Video Games and My Life.

SO following my last blog post I'll talk about my recent obsession of video games. In 2007 I had a bit of an alcohol addiction. I rarely went a day without at least a Corona, most of the time my drinking began at lunch time during work hours mind you. After I left my job my drinking continued on and actually got worse. It go to the point where my wife gave me an ultimatum stop drinking or leave. I knew I had gotten bad, but I had no idea it had gotten that bad.

Ok so now the part about the video games, So I had owned an Xbox 360 for 6 months at this time but didn't play it very often. So one day I decided ok I'm going to quit drinking (some say its because my dad moved out of town the same day I quit but I say otherwise.) Anyways I picked up my 360 controller and turned it on to play some Oblivion I was working on the Thieves guild quests at the time and I finished the quests out that night. Then I heard the sound... I'd heard it before but really didn't know what it meant. It was the achievement unlocked sound! So I hit the dashboard button on my controller and started checking out my achievements and saw what I could unlock. I thought hey this is pretty cool! So began my gamerscore whoring, I had only 3 people at that time on my friends list and the highest gamerscore of them was around 3000 I thought way I think I can catch that and I did at about 6500 points I happened to read an article on a website I used to go to called Playfeed about a gamerscore club called the xbl10kclub they were celebrating their 1 year anniversary. I thought to myself no way there is a club for people like me? So I went to the site and checked it out. It looked pretty cool but I had never spent time on any forum before so I figured well I better get my score up to 10k so I can join. In the mean time I decided I better get a little more familiar with forums, so I joined the xbox.com forums. What a mistake that was tons of little asshole kids who troll the forums preying on anyone who's not sure about something then flaming the hell out of them. Anyways back to the 10k a couple of weeks later I hit 10k and signed up. I posted my first welcome thread in the forums just to test the waters and see what kind of response I get as I was a little hesitant after getting flamed damn near daily on the xbox forums. To my surprise I received very welcoming responses from everyone. I thought hey this isn't half bad. So I started checking the forums daily making random replies still a little weary. Pretty soon I started getting friend requests from other forum members on Xbox live. I was really starting to enjoy this forum stuff. Now by this time I had gone 2 months without even a thought of drinking I had a new addiction and it was an excellent one! Then something I thought truly amazing happened I was sitting up late one night listening to the weekly Zunecast and they mentioned a giveaway for a Chris Paladino autographed copy of Shadowrun. While at the time I had no freakin clue who Chris Paladino was but I still thought it was pretty exciting. So I entered the contest, then one day I get an email from Rodsmack 10k saying "congrats bro you won the copy of Shadowrun!" I couldn't believe it! I was shocked, I'd never won anything like this before! That was just the icing on the cake! I knew I'd found my community! I'm a 10k member for life! I even added the 10k to my gamertag twice along with my sons (Outlaw 10k)

just to show my love and appreciation for what they've done for us. Now 7 months later my gamerscore is

and I'm a very active member of all the Xbox communities and have won multiple contest from different communities I stay active in and still not a drop of alcohol! I love seeing my score in the top 20-25 of all the leaderboards I join and hope to one day be at #1 in a few of them! Anyways i want to give a little shout out to The 10k members Rodsmack, DrunknMunkey, ReallyOldPunk, Mistah Clutch, Prestiege, Simon, ContacttheDude and everyone else helping out with the community! I also want to shout out the owner of 360style Avid X, bimbobarbie, and igotgame, for all their hard work! If your not already a member of these communities go there now and get involved NOW!

Road to unemployment...

Ok so here is my first ever blog post. I'll start out talking about how I ended up unemployed. The beginning was back in July, I was working for a Real Estate company well known for their Erik Estrada infomercials and property for sale all over the us. Things were not going well for me there. I was a Land Acquisitions manager there and in charge of locating potential projects through research via the internet, contacting Real Estate agents, and traveling to different areas all over the US. One of my fellow colleagues was let go and they decided to drop her workload on top of mine. The problem with that was I had no clue how to do what she did. I wasn't aware of all the proper procedures of MLS (Multiple Listing Services) sales. I was extremely stressed out everyday and my blood pressure was through the roof for a 26 year old. I couldn't take it anymore so I started to search for other options of employment. I stopped into my local Harley Davidson dealership to pick up a few things for my Buell, I was talking with the Manager about my situation and he said we have some sales positions open. I thought now I could do this, how hard is it to sell a Harley?! They pretty much sell themselves. I've grown up around Harley's and owned a few of them along with my Buell. So we did the paperwork and I went back to my current employer and asked the owner and HR director if they would lay me off so I could collect unemployment if need be, after some convincing they finally agreed and I was on my way to becoming a Harley Davidson salesman. The next week I went in to the Harley store and told him I was done with the other company and ready to come to work, to my surprise and disappointment the manager told me he needed a couple of weeks to sort some things out. Ok I thought no problem I can wait to weeks. 2 weeks went by and I returned to the Harley store to another disappointing and frustrating answer, 2 more weeks. I was a little discouraged but thought ok I can go a couple more weeks. Another 2 weeks go by and I return to the Harley store with my hopes extremely high only to have them crushed. I'm sorry sales are slow we're not going to be able to hire you. I stood there in shock! I couldn't believe it I had given up a really good paying job that I wasn't able to return to since they had already hired a replacement. Well here I am 6 months and 115 applications later and still no job. Unemployment was a joke to try and collect as I hadn't lived in California long enough to file online everything had to be done through the mail. I had to wait 2 months to get a check and by then I'd already given up and forfeited the rest of my unemployment. Only offers I've had for employment recently have been $8-$12 an hour jobs. In Southern California thats equals about $5-$6 and hour. When I left my home town to come here I was making $20 an hour in construction. I applied for several construction jobs here, with 12 years experience mind you and have basically been laughed at one time even told that they can hire mexicans for $8 why would they want to pay me anything above $12. So there you have it thats my unemployment story and my first blog enjoy.