You can read the full article here - but to summarize, Geocities, the free web hosting service from 19-fucking-95, is pretty much dead and buried.

This is one of the saddest events for internet related matters. Seriously. If you were on the web from 1995-2000, there’s a strong chance you had a webpage at Geocities.

The very first website I ever created was at Geocities. I can’t remember the exact URL, but I never even knew HTML and used Geocities Website Builder software to create it. If it wasn’t for that, I probably would have never got into the business I am today.

I still remember my first homepage. BluenoseGjMcGs Website was the name of it. It was more just a personal page where I put on some pictures, funny soccer quotes, jokes etc. I also ran a brief TNM e-fed and posted stuff on there too.

Then when I created my first wrestling website, the Pro Wrestling World, I had it on Geocities. Amazingly, I still remember the URL - it was /http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Arena/9333

Unfortunately the site is long gone, and the earliest web archive is just a forwarder to our new site.

I remember having about 300 different Geocities accounts, as we had lots of files to host but Geocities had a size limit for your account(no bandwidth limits at that time). Just thinking about all this brings back memories. The biggest thing at that time I remember was EVERYONE had Geocities accounts, and then they all left to go to uh…Simplenet.com I think it was. Like people had URLs like WrestlingGod.Simplenet.com and so on. Then one day due to bandwidth, simplenet just booted every fucking wrestling site off them, which was epic lolz.

Anyway, very sad to see Geocities gone, as it kicked the ass of all it’s competitors, like Angelfire and Fortunecity. Unfortunately they never could figure out how to really profit from the site, especially in this web 2.0 world. It seems silly - but to me, it’s like an NFL Player seeing the kids team he played for at 4 years old shutting down - they got me the start in this business, and who knows if I’d still be in the position today without it.

To Geocities: Thanks.  I owe my livelihood to you, as do many others I am sure.

Well at the end of this month, I’m going to cancel my Blockbuster Unlimited Game Rental deal that I had going since the beginning of February.  It’s actually a great idea, but the problem is that you feel obligated to play the rental game.  My game collection is huge and I haven’t been playing a lot of games that I should be, so I’m going to cancel it till like June or July and then get it back.

I’d always planned this to end around this time, for the release of the new Fallout 3 DLC.  Just a shame I wasn’t able to rent some games I really wanted, like RE 5, or Lost for Janise, or WWE Legends, or a ton of others.  Oh well.

So taking a look at my games, other than Fallout I have to play:

• Rainbow Six Vegas 1.   Story mode and T-Hunt on Realistic.
• Rainbow Six Vegas 2.  Story mode on Realistic.
• Bioshock.  Hardest difficulty.
• Left 4 Dead.  Only played 2 story modes.  Also gotta play it online.
• Burnout Revenge & Paradise.  Just need to play these more.
• Dark Sector.  Hardest difficulty.
• Civilization.  It’s just been sitting there for a LONG time gathering dust.
• RE4 for the Gamecube.  Yep.  Still not played.
• Mass Effect.  Barely scratched surface with it.
• Gears of War 1.  Gotta go through co-op with Risto.
• Gears of War 2.  Gotta go through on Insane.
• Fifa 09.  Just haven’t played thus much at all since purchasing.
• Halo Wars.  Same as above.  Rented it.  Played 1 skirmish.  Loved it.  Ordered it online.  Arrived last week.  Haven’t played it yet.
• Saints Row 2.  When the new DLC comes out, going through it again on competitive co-op.
• Marvel Ultimate Alliance.  A lot to do in that, gotta go through it on hardest difficulty too I think with Risto.
• Skate.  Played for an hour.
• Rock Band 2.  Need to just play this more.  Hopefully get an NPP jam session soon.
• Lego Star Wars.  The fact I don’t have 1000/1000 in that is bugging the hell out of me.  I intend on playing this, Batman & Indiana and getting those.  I’m starting to care about achievements again.
• Call of Duty 2 & 4.  Call me a sadist, but I want to go through both of these(and probs COD 3) on veteran.  I got big balls.

So yeah - whew.  Lot of games to play.  I want to clear out my shelf of games I’m not interested in and just keep ones that I will - you know - actually fucking play.  Add in all the work I have for myself and yeah - gonna be busy times ahead.

I’ve no idea why, but I decided to spend oh the last 90 minutes setting up my blog here so that Twitter updates get posted on it.  The subject will say “Update from Twitter” I believe, so now every time I…..”Tweet”…as the cool kids say, it’ll show up on my blog!  Pretty neato actually, but really I coulda spent my time a lot better.

Oh well - off to bed, up in the morning for a massage, then some work before Brando gets in town.  We were going to go drinking right away but I have to look after the kids till 8pm, so we’ll probably just chill, take it easy etc and not bother doing much.  Then Saturday it’s off to watch UFC in prime mothafuckin seats, BOOM.  Can’t fucking wait.

Alright.  Must sleep.

It’s been a crazy week and I haven’t been at the computer much; sorry for lack of updates, and I’ll write something more detailed when I have time.  I’ve been working since 6am today however, and it’s 11:40pm and I have at least another 3-4 hours of work left to do, before attempting to take the weekend off.

Anyway although it’s been a busy day, I took some time out to buy myself a new phone.  I’ve had a shitty phone history - every phone I’ve had ends up breaking.  Some because they are poorly made(3 fucking Razrs), some because I’m an idiot(sure I’ll respond to this text message in the pouring rain), and others because I let my son play with it when he was 2, and he drooled all over it.

Last year I bought a Japanese Iphone knockoff, and it sucked.  The touch screen keyboard was useless as a child would have problems keying stuff on it.  The navigation etc sucked too, and overall it was just a piece of shit.

I kept putting off buying a new phone.  I was debating with going with another Razr just so I could text again, or waiting for a new iPhone or something to come out.  However I’ve been thinking a lot about my life lately, and the fact that I don’t get out anywhere near as much as I used to.  A large reason for that is because I hate going places because if I am away for a few hours the e-mails etc can pile up.  Worse, I pride myself in customer service, and if someone e-mails me saying “Hey I signed up for Full Tilt Rakeback” I want to be able to respond to them within an hour or so max.  In the rakeback industry, customer service is the one thing that can really make you stand out over other sites.

So yeah - I went for one of these:

That is a Blackberry Bold and will hopefully make my life a lot fucking easier.  I managed to get a good Rogers Rep on the phone, and got it for just $250.  It’ll also be at least $50 a month which is a bit meh, but it should make life a lot fucking easier.  No more will I have to go to the computer during commercial breaks to see if any e-mails have came in, etc.

I’ve been aching for a Blackberry for awhile.  I actually bought one a few years ago(around the time I had Scotsmanality Deux just started) but returned it within a day as I didn’t want it.  Really at that time I just didn’t fucking need it.  Now I am pretty sure it is going to be one of those things that within a week, I will wonder what I did without it.

Anyway more luck to do - but I am excited about the Blackberry yay!  It should arrive next Wed-Friday.

So today was shitty for the most part.  I got a lot of key work done in the morning, and Risto was off work and asked if I wanted to play some Rainbow 6 Vegas 2.  I said sure no problem, give me 30 minutes to write an Aced.com Poker Affiliate Program Review for the Poker Affiliate Bible.  So I do that with about 5 minutes to spare, tell Risto to fire up the XBox, post the article to my site….

….and everything fucks up.

Suddenly when you would visit the site, it wouldn’t load, then would time out.  So I enlisted the help of Frank, my go to guy for techy stuff.  So the two of us start brainstorming.  There’s no easy way to see what the problem is, so we start by eliminating all problems.  First I upgrade Wordpress.  Still broken.  Next I upgrade all plugins manually.  Still broken, one hour gone.  I remember I installed eaccelerator recently, so we remove that, recompile apache - still busto.

After testing out a few different things, we finally narrowed it down to it being a specific theme/design issue.  Okay great.  After a bit more work, we figure out it’s in the functions.php file, and narrow it down to the code which posts excerpts for password protected categories.  Some other issues crop up, but we manage to fix them all finally.  This took about three fucking hours, and it ruined my day.  After this was done, I told the wife I was going out for a bit, grabbed my coat and just headed the fuck out, feeling really pissed off at the world.

I caved and bought a pack of smokes and this made me feel better.  I headed up to Blockbuster to rent COD World on War, and saw Halo Wars there.  Craving a good RTS, and going on the recommendation of Nateeasy, I rented it.  Came home feeling emotionally drained, went for a shower, got into my PJs, and felt a lot better.  Relaxed and watched the Celebrity Apprentice with the wife, as my day turned around.

Then with the wife up in bed, I was busy finishing off a few work related things, when I remembered Halo Wars.  I put it on just to try it out and HOLY SHIT - it’s everything I want in an RTS.  Nice and simple, easy to navigate etc, nothing too dumb in it - I fucking love it, and am ready to buy it and all I have did is play one skirmish.

Anyway yay - that’s put me in a great mood, so now I am off to bed, and then tomorrow I’ll be back to conquer the world.  Fuck I feel good.