out on newsstands this month, 'Bustin Punks' a 6 page article about cheating in PC games today. interviews with Richard Hayden at Prizefight, Tony Ray of Even Balance, and Maddog of TeamWarfare League. In addition, team myg0t of cake fame gives us their perspective on the idea of 'cheating' and how exactly they define it.

also in this month's issue of CGM is 'Dueling for Profit' for you WoW fans. Olaef of Uldum has made over 70,000 gold by dueling and he tells you how in CGM.

both written by me and both are cover features :)

buy a single digital issue at http://www.zinio.com or pick one up at barnes & noble, borders, and other fine stores.

glhf.

Finally; i decided a few days ago that working in three volunteer writing positions was too much, especially when i was giving them time for free and putting off paying gigs to do this free stuff. No queries equals no money eh?

So, i decide that i should only be devoting my time to one. I choose one, and quit the other two. That night, i sleep heavier than i have in a very long time, and i am exhausted from the emotional drain i feel when i quit something.

However, the universe must be smiling on me that i quit two of them. The day after i quit two of them, the CGM/Massive EIC about doing three stories for his two publications. When i told him about one of the guys i was tracking down to interview, he liked the guy's story so much, i have clearance to do an article ONLY on him. Which makes four very good possibilities of me being published with them, provided i dont hand them a piece of shit story full of bad grammar, spelling errors, and crappy transitions. which i'm not worried about. Even my BF2 Team HOT interview got 5000 reads. I could write this video game crap in my sleep, especially if it's interesting enough. it always is. And if i do really well, i will be 1200-2000 dollars richer out of this. enough for me to finally get a laptop.

So, already, i get the assignment on Monday, then i tell him on Tuesday that i can have the article done by Xmas. i got the ___ interview secured, and the ____ _______ interview secured. Got my questions sent out to both ___ and ____ _______. The only ones I'm still waiting to hear back from are those guys at ___. If they do not respond to me, i will be emailing _____ _____ this weekend to see if i can get an answer out of him. If i don't hear from him, i'll just email someone at the ___ to see if they will talk to me.

I even got my sidebar interview secured with _____- that's happening tonight. How cool is that - i not only got approved to write an article about ________, but even the biggest ________ team on the internets agreed to talk to me.

I'm only missing one interview, and if they don't reply soon, i dont mind; i can always find someone else who wants & appreciates the publicity. The rest is taken care of :D

Oh, it feels so good to be on top of my game finally. Feels good to be devoting time to my own goals instead of constantly devoting them to other people's goals. I kept waiting for certain people to hand me the torch, thinking that after all my volunteer efforts, one would finally pay off for me, and look what happens when i quit. Two doors close and four open. This is a milestone and the beginning of a new era for me. The funniest/weirdest/biggest thing is, if i listened to all those people back in the beginning who made fun of me and tried shooting me down, i wouldn't have any of what i have now. God, how terrible of me - I used to think it was such a big deal when even just one person gave me negative/mean responses. i would agonize over it for way longer than i should have. i dont know what i was thinking...

cheers to the pursuit of happiness and dream chasing. I've wanted this since i was ten. And It's only up from here.

*sorry to put blanks in there, but i can't talk about the story or who im interviewing, at least until after the story's published.

im puttin on the nerd glasses and playin a few hands of magic the gathering toodayyy. although i stayed up late last night, so i am feeling particularly vindictive and have little patience for anyone doing anything remotely stupid this morning. i stayed up too late volunteering at my choice of non-profit: perverted justice.

truly sickening and very hard strain on you mentally, really, but very very worth it when you consider the children that you probably helped save. they have TONS of positions open for people to volunteer, including graphic design, for anyone who might be interested. a very worthwhile cause to donate your time to. in addition, they prefer you donate time and effort rather than money. you can donate time and effort from anywhere, since this is a mostly-online organization. they bust child predators. you must be 18 or older to volunteer.

caution: the opening page is suitable for all viewers, however, this site warns on the opening page that all site viewers must be over 18. http://www.perverted-justice.com

for those of you who doubt this is as big an epidemic as the media makes it out to be, please visit bc, gc (pm me to ask what these abbrevs mean), and perverted justice for truly disgusting chat logs and/or recorded discussions.


orrrr i might just go crawl up in a hole and go to sleep, which is what i really should do.

OH YES. almost forgot,

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=superangrymonkey

please visit the above link and watch his hilarious videos. this is pretty much how i feel about the world, and i admire this guy for doing what he does.

GRR.

those guys are disgraceful to the beautiful city of seattle's competitive gaming scene. i will be telling everyone i know in the journalism community not to ever use them for anything. i dont know if my reach extends very far (probably not :)) but if this TWL interview had turned out well, i was planning on asking them to help me with the css features in my competitive gaming column that's coming out in the next few months.

basically, i contacted them two weeks ago about an interview and they said yes. then, i never heard from them for a week, when the same dude that said yes asks me to send the questions again, and today i go to their forums to ask them what's up and clear up what i think is a minor misunderstanding and they are complete dickwads to me.

whatever, i am kind of pissed off because the only reason i asked them is that theyre from seattle, and i would have liked to give them coverage at the outlets i have available to me.

so, i recommend to anyone who's doing CSS interviews, do not ask seattle fight club - they are large idiots and completely unprofessional. what a pain in the ass, they agree to it, two weeks ago, agree to it again a week later, then when i ask them about it and tell them my story is going to be late, they tell me to fuck off and just deal with it, after two weeks of telling me yes?

grr. large idiots. unprofessionalism really gets under my skin. why didn't they just say no in the first place instead of wasting my time like that? i depended on them. now my deadline is in two days and i have nothing. im sure karma will work this out one way or another though.

i've never encountered such a rude team - most teams i contact are really helpful, professional, nice, and just happy to get the coverage - even the really good teams. one team even liked my article so much, they now hire me for freelance work on articles for their own website.

My hubby and i will be going to 13 Coins this Thanksgiving; seeing as there is no point in cooking a humongous dinner when only two of us will be there. I am looking forward to it because 13 Coins has those huge, tall seats and very very good food on a menu of probably over 100 items. There is so much to choose from, and they are offering a Thanksgiving Day menu in addition to their regular selection. He's already seen their menu, and even he found something on it that he liked.

So yaay :)

The next four days off will be spectacular. No more six-days-a-week to work, and i will have some time to catch up on all this writing stuff i've let get behind. Mostly, i just have administrative stuff to do, like income/expense tracking, organizing outlook and adding contacts to my database, scanning in the mail and documents i have on paper, and possibly finding a file-sharing place to put my PDFs and whatnot. Plus we are going to pull out the Xmas tree and do some serious overhauling of our apt - hopefully it will smell alot better after this, and i can get him out of his depression.

He's meeting me for lunch so i'm pretty excited about that; lunch can be lonely and boring sometimes when i have to eat by myself. i will probably ask him to meet me for lunch a couple times a week if this whole situation goes well (it's gone spectacularly so far, big change from two days ago).


PS- i am going to try and keep this blog updated, in addition to the blog i keep at my website. we'll see how it goes.

my blog