In lieu of meaningful posting (‘cause I have nothing meaningful to post, of course) I present the following link for your amusement. It’s tasteful, timely, and… something else that starts with the letter T, I’m sure.
Author: Karel Kerezman
-
Warning! Warning!
From the creative minds behind the Church Sign Generator, I present the following warning sign:
Go forth and make your own, or something.
I’d post something more witty and in-depth, but I just put in a very long day dealing almost entirely with email server issues. I’m beat. See you tomorrow, friends.
-
Sleep is for the weak. Wait, I’m weak! I need sleep!
I scheduled myself a three-day weekend, figuring I’d catch up on sleep among other things.
Friday morning I slept in a bit, and I assure you I reveled in the luxury. The rest of the day was busy yet fun, including meals at the Hot Cake House and NoHo’s.
Saturday morning I woke up, bright eyed and bushy tailed, at 8am. You know how it goes, sometimes, when you wake up and you know that you are absolutely up-and-at-‘em, not to sleep again until siesta time at the earliest? Yeah, that’s how Saturday felt. I cleaned house, then met up with Wendi & the kids for the previously-journaled dinner and movie fun.
Yesterday morning I woke up, bolt upright in bed no chance of going back to sleep time to get cracking… at 7am. I repeat: I woke up, fully, at seven o’clock in the morning, on a Sunday for which I had no concrete plans until evening. This could count as an injustice, but it gets worse.
Last night I went to bed at a fairly decent hour, knowing that my first day back at work after a three-day weekend is always “entertaining.” I tossed and turned for an hour. I got up again and watched an episode of anime to see if that would help. I went back to bed. At about 1:30am some jerkface down the street decided to honk his horn for two solid minutes. After that, I stopped looking at the clock. I was in full-on, stare-at-the-ceiling insomnia mode.
So today, I was an hour late to work, and I’m running on maybe two whole hours of sleep. Mondays suck enough without throwing sleep deprivation into the mix, dammit…
-
A weapon made for my kind of gameplay.
One of the gaming activites available to our usual Sunday evening group is that of “create very large battlemechs and blow things up with them.” We do this virtually, of course (darn it all). Our “MechWarrior” of choice is MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries with the MekTek Pack installed for added blowing-things-up goodness.
MekPak version 3 came out recently, so this weekend we gave it a whirl. Among the usual improvements (more mechs, for instance) we got a really big new toy to play with: The railgun. Only two mechs can even mount it, it’s so big. So of course we all had to try it out. (“Seven slots? Good grief! 56 points of damage? I want one!”)
After a few normal rounds of play, we noticed that one of the maps is a target range. Ooooh, nothing but flatness! It’s perfect for those of us (like myself) who like the long-range game. We did moderately terrible things to the AI mechs and generally had a… dare I say, blast? Of course I dare.
Why yes, my stress has been relieved. Thanks for asking!
-
Steamboy Redux
Wendi and the kids and I got together this evening for dinner and a movie. Mind you, it was later than I originally though it’d be, but that’s understandable considering they all went to the airport (with all of the delays that entails) to see the kids’ maternal grandmother off homeward. We all went out to Applebee’s, then decided to rent a DVD instead of brave the crowds and costs at the cinema. (Besides, we couldn’t all agree on a movie; I’m wholly uninterested in the Potter flick, let alone Chicken Little. Bleah. And the less said about the new Zorro flick the better, apparently.) We picked out two movies, both animated: Steamboy, and Robots.
Tonight we watched Steamboy, and because I have kids with discerning tastes we unanimously agreed on subtitles and the original language rather than suffer the dub. While the voices fit somewhat better, I’m afraid that the movie is only barely improved on account of that fact. It’s still a big, loud, beautiful mess of a film, as I’ve said before (at considerable length).
Maybe I’ll watch Robots when I go visit the kids in a few days. Then again, maybe not.
-
Weather Vain
As the weather gets colder, I’ve run into a bit of a problem. Last year, and for several years before that, I had my wonderful Columbia Sportswear jacket to keep me warm in winter. The problem is that I lost the (awesomely warm-keeping) liner portion early this year. (I forgot it at a restaurant. By the time I called, it was gone. Argh.) The shell portion of the jacket by itself makes a good rain guard and a mediocre windbreaker, but even combined with the best sweater I have doesn’t make a very warm coat.
So, finally, this evening I went to Burlington Coat Factory to see if I could scrounge a decent winter coat that I could afford. All of the wool-type coats I tried didn’t fit in one fashion or another. It was a case of too much shoulder, too much sleeve, not enough room inside, or some combination thereof. In the next aisle over, however, I found a selection of trenchcoats. The very first one I tried on fits perfectly, looks pretty good on me, sports a detachable liner, is comfy as all get-out… and only cost $50. Score!
In related news, I was a very very good boy when we (Lil’ & Geoffrey & Angst) were at Best Buy (picking up a cheap little digital camera for Angst’s birthday). I looked at, but did not buy, a boxed set of anime that I’ve been considering picking up. I resisted temptation even though the sticker price was only about 3/4 the list price I’ve seen online! Go, me!
I’ll get the hang of this fiscal responsibility nonsense yet, dammit.