1) Family > everything.

2) Never go into business with someone you’ve known for less than three months. That’ll give you enough time to see the happy/sad/sober/drunk/depressed side of them, and see how they treat you. Usually, drunk + depressed is a bad mix.

3) If someone has a blog in which they openly bash others, chances are you’ll be next. Even if they swear you won’t be.

4) A drastic change may be the best thing you ever do.

5) If you ever have a feeling in the back of your head that someone may be a bit “off”, be wary. It’s your subconscious screaming at you.

6) This is going to sound cliché, but if you have a goal, finish it.

7) Time management.

8 ) If you don’t like someone, move on. Real friends shouldn’t treat you like shit.

9) Re-read your emails before sending.

10) There may be a perfectly good explanation.

11) There are people out there that don’t think “internet people” are real, therefore, they treat them differently than real people because they don’t have to deal with the real-world consequences.

12) You might be wrong.

13) It’ll be there in the morning.

14) The world is getting smaller. Be excellent to each other. You never know who you might bump into at the next trade show.

15) If you don’t have time to use it, don’t buy it.

16) Do absolutely, everything you can to not get financially screwed by someone.

17) Don’t take your frustrations out on others.

18) People that are perpetually angry make bad friends.

For 2008:

1) It’s not worth “trying to see the good in people”. If someone’s 90% prick, the other 10% isn’t worth having around.

2) Time management.

3) Still working on that goal. Getting closer.

4) Be excellent to each other.

5) Family > everything

They wanted to kill A’Lar instead of Lady Vashj. Now, killing Lady Vashj gives you half of the Black Temple attunement quest, so why wouldn’t you want to finish it and be done? This is the same guild that took down lots of other bosses, but now they want to be a bunch of pussies (yeah, I said it) and do something cheap and easy. It’s not about the gear or the DPS, the guild has that. It’s about the drive to get the job done. Nobody wants to work for their supper anymore because Blizzard said “EXPANSION!” and the first thought everyone in the guild had was “My gear will be obsolete”. So one by one, people wanted to start taking it easy. No raiding on the weekends, cut an hour off the raid times, and do wussie bosses.

They also wanted to raid on Mondays. Who wants to take a weekend off, go to work, and then raid on Monday night? I suppose I’m in the minority there also. On Monday night I like to sit and veg out. It’s the first day of the week, I don’t want more stress. I want a beer in one hand and football on TV.

So, for the second time, I quit the very same raiding guild I quit before. There was nobody left there who even knew my real name, all the people that did are gone. They either quit the game, sold their characters (shh!), or just haven’t logged in.

Now I can do what I want again. If I choose to join another raiding guild, I can. I thought about it and I think I’m going to try and get some people I played with on Boulderfist to join a different PvP server where there are less as–, errr, boneheads. I’ve also been playing a lot of Halo 3 lately, with friends, of course.

I’ve also toyed with the idea of going back to EQ2. I logged in yesterday for the first time in a while to find a lot has changed. My guild booted all non-raiders which means I can’t buy certain things from the City Merchant anymore (thanks, jerks!) and my house now needs status points for upkeep. I usually don’t wish ill on anyone, but when you boot the very same people that helped get your guild level to FIFTY, you tend to hope they all disband. Logging into EQ2 wasn’t easy because all the “friends” I had were the very same people that voted to boot all the non-raiders from the guild, so I’m getting no help there. It’s like I’m a level 54 noob. We shall see. I don’t want to give up my house, that took a lot of hard work to get to where it was.

Sure, the usual thing is to go to Vegas or Atlantic City or something, but then you have to bring people and most people don’t want to travel to Vegas just to have a birthday party.

I found out that Blade Runner: The Final Cut opens on October 5th at the Ziegfeld in New York City. It’s not as elaborate as going to Vegas, but it is one of my favorite films and so I decided that I’d at least spend the afternoon seeing it.

Tickets bought.

As always it was a lot of fun. I always love seeing people in costume, but what’s funny is when you catch them on their cell phones .

The kids had a wonderful time. I have a feeling one or both of them will wind up in costume eventually.

One thing I didn’t see this year is anyone dressed in WoW garb. There were quite a few last year and although it doesn’t quite jive with the setting of the faire, it’s not that bad to see it.

This year, however, a group of Star Trek nerds decided to dress up in their goofy Next Gen costumes. Guys, I hate to tell you this, but this is a Renaissance Faire, not a Star Trek convention. People were literally laughing at them. It seemed that at some point they realized they made a serious mistake. And sure enough, I took a picture of them.

I sometimes wish I could go there more often, but I suppose those days are gone. It’s nice to visit every now and then.

The reason why I felt compelled to post an image of a Milky Way bar is because I haven’t had one in so damn long. When you spend 7 years not eating junk, you realize how much you missed something. The thing is, when your pants stop fitting you realize again why you stopped eating junk food in the first place.

To sum up: STOP EATING

Click here

The next tape was a repeat of an old SNL from 1978 with Steve Martin and The Blues Brothers. That’s when SNL was funny. 25 years later the same show still cracks me up. Why can’t the show be that funny today?

Radio Station
Guitar
Unreal Tournament (can you believe it’s been 5 years?)
Everquest (can you belive it’s been 5 years, also?)
Misc. computer stuff (Photoshop, Applescripts, OS Customization, Bluetooth)
Home theater goodies
Web site management

How the hell do you juggle all that, family, kids, friends, a life? I gotta cut something out. I was thinking about ditching the radio station. I did it once before and regretted it, but quite frankly, I get very little out of it, I don’t make money from it, and I get little feedback from it. When I killed the station last time, I got a lot of email from people saying that my station was one of the best out there. The problem is that the state of electronic music isn’t the same as it used to be. It’s not the same as it was when I had my show on WTSR in the late 80′s. There’s no diversity anymore, and there’s nothing groundbreaking. I find myself listening to all the older stuff instead of the newer stuff, and I’m running out of older stuff to play.

The station’s currently ranked #28. The problem is that I don’t know what else to feed this station. I find myself picking the same artists over and over again since there’s nobody new out there that’s worth putting on the station. I’ll find an artist here and there on the net, but for the most part, I feel tapped out.

So this leads me to Unreal Tournament. If I drop the station, I could put that money into renting and running a UT server. However, I don’t know if I could dedicate myself to keeping it up day after day. I don’t know how people do this on a regular basis for years at a time. One person I know is doing it and his server never has any players on it. At least the radio station has listeners.

I digress.

Going to see The Nerds tonight at Vanderbilt’s. Should be fun. Mary and I need to get out together for a change.