Coughs, Cosplay, Cutaways and Cimmerians

The word of the week is affective .

December 3 - Can I hack it?

It's the same old grind: see job, apply for job, hear nothing.

This week, I'm changing things up a bit, by making EVERY effort to get myself noticed by said employers.

I'm going in to three places that have listed jobs to get the names of the hiring managers and targeting the heck out of my cover letters. I'm also going to ensure I make a good impression, but that will depend on how little coughing I can do while I'm there. It's not easy and I really need for this freakin' hacking bought to disappear ASAP before it hurts my chances of getting employment as well as affecting my health in other ways. Not good.

December 4 - Infinite Cosplay!

Do what you love, and sometimes that will lead you down unexpected paths. In the case of one cosplayer, her costuming skills landed her a job!

Not just any job, either: BioWare hired her to play the character of Elizabeth to promote  the upcoming BioShock: Infinite game being released later in 2013.

The resemblance is startling!

Looking at the photos in the article, I have to say the resemblance IS uncanny. It's to her credit that she recognized this and made such timely work of creating her costume. As I'm hoping to go to a convention or two in the next few years( work-dependent )I'm really fascinated by the growing numbers of talented cosplay costumers out there. As far as I know, I don't resemble any characters from any game, movie or novel.

Or do I?

December 5 - Cutaways!

One of my earliest and truest loves are cutaway drawings; I couldn't get enough of them as a kid and I still can't, really. I've collected various technical manuals and actual cutaway books( like the various Star Wars ones )and I'm always on the lookout for more.

But they're not as easy as you might think to track down. I spotted this recent article on io9.com about cutaways and it sparked my interest all over again to hunt down some more intricately complex imagery of the insides of things technical and fantastical. Still with pride of place on my wall is this image of the Enterprise-D:

Click me to see the glorious details!

I'm not sure exactly why I like them so much. Maybe it's because I spent a lot of time as a kid imagining what the insides of those spaceships and other sci-fi places were like. Filled with piles of technology alongside the more mundane things like toasters and toilets, I wondered where the phasers got their power from and how many torpedoes an X-Wing could carry, and where. With that kind of a mind, I'm still surprised that I didn't pursue engineering, though again my grades in math would have to have improved by at least 25-50% on average. Just the same, I still love cutaway tech drawings to this day!

December 6 - My life isn't so bad

Every so often, when my brain starts looping on the things in my life that aren't going well, I have to give myself a mental shake: it could be worse. In so many ways…

For example, I could have this man's problems: Huang Chuncai is 32 and still lives with his parents… brace yourself for the reason and do NOT click the link if you have a weak stomach. DO click it if you want to see what troubles one person has to deal with.

So: when one's problems are of the wallet, or are mental more than physical, you have to stop and remind yourself that YOU CAN CHANGE them.

And when you're feeling stressed, relax. Take a cue from the Daleks:

December 7 - It's Officially Bronchitis

It's that time of year again for viruses to be passed around like candy.

I've already got mine: I've had a cough for three weeks now. As I've said last week, it's been bad enough that I can't talk at times and as long as I don't speak, it's manageable.

Yet I've coughed hard enough and long enough to pull a few muscles in my chest, so that it now HURTS to cough. Quite a bit. So I gave in and went to the doctor( who said it's Acute Bronchitis )a few days ago to get some antibiotics, which do seem to be helping gradually reduce what's clogging my breathing. I'm hoping that by Monday I'll be left just with the semi-shredded feeling of sore muscles in my chest and not the cough. The flaring spike of pain over my right ribs should heal given time, if I'm not constantly coughing. Staying in where it's warm and not damp with constant rain has been helping, as has NOT talking to people. Which I hope will end soon, when someone eventually calls me for an interview.

If you want to avoid getting this long-lived cough, or some other germ, this holiday season, follow this simple advice that I learned long ago: Don't touch your face! Keep your hands BELOW your neck whenever you're out in public and you should be fine. But it's a habit you have to learn; the average person touches their face once a minute, all day long!

December 8 - The Hobbit in ONE WEEK!

For over thirty years, I've waited to see The Hobbit hit the big screen.

The animated version that came out in the 1980's was nicely done but didn't do justice to the material, I felt; live action would be best but that was impossible back then.

This is now.

Peter Jackson's released the WETA crews onto what is now The Hobbit TRILOGY and I'm simply giddy with excitement. Of all the books I read as a child, this was THE one that most fired up my imagination. I think that's why I was disappointed with the animated movie: the pictures in my head were SO MUCH cooler than on the screen. Heck, I remember being repulsed by the ElvenKing when I saw him in the film; in NO way was he what I'd imagined elves to be. It skewed the film for me from that point on.

No, I'm going to see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey this coming weekend when it opens, with open eyes. I expect I'll be doing it alone, as the last time I tried to get people around here together for a film it ended up just being my sister and I at the theater.

But for The Hobbit, I'll gladly sit alone in the dark to see my childhood dream on the screen.

December 9 - Amiga Games for sale too...

Today, I had little bouts of nostalgia while preparing four different lots of 15-20 Amiga games( most boxed )for sale on eBay. One of them in particular had fond memories: Warlords, a turn-based multiplayer( meaning you and your friends in a room )game similar to the old 1994 Warcraft game series… but predating it. I pulled out the save disk from the box, remembering how we five friends had sat for hours at a time for many months in a row one summer, taking turns attacking each other's kingdoms. It was a blast, all the more fun because you didn't have to go anywhere or pay anything; it was 'offline' in the very earliest days of the internet when 56K modems were still extremely rare and costly beasts. 

BONUS: I found a browser-based spiritual successor to Warlords called Warbarons! Best of all, it's FREE!!! Anyone want to start up a game with me?

Speaking of costly: I discovered that I possessed an EXTREMELY rare Amiga game! Conan The Cimmerian is apparently a much sought-after 1991 release for the Amiga, worth many hundreds of dollars… IF it has the original manual and the map in the box.

Mine has neither, just the box and manual. *sigh* So it's in effect, worth maybe ten dollars. Doh! Where did they go, I wonder? I'm going to search every box I have, in storage and otherwise, to find that manual… it's worth the effort and I have the time, for now.

Which I hope will change soon. It has to.

My chest hurts whenever I cough now, like I've been punched in the ribs for hours on end. It's moderately bearable when I breathe shallowly, but I really need to get this bronchitis under control or I fear it will start to hurt to breathe at ANY level. I've called TeleHealthBC tonight( Sunday )and they've told me to go see a doctor tomorrow morning if the pain is still present to ensure it doesn't get any worse or indicate more permanent damage… not what I wanted to hear. For now I've bound up my ribs with elastic bandages, which helps somewhat when I cough. I'll probably be able to sleep tonight.