age++ a couple days ago; no, I'm not dead, in case people were wondering.
I realize I have not posted since like May. Most of the details of my life I either a) don't feel like talking about in journal medium or b) are minutae of either work or gaming that most normal people would not find interesting. If you happen to want to hear about either of these, feel free to contact me on AIM.
One may ponder this and think "so you're abandoning LJ?" Perhaps in time, but I have something else in mind for this space. Keep an eye here for a weekly column, of sorts.
As a final note, for those of you with a deficiency, Graveyard BBQ's "Cheat on the Church" certainly meets your daily requirement of Vitamin Cowbell. It's worth a listen as long as you don't hate metal-ish rock.
Car stuff is long since dealt with, and I have a new one all but identical to the old.
A few days ago I was considering going to CMU for Carnival-time, but every time I checked Orbitz etc., I could not find tickets for reasonable times at anything less than like $315. So I decided to procrastinate on actually making a decision, because that's kind of like being decisive, except not. Apparently this was the Right Choice, as checking last night yielded tickets that were both direct and at times that are pleasing to me at scant over $200. Skör.* This means I will be in PGH April 21-23; people there at that time, I will make an effort to see, unless I don't like you/am afraid of you/wind up overscheduling myself again.
My company won the contract for the program I've been working on since I started. This is good, and hopefully will result in me moving to Washington DC in a few months (at first temporarily, and hopefully becoming permanently).
Otherwise, I'm back on the (war)crack for a few months now. I'm less of a hermit than I was when I was doing it last, but not by much. Ah well.
I could probably say other stuff, but meh.
*: One day when I am rich and have copious free time I will start a happy swedish metal band. They shall be named Skör. If any of you steal this idea I will hunt you down and...something.
**: www.orlyowls.com amuses me on a primal level, probably because I have tremendous tolerance for really stupid memes.
I'll start this off with a PSA: WEAR YOUR GODDAMNED SEAT BELTS WHEN RIDING IN A CAR.
So yesterday I was heading north on I-95 - I was going to visit friends in Atlanta this weekend, and decided (again) to drive it rather than deal with the cost/annoyance of flying - when, near St. Augustine, I notice one of those big extra-set-of-wheels-under-an-expanded-skirt Ford trucks coming up behind me damn fast. I wasn't terribly sure if he would stop in time, and he is sort of a big scary car, and my policy (lately) is to move out of the way of people who want to go faster than I am going, so I checked to my right. It seemed open, so I turn on my blinker and move to the right lane...completely missing the semi in my blind spot. He hits my rear right side; this sends me spinning, and I hit his (or perhaps another semi) front. I then bounce into him/the other semi, apparently going into the undercarriage - thankfully far enough up that I bounce off rather than being pulled under the wheels of the trailer. I am propelled into the Ford that I originally went to avoid, and then back the other way, at which point my car rolls, coming to a stop driver-side down.
I am relatively unhurt - a couple of scratches, and some bruising, but that is it as far as I can tell, though I'll be seeing my doctor Monday. My car is totaled, as far as the police and tow driver said; insurance will cover it (and the rest of the accident). It took about a day to get back home. All in all, though, considering how bad the accident was, that I'm alive and more or less unhurt is the big thing. And I'm very, very thankful for it...though ask me how happy I am when I see my insurance premium in June :|
Netflix has been found to be a Good Thing, but I think like 90% of the people here already knew that.
Project at work is nearly "done" (i.e., my involvement with it for the time being is probably almost over). This is good and bad; on the one hand, it'll be nice to move on, even if only for a little bit; on the other, I'm familiar with the stuff I'm doing.
I am contemplating running some sort of pen-and-paper (more like electrons-and-magnetic-disks, but meh) RPG over the intarweb in the kinda-near future. At the very least we'd be using IRC to communicate, but I'd also like to use some kind of VoIP to make the game a little more interactive. I have not had the opportunity to play in more than a one-shot in about a year, and I kind of miss it.
Due to the eeeevil forces influencing my decisions, the setting would be Star Wars, set approximately four thousand years before the Battle of Yavin (the end of the IV, if you did not know). Knowledge of the KotOR games will be useful for flavor, but is not necessary, as things will start about ten years after the events of the second one. I've got sparse details (general plot flow, main antagonists without stats, etc.) so far, and would not start until I have at least the first third of the overarching plot line done and the backbone of parts II and III also finished. If I'm diligent, that's a month or so. Interested parties should contact me via comment (though I'll warn that people I don't know in a more real-life capacity will probably be ignored), email, AIM, or (if you must) phone.
So I lied when I said I would be quitting WoW at the end of my paid period. It wound up being more like two days after I said I would quit. Only regretting it slightly - I do in fact miss several of my guildmates.
Plans for New Year's were "sit at home and do whatever." Last year was "sit at parents and do whatever." It's unfortunate that basically all of my better-established friends live neither near my parents nor myself. This time it is more my fault, as I could have made better efforts to make friends with people here, but as far as I know most of my friends here in the Cultural Wasteland are off visiting relatives and I'd therefore not be able to do anything with them anyhoo.
Plans for the following year include a general wish to become more healthy; this of course includes the standard hope for efforts at derotundification, but also actual getting healthier; this includes better-getting wishes for the Ailment I Speak of to Few, and in the short term getting rid of the Wandering Deafness. Note for the concerned - the latter is due to an infection and is (I hope) not permanent. Don't freak out.
Other plans hopefully include a move to Washington DC (via work, no less). I will know more about this happening or not happening around April or May.
Quick shots: -I will be visiting Pittsburgh sometime before the end of the CMU school year and after January; likely for Carnival, but if enough people tell me that's an off time and can suggest another I will be generally happy to come then. -I have, to no one's suprise, been playing video games lately. Dragon Quest 8 is fantastic and I cannot recommend it highly enough. If I was still cosplay-inclined (or, well, con-inclined, for that matter), I would be all over going to a con as Yangus. Animal Crossing: Wild World is also good and benefits from the portability of the DS. It's much easier to pick up, play for half an hour, and then put down again, which seems to be the optimal playstyle for it. -The actual purpose of Red Bull is to be mixed. In related news, I am sad that the optimal serving method for Jaegermeister seems to involve a machine whose *only purpose* is to chill the stuff. -Repeated use of chkdsk will generally be enough to get most of the non-borked data off a hard disk that has gone sad. -Toll roads are the tool of the Devil. -12 Oz. Mouse gives me hope that one day something I make will make it to mass media, as I can't imagine making something much worse than it in the worst case. -Just starting the Netflix thing. Considering my general sloth towards seeing movies, this is surprising. Queue is at about 30 disks; in addition to stuff I've wanted to see, I've gone and put on stuff I've always felt I should see but never did ("Fight Club", etc.). First up: "Master of the Flying Guillotine", "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels", and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (2005) (succumbed to the idea of Johnny Depp frolicing due to the Oompa Loompa songs, I did).
Happy holidays to all. Yeah, they're over, but still - happy holidays.
People may or may not be aware - or care - that according to the freshly-released cast roster for X3, Kelsey Grammer will be playing Beast. Now, I have encountered a good bit of mockery of this as I have been sailing the seven intarwebs in the last day or so, and while I enjoy seeing a good-natured ribbing - heck, I enjoy seeing a foul-natured roasting - I can't help but disagree.
My image of Beast is largely from the cartoon...and not this new hippy Evolutions crap or whatever, but the good ol' 90s cartoon where the X-men wore yellow outfits (at least I think they did, anyway). In this cartoon, 90% of what I remember him doing is hanging upside down from the celing while finding the derivative of the thermonuclear flux of Shakespeare's sonnets - essentially, being smart while in weird poses. I have confidence that Mr. Grammer can do this.
In other news, I have finally decided to quit World of Warcraft; the actual doing of such will probably come when my current paid period ends (in a couple of weeks). Remaining time in-game will be spent hopefully seeing a large orange hammer fall into a pool of lava (this weekend, assuming I'm not at work and that my decision to leave does not preclude me going) and making some stuff for the guild that they won't have access to after I leave. Much like how killing monsters in Eternal Darkness gets you sanity back, killing my WoW habit will return free time to me. And anyone who knows me knows how much I value free time over sanity.
Speaking of work, I made my 40 hours for this week yesterday. And everything works but this one critical function, which is just batshit insane and does not do what it is supposed to do. No one is exactly sure why it does not work, but we all blame various degrees of database locking and threading. After spending all damn day and a good chunk of the night at work yesterday, I find myself unmotivated.
I find myself reading more lately. A Feast for Crows is good, as I expected, but I am sad that it doesn't seem to do much with most my favorite characters. I can only hope they'll be in A Dance with Dragons more.
What is there to say about recent stuff? Little. One of the more notable things is that I have been tapped to get a security clearance; several people have already had me ask them if they would mind being contacts, and I am happy to say that all but one I actually talked to agreed (and the one never actually said yes or no, but dodged the question). I am mostly done with the forms; primarily now I need two more people, both of whom know about my activities while I was in Japan (this does not necessarily mean "saw me in Japan", just that you have a good handle on what I was up to while there; if you did, though, even better). One can be wherever, one must presently be in America. If you or someone you know fits those criteria and would be okay with being a contact for me (this will likely involve a phone call/short face-to-face with an investigator), please contact me via my gmail account, ayndin@gmail . I'll need your address and phone number, and name if for some reason that has leaked out of my brain-meats. This is essentially the last big piece of data I need, so if people can help me out here, I will be done and happy. Thanks in advance for the help :3
In other news, while the last few months have seen me diagnosed with health problems of assorted severity and hilarity, I am mostly okay, if desiring to leave Melbourne. I am pondering hitting CMU to see people in a couple months; at worst it'll be carnival-time. I still play WoW, though as of late a general feeling of discontent/boredom with the game has been gaining momentum. Work is very busy, and I am in fact presently about to go to a meeting, so for now I will end this post. Ciao.
This post to inform people that I have not in fact died or gone Luddite or turned into a conservative Republican or anything else terrible and have reached my 23rd birthday (today).
I could probably say other things here, but meh. Feel free to bother me on AIM or via my phone if you have a burning desire to talk to me.
This message brought to you by the letter Z and the god Hakkar.
Okay, I'm looking at attending PAX as my convention for the year (August 26-28). Normally, I would go to Otakon, but as I've mentioned, that convention has very very little that is intrinsically interesting to me any more, and is becoming increasingly crowded/populated by stupidity and annoyance. Much as I like seeing friends, many of the people that I would be attending to see live in PGH, and to be perfectly blunt it'd be much more effective to go there to see people rather than do ships-passing-in-the-night at Otakon. And less annoying. Though, should I do that (and I may), I'll want to plan a little better than I did for my April trip. Most certainly did not get to see all the people I wanted to then, largely due to being rather busy the whole weekend.
In any event, back to the matter at hand. As PAX is in Seattle, it's a pretty long trip, which means a) plane tickets aren't terribly cheap and b) flight times get more inconvenient. So I'd like to start making solid plans now if I'm going to go - this way I can buy tickets for less than insanity dollars. So, questions:
1) Is anyone else thinking of going to PAX? If so, we should talk about hotel (or if someone would be willing to have guests should they live there, crashing) arrangements, and transportation-y stuff.
2) If other people are going and do not yet have pass-type things, should we organize something with one person getting passes for all and then paying them back, or shall it be every (wo)man for themselves?
3) Any suggestions for decent places to eat/etc. near the convention area? Also hotels - inside info on that would be appreciated.
If anyone has stuff to add, feel free to drop a comment.
