Oh, hello there.
Welcome!
Imagine me sitting in a red leather armchair in a library. A fire is burning in the hearth, Spot is washing herself upon the footstool while Lilah is roaming across the top of the red felt pool table knocking balls around for everyone's amusement. Your editor-in-chief is wearing a smoking jacket and a pair of briefs with a questionable pedigree.
Friday was quite productive. I purchased two kinds of earplugs. Right now I'm wearing the purple foam kind rather than the silicone earplugs. My only fear is not being able to hear my alarm clock and being late for work. At the moment I have my clock set to go off in two minutes. Actually one minute because the face just changed.
My beard and mustache are now trimmed after growing out a thick, luxuriant beard which would be the envy of any mountain man worth his salt.
The alarm has gone off, I can hear it quite distinctly which means I'm golden!
Back to my facial hair. At times bushy beards can be more trouble than they are worth requiring much more primping and preening which are philosophically antithetical to the idea behind beards. Men grow beards because they are men. Such individuals have better things to do than engage themselves in such follies like 'personal hygiene' in order to pursue an exciting career administering UNIX servers and complaining about the science in popular science fiction films. Also many great men have worn beards throuhout the ages and the vain fashion of remaining clean-shaven is a mere hiccup stemming from a single republic's military culture. Ever since I've trimmed my facial hair I don't feel awful. Ever since October 2007 I've been equating a really, really long beard with depression.
My nose hairs are also trimmed, kinda, sorta.
Tinkering with heptapod.org is still minimal non-existent yet I persist in updating though no one will read my posts. Ironic thing is nobody reads heptapod.org so there's really no difference.
Now I'm rising from my chair and walking over to one of the bookcases where you see three thick novels.
In the past two weeks I've begun reading George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. Mostly because I got the books for free and I'm still being cheap. My secret Santa at work got me A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords for Christmas and using the Barnes & Noble card provided by my two department managers I acquired A Game of Thrones. Mr. Martin you got your royalties fair and square. None of this internet pirating nor library thievery hurt your bottom line! As you may or may not know, gentle reader, I'm not a fan of the fantasy genre and certainly all the tropes are evident in this work. In the favor of these tales I'm not facepalming (as with Dies the Fire and S.M. Sterling's Emberverse books) nor am I skipping over subjectively irrelevant chapters just to finish the book (Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert's Dune 'prequels'). Heck I even brought A Game of Thrones home with me to read over the weekends rather than leaving it as my lunchtime companion.
P.S. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is more fun not having to worry about keys coming loose! Don't forget to spoil yourself to forestall stupid deaths.
Ye olde blurry and dirty keyboard.
The seamy underbelly of my laptop.
Gotta unscrew all the screws marked with a "K".
Out damned hard drive! Blurriness be damned!
Removing the fucker from the laptop.
YES IT IS A FUCKING MESS THANK YOU VERY MUCH
Is that salt? Pieces of dead skin? Ramen detritus???
You are no match for paper towels and vacuum cleaners!!!
Replaced at last! Like new!
My computer is a cat, I tell you what. Multiple reinstalls of Windows, hit by lightning twice, upgraded ram, upgraded hd, replaced keyboard, a small crack on the front of the left side of the keyboard handrest and a new battery.
"Twice?" I can hear that running through your head, gentle reader.
Yes. Back in New Jersey my laptop suffered a surge. Fortunately it was protected by a surge protector and only the humble winmodem got fried by the surge.
The next time was August of 2002 when I was upstairs watching wrestling with the Birds during Smackdown! while an electrical storm raged outside. There was a huge, HUGE lightning crash nearby and my computer was killed because I didn't have it on a surge protector.
This laptop has been through hell and back. Hopefully its service will continue into the unforeseen future. Even if I acquire a replacement computer this laptop will still see lots of use.
Next I was attempting to continue my journey across the USA and my next stop was New Mexico. It was like the entire state was made out of the same prominent ruddy stone over at Garden of the Gods. Bright and sunny which was balanced out by a lot of shade from overpasses and mountains towards crepuscular times. I needed to find an auto parts store for some reason or another. My laptop was on the passenger seat and had directions to one but I ended up being lost and stumbling into a southwestern mall. All the buildings were adobe and had a feel of an amusement park and tourist trap than a place where people actually bought stuff.
You know those fortune telling booths with the animatronic gypsy lady? This place had one of those booths but a real live guy was in it and would tell your fortune for a nickle and give change if you had nothing smaller than a dime! The entire time I wanted to get the name of the lead singer from the Pretenders, since she was elected President of the United States of America, and for the life of me I can not remember her fucking name. In fact the identity eluded me so much that I blurted out "How much wood can a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?" The guy laughed, handed me a piece of paper with "No" on it then used a yellow highlighter on a blue d10 that I kept calling a d12.
