Remember when I said I was going to move the blog under the main page, I lied. Or rather, I changed my mind. I’m going to leave it right where it’s at /log. I mean, it’s a blog, it should be off on the side and the main page should be something flashy and cool. Now I just need to come up with something flashy and cool. Maybe I’ll even put up some more pages.

I’m a big fan of the way my posts get imported into Facebook with that giant RSS feed logo or my PSN card. Makes every update doubly annoying. Gotta figure out how that works/why it’s happening and make it stop. And I didn’t really do anything, but the twitter posts are getting imported once again.

My brother picked up a PS3, and unlike when he had a Xbox he’s online with it. I’m thinking I’ll be getting my football on… nope, not gonna happen. He doesn’t want to buy Madden 10, he’s going to wait for Madden 11 to come out next August. That’ll work nicely for me, in that Kevin and Jay have probably decided never to buy a Madden game again. Without them I won’t have the leverage I need to get Denis to buy next year’s game. Joel might be coerced in if everybody else was playing, but without them, it ain’t gonna happen. So all my football dreams are shattered. It’ll probably end up being me and my bro playing Madden come next year… I love it when a plan comes together.

Zachary is involved with a girl now, according to his Facebook page, I have no other details. Haven’t heard anything more about Tyler and his lady friend, beyond him wanting to borrow the car. Karin… yeah, I don’t know what she’s up to. Kirra is making noises about coming to stay with us, she’s saying end of April, but I’ll believe it when I see it. Rascal (Crooktail) is doing better, swelling is gone and he’s actually got some flick in his tail at this point, but it does have a nice crook in it about an inch-and-a-half from the base. I keep meaning to take a picture, but I’m lazy and forgetful.

Tasha and I have decided not to move. We’re going to stay put for another year. We’re in a nice enough place and the rent isn’t going up all that much. It’s mostly a financial decision, seems like the bills always roll in when you’re saving your pennies for something. We  don’t hate it here, we’d like a house, but Tasha is just getting regular paychecks again and we’re going to just sit tight for another year. As a plus, none of our friends will have to relearn where we live. I am toying with the idea of getting a second carport, it’s silly but I think the one next to us is available and that’d be almost like having a two car garage and as such my bike wouldn’t be nearly as crowded and I wouldn’t have to worry about the neighbors bumping my car.

That’s it for now.

I spent far too much time working on the exterior lighting at one of my branches today. What I thought was going to be maybe an hour ended up taking all day; and I get to go back with parts tomorrow. Such fun. Kinda screwed my plan for the day and subsequently my plan for the rest of the month. Now I’m going to have to scramble around tomorrow to get everything done.

NaNoWriMo is right around the corner. Sunday will be the first day of actually writing the novel. I feel pretty good about the notes I’ve got and the outline I’ve put together. There are holes. Holes in character. Holes in the story. But they’re good holes. The kind of holes that I expect to be able to fill easily as I write and get a better handle on the story, characters, and relationships within the novel. Like I said, I feel good about what I’ve got and I think this is going to be a good story.

Jay and I have the bye in our Madden league. Denis played the Rams tonight and lost. They beat me a couple weeks back. They played like superstars in both games, which is great for a team that is 0-7 in the real world. Between both our games the Rams grabbed a total of 8 interceptions. I think the AI online is being handled by a supercomputer. It’s maddening because I’ve been tweaking my settings to duplicate the AI performance online and I can’t seem to do it. Makes practicing a little difficult. Okay Kevin, play your game so we can roll the week and go face-to-face, Packers vs. Lions.

I lost my fantasy football game. **SIGH** That leaves me with a 1-6 record and a sinking feeling about the rest of the season. Damn you, Roy Williams. Damn you, Calvin Johnson. And a big FU to all my runningbacks.

I started piecing together my ’standing desk’ tonight. I picked up a two drawer cabinet as the base. Then I used some galvanized pipe to create a monitor stand. I found a bracket to use for a tilting keyboard tray and screwed a board to it. It’s very rough right now, but I don’t want to put a ton of effort into making it pretty until I determine if it’s going to work for me. So far I’ve put about $60 into it between the cabinet itself and the pipe and fittings, so even if I hate it, I’m not out much. I’ve already got the monitor and I should have a keyboard around here somewhere. I think it’ll be a grand experiment. Tasha thinks it’s dumb. Tasha thinks I’m not going to like it. Tasha thinks it’s a waste of time, effort, and money. I hope Tasha is wrong.

I should be working on my novel. Gotta get the Josh Hale character sketch up. Later.

I picked up Champions Online a couple weeks ago. I enjoyed City of Heroes while I was playing it so I thought I’d give this new super-powered MMORPG by the same studio a chance. Strangely, I wasn’t particularly geeked about the purchase. I actually left the damn thing in the truck for 3-days before I even brought it in the house to install it, which is very unusual for me. My excitement didn’t increase after the install either, I downloaded the patch and started using the character creator…. but I shut it down before I’d even finished making a character. I didn’t pick it up again for a week. Then, I did make it through the character builder, but shut it off two minutes into the tutorial. I just don’t care. I don’t like the graphic style of the game, I found the character builder to be clunky and not very intuitive, it’s just not doing it for me. I’m not willing to invest myself in this game.

My City of Heroes account expires next month and I have no interest in renewing it. I’m not going to pay for anymore time for Champions. I tried the free/pirate version of WoW and found it lame. Really, the only MMO that I’m playing is Dungeons & Dragons Online and that’s only because it’s free and I have a few friends playing it. Friends make these games worth it, otherwise… I’ve learned that I don’t care much about them. I guess I’m not a MMORPG kind of guy.

Football isn’t going much better. I lost again in my fantasy football league giving me a 1-5-0 record and one of the lowest point totals in the league. Sadly, I don’t care. I’ve managed to get my QuickHit team to level 13, but haven’t put much time into that either. And as for Madden 10 on the PS3, I beat Denis in overtime, 48-42, but it’s been more than a week and Jay and Kevin haven’t played their league game. I don’t think either of them is having any fun with it, which means this won’t last. And my Lions are doing not-so-well. At least they won one game.

Forza 3 comes out next week for the 360 and I’m looking forward to that, but with NaNoWriMo I won’t have much time to play it. Maybe I’ll hold off and hope I get it for Christmas.

I’ve been working on my story. Getting my ideas put into some sort of order. Fleshing out the characters. Determining locations. And I’ve got to say it’s coming along pretty good. I haven’t heard from Doug since I broached the NaNo subject, so I can only hope that things are going as well for him. Tasha has been helping me out with some of the psychology, motives, and general story stuff as this tale is more along the type of stuff that she reads than what I read. I’ve read some suspense/crime fiction but mostly my connection to the genre is through the television, so it’s nice to have her input.

I started to fill out a character chart for my main character, with the intention of completeing one for each of my primary supporting characters. But the chart I was working from was a 5-page survey and a lot of the questions I couldn’t answer, didn’t seem to fit, or didn’t seem relevant to the character or story. I understand the point of the exercise is to know your character, but this seemed excessive. I stopped that particular exercise for the time being. It’s just not how I do things and it felt uncomfortable. So I’ve been working on a plot diagram. I don’t think it’ll make a lot of sense to you. It makes sense to me, and I guess that’s what’s important. This is what I’ve got up to this point.

Story Connections

Sunday was a bad day for Fantasy Football if you’re the manager of the Rampant team, which I am. Monday wasn’t any better. I didn’t pay enough attention and started two players who had bye weeks. And the players that did start didn’t do so well. My bench outscored my starting roster. I lost the game. I suck. Oh well.

That’s about all that’s happened over the last couple days. I’m giving myself headaches thinking around corners and getting my ducks in order, but it’s all good, and I think the story will benefit from all the effort. That’s all for now. Later.

I played my first Franchise game in Madden 10 tonight. Jay’s Bears against my Packers. If you want the whole crap-load of stats, and I can’t imagine you do, you can check them out on the Madden Franchise site, here. Actually, I’m not certain that you’ll actually be able to see that page. I’ll simply say that things went pretty much my way throughout the game and I won, 14 Bears @ Packers 24. I had one fumble, but Jay had 1 fumble and a whopping 5 interceptions. I wanted to win, but not that way. Jay was a good sport about it and I look forward to a less one-sided affair when next our two teams meet.

In the No Nuts, No Glory fantasy league, my Rampant lost for the second week in a row. In fact, my scores seem to be going down with each week. It’s not how I’d hoped this would go. Anyway, final score in the game; WTF? 114.3, Rampant 94.1. I don’t really have much hope of the team improving, because I just can’t bring myself to care all that much. I do what I feel I must to remain competetive, but I just don’t really like the way the league is structured, rules wise. I don’t like people working on the waiver wire while the weeks games are still being played. I think there should be a period where the rosters are locked, say from the time the first game of the week starts until the time the last game of the week ends. No moves. No trades. No actions. But that’s just me and it’s not my league. I imagine that everybody else in this league is sitting around with their laptops on their lap as they watch the games and making changes to their team in damn near real time… Sorry. I’m not that into it. I beat my brother and that was my goal. We’ll just have to see how this whole thing plays out.

Have you had a chance to check out Quick Hit Football? My brother has, but I had to send him an extra code I had because as far as I know he still hasn’t gotten the one he applied for. My team is doing pretty well, at least I feel like it’s doing pretty well. I’ve got a record of  11-5-0 and a coaching level of 12. I played one game against a real person, and they quit on me in the 4th quarter because they were loosing. Which was made doubly annoying by the fact that them quitting meant that I lost 1200+ points that would have gone towards leveling me up the coaching scale. As a result, I’ve not taken another chance on real people. My impressions of the game are still favorable. It sounds like they’re planning on a lot of cool features, but it’s still in beta right now, so I guess we’ll have to wait to see what all comes to fruition.

It’s official, Denis is in the PS3 Madden 10 Franchise. We played a practice game tonight. I didn’t do so well. I completed 3 passes for 38 yards and ran for another 18. I had 3 balls intercepted and another 3 knocked out of the air. Fortunately, he didn’t play that much better or it could have been a real blowout. It was not a good game. Final score was, 14 Vikings @ Packers 3. Ah well, we’re calling it preseason. And anyway, I’ll whoop up on his purple ass in the regular season when it counts. Which leaves only Jay to test myself against, and that seems odd; odd only because his Chicago Bears are my first game of the season, so if we played a preseason match we’d only be turning around and playing an official match right after. I had intended for him to be my first game, but things didn’t work out that way. I guess I’ll leave it up to him.

Yesterdays Corn whipped up all over me in the fantasy league, beating me by better than 30-points. Everything I said yesterday still applies. No changes for me, I had nobody playing in the Monday Night game. Needless to say, he did. Final score was: Yesterdays Corn 138.8, Rampant 108.5. Here’s hoping that I get better results next weekend.

Finally the magic combination of a QuickHit Football code and a working website have come together to allow me to try out the game. I like it. It’s almost a football RPG. You’re the coach, you pick the plays and the players do their thing, you play games and earn points, after enough points you ‘level’ up and get different points that you use to improve your players. Which kinda pulls you along because you don’t want your players to suck. A word of advice, don’t pack all your points on one player, because you’ll end up with a QB that’s 3x as good as everybody else and if you’re throwing to a guy who can’t run a route or catch a ball it really doesn’t matter if you’re a superstar. And there’s no way I can see to reallocate your points once you’ve left the training screen. I’m just saying.

There is a download, so it’s not a completely online game. And there is a bit of lag, but not bad. The quarters are 3-minutes long and it takes about 20-minutes to play through a game. There’s some fun to be had here if you like football. I can see this being nice at the office, if I had an office, assuming you can put a small program on your machine. Codes still seem to be taking awhile to get, mine took four or five days to arrive, and I guess that’s because it’s still in beta. Give it a shot if it sounds good to you and then send me a friend invite. I’m arohen and my team is the Grand Rapids Lions. I haven’t played any human opponents yet, but I have played a number of the AI teams with mixed results:

Game Results

9/21     Brooklyn Gorillas        L          21-14   B Justice

9/21     Seattle Lonewolfs       W        10-7     R Chaput

9/21     Greenwich Guppies    L          21-10   T Wooten

9/21     South Shore Pirates     W        17-14   L Schnabel

9/21     Chicago Bombers        W        24-14   M Goldsmith

In other football news, things are looking bad for my fantasy team. I’ve got two guys who scored me no points and one guy who managed to get negative points. I’m losing by 8 points. And my opponent has two players playing tonight. So my record will be 1-1-0 by tomorrow morning. Congrats to my opponent, Yesterdays Corn.

Denis has picked up his copy of Madden 10 and I expect that he’ll be in the league sometime tomorrow. Looks like this thing might actually happen.

And last but not least, today is Doug’s birthday. Doug, do you still remember high school? Twenty-three years ago? We’ve had a good run, happy birthday.

Took the car in to Midas this morning. I’ve been meaning to take it somewhere for a while, and now that we have Tasha’s car here, this morning seemed as good a time as any. The thing has over 86,000 miles on it now and my list of things that need attention was long; mushy brakes, squealing belt, front tires and alignment, tune-up, and oil change. So I was hoping to get out of there for $600, but expecting it to be more like $1000. This is what happens when you wait too long for these repairs. So I was expecting to pay some cash. Which I was okay with.

I took it to Midas because, well, they just seemed like they were equipped to do everything I wanted done. They gave my car the thorough once over and brought back a slightly expanded list of things that needed attention. I pretty much expected that there were things I hadn’t noticed yet, so no surprise there. In the end, the oil was changed, the other fluids were topped off and the car given a tune up, the fuel injectors  cleaned, the battery was replaced, the brakes were checked (and were still good, but needed to be bled and adjusted to fix the pedal), both serpentine belts were replaced, the front end was aligned, we got a new set of spark plugs and wires, and we replaced all four tires (a nice matching set). It was a lot of work and I didn’t expect to see the car again until Monday afternoon, but they had it ready for us by 4:30 pm. It cost me just shy of $1,200, but we want to keep this car for another year-and-a-half or maybe two before we get another and just going on what I’ve had to do to this car in the past, probably this’ll be the last repair I do to it. So it was more than I thought it’d be, but not too much so and I feel confident in the work. It’s all good.

We got the all the laundry washed, folded, and put away, despite the fact that our new (or rather most recent, this thing may be 50 years old) washing machine seems to leak slightly. Which is very nice, considering the last one didn’t spin out anymore. We can deal with a slight leak for a weekend. Tasha did her house stuff, went to the store, and then made some very good nacho’s for dinner (after freaking out about the cost of the car repair). Apparently, stress makes her a wiz in the kitchen.

My Packers and I played my unofficial, preseason game against Kevin and his Lions team on the PS3 earlier. And the Packers (28) came out on top of the Lions (14). Jay was in the background, probably sitting on Kevin’s couch, and I like to think he was watching film and wondering how he’ll ever be able to beat this powerhouse that is Green Bay with his lowly Bears. He was hard to hear, but the fear and trepidation came through loud and clear. And Denis? rumor has it that he’ll pick up his copy of the game tomorrow. Not that it matters, he’s not very good at sports games or any games for that matter. I have no fear of his weak skills.

Oh yeah, I must acknowledge that Kevin has joined the Franchise. No more flack for him.

I’m off to play some Burnout with Denis on the PS3. Perhaps Jay and Kevin will be around later to join. So many games, so little time.

Later.

I may have to take back what I was saying about Quick Hit Football. I signed up a few weeks ago and they let me register and make a team. Last night when I tried to log in, they told me I had no account. I have the email. I have an account. To make matters worse. I’ve applied for a new account but have yet to see a code in my email. They’re not making me a fan. I’d like to try it, but apparently they don’t want me too.

Still nobody in my PS3 Madden Franchise but me. No excuse for Kevin and Jay. Denis, well, he won’t even pick his copy up until Sunday, so I’ll give him a little slack. But not much. I see that NHL 10 is out now and getting good reviews, I bet the guys are all over that, and if they are… I may make them wait. Bwah ha ha ha…

Our washing machine stopped working last night. Actually it’s been acting up for a couple days. The repair man says he’ll have a new one for us tomorrow. I’m down to my last uniform, good thing I don’t need them for the weekend.

I’ve been doing some research for a novel. I think I’m going to have to give up on Malach, I just don’t think I’m ready to write that story. It needs to stew for a bit longer on the back burner of my brain. But I want to write. So I’ve been thinking of ideas. And I’ve got one. Just need to figure a few more things out before I put words to paper.

Later.

Video game football is back. The 1st and Ten league has been reborn on the PS3. Jay, Kevin, Denis, and myself are taking up the Online Franchise mode in Madden NFL 10. In order to decrease the number of games against CPU Opponents we’ve taken teams in the NFC North. Jay will be heading the Chicago Bears, Kevin the Detroit Lions, Denis has picked the Minnesota Vikings, and that left me (last pick, last choice) with the Green Bay Packers. It’d be great to get more into this thing, so if you have a PS3 and Madden NFL 10 we’d love to have you join us. Provided of course that you’re not a dick. I don’t want to play games with a dick. Sorry. But at least I’m honest. Now if I could just get these other guys to sign up online so I can get started with the trades and what not.

In my fantasy football league I’m happy to report that Rampant (my team) beat RUNT (my brother’s team) in the season opener. Final score was Rampant 119.2, RUNT 111.0. I told him I was going to beat him and I’m glad I wasn’t just blowing smoke. It’d be a touch embarrassing to get beat by my baby brother. Points-wise we both ended up in the middle of the league. I’m feeling pretty good about this thing, but I don’t expect to win it and take home the big money.

In other fake football news, I found this online game by some of the folks that worked on Madden and worked on the 2K teams. Quick Hit Football. It’s a coach style game, or at least that’s what they’re saying. I haven’t actually played it yet, but I am looking forward to it. My team is the Grand Rapids Lions and my user name is arohen, per usual.

Did you watch the Saints beat up on the Lions this weekend? It was rough, but I did like what I was seeing from the Lions offense. The defense… not so much.

Today we jumped on the bike and headed out on the highway, looking for adventure or whatever came our way. We ended up in Muskegon, actually that was the plan from the start, but it didn’t sound right with that first sentence.  We went to the pier, and ignoring the warning signs telling us we would die, walked out by the signal tower and sat on the rocks. It was a little cool for swimming, but I wanted to eat at Captain Jack’s before they closed for the winter, so we had lunch there. It’s a very nice little beach pavillion style bar; think food, drink, volleyball, fun in the sun, and live music. It’s a little far from the water which is kind of hidden by the tall beach grass. There was a boy girl duo playing fiddle and guitar playing beach music on the deck. The food was pretty good and not too expensive. But damn is that a long ride on the bike. I really need to get a windscreen and maybe a bigger seat for the lady passenger stuck on the back. I think this was the first time we’ve gone to the beach without the dog, and it was kinda nice to not have to worry about a wet sandy animal on the ride home. It was cool. We’ll be back for the party next summer.

I spent a little time playing Diablo 2 with Denis and Joel this evening. I gotta say, my eyes aren’t good enough to play this game on my monitor. I’m running at a resolution of 1920×1200 and the game was designed to run at 800×600 or maybe 1024×768. Even with the hi-res patch my character is a tiny little fella. Playing with these two reminds me of some of the problems we had playing Anarchy Online, mainly my desire to kill things and their desire for me to slow down and stick with the group. And a general conflict of interests, or should I say goals. But it was a good time and the latest version of Skype seemed to hold up well over the conference call.

Tomorrow is the holiday. I hope you enjoy yours. I’m just glad for the day off and the short week.

Later.