I ditched my old blog. Crappy FortuneCity is crap. So I've moved to Blogger.com for a much easier to manage and eaiser on the eye, blog. it will also be more refined, as mentioned on my new blog.

http://hlifehotdog.blogspot.com/

I spent my Spring break in Spain on a class trip. It was about 10 days and we stayed in Madrid, Seville and Granada. We also stopped in Cordoba and Toledo to walk around and whatnot. I saw such beautiful architecture and landscapes and an unbelievable amount of olive trees. Seville was covered with orange trees, but supposedly the oranges were bitter so I didn't eat any. Toledo was sword heaven. Every other shop was calling my name. Unfortunately, I was low on euros and all of the banks were closed, so I didn't get to bring one home.

My favorite part of the trip was the people I was with. There was such an awesome group of people who, for the most part, got along so nicely. We had such a great time, and the trip would not have been as good without them.

Coming back to the states, we landed in a nasty little storm and the landing was rather bumpy. All is good. I took a lot of pictures and a bunch of them are for textures I will try to make.

Anyone else do any traveling recently?

Don't you love technology and how it's always improving?
During christmas break, my brother helped me pick out computer parts from the website of a local-ish store. Today, I went to get the parts we had decided on.
Among other things (the processor and graphics card were both no longer being sold, so they got upgrades too), The cashier upgraded my choice of a 500GB HDD to a 1TB HDD. For 49 cents less.

I've also picked out a laser mouse to replace my old, scroll-wheel-malfunctioning ball mouse. Once everything arrives, I'll have to find a use for the 7 extra buttons. I'm thinking console commands in source.

TL/DR: Terrabyte HDD is cheaper than 500GB, My days of shooting windows with RPGs are soon to be over.

Going to meet Kane, leader of the Brotherhood of Nod in person in a couple of hours.
He's in the Netherlands to promote the latest episode in the Command & Conquer Tiberian/Tiberium series.

Yes, i know, they fucked up C&C4 pretty bad, but im going to play it anyway, because it has GDI, Nod and Kane. Plus, it's the last in the series.
Call me crazy, but i don't care.

I FIGHT FOR NOD!

Edit: Mission Accomplished!
I got to meet Kane and got a signed limited edition of C&C4.

I don't have pictures, but i do have some video footage. It's not much, but i'll see if i can get something out of it.

EDIT:"I think they're on to us."It's not Gmod 10, so don't expect me to drop in on anyone's server or anything, but it works, since I modded out the HL2DM cache. (Too damn lazy to install it, and who needs the MP options anyway)

Comics, here I come!

The neverending curse

Don't you just love silence? Especially when it's time to sleep?

I've been deprived of good ole silence for years. In about 2002, the old bitch next door got herself a new dog. An apparently prize-winning German Shepherd. She got up every day at 6.30 in the morning and let the fucker go outside. Of course, since she never allowed it to have any contact with the outside world, the SOB would bark at absolutely anything from behind the fence: people passing by, cars, birds, garbage, hearing my voice from the other side of the dividing wall, or just because. This usually went on until lunch, and then let it back out until dinner. The only period of acceptable, continuous silence I could get was 22:00-6:45. And since my school had classes late, after having dinner and shit I could only go to bed after midnight. Then of course I wouldn't plan to get up before noon. This fucker ruined my sleep patterns.

And of course, if you tell the owner of such a dog anything, they just don't give a shit.

We moved to a new house last year. At last I would forget those fuckers. How wrong I was.

At the new house, it wasn't just one. It was two fucking barkers with no time restrictions. Area diagram below. The first one, labeled 1, is a large dog which I've never seen- it's outside my field of view. As soon as they let it out to the back yard, it started barking nonstop with its very loud voice. This could be at any time of the day, or any time of the night. After some time, we discovered this was especially bad at about 4 in the morning when certain cat passed by on a wall. Luckily, this one has been pretty silent the past month or two (knock on wood).

Then was the second one, labeled 3 (yeah wrong order). There was an old ancient, peaceful and silent balding yellow dog, until one day (not long after we moved in) they got him company: A young, small brown Boxer with a not too loud, worn out high voice -yet still terribly annoying. This one is random. We don't know its reasons, but it also barks continuously at... anything. Just because. It can bark for days without rest. Right now it's been yelling since yesterday, with only a pause between 2am and 6am. You can guess how I slept.

And finally, 3 or 4 months ago they finished a small housing building with 4 balconies facing back. People started moving in. Right there, at the last balcony, lives number 2: A German Shepherd. Sometimes it's not there, but when it is, it barks. Loudly. Very. Like the others, just because. Any time of the day or night. This morning this one teamed up with number 3 to fuck up my sleep once again. Both shut up at about noon.

Then also, this morning there was one replying to 2 and 3. Luckily, it's not a regular customer. But still joined them this morning to piss me off even more. It's somewhere in the orange area. I've never seen it. But I don't care about it, I believe I'll forget about it if the others shut up.Note: Not to scale. My bedroom is at the red spot. It's about 20 metres to number 3, and 25 or less to number 2.

I've already given up. Not even the police gives a shit, they don't come when I call them about this. Does anyone here know how to... ahem... "take care" of this issue? I'd have already shot them all but my father has a strict no-shooting policy (and this isn't Texas). I don't know what to do.

Edit: Wow, long post. Gotta stop doing that.

Update
An air rifle is the solution to subjects #2 and #3. No actual harm done. I should bill the owners for educating their stupid animals (something they should have done, just like I did with my own dog). It's like they want them to be annoyances.

I still don't know what to do with subject #1, although (knock on wood) it's been quieter lately. And whatever there is in the orange area, I think it's just replying to #2. Also since this morning I hear puppies from about that area. I think it's time to get grenades.

Jesus tapdancing Christ I put in a 16 hour day already and I still have about 8 hours left. That's a whole 24 hours! Freelance work is hard sometimes, I hope I get a boat load of money for this! ... probably will.

I can't say anything since I'm under a contract. There may be some new things in my near future like food and a Wacom Cintiq.

Happy Pi day!

I went to see 'Architects' last Thursday (for the third time) it was nothing short of amazing, by far the best show they have put on so far!

I was speaking to the bassist (Ali Dino) about a week before the show, he's kind enough to talk to fans over MSN. Long story short, I found out his favourite sauce was Nando's Medium BBQ so I bought some and took it with me to the show, had to sneak it past security too!

He was standing at the merch desk and about 50 people were trying to talk to him, I made my way to the front, caught his attention and held out the bottle. I've never seen someones face light up like his before, he literally dropped what he was doing, gave me the biggest hi-five known to man and then spoke to me for a good 10-15 mins and got a picture with me.

Meanwhile, roughly 50 other people were staring at me wondering what was so special about me, haha.

After the show I wandered around the back of the building to check out the tour busses since I was being picked up in a while, I look to my right and Dan Searle is rolling his drum mat up, (drummer of Architects, I'm a huge fan of his since I play drums myself) So I got a picture with him and had a good conversation for about 10 minutes, I couldn't believe my luck.

It's amazing when a band is getting pretty big but still have all the time in the world to talk to fans, they were all lovely people. After this show and the previous 2, I've now met them all!

To round the night off I got my ticket signed by Sam (Vocalist) and they played a song from their latest album for the first time on the tour 'Hollow Crown'.

Seeing them again in October!

Here's the song they played, kicks in at 2:25 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDD3cB_euzg

I just have to mention something that occurred earlier today. I'm currently working with my uncle who is in the moving-business. Today we were going to help a student move from his dorm to a proper apartment in another part of town, and his father wanted to help.

So, as I was stacking boxes and whatnot into the elevator at the ground floor of the apartment complex, the guy's father suggests that he do the stacking and I do the unloading on the second floor. I proceeded to the second floor to wait for the elevator to appear, but after waiting for around two minutes the damn thing still hadn't showed up.

I could hear muffled noises coming from downstairs and I thought that the old man had managed to get himself stuck or something, so I rushed down to help. It turns out that he had pressed the button to go to the floor he was already on and had not noticed this, so he had unloaded all the boxes onto the exact same place there were at before!

A failure of the highest calibre indeed!

It's getting harder and harder to work on Colony 42.
One of the reasons is the move to source- it's easier and funner to map for source than GS.
Another is that I don't have a team. There's no coder to give me something cool to implement (not that I need anything but what I have) No other mappers to work on other areas and spur me to best them...
And then there's the tweaking. When I'm stuck on something that I have to tweak endlessly, like running water, I lose the will to map because there's no real progress- just the same rooms, nothing new and interesting to see and test.

tl/dr: JeffMOD complains about "mapper's block"

Ever felt like your friends don't give a damn about you?

It happens to me all the time. I have a couple of friends who say they're my friends, but they seldom remember me if I don't call first. I'm already a background element in everyone's lives. I'm the decorative NPC. I'm the optional quest nobody's interested in.

It could be easy to say that I have nothing to give, but that's not true. I care, I'm always there, they always have my unconditional attention. Yet I don't see any of that come back. I'm always the last option, the oh-well-if-there's-nothing-better. Is it asking too much to expect the same from them?

I know that as a computer geek I shouldn't expect to have a girlfriend, but a friend or two at least? Are my expectations so unrealistic? I'm starting to think they are. Actually wanting my friends to pretend they're friends? Pfft. Who would come up with such a thing.

Example: two days ago, one of them tells me one of his (female) friends wanted to see a movie. She said "Bring a friend, I'm coming with one too". Of course, only a week later I hear of this event. He then adds, "I'm sorry, I have to confess you weren't the first one I thought of". Well, not a surprise for me anyway - I'm never the first one anyone thinks of. Sometimes, not even the last one.

Then there's my other friend, whose friendship, company, support and overall giveashitness I appreciated the most. At one point we didn't go a day without talking in one way or another. But not now. For months already she hasn't written anymore, doesn't call, doesn't text, doesn't reply to emails, doesn't get online (to, say, msn) for weeks. She insists everything is alright, but (due to all the above) I still feel that "I don't care" vibe coming from her. She did call me for my birthday, though. But that's it. Is this all a joke? I just don't understand.

Life is always teasing me. There doesn't seem to be anything in it for me.

TLDR: I'm depressed, I feel worthless and forgotten.

I just updated to Ati Catalyst 10.2 from 9.8

Valve Hammer Editor 3.5 works fine again ( after 3 years).

YAY !

After this I'll wait for other guys to tell me if the following versions of Catalyst will still support Hammer editor

Made this for Urby.Hope this wasn't a part of a surprise or anything...

Just played The Specialists for the first time, and my god, i was blown away...

I played with bots for about about an hour in random map (the map with the huge hall with the mirrored floor, and all the glass doors/windows you break to continue from area to area) and my god i had a blast familiarizing myself with the controls and all the powerups. I LOVE all the weapons... SUCH an improvement from the original HL weapons.... (on that note, i think A LOT more people would play HLDM if the weapons look/feel/behaviour were upgraded a little bit.. i HATE the original HL weapons..)

Then, i went to a server and got my ass handed to me as one would expect, but still had a great time playing the "the lobby", perfectly recreated from the The Matrix.

kinda sad to only see a few active servers left for such a great game, but at least there still are some... I'm so sad i didn't start playing this game sooner...

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