If you don't know, I recently purchased an EVE Online subscription. I've been playing it every second of my spare time in an attempt to "level up" (yes, it's an MMO) and get my skills to a point where I can get into a decent ship for PVP battles and such. Well, I joined up with a fleet, not knowing what I was doing, and they were just flying around aimlessly (or so I thought). Eventually, however, we all ended up in a battle with another fleet; a PVP war. My ship was a level one POS with one small pulse laser on it, so I bailed (or so I thought). Once I had bailed, I quit the game and went about my day. When I went back to the game, my ship was in the same place I had bailed to, and none of my fleet members were there. All the enemy ships, however, were there. Apparantly they didn't know that I was a total noob with a worthless ship, and they proceeded to blow me away. I was a little upset, but I didn't think much of it until I realized that had also lost everything in that ships cargohold, which happened to be just about everthing I owned. Lasers, skill books, minerals, etc. Huge, HUGE, frustration, but I had a good chunk of change to get some of those things back with, so I wasn't too worried.

I purchased such a ship, a destroyer, and fitted it with 5 medium level pulse lasers, and one medium level beam laser (which cost me a lot of money and time, going from station to station to pick up said newly acquired merchandise). One of my skill books (sorry for the unexplained terminology) was at a station 22 jumps away. I knew that it would take about 30 minutes to get there, so I set the auto pilot of my new destroyer, fitted with awesomness and jumped in the shower. I didn't know that I was in a low security PVP section of the universe, but apparantly I was because when I got back my ship had been destroyed by pirates. Not bot pirates, actual people on the opposing side of the war I'm apparantly involved in.

So, not only had I just lost everything twice, I now have to start over again from scratch for a third time. Luckily, my skills and money aren't affected by losing ships (except for the fact that I have to spend my money on a new ship). This game is really, really difficult to get situated in and not knowing a thing about what all goes on in it is deffinatly a downside as well.

From the learning process of hindsight, I've decided to purchase insurance on all the ships I buy from now on, and I've also learned that any solar system with a security level of 0.4 or lower is called a "Low Sec" system which noobs and loners need to stay away from.

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem for Gamecube. It's a game that messes with your head when your characters "sanity meter" get's low. There are 14 different "sanity effects" and even knowing that, I fell hard for one of them. I was on the brink of insanity myself because I had very little life left, and I was on a level's final boss. At one point, I got so very close to beating him that the excitement clouded my memory of the sanity effects, and when it said "You're gamecube controller is unplugged" and the game continued while my character stood helpless, I actually dove over the coffee table to plug my controller in whene the screen flashed and my character said "What's happening to me?" like he always does after a sanity effect. My face must've turned red, but luckily no one was there to see it. I paused the game, took a breath and laughed at myself. It was a great experience.

I just took the bait of a Xanga offshoot site. Click here to do the same!

Last night I watched Apple's iPhone OS 3.0 presentation, and after doing so I dropped to my knees and cried. Miracles are happening over at apple, and the iPhone's new OS will really, sincerely change the world. Any iPhone haters out there will be shut right up when this new OS goes live. Over 1000 new API's for developers are being released, and iPhone 3.0 yields over 100 new features for the end users. Multimedia messaging? FINALLY!! YouTube user login? FINALLY!! Copy and paste? Holy crap, need I say more? The ONE thing the iPhone doesn't have that just about every other phone has (including my old Nokia) is a video camera. Sure, if you jailbreak the phone, you can get a video camera. But, the videos you take cannot be synced with anything, so even that's useless. Anyway, if you've got a couple hours to burn, I highly recommend you watch the presentation. Especially if you don't have an iPhone. If you do have an iPhone, brace yourself for your wildest display of pure joy since iPhone 2.0. This is big. Really big.

There's no doubt in my mind that this job was a gift from God. Amidst this terrible economy, jobs are virtually impossible to find, and this one just kinda fell into my lap and brought great financial assistance just in time. However, it is an eight hour a day, five day a week job, and I have really fallen in love with the swing shift. 40 hours a week (in a row) is just too much for me to handle. Each day it gets harder and harder to wake up knowing that I have to go to work again. I haven't had any time to play video games, I haven't had any time to blog or write anything, and I haven't seen my girlfriend or her boys for more than 10 minutes a day if that. You can say "welcome to adulthood" all you want, but this is just too much for me to handle all at once. Yea, I should be greatful I have a job, and I should be greatful I have a family to come home to, but I just don't know how much longer I can take this punishment. The job is way too much stress for me to handle, but there's really no other option. I can't quit, and I can't stay. What can I do? I'm absolutely lost in all this confusion and I need another option. Maybe something will come along. We'll see.

I realize I haven't posted a blog in a while now, and I really feel bad because a lot has happened since my last post. But that's why I haven't posted in a while. I've been so busy working and figuring out financial issues and a slew of other things that I haven't had time for anything else. My Steam profile says "0 hours in the past two weeks" which is absolutely not right. Zero hours of gaming in the past two weeks? Pathetic. Working 8 hour a day, five days a week really sucks the life out of you, and the fact that some of you still find time to blog working said schedule is absolutely amazing. Mad props to you. I probably won't be blogging as much as I usually do any time soon, but like I said in my last post I'll try and do XangaTV as often as possible on weekends. If Friday is better for you, I can try and do it Friday nights, but I work until 9pm (central time) so it might be late. Otherwise, I'll be doing it every Saturday for as long as possible. I'm sorry I haven't kept up with you guys, but I am reading your blogs (from my phone while on break at work) and I'll do my best to comment whenever I get the chance. I like to do XangaTV a lot, so drop by my page every now and again, and you might see me a few times during the week as well. Peace!