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I miss the net…

Published by phate August 7th, 2008 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

i_am_sleepyPlease forgive my grammar, my horrible spelling, and my myrid of typos.  This was an email I sent to a friend asking why I was never online anymore.  I pretty much copied and pasted it (edited names).

Ok, I would gladly sit on the internet for a day… But I don’t get to for another *counts* 10 days :(

The last few days went as such:

Monday we got up obscenely early and drove two hours to shoot guns and bows all day.  Ate some yummy food… hiked around… got some sun… was attacked by bees and grasshoppers ;p… then drove 2 hours home and packed and cleaned.

Tuesday we drove to Morgantown way too early with my sister.  Mom and dad followed in another vehicle so they could go back home Friday (tomorrow…. or today).  I walked up and down 7 flights of stairs carrying about 700LBS an armload 400 times until Chi’s car was unstuffed while the rest of them touted Chi around getting her school stuff finished.  Then we went shopping for apartment stuff and ate.  In the mean time we had no internet because my modem port was bad… so the ppl said they would be at the apartment on wed from 4-12.

So, we crash that night and chi has a 2pm hair cut the next day… but I stay at the apartment so I can wait for the modem guy to come switch them out.  He show’s up about the second my family leaves and fiddles around and then tells me that Comcast (HAH!) is having internal problems and I still wont get my net unless I call back about 4 (it was 130). My mom and dad come back and get me and we run around downtown… chi hates her hair so we go back and have the guy fiX it… it is about 5 by the time we make it back uptown and go to Wal*mart (ugh) and Sam’s to shop some more.  Then we go back home, unload and go back out to eat.  I get home and still no net.  Went to bed at 1230am and got up at 3am to a phone call.

Side story relevent to main story.  A buddy doesn’t have an apartment atm… ie he is homeless and staying at my apartment while I am gone for the summer.  But, with my parents up… he had to stay elsewhere.  He was meant to stay with a friend that night.

My buddy called from a pay phone… said he was “so sorry”.  Apparently he had been knocking on his buddy’s door all damn night and she was ignoring him (she later called and said she fell asleep 15 mins b4 he got there… didnt leave the door open for him… and didnt hear him beating down her door).  So, we have to leave at 415am to take Chi to the airport in PIT (an hour and a half away) by 6am for her 7am flight.  My parents say he can just stay here while we are gone, so he comes over while everyone is getting ready.

We drive to PIT, drope chi off and then drive another hour and a half to Wheeling to go to a sports/outdoors/hunting place called “Cabela’s” that dad has been wanting to go to for ages.  It… is… HUGE.  It has a stuffed Zoo in it… elephants and… fun dead animals.  I got a massive Ka-Bar Marine Knife :D :D :D  We ate breakfast there (the store had its own eatery and shooting range!).  The food was not fit for pigs… but whatever, it was entertaining.

Anyway… we end up getting home at 130ish (we got there at 6am… had been up since 3).  My buddy was in Chi’s bed… mom n dad had mine… so I took the air mattress and slept a tad over an hour by the time I got settled and my buddy woke me up to go to work.  I fiddle around while buddy is getting ready and finally get some internet!  WOO HOO!

Mom, Dad, and I went BACK out to go to eat and make a trip to  “Dick’s Sporting Goods” and return some bottles and get a gun cleaning kit for my glock.  I had to be back home at 730 to do the podcast with Stephen at 8.  Then I get home and the POWER IS OUT and I have no net again!  Power was out for a while (was meant to be out till 2am) and then it comes back on… but I am half asleep by then so I don’t get a wake up until 10pm when my parents tell me they are crashing too.

Tomorrow we get up early and go shoot, then go down town and goof around and I go help the same buddy with his apointment with his advisor.  He is out of a place to stay Monday, because I go to pick Chi up from PIT monday and we will stay here monday night and then head back home tuesday evening to stay at home till sat when STEPHEN comes in.  We are helping him move his things up to morgantown because he quit his job and is moving back up to WV ^_^

He is staying with us until he can get a job and an apartment.  We are stoked!!@#

So, Friday night I have plans with friends since my parent will be gone;  Sat, I am getting up early and helping el buddo look for a place to stay… then Church Sunday morning… then chi monday morning… I can relaX a bit tuesday, tho.  Chi will be doing school stuff… but I have to drive back tusday evening (about 5).

Ummm, I start my masters program Sept 2 (day of my birthday), and I have my surgery august the 21st.

There you go… a BOOK on my life for the last 4 days :D

I’ll post the fun animal pics up on the forum soon.

Miss you guys!

Cataclysmic Damage! *UPDATED*

Published by steve July 28th, 2008 in Special Reports. 0 Comments

UPDATE: The forum is back up. Whew!

The forum has taken a serious hit from some terrible storm known only as….THE UPDATE DESTROYER!! Yes, you read that right, some kind of update just blew through the forum and wiped the slate clean. Yep..completely unavoidable.

OKAY! It was my fault! Your fearless leader has found a way to destroy everything the community holds dear, but fear not! I am doing my darndest to bring the forum back and make it work again. I’m at a loss as to why one simple version update would blow it away to the point where it just doesn’t work. Something’s wrong witht he way it talks to the database. At least that’s my theory. For some reason, it doesn’t remember that you are even there, so it just keeps telling you there is a session error. I can’t even get into the admin backend!

I’m restoring to a previous version of the database as well as the actual software in hopes that it may restore the forum to it’s previous glory. Check here for updates until this crisis is averted.

Err, Change of Plans

Published by phate July 9th, 2008 in News and Special Reports. 0 Comments

Ok, so the doctor’s office just informed me that they forgot to do the digital imaging AND the tests needed to put me under general anesthetic… all major party fouls when undergoing a big surgery….

So, the surgery is not going through.  I am meant to go for some tests Friday.

On the up side… I can see Hellboy and Batman, and go to my buddy’s wedding now :D  Yay!

SmasheZ Smashed Face

Published by phate July 9th, 2008 in News and Special Reports. 0 Comments

I have had a hole in the cartilage of my nose since I can remember.  It is a huge pain in the arse… HUGE!  The whole is on the inside (I don’t appear as if I have pierced my nose!), and it is technically called a “nasal septal perforation”.  It used to whistle when I laughed, it bleeds all the time, and it has grown up on the right side until I can only breathe out the left side of my nose.

So, after going to a few doctors and being asked if I used drugs (apparently cocaine use erodes the lining of your nose…), and then royally pissing the doctors off for accusing me of drug use… I found a wonderful doc in Morgantown who is going to help rearrange my nose for me!

It is a 3-4 hour surgery, and I will be put under anesthesia.  They are going to take cartilage from my ear and fill in the hole in my nose.  They are also using a substance I have never heard of to replace the lining in my nose.  After the surgery they are putting splints up both sides of my nose and I have to leave them there for THREE weeks.  I won’t be able to breath out of my nose for THREE frakking weeks.  Grr.  Then after that, I have the splints removed and a little “plastic surgery” looking bandage stuck over my nose for a week.

There is a big chance I could hemorrhage the first week of the surgery, and there is a chance that the surgery will not take and will just make me worse off.  I am kinda nervous, but mostly dreading being a mouth-breather for the better part of a month.  LAME?!

Keep me in your thoughts and prayers ;)

I will hopefully be back for next week’s show depending on how I feel.  I will definitely miss this week’s… I am going to be doped up from the surgery.

I will miss you guys!

Shutter To Speak Of It

Published by phate April 1st, 2008 in Movies. 4 Comments

Ok, so Stephen and I segmented the week into bits and dished out writing assignments.  I got Monday and Thursday… guess who didn’t remember to write until 7:00am on Tuesday morning!  (Err, that would be me in case you aren’t following along too closely.)

I also have nothing planned out to talk about… Someone get me a personal secretary–preferably a nice, tall half naked male.

I saw the movie “Shutter” last night (instead of writing), and it was pretty good!  Then again, I fall in the category (one of two) of those that were scared shyteless by the movie The Ring.

I grew up watching Alien, Terminator, and Predator.  None of those ever really freaked me out, but damn it, I was THIS close to walking out of the movie theater when I saw The Ring.  Scary crap!

So, if you thought The Ring was immensely stupid (quite a few of you, so I hear), then Shutter will bore the crap–I keep saying crap because I am reading Battlefield Earth, and L. Ron likes to say crap… a lot–out of you.  Nothing ground breaking for the genre, but a nice way to kill a weekday.

Technically, I was meant to see Doomsday at 9:50pm.  Guess what time I left my apartment to go see it?  9:55pm :D

And now you all know that I am psychotic (because of watching the Alien series as a child), I don’t have my act together (naked male secretary, where for art thou?!), and I am constantly late for everything (this particular friend has not learned to lie to me about the movie time as of yet…).  And, I am apparently a vampyr.

The sun is rising… and I am setting!

The Blog: Reinventinated!

Published by steve March 30th, 2008 in Announcements. 0 Comments

The new H&H Blog has now joined the ranks of the official site with a brand new theme! I’m quite proud of the header at the top by the by :). We wanted to make the two sites blend together and appear seamless for you guys when you go between the two. 

This site used to be all about the news and stuff that happens in the world, but we will be totally modifying this site into one that updates you on what goes on behind the scenes at Horseshoes and Hand Grenades. Or if one of us feels the need to rant about something completely off topic, it will go here. Look forward to some cool stuff in the future! We’ll keep you posted!

-Steve

Metamorphisis

Published by steve March 1st, 2008 in Announcements. 1 Comment

HNH Logo

Greetings Ladies and Gentlemen! This blog hasn’t been the most productive blog ever crafted, but here at Horseshoes and Hand Grenades we desire to change that and with it, we will be changing multiple other things. I just wanted to let you guys know about a few things we are planning for our new site redesign!

One of my favorite things that I am most excited about is the general new direction that we will be heading in. Don’t Panic! You’re still going to be getting the oddest of the odd news out there delivered to you in the form of podcasting, but we will also deliver it to you just like we started to do here when this Blog started. We will be combining the blog and podcast into one site that you can go to and read about odd news that happens everyday in this crazy little world of ours. We want to be a weird news resource that you guys love and can visit on a regular basis for new stuff. That’s the most exciting thing for me.

Aside from that, we will be moving the current forum from piandchips.com/forum to horseshoes-handgrenades.com/forum. This is a result of Pi and CHiPS closing it’s podcast network in favor of concentrating all of their power on Pi and CHiPS Game Design. All of your accounts and avatars and all that good stuff should be left in tact and you’ll just start visiting the new forum. It should be pretty simple and if my theory is correct, when this baby hits 88 mph your going to see some serious…stuff.

So! There will be more coming down the pipe in the coming weeks. So keep an eye here for more news and updates!

-Steve

Lateness

Published by phate February 16th, 2008 in Announcements. 0 Comments

As you may (or may not) have noticed… we are late putting out the show.  Mega party foul, I know.  BUT, we have a perfectly good reason.

Mini-Bears.

You can barely see the little menace… but it is there… lurking… hiding… wanting you to turn your back so it can eat every bit of leftover Valentine’s Day candy that you’ve got stashed in your pocket.  They sneak up on you with their cute “I’m so innocent” eyes, and by the time you see danger coming, it is too late!  BAM!  Your candy is gone, and you are left with only a wrapper flapping in the cold air.  Subsequently, you will be ticketed for littering, and the mini-bear has struck again!

Actually, my parents came to visit for the weekend, and they are seriously putting a damper on my podcasting activities.  It is hard to be crass and talk about my sex toys while my parents are in the other room…

Our fervent hope, is that we get the show out tonight.  Pray the mini-bears do not make a second showing!

-Ash

The Walking Dead

Published by steve February 10th, 2008 in Comics. 0 Comments

I have just completed reading all of the current volumes of The Walking Dead, and I have to say that this is the most compelling and interesting comic that is being written today. I was on a quest recently to find a comic to read other than the same old superhero stuff that I’m reading, and picked up this gem. There is a huge world of comics and graphic novels out there that are begging to be read by me, and this one was the first one that I decided to pick up.

The Walking DeadFrom the first page of this book, I was already hooked to it and begging for more. The series is written by Robert Kirkman with art by Tony Moore, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn. The first book is the only one done by Tony Moore, and the art is incredible. It’s a completely black and white book which gives it a dark and dreary mood to start with. The premise is that the world has been overrun by Zombies (though they are rarely referred to as such), and picks up in a very “28 days later” style with a man waking up in the hospital and very confused. The man is named Rick and you get to know him real well throughout the series. He embarks on a quest to find his wife and son, and actually finds them pretty quick. That’s where the story really begins.

One thing that I loved about this series is the way the characters interact with each other. Robert Kirkman has breathed life into these people in a way that I rarely see in comics or even a lot of novels I’ve read. They are all distinctly different with their own problems, losses, and emotions. You begin to feel for these characters in a way that you don’t expect as you watch them struggle through the anarchy and danger of this new world. The zombies in the book are really just a backdrop to the real human drama that would likely take place if we were all forced out of our homes and into a world where there are no more laws, and people are forced to band together whether they like it or not.

One of the things about the series that I love is the art. I especially love Tony Moore’s work in the first volume. I hated to see him depart from the series, aside from doing most of the covers. His style is very cartoonish, but very real all at the same time. I took great notice in the details of his drawings, mostly in the way the zombies are decayed and just in every aspect of the characters expressions. There is one particular scene where one of the characters is bit in the arm by the zombie, and the wound is so gruesome that I cringed when I saw it, and it hurt me just to look at it. The most amazing thing is that he captures the moment in monochrome instead of color. Cliff Rathburn and Charlie Adlard do a great job as well, but there is something about Tony Moore’s style that I totally dig.

Anyway, to bring an end to this WAY too long blog post, I hope you guys get the opportunity to check out The Walking Dead and you enjoy it. It’s definitely R rated in every way, so keep it away from the kids :).

-Steve

Rock Climbing

Published by phate February 8th, 2008 in Just For Fun. 1 Comment

I went rock climbing Thursday, and it was so much fun!  As with the skiing, I am going to give you a list of things I learned to help you when YOU decide to go scurrying across some rocks.

  1. Rock climbing shoes are gross… wear socks!
  2. Do not do anything tiring the day before you go or your muscles will turn to mush on you.
  3. If you think about it to much you will psych yourself out.
  4. Just run up to the wall and start climbing.
  5. It isn’t scary at all.
  6. The harness will give you the worst frontal wedgie… ever.
  7. Even if you outweigh the person belaying you, you aren’t going to drag them up off the ground.  Really.
  8. Falling isn’t bad because the floor is padded and bouncy!
  9. People who rock climb are freaking awesome… ask them  for tips!
  10. Follow the green tape markings… they mark easy foot/hand holds.
  11. You’re going to look like a dork in your rig and helmet… just accept it and move on.

I am joining a group that meets every Thursday, and getting my belaying license!   Hopefully, between rock climbing and skiing, I will be able to escape from any zombie situation that should arise. :D

Go forth and climb!

-Ash