Halo 3 Wallpapers (Set 2)

Here are a few more wallpapers I made with Halo 3 medals. These three are some of my favorite ones to get in a multiplayer game.

  

Halo 3 Wallpapers

Here are some Halo 3 wallpapers that I made. Each one is a medal you can earn during multiplayer games. I made vectored versions of most of the medals you can earn a while back and decided to take a few of them and make wallpapers out of them. Anyways, I think they turned out pretty cool.

  

I’ve Been XBoxed

No, I did not die, I just have not had the motivation to blog about anything. I’ve also been consumed by what my significant other (wife) has dubbed “the other woman”. She is referring to the XBox 360 and Halo 3 I borrowed from a friend of mine. I originally intended to borrow it so that I could Forge some multiplayer maps (fellow Halo brethren know what I’m talking about) for our next game day. Well I ended up trying a free one month trial of XBox live gold membership and now I’m completely hooked. I’m going to buy the Xbox from him and I’ve already got my own copy of Halo 3! My wife can hardly stand her excitement! (Yeah right, she’s definitely not a big fan of my new toy). If you ever run into Blackout8SIX playing Halo 3 online, that’s me.

Move Over Mary

Move over virgin Mary! Look out face of Jesus! This is the Elevation Church Leaf! Sometimes I have a hard time believing people will flock to some piece of tree bark that looks like the aforementioned people. Maybe not believing, but understanding. People do crazy stuff. If I looked down into my plate of pasta and saw the virgin Mary, I’m not sure what I’d do. I certainly wouldn’t make a big to do about it. I doubt the Lord is trying to reveal His self to me through the endless pasta bowl at the Olive Garden.

I remember some dude made a big deal because one of the spots on his goat looked like a number 3 (as in Dale Earnhardt). Yeah, that was ridiculous. It just seems like people are worshiping idols. When people make a pilgrimage to see something they find incredibly important, it sounds like when the Israelites would travel to Shiloh, Jerusalem, etc. to worship. Did you get that? To worship. They went to worship not the temple, not the priests, but only God. I think people can worship the face of Jesus in the side of a tree and not the real thing.

With all that said, here’s a leaf my wife found for all you Elevation Church attenders. She picked it up because she thought it was pretty. I looked at it and said “Look! The Elevation Church leaf!”

More 86Graphics T-Shirts

Here are my latest designs for my 86Graphics stuff. If ever I get a chance to make these into t-shirts I’m definitely going to. I might be the only one who will wear them, but hey, I like the designs (of course I am kind of biased).

I got my inspiration for the “Wolves” design from listening to “Follow The Wolves” by Demon Hunter. I just got this image in my head of wolves hunting by moonlight and thought I should use that for a design.

 

The Wrong Idea

I got home Friday night and we decided to camp out in the backyard. I’ve got this huge six-person tent that I got as a five-year gift from work that I’ve never used and have only set it up once to see what I looked like. I could have picked from a variety of things but I thought the tent would be the best way to go and would probably get more use than some of the other choices. Anyways, my son has been begging me to camp out in the backyard but it was the middle of summer when he was asking and so I told him we should wait until fall.

So we waited. Once it was cool enough outside it started raining every weekend and prevented us from doing so. This weekend could have been the last warm autumn weekend that would be perfect for all four of us to camp out. It started off with me raking some leaves in the backyard to make room for the tent. I raked up most of them and started using a leafblower to finish the more difficult parts (Willow Oak leaves suck!). The boys jumped around in the leaf pile for a while. Then we made a campfire and cooked hotdogs.

By now it was too dark to see anything outside and I had yet to put up the tent. I couldn’t just say “Sorry son, Daddy screwed up and waited too long to put up the tent. Maybe next time.” So I pulled my car into position to shine the headlights into the yard. I put up the tent with the highbeams blinding me most of the time. The lights were coming in from the side so that made it very interesting with the high contrast on the tent surface. Just trying to find the right sleeves and hooks to put the poles through was a challenge even with light. So after much frustration and light swearing under my breath, the tent was up and ready.

We got the inside of the tent ready and actually brought the portable DVD player outside (real campers, huh?) because it was still rather early. We watched a movie for a little while and then decided to go to bed. My three-year old son was so excited he was jumping all over the place. He jumped on top of me and I pushed him off playfully…

It was all downhill from there. On the way down my son went head first into my wife’s mouth. I heard a crunching sound and two people crying. I grabbed the flashlight and shined it on my wife and she had blood running down her chin. At first I thought her nose may have been broken. We frantically got inside where we discovered my wife’s lip had been bust open pretty badly. My wife was laying on the floor with a rag over her mouth and whimpering pathetically. She was as white as a sheet. I don’t know if it was the pain or the sight of the wound. I called my mom who came right over to watch the boys while I took my wife to the emergency room. While we were waiting for my mom I grabbed most of the stuff from outside so that the boys would have their pillows and blankets because the campout was a bust.

We arrived at the emergency room around 10 PM. We were actually arguing on the way there because my wife thought I pushed our son too hard and that is what caused the collision. She was very grumpy. So here’s the scene in the waiting room – tell me what you would think:

Man and woman sitting in waiting room of the hospital. They are apparently angry or annoyed at one another based off of the body language. The woman is sitting there with a busted lip and the man is just sitting there reading a book…

I know what I would have thought. They called my wife back and we started back and they said that I should stay in the waiting room. It didn’t dawn on me until after I sat down that they probably were going to make sure she wasn’t being abused. She later told me that they asked her those questions. She said she was abused…by her three-year old. One tetanus shot and five hours later we got home at 3 AM completely exhausted. At least she didn’t have to get stitches…

What To Write…

It’s been a while since I blogged anything remotely controversial. I’ve had many ideas for blog posts that would probably get some attention but when I ran them by my wife, she said she didn’t think they were a good idea. Previous posts such as “Seat Nazis” and “Deviant Bystander” were posts that she would chide me for writing. My friend Tim would make comments like “Oh boy…”, a mannerism of his that my wife says that I am now mimmicking. I’m influencing him as well because I’ve heard him call his wife “Woman” when calling her. That’s something I’ve done for a long time toward my wife. I of course mean nothing sexist or degrading by it, its just one of those things. She’ll calls me “Legs” whenever she needs me to reach something for her.

This post doesn’t really have a direction or point that I’m trying to make. I just felt like writing. I’m sitting here at someone else’s computer covering for them while they are on their lunch break. I quit writing posts at work (mostly) because I don’t want to get in trouble for wasting time at work.

So Obama got elected…still not sure what to think. Democrats are in control of the government (the Executive and Legislative Branches that is, maybe the Judicial). I got to vote for the first time in 2004 because I couldn’t get to the polls in 2000. I voted for Bush (yikes!) in 2004, but I didn’t vote this time. I really wasn’t sure about either candidates. They both had things I liked and disliked. The best part about the election has been the SNL skits. Will Ferrell playing as George W. Bush was definitely my favorite. The best line of the skit was Ferrell saying ”George W. Bush always gets his man, save for one huge exception.”

Fall softball is almost over and I’ve had an abysmal season so far. I did decent by my usual standards during the summer, but now some of my teammates are calling my batting average the “McEwen line” instead of the “Mendoza line” (baseball reference for those that are wondering). I’ve had one decent game batting and everything else has been crap. We won the Championship back in the summer, but we’re only 4-4 this fall. Of course we’re missing four key guys from the summer. Three of those four have subbed a couple of games, but that’s it.

Well, that’s it for now…just one of my classic rabbit trails.

Day Trip to the BRP

Our son’s baseball game was cancelled Saturday morning and at about 9:30 AM we decided to head up to the mountains to enjoy the fall colors. We have talked about doing it for a few years now but have never done so because it would cause us to miss a game. It was quite spur of the moment and we sort of see-sawed back and forth about whether or not to go. In the end we just couldn’t help but pack it up and head out the door.

We got on the Parkway in between Blowing Rock and Boone and drove down close to Mt. Mitchell where it was closed due to some repairs of some sort. We could have taken a detour and got back on the Parkway down near Craggy Gardens but it was late in the day and we were getting hungry. Overall it was a pretty fun day except for the fact that it was fairly chilly. The only trail we hiked was Flat Rock because we spent most of the day driving and just taking in our surroundings. The BRP was quite crowded because the higher elevations were at their peak colors for the fall. Every parking area for trails off the BRP were overflowing.

A Saturday afternoon drive down the BRP during peak fall colors is something everyone should plan to do as often as they can. Gas was $2.89 in Gastonia and I think we saw it cheaper somewhere else. But the gas money was worth it.

 

New CSL Logo Design

This is just an idea I had for the Cactus Softball League. I designed the current logos that are being used, but sometimes I like to mess around with new designs. Its possible that this could be used somehow in the future.

I wanted a rattlesnake in the logo. The current logos have a cattle skull in them. I still think that is probably the best way to go but I wanted to mess around a bit with another idea. So I set out to look for clipart of a rattlesnake that I could use for my new logo. After searching and not finding anything worth using, I decided to draw it by hand and then draw it in Illustrator. It turned out pretty good in my opinion (which is obviously biased). I tried a few different looks for the snake, but decided on what you see here. I kept the same font because I thought it would be good for something to stay consistent in the logos.

Give That Kid a Rimshot

Saturday night we went over to our friends, the Hoppers. My wife and Jess went out for coffee while Hugh and I stayed at the house and watched the kids. We played a couple of games of chess and just hung out. We were watching the Red Sox/Rays game in his room. My 9-year old was laying on the bed watching the game while we were playing chess. I was totally distracted by the baseball game that I wasn’t really focusing on the chess game at hand and so I didn’t really play well. The Red Sox were up to bat and the Rays had just put in a relief pitcher named Grant Balfour. The pitcher walked the batter and then my son said the wittiest thing I’ve ever heard him say:

“Of course he walked the guy, his name is ‘Ball-four’.”

We died laughing and I praised him for his wit. I was very proud. I still chuckle every time I think about it.