Whenever I am fortunate enough to take a vacation from work I often make time to work on some of my musical pursuits. This is of course fit in around family activities. That wasn’t the case this time around however. On my first day of vacation I got an idea for a simple strategy board game for my son and I to play. It only took about 15 minutes to make but I enjoyed it so much that ideas were quickly filling my head for a more complete game based on the concept that I had introduced with my son.

Over the last couple weeks I’ve added things, removed things, tweaked and reworked elements of the game until what has emerged is a pretty complete strategy game.

While ideas for board games have crossed my mind in the past, this is the first time I have had such a complete idea and actually turned it into reality. Below is a picture of the first paper prototype of the game that I played with my son. It’s not much to look at and the board design has come a long way. And of course the game won’t actually use plastic army men.

I’ve playtested the game a handful of times and that’s what has led to most of the changes that were implemented so far. To give you an idea of the gameplay: It’s a two person game wherein each player is given 12 soldiers and some of those soldiers are given random special abilities. On each players turn they are able to move or shoot based on a limited number of allowed actions per turn. There are also several different types of terrain in the game that change each time it is played and this also affects what strategies each player may try to use. Similarly there are random events that are activated by specific squares on the board. These Events can either be a positive or negative thing and so players must choose wisely whether they want to chance putting a soldier on one.

Ultimately, I hope to find an avenue to release the game publicly. I’m still a long way off from that however. The next steps are to continue to test and tweak the gameplay, continue to work on the graphic design of the final board and of the Event and Ability cards, and to design the play pieces themselves.

Once all of that is done I will need to have a professionally made prototype to allow me to promote the game for public release when the time comes.

It feels a little early in the development process to be discussing all of this in a blog post but I need an outlet for my thoughts on the game other than people who are close to me, because I’m sure a couple of them are tired of hearing about every little update I make by now. 🙂

As I alluded to in my previous post, I have some exciting news that I would like to share. A few weeks ago I finished up work on my first book! Its entitled The Society of Virtue: Thirteen Character Virtues That Can Change Your Life. I worked on it over the past couple of years in between other projects but when 2012 began I knew that it was time to make The Society of Virtue a priority and finally get it finished.

The book is inspired by Benjamin Franklin’s list of thirteen character virtues that he had devised and had intended to create a secret society based on. Franklin never did get the chance to create his secret society but his ideas live on. The Society of Virtue is an original work that pays tribute to Franklin’s ideas and carries on the spirit of them with improved personal character through adherence to thirteen virtues.

The Society of Virtue is currently available from all of the major online book retailers and will soon be available in some of the smaller ones as well. Here are links to purchase the book:

Buy it on Amazon

Buy it on Barnes & Noble

Buy it on iTunes
(currently only available in the iBooks app, not on their website)

Buy it on Diesel eBook Store

Buy it on Smashwords
(in a variety of eBook formats)

As a special bonus for people who buy The Society of Virtue I’ve included in the book a special password that will grant access to a members only area of The Society of Virtue website. Once there, readers can enjoy downloading a variety of special bonus content.

I hope that you will consider buying a copy of The Society of Virtue. Not simply because I want it to be successful from a sales point of view, but also because I believe there can be real benefit to in the lives of those who choose to follow through with the pursuit of the virtues.

Things are about to change drastically in my life. It’s a good change I believe, though I’m sure that there will be something of an adjustment period. The change I speak of is that my family and I are moving about 60 miles away due to a job promotion.

The promotion is a good thing of course. We are leaving behind the farm house that we’ve called home for more than six years. I have mixed feelings about that. Up until a few months ago we hadn’t really given serious thought to leaving here but the situation has changed and we’re excited about the future and the possibilities that lie ahead. Though life will certainly be different.

Though we are still searching for a new house at this time, we assumed early on that wherever we end up that it would be unlikely we’d be able to take the chickens with us. So we’ve already sold them. It was bittersweet seeing them go. I enjoyed having chickens these past couple years but I’m not gonna lie, the idea of not having animals at home to take care of is an attractive one, at least for now. I could see raising chickens again some day, but for the time being this is a serious blow to my not too seriously pursued pursuit of self-reliance.

It’s also an opportunity to find new avenues to pursue some measure of self- reliance however. What exactly those may be I won’t know until we’ve found a house and I know what is possible there.

Then of course there is the consideration of my music. It seems like I spend more time dealing with roadblocks to recording my songs than I do actually recording them. I really don’t know what to expect yet on this front since we haven’t found a house yet. Long term I think without animals at home that I will actually have more time to accomplish music. On a brighter note, I recently won an iPod Touch in a lyric contest and it seems that I may be able to use it as a little mobile studio which should be fun.

That’s pretty much the summary of what is going on right now. In other news, my first book is getting published soon. I’ll have more details on that as the date draws nearer.

It’s been a long time since I’ve released any new music and I’m glad to be able to do so today. My band 2 Hour Drive just released a six song album on Amazon Mp3. It’s available for only $5.34. Click Here!

For those of you who don’t follow my music news very closely, 2 Hour Drive is my band that I do with Joe Quatrone. It’s primarily an internet band but we do get together when we have the opportunity.

I really do hope to get new music out more regularly than I have in the past, but we’ll see what happens. For now please go take a listen to “Lift Your Hands” and consider purchasing it. Thanks

Each year when the calendar changes over I get an idea in my head of a theme for the year for myself. I don’t know what spawns the idea or why each theme is what it is, but it’s usually pretty accurate for the year that unfolds. In 2006, I got the idea that it was the year of Change. A few months later we found out that my wife was pregnant with our first child. In 2007 it was the year of Transition. A few weeks later I got a new job, after 5 and a half years at Staples.

This year the idea that just popped into my head earlier is this: The Year of Breaking Free. I’ll explain more about what I think it means below but first I should catch everyone up on what’s been going on in my life.

It’s been a little over four months since I posted something new, sorry about that, a lot has been going on in my life. Most notably of which is that my wife and I welcomed our daughter into the world a few months ago and that of course has kept me from blogging as much. A good thing of course.

I’ve also continued to be quite busy with my web ventures which are progressing slowly towards more positive results.

And I think I alluded to in the past that I had started a new band at the beginning of the summer. That band is 2 Hour Drive and we’ve been having a blast so far.

So what does Breaking Free mean to me? Well in a few days I will turn 29 and for the past 10 years I’ve been working in retail. I don’t really like it, I never have. So in 2011, I hope to finally break free from that, whether that manifests itself as a job in a different career field or being self-employed with my web marketing projects. And speaking of which, Breaking Free also means breaking free from money problems. My job barely pays enough to put food on the table, with hard work and persistence I hope to increase revenue from internet marketing to finally get ahead of this money stuff.

Breaking Free can also carry more ethereal meanings as well. Like breaking free from fear and apprehension, from worry, from wasting time. Free from burdens that only serve to demotivate me.

This is my theme for 2011, what’s yours?

I recently put out a new music video for a song I recorded a couple years ago titled “Godzilla, Don’t Eat Me”. The video is made from clips of one of the very early Godzilla movies. I had a lot of fun making it and you can view the video below.

The reason for releasing this right now is because my focus is shifting away from doing music as a solo artist and I wanted to get this made before I get too deeply involved with my new band. Yep, I’m in a new rock band. I’ll have more details about that once we have a proper website put together.

Six years ago me and some other lads formed a pop/punk band named CrewmanNumber7. We wrote songs, played shows, entertained, and generally had a good time. The band even recorded a five song EP with Grammy winning producer Barry Blair (Bleach, Audio Adrenaline).

That 5 song EP was titled When Yellow Met Blue and included some of our fans favorite songs like “Plutonium Girl”, “Dreams for Us”, and “Empty Spaces.” The band split up four years ago for a variety of reasons, all very common ones among young bands. Just pick whatever cliche band split up reason you can think of and put that on CrewmanNumber7. The details are not all that important.

What is important however is that for the first time in four years our album is available for purchase through Amazon Mp3. I wanted to make it available because it was a good little album that I just didn’t want to be collecting dust on a shelf. Click here now to go have a listen and see if you enjoy it.

You may have noticed that I gave the site a serious facelift last week. I never really liked my old WordPress theme even though I had spent the time to make it unique, whereas right now I’m just using a theme someone else created. I think it’s a cleaner simpler look and that is what I was going for.

In other cool news, now when you visit this site from a mobile browser, you’ll be viewing a mobile version of the site which looks  perfect on mobile devices and loads a lot more quickly. So hopefully my visitors that enjoy mobile browsing can have a better experience now.

It was a cold and windy day in early January when I got a call from my wife. “The sink is backed up and water is shooting everywhere out of the washer,” she said in a frustrated tone. Being the wise husband that I am I left work early to go home to my wife’s rescue.

Upon my arrival at home an idea occurred to me that perhaps the problem was not that there was a clog but that the drainpipe exiting the house from the kitchen was frozen. This was entirely possible because the drainpipe was buried only a few inches beneath the ground. Old farmhouses have fun things like that. Before entering the house I circled around to the backyard and discovered the terrible truth.

Water from a downspout had run downhill and washed dirt away from the pipe completely exposing a three inch section of it to the frigid air on the north side of our house.

This was not a good situation. The sun was setting and the temperature was dropping even further and with a frozen drain pipe we wouldn’t be able to use any water in the house until it thawed out. Not really knowing what to do I drove to Lowe’s hoping to find some answers. An employee showed me to the electrical pipe heaters that are meant to keep a pipe from freezing. These ranged from $20-30 but clearly written on each one was a warning to only use it indoors and not allow it to touch the ground. I tried soliciting ideas from Lowe’s employees to try and fix my problem but they were unable to offer me any solutions.

I was growing desperate at this point. It was dark out, cold, and windy. As I made my way towards the front of the store I spotted something that I thought just might work. It was a cardboard display of Hot Hands and Toasti Toes, the little bags of hand and feet warmers that people who work outside in the cold winter months sometime use. I read the packaging on each carefully. The Hot Hands actually get hotter than the Toasti Toes but the Toasti Toes don’t require oxygen to stay warm once you get them hot. For the idea that hatched in my head, there wasn’t going to be much oxygen available.

I purchased six packs of Toasti Toes, costing me about $8. When I got home I quickly went to work. I knew that that main problem was that the pipe was exposed to the cold winter air, so I needed to cover it with something. With the ground frozen I had little choice: I went to the barn and got some fresh horse manure. It was readily available and well, some of it was still warm.

Once I had removed the Toasti Toes from their packages and they got warm, I stuffed all 12 of them (there’s two in a pack) down around the pipe. Then I put a brick on top of it and dumped a wheelbarrow load of horse manure on top to seal in the heat. And then, I waited.

And waited some more. Hours passed and nothing happened. I was starting to think that I had just wasted my time and that it was a stupid idea to think that a product meant to keep feet warm could possibly unfreeze a metal pipe in early January. It was late at night and I was about to get into  bed, disappointed that my MacGyver-like home repair had failed and not knowing what I would do to fix it the next day.

Suddenly, I heard a great whooshing sound coming from down stairs.
My wife was already in bed and asked what I had done.  “It worked!”, I exclaimed and ran downstairs to confirm what I knew to be true. Sure, enough the pipes were empty. The drain pipe was unfrozen all thanks to Toasti Toes! Five hours, six packs of Toasti Toes, and a pile of horse manure were all that was needed to get me out of a bad situation.

Thanks Toasti Toes!

Six years ago my friend Matt and I started a web comic called The Office Comic. Over the course of two years and about 150 strips we had a lot of fun with it and got a lot better at it as time went by.

After it ended I let the website go offline and the domain name fall into the nefarious hands of the guys from Water. They seem to have finally relented in their fight against us and let the domain name go. So the other day I picked it up and have decided to put the archives of the comic up for the world to enjoy once more.

I’ve always enjoyed writing and one of the things that I appreciated most about doing a webcomic was that thanks to Matt’s artistic abilities I was able to experience writing in a medium that I would not have otherwise had the opportunity to do.

Exactly six years after The Office Comic began, on January 25th I will begin publishing the archives in the same way that they were originally published, following a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule. Go to TheOfficeComic.com to experience it in all it’s lost glory.