Better but not cured - Monday

I got up late as is always the case if I don't have a good reason to get up early. I played some Warcraft 3, WoAed and looked into Software Systems. Not only did Freya come to CU, she brought her housemate. I didn't go to the pub and instead went home. I just didn't feel like socialising tonight and I'm not sure why. I don't feel like I did yesterday, well, at least not as bad but it's still the same vague feeling.

Why so glum chum? - Sunday

I got up and went to call on Freya to see if she was going to come to Church, she had gone to work so I was only walking Siän today. This week we had a guest speaker and I'd asked to not be helping with Discoverers. Tim was our guest speaker and is from the Lawyers Christian Fellowship (yes, Christian Lawyers Fellowship makes more sense to me too). This morning he spoke from John 1 and about how a world in Darkness does not want to see the light, for they know what it brings. He used the example of some prisoners awaiting a death sentence, they didn't want to see the lantern as they knew it'd be held by their executioner. After the service the lot of us went to the Thatched House and had to wait some time for our meal but it wasn't too bad a wait. I was originally going to go for the "old reliable" that is the Half Roast chicken but due to not finding anybody else going for a similarly priced meal I upgraded to a Sunday Roast Dinner and partnered with Becca. It still involved a Half Roast Chicken but also included a load of other stuff. I even ate a lot of the vegetables. We had quite a lot of fun during our meal. Fi (Steve's Girlfriend) was down for the weekend and was sitting next to me, I'm probably not the best influence on her seeing as with my suggestion she threw a pea down Sarah's top and managed to embarrass herself another way (this was not my fault and not too related to me). After the meal I went over to Steve's house then collected Becca (but not Siän, she had work to do) and went to Church where Tim spoke on some of John 2, specifically the part where Jesus sorts out the people in the temple. Now, the best part of the message for me was not in itself the message. It was true and all but I learnt something new that was not the message but caused by it. I talked to Pauline Mitchell after the service about how Jesus says to turn the other cheek yet at the same time Jesus clearly acted in a physical way to the people who were being very unholy. He stuck up for his belief. My question was "If I am walking someone home and they're attacked, what do I do? Jesus says to turn the other cheek and yet I'm also told that violence is not the answer". It turns out that the turning of the other cheek is not actually to sit there and let someone get beaten up. It refers to insults and challenges, namely you would turn the other cheek and ignore the challenge/insult, however, it does not say to not defend people that need it. Of course, crippling someone is probably not needed so you have to apply some common sense and love your neighbor. I walked Becca home, walked back home myself and failed to get a game of Warcraft 3 running because of a problem with our Router and my computer (very irritating). I watched some Family Guy and for some reason, don't feel very happy. My day was great, one of the best Sunday's I've had in a while. Heck, recently I've been feeling slightly dead when it comes to my faith, I know it's real but I don't feel it. This is irritating. Today has helped a lot with it but for some reason I feel almost depressed and I can't figure out why. I currently hope it's because I might not have had enough sleep and that the problem will solve itself.

A Late and an Early night - Saturday

Friday involved a very nice lie in, then I got up, did some revision for an exam. The exam itself was very boring and everybody (I kid you not, everybody had their pen and paper on the desk) was done in ten minutes. So, I prayed for some of it and dozed for the rest. I walked home and relaxed. I played some Warcraft 3 and then went to a very late night Prayer Meeting that lasted until 0040 on Saturday, I was very tired when I got home. So, I got up very late today and spent the second half of the day playing Warcraft 3 with Peter. Peter has played a few games offline with myself and Gareth and today we rigged the router to allow me to host games, that meant we could play as we wished online. We played a map called DOTA. Each player has a hero and fights on the side of one of two teams. Each of the main teams creates units that they throw at the other. To win the game you have to destroy a specific structure of the enemy, there are many ways to get into a position where you are strong enough to do this. The first is to guard your troops and use them to support your assault on the base, the other is to kill their player characters so many times that you're just too powerful for them to stop. Usually it's a mix of both, though, I have several times seen people kill the other heroes so many times they can waltz all over the place. Today I saw the opposite. Myself and Pete died quite a few times, infact, it's a huge number of times and killed them only once. We still won. Yes, we worked as a team and stayed positive, they neglected to support their troops at key stages of the game and because of that and some clever tactics we won. Note, Pete got our kill, I never managed to do more than scratch one of their heroes. This pattern repeated itself throughout the day, most of the time with better hero-kill ratios for us. We lost one game, and that was against Coel and Zak. Here is the picture at the end of the game showing our scores at various things, myself and pete are on the left. If you're interested, note the difference in Creep Kills (they are the main source of gold normally) and also Total Kills (refers only to Heroes) where they outclass us quite well. Each Hero kill got them the equivalent of about 8 Creep kills and forced us to wait until we were resurrected, it also lost us gold. Here is the replay file, it was played on DOTA 6.40 which is available here.

Productivity - Thursday

I got up later than I wanted too, but that's because I've had a few too many late nights, it's much earlier tonight so that's going to help. The day consisted of WoA, Warcraft 3, Eating and umm, more Warcraft 3 in the evening. I even made a new friend from Romania (we cracked a lot of jokes in one of the game and had a lot of fun). Tomorrow is my B201 exam so I did do some revision, it's all about things like Health and Safety. Oh, I also had a look at learning a new programming language called Perl, apparently it'll make me very employable. Still nothing from HP.

Sorry for the Lack of Updates - Wednesday

Monday was pretty boring, I also went to bed really late so didn't blog. Tuesday was much better, HP phoned me asking if I was still interested in the job at Bristol, I of course said yes. Huw came over and we sorted out a load of WoA stuff. I also played Warcraft 3 quite a lot. Today was the Prayer Lunch, specifically the one where I was bringing some food. Rather than a crate-load of Tunafish Sandwiches I opted to bring Parmiers. First I had to cook them. I cooked some last night and made some more this morning. Everybody was surprised that I had cooked something, and something so tasty at that. They were all eaten by the end of the lunch and I only had two of them. The rest of the day was spent with some work and some Warcraft 3.

All around good - Sunday

I had a lie in as per usual, walked Becca and Siän to Church and helped with the Discoverers. It is really satisfying and fulfilling to be able to help, I even got a bracelet from it (we made some Bracelets) which I later gave to Sarah as she'd actually wear it. I was going to be walking an additional lady to Church but I somehow didn't get her Email and so wasn't aware she was going home for the weekend. Oh well, that's life. After the service we went to the Thatched House, Brierley was somewhat hyperactive and played leapfrog some of the way, it was quite good fun. I ate all of my half roast chicken, partly to prove to Brierley that I could, partly because I was hungry enough that I could. I went home and did some WoA stuff along with napping. The evening service was about persecution. Interestingly enough, the countries such as China, where Christians are persecuted openly and in a very nasty way, the people do not pray it goes away, they find that in it their faith in Jesus grows. It reminds me of something Ceryn asked/told a group of us on the way to Church one day. "When persecution comes here, which it will, are we going to be able to endure it?" It makes me wonder, I've never been persecuted for my faith, mocked yes but that happens with most things I do. Once I got back I looked at some trailers on the Apple Site, it turns out the 720dp High Def trailers are very very nice on this computer, I also found a way to save them to disk (igetmovies didn't work). I now have almost 2GB of them, very handy as I now don't need to stream them off each time. Some of the films I look fowards to are 300, Children of Men (already out, apparently really good), Happily N'ever After and Shrek the Third. Some others that I'll probably not watch at the cinema but would be intersted in finding the DVD of will be Evan Almighty, Fantastic Four rise of the Silver Surfer, Letters from Iwo Jima, Smokin' Aces, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Lives of Others.

And that's the end of that chapter - Saturday

All day was spent working on WoA, for the next few Saturdays there will not be any WoA, so I need to figure out what to do with my spare time. I'm wondering if there are any mad parties scheduled soon that I can attend...