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That’s right folks, with the recent news at work I feel its almost required I cut back what I can at least for now.  So perhaps not the end, but both my Tabula Rasa and Warhammer online accounts have been been put on hold for now.  In all reality I keep busy enough with various projects and console gaming that I don’t get to play them nearly enough to be paying monthly anyway - but I really enjoyed both of them and liked to play them when I could.  I kept my subscriptions so that was possible.

As some of you know, my company decided to take a unique approach to the economic problems most businesses face these days.  Instead of selecting whatever number of individuals they needed to trim to cut expenses, they decided to ’share the pain’ (their words not mine) with the entire staff - that is to say we all recieved a 20% pay reduction.  To be completely fair, it was a 20% reduction in the time at work as well - I now have an extra day off of the day job.  All in all a bit of a shock to the system, one which made me think I really should think about what I can do to cut back and save or pay off debts, especially when who knows when things will get better, or worse.

Now of course let me say I know I am not the first that has been impacted by the current state of the economy and sadly I doubt I will be the last but it is my blog so I can rant from time to time if I want.  Do I think that this was the right choice for them to make?  Well honestly I am not in the postion to make that call.  I am sure it wasn’t an easy decision to make either.  I can say that I don’t love it, some might have even said I overreacted at first, but looking back I guess I am happy I still have the 80% left.  Some people I know have not been as lucky in recent times.

So even though I have an extra day off as I continue to fill that day with things to do - I will miss my Tabula Rasa (so close to finally making 30 and selecting my final class selection!) and Warhammer (I barely got to know you), but I have hope I will be back soon enough. 

Truth be told, you probably will see me on Xbox Live from time to time on that day off (Monday)- and you can guarantee I will have a few more hours to dedicate to 360voice and GamerDNA development.  Which my friends, is what I like the call the silver lining of this cloud.

As my wife said this might have been a sign, we will get through it, and who knows maybe I will end up coming out on top from this challenge in the end.

I have been Avatar…ized! That’s right I made it in on the second wave of NXE previews.  I actually didn’t even notice the email but got a prompt for a system update when I was booting GoW2.  After it completed I noticed the email in my box saying it would be coming. I have to admit, I originally signed up to just give it a shot, and see what it was all about - but I wasn’t super excited to get my hands on it or anything.  I think I have said in the past that console updates don’t get me hot under the collar for the most part - but I have to bite my tongue.  The new features and sexy look make me happy I got my hands on it early. I am actually considering going back to netflix, just for the online streaming (changed to blockbuster online a while back), and the interface just seems to function a ton smoother, but who am I kidding if you really care about the update, you all ready read all about it on 10 news sites - you dont need me to drone on on my blog about it.

Gears of Goodness War 2 Secondly I went out and got Gears of War 2 at the midnight release in my area.  It was pretty quiet - the biggest news from the night was the kid behind me won a free Halo 3 Legendary edition for wearing a Gears of War shirt to the event.  So apparently it does in fact pay to be “that guy”, you know the one that wears the band t-shirt to the concert of said band.  My hat goes off to everyone involved with Gears 2 though - seriously.  I haven’t completed the campaign as of yet, but I have been completely blown away by it every moment so far - and the multiplayer experience has been amazing as well.  The horde mode gets intense, again I haven’t gotten high enough to really gauge this - but it turns into complete mayhem quick - and I love every minute of it.

Well that’s it for now, those two things made such an impact I felt like taking a moment to pimp them out - I expected both to be good, but they surpassed my expectations on so many levels.  I have been tooling around with XNA here and there when I have some free time - so depending on what comes of that I might post up some samples or something.  It will probably be quite some time before I even consider having something thats worthy of the Community Games on Xbox Live - but game development was always a childhood dream of mine - and even if nothing comes of it, I enjoy tinkering. Speaking of tinkering - I have been playing around a bit with some new signatures heavily based on 360voice data & avatars - heres a quick sample - what do you think?

I am going to get cranking away on some code my current GamerDNA and 360voice projects again - and with luck some more Gears 2 soon…very soon

So after my post yesterday I was headed out the door of the hotel to wait for Trapper and Steve for the BBQ as I said.  I would have never guessed how the rest of that night played out though - sure some of it went as I expected - food, rock band, and meeting Trapper’s wife and kids, but so much more happened.

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.

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Yesterday was a bit of an adventure - some serious congestion with security to get to my first flight making my boarding somewhat tight, then I took a cab from boston to GamerDNA, a trip that cost $40, which was much more then I originally had guessed.  Just to put it in perspective, and this might have changed since I lived there, but you could take a cab from the airport to most of the central portion of philly for $25.  Then I headed up to the office, and got to meet everyone that was in the office and not busy with meetings and such.  Steve (Fatty Chubs) and I had an ongoing meeting for most of the day in releation to some 360voice changes, and “Badges 2.0″ in a whole.  We made some pretty serious progress, at least in our planning process.

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!

Well I noticed my blog entries have cut down since I decided to keep the blogging to more of a personal level - but then again who needs yet another news site anyway - and lets be completely honest (I am a big boy I can take it).  It is very highly doubtful that you are heading over to my humble blog to get the latest news stories in the gaming world anyway

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

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Well, its been quite a while since I posted on here, except a quick congrats to steve519 on the birth of his new daughter, and a quick mention of the friendcast, and i don’t have any real excuse, just going through the motions I guess.  Perhaps it is time for a quick status update for those of you that care what I keep myself busy with.

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. 

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Yeah, the title of this post means absolutely nothing.  I just was having a hard time coming up with a title for a post about pretty much nothing [:)]  I haven’t blogged in a while, on any of my sites actually so I figured I should take a bit of time and change that.  Be warned, when I start thinking “I haven’t blogged in a while”, the posts usually end up just me rambling away, mostly about things you couldn’t care less about.  You have been warned!

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Just realized I haven’t posted anything on the blog lately, which got me wondering why that was. Especially with all of the new GDC news - the blog should be exploding with info!  Long story short, I have just been busy I guess.  Doing some major code changes at work during the day - and filling my nights with some coding as well :-)  You might have seen me respond to one of your support requests at 360voice (boy you guys submit alot of support requests!), or you might have noticed the recent rollover changes on your challenge page on the 360voice front, and in relation to 360friendspot - it went through some pretty major (background) changes which I am working on it here and there - we are still battling a DNS issue - so if you cant see the site (like me at the time of this posting) its because somehow the DNS got out of wack again  - so I had to ask ZaaM to update it again, I really am begining to hate DNS issues.

I also just re-built a LAMP server in my house to play around with - mostly to try out Ruby on Rails.  It’s a bit different but interesting.  If I ever really get a handle on it, maybe some new tools will show up using Ruby on Rails

Finally my wife accepted a new job, starting tomorrow - so we have been reorganizing the office - mostly taking out her work stuff that she no longer needs - and rearranging my desk area with the new found space. 

Hey Squid you skipped a week again!  Yeah I am aware, but this week of all weeks I have a pretty valid excuse, perhaps a few.  I joined a new site officially, a site is moving, and unfortunately a site is dying.  This should be an interesting update. 

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So I just realized that I haven’t posted about my trip last weekend to hang out with Steve (Fatty Chubs) and Trapper (ChangeAgent) from 360voice.com.  That’t not entirely true actually, I did mention it in my Status Report, but at the time of that post I had not uploaded photos. 

Friday Evening after work I headed to my wonderful small time airport awaiting my flight to Chicago.  The flight was like most flights these days delayed, but luckily they offer free internet service in the airport.  So I was able to pass my time with Zelda: Phanton Hourglass on my DS (I still haven’t come close to finishing this game - I am such a slacker), and randomly browsing forums and chatting with friends etc. 

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