chadvalentine

Please come to my birthday--September 25th, at 7:00 PM!

2009-09-16T21:16:56Z

First we'll have dinner at Pancho Villas (2539 Nicollet Ave. S. Minneapolis MN 55404
http://www.panchovillasgrill.com/) and then over to the clubhouse, aka Man-Ville (the Purity Bakery Building, 500 East. 36th Street) for fun and drinks. I will supply beer and some snacks at the clubhouse--we'll have music, movies, and fun over there. We'll have a great time!

This thursday!

2009-05-11T16:09:13Z

Going to get dinner and maybe a drink or two the Independent! Please come along!

Anyone want to go to the Independent on Wednesday?

2009-04-28T04:09:03Z

Let me know! Should be fun.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Wandering around uptown

2009-04-02T00:15:59Z

If you're in the area give me a ring!

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Anybody wanna hang out Valentine's Day?

2009-02-12T18:57:44Z

I could use the company.

Testing from iphone

2009-02-05T22:50:06Z

Yes

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Too awesome not to post...

2009-01-04T21:38:50Z

Heh.

In 2009, chadvalentine resolves to...

Tell my family about comic books.
Cut down to ten computers a day.
Take evening classes in linux.
Learn to play the apple.
Find a new raoulthegoatboy.
Give some geeks to charity.

It's been FOREVER--happy 2k9.

2009-01-02T21:44:27Z

1. I'm going vegetarian. Not vegan, since I don't have that Green Lantern level of self-control, but I truly believe it is the healthier diet. Plus, it's an excuse for me to eat more indian food.

2. Quitting smoking for good--I know I don't smoke hardly at all, but I'm still not fond of it. No cold turkey this time though--I'm riding the Nicorette, lozenge, patch-lovin' train all the way to the end. (see Green Lantern in comment #1)

3. I love my wife. I love my friends. I'm very, very fortunate to have both.

3. 2008 was a great year job-wise, and a good year for personal closure. Things will be better in 2k9.

4. Hope your New Year is good, and that Christmas is great.

She mad me who I am...I miss her so much...

2008-10-01T05:00:09Z

Sorry gang, this is a long one. My grandmother died last October, and I buried her and my mother recently.

It was hard, but not harder than anything we've all gone through. I love her, and miss her very, very much.

St. Vrain-Valentine, Charlotte (Jones)

Charlotte St. Vrain Jones Valentine...Our dear Mother and Grandmother, Charlotte St. Vrain Jones Valentine, passed on Oct. 9, 2007. She is dancing in Heaven in her fiesta dress! She was 86 years young, full of life and gracious to the end. She is survived by her oldest daughter Christina St. Vrain Valentine, grandsons Chad Eliot Valentine (and wife Hannah) Dylan Carrol Valentine-Fossum, granddaughters Charlotte Elizabeth Hecht, and Claire Iris St.Vrain Valentine-Fossum, great-grandsons Anthony, Corbin and Daniel and many friends, nephews and nieces. Sadly, her youngest daughter Carolyn St. Vrain Valentine passed on in January of 2008. She is greatly mourned and missed by her family. Charlotte was born Sept. 15, 1921 in Albuquerque, N.M. to James Jones and Maude St. Vrain Jones. The family was big sister Alma, brother Jimmy, Charlotte, little sister Mary Elizabeth, and younger brother Preston Brooks Jones, who became a prominent Texas playwright. She was very proud to be a descendant of the famous pioneer family the St. Vrains, Charlotte was the great granddaughter of Marcellin St. Vrain and Royal Red. Later in life, after teaching herself to use a computer Mom wrote an extensive family history of the St. Vrains and Jones families. Beautiful red haired Charlotte met handsome Lt. Carrol Valentine during the War and was married Dec. 23, 1941 in Seattle, Wash. They were married for 58 years until his death in 2002. Theirs was a true marriage of the heart and mind. "Val" was employed by Mountain Bell, and in 1962 the family moved to Boise. Charlotte liked Boise "it reminded her of Albuquerque" she would say. They made a good home on North Cole (yes the house with the Totem pole in front)! They were happy there for 38 years. Mom was an expert seamstress and quilter; her quilts are prized in the family for their colorful beauty and "tiny, tiny stitches"! She always had "projects" going and was very creative, whether building a kitchen table, sewing up all of her daughters beautiful prom dresses or growing flowers. She loved to "dig in the dirt". She loved little dogs and birds. She was very witty and constantly worked crossword puzzles and logic problems and read, she was intelligent and "sharp" all her life. She loved "reparte" and Scrabble! Mom charmed all who knew her, she was generous but thrifty, kind, spoke her mind, and was loyal to family and friends. She encouraged us all to be strong and to do what was honorable. She taught us by example. Val and Charlotte moved to the "Long Branch" house in 2001. Mom took care of Dad all through his illness, until his passing May of 2002 at 86. Having some health issues herself, Mom was making plans to live close to Chris, but a sudden bout of pneumonia surprised us all. Mother, who so loved life, joined Dad and Aunt Bette and "Mamu" on Oct. 9, 2007. She is always in our hearts. We love you Mom. Private services have been held. Arrangements were under the direction of Summers Funeral Homes, Boise Chapel. Thank you friends of Charlotte and Val through the years, especially Allen Derr, a true friend to the Valentine family. Condolences may be sent to the family in care of Christina St. Vrain Valentine, 5265 N. Syracuse Street, Portland, Oregon 97203.

Candid Me Photo Meme--I always look the same.

2008-09-30T22:08:20Z

no staging, no lighting, just at the office. I'm cold.

09/26--Come to my birthday!

2008-09-13T03:18:04Z

Time for my birthday party--the actual day is on the 25th (Thursday), but we're celebrating on the 26th (Friday). Should be a good time.

It will consist of...

1. Dinner at Pancho Villas at 7:00 PM

http://www.panchovillasgrill.com/

It's at 25th and Nicollett, and is a wonderful place, full of character (the good kind!), with good, reasonably priced food and great drinks. I love it. I'll make sure I have reservations based upon about how many folks I think are coming...

2. ??? (not sure if I'll even need/want something in-between--might be nice to go out in public to officially wave my youth away).

3. Drinks, music, movies, whatever at the Purity Building Building, AKA the Clubhouse

500 East. 36th Street (5th Avenue South and 36th Street)

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&rlz=1C1GGLS_enUS291&q=500+E+36th+St,+Minneapolis,+Hennepin,+Minnesota+55408,+United+States&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&resnum=1&ct=title

Those that hung out with us on New Years will recognize the place. It's the converted art studio my friends use as their swingin' private club, and have generously offered to let me use it for birthday shenanigans. It's got liquor, beautiful decor, and plenty of couches for most everyone to sit down and hang out. There will be plenty of drinks around and I figure we could probably order pizza or something in case anyone shows up late or is hungry after dinner.

This is the general plan, but if anyone knows of anything they think might be more fun, I'm completely open to suggestions. Hope to see you. Feel free to wear whatever you want, but I'll be dressed up a bit.

What should I do for my birthday?

2008-08-27T22:50:54Z

Eh?? throw ideas at me!

The Idaho trip...

2008-08-27T05:57:09Z

It was much funner than I thought it would be. Saw many old friends. Saddened, slightly, by the state of the Old Home Town, but they deserve it.

See, Boise is a western city, in all senses of the word. They have no public transportation--none, the bus runs two routes, and gas is the 3rd most expensive in the nation in a place where no one makes that much money. The amazing part is, all these guys that used to talk about cars are riding bicycles now--ALL OF THEM. I have never seen so many old-school country boys so excited because they have 'X' kind of bicycle and this kind of leather saddle (it's still out of an Eastwood movie kids). Guns were talked about too.

Understand, All this liberal "claptrap" about firearms we squabble about in Minneapolis were politely ignored and put to bed decades ago in the Potato State. You can, legally, carry most any firearm on your person most anywhere, though most places reserve the right to tell you "No, leave that in the car, thanks" if you try to carry it in a public place. it's odd to see that downtown has become so Californian, and yet, as of less than a decade ago I saw a biker asked to leave his shotgun inside his vehicle holster on his motorcycle outside Mulligans--with the bike parked right outside the door. He did so with a heavy sigh, and then went in and ordered a vodka Red Bull. The speed might leave the biker, but the biker never leaves the speed.

I saw my nephews--they are healthy and beautiful, and I spoil them every time I see them. Bought presents for the entire family--I really don't see them enough, and I am my grandfather's son, so sometimes I show my love with money. They were good gifts too--videogames, electronics everywhere-I'm that cool uncle--but it made my heart warm to see my youngest nephew play with the Incredible Hulk *all week*. Little guy took it everywhere--the park, the river, restaurants. My sister said it was his new favorite toy. He's autistic, and full of love, but doesn't talk much, and him hugging me and saying "I love you Unca Chad" made my damn week. Anthony will be an engineer someday, he builds everything in his mind's eye--he's a genius. Corbin--he looks EXACTLY like me at his age, only much better looking. that kid is gonna be dangerous.

Saw a few old friends I knew, and a few I'd forgotten, due to my monstrous long-forgotten scenester ways, and I admitted being ashamed of them, and due to the quality of their character I was immediately forgiven. Had a few old friends buy me drinks. Took my young cousin to a good night out, and I became that Overbearing Relative, who instantly consumed any and all drinks and threatened with chromosomoal harm any being who bought her such and approached her. I swam in the pool I rented, and baked in the hot Idaho sun.

I buried my grandmother's and mother's ashes, some of later's which will go to New Mexico and get thrown in the wind of different sands. I cried a little. I spoke for Her, and her, and cried very slightly, but they were my tears, which I gave to the desert for both of them. I ate generally mediocre food. A young and tiny punk thing approached me and apparently wanted me to take her somewhere else, and was surprised that someone with my kind of ugly was married. She then hid her insecurities by asking about my penis, my preferences, and then said she wanted to have sex with my wife, which were all ignored, scolded, and laughed at in turn. She then lost her phone, and her best friend took her pants off in the bar. That night will be talked about for weeks, and for me it was a Sunday.

I'm happy to be back, though part of me feels that my mom got one last expensive trip out of me. I wanted to go to Canada. Sometimes, I feel like I'll never cross the border. I've missed Mexico and Canada twice each now. I need a real leave of absence, like a month or more.

Nazis and Freemasons

2008-08-27T05:10:22Z

Nazi Germany didn't like Freemasonry--they considered it a threat against the state. I am lucky to be neither German, nor in my 80s, but it was a very sad thing.

http://mill-valley.freemasonry.biz/amermerc.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_victims#Freemasons

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007187

I've got it pretty easy compared to others. I'm ashamed of nothing.

M.O.D.O.K. Encounter Chart

2008-08-20T20:49:24Z

M.O.D.O.K. Reaction Chart

on d6

1. KILL
2. KILL
3. KILL
4. KILL
5. KILL
6. Tea Party

thanks to discoflamingo for the idea.

Are you going to the Rehersal Dinner tonight?

2008-07-31T16:36:55Z

cloudscudding and elfdope have graciously volunteered to take us there, but we're stuck for a way back. Can anyone oblige? Will pay for gas!

chadvalentine @ 2008-07-29T17:02:00

2008-07-29T22:02:45Z

Definately going out tonight. BUT WHERE?!

Writer's Block: Your First Record

2008-07-19T02:25:36Z

What was the first music album you ever bought or owned? Do you still listen to it or have you moved on?

Submitted By mirandagaara

View 500 Answers

Easy. Never Mind the Bollocks.
Either that, or Bridge over Troubled Water.

I was a very, very confused child.

when you die...

2008-07-19T00:01:41Z

have you ever thought or put a plan into action for how to handle your earthly remains when you die?

Stranger in a Strange Land brings up lots of feelings in me, but it's likely that's only so because of the family resemblence.

many, many people I have known were cremated. my grandfather, grandmother, mother, all cremated. a few friends and acquaintences who died via misadventure, as well. Hunter Thompson was cremated and shot out of a cannon. it hardly seems like the most environmental choice. people are just chock-full of carbon. it's like nuts in a Snickers bar. I might consider it a personal point of pride to have raised the global temprature a millionth of a degree, but I wouldn't be around to nod approvingly and shout 'YES! YES!'

I've never really thought about it until I was talking with my sister recently. she was terrified to look into my mother's jar of ashes--'i might find a toe in there!' I assured her this wasn't true, and she faded into a segue about her recent divorce.

I think, maybe, I would like to be turned into a combustant of some sort. preferably a vibrationally sensative explosive. then used to destroy a non-alcoholic brewery, or a cannery that packs decaffinated coffee. failing that, freeze my head, burn the rest and shoot me into Canada. if I can't conquer the Northern Menace, they'll at least inhale me.

chadvalentine @ 2008-07-18T16:16:00

2008-07-18T21:16:57Z

If anyone's downtown after 5 and wants to grab a drink downtown, I'll be wandering the streets like some kind of clean shaven, tie-wearing, devilishly handsome vagrant.

Why I don't drive...

2008-07-07T19:45:27Z

Lots of folks have been asking me gentle questions as to why I don't own a car, motorcycle, or Jet Pack. There's a few reasons, some of which you've heard me mention before, and at least one big one that's personal, which I'm willing to share.

1. Proximity--I live in Uptown. For as long as I've lived here, I've worked in Uptown or downtown. There was that bit at First Tech which required me to go on site to other places, but it was really few and far between, and I had the truck for that.

2. Vehicular Drama BS has left a bad taste in my mouth--I had a perfectly good one back in Idaho which I was told by no less than three people I wouldn't need when I moved here, so I sold it. The 'friend' I'd sold it to (I'd introduced him to his future wife, even) ripped me off. He'd paid me $50.00 (I was asking $500) and he never sent me the rest. Never responded to phone calls, letters, emails, or anything. Fuck you very much, David Van Houten of Boise, ID! I bought a truck up here for $2500 from a co-worker, and got ripped off on that too (it was in bad shape as it turned out, despite her assurances; she was my part time supervisor, and essentially told me she could make my life really hard if I kept complaining about it). I had it for a while, then the starter finally died and I left it parked in front of my apartment. Months came and went. One day heard my neighbor talking about the truck with all the tickets on it...with a sinking heart I went to check it out, and my tabs had expired--but because it was parked on the street they'd given me something on the order of 30 expired tabs tickets, which had turned into an arrest warrant, which almost got me arrested in St. Paul. yeah, good times. It took some quick thinking (i.e., begging) with City Hall to get that sorted out in any affordable manner.

3. Environmental--A small clause, true, but it's there. Part of me feels oh-so-slightly smug I don't ride around in anything burning dead fermented dinosaurs. That being said, most of my friends are clever and smart enough to drive cars with amazing gas mileage, so they can feel smug too. If you're driving an SUV and have less than 4 children, I don't know you, and would rather not.

4. Money--I'd rather give a friend 5 bucks toward a gallon of gas, knowing I'm paying to share a ride with them, than make a car payment, plus insurance, plus tabs, for something I may or may not use. Any car I had would sit virtually untouched in the spring, summer, and fall.

5. Vision--the personal part. My eyes suck. Oh, this doesn't mean that I'm blind, quite the contrary--I can read with my glasses off just fine, identify you from across a dark room (most of the time) and have no problem with various colors or most fine print. It's that I don't have any depth perception. To me, everything appears the sane way it does on TV, only with more color and crisper around the edges. Stereoptigrams don't work for me, nor do the "unfocus your eyes and find the unicorn in this painting" stuff. I can't see 3d movies, even with glasses (trying so gives me a HUGE headache). Sports that require you to make quick distance judgement calls (basketball, for example) I'm awful at. I have learned little subconcious tricks--for example, I know that if object X, which is normally so-and-so size, looks to be about half it's normal size, it's 10 feet away. Shadows help me do this too. This isn't a big deal at all, normally, during the day, but at night I have none of my normal tricks--there's no shadows, and tailights in the dark look pretty much the same size wether you're 10 feet away or 3 feet away (and while driving, it makes a difference!). Lots of rain will practically blind me, as my poor Visual Cortex is desperately trying to focus on the many many drops landing on the windshield instead of being able to look beyond it. I just don't feel it would be safe for me to drive at night, and sometimes during the day. Hence, no car for me.

I wasn't born this way--it happened right after. I was two months premature, and thus was put in an incubator. Incubators were still an inexact science at the time, especially in the high-tech mecca of Boise, ID, and they accidentally put the oxygen ratio way too high for my poor premmie tissues and membranes to handle. It *burned* my infant eyes and optic nerves, and could have done much worse if someone hadn't figured out that little wiggly baby wasn't wiggling cause he was HAPPY to be in that glass box. It was fixed, medicines were applied, damages were asessed, shrugs were made, apologies offered--you didn't sue your doctor at that time, although sometimes I wish we would have--it would have made years of being picked last in basketball seem much less unpleasant. Of course, it's entirely possible that my A-Game is just non-existent anyway.

In a nutshell, this is why I don't drive. I have no idea what's stopping Hannah.

INPUT: How would you sell more comics?

2008-06-27T15:42:25Z

Taken from a thread on the DC message boards, these are my thoughts--

1. CONSOLIDATE--have a Batman Family book (Nightwing, Robin, Batgirl, Catwoman), Superman family book (Superman, Supergirl, All Star Superman) maybe quarterly double-size issues spotlighting a particular character.

2. RETIRE some chracters--Let Ted Grant, Alan Scott and Jay Garrick rest . Don't kill them--let's them walk off into the sunset, peacefully, and live out their golden years. (and truly make it permanent--i.e. they all have no powers/exceptional abilities anymore). Replace them with Ted's son, John Stewart (or maybe Kyle), and...maybe Barry? *if* he stays around (don't think he will). Heck, pull Wally out of the JLA and put him in the JSA (they're more of a family oriented team). Neat thought--Jay gives Wally his helmet.

3. Kill Superman's godlike status--make him be more of DC's version of Captain America, but an icon of the entire planet. No,he's still got to have powers, but make him be a tenth as powerful as he is now--which would still be enough to do some major damage (but he'd have to use his head for big guns like Metallo, for example). At the same time, remove the Kryptonite/red solar/magic vulnerabilities. Force him to fight smarter, without the iconic Demigod shots of him tossing mountains or anything similiar. Superman should be sold based on what he represents, not just what he can do. I know that ground's been covered somewhat, but it could be better.

4. Put comics back into Supermarkets and drugstores--and airports. They should be as ubiquitous as magazines.

5. Make a few titles the equivalent of some CB network offerings--Marvel's Runaways and Young Avengers are like Dawson's Creek or 1 Tree Hill--aimed at a particular market. DC has no equivalent (no, Teen Titans doesn't count).

6. MORE CARTOONS! Cartoons aren't only potential money-makers by themselves, they're also half hour commercials.

(yes, I know a lot of this is DC-centric--they need all the help they can get right now).

Top 100 Books--

2008-06-25T16:52:37Z

"The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed."

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole (reading it right now, ironically enough)
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I'm impressed by how many of these I've read. I need to get on Austen and Bronte. Yes, I said it.

It's been too long since I updated...

2008-06-23T17:09:53Z

with anything real, so here goes.

1. I'm having good days, bad days since my Mom and Grandmother died. It was just so much to handle all at once. Generally speaking though, the good days are outnumbering the bad, so I think I'm getting better. Thanks to everyone who has stood by me and blessed me with your patience and understanding.

2. The battle to quit smoking continues. I'm back on the Chantix, but not doing as well as I was the first time. Remember, I'm not an every day sort of smoker, only when I got out or feel like being social (which is ironic, because it's just about the most anti-social thing you can do anymore). To be fair though, I'm doing it less and less with longer times in-between when I do, so there is some progress there.

3. I'm now part of the Ancient Free and Accepted Masons. It's good for me. Soon, S., R., and I. will be in too, hopefully. I would dearly love to have my Grandfather's Masonic ring, and I've emailed my aunt several times asking about it, but gotten no response.

4. Job is going well, but being a boss is much harder than I thought it would be. Even so, I've made some real changes which are unquestionably good. I really, really want to go back to school--I need more certs. Maybe the fizzing in my brain will have eased off some in a few months.

5. My sister divorced about 6 months ago, and is now pregnant again. With twins. She finds this to be a very good thing, and I'm happy for her, but she already has three kids she can barely support right now. I wish I knew how to help her. I have a feeling this situation will get worse before it gets better.

6. Hannah is doing well. She has been my rock and anchor and my best friend throughout all this unpleasentness, and sometimes I feel that I have so much love for her that one heart couldn't contain it all. We got her a Wii Fit that she's been using every day, and she's lost a few pounds. She really likes it.

7. We bought two new bicycles from Sunrise Cyclery to shake things up a bit and encourage us to ride more. Mine is an '80's fanny pack neon green Fuji single speed, and Hannah has a classic bright blue British road cruiser (3-speed, fenders, large basket, the works). Storage being a premium in our little place, we also got a bicycle rack so we could 'hang' bicycles onto the wall. It looks something like this...

now, this isn't ours exactly--ours is larger and heavier duty. It mounts to the wall using a large bolt that you're supposed to screw into the wall stud. We put it in the bedroom, I screwed it in, and we hung up our bikes there for a few days--until about a week after we got it, I tried to hang something up and it ripped loose out of the wall. Whoops. Looks like I'd missed the stud after all...it's now sitting disassembled in the corner for re-deployment to another part of the apartment. We currently have 3 bicycles parked in our kitchen and one in the bedroom.

8. Back in March the company sent me to a Crystal Reports seminar in Washington, D.C. I got to do a little sight-seeing. Downtown DC is eerie--it was originally meant to hold about 800,000 people at a pop, and now there's only 400,000 or so there at any given time, so many of the buildings, while occupied, have few people in them. There's little downtown traffic too (although it's very fierce on the edges of downtown). Ford's Theater was sobering to walk by--I wasn't even looking for it, just happened to walk by, and look up, and there it was. Went to the Mall, saw the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial, which made me tear up a bit. I'm told the Jefferson Memorial is truly awesome too, but I didn't make it over there. Spent about two hours in the Smithsonian, but found myself surrounded by hordes of Goblins, so I fled. My brother was nice enough to drive down from Richmond to hang out for a night--that truly made my trip. We had a really nice dinner and a few drinks, and talked until 1 in the morning. i was sad to see him go.

9. My Mac lust finally got the best of me and I got one of the newer Macbooks (not a Macbook Pro, I'm not made of money!) It is exceedingly elegant, and Leopard is a beautiful, powerful, very friendly OS. That being said, although I got a good deal on the Macbook, it still cracked $1500.00 once Applecare was taken into account, and man...although the OS blows Windows away in most regards (speed, reliability), the amount of free apps, while impressive, simply aren't up to the quality of stuff you can find in Windows. Transmission is a very serviceable Bit Torrent client, but it's not as good as uTorrent. There's nothing that works as well as NewsLeecher does on the PC. Safari, frankly, sucks. I don't see what the hype is about--it is *not* faster than Firefox by any standard. I played Civ 4 on the Mac, and on a 2.4 GHz Powerbook with 4 GB of RAM it barely ran--and kept constantly crashing and having graphical glitches (for which there are no patches or fix planned, per Firaxis). Escape Velocity Nova, my favorite native Mac game of all time, wouldn't even RUN on it--another issue which Ambrosia Software has no plans to fix. I tried to use it, and tried to love it, but I kept going back to the PC laptop, and finally I conceeded defeat and returned it back to Amazon. I then turned around and parted together an actual Desktop PC that is an unholy beast. It's got a Intel E8400 (45nm 3 GHz Dual core) processory, an overclocked MSI Nvidia 9600 video card, and 4 GB of DDR2 1066 memory. It's also got a heat sink for the processor twice as big as my fist. All good, quality parts this time; traditionally the vendors of my computer hardware are former Eastern Block nations. I'm very pleased. the thing overclocks like a mother too, but I want longevity out of it, so I'm mostly leaving it alone. It goes very nicely with the 22" Dell LCD I got a few months ago. No pictures yet I'm afraid.

10. On the gaming front, I still have a WoW subscription, even though I'm not playing it much (hell, it's free). Also been playing Lord of the Rings Online and just bought Age of Conan. Lord of the Rings online is quite possibly the best MMO I've ever played--it's sublime in virtually every aspect. The only drawback (and this is speaking on behalf of others, not for myself) is that it's PvP options are weak. who cares? PvP is for children. Yes, there's still an option (it's unique--you play as a monster and go off trying to kill players) but it's not as fleshed out as some others. Age of Conan is the first 17+ rated MMO. It has lots of boobs and blood, and it is very, very violent. It's also very pretty, and very unfinished. As in, "We shouldn't have released this game yet, it's chronically short of stability and content, but shareholders are demanding results". Maybe I'll come back to it in a year.

11. Hannah and I had originally planned to not do Convergence this year--last year was out first, and while it was a grand old time, the (Benefit=Fun*Cost) equation didn't quite balance out. However--unlike last year, where we knew a LOT of people who went, and even more there--this year it seems EVERYONE we know will be there. I'm truly confident the Twitter and Blogosphere will consist only of items beamed from the Hotel's wi-fi and various PDA devices for those few days. I imagine that we'll make it for a day or two. Hopefully someone can give us a ride.

12. Going to Chicago with Ryan this weekend to poke around the Wizard Con, and ideally I'll get a chance to urinate on Warren Ellis.

Tweets for Today

2008-06-17T21:18:00Z

16:34 @nemoren J. Lambert? How do I know that name? #
16:35 @janedavis Mannequins make lousy conversationalists. #
18:43 'every time she drinks water, I don't see her as thirsty, I think she's re-fueling...' #
09:15 @cloudscudding Hooray! Knee! #
09:16 I notice that the Chatterbox crowd is their usual quiet selves on a Tuesday morning. I crashed at 9 last night-wasn't fit for company anyway #
09:16 @bastardforhire You broke hour shoulders on a Levee, and you know it? #
09:33 NYT Interview with Gore Vidal-HILLARIOUS--tinyurl.com/3qzow5 #
09:48 @frankvanrad OHHHH! I *rule* at Trivia! I'm an Alexendria of Worthless Knowledge! #
10:15 @sevenian I say we need more candy which celebrates the rich nautical history of New England! It's called "Lighthawse", BTW. #
12:12 @coraanu Here's an idea--get her some movie theater gift certificates. Make sure it's a few tickets of 2+. That way, if she likes... #
12:38 @sevenian how big of a hole? Corrugated or double-corrugated? Should the box be waxed? #
12:53 @coraanu "Dick in a box", eh? Hrm...is it too late to change my band name? #
12:54 @coraanu Wait! Wait! I know what to get her! Get her an industrial strength pedicure to soothe those gnarled hooves of hers! #
12:55 My back and neck are cracking and popping like crazy today, in a good way. My spine now bends like a lemur. #
13:03 @coraanu @FVR has the right idea. Get those new chainmail magnums, they're textured for her pleasure AND re-usable! #
13:03 @edkohler That's it brother! STICK IT TO THE MAN! #
13:48 @bastardforhire Well, of course, it's the NOLA airport. There's, what, 3 people in line? #
15:08 I am supposed to be a "certified videoconferencing expert". Can any of you imagine just how worthless that is? #
15:11 I believe tonight I may go to either Black Forest or the VFW, maybe. #
15:16 Am upset to see that on the Firefox 3 download page, Saudi Arabia only has 1-5K downloads. Get with it, Arabia! are you our allies or not?! #
15:40 What should I wear tonight? #
15:41 @newcoventry I downloaded mine in about 45 seconds. Musta got lucky! :) #
15:56 @frankvranrad that's what you always say. Wasn't me in the blanket-cape and 'tard helmet enough for you? #
15:56 @sevenian they're only fun if they're lit. just like me. #
15:56 @janedavis tell him "leave me the f#ck alone, BERT" #
16:00 @janedavis smile at him sweetly and say "were your parents born with the same surname? Keeps reunions simple, right?" #
16:16 @frankvanrad Go f&ck a peanut, or some other legume. #

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