mikailborg: I can't even remember what event I was attending, but I must have been taking it seriously. (Default)
Our Shadowrun Game Night rolled around last night. We'd missed the last few due to various logistical issues, but finally we had everyone except Lewis and Amy. So what did we do? Spent the evening catching up with each other.

Heh. Can't say I minded too much. It's good to hang with one's friends for whatever reason.

Of course, the tornado warning last night added a little drama - apparently the center of the 'red zone' passed right by Jesse's house. no damage done, though, and she was able to relax a bit after the worst passed.

Well, we'll just have to get together again in two weeks!
mikailborg: I can't even remember what event I was attending, but I must have been taking it seriously. (passing)
"Very much what I imagine a small college town with crappy weather would be like, back on old Earth." - Captain Vanderdecken, Space Rogues

Yes, we've got nice thick fog, accompanied with that fine, voluminous rain that coldly soaks everything in no time.

I may not find my way to the con without leaning out the car window and yelping sonar pings into the blankness.

At least I feel pretty decent this morning. Yay getting up just before the end of the continental breakfast.
mikailborg: I can't even remember what event I was attending, but I must have been taking it seriously. (Default)
  • 07:41 Mythbaby: "Mythbusters" Build Team member Kari Byron is pregnant! Congratulations! Guess she'll be missing some of the rougher stunts. #
  • 14:50 Walked to client and back, about 10 minutes each way. Great day for it, 70 degrees out. #
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Rain delay

Mar. 17th, 2009 07:31 am
mikailborg: I can't even remember what event I was attending, but I must have been taking it seriously. (cheesed)
Yes, it's raining this dark morning, and I commend your decision to drive several miles under the speed limit. Your caution and knowledge of your limitations as a driver are an example more people could stand to follow.

Now get out of the bloody passing lane!
mikailborg: I can't even remember what event I was attending, but I must have been taking it seriously. (orbiting)
Langley is closed for the day, which surprises me. There's a dusting of snow outside, but it sure isn't anything I couldn't drive through. Perhaps the bridge-tunnels are unsafe. Our e-mail notification system is a tease, though: "Check Sunday at 7pm." 7pm Sunday: "Not sure. Check Monday at 5am." 5am Monday: "We're definitely closed until Monday at noon. Check at 10am for more." 10am Monday: "Yeah, okay, we're closed."

The upshot is that I have a day off, and for once Starr's not working today either. We didn't see much of each other this weekend, so this'll be nice. We might hit the Y together and get some exercising in. The cats are thrilled to have us home, which means they are all over us every second. I'm thinking of getting some kitty restraints. (Cue Steve Martin's "Cat Handcuffs" routine.)

I made my hotel reservations for Technicon this weekend. Went nuts and got a suite, since a suite at the Microtel costs less than a twin bed other places. My plan right now is to drive up Friday after work, chill Friday night, do the con and some local socializing, and drive home Monday. I often miss everyone up there. You guys need to all come down to MarsCon or NekoCon or something now so we can hang out.

Mom tried to move back into the house at Kentland this weekend. With reservations, I support this - her plan sounds workable, and she's going to have outside help. But we learned that a pipe was broken, necessitating shutting off the water, and the gas was also shut off for some reason. I have to get her and Whitney together to get that fixed, as there's not much I can do about it from here.

And speaking of houses... Starr's parents have made us an offer to buy this house from them. Without going into details, it's a deal we would be complete fools to pass up. We've agreed to their offer, and are setting up the money now. Nothing's been signed yet, but it looks like we are going to be homeowners.

I'm going to own a house. A four-bedroom, 2.5 bath house in a nice neighborhood, with a garage, a swimming pool, a fireplace... and this from a guy who was amazed he could afford a three-bedroom apartment. I'm still a little dazed at the prospect... this is awesome. Starr's right now looking at mortgage rates from her USAA membership, we might even get a good rate. Whoa. *deep breaths* Please send good thoughts my way if you can spare them. This means a lot to me!
mikailborg: I can't even remember what event I was attending, but I must have been taking it seriously. (Default)
  • 09:31 @meiran Awesome! Very well done! Are you going to shoot for "Elder" in the last couple days you have left? #
  • 09:44 A 32-degree morning seems much balmier compared to the 12-degree ones last week. #
  • 10:05 Dangit, I have just accidentally spammed Starr's work address with the invite to the Shadowrun tonight. Hurr, me use computer good. #
  • 11:47 @meiran I picked up the coins for all of Kalimdor yesterday (not counting capital cities). The Horde outposts were a bit exciting :) #
  • 12:01 I think the guy two people ahead of me in the lunch line was trying to pay in Euros or something. #
  • 13:15 Wish I could leave early. I still have dishes and laundry to put away before gaming. And the Xmas tree should come down someday too. #
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mikailborg: I can't even remember what event I was attending, but I must have been taking it seriously. (crusade)
This morning Chesapeake got its first real frost of the season. Combine that with a very light fog, and the drive to work was just generally washed out a bit. Just a little bit dim and faint, as though the world was fading in around me and had gotten stuck at 98% complete.

On the other hand, at least I got to make the entire drive with the sun up. This has nothing to do yet with the longer days, but with the fact that the new kitten fall asleep on my chest this morning as I read the night's email. I can't blame it on the kitten - she weighs substantially less than a pound - but she was certainly a contributing factor.

Did you know you can program your computer to play World of Warcraft for you while you're not there? Pretty pointless of course, and Blizzard and the rest of we players would like it to stop because it messes up questing and the economy, but it can be done. I decry the practice - decry, decry - but the one place I'd consider it is the Fishing hobby.

You can level up your character's Cooking skill by standing in front of a stove for a few minutes with all those critter parts you've been collecting while you killed everything. You can do the same for your First Aid skill by spending five minutes making bandages from all the cloth the bad guys dropped. But leveling up Fishing takes hours and hours and hours and hours of staring at the little float on your fishing line. The higher Fishing level you reach, the larger number of hours you'll be spending for the next 25-point gain.

WoW fishing is fairly useful in the game, and I wish I had a higher level in it, but this is just too much realism for me.

EDIT: Just to be clear, I will repeat that using the autoplay programs will get a player banned from the game, and myself I agree with Blizzard's reasoning on the matter. On top of all that, it's also lame. You don't want to be lame, do you?
mikailborg: I can't even remember what event I was attending, but I must have been taking it seriously. (Default)
  • 07:51 Woke up this morning on Riff & Magenta's home planet: Land of Night (and high electric bills!) #
  • 13:02 Ozzy Osbourne for WoW: tinyurl.com/6drrfj Guess his race / class. Go on, guess. #
  • 19:57 Still unpacking. A bit stunned at the amount of STUFF one can extract from a three-bedroom apartment. #
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mikailborg: I can't even remember what event I was attending, but I must have been taking it seriously. (gaming)
Local weather is trying to be obliging. "You don't have a light jacket right now? Okay, we'll just drop the morning temp to 45 degrees so you can wear your winter coat, does that help?"

Had a very weird dream the other night where I climbed down a narrow drainage pipe to find myself in a secret underground studio where they were filming the return of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" to the cable channels. I was privileged to sit in on one of the sessions where they watch the movie and write the jokes; I started ad-libbing along, and they hired me on the spot, causing me to draw the wrath of one of the other writers for some reason. Any dream interpreters wanna take a shot at that one?

In the ongoing Stuff Reduction Plan, I did some heavy game materials archaeology yesterday. I found my copy of Amber Diceless, a fascinating take on RPG mechanics that uses no random chance at all; Star Warriors, a fast-paced, careening tactical game of Star Wars fightercraft; and Ogre, light infantry and vehicles against a robot tank the size of a small city block. I'm keeping those. (Actually, I fear the Ogre set may belong to [livejournal.com profile] rattrap.)

Going away is the stack of official Star Trek fan magazines, which will be probably be trashed; and [livejournal.com profile] raininva has dibs on the bigger stack of West End Star Wars RPG and Indiana Jones RPG books. Battletech 3025 scenario and source- books are going; Battletech 'Mech listing books are staying. I'm not sure whether I'm keeping Castle Falkenstein, or the hardcover first-edition copy of White Wolf Mage. (Starr, a onetime Vampire LARPer, may give me permission to keep that.) However, I will divest myself of the two Last Unicorn Star Trek RPG hardcovers, and the Traveller: A New Era core book. I have a lot of gaming stuff.

Last treasure unearthed: my Wireframe Babylon Project books and GM screen. The savvy fan will find the names of [livejournal.com profile] jsciv, [livejournal.com profile] yubbie, and [livejournal.com profile] impink within; and down in the playtesting credits, a listing for some doof that goes by [livejournal.com profile] mikailborg online. Yeah, I'm keeping that one.
mikailborg: I can't even remember what event I was attending, but I must have been taking it seriously. (slaine)
Well, fall has arrived in Hampton Roads. We're getting our usual ration of violent, brief evening thunderstorms; and the leaves are beginning to give up the struggle and drop from the trees. The change I found most notable is the 55-degree morning I walked out into; especially since my White Plectrum jacket has finally given up the ghost, and my Starfleet denim jacket isn't quite what I want to wear to work. (Oh, and the Starfleet jacket's falling apart too.) Looks like this weekend will include shopping for something to keep my arms warm.

After reading my tweet about last night's dreaming, [livejournal.com profile] tango suggested a nice white canvas jacket with really long sleeves that buckle in the back. Sounds good for lots of reasons, but it would make the morning commute a bit trying if I had to steer with my teeth.
mikailborg: I can't even remember what event I was attending, but I must have been taking it seriously. (orbiting)
So who was I listening to in the car on the way to work today?

The Dresden Dolls and OreSkaBand. I would have liked to see OreSkaBand when they were here this week, but I couldn't exaclty take Tuesday off :(

I blame my musical taste on my mother, who tricked me into liking classical and folk in addition to the rock I got off the radio; and Tom Monaghan, who ate little more than ramen through his college years in order to acquire a huge and supremely eclectic CD collection.

When someone asks me what they're likely to find on my iPod, I answer "almost anything from a Bach symphony to Japanese bubblegum punk."

Walked a mile-and-a-half today. I really need to do this earlier in the morning before the mercury tops 80.
mikailborg: I can't even remember what event I was attending, but I must have been taking it seriously. (cartoon)
My Mom's back in the hospital. The blood thinner she had been prescribed caused some internal bleeding; it seems to have stopped, and she'll probably be out again by the weekend. But... oy.

We found a Jamaican cafe / grocery less than two blocks from us last night, and I tried curry chicken for the first time ever. Extremely yummy, though I'm not used to eating anything that shade of yellow; nor am I used to picking that many tiny sharp chicken bones from my teeth. Oh, and an hour later, my stomach was not pleased with these new spices at all. Still, yum.

The apartment building I live in is very nice, but it's still an apartment building. One of the tenants on my floor has had multiple summonses taped to their door in recent months; this last weekend, they moved out in a flurry of activity (mysteriously bringing a mattress into the place in the process). Well, police showed up a couple of days later to pound on their door, and there's an eviction notice taped there now (which doesn't exactly change much at this point). I'm actually sad. They seemed nice enough, and it's a shame when people's mistakes land on them so hard.

At this moment, I am rather physically and emotionally weary. I'll be fine, it's hardly life-threatening. But the assertiveness I have been trying to encourage in myself in recent months is eluding me a bit just now. Of course, now is when I really need it.

Oh, and the smoke's back in Portsmouth this morning. Koff.
mikailborg: I can't even remember what event I was attending, but I must have been taking it seriously. (flying_gif)
If someone's Twitter profile page says that they are following 35,000 people, than I somehow doubt that their 'personalized' request for me to follow them back means much. It doesn't help that all their tweets are private. How do I know if you're interesting if I can't read your tweets / journal entries / etc.? This is also why I don't have a MySpace.

Spent all night last night trying to catch up on e-mail correspondence, and in the process, forgot to call my mom and check on her, which I am not especially proud of. I did get the gerbil cage cleaned, though, which I've been promising to do for a couple of weeks.

MikhailBorg at age 19 [livejournal.com profile] cynical_prophet sent me this picture of myself from 1988. I was kind of down that night, and the pic was a surprise, so I don't have the best expression. Starr had a fairly amusing reaction: "Is that you!?"

"Yes, it's me, about 20 years ago."

"Wait... you still have that shirt!"

"Not that it fits, it's a size medium or so."

"More like size Tiny!"

Temperatures are down a little, so I am walking again. Missed yesterday, but I aim for a mile today!

EDIT: Hokey smokes, they are sending my mom home from the hospital on Friday. Now that, boys and girls, is a solid recovery. I know she's going to love getting to see her kitty again!
mikailborg: I can't even remember what event I was attending, but I must have been taking it seriously. (cyberpunk)
Found Iron Chef Japan on the Fine Living Network. Now I need only suffer through the occasional Martha Stewart commercial to get my fix. Sadly, NBC / Universal came down on them about the Backdraft music, and the whole show's been re-scored by someone who didn't really get it; but it's better than nothing.

There's a tire fire in North Carolina this week, and the smoke's traveled all the way up here. The air in Portsmouth is nasty. I feel like someone in a cyberpunk book who should be walking the city streets with a small respirator. Sucks, because otherwise the heat's much more tolerable today.

Thank goodness for the Baen Free Library and the Baen CDs. Because of those resources, I didn't pay any money for John Ringo's The Hero. Now, I enjoyed his first "Posleen" books well enough, though the ending of the war was unsatisfying; but this book pretends to be one story for 100 pages (!) and then, without warning, changes its mind, abandons nearly everything, and becomes a completely different story.

Imagine you're watching the second Trek movie, getting into the story, and the first face-off between Kirk and Khan has just ended. Suddenly, a renegade cadet from the Enterprise steals the Genesis Device plans, uses the prefix codes to cause warp core breaches and destroy both ships, and hides in the Mutara Nebula in a 72-hour survival spacesuit to wait for an arranged Romulan pickup. Unknown to him, one of Khan's men got out in a similar spacesuit, and is hunting him down as the only chance for survival.

While the "hunting each other down" part of the movie might be gripping, I assume most people's reaction would be, "WTF? What happened to the plot I was just watching? Who are these people? I don't even like these people." That was my reaction to this book. Ah, well, it's not like I don't have lots more to read, including In The Serpent's Coils, Grave Peril, and Little Brother (yes, it's a free download).

Oh, and while I'm reviewing things, have I mentioned that I am now quite the Steven Moffat fan? The ending of "Forest of the Dead" had me saying to myself, "Bit of a downer, but everything lined up properly, lotsa neat stuff, some good lines. Good episode." Then: Non-specific Spoiler ) Well done indeed.

Speaking of which, the reason there's not going to be much 2009 Who is that David Tennant will be playing Hamlet on stage that year, which I'd love to see. Here is Neil Gaiman writing Tennant's Tenth Doctor as Hamlet:

"To be, or not to be, that is the question. Weeelll.... More of A question really. Not THE question. Because, well, I mean, there are billions and billions of questions out there, and well, when I say billions, I mean, when you add in the answers, not just the questions, weeelll, you're looking at numbers that are positively astronomical and... for that matter the other question is what you lot are doing on this planet in the first place, and er, did anyone try just pushing this little red button?"


I'd so watch that.
mikailborg: I can't even remember what event I was attending, but I must have been taking it seriously. (TARDIS42)
Finished my 10th mile of the new mile-a-workday program. At this rate, I should reach Rivendell by Christmas :) Yesterday and today were beautiful walking days - 70 degrees, light breeze, cloudless skies. I notice that I'm slightly less overheated and winded than I was two weeks ago, though much progress remains to be made.

With the removal of two 200-calorie Cokes from my day, and a 200-calorie walk in addition, I'm hoping I see even a tiny bit of body difference in a month or two. I mean, I figure my diet beforehand was in the 2,200 - 2,400 calorie per day range, so that's a fairly big cut.

After around 20-years, I have reconnected with [livejournal.com profile] cynical_prophet. He and I used to be thick as thieves in the Pathfinder days, but we had a falling out. That water's long passed under that bridge, and I found him through clicking random LJ links - it's good to hear from him again. Hard to write a short letter about "here's what I've been up to for the last two decades", though.
mikailborg: I can't even remember what event I was attending, but I must have been taking it seriously. (passing)
If you want to know what last night was like in these parts, Google "obici tornado".

The storm wasn't bad for me. We got the alert around 4 here at NASA, but all I had to deal with on the drive home was some rain and a bit of wind on the bridge. Starr, on the other hand, stood in her hospital as a funnel came right for the building, tossing around cars in the parking lot and cracking some hospital windows with flying debris.

She had to stay at work a little late, in part because the road home was damaged and closed, but she finally made it home safe and sound, if a little stressed.

We are both fine, though kitty panicked a bit when it took Starr so long to come home. None of our friends have reported any serious difficulties either, for which we are most thankful.
mikailborg: I can't even remember what event I was attending, but I must have been taking it seriously. (yeager)
Rough start to the day.

Didn't sleep well - under-hydrated, I think. 200 spam messages from last night in my inbox: the Russian spammers are trying some new tricks. I can't even read most of the e-mails. More idiots driving 45 in the passing lane, then shifting right and doing 70 in the slow lane; and to top it off, my morning podcast glitched out halfway into the drive.

On the other hand, I was greeted again this morning by friendly ducks on the way out to my car. Last night was great, with pizza and WoW provided by Starr and a remarkably clean apartment she'd spent her "lazy day" scrubbing. And this morning I heard that my longtime partner-in-crime Tom Monaghan, one of the few Starfleeters to hold officer posts on USS Heimdal, Pathfinder, McKay, Yeager, and Ma'at, signed his first fiction book contract! Awesome!

So karma balances, and if the rain lets up at all I'll get some more walking in today. Into the fray!
mikailborg: I can't even remember what event I was attending, but I must have been taking it seriously. (cyberpunk)
This morning brought a bank of that 30-meter visibility fog, and the "bridge from nowhere to nowhere" effect on the Monitor-Merrimac. Already, though, it's turned clear, mild, and sunny with a cool breeze: I suddenly want to skip work tomorrow and go to Busch Gardens. Won't, of course, but still.

Yes, "I can't support your virtualization software at this time" means I can't troubleshoot the apps you're running in it, either.

I finally have the free Pirates of the Carribean MMO running correctly on my laptop. I'm likely to play it about as often as I launch Second Life - which is to say, almost never - but it's amusing nevertheless to get "FedEx" quests* from Johnny Depp. None yet from Orlando or Kiera, but then, those are probably saved for people who actually play.

Starr went to her mom's on Tuesday to plant the irises I retrieved. Turns out there were about two dozen, so with the other plants she'd brought, she spent most of an afternoon digging. Add that to her hospital shifts for Wednesday and today, and I've got a still-tired lady on my hands!

Happy WoW stuff: thanks to [livejournal.com profile] shrewlet, I got all the materials to finish building Mirandala's epic quality Destruction Holo-Gogs. Among other materials necessary were 206 chunks of difficult-to-mine ore... I can only assume that a LOT of refining is done to turn that into a single pair of goggles.

Also, my polymorph quest issue was resolved while I was offline, so Mir can now turn people into pigs. Thank you, GMs! Too bad that the spell's unavailable to my warlock, since I named her Circy.

And thank you [livejournal.com profile] ranchonmars for the postcard! I have too aged since the Pathfinder days, but it's dang nice of you to say otherwise :)

*Game character A gives you item to take to character B, who will reward you with money, loot, XP, or often as not another FedEx quest. Perversely amusing when characters A and B are less than 20 gameworld yards from one another.
mikailborg: I can't even remember what event I was attending, but I must have been taking it seriously. (flying_gif)
BIG weekend.

[livejournal.com profile] rhaps and [livejournal.com profile] shrewlet came down, partially to socialize, and partially to pick up some unused floor tile from Starr's mom.

I won't list all the places to which I drove on Saturday and Sunday, it would be tedious for both writer and readers. But my destinations involved finances, prescriptions, breakfasts, lunch, dinner, additional socializing with Dwight, Bert, and Meche, HD channels for the TV, tile collection, and flowers.

The irises were interesting. Turns out that they were free because I had to dig them out of the lady's downtown Norfolk garden myself. In the rain. And I hadn't brought tools. And there were two hens and a rooster looking over my shoulder and providing constructive criticism.

On the other hand, the additional HD channels were all free, and consisted of content such as Discovery, Science, Food Network, Bravo, and TLC: the only sort of channels our TV tends to be tuned to anyway. We did watch 2001: A Space Odyssey on Universal HD, learning that yes, a pretty movie gets prettier at 1080i.

Good weekend, but I'm pooped.
mikailborg: I can't even remember what event I was attending, but I must have been taking it seriously. (simpson)
The cat wishes everyone to know that he was highly paid for this television appearance. The hamster... would like some more carrot bits please.



Game blogger Tobold suggests that WoW players would reach endgame with far better raiding skills if there were quests where you had to practice raiding with sets of NPCs. Aside from the time pressures, one reason I don't do instances is that I'm not very good at them, and I think this is a fine idea. When I do have to hit an instance dungeon for a quest, I usually end up in the company of several far-higher-levelled guild mates, and my presence becomes a bit unnecessary. This idea would mitigate the problem a bit.

[livejournal.com profile] rhaps and [livejournal.com profile] shrewlet are coming down this weekend, which is a good thing because my Technicon experience was extremely rushed. I envy Rhaps' new iMac, which is the same model as my Mom's. But I'll have my Mac Pro soon enough.

Paying bills, finishing paperwork, getting all sorts of ducks in a row this week. (They were sitting out front again this morning, enjoying the humid weather.) It all feels good. Also: new blender yay :)

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