The word of the week is persevere.
Nov 27 - Smartass
Lately, I've been leaving some good
comments online, specifically, on FBook.
Since I haven't been writing much of
late, only editing, I can only guess that my creative side needs some kind of
outlet. Much as I try not to be beholden to FBook, I do spend too much time on
it of a day( mostly at work, when my hands are busy but my eyes and brain
aren't )though I've managed to curate my feed fairly well to filter out
much of the crap( 45, fads, viral garbage, idiot articles et al ).
There's only so much you can filter...
In the last few weeks though, I've
found myself becoming somewhat of a wag: an article will catch my eye and a
humorous sentence or two will pop into my head which I usually use as a
comment. For example, this was a comment I left about an article on getting
into arguments online:
 |
| A brief example of a few dozen I've left this past month... |
This is an obvious form of
self-gratification, but it's harmless one, in that I'm looking at an article
title or comment and immediately trying to find humor in it. Today, much of
what I've created a has been throwaway, but it's been vital in one aspect: it
shows that my sense of humor is still there despite my current stresses, and
I'm keeping it active on a daily basis in these small ways now and then.
As such, I know my Muse is still
smiling.
Nov 28 – NWN RETURNS!!!!
It's back!
Out of the blue, Neverwinter
Nights: Enhanced Edition was announced today by Beamdog Studios, who is put
together small team to update the venerable 2002 D&D game with some modern
graphical touches and, more importantly, FULL updated server coding and
hosting!
What this means is that the dedicated
NWN community can once again connect via an in-game central server to browse
for various PW's( persistent worlds )on a master list, instead of having to go
through various third-party ad-hoc solutions which complicate things a little
too much when you just want to game for a bit.
Now, I don't have the time at present to indulge
in my NWN habit, but I'm making myself a promise to get on board if 2018 turns
out as well as I'm hoping for work and writing: a reward of NWN, if you will.
Something worth working hard towards!
Nov 29 – Good Days, Bad Days
All this week, I've been struggling
physically, which affects me mentally.
My left leg continues to be an issue,
where the tendon keeps getting so tight it feels like I could pluck it like a
bowstring to hear it hum. I'm hitting it with heat on and off all day at work, warm
baths at night and stretching, to try and limber it up to keep any recurrence
of tearing at bay, but it's damned difficult some days. Walking with a cane
doesn't help to stretch it, unless I concentrate on a "just enough
weight" with every step: a maddening distraction that's exhausting.
This has also affected my breathing,
causing a recurrence of tension in my solar plexus and making it hard to sit OR
stand for too long a length of time without discomfort and/or pain. All I can
do there is monitor my breathing, remembering to relax, and not sit or stand
for more than twenty minutes at a time... all day long.
It's a damned good thing my day job's
not more demanding right now, or I'd be unable to do much every other day for
the discomfort / pain.
The stress of NOT having landed a
better position only adds to all this.
Yet all I can do is soldier on: each
day is a new challenge, where I set myself up to hurt less the next day by not
screwing things up physically. I pay close attention to how I'm standing /
sitting / walking / breathing without overdoing it to the point of anxiety, and
fit the rest of what I need to do into those spaces.
Next week, I hope to FINALLY get back
to swimming, which will limber things up again - that's the theory, and it's a
hope I'm betting heavily on.
Otherwise, android bodies can't get
here soon enough!
Nov 30 – New Firefox!
Web browsers: we take them for granted.
Myself, I use FIVE different
browsers... because I have a lot of things on the go, and I can just have each
open to the last set of tabs whenever I use them. Convenient, but that's not to
say that each browser is interchangeable:
A quick rundown: I use Chrome for my
everyday browsing, Opera for business / writing-related tabs, MS Edge for
work-related things( it's too slow for much else )then Maxathon( an
odd duck )for the one-off link-check and FireFox for speed when I just want
to look a few things up without having Maxaton crash constantly on all sorts of
different sites.
Yes, FireFox is my new go-to browser,
since its latest update - wow!
I didn't bother with it much prior to
that, as it was SLOOOOW to load... too damn slow. Even the 64-bit
knockoff, WaterFox, was too slow for my tastes, sadly.
But, with the latest update to
version 57.0, a host of speed improvements including 64-bit coding has made
FireFox *fly* - just like the old days! There's much to be said for a program
that just WORKS, and works WELL, so much so that your 'net browsing experience
becomes transparent, and so your productivity rises commeasurate to the lack of
problems in the web interface.
Well done, Mozilla. Welcome
back!
Dec 1 – Past Peek: Two Decades!
Life is funny sometimes, and passes
by too quickly most days.
While tidying up my closet after
taking out a few things to sell on eBay, I came across an old calendar I'd
saved, one that an old artist friend had created back in 1997. Here's a picture
of what I was up to in December of that year:
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| My handwriting is still about the same: awful |
As you can see, I had a few things on
the go, including the mid-term exams from my second attempt at university that
would fizzle out again in 1998.
I was juggling school while
transitioning from finishing four years of working at Tim Horton's to my
new job in-town at The Office Place. For both, I had short shifts that
added up to around 20-25 hours a week, with ALL my weekends spoken for - not a
whole lot of time for doing much else apart from school, as I recall, though I
was still running the local Amiga Group in its final year of operation.
Yet, as you can see, I still managed
to fit in a D&D game, as well as TWO Christmas parties, pay my
admittedly-small bills and figure out some time to both reformat my computer( a
Pentium90 at the time! )and watch ReBoot on live TV.
Ah, the golden years. They didn't
seem like it at the time, as I was so busy juggling everything( and school
didn't go well that year )but man, I had energy AND my health, which
allowed me to get through quite a lot then that I can't imagine now.
So much, from so few marks on a
page...
Dec 2 – Selling Catapults
It's sad, but it was inevitable:
another toy has to go.
I've held onto my almost-mint Crossbows
and Catapults game for 25 years now, having acquired the base set in 1986
and the bigger Grand Battleset in 1992 as well as a few smaller expansions
while they were still being sold in stores( I think I got most of those at a
discount as they were being cleared out ). As you can see, there's quite a lot
to the collection( 240+ pcs ):
 |
| That's a lot of plastic in surprisingly good shape... |
What made this game shine though, was
my basement at the time: it was a massive open area of painted concrete with
few obstructions, perfect for blasting the little plastic 'caroms' at your
opponents armies and structures. Usually my friends and I agreed that the
victory conditions were either A) the 'army commander' was knocked down( he
had special markings )or B) all of the flags were knocked down. This made
for some fast and furious carom action, but you had to take the time to aim, as
you couldn't recover any ammo once fired.
Nowadays, I don't have anywhere to
play this game, nor anyone that I believe would be interested in what amounts
to a basic fling-fest of plastic pieces flying through the air or shooting
across the ground. This review covers all the basics:
Thankfully, since my set is in
excellent condition, it should command a decent price on eBay( if it
sells... )that will pay a few bills this month. It's too bad that most of
everything else that I'm any onto has little resale value, as I wouldn't mind ending the year ahead of the game instead of just trying to keep up.
You know, kind of 'catapult' myself
into 2018... :-)
Dec 3 – Birthday and Supermoon!
My parents, sister, girlfriend and I(
there has to be a better way of phrasing that..? )went to the Lure
Restaurant for a late breakfast this morning, to celebrate my dad's 70th
birthday this past week. It was notable as neither of my parents are
particularly mobile right now( my mom's knee is wonky and my dad is off work
for 6 months due to a work injury )so getting them both out was a treat for
us all.
Lure was lovely: bright and spacious,
and weirdly, crowded: almost every table was full, a far cry from the
almost-empty place my sister described from her Sunday business breakfast there a few
months ago. We had a table right in the center under the
'bell lights' that was raised higher than the surroundings, giving us a
splendid view out over the harbour enhanced by the sun-and-clouds of this
morning that at times was blinding-bright on the water. I was also right on-point with a plethora of puns, to everyone's delight save my sister... as always; she's perfected her good-natured eye-rolling by now after so much practice.
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| You can see where I get my beard-genes from... love ya, Dad! |
As you can see, it's a nice place,
and the patio looks great, though the harbour's LOUD and smells of diesel from
the seaplanes depending on the wind direction. We ate well and took our time,
relaxing for over an hour and a half with the pleasure of each other's company.
Happy Big Birthday, Dad!
As well, my sister and I popped down
to the south shore shortly before 7 PM tonight to see the Supermoon! We timed
it perfectly: the moon emerged through a hole in the cloud cover for a glorious
ten minutes, and I took a few dozen photos with various low-light tweaks while
enjoying the glorious sight! A few pictures did turn out, and the one
below is my favourite of those - a great finale to the weekend:
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| Not bad for an amateur with a $100 eBay camera! |
I'm feeling better than I did at the start of last week: I can sit up again and move my torso without too much issue, though my left leg( as mentioned )is still a work in progress. I'm still plugging away at applying for better jobs, hoping to get noticed with my carefully-crafted applications, and somewhere in all that I'm fitting in editing my Draft v4.5 ... is it 2018 yet?
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