Today is July the 26th. Andrew is due to arrive on August 29th early in the morning. Preparations have already begun. This last weekend was spent doing another Purge and cleaning spree. As one of my friends said, “Wow, is your place really that dirty? Seems like all you do is clean!” No, it’s not that dirty. As a matter of fact, the house is usually quite clean. It’s just that I have so much Stuff that it tends to turn into clutter around everywhere! I still haven’t found the spider-man gloves yet, but the house is starting to become less cluttered. I took out another truck full of crap to the dumpster. Its crazy the amount of stuff that I was just holding onto for the sake of holding onto. For instance, I have a subscription to a magazine called Maximum PC. It’s a great magazine, I highly suggest it. But I never read any of the old issues. I had a box outside that was filled to the brim with old issues. Not any more.

So now Andrew’s room is completely set for him to arrive. I have cleaned out the desk, the closet and everything else that isn’t supposed to be in there. There are some Toys, and furniture. I have also added his computer to the room, but it’s not working yet. I bought him a new case but something isn’t working on it and I haven’t figured out what yet. I am almost to the point of just going and buying one of the $400 HP machines and upgrading it with a new Video card (I have spares). Well see if I can get this one working, but it may just turn into a project PC for Andrew to tinker with. Outside of that, his room is ready to go. (It’s no longer the evil Den)

Things have not lightened up at work either. I have been focusing all of my work time on building a RIS server. For those that don’t know, RIS stands for Remote Installation Services. It’s a server on the network that can remotely install full machines with new operating systems and baselines. Using this, we can place a new computer at someone’s desk and just set it to download its OS from the RIS server. Since it’s all done over the network and automagicly, there are no disks needed and it’s relatively un-attended. For some odd reason, the first few times I tried to get the damn thing to work it kept saying I didn’t have the right permissions. So I wiped it and started over.

As for the rest of lifes goings on. I have finally posted the pictures from the Fourth of July, and from the children’s hospital event. There isn’t much to the pictures for the 4th, mostly just fireworks and a cute picture of me and Amy. The children’s hospital was a very informative event. This was not your average hospital. This was an “Advanced Care” facility. Basically, this is where children come after the extended hospital stays for long term care and, hopefully, recovery. Many of the children were un-able to respond but we were told that the stimulus of seeing us in costume was good for them. The parents that were on hand for our visit also appreciated our efforts. It was a sad trip, but overall rewarding.

Who knows what will happen this weekend. For that matter, the week isn’t up yet…

I guess that means I should probably write a little more often. The sad thing is that there hasn’t really been anything great to write about. Life has progressed as normal, well as normal as can be expected with the life that is mine. I have purchased Andrews ticket to come out here. I got a great deal through a site called Kayak. So in roughly a month he will arrive to shake things up around here. It will defiantly be an experience, but I am more then willing and ready.

In other saddening news, it would appear that the great Scotty, James Doohan, has passed away this morning. I don’t believe that in all my years of con going I ever got the chance to meet him, but from what I have heard, he was a great individual. There may be rifts between Star Wars and Star Trek fans, but when it comes down to it, when a good person passes away, everyone connected feels it. So today James Doohan has become one with the force and has beamed up for the last time. Thanks for the Memories Scotty!

On a happier note, the newest trailer for the Serenity movie came out today. For those not in the know, Serenity is the movie that was born from the TV show Firefly. This was a show that was picked up by Fox, but being Fox, they f’d it up beyond belief. The actually aired the episodes out of order, they threw it in a Friday night death slot. I for one loved the show. I started watching when they first aired it and was hooked. I was really upset when the show was canceled. Like wise I was very excited when I found it all on DVD. Last year, when it came out, I sat and did a firefly marathon. It was great to watch all of the shows in the order they were meant to be seen in. So now, about a year later, we prepare for Serenity! There have been two trailers released and both just make me want to see the Movie more and more. Amy has even made plans for when Andrew arrives, we will be sitting and watching the Firefly episodes again to catch him up.

This last week has been crazy. There have been so many changes going on, it’s not even funny. Things at work are on the verge of ballistic and it’s defiantly having an effect on me. I have been a little more stressed out than usual, and the sad thing is that I don’t know that it’s going to get better for a while. You see, we have Tons of shakeups here at work going on around the end of July, Andrew coming in at the end of Aug., Andrews school starting up in September, and all of the miscellaneous stuff in between. This is probably the reason I haven’t been writing much.

The last weekend went really well. I bought me a new storage closet for the back patio that works out great! Plus we really got a lot accomplished in the way of cleaning up. They may or may not be more of that this weekend. On Saturday we have a few things going on. In the afternoon we will be making a stop off at one of the children’s hospitals in Richmond VA to do some trooping and give the kids there a few smiles. I know troops like this are tough, but knowing that the kids will enjoy it makes it all worth the effort. After that it will be down to Mark’s place for a Luau party. Not sure what time we will get back from that. Hopefully my inspiration to write more will manifest soon.

Time to introduce you to two new joys in my life. These of course do nothing to replace the current joys, they in fact, add quite a bit to those, but I digress. As you can gather from some of the previous posts (few as they have been) I have picked up a new game, Battlefield 2. The other joy is not new at all but has been around for a while, I just have been late to the game in signing up for it. All-Of-MP3 is a website where you can download Music, Legally! First lets start with the gaming.

Many a moon ago there was Wolfenstein. It was a strange and mysterious castle where lots of Nazi’s bred poorly fed German shepherds and demons, you know, like you do. In this strange castle, you would wander around and shoot these Nazi’s, and their little dogs too (and eat the dog food), you know, like you do. Castle Wolfenstein was one of the first games to revolutionize the First Person Shooter genre of games. It spawned some of our all time favorites like Doom, Quake, and Tribes. Tribes was a personal favorite because it was much more team based and not just a walk through shoot everything sort of game. It was tribes that brought me into the team based competitive gaming society. Trust me when I say that the community that surrounds gaming competition is a lot bigger then you could possibly imagine.

Getting involved in a good team and starting competition led me to a little known online radio station named the Tribes Sportscast Network (Soon to be re-named to Team Sportscast Network). Following my love of radio I jumped in and started working with them to broadcast all of my favorite games, Tribes, Jedi Knight, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and, new at the time, Battlefield 1942. BF1942 brought together some great aspects of multiple games and combined them into a whole new wartime experience. In Tribes you had multiple rolls for team members and to compete well, you really needed a diverse team. In addition to your flag runners and defensive players, you needed engineers and medics. Games like Return to Castle Wolfenstein brought a whole new sort of game with a conquest style, you capture and area and hold it as long as possible. What BF1942 did was to take the game style of a conquest type, combine it with a variety of team members, then throw in tons upon tons of vehicles. If you wanted to drive a tank, you could. Fly a plane? Hop on in! This was an amazing aspect of First Person Shooters. I no longer had to walk over to a flag and sit un-guarded. All of this was set in a World War II environment. The maps were actual locations of important battles for the time.

Now, take the game play of Battlefield 1942, and throw in modern weaponry and a new shiny graphics engine, you get Battlefield 2. Modern vehicles, modern guns, and a few familiar looking maps make this a phenomenal game to immerse yourself in. Nothing I have played lately has given me the fun factor satisfaction of jumping into an F-15 with a friend gunning for me, doing a bombing run over an enemy base and then jumping out to parachute down, hop into an enemy tank and take the base. They also added a whole new aspect to the game with squads and commanders. As a squad leader you can send direction to your squad mates and request support from your commander. As a commander you can use radar and UAV to spot enemy’s, provide direction for your squads, and drop in supplies and artillery. A good commander and turn the game around really quick. The game does have a few faults, of course. The server browser needs a lot of help. Finding friends online is a pain. There is currently no way to save a server as your favorite. Overall it’s a fun game and has really pulled me back into the FPS genre.

So, Moving on. I Love music. I don’t think I could call myself an audiophile or any such like that, I’m not crazy for music to the point that I could tell you when Depeche Mode’s first album came out, but I really enjoy music. I have a very wide variety of CD’s and MP3’s. Many people have commented on my Eclectic tastes when it comes to music. There are very few types of music that I don’t like. The problem is now that the RIAA being the bastards they are have jacked prices of new CD’s through the roof and nearly killed any other means to acquire music. One site in particular is just beyond the RIAA’s grasp and very very in-expensive for music. Plus, since I am actually buying the music, it’s completely legal! The site in question is http://www.allofmp3.com. How they do it is to charge per meg for music, and that’s only a few pennies per meg. I recently purchased 2 full albums and 1 single and only spent $2.80. How awesome is that! I highly suggest that you check them out, they have a very large library to choose from and the formats that you can download in are great!

Back on the home front, I don’t believe we have much planned for this weekend. I think it’s time to buckle down and deep clean some of the house. Most likely this means that I will finalize Andrews room (no longer the evil den will it be called) and do some spring cleaning (yeah, I know I am late). Of course, you know there will also be gaming as well! Have a good weekend everyone!

Sorry I haven’t posted much recently, I have had a lot happening that has kept me pretty busy. The sad thing is that Most of it didn’t go as planned at all. Here we had this lovely 3 day weekend and even got off work a little early on Friday so you would think I had lots of time to do a lot of things. You would think that, but that’s not what happened. Almost everything that I had planned on doing this weekend got changed into doing something else or nothing at all. The sad thing is, after all of the nothing and changed plans, I am wiped out!

So this weekend was an annual event called UVALAN. It’s a LAN convention that originated around the game Tribes. For those who don’t know, a LAN convention is where you bring you computer and hook it up to a closed network and play games against others until the wee hours of the morning. The downside to the LAN is that Tribes isn’t played near as much any more and they didn’t have as many people as they were expecting. From what I understand they actually went in the hole paying for this years LAN. It’s a bummer too because this was probably one of the best ones. Granted I didn’t play for very long, but the whole LAN just seemed a lot more comfortable. I spent all of Friday night there from 4pm till 3am. Since I don’t play Tribes anymore I played a whole lot of Battlefield 2. 10 hours worth to be exact. More on BF2 Soon.

Well, I decided not to return to the LAN on Saturday simply because I had planned on gaming with Lee and Doc. That didn’t really happen all that much though, Not even sure why not. Come to think of it, except for Saturday night, I am having a hard time remembering what I did on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday night was horrible though. Every year on the Saturday night of the LAN I usually make an appearance of some sort. Usually in costume. Last year was Biker Scout with Amy in her Groupie. This year I decided to do Spiderman and Mary Jane. Sadly this didn’t happen as I seemed to have misplaced my gloves. We tore apart the apartment (that sounded funny) and couldn’t find them. (Peter Parker never has these problems I bet).

I was so angry with myself. I even went to Wal-mart and had one of the worst experiences with anti-customer service while searching for a suitable replacement. Mind you I was already pissed off. I walked in and found someone working in the clothing department. I asked her very simply where the gloves were. She grunted at me and motioned to the other half of the store. In my mindset I wasn’t going to take that so I loudly asked her “Do you think you could narrow that down for me? That’s only ½ the store!” She grunts again and walks me over so that only 1/4th of the store is visible and waves her hands madly toward it. Of course there is no clothing in that section. So I Very loudly exclaimed “*&^$% you then your no help!” It was horrible! I spent the rest of Saturday evening killing things in Battlefield 2.

The fourth of July was Hot, damn hot. For some reason my air conditioning was not working either. Most of the day was spent panting heavily and laying down. Amy even crashed out on the couch because of the heat. My original plan was to clean house but with the lack of energy that just wasn’t going to happen. I finally figured out that it was the filter, and it was very dirty. After taking the filter out and cleaning it, the AC worked like a charm. Who Knew? Of course we didn’t fix this until right before leaving to watch the fireworks.

This year we wanted to try something local. I figure that next year, when Andrew is here, it will be cool to see the display downtown. So this year we went to Lake Fairfax and watched the light show there. We arrived at around 7pm and got a great spot right next to the lake. We could see where the fireworks were being launched from and a great view of the explosions! The show didn’t start until about 9:30pm so we had a good 2 ½ hours to kill but we managed. I never really knew how culturally diverse the area around where I live was. I can’t think of a 4th of July celebration I have been to where they served Hot dogs, burritos, and tandori chicken. And there we lots of people there! Towards 9pm it got really crowded. The show was great though, and we made a smart move by parking very far away from the park. We got home by around 10:15pm.

I will of course be writing up a Battlefield 2 review very soon. In the mean time, I hope you had a good weekend!