Woot I'm on vacation! Well sort of anyways. We're launching a new program for the Field Techs at work, so I've been going non-stop for the last month now, I finally get a couple extra days off... and where am I? Indiana of all places.

So here I am at GenCon with Storm... and I've never seen so many adults in costume outside a ren faire before. This place is definitely the RPG/LARP gamer paradise. Which would probably be really cool if I had that kind of time, but I'm definitely sticking to Online gaming. Anything involving paper, pens and dice is way to complicated and time consuming for the few braincells that have not been consumed by work.

Well, as some of you may know, danjackson has joined the Army. He emailed me earlier today and wanted me to pass along his email address to everyone so that they could stay in touch. His RL name is Jason and his email address is: jason.c.taylor1(at)us.army.mil . I hope that everyone encourages him because at one time I was also active duty military and know how important receiving news from home and friends is while I was defending our freedoms. DJ asked me to pass this along so that we would have a way to stay in touch with him and I consider him a very good friend. I hope that we hear some g

Andy and I had the opportunity to spend last Saturday at Sea World with his folks - his parents, and his brother, sister-in-law, and their two kids. We weren't about to pass it up, so we got up nice and early and headed down to San Antonio with his parents in their car.

I was wondering at first if they'd take it badly if Andy and I slipped away to wander around by ourselves, but apparently not; the second we walked into the gates and the family started to debate what they wanted to see first, we slithered out of the way and headed over to the Clydesdale exhibit to see the horsies.

After that we checked out the dolphins, which you can apparently feed yourself at certain times during the day. We didn't get to, but we noted the feeding times for later. Then we headed toward the rides... because while I have a deep and abiding fear of roller coasters, I did tell Andy that if was going to try to get me on one, it had better be in the morning before lunch.

Sorry I haven't been online lately folks. Thanks to all your well-wishes (and hopefully my own expertise) I successfully landed the job at Turbine Games. I've been offline in preparation for the move, and will still probably be offline for a bit longer. My first day of work is September 10th, so hopefully I should have internet again at that point and will be able to login and say howdy.

In the mean time, I've got *lots* of packing to do and crazy amounts of work to do. I'll see you all after the dust settles.

So last week I got tired of hearing Hunden hack and wheeze his way through work and I realized that I could very well be in Austin, as all my junk is packed and I was kinda just sitting around taking care of my cats and waiting to move. So, with Oz being the kind soul that he is and volunteering to watch my critters for me, I booked plane tickets to Austin and flew down last Tuesday to do fun things like thump the man on the back and make yummy homemade chicken soup. And make sure he's properly drugged of course, because he has a nasty habit of not really actually taking care of himself. *spank*

We had a great time in Chicago for St Patty's Day! Nexy year we will likely stay in Madtown so I don't have a 2 hr drive with a hangover ! Check out the pics here.

Well, here I am a week into my trip to French Guiana. Work is going well and launch is on schedule for Dec 8. Here's a LINK to ariane's website. They're going to be launching our satellite and will have a live feed.

FG is like a 3rd world country (i.e poor, dirty, and slow) except that everything is expensive (They use Euros here). Being a french territory, most people speak french(duh) or Portugese. The natives aren't too arrogant and even occassionally friendly. There's a regiment of the Foreign Legion here, as well as a detachment of the Gendarmerie Nationale (French National military police), so its fairly safe. And before you ask, no they haven't offered to surrender to me...yet.

Well, it is that time again. I have decided that I can't take living here in Wisconsin any more. A friend of mine that lives in Texas is inviting me to move down there to reassess where my life is going and it is an opportunity that I can't pass up again. So around the beginning of December I will be moving once again.

I wish that I had been able to make Wisconsin work for me again, but the pressures of my living situation have just gotten too out of hand. I am sleeping on an Air mattress in the living room and people are constantly waking me up when they are moving around. I think that is due to my involvement in the military. Also, doesn't help matters that the other day I was sleeping hard and when someone got up from the computer in the living room, the chair fell back and hit my bed just inches from my head. To top it all off, I am sick now and we are passing it around to each other. Finally, I am just sick and tired of people telling me that I am just too into video games and need to get away from it. I am a 33 year old male and even went out and bought a new TV so that I can actually enjoy movies and video games and now they say that I don't interact enough with them. It seems like I am constantly tired and just run down. Well, thankfully, a friend of mine has offered me a chance to start over again and I am jumping on it before I slip in my AA recovery program.

On the off chance anyone here has ever been to French Guiana, I would be most appreciative of any advice or insight.

It appears that I am headed off to Kourou, FG to help support a launch of one of my company's satellites. On the surface it would appear to be a pretty cool assignment, but it will extend over and past the Thanksgiving weekend and I'll be returning just short of the actual launch. I'm low on the totem pole so I get stuck with the shift no one wants. Still, I think it will be a pretty cool experience. And I suppose a corona on the beach with some exotic south american hotties to oggle (and perhaps befriend) will relieve some of the homesickness...

Well, I made it to Hanoi VN okay. By comparison to Bangkok, it is smaller, poorer and less developed. The cabbies, street venders and beggers are more pushy and more needy. Everything screams tourist trap so I've been pretty careful about buying things. If I see something interesting, I try to walk the entire block before coming back just to see how unique it is and to get an idea of the right price.

I met my friend that is going to be teaching english over here the other day. We had a nice daytrip wandering around town. Company was good so no complaints about that. Was pretty hot (38C) and humid. I must have lost a liter in sweat.

Ok guys, I'm going to spare you all the e-mail that I'm supposed to send around-- I figure you can all read what I have to say about it here. Please give this some thought, it'd mean a lot to me. I do ask for a donation later on in the post, so skip this if you're not up for that kind of thing.

Well, it has been several days since I have arrived in Bangkok for my vacation. As vacations go, this has got to be my best so far. It took a day or two to become acclimated to the hustle and bustle of this city. I am generally very tolerant of warm environments, but it has been a constant effort to cope with the heat and humidity.

Among many things, I've noticed that the Thais have a heartfelt respect for their king. Since his taking the throne, he has been key in raising the quality of life of everyone, especially the poor, by creating and involving himself with many public works. I see many thais wearing yellow T-shirts which marks the king's 60th year since ascending the throne. The people I've me so far have been very nice, but I've been cautioned that thais will not tolerate disrespect to the king, to the point of being violent. Quite a contrast to the US.

Whew!

After a two hour delay on my last leg from Tokyo, I finally arrived in Bangkok around 3 AM. Even at that late hour, there was still a fair amount of traffic.

Getting through customs was pretty easy and there were automatic money exchange machines right at the airport. (1USD=40Baht btw) There were cabbie hustlers trying to sell me fares from the airport to my lodgings for like 700 bht ($18.00). I passed and went outside to get in line at the normal taxi curb cue. Fare came out to 220 bht (with toll). Yay! Gut check proved right.

Well,

In five hours, I'm going to be heading off to Vietnam and Thailand for a month long vacation. Can't wait to go off exploring, see the sights, try out exotic cuisines, and do things that would probably be best left unspoken about in polite company.

This trip has had both good and bad moments in it's build up. I originally had a good friend that was going to go with me, but he backed out just before we were to buy tickets. So faced with the decision to go it alone, or not go at all, I thought what the heck and decided to go solo anyway.

Glad I did too. I later met a girl thats headed over there to teach english for a year. We agreed to meet up in Hanoi in a week or so and do some sight seeing together. She's out-of-my-league attractive, but we get along pretty well and have a lot of shared experiences. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

More to come...