I few year or so ago, maybe two, I worte a blog about "gamer friends", and how something that many people think is a "anit-social" hobby, can lead to life long friends that you look forward to talking with every day. I went on to talk about a great article that I found (the link to that article is now broken)that brought up the subject of having a contact list of your gamer friends that you can give to your mom, dad, sister, brother, wife, husband, girlfriend or boyfriend, in the event that something happend to you. This list would be used to send emails, post a blogor call people to let them know of your situation if you couldnot do it yourself.

It's a sad, depressing subject, but I feel a necessary one it in todays world where you might know a handful of people, that you really only talk to online. What would happen, or how would you feel if suddenly one of those people just stopped showing up online in games that you play together, or in forums that you always post in? Not knowing what has happened to someone is a terrible feeling.

During the course of the past 15yrs I have made some AWESOME, lifetime friends via video games, and sites like Gamespot. When I say awesome, I mean friends that come to visit, friends that I go visit, friends that I talk to via LIVE almost every single night when I am home. I, in a way, grew up, and lived life with some of these people. I know where they grew up, I know where they live, what they do for a living, have shared laughs, crys in good times and bad. I know their kids, borthers, sisters, and in some cases their parents. Long story short, they are a very important part of my life, these "virtual friends".

I bring this up today because I recently (this past Monday) got back from a very nice vacation and was looking forward to getting on LIVE Tuesday evening to chat it up with the two people that I have been playing wtih almost every night for the past 15 yrs. Our relationships started in the way way way back during PC games where all you could do was type messages. Voice chat programs came out and we then had a chance to talk, where we really started to know each other. We played Half-Life, DoD, NASCAR, C&C, StarCraft and uncountable other titles. With the release of the Xbox360 we have spent countless hrs screaming, yelling and laughing at each other, the entire time still getting to know each other like family.

I signed in to LIVE at our normal start time of 8pm and sure enough, one of my buddies was already on, waiting in a chat room. We BS'd for a little while, waiting for a third buddy before we would dive into our nightly hockey game. Time passed, the third was a no-show. This is a little odd for him, but not unheard of as sometimes he is a little late. After about 30 minutes of talking politics and vacation stuff I asked buddy #1 if he heard from buddy #2, his response was this.... "no, I have not seen him on at all in the past 6 nights".

This immediately caused me some alarm as I know buddy #2 schedule like the back of my hand, I know he had no vacations planned, and I know he does not travel for work. Barring a complete lack of internet on his end, there was no reason for him not to be on with us.

I told buddy #1 to hold on, as I sent buddy #2 a quick text to see if he would be joining us. The response I got back was a sucker punch directly to my face.

Buddy #1 was lying in the hospital, waiting for surgery that was already scheduled for the following morning. It turns out, the night I left for vacation he had gotten extremely sick and was rushed to the hospital. Two days later he was diagnosed with kidney cancer, which has spread to his bones and lungs. Yesterday he had a Kidney removed, but the prognosis for him is bleak at best. People in his situation based on what they now know,, do not have much time left.

This will be the third gamer buddy, extended family loss I have experienced in the last 10 yrs.

What I am trying to say is this, please make sure you create a contact list of your gamer friends so they can be contacted in the event of something like this. It would have killed me to not had a chance to speak with him again just because of something as simple as a list not being made, or a phone # not being exchanged.

Hopefully in the next two weeks I will be traveling once again to meet my friend, maybe to see a movie with him, maybe a baseball game, maybe to just sit and share stories. The only thing I actually know, it will be to say goodbye.

I will be here,

That's what I'm talkiin about. Punta Cana DR baby.

And, somehow I have managed to reach level 60 here at GameBomb. Somehow my life now feels complete. Hope everybody has a great weekend.

So, I had this "thought" the other day. It's either a earth shattering thought of mega genius, or, it's a thought that has crossed many people's minds in the past. I have no idea.

Given the pulse of today's gaming environment, where there seems to be bigger outcry about game developers wasting time, money and valuable resources to include multiplayer in almost every game at the risk of putting out a lesser quality product, what if we had a choice? I mean, we are gamers right, we LOVE choices!

So here is my thought……

What if we had a option to buy a game that either had, or did not have MP built into it? For example, what if (and don't get me wrong, I am pretty sure we will never see a full game drop back in price in the future), but what if you hate multiplayer, and never have the intention to dive into the beautiful Halo online society, or never will have the desire to compete online with the awesome people that do with Madden games? Would it not be cool to be able to buy a version of Madden that just did not have multiplayer in it? But the guy behind you could pay a different price for the same game that does include the online aspect?

My thought would be you could buy the single player version for $$, or the multiplayer version for $$$$. I know there are flaws with this idea, crap, it might have even been done before, just thought it was/is/could be a solution to pleasing us gamers.

Thoughts?

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)

[spoiler] The meaning of life is our new wine vault at our favorite restaurant [/spoiler]

For the kitchen :D

This is for @johnsteed7 to pass around his office.