podcasting 2 Comments

So Tired

Today at work was a pretty blah day. Worked on some boring reports that are sure to put anyone to sleep. I made it through, though.

Then I walked out to my car and saw the flat tire. Nice. Waited for my two co-worker guys to walk out to the parking lot and asked them, “Do you think that’s too flat to drive on?” Oh, yeah.

Borrowed James’s cell phone to call Aaron and let him know I might be late, all while the manly-men are switching out the nail-ridden tire for the donut. They changed the tire in six minutes flat, while I was on the phone. I thanked James and Rob profusely and drove home on the donut.

I had about two minutes with Aaron before he had to leave for work. During that time, he gave me a hug and I got to open the Kujibiki Unbalance patches I ordered from Japan for this weekend’s cosplay. Anyway, he took the other car to work, so he wouldn’t be driving on the donut, and so the Contour will be in position for me to take it to work tomorrow myself, instead of the Kia.

Once Aaron left, it was time to go vote. I’m relatively new at this voting thing, having only become politically active at the last presidential election. Our polling place had changed, since the school where we voted last time is now under renovation. I had no trouble finding it, though, and beelined past the NBC 24 camera before they could get a shot with me in it.

I really, really dig the new touch-screen voting machines. Much better than the friggin’ Scantron-style bubble sheets we had to fill out last time. Having people from the same neighborhood in the same room was kind of fun, too, and made me long for the days of real community. (The Browns fan behind me telling the Steelers fan in front of me that she shouldn’t be wearing that Steelers jacket made for some surprisingly pleasant banter.)

So, voting done, I went home via the gas station to fill up. The Kia had less than an eighth of a tank left, and I filled it for $20.05, which is a welcome change from the $28 of yore (i.e. summer).

OK. Tire changed, husband hugged, voted, gassed up, and back home. Time for food. Threw some sausages in the microwave and voila, dinner is served.

Scarfed that down. Now it’s time to get down to business.

This evening was supposed to entail me researching and outlining tomorrow’s podcast and finishing up my Kujian helmet. Instead, I ended up talking on the phone with Ann, the new LSM Public Relations committee chair, for 20 minutes about what we should do for press releases. Started looking for some podsafe music for my podcast.

Aaaaand I’m done. I am completely exhausted, and it’s not even 10:00 yet. I want to get my podcast done and uploaded tomorrow, so that my biweekly schedule isn’t totally out the window by show #2, and so that I have Thursday to do the last-minute finishing-up of my cosplay outfit. I really wanted to work on that tonight, but I’m afraid I’d fuck it up at this point.

I’m so tired, I don’t even want to add to my NaNo or play Civ 4. Now *that’s* tired. Ugh.

Maybe I need to print out all my low-carb materials, bring them to work, and forego my lunchtime walk in favor of scripting out my podcast. Not a bad idea, although I’ll miss my outside time.

*checks weather.com*

Hmm… mid 50s and windy. Not horrible weather for walking, actually. Oh, well.

randomness

Gaming Update

Decided to suck it up and buy a new video card. Got a GeForce 4 MX 4000 from Best Buy for sixty bucks. Now Civ 4 runs great (or good enough for me), and my computer actually seems faster now that it’s not devoting 96MB of its own RAM to the onboard video.

I figured it was a good investment, anyway. WTF.

reviews 1 Comment

Fan-Freaking-Tastic

So, I saved five bucks by getting the new Civilization IV Presell Edition from Amazon with free shipping, which meant that, yes, I got the cool spiral-bound manual and fold-out Tech Tree and keyboard shortcut map and neato box and all that. For only $44.99!

It took a while to get it, what with the free Super Saver shipping and all, so when it arrived, all my willpower to resist playing Civ 4 went straight out the window.

Then I tried to play it.

Dude, where’s my map? I can’t see anything! I thought at first that maybe I just hadn’t explored far enough, but once I started building cottages and roads and pastures and shit, and I *still* couldn’t see, I realized something was terribly wrong.

Dude, where’s your head?! This looks like the outtakes from Shrek — you know, where they accidentally rendered Donkey inside-out? And his teeth and eyeballs were on the outside, and his fur was all spiky? Yeah.

Updated my video drivers, no help there. Tried a Windows Update, but I’m good there, too. Finally, I found a forum off of the 2kgames website, where I learned all about the “T&L” graphics thingie I read about on the box:

Solver (forum staff member) says:

T&L is a requirement, and that Intel graphics craptroller doesn’t have it.

Yes, indeedy, my Dell Dimension 3000 has an integrated Intel graphics card.

*pauses for giant hissy fit*

OMG, Civ is one of my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE games. I never needed anything fancy with my graphics card before. I’m not a big PC gamer, really. I’m content with Civ and Starcraft and occasionally Warcraft.

I’m not sure who to be pissed at: the makers of Civ 4, who assumed that everyone who’s anyone would have a graphics card that supports T&L (which I’m honestly still not sure what it is which stands for Transform & Lighting, an apparent staple of 3D graphics), or the nice people at Dell and Intel, who didn’t integrate what seems to be a fairly normal and not at all cutting-edge technology into their graphics cards.

In either case, the game is currently fucking unplayable on my machine. I either have to a.) hope to God it plays on Aaron’s Dell Dimension 4600, and that he won’t mind if I bogart his computer while he’s gone at work, b.) spend X number of dollars on a new graphics card (does my computer even have another slot for a graphics card?), or c.) cry a lot and bang my head on my keyboard.

Fuckity fuck fuck goddamn mother fuck.

It looked like it was going to be so super fucking cool, too. I am severely pissed right now.

FUCK.

(And, yes, I know it’s just a game. But I’ve been super-geeked to play this game for over a month now, and this is really shitty.)

Update: Wish I would have known about this site before I blew $45 on Civ 4:

Oh, and FYI? I am not buying any of the fucking $300 video cards they recommend. Maybe I’ll dig up some reviews of the Diamond Stealth S80 or the GeForce4 MX 4000 or something. Effectively turning my cool $45 game into a $100 game.

*sigh* Just chalk another one up to me being a big stupid fuckhead sometimes.

anecdotes

Restrooms

The first floor women’s restroom at my work has three stalls. This is not usually a problem, as we don’t all have to go at the same time, so three stalls are sufficient.

However, the middle stall has been out of order this week.

Incidentally, the middle stall is everyone’s favorite. The stall closest to the door is the handicapped stall, which our resident wheelchair-bound employee mocked openly as being entirely too small to fit a wheelchair into. (Another single-person restroom was constructed for her use.) The stall farthest from the door is awkward, as the toilet is slightly off-center, so the user has to check between her knees before sitting to ensure that the target is, in fact, locked-on.

The broken middle stall caused a minor traffic-flow problem around lunchtime, when a group of women attending some sort of training session at our building swarmed the restroom. This required me to wait in a five-person-deep line for my turn to pee. Five minutes of my life wasted; not that big of a deal, I guess.

The broken stall caused a problem of a wholly different sort later this afternoon, as the toilet-choking load of shit still in the bowl began to smell. Bad. I dislike spending a short amount of time in a wretched-smelling bathroom considerably more than I dislike spending a lengthy amount of time in a normal-smelling one.

The odor wasn’t bad enough to induce gagging, but it was very unpleasant. Just knowing that someone’s shit was festering and fermenting behind that closed door was disturbing enough.

Update, 4:15pm: Someone finally made the stinky load go down the hole, but the john is still faintly redolent of shit, and the middle stall is still marked out of order.

genealogy 2 Comments

Happy Halloween

In other cultures and in various world religions, what we Americans call “Halloween” is celebrated as a remembrance of departed loved ones. For example, the Japanese celebrate the autumn equinox as a time to remember and honor their ancestors. The Mexican Day of the Dead is a party to eclipse all parties (from what I can tell, anyway — I didn’t take Spanish, so I’m not well-versed in the culture). Samhain, the Wiccan observance, focuses on the thin veil between this world and the next. This is, of course, a gross overview of these holidays, and there are many more besides these.

In recent years, I’ve taken to celebrating Halloween in a unique way that’s meaningful to me. I consider myself an agnostic, so observing Samhain or any other faith-based or religious rituals would be hypocritical and almost rude. I also have no social life, and very few local friends, so costume parties are out. 🙂

Seriously, though. What I do is genealogy.
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