Back and blogging...RL upgrades include: fatherhood, masters degree, and instructor status

I am back in action.  My blogging hiatus is complete.  I finished my masters degree in Theology (inadvertently boosting the "priest" element of this blog), completed the USAF's instructor pilot course in the C-130J, and (most importantly) we had our first kid, Molly.
This blog will henceforth be exclusively pictures of my adorable daughter.

Just kidding.

Fatherhood and instructorhood are treating me well, although my sleep-to-wake ratio seems to have changed forever.

I now play WoW and Clash of Clans, and only in-between time spent with my wife and daughter, and when I'm not on base.  I no longer raid, but I am an avid garrison developer, and I am leveling my fourth character to 100.

Remarkably, I recovered my oldest WoW account, the one I played when vanilla launched!  My original priest is still there!  That means I now have a character with full Tier 3 (Transcendence) gear and the ultimate priest mantlepiece, Benediction/Anathema.  I am in priest transmog nirvana.  So few priests can tout those old pieces, and almost none can claim that they got Tier 3 when it was the top gear in the game.  Ahh, the old days.

I will be blogging about gaming with sporadic schedules, mobile gaming with Clash of Clans, and a LOT of WoW strategies for "fire and forget" gaming.  "Fire and forget" is a reference to air-to-air missiles which a pilot can launch and then ignore due to autonomous guidance systems.  In WoW, this includes follower missions and garrison buildings.  In CoC, just about everything other than active attacking is considered fire and forget.

Stay tuned for more updates!  I'll be sharing about my first paladin, Smoogepal, which was my first character to hit 100 thanks to the free character boost which came with WoD.  I'll be talking about the fantastic crafted items which are making my hunter, Smoogehunt, a force to be reckoned with.  And, I'll be talking about the best ways I've found to capitalize on the WoW economy when you only have minutes to log in at a time.

And, in my normal fashion, I'll weave in parallels from my career as an Air Force pilot, where I am now an instructor, flight commander, and soon (hopefully) to be a Major.

Signing off...

Waddle

2013 Recap and Summer in Abilene

2013 has been an exciting time, with a lot of travel, Air Force trips, and good career development.  Limited gaming time, and very little computer work though.

I now serve as an Aircraft Commander in the C-130J, a primary scheduler for my squadron, and a deployer-to-be once again.  Later this year, in true herc pilot fashion, I'll be saying adios to the U.S.A. once again for a while to do what we do where we do it.
I spent 2 months in Montgomery, AL, where I knocked out three classes towards my Theology masters degree, completed a leadership course, and played a good deal of Starcraft II.  The internet connection was so shoddy that I could not play Mechwarrior Online, which was a real shame for me.  In that time, I drifted so far back in the MWO scene that I am hesitant to pick it back up seriously.  And, while I have a lot to say about SCII, my playtime on that game has been 0.000 since returning to Abilene.

Now, as I begin to anticipate a long stint in another deployed location, I've started looking for some good hobbies I can bring with me to help me pass the time.  I have not upgraded my Macbook Pro since the last deployment, so that is somewhat restrictive if I want to get into something released recently.  After what seems like endless google searches for good MMOs that do not hinge on fast-twitch latency, I have decided that there is simply nothing out there that topples my old staple.  That being said, tonight I began downloading the client for WoW and, coincidentally, I resurrected this old blog.  I will also be posting randomly to the Born to Waddle blog as I aim to improve in the area of running and core fitness this summer and while deployed.

This blog was conceived as a catch-all for hobbies, leadership lessons, and career accomplishments.  So, I fully intend to capture the things I am learning as I fly, as I fire up an MMO once again, and as I practice leadership concepts in the best laboratory ever created (the military).

Here are my simple precepts:

1. God, family, others and me - those are my priorities in order
2. Fly safe, operate professionally, and always improve as a pilot, officer, and husband
3. Work hard and play hard, in that order
4. Play efficiently, work smarter not harder in games, and capture lessons learned
5. Be duplicatable in everything, whether it be dealing with airmen or leveling a character

Stay tuned for more updates on leveling my first character to cap in Mists, lessons learned as I try to improve processes in scheduling airlift operations, and trips and fun during my precious few months left at home.

July is already completely scheduled out, with a brief TDY to MS, some good family travel, a checkride, and a lot of deployment preparation.  One of my personal goals, with respect to the deployment and connectivity, is to consolidate all the equipment that I want to bring with me when we ship out.  I'll be thinking about routers, LAN equipment, wireless equipment, carrying cases, power options for 240V infrastructure, and good ideas for software that I'll want to have with me.  I'll be trying to set the laptop up for easy use and limited download requirements once I'm over there.  I'll be looking into good video communication options to use so I can talk to my wife.  It's certainly going to be an interesting time once again.

Thanks for reading the revived Priest and Pilot blog.