Ionburn had been dormant for a long time, but I had been working on it for a while. It’s now updated. When you first go, it may look the same, but hang around for a minute and then you should notice something. There were more features than what’s there now, but I’m still working the bugs out. I made that one from scratch so I hope you like it.

JayNCoke got a total makeover as well. I made that one myself; and I’m really proud of it. I really want the site to be a sort of online portfolio more than a blog. I had to incorporate some nifty javascript fade effects as well as some full-on AJAX navigation. Also on the home page I created a sort of “lifestream” to pull my various web activity and put it in one place. There are several sites that do this to varying degrees, but I thought it’d be a cool project to do on my own.

So that’s it for now. Like I said before, I got some posts in the works as well. Hopefully I can keep my promise and update regularly now. If not, someone please remind me with a nice kick-in-the-butt.

I had sort of found myself in a rut in the past month or two. It was due to a combination of things: the job situation, relationships, friendships, money, family, blah blah blah. I guess it all pretty much hinges on the job front though. I had been previously stoked about my interviews; however, I was hit by a flurry of rejections: “Sorry, we don’t have any positions for you at this time.” or “Someone was better qualified for the position.” It doesn’t feel great to hear that you aren’t up to their standards. And then that just kind of bowled me over into a slump where I hardly wanted to get anything accomplished. I felt like I had no self-worth, and that I can’t really move forward in my life without a new job. I hate pity-parties, so don’t feel sorry or whatever. It’s just how I’ve been feeling and nothing could have prevented it.

Yeah, so that made me really upset. All that doubt and depression combined with doing nothing in the house all day drove me kind of crazy. It’s good that I have some friends I could talk to, so that helped a little. But overall, I wasn’t really happy.

However, a couple days ago I had the fortune to fly down to Florida and help work at the storage business my family has down there. I’m really glad I’m here. It’s gotten me out of the house and somewhat busy. I feel recharged and enthusiastic about getting things accomplished. Also, while it’s raining some days, I had a chance to enjoy the beach a couple times… love that sun and sand. I’m not sure how long I’ll be here, but I’m glad for the change in my dreary routine.

Oh yeah, and as a side note, I had recently bought a scanner and scanned in a lot of photographs. Check em out here if you’re interested in seeing some random pics.

Also, I hear about all the cold and snowy weather back home… now I’m really glad I’m here.

I felt a little weird. I mean, a lot of these guys have some of the same interests as I do; namely video games and perhaps anime. But somehow I just didn’t feel like I could mesh with a lot of them. I dunno. I guess I’m still a horrible, judgmental person. A couple of people were actually well dressed (either some cool hoodie and jeans like that)… but then you see people with sweat pants. SWEAT PANTS. Come on, now. It’s fine to wear at home, but out in public? OK, here’s a little dirty secret, but I used to wear sweat pants when I went to public school for one year. GOD, what the hell was I thinking? Right, enough rambling about that. I shouldn’t be such a meanie about how the way other people present themselves. (But at least wear deodorant for god’s sake… nobody thinks that your B.O. is any type of attractive musk).

Also, I brought back the Library page. No reason for it particular. I just like to keep track of what I’ve been reading lately is all.

And a few more quick hits:
- Been playing the hell out of Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga on Wii. Something about seeing characters like Darth Vader, R2-D2, and Boba Fett as Lego figures is just… endearing.
- I saw Walk Hard a while ago. Not terribly impressed. Perhaps a 4/10.
- I also had seen National Treasure: Book of Secrets. I hadn’t seen the first one, but I thought I’d give this one a chance. I thought it was good and entertaining! 8/10.
- I’m intrigued by previews of Cloverfield, namely that it’s presented as a film through peoples’ cameras… it’s really exciting, like it really immerses you into it and you’re experiencing everything they are yourself. And also you can’t find out anything about what it is that’s attacking the city. It’s a very closely guarded secret. But what else can you expect from producer J. J. Abrams? He wrote the book on “wtf is going on” with his show Lost. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a really good ‘monster movie’ ever… Godzilla 2000 is the last one I remember seeing, but that was really atrocious. Haven’t seen a clip yet? Check this out:

Yeah, that looks like it’ll be crazy.

Here’s something new I did recently: I went to a Wizards game! I’m not really a basketball fan by any means, but I thought it would be fun to go see a game with my brother. I actually had fun! We have season tickets… we usually don’t use them, but I’m thinking we should again soon. The Wizards aren’t by any means a great team (although I know absolutely nothing about any of the players or any other team for that matter), but they’re DC’s team and I gotta root for ‘em. I took a couple pictures, of course.

There’s also been plans being formulated recently concerning my job and immediate future. Nothing is actually set in stone, but I’m kind of excited about the prospect. I’ll post more about it as it develops.

Today, I was supposed to have an interview in the morning, but they called and had to reschedule it. *sigh* Yeah, it was frustrating, and it left me with a whole day of doing practically nothing. I got some serious bouts of boredom throughout the day. I spent most of it playing Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions. I finally found a guide for it and restarted it since I totally messed up in the beginning and missed a special event (hint: don’t release the two female soldiers that join you in the beginning of chapter 2). The game is so awesome. And the cut scene with Balthier from FF XII is so fun to watch. And ::spoiler:: Argath returns (he totally didn’t die at the end of chapter 1). It’s probably my favorite game on the PSP (and there aren’t that many). Just kind of wished there was someone else around with the game to do the Melee and Rendezvous modes though…

So, another thing I did today was watch a lot of HGTV, one of my favorite networks for the past few weeks. I don’t know what it is; I just love watching the shows and getting ideas for how I want my house to look like someday. My favorite shows are House Hunters, Designed to Sell, Hidden Potential, and Color Splash. Color Splash has to be the best one though. David Bromstad, the host, is just so fun to watch; he has a lot of creative and awesome ideas, he’s very energetic, and he’s just totally cool. While he’s not too bad to look at, Danielle Hirsch is totally the cuter choice. House Hunters and Hidden Potential are great too since I really had no idea before what I wanted in a house, but now I have some thoughts on what to look for eventually. Designed to Sell is full of design ideas on how to present your house when trying to sell it; I plan on getting a place that I can get cheap and then flip eventually… yeah the market sucks right now, but that’s good for me as a buyer and then hopefully I’ll have lived in it long enough and built a ton of equity to make a nice profit when I move on.

And by now you’ve probably noticed a new layout change. I wanted to reflect the winter season, so hopefully this Winter Ice theme does it.

Geeez… bored bored bored bored… I think I’m gonna have a DVD marathon tomorrow… we’ll see.

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• Pretty much nothing. Just relaxing, being lazy, and just generally turning my brain off for as long as I can.
• I’m taking phone calls from potential employers that found my resume. Unfortunately, I don’t have a computer at the house (right now I’m at a friends’) to do research and do proper preparation for my interviews, but oh well.
• Our little pomeranian died the other day. My mom is pretty upset about it. She seemed fine, but she just stopped breathing and died. I’m still a little sad about it… She was still warm when I saw the little furball wrapped up in a towel.
• Saw some dolphins in our backyard. I tried my best to take a picture of one grabbing a fish out of the water.
• Saw a space shuttle launch at the JFK Space Center. It was pretty bitchin. And loud. And awesome. I’m glad I saw it. We know someone who works for NASA, so we got the hook up and were able to get into the hot spot to watch the launch.
• The best part of Florida right now has to be just laying in the hammock at the pier at the back of the house. It’s still hot, but the shade and the constant breeze just make it perfect to lay about for hours on end.
• I decided to stay another week here. My parents just left this morning, so I got the whole place to myself.
• I’m flying out to Chicago from here next week. Then after another week there with family, I’m looking to hang out with my friend in Vegas for a weekend… I am in no rush to come back to MD! lol

Yep. I got some pics up. So yep. That’s what I’ve been doing. I’m probably gonna go out and try out some of the bars by the beach later tonight…

So, updates. Nothing new, really. Still looking vigorously for a new job. It gets tough when you have interviews then don’t hear anything from the employer after that. But I gotta keep plugging away. If worse comes to worse, I’ll have to go back to being a bank teller… :

I’ve started playing Final Fantasy XII finally. That game is actually fun. And I love the new battle system. It is just way more smooth to execute. And in terms of my favorite FF games of the series I’d say it’s right up there with VII and X. Tactics is my favorite of them all though, and it just got released on the PSP. I just got that, too, and it is just as awesome as when I played it on the PS1. The music and story just make it one of the most memorable games I’ve ever enjoyed. So yeah, with no work, I’ve been spending a lot of time playing video games for a change.

I’m actually leaving tomorrow for Florida. I’m taking the PS3 and PSP along to keep myself occupied when I’m not busy seeing the sites and what not. Looking forward to the nice, warm beach down there. ^_^

Also, my cousin recently asked me to be part of a dance routine for the Philippine American Association of Delaware (PAAD). I am reluctant. I have no coordination for a choreographed dance. lol. Only perk being that a girl I had a crush on will be involved. hahaha. Now what kind of dance are we talking about? Well, there’s going to be tinikling, of course, but she says she going to take a large part of the moves from this:

Yeah, baby! Lookit them dancing Filipinos! They’ve got some sick moves. LOL. So I am undecided on that. I don’t know if I’ll have the time to dedicate to practice actually. I’m in the midst of deciding whether or not to pursue my trip across the country. After Florida, I am more than likely taking a plane from there to Chicago. From Chicago, either NYC or California. Gotta hear back from some people first. We shall see.

I also decided to get rid of some of the other pages. I felt they cluttered the site and no one really visited them. So, the videos, music, misc, portfolio, library, and links pages have been removed. I decided to move my portfolio stuff to my other site anyway. And the rest, I decided to crunch and summarize my interests into the redone About page.

On a different note, I would like to share this article: Write Your Stress Out of Your System. It briefly talks about how you can unwind by keeping a journal or blog. Not only will it help improve your writing skills, but also “is a good way to vent because you get to verbalize your emotions and opinions.” And as you probably have noticed from the past few days, I’ve been venting like crazy… and it really does help.