Hopefully I can get caught up a little now!

I've been having trouble reading reviews let alone writing them lately; trying to get stuff done in between taking care of the baby, and the ISP here is so awful that half the time it just hasn't been possible to do anything online. Seems a little better now (though still terrible), but at least I can tether my phone if necessary and use my mobile internet too now. Sad that 1 bar of 3G service is faster, has less latency, and has less packet loss than the local cable company.

Terrible internet connection lately, hopefully MICom Cable straightens up and gets decent one of these days. Packet loss between 50% and 80% sometimes, latency over 800ms just to the cable office and tech support who asks "What is a ping?". Epic fail.

PC: Torchlight II & Borderlands 2
Wii: The Last Story
PS2: Suikoden III
PSX: Valkyrie Profile
SNES: EarthBound
NES: Dragon Warrior III
Genesis: Shining Force II
Android: Dungeon Village
Watching: Dragon Ball

Note: These are just general guidelines and I tend to deviate from them often enough, especially in categories that interest me. If you have any questions as to why I rated a certain way feel free to email me (with a link to the review in question) and ask! I'll be happy to point out anything that I felt was missing or not explained well enough to warrant a higher rating. I'm always willing to go back and have another look at updated reviews and re-evaluate my ratings accordingly.

One thing to note is I will almost always knock my rating down a notch if your review is wrought with spelling and grammatical errors. If it's too bad, I'm going to automatically Not Helpful it. There's a built-in spell check that you can run, and it will take all of 5 seconds. If you're too lazy to even do that, then I'm too lazy to move my mouse pointer off of the Not Helpful button. This website is about written product reviews - if you can't write them out well enough that people can easily read them, what's the point?

Most Helpful
You have to cover every single thing I can think of, and do a terrific job of it. This means your review is more helpful than any other review on that product; so you'd better not slack. Either that, or send me large sums of money! =]

Very Helpful
If you give me almost all the information I'm looking for, you'll get this. You don't have to cover every single thing, as long as you do a decent job of covering most of it, but you at least need to cover all the major points.

Helpful
If you give me at least half of the information I'm looking for (or more, but not quite enough for a Very Helpful), and do a decent job of it, you'll get this. Half of the information isn't really too much to ask, and this is not a bad rating.

Somewhat Helpful
If you do a poor job of covering the information, and/or provide less than half the information I was looking for, you'll get this. If I leave you this, you can always go back and edit your review, update it with more information, and I'll be happy to go back and read it again (providing you email me with a link to the review). Hopefully you can get this low rating changed with an update.

Not Helpful
This is for those reviews that say almost nothing about the product, are published in a foreign language, typed in all capital letters, or are spelled like they were written by a pre-schooler. This is also used for any review that violates Epinions guidelines. Reviews that are possibly plagiarised will also be given a Not Helpful unless/until it can be verified that the author is the original author and any confusion can be cleared up.

Off Topic
If your review is in the wrong place, you get this regardless of how good or bad your review may have been. Move it and email me a link to the review in the correct location, and make sure the old one is deleted so it's not a duplicate, and I'll go back and change this to something more appropriate.

Express Reviews
If they are on topic and give any type of information, I generally mark these Show. If any of my above criteria for a Not Helpful apply, they get a Don't Show rating.

If you add me to your web of trust, I'll probably try to read more of your reviews... but don't expect me to just automatically add you in return. If I enjoy what I read, I'll probably keep reading. If I see you write well and rate fairly, then you'll probably get added eventually (as long as you don't turn out to be rude, annoying, or a general asshat). Your chances of being trusted by me do not increase nor decrease by trusting me first, except maybe for the fact that I may not have stumbled upon much of your work in the past.

Birthday: May 22, 1981

I build computers and play games. I'm a huge Detroit Red Wings fan. Also digging the Lions lately; they pulled a couple out of their butt's at the last minute, but that makes for exciting stuff to watch.

I have quite a collection of vintage Nintendo games, and my Super Nintendo collection is quickly catching up. I love to browse yard sales and flea markets for my games, often getting games for much cheaper than they normally cost because people just don't realize the value of some of the classics. They're getting harder and harder to find though, so I've been picking up a game or two here and there online from places like eBay to help fill in the gaps in my collection. I've only got a dozen Sega Genesis games, but one of these days I'm going to start working on building that collection as well. These 3 consoles are the ones I had growing up and I have many fond memories of playing them with family and friends throughout my childhood.

A number of my family members also participate here at Epinions, some more than others. My fiancee carriebug writes once in a while. My mother, kelly60, is a former top reviewer in Pets and advisor in Online Stores & Services. My sister missyellis, my brother zechjennings, and my brother xunie all have written something or other at various times.