Random Dialogue

Jamie was parsing through the tags on Slash, and was churning the permutations of ‘advertisement’ in the system. There were two hits for ‘zonkvertisement‘, so I wanted to see what I was selling. I’m apparently pimping the concept of the electro-defroster for cars, and Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Zonk (10:44): I had no idea.
Zonk (10:44): You would think that advertising for the president of china would pay better.
pudge (10:45): Zonk - you realize China is communist, right?  :)
Zonk (10:45): …
Zonk (10:45): damn.
pudge (10:46): you are paid in your love and devotion to the People’s Republic.
Zonk (10:46): I really should have considered this more carefully. This is what I get for signing a contract in a language I don’t read. 

I think I’ve got me writing legs under me again, at least for the time being. My Kingdom Hearts 2 Review is up on the site today.

The day has finally arrived. CmdrTaco has put up the announcement for the Slashdot CSS Redesign contest. First prize is a pimping laptop. Yay! New look for work!

Last night Katie’s head wasn’t so good, so we spent some time relaxing and trying to get her headache under control before we hit the hay. We talked a little bit about high school, not something we do terribly often nowadays. When you’re a teenager, everything seems so vitally important. Looking back, I have a clarity of perspective on what happened then and there, and the present doesn’t reflect all that favorably on my past.

Just the same, I did manage to make some good decisions. Specifically, my decision to open myself up to people who would in time become members of my extended family in every way that matters. Joe has been a good friend for more than a decade, and Abby for almost as long. Along with the rest of the crewe that I mentally think of as ‘The Table’, I helped them tie the knot this weekend in as grand a fashion as you’d like.

As a group, we’ve had a lot of water under the bridge. A lot of things can happen in a decade, but yet we’re still here, doing our thing ten years later. We’re all busy people, and we all do our own thing. I see some folks more often than others, and I really wish I saw some folks more than I do. From conversations I’ve had with people lately and my own plans, I know that we’re not going to be all together in one place for terribly much longer.

Just the same, I am more grateful than I could ever express that I have the friends I do. The future holds what it will, but I know that if it goes bad people have my back. And I’ve got theirs.

I hope you’re having fun in Seattle, Jabby. Congratulations.

Okay, don’t really.

We are all caught up with the Who, and I’m just as enthused about the series as I was during the first episode. The last episode, “Dalek”, just about made my head pop. I don’t know why people are rezzing old S/F shows and making them topical and good, but I’m not going to question it. Note to the universe: Red Dwarf is fine the way it is, please don’t try to improve it.

Cleaning went well yesterday. I can like, use my desk again. The kitchen is also now devoid of small scuttling life forms. The bastion of unclean that is our bedroom now needs to be assailed. We’re planning to use catapults. I also finished my metareview for Metroid, Tetris, and Brain Age. ‘A DS In Every Pot‘ may have been too vague for a title.

I’m doing some spring cleaning today, getting the house back into some sense of order after almost a month with me on the road. In particular I’m going to try to tackle my desk, which is a sprawling mess at the moment. I also have to finish my review tonight, and my master plan includes a trip to the gym.

Yesterday’s power outage turned out to be not as bad as I’d feared. Juice came back on fairly promptly (once we were already out of the house, of course), so we didn’t lose our milk or anything like that. Work was absolutely dead, though. There were about ten submissions from noon to midnight yesterday. It’s hard to post stories when you don’t have access to them. :p

As happy as I am to be home, I’m already making plans for the next time I’m to get on a plane. Katie and I are going to be hitting California and Oregon in June for Matt Feldman’s wedding. We’re going to get there a week ahead of time to take in SFO and the wine country, and then head up to Ferndale to visit the relatives. We’ve got plane tickets, a claim on a rental car, and tickets to a baseball game. It will be the first ‘vacation’ we’ll have taken since our trip to Disneyworld a few years ago. Yay for trips that don’t involve business.

Last night Alan lead us in a rousing session of Deadlands to stand in for the Shackled City game, on hiatus for the month of April. It was very fun being a player for a change.

We lost power sometime before 8:30am. I know this, empirically, because our alarm didn’t go off. Thankfully, I guess, the loud noises associated with the storm woke me around 9. Happy Easter, you’re powerless! All that food you just bought will go rancid! Yay!

It’s almost 11 at this point, and we’re going to take our prep stuff for dessert and corn casserole to the Giacominis to prep it there. I have a thing about using knives in the dark. Crazy, I know.

At holidays I usually say something about my reaction to the spirit of the season and stuff, but I’m not really the right person to talk about Easter. In point of fact, I don’t really have feelings about Easter. I’m not Catholic or Christian, so it means nothing to me as a religious festival, and I find the whole bunny-chocolate-peep thing nauseating. Don’t get me wrong, I scarfed chocolate bunnies with the best of them when I was a kid, but at this point I’m really not a ’sweets’ person. The occasional trip to ColdStone is about all I can handle on that end, and the thought of all that sugar in an Easter basket makes me oogie.

I’m still unsure about the Flickr/Gallery conundrum. I have to say, I like working with Flickr a lot better than Gallery. It turns out that my appreciation for MMOGs apparently extends to the ‘game’ of putting photos online. As much fun as I have tagging and describing my own stuff, it’s even more fun to click through tags I make to see what other people have put out there. Because of the easy way Flickr allows associations and groupings I’m also finding it very freeing; I don’t have to constantly be making new Galleries and stuff to organize things. Sets are much easier to work with, fluid you’d almost say, and the ‘overview’ screen is a great tool for forcing me to prune pictures. Indeed, if you look at my Flickr versions of some of the Galleries, they’re much more focused than the ‘everything and the kitchen sink’ approach over here.

I’m more than halfway through a combo review for Metroid Hunters/Tetris DS/Brain Age. Assuming we get power back sometime tonight, I should have that up on the site for Tuesday. I always jinx it when I say it like this, but I’m also going to go for a Kingdom Hearts 2 review this week. Mebbe even one more, but if that gets written up it’ll be happy times for me. I’m soo behind…