What’s been going on…

by | Oct 16, 2006 | Personal

Ever since Hindenberg went down (up) in flames, I’ve neglected most if not all of my websites and journaling responsibilities. Well, if you can call bitching about pointless topics a responsibility.

Mainly this malaise is due to a lack of time and a lack of will power on my part. Going a month without a major update leads me to believe that I no longer “need” to write about my life like I did in the past. Writing now resides squarely in the “want” category.

When I was younger, back in the golden age of the internet, I felt a solid need to express myself in some digital fashion. In 1996, I began that expression. At the time I was using Blogger. Soon after Live Journal came on the scene, quickly followed with more robust packages like Moveable Type. Now it’s WordPress.

I think somewhere along the way, by being in art school, keeping journals, and learning to express myself in a more adult fashion, some of the newness wore off. Blogging for me is no longer the “cool nerdy thing” that I used to delight in doing. I think there are a lot of people that feel the same way. A lot of us started into this believing we were a small niche collective of like minded individuals, who, for the first time finally had a voice in the darkness of the internet.

Now, it’s all myspace and youtube and having a journal online is something that middle school kids do. “Personal” content went mainstream and destroyed itself in the process.

Now everyone has a journal. Not just a journal, but everyone has video from their phones on youtube, 150 friends on myspace, a flickr photostream from their adventures last weekend.

I don’t mean to sound like I’m railing on it, I’m not. I’m merely trying to illustrate that words on a page was OUR generation, and now that the next generation is here, social interaction is THEIR caveat.

I’m not trying to sound dramatic. I’m also not trying to cryptically say that I’m abandoning blogging. Far from it. What I’m trying to get across is that as I’ve gotten older, the teenage need to express myself and “find” myself is diminishing. Being, as of this winter, in my (*gasp*) late-twenties, I no longer have the same creative urges as say for example, the 17 year old me.

I’ll put it like this: Long ago I enjoyed learning how to dance. I enjoyed dancing with all my friends, learning new steps and trying new things. After a while I met the woman of my dreams who also enjoyed dancing. We danced together. One dance in particular. We got married, still dance, and still enjoy it. But, we don’t take lessons any more. We don’t dance with other people. We’ve found our dance partner for life, know all the steps, and now we dance just for personal enjoyment.

That’s what writing has become for me. It’s wonderment and freshness and awkwardness has worn off and it’s become something I do simply because I want to. I don’t need to dance. I don’t need to learn new steps. I can dance just for the fun of it.

So, in the end, what I hope will happen here is that I write about things I want to write about. There are many topics I’d like to discuss in great detail and will continue to do so until this serves no purpose to anyone or until it’s enjoyment is gone, whichever comes first. Neither are in the foreseeable future. You’ll continue to hear me bitching for quite some time.

In a post to follow this one shortly I’ll detail some of the actually events that have shaped the past month or two, but I felt it necessary to explain my absence a bit before I jumped back into it.

When the server crashed, it took with it a piece of my past that I used as a building block for my own personal development. Writing about what I felt really helped me in what every artist could describe as their search for the soul. However, while I was without it, I realized that it wasn’t something I necessarily “needed” any more. It wasn’t a crutch persay, something that I was relying on to get on with my life, but it was more of a security blanket or, in a more adult metaphor, a release valve for daily pressures. I could vent here on my journal and, with the exception of you guys, no one would really care. That was almost a relief in itself. I could tell the world what I thought of it and no one would really care. Heaven help me if I ever gain a decent readership.

So, in case you’re just joining us, I’m writing again, this time for fun. It may not be frequent, but hopefully it’ll be worth reading.

Out.

What luck I have

by | Aug 26, 2006 | Personal

I have what many would consider a negative aura when it comes tob my automobiles. My first car, the white Mazda was horribly mangled in a wreck. My next car, the yellow pick up, had a bad habit of parts falling off at the most inappropriate times. My Oldsmobile that follow decided that its A/C, power windows and catalitic converter had run their course… all in the same month. The Matrix was brand new, so all it could do to me is get flat tires.

My Mazda, my poor baby, in the past two weeks, has had its windshield smashed in and now today got another flat tire. That’s three in as many months. Thankfully I had the foresight last time to get the “road hazard” warrenty. This one is a freebie.

I’m sitting in discount tire right now actually. *sigh* what a wonderful Saturday.

I do ok from time to time…

by | Aug 17, 2006 | Games

Every Wednesday the guys from the Texas Combat Crew get together and drink. Heavily. Then, we play Battlefield 2, because that’s just what we do. Our “Drunken Wednesday Game Night” as it’s been cristend has attracted an attendence of histroic perportion. When you do a search on All-Seeing-Eye or Game-Monitor, not only does out BF2 CTF server come up, it comes up often as the highest ranked. The developers of the mod have taken such a fondness to our schenanegans that they reoutinly stop by, enjoy a view drinks vicariouly via TeamSpeak, and get their game on. You can see a few of them in that screen shot. Anyone with a “Dcon” tag is actually developing the game we’re all playing.

It feels really good to be a part of something this much fun. It’s a real great group of guys, who I enjoy playing with every time I do. Having a crew like ours is what video game clans should be about. Non of this competition pressure, no one getting angry over someone elses “skill”, no one having an attitude problem. Just a fun, friendly gaming experience. It could be that way since all but 2 of our members are over 25, most of us are married, have kids, steady jobs, and generally aren’t 14 year old smacktards just there to “pwn noobs”. We’re there to have fun.

We run a smacktard free server and I think that’s what everyone enjoys. So, cheers to the CTF mod, cheers to good gaming, and cheers to the guys of the Texas Combat Crew. See you Wednesdays.

-=TCC=-Doc – proud member of the TCC and profession spokes person for drunken gaming

PS: If you’d like to learn more about the TCC and our Wednesday night fun, please visit is at our website. Also, please know that you’ll need the game “Battlefield 2” by EA and the DCon CTF mod, available here.

Gameage

by | Aug 15, 2006 | Personal

I doubt heavily that’s actually a word.

Completely out of the blue, yesterday I had the urge to open up Steam. Now, I realize I’ve slacked by being the last person on the planet to try HL2:Ep1, but I planned on getting both Ep1 and Ep2 at the same time, mostly for its tasty Portal and Team Fortress goodness.

This sudden urge to play HL percipitated the systems launch. As it opened I couldn’t help but be impressed by the ease of Steam. I hadn’t played any of those games in 6-8 month and in less time than it took to warm up the oven for the pizza rolls I was about to enjoy, I was up and running. Seeing everything updated that quickly and easily made me realize just how long it had been since I played CS. Three (literally) mouse clicks later I was logging into a server.

At this point I really have to hand it to both Valve as well as the CS:S community as a whole. I had a very enjoyable experience, played on a smacktard free server running so very innovative mods and some great maps and I really had a good feeling thay what I was playing was fun.

When I began playing CS:S when it came out it really felt like a rehash. It was a game I was “done” with. The maps were the same maps from 8 years ago, and there were only a few of them. Last night I played at least 20 maps I had never heard of and really enjoyed each one.

So, after all this time, CS of all things, made me feel that computer games were really fun again. Ah the memories…