Urghaberga and her new hair-do. :)

World of Warcraft patch 3.0.2 launched!  As I expected, its made this 60-70 grind so much smoother for me and my rogue.  (I went from 63-66 in under two days.)  I love the new rogue buffs.  The bottom talent in the combat tree is amazingly useful against enemies.  Haven’t had any PvP encounters yet, but I’m sure it’ll come in handy there, too.  I just hope it doesn’t get nerfed too badly later on. :(  Also, I got a new haircut since the barber shops were introduced in the patch.

My Saints Row 2 character.

Still sorta working on the WoW trading card website, but development has slowed on that.  Been getting distracted from that with WoW and 360.  Earlier tonight I wrote a script for my brother to display and browse a file directory tree in a web browser.  I’ll probably put it up for download here later on some time.  That further helped me in my “re-learning” effort, so hopefully the trading card website can get finished soon… or at least a working prototype of it.  I hope I just don’t get distracted and forget about it with all the new video games coming out again.

I just got Saints Row 2 which I am loving.  Its just as, if not more over-the-top ridiculous, cheesy, crude, and awesome as the original.  One of the biggest improvements has been the character customization.  A lot of my time has been in the clothes shops just tweaking the guy’s look.  Fable 2 and Fallout 3 come out in the next couple of weeks so I’m probably gonna be going back to focusing on 360 again… Not sure how thats going to affect the WoW.  Gears of War 2 and Call of Duty 5 are coming out in November, but I doubt I’ll be day one investors in those like I was with the others.  Too many other games to play!  I got into the Call of Duty 5 beta and haven’t even found time for that yet.

My WoW Fragmat. Its so pretty and big and smooth and awesome. :D

Stupid Lisa got to go to stupid BlizzCon and I didn’t, but she did buy some stuff from the store at my request and shipped them to me.  I gots two shirts and a large and pretty Fragmat mouse pad.  The shirts was a StarCraft 2 t-shirt and a long-sleeve Northrend shirt.  I wanted the Horde t-shirt, but the dummies behind the counter gave her the wrong one.  Its not a problem, though.  I love the Northrend one just the same.  I don’t have many long sleeve shirts to begin with.  She also tossed in two StarCraft 2 sweat bands (to be sure that my wrists never get too cold), and a nice little drawing of a rogue getting owned by a paladin (like that would ever happen).

Mirror picture with my Northrend shirt

The unemployment extension ran dry last week.  Still filling out applications all over but nothings catching.  Planning on taking some classes next semester, too, so I dunno if thats gonna hurt the effort any either.

Its kinda funny.  The only time I’ve been able to settle down and get some code work done is after around 1:00am, when everyone is asleep and I should be in bed.  I just open up Winamp, throw on my headphones, and get to work.  It definitely isn’t helping me keep a “normal” sleep schedule… guess its a good thing I don’t have a job still.

Damn it, I need a job!  I’m probably gonna be reapplying for UPS again since I never heard back from them after the factory tour and THREE interviews that they had me come in for.  Because of the season it would be for the holiday part-time rather than the long-term employment that I applied for earlier, which is good because that two-year commitment they wanted from me was a little intimidating.  I would have gone through with it, but if something else would come up then that bridge would be burned and I wouldn’t be able to ever work there again.  Is that a good thing or a bad thing?  Well, that’s to be decided at a later date…

Been thinking about going back to school and taking a couple classes part-time, too.  Having a degree would help this whole situation, I’m sure.

I wanna go see Local H play live soooo badly.  I have ever since I discovered their music.  Most of their shows are in bars and are 21 and over so I never was able to even go… but now I can! :D  They are playing in DeKalb on the 24th.  I gotta see if I can convince one of my friends to let me drag them along.

Oh, and my rogue finally hit level 60!  Level 62 now, actually, and I am in Outlands now too.  Cool stuff.

It was about a week before I could find the starter kits to get my collection up off the ground, but once I did, the collecting bug bit me… hard.  A couple weeks later and I now have about 3,500 cards - probably more.  Yeah.

Its nice to have a new hobby.  I seem to have hit a bit of a slump with my art, and was going to go crazy if I JUST had video games to keep me busy.  The cards have provided me with a number of different types of fun too.  Just simply sorting the cards, as dorky as that may sound, has been a nice way to pass the time away.  I guess it just comes with the compulsive nature I seem to develop with these sorts of things.

Probably the best thing to come out of this whole fiasco, though, is that it has helped me revitalize interest in one of my other hobbies - programming.  Web programming, that is.  I haven’t really had any ideas or a strong drive to make anything with PHP and MySQL in a very long time.  I’ve been wanting that to change for a very long time, I just didn’t know how to do it.  I’ve finally come up with an idea.  A card database and collection index.

There are a good amount of card database websites out there, but I’ve really been wanting some kind of website or software that could help me keep track of my collection.  Especially with such a large collection, I want something more interactive and visual than what a simple Excel document can provide.  My efforts looking for this kind of software have been very unfufilling, so I decided that I’m gonna make one to fill the void.

Should be fun.  Hopefully I can actually see it through to the end.

So I got Too Human and Mercenaries 2 instead.

Too Human is terrible.  Worse than I expected, after having played the demo.  It almost seems like the camera and controls got WORSE in the final product.  The clumsy melee control mechanic almost makes the game unplayable.

Oh well.  I have it for four more nights and I’m a sucker for achievements.

Haven’t tried Mercs 2 yet, but it looks pretty good.  The original was pretty fun so I’m not too worried.  Another copy of Force Unleashed should be available in a couple of days.  Looking forward to Lego Batman too.

Three weeks ago I was picked as fourth place winner and got 1000 Microsoft points in Xbox.com’s GTAIV sweepstakes that they ran around the launch of GTAIV.  That also came out of nowhere to suprise and excite me.

I never win these kinds of things, so both happening so close to each other is kind of strange.  I’m not complaining, though!  The last contest I can remember winning is a cake walk at a church picnic.  I only tried because my sister was bugging me to try it, and I won a cake on that first entry.

Long story short - I kept starting over because the network file sharing wasn’t working when I was testing it in VMWare.

Turns out it was all because of some issue between VMWare and my network controller’s drivers.  VMWare doesn’t play well with “Offload TCP_LargeSend” enabled on my NIC.

So, basically, all I’m really trying to say is that I hate compruders.  They like to waste my time.

• I’m playing WoW… again… for like the fifth time now.  I might actually keep up with it this time, though, since I have friends that actually play WITH me.
• Psychostick is the greatest band you’ve never heard of.  Go listen to them!
• I now have a very short mohawk on the top of my head.
• The new Slipknot album is good.
• I kind of want to get back into web coding but I don’t think it’ll go anywhere.  I never have any ideas or focus.
• The seventh and final season of The Shield premieres in one week, and I’m soooo ready.
• I need to clean my room and format my compruder.

That’s all for now.  Adios.

Putting aside the utter ridiculousness of the IDEA and other obvious flaws with this announcement, what the hell is this going to be about?

Is it just going to be another Stripperella, only with a lot less body-mass? Instead of fighting the usual “bad guys”, she’ll just get drunk, smoke pot, and have sex with any man who would have her?

Think of the story-lines… her secret identity is revealed by way of grainy night vision video footage? Someone frames her for drunk driving and she gets sent to jail? She fights a serious and intense bout with AIDS??

Oh Stan, why have you forsaken us?