Month: February 2004

Ahh, blessed silence… Zeze has left to return the relative to Maryland so I’m free to enjoy some music and unwind from the peopling I’ve gotten over the last few days.

It’s taking some time for me to get used to having folks around *all* the time again and being drug four different directions simultaneously as long as I’m awake.

See, Zeze (my roommate whom I’ve known for a long time) is always in a perpetual state of “go” and of course wants me to go along too. Me, I’m more of a sit and meditate type and if it isn’t an emergency I prefer to stay put. Add in Zeze’s son, his wife, and their son who are here most of the time too, and you get a very high level of interaction that I’m just not used to.

It’ll get better once I get my own wheels and I can disappear when needed. Right now I’m considering buying either a new Cooper Mini or a PT Cruiser. The Lotus is just too expensive insurance-wise and they’re such a pain to keep running… I’m going to be far too busy to tinker with a car all the time, especially if I need it to get back and forth to work.

On to other things…

I’ve gotten a few emails about the new laptop and the top two questions are “why a Mac?” and “Just how big is that?”:

Well, first of all I chose the Mac after comparing -every- decent laptop on the market and finding that overall the Powerbook has the most features I wanted. Secondly it’s a Unix-based system which makes it very powerful when I feel like fiddling under the hood. Thirdly it’s like getting two laptops in one as it emulates Windows XP almost as fast as a native $1000 laptop, so anything I need to do on the PC side is still very doable. Lastly it’s made out of metal, not plastic, and it just looks very industrial which I like. 🙂

I’ll have a nice external 250gig HD hooked up to it via firewire 800 in another week or so and then a similar external DVD+-RW drive the week after that.

Well, I think I’ll sign off here and just sit and enjoy the music. Speaking of which iTunes directly exports what I’m listening to when I hit “send” so the format will be a little different from now on.

Have a great day!

Ok, it only took seven years, about a thousand dollars, and nearly as many miles and hours but I finally got my Virginia driver’s license back. Yay me!

Unfortunately the VA DL is *ugly*… I much prefer the Colorado DL when it comes to aesthetics. The VA DL also expires on my birthday in 2009; five years as opposed to Colorado’s ten years.

Oh well, at least I got it done… Now I can go look at that white Lotus Turbo Esprit at a dealership near here that I’ve had my eye on since I got here. 🙂

Let’s see, what else? Zeze is on the way to Maryland to get some relative who will be staying here for the weekend so I actually have a few hours to mess around with the laptop and listen to some music. The sound system in the Apple Powerbook is just as cool as the rest of it…

Fredericksburg has gotten very big since the last time I was here. It’s shocking to me just how much of the town has been replaced with a shopping center or mall. Fortunately, coming from the outback of Colorado where it took two hours to get anywhere “civilized”, I’m finding the city-ness of FBerg to be refreshing. Of course it also helps that the condo is on the outskirts of the city in one of these instamatic neighborhoods full of clone-homes. Everything here is about 6 months old and the development isn’t full yet so it’s a pretty peaceful place. I’m sure that in the next six months I’ll be jonezing for some solitude, but that’s six months from now.

Well, I think I’ll sign off and maybe futz around with Shadowbane for a while then take a nap before it gets crazy around here again.

Have a good evening out there folks…

Ok, today we’re trying a new thing here for ye olde journal… I found an application for OSX that simplifies the act of posting a bit by supplying a direct desktop-to-journal interface rather than my usual habit of typing everything out in word, then cutting and pasting to here. I figure I’ll try it for a few days and see what happens.

Everything is moving forward at the prescribed pace at the school. My first MCSE/MCSA classes start on the 8th of March. They are Monday-Wednesday evening classes so that should leave me enough time to check on the CBT-based A+/Net+ classes for a few weeks to make sure Zeze doesn’t have any issues with them. See, Zeze knows the material well and good enough, but has never taught a formal class before… I’ll also have Friday afternoons and Saturday/Sunday off, which is nice since I haven’t had a complete weekend in a very long time.

Today I make another attempt over at the DMV which should be *loads* of fun.

I also finally got a chance to really work with the laptop yesterday and discovered a few very basic features that I’ve grown quite accustomed to missing from OSX. Oh well, I’ll work around it.

Oh, and I managed to find the update for Shadowbane last night… It’s not available anywhere in the US but here in Fredericksburg where one of the local game stores in the mall has a dozen copies. Now I just need to find time to mess with it.

Well, I have to run off to the DMV, then over to Express Auto for a bit, then up to Maryland to pick up Zeze’s nephew, then I might have a few minutes before midnight to work on something other than my stress levels…

Lyon is dragging my sorry carcass over to the airport this morning where I will attempt another takeoff and landing and end up in DC once again.

It might be a few days before my next entry; I’ll be picking up a new laptop and having to get everything settled before I can get back online.

Wish me luck!

Today I tossed my worldly posessions into Wolf’s car and am leaving Avon for the unknown. I’ll be at Wolf’s place for a couple of days.

Friday I get on an airplane to Virginia, and Monday I’ll be reviewing class materials before classes start in early March.

I’m giving Wolf my PC as it doesn’t fit in a suitcase. I’m supposedly getting a new laptop when I get there, but I’ll be offline for a few days while I get it and get it set up.

Wolf is also keeping a couple of small boxes for me until I either send for them or return to get them… Luckily I don’t really have very much, and what I do have is just small senitmental things that pack easily. So I’m not taking up a lot of room.

It’s depressing that this is what I’m used to; since I left home for the Navy in 86, I’ve essentially lived out of suitcases. I don’t expect this trip to Virginia will do anthing to change this, but I’m willing to give anything a try.

I took a few photos of my mountains the other day for something to look at when I get homesick…

Today’s my last day at the shop. It’s just me here today and there probably won’t be any business – so I’ll do like I usually do and put on one of the hundreds of VHS movies we have here as background noise.

For posterity, here’s some pictures of the shop and some of the work Jack and I did to turn a garage into a store:

More snow today which is good not only because I like snow, but they are saying that due to Denver’s summer thirst, we pretty much need it to snow every day till the middle of June to break even.

Well, I got the call last night from the school and everything is a “go”. Some time here shortly I’ll be back in Virginia (shudder) and teaching people everything they need to know to stand in an unemployment line because all of the tech jobs are on the eastern rim.

Actually, it’s not that bad I guess. Right now the tech sector is re-igniting there in the VA/DC/MD area. Maybe a few corporate overlords are becoming disenchanted with the lack of either creative or QA ability in the eastern rim software sweat shops, I don’t know.

It is a fact though that the average $20 a day eastern rim programmer can only perform whatever programming function he/she trained for. They aren’t a very “out of the box” group of people; things like communist dictators or a rigid caste system will do that to you. The exception to this rule is if they actually manage to get out of the box and move here to the US.

Basically, if one were to equate programming with animation, the eastern rim software sector is much like a large group of cheap tweeners… They can churn out lots of base code, but there is no design element there. There is also little to no QA in the system either and a lot of the code bought from there needs a lot of refining once it gets back here…

I don’t know. I guess it’ll all boil down to costs – like everything else.

Well, outside the real world I managed to make 9th level in both crafting and adventuring with my little dragon last night between phone calls, emails, Second Life stuff, and all of the other projects I have going on here. One more level and I’ll get out of the “hatchling” phase and start to get some real undead stomping power. 🙂

Well, I have to run and get breakfast and get to work.

Take care out there in ‘net land…

I took the plunge on another 3D, computer based time waster yesterday; Horizons.

So far it’s a lot better than Shadowbane simply because it has a lot more depth. Shadowbane excels with the combat aspects of a MMORPG, but they seriously overlooked everything else “RPG”… Some folks have taken to calling Shadowbane “ShadowQuake” for this reason. The game has a lot of promise, but it appeals too much to the twitch gamers out there who could care less about back story, detailed race histories, or political strife… They just want to run around and kill people.

Enter Horizons, a true RPG world accessible by thousands of folks simultaneously. Really, you can advance your character just by making things and selling them… No combat needed. Though it helps to be familiar with which end is the sharp one on a sword as the world is being over run by an undead army and they don’t care if you are the best mason anyone has ever seen.

Oh, and dragons are a playable race. (yes!)

Fortunately they did dragon’s justice by making them;

A) Hard to play well as pretty alien to anything people have played before, as I would expect from a sentient, winged, weapon breathing lizard.

B) They start off pretty weak as hatchings and take a long time to “grow” into the 60 foot long monsters they are capable of becoming… This keeps the average dragon “wannabe” from playing one for very long before moving on to a Dwarf or something.

C) They are physically a bad choice for “combat gamers” as they cannot wear armor other than their scales (which mature as they do into tank-like plating later), and use no weapons other than tooth and claw (which improve with age as well)… So for the first 60 or so days of play, you’ve gotta learn your enemy real well before engaging them in combat.

So if you don’t have the patience to tough it out being one of the weakest races in game for a good long time, dragons aren’t for you.

The game is new and no one has managed to get a dragon past “adolescent” yet so no one really knows what we’re capable of. There are theories that it will take an accumulated 60 days of playing to reach “adult” and it’s unknown how long it will take to reach “ancient”.

So far, after one evening of play I’ve achieved 8th level in “Adventurer” and “Crafter” which are the two basic schools one can learn before 10th level. After 10th, there are something like 20 different schools one can train in, though Dragon kind are bit limited in this respect (we don’t use tools as bipeds understand them, so their classes mean little to us)… I think I’ll either become a lair crafter or a scholar of the healing arts, not sure yet.

No one is exactly sure yet on how far one can advance either… In beta some players managed to get beyond 100 levels in a class. Of course this took months of single minded dedication to said class. But for all practical purposes the game is limitless.

Mechanics aside, the game is also quite beautiful to look at… For example, one of the dragon cities, Dralk, is set in the cone of an active volcano and consists of massive floating rock spires held down with immense chains with links three times my height. The lava flows and glows, the paths around the city steam and fissure, and the crystals that hold the spires aloft glow faintly and are translucent… Even the occasional small rock falls from overhead and can be heard splashing into the lava pool below. Pretty amazing really… And it’s probably a lot better than this as my video card is on the far edge of “suck” these days.

All in all, I’m pretty impressed. I’ll report more as the days progress and I manage to squeeze a little more free time out of my day to play.

As of 6:07 this morning I’m officially half way though the warranty on the average twenty first century human; I’m 35 now. I suppose I should go get my tires rotated and my oil changed. 🙂

On my annual ‘trip around the sun’ date I like to look back and see where I’ve been:

Thirty years ago on this day I was five. Those who raised me and I lived in this tiny little trailer in west Longmont Colorado and I went to Lincoln Elementary. I got my first bicycle today, but the mother unit was far too overprotective to let me go anywhere outside the postage stamp yard with it, though I was smart enough to know that I had to stay on the sidewalk as long as I had those goofy training wheels… My favorite toy was what was called a “Zip Racer” which was this plastic dragster with a rip-cord operated gyroscope for a rear wheel… Well, my stretch Hulk was pretty popular too till I cut him open about a week from now to play with the viscous goo they filled him with.

On this day, twenty five years ago I was playing AD&D with my next door neighbor, Philip Pike, in his mom’s basement. Flinthorn was already three years old at this time. Philip was probably the best friend I could have ever asked for as a kid and I spend so much time over there, usually in the hopes that his mom would adopt me, that I was an official part of the family. Ah, the adventures we had in that basement would fill a full length novel… There were periods of days where the walls of the basement weren’t there and all we could see was the vast horizons of our imaginations. The computer of choice was a Sinclair zx80 and later a Commodore VIC20.

Twenty years ago today I got my learner’s permit and six months later I got my driver’s license… This means I’ve gone 20 years with only one accident; a very strange collision with a speeding auto-parts delivery truck while picking up my future ex in New London (some say this was a sign), and only three speeding tickets. Not bad I guess considering how I used to drive… There are a few folks out there who still remember “Highway Moshing” and Doug Aubenque was once in the car with me when I pulled 2 360’s and a quick reverse into a driveway on a busy New London street in Brian Dorricott’s little red Toyota Corolla GT-S. Hehe, how the mighty have mellowed. The computer of choice was an Atari 800xl and my first car was a 1969 Toyota Corona.

Fifteen years ago today I was serving in the US Navy on the USS Pennsylvania (SSBN 735), living in a one bedroom apartment in New London Connecticut, had recently met my future ex-wife, was spending most of my waking moments gaming, and things were looking pretty good for me. My birthday event this day was a lazer-tag battle over at the New London Arboretum with about seven other people. It was a cold, miserable day but we all had a lot of fun… It was a lazer-tag event similar to this one where it was determined that Unicorn’s aren’t really extinct; we just learned to hide in trees. I used a highly modified lazer-tag rifle fitted with an IR intensity strength meter (for detecting near misses), a stereo “bionic ear” system for hearing enemies out in the brush, and a fully custom glass optics system with an insanely powerful IR emitter. My ex was mistress of the lazer-tag pistol and carried two of them in holsters… She was bad news in that game and could eliminate trained green berets in field exercises. The computer of choice was an Amiga 500 and the car was a brand new Chrysler Le Baron.

Ten years ago today I was coming back up from four years of hell. I had been laid off so many times I couldn’t count them all, I had been living on the good graces of friends on and off for a long time. It was just generally a shitty time for everyone involved. Anyways I had recently gotten a maintenance and management position at a big apartment complex on the corner of Federal and Colfax. Those of you familiar with Denver should have just shuddered uncontrollably. I had just separated from my ex about a week earlier and had recently discovered this BBS called “Empire of the Dragon” which was operated by Aryntha (back then it was Icedragon). I’ve known Aryntha now for over ten years. The computer of choice was a home-brew 386dx-33 and that Amiga 500 which was then known as the Franken-Amiga due to all of the mods that had been preformed upon it. The car was a1977 Fiat X-19.

Five years ago today I was living on a 40 acre farm in Rhoadesville Virginia with ZeZe, Neme, their two kids; KKB and Shebub, the great and powerful Pegasus (who lived in the apartment above the horses), the horses; Frencheska, Widgit, Thing, Chinaball, Tuffy and Lana, the dogs; Orpheus, Buddy, and Tatter, two cats, a ferret, and the rooster. The place was immense with a back yard/forest you could get lost in which included a 2 acre lake. I was making ridiculous amounts of money at this time and my life style showed it… I traveled to England several times just to visit a good friend, Findhorn, for a while and I jetted off to Amsterdam for ten days and drove around Western Europe. I had my 28 foot Scarab offshore racer, a hopped up 1967 mustang, a T1 line running directly into my bedroom for my internet connection, and the computer of choice was the absolute latest in technology; a home-brew dual 1.13 Ghz PIII that was just insane for the day.

Today I live in a roughly 8000 square foot mansion near Vail with Larry and Vivian who seem to have adopted me. I’ve known Larry for the better part of eight years and I work with Larry in his various pursuits from the shop over in Eagle-Vail to his consulting firm down in Denver. I’m not rich by any stretch of the imagination, but my income is completely unattached as all of my bills are covered… Basically I get to have all the perks of being a multi-millionaire without the tax issues and my friends can make the drive and enjoy it too. My computer is still a top of the line PC, a 3.2 Ghz P4, and my 1991 Caprice I just gave to some friends who needed it… Much like how they gave me a roof and a bed when I needed it.

All in all, I’ve had a very good life. I can look back at all of the bad times and realize that I’ve learned a lot from them. I’ve fallen in love and been heart broken, I’ve traveled extensively and seen a lot of the world, and I have a lot of really good friends who I can count on and who can count on me. I have no enemies that I know of, except perhaps my ex who admits she has issues with forgiveness of anyone, not just me.

All things happen because it is time for them to happen, and looking back I can see how it all fits together… I’m thankful for all of it, the good and the bad, because it is what makes me uniquely “me”.

Ok, I’m back. It’s been a long, hard week up here in the thin air.

There’s nothing of any real merit to report, so I’ll just babble incoherently for a while; which I tend to do even if I’m not writing in the old journal here.

It looks as if it is school season again for just about everyone I know. Aryntha and Rai are both in classes down at CSU now, Lyon is deep in his medical training, ZeZe is in training for a teaching position, I’m heading back east to do my teaching gig again, and now Lynx is heading off to a technical school for CCNA and MCSE.

I wish him luck. This will be tough for Lynx, but I think he’ll do well.

Let’s see, what else? Oh, I got a new digital camera yesterday… The story behind it is pretty good. See, a few days ago this guy came into the shop wanting to sell me a brand new Sony MVC-CD350, still in the box. He’s a ski-bum and had bought the camera from Wal-Mart, tossed the receipt, and run out of money for a lift ticket. Wal-Mart wouldn’t take the camera back without a receipt so he was screwed… Well, I bought the camera off him for $100. He wasn’t extremely happy with this as he bought the camera for $400 and wanted at least $300, but he went for it anyways. It’s not like I was purposely trying to screw with the guy, all I had on me was $108 dollars and some change.

I played with the camera a bit and while the “picture directly to CD” thing is pretty neat, Sony really should add some ram to the cam so that you can take more than one picture before waiting the 30 seconds for the CD to finish writing.

Cut to yesterday; I took the Sony, in the box, over to Wal-Mart. The Wal-Folks know me pretty well because I’m always buying big ticket tech stuff from them and continually having to return it because some ape in the back dropped it off the top shelf or something. So I trundle in with the box, the lady at the customer service counter sighs audibly, and I get a $400 credit on the camera without having to say a word. So I turn around, add $100 from my wallet and buy a brand new Casio EX-Z4 complete with 256meg SD memory card…

$500 camera, $200 cost.

Now, if things hold true for me, because I got away with this something bad will happen to me to counter the effect… At least I know it’s coming though.

That’s about it from the Colorado High Country Unicorn Sanctuary and Flop House. I’ll talk to you later.

Take it easy out there…

Still kicking. Been real busy the last few days with no immediate end in sight.

Will post more soon.

Ok, my renter-imposed travels have abated for the nonce. They left yesterday after the football game and the house is in shambles.

To recap what has happened since my last missive:

We left Aryntha and Rai’s place at about noon Saturday with grey skies and very light snow falling, and journeyed across Denver to the north. We got to the Longmont L-CXR facility as the blizzard of ’04 started, took a few quick cold and wet photos and pressed on. After that we went about 7 miles further north to another site that wasn’t there anymore. It was unanimously decided that the day was a bust and that we should return to the apartment.

Aryntha returned to bed, Rai and I used the TV computer in the living room to research some other old phone stuff. Later in the evening we went over to “Breakfast King” to meet up with Korn, Keyler, and “The British Guy” who I can’t remember the name of.

“Breakfast King” is a really cool place with good food (as long as you don’t get the fish), good prices, and a very unique atmosphere… It was voted the best place in Denver to get eats and feel like an unpaid extra in a Quinton Tarantino flick. It’s also open 24/7 which is very handy for us. We stayed there till about midnight talking about software, then returned as a group to Aryntha and Rai’s apartment to continue software talks… All I can say about the software is that it involves a lobster, a robot, sputnik, and a lot of very existentialist imagery.

We all crashed at about 3-4 am. I got up at 7am as usual and as Aryntha had a lot of work to finish on Sunday for a contract he’s working on, I decided to stealth out and get the things I needed to get done in Denver done.

I dropped off the big pile of paperwork to the accountant, gassed up the Wag, and then as it was 9am and Lyon and Wolf always seem to be up and running at about the same time I am, I called them to see what they were up to.

I woke them up.

Lyon spent about fifteen minutes getting it though to me that it was ok and that he needed to be up anyways as I drove over to their place. I got there and as they got a look at my bedraggled continence I was given a few cups of coffee, a nice bowl of chicken noodle soup, and a lot of worried looks from Wolf.

I had no idea I was so run down…

Once Wolf was sure I was fed and would survive we got down to the stuff I needed to do before I went back up the mountain. I got the form filled out for the car I gave them, got their new digital camera hooked up to Wolf’s computer, and got the new router configured… See, Lyon and Wolf have a new semi-permanent guest by way of “Scales” who has moved in and he too has a computer, so the old router just wouldn’t cut it anymore… The new router is a Linksys 54G job which should work ok now that it has the new v.2 firmware.

As I was taking care of this Vivian called from her daughter’s place over in Cherry Creek and wanted to know if I could come over and make her laptop work with their network.

So I said my goodbyes, fired up the Wag again, and bounced down town to Carla’s house which is valued in the 4 to 5 million dollar range… It’s a nice place, but they’ve got so much wrapped up in it that it’s not functional as you can’t touch or use anything in it.

It took me less than a minute to get Vivian’s laptop running on the network, and this includes hacking the WEP key for the house router… I really need a new field of work.

I talked with Larry briefly as he was sitting down in the living room to watch “The Game” on the 60-something inch DLP 1080i TV which is surrounded by custom speakers that are powered by a full Harmon-Kardon set up, which is all in a custom made entertainment center… Seriously, there is more money wrapped up in Carla’s living room than most people have in their entire house; and they’re never there to enjoy it.

I don’t understand rich people.

So with all of this accomplished I snagged a bottle of designer water out of the fridge (still had the $8 price tag on it), fired up the Wag once again and made for the hills.

I swung though Golden to get some pictures of the North Table Mesa AT&T site, then followed highway 6 west though Blackhawk canyon for a change of scenery. I stopped in Georgetown to get some lunch at Raymond’s Place (best burgers on I-70) then pushed on though to Vail.

I pulled up in front of the house, snuck back into my room which appears to have made it though the siege without much injury, took a long hot shower, and then fell into bed.

Thus ended my Sunday.

Today begins another week and I’m off to the shop early to make sure everything is clean, polished, and working just in case Larry visits when he gets home later today.

I still need that vacation…