentences and paragraphs flow, look up words that I am unsure of (with regard to spelling or meaning), and think about how the letter will be read by the person to whom it’s addressed, as I write.

*Yes, I do all of this even when I send emails. To me, it feels disrespectful to send someone an email with a lot of mistakes in it. Just as important, though, is ensuring that something isn’t left out (or in), like a negative, which could convey a completely different meaning than that which you had intended. I don’t claim to be perfect, but I shudder to think about how embarrassed I would have been if I hadn’t proofread and edited countless emails and blog posts.

In addition to the distinct compositional experience, handwritten letters have both a sense of permanence and personality that electronic communication struggles to approach. Someone reading a letter can get of a sense of the writer’s personality and emotional state from a letter. Furthermore, letters have their own versatility: paper is also a medium for art, and I have received letters with drawings, diagrams, tables, and notes scribbled along the sides of the text. Letters are also real, physical things, and are able to be kept, filed, stored, and reread without the burden of another device. Like vinyl records, a letter can be something that is neat to have: it’s something that someone took the time to create, to express any number of ideas, or to entertain you.

Now, I’m not bashing electronic communication – I use it every day, and appreciate its conveniences and advantages – but I had a good time writing this letter today. It was an old, familiar process, but also one at which I am definitely rusty. I am determined to write more letters this year, both to my friend and to others. Perhaps he will write me back, and we can correspond with some regularity – that would be fun, as well as good exercise for the brain. It may also become something of a luxury sooner or later – with the way that things are going with the USPS and its heavy financial burdens, our concept of snail-mail (a term that I detest, by the way), which we take for granted now, could change drastically over the next several years. I’m going to write some letters this year, and send them through the post office while I still have the chance.

My week: fixing cars and thinking about people

I mentioned in my last post that I intended to blog more regularly than I have since the Cataclysm release. Four days later, I have yet to publish anything, but I’m comfortable with that.

See, the holidays seem to be a busy time for most people. Whether there are gifts to purchase, wrap, and send out, groceries to buy, parties to attend, family and friends to visit, college and work to wrap up, or other end-of-year activities, there is always something going on.

In my case, this week’s plans have been sort of pushed aside to deal with car issues. On both Tuesday and Friday, I was asked by my girlfriend to take care of problems with her car.

Adventures with the car

Now, I am not a car-savvy guy. The list of car-related problems that I can take care of is limited to checking and filling fluids, changing and rotating tires, replacing blinker bulbs, and things like that. So I’m not totally comfortable with vehicle issues, but I can handle a limited range of repairs.

On Tuesday, she asked me to take care of the dying battery in her car. Her brother, who works at a local car dealership, took care of finding the battery for me, as well as letting me use the shop at his business as a place where I could change it. My tasks included picking up the battery, getting her car started, taking it to the dealership, and installing the battery. While I did that, he checked the fluids and tire pressure, disposed of the old battery, and so on. It was his Christmas gift to her, as he and his wife are busy with a new baby.

It was nice that he let me use the shop, for two reasons. First of all, it was about 20∘ Fahrenheit that morning, so it was great to have a warm room in which to work. Secondly, the variety of tools in the shop came in handy for getting to those those hard-to-reach places while removing the old battery and installing the new one.

On Friday, she called me to tell me that her front passenger tire was flat. She noticed that her car felt like it was riding funny on her way to work, and when she got there, she was horrified to see that the tire was completely flat. I drove over and inspected it, and decided that it needed to be replaced since it had been driven a couple miles on the flattened rubber. So I put the doughnut (which was also flat) on it, took the tire to Sears (in my car), discovered that culprit was a nail, had a new tire mounted, and then I brought it back to her car and reinstalled it.

Now, at some point I have to rotate the tires so that the new (odd) tire isn’t a drive-tire. I should also fill up the spare tire in her car, and check mine while I’m at it. Perhaps I’ll do that tomorrow – it’s supposed to be a balmy 35∘ in the afternoon!

Thoughts while adventuring…

I enjoyed working on the car for her. I like making her life easier, and clearing up problems like that makes me feel good.

One thing that I kept pondering as I worked was how it’s easy to disconnect with reality in this world. It first occurred to me as I was leaving Sears with my car battery on Tuesday. I had the opportunity to hold the door for an older gentleman, who was appreciative. I wished him a Merry Christmas, and he did the same.

While retail at the holidays is always physically and emotionally taxing, one of the few things that I miss about it is the opportunity to interact with some of the customers. I liked saying “Have a great holiday!” to people as they concluded their transactions and left the store, and “Have a Merry Christmas!” to those with whom I had actually talked about Christmas.*

*I respect that people celebrate the holiday season differently – some celebrate it as Christians, others celebrate it as simply a family holiday, and still others celebrate entirely different religious holidays in December. Some people don’t celebrate it at all. However, it was always heartwarming to be able to connect with a person, while at work, about Christmas, and I always felt more grounded, more myself, when I was able to exchange warm Christmas wishes with another person.

Anyway, the thought that I had after the “Merry Christmas” exchange with this gentleman was to consider who he may be. In truth, we are all different, as humans. Each of us has a different perspective, a unique background, distinctive personality traits, and our own personal beliefs. At the same time, we’re all humans. Since there are millions of us, even thousands of us within our greater locale, we are bound to share some, though not all, of these things with most of those that we encounter.

This gentleman, who cheerfully returned my Christmas greeting, likely has political beliefs that differ sharply from mine. He has probably done things that I will never do, and I’ve probably done things that he has never done. And so on… and yet, there is a connection, and that connection relates to our humanity in some way.

* * * * *

As I was putting the new tire on my girlfriend’s car in the parking lot, a woman saw my open trunk, stopped, and and asked, “Are you ok?”

I told her that I was fine, and related to her in a few sentences that I was simply replacing a damaged tire on my girlfriend’s car. (Changing tires is easy, and I was half-done and looking forward to getting home and, frankly, using the bathroom.) She mentioned that I was a nice guy for doing that, which was nice of her. I wished her a Merry Christmas, and she wished me the same, and went on her way.

I smiled to myself. In a world where so much of what goes on (and what we read about) is uncaring, mean-spirited, or political/commercial posturing, there is still a spirit of concern for others – we just have to be aware of it.

Ad-load fail

When Safari fails – which happens too often – sometimes I get stuff like this (screenshot taken on 9/18):

When an SI.com ad fails to load, it's good to know that you could always go to Wowhead instead.

From the feed reader: recent posts of interest

A few articles I’d like to share…

• Alex Skolnick, lead guitarist for thrash band Testament and his own jazz group, Alex Skolnick Trio, posted about The Shred Epidemic late last month at Guitarplayer.com. As a talented guitarist who brings a lot of melody and musicality to his leads, his take on the issue is compelling.
• Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic writes a blog for Seattle Weekly, and a few weeks ago he wrote an article about Analog vs. Digital as a recording medium. I know a lot about music, but he gave an interesting inside perspective on analog tape and the challenges it presents during the remastering process.
• On a different front, Krist wrote recently about Wyclef Jean’s bid to become the new president of Haiti, relating his own short experiences as a candidate for Lt. Governor of Washington in 2004.
• Joe Posnanski wrote recently about the Heart and Hustle Award, which Derek Jeter has inexplicably never won.
• The new issue of Spin magazine has an article by David Peisner about this year’s Soundgarden reunion. Part of the article, containing bits of interviews with each of the four members, is available at Spin.com.
• Icedragon at Druid Main recently posted a series of articles about druid macros, and I found them to be a very helpful resource. They are Macros Revisited, /Cast [Advanced] Macros, and C-c-c-combo Breaker! Dual Macros.

 

From the blogroll: recent posts of interest

I wanted to share a few items that I’ve found interesting lately.

• Joe Posnanski of SI.com has a writing style that doesn’t necessarily follow the unfortunate mainstream model of sensationalized, disjointed, and clipped-sentence reporting. His anecdotal pieces have a great storytelling quality to them. Monday’s article is Rafer Johnson and the Power of 10, a look at Johnson’s 1960 Olympic decathlon victory over C.K. Yang. It’s filled with interesting stories about Johnson, one of the great unsung heroes in U.S. athletics history. Check out his other posts as well.
• Kalon at ThinkTank has a couple of articles about feral druid talents in Cataclysm. His most recent one (here) continues the trend his posts have had recently of giving me mixed emotions about how feral talents are going to look when the expansion drops. While I’m not as concerned about feral DPS out of the box, since raiding is not on my radar right now, he has voiced plenty of concerns about the lack of differences between the two feral specs (here is a previous article that goes into greater detail) that have me wondering how feral is going to play at launch. I guess that my biggest concern is that, while I see a lot of excitement about some of the changes to other classes, the excitement level from ferals who are in the beta seems to be lukewarm at best…
• Saniel at Primal Precision wrote last week about Understanding Burnout. While he’s more of a WoW veteran than I, it still struck a chord with me!
• The Noisy Rogue started a new priest and plans on… imagine this… leveling and running instances without using the dungeon finder, forcing himself to “make friends” with people in order to achieve goals.
• Pastor and author Brian McLaren wrote an interesting opinion piece for CNN regarding Anne Rice’s announcement that, while her “faith in Christ is central” to her life, she is quitting Christianity. Check the post for her reasoning, as well as McLaren’s reasons for both supporting her and for not following in her footsteps. I found it to be a well-written, sympathetic and logical bit of writing.

Miscellaneous update: heat wave edition

The heat has been pretty much unbearable this week. As such, I’ve tried to balance some productivity with some fun inside stuff.

Books

After I finished reading The Eagle, I went through a span of several days where I felt like I didn’t want to read anything for a while. It wasn’t a pleasant experience, but I didn’t think it would last long. I picked up Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger from time to time, and, as it’s not a long book, I finished it last night. It was a bargain book, and I was hoping that it would be a story that stands on its own; admittedly, this was because I didn’t want to have to find the sequels, but I’m going to have to at some point, because it really functions as the beginning to a larger story. So I have to read the next one at some point…

A couple of nights ago I started reading Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass, and it looks like that will be holding my attention for a while.

Music

I’ve been working on a song, little by little. Lyrics are much more difficult for me than guitar, so it’s going to take a while to finish. That’s fine, because it’s all for my own enjoyment. My fingers are coming along slowly, as I get them accustomed to playing the guitar every day. I’m hoping to change the strings on my acoustic this weekend, because it’s been a few months and they’re starting to look and feel worse for wear.

Video Games

The Steam “Perils of Summer Sale” ended on July 4th, and I restrained myself, not dropping a lot of money on a bunch of games that I’m not sure I would play. I have a terrible habit of buying games and letting them sit for months (or forever), and so I only picked up one game, Civilization IV Complete, for $10 last weekend. I had intended to buy another game or two, but there were a couple of occasions where I added a game to my cart when it was 75% off for the day, decided to think about it before buying, and then forgot about it (Torchlight for $5 was one of them). I wasn’t too broken up about that, in the end. Like I said, I’m really bad with playing most games that I’m “interested” in – something weird about my personality, I guess – so the one game was enough for me.

As a side note, there are many games that I know are available for Mac that are not available on Steam. Like Dragon Age: Origins. EA has made a concerted effort to make more games available for Mac over the past year or two, and they’re available elsewhere, but with DA:O I’m holding out for a while. I like the fact that Steam seems the most likely candidate to provide updates, something that has been universally absent for that game in particular on the Mac.

In general, I’m really happy with Steam, although I’ve only used it to purchase three games thus far. I do wish that they would release more than two or three games per month for Mac. I’m not blaming them, though. I’m sure that they’re constantly dealing with issues related to the games that they make available, and so I’ll continue to check a couple of times a week to see what’s new or on sale.

Etc.

As far as what else has been going on, I’ve been doing a little gardening (trying to keep the tomato plants sated and healthy has been my greatest challenge) and other yard work (in small spurts), as well as plenty of chilling out indoors, trying to stay cool. Fortunately, the worst part of the heat wave seems to be over, moving toward the southeastern coast now. We’ll still have temps in the low 90s next week, but it shouldn’t be as bad, thankfully!

A 4-day stretch I’m not looking forward to

/sigh

Yeah. It’s going to be very uncomfortable.

Friday afternoon haiku: The “new and improved” Hotmail

The interface sucks.

It logs me out too often.

Sorting’s still a joke.

>.<

I may import to gmail soon…

Recent links of interest

My personal output has been even lighter than usual over the past week. The main reason for this is that I am working on a long post about politics, and I’m struggling with wrapping it up. I need to write a conclusion, and I also need to think carefully about the cohesiveness of the piece before I post it, because I have a tendency to be less than concise when I write. So, there’s plenty of revision still to go with that one…

On Wednesday I made a day trip to visit with my brother and his family. It was a fun, crazy day, the only way it can be when 2-year-old twins (and a 6-month-old infant who’s teething and crawling) are involved!

I’ve also been reading a lot. Books. Yeah.

Meanwhile, here are a few highlights from the posts I’ve read over the past week or two.

Click here to read Krist Novoselic's May 4th post, "Analog Music & Cars in the Digital Age"

• Nirvana bassist / political activist Krist Novoselic has a blog on Seattle Weekly’s Reverb, where he posts twice a week on music and political issues. An avid lover of vinyl, he reviewed the Rolling Stones’ Exile On Main Street [Super Deluxe Edition] last Friday, and yesterday he reminisced about Shocking Blue, a classic but under-appreciated band from Holland whose “Love Buzz” Nirvana recorded for their first 7″ single. Krist is an affable and very intelligent guy who absolutely loves music, and his posts are a lot of fun to read.
• John (BBB) posted a humorous idea regarding the return of CC in Cataclysm, and ReversionLFM of Looking For More made it come to life!
• Andrew of Systemic Babble wrote a great rebuttal to an article on Gamesbrief by Nicholas Lovell, who stated that Steam’s “monopoly” on PC downloads would be the downfall of the PC game industry. The discussion in the comments is very interesting as well. Additionally, he recently posted a wonderful link to The Scale of the Universe, and Friday’s post regarding the most recent developments involving Israel really resonated with me.
• Jacemora, Druid of the Moon, followed up on the idea of using a Mangle-spam rotation. Mangle vs Shred seemed to be a popular question when the changes to Mangle and the Glyph of Mangle went live with Patch 3.3.3. Many ferals, myself included, seemed to feel at the time that Shred and its positional requirement were still the best option for high damage. His verdict: Shred is indeed the way to go.
• Gordon at We Fly Spitfires wrote an immensely popular (and very funny) post this week entitled MMO or Baby? He also has a review of the WoW Remote Auction House beta, and since he posts almost every day, there’s plenty of other good stuff to check out.
• In Wednesday’s Tree of Life post, Keredria talks about Christian guilds, and mentions that she may post more on religion in WoW in the future. I hope she does, because her post was entertaining and informative.
• Finally, Dr. Tom Bibey wrote about his favorite bookstores in a manner that made me immediately want to go book and music shopping at mom-and-pop stores… again… yes, I have a problem!

Enjoy! Hopefully I’ll finish the piece I mentioned above sooner than later… or some other legit post, at least.

Random linkage, new Gravatar

New Gravatar photo

Here are some links from the past week or so that have given me food for thought:

• John, the Big Bear Butt himself, posted a massive list of book recommendations on May 14th, and it has literally (um, no pun intended?) flipped my mental “to-read” list upside down. While I’m still working on finishing up a few books myself, I’ve found myself wondering what I’m going to read down the road, other than a few suggestions from friends. This post just opened up a can of whoop-ass on my feeble reading goals. My old guild master, Secure, has been recommending the Wheel of Time series for as long as I’ve known him, and this list just made that bug in my ear buzz a little louder… Book recommendations are never bad, as far as I’m concerned!
• Kara at Vomi Mot wrote a couple of days ago about Dungeons & Dragons and Christianity. Her article is a reaction to an article by William Schnoebelen of chick.com, in which he details his experiences with D&D, along with his road through witchcraft, satanism, and finally to Christianity. While I don’t have any opinions that I feel qualified to express here, I found her response to be well thought-out.
• My friend Greg at parkinthepark has some commentary and information on Voltage Pictures’ massive lawsuit against tens of thousands of people who pirated “The Hurt Locker” online. He also sent me a link to an article on the subject by Peter Serafinowicz at Gizmodo entitled “Why I Steal Movies… Even Ones I’m In.” This is a compelling battle to watch; as fast as technology and the behaviors of users evolve (and as much as producers and publishers of various media attempt to keep up), the collective business model is adapting with an alarming lack of swiftness. Check the links for more info.
• Gordon at We Fly Spitfires has posted several items that intrigue me (doesn’t he always? LOL!). On the 14th, he posted about his new toon he created, with backstory, for Age of Conan. The next day, his topic was Should I Purchase The Half-Price LotRO Lifetime Subscription? If I had a PC, I’d be tempted myself… May 17th brought an article about racism in MMOs, and yesterday’s post concerned the subject of the death of role-playing in MMOs.
• Andrew at Systemic Babble posted a link to an Impressive 3D Optical Illusion, as well as an article about a new measure proposed in Canada’s House of Commons by Liberal MP Keith Martin that would see Canada’s government encouraging parents to prevent their children from watching TV or playing video games one night per week.
• Larísa over at the Pink Pigtail Inn has an interesting idea: what if we all stopped blogging (and reading blogs) about World of Warcraft until Cataclysm is released? She also posted today about resistance to the concept that Blizzard is a business, while Tobold has a response to Larísa’s blogging proposal.
• Keredria at Tree of Life posted an educational article on Government Structures in WoW, based on information from wowwiki. Honestly, I’m ashamed to admit that this is a subject I had really never spent much time thinking about, but some of the governments they list for certain zones are fascinating.
• Finally, Ronnie James Dio died on Sunday morning of stomach cancer. The legendary vocalist was an inspiration and hero to several generations of rock and metal musicians, and his recordings with Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Dio, and Heaven and Hell are some of the most revered and respected of all time. You can google his name and find tons of information about him, but for a long list of remembrances and tributes, check out blabbermouth.net (links to their search results for “Dio”).

There it is: I’ve laid bare some of my internet/blog-reading interests for the past week… Now maybe I can go work on a real blog post of my own at some point today!