It certainly has been a long time since I bothered to do anything but look at artwork and do the occasional favorite here and there, hasn't it? Things have been crazy since San Diego Comic Con - I changed my job role twice, got a fairly reasonable promotion, got a new vehicle (but not the F-150 I was questing for), and am now working on getting my house mates sorted and upgrading my refrigerator. So I figure I'll do a few general updates here for the people that are curious as to what is happening in my life:

1) New Car!
Originally, I had wanted to get a truck for enhanced carrying capacity and the ability to tow a decent sized trailer in order to make use of the pop-up camper sitting in my side yard. However, it turns out trucks brand new are wicked expensive, and nothing I could do would allow me to afford one. I could have gotten a used truck of obscene build, but I wanted a new vehicle this time around. After test driving multiple cars, I decided to try to get my hands on a Dodge Challenger with the 6.2L in it - but the dealer wanted to screw me over after getting the -exact- car I was looking for on the Dodge Website.
I ended up getting a brand new 2013 Ford Focus ST, because I drove one, had to pass a SUV on the freeway on the test drive, and the turbo kicking in attempting to torque steer the wheel out of my hand. It's zippy, same fuel economy as my Prelude on average, and comes with over 50 more horsepower, and is a 4-door hatchback. I think of it as the bastard offspring of my Mom's BMW Z4 and my Dad's Nissan Versa. All the power (and expensive tires) with all the cargo space. I'm slowly creeping towards the 3k mile mark, and I love driving it.

2) Promotions!
I got promoted twice. The good news is that I'm back in office, and loving it far better then working at home. The not so good news is that it is in fact quite a challenge, and while I enjoy that fact, it leaves me with less goof around time. I'm actually working for my paycheck now! The bad news is that I ended up with a closing shift this run which disconnected my schedule from much of the rest of reality.

3) Working around the House.
This has been the major thing I've been doing when not working, thinking about work, or farting around in Skyrim with a host of sex-enabling mods. I've been converting lights over to LED bulbs for longevity, trying to see about replacing my refrigerator for christmas, installing sensor bulbs and playing around with smart house switches and software. One of my front water valves popped the valve diaphragm and I had to shut off the sprinklers for winter anyway. The outside path lights are starting to work again after some jury rigging, which is always nice to see things getting better. In fact tomorrow I'm going to see if transplanting two of them will get the main front pathway lit up properly. The spa now has a thermal cover and is chlorine balanced and in anti-freeze mode for the winter - it will actually be ready for use next year FINALLY. I had to let the lawn go though, so next spring will be trying to bring it back to life once more, and one of the crappy trees out front got taken down. I still need to price out, dig, and install a french drain for the back yard so it stops being a marsh, though.

4) Startide 4
The biggest time sink I have is the text-based sci-fi furry game I've been working on for around 10 years or so now. Startide 4 is slowly coming together lore wise, and there's a few good RPers that are helping me shape it, but I'm running into some strange combination of hardware/ software issues that prevent a steady connection. The persistent telnet connection will just random drop with multiple people are connected for no particular reason I can pinpoint, as it has happened on both old and new hardware (an IBM e335 1U Rack Server and an Intel Atom/ nVidia Media PC respectively), but works perfectly fine when I hide it behind my firewall. This basic issue is wrecking me since I can't seem to figure it out, and I've even tried both Debian and Ubuntu, and now CentOS (which is having some trouble with IP allocation). I'm beginning to wonder if there was a problem on compile, or if it is maybe even the database files at this point that are corrupted somehow and causing the server to 'burp' when trying to move a lot of things in memory.
The website is up and running, including a wiki, over at http://www.startide.us and looks at least partially good. Lots of information but poorly linked, which is why the wiki part got added on.

5) Art, Writing
Yeah... I got nothing. I haven't drawn, doodled, or done creative writing not involved with Startide 4 in ages. I've almost forgot what a drawing pencil looks like.

6) Tricopter
Same as Art. Poor Peg Leg has been sitting on my workbench needing a firmware upgrade for... months and months. I am not pursuing the R/C helicopter scene at the moment due to the firmware problems I was having. That, and I just had to replace just about EVERYTHING last time I wanted to fly, which is no good when I'm budgeting in a car payment -and- house upgrades.

Some other topics of interest I'm sure I should include:

Further Confusion:
- Yes, I want to go. Yes I am registering this week. No, I don't have a room, which is irking me to no end. I want a room, they're all sold out completely. At this point, it'll be luck if I'm able to stay anywhere remotely close to the convention.

House Parties:
- Planned for spring sometime, hopefully. Still need to toss a room mate, clean up the house, get new couches, etc etc. Mostly the room mate issue at this point.

A big fat "Awesome" to Mallin of SacFurs fame, for his engagement. May your happiness know no bounds!

I'm still depressingly single, but that's more my own mindset at this point. Every relationship I've tried seemed to hinge on me not being quite the perfect fit, so I figure I'll just enjoy what I have. My roomies and I are more or less a bit of a family together, even if we're more of a family in the 'fraternity' sort of way then anything else. Still hoping that little spark called romance will be given a chance, but eh, there's plenty of furry porn out there.

I'll probably try to draw sometime. Hopefully.

I am planning on going back to class for spring semester at Consumnes River. I would like to attempt to get an Associates both in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering to see if there's one I like over the other, then pursue a Bachelors in that direction. I am woefully short on my math skills, and my brain is quite rusty. I expect a two to two and a half year time estimate on completion if I'm lucky and good at the same time.

Anyway, that's my update! I hope Startide starts to make sense and I can get it stable enough to grow, and that I can get some more content made to actually load onto this site. I have begun to feel less like a creator and more like a consumer of media, which is never a good sensation to have.