Roleplaying, Recycling and Returns

The word of the week is happenstance.

March 31 - Cool News

Humanity took another big step towards reaching the stars today.

Surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital have begun human trials for suspended animation. They will be testing new techniques that allow victims of accidents and violence to be put into an artificial state of low-temperature suspension in order to help the surgeons slow the loss of blood while they repair the patient's body.

If this sounds like science fiction to you, you're not far off. Up until now, there's been no method developed that would allow humans to be placed into a state of chilled metabolism that would be ideally suited to long-term interstellar travel. Up until less than a decade ago, if you froze someone, there was a vanishingly small chance you could ever revive them and even if you could, they’d likely have suffered severe brain or organ damage.

Be sure to get frozen with a good expression on your face

With the new procedures being tested, the next step of sending humans into space on journeys of hundreds or thousands of years is a little closer. Admittedly, the starships that the people would be traveling on would need to be reliable on a scale at an order of magnitude greater than any level of technology available today, but that's another story.

For now, it's thrilling to see science make a major advance like this, where people can dream of the stars and perhaps even a chance for immortality at the same time.

April 1 - Library Launch

Tonight I attended a book launch!

It was the first book launch I've ever attended, being held at the local library in Colwood. A friend of mine from my writing group wrote several stories for an anthology and had invited me to come on out to the launch. I thought it was a great idea, arriving there just a little bit after dinner time.

It was a smaller affair than I anticipated, with around a dozen people including the authors and the publishers, but it was definitely an excited group. The authors each stood up to read a piece from their work in the various books being launched this evening, excerpts of no more than 10 minutes in length. It was thrilling to see the excitement in their eyes and hear it in her voice as they read their work for the rapt audience.

If you have THIS many people at your book launch, congrats!

Afterwards, the conversations were animated and although I didn't get a chance to speak to some of the authors, one and all they were floating above the ground with having their work finally in print. Much like my own feeling of euphoria when I had the second draft copies of my book printed last summer; it was wonderful to see that same feeling reflected in the eyes of many of the people tonight.

As for my own book launch, I'm hoping that will take place within a year or two and perhaps be held somewhere more grandiose than a library, no fooling.

I'm thinking... a shuttle launch pad.

Speaking of which: for some reason my blog has received hundreds of hits this week:

Normal activity is 15-25 hits a day, so wow...

I've no idea why, but it's kind of thrilling. Who are all these people and where are they coming from? As far as I can tell, it's not some kind of bot-rush or other stat-skewing slew of pageviews, so we'll have to wait and see what the stats show in the next few weeks. I don't believe they're hackers or bots, as the stats would show known referral sites or the same address trying dozens of times, but who knows these days.

Heck, I might be getting popular... this week's post is my 333rd, after all!

April 2 - New Laptop Blues

I returned my new Acer laptop today.

I had no other choice, really. I spent too much time over the course of two days this week trying to overcome the issues I was having with the unit, with no success. The final straw was where I was forced to chat with an Acer technician via their website in order to get an answer and THAT only happened after a needlessly convoluted and protracted warranty registration nightmare that took most of a day. It was a terrible experience and extremely frustrating only to find in the end the answers I got were the ones I hadn't wanted to hear anyway.

In the end, there were two major reasons I had to return the laptop. The first was that the 'green' 5400rpm hard drive was far too slow to allow me to multitask, and so use the laptop's speedy i5 processor efficiently. I had to wait for anything to happen when browsing the web or editing documents at the same time, which is unacceptable for a modern computer. The 20gb 'SSD' drive that was advertised on the S3 turned out to be a 'cache' and not an SSD at all, useful only for quick bootups and putting the laptop to sleep - Windows runs from the slow hard drive and that is a Very Bad Thing when it comes to speed.

Seriously. It felt like this.

The second reason was that if I had wanted to open the computer's case to upgrade the hard drive, Acer would consider that to be voiding my warranty; again, unacceptable. I was especially annoyed by the second item, as some manufacturers will allow you to upgrade a laptop hard drive and not consider it as voiding one's warranty. Given the hoops I had to go through to even eke out that little bit of information from Acer, I knew that the laptop was going to be returned.

Fortunately, while I was at work today I stumbled across a serendipitous solution. Another ultrabook had come in as an online return and amazingly it was everything I wanted... And it was only $30 more costly than the Acer unit I was returning! I looked over the stats: it's  the highly-rated NP540-U3C by Samsung, with an i5 CPU and best of all, has a solid state drive inside that is 10x's speedier then the silly Acer S3 laptop. It's small and portable and powerful and I feel very, very lucky that my timing was so perfect to find it this week after making my decision to return the Acer. 

I've set the Samsung aside with my name on it until next Wednesday, when I should be able to effect the transfer of my employee computer purchase plan over to it. I'm very pleased and looking forward to using the notebook as I intended, to write what I need to when I need to and not being hamstrung by unadvertised quirks in the technology.

April 3 - Chapters Three

After a full day's work, three whole chapters were done being edited.

Overall, I'm pleased with that result this week, given the issues I had trying to get my Acer laptop 'fixed' this week. I'm also happy with the writing that resulted, as several of the chapters I edited were crucial ones, with a lot of tweaks and additional information that have now made them a much better fit into the overall story.

NEWS FLASH: one of my favorite video games of all time is coming back!

Homeworld, one of the classics of space warfare, is being remastered for release sometime later this year. This is fantastic news, as the space RTS genre has been rather lackluster in the last decade or so. Homeworld was a fantastic game, with incredible 3d visuals and a compelling storyline that, combined with fluid game mechanics, made for a game that has yet to be surpassed even today.

Put into a modern gaming system with updated graphics, I can hardly imagine how wonderful an experience it will be. I have to confess, I may end up trying it out with the 3d feature of my television, just because I want to see if that adds anything to the game. I've tried the 3dTV with a few other games of a similar nature and so far found it to be fairly gimmicky instead of useful. Here's hoping Homeworld will be different in that regard.

April 4 - You, Not Me?

I was told today I was flawed.

A very good friend of my sisters saw me at a party last week and confided to her that although he found me a fascinating conversationalist, he noted that I rarely asked questions about the people I am speaking with. He said it was something that he'd noticed about me the last several times when we were all out together socially and he felt the need to let me know, albeit in a roundabout way.

As a writer, someone who is supposed to be observing most everything going on around them, it is a major failing not to dig into the character of other people in order to discover the gems of the stories that they carry with them. Not to mention just finding out more about them, which will better inform the creation of your own characters as an author.

Plus, it's just polite.

Honest observations like this don't come along every day and I'm very grateful for my sisters friend for feeling the need to tell me about this, however obliquely. I'm hoping that I don't have too many other major shortcomings that have gone unnoticed, but don't consider this a request for all of you to write me to let me know everything that's wrong with me. Considering that most people are quite blind to their own flaws unless they have them bluntly pointed out to them, I'm pretty certain that I don't have too many other character flaws hiding inside.

Also, the thought that I may be subtly narcissistic yet not have noticed did cross my mind. I'm by no means a selfish person, but still I can't help but wonder if subconsciously I love to talk about many subjects and one of those subjects is me. However it comes up, I'll happily chat and perhaps in that mirror-like focus, I lose sight of the fact that I may be talking to someone who may be as interesting as me... or likely even more so.


April 5 - Roll 'em!

After work today: adventure!

For the first time in almost a decade, I played a game of Dungeons and Dragons using pen and paper and those wonderful random dice that tend to cause a lot of screaming for joy or in horror. I have to say I'm forever grateful to my parents for allowing me to play DnD when I was young and not listening a whit to the fearmongers who tried to ban the game - it's made my imagination what it is today.

The group was a good size: eight people, including the DM, only some of whom I've met before. We gamed at a lovely location just outside the city with plenty of room for us all to gather round a single large trestle table. Although we didn't game for more than a few hours at this initial session, I found the people to be simply wonderful folks who, if you believe it, all have an appreciation for puns!

It was pretty much like this. Guess who I am?

Needless to say, I had a great evening and I admit that I spent more time thinking about one -liners then I did about how my character's personality was being portrayed. I also am happy to say that I spent a lot less time with my nose in a manual buying equipment and far more time paying attention to the game, something I've known that I'm guilty of doing from past DnD sessions.

There's a certain thrill to gaming with people in person that can't be had online, though there are advantages to both. I do enjoy using my imagination and interacting with people personally quite a lot, so tonight was wonderful in both regards. I'm really looking forward to the next session in a few weeks when we might actually get something done other than swat a few cyclops mere steps from a bar...

In the meantime, my rogue will be counting his loot.



April 6 - Idle Recycle

This coming week has me working a mere two days. Erk.

Part-time doesn't cut it for making headway in my financial life as you might imagine. Ironically, I cashed in a whole pile of cans and bottles for recycling from work today, simply to get them out of the way as nobody else there has bothered in months. My motive was to use the money to pay for a farewell party for one of the staff who's leaving in a few week's time, which was fine by store management. As I was heading out to Cordova Bay today for the first of four days of writing, I had the van anyway and was able to pack it to the gunwales with the entire load of recyclables - they barely all fit, if you 'can' believe it.

A canner in NY from the Oscar-nominated film 'Redemption' 

Now, there are people here in Victoria( and elsewhere, too )called 'canners' who go around the entire city tirelessly, searching every available bin for recyclable items to take for a deposit refund. I see them wheeling bicycles or shopping carts festooned with bulging backs of cans and bottles and have sometimes wondered what all that effort has netted them. I wonder if it's worth the effort compared to holding down a regular job that doesn't pay much, like mine.

As it turns out: it doesn't pay very well at all.

After sorting and bagging five massive sacks of recyclables, the total payout was $53.00 even for over 1,000 items turned in. Good for party funds, lousy for living on.

See if you can name them all; I couldn't ... 

Tonight is also the premiere of the 4th season of Game of Thrones, which I'm sure has millions of people jumping up and down for joy. While I'm one of those people, I'm not going to be watching the 4th season premiere tonight as I still haven't manage to see any of the third season episodes yet, for various reasons.

Soon enough, though. In the meantime, if you need to catch yourself up on what's happened in the previous three seasons, you can find a great refresher over at io9.com who have done a wonderful job in the article of catching readers up on each season. They also have an episode by episode guide that you can read too; again, I'll be getting there soon...

That's all I've got for you this week. Since I'm starting my writing sabbatical early on Sunday night in Cordova Bay, I don't have my home PC's voice recognition software to help me write this week's blog. Meaning that I had to use Google Voice on my phone to capture the bulk of the words, errors and all, then slap that into my browser to edit by hand. As error-prone as the raw text was, it still took me about three hours to edit it all down to the final version, which isn't bad. Have a great week!