So, every once in a great while, we may feel compelled to make a statement.  I don’t mean like the one I made her yesterday about the weather (although I still stand by that one).  No, I mean something, well… more.  What sort of statement could one such as myself make?  Not much of one… at least, not in any form of originality, anyway.  But I can echo someone else’s.

 As the story goes, this video was made with an intended purpose… a focus on the War in Iraq.  The statement it makes though, reaches far beyond any one purpose.  This video should be viewed more as a way of life… a better way.  Is it possible that the World can really live this way?

 You decide.

 With each passing day, we have choices to make.  Do we turn left, or right.  Do we smile, or cry.  Do we point and laugh, or do we help the person up?  It doesn’t take much to reach out and make someone else’s life a little better.  Does it?  One World.  Our World.  Together.  Think about it.

WTF??? Like seriously… what the Hell is the deal with the weather here all of a sudden?  In one day, we went from 10 degrees and sunny, to 0 and snowing, to 2 and hail, to 10 and sunny… ALL IN A FRICKIN’ HOUR!!!  So I’m standing there thinking "No, this can’t really be happening…" but it was, and bloody hell, it sucked.  Mind you, it didn’t snow enough to stick, but just the same, white crap fell from the sky when it was supposed to be sunny and warm.  Damn BC Coastal climate.

On a side-note, Digital Storm LAN has signed on a few new sponsors.  RedBeard joined us yesterday, and has offered to send a number of high quality OEM skins for the LAN.  What are OEM skins?  Well, they are metal foil skins that you can put over your DS, PSP, or XBox to give them a completely unique look.  They use a 6 colour print process onto the metal, then coated in a clear epoxy to provide protection from scratches and dings.  This allows you to have a flame job, or advertising for your own company, or favorite movie logo right there on the side of your game console (or whatever else).

DSL has also partnered with VS-Gaming Arena out of Vancouver, giving them exclusive in-store ticket retail sales.  In simple English, this means that if you want to buy a ticket for DSL in person and can not make it to one of our selling events, you can buy the ticket at his Cafe anytime during their regular business hours.. and can even sit down at one of his many computer terminals to check email, or just frag the guy on the other side of the room.  It’s all good, and Dustin is a great guy, so be sure to swing through and say hi, even if you don’t need a ticket.  He’s got a CS 1.6 Tournament coming up on the 12th and 13th, so if you’re into the FPS games, this might be just up your alley.

We have another "in person" ticket sale taking place at the Croatian Cultural Center on April 12th, from 1PM to 4PM (it’s a Saturday).  There is also a monthly computer swap meet taking place there at the same time, so come and buy your ticket, and stay for the sale.

On a personal note, umm… lesse, what is there I can talk about…?  Uhh… yeah, I’m drawing a total blank on this one.  It must be because it’s my day off and my brain refuses to function when it doesn’t actually have to.  days off are good.  Like pizza.  I like pizza.  And cookies (yes, I am simply looking around the room and describing what I see… sad, isn’t it?).  Caffeine is good too… and speaking of which, my cup is empty, so I’m gone to get a refill.

Take care everyone, and coffee to all.

           And time marches on.  Well, at the moment it’s sort of on it’s knees, crawling towards the impending date… but it’s moving forward, which is good (time moving backwards is always a bad sign, unless it’s in the Superman-sense where he’s reversing natural disasters caused by a nuclear warhead targeted at the San Andreas fault… which sucks, because that fault-line runs right up the BC coast.  But I digress).  Digital Storm LAN 2008 is coming fast, and we have our first official "in person" sale date set for Saturday, March 22nd at the Center.  What’s this mean?  Well, primarily, it’s a great chance to meet some of the potential attendees, as well as a chance to start seeing something come in from the sale of the tickets (which will of course end up going towards paying off the cost of the hall rental, but whatever).  There has been some speculation going around that DSL has sort of come out of nowhere and is trying to undermine other events taking place in the area… I’m kind of disappointed by such comments and would like to set the record strait by linking directly to a post that Tami has made in regards to such "net-line rumours" (grapevines, while good for standard rumour spreading, does not handle the loading of web pages nearly as quickly as the fibre lines running through town, so we will use net-lines to spread the good word instead).  Check it out on the DSL forum at http://www.digitalstormlan.com/forum (it’s there, I swear it).
           Wow… run-on paragraph.  Anyhow, things are going great here… as always.  It’s great (I think I’ve said this before) to be back on the West Coast, where you can strip off your rain gear because its sunny and hot, and by the time you hang it up on your machine (I drive a forklift, remember), the clouds have rolled back in and it’s pissing down rain (wait, I’m not done yet)… so, you take the gear and proceed to put it back on.  In the 30 seconds that have passed, so too has the cloud of eternal waterfalls, and it’s again sunny and hot… and people are staring at you like you’re nuts for wearing such heavy rain-gear on such a nice day.  Yep, BC climate is awesome in it’s annoyance.  But the perks far outweigh the downside to living in a coastal rain-forest, and I’m loving being back on home soil.
           Video Games Live went on sale the other day, slightly ahead of original planned date… Tami hit up Ticketmaster, and actually got us 3rd row tickets.  So, we are essentially going to be in the orchestra pit for the show… well, not right IN the pit, but close enough that I could probably sneeze on the brass section and infect them with whatever sickness has managed to plague the staff at work.  Not that I would do something cruel like that.  I save my sneezing on people for my co-workers… just helping to spread the bugs.
           Mike is still rocking hard with Blade Radio.  He’s logged in over 35 hours this past week on the air, and is going strong with (as was reported to him tonight) a record-blowing (for them) 250 listeners.  That’s a lot for a small fresh-start Internet Radio station catering primarily to Guild Wars players.  Don’t take that the wrong way though, they don’t JUST do Guild Wars stuff… oh no, they are constantly giving away swag and prizes, from in-game gold, to actual computer hardware and software.  And of course, there’s the music itself, which is, in my opinion, well worth the bandwidth.  They broadcast 2 separate streams, depending on your connection speed, so it’s very friendly to a large number of potential listeners out there.  Their website is http://www.bladeradio.com (pardon the fact that the web-pages themselves are somewhat slow… I’m trying to convince them to upgrade their web host to someone with more speed available… the radio does not operate on the same speeds), so check them out when you have some time and want to listen to great music.
           As for me?  I’m going to go work on a website… or maybe grab some caffeine and bang my head on a desk… oh wait, one inevitably leads to the other anyway.  So I guess I’ll go grab some caffeine, work on a website, and bang my head on the desk for a while.  Got a busy few months ahead of me, and frighteningly I am actually sort of looking forward to it.

…………..

           I must be nuts.