2009

I went to the Nets game last night with my brother, sister in law and nephew. I will hopefully have pictures up sometime soon, but right now I don’t feel like hooking up my phone or the camera to the computer. The game sucked, Nets once Nets got down in the first quarter, it didn’t get any better. The seats we were in were amazing, and because of the seats and who owned them, we got special treatment and free food. We got to go under the bleachers to where the Nets Dancers locker room was and eat at a free buffet. Nothing beats free food and beer.

Before we got to the game I was playing my brother’s 360. Now I have played Call of Duty and Call of Duty 2 before, and didn’t really like them. Call of Duty: World at War, was really different from those games and I can see how people like it and Call of Duty 4. I can’t afford to pick up any game right now, I can’t even afford to pay the Xbox Live bill, but when I have some extra cash I may pick up a Call of Duty game, even if I have to wait until November for Modern Warfare 2. I just hope they have the zombies game play with it.

XBox Live Arcade has tons of great games that you can download and play. No games peak my interest more than the ones that are remakes of games I loved as a kid. Here are some of the great games of yesteryear that I would love to see on the Xbox Live Arcade at some point in time.

Sonic and Knuckles- Sega Genesis’s sequel to Sonic the Hedgehog 3 that enabled lock on technology so that Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles could be played as one long game. Together, the two games created one of the best Sonic game for the system.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time- The sequel to the TMNT arcade game that was later ported to the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. We already have the original arcade game, why not the sequel?

X-Men Arcade Game- Six players simultaneously playing on a dual CRT ultra wide cabinet that was usually filled with players and spectators. It was hard to ever get close to the cabinet to watch the game, let alone play it.

Simpsons Arcade Game- Another game that was hard to get near in the 80’s and early 90’s. The game played much like the Ninja Turtles games, but two players had special abilities if the characters and situations were right.

Toejam and Earl- I’m not sure how popular this game was, but I remember playing it with my brother on the Sega Genesis. It was one of those games that just seemed stupid if you were playing it alone, but when playing with someone else, the split screen technology and open world was a crazy amount of fun for both. Just try and avoid the sequels.

Willy Beamish- This game puts you in the life of a nine year old whose just starting summer vacation. You have to solve puzzles and not annoy adults, otherwise they will ship you off to military school.

Sam and Max Hit the Road- With Sam and Max Season 1 coming to XBLA, it just seems like that Sam and Max Hit the Road would be the obvious predecessor.

What games would you like to see on the XBox Live Arcade?

One of my many, many goals in life is to attend the biggest electronics show in America, at least what used to be the biggest and what appears to be returning to its former glory. I am of course talking about none other than E3. What is E3? It stands for the Electronics Entertainment Expo and it showcases the latest upcoming video games, gadgets, and hardware. Whenever Nintendo or Sony have something big to announce, they usually do it at E3. Microsoft announced Halo 3 at E3 a few years ago. E3 is where I want to be.

Why am I not going? Well it isn’t open to the public. Those who are fortunate enough to go, are hand picked.Lindsay received her registration card in the mail (she went a few years back). Tim also received an invitation to attend. I think I may try and make this blog more technology based, or maybe add more of a technology aspect to the site in some way, this way it might peak some more interest, though that has been on my to do list for a while now. I guess only time will tell what happens huh?

We found out yesterday that the bump that they removed from Bella’s stomach wasn’t a cyst, but was in fact cancer. The vet says he thinks he got it all, but we have to keep an eye on her and see if she gets anymore growths and take her for regular visits. I guess all we can do is work to be able to afford it and watch and wait. I hate the feeling of being helpless though.

Krissy and I headed out to dinner last night, seeing as how we hadn’t been out in a while and it was St. Patrick’s Day. We went to Friendly’s, not someplace I could get a beer, but it was still nice all the same. Maybe this weekend we can go out to someplace with a bar or something, I just want to get my drink on, though I might need to get it on while watching Lost tonight.

I brought Bella home after the surgery yesterday around 4PM. She is in a lot of pain and has a bandage around her stomach. She is supposed to have limited activity, but when I try and pick her up she cries out in pain, no matter which way I do it, so when I bring her out to pee I walk slowly down the stairs with her. I need to bring her to the vet again today to have them look at her wound, so getting her in the car might be tricky. I was thinking about trying to get her in a laundry basket and using that to carry her. Yea, I am that desperate.

Bella is having surgery on Thursday to get a lump removed from her stomach. The surgery is less money than we expected it to be, but it is still expensive so we are both working our asses off to try and get as much as we can before Friday. In theory we have enough money to cover it, but we’d also like to be able to survive without giving away all of our money.

Needless to say any non necessary purchase is put on hold until further notice, so that means no Halo Wars or Resident Evil 5 for a while. Hopefully I will have at least one, if not both before the Ghostbusters game comes out in June. The surgery has also put off a RAM upgrade , and a possible Wacom tablet purchase.

I think it would be best if I had a pen to go over the lines, as a mouse is very limiting. Anyway, this is the beginning, it may very be where I stop and not do this anymore until I buy a tablet. Who knows when that will be though?

So here is my Superman sketch. Over the next few days (or whenever I have time) I am going to be posting updates to it and making it more digitally enhanced. Don’t be surprised though if you see some sketches in between me actually updating this sketch.

Our friend Lucy died last week. I haven’t really felt right since, tonight I think I am feeling a bit better, after I got some information that makes some things make sense. I only knew her for a few months, but she was cool. We’re all going to miss her.

Other than that, I have been trying to get my mind off of things. My Xbox has stopped working however. It isn’t anything serious, just that I can’t connect it to the internet. It sucks, especially if I want to pick up Halo Wars next week, since any RTS is funner when you are playing against other people. Games that are meant to be played with others, like Left4Dead, Halo Wars, Resident Evil 5 are lacking when you play them alone.

On the work front, MyJokeCafe has more than 30,000 members. We grow more and more everyday and with the addition of Comment Cafe, you can now have your own comments to put on other people’s pages. The testing server for the sites, however, isn’t as powerful as the live server, so putting the 30,000 members along with all their information into a database on that server was a bad idea. I just hope I can sort through it in the next day.

I guess that’s it. This weekend, I don’t know what is going on, but I do have some stuff to do for work once everything on the testing server is sorted out. Things with my site, are paused. I have had the Spiderman 3 synopsis typed and done, just adding pictures, but I haven’t gotten around to getting all the ones I need. After that though, some big changes might be coming. Stay tuned, it will only get better.

I managed to sit down and play the Halo Wars demo over the weekend. Originally I had low expectations for this game, Ensemble has made some addicting games over the years, namely the Age of Empires Series, but never did I thought a Real Time Strategy game would work on a console, let alone a Halo RTS. I was wrong though. The game works, the controls are built for a controller and not for mouse and keyboard that are ported over to a controller. It also gives insight to the Halo series for those who didn’t read the books.

I know that this was the last game Ensemble was working on, and Halo 3:ODST is the last Halo project Bungie is working on, but I am still hoping that a new Halo project is announced after the latter. I love the Halo series, especially the Master Chief and Arbiter storylines, so maybe they will continue once ODST is out.

The new layout is up. I believe is is much cleaner, even if it isn’t much of a big change. I have added a Twitter section so I can update on the go with what I am doing and whatnot. I added the updates to the sidebar for the time being, until I can get more content for the homepage.

We have our first ever Guy of the Moment, so I would like to congratulate Jonathan on being the first. I hope he is proud, he had gotten almost double the votes of second place, so that is something to be really proud of. I didn’t have much participation getting guys to sign up, but the voting really took off, so I might do it again in the future.

I have been busy lately. First, the Guy of the Moment Contest is open for voting. It has gotten almost as many votes with three guys in the first few days than the Girl of the Moment contest did in its entirety. I am really excited about this, maybe I will do a contest every month, alternating between guys and girls. What do you think?

The second thing I am really excited about is the return of the official Lep’s Lair Proxy! This was huge before I had to take it down, so I hope that it will be big again. If you need a proxy, or just want to browse the web anonymously then go use it.