Horizon Zero

This Day Of May

Happy May 1st, comrades!

April proved to be a rather hectic month. There are some big structural changes at work about to happen that I'm not entirely happy with and we're still dealing with the implications.

Also, I took a little trip out to San Diego to attend a wedding and catch up with the family unit. Was fun, if busy. (The only flight back from San Diego was a redeye flight to Atlanta that left at 10:30 local time and arrived in ATL at 5:30AM the next day. Not a very enjoyable experience.) Beyond the wedding festivities, we managed to sneak away to Seaport Village where I ate the greasiest slice of pizza ever, took a few photos (that I will upload at some point) and bought an amazingly overpriced T-Shirt. So, typical tourist stuff.

I've been playing a lot of Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, killing time until Diablo III releases later this month. I prefer the biotic character types over the techie and soldier roles - right now I'm rocking a level 16 Asari Vanguard, specializing in Stasis bubbles and headshots with my trusty Carnifex IV pistol.

I haven't exactly given up all hope of getting the World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria beta working on my PC, but let's just say that confidence at this point is low.I don't know if it's the age of my system, the inner workings of my ISP, or just some magical confluence of events, but I've been able to get the bloody thing to work exactly once, and that one time the connection was sucking down data at a non-blistering 110k per second or some godawful number like that. (I had similar trouble trying to download and apply SWTOR fixes back when I was playing that. I wonder if there is a connection?)

In contrast, the Diablo III beta worked fine. I'm definitely going Demon Hunter as my first character when the full game goes live.

I probably will need to start preparing for a new PC, though. I've managed to hold out against The Urge to Build for nearly five years, now. Time and technology are starting to overtake me.

Happy Birthday Post

To the sister unit.

Don't worry too much, you're still in the Most Coveted Demographic.

:p

Sixty-Eight Days in India

My brother in law is on assignment in India and has set up a blog to document his adventure. Their adventure, I should say, since the sister unit flew in before Christmas and will be there until the middle of the month.

Only one entry so far, but there's still time. You can check it out here.

Return to the House of Mummies... sans Mummy

Back home in Saint Robert. Family reunion was well attended, although I will confess to eating and running.

I found an iPad app for GenCon that should come in quite handy. (Did I mention I bought an iPad? Because I did.) It's got maps of downtown Indy and the convention center and participating hotels, plus a fairly thorough database of events, complete with the number of tickets remaining.

Back to work tomorrow, of course. This month will prove challenging. Lots to do, and the clock is ticking.

The Gathering

The annual ritual family reunion is this weekend. Fortunately there is no "There can be only one" policy.

Because that could get messy.

Once I return home, I have a quick three day work week. Then it's off to Indy, for four days of gaming fun at GenCon.

Final Preparations

The Southern portion of my Grand America Road Tour '07 starts tomorrow as I head off to South Carolina for my sister unit's impending nuptials. I'll be traversing most of the length of Tennessee, and passing through Kentucky and North Carolina before reaching Charleston. I'll also be going through Illinois, but that's damnyankee territory so it doesn't count for this expedition.

Next month, the Northern phase of the Grand Tour takes place, as I sojourn to the place of my birth - Indianapolis, IN for those of you who aren't up on the bio - to take part in the great geek religious festival known as GenCon.

I'm taking my laptop, camera, mp3 player and DS Lite along - all the comforts of home without actually being at home. Wireless internet access points willing, I might be able to post a few pics before I get back.

But even though I'm gone, the July blogging juggernaut will roll on! Thanks to the wonders of scheduled posting, I'll have fresh new content for you at least some of the time while I'm away. At least I think I will. I'm pretty sure I've got a few half finished screeds saved on disk somewhere I can throw up on short notice...

Was that last part out loud? Oh, bother.

It's Not the Years, It's the Miles

Okay, there's not much to this getting older thing.

After all, it's not like it requires any extra effort on my part.

Besides, all 30 means is that teenagers can't trust me anymore, and they never could anyway. But if anyone starts yelling "Renew!" in my general direction, I'm going to smack them.

36, now there's a birthday to fear. That's when you pass from the coveted Young Adult demographic and suddenly your opinions about TV, music, clothes and the rest stop mattering.

The horror.

Enter the Sandman?

Today is my birthday.

In precisely 365 days, I will either have to Renew or decide to Run. Which means my membership packet from The Establishment ought to be arriving sometime after tax season, I suppose.

Strange, I certainly don't feel like a grown-up. Heh.

Tsunami Relief Gets Personal

Found out this evening that my sister, who is a still pretty new Air Force 2LT, will be deploying to Sri Lanka sometime very soon, to help with the relief effort there. Apparently she had a choice between Sri Lanka and Indonesia. I think she made a good choice, myself, although I have been seeing reports that the Sri Lankan government has been a little prickly when it comes to foreign aid. Or, at least foreign aid from Israel.

Anyway, prayers will be uttered and fingers will be crossed. She ought to get some real use out of the digital camera she got for Christmas, too!

Tis the Night Before Christmas

I'm spending Christmas and New Year's at my folks' house, along with the rest of the family. It looked like the sister unit might not make it today due to multiple airline snafus, but we finally managed to get her to the homestead after two botched connecting flights out of Houston.

Christmas Eve is also Dad's birthday, so we get a bit of a sneak preview on the gift giving. Well, Dad does.

We're engaged in the traditional family holiday tradition at the moment, which involves six hours of Christmas movies, about a gallon of hot chocolate per person and multiple waves of cake, cookies and other assorted bad for you goodies. If our timing is right, and after 23 years it almost always is, the last scene of White Christmas will end right around midnight.

Then it's off to bed - and whatever sleep can be gotten after downing a gallon of hot chocolate. Okay, it's not a perfect system.

But it's tradition. XD

Anyway, Merry Christmas, or the gift giving celebration of your choice.