Yo! Its been a while since we've done one of these. You know, the Annual thread where we say whats up and see how everyones doing? The year is almost over and I thought now would be a good time to reflect on things and let our fellow AT'ers and associates know whats up.

I've had quite a hectic year myself. So many unexpected responsabilities literally heaped on me. I manage to get through my 2nd Semster in college with the grades I wanted but this last semester proved to be much too challenging for me; and in the end I ended up droping almost all my classes rather then settling for something less then what I expect of myself. I've somehow still managed to also keep my job and sanity and its all been a great learning experience. I've definetly felt myself grow alot this year.

Got myself a 360 and been splurging on games like I've never done before. With my DS and 360 I've never been so satisfied with a purchase I've made as I have with these. As of lately Crushinator,Donkey, some of donkey's friends and I have been housing it up on Call of Duty 4 and man have we been having a blast making fun of some italian gangs, making fun of spoiled annoying little kids, teabagging, knifing, headshotting, car exploding, Bret Favre grenade lobbing fun.

A file on my windows PC corrupted so I haven't been able to get on PSU or visit the boards in like a month now. Hopefully I'll have that fixed by end of this week. Not sure, what I want in my love life when it comes to women so I've just been taking things as they come don't really want to commit to anything. Still keeping my dream of aiming for the top and focusing on my first step to that dream by becoming a teacher. So what about you? How are things with my fellow AT'ers been going? I know some of us have gone through some very troubled times so I hope I don't trouble you or bring back any unpleasant memories. But I've really grown attached to my time with you guys and I feel that I genuinely care for you guys. As so I hope for the best for everyone and invite you to share with us whats happening with you. At least let us know your still alive!

I've been buying more games than I know what to do with, and playing them with the time I can manage. There have been so many gems this year I can't even begin to name them all, thought right now i've been running through Zelda on the DS. Been working with the post office, which I loathe and am just counting the days until I gtfo of that place. I've been looking for work in Maine as i've been planning on moving to that area in January in a place for crazy cheap rent, and i'm pretty psyched.

I've been hooked to my TV for Chuck, Heroes, and Scrubs as of late, because the're just entirely too awesome. Christmas has been busy, but it's always a nice time of year, so i'm cool with it. Looking forward to the next chance to game with my fellow AT brothers. ;)

Well theres a decent chance I'll be moving to Utah (lolhicrush) next year, and living with a friend of mine. We're working together to make a varied arts studio, with another friend of ours that lives nearby, and hopefully make a small business out of it.

I got ahold of a professional animator a while ago via e-mail, who gave me some advice on getting into animation as a career, along with tips from another former animator for the old school Spider Man cartoon (isn't that friggin awesome?!). Which hopefully, all builds up to more connections of that nature.

So yeah, within the coming couple of years, I'm sure my life will take a huge leap in what I wanna do for a living.

And I'm just here currently, day by day doing the same ol' same ol'. Nothing to extraordinary to report besides the above news. Other than being too poor to play any of these new games with you guys.

But yes, that's about it. Heres to more roll call threads in the future.

Tee-hee, nowai, that would be radical. I'll buy you some drinks if you move up!
I don't know how long its been since we've done one of these, haha. Right now I'm working as Assistant manager (ass-man!) at a local custom computer retailer. I'm not 100% satisfied with the job as far as wanting to make a career out of it, but the people I work with are great and I'm making fatter stacks of cash than ever before, so its nice. The big problem is that I have to work a shitload of hours (usually over 50 a week) and I have to work saturdays, so I don't have much free time for anything. We're moving into an extremely hectic month (as anyone who's worked a retail job during x-mas knows) so I'm gonna be burning the midnight oil till the end of the year. Hopefully I can get some serious time off in the first quarter '08 though, I want to take a long vacation and maybe even visit some AT peeps on the east coast.

I was finally able to get a new car after driving my old '96 cavalier pretty much to its end. Tanshin can attest that the old crushinator-mobile was letting out its death-rattle for abou the last 7 months . So now I'm driving an awesome 2002 mustang! Or at least it was awesome until we had a sudden blizzard last saturday and I spun out off the side of the freeway into a ditch . The damage isn't super bad, but it sucks seeing as I just got it 8 days prior, and I'm probably gonna be out almost $800 to get it back to normal.

On the gaming front, I've got the same story as Wir and AC... too many good games, and not enough free time to enjoy them all! This holiday has got to be the best (if not easily in the top 3) for amazing videogame releases. If you watch my XBL profile you can see I've racked massive amounts of time into Rock Band since it came out, its just fantastic. On the online front I've been playing COD4 a lot with AC and Donkey, more people in AT need to get on this game! (Wiryu, Kazicht, HC82, get your asses in gear!) Its seriously the next big thing FPS-wise, both console and PC versions. I still dabble in Halo occasionally, but I just dig the tactics and intensity of COD4 more, and the rpg-esque leveling up just increases the incentive to play more and get better. The new map pack for H3 should pull me back in this december though.

I'm also trying to get through some of the awesome single player games I picked up last month, I'm heavy into Assassin's Creed right now, and then I'll hit up Mass Effect after that. Then I've got Zelda on the DS and Contra 4 to man up as well. I've finished Super Mario Galaxy, so the Wii can continue to gather dust till Smash and NMH come out this Feb.

Real life is insanely demanding; I get home around 8pm every day. Gaming is something I do maybe a few hours on the weekend and it's been going toward Mass effect.

So, where do I begin?

I'm a banker now and its pretty intensive due to the learning curve. I should say "New York Banker," because it's a little different here than in other states. I finished all that insane training and the job is demanding. It's really something I find that I'm taking home with me, in a sense that now I really need to have a strong understanding of the market, on the job and off the job. The more you know, the better you help your customers, and the better you can help the customers, the more money you make. I barely have time for lunch breaks, and if I take lunch breaks I lose the potential to make more money. This job is totally incentive based and it has massive money making potential. The thing is that I gotta bust my balls to do it. The fact that I'm new at it means that I'm in the process of taming the job.

It's a little more complicated than just me being busy right now. It's like an uphill battle, since iam trying to build myself in many ways. As an adult, and as a professional. I find that when I come home, I'm trying to focus on so many ways to get my life moving foward in the direction I want to go, that gaming takes a back seat.

As an adult:
Trying to find a new apartment, or maybe consider purchasing an apartment. Location is very important and money is of course the issue. The hunt for one in NYC is beyond annoying. I find renting in a nice neighborhood to be a huge cash-sink, because those dollars could be going toward a mortgage, which nets you actually equity (ownership). The problem is, to buy, at least in NYC, you need a good 30k to 50k saved away just for the down payment. I'm about halfway there, but I am feeling very impatient. I can move now and rent in a very nice area, or wait the year and buy in a decent area. I really feel like the moving now will give me the personal boost I need to get my self in order, but the cheapskate in me doesn't want to pay some bastard excess rent if it's not needed.

As a professional:
This job is a great fit for me, since it's totally incentive/performance based. If you don't produce the numbers, you're out (ie. fired). Produce the numbers, make big money, and you're a demigod. I gotta have the eye of the tiger right now to do this. Because this is more so a career then a job for me, I feel that I personally have to put in a lot of initial effort to produce the numbers I'm looking for to reach the further job positions I have in mind. To put it simply, it's do or die, and I intend to do-do-do. So, I spend a lot of time bettering my self with financial knowledge, in addition to opening a brokerage account with exposing myself to the market. All of these things will help me to gain the ability to produce more and quite frankly, it takes up time. Essentially, my job, for me now, is going to be a disipline in the financial field for the next few months.

Honestly, the biggest thing holding me back is myself. I'm just not 100% here right now.

Sounds like a real man's job, something that can turn out to be real satisfying once you get comfortable with it.



You can BUY an apartment? Like as in, you own it forever? I'm not 100% clear on this, as we don't have that type of option here. Although a lot of my friends my age or even younger are buying houses now... It makes me feel like I'm not being responsible enough or something. But I'm still at a nomadic-feeling point in my life, I can't tie myself down with roots like that just yet!

I was busy with school with projects due each week. I had all studio classes this semester so it was killer. 2 classes (6 hours straight) back to back Mon. - Thurs. I just finished up my final exam today (and my final project just 15 minutes before class started) and man it feels good. Now I can get a full night's worth of sleep or really play games all night haha. I'll finally be able to enjoy watching House MD without fiddling around with my drawing tools or graphic programs. Too bad no new episodes won't come out for a few weeks. I guess a good thing coming out of all of this is that I was able to put out some pretty nifty work that I thought I wasn't capable of. I had fun but it was alot of work.

As for my DJ side "job", I'm starting to get more involved with the local scene and I got a handful of gigs coming up. One thing that was pretty cool this year was this DJ audition the week before Thanksgiving. It was to see who would play at the party the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. They were only going to choose 8 DJs. The auditions started at 7PM but I didn't really come until an hour later. I didn't get to audition until like 10:30PM or 11:00PM because I was further down the list. I get a call a few days later telling me that I could perform. Wow sweet but the time slot for me was way too early and only one of my friends got to see me perform. Plus I only had 30 minutes to do so. I didn't really mind. It was a nice experience. In the end, all the DJs that auditioned got to play (around 14 total spreaded out to 2 rooms) and we all made $50 for 30 mins or so of playtime. I didn't expect to get paid at all. The party itself was pretty awesome. The club was pretty packed and they had a fashion show in another room earlier that night.

As for the gaming front: I've been playing PSU:AoTI occasionally. I've been enjoying it so far. It's much less of a grind this time around. Been playing in alot of open games.
Like AC, I'm pretty glad I bought a 360 even though I only have 3 games for it. My first real Halo (online) experience was pretty awesome and so was my first real in-depth experience with Guitar Hero. Everything has already been said for CoD4. Good game and great in between everything else. XBox Live itself is pretty cool even though I had doubts about it. There's occasional assholes on there but you can pretty much find that anywhere these days. Another thing would be that some people think that I play PSU on the 360 when I really don't and they ask me to get on and game with them. Maybe I should pick it up afterall haha.
On the DS, I'm still trying to get through Contra 4 but I keep dying at the 2nd part of Stage 2 (the new music kicks ass though). I was playing Zelda for a little bit then I stopped because of all of the CoD4 action. I'll probably get on that later on.
As for the Wii, my bro took it back to play Metroid so I'm SOL. I was ready to play some Mario Galaxy too =(

Not sure what the new year will hold. Probably more projects =(

Well, I was referring to purchasing a condominium (condo). It's like an apartment complex where you own shares in the complex, equating to an individually owned apartment. Think of it like a Whopper Jr. and a house is a Whopper; although, some new york condos are stupid expensive. As for homes, you're much better off buying a home then renting for the next 15 years, if you save up. You'd be somewhat surprised to find out that the money you spend to rent can equate to the same amount of money you spend on the mortgage for a home. If the money goes toward a home you own, your rent money technically isn 't going to waste, but it's being reinvested back into your personal estate,'so down the road, all that money you spent living in a house can now be accounted for in the form of equity (home ownership). That house can now be sold after its fully paid for, versus renting, where you have nothing to show for it in 15 to 30 years.

The key is that if you're paying 500 for rent, and you can pay the same for a mortgage on a home, then you're better off buying a home. Homes are more mantience though, but it's a smart investment if you can afford it. Besides, the price of houses will continue to drop over the next few years. If anything. I'd just save some money up for that down payment in the future. What holds a lot of people back from buying a home in New York is that they need a downpayment, which is usually 2% to 10% of the home in advance. You can do less toward a downpayment, but then there are extra costs. If you buy a 80,000 home (dunno what prices are out there, but 500,000 is normal for a house in nyc), it's smart to save 8,000+ before hand.

If you're looking to save, it's usually a good idea to put away about 5% to 10% of your weekly paycheck in savings and strive for a target amount to hit, other wise you'll just spend it on bullshit. I would head to your local bank and ask about C.D.s (certificate of deposits) If you're saving money over the long haul, it's a good way to get some extra cash with your savings without exposure to the market. Something like an 'annuity' is used for retirement, so a C.D. helps keep your money locked away for short periods of time and gain interest in the process. wiki it up (Certificate of Deposit). Just remember once you set one up, that money isn't to be touched for the time period of the C.D., other wise you get penalized (which is bad).

Food for thought:
If you put away $1000 in a 1 year 5% C.D, you get 50 bucks in interest, but...
If you put away $10,000 in a 1 year 5% C.D. you get 500 bucks in interest at the end of the year. That's like a free game system. The more you save now, the greater the interest accumulates.

Not to stray from the subject of this topic, but being a nomad is cool now, since you're figuring out a lot of things in life, but do disipline yourself to start saving up regardless.

Let's see... I take my last final before winter break starts. My sister's 5 months pregnant, and I'm gonna be an uncle sometime in the weeks surrounding my birthday. I hope to be out of school by August but I'm not holding my breath.

As for gaming, I've been playing FFXI whenever I can and I'm really enjoying it this time. I may or may not get a 360 for Christmas. I'm also looking forward to FF4 on the DS.

Oh, I am quite the jew when it comes to finances, really. I save a lot, but I am looking for a good way to invest my money so it actually builds up, intead of just sitting in my checking/savings accounts with the shit 2.5% interest or whatever. I'll check into the CD thing with my bank. Any other sage money advice?

Mutual funds are always solid. If you ever end up employed by the Federal Government their TSP program owns. Any employer offered savings/retirement plan where they match up to a certain amount usually go well for the employee. Just be certain of any restrictions that may be in place should you ever leave. My TSP plan with gov allows me to put any % of my pre tax yearly income with the gov matching up to 5%. Currently the high risks have like 8% growth rates.




As for my current status, mainly just work work. I am gainfully and rather happily employed at the IRS Ogden facility in the Campus/National Print Services division. Still trying to get on solid financial ground after that last shitty dead end job. Getting there slowly, night/Sunday differential helps a shitload. Beyond that really the same ole, work work, play when able and get shitfaced on the weekends. Gaming wise, still a PC man, WoW and EvE are mainstays with a hodge podge of games like Crysis, HL2-Portals, Hellgate:London, and anything else entertaining looking for in between fun. Hope to be snagging a 360 before long, get in on some Haro 3 and CoD4 MP action with the crew. Beyond that, just the same ole same ole. Cannot argue with leading a bit of a simple life now and then.

Haha I was thinking of doing this too AC, gg. Anyway, things have been good in the life of D. I actually graduated back December of last year, with my degree in History. And up to present day, I haven't used it haha. I figure being 23, I still have a lot of options though, its just a shame I owe like a lot in loans, but I have a gameplan to get that taken care of. For work I do sales, and I also have a job where I put shit in boxes. In either case I'm cool with them both, and once I really excel at the former job, I think I'll make it my career. I still have things I want to buy, and also some debt to take care of, but I'm not sweating any of it.

As for the ladies, at the moment I'm enjoying the weekend bar and club seen haha. Since work allows the most time to play during the weekends, me and some friends usually head downtown and have a good time. As for an actual girlfriend, now is for sure not the right time to be committed to someone, but it doesn't mean I won't have fun with someone for a night haha.

As for gaming, it's truly been PSU that's been eating my time. I've mostly played with cats from Insanity Elite, and I've been having a blast. I've just recently got to level 101, and I'd say about 90% of the time when I log on there's someone to kick it with, good times. Outside of that I play Guitar Hero, and my DS quite a lot. I also play my brother's PSP sometimes. That's about it however haha. I still plan to get both a 360 and a Wii, with the Wii being first, so whatever you guys happen to be playing at the time, I'll think about hopping in haha.

I'm not sure what else there is to say, other than overall status=Great. Things could be better things could be a helluva lot worse, but I'm doing just fine.

Good luck getting your hands on a Wii because those suckers are still going like mad.

I've been thinking of picking up a Wii myself, but damned if I can squeeze in time to play..

As for money:


Oddies is right. Mutual funds will provide a much higher rate of interest than a C.D., but you're exposing yourself to the market and it lacks FDIC insurance (which is the best part about it). Before I go more in depth with mutual funds, what oddies is referring to is a government 403(b) (TSA = tax sheltered annuity). It's geared toward retirement and is tax deferred, which means uncle sam can't get his greedy paws on it intill later on. There are non government versions and we call them IRAs. I'll just give a quick rundown of how it works and it's benefits:

Tax deferred Annuities and IRAs:

1. Geared for retirement... placing a lump sum of $30,000 in an annuity at 30 years of age with a good 10% rate of interest will yield a $500,000+ in growth when your 65.

2. It's tax deferred... This means you pay taxes later, not right now. This is huge. This allows your money to grow faster since uncle sam can't take his cut intill you withdraw. Since the IRS can't take the taxable earnings yet, the tax deferred interest stays there and you get interest on the A) principal, B) the interest gained, and C) the taxable interest gained. Pretty much your getting more interest on the interest gained, then if the taxman came and took it away now, versus in the future. You compound this interest for 30 years and you've got yourself set up.

3. More reasons why tax deferred is awesome... When you're a geezer, you probably will be unemployed and not working. That means you'll be in a low tax bracket. So when you finally have to pay taxes on your annuity, the tax man takes a lot less. This is is dependent on a lot of factors though.

4. Might be tax deductible. Depends on your income.

4. You can't touch the money intill your 59 1/2 years old. That's why uncle sam gives you a tax break on it. If you touch the money, you get penalized 10% of your earnings, which is bad. The key point to know is that you CAN touch your IRA if you're using that money as a first time home buyer and you will not receive that 10% penalty. If you're looking to buy a home in the future, putting your savings in a traditional IRA is a smart thing to.


Mutual funds:

1. They're sexy... They give much higher rates of return than a C.D. But are broken down into a few things:
a) Your risk tolerance: Riskier mutual funds can cause you to actually lose your money, but they can have a HUGE payout.
b) Professionally managed: Instead of learning the stock market, you've got PHDs and CFAs doing the hard work for you, as they get crackin' and make you money.
c) Are almost always profitable under a long term situation. Mutual Funds are geared for longer term invests (5+ years), but can still be quite profitable if shorter.
d) Are broadly diversified. This means that your mutual find portfolio can have 9000 different stocks and bonds in it, everyone of them being professionally managed. It follows the 'don't put all your eggs in one basket' theory. Your spreading out the risk among many well performing stock and bond positions, so that if some do poorly, the rest pick up the slack and you profit regardless. It's the key to profiting in the stock market. Life insurance companies profit off of your life and death from the same principal.


Risk Tolerance:
Risk tolerance is the most important part of a mutual fund and I will give an example. I have a JP Morgan India Select Fund (JIDSX is the quote). That means it's invested in overseas companies in India. In 4 weeks the fund gained 13.08 % growth, which is pretty crazy. But, I as an investor need to understand that since this is a high risk investment, because it's overseas, it could go down just as much. A mutual fund will go up and down all the time over the course of a year. This is normal. The key point to understand is that after a year of ups and downs, did it do more ups than downs? In this case, mutual funds tend to gain and lose so much so, that to a point where it GAINS more than it loses, so that it yields a larger % of growth at the end of the year than a CD, making mutual funds an excellent way to invest.


For the faint of heart, some mutual funds are more conservative and are less crazy. You gain less yield (only 6% to 7%), but it's safer and stable. It will generally always yield that type of gain year after year, where as the risky investments could gain 35% one year and lose 15% the following year. That may sound bad, but if you think about 35% - 15% is still 20% in total gain over a two year period, which is still better than a damn C.D. All in all I find higher risk investments with a long term horizon to have the best returns, just be smart enough to buy good performing funds and put your money in healthy market sectors. Putting money in a risky market sector that isn't performing well is just asking to lose money. That's why most mutual fund owners are conservative, because it yields more than a CD and is more stable. I prefer to follow the market and have my money in excellent market sectors with high potential, while at the same time being professionally managed. Yea, it's risky, but it's an educated risk.

Note to Crush: Enquire about mutual funds. Dunno if your bank does that, but there are lot of reputable investment companies. General rule of thumb, young people focus on GROWTH in their mutual fund portfolio, due to our young age and ability to endure the ups and downs in the market. All in all, growth yields higher returns in a long term setting.

HC covered most everything, I am still getting a crash course in federal retirement plans as I am such a new employee so I am a lil lacking in info on it. However mutual funds I have delt with, http://www.thrivent.com/investments/ being the specific group that handled it. I originally had the money split between high risk, mid risk, and low risk. Which, with the stock drops with 9/11 wasn't such a bad choice as the mid/low risk held far better than the high risk and gave me a base to work from. With my TSP plan I am still debating to go all out high risk, since as HC said, due to young age the ups and downs are a lot easier to handle and allow for some very nice returns.

Moved out of fl back in January to TN, went to work for awhile but because of a bad car accident that my b/f's mother was in i quit work to help out around here more, and now i'm just back to being a full time mom, and still playing WoW..only took 3 years but my rogue is finally lvl 60 lol

Recently dealt with a complete system restore on my computer, Lost access to ATHQ and several emails including the one tied to my forum account, but I'm back in business now.

I've mostly been working, enjoying the holidays, and raising hell when ever possible.

I've been trying to get a new console but Now i'm more focused on some new wheels as my truck is crapping out bigtime. shitty.

I still play WoW when i can, but i'd really like to be cracking off rounds on Haro III and CoD4 with you guys. Perhaps i'll give PSU another spin for now.

Life is crazy and uncertain at the moment, and i have alot on my mind, but i digress, things are good for the most part.

I'm still alive hehe,taking it easy,enjoying my early semi retirement until i find a little job on the side or even a small business i been thinking of doing for a while now...so yeah playing a lot of stuff,mostly on the 360,i see some of you guys on sometimes like Crush and DQ...playing a lot of LoTRO,which is not bad,still a bit of Warcraft,got Mario Galaxy but haven't played it yet heh and just finished Drake for the PS3 and playing Folklore right now....man that is one weird game but it grows on you hehe.

So yeah,hopefully we can play together in some MMO or on the 360 or something more next year....Happy Holidays everybody.!!!!!!!!!!!!!