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There are a few things that I would take a time out for to write some in LJ. One of those is Fallout 3. Readers of my journal might remember that I have a certain love for this series, it's up there with Final Fantasy. I recently got F3 for my birthday and while at home sick I played it alot. It is an amazing game, and so awesome in so many ways. I love me some post-apocalyptic themes, and F3 takes the cake. It takes place in the DC area of the Eastern US, and when you first emerge from the vault there is a very cool effect of your 'eyes' seeing the sun for the 1st time and then the view is breathtaking. You are on a steep rise in rocky terrain, and as you look over the countryside you see the ruins of the Washington monument in the background (the obelisk). Burned out and rotting corpses of houses, streets, & vehicles litter the landscape. One of the great things about F3 being a 'next gen' title is that the graphics can finally convey just how much of a wasteland the countryside is - 200 years after the bombs fell. It is amazing and breathtaking & poignant all at the same time. The game is also brutal, in a mad max sort of way. I thing the designers really got the essence of the game right, and went even beyond that! The gameplay itself is changed as well, being that everything is now fully 3d over the isometric view from the 1st two games. At first one might describe it as a first person shooter because it has many similar mechanics, but behind the scenes there are actually numbers being crunched to determine how much damage you do, what body part you hit, and if you do critical damage etc. In that respect, it's not a true 1st person shooter. Leveling up, there is a cap placed on skills this time around which is actually welcomed. Pretty much, the cap is a 100 or 100% on skills. Higher skill %'s really do make a difference, and you don't have to keep pumping skill points into something beyond 100 to make it uber. From 90 to 100% it already is. Tagging a skill means it's a specialty of yours. It gives you a 15% bonus to the skill but doesn't do much beyond that. In F1 & F2, a tagged skill increased 2x as fast (I.E. you put 1 pt into it and it went up by 2 pts.) In F3, they only increase by 1 regardless of whether it's tagged or not. You also get a perk every level, which is very nice I think. The perks don't seem to have been toned down either to compensate for this change. The game, while it does have 'silly' moments, seems a lot more serious overall this time around. There are a few humorous people & encounters, but you're not going to come across the knights of the round table, or face the bridgekeeper here. Overall, I am really loving this game, they did a great job on it and it feels more like fallout than F1 & f2 did, if that makes any sense, but of course you wouldn't have f3 if it weren't for those games either. It does a great job of pushing the series forward and I look forward to seeing what else Bethesda does with the series.

So, election night we were very excited to watch history unfold on the tv. It was also exciting to see that Indiana would be "blue" for the presidential race in my lifetime too. Amazing.

Ashley is turning into a goofball, such so that it's hard not to laugh when really we should be scolding her. Despite that, she is a great kid and everyday I am proud to be her dad. She is still jabbering words, but everyday those words start to make sense. She picks up on things very quickly too. Halloween was a good example, and after some trouble at the first door she knew what to do after that.

Well, I havta get going. I hope you enjoyed the update and hopefully it won't take me a month to write again.

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Good things: Gen con was a total blast, and the entirety of what I did is too long for this post. My buddy Chris came down and we had a really good time hanging out, playing various games and just taking it all in. We even took a break and got to tour the new Colts stadium which is very large, and has one of the longest and highest freaking escalators I've ever been on. Ashley had a blast riding it though.

Frustrating things: Lack of communication between Emily and I made Gen Con weekend also highly stressful. The good news out of that though is that we learned a thing or two and I think next year will go much smoother.

This weekend we are giving our kitchen a facelift. We'd like to gut and redesign but since we don't have the money, we're opting for just making it look nicer. For help in this project, my Dad is coming down, and also Emily's Mom, Stepdad & half-sister - so it's going to be a full house to say the least. Here's hoping everything comes together.

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Things have been quite in the land of Eve lately, mostly because I haven't been playing much of it. I got into the Ps3, and now I'm really heavily back into Titan Quest. Such a great game, and one of the very few to get the 'formula' of hack n slash loot games really down. I was crazy for Diablo 2, and TQ carries this fine tradition forward. It goes without saying that I'm extremely looking forward to Diablo 3.

Two other games I'm looking forward to: Deadspace & Fallout 3! Especially the latter of those two since I've been a huge fallout fan for a long time.

Ashley is doing well and continues to both impress & do funny things. Yesterday, both Emily and I swore she said "I can't find it." and "where is it?" though it wasn't spoken very clearly as of yet - but we are pretty sure that's what she was intending to say. She can also say "I love you" sometimes. Whatever the case, she's a trip.

At my work place, when things go wrong we like to blame 'the system' which is to say this esoteric, entangible computer intellegince that is responsible for sending and monitoring orders. We like to say things like "It (the order) needs time to flow through the system." or "The system released it prematurely." etc. It's kinda fun knowing we have our own personal SkyNet fucking things up on a regular basis...atleast that's what I tell my other geek friends.

Not much else to say. Things are going pretty well really. I've started working out again, and so has Emily so we are getting more healthy. We've got plans for our house that are starting to come together which is fairly exciting. All in all, things are going well.

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That's about all I have time for right now, but I'll be presenting some more in-depth thoughts about things later. For now, my general concensus is that I like it.

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3:10 to Yuma (the new one, haven't seen the 1957 original) is a damn good movie, and looks freakin awesome on blu-ray.

Hmm...I don't have much else to say. Been taking it kinda easy due to the illness & all that. I really really really need to start exercising again.

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So...I'm wondering right now why most americans fought so hard to get the democrates in power a few years ago? Cause right now, it doesn't seem much different than the republicans...And Obama, wow man I'm actually pretty disapointed in you. I thought you were by far the better candidate but Hillary voted no! You are still a lot better than the alternative, and I know better than to pull my support, but still - unless you do something really ballsy here soon, then I've lost alot of that feeling of hopefullness I was having over this campaign year. I feel that your support of this bill has lost you alot of the support you were getting, as people are once again disenfranchised by the government.

Sad, just sad.

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I turned in my ps2 at gamestop. My work-mate said they had given him 60 bucks for it, but I either got royally screwed or he had alot more stuff with it than he let on (or he could have been exagerating too I guess). You know, Gamestop actually really sucks for trading in games. Honestly. They won't take ps1 games anymore, nor will they take pc games. They hardly even sell PC games anymore actually, unless it will make them money - like WoW. Anyways, I had one ps2 game and they gave me a whopping .75 cents... for something they'll turn around and sell for 20 bucks. My system, they were going to give me 35 $, which I guess isn't horrible, but then the guy looked at the cords. One of my cats (probably Smokey) chewed on the cord, exposing the wires a bit (but not chewing through them). So he wouldn't take one controller but would take the other, which also had 'dents' in the cord from my cat. I guess he was doing me a favor? Oh, did I mention this was the same guy who sold me the ps3? So yea, weirdness here too. He flat out tells one customer that he had his back turned to the customer because he was already helping me, and because he (salesman) was a dick. I kid you not. Anyways, so with only 1 controller they would have to 'refurbish' the system, which was a 15 dollar fee that reduced my 35$ down to 20$ You know, if I go looking on E-bay and see I could have sold the ps2 for way more than that, I'm going to be a little miffed - miffed at myself for not having the balls to say, "You guys suck corporate ass." and leave the store. Alas, I did not do that and like a chump I took the credit and put it towards a pre-sale for a Civ game on ps3.

However, their were two interesting things that happened. The first was the lady who thought she'd just park her van in front of the store when the curb was clearly marked yellow. She brought her kids, so she clearly intented to look around and get her kids something. It's not like the parking lot was 10 miles away, and as a matter of fact there were some very good spaces available. Anyways, a few minutes later a cop comes in and asks who was the driver of the van. "You need to move your vehicle, otherwise I'm going to tow it and call animale controll." That leads me into the next part, as I left the store, a little white dog was trying to get out of the van but got stuck on the open window and was yelping in frustration and maybe even pain. I went back in and told the lady.

But wait, there's more! As I was leaving, another customer approached me and asked me about the ps1 games Gamestop wouldn't take. He looked at them, (One was an rpg, the other an action game) and wanted to buy them... not really knowing their true value I told him two bucks and he could have them. I then, out of the kindness of my heart, gave him the controller GS wouldn't take - what the heck was I going to do with it? It was useless to me.

After that adventure, I was feeling a little rundown again, so I went home and fell asleep on the couch for a bit. Then I got a call from one of my Aunts who invited me out to dinner, so I went to Santorinie's Greek Kitchen (our fav greek restaurant) and had dinner with two of my Aunts which was very nice. Went home, rested a bit, then took a shower and went to bed.

Now I'm at work...

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Having fun with MGS4 & guitar hero 3. Not much else to say, but I'm looking forward to the weekend. Hopefully my lovely wife & I can go catch a movie or two - it just depends on if we can get someone to watch Ashley or not. There seems to be alot more "I really want to see that in a theater" type movies this summer - atleast in my opinion.

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The next day, I walked back into that gamestop thinking there was no way that they still had it. The clerk was a different guy, and he at first denied having them. I told him that the clerk yesterday had said they got some in and thankfully he didn't argue with me, he just went back to check. A minute later, he came back out holding the 80gb ps3. On a secondary note, why are most game stop employee's - well, weird? As he's walking out of their stock room, he proceeded to chide me because of my shirt (which reads: Nintendo Rehabilitation Clinic), calling me a traitor for buying into sony. I kinda misunderstood him and thought he was chiding me on being a nintendo fan - and the look he gave me when I rubbed in what the shirt said was pretty priceless. I'm not sure why I tried to reason with him, but stated I didn't hate Nintendo - I was a gaming fan and didn't hold to any one console because of that. Anways, on to more weirdness; I asked him for Guitar Hero 3 and he said, "You don't want that, you'll be busy playing MGS4." he said very seriously. I looked at him, not really believing that a store clerk would be discouraging me from buying something else and said, "That maybe true, but I still want it." He sorta rolled his eyes a bit and went back to look for it and brought it back out with him.

So, long story short, I finally got the ps3 in the last place I would have expected to find it. It was expensive, but worth it.

The joy of my find would be somewhat short lived though. We had plans of relaxing on the weekend and getting alot of chores around the house done. On Friday, Emily was working from home and at about 10:30 or so I get a call from one of my best friends named Matt Hicks. I answered the phone rather cheerfully, glad to be hearing from him, but also maybe thinking he was going to be in town during the weekend, but unfortunately the news was not so great. His father, Jim, was dying - litterally on his death-bed. I have always been very close to Matt & his family. Jim had always treated me like family actually, so I was upset on hearing the news. After I got off the phone with Matt, I was a little unsure what to do. I had to work in a few hours, and it being a friday I was fairly certain I couldn't get it off. However, I wanted to be there for Matt, and I also wanted to say goodbye to Jim - something you don't often get a chance to do. So I called into work and very luckily was able to get the day off. I called my other buddy Brian and appologized for leaving him alone during the evening shift, but he understood. Then Emily & I hurridly got packed. We picked up Ashley from daycare, and then ran into trouble finding boarding for our dog. Strangly our normal dog kennel was booked. It took us a few tries before we finally found a place and we dropped her off. Then we hit the road. On 64, about a half hour from the 164 exit we ran into a nasty storm that was rather sureal. When we arrived at my parents home, their power was out. I called Matt to let him know I had arrived, and 20 or so minutes later he called saying that it was ok for me to come over.

Jim had fought cancer for over 12 years. The experimental chemo he had taken did a great job of knocking the cancer out, but unfortunately it destroyed his bone marrow - giving him acute lukemia. When he learned that the treatment to cure the lukemia would very likely not be perminent and could kill him he declined. Because of the severe damage to his bone marrow, his bodies ability to make new blood was next to nill, thus leaving him with the other option of getting constant blood transfusions. He decided at that point to go home and spend his last days with his family.

Jim's condition had fallen rapidly since Thursday, so the family knew he wasn't going to last much longer. He was un-responsive mostly, but I held his hand for a time and showed him pictures of Ashley. I said my good-byes. He passed away at around 2:30 am on Saturday - just a few hours after I left for the evening. Matt gave me a call in the morning, and my family went over at around 11:30. It was strange, not seeing the bed or medical equipment there anymore. What a strange juxtaposition though, watching my daughter play with toys in a room that mere hours before was a place of sadness. I think though, that in some ways it was a welcome relief - to hear a child laugh, to let you know that Jim would have liked it that way. When we decided to leave, we said our goodbyes and I embraced my friend Matt. He started to break down a little, the first time I'd ever seen him do that, then he composed himself once more. My heart ached, because I wished I could do more, but I knew that just being there was exactly what Matt needed.

There really isn't much to say after that. I offered my time to Matt and his family in whatever way they needed, but at that point they were understandably busy.

I will miss you Jim, you were someone I looked up to, and I always enjoyed your company and stories.

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The next song was Free Bird. It took me 2 tries. The first was pretty much getting used to the song again, then I really nailed the first half of the song which is what helped me get the 5 stars. The long guitar solo during the second half is crazy, but I also did better on that too which helped. Getting 5 stars on all the main songs on medium unlocked the Viking guitar.

I've tried some songs on hard, and I managed to beat a few but damn, yea it's hard. Gonna take alot of practice - alot. There are two things I'm having difficulties with. First is moving my hand to hit the orange fret button. I can't stretch my pinky so I have to move my hand. This sorta comes down to memorizing when I have to do this, and as they say practice makes perfect. The other problem is the massive number of hammer on & pull off notes. In medium, you'd come across 3 at most but you often didn't have to do the technique becuase the notes would came at you slow enough (compared to hard & extreme modes) to strum them if you wanted. In Hard, there coming at you like 6 to even 9 note long streaks of hammer on & pull off's, and the notes come so fast that you HAVE to do the technique - you can't strum these (Well, suppose you could doing double-strumming). Basically, on a HO or PO note, you strum the first note and then without strumming anymore, you press the appropriate fret buttons for the subsequent notes. I guess it's just like on a real guitar where basically you've strummed and while the strings are still vibrating you play additional notes. It's used for very fast note sequeances. I used to be horrible at them, but I AM getting better.

I have this feeling of hope that the 80gb ps3's will be in tomorrow at Best Buy - and I'm debating on re-scheduling my dentist apointment to next week... just not sure yet.

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Our neighbor Jake had invited us over for a bbq at his house, so that evening we headed over there and met his friends etc. Jake loves to cook, and his bbq was pretty damn good. Overall, it was a good time, and after Ashley went to bed I was able to stay and I got a bit drunker than I expected too. I've decided that I don't like Southern Comfort - not because of it's taste - it's very yummy. No, I don't like So Co because it hangs in me alot longer than other stuff does. I tried to go to bed at 11:30 but I couldn't because I started getting that spinning feeling when I closed my eyes (And I had stopped drinking at 10!). At about 1 am, I was finally able to get to sleep. So, I'm kinda tired today, but otherwise doing well. Once again, I make my friends invious by never suffereing from a hangover.

Anyways, Jake is a cool guy and it turns out we have alot in common as far as movies & books go. I hope we get to hang out more.

Outside of those things, Emily and I played Guitar Hero together. We traded off, and she beat easy which she was really happy about. She even got 5 stars on all the songs. She's kinda funny though. She's not a big game player, but she loves Guitar Hero - and I'm happy to have something like that she really enjoyes. She is very determined though. She doesn't like to move on to another song until she has 5 stars. Oh boy, she just started medium and we're going to be on the 1st set for awhile! ;) I kid, I kid. I myself have two songs left on medium I'm trying to get 5 stars on. Carry me Home by The Living End, & Free Bird by Leonard Skynard. Well, I'm sure most people know Free Bird - it's just long but the guitar solo is pretty crazy. Carry Me Home is really freakin intense though. It's a great song however. I've managed to do a few songs on hard. It's taken alot of practice before I try the songs for real. I know I had trouble with medium at first, and I hope that hard will be the same way - after awhile and practice it starts to become second nature. It's learning to move your hand so you can hit that orange fret button that's the crazy bit. Anyways, I can't wait to get the ps3, cause I'm deffinately getting Guitar Hero 3 for us.

In Eve, I had a lot of trouble getting out of Fountain - well, the stuff I wanted to get out. I finally found someone who was willing to Jump Freighter the stuff out, and once that was done I was finally able to get into the corporation that my friend and I started with out alts. I'm looking forward to relaxing a bit in eve. 0.0 life is interesting, but it's deffinately for the more hard-core players amongst us. Being a miner, it does suck losing access to the really good ores, but oh well. Now, we're looking to raise our faction with Gallente so we can put up a high-sec research tower. Looks like we'll be hitting some Cosmos missions. I've been doing alot of research on them and they look interesting. Should be fun at the very least.

Ashley is doing well. She's picking up new words, and sometimes they're pretty clear, or atleast by her standards clear. She's getting to the point where asking her to do something to 'help' is getting easier to get her to do what you want. For example, if she's got something we don't want her to have, and you ask her to bring it to you she won't. However, if you tell her to take it to mommy or daddy, she will. This morning, she started having a fit when I layed her down to change her diaper. So rather than force her, we just asked her to lay down so we could do it. She promptly did and it went smoothly. Some things get easier, others get tougher. Still, it's a joy.

Doing well now, and it's good to be back to work - though I wasn't missing the stress.

In Eve, my alliance Bruce is pretty much falling apart. I'm trying to get the last of my stuff out of 0.0, which I've figured out is great for story time but not really for me. It's a hardcore area, and my busy real life precludes me from fully taking advantage of it. Anyways, Bruce is making the wise choice to retreat rather than try and maintane space they can't defend. Several big member corporations are cutting lose rather than sticking it out to help them rebuild. I guess they tasted the high-life in Fountain and don't want to go back to Empire? Not sure. My corp is one of those leaving, but it honestly does pain me to leave as well. I really enjoyed Bruce, and wish I could continue in the alliance but I really need to make the game fun again. I have some big personal goals for my character I'd like to achieve by years end if possible, plus it will be great to work with my buddy to get our own corporation up and running. We might consider recruitment in the possible future, but for right now we're trying to work on our business model.

Emily got me Guitar Hero 1 & 2 for Fathers day plus 2 guitars! We were rocking out a bit last night and had a good time. I'm glad Emily likes the game too, because it will be fun to play together.

Sunday was pretty much lazy day. We didn't do a damn thing. Me, my intestinal problems seemed worse which made me not want to do much of anything really. It seems to be doing better today, and I hope that it is getting better. It's been annoiying to say the least.

I just got a repair ticket that said, "Circuit goes up & down when it rains." Now, I do programming repair so really, not sure why they are complaining to us about something like that... so I replied (and I couldn't help this to be honest) "RCMAC has no power over the weather, dispatch a tech to check cable."

The gilgimesh hunt on FF 12 was easy at first, but the second fight was tough. The guy had six arms and when I'd do enough damage to him, he'd pull out a famous sword from past FF's. Cloud's Buster sword, Squal's gunblade, even Tidus's Brother sword came out. You also have to steal from the boss because it's the only way to get the Genjii equipement in the game. That was the hard part really during the 1st fight, I wupt his ass so quickly I almost missed the chance to get the first two pieces. Then it was going deep into the mines where he was at to fight him a second time. He wiped out my party on the first attempt, so I re-orginized my gambits and had a much easier time. AFter all that work, I finished the quest and got the rest of the genjii equipement.