2011

So we came down to Delaware for a vacation/change of scenery. So far it’s been good. The things that I didn’t really like down here are gone and I am really beginning to see the potential of what it could do for us. We’ve even started to look for a house down here, though right now they are a little out of our price range, but if business picks up for both of us then maybe something can work out. Right now there are two different houses, practically right across the street from each other, that we both like and dislike for various reasons, but who knows if they will be on the market when we start actually looking for a place to live.

I’ve still been working a lot, but I’ve had enough downtime lately to start really thinking about some new ventures and new ways of bringing in business, so it’s really going to be interesting if I can start or follow through with them. I’ve been on Facebook a lot under the Lep’s Lair account. I’ve changed the profile picture to the Girls of the Moment and the Fanlisting girls. Let me tell you that there are some perverts out there. It’s sickening what they’ve said and I am pretty sure that I could have some of them arrested for it. I do think for the most part my marketing on Facebook is working though. I have a LepsLair group, Add me page, LepsLair page and a Subscribe to Me page all linking to the site. My Analytics are up and I see a lot of traffic coming from Facebook, I just need to figure out how to capitalize on it more than I already am. I think I am going to add more people to my group then head to bed.

On this day ten years ago, a tragedy happened that brought America closer as a nation and reminded us that there is evil in the world that we must stop. Ten years later we still fight this evil and and we as a nation overcome everything that is thrown at us. Whether it be terrorist attack, debt problem, problems with our government, problems with another government, anything, as a nation we come together and fight. We’ve fought for over 200 years and ten years ago we were reminded that we can’t be too comfortable because there is always another fight to win. We must never forget, we must never give up, we will overcome this and any evil that comes our way. May God, Allah, Yahweh, Zeus, or anyone that you choose to worship worship, Bless America.

It’s been a while since I last wrote, honestly I think the only reason I am writing now is because I am sitting on the train to Manhattan. These last few months have been good, though uneventful. Besides work and Black Ops there’s not much going on.

As I watch the news lately, I see that my opinions have been wrong in the past. The state that this country is in is ridiculous. Both parties just seem like they want to help America, which I believe they do, but I think that the way they are going about it is all wrong. We can easily get more money for the programs we need with some simple common sense modifications, like drug testing for welfare, not providing any support for people who enter this country and stay here illegally, legalizing marijuana, and a lot of other things. For some reason our politicians can’t see these simple things that can be done. Maybe when you have that much power you have to see things as black and white.  Obama promised change, he has been able to deliver on some, I guess it was too much to hope for so. Much from someone who falls in the category of our two political parties, we still need change, but its change from the current system.

Things have been pretty crazy the last few weeks which is why I haven’t had time to update. First, as most of you know, Krissy quit her soul crushing job and is now back to working for herself as a designer. Since she did that though we’ve both had an enormous amount of work coming in. So much so that I haven’t even looked at my site, or even did a wrap up of E3.

My high school was called Collier. It was founded by a convent of nuns known as the Sisters of the Good Shepherd. It was originally founded as a home and school for wayward girls, but eventually stopped being a home and opened up the school for both genders. I wrote the following on a post on one of my school’s Facebook groups and thought I would share it here, since a lot of people get the feeling that I am against all religion.

When I went to Collier, there was a lot of gay and bisexual students. There were students who got kicked out of school for fighting and drugs. I went to Catholic school for a number of years and they would basically just say if you do this your going to suffer eternal damnation. Looking on the news you see people saying that the end of the world is this date or that one, the Westboro Baptist Church pickets anything they can with signs that say “God Hates Fags”, Catholicism is looked down on in recent years due to the abuse scandels. Even individuals who believe they are good Christians and Catholics say that if you do these things you are going to Hell.

I don’t know what the above would say about Collier, I know that before I went to Collier I had shrugged off religion as a hateful practice, then a few weeks into being there September 11th happened and the news kept reiterating that it was done by religious extremists it made my distaste for religion even more.

Over the next few years at Collier, hearing, researching, and understanding how Collier came to be and seeing the religious statues on the campus, plus the fact that these nuns, administrators, and everyone who worked there really wanted you to be yourself. Even if that meant being gay, bi, straight, whatever, no one ever passed judgement onto you for being who you were, and while Collier isn’t technically a religious school, as I said you have the statues and the convent right there, plus a nun is praying for you during your time at Collier, it does have the potential to go the way that most other religions and religious people go, but it doesn’t. It accepts you and it helps you find yourself and be a better person, without judgement, or anything.

While most probably look at Collier and not think anything religion being associated with it, the fact is that it was founded by nuns so when I think about religion and how I see it as a huge problem and tearing this country and world apart, I also think about Collier and how if it wasn’t for religion how many of us wouldn’t be where we are, wouldn’t have graduated.

I wish more of the religious people of the world would stop judging others for their actions and put their energies to good use, like the Sisters of the Good Shepherd did with Collier.

It would seem I disappeared hasn’t it? Well I haven’t. I have been working behind the scenes on new features and more. I have also been doing some much needed cleanup and SEO models. I’ve also been working and getting everything prepared. Since Krissy has decided to leave her job and get back into the web design business, we have been coming up with ways to help us both gain more clients and whatnot. I’ve also been scouting for talent in other areas of life. So while it may seem that I haven’t been around, I have been, I just haven’t been vocal about it. Stay tuned.

We are a couple of weeks away from E3 and it looks like most of the biggest news that would come out of E3 is already being released. Assassin’s Creed Revelations was revealed today and Nintendo’s new console was revealed a few weeks ago. I figured I would post my predictions for E3 this year as I have done in the past.

Kinect Games for core gamers, this is something that has to come to fruition if Microsoft wants Kinect to be taken seriously by core gamers. I expect that in some way they will be mixing the controller (or a new controller) with Kinect.

While Microsoft hasn’t released a new Halo game the same year as Gears of War, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t going to be shown at E3. There are rumors that a Halo remake is in the works, but also rumblings of a Halo 4. Either way it is safe to assume that 343 Studios is working on something to do with Halo.

Updates have been a part of their console since day 1. Your console OS doesn’t even resemble what it did when the Xbox360 first debuted, so it’s feasible to think that their maybe another big update to the software of the system. Perhaps something like the Playstation Home?

Nintendo just launched a console and they have already confirmed the successor to the Wii, so it’s safe to assume that we will see the Wii2 in action come E3. With the Wii the biggest draw when it came out was the controller. With something that important last generation, let’s hope that the new console has just as an impressive controller since Sony has their Move out.

I think that we will see a lot of new software for both the Wii2 and the 3DS, I think that most of the games shown last year for the 3DS will be playable and hopefully the strong 3rd party support will continue for their Wii successor. One thing that I think will be the focus for the Wii2 will be online support that is not like Microsoft or Sony, what that means, I don’t know, but it’s Nintendo, and they dare to be different.

As for the current Wii, I think we may see the Vitality Sensor, Skyward Sword, and maybe a New Super Mario Bros Wii sequel, but other than that I think it will be all about the Wii2 and 3DS.

With the hacked accounts recently Sony has a lot to make up for. I think for one, they will make a public announcement due to the recent problems and maybe offer amends starting at the time of their press conference.

The Next Generation PSP (NGP) will most likely be given an official name, a price tag, and a release date. Without good third party support, though this will likely struggle like the PSP did, so I think not only will we see major console developers providing support, but maybe some App developers will be giving support as well.

For the Playstation 3 I can see a new God of War game announced. I can also see a new Kingdom Hearts game being announced, though at this point with all the powerful hardware available, I don’t know if this would necessarily be a PS3 exclusive or go out to Xbox360 and Nintendo as well.

Without the games, the systems are useless, so here is a list of games I expect we will see or hear about that aren’t exclusives. Please note that this list doesn’t include any of the already confirmed games that will be appearing.

• Bungie’s next game which will be distributed by Activision so it will more than likely be a nonexclusive.
• Grand Theft Auto 5 is most likely in development, but will it be announced? If it is, will it be released this year?
• Bully 2 has been hinted at as being in development, but is it really?
• Angry Birds has become huge the last few months, it would seem odd if they didn’t come out with a console/handheld version
• Shenmue 3 is probably a long shot, but after Duke Nukem Forever is finally being released after years in development Hell, I can always dream right?

I was at Ground Zero on Thursday and I took the picture above. It is of the Freedom Tower being built. At first I had no idea why I was being drawn over there, now as I see the reports that Osama Bin Laden is dead, I understand it. I’ve talked about how I speak to and see the dead before, but last week, it was like they were calling me to see this. When I got there I felt so much pain and sorrow and even confusion from the dead. It was something like I’ve never felt before. Unfortunately, it was something that I wasn’t able to shake, it seemed as though some of the dead from there were still with me. It was weird, I have heard stories about the dead following ghosts home, but that was usually during investigations and for the most part those were evil spirits. Today those feelings changed, it was as if the ghosts were getting relief and could move on and be with their families and not be in such a sad state. Unfortunately I didn’t understand why until I saw it on the news. Osama Bin Laden was killed today. Personally this is a great thing because I remember after September 11th the sky was black for days due to the smoke and ash. It means so much more now, after I felt what those ghosts felt before and what they feel now. It makes this news mean so much more.

It seems like every few years someone I know dies. It started with my grandmother and ever since her death I’ve lost friends, teachers, and family members every few years. This week a friend from high school, Diedre Banovich died in a housefire. I’ve been really shook up the last few days and have gravitated toward people who knew her and reconnected with some that I haven’t really spoken to a lot lately.

It sucks that when you grow up you also grow apart from people who you were close to when you were younger. People I consider brothers I barely talk to anymore, but this week I have been trying to talk to them on XBox and on the phone due to this. Bob asked me if thought this was the Collier Curse or if this is something everyone our age goes through, losing good people in your life and eventually it stops for a while. For those who don’t know the Collier Curse is something that Collier High School students claim happens when kids leave the school. I have to admit thatsome weird and awful stuff has happened to a lot of us, though we seem to grow together and be a family years after we graduate high school, which I think is unique for a school of any kind to do. Maybe it is the universe’s way of telling us that no matter what this will be a part of your life and make up who you are, or maybe it is all just a huge coincidence. Either way I just know that it sucks and that these bad things shouldn’t be happening to such good people.

As I mentioned in my last post, I have been going through and trying to make my site more SEO friendly. I will be the first to admit that when I started this site years ago, I had no idea what SEO was and I just built it with bad SEO on top of bad SEO. Now I am going through, trying to change things and better optimize things for search engines. It’s a pain though since I have to go through each section and try and come up with unique content for things like the the gallery images and whatnot. I think I am getting a good handle on things though, it is just going to take a while to redo a lot of these pages and sections.

SEO isn’t the only thing I am working on though, I have a big marketing strategy for the fanlistings that I did last year, so hopefully the strategy pays off again, if it does as well this time then I will continue the strategy on a more consistent basis. I am actually not expecting things to be AS good since I am tweaking it a bit, but if it does even half as well, then I am definitely going to continue it.

I am also looking at a spider work its way through the site to create a sitemap for me. Last night it stalled when I tried to stop it, but today if I just let it go by itself I think it will be fine, it just might take a few more hours to complete.

So I know I have been talking about work, a lot, but since I have had a bit of a break today as far as what needs to be completed goes, I decided to just work on a few clients and while I was waiting on them to get back to me, I would work on my site. It’s not going to be this easy the rest of the week though, tomorrow I am heading into the city to hopefully be up with phase one of this big project that has been on and off since September.

So I finished that big project a while ago, but I have been swamped with other things. I have three major clients in the city, all working in the same office, but divided up into separate companies. The big project was for one of them, but the other two have keeping me busy since September. On top of being an independent contractor for them, I also have other clients, including one from last year who I went to Tech Crunch Disrupt to represent, a Local site, working on a site for a friend’s client, and a client in England. To say the least, I am very busy. I am basically working seven days a week, trying to get as much done as I can. I have another big project that I am undertaking at the moment and I should be finishing it up soon, it shouldn’t be too difficult, just minor cosmetic things at this stage since all the development is basically done.

This Friday I head off for vacation though, Kris has the whole day off so we are heading out really early. It’s going to be the first time in a few months I take a weekend off, let alone a three day weekend, so hopefully I can be well rested during it.

In other news, I bought a new laptop and iPod. I would have posted pictures, maybe next post, since I didn’t take any yet. On top of the new laptop and iPod, our room is kind of more of a mess than usual since we bought an armoire that is bigger than the dresser we used to have and we are trying to sort everything still. My favorite new toy is my laptop, naturally. My iPod is a pain because I need to convert a lot of my music from Flac to be able to be used on it. My laptop is a beast, 6 gigs of RAM and the Beats Audio. It just sucks that the most I have used it is for work when I am in the city. I am thinking about booting up some Halo 2 on it though, I do miss that game and I imagine that the laptop could handle it well, plus I am curious to see how many people play it on PC.

Yes I know I am behind on comments and I haven’t updated my site in a while. Well actually that isn’t true, you will notice that I have added a jquery featured slider to the home page, and on some of the pages I have been trying to add in some better meta tags for SEO purposes, as well as other things to improve the SEO of the site. So far I have seen a bit of an improvement, but I just did a few sections and it improved, once I can get the rest of the site optimized, I imagine I will have a lot more traffic.

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I am just going to come out with it, up until Smallville, live action Superman films and television shows were boring. Even Superman Returns that came out a few years ago, directed by the very talented Bryan Singer, was very boring, maybe even more so than Superman 2. I don’t necessarily believe that is any one person’s fault, I blame the way it is handled. Smallville did something that to my knowledge has never been done before, it’s taken Clark Kent and made him interesting. Coming up on the last five episodes of the series you can go through the last ten years and see the journey he has faced, from being one of his only kind on earth, to being a hero only because he can do things others can’t, to finally accepting his fate and fully embracing it.

A lot of people are complaining that Clark should be wearing the suit already and stop being the Blur and embrace Superman already, but that character Clark is still turning into. Once Clark embraces being Superman and fully making Clark Kent the disguise, then it is no longer the story of Clark, it is the story of Superman, and once it is that story then the story of Clark completely changes. Once Superman is born, the story of Clark Kent in Smallville ends. He no longer is a guy who goes out saving people because he can, he becomes a super hero who disguises himself as Clark because he has to, and we’ve seen that story five times in movies before and every time the scenes with Clark are boring.

Think about the Burton and Schumacher Batman movies, in those movies I know personally I couldn’t wait for Batman to come on screen and for Bruce to hide his face, because in those movies Batman was the focus and Bruce was the secret identity that we had no interest in seeing because like Clark he is a disguise and not who the character really is. I think Nolan’s Batman movies really embrace the idea that, like in Smallville, the hero and the person are really the same person, at least to those closest to him.

For those of you who don’t know, Nolan is producer on a new Superman movie starring Hendry Cavill, Amy Adams, Diane Lane, and Kevin Costner, Zack Snyder is directing the movie and has given big praise to Smallville recently. He says his story will be more focused on Clark becoming Superman, so hopefully they will do what was done with Batman and hopefully it will at least not make me want to fast forward through all of the Clark Kent scenes. Either way, my one main hope for this movie is that it has more action in it than an episode of Smallville and that it is not boring in the least.