So you knew it was coming...the inevitable Halo post. Now, I've been a guy who has been into plenty of shoot em ups before. A little Doom, a ton of Quake, some Kingpin. I stopped doing the shoot em ups mainly because I didn't like things like Unreal Tournament, and my computer progressively became unable to play such games.

There was a time when I still was into games but not as much. Rollercoaster Tycoon, Red Alert, and things similar. But there was a good period of about 5+ years when I honestly didn't get into the shoot em ups again. My parents worried about me because of Columbine and my desire to play games that dealt with killing people or just destruction. Understandably, they just wanted me to be healthy and happy. And I always was.

Then came the Xbox. My roommate from Regis, Ryan, had purchased one less than a couple weeks after they came out because he heard of this awesome game called Halo. He brought it back and I still wasn't too into it. In fact, I only played a handful of times simply because I would get rocked whenever I tried. I moved to Texas, and suddenly, about 18 months after Ryan bought his Xbox, I decided I wanted one too.

I went out after my 21st birthday and purchased the whole setup, and didn't buy the PS2 simply because it didn't have Halo. So I got into it that summer and played it for hours, and tried to have people over frequently to play it. Inevitably, Halo 2 came out when I was back in Colorado. The biggest factor was that it now enabled the Live service to play multiplayer over Xbox Live.

Of course that prompted us to connect both of our Xbox's at our apartment at the time in Boulder, and eventually would prompt me to Buy the Xbox 360 (with Adam's help, though I paid him back for it).

I can't tell you how many countless games have been played and have been an absolute blast with. There are moments that you just get rocked, and other moments you just rock. And some great kills that make you wish you could show everyone.

By far, the pic below indicates probably one of the best games I've ever played, back in August. I've had a few since then where I've gotten 42 or 43 kills (out of a 100 kill game, 8 players per team), but this was a milestone.


I was playing under the tag "COOKIEMONSTERS." The Ninja Noodles guy (4 players) left right after the game started...so it was 7 on 3.

Another cool thing is that combined, the 2 Xbox's at our apartment have logged nearly EIGHT THOUSAND games. Wow, that's a lot of time. One great thing is the ability to view the stats for these games online, via Bungie.net.

This is for my "gamertag" (your unique user ID on Xbox Live) "A DOPPELGANGER."
My Gamertag

It's pretty sweet I think. Also, you can view the Xbox 360 games I've played and such. It's a pretty cool system I think.

Anyway, Halo 3 is just around the corner. I've received word that I'm in on the public beta which I think is only a few weeks away. A test of 3 or so levels of Halo 3, I simply can't wait. It'll be even better to have Halo 3 on my shelf, as I'm sure it won't leave the Xbox for months.

Well, most of the projects page is now up and running. It's funny that some of those servers are running, when one clearly hasn't been updated in like 7 years. Not bad. It's weird to see some of that stuff though, coding that took hours (and still does) and how cool it was back then to have a site. The Strange Prange films one was when I had planned on going into the film business, but as you can see, most of the content contained on it is my writing.

Most of the content contained on the projects page is writing projects or has a lot to do with writings that I've done. I'm starting to see a pattern...I plan on getting the main part of the site up soon, but that's more coding and such that probably won't happen for another week or so. I kind of hope the blog will be viewed more than any other part of my site, but we'll see.

I will be updating some of the stuff from The Dig and The Thing that may be of interest to people who followed those, or perhaps not. One thing I was able to grab from The Dig were pictures and captions taken for the CD-Rom that I had compiled the end of my freshman year at Regis.

Anyway, on Friday I had a major accomplishment, I finished Ibuprofen from an entire bottle. The amazing part though is evidenced in the pic below:


That's right: the pills expired in 1998. That's like 9 years ago. It's a bottle from CostCo, so no wonder it took me forever to "finish it."

I haven't really posted about this either, but another part of my nerdy side came out about 2 months ago, as I picked up a brand new Dell computer. Why, you might ask? My "old" one (18 months) was short on memory, and I wanted to have Vista. I tried it for several months earlier in 2006 and liked it very much. So I bought this beauty, and side by side, this is what they looked like:


I didn't expect it to be bigger, but it has about 4 times the power the old one did. So far, so good. Only a few issues have cropped up with Vista but nothing too horrible or anything. Best Windows version yet, for sure. And I like that I can stream movies and music to my Xbox 360 (though no DivX yet - I'm having issues trying to figure that one out).

Anyway, enough rambling. I need to get up early, but I will making posting on here a normal thing.

Ahh the power of having a blog on a personal website.

So it may look like I've spent a lot of time creating this site so far, but that would be a lie. I've spent maybe a good hour or two tweaking things here and there, graphic work and server stuff. I must admit I like having my own domain again, especially since Batpad.net has been down for several months.

Of course, Facebook and MySpace exist and have some good ways to reach the masses with blogging, but I much prefer this, where I can edit it to my choosing and such.

So it's officially April Fool's Day. I've never been such a fan of the holiday, but admittedly haven't tried to prank anyone with it in years.

I'm going to the Denver Auto Show tomorrow with a bunch of friends and my brother-in-law. It will be a good time, mainly since I haven't gone in 6 years, that and it should be fun to go with a bunch of people I know.

Did anyone see this?
Chocolate Jesus exhibit cancelled

That's just crazy. People never cease to amaze me.

I'm currently reading a biography on Teddy Roosevelt. I've never been too much into books like this (historical accuracy tends to bore me - unless it's about technology or cars or something), but after reading about his expedition to the Amazon, I became intrigued by the man himself. His adventure hits home with my time in the Amazon as well, just because I know how scary some of that stuff probably was to experience. And I wasn't (too) near any danger.

Anyway, I'm planning on regularly updating this thing, thanks Kevin for the heads up on the blogging software!