So, I was neglecting the slides for my PhD defense 5 days from now as I yielded to my curiosity. I decided to practice my database querying skills to find out the highest word counts in the community and find out just how much we have written so far. I think the results are mostly unsurprising.

Username	Word count
Gossamer	216415
Nya Winters	198703
Abashai	99342
Gillar	78470
Tarot	77297
Kavala	61913
Akuaysun	59148
Colombina	49853
Chaelnomyl	49586
Cayenne	45779
Malia	38401
Stitch	38011
Sorian	34559
Terminus Norin	34508
Leo Varniak	33983
Liminal	33206
Kadarus	30954
Voreasos Alisier	30771
Zaira	30590
Alistair deGrey	26221
Kamalia Timandre	26167
Arabella Sintos	24444
Gromhir	22609
Devandre	21407
Evarette Karmine	21081
Alice	20920
Niall Raghnall	20668
Trista	19104
Ialari Pythone	19000
Sondra	17852

For the sake of becoming immersed in the world of Mizahar, I instinctively have urges to talk about what I'm describing as if it were part of my own world and that I am experiencing the realities of that world in the present- or perhaps I'm attempting to integrate myself in the miz world itself. As I build Endrykas description I feel this urge for present tense the most. It excites me to write like this because I get an amazing rush of having experienced it as much as my character themselves would experience it being there. The best part about enjoying creative writing for me has been knowing that this will someday be the inspirational soil that other player characters will sprout from to create their own unique branches of stories and miz world events.

<3

Every now and then I get teased about the barren waste that is my Facebook account. No avatar, no personal info, a handful of University friends I haven't talked to in years, and a bunch of game messages & invitations. I often claim lack of time, but sometimes I give the honest answer that I value my privacy, which almost always gets people giggling or rolling their eyes as if I had delusions of grandeur. There is a widespread and simply misplaced belief that privacy is only a concern for Hollywood actors and politicians. I can live with that, it doesn't bother me. There is a vicious version of the belief that really gets on my nerves, though - the "nothing to hide" voyeur's argument.

It goes like this: "You don't hide anything if you have nothing to hide." This seems to be the recent trend, and it's getting worrisome for me. Facebook has been casting privacy to the winds lately, with their terms of use changing almost daily to reflect the new policies. If you have a FB account, then more and more aspects of it are going to be public, you won't have a choice and you will be poorly informed at best. Friend lists already are public. So will profiles. In the words of the FB founder, "the world is going public". I love the English language, I really do (or I wouldn't be here ). Its power to express strong concepts with a minimum of sounds is unmatched. Unfortunately, it can be used for cheesy slogans like this, as well. Have you asked the world if he's going public lately? I've left a message on his answering machine, hope he'll hit me back shortly.

The Google CEO said: "if you do something you don't want anyone to know, then you probably shouldn't be doing it." This is officially scary (and definitely not the first time Google provides morality as a PDF download for the masses; turns out their motto "don't be evil" is not just a...

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Seriously. The title sums it up. Crazy huh? Sure, it won't last, but for right now I'm savoring it. See... I've been confined at my house for roughly the last two and a half weeks almost going on three while I recovered from carpal tunnel surgery on my right hand. It was great having a break from work, but when your on a 'break' you want to be able to do stuff. When your hand is wrapped in gauze and causing you serious pain, you really can't do ANYTHING. I could wiggle my fingers, but that was about it.

Now though... I happy. I just went back to work today. I missed work. I really love my job. It can be crazy busy or dead boring slow, but its always an interesting and challenging part of my day. I like to think I'm a great hostler. Maybe I'm not the best one that ever lived, but I love to smile all day long and do the best job I personally can do. That means, to me, cleaning and straightening up the yard (it can get trashed fast with 300+ trailers). That means giving the best customer service to the DC I work for that is possible. It means having a 'can do' attitude thats heavily infused with friendliness and helpfulness. Sometimes I have a bad day, but even when I'm having a bad day, I still have to put a smile on my face and get my job done.

I guess when you take time off work, you always wonder if you'll be missed. Will people even notice? It goes along with the whole thinking process about disappearing or dying today who would care or notice? Turns out... everyone cares and noticed. I got so many smiles, thumbs up, "LET ME SEE THE SCAR", people poking at my wrist, gossping with me, complaining about all the frigid weather I conveniently missed... it was bliss.

Granted my palm hurts where they cut through it after an 8 hr shift, but thats to be expected. I haven't done much with it for three weeks. I only had the stitches out Wednesday, but baring that, emotionally I'm in bliss. The substitute did a good job, but my relief...

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Pics of my Mom's cousin's Place in Carrol, Iowa. These are my... second cousins (?) Jean and Wayne. Great people. Don't egg their house. You gotta love it. I'm really glad I'm not there.