Yo I Be Where I Be At

Yes, I'm a neglectful bloggist, I know, but I'm good at what I do, and I'm rather charming, which means I can get away with whatever I want.

Lemme lay it out for ya like this:

- I take classes, and I'm one of those students who works incredibly hard at determining what I can do to get away with having to do the same amount of work as the generic, average students, but get at least a B. This takes a lot of dedication and devotion to fucking around. I take my slacker-ness seriously.

- I work, and I rather enjoy what I do. Working in IT on a college campus seems like a tough, bitchy job if you haven't actually had a tough, bitchy job. I have had some fairly bad jobs (ripping the guts out of chickens), and I've had some very, very hard jobs (being a restaurant GM), so going to work in an IT department on a college campus is something that I actually enjoy, and in order to keep enjoying it, I actually, ya know, work. And read sports news on the internet.

- Uncharted fucking 2: Among Thieves. Thank the Maker, this is the best game I've played in a long, long time. I know that Cody's mental vagina has developed a severe allergy to cut-scenes, but this game epitomizes my belief that, in certain games, the cut scenes provide a wonderful breather, and act as a 'take a sip of your beer, grab a smoke, and relax for a minute' kinda moment. Cody, my dearest friend and fellow bloggist, I urge you to inject your brain with some Vagisil, and happily slurp down a PS3, loaded with wonderful cutscenes. Anyway, this game is the best of the adventure/platforming genre, and has a beautiful blend of puzzles, storytelling, rich characters, platforming, combat, gorgeous art, and my wife was even wanting to give kudos to whoever 'dresses the sets,' so to speak, because the environments are so detailed (and I don't mean polygons and textures, though those look nice, too.)

- I also journeyed out to Kingston, IL and Chicago over the weekend for a wedding and to visit the in-laws, so there.

- I spent quite a bit of time fighting with Windows 7, since I got my retail keys for several copies a couple weeks ago, through work/school. I've been trying to upgrade my gaming Deathbook from Vista Home Premium x64 to Windows 7 Pro x64, and it is not, officially, possible. I don't accept that, and I'm halfway through the process now. Of course, if I have to do a full reinstall, so be it, but I have that machine, and each game install, super-customized, and don't even get me started about my fucking iTunes library. If I have to reinstall, I'm looking at a month or two of tweaking to get everything back to where I want it. No thanks.

- Lastly, I've been working on getting more gaming going w/ Linux. One of the things I'd really like to do in life is bring a greater gaming presence to Linux. It would make gaming platforms FREE, which is a huge win, but would also open game development up to a greater number of people. Gaming + open source could be a great thing. I've now got Guild Wars & the Neverwinter Nights (plus all the expansions) running on my Ubuntu netbook, and they both run PERFECTLY. NWN actually runs without any emulation. It is actually running ON Linux, which is awesome. Now, if we can just get Steam to act as a means to run anything and everything on Linux...

Oh, and I guess I need to publish that third chapter of my book on here, as I had promised. I'll get it up here tomorrow.

What have you been up to?

-Blaine

Welcome to Not-Summer

I walked outside in my usual summer attire the other night, to grab a quick smoke (yes, I know, I know). I was wearing a t-shirt, baggy cargo shorts, and bare feet. I stepped out onto the front step, and BAM! It hit me! It was fucking cold!

This is St. Louis, people, not Chicago. Chicagoans piss and moan about the alleged 'summer' they get up there, but having lived in both places, I can assure you that while they are experts on cold and losing, they don't know shit about heat. St. Louis gets crazy hot. 95+ degrees with 100% humidity is almost the epitome of uncomfortable.

Personally, I love it. I'm used to it, grew up with it, and don't feel compelled to spend a lot of time talking about it.

The cold, though...ugh. There aren't many things in this world that I don't like. Aside from cold, precipitation, dishonesty, Nintendo apologists, religious beliefs, those who are opposed to science, those that identify stringently with a political party, reality television, mustard, cloudy days, modern hip-hop, IGN, lobbyists, Dave Matthews Band, pickles, fans of the band 'Creed,' Ubisoft, Mac users, Windows, Gentoo snobs, people with hygiene issues, Miller beer, the Cubs, Cubs fans (I do like having sex with female Cubs fans, though), wholesomeness, non-organic food, young people, old people, people who don't like Pearl Jam, wheat bread, Faux News, Jack White, Roger Moore as Bond, Internet Explorer, people who pretend to like using Safari, people who refuse to use Firefox, people who pretend Chrome is secure and just as flexible as Firefox, late 90's pussy rock, people who replaced the word "terr'ism" with "comm'nism," people who argue on the internet, people who post long message board posts in an effort to argue on the internet, people who post long message board posts in an effort to argue about politics on the internet, people who post long message board posts filled with 'facts' taken from a Faux News propaganda blast in an effort to argue about politics on the internet, people who think a man's hand is cleaner than his cock, turkey on a sandwich that is not covered in gravy, people who get lazy when building a standard image, people who pay for non-gaming software, people who work hard at furthering a negative stereotype, Activision, subscription fees, being busy all the time, people that accept that this is all there is, and many more, I really don't have too many dislikes.

Chicago was a very difficult place for me to live. Mainly because it's cold 8-9 months out of the year, always cloudy, everyone's amazingly negative, and it's really like living inside a dome. A dome filled with cold and bad weather.

Aside from the miserable weather and environment, it was a damn fun place to go to college. The bar scene is amazing, and the women...my god, the women are beautiful and not nearly as uptight as the girls here in St. Louis. Chicago girls are better looking and much more liberal with their vaginas than St. Louis girls. I was so taken with them, I had to keep one for myself and marry her.

Anyway...

...things have still been crazy, though markedly less so. I'm in the middle of three straight days of no free time, in which I'm occupied all day and all night, and I am working to put a stop to this bullshit. There are few things I hate as much as having plans after a work/school day. If I've been busting my ass all day, I like coming home, hugging my family, climbing into a recliner, watching some sports, playing some games, running around with my son, some dinner, and then I like to molest my wife. I like being able to fall apart for a few hours after rigidly holding it together all day. If that makes you roll your eyes, please go choke on a spiked dildo and die of a hemorrhage while being skull-fucked. I'm old enough now to have preferences, and I'm probably a stronger man than you, anyway, which is why my life is considerably less complicated and compromised than yours.

Last night, it was the boy's b-day, tonight, it's my Java class (which is totally bad-ass), and tomorrow night, it's the Governor's Cup (Rams vs. Chiefs, final preseason game). My in-laws might be coming in town this weekend, which could be fun.

We'll see how the next two days at work are. Work is really the thing that either lets me post or kills it, since that's really the only time I have for posting right now. That'll change, as I get into a rhythm with each week.

My next post is going to be my hilarious email conversation with EA. You're not going to believe the shit that we've been saying to each other. I still think that there are some very cool folks who work there, but their bloated structure really caused some problems between us. I'm going to get that up before the week ends, so make sure you check it out. It's nearly the best 'awful' thing to happen to me.

Gotta head to my next class. Word.

-Blaine