Hey There Everybody

I've taken a small break in Disgaea and thought it would be nice of me to come out here and post a bit. The next few posts are probably going to be a little unusual. The next couple of posts aren't going to be me bitching about something. I unearthed my old web page on the Vampire game I used to run and found that the narrative journals are still in place. So I'm probably going to be sprucing them up a little bit and posting them up here, kind of like a really crappy serial story. So keep reading as I go through them.

Things are going pretty good all around. I've been brainstorming amongst myself today about some comic ideas and concepts. So all things being equal I should at least have some rough sketches sometime soon.

Can I retract that last statement?

That last statement that I made has been rendered false. Disgaea now officially has my soul. The game is incredible...tactical RPG elements with an incredibly deep item and class system that lets you do pretty much whatever the hell that you want. Yvonne's playing it right now while we wait for the impending child to drop from her womb. Enough of that...back to my games...

Jedi Academy PwNz my soul

Sorry it's been so long between blogs, but I've been engrossed entirely in Jedi Academy. The same thing happened when Jedi Outcast came out, but this has been far far worse. It's pretty well been every available moment I get I've been playing in the multiplayer saber duels. I've been re-learning CSS in order to get this web comic into some sort of pre-production. It'd be nice to actually get it going this time around.

The Day that No One Updated.

My morning routine is quite simple. I get up and go out to the computer to check my e-mail and the web comics. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are great mornings because that's the schedule under which most web comics update. But not this morning. Not a single one updated. Usually if nothing else, Penny Arcade will have the comic up if not the newspost. Or hell at least one of them will have updated. That ws not to be this dark morning. I'm positive that they'll have updated this afternoon, but until then the day will be without mirth.

Stranger Things HAVE Happened

I was thinking today, and I seem to suffer from a strange affliction. Unlike the others the doctor says this one isn't immediately curable. I seem to work best under pressure. Though I believe it goes a step beyond that, I don't seem to work at ALL until the pressure is on. I can always find a reason to put something off until the deadline is straing me dead in the face, and then I can work magnificently. I don't quite understand it, but it comes in handy quite a bit. This webcomic is a brilliant example. I've been putting it off for a while now. I pretty well stopped drawing and things screeched to a halt. now that chad has the inkling to do it again the wheels have started turning and things are kicking into overdrive in my mind. I have it all worked out...the "master" plan if you will. And i know all i need is a date and I'll have everything done at the last conceivabl second. For some reason it's just the way that I prosper...

And Tonight....

Tonight's musical slection is The Cult. In my opinion they're one of the most underrated bands of all time. I think Ian Astbury has one of the best rock voices I've ever heard. As it says on their website. "Too Hard for Goth, too metal-edged for alternative." This would keep them pretty well out of the mainstream. But I really don't know anyone who doesn't know Fire Woman or She Sells Sanctuary nearly by heart. If you're ever bummin' around a cd store, check out their selection. Check out their compilation "Rare Cult" It would have to be the greatest compilation set I've ever seen, with over 90 tracks, and a bunch of unreleased stuff. The 80 page book that comes with it doesn't hurt either.

Finally coming back around.

Well everything was up and running..until Intel struck an unforeseen blow. In the process of getting everything back online I installed the Intel PRONet drivers, and it assimilated my USB network. This took me offline entirely. Though it was a minor setback, it does kinda leave me on schedule for my final act of vengeance to the Vampire community. Most of you know about my incredibly favorable view of the Vampire: Redemption community. The friends I made, along with the enemies were possibly the best I've had in an online experience. But tonight I'm going back in after nearly a year hiatus to wreak my last and final act of retribution opon said enemies. I believe Redemption will be a good term for what is about to happen. So if any of you reading this play, and are either a member of the Society of Elders, or know members...tell them to run. Run for the pathetic little online undead lives because tonight is payback for the Network Card, payback for the crashers and the hackers and the raids. Tonight there won't be an Elder Cainite who won't feel my fangs sink deep into their neck. And Renee...Hide in your locked room as you always do, it'll make it just that much more fun to find you.

The Battle is over...but there were casualties...

Well I'm posting this from my house tonight, so that can only mean one thing...HAL is up and running. It was a grueling battle but I came out on top...for the most part. My 13.6 gig Hard Drive; affectionately named Vinnie, was the first casualty. He bit it hard and will be greatly missed. Another casualty was EVERYTHING on my 80 gig hard drive. There were 7 years worth of music web pages, and various things that I had written...all gone. *sigh* Let the rebuilding commence i guess.

In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is King

Well, the computer didn't go quite to plan. After I got it assembled I found that the motherboard (more than likely) was screwed so I've gotta take it to where I bought the parts (Unfortunately, Tech Advanced Computers) so they can "assemble" it, just in case I'm a fucking moron and can't build a computer on my own. So with any luck I'll be back online this weekend.

From an Undisclosed Location...

With my computer completely out of operation now, the next two days can't get here fast enough. If all goes well, HAL 3.0 will be online and completely operational by saturday afternoon. I can operate on the web in safe mode...very carefully. so far the only thing I can't access is my mail. For some reason HAL 2.0a doesn't like my mail. Oh well. I haven't been on it much anyway since it died. I've been playing my PS2, waiting for the next .Hack game to come out. Maybe write a longer one Saturday when I rejoin the world of the living.

Soon...

Well next Saturday will be the official birthday of HAL 3.0. I'm stripping down the current HAL next week and rebuilding him in a new case, processor and other assorted hardware. Next week I move up to 2.4 GHz. WoOt. I will have full functionality back instead of having to operate my computer in safe mode. It will be a thing of beauty that just can't be missed. For on that fateful day, I WILL RULE!! anywho, just letting everybody know that I'm still alive around here.

One Bong to Rule them All...

Sorry for the usage of Bong in the title, but I felt Water Pipe to be a little unwieldy in the title. Jon got this killer Hookah for his birthday. It's pretty damn slick. last night it was sitting on his dining table like some sort of centerpiece. Thursday was Yvonne's birthday and friday was Jon's, so we had a little celebration friday night to cover everything. Then we ate the mescaline and went swimming. Just kidding. I've been watching Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas lately, not to mention just finished the book again for what is probably the hundredth time. So I've been spouting quiotes from the books every now and then, as I'm sure you can tell by the title from a few days ago.

So we're in the mall playing DDR yesterday and chad is bemoaning his single-dom and I offer him sage advice, as I'm often paid to do. "Just point a girl out and go do your thing" is along the jist of what i tell him. And we're playing DDR and this chick is up there and chad decides to go for it there. what's truly sad is the first thing that came to mind was "Wow, someone actually listened". We played a fair bit of DDR yesterday. I was pretty damn stiff for the first couple of songs, so I looked truly rediculous on songs that I normally can ace no sweat. I think the chick is bad juju because as soon as she went to the bathroom I got my groove back. Well I guess as much groove as a 26 year old white guy can have. I'll have to hunt chad down to find out how the movie date went last night.

I'm probably gonna head up to the mall in a little bit to play some DDR. I'm thinking of being saucy and strating my conquest of Heavy, though I might wait until I'm a little better at Max 300 and Orion .78 on Standard first. I'm pretty decent, but not as decent as I'd like to be at them. I can whip through them on Light with no problem now, so if I can ace them on standard I think i'll feel like I've gotten my grasp of Standard.

HAL is reborn...kinda

After 2 straight days of struggling with this damn computer I finally have it back to some semblance of working. I tried to reinstall Windows no less than 7 times. My little Hard Drive is on the fast track to being fried I believe. Even after the reformat and installation its almost got more problems than it started with. So I'm gonna pick up a new Hard Drive Friday and hope that works. And now onto weather.

It's hotter than fuck. It was at least 95 yesterday and after the rain slacks up this morning I'm sure it'll get to somewhere around the same temperature. Thankfully I can't remember the last time that it went a full day without raining so it been pretty decent for the temperature. As long as it's raining that is. And now onto sports.

I picked up a few new games this weekend. From the same aforementioned Buy 2, Get 1 free sale at Gamestop. I picked up Super Bust-A-Move 2 for Yvonne. She loves those games so I have no problems picking one up every now and then. I used to play it back in the day, but I haven't since they felt the need to incorporate some sick idea of a story to it. I also picked up Robotech: Battlecry and Defender. Defender was really for the collection value. I'm a huge, what they would call now, retro-gamer. I love all of the old arcade games and games on teh Atari, which is where Defender comes in. It's a remake of the old Arcade/Atari Golden Age. In the original you flew this little ship and had to pick up colonists before the aliens killed them. It was pretty neat for the time. Well the new Defender ownz it entirely. In true Midway fashion they remade a classic into another classic. You get to pick from 6 ships, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. It's a fuckton of fun. Robotech: Battlecry on the other hand satisfies my Anime/transforming plane fixation. It's a nice looking, cel-shaded game that does incredible justice to the Robotech series. As you progress you can unlock new Veritech to pilot and color schemes and intervies and all sorts of neat stuff. The game relies heavily on you being able to effectively use your Veritechs transformation abilities. Trust me it's a mother fucker if you don't.

Well I think that's about all I have to rant about today.

We were somewhere around Barstow when the drugs began to take hold...

Today turned out to be a thoroughly enjoyable day. We picked up Yvonn'es little sister Nikki and went to the movies. We had to g to University mall since Nikki had never played the 8th mix machine. She did well I must admit. We all went to see Pirates of the Carribean. I loved the movie personally. It was a lot of fun to be sure. It had a kind of light hearted tone to it despite the overall action of the movie. Johnny Depp played an incredible pirate and really made the movie. I definitely reccomend it to anyone looking for a decent movie to check out.

I've been playing more and more of Legaia 2, and I think I figured out why. If you look at it in a different light, it kinda resembles the PnP game Exalted. The types of "Mystics" resemble the castes ad types of Exalted in the game, and the storyline kinda runs along the lines of how an Exalted game might run. If you're wanting to get into Exalted, and you have a PS2, I highly reccomend this game for some loose reference material.

My migraine the other night prompted me to take a jungle juice concotion of Lortab 7.5 and Demmoral. It made for an interesting night. It didn't have quite the expected effects however. I pretty well expected to be a pile of goo as everybody else was on just the demorral alone. I got a little fuzzy and things were slightly more humrous, but that was pretty much the extent of it. It certainly made the pain go away though.

My video card is going bad...really bad. I just had to go back to onboard video. ack. i miss it already. I know i'm not gonna be able to play my games, but i'm sure i can hold out until friday when i get paid. I'm gonna start work on a new computer as well. it's gonna be pretty slick, and will hopefully keep me ahead of the curve for a year or two at least.

Coronary? Yes, I'll take two please...

It's hard for people who are set in their ways to admit that they're wrong. This is an ongoing struggle I'm having with my interim boss, Smitty. He seems rather reluctant to admit that I am right on a good deal of the stuff that we deal with. He's been out of action for about a year now, and I have to admit that I didn't know a quarter of the things that I do now. For some reason he still feels the need to treat me like I just started working there and don't know my ass from a hole in the ground. He refuses to admit that I may actually know more than he does about air conditioning and duct work. I can be minding my own businees doing something right and he feels the need to cme up and completely tear it apart saying it's wrong. something as simple as making a piece of duct he drug out into a 2 hour ordeal in which i just took the kerfing tools from him and cut it myself while he stood over me saying it woulfn't come out right...and it did. So all of my accomlishments are nothing more than "luck" and they would have turned out better if i'd done them his way. I think i'm gonna crack if he keeps it up.

Buy 2, Get 1 Free....Sign me up.

Well i went to gamestop last weekend and picked up a few games for my PS2. Here are my thoughts on what I picked up:

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

Killer game. I also own GTA3, but for some reason this game is just so much more fun. The killer 80's soundtrack doesn't hurt a bit either. There's nothing like runing a drive-by while listening to "I Wear My sunglasses at Night". There was one mission in the beginning where I had to go all Scarface on this one guy with a chainsaw. Good stuff. For what a lot of people seem to think is a rehash of GTA3, I find that the soundtrack and the gameplay are a worthy investment. I love it personally.

Legaia 2: Duel Saga

This would probably be on of the most underrated RPG's I've ever run across. Legend of Legaia for the PS was an OK game, but lacked a lot of graphic detail. Legaia 2 makes up for it. It's unique combat system make for an interesting play experience. You fight by entering where your strike hits on your opponent. If you enter the right combination you learn Arts, which are super powered combos. As you level up you gain more Art Blocks, so you can enter more strikes per turn. It really is worth the experience. While the storyline is still kinda so-so, the gameplay itself is pretty fun

Enter the Matrix

Everybody and their brother has mixed opinions of this game. And on some counts I have to agree with a few of them. There is a certain "unfinished" quality to it. There have been several instances where the game will just go spastic for no apparent reason. The music in certain areas gets quirky and goes into an infinite repeat of the game 6 notes. Those are my only down notes for this game however. The action is top notch, and the Focus moves are awesome. The movie scenes between some scenarios are great, featuring the actual actors. I personally enjoy the hell out of the game. But I swear, if agent smith throws me off of one more skyscraper I'm gonna throw the game.

All in all, I think they were worthy purchases, though the game I'm really waiting for comes out at the end of next month.

The Job that never ends (reprise)

Just when youthought it was safe to answer your radio another laundry list of crap to do has sprung up for harbourview. So we've gotta do that sometime tomorrow. Today was a day of impossibilities. Things that are not really possible in refrigeration popped up all at once today. In addition to these the alternator in the worktruck died on us on the way back from the dump. So we got to change that on out. I'm starting to think that karma is nailing me for somethign that I might think about doing in the future. I have what I've always called pre-emptive karma. i get nailed for all the bad stuff before i do it. It's rather irritating really. nothing much to write about, just wanted to sign in and say hi to everybody.

:)

Dread Zeppelin always makes me smile.

Apologies

You're gonna have to excuse my rapid-fire depression and self pity posts of the last, oh, about 20 minutes. I've got a lot going on in my head at the moment. There's a lot of heavy things going on right now and I guess I need some sort of affirmation that something's going right. Though I really do feel like destroying something beautiful, my desrtuctive streak goes much deeper than that. I want to crush, maim and kill for no good reason at all. No one is on to talk to, and I have no urge to do anything. I've started no less than 3 projects in the last 20 minutes and I've made it no further than selecting a background color and text color. I have no desire to write, to create, to share, or to continue doing much of anything. There's no real reason to. All of my efforts end up in a Dead Projects folder. Trust me, there is such a folder, right on my desktop next to the shit can. Only one step away. I even set out to draw a little and got as far as bringing my case in from the car. Stacy is a prime example of why even try. here's someone who did it all by the book. perfect credit, perfect lifestyle. owns his own business. now it's all going to shit in less than one month I'm sure that ACS mechanical will be no more. It seems to be the end of a lot of things lately.

Dear Universe,
I'm sure that i've been a part of your personal Gag Reel lately. Why do you feel the need to bring everything to bear against me all at the same time? Have I not believed in your power and pull all this time? Have I not helped others to open their minds to possibilities that established organisations would rather we not think? Why do you sit up late at night and conspire against me? I would like answers. It's the least you could do at the moment. I think the game started when I was fourteen and you thought it would be funny to see how I persevere. Well I'll tell you. i've played by my own rules. I've lived my life how I see fit and kept true to every single one of my morals and beliefs. I haven't languished in self pity or angst like some would. Don't you think that was a pretty heavy load to thrust upon a teenager? I did everything right up until I turned 18. In the end you realise that it's all a waste and you've gone out of your way to prove it to me lately. If you could see clear to clear your schedule for a few minutes and tell me why it's so funny I'd appreciate it.

I'm done for the moment. I needed to get this off of my chest. There's nothing overtly wrong with my life, but everything just seems to be falling apart around me for everybody else. I want to destroy something beautiful...

I feel like destroying something beautiful