Dennis Spielman's Blog Archive for November 2007
Newest posts are at the bottom.
Fact and fiction are blurred here.
You have been warned.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Gather around, friends, for a I have a tale to tell of how we've our lost house. It's a long story, so I'll try to summarize as best as I can on how we got screwed over.My parents decided to get a different insurance company so we could have a lower payment and save money. When you get a different insurance company, they hire this third party company to basically inspect the outside of the house to see if it's in good condition. After this inspection, my parents called the insurance company and they said everything was fine, so we cancelled our old policy and switched over to the new company. This was like a month ago.
On November 1 we got a notice the house that was declared "uninsurable." The company that was hired to do the report exaggerated several things that were wrong and used picture angles that make the house look worse than it is. This report should have been given to us much sooner, but they dragged their feet on the matter. The insurance company decided not to give us any chance of fixing the problems, and we couldn't afford to fix them either. This notice also goes out to all insurance companies, so we can't like get different company. Without insurance, we have to sell the house within two months or the bank will foreclose. My parents are going to do some things so they don't get hurt on their credit and of course their getting a lawyer, but with the insurance being revoked on the 11th, we can't stay at our house.
I wanted to wait a few days before I posted this so I could let you know the direction we're going now. After a family meeting, we're all going our own ways. My sister is going to move in with a friend, my parents are looking into getting an RV hook-up and trailer living, while I'm getting my own place. I'm actually really excited an anxious to get my own place. I feel a bit pressed since I would be living in a place for time without any insurance, so if something happens, that's it. My family does want to get things rolling quickly too. I've been telling myself all of the good things that could come out of this mess. I'm so going to have a house welcoming party. I'm going to start looking for a place tomorrow morning. The weekend just isn't a good time to look since many offices are closed. Though, I might though actually drive around tonight and get a feel for some places. I've just never pictured it happening like this.
So, yeah, that's what's going on. I know that you might want to give a suggestion on something we could do, but really, whatever it is, we just couldn't afford it. I'll keep you guys posted. I'm helping some friends with their movie this afternoon, which I actually need to leave and meet up with them now...
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
I went to bed Sunday a bit early because I was tired and my throat was tightening up on me, making it a bit hard to breath. It was more annoying than anything. In a dream I had that, someone gave me an inhaler to help me breath better. When I woke up on Monday, I was all fine. That's weird, huh?So, when I to bed on Monday, I wanted to see if I could have a dream and get rid of my ingrown toenail. My dream that night was rather suspenseful. I saw a guy running around waving a gun, so I told a police officer about the matter and shortly after, that guy with the gun tries to come after me to ratting him out. I ran away from the armed man with the police officer. After awhile of running away through this large like office/school kind of building, I had to go my own way. I kept pushing one door open after another, running through one room after another, to lose the bad guy. I finally made it to this one room with a window. I knew that once I went through the window that I would be safe. Just as I opened the window, I remembered that I need to try and heal my ingrown toenail. I tried to use my magic, and I think I healed it, but of course I woke up in the morning and it was still there. Still, that dream means something. I think I'm going to be on my own for awhile, pushing doors open in my life.
Yeah, looking for a new place hasn't been very successful. I'm been looking at duplexes and small houses for rent and I haven't had much luck. Every place has been either too expensive or I didn't feel comfortable with the neighborhood or the place. Still, I've only been looking for a few days and I haven't covered that much ground. I've following ads in the classifieds and I've ran those dry, so today I'm just going to drive up this one street in the city and look around there for signs.
Friday, November 9, 2007
I had found a place yesterday. Had is the key word. It was part of small duplex. It had one bedroom, living room, kitchen place with central heating, washer & dryer, fridge, and stove for $425 a month. It wasn't too far from my work. I have been looking at houses in that price range, but all the ones for rent less than $500 a month, well, let's just say there were not in a safe area or the place itself was pretty shitty. So, anyway, this duplex I found, well, I went and meet the landlord at his office. He was a nice old man, but I was concerned that he had several pictures of George Bush hanging up... I didn't really give it too much thought though, but it did remind me of another old man I had met. Anyway, I paid a $200 deposit plus money to cover up to the first due date, so in total I gave him $426. I was pretty happy. Then shortly after, I don't know, but I felt like I made a mistake. To make myself feel better, I called another place I had saw, but was kind of iffy on, during my place hunting trip that day. It was a 2-bed house, pretty big too and it was also $425 a month. I called and it had already been rented out, so I felt better about my choice. I meet up with my family at my Dad's work, at which time I helped out at the store for awhile. I then showed my parents, my sister, and my sister's boyfriend the place and they liked it. After awhile though, I still felt like I made a mistake. I figured I would feel better in the morning.This morning I first got a call from my landlord saying that he miscalculated the first payment that I still owe him a $100, but he said he was in no rush to have it. I was a bit worried because I knew I had less than $200 in my bank account at the time. I then took a hard look at my bank account. I realized that there was just no way I could safely afford the monthly rent once I started to figure the cost of everything; car insurance (which would go up since I wouldn't be part of a family plan - I totally forgot about that), cellphone, car payment, Internet, gas (both for the house and car), electricity (which I've been told to expect that to be $100 right there), and food. I knew if I stayed, I wouldn't be able to buy food unless I happened to get more hours at work. Lately, I can only safely count on $500 a paycheck, and there's been a few times when it's been a little less than $500. If I could always have at least $600, I would be fine. I had to look somewhere else to free up some money. I checked into my car loan. I thought if I might be able to pull out all of my savings and pay off the loan, but I had another $4,000 left on it and I only have less than half of that in savings. Fuck. Now, keep in mind that my mind was racing, really figuring things out. So, yeah, I took a shower first to calm myself, then I called my landlord and told him that I had to pull out at which point he had me come to his office to make a settlement. Thankfully, I didn't call to get gas or power turned on the place yet.
When I got to the landlord's office, I first I offered him $50 for his troubles to pay for a newspaper ad, but he said that cost him $64, so I offered him that. Did he go for that? No. He decided to take advantage, even though he said he didn't want to, but he did anyway, saying this is a business and he really wouldn't be able to find someone to rent it until Monday, so he made it $100. (So, I got $326 back of the $426 I had paid him for having the place for less than 24 hours.) I was like fine and agreed to it. I really did act the better person, shaking his hand afterwards and apologizing yet again after he gave me a check. I wanted to argue with him some more to get him to lower it some, but I held my tongue. I still want to argue. I felt like I should've said, "well, sometimes when doing business you lose money to make someone else happy." I hate old white people, especially if they have money. I feel really stupid and pissed off at the same time. I should've known $425 a month was going to be too much, but I felt so pressured to find some place quickly.
Well, you know what, I promise that if I ever open some sort of apartment complex that I would give people a 30 day happiness guarantee where they can get all of their money back. Though, I would do so much more if I ever did open some sort of living complex. I would do awesome stuff, like I build it underground to protect people from tornados, have an large evaluator to help move their stuff in, make each unit soundproof so you won't hear your neighbors, have a river flowing through the hallways, make all the doors double the size that people are used too so people can actually fit a couch through them easily, and I would have like a shopping and eating district for people. To top it off, I would make it affordable for single people too. You have to admit that would be so fucking awesome.
Good news is that I don't have to worry about getting a place so soon. It looks like my parents can get some temporary insurance so they can have time and money to fix up the place and sell it for a profit. My parents are also worried about my sister living with her boyfriend and if things go wrong between them, that she wouldn't have a place to stay. As for what I'm going to do in the mean time -- I'm going to make some great things.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Alright, it's time to talk about some projects I've been working on! I do want to say that I have been working on my second novel here and there lately. I still got a long way to go on it. Also yesterday while I was driving to work, I came up with a cool idea for a TV series, but I'm not going to tell you about it either. :P No, what I am going to talk to you about today is Triple Fang. Yeah, that Mac OSX game I finished like last year and said that I would remake to add more awesome. Well, the past few days I've been doing just that. I've been working on a new version of the Madness Forest stage that is now titled Madness Falls. It's more of a jungle stage now and thanks to a sprite background sheet by Skylights it's much more cooler looking than Madness Forest. Don't take my word for it, check out this mock screen shot of the stage (it's a mock because I made this image by cropping a part of the background and added Nack to the image). The finished stage will hopefully have an animated waterfall.
Also, I think it's time that I open up the You Laugh, You Lose section. Basically, once a week I'll post some funny images. In the future I'll let you know whenever I update it through my blog. I guess that's basically all I wanted to tell you guys. I mainly wanted to let you know that I was working on Triple Fang. Expect more updates soon on the game.
Monday, November 19, 2007
I want to try and keep regular updates to my blog, so here are four in game screen shots of the Madness Falls stage from Triple Fang.- Screen Shot 1 - Look, part of a loop
- Screen Shot 2 - Waterfalls are sexy
- Screen Shot 3 - A hilly area
- Screen Shot 4 - The Upper Part
I still got a long way to go before I'll release the new version. This is just one of the stages I'm remaking and I still got boss stages to add. Speaking of which, I'm going to go work on the boss stage for Madness Falls. Spoiler: It's going to be Knuckles!
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
I was going to write for the sub-header, Ego's Street Magic Show is Online, but technically it's been online for awhile. I'm just now bringing it to Rogue Ego. What is Ego's Street Magic Show? Check out the page and read the description for yourself because I would just copy and paste it here, but I don't want you to read it twice, even though it is an awesome description worth reading twice! Oh, fuck, here it is:"Ego's Street Magic Show is an on going interactive sprite comic series that was started in the SoaH City forums. Follow SoaH City's Mayor who puts on a street magic where anything could go wrong or awesome. Not even the creator of the series knows what's going to happen because people keep adding to the story! People have raved such comments as, "for the win," "I actually lol'd," and "this topic was great, we need more of these." But why listen to what they saw and read it for yourself!"
So, yeah I worked on the Knuckles boss stage a bit yesterday until NBC demanded that I get in front of the TV and watch Chuck, then Heroes, and finally Journeyman. It was all good, but I felt like if Heroes had like an extra five minutes it could've been much smoother. I found out that they're now selling the Helix Symbol Necklace online through NBC's store, so I have to totally get it. Oh, right back to Triple Fang. Yeah, I worked on the boss some this morning and it wasn't playing the way I wanted it to play. I'm trying to make Knuckles pull out a large rock out from the ground and toss it at Nack, but there's this weird issue with the sprites. I think I might just end up going with my first idea for Knuckles' attack: a fireball punch. He also isn't jumping high enough either, which I think I can get sorted.
I still got a lot planned for this week, including a new edition of You Laugh, You Lose (which all of my MySpace friends enjoyed) and a new short horror story that I'm going to post on Black Friday about two vampires in a mall. WHAHAHAHA! Until then, spread the word!
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
With Thanksgiving and Black Friday this week, I think I should do an edition of You Laugh, You Lose with that theme. Fuck that, it's ninjas this week! There's eight ninja releated images this week. While going through my images, I realized I had a bunch more Star Wars lols, so I'll have to do another Star Wars theme, but that will be another week!Friday, November 23, 2007
I hope those in the U.S. had a good Thanksgiving and Black Friday. As for me, I was kept pretty busy. Since my Dad had to work on Thanksgiving, I had Thanksgiving lunch at his work. I brought my Mom there with all of the food and helped set things up. We ate a little after two. After that, I visited some friends, play games with them, and I came home and did some work.Today, I went shopping this morning at about 7:30. I hit places were there weren't any big lines. I ended up spending more money on myself than for other people today. Hehehe... Yeah, well, money is tight with family and friends this year, so I knew if I wanted something big that it would be best if I just bought it myself. All I did buy for myself was mainly some games and a few movies. Anything really cheap I want, like less than $25, I'm letting other people spend on me. I still got to buy some gifts for friends. Today was just family. Of course, I still had to work, but I didn't have to go in until 5 p.m. Man I thought we would be slow (usually people don't get glasses on Black Friday), but we kept pretty busy back in the lab.
But that's all boring personal stuff! You see also during the past few days I've been working on a short story that takes place on Black Friday titled Happy Ending. "It's been a long, stormy Black Friday. Security was tired. Customers were exhausted. Workers wanted to go home. It was the best time for Sid to let his lover Marie take any human she wanted." It's a mature horror story, so if you're interested, check it out. At the end of the story are my comments over it. Enjoy the story and enjoy the weekend!
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
This weeks You Laugh, You Lose theme is Parody Motivator Posters with five fun filled pictures. Order now!Tuesday, November 27, 2007
So, this morning I went fishing with my grandpa at one of his friends' lake. I don't care much for fishing. I think it's really boring, but I went anyway to spend some time with him. It wasn't long for us to be out on the lake when I got a bite on my line. I reeled in as hard as I could. This fish was putting up one hell of a fight. Then I gave a good tug on my pole and yanked him out from the water. The fish went flying into the boat. This fish was huge. It was like five feet long! My grandpa was really excited. We tried to put it in the ice chest, but it didn't even fit in it. Its head and fins just stuck out from the chest, so we went back to shore to put the fish in a big freezer.When we got to shore, my grandpa's friend greeted us. My grandpa opened up the chest and show his friend the fish that I caught. The fish seized the opportunity and flopped out of the chest and made his way back to the lake. So, yeah, that sucked, but oh well, I don't like eating fish anyway. My grandpa and his buddy went off to get some stuff to help catch it again while I just stayed out the boat. Shortly after they were out of sight the fish had returned to the shore, but this time it had mutated itself. The fish now had four large yellow eyes placed in the same fashion of that of a hammerhead shark and it had grown two legs to allow itself to walk on land.
The fish ran after me baring its huge sharp teeth, so I ran into the house. I have been running a lot longer than the fish so naturally I made it inside safely. However, that didn't stop the fish. The fish busted down the door, so I kept on running from room to room throughout the house. My grandpa and his friend where no where to be seen. I had no idea where the fuck they were. Then after awhile I didn't hear the fish anymore. I figured it must've went back to the water to get some air, but I knew it would come back for me. It was pretty pissed. I knew I had to fight back.
I marched outside to confront my foe. What I confronted was that the grass had grown three feet tall in the short time I was inside. I don't know how the fish did it, but it did it. I figured it might be lurking in the tall grass to sneak attack me, but I wasn't going to give him that advantage. I made a quick slashing motion with my right arm and the grass cut itself down as my arm pointed at it. The fish was not there. I went back inside to check and make sure he still wasn't inside. He wasn't, so I went back outside down to the lake. On my way I saw the fish rising out from the water running after me. I stood my ground as the fish charged after me. Just as he got close to me, I ducked down, picked him, raised him high over head, and with all my strength I ripped him in half in front of me so his guts wouldn't land on my head. I then threw him as far as I could, which was about fifteen feet. Both of his body parts were still flapping around, so I pointed my hand at him, extended all of my fingers out to point at him, and fired a wave of electricity from my fingers at the fish. I totally crisped him. A little too much to eat, but I like I said I don't eat fish anyway, and I don't think anyone wants to eat a mutant fish either.
Yeah, after that ordeal, I had breakfast (Chocolate Marshmallow Mateys, yum), read messages, took a shower, and went to work. I took my Mom to her work as well. Nothing too interesting happened at work. We were pretty busy in the morning. I got time to do some maintenance on some of the machines. I got work off at 6. Now I'm at home telling you about my day, but most importantly about my bad fishing experience. Oh! Myth Busters did a cool episode about Pirate myths tonight. You should check that out. As for me, it's late and I got work early tomorrow, so until next time, be careful when you fish.