Ok, this can be chalked up as being one of the absolute worst weeks I've had in quite a while.  If it could go wrong, it did, and after going wrong it seemed to just compound and get worse.  I'm so glad it's almost the weekend, I could dance.

So, even though this has been a more active blogging week for me than most, I'm still doing my new weekly bit, if only to get into the habit.

What I'm Playing

• Burnout Paradise
  Last weekend, I grabbed the Burnout Paradise demo from XBox Live.  Holy cow was that fun.  So much fun that I went out and bought the game that afternoon.  This is impressive because I usually hate racing games.  This one is so much fun though that I had to get it.  I've been playing it most nights this week.
• Rez HD Demo
  I grabbed this demo from XBox Live mid-week to take for a spin.  Nifty game, interesting style.  I'm not sure I'll buy it though, just doesn't seem like my style.
• Sins of a Solar Empire
  Launch is next week.  We've been doing final playtesting and just having fun in general.  I was at the office until Midnight on Wednesday playing against Frogboy, Yarlen, Vates and Charles from the games team.  I will likely be playing more this weekend as release nears.
  
  We got our boxed Collectors Editions at the office on Thursday.  It's so cool seeing your name in the credits section of a game manual.

Backups... always have backups

Holy cow, was this a bad week for servers for me.  A server I maintain at work which houses a few minor sites went buh-bye on Monday when work was being done on the host machine (my server was a VM).  Long story short, my only backup of the data or the database was 5 days old.  So not good.  From now on, nightly backups of all database data, and at least a weekly dump of web files to a different physical server.

It was really the first domino falling that led to the general tech disaster that was this week for me.  It's Friday, and that server still isn't back up.  *sigh*

Weather

I'll just say this... I hate winter.  I would be a happy guy if I never had to deal with snow or below-freezing temperatures ever again.  It doesn't help that my furnace only half-works at the moment.  Thank god for electric blankets, otherwise I might freeze to death.

Online Dating

I work so much it's incredibly hard to meet new people, so I have to once again (as I've been single for a bit now) turn to online dating.  Whoever says online dating is easier/you don't deal with humiliating rejection as much obviously hasn't tried it before.  I've had mixed success with it in the past (met my ex online).  But it just seems worse this time around.  The results lately have been... depressing.

Being a geek and dating are two things that don't go well together it seems.

I Need a Real Vacation

I need to go somewhere nice and warm.  Somewhere that I can't log on to email, IRC, or a web site and just relax for a week.  No work.  No family.  Just me doing things which relax me.  It's been way too long since I had an actual vacation.  I've gone home to visit family for holidays.  I had one weekend up north back in September, but that's been it for almost 4 years now.  I need a break and to really get away.