The word of the week is tangible.
July 10 – Writing Retreat
After work today, I attended a brief
'Writing retreat' at a local author's house, with several other writers I'd
been invited to enjoy the evening free of charge as a thank you by the
organizer for helping set up several meetups between them and the membership of
the writing group I help manage locally.
The evening proved to be very
fruitful for me creatively, as the methodology employed was guided in simple
terms around objects and ideas to foment creative thought. This proved to be excellent fodder
for my imagination. I came up with about a dozen pieces altogether, of which I
liked this one the most:
I really enjoyed the evening, and
I'll consider going for one or two more later in the year as treats for myself
once I complete the heavier lifting I need to do the next few months regarding
my novels and my business.
July 11 – eReaders, for me?
Last month, my amazing girlfriend
gifted me with an Amazon Kindle eReader - wow! Reading some of my hundreds of
Amazon books on it has been a blast.
However, you need a light source in
order to see anything on the screen, which means it's perfect in daylight and
completely invisible in the dark. Seeing as even the next model up, Kindle Paperwhites, are going for around $100 CAN plus shipping on eBay, they wind up
costing about the same as new ones - ouch!
But... today was Amazon Prime Day,
of which I'm still a member! That meant there were sales almost everything and
my heavily-crossed-fingers turned out to be lucky: new Paperwhites dropped to
$99.00 for today only, the lowest they've ever been! I was able to snag
one as an early birthday gift from my parents and sister, and I did a little
jig in front of the TV when all was said and done. YAY!!!!!
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| Old one out, new one in - barely! |
I also performed 'heart surgery' on
my dying OnePlus One tonight.
As a new battery only cost $15.00 I
decided a few weeks ago to give it a shot, and thankfully the instructions on
Ifixit.com were really easy to follow after the battery arrived in the mail
today. It was a tight fit, as the new battery's cable was a touch shorter than the dying original's.
The only hiccup in the installation
was that the outer case cracked along all the spots where the holding tabs were
on one side, but at this point I don't care about aesthetics - there's a
replacement Samsung S5 on the way, after all. I just wanted to see if I can get
some more useful life out of this OPO, perhaps to repurpose it as a bluetooth
controller or a smart-home control, but not if it keeps overheating.
So far, the temperatures haven't
reduced significantly, and I've also discovered that the new batteries
temperature sensor is defective, as it reads a constant 78.6° - useless, but at
least I can still feel with my finger if the phone's too hot in my hand...
July 12 – WINNER!
I received an odd phone call at work
today, close to my morning break. As it wasn't a number I recognized, I
let it go and since no voicemail was left, I chalked it up to someone's wrong
number and thought no more about it.
Until an e-mail popped up on my phone
a few minutes later:
It said I'd won advance screening
tickets to the upcoming Valerian movie next week... whaaaaaattttttttt????????
I had to rub my eyes just in case, but it was true! I've been participating
in online contests for a few years now, for a few minutes every day, and I won
again after a long dry spell:
I've been really stoked go and see
Valerian when it opened on the 21st next week, and it's just icing on the cake
now that I get to see it two days early! I'm tempted to bring along my copy of Ambassador of the Shadows( the comic that's the
movie is based on )to complete the journey that my six-year-old self began
nearly 40 years ago when I first read it...
July 13 – Trolling
It's easy to become distracted on the
Internet. Moreso when it's subjects you care
about; for me, those are things like climate change, vaccinations and similar
topics that invite divisive debate.
What it also invites are trolls.
Several times in the last few months, I've made
the mistake of engaging people too deeply on FBook, due to the nature of the
conversational topics on several posts. I'm well aware that it's
extraordinarily difficult to change anyone's mind over the Internet( to the
point where I don't think there's a documented case of it happening to date )but for whatever reason in several instances, I thought the person might see
reason and meet me halfway.
Nope.
The arguments were like someone
showing me their marble collection... except that each one is cracked in some
way, and each time they plucked out a new one to 'show it off' the cracks are
obvious to me, yet they KEEP pulling out new ones despite me continuously
pointing out the flaws to them. It's like they can't see the flaws, and
think if they just keep pulling marbles from
the bag, eventually they will be proven correct, despite the flaw in
each and every one.
Mainly, I think this has to do with
selfishness, as most of the the people I saw arguing against my point of view were doing so from a selfish base, a 'Why should I have to pay for others with
MY money?' mentality that being a Canadian living in a socialist country, I
find shallow and backwards in this modern day. Not to mention the levels of
profound ignorance that were displayed by many people in general.
However, this same week, I was given
hope that selflessness would win out over said self-interest, thanks to a study
that found microbes with the altruistic tendencies had a much higher survival index. So the selfish microbes died out, in favour of those who shared...
So perhaps the microbes will
be able to get it right when we're all gone...?
July 14 – I must go there...
After starting my week's vacation today( flex day! )I now know where I have to take a
vacation in 2020...
Star Wars Land!
Revealed that Disney's D23 event
today was the first look at a physical model of the upcoming Star Wars Land
being built at both Walt Disney World( FL )or Disneyland( CA), of which the
latter is far closer and more likely for me to be able to get to... grinning
like a kid all the way.
Here's a 7 minute tour of the model
with one of their Imagineers:
As well, there's a series of amazing
close-up photos of the model, showing all the various parts: ships, rides,
shops and more, all set in the Star Wars universe.
As icing on the cake, there will be a
Star Wars hotel available as well, which purports to be a 'totally immersive
experience' which I would love to immerse myself in, if the cost wasn't pegged
at around $1000 USD per night's stay.
Ouch. *sad Wookie howl*
July 15 – Eclipse Returns!
Whoa... it's been five months since I
last played a game of Eclipse, which I think is far too long!
Fortunately, my friend Chris was open to playing just such a game today along
with my lady and our friends Cara and Greg - yes! As a point of
interest, I noted last time that we could have up to eight players but I was
mistaken: we can actually have up to nine and considering that it takes about
an hour per player to play the game, that's really not that bad.
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| 2.5 hours in, things are getting interesting... |
We started the game at 3:30 PM and
the first five rounds so everyone do typical empire-building, though you can
see from above that my empire( green ) had quickly become stymied by a
wall of powerful Ancient ships that I didn't have the firepower to overcome
easily. The cost would have been just too great, so my expansion was stopped
dead one way and the other way saw me hit some dead ends in terms of exploration;
again, not good.
After the 'saggy middle' of the game
was passed, things really heated up in terms of fleet purchases and technology
research, both key factors to creating big nasty swarms of spaceships to go and
smash your enemies with.
Which didn't happen much until last
couple rounds of the game:
 |
| Greg sported the same colour shirt as his empire: dedication! |
As you can see from the picture
above, major fleet actions in the last round were underway: My newly-purchased
fleet in the bottom-left had repelled an attack by Chris' white fleet, and the
other major battle of the game took place between my lady( in black:
Borg-esque! )and the fleets of both Chris and Greg( red ). Action!
In the end, though, resistance was
futile: my lady won with a score of 31 Victory Points, her total points over 13
higher than anyone else. She really knows how to play the right strategies, but
the rest of us are learning quickly...
July 16 – Me Day!
Today was a perfect birthday.
I slept rather well last night and
woke up somewhat refreshed, in part because I'd had another massage session
yesterday morning that really helps to loosen up my far-too-tense abdominal
muscles: I didn't wake up at 4 AM in pain, so huzzah!
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| Even Google got in on the act... is that good? |
After a relaxing breakfast with my
lady, we both headed down to Harrison's Yachy Pond for a bit, to test out the
pair of new batteries that I received several weeks ago after a two-month wait(
from Turkey, of all places ). It
turned out that one of the batteries was defective, and to add insult to
injury, my PT boat's control system started malfunctioning to the point where
it wouldn't run properly. Luckily, the president of the RC boat club took an
interest in my difficulties and generously offered to take the boat home to
work on himself. I was thrilled at the offer and I'll have to think up a
suitable thank you for him when I see him next.
Then it was lunch time with my
parents and girlfriend( my sister's off
in Calgary this week for a much-needed break with friends ). We went to
ReBar downtown that bastion square, which was packed with people enjoying the
gorgeous weather, perfect for the annual Busker's Festival taking place this
weekend in Victoria. The food was excellent(
I had a veggie burger with mushrooms and Swiss
cheese - yum! )and the place had a funky vibe that we all liked, so
we'll most likely be back sooner rather than later. My lady then took me out
for ice cream over at The Beacon
Drive-In, where we got into an intense discussion of my novel's characters,
which I absolutely loved and tried my hardest not to give away any spoilers!
Back home, I got a few more things
done, then relaxed for a few hours, watching a few episodes of Tron:Uprising
online - a wonderful show that's extraordinarily hard to get a hold of, as
it's not out on DVD or Blu-Ray, and I don't care to purchase it from iTunes, as
I consider Apple's service an evil I don't wish to foist on my computer anytime
soon. Ironic, considering the subject of Uprising...
Yes indeed, a pretty solid week that I couldn't wait to end, so I could be on VACATION! A working vacation, mind you, where I plan to make great strides EVERY day to finish editing my novel. I won't have another chance like this in 2017, so I'm going to make the most of it!
