|
01.01.03 :: 22:42
Animal Crossing owns me.
01.04.03 :: 11:52
Animal Crossing still owns me. It's one of the few things I really look forward to lately. I've upgraded the ground floor of my house twice and built a basement (which is currently full of fish I'm going to sell next time Nook's is open). Elf and I have been earning mass amounts of money to pay off my mortgages in a day or two ^^v My only real complaint about the game is that my work schedule and the hours Nook's is open isn't very compatible. There are only a couple hours I can actually play during the week =/
Work's been massively stressing me out. People are dropping the ball all over the place and there have been an abnormal number of system glitches that are outside of our control. (For example, yesterday a fiber optic line in Roseburg was cut and that denied Internet and telephone services for a good chunk of the Oregon coast. And if that wasn't bad enough, Verizon had a switch flooded with water and that took out things in the northern part of the state).
The stress is getting to me. My shoulders and neck have been in knots the last couple days. Icy Hot is my best friend right now. And my nightmares have continued. Last night's dream had me on a tanker ship and I killed a lot of people. Then there was the head baddie and his five younger siblings / sub-bosses. I shot the heads off of the three youngest ones (they just popped off). And I battled with the elder three. Then I played possum and they tossed my body overboard 'cause they thought I was dead. That was how I got away.
01.05.03 :: 15:47
Elf returned home today. We spent a nice week gaming like there was no tomorrow ^^ Wai wai. My shoulders and neck are less stiff today. They're still tight, but not to the point where I feel like my head is going to pop off my shoulders. The 'rents invited me over for dinner tonight. B'sides doing some light chores nothing else is going on right now. A bit anti-climatic after the busy holiday ^^;
01.05.03 :: 21:45
I'm probably the only person that'd be excited about this, but I redid the shelving in my bedroom and the living room ^^ It all worked out better than I thought it would ^^v Everything has its place and is put in it (at least in terms of games and DVDs). And the games are at least in the same room as the system that plays them. I haven't always had it that way and the older games were in a box before I organized tonight. So, yay for shelves and organization :D
01.06.03 :: 21:15
Today was sooooooo busy at work @.@ From 8am - 5pm my phone didn't stop ringing unless I pulled the cord out of the back (which I had to do a couple times). Nick had individual meetings with each of us today. Not much happened in mine that wasn't expected. Nick and I have worked together for a couple years, we know where the other stands, so the meeting was more of a formality than anything else. I get Friday off to make up for working last Saturday. That's good, I'm already planning chores to do that I wouldn't have time for otherwise.
My time is now being divided between Animal Crossing and Super Smash Bros Melee. I'm sure that I can master Zelda/Sheik's moves and beat the stuffing out of any first-party mascot that comes after me ;)
I'm also starting to get the itch to write again. I listened to my SeeDfic 'theme' CD again. It makes me miss the character of Sean. He was a fun one to write ^^ (Maybe I shouldn't have killed him off... ^^; )
01.07.03 :: 21:49
I ficked a little bit today. I wrote about a page and I'll probably toss out half of it as crap. The most productive ficking that was done was the editing =/ Not back in my groove yet. Hmm.. what else..? LeVar-kun went off to boot camp today. I hope he does all right in the Navy (he's a braver man than I am for joining). The big news at work today is that the #3 man (the uber-boss) resigned and now they're trying to keep everything from being tossed up in the air... which it already is. Oh, and the rest of the company refers the tech department as the "cesspool". Mrf, I don't blame the uber-boss (who was ultimately in charge of us) for leaving...
01.09.03 :: 22:49
I had a couple weird calls today. The "you did *what*?" award goes to the man who *wasn't* a customer of ours who called up wanting me to guide him through plugging his computer back together. Not the cords on the back, mind you, but the cabling inside of it. He'd decided to take everything apart and clean it out and then couldn't remember how to put it back together ^^; I told him that I couldn't help him with it (well, I could if I was physically there, but there's no way I'm doing that over the phone...) and to take it to a computer shop to have it reassembled.
The call I received that got the most laughs from my co-workers at my pain was from an old biddy I'd dealt with on many previous occasions. The woman had gotten several pornographic spams and wanted to know how to write a filter in her Outlook Express to block them. I lead her through building a filter based off of keywords and then we got to point where we needed the words. I tried to politely jar her mind into thinking of the right type of words without actually having to say them. (This is an old woman, I don't want to be listing that kind of stuff off to her!) Ah, but her pure mind couldn't conceive of such filth and so she insisted that I list off words she could put into her filter. I tried to do it softly so that my co-workers couldn't hear me, but they did and were laughing their butts off. What was worse was when she asked me to *spell* some of them for her --; Oi, oi, I'm not going to live that call down for a couple weeks, I just know it.
01.10.03 :: 19:47
Ah, I was very good at doing nothing today :D I played Animal Crossing for a couple hours and Super Smash Bros. Melee for several more hours on top of that ^^; I'm still not very far into Melee (well, I haven't had the game for a week yet)... I've only unlocked 1 bonus level, 5 secret characters, and won 60 some odd trophies. I need to get good at this game or Elf is going to trounce me the next time we meet. I know I'll never get the best of him in Soul Calibur, so this is my next current chance to redeem myself!
Dad had the house sprayed for bugs yesterday ^^v He says that the sprayer-guy did an outstanding job (IOW: nearly soaked the house in spray o.o; ) He got all around the house, both garages, the shed, the wood shed, and around all the trees. Dad came out again today and got the locks to the house repaired. (They really needed it, no amount of jimmying was going to coax them into working smoothly again =/ ) Tomorrow I'm going to my aunt's place to set up her new computer and teach her how to use it. I hope that doesn't take too much time. (I'm expecting 2 - 3 hours ^^; )
01.11.03 :: 22:22
Mom and I took my aunt the computer I built her today. She's never used one before, so it was a crash course in computer usage after I showed her how to get it up. We spent about 3 hours going over it and just barely scratched the surface o.O; I know she'll pick it up like lint though. My aunt's a very smart person with the curiosity of a cat (and that can be exhausting if she catches you to pick your brain clean o.o )
I took a nap when I got home and had a very odd dream. I dreamt that all the streets in GP were one ways and that I was always going to wrong way (of course --; ) And then I drove into a building / area that had the gym lockers for the US senators. One of the senators was vehemently arguing about how the aliens were deceiving the people by not allowing most of them to have 'true' dreams. It was very weird, let me assure you.
I'm still working on kicking butt in Super Smash Bros. Melee. I've got 73 trophies unlocked now. I know how to get more trophies unlocked, but I need a second controller and someone to play with me!
01.12.03 :: 17:44
I invited my parents over for dinner tonight and they actually accepted o.O Yay... Though I managed to screw up the pot pies. (You'd figure "throw them in the oven and bake for an hour" is fool proof, but I must have Akane DNA or something...) I showed them Ghost in the Shell dubbed in English. Mom slept through it ^^;
The light switch in my bedroom is on the fritz or something. I can't turn the overhead light on and I know it's not the light bulbs. Dad said he'd replace the switch for me, but I'd have to wait until Thursday. (He has to go to school this week and will be out of town until then).
I'm about ready to send my draft for Sowing 19 to Helen for editing. I haven't quite finished giving it one last read through, but I'll get that done tonight. Then I'll fire it off to her and maybe if she isn't busy she can hack at it and I'll have a part posted on the 15th. I won't have one ready on the 1st to follow it up, but something is better than nothing, right? ^^;
01.13.03 :: 21:43
Monday the 13th began with Pepper darting out the door this morning and not returning for 20 minutes. Haha, silly me, I should have learned by now that a black dog in the pitch dark wasn't going to be an easy thing to find. Stupid mutt ¬.¬;; When I got to work I discovered that the cuffs of my pants were covered in grass stains and mud. Oops.
Work went by fast. Yay! I got home, fell into bed, and napped for a couple hours. In fact, my brain is still asleep; the body had to get up, eat dinner, and play Animal Crossing. (I only played for about a half hour tonight. I'm annoyed to find another igloo where my flower bed should be --; )
01.15.03 :: 21:52
Quick hits blog entry tonight: Dad's returned from his trip to Portland for schooling. Hopefully he will fix the lights tomorrow (the dark sucks). I finished reading "Honor Among Enemies" last night, started "In Enemy Hands" today. (This is, like, the 3rd time I've tried reading through this book ^^; ) Not going to post the SeeDfic tonight because I want to be in bed by 10pm. (I've been trying all week and have yet to make it for one reason or another). I paid off the $400,000 mortgage on my house in Animal Crossing. I'm sure I'll have a new, bigger mortgage to pay off by Friday once Nook is finished expanding my house. And that's all for now x.x
01.16.03 :: 20:09
At 4am this morning I woke up and saw a red light staring at me. This wouldn't do, it wouldn't do at all. See, I can handle green and yellow LCDs staring, glaring, and winking at me, but the red ones... they're evil, man. I leaned forward to see what device produced the red mark (I didn't think any of electronics in my room had one): it was the recently installed digital cable box. I had to do something about this.
The first solution that ran through my mind was to pull out some electrical tape and just cover it up, but I don't know where my roll of tape is. Instead, I dug around my (perpetually messy) room for the manual to the box. I found it sandwiched in a stack of books between Brady's Final Fantasy X strategy guide and Versus Book's Wild ARMs 3 strategy guide. That's the logical place for the digital cable booklet, wouldn't you say? ^^;
Well, the digital cable didn't come with just one book, it came with three. I flipped through the one that covered the remote itself, reading by the light of the TV since my light switch hasn't been repaired yet. (And I'm still sitting in the dark --; ) I found out what the red light meant when I flipped through the booklet of quick commands. Charter Digital Cable Service had sent me a message. How kind of them. I deftly maneuvered through the menus like a newbie before stumbling into the one with the message. It was a reminder of an upcoming WWE(?) event. Wrestling, or something. So I had an evil red light glaring at me at 4am to tell me about a wrestling pay per view.
...
When I have light and more time I'm going to see if I can disable the special features of this box or at the very least find my roll of electrical tape...
01.18.03 :: 21:36
Hmm.. I'm pretty sure I mislabled the entry for the 16th as being the 17th [fixes it]. I stretched out on my bed around 9pm last night to relax, take a nap, watch some tv, and at around 7am this morning I had Pepper jumping up and down on me wanting to be let out and fed. Oops, I feel asleep and didn't wake up until the morning ^^;
I've been busy today. I spent the morning with my mom and aunt Ginny. We went shopping for printers and a new monitor (the one I gave her for her computer isn't very good, but it was all I had =/ ) I also hooked her up with some speakers and mom gave her a couple reams of paper for the printer. Aunt Ginny insisted that she could by her own paper, that she didn't have to mooch off mom, but mom gets paper for so much less than what you'll find it at retail. Staples had reams of paper there for $13 [faints!] Mom gets it for $1.29 a ream. Owning a print shop and buying paper in bulk has its advantages ;)
I've been a kinda bad bean lately... ^^; I'm still up to my eyeballs in playing Animal Crossing and Super Smash Bros. Melee and I've bought a few games this week ^^; My game purchases fall under 3 categories: must have, will get if it's cheap, and will get if it's cheap and I have nothing else to play. Well, I found 3 games that I wanted on my 'get if it's cheap' list ^^; Then DW3: Xtreme Legends came in (but I paid for that a while ago). I found Legaia 2 at Costco for $19. At every other store in the valley it's going for $50 x.x (On the plus side, when you add those 3 games together they come to about $50, which isn't too bad.) I also found Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for $14 new. I'm still trying to decide whether I should keep it for myself or sell it on eBay or something. I could probably get around $35 if I did sell it. Hmm...
I saw "Catch me if you can" with Dave this afternoon. Usually I don't go for Leo movies, but this one was pretty good. I'm glad that I saw it once and I'd probably watch it again if it were on TV, but I don't think I'll be rushing out to get the DVD. (Which isn't saying much considering that I don't own a half dozen 'domestic' (not anime or a foreign film) DVDs ^^; I own 4, in fact.)
After the movie I went and had dinner at my mom's place. She'd bought a large chicken pot pie at Costco. At least she managed to cook it right the first time (unlike me last weekend --; ) Dad made it out the house while I was running errands and fixed my light switch. Wai! Wai! I've got light again :D
01.19.03 :: 09:44
This morning I dreamt that I was playing golf with aliens and the only club they would allow me was a left-handed putter. Man, did I suck o.o;
01.20.03 :: 18:41
"I'm sorry Ma'am, I'm going to have to impound your computer. You can either pay a fine or attend a continued education class at the local community college. Upon completion of the class your computer will be returned to you and the fine waived."
Don't I wish... ^^;
I just didn't have the communication mojo with me today. It doesn't help with half my calls are people who tell me things that have absolutely nothing to do with the call. ("I have wireless, how do I check my email from my friend's house?" or "I'm legally blind, what speed DSL do I have?") The other half of my calls I must have slipped into the geek-tongue or something 'cause people *were not* understanding me. ("Open Internet Explorer." "What?" "Open the program Internet Explorer from the icon on your desktop." "Huh?" "Double-click the big blue E." "You want to fix my Internet?" "Isn't that what you called me for?") I'm going to be over here sucking my thumb, don't call me...
01.21.03 :: 19:42
Nick sent an email to the techs today reminding us that the new uber-boss will be here tomorrow. (He also reminded us to make sure we dressed neatly and to company policy, and that our desks were clean). I looked over the stuff on my desk and realized that I've been working in that cubby for over 4 months and the most personal item I have there is a frisbee I brought in this week to play frisbee golf. No pictures, no printouts, only a couple notepads, a single binder of tech notes, and my computer. Most everyone else has pictures up of their family. The thought of posting a picture of a family member has never occurred to me. (And I don't think I'd want to post one anyways..). Maybe I'm just not sentimental, or I'm not comfortable enough to personalize my workspace. I guess that'll make things easier when we go to 24 / 7 rotating shifts and we have to share our workstations. Just so long as I don't have to share with a slob...
Oh, 5 weeks after his surgery and my dad's work has called him back. He can't do *his* job, but he can wander around the shop as a mentor to the younger mechanics. Nothing wrong with his mouth or his mind, so I guess that makes sense. Though if I were in dad's shoes, I'd still want to be resting and getting my arm recovered.
01.22.03 :: 20:35
We all got to meet the new uber-boss today. I don't think I said more than 4 words to him (and those words were probably "nice to meet you".) In other words, he just skittered through the tech room and sent most of his time with the system admins and management. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. I got the impression that the techs were the last thing on his mind at the moment...
Jackie~~ One of my co-workers has the first season of Stargate SG-1 on DVD and I asked him to lend it to me. If he does I'll sit down and make a weekend of watching it, eh? :)
01.25.03 :: 09:51
Y'know why I like console games? Because when I get 'em home and stick them in the machine they work :P Getting EverQuest and Yggy to agree with each other was an hour long process (at least). At first it seemed like it was going smoothly enough with the install. That is, until it tried to download patches, then it told me that I wasn't connected to the net even though I was looking at Sony's EQ site at that time :P Grr... I took down my firewall and took apart my network so that everything between Yggy and the cable modem was removed. Got it to the point where it downloaded and installed the patches, yay. Then I crashed a couple times while trying to load the game. Made it through the registration process, selected a server, created my character, then crashed. Went back and had to recreate the character I just made, then Trillian popped up and crashed the program again. (I'm really sorry if I seemed angry NB. It wasn't directed at you, but at the stupid EQ. At that point I had been fighting for an hour to get it working --; ) Killed Trillian and loaded it up again and managed to actually make it into the game. W00t, I think...
Dave (one of the co-workers who was pressuring me to play :P ) was very nice and spent a couple hours teaching me how to play. He gave me some basic armor, spells, and this eyeball item that does something for the fire spells he gave me, I think. I'm a Halfling Druid (low to moderate difficulty ^^;v ) named Mamegami (the other names I tried were rejected :P ). I died three times while trying to learn how to fight, but finally managed to lay the smack down on some snakes and bats. (The spiders still kick my butt, they gang up on me and I can't run away fast enough x.x ) (And what's up with only 8 item slots? That's worse than Legend of Dragoon :P )
Anyhow, Animal Crossing update... Marcy the Kangaroo (one of the animals I taught to say berf) moved away yesterday =( She was replaced by a cow whose name I don't remember and doesn't say berf at the end of her sentences. Rasher the Pig still says berf, yay, I hope he doesn't move away :P
Mom's berfday celebration is today and I was invited this year o.O; So, we're gonna have lunch at Applebees and then go to Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I know that mom's already seen it, but that's the movie she chose. I pre-ordered her the next Harry Potter book and bought her Internet for Dummies. I feel kinda lame getting her books for her berfday, but I know that they're books she'll like / has asked for ^^;
01.26.03 :: 16:42
Y'know... I put more effort into cooking Pepper's breakfast than I put into making my own. I usually chomp or some bread or crackers (most breakfast foods turn my stomach x.x)... But for Pepper I have to cook her rice, mix Citruscil into it, then mix that in with her kibble. Spoiled mutt...
I'm watching the Super Bowl right now. The commercials are the good part. The Bug Light ones seem to be the best so far, though I like the Yao one too ^^ I want to go see Daredevil when it comes out, but I've been wanting to see it for a while ^^;
01.28.03 :: 22:28
Played EverQuest again tonight. It went a lot better this time. For one thing, my computer didn't crash once. (It dragged it's tail at some points, but didn't crash). Also, I knew enough about what I was doing to actually play the game instead poking around menus wondering what was going on. We switched to a different server, so I started a new character (same name). Dave was very nice again and played with a powered down character to help level up. And another random person buffed us (new term I learned tonight, made us a lot stronger temporarily). It was fun to run around like mad attacking anything we could while the spells lasted :D I've found that people on EQ are a heckuva lot nicer than the WarCraft people I'd watch Elf play with. Many of them seemed like immature lamers, but the people on EQ have been healing my weakling butt if they see me about to be beaten down ^^; (I only died 3 or 4 times!)
The local news people came by work today 'cause they wanted to do a story on the Slammer virus. Hum... I guess it's news worthy because it's caused slowdowns on the net, but it really doesn't affect the average joe b'sides that. (I've gotten a few calls of people wondering if their machine might have been infected ^^; )
Dad went to the city council meeting tonight to raise hell in mom's place (she's come down with a cold or something). He said he was really nervous when it was his turn to speak before the councilmen, but once he got started he didn't stop. I think dad enjoyed ranting at them as much as mom tends to ^^;
Y'know... Oregon's stupid in some ways. For one thing, the State of the Union address is tonight. It was also the council meeting (so you'd miss the address if you went to the meeting) and it was a special election day. (Let's all get out the vote to slam down a new tax measure!) NWCN says it's failing 56% to 44% so far, but didn't report how much of the vote was counted.
01.29.03 :: 22:33
Work was dead today, which is good because we were short staffed ^^; The few calls I took were from people with complicated problems that took 30+ minutes to fix or were very dense. (Like the man who acknowledged that his phone line was crap but failed to see how that could adversely affect his dialup connection [rolls eyes]).
On my way home mom gave me a call 'cause she needed some work done on her machine :P She wanted some fonts installed, no biggie. But once I was there I got the real list of repairs :P Her zip drive was flipping out. I dug it out from under her desk and it was caked in dust (or, more exactly, the powder used to make ink dry faster =/ ) That wasn't helping things a bit. I poked at it some more and found a goober inside of it. (Like, take a mouseball out and on the mouse rollers there's black crusty stuff there that can be flecked off.) That stuff was inside the drive o.O; I carefully cleaned it out with a bent paperclip and set the drive back up. It worked after that. Huh, well, I'm not counting on the drive lasting forever. I've already got a backup one sitting here for when the drive does die and mom panics :P
A 23 year old skateboarder died this morning when he jumped off the second floor of the downtown parking garage. A uniformed man spotted him and his friends and he panicked and jumped to the cement below. The man, it turns out, was just a security guard, not even a cop. (There is a police sub-station in that structure). He was going to ask them to move along; he couldn't ticket them or take 'em to jail or anything. And like that wasn't bad enough, some other skaters got it in their heads that an appropriate memorial would be to graffiti the parking structure. This may sound terribly insensitive, but the skater who died is a Darwin Award candidate IMO. He was standing next to the staircase when he jumped and he died for a stupid reason. I do feel sorry for his folks though. To have their son die for nothing --;
| 
