Tyler's Average Life

I'm still alive!

2011-11-08T14:01:00.000-08:00

Sorry guys, I know it's been a really long time since I've posted, but I have good reason.

Not long after I started posting here, I had some bad family drama, and my dad and stepmom kicked me out of the house. About a month later I lost my job. So now I can't afford internet, so I haven't been able to get on and post.

I do have good news though, I'm currently attending a community college thanks to FAFSA's financial aid. My original plan was to save the leftover money to ride on until I could find a new job, but I got into a car accident and totaled my car. So that money had to go a "new" car. And by "new" I mean a 1998 Mercury Mystique.

But now that I'm attending the college (which has free wifi!) and I've adjusted to my course load, I'll be able to get on more often and post! Plus I'm currently posting at a good friend's house, who let's me chill with him and use his internet.

Back when I was posting before, I had this idea about doing Team Fortress 2 Tuesdays. Well, as you might imagine, that's going to be REALLY hard to do without internet. However, I've picked up a new hobby. Competitive Pokemon Battling. Hell yeah. I think I'll explain that in another post, perhaps tomorrow, but right now I have some homemade spaghetti to eat, and I'm starving!

TF2 Tuesdays?

2011-07-26T10:21:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I mentioned the idea of devoting Tuesdays to posting about TF2. The idea was to post in game footage of things like cool kills, killing streaks, or embarrassing deaths. However, what I didn't have in mind at the time, is that my computer isn't very powerful.

My rig only has a gig of ram and has a 1.60GHz Dual Core processor. While these specs are just fine for playing the game just fine, it really gets bogged down when I try to record demos. My answer to this would to use the recently released Replay system. The only problem with that is that I would have to remember to save the Replay when I died if anything interesting happened during that life. One thing you will probably learn about me throughout the life of this blog, is that I am quite absent-minded. If I get an amazing kill, say I reflect an enemy Soldier's crit rocket and the blast damage wipes out half of the enemy team, well, that's certainly something I would want to show off! However, say I'm really on my game that day, and that life lasts for 10 minutes. When I finally die, chances are that I won't remember to save the Replay until it's too late. Do you see my problem?

I guess for now I'll just try to remember to save my replays until I either get a better rig or find another way to do things. But the better rig requires money, and in the position I'm in at the moment, it might be awhile before I have that much money.

While we're on the subject though, what kind of specs would I need to have my game constantly recording a demo so I can just set it to record and start playing? If you know, or if you have anything else you'd like to say on the matter, leave it in a comment :D

My first post!

2011-07-25T08:06:00.000-07:00

Hello, my name is Tyler, and welcome to my average life.
I figured I would take this first post to introduce myself.

I'm 18 years old, I have a part time job working at Molded Fiberglass Inc. It's a hot job, the work is repetitive, but overall, it isn't bad.

I graduated from high school this past school year, and I have registered at my community college and have signed up for my Fall Semester classes. However, I think I need to get in touch with my advisor and see about changing my classes. See, I signed up for an Associates Degree in Computer Science Technology, but none of the classes I am currently signed up for have anything to do with computers. I have an Expository writing class, a math class, and an Anthropology class. The only class that I don't feel really belongs is the Anthropology class.

My parents divorced when I was young, and I've lived with my dad since, going to visit my mom for the weekend every other weekend, with extra time over the summer and during the holidays. However, I am moving out of my dad's soon, and am moving in with my mom. I got into a bit of trouble with my dad and my stepmom, and we don't quite see eye to eye, so we decided it would be best if I moved out.

I spend most of my spare time on my computer on the internet. I'm usually on Facebook, Pandora, and/or playing a game on Steam, and sometimes I'm on all 3 at once. I'm usually up until the wee hours of the morning, and I pull the occasional all-nighter doing these things.

I also have an interest in Linux that comes and goes. I have a desktop that is dual-booting Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.10. I installed 10.10 instead of 11.04 at the time because Unity was a it too buggy for me. I also have two laptops. One of them is here with me at my dad's, and currently has Ubuntu 10.10. At one point I really wanted to turn it into a music streaming server, just to get my feet wet and try something new with Linux, but I was never successful. I plan on putting Ubuntu 11.04 on it and just keeping it for web browsing.

If I'm playing a game on Steam then I am most likely playing Team Fortress 2. I owned it before it was free to play, and I've had it for a good while now, but I'm not sure exactly how long. I think it would be safe to say that I'm a decent player, but I'm nothing special.

Other notable games that I have on Steam are And Yet It Moves, Left 4 Dead 2, Fallout 3, Half-Life 2, and Terraria. I'm far from what you could call a dedicated or hardcore gamer. I've yet to beat any of these games, and I don't really like Terraria.

I'd like this blog to kind of cover different aspects of my life, a journal of sorts, but without getting into the dirty details. I'll try not to let this blog become a place for me to piss and moan about my life, because I'm sure that's not what you want to spend your time reading about.

Content Ideas: I have a couple ideas so far, like Movie Mondays, where I will watch a New Release on Amazon's movie store and post a review and my thoughts on Mondays. I also thought about TF2 Tuesdays, where I will post a Replay or Replays that I've saved, and talk about cool or interesting things that have happened on TF2 lately.

Well, that's about it I suppose, for this introduction. If there is anything else you'd like to know, or if anyone has an idea for any other kind of subject matter that you'd like me to cover, let me know in the comments and I'll think about it.

Tyler