Monthly Archives: November 2008

Random Update

Posted by on November 20, 2008 2 comments

I haven’t made a post in a long while, so I figured it would be good to just dump some information here.

My life has been a little hectic lately, the most significant part being a split from my girlfriend of 5 years. I’ve had a pretty rough time with it, and it has been further complicated by the fact that she still lives in my house. I’m not going to go into any of the details, but it has been hard and isn’t getting any easier.

This really opened up the opportunity to move back to Utah. My family has always wanted me to move back, but my girlfriend was steadfastly against it, so it was never an option. With that restraint removed, I started seriously considering it.

Recently, our family business took a heavy blow when my sister betrayed the company; stole employees, files, and equipment; and went to work for a competitor. My other sister did essentially the same thing a few years ago, and now they both work for the same company which is somehow related to my (our) biological father. It is a horrible horrible mess and has hit my mother understandably hard. Additionally, her dog just died, so my presence in Salt Lake would be a much needed good to help outweigh the bad.

On a different front, my grandmother has apparently been declining since my grandfather died. She hasn’t been taking good enough care of herself or her place so, as the plan has always been, she moved out to California to live with my aunt who is a nurse and can take care of her. My parents own her place, but with the market the way it is, the house is upside down and they cannot sell it. By moving in there and paying some meager rent, I can help my family out financially while still saving some money myself.

With my ex-girlfriend moving out, I’m down to just one roommate and I really can’t afford my house anymore. I can’t sell it (that damn market again), but by using a property management company I can rent my house out reliably from Utah. With the rent a tenant would bring in, it’s cheaper for me to pay rent in Utah than to stay in my house in Texas.

So, all these things came together about the same time, and I’m taking the leap and actually moving. It will be crazy, it will be a little wild, but I expect it to be fun too. I’ve been getting the house ready and scoping out folf courses in salt lake (there is a crappy looking one 2 miles from the new house!). The moving truck is coming on Dec 1, and we will be following shortly there after. Crazy!

New Shirts in the Shop!

Posted by on November 17, 2008 No comments

I added a bunch of new shirt designs to the shop. They won’t come up in the sidebar yet, but you can check the shop itself at keeyai.com/shop. One of these days I’ll set up a custom page that displays them better and is digg/stumble/etc-able. They are generally pretty tame, but technically the page is probably not safe for work (some shirts have explicit text).

They are all priced at almost cost (usually $1-$2 goes to me). I’ll probably raise them up a bit later, so get yours now! Also, if you want something tweaked slightly or text in a different color, let me know and I’ll change it up for you.

Failgate London

Posted by on November 4, 2008 No comments

Thank goodness I didn’t opt for the lifetime membership!

Hellgate: London was yet another one of those games — awesome in beta, terrible at release. Terrible is a bad way to put it — more like, release didn’t have anything else, and was therefore a total disappointment. Beta was so goood too! Sigh, such is the current game industry.

Anyhoo, the point of this post and that terrible pun for a title: I received my official email from Bandai games today. For those of you who don’t know, hellgate has had a huge amount of legal trouble – Flagship fired everyone, Bandai was suing to get the license (and won, it appears), etc. I’m surprised it has lasted this long, honestly, but hellgate is finally coming to a close. As of Jan. 1, 2009, the hellgate london servers will go offline and no more multiplayer will be available. Hellgate has a shitty single player, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the multiplayer experience. You can’t even play locally. If they are awesome, Bandai will release either a server exe or a patch to run local games, Diablo 2 style, but that is a long long shot, so don’t count on it.

RIP Hellgate.

Spritesheet Tool

Posted by on November 4, 2008 No comments

As I was working on my procedural tree tool for Bonk, I realized I really needed some GUI items so I could manipulate the variables for each tree in real time. I’ve been putting off the GUI system in MUA for a really long time and this was the final straw that got my ass [...]