Resolution 12 - Have an Amazing 30th Birthday - Complete!

So last Thursday I finally turned the big 3-0! And I sent out my 20s in a blaze of glory, perhaps you can say I burned the house down? The day started off innocent, I grabbed my free birthday lunch at Paradiso with my BFF Matt, and we spent the afternoon doing a bad movie marathon. Absolutely make sure not to watch the latest Kurt Angle indie flick "Death From Above" as well as "A Talking Cat" off Netflix streaming, well maybe the first 20 minutes to get the gist of it, as it is atrocious.

In the evening I met up with the family for dinner and cake and ice cream afterwards....so much cake. All was well and good, but I did not really have any plans set for that night. I did have plans to do a little belated celebrating the next night with a few friends who were all unavailable Thursday night, but I did not have any plans to do much of anything my birthday night except maybe try and play some blackjack and have a couple drinks and see where the night would take me. Thrilling birthday night plans, I know.

I was a little bummed out going into the night because I kept thinking I should be doing something awesome for my birthday night for hitting the big 3-0 milestone. I was probably putting too much thought into it, and I had a pretty good night lined up with friends the day after to look forward to. Things changed at the right time when a few people I did not anticipate reached out to me to join them for what ended up being a legendary night out. I will refrain going into specifics about that night, but for you reading I am proud to say I remember all of it, and regret none of it! It turned out to be an amazing night celebrating my birthday with some great people I definitely need to party with some more! Thanks again to you know who for thinking of me and reaching out to me. It was a hell of a night that meant the world to me, and I will never forget it!

Resolution 11 - Visit Washington DC - Complete!

So as I detailed in my last blog, Washington DC is the main tourist destination I always wanted to see in the country and I was determined to make it out there this year and by sheer luck my dad was happening to be passing through there to visit his brother and I was able to meet up with them there and catch a ride back with him. Everything went down as planned. I was dreading my dad and Uncle got the airports mixed up and I would have been waiting hours for them, but they were ready and waiting for me right when I got my luggage. It was pretty late when we met up, so we caught dinner at a Korean buffet and passed out to a movie at my uncle's on the first night. The Korean buffet was great, never ate at a Korean restaurant before and did not know half of what I ate, but it was mighty tasty.

Second day, after breakfast my uncle dropped my dad and I off at the DC Metro and we went to the main DC area. It was surprisingly to find our way around, and a couple friendly locals noticed us perusing maps and helped point us in the right direction. That day we scoped out nearly the entire Smithsonian American History Museum. Absolutely loved it and took it all in. As I mentioned before, I am a huge history nut and just soaked in all the information in war wing, the presidential wing and nearly everywhere else in there. We also checked out the Holocaust Museum, which I loved for an entire other set of reasons. Obviously it is a much somber tone in there, but I highly recommend checking out that museum there because that tragedy deserves to be remembered so it never comes close to happening again. I know that goes without saying, but that is literally the theme of the place "Never Again." Without argument, a great message.

That is all we had time to do on the first day by the time the museums closed. I just could not bring myself to brisk through the museums. I had to eat up and get refreshed on as much knowledge as possible. I wanted to go on a moonlight tour of the memorials I saw advertised, but I forgot you had to book that reservation a day ahead of time. So I did not get a chance to tour the memorials which I highly regret, but at least I have more of DC to check out for my eventual return there. That night I was delighted to see my uncle had a treadmill and steam sauna at his place I was able to take advantage of to keep up on my running while finally getting around to watching Men of Honor. Never took a steam shower before, and it was quite the experience.

Third day after some decadent pancakes, we spent most of that day in DC checking out the Newseum and Smithsonian Air and Space museum. The Newseum is a museum dedicated to the history of journalism, which is right up my alley, so I made sure this place was on my to do list. They had an amazing display in front which had the front page from a random newspaper from each state and I was delighted to see the front page of our local newspaper, the Grand Forks Herald get the nod to represent North Dakota. As I anticipated, I loved the Newseum and ate up how they had the history of the printing press, tv and web journalism presented. My dad the crossword fanatic, loved they had the first ever printed crossword on display and got a couple of photos and plans on blowing them up so he can complete it. We saw a 4D movie there which was a 3D movie, but the extra dimension was moving seats and air that blew at you at certain points.

We did not have that much time in the Air and Space museum. Only a couple hours because we checked out nearly all of the Air and Space museum. Loved what I saw, which included a wing dedicated to the Wright brothers, and wings on WWI & II aviation. Last night it in DC my dad, uncle and I ate out a fantastic Mexican restaurant, and we got some early zzzzs before we headed out on our long drive home.

Had an amazing time in DC overall. Three days is not nearly enough. In that time I only managed to see a modicum of what DC had to offer, but I made the most out of what I did saw and do not regret it a bit. Like I stated above, I still have plenty more to see to easily justify a return to DC. It was also great to catch up with my Uncle Jim whom I have not seen in several years.

That was also a great theme on the way back, I was able to catch up with a ton of my dad's side of the family that I have been horrible at keeping up with this past decade. We also saw my Uncle Roger and Aunt Norma in upper Michigan and spent Easter weekend there. Had a great time visiting them and my cousins Josh and Jennifer I have not seen in many years. My aunt is a huge book nut and I had a great time picking her brain about my growing interest in reading in these past years. I swore to them to do my best not to lose touch again. Also returned to the Milwaukee area on our route back and visited my cousins Carrie and Charlie. They have a huge ranch out there in the outskirts, and I took advantage of the nearby running trail and got annihilated on running on my first trail that featured numerous hills.

I got back in town last night, and combining my Milwaukee to DC and back home treks, I was on the road for 10 days straight. Easily my longest and most ambitious vacation yet. I enjoyed every minute of it, and still have a few days left to unwind and get settled back in before returning to work.

Resolution 10 - Return to MGC - Complete!

Last night I just returned back from my mammoth cross country vacation where I made my (mostly) annual trip to Milwaukee for the Midwest Gaming Classic. I say mostly because I missed last year, and thus my desire to return there and catch up with everyone I see there every year made it go on my resolution list. I also visited a ton of family in Washington DC, Escanaba, MI and Delafield, WI. More on that in a second blog to come later today. In my old blog, my annual MGC entries kind of went on forever, so be prepared for a wall of text! I will try to sprinkle in a few pics to mix it up. I have a whole album of pics uploaded to my Facebook account, so make sure to check the rest of them out there.

I flew in on Friday. I was a little worried I might not make it in time. I got out of work a little before 2am on Friday morning and was able to sneak in a three hour nap. I got a lift to the airport well before my 8am departure time and arrived midday Friday. The hotel I was staying at was also where MGC was taking place so it was no problem getting around. I caught up with a few other people that arrived early and decided to sneak in another power nap before the festivities continued for the first night there.

Glenn of the PSnation podcast organized a huge community meet up event that night. It included a yearly trip for dinner at the amazing Delafield Bruhause, followed up with karaoke at a nearby bar. To make sure we did not have to worry about rides or designated drivers, he also arranged for a party bus we all went in on. The bus was set to leave from the hotel at 6:30. I got down to the lobby at 6:25 and......saw no one there. Odd, I thought, maybe everyone was meeting at the Retroids conference room we usually hangout in throughout the convention. A quick traversal there and I instantly found out that I was forgotten. Luckilly, Retroids cofounder Ken and fellow Retroids podcaster Tom were still down there finishing setting up for the convention and were planning on leaving a little later so I was luckily able to hitch a ride with them! I made sure to give Glenn a lot of grief, and I was just thankful to still make it out there.

Friday night ruled. The dinner at the Bruhause was amazing as always. I got the same fish fry special I always get, and it is still the best Cod around! Their in house brews are still as awesome as I remember too. Topping it off was one of my best karaoke nights yet. We had a section reserved for our group and we had a blast cheering everyone on. There were some diehard locals that kept a ton of country flowing throughout the night, including a guy who gave the most enthusiastic rendition of "Strokin'" I have ever heard, and a lady who somehow kept a straight face with her masterful performance of the "Pussycat Song." I was also amazed by another great singer who was later jamming out on top of the bar and showing off some amazing "bar-kour" flips.

I went up and sang two songs. I started off with one of my old stand-bys "Mother" by Danzig. I was then thrilled to sing "All the Things That You've Done" by The Killers because I never saw it in any other karaoke catalog before. I felt I did pretty decent up there. I went to get another drink afterwards, and a bar patron told me I had a perfect voice for The Talking Heads, and asked me to sing "Burning Down the House" which I gladly obliged to. I think I must have nailed that song, because they rang a cowbell after I was done, and they only did that for a couple other people that were pretty on that night...that or I was drunk and godawful, which I would not put it past me either!

Saturday arrived and it was the official start of the convention. The last couple of years I attended when I was still hosting the podcast I spent a majority of the show in the Retroids room manning a table representing the podcast. I usually had a television hooked up with some classic N64 wrestling games and ran a WWF No Mercy tournament each year and loved doing it, but a part of me missed out on not being able to check out the convention all that much. Since the podcast folded a month ago, it meant it was the first time I was able to be able to roam around freely in a few years.

I still checked out the Retroids room to catch up with people at least several times throughout the show, but it was great to be able to spend more time in the museum checking out almost every single videogame system in history up and running. I was eyeing this unique looking dodgeball game on Neo-Geo to play, but was never able to hop on it. I did get my annual time in with the Jaguar though, and dominated my brother's friend Zach in two games of NBA Jam TE. I also spent a bit of time compared to years past in the arcade hall which had countless arcade and pinball machines set up on free play. Usually it is nearly impossible to find a machine to hop on, but my timing must have been spot on this year as I was able to hop on several cabinets with little to no waiting.

Nearly a half year after its release I was finally able to play the WiiU. It was set up in the Retroids room, and I played roughly the first half hour of LEGO City Undercover. For those unfamiliar with it just imagine a LEGO version of Grand Theft Auto. Loved the first half hour of it, and it was refreshing to see a LEGO game with all unique characters in a new genre for a change. If I were to get it a WiiU, this and Super Scribblenauts would be the first two games I would purchase for it. Another fun moment was the developers of one of my favorite PS3/360 games, The Pinball Arcade had a booth set up with their as of yet to be released 3D Pinball tables on display, and it was an unexpected to treat to play my first ever 3D pinball. I also won a high score contest and won a tshirt from them and a code for their brand new Star Trek table.

I only had a chance to catch a couple of speakers this year. I must have jotted down some times wrong and got the speakers mixed up. I did see the unveiling of the RetCon 4, which turned out to be the RetCon 5, which is a system what can play NES, Genesis, SNES, Famicom and GB/GBC/GBA games. It looks mighty promising for an all-in-one system, and has some really enticing HD upscaling capabilities. Speaking of old games, the main attraction of MGC each year is of course its loaded vendor hall. In past years I have spent more than I care to admit here tracking down games for my collection. While keeping my immediate trip to DC in mind, I kept my spending down this year and spent only a record low of under $50. I was tempted a few times gobble up a few other games, but managed to keep my impulse buying to a minimum.

My haul this year included Road Rash for Game Gear for only $4, two random Famicom games for $10 combined. I have a NES clone that plays Famicom games and wanted some games for the sake of making use of that port so I picked up a random baseball game and Japanese version of Tetris. On the second day, a dealer was running buy any two PS2/Xbox/GCN games, get one free. I ended up getting 007 Everything or Nothing, Carve and Mario Superstar Baseball all for $20. Highlight was completing my 32X CD collection and getting the final fifth game I was missing in its library with Farenheight for only $12. I kept eying a GameBoy Micro at the show, but managed to walk away from it.

Another highlight of the show was on Saturday night for the annual Retroids after party. The Gamers Only Older podcast crew are all big fans of board games. They specialize in complex games you can only find online or at hobby shops, and they arranged for a six to seven player game of Eclipse I partook in. The simplest way I can describe Eclipse is that it is a much more complex version of Risk, in space. Gamers Only Older host, Scott did a great job easing us into its in depth rules and explaining its many intricacies. We did a "short" version of the game, which took about five hours to finish as best as I recall. I had no problem with it, and had a fun learning this new game and I was finally starting to grasp a lot of its core principles by the end.

As expected, MGC kicked ass again this year and I am glad I was able to make it out. It is always a blast spending a weekend geeking out with many fellow gamers who are as passionate about this hobby as I am. Hopefully I can return next year.

Resolutions 10 & 11 - Go to MGC & DC - Preparing for Departure

From 2007 to 2011, every year sometime in March I traversed to the Milwaukee area to attend the Midwest Gaming Classic (MGC). It is a retro video game convention filled with many vendors, community events, speakers and also has a ton of fellow gaming friends I get to meet up with once a year with as we all indulge in our favorite hobby. 2012 was the first year I missed attending because I went to Miami last year for Wrestlemania, which coincidentally was within a week of MGC, and there was no way I was going to be able to make both of those happen.

So one of my resolutions for this year was to return to MGC. Usually it is a cheaper trip because the last few times I went there I drove down with my brother and two other friends. It was a straight 11 hour shot down I94, and with gas split four ways it was usually pretty travel efficient. It was not meant to be this year however as my brother and friends cannot make it this year. I would have made the drive myself, but I decided to make this a two part vacation and will end up flying down instead.

After spending the weekend in Milwaukee I will be flying down to Washington DC to take in its renowned sights and attractions and visit my dad and uncle. History was always my favorite class in school, so Washington DC has always been a dream destination of mine to check out the memorials and museums. My dad is currently on a vacation in Georgia visiting my two sisters, he drove down there a month and a half back and was planning on visiting a few other family and friends in Florida, Michigan and DC on the way back. When I told him I was thinking of checking out DC right after Milwaukee this year a few months back, he offered to tweak his schedule a little bit so he can meet up with me in DC for a few days, and offered to ride back home with him.

So this is quite the ambitious vacation, and I got quite a bit planned. Hopefully everything will go down without incident. Though I am almost counting on some kind of vehicle malfunction on the way back home with Dad. That was almost always a given on our yearly family trips growing up. I will be out of town for a bit, but look forward to my next blog which will probably be a lengthy recap of my travels.

Before I go, since it will be a little longer than usual for my next update here is something to tide you by. Some of my favorite On Tap episodes have been our yearly MGC recap episodes where we dissect the craziness that transpired over the weekend, have many fun tales and go over all the gaming loot we picked up. The 2010 and 2011 recap episodes were fun to record because we taped them live at MGC itself, so you can hear all the ambient noises of the event as it is taking place, and hear a few spontaneous guest host cameos to in the midst of the madness. Just right click on each year to download the corresponding podcast:
2007 | 2008 |
2009 | 2010 |
2011

Resolution 1 - Run the Half Marathon - Progress Update

I swear I must have jinxed myself. Shortly after posting the last blog, I went and checked the forecast for Lisbon, ND (a small town near where the race was taking place). My how different the forecast changed. It went from a high in the mid 30s to a high of 20. And over the next couple of days the forecast kept getting worse and worse to the point of a race time starting temperature of 2 above, and only a 13 degree high that day.

To make it worse, the night before the race we got several inches of snow which led to horrible highway driving conditions. I kept checking in on the event's Facebook page for updates from other racers coming from Grand Forks and Winnipeg saying they were stuck at rest stops or decided to turn around and go back. My little 'ol Ford Ranger does not have four wheel drive and loves to fishtail in the slightest amounts of snow, so I knew there was no way I was going to be able to make that drive down there.

I hated to do it, but I sent an email out to one of the race coordinators notifying them of my withdrawal from the race. I still wanted to go out and do some kind of big run that day, because I bought way too much gear and spent a ton of time prepping up for it. So I went out to the Greenway bike path in town and convinced myself I was going to run an 8 mile loop four times over. Well, it sounded like a good idea until I realized none of the Greenway was plowed, which I was prepared for until I ran into some nasty drifts I had to run around. Also add in the fact it was barely above zero, with some nasty wind gusts to boot. After six miles, I came to the realization this was a stupid idea with no big race day vibe and fellow racer camaraderie and was not how I wanted my first big run to go down and so I despondently went back to my vehicle and drove home.

I was pretty upset about how the whole day went down, and tried to make it better by grabbing a bite with my brother and a few friends, but that did not really do the trick. They went out for drinks and some early St. Patty's celebrating while I went and slept the night away...literally. Sorry no happy ending to this blog, and the weather looks to be getting worse this next week so it looks like it will be back to running on the treadmill again for the foreseeable future. Will just have to train hard until the Fargo Marathon in two months.

If there is some upside to this, it is probably for the best I did not compete in that race. Out of the original 53 racer field, only 32 made it out there to race day. And out of the 32, only 19 finished. Some racers got frostbite and early stages of hypothermia. I imagined I would not have fared that well out there other. Blessing in disguise, I guess.

Resolution 1 - Run the Half Marathon - Progress Update

For reasons that will be impossible for me to explain, and presumably for anyone to understand. I signed up to run an Ultra Marathon. 31.1 miles. This Saturday. On a nature trail mostly covered in snow in the middle of nowhere. I am out of my mind, I know. I have been signed up for this for a few weeks now, and am eagerly anticipating it, and petrified of it at the same time. I have been training rigorously since, but we shall see what I am made of come race day. All I can say is I went with my gut, and even though the farthest I have ever run was a half marathon before, somehow, someway my body was telling me I can do this.

There are only two checkpoint stations during the race. From what I understand, each station will have a medical staff there examining each racer as they pass by, and even if the racer persists on continuing it will be up to the staff to decide if they will continue or not. In all likelihood, I will probably only make it to the first station, maybe the second before walking away. These are incredibly extreme conditions I will be running in. From what I hear on the event's Facebook page, a lot of the race will be a slog, through a trail made primarily from snowshoes. The second half of the race has numerous sets of rolling hills making for a more challenging race. To top it all off, on my safety waiver I had to sign, I was forewarned of possible cougars in the areas. A coworker also familiar with the area of the race told me to be on the watch for packs of coyotes too.

I have been primarily running outside in the cold the past month to prep up for this. My friend Adam went on a couple training runs with me this week with some nice elevation changes over the course of 9 miles. For some real preparation for the hills though, I found a part of our mammoth city dike system along the bike path and ran up and down it for a half hour. My legs felt like spaghetti, but I think those were some extreme training scenarios to go through so whatever the slog is like come Saturday will hopefully be a lesser experience.

I have bought a ton of gear to make sure I have all my bases covered. We were required to get Gaiters and Headlamps. Gaiters make sense and I am glad I got some for however deep some of that snow is to trudge through. I will be wearing two sets of socks, with my outer layer being a heavy duty set of calf high socks. The trail is marked by flags, but in a worst case scenario in the event we get lost for several hours is what the headlamps are for. I also picked up a glow in the dark vest just in case. Also purchased a waist belt holder for a water bottle, a ski mask, and a outer glove liner for my running gloves. Finally, I picked up 8 gels to help replenish calories and energy throughout the run.

The weather looks like it will be fair in the area, with highs in the mid 30s, and come race time the temp will be in the mid 20s. It will actually probably be the warmest weather I will be running in this year thankfully since it has been a much colder March than last year. Last year we had temps in the 40s and 50s this time, and right now the warmest I have been able to run in recently was only 33 degrees a couple weeks ago. At least it will be a hell of a lot better than running in zero degree weather last month. I will still be wearing two tech tees and a windbreaker, so I will be plenty warm.

Look, I know my odds of finishing this are not promising, but something deep down is telling me to go for it. Call it whatever you want, but I am sick and tired of running away from challenges most of my life, so even if I do fail, at least I know I had the heart to try. Keeping up with my glass half full outlook on life, finish or not, at the very least this will be considerably effective training for the half marathon.

Resolution 7 - End the Podcast - Complete!

Last weekend I met up with Chris and Lyzz over Skype and we knocked out the final episode of On Tap. After 185 episodes and seven years, it felt incredibly relieving to finally pull the plug on it. We went all out on our final show and made it a 4 hour, 18 minute epic, our longest show yet. If you have that much time on your hands, click here to download and spend an afternoon listening to it.

Our last episode was our yearly games of the year special where we go a little crazy with awards. For a couple of years we had nearly 50 awards we handed out ranging from traditional awards like 'Best Graphics' and 'Best Value' to dubious honors like 'Best/Worst Cover Art' and 'Best Achievement/Trophy.' With so many awards, these shows grew to be pretty long. Last year and this year we trimmed it down to about 30 awards, but we still ran rather long. I hope you guys love Lord of the Rings Online, because about 3/4s of Chris and Lyzz's awards went to that game.

I was lucky to be able to reach a few past recurring guest hosts and have them come on for special guest segments, which I inserted sporadically throughout our crazy long awards segment to help break it up a bit. Matt and my brother Joe came on and shared their top picks of 2012, and host of the PSNation Podcast, Glenn Percival came on so we could both rave about how far videogame pinball has come since we last talked about it on the 100th episode of On Tap. Joey was a blast to record with, he was in the middle of raving about Battlefield 3 when I asked him how he likes it compared to other military shooters he played to death online like SOCOM and Rainbow Six. He then spontaneously went on a ten minute rave/rant on the entire SOCOM franchise on PS2 and PS3. We were going pretty long already and I did not want to lose this amazing material so I cut it out of our game of the year talk and inserted it into the very end of the show, so On Tap's final seconds will be Joe talking about the highs and lows of the SOCOM series. A fitting end if I must say!

On Tap's archives will remain up until this August and they will then be gone forever. Here is an appendix of some of our favorite episodes, make sure to download them before they're gone or if you want even more, then check out all the archives over at ontappodcast.com. I feel relieved to finally be done with On Tap, I had many great moments over the years, but I ended it about a year and a half later than I would have wanted. No idea where my podcasting future will take me, might end up starting a new show down the line, but it would be ideal to do some guest hosting on other shows if they care to have me as a nice breather from having to do all that back end work like updating web pages, RSS feeds and post production editing.