I Will Play My Game Beneath The Spin Light

Throughout my life, I'm been reminded that I should be thankful for the freedom that I have in this country. The freedom to live where I want, eat what I want, say what I want, obtain any job I want, believe in any religion I want, and love whomever I want. At least that's what I'm lead to believe when I hear "freedom". The problem here is that some of these contradict themselves. I have the freedom to choose any religion I want, however people have the freedom to tell you how you're wrong. Not to mention they have the freedom to proceed to make a ballot and ban whatever I believe in. In turn, we've just completely destroyed the freedom that I had because of the freedom of another.

Proposition 8, a California ballot proposition that restricted the definition of marriage to the union of a man and a woman. Marriage, a religious sacrament where a man and woman join two families into one. Ballot, a device used to record choices made by voters. Whatever happened to the separation of Church and State? This is an issue that is being defended by arguments such as "There's nothing in the Bible that says being gay is right..." or something to that effect. With that argument, that makes this a religious debate, something that any government in the U.S. shouldn't even touch. After the voting was taken care of, they shouldn't have even let this go through, because that's involvement of the government in a religious debate. Now, I'm sure there are other reasons as to why people don't want gay people to marry, but I can assure you that none of them are valid. Even the religious reason is a little out there, but in my opinion it's the closest one to being valid. People should be looking to their church and try and get an amendment passed there about gay marriage. Which is fine, then gay people can just look to another church to get married.

We have freedom to do as we please, however I think there comes a time where enough is a enough. There is a time when freedoms should be considered abused and proper measures should be taken. In the case of this, I'd argue so. This isn't just preventing people from getting married. This is now revoking people's freedoms in the LAND OF THE FREE. I don't understand what people hope to accomplish by banning gay marriage. It's not going to stop them. Sure it won't be recognized in the church. If that's the case, then who cares about the church. In their eyes, they'll be considered a married couple. I'm sure there's even paper work they could fill out that, by the state, they would be considered married as well. So at this point, all your really doing is just amplifying your believe that what is in the Bible is word and it is right.

Now, I'm not going to knock religion. Everybody's entitled to their believe, and ya know what? More power to them. You believe whatever you want. What bugs me about all this is that people have the nerve to say that your wrong. Now I know faith is all about believing in something that you've never seen, but I don't think you have any right to say other people are wrong. The Bible, better yet "religion", says that being gay is wrong. Fine, then the people of that religion can't be gay. However you can't force people to follow that and use the reasoning of "You're wrong and you need to be this way". If they want to be gay then fine, they don't have to be part of that religion. There's enough religions out there I'm sure you'll find something that'll fit you. Hell if not, make up your own beliefs. Just remember, whatever you choose in this life, you'll have to answer for it in the end. And guess what, faith ain't worth shit when judgment comes around.

Banning gay marriage is like banning alcohol, and they still found ways to get it during prohibition. So go ahead, use your freedom to make others' lives miserable. Just because yours is doesn't meant that everybody else has to be. And then you people wonder why gay people go to extremes to celebrate their sexual orientation. It's stupid shit like this that makes them more vigorous in their celebration. And to be honest, if this is how we're going to play it, I support their orientation and how they celebrate it. I feel it's like the origin of the middle finger. Details aside, during one of the world wars I believe Germany would capture enemy soldiers and cut off their middle finger, because they would use that to fire their guns. So for people who didn't get their finger cut off, they would show it to them as kind of a taunt.

Land of the free my ass.

Call me superficial. Call me an asshole. Call me whatever you want, I got news for you. I don't care.

As of late, I noticed that I've developed a gripe with obese people. I think it's because I've reached that point in my life where I'm starting to see how this horrible world we live in works. I've seen a few references in movies where foreign people mock how one of the things America is known for is it's health condition. When seeing these movies in the past, I would chuckle at it because I knew there was some truth to it. All I had to do was walk out of the theatre and I'm sure I would have seen someone to prove that statement true. Later on, these claims were not only confirmed by visual evidence, but now there were statistics to back it up. You know obesity is a problem when every other week on the news you'd see some story about it. In these stories, there was a statistic that was brought to my attention which caught me off guard. It was that obesity costs us $120 billion a year. Especially when in a time of economic crisis, I want to say this angered me. Angry like when your roommate leaves the TV on and they leave the house so the TV is left on all day wasting electricity for no purpose. I guess I could say that I was disappointed in our wasteful behavior. It appeared to me that we were just throwing money away at people not caring about being obese when we could be using that to help our economy improve. Seeing this makes me want to believe Agent Smith's quote from the Matrix more and more.

Now I realize that we live in a society that puts emphasis on being beautiful and being as skinny as possible. However I'm not saying that we all need to be like super models. In fact I despise some models that are skinny. They look like a flesh skeleton. I'd be afraid that I would break them by shaking their hand or something. I'm aimed at the morbidly obese people who don't seem to really give a crap about anything, and you all know what I'm talking about because we've all seen them. That person who can't stop eating McDonalds, goes out to the bar and dress inappropriately for their weight, and sits around and bitches about anything and everything including their weight. As if it's some complex puzzle they can't figure out why they are the way they are. Perhaps if you either put down the fast food, cut your meals down to 2 - 3 decent sized meals, or actually got off your fat ass and did something active you wouldn't be the way you are. Or at least not as horribly out of shape. Of course if you give them this sort of advice they either get offended or imply that they are too lazy.

But can we blame them? I mean this is America, we need everything in our lives given to us yesterday. If we don't have it yet, it's too long to wait for it. Then of course this idea spawned the flux of diet pills. Take this pill and you'll magically lose weight. You don't even have to exercise or change your diet. That's right fatty, eat up, go for the gusto. In fact, why smoke between gobbles? (Heh sorry I love Frisky Dingo) Now I feel that we as humans just want to be lazy. That's fine. Being lazy from time to time never hurt anybody. I'm even guilty of being lazy. However, being lazy shouldn't be an excuse as to why your fat. If you truly were lazy, you wouldn't be that fat. My own friend said that he actually lost weight due to laziness. Yes, he was too lazy to get himself food. Now THAT'S being lazy. Therefore, to some degree you want to be fat. Your actively choosing to make yourself fat.

Now I know exercising isn't always an option. Trust me, I've been there. It's how I got into the current situation I'm in. Being in the real world, you find out the horrible truth. You think there's not enough time in college, wait till you get out in the real world. Not to mention the real world isn't exactly health friendly. You sit around for 8+ hours, you become stressed, and you eat food that probably isn't the best for you but it's easily available so you can get back to work on time. This isn't a good recipe for being healthy. Ever since joining the 9 - 5 grind, I've gained some weight. Which sucked because just before I graduated from college I started to get into this exercise routine where it was helping me lose weight. So having the horrible self esteem I have, I decided it was time to take a stand before it gets worse. I started to implement my own exercising routine. Keeping a regular exercising routine is hard work, and I don't just mean physically either. Things would come up that would be planned around the time I usually exercise so I would find myself skipping that day's worth of exercising.

Which brings me to my point why I have a gripe with obesity. Not only is it usually not good to look at, but I feel it portrays the person's mentality. And the mentality that it portrays is laziness. I'm not a fan of the mentality of, "It's too hard and I don't want to work that much so I'm just not going to try". That's fine, apparently dignity isn't something you care about. Plus, sitting around all day all the time can be boring. I'm not saying that we all have to be skinny, although nice. I just think if you weigh over 300 pounds, you might want to be concerned and start taking steps to fix that. Because even if we cut the obesity in America by half, we may even just cut that cost in half as well.

Politics try to rally everybody behind their country. It hard to want to be proud of where your from when the majority of us think the way that is portrayed above.

Disclaimer: Remember, I'm not saying that I hate all overweight people. I'm overweight myself. I hate overweight people that just don't give a damn.

One of the hardest things to do in life, I'd argue, is parenting. Shit I don't plan on having kids for a LONG time, and even when that time comes I don't know if I'd still want them. Maybe because I'm still young and I want to live my life, but to be honest what's the point of having kids? What's the benefit? You pass on your genes so that people know you existed. Why would I care what people I won't know exist know about MY existence? It's not like I'll be around to care about it or even affect it if need be. As far as I can see, kids will eat up more of my money and capitalize what little free time I have. Thus parenting is the hardest thing you could do in life because you have to accept the fact that these things are going to happen and also become responsible for them.

Now I don't why this is the case, be it that people are unwilling to accept the fact their lives will be ruled by their children until they die or the children came unexpectedly and they don't want to accept that their life came to a close so abruptly, either way it seems like people are trying to come up with excuses as to why their children are the way they are. I believe as a natural human response we try to point the finger at other things rather than looking at ourselves and seeing what we've done wrong. Parents don't pay enough attention to their children, then they go out and cause a ruckus and next thing you know the parents are on a witch hunt to find out what caused their children to act such a way. Of course it couldn't be the neglect of your children that's causing them to want your attention and/or approval so they go to such great lengths to get it. No, because what's wrong with worrying about your 401k, your house, your possessions, your car, your stock portfolios, your retirement? There's just not enough time in the day to check all of that and then pay attention to your kids to show you care and that you love them. It's because of them you have to spend all your time at the office so that you can make all the money to pay all the bills and live in luxury, so I'm sure they could understand that.

I grew up in a similar environment. Father would work all week from 9 - 5 and he was also an accountant so if it was between the months January to April I would barely get to see him because he was running his own tax business. My mother would work in the evenings so she could take care of us during the day while father was working. Saturdays mother worked while father had the weekend off, and Sundays everybody was home. Most of the attention I got from my father usually was academic related because I would see him in the evening and thus the whole, "did you finish your homework" routine happened. On Saturdays, I'd actually get to hang out with him, assuming he wasn't finishing work for later in the week, fixing stuff around the house, or just relaxing. So I needed something to occupy myself with so I wouldn't hassle father all that much. There was one thing that my father and I would do together which I was able to do on my own. Video games. My family owned every Nintendo system up to Nintendo 64, a Playstation 2, and even an Atari. So I was exposed to video games at a very early age and still play them to this day. I'll admit that video games back then were not as graphic as the ones today, thanks to technology. However that doesn't mean there weren't violent video games out there. Oh there were. I would know because my father was very strict on what music, movies, TV shows, and even video games I could listen to/watch/play. This prevented me from seeing socially accepted series such as the Simpsons, Bevis and Butthead, Daria, etc. Basically any show at the time that "everybody" was watching, I was not watching because my father wouldn't let me. Also, I didn't have an allowance so if I wanted a new game I would have to ask him to buy it for me. Again allowing him to filter the games that I could play because if he didn't like a game, he wouldn't buy it for me. At the time it was very annoying and I had some disdain for his ways. I still do, but looking back I can understand why he did what he did.

Gears of War 2; the only game I've been looking forward to for over several months now. I've read some articles about it and apparently it was banned in Germany because it was too violent. Apparently you can use dead bodies lying around as meat shields from bullets and now they introduced a counter to the insta-chainsaw death move, which causes the player to cut the person in half from the groin up. I've heard they put a content filter on the game to make it more acceptable. I've heard that it takes out all the swearing and turns the blood black. Pardon my next inquiry but, how the hell is changing the color of blood any better? All it's going to do is teach our kids that we now have black blood instead of red. Games have evolved over the past 20 years along with social standards. I did a project in college to show how violence is more acceptable to society. Example: There was a remake of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre a couple of years ago. If you compare the two by watching the scene where they pick up the hitch hiker in the beginning, you'll find some disturbing differences. I'll save you the trouble; basically in the older version it was just some guy who appears shifty and freaks everybody out in the car. In the recent version it's a girl who is shaken, thinking somebody's going to catch her, and then she shoots herself. They even show her shooting herself on film. I feel this could be somewhat of a cause for violence in the world because it's desensitizing us. We're used to seeing people being shot, firing guns, chopping of appendages, etc. and because of that people would be more inclined to lash out and claim, "Well I saw it happen in this movie so I don't understand what the big deal is". I feel age plays a major role in this discussion. Yes being desensitized to this violence at a young age could cause them to form a warped sense of right or wrong. However if the reformation happens after a solid foundation is created, then I feel that the individual would be able to look at violence and realize that although it happens, it's not necessarily right.

Yes video games are violent, however not all video games are. Look at Nintendo. My peev with them is that it appears they have forgotten about the hardcore gamer and reaching out to the casual gamer more. For instance, Prince of Persia: Rival Swords for the Wii. I've played Warrior Within on Playstation 2 and it can be a pretty gory game. They show slow motion shots of you cutting your enemy's head off, or splitting them down the middle with blood flying everywhere. However, for Rival Swords on the Wii they have the same mechanic but there's no blood or gore. For me, it seems kinda silly because you hear the sound, so you expect to see the gore, and yet they enemy remains intact. I personally don't care because I'm playing it for the story and game play, but this is an example to show that there are other alternatives in video games. I think if my father were to have a child from this time period back then, he'd turn out a decent person who wouldn't have any problems with violence. Yes, I'll admit it, although I didn't agree with it my father raised children well. Now you don't have to ban your children from all forms of violence until they reach college but keep in mind the repercussions. You may have to spend more time with your children to make sure they aren't getting the wrong ideas while playing games like Grand Theft Auto, Gears of War, Call of Duty, Dead Rising, Assassin's Creed, etc.

Video games aren't any more responsible for your kids acting the way they do than the music they listen to, the movies/TV shows they watch, the people they hang out with, etc. Also it's not the video games that are causing them to do it, it's how they perceive the games; or anything else for that matter. Thus falling back to parenting. How you raise your children will effect how they view things they see. If you neglect them, they have no foundation and thus you won't be able to control how that foundation gets built. I was not being sarcastic about how there's very little time to spend with your children. It's true, the minute you have children, you'll never get a free moment again. Thus they'll need to turn to things to keep them busy. Video games is a good way to keep them busy. However you should probably get to know your children first before giving them access to this fucked up world we live in.

I am gamer and will be till the day I die. So if you want to take my games away from me, you'll have to pry them from my cold dead fingers.

I'm going to hit you up with some Double D action. (and as I write that I realize that only one person is going to understand that and he'll never read this)

Technology; it's a wonderful thing or is it? Being a computer freak I favor technology but I started to realize how it's tearing us apart. Sure we can stay in contact with people across the globe via IMs, cell phones, email, etc. but what about our next door neighbor? Heck, the only reason we actually know anything about our friends is if they updated their facebook account. Why bother talking with the person when I can just look at a website that gives me any information that would interest me?

I remember when I used to get excited to use the phone to call my girl of interest and talk to her for hours on end or needing to call my friend Matt if I wanted to hang out with him or even see what was going on with him. Yes, we had to use the phone but even that is more personal than what goes on now. Since removing text messages from my phone plan, I realized that I don't get many phone calls from people; not that I did when I had text messages. But it showed that I was receiving text messages from people more than phone calls. Now that I don't receive text messages I find that I'm out of the loop of people. I've talked with some and they say, "Oh yea I do ::blank:: all the time. I'll add you to the text list" or "Oh? Well I sent you a text message about it" etc. This is not the problem, because then I tell them I don't receive text messages; their reply is, "I'll send you an IM or leave a message to let you know". I come to find, not to my surprise, that I never receive any sort of message. It's sad to know that we rely so heavily upon things such as facebook and text messages that when people are incapable of receiving them we're taken out of the loop. People no longer have names, all we see is the 9 digit number and the messages we send to them. So why would we bother to go out of our way to inform people about things when technology is supposed to facilitate it? If there's anything our species is known for, other than being social, it's lazy.

Facebook is another evil. Like instant messages, we are able to get in contact with people we know. Different from Instant Messaging programs, we no longer need to know a screen name. However the evil here is that if we wish to be in contact with people through this fashion it requires us to sit at our computers, keeping us from interacting with people around us. So if we wish to stay in contact with certain people we know, we have to sacrifice personal interaction around us. And as much as I love being in contact with friends, I love being able to do things with people that are around or at least people I know I can get a hold of through conventional means. We could check our messages from any computer in the world, however when I'm out and about the last thing from my mind is checking my facebook. I'm more concerned with the world around me and what's going on.

The solution here is easy, break the habit people! Close the browser, pick up the phone and hit the dial button. I'm sure the person would be grateful you took the time to get a hold of them every once in awhile and not just send a bunch of ones and zeros. Only machines read ones and zeros and we're not machines, so let's start acting like it.

I realized it's been some time since I last updated. I remember wanting to create an entry but by the time I had time available to sit down and write about it, I forgot what I wanted to talk about.

Anywho, it's be an interesting ride so far. I'm currently in the job hunt. Right now I'm waiting to hear back from a company that I thought wouldn't be too bad of a job, and it's still in the area so I wouldn't have drive all over the place. Conveniently, after I have the interview I at least got a response from Harmonix, which I applied for. Basically they said due to the volume of resumes, it's going to take a bit for them to get around to me. But at least they responded to my emails I was sending them. I was worried because it took them several weeks to respond. So now, I'm just bidding my time. When I first started this process, I loved it. I was finally given the free time I need to catch up on things. However, now in my current state, having done this for almost a month now, I'm starting to get a little worried. Worried that I'm getting to used to my situation which I swore I wouldn't do. I guess it's because I feel like I should always being some sort of work. I blame my dad for that. He'd always tell you, "There's always work to be doing". Therefore making me feel uneasy if I just sat around because I was afraid he'd come around and be disappointed in you not doing anything "constructive".

So why not work on my projects, such as my movie and game? Funny you ask this. Last week my monitor decided to crap out on me. I properly tested it; I took my Tonya's monitor and hooked it up to my (worked fine), I bought a new VGA cable for my monitor (nothing happened), I tried plugging the monitor into Tonya's computer (nothing happened). So I had to get me a new monitor. I guess having the same LCD monitor for 4+ years was a good run, I've just never heard them burning out like that. Oh well, that's not the problem, the problem is now I have sit and wait for my monitor arrive and until then I have no access to my computer. It should be getting here either today or tomorrow (crosses fingers).

So I've been using my Wii for internet access, which is fine however if there's a site with the most recent flash it won't work. Like right now, there's two contests I'm trying to look into; the BK Indiana Jones contest and the Mountain Dew New or Old School contest. So I'm current using Tonya's computer to enter all this in. There's no way in hell I would be caught typing all this in on the Wii one letter at a time. It would take forever!

It's weird, around this time of the week I feel like I should just get a job so I have one. But I looked at the situation, my current pay is basically the same as a minimum wage job. So that way I don't have to lower myself to get that kind of job to just "pay the bills". I can take time, look at jobs and determine which one I would like. Because lord knows, I don't want to go through the same, "I don't like my job" with the new one I get.

So there's an update for ya.

Do you ever feel like you're alone? And do you ever wish you'd be unknown? I could say that I have, I could say that I have.

And do you ever feel things here aren't right? And do you ever feel the time slip by? I can say that I have, and I can say that I have.

So hear this please and watch as your heart speeds up endlessly. And look for the stars as the sun goes down. Each breath that you take has a thunderous sound. Everything, everything's magic. Just sit back and hold on, but hold on tight. Prepare for the best and the fastest ride and reach out your hand, and I'll make you mine. Everything, everything's magic.

And do you ever lay awake at night? And do you ever tell yourself don't try? Don't try to let yourself down, don't try to let yourself down.

And do you ever see yourself in love? And do you ever take a chance, my love? Because you know that I will, Because you know that I will.

So hear this please and watch as your hearts speeds up endlessly. And look for the stars as the sun goes down. Each breath that you take has a thunderous sound. Everything, everything's magic. Just sit back and hold on, but hold on tight. Prepare for the best and the fastest ride and reach out your hand, and I'll make you mine. Everything, everything's magic. Everything, everything's magic.

So I'm at work, and Bull Radio is doing his "Edge Work Orders" and somebody had put in a request for a song that I haven't heard in a long time (and I was very happy of that fact). I remember at the time when it came out, a slew of people had mentioned how it was, "the greatest love song ever". Well okay, it wasn't that exact quote but they gave off that impression. I had a debate with someone on how it wasn't and was asked to provide some evidence. Either way, it has been a long time since this has happened and I feel like I must debunk all of you people who felt the same as these people did.

Honey why you callin me so late
It's kinda hard to talk right now
Honey why you cryin
Is everything ok
I gotta whisper cause I can't be too loud
The first verse has a lot going for it. It sounds like a legit love song. Somebody's girlfriend could be calling them up at night and wanting to talk. Fair enough

Well my girls in the next room
Sometimes I wish she was you
I guess we never really moved on
I believe this gets destoryed by the second line here. The first one is okay because it could just be a close friend. Oh you don't want to be too loud becuase you don't want your current girlfriend to know that you actually want to be dating the girl that's calling you. The third just confirms this.

It's really good to hear your voice
Sayin my name
It sounds so sweet
Comin from the lips of an angel
Hearin those words
It makes me weak
Sayin your name, I see what he did there. Now he's having sexual fanasties about her. Not exactly a bad thing, because there'd be something wrong with you if you didn't. However if you were in a committed relationship, thinking about having sexual fanasties about the girl you said YOU WISHED WAS THE GIRL YOUR WITH kinda kills the whole love song. What about your current girlfriend? Do we not care about her?

And I Dont
Never want to say goodbye
But girl you make it hard to be faithful
With the lips of an angel
Double negative. So you do want to say goodbye? This paragraph just drips with, "I'm seriously contemplating leaving my girl to be with you again". I'm sorry but I'm used to my love songs involving only one individual and it doesn't require the breaking of someone's heart or cheating. But there's no cheating going on yet, he's just talking about it. But there are allusions to it.

It's funny that you're callin me tonight
And yes I dreamt of you too
Does he know your talkin' to me?
Will it start a fight?
No, I don't think she has a clue
Oh jesus, she's with someone too?!

The rest of the song basically repeats the chorus over and over again. Call me old fashioned, but I'm used to the songs that require two people. A.) The person singing the song and B.) the person having the song sung to. There's no love triangles, no cheating, no inklings of drama or emotional scaring of another party. Just an individual proclaiming their love to someone. Sure this has that, on top of the fact that he really wishes he was with the girl he's talking to and not the girl that he's with. If you seriously feel that way about the girl, then WHY ARE YOU WITH THE GIRL THAT YOU'RE DATING?! Terrible. I know I wouldn't have this song play at a wedding or something like that. This is a love song I would save for the scenario where I broke up with a girl and felt like I need someone to be with for comfort and then realized that I still wanted to be with the girl that I originally broke up with. That is the one and ONLY time I could see this song applying as a "love song".

And if that person I had the debate with is reading. Check out the song in the current music section for an example of a love song. At least more of a love song than the one I just broke apart.

Not only did they make a webpage dedicated to this, but they even programmed it using the game's engine. Me thinks Blizzard is having a little too much fun with SCII and the fact it's never coming out.

Now the sad part here is I actually thought of making a movie out of this. Watching this makes me want to actually script it out, but of course millions (not to mention possible movie companies) probably already have a jump start on me.

This happened to me once and I don't know why but this seemed like a very emotionally powerful scene. If you ever get the chance with your significant other, when you start making out, or cuddling, or whatever, try having the song "Bleed" by Cold playing in the background. I swear it's something out of a movie. I felt moved by it when it happened.

I thought I'd put it down so I don't forget, not like I could see how I could. Either way, I was referring to posting twice in one day. When thinking of what kind of sound I want for my band I found that I could only describe it so: I want lyrics like Brand New, vocals like Angels & Airwaves, and guitar sound like Breaking Benjamin. That would be an interesting sound.

So I was surfing the web and a certain website caught my eye. I found that there are companies that specialize in doves. As in, you call them if you want to have doves released at your wedding or other special event because it makes it more memorable. Nothing else...just doves. You're fucking kidding me.

I've seen a lot of marriage issues flying around me as of late which is fine because I'm too that point in my life. I've seen a few people I know getting engaged and seen some people have parents split. Normally I don't make a big deal of it because it's their lives and I don't know exactly what's happening in their lives. I don't mean I don't care to hear about it and such, I mean I don't care as in to talk about it in my journal. However the straw that broke this camel's back was a commercial that I heard, on the radio I think. It was a commercial for someone claiming easy and hassle free divorce. Really?! We've gotten to the point that we make a business off of people getting a divorce?! What the fuck! Pardon my french.

Someone brought it to my attention that apparently 50% of America is divorced. That's just sad. 50%? Jesus people. I'm sure some of it includes those "marriages" where the couple ends up getting pregnant at 17 and the girl wants to keep the baby so in order to support it properly they get married. I'm not saying that's the majority, but it adds to the percentage. It's almost as if people are just getting married on a whim and "hoping" everything will fall into place. "Oh I'm sure I'll love him more when we get married". Don't bet your life on it. Marriage isn't some magical ceremony where it makes everything all rosey and beautiful and automatically set up the "Lived happily ever after" scenario. Marriage is hard work, not a game. Marriage is a committment, almost a job.

Whatever happened to marriage being a sacred sacrament? A bond between man and woman? Thanks to divorce, we basically turned around to God and shat on the alter of marriage and said, "Fuck you God you can't control me". First thing, yes he can, and second of all, you're going to hell. Maybe it was because I grew up in the Catholic environment. I went to Catholic Grammar School and High School and I had this respect for marriage. I felt like it was something different, special, something you couldn't just easily hit the reset button and get out of it. And if you did it was a major offense, in God's eyes of course. People down here don't give two shits about divorce. It's like a get out of jail free card. This just goes to show you that human beings are weak willed. "Oh something's too hard, I can't take this. I want out". Tough. You're an adult now, time to face reality like the rest of are forced to do. And you don't see us bitching about it. Sounds like it's a problem with maturity, which I guess could hold true.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying the people I know that are getting married, or that got divorced are wrong. Although I may not respect the ladder as much for their choice, I just wanted to voice my opinion with all of this exposure to the subject. I for one know that if I were to ever get married, I'm going to make sure it's real. I'm going to make sure that I know that I could spend the rest of my life with the person I'm considering. And if afterwards, I find that it wasn't exactly what I was expecting, tough shit. I made an oath and there ain't no backing out of it. In my opinion, there is no such option as divorce. That way it brings back the sacredness of the sacrament. I feel that if you wait, it'll give you time to see the world, or at least what you need to see, and know what's out there for you and if you're missing it. If you find that you see something out there that you find you like, then you're not tied down to a choice you decided to hastely rush into. I told myself that I would AT LEAST wait till I'm 25 to even think about it.

Now, I've seen some people who get married at a very young age and they have success with their marriage. Which is fine, whatever works for you. Again I feel this is where it comes down to maturity. People mature at different rates from each other. There's a certain level of maturity that is required for marraige, and I feel that this is probably what a good portion of those divorces lack. When deciding to get married they aren't mature enough for it, but they don't know that. So they stay togehter for a bit and then realize that they may have made a bad choice and now they want out.

I don't know, I'm just coming with possiblities to the sickness that seems to be plaguing this rite of passage. If your married to somebody, you have both agreed to work through whatever it is that may come and feel that you two will make it work; come hell or high water. Divorce is basically you saying, "This is too hard, I don't want to deal with this anymore". It's a shame, a damn shame. And in the infamous words of Dr. Barnes, "I've said my piece Benjamin"(Waiting for Lefty)

So I finally did it. I got my Zune! =D At first it was very uneventful because it was on Saturday and I didn't get a car adapter for it and Brad was over so I couldn't pine over it all day. Not to say that I wish Brad wasn't there. I actually had a really good time with Brad this past weekend.

But I digress. So I hooked her up to the computer and DLed the software for it. The minute I had the software installed on the computer it started to DL all my songs and playlists to the Zune. It kinda sucked because there are some songs in my music folder that I don't listen to that others have put in there, so it ended up DLing all those as well. It was funny because it reminded of Element car commercial with the dog and he keeps bugging the car with, "Hey look grass. Hey look a bird. Hey look tree". It was like the Zune was said, "Oh hey here's all these songs let me download them for you right now" and your saying, "No wait I don't want all those...oh okay sure download all of them." I took it to DoTA with me and I'm glad I did. I could drown out those that kept whinning and then whined about whinning; AND THEN whined that we were whinning about their whinning. It was fruitless and I was said, "Ya know what, I can't hear you anymore."

I put some pictures on it and got my Steam picture on the background of my Zune. Blur got offended when I didn't have any pictures so I put some of him on there and of me and Liz. Today I finally got use my Zune at work and I love it. I am very happy with my purchase and I shall plan to buy a case and car adapter for it soon.

Now that I have it, it made me want to go through my music library and properly catalog all my music because it's very hard to find the songs I want. I'll be looking for an artist and come to find that the artist was categorized under "Various Artists" or "Unknown Artist" because in the information of the song the author AND song was saved in the title name. So I think for the next couple of days I'm going go through and make sure all the information is saved properly so I can just go to where the song and or artist should be. Now it's time to try out the radio feature =D.

So this past weekend was the "St. Patty's Day/ Bubba's Birthday" visit to Matt in Cincinnati. I was very excited for many reasons. 1.) I get to see Matt and hang out with him. The last time I actually got to chill with him (not just play B and then head out) was roughly two years ago when he first met Liz. 2.) I would be taking the trip with Dale and Bubba. While in college I didn't hang out with them too much because I had been dealing with stuff around campus. After I graduated I started to hang out with them, but not too much. So this would be a chance for some good chilling with them. 3.) The only time I left town to do something for the weekend was either to visit Liz or Bard and they live in the same general area. So it was nice to go visit another place in a different area.

So we all gathered at the casa de Bubba where I met Seth. We took to the highway with various jams from Macho Man Randy Savage, Tupac, Gunther, Limp Bizkit, Eminem, and anything else that was on Dale's Zune that I can't think of right now. It was a plethora of music. I could tell this was going to be a good trip because memories we're already being made and we haven't even made it to Cincinnati yet. After a tiresome drive, we finally arrived at Matt's place with some difficulty. We were trying to find a house that only Dale and Bubba had been to, during the day and only been there once or twice a year. Since it was roughly 2AM it made it somewhat difficult to spot it. After turning around a few times and calling Matt we finally got there. Before I got to this point I did some thinking about the weekend. I though, 'this is the last time I'm going to be able to party with Matt for awhile'. Since the last time I actually got to hang out with Matt was 2 years ago, I figured it'd be close to that time when I would get the privilege again. So I decided that was logic enough for me to give up my Great Dry Spell 08 for the weekend. With this in mind, we all agreed that we should start partying the minute we got there. Pleasantries were exchanged and then we started the beer pong. Seth and I played against Dale and Bubba and came to find some interesting rules. For instance, there was the NBA Hangtime rules. Meaning if you made two in a row, your teammate would have to say "He's heating up" and if you made the third after your teammate you have to say, "He's on fire!" and you personally would get a roll back until you missed. I was a fan of that, however the other rule I didn't like so much. Apparently if you get "Skanked" (meaning you don't make a single cup before the other team wins) you have to go down to your boxers for the rest of the night. So there I am, Seth never manned up, in my boxers and apparently once I did that all of Matt's roommates decided to come in. An excellent first impression. In between games, we enjoyed shots of Jim Beam and we ended up playing roughly 3 games. Needless to say, we got drunk pretty quick. Seth and I actually beat Dale and Bubba on the third game which apparently was a feat in of itself because they were the "Team Awesome". However, we won because Dale knocked over about 3 cups the entire game due to being drunk. I don't care a win's a win. Afterwards Matt, his gf Malory, and Bubba disappeared leaving Dale, Seth and myself downstairs. We chilled for a bit and spoke of how the next day was Steak and BJ Day. As Dale and I were talking Seth made a break for the bathroom and started to puke. Dale and I were both laughing and cracking jokes. I coined the term, "Pulling a Seth" which we ran with for the duration of the weekend. After some time of Seth puking, it was brought to my attention that Seth is allergic to beer. Now this story has been pulled on me several times, all being complete BS, so at first I didn't believe Dale when he told me. However Seth kept puking and Dale sounded quite sincere. In between pukes, Seth had confirmed the fact. I felt bad because I had forced him to help me finish the beers from our "Skank"ing and thus it was indirectly my fault that he was puking and possibly dying. Nobody was pissed at me because I didn't know, however I was shocked that nobody mentioned anything of it when I was making Seth drink beer. ::Sigh::

We passed out around 5ish in the morning. We woke up around 1PM on Friday and I was asking Matt, "So when's the tour?" I'm used to visiting Bard, where I get a tour of whatever city I'm visiting. We didn't get too much of a tour, but we went out enough to get a feel for the area. Either way, we went to a Hooters that was in Kentucky. It was nice because it was just on the river and as Matt said, "It's the only body of water more dirty than Lake Erie". It could have been because it was raining at the time, but appearance supported Matt's claim. It was my first time at a Hooters so I didn't know what to get. I ended up ordering chicken fingers but if I could do it all over again, I would have ordered the chicken wings. I discovered their wings are like Ponderosa wings, which I love. So I sniped a few of Matt and Bubba's wings. They were as delicious as I was expecting. This was when the "Mild" joke was born. I don't think it's what he ordered, but Dale had been going on this whole, "I'm from Buffalo" kick when we got there and he was mocking the Buffalo Chicken Sandwich. So when asked how he would like it, he said "Mild". It became a running joke for the rest of the weekend. Afterwards we bulked up on beer and then headed back to Matt's. Between getting there and the beer store, a certain drinking game was mentioned. The name? Edward 40 hands. The sound of it made me want to play it. I came to find that it's a race where you duct tape a 40 in each of your hands and you proceed to drink them. You can't take the duct tape off until your done with both 40s. First one to finish, and not puke, wins. Needless to say, Dale won both because he finished before me and I pulled a Seth. It surprisingly wasn't a "I drank too much" Sething, it was a "the period in which I took between sips was too quick" Sething. I came to find what a good friend Dale was when he helped me fix the kitchen sink, for it was the destination of my Sething and it wasn't draining. However I was able to finish and we continued on the night. We chilled around Matt's place getting drunk and I got to meet his friend Butters. People claim that he looks just like the South Park Butters and I will confirm that he is small, blonde, has a high pitched voice somewhat like Butters. However I don't think I would confirm an exact likeness to Butters. We got drunk for awhile, rocked out to Rock Band, I had a chat with Bubba for a bit, and then decided to go to this bar that was "down the street" from Matt's place called Dana's. In our drunken state we thought, "we can make the walk, let's go". We started walking and 15 minutes later we decided it was a bad decision. Thankfully we got there as spirits were wanning. It was a decent bar, a little small, but I did get to meet some more of Matt's friends there. Afterwards we started to walk back and came across a construction lift parked on the side of the road. Matt drunkly tried to ride in it, and then Dale and I tried to take the door off of it. After that Bubba said something that playfully offended Matt and Matt decided to try and beat them home so he could lock them out of his house. I took off after him and then realized we were at Xavier campus. Matt cursed the campus in his drunken state, and then asked these people that were moving luggage out of a van if they were "the shuttle". I was drunk, but I wasn't too the point where I couldn't tell what people were doing. So I ushered Matt away apologising for his inquiry and continued onward. The funny thing is later I came to find that Bubba, Dale, and company asked the same people for directions. I thought it was funny because it looked like a family dropping off their kids at college. So I'm sure they got a nice surprise when two groups of drunken people talk to them. Since I wasn't familar with Cincinnati I felt we were lost. Like some sort of a miracle, as I thought this Matt's phone rang and it was his friend Kate. She offered to come pick us up and we thankfully accepted the help. Surprisingly the rest of the group wasn't too far off and by the time Kate got there, they showed up. We all piled into the clown car that was Kate's car and headed back to Matt's. The minute we got back Matt exclaimed that he wanted McDonald's and insisted that we go right this instant. Due to censorship, information has been requested to be withheld and I shall adher to the request. But I can say that Matt drove a car full and Dale drove me. Dale and I had a dilemma with McDonalds. Dale order a 10 piece McNugget and when he handed me the bag I noticed that was not the case. There was a Big Mac, a couple chicken sandwiches, and a couple double cheese burgers. Dale took it back and I contemplated taking a few of the sandwiches because how would they know. Dale tried to keep them by saying, "If your going to throw those out, we'll just keep 'em". The night manager was not to privy to that idea and gave Dale some attitude. Since the dinner was closed Dale had to walk infront of a car that was at the pick up window to make the exchange. After akwardly standing there, Dale finally got his food. We came back and passed out for the night.

Saturday we woke around 1PM again and we proceeded to play Rock Band until about 5PM. It was funny because we were trying to do other things but it was the "one more song" mentality that kept us there that late. During this Dale and I tried to get everybody else to do Edward 40 Hands and everybody gave the, "If everybody else does it I will". Butter, however, was all for doing it and thus because he was everybody else would. We decided to get some food at this resturant in a mall in Kentucky. I don't know the name of either, but I do know that the resturant was very Dave and Buster like. There was a bar/arcade and then a resturant connected to it. We played some games (there was this Indy 500 racing game that Matt, Dale, and I took part in, and Bubba and I played Time Crisis 3) and got some food. There was this special where if you finished their pound burger and fries you could get a 10 dollar gift card. Carlton, one of Matt's friends that came over while we were playing Rock Band, and Butters decided to give it a run. What was funny is when Butters ordered it the waitress replied with, "But he's so small". We all laughed and Butters secretly was planning her demise. While getting food, we saw Sonic the Hedgehog. Being the gamer that I am, we HAD to get a picture with him. I believe it was Dale and myself who got the picture taken with Sonic. After dinner, Butters decided not to leave a tip due to the ridicule and we stopped at the beer store again for the 40s and then headed over to Carlton's place. We got there and then started the game; it was Butters, Matt, Carlton, Bubba, and Seth playing Edward 40 Hands. It was sweet sweet justice to see them endure the hell Dale and I went through. I put my money on Butters, however it was Carlton as the winner followed by Bubba and then Butters. During the game, I had taken a hit from the "Swagger bong". Apparently last time Dale was up he drank a lot of beer out of this funnel and then in a drunken state wrote his name on it. So from that point on, it was dubbed "The Swagger Bong". After Carlton finished, he offered to make Bubba chicken because Bubba had been bragging about his cooking. He made Bubba chicken and offered to make me some. Since Carlton had been trying to dethrone Bubba, I decided I would give it a shot. I got my chicken and realized half way through my chicken that it was under cooked. Fortunately the rest wasn't bad so I just finished it. I chalked it up to Carlton being very drunk, since he blitz through Edward 40 Hands. Once everybody was done, we decided to go Dana's again becuase it was right down the street. Dale had been trying to teach me the Swagger and in his attempt to due so he said to play off his band's CD release. He went around talking it and myself up. He would always introduce me as the bassists for the band. It's funny because he's asked me to be in the band, but I have yet to practice with them. Either way, many drinks were had at the bar and then we decided to head back. The details were a little hazy, but I do believe Butters came to pick us up and I think we went to McDonalds again. I do remember eating a double cheeseburger at Carlton's afterwards. At this point I had a lot to drink and it was getting late so we headed back to Matt's. Once I got there, Matt's roommate was playing Rock Band and he wanted me to help him beat a certain song on drums. I started to try and play and then realized I was too drunk for "dis shit". Next thing I know, I'm waking up on the couch in my cloths from yesterday.

It was Sunday 9AM, so I changed and then went to bed again. I woke up around 1PM again and wasn't feeling too hot. Minimal movement would be best for me, however the boys wanted to play Halo. So we all started to play and I felt sick with every movement I made. During one match I felt my jaw getting weak and numb like. Now I wasn't going to be dumb and try to man through it, so I got up and ran to the bathroom for good old Sething. I was ridiulded for it, but then came back and owned everybody in the round. The joke was made that I should throw up more for Halo. We order pizza so we could get some food in us before we hit the road. Now the previous days, we had order Papa John's but this time we wanted the cheap route and decided to go with Domino's. The pizza came 2 hours late but we didn't mind too much because we were playing Halo. The minute I got food in me, the day turned for the better. We stopped around 5PM and then hit the road. We got lost trying to find the Thruway back home. We drove through the hood of Cincinnati to find that we were driving in the wrong direction but finally made it. The trip back was very chill as we listened to Minus the Bear. I hadn't heard their music before it. It was mentioned on my facebook event for the cabin party and I decided to check them out while at work. I don't have any speakers here at work so by the looks of the site, I thought that maybe they were another death metal band. I can say that they are exact opposite of that. It's very good "chill" music. We we listened to that, and I had developed a headache during the ride. Long story short, we made it home very uneventfully.

All in all, trip was a HUGE (like Billy Fuccilo huge) success. I'm very excited I made the trip, I got to reunite with some old friends, make some new ones, and see the world beyond my front door. Heh, I've been on this wanting to travel kick. Now that I don't have parents telling me I can't and not relying on their funds to get me what I want, I want to see what I was missing out on. Well not missing out on, but seeing how different life out there is in comparison to Buffalo.

In a recent development this week, I sudden got this sense of purpose. For instance, I want to look into making a server for transferring and backing up files. Blur and I had this problem trying to get me songs that he wanted me to have. Also he mentioned there were a lot of songs that he wanted to get off of me. Since AIM has a stupid firewall issue, I figured if I had my own server we could just connect to that and he could take the files that way. Also I decided I don't like my job but not because of the work. Becuase of the customers. A couple of customers had brought it to my attention that there are some forums out there that don't speak too highly of my company. I took a look at them and on the plus side it's been like 2 years since those were posted. However they rank pretty high if you type in the name of my company. There were some reasons that people were saying that our company is a "scam". Now I'm sure it's the whole, "Oh because you work for them you're defending them" but to be honest before working here I knew shit about SEO. I think after working here I've gotten a good feel for it and how it works. People come in thinking that SEO is a constant finite thing that once you get to the top you stay there. WRONG! It's dynamic. It's changing all that time. Not too mention that the search engines aren't going to rocket you to the top the minute the optimization changes are in place. So I these webmasters saying, "Oh I'd like to see some work you've done" and when I give them some sites I worked on all I get are, "Well let me tell you why I don't like the work you've done by giving you pointers", or I get customers who say, "Is that all the work your going to do? This isn't what I paid for", etc. Long story short, I feel like people pay us to do our job and yet when we give them my product they try and find everything wrong with it, or somebody to tell them what's wrong with it. Just because as part of our process we add old methods of SEO, doesn't mean that we don't know what were doing. It's like it's a sacrlet letter or something. "OH! They're using that, they're dumb and don't know what their doing. They're just taking your money". Yea, maybe if you weren't a dumbass you'd see the other shit we do for your site. "Read a book." I put that in quotes becuase it's what Dale says when he mockingly talks about his job and the internets. So yea, basically I feel like people don't appreciate the work I do because of the field of work I do. The place I work at is great. The people here are awesome, and it's right around the corner from my apartment. However the people I deal with are dumb and impatiently expect me to turn water into wine.

Due to me actually like the place of employment, I'm going to stick around for a bit before looking to relocate. We'll see. I'm making some progress with the XNA launcher, however I know need Photoshop to make animations. That's another thing. I want to buy Photoshop so I have it on my computer. That way I can make graphics and the like. That and I want to eventually look into buying a 3-D rendering program. I want to buy these so I own them and can use them for whatever I want. Not have to be like, "Ok well all the features aren't activated because I DLed a trial copy and if I do anything with this I can't do anything with it because of copywright issues". However I'm a put my sites on Photoshop first so I can make the 2-D sprite games first. I'll work my way up once I get done with that. I was hoping to make some sort of action game with the XNA launcher, but I decided I'm going make that Tetris game I wanted to make with it. It looks like it makes the developing of the GUI a lot easier that Java did and the only reason I wanted to use Java was because Canisius spent two years teaching it to us.

So for the past few days, I've had dreams about Smash Bros. You know you've been playing it too much when that happens. Can't help it though, it's a stellar game and I'm very pleased. When I was at Tino's Saturday night before the release, I started to get a little worried. I was worried that maybe I built this game up too much and it wouldn't be as amazing as I had thought. I'm glad I was disappointed in that respect. Either way, it wasn't anything big, it was just me dreaming of us playing Smash Bros. It was kinda funny because my alarm would go off, I'd hit the snooze, and then in the dream I was saying, "Okay we've got 9 minutes we can finish one more stage".

After being prompted to do so by Shanon and Andy, I checked out Audiosurf and I have got to say, although challenging it's very fun and addicting. As Andy described it, "It's like Guitar Hero and DDR had a child and it wanted to be F-Zero." It's a rythm game where you drive down a road. Your car has a grid that's three lans wide and 8 squares long. On the road there are different color "cars" as they call them (or notes in this case). You have to try and collect them by running your car into them. When you hit them, they are put on the grid. Three of the same color will erase them from the grid and you get points. The more colors you have, the more points you get. It's pretty cool, there's different power ups you can get along the way, and different cars you can use for harder difficulties. The thing that's got me entranced the most by this game is the game's music library is your own. You read that correctly. It has you pick an mp3 file on your computer, loads it into the program and creates the track based on the song. The notes, the track, and the tempo are all determined on what song you pick. Slow parts of the song have the track slope upwwards, have less "notes" and they are colored blue, where as fast parts have the track slope downwards, have more "notes" and from time to time throw red colored notes at you. Red is the highest point value, while blue being at the lower end. I'm a fan.

Now to the point of this entry. I have this dream from time to time and it sticks out in my mind and makes me feel weird. Basically it'll just be a normal dream but all of a sudden I'll start poking at my tooth and it'll just pop out. It's weird because it's just a clean cut tooth and there's no blood or anything, just the tooth in perfect condition. It freaks me out because this happened after I lost all my baby teeth, so now I have to live with the fact I've lost a tooth and nothing is going to grow back. I have a few things I feel that I will live with my entire life, and all of my teeth is one of them. My sister is really into dream interpretation, so I had asked her because I've had this happen a couple of times. We took a look at it and I had forgotten between last time I had this dream and now. So I looked it up and here's what the "professionals" had to say:

"One theory is that dreams about your teeth reflect your anxiety about your appearance and how others perceive you. Sadly, we live in a world where good looks are valued highly and your teeth play an important role in conveying that image. Teeth are used in the game of flirtations, whether it be a dazzling and gleaming smile or affectionate necking. These dreams may stem from a fear of your sexual impotence or the consequences of getting old. Teeth are an important feature of our attractiveness and presentation to others. Everybody worries about how they appear to others. Caring about our appearance is natural and healthy.�

Another rationalization for these falling teeth dream may be rooted in your fear of being embarrassed or making a fool of yourself in some specific situation. These dreams are an over-exaggeration of your worries and anxiety.

Teeth are used to bite, tear, chew and gnaw. In this regard, teeth represent power. And the loss of teeth in your dream may be from a sense of powerlessness. Are you lacking power in some current situation? Perhaps you are having difficulties expressing yourself or getting your point across. You feel frustrated when your voice is not being heard. You may be experiencing feelings of inferiority and a lack of self-confidence in some situation or relationship in your life. This dream is an indication that you need to be more assertive and believe in the value of your own opinion.

In the latest research, it has been shown that women in menopause have frequent dreams about teeth. This may be related to getting older and/or feeling unattractive and less feminine.

Traditionally, it was thought that dreaming that you did not have teeth, represent malnutrition which may be applicable to some dreamers.

Other Perspectives

A scriptural interpretation for bad or falling teeth indicate that you are putting your faith, trust, and beliefs in what man thinks rather than in the word of God. The bible says that God speaks once, yea twice in a dream or a vision in order to hide pride from us, to keep us back from the pit, to open our ears (spiritually) and to instruct and correct us.

In the Greek culture, when you dream about loose, rotten, or missing teeth, it indicates that a family member or close friend is very sick or even near death.

According to the Chinese, there is a saying that your teeth will fall out if your are telling lies.

It has also been said that if you dream of your teeth falling out, then it symbolizes money. This is based on the old tooth fairy story. If you lose a tooth and leave it under the pillow, a tooth fairy would bring you money."sited work

Yea I definitely think it's the menopause.

...only Stamina Mega Bunny Metal Curry Heavy FAST Brawl

If you ask Tonya, that's the question I've been asking all week. Saturday couldn't come any quicker. I can't remember when I got so excited for a video game that time slowed down for me. I hated X-mas when I was a kid. I was so excited I couldn't go to bed, even if I tried. So I would be lying there wide awake because I was so pumped for the next day. To think of what games I would get and how much fun I would playing them.

To be honest, Super Smash Bros. Brawl (SSBB) was one of the factors as to why I bought a Wii. I love the Super Smash Bros. series however I never owned any of the games. I just happened to know people that owned the game, or a certain club that had it in the clubroom, and got to play to my heart's content that way. So this will be the first of the series that I'll actually own. That was pretty much the reason I bought the Wii. After meeting Mike, I was reminded how sweet Nintendo was. He had a Gamecube and I got to play a few Gamecube games here and there. I didn't find a game I hated playing. So when the Wii was coming out I felt that this was my opporunity to get back into the Nintendo scene, and Super Smash Bros. is going to make a game for the system!?! At the time I was led to believe that the game was going to come out at launch but I was disappointed when I went to the store to find that out. However, on the plus side it gave them time to perfect the motion sensing and make this game rock.

So in preparation of this blessed Saturday I've been watching videos of the game all week. You can look for one video on gameplay on youtube.com and they'll link you to the hundreds of videos. A personal favorite of mine is this video because it shows almost everybody's "Final Smash" move. Enjoy, I know I will...at least until Saturday. UGH! It's taking too long already.

This made me want to get back into my DDR days. Too bad all people playing it would be half my age.

Man my friends are boring, they never update their LJs. Come on people what am I going to procrastinate with at work if you don't write stuff! :-p

I should talk, the only reason I update my journal is because I'm bored at work. If it weren't for work I don't know if I'd ever update. XD

I'm giving this new look a try. I wanted to make some changes to my site but I was looking on LJ here and I couldn't find the FAQ on the override commands for S1. I came to find that LJ doesn't support S1 anymore so I guess it was inevitable for me to change to S2 if I were to make any changes. I like this style, but I wish I could edit a few things. I'm going to look into CSS sometime in the near future so I can override the layout and tweak it to my liking. I'm a fan of the calendar on the right, but I wish the dates where I actually posted something would be colored different. Also if you clicked the date to view a post, I would like it to be viewed in the layout, not in the lame LJ post an entry layout (you know where it has the account listed at the top in light blue and then it has a white background with black text). Very bland and boring. It's like, "What's the point in having a layout if when they want to look at a specific entry it comes to the boring view?"

I'm hoping learing CSS will allow me to fix that. If not, that's fine there still are other things I would want to fix.

This past weekend was exhausting. Friday I had the When Heroes Fail show which was awesome. I loved how Dale took out a cowbell went into the pit during one of their songs and layed this kid out. I didn't go into the pit for this show. I hold the same reasoning behind the last show that A Time To Stand had at Xtreme Wheels. Basically, I'm probably twice as old as the people in the pit and I don't want to get arrested. On top of that, I was going to Canisius for game night, so I didn't want to show up to that all smelly and sweaty. Oh yea, also I had to jet home to my parents house because I had a health insurance bill, which my dad offered to pay for me, and it was due on the 1st of this month. So I went straight from work, to my parents house, to the show, and then to game night. Game night lead into DoTA and that went till 2AM. Saturday I had Finegan's Farewell show. I haven't been too vocal about this performance because when I was first brought in to the show, I was lead to believe I was going to do two shows and that's it. Not to mention the first show I was going to be in, I was a small part with no lines and just ad-lib with Joe Spencer. From there I took Joe's role for the second performance, which was this past Saturday, because Joe couldn't make it. I was a little nervous because A.) we had only one rehersal before Saturday and I was just playing Joe's side kick, B.) I hadn't looked at the script before Saturday because there was only one or two speeches I had to learn, and C.) I didn't know if I would be able to fill the shoes of the role I needed to properly. This show was in Batavia, so I knew I had the ride up to memorize my lines, this was not the hard part. When we got there we ran a rehersal and I got a general feel for it, I was still a little nervous of remembering what to do when. The show started at 7PM and thankfully when it started everything just fell in place. I nailed the speeches I was supposed to be "sober" for and was able to play any missed lines and the like to being "drunk". The reason I say "drunk" is because it's a Irish funeral and the father of my character would want to have a party. So we do "shots" (of ice tea), so after that I have to pretend to be drunk. Needless to say, everything went wonderfully, everybody loved the show, and I got fed =D. The reason I haven't been vocal about this show more is because the shows are in different venues everytime, however this upcomming show is on April 5th at Briarwood in Hamburg. If you really REALLY want to come see it, get in contact with me and I shall pull up more information. So I got back around 11PM where I hung out with Liz for an hour and then headed out to DoTA which went till 5AM this time. Sunday I was supposed to go snowboarding with Blur, however when I woke up I was very tired and thought to myself, "I haven't been in my apartment for more than an hour this entire weekend." This mentality gave me the, "I want to stay in bed all day" feeling, however I mustered enough strenght to get up out of bed and get ready of the day. While I was showering I was thinking about all the bills I had pay in the next few weeks. I come to find that most of my great ideas to me while I'm in shower, especially if I've forced myself out of bed (because I move slow in the morning and thus take a long shower if I'm not rushed). Worried about all the bills I had to pay, I didn't factor in snowboarding and checked it out online. To my dismay, I was unable to afford it this week (I also owe Blur so I would be paying for two this week). I felt bad, because I saw Blur at DoTA the previous night and told him we were a go and I know how frustrating it is to be cancelled on at the last moment ::coughjoncough::. Sunday was a relaxing day. I came out to find that Tonya was watching a Barbie movie. I made fun of her but then found myself sadly watching the movie with her. There unforunately wasn't anything on, so we just sat there and watched the entire movie. Tonya was going to go to the movies, but apparently her company bailed on her and wanted to go grocery shopping. So I went with her, bought a few things for the house and came back. I played more of Zelda II, got past the roadbloack I was stuck at (heh, it's a double meaning because I had to find the hammer to get past the roadblock keeping me from getting to the rest of the map), then the L word came on which Tonya had to watch (but she also got me hooked on it), and then I played some more Assassin's Creed.

As much as I'm a trying to stick to my, "First in first out" queue for all my projects, I think I'm going to alter them a bit. A.) Microsoft released this XNA program which allows people to make their own game, allow Xbox LIVE members DL them and play them, and then comment on them. If they are good enough, then they will go on sale on Xbox LIVE. I'm thinking of putting off the movie for a bit and look into that, but I also thought to myself that I could do both. B.) Since I'm borrowing Assassin's Creed from my friend with a game my old roommate owned, I figured it'd be best to get that back to him ASAP just so I don't forget about it. So I'm thinking I'm going to play that first before Dead Rising or Half Life 2. However I want to beat Zelda II so I can move on to Castlevania and eventually get the sequel, Simon's Quest. I've been hoping they would bring that game to the VC because I remember playing it a few times way back when I was wee little boy. It was one of those nostolgic memories I would like to relive.

Those are really the only "projects" I'm working on. There's the band, but that's not really a project and more of a "I need the other band members to colaborate on things" type of thing. However on the band front, I've got two people asking me to join their band, one looking more likely than the other. But either way it'd be nice to finally join a band where I'm not the driving force of it. I digress, so I think I'm going to do a parallel processing thing and do both the game project and movie idea and play Assassin's Creed and Zelda II.

I started up my Star Wars campaign due to popular demand. I feel that I have more free time after work that I can actually come up with stats and plot and everything. Not to mention I have more than 2 people joining the game. So I'm excited about that, but the thing I'm super pysched for it Mark's Vamp game. It's been forever since last I played Vamp, and I'll get to continue a character idea I had. I wanted a character with Melpominee and I had started a Toreador in one of Mike's campaigns set on trying to learn that discipline. I had slaved away session after session and I finally got it. However, the campaign conviently fell off the minute I got it. In the infamous word of Zac, "No! The stack!". So this time around I'm going to play a Daughter of Cacophony, which is a vampire clan that starts off with that discipline. The other bonus of playing this character is that, as the name implies, it's a female character. I'm excited about this because every role playing game is always like, "you have to play the same sex that you are". Why does it have to be that way? I'm sure when the rule was in place it was to prevent people from doing stupid things. Which is fine, but if you're with a tight group of friends and know everybody's good for it, then it shouldn't be a problem. So we'll see how that goes, I'm sure the female novelty will wear off after the first couple of sessions. Mostly, I'm pumped about being able to use Melpominee.

Okay, as I've stated at the beginning of this post, I'm updating my journal at work and I think I've managed to kick off a few minutes with this. So, write stuff people so I have something to read and occupy my time here.

P.S. I wanted to state that oddly I had a dream about playing Oblivion. I haven't even played that game yet (as in ever), but I've seen it being playedeven on my xbox. The dream was based off of what I thought it would be like to play the game. Either way I thought it was odd and wanted to mention it.

Back around October when I purchased my 360, my friend Trevor brought me to this xbox forum site that he belonged to called The XLC. I had joined the site because I liked Trevor and figured it'd be a good way to stay in touch other than always signing into my xbox. At first I thought it would be just another forum where people join up, and just go off on stupid thing. So I posted here and there and of course there was the whole, "I'm new so I don't know anybody and there appear to be all these inside jokes". That's fine, it always happens when you join a new group of people. Long story short, I came to find that it was actually a site created by a handful of the members to just stay in touch with friends of friends, talk about games, and create a civil community of gamers. Several months later, I feel that I've actually made some friends on this site and, to my surprise, didn't consist of people just flamming constantly to get a hard on, well mostly (Phazzer :-p).

I've come to find that buzz about the 360 is the Red Ring of Death (RROD) that is causing a ton of xboxs to shut down and need repair. There was a poll taken on the site that asked how many times you had to have your xbox repaired. I was one of the lucky ones, but a good majority of the site population had mentioned going through at least 2 or 3 xboxs. Some said they had bought a second xbox so when the one goes down they have a backup. I thought that was crazy. One xbox set me back a pretty penny. I couldn't image buying another one. Apparently they bought an xbox without a HD, which is just dumb. So will all this hype about needing to repair their xbox, it made me worry about mine. I feel like it's just a time bomb ticking away till that fateful day where I'll have to go through the hassel.

But the beauty of it all, is that I've yet to hear any sort of problem with the Wii. I have seen mine and Andy's Wii freeze on several occasions but if you just power cycle it it works again and nothing is delete from the HD. I'm very glad I didn't get an xbox on launch because apparently all those have needed some sort of repair because of Microsoft's rush to get the 360 out. However I'm not worried about my Wii, which I got at launch, breaking down due to being one of the first versions.

I just finished Super Paper Mario yesterday and I've been reassured that Nintendo owns the world. It brought me back to when I had a SNES. Back then I was a Nintendo fan boy. In fact, at heart I am a Nintendo fan boy. However after the 64 came out, GC took way too long to come out and PS2 was readily available. Not to mention I had played several games on the system and enjoyed them. Also at the time I was the naive kid who thought graphics made a game, and thought the PS2 grahpics were better than GC. Thus I got a PS2 and haven't turn back since. Now with the next gen systems out, the Wii was the first one I got because I came to the realization that graphics aren't everything and the Wii proves it. My only complaint is that about 90% of the games are geared to the causal gamer, so their games aren't exactly challenging. Super Paper Mario showed me that even though a game isn't very difficult, it still can be challenging in it's own way and still take a good amount of time to beat. Hell I bought the game way back in October and it took me 3 months to beat it. Keep in mind I hadn't played it for 3 months straight, but still. I've recorded 20 hours of play on the game.

What I was trying to get at is, I find it funny how people have all this hype about xbox needing to be sent back to repair and buying more than one xbox so incase that happens they can continue to play. However, for me, I feel that if my xbox went down, I wouldn't really care about going through the process because I would still have the Wii I could play and keep me entertained.