A Truly "EPiC" cLAN Party is but days away. Are you prepared?

You should be, I've begged and pleaded with you to get BFV installed, patched and the WWII mod installed and tested on the server. Things should run smoothly on Saturday. I'm getting really excited for the party.

I've only received one item to be embroidered with our [-F69-] tag from s3k. I know Bolg wants to get one too and will be bringing it with him when he comes so these won't be done by Saturday. I'll make sure to get anyone's stuff back to them.

Penny Arcade released their game today; On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness. I've only played it for a little bit, but I'm quite impressed with how well the art made the transition to the third dimension. It looks really nice and I'm excited to play it.

We've been discussing a Squad Game Night on the forums, behind closed doors. I'm thinking if we do come up with something we'll post it publicly so anyone can come and play with us if they want to. More to come later on that.

I've been inspired by phr0st to work more on the site and a possible overhaul. We've been working on some things tonight. Who knows where this will lead, but one can only hope it is somewhere good for the squad.

[-F69-]bl00k

It is about time for an update.

We blessed Ashton this last Sunday and it was great to have everyone over that could make it. We got to meet "the girl" when she came with Mathazar. She was very out-going and super nice. She makes a real good first impression. Everything seemed to go well despite not having enough seats for everyone. Thanks again to those of you who brought food and drinks.

It has been over a month since EPiC passed away. I find myself still thinking about him a lot. I get sad about it, but I'm ok. The funeral was great and I really needed it. We decided as a squad that we would hold a Truly "EPiC" cLAN Party in his honor. The event is going to be May 24th and we have a record number of people coming. There hasn't been a LAN with this many of us since the Computech days. Even Bolg is flying in from Oregon! It's too bad EPiC won't be fragging with us, but I think he'll be smiling down at us while we are having a good time in his memory. We thought of some of EPiC's favorite games and ended up going with Battlefield Vietnam with the WWII Mod. That should be good because it is old enough to run on anyone's hardware, it has bots so we won't have people QQ'ing about me pwning them all night, and EPiC did injoy that game.

Work on the basement has progressed a lot. My brother laid the carpet last weekend. We got the painting done, just need to touch up some areas. The carpet is pretty dirty and needs to be shampooed but I've been taking a break this week from working down there.

Well, I'm looking forward to the cLAN Party. I think it will be a lot of fun to get the squad together for some gaming.

[-F69-]bl00k

LIFE

Owneress and I are happy to be celebrating the birth of baby Ashton. He was born Monday March 31, 2008 at 4:59pm. He was 7 lbs 12 oz and was 19.5 inches long. Both he and Mom are doing well and we are home from the hospital now. We would love to have you meet Ashton (as long as you are not sick). Just give us a call to let us know when you are coming over.

DEATH

It has been such a rollercoaster of emotions for my family as we welcomed our new son we lost our dear friend and squad mate. Phr0st called and informed me that Epic had passed away on Tuesday, April 1st. It has been a couple days and I still have so many emotions that I don't know what to say. I don't think it has fully sunk in that I won't be able to talk to my friend again. No more LAN parties, snowboarding, DefCon or omgwtfbbq's. I have tried to think back to what our last conversation was and I can't remember it. I can't remember what the last thing I said to him was. We had our share of arguments and disagreements and now I wish he was still here to cause me grief. I know that he now knows how much he was loved and is missed by all of us.

Hack3r

Third

ocYrus

Wooties

Blunt Logic

Southern Utah Mortuary

s3k's Words

[-F69-]bl00k

I know I missed a month. I even had an extra day to post and still missed it. I am teh suck. I'll try and make up for it now.

I've been keeping myself busy the last three weeks with trying to finish our basement. It has been a huge project well beyond what was initially perceived. I guess we have to go back a little further though.

Sydney got wicked sick. She was a puke machine starting on Friday February 8th. She didn't keep anything down. Same with Saturday. Sunday was a little different though; instead of just Syd puking now Owneress had joined her. Owneress puked all day Sunday and became very dehydrated very quickly. She started having contraptions that were painful which was a bit scary as it was a bit early for Ashton to come. Her doctor told her she needed to go to the hospital to get IV fluids. Since Syd was still throwing up everywhere and in miserable shape we didn't want to take her with us to the hospital and we didn't think it would be fair to ask someone to watch her in that state. We ended up getting Owneress' Aunt to take her to the hospital. The contraptions stopped and Ashton stayed put. I ended up staying home from work Monday and Tuesday to help out. My parents were planning to drive up that coming Friday to help us with the basement but my Mom took the bus up Monday to help take care of the sickies. This whole time I'd been dealing with barf and two sick girls I did not come down with whatever gomboo they had. However I did have a cold that started the week before and never got better so I was feeling pretty run down the entire time. So now my Mom is there to help out and then she starts puking. Now everyone is sick and we needed that time to clear out the junk in the basement so we could start working down there that Friday when my Dad came up. I tried my best to haul junk up but having a cold really sapped my energy. 

*ran out of time on this post and it actually was not uploaded till April 3, 2008

[-F69-]bl00k

A good time to be a gamer. I mean, we have Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Team Fortress 2, Portal, Call of Duty 4 and recently a few of us have revisited some older games and a few that we missed when they were brand new. I finally finished Far Cry, which I will rant about below. I'm in the process of downloading Company of Heroes on Steam right now to join Phr0st and Epic. Yesterday we had fun playing some Command and Conquer 3 which Epic also picked up from Wal-Mart. And I have yet to mention a certain 8 million pound gorilla in this paragraph.

WoW has continued to be fun although it has slowed down a bit for me. We are slowly progressing into Karazahn as a guild. Bolg has stepped up to fill in the role of a Main Tank for the guild and is doing awesome. We have grown enough that we seem to have more than 10 people keyed to Kara for the last two weeks. I've had to implement a sign up sheet on the forum to try and keep it fair and organized. I would encourage anyone that is part of the Fighting SixtyNinth guild in WoW to visit the forums frequently to keep up on what is happening.

As for my Far Cry rant. Man that game just ended up pissing me off. I needed to make room for Company of Heroes on my HDD so I wanted to finish Far Cry to clear that space. I had already used the cheat to give me all the weapons and ammo. I was making progress until one day my saved game was just gone. I was super annoyed. So at this point I decide that I will use the cheat to just load the level I was on and use God Mode to finish the game. I had to get some script and add it to a .lua in order for it to work. Playing through the rest of the game I am soooo glad I cheated. I can't imagine how anyone could finish that game without cheating. I mean the levels were just insanely unfair. It actually pissed me off to see how hard those levels were. They would be impossible without hacking. I did like the twist at the end and was satisfied enough with the ending. I am glad however to have it off my hard drive. Now I'm questioning Crytek's ability to make a good game. Do I want to play Crysis? Far Cry 2 looked amazing at PAX last year and it isn't made by the original Far Cry team so maybe that is a good thing. We'll have to see what happens. In the meantime I still need to make room for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and BioShock.

It is hard to be whiney when too many games is your biggest complaint. I have a computer that runs everything, I have broadband, I have a great monitor, sweet keyboard and I just got a new mouse. It is, indeed, a good time to be a gamer.

[-F69-]bl00k

I hope everyone had a good Christmas, it seems to have come and gone so fast. We got a stack of DVDs to watch but haven't watched any yet. I also got Call of Duty 4 and Bioshock. I haven't loaded up Bioshock yet, but CoD4 is really cool so far. It reminds me of camping because it is IN TENTS!!!! I haven't finished the single player yet, I just got to the Death From Above level. There's been some really cool levels and I've been really impressed with the game so far. I played some multiplayer with phr0st for a little while and leveled up a bit. Haven't had time to go back and play some more since Christmas though.

Tomorrow some of the squad are heading up the mountain to snowboard. It seems like I'm only able to go about once a year, but I'm glad I get to go. Snowboarding is such a rich white boy sport. Honestly, how do people afford it? While we were Christmas shopping we were at the Sports Chalet (sorry Peepee) and I saw this awesome jacket. I mean it was flippin' sweet! It looked super cool, but was incredibly functional. It had snow guards to keep snow from going up your sleeves and back, it had a special pouch for your mp3 player with a special place for your earphones, etc. It had pockets for everything you need for boarding. I can't ever remember it all. Anyway, it was $200 just for the jacket. I didn't even both to look at how much the pants were. I hope I can fit into my snow pants still.

In WoW news Bolgrad and Mormir have hit 70. This means we have a Main Tank to run Kara or anything with. Bolg is on vacation at the moment but it will be fun to start running things with him when he gets back. Blooklyn now has the full Primal Mooncloth set made. We helped Ghandisar start his Kara attunment last night for Guild Raid Night. I believe he is caught up to Bolgrad now in the quest line. Poop is plugging right along, last night I believe he was level 31. Taco and Remy are right around there too.

After talking with Ghandisar yesterday, I would like to reiterate that the forums are an excellent place to keep up with what is happening. We have a lot of good info in there that is really helpful for anyone playing WoW. I also would like to plead with anyone not using XFire to download and install it. Post your XFire username in the XFire thread that is stickied under the Squad Area so we can add you to our list. This is a great way to see who is playing what, where and when. XFire is especially handy for those who play other games like TF2 or CoD4.

Finally I hope everyone has a fun and safe New Years. For anyone that cares, I only slipped on my New Years' Resolution twice this last year. People have asked if I'll start up with the Your Mom jokes next year, but I think that goes against what resolutions are for. I'll make one last recommendation for a New Years' Resolution for you; visit the forums often and use XFire.

[-F69-]bl00k

I am driving to St. George today for my parents 40th anniversary. We were having a surprise dinner for them at my grandma's house but not everyone got the memo about it being a surprise so they know I'm coming down despite my constant lies to the contrary. Owneress and I are quite busy so this will be a quick day trip. Personally I'm not thrilled about 5 hours down and 5 hours back while only staying for 4 or 5 hours there, but then I think about how rough it will be for Syd and that sux. Oh well, at least it will all work out in the end.

Christmas is almost here. We finished up the last of our shopping last night. Owneress did a ton of wrapping and all the decorating. I was in charge of putting up the Christmas lights and hauling boxes. I also did my share of wrapping as well. Phr0st is going to spend Christmas Eve and Day with us. He is even going to Owneress' father's house on Christmas Eve with us for dinner and her grandma's Christmas Day for breakfast. Then I think the plan is to play all day. I know some of my gifts already (I bought some of them ;). I'm getting some PC games, lots of DVDs and I'm not sure about the rest. Suffice it to say we should be well entertained on Christmas.

I hope everyone has a good Christmas and since I probably won't post before the end of the month, have a happy New Year's also! Bolg is travelling for the holidays and so Bolg Town is more of a Ghost Town right now. I do have his login info because he was nice enough to offer his mooncloth cooldown for me while he is away. I'm just a few mooncloth away from my full set. Hopefully the new year will yield some better Kara runs for the Fighting SixtyNinth. Last Thursday was a pitiful showing with only four people online for Guild Raid Night. I was hoping to at least run a 5 man. On a brighter note, Bolgrad hit 70 before he left so we will have a dedicated Main Tank to run things with once he comes home.

A New Year's Resolution suggestion would be to visit the forums with some regularity if you don't currently do so. ;)

[-F69-]bl00k