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It seems as though everytime I try and pack, I get distracted. Everytime I put something in a box and seal it, I wind up openning the box because I packed something I wanted. I suppose I am being childish, but I packed up my DVD’s and I opened the box so I could watch Hackers. When moving day rolls around I’m going to have all these open boxes that I am going to be hurrying to close up. As for the distractions, video games, my girlfriend and my website have been distracting me.

I had a great time with my girlfriend, Kelly dispite feeling sick. We went to dinner, and spent most of the day in each others arms, which is always nice when you aren’t feeling well, I just hope I don’t get her sick.

The other distraction, you may have noticed. The menu now has a more visually appealing factor, and the Halo 2 stats are back with a new layout for the front page in the About Me section. I also fixed some problems with my chatroom. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have video games that won’t play themselves.

This past week I’ve been talking to my friend Noah whom I haven’t seen in years. It is so strange when we depart from people and not see them in years. I mean when I last spoke to him he was 15 and in Plainsboro, NJ, but now he’s 19 and in Montreal, Canada. It’s strange to see how the tides of time change some people. If we weren’t around to see the changes that we ourselves make everyday and came back years later, we too wouldn’t recognize ourselves. I read a book where a girl went in a coma and woke up four years later and didn’t recognize herself, and had to get used to the changes that went on while she wasn’t there to witness them. It’s scarey to think of what could happen in four years or even one year, or even six months to those you love.

I have a lot of stuff I wrote from back then, personal stuff not appropriate for the web, andI can see that I have changed. I don’t remember changing, I don’t making a decision to be different, it just happened. I guess that’s the thing they call growing up huh? To change so much that your former self would be proud of the man you have become. I suppose sometimes it is good that you don’t consciously change because then maybe you wouldn’t want to do it and you would fight the change. Whatever the reason we grow and change, just try and change into the person you always wanted to. I guess that’s where we get the idea to change, to know what we want to become so we change into that person.

So there are four yes count them four new pages in the Spiderman section. These four pages basically retell the story of Spiderman up until this point, and when the new movie comes out, it will be updated to reflect it. Along with the story I have provided screen shots of some of the pivotal points in the movie.

As for the house, the people decided to buy it so we think closing will be sometime around Thanksgiving. It will suck moving so close to the holidays, but it should be okay, I suppose. I plan to go to college in the spring, and I need to make sure I can make all my credits transfer.

Other than that, nothing new has been going on. I have some problems with my Halo 2 Stats section, but I am working on it. I also am working on getting better horoscopes from Astrology.

I’m 21 years old. I have had a Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, Playstation 1 and 2, and an X-Box. Plus I frequently play games on my PC. Back when I started playing video games, the games were really mild, nothing to give a second thought about, everything was mainly running and jumping, nothing that would cause any concern. Then in 1989 a video game called “Pussy City Pimps” came out, and it still wasn’t anything people made a fuss about. Even though the characters in the game walked around with their genitals hanging out, the game didn’t cause much of an uprise because it wasn’t that well known. Sixteen years later, video games with adult themes have been driven into the spotlight. Recently games like the Sims 2 and Grant Theft Auto: San Andreas have been in the news for mods that showed the characters simulating sex. Many groups are saying that these video games shouldn’t be allowed to be sold in the USA, saying they promote violence and turn people into killing and sexual machines.

One group even called the Grand Theft Auto series a training camp for cop killers. Now I’ll agree with them up to a point that they shouldn’t be sold to kids, and maybe they need to take the same precautions they take with porn, but it is my constitutional right to play violent video games. I mean I have been playing video games since I can remember. Back in 1996 I got the Playstation and along with it Resident Evil and Grand Theft Auto. I played them for hours at time, did it make me want to go out and kill cops, and shoot people in the head with a shotgun? No. I will admit that I wasn’t raised in the most stable environment, but that would put me at risk to be affected by these games right? I wasn’t. Now if I wasn’t affected by these games at 12 then what adult in their right mind would be affected at all?

A lot of people say that adults could be affected by these video games, but if adults are that feeble minded, why not disallow violent literature? Sure some adults are, just look at those who followed Manson, but do we really need to be babysat, by other impressionable adults. Now I say impressionable adults because the majority of the people saying this malarchy are from religious organizations. Now I have my own beliefs, and have experiences to back them up, but what about the adults who only read one book of faith, and base their entire belief structure around that and don’t even pick up any other book that might open their eyes a little bit more and see that all the religions have the same basis.

I’ve always wondered what would happen if you gave one of these impressionable adults a copy of Mein Kemf and told them to read it. I wonder if these people would be going out hating Jewish people because of World War I. If you believe that people are this impressionable, that they need to stop the sale of video games, because people will die, maybe it is because you are that impressionable. Maybe if you are one of these people who say video game violence will make you want to kill someone because everyone is so impressionable, maybe it is just the fact that you are so impressionable. I mean a video game being the cause of a school shooting and then the media blaming video games, without looking at other forms of violent media could be to blame, but because you are so impressionable you hear one thing about video games being evil and you are right on the bandwagon to bring them down. Forget the fact that the news has more violence on it everyday than one video game does.

I mean Canada has the same video games there that we do here, people are more likely to own guns there too, but they don’t have anywhere near the amount of school violence, or any kind of violence that we do here. I mean could it be that way because in Canada the news doesn’t constantly fill the screen with stories of death and horror, like here in America?

I am now going to bed, so that I can wake up tomorrow (later today) and blow up wraths, warthogs, ghosts and my fellow man. We live in America, the home of the free, the land where Church and state are seperate, and the land where our fantasies of blowing stuff up and killing our fellow man are met on game consoles. God Bless America, God Bless Video Games.

So the people the buying the house decided they wanted all these things done to it, things that if they were done it would bring up the value of the house 40 thousand dollars. The verdict is still out on if they are going to buy it or not, which is very annoying seeing as how my mother is pending on getting approved for the place down in Delaware, but on the up side, I was approved to live there.

So Kelly was having even more problems with her computer and came over the other day. It was nice haha. I helped her as much as I could with her computer, then we went to Outback. It was a good day.

I am still trying to get this layout into css style, and away from the tables. I am almost there, I believe.

I’m at work right now, like I am every Thursday at this time, and there should have been a realtor appraising the house. He is supposed to be one of the best in New Jersey, so hopefully he will sell our house quickly, before my mother loses it to the bank.

Work goes by so slow since we can’t go on AIM or anything, but I did get some new layout ideas, which I hope to be up soon. It isn’t anything to be impressed with, but I don’t want to post it without making the graphics for it first. Then after the layout is up I can get back to making content and advertising the site. Maybe by the end of the weekend.

My poor girlfriend Kelly lost her webspace, her laptop power plug went, and she lost her wallet in the same week. Sad I feel so bad for her Sad

Ever notice how online we cannot be bothered to type out whole words on the internet? U instead of you, im instead of I’m, are we really that busy that we can’t type out the entire word? I’m guilty of this oh so common way of typing. What makes me actually think about it, is the fact that when I write a paper or a blog, it doesn’t even register to take shortcuts and use shorter versions of the words. Why is it that on the internet talking to our friends, that they deserve anything other than our utmost respect. I guess it is because saying sup is really how we talk when we’re face to face with them. If a professor IMed you online would you talk to them with such casualty?

Recently another form of typing hit the web, 1337, or leet. This is using numbers and other characters as letters. People actually type whole conversations this way. An example would be: |-|3110 |-|0\/\/ 4|23 |_| 2o|4`/. Reading this actually hurts my head, trying to convert it to english, and people use their own forms of typing to come up with their own language, so one leet speak isn’t exactly the same as another leet speak. Why do people feel the need to make up their own alphabet? It started when handles were taken and people had to come up with unique ways of getting the name they wanted, but now they type it as if it was english.

Writing in leet doesn’t make you seem smarter, actually it makes you seem like you have a lot of time on your hands, and if you have that much time, then type out every word you would normally abbreviate in some form. Of course maybe typing with the abbreviated forms of words, or in leet talk is showing that the internet isn’t formal and that what we write online in an email or an IM or even a blog should be considered freedom of speech and not be looked at any other way. Anything that it written online is the soul work of the author and it is their views of the world, and writing like that is how they express themselves, and therefore should not be criticized on how they type, or what they write.

So the cable guy came and installed the new Optimum Voice service. It turns out that the line was shot so he had to drill a new one, so to prevent packet loss. With the new service, we get digital cable, which I need to pick up the cable boxes tomorrow. I am actually caught up in my classes so this weekend will be spent doing some work around the house, watching the digital cable, and spending time with my girl.

My birthday went alright, it was the first one without my grandmother which was tough, but it was okay all the same. My mom actually got me a six pack and a cake, while my father seemed to forgot, and didnt even call me at all, but that’s how it usually is.

So onto better news: video games!

In the coming weeks there will be a lot of video games coming out, that I want. Ultimate Spiderman, X-Men Legends 2: Rise of Apocolypse, Age of Empires 3, plus the XBox 360, but I doubt I’ll be getting that anytime soon. The only reason I even bought the original XBox is because of Halo 2, and I only like the online play of that, the campaign mode is lacking.

So it is my birthday as of 12:02 AM I was officially 21. My life is okay at this point. My grandmother has moved on to a better place, I have a good girlfriend, and I am content with school. I may move to Delaware in the coming months, but I don’t know if that is so bad. I can still go to New Jersey and use my father’s address as the mailing address, that is only if I wanted to go to a college in New Jersey. I am not sure yet of where I will end up.

So being 21 doesn’t feel much different than being 20, only now I can go drink and not lie about my age. I was going to go get some beer at midnight, but instead I played X-Men Legends. I started playing that last year, before I got XBOX, but never finished. I didn’t remember the story, so I restarted the game. I want to get X-Men Legends 2: Rise of Apocolypse, only because you can play as Magneto. I love a lot of comic book heroes, the X-Men movies were kind of not up to par, although the second one was a lot better than the first. I hope the third one is pretty good. With the rumors that Omega Red and Pheonix will be in it, it sounds pretty good.

Superman is looking like it might be promising, although with the current television series, I don’t know how big it is going to be. The Superman movies with Christopher Reeve were alright, but the overuse of powers in the second one kind of took away from it, though the second was better than the first. Maybe it will bring a good video game, like Spiderman 2 did.

So I am going back to working on the layout, which I don’t know when I will get done.

So I’m at work again with nothing to do and just sitting here bored out of my mind I figured I would try my hands at my new layout. I get the Gimp and I realize that compared to Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, this thing is crap. Okay it isn’t really crap considering it is free, but it needs more features. So I started making things in MS Paint and porting them over to Gimp and it just isn’t the same as Photoshop. Oh home computer how I miss thee. I think I am going to need to install Photoshop on my laptop and bring it to school. It’s weird I bought my laptop for school and have yet to bring it. Probably due to the fact that I need to install .NET for Visual Basic and C++, and it won’t install on my laptop. I need to get that working. By Monday I must have it done.

So I will hopefully be going to Ramapo to see Kelly this weekend, but I don’t know yet due to the fact that my mother wants me to do some work this weekend and stuff. Maybe I’ll sneak up there Tuesday morning if I can’t go there this weekend.

My birthday is this week. Twenty-one years old, old enough to drink, old enough to get drunk…legally. LOL. Smile

So it is my first day back to work, apparently there are new rules due to the fact that a few people didn’t do much work in the summer. So the new rules include no instant messaging, no games, no excessive talking to other student helpers, no trying to date people in the lab. I think the only rules that are going to be hard is the no instant messaging and no games because it gets so boring here at times. Plus I am trying to work on the new layout, and Gimp and Gimpshop don’t even stand up to Photoshop, or Paint Shop Pro.

My mom is home right now shampooing carpets and this weekend she said she’s giving me spackle and paint and that I need to get the walls in shape. She’s really trying hard to move quick, now that she doesn’t have my grandmother’s extra income. The fact remains that depending on when she moves, I may not be able to go until I am done with the semester, which means I might need to stay at my father’s house until then. What fun. If my mom wants to sell the house, that means I will need to clean my room. Now I can have a clean room no problem (maybe). Since I moved in, I haven’t put anything away and all my stuff is on the floor, so I will need to put that stuff away before she gets it on the market. To earn some extra money, I may be selling a 800MHZ Linux PC on Yahoo! Auctions, once I get it together and such. If that sells rather quickly, then I may sell a custom Mac, I know Mac’s can’t be customized, but I am working on adding a second harddrive, and formatting them both with a fresh install of the OS.

So it has been a few days since the actual funeral and I seem to be somewhat alright. I think I knew somehow that the end was near and I had to get ready for it and now I must griev in my own way.

I have a class tomorrow, which is my first Unix course which I haven’t even opened the book yet, that’s what class is for. I bought the laptop so I could do my work elsewhere, but for some reason .NET will not install, I need to look deep into that, but I just haven’t had much time. So this week I will be trying to catch up with classes, work, and getting the site updated a bit. I’m thinking of a new design coming soon. I think that I could make something somewhat better looking, with more space for the forum and words and not so much space for the blog. Also I am planning on taking all the 2004 postings and putting them on a archioves page at the end of the year, but that is still months away. So just to let everyone know I’m fine and now stressing and grieving in my own ways.