Woohoo. I've been nominated to join the Peace Corps. This means my interview did go well, my references were good, and I didn't emphasize my hatred of brown people (kidding!!). This is a big step, but certainly not the end of the journey. I don't know what region I've been assigned to yet, I'm assuming I'll find that out after I complete all the medical stuff (which isn't going to be very fun at all....) at which point I'll get another status change and be inducted into the lofty halls of the "Invitee". When I finally leave I'll be at the top of the ladder with the status of "Volunteer". Exciting times.

Oh sweet neglected blog, how lonely you must be with no new posts. In honesty nothing has happened of note. Really, I've been playing WoW pretty much all day and all night. That game really is great, really truly great. My played time just went over 4 days yesterday (that means I've played the game no less than 96 hours). $50 for 96 hours of fun is a good deal in my book. I'm not even done with it, there is still so much to do. A lot of people have a strict aversion to paying the $15 fee per month. Admittedly it's a bit steep, but in honesty it's a cheap habit. (One which will sadly come to an end when school starts... damn my need to graduate). Consider in the last 3 weeks or so I've played for 96 hours. The initial cost of the game is $50 which includes a month of service (I was a whore and paid more for the collectors edition, but lets not talk about that). Let's round and say that comes to about $0.50 per hour of entertainment. Say school drastically cuts my play time, to say... only 25 hours for the month (less than an hour of play per day). My cost is only $0.60 per hour. Chances are I'll play double that which gives a value of $0.30 per hour! Consider other forms of entertainment:

-Movie: $3.00/hour entertainment
-Food: $5-$50/hour entertainment
-Bar: $5-$20/hour entertainment
-Book: $2.00/hour entertainment (300 page book, 1 page per minute... new book)

By these numbers WoW is a bargain. Even compared to most video games; standard game lengths are around 20 hours. At $50 a pop this will be about $2.50/hour. Now the key is you actually have to play WoW to get these benefits, if you don't play your values will be higher. Still, it's a pretty good bargain if you ask me.

In other news I finished my Peace Corps. interview, and everything went pretty well. He as much told me to go and make an appointment for my health review because I would very likely be given an assignment. That was good news, but not until I get that email will I actually be too excited. I'm pretty sure I'll get a good reccomendation from him though, I by chance stole one of his quotes. The question was about my motivation for Peace Corps. and I concluded my answer with something to the lines of: "It's really for a combination of selfless and selfish reasons". To which he beamed: "That's what I always tell people! The most successful volunteers do it for exactly that, selfless and selfish reasons". I think that was probably a good thing. We'll see though.

Work is slow lately, but in a good way. I've been picking up PHP and wrote my first little app for work. It's a restaurant selector for deciding where we should go to lunch based on a myriad of criteria. It's so on the cusp of AI. We literally studied a search model that would be perfect for this situation, but I elected to not compound a new language with a difficult concept... so it's not too AIish. Maybe in the next revision. I think that's about it for now.

Almost done. I have but one final remaining until total freedom for a few weeks. Sweet. Things are going well. I got World of Warcraft last Friday. Tim and I decided we'd get it that morning, and spent the afternoon locating copies. We found them at Target in Paso, but when we arrived they had all been purchased. So we went to WalMart (the bane of my existence) and they actually had copies... What's more they had the collector's edition... and since I'm a whore.... Well, let's just say I have a Panda following me around now. This game is sweet, quite possibly the finest execution of the genre to date. Dying is bad, but not horrible. Levelling takes time, but not too much time. Regaining health and mana makes you sit... but not sit for too long. Blizzard, in their infinite awesomeness has actually found a good balance that doesn't leave you wanting to throw your keyboard out the window everytime an annoying game event happens. It suffices to say that December will be a month wasted in Azeroth.

Oh, and it's not for all intensive purposes, it's for all intents and purposes. Really, look it up.