Well, we went from 5 comments the week before, to 0 comments for last week; kinda like the yo-yo stock market. Which may be good, as things go, so maybe no news is good news, in these turbulent(-ish) times. So this week's and next week's blog: minimalist. Cue applause.
Jan 12th - Sunshine and Vikings
Just a gorgeous Monday here in Victoria; sunny all day, highs around ten degrees with no snow. Of course, the lovely weather means lots of people out, and I get to see a lot of foot traffic from where I am, stuck in a glass box. Which is nicer than being stuck in a back office with no view on a sunny day, though less cruel in some ways. I really, really like the lack of snow here... makes me smile.
I almost didn't have an entry for Monday, apart from that, until I read about this movie: Outlander. It's a story that took 18 years to bring to the screen, it has vikings in it... and aliens. Looks like quite a film, as it has a ton of solid names attached to it, including John Hurt and Ron Perlman of Hellboy fame. Watch for it!
Jan 13 - Superpower Boxes
The apartment is stacked with boxes now, some of them higher than I am, due to the extreme lack of extra space. Having learned from my last moving experience, the boxes are now simply numbered with a master list kept by yours truly so as to avoid temptations for boxes labelled 'camera' to disappear en route. Fortunately it is a short move, as such things go, so I hope that the two days off I've booked will be more than adequate for everything needed to be accomplished.
No superhuman moving efforts from me this time around, as I've not the energy. Though I could wish for superpowers, sometimes having them is not all it is cracked up to be, as this blog shows us. I have a few books on second-string superheroes, which are great reading; not to be confused with sidekicks, these heroes are stand-alones whose powers are not quite up to playing in the big leagues.
I've always been a fan of the Wild Cards series, edited by George R.R. Martin, which takes the superhero and plunks the concept right down into a universe very similar to our own. If you've never read it, you owe it to yourself to pick up at least the first book in the series and have a read. S'good.
Jan 14 - 7 of 9? I wish...
Existence is a fragile thing, but usually you can get a handle on reality even if you need a few supplements to make the picture sharp. However, a new theory may blow the socks off that: researchers at a German facility studying gravity have found data that suggests the universe is in fact a supermassive hologram - no, I'm not kidding.
Maybe those researchers should call up the writers from Star Trek: The Next Generation... nobody else has greater experience with the ways of holographic life as those guys. Especially how it can go wrong.
Or maybe it doesn't matter, in a world where people are more than willing to escape to such places as Second Life, where they can craft a better reality much more appealing than their dull daily existence here.
Still, life is what you make it( heh - still life! ). Eventually you'll end up surrounded by family as you pass from this mortal coil, or the other extreme: alone in your vast mansion, surrounded by sycophants who are only there to ensure a place in your will for a piece of your vast fortune.
Either way is better than a lot of other alternatives... well, except for immortality, but nobody's quite got that figured out. Yet.
Jan 15 - Day 9 of 9 and a Visitor
Today just rolled by, as I was feeling rather beat on this, the last day of 9 in a row working. I was glad to go home and relax, despite the chaos of boxes all around. Most of my plates and cutlery are packed, with a few left for daily use, along with all my books and DVD's so entertainment is limited to the 'net and the Xbox... which will also be packed shortly.
I had an unexpected visitor at the door today, one who has been by to see me several times already. More on this next week, I hope, when I have pictures.
One nice thing is that the NWN group I game with has seen a rise in numbers since the holidays, with a surprising number of new players dropping in to see the server. I've been stunned to encounter several folk who had actually read some of my Nichneven stories, which tickled me no end, I tells ya. It's good to be 'established' in that regard, in that people arrive fresh to the server and already have a sense of 'place' when they wander around to explore. Warms m'heart, it does.
Jan 16 - Lunch on the Prairie
I was up early today( my 1st of 3 days off )to fill in my passport renewal application, which was a nice change from having to go through all the rigmarole of getting one in the first place. The office was right here in Victoria, which was also nice; it moved into the top level of the Bay Center, which makes it quite convenient to get to and as an added bonus for the employees, it is set next to the food court - lunch breaks!
I didn't have lunch there though; instead, I wound up at the Prairie Inn, a place out in East Saanich that was established back in 1859... which perhaps explains why there is no website for it. The pub decor is eclectic, the ceilings are low and the whole place has that ramshackle feel of rooms added one by one as the space ran out. But the food: that's what has kept this place open. I had a large turkey pot pie that was baked to a perfect golden brown, with just the right amount of thick gravy and a huge side Caesar salad. The chunks of turkey inside the pie were thumb-thick, perfect white meat... my parent's meals were equally generous in portions and equally perfectly cooked. We all left with take-home boxes and the feeling of being quite full.
I spent the afternoon and evening packing more boxes, thankful that I had kept all the old bubblewrap and other moving materials from the last move in my storage locker here. Makes the job easier in some ways, though as always it comes down to fill box, tape, label and repeat. When all is said and done, I expect to have over a hundred boxes all told, plus furniture and bags of various soft items like linens. One can only imagine how much easier this would be if every book I had was an eBook... fifty boxes right there, give or take.
Oh, and Battlestar Galactica had its season premiere tonight... which I didn't see, and don't plan to until after the move. For now, I will content myself with a few BSG webisodes, which may be the wave of the future: smaller, less expensive side-plots to the main show that fill in unanswered questions and such.
Jan 17 - Star Wars Nerds love bacon?
While g33k culture has flourished, the stereotypes of the geeky cousin, the nerd living in his parent's basement, remains strong in today's society. While I don't normally endorse ridicule of such unfortunates, I did come across a hilarious mockumentary of the D&D gaming nerd called Fear Of Girls, which oddly has a very spartan companion website - odd, given the series' popularity. The comic writing is spot-on, and the production quality is rather high overall, given the medium. Go have a laugh.
If you liked that, you'll snort milk from your nose when you see this: The first Star Wars Trilogy as told by someone who hasn't actually seen it... in less than 4 minutes.
And what would this blog be without mention of bacon? This week, for those of you with a BBQ gleam in your eye for the first day of spring( months hence )I present: the Bacon Explosion!
Jan 18 - Half-Life 2
While I was out yesterday, I picked up The Orange Box fairly cheaply at EB Games. I've been waiting a while to get this compilation set, simply because my old PC couldn't handle it: it contains HalfLife2, both expansion Episodes, Team Fortress2 and the award-winning Portal... well, HL2 won a bunch of awards too, you know. I played it on and off all day, in between packing various things, and eventually played it well into the late hours of the night. I have to say I loved the graphics for the characters, but the background objects left something to be desired: often ladders and such appeared, well, flat... which is bad for a 3-D game. The story is decent, and the gameplay itself is solid... there are even such notable actors as Lou Gosset Jr and Michelle Forbes, who is also voicing a character in the upcoming Chronicles of Riddick videogame. Eventually I stopped playing, due to a combination of fatigue and the onset of a headache... the high pressure system here is still hanging around, which is great for the weather bu lousy for my constitution.
More cardboardy goodness next week, as I discover where I hid those missing parts for my computer... plus tell you about my visitor. Don't forget, you can always review my past blogs from the menu on the left, by year and by month - click on the triangle / arrows to see a month-by-month listing, etc.
Jan 12th - Sunshine and Vikings
Just a gorgeous Monday here in Victoria; sunny all day, highs around ten degrees with no snow. Of course, the lovely weather means lots of people out, and I get to see a lot of foot traffic from where I am, stuck in a glass box. Which is nicer than being stuck in a back office with no view on a sunny day, though less cruel in some ways. I really, really like the lack of snow here... makes me smile.
I almost didn't have an entry for Monday, apart from that, until I read about this movie: Outlander. It's a story that took 18 years to bring to the screen, it has vikings in it... and aliens. Looks like quite a film, as it has a ton of solid names attached to it, including John Hurt and Ron Perlman of Hellboy fame. Watch for it!
Jan 13 - Superpower Boxes
The apartment is stacked with boxes now, some of them higher than I am, due to the extreme lack of extra space. Having learned from my last moving experience, the boxes are now simply numbered with a master list kept by yours truly so as to avoid temptations for boxes labelled 'camera' to disappear en route. Fortunately it is a short move, as such things go, so I hope that the two days off I've booked will be more than adequate for everything needed to be accomplished.
No superhuman moving efforts from me this time around, as I've not the energy. Though I could wish for superpowers, sometimes having them is not all it is cracked up to be, as this blog shows us. I have a few books on second-string superheroes, which are great reading; not to be confused with sidekicks, these heroes are stand-alones whose powers are not quite up to playing in the big leagues.
I've always been a fan of the Wild Cards series, edited by George R.R. Martin, which takes the superhero and plunks the concept right down into a universe very similar to our own. If you've never read it, you owe it to yourself to pick up at least the first book in the series and have a read. S'good.
Jan 14 - 7 of 9? I wish...
Existence is a fragile thing, but usually you can get a handle on reality even if you need a few supplements to make the picture sharp. However, a new theory may blow the socks off that: researchers at a German facility studying gravity have found data that suggests the universe is in fact a supermassive hologram - no, I'm not kidding.
Maybe those researchers should call up the writers from Star Trek: The Next Generation... nobody else has greater experience with the ways of holographic life as those guys. Especially how it can go wrong.
Or maybe it doesn't matter, in a world where people are more than willing to escape to such places as Second Life, where they can craft a better reality much more appealing than their dull daily existence here.
Still, life is what you make it( heh - still life! ). Eventually you'll end up surrounded by family as you pass from this mortal coil, or the other extreme: alone in your vast mansion, surrounded by sycophants who are only there to ensure a place in your will for a piece of your vast fortune.
Either way is better than a lot of other alternatives... well, except for immortality, but nobody's quite got that figured out. Yet.
Jan 15 - Day 9 of 9 and a Visitor
Today just rolled by, as I was feeling rather beat on this, the last day of 9 in a row working. I was glad to go home and relax, despite the chaos of boxes all around. Most of my plates and cutlery are packed, with a few left for daily use, along with all my books and DVD's so entertainment is limited to the 'net and the Xbox... which will also be packed shortly.
I had an unexpected visitor at the door today, one who has been by to see me several times already. More on this next week, I hope, when I have pictures.
One nice thing is that the NWN group I game with has seen a rise in numbers since the holidays, with a surprising number of new players dropping in to see the server. I've been stunned to encounter several folk who had actually read some of my Nichneven stories, which tickled me no end, I tells ya. It's good to be 'established' in that regard, in that people arrive fresh to the server and already have a sense of 'place' when they wander around to explore. Warms m'heart, it does.
Jan 16 - Lunch on the Prairie
I was up early today( my 1st of 3 days off )to fill in my passport renewal application, which was a nice change from having to go through all the rigmarole of getting one in the first place. The office was right here in Victoria, which was also nice; it moved into the top level of the Bay Center, which makes it quite convenient to get to and as an added bonus for the employees, it is set next to the food court - lunch breaks!
I didn't have lunch there though; instead, I wound up at the Prairie Inn, a place out in East Saanich that was established back in 1859... which perhaps explains why there is no website for it. The pub decor is eclectic, the ceilings are low and the whole place has that ramshackle feel of rooms added one by one as the space ran out. But the food: that's what has kept this place open. I had a large turkey pot pie that was baked to a perfect golden brown, with just the right amount of thick gravy and a huge side Caesar salad. The chunks of turkey inside the pie were thumb-thick, perfect white meat... my parent's meals were equally generous in portions and equally perfectly cooked. We all left with take-home boxes and the feeling of being quite full.
I spent the afternoon and evening packing more boxes, thankful that I had kept all the old bubblewrap and other moving materials from the last move in my storage locker here. Makes the job easier in some ways, though as always it comes down to fill box, tape, label and repeat. When all is said and done, I expect to have over a hundred boxes all told, plus furniture and bags of various soft items like linens. One can only imagine how much easier this would be if every book I had was an eBook... fifty boxes right there, give or take.
Oh, and Battlestar Galactica had its season premiere tonight... which I didn't see, and don't plan to until after the move. For now, I will content myself with a few BSG webisodes, which may be the wave of the future: smaller, less expensive side-plots to the main show that fill in unanswered questions and such.
Jan 17 - Star Wars Nerds love bacon?
While g33k culture has flourished, the stereotypes of the geeky cousin, the nerd living in his parent's basement, remains strong in today's society. While I don't normally endorse ridicule of such unfortunates, I did come across a hilarious mockumentary of the D&D gaming nerd called Fear Of Girls, which oddly has a very spartan companion website - odd, given the series' popularity. The comic writing is spot-on, and the production quality is rather high overall, given the medium. Go have a laugh.
If you liked that, you'll snort milk from your nose when you see this: The first Star Wars Trilogy as told by someone who hasn't actually seen it... in less than 4 minutes.
And what would this blog be without mention of bacon? This week, for those of you with a BBQ gleam in your eye for the first day of spring( months hence )I present: the Bacon Explosion!
Jan 18 - Half-Life 2
While I was out yesterday, I picked up The Orange Box fairly cheaply at EB Games. I've been waiting a while to get this compilation set, simply because my old PC couldn't handle it: it contains HalfLife2, both expansion Episodes, Team Fortress2 and the award-winning Portal... well, HL2 won a bunch of awards too, you know. I played it on and off all day, in between packing various things, and eventually played it well into the late hours of the night. I have to say I loved the graphics for the characters, but the background objects left something to be desired: often ladders and such appeared, well, flat... which is bad for a 3-D game. The story is decent, and the gameplay itself is solid... there are even such notable actors as Lou Gosset Jr and Michelle Forbes, who is also voicing a character in the upcoming Chronicles of Riddick videogame. Eventually I stopped playing, due to a combination of fatigue and the onset of a headache... the high pressure system here is still hanging around, which is great for the weather bu lousy for my constitution.
More cardboardy goodness next week, as I discover where I hid those missing parts for my computer... plus tell you about my visitor. Don't forget, you can always review my past blogs from the menu on the left, by year and by month - click on the triangle / arrows to see a month-by-month listing, etc.
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