Doubt

In the grand scheme of things we are but specs of dust waiting to be blown away in the wind.

Man in the Mirror

I'd be lying if I told you I didn't cry today.

Rest in Peace Michael, we love you.

Fading

I feel myself fading at times, riding the wind's current as I slip into unconsciousness. I don't even recognize my old work as I stare at it thinking I wish I could write like that. I hate wandering aimlessly, and this is probably why I multitask, I dream, I write, I hate reality I want to escape it in some way at times.

I scare myself at night, dreaming of death and how it will all end. I picture the world turning and all I can see is blackness, in my demise. I hate thinking about slipping into senility. A body losing its mind, what a waste. I'm scared to lose control, and this is perhaps why I do not drink. I hate the idea of not being in control of what I do, the ability to make decisions based on my constant awareness. So that makes me a control freak...is this a bad thing? Is my controlling personality a flaw worth looking into?

I often wonder what life would be like had I let go of my inhibitions and let my mind and heart go through what I was exposed to early in my life. I found myself feeling like an old man, walking down the high school hallways. I hated them all, now that I remember. I didn't care about anyone I hurt, and pretended to console them....like I actually gave a shit. Why did I do that?

I've been busy as hell. To update the situation here, I have been giving school 110% and the other 90% goes to work and family. I find myself thinking, writing and talking about games more than I can play them. This has done a large amount of damage to my gamer ego as I find smaller, faster games more inviting at this point. I can't wait till I see some light at the end of this tunnel. Till next time.

P.S.
I promise I will write more when I can...but then again I can never really keep promises, its a family trait.

Reflecting

Well it's been a hell of a year. 2008 brought on many challenges, some of which I have yet to overcome. I've finally take some steps in the right direction and can't wait to start making some changes. First off, I've joined Westwood College Online. After doing some research, I went ahead jumped into the whole thing. I got the call and spoke with a representative, Matt Mcrae, who is an outstanding individual. We got to talking and I practically gave him my life story, poor guy. Before you knew it, I was on a one way road to getting a bachelor's with a major in Game Design (or Software Development depending on how it pans out). Monday was my first day of school and I took advantage of the forums they have us participating in. My software and books came in so I've been readin up on the assignments ever since.

My baby boy is 3 months old now and growing. He's a beast. I sat him next to my 2 year old neice the other day and she's maybe about a head taller. I've showered him in skeleton clothes and mohawk hair-do's but I can't wait till the day I stick a controller in his hand and become the coolest dad ever lol. I spend a lot of time playing with him and giving him colored things to play with, it's suppose to help his response time so hopefully he will be ready when Call of Duty 12 hits :)

So the only thing lacking at the moment is the absence of a good steady job. The mortgage industry crashed and burned this past year so I've been searching for something stable and something that can pay the bills. The funds are running out and the games out aren't making it too easy for me >.<>

The Checklist
Fable II - Completed
Tale of Vesperia - In progress
Fallout 3 - In progress
Dead Space - Completed
Red Alert 3 - In progress
Gears of War 2 - In progress
Left 4 Dead - In progress
Call of Duty: World at War - In progress
Dragonball Z: Burst Limit - Haven't started
Infinite Undiscovery - Haven't started
Lost Odyssey - Havent started

Still on Shelves
FF4 for DS
Little Big Planet
Mirrors Edge
Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm
Valkyria Chronicles
Last Remnant
Persona 4

Anticipating
Halo Wars
Resident Evil 4
Street Fighter 4
Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War II
Demigod
Killzone 2

Anyway so this time away also gave me time to start a hardcore gaming blog, rather than a gamer dad who just talks about stuff. Here's the link incase anyone's interested in becoming drenched in awesomeness! http://level-up-blog.blogspot.com/

Games 1 - My wallet 0

The Check List

• Fable 2
• Tale of Vesperia
• Fallout 3
• Dead Space
• Red Alert 3
• Gears of War 2

Still on shelves

• Lost Odyssey (backlog)
• Infinite Undiscovery (backlog)
• FF4 for DS
• Little Big Planet
• Mirrors Edge
• Call of Duty: World at War
• Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm
• Valkyria Chronicles
• Left 4 Dead
• Last Remnant

This holiday season is insane. I can't even keep up with all the new titles. I might have been able to afford some of those had I not purchased my new 360 Pro but god knows I need my HD >.< I would so buy all of them had they been released at different times but a married man with a baby and bills can only purchase so much at a time. I'm just one man!! They all deserve some room in the spotlight so hopefully they get some love. Maybe I'll discuss some of them in my new gaming blog (gonna pimp that out when its fully up ^.^) Anyway, my birthday's coming soon and hopefully I get to knock off a few more of those and add them to the check list.

Life with the baby hasn't been as bad as I thought it was gonna be. It's been a great learning experience and I haven't felt robbed of my time. Time for me is a big factor in life. I don't like wasting my time. I want to be able to spend it doing things I need to do or have been wanting to do. I hate feeling like a vegetable sitting somewhere and just letting time go by. I feel like that about sleep. Why sleep when I could be finishing up FF XII (yes I know, way behind on things). With all these feelings and worries about time I feel like I just burn myself out sometimes. Letting your mind race like that should be bad for your health. I thank my lucky stars for these blogs, who knows what I'd do without a medium to let out my thoughts.

Anyways, enough ranting, I'll post a link to the gaming blog soon. I'm looking forward to writing about stuff with no strings attached. Just our opinions (that's right, our opinions), my brother will be joining me in this project and hopefully we can come up with some good reading material. Here's to blogging!

Shifting

Games aside, I'm going to change my focus for a bit. I started this blog with an emphasis on gaming because its one of my favorite forms of entertainment. I read the gaming news sites instead of reading the actual paper about current events. I think about what game I want next instead of the new pair of jeans I should be getting. But truth is there's other things going on in my life and I want to blog about them too. As a matter of fact, I want games to be just something I mention every once in a while. If I want a serious gaming blog, I'll make one, but "Death Notes" is me......my thoughts, my ideas, my passion, my hobbies.

Why Death Notes? Well yeah, I loved the anime. I think it was great and something everyone should see. I love anime and no, not just Adult Swim anime, but thats a topic for another day. No, I felt that Death Notes maybe explained my thoughts, feelings, and negative outlook on things. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not an emo kid cutting myself here, but I have problems like anyone else and I perfer brooding in a corner than creating drama, or putting myself out there. This what I'm doing here, is not me. I don't usually explain myself because I feel it's weak. I feel like people blog because they starve for attenton and want someone watching them. They make online personas and this is their place to hide behind. I perfer to write, create or share.

This will be my focus. Let's hope I can keep it up.

My Gaming History Part 1 : The Early Days

So I figure if I want to become a journalist/writer (just one of my passions/goals) someday I need to stretch my skills and start dusting off all those memories that are just sitting there. Something you might not know about me is I have a horrible memory. I feel like Wolverine sometimes because new memories are constantly covering up old ones and my mind is always brooding about everything from what to eat next to "holy shit I could SO be leveling right now" while at my in-laws. So lucky for you, I won't have too many details, its more like a timeline overview? I don't know but lets jump in shall we?

Growing up, I had 2 older brothers who had the NES. I played games like Rygar and Mario Bros. without really knowing what I was playing. We loved FF1 even though we played the intro like 50 times and never really sat to play through the end. Eventually I got older and demanded a SNES from my mother. My father loved spoiling us so we always got what we wanted. And when I say "we" I mean my younger brother and I. Rick and I are 2 years apart and we grew up being really close. We did everything together. We watched wrestling together, we played sports together, I defended him against the neighborhood bullies, we played in the dirt with G.I. Joes, hell we even slept together. We've both been pretty damn close till it came to girls in middle school, but that's a whole other story, back to games.

The SNES took up maybe like 30% of our time. We played big titles like Super Metroid, Super Mario World and rare gems like Out of This World and E.V.O. Being young, our schedule consisted of going to school, coming back and playing with all the neighborhood kids. It's literally almost a sandlot story we had going down here where I live in South Texas. All the kids had different personalities, ranging from the fat kid everyone made fun of to the wuss who never fought back and even laughed when he was the one being made fun of. So with all these friends and sports being the serving of the day everyday we never really sat down and made gaming a lifestyle, like it is now. But we played anyways. I remember waiting outside of Toys R' Us to buy Super Mario Kart even. All these events take place from 1984 to 1994.

Eventually Sony came out with...The PlayStation. It was 1996 and we had just come back from living in Chicago for a year. My dad couldn't resist our pleas, and the PS1 was ours. The first two games we bought were Battle Arena Toshinden and Rayman. We were totally digging all the games. Tekken was great, and Resident Evil scared the shit out of us. Oddworld: Abe's Odyssey introduced us to story elements in games and Final Fantasy 7 made us cry (and fuck anyone who has something to that about it). It was a magical time for gaming. As the games matured, so did we. I feel like we grew up along side them, and in a way, we did. I didn't really get to play the Atari since it came out before I was born obviously, but I bought one at a garage sale in Chicago for 100 bucks, complete with over 50 games, sweet deal at the time. Anyway, FF7, really hit big with us. So did Metal Gear Solid. I'm talking about waking each other up at 6 in the morning to play games together (he always watched and read the strategy guides while I played, talk about a co-pilot haha). We were 90's kids. We watched Power Rangers, All That, Saved By the Bell, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles...good times. Now I feel like I'm game-dropping a bit but how do you establish geek cred without representing?

So there's the first part to my little overview. Part two will cover the awkward teenage years and adolescence where girl trouble reigned supreme and gaming introduces a new platform.