I AM BACK! TAKE COVER!

Welcome to October, 2003! A whole summer has gone by since last I bothered to splurt anything. What the HELL am I doing? Probably the same thing I was doing six months ago. Let's see...

Work. Sleep. Eat. Yup, same thing.. Well it's a good thing because if I wasn't doing any one of those things, there'd be some issues. Let's kick it up with the Friday Five :

1. Name five things in your refrigerator.

Ketchup, milk, Coca-Cola, hot dogs, butter - now wasn't that exciting?

2. Name five things in your freezer.

Ground meat, Stouffer's meatballs and spaghetti entrees, brocolli, waffles, cod fish fillets - could it get better?

3. Name five things under your kitchen sink.

The main garbage can, Orange Clean, Pledge, plastic bags, Carpet Fresh

4. Name five things around your computer.

Druid & cleric spell list components printouts (Everquest), CDRs, floppies, a scanner, speakers...

5. Name five things in your medicine cabinet.

Deordorant, nail clippers, hair crap, band-aids, old stinky cologne

Feel better now???

Welcome back....

No updates since May? Why? One main reason: Lost interest. Quicky update: Playing EQ again. That said, it kinda covers the last 2 months since update ;)

Where am I? I'm here, somewhere.

yeah, it's Saturday. I don't care...

1. Name one song you hate to admit you like.

"Beautiful Stranger" by Madonna

2. Name two songs that always make you cry.

Note: I don't cry.. Just feel really sad. Does that qualify?

"Burning Bridges" by Crimson Glory
"Far Away" by Crimson Glory

3. Name three songs that turn you on.

Turn me on? How about just songs that get me going.. jumping around, whatever.. These songs change from time to time, but these are currents:

"Rebel Robot" by Voivod - My current favorite tune
"Lethean River" by Tristania - Wow.. Hey, this is on one of the best albums, ever, really.
"Hold Back the Rain" by Duran Duran - this one just has so much energy, it's great

4. Name four songs that always make you feel good.

"Best I Can" by Queensryche - killer uplifting tune.. Crank it.
"Love and Dreams" by Crimson Glory - a very underrated band.. good stuff
"Happiness in Slavery" by NiN - yeah, not very cheery, but it makes me feel good when I'm pissed off. That counts, right?
"Raining Blood" by Slayer.. what could make you feel better than a good war song?

Bah.. i don't listen to much happy music, I can't think of any.

5. Name five songs you couldn't ever do without.

Ouch, that's too hard. Okay, how about songs I will likely never tire of listening to...

I guess just pick any of the above really. I have too much music at my fingertips to pick anything. I can listen to just about anything over and over.

Yeah, no updates for a while. I took a week off of work for the kids' spring break and it was pretty relaxing. I go back to work tonight (joy). Got a lot of good kid and gaming time in, but not much wife time. Sarah refused to go outside and play at all, all week long. She was basically plugged into my backside or Julie's and spent every minute with us. She's 8, so that's a little strange, but it was pleasant anyhow. She hasn't been that way since she was a lot younger and it was like having a baby girl again (sorta). It's funny, she loves Warcraft III, so we spent a good many hours with that game. She's quite good at it too. Lance enjoys some of the more "elitest" board games now and scoffs at the thought of playing Chutes N Ladders or Candyland.. hehe.. We play stuff like Settlers of Catan, Tigris and Euphrates and Talisman, which I have been slowly collecting parts of. I also started re-collecting full sets of the Star Trek CCG game, but I only want a few sets of them. The game was excellent, but unless you had a lot of cards, it was just too hard, especially if you had to share your deck with others.

Nothing else really going on.. Julie has picked up the EQOA (PS2 version) addiction, which allows me to play some of my single player games without guilt of lost quality wife time ;) I like watching her play anyhow, so does Sarah. Today is Greek Easter, so we're heading to my aunt's house for some good eats.

Just playing with some stuff here.. I used to have a BBS by the same name for many years (1987 - 1994 to be exact). It was an awesome BBS (I thought so). Anyhow.. If anyone remembers BBSs, they were kinda modular in design. All of them had a 'main' menu which allowed you to navigate to subsections with specific material. I am a theme-oriented person when it comes to design and function, so I had a theme running throughout the BBS, based on Voivod concepts. It just fit. Each menu system was a "vortex" and I had names for all areas that evade me now.. but it all fit into the theme. That's the way I will attack this site as well. The blog won't always be the main focus, but for now, it is the main "vortex" page.

I always enjoyed randomness on my BBS, so every time you visited, it would look different. I was constantly changing menus, colors, looks, etc.. Some of the BBS software allowed users to change their prompt templates and almost always the way their messages appeared in the message base areas. To keep with this design, I have employed a random quote javascript which pulls from a .js file containing all the quotes and displays them upon page load. If I get proficient enough with some JS, maybe I'll allow people to add their own quotes. I know this is easily possible with PHP, but I'm taking this one step at a time. With PHP and MySQL you can create a small database to handle all that... Oh yeah, the quotes won't make sense to most people, unless you happen to know the songs they are from. I tend to pick the most twisted passages from the music I listen to ;)

I also tore apart the template for this blog (this doesn't help my viewers any, just me) and put the style codes into a separate file so I can call it from any page. I've kinda decided the current look is good enough to use on any page, barring any font/color changes that can easily be changed via the style sheet.

Ok once I get the color fixed, I'll start building a site. Yeah, really, a site. For what? I don't know. See, I am sorta learning web site development at work and kinda self-teaching myself along the way. Editing and manipulating a blog template is a little like web design, especially if it's a complex one. I've always wanted a personal web site, just never bothered (too lazy) to do one. The last time I bothered, I got my wife kicked off of her hosting service because the 1.5MB Excel list of all my MP3 albums put her over her bandwidth limit when people viewed it. Not to mention, that's not really a very smart thing to do.. show all the things you've downloaded, regardless of buying a good portion of them in the end.

So anyhow.. I am into music, books, gaming (all types) and of course, family, so that's what the site will be. Maybe a page for each with news, etc.. interests, general blabber.. Who knows, maybe I'll learn something. The more I work with the web at work and here, I learn that I really enjoy it, especially when it all works.

Well, keep watching, maybe something will happen. ...

Screw it... I'm going all black until I can figure out this web color dithering stuff.. I also found a better chart: Color Chart.
I select dark blue and it looks green.. I select dark purple and it looks brown. So, I give up for now. Enjoy the darkness ;)

Bah!! This is what happens when you develop on a machine with very specific settings in the dark... The site looked like a rich, dark brown-toned environment until I checked it out on another PC and realized the colors were hideous! Ugh.. It looked so good. Well, turn down your brightness and contrast a little bit and you'll see what i was seeing - haha! Not sure why the brightness was so low on this machine.. Oh well, I'll fix the colors tomorrow. I did find a great site to help you coordinate your web colors though: Complete HTML Color Chart - Very handy.

Also, just for total kicks.. grab this font: Voivod. This is the font used in the older CD inserts, designed by Away of Voivod. The TTF font is a conversion by Dan Matlock, but it only looks decent at larger oint sizes. Pop it into your Fonts dir under C:\WINDOWS or C:\WINNT. If you don't like it, just remove it later and it won't display anymore ;)

Not much to say lately. It's time for taxes today. I think this day is one of the top 5 most frustrating days of the year. Not only is it annoying to tally up and organize all your expenses and income for the year (if it were just my income, it wouldn't be, but Julie has incomes from many different sources due to her line of work), plus medical stuff.. ugh that stuff is always depressing. Oh well, once a year isn't TOO bad. All I can say is BAH.

Wow, it's Saturday already? It's been a busy couple of days. Between animals, kids and daily house stuff, it's just been busy. Nothing really to say, just finished this week's homework for school. Yay.

DOH I nearly forgot. (I didn't forget this morning, just forgot to mention it for the purpose of this page).

This is a very special day. Eleven years ago last night, I was stationed at my to-be wife's house for a few days, arriving one night before (I left home with just a backpack and my shitty car - a Chevette). I was looking for a place to crash until I could find a place to stay back at college (as if they would take me back, I was expelled). To make a long story short, by the time morning came around (April 1st), something happened that would change the course of two lives. We spent all night sitting across from each other and Julie kept evading a question I kept asking her. Finally, she gave in and said she "kinda had a crush" on me, and that's it.

Eleven years later and here we are... This year is also our tenth anniversay (in December). Yay!

Some small structural things going on here.. Things may look broken from time to time. Oh yeah, thanks to my loving wife for fixing my archives, I never did get around to doing them ;)

Okay, I got the winamp JS working. It's kinda neat. Just gotta mess with the formatting and shrink down the guy's "powered by" plug and we're golden. Actually, I'm removing it for now, sorry blogamp guy. It was just too big and fubared my frame. I'll shrink it and put it back, the guy deserves credit after all.

Thanks to Karri for another idea for my bland blog ;)

Oh yeah, and a word to all those network admins + web designer wannabe's.. the BACKSLASH (" \ ") is for LOCAL directories and the FORWARD SLASH (" / ") is for web folders.. sheesh.. only took me 20 minutes to remember that.

Happy Tuesday. Tuesdays stink.. I end up staying late at work for meetings, barely get sleep and usually attend school at night, so very little family time. I feel crappy so I'm not going to class tonight. It's not like I have to go, i'm currrently at 99.9% and there's only one test and a final coming up.

I don't have anything exciting or funny to say today. It's just not a funny or exciting day.

ok fine, I'll bite...

The Friday Five

1. What was your most memorable moment from the last week?

Realizing that the $1,000+ order of furniture coming for Sarah's room probably wouldn't fit ;)

2. What one person touched your life this week?

My wife.. She constantly touches me.

3. How have you helped someone this week?

The ferret shelter lady. I scooped ferret crap.

4. What one thing do you need to get done by this time next week?

Probably my next school assignment.

5. What one thing will you do over the next seven days to make your world a better place?

Try not to miss the potty.

ARGH. Finally a day where not much is going on and I wake up with a sore throat, and I have this stupid assignment for school to do. A 3-page essay.. When was the last time I wrote a 3-page essay?? Years! Well, maybe I can just plug away at it and knock it out in an hour or so. Yeah right. Oh, hey, check this out: www.gamefly.com We're pretty addicted (as in, change of lifestyle addicted, not health-harmful addicted) to a few excellent services here: TiVo, NetFlix and now I'm thinking of joining GameFly. It's a service like NetFlix for console games, where you pay $21.95/mo for 2 unlimited rentals at a time. You keep them as long as you want, but you can only have 2 out at a time. What this means is, I can play something like FFX and Kingdom Hearts, finish them and return them when done, and if I finish both in a month, it only cost me $21.95. Yeah, you don't get to keep them, but you can buy them at a discounted price (around the same as a used game from FuncoLand). It's a good deal. Last year I joined a Blockbuster plan that was the same way, but you had to renew each month and it was only for the summer. I might do it. This way, it will satisfy my "I must play it all" hunger. I tend to start a lot of games, but finish few. I'd hate to BUY them all and have them sit there. Sure, I have enough games, but this service is really cool, and NetFlix kicks so much ass, this can only be a good thing. I just hope enough people sign on to keep it going. I just need to weigh up whether or not this would be cheaper than buying a game every few months, because I do like to hold onto them, I never trade games in, although lately I've been thinking about it.

Well, time to buckle down and do this damn assignment.

Ahh.. the morning coffee. Today it's Vanilla Nut Creme with my usual added vanilla creamer. I'm out of the creme coffee after today, so it's Swiss Chocolate tomorrow. The chocolate is a generic brand and I can tell the difference. The best recent coffee i've had was the stuff that came with the Godiva gift pack Julie got me for Valentine's Day. That didn't last very long at all.. I am thinking about that Gevalia stuff, since I like coffee so much. Maybe I'll do the sample thing and see if it's any good.

Today is ferret shelter day. It's not something I look forward to, and the reward for the time and effort comes only when you're leaving the place, knowing you helped out. I love ferrets, but after taking care of the 7 we have, I get enough personal ferret time for anyone ;)

Well, somehow I've managed to go a week without playing EQ. It's amazing how the longer you stay away, the less you want to play. Having finished a few games a few weeks ago, I decided it was time to pick up some old ones or try some new ones. I know this sounds silly, but I almost hate leaving a game unfinished more than leaving a house project unfinished. Ok, so unfinished games bother me more. Let's justify this.. it's money spent and not used.. er.. money tied up until a game could be finished and re-sold.. umm.. yeah!

Games I started and want to finish: Neverwinter Nights, Morrowind (yeah like you can finish that one), Drakan 2, Icewind Dale 2, Hereos of Might and Magic 4, Arx Fatalis, and maybe Jedi Knight 2. I played all the way through Quake 3 Arena in a few days, I had forgotten how much I loved Quake. Can't wait for Quake IV. Lotsa good stuff coming out this year too. I did pick up Kingdom Hearts (PS2) and Blood Omen 2 for the Xbox that was collecting dust. Yeah.. BO2 was the first game I bought. I want Panzer Dragoon Orta, but I'll wait until it's not $50. I like buying used console games a while after they've been out. The new Zelda game is tempting though.. Of course I still need to finish Ocarina of Time AND Majora's Mask.. The N64 doesn't get used too much these days.

The current household addiction seems to be Animal Crossing. My wife sends love letters to my daughter daily, and my daughter returns them. Even I created a little friend, and when my son gets off his endless grounding from video games, he might make one as well. The town bulletin board is chock full of "I love you" messages. It's really mushy.. My wife nearly shed a tear just now after receiving a fishing rod.. yes, a fishing rod, with love from Sarah.

One thing about not playing EQ.. You have a lot of time for other neglected games...

Woohoo.. I got home late from work, and slept until 8pm. Talk about wasting the day away. Plus, I missed the last few hours of my auctions and lost them all, LOL.

Oh well, I'm getting too frustrated with Ebay anyhow, maybe it's for the better.

Nothing much to say today, since I haven't been awake all that long.

Ebay is frustrating. You finally find that item you had been looking for, in just the perfect condition and...

1) Some auction squatter had been waiting for just the right time to outbid you with literally seconds left
2) Some idiot comes along and pays the preposterous "But it Now" price
3) Some idiot comes along and puts in a max bid way over what you'd spend, so you are fractically rebidding trying to find a reasonable compromise, only to learn that you still won't win in time, nor for a reasonable price. You'd have to set a max bid way over what you'd really spend..
4) You realize that you still haven't met the reserve price, so it doesn't matter anyhow, because the jerk collector/seller wants top price for his phat lewtz
5) The same idiot comes along and does the same top 3 annoyances to ALL the items you've bid on.

I'm a pretty avid gamer in many ways. It doesn't just stop at computer and console games, we play a lot of board, card and dice games as well. My kids are really into games that make you think a little more, but the occasional Sorry or Yahtzee isn't bad either. Lately, I've been having some cravings for old, old school gaming. Games that I may have played in my childhood.. You know, like the Wonder Woman game that was probably only in print for 2 years, but was actually a good game (just for example, of course!). One of these games is Talisman, the Magical Quest Game. It's a tabletop board game that allows you to play avatars of different character classes, like warriors, priests, etc. The premise is simple: become the strongest and make it to the center of the main board, and conquer all. The game itself can take a few hours even wtih 2 people. The beauty of the game is that many expansions were released to add to the original game, including new boards like a dungeon, a city and many new adventure and event cards. The only way to obtain Talisman anymore is via online auction or game conference. I haven't been paying attention to local game shows and conventions, so I end up spending time on Ebay. So far, I only have the core game. There are about 5 expansions, one of which is very rare, a collector's edition. I've seen that one sell for $350 or more. Most of them are $50 a piece, which isn't horrible. You'd spend that much on one game today. Most game expansions are about $30 anyhow, so $50 for a long-OOP game isn't too bad.

Anyhow.. if anyone is interested in playing something beyond the usual Bonkers and Chutes and Ladders (I'm a game snob, these games bore me, even my kids agree), stay tuned and I'll post some links to decent board game review sites. Here is a list of games we love:

Settlers / Seafarers / Starfarers of Catan (the original was Settlers, a CLASSIC among board games now)
Lord of the Rings + expansions (Friends and Foes, Sauron) - The original LotR game is cooperative and F&F makes it tougher. The Sauron expansion allows one player to play against the Fellowship. A very well-designed game. It was released before the movies and not based on them, like some of the recent ones have been.
Acquire - The guys at work love this one. Stock trading and company selling.. it's cutthroat.
Hacker and Illuminati - Two card games by Steve Jackson that are just too unique to explain. Very well designed and lots of fun. Play any way you like, cooperatively, aggressively.. anything.
Aladdin's Dragons - Great game that's not too hard for kids to pick up. Bid for gems and spend them later to gain artifacts and spells to win.
Tigris and Euphrates - Another hardcore strategy game. Tough to master and relies a little on luck so even playing against the toughest strategist won't stop you from playing again. It's tough to learn, but the conflicts when 3+ people play are just awesome.

That's a short list.. We have probably upwards 70 board, card and dice games. Enjoy.

Every so often, a milestone comes along in a parent's life that teaches a lesson. The first one begins before the birth of the first child, then another at birth, and many small ones en route to the first full night of sleep with a newborn. Over the course of time, there are countless milestones and obstacles in a parent's life that either make or break you as a parent. Sometimes they just teach you things that you can tuck away for future use, or that maybe you do not always make the right decisions.

Tonight was one of those milestones. Let me just share with you all (all 2 of you), the beauty and awe that is 8-year old girls, specifically speaking, 8 of them, which multiplied is 64. Which brings me to one of my new Uberlaws of Life: The Multiple Child Factor. When calculating the impact and damage potential of a group of small children, you must take the median age of the group, and multiply it by the number of children to get the MCF. The MCF is the actual number of people that it FEELS like you are entertaining. So, in my case.. 64 possible pieces of pizza on the floor.. 64 possible chocolate milk spills. 64 possible head traumas and dancing accidents. 64 possible headaches and 64 times I have to say "SETLLE DOWN" within the course of the 64 hours that it feels like I've been awake and shouting "SETTLE DOWN".

Now, on to the milestone.

I've learned a great many things about 8-year old girls tonight. I thought I knew it all. HA HA. Here's the top ten:

1. Little girls are fascinated by death and injury. They enjoy comparing who's grandma was hurt more in a car accident.
2. Little girls tend to learn coniving parent-fooling tactics to get out of cleaning up messes or anything else they wish to avoid.
3. Little girls always break off into cliques, and it's nearly impossible to get them all to do the same thing at the same time.
4. All little girls fart.
5. Little girls love to pretend they are farting just as much as little boys.
6. Little girls love to talk. This I knew, but never the extent.
7. Little girls that use Barbie dolls as weapons are scary.
8. Little girls do not understand the delicacy and value of electronic equipment.
9. Little girls do not understand the concept of "quiet time".
10. Little girls are not necessarily easier to manage in a group over little boys. In fact, they can be just as messy and obnoxious as any ONE boy.

Well, all I can say is.. whew.. and all that in just about 5 hours. Only 11 to go, most of which I am hoping will be eaten up in sleep.

Hmm.. I still hear thumping upstairs. I wonder how long it will REALLY take for all 8 to fall asleep. So far, I only noticed two were "out". 6 more to go...

Well, with Julie's help I've been able to add blogrolling, which is a slick way of easily linking stuff to me and for me to link stuff to the blog in a snap. Not that you care about my links.. ;) Next is comments, because I know everyone (all 2 of you) is dying to tell me what a geek I am.

More to come.. It's Sarah's sleepover party tonight, so most of the day will be dedicated to getting ready for that. Yay! 12 squealing, giggling girls for 16 hours... Ugh.

Let's see.. life update:

School: Sucks. Taking a required XP class. It's too exciting to talk about. Really. I won't even mention the even more exciting Internet research class I'm taking too.

Work: Sucks. My boss has me involved in some things I'd rather not be involved in, however with yet another "re-org" coming, he said it would be best to bury myself in new duties to save myself from the fate of others, as in, being moved to other teams and under other management. Not that I'm a poor worker, just that the company likes to move people around a lot to put people in groups where they belong and best fit. Even though I best fit in the group I am in.. you never know. Corporate life really sucks sometimes.

Home: Crazy. Sarah is 8.. 8!!! What does that make me? Old. Everything is "normal" here, just the usual daily routines.. eat, sleep, yell at kids, comfort wife, watch TiVo, play a game or two, scoop ferret crap, remove ferrets from places they do not belong.. run from ferrets that want to chomp on my ankles... [insert more ferret duties here]. I feel like I work in a zoo.

OMG, I am playing (not just playing, addicted to) Everquest again. How in the hell did that happen? Well, there's nothing better at the moment, that's how! I fit some quality Morrowind time in there when I can, too.

Well, this is all the updating I can handle on 4 hours of sleep in the last 24, and I'm way late for bed. Hi to anyone that's stopped by (hi Me!) and wondered "WTF" or as we now say "What the Frell??" when seeing October as the last update. Hmm, maybe I'll hack that and make it look like all the posts were from this week.. yeah!!

w00t! ok, I'm really going to try and update this thing now.. Even if I am the only one reading it. But hey, it's all about me anyhow, because the world does revolve around me.

Stay tuned.. for what, I don't know.

Testing.. is this thing on?