I still am working over at 360voice - and recently I had a trip to Boston to visit the parent company GamerDNA.  I previously blogged about that little adventure, just look a few posts back.  Part of that trip was to discuss possible options of me working with GamerDNA - partially because now 360voice is owned by them, but also because there is plenty of work to be done for gamerDNA as well.  So in the near future my coding obsession will include some work on GamerDNA as well.

After reading about Diablo 3, it got me back into Diablo 2 - so I installed and jumped onto to Battle.net again recently.  I have only completed a few quests, and have only gained a few levels but its just as good as I remember it was.  I just have been juggling that, other PC games, the xbox 360, and I went back to a MUD that I used to play fairly regularly (perhaps obsessively?) with a buddy of mine.  As I am typing this I just realized how amazing it is that I pass up my xbox 360 and PC with their amazing graphical capabilities and play a game which is simply text.  I guess on some level it makes sense, because the mud world is an MMO without graphics, one benefit is you never have to worry about your computer being out of date

I gave manhunt 2 a try on the wii, it was not horrible, but it just couldnt keep my interest so it got sent back to gamefly.  My wife and I have been playing rock band a few nights a week, all it took was her seeing me fail miserably at singing and she decided to join and show me how it is done.  So gaming is crammed full right now, it seems to go in phases I guess.

I think I am going to record an episode of the friendcast tonight - not sure if my partners are going to be around, but with my boston trip, and then vacation the show kind of is floating in never never land and people are probably are starting to wonder if its going to come back at all.

I left the hotel, and there wwas noise and banging going on everywhere, then I noticed a bunch of streets shut down - apparently it was Pride day, and there was a parade going through - so to try and keep the boys from having to deal with closed roads and congestion from the parade, I thought I would be smart and take the subway over towards Steve’s apartment.  Well I thought I was a big shot and knew what I was doing, unitl I realized I went 3 subway stops the wrong direction, ending up deeper into Boston - no big deal right?  Just hop off and get on the other direction to make up for the mistake.  Except when I  got on the other train it kept stopping and waiting for trains ahead of us, extending the time it was taking to get there - and of course being underground my cell wasn’t really working so there was no way to warn them of my screw up.

Finally things got real interesting, im sitting there jamming to my headphones, and we only regained 1 of the 3 stops I screwed up, and after that would be 3 more.  Well we stopped again and at this point I figured it was just like previous stops, a train in front that was delaying us from going ahead, but I very wrong.  Everyone started running, i mean running out the doors of the train, it was like a movie - there i still sat in almost slow motion wondering what the hell could make everyone run.  I figured I must have missed an annoucement or something and it was something like we had to change trains and everyone didn’t want to miss the other train or something, then I looked behind me - and saw a wall of smoke charging at me inside the actual train.  Apparently something in the station, or the train was on fire.  So of course I got up and ran like hell too.  So now I am 2 stops further into boston than where i was before, I dont really know the city, and neither do they - but we finally made contact on the phone.

So now its about 30 minutes later then we were going to meet, Steve’s GPS can’t find my location, and now there are about 20 fire trucks and hoses going all over the place - and you guessed it MORE blocked roads.  Its like the ability to block city traffic is following me.  Finally they made it into the general area, and as we discussed street signs I figured they were a block or two up the street, I ran up and hopped in and we were finally off to our destination.

We stopped and bought some beverages - which they ended up carding every one of us.  Which I found pretty funny, here the lady at the register is now looking at a North Carolina, a Pennsylvania, and an Illinois state ID - and we are in Massachusetts.  She gave them a look and had the mananger give it the OK, but I found it comical.

Then we made it to the house, met the wife, and the kids after they got up from their nap.  As expected the rest of the family was as nice as Trapper, it took a bit of warming up before the kids stop running from me in fear - but by bedtime I got a bit hug and a kiss on the cheek from Hannah.  Totally unexpected but sweet - and she can really rock out the mic on rock band!

After rocking out and then trying out some Grid - we got a message about the blogs on 360voice - apparently Steve broke them by forgetting to turn things back to automatic after fixing an issue and testing the night before.  After we got the hamsters back on the wheels to resolve that issue it was about time to get some sleep so I could make my flight today - so Steve and I were off back to the hotel.  The GPS went a little crazy near the big buildings, and we ended up just winging it for a bit to find it, but we finally located my home for the night.  Then just when I think its not possible that anything else could create chaos for my night, i get to the seventh floor and my key doesnt work - so I have to head back down and get that fixed before I can finally pass out.

Just to be safe, after all that craziness, I got a wake up call for 6:00 AM, set the hotel room alarm for 6:15AM, and then also my cell phone alarm at 6:30AM.  My flight wasnt until 10:30, but I was taking any chances, and it worked out because I am actually about to board my final leg in philly around the time I was originally supposed to leave boston (there was room on an earlier flight when I made it to the airport)

All in all, an awesome weekend - even with the crazy random parades, getting lost walking around Boston completely aimlessly, the crazy taxi prices, and riding on a subway train apparently on fire - it was still awesome, just plain awesome.

It was Carla, the office manager’s birthday so we all headed over to a restaraunt of her choosing for a few drinks and food - followed up by some seriously loud and seriously large rock band on a huge projector.  Quite an amazing end to the night.  Then I stopped in and took a quick look at Steve’s place and hopped a cab over to my hotel.

This morning I just roamed all over the cities of Cambridge and Boston - like seriously roamed, I started in a direction randomly turned and just looked following my path of randomness.  I actually walked so long that the sneakers I was wearing started blistering my heals, which I should have known that was going to happen - converse all stars seem to do that to my feet anytime I walk excessively.  I stopped in a mall that I stumbled upon and picked up a few shirts for the kids, their favorite characters, Dora for Summer and Thomas for Oliver.

The family seems to miss me, again not suprising - I rarely go away without them.  My son told me that I was away on work, but when I came home I was going to get a treat, then he continued to tell me the treat was birthday cake and we were all going to eat it.  Today was the first time that I talked to him on the phone and he actually communicated back, rather than just talked about whatever was on his mind about Thomas, or the wiggles or his matchbox collection.  It is crazy to just take a step back and see how big he is getting.

Rumor is that Trapper is headed over to pick up Steve and I, then we are heading back to his house for a BBQ and some gaming.  Which reminds me, Trapper - Fix your blog header, you are a Bostonian now!

It’s Sunday afternoon and I randomly decided to take a moment and blog about my weekend, and other recent happenings.  

If you are looking to hear me rather than read about my ramblings you can head over and check out episode #5 of the 360voice podcast, which was just recently released a few days ago - and of course you can always head over to 360friendspot.com for the friendcast every most monday’s.  We just recorded Epsiode 5 thursday, and I will probably put the finishing touches on the editing tonight.

I rented Kung Fu Panda, mostly to have one of the recent released games to talk about on the podcast, and perhaps for some easy gamerscore.  The game is actually interesting for a kids game - I mean I am not addicted and need to play it every waking hour but I have enjoyed it more then LOST for example.  The achievements for the most part are on the easy side, but there are a couple that might take a bit of work.  My son loved watching the game on the tv, so much so that I had to stop playing a few times since he was throwing things around like Po does and causing trouble.  He liked it so much that we had a family trip to the movies to watch it on the big screen.  That was the first time I have been to the movies in a while, and during ‘prime’ hours to boot - I forgot how expensive it is for a night at the movies.

I gave the CIV demo a spin too -  but I didn’t play for very long.  I used to love the series on the computer so I was pretty excited to give this game a try.  I am not sure if my interest in that genre has dropped or if I just missed having the full computer setup for controlling the game, but I just couldn’t get into this demo.  I haven’t totally signed the game off yet, but I might give it a rental first.

I went through and deleted a ton of my xbox live arcade games which I am almost definately not going to play - freeing up about 2 gigs of space on my hard drive.  I had to at this point I didn’t even have enough space to try more the 1 game demo at a time.  I have the Bourne Demo and Grid Demo downloading right now - Bourne I almost definately want to play the full game (its top of my gamefly queue), and grid after watching this video I definately want to at least give that a rent too.

I also played some COD4 to get in on the double XP weekend - but like any multiplayer shooter I can play for a while and enjoy it - but it starts to just feels like the same over and over again - spawn, die, spawn, die, spawn, die - so yeah its probably due to my lack of skill

I have quite a bit of traveling coming up in the near future.  This Friday I am heading to the airport at the crack of dawn for a weekend in Boston.  I am going to head over to GamerDNA and meet everyone there and then the rest of the weekend isn’t really set in stone, but I am sure I will get some gaming in with Fatty Chubs and ChangeAgent - and maybe at a beer…or ten.  Sunday is Father’s day so I am headed back home on an earlier flight on Sunday to spend it with the family - should be an interesting adventure though.

Then two weeks later we are taking a family vacation to Toronto, and a few weeks after that is my weekend trip to NYC that the company takes us on every year.  So my gaming might be neglected, but fun is still to be had.

Today we did our normal running around and shopping that we do most every sunday - but on the trip I was able to pick up my Wii Fit and finally replace the one that was lost or stolen on my amazon.com preorder.  Speaking of preorders, I am still waiting on Ninja Gaiden II, which I got a notice that the game was not released from the manufacturer delaying another game - i have my doubts if I will get this one either.

The final item for this jam packed weekend is I am taking my son to a Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Yankees game.  It’s an event my company is invited all the employees to come hang out, watch the game and have some food.  Baseball might be a bit advanced for my son to watch, but luckily its in an area where he can just run around and play with my co-worker’s kids - so we are giving it a shot.

First of all this blog isn’t my only neglected little internet home - I also have not been keeping up with the family blog either.  I recently posted an entry over there and uploaded about 200 images that were waiting to be put on the site.  Granted that blog isn’t filled with entries on a regular basis, only when we do something or have photos to put online - but I was a bit behind. 

I have the day off of work today, I spent half of it at my son’s pre-school for a little end of the year party, and the other half is being spent with the kids and just relaxing (with a few interuptions with checking the computer, and writing this entry). 

We are keeping up with our weekly schedule on the friendcast (episode #4 should be out monday).  We have not recieved a ton of feedback, but what I have recieved has been fairly positive - so either we almost know what we are doing, or people just prefer to be nice.  They say no news is good news, so I hope they are right  A big thanks to Ymiris, and Antediluvia for sticking with me weekly, and to Tallboy for his recent visit to the show.

I have been keeping busy with 360voice, recently did some modifications to the way you can categorize and list your games, always keeping up wtih support (though this has slowed down because we got some extra help on the support queue), and just lurking around the forums as usual.  There should be a new episode of the podcast on the way soon…ish!

Ymiris and I have been planning some changes for madden-stats.com, they are some pretty big changes on how you get your stats to be saved, and how you see them - its essentially gutting the whole system - fun stuff.  Hopefully one day it actually becomes reality!

My wireless headset just randomly stopped working, plugging it in for a charge doesn’t do anything either.  So I guess I can finally lay my ongoing complaint about my headset and the chat pad to rest.  I also pre-ordered Wii Fit (mostly for the wife) and it never came.  After calling to check on it, apparently it was lost, and they are out of stock so the best they could do was give me a refund.  I wish I would have known that this past weekend, because they were all over the place in the stores in my area - but last night 4 of the 4 places I checked were bone dry.  I am also waiting on a new hard drive for the laptop which is currently having a love affair with random blue screens of death and all signs point to the hard drive.  Hopefully that doesn’t get lost like the Wii Fit.

I am headed to Boston for a weekend in a few weeks.  Going to head over to GamerDNA to visit Trapper and Steve (aka the Voice boys) as well as meet more people in the company and see what its all about.  Not sure if it will end up being another Code Weekend - though I am sure we will go over at least a few ideas for the site, some gaming, and most likely beer - so I am sure it will be a rocking time.

A few weeks after that I will be up enjoying the fine nation of the Canuck’s with the family for a little over a week.  With gas prices these days, perhaps not the smartest plans, but it still is looking a lot cheaper than our original plans of going to Italy.

I guess that about does it, there are a few other things going on, but they are either nothing really worth blogging about in great length, or way to early to even consider how they are going to turn out - let alone tell everyone about….yet!

First episode, a pilot if you will, where Ymiris and Squidpunch get together to talk about gaming in general, some of the recent releases and gaming news. This is the first time I was actually running the recorder, doing the editing, etc - so hopefully it came out all right for you guys.

If you want to send us some feedback or be on the show email us at podcast@360friendspot.com

head on over and check out the show: http://www.360friendspot.com/2008/05/12/friendcast-episode-1/

4/27 4:15am’ish 6lbs 11ozs 
 

This weekend we recorded Episode #5 of the 360voice podcast.  It is a short and sweet episode, mostly just to officially release information on the big news releasing today about 360voice’s merger with gamerdna, on that same subject you can hear me speak a little on The Xbox podcast.  It is a great move for the site which will allow it to expand, flourish, and shine even more then it does today.  ChangeAgent and Fatty Chubs have all ready (mostly) moved up to Cambridge, and are rocking out as full staff at gamerdna.  No longer do they have the distraction of a day job in the way of working their 360voice (and other gamerdna properties) but the day job IS working on those sites.

I am sure there is more, but another post is just a click away when I remember what it could have been

I know the traffic was up more then it has been in quite some time, but it wasn’t high enough that it should have been affecting the CPU usage of the shared server (which is what they mentioned in the email from support).

So I am currently waiting for a response from support about the site, and if the site was going to be this active on a regular basis I definately would have to start looking into upgraded the hosting plan again - all though it really looks like there is some problem with one of the apps I have running on the site which is what is slowing it (and apparently many other sites) down.

I’ll post more if/when I know more to post!

Next on the plate was this little site called UnlockTheAchievement.com - it seems to be a bit popular, maybe you have heard of it?  I knew it was going to do pretty well, but it has surpassed (at least my) expectations…I am just glad that the code all works - though the server has had its trouble off and on, I don’t think it is code related.  The server has been hit with a pretty good amount of traffic from, xbox360fanboy.com, xbox.com, digg.com as well as the 40 some community sites which are hiding the images as well as promoting the site.  From that site has been a pretty good amount spillage over to my blog here (I have never had this many visitors!) as well as 360friendspot.  Both of them are hosted on my shared hosting plan - which apparently is taking a pretty big performance hit from the new found traffic (oops!).

…If you code it….they will come