Posted 9:39 AM by Tim Rafuse
New Year's Eve day.

No exciting plans for today, other than the termination of my contract. Yep, in about 9 hours, I'll be unemployed. Kinda sucks to be leaving, especially when nobody else is about. It makes for a nice quiet leave, but that's both good and bad. It's nice, because there's no fanfare, but on the other hand, I wouldn't mind a little fanfare.

Had some trouble getting onto the network today. Had to get Info Sec involved, so that was fun. All this hassle for my last day. They suggested that I get someone to make a few changes to my file, but I doubt that it's worth the effort.

I got word today that a friend of mine is engaged, has been for one week now. Congratulations! Woohoo! I don't know his fiancee as well as I'd like to, but that's only because I moved shortly after they hooked up. I've got no worries though.

Cleaning my desk today. A lot of stuff goes to the destruction bin. That's a fun little bin too. I can just imagine the tortures they put all that paper through to make sure its good and destroyed.

There's a lot of work still to be done this week. I've got to help with the packing, sort out what's going to happen and when, who's going to do what, and so on and so on. Crazy hectic week.

I want to put a few reflections on the year here. I'm having trouble thinking of them all. Hmm. My oldest started school, that was pretty interesting. There was the whole September 11 thing, but I'm not going to go into that - you'll see more than enough on it today and probably all this week. My youngest needed to have caps put on four teeth. The fifth anniversary of my wedding to Brenda happened, and my parent's 32 anniversary went also. There were highs and lows, and ups and downs, but all things got through in the end.

Next year will be 2002. I don't know what to expect. I'm starting the year unemployed and looking for work. Things may get worse before they get better, but they will get better.

Posted 6:47 PM by Tim Rafuse
Intersting happening for today: exploding frozen pop. I love physics, especially when its funny. Cold pop throws a bit of chemistry in there too, but it is funny. FYI, if you get pop below freezing, it doesn't freeze in the can. Well, it will, but you have to get it really cold. We had a can of pop in the trunk of the car and it was really cold. The pop had started to freeze, which made it puff out. We left it in the trunk and went for a ride, which didn't help matters. It froze enough to pop the top off it (this opens it really fast, especially after it was all shaken up.

In normal weather it would spray pop all over the place - in cold weather it does nearly the same thing. When you open a really cold pop, that's when it freezes. If the gas comes out, it gets colder faster (freezing fast). The pop blew, and sprayed (like always), but it froze almost instantly. This meant that there were little hunks of frozen pop in the trunk, some pop icicles on the trunk lid and a little less than a half can of slushed pop in the can (slushed by the time I got to it anyway). Well, maybe it's not as funny when you describe it, but it is funny. Tasty ice too.

Helga (the other computer) is still giving me some issues. I tried to reinstall the memory chip (thinking that it may have just not been seated properly), and that didn't work. The floppy drive is now giving me issues, so there isn't any way to get files off of the HD without installing the drive into another system. I may just do that, but I'm hesitant to. That will probably cause the whole system to crash (leaving me with one very loaded system and one dead system).

There's a lot of talk about what we're going to do now that I am out of work. There's a number of options, but I'm not sure just what's going to happen. Scary times ahead.

I'm still on the quest for a good deck. I've worked out the numbers, and I need a deck that can (and repeatably does) win the game by about the 6th turn. Total overrun. The tournament format requires you to be able to play about 1 game every 18 minutes, or about 12 minutes of actual gameplay per game. I'm thinking of a number of scenarios to do it. Until I find something that does that, the quest will continue.

Posted 6:58 PM by Tim Rafuse
I feel like such a tech-geek today. Helga (my second system) managed to not boot yesterday. Repeated tries were to no avail. I figured that the CMOS battery had finally given up. It had been very flaky before, so I decided that this was the cause. I went into a parts shop and nabbed a new battery (those things are expensive, eh?). Put that in, the system at least booted, but now the Registry Checker for Win98 was saying the registry was invalid (thus auto-fixing and rebooting). Some effort later, I managed to get the CMOS setup properly, and try a run through safe mode.

Now, I gotta tell ya, Helga is one of those transition computers. Half PCI slots half the other kind (USB?), plus four slots of DIMM and 2 slots of SIMM RAM (the long and short kind anyhow - I've forgotten too much terminology). So, anyway, safe mode tells me that the high memory area is flaky. So, I pull the SIMM chip (the long chip), and the system boots fine, no issues, no errors. So, either the slot is flaked, or the chip is flaked. Either way, the memory is cut in half for Helga. That slows her down a lot.

Anyhow, these sorts of things never fail to plague me. Whenever I make a small hardware change, the whole system wants attention.

Posted 4:01 PM by Tim Rafuse
I got official word today. No contract extension. It's actually a day earlier than I expected. I expected to hear about it at about noon on the 31. Woohoo. Six weeks of trying to get some information pays off, I learn that I'm not going to be continued a whole day earlier than I expected.

So, we've been in emergency planning mode since about noon today. There are a lot of options available to us, especially since we're forced into paying the rent for January whether we want to or not. Since we're paying for it anyway, there's a lot of sentiment towards using it. Sticking around C-town for most of the month. That's good and bad, because it means that we're stuck without any real way to make up bills and whatnot. I think we might just be able to float it, though. Bren and I will be discussing it at length.

Either way, it looks like I'll be making a series of trips north, (through Michigan since Buffalo is blocked right now) and looking for work like mad.

There's a lot of planning to be done, we'll see how it goes. Teardown of the appartment has already started. We'll be dismantling major furniture for a while it seems.

Posted 11:16 PM by Tim Rafuse
I lost a blog today. That sucks.

Anyway, some changes to the page have been made. I do have a lot more work to do making sure that all of the pages have a similar format. Check the main page to check it out.

More things to come.

Posted 10:51 AM by Tim Rafuse
Well, Blogger went down and I haven't been able to blog for two days now. I had things I wanted to say too. First, let me catch everyone up. I'm back in Cleveland. The drive down wasn't bad, the snow held off for us. There was a problem with me driving (too sleepy), but other than that, it was fine.

Burned a spot on my carpet today. Which sucks. Burnt my fingers at the same time. Gah. Tried to light a candle and it just didn't work out.

I'm taking it pretty easy for work today.

I've forgotten most of what I wanted to write here, which sucks since I was really hoping to write something this week. I've had a few storyline things in my head, but I haven't had time to get them down either. I'm starting to think that the content bit isn't as hard as it seems, it's just taking the time to write it all down.

I recall one thing. I've been thinking about getting the website here spruced up. I had some very ambitious plans the last time that I did an overhaul, and I really didn't meet up to them all. So, I've been thinking of once again going into the works and putting up something new. I've found that I don't have time to do all the things originally planned. At this point, it looks like I'll be keeping the personal info section, including the personal interests, etc. I've got to keep "All Things Dark and Evil" in there too, and the blogs of course. I think that I'll be dropping the programming section, probably melding it into some part of my interests. Yes, the site will devolve back into a site about me. Which will, of course, suck. But, I'll be getting content going with it :) I may move the blog to the front page to keep everyone up to date. We'll see.

In other news, there's still no news about work. That means that we stay the course. For me, that means following the last known instruction. Yeah, probably not the best plan, but certainly servicable.

I'm still plannning for the Bingeman's tourney, I think I've settled on a colour set. UB. That seems pretty solid for choices. But, I'm likely to change my mind. I was reminded about how outright broken Green can be at times. Blastoderm, Ernham Djinn and the like. I may have to look into GW or GWR.

Off to the design tables then. Lets see what I can do with this site.

Posted 10:43 AM by Tim Rafuse
Decision time. Here's the thing. I've got to get back to work for tomorrow. The only way to do that is to get out of here tonight or today. Now, I don't really want to leave today, so I'm checking the weather on the way down to see what it's going to be like. So far, it looks like snow through all of our drive in the US. I'm thinking that leaving earlier would be later, but I'd love to stick around a little longer.

The girls had "second Christmas" today. We didn't open the gifts sent from my parents on the 23 (first Christmas) because it would seem unfair to everyone else. So, we did the two Christmas thing. It all works out in the end. Though I imagine it will just confuse the girls. It's the same sort of thing with birthdays too. The girls get 2 each. One on their day, and one shared celebration between the two of them (they're close to each other, so this is easier for a party-thing). I think they're going to be very confused about these gift celebrations.

My dad is doing better. The operation was a success and the doctor cites no complications. That's good stuff there. Dad said he was looking forward to turkey dinner, and mom said that she didn't know who was gonna cook it for him. They're funny that way.

I've been mulling the future for a while. It's nearly ready :) No, seriously though, I have been giving a lot of thought to things. As it stands, I've got about 3 or 4 days of work (depending on if I go back today) for the people at work to give me their decision. I'm going to be making a lot of phone calls. Given that we're running this to the wire, it seems only fair that we make a few emergency plans, to ensure that we're not totally stuck in the cold.

I have two such plans in place. Both of them involve places that I can stay if I don't get continued. Wayne and Jeff have been very gracious in their offers and agreements. Thanks!

Anyhow, no matter what happens, I'm still going to be looking for work elsewhere. I'm not fully satisfied with what I'm doing now, so I need something that will be better for me.

Ok. Wishful thinking time. I've been considering several projects which will ultimately load me with things to do indefinately. Among my choices are programming, networking, painting, art, webbuilding, and more things. Part of this comes from the search for a new job. While I'm looking, I need to be doing something constructive. For me, that would mean either setting up a network (a small one for practicing on), or working on an application, or working up a new web page design for this site. Of course, the big one would be to start training for my MCP, or for me to get started on a Masters degree from some university.

Of course, being ambitious, I'd love to get all of that going at once. Build the network, design a web site for it. Work on a few VB apps for the network, which will help the MCP, once that's all done, do a few other apps, and be on my way with things, hosting, games, who knows. The main problem is, all those things take time. A lot of time. And some take money.

For the network, I'd need a hub, and cables. I've got 2 systems, which is enough for a very small network, assuming I go with a redirector service or a standalone cable modem (or DSL). I'd love to get a third box and run up either UNIX/LINUX or NT on it for web hosting. With a cable modem it shouldn't be that difficult to post a few pages and get my own domain set up. I'd have to get all that arranged, and I'd love a stable location to do it from. I'm sure I can get that worked out if we move though.

I've got a few small ideas for games or apps that I can run in client/server modes, so that's good, and I"m sure that I can incorporate them into the MCP studying. It's a lot of planning and design work to be done, but I figure that I can get a little help from Wayne.

Bah. Too much dreaming probably. We'll see what comes of what.

Posted 2:55 PM by Tim Rafuse
Well, I'm torn on thoughts right now. First, I went out to go skating with the girls. I left my skates at home, assuming I'd be able to rent a pair. No luck. So, no skating for me. Actually, very little skating for anyone. Bren's skates are terrible, and hurt her feet, Julissa's are good, but they hurt her feet too. So, we went to Canadian Tire and looked at skates. They each got a new pair. Why not? We can spare the cash, and they're cheaper here than anywhere else.

While at Can Tire, I wandered off with Hannah. She wanders into the gun isle (I thought they stopped selling guns?). Anyhow, this is also in the sports section, and surprise! They have paintball guns! That's pretty neat, I think. I have a sort of thing for paintball, since it's very cool, in my opinion. Of course, Brenda doesn't think so. They had some low-end guns for sale there, the cheapest coming in under $50. If I had the cash and opportunity (and a play group), I might have gotten it. But with that comes things like paintballs, facemask (more important than the balls, really), CO2 cartridges, and probably a few other minor things (like squeegees and such). It would probably be one of those happy sales where I'd drop over $100 on something neat. Sales people love it when you do that.

Now, for the bad news. My dad was rushed to the hospital today. My mom called while I was out. See, I'm about a 24 hour drive away from them. Apparently, his gall bladder is totally shot. So, he's in for emergency surgery to have it removed. I envy my brother at times like this. He's still near home, so he can just hop in a car and get there in an hour (or probably less). Actually, he's supposed to be home for Christmas, so he's probably right there.

I'm very upset about the whole thing, and I wish someone had been at home when I called. I came right up to write a few emails to people I know and this blog. So, I suppose I'm kinda hiding from it right now. Anyhow, if he's fine, I'll probably call home a few times this week and make sure things are fine, but I won't head out that way. I don't see it helping anyone. But, if he's not doing well, or theres complications, or if he dies or something, then I'm booking something and either flying out, taking the train, or stealing a car and driving there. Of course, I'm hoping he'll be alright.

I've got a few emails to write, and I expect I'll blog on this a little more... gotta take a look at the weather net too.

Posted 8:37 AM by Tim Rafuse
Strange thing I'm working on today. I'm searching the net for information on Rum. I don't drink, so this is why it's strange. My wife's family's name is also the name of a village in Guyana, so it's kind of interesting to see the they have a distillery. My father-in-law has been looking to get ahold of some 12 year old rum. It's been sold out, and that's not the kind of thing that comes back quickly.

I think I may be on to something.

I had the opportunity to go out and get a Hot Chocolate with a friend of mine. I rarely see him. That's the animator friend I mentioned yesterday. He reminded me that he's not a cartoonist, but an animator. That's cool though. He toook a look at my sketchbook, so that's pretty cool too.

We had a good talk, which was very nice. Apparently, I'm the source of a lot of stories for his friends, and they seem to think I'm interesting. Well, I can't say, but it's nice to be thought of that way.

Snow today. Real, full-bodied snow. I haven't had a snowy day this year, so I think this is probably fitting. For some reason, snow tends to get me into the Christmas spirit.

We moved Christmas. Maybe I said that? No matter, I'll say it again. We moved christmas to yesterday, so that all the in-laws could make it at once. It was very nice, and we got some video of it. Very harried, but I didn't feel as pressured as I did last year. I tend to get all my christmas presents very early (September or so), so there's very little for me to open on Christmas day. That's fine with me. This year, I feel like my dad. People get me food. I guess they know that I like to eat :)

I got a huge block of Extra Old Cheddar from my father-in-law. He got a block for my dad as well, since we both like the stuff. I also got some nice chocolates.

I've got a lot of "pre-christmas" running about to do today. More if I have time later...

Posted 9:13 AM by Tim Rafuse
Christmas holiday greetings to all out there!

Its the 23 today! We, that is, my family and I, have moved our Christmas ahead to today. We'll have a much smaller celebration again on the 25 with the rest of the Christian world.

We're going to church today, which I think is good. I don't get out to church enough anymore.

There's no snow here. I was very much of the impression that there was a foot of snow here already, like there was last year. But no, there's no snow. I mean, there are patches of the white stuff, but those are the old hardened piles left over from the shoveling and ploughing. Other than that, there's no snow. Its raining today too, which means that there could be snow of the temp drops enough, but that's not likely. I almost don't want it to bother snowing, since it'll be just a hassle when it comes time to leave.

I managed to semi-surprise Brenda last night. It's not easy to wrap something without her at least getting wind of it. So, she knew I had something for her, just not what, or where it was. FYI, I got her the new Sting CD, 'cause she loves Sting and his music.

I'm looking forward to tonight, at least, since I'll get to talk to a friend of mine that I rarely ever see. He's an animator (I guess "cartoonist" really says something different), and he's very cool. It's been about 6 months since I last saw him, and I'm looking forward to catching up. Besides, if I need to, I might have to crash at his place for a short period, and I'd rather be sure where he is :) heehee.

I've been playing a bit of magic with Lloyd, but he only has one deck. It works well though, nearly wiping me out when I was playing stasis. I managed to pull it out though, which reminds me to continue playing as long as I can still do something. The power of Morphling is amazing at times.

I've been reading Narbonic lately, a very cool comic about a mad scientist who's trying to take over the world. Some of the coolest bits are where the mad scientists justify things... like, when one scientist kills a lab henchman with a death ray, when asked why, she's like, "hello? I had a death ray!" It's very cool.

At this point, I only have 6 weeks to prepare a deck for the Bingeman's tourney. And I have nothing ready. We'll see what I can get started.

Posted 12:48 PM by Tim Rafuse
Ahh... things like this suck. I've been trying to resolve some of the work issues related to billing. There's been a number of snafus with billing, and who's been billed for what. Basically, things are messed. I did sort of know that this would be coming up. I've just been dreading it. Blah.

Anyhow, what this does, it is holds me back from leaving here until about, oh.. at least 1PM. An hour later than I wanted to be here. Of course, I'm not billing any of this time, because that would cause a few more issues. So, I''m no working either. Gah. If I didn't need the cash so much I wouldn't bother. Just another reason to try looking into something else I suppose.

That good feeling from this morning is starting to wane. Ok, it's nearly gone... but, what're ya gonna do?

Posted 10:27 AM by Tim Rafuse
Woo. New day. Feeling good about today. Probably because I had a good night's sleep, and I'm not working very long today.

I got a present today. A little mental/physical challenge thing. Very cool. Here's the deal: There's cube within another cube. The big cube is filled with water (and sparkles), and there are 6 balls in there. Three of them are pink, and float. Three are black and sink. I got the game with the three black balls in the small box, and the pink balls outside it. I figure that the challenge is to get them to trade places. Seems simple? Well, it should be pretty simple, but there's a little bubble of air in there that makes it a little difficult (if you get the air in the small box, it no longer sinks, but instead floats weirdly). It's very distracting. It took me a bit, but I managed to get all 6 balls into the small box.

I'm heading out today, vacation time. A nice 7 to 8 hour drive to Ontario, and we'll be there. Of course, this means a number of stops along the way, then the border check through, and so on... but overall, a nice trip. I'm going to try to keep that in mind.

Anyhow, other information. Wayne finally posted the tourney info for February. Fact or Fiction is restricted now (yeah, this is Type 1). That's not a big hit to me, because I never bothered to play with it that much, so I never experienced that kind of raw power. So, it won't bother me now. It actually frees up 3 spaces in the deck for me.

I nabbing an early lunch today, and then heading home shortly after. Which reminds me that it seems like everyone is going here an there this year. Wayne is headed back to NS, as are a few other friends of mine. Another friend is going from Switzerland to NS (his job stint in Switzerland is done), and I've got another friend in Quito, Ecuador. He's not coming home, but he is running about the countryside there. Hope he's having fun. Hi!

I've been thinking about running about the world too. The job that he's got is with a company in Canada that sends people worldwide to do tech stuff, help out with other governments and such. It sounds like a lot of fun really. But you have to be willing to live away from anyone you know, and be potentially stuck in a foreign country for a while. It does sound cool. If I wasn't married and such, I'd probably have done it already. Though, if I wasn't married, everything would probably be totally different, so it's not worth wondering about.

I am somewhat considering it as a possibility, maybe we could do something that takes the summer months or something? Africa sounds like it could be a cool place to visit. We'll see if anything comes of anything.

Posted 10:44 PM by Tim Rafuse
Last post for today. I went skating with the family tonight. I'm not much of a skater unfortunately. However, I find that I can do better if I just forget to think about what I'm supposed to be doing with my feet, etc. So, I feel like I'm doing a lot better. I still don't have any kind of stamina, but that'll come.

I do like skating, its the falling down that I don't like. I haven't fallen yet, so I'm alright, but I figure that it's only a matter of time.

Posted 4:16 PM by Tim Rafuse
More babble. Why not put all my thoughts online, eh? I'll wire a web server directly into my brain, and then you can get a reproduction of all my thoughts. Wouldn't that be scary?

Ok. First off, I've been thinking about schools. One of my options for "what to do now" is school. Another is to keep working where I am, and another is to get a new job. There's more (like get a new job, while going to school, or start your business up again, etc), but well, I guess I just went into them. Anyhow.

Thinking about school, I get the feeling that the best plan is to take a few years and work on my Masters. If I plan to go to school, that is. I don't see how it would hurt that much to take a few night classes anyhow, and get some of the credits for a Masters anyway. If I get the time and money. The thing that's been holding me back is thinking about what I'd want to study for a Masters. I mean, I'll be doing Comp Sci, but what area? I've been interested in NLP through Neural Netwoks, using Genetic Algorithms and fuzzy logic, but that's been done. I'd have to research it before jumping in anyhow, see where the research is going, and what's been done. I figure that alone could take me a year or so just to get up to speed again. Gah.

Anyway. One question that haunted me was whether or not a NN (Neural Net) system would be able to determine grammatical rules, given an random start state and a set of recorded conversations. Let me recap something for you. Some people think that in order to prove that NNs learn something, they need to start from a random connection state, and adapt until the process is successful. Think about that for a minute. If you were shown a game like chess, and told to play it, without being told the rules, conditions for winning or other information, would you be able play a good game? No. Of course not. What if you lost the game every time you made a mistake, and then had to start over? Would you eventually get the rules of the game? Maybe. But it would take a lot of games, and you'd lose a lot. Try playing chess against a 2 or 3 year old. Just put the pieces out and move one. See what they do. I feel this is the same situation.

Now, lets look at the other camp. Suppose you know how to play chess. You're playing a grandmaster, and if you lose, you're whipped or beaten with heavy objects. Are you going to learn? Maybe. If you're a computer, though, I doubt that you'll work out the ability to think a few moves ahead, unless you get into quantifying the relationship between moves. And that's gonna get complicated.

Ok. I'm straying and getting confusing. Let's simplify. Tic-tac-toe. If you sit with a 2 year old and draw the game and put an X in a square, what does the child do? They probably follow your lead, and draw an X. Ok. So that won't work. We need to tell them the basic rules "Draw an O". But you've given them that. They didn't learn it (you may have to remind them a lot). So, maybe they can learn how to play better? Well, yes. They probably can learn how to play better, but while they're learning, do you play your best, or just play to play? If you play your best, there is no way that an opponent can possibly win the game (FYI, Tic--Tac-Toe is a game that can be played to a draw every game with equally skilled players, and there is a formulaic method for playing which ensures a draw or win). Again, straying. A diagram would help but I'm not able to put one up right now.

Lets skip the discussion and say that I think that there are some rules (when related to games) that need to be given, and others that need to be learned. A rule which cannot be broken (the "one mark a turn" and "I'm X, you're O" rules for example) have to be given to the learning system, but meta-rules (like this is the best response to such a play) need to be learned. I'm just not sure that meta-rules can be learned from a system which starts at fully randomized values. Of course, part of the problem is working out a self analyzing and correcting mechanism for the network. To really do this, the network would need to analzye not only the most recent action, but also all previous actions leading to the outcome. If the system wins the game, then it needs "praise" for not just the winning move, but also for all the moves up to the winning move (since they allowed the win), and conversely, if the game is lost, then it needs "punishment" for the losing move, but also for any move leading up to the loss. This is easier to do with games where the winner can be determined easily, but not so when the game is complex (the math gets big fast), or where the win/loss state is difficult to determine.

Ok. Steering this around and getting out of here. Basically, I'm really interesting in NNs, and anyone wishing to make me babble about them, and how I figure I could teach them a game like Tic-Tac-Toe, Checkers or Chess should maybe talk to me. Anyone wondering what this has to do with NLP should maybe ask me too... but expect a more philosophical bent to the talk.

Posted 1:38 PM by Tim Rafuse
Blah.

That's today. Its things like this that get me going. Like what? Well, overreactions. Ok, maybe they don't get me going, but they do add a lot of stress to my day. Ok people, lets figure things out, ok?

Anyway, enough on that subject.

Tired today. No surprise there. Up until 2AM last night, and 1AM or so all the rest of the week, means that I"m runing on low power for today. Caffeine. Need it. My precious. Heehe.

Anyhow, the deal goes like this. I get to work today because they have something to keep me busy, but I don't have a new location to do billing. So, guess who gets stuck with the billable hours? Yep, the people already complaining about the 20 hours I "overbilled" them last week. Not my problem, lady.

On top of the heap today is me thinking about doing some comic work. I mean, I've got some time, and pencils, and paper, why not do a little up? Probably because I've got other things to work on.

Ok. That's enough.

Posted 11:00 AM by Tim Rafuse
Could not get online to Blogger yesterday. Gah. So much I wanted to say too... most of it lost now.

Anyhow, work life still sucks. Something on the order of 42 misplaced, overbilled hours to clear up. Ah. Whoops? And well, what did you expect me to do?

That's not the point here today. Yesterday, I left work early, no regrets, since I couldn't handle all the blah anymore. Went shopping with Jeff (who's on forced leave from work until January). I had thought about going to see Lord of the Rings, but passed in the end, citing that Bren wanted me home. She did. I got home, she went out for a bit. Which is good for her.

Later that evening, Jeff called and said that he and Dave were going. He'd even spot me the money to go. So, I went. We got there about 9:50 for the 10:30 showing. So, having nothing better to do, we played in the overpriced arcade. Jeff played a game with a lot of shooting in it, and I heckled him the whole time. He finally got shot up enough and made me play so that he could heckle me. He needs to work on his heckling. But, I showed him anyhow, since I got further on 1 quarter than he did. We then played T2 Judgment Day (which I hadn't played in forever). Dave was nice enough to heckle both of us a bit, and supply quarters for replays :)

After that, Jeff played a bit of Silent Scope. He's not sniper material - then again, neither am I... unless tac nuking the enemy from orbit counts.

We managed to burn 30 mins in the arcade, so we found our seats and proceeded to heckle the before the movie slides that tell you fascinating bits about other movies. Well, some anyhow. Then, the commercials started. Now, I must say that this is a fairly new thing for me. Most theatres I go to do not bother with the commercials. They go right into the trailers. Anyhow, after a commercial about something, and another commercial about a car (or picking up hot women in the desert, I wasn't quite sure - I just know it had something to do with a short black dress).. umm yeah. Well, the trailers started. The Spiderman movie looks like it could be worth the effort. I've classed it under "effects" however, so that means that I'm not expecting a plot. It does have Green Goblin in it though, so that's cool. He's my favourite Spiderman villian. You gotta love a hallowe'en-themed, flying nutball.

Well, 12 minutes of previews goes by (yeah, I timed it more or less), and the movie starts. It does a nice job of recounting history for the uninformed (like me), and then rambles right into the movie. It would help to have read the Hobbit (is there one or two t's? I think one.) just to understand about Gollum, and Bilbo and so forth, but they sort of breeze past that. I have the animated version, so I've got the general idea on that storyline (which is all you need really).

Umm... I might spoil bits for those not having seen the movie yet, so read with caution. I'll put a few caps at the end of the movie bit.

The movie is shot very nicely, with lots of litte details (probably more than anyone is likely to notice on the first or second viewing). Many of the vistas are very impressive, and I can't believe that most of it is New Zealand. Jeff says that he noticed that all the background music is keyed to the important people and places in the movie (certain themes for certain races, etc). There were a few bits that made me think about Magic cards though, namely the Cave Troll (very Orgg looking), and Saruromon (or however that's spelled) and his whole strip mining operation (very Strip Mine/Urza's Tower/goblin-y).

There was only one scene where the action looked very fake (more like a video game than a movie), which involved the characters all running in the Mines of Moria. This is probably because they looked like they were on a loop (either animated, or filmed once and looped together in a quick shot). This looked incredibly fake, and really threw me off, since the earlier scene (even with the Cave Troll) looked very realistic.

I especially liked the Balrog. Convincingly huge and dangerous.

My main complaint was the ending. I was so looking forward to more action, more grand adventure, more Orc killing! But, I didn't get it. Now, I have a long, long wait until they put out the second book... er, movie.

OK I'M DONE!

Good. Now, on to other news. I finally got some CD-Rs for the burner. So I made a CD. Took some of the coolest songs that I have. Mostly happy stuff. It's split about 50-50 with stuff I own (and can copy under Canadian law), and stuff I downloaded (which is illegal anywhere you go). So, the CDs about 50% illegal. Its still full of cool music though :)

I don't have nearly the selection that I had on my old system (which still houses most of my MP3s) but I'm working on the collection.

Posted 9:45 PM by Tim Rafuse
I finally managed to get some CD-Rs for the burner. Now, if I can get enough MP3s together, I can make a few CDs.

On another note, about the loading down my hobbies, I'm trying to decide if I have the time to do one, single panel illustration every two weeks. Yep, ultra-slow comics. I've got a partial idea what to do them about (Magic), and a few ideas for strips that could keep me in strips for about three months (that's only 6 strips really, so not a lot). Part of the problem is the commitment of time. See, I read a number of comics, and I happen to know that they take time. MegaTokyo takes the artist about 36 hours a week, and a number of others (CRFH, Real Life which use simpler comic creation methods) take a lot of time too.

What I'm looking at, however, is very simple. Black and white (unless I can figure out how to colour it), single panel, single punchline. I've said before that I'd be lucky to be able to manage stick figures with little arrows saying things like "DCI Judge" and "Kai Budde" on them to point out who I mean to portray. I'm hoping that's not really the case, but who knows what my artistic talents will bring.

Posted 5:04 PM by Tim Rafuse
So today I get asked to cover for one of the guys at work. Well, see here's the story. I developed a system, an application really, at work. And then I moved to a new project, leaving another guy in charge of all the development. Normally, this means that he handles it and I occasionally get a call about something not quite being right. That's fine. I don't mind, it keeps me up on what's going on with the system anyhow.

Well, he's on vacation, so I get the calls for help now. Ok. There's not a lot that I can do though, since I no longer have access to the codebase like I used to have. Anyhow, I'm called in to figure out the issue and get the thing working again. The fun bit is that given the error, I knew not only the issue, but where the error occurred, and the most likely fix for it. Both the temp patch (to get it running again), and the long term fixes. Woohoo me. This is what I like about programming. This is what I miss about it too.

I gotta get some time to do some more work at home.

I've been thinking about a network lately. Well, UNIX really, which brings the idea of a network to my mind. I figure that I can run a low-end server off of a maxed 486 with a NIC, and run that through a 5-port hub. I'd need to get the hub, and cables, and the server stuff (including a UNIX build and instructions, etc...) but all that would look good on a resume. Now if I only had the disposable cash for a DSL line I could route the whole mess through a single connection and host.... hmm.. getting ahead of myself on the ideas there... but it would be nice.

Anyhow... I'm trying to find time to cram a few more hobbies into my already loaded day.... maybe if I read a few less comics....

Posted 3:29 PM by Tim Rafuse
Third pop today. I go through these caffeine cycles too. Lately, I haven't been drinking a lot of pop. But, today, I am. I've had as many as 5 or 6 pops in a work day, and I'm usually pretty hyper by the end of the day. Not hyper today. Too busy trying to keep warm. One of the other people on my floor has taken to wearing a scarf. I'm sure it's just for fashion though (ya right).

Lately, I've been wondering about the point of coming in to work. I mean, I wanna work, but there's a lot of other things that I think I'd like to be doing. I'm not sure what it is about me thinking that I could make a living doing freelance work. I mean, all that footwork, all the trouble and hassle. Gah. I must be insane.

Posted 10:56 AM by Tim Rafuse
So, in the end, no PTQ for anyone. Wayne decided to avoid the snow, and just go to a Type 1 tourney. He didn't win there though.

I haven't been much into the whole writing thing, but I've been scribbling here and there. I'd scan it, but then, that'd take time away from playing FF7. I've been playing FF7 for quite some time now. I play it for a bit, then get too busy or tired of it, but I return to it later. I've got about 30 hours in it, but that's over a course of about 3 or 4 months. Yes, I play games really slowly. I've told myself that I won't get a new game (nothing epic) till I've finished FF8. Yes, that's right. Once I'm done with FF7, I've got FF8 to play. And of course, it'd be nice to finish Diablo too...

Anyhow. Back to my scribbles. I've been trying to think of a main character, or any character for a while now. I've got a name: Kain, but I'm still working on the image for him. I have, however, recently taken to drawing a guy in a really big cape. A really big cape. Huge. No matter. I might scan it some time.

As an update on the program idea, let me tell you this. It's a game. I've got the stuff I thought about into a file, and there's really just the niggly bits left to sort out before I'd consider the ground broken on the idea. Lemme tell ya a story. Way back, I was of the programming school which advocated getting the idea, starting on the code and reworking anything that became a problem later. As I learned, and studied, and struggled with this, I began to switch to the idea that you first plan the program fully, and then code it. This works wonders, but means that there's a period that no work is being done. Well, no code anyhow. Design doesn't generate things that managers tend to see as work. It's all ideas and plans and speculation on the future functionality and usefulness of their vaporware. While you can sell vaporware, it's not easy, and people do get antsy about it after a short period. Woo... slipped into a different area there...

Ok. Anyhow, I've got a game idea. The basic idea is set, as are the general rules of the game, and a few thoughts about gameplay, and so forth, but not one line of code has been written. No screen plans have been done (other than the ideas milling in my head), and there's still other design work to do. Conservatively, if I take about 10 hours a week (a lot of time really) to work on it, it should take me about a week more to finish the planning, another 2 weeks for the graphics, about 3 months to reach the 90% coded mark and then about a month or so for testing and refinement. So, I'm looking at about 5 months of work... if I really focus on it. Considering that I have other things to do with my life (family, gaming, friends, other application development, crafts), I'm not going to be able to focus on it. This means that it'll take me about a year or so to do. If I work on it fairly regularly. Not good for getting something out, eh?

Bren reminded me that I've never finished any project I've started. She's right. I'm gonna put that one on a combo of procrastination, upbringing and lazyness. Yeah. In that spirit, there is a project that I'd love to finish up. I started making a dress for Brenda a little more than a year ago. Given my ability to procrastinate, I started making it early for Christmas. About 3 months early. I've been sort of slowly, sproadically making it for her for the last year+. Part of the slowdown has been repeated moves, and part has been sheer lazyness. I'd put them at about 50-50.

I think I'm going to have to focus on the dress soon - once Bren's done with the sewing machine.

Ok. Games. There's been a tourney on my mind since I couldn't play at the PTQ. Bingeman's. For those in the know, this is not only a huge tourney, but it's a lot of fun. The deck format is Type 1.5 (more or less), with a 100 card deck minimum. Single elimination, untimed, unstructured swiss matches. A lot of games. The trouble is, like anything Type 1 or Extended, is that the card pool is so large that I have so many ideas, and so little time to build and test. I'll have to do like I always do. Build something, and play it till I know it - if I get any testing at all.

Posted 10:38 PM by Tim Rafuse
I'm not going to Ontario this weekend. That's the news.

I've had a program idea running about my head for a while now, so I'm working to get that all on paper before I forget the details. That's probably been sucking up all the creative juices for the Storylines. Maybe once I get it all out into a file I'll be alright with being able to write again?

Posted 3:29 PM by Tim Rafuse
Ok.. more rambles. Did you ever make a shirt? Like get someone to put letters on it or something? I did. I have odd ideas for shirts now and then, and wish I had more free cash to carry them out.

One shirt that I made was black, and had the word HENCHMAN across the front. I made 2. One for me, one for a friend of mine. It's a total rip for the 70s style Batman eps. There's one ep against Penguin, and his henchmen have black Ts with HENCHMAN on them. That show was the best for "descriptive labeling". Everything had a label, so people wouldn't be confused. I'm more surprised at the things that didn't have labels than the things that did.

One shirt that I'd love to make, just to see the reactions, would be a white T with black letters. "FRONT" on the front, and "BACK" on the back. Equally surrealist would be a shirt with the word "SHIRT" on it (to be worn with pants with the word "PANTS" printed on one leg). Those could be white or black, but I think it'd show better in white with black letters. If I get the time, I'll be making said shirts for Origins.

Which brings me around to talking about Origins. Its 6 months off still, and I've already started making plans. Apparently, so have they, I got a pre-registration mail yesterday. If you're a gamer, and you've never gone to a con, this is a good place to get totally immersed in it. I took Wayne with me last year (he'd never gone to cons before), and he loved it. I'd been to smaller cons, and had a good feel for what I was getting myself into, and it lived up to expectations. Of course, we went for 2 of the 4 days, ending up seeing only a fraction of the convention center and activities (I, personally saw the games room, anime room, some of the costumed people (wish I had time!!!), and a few of the random pickup games). I totally missed out on some of the dealer rooms, game halls, rampant fans, live action games (though the vampire girls are very cute in period dresses - yay corsets!), presentations, demos, game auctions, miniature gaming and a load of other stuff. I seriously want to do 4 days next time.

Ok. Maybe a bit of a convention primer. Something big like Origins draws people from all areas of gaming and fandom. You're going to see people in costume, people in suits, people not in costume but just dressed strangely, monsters, vampires, rabid gamers and some children. If you're friendly, you're going to be able to meet a lot of interesting people (Wayne and I met this one guy who was busily getting himself sloshed at a table in the hallway). First, being a con, some people have come just to play. To play all 4 days. These people may not even have a room to stay in (hoping to crash with new friends, or sleep in the hallways - I saw several doing just that). Some of the people you meet will stink. It's inevitable. Pizza, pop and no showers for 3 or 4 days means that people are bound to accumulate a smell. If you have a room, take an hour's break and go shower. If you don't have a room, the bathrooms will probably be functional enough to let you wash up.

Next, food. Origins was held in Columbus. There are no food places open in Columbus after 6PM. If you're hungry, eat before then, or learn to like lines and expensive food from the concessions. Bring extra money, but don't carry a lot of it.

One bad thing about cons. With so many people, it's easy for personal belongings to wander off and get lost forever. Trust me, I've seen it. A lot of gamers are also collectors, and some will collect anything that could count as a momento (the "Mens" sign for the bathrooms disappeared from the convention hall while Wayne and I were in attendance one day). Most people, however are exceptionally friendly, with strangers making sure that your stuff doesn't wander off.

Even with those drawbacks, cons are amazingly huge fun. If you like costuming, then you can go in costume, nobody in the con will think you look odd, but they will probably look at you a lot (costumes draw a lot of attention - especially women in costume). If you do the costume thing, be sure you know the con rules for props, and decency. Most cons assume basic decency guides (no more revealing than a swimsut), and common sense for props (no fire, nothing that looks like a real weapon, etc). If you're in costume, you may want to bring a change of clothes, or at least be in a hotel nearby (so you don't have to walk 20 minutes through town dressed up).

Pre-registration is the best thing you can do for a large con like Origins. Wayne and I pre-registered, meaning we just walked up to the registration desk, gave our names, got our badges and went - total wait time of about 3 minutes. Others had to wait in line much longer. We didn't stand around waiting. That said, arrive early, and expect that there will be some lineups no matter what.

Woo. Enough babble on cons for now. Expect more over time though, especially as we get closer to the 4th of July (Origins start date).

Posted 10:16 AM by Tim Rafuse
A few quick thoughts. First, there are a few movies that I wouldn't mind getting my hands on, if I had the cash for it. Waterworld, The Postman, The Shadow, and maybe one or two others that I've forgotten. Why? Well, Waterworld and The Postman are pretty neat, if horribly contrived, and I've always liked sweeping vistas and thoughts about a post-apocalyptic age. The Postman is a tad too "pro-American" in the way it's presented, but it's a nice story all the same.

There's also a few anime I'd like. Read or Die, Saint Tail, and the last vids of a couple of the series that I can't seem to find for the life of me (Lost Universe, Generator Gaul, Gasaraki to name three). While I'm talking about buying stuff, I suppose it'd be alright to mention a few CDs? The soundtrack to Serial Experiments Lain (if you're willing to order from Japan) would be nice, and possibly Wheezer or Drowning Pool, though I'd like the new Barenaked Ladies track too.

I have no idea why I'm going on about all that.

Before I go on, I'm gonna give a wave to all the other people reading today. You know who you are.

Ok. This weekend, I'm supposed to head up to Ontario. It looks like this isn't going to happen. Which is probably ok, since it would have put me going to Canada every weekend this month. Well, I'm going to have to get used to the drive again, it looks like this is going to become a fairly regular trip.

Woo... wandering the net can be fun: check this out. This is the kind of stuff I wish I had the time, money and skill to do. Crazy fun that is.

Now and then, I wonder why I haven't started to build my unstoppable army of robot warriors... oh wait - forget you heard that.

Posted 3:30 PM by Tim Rafuse
Ahh. Nearly the end of the work day. I had a 90 minute meeting last just under 3 hours (180 minutes) today. Not bad really, it burnt a good chunk of time for me.

Not much to say today, really. I get to go home and stay in front of the other computer (Helga), scanning things. That's not such a bad deal really, but it can get pretty boring.

The weekend plans are fairly open still. There's the PTQ, and some shopping, and learning to drive a stick-shift (silly Wayne for mentioning that!), and then the requesite talking to people about getting a job. All in all, fairly normal.

I still have some work to do on my deck to make it workable for the weekend, but that's what the internet is for, right? Anyhow, I've been hoping to play something a little unexpected, but we'll have to see how well that does in the end. I'd really be happy just to hit top 32.

I've been mulling some of the things I want to do. There's a lot of it out there. The website, the resume, a few programs that have been mulling in my head, several other items too. Maybe I'll get into the babble a bit later, eh?

Posted 10:31 AM by Tim Rafuse
I don't usually post this sort of junk, but it's irresistable... there's just too many of these things to resist....

If I were a work of art, I would be Piet Mondrian's Composition A. I am rigidly organised and regimented, although my cold and unapproachable exterior hides a clever way of thinking and a rebellious and innovative nature. A lot of people don't understand me, but I can still affect them on an emotional level. Which work of art would you be? The Art Test

Now that that's out of the way, we can get on to the news. Lost a tourney last night. Badly. Second round drop bad. 0-2, drop. That sucked, but I wasn't taking the losses well, so I figured I'd opt out.

Strange things afoot. Seems that the people in the office like my jelly. I made jelly, BTW. Some time back. Local apples and all that good stuff. Good thing about jelly, it stays all fresh in the jars and stuff. Anyhow, we've been holding on to this jam for a little bit, and tried to sell it at a bake sale. It didn't sell, but then, that was probably bad timing. However, in the closed market of the workplace, word gets around. So, we're selling it off. Which is good, because it means more money for us when we need it, and less worries about what to do with the jelly. Not that we're that worried about it.

My friend Vincent game me a hollar today. Nice to hear from him. We'll have to arrange a get-together/reunion thing sometime. I haven't seen him in a couple of years. He reads the blog though, so that's cool.

I want to arrange some sort of "comment" thing for this blog. I suppose that'll go on the list right after "change the layout", eh?

Posted 11:21 PM by Tim Rafuse
So. This future thing, right? It's got me all messed up. Can't get my head around it right now. There's just so much that's up in the air. So many things to do, so many things. It's times like these that I take one of the important lessons of life. When life gets too big, and you're trying to see and understand too much, it's time to start focusing again. It's like a reversal on "forest for the trees" except that you're trying to understand the whole ecosystem of the forest all at once. Sometimes, it seems like you can do it, and sometimes, it just isn't possible.

Right now, its impossible. I need to take a step back, take a minute to focus, to recalibrate. Get in touch with the important things. As they say, regain control over one thing at a time. Ride the rest out and take it slow. I think that if I just focus, I'll be alright. The firm spot in the shifting sands.

Posted 10:15 AM by Tim Rafuse
Tired today. How many times have I said that? Tuesday is tournament day, so I want to get in all the hours I need and still go play, so that means getting up early. I don't have too much of a problem with being up early, it's just that I tend to move slowly and not be really focused on anything. I get over it though.

I've been reading a lot of blogs lately. Different things that I find at random. I'm finding two main trends in blogging. The first is a blog like this. Pointless, random excerpts from the life of random-nobody-joe or jill, which makes little sense to anyone else. The second is a semi-professional blog. Where someone puts info out about world politics, theatre, or whatnot. Just an observation.

You might notice a surprising lack of links in this blog. This is mostly because I forget where things are on the net. I wander into a lot of stuff by random, or by websearch. So, I'm not really paying attention to where things are. I figure that you can find most of the sites jusst by doing a simple websearch. I should try to provide the links though.

Posted 4:21 PM by Tim Rafuse
Now and then, I wish it was then instead of now.

I so wish that I could wander off somewhere and do a little bit of drawing. Feeling a little inspired after this weekend. Odd fact about me, I'm competition-driven. I want to excel, and to do that, I need to compete. Fuse that with a little bit of my recovering perfectionism, and we're off to the races (figuratively, of course).

Heehee.. "recovering perfectionism". That's a good term. I suppose it's fairly accurate too. I'd really love to just wander off to a coffee house somewhere and sketch customers.

I've been drawing a lot of heads lately, I think I need to start focusing on specific features. Eyes, nose, mouth, ears, all the hard bits of people. I want to do some sketches of the rest of people, like bodies and such, but I don't have a model other than Brenda. She's not that great at sitting still long enough to draw her.

Well, gotta find some way to pass the next 3 hours.

Posted 1:56 PM by Tim Rafuse
My work computer:

Is so old...

...I have to shovel coal into it.

...it's steam powered.

...the hampster died.

...the RAM is a chalkboard and chalk.

...there's vacuum tubes in it.

...the cavemen used it.

...it's on loan from the Smithsonian.

And on and on. That's my work system. A system that I spend 8 to 10+ hours a day using. My first work system was a nice, P2, with WinNT on it. A very solid system, with a hefty OS holding it all down. A lot of flex, and a lot of useful stuff there. They took that away to give to another dev who needed NT. I got a P1, box, unloaded without all the features. They took that, and then loaded on Win95A, or something. Of course, 95A is the most buggy hazard laden OS available. I got the corp load of that too, which replaced essential features (like Regsitry editing) with simply not being able to do that.

Being the kind of person who likes their system to run, I chopped a few files, uploaded the 95 patches and rearranged the directory structure some. See, I've got a 4Gb drive, politely partitioned into 1, 2 and 1 Gb segments. With Win95, MS Office (with all the bells), VB6, MacAffee and a load of other corporate essentials loaded to C:, I've got a total of about 50 to 100Mb free space at any time. The original defaults were set to load the all win-temp stuff to Win/Temp, on C:. This, combined with what seems like a flaky RAM chip (reads 64, but seems to ignore chip #2 - giving a total of 32ish), means that there's a lot of disk swapping going on and a rapid degredation of system performance and stability. Blue-screening every hour, then needing a forced reboot.

So, anyway, to make a long story shorter, the system now works with sub-par performance issues, but at least is stable enough to not crash immediately. More often than not though, I'll crash VPTray, which manages the memory system for 95 (or something similar anyhow). This leads to an eventual crash, but at least gives me time to save my work (more often than not).

I'm only bothering with this whole rant because my system still manages to somehow direct a small portion of the temp files to C:, eventually pushing me under the magical 50Mb free space. As this gets eroded, the main disc swapping starts to bung up and the whole system bombs out. A lot. Three or four reboots a day, a lot. I had to go in there and hack things out again.

I keep asking myself why they don't get me a better system to do dev on, and then I figure that they probably don't care.

Posted 12:31 PM by Tim Rafuse
Ok. I got all but the last 4 of 5 pages of Alita read before getting off the bus today. I finished it up at lunch. A good story, solid art and good battle scenes. The characters seem a little over the top, but that's part of their development. I'd love to be able to come up with a story like this. I suppose I could, really, but to do the story, the art and all that would be very very cool.

I've been mulling a few story ideas (outside of the ones in Storylines), and trying to get something that looks like art out and about. I've got a series of ideas for 1 panel comics that I'd like to do too. The trouble comes with what I can draw, and what I'd like the art to look like. I'm not able to release my artistic vision or something.

Anyhow, I'm going to start to put a little more focus on the home life. I've been working the 10 hour days and not spending much time at home doing anything other than watching TV. If I can focus just a little more on the housekeeping, playing with the kids, doing the laundry and all that, then I'm sure that I'll get that much more out of life. Yeah. Looks like a short depression cycle coming.

Posted 10:23 AM by Tim Rafuse
So, I'm sitting on the bus reading Battle Angel Alita, and I'm thinking: it's good that I've seen the OAV, or I'd never understand any of this. See, Battle Angel Alita is apparently the second manga collection, and not the first like I thought that it would be. Silly me, I've got book #2. However, fortunately, #1 must be very close to the vid, so I'm alright.

I sometimes wonder what other people must think when I'm reading these novels on the bus. I mean, most people are reading books, or sleeping, but some people just sort of stare at those people. When I'm reading, a lot of the time, it'll be a book, but sometimes it'll be a manga (borrowed), or I'll be writing (trying anyhow) on the bus. I don't see a lot of people writing. I tried drawing on the bus, but that's hasn't worked for me either.

I did a sketch of Brenda last night while she was working on a project. I think I did alright. People seem to be easier to sketch than things or cartoons. I'm not sure why that is. I tried to get a sketch of Wayne this weekend, but I did it really fast and it didn't look too good. Wayne trashed it, but that's alright because it was really bad.

So, while I was away this weekend, the girls got the house all decorated. It looks nice. The living room is totally redesigned, so that's going to take a little getting used to. We've moved the futon (used as a place to hold all our junk), into the living room proper, and now we're using it to sit on. It's nice, but I think that it's going to take some time to get used to again. The girls are still climbing on it a lot, which we're trying to discourage them from doing.

Hmm.. I'm looking at the first post on the 9. Why would I bother indicating that the shop lady was pretty? Gah. I think it was too late at night. I mean, she was, but why am I saying it? Anyhow...

Posted 6:26 PM by Tim Rafuse
I got home.

I figure that if I try really hard, I might just be able to make a deck for Tuesday. I don't really feel like playing either of the two decks that I've played before, so I think that I'll have to go with something different.

That's all for now.

Posted 10:23 AM by Tim Rafuse
More things that I missed talking about yesterday.

While I was in a card and comic shop here (looking at anime), the shop lady (pretty!) was helping me out. She apparently has a large collection of anime too. Anyhow, turns out that she's an artist. Another artist guy came in an had her put a sketch in his sketchbook. She drew this very nice pic of a little boy. The other artist was showing his book, so I had to take a look. I've seen some great art before, and this was right up there with it. Very professional. I'm sure that there were things he wasn't happy with, but it blew all my artwork right out of the water, into the atmosphere and probably into a low orbit.

This gets me a little discouraged about the art thing at all. But, I heard him talking about how some of the images were from 1998, 1993 and older. I mean, he's got 8 years of experience, probably with regular practice and such. That's gonna do a lot for his artwork. So, I'm not worried. I mean, I'm just barely getting started. To think of all the time I wasted saying things like "I can't draw a stick figure" when I really wasn't that bad.

Anyhow, while I was there in the shop, I took to browsing the graphic novels. Bad for me. I found a collection of stuff by Masamune Shirow. There's a lot that I like with the way that he tells his stories, so I considered buying it. That, however, got derailed when I noticed that they had a set of "how to draw anime characters" books, which went into the whole bit. I would have gotten those, but they were too expensive. So, back to Shirow. I pull it out of the rack, look around and notice that there's a Battle Angel Alita novel there. I love that anime. Just the right side of depressing and bleak for me. I get that instead. The trouble is, this store has a lot of manga that I'd like. Like Ranma 1/2, Shirow, Tank Police, etc. This is definately a bad development for me.

I did take a look at their collection of anime there. It seems that most places have gone to carrying mostly DVDs. I've got no problem with that, except that I don't have a DVD player, and so can't see any of this DVD goodness. Of course the pricing schedule here is very messed too. In Cleveland, I can get a VHS for about $20, a DVD for between $20 and $30. Here, the vids are $30+ and the DVDs are $50+. The conversion is close, but isn't close enough to warrant any purchases. That's part of the trouble. I'd almost be willing to order the DVDs and vids direct from the supplier. I don't know if that would save me any money, but I know that it at least has a chance of being cheaper.

More things. I've been thinking about the near future. Post-christmas and all that. There seem to be a number of options available to me, as to where I can stay, what I can do and such. There's a part of me that wants to just coast the rest of the work thing where I am, even if I don't like what I"m doing. There's a part that wants to go and do the "living like a bum" thing for a little while. There's another part that wants to get a new job and get the work thing on. I'm, in total not sure about what I'm going to do. Well, I guess we'll see what comes out of it.

I'll have to try to focus more on the artwork thing, and maybe develop a little more on the Storylines.

Posted 10:08 AM by Tim Rafuse
So, I'm here doing some research with Wayne on companies. Overall, this weekend has been a bust for looking for work. I probably should have stayed home. But, we do get to move a carload of heavy books to out storage location. That's good for us. None of the books are essentials, so even if we don't end up moving, we're still in a good position.

Bren's been tearing apart some of our larger furniture. I've been finding that there are some interesting companies in the Kitchener/Waterloo area. A lot of cool stuff here, if you know where to look for it. I've thinking about taking a trip next week just to talk to a few of these companies.

The thing that sucks the most about this trip so far is how unproductive it's all been. I've talked with very few people, and there really hasn't been any sort of progression on the job front. I'm almost considering the alternative plan, which comes at the end of the year. It consists of either keeping the family on and hoping to ride out another month (Jan) in Cleveland, or getting the family out of the US, and living like a bum for a few weeks at a friend's place. If I can keep working in the US, then the cash flow thing is good. The trouble is that it'll be winter, and either me or Bren will be without a car and without a reasonable method of getting between here and there. I think it could work out, but it wouldn't be pretty all around. Gah. This is why things suck.

Posted 4:42 PM by Tim Rafuse
Since I'm not in a place where I can get a lot of internet tme, I'll be unable to update anything on the Storylines. I'll get back to then at the start of next week for sure. I know that there are some people who are reading them, so I figure that they might want me to keep up with them all the time. It's just like a regular weekend, really, except that this week has been bad for me getting the updates int. Good thing to know. Now and then, I'm just totally out of ideas.

Anyhow, I'm doing the job search thing. Its far from my favourite activity, so you can tell that I'm not feeling good about all this junk. I managed to skim part of an interesting article about posting resumes on the net. Very informative. I may have to go with some of the ideas tha tthey presented. I hadn't thought about the way those sites functioned before, but now that I am, I may be able to garner a few more hits.

The biggest thing about looking for work is that it takes so much time and effort to find a job. I know, I'm just lazy. I'm like a lot of people though, I'm looking for a job to just dump itself into my lap and go right to work. Somewhere in the back of my mind, there is a voice saying to just drop all this and go back to picking up contracts for myself. Did I forget how much that sucked? How hard that was and how royally screwed I got?

Well, this looks like a good place to tell part of that tale. Here's the deal. I'm trying to get a contract, and I get a referral from somebody or other to talk to this guy. So I do. He wants a website developed, but he has no other information. No, no names, no details... Anyhow, he's not really thought too much about the website thing, and it's for his small business that he's just getting started. He's got a vague notion of what he's looking for, but we're having some trouble getting it into words. This is my first mistake with this guy. I offer to do a few mock-ups for him. For me, a mock-up is pretty close to what the actual site would look like. Just missing text and precision formatting. I do a mock and push it to his site. He sees it, and isn't happy. He wants changes. We change it. He's still not happy. We brainstorm for a while, and go after a few ideas. We push that to the server. He looks, flips and had a cow. This is my second mistake. In the end he has a short talk with me over the phone and says he doesn't need my services anymore. I bill him for the time spent in dev, and he yells at me like I'm crazy. Mistake 3. In the end I get nothing.

The mistakes I made were this: First, I didn't take the time to get a good idea of what the client wanted. I wanted to start dev, and wasn't too good at getting him to elucidate what precisely he's looking for, so I go off in directions he doesn't want, wasting time all around. The second mistake was that we didn't fix mistake #1 when we had the chance. Two times we did something else, going on guesses and rough examples that he provided. Mistake 3 was that we didn't get him to ever sign anything. No paper means a verbal contract, and we didn't hammer out the details on that specifically enough to be able to chase him in courts. Always get something in writing before startring any work. Get a sig, and define clauses.

What would have worked better would have been to talk to him a little more about what he was looking for, get a layout designed, get him to sign something with a termination clause in it (ie. if he kills the project before a certain date, he agrees to pay X). And something similar from out side. In the end, he ended up with a site that was remarkably similar to what we had done already, and what we felt was a much simpler and lower grade of work than we could have provided. Anyway, that's that story.

Boy, it's been "Tim reminicses about his life" week here, hasn't it.

Posted 2:16 PM by Tim Rafuse
So I'm waiting. Waiting for someone else to finish something that they need to do so I can get started on the things that I need to do. That's no fun.

Posted 10:44 AM by Tim Rafuse
Grr... this is one of those things that bug me.

>Send this to everyone you consider a FRIEND, even if it means
>sending it back to the person who sent it to you. If it comes
>back to you, then you'll know you have a circle of friends.

Why can't people see how inane this statement is? It's the email that never ends! Oh no! I get it, send it back, they get it, send it to me again, and we go over and over until the servers crash and the earth falls into the sun!

Gwar. If people send me stuff like this, they know I'm not sending it back. It probably gets read, but after that, it's trash bin city. The circular filing cabinet. If I do send a reply then it's got one of two messages in it. 1) *Thwack* Can't you see the cyclic nature of this? or 2) Aww... so heartfelt it made me cry. FYI, I've never sent a #2 reply, because cut and pasted forwarded messages don't say heartfelt to me. They say, "someone emailed my this drivel and I was compelled to forward it to you through the mystic forces surrounding chain letters". *Thwack*

Boy, that's a fun word. *Thwack*

Posted 9:03 AM by Tim Rafuse
Sleep. Gah. I could use more. I've been running the long hours between 5AM and 11PM daily all this week. It's harsh on a person.

Anyhow, another day of work here. But, it'll be a short one. I'm headed to Ontario today, so I'll be headed out of here between 1PM and 3PM. The drive is going to be harsh. As I may have said, the last time I went to Ontario, I got busted for speeding. So, I'm gonna stick to the limit this time. Which, incidentally, adds about an hour to my drive. Five to six hours in a car by muself while I'm tired isn't what I want to do for fun. But then there really isn't a lot that I can do about that.

Part of the reason I'm up so late is because the girls weren't sleeping like they were supposed to. Another part was that I was getting a deck ready to play this weekend against Wayne. Lastly, the movie "From Beyond" was on the Sci-Fi channel, and it's based on the same by H.P.Lovecraft. I've never read any of his work, but I've heard of the Cthuthlu (no idea on the spelling there...) mythos and all that, so I wanted to see it. I'm not usually a big fan of horror movies, because I'm too weirded out by them, but I did want to see what this one was all about.

If you're willing to accept the first contrivance - that a magnetically resonant frequency can affect the pineal glad so that you can percieve otherworldly beings - then you'll be ok. Once you get past that, then you only have to deal with the other illogical bits to make it all work out. (I'm gonna spoil the story here, so read if you dare! Heehe... like you'll watch it anyhow). Some of the most interesting illogical bits I found had to do with the interaction of the invisible things "from beyond" and everything else. With the resonator (the device that uses the magnetics) on, apparently, these things are every bit as real as anything else. Ok. So what's with the pineal thing then? With it off, effectively, the things can't do anything. We never notice them. But, at least three seperate times in the movie, the head evil thing from beyond manages to turn on the resonator, and make it work (which, in turn, makes him visible and real).

This resonator thing is pretty strange too. It takes a couple of really big tuning forks to make the resonant frequency, so you expect that it would need to be pretty carefully balanced and such to work. Apparently not. Main character guy whacks one of the tines off with a fire axe, and stops it from working, but later, they just glue it back on or somthing, and it works fine. So, it doesn't have to be that accurate after all. Of course, it then shows it's amazing fragility when main character girl sprays it with a fire extinguisher. It shorts out. But, like fixes itself twice. Or the evil from beyond things do - I'm just not sure.

Another thing that gets me is that there's a lot of stuff that had to have been mentioned in the book, but are skipped in the movie. Main character guy #2 figures out that light and stuff will attract the "millions of little stinging bugs" that appear out nowhere at one point, but then stupidly shines a flashlight on himself (and dies, of course). That's the other thing that gets me. The main characters (other than main character guy #1) all manage to do absolutely nothing when the really, really could do something better. Like, the girl, with the fire extinguisher. She spritzes the resonator, but then, rather than smashing the thing to tiny, tiny bits - doesn't do anything! The whole flashlight scene that I mentioned, isn't too bad. Guy #2 is at least trying to shut down the machine (but it doesn't work), the flashlight thing does work, but then he throws the flashlight away. Which ends up pointing at him. Rather than move, out of the way, he just stands there, until he dies. Yeah.

Girl eventually gets the idea to blow the house up. Finally getting the idea of destroying the machine. How she (who's supposed to be a psychologist), managed to get 8 sticks of dynamite, and modify a clock radio to work as a timer (even counting down minutes and seconds), I'm just not sure. Anyway, she gets into the classic situation, bomb ticking, and she's chained to a wall in an S&M shop. No wait. That's not that classic anyhow. Ok, anyhow, in order to escape the building, she leaps out of a window, just as the bomb goes off. Good for her, except that it's a 4-story fall to the ground below. She survives, but breaks her leg (a little better lighting would have shown off what looked to be very good makeup here!). Of course, in the classic Lovecraft way, at this point, she's totally lost it. She has about 1 more line of sanity "He ate him." before flipping into a total insanity cackle. That, of course, is some of the best acting in the movie, and makes reasonable sense.

Overall, the movie isn't that disgusting, or that horrifying. No lost sleep, and, well, I figure that the book have got to be done better. I still probably never read one, but that's fine.

Posted 8:34 AM by Tim Rafuse
Interesting night last night. Despite getting up a 5AM to get to work early, and despite working a 10 hour day, I went out to play about 5 hours of Magic. Fun games. I even manged 1st place. So, I get home and Brenda's there, and she tells me that this distraught woman came to our door today. Just a few minutes ago actually.

Apparently, there was a bat in the hallway. I figured she meant in the hallway of her appartment, but no, she meant in the appartment hallway. Now, I figured that it wouldn't be too hard to get the bat out of the hallway just by letting it fly out of the door (all the hallways are separated by doors to impede fires or some such). But, the bat was apparently flying towards the end of the hallway, seeing or sensing the Exit sign just in front of the open door, making a quick loop and heading towards the closed end of the hallway. There, of course, it would loop back and go back towards the door.

Bren and I have both done a lot of biology, so we're sure that the bat isn't going to be doing so well if he stays indoors all night. She'd called the super, but he wasn't in. I've got no fear of bats, but I do have a bit of a fear of fast moving objects headed at my head, so I'm a little nervous about being in the hallway with the bat. My brain reminds me that they're incredible flyers, and would not be likely to hit me, land in my hair or anything else so ludicrous. Bren's much the same as me. I figure that the best plan, since it won't fly out on it's own (my original plan involved herding it into our appartment, then getting it out through the balcony door), is to catch it and take it outside. Since I just came from outside I figure that my coat should probably do it. The coat acts like a good deterrant to the bat, and eventually I manage to get it cornered (flaw: I can't see when the bat is close enough to catch, since my coat is in front of my face, so I'm trying pretty randomly). I manage to catch it in the coat, and scoop it into a bag. The bat manages an escape (thorough the sleeves I think). I figure that the coat isn't going to do it.

We go back to the appartment and get a bedsheet. This will be easier to make into a bag that he can't get out of. However, the bed sheet is a lot thinner than the coat, and I'm worried about being bitten. I don't need a rabies booster anytime soon. Brenda helps me with the capturing (since the sheet is big enough to take up the whole hallway. We get the bat cornered again, and accidentally knock it to the floor. It's stunned, but ok. I drop the sheet and then try to make it into the bag thing. It doesn't seem to be working with the sheet on the floor (and I"m not sure how slippery the bat is). I still don't want to get bitten, otherwise I'd just scoop the thing and go. So, the only thing that seems to work is to roll the bat into the blanket. It doesn't like that idea at all and is doing some chattering - at least we know it's ok. I keep it in the blanket all the way downstairs and out onto the grass. I unroll the blanket and expect to see a stunned bat on the ground, but it's gone before I manage to see it. I look around, and see what might just be a bat in the distance, and I know it's ok.

That's where the excitement ends, and I go home to sleep.

That brings me to today. Another day of work like any other.

Posted 5:03 PM by Tim Rafuse
The day is wearing on me. Not a good thing to say when there's so much of it left. After all, it's only almost the end of the work day. I've been awake nearly 12 hours, and I only managed about 6 hours sleep last night. I think. I'll be awake at least another 6 before its bedtime again. That, a concerted lack of food, and a dearth of sleep will all contribute to me crashing, literally or figuratively, about the end of the day Thursday.

For those who might not know (or care), I'll be away this weekend... unless things drastically change. The plan is to look for some work Friday, and see what's available. I think that I won't have any interviews lined up, cause I'm too much of a frady-cat when it comes to my job here. See, I wanna keep working here, and not piss anyone off. So I don't wanna use the company phone for calling about interviews. That leaves me with a remarkably small window where I can actually make calls. Especially if I'm never home.

I've got an especially short list of businesses to see. Like 1. That's just not going to do it. There's a couple other places I could check out, but I'm sure they'd involve driving some rediculous distance. We do what we must, right?

Bren and I were talking about what a move could mean for us. For Bren (and the girls), it means moving back in with her parents over the holidays. Not a great time to be doing things like moving, right? Right. For me, it means putting an additional strain on the cash resources of friends and acquaintences until I can get a job/steal/sell myself for enough money to keep the family going (yes, my mom would hate that... no don't bother to tell her). Anyhow, one thing that I'm sure of is that I'd happily work whatever and wherever I could to get the hours to keep the money flowing. I'm sure I'd be able to get a job at a game shop somewhere... well, wait, maybe I'd have trouble until I killed off the other employees, but I think I'm knowledgeable enough to get hired for the short term following the holidays. After that, it's burger flipping and burning myself on the deep fat fryer.

Lotta ambition there, eh? Of course, I'm making it all worse than it seems, right? Not really. I've got no money, big bills, and unless something happens soon, no job. That leaves me in a state. Wayne's been kind enough to say that I can stay nearly indefinately... IF I pay my own food and probably part of the bills. But he's also been kind enough to say that he'll front me enough for about a month. That's not a lot of time, but it's really generous. Muchly appreciate the offer, I"ll probably take you up on it, you know I'm good for it (not like some people "Adam" that we've known, eh?).

I dont' think I've ever really explained the whole "friends with Wayne" thing before, so I'll do it. See, Wayne and I both went to the same Cadet corps (army - the 2688 RCACC FYI). He and I knew each other, but at the time (much like now), I was a pretty severe loner. People knew me, and I could probably remember their name if I read it off their nametag. Anyhow, we hung out a bit, but not much (if my memory isn't playing tricks on me). I'm not sure why that is. Oh yes, I remember, I despised people back then. Hey, it's something you move past, ok? (And before the questions start, no it wasn't anyone specific, it was humanity in general, often including myself).

Anyway, to make a tanget, I started doing Cadets to "hang out with a friend of mine". One Mike Smith, who attended maybe 1 week before realizing that it wasn't for him. I however, was a lot more stubborn, or stupid, and stuck with it. I met Wayne there at some point (dates and times aren't my thing). Eventually, after some good times and bad times, I turned 18. They said "you can stay on until after the summer!" and I said "screw that, I'm 18, I'm done." I had a GF at the time, so she was a lot more interesting than the backwater Cadets were at that point. Besides, they were becoming pretty annoying. Anyhow, I left and went to school for 5 years. Wayne apparently, made something of himself in the corps and so forth. Well, after school, I had a period of harsh unemployment. I went to another school, and lo and behold, Wayne was there. We got reacquainted, and really, he was one of the first friends in Halifax for me (most others from school moved off other things went on with them). We had classes 8 hours a day, so getting to know the big guy wasn't a problem. I twisted his mind on games, programming and the like and basically reduced him to the man he is today. :)

Anyhow, since meeting him again, he's lived in 3 differnent places (me: 4), traveled half-way across the country for work (me too), lost his gf of some yearage (me, nope still married, but had a child since), and generally gotten to be one of the best friends I've ever had. Ain't ya'll weepy eyed now? Anyhow, it sure is nice of him to put me up for a month while I eat his food and take up space at his place. It'll be my goal to also borrow tournament money from him, and then consistently thwack him in the finals (I'll buy ya stuff with the prize money :)).

With luck and good fortune (or whatnot), I'll hopefully be out of his hair before he can say "get a job aready you lazy, shiftless, wanker!"

Posted 9:16 AM by Tim Rafuse
Today is a better day. Yesterday was annoying, plain and simple. Today should be better. There's no more direction, or anything, but certainly, things seem clearer. A good night's sleep, right? No, not really.

Anyhow, I'm hoping to get out to a local tourney today. I'm expecting there to be at least 6 players (counting myself), so that's a minimum of three rounds. If there's a top 8 cut, that's gonna be another 2 or 3 rounds right there. I'm thinking that they probably don't do top 8's or 4's or such. I've been looking at my ratings lately, and, of course, the only way to improve them will be to play. If I can play and win a few more than I lose (2-1, 3-0, etc), then I"m going to go up in ratings. That's what I'm looking for.

As a note, I'm 80th in Ontario for my Vintage rating. Pretty sweet. A few more games of Type 1, with a few wins should push me into the top 50. That's where I'd like to be. Up in the tops.

Posted 1:15 PM by Tim Rafuse
Woo. Today is not going well for me. I can't get over this anger thing that's going on. I think it's the stress.

Basically, here's the situation. I have a job that's coming to an end. Normally (well, it's happened before, so I should say: before) it's been a very stressful situation, what with money worries and bills and all that jack. This is no different in that respect, but there's a little bit more that's going on. This time, we're all in a different country, so if we run out of money, we have to pack and leave. If we were still in Canada, I'd be a little more prepared for the whole possible move thing. At the worst, it'd be getting a bunch of my friends together to do the move thing. An hours drive at the most. But here, getting home is a 7 to 9 hour prospect. The move has to be made all at once, and, to add to the whole thing, fairly quickly.

We were hoping to have some cash handy for the move, and had been working on the stockpile. No dice there. Things happened, and the cash was moved about until it's all spent. So, if I wanna get some cash for that ready, then I've got to work overtime hours. This wouldn't be a problem, if I had regular working days. I don't. I've got to take days off to get up to Canada and prepare a place for all our stuff to go. So, I could just work on the weekends, and drop everything else. I'm seriously considering that. Sunday has just become Monday. That way, I get a 5 day work week (of like 10+ hours a day), and then I'm either on the road or away from the family.

If you don't have a family to hang out with, it might be a little difficult to grasp the whole "hang with the family thing". Think back to when you were a kid if you can, and see if you remember the adults being around? If you do, well, then you did the hang out thing. They're there, you're there. If they weren't there much, well, you're where I am. Gah. Move along...

Let's see what else there is here. Oh yes. As far as work goes, here's the situation. The project I'm on stops doing anything meaningful on the 15. There isn't anything for me to do, but I still have to come into work. So, that leaves me wondering what's going on between then and the 30. The 30 is my contract end-date. Now, the project that I'm on has already said that they're going to go on in the new year, but also, that they probably won't need me then, 'cause they want to use their own people on the project. I'm fine with that, actually, and wholeheartedly support it. But, that leaves me without a real project. Which means that the people contracting me have no real need for me. Ok. So if they have no need for me, then my contract is over and that's the way it is, right? Right. Except! That there are 2 possible other contracts that they may want me for. Maybe. But the decision has moved from my indirect (I say indirect because I only ever get emails from her) supervisor, to an upper level supervisor who's no longer involved in the projects that I might get moved to. And it depends on his budget, which won't be fully approved for who knows how long. That leaves me in the lurch. Very lurchy too.

Goodness knows that I'd be happy to just drop the work thing for a week and look for work elsewhere. That would at least be partially productive. But, I can't do that because I still have bills to pay, and there's the whole moving budget thing. I'm starting to think that the best plan is to cancel all the bills on the 30, collect (and have redirected) the mail, and do a 2 or 3 month delay on payments. Call everyone and let them know what's going on of course so that we can ride the extension... I'd have to see how that would work out. It wouldn't be the first time people have skipped the country and stiffed people for bills owing... but I don't wanna stiff 'em, just pay it all off later. Like I need more outstanding debt.

I could go into some detail on the level of debt that I've incurred in my short life as an adult, but let me assure you that it's far more than I'd wish on other people. We've been fighting the debt thing forever, and pretty much knew that we'd be mired in it for a long time. We've really been digging out of debt for about 7 years now. That's pretty much right from the start of adulthood for me, but we've been doing better lately. This move (and subsequent unemployement) will be a huge setback to us, but we can get around it too - eventually).

Gah. Well, this is turning out to be "Tim rants the day away", so maybe I"ll see what I can load up onto the Storylines.

Posted 10:33 AM by Tim Rafuse
Gah. December has snuck up on me. I nearly forgot the first when it came, and now, it's the third. Bah!

Not that I don't like December, but it just means a lot of stuff here. First, I'm still in flux about what's going on with everything. The 30 of December is like this great cutting-off point. I can make no plans past it, simply because I don't know where I'll be. Right now, I could be at any place on the 1st of Jan. There are a couple of top locations though (here, Wayne's or my in-law's). Either way, it means that there's going to be a change in plans.

The plan (as little of it as there is) is that I'll be leaving after my work term is up. But there's no guarantee of that being the eventual outcome. So, if I stay, plans change. Basically, I have under 27 days to be packed and ready for a possible non-move. That sucks. A lot. If I do move, though, then I'm in the unenviable position of being broke, homeless and unemployed.... in winter. If I haven't said it before (and I have, just not here), the worst time to be homeless is in the winter. In the summer, the worst thing to worry about is a chilly evening, or a cold rain. In winter, chilly evenings are standard, there's wind and snow and worse. Gah. Luckly, I can crash at Wayne's house for a while. I'm hoping that I won't need to for long.

So, here's the position I'm in. If I put out the ultimatum (will I work next year or not?), I'll probably get the run about with the old "next year's budget" dance. Gah. Like I need that. But, if I don't put the ultimatum out there, nobody will bother to do anything to let me know just what's going on. Again, a hassle I don't need.

Busy month coming up too. I've got to get the total number of hours that I work up a little to make the most of what few work days are left. Toss on top of that three vacation and one holiday days coming up this month alone, and I've got myself cut down to a 4 day week every week for the next three weeks. That leaves me with four day work weeks, in which I wanna get over 40 hours a month in. That means working, 10, 11, 12 or 13 hour days every day. Every day. Every. Day. If I wanna get the hours in. I'm not sure if that's gonna work out, but I'll have to try anyway.

Ok... let's move on to a somewhat cheerier subject. This weekend. I'll be headed to Canada this weekend again. Yep. Gone off again. Wayne'll let me crash at his place. There's a Saturday tourney, which I'm looking to attend. I forget the type, but who really cares, eh? I'll be home before the work week starts and be back to work. Then I do the same thing the next week.

Christmas coming up soon too. I haven't done any shopping, and again this year haven't been in the mood for it. I'm just not feeling the Christmas spirit. Last year and the year before that I managed to get into the spirit eventually, but that took my girls getting into the mood first. Maybe I'd feel more like it if we put up the tree, but I don't think that we're going to do that this year. There's too much possiblity of moving to bother making more things to put away. I hope that I get into it soon.

Posted 11:26 PM by Tim Rafuse
I never thought that I'd get "too much" email. Even counting the amount of spam I receive. It seems that I get so much email that my inbox regularly overloads. About once a week. This is somewhat due to me archiving emails for about a month period. Well, it was a month, it's down to about 20 days or so now.

My weekend has been pretty free-form so far. I went skating and remembered why I don't do it so much (but should). Sore legs. Really not good for me to do a sport without stretching first.

Tomorrow looks like I might just be able to get a game of magic on. The guys here are looking to get a game in, and I am so looking forward to it. I've been getting the decks ready for the battles. :) I'm hoping for a lot of good games. Though, I"m planning on playing Stasis, and those games tend to drag on.