Hello all, it's been a while. I took a much needed break, to take a little vacation. Spent some quality time in Skyrim with my buddy Vorstag. During our journey we met many great, and no so great people. We also saw some beautiful, and awful sites. The travel was tough at times, many nights were spent by the camp fire, fending off all sorts of creatures. In the end, we had a great time but had to cut the vacation short, as I ended up taking a arrow to my knee

Here are some pictures from our travels. I apologize for the poor quality pictures, they do get better later in the vacation.

Here we are, Vorstag and myself before heading out.

Our first stop was in Solitude, here I am with a new helmet I found in a cave.

Here I am with a nothern mountain lake in the background, Skyrim sure is beautiful.

Here is one of the many ruined forts we came across.

We worked our way over to the interesting town of Riften, here I am in front of the statue dedicated to the god Talos. If you ever travel here, take note. Keep you wallet secure, mine was pickpocketed.

From Riften we traveled all night to get to Whiterun. Here I am next to a statue of a eagle, with Dragonsreach high above in the background. Poor Vorstag, he's always running the camera so he never gets in the pictures.

On our way back to Solitude ( we forgot to visit the science museum) we came across this interesting place, We could not figure out what it was for, maybe we will come back to it.

A little further along our travels, we decided to go on a little hunt. Here is Vorstag next to his big cat kill, a Saber Cat!

That is all for now, will post more from our vacation soon!

I know I posted a link to a video yesterday of the bridge my GF brought down earlier this week, but she just posted her videos and there are some neat slow motion shots she added this time.

You can see it HERE .

So... as my "get healthy" projects starts to kick into high gear, thaks to @yeah_write, I am now signed up for the Baltimore edition of Run For Your Lives run in October.

I am currently down -28lbs since I started down this path, and hope to be down another 20lbs by October. I normally don't run, but this sounds and looks like it will be a complete blast!

And in other news, my GF has made it to a all new level of celebrity, the job they did in Ohio yesterday made it all the way to Enlightened Redneck . How do you top that?

One thing that has kept Stacey and I up many a latelate nights, is trying to figure out the answer to that that age old question, What is the meaning of life.

You can all stop working on this, Friday night, we figued it out. Now, on to that silly "what came first" quesiton.

And for all you people that "know" You really need to watch THIS video and make sure you follow it up with part II (link provided with part I)

For the kitchen

This is for @johnsteed7 to pass around his office.

Do you have the ba!!Z?

Situation : 2014, Sony and Microsoft release the nextgen machines named Playstation Universe and Xbox Life. (ok, just totally made that up) Both systems now block the ability to play used games. Oh, and by the way, Nintendo decided to not even be bothered by releasing a new console, they just released the DS 5D, which also blocks used games.

The question: Seeing as a huge majority of the gaming community has already announced from the top of a mountain that they would "never" buy a new console if that was the case, do you feel you have the ballz to go through with the threat?

I'm not sure I do.

What is the difference between not being able to play used games on a console, and not being able to play used games on a PC, which we have not been able to do for years? I remember in the way back machine a time when I was able to walk into a store like GameStop and look through stacks of used games, not any more.

Just curious.

Ok, it's not summer, and it was far from a vacation, but just thought I would share my most recent experience in the implosion world with you.

Often I get question about what it takes to implode a building, my goal with this blog is to just give you a quick glimps at one recent project that I just worked on down in Houston, TX. I am not going to go into total drawn out detail, so I apologize if there are questions left unanswered.

1) you need a building....

This was the M.D. Anderson Houston Main Building. As you will start to see, it takes a lot of people, a long time to prep a building for this event, months for a building this size just to clean it out.

2) you need explosives, in this case we used what is known as RDX Shaped Charges, more than 1300 of them. It took me, and one other person nearly 4 days to put them all together. That does not include the time required to bring them all into the building. Keep in mind, we used them on floors, 16,14,12,8,4,1 and the basement. Also keep in mind, there are now working elevators at this point, everything needed must be hand carried up. Here are two of the non-working elevator lifts located on the 16th floor.

Here is a view from the 16th floor, looking south at the Astrodome, and Texans Stadium. Not sure how many times we did that climb, it sucked every time.

Here is me being not very happy about having to climb the beast.

Before you ask, we had to wear hard hat lights because there is no power in the building, which means no lights and very dark work environment.

Here are boxes of the shaped charges we put together. 1 box weighs about 30lbs to carry. More than 1300 were made, and mounted to the structures columns that were already pre-cut to help them move when the charges went off.

In total, about 540lbs of explosives were used, this included 50lbs of dynomite used in the basement to kick columns over, to help the building fall into the basement.

In this picture, you can see the black boxes used around the columns, this is done to cover the charges that are mounted to them, to help keep flying debris knock them off, or disconnect them from the main detonation system. All charges are connected via det-cord that burns at 27,000 ft per sec.... yes, that is fast, very fast. When the copper charges go boom, it sends copper shot right through the steel columns. This pic is of the ground floor.

When every thing is set (it took just our team, not the prep work, 12 days to load and wire the building. This is the prefect result.

For your enjoyment,HERE is a video from all of our cameras.

I am heading out of town early tomorrow morning for 10 days, very little to NO Gamespot, xbox or ps3 for me Hope you all have a happpy and SAFE new years! 2011 has been a blast!

Some of you may already know this, but.....

WE KNOW

.

So , I am begining to see how the next few weeks, and month will unfold. We are down to communication via text message. Soon, I expect, it might be down to smoke signals.

Her sneak ability has increased ten fold, I can hardly tell when she moves around the house. I even found her once sneaking up on one of our cats, and we all know how hard that is.

Speaking of the cats, NONE of them go into her room anymore, are they afraid of being skinned for leather?

I thought it would be funny to cut the power to her room, but thought better of it. Somewhere in the back of my mind I honestly am begining to believe she might be able to conjure some kind of creature, I'm sure things would not go my way if that happened.

I have also found all of our mixing bowls spread out near the fire place, with who knows what inside them. Looks like a mix of flowers, and... I have no idea what the red sticky stuff is.

I had to laugh as she once tried to practice her speech and persuasion abilities on me. Imagine how hard I laughed when she actually had the nerve to ask me to try this game. Is she really going that crazy?

Now, you may be thinking to yourself "Is GenWarbuff drunk? out of his mind? for the title of this blog, but fear not, what you are about to read is 100% truth.

It all started about two weeks ago, as I was playing a game, might have been battlefield 3, the 360 message box popped up on the screen. To my surprise, it was a game invite to play BF3 with one JOHNSTEED 7. The first feeling I had was of course this had to be a joke he was trying to play on me. Then I remembered that BF3 has 6 levels of Co-Op, that had to be it, there is no way he would ever dive into the BF3 normal multiplayer. I decided to finish the session I was in, then I would accept the invite. Woops, the game went on to long, I totally forgot about the invite.

A few days later, the same thing happened. Message popped up from Johnsteed 7, again asking me to join a BF3 game. However, this time I was just finishing a session and was heading out to eat. My intention was to eat quickly, then come back and see if he was still playing. Again, I got sidetracked and forgot to check. But this now brought a new thought to my mind, someone must have hacked his account, there is NO WAY johnsteed 7 would ask to play multiplayer twice within two weeks.

Before you think bad of me, I did send him a PM here on Gamespot letting him know that I was not ignoring him, it was just me forgetting to respond to his invites.

Now, this past Friday......... there it was, another invite from Mr Steed7. I wasted no time, I accepted the invite and in the matter of seconds we were linked in conversation via xbox live, and sitting in a BF3 lobby.

We started to play.........

It took him a few levels to start learning the ins and outs of the game, and with a few pointers from me, he started to really play the game, we were playing Conquest mode. For those that don't know, Conquest is a mode that is basically capture the flag.

I started to notice something amazing, the flag captures and kills that were popping up all had one thing in common, they were mostly all due to JohnSteed7 runnin, gunnin and capin flags! It was amazing, a thing of beauty, and not a single negative thing said about other humans.

Our final round together that night, he was out scoring me, and finishing in 2nd place of all players! Tears came to my eyes, life is now complete.

Look out online multiplayer gaming world, there is a new God in town, his name is JohnSteed7.

Day 2: Not much to add, there has been very little activity in the house, I mean VERY little. I do know that she is eating, I found telltale signs that hot pocket pizza rolls had been made.

All the cats are avoiding her, it might have something to do with her newly found joy in hide tanning. Pretty sure none of the cats want to end up as mittens, or boots.

I hear noises at night, wispers. Things are missing, I hear metal on metal banging noises, I think she is crafting something.

Day 3: It order to make the game more real, to feel like she is out in the world of Skyrim, all the windows in the house are now open. She mentioned something about picking flowers, and hunting for food. I am now worried for the cats.

Had to make a food run today, the cabinets and freezer were looking a little bare. Is she selling food now? Also, noticed a BIG black pot in the fireplace, and some very odd smells coming from it's general area.

I'm thinking of cutting the power to her room, humans need sunlight, she needs to get out for some fresh air, that will give time to search her room, just to see how bad the situation is.

So, I am sure you are all aware that Skyrim was released this past Friday. Now, I am not a RPG fan, so I am not playing it. I MIGHT give it a try after I finish some other games, but my guess is that I will play it for an hour or two, just like past RPG's I have tried, then trade it in.

With that said, I did pick it up, for Stacey. For those of you that don't know Stacey (which would be all of you) she is a A-Type personality, and when she sets her mind to something it is very hard to derail her.

Satrurday morning was Skyrim opening day for her. You should also know, she played Oblivon for about.... 700 hours, no lie. She also completed Viva Pinata 1 & 2, with help of a 7 page spreadsheet she found on the inturwebz.

Starting today, I will be giving dail updates, when I can do to business travel, on my life with this Skyrim addict.

T-1 Day :

Knowing what was to come, I prepared the house by getting all the laundry done while she was out with her sister, and cleaning the place top to bottom so she did not have to think about it over the weekend. Then I stocked the cabinets and fridge with quick prepare foods, there would be no time, or interestin cooking proper meals, probably for the next few months. I wrote down a list of important phone numbers, and put it next to the cell phone, which would live next to gaming location. I called family and friends to encourage them to keep in touch with her, if they noticed she were missing. I refilled the cats food cabinet, and had them all check by the vet, just to make sure there would be no sudden issues. I paid all the bills, and made sure the furnace was working, as cold weather is setting in. Finally, I placed her copy of Skyrim and the 700 page hardcover game guide on her dresser, knowing she would see it when she came in. I was all set for Saturday morning, and the weeks or months to follow.

Saturday: Day 1

6am comes early, for a weekend. I woke to the smell of freshly brewed coffee, and the soft fur of a cat that only pays attention to me when Stacey is out of town, or busy doing something that requires all of her attention. Because we each have own rooms (keeps the relationship going ) I got out of bed and strolled towards her room. As I peeked around the corner, there she was sitting on the bed, guide open, game map spread out on the bed, and a very LARGE cup of coffee in hand as she read the game book.

"Morning" I said...........no response. " Good morning Stace" I repated, only to get a "oh, morning" in return. I could tell she was deep into reading up on controls and other important need to know requirments for the game.

6:45am:

"Hey bubba" I heard from her room (her nick name for me), "yes" I answered, " Do you want to watch me set up my Dark Elf?" she asked. Knowing this is not normally the thing I would want to do early on a Saturday, but also understanding that this might be one of the last times I actually get to communicate directly with her, I decided to go watch.

7:30am:

Yes, Inow know it takes nearly 45 minutes to figure out just how you want to go about attacking this game. Trixie, the Dark Elf was born at 7:28am Saturday, Nov 12th, 2011.

After watching her explore EVERY SINGLE corner, table, drawer, dead thing, barrel and cage, she then went on a theft run and took everything in site. It's now 8am, she made it out of the first room

Time for me to leave, I had to go pound nails into my arm, or something.

2:30 pm:

Hours have passed, sounds were heard, lunch was had, by myself.

8:00 pm:

Pretty sure she ventured into the kitch for a snack, her cat is back with me. Shocker, she justpoked her head in the room and said she thought she was done for the night, she was getting tired and was having a hard time reading the text on the TV screen.

1:00 am:

The game is still being played, I am in this for the long haul. Good night I said to her, "ya, going to bed soon" is replied.

I now have,

Forza 4

NHL 12

Battlefield 3

CODMW3

Uncharted

And tonight I will have Skyrim.

Oh, and I have ICO & Shadow Of The Colossus................. I have started ICO, not sure how I missed that game way back when, it's fantastic.

So, when was a kid, I might have done some things with my friends that.... maybe were not so nice on a halloween or two.

Things change, that was a long time ago. This year was our first Halloween in our new place, even though we don't have kids, and are quickly approaching our mid 40's, we still had a blast!

Turns out our neighborhood is "known" for it's Halloween activities, we were told a few months ago that "it's a big deal, expect lots of kids". Well, what exaclty is a "lot of kids?", I had no idea. Well, after polling the neighbors I decided that about 1200 pieces of candy were needed, actually think I had 1500 after all the math. Let me just say, that after our friend came over and added to the mix, we had about 1800 total pieces............ 200 and some are now left over and that was after following a pretty strict rule on only letting each kid have two pieces.

It was a great time, I guess we had between 700-800 kids stop by, add their parents to that and we had a CRAP load of people walking around. The fun part is everybody really does up their yards, builds fires,and basically just sit outside for the entire event. There might have been some drinking too.

Can't wait till next year! will post some pics soon.

Can someone tell me exactly what Fuse is, and why/how it is different than Gamespot? This has always confused me and I am not sure why I need to use it.

In other news, Battlefield 3 came out, just thought I would let you know.

THIS made me laugh VERY hard this morning.