40oz

Last night, up till 10pm watching music videos on YouTube.

Go to bed, wife locks doors and joins me shortly after returning from the King of Prussia Mall. She came home in her friends car.

Forgot to change the alarm so I wake up at 3:30am, an hour earlier than intended.

Walk the dog at 3:30am, observe my car still in front of house. Observe nothing unusual. Very quiet Sunday morning.

Return home at 4am, car still parked in front of house.

Feed dog, eat a banana, observe car keys sitting on kitchen counter.

Go up stairs to bed, nap for an hour because I don't have work until 6:00am (didn't lock front door, didn't think id need to for only an hour -- and after walking up and down the neighborhood without seeing anything suspicious,)

Wake up at 5:00, brush my teeth, change clothes, put on deodorant, come down stairs, look at phone for a few minutes to kill some time, then go to kitchen.

Can't find keys.

Retrace steps around the house, thinking if I moved the keys to a location where they'd be easier to notice for about 15 minutes, its now 5:50am

Look out the window -- CAR IS MISSING.

Call police. Officer on the way.

Call work, tell them I cant come in, car is stolen, work uniform in the car.

Officer arrives at 6:10am gets some information. Asks if we were drunk last night, if the car could possibly have been repossessed, if we have any friends who might have believed it was okay to borrow, if there's something of value in the car, if we have enemies (crazy ex girlfriend, crazy relatives) that might want to get revenge for something, but we answered no to all the questions.

My wife and I are the only ones who live in the house. We haven't had any guests at the house for weeks, we don't have any enemies (afaik) that would want to do something to us, our crazy schizophrenic next door neighbor doesn't drive and has been in the hospital for the past five days. And my car isn't really worth anything or has anything of value in it.

The crazy thing is that someone entered my house WHILE I was in the house, with my wife and my dog. I don't know how they got in without alerting my dog, or me, or anyone. The keys were not in a very obvious place, I don't think, at least not more obvious than other things such as an iPad that was sitting on the living room couch, a Nintendo Wii, a bluray player, expensive makeup my wife came home with, an engagement ring that was in the bathroom(!!)

I don't know who could have done it. I honestly dont have any friends who know me so personally to know my morning routine, so I can only imagine it was some stranger stalker in the neighborhood who saw an opportunity (not even a good opportunity either, we were all in the house!) couldn't find anything else out of place or unusual with the house. This person was really inconspicuous for someone who would commit such a risky crime for a relatively little reward.

I am however, relieved no one was hurt and other than my missing car, nothing was damaged or destroyed.

I know statistically that most people that steal (or get caught stealing) vehicles often take them for a joy ride and dump them off somewhere else usually pretty far away and that most people who do often get away with it. Most of them usually aren't even recovered. The officer said this is a very strange and unusual case that we don't know anyone or can suspect anyone who would have done it, to freely enter our house, take the keys and leave with the car. Its a super ballsy thing to do.

If anyone has had any experience with having a stolen car, or has any advice they heard from someone who had their car stolen, I could really use it. At the moment im changing the locks on all my doors and waiting to get a call from the police to tell me they found it.

I have a professor who teaches my Exercise, Nutrition, and Wellness class who has hinted on more than one occasion that the theory of evolution can't be true.

He thinks the claim that human beings evolved from primates, and by extension microorganisms is totally bogus. Human beings, particularly how the body works internally, are far too complex, mysterious, and perfect to have possibly evolved from things that are so simple and vulnerable.

Having been in his class, he's highly educated, enthusiastic about the subject, and far from stubborn. I trust his judgment on a lot of things and he's by far more involved with the class than any of my other instructors. I don't know for sure if he believes in creationism, but I've overheard him telling a story to someone about some people he met at a church, so he may be an active church goer. He researches nutrition and physical exercises daily on the internet and on youtube and has something new to tell us every class, often finding out interesting stuff, and even finding articles claiming some human body functions that scientists have yet to have clear explanations for.

I'm not necessarily saying I agree or disagree with him, but I find it interesting to hear someone like him who is well educated and otherwise very open-minded make the claim that evolution can't be real. I haven't yet picked his brain about it, as I'd rather complete the semester and get my final grade before possibly offending him if I sound too contrarian to his beliefs.

I just started taking my first internet class at community college, and it blows.

I thought it would be kinda cool since it's set up like an internet forum like doomworld is, but getting work done for it is the most time consuming thing I've ever endured, and I just started. It's a computer information systems and technology class, and many of the points are involved in class participation, so the teacher will post a list of questions that are required to be answered in the form of a new thread. Most of the questions require you to click links and read a long article, or browse through a website and pick your favorite page and write a summary about it or something. In addition to that, part of the points involved are to visit other student's threads and respond to their answers in some way or another.

I'm a pretty self-motivating guy in most conditions, but I'm having a really hard time already keeping composed, mannerful, and polite to talk about something so hideously boring. It doesn't help that my teacher is flooding the announcements page with 10-15 minute long youtube videos related to the subject, links to other uninteresting websites, and isn't clear whether or not it's required or optional to view.

I feel like I'm going to be spending 20 hours a week of my own personal time just to keep up, while my classes on campus are a fucking piece of cake. I literally just show up, take some notes here and there through the lecture, and complete the assignments the instructor hands out in class, or immediately after class, and my mind is free for the rest of the week, while this online class has so much reading material drilled into that I feel like I'm neck deep in quicksand already. Anyone have any tips on how to get through this?

I can't remember if I've mentioned this before, but I've never really been a dog person until I met my wife. I've grown up with cats for most of my life and she's infatuated with puppies, so when we moved in together I became part owner of her dog. Until I've gotten more accustomed to her dog, I was always bothered by the way dogs bark and shout and jump all over you the instant you walk into a dog owners home. I'e grown to be more accepting of it as time passes, and to my surprise most people who've owned dogs or are best friends with a dog owner are too. But sometimes it makes guests uncomfortable.

Speaking of making people uncomfortable, my dog tends to make excessive eye contact as a way of getting attention. Naturally she follows me anywhere in the house I go. I think in part due to her separation anxiety, she needs to constantly be informed where I am at all times. I've kinda just adapted to it, but lately I'm beginning to suspect that she is learning that this is a tactic she can use to get what she wants.

I walk my dog every morning at 5:30am. It's the first thing I do when I wake up besides put on pants and shoes. It chills her out for most of the day and keeps her from doing things like peeing in the house or digging in the trash when my wife and I are out of the house. At 5:30am, It's dark and quiet and free from distractions and beats the neighbors who walk their dogs in the morning too, so my dog doesn't get all riled up and start yanking on the leash and trying to pull me around. I don't have any tolerance for that shit so I usually shorten the length of her walks if she starts acting up to keep her in line. After about the usual 45 minutes of walking her, I get home and take a shower, get dressed, then drive my wife to work, then I drive to my college classes. That's my morning routine almost every morning.

One morning I didn't have to go to school or work and chose to sleep in. At the time I woke up, around 9:00am or so, I went downstairs to watch some TV. As I was laying on the couch my dog, simply walking around in circles around the house as she usually does sits right in front of me on the couch and just looks at me. Unsure, I started petting her head, scratching her back, playing with one of her toys, but these only seem to distract her for a minute and the instant I stop she's back to sitting 6 inches away from my face staring at me with her big ol eyes wide open, occasionally making a quiet drone or moaning sound or something. This is annoying evil cat behavior except with the way my dog is, I find her exhibiting this kinda behavior to be much more noticeable and awkward. I think because cats have a way of acting where sometimes you're not even sure they are aware you exist, while my dog is always constantly alert of my whereabouts and responds to everything I do. I can't focus on the TV show and she continues making me uncomfortable, so against my will I take her outside for a walk in the afternoon in the hopes it would calm her down.

It works and she chills out for most of the day. At least until the next morning. I guess in excitement for going on these morning walks, she's awake earlier than I am. Sometimes I will wake up before my alarm goes off with my dog apparently staring directly into my eyes while I'm sleeping. Only inches away from my face, occasionally making that stupid moan noise, I accept the fact that with my dog's eyes fixated on me the entire time, and sitting invasively in my personal space, close enough that I can almost feel her breath when she exhales from her nostrils, that I'm not going to feel anymore refreshed trying to sleep during the remaining hour before my alarm goes off than if I just wake up now. This is becoming a daily affair and I'm beginning to suspect she's learning to do this conciously as a way to make me nervous and uncomfortable and give in to any of her demands.

Today I woke up at 3:30am. What do?

A couple nights ago I started watching a TLC 'reality documentary' series on netflix called extreme cheapskates. I'm a bit of a stickler at times in regards to spending money, and it was a bit relieving to see people so radically in that direction.

On the first episode, first guy they interview, out of all the episodes on netflix I watched, was the worst. He air dries his paper towels on a clothesline so that he can use to dry is hands or clean up a mess as much as five times. He puts a brick in the back of the toilet tank to displace the water so it uses less per flush, sharpens his disposable razors, picks up any amount of loose change, buys expired foods from the liquidation store, even asks people at restaurants for their leftover foods when they're done eating!

The worst of it though was, that his wife and him were talking about their wedding day, and how he had orthodontic surgery the very next day with no insurance. She had a job and insurance, which was the reason he married her.

The episode continued, and it's the morning before their 25th wedding anniversary dinner. And he had to get her a gift. She said she's given up expecting any sort of jewelry or fancy restaurant or whatever. The self-proclaimed extreme cheapskate spends the day seeking a variety of gifts to get for her wife for their 25th anniversary dinner -- starting with the dumpster. In his searches, he finds four wilted roses, to which he proudly states "nothing says romance like flowers" and a teapot, which he defended his finding by saying she's always drinking tea.

Later on he moves on to the discount food store, purchases a bottled water for $0.15, and a miniature box of animal crackers for $0.30. "Not even expired!" he exclaims. Then he 'splurges a little' this year by buying her a skull shaped stress ball for $0.99. When he gets home, he finds an old greeting card his sister in law gave to his wife when she was ill. He crosses her name out on the card and writes his own, and paperclips a piece of paper reading "Happy Anniversary" over the message in the card!

When they go out to dinner that night to the local diner, she begs him, for this one day a year, not to take other people's leftovers. They bicker about it back and forth on the ride there. When they get there, he says he needs go to the restroom, but instead gives the $0.15 water to the diner staff and asks them to refrigerate it for him, so that they can serve it to his wife in lieu of paying for a normal beverage.

The night proceeds with him giving her the garbage he collected for her. While not ungrateful, she's obviously not impressed. He later starts scavenging tables where the guests left their leftover food for the wait staff to collect, embarrassing her like no other. The episode ends with her consolidating herself by saying these things happen, but she gets over them in time. I thought to myself I would never be like him.

The very next morning I go out to walk my dog just before sunrise. As were walking, my eyes fall upon a trash can. Perched directly on top, is a 21 in flatscreen LCD computer monitor in great condition. Much bigger than my current monitor. It wasn't even in the trash, but sitting on top of an old beanbag, filling up the can. I stared at it for a while, but it was still dark out, no one was around. I hesitated. Started to walk away, then turned around and yanked it out of the can. I took it home, tested it, and it works fine! Much larger than my current monitor which i paid over $100 for, and the colors really pop. It's not in my interest to pick from the trash, but I can't help but feel like I really scored big.

I hate myself.

Here's an award winning thread:

almost every day I go into work, my nose starts to get itchy. I feel it on the tip of my nose and the outer parts of the inside of my nostrils. Its a lot like when you visit someone who owns a hundred cats and there's a thin coat of fur on every surface of their house and they just turned on an oscillating can. Its an infuriatingly annoying feeling and I only feel at work. As soon as I go home the feeling is gone. Theres no furry things where I work. I work in food service and the air isn't stuffy or anything, and I don't have any allergies, or a cold or anything. My nose just gets super itchy.

anybody have any idea what's up?

I think I'd truly regret calling this an announcement of my official retirement from Doom mapping, but I think I may be coming to the conclusion that it's time to quit kidding myself.

With certain circumstances in my life sucking up my time and negating my ability to pursue Doom mapping as a legitimate hobby, I've been balancing a weight on my shoulders with rather small unfinished projects that I'm struggling to bring to completion. Things are moving at a glacial pace and my future only looks to incorporate more extra-curricular activities in my daily routine, making my absolute favorite pastime look more and more like something that's only fit to be put in the attic and left alone as a distant memory.

A few years ago, mapping seemed to flow naturally out of me, which is where the majority of my body of work came from. I began to concentrate on more complex design strategies in order to construct more unique looking and replayable doom levels. Unfortunately this started shortly before I bought a house and got married and such. If the kind of levels I really want to make were a piece of jewelry at the bottom of the swimming pool, my responsibilities are the air-inflated floaties pulling me up to the surface. My wife would be offended if she saw me describing things that way but it's about time to admit that Doom mapping wasn't much more than a timesink to get myself to the point in life that I am at now. Now that I'm living it, there isn't much room to squeeze it back in. There really hasn't been much room this whole time and anything I've released since shows it.

While reverting to my older mapping style would probably be much more productive, I'd still have the reminder that "I can do better than this" lingering over me as I play through them. I think there are enough mappers here who can create similar enough maps. I'm not really interested in being a part of that category of mappers.

But anyway, it hurts my ego every time I come back to mapping after a long unavoidable hiatus with an intention to create a design that I feel has finally manifested in my mind after many weeks. The lack of regular practice with Doombuilder 2 is clear in my attempt to rectify it when the design comes out sloppy and inconsistent. I begrudgingly close the laptop lid and go do something else. If I find myself a career path that pays much better and has an unusual amount of downtime and low-stress, I may be able to get back into the groove and nullify everything this blog stands to declare. Until then, I feel as though the only other appropriate time to get back into mapping is when I retire and wait to pass away.

What does this mean for UAC Ultra 2? Not sure. For a long time I've been epitomizing UU2 as a way to "go out with a bang" and encapsulate as many of my ideas as humanly possible into a single megawad and live the rest of my life comfortably with the satisfaction that I've exhausted as much of my potential as I could into a final product. Then I'd leave everyone in the community with a sick megawad to play in many different styles with hundreds of hours of gameplay depending on how one chooses to play it. I'd also hope it would stand as a model for what I'd like to see more mappers do with their maps. I can't say I'm pulling the plug on it, but the rate of its progress is mirrored by my motivation to complete it without an optimistic partner or small team to share it with. I hope I can garner enough strength to make my ideas come to fruition, but until then, I've put a pin in it until things change.

In the meantime, I have no trouble checking on Doomworld and posting every now and again. I still have an insatiable urge to kill monsters and fortunately, playing the game and all the new wads that come out for it is significantly less taxing than editing it is. At best, I think tabling my mapping career may be excusable in exchange for offering myself as a mentor for any interested mappers (PM me!) or volunteering myself for a rather minor role in a major project. It breaks my heart to tell myself that it's time to call it quits, and I'll fight with every fiber in my body to keep the candle lit, but I just wanted you guys to know where I'm at.

Gregory Wang is a cousin of mine. We live on opposite sides of the United States so our relationship is pretty distant, but occasionally we get to meet up during family events and such. He's a pretty cool dude.

He's also an extremely talented pianist. He's been practicing piano since he was in second grade and has since performed in many concerts, was a four-year winner in music competitions in his school, performed with Johnson City and Maryville Symphony orchestras, competed in the Russian International Music Competition, presented with scholarships to various schools, and is currently studying at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music

I wasn't able to find any videos of him playing online but I've seen DVDs of him performing and it is jawdropping. I'm not even one to listen to classical music but his performances are completely outstanding. During holidays, he will occasionally sit down play requests on my grandparent's piano, from Charlie Chaplin to Lady Gaga. He has an amazing gift of being able to play music by ear.

I haven't contacted him recently, but I've been contemplating the idea of getting a piano keyboard, and some midi recording software and abusing his talents to record music to use exclusively in my Doom levels so I don't have to be concerned about people not liking the music in my maps ever again.

Last week, I noticed a flier posted outside of my workplace concerning a lost pet. Joe the Tortoise, with contact information with any help of where he was last seen.

Today I was walking my dog along a rather busy street and spotted something rather disturbing on the side of the road. Shell split in half, head severed, unusual intestines I'm not used to seeing (I've never dissected an amphibian before.) A certainly gruesome sight. I can tell by it's size that it's not your normal pond turtle. I think I have a duty to report it to the person who posted the flier, but I feel a little uncomfortable delivering the news.

RIP Joe the Tortoise.

Anybody have any suggestions on how I best tell this person?

Anyone play around with this much anymore? I've kinda steered away from it for a while since it's not so much the hot new thing anymore. But I decided to kill a few hours of my night playing around with its large amount of selectable configurations in hopes of generating a vast array of "what if" scenarios. Little did I know I'd dig myself deep into a downward spiral of time-wastery by voluntarily torturing myself with a series of monumentally horrendous megawads.

Allow me to state that this is by no means a rant about how Oblige is a terrible level generator. It's no cacoward maker, but it does kick slige in the nuts in a couple areas, and with it's huge level of customization, I'm granted the freedom to create horrible abominations that should never exist to be played by any doom marine. Rest assured, hilarity ensues.

I started my fun playing with the monster selection, where oblige offers the entire list of Doom 2's bestiary, with a drop down menu allowing you to pick the probability in which each monster appears. Out of morbid curiosity, I selected each monster and set them to "None at all" and lastly setting revenants to "INSANE" in the likely event of creating an all-revenant megawad.

My megawad opened up staging me in MAP01: "Data Refinery" which is where all the revenants live for some reason. The level started with me having to outrun hordes of screaming revenants, dipping left and right to direct homing missiles into themselves, despite being immune to their kin's firepower. When reaching the other side of the room, I am within arms reach of a chaingun, followed by long stretches of bullet clips scaling the walls of the room. It was a thoughtful gesture of Oblige to give me a weapon better than a pistol to calm this raging riot, but I was offended by it not taking into consideration how long it would take me to put a dent into this giant pile of 363 angry skeletons that occupy this territory that I so gracefully intruded. Attempting to run past them all was no use, as each corner turned was announced by overlapping RRRAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH's. Obviously I grew tired early of the lack of superior firepower and the inability to incite infighting. I retreated to Oblige's interface to create something new.

I wanted to give my Oblige experience a little more Super Shotgun lovin. Fortunately, the "I LOVE IT" option for weapons is the maximum availability for the Doom Weapon Control menu. I also wanted to stir up some good infighting too. I knew from past experiences, that setting the "monster strength" often opens up an episode with light monsters, which slowly progresses into armies of cacodemons and hell knights. I wanted to skip straight to the hard stuff, so I left all monsters set to "None At All" except for Imps, Demons, Chaingun guys, revenants, Hell Barons mancubi, arachnatrons, and archviles.

"It will be just like Hell Revealed 2!" he said.

I ran the megawad, accompanied with HRMUS.WAD to set the mood. Each level's starting room opened up with a weapon, a small group of ground troops, overcompensated by tremendous piles of health kits. Seriously, health bonuses on top of stimpacks on top of medikits on top of more medikits on top of stimpacks on top of megaarmors. Much like how selecting the Nightmare skill level is immediately followed with the question "Are you sure?" this was Oblige's method of communicating to me "Trust me, you are going to get hurt. a lot."

At least Oblige is honest. As each level successfully pitted me against insurmountable odds, with rooms so crowded there appeared to be no correct way to go without digging yourself a deeper grave. Opening a door only ignites a different variety of monster roars, unless of course I catch myself breathing a sigh of relief whenever I opened a door into one of Oblige's obviously prefabricated rooms, which are apparently too complex to house monsters. However it wouldn't take much for said rooms to be overcrowded by the resulting swarms of the next opened door.

In one map, aptly titled "Welcome to the Enigma" I had no trouble subduing the introductory Hell Barons with my unparalleled circlestrafing skillz. I ran up some stairs where I found myself waist deep in green armors, and a few medikits, and stumbled into a giant parade of arachnatrons. Seriously, probably the second largest fleet of arachnatrons I've ever endured in one sitting. After investing a good 15 minutes of my life crushing all of them with my super shotgun, I made a dash for the next door where my next task awaits. Unfortunately, my unsuspecting ambitions turn into a horrible nightmare, awakening a sea of archviles which flooded the room, driving me back to my starting area, permitting them to successfully reconstruct my entire arachnophobic death factory, leaving me in my starting room with 18 shells and 6% health, completely surrounded by an uncanny swarm of terror with no other purpose than to turn my screen very very red.

I played a few other maps which were usually stupidly unplayable, due entirely to my choices in selecting obviously game-breaking settings for my generated megawads.

In hindsight I probably should have provided screenshots and seed numbers. Maybe I will later as I delve my stupid self into trudging through these disgusting piles of crap.

I want to preface this blog by saying that this isn't a means of responding to everyone's reactions to it, and I'm not posting this for more detailed feedback. At this risk of sounding like a cry for attention, I'm hoping this is interpretted the way I intended it and less like "PLEASE LIKE MY MAPS!!" I'm just laying out my thoughts on how the first episode panned out and how the results were different than what I expected. This is helpful for me as a mapper, to spell this out for me to review during times of need, instead of letting it dwell in my mind, abstaining me from moving forward.

I believe I was successful in creating what many of my listeners said were overly ambitious. I created levels that could be played in single player, cooperative and deathmatch. I designed the maps to play quite differently in all skill levels, with each skill level optimized to a different style of gameplay per player. All done, without reducing the volume of monsters that appear in each map. I designed the levels with a high volume of large secrets to heavily expand the gameplay if the player so chooses. I also designed the levels with many different possible routes to the exit, so that coop players could spread out and attack the same monsters from different angles, and in Nightmare, respawning hordes of monsters wouldn't crowd up hallways, blocking the only paths the player can take. This was also exciting to me as the designer, as with almost every demo I watched, the players each had a different approach to each map, none of which matching my usual runs. It seemed almost every player had a different experience, even though most of them conceded on it being rather boring.

Watching the demos of my players in my maps was infuriating at times. The way many of the players skulked around corners, picked off monsters from a safe distance, and played highly defensively was absurd to me. It appeared as though they were expecting any step to activate the trap that jumps out and slits their throat. Like the use of light monsters was supposed to lead up to something deadly. When truthfully, I wanted my players to play highly aggressively, utilize all their weapons, ration out their ammo, and crash through this thing. Instead, players weren't very observant of the ammo items, were hesitant to press onward, and resorted to infighting to conserve ammunition. With six levels with the same style of gameplay, where players were quite obviously missing the point, I couldn't help but scream "WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?" while watching some of the demos people made for me, as they simply wandered around crowds of monsters, even while carrying powerful weapons and tons of ammo, and unintentionally ignoring the hitscanners that devastated them. Apparently distracted by the array of directions to choose from, which was the type of gameplay I designed the easier skill levels for. I was expecting people to approach these levels with the same aggressive enthusiasm as they would Knee-Deep in the Dead, or Hell Revealed 2. From my observations it looks as though the foreboding atmosphere and lack of highly threatening monsters implied a different method of gameplay, and the players obliged.

I was beginning to be concerned that with a game as black and white as Doom, that people seem to have a need to be told what to do, and that even with an increasing demand for non-linearity in the Doom community, it's the levels that pit the player in situations where "the only way out is through" are the most successful. It became increasingly depressing as I wondered how the creator of Garry's Mod might feel, after creating a mod designed for infinite possibilities, the majority of it's player base uses it to show off Gman making silly faces.

It was comforting when I retreated to my playtesters to ask where I went wrong, and they responded that I have successfully created levels that were perfect for the type of player that I am, and that what is perfect to me may sound good on paper, but in practice, it is so specific to my own taste that it's discouraging when another player, even one who does like the same gameplay as I do, has a mild disagreement with it, especially with a brand name that people will play with specific expectations. Just give it time.

I hope time is all that it is, but it feels as though my time is up now that UAC Ultra 2 is residing in post hell. I still have hopes that after UAC Ultra 2 is completed, that players may recognize its beauty and how careful I was at designing it after playing and replaying it a few times. That is, if they can reserve the strength to give it a second chance even after it left them with a sour taste in their mouth the first time around. Who knows how long that will take. It may take decades to even consider playing UAC Ultra 2 in Nightmare coop or in Deathmatch. And I could simply be completely full of myself to be expecting that, especially when a quick sadistic zinger at the end of my opening post is all it takes put its credibility in ruins for most people. But I certainly hope not.

I'm hesitant to move right on to making the rest of UAC Ultra 2. Even though I have set high standards for myself, along with any doom level designer, I'm in full confidence that I can create the amazing Doom experiences that I can envision in my head. I'm just concerned whether I can successfully design something that will appeal to the types of people that enjoyed Speed of Doom, Alien Vendetta, Scythe 2, and the Memento Mori's without compromising the goals I set for myself in the first place, especially because many of the scenarios that appear in these wads cannot be recreated without a UV-only like design. It will take a lot of careful planning to make them work in the many game modes I wish to appeal to, and simultaneously create a unique and fun experience for the people that won't play in anything other than UV. I'm taking my time with it, but I refuse to ship out a rushed product, and can assure that every map that appears in the completed megawad will have to endure a cruel and severe level of quality control monitored by myself.

In November 2006, I was 15 years old and got my first job working at Subway. Shortly after I set a personal goal to save up $30,000 to put down on a house and become a homeowner before I turn 22. I'm 21 years old, and I currently reside in West Norriton Pennsylvania as of August 24, 2012 with my current fiance Julie and our dog Penny (not shown)



When I was 15 years old, I started earning $6.25 an hour making sandwiches for people 5 days a week. I submitted to reserving 40% or more of my paychecks in separate savings accounts (some banks had better interest rates than others.) and doing my absolute best to live within my means. I used my money strictly for the cell phone bill (my burn phone that could only call and text was about $25 a month) and gas for my car (about $80 a month -- short commute to work) My entertainment depended on playing Doom and designing levels. I listened to the same CDs I listen to today, and I hung out mostly with my poor friends who knew how to have fun for free. I've studied marketing and advertising as a hobby and started analyzing social trends in regards to entertainment mediums. I've since established an irreversible hatred to almost everything such as video games, money, television shows, advertisements, movies, music, social events, etc. I've confided in doing the things that hit all the right notes for me, and sticking with them for long periods of time. This filled in a hold of boredom in me that hardly cost anything during this time frame.

I met my fiance Julie in October 2011 when I started working at Wawa, a gas station / convenience store combo where I currently make $12.00 an hour. Before we started dating, we would hang out every single day after work at midnight in the church parking lot behind her grandma's house where she lived. We stood out in the parking lot talking about anything. We talked for hours and hours into the night in 20 degree weather, just talking about ourselves and how stupid work is and how shitty people are and all that. It was freezing outside but we didn't care. We continued hanging out week after week, during a point in my life where I was convinced love didn't mean anything and to ever consider getting married is to find a woman that you can tolerate and coexist with for the rest of your life. I was wrong.

We started dating shortly after, even though I was hesitant to get involved with a coworker and more importantly, someone who I was a really close friend to. However, our relationship moved forward. As time went on, we would have our occasional tiffs at work. They say that working with your significant other does a lot of damage to your relationship. This can be true because we would often say some rather nasty things to each other just out of stress and time constraints at work. Fortunately we were able to resolve all of our conflicts because we agreed that it was more important to be together than to be the one that's right. (Which I'm sure you can imagine was extremely difficult for me to admit)

I asked Julie to marry me on February 14th 2012. We hadn't been together very long before I made such a commitment, but having spent a majority of my free time with her, day after day, it didn't take me long to understand that this was the girl I wanted to be around for the rest of my life. In due time, My commitment to my financial goal was later amended to be the for the house for my fiance and I to live in.

Here we are now. Notice the giant rock on her finger.



I saved up $30,000 in November 2011, and contacted one of my coworkers who is also a realtor. She was able to get me connected with one of her friends which approved me for a loan up to $158,650 because of my excellent credit score. We began shopping for houses in all the neighborhoods in the area. We looked at over thirty houses before we finally found one we were both comfortable in and agreed on. On August 24th, we settled.

Our house is a twin on a quiet street in West Norriton Pennsylvania. We have three bedrooms, one bathroom, a large front porch, a living room, dining room, kitchen, basement, and unfinished sunroom. We have a fenced in backyard for our dog Penny to run around free in, and a parking space in the back, along with a detached one-car garage.

This is our living room, shown are my brother Randy and friend Francisco. We got pretty much all of our furniture second hand. All of our friends and family have been extremely generous. The couches, coffee table, Playstation 2, and stereo were all free. I got the 55in TV on craigslist for $250 (it also comes with picture-in picture modes so I can do my Home Dooming Station that I plan to invest in in the future), and our cable (all the DVD seasons of our favorite TV series to the right of the tv) were about $150 in total.


Here's our kitchen, messy because this photo was taken while I had company over. We got our kitchen appliances from a coworker who was coincedentally moving out around the same time and had to sell her refrigerator, stove, microwave, and dishwasher that she got new two years ago. She sold me the whole set for $800. The house came with appliances too, but they're a bit older. We moved them into the sunroom where I'm going to clean them up and sell them on craigslist for, hopefully, about the same price. The kitchen table and chairs I got for free from mom and dad. They were taking up space in their basement.



Aaaand here's the backyard. Shown is my car in the parking space, alongside with our single car garage. We still have to mow the lawn and scrap that swingset. We'll probably get to that later this week.



TL;DR I've worked some years at a job that just barely transcends over minimum wage, and with a combination of careful determination and smart decision making, I'm now a homeowner living happily with my fiance on a quiet street in a really nice house. Things are looking pretty awesome for me and I couldn't be happier. Also fuck everyone who didn't believe in me and thought I was stupid for acting the way I have been for the past few years because this is where it got me.

Doomworld forums comes with an ignore feature that hides posts by the members who are selected to be on your list. It can be accessed from the user control panel. It doesn't totally hide the fact that the person had posted there, but it does state that the person who posted is being ignored, and only takes up a little space. I've recently been pretty liberal about updating it now and then. The link that says to click to read the post (because sometimes its relevant to the discussion) doesn't seem to work though. Other than that, doomworld forums now has much fewer people who post strictly in the everything else section, have lame opinions about video games and want to talk about the economy and politics and religion (or their lack thereof) and share other rather personal details about themselves that I'd be much better off not knowing. Now browsing through doomworld is a little less taxing on my sanity to read now that I'm reading more about doom and less about stuff that makes me want to kill all of you. That would be all.

Also in before "40oz is first on my list"

I know Doomworld knows a good bit about cooking stuff so I figured I'd ask.

Whenever I go to the grocery store and pick up condiments and sauces to add to my meals, I usually always end up with a ton of leftover sauces and dips and they end up stinking up my refrigerator for weeks. Well it doesn't stink that bad, but it's very annoying to open up the refrigerator after I haven't gone grocery shopping in a while, and find all I have left are bottles of ketchup, mustard, barbecue sauce, french union nacho dip, salsa, sour cream, maple syrup, horseradish sauce, relish, buffalo sauce, and nacho spinach dip, and nothing else edible.

I'll get one bottle of this stuff and it will last FOREVER. Sometimes I just wanna throw it away but a lot of it I've only used once and the bottles are almost totally full. Are there any good meals I can cook or prepare that will make good use of this stuff? Preferably not millions of hot dogs and hamburgers and giant bowls of nachos please.

As of late I've been on a house hunting quest with my loving fiance. We've looked at a few houses in person and we only have a few prospects now that we're considering putting an offer on. One of the things that we are really hoping for is at least three bedrooms, or two if there's enough property to add on the house.

As of now, my fiance agreed that before we have kids, It is okay that I use one of the bedrooms as a "Doom Room" / Office. A room to myself where I can put together my PC and Widescreen TV combo that I play with a gamepad, and optional split screen with three other PCs on Odamex. Also a dimly lit room with bulletin boards and sketch paper and a wide desk to draw over so that I can continue planning and making doom maps. (At the moment my life is just way too full of distractions to map comfortably.)

While the topic has come up some times before, My fiance would most certainly like to have kids at some point in her life. I agree and have no qualms with that. However, the topic of exposing my children to Doom at a young age, teaching them to map and play the game very well, My fiance has proven to have a rather averse stance on that subject. The first time I mentioned it she said "Our kids are NOT playing doom."

I chose not to get confrontational and I figured with a little more Dooming she might think differently in the future.

Another time it came up, I happened to be staying over her house with my laptop and her young cousins, a boy and two girls ages 3, 5, and 11 were visiting as well. They're very loud and hyperactive kids at times, and it was very funny to see how intrigued they were with the game as I was playing it. I was especially interested in how quickly they were able to figure out that colored doors are locked without the colored key, and tell me what places to go that I haven't explored yet, especially in such godawfully ugly '94 maps I was playing. I let them get a chance at playing a few levels too, and they adapted to using the controller pretty quick. The three year old played the best! It was also funny to see them shouting "GET THAT ONE THATS A BIG GUY" and "EWWW! HE'S UGLY!!" and telling me not to go in the hallways that are too dark!

Later that day my fiance seemed kinda iffy about me letting her cousins play the game. She said the game is really violent and scary, and that I was out of my mind if I was gonna let my kids play it. She even went on to say she doesn't want our kids to become psychopaths! I tried to deconstruct her argument saying that I started playing the game when I was 3, listen to grindcore, and watch gore/slasher movies, but everything else about me is completely normal. I went on explaining that the graphics are so colorful and pixelated, that it's comical compared to the melancholic gore that they're no-doubt going to be exposed to when the other kids at school are playing Gears of War 6 and Grand Theft Auto 8. And that violent video games have been scientifically proven to pacify a person's mind and make them less prone to commiting any violent acts (Which can be good and bad, I wouldn't want kids that are TOO passive)

Unfortunately, she didn't seem to buy into any one of my points and is still holding her stance. She doesn't seem too strong about this subject as I've seen her on other topics of interest, so I'm not really heartbroken about it. I'm sure there's gonna be a point where I can get her to crack and admit defeat. There's no way in hell I'll censor my kids from my favorite things.

The thought of that makes me wonder if my mom wouldn't let my dad be interested in the things he likes in front of me. As far as I know, I don't really have any grasp on the genres of music he likes, his favorite movies, what he likes to do. He's difficult to interpret sometimes. Not that I've ever had any problems with him, I just feel like there's more to know about him than I already know. I wouldn't want to be a closed book towards my kids, show apathy to virtually everything, and pretend to like things that I dont.

Any ideas of what I can tell my fiance about Doom to help change her mind? Or better yet, a source to direct her to so that she may see it differently than her naive TV-news-influenced thoughts lead her to believe?

It's pretty sick. Probably the best CD I own. Despise You still kicks ass even after a long hiatus. Agoraphobic Nosebleed sounds pretty awesome too, although I miss the crazy trippy noisecore of albums like Frozen Corpse Stuffed with Dope, I can't say I don't enjoy their newest stuff too. I just felt like talking about it.

Is the question my friends ask me.

I openly tell people I suck at googling stuff. Even though it's not entirely true. Generally, if I need to find an answer to a specific question, I can get whatever it is I need. What I suck at is obtaining information from things I don't know anything about.

Google didn't always suck. I remember when I was in middle school, I would google my favorite bands and find tons of background information about the members, filers from the shows they played, and related bands. I remember pretty distinctly simply searching for "doom" and spending hours scrolling though images and pages reading everything I can possibly know about the game.

I don't really search for the same stuff as I used to, and I don't really know for sure if the internet is just fucking gay now or if I'm just crumbling at the test of time, but I rarely get the kind of interesting results from googling stuff as I used to. The most common problem I have is even thinking of the right terms to search for. I've been wanting to learn more about foreclosed houses, so I searched "foreclosures" hoping to find out what they are, how much they typically run for, pros and cons of buying a foreclosure, etc. Instead I got a huge list websites with home listings that I need to sign up and log in to be able to see the price and pictures of the foreclosed houses they have listed. I generally spend a lot of time switching words around in my searches to get the kind of information I need to know, and often giving up before I even really get started. Searching anything will almost always give you links to really high-traffic ad-infested websites, or to youtube videos that don't tell me what I need to know, or opinionated blogs only marginally related to the searched term.

In fact, I decided to search today "I suck at google" and it wasn't until four pages later that I found an article that shed a little bit of light why google is so lame these days.

http://www.diligentiagroup.com/background-investigations/why-google-search-results-suck-and-what-to-do-about-it/

I was already aware of websites paying big bucks to land first results for certain keywords in search engines, but apparently all sorts of websites are manipulating the system, making unrelated garbage appear on the first couple pages and attempting to disguise itself as something you might be into. Too often I search for something, get overloaded with potentially interesting links to crap and get discouraged from searching any longer. As far as I understand, many other search engines suffer from the same conditions. Did google always suck or is this just the direction commercialized internet search engines are going?

I was watching some of The Green Herring's UV-Max videos of random PWADs on youtube and was a map that reminded me of some of my early (EARLY) doom mapping way back when. I had then remembered many years ago being heartbroken from having a laptop that I burned out to the point of not even being able to turn it on. My oldest brother was able to remove the harddrive and extract all the data on to some DVDs for me much later. By that time I recuperated from the loss of data I had on there and moved on. I decided today that I would load the DVD up and browse around.

I was amazed to run into a ton of my past files. I found some old freeware games I used to play, folders and folders of punk music I used to listen to (brings back memories!) and a whole bunch of images including some custom made forum profile pictures like the one seen below:



I guess I thought that was funny when I was in middle school.

Apparently Ashley Robbins was my favorite pornstar because I found a folder jampacked with her nude photoshoots among a few other random playboy playmate pics and some of Carmen Electra. Also found a folder of a bunch of myspace pics of my first girlfriend I used to creep on. Probably whacked off to those pictures too. Found some screenshots of old wads I was playing that I shared with a friend of mine who is also a Doomer. Found some slige wads (slige was a big deal at the time) I also stumbled on a folder with some midi files I had extracted from Doom wads like Scythe 2 and Memento Mori. I found a few that I recognize but am unsure what their origin is, it would be awesome if any of you guys could identify them for me.

I'm a bit dissapointed that I could not find the earliest bits of Doom mapping I've ever done which include edits of DOOM1.WAD, and some urban deathmatch maps. I did find my JDoom folder which was loaded with wads I was playing like Icarus and DOOMUD3.WAD, whatever that is. However I did stumble across this wad I found in my Doombuilder folder aptly named "jon.wad" which isn't my first map ever, but it's about the earliest piece of doom history of mine I will ever find. I don't even remember making it. Here's a download link if you guys want to see what I've been doing way back in 2004. It's MAP02.

http://jbserver.com/forums/attachments/8342_jon.zip

I do however remember working on a megawad that was going to replace SS Nazis with a cool doom zombie look alike. (basically a strife guy with doomguy's helmet) It's very short, clearly unfinished and full of unclosed sectors. I think I was trying to achieve a vanilla deep water effect and the architecture is inspired by fbase6.wad I believe. Boy how times have changed.

My girlfriend knows about my obsession with Doom and that I design levels for it, but until last week she didn't quite realize how simple it was. The other day my girlfriend approached me while I was drawing layouts for doom maps on paper. She looked at me quizzically and asked what the hell am I doing. I explained to her that it's a lot easier for me to make Doom levels when I plan them out of paper. I basically draw some shapes and when I draw them in the editor, they become rooms.

She looked at the unfinished half of the layout and said "what are you putting here?" I told her I hadn't decided yet. She told me I should make a room shaped like a heart. I was a little skeptical at first but I have a bad habit of frowning on a lot of ideas my girlfriend has, so I just went ahead and drew the heart shaped room.

Yesterday I was at home, off from work, and began mapping. When I was finished with the bits and pieces of the layout I drew the other day, I used my phone take a photo of the layout on Doombuilder next to the layout she helped me draw and sent it to her. Then sent her a screenshot of me playing the level inside the heart shaped room she designed for me.

She responded to the picture message with "OMG!! that looks awesome! Can I play it so I can see it better?" before then she had only played the first few levels of Knee Deep in The Dead before she was getting sick of getting lost. She needed to. I wouldn't let the relationship continue if she wouldn't play doom with me.

Later that night I stopped over her house and told her about how easy it is to make Doom levels. Just draw some random shapes, adjust the floor and ceiling height, and throw in some guns and monsters and you have a doom level. "I love drawing random shapes!" she exclaimed. Later this week I'm gonna install Doom 2 and Doombuilder on her laptop and play around with it to show her how it works.

I'm hoping I can show her some of my strategies to making simple layouts and show her some cool stuff you can do with thing placement. I know already she doesn't really love playing doom as much as I do, but I think she might have a thing for designing levels. We'll find out in the near future and I'll be sure to upload her work to the /idgames archive.