Kicked the bucket list

Nicole asked me a while ago if I have a bucket list, I had one but I think everything got crossed off already, almost. Must mean that its time ti update my ten steps


1luxuries
Well dollar a meal rations still ongoing, so luxuries shared now includes meat as well as coffee alcohol, potato chips and antipasto. Mostly this seems OK.

2prepare
Well as far a plans go I think I’ve completed every milestone I’ve aimed at and overcome every challenge God has put before me with the exception of filling a quiver with arrows. Currently there is nothing I really want to add to my bucket list. So I suppose I just reiterate old milestones and aim to improve skill and efficiency.

3efficiency
I really am sick of returning home to a big empty house and want to have somebody else to at least fill up a spare room. Current proposal is free board is somebody cleans for me. But I don’t really want to advertise as that wasted a lot of my tile previously.

4mental
New computer games, and guitar is coming along OK and presenting many challenges. I don’t think it’s something I can finish getting better at. So it’s merely a matter of how many hours I spend with Elva.

5physical
Can almost do a handstand, seems that before that is reliable I’ll be able to go into a bridge. Handstand walking is a long way off. Next step in Kitesurfing is backrolls. I can jump reliably either direction and change tack mid air no worries. My rations I think have made me leaner but now that I’ve been eating vegetables I’ve still got plenty of energy. Trying to survive on instant ramen noodles was a terrible idea. This reminds me of the book [Lucifers Hammer] and in hindsight could be the reason this winter was cold.

6spiritual
Leading a bible study has almost got me back into reading the bible which is nice. Since we are working chronologically I’ve been reading it like a novel, rather than a chapter a day.

7emotional
I think this is always the hardest category to come to terms with and thus I have the least I want to say about it. Which I suppose means I have room to grow and I should share more with my friends. After all a good friend is somebody who has a lot of knives and could easily stab you in the back and yet they don’t. I think if I got engaged next week my best men would be Josh and Tony and I’d have to invite Stephan and the Parfits along with the Doohans, aside from family of course.

8recover
Well I survived the 15k cane to coral run without any adverse effects this year. And it was fun running with Marc and the reservists plus the 160pushups. I didn’t enjoy working on the Rovema installation in packaging, mostly due to a lack of communication and not getting a chance to actually test and commission any of my programming. Nothing else springs to mind at the moment.

9fun
I really cant say I have had a lot of fun this last ten months or so Partially being cold and slightly ill due to winter. Social events I’ve tried to organise have generally been half as effective as I’d hoped and my house felt lonely. But I really don’t like to complain so sacrifices and compromises have to be maid to maintain a balanced lifestyle.

0shame
Only really ashamed of my lack of progress and sour attitude. In reality I’ve overcome a lot of challenges and been able to debrief at least with myself to see that things went about as smoothly as they could have gone with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. I think I have done a pretty good job of being meek lately. Then again that’s really hard to qualify and define. Thus the reason I’ve aimed for Meekness.

More * More
Weeeelll ….
Boardgames and co-op computers
Electric Bass Guitar; In a band, Blues riffs, walking bass and Rocksmith
Save for next overseas holiday
Whatever happened to camping? I havent been bush in ages.
Spend so much time in the surf and the sun that my belly never hangs over my belt.
Youtube tongue twisters in alternate languages.
House paid off in 2020
Be the most Meek.
Sell a computer game that I helped make.
Handstand walking + wall flips.
And then [This] I wanted started by last Christmas

Find some girl

• Computer games camping beach, dance.
• She can worry about insurance, tax, medical, bills and stuff.
• At 31 married
• At 35 house would be paid off. Some children (Dad will be 62, year 2020)
• At 40, retired to spend time with kids, run my own business / pastor / musician
• At 53, 18yo children
• At 65, settle down, sell home produce, booze and computer games, ready for grand kids. (Dad will be 92, year 2050)
• Will I have grand kids at an age younger than Dad?
• I probably won’t be the oldest kitesurfer, computers and games are tax deductible, still play the bass at church.

All in all I reckon I can cope with a bit of time travel even now. I’m prepared to be unprepared and with the help of God no challenge will be insurmountable

Shedmen 4th September

I’ve put some words together for Shedmen at my place on the 4th September. I’ve avoided listing any arguments/pro/con/bible verses. First I have some dot points ill talk around then I’ll mention what the concept actually is and I’ll maybe add the bit about tradition. We have not had much theological debate at Shedmen lately and I’m not that keen to talk about my like so I thought to start something heavy instead. So what do youse think? 

Women’s ordination.

• Back when I went Baptist the Calvinistic double pre-destination was a big deal. But mostly us of uni student age were sick of the argument and didn’t think it actually effected day-to day life. Some people are predestined for Heaven. Some predestined for Hell.
• Been an ongoing issue for a while 1932 in Canada.
• I think that because we are human we like to disagree, there will always be something to argue about and something that causes division within the church. It’s one of the tools the devil uses to attack us. Just like in the Screwtape letters by CS Lewis.
• I believe pastors conference earlier this year decided that they were unable to advise SYNOD what the Lutheran church should do. That is to say theologically they were not confident enough that the bible is for or against women’s ordination.
• This has been an issue of discussion in our church for more than 10 years I think. Every so often it’s put to the vote that the LCA will allow ordination of women, but they need more than ~70% of people to vote yes. I wonder if as a church we vote yes this year, would it go to the vote again at the next SYNOD to take away all the women pastors?
• Another story I’m reminded of is when the Israelites asked Solomon to give them a king, they nagged enough that eventually God said yes.
• Also in Australia I believe that the only occupation not available to women is being a priest of the Catholics or a Pastor of the Lutherans. But by the same token churches have an anti-antidiscrimination allowance in federal law. This is how we can discriminate against Muslims and not allow them to partake in Holy Communion.
• It’s not merely a question about gender equality, I’m a mathematician. Given 12ab=3a, therefore 4=a. Ergo gernder equality can be acheived by removing the difference and nolonger acknowledging anybodies gender.

Finally what does it even mean?
Given that a lay worker like Wayne Dionysius can get away with almost everything.
Women, humans what have a uterus, wouldn’t say boobs cause seems some blokes have them now.
Ordination, process of consecration for the performance of religious rites and ceremonies
i.e. only a Pastor can Baptise, consecrate Holy Communion and ordain more clergy.


From the LCA website:
Pastors are part of Christ’s plan for his church and he himself instituted the office of the ministry as a gift to the church. This is a distinct ministry which complements the discipleship and service of the whole church.
The pastors’ role in the Body of Christ is to feed and lead congregations and communities through the ministries of preaching and teaching God’s Word and administering the Sacraments—baptism and the Lord’s Supper. In fulfilling this ministry they are involved in various tasks: preaching, leading public worship, teaching, visiting and giving pastoral care.
They are ordained (placed into this office) according to Scripture and the practice of the apostles, and called by Christ, through his church, to serve in various ministry contexts in the Lutheran Church of Australia, including New Zealand.
Pastors serve in a variety of ministry contexts in the church. While the majority of pastors still serve parishes and congregations, some also work in school ministry, chaplaincy or in special roles in overseas missions.
The role of pastor in Christ’s Church is a servant role. Pastors exercise humble servant leadership, representing and imitating Christ himself by placing the needs and welfare of those they serve first.
They are called to receive and work with the guidance and direction of the LCA College of Bishops, accepting their leadership in ministry. [Link]


Tradition Vs Traditionalism 
From my dictionary
"Tradition is that body of practice and belief which is socially transmitted from the past. It is regarded as having authority in the present simply because it comes from the past, and encapsulates the wisdom and experience of the past. For some, the very idea of tradition is anathema. It is characteristic of modernity to reject the authority of the past in favour of the present deployment of reason, unencumbered by tradition or prejudice. While prior to the seventeenth century tradition was largely unquestioned as a source of insight, and in need of no defence, since the Enlightenment the notion of tradition has been defended by traditionalists such as Burke and, more recently, Hayek. Upon inspection, however, traditionalism, if not indefensibly irrational, turns out to be a demonstration of the overlooked rationality contained within traditions. Traditions often turn out upon inspection to be not so much irrational as subtle and flexible deployments of reason in particular spheres."

When Dad gets home from work mum has the Table set and dinner ready and mum always cooks and cleans.
Traditionalism:
We do this because my grandfather did and his grandfather before him, its right and proper and the way things are always done.
Why not change: old habits die hard, if it at broke …
Tradition:
Dad knows how to cook and clean from when he went to uni. But he is terrible at it; dinner would be late and warm baked beans on burnt toast is not very appetising. But mum got taught how to bake biscuits by her grandma and they are way better than anything in the stores.
Why note change: There is a meaningful story behind it all and I like it better this way.

4 month Recap

Overall:

Has been a while, just like [Levi], [Tony], [Beth], [Alice] and [Andreas]. We get motivated for a while then distracted.

Sometimes I feel like I’ve not done anything noteworthy in the pasy year, I have not felt like ben much. A few times ive asked myself am I here doing this because I actually want to? Or am I obligated? Or is it just a habit that I have?

But I have achieved a lot of things, in fact everything. A while ago Nicole asked me if I had a bucket list, Well I did have one but I think everything has been crossed off. Except for having a quiver full of arrows. That came up again recently from watching “Smarter every day” on YouTube [Psalm 127].

Our bible study is probably coming across my probably favourite bible verse soon, Joshua 1:9 do not be terrified, do not be afraid for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you shall go. Also I can do all things through Him who gives me strength. I suppose that’s how I’ve accomplished everything I’ve set out to do, God has blessed those endeavours, certainly not by my strength lest I boast, but by the grace of my God have I achieved these things.

So yes, while I have put pen to paper a couple of times I’ve not hit the publish button. And what remains is to find somebody to keep me warm at night. Certainly has been a cold winter this season and I’ve found myself wearing trousers more often than not. I’ve keen for a bear skinned summer [Link], when I started to lean on the bass I spent most of my sessions standing in the middle of the lounge in just my undies wondering if the TV would think I was playing naked.

So where am I at now? What small things have been left undone? What storms have I been though that ended up residing in a cup of Earl Grey [Link]? How have I set out to be a better Ben [Link]?

I’ve usually got a few notes of what I’m currently up to in game. And looking back through my to do list there are a lot of games unfinished that I’m not currently having fun with but may go back to soonish or maybe at Christmas.

Speaking of which I wonder how I should spend my long service leave? Sometimes I feel like this blog shoulnt have as much private into on it, sometimes I figgure nobody reads it anyway. At least I have a little control on what I put here other that facebook.

Warframe

Debonair Limbo, for Spy missions, exterminate, capture: Try map unlocks
Massochistic Nekro survival/excavation for potatoes/nurodes

Grinder to Host sab tower, 4 peeps should get my shade levelled up again
Playing as a gundam is also fun.
But the main reason I’ve stuck with this is so that I’d have a good support character in case we have another bash at it for a few Sojourns.

ESO

Quick levelling is done through hard(ish) questing.

Run quests at my level, or 5 levels higher.
Cat needs skill points to be a better thief to get cash to increase lootbags and movespeed.
AnOCD, needs public dungeons to level up undaunted for the bone shield / bound armour
Heal, shield, aoe heal, buff, buff, ult
Was good fun for a couple of weeks playing with Josh after my birthday. But I only know 2 people who currently have the game and at $80 price tag I’d be more inclined to recommend new people try GW2 or RAR, as they are both more friendly to new players. ESO is just too generic and too single player.

RAR

Still has novel ideas though it’s a bit buggy and a bit dated now.

I was playing it back in 2007, for a year or so until I decided against subscription model games.
Organic: Green machine, ye olde healer to play with Josh, maybe a little like Anoikis. As this was my first main healing character. I remember I only started playing as a healer/support because they were so hard to find ingame and the only way to reliably group with a healer was to play one. I also ended up naming most of my characters after complex chemistry, because all the names I tried were already taken. I should not have this problem anymore.
Here be a yoyo healer, built for teamwork
Need a second character incase I wish to play without Josh/Levi, maybe I should roll another healer then?
Skyzer the chaotic spinning dual wielding buff/debuffer Disciple of Kaine. I vaguely remember doing this previously and having fun in a group of three where each of us had chosen a different mastery path. Apparently this class has very good 1v1 survivability.

DawnOfWar II

And then following on from RAR, this got Levinathan and myself back into Co-Op Retribution which now had both acheivements and cards. Anoikis has gotten a fair bit of a workout lately, so I had to go and find [This] old forum post which ties into [That] old intro which I've recently updated here:

• "The Psychosomatic Anoiki’s abilities centre around the restoration of life. Whether or not the patient was living in the first place. Known in some circles as “Saint Anoiki the Axe” or merely “An OCD Healer” Anoiki sets out not to be good or a hero but often ends up that way. Given a penchant for necromancy and a desire to make friends Anoiki may be found to take things a little too literally. But when the opportunity arises would much rather heal the living than animate the skeletons of the deceased. Thus assumptions about Anoiki’s evil nature often result in Anoiki taking the role of an Anti-Villain. Taking whatever friends can be found in the beginning but when it all comes out in the wash Anoiki would prefer to heal everybody rather than hurt anybody. Though there are times that the suffix “the Axe” becomes readily apparent, very red and apparent. If everybody is healthy and whole then no healing can be practiced, and if you want to get better then practice practice practice."

Ergo grabbing the terminator armor, prefferably for 4 squads and priotitising health then melee, losing as many battles as possible to ensure we cap all the points of interest.

SR2HD

Not using cash for much, need to search for a new droid to patch me up and a scanner from the black holes. Proceed as normal; questing and saving systems. May be able to tackle 10 ships on my own now, and I suppose I should begin building up a fleet. A fleet will be my new replacement source of experience now that my charisma has fallen. I was going to rely on my charisma to get people to join me but they did not seem to keen anyway. I’m also curious about the ships available to the pirates. Apparently one of them is extremely fast. Also change race to human, probably the only time I will be a human character.

Aim still to be an evil pirate with a fleet of minions. Mainly keeping the Shadow of the Empire. On a subsequent play through I may try out the fast pirate ships and switch teams. But not now. So I need to persist with the blackholes to locate robots. And it is probably time to capture coalition systems rather than fight the dominators. First I suppose I can take all the military bases.

Currently only have half technology so I should be able to use blackholes a lot to travel, Thus I don’t really need the black goo. I’m not too fussed about recovering things from the dominators as I’ve seen much better equipment in the black holes and I can now effectively search them. I wonder if I should try to get maxed skills this play through?  Well I need tech and commander to make the best use of this ship. And that will set me up well for late game. Then I may want to use my XP to upgrade my robots instead.

Another goal is to upgrade my ship, which will require a huge amount of cash. Easiest method for that is the dominator planet recovery battles, main question thee is whether it makes and difference if I get the upgrade at a science or pirate station.

Might be able to just win but I would rather be a pirate,

Bass

Possible Wednesday orchestra? Ask Lyn Duldig for details and music

Blues chords/ walking bass lines. To play songs sans sheet music.
Play for fun not practice
New coloured stickers for 7 notes
Have heaps of free DLC from [Custom Forge] now, generally I'll get 70% accuracy on the first play through but I still really need the instructions when playing in church. Thats where a bass riff would come in. They can fit on any song, making me essentially a drummer, maintaining the pace and backbeat.

Cash

Last year or so has been a bit of a different struggle. Bills (particularly council rates) have been increasing faster than my pay. Finally at Christmas 2014 I was able to get my shower properly repaired, then had to replace all 4 of my car tyres because they had gone too flat for too long. So that put a rather large dent in my savings.

I’d also recently got into a habit of eating packaged meals as they were simple and quick. Though I had not realised how expensive they were. Say around $10 per meal and 20 meals in a month $200 per month on dinner. In January sometime I realised this and found some blogs with how to live on $1 USD per day. Therefore subsequently switched to cereal for dinner and meatless pasta for lunch, I have not recorded this religiously but:

Brekky

1kg musley at $5, use about 100g per meal = $15 per month

1L milk at $1, lasts about the same so, = $3 per month

Lunch

frozen stir fry at $0.3 per 100g

Pasta at $0.3 per 100g

+ Oil, salt, spices = $0.60 per meal, $18 per month

Dinner

One of the above two, occasionally rice. Say $12 for 20 days.

Then the other ~10 evening meals I’ll have visitors or may eat meat.and that may be $40 for a single evening.

Ergo my base food expenditure has been ~$58 per month all year.

Other than food I spend my cash on:

Bills

Homeloan repayments

Petrol

Charity (10% of income to church + Humble bundle)

Finance is the past... Seems from 2009 till mid 2014:

Holidays in 2009 and 2014 overseas cost me a bit ~$5k each

New car in 2013, will have saved me cash in repairs compared to the Commodore.

PC in 2009, kite in 2012 & 2014 other than that I’ve spent less than $1000 per year on myself.

Other than, other than that:

On average Bills have increased $2000 per year

On average Pay has increased $2000 per year

On average spending $14,000 via credit card, primarily food and petrol

Last year received $49969.83 in pay, after tax.

And yet I still really don’t have the cash to splash on alcohol or Kitesurfing gear. So my cheapest entertainment remains going home to play computer games. All the infrastructure is already in place and the ongoing cost is already incorporated into my bills.

Kind of makes my social life dull though. Recently through church people have highlighted what happens to "shut ins" and there was an interesting interview a while back about a girl in the states. Initially she got noticed due to an online rant about how hard it was to get ahead. A small lack of funds can quickly turn into a large lack of funds that is nearly impossible to recover from. Just this week I heared another story of a homeless man who found thousands of dolers in cash, turned it into police, then the local community raised even more cash to honor his morality and he turned it down as he wanted a job not handouts.

Ball

Would you beleive that i wrote this sometime back in March? Whilst I mostly remembered how to dance and picked up the steps without too much hassle; Totally forgotten what social outings are like:

There were wallflowers, some on purpose some not.

Some people were inappropriately dressed or did not put any effort in. For me the first half was fairly blurry and then I was focussing on faces, mayhap I should have been trying to chat up the girls with low cut blouse and miniskirts.

There were groups of people than knew each other well and a few like me that barely knew anybody. At times I’ve sought out the lonely and empathised with them or otherwise been inclusive. But this time I mostly just asked the closest girl when the dances were starting and talked to whoever my partner was at the end of each set.

And then for a Christian event there seemed to be very few people actually going to church in the following morning. The Towoomba spring ball is now only a fortnight away and I'm pretty keen to see if I can get my grove on again. This time I'm actually a little organised and knew it was coming up [Link] yay for FB.

 And one final tunish [Link] made me want to drive my car to work on Thursdays. This is pretty much the least amout of wordsmithing I've dont to a blog post for ages. Hopefully its readible enough that I wont get confuzzled in a year or so or whenever I look back at it. Magically the font and line spacing seems to change. I should halve edited this in HTMS and linked all the sub headings.