The kids have been doing great and growing up nicely. Garrett is getting bigger each day and won’t be long until he is crawling around getting into as much as possible. For Bethany, Emma, and Hannah, I signed them up for Soccer this past Spring for fun and they enjoyed it overall. My dad coached (as he enjoys that kind of thing and allows him to be involved) and I help coached from time to time. I think this Fall we will try Basketball as Bethany said it was her turn to pick.

Last month, we had my aunt and her family visit us. They stayed with my mom and it was good to see them for the short time we were able to. Difficult times lay ahead for them though and hopefully things will improve. I can only hope my neice matures and understands how you only go around once and gets things in order for her and her son’s life.

This summer will be a busy one I am sure with all the kids being out of school and stuff to do around the house. The wife has already commissioned me to put up garage door openers, put up a fence in the backyard, frame the basement, stain the deck, and a few other odd jobs around the house. I have already done the garage door openers this past month and will hopefully get started on the fence and complete it this month. Its fun to have the experience of doing such projects so I look forward to them somewhat. I just hate the financial backing needed for them even though it does save money doing the projects myself.

Supposedly there is a ten year reunion in the works as well from high school would should be interesting. Even though to some it will no doubt be a measure of success, it should be nice to see familiar faces. I know the wife keeps in touch with some of them online more than I do, but I never was much a fan of the social networking that has now become common place.

Work continues to go well for the most part, boring as it may be the majority of the time. I am often working overtime as usual, which helps pay the bills and allow for extracurricular activites. I was recently awarded based on my work performance during April and given a $50 gift check.

School continues to be a pain in the neck and short one class for my four year C.S. degree. Unfotunately I might not be able to take it until Fall 2010 or Spring 2011 due to class rotations. I am hoping I can do an independent study for it though, but ultimately that requires finding a professor willing to do so.

A few days ago, we ended up deciding to get a 29 gallon fish tank as the wife has been enjoying the 5 gallon tank so much. It should look very nice once setup this weekend. I also purchased a couple Gerbils for the girls (too early still for a cat or dog) and they love to watch them. I am still working on getting them hand trained which will no doubt be a longer process than first anticipated. Due to their age it is still tough to tell the sex of the Gerbils, but we can only hope they are both male male or female female. This has also delayed the naming of them as well. Although the girls have already volunteered to name them “Sparkles” and “Princess”. Pictures to follow soon of both endeavours.

In the interim, I have been going back catching up on TV series I missed during the first two decades of my life. I just recently finished watching Deadwood, which I must admit was a disappointing turn in the end. Perhaps the most interesting thing was learning how the language was during the period. However, due to contraints of losely basing it on the facts of the era, it ultimately failed and could have gotten the same and factual information by simply reading Wikipedia on Deadwod and the people there during that time. I just finished Keen Eddie as well and wish it had gone longer than it did (reminds me of Psych to a degree). Soon I will start First Wave and Inu Yasha.

I have also been playing World of Warcraft since January of this year. Its fun, but I still prefer EverQuest and Vanguard over it, but lack of content in the other two have given me no choice really. I am hoping Aion, which is due to release late this year, will be fun and a replacement for World of Warcraft. Console games I haven’t been playing as much as a result. Currently playing Prince of Persia for the XBOX360 right now with Left 4 Dead next in line. The kids and wife enjoy the Wii, but I am not as big a fan due to lack of story and gimmicky gameplay/controls in most respects.

Overall, it has been a good year and can only hope the future years are as good to me and my family. Time will tell.

- CyberManX

During April…well now that I come to think of it, I don’t remember anything I did during that month. In June, my brother, David, got married to Amy. I was my brother’s best man and that was a fun experience. The wedding itself was nice and I had to do a couple announcements/toasts afterwards, which I did surprisingly well at considering I’m not a fan of public speaking. I also started back up my GameFly subscription since its been about a year and some games I have been wanting to play are out now. Funny thing is, I swore I wouldn’t subscribe again until GameFly established a distribution center on the East Coast, but I figured how to speed up the turn around time a bit. You can check out the Games section of the site for comments on some of the games I have been playing lately. I’m still updating that though.

Not much really happened during the months of July and August. In September, Emma started preschool and turned two years old. She definetly has a different temperament than Bethany and can be very stubborn headed at times. Bethany also started back at the same time and goes three days a week now instead of two. We also visited the Georgia Aquarium during this time and about the only thing I really liked that was huge tank with all the Stingrays, Whale Sharks, etc. Other than that, the Tennesse Aquarium has them beat on variety and such I believe or at least it seemed like there was more to see.

Now here we are at October. Me and Rebecca will be celebrating our six year anniversary in exactly one week. It really doesn’t seem like six years, but that just goes to show how fast life can pass you by at times. I still love her a lot and I’m glad I found someone who can put up with my geek-like ways. She’s been a great mother to our three girls and hopefully one day the girls will realize that as well and keep a strong relationship with her. I try to help her out as much as I can, but its still probably not enough and over time I expect to improve in that.

Anyway, that’s pretty much what we have been up to. Nothing exciting or exotic, but I don’t for a minute take that for granted due to how much worse things could be. This also now brings me to why I entitled this log as I did. You see, recently Rebecca has become more internet savvy and found that bane of a site called MySpace. I dislike that site so much, but I won’t resort to ranting about that now. As a result, she has come in touch with a handful of people we knew in high school. Its rather interesting how most of them turned out and their current situation in life. I thought some of them would have done a lot better, but most seem content and happy from their blogs/comments on there. The really weird thing is or that I’m surprised by is how many no longer seem to know God like they did in high school.

I’m far from perfect, but I still love God and know that he is the reason where I am today. Plus, the things I learned from high school and were instilled in me by my parents have brought me to this spot as well. I only hope that I am able to do the same for my girls. My greatest fear I think is that my daughters might grow up one day to reject the values me and Rebecca share. I don’t want it to all have been for naught. Anyway, I’ll probably start a thread over in the Forums to keep track so to speak and maybe restablish some of those relationships. But for me, I was never really close with anyone in high school (ie. kept in touch after high school, developed a relationship outside of common events like baseball, classes, etc.) except my wife. I fit very well into that “geek” or “computer nerd” stereotype, but I never let it bother me, because I knew it wasn’t them that I had to gain acceptance of or do right by, but God.

- CyberManX

One of the my Summer 2005 courses starts next week. It will be an independent study for Elementary Linear Algebra, so I just need to make sure I remain diligent enough to study and pass the course. The course itself will run until the end of July and then the other one doesn’t start til July 1st, but will run til the end of July as well. After this semester I will only have three courses left to graudation provided I pass both these courses.

I’ll be working both tomorrow and Sunday, so I hope Devil May Cry arrives from Gamefly. Otherwise, I am going to have to find something else to occupy my time with as it appears its going to be a slow work weekend.

- CyberManX

So the other night, I finally had the time to sit down and watch The Lathe of Heaven. Overall, I liked the movie especially considering it was done by PBS and it was there first made for T.V. movie. I didn’t really get the ending because it was just a bunch of visuals that didn’t really have a point. I found this article though which goes fairly deep into the movie and was able to understand the ending. In the end, I would give it 3/5.

Today, while at work, I can hopefully get a theme for the forums.cybermanx.com that goes with the site more. Then, I can start working on more content and such for the site.

- CyberManX

On another note, work on the site continues. I am now working on a template for my weblog that coincides with the main web site. I have finished with album.cybermanx.com for the most part and will just add more pictures and screenshots over time. Hopefully, I will be ready to begin adding content to the main site and such by next week.

- CyberManX

Anyway, yesterday I did get to go and see Unleashed and it was pretty good. The drama and action were about equal in the movie. Overall, I would give it a 3/5. It had some really good action sequences, but the story wasn’t as developed as it should have been. Looking back, I could have probably just waited until it came out on DVD and then added it to my Netflix queue.

For the rest of today, I’ll work and continue development on my site. I am almost completely done with the album.cybermanx.com portion of the site and then will get the main page done. Hopefully, I’ll have some time to play Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption a little bit. And yea I know, it was released back in 2000, but I wanted to play through it before playing Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines.

- CyberManX

Today, I hope to get more done while working here at work as the weekends are usually so boringly slow. I think I will go and check out Unleashed in the theater today while at work too. It looks pretty good and should be entertaining. I’ll post my thoughts on it either later today or tomorrow.

- CyberManX

- CyberManX