8/27/2007

Adventure!

Man, I love xkcd - one of the many things that just about always makes me laugh.



Wanna have an adventure? First line in how great stories start :)

Too many people haven't been having adventures in their lives - my list just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and I'm finally starting to plan out knocking some of them off. Here's a few

- Carve up more blue runs on a snowboard
- Go to Vegas with friends
- Make a weekend trip out to New Orleans
- Go to more wine tastings in Dallas
- Get a backpack (and maybe a friend) and hop on my bike and ride out to nowhere and see where I end up in a week. Then ride home.
- Do some real, climbing mountains rock climbing!
- Make some crazy awesome badass stuff every day (check!)

So what's your next adventure?

8/26/2007

Apparently I suck at blogging.

Yup, that's me - I suck at blogging. Really is a shame, because I really do enjoy writing here. Well, to be honest, I enjoy writing in general. I'm going to really try to be better about putting more posts up here. I'd hate for it to go the way of my dream journal.

There was a point earlier this year where I was having very vivid dreams (and I still do, occasionally), and they were always really fascinating. So I went out and bought a dream journal (very appropriately covered with Morpheus, the king of dreams from Neil Gaiman's Sandman). Unfortunately, it has continued to be barren, not containing even a single entry. Maybe I'm just too lazy in the morning to do it. We'll see :p



Anyways, I digress. We've been crunching for the last week at work (which, I still assert that crunching at my current job is an absolute joke compared to crunch at other studios). Which of course means the real tiring out you do is totally voluntary. However, there is a lot to be done and not a lot of time to do it in, so it's been a busy week. That and we have one more week to go. What makes me sad is that, for the first time in a really long time, there are some games that I really want to play that are coming out, that I have to put on the side for now, until we finish crunching.

I was really looking forward to playing Bioshock, which came out last week, and actually surprised me quite a bit. In playing the demo, the world is absolutely beautiful not only in it's visuals, but also its story. The underwater city of Rapture is a fascinating place built off of political escape, and it produces a very compelling environment. I hope we start to see more hybrids of graphics and storytelling in the future. Hopefully my expectations aren't too high from the demo.



The other game I've really been looking forward to is Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. For anyone that has known my gamer side for any length of time, you know that I am a total Metroid fanboy. I think it derives from how much I enjoyed going through the original games on the NES and SNES. Super Metroid is still my personal "Best game of all time", especially for its time. So, I have been waiting for the new Metroid since I first played the original Metroid on the NES. The environments, the music, the adventure, the exploring aspect - Metroid is one of my personal heavens of gaming. It is also probably the series that I have replayed the most. I know that I've played through every single one multiple times, with the exception of Echoes. What excites me the most is that the controls are actually supposed to be very visceral on the Wii. I really hope it stands up to all the hype. I just know that when I'm playing a Metroid game, I tend to be totally pulled into the game play, and enjoy every minute of it. That's why this one makes me so sad that I'll have to wait to play it. (And avoid listening to other people's accounts of it).



That, and Samus is a hottie. There, I said it ;) Who said guys aren't attracted to strong women? lol



And, on a slightly more existential note, I'm always fascinated to hear and understand people's motivations for their actions, mine own included. Among my circle of friends, it's a topic of constant discussion, primarily because of Dave's incredible averseness to religion as a whole, and the fact that I tend to associate with very liberal people willing to entertain discussions of the sort. Some people are driven by their religion (or fear of it), some people are driven by their lack of religion, some driven by their morals, some driven by what they don't understand, and some who believe they are not driven, but are 'being' driven in the direction of fate.

Often in these discussions, people (Dave, in particular) tend to poke into my beliefs vehemently, since (for anyone who has seen me in these discussions) I tend to take the role of chameleon / devil's advocate / facilitator / therapist. Which actually tends to be a little bit more interesting at times (although maybe that's just for me). Maybe it's because subconsciously, I already know my beliefs, and so it's more interesting to hear other peoples. I dunno. Anyways, I digress.

People often ask me about my religious views, and my motivations, and in general, the closest I can get to is spiritual but not religious with a splash of agnostic. Most, if not all of my decisions are based off of the morals and views of right and wrong (although Dave doesn't believe in those either) that I was raised under. Which were, ironically enough instilled upon via with religious tones. That's a very simplistic notion of it, and certainly not without exception. I realize to some that sounds silly and hard to understand. (after all, something like belief in a higher power must be binary, right?)

A few things happened to me recently that solidified these beliefs to myself. Over the course of the last week, the following things were said to me: (each from someone that I consider close and respect)

You are a good person and a good friend. Thank you for everything...

Thank you. Thank you for actually being fair and not taking a side and not just making the negative assumptions that so many of our mutual friends seem to be.

[We] really struck gold when we found you.


So that. That's the reason that I do the things that I do day to day.