Alive
I guess I should start by apologizing. Its been close to a year since I put up anything new here and up until recently, it didn’t concern me much. The last year of my life has been one giant roller coaster that I had a hard time dealing with. Every single aspect of my life has changed, for better or for worse, and I am finally getting to the point where I have enough sanity to write a bit.
I never liked getting into personal matters here so I will try and keep that stuff brief. That side of my life has been the hardest. I have lost a lot in the last year but I have emerged gaining more I feel. Things seem to be more stable than ever and all the pieces are falling into place. I met an amazing woman a few months ago and she is the reason things are on the upswing. I have some great friends who have also helped a lot. I don’t know where I would be without them. I am working in a new building, 40 miles south of where I live. The commute sucks ass, but I will be moving in with said woman come summertime which will be closer. I haven’t decided if I like working where I am yet. I will save that judgment till after I move.
Enough of that stuff, lets move on.
Site Related
I just renewed my hosting for the year and I plan to get this place going again. My focus will still be where it is now, but more toward Magic, music and technology. I still have a Mac and I am still an Apple fan. The fact is, I work in a Windows world. All the computers I support, all the servers I administer, they are all Windows. I do support 2 Macs, but the amount of work that requires is minimal. I plan to talk about everything technology that strikes my fancy and that will cover a very broad area. I am looking at new designs for the site to kick off the semi-transition. Right now I am looking at Joomla for the back-end, but I will still consider WordPress since I have been using it for years. I am not sure how long this will all take since my life is very busy. I seem to have very little free time to devote to the site these days.
Maintenance
Maintenance is still going strong. It still gets downloaded about 2000-3000 times a month even thou the current version is over 2 years old. I do have a lot of ideas on where to go with the program but again, finding time to research and code is an issue. I mentioned before that I wanted to bring the program over to the iPhone format and that is still an interest. I am not sure if it can be done, but with the launch of the iPad, I see more of a use for it.
Magic
Magic has become a very big focus in my life. I regularly attend Friday Night Magic at a local spot, I play Dual of the Planeswalkers on my Xbox and I play Magic Online from time to time. I currently run a variation of Jund and a buddy of mine uses my cards running either Vampires or White Weenie. I do a ton of research throughout the week before FNM so I can be prepared for what I might see. I feel I am becoming a very well rounded player even thou most people seem to think I can only run Jund. With Rise of the Eldrazi about to be unleashed on us, I am already thinking about what might replace my Jund deck come October when most the cards are rotated out of Standard. Vampires seems to be a good choice, but its very hard to know before the other sets are released. M11 and Scars of Mirrodin are still to be seen and those sets might change the face of Standard completely. I know things will be different just with the Shards block rotating out, but what else might happen is a mystery. I would love to start getting into Extended as well, but the learning curve for that would be steep and I don’t have the cards. So that might have to wait.
Music?
I haven’t talked about music that much here, but it is a huge part of my life. I have been playing guitar for about 10 years now and I consider my guitars (all 3 of them, 4 if you count my girlfriends) to be life savers. I currently own a PRS SE Custom 24, an Epiphone Black Beauty and an old Epiphone acoustic guitar. The acoustic says “Epi” on the headstock so I assume it was made before Gibson got the rights to Epiphone? I really have no idea. I currently use a Fender FM65DSP 65 Watt amp with a Danelectro Black Coffee distortion pedal. I mostly play rock and metal stuff but I tend to experiment with a variety of sounds depending on my mood. I listen to the same kind of music as I play. Rarely will you see me sitting by without some kind of music playing.
Gaming
I still play games quite a bit (when I have time). I recently purchased a nice 55 inch Samsung LCD TV and my wonderful girlfriend got me an Xbox 360 for my birthday (gamer tag Sharvan if you wish to add me). I am trying to get back into World of Warcraft, but having that big TV sitting idle in my living room seems to be a crime. Sitting down to play Fallout 3 on the 55 inch TV with surround sound is pretty damn sweet.
Well that is all I can think of right now. I can’t give any time frame for when the site will change or when I will start posting more, but I will. As always, feel free to contact me.