This has been the most transformative year of my life. I'm happy that it is almost over and I'm a little weirded out that my 20s are coming to an end this March, but I guess I had to 'grow up' sometime, or atleast get old. Anyway, I'm happier now than I've ever been. It took some tragedy to get me to this spot, but I think that is how the world works. I lost some important people this year. We had two people die in my group of friends and another childhood friend of mine commited suicide. The hardest loss was my friend Loren that I've talked about before. I know some of you played Battlefield with us, he was lojomofo on PSN and I'm not exaggerating when I say he was the best squad mate you could ask for. Playing Battlefield 3 isn't the same without him. I know that is cheesy, but it is true.

Seeing him die at 28 from cancer opened my eyes. We are all vaguely aware that we could die at any time, but it doesn't really seem real until it happends to someone you know. Once he passed, I made plans to quit the family business and go back to school. It has been weird to be 'free' from my family. I still talk to them all the time and I still help at the shop, but I feel like an adult now that I'm not working for my older brother and my dad. I thought I'd feel guilty about leaving them, but I haven't really. It has been good.

School has been amazing. I'm well on my way to becoming a history teacher and I'm loving every second of it. I've got one more test today and then I'm done for the semester. When it is all said and done I'm going to have four 'A's and one 'B'. My history of eastern civilizations cIass was easily the best. Chinese and Japanese history are pretty remarkable things to study and the books we read for that cIass were excellent.

Over the break I'm going to be looking at all of my grandfather's war memoirs and typing them up so that they don't get lost. I'm also going to hunt down this taped interview with him and see if I can record it and convert it to mp3. He recieved two Purple Hearts and his unit liberated Dachau. I haven't read through his journals since I was maybe 12 or 13 and I'm really excited to get to work on preserving all of this stuff.

In terms of Gamespot stuff, I'm still a little lost with the changes made to GS. Most of it doesn't bother me. I think loosening up the rules in general will be fine, but I'm still unhappy about how the GGD is being handled. It didn't fall apart over night when they removed all the old rules, but I'm still unsure of what I can moderate and what I can't and I find myself a little disinterested in the board right now which kinda bums me out. Renaming it to the PGD and opening up to the hoards of barely literate children of the internet may make it more active, but I'm still not sure that it will make it a better board.

Outside of that, I've just been brewing lots of beer. My chocolate coconut stout will be ready to drink by Christmas and we've got a coffee stout fermenting in my living room right now. I'll be playing lots of Skyrim, BF3 and MGSHD over the break too. It is going to be really nice to have a month of downtime.