New House

I've been neglecting my blog for awhile so here I go.

Alicia and I are now married :D. We took a cruise to the Bahamas for our Honeymoon :).

The cruise went to Florida first where we decided to do some kayaking :). Then we went to Nassau where we visited the spot that the movie "The Blue Lagoon" was filmed. After that we went to Freeport, where we got to pet dolphins and have them kiss us on the cheek :). While on the boat, we enjoyed fine dining (Alicia swears that the ship's steakhouse made the best steak she has ever had. She used to work at a steakhouse :-P), fancy shows of singing and dancing, and lots of other cool things :). Even hit up the onboard casino to play the slots a little :D.

We have also bought and moved into a brand new house! Its 3 floors: ground floor (basement, 1/2 bath, and garage), 2nd Floor (Kitchen, Dining area, Living room, and 1/2 bath), and a 3rd floor (Master Bedroom and Master Bathroom, 2 guest rooms [one will become a nursery] and a guest bathroom). We bought a package deal from Direct TV that gives us pretty much all of the movie channels (HBO, Cinemax, Starz, Showtime, etc) and tons of sports channels that we couldn't opt out of :-P. Comcast is supposed to come tomorrow and give us Internet (20Mb/s download and 4Mb/s upload) and a landline phone number :).

Not much else going on. See you in a month :-P

YAY its May!

Hello Everyone!
I'm still alive and I'm only a month away from my wedding :).

Paul and I had our combined Bachelor Party this past weekend. Full of gaming and drinking, mostly gaming though.

Steve ran Wild Talents for us. Its a Super Hero game that uses the One Roll Engine (ORE). We did random character creation and ended up with 2/3 of the party as obvious villains, so everyone decided to be a villain. We called our group the League of Malcontent :-P. My character could Fly and had Telepathy and Precognitive ability. That was the wackiest game I have ever played... it even hurt my brain a little :-P. Fun was had by all.

Andy also ran a game for us, it is called Pathfinder and published by Paizo Games. It is basically D&D 3.5 where they fixed up a lot of issues and added some extra content... some even call it D&D 3.75. I played a Level 5 good Dwarven Cleric. Channeling positive energy was great and helped due to the amount of undead we had encountered. I think that everyone really enjoyed it, even though we have some who like D&D 3.5 and some who like D&D 4.0.

I even took the guys around Frederick, MD to both Comic Books Stores (Beyond Comics and Brainstorm Comics) and Tendo Buffet which really impressed Steve and Aaron :).

Most of us stayed up until 4:30 am and talked about the good old days of Anime Club and going to conventions. It was good to reminisce with the guys :D.

It was a great weekend, but I was glad to get home to be with my honey :)

Missed March, Hello April

Well a lot of things are going on. Alicia and I have bought a house. It puts me 10 minutes closer to work and her about 10 minutes further from work. However, the area is nice and seems pretty quiet. The house is currently being built, so we won't get to move in until mid to end of June, but we are excited :). 3 bedrooms, 2 full baths and 2 half baths, a nice kitchen with appliances already installed (there is a basic set and an upgrade set, we get an upgrade set ^_^.) that attaches to the back yard, a living room with a bay window, a 1 car garage, a place to hook up a washer and dryer (we are currently looking at those in stores), and a finished basement which has been promised to me as a 'Man Cave' for me to have my computers and other nerdy stuff :).

We went to look at furniture for the house. Bought 2 couches for the living room because they were nice and on sale this past weekend. We also went to other stores to price out other furniture that we will get later as needed.

Also, less than 2 months until we get married :).

A month has passed since my last update

The podcast is going well. We've released a new series called "A Closer Look..." (ACLS) in which we go back to a topic that we already talked about and give more insight in specific things, rather than talk about broad things like a regular podcast episode. We've also released a short about Monica rolling for stats for an oldschool D&D game that we had recorded an Actual Play episode for. Now I'm working on releasing another ACLS about Shadowrun and I have extracted an excerpt about how each podcaster make characters that will become another short.

So yeah, our podcast is still going strong.

Check out our website for more info and to hear the episodes: http://1d4cast.dvd20-productions.com

Speaking of the website some things have changed and we have added a wiki :).

MAGFest 9... is over

Back from MAGFest 9 and back to the grind. It was a great vacation that I got t spend with great people doing awesomely fun things ^_^.

Thank you, MAGFest, for another great party!

Pay raise... GET!

So I have had some money trouble for a while now. I try to run away from it and forget about it all the time. It had taken the fact that I was getting married and that I need to more money to do the things that we want and need: A house and eventually a family.

So I told my place of employment that I have to start looking for a new job, because this one is too far (gas cost and lots of mileage on the car) and I really don't get paid what I need to pay my bills and live off of. I really like what I do and for the most part I like the people I work with on a daily basis... I don't want to leave.

Apparently, they really like me and appreciate my work because they have offered me a huge pay increase and flexible hours. The flexible hours mean that I have the opportunity to work from home as I need all I have to do is provide a way for them to contact me outside of e-mail :D.

This is a huge step to fixing my financial issues and it will allow the items I mentioned above to happen plus more :).

Happy New Year!

December was action packed!

I played my last game of Mage: The Awakening, not sure when I'll get to do that again.

I recorded and edited 2 podcasts for 1d4cast D&D Special, go here to stream or download them :).

I also spent the day after Christmas and New Year's Eve with Alicia and we drove to my parents house to celebrate with them.

I had all of last week of December off from work (paid) so watched a lot of the New Doctor Who, Season 1 and 2 along with a lot of movies such as Fanboys and Ninja Assassin when Alicia had to work.

Now that January is here, the next big thing is MAGFEST, which is the best video game-centered convention on the East Coast.


The Music and Gaming Festival (aka MAGFEST) is a convention held by video game fans for video game fans. It plays movies and shows that are based off of video games, it has a concert hall where bands play their video game cover songs while fans rock out in the crowd, guest musicians such as Hiroki Kikuta (of Secret of Mana fame) host panels, Chiptune Concerts galore, Vendors such as X-Strike Studios sell their wares (t-shirts, movies, plushies, games and consles), and best of all a room that is filled with consoles of all types and Arcade machines is open 24 hours every day of the convention!

Let your inner gaming Geek/Nerd/Dork out and come join us in Alexandria, VA's Hilton Mark Center for one of the best conventions ever. It runs from January 13 (Thursday) to the 16th (Sunday).

To get a glipse of last years' fun, check out this 2-part video that a friend of mine, Bryan, made: Journey to MAGFest 8.

December is right around the corner

I've been very lax about writing here, so here is a new entry.

THANKSGIVING:
I had a great time visiting Georgia for Thanksgiving. The trip down on Tuesday was pretty smooth until we hit Greensville, SC around the start of PM rush hour. Then getting to Atlanta after dark was crazy. Cops everywhere, pulling over anyone they can. Alicia directed me around Atlanta via 285 and traffic got better.

Visiting her family was fun. On Wednesday, we went to see Unstoppable with Denzel Washington. It was very good. On Thursday, they made a great Thanksgiving dinner and her uncle and grandfather joined us. On Friday, Alicia, her mother, and I went out for a little Black Friday shopping. We found a really good deal, so I bought my suit for the Wedding. We also bought a Christmas tree and some decor for the apartment :).

On Saturday, the drive back started off well, but by the end it just seemed to grind at us. We got stuck behind an accident on 77N or 81N (I can't remember) right out side of Blacksburg, PA (Virginia Tech) and we lost a lot of time there. After that traffic just stayed heavy all the way home, which ended up being another ~12hr drive.

On Sunday, we had a few things to take care of and get some groceries. We rented "Avatar, The Last Airbender" from Redbox for a $1. It wasn't extremely horrible, but it was good either. I think it was worth the $1 though. The special effects needed some work (I was not impressed with the water bending except for Aang's use of it), most of the acting seemed very forced, and the story progressed really slowly even though they merged or cut things out for time. I wouldn't mind seeing a sequel, but I have doubts that one will be made with this one's failure in the box office.

All in all, I had a great vacation. I wish it could have been a little bit longer, but that is how it always is.

Update and new Podcast host

Things have definitely been busy. Renaissance Faire, Halloween Party, and a little bit of wedding stuff here and there as the time marches by.

One of the biggest changes is that I am collaborating with a bunch of my friends on a shared website with unlimited bandwidth and disk space. So we have audio podcasts, blogs and video blogs. All I've been able to set up so far is the podcast portion.

You can visit our podcast at its new site: http://1d4cast.dvd20-productions.com/

It offers downloading and streaming :). Also by the way, Episode 3 has been released, its about Shadowrun :).

Thanks for visiting my blog :)

I'm behind

Well, I have been meaning to update this at least once a week, but we can see how well that worked out :-P.

Anyway, my good friends Bryan and Beth just got married this past weekend in the Poconos. The ceremony was beautiful and they included a Celtic Hand Binding Ritual in which there were six colored ropes, with each having special meanings, picked by the Bride and Groom. As each was tied, the officiate recited the meaning of each color and had the bride and groom respond to questions. It was different from what I was used to, having been to all types from Catholic Wedding Mass to Greek Orthodox to civil union at a court house, but it was beautiful and wonderful :). The reception was spectacular as well. Lots of fun was had :).

Trying to find a time to record Episode 3 of 1d4cast has been hard for all involved, but we should get it recorded tonight, and hopefully released before the end of October.

On another fun note, Alicia and I will be going to the PA Renaissance Faire on Saturday with a bunch of friends. That should be a lot of fun :). The Tartan Terrors will be playing this weekend!