It's Been a Long Time Since I Saw You Around These Parts

Damnit.

It has been a long time since I have been around these parts.  By these parts I mean this blog and not where you are currently.  That would be a little sketchy and weird.  I swear I am not a stalker.

Work and Life get in the way of things that don't have to pay the bills.  Whenever it comes down to why people start blogs or websites and then abandon or step away for awhile that is the reason.  If this isn't their main source of income then they have to the primary job to pay the bills first.  Then when they have time that isn't dedicated to work, eating, sleeping, spending time with the spouse then they can work on the good ole blog.  That has been the case with me.  

I have been working two different jobs.  My primary one I had to travel with teams, cover special events, then set things up to end the school year with.  When I haven't been working then I have been at home helping around the house, spending time with my wife as she has had a hectic end of the year with getting things settled, and then sleeping.

The past two weeks however I have been away travelling.  I had my national conference for my profession in Las Vegas, so the wife and I flew out there after dropping the pup off at my mother's in NC.  After spending four days in Vegas we rented a car and drove from Nevada to Montana to spend about 3 days with my mother-in-law.  It took a 13 hour drive plus a quick stay over in a motel cause we were exhausted to get there, but we made it.  We had a wonderful time in Montana, especially seeing the mountain and going whitewater rafting down the Gallatin River, but then drove all the way back to Nevada on Monday to fly back to NC.  We drove through Arizona, Utah, Idaho, and Montana both ways.  Was so beautiful.  I had to put down my PSP several times to just take pictures.  hahaha

We then got back to my mother's house and spent the rest of the week there just relaxing, catching up on sleep, and spending time with her and the rest of my family that is in the area.  We then came back home yesterday.  It has been a whirlwind for sure.  I think that everyone should try and go through those states in a car.  You really get to appreciate the beauty that is America when you do that.  Its just so breathtaking seeing expanses of green plains and huge mountains, some with snow caps still.  Here is just one of the pictures I was able to take:

MONTANA!!

I decided to sit down after getting back and really work on updating things today, while playing some games.  I have gotten many things accomplished over the past 2 months, and especially over our trip.  I mean, when you spend 24 hours in a car and you drive ~12 hours of that, you need something to do besides just talking and looking at everything around you (p.s. I love talking to my wife.  I was just saying I could talk and click buttons).

So in the past 2 months I have been able to Beat a couple of games.  Mass Effect, Mass Effect, 2, and then over my trip I Beat Parasite Eve 2.  My wife commented that I have been on a roll lately, and I didn't realize it until I sat down and checked my Backloggery that she was right.  I have been blowing through games and that makes me really happy.  After watching all the craziness that went down at E3, plus getting into the beta for FFXIV, I set my mind into overdrive to start getting through games.  I need to get things out of the way so I can justify purchases that will occur in the future.  KHIII, FFXIV, FFXV, a PS4, a Vita, a 3DS; there were a lot of things that I instantly put on my wishlist in my head.  However sitting on almost $1000 worth of unfinished games makes my conscience hurt when I want to buy more.  Plus doing a budget everyday/every month,  I can't validate making purchases on things that won't get completely used.

So I did some upgrading of things.  

First: I got all the games that I already owned on disc off of PSN if I could for my PSP (I had a gift card that really helped me).  This enables me to play more games on the go, or just not in front of a PC/TV.  

Second: I finally got my emulators going for PS and PS2.  I used the bios off my machines, and I only use the discs that I own to play.  This will help me play games when my PS3 is being used, or if the worst case scenario happens with it.  

Third: I am doing my best on not playing series back to back as best as possible.  Sometimes it can make things dragging if I did Parasite Eve, Parasite Eve 2, The Third Birthday.  I would just scream "GIVE ME SOMETHING MORE THAN AVA DAMNIT!!".  So for instance, I beat Parasite Eve 2, and now I am working on Wild Arms and Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep on my PSP.  Once I get through KH, I wont' go straight to Chain of Memories.  I will probably move over to FF Tactics, or whatever.

Fourth: I am going to redo my "buying a new game" credit system.  I used to have it based on when I beat 5 games I will buy a new one.  That made sense at the time, but the changes I have planned will make it either harder or easier for me to get new games.  Hell, it could make it the best system.  The idea is to base the credit system not of the quantity of games beaten, but the value of the game.  So if I buy a game for $60 and beat the game, then I will put $60 in the "till" for me to use when I want to buy something new.  A lot of times I will buy a game new, but will work on another game first before starting it.  So I won't be getting lots of money in the till all of the time.  It will take some time to build up credit.  I could change it for new games as well and make it when I Beat a new game (that I know the price of) I only get 75% of the full price in the till. When I Complete a game, then I get 100% in the till.  Now games like Parsite Eve 2, which I have a disc for but I bought the PSN version, I will base it off the price that I bought it off of PSN, which I believe was 5.99.  When I have a game that I bought a long time ago but can't remember the price, then I will use ebay and/or amazon to find an average value to the game.  This value will then be used for the price of the game.

I plan on redoing the List and Completed List page, and I will include values to the games with each one.  Trilogy packs (like Mass Effect Trilogy) I will take the price of the game and then divide it by how many games are in pack.  I will also look into adding a Beaten List Page to go along with my Complete List page, but that will have to do with how things flow.

Fifth: I am taking some breaks to watch things on Hulu and Netflix so as to not burn myself out on my games.  It can take me sometime to figure out what I want to play just because I have so many damn choices.  Once I watch some queued episodes of whatever I have then I can concentrate on a specific entry.

Sixth: I started to do a Breath of Fire series play through on emulator.  I call it my BOFathon.  I won't always do this, however I found that when getting through my much older entries, something like this makes things a little fun.  So expect little many -athons in the future.  I will eventually need to come up with a good list of games for my extra-life campaign (please go and donate!!).

With all of these changes you can expect changes to the blog as well.  I am going to update the format.  Most likely the fishes will be going (I love those guy), but I want to try and clean up the pages some.

You can also expect for entries on the games that I mentioned on this blog to appear, plus other game entries as well.  I will add links in this post for when I make those entries.  I have a lot of drafts sitting in my posts waiting to be updated and worked on.  So don't think I am just sitting around and doing nothing.