What I Did On My Internet Vacation, By Greg – Age 29½

It was a dark time for The Rebellion. The Empire had cut off supply lines and there was no communication for weeks on end. Individual rebel cells had to subsist on playing old computer games like Populous and The Sims until supply lines could be re-established. Due to a system wide radio blackout caused by a super star destroyer lurking behind one of the moons of Jupiter, phone lines were reduced to hand held battery operated “cell phones” of marginal quality and range.

Okay… enough of that. I think I’ve butchered George Lucas’ works enough for one week.

Basically I spent my week in internet purgatory being driven mad by the lack of contact with the outside world. I unpacked some of my crap, tried to find the rest of my crap for my move south and when I wasn’t doing either of those I tried to amuse myself by playing some old video games that weren’t internet dependent and doing a little writing for my D&D campaign. All and all a fairly mind-numbingly boring/annoying week.

On the bright side I did manage to go see X-Men 2 with Trevor, Angela and Allan last weekend. It was very good and enjoyable and I think it outshone the first one because you had a group of already well developed characters having fun and going one step further in their development. Plus it was fun to watch Wolvie cut loose and go berserker as he’s been known to do in the comics.

Next weekend should bring about another movie foray as well as the usual suspects and I have made plans to go watch Keanu Reeves say “Whoa!” one more time in Matrix Reloaded. Hopefully it won’t suck, but based on the trailers I’ve seen, I’m looking forward to it regardless.

Anyways. I do believe that It’s time to stop rambling and to go and watch some TV. Army of Darkness is on so I MUST go and watch it.

And Remember… Shop smart. shop S-Mart

Greetings Starfighter…

You have been chosen by the Star League to defend The Frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada.

…

Okay. So it was the best I could come up with on short notice. Geez. Give me a break. I’ve been internet defficient for the past week and a half. My brain has gone to mush without a broadband pipeline to feed me more porn and idiot websites. You see if you can do any better if you were in this situation.

Errr… anyways, in case you hadn’t clued in yet, I am back now and am happily wading through the backlog of spam and things that I’ve missed in the meantime.

I’ll post more about my week long sabbatical/adventure into that scary thing called real life in a few days but for now I have to have a deep and meaningful conversation with my pillow. G’night

A Post! A Post! Huzzah!

Holy crap. Talk about living the life of a lazy fool. I really shouldn’t have stopped writing. I now know for a fact that what they say is true: You have to keep writing every day or you get out of practice, or in my case, you get so lazy that you forget to make posts and eventually you have to kick yourself at 4 a.m. to remember to do it. Damn that procrastination gene of mine. I swear it takes up ¾ of a helix sometimes.

Hullo all. *waves politely to the crowd of 2½* I just thought I’d make a post to say that I won’t be making a post for about a week or so while I move. Ze big bad ISP conglomerate that provides me with that sweet drug known as the internet will take a few days to get off their arses and hook service up in the new place. Oh well, I’m sure I can have fun contemplating my navel in the interim. And no, for those of you who were wondering, this isn’t the big move south yet. It’ just a short jaunt out of the sticks and into ze big city as my parental landlords move into their “retirement” home.

Thankfully though, the migration south of the 49^th still goes forward. The gears are turning, albeit slowly, and all the right bureaucratic peoples have been properly bribed and whatnot so all things said and done I should be stealing a job from some Mexican immigrant by mid-summer. Yay me.

Anyways, I probably should get back to packing… or maybe sleep. Though sleep is good, packing sounds better in the long run though as I keep finding more and more shit that I swear I had already packed. Then again, I could always sleep now and “get up early to work on things”….

….

I know. I laughed out loud at that thought as well. Rather humourous wasn’t it. But seriously, it might work, as long as we redefine early to incorporate any time after 4 p.m. tomorrow.

I’ll keep you in suspense as to what I decide. Maybe I’ll tell you all before I dismantle das komput machine for transport. Or I may just be evil/lazy and post the results when I get my service back.

Either way. Goodnight

Grrrr!

Don’t you hate it when you lose something you rely on daily? For some of you this if may be the car that takes you to work, or a pack of cigarettes, or a can of coke. For me, it’s my computer.

Some of you may think that is sad, but it is my lifeline. I’m a writer and having a hard drive filled with snippets of story ideas, plot outlines, character vingettes and other related paraphenalia that I can’t access is annoying to say the least. Plus there is also the fact that the computer is the cheapest and easiest way for me to communicate with my wife while we’re apart so having a working computer to me, sad or not, is a necessity that I can’t live without.

So anyways… for the last week or so my computer has been making a long drawn out death rattle of a noise. This isn’t surprising as it’s 4+ years old and has been in a constant state of upgrade since the day I got it back when P2 233Mhz was the coolest thing on the block. It’s had a good life, and while I want (and need) a new one, this one is all I can afford so I have to take care of it while I can.

Using the vast powers of psychic knowledge at my disposal, I decduced that the problem was the CPU cooling fan was giving out. Not a good thing to have fail, especially when my comp runs hotter than it should already. So a trip to the local radio shlock ensued and a replacement fan was procured. Bippety Boppity Boo. Replacement complete and everything is kosher again, though the comp is still making noises of it’s impending demise. Oh well I figure, it’s always been a noisy beast. There’s not a whole lot more that I can do.

Later that night, while I was surfing along merrily, the noise stopped and all was quiet. Hrrrm, I think to myself. This can’t be good. So I peek into the case and lo and behold the wee little bugger of a replacement fan had shuffled off this mortal coil and joined the choir invisible. Bereft of life, it rested in peace. It wouldn’t voom if I put four million volts through it. It was an ex-fan….

Right enough of the the Monty Python-isms. The fan was dead. No big deal, I’ll just go take this one back and find a decent one at a different computer store. Trip to the store #1 resulted in a dud fan that went about as far as a talking slug. Back to the store I went and returned el-duddo and garnered myself a replacement.

So go to put in the new fan and everything looks copacetic. Press power to test it and nada. Nothing. Not a sausage. Bugger all. I double check my connections just to make sure nothing is loose. I even went so far as to try the original mr squeaky fan that was the start of this adventure. Still nothing.

Next stop. The almighty guru on top of the mountain… or in my case. My dad, in the basement. I take the wounded beast of a machine to him and Mr. Wizard whips out the old tricorder and pronouces my power supply kaputski. My best guess is that I must have shorted it out somehow when I was replacing things. Either that or karma really IS a bitch.

So, delving into my ever-shrinking pocketbook, I buy me a new powersupply today. And voila all is right in the world once more.

Thus endeth the lesson.

A Nice & Logical Little Article

Found this article on the web and as it was by a writer I respect and admire, thought I’d share it with you all.

Enjoy, or not, as you so desire.

Random Thoughts

Found this quote somewhere and it pretty much sums up my feelings on the subject.

Arguing over the internet is like competing in the Special Olympics.

Even if you win you are still retarded.

Got A Comment

I hate it when I jump to a new commenting system only to have it fail due to excessive overuse after a few months. Hopefully Haloscan will get off their arses and finish their server upgrades soon so as I can eventually read what you idjits have to say about my recent blogs.

Yup. I am shallow and narcissistic. *grin*

Lo And Behold… An American Politician With A Brain!

I managed to find this link while I was randomly surfing about today, and for once… I actually agree with a politician. I’m both shocked and pleasantly surprised by this. Now, I only hope that more people believe this way and that the monstrosity of war that the current US Government is promoting will finally stop rearing it’s ugly head and slink back to the dark cave where it belongs and never trouble the world again.

A Guardian Devil?

Sooooo, today I went and saw Daredevil, the latest adaptation of a Marvel comic book superhero to hit the screen and I must say that I am more than suitably impressed.

It was good. Admittedly, it’s not as good as Spider-man was, but then Daredevil has never been the mass-market hot property of the Marvel universe that Spidey and the X-Men have been and comparing the two as similar would be a disservice to both. So I won’t.

Spider-man was good and enjoyable for it’s “feel-good, underdog does the right thing and gets the girl” spirit and message. Daredevil on the other hand, has always been darker, grittier and much less “comic book-ish” than most of the Marvel universe. A mature hero with both emotional ghosts and physical disability, without all the costumed trappings of the goofy, golden age of comics to clutter the landscape. He is, in essense, the Marvel universe’s version of “Batman”.

Now I’m not a Daredevil afficionado by any means, but after working in and owning a comic store, I’ve learned more than a few things about the character through osmosis and whatnot. I know the basic backstory and most of the ambiant characters well enough to go in to the movie with a general idea of what’s going to happen. I wasn’t dissapointed. All of the major character developments and historical landmarks were there for all to see. Sure there were a few liberties taken here and there — The Kingpin being a bigass black mofo rather than the chubby/obese white guy he is in the comic being the most obvious — but overall they didn’t change my enjoyment of the movie one bit. In fact they probably increased it because the way they were incorporated, fit the storyline seamlessly.

The effects were much better than I was expecting and the trailers don’t even hint at what you see in the film. This was a more than pleasant surprise and for once a trailer didn’t give away the whole movie in 30 seconds.

And for all those who are hardcore Daredevil, or at least comic book, fans, there are more than a few inside references and homages to the Daredevil franchise, it’s writers and artists that are fun to watch (and listen) for.

Overall a very enjoyable movie and a good waste of a couple of hours. If nothing else though, you’ll get to see a really decent trailer for X-Men 2 that has some new footage. Plus if you’re lucky you’ll also glimpse a trailer for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen which looks good and is something I have high hopes for, based on the original and masterful Alan Moore comic book.Though… I am a tad worried that it’s become very “hollywood-ized” as it’s apparently being referred to as LXG which both baffles and offends me to no end. And another thing… I’ve also always pronounced it EXTRA-ordinary rather than extraordinary. It just seemed a little more proper when referring to these characters.

I should stop before I start ranting here.

Psychic Flashback

For your amusement… It’s the Flash Mind Reader.