Some favorite bands.

These are some bands I've been listening to a ton. I listent to a bunch of other bands too, but these just keep coming back. Look em up and take a listen.

ABACABB

Genre: Deathmetal/Hardcore/Deathcore

www.myspace.com/abacabb

FOR TODAY

Genre: Metal/Hardcore/Metalcore

www.myspace.com/fortoday

MY BITTER END

Genre: Melodic Deathmetal/Hardcore/Deathcore
www.myspace.com/mybitterend

THE ACACIA STRAIN

Genre: Modern Hardcore/Deathcore

www.myspace.com/theacaciastrain

THE GHOST INSIDE

Genre: Modern Hardcore/Metalcore
www.myspace.com/theghostinside

WITHIN THE RUINS

Genre: Metal/Hardcore/Metalcore

www.myspace.com/withintheruins

My first attempt at touching up a portrait.

A little heavy handed with the effects, but I think its pretty good for my first time.

Before

After

Some more flyers for work...

These are a few more fliers I've made for Rent A Center. I'm starting to run out of ideas since they wont print them full color. You have to have a white background since they will be reproduced in black and white. Kinda frustrating, but oh well. Interesting note, the football player below is taken from a photo of a game where the Greenbay Packers were playing. Messed around with the color hue a bit and "Poof!" no longer the Packers.

Oblivion

So I have been playing this game lately (about 2 months now) call Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Its an RPG (Role Playing Game) which means you follow a non linear story line and your character is customisable down to his (or her) underwear. You start out as a prisoner (the reason never really comes into play) and work your way out by following a fleeing Emperor through a secret passage under the palace that luckily runs through your cell. As you go through the tunnels and sewers, you see the Emperor and his guards get attacked by mysterious figures in hooded red robes. The emperor for some reason talks to you about a "vision" he has had with you as the main character. He bestows on you the Amulet of Kings (a necklace of sorts that has unknown mystical powers) in order for you to carry it to safety in the event of his death.

You strike out on your own and just as you exit the sewers, the game gives you a chance to customize your character. You choose between male/female, then between all the races available. They have a lizard race, a cat race, dark elves, high elves, wood elves, nords (self explanatory), imperials (a dark haired Caucasian race of invaders), redguards (black skinned dudes) etc. Then you pick your hair style and color, and choose your face. You start with their basic template then adjust the individual features to your heart's content. They have literally like 50 different aspects you can change with sliding bars like the width of your nose, the tilt of your forehead, the size and position of your eyes, etc.

Anyway, the game is ridiculously long and time consuming (the reason I like it) and as you go through, you gain weapons, armor, magical rings, spells, and a ton of other stuff. You have an inventory of items, and the list can get pretty dang long. There are leather, fur, dwarvish, elvish, ebony, daedric (demonic, and also the best), iron, madness and amber armor (only with the expansion pack), steel, and glass armors and weapons. Each set has different protection levels on each piece (the boots have 7 points etc.) and they all add up to a total, so finding the next level armor helps a lot since your enemies get harder as you get more experienced. You don't start finding pieces of the better armor until you are at certain experience levels, so its always exciting when you find the gauntlets or boots to a certain type, because that means you will find more pieces of the set on your defeated enemies or for sale soon. Each set has boots, gauntlets, a chest piece (called a cuirass which includes the shoulders and arms), greaves (armored pants), a helmet, a shield, a bow, a long sword, a short sword, and a claymore (a two handed sword, think Braveheart). You can mix and match the different sets (the combinations are nearly endless), but the full set of dwarvish armor with the daedric longsword is my favorite.

To be continued.

Oblivion (cont.)

Here are some pictures of the armor (without shields), not all are represented though. The weapons aren't shown very well, and there arent many pictures of them, but they include: daggers, shortswords, long swords, claymores, axes, maces, battle axes (two handed), and bows. Each armor type (steel, ebony, daedric, elvish, etc.) has its corresponding weapons, so there are steel swords and axes, ebony axes and maces, etc. down the list.

Daedric Armor


Glass Armor

The game is composed of the main quest (the storyline laid out at the beginning of the game with the Emperor and such), The Fighters Guild quest line (kind of like a mercenary group, they take contracts to kill monsters and criminals etc.), The Mages Guild quest (they send you on quests in the pursuit of magical knowledge), The Arena Faction quest (a gladiator arena in which you work your way up through the ranks by killing a ton of opponents), The Thieves Guild quest (a Robin Hood-esque band of thieves led by "The Gray Fox"), and The Dark Brotherhood quest line (a secret society of murderers and killers led by a vampire, its actually pretty creepy, and the contracts make you feel kinda icky, so I only did two or three). Each quest line is composed of a ton of mini quests that focus on the particular faction (for instance, the Mages Guild has to do with magic, lots of learning new spells and fighting evil mages and necromancers, The Fighters Guild has contracts that require you to wear armor to survive and fight other meat heads such as yourself, The Thieves Guild requires you to sneak in the shadows and steal things unseen, etc.) There are also a lot of other side quests that don't have anything to do with the secondary quests. Since the game is so open and non-linear, you can play hundreds of quests without ever advancing one step in the main story line. The map is huge, over 16 square miles by scale, with hundreds of locations that need to be found, like caves, mines, ruined fortresses and cities, glades, and towers.

Every location has items placed in it, either on tables (dishes and utensils, food, potions), in chests (most have gold, weapons, armor, etc. and you have to pick the locks on a lot of them, an infuriating process), in cupboards, and other stuff depending on the surroundings. You can amass a good amount of items, so much that it weighs you down until you cant move until you drop some (your ability to hold more items goes up as you "level up" and increase in strength) or sell them. Almost everything has a use at some point. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of individual items throughout the map.

The enemies in the game are usually specific to the quest, and they vary quite a bit. There are trolls (pictured above, they look kinda like monkeys), ogres, goblins, ghosts, wraiths, zombies, necromancers (mages who practice necromancy, or the raising of the dead), skeletons, evil mages, vampires, nether liches (kinda like mummies, only with some armor and magical staffs), huge rats, bears, and wolves. Humans make up a big number of your enemies, whether they are bandits, Arena opponents, thieves, knights of an opposing faction, etc. They level up with you, so the game stays challenging. As you gain more advanced armor and weapons, they start appearing with better pieces also, which is good, since searching dead enemies is the best way to get armor and stuff. The main bad guys are the Daedra, demon looking guys who live in a hell type world called The Planes of Oblivion. They are trying to conquer the world by coming in through Oblivion Gates and sacking cities and towns. I'm sure there are more bad guys I missed.

To be continued.

The first promotion in my young life.

So as you know, I work at Rent A Center doing deliveries and collections and stuff. Ive been there for a little over 9 months now, and since that time we had our Collections Manager get promoted to be over his own store. Well now, that leaves a little hole in our employee positions. One that I was more than happy to fill. I'm now the Collections Manager (also the Assistant Manager) at the Midvale Rent A Center. I got a raise (Sweet!) that will help me pay down my debts, and a lot more responsibilities. Hopefully it works out as good as can be hoped, and who knows how far I'll go.

No sugar makes for less fat.

So, completely against my nature, I have made and kept a resolution. I started in May, on my birthday, not January, but still. Since May 14, 2009 I have almost completely cut sugar as an additive from my diet. That means no candy, no sugary soda, no cake, no brownies, no cookies, no frosting, no maple syrup, nothing with more than naturally occurring sugars (such as the natural sugar in milk etc.) and calorie free sugar substitutes such as aspartame and splenda. Luckily, you can find ice cream, maple syrup, diet sodas, pudding, and some candy made with splenda, not sugar. "Well," you say pompously, "Sugar isn't the only thing, you have to take into account the fat content and total calories along with a lot of blah blah blah." That is true, yes, but considering the calories per gram of sugar, a diet free from added sugar is a diet with a radically reduced amount of calories. Its has worked. Very well. Its all in the mind.

If you choose to pass over the above named sugary sweets, by default you take in less calories. Yes, the sugar part of unhealthy foods is a small part, but it is a good standard by which you can control your diet without counting calories. I think everyone can do things like this, an honest look at your habits and eating routine can lead to a personal natural way to be healthier. If you eat a lot of a certain type of fatty, sugary, or salty food, you probably need to cut back. Its human nature to overdo it. If you focus on one aspect of it (not ignoring the other ingredients, simply not obsessing over them), such as the sugar, and cut back on it, you can change your body's need for it. Then you can move on to the other sinfully tasty aspects, like the grease floating on your pizza or the cup of salad dressing on your cheese and croutons.

I think its important to view weightloss (or simply being healthier) as a personal, natural thing that you can accomplish with your own brain and control of greedy little hands (I gorge on sweets and other bad food, so the greedy references etc. really refer to me, not you).

To date, with no cardio or other types of exercise outside of work, I have lost 11 and a half pounds. Count the days. From May 14th to July 6th, that's 55 days. I think that's pretty good.