And so it begins...

Well, I must say it's been a long time since I've blogged about anything. There's a lot for me to catch up on. For one thing, I've decided to blog here every day as a 30-day trial challenge. The idea came from Acmlm's Board (II), and here's my post in the thread. As you can see, I also mentioned cleaning my room and writing down my dreams. Neither of those are doing so great right now. I've been kinda busy, and I haven't remembered any dreams to write down yet. Hopefully that'll change.

In other, overdue news, as some point my PC got messed up. I had to reinstall everything. This meant I had to start basically all my computer games over from the beginning. some of them haven't even been reinstalled yet. Also, my parents finally managed to find a Wii on sale over vacation. They promised it as a Christmas present, but everyone else bought them first :(. We also replaced the broken DS with a DS Lite, and the PS2 refuses to work now. Stupid disc-read errors...

I have a stupid orthodontist appointment tomorrow, and I know he'll yell at me because he expects me to brush 4 times a day. :P I guess that covers everything in a nutshell. It's kinda late, so I'll go into more detail tomorrow.

The Christmas Spoils

Err... Well, perhaps "spoils" isn't the right word. I did sorta vanish for a while, but you're used to that, right? :P In any case, I got some cool stuff for Christmas, and I hope all of you had a good Christmas and New Year's. For games, I received the Oblivion Knights of the Nine expansion and Gran Turismo 4 for PS2. The expansion is awesome, but GT4 wouldn't work. We had to return it and get a new one. That's not bad compared to what happened to my little brother Jared, though. He eagerly opened his Eragon game only to find that there was no game in there! They fixed that problem at the same time that they replaced GT4, but we waited until the 30th for that.

Anyway, my biggest and best present wasn't officially for Christmas. You see, we kinda live out in the boonies, and until recently, the only way to get high-speed internet was through Comcast. Comcast isn't too bad, but it costs $60 a month! Plus, my dad said our house would need some wiring done. I dunno why, cause it's only 6 years old... Anyway, the computer lab tech. recently mentioned that he had Verizon DSL at home and that I should be able to get it. I checked online and, lo and behold, I could! Only $30 a month for 3 Mbps download, and no wiring... It only took a hour to convince my parents.

We ordered it on Tuesday, and due to an incredible stroke of luck it was all set to go by yesterday afternoon! Let me tell you, life with DSL is like... well, it's like when we first got Satellite TV: so many possibilities, so little time. We can download 30 MB files in about 1 minute flat! It used to take us an hour! I signed up for the Verizon-Yahoo package, and I'm actually listening to Internet Radio as we speak.

Well, enough rambling. The final note is that I'm making the rounds and eradicating "Mari0mega" wherever I can. I'm 16 now! Mario isn't the main thing on the radar. My new username is jordan_mega_gamer, to match my email. Now, lemme at those online games! :)

Tales from the Land of Linux

Well, I still have my old habits of procrastination, but that's no big deal, I hope! The main thing that's been going on is that I've been experimenting with Linux. I currently have Fedora Core 6, and after initial difficulties it's been pretty simple. Of course, by "initial difficulties" I mean that I had to make manual adjustments just to get the login screen to load up. And then the headache of setting up a so-called "Winmodem". Oh well. It's working reasonably well now.

In other news, I had a concert on Thursday night. We did pretty well, if I do say so myself, and I had a 4-measure solo in one of the pieces. We played Selections from Fantasia, Peter and the Wolf, Rock and Roll Classic!, and Scottish Tryptich. Those probably don't ring a bell (except Fantasia), but anyway...

I've also been on the lookout for good Linux games, and I'd appreciate a note if you find any. I found one promising one that runs mainly on Windows but can be compiled on Linux. It's a 3D roguelike called Egoboo, and you can find it's homepage here. I just found it today, so I haven't tried it yet. The page looks rather outdated, and the wiki is REALLY outdated, but there's signs of recent activity on the forums.

That being said, I'll hopefully try to make another post before the new year. (I think I know what my New Year's resolution is going to be...)

Don't Even MENTION Nano...

Alright, I'll admit it: I haven't worked on my novel in over a week! I only have about 8000 words right now. I think I'm going to give up. I don't even find my story interesting anymore, which is a real problem.

In other news, I've migrated to Blogger beta, and with that comes another interface change. I've put up my (updated) game list for all to see, whether it be geeky or not. Dreams have been off the radar, but I have been sick a lot lately. I stayed home from school three times already this month, which is about what I average per year. My parents had me take a blood test last Friday to see if it might be diabetes (I had/have persistant fatigue and thirst). I haven't heard back yet, so let's hope no news is good news. :)

Finally, my dad had mentioned to me a couple days ago that he used to have a Commodore 64 and has kept it in the closet. I dug it out yesterday, but I know some parts are missing. I can't connect it to our new TV either, it seems. But I've heard that, for those who can't stand the thought of soldering, that Radio Shack might be the answer. Wish me luck with that, and drop me a line if you know anything about commodores.

Edit: Two little things. First, with the beta comes label technology, so you can zone in on certain categories. It doesn't do much now, with so few posts, but... Also, I just realized that I have this odd tendency to stick elipses into my post titles. :P

The woes of NaNoWriMo...

Well, it's Nov. 4th and so far I still have my sanity... but that may or may not change. Really, I'm surprised that I have the time to post here. I'm at around 4600 words right now, and I was supposed to be at 5000 words by the end of yesterday. Oh well. I didn't exactly have much of a social life before, so...

In any case, I've been too lazy to upload the thing in its entirety yet, but I posted two short excerpts on my NaNoWriMo profile. That's my link of the day.

There's one final thing I want to share. It's kind of sad, actually, but since I love crunching numbers I have percentages complete for all my favorite video games. If anyone cares, heres the list:

Kingdom Hearts - 7%
Dark Cloud 2 - 9%
Okami - 25%
Final Fantasy 7 - 5%
Morrowind - 3%
Oblivion - 5%
Neverwinter Nights - 2%
Doukutsu - 95% (Just can't beat the secret level...)
Zelda: Wind Waker - 15%
The Sims 2 - N/A
Warcraft 3 - 25%
FATE - N/A

Time is tight, so farewell and good luck to all fellow Nanoers... Oh, and if anyone actually reads this, please let me know.

Uhh... My life had some technical difficulties?

I don't really have a good reason for not posting in so long. My best excuse is that I've been busy playing games, and isn't that what this blog is all about? ;) In any case, I'll tell you that I've been rather busy, even though it's summer. Last Monday I got a job at our local supermarket as a cashier, and I finally got my first paycheck yesterday. It was my day off, so of course my family had to drive down 1.5 hours to Best Buy so I could upgrade my graphics card. :) I got an awesome Radeon X1600 Pro to replace my Radeon X300, and from a test this morning I can tell you that the difference is night and day. I can finally run Oblivion at decent settings!

I've also been busy making a game of my own, but progress is slow. My website is having a bit of trouble last time I checked, so I haven't updated a new version yet. (The website itself is a wasteland - hasn't been updated since December.) However, I have here a link to a semi-recent version of my game. Working title? "Matrix World". Lame, I know, but for a first game it's not too bad so far.

I'll be back soon (this time I mean it, and "soon" doesn't mean 4 months from now).

The Elder Scrolls and The Sims: My "Favorites"

Admit it: Every gamer has his or her "Favorites". Despite how you say you like all the games in your collection, you probably have a few that you'd, for instance, grab first in the event of a fire. My two favorites happen to both be for the PC. I love Morrowind, the third in the Elder Scrolls Series, and The Sims 2. Because of this, I'm hoping to buy an expansion pack for the Sims tomorrow. On Thursday, I'll be getting Oblivion, the "sequel" to Morrowind.

My questions to you are: 1. What are your favorite games?
2. What expansion pack do you recommend I buy tomorrow? I really like all of them and can't choose.

P.S. Fellow gamers waiting for Oblivion, take heart: I will post a review of it as soon as I can.