Category: Uncategorized

Ahh, my favorite kind of day… it’s snowing lightly outside, it’s close to the holidays so humanity is sleeping in, and I’m sitting here with my ever-present cup of Earl Grey and listening to my ‘old people’ music.

It’s a really nice snow, the kind with the really big flakes that float slowly to the ground… They don’t obscure ones vision, but they do tend to soften the edges of everything. It makes everything seem so much calmer.

So today let’s have more update and less rant shall we?

Hmm, let’s start with movies… I recently saw the special effect bonanza called ‘Narnia’ and I rather liked it. Of course I’ve read the entire book series almost every other year since I learned to read and therefore could be labeled as a ‘fan’, but it was still a good movie. But I’m also a bit nit-picky regarding my mythological beasties and I just wasn’t happy with the centaurs; they got the proportions all wrong – too much horse, not enough human – a centaur, for those of you who don’t know any, is fully capable of braiding his or her own tail, checking their hind hooves, and other such feats. The ones in the movie would have had a hard time even reaching their own rump.

Now the fauns were well done, especially Mr. Tumnus who really got the spit and polish treatment as he got the most screen time of all the Narnians with maybe the exception of Mr. and Mrs. Beaver.

Oh, and Aslan should have been bigger.

I really liked the more Germanic representation of Father Christmas in the movie, which holds true to the book quite well and which also segues nicely into the holiday portion of this update.

For those of you who have created some sort of ritual out of my yearly ‘end of the world’ announcement, here it is:

There are, as of today, only 2550 shopping days left till the end of the world.

See previous announcements for further information.

My gift to myself this year is a really stellar (and equally expensive) 24” LCD monitor. This monitor has so much screen area that I can put three 8×10 pages of information, side by side, on the desktop at the same time. It’s color-correct, has an 8 millisecond refresh rate, and is just a real joy to sit in front of while working on the computer here… And it makes the high res desktop wallpapers I purchased from Roger Dean a few years back for my Mac look *really* good.

Let’s see, what else… Oh, I’ll be flying out of Denver on the morning of the 25th and landing in Richmond that afternoon. From there I’ll be hopping into one of Scott’s 2005 Chrysler ‘PT Cruisers’ and driving cross country back to Denver. Sound like fun? It doesn’t to me either… But these are the sorts of things we do for those we deem to be friends.

See, Scott, aka ZeZe, will be moving in with Jae and I right before new years. This is a good thing as ZeZe is required for a lot of the side projects I want to do and will take some of the work load off of me at work by being able to perform the I.T. role better than anyone has in the history of the company… No more people coming into my office and griping about something not working because Jon and/or I are too busy with our regular jobs to really fix the damn thing.

This also drops the monthly rent for everyone here at Chateau D’Isaster to less than $350 a month and the rest of the bills by one third, which frees up more income for the fun things in life. Fortunately Chateau D’Isaster has enough room for about five people to live comfortably – it’s a huge place – so three people are pretty easy to deal with.

Another thing that having ZeZe here will provide is the drive to finish the theater… One quarter of the living room, known as ‘the cave’, has been ear-marked since we moved in as the home theater… Unfortunately neither Jae nor I watch TV and we tend to go to the theater for actual movies. ZeZe on the other hand does watch TV and has quite the collection of gear dedicated to this pursuit, so I’m sure with his prompting we’ll finally get the theater finished.

Well, I’ve exhausted my free time for journaling this morning and have to move on to the next item on my list. Have a safe and happy holiday everyone!

Well then, where was I? Oh, right, I haven’t actually posted anything in a month or so…

Same excuse as always, just plain old garden variety ‘busy’ and ‘worn out’.

The game of choice right now is “Horizons”, which you may recall I played some two years ago. I’ve played just about every multiplayer game available right now and I’ve found them all lacking after a while, usually due to there not being an age limit for the game.

“World of Warcraft” was fun for a while, till all the damn kids caught wind of it. It seems the games these days are being over run with trash talking munchkins with the imaginative capacity of a grapefruit. World of Warcraft, City of Villains, Everquest 2, etc, etc… All have become infested at this point.

The biggest problem with internet based games and too many kids is that, given anonymity and an audience, well over half of them will become the biggest asshat on record within a few minutes.

Enter ‘Horizons’, a game with a very odd story behind it and one which is mercifully free of ‘leet speaking freaks of nature. See, Horizons came out a little over two years ago to much fanfare, as it was truly revolutionary in concept: A fully player driven and dynamic world that players, and nature, could change over time as well as the most detailed crafting system in existence which creates a player owned economy in the game… Oh, and playable Dragons!

Well, there was a bit of an issue with this concept as it was so large and grandiose that the technology just wasn’t there yet. The game launched with all sorts of problems due in part to the publisher, Atari, rushing things out the door. Soon after Atari decided they didn’t want to be in the MMO business and left the developer, Artifact Entertainment, holding all the bills… About a year later Artifact folded and filed for bankruptcy.

So, move forward in time a bit and you’ll see a small Texas based game company, Tulga Games, buy the rights to Horizons in the bankruptcy auction. Tulga hires back several of the core people responsible for Horizons and they set about both fixing it, and bringing it in line with current technology – in a small garage-like atmosphere.

So here we are today: Horizons is still in what I would call a Beta, though I pay $13 a month to play it, and as it is both a ‘dead’ game and there is no PvP, all of the players are adults who are interested in the story of the game and the role-playing opportunities it represents. Horizons is recruiting some interesting folks to help them in their quest for the most accurate fantasy world simulation ever, and the latest is writer Peter S. Beagle of “The last Unicorn” fame who will be creating more backstory for the world.

In all of the ten or so MMOs I’ve played over the years, I’ve not found as great of a community as the one in Horizons. These are people that you’d not give a second thought to inviting over for movie night, if they lived next door you’d have BBQs with them, and you’d certainly be ok with having them watch your pets while on vacation…

Really, Horizons is as close to the old BBS era as I’ve been able to find since the inception of the internet. No one plays to get the biggest sword, the best stats, or to simply be annoying. Jae has done nothing but craft things for two weeks and he’s happy as a clam.

I’m playing a Dragon in the game; a mere hatchling. Though I’ve been taken under the wing (literally) of one of the ancient dragons (huge, building sized beings) who is helping me find my way in the world. In another few weeks I’ll be ready for my ‘Right of Passage’ into adulthood where I’ll not only be able to learn how to fly, but I’ll get about twice the size I am now. Ancient status won’t happen for at least another six months, but there’s no hurry – I’m happy.

Well, as you may have guessed I’m back under a pile of work at work and it’s consuming all of my free time / creativity / energy again.

It’s not that where I work is some sort of sweat-shop that borders on slave labor – its not – it’s that I’m pretty committed to doing the best job possible, and I’m also a firm believer in ‘if you want it done right, do it yourself.’

These last few weeks have been twelve hour days of writing software applications to generate statistical reports, based on huge databases full of things you can’t statistically analyze, for a company that simultaneously cannot figure out how to generate this data or what to do with it when they get it…

Why is it that every time I work with one of these big, multi-national, fortune 100 companies that I find myself wondering how the hell they got there, and stay there? All I can figure is that they have so much money that they can burn it for fuel to stay in corporate orbit, because it certainly doesn’t have anything to do with smarts.

What makes these ponderous corporate behemoths even worse to work with is that they know they’re a big fish and act like spoilt children most of the time, and this permeates all levels of the corporation.

This current multi-billion dollar day care center I’m working with outsourced some programmers from some time zone on the other side of the planet, and this too has been a major source of annoyance for the web-guy at work and me. We can’t understand them when we get them on the phone, they schedule meetings for 6 p.m. local because its 6:30 a.m. there, and they are completely incapable of creatively solving a problem…

That last is a huge issue as problems very rarely fit into something you read in a book, and these guys are all specialists in the same way insects are; incapable of cross-field thinking. For example, their javascript-form guy specializes in online form generation and only knows one way to manipulate the state of a radio button or check box… Unfortunately everything he knows doesn’t work for what the customer is trying to do, so he’s burned 100+ hours of our time as we work around his one method he has and try to make it all happen… And while this is going on he’s telling the customer we’re clueless and we have to placate them as well.

So, all of you CFOs out there pay attention: Outsourcing doesn’t always save money.

The customer outsourced their programming to New Delhi where they can pay 5 guys $200 a month each for 3 months… That’s $3000.

But, because India couldn’t make it go, the customer came to us (we’re cheap) and we charged them a lower-than-going-rate of $90/hour for 80 hours (1 engineer for 2 weeks). That’s $7200.

But because they are under contract to New Delhi we have to work around these ‘specialists’ and because of this we had to submit a 120 hour change order for two 90 dollar an hour software engineers. That’s another $10,800.

So the idea to do this in India has cost them $21,000, when if they’d just come to us first it would have cost them $7200, which is a savings of $13,800, and they wouldn’t have had to sit in a conference room at 9 p.m. repeating things four times.

*sigh*… But this will just keep happening because it’s all about “SAVE MONEY NOW!”, not about the longer view of such odd things as ‘customer satisfaction’ or ‘working product’.

Bah.

But, enough about my working life…

---

I saw the latest installment of the Harry Potter franchise the other night… Meh.

As I can’t read Rawlings without getting physically ill, I have to wonder if the books they based the movies on were getting tired or if it’s the director/actors that are just loosing enthusiasm. It was unfortunate that Jae’s first brush with all things “Potter” was this latest movie.

The movie-du-jour prior to this was “The Mask of Zorro”… This also warranted a “Meh”.

At least when you go see a Zorro movie you are treated to some nice, dangerous (on a stuntman scale mind you), explosions and the finale detonation was quite nice… They disintegrated a full-sized steam locomotive which is no small feat. The explosion must have elicited a chorus of girlish giggles from the demolitions unit as the slow-motion playback shows the shockwave traveling through the ground and you can actually see the concussion sphere condense the moisture in the air and expand outward from the train… For the uninitiated: “It was a hell of a boom.”

Let’s see, what else?

Oh, I picked up a used 21” Sony Trinitron computer monitor for $25, managed to shoehorn it into the front seat of the Toyota, and managed to get it into the house without permanently damaging myself, the house, or the monitor. For my next trick I will be replacing the 10Mohm resistor on the G2 brightness control section of the logic board with a 6.2Mohm milspec 2% 1 watt resistor to fix the common overdrive issue on these monitors… If all goes well I won’t electrocute myself either, as this repair takes place on the board at the base of the tube, next to the flyback transformer. They call it a flyback as that’s what you do if you touch it… The common distance is about 5 feet.

I also picked up another piece of computer gear this week: A Logitech G15 keyboard. What a wonderful device. After several years of a trend towards itty-bitty keyboards that one needs a pointer to type on, Logitech has released a keyboard for us folks with ‘man-hands’… This thing is huge, and my typing has gone back up to my ‘IBM selectric era’ speeds. It’s definitely worth the $80 I spent on it.

I also seem to have picked up a new hobby for 2006… This one requires some setup:

Some twenty years ago I was a theater arts geek in high school and ever since I’ve sort of meandered in the periphery of theater production. Well, one of my side projects has been a piece of software to orchestrate and control a few 8 channel micro-controller based light controllers I’ve been fiddling with for a few years, with the idea to use it in theater production. Well, having recently gotten most of it working, and having talked with a few folks around here as they start setting up their Xmas lights, and I plan to have the best christmas light display in Littleton next year! Now, it’s far too easy when someone says ‘christmas lights’ to think of the garish lawn-filling atrocities that most grandparents foist upon the world during the holidays. I promise you I won’t do that…

My plan involves a low-power FM transmitter to broadcast the music to viewers and stage-quality light sequencing to the same music… music such as “Christmas Eve-Sarajevo 12-24” or “A Mad Russian’s Christmas” by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

Basically the whole show will kick off once an hour for about fifteen minutes between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Leading up to the top of the hour the lights will just look like any other yard-art, but on the hour the whole set dims to black, “Sarajevo 12-24” starts up, and the show takes off with lots of sequenced animation, fades, some tasteful strobe effects, and the full theatrical bag of tricks. Then, after the last song, it all dims to black again then comes back up, static, just like everyone else’s yard for 45 minutes.

For anyone curious about the style of christmas music I’m talking about, here’s a sample from Amazon.com

It’s going to be some work, but I have a year… Maybe lasers… (grin)

Zeze is also most likely going to be moving in with Jae and I, and working at the same place as the new IT director if all goes well. With Zeze here, the electrical design for this insanity will be much cooler, safer, and has a much better chance of getting done. 🙂

And that’s about it for this update… Till next time have a great turkey-day and stay safe.

As of today I am officially single.

For the last month or so my ex has been working to get our marriage annuled; it turns out she was still married when she married me so legally we could not be married when we got married… And today the judge there in Washington state agreed and with the stroke of a pen I was never actually married in the first place.

It’s weird, but such is the way of the legal system.

As for me, it really makes no real difference as we’ve been separated for over a decade and there’s no mutual anything involved. All I had to do was sign a box agreeing to this fact.

I guess that’s that then.

And I have returned! Good lord, what a trip…

First off I would like to thank all of the folks that made this possible: Jen (Cander from Darkspear), Bill (Xayla from Darkspear), and Jon from work who convinced me that the place wouldn’t burn down if I took a week off, Jae’s uncle (Tanuvasa from Laughing Skull) who is a big WoW fan and who put us up at his place down the road from the convention there in California, Jae’s dad (Drindletar from Laughing Skull) who fed us while we waited for Friday’s paycheck to happen and gave us much needed cartographic support while in California, and all the guys from work who play the game (Darkspear, Twisting Nether, Laughing Skull, etc.) and supply endless hours of fun online.

For The Horde!

---

The saga of Blizzcon began Tuesday evening with my packing, planning, strategizing, and in my usual fashion planning every minute bit of the trip down to split-second accuracy. But then there’s Jae who doesn’t do anything with any sort of forethought or plan and who is the avatar of pure chaos, and makes sure that I understand that planning isn’t all it’s cracked up to be…

Come Wednesday morning at 11:00, when we need to pick up the rental car at 12:00, he staggers upstairs and tells me he still needs to get food for the lizard, and that requires a drive to the other side of Denver, thanks to the average pet store not selling mice for food. I manage to talk him into a fine meal of chicken and egg ala microwave for the lizard and I manage to get us both over to the rental car place right on time.

After a harrowing journey to ‘Enterprise’ we learn that if the car is being taken out of state, there is a $250 security deposit that isn’t listed anywhere on their web site. This is on top of them loosing my online reservation and, as there is no notice, the car cost goes from $90 a week to $144 a week. So now things are about $300 more than I had planned for the last two months. Jae has a little over $250 saved for the trip and I have about $150… Once ‘Enterprise’ is done with us we have a little over $100 to last us till Friday when we get paid.

Ok, so now Enterprise cannot get me the econo-box car I had requested and, as a ‘service’ upgrades us to a 2006 Pontiac Grand Prix V8-powered land-yacht… Remember that due to the increase in costs that Jae and I are now at $100 for gas to get to Anaheim, and now we have a car that gets roughly 18MPG while going down hill and with a stiff tail wind.

Undaunted we return to the house and I prepare several PBJ sandwiches, grab two frozen burritos, two cans of Progresso soup, and two spoons. Jae fills up a gallon jug with water and figure we’ll make do with a rolling pick nick. I run some quick math and based on the 1020 miles we need to go that the car needs to average 20MPG for us to make it… Jae looks at me, then the car, then back to me and states “I ain’t pushing that boat if we run outta gas”, and we proceed with our plan.

So everything gets unceremoniously thrown into the trunk of the rental, I pull the XM radio out of my Toyota and we get ourselves loaded into the car. The route is simple: I-70 to I-15, to I-5, to the convention center and with the XM radio tuned to the metal station we head out at 2pm… That is only two hours late, which is some kind of record for us.

The car comes with ¾ of a tank of gas which gets us all the way to Avon Colorado, which means everything else is down hill. $40 later the gas tank is full, my wallet is almost half empty, and I’m worried that there is no way this fine example of American gluttony will make it to California on $100.

I drive till around 10pm and, to the Pontiac’s credit it manages both a nice 80MPH and about 500 miles per tank. Jae and I switch at the I-70 / I-15 halfway point so I can get an hour’s nap… See, Jae isn’t real comfortable with the whole ‘road trip’ driving thing so I am to pull most of the driving duty.

So Jae meanders us into Vegas where we tank up the car again at a ‘Flying J’ truck stop which, happily, has gas for about twenty cents per gallon cheaper than Colorado and that is another ray of hope that we might actually make it. Interestingly even California was, on average, 15 cents per gallon cheaper than Colorado.

We switch again and I drive the rest of the way to Jae’s family business. We arrive there at about 5am and sit in the car till around 10am when Jae’s father and uncle arrive.

We are then led over to Jae’s uncle’s place where we will be staying and we both promptly pass out.

---

Friday morning, the first day of the con, sees me up and at ‘em at sunrise and ready to go. Jae and family are not exactly ‘early risers’ so we wind up getting to the convention at 10:30 rather than the 9am I was shooting for.

Now, this too was an adventure: Once we had ‘docked’ the Pontiac in the garage and made it up to the surface the first thing we see is a line of people similar to those you’d find at an Apple Store opening. The line went from the doors of the convention center clear around the Arena and almost to the Disney Entrance which is about a half a mile.

So we trudge towards the end of the line and, once there, discover that ‘this’ line was for folks who had already registered and were waiting to get in. The ‘registration’ line was on the other side of the convention center.

So we hike back around the place and get into the other half mile long line which eventually leads us to entering the convention proper at about noon…

But what and entrance! As we clear the doors the Orgrimmar theme music sounds loud and clear across the hall, which prompts Jae and I to laugh and I let loose with an Orcish “Lok Tar My Brothers!” in an exceptionally loud fashion, and am met with a loud “For the Horde!” and lots of fists in the air. This of course made for several frightened Alliance players in the goody bag line who huddled together looking as if they were about to be a menu item. As a note, the following photos were taken with my cell phone, so don’t expect award winning photography here…

 

Entering Blizzcon

The next few hours were spent with Jae and Drindletar in the goody bag line and me wandering about the main hall looking at everything while waiting for Jae to call my cell and tell me they were at the bag pickup… I got there just as Jae was leaving the line – he forgot to call me – so another hour was spent in that line again.

 

Some of the mood art in the hall

After that we all split up to make sure we covered everything. I proceeded over to the developer table and set about getting everyone who worked on WoW to sign a t-shirt for work. I then wandered over and did some in-depth analysis of the new expansion for WoW, and after that spent the day in Developer Panels.

 

Around 100 players at a time got 30 minutes to check out the new stuff for WoW

Then there was the dance contest where a few folks left with new Dual-Core Pentiums and hot new Soundblaster cards, a ‘sound alike’ contest where the winners won fancy z-board keyboards and one got an Alienware laptop, and the costume contest winner got a $4000 Alienware PC.

The con shut down at 10pm, and after Jae, Drindletar, and I sat around a Denny’s for a few hours talking about everything, we made it back to Tanuvasa’s place at about midnight.

---

Saturday went a bit smoother with us getting to the con at 10am. I saw the rest of the Invitational Tournament, played some Starcraft ‘Ghost’, chit-chatted with Metzen about the Warcraft backstory, tracked down Samwise and talked art for a bit, finished up the Developer panels I was interested in, picked up about twenty pounds of schwag, and then waited about three hours for the concert…

 

About 10,000 people showed up for the con

Samwise and the guys from Blizzard who make up “Level 60 Elite Tauren Chieftan” opened things. They’re actually quite good, in a Warcraft mythology mixed with heavy metal kind of way. Then they had some comedian on stage for a bit – very funny guy. Then The Offspring played and it was –LOUD-… Pitty their sound guy –SUCKED- and the end result was everything on the sound board running at the rail, which produced about 3000 watts of white noise for about ninety minutes.

Oh well, it was a great time none the less.

---

We left California yesterday at about noon and the trip back yesterday ended in a $100 a nite hotel in Avon because the pass was a sheet of ice and I was fading out. This decision came about shortly after Jae and I slid across an overpass at a 45 degree angle on I-70, at about 80mph, near Eagle.

We left Avon at about 9:30 this morning and got the rental back at noon, and since then it’s been unpacking and trying to unwind a bit.

---

All in all, when I was asked by Metzen if I’d be willing to come to another Blizzcon my answer was a definite “yes”… Though next year I’ll be able to win me a nice $4000 PC as I’ll have a costume ready. (grin)

And with that I’m off to catch up on sleep…

Take care out there!

Yes, yes. I know. The intervals between posts here are becoming longer and longer. I’m hoping that this bit of a vacation I am starting on today will assist me in getting back into the more creative aspects of my life.

I will be picking up a rental car this afternoon and shortly thereafter Jae and I will be headed for Southern California and ultimately ‘BlizzCon’ at the Anaheim Convention Center.

‘BlizzCon’ is the inaugural convention for all things Blizzard Entertainment. Blizzard are the folks responsible for such things as the ‘Warcraft’ franchise which includes ‘World of Warcraft’, ‘Diablo’, ‘Starcraft’, and a great many other wonderful things you may have heard of.

Now, while Jae is going to the convention to pit his ‘leet WoW skillz against the best players from around the world (I plan on embarrassing a few of ‘the best’ as well), and both catching both Jonathan Davis of ‘Korn’ and the finale show featuring the ‘Offspring’, I am going for other reasons. Artists Metzen, Twincruiser, Samwise, and Thammer will be there. These guys –created- the Warcraft universe in both words and artwork and I have been a fan of the world for a very long time. See www.sonsofthestorm.com for a brief ‘learnin in what I’m talking about.

After I get my fanish side sated I plan to spend all of my ‘time-between-skull-crushing’ in the panels for the game designers and getting the low-down on what is next for WoW. Blizzard will be showing off the first expansion for the game at the con, as well as putting to rest the various rumors about new races, a new continent, the hero classes, and other such trivialities.

All in all it should be a fun weekend in smoggy SoCal. I’ll try to write in from the show floor a few times and give updates for all my guild mates at work.

Till the next posting, be safe out there…

Jae and I are taking a well deserved break from ‘World of Warcraft’ and are playing with ‘City of Heroes’ (CoH) and its companion ‘City of Villains’ (CoV). I’m more playing CoH just to figure the thing out before CoV comes out on the 31st…

Now, the whole reason I’m looking forward to CoV is because I’ll get to let ol’ Raeshlavik out to play in his natural environment. In CoV one gets to build their own secret lair of evil (complete with traps, defensive weapons, and an interior design that really says something about the character) and defend it against the forces of good from CoH, gather minions and henchmen to work for you, and eventually take over the city and become the arch villain… I’m pretty sure Ravik has already won this game and it’s not even available yet. 🙂

Well, that’s not entirety true… I’m in both the beta test and the stress tests for CoV and therefore Ravik is getting a head start on the general population. But that is as it should be I figure.

Last night Jae and I wreaked havoc on the gangs of Paragon City with a fire mage and an ice mage, which was fun.

Our main ‘heroic’ characters are a scrapper/defender team with decidedly WWII-era flair: Jae’s character is a sword wielding refugee from an Indiana Jones movie, complete with fedora, leather vest and flared pilot’s pants tucked into combat boots. His name is Joe Coda and is a private investigator. Meanwhile the defender I’m playing is a radiation powered healer who is very reminiscent of ‘Polly Perkins’ from the ‘Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow’ movie named ‘Alicia Parks’ and is Joe’s assistant in the investigation business.

Anyways, the characters picked up their abilities during one of Joe’s better paying jobs where they had to recover this odd idol for an equally odd little man. The idol was of course highly magical and due to a turn of events the characters were infused with this power. So their over-arching plot line is to discover the identity of this odd little fellow and why he was interested in this artifact.

And with that I’m out of time and have to run off to work. I’ll post more about our adventures when time permits.

Have a great day everyone.

In other news I’ve been pretty busy with work, again, so my writing has tapered off, again…

Jae and I have managed to see a few movies though. I liked “Brothers Grimm”, but then again I like most things Terry Gilliam has done. I also saw “Serenity”, which I also liked, but I also liked the series so that one was a shoe-in.

The little bits of spare time I’ve had have centered around the new world and rules set I’ve been developing, the play by email setting I’ve been working on to test it all, and the web site to hold all the pieces. I really need to find some hobbies that aren’t all-consuming… Like TV or something. 😛

I’m currently reading the second book of the “Obsidian Trilogy” by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory, re-reading the “Watchers at the Well” trilogy by Jack Chalker (I managed to score all three books in one hardbound volume!) and have recently finished “First Warning” by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth A. Scarborough. The first is quite good, the second is part of a series of books that are among my favorites and the third was possibly the best so far of all the “Acorna” books… So there’s my review for ya.

And with that I’m going to clean out the fireplace and get it ready for winter… It almost snowed here last night. Which is about damn time if you ask me! 🙂

Wolf called yesterday with some questions about the new computer I gave Lion, and after a few unproductive moments on the telephone it was determined that I should just drive over there and Wolf would gladly feed me to make the computer go again… So off I went.

As it turns out they added a PCI IDE card to the computer and it had some basic RAID functionality to it which was what was confusing the whole process. Oh, and Lion’s wireless NIC had taken the long walk and was no longer functioning… But they have a direction to go forward with now.

So the rest of the day was spent catching up with the year since I had seen them last. Their new house is quite nice.

Eventually a new fellow named Nick arrived and gaming commenced. Wolf picked up some weighty tome which is nothing more than a gaming module the size of your average Oxford’s English. It’s an interesting idea as it is supposed to take a little over a year to finish based on 8 hours a week of gaming time. Anyways, before the night was over I had been drug into the proceedings and Flinthorn had been trotted out to lend his rather unique viewpoint to things… It’s possible that my Saturday evenings will be thusly occupied for the foreseeable future, which is a good thing to be sure.

I got home around 23:00 to find Jae still up and was told of his adventures: He and Jon from work were attempting to tow his derelicts out of the garage and managed to both get tickets for this noble cause; Jon for improper towing and Jae for driving a car without insurance… Though I’m unsure of how they determined ‘driving’ with that last as the car Jae was in was physically attached to Jon’s truck at the time and the motor won’t turn over anymore.

Anyways, long story short; once Jae finished paying for the tow truck, giving Jon the money for the fine he got, and got the money for the car; he was net $5 and has to go to court on the 10th… Which is where he will undoubtedly get another fine and this whole thing will wind up costing him around $100.

Again, people wonder why we rarely leave the house.

We also have a new house guest as of last night: A Savannah Monitor lizard…

A few days ago a fellow at work approached Jae and said “Want a lizard?”… From what I gather a roommate of this fellow had packed up a few weeks back and left the lizard and its tank just sitting on the floor. There was no heat rock, no food, no water and the rest of the roommates just ignored the thing hoping it, like the roommate who owned it, would simply just go away.

So Jae came to me and said “Want a lizard?” whereupon I asked what kind of lizard and was brought over to talk to the coworker who was attempting to divest himself of it. Jae and I agreed to take it as neither of us wanted the thing to starve to death or something, and I have some knowledge of reptiles thanks in part to canth? and her amazing collection of snakes and lizards from years ago (ever been bitten by a Tokay Gecko? I have…). Due to this exposure I felt I could assist the thing in getting back to a healthy life.

So we were told that he was unsure if the thing was even alive still and would ‘go rattle its cage and see if it moved’, it did, and now it’s here in my living room.

It’s drastically under weight for its size, favors one back leg, and has obviously not been handled often. I put the lizard in a large cardboard box in a quiet corner of the living room while I bleached the tank and replaced the bedding just in case there was a mite problem. Once back in the tank I started him on meal worms and he still has appetite so that’s good. I’ll run up to ‘Reptilian Haven’ here today and pick up some pinkies, a few large fuzzies and a small mouse or two (and a feeder tank) and some tetracycline in case I need it for an internal parasite problem.

The good news is that the monitor has a good nose so it hasn’t been stressed horribly and mashed itself against the glass of the tank.

We’ll also get to find out just how squeamish Jae is… I don’t think he’s ever been within sight distance of a pet that is a live feeder. 🙂

Last night Wolf and her daughter stopped by and dropped of some wonderful home-made cream of chicken soup for yours truly, which did wonders for making me feel better.

We spent a couple of hours catching up for the last few months and wolf showed me the almost invisible spot where they went in and added an inch to her neck. It’s interesting that they used dermabond (non-carcinogenic superglue) and just glued her shut… Very little scarring from that as there’s no stitches.

She’s doing fine by the way and gets to go back to work today, which makes her happy.

Today I head back to work; which given the options of sick or work I’ll take work.

Wink, our landlord, was here yesterday and laid out his plan for buying the place. I have to go over that today during lunch and weigh it against my lack of desire to keep driving two hours a day and the possibility consuming one entire paycheck each month in mortgage. Right now I don’t think ‘home ownership’ is all it’s cracked up to be and would rather have a nice apartment ten minutes from work…

So I suppose things are returning to normal around here.

Until next time, stay safe out there…

Another quick update.

Zeze went into the hospital for surgery Saturday morning to remove a hemangioma (A hemangioma is a benign tumor consisting of dilated blood vessels. When a hemangioma occurs in the liver it is called a hepatic hemangioma. Hemangiomas may cause problems because of location or hemorrhage) from the vicinity of the liver.

So far the recovery isn’t going well. Zeze has been slipping in and out of consciousness and is suffering an elevated heart rate. The doctors have run several tests to try and figure out what is going on, but no ideas so far.

Right now I’m playing a waiting game by the phone and hoping everything will be ok.

Just a quick update from work:

Google has released their new Instant Messenger client called “Google Talk” which has the potential to be light-years better than the competition.

Simply go to talk.google.com and download the small 800K application. The caveat is that you need a gmail account to use it, so if you are lacking in gmail goodness, drop me a line and I’ll hook you up.

I guess from this point forward if I’m on an IM-thing, it’ll be this simply because it doesn’t market at me or take over my web browser and add little links all over my hard drives. (Yes, I’m looking at –you- AIM and YIM)

I’ll post more after work, as it’s possible I’ll be getting out of here at a decent time tonight! 🙂

Jae and I started playing ‘Neverwinter Nights’ over the weekend as a change of pace from the MMORPG scene… One can only handle so much ‘World of Warcraft’ and Jae and I have about 3 months of it, so it’s time for a change of pace for a week or two.

‘Neverwinter’ is a game based on the AD&D 3.5 rules and as such is a pretty faithful computer-based reproduction of a tabletop RPG, which is nice. I’d still like to find a real RPG game to attend somewhere, but it’s tricky with my work schedule.

We spent most of the weekend just playing around with all of the character classes, but as of last night things have settled on me playing what I’m calling a ‘battle bard’ which is a combat oriented bard and is going mostly for the prestige class of ‘red dragon disciple’… So far it’s working well. Jae seems to have settled on a rogue and I’m not sure if he’s going into a prestige class or not.

We both made level seven over the weekend.

Well, Wolf made it though her surgery ok and is taking it easy at home, which is a big relief for me.

I haven’t heard anything from Zeze so I don’t know what is happening on that front.

Other than that, it’s more of the same here. I took Friday off and decided that, while there were things I could be doing at work Saturday, it wasn’t a requirement. See, I put in over 230 hours at work between the 5th and the 28th and I needed some time off… Well, still need, but there are things I have to do there that no one else can/will do.

I got a call from Aryntha while Jae and I were at the liquor store Friday night… I was in need of a glass of Glenmorangie and Jae wanted rum and coke for ‘drunken anime night’, which is where Jae and I unwind with an adult beverage and watch anime, which usually makes far more sense after you’ve ‘had a few’.

So Aryntha and Rai trekked over here and we wound up watching Monty Python’s “And Now For Something Completely Different” and three “Family Guy” episodes rather than anime as the only “TV” like devices Jae and I own are computer monitors. And while my 20” LCD is quite nice, it’s tough to see sub titles from across the room on it.

So everyone except Aryntha had a few drinks, watched a few movies, and by the time they were over both Jae and Rai were fairly tipsy.

As always when Aryntha gets around Jae the topic turned to religion and politics…

Jae is probably the only decent Christian (though he won’t admit it) Aryntha gets within forty paces of, and Aryntha has been on a big “republican’s suck, separation of church and state, neocons are in power, Bush is the redneck pope” kick for, well, one and a half terms now and seems to be on a crusade these days. But Jae took it in stride, and while he’s mentioned to me that every time he and Aryntha have been in the same room/car/hallway/space all Aryntha does is needle him on religion, he’s ok with that.

But I still have to mention this to Aryntha and get him to back off a little.

One more time with feeling!

Another week, another few days closer to payday, another stretch of time dealing with ignorance and stupidity…

No, really, I like my job… It’s the people I have a hard time dealing with.

The pick of the litter right now is the one running a special project for the company who, while being a technical idiot, still believes she knows everything and is suffering a bit of a Napoleonic desire to ‘own’ anyone who comes within 20 feet of her project…

The big issue with her right now is that she has a total disregard for any kind of project management. She’s well known to simply stroll into my office and require immediate help with something completely asinine without regard to the previous 5-7 people who were just in there.

See, I have a trouble ticket system installed at work, this lets me dedicate the time required for the other five departments and time-slice everyone the best way possible. Too bad this doesn’t apply to her… I guess.

Well, enough ranting about work.

Wolf goes in for surgery this morning. I don’t know a lot of the particulars such as where, when, or for how long, but my thoughts are with her in this trying time.

Zeze should be going in this week too for a thing-ectomy as no one seems to be too horribly sure what it is they are taking out. Yay doctors…

Jae and I are still twitching but the kid with the magnifying glass has simply *got* to cut it out…

And that’s about all I have time for…

It’s hard to be witty and entertaining in a forum such as Ye Olde Journal when you’re just plum worn out…

Since the first week of June I’ve been putting in an average of 56 hours a week at work, which has include most of Saturday and the occasional Sunday every weekend, which is why I just haven’t been highly available.

I’ve also got two friends going in for surgery either late this month or next month – and considering my friend ratio, that’s a big number:

Wolf is going in for back surgery on the number four vertebra, which of course means they have to get at it from the front of her neck and do lots of tricky maneuvering and this worries me.

Zeze is going in to have a tumor removed from the immediate area of the liver early next month and I’m worried about that one too.

And then Aryntha has been having worries about lymphoma…

I guess, as I tend to ignore the passing of time, that all of this is miring me down with my age a bit and putting me in touch with mortality… Everyone I know in my age group seems to be breaking down, which of course means that my time is coming whether or not I choose to acknowledge it.

Sure, I’ve got my excellent German ‘super soldier’ genetics which have allowed me to go 36 years and still have my tonsils, have no fillings and all of my teeth (except for the two wisdom teeth the Navy pulled ‘just because’), and I’ve seen a doctor exactly once in the last 15 years – and that was for a recluse bite. Heck, I’ve only managed to break two bones in 36 years, and only one of those resulted in doctor time, and my early years weren’t exactly ‘safe’…

But I know there is a fundamental law of this universe called entropy that states I too will break down eventually. And while this fact doesn’t worry me, it’s the way of things, I find myself worrying about how it will affect everything around me: How will the world remember me? Was I a good person? Did I make a difference in someone else’s life?

The measure of a life’s worth is in what it has achieved for others, and I step outside myself and view everything from afar and I have to say ‘yes’.

I’ve had a pretty good run I suppose and if the house lights were to come on tomorrow I think I’d be happy. I’ve seen places on this little blue marble that a lot of people haven’t, I’ve done almost everything on my grandfather’s list of things a person should do while they’re here; from piloting a ship and climbing a mountain to teaching and setting foot on foreign soil… Ok, I haven’t built my own house yet, but I’m working on that. 🙂

Important news: Colorado now has its first Caribou Coffee!

For those of you who have been around me and have sampled the most excellent “Hoof Mints” that I always carry with me, you can now get your own as well as the best coffee this side of Seattle.

On the way home from work Jae and I just happened to be driving west bound on Hampden, making for home when I saw the sign. So a sharp right turn later and we were just in time for the grand opening, complete with lots and lots of folks from the company. We got our coffee for free and Jae was quite impressed with the quality… Starbucks this aint.

Here’s how you get there: Caribou Coffee

I suggest everyone with any appreciation for the fine art of the bean head here immediately, grab some mints, and enjoy a great cup o’ joe. My favorite is the “mint condition”, which is really something worth trying. 🙂

A general warning to anyone who breezes past ye olde journal here…

Always put *something* in the tip section of a credit card purchase slip at a restaurant, even if it’s a zero.

Yeah, this is probably common sense by now, but I’m not very common and even though I tend to dislike people, I still default to trusting them.

Wednesday last week I bought lunch for a few folks at work at “Rosie’s Diner” near work, and even though I have a receipt here that states I signed for $33.19, my bank is reporting that I was charged $39.83, because I left $6 for a tip in cash and left the tip blank, blank. Then yesterday we went to “La Fogata” for lunch and we all paid $12 and again left cash for the tip so I left the tip blank, blank. Today my bank says that cost me $13.80.

So I essentially gave away about $10 last week because I like to leave a 20% tip in cash so that the server gets the money that day, rather than a week later when the credit purchases return.

To thank me for my generous tipping, the servers decided that I needed to pay more.

And folks wonder why I don’t leave the house.

Thus ends another two week long work week…

Today I boxed up my office for the movers tomorrow. I’m still not sure if they’re expecting me to go in tomorrow and help move, but no one said anything and I have way too much work to do before Monday.

On the way home Jae and I turned off our phones, stopped by the local cinemediauberplex, and saw “Fantastic 4”. Once again, don’t listen to reviews of a movie, just go see it… It was actually pretty good yet the reviewers are slashing it something horrible.

Sure, it’s no “Batman Begins”, but it’s also the first run out of a new story so there’s both back-story to develop and the actors have to get into their roles a bit more than if it was the third or fourth edition.

Jae is starting to get into the same boat I’m in with work… Wednesday he brought home a laptop from work and worked on one of his projects till some gawd awful hour of the morning. And tonight he brought home an entire PC from work because a different project is short five hours and he plans to do that tomorrow.

So, maybe next weekend I’ll have a couple of days off… Maybe.

But right now I have to get to analyzing several huge streams of numbers, so I’ll sign off here.

Till next time, enjoy the slow moments.

Still busy… I put in 56 hours last week on three different projects. Yesterday I was running a performance test for a company in England, for a deadline of 8am this morning, and there was no air conditioning in the building… It was over 100 degrees in my office for the 6 hours I was there running that test. It sucked.

Fortunately things should be slowing down by the end of this week, just in time for the ‘big move’…

The building where I work has become too small for the company, so we’re moving to a new and bigger building on or around July first. This of course means that I’ll be working next weekend schlepping boxes of crap from building ‘A’ to building ‘B’.

And that’s about it for this update. Till next time, take care out there.