To be brief, 2008 was not a bad year.
To be drawn out; Yes, quite a bit of crap happened but I must say for the most part I was able to continue to eat food, I felt loved, I had a warm house, and I have a job. I didn't lose my house. I could afford the gasoline and the overpriced rice. But for the most part I am happy and comfortable, even more so given that the tides of human attention are now turning towards the thought of renewed hope and action, when anything is possible and there's a slim chance they just might buck their usual habits and thought patterns and run free on the fields of possibility. It's good, and occasionally it bears permanent fruit from the seeds planted in these gathered days.
It was a good vacation. I got to see the niece, who is much less tiny now and a LOT more interactive. She can see you coming and react, and she seriously has the commando-crawl down pat. I told my brother if we ever encountered concertina wire in a hostile situation, we knew we could count on the niece to belly crawl and get away to freedom. All we would need to do is strap a note to her back and watch her scoot in to the jungle with our hopes and fears resting on her.
It's a funny image in my head, anyway.
It's interesting to watch someone start from scratch and figure out how to interact with what's around them. It's the unique perspective not granted to one who is in the middle of doing all of that sort of thing and doesn't have the luxury of experience or reference to analyze what's going on. Watching her crawl up to things and touch them, expecting to sense something about them, is a bit of wonder. Her laugh each time she does this stuff is also. I don't know that I've ever heard such a noise of pure joy from something before. Perhaps it's because she's being presented with something and takes it at face value. Humans after this will make happy noises, but it's with the tinge of expectations met, or surprise at not expecting something. My niece, she's just cool with anything that comes up. I should take lessons in no-mind from her. Part of me wonders how long it will be before she has judgment in her eyes when taking things in, and I'm thinking that day will be a sad one.
This was a good year. I turned 30 and didn't die, which totally caught me off guard. It wonders me bigly if others carry their thought of "I'll never get that old!" to the extent that I did. I was struck dumb with the realization, frankly. Still trying to figure out what's going on with the rest of my life after this, but I've got a good start with figuring out that what I'm in now isn't it. Enough process of elimination and it will reveal itself!
We said goodbye to our old calendar today, hanging up the lovely one with Hiroshige's block prints given to me by my mother and step-unter-jaju. Bob remembered so much, I was embarrassed to not recall it. We did a LOT. Otakon, ConnectiCon, our epic birthday trip to DC, Longwood Gardens (which I never really wrote about but certainly meant to because it was awesome). Looking back, it was an incredibly active and enjoyable year.
I made three official New Year's Resolutions, despite my general sneering regard for them. New Year's, to me, is rather arbitrary and carried only by the energy of those who believe in it. A thought is a thing, and the decision that January 1st marks new beginnings for so many does carry weight. At the same time, there's also the general idea that few people keep the resolutions. So if you're going to make them, do it for yourself and not because it's expected. For me, the new year is pretty much always going to start November 1st, so really my letting go of old habits ritual was done 2 months ago. But in the spirit of the common celebration, I decided to do it now.
Resolution 1: To be awesome and bombastic.
Resolution 2: To publish a story some time in 2009. I'm thinking more of a short story than a novel, but eh... whatever happens.
Resolution 3: To stop buying things and enjoy what I've already got. To this end, I am not purchasing anything that isn't 100% necessary (a.k.a. gasoline for the car, food) For the next 3 months. That means no new books, CDs, video games, or craft stuff. I just have to deal with what I've got and make do. The lone exception might be stuff for Valentine's Day.
We've purchased some exercise equipment that I'm looking to using. Treadmill for walking, which will be nice for when it's freezing cold and windy but I still want to walk.
Also got my hands on a crochet booklet from Japan of Sanrio/Hello Kitty patterns. I'm looking forward to working with it, and translating it as it's mostly in hiragana and very little kanji. Of note - apparently the kanji for "eye" is used to represent a loop of yarn as well as the opening in a button or bead. Kinda cool.
I'm looking forward to catching up on the last season of Lost over the long weekend here, playing more Little Big Planet (we found the greatest ocean-themed level this evening, user-created, and it was AWESOME), and drawing a bit with the super-groovy copic markers my honey got me for Xmas. More on that later.
This evening we greeted the New Year with raw oysters, a $7 bottle of twist-top champagne that was actually pretty good, and some lobster bisque from the local seafood market. A kiss and a toast at midnight also marked the occasion, and I'll be damned if Dick Clark didn't do the countdown in spite of a stroke. The man will NEVER die.
Happy 2009, folks. It'll get better. I swear it.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Actual Conversation #34 ~ Wherein I have fun at work
Bryan: could you re-add one more blackberry to the server for me? It's a reactivation of pin XXXXXXX for x@y.com
Helen: I can't. The server is completely full.
Bryan: this handset is already on the server - I had to wipe it
Helen: Actually, I can, no problem.
Helen: I just wanted to give a different answer than "Yeah, sure!" for once. :-)
Helen: Sorry, you were the guinea pig.
Bryan: LOL
Bryan: very funny
Helen: I can't. The server is completely full.
Bryan: this handset is already on the server - I had to wipe it
Helen: Actually, I can, no problem.
Helen: I just wanted to give a different answer than "Yeah, sure!" for once. :-)
Helen: Sorry, you were the guinea pig.
Bryan: LOL
Bryan: very funny
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Actual conversation #30-something, wherein the correlation between clowns and servers is covered.
me: Uh oh.
Robert: Hmm?
me: :(
I don't care about work today.
Robert: Uh oh.
me: I hope nothing breaks.
Robert: Hopefully! But if it does, at least hope it's interesting and exciting.
Like...clowns start coming out of the database server.
Or the Blackberries become self aware and start making fashion critiques.
me: "omg... those shoes with these pants? Are you serious? Take me off this belt. Take. Me. Off. This. Belt."
Robert: *laughs*
Robert: Hmm?
me: :(
I don't care about work today.
Robert: Uh oh.
me: I hope nothing breaks.
Robert: Hopefully! But if it does, at least hope it's interesting and exciting.
Like...clowns start coming out of the database server.
Or the Blackberries become self aware and start making fashion critiques.
me: "omg... those shoes with these pants? Are you serious? Take me off this belt. Take. Me. Off. This. Belt."
Robert: *laughs*
Friday, December 12, 2008
फ्रेय'स डे काम राउंड अगं.
A few items in my droll little existance here...
One, I borked the migration of my Trolly Girl account. Destroyed the ftp setup somehow in exporting it. You can find all of those old articles now attached in here somewhere, but hopefully if it was done right, you have to scroll back a ways to find them. In the meantime, I decided to go ahead with the Journaling RP idea, and created one for both Kaetze (who already had one tucked away in the annals of my "fiction" files) and for Krotze, my dk. We'll see how far the idea goes. Thankfully the interweb just sort of holds on to things until you get back to them.
Secondly, something I'd forgotten about but keep coming back to every few years is the Cats House out west somewhere. These wonderful people went to all the trouble of building stairways and tunnels for the cats to run around the house on. Most individuals today who try to set up something similar for their cats base it off the original design. It's neat. Unfortunately the website isn't fully up and running, but the front page gives you a neat look at the staircases that were built for it. Some day when we're not renting the place we're in, it could be fun to set something like that up for everyone. For now, though, they can make due with the wall around the kitchen, the fridge, and the top of the cabinets.
I have lost 3 lbs. I feel better about my outlook health-wise, like perhaps I won't develop diabetes and die at age 40 completely blind and inable to walk due to the strain on my knees. Not that I'm THAT big....but if you haven't seen me in a while, you're not going to be able to tell I lost the 3. *sigh* Ahh well. It's a start.
One, I borked the migration of my Trolly Girl account. Destroyed the ftp setup somehow in exporting it. You can find all of those old articles now attached in here somewhere, but hopefully if it was done right, you have to scroll back a ways to find them. In the meantime, I decided to go ahead with the Journaling RP idea, and created one for both Kaetze (who already had one tucked away in the annals of my "fiction" files) and for Krotze, my dk. We'll see how far the idea goes. Thankfully the interweb just sort of holds on to things until you get back to them.
Secondly, something I'd forgotten about but keep coming back to every few years is the Cats House out west somewhere. These wonderful people went to all the trouble of building stairways and tunnels for the cats to run around the house on. Most individuals today who try to set up something similar for their cats base it off the original design. It's neat. Unfortunately the website isn't fully up and running, but the front page gives you a neat look at the staircases that were built for it. Some day when we're not renting the place we're in, it could be fun to set something like that up for everyone. For now, though, they can make due with the wall around the kitchen, the fridge, and the top of the cabinets.
I have lost 3 lbs. I feel better about my outlook health-wise, like perhaps I won't develop diabetes and die at age 40 completely blind and inable to walk due to the strain on my knees. Not that I'm THAT big....but if you haven't seen me in a while, you're not going to be able to tell I lost the 3. *sigh* Ahh well. It's a start.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
I get up on my soap box and open my mouth... enjoyedwith a side of yorkshire pudding.
Yesterday was pretty damned good. We donated money to save the trees and the bees, and I popped some seriously delicious yorkshire puddings out of the oven for eating.
Colony Collapse Disorder, and I'm going to only say this once, is immensely serious. Honey bees are a key pollinator in our agricultural industry. Not just for our food, but for all kinds of other plants, they carry around pollen and help create fruits. If one in four animals of any other species on the planet -save perhaps slugs- were to disappear, we would raise a major alarm. But not with bees, for some reason.
If flowers don't get pollinated, fruit doesn't grow. Seeds aren't created, and old plants do not get replaced. You'll hit an apex ecosystem with nothing to perpetuate it. Also, not to mention, the price of fruits and vegetables will go through the roof, as will for meat when feed costs more because, you guessed it, it's eating the foods that are pollinated by the wind and there's a shortage again.
Penn State University has a specific research program set up to study colony collapse disorder. If you haven't already, I'd encourage you to read up on the issues and make a donation if you feel you can.
As for the trees... that was done in replacement for the douglas fir that sits in our living room, magestically adorned with all sorts of shiny ornaments. It just seems if I'm going to take something that could be used for paper, soil and water retention, lumber, somebody's ~fire~, a bird's home.... I should replace it at least two-fold.
In addition, I just learned about a bill signed in to law by Congress that could potentially ruin my budding business of crocheted toys and goods. It's rather interesting how sweeping the legislation was, when the country that sinned is China but it's punishing those here. Read up if you love hand-made plushies or Etsy, it's worth your time. I've signed and donated some cash to their cause.
Aside from that? Made a kick ass meal of steamed green beans, pot roast with gravy (It came in a microwave tray, so really all I did was reheat it) and a tray of yorkshire puddings. Having only ever tried this once and only pulled it off with mixed results, I've got to say those things kicked some serious ass, and we're having them again the next time we have potroast, or perhaps turkey. Anything where gravy could be involved. I used vegetable shortening to get them piping and crispy, and I find myself sitting here craving them. It's almost ~sad~, really. So much so that I'm trying to figure out how to just make a whole bunch and eat them with gravy and that's about it. For dessert? Bread pudding, of course. ^_^
In the spirit of Xmas and eating too many sweets, I must admit I am looking forward to putting together mounds of kissy-cookies with my Mom in Ohio. It's a tradition and despite my attempts to lose weight, I will forego quite a bit to be able to bake and eat those little guys!
Colony Collapse Disorder, and I'm going to only say this once, is immensely serious. Honey bees are a key pollinator in our agricultural industry. Not just for our food, but for all kinds of other plants, they carry around pollen and help create fruits. If one in four animals of any other species on the planet -save perhaps slugs- were to disappear, we would raise a major alarm. But not with bees, for some reason.
If flowers don't get pollinated, fruit doesn't grow. Seeds aren't created, and old plants do not get replaced. You'll hit an apex ecosystem with nothing to perpetuate it. Also, not to mention, the price of fruits and vegetables will go through the roof, as will for meat when feed costs more because, you guessed it, it's eating the foods that are pollinated by the wind and there's a shortage again.
Penn State University has a specific research program set up to study colony collapse disorder. If you haven't already, I'd encourage you to read up on the issues and make a donation if you feel you can.
As for the trees... that was done in replacement for the douglas fir that sits in our living room, magestically adorned with all sorts of shiny ornaments. It just seems if I'm going to take something that could be used for paper, soil and water retention, lumber, somebody's ~fire~, a bird's home.... I should replace it at least two-fold.
In addition, I just learned about a bill signed in to law by Congress that could potentially ruin my budding business of crocheted toys and goods. It's rather interesting how sweeping the legislation was, when the country that sinned is China but it's punishing those here. Read up if you love hand-made plushies or Etsy, it's worth your time. I've signed and donated some cash to their cause.
Aside from that? Made a kick ass meal of steamed green beans, pot roast with gravy (It came in a microwave tray, so really all I did was reheat it) and a tray of yorkshire puddings. Having only ever tried this once and only pulled it off with mixed results, I've got to say those things kicked some serious ass, and we're having them again the next time we have potroast, or perhaps turkey. Anything where gravy could be involved. I used vegetable shortening to get them piping and crispy, and I find myself sitting here craving them. It's almost ~sad~, really. So much so that I'm trying to figure out how to just make a whole bunch and eat them with gravy and that's about it. For dessert? Bread pudding, of course. ^_^
In the spirit of Xmas and eating too many sweets, I must admit I am looking forward to putting together mounds of kissy-cookies with my Mom in Ohio. It's a tradition and despite my attempts to lose weight, I will forego quite a bit to be able to bake and eat those little guys!
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Tyr's Day - a lot better than I thought it'd turn out, akshuly!
If you've been around in the last little bit, you know I'm getting pretty hyped about producing amigurumi plushies and general crocheted goodies.
Well, I just got word that my first commission arrived in Australia last week and is absolutely adored. My second was given to a coworker that promptly went on a tour of the building to get shown off to people.
The first commission got back to me and turned me on to a project where they're actually crocheting a coral reef. That's just awesome on so many levels... and I want to contribute, but I can't think of what to do. They've already got a seaslug. Maybe I could do a seacucumber or something simple? Or maybe I'll forget about it in a week and we'll never here about it again.
I finally got everything to work last night on the computer, Hallelujah! It chokes and sputters in the cities for some reason, but for the most part it bumbles along like a trooper and renders the colors beautifully.
I made a tremendous mistake last night, though. I was dutifully grinding along on the mage when I got bored and decided to start a death knight.
Wow. I went to bed 4 hours later. And I don't care that I'm lacking sleep, it was that much fun. It'll be damned hard not to jump on again tonight and try to play again!
There is just something immensely fun about using the force-grip on someone 30 feet away, yanking them to you, and then introducing an axe to their head. So far the only times I've died I wasn't being very careful or making good use of the runic power that was developing as I fought. In spite of this, though, I was so enthralled with the storyline and how things were set up that I didn't realize I needed to go to bed until I fell asleep in the office chair.
I really like this character. I deleted my old RP character and stole the name for this character. She shall be my new RP! With her I shall enjoy the game again, be in it for the story line alone and the sheer joy of enjoying the game. Plus the ability to force choke people is really freakin' awesome as well.
I am contemplating in the back of my little head possibly taking up journaling for Kaetze again, moving it from the old website I used to do it on to somewhere new, and throwing in Krotze as well. It would be fanfic, yeah, but it would also be an excellent RP. Seeing as I intend to RP walk with her wherever I go and in general play her up just for fun, fleshing her out with a journal and a back store (Although now that I'm thinking on it, I should change her name, as Krotze is already taken in my journals as the father of Kaetze, and that's what she's got now. Maybe she'll just be Kortze.) Not to mention that doing that will get me creatively writing a lot as well. The only real setback is figuring out how to set it up. That can probably be overcome pretty quickly, though.
With the computer drama now behind me, I can probably start diving in to Left 4 Dead with my honey, which I was hoping to do back when the damned thing first came out. I'm only, oh, a month behind now. *sigh* Hopefully we can download it and run it, playing together and blowing away super-fast zombies.
In the meantime, though, I think I'm going to open myself up to commissions with crocheting. Seems easy enough to pull off, and so far both people have been really happy. We'll see what becomes of it.
Well, I just got word that my first commission arrived in Australia last week and is absolutely adored. My second was given to a coworker that promptly went on a tour of the building to get shown off to people.
The first commission got back to me and turned me on to a project where they're actually crocheting a coral reef. That's just awesome on so many levels... and I want to contribute, but I can't think of what to do. They've already got a seaslug. Maybe I could do a seacucumber or something simple? Or maybe I'll forget about it in a week and we'll never here about it again.
I finally got everything to work last night on the computer, Hallelujah! It chokes and sputters in the cities for some reason, but for the most part it bumbles along like a trooper and renders the colors beautifully.
I made a tremendous mistake last night, though. I was dutifully grinding along on the mage when I got bored and decided to start a death knight.
Wow. I went to bed 4 hours later. And I don't care that I'm lacking sleep, it was that much fun. It'll be damned hard not to jump on again tonight and try to play again!
There is just something immensely fun about using the force-grip on someone 30 feet away, yanking them to you, and then introducing an axe to their head. So far the only times I've died I wasn't being very careful or making good use of the runic power that was developing as I fought. In spite of this, though, I was so enthralled with the storyline and how things were set up that I didn't realize I needed to go to bed until I fell asleep in the office chair.
I really like this character. I deleted my old RP character and stole the name for this character. She shall be my new RP! With her I shall enjoy the game again, be in it for the story line alone and the sheer joy of enjoying the game. Plus the ability to force choke people is really freakin' awesome as well.
I am contemplating in the back of my little head possibly taking up journaling for Kaetze again, moving it from the old website I used to do it on to somewhere new, and throwing in Krotze as well. It would be fanfic, yeah, but it would also be an excellent RP. Seeing as I intend to RP walk with her wherever I go and in general play her up just for fun, fleshing her out with a journal and a back store (Although now that I'm thinking on it, I should change her name, as Krotze is already taken in my journals as the father of Kaetze, and that's what she's got now. Maybe she'll just be Kortze.) Not to mention that doing that will get me creatively writing a lot as well. The only real setback is figuring out how to set it up. That can probably be overcome pretty quickly, though.
With the computer drama now behind me, I can probably start diving in to Left 4 Dead with my honey, which I was hoping to do back when the damned thing first came out. I'm only, oh, a month behind now. *sigh* Hopefully we can download it and run it, playing together and blowing away super-fast zombies.
In the meantime, though, I think I'm going to open myself up to commissions with crocheting. Seems easy enough to pull off, and so far both people have been really happy. We'll see what becomes of it.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Actual Conversation #33 - wherein the causes of headaches are explored
Robert: I'm trying not to take advil, but the head pain is getting back worse. It must be tied to how much I move my head because it didn't hurt almost at all til I got in the car, and it's worse now
So I took one and we'll see if that helps.
me: That seems like it's more connected to muscles and tendons than your actual head.
Robert: Yeah, I don't know anything for sure, I just hope it goes away soon.
me: kk
Sent at 9:50 AM on Tuesday
Robert: Yeah, the web is it's usual bounty of information. I seem to have a aneurysm, a toothache, neurological damage, a stroke, occipital neuralgia, and am possessed by demons.
me: <#(0_o)
Robert: Indeed
me: I can help with the demons part, but you're gonna need a dentist for the rest of that stuff.
Robert: Yeah....huh
Robert: Oh, it's also a pinched nerve...and caused by eating too many stale bakery products (I wish I was kidding)
me: When does it tell you your chi is stagnant?
Robert: I haven't gotten to that continent I guess yet.
So I took one and we'll see if that helps.
me: That seems like it's more connected to muscles and tendons than your actual head.
Robert: Yeah, I don't know anything for sure, I just hope it goes away soon.
me: kk
Sent at 9:50 AM on Tuesday
Robert: Yeah, the web is it's usual bounty of information. I seem to have a aneurysm, a toothache, neurological damage, a stroke, occipital neuralgia, and am possessed by demons.
me: <#(0_o)
Robert: Indeed
me: I can help with the demons part, but you're gonna need a dentist for the rest of that stuff.
Robert: Yeah....huh
Robert: Oh, it's also a pinched nerve...and caused by eating too many stale bakery products (I wish I was kidding)
me: When does it tell you your chi is stagnant?
Robert: I haven't gotten to that continent I guess yet.
So, yeah...this is what my Tuesday is going to be like.
Yes, people, Obama uses a Zune. Get over it. Probably because of the FM receiver, as is mentioned elsewhere, which makes it hella more convenient than an iPod.
Not that anybody gives a damn, but yours truly is still rocking her Creative Zen:M mp3 player in lime green to carry all 22 gigs of her music around, not to mention a few awesome cartoons. AND it comes with an FM tuner as well. In fact, I disliked iPods so much that I went and got a Zen: Stone at 2 gigs for only $50 with an LCD screen. It's small, efficient, well designed, and perfect for exercising! (Also lime green. It's like a little music pod that breaks away from the Zen, almost...)
And yes, I am really pleased with myself for it.
But getting back to the main issue, I'm puzzled as to why it's such a big deal. It's just an audio device. It's like if he showed up in Seattle Sonics jersey instead of a Bulls jersey. People, I guess, want someone of import and power to agree with their choices. Gives it more credence, perhaps? Who knows, and truly, who cares. He can listen to music while he exercise, and it's great that he's a bit of a technocrat like the younger generation.
In other news, this morning I won an argument by spamming someone with The Final Countdown, as portrayed in a YouTube video. It caught me so off guard that I'm still trying to figure out how that worked, but a sound logical argument did not. It boggles me...
Not that anybody gives a damn, but yours truly is still rocking her Creative Zen:M mp3 player in lime green to carry all 22 gigs of her music around, not to mention a few awesome cartoons. AND it comes with an FM tuner as well. In fact, I disliked iPods so much that I went and got a Zen: Stone at 2 gigs for only $50 with an LCD screen. It's small, efficient, well designed, and perfect for exercising! (Also lime green. It's like a little music pod that breaks away from the Zen, almost...)
And yes, I am really pleased with myself for it.
But getting back to the main issue, I'm puzzled as to why it's such a big deal. It's just an audio device. It's like if he showed up in Seattle Sonics jersey instead of a Bulls jersey. People, I guess, want someone of import and power to agree with their choices. Gives it more credence, perhaps? Who knows, and truly, who cares. He can listen to music while he exercise, and it's great that he's a bit of a technocrat like the younger generation.
In other news, this morning I won an argument by spamming someone with The Final Countdown, as portrayed in a YouTube video. It caught me so off guard that I'm still trying to figure out how that worked, but a sound logical argument did not. It boggles me...
Monday, December 8, 2008
Weekend shenanigans
I saw two utterly disparate but equally fantastic movies this weekend, in the midst of snow and crazy winds and a Christmas tree with suicidal tendencies.
The first we watched together was Kamikaze Girls. It came highly recommended AND decried, which told me I pretty much had to get my hands on it. The people who decried it had nothing worse to say than "it was weird and I couldn't follow it", which in common parlance translates in to "There were obvious tits and explosions".
Not to paint it with so fine a brush, but that did tend to be the crowd that didn't like it, based on their spelling and grammar.
So we popped it in, and I'll admit I was hesitant, dubious and hopeful all at the same time. The different reviews I'd read had mentioned something about motorcycles, embroidery, and gosu-rori dresses. I could not reconcile in my head how all of these were going to come together and not be horrible. Thankfully, they did it for me.
It was very similar to Amelie in how it presented the story, including the shorts that looked like they came from TV to tell side stories. It was irreverant, it made fun of Japanese culture, and it was highly enjoyable. So much so, that I honestly might consider snagging a copy of it for myself to keep around. And I would definitely watch it again.
What was great was that ther ewas no chance to listen to it in English. You got Japanese with subtitles, and that was it. By listening to it that way, you got a feel for the differences in culture and education based on how they were speaking, the inflection versus the body language... ti was subtle, and nothing I think could've been picked up in an English translation.It's one of the reasons I love to watch "Hero" in Mandarin. The intonation, how they carry the language, conveys a lot of the story. The emperor is obviously more pompous and far less noble than his English-voiced counterpart.
Bob admitted he'd hesitated, too, to watch the movie thinking that we would be smote with another August Rush or some equally crappy thing we didn't want to see. But I'm happy to report that he had as much fun watching that as I did.
The other film was the Director's cut of Donnie Darko. I'm told that the original did NOT have the chapters flash up on the screen explaining what was going on, and I can't for the life of me figure out how the hell anybody made sense of the movie without it. Having never seen the original theatrical version, I'll never be able to tell you, either, because I now know the story and I'm ruined when it comes to trying to glean a meaning from a storyline. It was handed to me. Alas.
I don't know what to say about this one. The entire premise of psychosis and time-travel in regards to water and metal and Frank, who is actually already dead, sort of escape me. Especially when the movie STARTS With the end of the anomaly.
Either way, it was enjoyable and I have a feeling if I watched it a second time around that more of it would make sense now that I know what's going on. Also catch more details the first time around that were probably missed. I would watch it again if it came up on cable one weekend.
It snowed Saturday night in to Sunday morning, with lovely big flakes drifting nearly sideways in the driving winds. I snuggled up under the blankets and watched it happen. Sadly, it didn't stay long. There was only a light dusting of it left by the end of the day. I got just enough to make a good sized handful, which I then did NOT through, because I am a good girlfriend and Bob does not actually make a good target as much as he really looks like he might.
I rooted out the crap in my computer, taking out the sound card that was never fully integrated with the machine for some reason, and rolled the sound over to the motherboard. For some odd reason it sounds spectacular now, but that's probably because the drivers never were fully installed for the Diamond Stealth soundcard, so I was getting the bear minimum. I'll leave it like this and keep the sound card around for the next play machine I build. However, upon removing it and fixing the drivers for the onboard sound-card, my video card degraded noticably when trying to run WoW. SO... that did not fix the issue and the only other thing I can think of is replacing the memory at this point, as the error that popped up talked about being stuck in an endless loop waiting for resources to be freed up. I dunno, we'll see what Santa brings me, then I'll get me some new memory and crank my baby up.
In the meantime, the old laptop and the old desktop will be sporting shiny new Ubuntu OSs just as soon as I remember where I stuck the dumb CD.
We also got ourself a Xmas tree this weekend, which has me very excited. It was, unfortunately, just a bit top heavy with a slightly curved trunk. So when we got it fully decorated, it took a header that Bob just barely missed saving it from, and we had to rig it to the wall with hemp twine and a lot of complicated boy scout knots. But it's staying upright!
Another neat thing this weekend, we went to the Victor Cafe' in South Philly. It's a lovely little place where the waiters will stand up about ever 20-30 minutes on the stairs, ring a bell, then announce the aria they're going to sing... then, accompanied either by piano or piped in CD, they sing loudly and beautifully. Most are students at a school in downtown Philly that teaches opera.
On top of beautiful live music, the food there was wonderful, and I would absolutely go back there. But probably in the summer, as parking was a bit nuts. It's a row home directly on the street with no lot.
An amusing side note, we actually did manage to get a parking space about a block away, which was ridiculously close, and it was under the only tree with plum blossoms raging on it in the whole city of Philadelphia. The light pink of the flowers coupled with the snow that was falling were almost surreal in the purple-white glare of the sodium vapor streetlamps. I enjoyed it.
We took a side trip to see Pat's and Geno's, and I must say that the last time I saw that many neon lights on the outside of a building, I was in Vegas and there were strippers being advertised. We could see it from 3 blocks away. Geno's, that is. Pat's was understated with a blue and red sign...one.... lit up near the ordering window. The difference was amusing.
We have sworn to go back there at some point and compare the two, as they are catty-corner to each other on the intersection. Meanwhile, I'm thinking of researching opinions on who's is better and why, as well as what to order when you get to the window, and why.
It'll all be very scientific. And possibly very greasy.
The first we watched together was Kamikaze Girls. It came highly recommended AND decried, which told me I pretty much had to get my hands on it. The people who decried it had nothing worse to say than "it was weird and I couldn't follow it", which in common parlance translates in to "There were obvious tits and explosions".
Not to paint it with so fine a brush, but that did tend to be the crowd that didn't like it, based on their spelling and grammar.
So we popped it in, and I'll admit I was hesitant, dubious and hopeful all at the same time. The different reviews I'd read had mentioned something about motorcycles, embroidery, and gosu-rori dresses. I could not reconcile in my head how all of these were going to come together and not be horrible. Thankfully, they did it for me.
It was very similar to Amelie in how it presented the story, including the shorts that looked like they came from TV to tell side stories. It was irreverant, it made fun of Japanese culture, and it was highly enjoyable. So much so, that I honestly might consider snagging a copy of it for myself to keep around. And I would definitely watch it again.
What was great was that ther ewas no chance to listen to it in English. You got Japanese with subtitles, and that was it. By listening to it that way, you got a feel for the differences in culture and education based on how they were speaking, the inflection versus the body language... ti was subtle, and nothing I think could've been picked up in an English translation.It's one of the reasons I love to watch "Hero" in Mandarin. The intonation, how they carry the language, conveys a lot of the story. The emperor is obviously more pompous and far less noble than his English-voiced counterpart.
Bob admitted he'd hesitated, too, to watch the movie thinking that we would be smote with another August Rush or some equally crappy thing we didn't want to see. But I'm happy to report that he had as much fun watching that as I did.
The other film was the Director's cut of Donnie Darko. I'm told that the original did NOT have the chapters flash up on the screen explaining what was going on, and I can't for the life of me figure out how the hell anybody made sense of the movie without it. Having never seen the original theatrical version, I'll never be able to tell you, either, because I now know the story and I'm ruined when it comes to trying to glean a meaning from a storyline. It was handed to me. Alas.
I don't know what to say about this one. The entire premise of psychosis and time-travel in regards to water and metal and Frank, who is actually already dead, sort of escape me. Especially when the movie STARTS With the end of the anomaly.
Either way, it was enjoyable and I have a feeling if I watched it a second time around that more of it would make sense now that I know what's going on. Also catch more details the first time around that were probably missed. I would watch it again if it came up on cable one weekend.
It snowed Saturday night in to Sunday morning, with lovely big flakes drifting nearly sideways in the driving winds. I snuggled up under the blankets and watched it happen. Sadly, it didn't stay long. There was only a light dusting of it left by the end of the day. I got just enough to make a good sized handful, which I then did NOT through, because I am a good girlfriend and Bob does not actually make a good target as much as he really looks like he might.
I rooted out the crap in my computer, taking out the sound card that was never fully integrated with the machine for some reason, and rolled the sound over to the motherboard. For some odd reason it sounds spectacular now, but that's probably because the drivers never were fully installed for the Diamond Stealth soundcard, so I was getting the bear minimum. I'll leave it like this and keep the sound card around for the next play machine I build. However, upon removing it and fixing the drivers for the onboard sound-card, my video card degraded noticably when trying to run WoW. SO... that did not fix the issue and the only other thing I can think of is replacing the memory at this point, as the error that popped up talked about being stuck in an endless loop waiting for resources to be freed up. I dunno, we'll see what Santa brings me, then I'll get me some new memory and crank my baby up.
In the meantime, the old laptop and the old desktop will be sporting shiny new Ubuntu OSs just as soon as I remember where I stuck the dumb CD.
We also got ourself a Xmas tree this weekend, which has me very excited. It was, unfortunately, just a bit top heavy with a slightly curved trunk. So when we got it fully decorated, it took a header that Bob just barely missed saving it from, and we had to rig it to the wall with hemp twine and a lot of complicated boy scout knots. But it's staying upright!
Another neat thing this weekend, we went to the Victor Cafe' in South Philly. It's a lovely little place where the waiters will stand up about ever 20-30 minutes on the stairs, ring a bell, then announce the aria they're going to sing... then, accompanied either by piano or piped in CD, they sing loudly and beautifully. Most are students at a school in downtown Philly that teaches opera.
On top of beautiful live music, the food there was wonderful, and I would absolutely go back there. But probably in the summer, as parking was a bit nuts. It's a row home directly on the street with no lot.
An amusing side note, we actually did manage to get a parking space about a block away, which was ridiculously close, and it was under the only tree with plum blossoms raging on it in the whole city of Philadelphia. The light pink of the flowers coupled with the snow that was falling were almost surreal in the purple-white glare of the sodium vapor streetlamps. I enjoyed it.
We took a side trip to see Pat's and Geno's, and I must say that the last time I saw that many neon lights on the outside of a building, I was in Vegas and there were strippers being advertised. We could see it from 3 blocks away. Geno's, that is. Pat's was understated with a blue and red sign...one.... lit up near the ordering window. The difference was amusing.
We have sworn to go back there at some point and compare the two, as they are catty-corner to each other on the intersection. Meanwhile, I'm thinking of researching opinions on who's is better and why, as well as what to order when you get to the window, and why.
It'll all be very scientific. And possibly very greasy.
Actual Conversation #32
Helen: Okay, this is fucked up.
Helen: I opened up my candybar... and...like... there were pieces of another candy bar in there with it.
Helen: It was like a mob hit.
Helen: And they dumped part of the body in with this bar.
Ben: lolololol
Helen: What's weirder is... it was a heath bar or something.
Helen: And this is a milky way.
Helen: How does that even happen??
Helen: I opened up my candybar... and...like... there were pieces of another candy bar in there with it.
Helen: It was like a mob hit.
Helen: And they dumped part of the body in with this bar.
Ben: lolololol
Helen: What's weirder is... it was a heath bar or something.
Helen: And this is a milky way.
Helen: How does that even happen??
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Epic Summary Win
The Dark Knight. All told with Team Fortress 2 kill notifications. That's freepin' brill...
...lawl...
...lawl...
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Stuff I Learned before I was Really Awake.
It is only 10 am just now, and already I have been angered by people who can't do their work out in Malaysia (or rather, their American counterparts calling up and being ignorant re: lack of VPN), I have had to look up what a Tarrasque is, thanks to Ommatidia.com, and courtesy of an article on MSN, I have now learned that of the top 11 lamest blogs out there, the dullest blog in the word and The Adventures of Pat O'Neil are probably the most amusing blogs I've come across. That last item is mainly because it does not contain the self-aggrandizing, pretentious, pseudo-intellectual junk found in most blogs posted by people who think the interwebs gives a damn about their opinion. Basically like what you read here, if you read. ^_^
Anyway, that's an awful lot, and that was before I had coffee or food. So I think I'm going to be fully justified in hanging up on anybody who gives me one iota of shit for ANYTHING today.
Of course, being that an iota isn't really quantifiable given the tools available to me, that's going to be really subjective in the measuring today. (Wikipedia was no help in calculating an iota, btw.)
I have also learned in the short time of this morning, that marketing done to grandparents is done so with the notion that they are gullible, stupid, and prone to bright packaging. We were trying to find books for my family and Bob's and there's not a single one that didn't sound pandering, over-simplified, or just plain cheesy. So there's a good reason to not become one any time soon. They haven't yet figured out that the far savvier boomer generation is now in the grandparents chair.
And one last thing... if you should happen to crochet a Cthulu and bring it to work for a coworker, always make sure that they take it with them back to their own cubicle. The one that I gave to a coworker ended up in another coworker's cubicle while they were working on something, then he forgot and left it. The second coworker found it and was severaly freaked out by it. I call that good craftsmanship. ^_^
(As an aside, I was just told via IM that GM will be killing off the Hummer as a commercial vehicle as part of their proposal to the government. Thank god. Those things were only useful in Africa and don't belong in American garages.)
Now that...that is a lot of learning for only being away 4-5 hours.
Anyway, that's an awful lot, and that was before I had coffee or food. So I think I'm going to be fully justified in hanging up on anybody who gives me one iota of shit for ANYTHING today.
Of course, being that an iota isn't really quantifiable given the tools available to me, that's going to be really subjective in the measuring today. (Wikipedia was no help in calculating an iota, btw.)
I have also learned in the short time of this morning, that marketing done to grandparents is done so with the notion that they are gullible, stupid, and prone to bright packaging. We were trying to find books for my family and Bob's and there's not a single one that didn't sound pandering, over-simplified, or just plain cheesy. So there's a good reason to not become one any time soon. They haven't yet figured out that the far savvier boomer generation is now in the grandparents chair.
And one last thing... if you should happen to crochet a Cthulu and bring it to work for a coworker, always make sure that they take it with them back to their own cubicle. The one that I gave to a coworker ended up in another coworker's cubicle while they were working on something, then he forgot and left it. The second coworker found it and was severaly freaked out by it. I call that good craftsmanship. ^_^
(As an aside, I was just told via IM that GM will be killing off the Hummer as a commercial vehicle as part of their proposal to the government. Thank god. Those things were only useful in Africa and don't belong in American garages.)
Now that...that is a lot of learning for only being away 4-5 hours.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Giving the Thanks-ish things.
Every year I sit down and go through a list of what I'm thankful for in my life, as do most Americans. In a moment of extreme arrogance, I'm going to float the idea that while a lot of them might be thankful for having food on the table, not a lot of them are really and truly grateful. It's expected, and expected that they'll have the means to acquire it. Food just appears in this society and is consumed, sometimes in abusively large quantities. And while I didn't set out to bitch, I guess that's where we're going with this. An attitude where there is enough food to be consumed in gluttonous amounts without using it for nourishment, without enjoying it, is an abuse of the resource. In the history of the planet it was only recently that we had the ability to produce such massive quantities of nourishment. Starving children in Africa aside, most Americans probably haven't had the priviledge of starving to be appreciative for their food. I give thanks for being in a society of such affluence that getting my hands on food is as simple as going to the gas station for a set of Twix bars. I don't have to carefully tend crops or pray the war stays away until after harvest so there's at least something in the cupboards for winter. I give thanks for being an American, and for being able to get my hands on something to feed myself. I give even more thanks that it tastes of turkey and honey-baked ham and sweet potatoes... and not ramen.
I was struck recently by the difference in two shows that had basically the same premise... get stuck away from civilization, try not to die. There was Man vs. Wild and Survivorman. And their reactions to being out in the wild were vastly different.
Where as one would talk about how starved he was, but how grateful he was for any nourishment that came his way (even if it was the most godawful tasting bug around)the other would declare everything to taste like shit and stress that he was only doing it for survival, otherwise he would never try it. Whereas one spent his time picking around for nourishment, constructing little shelters of things and generally just finding what he needed, the other went slamming through the wilderness like a child with a new baseball bat. He tore things apart, dug in to things, and generally destroyed anything he came in contact with. We had a good laugh at the second guy's expense with jokes of "Caught it, tried it, tasted of shit, raped it, left it to rot in the desert after setting its den on fire with its young still inside." Except that it really wasn't that far off. One was an American. One was an Englishman. I will leave it to you to figure out who was less the "leave only footprints" kind of guy.
But this is sort of what I mean. One man is grateful for anything that comes his way. The other...subsisting and begrudingly takes what is offered or captured. It's fucking keeping him alive, and he's talking trash about it. This sort of mentality can only come from someone who hasn't really ever been in danger of starvation a day in his life, and what's more, feels entitled to have something better. That's great to have such priviledge. But what most people don't realize is that it isn't a right, getting to have good food on your plate. It's a conjunction of national economic policy, socio-economic status, and just plain luck.
So with this little mini-tirade of mine, I'm hoping the point shines through that to be able to celebrate with a turkey and EVERY fixing that is a part of one's family tradition is amazing, and something truly worth being grateful for. I'm hoping when people say it, a good portion of them really, really mean it.
I was going to throw in something about materialism and the poor bastard that got smashed at Wal-Mart but I think the event really speaks for itself, along with all the major news outlets screaming over it right now. It doesn't needed the added weight of my two red pennies, honestly.
I'm grateful to breathe, to heat, and to receive and give hugs this year. I am grateful to have a good man in my life whom I love, and cats that come in for the cuddle the second I lay down. And I am grateful to have all the supplies I could possibly want to draw, paint, crochet, or do anything else with the arts. I'm pretty damned blessed.
I was struck recently by the difference in two shows that had basically the same premise... get stuck away from civilization, try not to die. There was Man vs. Wild and Survivorman. And their reactions to being out in the wild were vastly different.
Where as one would talk about how starved he was, but how grateful he was for any nourishment that came his way (even if it was the most godawful tasting bug around)the other would declare everything to taste like shit and stress that he was only doing it for survival, otherwise he would never try it. Whereas one spent his time picking around for nourishment, constructing little shelters of things and generally just finding what he needed, the other went slamming through the wilderness like a child with a new baseball bat. He tore things apart, dug in to things, and generally destroyed anything he came in contact with. We had a good laugh at the second guy's expense with jokes of "Caught it, tried it, tasted of shit, raped it, left it to rot in the desert after setting its den on fire with its young still inside." Except that it really wasn't that far off. One was an American. One was an Englishman. I will leave it to you to figure out who was less the "leave only footprints" kind of guy.
But this is sort of what I mean. One man is grateful for anything that comes his way. The other...subsisting and begrudingly takes what is offered or captured. It's fucking keeping him alive, and he's talking trash about it. This sort of mentality can only come from someone who hasn't really ever been in danger of starvation a day in his life, and what's more, feels entitled to have something better. That's great to have such priviledge. But what most people don't realize is that it isn't a right, getting to have good food on your plate. It's a conjunction of national economic policy, socio-economic status, and just plain luck.
So with this little mini-tirade of mine, I'm hoping the point shines through that to be able to celebrate with a turkey and EVERY fixing that is a part of one's family tradition is amazing, and something truly worth being grateful for. I'm hoping when people say it, a good portion of them really, really mean it.
I was going to throw in something about materialism and the poor bastard that got smashed at Wal-Mart but I think the event really speaks for itself, along with all the major news outlets screaming over it right now. It doesn't needed the added weight of my two red pennies, honestly.
I'm grateful to breathe, to heat, and to receive and give hugs this year. I am grateful to have a good man in my life whom I love, and cats that come in for the cuddle the second I lay down. And I am grateful to have all the supplies I could possibly want to draw, paint, crochet, or do anything else with the arts. I'm pretty damned blessed.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
NaNoWriMo Day-Final
Ladies and Gentlemen, I have an announcement make.
At 6:35 pm EST, yours truly crossed the finish line with 50,770 words. 93 pages.
I have earned my special fox hat that I will be modeling for everyone later, along with the celebratory pie that Bob and I are going to go have as soon as he is done with his raid. Following that I will go on to complete my homework for this week and in general feel like I'm pretty hot shit for pulling all of this off.
In the final review, it's amusing to note that it all came down to the bribes and the Hat of Cat that I stuck on my head whenever I got stuck.
To that end, I'd like to take a moment to thank Pawstars for providing me with that hat at AnimeNext earlier this summer. Without it I wouldn't have had my own version of the "viking horns" so often referenced in NaNoWriMo mythology as a means by which one can spur their creativity. Sitting there with that hat on my head told my brain it was time to focus and get some shit done. And got it done I did.
If anyone's interested, their website is www.pawstar.com, they are lovely and fun people, and I just got the Extra Warm Fox Yip Hat II from them to reward myself for making it through. They also make cat hats, wolf hats, rabbit hats, panda hats, and cosplay things. All of it is fairly adorable, and a lot of it probably would mostly look good at an anime convention or on a snowboarder.
If there's a way I could be more excited or proud of myself at this point, I don't know of it. This evening I am epic and legendary and full of the need to feast and be victorious.
Tomorrow I will be a normal, mundane helpdesk technician with a manuscript in need of fleshing out, grammar checking and finishing up. But for now...I fucking rule.
I rule so much that I'm going to go get that 72 pack of copics I've been drooling over, the next edition of Tokyo Mew Mew, and some paint brushes. I'm feeling the need to channel all this creative energy elsewhere finally!
Happy Thanksgiving....
At 6:35 pm EST, yours truly crossed the finish line with 50,770 words. 93 pages.
I have earned my special fox hat that I will be modeling for everyone later, along with the celebratory pie that Bob and I are going to go have as soon as he is done with his raid. Following that I will go on to complete my homework for this week and in general feel like I'm pretty hot shit for pulling all of this off.
In the final review, it's amusing to note that it all came down to the bribes and the Hat of Cat that I stuck on my head whenever I got stuck.
To that end, I'd like to take a moment to thank Pawstars for providing me with that hat at AnimeNext earlier this summer. Without it I wouldn't have had my own version of the "viking horns" so often referenced in NaNoWriMo mythology as a means by which one can spur their creativity. Sitting there with that hat on my head told my brain it was time to focus and get some shit done. And got it done I did.
If anyone's interested, their website is www.pawstar.com, they are lovely and fun people, and I just got the Extra Warm Fox Yip Hat II from them to reward myself for making it through. They also make cat hats, wolf hats, rabbit hats, panda hats, and cosplay things. All of it is fairly adorable, and a lot of it probably would mostly look good at an anime convention or on a snowboarder.
If there's a way I could be more excited or proud of myself at this point, I don't know of it. This evening I am epic and legendary and full of the need to feast and be victorious.
Tomorrow I will be a normal, mundane helpdesk technician with a manuscript in need of fleshing out, grammar checking and finishing up. But for now...I fucking rule.
I rule so much that I'm going to go get that 72 pack of copics I've been drooling over, the next edition of Tokyo Mew Mew, and some paint brushes. I'm feeling the need to channel all this creative energy elsewhere finally!
Happy Thanksgiving....
NaNoWriMo, day 29....
Word count as of today: 46,530
Total pages:87
I will be completely finished by tomorrow with utterly no problem. My only gripe is that one of these years I will have to learn how to write and finish a story in 50,000 words, as this'll be the second year I wrote something and wasn't even halfway done with the story when the time and word count was up.
I think I just love being descriptive a leeeeetle too much.
Anyway, here's to victory! Onward and forward! I'll give an update on the Thanksgiving weekend tomorrow.
Total pages:87
I will be completely finished by tomorrow with utterly no problem. My only gripe is that one of these years I will have to learn how to write and finish a story in 50,000 words, as this'll be the second year I wrote something and wasn't even halfway done with the story when the time and word count was up.
I think I just love being descriptive a leeeeetle too much.
Anyway, here's to victory! Onward and forward! I'll give an update on the Thanksgiving weekend tomorrow.
Monday, November 24, 2008
SURPRISE PIANO!
What an awesome world we live in, when people feel the need to randomly set up mystery pianos in the woods.
I just hope somebody isn't out a very expensive piano for giving the rest of us a smile.
I just hope somebody isn't out a very expensive piano for giving the rest of us a smile.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
My early Xmas preset to you all...
Remember how much fun it was to get your hands on bubble wrap when you were a kid and go crazy?
Well, thanks to the procrastination station on the NanNoWriMo website, I was introduced to the Online Bubblewrap Popping Page. If you ever have a spare moment, or you're frustrated, head on over and waste a few minutes. I suggest clicking the box marked "Manic Mode!" in order to bypass having to click individually on each little bubble. Also, I highly suggest clicking the "Fresh Sheet" button with your sound turned on so you can experience the slightly creepy yet very amusing audio queue that results.
Segwaying from that to something more serious... A few weeks back I was talking with a coworker and we swung over to people-specific ringtones. I joked that I had a special ringtone for the phone number of the guy who used to stalk me, so I would know if he called. The coworker looked at me like I was nuts and asked why I would bother to do that. Well, I replied, so I could be warned if he was trying to contact me again. And has he? asked my coworker. And at that point I realized that it had been well over a year, and I was being paranoid...but also, I was hanging on.
That evening, I deleted the whole thing, and updated my online phone list so that ti wouldn't even be saved there in case of an update. and with that, it was all officially banished from my life. I hadn't realized until that moment just how stupid I was being, and how I'd been holding on to old emotions. After that moment, the remaining fear left, and I just felt lighter.
The connection here is that the coworker I talked with was the same coworker that provided me with real-life bubble wrap on Thursday to play with. That drove me to dive in to the bubble wrap page when I saw it. And there you have it. How my world is connected some days. :)
Well, thanks to the procrastination station on the NanNoWriMo website, I was introduced to the Online Bubblewrap Popping Page. If you ever have a spare moment, or you're frustrated, head on over and waste a few minutes. I suggest clicking the box marked "Manic Mode!" in order to bypass having to click individually on each little bubble. Also, I highly suggest clicking the "Fresh Sheet" button with your sound turned on so you can experience the slightly creepy yet very amusing audio queue that results.
Segwaying from that to something more serious... A few weeks back I was talking with a coworker and we swung over to people-specific ringtones. I joked that I had a special ringtone for the phone number of the guy who used to stalk me, so I would know if he called. The coworker looked at me like I was nuts and asked why I would bother to do that. Well, I replied, so I could be warned if he was trying to contact me again. And has he? asked my coworker. And at that point I realized that it had been well over a year, and I was being paranoid...but also, I was hanging on.
That evening, I deleted the whole thing, and updated my online phone list so that ti wouldn't even be saved there in case of an update. and with that, it was all officially banished from my life. I hadn't realized until that moment just how stupid I was being, and how I'd been holding on to old emotions. After that moment, the remaining fear left, and I just felt lighter.
The connection here is that the coworker I talked with was the same coworker that provided me with real-life bubble wrap on Thursday to play with. That drove me to dive in to the bubble wrap page when I saw it. And there you have it. How my world is connected some days. :)
A Few Things I Have Learned Today
1. I can't write during the day. there is some sort of mental block that keeps me from sitting down to a laptop and typing. It is now 12:30 at night and I'm finally starting to work on NaNoWriMo. This does not make for a successful 50,000.
2. Blanket statements made by the uninformed piss me off. If you're not a gamer, but you feel the need to go off about how irresponsible some gamers are, perhaps you should check your audience first. Some of your audience, I can ~guarantee~ will be that very thing you have chosen to randomly rail against. The universe does it because awkward backtracking by loudmouths is amusing to most involved. The hurt feelings that come from aforementioned uninformed loudmouths, however, are not amusing. Those of us that are usually thick-skinned until you find the one chink in it and manage to drive the spear home are going to fight back. You don't get the right to act indignant or surprised when this happens, people.
3. I love to move and exercise. At one point I used to dance and stretch constantly, and I miss those days. When I do finally get off my ass to do it, I enjoy it. I just wish it didn't result in a blood sugar crash and a few hours of low-level headache to follow. :(
4. Snow is still magical, even after 3 decades of being exposed to it. Self-explanatory.
5. Hypochondria is funny, but only until you give a second rebuttal on why you might have a certain illness. After that, further insistence in the presence of someone who obviously doesn't believe you will just lead to annoyance. (For a short time on Thursday I thought I might be a sociopath. Then I realized no one can be THIS insecure about wanting more friends and enjoying talking to others and have a brain malfunction like that. I'm just very badly self-absorbed and it shows.)
6. There are a lot of assumptions that go along with the holidays. They are not the same assumptions held by your loved ones. It will take a while for you all to figure this out, and even longer to untangle, investigate, and reach compromise. Have patience. Rome was not built in a day and deciding whether to hang colored or white lights on the tree won't either.
7. The majority of my computers' resources, both desktop and now laptop, are taken up with getting me access to music. XM Radio, the new and faster Winamp program I just downloaded to play all of the mp3's I've also downloaded, and Pandora.com for when I can't get to XM... all of these take up a lot of space and processor speed. Pandora particularly is a system hog. Best not to leave it running in the background unless you absolutely HAVE to listen to a station dedicated strictly to French and Chinese rap that you have carefully constructed over the course of 2 weeks. (That is a true story.)
8. The human mind can devise multiple things to do with your free time. Only choose a few of them, and do not beat yourself up that you chose those instead of others. You'll simply spend your time regretting that you can't do everything at once and not be happy with what you make the time to do. Knit a scarf instead of doing the dishes. Vaccuum instead of playing the new video game. Be glad that you get to experience any of these things at any time, and the beauty of the choice to. (thank you to Bob for pointing out I do this a lot to myself.)
And finally...
9. Don't ever suspect you're good at something. Just do it. And keep doing it, as hard and as thoroughly as you dare try it. People will let you know when they're impressed. If you're really good, large groups of people will tell you they think so.
Now off to go write. 24,144 words, 50 pages. I will have 35,000 by the time the weekend is over!! I have to earn my fox hat!
2. Blanket statements made by the uninformed piss me off. If you're not a gamer, but you feel the need to go off about how irresponsible some gamers are, perhaps you should check your audience first. Some of your audience, I can ~guarantee~ will be that very thing you have chosen to randomly rail against. The universe does it because awkward backtracking by loudmouths is amusing to most involved. The hurt feelings that come from aforementioned uninformed loudmouths, however, are not amusing. Those of us that are usually thick-skinned until you find the one chink in it and manage to drive the spear home are going to fight back. You don't get the right to act indignant or surprised when this happens, people.
3. I love to move and exercise. At one point I used to dance and stretch constantly, and I miss those days. When I do finally get off my ass to do it, I enjoy it. I just wish it didn't result in a blood sugar crash and a few hours of low-level headache to follow. :(
4. Snow is still magical, even after 3 decades of being exposed to it. Self-explanatory.
5. Hypochondria is funny, but only until you give a second rebuttal on why you might have a certain illness. After that, further insistence in the presence of someone who obviously doesn't believe you will just lead to annoyance. (For a short time on Thursday I thought I might be a sociopath. Then I realized no one can be THIS insecure about wanting more friends and enjoying talking to others and have a brain malfunction like that. I'm just very badly self-absorbed and it shows.)
6. There are a lot of assumptions that go along with the holidays. They are not the same assumptions held by your loved ones. It will take a while for you all to figure this out, and even longer to untangle, investigate, and reach compromise. Have patience. Rome was not built in a day and deciding whether to hang colored or white lights on the tree won't either.
7. The majority of my computers' resources, both desktop and now laptop, are taken up with getting me access to music. XM Radio, the new and faster Winamp program I just downloaded to play all of the mp3's I've also downloaded, and Pandora.com for when I can't get to XM... all of these take up a lot of space and processor speed. Pandora particularly is a system hog. Best not to leave it running in the background unless you absolutely HAVE to listen to a station dedicated strictly to French and Chinese rap that you have carefully constructed over the course of 2 weeks. (That is a true story.)
8. The human mind can devise multiple things to do with your free time. Only choose a few of them, and do not beat yourself up that you chose those instead of others. You'll simply spend your time regretting that you can't do everything at once and not be happy with what you make the time to do. Knit a scarf instead of doing the dishes. Vaccuum instead of playing the new video game. Be glad that you get to experience any of these things at any time, and the beauty of the choice to. (thank you to Bob for pointing out I do this a lot to myself.)
And finally...
9. Don't ever suspect you're good at something. Just do it. And keep doing it, as hard and as thoroughly as you dare try it. People will let you know when they're impressed. If you're really good, large groups of people will tell you they think so.
Now off to go write. 24,144 words, 50 pages. I will have 35,000 by the time the weekend is over!! I have to earn my fox hat!
Friday, November 21, 2008
The Sublime and the Sub-human, all before lunch.
This morning I awoke to 3 inches of beautiful snow blanketing everything in my backyard. I was happy to watch it drift down quietly in the early morning's growing grey light. When I got out of the shower, it was a beautiful pervasive white that highlighted every dark branch and reed, drawing attention to the form of the thing simply by laying upon it.
I wrestled with getting to work, finally turning around to come home and set up the VPN to work from home for the day. When the initial setup did not work correctly, I ended up packing it in and heading to work around 11 after all of the people scared of the snow had gotten off the roads. I enjoyed the whiteness of the forests and fields and the fat flurries that dropped down past my car as I drove. It truly felt like winter, the winter I've been waiting for with baited breath. It's my hope now that it stays a while, and doesn't simply melt by the time we all get out of work. Already it was starting to melt on the streets and sidewalks and fall off tree branches in places. Maybe if it can hold on there will be something to walk around in on Saturday or Sunday. Maybe we'll even see more. I'm tired of bland, grey winters with snows that don't stay. I long for the years when I could pile up the snow high enough to jump off the roof of the garage in to the waiting cushion of it below. (This is a true story and my Mom still yells at me for it, btw.) I want those winters back of boots and cold noses and the blessings of hot chocolate in cold tummies. I wanted to appreciate a fire for putting me in to a deep, drowsy state while slush melted off my shoes and gloves. And I want a chance to make a snowball and throw it at Bob when he's not looking, then run inside and hide like a wuss.
Perhaps all of these things will come. It's just one snow fall, and the middle path states you don't put all of your hopes in one snowstorm. But it is fun to remember. :)
Of course, in the midst of all this reverie and hope for a white winter and Christmas came the news that a young man killed himself live via a webcam. And nobody realized it was serious. He took something like 20 xanax, fell over, and never got back up.
The jokes and the demands that someone stand responsible for it are already flying, with the stipulation that the people demanding someone take ownership of it shouldn't have to ,because they weren't directly involved (of course.) Pass the buck, internet style. Amusing to watch, sad to see start.
I do worry a bit what the repercussions of this might be. Copycats? Tougher regulations on those of us who wouldn't have thought to use it that way? A backlash against people who use the internet as a way to find help for issues like that? (Will they all be dubbed "candyjunkies" now?) Ahh, the next step forward in loss of innocence.
Oh well. Welcome winter. I've been waiting for you. Glad you're here now.
I wrestled with getting to work, finally turning around to come home and set up the VPN to work from home for the day. When the initial setup did not work correctly, I ended up packing it in and heading to work around 11 after all of the people scared of the snow had gotten off the roads. I enjoyed the whiteness of the forests and fields and the fat flurries that dropped down past my car as I drove. It truly felt like winter, the winter I've been waiting for with baited breath. It's my hope now that it stays a while, and doesn't simply melt by the time we all get out of work. Already it was starting to melt on the streets and sidewalks and fall off tree branches in places. Maybe if it can hold on there will be something to walk around in on Saturday or Sunday. Maybe we'll even see more. I'm tired of bland, grey winters with snows that don't stay. I long for the years when I could pile up the snow high enough to jump off the roof of the garage in to the waiting cushion of it below. (This is a true story and my Mom still yells at me for it, btw.) I want those winters back of boots and cold noses and the blessings of hot chocolate in cold tummies. I wanted to appreciate a fire for putting me in to a deep, drowsy state while slush melted off my shoes and gloves. And I want a chance to make a snowball and throw it at Bob when he's not looking, then run inside and hide like a wuss.
Perhaps all of these things will come. It's just one snow fall, and the middle path states you don't put all of your hopes in one snowstorm. But it is fun to remember. :)
Of course, in the midst of all this reverie and hope for a white winter and Christmas came the news that a young man killed himself live via a webcam. And nobody realized it was serious. He took something like 20 xanax, fell over, and never got back up.
The jokes and the demands that someone stand responsible for it are already flying, with the stipulation that the people demanding someone take ownership of it shouldn't have to ,because they weren't directly involved (of course.) Pass the buck, internet style. Amusing to watch, sad to see start.
I do worry a bit what the repercussions of this might be. Copycats? Tougher regulations on those of us who wouldn't have thought to use it that way? A backlash against people who use the internet as a way to find help for issues like that? (Will they all be dubbed "candyjunkies" now?) Ahh, the next step forward in loss of innocence.
Oh well. Welcome winter. I've been waiting for you. Glad you're here now.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Art for Art's Sake.
I figured out how to make a rather fetching ascii headcrab at work today. Thought I would share, as this is probably the best thing I have accomplished today.
((''\\(^,..,^)//''))
If you take the end , off, it would be Lamar.
I know you guys love it.
((''\\(^,..,^)//''))
If you take the end , off, it would be Lamar.
I know you guys love it.
NaNoWriMo count day 18
16,965 words.
Don't remember how many pages.
I'm seriously behind enough at this point to warrant putting the cat hat back on and getting to work.
Advised word count for this day: 30,006.
I have to make up 15,000 words in the next 12 days. This is when I think back trying to determine exactly why I decided ~not~ to write at any one given time.
Hiking in the woods with my Dad and then going to lunch was NOT something I was willing to forgo, though. Screw you, wrimo count. Screw you.
**EDIT**
As of 11:35 I am at 20,653 words, 45 pages. If I have 2 5,000 word days and one 3,000 word day, I'm easily caught up. Story wrote itself again when I put on the cat hat and sat down to do some business. Have I mentioned how much I love this process??
Don't remember how many pages.
I'm seriously behind enough at this point to warrant putting the cat hat back on and getting to work.
Advised word count for this day: 30,006.
I have to make up 15,000 words in the next 12 days. This is when I think back trying to determine exactly why I decided ~not~ to write at any one given time.
Hiking in the woods with my Dad and then going to lunch was NOT something I was willing to forgo, though. Screw you, wrimo count. Screw you.
**EDIT**
As of 11:35 I am at 20,653 words, 45 pages. If I have 2 5,000 word days and one 3,000 word day, I'm easily caught up. Story wrote itself again when I put on the cat hat and sat down to do some business. Have I mentioned how much I love this process??
Monday, November 17, 2008
Left 4 Dead
Nooooo no no no no no nooooo no no-no. No. Nuh-uh. No way. No. Nooooooo-ho-hooooo.....
*rocks back and forth rhythmically, staring at the wall*
The cinematic alone made me want to curl up in the closet and hide for days. The game play between video card glitches was freaking awesome. The AI was relatively good, and it was only on the 4th reload that I screwed up and shot my teammates.
But zombies? Noooooooo way. In my world, they better NEVER EVER EVER move that fast. If they do, I am going to crawl in to my attic and drink my own urine as quietly as possible for as long as possible until I either die of starvation or they get it together to scour the countryside and pick the super-speedy necrophagists off to the point of extinction. I'm dead freakin' serious about this, folks.
I was leery of zombies to begin with, and it used to be watching Night of the Living Dead was enough to send me in to nightmares. But no... someone had to go and create 28 Days Later, introducing the idea that they could outright sprint until you collapsed. Meanwhile, they were ready for another 5 K and not even winded in spite of having just downed your sweetbreads and the majority of your esophagus. When I saw that, I had nightmares on and off for a least a YEAR.
What's really sick about it is that both movies mentioned are now among my favorites. So is Sean of the Dead, a British flick that spends most of its time making fun of other zombie flicks, and good on them for it. It made me howl.
Anyway, as some of you know I love to embrace that which terrifies me in an attempt to understand it and get over it. Because of this I've actually done a lot of reading on this history of zombies and zombie movies. For the most part, I know what to expect when I'm looking at the depiction of a zombie, and rather pride myself on that fact.
But with the Left 4 Dead demo, it pretty much took everything that made it scary, twisted it to wring out all impurities, then added in a few small things that upped the ante. Like different KINDS of zombies, so you have to have a different tactic for each of them.
Also nice was the fact that the group will not follow you if you go wandering away from the direction you need to be headed to reach your objective. On our first run through the apartment building Bob and I went off to the right away from the stairwell to do a bit of investigating, and the other two didn't follow. That was the only way we knew that we were supposed to go down, and it worked out nicely. There's really no map to be had that I could tell, so a subtle indicator like that which keeps you in the game is highly appreciated.
Those guys that spew bile all over everything? Okay... dude, that's harsh. Because you can't see, and it attracts the infected, so they're swarming at you and you're basically shooting at whatever runs up and tries to eat your face. This happened twice, and miraculously we got through it alive without shooting each other a whole lot.
I did notice that closing a door to keep zombies from creeping up behind you seems to pretty much invite them to swarm at you THROUGH that door, so learning to constantly strafe and keep my back to walls was important. Another great thing was that each time we went through, the makeup of what attacked us was entirely different. We didn't have the same encounter twice. That made it really enjoyable.
That being said, if I can clear up the issue with my video card, I will probably be getting this on the PC. I may even play it alone, since there are 3 other AI companions that join me in the story. I'd recommend it to others somewhat leery of the survival-horror genre as well because of that. It lets you be slightly less panicked than perhaps you would be otherwise.
Maybe this will be the deciding factor in me getting over my fear and moving on!
...probably not. But it is HIGHLY satisfying to plug holes into things that really, really want your precious fluids.
*rocks back and forth rhythmically, staring at the wall*
The cinematic alone made me want to curl up in the closet and hide for days. The game play between video card glitches was freaking awesome. The AI was relatively good, and it was only on the 4th reload that I screwed up and shot my teammates.
But zombies? Noooooooo way. In my world, they better NEVER EVER EVER move that fast. If they do, I am going to crawl in to my attic and drink my own urine as quietly as possible for as long as possible until I either die of starvation or they get it together to scour the countryside and pick the super-speedy necrophagists off to the point of extinction. I'm dead freakin' serious about this, folks.
I was leery of zombies to begin with, and it used to be watching Night of the Living Dead was enough to send me in to nightmares. But no... someone had to go and create 28 Days Later, introducing the idea that they could outright sprint until you collapsed. Meanwhile, they were ready for another 5 K and not even winded in spite of having just downed your sweetbreads and the majority of your esophagus. When I saw that, I had nightmares on and off for a least a YEAR.
What's really sick about it is that both movies mentioned are now among my favorites. So is Sean of the Dead, a British flick that spends most of its time making fun of other zombie flicks, and good on them for it. It made me howl.
Anyway, as some of you know I love to embrace that which terrifies me in an attempt to understand it and get over it. Because of this I've actually done a lot of reading on this history of zombies and zombie movies. For the most part, I know what to expect when I'm looking at the depiction of a zombie, and rather pride myself on that fact.
But with the Left 4 Dead demo, it pretty much took everything that made it scary, twisted it to wring out all impurities, then added in a few small things that upped the ante. Like different KINDS of zombies, so you have to have a different tactic for each of them.
Also nice was the fact that the group will not follow you if you go wandering away from the direction you need to be headed to reach your objective. On our first run through the apartment building Bob and I went off to the right away from the stairwell to do a bit of investigating, and the other two didn't follow. That was the only way we knew that we were supposed to go down, and it worked out nicely. There's really no map to be had that I could tell, so a subtle indicator like that which keeps you in the game is highly appreciated.
Those guys that spew bile all over everything? Okay... dude, that's harsh. Because you can't see, and it attracts the infected, so they're swarming at you and you're basically shooting at whatever runs up and tries to eat your face. This happened twice, and miraculously we got through it alive without shooting each other a whole lot.
I did notice that closing a door to keep zombies from creeping up behind you seems to pretty much invite them to swarm at you THROUGH that door, so learning to constantly strafe and keep my back to walls was important. Another great thing was that each time we went through, the makeup of what attacked us was entirely different. We didn't have the same encounter twice. That made it really enjoyable.
That being said, if I can clear up the issue with my video card, I will probably be getting this on the PC. I may even play it alone, since there are 3 other AI companions that join me in the story. I'd recommend it to others somewhat leery of the survival-horror genre as well because of that. It lets you be slightly less panicked than perhaps you would be otherwise.
Maybe this will be the deciding factor in me getting over my fear and moving on!
...probably not. But it is HIGHLY satisfying to plug holes into things that really, really want your precious fluids.
And in this corner...
This morning as I was leaving my development I saw two birds jumping on each other and rolling around on the ground.
When I stopped in my car I realized they weren't crows, but two red-shouldered hawks. It looked like they were playing, and when they flapped their wings the undersides ha the most beautiful barring and red I had ever seen. It took my breath away.
Hawk wrestling. Sometimes the universe gives you something cool for Breakfast. :)
When I stopped in my car I realized they weren't crows, but two red-shouldered hawks. It looked like they were playing, and when they flapped their wings the undersides ha the most beautiful barring and red I had ever seen. It took my breath away.
Hawk wrestling. Sometimes the universe gives you something cool for Breakfast. :)
Friday, November 14, 2008
Night of the Living Bivalves.
Wednesday night. In the annals of all that I have attempted and done, there is a common theme running through it... Helen don't mix with high society too good. While I wasn't born in a barn, there are certain public rituals and things that are of such a ridiculous nature I can't help but laugh and mock a bit.
Both Bob and myself had been looking forward to an oyster tasting session at Legal Seafoods ever since we found out about it back in September. We'd signed up for it and done a little jig when we found we were off the waiting list, looking forward to what had been billed as a night of learning about the various types of oysters available. As we've both come to view oysters as a rather delicious member of the crustacean family, this seemed the ocean-bound equivalent of a wine class.
We arrived, expectant and excited, to see that they were shuttling everyone in to the bar area. Everyone. Probably 50-60 of us.
In my head I thought it was a holding area until they had the meeting room ready where they were going to sit us down and do a talk about the pluses of each kind of oyster they were offering, and we would get a chance to taste them after these were highlighted.
Not so. We were handed a menu printed on cardstock. There were 2 stations set up for the oysters, and when they were set out there was just a sign put up with the name on it. A brief description outlined their individual flavors on the menucard, but no one took the time to tell us anything.
We took up positions at the bar and I watched as huge queues formed at each of the stations. There was much jostling of elbows and rushes to get there, with people craning their heads and watching carefully to see what people were taking ahead of them.
I know this behavior. I see it in my family whenever we get together and cook and there's anger that someone's eating too much, or fear that there won't be enough left for them. An entire room of adults switched over to survival mode in the matter of 2 minutes, and it was probably one of the most sad and disgusting things I've seen in a while.
Worst offenders were the elderly, who were aggressive to get to the front of the line. Any time a waiter came out with hors d'oeuvres he got perhaps 5 feet in to the room before he was swamped by people scrabbling to get a piece before anybody else could take it. Like seagulls going after French fries. Or that scene in the Mummy where the bugs run over the guard and devour him, leaving his bones to drop to the temple floor.
We got a decent share in the oysters, and one of each item that went around on the trays. It was all delicious, and through trial and error we DID learn which ones we liked the most. Amusingly, Bob and I do not like the same ones. But we can probably come to a consensus, as neither of us outright hated any of them either. When we return, or go elsewhere for that matter, we'll know exactly what we like.
The sheer gluttony involved, the eating for the sake of eating, the constant jostling and fear of not getting enough...I just couldn't figure out how anybody could enjoy their food like that. Eating for the sake of getting a lot of food is unhealthy, and it does disservice to the thing that's nourishing you.
There were a few who took obvious enjoyment in the ritual; I specifically remember one man declaring he didn't need a fork, he was "a slurper", then taking his sweet time tilting the shell to his lips and enjoying the flavor. THAT did my heart good.
At one point when people were starting to get very aggressive and pushy about things, we realized that we'd gotten what we wanted out of it -that is, to sample different types of raw oysters and preparations of them cooked- and that really we weren't having much more fun beyond that. Bob looked at me and said "You know, I could eat something else right now."
And I said "You know, I could too. How about cheeseburgers?"
With that, we departed, happy to be away from so many people in such a confined space going after limited resources. It was like Japan, but without the ingrained feudally-spawned politeness.
For the next 20 minutes we had drunken fun driving from King of Prussia to Radnor, where they have a Microcenter. I had been drooling over a laptop they had ever since the original one didn't work and wanted to have it in my hands to try it. If it was good, I was going to buy it then and there. I had fallen in love with the idea of a laptop too much to not have one, especially if it was only going to be $80 more with double the memory and hard drive space.
We got there and circled through, looking at things. I located the laptop, closed my eyes, typed on the keyboard, and when I opened them I was convinced I wanted to take one home. Previous keyboard being so unresponsive, I was really starting to appreciate when technology did what it was supposed to. When I was going through checking out the background on it, a saleman stepped up and began talking to me about the features on it. I guess it appeared that I wasn't really listening (he was listing things I didn't care about, so I may not have been) so he finally stopped and said okay... what will you be doing with this?
I turned to him and said you know, honestly, I'm going to take this home, strip Vista off of it, and replace it with Ubuntu.
The man blinked, and in that moment I realized he didn't know what Ubuntu was. The man who was supposed to help me make a decision on the laptop I needed to do things with in my life was standing there staring at me, lost.
Well, he then said, I guess I won't be selling you the extended warranty.
Then he went off on a tangent about how removing the operating system was going to void the warranty. Don't worry, I told him, I've got a household FULL of devices I have voided the warranty on. Non-plussed, he pushed further to make his point. What was I going to do, he asked, if something happened to it and it needed repairs? Well, if that was the case, I would fix it, I said. And either he didn't hear me or didn't believe me, becuase he continued on for a moment about how tough they could be to repair.
Nuh-uh. Not really. I own a screw driver. I can replace hard drives, RAM, processors, you name it. I can check wires. Software issue? I'll diagnose it. Because in the past few years, I have become a giant geek and I am freakin' proud of it.
He then asked, AGAIN, what I was going to use it for. Networking and programming I told him, I'm going to school and I need to code and write papers.
And he then looked straight at me and said "You know that thing doesn't have enough memory enough for that, right?"
....what??
It had 1 gig of RAM. As far as I"m aware, that's several more megabytes than is necessary to type something in to notepad in Windows. And at that point I promptly ignored anything else the man had to say about anything, because he didn't understand the product he had, he'd just been told to sell people on memory.
I bought some, but that was because I wanted to play video games on it and it was on sale for 66% off. That's not that bad a deal, actually.
What was funny was when the man went back to grab the memory (after assuring him that it was not "XP" I was installing as he kept stating, but Ubuntu, and yes, I wanted it for the hardware and the price, the thing was going to be my bitch the second I got at home and nothing else in the place even remotely interested me.) Bob came to me in the aisle, motioned me in close, then said under his breath "Hey, are you still drunk? Because you're buying a lot of stuff..."
I assured him I wasn't, and just the question made me laugh. He later stated that with as much as the man was questioning what I wanted to do, it was pissing him off, so he'd walked off for a bit. He figured I'd let him get away with it because of my normally congenial personality and the fact that I am a good-humored drunk. He had a very valid point. The man, despite my generally good mood, was a dumb ass and relatively rude in constantly questioning my knowledge and ability. I thought I might be over-reacting, but having someone there to confirm it made me feel a little better.
We gathered up the goods, I fairly skipped out the door with my new Acer laptop (which I still adore) and we headed up Lancaster Ave. to Berwyn, where a Burger King awaited us.
We finished off the night with double cheeseburgers, onion rings and shakes. And in a semi-dirty burger king run by teenagers that weren't paying attention to what they were doing while making the food, it was a far more comfortable and enjoyable atmosphere to be in. I love oysters, especially raw, but they just couldn't do for me what that greasy pile of hamburger and processed cheese-food could. I found it amusing that I (and from what I observed, Bob) were far more at ease in the fast food joint than in the nice restaurant. I guess you can take the girl out of the country....
...oh, and btw, when we got home he didn't see me again for the rest of the night, I was too busy playing with the laptop. It's freakin' awesome. ^_^
Both Bob and myself had been looking forward to an oyster tasting session at Legal Seafoods ever since we found out about it back in September. We'd signed up for it and done a little jig when we found we were off the waiting list, looking forward to what had been billed as a night of learning about the various types of oysters available. As we've both come to view oysters as a rather delicious member of the crustacean family, this seemed the ocean-bound equivalent of a wine class.
We arrived, expectant and excited, to see that they were shuttling everyone in to the bar area. Everyone. Probably 50-60 of us.
In my head I thought it was a holding area until they had the meeting room ready where they were going to sit us down and do a talk about the pluses of each kind of oyster they were offering, and we would get a chance to taste them after these were highlighted.
Not so. We were handed a menu printed on cardstock. There were 2 stations set up for the oysters, and when they were set out there was just a sign put up with the name on it. A brief description outlined their individual flavors on the menucard, but no one took the time to tell us anything.
We took up positions at the bar and I watched as huge queues formed at each of the stations. There was much jostling of elbows and rushes to get there, with people craning their heads and watching carefully to see what people were taking ahead of them.
I know this behavior. I see it in my family whenever we get together and cook and there's anger that someone's eating too much, or fear that there won't be enough left for them. An entire room of adults switched over to survival mode in the matter of 2 minutes, and it was probably one of the most sad and disgusting things I've seen in a while.
Worst offenders were the elderly, who were aggressive to get to the front of the line. Any time a waiter came out with hors d'oeuvres he got perhaps 5 feet in to the room before he was swamped by people scrabbling to get a piece before anybody else could take it. Like seagulls going after French fries. Or that scene in the Mummy where the bugs run over the guard and devour him, leaving his bones to drop to the temple floor.
We got a decent share in the oysters, and one of each item that went around on the trays. It was all delicious, and through trial and error we DID learn which ones we liked the most. Amusingly, Bob and I do not like the same ones. But we can probably come to a consensus, as neither of us outright hated any of them either. When we return, or go elsewhere for that matter, we'll know exactly what we like.
The sheer gluttony involved, the eating for the sake of eating, the constant jostling and fear of not getting enough...I just couldn't figure out how anybody could enjoy their food like that. Eating for the sake of getting a lot of food is unhealthy, and it does disservice to the thing that's nourishing you.
There were a few who took obvious enjoyment in the ritual; I specifically remember one man declaring he didn't need a fork, he was "a slurper", then taking his sweet time tilting the shell to his lips and enjoying the flavor. THAT did my heart good.
At one point when people were starting to get very aggressive and pushy about things, we realized that we'd gotten what we wanted out of it -that is, to sample different types of raw oysters and preparations of them cooked- and that really we weren't having much more fun beyond that. Bob looked at me and said "You know, I could eat something else right now."
And I said "You know, I could too. How about cheeseburgers?"
With that, we departed, happy to be away from so many people in such a confined space going after limited resources. It was like Japan, but without the ingrained feudally-spawned politeness.
For the next 20 minutes we had drunken fun driving from King of Prussia to Radnor, where they have a Microcenter. I had been drooling over a laptop they had ever since the original one didn't work and wanted to have it in my hands to try it. If it was good, I was going to buy it then and there. I had fallen in love with the idea of a laptop too much to not have one, especially if it was only going to be $80 more with double the memory and hard drive space.
We got there and circled through, looking at things. I located the laptop, closed my eyes, typed on the keyboard, and when I opened them I was convinced I wanted to take one home. Previous keyboard being so unresponsive, I was really starting to appreciate when technology did what it was supposed to. When I was going through checking out the background on it, a saleman stepped up and began talking to me about the features on it. I guess it appeared that I wasn't really listening (he was listing things I didn't care about, so I may not have been) so he finally stopped and said okay... what will you be doing with this?
I turned to him and said you know, honestly, I'm going to take this home, strip Vista off of it, and replace it with Ubuntu.
The man blinked, and in that moment I realized he didn't know what Ubuntu was. The man who was supposed to help me make a decision on the laptop I needed to do things with in my life was standing there staring at me, lost.
Well, he then said, I guess I won't be selling you the extended warranty.
Then he went off on a tangent about how removing the operating system was going to void the warranty. Don't worry, I told him, I've got a household FULL of devices I have voided the warranty on. Non-plussed, he pushed further to make his point. What was I going to do, he asked, if something happened to it and it needed repairs? Well, if that was the case, I would fix it, I said. And either he didn't hear me or didn't believe me, becuase he continued on for a moment about how tough they could be to repair.
Nuh-uh. Not really. I own a screw driver. I can replace hard drives, RAM, processors, you name it. I can check wires. Software issue? I'll diagnose it. Because in the past few years, I have become a giant geek and I am freakin' proud of it.
He then asked, AGAIN, what I was going to use it for. Networking and programming I told him, I'm going to school and I need to code and write papers.
And he then looked straight at me and said "You know that thing doesn't have enough memory enough for that, right?"
....what??
It had 1 gig of RAM. As far as I"m aware, that's several more megabytes than is necessary to type something in to notepad in Windows. And at that point I promptly ignored anything else the man had to say about anything, because he didn't understand the product he had, he'd just been told to sell people on memory.
I bought some, but that was because I wanted to play video games on it and it was on sale for 66% off. That's not that bad a deal, actually.
What was funny was when the man went back to grab the memory (after assuring him that it was not "XP" I was installing as he kept stating, but Ubuntu, and yes, I wanted it for the hardware and the price, the thing was going to be my bitch the second I got at home and nothing else in the place even remotely interested me.) Bob came to me in the aisle, motioned me in close, then said under his breath "Hey, are you still drunk? Because you're buying a lot of stuff..."
I assured him I wasn't, and just the question made me laugh. He later stated that with as much as the man was questioning what I wanted to do, it was pissing him off, so he'd walked off for a bit. He figured I'd let him get away with it because of my normally congenial personality and the fact that I am a good-humored drunk. He had a very valid point. The man, despite my generally good mood, was a dumb ass and relatively rude in constantly questioning my knowledge and ability. I thought I might be over-reacting, but having someone there to confirm it made me feel a little better.
We gathered up the goods, I fairly skipped out the door with my new Acer laptop (which I still adore) and we headed up Lancaster Ave. to Berwyn, where a Burger King awaited us.
We finished off the night with double cheeseburgers, onion rings and shakes. And in a semi-dirty burger king run by teenagers that weren't paying attention to what they were doing while making the food, it was a far more comfortable and enjoyable atmosphere to be in. I love oysters, especially raw, but they just couldn't do for me what that greasy pile of hamburger and processed cheese-food could. I found it amusing that I (and from what I observed, Bob) were far more at ease in the fast food joint than in the nice restaurant. I guess you can take the girl out of the country....
...oh, and btw, when we got home he didn't see me again for the rest of the night, I was too busy playing with the laptop. It's freakin' awesome. ^_^
Thursday, November 13, 2008
NaNoWriMo update for day 13
Current word count: 11104
Page count: 29
Advised word count for this date: 21671
Only 10575 more words to write to catch up!
I'm in love with the story again. The magic of the process grips me once more, as long as I shut up and get out of the way.
My goal was to have at least 10,000 words and I blew past that to finish a section.
Rather proud of myself. 3,553 words in one sitting. (No, I'm not making that up, either. that's the literal word count for this evening.)
I figure if I have 2 5,000 word days, I'll be mostly caught up. I've trended towards writing more than the recommended 1,667 words a day anyway.
Also, just want to mention I wrote all of this on my NEW laptop. Got it at Microcenter Wednesday night. Wednesday night was an adventure on its own, deserving of a separate entry. I will do that, but later. I'm very tired right now and not feeling too great.
Send me heal-y vibes if you can. I'd appreciate it!
Page count: 29
Advised word count for this date: 21671
Only 10575 more words to write to catch up!
I'm in love with the story again. The magic of the process grips me once more, as long as I shut up and get out of the way.
My goal was to have at least 10,000 words and I blew past that to finish a section.
Rather proud of myself. 3,553 words in one sitting. (No, I'm not making that up, either. that's the literal word count for this evening.)
I figure if I have 2 5,000 word days, I'll be mostly caught up. I've trended towards writing more than the recommended 1,667 words a day anyway.
Also, just want to mention I wrote all of this on my NEW laptop. Got it at Microcenter Wednesday night. Wednesday night was an adventure on its own, deserving of a separate entry. I will do that, but later. I'm very tired right now and not feeling too great.
Send me heal-y vibes if you can. I'd appreciate it!
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Death to Sirius. Immediately.
So... apparently not just me, but most of America woke up this morning to discover that Sirius had lobotomized XM radio, and they were about as happy with it as I currently am.
My presets are fucked, and to my immense dismay and loathing, there are now DJs on the channels. DJs announcing the song titles and not really doing anything but making the airwaves sound like regular radio. I didn't move to XM to hear regular beer-chugging, frat-boy radio with ditzes trying to sound bad-ass and men telling jokes catering to the lowest denominator. Basically what's happening now is that you are paying for the priviledge of listening to REGULAR FUCKING RADIO.
And they're proud of it, too... Sirius is reacting as if it's a benevolent dictator allowing us to stick around and experience the greatness of ~their~ stations.
Fuck that.
When I am paying $13+ dollars a month to listen to something, I'd like to do so because it ISN'T like terrestrial radio: Full of ads and obnoxious DJs. There aren't ads still, but now that I've located the shuffled channels I used to listen to, there ARE irritating, loud, obnoxious DJs breaking in to my music enjoyment with their inane comments and insipid witticism. Why announce what song is coming on? IT IS ON THE DAMNED DISPLAY. Listening online instead of in your car? IT IS ON THE THE ONLINE RADIO PLAYER. Right there. Save yourself some money and FIRE those airheads. Recover some of those Q3 earnings you've lost so much of.
I wrote them a letter expressing my intense dissatisfaction with the state of things, and that I'll be canceling my subscription in 3 months if they don't change a few things around. It's sad, because I really loved XM radio. The ability to get music anywhere at any time as long as it wasn't really stormy was great. I even went so far as to buy a unit for in the house to listen to it there. *sigh* All useless now.
Guess I need to shape up my Pandora stations until that dies as well. After that...who knows where I'll get my music fix. I'm really, really disappointed in all of this and what they did to something that was the anti-radio I so desired. It's not a good week for Helen or her gadgets.
My presets are fucked, and to my immense dismay and loathing, there are now DJs on the channels. DJs announcing the song titles and not really doing anything but making the airwaves sound like regular radio. I didn't move to XM to hear regular beer-chugging, frat-boy radio with ditzes trying to sound bad-ass and men telling jokes catering to the lowest denominator. Basically what's happening now is that you are paying for the priviledge of listening to REGULAR FUCKING RADIO.
And they're proud of it, too... Sirius is reacting as if it's a benevolent dictator allowing us to stick around and experience the greatness of ~their~ stations.
Fuck that.
When I am paying $13+ dollars a month to listen to something, I'd like to do so because it ISN'T like terrestrial radio: Full of ads and obnoxious DJs. There aren't ads still, but now that I've located the shuffled channels I used to listen to, there ARE irritating, loud, obnoxious DJs breaking in to my music enjoyment with their inane comments and insipid witticism. Why announce what song is coming on? IT IS ON THE DAMNED DISPLAY. Listening online instead of in your car? IT IS ON THE THE ONLINE RADIO PLAYER. Right there. Save yourself some money and FIRE those airheads. Recover some of those Q3 earnings you've lost so much of.
I wrote them a letter expressing my intense dissatisfaction with the state of things, and that I'll be canceling my subscription in 3 months if they don't change a few things around. It's sad, because I really loved XM radio. The ability to get music anywhere at any time as long as it wasn't really stormy was great. I even went so far as to buy a unit for in the house to listen to it there. *sigh* All useless now.
Guess I need to shape up my Pandora stations until that dies as well. After that...who knows where I'll get my music fix. I'm really, really disappointed in all of this and what they did to something that was the anti-radio I so desired. It's not a good week for Helen or her gadgets.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Depression. I has it. Meh.
I've had a laptop for 12 hours now. And when I get home it will have been for 23 hours, and at that point it's going in a box with an RMA and being taken to the post office to be shipped back.
The keyboard is entirely unworkable, and considering I got it for the ability to do word-processing and coding, that's pretty much rendered it mostly useless for those functions. So, sadly, I must bid it goodbye.
On the upside, I found a much nicer, more substantial laptop for only $70 more, AND it's at my favorite Mecca of geekery in the whole word, Microcenter. So hopefully I'll get the return $$ soon and that price holds up so I can go test drive one and see if I like it. In the meantime, I dunno what else I'm going to do, maybe just sit there at the desktop like I always have.
Because of this I am now yet another day behind in the NaNoWriMo challenge. And also, this disappointment came on the heels of learning that I am pretty much failing the database class because I don't grok what the hell they're talking about when it comes to setting a database ~up~. That coupled with discovering this morning that I weight the most I ever have in my existance and I am pretty much ready to call it quits for the day.
By the way, Hiro's spirit walk? What the hell. Show him the villains... and he basically sees images of the Petrelli family and Claire's Mom. So from this I gather that the Petrellis are the root of all evil and he needs to kill them now. Sweet. Because every time we ~don't~ let a Petrelli die, the fate of the world gets a lot more dire.
I'm in a bad mood, I'm depressed, and it's making my back hurt in that weird way it only can when I feel completely bereft of initiative. I think I will dance when my candy shipment shows up (hoping it does today) and then I may go take a bubble bath. After that... literary genius. Or at least an attempt to catch up in NaNoWriMo. And somewhere in there I will make enchiladas. It's hard to hate life when you have enchiladas. I dare anyone to try.
The keyboard is entirely unworkable, and considering I got it for the ability to do word-processing and coding, that's pretty much rendered it mostly useless for those functions. So, sadly, I must bid it goodbye.
On the upside, I found a much nicer, more substantial laptop for only $70 more, AND it's at my favorite Mecca of geekery in the whole word, Microcenter. So hopefully I'll get the return $$ soon and that price holds up so I can go test drive one and see if I like it. In the meantime, I dunno what else I'm going to do, maybe just sit there at the desktop like I always have.
Because of this I am now yet another day behind in the NaNoWriMo challenge. And also, this disappointment came on the heels of learning that I am pretty much failing the database class because I don't grok what the hell they're talking about when it comes to setting a database ~up~. That coupled with discovering this morning that I weight the most I ever have in my existance and I am pretty much ready to call it quits for the day.
By the way, Hiro's spirit walk? What the hell. Show him the villains... and he basically sees images of the Petrelli family and Claire's Mom. So from this I gather that the Petrellis are the root of all evil and he needs to kill them now. Sweet. Because every time we ~don't~ let a Petrelli die, the fate of the world gets a lot more dire.
I'm in a bad mood, I'm depressed, and it's making my back hurt in that weird way it only can when I feel completely bereft of initiative. I think I will dance when my candy shipment shows up (hoping it does today) and then I may go take a bubble bath. After that... literary genius. Or at least an attempt to catch up in NaNoWriMo. And somewhere in there I will make enchiladas. It's hard to hate life when you have enchiladas. I dare anyone to try.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Oh crap! I almost forgot.!
My laptop will be showing up at some point tomorrow, and for this I am SINCERELY hyper. I can't wait to sit downstairs watching TV in the background while cranking out my homework and NaNoWriMo stuff. Or working on coding. Or whatever!! I can do it now and Bob can play Fallout to his heart's content. I like this idea. I like that I can just plop down and do something with Project Euler on the couch! I like that I'll get to play with the gOS and familiarize myself a lot more with Linux. It just all around makes me happy, mainly because I never thought I'd be able to afford one. It's right up there with the time I came home with my own Xbox and copy of Halo and proceeded to play that thing until my eyes burned at 3 am. Stuff I never thought I'd be able to do and I happily prove myself wrong. I GOT A LAPTOP. I AM GOING TO USE IT WITH DEADLY FORCE.
Secondly, I have found what is probably the greatest website on the intarwebs. www.oldtimecandy.com is the website for all those kinds of candy bars you remember from when you were a kid. They have airheads, lemonheads, rootbeer barrels, charleston chews.... all kinds of things that are damned hard to find anywhere these days. They even had MOUNTAIN BARS, and I've never seen those anywhere else but the Summit at Snoqualmie out in Washington State.
Being on an after-Halloween candy binge, and also being out of mini Twix bars, which is what I was madly craving, led me to that website. They have a glorious thing you can create there called a grab-bag, where you can just go down the list of everything they offer and pick out as many items as you like. You can do it in bags, boxes, or as singles. They just wrap it all up in a plastic bag and ship it out to you.
I am a wee bit ashamed to say that I dropped $30 (with shipping) on a grab bag of stuff from when I was little. But my rationale was that I had fond memories of this stuff, and it was things like running across the street to buy Big League Chew bubble gum from the concession stand at the ballpark started teaching me how to save. So there's something redeeming in all of this.
Either way, I ordered 2 of everything. One for me, and one to share with Bob, who didn't really "do" candy as a kid. I'm going to slowly dole it out one sacred piece at a time and share my memories of it while we commune with the Gods of Glucose. It seems kinda fun in my head when it's presented that way.
Also... after it was mentioned several times, I decided that my passion for creation plushies, beaded things and other forms of crafti-ness probably needed a reason. So I created an Etsy shop. What on earth is an Etsy shop, you ask? Well, it's an online storefront where they take a very small commission in return for you being able to post your handmade goods. It is strictly specified that it is for hand-made, one of a kind items ONLY. It won't be turning in to eBay with 23 of the same thing purchased wholesale from elsewhere! I've been perusing the site to look at the people on it, and it seems like a decent community of committed artisans. Lots of REALLY creative ideas on there, as well. I'm sort of wishing I had an excuse to buy some hats, hair clips and feathered headbands right now. So much talent, and so many neat little things!
Anyway, wish me luck in the realm of trying to sell my little home-made creations. I have a feeling I'll be getting totally sick of crocheting Cthulus in the not-too-distant future. :)
Secondly, I have found what is probably the greatest website on the intarwebs. www.oldtimecandy.com is the website for all those kinds of candy bars you remember from when you were a kid. They have airheads, lemonheads, rootbeer barrels, charleston chews.... all kinds of things that are damned hard to find anywhere these days. They even had MOUNTAIN BARS, and I've never seen those anywhere else but the Summit at Snoqualmie out in Washington State.
Being on an after-Halloween candy binge, and also being out of mini Twix bars, which is what I was madly craving, led me to that website. They have a glorious thing you can create there called a grab-bag, where you can just go down the list of everything they offer and pick out as many items as you like. You can do it in bags, boxes, or as singles. They just wrap it all up in a plastic bag and ship it out to you.
I am a wee bit ashamed to say that I dropped $30 (with shipping) on a grab bag of stuff from when I was little. But my rationale was that I had fond memories of this stuff, and it was things like running across the street to buy Big League Chew bubble gum from the concession stand at the ballpark started teaching me how to save. So there's something redeeming in all of this.
Either way, I ordered 2 of everything. One for me, and one to share with Bob, who didn't really "do" candy as a kid. I'm going to slowly dole it out one sacred piece at a time and share my memories of it while we commune with the Gods of Glucose. It seems kinda fun in my head when it's presented that way.
Also... after it was mentioned several times, I decided that my passion for creation plushies, beaded things and other forms of crafti-ness probably needed a reason. So I created an Etsy shop. What on earth is an Etsy shop, you ask? Well, it's an online storefront where they take a very small commission in return for you being able to post your handmade goods. It is strictly specified that it is for hand-made, one of a kind items ONLY. It won't be turning in to eBay with 23 of the same thing purchased wholesale from elsewhere! I've been perusing the site to look at the people on it, and it seems like a decent community of committed artisans. Lots of REALLY creative ideas on there, as well. I'm sort of wishing I had an excuse to buy some hats, hair clips and feathered headbands right now. So much talent, and so many neat little things!
Anyway, wish me luck in the realm of trying to sell my little home-made creations. I have a feeling I'll be getting totally sick of crocheting Cthulus in the not-too-distant future. :)
Sunday, November 9, 2008
SMRT!!
So Saturday I spent the majority of my day at my friend Blake's house in E-town. She's been studying incredibly hard for as long as I've known her to become a psychologist (or psychiatrist, a psych-individual). She's finally nearing the end of it all, and her current semester's class was about giving tests to individuals for various things.
Achievment and IQ, etc. And for some bizarre reason she decided that she really, really wanted to test me as part of helping her learn how to give the tests. I thought it would be interesting, as the last time I was tested was in 5th grade, and at that time it was something like 126. I was interested to know if it had gone up and I'd heard that it does over time (Also, I had no idea if 126 was "good" to be or not.)
I thoroughly enjoyed both of the tests, especially the part with the puzzles and the blocks. I was asked NOT to do the puzzles upside down so the finished products would be facing her, as apparently she had a picture of what it should look like from her angle and I was just screwing it up. Oops. Shows me for being a big damned show-off.
We took a break between the IQ test and the Achievement test to run and grab some Indian food at a rather nice place in Lancaster. It's been so long since I've had any that it was an immense treat just to have the Basmati rice. Tandoori chicken, tikka masala and naan absolutely made my day. I dove in and enjoyed myself. Meanwhile I chatted with Blake and her hubby Dustin about life, the universe and everything. Dustin's taking German, so we traded German bands we knew that he could use for his classes.
We came back, finished the achievement test (it would appear I actually know how to do math now... I've finally tricked my brain in to recognizing calculating patterns and ignore the numbers until I need values. SWEET.) and then retired upstairs to chat and listen to music. I shared with them my love of the GraphJam and TotallyLooksAlike websites, and they shared with me the YouTube videos for Nerd Porn and 1-900-Nerdy-Girls. VERY good stuff.
Blake decided she wanted to grade it while I was still there so I had my first real sampling of Portishead and a few other things as she worked her way through it.
Raw score got us overly excited at 157. Then I realized there was simply no way it could be that high based on the initial score. So we put it through the wringer, and came out with an adjusted, more accurate score.
Now...for the sake of not being overly obnoxious about it, I'm simply going to say this. I officially qualify for Mensa, which has been a bottom-of-the-pile goal of mine ever since I originally took the test. They take the top 2% of the population, and I handily slide in at the top 1% of the population. It's not something I was sure I could change. IQs seemed to be pretty much fixed.
With this in my mind, it now occurs to me that the only excuse I had for not completing college initially was letting stupid shit like my ex get in the way. There's utterly no reason I couldn't have pulled it off. It lays to rest -at least for now- all those sniggering whispers that I'm actually not that intelligent, that all the success up until now has been just pure dumb luck and really I'm a talentless hack... Nope. I'm pretty much capable of everything except launching a rocket. But I could certainly start it on my own.
It's interesting what peace of mind a simple number can give you. Also, I realized that without the quirks of it, I wouldn't be nearly as nifty a person as I'm told I am. I am slowly coming to believe it.
Thought I would take a moment to point out that I am currently at 7,551 words for NaNoWriMo. Should have 15,003 but at least I'm more than halfway to the goal. All I have to do is sit down and crank out 4,000 words over the next few days (not that big an issue) and I'll be caught back up. I'm liking the story, but not trusting the process. Need to work on that.
Time to go to bed, so as to be unbearable tomorrow at work and a bit smug. I know it'll happen, so I'm just embracing it.
Achievment and IQ, etc. And for some bizarre reason she decided that she really, really wanted to test me as part of helping her learn how to give the tests. I thought it would be interesting, as the last time I was tested was in 5th grade, and at that time it was something like 126. I was interested to know if it had gone up and I'd heard that it does over time (Also, I had no idea if 126 was "good" to be or not.)
I thoroughly enjoyed both of the tests, especially the part with the puzzles and the blocks. I was asked NOT to do the puzzles upside down so the finished products would be facing her, as apparently she had a picture of what it should look like from her angle and I was just screwing it up. Oops. Shows me for being a big damned show-off.
We took a break between the IQ test and the Achievement test to run and grab some Indian food at a rather nice place in Lancaster. It's been so long since I've had any that it was an immense treat just to have the Basmati rice. Tandoori chicken, tikka masala and naan absolutely made my day. I dove in and enjoyed myself. Meanwhile I chatted with Blake and her hubby Dustin about life, the universe and everything. Dustin's taking German, so we traded German bands we knew that he could use for his classes.
We came back, finished the achievement test (it would appear I actually know how to do math now... I've finally tricked my brain in to recognizing calculating patterns and ignore the numbers until I need values. SWEET.) and then retired upstairs to chat and listen to music. I shared with them my love of the GraphJam and TotallyLooksAlike websites, and they shared with me the YouTube videos for Nerd Porn and 1-900-Nerdy-Girls. VERY good stuff.
Blake decided she wanted to grade it while I was still there so I had my first real sampling of Portishead and a few other things as she worked her way through it.
Raw score got us overly excited at 157. Then I realized there was simply no way it could be that high based on the initial score. So we put it through the wringer, and came out with an adjusted, more accurate score.
Now...for the sake of not being overly obnoxious about it, I'm simply going to say this. I officially qualify for Mensa, which has been a bottom-of-the-pile goal of mine ever since I originally took the test. They take the top 2% of the population, and I handily slide in at the top 1% of the population. It's not something I was sure I could change. IQs seemed to be pretty much fixed.
With this in my mind, it now occurs to me that the only excuse I had for not completing college initially was letting stupid shit like my ex get in the way. There's utterly no reason I couldn't have pulled it off. It lays to rest -at least for now- all those sniggering whispers that I'm actually not that intelligent, that all the success up until now has been just pure dumb luck and really I'm a talentless hack... Nope. I'm pretty much capable of everything except launching a rocket. But I could certainly start it on my own.
It's interesting what peace of mind a simple number can give you. Also, I realized that without the quirks of it, I wouldn't be nearly as nifty a person as I'm told I am. I am slowly coming to believe it.
Thought I would take a moment to point out that I am currently at 7,551 words for NaNoWriMo. Should have 15,003 but at least I'm more than halfway to the goal. All I have to do is sit down and crank out 4,000 words over the next few days (not that big an issue) and I'll be caught back up. I'm liking the story, but not trusting the process. Need to work on that.
Time to go to bed, so as to be unbearable tomorrow at work and a bit smug. I know it'll happen, so I'm just embracing it.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Fallout 3, or; How I Learned to Stop Being Afraid of the Apocalypse and be grateful for my world
An odd thing has been occuring over the past several days as I have shoulder-surfed Bob's campaigns on behalf of the citizens of Megaton. There's been a slow evolution in my reaction to the bleak wastelands displayed on his screen.
In the beginning was irritation at the charred, ashen cast to the entire landscape. There is very little color to be had save for the occasional splotch of blood or streak of paint left on roadside signs that survived a blast. I spent my time being amused at the "use lots of light bloom and reflection over top of grayscales and browns for GRITTY REALISM!" trick they had in it. It was fairly cliche. I'd seen it in Resistance: Fall of Man, Gears of War, Halo...hell, I'd seen it in the Outlands in World of WarCraft. It's been done to the point of having no initial visual impact and basically making the enemy really hard to see if they are at all similar to the color of dirt.
But then as he ventured further I saw that there was a reason for this. It wasn't just that they were going for gritty realism, it was the fact that the entire world was scrabbling around after a nuclear freakin' holocaust. This was what the landscape would probably really look like after dropping the big one on suburbs of DC.
At that point the focus switched to how they were recyclng everything, and how scavenging 200 year old technology was keeping the current survivors afloat. And I was impressed that they'd kept the feel of the 1950's Americana around but still made it feel as if America had aged. I started paying far more attention to the signs, the billboards and the posters on the walls. Those little remnants of advertising and communication stick out like a sore thumb in the middle of all that is burnt out and sorta still on flame. Like America got trashed, but it isn't willing to go quietly. And it's going to tell you all about Nuka-Cola from the side of a ruined building because that's what we do in America. We drink soda, and we like to advertise the product. Sort of amusing and telling all in one little graphic, really. These days you can barely escape sponsors' labels on everyone and everything on TV. They even throw commercials up on TV in the middle of the show, those little banner-runners that creep in just under your line of sight and tell you that ER has a cliffhanger coming up.... crap like that. Indeed, it's SO prevalent that you would be more likely to find advertising for something in a former populated area than anything else. And this is why I think it's funny and entirely apt that it's the most visible....but 98% of the books are burnt.
Then, finally, this was reached the other night as my beloved was crossing the wastelands to the 3Com satelite station, or whatever it is called. Anybody who's hit this part knows what I'm talking about. It's the one near those with rusty armor from the Brotherhood. As he crossed, I realized that this could have all been true. One iota less sense, one micron more paranoia, and we could be scavenging Philadelphia for non-radioactive soda and food. The burnt out and crumbled overpasses, and the deserted subway tunnels would be where we would withdraw to in order to stay out of the radiation. There would be no continuation of society. All invention and innovation would stop cold at that point and take possibly hundreds of years to re-establish after trade routes and supplies for our every day life had been wiped out.
In that moment I gave great thanks that those who came before us were so deeply aware of what it might mean to launch a nuclear weapon in this world. I have a beautiful green planet outside my door, with people who don't want to shiv me for a bottle of soda or capture me for slavery. It's a place where we have the time to withdraw and create music and art, or play games. Or just sit and read. It's not a struggle every second to keep from being eaten, killed, or irradiated.
Why all of this occured to me as I looked over my shoulder to look over my mate's shoulder and watch this game he loved and lusted over play out, I can't be sure. I'm not sure it would have had the same impact even if I had been the one to play it, as I would have been absorbed in trying to find mole rats for testing, looking for characters for fed-ex quests, and the like. This allowed me to actually watch someone interact in the world and be an impartial observer of the whole mess, notice patterns and ironies that might have flashed by only partially appreciated otherwise.
If nothing else, it's left me grateful to walk outside and have grass in my yard and flaming foiliage on the trees. I won't get sick from drinking Coke, and nobody's going to run me down on the road to steal my clothes. I never even realized I had it to be grateful for until I watched my bf interact with the citizens of Megaton.
In the beginning was irritation at the charred, ashen cast to the entire landscape. There is very little color to be had save for the occasional splotch of blood or streak of paint left on roadside signs that survived a blast. I spent my time being amused at the "use lots of light bloom and reflection over top of grayscales and browns for GRITTY REALISM!" trick they had in it. It was fairly cliche. I'd seen it in Resistance: Fall of Man, Gears of War, Halo...hell, I'd seen it in the Outlands in World of WarCraft. It's been done to the point of having no initial visual impact and basically making the enemy really hard to see if they are at all similar to the color of dirt.
But then as he ventured further I saw that there was a reason for this. It wasn't just that they were going for gritty realism, it was the fact that the entire world was scrabbling around after a nuclear freakin' holocaust. This was what the landscape would probably really look like after dropping the big one on suburbs of DC.
At that point the focus switched to how they were recyclng everything, and how scavenging 200 year old technology was keeping the current survivors afloat. And I was impressed that they'd kept the feel of the 1950's Americana around but still made it feel as if America had aged. I started paying far more attention to the signs, the billboards and the posters on the walls. Those little remnants of advertising and communication stick out like a sore thumb in the middle of all that is burnt out and sorta still on flame. Like America got trashed, but it isn't willing to go quietly. And it's going to tell you all about Nuka-Cola from the side of a ruined building because that's what we do in America. We drink soda, and we like to advertise the product. Sort of amusing and telling all in one little graphic, really. These days you can barely escape sponsors' labels on everyone and everything on TV. They even throw commercials up on TV in the middle of the show, those little banner-runners that creep in just under your line of sight and tell you that ER has a cliffhanger coming up.... crap like that. Indeed, it's SO prevalent that you would be more likely to find advertising for something in a former populated area than anything else. And this is why I think it's funny and entirely apt that it's the most visible....but 98% of the books are burnt.
Then, finally, this was reached the other night as my beloved was crossing the wastelands to the 3Com satelite station, or whatever it is called. Anybody who's hit this part knows what I'm talking about. It's the one near those with rusty armor from the Brotherhood. As he crossed, I realized that this could have all been true. One iota less sense, one micron more paranoia, and we could be scavenging Philadelphia for non-radioactive soda and food. The burnt out and crumbled overpasses, and the deserted subway tunnels would be where we would withdraw to in order to stay out of the radiation. There would be no continuation of society. All invention and innovation would stop cold at that point and take possibly hundreds of years to re-establish after trade routes and supplies for our every day life had been wiped out.
In that moment I gave great thanks that those who came before us were so deeply aware of what it might mean to launch a nuclear weapon in this world. I have a beautiful green planet outside my door, with people who don't want to shiv me for a bottle of soda or capture me for slavery. It's a place where we have the time to withdraw and create music and art, or play games. Or just sit and read. It's not a struggle every second to keep from being eaten, killed, or irradiated.
Why all of this occured to me as I looked over my shoulder to look over my mate's shoulder and watch this game he loved and lusted over play out, I can't be sure. I'm not sure it would have had the same impact even if I had been the one to play it, as I would have been absorbed in trying to find mole rats for testing, looking for characters for fed-ex quests, and the like. This allowed me to actually watch someone interact in the world and be an impartial observer of the whole mess, notice patterns and ironies that might have flashed by only partially appreciated otherwise.
If nothing else, it's left me grateful to walk outside and have grass in my yard and flaming foiliage on the trees. I won't get sick from drinking Coke, and nobody's going to run me down on the road to steal my clothes. I never even realized I had it to be grateful for until I watched my bf interact with the citizens of Megaton.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Time to move this caravan along
It would appear that America is really, really sick of the Republicans and they are just wiping them off the face of the planet except for the VERY conservative locations of the country.
I must admit the wave of blue is a surprise. I really thought there would be a closer race. Then again, it's not quite finished yet and all votes haven't been tallied. We shall see.
That being said, I must admit there is a creeping fear that the Democrats will get together and start acting like it's a legislative kegger up there the way the Republicans did when they swept in many moons ago. I'm just praying fervently that this is not the case with the Dems. There is already that bit of antagonism there in Congress and they're letting such bullshit things as people sounding partisan in a speech hold up things that might actually help the common man. Lovely.
Pleasegoddon'tletthembeassholeswiththis.... Pleasegoddon'tletthembeassholeswiththis.... Pleasegoddon'tletthembeassholeswiththis.... Pleasegoddon'tletthembeassholeswiththis.... Pleasegoddon'tletthembeassholeswiththis.... Pleasegoddon'tletthembeassholeswiththis....
*chants five minutes solid hoping the elder gods, the eldritch gods, or the new and used gods overhears her prayers*
There is a bit of sadness to the McCain campaign. At some point it became obvious that he was already on an uphill battle and outmaneuvered by a younger, more tech-savvy candidate that had an uncanny way to tap in to the zeitgeist and ride it. Funding aside, it would've been hard for him to win anyway.
What was interesting was the announcement of New Hampshire going to Obama on CNN. When they did, one of the commentators mentioned that McCain had hoped to win there because he'd had such fond memories of the townhall meetings there. It made me a bit wistful that a man that tried so hard couldn't even take something small like that away with him. Hopefully he'll continue on with doing what he does best and take something away from this besides bitterness and a bad photo op of his wife smoothing his hair over. I really do hope so, the man's been through a lot.
And that being said, CNN just projected that Barack Obama has taken enough electoral votes to be the next president of the United States.
Thank you to my fellow countrymen for letting me be in a country that elected an African American to the white house. I had faith and warm fuzzies before. I will even admit that I had fervently hoped for this...but to see it happen is something I'll probably remember. In 20 years I will be able to bore my grandkids to death with tales of watching the first black president win an election. By then we'll have had 2 more and they'll tune me out and plug in to their video-scan game sets. That'll be a cool day.
My neighbors are setting off fireworks in celebration outside. This is wonderful beyond words.
I must admit the wave of blue is a surprise. I really thought there would be a closer race. Then again, it's not quite finished yet and all votes haven't been tallied. We shall see.
That being said, I must admit there is a creeping fear that the Democrats will get together and start acting like it's a legislative kegger up there the way the Republicans did when they swept in many moons ago. I'm just praying fervently that this is not the case with the Dems. There is already that bit of antagonism there in Congress and they're letting such bullshit things as people sounding partisan in a speech hold up things that might actually help the common man. Lovely.
Pleasegoddon'tletthembeassholeswiththis.... Pleasegoddon'tletthembeassholeswiththis.... Pleasegoddon'tletthembeassholeswiththis.... Pleasegoddon'tletthembeassholeswiththis.... Pleasegoddon'tletthembeassholeswiththis.... Pleasegoddon'tletthembeassholeswiththis....
*chants five minutes solid hoping the elder gods, the eldritch gods, or the new and used gods overhears her prayers*
There is a bit of sadness to the McCain campaign. At some point it became obvious that he was already on an uphill battle and outmaneuvered by a younger, more tech-savvy candidate that had an uncanny way to tap in to the zeitgeist and ride it. Funding aside, it would've been hard for him to win anyway.
What was interesting was the announcement of New Hampshire going to Obama on CNN. When they did, one of the commentators mentioned that McCain had hoped to win there because he'd had such fond memories of the townhall meetings there. It made me a bit wistful that a man that tried so hard couldn't even take something small like that away with him. Hopefully he'll continue on with doing what he does best and take something away from this besides bitterness and a bad photo op of his wife smoothing his hair over. I really do hope so, the man's been through a lot.
And that being said, CNN just projected that Barack Obama has taken enough electoral votes to be the next president of the United States.
Thank you to my fellow countrymen for letting me be in a country that elected an African American to the white house. I had faith and warm fuzzies before. I will even admit that I had fervently hoped for this...but to see it happen is something I'll probably remember. In 20 years I will be able to bore my grandkids to death with tales of watching the first black president win an election. By then we'll have had 2 more and they'll tune me out and plug in to their video-scan game sets. That'll be a cool day.
My neighbors are setting off fireworks in celebration outside. This is wonderful beyond words.
Actual Conversation # 33 -Wherein the benefits of having a video game character as a public official are covered.
Ben: I am in hell
Helen: Oh?
Helen: Will it help if I told you I voted for Sonic the Hedgehog for PA attorney general?
Ben: yes
Ben: im making sonic sound effects now
Helen: I figure since I was also voting on a bill to spend $400,000,000 to upgrade irrigation, sewage and drainage systems in PA, we need a man who will drop cash the second someone pats him on the back a little too hard.
Ben: hahahahahahahahahahaha
Helen: Also, I came out of the polling place, threw my hands up, cheered, and said "America! Fuck yeah!"
Helen: That's been my theme all this morning.
Helen: Oh?
Helen: Will it help if I told you I voted for Sonic the Hedgehog for PA attorney general?
Ben: yes
Ben: im making sonic sound effects now
Helen: I figure since I was also voting on a bill to spend $400,000,000 to upgrade irrigation, sewage and drainage systems in PA, we need a man who will drop cash the second someone pats him on the back a little too hard.
Ben: hahahahahahahahahahaha
Helen: Also, I came out of the polling place, threw my hands up, cheered, and said "America! Fuck yeah!"
Helen: That's been my theme all this morning.
Actual conversation #32 (with prologue) AMERICA! FUCK YEAH!
It is a glorious day in the United States of America. As a lot of my friends know, I wax poetic on the glories of the Republic and the singular honor of being able to decide who will govern me when so many others in the world don't. I will not rattle off the usual list of things that come to mind, however. I will just say one word. Sudan. Actually.... two words. Zimbabwe. Google "recent news" if you're still lost.
Bob and I bundled ourselves in to the car after having a breakfast of oatmeal together, obtained caffeinated morning drinks from Dunkin Donuts, and headed up to the church where voting was to commence.
We arrived there perhaps 2 minutes before they opened the doors, and the line was already around the outside of hte parking lot and down the hill to the berm of the road. 300 people all waiting to cast their ballots. It was just glorious.
It was also a 2 hour wait for those of us that didn't think to get up early and be there at 5:30, like the first 20 people in the line did.
Once we had our ballots in hand it was a quick minute to look over the candidates. Part of me was tempted to just vote straight party. But then I thought of the rich opportunity I would be robbing myself of by doing that, and instead filled out by hand each individual circle.
When I came to Attorney General really I didn't like the choice of candidates there, so I careful penciled in "Sonic the Hedgehog". I think he's run a good, clean campaign, I've been familiar with his efforts over the years to stop menacing robots from invading (he has been highly successful in this since the early 90's, I might add), and I think he'll be speedy and thorough in his decision making. Couldn't imagine a better man for the job.
All that done, we handed our ballots in to be scanned, then headed out in the cool fall day.
'Tis a beautiful day to breathe American air. Long live the Republic.
Helen: Slacker.
Joseph: hey
Joseph: why am I a slacker?
Helen: For not going to vote!
Joseph: heel no I am trying again after work you can't keep me away from making Mcain go away damit
Joseph: my apologies if he is your conadidat e however!
Helen: Hey, I voted for the guy I think would do the job.
Joseph: col
Helen: Other people will vote for their guy.
Helen: I care not, so long as they get out there.
Helen: Meanwhile....damn are my feet sore from standing.
Joseph: thats what our men and women dies for right?
Helen: Indeed.
Helen: Well, we'd hope.
Helen: If they died for pudding, I assume we would consume mass quantities of pudding in their honor.
Helen: But voting is probably more awesomer.
Joseph haahah indeed hmm puding ughh
It is now my sacred duty today to make sure that every American I come in contact with (and a few confused Germans who call in) have voted; if they have not, it is also my sacred duty to give them unending hell until they give me enough assurance they will.
Bob and I bundled ourselves in to the car after having a breakfast of oatmeal together, obtained caffeinated morning drinks from Dunkin Donuts, and headed up to the church where voting was to commence.
We arrived there perhaps 2 minutes before they opened the doors, and the line was already around the outside of hte parking lot and down the hill to the berm of the road. 300 people all waiting to cast their ballots. It was just glorious.
It was also a 2 hour wait for those of us that didn't think to get up early and be there at 5:30, like the first 20 people in the line did.
Once we had our ballots in hand it was a quick minute to look over the candidates. Part of me was tempted to just vote straight party. But then I thought of the rich opportunity I would be robbing myself of by doing that, and instead filled out by hand each individual circle.
When I came to Attorney General really I didn't like the choice of candidates there, so I careful penciled in "Sonic the Hedgehog". I think he's run a good, clean campaign, I've been familiar with his efforts over the years to stop menacing robots from invading (he has been highly successful in this since the early 90's, I might add), and I think he'll be speedy and thorough in his decision making. Couldn't imagine a better man for the job.
All that done, we handed our ballots in to be scanned, then headed out in the cool fall day.
'Tis a beautiful day to breathe American air. Long live the Republic.
Helen: Slacker.
Joseph: hey
Joseph: why am I a slacker?
Helen: For not going to vote!
Joseph: heel no I am trying again after work you can't keep me away from making Mcain go away damit
Joseph: my apologies if he is your conadidat e however!
Helen: Hey, I voted for the guy I think would do the job.
Joseph: col
Helen: Other people will vote for their guy.
Helen: I care not, so long as they get out there.
Helen: Meanwhile....damn are my feet sore from standing.
Joseph: thats what our men and women dies for right?
Helen: Indeed.
Helen: Well, we'd hope.
Helen: If they died for pudding, I assume we would consume mass quantities of pudding in their honor.
Helen: But voting is probably more awesomer.
Joseph haahah indeed hmm puding ughh
It is now my sacred duty today to make sure that every American I come in contact with (and a few confused Germans who call in) have voted; if they have not, it is also my sacred duty to give them unending hell until they give me enough assurance they will.
Monday, November 3, 2008
And just as an aside...
... I have never seen anyone more miserable or useless in an investigation than "Miz". Seriously. It wasn't 7 hours to talk about yourself. It wasn't Hollywood where people drop to their knees and sucked you off because you were making them a pretty penny. It's a ghost investigation and you need to shut your mouth and learn instead of talking over everything and everybody.
He was fucking useless. Utterly useless. And it became apparent as they didn't let him go down in to the dungeon or anywhere that there was a lot of activity that they were trying to keep his abrasiveness away from areas they were getting readings. The fact that he wasn't even visible for the last 2 hours of the investigation? Even more telling.
Perhaps the best part of all was when they cut to Grant, Jay and Steve Valentine and they immediately started making fun of him. You could tell they were irritated but trying to be polite about it since the cameras were on them. Bob and I had a good lol at that.
I'm just glad they stopped showing him. Hopefully it was because enough people bitched that he was ruining the show and they weren't there to listen to him talk about himself.
Also, I don't believe for a second that game was actually called "cornhole". Sounds to me like someone was just trying to get them to say it on TV a whole bunch.
As an aside, it is my beloved's birthday today. We are celebrating by just being together and having dinner while chatting. It's the nicest and most intense present I could give him. He's brilliant thinking these things up. :)
He was fucking useless. Utterly useless. And it became apparent as they didn't let him go down in to the dungeon or anywhere that there was a lot of activity that they were trying to keep his abrasiveness away from areas they were getting readings. The fact that he wasn't even visible for the last 2 hours of the investigation? Even more telling.
Perhaps the best part of all was when they cut to Grant, Jay and Steve Valentine and they immediately started making fun of him. You could tell they were irritated but trying to be polite about it since the cameras were on them. Bob and I had a good lol at that.
I'm just glad they stopped showing him. Hopefully it was because enough people bitched that he was ruining the show and they weren't there to listen to him talk about himself.
Also, I don't believe for a second that game was actually called "cornhole". Sounds to me like someone was just trying to get them to say it on TV a whole bunch.
As an aside, it is my beloved's birthday today. We are celebrating by just being together and having dinner while chatting. It's the nicest and most intense present I could give him. He's brilliant thinking these things up. :)
Sunday, November 2, 2008
NaNoWriMo Begins!
Well, it's November. For the second year in a row I opted to take part in the National Novel Writing Month's Challenge. Having this on top of work and school is going to be a hell of a challenge but I'm really hoping that I can pull this off.
Unlike last year, I didn't have any idea of what I wanted to write. Urban fantasy seemed a strong possibility but I had no idea what to do. I actually skipped the entire first day while trying to recover from the month of October, which was insane and hectic. Upon waking up this morning (on a day with an extra hour of sleep, no less. w00t!) I realized with a panic that I was ~already~ 1,667 words behind. I had no story ideas, I only had a title based on a minivan that had been driving ahead of us while we were out drinking on Halloween.
Then, per usual, the magic happened. I sat down this morning and began to describe an image I'd had in my head that had been waiting there without really telling me it was squatting and not paying rent. And then 4 pages later I had an interesting prologue.
After a bit more describing the alternate intersecting character, I had 7 pages. 2,266 words, to be precise. And then after taking a hike, having dinner, picking up the house, crocheting part of something and finishing watching the full DVR'ed 7 hours of Ghost Hunters Live that I missed Halloween Eve, I came back to finish off the allotted word count for the day.
I've had to stop myself from continuing, in fact. If i continue to type it'll take me MUCH further in to the evening than I would like to be awake. This story suddenly came together, all of the characters introduced themselves to me abruptly, and demanded I continue on with the tale immediately.
Oh me of little faith. I ~knew~ this would happen somewhere deep in the marrow of my bones but my logical mind (the one that has single-handedly murdered more literature and art than any other ANYTHING on this planet) screamed that I couldn't begin unless I had a proper plot synopsis, an agressor somewhere in the plot, and a definite idea of where the story was going to go. Guess what? NOT.
I didn't even know who the "bad guys" of this story were until we were going on a walk. I didn't even know one of the characters was going to be pregnant in it until the hike. I still don't know what's going on or why these guys are in danger, but I'm sure the story will let me know. Such is the way of literary endeavors. Really you're just fingers for typing and a mind for holding the data you're being fed. Fire in the head, indeed.
Anyway, here's the official statistics, whick I intend to update on as the month goes.
NaNoWrimo Challenge: 3,767 words, 11 pages.
Word goal for the day: 3,334.
Oh, and I officially ditched the GlaDos wallpaper today in favor of a lovely little number that tells me how many words I should have written by what day of the month, to keep me in line.
Really I expect to get very little in the way of other art done this month. My oil paintings will have to wait, I guess...and everything else.
It was good to get out and hike. I enjoyed the fall foliage and the sounds of the critters preparing for winter. There were very few people on the trail early this morning so for once we got to see the chipmunks, squirrels and birds running around doing their merry little thing. In the spaces between falling leaves we could also see more in the woods around the trail and realized there were several crumbled brick and stone structures. If I had more time I think it might be fun to research and see what was there before. Maybe in December.
PS - probably failing the database class. I just can't make myself to really understand the topic, so predictably perhaps I also don't give a damn in there. I'll do the groupwork so that they don't get a bad grade on account of me, but I just can't see pulling this one out.
The idea of switching to being a graphic artist appealed to me, until I realized I would have to buy a lot of rather expensive software (even with student discounts on it) just to complete the degree. I'm also worried about burning out on something I just love to do. So I guess for now we'll trundle along and pretend we reeeeeally want to have a future in computers. *sigh* I would so rather paint and write, but that logical mind of mine has an axe ready with the names of all my favorite things on it. Meh.
I'm sleepy. It's been a long 25 hours. Back to work and the real world again tomorrow.
Oh, and no ghosts this year really. That was rather nice but confusing. :)
Unlike last year, I didn't have any idea of what I wanted to write. Urban fantasy seemed a strong possibility but I had no idea what to do. I actually skipped the entire first day while trying to recover from the month of October, which was insane and hectic. Upon waking up this morning (on a day with an extra hour of sleep, no less. w00t!) I realized with a panic that I was ~already~ 1,667 words behind. I had no story ideas, I only had a title based on a minivan that had been driving ahead of us while we were out drinking on Halloween.
Then, per usual, the magic happened. I sat down this morning and began to describe an image I'd had in my head that had been waiting there without really telling me it was squatting and not paying rent. And then 4 pages later I had an interesting prologue.
After a bit more describing the alternate intersecting character, I had 7 pages. 2,266 words, to be precise. And then after taking a hike, having dinner, picking up the house, crocheting part of something and finishing watching the full DVR'ed 7 hours of Ghost Hunters Live that I missed Halloween Eve, I came back to finish off the allotted word count for the day.
I've had to stop myself from continuing, in fact. If i continue to type it'll take me MUCH further in to the evening than I would like to be awake. This story suddenly came together, all of the characters introduced themselves to me abruptly, and demanded I continue on with the tale immediately.
Oh me of little faith. I ~knew~ this would happen somewhere deep in the marrow of my bones but my logical mind (the one that has single-handedly murdered more literature and art than any other ANYTHING on this planet) screamed that I couldn't begin unless I had a proper plot synopsis, an agressor somewhere in the plot, and a definite idea of where the story was going to go. Guess what? NOT.
I didn't even know who the "bad guys" of this story were until we were going on a walk. I didn't even know one of the characters was going to be pregnant in it until the hike. I still don't know what's going on or why these guys are in danger, but I'm sure the story will let me know. Such is the way of literary endeavors. Really you're just fingers for typing and a mind for holding the data you're being fed. Fire in the head, indeed.
Anyway, here's the official statistics, whick I intend to update on as the month goes.
NaNoWrimo Challenge: 3,767 words, 11 pages.
Word goal for the day: 3,334.
Oh, and I officially ditched the GlaDos wallpaper today in favor of a lovely little number that tells me how many words I should have written by what day of the month, to keep me in line.
Really I expect to get very little in the way of other art done this month. My oil paintings will have to wait, I guess...and everything else.
It was good to get out and hike. I enjoyed the fall foliage and the sounds of the critters preparing for winter. There were very few people on the trail early this morning so for once we got to see the chipmunks, squirrels and birds running around doing their merry little thing. In the spaces between falling leaves we could also see more in the woods around the trail and realized there were several crumbled brick and stone structures. If I had more time I think it might be fun to research and see what was there before. Maybe in December.
PS - probably failing the database class. I just can't make myself to really understand the topic, so predictably perhaps I also don't give a damn in there. I'll do the groupwork so that they don't get a bad grade on account of me, but I just can't see pulling this one out.
The idea of switching to being a graphic artist appealed to me, until I realized I would have to buy a lot of rather expensive software (even with student discounts on it) just to complete the degree. I'm also worried about burning out on something I just love to do. So I guess for now we'll trundle along and pretend we reeeeeally want to have a future in computers. *sigh* I would so rather paint and write, but that logical mind of mine has an axe ready with the names of all my favorite things on it. Meh.
I'm sleepy. It's been a long 25 hours. Back to work and the real world again tomorrow.
Oh, and no ghosts this year really. That was rather nice but confusing. :)
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Everyone's Favorite Holiday Orb.
Behold.... we do nothing small at my house. I give you 2008's offerings in the jack-0-lantern category, and I am seriously proud of all of these guys.
The Nerdcore Pumpkin Parade by *Red1332 on deviantART
From left to right it is Cthulu, lord of madness, the Oh Noes! Emoticon (Bob carved that brilliantly), a kodama's face from Princess Mononoke, and finally Lamar the headcrab from the Half Life video games.
They were VERY fun to create, but my hands are sore and chafed, cut and bruised from all of this work, so I'm very glad they'redone. I hope everybody enjoys looking at them as much as I enjoyed making them!
The Nerdcore Pumpkin Parade by *Red1332 on deviantART
From left to right it is Cthulu, lord of madness, the Oh Noes! Emoticon (Bob carved that brilliantly), a kodama's face from Princess Mononoke, and finally Lamar the headcrab from the Half Life video games.
They were VERY fun to create, but my hands are sore and chafed, cut and bruised from all of this work, so I'm very glad they'redone. I hope everybody enjoys looking at them as much as I enjoyed making them!
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Saw V
You know, I made this HUGE deal of going to see the fifth installment of the series and then just didn't write anything about it. How....weird.
Considering it was a completely epic night, I guess I was too wrapped up in it to really pay attention.
Long story short, we completely pwned Alien: Extinction in the lobby of the movie theater. Bob got 3rd for all time high score, and I got all time high score for damage to company property. Pardon me if I see a row of gasoline barrels and decide to use them to our tactical advantage. Geez. But it was very cool to get to put my initials in to the game.
We had dinner at Olive Garden, and I finally gave in and had coffee to wake myself up. I was constantly exhausted without it, and while I probably could've counteracted it by sleeping a full 8 hours for the past few days, it turns out I actually built my activity schedule around the ability to stay awake on less sleep thanks to caffeine. So I caved, had a cup of it with dessert, and was able to fully enjoy everything.
After Olive Garden we went to Barnes and Nobles and scoured the place for DVDs and fun looking books. They had a copy of Arkham Asylum there, which I fawned over and whimpered about repeatedly before finally putting it back on the Halloween display. I don't have a lot of friends, and what friends I ~do~ have aren't nearly so in to the mythos as I am. It would've been a waste of nearly $50.
Bob found a rather cool looking book called Death: A biography. He hasn't read it yet, but from the synopsis it seems fascinating. If he doesn't start reading it soon I'll nick it and read it myself.
I found a book on ghost haunting in West Chester (only about 5 miles from me now) so that seemed fitting to pick up. I also grabbed the next installment of Chibi Vampire. I'm up to 8 now, almost done with the series. There was no Tokyo Mew Mew or Bride of the Water God except for what I already had, so I had to content myself with my findings.
After we got fairly kicked out of there (the place closed at 11 pm) we made our way to the theater where Alien carnage ensued. After that we acquired popcorn and sodas, and watched the movie.
Now, as anybody who lives on the east coast and carries a pulse knows, the Phillies are in the World Series right now. Even myself, with as little interaction with the outside world, sports and the common man as i get, knows that this is occuring. So while we were in the theater there came a great many hoots and shouts of "GO PHILLIES!" from random twenty-somethings hyped to be there. Oh, and I should also mention this theater was PACKED.
In the midst of this I suppose someone got sick of people shouting about the Phillies and other inanities and stood up....and proceeded to recite a Shakespeare solilquoy. Loudly. Which one, I couldn't tell you. I only caught 3 words, although I swear "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" was in there under the heckling. He projected this to the back row, with perfect cadence (the main reason I recognized what he was doing, pretty sure it was iambic pentameter) and stood there for 3 minutes solid doing this. People hollered. People booed. Someone shined a laser pointer on his forehead. He kept going. And when he was done and sat down, two groups of people cheered... those happy that he shut up, and those happy that he actually pulled the whole thing off. It was a completely random and beautiful thing to have witnessed, and to boot, it shut people up from hollering about sports.
The movie. Hmmm....
Well, the puzzle/game he had everyone run through was brilliant. It presented itself as one thing but was really another, and came crashing home at the end. There was a lot of back story explaining how Jigsaw passed along his ideas and setup to others as he was dying, and that helped a lot in understanding a few things. But it just didn't have quite the Oomph that 3 or 4 did, and while there was a bit of a mindfuck, overall it wasn't like usual where Bob and I would immediately be compelled to go to a diner and tear apart the movie section by section for any clues or possibilities we might have missed. It just seemed to be cleaning up the first 4 movies, setting clues for the future, and getting ready to progress on.
If I am recalling this correctly, they are shooting Saw VI right now, and there is a script for VII and draft scripts for VIII. So that was sort of the awkward halfway point in the series, almost. It's like the movie that hits the teenage years and starts to grow fur in places they didn't before, the voice cracks, that kind of thing. They should mostly have it together when the next movie comes along next Halloween. I look forward to seeing that one with Bob as well. :)
Epic evening y'all. Honestly. It should be written in purple on my calendar!
Considering it was a completely epic night, I guess I was too wrapped up in it to really pay attention.
Long story short, we completely pwned Alien: Extinction in the lobby of the movie theater. Bob got 3rd for all time high score, and I got all time high score for damage to company property. Pardon me if I see a row of gasoline barrels and decide to use them to our tactical advantage. Geez. But it was very cool to get to put my initials in to the game.
We had dinner at Olive Garden, and I finally gave in and had coffee to wake myself up. I was constantly exhausted without it, and while I probably could've counteracted it by sleeping a full 8 hours for the past few days, it turns out I actually built my activity schedule around the ability to stay awake on less sleep thanks to caffeine. So I caved, had a cup of it with dessert, and was able to fully enjoy everything.
After Olive Garden we went to Barnes and Nobles and scoured the place for DVDs and fun looking books. They had a copy of Arkham Asylum there, which I fawned over and whimpered about repeatedly before finally putting it back on the Halloween display. I don't have a lot of friends, and what friends I ~do~ have aren't nearly so in to the mythos as I am. It would've been a waste of nearly $50.
Bob found a rather cool looking book called Death: A biography. He hasn't read it yet, but from the synopsis it seems fascinating. If he doesn't start reading it soon I'll nick it and read it myself.
I found a book on ghost haunting in West Chester (only about 5 miles from me now) so that seemed fitting to pick up. I also grabbed the next installment of Chibi Vampire. I'm up to 8 now, almost done with the series. There was no Tokyo Mew Mew or Bride of the Water God except for what I already had, so I had to content myself with my findings.
After we got fairly kicked out of there (the place closed at 11 pm) we made our way to the theater where Alien carnage ensued. After that we acquired popcorn and sodas, and watched the movie.
Now, as anybody who lives on the east coast and carries a pulse knows, the Phillies are in the World Series right now. Even myself, with as little interaction with the outside world, sports and the common man as i get, knows that this is occuring. So while we were in the theater there came a great many hoots and shouts of "GO PHILLIES!" from random twenty-somethings hyped to be there. Oh, and I should also mention this theater was PACKED.
In the midst of this I suppose someone got sick of people shouting about the Phillies and other inanities and stood up....and proceeded to recite a Shakespeare solilquoy. Loudly. Which one, I couldn't tell you. I only caught 3 words, although I swear "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" was in there under the heckling. He projected this to the back row, with perfect cadence (the main reason I recognized what he was doing, pretty sure it was iambic pentameter) and stood there for 3 minutes solid doing this. People hollered. People booed. Someone shined a laser pointer on his forehead. He kept going. And when he was done and sat down, two groups of people cheered... those happy that he shut up, and those happy that he actually pulled the whole thing off. It was a completely random and beautiful thing to have witnessed, and to boot, it shut people up from hollering about sports.
The movie. Hmmm....
Well, the puzzle/game he had everyone run through was brilliant. It presented itself as one thing but was really another, and came crashing home at the end. There was a lot of back story explaining how Jigsaw passed along his ideas and setup to others as he was dying, and that helped a lot in understanding a few things. But it just didn't have quite the Oomph that 3 or 4 did, and while there was a bit of a mindfuck, overall it wasn't like usual where Bob and I would immediately be compelled to go to a diner and tear apart the movie section by section for any clues or possibilities we might have missed. It just seemed to be cleaning up the first 4 movies, setting clues for the future, and getting ready to progress on.
If I am recalling this correctly, they are shooting Saw VI right now, and there is a script for VII and draft scripts for VIII. So that was sort of the awkward halfway point in the series, almost. It's like the movie that hits the teenage years and starts to grow fur in places they didn't before, the voice cracks, that kind of thing. They should mostly have it together when the next movie comes along next Halloween. I look forward to seeing that one with Bob as well. :)
Epic evening y'all. Honestly. It should be written in purple on my calendar!
Games Galore
Little Big Planet is a fantastic game. Yes, in the beginning it's pretty much a weird hybrid of platformer and....RPG-esque thing, but it is utterly adorable and a blast to play. That you can control the thing using the sixaxis controller is great. That you can do that AND the hands just means that every time you finish a level "Jungle Boogie" MUST be danced.
The only downside is my accidental foray in to public indecency. I dressed up my little sackgirl in a cute striped bathing suit with pigtails and went cavorting off in the world with her.... unaware that a bathing suit in this game consists of two parts and she was running around without pants or underwear on for the better part of an hour. Ooooops. And they were worried about parts of the Koran being chanted in this thing....
Per usual we now have a dearth of games and it will be a while before all of them can be completed. Too Human is occupying Bob (I keep meaning to play it and getting distracted.) as is Fallout 3. We grabbed a copy of My Japanese Teacher for the DS to learn a bit more for the trip, but so far haven't even cracked it yet with all that's been going on. And me? I'm still in the middle of Braid, OTRPODS 1, The Legend of Zelda for DS, Pokemon for DS, and NOW we can add to it Super Mario Bros. for the DS. Also, on the way are Kuon and Call of Cthulu. Because I swear I will break this stupid fear of survival horror games!!!
While waiting in line for Fallout 3 I got started on the first part of God of War for the PSP. I miss how fun that game is, and I'm glad they scaled it down to a size that's portable. Only issue, I got stuck at one point battling a cyclops where the game completely froze up. I couldn't even powercycle the thing. I had to pop out the game and turn the PSP off. I seriously hope that doesn't keep happening or there will be issues. *sigh*
So.... yeah. Up to my ears in games. And this isn't even counting leveling up my new night elf rogue for WoW (oh crap, just remembered the expansion is coming out soon. >.< ) and a few other things. At this point I've decided the best course of action is to win the lottery so I can stay home and complete all of these things. By not finishing them, they're weighing heavily on my psyche and will eventually lead to a complete breakdown. Seems entirely logical when put in that perspective, ne?
The only downside is my accidental foray in to public indecency. I dressed up my little sackgirl in a cute striped bathing suit with pigtails and went cavorting off in the world with her.... unaware that a bathing suit in this game consists of two parts and she was running around without pants or underwear on for the better part of an hour. Ooooops. And they were worried about parts of the Koran being chanted in this thing....
Per usual we now have a dearth of games and it will be a while before all of them can be completed. Too Human is occupying Bob (I keep meaning to play it and getting distracted.) as is Fallout 3. We grabbed a copy of My Japanese Teacher for the DS to learn a bit more for the trip, but so far haven't even cracked it yet with all that's been going on. And me? I'm still in the middle of Braid, OTRPODS 1, The Legend of Zelda for DS, Pokemon for DS, and NOW we can add to it Super Mario Bros. for the DS. Also, on the way are Kuon and Call of Cthulu. Because I swear I will break this stupid fear of survival horror games!!!
While waiting in line for Fallout 3 I got started on the first part of God of War for the PSP. I miss how fun that game is, and I'm glad they scaled it down to a size that's portable. Only issue, I got stuck at one point battling a cyclops where the game completely froze up. I couldn't even powercycle the thing. I had to pop out the game and turn the PSP off. I seriously hope that doesn't keep happening or there will be issues. *sigh*
So.... yeah. Up to my ears in games. And this isn't even counting leveling up my new night elf rogue for WoW (oh crap, just remembered the expansion is coming out soon. >.< ) and a few other things. At this point I've decided the best course of action is to win the lottery so I can stay home and complete all of these things. By not finishing them, they're weighing heavily on my psyche and will eventually lead to a complete breakdown. Seems entirely logical when put in that perspective, ne?
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
The first of the season!
It snowed today. Several inches, covering the grass and the cars in the parking lot at my workplace.
Long live winter, whose impatience drives autumn before it like the hound harries the fox. :)
Long live winter, whose impatience drives autumn before it like the hound harries the fox. :)
Monday, October 27, 2008
Games Galore
Little Big Planet is a fantastic game. Yes, in the beginning it's pretty much a weird hybrid of platformer and....RPG-esque thing, but it is utterly adorable and a blast to play. That you can control the thing using the sixaxis controller is great. That you can do that AND the hands just means that every time you finish a level "Jungle Boogie" MUST be danced.
The only downside is my accidental foray in to public indecency. I dressed up my little sackgirl in a cute striped bathing suit with pigtails and went cavorting off in the world with her.... unaware that a bathing suit in this game consists of two parts and she was running around without pants or underwear on for the better part of an hour. Ooooops. And they were worried about parts of the Koran being chanted in this thing....
The only downside is my accidental foray in to public indecency. I dressed up my little sackgirl in a cute striped bathing suit with pigtails and went cavorting off in the world with her.... unaware that a bathing suit in this game consists of two parts and she was running around without pants or underwear on for the better part of an hour. Ooooops. And they were worried about parts of the Koran being chanted in this thing....
The world just got more awesomer.
Glow in the dark cats exist, and didn't even require a nuclear holocaust.
Thank you Universe. This made my Monday.
Thank you Universe. This made my Monday.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Caving under pressure...
Shoot me. I have a Facebook profile.
The headache showed up for about 5 minutes, then disappeared as soon as I drank some tea and took some advil.
So far this is the wussiest withdrawal EVER.
The headache showed up for about 5 minutes, then disappeared as soon as I drank some tea and took some advil.
So far this is the wussiest withdrawal EVER.
Using Tea as a Wet Nurse
It is Day 3 with no caffeine and I have done my best to avoid coffee in its myriad forms. So far in my life that means "Look at the coffee machine but don't touch."
It's not THAT hard, really. I just don't make a cup. But then the ~side affects~ started and now I'm wondering if it was such a wise idea. Then again, it's not like I'm ever going to NOT be tired, at this job or the next one, so I've been sticking with it.
I noted a spike in my craving for sweets last night, to the point that I couldn't ignore it. Indulging in some Sinnamon Lesser Evil candied popcorn helped abate it, but my general hunger then came back with a vengeance.
I'm wondering if my brain knows better than to try the bullshit headache route and instead is just trying to tap in to my former fears about starving and trying to push that button until I drink it again.
I shall keep on with observing this, as it's downright fascinating. I was expecting a major headache by now, and it's rather surprising it hasn't hit yet. I'll go with it.
It's not THAT hard, really. I just don't make a cup. But then the ~side affects~ started and now I'm wondering if it was such a wise idea. Then again, it's not like I'm ever going to NOT be tired, at this job or the next one, so I've been sticking with it.
I noted a spike in my craving for sweets last night, to the point that I couldn't ignore it. Indulging in some Sinnamon Lesser Evil candied popcorn helped abate it, but my general hunger then came back with a vengeance.
I'm wondering if my brain knows better than to try the bullshit headache route and instead is just trying to tap in to my former fears about starving and trying to push that button until I drink it again.
I shall keep on with observing this, as it's downright fascinating. I was expecting a major headache by now, and it's rather surprising it hasn't hit yet. I'll go with it.
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