Month: July 2002

  • Mini-Vacation Recap

    Yes, I went to the department-head meeting. Yes, I downloaded the Maximiser data at 10:00. No, I didn’t get sis’ CD-ROMs mailed off. (Whoops.)

    We did, however, eventually get down to the Family Fun Center for some… er… fun. This time we started with the bumper boats. I love bumper boats, and these have squirtguns. Muahahahaha.

    To dry off, we played 18 holes of minigolf. The huge group of kids (did their shirts read YMCA? I think so.) let us play through as they massed at the first couple of holes. Once past them, we had nobody in front of us (or behind, really) for the rest of our game. No pressure! At one point I got down on the astroturf and blew on Erica’s golf ball to make it go in. Needless to say we took very little of the game seriously, which is the best way to play minigolf anyway. Scorecards? What fer?

    After that we split up, Wendi and Erica taking on the go-carts while Alex and I tried out the arcade. Oddly enough our first game was air hockey, and it was just about the most fun we had in the arcade. We’ve pretty much decided “to hell with the arcade next time.” The money would have been better spent on another round of bumper boats.

    Once our arcade tokens were finally exhausted we decided to head out, grab some snacks and head for home. By way of Future Dreams. While at Safeway (of all places) we noticed the paperback for the most recent Raymond Feist “Krondor” novel. This computer-game-based series isn’t bad, but it also isn’t all that superb. We picked this one up anyway, and… it isn’t bad, but it also isn’t all that superb. (Why no, in fact, I’m not going to waste time with a full review. Why yes, I did finish reading it in a mere three hours.)

    We came home, kicked back, prepared and enjoyed some chocolate chip cookies, read comics and novels and such, and then Wendi and her dad took off for another late night of karaoke. Meanwhile I got online, read and replied to my usual ultralight stack of email, then decided to post a recap of my vacation day.

    Um, I guess that’s everything up to this point, isn’t it? Tomorrow it’s back to the salt mines for me. I hope I’m up to it. I’m a little depressed about the conjunction of my small raise and the increase in insurance deductions, but I’m trying very very hard not to let the depression get ahead of me. Wish me luck.

  • Taking The Day

    After a busy stretch at the office, and with both my newly-improved paycheck and Wendi’s double-gig-weekend payday coming, we decided that tomorrow should be a day off. We’re going to run errands, then we’re going to take the rugrats down to the Family Fun Center in Wilsonville. We checked it out on Sunday (we played minigolf, actually) and enjoyed it enough to want to go back during the week when it might be just a smidge less crowded.

    I still have to show up for the department heads meeting at 8:00, and at 10:00 the Spring book Maximiser data gets released. *sigh* So I can’t leave until after that’s installed. Then we run to Future Dreams for the comics, and to the bank to set up my account. (I get my own debit card so that I can’t possibly screw up the family finances whenever I go out to lunch or something. This way I can pay my Future Dreams and Northwest Link monthly bills on my own, yay!)

    In other news, I just finished burning and labelling the six CD-ROMs of anime music videos I promised my sister as a wedding present. I’ll package them up for mailing tomorrow morning while I wait for the Maximiser data to be released.

    At least I’ll get most of a day off, dammit.

  • “you might get to be a Christian, too.”

    The proprietess of Dragon Ink came across a book entitled, “Little Visits With God.” She also gave us a sample from one of the stories…

    Why Cindy Wanted To Be Spanked

    Cindy had been naughty, and she knew it. Twice in one week her daddy had spanked her. She was little, but not too little to know why she was spanked.
    Cindy told her little friend Walter about the spankings.
    “I never get spanked,” said Walter.
    “Sometimes you should get spanked,” said Cindy.
    “Why?”asked Walter.
    “‘Cause then you’d be easier to play with, and you’d grow up to be a better man and … and… you might get to be a Christian, too,” Cindy explained.

    It’s only frightening because it’s real.
    Dragon Ink – Little Visits

  • Versus Man, Versus Monster

    It’s done, it’s posted, and if you have the bandwidth for a 38 megabyte download I encourage you to check it out.

    Versus Man, Versus Monster, footage from Iria: Zeiram the Animation and music by ‘Kin Selim.’

  • Music Video Progress Report

    After three solid hours today spent working in VirtualDub and Premiere, I can confidently claim that by day’s end tomorrow my third anime music video will be complete.

    My progress reports to the animemusicvideos.org journal can be seen here.

  • Weekly Recap, the pilot episode

    As I promised (or was that a threat?) recently, I’m going to take a stab at a Weekly Recap based entirely on Argephontes‘ Weekly Round-Up. If nothing else, this will give me something to work on all through the day. I have more sites to cover than she does.

    • Since I stole it from her, let’s start off with Argephontes. Or Tempest Moaner, to use her Porn Name. Her week consisted mostly of headaches, coffee of low quantity or quality, and the pursuit of decent drinks. Ah yes, and probably weaseling out of showing up at a wedding. Can’t say as I blame her.
    • Cruising across the tabs at the top of my Mozilla screen I come to Captain Rooba, who presumably experienced a miscommunication with that new girl in his life, and who’s been too busy to post all that much. Too busy, in fact, to post a Rooba’s Remix this week. (Correction, he did too post one! Sorry ’bout that!)
    • At debris.com, the intrepid homeowner (and the developer of Monaural Jerk) endured odd-hours realtors, BocaBurgers, and mountains of business cards. Last week. This week he reminds us that we should be reading real books, too.
    • Snappy the Clam is just glad to be out of the hospital and feeling somewhat better. To say that he had the worst couple of weeks out of everyone I know would be a gross understatement. Stop by his site and wish him better health, please.
    • Emily took lots of photographs, as is her wont. She also was introduced to something called “1000 Blank White Cards,” or 1KBWC for short. Maybe Matt of debris.com should send her all of those business cards as BWC stock.
    • Meanwhile, Jessy is preparing for her stint in the Blogathon, as well as enduring the final couple of weeks before her move. She’s both anxious to get moved, and anxious to do some things before she leaves her current home.
    • The general mass-migration to Movable Type continues as Q Daily News prepares to leave Manila in favor of the now-ubiquitous MT. He also exhorts us not to send video email, a plea I can agree with wholeheartedly. And lets not forget new species of centipedes. Of course not.
    • Our favorite truck-driving fluttergirl is preparing for another long stint on the road. During some downtime she and her friends concocted some movie abuse along the lines of, “Weekend at Bernie’s 7: The Bernie Witch Project” and “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Bone.” She also names her computer machinery after South Park characters. I don’t feel so bad now for using Tenchi Muyo names. Nyah!
    • Firda, the Weblog Wannabe, got some fansign but is also suffering from design theft. (Anyone who uses a duck motif gets points in my book. As if you couldn’t have guessed.) Her collection of blogged links this week ranges from online games to “100 albums you should remove from your collection immediately.”
    • Madame Sinister of Sinister Tales is in Houston by this point, but the first half of her week provided plenty of journal fodder. The biggest irritations in her life both involved customer service… one on the part of hospital staff, the other on the part of understaffed grocery stores. She may have managed to convince herself to actually spend her vacation in vacation mode, not in “check my office email occasionally” mode. More power to her. Turns out she has three degrees of seperation from J.R.R. Tolkien, who liked not to talk so he talked about the weather.
    • I finally got through to Melpster‘s site, where she continues to suffer the lingering nasty cough that just won’t die. She’s also computering in the dark, when it’s dark. Her life lately is an odd combination of dream interpretation, working at Wherehouse, watching tapes of Vance DeGeneres and trying to keep her spirits up.