2005
Saved for posterity, or maybe for no particular reason at all. Here are some of the previous things that I blathered on about.
[Blahrchive]
December 23, 2005.
Merry Christmas!
I am not religious, and I partake in no form of Christianity. Christmas is a secular holiday for me, as I expect that it is for many, many other Americans. So, Merry Christmas! in a totally Santa-not-Jesus way!
And as my own little special Christmas treat for the one or two of you that might care, here are a couple special Christmas versions of my normal wallpaper, with a special guest Santa courtesy of Little Gamers. These are at the 1920x1200 that my desktop runs, but you can cut them down and resize them for yourself.
December 12, 2005.
Holidaze.
I've been suffering from an annoying cold for nearly a week now. Thankfully most of the symptoms have been controllable with the right drugs. It seems to be getting better now, thankfully, but I sure am ready to be well again.
Yesterday, Rob brought over his ladders, and we put up Cori's string of Christmas lights on the house. Now we're part of the holiday spirit, or something. I still haven't decorated my tree, but I'm planning to take Santa out of the closet in a few minutes.
November 27, 2005.
Recycled Electrons.
I am updating this site using my brand new desktop computer. I picked up a new Dell XPS 600, running a 3.2 GHz Pentium D, with 2 GB of RAM and a 320 GB Raid 0 array (two 160 GB drives striped into one fast drive). It sure is a lot snappier than the old machine, even when I'm doing several things at once.
For the curious, my previous Dell was purchased in April 2001, which means that it was about 4.5 years old when I replaced it--the longest stretch between new machines I've had since I started buying them.
November 16, 2005.
They Deserve Worse.
Heh, I was just telling my friends about this the other day, and about how stupid Sony was to do this. Looks like it's now bitten them on the ass, as it should have: Sony recalls risky 'rootkit' CDs.
November 13, 2005.
Stays in Vegas.
I haven't said blah about the Vegas trip yet. It was fine. I'm a terrible tourist, and I know this. I didn't really do much, and I'm okay with that. If I do go back for some reason, I'm going to do some different things, but for now I'm just not planning on going back any time soon.
The Bellagio is a really nice place. Easily the best hotel room I've ever stayed in. Beautiful bathrooms, plenty of room in the living area, comfy bed. Nice and swanky. I liked that. It also provided my first ever celebrity sighting: David Krumholtz was in the hallway at the Bellagio talking with someone when we walked past. I didn't bother him--I'm sure he has a life--but I easily could have if I'd wanted to.
I spent a buck fifty on slots--my best win was seven nickels, which I spent on more plays. (I won't call it gambling, though, because I had no expectation of winning anything. I pretty much just gave the machines my money to watch the spinners move around.) I must say slots are pretty boring. There were all kinds of card games I'd never heard of, and maybe would like to try some day.
Aside from visiting lots of shops, one thing we did do was visit the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum's Russia! The Majesty of the Tsars: Treasures from the Kremlin Museum exhibit. That was interesting, and the sheer opulence on display made it easier to understand how the people of Russia could later get caught up in a revolution pitched as empowering the workers.
I also went down to Treasure Island with Jason to catch the free show they do down there every evening. I forget what it's called, but it has to do with Pirates fighting against Sirens. It was cheesy, but also fun. It also lasted nearly half an hour, which I thought was cool for a free show.
Anyway, the trip was pleasant enough for a short break, and the weather was awesome (although the air was a bit too dry). I won't be going along on a drive again, though, and will likely only fly for long trips like that in the future.
As an aside, this trip also helped reinforce that I should not vacation with just my siblings. There are far too many incompatibilities between my nature and theirs that make such things annoying if you plan to hang out together. Of course, that shouldn’t be a problem if the intent isn’t to see each other more often than just dinner, or something. (This time, Jason was there, which was nice for me as I had someone to hang out with for several hours until the others got up.)
October 26, 2005.
Tripped.
Even though I've had the dates and basic schedule since June, I still managed to overlook the fact that I'm leaving from Vegas on Wednesday, not on Tuesday. This means I'll be missing the weekly game, which is a bit disappointing, and a bit disruptive (since my computer runs a program that helps keep my character and Kevin's characters accurate during combat). That kinda sucks, and I feel bad for just now paying enough attention to notice this. But I still plan to enjoy the trip.
October 18, 2005.
Moved.
Well, I'm mostly moved now. Thanks to Stefan, Rob, Mark, Jon, Steve, and Kevin, who all pitched in to move my crap on Saturday. It went pretty quickly thanks to all the extra hands involved. Thanks to Dad as well, since he and I moved a couple SUV loads on the preceeding Thursday (which also helped move things along on Saturday). I have basically just my kitchen left to move, which I packed up yesterday and Stefan and I should be moving today.
Because I've been asked about it, and forgot to mention it here, allow me to state that Bose did indeed replace my headphones again, and did so pretty rapidly. I didn't get notice that they'd shipped the replacements, they just appeared at my mailbox. No problems there.
Halloween is rapidly approaching, which means my first trip to Las Vegas is also rapidly approaching. I'm looking forward to a few days off where lugging heavy boxes and furniture isn't involved.
October 9, 2005.
Moving Time.
I didn't update the blahg last time I updated the page. Bad me. Anyway, I'm updating now.
Cori and I are moving this week. I'm moving Saturday, using a rented truck and anyone who shows up to help, while Cori is moving Wednesday with a moving company. Her move will cost more, but will be much less stressful and strenuous, I imagine. I still have to pack up all my stuff, which will be a major pain in the ass. I also have to start changing my address for all the various places that need it, which is another PITA.
In other news, GCA has sold through its initial print run, and another print run has been ordered. This is excellent news, because I expected we might sell that many copies in the first year, not the first quarter. It also means a few more bucks in my pocket, which is nice during this period of extra expenses related to moving. On the other hand, the first quarter would be, by far, the biggest sales period, so I probably won't see such nice news, or money, again.
September 25, 2005.
3 Things Unrelated.
It looks like Cori and I have a rental house, which we'll get to move into in October. This is the house that I mentioned on the 22nd. The other houses I wanted to look at didn't work out. We've signed the agreement for this place, and should be paying the initial move-in costs this week. Now I have to pack up all my shit and get ready to move. Ugh.
Yesterday was Kevin's birthday party, which was held at Jon's house. It was a nice time. I didn't get home until just after 2 AM. I haven't intentionally been up until 2 AM in a very long time, and then I couldn't fall asleep for a long time after I went to bed. Oh, well.
Arnie has been here today. He was having some issues with a project in VB6 that he's trying to modify for a customer, and we figured I could help him with that. We found the source of the problem, and killed it, so he's now able to run the project. Now he has to figure out how to implement the changes that are necessary.
September 22, 2005.
Yet Again.
Once again, it's time to update my blahg, but I don't have anything in particular to talk about.
Bose still hasn't shipped my replacement headphones. I'm considering buying a pair of their headphones without the noise cancelling--they're half the price, and should work very well for the quieter periods around here, which thankfully are much more common now than with my old neighbors. That should add a good bit of life to the ones that constantly wear out. On the other hand, I don't really think I ought to spend more money on more headphones when I've got two pairs (sort of, when working) of $300 headphones already. I should probably wait to see what things are like wherever I'm moving to, before considering anything further.
Cori and I looked at a rental house last night. It's about 1800 square feet, and has plenty of room for both of us. The location isn't ideal for me, but is acceptable (I can walk to the Bethany shopping center), and the house is nice. I want to look at a couple others, but this is one I can certainly see us being able to work with.
September 18, 2005.
Forgetful.
My post yesterday that I haven't had an out-of-town vacation since 2001 was bull. I had completely forgotten that I went to GenCon in July of 2003. So, it's only been two years since my last out-of-town vacation, not four. I have no idea why I'd forgotten GenCon, since I rather enjoyed it at the time. Must be getting old. That, and I used to have much longer gaps between vacations, so four years felt more right than two.
September 17, 2005.
Forget.
I have absolutely nothing I feel like writing here today. Yesterday, I'm pretty sure I had something I wanted to write, but I wasn't at home, and then I forgot about it when I got home. Now, I can't even remember what it was that I was going to write. Yup, I can be pretty lame. And boring.
I haven't had an out-of-town vacation since 2001, so I'm looking forward to being away from the computer for a few days next month. It won't be much, but the sibs and I are going to Las Vegas over Halloween. I've never been there, so I don't know if I'll like it at all, but at least the separation from the work space will be nice.
Oh, I remembered what I wanted to write about. I think.
This week I returned my second set of Bose QuietComfort 2 headphones. This pair lasted only four months before the sound and noise cancellation started cutting out in the left earphone. Six months for the first set, and four months for the second. That's not exactly a great record, so obviously these things were not designed to be put on and taken off every single day--at least, not put back into the carrying case. I'm on my third pair right now, and this pair I am not folding back into the carrying case after each wear. Instead, I'm leaving them open, on top. This squishes the foam ear cups together at the bottom, so those will probably wear out faster, but since the last two pairs of headphones didn't last long enough for even that to happen, I'm hoping that at least this way this set will last longer than the previous ones did.
September 12, 2005.
Things.
I wonder when I became such an acquisitive person. When I was younger, I didn’t feel any overwhelming urge to own everything I liked. I was actually very content to borrow books from the library or from friends, and I was fine with renting movies once in a while. But not now. Now, I get a certain amount of joy just from buying certain things (DVDs and books, mostly, but also CDs) that I like. And I love having collections of them. Really, how likely am I to watch most of the movies that I own again? How likely am I to re-read most of the books that I own? Not very likely in either case, really.
And yet, I can’t seem to help myself. I just love buying the stuff that looks interesting, and I love owning it once it gets here. In some cases, it can take me months or years before I actually get to enjoy the reading (or watching) of the new item. At least I don't currently own any CDs that I haven't listened to, but then, it's easier to listen to a CD while working than it would be to read a book while working.
Sometimes, I actually miss the days of my youth, when I could move everything I owned in one car trip, and I could comfortably live in one bedroom of a shared house or apartment. Now, I can’t even fit into two rooms, even if I dumped my living room furniture (and I don’t own any dining room furniture). Admittedly, I need one room just for my office, but still, I need too much space just to store my books, DVDs, CDs, and my audio-visual equipment.
So why'd I get so acquisitive? I don't know. I also have no idea where I’m going with this. I was just idly thinking about it, and thought I’d toss it up on the ol’ blahg, since I need to update it.
September 7, 2005.
Desert.
I added a new scrapbook page with some pictures from the road between Hood River and Bend. They're aren't very exciting, but I took them, so I put them up.
September 5, 2005.
Oddities.
I need to update the page, but don't have much to say, so here's a couple odd little bits I noticed:
I thought I removed DVDs from the player by picking them up at the outside edges. But, paying attention, I found I actually pick them up by the center hole and one edge.
They're minting new buffalo nickels. I only know this because I just found one in my change bin. How'd I miss that before?
September 2, 2005.
Charts.
I just noticed the Warehouse 23: Top Sales By Month charts. GCA was the top Everything Else entry for July 2005, and second in August 2005 (beat out by some specialty pins, actually). That's pretty decent news. That, and GCA sales on e23 alone have covered my advance already, so I should see some dough at the end of the quarter.
August 25, 2005.
Wonder.
Last night we got together to do setup and introduction to Mark's new space game using the Hero system. My character is a mage, and wow, is Hero way more complicated to try and keep track of things than I remembered. It would probably help a lot if I'd refreshed my memory on the rules, and hopefully I'll do that soon. While I don't think I need to be all that up on the various bookkeeping things, I don't generally like being in the dark about that stuff for my character.
However, I am looking forward to actually playing, and seeing what we're going to get up to. We had only a little bit of game time after the prep stuff, and some of the characters look quite interesting. I really liked how Jeff's character approached mine after our new special ops team was formed, to try and get some inside scoop on the other characters. (My character is the ranking officer on the team, and has access to additional info on the various members.)
As per usual, I'm now changing topics, the next one being completely unrelated to the one above.
I'm re-watching Wonderfalls while riding my exercise bike. Since it's only half a season, and the urge hit me, I decided I might as well do that before getting back to the full seasons of Buffy or Angel. I really enjoy the way Wonderfalls works. I miss having something like that to look forward to on television, especially since the new slate of shows on the networks this fall looks entirely devoid of quirky, offbeat hour-long shows with a high humor ratio.
August 24, 2005.
Blocks.
My dad drove by our old rental house the other day, and it was no longer there. He says both that house, and the one next to it (which my old landlord also owned) have been razed. I guess the landlord got tired of trying to rent the places out, and instead decided to act on his plans to turn the property into four lots instead of just two. Or he sold them to someone else who believed as Stefan and I did: the property was worth something, but the houses were crap.
Completely unrelated, but cool: a Lego Serenity from Firefly.
August 20, 2005.
Death is Relative.
Well, sales of GCA on e23 have slowed down a bunch, but are still moving. It will be interesting to see how many have accumlated by the end of the quarter.
Otherwise, I've been too busy to do much, although I did finish season 1 of Dead Like Me yesterday. It was as good as I remembered, but I was right, I like the second season better. I'll miss the show. Now, for my daily exercise viewing, I'll go back to finishing off the seasons of Buffy and Angel that I haven't watched on DVD yet.
In other "news", Stefan and Steve are at GenCon. I hope they're enjoying themselves. Stefan managed to pick me up a convention-special Heroscape figure, so I'm enjoying the con, too.
That's it. I'm done for today.
August 16, 2005.
Almost Famous.
My brother (Stefan, for those not too familiar with my family) has joked previously about my being famous, due to GCA. I'm not, really, but my name may be recognized by a few gaming geeks here and there. Now, however, my name actually turns up something on Amazon.com, and I gotta tell you, that's a cool feeling.
On top of that, I no longer feel like I might be in danger of feeling like I made a mistake with the GCA deal. Or something like that. I got word that sales into the retail channel went very well, and sales on e23 continue to rise.
Not too bad a day, I guess.
August 12, 2005.
Feeding the Habit.
I finished the Earth 2 box set, finding that the last two episodes in the set were actually episodes that they hadn't shown from earlier in the series. They put all the episodes in "air date" order instead of "intended airing" order, which is annoying. At least I could identify relatively well where the episodes were supposed to fall (because they sure don't fit at the end), and made note of it for anyone else who watches the set. On the whole, though, I did enjoy the series.
I also just finished season 2 of Dead Like Me. It's a shame that Showtime cancelled this show, because they were just starting to get into some pretty interesting stuff within the world. Anyway, I quite liked this season--better than I remembered liking season 1, which I'm now going to go back and watch, now that I have it, too.
In other news....
GCA debuted on the e23 sales site for SJGames earlier this week. At the time I'm writing this, it's already sold 170 copies, which makes me pretty happy. I make more money per copy from e23 sales, so I hope to see a lot of them.
I have no idea how many copies have been sold into the retail channel. I hope it's a lot, though, because with all the work I'm doing on GCA, more sales is definitely better. I don't want to end up feeling like an idiot for having made this deal.
August 3, 2005.
See.
Not a lot to say today, again. Basically been working a lot, and when not working I've been watching DVDs. Recently, I've watched the Scrubs season 1 box set, which was very entertaining, and now I'm currently working my way through the Earth 2 box set. Earth 2 started off slower than I remembered, but is moving along well enough now.
July 27, 2005.
Caliente.
Holy cow, has it been hot here lately. It was in the high nineties yesterday, and is supposed to be about the same today. I put in Cori's air conditioner for her yesterday, and I'm really glad I have mine in as well. I'd be a puddle on the floor in this oven they call an apartment, otherwise.
I've found that I like the "Now Better Tasting" "Nacho Cheesier" Doritos less than the old ones. This isn't the first time a product has claimed to be better, and I've actually found it to be worse. I hate that.
I think I need to get out and take some more pictures, too. My Photo of the Moment has been getting short shrift for ages, now.
July 21, 2005.
Defeated.
I canceled my City of Heroes account today. I finally reached the point with it that I tend to reach with all such games: I just don't care any more, because everything is bascially the same. The various storylines and different groups were interesting for a while, but eventually it just boils down to killing stuff to advance. Even the interest in getting new and different powers just gets lost after a while. So, no more CoH for me.
July 20, 2005.
Tick Tock.
No updates for a while. Been pretty busy, trying to get work done of all sorts, plus providing some support for GCA. It seems that there are always a billion things that need doing, no matter how many I get done. Ah, well, I suppose it's better than being bored all day.
It would be nice to have a project some day that actually ends in a perfect product, something that I can look at and say: "That does its job perfectly, and it can't be done any better." I suppose that'll have to wait until I reach some other plane of existence, or something.
Anyway, it's gaming night in a bit, and I have to put my kit together for that. Maybe I'll have something else to talk about soon.
July 9, 2005.
The Final Frontier.
No, the post title doesn't really mean anything at all this time. I had to update the blog, since I was updating other stuff around here, and I was looking at the last entry, which was titled "Space"--being a geek, "the final frontier" naturally follows "Space" in my brain. That amused me, so here we are. (And yes, there is space in my brain. Ha ha.)
Changing topics....
Cori and I were trying to watch The Sopranos last night, when the upstairs neighbors came home and started to be loud with the stereo. I eventually went up and asked them to turn it down, which they did, as well as giving me a number to call if it got too noisy in the future. Gradually after that, the stereo noise crept up again, so I suspect they decided to turn it up a little at a time until I complained again. I hate that. I didn't complain again, because they turned it down at ten, which was good enough. Of course, then there was all kinds of banging and thumping and yelling for a while. Some people.
Only a few more months in this place.
July 4, 2005.
Space.
Since I'll be moving out of here soon, I've been looking at the floorplans for other apartments. It's shocking how many of those other apartments have floorplans that I think totally suck. A lot. I tend to like more open space, with a nice flow from room to room, while most apartment designers appear to like haphazardly dropping rooms down with no apparent plan in mind. Kinda sad. And, unfortunately, it seems harder to find decent two bedroom plans than it does to find decent one or three bedroom plans. That just strikes me as weird. (Of course, there are a lot more two bedroom plans than three bedroom plans, so many more chances to suck.)
I'm looking forward to getting out of this place, but not to moving again. Moving sucks.
[2005 Entries (January - June)]
This page last updated January 6, 2006. Contents Copyright © 2004-2006 Armin D. Sykes. All rights reserved. Click here to contact Armin.