2009

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.

I have been a fan of the Resident Evil series since I first borrowed Resident Evil from my friend Brett for the original Playstation. Over ten years later the game still freaks me out. This time is different, this time you have a partner with you and you aren’t alone. Also they aren’t zombies anymore, they are tougher creatures, much like you fought in Resident Evil 4, but if they try and kill me in a Resident Evil game I will refer to them as zombies now and up to Resident Evil 10, if they make it. I am not sure if I will be picking this game up when it comes out, since it will be out ten days after Halo Wars, but it will definitely be a game I will be picking up at some point.

I have been working on a lot of projects lately. Things for new clients, things for old clients, and a lot of things for Lep’s Lair recently. Guy of the Moment is going very slowly, I have a couple guys that have signed up, but that’s it. I don’t think the response for the initial entries will be as great as it was for Girl of the Moment.

I am still working on the things I’d hope to someday do, mainly I am thinking of different things and put them in a database. I will eventually create a page on the backend for it, but right now it is fine putting it right in the database via PHPMyAdmin. I am hoping to come up with a few more, I have around sixty right now. When I get to at least seventy five (or by Friday) I will start working on the page for it to be displayed on.

I am working on something else, but I think that I will need to modify the layout for it, which is fine because a two column layout is getting dull, I might need to change it to a three column one soon. I don’t know when that would happen though, I have to really think about how I want to invest in this new idea and how to fully make it come to my advantage.

In personal news, I am absolutely obsessed with Heroes. I have watched all of season one on DVD and have seen the first three episodes of season two. I can’t believe I have missed out on such a great show for so long. I will be watching a lot more television lately it seems, Sarah Connor Chronicles are moving to Fridays, which rounds off the week of television that includes The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, Fringe, Smallville, Lost, and the Office. Hopefully this season of Lost will blow me out of the water like last year’s did.