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!

Ok, so that’s party true and mostly just kidding around. We made it back from this past weekends camping trip and neither of us were mauled by bears or eaten by raccoons. The whole trip was a lot of fun. The KOA Campground that we were at was a little farther out than I had originally planned but it was a nice site and well cared for. Some of you hard core campers would say it was a wimpy camp site, but for Amy’s first time (and my first in a long while) it was a good start. They had a pool and lots of activities, but we didn’t do much there. The one thing that upset me about the place is that they advertised that many of the attractions were “local.” These attractions were about an hours drive away.

Well we left home around 5ish on Friday evening at got there around 7:30pm. It was still nice and bright so we set up our camp and I got a nice campfire going. It took a while for Amy to get used to all the bugs that go along with camping. By the time we left she was at peace with the bugs (: For our first camping dinner I made us some Hot Dogs. We roasted them on the fire, well, we tried to anyways. Turns out that 1: it as still really hot out and 2: the sticks we got to do our fire roasting things were very short. Those two things combined made for very hot hands. One of the other lessons learned would be to place the ice inside bags, then into the cooler. I am too used to just throwing in Ice and Cider or soda, you know, things that it doesn’t matter if they are wet. So a lot of the food packaging got wet and that wasn’t so good. The tent that Amy bought had a very nice screened top to it so we were able to fall asleep staring that the tree tops and the stars. It was wonderful.

Saturday morning came along quick. I think this would be one of the first times in a long while that I was up by 8am on a Saturday. On of the things I had planned for was a grilling piece over the fire pit to be able to cook food on. So there wasn’t one here. I ended up buying a really cool little BBQ grill ($5) that was perfect for making breakfast. Amy made us some scrambled eggs and bagels. We thought it would be nice to see about Canoeing through the day. After driving for nearly an hour (I said the stuff wasn’t local) we got to the Shenandoah River Outfitters. We got ourselves a canoe and signed up for the 7 mile trip. (This was the easiest and I believe the shortest) After about 10 min of slathering on Sunscreen and deciding what to bring we jumped in the canoe and started the journey! 7 miles is a long way. The weather was perfect for the slow leisurely pace we had going. There were two other canoes following us, but I think they stopped somewhere around mile 2 to swim for a while. Around mile 3 we had our first incident. We could hear the water getting rough from a while back but didn’t think much about it. I steered us over towards the bank because I thought it would be a little easier. Turns out it was much, much, worse. Amy said it was like coming up on a roller coaster drop. Sure enough, we panicked and the canoe went over. I instantly jumped to make sure Amy was ok. She was having some trouble with the current but managed to right herself. She turned and asked about the things in the canoe. Here was our canoe’s inventory before the tip:

• Amy
• Me
• 2 Paddles
• 4 Bottles of Water
• My Sunglasses
• 1 Waterproof GPS
• Amy’s Removed Shirt
• My Cheap Digital Camera Wrapped in the above shirt.

After the tip we recovered 3 of the bottles of water, the paddles, and finally, the camera (after being submerged for about 5 min.) So the GPS (which was bright yellow) Most likely floated away and is in another state by now. My sunglasses, which I had owned for about a year and a half, and my tribes ski team shirt have now been donated to the Shenandoah River Foundation. The most important thing is that we were ok, no one was hurt, and we were able to continue along the river. I was a little bummed about the GPS and thought we might be able to find it if we went back a little ways. Sure enough that led to another tip. It would have been a lot easier to paddle up river if it weren’t a rapid area. So after the second tip over we just let it go and headed back down the river. The downside to this is that I had set the point were we were going in the GPS and was using that to guide us. Without it we were slave to the poorly placed signs along the river. The other two canoe’s managed to catch up to us by now. (Seeing as how we spent about 30 min flailing around in the river) so we stayed near them just in case we had another incident. Thankfully it was a nice peaceful trip the rest of the way. There was one part where I thought I saw a bear in the river (turns out it was a cow) but I started screaming at Amy to “Paddle to the other bank!!!”

Once we finally made it to mile marker 8 we were beat. My arms felt ready to fall off. We poured ourselves into the truck and headed back to the camp site. Along the way we made a few stops, just to check out a few things. One of those stops was at Luray Caverns. I wanted to get an idea of how much a trip in would cost. Apparently it takes a lot to maintain the incredibly large cave that’s been there since time began because it costs 20 bucks per person to go in! It would appear that someone found a niche and is working it for all it’s worth. Screw that! After quickly exiting the Money grubbing bastards at the caverns we made a quick pit stop at a Wal-Mart we passed on the way up. We picked up a few other things we forgot, like cheese for the burgers and some chips. Low and behold we found the holy grail of chips. Chili Cheese Fritos! If you have not tried these, it is a must have! They are by far the best Fritos I have ever had. Sadly, We can’t find them anywhere local! We were so excited, we tore into them as soon as we got to the truck.

Back at the camp, took a few moments to shower the river off of us and lay down for a mid afternoon nap. (The river wiped me out) The Campground had a small trail that we walked part way up, then decided we were too tired to go the rest of the way. Plus it was getting late and I needed to start dinner. Amy had some things she wanted to grab at the store so I started up the grill and the camp fire and commenced with the burger making! Since the grill I bought was a very small one, it took a long while to cook things on it. This was perfect thought because it gave me the chance to break out the drum and do some camp fire drumming. I became the dinner music for a few campsites around me and even got a few compliments. Between songs (I was drumming to my CD player) I would flip the burgers. We had a nice, campfire lit dinner of hamburgers and egg salad. Well, I ate the egg salad, Amy isn’t much of a fan of it. After dinner we made the traditional campfire smores. Another first for Amy. This sugar rush was just enough to clean up the campsite to get ready for bed.

Cleanup time! I think we woke up at around 9am Sunday morning and started the clean up process. I really thought it would take longer then what it did. We were done and out of the campsite by 10:30. This was fine of course because it meant a slow leisurely drive back home. Amy was so excited about the whole trip. She said she had a ton of fun, and I believe her. Even the drive home was fun. We drove a little farther on 81 then we were supposed to and ended up taking highway 17/50 home. The houses and towns along that drive were beautiful. When it comes time to buy the house I may look up in that region. We even saw a BBQ place that was worthy of a few pictures. After we got home we unloaded and started cleaning. At least, as much as we could before collapsing. I managed to squeeze in a little WoW time as well. All in all, it was a great weekend! There are a few pictures in the gallery.

The clock is ticking down to our first annual Wizzer Family Camping Trip! I want to make it a point to start camping at least once a year (if not more.) With Andrew coming out, I know it will start to mean more to do things like this together. As an added bonus, Amy has never been camping. Ever. With this in mind I have opted for the easy style of camping…..KOA. Yeah, the whole “Your camping cause your sleeping in a tent, but not really cause your 30 steps from the pool” camping. It will be a fun way to get out of the house and see a little bit of nature.

On the list of things to see are Shenandoah National Park, Luray Caverns, and Skyline drive. I will need to stop by the store tonight and buy some food stuffs for the trip. You know the usual, hot dogs, smores stuff, burgers, etc. When we come back either Amy will have loved it and want to go a lot more, or I will be posting a tent for sale! Wish me luck!

Wow, I just looked at the clock and realized that I had not posted anything yet! Shouldn’t be a really big post as not much happened this weekend. The general plan was to take things easy. I still wasn’t feeling well after the freaking head cold I caught. Amy also had a take home test she needed to work on for school. Friday was very much the usual, gaming until pretty late. Which of course means that Saturday morning was a late morning. I accidentally got sucked into playing WoW a lot longer than I had planned on Sat morning (afternoon?) So we really didn’t get going till like 1pm.

So the plan was to get some stuff for the truck. I have been needing a specific thing for the truck for a while now and finally decided to just go get it. First stop was going to be . Not really my first choice but easy because of location. They had a decent selection, but I thought I might be able to get a better price at Tweeter. When I got to Tweeter I set about looking for the guy I always dealt with there. I believe his name was Brian. He installed some other things in the truck and was the reason I came back. Instead I got stuck with this moronic salesman who didn’t really know what I wanted. He proceeded to tell me about a system I didn’t want and how I would have to pay extra for a functionality that I already had in the truck, but this new part would disable it so I’ll have to pay to have it turned back on. Needless to say, I walked out.

It got to be about time for lunch so we stopped at a new place called Pars. It’s a Persian restaurant on Lee Hwy. I thought it would be nice to try something different. I wish I had done more research about it though. It wasn’t that great. I ordered Kabobs and got an odd version of meatloaf. The dining area was nice, but I should have taken that we were the only people in there on a Saturday afternoon as a sign.

While our stomachs were busily working on digesting that lovely thing the Persians at Pars called lunch, we headed out to see Batman Begins. This was by far the best Batman movie mad to date. It was dark like Batman is supposed to be. It had just enough humor to lighten the situations, and it defiantly sparked a variety of emotions. Everything about the movie was entirely believable, the technology, the car, even the city. Nothing was so outlandish that you had to blame Hollywood for it. Just about the only thing I didn’t like was the event of Bruce’s parents dying. The original origin of Batman has him going to the movies with his parents. The movie they say was “The Mark of Zorro.” This draws the parallel between Zorro, a masked vigilante who cares for the people of his town, to Batman, a masked vigilante who fights crime for the people of his city. The movie plants the seeds that grow into what Batman is. Outside of that, the movie was Awesome. Go See it!

Sunday wasn’t all that exciting for me. Amy caught the cleaning bug and went about making the house immaculate. While I tried to clean, the chest infection kept me tired and winded (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.) One thing we did do was to Test out our new Tent for the upcoming camping trip. I’ll go into that more later on this week. Hope everyone had a good weekend!

It feels weird to be posting on a Thursday. I feel like I need to post because I didn’t post yesterday, but, it’s Thursday, so I normally just wait for Friday to post. Well, I figured that since it was an odd day for posting, I would post on an odd subject.

My living room has turned into my collector’s room. I really didn’t plan on this. When I moved into the apartment, I had originally planned to make the living room as normal as possible, and maybe have another room decorated with all of the Sci-Fi stuff. After about 4 months of bare walls, I thought “I can just put up the Pictures, that’s not too bad.” As you can guess, it just went all downhill from there. I really don’t mind having it all there, but it’s just growing and growing. Pretty soon, I am going to be that Guy with all the collectible stuff in his Living room. OH WAIT! Please keep in mind, I have a normal life. I am not completely obsessed with Star Wars. I like it, I enjoy collecting. But if I had a fire and it all burned down, I would not be committing Hari Kari.

Lets start with the entry way. As you enter the door, on the right hand side, is my computer desk. It’s usually very cluttered so I didn’t get a picture directly of it. Instead I took a shot above it where I have a variety of Light Sabers. You can see at the Top there is Darth Vaders Saber, and Lukes Saber. Below those are a Small blue saber that came with the Talking Yoda, and then a Custom built “Old Republic” Style saber. Down below those are two more custom built sabers, one has a wooden dowel built into it for filming purposes.

To the right of this wall is the window and above that are two more sabers. The Darth Maul, and the Mini Maul. You can see in the corner is another saber hilt. This one is my personal custom built saber. (And apparently a number of spider webs, I’ll have to clean those.)

On the wall dividing the Kitchen and the Living room I have a few Blasters mounted. The Top one is a Naboo blaster from EPI, the left is Han Solo’s Blaster, and the right is my Custom built Scout Blaster. The cane you can see is my custom built Emperor’s cane. And all of this is around the poster for Revelations. (Signed by Dawn, still waiting to get Shane’s sig.)

Off to the left of that wall is the book case. Nothing too remarkable about the books, but up on top there is even more stuff! Visable things include, The Enterprise D, Anakins Pod, a bottle of Romulan Ale (from Las Vegas) My Borg Cube Dice, a Bottle of Bawls in a TSN hugger, and of course, my cute and cuddly thing that should not be: Cuthulu. (Wearing my Cyclops Sunglasses)

Now it’s time to enter the living room. (Cue the dramatic music) Lets work our way around from left to right. Just in front of the Book Case is the Life sized Storm trooper stand up. You will notice that he is wearing my Boonie Hat and has my Ghetto Garrison Finger on his shoulder. Hanging above him is a TIE fighter of course.

This is the big Picture. There’s a lot going on here so I attached 4 different pictures together. Moving from left to right we have: a Celebration III Vader figure, a Special Silver clone trooper, my Boba Fett Unleashed, a Standard Stormtrooper, The Celebration III Epic Print, my Grandfathers rock, Sebastion (the cat gargoyle), my Spiderman Bust in front of a spider man print, A few candles, a standard Biker Scout figure, the Han Solo Unleashed, and to finish off the mantle, a Speeder bike, Com unit (remote control for a speeder bike) and incense. The other figures on the wall are another silver clone trooper, a Silver Sand Trooper and a Silver Darth Vader. All around my Ceramic Phantom of the Opera Mask. Down sitting on the drum would be my Furby style Yoda. (shhhh he’s sleeping). Finally, above the TV we have the Millennium Falcon, My Gentle Giant Biker Bust, the Remote controlled Speeder Bike with biker, a Clone Wars Clone trooper, The Birthday Present Biker Scout Statue, and then R2 down on the side. Behind the TV you see a Print of an Empire Strikes Back montage, This is one of 3 prints that I have Signed and Numbered by the artist James Cukr.

In the corner opposite from the TV we have an Episode I teaser poster with the X-wing hanging above it, then there is the Boba Fett Standup. A few non-star wars things over here include my Team User-friendly flag, and my Hard Rock Café lanyard. I have been collecting pins from the different Hard Rock Café’s that I visit. The cool thing about this corner is the light that I placed here. I set a lamp here to cast indirect light into the room, so it’s pointed right at the Poster. When it’s on, the poster makes it look like the lamp is casting the Vader shadow. It’s eerie.

Moving along the wall we have the second Cukr print “the Arrival of the Bounty Hunters” This is by far my most favorite of the three. There are two shelves here that just have an assortment of random stuff, I’ll let you figure out what’s there.

Almost done! Just above the DVD rack would be the third Cukr print “Sith Lords” This one came out right after Episode I so it only shows the three. Here we also have the Ralph McQuarrie portfolio for Empire Strikes Back (Given to me by Doc) Darth Vader’s TIE hangs overhead, and the Boba Fett head hanging here is actually a Cloud City Mini Playset. Sitting on top of the DVD rack would be Pictures of my Son and the Sword Case from Osan AB Korea.

I have an Open area Bar like place that looks into the Kitchen, above that I have placed all of my celebrity signed photos. I call it my Wall of Fame. All of the Sig’s I got myself, I hate the people that sell signitures on E-bay, it’s so Im-personal. Here we have, John Delancy (Q), Kate Mulgrew (Capt. Janeway), Tyler Mane (Sabertooth), Ethan Phillips (Neelix), Virgil (Pro Wrestler), Michonne Bourriague (Aura Sing), Adam Baldwin (Jayne), Jewel Staite (Kaylee), Nathan Fillion (Malcom Reynolds), and Brian Thompson (Lots of Stuff).

Finally, the last stop on the trip is just inside the door to my bedroom (but clearly visible from the front room.) This is a Pepsi Machine Medallion. It’s never been used in a machine. I am not going to Say where I got it. This is probably one of the most unique items in the Collection.

So there you have it. The tour of Steve’s Collectable living room. It’s crazy isn’t it! As soon as I get a house (or bigger apartment) I am going to have just one side room with all of this in it. Most likely the computer room. In the new place it will be a quest to create a normal looking Living room. Until then, I just don’t have the storage space to take all of this down. Feel free to leave comments on what you think, Or just shy away in terror. Whichever!

Ok, sorry about yesterday, I really wasn’t feeling well and my head was somewhere in La La Land. I think it’s along the lines of a simple head cold. I am a little congested, I have a small cough, and my nose is running the Marine Corp Marathon. Thankfully, no fever, and while I am a little tired, I am not as wiped as I was last time. Today I made it all the way to 11:30 before taking something. Well, anyways, lets move on to what happened this last weekend.

It was a very long drive down to Norfolk. We took 7100 to 123 to 95 to 295 to 64 (for those of you in the area you know the route) for some reason, all along 95 and 64 there was TONS of traffic! What was annoying about this is that there was no reason for it. I couldn’t see any Crashes, no pull overs, no stranded vehicles. So explain to me why everyone felt the need to all drive at 25 MPH the whole way? Even through the tunnel between Newport News and Norfolk, it was slow. The other side of the tunnel? Free and clear. /sigh

The nice break that we had was in Occoquan. It’s on the way down south so we decided to take a bit of a break there. It’s a very quaint little Riverside town. It was Very typical for an “Old Towne.” There were certainly more country shops then you could count, but the scenery was nice and it broke up the trip nicely. Occoquan isn’t actually very far from where I live now. I wonder how much a place down there would run me.

While visiting with the Doc meister, we got to visit the beach that is right across from his house. I took a look at the picture I posted last week and I guess you really can’t make out the words after it go resized. That really is an overhead of his house though. The beach was absolutely beautiful. The weather was warm but breezy. We took off the shoes and just took a long walk up and down the beach for a while. It was most relaxing, and I know that Amy and I both needed that.

Once we got back (r was it before, I forget) I got to see my Birthday present! Doc went all out, he got me the Kotobukiya Scout Trooper Statue! It’s amazing! The detail on it is phenomenal. I will defiantly see if I can get some pictures of it posted. I am sure that the one to the side here just doesn’t do it justice. I have placed it in a station of honor on the TV. It is next to my remote controlled biker scout and my Gentle Giant Biker Scout bust. Pictures will come soon, I have been meaning to take pictures of the Living room. But that’s a post for another time.

For dinner, Doc and Diz whipped up a down home country style supper with all the fixins! We had fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and corn on the cob! Needless to say, Amy felt right at home. After dinner, we retired to the deck where Doc assured us that the fireworks, which were being launched from the nearby Harbor fest, could be seen. We waited and I think we might have seen a subtle change of light in the sky behind all the trees, but no fireworks. This was when we thought another walk on the beach, this time, by moonlight, would be in order. There were a few people lighting off fireworks over the water so it was not a total loss. All of that and Amy got a romantic moonlight beach walk.

By now we were starting to get pretty tired. Especially since most of us were up till 2am the night before. (late night gaming on Friday night.) Doc had rented the movie “The Life Aquatic” so we sat down to wide up the night watching a movie. I am not really sure what to say as far as a review of this movie. The Life Aquatic is about a “Jacque Cousteau” type character that is past his prime. The movie is very Dry and very Blunt. It was good from an artistic point of view. It just, I don’t know. It’s so hard to explain. It was funny, it had moments that were very astonishing. But…… I guess you will just have to judge it for yourself.

On Sunday we had a lazy morning and then headed off to the Norfolk Harbor fest. There were a gaggle of boats and ships to see, but the main one that took our notice was the Kalmar Nyckel. It’s a ship that sails out of Delaware and is a recreation of the Original.

The original Kalmar Nyckel sailed from Sweden to the New World in 1638 leaving its passengers to establish the first permanent European settlement in the Delaware Valley, the Colony of New Sweden in present-day Wilmington, Delaware.

We got to tour the ship and see what some of the crew deal with. It was very interesting. I put a few pictures from the trip in the gallery.

Shortly after the Harbor fest, we decided to start the trek back home. Thankfully there was not near as much traffic on the way home. One of the games that Amy and I play while on road trips is Punch Bug. I am sure you have heard of it. If you see a Volkswagen Bug, you call it, and the color, and you get a punch on the other person. Our rules are:

• Classic Bugs are Double Punches
• Convertible Bugs are Double Punches
• Convertible Bugs with the Top down are Triple Punches.

So you can imagine if you saw a classic convertible with its top down, that’s a four punch bug! Well, a while back we weren’t seeing enough bugs to make this game all that interesting anymore. So out of the blue Amy reaches over and slaps me saying “Mustang Blue.” This spawned a whole new sub game. The rules are as follows:

• Any Mustang is a slap
• Convertibles are Doubles
• Top Down’s are Triples

This made for a very fun drive, both there and back. With traffic moving so slow on the way down, I had enough time to actually pay attention to the other side of the road and see all of the Bugs as they were coming. I was getting so many that Amy would actually get very excited when she saw one and hit a little harder each time. It’s all in good fun and no one really gets hurt, but by the time we were done with the trip, both of out legs were red from the slaps and she had an impressive bruise on her arm. (Don’t freak out too much, she bruises if you barely touch her arm). It was defiantly a fun time though.

I think I am going to wrap this one up here and continue some more tomorrow. See ya then!

You know, it’s actually pretty hard to find a good image for “My Head is swimming.” See, all of the images (ok well, most) that are in the blog are from Google Image Searches. I put in the thing I am writing about and then re-host it from my site. So if the topic is, say, my fever from the other day, I would do a Google image search for the word “Fever” and see what came up. But there aren’t really any good images for the term “my head is swimming” So I think I opted for something surreal. Meaning behind it being that, I am not feeling on top of my game today. I didn’t sleep well because of a scratchy throat. This morning I wasn’t feeling too great so I took some of the ever famous DayQuil. You can now imagine why my head is all whirly twirly. Thankfully, there are no weird animated children’s drawings in my head.

Wow, I have been working on this all day, and I just noticed that I only have 1 paragraph! Ok, Given that I have just taken my Second dose of DayQuil and I know that I am going to be Loopy again in about 10 min, I am going to officially say that the Weekend trip report will be done tomorrow. Highlights of which will be: Long trip down to Docs, Stopped at Old Towne Occoquan, Enjoyed the Beach, Doc’s Birthday Present to me, The Life Aquatic, Norfolk Harbor fest, and Punch Bug/Slap Mustang (You will have to wait till tomorrow to understand).

Yes, it’s time for yet another road trip! It seems like I am spending most of my weekends going somewhere other than here. Well, except for last weekend of course. This coming weekend we will be off to VA beach to visit with Doc and Diz. (I would link to their site but, oh, they don’t have one!) They live right on the beach so it will be nice with the weather getting so freaking Hot. Since they have stuff going on till around 2-3pm on Saturday, I figured we would just take a nice leisurely drive down to VA beach and maybe see some of the sights. *GASP* What’s this? Steve is leaving the house and venturing out into the Big Blue Room with poor Temperature control? Yup! It’s time to unplug and see the world! I have even been contemplating the Idea of going camping. You know, the whole tent, sleeping bag, fire, etc..

Last night I actually did something nice for Amy. One of her absolute favorite movies is one called Down to You. It stars Freddy Prince Jr. and Julia Stiles. Well, in a scene of the movie (actually the very end scene) Julia’s character, Imogen, comes home from work and opens the door to find a candle lit on a table. Next to the candle is a note that says “Go to the next candle”. Sure enough, there is another candle on a table a little father into the apartment. On the note with the second candle it says “Why are you walking around in the dark, turn on the light.” And of course when she turns on the light, there is Freddy’s character, Al. He starts mouthing the words to Barry Whites “Can’t get enough of your love.”

Well, I was originally supposed to go to the Nationals game with Paul, but he forgot about a date he had made a while ago, so we canceled the game. Amy, however, didn’t know that. She thought I wasn’t going to be home until around 11pm. So I went about my plan as soon as I got home. I had the notes almost identical to the movie versions. Knowing that I could not repeat the magic of the movies in my apartment (in the movie she turns on the light and the apartment is lit entirely with candles, who knew you can light candles by a switch!) I had the last note amended to read “open the door and turn on the light” and set the candle near the bedroom door. By the time she was off of her class, 9:45, I was in my suit and had my handy Screwdriver prop Mic handy. The song was cued, the candles were lit and I was in position.

When she walked in, I couldn’t see her face. (I was behind the close door) But as soon as she turned on the light and heard the song, I could swear she was about to cry. I played the roll almost exactly. We danced, and hugged, and she still looked like she was going to cry. It felt good to do something nice for her. And the really nice thing is that it took nothing to do it. I owned the song, I had the candles, and the notes were just some paper. So for the cost of a Match to light the candles, I put a smile on her face that will last her a lifetime.

Will be posting Monday with the trip report.

Is it even safe to say you have writers block if you’re not “officially” a writer? I mean, I write for a blog, it’s not like a book, or a media outlet really, but, in a way it is. I am posting out my thoughts and feelings on Life, the Universe, well, everything really. (Ok so that was cheesy) and there are people out in the world that read what I post. Some of those people know me, some don’t. So why wouldn’t that label me as a writer? So now that we have confirmed my officially being a writer, I think it’s safe to say that I officially have writers block. Seriously, I haven’t been able to think of anything to write about.

This last weekend was very plain. I gamed a lot, and Amy worked on her homework. Heck, we didn’t even do that much laundry. I did spend a little time working on some really great sounding drops for Awakened Radio. But Of course, since there is no real structure or communication, they won’t be used. (sigh.) Overall it was a very relaxing weekend, but to be honest, nothing really ground breaking happened.

Thus, is my dilemma. What do I write about when there is nothing to write about? Wow, I am starting to have a de’ja’vu. It almost feels like I have written about this subject before.

The first part of the week was basically the same as the weekend. Come home, Play around on the PC, Eat dinner and watch some TV, Play some more, go to sleep. The good news about this is that I am starting to see the benefit to not going out and spending money. I might actually have some spare funds. Of course, that’s all going into savings so that I will have money for when Andrew gets here. That’s coming soon, by the way. Come August time, my Son will be making the move to live with his dear old demented dad. It will be good for him and for me.

So, about the only exciting thing to come from this week is the new Patch for WoW, and me canceling my MXO account. The new patch includes the first of many battlegrounds. This is basically an instance that you go into to do PVP. The one that I got the chance to try was the Capture the Flag battleground. It was a lot of fun, and I got some great Honor Kills from it. Once I get a little higher in Level I will be able to try the other one.

And finally, yes, the Matrix Online account has been canceled. Good Riddance. It was probably the worst MMORPG I have ever played. The engine was terrible, and game play was a royal pain. I have ranted about it enough so I won’t go into more about the game. The Canceling of the account was just as Nightmarish though. I finally had to send in a Tech Support petition:

————————–Begin Transmission————————————
Customer (Steve Petrucelli) – 06/06/2005 09:59 AM
I have tried Multiple times to Call and cancel my account.

When I get the Option to Press 4 to Cancel, I get transferred to a Busy signal.

I do not have all day to sit and call back just to cancel my Account. Please cancel the account as of today June 6th 2004. You were able to activate the account in a matter of seconds over the web. It should be just as easy to cancel the account.

—————————–Response 1———————————-
Response (Doug) – 06/06/2005 11:19 AM
Hello Steve,

Thank you for contacting Technical Support! We have received your request and forwarded your petition to the appropriate department. You can expect to hear back from them shortly. If you have not received a reply within 48 hours please update this petition.

—————————–Response 2———————————-
Response (mxo.nun) – 06/06/2005 03:24 PM
Steve
We can cancel your account. However, we’d like to ask why you’re canceling so we can better improve the product for future users.
Thanks,
mxo.nun

—————————–Response to Response2———————————-
Customer (Steve Petrucelli) 06/06/2005 06:53 PM
The game did not live up to the hype, the game engine itself was clunky and too difficult to use, the combat system was boring and over-rated. The mission system was far too repetitive and thusly, boring. The idea of running along and getting “Sucked” into a locked combat over and over and over made getting anywhere a chore. The “Live” events proved to be a waste of time as I had never seen any of the events or the results because of the locations or the servers going down ever 30 min for “Maintenance”. Overall I think you might have had a good game with the storyline, but the actually game mechanics completely sucked.

—————————–Response 3———————————-
Response (mxo.nun) 06/07/2005 09:50 AM
Steve
We have set your account to pending cancelled. This means that you can still play the game, but at the end of your current subscription period, your account will become cancelled instead of renewing automatically. If you desire to reactivate the account in the future, please use the activate link in the master account status page. Thank you for your feedback. I would like to note that if you turn on Evade Combat and refresh it after it goes down, you’ll have a lot less problem with getting pulled randomly into interlock by the gangs. That used to annoy me too, until someone pointed out that I could avoid it with this ability.
mxo.nun

—————————–Response to Response3———————————-
Customer (Steve Petrucelli) 06/07/2005 10:12 AM
I appreciate the help, but I used the Evade combat multiple times. It’s when you just get out of combat with one guy and another pulls you in. when your jumped by 3-4 MOB’s and each one gets “their turn” as sucking you into combat, it gets old. Any other game I can just run away. Here I had to evade combat, and then when that fails, I have to exit combat, and then get sucked into another, then another, then dead. Doing that about 10 times per session isn’t fun. If you want a suggestion, make it so that when you Retreat from combat you can’t get sucked into any other combat for about 5-10 seconds. Would make retreating a little better and would stop the “Yo-Yo” effect of getting sucked into multiple combats.

—————————–Response 4———————————-
Response (mxo.nun) 06/07/2005 10:25 AM
Steve
Thanks for the suggestion. The developers are actually already working on changes to the interlock system like this, in order to make this issue you’ve described less frustrating. (You may have seen some of the threads on the boards where people are discussing the pros and cons of the proposed changes.
mxo.nun

——————————-End Transmission—————————-

So all of that, just to get an account canceled. Every other MMORPG has a “Cancel Account” button on their website.

Anyway, I am going to make it a point to post something on Friday. Look for more then