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We are home! - Less sand, and no waves

Friday, July 20, 2007

Well the beach was fun while it lasted. We are back now and just spending the final half of our vacation relaxing around the house.

Our last full day at the beach did present a few photo ops. We built a castle! It started out as a small project with Georgia and I. Then after a few minutes, most of the family joined in added pieces here and there. We had a wave break at the front of the castle to ward off the inevitable doom of high tide. Multiple moats to aid when the hoards of orcs attacked from across the sand dunes, and a small village adjoining the keep to supply the incredible amounts of wine the king and queen demanded from the subjects.

Georgia did an incredible job with the center keep and it lasted long after the rest of the castle had washed back into the ocean. We really had fun the last few days and we were very sad to leave. Her family is really fun to be around and they have really accepted me it seems.

So now we are home and getting caught back up with school and house work. We really miss the waves at night, but if anyone feels overly generous, I've added the Conair SU7 Sound Therapy machine to my wishlist . I also took time last night to adjust the frame of this site so that the menu on the left can incorporate more descriptive text. I also increased the size of the main display area a bit. Overall, I think the ease at posting has helped me with wanting to keep the site updated. Hopefully this will continue on into the coming months. I'll post more late, but here are the remaining shots from the castle work.

posted by Travin # 1:22 PM 0 Comments | Add a comment?

Vacation = Food, more food, and BEER

Monday, July 16, 2007

Dinners around here are something special! Each family is in charge of a dinner, and this makes for a big variety of foods. Tonight was our night and we supplied a huge dinner of BBQ pork, chicken, coleslaw and bake beans.

I think I almost ate myself into a coma the food was so good! After an hour or so of our coma naps, the evening broke down into games on the beach. Our favorite is Bocce ball. Quite a challenge when there is loads of soft sand and high winds. The kids had fun by watching one of Georgia's cousins being buried inside the partially remaining sand castle not to return until the rising tide had all but uncovered him. With the setting of the sun, we've retired inside to eat watermelon and of course drink more beer. I even think there might be a bit of scotch in our future as well
It's a non-stop party here folks, and the week isn't even half over.

posted by Travin # 9:03 PM 0 Comments | Add a comment?

82 degrees, light breeze & BEER

Sunday, July 15, 2007

I finally got around to taking some pictures of the house and the surrounding beach. The waves were pretty nice today and the temperature is perfect. 80-82 degrees with a light breeze. Still getting a few light showers from time to time, but they are barely noticeable. We spent most of the morning being kicked around by the waves. Then we retired to the house for lunch and so the kids could play the Wii (of course). I'm telling ya, that console is one of the best inventions of all time. I've never seen a group of kids so hooked on being active instead of just sitting on the couch barely moving. Thank you Nintendo!

Overall, the house is a really great place. It is just big enough for the family, and no one ever feels like they are sitting on top of everyone else. I can comfortably sit at the laptop and relax while writing this post. There are over 10 rooms in the house, two separate living rooms each having their own TV. High speed wireless is a good bonus for the two MMO geeks in the house (take a guess who those are) and two separate kitchens as well. The house is also so far down off the beaten path that we get almost zero traffic and little if anyone else on our beach. I highly recommend this location to anyone looking to rent a beach house for the summer. Well, I'm off to a cool beer and spend some more time on the sandy beach. Cheers!

posted by Travin # 2:00 PM 0 Comments | Add a comment?

Day One - Thank God for vacation days!

Saturday, July 14, 2007

Well we've arrived! The drive was pretty bad, but we are happy to finally be stopped and stationary for five days. We are in the same house here on Topsail Island, NC. The first day is always pretty much the same. Everyone doing their own thing until the whole family arrives. A perfect time for a nap! We had a nice little storm roll in around 7pm. Was great to just sit on the deck (with a "few" beers) and watch the lighting roll in across the ocean. Glad to be here and hopefully I'll finish unwinding by Monday so I can really get on to relaxing!

posted by Travin # 11:39 PM 0 Comments | Add a comment?

GameSpy - Warhammer Review

Thursday, July 12, 2007

If you've been out of the loop, then you might not know that I am working on EA's next MMO: Warhammer online. I'll spare you from previous reviews and just start anew with the most recent one from Gamespy.

In a recent conversation with GameSpy, EA Mythic General Manager Mark Jacobs offered up the official reason for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning's delay to Q1 2008: the team simply decided to invest more time in development in order to make the best game possible. Given how fluid release dates are in this industry and how many reasons are offered for their changes, such an explanation couldn't help but raise a few cynical eyebrows among Warhammer fans. Clearly the team is aware of this, because at a recent EA pre-E3 event the team was showing off the fruits of that delay: a completely revamped Dwarf and Orc play experience and redesigned starting areas to take advantage of all the team had learned in the development process. Well, good on them, because after playing the revised Orcs, I'm starting to believe I should be less cynical. (read more...)

posted by Travin # 4:07 PM 0 Comments | Add a comment?

Google - Blogger

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

So I figure my first post should be about the system that actually provides the service for me. I looked everywhere for good blogging software. I started first with compiled solutions, and then moved to PHP solutions. I even looked at what Georgia uses. Which is an installed app called Wordpress. In the end I figured that the time investment wasn't worth having to maintain my own code. It was at that point I started looking for providers. I looked at quite a few namely, Google's Blogger, Blog.com, Livejournal, MySpace, Windows Live Spaces, and Yahoo! 360°. In the end I settled on Google's Blogger. Shameless plug:

I chose Blogger because of it's commitment to site developers, the data is backed up and stored on Goggle's servers, and can be controlled via e-mail and cellphone if desired. It was also extremely easy to integrate into my own site and makes use of RSS and ATOM feeds.

Time will tell if this was a good decision. If you find that I update this blog more than once a week, then it was a good decision after all. I look forward to any responses I get. It is the first time I've really opened up this site for comments from anyone out there. Time will tell if that was truly a wise thing to do.

posted by Travin # 10:33 AM 2 Comments | Add a comment?