Journal entries in 'Dear Diary' for March, 2005

Well, that was a waste of an hour and a half. My plan was to go to the sci-fi convention today, camera firmly in hand, and take pictures of all the costumed nerds (OK, and probably enjoy myself a whole lot). I called the place it was at, Tropimar, to ask when it ended, and they said 8pm. Splendid. So around 4pm I headed off, but got stuck in traffic, which I keep forgetting to factor into my plans.

I finally got there around 5, but figured I still had three hours, which would likely be more than enough nerdage to satisfy me. However, as I pulled into the parking lot, the guy in line ahead of me was backing out, and the parking attendant told me that they had just closed. I asked if there was any other place to park and he said nope, not in the area. Excellent. So essentially I had to turn around and go home (and fight my way through the traffic again), having seen nothing but one slightly costumed nerd in a purple wig standing out by the curb. I didn't even get to hear the guy who played Chewbacca make that great "Awwwaararagggh" sound, as I'm sure someone would have asked him to do.

Haha, there's a sci-fi convention here on Sunday, and Peter Mayhew, the actor who played Chewbacca in the first three episodes of Star Wars (and is reprising the role in the upcoming Episode III) will be speaking. I'm tempted to go just for the hell of it :) I wonder if they will stage a reenactment. I sure hope they pick me. (mp3)

Man. You know how when you sleep too much, it just makes you tired? I think I did that last night, and woke up and felt sleepy, so I slept some more until I was rested again. I went to bed at 8pm for a short nap, and ended up waking up at 10am, 14 hours later. I'd better not get sleepy at work today, or I'll be pissed :)

Well that was a brief yet exciting adventure. I expected a package on Saturday, and it hasn't yet arrived, so when I saw the mail truck pass by, I went out in my robe (against my better judgement, but I didn't have time to dress) to get the mail and ask him about the package. Upon my return, I realized I had let the door shut behind me, and as I'm not in the habit of keeping house keys in my robe, I was locked out, with the cable guys working on the cable box right in front of my house. Needless to say, there was no one else home. Perfect.

Obviously, the side gate was locked as well, but I figured one of the back doors themselves was probably open, if I could just get into the backyard.

I don't know if you've ever tried jumping a wall in a bathrobe, but it's not easy to do without exposing untanned regions to the public at large. At least, today I learned that I'm not capable of such a feat. Sorry, cable guys.

To add injury to insult, in my haste to get over the wall, I was not able to give due care to protecting sensitive nether regions from harm. Sorry, genitalia.

But the happy ending is the back door was unlocked. And I'm now wearing pants.

Today was fun. So many people remembered my birthday. Weird. I woke up to find like eight or nine IMs from people, and throughout the day Bryan, Meg, and Jenn called. Although I've always felt the whole "ackowledging a birthday" thing is a bit hackneyed and overrated, I have to admit it is nice when people remember of their own accord :)

I met up with Michelle and David, and we tried to go bowling but were deterred by traffic. We found ourselves near San Patricio, so we ducked out of the dilatory morass and decided to watch Million Dollar Baby. Great movie, but not an uplifting experience. So to lift our spirits, from there we returned to my house and ate delicious brownies that Natalia and Mami had made to serve as my birthday cake. Michelle went over to her boyfriend Billy's house to say hi, since it's nearby, and David and I played a little music.

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Today I hung out with Michelle, and went with her to pick up an old friend of hers named David Hernandez from the airport. He is a guy she sort of dated back in 6th grade, at which point he moved to Arizona, and they hadn't seen each other since. He was actually really cool, and I got along great with him. I was sold when we were discussing musical tastes and he asked Michelle, "Have you heard of Dream Theater?" and she smiled and pointed at me. He's a drummer, so he was surprised and impressed when I mentioned that Mike Portnoy did a drum clinic here a few years ago.

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Frighteningly, I'm actually getting into this EVE Online thing. It's a different experience, because of the whole multiplayer thing. In most games, when you're starting out, you run up to everything and look curiously at it, try shooting at random stuff, etc. In this case though, most ships and stuff you see out there are actual people, and things you do can actually affect other players, so acting like an inquisitive four-year-old ends up drawing attention to yourself :) I was exploring the interface, looking through the list of signed-on users, and double-clicked one to bring up the information on that user. However, instead of doing that it opened up a conversation window, and the person said "Hey, what's up?" I said eek and explained I was just learning my way around.

We'll see if it remains interesting once I get enough into the game where I'm actually interacting with other people regularly — I've never been a super social person, so it's hard to say whether that would be a desirable or distasteful aspect in a game. We shall see. There's tons of potential for interaction in this game if it's desired — players can form corporations to manufacture products that are better than the ones available directly from the game, for example. You can join a corporation and perform some service for them like mining or couriering or whatever. I sort of think that might make it feel too much like work though, because they would probably be pissed if I didn't sign on for a few days because I didn't feel like it or had too much work or whatever, hehe. I don't want to feel obligated to a video game.

Yesterday I came across this entertaining tale of deceit and consciencelessness describing a scam a guy pulled off in a space-based MMORPG called EVE Online. I hadn't heard of the game before, but although the general point of his story is that he becomes disillusioned with the game and turns to "crime," his vivid descriptions of the battle scenes actually sounded pretty intriguing. It's sort of like Homeworld only multiplayer. So, despite my usual lack of enthusiasm for online gaming, I figured what the hell and downloaded the EVE client and paid the $20 for 30 days worth. I highly doubt I'll actually keep paying the $15/month even if I do like the game, but it sounded interesting and worth a $20 experiment.

I've only played it a little so far — I've only done the tutorials, haven't interacted with anyone else yet. But it does seem pretty enjoyable. You can pretty much do anything you want — some choose to mine asteroids, some run trade routes to sell goods in areas where they fetch a higher price. The part I like is that some decide to be pirates and lurk in the less patrolled areas of space between star systems and prey on those traders. Sure, the fact that it's an MMORPG means you're stealing from real people, but hey, their job would be boring if you didn't provide some excitement and risk :)

So we'll see if it proves entertaining enough to hold my interest — very few games do — but at first glance it looks pretty fun.

Last month a guy from England named Chris Rustage sent me an email saying he liked my photo gallery software and would like a copy to use on his own site. I haven't really prepared it for public distribution, and told him so, but he still felt it was his best option, so I cleaned it up a bit and sent it to him.

Anyway, we were talking about photography yesterday and he mentioned he's got the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L lens I've been longing for since I got my first Canon (although of course what I really want is the version with Image Stabilization). I asked him how he liked it and the bastard showed me all these incredible photos he has taken with it (Kids by the fire, Sunset at the beach, Pelican, Swinging, Seagull in flight, Tiff Needell). It's incredible how sharp the photos come out, even handheld in such low light. How am I supposed to be mature and save my money responsibly when faced with temptation such as this?! Jerk. :) Fortunately, I can't currently afford that lens even if I were to spend all the money in my bank account PLUS max out my credit card. So I'm safe for now, phew.

Remember how I was looking forward to this weekend, and finally getting to sleep, catch up on a week's worth of Stargate, etc? I've found an even better way to spend the weekend: working! Luis asked me to cover his shift on Sunday, from 10am to 10pm. Sweet. I like how it's a day shift too, so I get to adjust to daytime and then back to nighttime for Monday night. I mean, I certainly don't begrudge it, since he's got a family emergency, and I'm just glad I can help. I just found it amusing to have the request come on the one weekend I was most looking forward to sleeping :) Ah well, maybe this will all help me get used to sleeping less. Right now, I'm not very functional if I get much less than 8 hours of sleep, and I view that as a handicap.

Ugh, this has been a difficult week. Andy, Donny, and Violet are down here for the week for their spring break, and as usual, I'm spending my nights working and my days hanging out with them, and carefully ignoring the missing third component, sleep. However, I've never been very good at this, so it just means that sleep encroaches upon all the other activities of my day like wine soaking through a tablecloth.

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