Because it is a day for a mandatory Blog post and I honestly can not think of much original content to write on. So, it is time to bore the world again with another "what I am currently into" type post...

Fortunately, XBox Live service was restored tonight. I was able to get on and play about an hour of Gears of War with the regular Wednesday night crowd from CAG. I was recently approved as a news writer for the site, hence the genesis of my tracking of the XBox Live Service issues in the first place. It is a pretty neat gig, and may spawn some other activities as well in pursuit of eventually getting a gig as a writer...somewhere...for someone...writing about something. Engadget is taking applications, but I just did not think that I was ready to pitch in on a more mandatory than voluntary basis for a site that is very competitive about posting first.

I recorded the 4th CAG Podcast with Greylock Sunday. Once available, I should be capable of posting it here. I have spent most of the first half of this week writing rather than doing projects in the network room. I am about at the point where I am going to be forced to install the NAS that I bought probably two months ago. Especially since my next task is my quarterly backup of my iTunes archive. I think one of the drives I have in the current two-bay NAS is down to about 100MB.

I wrapped up some time with Star Wars: Republic Commando Sunday night, and then got into N+ for the Nintendo DS. It is a wonderfully light bit of gaming fare, especially following some relatively serious strings of gaming in Rome: Total War, GRAW 2, and Rainbow Six III: Raven Shield, all for the PC. I am not a platform gamer by nature, but even I could not deny the sheer addictiveness of this game that combines the simplest mechanics of platforming with puzzle game devices (another one of my least favorite genres). That phase is complete, and now I am finally getting started with the single-player campaign in Call of Duty 4 for the 360.

And what have I been writing about, you ask, if I have not been posting it here? Most of my writing time has been spent posting news stories on CAG, some of which I have also posted here. Additionally, I've been pitching in over at Notebook Reviews Forums, helping out with people looking for budget gaming laptops, one who needs a cheap Toshiba notebook to replace his busted Dell, and another who was looking for guidance on how to archive emails in Microsoft Entourage for OS X. Quite a few of those, especially helping the guy out picking a gaming laptop, took quite a bit of research, so what I have not been doing a lot of this week is sleeping.

Speaking of which, I am going to start this archive backup, and then get some shut-eye. C'y'all latuh!!!

...and take care of you. I'm outta here.
- Vr/Z.