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!

The older I get...

I love roleplaying games and I love the creativity that comes out of them. However, I have found that as I get older, the less creative I become. I love games like Mage: The Ascension (old WoD) and Mage: The Awakening (new WoD) because they both force me to be creative to use magic. I have found that these days, it takes all I can do, just to get an ounce of creativity out of myself. It's rather annoying >_>...

1d4cast Episode 2: A Look At nWoD

I just uploaded the newest episode of 1d4cast to the website, 1d4cast Episode 2: "A Look At nWoD"

Download it at http://www.otakudreamers.com

Should be on iTunes soon.

Enjoy!

twitter

I have finally decided to jump on the twitter bandwagon: http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Famvteknoboy%3Futm_source%3Dfb%26utm_medium%3Dfb%26utm_campaign%3Dfb_app_share%26utm_content%3D517692116&h=f97fe

follow me @amvteknoboy if you want to :)

Lots coming up

Working on the edit of 1d4cast EP2, so stay tuned for that. With any luck, I'll get it out by Monday. Also, 2nd session of Mage is next weekend, on the 11th with SIBCon the weekend right after it. I'm going to be very busy for a while.

Might be getting a new host for the podcast, talking with my friend Bryan about making a collaborative website for all of our stuff.

I have also been busy with Alicia, working on details for the Wedding, such as guest list, music, reception, and ceremony ideas. It seems so far away, but we both know that if we slack, it'll be here before we know it.

Back to the grind. Happy Labor Day weekend everyone!

SIBCON XV

SibCon is small gaming convention, a sister convention to COSCon, that is organized and ran by members of the Circle of Swords Gaming Guild (http://www.circleofswords.com).

SibCon XV (http://warhorn.net/sibcon-xv-2010) is held at the Days Inn & Conference Center located in Butler. PA, which is just north of Pittsburgh, PA.

While it isn't a GenCon Indy, Dragon*Con, or Origins convention, it is fun in its own right. It been mostly RPGA D&D gaming (3/3.5 with Living Greyhawk before and 4.0 with Living Forgotten Realms now), several tabletop miniature war games, and a long running Old WoD Vampire: The Masquerade LARP (which I am very involved in). I've been going to this convention for the last 5 years and a lot has changed and the games have branched out. They have offered Zombie LARPs and Serenity LARPs in the past, and now offer a Star Trek LARP this year. As for non-LARP games, they are offering some nWoD games, Dogs in the Vineyard, Classic D&D (& 2nd Ed), and many other games.

It'll be good times as usual and I can't wait to get there :)!

Here is the ring on my wonderful fiance's hand that my hand is holding :)

I am engaged :)

After almost a year of dating Alicia, I proposed to her this week :). She happily accepted and there was much rejoicing :).

In Michigan

Well. I'm here in Michigan. The plane ride wasn't too bad, but Enterprise took forever. I walked into our sister company around 1 pm, was given a quick tour and immediately put to work. I was in the office until about 5:30pm. Then heading to my hotel, I spotted a Damon's grill and stopped for some loaded potato skins, a tasty burger, and a blue moon :). Sitting in my hotel and relaxing now.

World of Darkness: Mage - The Awakening!

I've stated that I am a gamer. Unfortunately I haven't been able to game since I moved down to Winchester, VA from Gettysburg, PA for two reasons. 1) I don't have a lot of time on my hands these days as my girlfriend comes first and 2) I don't know anyone in the area and haven't found a decent gaming store to meet other gamers.

I'm not opposed to playing games online through things like Skype or IRC, but again, Alicia gets the most of my time these days :).

Anyway, I have been given the chance to reconnect with a friend I haven't seen in a long while. He is going to be running a Mage - The Awakening game set in New York and will be a heist-like game in the sorts of Ocean's 11 and Sneakers. Our first game is tomorrow, Saturday, August 7th

Its going to be great to see him and it will fun to finally play Mage. I've ran it a few times, but have never played it, so I am really stoked! I am an old Mage - The Ascension and the last time I was a Mage player was back in college during my senior year 2002 - 2003... Yeah, I'm jones-ing for this! Thanks Tony!

1d4cast Episode 1: Introductions

Ok everyone, the first episode of the new podcast, 1d4cast, that I am making with John Christian Foster , Monica Speca , and Stephen Horrocks is finally out! Go to our website to download episodes:http://www.otakudreamers.com/

Business Trip

Okay, so I work for smaller company that is owned by a bigger corporation. Well my company has plenty of sister companies all under the same umbrella corporation. I just found out today that come Monday I will be on a plane to Ann Arbor, Michigan (one of the mentioned sister companies) to help relieve some stress.

Apparently there is a huge project going on and lots of problems arising. I am to go there for 4 days Monday, August 9th until Thursday, August 12th. It's going to be hell, but this makes me and my company to good, sorta like scratch your back if you scratch ours.

Pros:

• All expenses paid (room, board, fight, and car rental)
• I like travelling to new places
• Meet new people

Cons:

• I am going to miss Alicia terribly :(

OS of choice

My Operating System of choice is Linux. Microsoft and Apple are too restrictive and pricey for what you get.

I started using Linux back in college with the distribution called Redhat. It was ok, only supporting some of my hardware out of the box  However, I liked the idea of rpms as a package system, so I tried Mandrake. Again it was ok and left me wanting more out of my OS. I have tried many distros since then including Slackware, Gentoo, Puppy, openSUSE, and debian. While using Debian, I fell in love with the deb package system, Apt, which downloads the deb you need plus all of the required debs it needs. However Debian felt too clunky for me. It was then that I stumbled upon Ubuntu based off of Debian. Ubuntu just worked. I rarely have a problem with it and it is very easy to stay updated. Just recently, I was reintroduced to Linx Mint (which is based off o Ubuntu) and I have to say that I feel in love all over again with its newest version, Linux Mint 9: Isodora. Like distros, I have also used several Window Mangers: Gnome, KDE, Fluxbox, Openbox, Window Maker, fvwm, xfce etc... I like the lightweight of xfce and openbox, but I stuck with Gnome. With Linux Mint 9, I have been reintroduced to KDE, which I have not liked in the older versions. I know a lot of people are hating on the new direction that KDE has gone with Plasma and plasmoid widgets, but I love them.

Here is my current desktop (Linux Mint 9 using KDE):

Podcasts

I am currently working on two podcasts.

1. An informational podcast geared towards new players for a Vampire LARP I like to participate in.
2. A hobbyist podcast about gaming (tabletop, LARPing, etc) with 3 friends that I met at through an Anime Club I used to be belong to at college.

Both podcasts have episodes that are being reviewed before becoming public. Once they are public, I'll post them here :).

So it begins: My First Entry

So I saw this service, now offered by Google, and decided that I should make a presence on the web other than Facebook, Digg, or Livejournal. I'm not totally sold on the idea of Twitter yet, so maybe that will come later.

A little about me:

• My name is James.
• I have a wonderful and beautiful girlfriend who I have been with for almost a year.
• I'm a gamer: Not so much the video gamer I used to be, but I still play tabletop RPGs, war games, and participate in a few LARPs.
• I'm a geek: I have a fascination with computers and technological gadgets. I also work in the IT field.
• I'm a music connoisseur: I LOVE music of all kinds. The only genres I tend to stay away from are Jazz and most Country. My favorite genre is Techno as my blog name implies. There are a few exceptions here and there though, so I consider my tastes to be eclectic. 
• I <3 Anime: Well, I used to love it. I've been out of the loop for about a year and a half now on the new stuff, but I love the old stuff. Again as my blog name implies I make AMVs (Anime Music Videos), although I haven't done so in very long while. I still have ideas, so maybe I'll start making them again :).

Like any other blogger, I'll use this as an archival documentation of my life. Posting about games I play, people I know, things I do, etc.

Thanks for visiting my new blog :)