Of Life and Diversion

Ain't Life Grand: Smells Like Teen Spirit

2012-01-10T20:35:00.002-06:00

So, I have no big weekend intelligence post this week. Nothing major happened this weekend, which isn't exactly a bad thing given how crazy the last few weeks have been. Only chore-like thing I did was the WalMart run. D had a busy weekend running several parties, kicking off a new consultant, getting some party and consultant leads and making some decent bank, while I camped out at home with the kids.

Now, every other weekend, when I say kids, I'm also referring to Elizabeth. Elizabeth is Kevin's daughter, and for the most part, she and Clara get along famously and into all sorts of trouble. Their prime time for mischief is early in the morning while the rest of the house is still sleeping, keeping their chances of getting caught in the act at a minimum.

Sunday morning, they had decided to make an exceptionally horrific mess of the upstairs. Toys everywhere, toothpaste on the bathroom counter and floor and little flecks of unidentified white gunk all over the carpet, stairs, chair, bed and new drum set. After hollering at the girls for the mess, I couldn't help but notice that the whole loft had a very, very strong smell that I could only describe as "berry." "What IS that smell?" I wondered as I went for the stairs, and nearly slipped down them stepping on something. Just barely catching myself, I picked up a destroyed stick of Teen Spirit deodorant that Elizabeth had, I later found out, left on the floor after picking it apart and spreading all about the loft.

"Ah," I said, finally, "smells like Teen Spirit."

Ain't life grand?

The Dude Abides

2012-01-05T21:36:00.002-06:00

The first time I watched The Big Lebowski, I was a sophomore in college. Two good friends of mine from the scholarship program I was in and one of their childhood friends innerduced me to the film. The idea was to get drunk on Keystone Ice and/or White Russians and try to play through a game or two of Cribbage while watching the movie and takin' er easy, and it became something of a regular ritual during our years there. It didn't take long for other folks we knew to join in and keep the tradition going after we left. But I guess that's the way the whole durned human comedy keeps perpetuatin' itself.

Yeah, as a fan, I was a little late to the party. I became an ordained Dudeist Priest in good standing in 2009, allowing me to minister over religious ceremonies in most U.S. States. Still, I'd always wished I could have seen it on the big screen. I guess I could have seen it in the theater when it was released, since one of my best friends worked there while we were in school, but I'd never thought of it.

So when Kevin told me a week beforehand that he had purchased tickets to an audience participation showing of my favorite college film at the Alamo Drafthouse, I was stoked. I don't think I gave her the amount of notice she'd have preferred, but my loving and understanding wife still allowed the semi-impromptu guys night out and watched the kids. (EDIT: I love you, hon!) After some front row parking and a round of beverages, we took our seats and were handed an inflatable baseball bat (think low-tier carnival prize or Chuck E. Cheese style), a purple glow stick and a pair of men's briefs (clean, we were assured). They had a one frame bowl-off in the front row with giant pins and a big, inflatable beach ball just before darkness warshed over us.

It was an interesting way to watch the show. Kind of a RHPS meets Sing-along. They had certain crowd-pleaser quotes (and a few oddball ones), along with the lyrics to the songs down at the bottom of the screen in subtitles. Audience members were encouraged to quote along with the show and shout things at the screen. At special scenes, we had the aforementioned props to act out the scene.

That purple glow stick? It was for when Jesus made his first appearance in that signature purple jumpsuit. People went nuts waving them in the air and tossing them around the theater. The bats were for when Walter beats the crap out of the car (NSFW: language). Bats were swinging everywhere, off of other people's faces and narrowly missing empty beer glasses. I knocked my glow stick off into the front row with it! The underwear was probably the best prop: it was for throwing during the hand-off scene (NSFW: language). Most everyone threw theirs immediately, a hundred pairs of tighty whities flying around the theater. But some people either held on to theirs, or picked some up off the ground, and threw them at other scenes. Kevin tied his in a knot and soaked it in beer to "give it some distance" and, much to the amusement and delight of the people sitting behind him and as much to the disgust of the people sitting in front of him and the theater cleaning staff, and threw it, nearly hitting the screen.

It was a good time, and I'm thankful to Kevin and D that I can finally say I saw it on the big screen.

Ain't Life Grand: Just a Little While Longer

2012-01-02T22:33:00.002-06:00

Today was the last day of the long winter break. I had spent all of the rest of it at home with the kids - 12 crazy days of Clara and Colin bouncing off the wall at home, getting into trouble, eating everything in sight, with a well-placed winter cold for flavor. This day, however, was also the first day back to school for them, and one of the few days D had off from work, making today the only day we had off together without the kids in our hair.

We went out and had a nice, relaxing breakfast, lounging around at Starbucks together, drinking some of the season's best brews. And after a brief grocery run, we took a long, lazy, kid-free nap. The kind of nap you only get when you don't worry about what's happening on the other side of the bedroom door. We both REALLY needed that. As much as we love our kids, we needed that...

While I wish I could get one more day like today with her before hitting the grind again, I'm thankful I got to be with her today. Ain't life grand?

2011 Year In Review

2011-12-31T14:32:00.013-06:00

I had wanted to do a year in review, highlighting all the big moments of this year and putting neat little links down below for you to click through and read about all the zany misadventures of our intrepid household.

But you see, I was lazy this year.

Maybe lazy isn't the word. Tired maybe. Overcommitted might be better. Outcome was the same, though. At the end of the day, I just didn't have it in me to want to write. Many of these posts can take an hour or more to write, and I just didn't have that block of uninterrupted time to sit and type. There's always something else that needs doing.

But here's where it gets tricky. Unlike all those other things, writing actually makes me feel better when I'm done. I feel motivated, energized. It's a relief to get my thoughts and happenings down where I can see them. Even if I don't post all of what I type out, at least it was out on the screen for that little while, where I could see it and examine it for what it really is. I feel lighter and more accomplished when I'm done, which is way more than I can say about some of the other things I do in a day.

For instance, if I had written it at the time, I would have been beaming with pride when I posted that, after more than six years, I finally adopted Colin.

New last name and everything. He made the decision to take the Cope family name on his own. Barring some paperwork to amend the birth certificate and get a new social security card, it's a done deal. He's always been my boy, but now the papers agree.

There would have been a link to a post about when I almost lost Clara. I was trying to get everyone ready to go in the morning, and when I called for Colin, he didn't respond, so I asked Clara to see if he was out at the car already. She interpreted this as "Epic Neighborhood Quest Times!" and upon finding no hint of her brother at the car, she decided to go search for him. Turned out he was in his room and just didn't feel like answering that morning. Thank goodness our neighborhood is full of kind and understanding people, many of whom are parents themselves. One of them saw her on their way to work, told her she should not be out by herself and to go home, and then followed her to make sure she was going home. I had never been so relieved as when I saw that mop of blond hair bouncing up the street back home.

There would have been an entry on my wife's new business. Yes, she's started her own Passion Parties business - purveyors of fine romance advice and products, and has worked and recruited her way up to team lead! Not only have the profits grown steadily over the past few months, but the knowledge and advice have been phenomenal for our relationship.

Not to brag (well, maybe a little, she deserves it), but that's pure profit earned in less than one month from cash sales only (not counting profit on credit card sales). She earned enough last month to not only cover a car payment, but also pay for airfare to Vegas for her convention next March. I've been helping her with advertising and promotion, building an exchange server and managing the domain, tanking the kids and doing some of the more mundane paperwork prep so she can focus on customer and training calls. I'm so very proud of her, and the future looks very bright. You can find a link to her online store and website in the links section (somewhat NSFW), true, but I would have made a whole post on the new business alone.

There would have been a post or five about Christmas. I have been spending the entire Winter Break at home with the kids this season so D will have enough time off for Vegas. These past two weeks alone could have filled a page.

Yes, that's a drum set. For Clara. She loved the toy drum we got her several years ago so much that, in a fit of masochism and alcohol, we decided to get her a set of them that we saw online. We spent almost two whole days shopping online over Thanksgiving in El Paso, hunting for just the right gifts. Colin got an e-reader with a built-in radio and media player, loads of B&N gift cards, the newest Zelda game and "A Christmas Story" bundle, complete with the DVD of the film and an actual BB gun - the same one that Ralphie obsesses over the entire movie. Along with her drum set (which she just LOVES, wish I could find a way to post that Facebook video...), Clara got books and cards and clothes. They both got Nerf guns to shoot each other with. D got a load of clothes and a brand new shower head to replace the old one that made more of a dribble than an actual shower. The hoops that I had to jump through just to get that here and ready before Christmas would have warranted it's own post. I received a Nook Color, and have done more reading in the last week than in the past three years combined.

There would have been more posts about us starting the year off with some good friends who had to leave us because they received new orders to move out, and how much we miss them even still. There might have even been a mention of them later, congratulating them on a gorgeous baby girl. There would have been at least one post about Kevin moving in to our house, and several more short posts at least on the ensuing hilarity. There would have been posts about meeting new friends and the good times we've had with them. There would have been a post on my promotion at work, the restructuring that's taking place (don't worry, it's a good restructure) to make our department work more efficiently and how much more I'm enjoying my job now that I can focus on the parts of it that I really enjoy.

There would have been many more posts.

But they didn't happen this year. For one reason or another, they just didn't. I love this blog too much to let that happen again. So, as much as I'm not one to make New Year's Resolutions, I'm making one this year. After all, I've made them before and they turned out great. This year, I want to post at least one general and one weekend intelligence entry a week. Shorts are fun and bonus, but I want to do at least that, if not more. Help me along in this, won't you? Comment in the comments section, like the Facebook page and give me feedback, and share this page with your friends. Let me know you're out there and enjoy reading this as much as I do writing it. And if not, why not?

I pray for a joyous and prosperous new year for you all! See you next year!

EDIT (1/1/2012): D uploaded the video of Clara playing her new drums from her phone to YouTube. You can see it here. Happy New Year!

Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men

2011-12-24T09:45:00.003-06:00

Today when I rolled outta bed
A song was goin' through my head
And it's been runnin' round in there since then.
All about the bells a-ringin'
Hallelujah angels singin'
"Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men!"

It all goes back to long ago when
Mary and her husband Joe got
Stranded in a barn in Bethlehem
Mary had a baby boy and
The heavens opened with joyful songs of
Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men.

And in the sky there was as star,
Much brighter than the rest by far,
And shepherds gathered 'round their flocks to tend.
And wise men brought them gifts and things and
Angels sang of baby kings and
Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men.

It wasn't anything he did
'Cause he was just a little kid but
Somehow they all knew it, even then.
He was born of joy and love and
To remind us all the message of
Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men.

Now every year it's just the same:
We miss the point and go insane and
Overeat and drink and stress and spend!
When all you need is to remember
Once a year, in late December,
Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men.

So when I hear those carols chime and
Get these little tunes and rhymes
All stuck there in my head yet once again,
I just leave there 'til the end of the year
And try to listen when I hear about
Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men.

From me and mine, to you and yours, regardless of creed or belief, may you experience fullness of joy and peace this holiday season.

Serious Update: Have you seen Randy Ponzio?

2011-11-20T00:10:00.005-06:00

Don't normally break out of the typical format, but this is important. A good childhood friend of D's has gone missing in Vancouver. If any of you know him or know someone in Vancouver who might know him or can spread the word, please pass this along.

Here are some links with more information. If you can help, even just by spreading the word, I'd be very grateful:

Thanks for your help!

EDIT: My condolences to the family and friends of Randy Ponzio. I never knew him, but from what I've heard of him, I wish I had.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Missing+Vancouver+musician+Randy+Ponzio+found+dead/5740776/story.html

Please pray for them as they mourn. Thanks again.

Weekend Intelligence: Halloween House Party!

2011-11-01T21:07:00.000-05:00

A lot changes in a year: jobs change, new friends come and old friends move on. But one thing that's a tradition in our house is Halloween. That's OUR holiday! For four years now, we have decked our house out in Halloween decor, went all out on our costumes and handed out some of the best candy in the neighborhood. And now, for two years, we've also thrown a big Halloween party. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights!

Honestly, we weren't going to do a party this year. Oh, I had THOUGHT about doing one this year since last year, but I didn't think there would really be any interest. A third of the people that were invited and/or attended the one last year had moved out of state, including the handful of party crashers. But about two weeks away from what would have been the party, and completely out of the blue, I had a few friends mention individually that they were really looking forward to my party this year...

I guess that means I'm throwing a party this year. >.>;

A Facebook event posting, some online costume shopping and some last-minute babysitter calls later, and we had a party planned. We decided to go with a kind of Alice in Wonderland theme. D picked out an amazingly detailed Red Queen costume, and I went with a Mad Hatter costume that included the works. Well, it was supposed to include the works. Instead, the hair was pulled off the hat, the tie was sticky and the pants were missing. Sounds like a rough weekend (pa-dump-psh)... Anyway, I called the customer service line for the site that I ordered it from and sent pictures of what remained of the costume, and they got me a refund and said I could keep the costume.

Now, the costume was not all that great of a deal for the price I paid, but it was a great deal now that it was free. Throw in some hamburger queso and some crock pot Lil Smokies and meatballs, homemade sparkling cranberry wine, beer, liquor and mixers, 72 jello shots (yes, we made 72 of them, in pina colada, strawberry daiquiri and margarita flavors and spiked with the appropriate spirits for the flavor) and a playlist of some creepy movies and music, and you have yourselves a party. I invited all the San Antonio people I knew, and D (with her new and successful network marketing business) invited a TON of people. We had a decent turnout, and even had some party crashers again this year.

Trick-or-treating was great again this year. Added to the collection of decorations this year is a skeleton pirate to hang on the door knocker, a larger skeleton pirate that looks like it's breaking up through the ground around the bushes and three skulls that connected to the fog machine via hoses. The first two made it through the holiday, but the tubing for the skulls started melting from the heat of the fogger, so they got tossed. At least we still have the skulls for next year.

This next week will be a full week, but then I'm taking Monday off for a 3-day weekend. Colin and I have some important business to take care of that Monday... :) Stay tuned.

Clara's 5th

2011-09-27T11:01:00.004-05:00

Has it been five years already?

It seems like only yesterday that a little baby tumbled into my life, with striking blue eyes that met mine only after I gently called her name and an unabashed passion for life. Five years later, I have a goofy little girl with two missing teeth (you can't tell from this picture; she has a mouthful of food) who's just starting to read. But she still has the same joy-filled blue eyes and a fiery love for life.

Five years... Why is time so awesome and so cruel at the same time?

It's our family tradition that you get to choose where to eat on your birthday. This has resulted in far more hours than one should ever spend in a Chuck E. Cheese over the years. Thankfully, Clara choose Peter Piper this year: same game room chaos, true, but 100% less creepy animatronic talking rodents.

The place was fairly quiet when we got there, and it looked roomier than I'd remembered as well. Apparently they'd done some extensive remodeling since we'd been there last, and Mondays are slow evenings. After ordering our pizza and game tokens, filling our drinks and finding our seats, we sent the kids off to play. Colin, who, despite dragging us to places like this and acting like a sugared-up twit for the past 7 some-odd years, was suddenly too cool to be seen in a place like this, especially with his baby sister, and only begrudgingly looked after her as she rode a rickety old kiddie ride and tore through the jungle gym.

The pizza didn't take long to cook, so I rounded up the kids to get to chowing down. Colin finished his pizza in short order and wanted to get some time to play some games without his tag-along sister, so he went and blew all his tokens in under 2 minutes flat on the coin-drop games. I gave him a few more dollars to play, with the warning that there was no more money for additional tokens. Again, 2 minutes flat, and he was back at the table complaining about being bored.

It was all lost on Clara, though. She was very happy to be there, eating her favorite pizza and playing games. Once she'd finished up and had a good wipe down of all the pizza grease, she struck out with D and I in tow and tokens in hand. One ride in particular had caught her attention while she was eating: it was bright orange, loud, had a huge screen with air blowers and seats for two which rocked and shook in sync with the scene onscreen...

Oh, look! There's one... You can really get anything on the internets, stationary death traps included.

Anyway, she thought this was a great idea, and I didn't call "Not it!" fast enough, so I sat with her on this thing while D stood away and watched on with a camera phone and a smirk. The ride was clearly not designed for either of our sizes: my head sat well above the head rest, legs cramped up onto the foot holds, and you could fit three of Clara into the other seat with room to spare. Clara wanted to do the simulator with the race cars, because, well, because race car. I vaguely remember, in between the repeated blunt head trauma from that shaking contraption of doom, crashing into other cars, going over speed bumps that jumped over lanes and through loop-the-loops at breakneck (not figurative) speeds.

For all my silly complaints of severe and/or life-threatening head and neck injury, Clara actually had a blast: she was whooping and hollering the whole time. Everytime the seats bucked, she'd laugh, which sounded even more funny given that she was being violently shaken by a robot. Eventually, the ride came to a stop and it was time to get off. I crawled off, still rather dazed at the experience, but Clara, still very much excited with the adventure, tried to jump off unassisted. She caught her thigh in the handles, bent her leg in a very unnatural way, tumbled off the ride head first and was caught by a very horrified DeAnn. We spent the next 15-20 minutes or so filling out an incident report with the manager of the establishment. Don't worry, she was dancing and running around through most of it, though that might bruise up.

Thankfully, the rest of the evening was pretty uneventful. We sang happy birthday to her over a big, chocolate cake with a candle shaped like a "5" and watched her blow it out. After cake and ice cream, she opened her cards and presents. We got her a Disney's Beauty and the Beast DVD and a Tangled TAG book for her reader. Grandparents and great-grandparents sent her a rather nice chunk of change by way of those noisy electronic birthday cards she absolutely loves. We read her book and finished off the last of Snow White that we'd started the night before just before she called it a night.

Final tally: pizza had, tokens spent, concussion sustained, incident report filed, tickets won, trinkets acquired, cake and ice cream scarfed, cards and presents opened, books read and happy little girl exhausted, but truly loved.

Weekend Intelligence: Avast ye, throw in together and harken!

2011-09-19T14:35:00.008-05:00

Aye, it be that time o' year again! Time when we be putting aside the proper frivolities of our standard parlance and take up the rougher jawin' as heard in yer favorite boozin' ken.

Translation: Today is International Talk Like A Pirate Day! Yes, it's a real thing. Every year, on September 19th, folks from all over the interwebs get together and, well, talk like pirates for the day. And maybe it was the family's collective pirates wanting to celebrate a bit early, but we had a rather piratey weekend. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights!

ARR!

Due to some automotive problems, and a need to move forward on some issues on the home front, D and I took Friday off to take care of some unfinished business. After getting the car and sharing a few at the Flying Saucer while completing paperwork (and trying to break D into that market with her new business), I sat down for the evening and, on a whim, decided to browse Steam games. As it turns out, Puzzle Pirates, an MMORPG that we used to play back in the day while waiting for FFXI servers to update, was now free to play on Steam. We only played it during maintenance, but it was fun, family friendly (any cursing would be replaced by ridiculous and completely family friendly pirate-speak curses) and, best of all, free. It fell by the wayside because, well, FFXI ate our souls.

At any rate, I decided to give it a spin. I installed it and created a pirate, and hadn't been playing it much more than 30 minutes before both Colin and D had taken notice, downloaded it, installed it and were pillaging with me. :D We had quite a piratey weekend: we found a good crew and I even bought a special ship that we can do runs in as a family or with the other crewmates. Just need to finish getting it stocked up with plenty of rum and cannon balls. LOL

The actual talk like a pirate day was a work day, and as much as I wanted to just sit at home and have me a swig o' rum and relax, there was work to be done. But that didn't keep me from talking to coworkers and (understanding) clients alike as a pirate and wearing my tricorne around the office. Yes, I keep one on hand at my for just such an occasion. In fact, a new employee started in our department, and her first impression of me is hailing her with a hearty "Ahoy!" while drinking a coke and wearing a pirate hat.

Life can get a little hectic and can be really complex, but sometimes, all you really need is to do is point the bowsprit, find something to have a good "har" about and set sail.

Ain't Life Grand: You Gonna Make Biscuits?

2011-07-09T20:15:00.003-05:00

It was my turn at the on-call phone this week. One of the system engineers saved my ass and covered for me for the weekend while I had family in town, but I got the phone as soon as I got back. And, of course, wouldn't you know it but the silly thing went off in the middle of the night every night I had it?

But it wasn't it's typical ringer... I was pulled out of sleep by GIR, asking the timeless question "You gonna make biscuits?!"

Well played, Hahn. Well played. Ain't life grand?

Weekend Intelligence: July 4th Weekend - Now With 100% Fewer Fireworks!

2011-07-06T20:17:00.000-05:00

The blistering heat and severe drought of South Texas this year prompted the powers that be to outlaw all fireworks and cancel all 4th of July displays this year. Bleh. Especially since my mom, dad and brother, Jordon, had been looking forward to coming down and visiting us for months. No fireworks on the 4th and a house full over: what to do? The answer is simple: take it easy and try to stay out of the heat! So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights.

They didn't actually leave until late Friday, and since they were traveling from Emporia, KS, they wouldn't be in until late that evening. Even so, I took the last few hours off from work to get the house ready: ran the Roomba and the Scooba to get as much of the pet dander up as I could, cleaned the kitchen and living room, dusted and changed the filter on the AC. See, dad is allergic to cats, and we have two of them, so every little bit helps to prevent him from turning into a sniffling mess my wife affectionately coined "sneezing tomato." When they were just outside New Braunfels, I got some hamburger queso dip (the same stuff D's mom makes when we travel there) and some margarita mix ready for them. They got in about midnight, but were still up for an hour or so of kicking back and having a drink before calling it a night.

Saturday was pretty packed. We spent the better part of the morning planning out what we wanted to do that evening. My folks had never been to the Riverwalk, so we wanted to show them a good time. We booked dinner boat tickets and aimed to see the jazz club later that evening. We went to the Flying Saucer for lunch to show them our favorite pub and put 3 more beers under my belt. After a nap, we piled into the van and went downtown.

Now, the place was packed and hot as all get out. And I mean PACKED: most walkways were only single file in both directions, and some were even less than that with all the vendor booths open for the holiday weekend. Combine this with the heavier than average tourist traffic due to that same holiday weekend, and you get the perfect storm for someone ending up in the river. I thought for sure Clara was going to end up in the drink more than once. When we got to the riverboat tour ticket line, it was snaked around the tensabarriers, up the stairs and onto the street topside. An easy 2 hour wait. -.-; We just decided that, since we were going to be on a boat anyway, we'd skip the tour. After sitting in this place for 15mins getting ignored for a drink order, we decided to get some bottled water at the CVS and chill at the Hilton until our dinner boat was in.

I'm glad we didn't stress the tour boat, because after the food was served, the boat disembarked and provided us with a tour. Perfect! In all the years I've been here, I'd never been on one before. I'd seen them trolling around, but never been on one. It was a little cramped, but the food was fantastic and the tour was great. After we finished there, we found some open seats at the Landing's patio just in time to hear the jazz trio start up. While D and I have been here several times before, this was the first time we took the kids with. And it probably won't be the last, as Clara absolutely LOVED the jazz music. She put her hands in the air and just started jiving to the music with all the bead necklaces she suckered out of the folks on the dinner boat. It was adorable, and not lost on the band and patrons, some of them taking pictures of her dancing and waving her arms.

Sunday we were going to try to hit Sea World, but if the Riverwalk was any indication, the place was going to be like a stroll through an overcrowded loony bin on the floor of an active volcano. As much as I love Sea World, none of us were up for that. Instead, we took it easy, had some lunch and scheduled massages for D, mom, Jordon and I and bought theater tickets for dad and the kids. Afterward, we went to Joe's Crab Shack and had some seafood. D got this drink that came with a shot of grenadine in a plastic toy shark, and the waitress shouted out "OH NO! THERE'S A SHARK IN THE WATER!" as she poured grenadine into the blue drink and groaned painfully. Ever the networker, D chatted her up to see if she'd be interested in doing Passion Party consulting. LOL

Monday was even more of the same: very relaxing and not too much planned. We went to the mall to get a few things that Jordon needed. The parents sprung for some swag at the Disney store - beach towels and swimming gear for Colin and Clara. I needed a new pair of shoes for the gym, so I got that while I was out there, too. After the mall, the kids went with the grandparents to go swimming at the hotel pool while we took a nap. For their last night in town, we went to dad's favorite restaurant in town, the Alamo Cafe, for some of their world-class margaritas, fajitas and fresh made tortillas.

In a way, I'm sorry I didn't have more for them to do while they were in town, but then again, I think a nice, relaxing weekend might have been what the doctor ordered for all involved.

Life's Little Updates

2011-05-25T16:12:00.006-05:00

It's been a while since I've updated everyone on the state of our little corner of the world. How the days seem to fly...

First off, our good friends Mike and Claudia decided to abandon us for the east coast. :P Actually, Mike got new orders and had to move to Ft. Bragg a few months ago. This effectively put an end to our little gaming group for the foreseeable future - at least until Wizards of the Coast gets around to releasing their virtual table so we can play online. It was fun while it lasted, and we did get one last hurrah and ended with an adventure that had some decent closure.

Related to that... With their move, Kevin, their roommate, was out of an apartment. D and I offered him a place to stay at our house for a little rent, and he accepted. His daughter, Elizabeth (Erizabef in Clara-speak) gets along with both kids and stays the weekend as well every other weekend, making for a very full house. :)

We've also been keeping on the lookout for some new gaming buddies. While we miss our friends something awful, we still want to put dice on the table. After posting on some gaming boards and putting a note on Craigslist, we found some folks who were interested. I went through all my old campaign notes and designed a reboot for the same campaign. And just when we were about to start, that week, their schedule got mixed up and they were unable to make it anymore. Luckily, Kevin knew someone else who was interested from D&D Encounters, so he joined in instead and we were still able to play last weekend. And despite being one person short for the encounters I made, we still had a great time. I hear he might be bringing someone to the next one, so hopefully it can game on time again.

And its game off again for FFXI and FFXIV. While we started playing again, I can count on one hand the number of times I've logged on in the last few months. It's just not worth the subscription anymore. We've decided to use some of the savings to get gym memberships at Bally's, as well as put some extra towards credit cards. We finally have a plan to get out of debt.

D has started a home business with Passion Parties. You know, those parties. She's loving the opportunities to set her own goals and rules, all while doing really well in her sales and having a blast at the parties. She's also just opened an online store. I've also added a link on the sidebar. For obvious reasons, it may be a little NSFW, but when you have a moment, have a look. She has a little something for everyone in there, men and women, singles and couples alike.

Colin's doing really well in K12, an online homeschooling program that he attends over at the same home daycare Clara has been at for years. They're both excited for a little break this summer; we're headed to El Paso for Memorial Day, making a 4-day weekend of it and we're taking Alice the Tank (we finally gave her a name) along for her first family road trip. I love Lucky, but the van is so much more comfortable for long-distance travel.

Summer is almost here, and I'm looking forward to it. :D

Weekend Intelligence: Goodnight, Christine

2011-05-03T16:09:00.000-05:00

Sometimes life just seamlessly transitions into a different chapter. And then sometimes, there are very distinctive breaks in chapters that can be a bit hard to take. This weekend was one of those. Forgive me if this doesn't follow the normal format and rambles a little; the symbolism hits close to home for me. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights.

Christine, my convertible, had been having trouble since the minor accident I was in late last year. Nothing serious, mind you, but she was pretty banged up. It was a real blow to the ego that my lovely car had taken a hit. I had saved up money to do repairs, but thought better of spending it on a car when there were so many other more important things to do, namely paying for Colin's adoption. She just started to slide from there. Combined with some shady and underhanded dealings with maintenance done at WalMart (I realize it's my fault for doing them at WalMart, but they didn't have to be deceptive crooks about it) that ruined her oil pan, she was having some real issues starting and idling.

Well, this weekend, the problems got extreme, so I took time off on Monday to get her down to the service center to have her looked at. She needed, among many, many other things, at least a replacement of the oil pan, gasket and plug. They quoted me $840 for it. Then they quoted me all the other work she would need to get her to driving like she did before the accident. All in all, just shy of $3000.

$3000... For a car that was going on 9 years old and 90k miles. For a car that I still owed $5000 on and could only get $2000 for. I remember when she had 30k... But the fact of the matter is that she was becoming a money sink and was quickly also becoming unsafe to drive. I have no doubt that if I would have taken Christine to Austin during week, she would have broken down. As much as it pained me to admit it, it was time to trade her in.

Since I only had that one day off, and she was having trouble getting from place to place as it was, D took the day off and we both went to Carmax. We'd had a very good experience there before, so we decided to try it again. She came to pick me up, bring me to the dealer to get the convertible, and we both went down to Carmax.

It became clear in the first half hour there that we were looking for two different things. I was looking for something to replace Christine with that would be just accommodating enough for our family, maybe a little larger for any additions. D was looking at minivans. Big minivans. Now, in fairness, we've been seriously considering, if not trying for, an addition to the family. But since we've had a Vue (first Summer, then Lucky), I've had the freedom to also have a fun car.

The problem is that our family is already starting to get too large for poor Lucky. Going anywhere of moderate distance in the Vue with all 4 of us (not to mention Suzie) is difficult in the Vue. Colin spends most of the time curled up in the fetal position or otherwise contorted around luggage. Visiting grandparents in El Paso, Kansas or even the East Coast would be difficult now, and simply wouldn't work with a second car seat in the Vue.

Long story short, after spending 4 hours on the lot, several test drives and some debate, we traded in Christine for a 2010 Chrysler Town & Country. It's a behemoth of a vehicle, especially considering what I was driving before. I have to climb up into the driver seat; it feels more like I'm driving an RV than a van. It has three rows of seating: two front seats, two middle seats and a bench with three spots in the back. And all seats except the driver and passenger seats fold up into the floor, creating a cavernous cargo space. To be sure, it's a beautiful minivan, and at a price that was less than half that of the current year model. However, it was still a minivan...

It was a real hit to my ego. After all, I'd already given up my first convertible (Elizabeth, or Libby for short) for a nice, sensible family car. I had to ask myself what it was that hurt so much about letting go of Christine. I had already prepared to do that in February, after some of the problems began to surface. I was planning on replacing her with something similar. So it really wasn't about the car itself. It's way more about image, both outside and self. I see myself as being a young, fun-loving free spirit with a badass stereo, and I want others to see me that way. Most of the friends I've met here in Texas have never known me before having a convertible. And now I'd be driving around a vehicle that way more family than fun. I guess it's the one thing I fear most in life: to wake up one day and wonder what the hell happened to all the fun and joy in my life.

But you know what? Despite all the assholes, crappy jobs, low wages and other bullshit life has hurled my way, I still haven't reached that day. The few regrets I have are easy to roll with. It never mattered the clothes I wore or car I drove: I brought the fun. I still bring the fun. For starters: I can fit a full sized air mattress in the back with all the seats stowed. Fun times anywhere. :P I can also fit in a full camping setup, with all three kegs of cider and CO2 tank, without cramming. You better believe Austin work roadtrips will include a cooler of beer and a fishing pole. And I still have the stereo, subs, 6x9's and amp...

What, you didn't REALLY think I was going to sell the stereo, too, did ya?

There's not a single reason the same van that hauls kids on long road trips can't also haul the party. It's all about who's behind the wheel. Eventually this phase of life will pass, just like Christine. Hell, I had given up Libby, my first convertible, for a nice, family car, only to get Christine when it was feasible again. These things aren't permanent. So as sure as the hair on my head is turning grey, the time will tick down on this phase, too. Hey, maybe next time I can afford an even better one.

But in the mean time, she'll need a name...

Ain't Life Grand: Black Friday 2011 USA Tour

2011-04-26T15:12:00.000-05:00

For nearly three years, D and I have been following an awesome EBM artist from Hamburg, Germany. We've listened to him get progressively awesome in that time in ways that few artists allow themselves to grow. And while his skill is superb, he has said time and again, despite constant prodding from us and the rest of his US fanbase, that he would never do a US tour...

Until now.

Last week, Faderhead started a US tour to follow his Black Friday release. That is an excellent album, by the way, and I suggest it to just about anyone. He had a stop in San Antonio, so D and I made it a point to go party on a Monday night. You can actually see us in the crowd on that video. And it did not disappoint! Despite being "the smallest stage he's ever been on" (and it was comically small), he completely blew the roof off that club.

I've been waiting for 3 years for that. "Now is the time to be there."

Ain't life grand?

Weekend Intelligence: Bad Kung Fu

2011-04-24T15:29:00.001-05:00

To be honest, there's no real weekend intelligence this week.

Don't worry, you're not missing much. We would have gone to our annual ball. I posted no link for a reason, but Google "San Antonio Easter Ball" if you *absolutely* have to know... But, since we had plans for going out on Monday, we decided that two all-nighters in a three-day window was probably a bad idea. Especially when it overlapped with the work week. So we stayed home and had a quiet Easter weekend with the kiddos.

However, Friday was a good time. You see, D has become an independent consultant and purveyor of fine romance products via Passion Parties. The link is slightly NSFW, but honestly, check it out when you have time and privacy; she'll be getting an online store soon, I hear. Anyway, this means she schedules parties at other people's houses, generally on a weekend evening, and takes her products to showcase there. Which means she's not at home on a weekend evening. And you know what that means...

No, midgets and strippers were not involved. >.>;

And even if they were, I wouldn't admit to it here. My friends, family, and (most importantly) wife read this blog, and I try to keep it on the dark side of a PG-13 rating around here. Though you'd never know it with all the 4Chan references. Don't click that.

No, I'm talking about the classic, trusty guys night in staple: some ol' fashioned bad kung fu flicks. You see, I'm a big fan of bad kung fu, not to mention the badass feeling you get after watching bad kung fu. So is Kevin. The lower the budget, poorer the dubbing job, more improbable the physics and incomprehensible the plot, the better. The kind of films where no fewer than half a dozen people were likely seriously injured during the filming due to non-existent stunt budgets and/or legal safety regulations in the country.

Does the movie have subtitles? Then they obviously had too much money.

These are the kind of movies that assume you're viewing while consuming copious amounts of alcohol. They might as well have a "Best Served While Slizzard" advisory printed on the DVD. And there was plenty to be had of that: I had just kegged a batch of pear cider, and we had a 12-pack of Woodchuck, rum, whiskey and vodka at our disposal. Not that we drank all that in one sitting. We more or less destroyed the Woodchuck, that's about it.

We saw three movies that night. The first was one called Ong Bak. Technically, it wasn't a kung fu flick; it was a muay thai flick. Whatever. It actually was not bad at all: well-shot, no CG or wire effects. That's not to say there weren't plenty of ridiculous situations. In one scene, they're tearing through the streets of downtown Bangkok on... golf carts.

That's right, golf carts.

Complete with the hero jumping from cart to cart and ninja kicking people to the curb. In another scene, the hero gets caught in an explosion, only to emerge, lower body on fire, and deliver a flaming roundhouse kick onto someone's head.

Next was Legend of the Red Dragon, some really, really early Jet Li stuff there. Basically, the government in ancient China looks and acts a lot like the government of modern-day China: it gets what it wants and doesn't mind cracking a few monks in the process. Except in ancient China, they apparently had invincible kung fu zombie warriors who drove around in sawblade cars wherever the hell they wanted and didn't afraid of anything. I heard they were pretty cool guys. It was obvious that this movie was winning in the first scene, when the guy who would become the zombie later attacked the hero with a giant flaming log he had stuck with his claws. The hero countered this by sticking his spear into the other end of the log, spinning it really fast to drill all the way through the log and stab the not-yet-a-zombie.

Then the log exploded.

The last was Story in Temple Red Lily. This one is so horrible in that it's damned near impossible to follow. I'm pretty sure there's an evil baron after a prince. There's a drunk guy, too. And a giant bird that some of the people used to get from place to place. The rest is poorly dubbed political intrigue, camera angles that never seem to quite capture the subject (they got some awesome shots of talking trees) and fight scenes that make physics cry itself to sleep in a corner.

Bingo.

In-Cider Information

2011-04-07T20:29:00.000-05:00

So I've been brewing cider at home for a few months now, and I'm getting pretty good at it. I just get a kick out of making something that I can enjoy and share with others, out of rather inexpensive and mundane materials. The system I have in place can turn out a fully chilled, carbonated and cleared 5 gallon keg in just under 3 weeks, and at a small fraction of what it would cost to buy something similar. Since I've made a few batches, I've decided to post some of the recipes I've tried and how they turned out.

"Shrade's Spiced Hard Apple Soda"

5 gallons of Musselman's Fresh Pressed Apple Cider

3 lb bottle of honey

16 oz bottle of Karo Light Syrup

1 packet of Lalvin EC-1118 champagne yeast, stirred and activated in 1 cup of lukewarm water for 10-15mins

Steep 2 gallons with a sachet of crushed whole clove, crushed cinnamon, rough ground nutmeg, crushed allspice and orange zest for 15-20mins, taking care not to bring the cider to a boil. Combine the 2 gallons of warm spiced cider, 3lbs of honey and the Karo syrup in the fermenting bucket, stirring with a whisk to mix it up well. Pour in the last 3 gallons and finish by pitching the yeast just before sealing the bucket and putting on the airlock. I let this sit for 10 days, then siphoned it off into a carboy for another week or so to clear. The result was a light golden-brown cider, about 8.5% abv, that tasted like the sparkling cure for a cold, gloomy winter day. The spices really stood out, without being overpowering, and the alcohol level was high enough to give you a warmth without being too potent to actually enjoy. This was a favorite of mine, and one I've since made a few more times.

"Shrade's Honey Perry"

3 gallons of Gerber's 100% pear juice (or 12 32 oz bottles, as the case was, see below)

2 gallons of GV apple juice

32 oz can of GV pears in syrup, blended

3 lbs honey

1 packet of Lalvin EC-1118 champagne yeast

D and I love Ace Pear Cider, so I decided to try my hand at one. This, however, proved to be a bit of a trick. See, just plain pear juice is really hard to find in any quantity without being ridiculously expensive. What I ended up having to do was raiding the toddler/infant food section at three different grocery stores to get just enough for 3 gallons. The rest I substituted with ye olde apple juice. Combine these in a fermenting bucket, stirring in the honey and the pear blend. Pitch the yeast before sealing and putting on the airlock. I let this sit only a week, then siphoned off and cleared for three days, as I wanted some of the sweetness of the pear to remain.
I also toyed with a new clearing technique: placing the carboy in the keggerator to clear. This chilled the cider to around 37-40 degrees, causing the yeast to go dormant and fall out fast. The result was a crystal clear sparkling pear cider, around 7.5% ABV, that was sweet and crisp. Perfect refreshment for a summer day.

"Cranberry Farm"

3 gallons of GV 100% Cranberry juice

1 lb of honey

16 oz Karo syrup

Lalvin EC-1118 champagne yeast

When I asked D what flavor she'd want to try next, she quickly answered with "Cranberry." So cranberry it was. Combined the juice and honey into the bucket and pitched the yeast before sealing and airlock. I let this sit for nearly two weeks, in part because I got busy, but also because I knew there wasn't much sugar in there. Little sugar = little alcohol, so I wanted as much as I could get from this batch. It cold cleared in a carboy for only a day before kegging, and I sweetened it with the Karo syrup before sealing the keg. The result was something of a wine cooler. Think Boone's Farm, if Boone's made a cranberry. It was a little too sweet for my taste, but D loved it, and that's what I was going for all along, anyway. :)

"Apple Champagne"

5 gallons Treetop apple juice (highest sugar content per serving I could find)

3 lbs honey

32 oz Karo syrup

Lalvin EC-1118 champaign yeast

I wanted to make a prosecco-esque batch of apple champagne. Combined 5 gallons of juice with the honey and one of the two bottles of Karo syrup. The idea was to get as much sugar as I could available in the mix. I let that sit for two and a half weeks, until the airlock didn't bubble anymore. I cold cleared it for a few days and poured in the other bottle of Karo Syrup just before kegging. The result was a very, very bubbly, but very dry, apple champagne, just shy of 13% ABV. At first, it was very hard to drink, as it was just really too dry. After a few days, it mellowed out a bit and was a lot more like a prosecco wine.

Weekend Intelligence: National April Fools' Day Weekend

2011-04-04T10:20:00.017-05:00

For one day a year, every year, a certain degree of shenanigans and tomfoolery is not only expected, but welcomed. I take this day off every year, in part as a way of celebrating having PTO again, but also to celebrate the day with some relaxation and shenanigans of my own. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights.

Friday (aka: National April Fools' Day)

D decided to take the day off with me, and we both got up early to take the kids to daycare and head out to Calaveras Lake for some April Fishing. I'd had pretty decent luck out there in the past, and the weather was pretty good for fishing: cool (but not cold), cloudy with hints of fog and drizzle. There was one other guy who was out there since the crack of early, so there was plenty of room on the dock.

After getting the rigs in place and the lines cast, D and I updated our Facebook statuses to reflect the national holiday. We even had one of our friends believing that April Fools' Day was actually a national holiday that everyone had off from work, leading her to wonder why her husband was working. We left that to him to explain. :P

In the end, though, it was the April Fish that had the best prank of all - we didn't really get a single bite all morning. Even the guy that was out there before the sun only had one catch all day. We packed up by noon and had a lunch at the Flying Saucer before crashing for an epic nap: a very relaxing way to spend a day!

Saturday (and what was left of Sunday)

Some good friends of ours were throwing two parties on the same day. The first was for their son, who just turned two, while the second was a birthday/housewarming party for later so the grown-ups could celebrate their gorgeous new house. I took Clara to the first one while D took a nap. It was your standard toddler birthday party in South Texas: lots of children and family and presents, BBQ and queso, cake, ice cream, a pinata and the relentless San Antonio sun. They had set up a trampoline in the back yard as well for the children to jump around on, complete with a guard net so they could literally bounce off the walls. Needless to say, Clara had a blast.

Later, once the family had departed and the children were out of the house, the grown-up party started. Colin, Clara and Elizabeth (Kevin's daughter) spent the night at Noni's while we all went over to bring the party. And boy did we ever. We brought a bottle of Black Cask, half a dozen Monsters and the piece de resistance: two 5 gallon kegs of my fine homebrew - one with "Apple Champagne" and the other with what I referred to as "Apple Pie Cider." Someone had brought a karaoke machine with Billboard DVDs, and they had set up a dart board since the birthday party.

So after a cup of cider or seven, and much squawking on the karaoke machine, I decide that the trampoline is looking mighty inviting. A few other people agree, so we all dart out the door to the back yard, take our shoes off and go crazy. It had been many, many years since I was last on a trampoline, but in that state, it all seemed to come back to me really easily. Hell, I could still handle doing flips and splits!

But you know what couldn't handle them?

My shorts.

Yup. That's right. On my final jump, I split my shorts all the way down the right inseam; my gray boxers the only thing shielding my business from the eyes and elements of the outside world. But I stayed classy (intended to be viewed together, and only with the finest Scotch and Cuban cigars). I mean, it's not like I was going to drive home to change like that, and D and Kevin were in no shape to drive me anywhere, either. Just had a good laugh of it, another drink, some darts and some karaoke. Several of us crashed out around 2am, only to have the birthday girl run around the house hollering around 4am to wake everyone up to party some more.

Not so much. At one point, she went to Kevin and yelled at him to get up, only to have him briefly laugh at her and continue his snoring. The party ended about 5am, with the few people still there passed out randomly around the house. D and I took an air mattress in the living room and slept until it was time to pack up the kegs, (much lighter by that time, the cider was a big hit) get the kids and Sunday donuts. Naps were pretty much the order of the rest of the day for Sunday, even trumping the weekly grocery and supply run.

We just didn't have much else after a party like that. But it's all good: I can't think of a better way to finish off the weekend that celebrates fools than to be one.

Know Your Meme: The Whistles Go...

2011-03-31T21:25:00.007-05:00

Recently, at work, my coworkers and I were recalling some of the practical jokes we had played on one another, as April Fool's day draws near. IT guys can be brutal with practical jokes, especially on April Fool's Day. There was that change in computer policy that automatically locked the workstations after 1 minute of idle time. Then there was the 36x48 poster of Manicorn one of the system engineers and I printed on the plotter and posted to the back of HR Guy's door. And then there's the myriad of ringtones I've set for the on-call phone.

Imagine waking up at 2 AM to any of those...

But it was the ringtones that got me thinking. It's been awhile since I had come up with another good one. It's not that there aren't promising candidates out there. I mean, Friday anyone?

God help you if you click that...

It's just that nothing recently really has any true trolling power. Annoying is not enough: it needs to be intentionally ridiculous. It was while I was thinking about this that the conversation had trailed off into some other topic, and the phrase "whistle blower" was uttered.

"Whoo whoo~!" I instinctively blurted out. My co-workers laughed and looked at me like I was from the moon. I explained further that the whistles go whoo whoo~, and that they're like an alarm clock. The confused looks and questions about where I come up with this stuff told me they weren't up to date on this classic gem of a meme. As tempting as it was to claim it as an original random (I do plenty of that), it would have been wrong not to take advantage of this teachable moment in internet history.

So I took them on a journey: a journey through time. Back to the year 2003. Before YouTube and Facebook, and just in time for the birth of MySpace. It was Oakland, and a new fad was taking to the streets. Kids were getting their mufflers outfitted with "Whistle Tips", a piece of metal welded to the exhaust pipe that let loose a tremendously loud howl as the vehicle accelerates. A news station out of San Francisco decided to report on the nuissance to local residents. The report itself would have been utterly forgettable, if not for the two characters they found to explain the appeal of getting eardrum-splitting modifications permanently affixed to their car: Bubb Rubb and Lil' Sis.

It's not just that they explained it. They unapologetically defended the audial assault that these things made at all hours of the day. When confronted about how loud these things were, Bubb simply stated that those people "s'posed ta be up cookin' breakfast fo somebody" and that it was "like a alarm clock." They end the interview by speeding away in a car that was just outfitted with a whistle tip, nearly running into a parked car and barreling through a stop sign into oncoming traffic. Ironically, the whistle tip didn't sound as they peeled off.

The video went as viral as a video could go in the days before YouTube. Animated GIFs, soundboards and image boards were on fire with "Whoo whoo~!" YTMND was flooded with pages of Bubb Rubb whooping. More musically savvy individuals created remixes using sound bites from the interview.

I can't think of a better ringtone. When some moron calls at 2:30AM because they can't find the power button on their printer, what better way to announce the call than that? After all, that's like an alarm clock...

Fun and Games

2011-01-18T14:21:00.007-06:00

So much has been going on that I decided to try to piece things together in topics instead of one big, long post.

So much, huh? Like what?

Well, for starters, I've picked up Final Fantasy 11 again. Not really playing like I did before; it's really more of a hobby this time around than an obsession. There's so much that has changed in the game that I would be stupid to try to catch up to the power players. It's just one thing I do to pass time, when I have time to pass. I'm hoping to keep it that way.

Final Fantasy 14 came out, but for various reasons, I just don't feel it has the staying power that 11 has. Don't get me wrong: it's a beautiful game. They spared no effort in breathtaking graphics and a rich foundation world. Unfortunately, that's all it is at this point, even months after it's initial release. You can finish the main quest line in an hour, and you're left wondering "Welp... What now?" Not a good thing for a new MMO offering. We'll see where it goes.

I've also picked up playing D&D with some good friends. It started with Mike, one of the people D works with, his wife Claudia and his roomate Kevin. They'd wanted to start a campaign, but needed someone to DM who could host and be kid-friendly, as they all have kids. Challenge accepted. After some coaxing, D decided to join in the fun. Now we meet every Saturday night to let the kids run crazy, have a drink and put dice to the table.

Lastly, I've taken up homebrewing cider. There's just something about making something with your own two hands that you can share and enjoy. I may eventually branch out into beer or wine, but for now, I'll stick to making what I like. To go along with it, I've almost completed a small refridgerated keg system. In fact, I kegged my first 5 gallon batch just last night. It's a spiced cider, but it has a crispness to it that reminds me a lot of an apple soda. So I decided to name it Shrade's Spiced Apple Soda. I got a batch of pear cider in the works now for the next keg: the chest freezer turned keggerator could feasibly hold up to 3 of them at a time.

So that's pretty much what keeps me busy when I'm not busy - good friends and good times.

Dusty Book

2011-01-17T18:00:00.003-06:00

Amazing how fast time flies. One day, I decide not to update the blog, and the next the next thing I know, several months fly by and I'm wondering how to fill everyone in. Guess I'll do it in little chunks over the course of a few days. Don't worry: I still blog, just sporadically. :D

Sleep Deprivation

2010-08-24T10:22:00.005-05:00

I don't require much sleep. Generally, I can easily get by with 6 hours of unbroken sleep. The whole recommended 7-8 hours doesn't tend to happen very often, because I usually wake up on my own first. It's when I start dipping below those 6 hours, or that time is broken up into 1-2 hour naps that I start having problems.

Cranky problems.

Well, for the last week and a half, my sleep schedule has been shortened, interrupted or otherwise dictated by other people. No sir, I don't like it. And since I have few other outlets to vent my frustrations, the rant goes here. Lucky you.

On-Call Phone

By far, the biggest offender in the past week and a half has been my company's newest implement of torture. It used to be that the duties of after-hours on-call fell to people actually on the clock, but due to the flagging economy and a certain series of events, that group of people are no more. Now, it's up to the folks that already work a full day (in my case, usually more) to be pulled out of bed at all hours of the night to troubleshoot issues they likely have no capability to fix at that hour, and for no extra compensation for the disruption to their lives. Of the 6 nights I had the phone, it rang no fewer times than twice nightly, every night, and at every ungodly hour of the morning.

Not to mention that it went off at the worst possible times during my waking hours: screaming matches between Colin and Clara, while I'm trying to fix a meal or get a child ready for bed, my dear Saucer night... Why not? Not like I could possibly have anything better to do in the few hours I have off from work than to work some more.

Clara

Clara has reached a point in her development that, for whatever reason, she is wide awake at 4am. Everyday, without fail. D and I both have fond memories of this stage of development. Our parents brilliantly taught us how to entertain ourselves, and later fix a basic breakfast, until an adult woke up. We have tried to do the same thing, explain to her that she needs to quietly play upstairs or watch TV until other people are awake, but she either doesn't understand or doesn't care. She goes downstairs, gets into everything, knocks things over, leaves the gates open for the dogs to pee and poop in all rooms of the house, makes an epic mess of salt and yogurt and tops it off by tripping the deafening house alarm when she unlocks and opens the back door to let the dogs out.

This inevitably launches me from bed, high on adrenaline, into a haphazard race down the stairs to cancel the alarm before it calls the cops. Such a brisk, exhilarating morning run makes it nearly impossible for me to get any more sleep in for the rest of the morning. Which is convenient, since I'm going to need all that time to clean up the messes that Clara and the dogs made throughout the house.

This happens at least 3 times a week. I don't want to replace the doorknob cover on her door again, since she's potty-training and needs access to the bathroom, but I'm starting to run out of patience. I need sleep, and she refuses to stay put and stay quiet in the morning, despite anything we do.

D

Last week, D was out on what amounted to a company-paid vacation on St. Pete Beach in Florida. I think I may have mentioned this. Still a little jealous. Her absence kinda threw me off my game all week: I had a hard time initially getting to sleep, and a harder time getting back to sleep each time my sleep was broken. I know, I'm pathetic. But I missed my wife, and it showed physically.

Having her back has its own issues, though. If there's something that she feels needs to be checked in the middle of the night (e.g. strange noises, temperature too hot/cold, etc.) she doesn't get up and take care of it - she kicks me out of bed to do it. Also, if I happen to be occupying part of the bed that she wants, she can get pretty brutal. It's not unusual to be woken up by repeated kicks to the back, shin or other rather painful locations. Not like I can really hold it against her; she usually doesn't remember it the next morning, but that doesn't help the lost sleep.

At any rate, usually my only course of action is to prop myself up at my desk on caffeine and nicotine and try to grind out a day without biting anyone's head off, in hopes of making it through and actually getting some sleep the next night.

Ahh, ranting sure feels good. Glad I could get that off my chest. Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'm about ready for a nap...

EDIT (8/25): Had my first solid night's sleep in a week and a half last night. Feeling MUCH better. :)

Ain't Life Grand: Well... This is awkward...

2010-08-19T09:10:00.003-05:00

D's been out at a meeting of the minds in sunny, scenic Tampa this week, so I've been soloing the kids. Sore jaw notwithstanding (they're great, by the way - there was no way that tooth was going to be taken care of painlessly), it's been relatively easy, but we're all missing D terribly.

It's up-ended the morning routine, really. As funny as it sounds, my morning schedule involves being woken from sleep by her early morning preparations, typically harried and inevitably involving tripping over/running into things. Think of it kinda like my security blanket, except it's one that curses at all the crap on the floor.

So this morning, I'm brought from my slumber by some shuffling around outside the door, followed by a brief, yet quiet squeal and more walking around. In my drowsy state, I think to myself that D must have tripped on something, and roll over to snooze a bit before she says goodbye for the day. A little while later, I feel a weight behind me on the edge of the bed, and instinctively tell D that I love her and to have a great day. As I roll over and lean in to kiss her, I'm greeted by two large, yellow-green eyes, fuzzy pointed ears and a swishing Squirrel-kitty tail.

"Well... This is awkward..." I tell her as she meows at me and bolts out of the room.

Ain't life grand?

Weekend Intelligence: Distant Worlds

2010-08-03T12:09:00.006-05:00

In this day and age, "love" is easy to find. There are countless avenues to meet people today, with new ways being created everyday. The media inundates us with images, videos and ideas of how it is and how it should be. From tips and tricks to advice and stories, plot devices and steamy love scenes: you can find it everywhere. And while they all claim to be unique, or be that sure bet to land the love of your life, they all have one thing in common: the formula.

Meet
Fall in love
Get married
Live happily ever after

It's that fourth step that's the kicker for me. Seems a bit boring, no? Luckily for me, my best friend thought so, too. And so, for five amazing and years, we've been enjoying the adventure-filled journey married life was always meant to be. It hasn't always been fun, and it hasn't always been pretty, but we wouldn't trade even our worst day together for a good day traveling alone. This past weekend, we celebrated our time together, and in a rather appropriate way - as an adventure. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights!

Houston - Distant Worlds Tour

We had wanted to do something special for this occasion. While we were looking around for options, we found that the Houston Symphony was to perform selected works from the Final Fantasy series as part of the Distant Worlds Tour. Rumor had it that Nobuo Uematsu, who composed and scored the vast majority of SE's music over the years, was going to be in attendance. And all this was going on the weekend before our anniversary! Too good to pass up.

Saturday came, and some good friends of ours agreed to watch Clara and Colin while we made the 3-hour drive to Houston. D scored us some nice hotel accommodations in downtown Houston: within walking distance of the theater district, food, shops and clubs. Not that we HAD to walk - the hotel had complimentary chauffeur service to anywhere we wanted to go. We decided to take in the sights on foot for the afternoon anyway, visiting the Houston Flying Saucer (they have a LOFT!) and doing some shopping before getting ready for the evening.

After a sushi dinner, we were dropped off at the concert hall. Now, D and I are used to attending performing arts events. What set this apart from most of the others was that we fit right in to the veritable sea of gamers and geeks. Some people attending were even in elaborate cosplay! In fact, we sat one row back and a few seats over from one of the best Kefka's I have ever seen.

It was an evening of beautiful music. The repertoire was a little FFVIII heavy, but all the selected pieces were gorgeously scored and performed. They even had a special treat for the audience: they were premiering the orchestral and choral arrangement for "Jenova" from FFVII. We were the first to hear it! Best of all, not only were the rumors about Nobuo attending true, but he was VERY involved with the audience. He gave a small introduction at the beginning of the show, held a half-hour question and answer session after the show, and even joined the choir to sing in "Jenova" for the show's finale! He seemed like a very down-to-earth person for someone with so much acclaim.

We rounded out the evening with a few drinks at the bar and some special celebrating back at the hotel room. The perfect ending to a magical night. -.^ It was hard to accept that our stay was over and leave the next morning, but what a night! Those are some memories that will last for years.

Good memories of but one episode in a long list in this grand adventure. Isn't that how it's supposed to be?

Ain't Life Grand: Lights Out

2010-07-26T15:52:00.003-05:00

I was onsite for a client we have in the county courthouse a few day ago. After getting waved through security, I stopped off at the boys' room and took a stall.

I know, I know. TMI. Just listen.

While taking care of business, a very loud man entered, grumbled something about damn kids today, burped and loudly relieved himself, left without washing his hands and turned the light out on his way out, all while I was midflight. "Seriously?" I asked out loud. I sat there for five minutes in the dark until someone came in and turned the lights on. I thanked them from inside the stall, which startled them right back out the door. At least they left the light on....

Moral of the story: Shit doesn't always go down the way you expect it should, but it usually works out all right in the end. Ain't life grand?

Ain't Life Grand: Fishing Day

2010-07-06T11:26:00.005-05:00

I took a day off on Friday. I've needed a good solid day off to myself for quite some time now, and I just decided that I might as well make the 3-day weekend a 4-day one. I got up bright and early like I normally would, and took Clara to daycare. But I packed the car with fishing gear instead of computer gear, and went to Calaveras Lake instead of work. I was out on the pier by 8, and spent a good 3 hours checking out the water, enjoying the rainy breeze and fighting some excellent catches.

I caught two decent-sized catfish, and one larger red drum (for those who've asked). I cast the line out one last time before deciding to leave, and was BSing with some of the other people that took the day off, too, when my line went nuts. Like, crazy go nuts. I let the line out a little, and it didn't seem to take much of it. I figured there was probably a piece of driftwood that got pushed by the swells, and tried to reel in a bit. And then it started fighting. I fought this dumb thing for almost 10 minutes to wear it out, but eventually I was able to bring it close enough to the surface to see what looked like a boulder on the end of my line. That, pictured above, was a softshell turtle.

Not just any turtle. As you can see, that turtle took up half a truck bed. Eventually we got a net around it and were able to haul it in. At that point, I figured I had enough excitement for one day.

Three hours. Two catfish, a red drum and a fsking sea turtle. Ain't life grand?

Know Your Meme: How Do I Shot Web?

2010-06-25T19:02:00.000-05:00

It was 4:55 on a Friday afternoon. The trouble tickets were updated and the phones had been quiet all afternoon. We were all just trying to kill the last five minutes of the day: BSing about the week we'd just had, our plans for the weekend and generally enjoying some light-hearted banter. And that's when it hit: an end user at a new account was having some trouble with some unsupported software, and decided to enter a trouble ticket for it.

OK, OK... They're supposed to do that, so I'll not fault them on that, albeit it's somewhat douchey to do at five 'til five. It's the ticket subject and description that got us:

Subject: How do I fix part?

Description: I in (XYZ Application) and cant fix part. How do I fix part?

-.-; That's verbatim, missing contracted verbs, punctuation, articles and all. With stupid elemental damage imminent, I had to take evasive maneuvers. The guys were starting to scratch their heads, and asking me all sorts of questions: "What is 'part'? Are we supposed to know how to fix it? Is it in the documentation?" To which I simply replied, "Hay guise, how do I shot web?"

"How do I shot web?" is an interweb trolling-style catchphrase used to point out or poke fun at rather noobish behavior or inquiries. Its construction implies, vis-à-vis the lack of proper grammar and simple construction, that the person making the request is either trying to get a rise out of their audience, or is asking in earnest but may likely not completely comprehend the answer.

Shortly after the meme's inception, the fine folks at 4chan (don't click that...) created an image macro for it, depicting a confused Spiderman posing the question. It has since been used, combined with the original phrasal construct, as a template to fit other memes when the ability to create original content proves elusive.

And at five 'til five, that's about all I had left in me. It was enough to disarm my coworkers long enough to explain the joke and that there was nothing to be done about the ticket at this time; it was an unsupported application and the support for it, being on the east coast, would have closed up shop for the day. A move that we'd be wise to follow.

We'd just have to learn how to fix part another day.

Master of My Domain

2010-06-17T20:30:00.003-05:00

Somedays, you just can't get rid of a bomb...

While last week spilled over into last weekend and this week, turning this week into one big ray of sunshine, at least I was able to scrape some redeeming value out of it. Drum roll please...

I am now master of my own domain!

No, I'm not talking about that... As of Monday, gentle reader, you can access this blog by it's very name! Miracles of science and such! Just point your interweb navigational device to http://www.oflifeanddiversion.com - the tubes are such a modern marvel, aren't they? Don't worry: the old URL will still work, but feel free to update your bookmarks and start using the new address.

And if you are reading this and are on Facebook, you can get live updates delivered to your news feed by becoming a fan of this blog's fan page. Just do a search for 'Of Life and Diversion' after you log in - it's the only one there, and you'll know it by the logo. ^_^/

Shameless self-plug, I know... But! I've put a lot of work into getting things up and running, and I'm pretty proud of myself for what I've accomplished in the past two weeks!

As for my labor-induced funk: work be damned. It isn't right what they did, but it is what it is. Don't worry, I'll be back in fighting shape in no time. Luckily, I'm adhering to a pretty strict drink regimen to keep my mind limber. Though I'm really starting to think I need a real vacation... Maybe I'll put in for some time off. I need it. :P

Ain't Life Grand: Maybe the new one will be better

2010-06-14T20:54:00.000-05:00

I just took some major heat at work today for a mistake that could have been avoided by several people, but got pinned on me. You know, I can be precisely where I should be, doing precisely what I should be doing at precisely when I should be doing it 99.98% of the time, and no one will give a damn. But I make one misstep, and the foundations of the world begin to crumble.

Ain't life grand?

Know Your Meme: The Fine Art of Trolling

2010-06-10T20:15:00.002-05:00

This past weekend, we attended a surprise party for one of our friend's 30th birthday. We had a great time eating grillables, drinking and joking around. It was between those last two things that one of the revelers started to try to get Colin's rage on. The problem with this is that Colin doesn't really get his rage on. Ever. He's pretty reserved, he just starts to look uncomfortable and awkward. When it got to that, I asked the guy to ease up on him a little, and he replied "I'm just building up his troll resistance!"

'Trolling' is the term coined by the internets for the act of saying or doing something online to cause some emotional response, drama or controversy. The psychology alone behind trolling is profound - there are actually published studies on this stuff.

Allow me to get deep for a moment, if you will...

Basically, we act as human beings within a larger social context. This is made up of everything from where and when we grew up to the family we may or may not have, our economic standing to our sense of self. Our interactions with other people, what we can and can't do, say and sometimes feel, and our own internal thought processes are shaped, in no small part, by these social cues and mores.

It is when these things are removed from the overall social interaction equation that things start to get interesting. Think of it: the internet, for most intents and purposes, is anonymous. Sure, there are ways to track people down, but most people don't have the knowledge and means to do so. Even people with the knowledge and means to do so usually will be put off by just how much of a pain in the ass it can turn out to be. Some places on the web make this anonymity very easy, if not the standard, way to communicate with everyone else on the site. (Warning - Those links may or may not be NSFW, and will more likely than not cause your brain to leak out your nose if you spend too much time on them... You've been warned...)

In other words, you don't *have* to be you. You can be a smarter, wiser, wittier you; well, as much as your own intelligence will allow. Definitions of economic stature fades; while it's assumed you have something since you're seated at a computer with an internet connection, there's not much more that can be garnered about you that you don't volunteer. No one needs to know your name, your weight or size, the clothes you wear, your religious or spiritual views, who you're related to, who you know or who your friends are - and you most certainly don't have to let on to anything. You don't even have to be honest about it. It's amazing what can happen to confidence levels when you're just as likely to be a fat slob as a gorgeous knockout. Take this from a guy who played as a catgirl in an online video game for over six years.

And it's this absence of social context and relative anonymity that promote more uninhibited social behavior. People say and do things online that they'd never do in real life. Combine this with the innate desire for entertainment and an active and, many times, all-to-willing audience to respond in an equally uninhibited manner, and you have a perfect storm for trolling.

Once a troll has been recognized for what it is, the drama is sometimes continued by the person countering the original troll with an attempt of their own. This usually leads to a situation where the original topic is completely derailed, causing much rage on the part of the people who actually wanted to discuss the topic while the trolls go back and forth between themselves.

Welcome to The Internets. Check your sanity at the door and take a seat, please.

In the end, it was all in fun, though. Once Colin was on to our friend, and a conciliatory fist bump was had, it was game on between the two for the rest of the evening.

Weekend Intelligence: Squirrel

2010-06-07T15:35:00.006-05:00

I had started a blog for the long Memorial Day Weekend, but work and general lack of anything substantive over that weekend made it difficult to talk about. I spent most of it cleaning the house and getting some long overdue maintenance done while the rest of the family was in El Paso. The house looked immaculate for a whopping 48 hours after they got home. -.-; Such is life. This weekend was much more interesting anyway. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights!

Let me take a step back by a few weeks. Early in the morning in early May, during one hell of a rainstorm, a hired hand van visited the home on the corner in our neighborhood. In a few short hours, the cars were towed, all possessions that could be liquidated or had outstanding loans were confiscated and all the rest was tossed out into the front yard. I remember seeing those two children that lived in that house, for the last time, that morning. They looked more than a little in shock; their tired, blank expressions barely masking a fathomless sea of questions; no doubt they were bewildered at what they had experienced that morning and at their parents inability to do anything about it.

The family never did come back for the few things they could have salvaged from the rain. Some of the things had not been on the ground for half a day before some of the neighbors began to pick through it, finding in the rubble some trinket, appliance or tool. Something of value. The pile was pretty thoroughly trash by the time Waste Management came by 3 days later to pick up the remains and toss it in a truck. The only thing left behind at the end of it all was a ruined front lawn, an eerily vacant house, and a small, sleek white house cat with a big bushy black tail.

She sat there for several days after the trash had been removed, patiently waiting for them to come home. After about a week, she started to get hungry and finally, leaving her corner on the patio, began to hunt insects around the neighborhood. It was not long before she caught the vicious eye of some of the children in the neighborhood, who began to terrorize her with shouting, throwing sticks and chunks of brick and rock at her. I even witnessed grown adults in the neighborhood attempt shoo her away with water shot from pressure nozzles.

She didn't act like the ferals in the neighborhood: those nasty, screeching, demonic animals that ambush people as they walk in the evening. No, many times she didn't even really run, just took cover in some bushes until the people got bored and moved along. It was one such day that I was out grilling some burgers, and I saw this pathetic excuse for a kitten in the rock bed next door, eyeing me and what I had on the plate. Her coat had become scraggly and she had lost considerable weight, but the one feature that she still had was that tail of hers.

It's true what they say: don't feed a stray cat unless you want a new cat, but I just couldn't help myself. I cut a small piece of hamburger off and called out to her, "Hey, Squirrel Kitteh! You can has cheezburger?" She shyly made her way over to me, and once she came as close as she cared to, stood up on her hind legs (again, reminding me of a squirrel) and in one swift move, snagged the bit of meat from my hands with her forepaws, crammed it into her mouth and disappeared into the bushes.

It wasn't long before we saw her again. She decided to take up semi-permanent residence in the next-door neighbors bushes during the day to escape the sun. I set a bowl of water out for her in the shade during the day, and at night, she'd hunt the junebugs that bothered us while we sat out and smoked. That worked for a little while, but it became clear that she remembered what it was like to live inside, and wanted to return to that life. So after a little saving up, this past weekend, we trapped her in the garage so we could take her to the vet and get her caught up on all her shots and tests.

I'll tell you, I spent a good couple hours trying to get her into that cat carrier, and still didn't succeed. She did NOT want to go into the box. I asked D for some help. She agreed, and after 2 minutes, single-handedly lured, caught and placed the cat in the carrier. When we arrived at the vet, the receptionist asked us to fill out some initial paperwork. After I had filled it out and gave it back to her, she took one look at the cat and laughed. "Squirrel..." she said with a smile, "Yeah, that about says it, don't it?"

Today, that house still sits vacant, its large, uncovered windows showing off the cavernous inside and empty walls in the light of day. And that front yard is still messed up. It'll need some serious TLC from whoever eventually moves in there. But that cat will, from now on, have her fill of food and water, a comfy place to nap atop a carpeted cat tree, and never again have to worry about children's sticks and stones, the blazing hot sun or the driving South Texas rains.

Week In Review: The Great Telecommute

2010-05-28T22:51:00.003-05:00

Clara's daycare was closed the week before Memorial Day, as Noni took in some very much needed R&R down south of the border. Normally we just fall back on an alternate backup, but she was unavailable for the week as well. When our backup for the backup canceled on us, we started sweating a little. I mean, how were we going to sort that week out with no child care? That would mean one of us had to stay home and take the week off, possibly unpaid! Or does it...

There I go. Thinking again. What have I warned myself about thinking... I posed the issue to my manager and he agreed that it would be OK this once to set my phone up with mobility to the house number and let me remote in from home. After all, I just had to stay on top of my service requests, take calls that come in and be available for questions on issues as they arise. Nothing I can't do from the comfort of my own home!

Now, don't get me wrong. I've read all the literature and all the reports, all coming to the same conclusion that telecommuting is the next best thing since this. Don't click that. But none of them took into account trying to present oneself as an IT professional in the presence of a 3 year old. So, for your entertainment, here are the best WTF moments, presented as a week in review.

Disclaimer: Never let it be said that I didn't warn you of the destructive potential of children.

WTF Moment #1: On the very first day... No... I can't even call it that, because the day had not really started yet. Clara decided that it was time to get up at the butt-crack of 4am. This child goes to bed after we do and wakes up before us. D was good enough to get up and get her ready for me for the day, but shortly after she had left, Clara decided that it was time to wake me up with a vengeance. She dropped trou and let loose (in all senses possible) all over the carpet in the loft. As if to add insult to injury, she tracked it a few times across the air uptake to the central air unit, then burst into my room squealing. I had just changed her into clean clothes and begun to clean that up when she performed an encore downstairs. It was clear that this week was to rock like no other.

WTF Moment #2: As I'm trying to confirm a complicated procedure with a client, Clara runs into my office and, at the very top of her lungs, screams in an otherworldly shrill voice "DADDY I POO POO ON FLOOR EWW STINKY!" I'm glad I didn't have to explain that one to the customer: she'd already had three of her own and saluted my efforts in attempting to work from home with a toddler.

WTF Moment #3: After logging into the call queue for the morning, I hear a scuffle in the kitchen, followed by a loud thud and a yelping dog. I go over to the dining area to find Clara with a salt shaker, no doubt procured from the cabinets above and, after using Suzie to break her fall from the counter, began lightly salting herself and the carpet and tasting it. I asked her what she was doing, to which she could only respond by looking cute and stating that it "need salt."

WTF Moment #4: Clara has been pretty good with potty-training, despite my ranting on here to the contrary. It's only the mornings and while she's sleeping that get her. Most of the time, she goes to the restroom all by herself and only needs some help getting dressed afterward. So it's not unusual to hear the toilet flush at random. It is unusual to hear it flush 4-5 times in a row in quick succession, followed by some angry backtalk from the plumbing. Artur always said "Plumbing don't talk," so I decided to see what my child had summoned. Turns out, whatever it was, she was trying to appease it by feeding it toilet paper. She had placed one end of the roll into the toilet, and was watching it spin wildly as she flushed. When she saw I wasn't anywhere remotely as amused as she was, she tried to explain herself, saying "Daddy, potty eating! Om Nom Nom!"

I couldn't help by crack a smile.

Cut To The Chase

2010-05-26T06:43:00.002-05:00

You will never believe what happened to me this morning! I hardly believe it myself. I was going about my morning routine: washing up, prepping Clara, getting ready for work - when I heard a strange noise from the downstairs living room. It sounded like someone was shuffling through the drawers in the kitchen. Colin had long since left for school. I grabbed a camping knife I keep upstairs and slowly crept down the staircase. There was a tall man in the kitchen, rummaging through the junk drawer: I wasn't alone in the house...

Just as soon as he realized I had caught him, he bolted out the front door and into the hazy morning. It was just instinct to run after him. I chased him down the block, around the corner and down the main street. Adrenaline fed my heart and feet, and I slowly gained on him as he fled into the wooded area west of the neighborhood. He vaulted over the brush, but I still recklessly pursued him into the forest. Try as I might, however, I lost sight of him, and track of my surroundings.

Lost. In the middle of the woods. On a work day. Chasing some no-doubt crazy person I caught in my home. Only me...

The trail suddenly went from stone cold to on fire: the man had tried to get behind me and run the other way while I had lost sight of him. He, however, didn't see the large tree branch on the ground, tripped and landed with a thud. I ran toward the commotion just in time to see him get back to his feet. This was my chance! I ran at him with everything I had and shoulder slammed him face first into the dirt.

“Game over, asshole!” I said as I stood over him, knife in hand. At first, he was very stunned as he held his bleeding nose, but to my surprise he began to laugh. Admittedly, this had me a little rattled. It was all I could to keep from kicking him. “And what’s so funny?” He replied, through his bloodied nose and laughter, “Read the first word of each paragraph!”

Weekend Intelligence: Campfire Rule

2010-05-24T19:53:00.000-05:00

It had been several years since the last time I'd been camping and fishing, but I finally broke that this weekend. While we didn't really catch much of anything, Colin and I had a great time up at Pace Bend. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights.

It didn't take much to get the Vue packed up and readied early Saturday morning. Colin was up at the crack of dawn, and very excited to get going. We had spent much of the past week cleaning the garage, packing clothes and gear for the trip and staging everything we'd need in the newly-cleaned garage. The day before the trip, D decided she didn't want to go, so it was just going to be Colin and I, which made it a father-son trip of the sort we'd never had before.

After a quick breakfast at Whataburger, we struck out north. It took almost two hours to reach the park. This was going to be great: setup camp, maybe some mid-afternoon fishing and brews... This is when I looked behind me and started to wonder where the fishing poles were. -.-; In the craziness that was trying to get everything else ready, I had forgotten to pack them! We took a small detour into a nearby town to visit their local Target store. Colin got one of those slingshot fishing pole launcher hooberwhatsits, so he was arguably happier than if we had brought his boring old neon green one that was mine when I was his age. A quick stop for lunch and we were back on the trail.

We met up with Didi (one of D's friends from HS) who had been there since the night before. She was there with her guy and had put the word out for several of their friends to stop in. After getting the massive tent set up and the gear moved into it, we packed a few beers and hit the shores. Didi was really the only one who caught anything - a handful of brim and a baby wide-mouth bass. The rest of us got a few hits on the line, but nothing to pull in. It was all good though, as Colin had a blast and the rest of us had a reason to drink. ;)

When we got back, a few more people had showed up, and we decided to get the campfire started. We cooked hot dogs and s'mores, sat, drank and BS'ed well into the late evening hours. Haven't had relaxation on that level in quite a while. After it was dark, we decided to stumble down to the shore one more time to try to catch catfish. No catfish, but the cliff side rocks bit me good as I lost my footing in a break in the rocks and dashed my shin on them. I'm sure the SoCo had nothing to do with it.

When we got back to camp, we watched the fire slowly die out before calling it a night. We started to dispose of burnable trash in the fire, when Colin asked what could and couldn't be thrown in. I gave him the simple rundown of the campfire burnables rule:

If it burns, burn it.
If you're not sure that it burns, burn it anyway.
If you know it doesn't burn, throw it away.

And we wondered why we had a pretty green sheen on all the hot dogs. :P

Well, the weekend is now over, and I'm glad we had a good time together. Colin can't wait for the next time we go out camping, and who knows? Maybe we'll even be able to convince his mom to come with.

Ain't Life Grand: Tent Cities

2010-05-19T20:24:00.001-05:00

This week, one of the main event preparations I had to make was getting the tent seams sealed for the season. This involves actually setting the tent up. Colin was all over that. So were all his friends, and before long, so were all THEIR friends. At one point we had over a dozen kids buzzing around the house, poking in and out of tents and playing fortress games.

It reminded me of when I was a kiddo and my parents would let us set things up like that in the yards or basement. So much fun - I think that's part of the reason I love camping. He was having so much fun, I almost didn't want to pull him away for dinner. Anyway, just before running back outside after dinner to rejoin the fray, he looked at me and his mother and said "This has got to be one of the best days of my life!"

Ain't life grand?

Know Your Meme: Amber Lamps

2010-05-19T15:26:00.002-05:00

Today at work, I recieved a phone call from a very distressed customer. You see, there were blinking lights on their email server. Blinking lights, kids, and yellow ones, at that. I asked her if she, or anyone else for that matter, was experiencing any issues with email delivery. She told me she hadn't noticed anything wrong, but those lights sure were blinking.

Blinking yellow lights, folks...

After due diligence, I found there was nothing wrong with the server beside being as old as God. I was, unfortunately, unable to troubleshoot the color of the lights on the server remotely. >.>; Sarcasm aside, I had to create a ticket to check out the server, since I had spent time on it. I decided to have some fun with it, and in the subject light, entered "Amber Lamps on server."

In case that link is a teal deer for you, let me break it down for you. Amber Lamps is a spin-off from the viral video from early this year dubbed Epic Beard Man. In the video, a "fist fight" breaks out on a metro bus between a black man and an older white man (who happens to have a rather gnarly beard) over some alleged racial something-or-other. The video starts just shy of a minute or so before the actual fight, so you never actually see or hear the beginning of the initial argument. And I use "fist fight" loosely; the black man threw the first punch and then was pummeled to a paste by the older man.

Over the course of this entire episode, there are many people yelling and hollering, shuffling around and egging on the two men to fight. There is, however, one lone figure who simply sat and watched the whole act play out, listening to her music on giant headphones, a genuine look of complete disinterest in the beat down happening mere feet from her.

The older man was escorted off the bus as the other limped back to his seat. When asked if he needed any help, he replied he might need an ambulance. It is this statement that is the cause for the spin-off. You see, his reply was rather unintelligible, likely from the injuries he took, and it sounds like he's calling for Amber Lamps. As you can imagine, the interwebs instantly caught that and ran with it, eventually turning it into a moniker for the cool-headed chick in the headphones.

Weekend Intelligence: A One Car Garage

2010-05-17T12:01:00.002-05:00

Inertia is rough: it's one thing to want to do something, but making all the preparations to actually get that something to happen is a completely different matter. While the outdoorsy bug has bitten, there are a lot of things that have to be done to make it possible to go on a trip. All things that I decided to try to knock out this weekend. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights.

Backing up a few steps, I had wanted to go fishing this weekend, weather permitting. Well, it didn't: it rained and hard this weekend. When it became clear that it wasn't going to happen, after updating the few folks that had said they'd be interested in going out, one of DeAnn's friends said they were planning a camping trip to Pace Bend Park for the next weekend. Awesome! All I need to do is get my stuff in order...

After staying up entirely too late on Friday night, and the subsequent rousting at the crack of dawn by Clara being Clara, we decide we'll get some of the things we'll need at the weekly supply run. I think I may have successfully given the bug to D; since Clara would need her own gear, it was the perfect opportunity to get all sorts of cute princess camping gear. By the time we got out of the sporting goods, Clara had a Disney Princess sleeping bag, folding chair, fishing pole set and camping flashlight/lantern. We also got new sleeping bags and a new tackle box for the fishing supplies.

It's not that I didn't already have several sleeping bags and a tackle box. It's that these had been stowed away in the portal to the abyss that we call the garage for years. You see, we've been living in this house for going on 4 years now. Even in the beginning, we piled all the things that had been taking up space in the tiny storage closet we had at the apartment. It started out neat enough, but several years of stacking crap on crap turned the garage into a pit of despair. This practice got immeasurably worse during and following the Great Flood. By that point, we weren't even really stacking things neatly anymore; junk was just being thrown on top of the pile. At one point, I couldn't even wheel my grill out to cook on it - it had started to become one with the pit.

To top it off, the Texas wildlife had built their own miniature refuge. It had become it's own sick ecosystem: live bugs and spiders, dirt and grass clippings, insect nests, skeletal remains of small vermin, newts and toads. A feral cat had even once considered it a litter box and left several mementos in the far back. You know you have something to fear when you start to see dead cockroaches. Something that has proven perfectly capable of surviving global cataclysmic events met its end in my garage. Be afraid...

Anyway, the tackle box had long since been destroyed in an avalanche of crap, and this being Texas, God knows what's living in the sleeping bags. The folding chairs were wrapped in cobwebs and the fishing poles were snapped under the weight of falling boxes. The absolutely awesome Goldfish cooler had become buried in the strata of junk, no doubt well on it's way to becoming a diamond. It came down to the fact that if I really wanted to ever go camping and fishing again, I would need to excavate my gear from the garage, which meant cleaning the garage.

/sigh...

Ok... OK! I'll do it! I spent the rest of that day hauling just about everything, scuz and all, into the disinfecting light of day. The entire floor was thoroughly swept twice. All the shelving was wiped down with cleaner. I mounted two brackets to hold hoses and extension cords. Anything that I hauled out that could be salvaged was brushed off and wiped down. The rest was trashed. I found my old ginormous tent, still intact, if not dirty. Most of the folding chairs were OK, too, just needed a good shaking out. Colin's fishing pole was good, but the reel was shot. My fishing pole was shot, but the reel was OK. -.-; The tackle box was crushed to smithereens, but most of the tackle was intact. I had to stop about 5 feet from the back wall because the dumpster was completely full. But at least I can park the car in the garage now. I haven't been able to do that since... well... never.

The rest of the weekend was pretty uneventful after that. I was hurting something fierce the next day, but it was worth it. If I can find a nice day next week, I'll have Colin help me look for the base tarpaulins, set up the tent and seal the seams for the season. It's gonna be a rocking summer, I can feel it!

Know Your Meme: The Epic of Technoviking

2010-05-13T11:27:00.003-05:00

We've come to the conclusion at work that one of our coworkers is stuck in the Internet Tube circa 2003 as far as meme knowledge is concerned. This is dissapointing, since we work at a tech services company. It is being steadily corrected, but it has made for some rather WTF moments when something is referenced that he's pretty clueless about.

This week, someone sprung for sodas for the office. Nothing too noteworthy about this, but he passed them out upside down, as an "Offering a la Technoviking." LOLs were had all around, except for our poor friend who was more o.O? than LOL. This HAD to be made right. I decided to relate the Epic of Technoviking while trying to find a version of the video that hadn't been ripped down...

In the beginning, there was the Blue-Haired Dancing Girl. And she danced to the beat of the drum. She beckoned all to dance to the beat of the drum, and the crowd reveled. There was much rejoicing. But, like anything good, such revelry can only be had for so long before some asshat will try to ruin it for everyone. Thus it was that a Wild Asshat appeared and proceeded to grope the Blue-Haired Dancing Girl.

The Asshat would have rained emo on the whole parade, if it were not for a lone stranger of immense strength and stature. He was girt for battle in the ancient, traditional Industrial tribal manner: his beard braided and hair shorn, clad only in long forest green shorts, various charms and pendants and 40lb combat boots. The stranger, the Technoviking, would not stand for this Asshat's asshattery. He caught the Asshat by the arms as he tried to escape, demanding an explanation of his transgressions. The Asshat did try the Technoviking with deceptive arts, but the Technoviking prevailed. And with his epic point he did send the Asshat packing.

At this point, feeling quite angered and exhausted by the ordeal, he signaled it was time to march. No one knows how far the Technoviking would have made the crowd to march, or what he would have lead them to, but he lead them just the same. And they did follow, knowing that to stray would further provoke his wrath. In an effort to appease the Technoviking's wrath, a bald wizard approached the Technoviking with an offering from a land no doubt in the Far East: Upside-down Water.

And the offering did appease the Technoviking. He was refreshed and renewed. And thus he began to dance. He danced in his 40lb boots with the crowd to the beat of the drum. There was much rejoicing. During the wild dancing, a educated man, educated in the ways of education, came to the Technoviking, and presented him with miniature books of hidden knowledge. As tempted as the Technoviking was to eschew his tribal ways, he held fast to that which he knew was his destined purpose. The Technoviking does not read; the Technoviking dances! And as the beat of the drum intensified, he did tear it in half with his bare hands and continued to dance.

He danced in his 40lb boots with the crowd to the bead of the drum. There was much rejoicing.

Ain't Life Grand: Teach a Young Man to Fish

2010-05-10T22:05:00.004-05:00

While at WalMart early this weekend with Colin, I decided to renew my fishing license. He asked why I was doing that, and I said I have wanted to take him fishing and camping for a while, and was thinking about planning a trip out to one of the parks sometime soon. Colin seemed pretty excited at the prospect of getting out of town to go fishing and camping with me.

I have to admit: I'm pretty excited at that prospect, too. Ain't life grand?

Maybe I'll Go Outside This Year

2010-05-05T15:41:00.004-05:00

I dunno if it has something to do with the weather getting nicer in the evenings, there being more daylight when I'm available to enjoy it or just getting tired of the same old routine day in and day out, but every year around this time I get to wishing I could take a break, pack up my fishing and camping gear and get out of town for a few days.

Some time down by the water always did my soul good, and God knows I could use the vacation. In fact, I used to go fishing almost every weekend and camping semi-regularly at Gavins Point, and as far north as Lake Itasca, before I moved and started a life here in Texas. I didn't really think about it much the first year or so because I was simply amazed at how people did anything when it was Sands of Africa hot outside. We lived in a tiny bottom-floor apartment and D and I both worked our asses off: the tent and poles found a cozy home in the outside storage closet.

As time has worn on, though, I've found myself wanting to go on that first trip in years. You know, before it gets too ungodly hot. I almost did last year, too. I bought a fishing license that I never used. But the important thing is I bought it and I could have used it. Prepping the supplies is as easy as spending a nice spring evening setting up the tent and resealing the seams, finding the tackle box in the garage and making sure I have a working fishing rod after all these years.

But maybe, just maybe, I'll go out this year...

Weekend Intelligence: Kids will play

2010-05-03T13:11:00.004-05:00

To be honest, I was considering not writing an entry for this weekend. Save the 1st birthday BBQ thrown by one of my coworkers and the relaxing Saturday night, there really wasn't much to write about. But I figured I had a good thing going and I'd like to keep it that way. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights.

D was starting to feel sick on Friday, and by Saturday morning had a full-on cold. Since the kids were bouncing off the walls, I told Colin to go out and play. Clara was VERY upset that he was heading out, and proceeded to put her shoes on and run out the door after him. The both of them went over to the house across the street to play with the neighbor kids. Colin has friends in the neighborhood, but this was really the first time Clara had gone outside to play with other kids. She quickly became good friends with one of the little girls, while I sat on the porch and enjoyed the gorgeous Saturday morning.

Later that day, a coworker was throwing a first birthday party for his daughter, so I brought the kids and some beer and let D get some rest. The children had no problems inventing games, one which involved tearing down a dead tree with their bare hands... The coworker didn't seem to mind much; he was going to take it down in the next few weeks anyway, so they were doing him a favor by weakening it a bit.

I think it's good for her to get outside and play with the other kids. Colin can be shy, but eventually will open up and socialize with others. Clara hasn't had much interaction with others besides the few kids and adults she sees everyday. I was happy to see her adjust and have fun in new social settings. I don't know if it's a milestone or anything, just something I hadn't noticed her do before.

Know Your Meme: Meh

2010-04-29T08:41:00.007-05:00

Recently, I stated that I was feeling "very meh" in a Facebook status comment. That's not incredibly surprising, as I typically feel meh about a great deal of things. Certainly not blogworthy. It's the response, the only response, to the status that got me.

"Meh? What does this mean?"

O.O God bless her, she's a really kind-hearted person, and was asking in complete honesty. The interweb elves must have missed a few neighborhoods, I guess. But it got me thinking for a moment: how do you qualitatively define something as broadly encompassing as 'meh?' It's like trying to explain the therapeutic benefits of bubble wrap popping or why this is so entertaining. Harder, really...

I guess with something like 'meh,' it'd be easier explaining what it is not. Basically, it's when something (including your mood) is not funny enough to laugh at, not sad enough to frown at, not crazy enough to shout out about, and not urgent enough to warrant getting up and doing something.

For example: imagine someone you are acquainted with lost something trivial. A quarter, let's say. And let's say, for argument's sake, that they have no internal monologue, no concept of cognitive relevancy and no social filter and blurt out to you that they have lost said quarter. What would you do? You probably wouldn't smile or laugh. Even considering this person is one step up from a complete stranger, that's still kind of rude. You probably wouldn't laugh internally either - it's just a quarter, after all. Same reason you wouldn't frown or be sad for his loss, at least not with any degree of sincerity. You likely won't call your best friend/spouse/mom and dad to let them know about this poor, strange schmuck loosing his two bits. Lastly, you're not likely to drop what you're doing (likely much more important than a quarter) to really scour for his missing coin. Oh sure, you might look around your feet for a few seconds, but then you'd probably shrug your shoulders, give him the obligatory "Wow, that sucks" to give that small, if not unenthusiastic, impression of sympathy and be on your way.

And I guess that's really the best definition of 'meh': the verbal equivalent to a shrug of the shoulders.

Ain't Life Grand: Pop and Walk-off

2010-04-27T22:15:00.003-05:00

An update on how much of a bitch payback can be:

Clara had a really hard time getting up this morning. I tried the usually gently calling her name and rubbing her back to wake her up, but she just wasn't having any of it. Just when I was about to give up and bodily haul her out of bed, I noticed her corn popper leaning against the post of her bed...

>.>

<.<

>:D

After quietly clearing some of the clutter out of the way, I proceeded to run around her room, pushing the popper and laughing, finally bursting out hysterically just before ramming that damned thing into the bedpost at the head of her bed.

She sat up, glared at me and said, "OK, Daddy. I awake."

Ain't life grand?

Weekend Intelligence: Pop and Walk

2010-04-26T10:40:00.001-05:00

Since the daycare and schools were closed for Battle of Flowers, I took that Friday off to spend with the kiddos. Seriously, Texas is looking for ANY reason to close up shop for the day. I wouldn't be surprised if kids will get the first day of school off as a holiday in the near future. LOLs and lack of sleep, BBQs and Corn Poppers: this weekend had it all. And let's not forget the return of this classic tag line: So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights.

I swear Clara has found a way to break free of the need for sleep. She sleeps maybe 3-4 hours at a time, and then is up for hours. This includes overnight and means she's up well before the crack of dawn most days. D still had to get to work on Friday, and shortly after she left, Clara got up to let me know "Momma gone!" D:! She was upset! I spent the rest of the morning chasing the kids around and generally just trying to keep the house from falling apart. We got a chaotic lunch in with D over near where she works. As crazy as they are, she was happy to see them and get away from work for a few.

We were invited to a Saturday BBQ that one of my wife's coworkers was hosting. After watching Colin school 3 grown adults at Texas Hold 'Em and a massive potty training failure courtesy of Clara, I was voluntold by my lovely wife to go get the grilling started. I didn't mind, really. Truth be told, I get nervous around large groups of people I don't know or don't know very well, and being the 'Grillmeister' at a BBQ is something of a social crutch for me:

People are prone to be friendly to the cook - something about subconsciously not wanting scorched food.
I have something to talk about with random people. "So, I see you have a fire there? Yup. Fire sure is hot. Yup."
I like alcohol, and if there is going to be alcohol, it generally gets to the people around the grill first. See first item in the list.
If everything else fails me, I can just be too absorbed in the act of cooking to really interact with the crowd.

Luckily for me, only the first three of that list applied. People hung out and brought me a beer, we chatted it up and had a great time. Sooo much food, I hear that there was quite the spread of leftovers.

Sunday morning started with a BANG. Literally. See, Clara was doing her "I don't need sleep" thing, and decided that it would be an excellent idea to get her corn popper push toy out at 6 in the morning and start running around the loft with it, laughing maniacally and running into walls and doors.

My door.

Did I mention it was B.F. of early on a Sunday morning? Just making sure. Anyway, she ran headlong into the bedroom door with the corn popper while screaming/laughing at the top of her lungs. And through all of this, D didn't budge an inch. Not even a skip in her snoring. I opened the bedroom door as Clara was backing up and preparing another charge. Very surprised that her unholy ruckus would wake anyone, she took an off step back and fell over. I don't think she'd ever been hauled to her room so quickly. I set her on the changing table and had a few words with her:

"Clara, what is wrong with you?!" I asked in a forceful, yet whispered tone.
"I dunno!" she replied, also whispered.
"Clara, what is Colin doing?"
"Colin sleeping."
"What is mommy doing?"
"Momma sleeping," she said as she started to grin. She liked this game.
"What does daddy wish he could be doing?"
"...sleeping?" she whispered nervously. This one stumped her, apparently.
"THEN WHY AREN'T YOU SLEEPING!?" I asked as loud and forcibly as a whisper would let me.

She jumped down off the table and into bed, I tucked her in and she let me sleep for another hour or so... I figured I'd just go get donuts and start the Sunday Morning routine, then snuggle with D for a bit until it was time to really get up. Didn't work out so well: the whole sleep deprivation thing over the course of several days at the hands of Clara meant I didn't just snuggle, I crashed until 11. Clara cried about something, prompting D to launch from bed in a frenzied panic, going off about how late it was. Suuuuure, NOW she hears Clara... -.-; Somehow, we still managed to salvage the day - did our shopping, got the kids their summer haircuts and knocked some laundry out before calling it a weekend.

I could use a day off to recover from my weekend. A work week will have to suffice, I guess.

A New Book

2010-04-22T14:28:00.005-05:00

Well, folks. By now, you've probably noticed that I've fallen off the face of the world as far as blogging is concerned. There've been a lot of changes and trials going on in my life in the last year or more, and this blog kinda fell by the wayside.

What's interesting is that everytime I thought back on my poor, lonely piece of internet and wanting to update it with something interesting, I felt what can only be described as a paralyzing pressure to explain why I've let it go so long, to make that post interesting or insightful or particularly humorous and to make sure I get back "on schedule" with my posts. Whatever that means. I have guilt issues I guess, and with something that I created to give me an outlet against those same issues.

But you gotta have a sense of humor about life, right? Or you'll wind up with a nervous twitch, chewing on your keyboard in a padded room. Your choice.

I won't be bringing you up to speed in one post. There's just waaaay too much going on and most people that read this blog hear a good bit of my day-to-day chaos right from me anyway. For the folks that I don't talk to, I'm sure you'll get the tune after I hum a few bars. And I'm not going to keep a schedule, either. I'll blog when I feel like it and when I feel like I have something to share.

I will start off by saying that I've quit Final Fantasy 11 since I last posted. It just needed too much time and too much energy, and I just couldn't keep up and stay on task with everything else going on in life. To that end, long-time visitors will notice that there is a big empty space on the right where a whole bunch of FFXI stuff used to be. I'll figure out something to put there. FFXI was instrumental in getting me to where I am today, but the time had come to move on to bigger and better things.

Things like professional training. In the year or so since the last post, I have worked to become Microsoft certified every which way from Tuesday. I've had the experience and knowledge for a long time now, just never the official seal of approval that I actually might know what I'm talking about. I have one more test to take for the last cert I'll be working on for a while. So, with my training, experience and degree, you'd think I'd have been promoted a few times by now, but management has been dragging feet for the last couple of months on the proceedurals. I've been keeping the heat on them, though, and I'm still hopeful that something will budge soon.

I've also picked up smoking again for the first time since high school. I'm currently and perpetually working toward quitting, but I'm having a hard time replacing them with something that is both satisfying and not soaked in calories. What can I say? The body remembers what felt good.

D is still D. Despite being the gorgeous woman I married, the poor dear still had a bit of a life crisis when the realization that she was turning 30 hit her. I surprised her with a trip out to San Marcos to go tandem sky diving for her birthday, with a good friend of hers from back in the day in El Paso. :) Clara is still Clara - just less toddler and more preschooler. Fearless and self-confident and 100% princess. She's cute and she knows it, which can make discipline exasperating at times. Potty training has gone well and now generally only needs a pull-up while sleeping. Colin has hit his tweens full stride. He's a good kid, but he tests his boundaries everyday. I say it's good for him, as long as he's learning from them when he hits one head first.

Anyway, it's good to be back at it, that's for sure. Comical or tragic, it's definitely cathartic, and I've missed it. I hope you find as much enjoyment reading my ramblings as I do writing them.

Weekend Intelligence: The Mikado

2009-03-23T09:18:00.004-05:00

After spending a week doing some pretty heavy lifting at work, what better way to reward myself than to stay up until all hours of the morning dancing and having fun? Work hard, play hard, right? >.>; Between clubbing and the opera, I barely noticed the weekend go by. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights.

House and Home

The work week was pretty brutal. The client site that I was at needed about 50 workstations torn down, reimaged, packed up, stacked up and shipped out. When I was almost done, they let me know that they'd forgotten to ask me to pull serial and part numbers from each of the workstations, so I had to unstack, unpack and record all the workstations I'd already done, and repack them and prep them for delivery. Very tiring!

It was a wonder I was able to go out that evening. D and I have been trying to get out a little more. We've spent the last two years living like hermits: who knew its almost impossible to get out with kids? >.>; We went out to a club that we'd tried out before, but had a bad first impression. The first time we went was on a Saturday night about a month ago, and they were having a radio remote night. That means they pandered to the crowd that listens to that station, and as much as I love "the best mix of the 80's, 90's and today," when I go to these kind of places, I'm looking for something I can hit the dance floor with right away. It was much better this time around, so first impressions aren't always best. Just don't go on radio night. :P

The next day was spend recouperating from the previous evening before our opera night. Since our show was The Mikado, a victorian satirical musical set in feudal Japan, we decided to go out to eat at Samurai Sushi for the complete experience. Speaking of complete experience, it wouldn't be a real weekend night in downtown San Antonio if there wasn't an absolute sea of humanity filling the streets. I mean, I know it's tourism that keeps this town afloat, but in one night there was a celebrity roast, a Mary Kay convention, Air Force graduation, Spring Break weekend and the opera. Downtown was NUTS. The streets were bumper-to-bumper, and just about every parking garage was filled to capacity. We got into the 3rd one we passed by just under the wire before it closed.

So we were a little late. By a good half hour. Which wasn't a big deal, as they always start on time by having the current president of the opera talk for a few minutes before they even start the overture. We might have missed the first 5-10mins or so. There were few problems we had with this performance... The first being that they accoustics, being what they are in an opera house, are optimized for operatic and orchestral performances.

The Mikado was neither of these: it was more of a musical than anything. Much of it was spoken, and the singing was not of the style that carried over the orchestra. Furthermore, they did not have any of the lines displayed in supertitles, as they had been in past performances. The end result was something of a murmur that was half drowned out by the orchestra. Imagine an unholy union between a cheap knockoff of work by William Thackeray meets the adult characters from the Peanuts cartoons, set to music that was constantly too loud. Yeah, it was like that. We left early simply because we couldn't understand what exactly was happening, and didn't feel like fighting the opera crowd to get out.

Sunday morning, we got up bright and early to meet with the wife of one of D's coworkers who was recently deployed to Iraq. She has a little one too, so it was good to exchange toddler stories over a good breakfast. After WalMart, we really didn't do much else for the day. It was one crazy weekend, and I was good to just chill out and relax for what little I had of it left.

In Game

Was kinda a shame that I didn't have much time to blog last weekend. So much happened in game. To quickly recap:

Soulfire ground out several KS99 dragons, and one of them dropped a Wyrm Beard with my name on it! 1/3 Black Belt items, baby! Not to mention all the gil and such that goes with getting in on those runs.
We also camped Fafnir several nights, and actually claimed him 3 of the 5 nights we camped. and 2 of those claims was me. >:D My computer has no lag, even when the zone is completely packed, so the dragon popped each time as clear as day. My issue the third time was I was too far away to cast Flash, but I saw him pop unclaimed.
Finally, we leveled our "marriage mules" to 15. Only 5 more levels to go until they're legal. LOL!

This weekend was significantly lighter in game. We really didn't do much until Sunday, when we leveled BST. We started out in the tree, but it was simply too crowded. Seriously, that place has become THE place where everyone goes to skill up. So I decided to start scoping out a new camp. The mobs there were starting to get a little too easy, anyway. One guide suggested that a duo does really well just outside the eastern gate of Nashmau, so we decided to give it a go. Glad we did. Our rings wore in 10mins there, and we were getting chain 4-5 with little effort. After about an hour, we were over halfway done with the level, and decided to logout in Nashmau and call it a night.

So... The next two weeks looks like this: I'm onsite Monday and Tuesday and in the office Wednesday and Thursday. Then I'm traveling to Yuma, AZ on Friday to work Saturday, Sunday and Monday, and returning to San Antonio on Tuesday. I haven't worked an April Fools' Day in years, and am not about to start now, so I have PTO in for Wednesday. Then I work somewhere (I think...) Thursday and Friday before I get a taste of the weekend again. It might be a little while before I get to write to you all again, but I promise to keep you posted when I can! ^_^/

The Fine Art of Diplomacy...

2009-03-12T10:58:00.002-05:00

...is the ability to tell someone to "Go to Hell" without them being offended. If you're realy good, they may even ask for directions. This past week, on top of being horrifically short-staffed, I was also lagged as all get-out from the time shift.

/workrant on, and be warned, some links may be a little NSFW...

Monday was particularly bad: we were the most short-handed that day, I was the most lagged that day, and Monday's are bad anyway. There seemed to be no end to the calls from very self-important people that only thought to call in at that very moment for a problem that they needed fixed an hour ago. Or the sectretary who places a top-level ticket because their screen resolution is too small. And don't forget the person who knew they needed to check a laptop out last week, but decided to let IT know about it an hour before the big presentation...

Seriously, a lack of planning and common sense on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine. But in my line of work, there are certain things you can say or do to effectively deny an asshat request and alert the requestor to their own asshattery without making them angry at you for being the bearer of either bits of bad news. Usually, things that are requested for checkout need to be asked for several days in advance, so one always has policy to fall back on. It's also part of any good IT specialist's troubleshooting repertoire to have the end user reboot their computer. If they protest, saying they have already done that, tell them that some issues require three reboots to resolve. The Mute Button is a good friend of mine, as is its older brother, the Hold Button. I tend to save the Hold Button for particularly vicious people, as our hold music is nausiating - 2mins on hold, and if they're still there, they're significantly mellowed out.

Don't get me wrong: I'm one of the most people-persons I know in IT... Stop laughing. >.>; I generally want to help decent human beings, and I don't think I'm asking for much in asking for that. But I can NOT stand rude, thoughtless and self-important people.

/workrant off

Work aside, we've been busy trying to unpack things we need to do basic cooking and cleaning, while trying to keep the resulting mess down to a small explosion. Clara is absolutely insane lately. Happy, angry or random: it makes no difference anymore. She shrieks for any reason or no reason. One day this week I had to put her to bed nearly an hour early, simply because she was giving me a migraine with her incessant screams. I know she doesn't mean it: she's such a sweetheart and is learning new words and phrases everyday, but sometimes (read: WAY too often) she just gets so excited that words completely escape her, and she goes off on a shriekfest.

To top it off, she's finally learned how to open doors... She's walked out the front door, walked in on people in the bathroom and gotten herself stuck in the garage, unable to reach the doorknob to get back in the house. Recently, in the middle of the night, she's climbed out of her crib, left her room to go downstairs, ate the cat's food and knocked over a water bowl, opened the door to our room to come over to my side of the bed and start talking to me. o.O? I rolled over to see a crystal blue pair of eyes staring at me. I asked her what she was doing here, to which she simply said "Pi? Pi-pi?" That's Clara-speak for "Pick me up?" I carried her back to her room, but we're seriously going to have to look into doorknob covers.

Weekend Intelligence: The Green Fairy

2009-03-09T11:37:00.006-05:00

Our first full-fledged weekend back in the house, and we decided that adage "Work Hard, Play Hard" was in order. So we decided to get adventurous and buy a drink that D had never had before, and I hadn't had in years. If we're gonna lose an hour, might as well lose it in style. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights!

Earlier in the week, I had been by our friendly neighborhood liquor store for some of the usual poison. The owner and I are on relatively friendly terms, and in asking what was new, he showed me that he had come across a new entry in his already pretty varied collection - an imported French Absinthe. He told me he would have 6 bottles in by the weekend, and would hold one for me if I wanted to buy in on the case. >:D It had been ages since I had absinthe: last time was on my trip to Austria when I was a Sophomore in college. So when the opportunity came up, I told him to hold one for me.

So that Friday, I stopped by after getting sugar cubes and picked up a bottle of the Green Fairy. D had never tried it before, so I cautioned her that it was an Anise-flavored liquor, since she's not a big fan of black licorice. Apparently, 'Anise-flavored' didn't register as 'licorice-flavored,' so she had a time getting it down. And just like the last time I had the drink, it was a very fast-coming, heady buzz that overwhelmed and left you rather carefree and prone to smiling. :) We had a great time that evening in game, leveling and generally catching up with friends we haven't seen in a month.

The next morning was my therapy session with Denise, and I got a chance to talk through some of the things that have been on my mind the past few weeks. It's really a relief to have someone completely unbiased and objective to bounce thoughts, feelings and experiences off of. At any rate, by the time I got home, the AT&T service had dropped yet again. D called in to start the trouble ticket and got our account upgraded to automatic tier 2 support for any further support calls we have to make. They sent out two engineers to look at the lines and punchdowns, refitted some of the jacks and were on their way again. Honestly, I'm pretty unhappy with the product, and if we have one more outage this month, we're probably going to switch back to TWC, as much of a pain in the ass as that would be.

We lost an hour of sleep that night, and felt every minute of it the next day. We just had an impossible time keeping up with the day. We got up late, ate late, did our WalMart run late... I hate Daylight Savings time, whether I'm gaining an hour or losing an hour, it always leaves me zombied for a week. -.-;

More Bars, More Places...

2009-03-04T13:22:00.003-06:00

Colin decided to get sick on the school breakfast on Monday, so I was called to come pick him up from school. I've lost so much work between the kids getting sick and the stupid flooding that it's a wonder I'm still financially afloat. What really got me burned was that he wasn't really sick. As soon as he was home, he was bouncing off the walls. Almost doubt he was actually sick at all at school. At least it bought me some time to unpack more things and check the connection. As it turned out, the connection was dropping yet again. Another call into AT&T...

Starting to really regret switching over to AT&T. In the past week, I've had to place 10 service calls, have had 4 technicians and an engineer make house calls, went through a DVR, 2 cable boxes, 3 residential gateways and had all the telecommunication wires and fittings replaced in the house, and my connection is still is not always solid up. TWC was definitely more expensive, but at least their uptime was near perfect.

This time the connection seems to be holding a little better. It's only dropped twice that I know of since the engineer came out and rewired the data lines leading upstairs. He also changed the fittings outside and made a call to get the cable line from the neighborhood box buried. Apparently they neglected to do that during install like they were supposed to. We'll see how it holds up after they bury the line.

Weekend Intelligence: Life Spice

2009-03-03T13:39:00.004-06:00

Had an accidentally long weekend, but that's OK. I needed it to iron out all the final details of our exodus from the hotel back into our own house, unpack stuff and fix some residual issues. D and I also decided to get some 'us' time in on our last night in the hotel. ^_^/ So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights!

House and Home:

Clara had been very boogery all week, and on Friday, she decided to run a fever. Since D is already in the negative from all this flood shenanigans, I took off work to stay with her. She slept all day long, poor thing - she really wasn't feeling well. Only woke up once for a few hours to get some food and something to drink, then let me know she wanted to go back to sleep. This worked out rather well, since the movers had all but finished moving our stuff in. I got most of the stuff out of the hotel room and into the house. Everything but the food... Apparently in the course of moving our fridge out, they forgot to defrost it and leave it open. For a month. I swear, when I opened the freezer, the sentient life that had developed in the fridge started cursing me out to turn off the light and shut the damned door 'cause they didn't want to heat the outdoors. They sent the service people over to do a decontamination on the fridge - hope we don't get sick.

Also noted that the upstairs cable box was freezing up. We JUST got AT&T U-Verse installed in our home last month, and this was really the first real test it was getting, and already it was screwing up... I called their technical support, and after navigating the treacherous waters of the phone tree, I got a representative that put me on hold half a dozen time for no shorter than 2 minutes a hold. Honestly, that's inept. -.- After a good hour of this shenanigans, they scheduled a technician for Saturday afternoon.

This whole ordeal has left D and I rather on edge, and in After what we've been through, we decided that we were long overdue for some adult fun time, contracted the help of Noni's daughters to watch the kiddos and went out for some fun. Not going into details here, but let's just say we got some pretty decent mileage out of our last night in the room. -.^

Saturday morning was a bit of a run. We needed to get the kids by 10, be out of the hotel by 11 and be done with our running around for the day by noon, since the AT&T guy and the new furniture were scheduled for the 12-4 window. Somehow we were able to bend space and got completely checked out by 11. From there, it was a quick run to pick up the things we absolutely needed before noon. The furniture guys came and left quickly, and D and I broke the new love seat in with a wonderful nap until the AT&T guy arrived. ^_^ He changed out the upstairs box, checked the house wiring and determined that the main gateway needed to be replaced as well.

And it all worked great again until later that evening, when the wireless decided to go out. So I strung a line to my old Linksys wireless router, which made the connection drop every 2 mins. Hooray for 24-7-365 tech support. -.- After another half hour call, we got another tech scheduled for Sunday to change out the gateway. Good thing we didn't have much going on for Sunday, just some light shopping to get us through the week.

In Game:

Finally, we were able to play our own game on our own computers in our own home. :D Once the kids were put away for the night, we were able to level our BST a little. D found something else to do online while I decided to brush the dust off my campaign medals. I'd lost interest in upkeep on them since the winter update didn't include the Cobra mage body piece like everyone was hoping. Over the course of the weekend, I picked up 2 merits and burned off all my ops credits that had been sitting around for months. Keri and I also leveled our mules that we're building to marry our main characters. She'll get a dress and ring that has my mule's name on it, Shrades, while I'll get the same from her mule, Keriths. Original, huh? :P

There's No Place Like Home...

2009-02-26T10:37:00.003-06:00

Wow. Just, wow.

I'm sorry it's been so long since I've updated you all on the continuing house flooding saga. Between doing a financial tap dance, increased commuting, coordinating subcontractors (read: herding cats) and an increasingly busy work schedule, I have lost a good 3-4 hours a day of free time, and make it all up on the weekends. Been running on emotional empty for a good week or two now.

But the time to move back into the house is finally here. The walls and insulation are back where they belong, the paint is dried, the flooring installed and the movers are scheduled to move our stuff back into the house. And we only needed to buy two 1.75L bottles of Black Cask to do it... So I thought I'd give a quick recap of life in a hotel, and why I think I know why I'd want my own home more.

Let me start by saying this hotel is awesome. I'll be recommending it to any friends and family that want to come visit us over the accommodations that they normally get. The rooms are a fair share larger than their competitors for the same price, the amenities are simply amazing and it's very close to where we live. And the weekday socials, and subsequent free beer, have been a real lifesaver at times. But it is still a hotel, and living here has removed a good 2-4 hours from my day, everyday.

We have to wake up at 5-5:30am every day (in part because D can't just get out of bed, she needs to snooze for 15mins or more :P ) in order to get ourselves ready. Here is where the time starts slipping away from us. We have to factor in the time of taking the dog on a full walk instead of just letting her out in the back yard. We have to factor in the time it takes to have everyone to get ready and eat breakfast at the same time instead of staggering it, and we have to factor in the time that it takes to get both Clara and Colin out the door in time for him to make the bus, which still makes its stop at our house. What I used to be able to get up and handle easily at 6:30 now takes at least an extra hour or more if I'm lucky and don't miss Colin's bus.

After work, I have to pick Colin up from home and bring him to the hotel. His bus is still dropping him off in our neighborhood. So while I get to the house at 5:15-5:30, he doesn't show until 6, leaving me to waste 30-45mins sitting around in my car listening to the radio. There's nothing to do in the house unless I had the foresight to bring laundry with me in the morning. Then I have to fight rush hour traffic AGAIN to get back to the hotel, again walk the dog instead of just letting her out, and finally start making dinner, usually around 7. This amounts to about an hour and a half lag from where I'd be if I was in my house.

Furthermore, Colin's bedtime is 9. If he goes to bed much later than that, he rivals his mother in terms of difficulty prying out of bed in the morning. Normally, I'm up bopping around and doing things until about 10-11, but I can't do that with the kids in the front room trying to sleep. So this leaves usually just under 2 hours to get dinner made, exercise and the day's business complete before the kids need to get ready for bed. Once it's lights out in the front room, D and I are trapped in the back master bedroom while the kids are asleep. While it was kinda fun for the part of first week to have a built-in together time, we have come to the conclusion that we like being able to decide when and where that together time will be. LOL Another perfectly good hour or two lost every night.

Housekeeping has also been a severe pain. It started off with them taking things out, but not replacing them. They take towels, trash and linens, but then don't replace them with another set. As time went on, things started disappearing. I admit it was also dumb to leave a $20 bill sitting out on the dresser - that grew legs and walked out. It shouldn't have, but that's what I get for trusting strangers to clean my room. Jewelry and other odds and ends have gone missing, either by fleet fingers or careless cleaning. There have been days where we will put up a sign not to disturb, only to have them knocking and calling while the kids are napping. We have also put up the "Later, please." sign, only to have them not stop back at all. When we complained, the next day they checked in on us at 9am on a Sunday to find out when we'd like to have the room cleaned. Then there have been the days that, for whatever reason, the just didn't feel like cleaning the room at all. By the time we get home in the evening, all the housekeeping jokers are long gone, and the front desk can't do much about it beside give us towels and toilet paper.

Last time, they gave management the excuse that the dog was loose in the room, even though Suzie had been in her kennel all day. How do we know this? Because they're not allowed to put the dog away, or even supposed to go in the room if the pet is loose, I put Suzie away (as I always have) before I left for the day, and she was patiently waiting right where I put her when D arrived home that evening. So either someone put her away, or someone's lying.

So where do we make up all this time lost during the day? The weekend, of course! We pack as much as humanly possible into our waking hours on the weekend, skip naps and have even skipped a few meals. All this to be able to do what we normally would do on a weekend, plus paperwork, shopping for replacement items and tending two living spaces. Leaving us feeling more like we need a weekend after our weekend, and less like we're ready for the week ahead.

As far as gaming is concerned, D and I have only really had two nights in a month that we've sat down and played for any real length of time. We leveled BST one night and went out to merit in Nyzul another. I got a day off while waiting for the AT&T (<3) and Brinks guys to show up and install the new phone lines, and got some good money fishing and escorting newbies around to flag advanced job quests. One of them asked me if I wanted to make a quick 35k, and I asked doing what, to which he replied "I need an escort." I told him I don't play like that. Had a good laugh while unlocking his corsair and puppetmaster.

Planning on having a chat with the General Manager about our stay there before we move completely out sometime this week. He has a lot of good things going for that place, but his help needs help. We're not really out for any kind of compensation, but as a former manager, I know it's important to hear honest and civil perceptions from customers in order to fix problems. At this point, all I want is my own schedule and my own bed, in my own room in my own house.

In Need of Doors

2009-02-04T09:42:00.004-06:00

EDIT: I realized I never put a picture of the hotel with the Weekend Intelligence. That's the hotel we're at. The virtual tour on that site rocks, and yes, the place really is as nice as it looks.

The construction workers started the task of ripping out drywall in the kitchen on Monday. They removed the kitchen cabinets and crown molding, and the service contractors moved everything out of the house in the affected rooms. By the time I got there in the afternoon, the place had a very eerie echo to it. Poor Suzie had been in the kennel the whole time while strangers traipsed through the house. I let her out and played with her a little bit before Colin and the gang arrived. Once everyone had arrived at the house, we gathered up a few things and went back to the room.

I feel a sense of exile. I miss my house, and the freedom I had with it. I miss my castle. D and I can't really do anything after the kids are in bed, since they sleep in the living room of the suite. That's the same room that has the XBox, Wii, our computers and the door to the outside world. Everytime I even make noise by that door, Clara startles and wakes up and gets pissed that we won't come take her out of the pack-n-play.

Not that she can't get out - she's learned how to scale over the top of the playpen turned crib, and does so regularly. But when it's bedtime, she knows that if I catch her out (or if Colin tattles on her) that I'll come out, pop her on the butt and set her back in her crib. You can tell she's pretty anxious lately. There's just so much going on that's not the typical routine, and she's been very unruly and much more emotional than she usually is.

And poor Colin. He shares the living room with his sister. Several nights now, she's been up at 11 o'clock and later because she's just so wound up with all the noises and such from the room above and from the hallway. So she spends this time squealing and trying to escape her crib and generally making it hard for him to get enough rest. But sleeping arrangements aside, she's been the only other kid available for him to play with for a week now, and he's starting to get a little impatient with her.

Thankfully, some of our neighbors who have been very helpful in letting Suzie out while we were gone last weekend invited us to dinner at their house. After eating quick frozen meals or restaurant food for the past week, a home-cooked meal was so nice. Clara got to play around a different house, eat in a high chair and watch TV on a couch while Colin got to play with some of the neighborhood boys.

We're all on edge, really. Sometimes a family just needs some doors to keep the peace...

Weekend Intelligence: Suitcase Living

2009-02-01T16:47:00.003-06:00

The continuing saga of our poor water-logged home has pretty much dominated the day-to-day. This weekend intelligence is more like a week in review as well, and since I'm finding myself working this weekend to make up for the time I missed this past week to meet with insurance reps and contractors, I actually have time to make a good go of it. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights.

House and Home (and Hotel)

Following the drying process, it was suggested by the service contractor, as well as the construction/restoration contractor that our family get packed out of our home while they went to work. There were a few different reasons for the suggestion. The first consideration was to the fact that we have a very rambunctious, destructive and unruly toddler, and there would be lots of unfinished house lying around that she would gravitate to if left to it. Another consideration was that one of the rooms that needed the most work was the kitchen, which meant that it would be rather unusable until they were done. Lastly, they could leave the worksite in progress without worrying about its impact on any occupants - tools, construction debris and equipment could be left lying where they were needed for next time.

What this meant for us was that, yet again, we needed to pack up. Whatever we would need for the remainder of the build, estimated at about 2-3 weeks if all goes well, needed to be packed and taken to a hotel suite or extended stay arrangement. We found a nice place called Residence Inn by Marriott not too far from where we live, making it much easier than before to get Colin to school and Clara to daycare. They have pool and spa, workout room, fully appointed kitchen suites, daily maid service and a free grocery service. Yeah. They send someone out with your shopping list, buy everything, put it away for you and put the grocery bill on your hotel tab. All for $99/night. Makes me wonder what I'm doing paying a mortgage. LOL

It took us about 2 nights getting everything we would need for an extended stay. While we were moving out, the service contractor sent out a team of packing ladies and packed almost everything in the house in a day. They only left what we asked them to because we weren't ready for it to be packed yet. 559 boxes. O.O You never realize how much crap you have until you have to move it. At least I'll be able to go through things box-by-box, put things in their rightful place that we want to keep and throw/donate whatever I didn't want in my house to begin with.

It's a tight fit, but so far the hotel has been very accommodating. The General Manager took me around to see the various room layouts, and I chose one that was spacious enough for the 4 of us, yet wasn't overkill. He said that we might find ourselves leaving there a little spoiled - I could use a little spoiling. ^^

Weekend Intelligence: Chasing Waterfalls

2009-01-26T15:41:00.003-06:00

Alternative Title: Water, Water Everythewhere. This weekend was absolutely surreal, following a pretty epic fail on the part of our plumbing. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights.

House (or what's left of it...) and home:

I came home a little early from work on Friday to a pretty nasty smell and the awe-inspiring sight of my own personal waterfall from the kitchen ceiling. Apparently, over the course of the day, the master bathroom toilet (the one just off of our bedroom) had backed up. But instead of draining normally, it clogged on the way back down. Which wouldn't have been so bad, if it weren't for the fact that the toilet kept running and eventually ran over, creating a heel-deep lake of standing sewage. The water soaked the carpet in the closet, the master bedroom, the hallway and the loft upstairs. It also apparently got underneath the sinks in the bathroom and found the holes drilled to install the security system, creating the lovely waterfall from the inset can light fixtures in the kitchen and the ventilation duct over the living room love seat.

You know that's gonna make for a rocking weekend... -.-;

After making a rather panicked call to D, I got the shampooer from the garage and started the task of picking up all the standing water. A good workout with the plunger, 5 shampooer buckets and a half dozen towels later, I finally got the stream coming through the ceiling shaved down to a trickle. The closet was a lost cause: the carpet was completely soaked through, as were most of the shoes that were laying around haphazardly. I was able to salvage my green docks, D's wedding boots, a nice pair of heels and some sandals that she just bought. Everything else on the floor was, at the lease, heavily dampened, and most things were soaked completely through.

We called the insurance office, who sent out a service contractor to start cutting holes in the walls and ceiling and tear up the carpet. After doing their best to make my house look like Swiss Cheese, they set up some massive air movers and dehumidifiers. It sounded like a jet engine was warming up in our house. Combined with the smell and the newly exposed carpet tacks, we decided that it was not very feasible to stay in the house, and so we got a suite at the Embassy for the weekend while things dried out.

We still kept our weekend plans, though. We had wanted to go out and party a little, and still were able to, but with the added bonus of having a hotel room to go back to. -.^ Ended up hitting a little rock bar for some live band action in Alamo Heights with some friends. Once the weekend was over and the service contractor was back out, it was clear that we were probably going to be packed up while they did restoration.

To give you an idea of just how hectic this has been: I started this blog entry on Monday and just barely finished it today. -.- I will try my best to keep you all updated, and we appreciate all your thoughts and prayers while we get this squared away.

Keeping Up Appearances

2009-01-19T10:19:00.005-06:00

I apologize for the lapse, but there are many things going on in my life lately that I really just don't feel like blogging about. Not that there's anything wrong, but it's just certain things I don't feel is necessary to share with the world. This is nothing new: there's lots that I just classify as "family business" and don't write about. But lately there's been a flood of this and it's been at the forefront of my thoughts and interactions at home. And it has been making it very hard to blog.

At any rate, there are some highlights from the past week or so that are pretty noteworthy. For starters, I finally got the Dell that we ordered through D's discount program at her work. It's a Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz with 4 gigs of ram and a 500 gig drive, running 64bit Vista. It freaking flies. I turned the settings on Final Fantasy XI ALL THE WAY UP and went to Dynamis - Windurst with 40+ people. I was pulling 3000+ on the receive bar and there was absolutely no lag. At all. All characters and monsters moved completely fluid. It was a beautiful thing.

But I told you that to tell you this. When we ordered this computer, we decided to buy the upgrade for a wireless PC card to be preinstalled. One less thing to pick up at WalMart, right? -.- When I finally get the machine up and running, the network connection is dog slow when it's working and constantly drops connection. I check the drivers provided on the Dell website and note that there are only 32bit drivers for this card that was installed into a 64bit machine.

Hmm... Some system engineer needs to be slapped. I did all the hardware troubleshooting that could be done without replacement parts. It was either that the driver was bad (duh) or that the NIC was bad, or both. It was definitely possible that the NIC was bad, too, but I had a hard time believing that the only drivers available for an ASUS card were 32bit.

After a very long wait to get to Dell Tech Support, I got some poor girl who had no idea I do this kind of work for a living. I started rattling off the troubleshooting steps I had already taken and how I came to my conclusions, only to have her as me if I had taken a step that I had just explained. Complete script monkey - I would hate that job. And it's not like it was her fault; she probably had to follow that protocol before she could escalate my call. After being put on hold a few times, she was able to escalate the call to components. A new card is in the mail. If that doesn't work, then I know that my initial reaction was most accurate: their drivers suck. I'm kinda hoping I'm wrong... Until then, I have the Courier Carrie laptop sharing it's wireless connection on a wired switch that is linking the laptop and the new PC. It's ghetto, but it works for now.

Game life has kinda taken a backseat the past few weeks. The very few times we have been online have been for our assault/Nyzul static, leveling BST, leading a Promyvion run for DBH and the Dynamis this past weekend. The main issue had been my laptop, which had started to take a turn for the worst and overheat every 3mins. That pretty much makes it impossible to game or really do much of anything. The Courier Carrie laptop can play FFXI, but the graphics don't go any higher than lowest due to a severe lack of system resources.

Beside FFXI, we've been getting back into DDR now that the 360 is back from the shop. D and I are really determined to loose some weight this year and slim up a bit, and the WiiFit is a nice tool to use in conjunction with our other aerobic exercises.

All sorts of goals and goings-on in the new year. ^^

Weekend Intelligence: Nomage For Your Brain

2009-01-12T08:35:00.004-06:00

I took a week off from blogging to catch-up on some life things left over from vacation and taking it easy. Contemplating whether or not I want to keep this blog, as the resolution that started this blog was to keep it for a year... Yeah, I guess I'll keep it. ^^ But then that means I have some catching up to do... So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights.

House and Home:

First, thanks for your thoughts and prayers for DeAnn and her family's loss. I didn't blog about it, or several other major life stressors that have been going down the past month or so, but needless to say, we've been run down pretty ragged. It only gets better from here, though, and my wife and I are stronger for it.

Following the Holidays, we got the Wii set up and online on our new entertainment system. The way the extra content works on that system is you buy up blocks of points, and use those points to buy classic games, new games and added Wii content. We ended up buying Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life As King. That game is crack. Absolute crack. While they make the game easily playable in 10 minute "days", they don't tell you how your previous day went until the next one, making for a very addicting play experience. We also purchased Zelda II (since D had never played it before), MegaMan 9, the Internet and Aquarium channels and a WiiFit. The WiiFit is nice for tracking our weight loss goals, but the aerobic games are somewhat light until you grind them out over and over again to unlock harder modes. Having DDR'ed for so long, the pace feels too slow, but I'm sure it's exactly what some people need. Personally, I can't wait to get back on DDR, as soon as the XBox gets back out of the shop, which should be pretty soon.

I also had one of those birthday things this past weekend... 27... >.<; I feel old. Anyway, I wanted to go to Benihana, but the wait was over an hour, and we have a two year old. >.>; Instead we went to a relatively new place called Kobe Grill. I've been wanting to try the place out for a while now, and I'm glad I did. The wait staff was very attentive, and very Japanese in their waiting style. Unlike Benihana, or really any other restaurants, the servers excused themselves or apologized each and every time they needed to interrupt our dinner to fill glasses, bring/take plates and deliver the check. They gave slight bows each time they came and left. When Clara pitched a fit while waiting for the appetizers, they gave her a little glass dog to look at and play with. I gave it a 60% chance of ending up in a billion little pieces on the floor, but I really appreciated the gesture. The chef made sure that she would be OK with the fire tricks, and was sure to cook things that the kids would eat first so he could move them to a cooler part of the grill while the other things were cooking, making them not quite so scalding hot when the meal met little mouths.

As for how the kids did... Well, Clara was Clara. She wanted her food NOW and threw a fit pretty early into the visit. At least that cooled her off for the rest of the time. She loves sushi, and even told us "Sushi, yummy, mmm." Wasn't too hot on the soup, though, which was a surprise because she usually loves soup. Colin actually tried some new things while he was there. No sushi or soup or salad, but he did eat his rice, a good portion of his meat, and even had a bottle of Japanese strawberry soda, even though he was unsure if he'd like it. A very pleasant experience, and a great birthday dinner. ^^

In Game:

We really didn't do much in game worthy of any note in the past two weeks. Seriously. I led a short and unsuccessful Promyvion - Mea run for my social shell, and we got some experience on our Beastmasters in the Boyahda Tree, but didn't even level. There's just too much going on in our lives lately to really have time to invest in game. Hoping things will cool off a little in the upcoming weeks.

So the blog lives on!

2008 Year In Review

2008-12-31T15:41:00.004-06:00

Weekend Intelligence: Merry Christmas!

2008-12-30T13:35:00.003-06:00

It might have been sunny and 80 when we left, but this weekend was all about dreams of a White Christmas. Since there was so much going on, and I felt more like sleeping and goofing off than writing on my vacation, I decided to put it all into one big Christmas post. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights!

She had the day off from work, but I still had to work a half day. I dropped Suzie off at the vet for boarding beforehand. Work was pretty slow on the day of Christmas Eve, so I was easily able to get out on time and make it back to the house to help D finish the last of the packing and preparations. All in all, we had 6 checked bags and 6 carry on items for the four of us, so it was a bit of a juggle getting all the luggage into curbside check-in. After that balancing act, we had to jump through the TSA hoops.

San Antonio Airport has a separate line for families with small children, for which we were only initially thankful. They were no more understanding or accomodating in that line than they would have been in the regular one. Clara ran back through security twice in the process of trying to get all the carry-ons set just right in the bins and taking off our shoes. And each time there was a security guard just watching her run off and snapping at us to move along. And the lady behind the X-ray machine barked at me that all laptops needed to be in their own bin, not on top of the bags like the last time I travelled. EXCUSE ME! I'm only stripping clothing while trying to accomodate all your ridiculous rules you change every 2 months and juggling a toddler. Moron.

The plane flight out into and out of Dallas, as well as the layover were pretty uneventful. Just a lot of people. The flight from Dallas to Omaha made a stop in St. Louis that wasn't on the itinerary. I guess they redid the flight plan to accomodate some cancellations. And it was a good thing, too. Clara had a serious 'blowout' in the plane and needed a new set of clothes. Luckily we found a St. Louis onesie in a terminal gift shop, and were able to stuff her soiled clothes in a few plastic bags. The flight out was delayed by about an hour to make sure everyone that was travelling on Christmas Eve was able to make it. I was annoyed at first, but as I thought about it, that must have been a hard call to make and was the right thing to do considering what night it was.

We landed in Omaha and were greeted to a draft of 6 degree air. Ahhhhh... Home. Grandma and grandpa were ready for us with all the warm coats, scarves, gloves and snowpants for the kids. They brought my big poofy trusty blue coat ( UNIBloo! :D ) that I had when I was in college. When we arrived at the rental car counter, there was some poor girl who looked like she lost a bet and had to work Christmas Eve, and rather unhappy to see a customer. The economy car we had reserved was gone, so we got a free upgrade to a midsize. There was a Camry and an Impala available. D wanted the Camry and I wanted the Impala, so we went to our main fallback for dispute resolutions: RPS. Best of 3. Impala it was, and by the time we were finished with our antics, the gal behind the counter was laughing and had an ear-to-ear smile. She admitted that it sucks to work Christmas Eve, but we made her night. A 2 hour car drive through the snowy countryside put us in Norfolk around 1:30am, where a nice warm bed with PJs and a drink were waiting. It was so good to be home.

The kids made out like bandits Christmas morning. Colin got all sorts of Star Wars gear: the original trilogy, DIY lightsaber set and Clone Wars DVD. He also got a set of classic books and a big Rube Goldberg marble machine. Clara got all sorts of cute things: a fairy princess tea set, talking piggy bank, peg puzzles and books. The grandparents got us Wii for the family that they had snagged as a Thanksgiving special (not Black Friday, which I thought was odd). I got D a 9+mpxl Kodak, an 8gb iPod and the folks got her a digital photo frame: all the big things on her list. I got the boxed set of The Red Green Show. The show is apparently still on PBS in reruns, but now I got a whole bunch of them to whet my appetite. Later that afternoon, Grandma, Colin and I went out to Skyview for some sledding. We were only there about a half hour total, he went down the hill all of twice before getting too cold, but we had a great time nonetheless. While I wish I could have brought Clara for the sledding, she's too little yet for sledding. Still would have made for some great pictures of her in the snow. We ended the day with a great turkey dinner with all the trimmings.

We went out with the grandparents the day after Christmas to look for good deals and get gifts for the family white elephant gift exchange. The crowds didn't seem as crowded as I remembered them. Maybe its the economy, or maybe it is because I'm used to a lot more people. Either way, it was nice. I stopped into the local GameStop after lunch to see Matt, a good friend of mine, who is the assistant manager there, and we made arrangements to talk later. The agenda for the rest of the day really just involved sleeping, eating turkey hash and goofing off. We even got in a little gaming on the laptops we brought with us. Nothing heavy though.

We made arrangements to visit Matt and his girlfriend on Saturday. They had twins earlier this year, and we got to see them. He was appologetic for the state of the house and I could only think to myself "Wow, this is the loft on a good day..." They had a boy and a girl, and the little guy had lung collapse when he was born and has since seen some work, but he's doing just fine now. He sat on my lap for a while and studied my face before giving me a big cheesy grin. Saturday was also grandma and grandpa's 28th wedding anniversary, so they took us all out to eat to celebrate at the 'best margarita spot in town.' That's them up there: 40oz margaritas. Jordon and DeAnn finished theirs, but my stomach acted up before I could completely down mine. When D asked them what their secret was for staying together for 28 years, grandma jokingly replied that they hadn't seen each other for most of it - being apart really helped. The idea of a 30-year bash was thrown around: a nice vacation destination or maybe a cruise in the Carribean. At any rate, mom said no one was allowed to have kids or get married then. :P Gives me two years to earn some vacation time and save up. They said that about their 20 and 25 year anniversaries - I'm gonna hold them to this one! LOL

Sunday was the extended family party in South Dakota, a little over two hours north of Norfolk. It's a white elephant exchange party that they do almost every year, however it's been increasingly hard for everyone to make it anymore. Most of the 'kids' are grown up and in college and having kids of their own, but I was rather impressed at the turnout. There were about 25 people all told. And they all thought Clara was the cutest thing. It was good to see my grandma, too. We got a 4-generation photo with grandma, my mom, me and Clara. When it came time to for the exchange, I got a purse (-.-;) which was traded out for a bath robe, and D swapped out someone's gift card, but then got it stolen from her for a set of saws. (-.-;) So we didn't fare so well, at least for useful things that would fit in a checked bag, but it was a good time nonetheless. The drive back gave us a gorgeous sunset and many farm houses decked out in holiday lights and covered in snow.

Monday was our last day out there. We drove back to Omaha and got through security two and a half hours early, with no major issues. Security there was much friendlier there than in San Antonio. Imagine that. -.- Both the flights into and out of Chicago were jam packed, and Clara was incredibly wound up the whole time, refusing to nap and getting fussier by the minute. Combine a cranky toddler with a very heavy load of carry on luggage and the holiday flying circus, and you have a very worn out pair of parents. I kid you not, she screamed and yelled nearly the entire time we were in the air. At one point she stopped and did something cute, and the couple in front of D noticed. The woman turned to the guy with "those eyes" and asked him if he didn't find that absolutely adorable. "Doesn't it make you want one?" His eyes said it all: she'd been working on him for a while. He looked helplessly over at me and it was all I could do to shake my head at him and mouth "NO!" before she saw and shot me a glare. Poor man. Poor, poor man. Fight the good fight, brother.

We finally landed in San Antonio just shy of 11:30pm, over half an hour later than expected. They, again, waited for everyone that was supposed to make the connecting flight, and that meant that if their flight was running an hour late, so was ours. >.<; I can understand on Christmas Eve, but that was just silly. After we claimed our bags (they all arrived in relatively good condition), we caught the shuttle out to the parking lot, got the Vue and got home. We dragged all the stuff in, resolved to put it away at a later date and called it a night around 1am.

Overall, I had a blast. I've needed a snowy Christmas for years and I've been homesick for so long. I miss the way things make more sense. It's hard to describe, but sometimes things just don't make any sense here in Texas. Things move a little slower there, and there are simply less people. Grandma and Grandpa absolutely doted on my children - they loved every minute of getting to see them and spoiling them rotten. Dad insisted that Clara sleep in their room after the first full night. Apparently she got up at 2am and started singing. I was about to profusely apologize for the lost sleep, but he said it was the most precious thing he'd heard in a long time, and told me that the only one in the room that minded the addition was Roxy. She was a little jealous that there was another little thing in the house getting all the attention. :P

This trip was very good for my soul.

Festivus 2008

2008-12-24T09:11:00.005-06:00

Just thought I'd throw that out there for all the Seinfeld fans out there.

Nothing much to talk about, so I'll keep this post pretty short. I dropped off the gifts for Noni and her family. They've been such a blessing in our lives over the past year - the whole family. Especially considering what we were stuck with before her that somehow passed for licensed childcare. I know the gifts weren't much, but we really tried to find things that they'd either use or get a pretty good laugh out of.

Tonight, we were just doing some of the last of the packing and cleaning up before we're gone. D got the confirmation for the airline, the rental car info and the boarding information for Suzie while she was at work. I'll be taking her with me tomorrow on my way to work.

This whole holiday season has had D and I on edge, so after the work was done, we had a drink and took a moment to reconnect. It ended up feeling like it was the Airing of Grievances, though. Poor D, I kinda blind-sided her with just how stressed and lonesome the holiday campaign mindset has left me. We came up with an action plan, then did a little more 'reconnecting.' -.^

Well, by this time tomorrow, we'll be in the air on the way to Omaha. I wonder if we'll see Santa out the port side windows. :P

Weekend Intelligence: It'll Be A White Christmas...

2008-12-22T10:58:00.003-06:00

Despite the size of this post, there is actually quite a bit going on this last weekend before our trip. It's just that most of what's going on isn't so much many different things as it is a LOT of a few things. Volume. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights!

House and Home:

Laundry. Laundry. And, um... Laundry. This weekend saw us do every article of laundry in the house. Sheets, towels, clothes: the works. All told, there was probably about 10 loads pushed through or still in various stages of completion. Couldn't do it all, but will probably finish it on Monday. Got tons of packing to do too, but can't do any of it until the laundry is finished.

Also cleaned up the animal filth in Colin's room. I'd been on him to clean his room for weeks now, and especially after our most recent discovery in there, I wanted to vacuum and shampoo. He spent most of the weekend picking up his room and throwing away all the things that the cat and dog had soiled, but that he'd left lying around to rot. He complained that it smelled like the bat cave, and I had to agree with him. Why didn't he notice that stench sooner? o.O? He got some of it, but by the time I had told him I would be up to vacuum and shampoo, there was still stuff lying around on the floor, dried cat poop stuck to the carpet and clothes that were "crispy." It took me almost 2 hours to clean, vacuum and shampoo that room.

Left to do items finishing the laundry, packing and taking out the trash from all over the house. Not too shabby for a weekend.

In Game:

Beastmastered it up. A lot. We dinged 59 on Friday night in our Antican camp, then returned there and nearly made 60 the following night. We finished 60 off with some Fields of Valor rounds, which allowed us to equip our full AF and matching Tungis. That is a monster of an axe, by the way. In the early days, it was rumored that it had a hidden effect of double attack. It has since been debunked, but it sure does hit fast and hard. I can see how some people would mistake it's sheer speed for double attack, especially if their CPU was lagging. While the experience is still fine at the Quicksand Caves camp, we're starting to pull way too much hate from our pets, making it difficult to regain the proper enmity balance due to constant curing. Now, with the addition of the better gear, I think I'll be scouting around for a new place for next time - it's still a bit early for the Boyahda Tree camps.

We are now in desperate need of resupply on our BSTs. I had 2 jug pets left and less than a stack of pet food after our most recent run of leveling. Keri completely ran out of jug pets and her pet food stock is dwindling as well. After I was sure that we were not needed for Soulfire's Dynamis - Tavnazia run, I went to Aht Urhgan Whitegate and fished Hamsi for over an hour. Keri's cooking mule whipped them up into Fish Oil Broth in short order, so at least we have expendable pets again. Need to go to the Sanctuary of Zi'Tah for a night and farm up some coeurls to turn into pet food.

Lastly, we decided to do all the in game Christmas events. There's presents for the kids, exchanging cards to other people and giving gifts to some of the nation's more "Bah-Humbug" citizens. The big prize this year were handbells that jingle when you hit things with them.

As for the picture - we got word that Norfolk got some pretty decent snowfall. I've been dreaming of a White Christmas for several years now, and it looks like I just might get it. ^_^

The Legend of the Cursed Red Ring of Death

2008-12-19T09:46:00.004-06:00

Yes, that is my XBox... Yes, those three lights are red. And yes, while you can't really tell from the still photo, they are blinking. It's the thing that every XBox 360 owner dreads seeing - the Red Ring of Death indicating a general (read: vague and indescript) hardware failure.

This nasty little demon was waiting for me when I turned on the machine after getting home today. The generation of machine I had purchased was supposedly more resistant to RRoD, but apparently not immune. I called XBox support right away. After a heated exchange with the automated menu system and a short hold, I was connected to some poor phone monkey in India. I must admit that their phone skills and accent suppression training seminars have gotten better as time has gone on - I could hardly tell what region in India he was from, only that he was from India. We ran some quick troubleshooting before he got the RMA process started. Apparently the warranty runs out on December 26th, so if it was going to go on the blink, it chose to do so in the knick of time. A box is on its way to ship this out, and I should have it back in 2-10 weeks. -.-; Just as I got a NICE entertainment setup...

What can I say? Stikes and gutters. After dinner, D and I gamed for a bit. We've been wanting to get out in game characters married to each other for some time. Unfortunately, as is the case with most of the real world, only characters of the opposite sex are allowed to marry in game. And since Keri and I are both female characters, that's something that's just not likely to happen. So we decided that we're going to try to get our main characters hitched to mules of nearly the exact same name. I finally said goodbye to Noyoudo and created a Hume MNK names "Shrades" and Keri created a Hume WAR named "Keriths." You only need to be level 20 to marry, so it shouldn't take long to get them up to snuff. Then, when one of our applications gets approved, the other will get a ring that says Shrades or Keriths. Close enough, right? >.>;

After leveling these new mules to Lv5, we hopped on our mains for more BST leveling. We both dinged 59 and ran through the leftover ring charge from last time and most of another one before we called it quits for the night. We're holding a pretty consistent chain 3 now against the ants, and the experience is rolling in. We should be able to work another level or two out of this camp before we will have to leave, as the pets/prey don't get any stronger, making it too easy to pull hate from them.

Each passing day, I'm more and more excited about the vacation. I have one more day of work, followed by a weekend, then two and a half days before a long five and a half day vacation. Weekend intelligence will likely consist of laundry, wrapping, packing and gaming, but something always seems to happen to keep life interesting. >.>; Sure hope I'm not jinxing myself...

Tech Support Bloopers

2008-12-17T16:23:00.004-06:00

Anyone who's worked in service, particularly tech support, knows that people can say and do the strangest things. They weren't always funny at first, but they're pretty humorous looking back on them. Always makes for a quick, fun post about some of the stories that stand out from the rest. So, sit back for some adventures in troubleshooting:

Recently, I was talking an end user through connecting to an Outlook Web Access site to check their email while they were out of the office. I asked him to type in "H-T-T-P-S, Colon, Slash Slash..." to which he replied "... Colon... Colon... Where is my colon? ... Where'd it go? Do you know where my colon is?"
A semi-retired client living in Costa Rica called in at 5 'til 5pm (love those calls... -.-; ) and was trying to connect to his company's VPN. It was very hard to walk him through all the steps to troubleshoot because several things that I needed him to do he simply couldn't comprehend. After nearly half an hour of troubleshooting, I told him that, based on what information I had, that he had no internet connection. He told me that was silly, and we agreed to consult a coworker tomorrow who had gone home for the day. The next day, after another 30min troubleshooting session with said coworker, he came to the same conclusion. As it turned out, the gentleman had forgotten to pay the bill from his ISP.
I received a call from a rather panicked general manager that the phone system, voicemail system, network and computers were all completely non-functional. He needed to call me on his cell phone. I started with the computer issue, asking him to power the machine all the way down and try to reboot it. To which he replied, "I can't do that, we don't have any power."

EDIT: For all you concerned readers, D is doing OK after her accident yesterday. She has some back and neck pain, but she's going to see a therapist tonight to get a claim started. Keep her in your prayers. ^^/

Avoiding the Wreckage: A Primer for Inclement Weather Driving

2008-12-16T10:40:00.006-06:00

I love wintry weather.

I love the crisp, cold feeling of the air in my lungs. I love the feeling of the cold wind piercing through coat and clothing alike. I love the fact that, at least after Christmas, people stay inside and I can go out and enjoy places being considerably less crowded. Likewise, I love how the roads are generally less crowded. I love how it makes that special someone that much more inclined to be close to you. I might be a little crazy, but I love the wintry weather.

But I swear, if it merely threatens to look like there might be a chance of a possibility of potential unfavorable weather, everyone in South Texas freaks the hell out and starts running their cars into each other. It's as if the cold weather causes what precious little brain cells the people around here have to say "¡Híjole! Olvide este, jefe. Call when it's warmer; we'll be down in Puerto Vallarta if you need us." That forces them to use the brains they bought at the iPhone Apps Store... Talk about things that make you go 'Bruu...' Sometimes I wonder how people still have vehicles in this city...

D was in another car accident this morning. She was hit from behind in on a "slippery" patch of road. I say "slippery" only because the road was completely dry and clear on my 50ish mile commute, but had the sky decided to spit on that patch of road, it would have been frozen. She's OK thankfully. The Vue is, yet again, a little banged up, but drivable this time. On my way into work today, I must have passed by a dozen wrecks. Each one involving at least 3 cars, and they were all on the on ramp or off ramp of a major street or interchange. All but one wreck, which was cause by people rubbernecking in the fast lane and therefore was off on the left-hand side of the road, just behind the blind side of a curve. -.- I watched as one person slammed on their brakes and slammed into the growing pile. Instead of slamming on the breaks, I just coasted right around them, and saw another person in my rear-view mirror slam into them.

Let me reiterate that the roads I took were clear: no ice, no water, no patches of fog. It was cold and windy to be sure, but the physical road condition was A-OK. I have a hard time believing that every one of those people in the accidents this morning ate lead paint chips while being dropped repeatedly on their heads as children. Maybe a sizable majority, but not all of them, right? I just think they honestly have no clue how to drive in any weather but sunny and 80 degrees. So. for those readers that live and work in Texas or other warm climate, I'm writing this short primer on inclement weather. Listen carefully...

If you're afraid of winter weather, the worst thing you can do is slam on the breaks. Seriously. Plan ahead. Treat each pedal in the car as if there was an egg between your foot and the pedal. Apply no more pressure to that pedal than would break an eggshell. This is THE rule to remember when all other rules have been forgotten. If that means you need to back the hell off someone's bumper to have enough reaction time to slowly decelerate, then do it. It's not like you're gonna get there any sooner by riding someone's ass the whole way. The problem most people have is that they are entirely too close, going entirely too fast and when some dumbass in front of them lives up to their namesake, they have no room for the error. They are forced to slam on the brakes or over-correct their steering. Now who's the dumbass?

But when your car is not mating with the car in front of you, you should have plenty of room to make any maneuver you need without the risk of loosing of control of your vehicle. After you have that #1 rule down, add these to your skill set, and in this order:
-Because your front tires share their traction between braking and steering, coast to decelerate if at all possible. Letting gravity do the work gives your tires the most traction for steering.
-Try to avoid the lanes closest to the entrances and exits to the freeway, moving over about a mile or two from your destination exit. This keeps the lanes used for merging clear of clutter and reduces the chance that someone will merge into you.
-Don't rubberneck at other accidents: the safety distance in front of you is to make up for other people's stupidity, not your own.

As long as you're following the main rule about the eggshell on your pedals, the other guidelines should fall into place: you should have enough room to gently steer your vehicle or slow down without sliding into anyone. And the more people that follow this rule, the faster and safer the traffic can actually move.

Weekend Intelligence: Search and Seizure

2008-12-15T08:22:00.003-06:00

Lots going on both at home and in game. This time of year is always kind of crazy, and our family just seems to have its own brand of insanity. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights!

House and Home:

Friday night was my company's Christmas party, and one of DeAnn's coworkers graciously offered to watch the kiddos while we went. The party was at a high-end French restaurant. They had wine and mixed drinks you could buy with drink tickets, and two buffet areas with appetizers like quail, crab cakes, spring rolls and a variety of cheeses and desserts. I introduced D to some of my coworkers and management, and we had a few drinks and chatted it up for a little over an hour or so before ducking out. Later found out the party ended shortly after we left. Overall, we had a really good time. When we picked up the kids, we found them settled down watching Finding Nemo. I guess Colin had won the game of Scrabble they brought out to play. LOL

There was just so much to be done on Saturday. Dishes and laundry and cleaning and more laundry. We ran our WalMart run and picked up Colin's meds all at the same time, while juggling several loads of laundry. It'll be a few more days until we have the laundry pile back to a manageable heap. At least we had Omaha Steaks from D's mom for Christmas, so the grocery bill was lower and we had good food to look forward to. If only the kids would cooperate long enough for me to cook a meal...

Maybe it's just the weather, but the kids seemed to be particularly off-the-wall lately. I don't know what it is about them, but they seem to know when its the worst possible time to act up, and decide to act up then. Colin will be completely oblivious to the destruction he's causing in the depths of his ADHD madness, and Clara will be only too happy to help. We try at least to keep her entertained with raisins for a snack and Veggietales, but she gets bored of the videos and just ends up feeding the raisins to the dog.

On that note, did you know that raisins can cause seizures in dogs? I sure didn't! But sure as could be, just as I was sitting down to take my first bite of the delicious steak I spent the last 45mins preparing, Suzie huddles right next to me, looses bladder control and starts to spasm. Poor girl! ; ; I tried to keep her calm until it was clear she was coming around, while Clara started to launch food and Colin watched, laughing at Clara one moment, visibly concerned for Suzie the next. D had already finished her meal and went to the computer to email the vet, leaving me to juggle the convulsing canine and both kids at the same time. -.-; My steak dinner was cold by the time I got to it.

Sunday was not quite so madcap. At least it didn't require us to leave the house. We still had a walking mountain of clothing to wash, illuminating the need for more hangers next time we go to the store. I think Clara is eating them. Between rounds of gaming, Colin and I picked up around the house while D cleaned the catbox. Nothing in there...

>.>
<.<
>.>

So... where is the cat... Um... o.O? We started looking around the house. Turned out that the cat had been using Colin's room as a toilet since Thanksgiving, and he was completely oblivious to it. I really try my best not to go in there, but I walked in there this time and retched. He plays in there. He reads in there. He hides from his baby sister in there. HE SLEEPS IN THERE! How can he NOT smell that? I thought I smelled something funky upstairs, but everytime I did, I found yet another diaper that Clara had hidden somewhere, and figured that must have been it.

I wonder how I can make the cat's disappearance look like an accident...

In Game:

While Soulfire was doing Medusa and tier 4 ZNMs this weekend, Keri and I decided to get some good sessions in on BST. Mainly, this was due to us not being home for Medusa and Keri isn't much into ZNM. Something about needing a ton of open inventory spots... We did a few rounds of Fields of Valor in Xarcabard to ding 58, and I level synced to her and helped her do a round without flagging one myself to get her caught up to me.

We decided to look for a different camp than Toraimarai Canal. While the experience there was really good, it simply wasn't worth the amount of work it takes to drag the charm-resistant slime through a nest of aggro-happy mobs. That place is really unforgiving of any mistakes, which abound when playing BST. I picked through some forums and found that there was a nice camp for a 60ish solo player in Quicksand Caves using the southwesternmost entrance. Same entrance you use to get to the Chamber of Oracles. The plan was to throw the lizards there at the ants. While the whole "60ish solo" part had me a little worried, I decided that we should go check it out.

Glad we did. The lizards didn't con any higher than T, even at that level. Easily zooed. And there were about 3 lizards for every 2 ants, so we had plenty of pets available for swaps. The only rough part tended to be the PLD ants down there, because they would perpetually cure themselves to be just beyond us being able to land a killing blow. I think we should be able to ride this camp out through 60 or 61, and then we have The Boyahda Tree to look forward to.

Quaide was missing for our normal Nyzul runs, and since we beat 100, the only reason we'd be going would be to farm floors for weapons and armor. We enlisted the help of some LS mates who needed floor 40 win and decided to make a farming/win run out of that. No armor or weapons that we needed dropped, but the WAR weapon that Quaide would have wanted dropped. >.>; The other two tags we spent getting Japolo caught up to us in Lebros Cavern assaults.

We were a bit rusty in our Dynamis - Xarcabard skills. For some reason, we just kept making sloppy mistakes. People took too long getting into the zone and got wiped out on the sac pull. One person got away from the main group of demons, but trained a smaller group of them from the sac pull and wiped more people. On the demon kings, people were chasing instead of staying put, aggroed a large group of demons and wiped us again. We started the line pulls too soon after a wipe, the sleepers weren't ready and we got wiped again. Somehow Keri got lost and made it behind the line, making it impossible to get to her without dying at least once. And lastly, it was decided that we only really needed 2WHMs for Dynamis Lord, which not only failed miserably, but took forever to recover from. Something about only having 2 WHMs to scrape people off the ice.

At least Monster Gloves dropped... O.O Yeah! That concludes my gear desires from Dynamis. I'm still looking forward to doing more Dynamis, but now I'm more or less just doing them for the points. :D Oh, I'll take the WHM belt if it should drop (it's a sexy piece), but that's the last piece that I really WANTED. I'm now 5/5 on MNK, WHM and BST, and I have the BST accessory piece. Now to get the 17 levels I need to wear the set...

Ended the night by catching the tail end of the officer's meeting for DeathByHairball. I missed the majority of the meeting while I was in Dynamis, but I was able to get the basic idea of the point system they want to implement. We're also looking to start doing more events after the holiday season is over to try to build group cohesion. This time of year stresses just about everyone out, and there's been a lot of arguments, hurt feelings and people are leaving over them. Hopefully things will settle down once the holiday stress is taken out of the picture and people can just enjoy their time again.

Hard to believe, but in less than two weeks we will be heading out to the great white north for Christmas at my folks house. I haven't been up north in 3 years, and haven't seen my parents in over a year. I'm really looking forward to getting the hell outta Texas for a couple of days.

Farming Out: The FFXI Winter 2008 Update

2008-12-09T12:55:00.006-06:00

The Winter 2008 update for FFXI dropped on Monday, and as fully expected, I didn't play at all that night. I had two machines and the XBox to update. But, unlike with previous updates, it didn't drop me anywhere near as many times. I think I needed to restart the PC update twice - it finished before bed. o.O The XBox update completed flawlessly overnight. That's considerably more hassle-free than past updates, where I've spend two full days in frustration as I countlessly restart the update process and pray the next restart doesn't bomb my system.

There were quite a few things added in the new update, and I've decided to dedicate one full post entry to some of the more noteworthy changes:

-Introduction of "Fields of Valor": a new system in which players can take on voluntary training regimes to slay a number of specified enemies in an assigned period of time. ... If successful, players will receive experience points, gil, and Fields of Valor points redeemable for other benefits.

So, lets say you have a low to mid-level job, or have a friend who has one, and they want to get some experience, but don't want to put together a whole party. Hell, they may only have 30mins until they have to call it a night. All you need to do is go to the area you want to train in, register a training plan, level sync to your friend (if needed) and kill the mobs on the plan. They're all outpost areas, so you can easily warp to them. As long as the mobs yield some kind of experience, they count. Once you meet the quota, you get a big bonus.

Pretty amazing stuff, really. Keri and I teamed up with Relme on our BSTs with his DNC and synced down to 39 and did a few rounds in Beacedine Glacier. While the experience per mob wasn't outstanding, the bonus at the end made it worthwhile. The total exp/hr was actually comparable to our run-of-the-mill sessions duoing, but with the safety of partying with someone and being really, really close to a way to get home. About that -one of the things you can use the points for is a warp home. The manual is at the outpost area. So if the region is owned by the beastmen, you can still use it to go home. Keri and I also duo'ed in Xarcabard for a few rounds on BST to similiar results. Each round only takes about 15mins, so its perfect for the casual gamer or to simply pass the time waiting for something else to start.

-Members of a Level Sync party will no longer lose beneficial status effects such as Protect should the synchronization designee level up. Accumulated TP, and the effect of the Charm ability on monsters, will also no longer be lost.

-The following equipment attributes have been added to the list of those which will remain in effect, and be adjusted accordingly, during Level Sync: Evasion / Enmity / Healing HP / Healing MP

They should have had an emergency maintenance over this issue when Level Sync was implemented, in my opinion. I've heard tales of people getting synced while trying to get into very dangerous places, having their beneficial effects wear off or having their pet decharm, and dying in a place where they had to homepoint because no one could get to them. That they included this in the update seems a little late. At least my Dark Staff isn't completely worthless anymore and I can get hMP+ while synced.

-While the query selection boxes associated with the white magic spell Raise and the black magic spell Tractor are being displayed, the same spells will no longer be able to be cast on that player.

This saves me more MP in events/dynamis/besieged than I can rightly put into words.

-The enchantments on the following items can now be recharged in Al Zahbi, Aht Urhgan Whitegate, Nashmau, Southern San d'Oria (S), Bastok Markets (S), and Windurst Waters (S): Chariot Band / Empress Band / Emperor Band

Finally, a good use for those 230,000 some-odd allied notes. And here I thought I'd have to use them all on chocobos and sprint shoes...

-The tax levied on bazaar purchases has been abolished in the following areas: Ru'Lude Gardens / Upper Jeuno / Lower Jeuno / Port Jeuno

Which resulted in the mass-exodus of RMT/LS bazaars from The Shoppes of Batallia Downs. They're all on the Upper Jeuno Bridge now, just inside from Batallia.

-Players can now warp to Aht Urhgan Whitegate from Jeuno by talking to the Salaheem's Sentinels representative deployed there.

-The locations of outpost warp NPCs in San d'Oria, Windurst, and Bastok have been changed as follows: Northern San d'Oria (D-9) -> Northern San d'Oria (K-9)Bastok Metalworks (F-8) -> Bastok Mines (K-8)Port Windurst (D-5) -> Port Windurst (L-4)

In other words, the amount of time spent travelling on foot has been drastically reduced. Especially in the case of those OP NPCs - they put them RIGHT NEXT to the mog house entrance. Very nice. And I always thought it was weird that Jeuno had an invitation quest, but not a warp representative like the other nations.

-The sale prices for the following items have been changed:Black Ink / Bugard Skin / H. Q. Bugard Skin / Orc Piercer / Yagudo Freezer / Shellbuster / Leech Saliva / Bird Blood / Beast Blood

{begin rant}

This just pisses me right off. Seriously. You might recall that over Thanksgiving, I NPC'ed off the Beast Blood that dropped off Lesser Gaylas to afford the Apollo Staff for my BST. Earlier this year, Talon, Keri and I would farm Castle Zvahl for those weapons to fund our BLM. Many, many other legitimate players use these farming methods to get what they need. But everytime the average player finds something that they can really cash in on, SE nerfs it so that it can't be used by RMT. Instead, why not fix the root cause: that the amount of gil needed to do endgame activities is too difficult for the average player with 1-2hrs/day play time to get without spending weeks farming. All this does is drive players who would otherwise be honest, rule-abiding players to buy their gil from the very sites SE is trying to fight, and at an even more inflated price due to the increased difficulty of getting said gil.

Wake up, SE.

{end rant}

Overall, this update leaves me with more game to play and less means needed to play it. And I'm not sure how I feel about that. A little confused? I mean, how did they put so much win AND so much fail into a single update that didn't take two days to download? I'm gonna just have to suck it up and spend a week doing nothing but fishing in Nashmau for the gil I need to do endgame stuff.

Weekend Intelligence: This 3-Day Weekend Brought to You by the Saturn Vue...

2008-12-08T12:48:00.005-06:00

It was a great 3-day weekend. If it weren't for how I came about getting a 3-day weekend. Gotta love unexpected car troubles. Hey, at least I got some extra time getting acquainted with the new home theater system. :D So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights!

House and Home:

Friday morning started off like any other Friday morning. We all went about our morning routine like the clockwork it's become, until something jarring sounded from under the hood of the Vue as D tried driving it off for the morning commute. It was difficult to even start, let alone drive, and made a horrible grinding sound. I told her to take the convertible for the day, effectively leaving my workday at the mercy of the mechanic's shop.

Not that they're bad people to be at the mercy of. We got the Vue at the Saturn dealership not more than half a mile from our house, and they've always been fair to us the few times the Ion we owned had been in the shop. I was able to coax the Vue to start and limp the half mile to the shop, where they took us in immediately, despite having no appointment. Clara made a bee-line over to the duplo blocks table and started going through the large sack of blocks, picking them out one by one, inspecting them, saying "No" and promptly chucking them over her shoulder. Once she had thrown all the blocks on the floor, she brought each one to me to look at before taking them back and putting them back in the bag. Then she wanted to look at all the cars in the showroom, and I let her sit in the driver seat of each one. She called each car "mine pretty car" and played with the steering wheel and honked one of the horns on accident. >.<;

Once it was clear what I would and would not have to pay for on this repair trip (((>.<;;;))), they offered to shuttle us to wherever we needed to go. I had the option of dropping Clara off at the daycare, but I decided to spend the day with her instead of dropping her off. We watched Disney's Robin Hood and Dr Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas together, and about halfway through Robin Hood, she curled up on the couch with me, falling into a deep snore during the Grinch. It was nice - she's not normally a cuddler. After she went down for a nap, I spent most of the rest of the day cleaning and doing laundry.

Saturday morning was our long-scheduled dentist day for the kids. The dentist we went to was kinda neat - they had a large kids play area inside the waiting room that Colin and Clara climbed around in, and several scooting options for younger kids. Clara sat in the car they had and scooted around. She also attempted to climb the water fountain. Clara's visit was just a quick brush/floss and play in the chair. Just to get her used to the office and not permanently scare her. Colin had no issue with the dentist - in fact, he's been asking when he can go for the last few months. We've been unable to go much because we had no dental insurance for a while, but now we're all caught up.

We did our WalMart run and got the oil changed in the Vue shortly after the dentist, and were more or less bums for the rest of the weekend, only doing some light laundry here and there and keeping the mess to a minimum. The only other times we went out was to get the convertible's oil changed the next day, and we didn't hang around for that.

In Game:

Surprisingly, I didn't play anything during the day on Friday. I spent the day pretty well divided between playing with Clara and cleaning the house. Soulfire was attempting another Medusa run for FNLE, as our first attempt was a valiant, but ill-fated effort. This time, though, we were much better prepared, but as it turned out, she wasn't feeling much like playing and was nowhere to be seen. -_-; Who hunts Medusa, honestly? We killed a SMN NM Lamia in there, though. Almost wiped when its avatar used its 2 hour move. Nothing to show for it. :P

We spent a bit of time after Medusa and on Saturday night leveling BST in the canal, but it didn't go so well. Toraimarai Canal is very unforgiving if you aren't paying complete attention or if you make a mistake, and Keri ended up dead several times. We both had to home point at least once. While the experience is great when you don't screw up, it is brutal in there when you do. I might start scouting some of the other areas to see if there isn't somewhere that is a little kinder to the distracted BST.

Sunday morning was our last Nyzul climb session. I say last because we beat floor 100, so all the runs we do from now on are purely for fun and farming. We can also start focusing more on assaults that we need for rank up. We did Dynamis - Valkurm later that evening, and Keri got the BLM belt and I got the BST belt, both very sexy pieces of equipment for the spot they occupy.

Version update is coming up, so my next post will either be what I think of it, or complaining about not being able to update. Or both. >.>;

Shopping Frenzy Post-Mortem

2008-12-03T08:56:00.002-06:00

Hard to believe that the week is already half over. It feels like I just drove into San Antonio from El Paso last night. LOL Could be due to the fact that I haven't been in the office at all the past two days. On Monday, I was up at my favorite New Braunfels client helping their help desk cover calls, then on Tuesday I was in Boerne working on a laptop most of the day - no phone work involved! Been a nice couple of days.

D and I are slowly coming down off the spending high we've been on the past few days, and it's kinda hard. Everything, everywhere is asking for money this time of year, and it's been hard putting the checkbook/card down and just take a moment to assess our standing. We're good so far, but the temptation to continue to dump our cash is strikingly sharp.

For example: While we got a good deal on TV/Home Theater set-up, we didn't get anything to put them on. We picked a nice one up from WalMart last night, but I can't help but feel some buyer's remorse for buying one of the more expensive ones. This one is mostly metal, with 3 tempered glass shelves, flat panel mounting stand and wood finish that matches the woodwork in the kitchen. I guess you get what you pay for, and I don't want a really nice TV/stereo to be sitting on a piece of junk TV stand, but still...

Another example: My laptop has always been a bit of a headache. It runs waay too hot, usually shutting down abruptly due to overheating. The sound device driver is cobbled together because the one that came with it made the speakers distort. It has a tendancy to lock up for a minute or two when under load. So its no surprise that I've been browsing computers online. D and I almost bought one last night from TigerDirect. Almost. It's not like the laptop is getting worse: it's always been like that. If I've been dealing with it for this long, I can hold out another year. In the end, it was just too hard, given all that we've bought, to justify buying me a new computer at this time.

Speaking of TigerDirect. Noni told me that her stereo reciever went out on her. >.<; That's when I mentioned that Tiger was having some great deals for Cyber Monday. Tiger's been rather good to me over the years, so I don't have too much of a problem giving them my recommendation. That's saying something because I typically don't give recommendations because businesses today give a pretty sketchy level of quality of service. But all my computer builds have been mostly through them, and when components have been DOA or gone bad, they've been really good about providing prompt replacements or refunds.

So aside from the odd gift here and there, we are pretty much done with our Christmas shopping, and were able to get away without having to sell body parts or children. ^_^/ Now if I could only pry my wife away from shopping sites...

Weekend Intelligence: Beeps, Dings, Chimes and Rings

2008-12-01T09:43:00.005-06:00

We had an awesome and adventure packed Thanksgiving weekend in El Paso. And each adventure seemed to be heralded by some sort of alerting noise - beeps, dings, chimes and rings. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights!

House and Home (and beyond!):

Beep... Beep... That's the noise that I woke up to on Wednesday morning. Apparently it had been going all night, kept Colin up and woke D up much earlier, but she didn't want to wake me up - figured it would eventually wake me up. All it ended up doing was driving her nuts for a few hours. After some hunting around and some light acrobatics, I eventually found that one of the smoke alarms had a dead battery, but as I was already late, I decided I would deal with it later. I remembered to get my badge out of the convertible just before D left for work, I was taking the Vue.

Noni's daycare closed early on Wednesday, so I had previously requested a half-day off so that I could get Clara. This would also give me enough time to clean and get started on packing the Vue. On my way to the daycare, D rings my cell phone. Apparently, the dinging of the car telling her that the headlights were still on didn't have quite the annoyance factor of the smoke alarm. The convertible was dead. Of all days to have an automobile incident, we'd have to have one when we needed to be on the road early. Someone in the lab she works in offered her a jump, but the battery was too drained for a cold, uncharged jump and it didn't work. So I got Clara, quickly cleaned up the Vue, picked up Colin, my emergency auto kit and the chinese food I had ordered ahead of time, then raced out to the ISR to jumpstart the convertible.

Begin PSA: Just incase you're unaware, if your battery is dead due to a slow drain (headlights, map light, cabin lights, etc) and the engine won't even crank over, then you're going to need to charge the battery a little bit before trying to start. Hook up the battery like you normally would, but rev the engine on the vehicle that's giving the jump. Hold the engine revved for about 2-5 mins, and keep it revved while trying to start the dead car. 90% of the time, it works everytime.

After some cold chinese and a packing frenzy, we were on the road. It was only about two hours later than I wanted. But that makes the difference between being able to cover a large chunk of highway at 80+mph and crawling along at 65mph all night long. -.- For all you non-Texans, the interstate speeds change around here at dusk. It would make too much sense to leave it all the same speed. I set the cruise to 70 after dark and just plodded along with everyone else. The kids wanted to watch a movie on the laptop, and D was having a hard time getting it set up. Go figure that the minute I take my eyes off the road, I nearly rear-end a State Trooper. He had just finished pulling over some bozo who decided he was going to pull over on the wrong side of the road, so as he was trying to merge back into traffic, I came up on him waaay too fast and got pulled over myself. A siren is kinda like a beep... >.>; I think he took one look at the chaos in the cabin and understood, 'cause he asked me where I was traveling for the holiday, let me off with a warning and told me to be safe and enjoy my weekend.

Thursday was VERY relaxing. We slept in very late and idly watched football and gamed a little. D's mom had bought a 17lb turkey for 3 people and 2 kids, so there was a TON of food. We went through the Black Friday ads and decided to enter the early morning craziness for the Polaroid 42" HDTV they were selling for under $600. The plan was to wake up at 4, get something quick to eat and bring it to the store to get in line for the TV.

That was the plan, anyway. The phone alarm dinged around 4, but we ended up taking a little longer than anticipated getting up, sitting in the drive-thru for nearly 20mins waiting for service and found over 200 people already in line for the 20 TVs they had. Do the math - it don't work. D and I just decided to stand off to the side, eat our food and watch the crazy people. That was the only deal worth being anywhere but at home at that hour, so we went home and did all of our holiday shopping online. We did end up buying a TV and nice Home Stereo System at TigerDirect. The TV was normally $1100 and the Stereo $500 - we got the whole rig for under a grand. We also picked up all the gifts for the kids and most of the family as well. Very pleased with our finds this year.

That night, we decided to go out dancing. Last time we were in El Paso, we went to Graham Central Station, but apparently there had been a rash of shootings there lately. We decided to go to the Whatever Lounge and Old Plantation after dinner and coffee instead. For those of you that actually follow the links - yes, there are lots of rainbows for a reason. Ding ding! Honestly though, I'd say it was a good 50/50 split between the straight and the LGBT crowd, but it was kinda hard to tell at times. Some might wonder why we'd chose to go there over other bar/club/lounge choices in town, and the reasons we chose that club over the others were pretty simple:

-Friendlier Atmosphere: Aside from the obvious reason why the patrons would be more friendly, there seemed to be waaaay less "he-said-she-said-baby-momma-drama" style shenanigans that you usually find at a club on a Friday night.
-Better music: Music you can actually dance to, played by an actual DJ from actual vinyl on actual turntables. Bad. Ass.
-Better drink specials: We spent the same amount of money hanging out at a lounge for an hour before the club opened as we did actually in the club all night long. And we were never want for drink.

Long night short - we had an absolute blast. D and I drank and danced to some of the best electro until 1am, and at the risk of giving this post a PG-13 rating, left just after the male strip show ended. So much fun.

The next morning, we woke up just in time to schedule a lunch with Papa (D's grandpa). He's very by the book, which has historically been at odds with our tendancy to be completely bumtastic while on vacation. But we nailed down 11-2 for catching up and eating at a local cafeteria style restaurant. He has been known to get on D's case about her weight, but lately we've been doing DDR just about every night for 15-20mins, and she's made solid progress, so we had a lot of positive things to talk about on the wellness topic. I bragged on her dedication to being more active and her weight loss so far - I think he might have actually been impressed. :D

We finished off the weekend on Sunday with a visit to D's old church for breakfast and worship before packing up the Vue and heading back on the road. We decided to push past Fort Stockton and refuel in Ozona, and were greeted with the ding of the fuel light 30 miles outside of the town. We're blessed we actually made it. Once we finally got home, the beep that started it all came back to haunt us: I completely forgot to put new batteries in the smoke detector. >.>;

In Game:

Not that we played much, but we did bring the 360 and laptop with us, so we were able to play a little bit. Most of my online time was spent doing what I rarely get to do: farm. Earlier in the past week, Keri and I found out why there are always people killing the bats in the Sanctuary of Zi'tah. Those damned things are broken! They almost always double drop beast blood, which NPC's for a little over 1k. Combine that with the fact that they are very, very squishy, spawn rapidly and there are a bajillion of the little buggers, and you have a very lucrative gil-making vehicle that is completely independent of the Auction House market.

Their only "drawback" is that they only spawn from dusk to dawn in game, so you have about 30mins to farm and 30mins of down time. Not really that bad of a deal, really. It means you can seriously do something else while actively farming. I watched Thanksgiving football, played with Clara a little bit, did some laundry, took a shower and ate Thanksgiving Day dinner, all while farming up a little over 175k over the course of the day. I used all that cash to upgrade my Light Staff to an Apollo's Staff to give my BST charm a bit more of a kick.

Speaking of BST, the other thing Keri and I did over the long weekend was put in a leveling session on BST. Back in the Toraimarai Canal, we did the slime trick again and it worked just as wonderfully as before. One of these times, we're gonna have to put in a good 3-4 hour session in there and just grind it out. The experience in there is phenomenal.

That about covers it. I'm on the road on Monday and part of Tuesday, so I might not get time to update like I want to. Gotta love working tech support after a long weekend...

Weekend Intelligence: Company

2008-11-25T08:40:00.003-06:00

So maintaining the clean streak in the house from last weekend paid off this weekend. We had company Friday night, and the house was more or less acceptable not to have to do much with it this weekend. So, in what I hope will become typical weekend intelligence fashion again, here are the highlights!

House and Home:

Friday night was good fun. One of D's coworkers had his kiddo for the night as his wife went out with friends to watch the new love-smitten chick-flick sighfest, Twilight. So we invited him over for dinner and some adult time while the kids play. We hadn't had people over to our house for barbecue and beer in a long time. Apparently, we live on the other side of the world from them. And he is admittedly more directionally challenged than D. That thought is kinda scary, and hard to believe... Anyway, I had to call him to clarify that we did live nearby a different mall than he thought: we're at the one close to Sea World on the Northwest side of town, the one he thought was on the east side. At least it gave me some lead time to properly barbecue the chicken with some sauce I mixed up, instead of quickly just blackening it. Comes out so much better when I can cook it slowly. We ate and drank and talked about all manner of topics until the kids started winding down for the night. We've got to do that again someday soon. I don't mind hosting or driving (whichever is easier on them), but that was fun.

Since we'd kept the house more or less presentable through the week, all that was needed on Saturday and Sunday was some light pickup and maintenance. We went to church on Saturday night. I enjoy going on Saturday night because it leaves my Sunday mornings open to sleep in and enjoy the day without worrying how I'm gonna pack 6 hours of activities into a 3-hour period. We did our normal WalMart run on Sunday. I finally broke down and got D and I new chairs for the office. There was one screw holding my seat together on my old chair, and it was poking me through the cushion in a rather uncomfortable way.

So many bad jokes...

In Game:

Keri and I set up our BST and hit Crawlers' Nest to burn off a ring charge. We had just finished off the charge when Byble, a member in DeathByHairball, asked if anyone was available to help him get Limit Break 1 items - needed to progress past level 50. One of the three items drops off of monsters in Crawlers' Nest, monsters we could easily defeat at our level. That request came across about the same time that two parties decided to descend on our very clearly occupied camp and kill everything that moved. I hate people. After helping Byble, I committed to searching all areas for a new, less frequented camp.

I came up with Toraimarai Canal. This gem of a dungeon is accessible right from our hometown of Windurst - no travelling needed! It has two clear tiers of monster levels, which makes for easy pet/prey distinction. And the lower level tier has slimes, which are quite possibly the best pets in the game (despite being notoriously hard to charm), as they have incredibly strong attacks, special moves and are impervious to physical damage. The drawback is that the pet slimes spawn quite some distance from the prey, requiring us to drag them across the entire zone to camp. Keri died in the process of getting a pet, but once we had them, we didn't have much issue getting back to the zoneline. Once we got back, we Familiared the slimes and tore everything that moved apart. They went through the fish, bats and skeleton targets like they were paper. And since they were so many monsters, we easily kept up chain 4 for experience bonus. We made nearly an entire level, but with the death, I am 1k ahead of her. I'll have to log on as her one of these days and do some campaign ops to make up the difference.

In Soulfire news... We took down Bahamut on Saturday. 18 minutes of preparation for a fight that lasted no longer than 30 seconds. LOL The gear drops weren't fantastic, but he did drop just about every crafting item that would fetch a handsome price on the AH. If everything sells for the going AH price, divided up, we each stand to make about 310k. I can't wait for the next one - I need the money.

We also a did Dynamis - Beaucedine run. Nothing fabulous. We got some nice 100 coins drop, and a bunch of MNK relic that no one wanted. It is to be Shadokaryuudo's last sponsored run. He might still lead the event and teach others how to lead the event, but he's officially done paying back the coins he borrowed to get his relic katana a few months back, and thereby done paying the entry fee for all of us to get into Dynamis.

I'm seriously considering changing my main to BST. I love the job, want to lot on gear for the job, and want to maximize my chances should Monster Gloves ever decide to drop in Xarcabard. That's the last item I need to complete the set. Don't get me wrong. I love MNK and WHM, but I don't really need any more gear for them. I like BLM, and it could probably use some love, but all the linkshell drama involved in the simple act of leveling my BLM to 75, not to mention all the pre-existing competition in our shell for BLM gear has left a nasty taste. I'll need to get a few levels first, though, if I want to be BST main.

Short week coming up. I'm out in New Braunfels Monday and Tuesday, and I have only a half day at work on Wednesday. Noni's closing early on Wednesday, so I need to get Clara, pack the Vue and have everyone be ready to hit the road for a Thanksgiving in El Paso.

Business Trippin'

2008-11-20T08:17:00.007-06:00

Rather short update, since there's not much else to blog on lately. Just what goes on during the commas in the "Wake up, work, go home, sleep" routine from the past few days.

We've been playing catch-up on old business since D got her new job and we can afford it. That includes dentist visits, doctor appointments and vet visits. The damage: Mercy has some exotic intestinal parasite, both D and Suzie have Stage 2 Periodontal disease and Clara is a toddler. Only time will fix that last one. Suzie and D both went to the dentist this past week to get their gums scaled. And no, they didn't both go to the same dentist... Mercy has a series of syringes that she has to take by mouth for 5 days. Anyone out there ever try to give a cat medication? Yup, it's kinda like that... My dentist appointment is next week, and the kids' are in December.

We're going to have friends over to the house in the first time in a really long time. Since DeAnn is out on a business trip Wednesday and Thursday, and the house could legally draw funds as a Federal Disaster Area, we decided to get as much done as we could before Wednesday. Floors got scrubbed, carpet got vacuumed and shampooed, laundry got moved through. My back was killing me after, but I do love me the stink of clean. ^_^ I guess D is getting teased a bit at work that I'm not really into sports and do a lot of the cooking and cleaning around the house, while she looks forward to coming home to a hot dinner and a beer, and does the token chore here and there. ;P

In game has been pretty sparse. Keri and I have been leveling BST a little bit lately, and I've been trying to brush up my RDM as a sub for BLM. I've also reached 58 Alchemy, and am at a point where I can level Fishing and Alchemy in tandem for skill-ups and gil for the next 10 levels or so.

Lastly, I found out that one of my all-time favorite shows, The Red Green Show, was cancelled in 2006. Before you laugh too hard at it taking me over two years to find out and ask if I've been living in a cave all this time, remember that I have been living in Texas... >.> And this is a Canadian comedy show. The Texas part alone is bad enough. I was pretty bummed out when I read about it - that was one the best shows to hit the airwaves. I went on the Internet to YouTube to watch a few skits and mourn the loss. D looked at me like I was from the moon, but she's from Mexico, so I didn't expect her to understand. LOL I wonder if they have any boxed sets...

I am HERO!

2008-11-19T08:01:00.004-06:00

If you couldn't tell from all my ranting this past year, Clara has grown into quite a free-spirited and adventurous kiddo. She's a diva. Things are her way or she's not going to have it. She's also not afraid of anything. She's the most rough and tumble toddler I've ever seen. In particular, she LOVES heights. She'll unflinchingly scale some piece of furniture or climb some stairs and jump off! I have a sneaking suspicion she's gonna be into sky-diving...

She also, like most little kids, finds a video to latch onto and watch over and over and over again. Lately, she's been watching a Veggie Tales tape featuring a recurring character named LarryBoy. Think Batman meets Superman meets a bad acid trip at the produce isle of the supermarket. Before the hero LarryBoy jumps into action, he says "I am that hero!" Clara has shortened this to "I AM HERO!" At the top of her lungs. Each and every time. And she's made this her rallying cry before doing something adventurous.

While we're talking about jumping... I woke up this past Sunday morning to Clara yelling "I AM HERO!" at full volume. Followed by a very loud, dresser-shaking thud. I did my fatherly duty and poked D to go see what was up. Unfortunately, as I was realizing she was dead to the world, I hear her yell again "I AM HERO!!!" and another even louder thud. I got up and got to her room just in time to look in on her about to do it again. She had scaled the walls of her crib and perched herself at the foot of her bed. Steadying herself by putting her butt in the corner and straddling the corner of the crib with both feet, she pulled herself up, put both hands in the air and yelled "I AM HEEEEROOOOO!!!" before launching herself from the top floor of her crib onto the pile of blankets on her mattress below.

I opened her door and just stared at her. Knowing she was doing something she probably shouldn't have been doing, she gave me her best "I'm cute" face. -.- I stood my ground, though, told her that was a no-no and got her changed and tossed her to her sleeping mother. :D I joked with her later that I think Veggie Tales are a bad influence on her, reminding her that when Colin Power-Rangered himself head-first off a piece of playground equipment, he was permanently banned from watching it ever again.

The way she is, I know she's going to end up in the hospital. Probably more than once. I just hope our insurance is as good then as it is now.

Political Super Bowl: Election Day 2008

2008-11-05T13:55:00.006-06:00

Now, I never intended for this blog to be a political sounding board, and I'm not about to start now. But I'd be hard-pressed to make an entry for today and not talk about my impressions on the national elections.

Coverage of the long lines, voting machine malfunctions and voter fraud legal preparations had begun several days before today. And it was true that there were long lines in many places, but as the evening went on, reports started coming in that polling stations were eerily quiet, and there had been (barring a few rather sinister text messages telling all Democrats and Obama supporters to vote on Wednesday) no real incidents to speak of. Far cry from the mayhem of recent elections.

I briefly stopped by WalMart to pick up some diapers and fill up the car. There was a rush on the gas pump on false reports that an Obama victory would drive gas prices up by as much as $2 this week. People, people... Economics 101: the price of a good or service is generally reactionary, meaning that it goes up BECAUSE of a rush. On the flip side of that, if you DON'T rush, the price will not jump. There were some people at the pump filling all their car gas tanks and storage jugs and large water dispenser bottles with gasoline. When I went inside for diapers, there was a mob of people in the sporting good section. Apparently there was a run on firearms and ammunition as well, on fears that all the guns were going to be taken away tomorrow. Only in Texas... Stupid people should not be allowed to breed.

Poor D was sick, so we spent most of the evening upstairs on the futon watching election coverage on the various news outlets. I was pretty amazed at how different the tone of the various agencies were:
-NBC affiliate had a fluffy feel-good coverage/interview with several people on the Obama team. When they cut to the local coverage, they had one happy, upbeat reporter at the off-the-hook Obama watch party downtown and one relatively unhappy-looking reporter at the nearly empty bar-and-grill hosting the McCain watch party.
-Fox coverage was not reporting any projection numbers that put Obama ahead for a good 2-3 hours into the count. As a result, their numbers had McCain ahead for a little while, even while it was pretty clear the race was over in several states. In addition to their right-leaning reporting of the events unfolding, they had some pretty incendiary commentary.
-ABC tried their best to be balanced by pairing Sam Donaldson with Rick Klein, but Sam went on too many bitter side-topics, grilled the liberal guests, and told too many stories of yesteryear and the old glory days for the more liberal Rick, or any of the other guest analysts, to say much.
-And, as always, I followed the Comedy Central coverage as well. As silly as it sounds, I have found that they have the most balanced (read: all are mocked equally :P ) coverage available at just about any time, despite being mostly satire. The facts that the satire is built on are easy to pick up and you're left with factual coverage and intelligent humor and commentary. More than I felt I got from the fluffy-feel-good or the fire-n-brimstone coverage. Ironic that it comes from a comedy channel. I've watched election coverage on Comedy Central since the 2000 race and have yet to be disappointed.

The night, as we all know, was called for Obama pretty early on, and just after the west coast closed shop, McCain appeared to make a speech. I, as probably was most of America, was expecting him to say that it wasn't over, and that they were going to investigate possible voter fraud and this, that and the other thing. Instead, he delivered an eloquent, gracious concession speech. On top of that, when he mentioned Obama by name, and the crowd cried its usual boo, he quieted them. Not once, but twice. In my opinion, that spoke very highly of him as a gentleman, a soldier and a patriot to gracefully bow out and say what he did. On the flip side, I found Obama's speech to be too close to an inaugural address for the moment. I mean, it was an awesome speech, and he's been known for his rhetorical flair, I just thought it was a little heavy for the moment. Except for the part where he said his daughters could finally have their puppy. :)

Regardless of whether you liked the outcome of the night or not, I'd ask you to pray for our next president, his advisors, and our country.

Weekend Intelligence: Happy Halloween!

2008-11-04T08:38:00.003-06:00

I love Halloween. Next to Christmas and Easter (for obvious reasons), it is my favorite holiday. I consider it MY holiday. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights!

Halloween!

Yup, that's the big highlight of the weekend. I got home a little early from work, and got all the decorations out for the evening. The door archway was laced with orange cluster lights, a blacklight was set in the front door light fixture and a foam jack-o-lantern sat on the doorstep. In the front window, we had purple cluster lights strung and hanging low with a drape of creepy netting-like cloth and a blacklight to set it off. The bushes in the front had a fog machine and a strobe light in them, two large tombstones and some graveyard fencing. A jolly roger and a scary wide-eyed face were carved out of some pumpkins and sat by the tree. The whole setup was topped off with a small stereo playing an endless CD of creepy sounds and people screaming. As for costumes, we all went as pirates this year: I have a pirate costume I've had for years now, Colin decided to get a pirate costume, we bought a cute pirate costume for Clara, and D was able to get a costume for the first time in years.

The daylight picture doesn't do it so much justice, but you could see the house from the corner of the block after sunset! The house was so creepy, that some of the littler kids were too scared to come up to the doorstep. People took pictures of the house and pictures of Clara and picture of them with me and my big bottle of rum! As for taking the kids around, I took Clara down one side of the street before sunset, and she got all worn out and needed me to carry her back. After she got a "taste" of why we were going door-to-door, she went out with D for a second go around after dark, and made out like a bandit. Hell, some houses let her take handfuls of candy out of the bowl by herself. That's right, give the Cute One all of your candy, humans. :P Colin went out with a bunch of his friends before I could get back with Clara, and still made out like a bandit.

While they were all out, I held down the fort: reassuring scared little kids that it was all fun and scaring high-schoolers that came to the door. One of them knocked and I opened the door from a hiding spot in the downstairs bathroom. When he was all "WTF" I slammed the door shut and got a decent shriek outta him. Was sure to give him candy. Another one I pounded on and yelled from the other side of the door, then said in a scruffy, pirate voice, "Who let ye out? Git back in yer cage afore I whip yer agin!" just before opening the door. The two girls were visibly shaken LOL. The way I see it, if you're gonna go trick-or-treating as a teenager, you gotta A) be ready to explain your costume if you're not really dressed up and B) be ready to take a little bit of harmless trickery. ;P

At any rate, a good showing in our neighborhood, the kids were coming starting around 7 and didn't completely let up until about 10, when we did a quick tear-down before any real witching hour mischief could happen. With Halloween on the decline in recent years, I find it comforting to see it so alive and well in my neighborhood. For all you photophiles reading this, here is the link to the photobucket album for this years Halloween.

Got several on-site assignments this upcoming week, as well as the national elections and typical daily craziness. Hopefully I'll get in a word edgewise. ^^

Lights in the Sky

2008-10-28T15:50:00.006-05:00

Interrupting the daily grind with some highlights from the past (two? -.-) weeks...

-Nine Inch Nails had a stop in San Antonio on their Lights in the Sky tour. Being long-time fans, D and I jumped on the opportunity to get seated tickets for the concert. The opening group, Ghostland Observatory (also here, but I like the MySpace link better), were absolutely rocking. Heavy Europop influence with streaks of David Bowie, Prince and... Elvis. Doesn't sound like it could be awesome, but it was great. And, of course, Trent and his gang brought everything they had when they took to the stage. True to the tour name, one of the main special effects of their show was a massive display system with LED lights sewn into a curtain drop. It was like having 4 transparent stage-sized monitors that could give the band any setting they wanted. There must have been literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lights. One setting had them in a desert, with a cloudy sky and shifting sand. Another obscured them in white noise, only to make a member visible when they approached the backside of the curtain. It's hard to put into words how awesome the end result was - we had a blast!

-Colin had his LaserQuest birthday party. Only one of his classmates showed up, and none of the neighborhood kids came. One of them cancelled at the last minute with no explanation. Noni's kids came, though, and we had just enough to make the minimum number of people we had planned for. D was a nervous wreck through most of it; I took care of most of the setup and such while she was in the laser tag arena. I don't know what it is about her and planning events, but she gets really wound up trying to make sure everything is just right. I think the failure of most of Colin's "friends" to show up threw her for a loop, and she never did just calm down.

-After the party, we trekked into the depths of the Texas Hill Country in search of the Bat Cave. LOL There actually is a bat cave called, for severe lack of creativity, Old Tunnel. It's a wildlife management area that is home to hundreds of thousands of bats, and every night around the same time, they come out in big swarms and fill the night sky. Noni had reserved a showing for the daycare kids, so we packed all her kids in our vehicles and left from the LaserQuest to the bat cave! The two younger girls that went with me in the convertible were dancing to the music on the radio with the convertible top down, and motioning for all the truckers we passed to honk. Hilarity ensued the whole way there.

When we got out there, we had a little less than an hour before the bats were supposed to come out, so a bunch of the older kids decided to go exploring around the wildlife area paths. When they got back, there were several kids missing, including Colin. -.-; Would figure he'd get lost in the wilderness... I went out and found him and the missing kids lost way out in the woods, off the marked trail (of course), across a small ravine. He was very happy to be back with the rest of us, and hopefully scared enough not to go hiking off like that again anytime soon.

Clara had started channeling lesser demons, so I went up to the top of the hill with her so she wouldn't disturb the park guide... er... bats. Seriously, she looked at me like I was from the moon when I got up from her lecture about the various bats of the world to go look for my son who was lost in the woods... Anyway, once I'd gotten Clara away from people, she complained a little bit longer and then settled right down, almost falling asleep at one point. It was just too dark and too late for such a little one. I set her on my lap when the bats started coming out, and she whispered a very excited "Wow!" while trying to follow the little critters across the night sky.

-Lastly, our house is decked out for Halloween! We put up strings of orange cluster lights around the doorway and purple cluster lights and creepy cloth hangings from the front window, a foam Jack-O-Lantern at the doorstep, replaced the porch light with a blacklight, and set up tombstones and ghoulish fencing in front of the bushes. We also got two pumpkins that we'll likely carve a day or two before Halloween. The San Antonio heat will make them get nasty if we carve them too much before then. I'll be sure to take/post Halloween pics on the Photobucket. Beside Christmas (for obvious reasons), Halloween is my favorite holiday! :D

Gupolupo: Everyone's Favorite Mule

2008-10-16T11:42:00.007-05:00

In FFXI, a mule is a character created for the sole purpose of increasing the amount of inventory space to which you have access. For an increase of $1/mule/month in the monthly subscription fee, each mule created gives you, essentially, another whole person's inventory to fill with your own crap. Some people level a craft on their mule - Keri's mule, Rhylosha, has a very high cooking skill. Others use their mule as a way to increase the amount of things they can sell through the Auction House system and on overnight bazaars. Most of them, though, are just characters created for the 30+ extra spots of inventory.

Enter Gupolupo. Yup, there he is. He's smart. He's handsome. He's witty. He's wanted by all the ladies. He's the Tarutaru of Leisure. Think Hugh Hefner, but as a midget. And always clad in a bathrobe. Why wear anything else? He's a lover, not a fighter: he's never defeated a monster in his nearly 5 years of existence. Hell, he's only been outside the city walls once or twice. Keri and I use him as a mule to carry our crafting supplies and crystals so we don't have quite so much cluttering our personal inventory. But lately, it's becoming apparent that Gupolupo is running out of space, and growing increasingly tired of the same four walls. He wants to see the world! So I've made it a pet project to try to get Gupolupo's inventory upgraded, as opposed to simply buying yet another mule.

The upgrade that produced the most extra inventory (and killed the most time) was the one I did first - gaining access to a Mog Locker. To do that, Gupolupo would need to be a registered mercenary in Aht Uhrgan. To be a Mercenary, he would need to travel to staging point across the churning seas and beset with hordes of really nasty monsters. To even get to Aht Uhrgan, he would need a boarding pass for the boat to the Near East. To get the pass, he would need to join a highly-secretive group of pirates and smugglers and complete a quest that would take him all over the world in search of the six subjob items. All on a Lv1 character.

Hey, it'll be fun. The following happened over the course of 2-3 weeks, and involved waaaaaaay more death and home-pointing than I care to cover in detail.

I started preparing him by taking him around and getting all the telepoints, making it easier for him to get around later. Once I finally decided to start the quest, I borrowed Keri and took Gupo to the dunes and hunted crabs and flies until they gave up the goods. Then we went to Gusgen and hunted ghosts and skeletons there until they dropped the items he needed. Finally, we went to Buburimu and Keri made quick work of dhalmels and rabbits for the last two items. After a very careful run to Jeuno, Gupo was rewarded with a shiny new boarding pass to the Near East! Before disembarking, I completed the invitation quest in Windurst, anticipating future use of the warp NPC there.

Once in Whitegate, Gupo stopped by the sentinels mercenary office to start the next leg of the adventure. He got orders to deliver a supplies package to a far-off staging point in the wilderness of the empire. The easiest staging point to access involved an NM-prone boat ride and a trek through a zone with true-sight and highly aggressive monsters. x.X; In the end, though, he finally made it there and delivered the supplies, used the warp to get home and joined the mercenary ranks. He immediately opened a Mog Locker lease and did the first of 5 upgrades to it, adding 40 spaces to his inventory.

The next item was his Mog House storage. I'd been researching quick, cheap ways to boost storage space, and found a particular piece of furniture that gave lots of inventory, had a strong elemental power and gave the Moghancement: Gardening effect. I got 10 of them to max out his storage space, and make for a claustrophobic arrangement for his moogle. LOL It took the better part of the evening to move all of my other mule's stuff to Gupo. Next, I'll have to camp the AH for some items to upgrade his Mog Safe and personal inventory, and take a serious look into taking up gardening. ^^

Travelling Man

2008-10-15T09:51:00.007-05:00

EDIT: Clara's 2yr portraits are online and too cute for words. DeAnn spent time last night putting them up on the Photobucket. Have a look!

Just a quick update on some highlights from last week and the weekend. I haven't fallen off the face of the earth - I've been driving all over it!

-I was on customer sites most of the week last week. The first two days I was out at Boerne working on configuring some new workstations and setting up printers. The third day I was out at my old friends in New Braunfels cleaning up some viruses on remote computers. I got a call on my way home from there to go out to Boerne and fix a high-priority email issue, so I didn't get home until nearly 8 that night. I was out at Boerne again first thing this week to fix up some remaining printer issues.

-My request for PTO on the Monday after Christmas was actually approved. Praise Jesus! We're in a position where we can afford to fly north for Christmas. I'm really excited about getting to see real snow around Christmas for a change. :P Some of my family I haven't seen in going on 5 years now... x.X; This probably means we can't afford an HDTV for Christmas, but it's WELL worth it. We got plane tickets last night for much less than expected, and picked up a rental car for the drive home. ^^/ Combined with the NIN concert next week, going to El Paso for Thanksgiving and my company's Christmas party, D and I have 1-2 things going on each month through the end of the year. :P

-We rescheduled Colin's birthday party that was scheduled for this Saturday to next Saturday. We got no RSVPs from his classmates saying they'd attend, so we're going a different route and only inviting close family friends and neighbors that he actually plays with. I've never understood the whole "Invite everyone in your class" idea anyway: spend a ton of money on kids you KNOW he doesn't play with or may not even like vs. spend a lot of money and have people we like and have fun with regularly to party.

-Clara had her 2yr portraits done this weekend. We get online proofs sometime this week. She had pictures done in her Pirate Baby costume (complete with buckle boots!) and a cute dress sent from the grandparents. She really hammed it up, and they gave us a discount when we agreed to let them use her for their display models. If any of you want access to the online proofs, call/email/comment and I'll get you the info you need to login and look for yourself. ^_^

-While D took Clara to get pics taken, Colin and I went out Halloween shopping. It was nice to get some quality time with just him and I. He wanted to go as a Star Wars character to start with, but once he saw a really cool pirate saber, it was right back to pirate again. :D All we need now is for D to have a pirate costume and we'll all be swashbucklers this year. :P Also got a pound of fake webbing, a gallon of fogger fluid, 3 big bags of candy (one of which we already got into >.>) and a blacklight for the front door. Combined with the stuff we have from last year, our house ought to look pretty decked out this year. One of these years, I want to turn the garage into a haunted house, but that involves cleaning it first... Halloween is my favorite holiday, and I love being able to go all out with it. :D

-Gaming was pretty sparse this past week. The new schedule makes it tough to do much of anything late in the evening, because by the time we get around to sitting down, it's already past time to go to bed... Keri and I have the BST bug again, so we got online to crank out a few ring charges on BST over the course of the week. Later, I subbed BST on my RDM to level it, and was pleasantly surprised at how much anything/BST owns. XD I freaking mowed things over and got about 2 levels in one hour. We did our Nyzul static, only climbing up 5 floors due to bad luck and being a bit off our game. Dynamis - Jeuno yielded BLM AF2 for Keri, and sky gods the following night gave her the abjuration she needs for the Zenith Crown. I just wish I could get in on some Genbu's for Zenith Mitts, but the way things look with Soulfire, that's not gonna happen for quite some time.

-D had a meet, greet and eat at a fancy, upscale restaurant last night. I told her I'd take care of the kids and that she should go and have a blast. Colin went out to play after he got the dishes done, Clara went down relatively early and D got home just after Colin went to bed. She said she had a lot of fun: got to meet with her boss and other people she'll be working with, they had live music at the place where they ate, and she ate really well. She had Fillet Mignon, color me jealous. :P

That's about it for now. As you can see, I've far from disappeared. If anything, I'm starting to master being in two places at once. LOL

Weekend Intelligence: Don't Buy It

2008-10-06T14:44:00.003-05:00

Pretty much the standard weekend this weekend, but we changed up the typical weekend schedule a little bit. Nothing major when you look at it from the outside, but it sure felt like a nice change and seemed to make a little more free time. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights!

Friday was rather unremarkable. I had picked up Colin's prescription over the lunch hour, but did not have enough time to drop it off. This small oversight in time management set the stage for a weekend full of Colin bouncing off the flipping walls. -.-; After traffic calmed down a bit, we went to HEB and nearly got backed over by a truck that was too big to see us in its rear-view mirror. The big "For Sale" lettering didn't help either. D wanted to absolutely flip out on the guy: she started yelling in the truck's general direction and wanted to go get the phone number so she could yell at them. I just wanted to get what we went there for and get back home. Which brings me to my first "Don't buy it:"

If you see a huge, beat-up, black truck with "For Sale"

Written in white window chalk, don't buy it.

No telling how many people have been run over by it.

We spent the rest of the evening relaxing and goofing off in game. We're both pretty low on gil lately, so we spent the evening doing things that made some of the monies.

After we were all up and about on Saturday, did our typical WalMart run. On our way into WalMart, there was a group of grown men dressed in full, ill-fitting Boy Scout uniform, with maybe one or two boys with them, selling popcorn at the door. Creeeeeeeepy... If they wanna "role play," y'know, whatever... But:

Don't buy boy scout popcorn from people

Older than 16 dressed in full Boy Scout uniform.

Don't encourage them to do that in public.

We got what we needed (and some things we didn't), got everything home and decided that we were going to try to make the 5pm service to open up our Sunday mornings a little and let us sleep in. We dropped Colin's prescription off on the way there, and went out to eat at Sea Island after church. After the kids were in bed, we had a LOLtastic time brushing off BST for the first time in weeks and getting some experience. And there was much dying and home pointing. In fairness, it was the first time in a long time we'd played BST, and it was a little rough getting back into the groove of things.

Sleeping in felt so good. We woke up at a leisurely hour, had breakfast and did our weekly Nyzul runs. Quaide almost didn't make it because his computer was on the blink. An emergency uninstall/reinstall of the video card got it into passable working order. Nothing exciting came of Nyzul, but we did win enough for me to rank up to Lance Corporal. ^_^/ After gaming, D and I did all the running around we couldn't do the day before. We needed to get Colin's prescription, pick up his present from WalMart, pick up some wrapping paper and other odds and ends, and get some weed-eater cord to tame the savage yard. On the way to our first location, we saw they were doing some major renovations on a nearby Super 8 Motel. In their parking lot, they had a spray-painted cardboard sign nailed to an upturned pallet that advertised "Used Twin and Queen/ Mattress & Box Springs Sets 4 Sale / Inquire Inside."

Don't buy a used matress.

Especially from a motel.

Eww...

After getting Colin's meds, we went over to pick up his presents. In this city, enterprising poor and homeless people beg for money or sell various things from the side of the road at busy highway intersections. The guy there this afternoon was selling... bottled water. And looking entirely too happy in the process: grinning from ear to ear and grabbing them from a cooler he had in a shopping cart. We were nowhere near somewhere that had shopping carts...

Don't by bottled water

From Creepy People on the Side of the Road.

Seriously, don't drink the water - Just wait until you get home.

So we got the presents and the wrapping paper, went to Home Depot to get the weed-eater cord just in time to make it home, cook dinner and hit up Dynamis - Xarcabard. We got above average drops for that zone and the win for that zone for the first time in months. He was stingy and didn't drop any gear, but winning sure felt good for a change.

Weekend Intelligence: Down on the Riverwalk

2008-10-01T08:05:00.002-05:00

Had a great weekend this past weekend. The main event was the opera, but there were plenty of sideshows to keep life interesting. You never know what you're gonna run into on the Riverwalk! So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights!

House and Home:

The big event - San Antonio Opera's performance of Carmen meant that a lot of things needed to happen on Saturday. D had made the call that the babysitters (Noni's daughter and two of her friends) would be coming over to our hurricane wreck of a house instead of us delivering and picking up the children from their house. This meant that we spent the better part of the morning and early afternoon deep cleaning the kitchen and downstairs living room and making the loft at least presentable. The kitchen was particularly disgusting. It never gets cleaned: trash and dirty dishes are always left lying on the floor instead of being disposed of, crumbs and grime left all over the counters and things left sitting out instead of being put back where they belong. It drives me absolutely nuts and usually nothing happens until I blow up and make a big stink about it. Even then, the most it will usually get is Colin running around the floor with a Swiffer. -.-; For the record, the Swiffer is absolutely worthless if you own a pet with any kind of hair, or a home with stone flooring. We have both. Its really simple: clean it if you dirty it, pick it up if you put it down, put it away if you take it out, shut it if you open it and turn it off if you turn it on. Messes happen, just pick up after yourself. I just don't understand how living in that kind of squalor doesn't unnerve anyone else in the house but me...

Anyway, I insisted that all the grime, crumbs, dirty dishes, trash and pet hair get purged from my kitchen. The front room got de-toddlered and the loft was brought to at least a manageable playroom mess level. Somewhere in there we also got a WalMart run in to pick up dinner and the week's supplies. After that we started getting ready, I went and picked up the girls from Noni's house and, after D gave them a quick grilling on the workings of the house, we were on our way.

I decided to try to get us a spot at Cafe Ole on the Riverwalk before the show. What I did not take into consideration was that we were both wearing really nice (read: uncomfortable for walking) shoes and the walk from the parking garage to Cafe Ole was a good quarter mile. x.X As we were descending the steps from the streets to the walkways below, we found ourselves in the middle of a throng of pirates. There must have been a couple dozen of them - they filled 3 tour boats - all "ARRR!"ing and threatening to make the tour boat guide walk the plank. LOL

By the time we got to the restaurant, our feet were very ready for us to sit and have a drink. The pirate boats came by a few times while we were eating, hollering at the landlubbers and splashing water at people who were taunting them from the shore. No sooner had our appetizers come up than a mariachi band came to our table and started a lovely romantic serenade. After a great dinner, we started the trek back to the opera house, cheering the pirates on as we went up to the street level. A short walk, but it felt so long. Poor D had blisters by the time we reached the crosswalk to the auditorium, and decided to walk the rest of the way barefoot.

Carmen was hot. The female lead needs to sing, walk, think, dance and breathe sex the whole time she's on stage to come off as believable, and it was done very well on Saturday. It's one of the opera's I'd suggest anyone who is new to opera to see. There's a lot of music in it that is still in common use in TV and radio, and a lot of themes that are used in TV shows and movies started right there. In fact, most people who've never been to an opera would be very surprised to learn just how much pop culture borrows from this art.

We spent most of the day Sunday relaxing and mentally preparing for the change starting next week. Bed times, sleep schedules, morning routines: all would be changing come Monday with D's new job requiring her to be at work earlier than her previous job, and the job site itself being further away than mine.

In-Game:

We attended what may be one of the last KS99 runs for a while on Friday night. I almost didn't want to go, but they were in desperate need of a WHM and it was the Wyrm battle. I'm glad I did go: I actually got a drop from one of the fights that was worth 90k and sold the same night. With all my alchemy products finally clearing the auction house and that nice little boost to my bank, I was finally able to buy a Serket Ring before they rebounded in price. I also had enough left over to by an Aquilo's Staff, the HQ version of the Ice Staff and my first HQ elemental staff. ^^

Didn't game much Saturday, aside a little bit after we got home from the opera. We goofed off in one campaign battle before acknowledging our mutual exhaustion from the nights' awesomeness. XD.

Sunday morning has become our Nyzul Isle static time. While it's pretty thrown together, we work really well as a team and have made some awesome progress. In only 3 weeks, we've cleared up through floor 30/100 and made several boss attempts. Did the same thing this weekend, but didn't quite make it to the boss during our boss run. The evening was planned for a Dynamis - Xarcabard run, but one of the LS's on Shiva infamous for its asshattery decided they wanted to go and bumped in 15mins before us with only 10 people. We did a Dynamis - Bastok run instead.

I know this is getting posted on the Friday after, but that's just the way my week fell this week... Really rather busy. I'm looking forward to trying to relax this weekend. XD

In the Ranks

2008-09-25T09:32:00.003-05:00

DeAnn was supposed to start at her new job on Tuesday, provided they got the drug test back. The only job that was still in the works that we hadn't heard back from was offer from General Dynamics. As many of you know, GD is the contracting firm with whom she landed the job that moved us out here in the first place. They pay really, really well. She had interviewed and was confirmed for a Program Coordinator contract, pending the results of the bid GD was making to the government on the job. This was quite some time ago, and we'd prayed for it, but put it in the "Wow, that sure would be nice" category...

God is good. On Monday, while she was at home, she got a call from General Dynamics, informing her that they had won the contract and the position was hers if she was still available for it. O.O We're talking almost as much every month as the both of us were making combined. The job is decidedly more administrative than physical, so she hesitated at first, but then realized just how much money that was and jumped on it. :D She's out of the lab, in an office where she can wear make-up and open-toed shoes. No more hot and stuffy labs, slicing up small animals or hours hunched over dangerous machinery. As an inadvertent bonus, she can't start until next Monday, so she has the whole week off from work. She's been getting forms filled out, running errands, doing housework and, of course, getting in some well-deserved game time and rest. I'm so proud of her.

I got out of work early on Wednesday to take Clara to her 2yr well baby check up and shot update. Happy to report that she's doing very well developmentally. And, as always, she took her shots like a champ. A very brief display to let us know that she did NOT appreciate that, and then back to her typical cheery self.

Colin's homework has been mounting on him the past few days, and he's starting to realize he can't just slide through his work like he did last year. His teacher expects quite a bit out of him, including neatness, of which he has always been sorely lacking. We was working on a piece of spelling homework the other night that had scribbles, doodles, whole blocks of sentences heavily marked out and was crumpled like it had been picked out of the trash. D and I insisted that he neatly redo it on a clean sheet of paper, and he threw every reason he could think of not to at us. He worked on his homework the better part of the evening and wasn't able to go out and play like he wanted to. His friends are starting to spam our doorbell and phone, I just have to tell them that he's not available until he finishes the things for which he's responsible.

In game, Keri and I have been fairly busy trying to make gil. While home, Keri has been farming up dark clusters in Xarcabard for Rhylosha's gil machine. She'd wait for weather, kill some clusters, the odd Shadow Dragon pop and afk for a bit when weather was down. Well, on one shadow dragon, she popped Biast (AKA Shadow Dragon's Mommy), and it was none too happy that she was killing her babies. She was able to take down Biast with some help from an LS mate, but she nearly got "eated by teh dwagon." I've been trying to farm up enough money to afford a Serket Ring through alchemy and other NPC/bazaar activities. I'm really close, but everytime I get this close, some jackass decides to gouge the price of the ring up another 100k while other jackasses undercut the things I make money on. I hate people.

Finally, we can officially say we're among the ranks of the BLM army. After several months of drama, manaburning and rats, Keri and I dinged 75BLM at last. Seemed like every night this week we were out getting experience points: 2k here, burning off a ring charge there. Last night, while duoing Wamoura Princes, we both dinged on the same mob. :O We took a moment to warp back home and dump the 6 merits we'd been saving up on the AM2 spells Freeze II and Burst II before heading back out and completing the ring charge. All I have to say is AM2 spells on those mobs is almost like cheating. We kept a constant chain 3 without breaking a sweat, even when Gravity failed to stick.

My Wish List over there is starting to look like Swiss Cheese... XD

Weekend Intelligence: Blowing off steam

2008-09-22T10:04:00.004-05:00

With the week D and I had last week, we were in desparate need for some ol' fashioned blowing off steam. Just so happened that Noni was in the same boat, so we made a Saturday night of it. ^^ So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights!

House and Home:

This past week was D's last week at the job she's been holding on to for dear life the past year and a half. It hasn't been easy, and the two-week notice was no exception. I've always said that the concept of two-week notice was the most unfair strategy ever devised by Corporate America. You have to give one to leave on favorable terms in more circumstances. However, most businesses use it as free license to utterly abuse you for the last two weeks of your employment. Businesses aren't held to the same standard they hold their employees to: they can pink slip you at any time for any reason and have security escort you out an hour later. American business would be different if employers had to give that kind of notice, you can be sure. This, on top of mounting pressure from her upcoming offer and trying to push through an offer from someone else made for a very stressful week.

As for mine, one of our clients (our largest client) had a new phone system rollout. This system has exploded at least half a dozen times over the course of the past week. You see that photo I posted? That's a picture taken from inside the project war room. You can't see it, but there's a cot off to the right side. And yes, that is chinese, mexican and Chili's all mixed together with the huge bottles of Coke and Cisco equipment. I heard one of our phone engineers went in last Monday and didn't get home until Wednesday. That picture is an indication of the craziness that called non-stop all week long.

So I asked one afternoon if Noni had anything going on this weekend, and if she was up for some burgers, beer and shenanigans. Just so happened that she has been having a hard couple of weeks, and some cutting loose time was overdue for her, too. I had talked with her son-in-law about bringing Halo over some night and goofing off, so we brought beer and the 360 over on Saturday night for some good times. Go figure he decided to go fishing instead LOL. You know, when a sports team fails to show up to the field on time, its called a forfeit. ;P Of course, I'll be willing to field a rematch. Colin ended up playing the 360 for the majority of the night, and was very pleased when he got an audience while playing Star Wars: TFU. All in all, we all needed a breather moment to relax and unwind with friends. ^^

In-Game:

OK, so Lv75 BLM didn't quite happen. It could have happened had we not tried to level where we did on Friday. As I've said before, SE has all but made BLM obsolete in standard parties. So all BLMs pretty much go to the same place after Lv70. This leads to 50 BLMs running around the same camps on the same mountain after the same mobs. Not a pretty picture. So one of the people we were partying with suggested that we go to a more 'obscure' location in the same zone. First thing that goes through my head when I hear that is the location is 'obscure' for a reason. Now, to be fair, the place was completely empty, and there were good places to camp. But the place we chose to camp was not one of them. It was simply too linktastic. I ended up being about even for the night. Keri, who is not quite as skilled in aggro avoidance as I am, died several times and ended up about 6k experience points behind for the night.

So we spent a good chunk of our ingame time this weekend (and it wasn't much) catching her back up to me. We did campaign battles, ops and even knocked some rats down. We also did another round of Nyzul assaults, and I got the MNK specific mythic weapon. O.O! I couldn't believe it when I saw it drop. Now to climb the rest of Nyzul and get a new weaponskill. XD We're gonna hit some assaults on Tuesday in an effort to bring us all closer to Captain rank, since we seem to work pretty well as a group.

Finished off Sunday night with a Dynamis - San d'Oria run. I'm long past lotting anything on these city dynamis, but its good that several people who had been waiting for certain pieces of gear finally got them. And its 3 more points toward finishing Monster Gear for my whopping 52BST. :P

So starts another week. D has Monday off because the place she got hired at won't let her start until they get the drug test results back. Hope she studied hard. And if last week's phone changeover response was any indication, I might be in for a wild Monday. >.<;

Excuses, excuses...

2008-09-18T12:52:00.003-05:00

The past few days have been very busy at work. The other half of our largest client made the cut-over to Cisco Unified Messaging: all new phones, all new system, all new learning curve. And we're not talking about a handful of users here - hundreds of users of all levels of technical expertise just got tossed into a brand new environment. "Bonkers" doesn't quite do it, but it comes pretty close. Not only have I had my first 100% billable day ever, and had two of them in a row.

And the fun doesn't stop at work! Oh no, the poo flies at home, too! Literally. Last night, during potty-training, Clara decided to get up of the potty, sit on the carpet and loose 5 pounds. She then proceeded to smear it into the carpet with her hands and butt. -.- I guess I'd been looking for an excuse to go buy a carpet shampooer... I ran out to WalMart and picked up a relatively decent one. It wasn't the cheapest one on the shelf: it has two rollers and a water heater built-in. Took all of 10mins to put together. While I was out getting it and putting it together, D picked up the living room. All in all, it was a good 2-3 hours after I got home before I could actually jut sit down and relax, but at least the living room looks nicer. If we're gonna eventually get a nice TV, the entertainment center is going downstairs, the kids' stuff is going upstairs into the loft and the living room will need to stay clean anyway.

Hard to believe, but the weekend is already almost here...

Weekend Intelligence: Exegesis of a Bad Parent

2008-09-16T08:44:00.003-05:00

I've decided to forgo the typical weekend intelligence style this time. Not much happened this weekend anyway. We slept in and did minor cleaning. Hurricane Ike missed us by leaps and bounds. All we got were evacuees. >.>;

I need to address something that needs addressing: it's come to my attention that some of my readers, people who I know and love dearly, are a bit concerned with a few of the beliefs and practices I've set forth for rearing my children. From chores to the morning routine, when I talk about what Colin does on a daily basis, I get raised eyebrows at best and the good ol' fashioned tongue-lashing and unrequested parenting advice at worst, sometimes from people who aren't even parents! So allow me, if you will, to provide an exegesis of my poor parenting, and its relevance to my children and today's modern world.

The fact of the matter is that my two children were born into a world that is increasingly forcing the young to make adult decisions, while at the same time depriving them of the adult status and esteem and blurring the line of consequence for making poor adult decisions. This is very dangerous territory for children, who are innately prone to be hedonistic, impatient and completely self-gratifying. Colin, in particular, is on the threshold of this land of mixed signals. Soon, if he hasn't already, he will be making decisions on things such as whether or not to drink, use drugs, have sex and blow off his education.

Colin is a very bright boy. Very intelligent. But history has shown that intelligent people do not necessarily make intelligent decisions. Intelligence, tempered with sensibility, responsibility, patience, and honor are prerequisites to choosing the right path and enjoying success, and are hallmarks of true manhood. It takes takes intelligence to recognize all options available to you in any given choice, sensibility to sort through the options and appropriately assign probable consequences, responsibility to choose that which is good and right and true before God, and so to act courageously, patience to act at the most opportune moment, and honor to accept your consequences, good or bad, with dignity and respect.

This is what it means to be a man.

So, in a world that asks boys as young as 9 to be men, it's important he be trained up in these essentials as soon as he can. As silly as it sounds to people who grew up in another world, another time, this is the reality of our world now: a choice made at the tender age of 9 can dramatically change the course of his life, up to and including being the end of it.

So, how does getting up and getting dressed, preparing for the day ahead, completing daily and weekly duties and following a schedule and curfew translate into these lofty goals? By instilling in him what it means to make appropriate decisions in an environment that, while not free from consequence, is relatively safe in case of failure. He is given things that are within the scope of his capability, and he learns he is capable because he is intelligent. He is given options to sharpen his sensibility and through experience learns how to anticipate and weigh consequences. Through consequences (good and bad) and guidance, he receives reinforcement to make good decisions, and is emboldened to make them more frequently. Through rewards, he learns the power of patience and gets to enjoy the benefits of his good decisions. Through discipline, he learns from the consequences of his poor decision, learns to take his consequences with honor, and is given the opportunity to try again with the full support of his family.

It is in this way that something as simple as doing the dishes every night promptly can train him up to be a good and honorable man. He is capable of doing the dishes promptly, and this capability and expectation is relayed to him. If he chooses not to, and go play his DS instead, he will loose his DS and still be responsible for completing the dishes. If he chooses to do the dishes, but dawdles and plays in the water, he is made aware of the time he just lost that could have been spent doing something fun, and has the added responsibility of cleaning up the mess he makes. But by choosing the correct choice, he is praised and given the evening to play with friends or spend his hard earned time however he sees fit. Once a schedule is in place during the school year, he earns an additional reward in the form of allowance for successful completion of the day's duties.

Some people might say that this talk is all well and good, but that I'm asking way too much of an 8 year old boy. Get up in the morning and out the door all by himself? Do his homework with no one to help him? Do housework with no prompting? Isn't that a bit much? If you're asking these questions, you are correct: they are not in the scope of what an 8 year old can reasonably do. Which is why I don't expect him to do them.

The above are goals - things to work on, things he will eventually need to be able to do. He doesn't get up all by himself, I or D get up bright and early with him. We usually alternate, but he's never all on his own. When we get him a working alarm clock again, we'll be getting up before the alarm to make sure he gets up to it. He walks 4 houses down to the bus stop with the herd of other children on their way, 5 mins before the bus arrives. It's nothing he isn't capable of and he's not alone while he's working on it. When he's successful, I'm sure to let him know, and when he repeats successes with regularity, we move on to the next step, add responsibilities and privileges, and generally build the foundation of sound work ethic and responsibility.

But why can't you just be nice and let him be a boy? Little boys are supposed to be carefree and not have to worry about these things! Why can't you be a friend? That's an easy one: because I am not his friend. I'm his father. The world already wants to call him a man, and propose ways to prove he can be one: so many messages today reinforce the idea that to be a "real man," you'd do fill-in-the-blank, no pun(s) intended... >.>; And none of the worldly ways to real manhood have anything to do with being a real man. He doesn't need another person in his life making it easy to do the wrong thing - he'll have plenty of them.

On a side note, Clara is not off the hook for this, either. Clara will one day enter this phase (unfortunately, it will likely be even earlier than Colin), and I will have to do with her as I am doing with him. To be honest, they'll probably think I'm their worst enemy when all they want to do is be indulgent and hedonistic. And I am perfectly OK with that role.

Bottom line: my children need all the things I have outlined for all the reasons I have outlined, and time is fleeting. The time we have as parents to have a true impact on our children's lives is, by its very nature, evanescent. Eventually, the boy becomes a man, the girl becomes a woman, and both are subject to the same rules and consequences to which all adults are bound, regardless of whether or not they have experience with the idea. I'd rather not throw my children to world unprepared.

Limited Potential

2008-09-11T10:17:00.003-05:00

Its quiet so far at work today, but only because its our email server that's on fire. >.>; So I thought I might be able to get in some recent happenings.

First off, congratulations are in order to my sister-in-law Heather and her hubby, Tristan, on their newest addition. Rory Shaun Overson was born by emergency c-section at a whopping 8lbs 4oz and 20in long. That's enormous considering the mother. Don't want to go into the shenanigans that is military medicine, but suffice to say I'm glad they are OK. And because a surgery was needed, Tristan's deployment has been indefinitely suspended while he tends to his recovering wife. Baby is a lottle banged up, but nothing serious from what I hear, and mother is tired but happy and with good pain meds. LOL

Colin has been having issues getting out the door in the morning. On Monday, he missed the bus because he was dawdling while eating his breakfast, then hid downstairs until we were up and about to avoid letting us know he'd missed the bus. -.-" Then he missed the bus again on Wednesday because he didn't get out of bed. Getting up at request or to an alarm, clothing oneself, fixing oneself a bowl of cereal and walking a quarter of a block to the school bus stop are all things that are not outside the realm of capability for someone who is almost 9. These are things he can do! He doesn't want to do them, and that really ticks me off, especially when mornings are already chaotic.

We've also been knee deep in potty-training for Clara. I know, I know, that's not very punny. She really likes Dora the Explorer, so we got her some Dora pull ups. One evening, after she'd gone in her pull up, D told her that she peed on Dora, and just about made Clara cry. Then she took her pull up and tossed it in the toilet... >.>; That's something, right? She gets the idea that her waste goes in the potty, but she I don't think she has learned to tell when she needs to go.

The big version update was Monday night. This always means that I don't get to really game for the next 2 days. >.<; This update involved the implementation of the highly anticipated level sync feature, something that promises to make leveling low-level jobs much easier. The system works by limiting the higher level members of a party to the level of a member determined by the leader. And it lets people do this without needing to keep low-level gear on hand by limiting the stats and potential on the gear as well. This makes it very easy for high-level people to party with friends at a lower level. But the fact that the update was some 80Mb and that 100,000+ users worldwide were trying to download it all at the same time prevented me from getting to experience this first-hand that night. I spent all of Monday and part of Tuesday updating the PCs and the XBox 360 with the latest version. Ended up doing simple farming on Tuesday night, trying to save up for a Serket Ring.

Wednesday we decided to try out the level sync option and level with Crazygirl on her BLM in the ruins. She's Lv69, 5 lower than we are, so that put us back at the sweet spot for experience there. We easily got 8k over the course of the evening without using an experience ring charge, and we had a lot of AFKing and breaks for children and drinks. Overall, I like the new system, but I think it leaves a little to be desired for gear. You see, you don't have to keep level capped gear anymore, because the system modifies the stats on the gear to make it less powerful. The downside is that they decided that some stat modifications were going to be negated altogether; things like magic accuracy, magic attack and convert HP to MP. Things that are the staple of all the good BLM gear. -.- Thanks SE. Regardless of the slight setback, it was still very good experience, and it brought CG a little closer to our level. ^^

Might try out Limbus tomorrow night. They reduced the entry fee that during the update, too, so we might be able to actually afford it.

Lack of Intelligence

2008-09-10T10:51:00.003-05:00

No. There is no weekend intelligence. Its slow-roasting over the fire that is Cisco Unified Messaging when Microsoft Exchange pushes an update that is not pre-approved by Cisco. I'm not going to even try to recall all that happened this past weekend when this week is already half over.

I just haven't had time to write much. I wake up and go to work until I come home, chase a potty-training toddler around to exhaustion, direct a spastic ADHD boy to do house/home work, get about 30mins to really decompress and go to bed. I think I eat somewhere in there, too.

Through all this, I've found that I put a very high value on personal time. It's gold to me. The fact that I seem to be losing it to or spending it on everyone else but me leaves me feeling robbed. I think I need a vacation...

Week In Review: Duties, Tasks and Deeds

2008-09-05T09:55:00.004-05:00

Its weird how things have a way of spontaneously combusting after a 3-day weekend. I haven't been at my desk much this week, so I'm going to do a quick catch-all post for the week:

-I've been out to the South Texas Blood and Tissue center twice this week to cover for low staffing levels. The first time was to facilitate a move of 8 workstations from one side of the building to the other, and I took on a few tickets while I was there. Yesterday, I went over there to help clean up stale tickets and ended up doing damage control while our network engineers worked on an issue between the voicemail system and the email system.

-DeAnn had a smash-up week last week on the job front, and has three serious prospects all vying for her. She received a hefty offer letter from a former employer - the one she worked for that moved us to San Antonio. And I mean hefty. Hefty as in "almost twice as much as I'm earning" hefty. That one is contingent on that company actually winning the contract. That one would be NICE. She also got personal assurance from another potential employer that they would rework their budget and see how much more they could add to their original offer idea and send an offer letter soon. The lastly, the third position wants to have a lunch meeting today with her and the rest of the team to get to know her better. And she's received several calls on her at work for background checks and employment verification.

-Colin had a rough spot at after-school care. Apparently he forgot his meds before heading off to school, and refused to do his homework. So he spent all night getting it done at home. The next night, he came home without his spelling done. He claimed it was because they weren't allowed to do it in class or take the storybook home, which turned out to be a vital part of the assignment. I don't think we were getting the whole story, and I'm going to let him have it if he's trying to test his teachers and afterschool assistants.

-Clara is... Clara. A walking, screaming, temper-tantrum throwing bundle of excitable toddler and poop. -.-; With still developing brains, constantly instable emotional storms and an evolution-inspired propensity to narcissism and hedonism, toddlers are inherently insane. Seriously. If you haven't spent the day with a toddler and don't have one handy to experience it, just go to your nearest psych ward and carry on a deep conversation with the man who talks to his crayons. It's kinda like that. With more poop.

-In Game life has been pretty disappointing. I died on BLM trying to take pics of pugils at Cape Terrigan. The lucky bastard caught me between stoneskin casts and I never really recovered. Then Keri decided to use a ring charge in a manaburn party without checking if I had a charge available. Which I didn't, because she used it to level my RDM that they give me flak for not having leveled. This equates to me working my ass off in campaign battles instead of earning merits for AM2, putting me even further behind.

Speaking of last night, I decided that it was no big deal to invite another BLM and his THF secondary account to our manaburn. I mean, we were just there to hit 74 and get Emma her merit. But Keri, TS and Emma got mad that someone was leeching exp. Nevermind that we're still completing our objective and generally having a good time doing it. Noo~ it's messing with our exp... I did finally get 74, but I still got the feeling that I should have just stayed in bed and not logged in. I hate leading parties...

Weekend coming up, and I feel like I worked all 5 days, even though it was only 4. I'm just hoping nothing else blows up between now and quitting time...

Weekend Intelligence: Adventures in Potty Training

2008-09-03T07:21:00.003-05:00

Alternate title: "We're gonna need shampooer after this..." This nice, long Labor Day weekend was the weekend we decided to start Clara on the potty. This means my parental duties involve at least twice as much fecal matter as they did before, and with about four times as much excitement about it. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights.

In Game:

I'll start with this part, since it's easiest. Keri and I pretty much tore into BLM all weekend. At nearly every opportunity, we went out to get some experience. When we had enough people, we'd hit Mt. Zhayolm and kill wamoura larva. When it was just us, we'd go to our faithful standby of clocktower rats. We're now less than 10k from 74: there's light at the end of the tunnel!

Aside from that, I farmed Whitegate for Retrace and Teleport requests in between farming zeni for ZNM. I even did one mercenary job of escorting a RDM through Castle Oztroja to get his crest for limit break 3 (ability to gain levels 60-65). That was a cool, quick 30k. I made about 80k overall, but spent some of it upgrading gear and leveling Alchemy, which I have nearly capped on Vitriol.

We also completed Apocalypse Nigh for Keri and Vudian, the last two members of our mountain climbing static that needed it. Fight went much more smoothly this time around, and I'm glad that I can completely close that chapter of my adventuring career.

Soulfire decided that Labor Day Weekend was a good time to try to do some Kirin sets. While several key players/jobs were out on vacation. Yeah. Good idea. The result was a 4 hour Kirin session where we only popped 2 sets... That's right: average 2hrs/Kirin... That's like watching paint dry. We simply didn't have the numbers and spent most of our manpower zombie-zerging the silly thing. One member stated he watched all of Blazing Saddles in the time it took to pop Kirin and bring him to 25%. We really shouldn't lowman things like Kirin. If we did things like that at Jailer of Love, people would be howling...

House and Home:

Labor Day Weekend is named such, not as a celebration of the working man and well-earned repose from said work, but because you labor HARDER that weekend. -.-; I must have pushed through 7-8 loads of laundry, and a good chunk that workload was sheets. Clara's sheets. More on that later... On top of this, we got a nastigram from the homeowners' mafia about our yard, so I needed to work on that as well.

DeAnn had an interview with a company that does basically the same thing she's doing now on Saturday. She said it went very well and they would be sending an offer letter sometime in the next week. I'm really looking forward to her having a new job lined up for when her current one expires - we'll both be able to breathe a sigh of relief. She also had an interview for a contractor position on Friday that sounded promising as well.

D decided that we were going to begin potty training proper this weekend. Since she's gotten into the habit of taking wet diapers off and throwing them across her room from the crib, we have been introducing her to the idea. But this weekend was the big start. We sat the potty chair in front of the TV and gave her all kinds of fluids and foods and waited for nature to do its thing. And waited. And waited. I swear I lost more brain cells watching Cartoon Network's Labor Day Pokemon Marathon than I ever did in college. While this was going on, I was doing yard work and laundry and trying to keep a toddler seated on the pot. Not an easy feat, but I think somewhere in there I unlocked the secret of being in 2 locations at once.

The house is starting to show some scars from the adventures, though. Particularly the carpet. In one instance, I turned around for 15 seconds to fold a sheet and put it up in the linen closet, and Clara decided to jump up from the potty with an ear-piercing shriek, run to her bedroom and pee on the carpet the whole way there. Another time she sat on the potty and farted for nearly an hour, only for me to give up and go get her a pull-up. While doing this, she got up and took a dump right in front of her bedroom door. And then there was the after-nap diaper lobbing. She soiled her diaper after Sunday's nap, which she promptly took off and lobbed across the room, landing soiled-side out against the wall. After that, she peed on all her blankets and pillow at the head of her bed, then went to the foot of her bed and pitched a soda can sized loaf there. Yay, even more laundry. -.-;

So that went on all weekend long without any real progress. Somehow, all weekend long, she managed to go to the bathroom on everything else in the house except the potty. I've gotta have patience with this though - just gotta think about all that change I'll be saving by not dropping it on diapers. And to her credit, she did go to the bathroom on the potty during dinner on Tuesday, after the weekend was over. We had a pretty big celebration and made a big deal about bringing it to the big potty and flushing it down. She was really mesmerized by that, so we're gonna have to watch her to make sure nothing goes down the ho~ole that shouldn't.

Between potty training shifts, laundry, gaming and the occasional blissful nap, there really wasn't much more to my weekend. The everyday chaos, while it can be a nuisance and makes for really good blogging material, is worlds apart from the crisis-mode where we started out. What we experience day-to-day now is nothing compared to the constant joblessness, the fear of living in a dangerous neighborhood and the sickeningly hot, inefficient (and thereby expensive) apartment that used to be our reality. Even with D's job ending this month, she's had some REALLY promising leads lately, and I'm loving my job. As D put it the other day, "Looks like we've hit the middle class full stride."

School Daze

2008-08-27T09:27:00.006-05:00

So Colin started another school year this Monday. Hurray for getting up at the butt-crack of dawn to make sure he's on the bus. -.- Being a working family, we've always had the issue of what to do with Colin in the hours between school letting out and the first parent arriving home. He lacks the proper judgement to be left alone too often or for too long. Last year, we didn't make it on the list for the afterschool program. Daycare centers are rackets, I tell you - we simply couldn't afford the price they charge for afterschool care. And the school wouldn't bus him home on a route that he didn't arrive on, so he couldn't stay with the home daycare we had for Clara. So we had to trust Colin to come straight home every night from the bus and stay inside and get his homework and chores done, all without any adult supervision. Maybe it was too much responsibility for a child of 8, but it was pretty clear that wasn't going to fly for long.

DeAnn took time off work to camp the afterschool program meeting this year, and got him in just under the wire. Now he has somewhere to be afterschool. All's well in another day of wine and roses, right? Well... Not quite. While the program does bus the kids home, the busing doesn't actually start until Sept. 15th. So the parents have to come and pick the kids up... See where I'm going with this? They don't release the kids until 5:20, so the place is an absolute zoo. The first day, there were kids running around the cafeteria while parents formed a big, angry pitchfork-wielding mob outside, waiting for their kids. Second day was not much better. This time, they had formed a line that wrapped around the building and down to the portables.

The only reason I didn't spend an hour picking him up was because I look important. Or rather, I can look important. If you do something and completely appear that you're supposed to do that something, people don't question it. The first day, I simply walked around the mob with a grizzled, managerial look on my face. I'm rather practiced on that one. The second one, I saw the line and said to the people at the back, "Is this the line? Man, they can keep him!" I walked around to the other side of the building, grabbed an empty folder and pen I saw sitting on a table and walked right through the guarded door. As soon as I was in, I set my props to the side, jumped to the front of the line and got my kiddo.

I know, I know... I shouldn't take advantage of the stupids. But it's just too easy not to, and what's the point of having higher intelligence if you can't use it for something. Beside, you'd think that the school administrators would exercise more wisdom in their master plan for herding our children (and the parents with them) off their property. They do, after all, work at a school...

Weekend Intelligence: Modus Eversio

2008-08-25T10:18:00.004-05:00

All in all, it was a very productive weekend. I didn't stay up as late as I would have liked, but at least I got some pretty big tasks taken care of, including overthrowing the powers that were in control of my backyard. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights!

House and Home:

I was very ready for it to be the weekend. I've been feeling pretty run down the past few days and was looking forward to some rest and relaxation. We gamed for a bit together on Friday night, but we had a lot to do the next morning and I ended up feeling pretty burned out, so called it quits early and left D to continue playing if she wanted.

Turns out she met up with her seeester and her hubby and stayed up until 5:30 in the morning... I woke up out of habit at 6 and noticed she wasn't in bed with me. Instead, she was passed out on the couch and loudly sawing logs, every light on the downstairs level was on, music was blaring from her computer and the tequila and margarita mix bottles were knocked over and empty. -.-; Also couldn't help but notice that my work phone was blinking with new message notifications from Facebook... So much for trying to get too much done in the morning. I got a sheet and covered her up, put the dog home, turned off the music and lights and locked up for the night/morning/whatever.

Went back to sleep for another 3 hours until I was stirred from sleep by some loud banging outside my door. Colin was awake, ADHD in full swing, and he was kicking the TV and laughing. D hadn't moved at all, still snoring up a storm. Once I had Colin medicated and dressed, I got him to help me get all the cans together and loaded into the Vue. Deposited my long-overdue mileage check, recycled the cans and picked up some Shipley's. I decided to get Clara up and fed and coffee brewed before I would try to tackle prying DeAnn from the clutches of the couch. Oh and she didn't get up without a fight either. :P Luckily I had coffee and donuts ready, so Hangover Kerith was tanked for the time. Realizing that this severely limited what was going to happen, I asked D to just watch Clara and pick up the kitchen so it could be scrubbed, and told Colin to do the dishes that had been sitting in the sink for days. I then set my sights to the only part of my kingdom where my reign was not complete: my backyard.

It's been awhile since I was able to clearly see my back fence. The tall grass and weeds and all manner of insects and animals had taken over my back yard. Suzie only really had about a quarter of the already small yard to use to take care of her business. In weekends past, I'd tried to mow it down and hit it with the weed eater, only to be met with marginal success at best and epic fail at worst. It was at the point where the lawn mower couldn't handle all the grass and it was way too thick for the weed eater. Last weekend, I went out to price an electric hedge trimmer, but the cheapest they had out of season was $40. Earlier this week, I checked another place and picked one up for less than $30. >:D It would be my method for overthrowing and wiping out the backyard jungle.

Fast-forward to this weekend, and I was standing in what little yard I had left, weapon in hand and ready for an epic battle. I started up by the house and effortlessly carved the overgrowth away. As I worked my way to the far back corner, I set foot in an ant hill and had to call retreat. My foot was pretty messed up, but I was not ready to cede victory just yet. I began my re-approach from the middle of the yard, carving into the tall grass and dividing the brush. Ants and spiders and snakes: oh my.

We really let the yard get way too far gone. It took a good solid half hour, but I returned home victorious and once again king of all I survey, including my back fence. The yard work took it's toll, though. The ants had chewed my foot up pretty good, and it was burning, itchy and swollen for most of the weekend. I also got bit a few times by the rather large spiders we get to enjoy in the lovely state of Texas. And I always get allergy-related sinus headaches when I do yard work. After a shower and a change of clothes, D and I hit WalMart, and followed it up with a nice long afternoon nap.

I made my intentions pretty clear for Sunday, too. After working my tail off on Saturday, I wanted to sleep until we naturally woke up and make the service that didn't involve giving anyone an aneurysm. Verbatim. D joked with me that it really meant getting up when I decided it was time to get up and scrambling out the door to make the 1pm service. But I got up at 10 and let her sleep. Even Colin was still asleep. I gamed for awhile in the quiet of the morning and whipped up some coffee and cinnamon rolls around noon. I felt bad, but I woke D up at noon. I knew she'd be upset if I let her sleep the entire day, as she's been known to do. Didn't get the family all breakfasted until almost 1, so we didn't go to service. We lounged around, gamed, did some minor laundry and basically were just bums all day. Was nice for a change.

In Game:

Soulfire's FNLE was Behemoth KS99's. They went well, except for all the BLM death. Kinda hard to avoid when the primary strategy is to blast it with nukes from squishy BLMs until it dies. He tends not to like that so much and starts hitting back. I felt like the week had handed me my ass, so I crashed relatively early for a Friday night. Keri, however, spent all night in game, drank heavily and woke up half clothed in Valkurm Dunes the next morning. :P

<3 ya hon!

I spent the majority of Saturday game time doing ZNMs, but I did squeeze in a short manaburn - enough to make BLM72 happen. For ZNMs, I popped 2 of my 3 Verdelet's and got both the shield that I really wanted for WHM and BST and the cape that I'm testing out on BLM. That shield is the main thing I've wanted from ZNMs, though - glad to finally have it! Also won the lot on a Water Grip and Brickhouse gave me the Wind Grip he won the lot on for BLM. Picked up a Fire Grip off the AH for 2k, so now I'm 3/8 for the set.

I spent the first half of Sunday burning up Alchemy materials. I was on potions, which is not a very expensive synth at all. I ground out 7 levels on it over the course of the morning, all the way up to the cap at 40. Next is Vitriol, and I'm gonna ham that one up. It's nothing but profit: spend an hour or two killing sapplings and hunting water clusters and selling off the results to an NPC. Completely circumventing the economy is the way to go. It takes too long to try to push all this product through the auction house. I also got in a small manaburn before Dynamis - Jeuno. Which was a complete cluster-flux capacitor. You see what I did there? >.>; Seriously though, we either just failed to bring our A-Game or didn't have enough of the right jobs, but we died waaay too much. Snibe's relic is finally paid, and several people got the relic they were after, but it was a good thing we weren't after the win...

Monday is and so are we! At the butt crack of dawn! That's right, the first day of school is tomorrow, which means we have to resume the old wake up with the chickens schedule. In a way I'm bummed that I lose that extra half hour of sleep, but I'm soooo glad Colin is finally back in school. He's been driving me nuts with his boredom and really needs to be back in class.

Red Headigan

2008-08-22T10:41:00.003-05:00

Was a real toss up last night on what to do, so I put the question to D if she would rather get her hair redyed, hit up Soulfire's Limbus run or go level (insert-job-here). After changing her mind about a half dozen times, she settled on getting her roots redone.

Maybe I'm just a little weird, but I actually kind of enjoy doing things like that. I did it a lot with my female friends in college. I just get a lot out of the social interaction aspect of tending to a person on that kind of level. Same reason I like giving back/neck massages. ^^; Anyway, we were in and out of game all night while I applied 3 boxes of dye to her head. After all was said and done, she was a thorough red head again. :D

What little I did do in game consisted of HQing the desynths on Goblin Masks into Glass Fibers and then making lenses out of the fibers. I am a little over one level left from capping on that recipe. After that, it's time to go hunting lizards and saplings. The recipes from then until 60 become pure profit while skilling up, and I'm looking forward to makin' some monies.

EDIT: I just realized that I posted everyday this week. First time I've done that in weeks. ^_^