Talking to Myself Again

Maybe I Should Start Posting Again

July 20, 2010. That was the date of the previous posting on this blog. Over 18 months ago. (*does some math*) 562 days ago.

So.

What to write about?

Well, there is plenty to write about. Trying to summarize a year and a half in one blog post is... overwhelming. So I'm not going to try. I'll just get us caught up to the present.

I spent quite a bit of time becoming addicted to Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO), which moved to a "free to play" business model in September 2010. (That might explain the lack of posting.) It's a fun game, but December 2011 saw the arrival of the 800 pound gorilla, also known as Star Wars: The Old Republic. That seems to have tempted away quite a few of the members of our kinship, so I've been playing less LOTRO in the last month or so.

Dawn has been sick. How's that for summarizing 18 months of a person's life? Okay, she wasn't sick the entire time. Still, she's been sick quite a bit. It turns out she's allergic to mold. Which seems to be everywhere. Inside our hourse, for one. And pretty much everywhere outside, for another. She spent much of last winter coming down with a cold which became a sinus infection which became bronchitis which became pneumonia. And she had an enlarged thyroid, which initially they said wasn't a problem, then later said should be removed. Which they did 2 weeks ago. And now she has no energy, because apparently her remaining thyroid didn't get the memo that it was going to need to do double duty.

Orlando is now in first grade. Somehow I managed to go through his entire kindergarten year without posting a single thing. Maybe that also partly explains the lack of posting. I'll try to do better. And there will be pictures. And videos. And amusing anecdotes. And stuff.

P.S. Just before posting this, I discovered that I had a draft post, written on December 31, 2010, still waiting to be finished and published. Well, no way that I'm going to finish it at this point, but I decided to publish it anyway. Oh well.

Games Night

Our friend Ann hosted a games night last weekend. That's right – we actually left the house and spent time with other adults!

Well, Dawn spent time with other adults, playing a game called Apples to Apples. I mainly spent the night downstairs playing pool with Lando.

I've no idea why Lando looks so forlorn here. I doubt it was anything Maddie said!

Notice Lando's shirt? That's right – Super Mario Brothers! Yes, he is a Nintendo child! He wins races in Mario Kart fairly regularly now and has actually made it through the first level (1-1) of Super Mario Bros. Wii. Lando and I spent most of the evening downstairs playing pool. Lando has enhanced the game of pool with his own custom rules, most of them taken from Nintendo games, including obstacles and boss monsters.

Also, notice the cat with the jack-o-lantern body in Lando's hands? That's Pumpkin. Notice the lack of Giraffe in Lando's hands? After 5 years at the top of the totem pole, Giraffe has finally been displaced by Pumpkin as the toy that Lando carries with him everywhere! We're not sure why, but perhaps it's because Lando's hands are now large enough that Giraffe's long-suffering neck was too skinny to be a comfortable fit. Whatever the reason, Pumpkin is now top cat!

Can you say "cute overload"? That's Anna on the left (Ann's daughter) and Maddie on the right (daughter of Donna, who is providing the lap for this meeting of toddler minds).

Aww!

Look! It's Cute Thing 1 and Cute Thing 2!

And that concludes this installment of "Little Kids Being Cute Just by Existing"!

Whoosh! That was March. (Mostly.)

mood: busy
music: silence

At the end of my previous post (dated Feb 28), I wrote, "Other than the Very Important Topics, I'd also like to write about Springfield's planned winter farmer's market, rearranging our living room furniture, pizza toppings, and copying stuff from Tivo to DVD, but those topics will just have to wait for another day."

This is not that day. So here's a brief recap of how March went. A very brief recap.

Fri, Feb 29 - Vertigo

Dawn was sick with benign positional vertigo (aka getting dizzy and queasy every time you move your head), so stayed I stayed home from work to take care of Lando.

Sat, Mar 1 - Dinner with the Smiths

Dawn was quite a bit better, so we at dinner at Smiths' house.

Sun, Mar 2 - Vertigo

Dawn's vertigo was worse again, so we did pretty much nothing.

Mon, Mar 3 - Funshop Ice Skating

Dawn was quite a bit better, which was good news, because that morning was Funshop's ice skating event at Nelson Center. Originally Dawn had planned on putting on some skates and doing a bit of ice skating for the first time in many years, but the vertigo meant that would be a bad idea. As before, when we got there, Lando had no interest in going out on the ice.

We spent about 30 minutes with him in the lobby, where it was comparatively quiet (except for Lando, who was running around like a mad man), then another 30 minutes watching the other kids skating (except for Lando, who was running around like a mad man).

Just about the time we were thinking about calling it a day and going home, Lando decided he was ready to go out on ice. He only stayed out there about 20 minutes or so, but he quite enjoyed it. I took plenty of pictures, of course, but haven't gotten any of them posted yet!

Tue, Mar 4 - REALL

As usual, the first Tuesday of the month meant a meeting of REALL, the local skeptics group. I didn't have anything planned, so we just sat around and talked a bit.

Wed, Mar 5 - Funshop

Another Wednesday, another Funshop evening! However, due to the vertigo, Dawn isn't supposed to drive until at least a week after the last symptoms go away! That meant that, rather than meeting her at the Funshop building (which is not far from where I work), I had to drive home to pick up her and Lando, then drive back across town to Funshop. Not a big deal, but I normally have 30 minutes or so to read a book while I'm waiting. Oh well.

Thu, Mar 6 - Errands

I left work at 2:00 and ran a couple of errands. Exciting, huh? Um... I think I went to the post office. I bought stamps. Nobody died.

Fri, Mar 7 - Preschool Registration

This was something of a big day in Lando's life, and in ours. We went to registration for "Preschool in the Park" at Washington Park. This will begin in September, and will be just 2½ hours on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. The "classes" are small (10 kids), so Lando will get plenty of attention. And because the classes are short, it will help ease Lando (and Dawn) into the idea of not spending the whole day together. :-)

Lando had plenty of fun playing with the toys that were out while we got him registered. Then when it was time to leave, he had a complete meltdown. *sigh*

Sat, Mar 8 - Moms Group Play Date

Dawn is running the Springfield Moms Meetup Group and had scheduled a play date at the mall for 9:00 am. White Oaks Mall recently installed a very nice soft play area for kids up to about age 6 or so. Scheduling it for 9:00 am meant that it didn't interfere with plans for the rest of the day, but it also meant getting up and moving somewhat earlier than perhaps some moms would like to on a Saturday. In addition to us, only 1 other mom showed up. She had 3 kids with her, so Lando had fun playing. Again, I took pictures. Again, I haven't posted any of them yet.

Sun, Mar 9 - Daylight Saving Time

Daylight Saving Time began! I don't care whether it saves energy or not; I like Daylight Saving Time! The extra hour of daylight after work just really helps me feel a bit less stressed out. Otherwise it feels like, "Get up, go to work, come home, time for bed!"

Mon, Mar 10 - Disk Drive and James Randi

I took the afternoon off to do two things.

One was to go to Best Buy and buy a hard drive. My PC has 600GB of disk space. Of that, it had reached the point where only about 5GB was unused. If you're wondering how I could be using 595GB of disk space, here's how: digital photos (I shoot in RAW format, which means each picture from my 8 megapixel camera uses about 7MB); digital music (I have about 300 CDs copied to disk); digital video; TIVO files; etc.

So, how much does half a terabyte of disk space cost these days? $130.

And since I was going to have enough space to actually do so, I picked up Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the first computer role-playing game I've bought in years.

The other reason I took the afternoon off was for a brief road trip to Champaign. Members of REALL and the Springfield Area Freethinkers carpooled over to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to see James Randi give a talk. Oh, and some Nobel Prize winner, too. :-) James Randi is a former magician who, among other things, exposed Uri Geller as being a fake, appeared on The Tonight Show numerous times, debunked dowsers, psychics, faith healers, psychic surgeons, hypnotists, etc. And he's a funny guy!

About 500-600 people turned out to see him. Afterwards he stayed around to chat, so I got a chance to talk with him a bit, had him sign my copy of his book Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions, and got my picture taken with him. That picture and the numerous ones that I took of him are still waiting for me to post them. (But you already guessed that, didn't you?)

(Oh, the Nobel Prize winner? That was Richard J. Roberts, who won the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for the discovery of introns in eukaryotic DNA and the mechanism of gene-splicing". Now you know.)

Tue, Mar 11 - Disk Drive and Oblivion

I installed the new 500GB hard drive in the computer. I really like the physical layout of my computer. It was definitely designed to make it easy to get to the components and install stuff. What a nice change!

Installing the hard drive was a snap. Now all I had to do was move some files from the old drive to the new drive. About 240GB of disk space was being used for digital photos, so I decided to move those. I decided to play it safe and copy them to their new location, rather than moving them, so I could verify that everything worked before I deleted the old copies.

However, after I started the copying process, I saw the time estimate: 180 minutes. That's right -- 3 hours! Okay, forget that. I canceled the copying process, reasoning that if it was going to take 3 hours, it could do so while I slept.

So I installed Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and played it instead. It's fun! And now you know part of the reason why I've been unable to find time to post anything on my blog for the last few weeks.

Before I went to bed, I started the processing of moving the digital photos to the new drive. Because the process was going to take 3 hours, I decided to be brave and tell it to move the files rather than just copying them. (Yes, I know. Don't worry. It turns out okay.)

Wed, Mar 12 - Disk Drive, Sick Son, No Funshop

I woke up early and decided to check to see whether the digital photos had been successfully moved to the new disk drive. I walked into the office and saw a dialog box informing me that one of the files to be moved was a read-only file. Did I wish to move it anyway? Yes, damn it! *grumble* Luckily the read-only file showed up with only about 30 minutes left in the process, so it didn't cause a big problem.

After the files finished their move to the new drive, I started Photoshop Elements, then went into the organizer to tell it where all of the files had been moved. That's when I discovered that I had messed up. There is no way to tell the organizer, "hey, all of the files in this directory are now located in that other directory." Instead, you have to specify the new location one file at a time! As you might have guessed, with 240GB of digital photos, that would take quite a long time. The organizer catalog contains all kinds of information, such as the captions and keywords attached to each photo, so just ignoring the problem and starting over wasn't an option.

It turns out, what you're supposed to do is move the directory from within the organizer. *sigh* So that meant I had to move all of the files back to their original location (which took another 3 hours), then go back into Photoshop Elements and move the files yet again (which took yet another 3 hours). So all together it took 9 hours to get everything moved to the new disk drive!

Everything worked out in the end, though, and now I have plenty of room on both drives!

Another Wednesday, another Funshop session. However, Lando was sick, so no Funshop for us! (That was sort of good, because it meant that I could stay home and work on moving those files around!)

Thu, Mar 13 - Oblivion?

I'm drawing a blank here. I must have been playing Oblivion. Actually, Thursday is Dawn's night to do stuff, so probably I was keeping Lando entertained. And wanting to play Oblivion. :-)

Fri, Mar 14 - Er... Oblivion?

I suspect an alien abduction. Or more Oblivion.

Sat, Mar 15 - Sick Son, Play Date, Freethinkers

Dawn tried another play date at the mall, this time scheduling it for 9:30. However, Lando was sick, so he couldn't go. Since Dawn was the one who scheduled it, she figured she at least had to go. Unfortunately, nobody else showed up. *sigh*

Also, it was the third Saturday of the month, which meant another meetup of the Springfield Area Freethinkers. There was a pretty good turnout this time. I think the receding winter weather is making people feel more like getting out, even if "getting out" means "going to the Buffet King and eating lunch."

I suggested that for the April meetup we get together somewhere quiet where we can listen to the CD of Julia Sweeney's Letting Go of God. Remember the Saturday Night Live routine, "It's Pat"? That was Julia Sweeney. Anyway, she now does a standup act where she talks about her spiritual journey from being a Catholic to becoming an atheist. (Her transition began, ironically, with her decision to attend Bible study classes at her church. Oops.) Anyway, we'll be getting together at Janet's house to listen. And because Janet's house isn't a restaurant, it will be BYOL (Bring Your Own Lunch).

Sun, Mar 16 - Um... Oblivion?

Nope, I can't think of anything that happened on this day.

Mon, Mar 17 - St. Patrick's Day, Early Riser

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I went to work, of course. When I left, everyone was still asleep. Later, Lando got up, went into the living room, and sat on the couch. Dawn eventually woke up to the sound of him calling out, "Is anybody home?" :-)

Tue, Mar 18 - My Night

We didn't feel like cooking, so I swung by Panera Bread and got us dinner. Every other Tuesday evening the Schwan's delivery guy comes by. We're pretty much limiting ourselves to pizzas and ice cream these days. Definitely not local and definitely not whole foods, but definitely very tasty!

Oh, and I played Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion until midnight.

Wed, Mar 19 - Funshop, Playing Outside, Super Size Me

Another Wednesday, another Funshop evening. The weather was nice enough that Lando was able to play outside for a bit after we got home.

At work, I have a 30 minute lunch and two 15 minute breaks. My computer has a DVD drive, so sometimes I'll bring a DVD to watch. Today I watched the first hour of Super Size Me. So far, wow! Here's the trailer:

To Be Continued...

I started writing this post a long time ago. March 19, actually. It's pretty much sat untouched ever since. Well, I'm not caught up yet, but rather than risk letting this sit around any longer, I'm going to go ahead and post it now. You'll just have to wonder how the rest of March turned out. Pretend that it's a cliffhanger!

Our 3-year-old Computer Geek

mood: happy
music: silence

Lando has recently become much better at using the computer.

For quite awhile now, he has been able to click on things with the mouse, but more often than not he would right-click on things, bringing up the context menu, rather than left-clicking on them. He'd be at Noggin's web site, for example, trying to play some Flash-based game, and instead would keep getting the context menu. As a result, when he wanted to do something on the computer, that pretty much meant that Dawn or I would have to sit next to him and click on whatever he pointed at.

However, just in the last week or so he seems to have gotten the hang of it. He's now left-clicking with the best of them! And he loves it! We'll bring up the web page for Ready Set Learn!, Caillou, or Oobi, and Lando will spend 30 minutes quietly clicking his way through the activities. He doesn't know how to click and drag yet, so he can't really do things that require that (such as drawing), but many of the games just require clicking, so that isn't really a problem. I even turned him loose on YouTube so he could watch SCA combat videos! That might have been a bit dangerous, but so far as I know he didn't locate the "2 girls 1 cup" video.

Unfortunately, whenever he would play one of the Ready Set Learn games, he would quite often click the button to print the screen. That's fine, except that after he would do that, the Windows printer dialog box would pop up. Lando wouldn't know what to do, so every few minutes it was "Dad! Come here! I need you!"

After a couple of days of that, I made a mistake: I explained to him which button to click in the print dialog box to make it print. Why I didn't explain to him the "Cancel" button instead, I don't know. As a result, Lando has printed so much stuff over the last 3 days that he's now responsible for the disappearance of an additional 2 acres of the Amazon rain forest. Well... At least 1 acre. Anyway, he's printed a lot of stuff!

So, if you're in need of pages for your toddler to color or material to use as insulation for your house, just call. We've got plenty.

What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?

mood: calm
music: baby monitor

I took another one of those online tests, this one to find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?

I Am A:
Lawful Neutral Human Wizard/Sorcerer (3rd/2nd Level)

Ability Scores:
Strength-8
Dexterity-11
Constitution-11
Intelligence-15
Wisdom-12
Charisma-13


Alignment:
Lawful Neutral A lawful neutral character acts as law, tradition, or a personal code directs him. Order and organization are paramount to him. He may believe in personal order and live by a code or standard, or he may believe in order for all and favor a strong, organized government. Lawful neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means you are reliable and honorable without being a zealot. However, lawful neutral can be a dangerous alignment because it seeks to eliminate all freedom, choice, and diversity in society.


Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.


Primary Class:
Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard's strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.


Secondary Class:
Sorcerers are arcane spellcasters who manipulate magic energy with imagination and talent rather than studious discipline. They have no books, no mentors, no theories just raw power that they direct at will. Sorcerers know fewer spells than wizards do and acquire them more slowly, but they can cast individual spells more often and have no need to prepare their incantations ahead of time. Also unlike wizards, sorcerers cannot specialize in a school of magic. Since sorcerers gain their powers without undergoing the years of rigorous study that wizards go through, they have more time to learn fighting skills and are proficient with simple weapons. Charisma is very important for sorcerers; the higher their value in this ability, the higher the spell level they can cast.


Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

It was a somewhat frustrating quiz, because it had questions like this:

Rate your sensory perception ability.

• I am aware of most things that occur around me.
• I have the keenest senses of anyone I know.
• I have extremely poor awareness of my surroundings.
• I easily spot details that others miss.

So in this example, you can choose way below average, average, above average, or way above average. What about below average?! That's one of my pet peeves with polls. To me, the positive and negative choices should balance out. For example:

Rate the President's job performance:

• Worst President ever!
• About average
• Good
• Best President ever!

If "Good" is a choice, "Bad" should also be a choice. Okay, enough nitpicking about this silly quiz.

Oh, and here are my detailed results:

Detailed Results:

Alignment:
Lawful Good ----- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (21)
Neutral Good ---- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (18)
Chaotic Good ---- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (16)
Lawful Neutral -- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (25)
True Neutral ---- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (22)
Chaotic Neutral - XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (20)
Lawful Evil ----- XXXXXXXXXXXX (12)
Neutral Evil ---- XXXXXXXXX (9)
Chaotic Evil ---- XXXXXXX (7)

Law & Chaos:
Law ----- XXXXXXXXXX (10)
Neutral - XXXXXXX (7)
Chaos --- XXXXX (5)

Good & Evil:
Good ---- XXXXXXXXXXX (11)
Neutral - XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (15)
Evil ---- XX (2)

Race:
Human ---- XXXXXXXXXXXXX (13)
Dwarf ---- XXXX (4)
Elf ------ XXXXXXXXXXXX (12)
Gnome ---- XXXXXXXX (8)
Halfling - XXXXXXXXXXXX (12)
Half-Elf - XXXXXXXXXXX (11)
Half-Orc - XX (2)

Class:
Barbarian - (-29)
Bard ------ (-23)
Cleric ---- (0)
Druid ----- XXXX (4)
Fighter --- (-2)
Monk ------ (-4)
Paladin --- (-19)
Ranger ---- (0)
Rogue ----- (-2)
Sorcerer -- XXXXXX (6)
Wizard ---- XXXXXX (6)

So my "Lawful Neutral" alignment actually had a fair amount of "Chaotic Good" mixed in with it (with just a pinch of Evil). And my Wizard/Sorcerer came close to being a Wizard/Sorcerer/Druid!

Getting Caught Up ... Again

mood: sleepy
music: baby monitor

Once again, I've got 2 weeks of stuff to discuss in a single entry. You know what would be a better idea? Posting daily! Seriously, it would be great! Each evening, I could write about what happened on that very day while it was still fresh in my memory! Better yet, since not all that much happens to me on any given day, I would have plenty of time to ramble on and on about it in a humorous fashion! Well, I'm not sure whether I could do the humorous bit, but I am pretty confident that I could handle rambling.

Before that, however, here's a Reader's Digest Condensed Version of the last 2 weeks.

Wednesday, November 14: Normally this would be Funshop night. Actually, it was Funshop night. However, Lando was sick with a cold, so it was Funshop night without us, and without us, does it really count? I suspect the Funshop staff just canceled the evening when they realized that we weren't there.

Thursday, November 15: Nothing happened on this day. It might as well have not existed. Now that I look at my calendar, I see that there's a blank hole where that date should be. I apparently was abducted by aliens and had unspeakable yet completely forgettable things done to me on that day, because I remember nothing about it. Odd.

Wait! I just remembered what we did! First, we worked on cleaning up the house in preparation for a visit by Dad & Pat. Then, since we had the floor relatively cleared of cars, pillows, swords, games, stuffed animals, bowling pins, more cars, trains, more stuffed animals, magazines, newspapers, unidentifiable snacks, and so forth, I suggested that we take that opportunity to put up the Christmas tree. Not decorate it; just put it up, to claim the space. So we did that, violating our sacred vows never to put up Christmas stuff before Thanksgiving. Oh, the shame!

Friday, November 16: Our cat Marta went to the vet again for her weekly CBC blood test. She had her second chemo treatment for liver cancer on a week earlier, so they wanted to check her blood. As expected, the chemo treatment had caused her white blood cell count to drop, leaving her susceptible to infection, so they gave Dawn some antibiotics. Well, they didn't give Dawn the antibiotics; they gave Dawn the antibiotics. To give to the cat! Understand? Well then you figure out how to phrase that sentence if you're so smart!

Saturday, November 17: Dad & Pat arrived from Texas to visit for a bit. Every year Pat goes home to Murphysboro to do the Thanksgiving thing with her kids, so the weekend before they came up to visit us. The good part was that we got to visit with Dad & Pat, who we don't get to see very often, given that San Benito, Texas is over 1300 miles away. The bad part was that this was the same weekend as Crystal Ball, so Dawn & I had to miss that.

"Hey, Wally! What is Crystal Ball?" Glad you asked! Crystal Ball is an annual event held by the Barony of Shattered Crystal. ("Hey, Wally! What is the Barony of Shattered Crystal?" It's the Belleville, Illinois branch of the SCA, the Society for Creative Anachronism. "Hey, Wally! What is the Society for Creative Whatchamacallit?" It's an international group of people that recreate the Middle Ages, sort of like Renaissance festivals do, but with everyone participating. Are you done asking questions yet? "Yeah, I think so." Good. Now, where was I?)

Crystal Ball features an entire day of dance classes, with something like 10 different classrooms being used concurrently, so that you have a wide selection of dances to learn. After spending the day learning dances, there is a feast in the evening, followed by the actual ball itself, which runs way, way, way past midnight, typically ending sometime around 3 in the morning.

If you enjoy Medieval dancing (which Dawn & I do), then I've not heard of a better event, certainly not within easy driving distance.

Of course, with a nearly-3-year-old, things get a bit more complicated. If we had gone, we probably would have had to come up with some sort of babysitting arrangement, either leaving him with someone here, or going with someone who could take turns keeping him entertained. By next year, when he's a nearly-4-year-old, we might be able to just tell him, "Stay here, play quietly, and don't chop off anything that can't be easily reattached." We'll see.

Also, there would normally be a meetup of the Springfield Area Freethinkers on that day, but (1) they were going to Chicago's Field Museum to see the Charles Darwin exhibit; and (2) we weren't. Why does everything seem to happen at the same time?

Sunday, November 18: When Dad & Pat show up in mid-November, we always drag them to the Festival of Trees, a fund-raiser for the Memorial Medical Center Foundation. ("Hey, Wally! What's the Memorial Medical Center Foundation?" I've no idea. All I know is they charge us $4 to look at their Christmas trees. Presumably they're doing something useful, or at least legal, with the money.) I'm still posting photos from the event, but here's one of Lando with Little Cindy Lou Who:

And here's Dad & Pat checking out the gingerbread houses:

Monday, November 19: Another alien abduction. My mind is a blank.

Tuesday, November 20: My original plan for this day was to attend the monthly Liberty Brew & View, where we would be watching Harlan County USA. It's a documentary about a coal miners' strike in Kentucky in 1973. Will Reynolds said it was his favorite documentary, but for some mysterious reason I just wasn't that interested.

Okay, I just remembered part of the reason for my relative lack of interest. I also remembered what I was doing Monday evening.

I decided to play a video game.

More specifically, I hadn't played any sort of D&D-style computer role-playing game for quite a few years, so I decided to pull one out and play for a bit.

First, I dug out the disks for Baldur's Gate II and installed it. Copyright date: 2000. I can safely say that my computer far surpassed all of the recommended specs for the game. Actually, the game hadn't heard of a CPU faster than 600MHz and didn't trust a screen resolution greater than 800x600. Support for 1024x768 was considered experimental, and support for 1680x1050 was unheard of.

After playing Baldur's Gate II for a little bit, I decided to abandon that and instead play Neverwinter Nights. Copyright date: 2002. Again, I can safely say that my computer far surpasses all of the recommended specs for that game. However, it was a very significant advance over Baldur's Gate II, at least in terms of the graphics. It even supported 1680x1050 screen resolution! So I buried myself deep into Neverwinter for a bit (instead of posting something on my blog, I might add).

Now I'm curious as to what the state of the art is in D&D-style computer role-playing games these days. I might even go buy a game that strains the ability of my computer to run it. (Say, copyright date 2006.) However, I think I still have quite a few hours of enjoyment left in Neverwinter Nights before I think about spending more money. Besides, given how long I go between gaming sessions, it might be years before I finish the game!

Wednesday, November 21: Normally, this would be Funshop night. However, because the next day was Thanksgiving, there was no Funshop scheduled. Or perhaps they just didn't want to face the disappointment of us not showing up again. When we go for a week or two without attending Funshop, then when we finally make it, Lando stays very focused on getting in as much playtime as possible! Tomorrow is Funshop night again, so this will be the first time he's been back in 3 weeks. I expect we'll be scrambling all over that room to keep up with him!

Thursday, November 22: Happy Thanksgiving! Naturally, I had the day off. We had made plans to have Thanksgiving dinner with GM & Rosie on Saturday, so we didn't do anything special on Thanksgiving itself. However, partly because of Lando's recent interest in football and partly because watching football is a traditional Thanksgiving day activity, Dawn suggested that we do so. Of course, by the time we remembered this, it was Thursday evening, so we almost missed it! Anyway, I turned on the TV to watch a football game -- just 2 weeks after having watched the Colts play the Chargers in the first football game I had watched in years -- and found myself watching the Colts play the Falcons.

Have you ever had the experience of watching a single episode of some TV show, and then years later turning on the TV and finding yourself watching that exact same episode again? That's sort of what this felt like. And like before, Lando stayed interested for about one quarter -- throwing himself to the ground on every play. After that, he was ready to do something else, but I had to watch the other three quarters to find out who won!

Friday, November 23: Being a lazy, good for nothing state government employee, I had the Friday after Thanksgiving off. (I read that New Jersey's governor decided to end the practice of making the day after Thanksgiving a state holiday. Since Thanksgiving, for some strange reason, always falls on a Thursday, nobody wants to go to work on the Friday after. Even those who do go to work won't feel much motivation to get anything accomplished. You can argue that they shouldn't feel that way, but you'd be arguing against human nature.)

Marta went to the vet for another CBC.

That evening we went to the Festival of Trees again, this time with Eric, Patty, Sarah, and Rose. Our primary reason for going a second time was to watch the St. Andrew's Society of Central Illinois perform. Bagpipes, drums, Celtic dancers -- what's not to like? Actually, although Lando loves all of those things, he was a bit overwhelmed by the loudness of it all. Drums and bagpipes indoors, even in as large a building as the Orr Building, are very loud!

They take new dancers as young as 3, so perhaps someday Lando will give it a shot. Virtually all of the dancers are girls, so this would be a great way to meet women!

Saturday, November 24: We had our Thanksgiving dinner with GM & Rosie. I had turkey, dressing, gravy, etc. Dawn, being vegetarian, stuck to mashed potatoes, peas, sweet potatoes, etc. Lando, being 2, stuck to being picky about his food.

One thing we didn't do was attend Chambanacon, a little annual science fiction convention. It began in Champaign-Urbana (aka "Chambana", thus the name), being held in the Chancellor Hotel every year on the weekend after Thanksgiving. I would go most years, partly to attend the convention, but also to a large extent just as an excuse to revisit the UIUC campus (where I went to school) and the college town area.

However, a few years ago due to increasing rates being charged by the Chancellor Hotel, Chambanacon moved -- to Springfield. Umm... What? Well, that made it much more convenient for me to attend, but it also removed one of the main reasons for me to attend. Even before that, I think that over years the Chambanacon staff had grown a bit lazy, not doing anything to attract new people to convention and pretty much just coasting. As a result, Chambanacon had shrunk -- and aged. It lacked the energy that it had had at one time. True, they advertise it as a "relaxicon", but frankly I can relax much more cheaply at home.

This year, for whatever reason, Chambanacon returned to Champaign-Urbana, although this time to a different hotel ("The Historic Lincoln"). Perhaps we'll try it again next year and see whether it has begun to bounce back. Actually, I think I'd rather try one of the other science fiction conventions that are within a reasonable distance. We'll see.

Sunday, November 25: I don't remember much about what we did during the day, but that evening, right after Dawn gave Marta her antibiotic, Marta vomited up the pill in a pool of blood. This is not something that you want to see. We debated whether we should call the animal hospital that night, but we decided there probably wasn't really anything to be done until morning.

Monday, November 26: Dawn called the vet at 7:30 AM and told them that Marta had vomited blood the night before. They told her to bring Marta right in, so I stayed home with Lando while Dawn to Marta to the vet. They kept her there until 5:00 that evening, giving her fluids and so forth. Apparently the problem was the antibiotic, which really disagreed with Marta. The good news is that there is an alternative that doesn't involve shoving a pill down her throat twice a day. The bad news is that the alternative involves giving her a shot. Us. Giving her a shot. Correction: Dawn giving her a shot. I'll hold Marta, but sticking her with a needle? *shudder*

Despite all of the drama with the blood-vomiting cat, we did something fun that day: We went on a date! Yes! For probably the second time in 3 years, Dawn and I actually went to a movie! In a theater!

It was amazing! It was expensive! $9 for a ticket?! Yikes! I had thought $7.50 was pricey! Well, $18 for tickets, plus $19 for food, making a total of $37 for this date. And we didn't even go out to dinner! Oh well, it was fun anyway.

We went to see Enchanted, which I would probably give 4 stars out of 5, while Dawn would probably give it 5 stars. It had quite a few funny bits, but I had hoped they would do a little bit more with the "fish out of water" theme than they did. It was still a good movie, though.

And it was a date! Lando stayed with GM & Rosie, who kept him well entertained until we returned. Actually, from the way Rosie tells it, Lando pretty much played quietly until Dawn & I showed up, at which point he reverted to his normal hyperactive self. *sigh*

Tuesday, November 27: Dawn took Marta to the vet again, because they wanted to monitor her again for the day. They'll want to do the same tomorrow. Marta is really getting tired of us stuffing her in the cat carrier.

This evening I attended my first regular meeting of the Sangamon Valley Group, the local group of the Sierra Club. We had attended the potluck cookout in October (when Lando fell and got an enormous bump on his head, prompting an emergency room visit), but we hadn't attended a normal meeting before. GM had said that he was also going to be attending for the first time, but didn't show up. I don't know if something came up or if he just forgot about it. I did see a few people I knew -- Will Reynolds, of course, but also Larry Trutter (who I know from my Amiga and BBS days, as well as from REALL and the Springfield Area Freethinkers) and Chris Pearson (who I know just as an acquaintance from my work with GIS and ILGISA).

The evening's presentation by Bob Barewin was about going on Sierra Club trips, particularly service trips, where you go somewhere to work on building, repairing, or in some way improving a park. The specific example covered was a service trip to Canyonlands last spring, where they worked on surveying and documenting the Anasazi petroglyphs. It sounded quite interesting, although it would be a few years before we could go with Lando. He'd probably have to be a teenager before they would allow him to participate in something like that. We would like to go on some sort of a less ambitious camping trip in the next year or two, though.

Wednesday, November 28: Hey! We're caught up to the present! And it's way past my bedtime! I think I'll post this and turn in. Good night!

Ally McBeal, Age of Empires

The vast majority of my weekend can be summed up in two words -- "Ally McBeal." Over the last few days, I pulled out the video tapes and watched all 23 episodes, plus the crossover episode of "The Practice." Given that it's an hour-long show... well, you can do the math as well as I.

One thing I noticed about "Ally McBeal" is that, whenever I began to think "I think that such-and-such is a problem," they would have an episode in which they dealt with "such-and-such". When Ally's getting a little too nuts, she goes into therapy. When John Cage is winning too many cases, he loses one. When Renee is acting a bit too sexually reckless, she's shown the dangers.

Plus I love the way in which things reappear after a few episodes. It gives everything a sense of continuity and importance, rather than just introducing the thing for the first time at the start of the episode. Of course, that's also a disadvantage, because I think it makes it very difficult for a new viewer to get into the show. It's a bit like trying to become part of a group of friends who constantly make in-jokes and veiled references to past events.

Enough about Ally. Most of the remainder of my weekend can be summed up in three words -- "Age of Empires." That's a computer game from Microsoft that's similar to "Warcraft." There's not much else to say about that.

Yes, the weekend was entirely a tribute to the concept of "electronic home entertainment."

My Life by the Numbers

Thursday: 230.5 pounds.

Friday: 230 pounds.

Saturday: 230.5 pounds.

Sunday: 231 pounds.

Yesterday: 231 pounds. I seem to have stalled.

Centralia Visit, Satellite TV, Software for Work, 4 Movies

Good heavens, how easily we fall out of habits -- when they're habits we didn't want to fall out of! I've missed a lot of days (as Mary has reminded me), so there is no way I'm going to be able to remember what happened over the last 11 days. Well, I'll just post what I remember and then try to get back on schedule.

Last Friday (June 6), right after I posted my previous entry, I hopped in the car to travel down south to visit my parents in Centralia, Illinois. They had called a few days earlier to ask about a computer problem they were having. It turned out that the monitor for they old Commodore Amiga 500 had died on them. Well, I've got 4 old Amigas scattered around my place, so I told them I'd grab a spare monitor and deliver it to them over the weekend.

While I was driving down Interstate 55, I saw a flatbed truck in front of me. On the back were some large containers labeled, in bold letters, "LIVE FISH." Three thoughts passed through my mind. The first thought was remembering that old joke. ("If you heard about a new movie coming out called 'Attack of the Killer Goldfish,' would you think it was about one great big goldfish or a whole bunch of little ones?" I love that joke.) The second thought was to wonder why they felt the need to label this thing. Did they think that people would drive more carefully if they knew that there were live fish traveling down the interstate? Did they think that emergency response personnel should be warned, in case of an accident? The third thought I had was to note that it is easy to obsess over trivia during a long car trip.

Saturday (June 7) they showed me their new camping trailer, a 37-foot 5th-wheel. Talk about massive! It just barely fits in the pole barn that Dad had built for his 32-foot trailer. There's probably about six inches to spare! In addition to being 37-feet long, it has three slide-outs, so it's nice and wide. It has the usual stuff, of course (kitchen, bathroom with shower, living room, bedroom, etc), but it also has some things I hadn't seen in a trailer before, such as a full-size couch that folds out into a bed, two full-size easy chairs, and even a computer desk!

While I was there, I also spent some time experimenting with Mom & Dad's new satellite TV setup. They went from something like 6 channels to 40 or so. We watched Monica Seles lose to Aranxa Sanchez Vacario (sp?) in the finals of the French Open, then just seconds after the match was over, we switched channels and watched the Triple Crown not get won.

Sunday afternoon I bid the folks goodbye and returned to Springfield.

Monday and Tuesday are a blur.

Remember a few weeks ago when I complained that I apparently wasn't going to get any of the stuff I asked for at work during our annual end-of-fiscal-year mad rush to buy things? Well, on Wednesday I actually received some stuff! Microsoft FrontPage 98 and Adobe PhotoShop arrived! I already had Frontpage at home, so that wasn't particularly exciting, but PhotoShop was something new for me. I quickly went out and bought a few books to learn how to use it. So far, I am extremely impressed! This is an incredibly powerful program and I have been amazed at how easily I am able to create some nifty looking graphics. Well, nifty looking for someone who has absolutely no artistic ability, that is. In addition, in reading through the license agreement, I was pleased to learn that I am allowed to install it on my computer at home as well! Considering that the program sells for something like $600, that's a very nice bonus! I spent most of the rest of the week and part of the weekend learning how to use it.

Wednesday night was gaming night, of course. We had pretty much a full house, so we had a massive, 8-player game going. If I remember correctly, my deck basically sucked the entire night. I really need to put together something new!

Friday, on the way home from work, I stopped off at Blockbuster to rent some videos. Ever since I got my DVD player, I've been buying DVDs instead of renting movies, so this was the first time I had rented any in quite awhile. Since virtually all DVDs are in wide-screen format, I even found myself being momentarily surprised to see that message about "this movie has been formatted to fit your television"!

On Saturday I watched "As Good as it Gets" and "Gattaca". "As Good as it Gets" was very good! Helen Hunt and Jack Nicholson -- how could they go wrong! I enjoyed it alot. "Gattaca" was reasonably good, too. It's about a future society where genetic selection means that the elite are born without imperfections. Sort of a Brave New World kind of thing. It was interesting, but not great.

Sunday I watched "Boogie Nights" and "Brassed Off". "Boogie Nights" was something of a disappointment, given all of the good things the critics had said about it. It was interesting, but it seemed to lack a climax (no pun intended) or an ending. It was sort of like they just ran out of ideas and stopped shooting. I think it sort of lacked focus. "Brassed Off" was pretty good. It was about a British town where the local coal mine is being closed and the people rally around the coal miners' brass band. It wasn't exactly "Hamlet", but I enjoyed it.

Well, I think we're going to have to call that good enough for this entry. Hopefully I can get back on schedule after this! (Monica? Next time, I think.)

My Life by the Numbers

Plenty of days to catch up on. Are you really interested? No? Then skip this bit.

Last Saturday: I was visiting my parents, so I wasn't able to weigh myself.

Last Sunday: Ditto.

Last Monday: 232.5 pounds. I gained only a half-pound while visiting my parents, which is a good thing! My mom always thinks she's feeding an army when she cooks. :-) Walked 2 miles in 27:37. That's my fastest time yet!

Tuesday: 232 pounds. Walked 2 miles in 28:09. I'm rather surprised at that time, since I had decided not to try walking fast. A couple of weeks ago I would have been amazed at that time. I guess this means I'm getting into (relative) shape.

Wednesday: 232 pounds.

Thursday: 233 pounds.

Friday: 232 pounds. My weight seems to be stuck! Walked 2 miles in 27:30. That's another personal best time!

Saturday: 230.5 pounds. Coolness!

Sunday: 230.5 pounds.

Monday: 230 pounds. That's my lowest weight since October of last year. I've lost 15 pounds in 11 weeks.

Today: 231 pounds. Didn't walk, but I mowed the grass, so I figure that counts. :-)

Tammy, Gaming, Degrees, Deer and Rabbits

I received an e-mail message from Tammy! Tammy lived next door to my parents when I was in high school, and I doubt I've seen or heard from her since before I graduated from college twelve years ago. She recently got an Internet account, and decided to do a search on my name. "Wally Hartshorn" isn't exactly the most common name in the world, so I was pretty easy to find. Apparently she got married, had a kid, got divorced, and got remarried. Quite a bit can happen in twelve years, eh?

Yesterday was gaming night. To our usual mob (me, Mary, Bill, David, Adam, and Amy) were added Joe and Ted. Luckily, Bob, Jen, Mike, and Sharri didn't show up. If they had, it would have been a very crowded place indeed! Ted just got his second Masters Degree and is soon going to be attending the University of Kentucky to get his PhD in Anthropology. I'm not sure what one does with an anthropology degree. My suspicion is that you teach anthropology.

Gaming basically sucked. I was playing with a new deck and it did absolutely nothing. Oh well.

Eventually, I decided to bid everyone a "good-night" and head home. I told Mary I was going to make another entry in my journal when I got home and she told me to drive safely. Foreshadowing? When I was probably less than a mile from home, driving down Interstate 55 at 65 miles per hour, a deer suddenly appeared out of the darkness, standing in the middle of the interstate! Ack! Brake hard! Swerve violently! But not too violently! Yeesh! I had been tired, but that woke me up, I can tell you. But I wasn't home yet. Just a couple of blocks from home, two rabbits ran out in front of my car! Ack! Brake hard! Swerve violently! Well, not that violently; they're only rabbits, for cryin' out loud. I made it the remaining two blocks without incident.

And then I wrote my journal entry.

My Life by the Numbers

Today: 232 pounds.

Gaming Night, Dead Amiga, Satellite TV, Mom and Dad Camping, Training

Wednesday night was gaming night. David and Sharri have just bought a house, so they weren't there and apparently aren't going to be for awhile, due to getting ready to move and trying to sell their house. Jen and Mike were there, though, so we still had seven players.

When I got home, I received a message from my parents that their computer's monitor had died on them. They're still using an old Commodore Amiga 500 with 1 megabyte of RAM and no hard drive. I think I've got about 4 old Amiga monitors lying around here (don't ask), and I think two of them still work, so I'll have to test them out this weekend.

I called them back on Thursday. In addition to talking about the monitor, Dad said that they now have their satellite dish, with 41 channels. Welcome to the '90s! They also went camping at the lake for the week leading up to Memorial Day, using their new monster trailer. He said they really like it, although they nearly had a disaster when the water system developed a leak. If they weren't there to discover it and turn off the water, they would have had a flood on their hands! As for Mom, her radiation treatments went well. They ended a couple of weeks ago, but she'll probably have another couple of weeks of treatments soon. After that, they're hoping to head out west to do some real camping!

Thursday and Friday I was in a class at the training center, Novell Netware 4.1 for Users. It was pretty much a waste of time. I learned some things, but what I learned I think I could've picked up in about 30 minutes from a book.

That doesn't matter, though, because we're in our annual end-of-fiscal-year spending panic at work. This happens every year. Our department has a budget of zero dollars -- literally. (I'm using the word "literally" in its intended sense of "truly," not as hyperbole.) If we want anything, we have to persuade another department to pay for it. As a result, we get nothing until the other departments have run out of things to spend their money on. At that point they toss some money our way and we have to spend it almost overnight.

In addition, the money can't be spent on just anything. For example, "training" money can only be spent on training, not on hardware, software, or anything else. As a result, we can only spend this training money on whatever classes happen to be available right now. Never mind that this course is nearly useless, while one being offered in two months is just what we need -- we won't have any money two months from now, so it gets spent on the nearly useless course.

In short, our so-called purchasing system sucks.

My Life by the Numbers

Wednesday: 232.5 pounds. I'm not sure how I lost two pounds overnight; I weighed myself three times to confirm. Walked 2 miles in 28:43.

Thursday: 234 pounds. It's always like this after gaming nights. :-) Walked 2 miles in 27:59! "Why so fast?", you ask me. While I was walking, I spotted two women walking a block or two ahead of me. My competitive instincts kicked in and I walked faster to try to catch up and pass them. However, that only lasted for the first half of my walk, because they played a trick on me and took a different route. Wimps! I would've left 'em in my dust -- if one can kick up any dust while walking on a blacktop road.

Today: 234 pounds. Didn't walk. Didn't wanna.