Mackenzie's Weblog

Comments Down

You may have noticed that comments are down on the site.  I'm currently looking for a fix.  I'm getting exasperated.

Friday Catblogging!

The Couch Edition:

That's proof that they aren't always super friendly.

I'm Currently Reading:

Odd and the Frost Giants (World Book Day edition)

This is a UK import, and a children's book.  For more information about World Book Day, check out this site.

I really, really wish that the U.S. participated.

Have a great weekend!

The Savages

Last night's film series movie was The Savages.  I enjoyed it quite a lot.  It was basically the story of a pair of siblings dealing with their father's end-of-life stuff, as well as their general life stuff.  It was quite good: mostly serious with the occasional touch of humor.

One thing I didn't like about the film series was that there was a lot of laughing at inappropriate times.  There were a lot of moments that were very serious, sad, weighty.  But people would be laughing nonetheless.  Maybe they can't be blamed too much; the previews really emphasized the funny moments.  But still, some of the things about dealing with their father's dementia aren't funny, but people were still laughing.

Anyway, I recommend it.

RIP - Arthur C. Clarke

I learned this afternoon that Arthur C. Clarke had died.  It was bound to happen, sooner rather than later considering his age.  But still, it really is chilling to me.  I'm an old-school sci-fi geek, when it comes down to it, and a fair amount of my teeth-cutting was on Clarke's books.  He was all the more admirable for his scientific knowledge.  I still remember reading Earthlight.  It was amazingly accurate, from a moon exploration standpoint, with only one major gaffe (the idea of a kind of plant life living in the shadowed craters of the moon).  That one error was pretty excusable considering the book was written in 1955.

Anyway, there are a lot of obits out there, so I won't go into it any further.  I'll just say that I'm saddened by his death, but I'm very, very glad that he lived.

Love the Visits

Yesterday an old friend of mine visited Laramie, so I took the afternoon off to hang out with her and her husband.  It was really fun.  I hadn't seen her in three years, though we keep up with sporadic emails and infrequent phone calls.  We wandered around downtown Laramie (and I successfully avoided buying anything at the Copper Kettle), had lunch at the local bakery, and went bowling for the afternoon.  Very fun.  Maybe next time I'll get to visit her in Arkansas.

Taxed

I received my tax return last week, and it left as quickly as it arrived.  I chose to put some of it into a high-yield savings account as the beginning of an emergency fund, but the bulk of it went to create a dent in my American Express account.  My one effort to stimulate the economy was to buy Sins of a Solar Empire early (I'd planned to buy it in April).

That makes me think of the economic stimulus package.  I'm not sure that it's that great an idea.  Aside from the fact that now may not be the best time to cut the government's income, I haven't met anybody who actually plans on spending their $600 check.  Everyone is either putting the money toward a debt or into savings/investments.  The investments may have some effect, I suppose, if enough people do that, but that seems to be the least popular option in my decidedly unscientific poll.  If the point is to get us to buy things, I don't know that it will work.  Of course, I'm no financial expert, but it just doesn't make logical sense to me.

Regardless, I'm looking forward to getting my check and promptly signing that over to American Express as well.

Friday Catblogging!

New Furniture Edition:

I'm Currently Reading:

Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time

Have a great weekend!

Who Knew?

Powered By Vibrators

Apparently, I've been going about this debt reduction thing all wrong.

Thanks to E. McPan (for linking to the quiz).

Small House

Well, my house doesn't seem quite so small as it did before.  The big news that I referred to yesterday is this: I now have living room furniture!!

It's leather, and a sort of off-white/very light beige.  Normally, I wouldn't go for leather, or for that color, but the furniture stuff is is pretty good shape, and I managed to pick it all up for $250.  Can't beat that.  Plus, my cats are unlikely to destroy the leather--they've never touched anything else that is leather.  Besides, keeping their claws clipped will head that off easier than with cloth, too.

The important thing is that I now have a soft place for guests to sit.  It's bliss.

The photos can give you the idea, though the lighting isn't that great.  And yes, that is a shrimp nigiri pillow on the couch.

Lost and Found

Something wondrous has happened.

You may remember that I lost my knitting bag.  After the move, I must have torn through my new house a dozen times, searching in all boxes, all shelves--I really went crazy.  Eventually, I had to accept reality and begin rebuilding my supplies.  Then I did some more knitting.

Yesterday, I was in my closet, getting ready for work, when I leaned close to the window to look out at something close to the house.  That's when I noticed something dark behind the closet door.  In disbelief, I opened the door to get a better look.

You've probably guessed by now, but this was indeed my knitting bag hanging on the back of the closet door.  For all my tearing up my house, I must have never looked behind that door.

I'm quite joyous.  I did indeed knit last night, nearly finishing the second skull-pattern baby sweater for my friend's kid.  What was awesome was when I compared the new needles I'd gotten and found that the only thing that duplicated was a set of size 0 double-pointed, which I can always use more of.  Besides, my old ones are shorter.

It's possible I may have found the bag anyway, in the spring when I put the glass pane from my front screen door in that closet.  Or maybe I would have decided to store the glass somewhere else.  I don't know, but I'm certainly glad to have my bag back.

This is shaping up to be a great week.  Stay tuned tomorrow, when I expect to have more great news.

Spring Forward

Like most people, I got up an hour earlier than usual this morning, but not according to the time on the clock.  Strangely enough, I don't feel more tired that usual.  Perhaps I will later today.

I was thinking about the old rule of changing your smoke alarm batteries when you change your clocks.  With the new, far longer daylight saving time, I'm not sure that really makes sense anymore.  Really, we only have about four months of standard time.  Perhaps we need some new twice-yearly event.

I'll probably use the Solstices.  I doubt, though, that this would work generally because most people don't pay much attention to astronomical things.

Free Book!

I had more trouble with the site this weekend, trouble so bad that it brought the site down.  I seem to have fixed it (again).

All to bring you this: Neil Gaiman has posted his entire novel, American Gods, for free online reading.  It would be difficult to read the entire thing online, though possible.  Instead, I recommend that you check it out, and if you like it, pick up a copy at the bookstore or the library.  It's awesome.

Click here.

Politics

When I was in High School, in 1992, Bill Clinton came to Wyoming.  He was the first major presidential candidate to do so in recent memory.  It was only a brief stop off the airplane, speech, then fly away again, but it was more than we usually get.

This year, there has been a flurry of activity.  Obama and both Clintons have been campaigning here.  They've even given multiple speeches in several places around the state.  It's quite remarkable, all this fighting over Wyoming's 18 delegates.

The caucus was today.  I just got a "Breaking News" email from USAToday reporting that Obama won Wyoming's 18 delegates.  I love the idea that our little state really had some attention for something good.

Error

Yes, I know there's something odd with the layout and everything.  I'll get it fixed at the earliest opportunity, which looks to be after work.

[Update: I got it taken care of.  Somehow, my default template got nuked, and I had to rebuild it from the remaining scraps.  Major pain, since it required me to remember coding skills that I'd pretty much forgotten.]

Error

Yes, I know there's something odd with the layout and everything.  I'll get it fixed at the earliest opportunity, which looks to be after work.

Friday Catblogging!

The Aerial Photo Edititon:

I'm Currently Reading:

Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time

Have a great weekend!

Neighbor Update

It looks like the work on the neighboring house is proceeding apace.  I often see one (or both) of two vehicles, and the truck is frequently loaded with various things.  One day, it was sheetrock, so I suppose that means they're gutting at least some of the interior.

Right now, I don't know if those working on the house are the new owners or the old.  The "For Sale" sign disappeared around the beginning of all this work, and there was never an "under contract" notice.  But that could mean that things were taken care of quickly, given the "special financing" and the new owners simply planned on gutting the place from the beginning.  I must say, if someone is able to do all that work without hiring others, the house was probably quite a bargain.

Alternatively, this could be a "take it off the market for a while, fix it up, then put it back up for sale" sort of thing.  Time will tell.

RIP: Gary Gygax

Late last night I discovered that Gary Gygax had died at the age of 69.  For those who are unaware, he was a co-creator of the seminal role playing game, Dungeons and Dragons.  There's bound to be a lot of commentary about the game and its creator's influence on contemporary culture, but I'd like to pause and reflect on my own role-playing roots.

Being a fantasy reader for some time, I really took to D&D.  I remember that it took a while to get a group together, and I only played occasionally in high school.  In college, though, I played quite a bit, and it was really fun.  But my fun with D&D led directly to my exposure with the White Wolf brand games.  These are far more mature, dark, and thematic.

Aside from the games, though, my role playing hobby had a far more significant effect.  And I'm not talking about the rather large amount of money that I sunk into the various books over the years--my collection is worth a small fortune.  It's also not the voluminous detailed rules, and my role as a rules-lawyer, which probably had some influence on becoming a real lawyer.

Instead, I've met some of my oldest and closest friends while gaming, and many of my fondest memories are gaming-related.  Aside from our various in-game antics, which were considerable, I recall coming home in the wee hours of the morning after being up for hours with my friends, drinking bad coffee at the local greasy spoon truck stop after marathon sessions, and many other fun times.

Man, that was fun.  Thanks for the great times, Gary.

I wonder if there's a game somewhere nearby?

Scare!

I had a bit of a scare today.

I've been getting rather shrill emails on my University of Wyoming email account warning me that today is the day my email account gets deleted.  Previously, I'd been using the exchange account to store all my email, regardless of the source.

This morning, I decided it was time to sever that connection and go with just one account.  So, I deleted my UW Mail "account" in Outlook.

Big Mistake.

That ended up deleting my access to all my non-archived emails.  The OST file was still there, but nothing could access it.  I spent an hour before work trying to figure out how to access my emails.  I was downloading various programs, trials (the full price for some was up to $600!), etc.  Nothing worked.

In the end, I was able to reconnect to my UW Mail account and store all my emails as a PST file.  That was a big relief.

Right now, I'm trying to decide the best way to ensure I get universal access to my email, while allowing me the integration with everything that I've come to expect from Outlook.  But I think I'll wait until the weekend to tackle that.

Enter the Reading Room

Yes, I've been gone for a bit--a little too preoccupied to do much blogging.

This weekend I was very productive.  I actually got my basement reasonably cleaned out and unpacked (yes, unpacked).  For example, I've got the library (or "reading room") all unpacked and set up.  It's a much more inviting place to, well, read (though I'd like to have better walls and flooring and lighting).  It also has a fireplace, so that makes it rather pleasant, as well.

That leaves pretty much one room in the basement to be fully unpacked, which I also worked on a bit this weekend, but didn't finish.  Officially, it's supposed to be the "entertainment" room, but I've found myself entertained more by my computer, with which I watch movies and TV, than anything else.  Besides, with no comfy furniture, going downstairs to watch things seems absurd.