AWESOME!!! (deals)

So, I hopped on Steam a few days ago and noticed... FREE STUFF!!! That and a whole bunch of deals for those of you with the money to spend. Most games are under 20$ and if you meet certain requirements you can get even more off. I already got Portal and Flat Out free and am going to continue trying to get more. The biggest deal/ contest they have going on right now is, if you can complete enough of their goals and get coal... You could win all of the games steam has to offer... Thousands of games for several days, weeks, or even months of magnificent PC gaming. Anyway, now that I'm done nerding out about that... This is another reason steam isn't such a bad idea if your computer is up to date, and has some good hardware on its side. With the right mind-set and the time, you can play almost any game you could want to.

Anyway I hope all of your christmas's were good, and I hope you continue reading. Until my next post ALONZI!

Its 2011 Christmas!!

A post for all those that celebrate and all those that don't. This happy holiday season has been good to me, and it has shown me that if you try and put yourself out there a lot is possible. In one month I even got 150+ views on this little blog that I honestly didn't expect anyone to read. You all have already given me a gift this year by showing me that people do care about what I say sometimes, but at the same time that doesnt mean they always will or that it was a huge deal. I will keep posting about whatever I can think of and tell me what you think, or even what I could post as another topic later. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, just happy holidays all around no matter what your religion, what you believe, or what you think. This is the season of happiness and forgiveness.

My job search (a little ranty)

When I moved and got the stuff I had left back over there, everything I own fits into about a single box... But things are not what makes a person great or memorable, its the personality and the mind, and what that person decides to do with it. I still don't have a job and honestly am starting to feel useless, I know I am good with people. I can work with people, I can work with most anything else that's simple enough. My main issue has been that I stopped trying, I know it was a dick move and I'm trying hard again... I'm not used to the working world though, I mean even my brother and sister had an in when they got their jobs. I don't want to wait anymore though, I NEED A JOB! No matter what it is, if I don't get one in a few months I seriously have no idea where my confidence levels are going to be. I know I joked a few times about only wanting a job for Christmas, but honestly, it was no joke... If I could choose between a bunch of fancy gifts, and actually being able to buy anything for myself, I'd choose the ladder. I just wish job hunting was as easy as it was when I got my first job as a paper boy, and than my slightly harder to get job at a mini-mart near my house. Things just have gotten so much more complicated and impersonal, for me if you take out the human element, you take away the draw of the job. Not to say I won't try and conform to the new way of job hunting, but I just don't understand how things got so weird so fast. I've always though you would want to meet the people you hire before hand, no matter what you might be doing, even a phone call would be nice. I guess what I'm trying to say is the new way of job searching is much more tiring for me than what I experienced in the past, makes me feel old saying that but it's how I feel. Please don't take too much of this to heart though, besides the wanting a job thing that is. The point of my posting this was so the few readers I have might know what's going on in my life, after all part of the title is "What I'm doing". Thank you for reading, and remember to keep your chins up, until next post I'll be sleeping......

or not near a computer anyway...

Peace!

Time For A Face-Lift

Or at least that's what most of the sites I frequent must have thought to them selves. I first noticed it on Facebook, it sorta kinda took a page from everywhere else and is letting you have a simple background picture. To me it looks tasteful and is going to keep a lot of people happy, mainly because it didn't screw with Facebook Chat, or the feed page. It does seem easier to read and access, along with letting you check specific months of posts instead of clicking "show more" about a thousand times. In my opinion Facebook's Timeline feature is worth it, just check to see if anyone you know has it and give it a try, as I understand it you can remove it later or simply not publish it if your not sure about it yet. The second place I found some aesthetic changes was YouTube. It started this winter face-lift a while ago, not that I remember when it started... But the changes have only improved usability and have given YouTube an over all nice look. The most recent thing I noticed was the 3D functionality and what seems to be a snowflake effect YouTube has put into some of the videos. I'm not sure which videos can or can not have this effect yet, but a lot of them have a little snow flake button just next to the quality button. I've found various other changes that appear to be minor, I would go into detail as to what they were but it is getting late so I'll just say there have been a lot if you look around. Just to name two sites I've noticed subtle changes in, there's http://www.escapistmagazine.com/ and http://blip.tv/. But as I said, the changes I've been able to find were small, and if you weren't looking you wouldn't notice.

Anyway, happy holidays and have fun with your holiday plans. As for me, I am going to be in the mountains with someone special and half of the family I will eventually call my family. Please comment or whatever you do on here, and give me some ideas if you have some, I'll post again soon.

Suspicious Activity? On My E-Mail? It's more likely than you think...

So, apparently my aol mail account has been disabled for my safety because of its "Suspicious Activity". I had already known about said activity but since there was no option to force me to be logged in to send something, I could do nothing about it. I let it lay where it was and blocked the occasional spam message that I got. Now... After all of this time... AOL has finally caught on to the problem with my account, the only solution however... Close it for MY protection... What The HELL! Honestly I'm not the only one who has an essentially hi-jacked E-mail account, I'm pretty sure mine got jacked from one of my friends hack messages. They didn't send it, but they were infected... You'd think AOL would just have though of something to... I don't know... Disable boting on their mail services? Would it be that hard to make the person have to know a password and where their computer was located? Anything.... I just can't believe this... On top of that my account is now locked for 24 hours because I couldn't answer the security question, which I'm assuming is case sensitive. So, I doubt, HIGHLY, that I will gain access to my MAIN FREAKIN E-MAIL! ...for a while... I know I am no server expert but youd think they would have gotten the help of someone big in virus and spyware protection by now, like oh, I dunno... CISCO systems or McAfee? Seriously, most of the e-mail services out there need to tighten the cracks a little. I don't think this little rant will change anything in any way but, man I wish it would. If anyone else has problems like getting recipient could not be found, when you did not send a message, please comment and tell me about it... Also it would do those people well to memorize, thoroughly their security question answer, so they don't get locked out of their account.

Forge: Simply Magic

So, I play Magic: The Gathering when I can find someone to play with, and when I can find the spare time. I have had only one of those things lately and no deck so I decided to look into a game that I used to play, Forge. It's a fully functional Magic deck tester, or that's what I use it for. You can build a deck out of any of the cards that they have installed which at the moment comes to about 9,536 cards in total, possibly more if there has been an update since I last checked. I assume this project has taken a lot of the designers time, and with it not being made by a company, even more of that individuals time. The creator originally made it just for fun and to see if he could, I coded a little and seeing if you could is a great way to pass time while programming.

The AI works well, the card graphics are the real life card pictures, and the deck builder is fantastic if you know the rules of deck building. Theirs even a working quest mode, that I sadly have to say I have not given a try yet. If the rest of this program says anything about what the quest mode will be like though, I should give it a try as soon as I can.

Over all this game is decent and has support for Mac and PC users. The user interface is simpler than it used to be and is easy on the eyes. If I was Wizards of the Coast, I would allow this game to be produced as a cheap deck tester, even maybe calling it Deck Forge or something. Eh, pipe dreams, but anyway if you are into trading card games and cant figure out magic, give this a try. Hell if you do know how to play magic use it as a deck tester and something to help you find better combinations.

If you'd like to check it out look at their blogger:  http://mtgrares.blogspot.com/
                                                       or their site:  http://www.slightlymagic.net/wiki/Forge

Sometimes the download links go down but its not his fault, just the site he hosts on going down. He always re-posts the content elsewhere though, so if you get into it no worries.


I rate this program 4 out of 5 for ease of use, being one of the few brave enough to keep pushing forward, and for just being a great game overall.

Operating systems: How much do we really know?

We all use one, even if we are on the go using a smart phone. Although I'm going to stick with what I know and talk about the three big players in my opinion. There are the two everyone's heard of, Mac and Windows, but there is actually another option that not everyone considers, it is mostly if not completely free and it is called Linux. From personal experience each of these operating systems works very differently but I haven't really done the research into each of them. I have to say I don't have a lot of experience with Mac but I have used Linux and Windows quite a lot.

Anyway I'll start with what I have heard or do know about Mac. It's better with graphics programs and creative projects than windows is and has a selection of Mac only  programs to select from. While not having as much in the gaming department it still is pretty good about not getting viruses (mainly because no one makes Mac viruses...). Anyway the big thing that turns me away from buying a Mac computer isn't the operating system, its the way they are built half of the time, with the monitor and computer in one unit. It makes upgrading hardware more dangerous and difficult, that and I'm a gamer. From what I've seen there are not nearly enough games for Mac to help me keep playing the games I love.

As for Linux, it is generally used in servers and is decent for that from what I've seen. I could be wrong and things could have changed, but from what I remember Linux OS was used in servers a lot of the time. The viruses, it does have less than Windows, however I would assume it has more than Mac because it is used in servers so much. It is harder to learn how to use depending on the version of Linux you choose to use, some could be similar to Windows, others could be like Mac. I've only had experience with a couple versions however and they were more like Windows than Mac. Honestly, I don't know if Linux can run games without having compatibility programs running and installed. I never figured that part out, but from what I hear Linux is fun to mess around with.

What can I say about Windows... It runs smoothly if your careful but, some versions have never and will never run well. XP seems to still run fine for me, even though Vista and Windows 7 have both come out. For me Vista had no problems but, I've heard so many complaints that not all of them could be small screw ups here and there. As for Windows 7, it seemed to fix all if not all of the problems that Vista just couldn't seem to correct with its updates. To me 98 still seems more convenient but cant run anything worth while now a days anyway. Windows is the most widely used OS and honestly why wouldnt it be, it's in schools, libraries, and so we wanted it in our homes. Its our safe, home sweet home of operating systems and if your already using it, there is little reason to change to anything else.

I hope  you enjoyed this read, and I love to get feedback so please comment.