Happy New Year!!

This post unfortunately won't have pictures, but I'll post some later. Happy New Year everyone! We had a fantastic holiday this year and I wanted to thank everyone for all the wonderful gifts. (some of these warrant pictures, so like I say, I'll post those later). For a great little video on how New Year's Eve went, jump over to Matt and Camille's Blog.

It feels like a lot has happened during the holidays. Both our old housemates got engaged over Christmas (not to each other). So Congrats to Emily and Michael, and Shimmy and Emilie. Yes, two Emilies, and Matt dated them both at one time or another. Michael's the odd man out, but I guess this now makes him the right man in! We're really stoked for all of you!!!

We had a blast gaming in Idaho with my sister and her friends. We got through an entire adventure in one night! It even snowed while we played. I love spending time with my sister when I can. She continually makes me laugh in new ways. It was great to see all my family, to spend time with my mom again, with my grandparents, and to see the extended family on Christmas Eve.

Thanks again to Adam and Julia for meeting us for breakfast. I wish we could have spent more time together but it was great to catch up even for a little bit.

Our Christmas gifts were great and meaningful. The highlight for me was mom's gift of her old wedding band, which fit my ring finger perfectly. Then the next day Cindy gave me a new wedding ring too! Unfortunately it didn't fit. So we went to the jeweler and got mom's ring sized for my right hand ring finger (which is a little bigger than my left hand), but we couldn't get my new wedding ring sized because it would have put it out of shape. When we got home, we looked up the site and found that they didn't make my new ring in a Men's size smaller than a 9. I'm an 8 - 8.5. It's going to work out fine though. We're going to return the ring and if they can't make a ring in my size of the style Cindy picked out, I'll get a duplicate of the ring I had originally lost, but an upgrade to 14k instead of 10k. All of our gifts were great and it seems we did well on the gifts we gave this year too.

I don't really have any resolutions for the new year, but I do have a few hopes and wishes.

• That mom and Cindy land great jobs ASAP
• That The Gamers: Dorkness Rising gets a great distribution deal ASAP
• That Demon Hunters: The Roleplaying Game does well
• That Jeremy's real estate business really takes off
• That Dead Gentlemen lands at least two great deals/projects this year
• That I get to see my family in North Carolina
• That Grandma and Grandpa Hall get well soon
• That I take up some kind of regular physical activity
• Maybe, just maybe, I begin learning the guitar (bass or otherwise)
• That I get to do some acting
• That I become extremely proficient with a pistol

I'd say that's a good start. Well, got to get back to work. Happy New Year Everyone! If you feel like it, post a comment on some of your New Year's Wishes/Resolutions this year. I'm interested in seeing what you hope 2008 holds for you.

Something

Don't have much to report. I came down with a cold, but I'm almost over it. I've been trying to kick it before we get on the plane tomorrow, Idaho bound. Gonna take a half day tomorrow. Work's been long hours again. I'll never get used to getting up between the hours of 4am and 5am no matter how many times I do it. Bleh.

I got your gift from Cutco, Grandma, and it's awesome and I'm using it. Thank you!! No, I won't be taking it on the plane. Tomorrow I go pick up Dad's gift. It finally came in. They sent it all the way from North Carolina, and no, it's not another weiner dog.

And yeah, that's about all I got. Felt I should say something, so, there you go.

Idaho Gaming

So this is more or less for my sister and anyone playing in the D&D adventure I'm running in Idaho around Christmas time.

Character Creation Rules:

Any D&D 3.5 Book is legal if you have it (Except for Miniature's Handbook).

For reference, everything from the Players Handbook, the Dungeon Masters Guide (a great place to find your gear), and other stuff can be found at:

www.d20srd.org

That's if you don't have the books.

Everyone will be 9th level characters.

28 point buy where each ability starts at 8 and you buy your ability points up, using a total of 28 points to spend. The ability point values are as follows:

9 - 1 point
10 - 2 points
11 - 3 points
12 - 4 points
13 - 5 points
14 - 6 points
15 - 8 points
16 - 10 points
17 - 13 points
18 - 16 points

OR roll 6 sets of 4d6, dropping the lowest die in each set

Bonus feat every odd level (instead of every 3rd level)
Ability boosts are normal (1 point into 1 ability every 4 levels)

Usually it helps to figure out what kind of character you want to play first. When you don't know what the options are, think of a movie character or something like that to help come up with a concept, and I can help you build it.

Angie has my email address, and I'll see if I can't get the forums to work for you.

Holiday

Happy Holidays everyone. I'm so damned thankful it's a holiday right now. It couldn't have come at a better time. I'm exhausted. These constant 13-14 hour days have been killing me. As soon as we finish building all the racks inside and organize everything to where they're going to go, I think I can stop working so much.

I've had to come in so early because we're in a new building with new restrictions, and if the guys don't have proper guidance, it takes forever to get the trucks out of the yard and on the road to make deliveries. We're getting there though.

Today i slept about as long as I worked yesterday. Felt great.

So Cindy put up a Christmas list, which means I should probably do the same.

1. When in doubt, D&D Miniatures are never a bad idea. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, just plug in D&D Miniatures at Amazon.com. In fact, most of my ideas can be found at Amazon.com
2. Anything from my Amazon.com wish list. I just updated it.
3. Guitar Hero: Rock of the 80's
4. Any of the following Ian Fleming James Bond Novels (my collection somehow dwindled)
   
• Casino Royale
• Dr. No
• For Your Eyes Only
• Moonraker
• Thunderball
• The Spy Who Loved Me
• The Man with the Golden Gun
  
5. Alternatively, just a new set of ALL of the Ian Fleming James Bond Novels (my partial collection are some pretty ratty paperbacks)
6. Any James Bond Novel by John Gardner (Except Never Send Flowers)
7. Any of the following James Bond DVDs:
• Diamonds are Forever
• Live and Let Die
• On Her Majesty's Secret Service
• For Your Eyes Only
• The Man With the Golden Gun
• A View to a Kill
• The Spy Who Loved Me
• Living Daylights
8. A Cutco Pocket Knife
9. A pair of size 12 running shoes
10. Apples to Apples game (it's a card/board game)
11. Neat coffee mugs
12. A subscription to GameFly
    

Well, I think that's plenty. I'm also TOTALLY happy with gift certificates to places like:

• Amazon.com
• Starbucks
• Best Buy (one just opened down the street from us)
• Macy's or some other clothes store that's nearby. I think I need to get some button down shirts, but I don't know my sizes.
• Target

Okay, it's time to hop in the show and get ready to have Thanksgiving with friends. Happy Turkey Day everyone!

Guitar Hero Video

This was Cindy, me, Jeremy and Katie all weekend.

I can't believe we did this ALL day

When I first heard about this game, I thought it was like that other interactive game, Dance Dance Revolution. You know, that game where you look like a big douche standing in front of a TV, stomping on a stupid game mat trying to mimic something that resembles a Britney Spears video. Guitar Hero is a game that comes with a controller that looks like a toy guitar. See below:
People have been going nuts over this game. So on Friday, our friend Rian Bosak was in town so everyone came over to hang out at our place. Jeremy and Katie are our new friends that Rian introduced us to. We introduced them to D&D, and Friday, they introduced us to Guitar Hero. I was reluctant at first, but I'll admit I was curious.

Jeremy had Guitar Hero 1 and 2. Turns out Guitar Hero is way more fun because if you have two of these guitar controllers, one person can play lead guitar while the other player can play the bass line. And the music selection is really awesome. I went through the tutorial on Guitar Hero II, and then Jeremy and I gave it a whirl. I think my first song was Motley Crue's "Shout at the Devil". HOLY CRAP was it fun!

So Jeremy and I are rocking out and Cindy comes in and sees us. She watches for like 30 seconds and says "Oooh! I wanna try!" I was stunned. Cindy does not really play video games. Except SpyHunter, which she kicks my ass at.

She picked it up really fast, and before long, we were all swapping turns rocking out. Then someone said that Target was having a sale on Guitar Hero III, which included TWO guitar controllers all for $99.00!

Yep, by noon the next day, Guitar Hero III was ours. It would have been sooner, but we were up late the night before rocking out to the other Guitar Hero games.

Heh, I can actually hear Cindy in the living room right now playing the game as I write this blog. She's playing the game BY HERSELF!

This game is a great party game. You can take turns two by two, with different songs and different difficulties. It's definitely a game that gets more fun while drinking too of course!

And we played Guitar Hero III ALL DAY yesterday. I think we ended around 8pm, watched a movie, and then played a little more before everyone took off.

Here's a video of just how ridiculous it is, but don't be fooled, if you ever find a controller in your hand, you too will fall to the temptation to rock out.

The move is over

Now the fun begins. We just finished this week moving my entire facility at work to a new location. The facility is much bigger, but there's no yard and they're being very strict on storing flammables, which is bad because that's what we sell primarly: Flammables!

Now comes the the fun part of unpacking, sorting, finding things, setting up the office, etc. It feels like I'm in a perpetual state of moving. Some day, I'd like to not move for a long time.

It was a really long week. Worked a 14 hour and then a 15 hour day Thursday and Friday respectively. Made up for it though this weekend. I pretty much slept the whole weekend. I'm not going to bust myself next week. I'll put in my day, and call it good.