Just wanted to take a moment to wish you, and your families Happy Holidays. Its been a little while since my last blog. I'm still deployed, but am down to around 6 weeks so should be heading home in early Feb. I can't wait to get back to having a normal life again. This is the first Christmas I will not be able to spend with my family so am trying not to let the Holidays get to me. Not much joy when you work everyday, and are so far from home.

I managed to get a trip downtown after 5 months of being here and spent a little time using wi-fi in a cafe. I was able to finally get Bioshock installed (required an internet connection to finish the install) and love the game so far. I also ordered CoD4 for my laptop and finished it in about 5 hours. It was good, though a bit short. Though I really enjoyed the AC-130 level as I've seen a bunch of video's of our guys doing that stuff for real...it was pretty accurate for being a game as to what the gunners really use/see. For being gone 6 months there isn't a whole lot of games I really want when I get home. I have Halo 3 waiting on me, and will be buying Guitar Hero 3, Assassins Creed, and Lego Star Wars: Complete Saga (all for the 360). I have my Wii, PSP, & DS with me so have been able to keep up with a few games like Super Mario Galaxy while here.

I was looking forward to playing some WoW again, but after viewing the armory it appears the guild I was in pretty much fell apart. That sucks as I really enjoyed playing with most of them. So guess its time to find a new one. Well look forward to seeing you all on GS,WoW, or Xbox Live in a few weeks. Take care all.

If you where wondering what ever happened to me well turns out I didn't get sucked into a black hole, or eaten by evil chipmunks. Instead I was given a weeks notice in early August that I was entitled to another free all paid 6 month vacation to the land of sand courtesy of Uncle Sam. So I ran around in a frantic rush trying to get everything in order to leave and never really got to tell anyone. Since the government deems anything that may be fun to do on teh internets as bad. Attempts to get on Gamespot, IGN, etc have all been met with a giant blue badge of death that states "ha, ha, ha..you can't do that" like some cruel school yard bully mocking your every effort. Though you can access stuff to do with tv & movies so I'm using tv.com to get into my profile.

Other than that I'm doing fine over here thus far. The 130 degree days have passed and we are now in a cold spell with highs in the 90's and lows in the 80's. I tell you it was insanely hot here in August. I'd drink nothing but water and Gatorade all day and still end up with a headache from heat exhaustion. The days are passing pretty quick so already 2 months down and 4 to go until my old friends fromOGU can embarrass me at Halo 3...go ahead an laugh now with your months of practice, lol. I did bring my laptop, DS, PSP, and Wii along though working 13+ hour shifts 7 days a week doesn't allow a whole lot of time to game. I looked forward to Bioshock for a long time so I ordered the PC version, tried to install it and was only met with disappointment due to the requirement for an internet connection to finish the install. We have internet access at work (though as I said everything is pretty much blocked), but you can't download anything, or even stream music/video so there is no chance in hell of me getting my laptop online here. Guess I'll be waiting until Feb to play that as well. Well just wanted to say hello and as long as they don't end up blocking tv.com you'll probably see some replies in your blogs from me...L8R.

Last summer I was looking for something good to play amid the typical dry gaming months so after hearing all the talk I stepped into my first MMO...World of Warcraft.

At first it was a great time as I started off as an Alliance paladin (Dragonblight). I really love the pally class, but its not for everyone. Your not the best in game at fighting/healing, but get a taste of both which can give you a huge survivability rate compared to other classes. It was a fun experience up until I hit around lvl 50 then things seemed to get complicated, and I didn't play for 3 months leaving my toon at lvl 55. The biggest problem was my work schedule as I work 12 hr shifts on graves which pretty much kills any attempt on going raiding so I can start picking up end game armor/weapons. The second is with the expansion coming out, and my guild going after higher end game instances (AQ40, Naxx) is that no one seemed to have an interest in helping me do the early instances to gain things like my first dungeon set of armor...so I just quit. My account was paid until the end of Feb so I was going to cancel.

One night last week at work I came across a bunch of guy's out having a smoke all talking about WoW. I explained I quit and the reason why, but they just wouldn't accept that fact. Well I found out they play Horde in a large guild on Elune that has allot of Air Force people in it. The guild is pretty mature as everyone is ages 20-46, most of them have been together since Everquest was released, and they've got the experience (over 400 lvl 60's) completing end game instances like naxx. They offered to help me get any armor sets I need later on, and have even got me off to a good start by throwing quite a bit of gold/items my way. So what can I say...they convinced me to join up with the BC release this week.

I started a Blood Elf paladin character early Tues morning and got him up to lvl 16 today. Since I have experience playing the pally class they are eager to get me lvl'ed up so I can raid with them. What makes this different is I'm playing with people who I see every day at work, or have met before on deployments so If I have any problems we can just talk face to face. Another plus is a few of them work graves with me, and have the same days off so we can get together online on our nights off to raid/quest together.

All I know is I'm having fun playing again which is all that matters. WoW is really a great game which I'm sure those of you who play already know, and if you haven't then you don't know what your missing.