Technology

What is it of late with me and technology? I'm losing on almost all fronts and then winning on one. The iPod seems to work all of a sudden. But the receiver seems to be slowly flaking out and the previous wireless router, oft suspected of being a bit slow/timing outish, now may look golden to the 3 times as expensive on that can't push a signal out to my living room! I need to talk to Al, maybe somehow it got set up wrong or something is interfering. It worked great before so what the heck is stopping it now? Bloody technology. At least I only deal with the code end. *sigh* Anyhow going to go play some Street to calm myself down and then look at houses/make lunches for the rest of the week.

Changes

I have to admit one of the most conscientous changes I've found that reminds me I've graduated is all the shifting of e-mails from my UWSP account to my other accounts. No longer can I have notifications go to my UWSP account as that doesn't have long to live. It's a little sad. It'd be nice if the UWSP account could live on but that'd get expensive for the UW system to manage.

My wi-fi router has issues. I think in fact it's always had issues because it was a $20 refurb and I should have just gone and spent $50 on a brand new top line model. I'll probably do that now. Not sure what I'll do with the refurb. It may still function I am just not sure I care. My setup now confirms it times out semi-regularily hence the slower performance I've had with it. Not sure why it quit working last night but oh well.

I'm sick. Blah. This weekend has been rather blah. Hopefully things will look better this week, it all seems a bit grim right now.

Project Progress

So remember how sometime in the early-mid summer I started copying out D & D monsters from the books into a spreadsheet for ease of use? Well I finally finished the first mosnter manual. At this rate I suspect I'll finish by 2010 if I ever finish at all :D

File Under "Ooh"

So now the little personalized Google homepage is set up so that you can expand RSS links and read brief parts of the articles. I can read Slashdot off my Google homepage. Very cool.

The two bad things about working out in January are the double rushes: one right after the new year when all the people who resolved to be in better shape work out and thus fill up the place for a month or two and secondly the wave of college students who are essentially doing the same. By March the place is half empty. Crazy.

Possible Redecorations

Yea I know, little short burts all night. What can I say? Anyhow here is part of my efforts to unwhiten my walls. I've found my old movies posters are looking bent, folded, and sorely old (my favorite for Black Hawk Down got folded real badly so it's almost an eyesore now :/ ).

So here's some stuff off DeviantArt that's available in prints. Kinda listed them in a vague order of favorite to least...

(1) World on Fire
(2) Fishing
(3) Autumn Days (same artist as World on Fire)
(4) Road to New Atlantis
(5) The Lonely Tree
(6) Countenance

There you go. Give me your top 3. The sad thing is I was really going for my vertical then horizontal prints but I didn't find many :/

Primatech Paper

Can you get past the jobs code on this page?

Ptolus 2

The 2nd round of Ptolus is up.

School Starts Again

But not for me for the first time, well, ever. That's really odd. Looking forward to being able to spend time with people who are back though! In other news I'll have a Ptolus update hopefully tomorrow night, the PCs got a nice pile of loot so they should be happy happy. Rather surprising turnout for today's championship games today it was fun to watch: Bears vs. Colts who woulda thought? Can't call it right now!

Final note, I borrowed my unused smaller tv to Jo for the semester and now my bedroom looks really barren so thinking of getting some prints off of DeviantArt. May post the final candidates for comments from the readership(?) if anyone cares to comments. All probably tomorrow.

PS New Heroes tomorrow and a new Battlestar that was tonight (may copy it from Al & Steph).

Blog Neglect

Yup, that's what I have been doing. Ok here's my excuse: I've been busy. I come home and I have stuff I want to do even if it's just kicking back and relaxing although half the time I have legit stuff to do so it's kind of a weird mix. This weekend will probably be crazy too cause I am running Ptolus again so that'll be most of Saturday. Sunday everyone is coming back so probably (hopefully?) gonna be hanging out with them and catching up.

So what's new here? Well it finally snowed and then proceeded to get cold. Finished Assignment in Eternity and just moved into Man-Kzin Wars IV. It's been awhile since I've read one of the series so having to remember things about Niven's Known Universe. More short stories though! This is the third book in a row that is short stories. It was getting bad with Heinlein and Russell's books because some of them have very similar themes. Luckily Man-Kzin Wars are much newer (1991 compared to 40s and 50s for the other short stories) and all are set in a very specific if hugely broad setting-a huge amount of Niven's material takes place in the Known Universe which is a full universe.

The Star Trek cards came and I am geeking out on them. I'm such a nerd. But it's fun to relive the old days a little bit and I did pretty good for actually cards pulled. I won't bore you with the details (or scare any of you left who still thought there might be hope :D ). Somewhere in me there must be a strange gene that loves to organize and sort. Mom would be kind of proud I think.

Well time to read and get to bed. One day of work left this week and then (yay!) the weekend!

Nostaglia is all in the cards

Had one of those moments of nostalgia where I am remembered the old card collecting/gaming days of Star Trek and Star Wars CCG. I haven't played Star Trek since high school and we're talking freshman or sophomore years at the latest. A lot of the guys who I knew who played quit playing and thus the games dried up. I still have tons of cards and would love to play, I was unstoppable for awhile in that game, but don't know if there are any players anymore. There might not even be many players for the 2nd edition of the game. I found online that entire boxes that use to sell for $60-$80 now sell for $6-$15. (I bought some, I don't know why, for old times sake?)

Star Wars still lives on despite having no new cards or official support - Decipher has practically gone under itself. I do wish Seth and Brent were back so I could try out some decks I'm making. Probably will get crushed. Seth is a good player and has good strategies/decks (plus nice set of cards) and Brent is a good player too. But they are both far away, maybe in a couple years? (Next year in Coruscant?)

I feel like I should write something

However I haven't a clue what to write aboute. The soundtrack to 'X' came today and it's quite cool. I pretty much love the main theme which they occassionally (er a lot occassionally) beat to death in the show -ask Twism- but they also have a couple of the other pieces of music that I have discovered I enjoyed without realizing it at the time. On the "Be Human" soundtrack for GITS 1 & 2 focusing on the Tachikomas I discovered a couple pretty cool songs. Possibly the most amusing moment (in looking back retrospect) was the point where I was having a somewhat serious chat with a friend and the X Soundtrack hits the very serious moody theme. One of those odd timing things ya know?

Well that's all I got. I am plugging away through both my books. At this rate I could actually maybe run out eventually although I think once I get to The Silmarillion my pace in that area will slow and Entities or whatever I pick up next for at home will probably not roll along as fast the short stories. I really am highly entertained by Russell's ability to throw strange twists into stories. Rarely do you see what's coming at all!

Good Omens on the Street

I love making up weird titles based off what I am gonna talk about. And the major ingredients of this post are books and NFL Street so go figure!

So I finished Good Omens and it was quite funny. The end was somewhat anti-climatic but in a way that might be part of the joke. Anyhow I have moved on to Major Ingredients. It looks like I've read more of it then I remembered probably the first 3-4 stories at least maybe 1-2 more then that. It's ok the, I'm enjoying re-reading them. Russell is a very fun author to read. His stories generally have odd twists, apparently a lot odder if you read them originally in the 40-50s. I'm also starting Heinlein's Assignment in Eternity which looking at it now appears to be compilation of a couple of his shorter stories in his Future History. It's been forever since I've read The Past Through Tomorrow/The Green Hills of Earth(which is the shorter version of Past Through) so remembering that setting may be a challenge even though really the only constant is Earth in the setting.

On a random less bookish note I'm really getting into NFL Street 2 and actually improving a bit being able to pull off style moves somewhat regularily as well as crush the opponents regularily. Nice way to relax after work. Not nearly as fun as my favorite way: sleeping. :D

Well gonna read a little then crash. PS: Hi Aprill Joy (maybe I can send some readers your way!)

Wii-porting

So I got to play the Nintendo Wii last night. Pretty dang fun. Really tempted to get one although probably not this year considering my other intended purchases plus I have to fix the iPod. Talk about a game system designed to reach out to non-gamers. Evie was borrowing her boyfriend's system while he was gone for a week and she and Amber were having more fun then me. Def. works you up into a sweat in competitive games (ie Wii sports Tennis and Boxing). Madden was something of a challenge mostly because a lot of common moves are now done by motion rather then button. Practice, practice, practice I guess. Anyhow if you get a chance go and play one, you'll enjoy it.

In other news: if I haven't said so before fantasy football turned out alright. In my 3 leagues I got a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place finish so I did quite well. The Bears struggling at the end hurt me a lot. Also the Rams doing awesome the last two weeks knocked me out of one championship battle. Here's to next year!

Blink

Yea, some house cleaning happening here. Namely I switched to a new template (hopefully I managed to switch my Analytics stuff too) and cleaned up the links. You'll probably notice a ton of them are gone. You'll also probably notice that you weren't really reading (or likely evening checking) nearly all of those that dissapeared. I'm trying to reign the numbers back down a little bit and weeding out blogs that have been silent for a year or more. It's sad but the pruning needed to be done. Welcome to 2007!

Random Stats

In 2006 roughly 6400 visits and 10,000 pageviews occurred on this blog. Busiest month was February with roughly a 1/10 of visits and pageviews. December was the slowest. In fact the trend was pretty downwards all year. Guess I neglected my shameless advertising.

Down to the River to Pray

Let's see. News. Aside from work. Reading Good Omens it's pretty funny. I'd highly suggest it. Next up is Major Ingredients but might be a little bit depending on my schedule. I'll be getting to bed earlier with any luck (prolly 10ish most nights) so that cuts into my reading time. I am getting Rappan Athuk: Reloaded as a late Christmas present (ie using Christmas money). It's a big old box set of a dungeon crawl. It was either that or World's Largest Dungeon which was bigger but less highly quality and reviews. I am thinking that I may keep the focus of this thing more on books as it's maybe the most interesting thing I talk about and I do it regularily anyways.

I'm eagerly awaiting the return of college friends who are gone. It's just too quiet and lonely here otherwise.

:/

First days are always some of the hardest.

One Shot: Bastion of Broken Souls

It can be read about here. Time to sleep since work begins in less then 8 hours. Wish me luck!

2007

...has arrived. Happy and safe new year everyone.