I have not been posting any update as of late. I have not been doing much of anything really, mostly slacking off.

First it started last week when I hiked from my house up the thornhill mountian trail to the first lake on top of the mountian. It took five hours of walking to reach the summit overlooking the lake, and another three and a half hours to walk back home. Needless to say my legs were a little sore for the next few days after that.

The the the other day I purchased Half-Life 2 using steam. It was an simple experience, and I have to say using steam to purchase games online is a mixed blessing. For one the purchasing of a game using steam may be easy but having to wait for 2 days before you can play the friggin game is BS. And Yes I have broadband! The download for HL2 is over 3 gigabytes! And that does not include downloading Counter-Strike Source, HL2 Death match, or the Source SDK!

Then there are the "Time" concerns. Time as in will I still be able to play HL2 15 years from now? Or will valve simply decide to stop supporting it. Additionally, what happends if Valve the company goes belly up, what happends to all us gamers then! Will we still be able to play HL2?

I considered taking the $60 CAD I spent on HL2 and getting World of Warcraft but I dispise blizzard for taking the monthly subscription aproach. it's cheap, meaningless, and BS. And is just another way to suck more money out of the consumer for the same game.

I have also been planning a new game engine called Zider. The name Zider is a mix of words and meanings. It combines Side scrolling game "Side", but rendering the scene in 3D "Z depth". Hence the name Zider. It will be my 10 to the 24th power attempt at starting and finishing a usable game engine. But this time I'm taking it slow. Really slow. Now that I have a better understanding of game engine design and in game consoles, as well as my DXTools graphics library I almost have all the tools and pieces I will need to make the Zider game engine a reality. Zider is actually a old idea I have had for a while now but have yet to get around to coding it. Just one of those things I guess.

Oh yah, can't for get about this. Guess who can juggle? You got it! Yours trully! ha HA! Awesome. The other day for no reason at all >cough< Wating for HL2 to download >cough< I picked up 3 tennis balls that were lying around and started learning how to juggle them. I can't believe it only took between 6 and 8 hours before I was juggling 3 balls! I have already started to get real fancy and doing tricks like in the middle of juggling I throw up one ball then as it's comming down throw the other two balls up at the same time, catching the first ball and continuing to juggle. I can also juggle 2 balls in one hand!

It was actually a fluke that I started to juggle, I was out in the back yard and after hours of not being able to grasp the concept of juggling just out of the blue I got lucky and managed to juggle 3 balls about 5 times before fouling it up. But that's all it took to open my eyes and wrapping my mind around how to juggle. From then on I've been juggling up a storm.

Strangley enough now that I am comfortable juggling, my mind can be off wondering on something else while I'm juggling. many times I feel as though I am juggling unconsiously and I'm not in control. It's a strange sensation being able to keep track of three balls both catching them and throwing them at the same time, and doing it in rapid succesion.

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