All Virginia’s Parties
Quite a weekend! I burned myself out just a teeny bit, but I did have a lot of fun.
Friday morning, I decided I’d get right on the road after work, so I threw a weekend bag into the back seat. I even got to leave work a bit early to take care of an iMac repair at CompUSA. It was a good thing I did leave early, because there were 30-60 minute delays at every tunnel out of Norfolk, and if you’re heading north, you pretty much have to take a tunnel.
I’ll spare you the next in my ongoing series of traffic rants, because I still showed up at kittykatya‘s place just in time for lekythen and pulp_tarentino to return from an errand. Spent a couple hours catching up with J.J., whom I haven’t seen in 6 years. We’ve both grown up a bit, and I almost felt that we clicked better as reunited friends than we did when we were dating. So that was quite good.
Friday night and Saturday morning were spent catching up with Alex & Barb & Chris (look, alphabetical). Unfortunately, I had to head off before J.J. came back for her stuff, so I didn’t get a final goodbye. It was a good thing I left when I did, because the sky opened up as I left, and I lost another 90 minutes heading back down 95. Luckily, platypusgirl and krysturtle were willing to accept a soaked, bedraggled Borg into their home and I had a very good time at their party.
I met many people, some of whom I recognized from con meetings, but few of whom I can remember their names 🙂 The party was fun – lotsa people, good food, nervous kitties. We established that cat toys are far better for amusing small children than small-children toys are, and I have finally seen more than 50% of “The Goonies”.
Sunday, I napped a lot. I also tried to track down used copies of the “Riverworld” books – so far, no luck, but there are lots more places to look.
Phew.
I want ten 1-yard lengths of PVC pipe and don’t ask
Contractors are using heavy power tools less than 25 feet from me as some remodeling goes on. Noisy only begins to describe it; at one point they were using some kind of pneumatic punch which made me jump 18 inches evey time it went off. This has been going on for weeks.
Today, I’m prepared – I have headphones and iTunes. I can still hear them, of course, but I can ignore them much easier. I think they know that, too; today they’ve decided to set off the building alarm 3 or 4 times for my office enjoyment. Oy.
Forged in the fires of Home Depot: While I was snickering, I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone still goes to “Toy Depot” to buy stuff for, you know, actual home improvement.
Finished “To Say Nothing of the Dog” last night. Often funny in a “heh” way, and an interesting look at a modern time-traveler stuck in Victorian England, but it was another example of characters dragged helplessly through the plot for a couple hundred pages. My own preference is for protagonists who get some kind of grip on things sooner or later.
Yay! Jerry’s not dead!
I’d like to join ranchonmars (who beat me to the punch, frellit) in wishing rattrap a very happy birthday!
“Your tail-light’s out, and, ah, you have no knees.”
Actually, it’s my headlight. I meant to get that taken care of last night, but I ran out of energy. I just don’t get much done in the evenings now – they’re so short. If I go out with friends, that takes care of the evening in one swoop, I go home and go to bed. And I really am having knee problems, I have been all week. Every time I go up a set of stairs is a bit painful, I don’t know what I did to myself but I’m ready for it to go away.
I miss getting home at 2 and 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Of course, I don’t miss staying at work until midnight, which is what gave me the early days the rest of the week, so I guess it all evens out.
It’s raining this morning, as it is over most of the mid-Atlantic states. I like it when it rains. Either a clear, sunny, warm, not too humid day, or a nice steady rain that means business but isn’t sheeting down in an effort to get people to build arks. None of this half-way gloom stuff.
Heading back to Salem tonight for the weekend. Thank goodness for audiobooks.
Switching to Fighter mode
There’s a cross-platform flight simulator called X-Plane which is quite competitive with the well known MS Flight Simulator. It’s extensively modifiable, playable over networks, and has an amazing amount of third-party material available.
Today I found the VF-1 Valkyrie file! Custom cockpit, swing wings, and even details like gear doors and vectored nozzles operating perfectly. It doesn’t transform, but that would be asking a lot. And you can even fly it over the deserts of Mars! There’s a nice movie of the fighter running in X-Plane too.
There’s also files for the Space Shuttle, the Marine Dropship from Aliens, and somewhere (haven’t found a link yet) Thunderbirds 2 and 3.
If game materials are dangerous, what does that make me?
NYC Ferry guard tries to confiscate role-playing book as “inappropriate”.
I’m not even going to be sarcastic about this. This just makes me angry, and sad. Are we really going to have to give up all our freedoms one at a time in the interest of “public safety”?
Edit: According to Greg Costikyan’s weblog, the New York Waterway folks are very red-faced about this and are attempting to get more details in order to take corrective action. Urge to kill falling… falling…
Oh lookie, a long line of cars
I have discovered something about this part of Virginia.
If you have to drive anywhere that involves passing through a tunnel, don’t be shocked if you’re late to your destination.
Foamy Flash A-Kon
A little bit of Flash video, where Foamy the Squirrel of Ill Will Press opens the recent A-Kon 15 anime con.
(Parts of this may offend some folks. I think that’s what the animator was going for.)
Cruel, cruel cable masters
The Sci-Fi Channel Loves Me! They are showing an original Bruce Campbell movie next year. Who cares if it sucks like most SFC movies; Campbell is a man who can make nearly anything watchable. If he’d been in Battlefield: Earth, I might not have wanted to projectile vomit while in the theater.
The Sci-Fi Channel Hates Me! (same article) They plan to do a miniseries next year of Larry Niven’s Ringworld. Excuse me while I curl up in a ball and whimper.
“La Repth – Staccato – Data Drain!”
I finished .hack//INFECTION tonight.
Got some side quests to do, but the main storyline is complete. Next week maybe I can start on .hack//MUTATION. The final boss battle wasn’t as rough as I feared, but I’ve seen raininva do it, and I was well prepared. Good game! I’m enjoying it.
I have several unfinished PS2 games, it always makes me feel good to clear one from the queue.
