Deep breath before jumping in the deep end

Grumpy me pokes his head out of his LJ cave and says, “write some stuff, it’ll help you get over yourself”.

I have a job interview tomorrow, and tonight I work a trial shift at a typesetting job. If either one of these jobs works out to a steady paycheck, I can stop sweating and resume planning for the future. I’ve been filing unemployment claims with the state for a month now, and haven’t seen check one, so things are pretty tight.

I’ve missed every summer con I wanted to go to this year because of money issues. Bleh. This is, of course, part of the general fan experience – not news to almost anyone reading this journal – but it’s still disappointing. I keep reading about cartoonists and gaming people who will be at DragonCon and grumping.

Moving my Doctor Who episodes over to DVD so I don’t have to drag around the laptop for showings; it’s a lengthy process, involving converting the episodes to DV streams, and then letting iDVD convert them back down to MPEG-2 files. Unfortunately I don’t have software that will skip the middle step. I hope the quality stays okay, there’s clear artifacting in the AVI files already. A friend pointed out that the first season never managed to get to an alien planet – only England, Utah, and a couple Earth-orbit space stations. I hope the second season’s more ambitious.

We watched Constantine a couple nights ago. It’s an okay flick if you don’t think too hard about the religious aspects involved… which, for obvious reasons, is next to impossible to manage. It’s not even that I disliked the movie, it’s just that I kept thinking, “But, but, but…” afterwards. It was also a shame that the movie was unable to rise above killing off the three obvious redshirts.

One thing is now clear to me in WoW; soloing sucks, partying generally rocks. This has of course been obvious to most of the players of the game for ages, but I am sometimes slow. Clearly I must bite the bullet (WoW does have firearms) and find more folk to group with on a regular basis.

Booklist: finished Eragon (N), Wizard’s Holiday (N), Debt of Honor – Tom Clancy (R), Just a Geek – Wil Wheaton (N), Catch Me If You Can – Frank Abagnale (R), First Lensman + Gray Lensman + Second Stage Lensman – E.E. “Doc” Smith (R), A Morbid Taste For Bones + The Hermit of Eyton Forest – Ellis Peters (R). I wish I could find my copy of Doc’s Galactic Patrol – methinks that I’ll need to start haunting used bookstores again, which is how I got the Lensman books in the first place. I have been putting off reading Chobits 6 because it’s been long enough that I’ll want to re-read the comic from the beginning, and I’ll probably also want to be able to afford 7 & 8 soon thereafter. BTW, I’d recommend anything on this list. Eragon especially was interesting to me by being remarkably unoriginal, yet well-written enough that I look forward to the next volume.

Oh, good lord, avoid The Reality Dysfunction. Nothing at all happens for 300 pages; dozens of characters are introduced and then left by the wayside; and then we start the lovingly, orgasmically detailed torture scenes of animals and small children. Really. I darn near threw the book across the room, and I certainly won’t be finishing it. My guess is that the author has serious issues to work out, but I don’t see any need to let him do so through me at $7 a book for a six-book series.

I’ll let everyone know how the job thing pans out!

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8 Comments

  • rebelsheart says:

    I’ve got the sequel to Eragon in my hands. I read halfway through it before discovering I’d received a misprint. Eldest vanishes for 60 pages to be replaced by Inkspell, by someone who is not Christopher Paolini. My replacement copy has arrived, but I keep forgetting to bring it upstairs and finish it. Thus far, it’s been slow.

  • eeedge says:

    What level are you up to now? I’m willing to start a new character to go partying with you.

  • Mikhail says:

    Mirandala made lvl 31 last night, but she needs to rest for a while because I promised Rain that Mir wouldn’t outpace her rogue – and Rain’s going to be out of town this weekend 🙂

    Grethon the warrior is up to 17, and Avrela the druid is up to 13. She needs the help more than he does – I think warriors and rogues are easier to solo than druids and mages!

    (I need to update the userpic of Mirandala. She’s got a cool new outfit now.)

  • eeedge says:

    I really like mage or priest/warrior or paladin combos. The fast damage of the mage is sweet in conjunction with a wall.

    Someone was telling me the other day that hunters are hard to party. Paladins are supposed to be getting a ranged attack soon. Yay!

    We’re down to one computer on-line, but if you want to play for a couple of hours around 8 tonight, give me a call! (Four seven eight four seven seven three zero seven zero)

  • Mikhail says:

    I have added that info to the address book! Unfortunately, I’m working an evening shift tonight at thi tryout, so I won’t be home in time to play. I’d love to take you up on the offer soon, though!

  • yubbie says:

    Did you watch through the credits? You realize at the end that one of those redshirts was a yellowshirt…

  • nviiibrown says:

    It beat the redshirt axings of Hellboy. No credit to non-powered B.P.R.D. agents at all! You’d think they recruited from the Police Academy movies.

  • shrewlet says:

    just wishing you luck…

    Well, since I haven’t read any of those books that you have mentioned or have been hooked into WOW; I will just wish you good luck on your job interviews.

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