by A.J. Wood

My Birthday Wish…

LegosAs we’ve been inundated with news about the War with Iraq, my birthday wish goes out to the U.S. POWs being held. May their will prove stronger than their captors, may their training provide them with hope for their safe return.

Weekday birthdays suck. As a kid my parents made my birthday seem like a national holiday. I reveled in the glorious celebrations each year outdoing the previous as I grew from a child until my college years. Then a strange phenomenon happened after my 21st birthday. Suddenly I was hit with milestone celebrations. Birthdays passed like Hallmark holidays until my 25th birthday (Yippee! Car insurance became cheaper). Another season passed until the “big” Three-O. It paralleled my 21st birthday as the drinking was as intense while the motivations were inherently different (21 “I can legally drink!” 30 “I can still drink like those 21 year olds”). Alas, I have discovered the maintenance & upkeep my body needs to compete in its thirties. Don’t get me wrong, I can still whoop some ass, I just need a little more time between rounds. Where was I going?

Oh, anyways, today I’m another thirty-something. It’s Tuesday and there hasn’t been any fanfare or cake or naked chicks or the fanfare of naked chicks jumping out of a cake. My parents sent me a birthday e-mail last week (so they wouldn’t forget) and this morning Michelle greeted me with “Happy Birthday” before heading out the door to work. Even the gatos who are normally up in my business first thing in the morning are off sleeping somewhere. So as I get ready for school I’ll leave you with this story which appropriately sums up my mood at the moment:

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I woke up early feeling depressed because it was my birthday, and I thought, ?I?m another year older,? but decided not to dwell on it. So I showered and shaved, knowing when I went down to breakfast my wife would greet me with a big kiss and say, ?Happy birthday, dear.?

All smiles, I went into breakfast, and there sat my wife reading the newspaper as usual. She didn?t say a word. So I got myself a cup of coffee and thought, ?Oh well, she forgot. The kids will be down in a few minutes, they will sing ?Happy Birthday? and have a nice gift for me.? There I sat, enjoying my coffee, and I waited. Finally the kids came running into the kitchen yelling, ?Give me a slice of toast! I?m late! Where is my coat? I?m going to miss my bus!? Feeling more depressed than ever, I left for the office.

When I walked in, my secretary greeted mew with a big smile and a cheerful. ?Happy Birthday, boss,? She then asked if she could get me some coffee. Her remembering my birthday made me feel a whole lot better. Later in the morning, my secretary knocked on my office door and said, ?Since it?s your birthday, why don?t we have lunch together?? Thinking it would make me feel better, I said, ?That?s a good idea.? So we locked up the office, and since it was my birthday, I said, ?Why don?t we drive out of town and have lunch in the country, instead of going to the usual place?? So we drove out of town and went to a little out-of-the-way inn and had a couple of martinis and a nice lunch. We started driving back to town when my secretary said, ?Why don?t we go by my place, and I will fix you another martini?? It sounded like a good idea, since we didn?t have much to do at the office. So we went to her apartment, and she fixed some martinis.

After a while, she said, ?If you will excuse me, I think I will slip into something more comfortable,? and she left the room. In a few minutes, she opened her bedroom door and came out carrying a big birthday cake. Following her were my wife and all my kids, and there I sat with nothing on but my socks.

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 by A.J. Wood

Bed please…

minibike
Recovering from a long school day. Normally, I would ramble on about this weekend’s events, but let me sum up for you then point you to the photo gallery:

Saturday Night – Rocked our asses off after leaving Tiki Bobs and joining Jen at Have A Nice Day Cafe. So sooooooooo good to catch up with Jen, our premiere party girl.

Sunday Afternoon – Michelle & I went to Ft. Worth to catch Geoff doing sportbike tricks at Pennington Field. Saw Daniel & Meg (pics soon), rode the track in Daniel’s Mustang (video coming soon), and then witnessed Geoff bounce off the pavement when the wind swept him off his bike while doing a standup trick. Geoff ended up with a cracked rib and we waited for Kendall to come out with a truck so we could haul the bike back to Geoff’s.

I’ve homework to do so you checkout this weekend’s pics and I’ll catch ya tomorrow.

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 by A.J. Wood

Woo Hoo!!! Spurs 112, Mavs 110

TimLast night’s game was AMAZING!!! It was much better than the last game we attended at the American Airlines Center. Close games are always fun as you’re glued to your seat until the very end.

It was interesting to watch the love-hate relationship the Dallas home crowd has with guard Steve Nash (because of his anti-war opinions). On one hand he was booed when he entered the arena and subsequently whenever his name was mentioned early in the game. Later small cheers roared when he scored rising to hysteria as the game was THAT close. Heh, kinda hard to dis the guy when you want him to win games for you.

OK, have to run to class now, but I posted some old EverQuest character info (dug up from my old website) for Katie & Ryan. And thanks to Tom over at Orby Online for linking up with me.

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 by A.J. Wood

Alive & Well

Received my first ever “Why aren’t you bloggin’?” e-mail from Katie (cool beans). She was concerned that I had once again become enthralled with a cute wood elf nymph and muscle atrophy was beginning to kick in from 48 hours of non-stop gaming on EverQuest.

Not to worry. As Ryan put it “Monks bleed all over anything anyway” and actually my schedule’s been too busy to engage in another rousing adventure of corpse retrieval.

Yesterday I officially returned to college. My brain hasn’t completely kicked into “school” mode yet and I’m sure there will be some head-butting as I’m not really a rules kind of guy. (What do you mean I can’t eat BK in class?) It feels more like high school than college, but hopefully things will loosen up in the upcoming weeks.

My evenings have been spent finalizing a DVD project for a local comedian. Working a bunch with Fred who’s doing a tremendous job with the editing.

Michelle & I will be downtown tonight to see the Spurs play the Mavericks. Should be another entertaining evening as MICHELLE IS A SPURS FAN and they are the visiting team.

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 by A.J. Wood

Got EverCrack?

EverQuest picAfter exchanging e-mails with Ryan I decided to dust off my EverQuest CDs and take another look at the online world that held my attention for almost a year. Ryan mentioned a lot had changed in the two years since I stopped playing (mostly the User Interface and some other game play stuff) and I was motivated in part by an e-mail sent to me by Sony Entertainment who had kindly reactivated my long dead account.

“Try us again for 30 days, free of charge.”

“Get reacquainted with old friends, engage yourself in new zones.”

“Relive all the things that made you play in the first place.”

A shrewd move, not unlike asking Chris Rock in the movie “New Jack City” to take his just-recovered-crack-smokin’ butt back inside a drug lab. The temptations were high and I wondered if I might get sucked in again for $12.95 a month.

To fairly assess the changes I decided to shell out $10 for an expansion upgrade called the Shadows of Luclin. This last expansion touted newer 3D models and a better graphics engine plus an additional race & character class which I had not played before. I loaded up the CDs and waited as 10 minutes worth of online upgrades were downloaded via the Internet. Finally I was prompted to play the game and as I entered my old account info a new theme song trumpeted from my speakers.

Well the character screen was certainly different. The 3D models had improved and my characters had smoother features and new hairstyles. All three of my characters appeared to be intact so I selected my primary character Azarok and proceeded to enter the world.

From this point things got crazy. It had been so long since I played that I had forgotten which part of the world I was last in. Also, as I hadn’t played on my new computer at all, I quickly discovered none of the function keys were setup for the game. I entered the world only to be immediately attacked by what appeared to be a Sand Giant. I say this because there were a flurry of pop-up windows I wasn’t familiar with blocking my complete view of the screen. As I clicked the windows closed, my computer speakers echoed Azarok’s screams as he was pummeled to death. Quicker than a Tyson’s last fight, my character was crushed by massive giant blows.

Then the fun started.

For those unfamiliar with the game, the EverQuest world is divided into zones. As the game supports people playing online with 56k modem connections, only one zone is loaded on your computer at any given moment. When moving from one zone to another the game pauses while the location map is switched out. The bad part is when you die you don’t necessarily reappear in the same zone as your corpse. “Souls” are bound to specific zones and it just so happened that I was bound about 60 minutes real time from where I died. At this point I should have simply logged off.

The road back meant figuring out which series of shuttles & boats to ride. I almost got lost, but I was assisted by another player (thanks to Cadavear the Necromancer if he’s reading this). Fortunately, the Sony folks implemented a quicker teleporting method which allowed me to bypass some boat travel. With Cadavear’s help I shaved off roughly 20 minutes traveling back to where I died.

This screen shot sums up my afternoon. Notice the giant still looming in the background. Heh, after this afternoon’s adventure I think I can say I’m definitely past my EQ addiction.

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