What About <your name>?

[Bob]

That was a good read. Such good answers that I'll assume it was a text interview because I'd be surprised if those were "on the spot" answers. Students have quoted me in the school paper before and my quotes are often herp-a-derp (when they actually quote me correctly instead of paraphrasing and still using quotes...darn journalism class not using good structure).

Also, congrats on being published! Any info about where we can find your works?

[wyvernxk7]

Yes, it was a text interview, but I answered them all in one stretch of time. I would say "all in one sitting," but the first half of it was the second half of the four mile walk I took with Brittany on Monday, and I finished it once I got in. I think I would have done decently on these questions, because I did very little backtracking or adding/subtracting once I was done with them, but in general, I'm definitely glad that I didn't have to stammer my way through it!

Anyway, thanks! My understanding about the publication, MUSH/MUM is that it will be up any day now, as their site and their correspondence with me both said it would be this month. We shall see precisely when.

Thanks for your support and for reading it, both of ya!

[Bob]

So in Computer Science yesterday, I taught "Big O" notation. It's an actual thing. It has to do with runtime. Point is, TGP nostalgia.

[agent0042]

Ah, Big O - the Squall Online Experiment, right? That was always one of my favorites. Cachickens, good times.

[Fleck]

If any of you all want to know some of the shenanigans I've been up to lately, here's a video some friends and I made just tonight.



This really sucked. 0/10. Would not recommend.

[wyvernxk7]

Ug. Well, at least it wasn't a big mug of whiskey, right?

[Fleck]

If it was a mug, we'd have all died. No amount of lemon juice can make Wild Turkey not terrible.

[Bob]

I don't REALLY have the time for it, but I feel like making an update post. I think my last even semi-update was when April was born, and now that she's 8 months old, it makes me remember that I haven't posted in like, 8 months.

So guess what? I have less free time than ever! I couldn't even make an update over the summer because I was so busy. Kids sure take a lot of time and effort. So does teaching. I lost a lot of my summer to a fun battle I was having with my school. Long story short, they converted our school's computer labs into rooms and needed a few teachers to teach in the labs. Since I have one class of AP Computer Science, it seemed to fit, but we had a fight over which room I got. It was interesting to stand up to administration and hold my ground and whatnot. I don't usually do that kind of stuff, but one of my conditions for taking a lab was that I get to pick which one I got and they were trying to go back on that. So I had to go to school a few times in the summer to fight about that. And then when I won, I had to move all the crap from my old room to new one. And don't get me started on the SmartBoard issue! Don't do it! I see you wanting to do it, but don't! So yeah, lost a lot of summer to school, and now school is back in session (fourth week actually).

And y'know...two kids. You have one kid and you're like, "Yeah, kinda frustrating at times, but not too tough." And then you have two. And suddenly there is no "My wife's got Dean, so I can relax a bit." It's man-to-man, adult-to-baby defense all day and all night. How my wife manages both of them at once while I'm at work is beyond me. April started crawling about a month back and she's just unstoppable. She won't stay in one place, she wants to crawl right for the most dangerous thing in the room. For one of her first crawl videos, I was filming and had to put down the camera and get her because she veered off into the land of unsafety. Like, right away. Straight shot to safety, but she said "ooh a pencil on the ground!" (or something like that--don't remember exactly what it was...also she didn't literally speak). Speaking of speaking, FIRST WORD = DADA! Booyah! We're buddies. She's a daddy's girl. It works since Dean is kind of a mama's boy.

And the sad news, it looks like TGP is finally dead. I really wanted to write the final two seasons of AFFR to end it all, but I don't think it'll ever happen I posted the first two seasons up on fanfiction.net about a year ago. They're viewed occasionally, but looking at the traffic, it looks like most people open the first part, then jump to the end to see who wins. A handful are reading through the whole thing, so maybe they'll wander over to TGP and inspire me to write, but pretty soon it isn't going to matter. In about one year, I'll need to make my next site payment and, at this point, I'm not planning to make that payment. If I had reason to believe I had a bunch of people eager to read the final chapters, then MAYBE I'd write more, but I don't think I really have the time to do it regardless of demand. Heck, I haven't even changed my copyright banner to 2016...and it's almost(ish) 2017! So it's about time to count down the days till it goes under, which is September 18th, 2017. So still one year and change left, but I wouldn't expect much content.

So that's the bad news. The good news is that Bob is super busy, but happy to be super busy. I've wanted to make posts several times about life with kids, but I don't know if it really merits a full post. It can be summed up pretty easily. It's the hardest time in my life between work, scolding a toddler, getting screamed at by a baby, and having very little time to myself, but it's also the most rewarding. It's like life after the final boss. The game has been won, so there's a feeling of relief about the things that used to be important, but now there's all this bonus content. After dungeons and super bosses. And while the bonus content is EXTREMELY difficult, it's arguably more fun and more satisfying than the regular game. Yeah. Comparing raising children to fighting super bosses. I went there.

Oh, and we went to Disneyland for 5 days over the summer. It was really my only "break"...but as a parent, Disneyland is not exactly a vacation! It's so much fun paired with SO MUCH FRUSTRATION! I think Disneyland was my metaphorical after dungeon and Dean and April were the super bosses at the end. They had a ton of fun and they were super cute, but keeping track of kids and keeping them happy in lines and juggling necessities like diapers and snacks in a double-stroller and going through security and opening all your bags and...ugh. It's tough. But worth it.

...I feel like I had a lot to say, and now that I type stuff, I just don't have much interesting to say. *shrug* I don't think I'm interesting anymore? Question mark? Shrug? But wanted to say something about the long pause of internet silence. Hope to hear how y'all have been lately, too. I'm still just as eager to hear how you all are doing as I always was, I just haven't had time to stop working or parenting in a long, long time (Even now I should be making an assignment for my computer class tomorrow, but I'm putting it off). Hope to hear from everybody...when you have time.

[Fleck]

A million sad faces about the end of TGP

It might be strange to say it, but this little forum and the website it's attached to was one of the most positive things in my life for a number of years and I can honestly say that I don't know where I would be if I hadn't met you guys. Unfortunately, it seems that meatspace has finally risen up and claimed us all and TGP Forum is no longer the central hub of our waking lives, but it's still sad to see it go. Like a really old dog that is too old to run or play and just sleeps all the time yet is still part of the family.

I'm still debating as to whether or not I want to go into all the events that have occurred in my life in the past year. All the interesting things that happened are pretty dark and--when told in quick succession--make my life seem a lot worse than it is. For now, suffice it to say that I'm actually pretty happy with my life the way it is, but I feel like I've aged ten years in the past one. To steal Bob's final boss metaphor, it's as if I beat the game, then hit "New Game Plus." I still have all my old armor and skills, but the monsters have leveled up and I had to spend much of the past year grinding to make sure I don't get my ass kicked.

Oh well. 95% of the bad things that happened recently were directly or indirectly my fault, so it's not like I have much right to complain. From what I know about what's going on in Gabe's life and from what you've said, Bob, it sounds like you guys all have your shit reasonably together. I'm glad to hear it and I hope things get better for you guys!

As for my online life, Google has officially fucked me out of a website. After emerging, dazed, from a particularly bad string of months last year, I went to check up on the status of my website and start working towards building content again only to discover that Google canceled my account due to nonpayment (even though I FUCKING PAID THEM GODDAMN IT) and some shitty domain squatter bought up the rights to my address but didn't even have the decency to put up a placeholder website. So, last I checked, all my stuff is still there, but I can't access any of it because I no longer have the domain name rights. So, fed the fuck up with Google, I made a wordpress account.

kylesawyerblog.wordpress.com/

It's still VERY much unready for the public as all I have there is a somewhat maudlin "About" blurb and nothing else. I'm working towards adding stuff to it later. More news as it develops.

So how's everyone else?

[Fleck]

Wow, I killed this whole conversation, didn't I?

[wyvernxk7]

No, I've just been busy and tired and full of excuses! I mentioned to Bob weeks ago that I was planning on posting here, but sometimes I procrastinate. Boo!

I too am sad at the demise of TGP, but it lives on in our hearts and (I hope, at least occasionally, since it's free 4eva) this forum, right? Right!? Please say right, Bob! I'll wait...

...I'm not going to wait, that would just be an excuse to procrastinate some more. I concur with Fleck on how vital this forum was to me growing up. I was pretty freshly in high school when my friend Adam got me into BS, and though high school was nowhere near as dark for me as middle school, I think a huge part of that was having this place as a haven to come home to, a place to share the most absurd laughs and notions with a few people who, even now, even with all the separation of time and so on, I still hold in my heart's inner circle of friends. Am I a total sap? Duh. Doesn't mean I'm wrong

For me, life's been like playing through (gonna use it as a metaphor even though I wasn't masochistic enough to actually do this to myself) FFXIII, only to discover 2/3 of the way that FFXIII-2: Revenge of Sera was out and then transitioning to that, only to get halfway through that to find that FFXIII: Lightning's Fever Dream was out and playing that, only to never quite get to the end of any of them. Life's been significantly less mediocre than that series, but I have been consistently exhausted and pulled in a bunch of different directions... only to have Mr. Two-Kids over here take away any notion of me having a place to complain about being stretched to thin (just kiddin', Bob, y'know I love ya )... anyway, it HAS been a pretty mixed bag of a summer, but I'll beck up slightly further just in case I didn't mention that I BUILT MY FIRST COMPUTER AND IT'S A TOTAL PIMPMOBILE! I'm typing on it now! It's... it's looking right at me! *hides*

*re-emerges* I should mention, I'm super-tired and had a laughably small portion of Bailey's (one of those little 1.50 bottles, and I cut it with milk because I'm super-lame!), so I'm sorry if I'm incoherent, but I'm racing the clock before I have to sleep, because I have to be in early tomorrow. Anyway, at the end of May, we found out that Brittany's sister was getting married on July 4th weekend and had to scramble to arrange tickets to get up there, as they were banking on us setting up and running most of the thing, so that was a bit stressful, more for her than me, but nonetheless. At the same time, I applied and was picked for the Lead Rehab Tech position at my jobsville, which is a Neurological Rehab Center. If I haven't rambled about it already, I deal with adolescent boys with developmental/drug/trauma-induced brain disabilities... you name it from the pantheon of psychological acronyms, at least one, probably many of them have it on my unit. Right now, it's 13 of them, me, the other tech, and our badass nurse who is also in an Americana Rock Band. She's a badass.

Anyway, at the same time as getting picked for that job (which meant a bunch of extra training over the month of June and July), the kids were out of school for six weeks, and they get super-cagey, which, in that population, tends to mean super-aggressive. I got banged up a few times from them coming after me or me intervening when they were going after others. Not. Fun. My confidence took a huge hit right when it was supposed to be on the upswing, and I was a bit gunshy for a while. After a third incident, I decided to take the offer of three free counseling sessions just to be on the safe side of things. That helped and was great to restabilize myself with, although it (or my sneak-attack Seasonal-Affective depression, which doesn't come like clockwork between March and April now that we're down in Texas) dredged up some things from thirteen years (give or take a couple) ago that I'm super not proud of. There were a couple times when I was a teenager that I groped girls without permission and in the back of my mind, I had never let myself live it down... making myself feel like a terrible person, just flat out hating that part of my past and fearing how it could come back around in the future and, above all, convincing myself that I had done something irreparable to my female peers back at that time. I was more depressed than I'd been in years for the first half of August, and to make matters worse, we found out that Brittany's 16 year old niece killed herself (I'm bad at segues!) It's been an absolute whirlwind.

On top of that, I signed up to do the August Postcard Poetry fest for the second year in a row, which is a blast, but there were stretches of August when I couldn't muster enough focus to even think about two words in sequence, no matter how compelled to I felt. So I just, tonight, got my last of the 31 poems written on my last of 31 postcards and dropped it in the mail to my last of 31 recipients. It's a great experience and I love getting all of the cards from the other folks... keeps me active, writing-wise, which is obviously important.

Oh, and I probably have mentioned that we made a music video for the band Gringo Star, one of my favorites, right? If not, we set it up back in January, shot it in March and April, and I edited it though May. It took ages to finish... but one of the band members was replaced over that course of time and they got a new label and the label didn't want to use it in an official capacity. That's fine, I get that, and it seems like Nick and Pete, the brothers at the core of the band, still would light to use it for something, but I haven't been especially pushy to find out for what. I'll share it here when that changes though. Regardless, it was a big, fun challenge, and I'm pretty proud of how it turned out, even if the label passed it up.

Also, and not to tack this on, but it's an under-the-radar, secret thing for now (which means no mentioning it on facebook, essentially... I know how likely that is... not!), but Brittany and I got Justice of the Peace married this past Saturday, partly for insurance reasons, partly for 'we've been together for 6.5 years now and if we keep putting it off, we'll never even have a ceremony' reasons. We're going to have a ceremony about a year for now. More details on that to come, and again: Shhh...

So, Tl;dr: Music video/promotion/ptsd/decades-old guilt/therapy/weddings/suicide/poetry/disappointment/self-improvement/work in progress/marriage.

[Fleck]

Congrats on the Secret Marriage, Gabe!!!!

I'm glad you finally posted! It's good to hear what's been going on in your life. Your life sounds way more interesting (and difficult) than mine

[wyvernxk7]

Thanks, Fleck! I wanted to make sure I had time to get everything down on an update post, but things kept coming up and adding up, so I finally just said, "Screw it, they deserves ta know!"

[Bob]

Secret congrats, Gabe! *secret high five*

I'm on my first self-built PC, too! It's very nice. Got some very nice specs. It's amazing to hit the on button and have the computer ready in like, 10 seconds. My laptop takes closer to 10 minutes, which is why I am replacing it. Just placed an order for a new one last night. Bank didn't like me and Kristy both buying fairly large purchases within minutes of each other around midnight. I basically told her "if the bank doesn't freeze our card for this, I'll worry." But luckily(?), they did. It got fixed, no worries.

Know what's the sad part of TGP ending? I just finished Tales of Symphonia last night and I really want to do a True Cast for it Nothing is stopping me, so maybe I'll do it, but...ugh. Finding the time to do it... Eager to play more Tales games, but holy hell that game was long. I think 52 hours without (intentionally) completing any side quests! And the plot keeps circling back over itself soooo many times. I thought I was at the end at 40 hours...and by all right should've been, but nope! But yeah, 52 hours with my current schedule means more like half a year. I'd play a couple hours, then not play for a week, so...yeah. Bottom line: I can see Gabe liking it (it reminds me in parts of Breath of Fire) and I suppose I enjoyed it, but it was just too long. Cut in half, I think I'd really like it. But dang. It takes several game-changing plot twists, so you think you're nearing the end, only to find out you're not even close. Hell, mini-spoiler, but you basically defeat the big bad of the game...and it's still not over! You need to beat him again...after two more full dungeons, one of which is multi-part! Whee! And the parts where there's a baby yelling at you and a toddler screaming at his mom in the other room--wait, that might've been IRL. Eh.

For my own sappiness, I will say that you guys are what made TGP awesome for me. It's funny because for a lot of years, my site felt like garbage because I only had a handful of people visiting it. I felt like I was a failure for not having homestarrunner or maddox kinds of numbers. But in looking back over it, I realized how much it helped me define myself. A true introvert who would rather have a few really good friends than thousands of fans. The forum here is free, so I'll keep it alive. I just can't justify paying even $8 a month for a site I barely use. But this forum is where I actually talk, not on Facebook. I think my last Facebook update was probably when April was born. And before that was...probably something about an infant Dean. But you guys know me best, so this where I talk. Some day, the zombie apocalypse will hit and phones will go down and such, and we'll be crawling over to our computers, logging into TGP Forum. "Guys! The shed is overrun! Meet at the old lumber mill!" You know, like movies where they had handheld radios as kids and then as adults they use it when the modern tech doesn't work. That'll be us. Oh, and I'm sure I will at some point also make a comment about Fleck's ass.

Speaking of which...nice ass, Fleck. You too, Gabe. Nice asses all around

[wyvernxk7]

Why, thank you, Bob! I can only assume that, even with two kids, you've managed to keep your fine figure as well!

Maybe you could make a "TGP Classics" category here on the forum and just post some of the content you want to preserve like AFFR, True Cast, etc. Maybe even BS for the nostalgic?

As for Tales, I've tried playing it two different times and gotten absolutely thrown by the tedium early on... pushing that block around for ages and if you drop it into the wrong hole (a rookie mistake!), it attacks you or something. Guh, dunno why that was just too much for me, but it was too much for me. Twice.