Hello again, to all my friends.

I've noticed that this world is giving me not so subtle hints to get back at this stuff, so here I am again. While it's true that Hit the Buttons failed as my new Next Level start-up, I see no harm in transforming it into my personal blog. Since most of my stuff will revolve around videogames, it's still central to the topic.

First and foremost, I am on a total skid in the Hodge's Cup season right now. The season wasn't starting out too great for me, but I've been making it worse recently. I was just under .500 for the season going into today, but I took a sharp dip downward. For some reason, I just couldn't find the twine if I were wrapped up in it. NOTHING went through.

If I believed in the stuff, I'm sure I must've jinxed myself. I brought a notebook around for the purpose of writing down my personal stats. Last year I had the MVP (Scott Gomez), so I still think that I can pull something out of this season. It will be hard, because my brother Ryan has two guys who have more points than games played. My best has a point every 2+ games.

But there is still plenty of hockey left to play (unless you're Bob, he's 2/3 done). I took the time to write down the rosters while I was there, so one day this or next week I'll sit down for 5-6 hours and try to put all that stuff in. If it takes too long to get my team together, I'll probably just roll with that for now and slowly work up the rest of the league. But I need practice, I need something to break this slump.

In other news, I've been playing a bunch of Brutal Legend. (I have no idea how to get an umlaut on here) People have been bringing up the game in my casual hang outs, so I love getting to be able to tell them what I think about it. I don't want to get too in depth, because I plan on writing a review for it here. I also have a bunch of story-spoiling stuff I want to write about too, so that will be two articles (blogs) dedicated to Brutal Legend. It's a good place for me to start this season to bring myself back into this business. If I can keep up with myself during this season, then I shouldn't have much trouble keeping pace during the other months.

Speaking of the season, I'm going in to Hollywood tomorrow to spend one of my free rental coupons. I'm not entirely sure what I want to rent though. I was going to use it this weekend and get something like Dirt, reasonably new and something they'd probably have deep in a weekend. I wanted to get it then so I would have it the full time before I went on my mini-cation this weekend. But I noticed that Borderlands and Smackdown 10 come out this week, so I'm struggling with which one to get. I'm obviously going to finish Brutal Legend, tomorrow in all likelihood, but I'll have plenty of time to get deep into whichever I rent.

I managed to finagle Thursday off so I could go to the Ludo show without any incident, and I already have Friday off since I thought we were taking a weekend in Chicago. If I rent Smackdown, I might not have to buy it later and could wait until it dips down in price to get it for collection purposes. If I get Borderlands, I could just be setting myself up for another Fallout, a game I'd like to play but don't have the time to sink into it. I'm still not sure, but since Hollywood doesn't open until I get to work, I'll have until I come home to figure out.

Kyle's does open up in time for me to go on my way to work. And I'm totally falling behind on comics. I'm sure I have enough to read for multiple hours for the next week, and still have a couple left to bring in to read on lunch. It's not that I'm falling out of love with comics, I think it's mostly that I have a PSP so I can sink BILLION of hours into Final Fantasy 7 on-the-go. I should shelve the PSP for a while just so I can catch up on other stuff I could be doing during that time. Final Fantasy Dissidia started sucking up my precious lunch hour, and then when I got far enough to just be leveling, I gave it up to Final Fantasy 7. I know, I need to put these fantasies to bed, but their so damn addictive!

It really does speak to my love of FF7 that I keep on going back to it like this. I actually learned a couple somethings that I didn't know about the game before hand. I had no idea that Yuffie was so good with the Morph materia. I've been trying to get a game where I basically max out the characters. I want to make beating Ruby relatively easy. The best way to do it in my book is by getting a lot of the materia you'll need, and max your stats to use them effectively. I've been doing good with the materia (6 Counter Attacks, 2 mastered; Knights of the Round at 3 stars I believe, and a couple of Mimes) but I haven't really rolled up my sleeves and tried to max some stats.

This time I am and knowing that with the Conformer, Yuffie doesn't take any penalty for Morphing has meant the world to me. She already has a maxed Attack Power, and I'm working on Cloud right now. I figure I'll get Barrett and Tifa, maybe Cid and Vincent, then work on Defense. That'll take me a long time though, so shelving it sounds kinda good right now.

Thanks for sticking around on my inaugural re-debut of the Daily Blog. Tomorrow will be more about personal life, since I anticipate getting on here after work. Not a lot of gaming time from wake to work to home.

Enjoy the day folks, make it shine!
-Daniel