InkBlot’s Journal

I’m usually slow about these things, so I’m sure you’ve probably seen this elsewhere.  Match It For Pratchett is a grassroots effort to raise support and awareness for Alzheimer’s Research.  The site itself does not collect money, instead it directs people to the Alzheimer’s Research Trust in the UK.  Why the UK?  Because the site was started in honor of top UK author Terry Pratchett, who was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s this last year.

Terry Pratchett recently donated $1 million (£500,000) himself, with the comments, “I am, along with many others, scrabbling to stay ahead long enough to be there when the Cure comes along. Say it will be soon – there’s nearly as many of us as there are cancer sufferers, and it looks as if the number of people with dementia will double within a generation. In most cases, alongside the sufferer you will find a spouse suffering as much. It is a shock to find out that funding for Alzheimer’s research is just 3% of that to find cancer cures.”
If, like me, someone in your family suffers from Alzheimer’s…or even if you don’t know anyone who suffers this horrible disease now, I encourage you strongly to take action.  The Alzheimer’s research trust is in the UK.  Here in the US you can also check our the Alzheimer’s Association. Whether you realize it now or not, you’ll be helping someone you love.

Much of my daily reading on the interweb comes from news aggregators.  I particularly like those with a sense of humor, such as Fark.  That sense of humor, however, doesn’t mean that the news isn’t serious.  Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s tragic.  Sometimes it’s important, sometimes it’s personal.

The other day, this story floated across the wire.  It described Charles Whiting, who lost his wife in 2005 to cancer and emphysema.  One thing that comforted him was the voice mail greeting his wife had recorded with their Verizon phone service some years earlier.  The message remained long after she was gone, and Charles would call it daily to hear her voice once more.

Recently, system upgrades replaced the equipment which provided Whiting’s voice mail service, and the greeting was lost.  Calls to Verizon informed him the previous greeting recordings were lost for good.  It was sad, and a reminder that the world is always changing and someday the things we rely on most will inevitably disappear.

At least, that’s what I thought when I saw it.  Today, a follow-up article showed up on the AP wire.  From the article: Company spokesman John Bonomo said Tuesday that a contractor found the recording and restored it to the new voicemail system.

“I’m glad they rescued it,” Whiting said. “I’m very happy.”

Another reminder: There’s always some good in everyone’s heart.  Let it out whenever you can.

I ain’t dead.

Life continues, although I am recovering from last wherein our hero was forced to work 1:30pm-10:30pm shifts, in order to teach the graveyard crews.  That does mess with one’s sleep schedules.

I could try and make some sort of excuse to why it’s taken so long since Christmas for me to start posting again, but if you’re a regular reader of my little blog:

1. You must be related to me, or you just have me on a friends list and forgot I was there.
2. You’re not horribly surprised at long silences from me.
3. In fact, you’re probably more surprised that I am actually posting.

It must be a bit of a shock, I suppose. Anyhow, I am back, and alive. I’m not sounding so great, thanks to the Creeping Crud I’ve caught from Mrs. InkBlot. For her, she suffered horrible, hacking coughs for several days and a minor ear infection. For my part, I suspect we caught on to it quicker, because I’m not suffering the coughing as badly (I started medicating early), but I did manage to lose my voice at work on Monday, and it’s still not all back yet. I sound like a 40yr, 10 pack-a-day smoker. Which is a small improvement on yesterday, where I sounded like the same smoker, after one of those permanent tracheotomies that requires one to use one of those electronic voice modulators to speak. Except, I didn’t have one of those, so I whispered a lot.

As I said, I’m getting better. Muscinex-D is keeping the gunk in my head flowing out, and although I’m not having to be close personal friends with a box of tissues, I do have to eat something every few hours (usually toast) to keep my stomach from lodging a complaint. The crud has made past the sinuses, up the eustracian tubes to start knocking on my ear drums. Fortunately, I’m also on antibiotics and they seem to be keeping the crud at bay. This morning was bad, I will say…my head hurt, my ears hurt, but after medications and some fitful napping, I do think it’s all starting to recede at last.

I wish I could say I love my job. I wish I could say I look forward to going to work each and every day. For the most part, it doesn’t suck and I get by. I certainly wouldn’t mind time off when the opportunity presents itself. I just wish this opportunity had kept the gift receipt, because I’d really like to return it. It scares me to say, I’d much rather have been ‘normal’ and at work this week, than suffering here at home.

I must be sick.

This might be my last chance to say this for a bit, so Merry Christmas to all, and a happy New Year!  I hope everyone is home with loved ones, and if you can’t manage that then I hope they’re in your hearts as I’m sure you are in theirs.

Finally, on my Christmas break!  I’ve been hugely busy at work the past few months, as a major project is nearing launch.  So, this is a bit of calm before the storm.  Fortunately for me, I had a bit of saved up vacation time, so I’ve all this week and next to myself.  The missus can’t quite say the same.  She changed jobs in October, so I don’t know she’ll have any vacation saved up for this year.  In her favor, her boss changed jobs the same time (it’s a whole new business, to be frank), and has declared that he’s not working to hard around Christmas, so his staff likely won’t be either.

Still, on my own for a bit.  Christmas lights are up on the house, but nothing inside.  I know, I know, mid-December.  Should have had everything up on Halloween, I suppose?  I know my local grocers had their Christmas goods up back then.  I’m sorry, I’m just not in a hurry…even after Thanksgiving passes.  Since that holiday, we’ve been cleaning up inside and out to get ready for Christmas - but this was the first weekend of truly decent weather to go out and actually put up lights.

Besides decorating, I’ve still almost all my shopping to do.  I ordered a bit of stuff online already, and it’ll be showing up this week.  Hopefully I can go out and hit the popular stores while everyone’s at work.  We made the mistake of driving to the mall this weekend.  We couldn’t find a single parking space.  The rows were full out to the very edges.  It’s not even that good of a mall!  It’s already turning to madness out there, and even early on a Monday I fear shopping.

I fear traffic the most.  Inside the malls and stores isn’t nearly as bad as driving in their immediate vicinity.  It’s as if drivers regress to their most primal instincts.  They fight not just for parking spaces, but for position as if any car that pulls in front of them marks them a failure.  In a town that normally opens up space in traffic to let you in, at this time of year they’ll run you off the road if you try to squeeze in.   Meanwhile, anyone behind you is ready to lay on their horns if you pause too long.  Or worse, make their own lane of traffic, driving through parking spaces, over medians and sidewalks…I saw someone just the other day cut through a gas station because the traffic light on the corner was taking too long for them.  They nearly cut down someone cleaning their windows as they fueled up their car.

Please, everyone, calm down.  Be patient.  Christmas is not nearly so important for the gifts you’re trying to buy for others, as it is for being the time of year we pause and give our love and affection to each other.  I’m going out now.  Wish me luck.

I want to design a pssorpg¹.  You’ll do everything an mmorpg does: create an account, download a client, login to a selection of worldwide servers, create your character², and finally login.

Then, when you begin the game and the initial cut screen fades away, a simple dialog appears which says, “Click here to begin.”

Upon clicking, the game then says, “Congratulations, you win!”

“Game Over”

1. pathetically small singleplayer online role-playing game [back]
2. playing dress up a la City of Heroes, then cursing when the name you want is already taken [back]

Saw this movie today at a DLP theatre in my neighborhood.  The DLP theatre part is highly impressive, with a very clear picture.  Yeah, right, techie stuff.

The movie is, in a word, corny.  But corny in a good way.  In fact, I’d say this movie takes “bad” to new levels of fun.  Ever see those poorly made action movies?  The ones which don’t aspire to much, that think mediorce is a actually pretty good for what must be a fairly pathetic budget?  Now, you know how so many of these movies usually start out OK…doing the best with what they have, scraping by, then you get to some scene where, well, no matter how you look at it, the movie usually takes a turn for the worse.  Maybe it’s bad effects, but usually it’s writing.  Some plot hole, or contrivance, some short cut to keep the movie going forward but at the cost of leaving any credibility behind.

A mediocre action movie doesn’t usually survive such wrong turns.  This movie starts out on one, then uses the rest of it’s time to try and top itself.  And thats why, for me, it works so well.  Completely godawful, corny turns that just keep taking the action down unexpected paths.   A body count I haven’t seen in some time.  This movie aspires to be bad, and nails the target exceedingly well.

Anyway, hello, I’m not dead yet.

You’d think long hours in the computer industry would make a person not want to touch PCs at home. For many, that’s true. For some of us, however, it’s not. Sad to say, I’m a computer geek through and through.

I play plenty of games on my PC. I’m a big fan of first-person shooters, ever since Wolfenstein 3D. I’ve only really been dabbling in the mmorpg realm lately…I started in City of Heroes, and recently moved on to World of Warcraft. I could rant on how CoH lost me quite a bit¹, but that’s not why I’m here today. Today, I’ve been playing the new Lord of the Rings Online for about 4 days and I have to say: Wow.

Oh, wait, I meant. WoW. World of Warcraft. Some of the first screenshots of the game I saw, I could tell LOTRO used the same game engine. I expected this would work out well…making it easier to adapt. In fact, it’s a little too jarringly familiar. The same chat window, the same player/opponent status bubbles. The same compass and map system. Along the main toolbar, the action bar is centered with bags on the right, and system icons on the left. It is a bit odd to reach to the left side of the bar for the main menu button. Worse than this, is the UI doesn’t scale well on my widescreen laptop. At anything other than my screen’s native resolution I get overlap particularly on the player/opponent status bubbles².
Not that keeping an eye on my own health (sorry, “morale”) is much of a concern. In 6-7 levels now I haven’t found a serious challenge to life or limb. Mind you, the introductory content isn’t too bad…lots of nice little cut scenes, tantalizing bits of story (both from the books, and original to the game). It’s just that’s all the game has going for it. The story, and more importantly, the world it’s set in. Otherwise, the game is just WoW in newer clothes.

And this is what has me most disappointed. I knew going in it would be more elves, dwarves³, et. al. in a glorious fantasy landscape. I was expecting a new take on things. I wasn’t expecting the same quests: go hunt X creatures for a belt, go defeat goblins until you find item Y. I wasn’t expecting the same sort of professions, crafting, auction houses, and so on, and so on, and so on. I wasn’t expecting it to be so much the same.

1. I think I even have [back]
2. And native resolution isn’t working for me on my poor little laptop [back]
3. or dwarfs [back]

Terribly sorry for ignoring you, it’s very rude of me. Time has just flown by and I don’t know where my head is at.

Work consumes much of my time during the week, and alas, my weekends are mostly spent recuperating. Most of the time I feel quite out of control of my own life. I need to rectify this.

I expect it will take drastic measures.

Well, anyhow, I have a new MySpace page up…just to track friends on there. I’m not sure why they’re there…I haven’t figured out what MySpace is really for. What do you do with it? In my free time, I often dabble in World of Warcraft. City of Heroes is gone for me…it’s gotten too boring over there. I know “Inventions” are supposed to be the bee’s knees, but really…why introduce an economy into a superhero game? Either you’re hanging out in the Auction House playing the market, or your on the streets grinding twice as hard to get those rare recipe drops.

I don’t see Superman doing this. Although, I hear Batman makes mean cookies…I don’t think that’s the same kind of recipe.

I’d talk more, but, heh, must get back to work. I’ll try not to be a stranger.