DarthTofu

Just for the heck of it -- life's changed a bit for me since the last time I posted. I was up in the DC area for a bit, hanging out with SOCL IRL for about a year. I swapped over from being a mechanical engineer to a code monkey (kinda. I mostly just add new and exciting bugs to the codebase, features are too much work). Got myself a new job working fully remote, and my girlfriend practically leapt at the opportunity to leave DC. Turns out, not everyone likes living in hot, humid environments? She's a weird 'un. Anyway, relocating again, this time to the Pacific Northwest, hopefully to stop bouncing around so darned much for a few years. Or maybe I'll head off to the American SouthWest and get the full US of A experience. Or maybe we'll head on to another country entirely- this one's starting to get a tad fascist.

.... so I recently picked up a copy of The Last of Us and beat it. If you haven't beaten it, don't click the link I'm posting. If you have, enjoy this pretty sick alternate ending.

With the amount of travel i do, paths may cross. I just went to Texas, Georgia, and Ohio recently. This week is Florida and Georgia again. If time permits, I'd enjoy meeting up for a beer after hours with somebody from the forums.

I'll go ahead and be creepy and check in a little bit for Rob and SOCL since I'm facebook friends with them. Rob is happily married and still living in New York. He's a pretty hardcore Rangers fan still, and he's exploring (or at least posting pictures of) some interesting culinary creations including some form of pizza topped with bits of duck and what appears to be a Mexican dish that involves cooking with beer. SOCL is also happily married, and appears to be persisting with his perpetual student life, or else keeping up to date with his former university... either way, it made it into his recent posts. He also appears to still be a giant Roman nerd, but none of the most recent pictures feature him in full armor, so I'm going to guess that the conventions have gone by the wayside for him. Both seem to be doing quite well.

I'm strongly considering buying a PS3, just because of the lovely price drop. I'm going to hold off on it, though, as I've only recently put a roof over my head and picked up furniture/a TV. Baby steps toward getting nice stuff... taken when I get paychecks...

These forums have been relatively inactive for around four years, now. I imagine we're all in different places than we were way back then. So what's changed with you all? For me, I'm still up in Indiana, graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering, and just got a new job working as a service engineer with a large machinery company. I get flown out around the world (mostly US) on the company's dime to help with start-up of the equipment (making sure that it's up to spec after shipping, that it's installed properly, and providing training and basic maintenance instructions to the foreman and the operators of the equipment). I'm still new to it, but I'm liking my coworkers and liking that I get to see the world while I'm still young, so that's pretty awesome. So... who's gotten married, had kids, moved someplace new, gotten a degree, etc?

'sup? The game's kinda pushing twenty years old. I'm not terribly surprised that the forums have died down so much.

Well, I missed this... I still check the forums every so often, though.

Not at all suitable for work.

[ur;=http://disney.go.com/wreck-it-ralph/#/fixitfelix]So Wreck it Ralph made its own video game...[/url]

It looks quite pretty, but if you recall, so did TFU. Granted, it had an impressive storyline, so that's something I'm counting on for 1313. I agree, Beyond looks stupidly gorgeous as well. How the heck did they get an engine that powerful made up? Seriously, the stuff that they're rendering in real time is good enough to be its own CG movie... Also-- I'm excited for the South Park game, Stick of Truth

circa 1980 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v76jRI3ATlk&feature=related

I'm still a skinny bugger, don't worry. It's odd just how far things have come. Went from being a very unhappy little teenager to... someone very different. And I think that maybe, just maybe, I have you guys to thank for alot of that.

She's 8...

We presented her with it a few days after I made the post.We were at $3000 the night before we were going to give her her money. That felt pretty good-- it was literally ten times what I thought we would raise. Then Tuesday came. I had a few random folks text me (recognized most of the numbers at least) talking about donations, and I told some to go to student affairs to drop them off, some to go to my room. When I finished up a nasty midterm, I came to student affairs to get whatever had been dropped off so that we could hit up the bank. One of the fraternities donated a whopping $592 that day. Needless to say, I forgot about the crappy midterm and may or may not have shed a few manly tears. There were a few more donations as well, to the point where I walked out of the building with around $800 or so. Then I got to my room. People had dropped off $600 on my desk over the course of the day. Six. Hundred. Dollars. When we went to the bank and totaled everything up, we had a check for $4441.06. That was entirely too close to a fun number, so we gave her an extra $3.38 for the sake of hilarity. Oh, and Aramark, the company in charge of the food services on campus, decided to match us a quarter for every dollar raised. So all-in-all, we gave Bonnie $5,555.55, or 18.5 times what I thought I'd accrue from all of campus. Here's a picture of Bonnie and I from when we presented her with the money. It was more than a tad emotional. There's also a of the reveal. Gotta say, it felt pretty good.