Roleplaying Game [Geek] Humor

If any of you were geeks like me in junior high/highschool you probably have mixed memories of roleplaying game sessions with your friends.

Depending on the crowd you played with, you probably had an experience at least somewhat similar to the current comic over at VG Cats. It made me chuckle and brought back some memories.

I can't permalink over to it so check out #116 if it's been updated by the time you read this.

Netflix Competition

Well Blockbuster.com has finally opened up it's online DVD mail service. The first real contender with any real possibility to knock Netflix down a peg.

I love Netflix, I think it's a great service - but I have also just now signed up for blockbuster.com's free trial. They give you two weeks free, 3 movies at a time, no late fees - exactly like netflix. The two differences I have noticed so far?
- Blockbuster charges only $19.99 as opposed to neflix's $21.99.
- Netflix seems to have much more of a selection.

I will post my review on the service (delay in movie shipments, etc.) in a couple weeks. For those who are interested, or don't want to wait - go try it free for a couple weeks yourself at Blockbuster.

Tired of XP's look?

I am very into the whole 'skinning and customization' of windows scene. Someday I will set up a scrapbook with screenshots of all the variations my desktops have gone through over the years.

Anyone who is even remotely interested in this type of thing should go check out
AlienGUIse.

It's free and pretty damn nifty. It uses a slimmed down version of Stardock's theme manager/object desktop suite. Which I have been using for years now. Stardock's software allows for complete customization of a PC.

Alienware's new offering does the same thing - the only hitch is right now there are only 2 skins for it, and both of them are (of course) alienware branded. This doesn't bother me, since I own (and love) my alieware PC. But it may bother some of you.

Either way, it couldn't hurt to
look.

Note: Due to the fact that this just happened today as well as the fact that it is pretty damn popular it may take a few trys to download, since Alienware's servers are being hammered at the moment.

Teleportation not that far away?

I know some of my Startrek loving friends would make some kind of 'beaming' joke at this point, but I will refrain.

We aren't talking about physical matter yet - only light. But it is still very impressive.

You can keep your flying cars, I want to be able to walk into a small closet-sized device and walk out a similar one 100 miles away.

"Physicists have carried out successful teleportation with particles of light over a distance of 600m across the River Danube in Austria."

"Quantum teleportation could be harnessed for fast, powerful computers or communication networks."

Check the BBC article here!

New workaholic salesman alert!

As you can tell from the title, there is a new salesman at my company. For those of you who are reading this and don't know me.. if there are any.. I work as a Database Manager for a printing and direct mail company.

Now, we are by no means a large company - maybe 50 regular employees plus temps when needed. It is a pretty laid-back place - for the most part. We have a few nutcase work-a-holics who come in everyday to annoy everyone else - but for the most part we go with the flow.

They just hired a new salesman, who comes from a big-corporate background. He has been here for two weeks and still hasn't come to realize that we aren't IBM. Here, when we want to talk to someone, we don't schedule a meeting - we pick up a phone or walk over and talk.

So, this new salesman - I will call him Bob, decides that he needs to talk to the mail department heads. He sends us e-mails to schedule a meeting, confirms via telephone and sets up a 30 minute long powerpoint presentation on something that would have normally taken 2 minutes of conversation time.

Who was at the meeting? Bob, me, and one other person. I swear it must've taken him (at least) 3 hours to prepare this presentation and 'pamplets' for the attendees.

I give him another month before he realizes what kind of company this is, and quits. He seems to be too much of an overachiever to actually work here :)

I will admit the colors were pretty though.

In a quandry...

Sooo.. my life just got a little more complicated! Haha!

Last year, in September, I recieved a call from a former employer asking me if I would like to come back to work there. The pay was better, I wasn't really happy where I was currently - so I said yes. I was then put on hold until March. After that, I pretty much had given up on the possibility of it ever happening, and promptly forgot about it.

Fast-forward 11 months from first call.

Those of you who have seen my posts here know that I am thinking about moving - in fact I am actively searching for a new place to live. Yes, that is right, I am planning on moving from NY [ the greatest state in the world] to Connecticut [the, um, state next to NY].

I work in CT, I know people in CT, and I (for some reason) like it there. My job has gotten better, got a nice raise, they are talking about another raise/promotion happening in the next few months (which may or may not happen, depending).

Yesterday, I get a call from the VP of the other company that had wanted me a year ago. He says things are finally happening and he hopes I am still interested in working there. I tell him 'sure' since I don't believe in slamming doors and he tells me that he has emailed me a proposal that he wants me to look at.

So now I am faced with the choice between a few grand more per year [and staying in NY] but I would have to work another 5-10 hours a week for it. Or moving to CT like I had planned - keeping this job until I found something better at one of the larger CT cities I would now be able to commute to, and continuing to work anywhere from 30-35 hours a week.

Actually, now that I typed all that out I am leaning toward telling this guy it's too late. What do you think?

Scott says I should update.

So, my good friend Scott over at Blankbaby has informed me that he would like me to update this blog.

I had decided to keep this blog on hold for a bit, since pretty much anything I post at this point will sound negative, and I really would like this to be a happy place :)

I am still looking for a new apartment, my current landlord is still leaving workmen alone in my apartment - I came home last thursday and everything had been moved. Yes, you read that right. They were poking around in my entertainment center and TV stand in my living room, looking at the papers on my desk in my bedroom, and moved around things on my dresser, as well as the TV stand in my bedroom. They even went so far as to move furniture that I had pushed to one side of my living room so they could get into a closet there. Things in my living room had been covered in sheets (since my landlord has still not completely fixed the hole in my living room ceiling), and upon coming home I noticed that the sheets had obviously all been removed - since they were now covering different pieces of furniture.

My landlord, of course, "was in the apartment the whole time" but couldn't tell my when/how all that happened. Strange, you would think they would have noticed all that activity. I was then told "I may have left them alone for 5 minutes". That, roughly translated from evil landlord speak means, 'They said they needed to get in there for something, so I unlocked the door for the day and gave them the run of the place while I was out front gardening and landscaping.'

Oh well.

I will update when I am in a better mood or searching for a new place isn't taking up all my time.

Micro-Review of: I, Robot.

Aside from the fact that the movie has little to do with the book by Asimov (or so I am told, since I never read it), I thought the movie was pretty good. The acting was decent, some of the writing/dialog was a little cheesy("you are the dumbest smart-person I know!" Oh yeah, well "you are the dumbest dumb-person I know!." OH, SNAP!)
Special effects were pretty damn good - I actually forgot that I was watcing CGI robots running around on screen (which is, in and of itself, a testimonial to how well done they were).
All in all, it was a good sci-fi action flick, and as I commented to my friend Scott after we saw it, I think (if they changed the ending) that it would have been great prequel to the original Matrix.

All in all, I give it a B.

Apartment hunting sucks!

I can't wait until I find something, this way my life can get back to some semblance of normalcy. I am eating, drinking and breathing apartment hunting at this point.
So far, all my blogging here has had something to do with my current apartment or apartment searching.
Eventually, I will actually discuss things other than apartments! I can't wait.
"What will I discuss?", you may ask.
Hell, I don't know, Video Games, PC Customization, Movies, Books - you know all the things that have taken a backseat to my laudable goal of getting the heck out of my apartment :)