Oblivion

The latest game in the Elder Scrolls series is absolutely stunning, especially when compared to Morrowind.

The graphics alone are so absolutely mind boggling, I can't even really describe it. There are areas of scenery when you just have to stop and gawk. Shorelines on lakes, sunsets over mountains, or just standing on top of a hill and looking around. Absolutely freaking stunning. No RPG has ever had anything close to this amount of graphical detail - ever. Not even close. I'm still drooling. And my system isn't even able to max out all the settings either. Amazing.

The storyline and extremely open-ended gameplay is awesome as well. Truly epic.

I'd write more, but it'll have to wait until I get further in. Got to see if I can find a priest when I get home to cure my vampirism before I have to start killing folks. I'll go back and get bit again further down the line, hehe.

Songs of the day:
Glycerine - Bush
Stupid Girl - Pink
Hell's Bells - AC/DC
Clean My Wounds - Corrosion of Conformity
Blue on Black - Kenny Wayne Shepherd

The Pain of Tech Support

Yep - time for another rant about the pain and horror of providing tech support for the country.

You knew I was overdue :P

Scream all you want, but I blame most of today's rant on Affirmative Action. It's an absolute piece of political bullshit. Fuck the political correctness today too. Everyday, I talk with government employees that have absolutely NO fucking business having the jobs they do. Thanks to affirmative action though, every site/facility has to have a certain number of minorities, females, and disabled individuals working at it. They at least have to match numbers for specific regions.

It's all fucking bullshit. The last two nights, I've had to deal with the biggest noneducated inbred fucking hillbillie. He's of a minority race (not saying which) and is un-fucking-beleivably stupid. He doesn't know the difference between capital and lower case letters. He doesn't know what a dollar sign is. Oh yeah - I forgot to mention that english is his first language. He's not from some other country, he's just fucking stupid.

Through it all, I'm unable to say anything remotely derogatory, despite the fact that he's a fucktard. If there was ever a better definition of that particular phrase, I'd shudder to think of it. Did I mention that he has a government job in a high security facility?

FUCK!!!

These are the times I need to find a way to get citizenship in Australia, hehe :)

Tech support in general just kills me, but dealing with people like this will simply drive anyone over the edge.

Ok - I'm done ranting for the moment. :P

The Emerald Dragon

Perhaps someday, but probably not. A couple of years ago, I was actually in the process of opening my own tattoo shop. Nyx and I spent almost a year researching and planning. It was an exciting time, but terrifying as well.

Rather than The Emerald Dragon, it was going to be Incarnations In Ink and cater to the pagan crowd in general. It was great. We wrote a ton of business plans until we had a finalized copy we could bring to the bank in search of a loan. We had our top three site choices picked out and had spoken with the companies renting them. We were in the process of getting a Body Modification license for working within Denver.

The list goes on and on. Through all of it, I have to thank Heather for being so unconditionally supportive and happy for me. Nyx and I threw ourselves into it completely, and it certainly consumed every waking moment I had. So much so, to the point of pretty much exiling everyone else around me. And the planning was just the beginning. The amount of constant hours that would be spent in the shop began to concern me. Not because I wouldn't love to be there, but because I know that's the only place I would be.

As much as I love/loved tattooing, it might actually be a bit unhealthy to my mental stability. There are a lot of things that I truly love about it and that's where the worry begins at times. When I'm working, nothing else in the world exists. It's a great escape, to completely lose yourself within a piece of art - to pour the essence of your soul into a piece of art that someone will carry for the rest of their days. The joy of escaping the world is impossible for me to explain. It's a rush and I loved it... maybe a little too much.

Maybe it was a fortunate turn of events in a truly twisted Karmic sort of way when we ran into funding problems. Karma has a weird way of helping things work out the way I think they should in the end (although sometimes I hate the trip, hehe). Companies we were dealing with would either be willing to give me the money, but only for the sole purpose of paying off my car (yes - they can have a condition like that in a refinance), or not give me enough money to make the tattoo venture worthwhile.

At times, the dream is still alive. I hadn't been that excited about anything since I was tattooing in Yuma. Thinking about those times though, there are some definite disadvantages in opening a shop as well though. Mainly, they include having to do virtually every dumb and boring tattoo that came into the store, and having to deal with some of the people in general. I think the stress of knowing my house was also riding on everything would have given me an early heart attack as well.

There are still days I dream of it though. The truth of the matter is that I simply can't afford to. We have too many bills, and not enough cash. As much as I’d like to, I can't drop everything to start an apprenticeship again - too many responsibilities and not enough time. I still hope to find a group of guinea pigs someday though, haha :)

My Conglomeration of Thoughts...

Today will be a gathering random thoughts. You have been warned :)

What happened to the days of youth? And why can we not appreciate the advantages of youth when we have it? I imagine the main reason for that is simply this - we haven't had the time necessary to garner the grains of individual wisdom that we do as we have to process more and more experiences as we get older. I'm not sure there's really a perfect medium either. Like many before me, I could say that I wish I knew then what I know now, but if you really think about it, that's a completely incorrect statement. Some of the greatest memories I have are some of the insanely stupid and dangerous things my friends and I did in our teenage years. Then there are the times I was continually far too drunk with my friends in my early 20's. I would say well over 50% of the things we did were just absolutely asinine, but they were fun and fortunately, no one really got hurt. If I went back to those years with the knowledge I have now, I'd be a very boring person. Sure, I may have made a lot of changes, ending up richer and better educated, but I don't think I'd have the memories of being a fun loving wild child.

This isn't to say that I don't truly appreciate and enjoy the age I'm at now. I think your early 30's are actually a great point in a person's life. You're old enough that people take you seriously, you generally have a decent career path, you have a large amount of life experience to reference for new situations, you've been around the block a bit and tend to have a better understanding of life. Things are far more stable in my life now than they were in the past, so that's a good thing. In your 30's, you're still young enough to do whatever you want, but old enough to know better, haha.

I do miss the days of having a 200lb frame of bone and muscle. I've still got it, but it's covered by about 85 pounds of fat too. I can lose the weight, but the amount of effort involved in losing it is a gazillion times more than the energy it took to gain it, hehe. I still debate about losing the weight. I know I need to and should simply for health reasons if nothing else. I think it's the food I'm not ready to give up. I live for starches - bread, potatoes, pasta. I could continue to eat all of those things, but that would need a large amount of exercise to balance out. Yeah - I'm a bit lazy at times :)

Next!

With the general glut of new MMORPG's coming out, there really hasn't been one since EQ2 came out over a year ago that I've been really interested in. I was interested in the Dungeons and Dragons online game, but after getting in during phase I beta and testing it off and on throughout the test, it's simply not for me. It has some great concepts, and great ideas. On top of that, I understand why they're going the route they are and applaud them for it. Unfortunately, it is NOT a solo friendly game - at all. I simply don't have the time to invest in being on the game at regular intervals and depending on a group all the time.

A new game in the works is Gods & Heroes (godsandheroes.com). It's steeped in Roman/Greek mythology and simply looks amazing. Later on, I'll toss up a picture of a medusa from the game. When I first saw the picture, I thought it was a painting, piece of concept art, etc. It's actually a screen shot and has to be the absolute coolest image of a medusa I have EVER seen. Yes, it really is that impressive. So impressive in fact, that I've been seriously going over in my head whether or not it's actually possible to do as a tattoo. Not by me, because I simply do not have that kind of skill. I've been trying to figure out whether it's actually possible to recreate that image as a tattoo by ANY artist in the world. It's stirred the ol' creative juices again and has me debating to dig out my sketch pad and start drawing again. If I start drawing again though, that means I'll start tattooing again and I'm not sure if I'm ready to do that again.

There are days I seriously miss tattooing. Sooner or later, I always find a piece I agree to do and have a good time while working on it. The problem though is there are much better artists out there. There are too many gaps in my tattooing education. Bill did a great job of teaching me, but he came from a fine arts background, so there are a ton of ground rules that I simply don't have. The biggest issue is lack of practice. I've probably only done 3-4 pieces in the last couple years. I need too many pieces of meat to practice on, but I'm not willing to just let anyone in my house that wants some work done. That means I only let friends in and I don't want to use them as guinea pigs. Yes, I can do the safe tribal tattoos since they're fairly mindless to work on, but there are a number of techniques I want to experiment with. There are some seriously cool pieces of art I'd like to do, but there simply isn't anyone to do them on, especially since most of them are not pieces that I would recommend as a tattoo. It's just that some of these pieces have some pretty cool effects and I want to see if they can be duplicated on skin.

Ah well. See - now I've got myself thinking about tats again. We'll see...