Beginnings?

So, I created this blog almost two years ago now and never really did anything with it. I've always wanted to, but never seem to have the motivation or inclination to bother. I've decided that needs to change. I keep telling myself I'd like to be some sort of writer, and I have a lot of crap in my head to get out in one way or another. I want to do something regularly, even if it's just to force myself to stick with something regular and scheduled like this. The initial intent here will be to post say, three times a week. I'll leave it open to allow for more than that, but I'm going to aim for at least those three. They won't even necessarily be long posts, just getting something down in text will accomplish something, I hope. We'll see where it goes.

As for content? Well, this is my little space, so honestly, whatever I feel like writing about. I suppose a good jumping off point would be to write a bit about myself in an effort to get out some possible ideas for postings and give anyone who might actually stumble across my little slice of web an idea of who they're reading and what makes me tick. So let's start there.

Basics, hmm? I'm a 29 year old Caucasian male from Buffalo, NY. I've spent the last five years living in Aiken, SC, just across the border from Augusta, GA. I have a wife whom I met in college and who is almost as much a geek as I am. We just bought our first house about a month ago and have spent the weeks since learning all the fun things that come with being a homeowner, rather than renting some apartment. I went to university for IT, though the program ended up being nothing more than programming which I hate, so I am otherwise a self-taught PC tech with several certifications that I haven't used outside of my own personal machines in at least a few years. I currently work as a property manager for a small apartment house in addition to being the bread-baker for my family's tea/coffee bar and bakery. While breads are time consuming to make, even with all the commercial equipment we have, I've gotten into a groove with it, so my brain rarely has to do much, leaving way too much time to think and daydream. I love music (with the exceptions of most scream-o, country, and being entirely out of touch with most pop), and love playing the piano, though I haven't done much of that in recent years. I'm also into home-brewing, which has so far netted me five bottles of awfully tasty mead that knocked a bunch of friends on their asses.

Onto geekier things. I got into Magic: the Gathering as a pre-teen, fell out of playing during high school, and got back into it when friends started pulling out decks in college. I have a collection way too large to be reasonable, and it drives my wife crazy. I've always been an avid reader, mostly of science-fiction and fantasy, which easily led into my love of Dungeons and Dragons (as well as most any RPG) when I finally got a chance to learn to play about 11 years ago. My friend Joe is the guy who taught me to play, using his heavily home-brewed version of 1st Edition. After three months, I had so many adventure ideas bouncing around my head that I needed to try running some on my own, leading me to go out and pick up the (new at the time) 3rd Edition core books. My first campaign opened with 7 players and a sketched out dungeon on a piece of loose leaf that failed so utterly that I gave the DMing thing up for at least a month while I tried to figure out what the hell I was actually doing. I tried again a few weeks later, this time with just my friends Kara (now my wife) and Ashley, who were also new enough to D&D that they wouldn't have any sort of preconceived notions of how the game should go, so I could feel things out and run it the way the three of us felt it wanted to go. Things went swimmingly from there and I've been running games ever since. The last several years have been games for (mostly) the same group of guys I gamed with in NY before I moved, we just do it on Skype now. Seems to work well, except when one of our internet connections craps out, but that doesn't happen too often. I mentioned being into Magic, and my favorite aspect of the game now is variant play-styles. I absolutely love Commander (EDH), have a lot of fun playing around with things like the Wizard's Tower, and have even made myself a nice Pauper Cube, though straight up 60-card constructed duels are still a lot of fun. Oh, into a lot of board games as well. Kara and I got into a weekly board game night while we were still living in NY and it stuck, so now we have a 6-foot by 4-foot bookshelf absolutely buried in various games and more that won't fit the shelves. Video gaming's a big thing for me as well. I play Dungeons and Dragons Online with Kara and Joe, run a tiny Minecraft server for myself and a couple friends, and have a staggeringly large Steam library. Was replaying Far Cry 3 before I started writing this tonight.

Well now, I think that about covers it. If you're looking for the TL;DR version, it goes something like: Massive geek, plays way too many games and talks too much.

I'll be posting here pretty regularly, with any luck, so feel free to ask me just about anything, I'm typically an open book.