Welcome to the community, Josh!
If you want to play on a server, I suggest that you go to
Menche's server. There are many mods installed, including Mesecons (redstone) and nodeprotection (nodeprotection makes it only possible for people with a special permit to build in a set area). Note that you will have to ask for an account before you can get in the server, this is to keep spammers from making profane spam-accounts and such. You may have to download a nightly build to play on most servers (get it
here if you use windows) as support for stairs/slabs was added recently.
You should also beware of people like ''LANDMINE'' and ''ACDC'' and a few other that can not be named, as they are griefers. Kill them on sight if possible, if they are too far away leave it to the moderators to deal with them.
P.S. if you never intend on playing Minecraft again, may I possibly ''have'' your account? I don't want to waste money on an account and all.
Resources are abundant; only money is scarce. People should not have to work hard and remain poor just to pay for the needs of survival.
Society can thrive without money - but only if productive members of society are rewarded for being productive.