FNFD.BLOG

I had a date. With a woman.

Sweet On Geeks finally came through for me. I got an email last week that someone had sent me an ice-breaker-ish thing on the site (it was a picture of a delicious bass, if that makes any difference), so I had to try to remember how to log in there and check it. I read her profile, and sent her a message about some of the common interests we have, and she wrote back, and I wrote back, and this would have kept up as near as I can tell forever, but Melody stepped in and convinced/threatened me to just ask her to go do something already.

I asked her to meet me at a tea place in Pasadena, and she agreed. We met up around 3 this afternoon, and got some tea and talked until 5:30 or so, and then I asked if she wanted to get some dinner, and she did, so we found a place and got something to eat. And then we went back to the parking area, and I asked for her number, and got it. Which makes me wonder if that will negate the lack of cookies ever coming into my life again if I didn’t get someone’s number by the time Melody got back from Brazil, and then not getting anyone’s number by then.

Filed under: Geek Love
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After several months of installing patches, and reading help message board posts, I finally managed to get Spore to run on my computer. And thus ending any hope that I will ever leave the house other than for work. Well, at least for now, I typically get really involved in some unending minor part of a game and eventually stop progressing through the main plot and then one day stop playing. Which reminds me that my empire in the space phase is primarily an economic one, so all I really do is fly around and buy something in one star system and then try to sell it for a better price elsewhere, set up trade routes, and eventually buy planets from other empires. It certainly beats me needing to find my own planets.

Not that there isn’t a good chance I’ll stop trading and spend all my time terraforming planets to make them more habitable. That one seems like eventually the other empires will notice I’m not doing things for them anymore and then they will stop being my friends. Which as near as I can tell just means they won’t always come running to me when someone attacks them, or some animal on their planet has a disease (which means I need to hunt it down and shoot it with my laser. Spore: It’s not for vegans).

Oh well, the roommate is back tomorrow, so I probably can’t hang out in my room all the time anymore. And if the weather stays like this for a while, I probably won’t anyways. I got outside to do some garden stuff today; After the frost the things that were still alive were pretty dead. I probably could have resurrected one of the tomatoes since it had a few leaves down near the base still alive, but i think it would be better to just get all the grass and weeds out of the plot and start over again.

Filed under: I'm a geek
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Following the thread we have Egg, followed by Comet, followed by ???. I’ll know soon.

After a several year hiatus, Alice is once again in my life. She came over for Thanksgiving, and while I’m not exactly panting at her heels, since it has been a few years (and even I kind of give up after a long enough time), she is easy to talk to. Which for me, is kind of a special case.

After some prodding, I’ve set up a lunch date(?) for Saturday, so that will be interesting. After the last time we had a meal together, I didn’t see her for 3 years. I’m pretty sure the lesson picked up from that time is “move faster” so I think I’m going with that.

I really think there is something special about her. I haven’t had a passport for 14 years, but when I was around her last week, listening to her talk about the places she’s been. I really want to get one and go places. Ideally, with her.

Filed under: Geek Love
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It’s really probably not a good sign when you can look back almost a year in the posts just on the main page.

Ok, so let’s see what’s on the post checklist. Whirlwind summer romance….nope. Travel…nope. Salsa dance class to try to facilitate whirlwind romance…sure, why not.

I’ve been through roughly 22 weeks of salsa classes since my last post. And when I look at it that way, I become a bit more disheartened than I was before I wrote it. Certainly I, technically know a lot of moves, but I just feel that I should be able to remember them outside of class a bit better after that long. I’m also fairly concerned that anyone who has not been in the class with me won’t have the slightest idea of what I’m trying to lead. Hopefully I’m just being a bit pessimistic, but I won’t really know until I actually get out there.

Which kind of leads into the second thing of note which is going on. That being the psychological counseling. The original stated goal was to be able to socially interact with other people. So far I’ve been assigned to read Men are From Mars, Women are from Venus, which is a wonderful resource if you happen to have married someone and need to develop a better understanding of why they currently wish to divorce you. That doesn’t really apply to me though, so I’m not especially interested in finishing the book. It also appears that when I do try to interact with people, I phrase things wrongly, and can’t pick up the difference between what I’m saying an how I should have phrased it. So I’m not really sure where the sessions are going. I’ll stick it out through the end of the year (at which point my health benefits will reset) and see if it seems to be helping.

Work is crazy. The manager is out for maternity leave again (we need to sit her down and explain where babies come from when she comes back), so I’m doing her job and mine, but without the various bits of software that make project management possible. On the plus side, I get to tell people what to do. On the minus side, I get paid the same as before, or possibly less, since there isn’t anyone to approve my overtime, so I don’t get paid for it. And I forgot to write down a lunch break on my timesheet for a day last week, so payroll reclassified some time worked as lunch, and then made me fill out a time off request for a half hour since that took me down to 7.5 hours worked that day. I’m not entirely sure that’s legal. Maybe I’ll need to drop a note to the auditors when they come in after Thanksgiving.

Filed under: General
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Happy Birthday to Me, Happy Birthday to Me, Happy Birthday dear Meeeee, Happy Birthday to Me.

As I mark this milestone of turning 30, I notice this evening that I’m walking slower, my legs hurt, actually, come to think of it, everything hurts.

Now, possibly this has some connection to 7 hours of paintball today. And even if it doesn’t, I think I’ll blame it on that anyways. It was a nice day for it, sunny but not hot and with a cool breeze. The morning games didn’t go all that well for me, I kept getting knocked out really early, but for the afternoon games I either never got hit, or was hit near the end when I’d advanced to far into the other side of the field and some of those players had hung back, possibly waiting for me, but I’ll just chalk that up to that they lack the warrior spirit. Or were doing the smart thing and guarding their flag.

I was pretty much falling asleep on the drive home, so I’m going to go do that now, and will take the evening as it comes. I’ve been out the last two nights for various things, so I think it might be nice to stay home and watch Sunday night Fox stuff.

There had better not be any sort of basketball preempting what I want.

Filed under: General
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I have a new reader, hooray! Good job LinkedIn.

I actually had two network requests this week, from my two readers, so that was moderately interesting in the “I’d better update” kind of way. So, welcome Candice, who knew high school Scott and probably has better blackmail material than just about anyone who can currently find me. I mean emails, IM logs, all that’s easy to fake, but the potential of actual physical letters turning up from the pre-email era (when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, which was possibly just a bit ball of magma, as I vaguely recall), that’s just a whole bunch of potential trouble.

In other news, the move to Pasadena is pretty much complete, so probably no one will ever visit me again since I’m not next to Disneyland. *sigh* And I never did get my picture taken with Eeyore. On the plus side, so far the drive has been mysteriously better than the drive from LA. Possibly I’ve gotten a little better at picking lanes. Possibly the GPS function of my phone got enabled by a firmware upgrade a few weeks ago and it interfaces well with Google Maps Traffic telling me where I am, and where everyone else is stopped (Important note: Do not use Google Maps on your phone while driving, it says so right in the thingy you have to agree to before you can use it.)

Filed under: General
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An afternoon off, and a Firefly marathon on the Sci-Fi Channel, thus keeping me from needing to switch DVDs and decide what episodes I want to see. Which was the original plan before I turned the TV on. What could be better?

Filed under: Scott Not Complaining
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When I got home tonight, I noticed the smell of gas in the apartment. This doesn’t concern me a lot, as there are typically 5 flames burning in my apartment due to various pilot lights, so if I’m smelling gas, it’s not at a level that is dangerous, or things would already have exploded. In any case, one of the pilot lights for the stove had gone out, which has happened a few times before, but does lead me to the conclusion that possibly the apartment is trying to kill me.

In related news, I’m moving to Pasadena over the next few weeks, such that the apartment can try to kill the next residents, or catch on fire, as it sees fit. Meanwhile, I will by spending my time on the various highways, hoping that other motorists catch on fire, but do so well off to the side where I’m not effected, or better yet, somewhere behind me and block that traffic off.

Filed under: General
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It seems that in-line skates and patches of mud hidden in the shadows at the bottom of a hill do not mix. Pretty much as soon as I saw it, I knew I was in trouble. Once one foot mysteriously jumped off to the side, the trouble escalated to…whatever it is that is after trouble, possibly missing time followed by assessment of injury.

Judging by the evidence of direction of scratches on my wrist guards, skates and pads and where I’m sore, and where the patches of mud are on what I was wearing, I have developed the following scenario.

I hit hands, knees, and toes first, off center towards the left. As those points caught on the pavement, I rolled over left hitting my left elbow and butt, finishing on my back, crushing the water bottle on my backpack, and since the backpack elevates me, hitting the top of my head on the ground.

No significant damage to anything, just a few scrapes and bruises. There are some pretty deep cuts in my knee pads though, which I’m thankful are not in my knees. Apparently I had a small tripod with me as well. Now I have a mono-pod.

Filed under: Scott Complaining
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I’m almost certain there was a story in there somewhere, but it got kind of lost in the “someone put the Blair Witch camera work in a cement mixer.” It probably is pretty authentic of what would happen if you gave a camera to someone who has never seen one before and then had him flee New York, but an authentic documentary of what not to do with a camera may not have been the primary goal. I have a fairly strong constitution, but watching this movie made me feel like I’ve been on a really poorly maintained rollercoaster, suffering from headache and nausea.

Other than that, it wasn’t too bad. There was a big monster, things collapsed and exploded, people acted against their own best interests (ie the interest of not being killed) with predictable results. In general, a monster movie. And one in which I hope that somewhere out there there is someone who was able to watch closely enough, long enough to tell me what was going on.

On the plus side, there as a preview for Ironman, which could very well be an actually good movie based on a Marvel comic.

Filed under: I'm a geek, Scott Complaining
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