It’s been a busy year here at the Pence household. Like most people, I’m busy celebrating with the better half and quite definitely “nicely relaxed.” this year, I am “nicely relaxed” (ie obliterated… so please excuse the typos) on a steady stream of Mooing Irish Pepsis (Bailey’s, coke and milk) and rum and cokes, but made with this awesome Black Cherry rum. It’s very rare that me and the...

If you said a newspaper you used to beat the annoying guy on the cell phone yelling loudly as if that would help his reception whilst stuck in an elevator with him until he is bloody–then you’re wrong! (Say that run-on sentence three times. Fast.) It’s actually something I’ve been tinkering with on the side lines, mulling and musing over whether or not I should have one and if, by having one, I’m sort of making...

Sometimes you just don’t know how much you can do until you set a ridiculous goal for yourself. This year, I decided to participate in something I’d never heard of before: National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. The trick to this little contest is this, between November 1st and November 30th you write novel (hopefully) of at least 50,000 words. The better half was participating this year and, since I’d just been promoted...

There is always a period in every year where there are basically no major releases in PC and console gaming. When you’re like me and don’t care about first person shooters and sports games, the gap is even more noticeable. Even so, there is usually at least one title that is halfway decent in the Sim, RPG, MMO or RTS genres to keep me going. Sometimes I’ll be gifted with a game that rocks enough to keep me playing and...

I wasn’t always a customer service manager. In a former life I worked for–and at one point, owned–a small, honest, computer repair business; working on everything from large office networks to private home computers. Unfortunately, as usually happens with any good business, the market became crowded and turned into the abusive used car lot that is computer business today. I bowed out as gracefully as I could before losing my...