Christmas Holidays

Yes, I said Christmas....not happy holidays. Why? I believe in God. Nuff said.

Hope everyone had a good Christmas. I know I did. Got my daughter for Christmas eve night and Christmas morning. I couldn't have asked for a better present. Plus something happened to me that I always wanted to but it wasn't as fun as I thought...but looking back, it was pretty damn cute. What happened was during Christmas morning. I was asleep and like usual, my daughter was up before me.

Before I continue let me say this, my sister, her husband and their 4 children were over visiting for Christmas so I let my sister and her husband use my bed. With one simple rule though, no sex. lol. So anyways, I was sleeping on my couch and my daughter came to wake me up. The way she woke me up was what I'm mainly talking about it. She literally jumped on my. Knees bent, landing on my stomach. I went from being in a deep sleep to having my hands and feet in the air from her landing on me. I wasn't upset, just a little sore. lol. Still though, it was the best Christmas morning wake up I have ever had. The next time I have her, in two years, it'll be my turn to wake her up that way...lol. Gotta love being a parent. :)

Well, this was a short blog. More to come, more often.....I hope lol. I'm just not as motivated either cause I don't get any feedback from my blogz. That wont make me stop blogging but it would be nice to have a comment once in a while. I wouldn't even care if it's random. People that know me knows how random I can be and most of the time, it makes no sense. lol

Well, enjoy your holidays whatever you celebrate. Just remember, family is the important part of this season. Enjoy the moments you spend together cause gifts get old, ruined, wrecked but great memories last forever. Well, unless you get Alzheimer. lol

~ JB

Priorities and Life

I've been thinking about the way my life is gonna be going in the new year. What changes I want and need to make and how they will effect my life, my daughters life and my career. Well, not really much my career but you kinda get the idea.

As some of my readers might know, I will have my daughter a lot more then I do now. I'm getting excited for the more time I get to spend with her. I know it will leave me a little stressed with having to get her to daycare on time then me to work and then back from work to pick her up before the after-school daycare closes. And it will leave me with less time to start to explore the dating world again. I have been single for a year...well, I should just say more like 18 months. The last person I dated seemed to only want to screw me a couple times then make up excuses to why she's too busy to hang out. Oh well, her loss.

I am planning on moving when my lease is up in June to a small 2 bedroom apartment. I do love to live in houses but there comes a time where you have to ignore what you want and get something that will allow you to save money so you can do things in the future with you child and give them the best possible life they can have. I've always wanted to give my daughter a better life then I had growing up and so far, she has, but I can always do better. When the day comes where I think I cannot do anything to better her life is the day I have given up trying to make her life perfect but I do not see that day ever coming. Even after she gets older and have a family of her own, I will still strive to get her life to be the best as possible. Even if that means sacrificing the things I want for myself in life. I do however see her wanting to go over and beyond to make my life better. I already see that compassion in her heart now. And I will do my best to keep that trait in her 'cause that will make her life so much better.

I've been meaning to spend more time doing my blog but I just haven't got around to it. I know shame on me but priorities change as life progresses. But don't think I will stop blogging all together. I will still try to do one once a week. Hopefully more. Anyways. it's getting closer to Christmas. Counting down the days for when Santa comes to spoil my little one. I have noticed that my excitement for Christmas has changed over the years from when I was young. I no longer get excited for getting gifts but I find more pleasure anticipating and watching my daughter wake up Christmas morning and seeing all the presents and the joy she will have opening them all up. It almost brings tears of happiness in my eyes just thinking about it. I hope she loves what she gets....well, I know she will love it. lol

Just remember people, life is always changing. Just keep an eye on the important things and push yourself to make that the main priority in your life, no matter how down you are, or how hard it might be, because in the end, those things are what you look back at and determine how great a life you lived. You don't want to look back and find out you wasted all that valuable time with childish behaviour. Only if I understood this like I do now 6-7 years ago. But I will not beat myself up on this, I will use it as a stepping stool so it doesn't happen again.

~ JB

Happy Decem-beard

Well, since Movember is over, why not start Decem-beard to continue on to keep those faces of ours warm for the winter months. I've had my goatee for a couple years and I don't plan on shaving it off anytime soon. And I'm keeping my stash for the time being. Kinda like how it looks on me again.

So far, this month is going awesomely. For one, I got my daughter for the night last night so I got to wake up with her this morning.....at 530am. I hate waking up that early but for my daughter, its a complete joy. I also got an email today to send in 2 game reviews and if they like it and I am chosen, I will start doing game reviews and get paid for it. Win-fuckin-win. Hopefully I get games sent to me or links to download them for free instead of me having to go out and buy certain games to review to their liking. This will also shorten my time on my Skyrim playing and my side project associated with that but it'll be worth it cause I'll be making the money. The only down side I see with this would be my anticipation to get done work quicker and go home to play the games and do reviews. I should actually start doing my own personal review more often.

Whats new with me, well, end of last week my boob tube TV started acting up. Basically it was like someone was sitting there with the remote and hitting `input`, `power`, `channel scan` or holding volume up`. At first it didn't bother me too much. I just put it back to the appropriate input/channel and continue gaming or watching TV/movie. But as the days or hours went on, it got worse and worse to the point where I couldn't have the TV on for more then 5 minutes without this happening to it. So like any other sane gamer out there, I had to go get a new TV. And I made sure I upgraded far. No, I didn't get a 3D TV. I'm waiting for 3-5 years before I decide on getting one of those. Make sure the market for them is better and the price goes way down.

Well, I got my new TV. A Samsung 1080p LED Smart HDTV. I'm loving it. I can have Netflix, facebook, and twitter through my TV. Not from streaming from another device like my XBox 360 or from a computer, but actually from apps on the TV. Also with the apps I can download games to it. I literally started laughing when I found that out. One part, "that's pretty cool" and one part "that's ridiculous." The thing that I find really sick was that I was able to download an app for my iPhone 3Gs and use it as a remote control. It even has a section to use for the games as well. To make it work though, you need to have the HDTV hooked up to your router via wireless or wired and have your smartphone also connected to the same router. Its that easy. I don't think I will ever use the remote that came with the HDTV anymore. All I need to do now is get myself a HDMI cord for my XBox 360 and I'll be set.

I'll be back another day. Probably with something more interesting to talk about....like what happened to my old boob tube TV...did I give it away, sell it or smash the shit outta it with a baseball bat and other blunt objects....only time will tell. And if I do the more fun choice, you better believe I'll have someone video tape that shit. And yes, of course, I'll post it online and link it on here. lol



On a parting note;   Make small things count.....teach midgets math.


~ JB

Life Almost Back to Normal

Well, as you can tell, I haven't been keeping up with my blogz. The mental stress I have from the long, after hours work has been getting to me. This job started back in July/Aug. and for the most part, I basically set aside most of my social life so I can actually have time to relax. By the end of this weekend this damn job will be done. I will miss the extra money on my paychecks though lol, but I will have my life back.

This next year is already starting to look amazingly awesome. I will be getting a raise at work, and I will be getting my daughter not every other weekend but every week for the week. Along with that and because I will have my daughter with me the same amount of time as her mother, I now don't have to pay child support. (Obviously I now have to pay more for food and extras for my daughter, duh...lol) Only if I was able to move sooner then when my lease is up in June. I do love living with my sister, her husband and their 2, soon to be 3 kids, but I need my own place. I need to get my personal life on the go in the direction I need and want. This past 1 1/2 years living with them has showed me a lot of things I need to adjust in my own life to make mine and my daughters life even better. Plus I bet my sister is starting to get sick of me...lol But I know she still loves me....for now...lol

I'm gonna set aside at least one day a week for now to start doing my blogz again. I'm not sure what day yet, but I will make sure I stick to it. Then I'll slowly over the next year work on trying to do maybe 3-5 blogz a week. I'm not gonna go by my original schedule that I posted near the beginning of my blogz. That was just a waste of a blog post. I still have to do my review of Rage, and Dead Island. And a couple other ones but those will be the first two I do. And I will be doing another one for Skyrim when I have more of the game beat. That may not be until mid January to late February. And hopefully by then I will have a side project ready to release to the public. I did make a short comment about it in SeasonedGamers.com but that's all the info I will release for it. I might even go back to the post and delete that part so no one can steal my idea. I will release that in a link to a pdf that I will posted on my lockbox.

Anyways, I got my after hours work to do now. I better get on it. The sooner I start, the sooner I get home to spend time with my daughter before she goes to bed.

And on a parting note I'd like to say,

"Happy Thanksgiving to all the Americans out there or like we call it here in Canada, Thursday." lol

~ JB

Skyrim....my first 10-15 hours

Well, I know I'm slacking but if I try to do this everyday, it feels like a job and the fun is sucked out of it. So I'm resorting to posting when I have something to post. That may lead to more post in a day or maybe one post a week...who knows. But if I do multiple posts in a day, then they would probably be smaller ones.

Anyways to the blog....

I have to say that I FUCKIN LOVE THIS GAME. This is by far the best Elder Scrolls game out there. If you are a RPG fan, you have to get this game. The dragon fights are fun and hard but doable, and I haven't changed the difficulty I play on yet. I have left it on Adept. (def. very skilled; proficient; expert).

If you have never played any of the Elder Scrolls games this is the one to try first. Not because its new, only because this is how they set up creating your character. You pick your race, your name and BAM your playing the game after the opening sequence. The 2 others that I've played were Morrowind and Oblivion. Those you need to pick your star sign to add bonus to your attributes and then you have to pick your major attribute. If you know what your doing, go at it but if you don't, you wouldn't know how to pick what attributes that would help you level up. Just say you want to be an archer mage assassin but if you pick attributes in the other games to work with those but you end up playing like an archer two-handed weapon expert bass-ass so the attributes now won't work the way you want with leveling up. So you have to do one of two things, just continue playing or start over. With Skyrim, you don't need to worry about that. Your character levels up with the style of how you play.

One of the things I thought was pretty cool what they did was that there are now kids in the game. Not of all ages, just probably around 10-13. The dragon fights are pretty random. There are some that are scripted to happen to go with the storyline but when you fight them, they are still random on how they attack. A lot of people are saying ,`This is how Oblivion should have been.` Well, I think not. Oblivion was still amazing for its day. Skyrim is Skyrim.

Some things I've learned from playing in this game are, if you don't want a village to attack you, don't shoot a chicken walking in the streets, dragons have ADD in some fights, using whirlwind sprint when over-encumbered gets you where your going a lot quicker, and save often.

I am maybe 15-20 hours into the game and I've only killed 5 dragons. And I'm not that far into the game. I've read on SeasonedGamers.com that a couple people are already done the main storyline and one guy has killed at least 19 dragons since he posted last. I'm falling behind. :(
Now its time to get up, hide some of my daughters toy glass diamonds and make a treasure map before I have to pick her up from school. And I'll be sliding in Skyrim or Halo: CEA in between.


~ JB

My life living in The Elder Scrolls

As many of you know, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim will be coming out this Friday, 11:11:11. So why not blog about my life inside this amazing game series.

That's what it is though, a life inside a video game. No not like The Sims, but in a place long ago, in a universe where magic is alive and everywhere. I have only played the 3rd (Morrowind) and 4th game (Oblivion) of the series. I destroyed Morrowind, but I didn't put much time in Oblivion. Why, just didn't have time and Halo: Reach controlled most of my XBox 360 life. Time well wasted. lol.

One of my best friends Matt called me up years and years ago about this game he bought. (Morrowind) He first told me when he first played the game, he spent maybe an hour in it, turned it off and thought `why did I buy they crap.` About a week or two later, like a good gamer, he gave it another shot. Never give any game only one try. Give it 2 or even 4 tries before giving up, you may find you like it after the 2nd or 3rd try. Anyways, after he game it another go, he loved the game and we spent a good hour or two on the phone talking about it. He was explaining everything he's seen and done in the game and all the features it had. He then said that he has to bring it over for me to try it.


Later that weekend he brought it over and I tried it. It was a little much to take in at first but once I understood how this game was I fell in rpg love lol.

It took me about 6 months before I picked up my own copy. I got the game of the year edition so I could have more stuff to do. I don't remember how many hours I spent in it but the days in the game was over 700.

The 2 crazy things that stand out in my mind from Morrowind was my first character, I just randomly roamed and I ended up near the ghost gate and I kept getting killed by these really strong guys. So the only way I could get out was to use the scroll that added 1000 points to your acrobatics. I pointed my character toward the shortest distance to water and jumped. Everything was going good. On my decent all I could see was water. Then something slowly appeared, an island. Out of all the area I was going to land I landed on the only island around. The island was also the size of a freakin bed. Seriously wtf..?

The other thing was that on day 666 was when my character turned into a warewolf. I didn't plan that to happen it just did. I thought it was pretty interesting.

Now for Oblivion. I played many hours into that but I never went too far in the story line. At one time I was borrowing my brother-in-laws XBox 360 while he has my Wii. I had my buddy's Oblivion game but I didn't have the system long enough to beat it.

About 16-18 months ago I got my first XBox 360 and I had to start over. Soon after I got Halo: Reach and like I stated above, that sucked up all my time lol. Then many other games got in the way and I just didn't make time for Oblivion. I still plan to play and beat it one day but with Skyrim now here. I might not.

Today is 11-11-11. And I picked up my collectors edition at lunch. The reason I didn't go to the midnight release was that I worked the 2 previous days doing 12hr shifts then Thursday morning I had to get up at 530am to get my daughter to daycare in time an then me to work. And I'm currently working a 12hr shift today so I have to still wait to pop this game in.

I destroyed Morrowind, barely touched Oblivion and now I have Skyrim which I plan to play the shit outta. lol And to get in the mood more, and thanks to my awesome boss, I made a 3' x 4' map of Tamriel, the continent that The Elder Scrolls take place on. If you follow me on Twitter, I posted a picture of me with it on there.

"When I die, my friends will be at my funeral, my good friends will cry at my funeral, but my best friends will change my Facebook status to 'Chillin with Jesus'."

~ JB

SeasonedGamers.com We are not a community, we are a family.

I first wanted to write this specific blog on the 7 year anniversary of when Seasoned Gamers started but that day came and went without me even cluing in that it was near. I did get an email from SG saying happy anniversary, you've been here 7 years, or something like that and that didn't even click in and I signed up on the first day. I'm actually the 2nd longest active member of the site. The only one there longer is JAMO who created the website.

What is SG all about? Well, like the title of this blog states, we are a family, not a community. That is actually partially true. Yes we are a community. We have currently 1,016 members. But the heart and soul of SG is in the group of Moderators, Administrators and overly active members of the site. We are what makes SG what it is, a family like atmosphere. If you look in any family, your own, your friends or whoever, you see a close, loving relationship that is full of helpful hands, great conversations, great friends and the occasional insults we joke about with each other.

I have not had the opportunity...sorry, let me re-phrase that. I have not had the privilege to meet anyone in person who is a member of SG but I have talked with them on the forums, XBL, text messages and on one occasion, on the phone. We do have a yearly meet up called the Spring Fling that many of us "SG Family" members go but all have been in the USofA and me living in Canada and without a passport, I cannot go. I do check out what other SGer's who go have to say after the event and I look at all the pictures and I can tell that it's a blast.

The site started initially in the XBox forums specifically in the Halo sub-forum when a couple people started talking about finding a forum we can all go to that is for adults. No kids allowed. So after a month or two of discussion, and the nice moderators at the XBox forums for not deleting an off topic thread in the Halo forum, JAMO posted about him getting started with making a forum we can all go to.

I made sure to check the link he provided almost every 2-5 minutes. Finally it worked and I signed in as member 04. Member 01 was the initial SG account, 02 was JAMO, 03 was some person who never posted and ended up getting his account deleted, then myself. Since then, there have been over a thousand people sign up and hundreds of accounts being deleted due to inactivity of finding out they are under the minimum age requirement.

In the past 7 years, SGers have helped with giving stuff to other SGers in need such as, XBox 360's, games, plane tickets, gifts, and the list goes on. I have not been part of this helpful side of things due to financial situations but if the opportunity ever arises again, and I am able to help, I'll be jumping in with both feet.

We have yearly leagues in Halo, CoD, Racing, Golf, L4D and others. We also hold our own Olympics every 2 years. We have many online meetups throughout the week that you can find any member of SG in. You will find someone to help you out with anything from gaming problems, network problems or any and everyday stuff.

So many things have went on in SG that there was always someone there to lend some kind words of advice, have someone pray for others, and even give best wishes to many things. We have dealt with at least one death of a member, RIP NextLevel360, we have been there when a member, Dadflash and his wife went to China to pick up their new baby girl, we've helped people with getting threw divorces, helped with giving advice on raising children and even shared funny stories that has happened to us and our own family. We've also had members of SG meet up in Afghanistan, and Iraq for a quick meet up when they had down time.

I am proud to say that I am a member of the best online community I have found online. There are not many people or places I can call my family or even a home but SG is one of those places. I will forever be a member of this community no matter how old I get.

And like the Seasoned Gamers tag line says; "Fun. Friends. Family. HOME." No words can be truer.

~ JB