Sunday, April 29, 2007

It's so hard to find my way...

...now that I'm all on my own...

Not looking forward to the coming week. No particular reason not to, nothing particularly dreadful looms on the horizon; hell, the ship's coming out of the yards, so pretty soon things will be back to normal. For some reason, I've been pretty down the last half of the day today... started out a little meh, with my parents waking me up far too early asking questions about my Flickr album, but things went a bit smoother after that; Cat invited me out to lunch, which I declined, and then Mark invited me to see Hot Fuzz, which I jumped at. Cat at first agreed to join us, and then reneged, citing the need to study for her exam tomorrow. Can't say I blame her, as her grad school choices depend heavily on her GPA for the this semester, and work and school have been pressing her pretty hard.

Her loss, though, as the movie was excellent, as good or better than Shaun of the Dead; very funny, with a heaping helping of action thrown in at the end for good measure (and fortunately, without interrupting the laughs). Couple of predictable moments, but overall very solid, and definitely recommended for those who don't mind language and gore.

Hung around the mall after the flick, got sushi and coffee with Mark and Mike, and then headed for home; went shopping with Cat, and then after she got off work went and got dinner with her. Despite nothing going wrong, or even being wrong, I've been feeling weary and depressed since I got home; probably just the general sort of malaise I get every so often, and soon to pass (there's a reason Danielle once called me 'the moodiest man alive', after all), but it doesn't do much to help me out now.

Did indeed get my 900c, which I've decided (with some assistance from Dani) to name 'Madb'; unfortunately, this entry is still being written on 'Eris', thanks to Madb's inability to access the new entry page on Blogger. Still, she can handle most websites I frequent pretty well, and she has a word processor; that right there accomodates 90% of my computer needs, and probably 100% of my travel needs. If I could get Armies of Immoren to run on her (probably a feeble hope, given the lack of Java) and a better word processor than WordPad, I'd be one happy camper indeed.

That latter should actually be a possibility; I've been browsing the various Handheld PC fansites on the web since I became interested in getting the MobilePro, and there are an awful lot of add-ons and support available amongst the user/hacker/modder community. Some assembly required, of course, but I think the gains are worth the risks...

Just realized I mentioned Eris without explaining. As I mentioned way back in November, I name all my electronics; my (60 gig photo) iPod is Molly, my PSP is Alexia, Madb is my MobilePro 900c, and Eris is my Acer Aspire 5100 series notebook (her predecessors were Liira (an Averatec 3200), and Kimmi (a Sony VAIO whose model number I've sadly forgotten, not that it really matters to anyone but a die-hard techie... which even I fail to count as). There are generally reasons behind the name; Eris, in this case, is because my computers are almost always sources of chaos, mischief, and frustration - I just figured I'd acknowledge the situation up front, this time around.

So, there you have it. I desperately need to go grocery shopping... and come to think of it, I need to transfer my laundry from washer to dryer before I crash for the night. I'm hoping to make it to sleep within the next half hour or two; while our hours are shifting back to our normal schedule (meaning 0800 to 1630 for the work day, rather than 0730 to 1530), giving me an extra half hour to to get in to work tomorrow, I've an awful tendency to stay up far too late on Sunday nights - making Mondays extra miserable. Guess we'll just have to wait and see how this one works out.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Breathe in for luck, breathe in so deep...

...this air is best, you share with me...

Not a hell of a lot going on here in J-land, just thought I should write... trying to keep in the habit. Sorrowfell continues to toddle along, never quite dead but never as alive as I'd like... differing schedules, my own random approach to updating, and the slow pace of online roleplaying in general all combine to make a frustrating morass of the storyline, as events that take only seconds in the game - and would probably take a few minutes to play out in real life - go on and on for weeks or months.

But whine, whine... if that's the most I've got to complain about, then I'm doing well indeed, hey? Took today and tomorrow off from the ship to try to get some personal business done, and ended up spending today being a lazy bum - big surprise to everyone, I know. I've done a little laundry and spent some time burning myself at the beach, but other than that I've been right here, doing just this - glued to my computer, snorting frantically to get my internet fix. This is our last weekend in the shipyard, and probably our last weekend in Virginia for some time, coming up; I'm looking at working it, as my 'vacation' in San Diego set me back a little bit, and I haven't been working anywhere near the overtime I should be. I suppose it's pretty cheap to take two days off during the week and then work the weekend for the extra money, but you kinda take these things as they come to you.

The weather's taken quite a swing for the warmer - I'd almost gotten used to the late fall temperatures rolling through the area, and all of a sudden summer rears its ugly head. I've always been a cold weather kind of person, although New Jersey in February of this year came close to freezer burning that out of me; it doesn't help that the pier we berth at in Earle stretches about two miles out into Sandy Hook Bay, leaving us to the tender mercy of a biting wind. Still, I'm most comfortable when the temperature is in the 40-60* F range, and the recent surge into the high 80s has left me miserably overheated... an unwelcome, teasing taste of what we're going to be dealing with in a few months. And I'm planning on sticking around for the next trip to the Gulf, in the summer, where the temperature has been known to reach 120*...? Clearly I've gone crazy.

A random post on one of the NaNoWriMo forums triggered the kewl gadgets lust forever lurking just one small step below my conscious, this time for the very cool looking NEC MobilePro 900c, a handheld PC. Yes, I did just purchase a new laptop, but this one's smaller. I've got something of a craze for tiny computers which my current laptop and its 15" screen just can't handle... I was able to get the 900c for a song on eBay, but now I'm trapped in that horrid sargasso that is the wait for shipping, and the hours - don't even get me started on days, or even weeks - drag by like years. As Carrie Fisher once said, "Instant gratification takes too long."

But with luck, my next update to this blog will come from my new, tiny sidekick - which I like to imagine myself carrying everywhere, ready to spring into writing action at the very moment of inspiration, but which I will probably use in the same manner as I do its much larger cousin, currently comfortably settled into my lap. Now, I just need to think of a name for it...

Saturday, April 14, 2007

With just one kiss, you could change the world...

...it might not be much better, but it certainly couldn't hurt.

So; I'm still alive. I know it's been some time since I've updated this, but I did warn you that it was random - and that I have an absolutely horrible track record when it comes to journals, blogs, diaries, and anything else that one is supposed to write in on a daily basis. To update the concerns from last time; the ship is back in the States (currently in a shipyard in Norfolk, VA, as a matter of fact, so I am actually home - a wonderful thing), I did make my goal of 50k words for NaNo, but once again failed to bring the novel to a satisfactory conclusion and then stopped work on it. I did add a little bit this past week, but I haven't a clue yet as to whether or not this is an indication that I'll actually pick it up again.

As far as my recent activities, I just flew home from San Diego; my cousin Curtis died recently from injuries sustained in Iraq, and my parents and I flew to California for the funeral, and to provide what help we could for his family. Curt was a couple of weeks older than I, and his older brother died last year - I'd only met them a couple of times, but their father is my favorite uncle and I hate watching him go through all of this. Funeral vigil and service were very sad, not something at all I'd like to go through again - but then, nobody ever said they were supposed to be pleasant, and having fun wasn't what I was there for.

That said, I'd like my funeral to be a hell of a lot more entertaining - held in a cabin in the woods somewhere, by a crystal blue, and very deep, mountain lake. I'd like an old fashioned wake all night, with whiskey, dancing, and song, and as the sun rises I'd like for my body to be laid in a longboat, with a backpack behind my head, a sword on my chest, and a bottle of whiskey in my hand. Then light the boat on fire and push it out in the lake. An Irish wake, a Viking funeral, and no crying.

Sounds like a plan to me.