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newer entries...
01-31-00 signs of life
01-30-00 Super Commercial Sunday
01-29-00 is that your final answer?
01-28-00 noodling
01-25-00 flailing away
01-23-00 Iron Butterfly... cricket actually
01-20-00 in high gear
01-18-00 WWBBD?
01-14-00 present day... present time!
01-12-00 cross my Palm with plastic
01-10-00 alas poor Jiminy, I knew him well
01-07-00 can't help myself
01-06-00 (quasi)millennial fever
01-02-00 my thumb was seriously wounded, but the soul still burns
older entries...
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signs of life
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| 01-31-00 |
At the risk of being tedious, the latest airsoft ordering news: Redwolf acknowledged the IESCROW stuff and I've paid. I'm waiting on the next step and I wouldn't be surprised to see mail in my box tommorow morning (Hong Kong is 14 hours ahead of my time zone, so it's lunchtime there as I write this).
Meanwhile, Combat Warriors did finally write me back. There was indeed a credit card error (they didn't get specific) and they've cancelled my order as I requested. Of course when I check their web page it says my order is still in process. I'm hanging on to that mail in case I see any mysterious $265 charges on my next bill and/or I get a strange package from California.
Silly me, I actualy promised "Mom" this morning that I'd be more patient and calm and relaxed. This afternoon there was a pop quiz. :P If you've ever taken a graphic meant for a black background and tried to make it look good on a white background instead, or vice versa, maybe you can appreciate what I mean. It looks so easy when you first set out to do it. It looks so crappy when you actually do. I eventually wound up remaking a couple of logos, which turned out infinitely better than trying to jam square pegs into round holes. Plus I got some use out of my old "flames" wallpaper image. Whee!
Speaking of websites, Steph has mentioned that a bunch of us are pitching in for mooville.net. I'm one of those. She wants to moove her journal/weblog/whatsit stuff to mooville and reserve per-bast.org for religious things. But I think a journal is an appropriate thing to keep on a website about Seshat -- y'all are just lucky I'm not posting accounting records here or something. :) I'll use mooville for other, more sinister things (bwahahaha).
Like dumb little java games maybe. I want to learn java, and what better programming exercise than writing simple games? I particularly want to do a version of SameGame (aka The Cafe Game aka HMaki), since it's very addictive, doesn't seem too difficult to put together and I'm not 100% satisfied with existing versions on the web.
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Super Commercial Sunday
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| 01-30-00 |
The Super Bowl is today. St. Louis's big chance. I could care less, but it'd take some effort. I'm not even interested in the commercials this year. I may wear my Buccaneers shirt when I go out today just to be ornery.
I have a love-hate relationship with snow. It's got a certain type of beauty and wonder that nothing else does. It blankets the world in pure sparkling white and softens hard edges into smooth curves. It highlights the roofs of buildings and completely changes the look of the architecture. A mere parking lot becomes a miniature range of mountains and valleys and gorges and lakes. It quiets the world and brightens the night. A couple of days ago a perfect little six-sided crystalline star the size of a gecko's toe landed on my sleeve and stayed for about ten seconds before melting away.
But then there's that sickening feeling you get when you step on the brakes and your car just keeps moving. Or the wet mess tracked inside. Or your car door freezing shut. Or snowflakes landing in your eyes and ears. Or all the messing around with coats and gloves and scarves and hats and boots, shoveling walks and de-icing windshields and getting woken up by snowblowers and all that.
So I'm glad it only happens a few days a year here. It's rare enough to be special, and not so frequent as to get really annoying. Now all of snow's less majestic cousins -- sleet, hail, freezing rain -- I could do without entirely.
I hit the local paintball store yesterday, not daring to hope they'd have airsoft goodies but thinking maybe they'd have general gear that applies to both sports. So I made the trip through the snow (stopping at Jiffy Lube first because I had plenty of time to kill and it was only a year overdue). They did have a full line of JT masks, but everything else was very paintball-specific.
It was kind of interesting in an abstract way -- but not as cool as airsoft, and more expensive besides, and though I don't have a basis for comparison, probably more painful. Or at least paintful. Ha. Little joke there. Oh, forget it.
You can apparently buy all the parts of a paintball "marker" and custom assemble one yourself. (It can be done in airsoft as well, but it's a lot more complicated... almost all custom jobs start with a complete, off-the-shelf gun, maybe two.) They were doing some kind of work on a full-auto marker, and dry-firing it sounded pretty impressive -- big barrel and lots of gas compared to airsoft. Actually I don't know what a gas airsoft gun sounds like in person, but I will soon.
Ordering from Redwolf is a little complicated. You email them the list of stuff you want (including things not listed on their site because they can get just about anything airsoft related), how you want it shipped and how you'll pay. They email you back with a quote. You log on to IESCROW and enter the details of the transaction. IESCROW sends an email to Redwolf, who confirm the details and make any necessary changes. IESCROW then sends you an email and you log on, approve any changes and pay. IESCROW holds on to the money and emails Redwolf that it's a go. Redwolf prepares the shipment (orange paint, trademark removal, upgrades, etc.), ships it out and notifies IESCROW that it's on the way. IESCROW lets you know. You get the package, make sure it's all there and working and tell IESCROW to release the payment to Redwolf. Whew.
GASA's ordering 3 upgraded M4A1s and Jeff's AK47 from Redwolf. The process started approximately a week ago, but they're at the stage where Redwolf is getting the stuff ready. They said it could take 10 days because of the upgrades.
I have a separate order in, because at the time they put theirs in I hadn't made a decision yet. I requested a quote at 1 AM on the 27th and got it at at 11 PM on the 28th -- not bad at all. I've sent IESCROW the details, but it's a weekend. Since I'm not getting upgrades I may actually get my guns before they do... which would almost make up for not saving on shipping.
I moved the geckos over to the other aquarium, causing them several hours of what was either anxiety or curiousity -- they're reptiles, it's not exactly easy to figure out their emotions. :P Josephine seemed to take it a little easier than Kalila, who did about 42 laps of nose-bumping the sides of the tank to figure out the borders. But they both tried scrambling up the sides. It's pretty hysterical when they're scrambling madly to try and go up, but their bodies are slowly tipping over sideways. Poco watched the whole process with great interest and even did a few sympathetic laps around his own cage. I wished I'd had my camera. The two geckos did some bizarre modern performance art poses, and they eventually snuggled side by side under the larger of the two hidey logs (after much turning around and stepping on each other's heads). Today they are definintely seeing the benefits of their new home though -- alternately basking under the lamp and retreating to the cool side, instead of sitting on the warm side all day trying to soak up what warmth they can get.
Great. Now the upstairs neighbors are intentionally banging on walls or stomping or whatever it is they're doing. Crude communication from one side of the apartment to the other. I just know they're Neanderthals or something. Now I have to retaliate by doing some practice airsoft shooting... don't worry, it'll be at a cardboard box, not the Neanderthals.
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is that your final answer?
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| 01-29-00 |
Sitting here in front of my computer with the lights turned out, playing Solitaire, Minesweeper and Freecell puts me in one of three states:
vegetative zen-like state where little things like hunger, thirst, call of nature, sore arm from the mouse, end of laundry cycle, etc. don't come between me and the game. I know it's mindless and I don't care.
even more boredom than that which made me start playing in the first place.
introspective, soul-searching, is-28-too-early-for-a-midlife-crisis mood.
I hate Minesweeper. I have a knack for finding mines the hard way. It's not that I can't figure out where they are based on the clues -- it's that when faced with a pristine grey surface to click on, my cursor just homes right in on a mine. Boom, the little smiley face turns into a dead frowny face. Unfortunately this sort of, um, talent, doesn't apply to games where I'm supposed to click on the hidden thingie.
Anyway. I hit Mood #3 tonight. It's not quite depression, though it's sort of a low-grade despair. I would describe myself as generally happy, but there's always some nagging irritation about things that aren't right in my life, and these just come to the forefront every once in a while. Some random thing will knock me out of it -- I'll see something funny or I'll get a wave-of-contentment thing in shrine or I'll buy myself some new toy or maybe I'll just wake up feeling great. It always works that way.
Now I could get really deep and ask myself hard questions to which there may be no answers... or I could just take some web-based personality tests.   Thanks Steph for inadvertently pointing 'em out. I took the Celebrity Matchmaker test and it came up Angela Basset. I'm bad with celebrity names so I had to look her up on IMDB. Turns out she grew up in St. Petersburg, about 40 minutes away from where I did. She has about 14 years on me, but Stella from the movie dug younger men... alright, I'll stop. :)
So...
Am I afraid of success? My guess: maybe. Test result: no (moderately afraid of pressure, not at all afraid of isolation).
A control freak? My guess: not really -- I'm more inclined to let things happen and accept them. On the other hand, mindless rigidity on the part of another person, or a tool (such as Macromedia Dreamweaver (cough)) really bugs the hell out of me. Test result: moderately low in romance, very low in work and leisure, and a big 0 in interpersonal. I guess I let people walk all over me.
Am I loony? I like the name of this one. My guess: moderately loony. Test results: confirmed, though I'm lower than average in public looniness (as I would have expected if I knew the test broke it down like that) and higher in emotional looniness.
Am I a mad scientist? My guess: probably not. Test results: indeed I'm just not maniacal enough.
What's my emotional age? I have no guess here. They rate this on a 0-100 scale just like the rest though, so the result (61) is pretty meaningless.
Social Skills Test? Guessing I do pretty bad on this. Oddly enough the test gives me a 65/100 and tried to sell me a book about tea recipes and table settings. Crowds bug me, being singled out for conversation (even small talk) by a complete stranger bugs me, I don't do parties well, at every opportunity I stick with my close friends instead of trying to mingle or meet people, I even try to sit in the back or away from the table in meetings at work until somebody nags me about it. But I accept that as the way I am... social anxiety is just a temporary state, not something I think I need to change in my life.
How motivated am I? Guessing it's moderate here. Where it comes to "maintenance" type things, the daily grind, I procrastinate badly or just skip it. I haven't done the dishes in 3 weeks, my car is a year overdue for an oil change, I haven't seen a dentist or optometrist since I moved up here. I'll do things if they're assigned to me or if they absolutely have to be done, but probably without relish. On the other hand, I go to work early and leave late, and when I get into something I really pour myself into it. Test results: moderate overall. Though it says I'm highly optimistic and I agree with that, I do think I scored higher on "action" and "dilligence" than I should have.
What breed of dog am I? Uh... my completely wild guess is a corgi. Test says... a Basset Hound. I am not making this up.
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noodling
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| 01-28-00 |
All this web design stuff at work made me fix up my own pages just a little. I don't have time for a radical redesign and I'm not sure I want to anyway, but it was overdue for minor color changes and stuff like that.
I literally just heard 2 minutes ago from the man himself that Greg, our lead software guy, is a father. Next thing you know, young Christopher Geoffrey Allen will be in there tuning Simu's Interactive Fiction Engine... well, give him a few years.
I'm still waiting for a response from Combat Warriors... sort of. I've pretty much given up actually. It's now been over 5 days. Couple of responses from customers on their message boards say that they only reply to email on weekdays during normal business hours, but that means they've had 32 hours on the job in which they failed to contact me.
Valkyrie won't take credit cards, so I put in a request for a quote from Redwolf for a Tokyo Marui gas blowback M9, a TM spring Glock 17 (widely said to be the best spring pistol available) and a scope mount for my FAMAS. I'll have to buy gas from another dealer since it can't be shipped via air; I might also see Thorin about a PC duster gas adaptor.
In some ways it's good to have to get a quote first -- this means a few days to think about whether I really want to go that route. There's a $50 non-blowback Beretta by Y&P that is really not very good to look at but is said to be extremely accurate. I have to analyze my reasons for wanting a gas pistol though. I don't want to have to cock the thing manually like with a spring pistol; I want some decent accuracy for target shooting; I want to be able to use it for CQB or for backup in a skirmish; I don't want to pay through the nose. But never having handled them I don't know whether blowback really makes the experience complete or whether I'm just as well getting a much cheaper non-blowback. Hmmmm.
I found out why the geckos haven't been eating well lately: they're not spoiled by the crickets, they've been cold. Their halogen light bulb burned out a few days ago, but I didn't worry about it because they also have an undertank heater. What I didn't realize is that at some point the heater got unplugged. So it's basically been room temperature in there. I do have a thermometer in their tank but it's hard to read unless I stick my face in there, so I just neglected to watch it. Good thing them I've been setting the thermostat in the apartment at 70-75 instead of letting it chill in the cold weather.
I got the pad plugged back in, but I'm thinking about moving them to the full size 10 gallon tank and using a ceramic heat bulb. I'm keeping a close eye on the temperature now though, and if I don't think it's warm enough I'll move them.
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flailing away
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| 01-25-00 |
Combat Warriors has still not responded to my email. I'm starting to get seriously unhappy with them. All over their site they blow their big shiny customer service horns, and though I can't find the page again, I know they made a claim that they strive to answer all email "within hours, not days." It's been about 71 hours so far, and I still don't even know whether they've charged my credit card. I tried another couple of email addresses on their site today -- they say on several pages to email them with any questions but they don't accompany that statement with an actual address or link -- asking them to cancel the order if the charge indeed hasn't gone through. No luck so far. If they provided a phone number to call to talk to a live person I'd have done that, but they don't. At this point, I'm going to follow the suggestion on their website and ask about them on their message boards, see what their loyal customers have to say about my situation... :P
I'm kind of generally frustrated with airsoft dealers at this point. Aside from the two big ones in Hong Kong, they all seem to have generally bad prices, bad reputations, haven't updated their website in months, will be accepting credit card orders "soon", are apologizing for the "recent" (last fall) delays in answering email, or all of the above. And of course the Hong Kong ones have that disadvantage of being in Hong Kong.
That said, the next one I'm looking at is Valkyrie Air. They're in Kansas City, are the organization behind the MWRAA, and if it becomes necessary I can drive over there and knock heads together, unlike certain dealers where I don't seem to be able to get an answer out of anybody. :) Their prices on Western Arms stuff are not wonderful, but the price on their Tokyo Marui M9 isn't bad, or maybe that Tanaka Glock 17 (though I'd rather have a 34 if they have one).
My mom often forwards me the kind of humor things that people bounce around in email. This one kind of struck me funny, in a goofy silly sort of way (can you see where I'm going with this?) 'cause a lot of them are more or less vaguely related to my spiritual Mom. For instance...
- Does killing time damage eternity?
- Why is the third hand on the watch called a second hand?
- Daylight savings time -- why are they saving it and where do they keep it?
- Did Noah keep his bees in archives?
- Do stars clean themselves with meteor showers?
- How many weeks are there in a light year?
Anyway.
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Iron Butterfly... cricket actually
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| 01-23-00 |
This week has gone by fast. The weekend is going by faster. It's already Sunday for cryin' out loud, I have to be at work in 20 hours! Too used to having 4 days in a row of slack.
However, I actually didn't go in to the office yesterday. Slept in, went to army surplus store and Maccaroni Grill and Galaxy Quest with Those Two. The latter two are highly recommended whether or not you're into airsoft. Pasta! Crayons! Nerdy fanboys! Nerdier aliens!
I let myself lose the bid on the spring shotgun on EBay. Instead I put in an order for a Western Arms Colt Iron Match from Combat Warriors. Their prices are inexplicable. Anywhere else, a G3A3 and a G3A4 are exactly the same price; this place asks $350 and $495 respectively. Anywhere else, an MP5K PDW is $20 more than an MP5K; here it's $125 more.
Anywhere else, an Iron Match and a Limited Master would be about the same price; here the Iron Match is $75 cheaper. In fact, it's in the same price range as the WA Colts from Redwolf, and there's no Hong Kong shipping hassles to worry about. And if you ask me, it's the best looking gun in the series.
I pounced.
The order is in, but the credit card validation thing blew up, saying something about an invalid vendor number. I emailed 'em to find out what's up, but that was late Saturday night and I don't expect an answer 'til Monday.
All of WA's high-capacity Colt series are top of the line. The Iron Match is a limited edition from a few months ago, the competition version of the Limited Master. Here's the review that swayed me the most, but everywhere you go in the airsoft community people are saying WA's Colts are the absolute best in looks, technology, accuracy, reliability, and usefulness in a skirmish. The downside is, of course, they cost the most!
The Sardine (my sister in Florida) is getting into airsoft herself. She's starting with one of the better quality spring pistols and is going for the SWAT look. Main problem is finding other people in her area to play with. I know there's a big group in Tampa that put on a major event several months ago, maybe that's the ticket.
I need to go get more crickets. About 1/4 of the last batch are lying dead in the bucket... I'm thinking they might have perished in the cold weather on the way home from the store, or that the gel things aren't as great as advertised.
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in high gear
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| 01-20-00 |
Being on the day shift is an amazing difference. Aside from sleeping at night and waking in the morning, there's the whole new world of being present and awake at the office for meetings. And there've been a ton of meetings this week, too.
It's been four days and I have four new projects. Well, 3 to 6 projects depending on how you split things up. Let's see, there's fixing old stuff for the thing I can't talk about, making new stuff for that thing, working on the Simucon 2000 website with Steph, and prototyping some other things I can't talk about. A full load, but I'm glad to have new stuff to do.
My "old" new toy from eBay came in today. David scraped off the ugly orange paint with his fingernail, which left Cheetos-like residue on his fingers but greatly improves the look of the thing. To further improve it I may paint the slide black (leaving the real metal parts and the lower receiver alone). It's not what I would call accurate, but good enough for a backup in case the FAMAS poops out on me in the midst of a game.
The efforts of GASA and its members are starting to bear fruit... or at least we're getting more people suckered in interested in the sport. Jeff's buying an AK-47, and volunteered himself for the Pain Test with the Bulldog. Mike wants to go to the next game though he insists he's not gonna buy a gun (yeah, right!) Banthis was grumbling about us getting him hooked on the idea. Last I heard, John Donham is getting into it. Relentless Steph is still holding out but we'll soon crumble her will like a cookie. Bwahahaha.
Working on designs for the Simucon 2000 page makes me want to spiff up my own site. But not right now. Stir-fry and Lain are calling.
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WWBBD?
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| 01-18-00 |
I estimated I'm getting $400 or so back from Uncle Sam (still waiting on the 1099INT from my bank though). I'm no longer so sure about the MP5K, so I'm toying with other ideas. Bidding on a pistol-grip Mossberg 500 spring shotgun on eBay and thinking I can slap a cool looking black heat shroud on it and have a pretty nasty looking backup weapon. If somebody else outbids me I won't be too upset 'cause I have other things brewing in my head. One possibility is buying an M16 and doing a cheap custom conversion on it, inspired by some cool things found online:
Normally I think M16's are ugly, but get rid of the sights and do the right magic to the handguard and it's pretty slick. I'm also thinking about gas blowback stuff. Both the Western Arms HiCap style pistols and the machine pistols are cool, but except for the Maruzen Micro Uzi (which may be hard to find clips for), for the price I can get another full-sized electric -- and gas guns don't work in cold weather. Hmm.
I wrote the rest of this two days ago, at home, on a Saturday. Emailed it to myself so I would upload it at work. But with Simucon, tying up loose ends on one project and getting involved in new ones, and the general weirdness of working days again, I haven't had the time or inclination.
What would you do if you won $X,000 (after tax)?
This is an interesting mental exercise... at least, more interesting than watching paint dry (the black spray paint on my FAMAS's flash hider, that is). You have to pick an amount of money you can really do something with, but not so much that you can quit working and become a professional bum. The sort of money you might win in a casino, rather than in the state lottery.
Sometimes I prefer to work it backwards. How much would I need to win in order to fulfill a fantasy?
I'll estimate that $5000 would comfortably pay off my credit cards, car loan, and parents with a nice chunk left over for a House of Netjer donation.
I'm not going to be greedy and put down "new car" -- but maybe set aside $1000 to fix up the Raider. Have a mechanic take care of the leaks, and with whatever's left get a cheap paint job, CD player, detailing, whatever. If that doesn't eat up the full grand, so much the better.
New computer of course. Doesn't have to be the top of the line Falcon gaming machine, just a nice middle-of-the-road HP or Compaq, generous on RAM. Where I'll get fussy is the monitor... 15" LCD panel or better. Let's say $2000 for computer and monitor, with the monitor probably being more than half.
Another $1000 for synth gear. A Korg Trinity is tempting, but I would be better off getting one good rack module and some software. I lean much more toward composing than performing so I can live with my cheap plastic keys.
You probably guessed right away I was going to bring up airsoft. While a trip to Japan to visit Killer Studios would be cool, instead I'd probably contract Clarence Lai from Den Trinity to make me a custom sniper - maybe an SR25 Widowmaker, or start with something less traditional like a SIG SG550. Or maybe a G3 HBAR, that could be fun. Call it $2000, pad out the order with a bunch of other guns and accessories.
Throw in another grand for furniture and miscellaneous and call it $12,000 total.
Hmmm. $10,000 is a more aesthetically pleasing number though, and prioritizing and budgeting will make it go a long way. Debt's first, then $1.5k should cover me on computer stuff, then $1.5k should get me 3 good airsoft guns and some gear, repair the truck but don't worry about cosmetic flaws, get one cheap rack synth, get a new bed and computer chair but don't worry about tables.
That'd do it.
The last coat of black paint should be dry now. Time to go check it out and see if it's ready for some orange brushwork.
And back here in the present time, I need to get moving 'cause Steph and Jeff are ordering pizza and I need to show up with some cash before it arrives.
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present day... present time!
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| 01-14-00 |
I watched the rest of Lain, one tape per night rather than one episode per night like I'd planned. I don't want to give anything away, but I think I can safely say that it gives the ol' blood a serious chill or two before it's over. Unfortunately the first half of Layer:11 is almost a waste of videotape (they sneak a couple of new clues in among a jumble of bits from previous episodes), but the rest of the series gets 5 stars.
We're on the new schedule. I'm supposed to use this weekend to shift over to getting up in the morning like a normal person. I managed a fairly groggy 2 PM start today. Gonna have to do better than that.
I'm not sure if the site is live yet or not as of right now, but here's a link to the GASA homepage. Told ya we were getting serious. There's a few typos and nitpicky things (like calling last weekend's event the "November 2000 MWRAA Game") but overall it's one of the better team/association sites I've seen. Then again, Simu would be in trouble if we couldn't make a half-decent web page, wouldn't we? :)
I'm looking into getting an MP5K or perhaps the custom SP89 from DEN Trinity (I like the looks of that foregrip a lot better than the standard K grip, and I'm guessing it balances a little better for one-handed firing... costs considerably more though). If I'm smart (which is occasionally questionable) I'll wait until after I do my taxes and see if I've gotta pay or get a refund or what.
I finally put on all my gear for a photo, and found that I actually don't like the combination of goggles, ski mask and hat. If I don't tug the mask's hole far enough that my nose sticks out, my glasses fog up (the goggles don't though). Probably I'll get a head net of some kind... I'm still reluctant to leave any part of my face bare knowing how much those BBs can sting.
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cross my Palm with plastic
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| 01-12-00 |
The cricket episode drove the thought from my head, but I was going to mention that I broke down and bought a Palm IIIe. I didn't hold out for the special edition clear case but bought it right from Best Buy. Considering that it comes with the hotsync cradle, the price is right there with the Handspring Visor, and after getting a good look at each of them I think it looks a tiny bit cooler.
Outfitted with lots of freeware and shareware goodies from PalmGear, it's a cool toy and useful for keeping track of meetings, things to do, grocery list, etc. I won't say "I don't know how I ever lived without it" because the answer is "Post-It Notes", but I'm glad I bought it. I could alternately have bought a Dreamcast, a DVD player or (for a bit more) another Airsoft gun.
Yes, I do plan on getting another. The MWRAA game that I missed out on was a bit of a learning experience. Good eyewear is important, but I have that covered already. Lots of storage space for gear, check. A backup weapon -- hmmm. My FAMAS jammed and Tracy had to borrow a weapon from someone else. It was too cold for gas blowback pistols that weekend too, which tells me that the backup should be a good springer (I'm thinking SPAS-12 shotgun or APS-2 sniper) or another AEG (all kinds of possibilities there... Uzi? MP5K? G3A3 and use the FAMAS as a hefty backup?).
The boss is serious about kicking off a St. Louis area group and will be opening up a website soon. I'll keep you posted of course. This is great... the more we get to play and the less we have to drive to do it, the better.
As for DVD, I guess I'm holding off on that. I bought the other three Serial Experiments Lain tapes from Amazon. Told myself I was going to watch them one "layer" at a time to make it last. Blew it the first night by watching a whole tape. As you go through the story a few things start to make more sense, but there are always new mysteries.
Poco did the famous Bearded Dragon Arm Wave at me for the first time today as I was on my way out. It was so cool. I've read about it many times and eventually saw a RealVideo of it, but Poco had never done it before. Maybe he was trying to thank me for the crickets?
The art of feeding lizards goes off into strange territory at times. Take Cricket Quenchers for example -- crickets tend to drown inconveniently in a drop of water, so you give them little gel chunks they can suck on instead. I'm surprised nobody has made a sugary fruit flavored version and sold it as candy.
We Product Developers are going to the day shift/on-call thing starting Friday night. Whoo hoo! It'll be nice to work normal hours, be here for meetings, get in on more projects, be less dead at quitting time and have no more 12-hour days on weekends.
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alas poor Jiminy, I knew him well
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| 01-10-00 |
Josephine still hasn't been eating, so I went and picked up a dozen 2-week crickets at PetSmart. A far cry from the invertebrate monstrosities in a can, these little tan fellows would almost be cute if it weren't for the unbreakable universal law that all insects outside Pixar films are nasty.
First I tried them on Poco. I've read that, while pellets alone are an okay diet for a bearded dragon, young ones grow at a much better rate if they get crickets too. Also, that apple-corn-wheat-chicken flavor has got to get boring after a while, and he doesn't seem to be into carrots or mustard greens. So I sent 3 of the little buggers off to their deaths.
People speak of lizards "hunting" crickets. In Poco's case, it was more like chain lightning. You've all seen cats rocket into the kitchen at the sound of a can opener, but they've got nothing on Poco. Two crickets were gone in less than a second; the third lasted only slightly longer. I've noticed that even with pellets, Poco has a very high speed chomp-and-gulp maneuver, none of this tedious ritual of chewing and swallowing and face-washing that geckos go through. Apparently he can execute it in midair on his way to the next target.
Couple of hours later, just as they were waking up, I gave the geckos about 5-6 crickets. Poco went insane, scrambling back and forth and running up and down the side of his cage, trying to get at them. Finally he settled down and did the dragon equivalent of shouting encouragement...
| Poco: |
| Kalila! There's one behind you! Left side of the log! Your other left! Get 'im! C'mon, move it! Hustle hustle hustle! There you... argh! That was so lame! I can't believe you missed! |
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| Kalila: |
| I was being stealthy. It never would have known what hit it if you weren't over there giving away my position. Now hush. |
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| Poco: |
| There he is! Get 'im! NOW! He's getting away... ARGH! That was pathetic! |
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| Kalila: |
| Will you shut up a minute? Now maybe if I stalk over here, obscuring my trail by going through the water dish... |
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| Poco: |
| GET 'IM! |
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| Kalila: |
| $#@*%. |
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| Josephine: |
| (dainty chewing noises) What's all the racket? |
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| Kalila: |
| Now I remember why I like mealworms. |
Seriosuly though, it was pretty funny to watch. While Poco went nuts in the cage next door, Kalila tried sneaking up on the crickets and failed miserably, and Josephine managed to catch and eat at least three without even budging from her spot under the hidey log. After several failures, Kalila finally did manage to trap one in the corner.
2-week crickets aren't noisy like adults. This is a big plus. I can do this on a regular basis... and will even if Jo decides that worms are okay, just for the entertainment value.
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can't help myself
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| 01-07-00 |
It's ad nauseam. (I'm not anal-retentive, I just think dictionary.com is pretty keen.)
Watching the Lain tape a second time doesn't really clear up very much. Noticed a couple of things I didn't before, which, instead of answering questions, raised more. I must get my hands on the rest! The guys in black suits with laser goggles can't stop me...
Last night I didn't even get up to take cold medicine. It's now been about 20 hours since I took any and I'm still getting incrementally better. Wasn't quite so wiped out just walking to the car as I was yesterday, and I even stopped at Best Buy before going to work. Their anime section is woefully lacking, about 7 tapes and half were Dragonball Z. But I picked up a new keyboard (a cheap ergo one that's half a step above the cheap ergo I use at work) to replace the much-abused first-run MS Natural Keyboard at home that has 4 missing caps and most of the numeric keypad sticks. I thought about getting a truly split keyboard, or a Darwin Smartboard -- more just to be exotic than anything else -- but then there's that little thing called "price" that convinced me otherwise.
I should've gotten a photo of the front of the office while the three warriors were getting ready to load up and head out for the weekend's festivities. The plastic BBs and battery chargers only slightly spoiled the illusion that they were getting ready for a bank job or something. And I'm feeling *almost* good enough today to really regret not jumping in the truck with 'em. Next time.
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^
(quasi)millennial fever
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| 01-06-00 |
"For the past five days I have had the flu and a broken computer. I'm just now getting the computer working. Still working on the flu. I'll write when I am up to it, but I didn't want you thinking I had disappeared." - Pamie, Squishy
"...a total-body cold-and-flu scenario, one of those crushing viral Tet Offensives that, every few years, swats you out of the land of the fully living for a week or two." - Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon
That about sums it up for me. I did have cable modem problems one morning (judging by the mesmerizing flashing of the modem's LEDs) but I was too busy alternating between trying to breathe and trying to sleep that I found it hard to care.
Haven't been this sick since... I can't remember. Sometime before I started working for Simu. The Blair Witch Hot Dog rolled over me in waves, and merely made me nauseous and dizzy and miserable for a few days, allowing me to still perform the basic functions such as breathing and sleeping. This one was pretty merciless all around.
I was going to switch some days with Steph so I could go hit the MWRAA game this weekend. Had to give up on that and go back to the usual 4/4 schedule so I'd have an extra day to rest. And then I had to take two sick days. I actually slept soundly last night and came in to work today, but the process of getting ready for work and walking to the truck (thanks to less than ideal parking conditions at Mooville Apartments) wore me out. So I'm hanging on by a thread here.
Here's the Simutronics weekend warriors that are going off to Operation Armageddon. The other three went for black BDUs since they're starting with a night game; I'm so well camouflaged that the camera didn't pick me up at all. I did this mostly by staying in bed trying not to cough while they went and got their gear and did the photographic thing.
Actually I have woodland BDU's myself. Thinking about getting a sniper veil and going for the full I'm-a-tree-and-you-don't-even-notice-me look... that means less running around anyway, right? :)
Two of the more interesting things I've done while sick is read Neal Stephenson's Crytponomicon and watch the first four "layers" of Serial Experiments Lain.
Cryptonomicon is the sort of massive hardback tome that could break your foot if you dropped it. It looks (if you ignore the author's photo on the back) like a very dark, seriously nasty horror epic. It's not. It links a special detachment of geeks and Marines in WWII with a tiny present-day telecom company that's gotten in over its head in the isles of the Pacific. The author likes to go off on weird tangents, sometimes mathematical, sometimes sexual and sometimes just long and twisted metaphors, but they wind up relating to the tale as a whole or making you laugh your ass off, or usually both. I'm not all the way through it yet, but I'd say it's up there with Snow Crash and his other stuff.
Lain is an anime series that's about the connection between the real world and "the Wired." It starts off with a young Japanese girl, an innocent who wanders through life as if she's lost. A classmate who committed suicide last week is emailing people, and things get weirder from there. I'll have to round up the other tapes and see where it leads next. They're subtitled, not dubbed, a big plus in my book. Both the voice acting and the animation are top-notch. Some cool special effects going on in there too. Consider me a fan.
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^
my thumb was seriously wounded, but the soul still burns
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| 01-02-00 |
Jeff has a Handspring. Steph has a Handspring. I still have my Zoomer. It's bigger, slower, not backlit, doesn't have as much memory, isn't Palm-compatible, the batteries are dead and the main thing I used it for was playing Reversi. Phooey.
After the last couple nights though, what I'm thinking about instead is a Dreamcast. Ooooh, Dreamcast. I told myself I was going to wait until the PlayStation 2 came out, since I'm a PlayStation its ability to play DVD movies makes the cost attractive and the ability to play my old Playstation games means I won't be switching cables around a lot. But David W. brought his DC in for New Year's and now that I've gotten a taste of Soul Caliber, I want more.
Fighting games are kinda fun but I never got deep into them... by the time arcades began to fill up with nothing but Mortal Kombat descendants and clones, I was bored with the whole genre. That was a few years ago though -- and Soul Caliber is to Mortal Kombat what Mortal Kombat was to Karate Champ. (Does anybody remember Karate Champ? Those bonus levels where you had to jump over charging bulls or dodge thrown flowerpots?)
I'm not sure what my favorite character is. Nightmare was my favorite last night, but now that I've learned a bunch of Ivy's moves I have a lot more respect for her. Yeow. The balance between the characters is actually pretty good, it's more a matter of the player's skill and style and knowledge of the character they're playing that really matters.
The only reason I'm updating my website now instead of still in there playing is severe thumb damage. Those Dreamcast controllers lack something in comfort, compared to Sony's Dual Shock.
Anyway. It's 2000... one year away from the third millenium. What's cool:
- we're living in the 21st century.
- a bunch of doomsayers have to go back to their jobs and face the humiliating fact that total chaos failed to ensue.
- all the bozos that bought "01-01-00: The Marketing of the Millenium" t-shirts, totebags, umbrellas, mousepads, watches, yoyos, etc. are stuck with them. (No offense if that's any of you, but... really, what are you gonna do with that stuff now?)
Unfortunately:
- we'll probably have to listen to DJ's play "the best of the eighties, nineties and oughts."
- After Y2K had to resort to the Alternate Universe Gimmick to continue its story.
- we actually had 01-01-00 party napkins.
Here at the office we celebrated not only by playing Soul Caliber, but by watching the South Park movie and drowning in over one mile of silly string. I was sitting right in the middle and caught it from all directions. Lemme tell ya, the stuff sticks to glasses. After wadding up the whole mess it was approximately basketball-sized.
I bought a Can-O-Crickets to see if the lizards would go for it. Opened it up, turned away, held my shirt over my face, put the lid back on and threw it out. It was full of black, bloated, putrid crickets the size of Wyoming. Easily the nastiest thing I've seen or smelled since last time I did the dishes. I'd rather mess with noisy, jumping live crickets than that junk -- and the lizards would be more likely to eat them too. I'll just stick to the worms for now unless Josephine continues to avoid them.
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regulars:
moo
third
chat
kimbered
logic
shades
on a whim:
orisinal
bilbanan
smurf
bang
lobster
yugop
skin
wood
rhythm
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