Salt Mining

Back in the office after a week of unbridled slackerdom.

It was easier to wake up than I thought this morning. I expect that means I'll have a devil of a time waking up tomorrow.

Meh.

Blasting Wind

Damn but it was windy today.

I took a walk out to get a bite to eat and saw all sorts of fun effects of the blustery weather. Kids blown off their bikes. Strollers blown askew. Crap blown into the street.

Good, clean fun.

Okay, maybe not.

I considered going running, but the wind is performing merry havoc on my contacts and my allergies. It was enough of a pain to take a walk.

Meh. Gave me time to do some online shopping for Xmas and run a diagnostic when my PC started acting buggy again. Ugh. May need to buy a new machine sooner rather than later.

Sucks.

Digest-a-rific

Ah, Thanksgiving Day. It really ought to be renamed "Gluttony Day".

Oh, I know. We're supposed to be grateful for all the good stuff in our lives, blah-blah-blah.

I'm grateful for all the good stuff every day. Seriously.

Oh, it was great to bond with family and all that. It was also great to devour unholy amounts of pumpkin pie after a delightful meal of turkey and all the other traditional stuff.

I'm still digesting it all. I wasn't even hungry for lunch today.

I actually finished a little Xmas shopping this afternoon. Yay!

Nom Nom Gobble

Soon, sweet, sweet turkey... you and your mashed potato and pumpkin pie allies will be mine. Oh yessss....

Soon.

You can run, but you can't hide.

Ninja Assassin

Yeah, I went and saw it.

Ten bucks and ninety-something minutes later, I regret nothing.

Oh, the critics are right to say it's a bad movie. If you're looking for a movie with a solid plot, great acting, wonderful dialog, and all that... save your money.

If you're unable to handle ridiculous amounts of CGI blood, dismemberment, and decapitations, save your money.

If an ultra-violent, ridiculous, video-game like movie is what you're looking for, cough up some money and watch this thing. It's great!

Needless to say, I loved it.

Ouch

Minor service for the car today. That was a pretty penny.

Now I must consider if I see Ninja Assassin tonight or wait until Friday.

Hmmm... decisions, decisions.

Well that's a bugger

I was supposed to head out to a birthday celebration for a friend tonight.

Canceled. Flu.

Not me. Him. He's got the flu.

That's pretty epic on the suckage scale when you get the flu on the week of Thanksgiving and your birthday.

Swimming in Who

Just saw "The Waters of Mars", the latest "Dr. Who" special.

I have to say, I quite enjoyed it. It was a bit self-indulgent and melodramatic, but compared with past Russel T. Davies offerings, it was pretty solid.

The ending was especially good. I'm going to miss David Tennant.

Can't wait for the next one...

Aaah...

I've opted to take the entire Thanksgiving week off.

Feels good.

The family dinner last night was a big one, so I slept in late this morning to digest the ungodly amounts of food I devoured. It's otherwise been somewhat productive. I scheduled my next car service. I hit Costco and the grocery store.

Nice and low-key.

I can now slack until drinks later.

And slack I shall. Oh yes...

It is Sunday

There is nothing to report.

That is all.

Car-ma

Ye gods the traffic.

Just had dinner with some friends in Foster City. The drive in was mildly-bonkers but the drive back...

Good lord.

Crazy amounts of people on 101, so I took the San Mateo bridge. And, of course, there was an accident on the bridge. I got past that and the CHP was doing a lane closure on 880. GAAAAH!!!

It was like a driver's ed horror story.

That said, dinner was totally worth it.

That was quite fine

After a slightly-disheartening class I hit the city with a buddy to do a little bar-hopping last night.

It was a pleasantly-random evening. Met some Aussies in an Irish pub and tried desperately not to get hit by some of the less-accurate dart throwing by some of them. Ate Shepherd's pie and drank many a Guinness. It's been too long since Guinness and my palate have spent quality time bonding.

Hit a saloon after that. Fine drinks, but it was crowded. Standing room only. I had some kind of fancy drink that had five or more ingredients in it. It was tasty.

We wandered on to a third bar that caters to people with more money than either of us combined and imbibed a bit of whiskey on the rocks and tried not to ogle the more attractive ladies too obviously.

My ability to drink a lot has slid significantly in the last ten years. It was an early-ish night.

Slept like a rock, but this morning was headache-free, so yay for high-quality booze!

The Dangers of Mocking Mother Nature

I went to lunch with a bunch of my teammates today. The weather forecast was for wind and rain. We'd had plenty of the wind but not so much rain up to that point.

One of my friends drove and as I sat in the passenger seat, I made a comment to that effect. I actually believe I said something like "Wow, what a pathetic excuse for rain."

Hindsight being 20-20, I probably should've kept my trap shut.

We finally found parking at the restaurant. Street parking. Just as the skies opened up and the rain came down heavily at a lovely 45-degree angle.

My jeans are still damp.

My umbrella was not as helpful as I'd hoped it would be.

Life lesson here: Mother Nature (or God) isn't really keen on me mouthing off too much.

Lesson learned? Probably not...

AAAAH!!! WANT!!!!

WANT!

WANT!

WANT!!!!

Sublime Awesome and Irritating Hotmail

So I roused myself early and watched last night's "Fringe" episode in its entirety.

Wow.

That was pretty awesome. I feel rather giddy. This will, of course, make it all the harder when FOX inevitably cancels the show. God forbid they'd put it on another night.

This, of course, just makes Friday all the better. And this Friday has taken an eternity or six to arrive so I'm especially overjoyed it's here.

Pretty much the only thing that's dampening my mood is Hotmail. Oh, I don't have a Hotmail account. No, no. For some reason, Hotmail is treating all my personal emails from my ISP as spam. Doesn't matter who I send mail to. If they have a Hotmail account, it's bouncing.

This happens about three or four times a year for about a week or so, then it goes away.

I only ever have this problem when I'm runnning an email roleplaying game with my friends (one or two of whom have Hotmail accounts) and only with Hotmail itself.

I can kind of see why the RPG stuff might trigger a spam filter. I'm not sure why my email to a friend overseas would.

And, of course, I have no business relationship of any kind with Hotmail so there's no one I can really resolve this with.

Jackasses.

Oh well. At least it's Friday.

MacGyver Tailoring

The downside to a martial arts class is that you've got to wash your uniform pretty regularly in order to keep it from evolving into a new life form and murdering you in your sleep with a rank odor.

Good, clean fun.

This does put a bit of wear-and-tear on an outfit that's already getting its fair share of abuse. Washing machines are not gentle constructs.

The pants of most martial arts uniforms I've owned are essentially a pair of white cloth pants secured about the waist by a draw-cord of some sort. Usually said draw cord is looped through the pants along the waist.

The sucky part is when the cord is double-looped about the waist (as my current uniforms are) and part of the cord gets pulled so it's stuck mid-way through a seam so I can't pull it tight. My only option is to pull the cord loose entirely and try to figure out how to re-string it.

Did I mention I'm hopeless with a needle and string? I'm especially wary of messing with any sewing on white cloth. My blood (from said needle) would doubtless stain the outfit.

So, on my last laundry pass (last night), this happened with one pair of pants. I had to pull part of the cord loose and yeah... I figured that was that. Time to buy a new uniform ('cause God forbid a supply store would only sell the pants... that would make too much sense).

I don't know what inspired me to grab a wire hanger from my closet, straighten it, duct-tape one end to the cord, and use the straightened hanger to re-string the pants.

I may never know.

All I know is that it worked.

I don't consider myself an especially-brilliant example of humanity, but damn I'm proud of my little flicker of resourcefulness tonight.

Yeah, shut up. I know it's a small thing. Let me have my victories, damnit.

Yeeeeaaaaahhhh....

Once again, the siren lure of advertising through blogs like Uncrate works like a charm on me.

I got one of these.

Just arrived today.

Why? I dunno. Maybe I need something last-ditch for the zombie apocalypse.

More likely it's that I have poor impulse control in my spending habits.

We all live in a...

More neat random stuff. (Gizmodo)

Wow

Saw this bit on Mao's underground Beijing, thanks to an io9 story.

This stuff is always awesome to read about.

frothing frenzy of frantic... um...

Okay, the title got away from me. I can admit that.

It's funny how my Tuesday ended. I completed a baking marathon the likes of which I've not done in a year or so.

I started off making some kind of strawberry shortcake cookie things for my friend as a birthday present.

Those... didn't wind up looking all that great. I sampled one that broke as I chipped it off the cookie pan. Tastes okay. I'm hoping my friend likes the batch. I figured out what I did wrong, so a second try should go smoother.

Then I made a batch of cookies, mainly to make sure I can still do it. I owe a batch to someone and so this batch was a trial run for the office (I saved a few for my own consumption).

And finally, brownies. Yeah. Those are dangerous. I've circulated some of those to my teammates at work.

Never hurts to provide sugary snacks to the coworkers. It helps garner a bit of goodwill when I need information later on down the road.

All that baking made me spin a bit. I wound up crashing early-ish last night and reading my latest book acquisition: "Monster" by A. Lee Martinez. It's quirky and kind of funny, so I'm enjoying it.

Then I heard a soft tap at my door that might, conceivably, be knocking.

Nobody knocks on my door. Well, hardly ever.

So I staggered to the door. One of my younger neighbors was a bit panicked. I guess her wireless died and she was working on some kind of assignment that required access to the Borg Collective.

Anyone asking me to diagnose problems with hardware must be truly desperate. She sounded really upset and stressed, so I grabbed a spare Ethernet cable and followed her into her apartment.

I'm always amused when people apologize for their places being a mess. Mind you, these are people who have not seen the chaos that is my apartment. If they only knew... but I digress.

Yeah. I had no idea why her wireless wasn't connecting her laptop to the Borg Collective. A light was out. Why was it out? I dunno. She turned the thing off and on again and that resulted in zip.

When in doubt, I'm a fan of hard-wiring. The router indicated it was still connected to the Internet, so I handed off the Ethernet cable on a loan and trundled on back to bed.

I don't think I've ever seen someone so happy to be reconnected. That's one serious student.

I should have offered her a cookie. Might have helped with the stress.

Ah well.

Halfway through the week!

InfoHurl

Saw these on multiple blogs (OhGizmo! and another blog that escapes my memory right now).

$317 + shipping for sunglasses. Yikes.

Yeah, I can resist that expenditure. Especially after California jacked up taxes so my paychecks are shrinking. Just in time for xmas, too.

--
Saw these on multiple gadget blogs as well. These puzzle me. Why not just wear or carry a watch?

--
I watched AMC's remake of "The Prisoner" for a bit. I don't understand why they bothered to use the name of the classic 60's series. Why not tweak the story a bit and present it as something more original? The way it was written (slow, plodding, a bit dull) it served double-duty as being uninteresting and pissing off fans of the original.

With a bit of editing and tightening, it probably could have been a more compelling story. I found my interest waning fairly quickly, though and I watched both episodes from Sunday night as well as what I could catch on TV last night.

Remake fever. Seriously... what the hell? I think the only remake that's been worth a crap was Abrams' Star Trek movie. And to be honest, that flick had little to do with classic "Star Trek". It would have been better to go with something completely original and let Roddenberry's legacy rest.

The Weird

My building had some paint work done recently.

So it's November, right? We're well in the middle of Autumn and heading towards Winter.

So why is it that I'm seeing all kinds of pollen embedded in the fresh paint? What the hell is pollenating in NOVEMBER???

And how do I make it stop? 'Cause I'm reasonably sure that's why I've been feeling sick lately.

Well that and the crappy ventilation in my office.

A Flurry of the Crazy

Eleven hours of gaming on Saturday. While my last post implied I didn't enjoy it, I was being a bit disingenuous. I had a marvelous time until about 10pm when I could feel my (cold? allergies? ailment?) creeping up on me and sapping life force.

A little after 11pm, I called an end to it and shoved everyone out of my apartment. I was having difficulty keeping track of my plot threads and that's a bad thing when you're GMing a game. It's especially worse given the complexity of the game I was running and the sophistication of the six (!!!) players I had.

Sunday I was moving slowly. I felt fine after I got some sleep, but I wasn't breaking any speed records to do anything. I trucked in to see the 'rents and had a fairly standard visit. I'd meant to bow out of dinner, but lingered instead and enjoyed a fine meal with the whole family. I think I made it home around 7pm.

I'm pretty damn tired still. Good times.

At least I don't feel sick anymore.

ugh

Eleven hours of gaming.

I'm getting too old for this.

Downtime Upswing

For someone who takes slacking to near-religious levels, I find I have a very hard time taking it easy. When I have hobbies I enjoy, I have difficulty backing off and letting myself coast away from them. Leads to burnout and/or injury, more often than not.

As I started feeling ill this week, I forced myself to take a break. Minimal time on my email gaming stuff. No martial arts.

After work, I just read a bit, watched TV, and got caught up on sleep (with the aid of Nyquil over the last two days).

It helped.

I think I've pretty much shaken my cold. I feel pretty good this morning.

And that's good, 'cause nerds will arrive soon for gaming. I'm ready for that as well.

Ah, slacking. Is there nothing you can't cure?

Where's my hockey mask?

'Tis a chilly morning on this Friday, the 13th of November.

I lurk at my desk with my hood covering my head in the darkness of my cubicle. Why? The air conditioning has come on. And I like the psychotic Sith-monk look.

Automatic deposit has brought me monetary joy.

Email has brought a few anguished screams of job-related irritation and frustration.

The residue of Nyquil from the previous evening leaves me disoriented. My immune system is wresting with what appears to be a cold (or really severe allergies). Thus far, my immune system appears to be winning the battle. Ten-plus hours of sleep probably helped.

For reasons I'm not entirely clear on, this seems like a really cool little invention.

Tomorrow, nerds meet for a brainmeat stew of psychosis.

I require more coffee.

Downtiming

I've decided to take the balance of the week off with respect to my class. I need to heal up a bit. I'm still dealing with some pain issues in the limbs. Ugh.

Perhaps I'll do some jogging to get the requisite exercise in the meantime. At least the legs and feet work.

Though, all of this is a good excuse to embrace that cyborg body. Hm...

I might be fighting a bug, too.

Yeah, sleep is good. I likes the sleep.

And the new "Fringe" tonight. I'm sure I'll like that too.

sleepytired

So sleepy... and it's only Wednesday.

Veteran's Day

So today is Veteran's Day.

Alas, my office does not offer this as a paid holiday, so I'm office-bound. Strictly-speaking, I'm waiting for a search to finish so I can get something done.

I'd like to say some pithy thing about how we should honor veterans and all that. Given that I'm not a veteran and all the actual veterans I know have long since passed away, it would sound a bit much to aim for pithy.

It seems enough to call out that it's Veteran's Day and those who served in armed forces deserve some recognition for all that they do.

And I really hope that we, as a world, get our shit together so soldiers won't have to do the soldier thing.

Hm. Turned into a semi-pithy posting anyway. And my search is done. Time to get back to the salt mines.

Subterranean Standard

It's Wednesday.

I can't think of anything to say that sounds witty in my mind.

Yes, I'm quite aware that the stuff I post isn't witty outside of the confines of my mind. Delusion only goes so far.

So it's sad when I can't even pass such a low bar.

I watched last night's second installment of "V". It was slightly better than the pilot.

Kind of in the way that getting jabbed by a three inch needle is slightly better than getting jabbed by a four inch needle.

The acting is still moderately horrible. The only saving graces are Elizabeth Mitchell and Morena Baccarin.

Peoples of Earth: Surrender

Surrender and bow to me as your new supreme overlord. I won't promise I'll be a benevolent ruler or even a particularly good ruler, but at least I'm being honest.

Rode my bike today. T'was a chilly ride but I regret nothing.

I can tell it's chilly when the hookers are not out on the street. That or Tuesday mornings function as their day off. Good for them. It's too cold in the mornings for the skanky mini-skirt look.

Tonight is the next installment of ABC's "V" remake. I'm torn. I absolutely hated the pilot episode, but given the dearth of science fiction on TV, I feel as though I should give it another chance. Hmph. Maybe one more chance. I'm a glutton for punishment, apparently.

If I ruled the Earth with an iron fist, any remakes would only be allowed if they were spectacularly-good. Otherwise, the writers and the producers would be put in a deep, dark pit and forced to do death-match battles with horrific mutant monsters until they were devoured for the entertainment of the masses.

Hey, it worked for the Romans, or it would have if they had access to horrific mutant monsters.

I will have horrific mutant monsters. Have no fear on that score.

I'm rather tired this morning. Tired and megolmaniacal. Must be Tuesday.

Conversation in the Office

Staff 1: "I had a very productive lunch today."

Staff 2: "That statement sounds wrong."

Damn skippy.

Lingering Suckage

So you're practicing grappling (and not in the fun manner of romance... I'm talking more about a martial, trying-to-break-someone way).

Your opponent is strong like a freak and weighs nearly as much as you do.

You can't really breathe.

You're having trouble breaking a hold.

Something along your ribs, on your back, just... gives.

That's it for the evening. You're shot. Hurts to bow. Hurts to inhale. You're concerned that maybe one or two of those ribs actually cracked.

Hot shower. Icy/Hot pack. Advil.

The next morning, you're more functional. Your back hurts still, but it's not nearly as crippling-bad as it was.

Good times. Ribs are clearly not-cracked. It's got to be a pulled muscle or something.

Survivable.

Fast-forward a couple of days. The pain is lessening. The pull isn't nearly as bad as you thought it was.

Then the air conditioning goes on in your office. You sneeze.

THERE it is!

Yep. Hurts to inhale again.

Goddamnit.

So. Cool.

This backpack may redefine "cool".

195 Euros is a chunk of change, though. That's about $292.19, according to an online currency converter.

Ouch.

Brrrisk!

'Tis a wee-bit chilly this fine mornin'.

A slight nip in the air.

I love it.

Mm

Quiet Sunday.

Nothing of substance to report.

Carry on.

Fringe redux

As "Fringe" episodes go, last night's wasn't bad. It wasn't one of the better ones, but it did shine a spotlight on the character of Broyles a bit. Good times.

It was kind of "X-Files"-ish, really. Well, more so than usual.

Not that it's a bad thing, mind you.

Fringing on a Friday

Ah "Fringe", you restore my faith in television.

Well, you did until io9 reported that you're having problems with ratings and might get cancelled.

*sigh*

Only watched part of last night's recording this morning. I was trying to get caught up on the news as I devoured breakfast. That attack on Fort Hood is truly disturbing.

V-ery bad

I finished watching the first episode of ABC's remake of "V".

What a load of shit.

Oh, Morena... why do you lend your goddess-like countenance to this load of steaming crap?

First of all, most of the show is overacted and not in a "it's so bad it's good" way.

Then there's the dialog. "What's our weapon?" [meaningful look] "Devotion."

Are you SERIOUS?

All the characters are bad cliches. The narrative flow is horrifically choppy.

Oh, and thank you ABC for the not-too-veiled commentary on the Obama administration. Evil aliens support universal healthcare. Yeah. Thanks.

It really troubles me that there are idiots out there who probably think that's really the case.

"Gasp! Socialist aliens are trying to make our poor people healthy! Damn them and their alien meedling!"

Oh, and the one African American actor? Well... I'd hate to spoil things for people who actually watch the show, but let's just say I can understand why one of my friends thinks there's some racist overtones to the show.

The original "V" wasn't great by any stretch, but it's goddamn SHAKESPEARE next to this piece of steaming offal.

Thanks for wasting an hour of my life, ABC.

The only that surprises me is that this kind of crap wasn't actually on FOX. It certainly sounds like Rush Limbaugh had a pudgy, drug-addled finger in it.

slow crawl

Chance of rain. Meh.

I'm too tired to care.

Moving so slowly today.

puzzling politics

I'm scanning the news and reading a bit about the election results from yesterday. Seems the Repubs did well in several races. There's speculation that this means trouble for the Obama administration in a couple of years, especially if Congress doesn't start focusing on unemployment.

Really?

Seriously?

Sure, the high unemployment in the U.S. is a serious problem and needs to be addressed, but does anyone really think the Republican party holds any kind of reasonable solutions to that? This is the party that's all about deregulation which helps policies like outsourcing which leads to fewer U.S. jobs...

I'm actually flabbergasted that the Democratic party can still function given how disorganized and ineffectual they are. They hold majorities in Congress and hold the Executive branch. Instead of pushing forward agendas to fix the damage of the previous administration, they're making a lot of ineffectual noise about "bipartisanship" and not getting a goddamn thing done. Case in point: the healthcare bill.

Did anyone seriously think that was going to be any good? As soon as there was noise about bipartisanship and the Repugnicans dominated the debate, that bill was dead. Seems to me that the Dems should've taken the offensive from day one and never let up.

Of course, that would require them to pull their collective heads out of their asses. That's probably asking for too much.

I'm all for bipartisanship, but let's be realistic. It ain't gonna happen if the Democrats can't get their own party members in line. Nevermind Lieberman... that tool should be shunned altogether. He's a Republican. Stop pretending he isn't and move on, guys.

It's like watching a train wreck. Gah.

Status Report

I didn't bother to watch 'V' last night. I taped it. I watched part of it this morning. I can already tell I'm going to intensely dislike most of the characters.

And that's after five minutes of showtime.

Still... Morena Baccarin...

Sorry. Where was I? Oh yes.

New "Fringe" tomorrow. That has me more excited. Killer shadow creature that dissolves people into an ash-like dust. Now THAT's what I'm talkin' about! You know what this show needs? Morena Baccarin!

I need to focus.

My work is going through policy shifts. I've managed to dodge a bullet in that regard and be a "test case". This will allow me to continue to attend my classes on-time... at least for now. This could all change next week. Livin' la vida Morena Ba... aaaah!

Cooler this morning. The weather report claims a ten to fifteen degree drop today and possible rain tomorrow through Friday. Good times. It's November. I'm ready for cooler weather and rain.

See? I can make a statement without referring to Morena Baccarin.

Um...

D'oh.

Remakery

Tonight ABC's remake of NBC's "V" airs.

No matter how many times I re-read that statement, it sounds pretty ridiculous.

Even with Morena Baccarin (mmm... Morena Baccarin...) in it, I fully-expect this remake to suck beyond human capacity to understand. Why?

The original "V" was okay for its time, but it hasn't really aged all that well and like most attempts at a franchise, it pewtered out into well-earned oblivion for a reason.

Did the lessons of Reanimator teach us nothing? Don't raise the dead! That counts for TV shows too! Remember "Knight Rider", after all.

That said, I expect I'll watch the show tonight. If I have to eat my words, well I can live with that.

November Arrives

Okay, technically it arrived yesterday but I was too busy slacking to take note.

A full moon of a Monday is kicking me in the face, so now I've started to notice.

Yeah. November.

2009 is doing the Kessel Run in record time, isn't it?

And the Bay Bridge is still closed. Personally, I'm not directly affected by the bridge closure and I'd just as soon CalTrans take the time they need and do it right. That piece that fell off last week was 500 pounds of big. Would've crushed my little car like a grape.

So, November. Time to start gearing up my tummy for Turkey Day later this month.

Should be an interesting month, all said. I've already booked every weekend into December (and that's going to fill up fast).

The roller coaster of the year is on a downward spiral.

Yawn

That has to be the most low-key Halloween-on-a-weekend I've ever experienced.

I can't say I was inspired to do much. I briefly considered going into the City, but with the Bay Bridge out, BART would have been more nightmarish than usual.

Now it's a lazy Sunday.

I love that, but alas Monday will follow. Ugh.

Developments at work are not making me look forward to tomorrow.