I am Jon Wheat

Warning Nerd Alert

noreply@blogger.com (Jon) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:20:00 +0000

Thursday is coming!!! Do you all know what Thursday is? Warning Nerd Alert, World of Warcraft, Wrath of the Lich King! It is upon us and I personally can't wait. I was unlucky enough not to get into the beta so the itch is strong with this one. The days of actually leveling are upon me again. Some of you that have been following this blog from the beginning will remember one of my first blogs was about how I had quit playing WoW. You may call me out if you wish, but know that I do not care. World of Warcraft is far too good of a game to ever have truly given up. Shortly after posting that blog I took up the keyboard again and immediately fell back into the grind, don't judge. I know I have kept it from you, but I don't care, I'm not hurting anyone. So call off the intervention, I wont be there I'll be questing in Northrend.

Peace Out
Jon

It's the Great Pumpkin Jon

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:15:00 +0000

So this weekend I went home to see the family and we decided to carve some pumpkins. Now I have never carved a pumpkin before. How can this be you say? Well, when I was younger, my mother believed that Halloween was the embodiment of Satan and all that is evil in the world. And so we didn't celebrate All Hollows Eve in our house, that included trick or treating and yes carving pumpkins. She let up once I got a bit older but by then I was only interested in the candy and could give to shakes of witches broom about carving a stupid face into a gourd. I should have tried my hand at it earlier because this weekend I found that I am a pumpkin master. Seriously I'm going to start selling these things, Kira isn't that shabby at it either. Below you will find a picture of mine and Kira's pumpkins, mine is obviously Mario and her's is the ghosts. Oh and and my mother, although she is more relaxed than she use to be, still sat in the corner with a crucifix, praying as we carved our unholy demons into the flesh of a helpless gourd. Just kidding mom ;)

Peace Out

Jon

Blog Fodder

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 16:11:00 +0000

OK, so I haven't been posting as frequently as I'd like and this is due to a few reasons. I hate writing about my personal life, and I don't think any of you want to hear about it. I'd rather write a blog about topics that people are interested in. I hate blogs that update people just for the sake of updating people. "So this morning I totally woke up and took a shower and used new shampoo. It smells good but left my scalp itchy." No, I won't do that. So my conundrum is coming up with interesting things to fill your eager little brains with. Politics would be the obvious answer during this election season. I would be at no shortage of laughable material, I mean have you scene Biden's teeth, yikes. But then again video games are my forte so to speak, so shouldn't my blog focus on that. But I also watch a lot of movies so there is plenty of opportunity for review. So I've decided that my blog lacks focus and this also causes a problem in that I think it needs a focus but I can't deiced on one. So because of my indecisiveness I have not been posting like I should. Perhaps I should just let it all lose and post about everything or maybe make a new blog for each different subject. I don't know, but I'll figure it out soon. In the meantime know that I have not forsaken the blog, I just want to do right by it... Ahhh screw it I'm too lazy to make different blogs for each topic, you all are getting a mish mash of propaganda spewed by me. Enjoy!

Peace Out
Doc

We Don't Need No Motivation

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:43:00 +0000

This week another challenge was handed down from the supreme chancellor of office challenges. It was simple and straight forward, make a motivational poster. So that is what ensued, the creation of many irreverent, funny, motivational posters. there isn't much else I can say so ill let the posters speak for themselves. This is my Blog so my Posters will be featured first followed by our Supreme Chancellor's (Frank) and then last but not least Jeff's. Enjoy.

Peace out
Jon

ps. I'll try and get a real blog posted soon, eg. one that has more literary content :)

Frank's...
Jeff's...

Batmansaywhat?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 13:09:00 +0000

So here in the office of Skill Technology we were offered a challenge, a challenge of wit and humor. The rules were simple, take the above four stills from Batman and add your own dialog. The ensuing creativity that flowed from our eager minds was at time ridiculous but between the mundane and sometimes the all out wrong we came up with some comedic gems. Below are some of my own and a few of my favorites from my coworkers, enjoy. (The last four are from others in my office the first two from Frank and the last two are from Zack and Jeff respectively. Click to see the larger image.)

Cool babies use BUTT PASTE

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 15:00:00 +0000

Being a Dad is tiring very tiring, I am very tired, and find myself at a loss of time to post blogs, hence the lack of blogage since February. To my loyal fans, both of you, I am sorry. The up side of being very tired is that I get to play with the coolest little person in the world on a daily basis. Jace is just about 3 months old now and getting cooler every day. So watch out Brad Pit, Justin Timberlake, Walter Cronkite and all you other pseudo cool guys, there is a New Kid on the Block, and yes he is cooler than them as well. Did you here that they are touring again, whats up with that? How do they get off calling themselves kids still? Anyway... Since this is my first blog back from a long reprieve. I'm going to ease back into this and talk about the eventual decline of our economical monopoly and its degenerating effect on the worlds governmental statutes...

Nah, lets talk about BUTT PASTE. Thats right I said BUTT PASTE. BUTT PASTE is an actual product, believe it, we use it in my household to calm the screaming of a child whose hind quarters have turned a not so pleasant rose color. BUTT PASTE by far has the best name of any normal consumer product on the market. When Kira first brought it home from the baby shower I believed it to be a gag gift. However after using the BUTT PASTE I have found it to be an invaluable necessity for anyone with an infant. So there ya go my first post back I talk about BUTT PASTE. Now that Jace has started to sleep better at night I promise to try and be more consistent with my blog posting.

This blog sponsored in part by the letter J, and by...

And Just remember kids, I'm a lover not a fighter... but I'm also a fighter so don't get any ideas.

Peace Out
Jon

PS. for extra credit count how many times the word BUTT PASTE appears in this blog.

Say No To Hamsters

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 03:35:00 +0000

So I have shaved my head in protest of hamsters because lets face it they are hideous, mean little buggers with a hunger for human flesh. No not really, hamsters aren’t that bad, but I did find out tonight that my wife has no clue of how to cut hair. It started with me needing a hair cut but not having time to go and get it done. So I asked Kira to give me a trim with the clippers. Well she decided she could get fancy with it and tried layering the hair. Needless to say that didn't work and it was never straight, and it continued to get shorter and shorter as she tried to straighten it out. Eventually we had to just shave it all and now I'm left looking like a cue ball. One good thing though I now know how I’m going to look in 30 years when I lose all my hair.

On another note, the Gimme Golf Beta Sign up is under way. So If you haven’t yet, go to www.gimmegolf.com and sign up. And tell all your friends as well. Come on all the cool kids are doing it.

Peace Out

Jon

Dance War's, Mantana and Clintons Mullet.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 22:43:00 +0000

This week has been rough for the blog I found myself with a lot of little things to write about but nothing to expound upon. And so this blog is a musing of some of the weired stuff that went through my head this week.

First off, never, never, ever watch Dance Wars. Dance Wars comes on right before another show that I watch so I occasionally catch 10 to 15 minute segments of the show. Just so your informed the show is a dance/singing competition. Now I'm a semi fan of certain realty shows, American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance. I even tried out for the former a few seasons ago, but that's another blog all together. These talent competitions are full of talent or at least people that are relatively good. However in Dance Wars the dancing and singing come nowhere near to anything you could find at a local karaoke bar or a second grade ballet recital. The singing from these contestants can only be compared to a bag of cats being thrashed against a wall, and the dancing is like watching a four year old that cant find a restroom and is about to burst. They must pay the audience to watch the show, because I don't know how anyone could cheer for these performances or be truly upset when one of the contestants is voted off. Anyway don't watch this show unless you need to laugh at stupid kids embarrassing themselves.

Next. I believe more and more every day that this great nation of ours is headed towards self destruction. The leaders and future leaders of our country are becoming more and more arrogant, dishonest, and just down right power mongers. This will eventually lead to our demise, and so I'm proposing an initiative, an escape plan you might call it. I propose that any of you that think like me, who value our freedoms, limited government and the right to make a living for ourselves, ban together. That we pool our resources when the time comes and buy an island, or a large plot of land in the mountains of Montana (Mantana as we call it in the office). Once there we set up our own colony and live in peace and prosperity. To make this work we will need people with all different skill sets, carpenters, farmers, doctors, and some people with a butt load of money to buy the island with. So the call is out, answer it if you want to survive the coming storm.

Finally is it just me or does Hillary Clinton's Mullet resemble Joe Dirt's?

Peace Out
Jon

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 14:17:00 +0000

Manuary is over but a new competition has begun. We still haven't decided on a name for it but we are leaning towards "American Beardiator" or "So You Think You Can Beard". Never the less we have turned Manuary into a survivor type competition where the meekest will be voted off the beard team at the end of each month. check out the video below too see who was the least manly this month.

Peace Out
Jon

p.s. YouTube link, http://youtube.com/watch?v=wygHUhqQHy8

I'm scared of women, and it's all the presidents fault.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 02:03:00 +0000

I hate politics, let me rephrase that, I hate Politicians. The fact that the most coniving, manipulative, hypocritical, power mongers, are the the same people that run for the offices that control our country is a despicable thing. So even though politics does nothing but anger me I still watched the State of the Union address on Monday. Afterwards I came to only one conclusion. Feminists will eventually take over the world and kill all the men in it. Let me expound. President Bush at one point in his speech said something about pushing to outlaw human cloning this coming year. This statement struck me as something that could be found in a science fiction novel. That thought got me thinking of what this novel would be about? This is what the preface to that novel would be.

In the year 2008 the United States of America outlawed the practice of human cloning. In the year 2037 the Woman's Feminist Movement revealed that they had cloned the first human child, a female, overseas. Armed with this power the WFM cloned themselves an army of women and by 2095 they had taken control of every government power in the world. Men became useless to them in the wake of their new science and in the year 3003 they began the inhumane, genocide of all men on the planet. By 3015 nearly every man had been wiped out save for a scattered few that lived their lives in secret, underground and in constant fear of being found. Zach Grecco is one such man and his revolution begins now.

So you see where I'm coming from. But seriously the cloning comment did get me thinking. NASA has a human mission to Mars and an elevator to space in the works. It seams to me, that just as Jules Vern's novels came to pass, we may be on verge of seeing some our more recent science fiction fantasies realized. That, for me, is very exciting, as long as the future doesn't hold man-eating females in it.

Peace Out
Jon

Ps. If I offended any feminist I'm sorry, please don't kill me. This was not meant to be serious.

Godzilla's not so tough anymore.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 05:07:00 +0000

So I was chilling at Rob's going away party tonight when all of the sudden a huge monster attacked Manhattan and made a completely amazing film. Yes I loved Cloverfield! For those out there that complain about the motion sickness they felt while watching it, grow a stronger lower intestine and shut up. The shaky "handy cam" film stile of this movie is what is at the core of its believability. I have never, never, felt so immersed in a film as I did while watching Cloverfield. The "realism" of this film was amazing, the special effect were so well melded into the scenes that I'm left wondering how Manhattan actually looks this evening. My friend and I commented upon leaving the theater that we felt tired from running threw New York all night long. We truly felt as if we were running right along side Hud ( the guy holding the camera throughout the movie) for an hour and half. The pacing of the movie was perfect as well. Once the chaos begins you are delivered intense, chair-arm clutching, action sequences flowed by short lulls that feed off the previous intensity. These lulls use humor and or sadness to connect you to the characters on screen and cradle you into a false sense of security before plunging you quickly back into the bitter truth of the horrific ordeal you are watching unfold. Matt Reeves did a wonderful job directing this film and I believe he achieved exactly what he set out to make (and no that wasn't to make people vomit.)
Perhaps I'll feel differently tomorrow after the post move euphoria wares off, but I doubt it. Move aside Godzilla there is a new monster eating people in New York these days, and he especially likes the ones who are prone to motion sickness. One more thing if your contemplating seeing this, see it now in theaters, it's the only way to do it justice.

Peace Out
Jon

I Take Pictures

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 03:21:00 +0000

At Christmas my Mom gave me her old cannon rebel camera. Yeah thats right a camera that uses film. So I went out and bought some Black and white film and took some pictures. The prints I got back turned out better than I had hoped but the digital copies I ordered were complete crap. The pictures that follow were the best from the CD but even these I had to alter heavily in Photoshop. I Might try and scan in the prints but I doubt they will come out very good either. Oh well, I guess I need a nice digital because I think I could really get into taking pictures.

Manuary Log, Friday, Manuary, 11, 2008.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 14:54:00 +0000

Manuary has not been kind to the office. Apparently growing a beard raises testosterone levels and gives a man the urge to do manly things. All ready we have lost one to the mountains.
It's been hard, but he was part of the marketing team so it doesn't hurt that bad. However I'm afraid this rise in testosterone is taking hold of us all. The other day I walked in on our programing team talking about joining a football league, and I could swear I saw our boss thumbing threw a Craftsman catalog last week. My suspicions were confirmed when he asked us all if we thought a table saw would fit in our conference room. My fear is that we will revert into a caveman like state and be reduced to chiseling the rest of our game into the wall of a cave somewhere in the mountains of Colorado. However even though we are out a marketing department, our will is not broken and we have not lost heart, our beards are growing longer each day and we WILL become the most manly game developing team of all time. About 2 weeks in

Meatwad's Audition

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 14:24:00 +0000

I was cleaning out my harddrive and ran across this. It's my very first audio project from Intro to Audio. the setup is this; Meatwad of "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" is auditioning for the part of Gollum in "The Lord of the Rings". Smeagol however is reading for himself and Meatwad for his split personality Gollum, there is also some angry Govenator action in there as well. All the voices were done by friends of mine and I wrote, directed and edited the clip. Seeing as I hadn't taken any video classes yet, the accompanying clip isn't exactly what I had in mind but it works. maybe some day all I'll go back and re cut this up until then enjoy.

Let the Growing Commence.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 16:44:00 +0000

Manuary has begun! Our office is holding a competition for all its members this month. In the month of January 2008 we are competing to see who can grow the fullest beard by month end. Today, January 1, 2008, we have all shaved and begun our ascent into manliness. At the end of the month we will hold a vote and the man with the densest facial hair will be named most manly.

They might as well give me the trophy now because as you can see below I grow facial hair rather fast. Below you will find a picture of myself clean shaven as of today(left) and next to it a picture of me from the sixth grade when I hadn’t shaved in only a day or two(right). I'm much older now and my facial hair grows even faster. So beware Skill Technology, I will be the hairiest guy in the office, and I will be crowned most manly.

Let the competition begin!!!

Jon

Technology is cool

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 23:20:00 +0000

Even though I hate my stupid, junk of a phone, Blackjack, it's still cool that I can sit on the train and write a blog from it. So you'll have to forgive any spelling or grammer mistakes becase this key board is freekin small! So you may be thinking what is the point of straining your eyes and typing with your finger nails? Well there is no point I do it because I can, so there. But this is kinda hard so I'm gonna stop now.

peace out
Jon

WoW I Quit You.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 19:01:00 +0000

I have broken the choke hold, made it through withdrawal and come out clean on the other side. Yes that's right, I have stopped playing World of Warcraft and it has reopened my eyes to the world of gaming. For well over two years I was immersed in a world of level grinding and loot gathering. My gaming life suffered, I only completed one game during my stint in WoW and most games I started were quickly overrun by my addiction. But now that I'm free I have rediscovered my love for games. I can play other games for hours on end with out that little WoW devil on my shoulder nagging me about my incomplete armor set. My X-Box Achievements have doubled since I set down the keyboard and picked up the controller again. I have even found joy in shaking a Wii-mote at my television screen. The Future looks bright, I only hope that the next expansion doesn't suck me back in. But if it does I'm hoping I can take a more casual approach so as not to neglect and miss out on other great games. Until then I'm going to suck in as much diverse gaming as possible.

Jon

Merry Christmas... to everyone.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 16:37:00 +0000

Dear Friends,

To my democratic friends. Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.

May you have a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2007, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great, (not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country or is the only 'AMERICA" in the western hemisphere), and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith, choice of computer platform, or sexual orientation of the wishee.

To all my Republican Friends. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Jonathan

(Herd this on Dennis Millers radio show.)

What's my motivation?!?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 16:37:00 +0000

The Writers Guild of America announced recently that they will be adding a Video Game writing award to their 2008 Writers Guild Awards ceremony. The award was instituted "to encourage storytelling excellence in video games, to improve the status of writers, and to begin to encourage uniform standards". The Guild went on to say that this award "Aims to spotlight a wide range of quality work by video game writers." I would like to know who exactly they could be thinking of when they instituted this award. I'm not trying to say that this award is ill advised or not needed, In fact I'm all for promoting better writing in video games. However I fear that the creation of this award will do nothing to "spotlight quality work" but rather spotlight what little to no quality work is being generated on the story telling front of video games. I hate to beat a dead Master Chief But unfortunately story telling has not only taken a back seat to game play and graphics but they have stuffed it in the trunk under the spare tire. As a gamer I find that I am starved more and more for a good story. And as a western society that has made great moves and written amazing novels I don't know why we find it so hard to inject a good plot line into a game. The entire Halo series felt like a bad remake of Star Wars meets Starship Troopers. Even the Halo ring itself wasn't original, Larry Niven wrote Ringworld years before the "writers" of Halo wrote their story. I mean how many more different ways are you going to have me kill an alien invasion, before you make me WANT to squash the alien invasion. Duel wielding is great, duck and cover games are fun, squad based strategy is cool. But what is my motivation here director? Story is lacking in games today and while I love the idea of a game writing award I'm not sure our medium is ready for it quite yet.

However something is stirring in the industry, I believe we are close to a new era in video games where the Story will start to show a more predominate face. If we look back at the history of video game creation we see an odd evolution of sorts. The dawn of video games was characterized by innovative, ground breaking advances in computer programing and so programing was the main focus of games. The art therefor was very rudimentary and simple filled with spaceships that were nothing more than triangles and aliens that resembled mushrooms. Granted technology at the time was no where close to what we have today, but art simply wasn't a priority. Today I believe we are at the end of a renaissance of game development where game art has taken a more predominate seat in the industry. The inklings of this began as far back as Mario. As games progressed and studios sprang up and started hiring artist rather than relying on programmers for assets, the art progressed. Art continued to refine itself and grow and now we are seeing games like Shadow of the Colossus and Heavenly Sword, games that fuel the fires of games as a true art medium. You can't talk about a game today without discussing its Art (Graphics) alongside its game play, but story is still rarely disused or critiqued. But now I hope the next step in game evolution is upon us, a second renaissance, where story driven games become more of a priority. Studios I hope will begin to integrate the great game play and art, that has become a standard, into a great story. Rather than slapping a pieced together plot on top of a good game mechanic and stunning visuals. Why is it that people will still watch " It's a Wonderful Life" or "Casablanca"? Movies that have stood the test of time. Its because of their story, not because they look so good or have innovative special effects. Once we start to make games that get people talking about the story rather than the new feature. I hope then we will start to see games that our children and grand children will play just so they can experience a good story.

Jon Wheat