Order of Battle
I’ve been sick for the last two days – sinus congestion, stabbing stomach pain, sore throat, fever… same old same old midwinter bug. Reluctantly, I took Tuesday off, which I think cut a couple days’ duration off this bug; it’s fading away as I sit here, leaving me with a scratchy throat and headache. I should be fine for the weekend; good thing too, as I had to do a bit of finagling to make MarsCon.
On the other hand, it means I’m woefully behind on my prep. I managed to get some studying in for the panels in which I’m involved, but my costuming took the hit, and I don’t know if I’ll have anything ready for the weekend. Since I’ll be leaving directly from work tomorrow, I have to get packed and otherwise ready tonight. Good thing I managed some laundry.
Sometime Friday afternoon, I will have to find time to take a nap if I want to do late night stuff. This is unaviodalbe, as my internal clock these days is currently set to a 5:30am – 10:30pm waking shift, and cons don’t run on that time. Considering that my Saturday panels hover around 10pm and midnight, I’ll probably need to do the same that day as well.
I need to do some restructuring of my life schedule anyway. One reason for my dryness of prose output in 2008 was that I had not made much time to sit, off by myself, and actually write something – the most I’ve gotten done in that regard is hiding in people’s offices scribbling on the Newton while monitoring their OS X Leopard installs. (Up to three hours of glorious undisturbed concentration!) It’s easy to journal in 5-minute increments at work, but I have not yet mastered the art of focusing on plot and character in those tiny chunks.
On the other hand, I’m slightly pleased with my attitude towards the problem. I’m doing better these days with creating plans of attack for my roadblocks instead of just whining about them and using them for excuses. I’m decades overdue on developing this skill.
From the corners of the ‘Net
Just had the odd experience of finding my fiction published on a web site of which I’d never before heard. It’s the Decipher WARS fiction I wrote, and it has their copyright tag on it, so perhaps it’s not ‘my’ fiction; but there’s no dispute that I wrote it.
Looks like they’ve posted all the released WARS fiction, including both of my stories. I have my own copies, of course, but it’s good to see them on the web. Hope they don’t have to pull them down anytime 🙂
Watching the what now?
My exciting New Year’s: no party, no fancy dinner. I didn’t feel well, so we stayed home to watch the ball drop on one of the excruciating network New Year’s shows. We waited for the countdown to start… and waited… and waited… and looked at the clock to notice that it had somehow become 12:22. Yes, we fell asleep waiting for New Year’s. Such a hardcore life we lead, eh?
I repeat what I said last year: if I’m planning to party or otherwise celebrate late into the evening, I’m at a point in life where an afternoon nap would be a wise preparation – especially if I’d gotten up at 5:30am that day to go to work.
Slept until almost noon on the 1st, because I’m still exhausted from last weekend. (Possibly from all of December.) Starr had to work, so after lunch I headed to Bert and Meche’s, where they got a game of Munchkin Quest going. I’m glad they have it, because I want to play it again, but this time I don’t have to buy a copy. It looks like an average game might well be 4-5 hours, though we had some non-gamer types at the board, which slowed things down a touch.
I’m tempted to say that my New Year’s Resolution is “1280 x 1024, 32-bit color at 60hz”. But in fact, the personal-improvement things I hope to accomplish this year are to keep trying to lose some spare tire, improve my education and my earning power, and do more non-journally writing. I’m especially unhappy with my writing output in 2008; I’ve stared at a lot of empty text files this year. That will be changing.
Happy New Year to all!
Reviewer to Battloid mode
Four years after the OAV series concluded in Japan, I have finally found time to sit and watch through Macross Zero. For my part, I was disappointed in the show.
The CGI effects of the Valkyrie fighters made up a high point – the opening chapter demonstrates a drawn-out Fighter-to-Battloid transformation sequence that nearly made me drool. Sadly, the actual plot and characters brought me right back down. The series suffered from prequel-itis: I knew the Earth wouldn’t be destroyed, because that job would fall to the Zentraedi in four years. For the same reason, I knew that Roy Focker wouldn’t be killed in combat, making his dogfight duels mildly tedious.
A repeated subplot is the preservation of the ancient ways of the island people, which again felt moot with the coming holocaust; and the bad guys only received the personalities of one-dimensional psychopaths. I expect better than that in anime. One of them had the nerve to try a sympathy ploy on the audience minutes after napalming a village of non-combatant islanders. I just wanted them to hurry up and get killed in combat so we could get back to the real plot.
Oh, and late in the series, there’s the standard anime “I have taken it upon myself to decide that humanity has reached a dead end so I shall cause their destruction in order to pave the way for the next rulers of the Earth” scientist. Isn’t that one on TV Tropes yet? Boring. Lame. Move on.
Still, I feel more “caught up” on the Macross mythology now, so I’m ready to hit Macross Frontier next. As always, your mileage may vary.
An old message for Operator 7G
I just found the Megazone 23 3-disc DVD set on Barnes and Noble. These movies influenced my imagination strongly, and I set one of the strongest pieces of fanfic I’ve written aboard a similar Megazone.
I got to tell you, though, this Christmas my reptilian “want” reflex is a little muted by the recent move. I can’t forget that everything I might buy, or receive as a gift, is something I may have to pack up and move in a box someday. Right now, I’m not thrilled at the prospect; who knows, perhaps my distaste will fade over coming months.
On the other hand, I still do have a B&N card from my birthday… and a couple hardcovers or a DVD set don’t take up all that much space… right? Right?
Yeah. I think I’ll wait until after the holidays and see if I still want it then 🙂
Always glad for books
A little thing I am thankful for: My Subterranean Press hardcover omnibus of The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox arrived this week. I can exchange two softcovers in my library now for a single hardcover, and perhaps not lose it this time (I’ve already lost one paperback of Bridge of Birds and one of Eight Skilled Gentlemen). It’s quite a shame that Hughart won’t be writing any more of them, but as he says on the flyleaf, he could feel “formula” creeping up on the tales, and that would be a worse shame.
If only certain other authors had stopped while they were still ahead of their own creation. On the other hand, a check with enough zeros on the right can be a powerful incentive to any writer…
Becalmed
In a perfect world, I would have an e-book or three loaded on the Newton right now, or have an iPhone with web access. Instead, I am sitting on Rt. 664, as I have for the last hour, waiting for them to clear a major accident from the Monitor-Merrimac tunnel. The good news is that I’ve got a nice calming trance podcast on the iPod.
I tried first to write some notes for fiction projects, but while a thought or two leaked through, I’m generally blocked; so I am journaling on this Apple notepad instead. I need to scrawl less sloppily; the handwriting recognition on the final OS rev was pretty good, but there’s only so much of my bad penmanship it can take. Lowercase ‘f’s keep coming out capital, for some reason. I’m adding more curve to the tops.
Car behind me just stalled out, guy asked for a jump start. No problem. Asked three times which terminals he had the jumper clamps on… after impressive display of sparks from my battery terminal, went and checked myself. Reversed them. Thank goodness that didn’t kill the Hyundai.
Just remembered I could send email from my work Blackberry; updated everyone there on my status. It seems I’m not the only NASA employee trapped here. I wonder if the accident was mechanical failure, or one or more people being idiots? I’ve been cut off twice in the last 24 hours by rude drivers trying for a single-car position advantage; Hampton Roads drivers can be brutal. On the other hand, I certainly hope no one was seriously hurt… as the cliche goes, “been there, done that”.
Whoops. We’re moving. Will post this from work.
Stand back, I’m doing… stuff.
Most weeks I wait impatiently for my Kingdom of Loathing turns to build up to a useful level. This week, I’ve been sitting at the max of 200 turns for days, but I don’t have time to mess with it. I guess it’s a sign I’m using my time well… KoL isn’t exactly productive… but on the other hand, you can’t be productive all the time. Makes Jack a dull boy, you know.
On that note, I am going to watch a movie this weekend. Either in the theater, or from my list of DVDs to watch or re-watch. I don’t remember sitting through an entire movie since we watched “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” together.
One of the two 400MHz CRT iMacs that have been sitting in my office gathering dust since I left Decipher has found a good home – it’s in the possession of Starr’s youngest sister. She’ll probably want to give it an external FireWire HD and/or a memory upgrade before long, it’s only got a 10GB drive and 256MB of memory. But it’ll do Word and Photoshop and play DVDs, and she seems thrilled with it, so happiness all around. I need to find some old games to pass along that don’t involve serious mayhem.
Speaking of productivity, I am attempting to do something personally productive at least once a day. Either spend at least an hour on a personal project, or sit and write something with some thought in it (thus the recent outbreak of philosophising every week or so in my LJ). It doesn’t come easy: I am a slacker and procrastinator. But time moves with or without me, and I’m not going to be left behind.
Veteran of the Psychic Desk
How insane have the last two days been? Well, I feel naked without my wristwatch, and I almost never go out in public without it. Sunday, I took it off and set it down for some reason – probably related to cleaning the apartment – and I don’t know where. But, since Sunday, I just plain haven’t had time to look for it. I keep looking at the pale band of skin on my wrist, and wishing I could scratch the mental itch of my watch’s absence, but it’ll have to wait!
On the other hand, my efforts from yesterday have not escaped notice. In the morning meeting, I heard phrases like, “Michael’s documentation sets a gold standard that we’d like to see our other documentation reflect.”
Now, focusing on one thing for that length of time is a real strain for me. I left work yesterday rather loopy, the last couple of pages do have some interesting typos, and my brain felt like I’d just tried out for preliminary Psionic Combat training. But the results seem to have been worth it!
