Oh Dear God… Sorry folks!!!!, Cheating…, Mmmmm Work!

I ran across my old LiveJournal, and had this cool idea – import all my LiveJournal stuff to  my Multiply account, and eventually import my MySpace stuff too.  The LiveJournal dates back to 2002 when it started.  Between LiveJournal, MySpace, and Multiply, there’s about 6 years of my life online (though there’s a big void – I quit doing LiveJournal back in late 2003, and started MySpace in late 2006.)

Aparently there was a… quirk.  When I initally imported all my entries, they didn’t show up as new entries.  Cool.  However, I also wanted to perserve all the comments from LiveJournal, which doesn’t import, so I did a little work and put them in manually.  Which confused Multiply, and suddenly they were all new entries again (Oddly enough, if you check the dates, they are still OLD posts.  WTF?)  So, real sorry about that.

I’ve mentioned before saving the past – the stories of friends, parties, bad situations, fights, basically everything.  And since these blogs represent a whole lotta timespan, I thought it wise to keep em.

I read alot as I went along. I cried for parts of it.

Some of the Best Of:

“Carpe Dentum?”  –  Darlene joking about my tooth loss.  The blog begins around the time my teeth started rotting out.  (And yes, that was Sieze the Teeth)

The construction of the second Onager.

The fact that Erik used to actually be pretty chatty on there.

Me convincing Meredith to start posting (she still doesn’t post enough blog entries 😉

Building Midnight Ryder Technologies the first time around (until I got sidetracked with Gamer Zone, which basically brought it to a standstill.  In a lot of ways, this is now Midnight Ryder Technologies 2.0)

Someone always had my back on a bad day (Thanks Heather.  I’m sure I said it before, but, you were always a source of sanity.  OK, well, sometimes a source of Insanity too, but a source of sanity when I needed it 😉

Lance getting laid off from Creek Electric.

The Fall of the engineering department at Creek.

IndieGamesCon ’02

My first (and second) TV interview.

My odd habit of using Lyrics in my posts apparently started from the very beginning.

My habit of breaking down the posts into separated sections with titles was an evolution.  It started out that I lumped it all together.  Then I just started using dividing lines.  Then eventually I went to titles.

Talked a whole fucking lot.  Just like now.

And of course a ton more.  It was a huge nostalgia trip.

I want to do the same things with all my MySpace entries – basically get it all under one roof.  Might also pull out all my GG entries and throw ’em on here too (though that’s mostly business related – the development of Trajectory Zone, and three IGC’s.)

I have something else I’d love to do someday.  I wanna tell the story of Gamer Zone, from beginning to end (though some of it will be… sanitized and fictionalized to remove direct likeness of certain key customers.  But… I’d love to do it as a webcomic.  Which means it will never happen 🙂  (It’s a painfully slow process for me to do organic artwork like people.  It would cover two years of my life, but would probably take 20 years to draw 🙂

I might just break down and write the story as a “humorized” version of the tale.  

Oh, and there IS another blog out there of mine.  No one knows about that one yet though 🙂  Muhahahahahah!  (Ok, it’s business and tech.  Which means boring shit to most of the people on here.)

(BTW – in case anyone is interested, I now have 156 blog entries on here after adding all my LiveJournal stuff.  Huh.  Maybe I should bind it all up and call it a novel? 🙂

Last night a customer paid me a bit of money.  I’ve been down a bit lately over various things (which have been chronicled on here) and pissy about money.  Early next week the payments for a big ass project begin, and I things begin returning to…er, normal?  Bills are due, I owe people money, etc.

And here I am, all jazzed up, ready to start this new project.  But… no data yet.  It’s Friday, and I still don’t have any data.

So, I cheated a bit.  My bills, etc. were planned to come out of that next check.  The little check that I got was more than just enough to put gas in the car, but, not enough to pay off any bills.

FUCK IT.  I’m wound too tight, time to do something for me.  But… I’m a cheapskate, so I did it cheaply.  I bought my drums kit for Rock Band.  And since Rock Band 2 is out (which I don’t own and probably won’t for quite a while), Rock Band 1 drums are CHEAP 🙂  I paid $50 for drums that usually run $79.  Nice deal.

Ah, but the deal got better.  Lemmie tell the story… oh come on, you know I wouldn’t have mentioned this unless there was a story, right?

I set up the drum kit.  I’ve played it at Dion’s – he’s got a nice round chair for drumming, and his drum kit sets on carpet.  Well, cool – there’s a nice round chair here at the house!

OK, don’t try drumming in a rolling chair.  It can only lead to misery.  Eventually I got wise, and took the rollers off.  I was waiting for customer information – so I’d play about 3 songs, and check my email. Then go back to playing.  I started at about 10 AM.

After making my chair less movable, I discovered that my drumkit liked to walk across the floor on it’s own – Rock Band’s drumkit doesn’t have enough grip on the bottom.  That I couldn’t figure a good way to fix.

Good thing I didn’t fix it… because one of the drum pads quit working about 3 PM.  I called Game Stop… problem is, that’s the last Rock Band 1 drumkit they have (and they won’t be getting anymore in – it’s a closeout item, duh.)  So my choices were get a refund, or they could upgrade me to the Rock Band 2 drumkit.  You know, the $89 wireless one.  For free.

So, I’ve got a kick ass one now – Rock Band 2’s drumkit really is better.  Lot’s better.  And it’s got enough grip that it doesn’t walk across the floor.

One thumb and 8 fingers have at least ONE blister on them each (most have two.), both arms hurt, one hand feels bruised, and my right knee feels like it has a knife under it.  I stopped playing when Doc got home… at 8:45 PM.  I played 10 hours or so today (actually, less than that – I had a support call with Kenosha, talked to Meredith for a while, talked to Brandon, Dad, checked email off and on waiting for data, etc.)

This is gonna sound stupid but… amazing how much better I feel after having spend $50, playing that stupid game, and not worrying or dwelling on anything.  Just viciously pounding on a set of drums all day.  Ahhhhhh… 

However, I’m gonna feel a hell of a lot better getting that real payday going.  This small check was basically a nice side thing – the real meal is still coming.  Then I can pay bills, etc., and well… feel the world is right again (or at least more right than it is.)

Doc has mentioned wanting to learn to play Rock Band before – he’s eyeballed the guitar and mentioned it, but, hasn’t set down and messed with it.  However, when I got up from the drum kit, he sat down and started messing with it, and found the tutorials and went through ’em real quick.  So I think I’m not gonna be the only one playing with it – good thing you can play one person on the guitar and one person on the drums 🙂

One thing to note… I’m pretty much done with the guitar section, but haven’t finished it.  The last three songs are good songs, but, they piss me off in one respect – Guitar solos.  Pplayed at that speed, guitar solos aren’t a precise art.  Listen to a CD -vs- live performance.  Rippin’ guitar solos are rarely EXACTLY the same twice.  But they’re expecting you to play it exact.  Fuck it – not gonna happen.  I’ve beaten two out of five “Impossible” songs on Expert now.  Good enough for me to call it good.  I’m a skin beater now 🙂

So I’m booked on one project until the end of October, then the second week in November I’m headed to lovely Kenosha, WI again.  And of course I’ve got some extra work crammed in the middle of everything else.  

Good!  I’m likin’ this!  Hopefully the trend keeps up!