Giant Spring Update

I have been employed since mid-February at Browse Awhile Books in Tipp City, Ohio. School is still plodding along as usual. Smash Bros. got delayed again but came out a day before my birthday. Speaking of that, I turned 21 on March 10th, 2008. Yay booze!

Current gaming is some Team Fortress 2, and a new, fledgling mod for HL2 called “Ballmen,” which is a simple old-school deathmatch game with one major twist: The ability to change your gravity to any of the six “cardinal” directions in 3D space, which makes for some…interesting gameplay to say the least. Those who get dizzy easily may not like it. I’m currently working on a map for it to show my support. However, my gaming in general is lacking at the moment simply because of work and school taking up most of my time. It’s not too bad, but meh.

I don’t even touch my XBox360 or Wii these days. It’s a pity.

I won’t even try to say I’ll fix this blog up this time, but it’s not impossible.

Right?

First post (of the year)

Classes are set to begin in less than a week, same old bunch of stuff there it seems.

Current gaming is Team Fortress 2, Rock Band, and some good old NES Emulator action. Smash Bros. in a little over a month and a week, too.

Also, I have a damn good digital camera now, so maybe you can expect a picture every now and then in the coming year. Maybe.

The Specialists, my favorite HL1 mod, has finally died…it clung to life since the brief resurgence after TS3’s release, but alas, it is now gone. Vino’s next project looks promising though. Dunno what Morf is up to, though.

In other news, this post is over. Yeah.

Autumnal Ramblings

Unreal Tournament 3 nears, a decently buggy demo arrived a few days ago. Runs like butter on this rig. Can’t wait to get a hold of it and see what kinds of mods pop up.

Fall is here in full force, thank God. Temperatures above 85F can bite me.

Played my Wii for the first time in a while…some Wii Sports for the bowling, and Super Smash Bros. Melee for practice for when the next one is released December 3rd February 10th. At least wave-dashing and L-canceling and all those pr0 glitches and exploits are gone, from what I’ve heard. (Suck it, Swei.)

Forza Motorsport on the 360 is what Gran Turismo should have been. Spiffy custom Lancia Delta hatchback with insane acceleration and a quick paintjob included on the left. The paint editor is a decently robust stamp-and-1000-layers system, allowing for just about anything to be made. Plus I have been informed of a quick and dirty glitch to get free money in the game, which is always fun.

However, my copy of skate. for 360 is cracked…it froze a lot before now, so I think it was a small break it came with that broke further with the stresses of being in a high-speed DVD drive, spinning like a motherfuck. Microsoft says deal with it, GameStop wouldn’t take it back either, so I’m pretty much screwed. God damn bear calvary.

The Cusp of Fall

Well, the last week of what is officially summer is here, and going out with some decently high temperatures, as my area will be in the upper 80F range until next week. Seems fair seeing as we had a COLD weekend in the 60F area.

Fall classes have started again, and luckily they’re all at the Englewood campus barring one online (Law 101) class. Mucho convenience in both time and (gas) money.

In terms of my gaming, the only thing of mention is EA’s skate. A much more realistic and street-oriented approach to the sport than any of the Tony Hawk games. One notable feature is the ability to record footage and upload it to EA’s MySpace-like site for the game. A nice clip of some of my “skating” can be found here. Fun stuff, not to mention I got my character looking decently like me.

Someday, I will redo all the categories on this blog, to bring them in line with what normal tags exist within WordPress, but it’s one of those little things that either take a crapton of motivation or an extreme case of boredom.

August was a huge month for Maegworks. The site got 1/4th of its hits in that month alone. This month is shaping up to be merely average, though.

Now for sleep.

A thousand curious clicks

Today, Maegworks has reached 1,000 views, today’s views mainly being from a witty-ass comment I made on Slashdot regarding Ubuntu’s lolsome naming conventions.

In other news, Fall Semester starts soon.

Current gaming is still TS, Albatross18, and Trackmania: Nations. New to the list are Worms: Armageddon (which STILL gets updated regularly) and Europa Universalis III.

I also got a blue iPod shuffle from my girlfriend. She got it as a “gift” for enrolling at her college, but she already has one of the normal iPods. Cute, tiny little thing.

I also re-arranged my room so that I can actually reach my closet without being impaled upon something. The TV is in a much better space, and I also got a new(er) Sega Genesis to go with it!

Also, in the past 60 hours or so, the floor below me had all 3(!) layers of flooring (vinyl, wood, and tile, in that order) removed and replaced with better tile. This was all brought on when a backup and leak in our radiator seeped across the foundation, ending up in the hallway, warping the hidden wood flooring, and literally creating a bulging fault line in the tile. Also, during the removal, they essentially had to jackhammer it all out, coating the whole downstairs in a fine white powder and playing hell on out allergies.

Now, off to connect both my Wii and PS2 to my TV in here…connecting three of the four last generations in one big pile.

A Letter of Mine, Published in TIME

A few weeks ago, Time Magazine did an issue whose cover story was about the Democrats and Religion. Inside, they had poll data that showed that the biggest turnoff to voters was if a candidate was atheist. Deeply disturbed by this, I shot off a letter to the magazine expressing my thoughts on that fact.

“As a young atheist who was brought up in a Catholic household, I was appalled to see that being atheist was the worst possible position for a presidential candidate. Atheists are not soulless people without morals. One does not need to have faith in order to know right from wrong–it’s called common humanity. It seems the only reason our nation looks for faith within ourselves and in our leaders is that we unfortunately have faith in neither.”

I was rather shocked to find today that my letter was actually published, one of only nine in that issue. My original letter survived the editing process pretty much intact…in fact they clarified it just as I would have. After I sent it in I though I could have been much more clear and concise, but the editors did a damn good job getting my point across clearly. The only big change was the omission of an admittedly off-topic sentence that was a thinly veiled slam against religious people who divide, such as some of those crazy Fundamentalist/Evangelical Christians and Ann Coulter. To be honest, those sentences weren’t needed…but certainly not regretted.

Another half-assed, forced update

My current gaming habits consist mainly of The Specialists (see linklist) and TrackMania: United, the latter being a crazy racing game with a robust track editor and puzzle-based mode. Essentially it lets you live out unfinished/impossible Hot Wheels fantasies.

In terms of school, just more math as usual, and a decently hard and challenging C++ programming course. I love a challenge, though.

My girlfriend is the current guardian of my Wii. I’m waiting for the good games to come out, such as Super Mario Galaxy, Super Smash Bros.: Brawl, etc.

I also acquired the following free of charge through legal but less than honorable means:

• Microsoft Flight Simulator X (DVD-ROM)
• 5 XBox360 Wireless Controllers
• Some Microsoft Headset
• Project Gotham Racing 3 for XBox360

 Me and my girlfriend are getting Outback carryout tomorrow, which will be awesome. That is all.

Summer is here, but was here over a month ago…

Summer classes have begun, and I am taking two classes, one online.

No hours so far this summer for my job, probably gonna pick a bunch up later this summer and for sure in fall.

The Specialists 3.0 was finally released, and is my primary means of gaming at the moment. I even made a CTF (or in this case CTB) map for it called Spectre.

Our area is finally getting some good rain.

I snagged a $64 pair of pants on eBay for $8.55, though the thing seems to be stuck in transit.

Tiny paragraphs make blog entries look somewhat bigger, I suppose.

Late-Spring Uber-Update

Well, I figured I needed to update before it becomes a month without one. Here we go, though each category in no specific order:

• School: Classes going well, few weeks left in quarter.
• Work: Awesome. Good co-workers. Piece of cake.
• Wii Gaming: Still not done with Zelda, play Wii Sports about once a day for the Fitness test.
• XBox360 Gaming: I play Guitar Hero II maybe once a week. Just can’t justify the amount of time it takes.
• PC Gaming: The Specialists 3.0 RC testing (now at 10) is the only thing right now, really.
• Magic: Haven’t played since December 3rd, 2006.
• Music: Working on next album, only one or two songs complete so far

In other news:

• I ran over a Possum driving home from my girlfriend’s tonight. My first car-based kill.
• Baby oil is fun.
• This post lacks oomph.

Hopefully the next post will be within the next week. Hopefully.

Employment Quest IV

I have landed a job. Oddly enough, it’s the same one I went for in Employment Quest II. Funny how that works, eh?

Tech support-ish job, part-time, ftw.