Thursday Thirteen #4 – Jumbled thoughts

Today is one of thosed messed up days where all my thoughts are all over the place. Sometimes you have days like this where it is difficult to focus on any one thing. Is this because there are too many things going on in my life?

Thirteen Things about my jumbled thoughts Ping Pong – I’ve been in this ping pong tournament at work where the organizer has left on maternaty leave. I’ve filled in with continuing to organize the rest of the tournament. WoW – Been give the love to my favourite MMORPG, World of Warcraft. Laptop – Recently bought a new laptop for my wife. She really deserves it. It’s to help her do more of her own writing. I’m the acting network administrator for our household so I still need to do some configuring for her. Petition – I’ve been recently going door to door in my neighbourhood looking for community support for getting our public school expanded from only JK – grade 6 to include grade’s 7 & 8 so that when my kids get to those grades, they won’t be walking a couple of km to get to school. Blog – It’s work to make sure you are keeping up with your blog. I’ve made a personal goal of writing one entry each day with the exception of weekends and holidays. (Those are for my family.) Writing – This has really been making a home on the back burner. I spend a little bit of each day at least considering another aspect of my story. Editing – Each day I try to get through one chapter of editing on my wife’s story. Sleeping – Yeah I’m having to work hard at making sure I get enough sleep. I get caught up in things too easily. I need to either have more alarms telling me when to move on to the next thing or have to watch the clock better. Linux – This seems to aways be changing. I’ve been spending some time trying to make sure my SuSE 10.1 box gets updated. I’ve been following IPodLinux waiting for the final release for 5.5G products. Damn Small Linux has changes periodically that I want to follow. And then there is always the lookout for interesting things that people are doing with the distributions. IPod – So much music, so little time. I have ripped most of my CDs to my IPod. Now I just need to sit down and create some of my favourite playlists. House – There are so many projects around my house. I think I’ll save that for another thirteen list. (Maybe I’ll have to use several lists.) Yard – It’s spring again and that means I’ll be going out and working on the outside of the house too. This too can be it’s only thirteen list. Co-workers – I seem to spend a lot of my time helping out my fellow staff. I seem to be the goto person for a lot of the technologies that we use at the office. Okay, that is it for now. Keep up the smiles Links to other Thursday Thirteens! Marcia – Poems I’ve Yet to Write Gabrielle – Happy Garlic Day (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

Are dreams a visit to a parallel world?

Okay, I used to wonder if dreams were really a visit to parallel worlds.  My dreams were always about locations that didn’t exist in the real world.  They were imaginary locations that I’d never visited, seen, or read about.  I used to get them on a regular basis.

Recently however, I have been doing some heavy gaming online and as a result I’ve found that my dreams are taking shape with certain aspects of the game.  Here are some examples:  In my dreams I’m starting to become concerned with how much space I have to carry stuff.  The other day I had a dream in which I was trying to figure out if this one rectangular bar that I found would stack.  In some of my dreams, I can see the names of everyone in the dream hovering above them.  In another dream, I was being attacked by something and wasn’t concerned since I knew that I could heal since I could tell how much damage I was taking and knew I could heal before I died.

Okay, so this to me is proof that dreams are mearly a process by which your brain is sorting out the events of the day and possibly trying to make sense of the information.

How many characters do you need?

Okay, not really how many do you need but rather how many is it reasonable to work with.  My first character was a druid.  Granted, not easy as a starting character but I think I have the hang of it now and I’m very happy with the druid.  I’d been doing a lot of soloing and small pickup groups.  In the pickup groups I’ve filled both tank and healing roles.  Heck, I’ve even covered both.  I’m now at lvl 43.  My wife got into the game and she and I both started mages.  We quested together and stuck together and lvl’d together up to lvl 17.  While this was great fun, it didn’t leave my wife with a character with which she could lvl on her own when I wasn’t available.  So she started up a second character, a hunter.  She worked on the hunter for a while and then when I got on, I returned to my druid.  Well several times I’ve heard her getting frustrated by some mob that is beating up on her in a cave so I came over with my druid and flattened the cave so that she could finish her quest.  Ever since, I’ve been spending a lot of time assisting her buy either hanging around and keeping her alive or plain flattening the mob that are attacking her.  Her hunter is now at lvl 18 and I’m not making any progress with my druid.  I don’t mind too much because it’s fun to help out and see her lvl but I’m starting to wonder if I should start up another character and catch up to her so that we can quest together again.  I figure I could work at a priest.  I don’t know if I can catch her.  Especially since a priest is so squishy.

So, do I

1. Stick with the druid and wait until she has lvl’d up to my size.
2. Get my mage out and convince her that we don’t need to keep the mages together anymore.
3. Start a priest and race to catchup to her.

Friday Five #1 – Contact lens don’ts

I’ve been doing the Thursday Thirteen and following it for a while now so I’ve been inspired to start a Friday Five. Not too big of a list. Hopefully something interesting to read. This morning I almost lost a contact lens that was irritating me so I’ve decided to create a small list of things not to do as a contact lens wearer.

1. Don’t take one of your contacts out when you are outside in the wind in the early dawn. I needed to readjust one of my contacts this early morning while I was waiting for the bus. As soon as I had removed it I realized my mistake. For those of you out there who are new to contacts, you will probably understand immediately. Those who have been wearing them for a while could make this mistake. Of course, those that don’t wear contacts might not get it. When I first started to wear contacts it took me roughly 45 minutes per contact to get them in. The eye has a wonderful defense mechanism to remove crap from hurting your eye. It tears. Believe it or not, a flood of tears makes it difficult to put a contact in. Another defense the eye has to prevent crap from getting into your eye is a reflexive blink. This too makes it difficult to put a contact in. Typically in putting a contact in, I balance the contact on the end of a finger and gently place an eye drop into the contact to maintain it’s softness (contacts can start to dry out in several seconds) and to assist in the getting it to “stick” to my eye when placing it in instead of it sticking to my finger. The contact needs to be placed carefully and quickly onto the eye and then gentle blinking will allow for excessive moisture to be removed and the contact will slide nicely into place. Okay, now lets return to the issue. Removing a contact is a last resort. Doing it outside is desparate. Doing it without any eye drops is asking for trouble. Doing it in the wind is idiotic both because the wind will excellerate the already short number of seconds it takes to dry out a contact and because it will make balancing a feather-light contact on the end of your finger impossible. Performing any kind of contact manipulation at dusk is foolish since you will never be able to find it if you drop it. Okay enough said.
2. Don’t eat hot & spicy wings when your contacts are bothering you. If your contacts are bothering you, you will need to make adjustments and we all know the badness of jalepeneos and rubbing your eyes.
3. Don’t wear your contacts to bed. Ugg. It’s happened to me when I’ve fallen asleep watching T.V. When you sleep, you don’t blink so much. Blinking is a neccessary way of spreading your eyeball lubricant around. Sleeping with your contacts on will result in your contacts sticking to your eyeball in the morning. It is possible to “detach” the contact from your eye and get the blinking going but I’d recommend avoiding this in the first place.
4. Don’t put your contacts in over an open sink. Typically in the bathroom there is a nice mirror hanging just above the sink. Until you become proficient at putting your contacts in, you will probably want a mirror for assistance. If you lean over the sink to get a closer look in the mirror and your contact falls, say goodbye to your contact.
5. Don’t use spit or saliva to lubricate your contacts. Bleck! Your mouth is loaded with bacteria that you need to keep your mouth healthy but your eyeballs don’t need this type of bacteria. Your eye balls are very sensitive and should never be exposed to this sort of stuff. Use proper eye drops or if available, your own tears.

Okay, so that is my Friday Five. Hope you liked it. Later I might even try to put it in some sort of format.

Warning: Epidemic Virus Alert

(note: Please read disclaimer at bottom of this message.)

Warning!

It has come to my attention that there is a virus that is spreading at an alarming rate through out the global networks. This virus infects the host computer and starts to take over the resources of the computer. A sizable chunk of hard drive space is consumed initially although the observed rate of consumption drops down to almost a trickle, most likely to avoid detection. This virus will utilize a sizable amount of RAM including dipping into the RAM from your video card. If you have a video card which shares your core RAM, it will take a larger chunk of your core RAM. At times it will reduce the available CPU power leaving you still operable but at significantly less power.

The virus tends to stay dorment until certain executable files are run. At that time, it loads its self into memory and then will call out to one of several handling servers across the world. The virus is advanced enough to grab extra files from one of the servers and morph it’s capabilities so it is impossible to tell exactly how far it has advanced by the time you read this. While active in memory, the virus remains in almost continual communication with one of the servers relaying various bits of information that it gathers from both your keyboard and your mouse movements back and forth.

The virus spreads through very clever social engineering in which the victim acquires and installs the virus without realizing the full impact of their actions. Once installed, the actions recorded from the keyboard and mouse movements are then leveraged in the next social engineering invasion.

It is rumoured that over 8 million systems around the world have been affected already.

On the good side, it appear that the virus is not destructive and there are no accounts of the virus destroying existing files on the system. The makers of the virus have also not taken extremes to hide the virus and have left it mostly contained to a single folder. It is uncertain at this time what reprecussions will reveil themselves if any attempts are made to delete the folder. No known anti-virus tools at the time of this writing are currently capable of either detecting or removing this virus. It has been thought though that one of the virus creators may have left some removal scripts embedded in the virus. If you are looking for these scripts or want to attempt to remove the virus by removing the folder you are on your own. As I am writing this warning, I am noticing that I’m experiencing the symptoms of this virus.

Oh… wait…. the virus is launching a warning. I have to go now… I just saw a Horde Shaman attacking Sentinel Hill in Westfall! Must engage in PVP!….

(Disclaimer: This is not a serious alert. It is at best a reasonable attempt at humour and should not be taken seriously. World of Warcraft is an online gamming product created by Blizzard Entertainment.)

Thursday Thirteen #3 – Things you need to do today!

Okay, I missed last week. My bad. Blame it on the Easter weekend. Anyways, one of the things I always do before I write my Thursday Thirteen is get a peek at one of my friend’s Thursday Thirteen and this week she has some good news. So read below and then go check it out.

Thirteen Things about things you need to do today Go visit Christine d’Abo’s Thursday Thirteen #22. View her impressive new book cover on her bog (#13). Write a little comment congratulating her. This will be her first published book. She’s put a lot of work into it and deserves it. Tell your friends. Write a blog about it so that even people you don’t know can hear about it. Email a link to her blog to your co-workers. (Make sure to put in a note that they should really be discreet in their viewing.) Make little hand-out cards with Christine’s blog address. Tell people you meet on the street. (You might want to give them one of those hand-out cards.) Go back and visit Christine’s blog again to make sure it really is true. Reassure your friends that you’ve double checked and it really is true and this is not a hoax. Wait for news of when the book is due to hit the book shelves. That news probably won’t be available today but you can still get started in the waiting. Change your email signature to suggest people should anticipate the arrival of Christine’s new book Put up posters in your neighbourhood announcing the comming of Christine’s new book and how good it will be for them to get a copy for themselves. Darn, thirteen already. Ah well. You can add the rest of the items I was going to add to me list into your list.Links to other Thursday Thirteens! Christine d’Abo – Things I did when I saw my cover Xilly – My 1st 13 Friends in Thursday Thirteen Sonja – Sonja’s (slightly neurotic) Writing Habits Denise – Things I wish I could do Angela – Things that happend or will happen in 13 days (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

Finding that editor groove

I’ve been spending too much time lately not editing or writing.  I’m not too concerned with the writing as I have suspended my writing with a section that I know I can get  back into easily and I have the next steps all ready to go.  The editing I just started to pick up again.  It was good to get back into the chair and invest some time into making a work of art come out.  (Well it should be a work of art when it is finished.)

Things not to do

Okay so I got back yesterday on Monday and found that I had forgotten to get my Thursday Thirteen out.  Bummer.  I came up with what seemed like a brilliant plan.  I decided to write a Thursday Thirteen on Monday about why Monday is sometimes Thursday.  It seemed like a nifty idea.  I got to about the fourth reason when I had to take a break.  Bad sign.  By the end of yesterday I got all the way up to 11 reasons.  After that I had to quit.  In reviewing my reasons I realized that a lot of them weren’t even why Monday was sometimes Thursday but more why Monday and Thursday were similar.  A couple of the reasons I found were so similar I had to edit them to ensure they were separate reasons.  It became an excuse pile to try and bail myself out of having missed the Thursday Thirteen in the first place.  I was becoming very sad.  I finally just kept my post in draft and slept on it.  Waking up today I realize that it was foolish and have deleted the draft so that I can move on and keep up my blogging.

So, having written this blog entry, I feel much better.

Second guessing your story

I’ve been taking some time off of writing my story in order to edit another author’s story.  Even in doing that I can’t help but think about my story from time to time to time to time.   Okay,  so I think about my own story a lot.  I’ve been reviewing the main plot and essentially the premis to my story and I’m starting to wonder if I’ve got a dumb main plot.  My story is set a bit in the future in an almost distopia.  Life isn’t horrible but it’s not all peaches.  The future gives me a bit of lee-way on technology.  I don’t want to give away my story but the part that I’m having a problem with is that my villain is spending a lot of money to deal with my hero in a specific way and I’m not sure that the cost is worth it.

Here is an analogy:

Suppose that the villain has captured the hero and is using an elaborate means of torture to extract information out of the hero by which a rare and expensive herb is used to drug the hero and by using several hundred employees dressed in wacked out costumes, get the hero cough up the information when pulling out a simple knife and starting to inflict pain on the hero is just as effective and cheaper.

So the part I’m having difficulty with is the believability that the villain will go to so much trouble and expense when there are much simpler ways of getting to what the villain wants.

Obsess Much?

Ha! I couldn’t help but steal the title from my good friend Christine at her site.  I’m self tagging to write 5 things I obsess over:

1.  Gaming:  I can’t even put this one lower on the list.  I have a facination with the complexities programmed into the great games that are made in this age.  My current fav. game has to be World of Warcraft.  What a time consumer.
2. Writing:   I’m constantly thinking about my story and where I’m taking it.  I’m reviewing how it’s progressing, I’m reviewing the next chapter that I’m writing (on hold at the moment), I’m reviewing how the rest of the story is going to pan out, I’m reviewing what I’m going to have to change, I’m even contemplating having that first review by someone else.  *shudder*
3. My Wife:  What!?!  I can’t help it.  She’s just so gosh darn….lovable.  I just can’t help but give her a hug when she’s within reach.
4. Computers:  Perhaps I was a mainframe in a previous life.
5. My Kids:  Okay, it’s not that they are the last thing on my list because they rank that low.  They are great kids.  I love to have fun with them every day.  We wrestle, game, play imaginary games, socialize, bike, learn, read and watch TV together.  And with that, I think having them at this part in my list leaves all of you readers with a warm fuzzy feeling.