In keeping with tradition over the last several weeks, I am not doing a real update. I have something brewing on the horizon in my job that may or may not affect things with Tux4Kids and since some of my coworkers read this diary, I would prefer not let anything leak before I get a chance to talk to them personally and make some rather hard decisions.

Instead, I'm going to be talking about ClanAM (alt. URL ClanAM), or Clan of the Angry Monkey my gaming clan. Last week, we had a military theme to our Unreal Tourney games which was very fun. You can read about it here and see screenshots of the game here.

For the clan, I of course wrote a SOCOM Strategy Guide for SOCOM: US Navy Seals for the PS2. A week or two ago I wrote up a walkthru for the Turkmenistan missions in SOCOM single player (which, are arguably the hardest solo missions in the game). If you play the game and find yourself stuck in this section be sure to check it out. I also wrote up a FAQ and review for Twisted Metal: Black (Online) (also for the PS2).

Anyway.... hope to have a real update within a week or so... sorry folks ;-)

2002 Oct 27 (Sun), 09:16 Happy B-Day Sam

Well, my B-Day once again today. I was born in '73, so I'll leave it up to you to figure out how old that makes me (I honestly always have to do the math in my head). We celebrated yesterday, as much as we could. Our hot water heater went out on us, and Cass and I had to hunt around for a replacement. Shopping for water heaters wasn't nearly as rough as I thought it was going to be, we ultimately wound up getting one from Sears which will be installed on Monday (which means I need to clean up the den).

Other than that, I discovered Cass had pre-ordered GTA Vice City for me for my birthday. I was a huge freakin' fan of GTA3 last year, so I have been anxiously awaiting this prequel of sorts. It's even number 1 on my Games I'm Excited For list currently. The game comes out tomorrow, so I could go and pick it up then (and probably will). The only problem is that I still haven't read a review of it. Everyone has just been doing preview after preview after preview of it, and there's been no review! So, I don't know what to expect. I don't like just buying games on faith that they're any good (tho, I have done so in the past) and I don't want to be burned (especially now that money is so tight). But if I just get it and dont open it until I read a review, that wont really work either because do you honestly think I'll be able to sit there staring at the box and not open it?!.

Anyhoo, I know this is nothing of an update again. I've been so busy with things, I've let my projects go by the wayside a bit. I will be forcing things in my life to calm down over the next few weeks, so I should be back shortly. I have done some things, but they are largely unnotable (such as working to fix our SpamAssassin set up over at Tux4Kids dev server and working with peoples whose mail is being bounced as spam.) All my real work is still sitting there staring at me.

If you have sent me any mail lately and I haven't responded, give me a bit before complaining. If it's really urgent, then you should be using my work addy since I get paid to check that everyday (see my Email Policy).