Jason decided he wanted some more spiked hair like Dad’s. Thank god dad doesn’t have a mullet, he would look pretty funny with mullet hair to match.
Spikey Hair Jason
Jason likes to say “hair… like daddys” and have his hair all spiked up. It never fails though, he always puts his hand on his head to see if its still spiked and makes it flat again! What a vicious cycle.
Jason at the Train Park
Jason took a ride on the train ride. He loves trains right now, has his own train table and trains that he plays with at Grandma and Granpa’s house almost every day.
Future Cowboy Fan
Jason looks so awesome in his cowboys hat!
AION Game Status
Wondering what the status is for the game AION?
Well this link will tell you what servers are up and down, as well as when the betas start up the the minute.
Disneyland Trip
The 28th and 29th of August, our family took a trip to Disneyland. Its been the first real vacation for our family since Jason was born. It was exhausting for me as Jason wanted “daddy” to take him everywhere.
We visited the park for 2 days nearly all day long both days. On day 1 we took a ride on Nemo Ride, watched a 3D movie, saw the worlds most advanced robot which can now run about 4 miles per hour! We continued to ride everything else in the Future Land and then took a tram and ate at the Rainforest Cafe. After going and taking a break at the hotel, we went back to Downtown Disney and ate at the ESPN zone. They have a giant arcade upstairs that we played in for a while before we headed back to disneyland. It was dark when we finally got back inside the gates, and we went straight to “It’s a Small World” that had Jason humming the tune all the way to Adventure Land where we stopped to watch the “Fantasmic” show over the lake. We took Jason on Pirates and the Jungle Ride before we called it a night.
On Day 2 we headed straight to toon town where we started with the Roger Rabit Ride and then got pictures taken with the Disney crew, including Jason’s favorite, Mickey Mouse. He saw Goofey and Pluto too and amazingly didn’t mind getting his picture taken with any of them. We played around toon town for a while and then it was about 100 degrees out so we stopped for a some Frozen Lemonade. It was so hot we had to stop on our way to lunch and go in a ride just to feel the AC. We ate some Pizza and went back to the Hotel to rest for a couple of hours.
We had a lot of ground to cover when we came back to Disney because we wanted to see the shows and rides at Disney Adventure. As soon as we got inside the Pixar Parade was starting where we got to see toons from the Pixar films play, dance, and shoot water into the crowd. We had front row seats, it was great. Unfortunately, Mator the character from Cars was big and loud. Its Jason’s favorite Cars character but he was incredibly scared of the Giant mator.
We went and saw the Monsters Inc ride which Jason seemed to love even though he has never seen the movie. We continued to see all the attractions in Hollywood section of Disney Adventure and then I picked up a fastpass to Hollywood Hotel of Horror, and got our picture taken. We got to see another 3D movie, “A Bugs Life” which Raquel and I have funny picture from our previous Disney Adventuretrip. Since Raquel doesn’t much care for the scary rides, her and JB grabbed a hotdog while I when for a crazy ride back at the Hollywood Hotel. We finished up the park be walking around to the Farris Wheel and seeing the parks from the 300 feet!
We rushed back over to Disneyland just in time to get a decent spot to see “Fantasmic” again, but left early when Jason literally asked “Down please…Bye Bye Mickie, night night time… Mommy Push Jason…”. We were stopped by a crowd of literally thousands waiting to see the fireworks show and managed to sneak into a spot where we had a great view of the show. Jason thought they were stars and as amazing as they were, he was spent and fell asleep only moment after he was in his stroller heading back to the “Vacation Room” as he calls it. A truly amazing trip, I can’t wait to have fun with him again next year.
Disneyland Buzz Lightyear Ride
We just got back from Disneyland and my first picture and post will be from the Buzz Lightyear ride since the new ride offered a free “email yourself your photo” option which is the best thing since baked bread.
Gears of War 2 Article
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AION Beta 5 Closed – Reivew and Screenshots
After trying all the classes, and taking 3 of the classes past lv ten, I’ve explored the complete set of UI options and explored most of the UI events that take place. Here is my summary conclusion of the good, the bad and the ugly.
The good: Great story, graphics will blow your mind, and flow of quests and missions will have you coming back for more.
The bad: Beta is closed, you can’t play anymore, and the beta had some serious connection issues the first night.
The ugly: The battle system and “lag” between skill click and onscreen execution may be enough to keep me on wow after I finish playing through the plot of AION. That’s too bad, I was hoping to move to AION completely from WoW.
1. SKILL LAYOUT LOCK – The first and most annoying thing was that I could not find a way to lock my skills on the UI bar. Absolutely no bugs here that I found though while using skills.
2. BATTLE SYSTEM – The blinking of skills while a skill is executing is extremely poor way to develop a battle system. I enjoyed the overall experience but AION fails to compete with World of Warcraft’s battle system in regard to smooth transitions in using skills. I have to hit the skills 4-5 times to make sure my character was going to execute it, and execute it fast. Especially with the idea of chains, I’m quite upset about this downfall.
3. GRAPHICS AND LAYOUT – The layout worked fine, with small amount of customization. The chat window was “average” but often times people could not figure out naturally how to talk to one another. At this point channels were almost useless. There are some serious issues with npc and character onscreen loads in heavy population areas. Often times I would have to re-enter areas 4-5 times before the NPC’s would load to turn in quests or talk to vendors. This seems to be more related to PC Graphics then Internet bandwidth as I found that changing the resolution (even increasing it) would reload the characters on the screen, so I began doing that instead of re-entering the areas. Hope this is fixed by the final release.
4. QUESTING and PLOT – This was by far the best part of the game. The quests were easy to find, strung togethre nicely by bringing you to new areas, identify level you should be to attempt, and map interaction was AWESOME! Plot and mini cinemas were also great. Way to blow FFXI and WoW out of the water. I can see this area is still being developed, and locating npc’s that wander should probably be updated or removed.
5. FLYING – The concept is great, and its a lot of fun to wander around that way. I think there should be some more quests that help you learn all the key ideas behind soaring, flying, and fighting while flyings. Flying around water and around areas where flying is restricted seems REALLY buggy on the graphics side. Hopefully this can be handled in some way. Also you can’t take off from water, doesn’t really seem reasonable unless you are actually swimming in it?
6. BROKERS (the auction houses) – Interface is fine, had no problems using the Brokers to buy and sell my good. The LACK of organization of items is going to be HORRIBLE in the final if there are not more filters. Lumping all the items together when thousands are posted will be a nightmare. Hope this is changed before final of good luck finding what you need.
7. PRIVATE STORES – while a great idea, its a bandwidth hog for offtime of players. Instead of encouraging players to log off and leave the server, it encourages players to setup shop, and leave there computers. If this is kept, I would HIGHLY suggest the ability for players to setup shop and log offline, then syncronize with the server when you log back in.
8. WAREHOUSES – No complaints. Very basic way to store more items and transfer items between accounts (once they reach lv 10)
9. PARTY PLAY – Party play was decent overall however finding a party was horrible. Similar to the OBSCENE party seeking from FFXI, you simply have to look around the area you are in for other people seeking a party. Please please please take a hint from Blizzard and create a way to build rooms of people looking for groups.
AION Beta Testing 5 Tonight
I will be testing the new MMORPG called AION tonight. The testing starts at 12:00PM Noon, Arizona Mountain Time. Since I haven’t been a part of the previous betas I’ll have to start by creating a character and learning the basic in game functions and maps.
Check out AION today and shoot me an email if you wanna play!
