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Did you know? This is my 9th entry this month! That makes this the most posts I’ve managed to mash together since… well, around this time last year. And that got me reading my old posts over again, and you know what? Yeah. I’m still always funnier in the past tense. Why is that? I’m worried that I’m going to end up a humorless, bitter old man, because no matter when now is, I was always funnier then.

End unhumorous rant. ;)

So the ‘zinger made it back from Los Angeles just fine. She saw many celebs (e.g. Bruce Willis) and pseudo-celebs (e.g. Chyna), and seemed to have a great time with lots of excitement and very little sleep. They made it in to a taping of The Price is Right, but they did not get the opportunity to either win an RV or molest an aging gentleman. Well, not Bob Barker, anyways.

Otherwise, life marches on. The catalogue at Extra Life has somewhere around 175 titles now, so it’s not doing half bad. Amanda’s planning on spending this weekend in Minneapolis, too, so I’ll probably have more time to work on it then. The new guy at work is settling in, but it hasn’t really seemed to affect my work load just yet. So far, all it has ~really~ meant in terms of directly affecting me is we have to get a slightly larger table when we go out for lunch. But time heals all wounds. And whiny moanings, I hope.

Nine Effing Posts. Ah yeah! I’m back, y’all.

Well, AmandaMarie is still in California, and was having a good time, last I heard. I got a drunken text sometime Saturday evening to let me know that “OMG I just saw Bruce Willis!”, and I got another text just before 6am my time (4am their time) this morning to let me know they were waiting in line for tickets. We’ve yet to have a real conversation just yet, but hey. That’s Cali for ya.

Speaking of transitions, now would be a good time to announce my own little trip to California. August Home is sending me to the 2007 O’Reilly Emerging Technology conference! I’ll fly out of Des Moines on Sunday, March 25th, and get back in to town late evening on Friday, March 30th. I’ll spend the time between those dates in lovely San Diego, California. :)

I’m excited about this trip for many, many reasons. First, I’ve never been to a real business-type conference before, and this is a pretty good one to cut my teeth on. There will be interesting speakers, and interesting people, and interesting… I dunno, drinking? Beats me. But it’ll be interesting regardless.

Second, I’ve never been to the southwest United States before and, let’s face it, if you’re going to find yourself anywhere in the southwest, the California coast ain’t a bad way to go. Plus I’ve never seen a legitimate ocean (though I’ve seen two harbors (Boston, New York) and a sound (Seattle) now), and this trip will definitely fix that for me.

Third, this will be only my 3rd and 4th commercial flights (numbers 1 and 2 being to and from Seattle last March). Although, if you count swapping planes as separate flights, I’ll technically be making ~four~ flights this trip, effectively tripling my commercial flight exposure. I’m on my way to becoming a veteran, ladies and genties.

Fourth and by no means the least, I’ll be spending all five of my nights in San Diego at the extraordinarily fantabulous Manchester Grand Hyatt, which is literally a hundred feet or so from the beaches (putting the ocean within theoretical spitting distance from the top floor of the taller tower). Also, this is where the conference is being held, so go me on that one. Also also, it’s only 3 miles or so from the airport, meaning the probability of a cabbie being able to screw up the drive is pretty minimal. Also also also, it’s within close walking distance of the Gaslamp Quarter, which is where I plan to spend my evenings.

The only real downsides? Good question. Well, I’m going this trip alone. I’ve never taken a big trip like this on my lonesome before, so that has me a touch nervous. I’m sure I’ll meet people and be charismatic and social and all of those lovely words, but still. A touch of anxiety at the outset. And… okay, so that’s really the worst of it. I’ll miss Amanda, if this week is any indication, but turnabout is fair play.

In other words, this is shaping up to be a rockin’ trip. ETech, I hope you’re ready for me. :)

Amanda is in Los Angeles this weekend. In fact, her plane touched down just over two hours ago. I know this because, being the slightly anal and occasionally anxious boyfriend type that I am, I tracked her flight (flights, really, from Kansas City to Minneapolis before she was off to La-la land) in real time from the moment it took off until the moment it landed. Well, I may have watched a movie in the middle somewhere, and gotten some work done on Extra Life. But the point remains the same. She gave me a call eight minutes after her plane touched the runway, and I took that opportunity to let her know she

So guess what? I went ice skating on Wednesday night! For the first time ever! Exclamation!

In fact, it was the first time in a very, very long time that I’d been forced to balance on any thin bladed-or-wheeled type shoelike device. The last time I roller skated, I distinctly remember my classmate Kevin Callison having a difficult time tying the laces on his skates. Not because there was anything wrong with his skates, but because he hadn’t really learned to tie shoes very well yet (his sneakers had Velcro). So yeah. It was a while ago. I’d say a good 16 or so years ago.

So there I was. Cold. Nervous. Nothing separating me from the ice but a thin pair of blades that looked as though they’d be more willing to slice me than support me. Nothing keeping me upright but my iron grip on the guardrail and Amanda’s reassurances that very few people died in skating rinks annually. Of course, she’s from Minnesota (i.e., given skates on her first birthday), so she’s probably safe without any statistics to back her up whatsoever. Megan’s husband Scotty skated up and promised me it wasn’t all that hard once I got moving. Of course, he’s from Maine (i.e., born wearing skates), so he saying skating is easy is a bit akin to Bill Gates arguing that computer startup companies are a cinch. Megan made her way over and said she wasn’t that great either, so I was in good (if small) company. At that, I released one hand from the guardrail and started to work out how that whole ‘moving’ thing worked.

And you know what? I didn’t fall down once! The entire evening! I lasted over an hour on the ice, generally several feet away from the guardrail, without my arse once hitting the ice. :) And that’s how I’m classifying a fall, too: ass on ice action. Because I ~did~ have a couple of near-misses. Once I lost my balance, slipped backwards, and came within a couple of inches of the ground before my right arm caught the guardrail. But it don’t count, because my bum was unblemished.

Now, I’m not saying I’m a superstar or anything. My speed improved over the night, but I never made it much past 4mph or so. My arms spent far too much time pinwheeling dangerously too close to the poof-ball hats of six year olds. And I was breathing a lot harder than anyone else when we were done from the added strain of using my calves to re-balance myself every few milliseconds. But I did better than I expected, and that’s good enough for me.

So, in other news, picture above is a two-for-one shot for y’all. It’s showing off both my new haircut and a bit of my new living room paint job. And it’ll have to do for now, because it’s Friday night and I should be doing something else. I don’t know what that is yet, but something. Else.

I’ve noticed recently that, ever since I started my full time web design job, I’d been neglecting my personal, freelance, or otherwise creative endeavors. So much so that I didn’t really have any side projects anymore. And that sort of bothered me. So what did I do? The obvious thing: I started a redesign of my blog!

And then I thought about it. And I decided that a 7th version of rootarcana.com wasn’t really what I needed. I needed something new, something I hadn’t really tried before. Perhaps even something that would, as I always hoped Rootarcana would (but never did), pay for itself.

From this contemplation was born the idea for Extra-Life-Games.com. Extra Life is a web portal of sorts, with the goal of helping people find good prices on new, used, and pre-played videogames. Fundamentally and admittedly, it is a retail affiliate site. I have no products of my own. Instead, I’m helping other companies find customers for their products. In return, I get a rather small slice O’ the pie. I’m like the travel agent on the island of misfit toys. Or, you know, something like that.

How is my site different from other affiliate sites (and there are literal kajillions (note: figurative kajillions))? For starters, and no offense to other affiliators out there, but most affiliate site are really ugly in terms of both design and code. While my site is by no means the epitome of visual excellence, it’s also not exactly hard on the eyes (and it will hopefully improve over time), and my code isn’t half bad, either. Also, my site provides quasi-decent search functionality, because I’ve taken the time to load all of the products into a database. I could have put the site together much faster without a DB, but it wouldn’t be nearly as useful. Also, most affiliate sites that I know of cater to an extremely small niche (i.e., a specific game or series of games). At the time of this writing, my catalogue contains just over 100 videogames, and I fully intend to add 50-75 new games to the list every week (and if you have a game you want to see listed, let me know and I’ll see what I can do).

So will this idea work? I don’t really know. I consider it an interesting concept, at the least. If I’m lucky, the site will pay for itself, and my efforts will not have resulted in yet another hole into which I voluntarily throw my money. If I’m really lucky, I’ll turn a small profit, which would encourage me to play around more with this business model - I’ve already bought a couple other domain names that I have ideas for. Time will tell, and we shall see. In the meantime, let me know what you think.