05.20.08

D’oh

Posted in Bailout, Gaming, Movies, Site News at 7:36 pm

Okay. It appears that in my rush to get through TWEWY– and believe me, it was a rush– I forgot that I wrote up a post over lunch. So instead of that post– which was about Iron Man– you get this, and the Game Clear notice that’s about to go up. I really am sorry, folks; I’m not usually one to space on this sort of thing, but as work is calming down (proof of this being that I really did get the post prepared over lunch) I should be getting more verbose very soon. Let’s just stick the Iron Man post on Thursday and see what I work out for tomorrow– I’m thinking I might watch NCIS now that the DVR’s built up a good buffer, but we shall see, huh?

Game Clear notice imminent…

05.16.08

Party Lines

Posted in Bailout, Site News at 5:28 pm

……..right, so I’ve finally overused the excuse of “no time to write”. Fine.

Today’s my birthday, so you get no post just yet. This was a rough week, and today’s celebration(s!) took the majority of the day. Over the weekend I’ll collect my thoughts and relax. So until then.

05.14.08

Rebound

Posted in Bailout, Site News at 6:13 pm

Yeah. Long story short: don’t expect any long entries this week. Hopefully over the weekend I can relax and get my thoughts together for something substantial here.

On an unrelated note, I wish the best of luck to the folks I know who are making some changes. You, as always, know who you are, and also as always know that you’re in my thoughts.

05.12.08

Bounce

Posted in Bailout, Site News at 6:48 pm

Sorry for the false restart today, folks. I got a little overwhelmed at work over the past week and a half, and have needed as much relaxation time as I can get. That kinda meant losing myself in my current games list, so unfortunately there’s nothing for me to write about right now. If all goes well there might be a piece up at Netjak soon, but that’s about all I can promise for this week. Beyond that, I’ll do what I can.

Incidentally, absolutely no writing got done last week and that seriously pisses me off since that was the entire point of Essay Week this time around.

05.03.08

Peace Out

Posted in Shameless Self-Promotion, Site News at 6:01 am

Well, folks, by the time you guys see this, I’ll be offline. I expect to see it through to the end, though if there’s an abject emergency– say, someone’s body parts are no longer all present and accounted for– give me a call. I hope nothing like that happens. Anyway, I’ll post on Sunday morning to let you know how it went.

Ciao.

05.01.08

A Day Off

Posted in Rants, Site News at 5:05 am

(Incidentally, since the upgrade of WordPress last week I’d noticed that the cut mechanism I used had kinda disappeared. What’s worse is that I couldn’t find the plugin I’d used before– its site still existed but the link gave a 404. So, I found a different one, hacked it to my purposes, and there we go, good as new. If you see any other weirdness, please let me know.)

I’ve made mention over the past week or so about a phenomenon known as Shutdown Day, which this year falls on this coming Saturday, May 3rd. According to the site, the project’s goal is to see how people’s lives are deeply intertwined with the technology they rely on on a daily basis, and to see if individuals can thrive without the high-tech tools we’ve come to take more or less for granted. While I think it’s an admirable goal, and I am participating, ( their reasons are not my own… » )

So, Saturday, I’ll probably have an automated post up saying I’m offline, and I likely won’t be answering e-mails or messages. I’ll take phone calls but only if they’re absolute, complete and total end-of-the-world emergencies. No net, no television, no movies, no music. Nothing going on beyond some reading and writing. As scary as it sounds to me– because, despite my protests, I’m very much aware of how much I lean on my tech gear– I’m really looking forward to it, mostly for the peace involved in it.

When I was in school, and this is something I just recently realized, I liked sitting in my back yard and reading. The sound of the wind in the trees was something I didn’t notice back then, but I remember now. Every time I get back to my parents’ house in the summer, I listen for that sound. When I’m at my house, over the summer, I sometimes hear it. Hopefully if the weather cooperates on Saturday– it’s set for a possible rainstorm– I’ll be able to hear that sound that brings me such calmness. Even if it does rain, that will be fine too– I love the sound of rain, too.

Besides. Computers aren’t the only things that need rebooting once in a while.

04.29.08

The Week Before The Words

Posted in Rants, Shameless Self-Promotion, Site News, Writing at 4:40 am

I’ve spoken at some length about Essay Week, without actually giving the skinny on what it is or what its goal is for the May session. I figure now’s a pretty good time to get it taken care of. Those of you who were around for the last EW, back in August, might consider yourselves excused, but I’d appreciate it if you’d stick around; the explanation’s a little different this time.

Well, first, to address the question on everyone’s mind: “What right does this jerk have to write these long, ridiculous diatribes and expect us to care?” Funny thing is, I’ve been thinking the same thing. I’m not particularly notable and I don’t really aspire to be; if I do become famous, I’d rather be known as a storyteller than as a commentator or discussion-master. Still, every once in a while I get these urges to try to speak my mind in what’s been called “the new marketplace of ideas”. (I’ll get into this more on Monday, when I talk about Web 2.0 and social networking.)

So, put short, Essay Week is five straight days on the blog about a handful of topics I feel the need to speak to. I come close sometimes outside of the designated Week, but usually scrap those because the topic on my mind at the moment is (nine times out of ten) fanboyism, and I’ve kinda done that one to death. The purpose of the week, when I first did it last year, was to give me some time to work through a game without having to worry about writing for the blog (recall I was working on the nonstop-posting challenge). This time it’s a little bit of an inversion– I’m writing so that I can, in essence, focus on my writing; the draft, specifically, needs some solid attention without interruption, and this coming week is an excellent way to do it. So, by prepping five long posts ahead of time, I can ensure that content stays flowing while at the same time giving myself a break.

Now, if that’s the purpose, why not simply take the week off from the blog? After all, Shutdown Day is coming– why not just stay offline and out of relative contact for the entire week? That’s more than a little impractical in this case. First off, I’m flirting with inertia enough as it stands. Recall my rules of writing– if you stop doing something long enough, eventually you stop doing it altogether. The second reason is that I do pride myself on having “something” up when I say I will. Even the excuses I’ve habitually posted, in my mind, count– it’s not that I don’t want to write for the main page. Sometimes things just come up, or sometimes there’s nothing really I want to say (or what I did say isn’t just bad, it’s whiny and annoying and you really don’t want me to post it, trust me). Finally, I did make a resolution to try to keep up a consistent set of updates, and I intend to keep that promise. (Maybe next year I’ll try daily updates on both sites…. hrm.)

So, now you know what it is, and why I’m doing it. Just to give you all a little taste, the five topics I have in mind– I’ll be writing the essays tonight and tomorrow– are as follows: “On Social Networking”, “On The Tantalizing Fringe”, “On A Lack of Organization”, “On Reinventing Oneself”, and “On Being A Programmer”. I do hope that you enjoy these topics.

One of the things I’d like, really, is to see people start discussing the topics a bit more. I always feel a little self-conscious posting all this crap up, as if I were some sort of twenty-first century Walter Cronkite telling you all The Way It Is. As much as I style myself a Forum Tyrant, I think there’s room to challenge me on a few things.

One way or another, I hope you’ll all join me in at least exploring some of the things I’ve had in the back of my mind for a while.

04.25.08

Don’t Hold Your Breath

Posted in Gaming, Rants, Site News, Writing at 5:15 pm

Yeah, so I’ve not exactly had much to say this week. It’s been busy at work and I’ve had other concerns. This weekend I’m hoping to get enough gaming and anime watching done to be more loquacious in the week to come… I will say that I did finish watching Please Teacher! over this past week, and I’m saving some thoughts on that for the April anime report, but overall this has been a slow month, as expected. I needed this month to slow down and “recharge”, I suppose.

Anyway, thinking about both running the Game and Anime reports next week (since otherwise they’d be delayed until the 12th and 14th), and setting up for an early Essay Week. I’m also curious: would it be too over the top to do two Essay Weeks in 2008? Maybe one in late October? Of course it’s really up to me, but I’m wondering if maybe it would be considered a little too, I don’t know, overbearing.

Off to enjoy the wonderful weather, folks… that’s why there’re portables, you know.

04.23.08

Keeping Quiet

Posted in Bailout, Site News at 5:37 pm

Not much to report right now; thunder threatens to take out my connection, so I’m going to just get this up and not worry too much about writing something deep for now. Catch you tomorrow on the LJ, I hope.

04.15.08

Upgrade Completed: WP 2.5

Posted in Site News at 8:33 pm

If you noticed the blog page loading kinda sluggishly of late, you weren’t alone. A vulnerability in WordPress caused a great many sites to be hacked, with loads of spam links, invisible to the user, being injected into the footer. WP2.5 closed this hole, but unfortunately upgrading was a pain in the ass and a couple of custom features were broken in the process. I’ve restored everything to a more-or-less usable state and as a result things should be back to relatively normal. If you notice any strangeness on the blog, please let me know.

But really, please go look at the Tekko Report. Really.