Nerd Fancy

Wait till I get a hair up my ass and I will start updating again….till then, sorry guys.

Never walk into a place you can’t walk out of. Mr. De Niro taught me that. I think he is on to something…though I may be expanding the context slightly beyond what he would comfortably support. I have recently been applying this statement to life and current standings therein. The question goes something like this…If you had to leave your current situation in life, by either force or choice, where would you go and what you would do? How do you escape your current lot in life?

I think it is clear at this point that I have been thinking a lot about my life as of late; where I am, where I am going, how I am going to get there and in what condition I will arrive. The usual thing one thinks when such things require thinking. It is important to stress that am not too terribly unhappy with where I am right now nor do I intend to execute an escape plan anytime soon…but it is important to know that it is there and to have one in the case it becomes a necessity over a convenience.

My issue is I haven’t formulated one that I have been happy with…and truth be told, it is making me a little nervous. I have found that people who feel trapped and tied down either don’t have a plan or the one they have isn’t really something they could ever see themselves doing. It is important to have a plan B. When life is grounded in how one perceives it, the escape route, even if never used, can be a comforting thing to have.

Mine currently revolves around a trailer. The current plan is to get a used Air Stream Bambi, attach it to my Trooper and head north. I want to spend some time in Napa and all of the costal north. Get odd jobs here and there, work for a few months in various places and move on. Not the best plan, I know, but it ends with me getting a job on a cruise ship out of Vancouver and sailing around the world for awhile. By that time, I will be able to get over my cowardness of traveling and I will spend some time country hopping. Let me expand on the cowardness comment.

I have realized that it is unwise to rely on other people. This is not to imply that all people are evil and everyone will screw you over if given the chance, far from it. People are so busy getting their own shit together that often times you life and issues are going to fall through the cracks (take this graphic redesign of this website for example) I, to date, have been bailed on three times for trips out of this country. I recently whined this stat to a friend of mine. She replied “So? Just go yourself. If you have a buddy, that’s great, if not, figure it out. I go alone all the time. I often prefer it.” The fact of the matter is I am a total wuss. I need someone to hold my hand the first time because I just don’t think I can hack it solo. Also, I prefer a buddy. I need someone I can share my experiences with, to joke with, to get into trouble with and laugh about it later. That is completely necessary for me to fully enjoy sites and most happenings.

I am by no means done with the country I live in. I have done two cross country road trips and I am always down for more. I have slept in the back of a U haul at truck stops, the concrete of a trailer park, and my car many a time. I prefer to rough it when I am able love roadside America…but I need to get out elsewhere. It has been something that has been bothering me since my Jr year in College (for some reason…the word College is really weirding me out…saying it over and over in my head…it holds a lot of weight.) and I need to get out and do something about it.

The current plan is to let my Job settle before I make any moves. I love my job. I work in a pretty nice office in the back of one of the largest LAN centers in the country. When I get stressed, I just go and game. I work with all gamers. We have been having random CS pickup games recently and Tuesday nights, we smoke cigars and play Poker in the conference room. It is a great environment and it suites my lifestyle very well. It is one of those jobs that people look at you and ask how you end up with something like that. I don’t want to leave that. Our company is growing and may turn into something huge that I want to be apart of. When the job does settle, the plan is to take some time off and see the world. Who knows how it is all going to work out….the point is, know your out. Make sure that at anytime, you can pack up your bags and walk if you needed to. I could get evicted and fired tomorrow. Where does that leave me? I landed this job on a fluke and it could leave me just as fast as it found me.

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Check out my photo adventure though the LA convention center. It is listed under pages to the right. I figure nobody would ever see that so I am telling you to click on the thing to the right. Go on.

I might try to fix the typos if you point em out to me in an email or something. Enjoy.

I killed it…I killed my computer. I turned it on…it beeped…I smelled something burning…and now it is dead. Some of my RAM became unseated during transport and shorted out when I turned on my box. Get new RAM? It is rambus…the kind of ram that was never outsourced and now costs as much as a new computer to upgrade. Plus, I am not totally convinced it was the ram that fired. I think the mobo is shot. The long and short of it is, due to the move and the fact that I cooked my comp, my writing has suffered. I have so much I want to say and do and now I am totally lagging. I haven’t even been able to get my pictures uploaded to get the E3 run down. It is all very tragic and annoying.

I will have my E3 rundown up by the end of this week. I am going to get my stuff uploaded and continue writing on a borrowed computer. I am slowly starting the build for a new computer. I need to see what I can afford. It is pretty rough all around right now. Anyways, that is the newest saga in my life. More to follow as always. Onward…

I am currently running around E3 representing both Howie’s and myself. A full update with pictures will be coming here along with (hopefully) a host of articles that I will be doing for various outlets. I will be doing a piece where I will be pitting the industries top gaming mice up against each other to see how they stack up.

If you are visiting this site and you received a business card from me, allow me to clear some things up. I am a freelance journalist that covers a nearly anything dealing with the industry. This site is both a personal blog of my travels within and out of the industry as well as my own personal hub where I can showcase myself. As you can see, the site is currently just a blog but it is being built up to accommodate my special needs. Thanks for stopping by and please I look forward to following up with you post show. Now then, sleep is for the weak….OFF TO TOMMY’S!!!

I have been quite the hobo the past few weeks. For those of you who don’t know, I had a place on the beach all lined up and ready for me to move in when, at the last second, the landlord decided to reject or app for no reason. This funny joke lead me on a frantic high stress scramble all across south orange county trying to find a place to live. I have effectively been living on my girlfriend’s floor much to the chagrin of both her and her cats. I might yet once again have a place lined up but we will see how that pans out. I am sure I will follow up with all of you once my life settles down.

In other belated news, I did get published by fatal1ty.com and am looking forward to doing more work for them in the future. They hooked me up with a eluminix keyboard which is the first step in direction of a sorely needed computer (it is one of those tricked keyboard that glows in the dark. I am convinced anything that has lights is faster plus it is endorsed by fatal1ty himself so I am just that much cooler now).

I have a quasi big boy job now. I am the official office manager of the Howie’s Game Shack corporate office. I have a sweet leather executive chair that  adjusts in 800 different ways and dual 19” LCDs. I chase down orders that we have made, place new ones, and make sure all the calls get where they need to go. I also do random bitch work like place orders for lunch and pick up picture frames at the local Walmart. Oddly enough, I am really enjoying my job. I am surrounded by games at all times in a world of entrepreneurial business, which I am finding rather appealing…as long as it is not I that is fronting the money.

In other, more exciting news, I am heading up to LA for the start of E3 tomorrow. It will be, once again, a total sensory overload. I will have something this year that I haven’t had in the past; an actual digital camera in which to document these events. My special lady friend likes to buy various bits of technology when she is bored so I will just swipe one of her “extra” digies lying around. Expect to see an extensive post show photo romp here when the smoke has cleared.

Sadly enough, there isn’t much in the world of gaming going on. I still play WoW when I can and encourage who has the means to join up. I have no doubt that once I have a place and I have been renewed by E3, my list of electronic addictions will be extensive once again.

Things are starting to clear up a bit and make a little more sense to me now. Having an actual job and, in time, an actual place really aids in the in the whole “things falling into place” deal. My next stop is to get unstupid. I spent some time recently with the three people that, when taken in a concentrated dose with alcohol, tend to ruin any budding ego one may have regarding their funny and wit. Duncan, Blair and Quinn are three mental giants that seem to unintentionally ravage the women and eat the children of Comedy Town when drunk. It can be a rather humbling experience to those who fancy themselves as cleaver. Drinking with these three sets the bar that much higher gives me something to think about striving for someday when I am not feeling the crippling mental lethargy that has been clawing at my stem since I left the social inactive shotgun blast that is College.

I’m Jesse. I’m here to help keep Travis from being crushed under the weight of his own genius. It’s going to be tough. Let’s kick things off with a new holiday we can all celebrate every day of the year.

Boo sleep, yeah blog! I am shocked. Three people asked me when I was going to update my blog again. Three! It boggles my mind…I apologize for lagging. I think it has something to do with my creative process. It goes something similar to this:

Dude! (yes, I often times yell dude in my head with an idea koo-aid’s on to the scene…it is an exciting time for me) I should totally write on that. (the envelope is sealed here before the question “why?” can be asked for ego security purposes).
Cut to me sitting at on my bed and thinking ‘I totally know what I am going to say. This will be my wittiest piece yet.’ I then proceeded to laugh at my own jokes and get distracted by whatever is arms reach. Fast forward a few days to me at my computer ready to write, after extensive web surfing and searching my computer, I open a word document. More clicking and searching follows. Before the words you are reading were typed, I had watched half the old Digital Media movies, tried to download the movie “The Game”, read up on the official rules on issuing a challenge recognized by the United States Air-Hockey Association., and listened to the entire YTCracker NerdRap. Entertainment. System album (still going actually). In fact, the only reason I am writing is because my internet crashed. (I will have to remember to link the rules to the USAA when it is back up). Where am I…

Right. So I am going to get out all my failed ideas all at once. I am going to just bullet and quick purge the things in my head out on paper….computer….

Digtail Media Movies.
Wtf were we thinking. Kent, you weren’t even trying in Suikoden. This does however spark the fire in me to regain the cinematic masterpiece Templar. I hear Mr. Reid still has it. I feel partial guilt for the loss of this movie. I was the keeper of the Templar CDs. I gave them to someone (I think either Josh or Danny) to burn or resize or something. Regardless, I uploaded the movies to the community FTP we had and reformatted my computer. Well, the upload got messed up and the final few scenes are missing. The current plan is to go back to our old High School, bust into the class room where we think our old teacher is teaching and try to barter one of the more current movies templar. This whole thing is probably totally lost on anyone who has no idea what the hell Templar is, please understand that I cannot stress the importance of this movie enough to those who were involved. It is a 45 minute movie that ranks a -12 on the movie awesome scale. I will keep everyone up to date on what happens with this….

WoW, I can’t believe it either.

Yeah, I am back on it. I am not totally sure why either. I got suckered in with promises of PVP and new game play experience with a Horde mage. Like a chump, I took Blizzard back after a nasty breakup. This can only end in tears. I guess the real reason is all my friends are doing it and I can’t rise above the influence. I guess I just ran out of reasons why not to. I will say that I am having a pretty good time (and that makes me feel dirty). I still loath questing and talking to anyone who plays the game (online and off) but the pvp is really proving to have lasting appeal. Maybe this time I will make it to level 60…and maybe I should stop talking about this because I am only making things worse.

Home sweet….ummm…

Bye house. My home in da O.C got put on the market and two hours later got a full price offer. We are now waiting on for the deal to close. Being out of College sucks. The only thing worse moving back in with your parents is being kicked out. I am king loser. This means my life is in a period of extreme upheaval and couch surfing. It is a bit strange. I have lived in this house for about 12 years and now it is gone. I am starting to remember why I hate for sale signs. Bye physical manifestations of youth memories, the foggy remembrances of aging are here to take your place.

Gizmondo right in your eye!

I have always had a special place in my heart for the Gizmondo. At the ’03 E3 (I think) I was first introduced. I walked into the huge, white and very bumpin booth where a token black guy rapper on a stage yelling “GIZMONDO! GIZMONDO! Yeah, throw your hands up, come on! Gizmondo ya’ll!.” I asked one of the booth attendants just pray tell is a Gizmodo. He proceeded to yell “Gizmondo!” at me and then handed my a t-shirt with a Rorschach ink blot on it. It was at this point my brain snapped and took off in two different directions. One camp, the more logical, concluded that these idiots had no product and what was being sold at me was a name that would be later applied to something a ex-Nike think tank popped out and debuted on MTV. The other, the child idiot side, was certain that Gizmondo was just so awesome that it was beyond anything that I could ever hope it to be. I could neither understand nor classify what Gizmondo is. Perhaps that is why I had a shirt with an ink blot on it. It was what I saw it to be. Gizmondo was in me. I made Gizmondo and shaped it from my hopes, dreams, and fears. Sadly, that part of me never really fully died, hence the faint twinkle in my eye when the name Gizmondo is brought up today.

You can imagine the glee I got when I learned the company CEO totaled a Ferrari Enzo and blamed a mysterious German man who he claimed fled into the hills. (I just realized some of you still have no idea what Gizmondo is. It is a handheld gaming system made by Tiger (same guys who made the game.com, remember that thing? Fun fact, it had a touch screen. Eat it Nintendo DS, you got nothing (note to self: I swear to god I wrote some of this stuff before. I might have written it below or in an away message….I think I need to use PEMDAS to finish writing this digression) yeah, the DS isn’t as cutting edge as they want us to think…well, none of their innovations really are, they are all past failed ideas of some smaller, lesser company)(I used to buy those little tiger games…I had a Ninja Turtles one…I could never tell if I was winning or losing, but shit moved on the screen and it beeped a lot and really, that’s all 5 year old me needed) It also had a build in GPS and some other crap. Not listed on it’s feature list was no software support and Gamegear battery life (yeah, I got one of those)) I have no idea if I did all those ellipses right. Anyways, when Gizmondo was released in the states, about 13 stores nation wide got units. HA! I just did a search for the website and it turned up an article saying they found a gunclip near the crash. This keeps getting better.

Read this and look at the pictures.

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/03/02/gun_clip_crashed_ferrari/

(telegraph pole? wtf? do Enzo’s also have flux capacitors?)

I am going to sleep. I have ran out of will and wit.

:::Fade to black. Plays short sound clip telling you your party has rested and regained all HP/MP:::

::shot fades in. Camera slowly pans a close up of a desk cluttered with videogames, old software, shot glasses, papers, various gadgets, statues, cables, and a box of star wars pez heads. It stops on two hands typing away on a black ergo wireless keyboard. The shot pulls out to reveal a large bearded nerd wearing an Atari “Roots” t-shirt punching keys while leaned back in his computer chair. The following words pop up on the 20” LCD that illuminates the room and reflects off his glasses:::

After reading over the previous writing, you can actually graph the quality decline with a nice downward slop. (ok, I lied, I actually didn’t go back and read shit…I am just guessing at this point…hell, I don’t even know if the above makes sense). But that does remind me. I want to see a Phantom vs Gizmondo grudge match. Both failed systems have such wonderful back story. Check out this neat spider chart here on the Gizmondo.

fatal1ty .com

I have been asked to do some freelance stuff for these guys…that could be neat. I am not quite sure how I am going to write about high end gaming when my computer consumes ass but perhaps they will be willing to help me out in the department.

Japan?

Oh yeah. A bearded raider form the East is going to ransack Tokyo. End of May is the target date. The sheer idea of getting drunk out of a vending machine and buying crazy ass Nintendo candy is enough for me to squint my eyes and throw the V. I am going to scare the hell out of the locals I am sure.

Howies…yeah…I am still there…

I have been upgraded from store bitch to office bitch. The owner has decided to take me under his wing and train me how to run a business. The pay is now enough to live off of but nothing for me to be bragging about. Next step, my own Lan center…perhaps? We will see…

Wow this thing is long…and it is all nonsense…I will have to remedy this somehow in the future. My only hope is that you read this at work because if you weren’t getting paid for this, I want to extend a sincere apology….I wasn’t even drunk…I don’t think…

I have begun to realize patterns in my life. Smaller spirals that mimic the larger ones manifesting themselves in various facets of my life. I suspect there is something broken somewhere that is steering me off course in a consistent predictable fashion. I believe that motivation and desire are two key areas I will send my gnomes to have a look at. Like my Jeep, they work well enough most of the time but, just to mix things up, periodically blow a fuel line and spew gas all over the road and engine causing you to have to rent a U-Haul in order to tow it the remaining 120 miles.

Regardless, I love writing. When things click, there are few things I would rather be doing. The kicker is, the fastest way to unclick something in my head is to put it on a schedule. Once I am required to scratch an itch before itch itself has driven me to do so, I become raw and no longer with to take nails to it.

Mistake #1: Saying I was going to make myself write but gumming it up like a old man on a Mott’s Cup….while we are at it…

NEW RULE:

I need to write something on here that isn’t dealing with the site or lack of posts. It is time for me to stop bitching about the quality of the water and start bitching about what’s outside the bowl.

Bitch blogging is very addicting. I am starting to understand why people have latched on to Emo with such heroin grade tenacity. It is a thin line that I wish to walk with this one. Perhaps I will write to my soundings. My current musings fit nicely into the default wordpress theme. I happen to know that certain steps have been taken to remedy this. Make over party baby! On that note…

I have had a recent revelation while sitting around at work about my avid pursuit of a career in the gaming industry as a writer. I think I might hate my audience. No, this does not mean you oh reader of mine. I am talking about the average gamer that picks up a gaming mag or reads an online site or, as I have become more familiar with in these passing months, those who would frequent a LAN center. Perhaps it is the level of saturation that has caused me such distain. This by no means is a shock to me. Go on to any online game and you will find yourself neck deep in asshole. Xbox live, any Blizzard game, your favriot FPS, hell every forum on the net holds true to this. Gamers are dicks. So being a gamer myself (I have a shirt that says so), what does this say about me? This line of thought has forced me to look at myself and question, am I an ass? The answer still eludes me as I am sure it is just as elusive to anyone who knows me. I will say this though, to write in this industry, you have to be somewhat of an ass, a refined and well spoken one, but an all none the less. More to come on this subject when I have more experience to speak of.

God this site is ugly. I really need to fix that. It is so damn skinny….this site and nutrition facts… Ryan Shwayder designed a great look for nerdfancy but it never got made. I figure with a bit of time, he would be able to implement that design into a wordpress theme. The problem? He has none. SOE (one of the videogame triad of evil) owns his soul. Sadly, this leaves very little time for the little people in his life. I will try to switch it up for my own sanity but until then…we will all have to deal…and by we and mean me since out of the two people who have come here, I am the only one with an issue. I still have the graphics that Dave Clark did for me and the business cards kick more ass than I know what to do with. I think I am going to start passing those things out just for the sheer amusement of giving someone a card for a blog…but I guess it beats handing them out for a dead domain. I think I will just keep dropping them in various fishbowls and jars in hopes of a free lunch for my next meeting.