and

Hmm.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a democrat but..

Somehow I don’t think Hillary would be as tasty a choice as the creamsicle.

-A.

I can’t describe what I’ve been busy with exactly as it’s a personal matter and those who are closest to me know about it already, but needless to say I’m hoping things are going in the right direction.. or the direction they should. If they don’t turn out the way I’m hoping I’ll be pretty upset, but I’ll move on and re-try again next year with even more paper-work.

As far as what’s been going on that I can divulge to the eager (I think your eager for an update.. though I could be wrong), public.. not much. I saw The Dark Knight as I said I would on midnight.. no surprises here, it was fantastic.. I’d love to see it again, but as it stands, I’m running sort of low on cash.

I’m saving for something that may take a while to get but once I get it I’ll be quite happy with it. I promise to post photos of it when I obtain it.. however, as it stands all of my “left-over” cash goes to World of Warcraft and Xbox Live. I’m not quite sure why I’m continuing to pay for XBox Live’s three month time because I haven’t played on it in a while as I’ve been too busy with leveling my Tauren hunter in World of Warcraft. Last time I wrote in this blog, he was a mere level 10 or 15, but he’s now a 58 (as of last night!), and will be going to Outland soon (possibly Wednesday or Thursday, depending on when Kurt makes it over to see me go through the portal).

I’m rather excited by the aspect of going to Outland as Kurt and I’ve never seen it.. despite playing WoW since it’s release and bouncing back and forth to other MMOs. As one of my good friends Matt puts it I apparently need “MMO Rehab..” though I’ve pretty much decided that I’m going to stick with WoW until I burn out of it, which may be some time.. as I’ve got a fantastic guild together (Blood of the Ancients), with a whole bunch of good people in it. I may create a paladin alt some time soon as I’m tiring of the Warlock I created to join Kurt with. The only reason I created the Warlock is so that Kurt and I both can get the 3x experience we get from the fact that Kurt re-bought WoW (for the DVD copies), and recreated an account.. thus giving me a Zevara mount for my Hunter. Kurt seems to think I’d enjoy making a Pally more as it’s “different” than a Hunter.. (he seems to think that Warlocks = Magical Hunters… and to be honest.. he’s not far off with that assumption.)

As far as what else is going on with my “gaming life” as it were, I’ve been playing a load of TF2 lately. It seems to balance out the chaos from MMOing almost all day. Sadly I still haven’t unlocked all the achievements and I guess that’s a good thing because I refuse to goto an “achievement server”.. unless I can find one when the Engineer achievements hit as my best class is Engineer.

Other than that, I’ve been cleaning house as usual. It’s finally beginning to look… clean, though it gets messier than I can clean. I’ll find time one day to clean it top to bottom and get it perfect…until that day comes (if it comes!), it’ll be cleaned one room at a time.. slowly.

So how is everyone?

I’m apparently pulling in hits from Brazil, China, and Japan now..

Hello to the Brazilians, Chinese (how’d they find my site I wonder?) and Japanese!

I would also like to apologize to the person whom I probably scared when I trace-routed their IP, as I know a few people were shocked that I did so, however I need to make a special note that I don’t always trace route IPs, I only do it when the comment is something makes me curious or is spam so I know where to write an ISP about the spam and to knock it off. As far as his name goes, he volunteered it on the comment, so that’s the only way I knew his name… what you submit on to this site is your own doing, and yes, I can track anything that happens on this site comment wise. I usually don’t .. but I feel I should make special note of that.

Until the next entry!

-A.

First things first, I’d like to apologize to Kurt.

While I mentioned he got me sick with a Sinus Infection (to which effect I’m taking Bactrim and Cephalexin), I failed to mention that that day he and I also went out to see Wall-E, and Wanted. My apologies my friend.

Wanted was pretty visceral and graphic, but a pretty decent popcorn flick. I’m pretty glad I saw it on the big screen because I don’t think it’d translate well to the small screen at all. Wall-E was better than Pixar’s Cars, but it still felt a bit … preachy about it’s “Save the earth & get up and do something instead of being absorbed by technology..” message. I have to admit though that the scene where Wall-E and Eve are “dancing” through space was one of the most magical scenes in recent film history.

Speaking of film history.. we’ve got only ten more days until my most anticipated movie of 2008 is out, well.. eleven for those who are unfortunate enough to see it the day after the midnight release. *Cue evil Joker style laughter here..* Why am I laughing?..

Is that enough of a reason?

I think it should be… I mean, after all I did something I swore I’d never do.. and bought my tickets off of Fandango (whose got the worst commercials in the world) for it..

What is that above anyway? It’s midnight tickets to the local theatre house for The Dark Knight.

As far as what else is going on in my life…

My cold is finally kicking it’s way out of my system.. (yay!).. I bought Forza Motorsport 2, Culdcept Saga, and my brother bought me Battlefield: Bad Company for my Xbox 360, if you’re interested in adding me to your Xbox Live friends list, please feel free, my gamertag is AndrewX4. Just let me know you read my blog, and I’ll approve it.

I’ve been playing a lot of Battlefield: BC and Forza Motorsport 2… Culdcept’s not bad, it’s just a little slow, and since I only have the computer to play against, it’s kind of boring.

Oh well. At least I have World of Warcraft to keep me busy. If you’d like, drop me a comment with a return email, if your interested in joining my friend and I on Bronzebeard (be ready to be Horde though!)..as Taurens.

I’ve been waiting for the pre-orders on Diablo 3 to start so I can put down my cash and have it reserved..

As far as other things.. I can’t really say much else is going on in my life that I’d care to mention here on the Blog o’ Barker..

To the person “John”, in Colorado, (at least that’s where your ISP’s trace-route came back) who said to “Grow up” (about the pain associated with Shingles), and “Get a job..” in my comments section of the previous couple of blogs, thank you for your comments, however, I’ve decided to keep them private so that only I may see them. I do have to tell you though that Shingles is extraordinarily painful to like 25% of people who get it. Talk to your local physician about it.. you’ll see why I was complaining so much. It really does suck. As far as the “get a job” comment, things in my life are going a direction right now where I can’t obtain a job because of certain obligations with the government first. I won’t go into much detail, suffice to say it’s one of a few things I think I’m going to keep quiet on here, and if you want to know, you’ll have to know me personally to get the juicy bits. The fact also stands that the local economy for jobs is absolutely terrible.. and I’ve worked most of the places I really would like to work, and they honestly, for one reason or another, don’t want me back. So there-in lies the fact that I would like to get a job, but certain obligations and stipulations have to come to pass first, then, yeah, I’ll get a job.

So, that should be decent sized update for everyone.

Off to leveling my Tauren Hunter.

-A.

Kurt was suffering from what appeared to be a sinus infection (I guess he gets hit with all sorts of particulate matter when he works in the produce section of Walmart), .. needless to say..

He passed it off to me.

I’m now sitting here in my computer room with the symptoms of a sinus infection.. so thanks a lot to him.

Not much else is going on with me that I can really write about. I’ve done a food diary for my doctor, who requested one when I went to him to see how well I’m eating.. and other than that.. not much else is going on.

Other than that.. I have my The Dark Knight tickets and I’m looking forward to seeing it when it comes out.

-A.

Yes.. Shingles. Doctors usually describe it as “A viral infection of the nerve ends in the skin characterized by pain and itching of the lesions,” but I have to describe it as the suck.

It is quite seriously the most painful thing I’ve ever faced in 27 years of life and getting certain things like the Flu and what not.

The thing that bothers me the most about this is that I’ve been doing the best I can to get myself to a normal “healthy”ness, by walking almost every other day, taking good long scrub baths, and making sure I’m clean. I also have been watching my dietary plans a whole lot.

What’s this get me?

Shingles, and more weight.

This isn’t fair.. or fun.

-A.

I had a very odd dream,.. not odd enough to wake me from my slumber.. just enough to stir me from the position I was sleeping in. I guess when I flipped positions, I woke up and now I can’t get back to sleep.

The advantages of waking up so early and having a cat who monitors your entire movements is that when you wander into the computer room to write a blog, they follow you in and take their regular spot.. and promptly, even though you’ve got music playing, fall asleep.

Yes, I’m talking about Shadow. I woke up at about 3:30, and wandered into the computer room to write a blog so you people have some news from me, and cranked up Pandora.com (Theory of a Deadman is playing right now), and found him sitting right next to me a minute later.. sound asleep.

Lucky cat. I wish I could do that.

-A.

When/if you favorite this site, you’ll now see a Favicon.

The favicon should look like my new logo, drawn by a very good friend of mine on deviantArt.

It’s also my watermark from here on out for my artwork/photography.

Anyway, I think it gives the site a bit of much needed personality, and flair.

As far as the site theme changing? .. I don’t think that’ll happen anytime soon because if you visit my deviantArt page, you can see I’ve been using the same basic theme, sort of, for my journal.. and soon, I believe I may have it for my myspace page.. I’d probably do something like that for my faceboook page as well, but they don’t allow that much customization. Ah well.

I quite like it if you can’t tell…

Let me know what you think.

-A.

Not much occured yesterday, I continued to watch TV on my new setup in my house.. ( I took the time to take my satelite dish’s output two to a sound switcher and my new Dell 2045 FPW, and now I can watch TV on my computer monitor. ) and cleaned up the kitchen a bit more. After that, strangely enough Kurt came over and we went out to Bestbuy, and I picked up a new Uniden DECT 3080-3 ( I know I’m linking to the DECT-2 here, but Uniden doesn’t have the -3 on their website, all it does is add an additional hand set. ), with the money I got from some art sales.

Over all, it’s a lot better than the old phone I used to have (a General Electric). It’s rather nice having three phones around my house, I might save up a bit longer and get two more.. one for my basement and one for my bedroom, but other than that, it seems to work out pretty darn well. I’m also hoping to nudge my father into putting a phone jack in my computer room so that I can have the actual answering machine unit in the room. As it stands, I’ve got one of the stand alone units in there. The reason why is because my main room is the computer room and it’s where I spend 80% of my time (the other 20% is divided between my bedroom and my sun room).. and it’d be nice to have the answering machine be in the “main” room of the house.

As far as what else is going on, I might watch Juno today, I got it from Netflix a few days ago, and I still haven’t watched it.

I can’t think of much else to write about, so I think I might just close this off and start reading the book my mom loaned me (it’s about Jack The Ripper) before I start cleaning my room or watching Juno.

Everyone have a good day/night.

-A.

I’ve grown out of the “Random Ramblings” name, partly because of the fact that I could never get Random Ramblings as a .com name.

Following this decision, I’ve decided to rename my blog to something a bit more creative.

As you may note from the right hand side of this site, my last name is Barker.

The last name Barker comes from the old carnival people who attempts to attract patrons to entertainment events, such as a circus or funfair, by exhorting passing public, describing attractions of show and emphasizing variety, novelty, beauty, or some other feature believed to incite listeners to attend entertainment.

It’s basically the person who advertises the circus and/or other things. They were the early advertisers back when circus’ were huge.

Thinking about this, I figured that I’d “bark” out my life to people, in a sense, advertise it… I figured it’d be a bit more of an interesting switch.

I think it’s a change for the better.

Let me know what you think.

-A.

What have I been doing?

Cleaning my house, planting flowers, getting it ready for Spring/Summer, and etc. I’ve also been tracking the election process.

There are a few eventful things going on in my life which I’ll detail out if anything happens like I hope will, but as for now, just know that my life is quite busy and I haven’t had much time to write in my blog.

As far what else is going on in spare time free activities, I’ve pretty much stopped playing City Of Heroes because I got pretty bored of it, it doesn’t help that Kurt and I picked up Age of Conan. We didn’t expect much, but to be honest, it’s extremely enjoyable, and after playing with the “LIVE COMBAT” element of the game, all MMOs we’ve previously played just feel kinda slow and pathetic. I don’t know how else to describe it. It may be a “mature mmo”, but it’s actually a lot of fun.

Anyway, I’m about to log off so I can go clean my kitchen (it’s looking pretty gross).

-A.