Long Day is Long

Cliff's Notes on Taco's Day:

6:00a - Get up, start getting ready, start pouring coffee down gullet.

7:00a - Drive to work.

7:45a - Get to work.

10:00a - Guy asks for help with some Java work he's doing. Start trying to untangle his mess.

11:00a - 30 minute meeting w/ guys in London developing a piece of the product for us.

1:15p - "30 minute" meeting ends. Meeting was very productive, though. Possibly the most useful meeting I've ever had.

1:30p - Go downstairs to deli for a quick bite. Sammich was ok but not for $7.

4:00p - Hand teammate untangled mess. Explain what I did. Attempt to correct his tendency to abandon standard, mature APIs that don't immediately work in favor of self-rolled code (that fails in boundary cases). Probably won't stick. Hold off on screaming fit over utter lack of knowledge of Java standard practices for a rainy day. Start working on incorporating latest info into my portion of our project.

4:15 - Realize dude has wiped out my test tables. Start recreating test data. Keep names of new test tables secret. Promise to invoke hoodoo curses at next opportunity. Reluctantly admit I should have predicted we'd step on each other's data. Still plan on hoodoo. Google price of sacrificial goats.

4:30p - Boss asks if I can have my portion of the project (including latest info & changes) ready to hand off to architect tomorrow. Tell him I'll do my best, but spent the bulk of the day force feeding best practices to a contractor. Offer to stay late to get it done, ask what time tomorrow it's needed to avoid delay. Boss says don't stay late, if it won't make it, just let us know asap. Refuse to delay release on my first project.

5:30p - Leave office to meet family for dinner. Find every moron on road between office and restaurant. Food is delicious. Fun evening. Wish father-in-law safe trip back home.

7:30p - Back at office. Dude I Secretly Suspect Is a Gay British Time Traveler From the 19th Century is still there. Make note to find out his name. Set coffee machine on high test. Begin swilling.

7:31p - Wonder if Gay British is redundant.

8:00p - First of many trips to bathroom in accordance with my elaborate coffee tag & release program. Find $8 on floor outside a conference room. Wonder if it belongs to gay British time traveler. Look for him to ask, but fail to find him. Reason that if it's his money, he'll just go back in time and pick it up before I find it. Pocket it.

8:30p - Trade text messages, PMs with Blue. Plot on folks 'n' rascals. Rack up impressive list of text messages. Give up and call. Chat about books, her recovery, and more plottin'. Okay, maybe not the plottin'. But she's got a PM about the plottin'. Did I mention plottin'? Plottin'.

11:00p - Finish vast majority of work due by tomorrow. Exhausted. Leave, grabbing one last mug of high octane coffee for the road.

11:10p - Radio station plays 1 Bourbon, 1 Scotch, 1 Beer. Almost makes it worth working late. Holler along. Badly. Mostly mumbling until the title line. Don't care. Holler louder.

11:20p - Pull in driveway. Get mail. Come inside. Dog is waiting on me at the door, hops up to get pet. Dog is awesome.

11:30 - Sit down with slice of cold pizza, can of beer. Start writing this.

My Holiday Movie Binge

I already had quite a backlog. I've been on a DVD-watching dry spell for a while. Partly because it's a fun way to drive Coyote insane (no, I'll never watch Hot Fuzz). But the pile finally started to call to me. And the post-Christmas DVD sale at Target netted me some sweet sets. I succumbed.

District 9. I wanted to watch this so bad when it was in the theater, but work was insane at the time, and I never managed it. Really fantastic film. Though I do have to wonder why the aliens went through the trouble of developing weaponry that would only respond to their genetic code.

9. Ditto on this one. Was desperate to see it in the theater, but damn work. Advice if you haven't bought it yet: don't buy it at the same time as District 9 like I did. All those 9s confused the register monkey, and she double charged me for this title. I had to go stand in line at customer service to get my money back. The lady at customer service was a bitch. Fucking Best Buy.

I heard pretty ambivalent things about this one. Most of the reviews I saw said it was visually fantastic, but had a weak story. I quite enjoyed the story. And I did find the visuals quite amazing. Learning of the stitchpunks' origins does seem to take a bit of the awe and magic out of the world, but I still loved it. Then again, I'm a sucker for a post-apocalyptic setting.

Paranormal Activity. Holy fucking hell. Our household is divided on the ending (wifezilla prefers the alternate ending, while I found the theatrical ending to be far more hair-raising). We're pretty much united on the "it's goddamn scary" front, though.

True Blood. I knew basically nothing about the show, but a couple people I know have said good things about it. Been thinking about picking it up on Netflix. Target only wanted $17 for season 1 after Christmas, though, so I figured it was can't-lose... if I didn't like it, I could get most of my money back at the used bookstore down the street.

How little I knew of the show was quickly apparent: Didn't realize Anna Paquin was in the show. If I'd known, I probably wouldn't have bought the DVDs. I hated her in the X-Men movies. Fairly impressed with her in this show so far, though. Also, if I'd known it was based on the Charlaine Harris books, I probably wouldn't have checked it out. For some reason, I instinctively hate those books. In truth, I know jack shit about them, so I don't have any rational reason. I just saw them on the shelf and hated them. I'm enjoying the show (though wifezilla informs me there's a lot more sex & violence in the show than the books, so maybe my bookhate/showlove is well-advised... vamps and sex & violence go together like... uh... vamps and sex & violence).

So we'll see. I'm only two eps in. Liking it so far though.

Buffy. More vamps. The binge continues. Half way through season 3. Yay. Love this show. Should've given it a fair shake all those years ago when it was on TV. Who knew it didn't suck like the movie? Gonna have to get Angel when I finish this run.

Big Bang Theory. Love the show, but I'm bad at TV so I miss it all the time. Got seasons 1 and 2, so I can finally catch up on all the episodes I miss. I'm not Sheldon.

Castle. Cap'n Mal. Stana Katic. Yummy.

Stargate SG-1. Yeah, I'm a latecomer to the show. Saw a few episodes during the late, great Sci-fi Friday (why the hell did they dismantle that?) and discovered I really liked it. I got a late birthday card with a gift cert to my favorite used bookstore tucked inside. Promptly ran over to pick up some SG-1, found season 1, got distracted... and accidentally bought season 5. Sigh. At least I have plenty of other stuff to watch.

Tropic Thunder. I've had it from Netflix long enough to have set a new Taco record for sitting on my counter. And if you know me, you know how impressive that is. Almost watched it the other night. But we forgot.

Hot Fuzz. Nevar! (But only because it drives Coyote insane.)

Incoming Movie Binge

I love the after-Christmas DVD sales. In addition to a couple of just-'cause gifts for other people, I snagged season 2 of Big Bang Theory, season 1 of True Blood, and season 5 of The Office for myself this week, at a mere $17 a pop. I finally broke down and decided to buy Wet tonight, and that trip to Best Buy yielded copies of 9, District 9, and Paranormal Activity.

I think my DVD dry spell may be over. I might even get around to watching Tropic Thunder, finally, Coyote.

Been about a month since I sent out my last short story submissions. No word yet. The wa-yay-ting is the hardest part.

Got a gorgeous wooden brain teaser puzzle set for Christmas this year. Due to a misunderstanding over something I said last night, wifezilla let kidzookie play with it today. It's now in pieces I'll never figure out how to reassemble, and worthless for display. So now it's in the trash. Le sigh. Win some, lose some.

Mailed out a couple of late Christmas gifts at lunch today. Yes, I'm well aware that you hate Christmas. Call it a Happy Today gift if you must.

Made up my mind to be Mellow Taco at work today. Went much more smoothly than it has when I've been my usual charming self. Guess I'll have to keep it up. I think it may actually keep me from having a heart attack in the long run.

Off to drink beer and watch 9. Yay.

Zee Germans, Tommy.

Long day.

They had the grand opening of the office today. The governor came out for it. The news crews came out, but it was a pretty small event, so I don't know that it'll actually show up on any news outlets. If it does, keep an eye out for me and marvel at how I behaved myself.

Been doing financial investment training courses. Jeebus. How is some of this shit legal? I start the actual classroom training tomorrow. Maybe I can ask them then.

The prereq courses I've been taking have been online ones the company put together. They're very typical of corporate training courses. Their attempts to be politically correct wind up being hilarious. The fictional investor whose story we followed today was Ralph Menses. I shit you not. I'm not mature enough to do this shit.

Company dinner at The Pit to celebrate the opening tonight. Great fun but also somewhat odd. Several times I introduced myself with just my first name only to be met with an epiphanic, "Oh, you're [insert my whole name]." My friends made jokes about my reputation preceding me. I wonder if I should be concerned.

People there are super nice. Met an Indian guy who is one of the funniest fuckers I've ever met, and I know all three of you who will read this, so that's saying something. Also, god damn, zee germans can throw down.

And now to bed with me. I am le tired and I have an early day tomorrow. Whee.

Things that are awesome because they happened to someone else.

My wife had to explain to my son what a vasectomy is tonight. It wasn't me. And that makes it awesome.

To hold my tongue speaks of quiet reservation.

Progress was made on the security for my little side project. Got the authentication stuff set up, so the site can now authenticate users and grant or reject access based on the users' granted rights. Sweet. Next up is encrypting the password. Yay.

My joints have been in really shitty shape for the past week or so. This week has featured a new treat in that my hands have been so painful that I haven't played guitar in days. I tried to play WoW last night but my hands hurt too much for that, too. Getting old is for the birds.

The pain in my joints eased up a bit today since I have naproxen again. I seem to be developing another ear infection to replace the pain though. Whee. I just fucking love the shape of my ear canals.

Big reveal went pretty well. The boss and I discussed my taking a new job, and he was pretty gracious about it. I felt kinda bad for him, because he came back from vacation sick as hell and had to have that conversation with me. He was supposed to talk to his boss about it and then get back to me and send an email out to the rest of the team. The email didn't seem to go out today, so I spoke with my team lead this afternoon just to make sure he was up to speed for any project planning he was doing. So... new job. Wow.

Pretty sure wifezilla's completely hooked on Buffy now. I've been given orders that I'm not to get ahead of her in the series. Excellent.

Done ruined that boy.

I came home today to a gift from my son wrapped up and waiting in my favorite chair. I opened it to find this piece of beauty, and it is indeed fucking awesome. I can't really go through it till I finish burning through the DVDs, but holy shit does it rock.

Because: Moar!

On my morning commute today I was behind a car with the personalized plate: MORE DPS. I couldn't agree more.

Guess tomorrow's the big reveal. Much of my desk is already cleared out. Hmm.

Got my rejection from F&SF this weekend. I only got as far as one of the assistant editors. Still, it wasn't a form letter, but a real letter with a signature, which was nice. Granted, they just pasted my name and my title into a Word doc -- I found the same rejection, verbatim, online -- and hit print, but even so, quite nice, I thought.

Not sure where I'll send it next. Asimov's has a bunch of hoops you have to jump through, and that seems like a lot of trouble for a rejection. I went through my list of lower-tier publications last night, and the majority of them have gone under. No big surprise there, I guess... it's a tough business. Many of the remaining places have non-continuous submission windows, and the one I want to hit up next stops accepting submissions... carry the one... today. Rather than push the deadline, I'm thinking I'll just wait till they open it up again (sometime in February I believe).

Meantime, I briefly mastered the intense depression that swallows me whole every time I look at Tezarul, tweaked it to match some requirements, and submitted it to a flash fiction place.

Spent the weekend getting that website side project in a fit state for development again. I lost my work when the mac died a while back, and had to rejigger it from my backup. That gave me the opportunity to correct a few mistakes I made in the deployment process in my first pass, which was nice. But I wound up spending most of a night trying to de-fuck (technical term) some mangled files, which was frustrating. End result: it's back and in better shape than before, and I'm making headway again. I got the basic security stuff set up and working, so I'm able to restrict content to users with certain rights now. Next up: storing passwords encrypted instead of in plain text.

Got my Buffy set and it is indeed awesome. Kidzookie and I binged on season 1 almost immediately, and he's hooked, especially on the standalone eps that don't really advance the overall plot. Wifezilla's coming around, too. She's watched an episode or two a night with me for the past few nights. I have hopes that she'll soon admit that she's actually enjoying the show.

As a result, yes, Coyote, I'm afraid that (much like almost everything I Netflix lately) Tropic Thunder is going to pull a longish stint on my coffee table before being viewed. But I've got a good reason this time, at least. I'm binging on 7 seasons here, man.

My hands hurt like hell all the time any more. Perhaps it's time I planned a graceful exit from 40 hours of typing a week for some time down the road?

We have traveled this way before and there is much to be learned.

Netflix has Cosmos available for online streaming. I've been watching an episode a night for a few nights now. I forgot how much I love this series (and Carl Sagan).

Upgraded my main PC at work to Ubuntu 9.10 today. Our network sucks balls so it didn't finish until a few minutes before I had to leave, so I haven't put it through its paces yet. It's pretty, though.

Today marks one month since I submitted my short story to Analog. The Black Hole indicates a turnaround time of around 40 days for rejections from Analog, so I guess I don't need to be panicking for another two weeks, give or take. Figures the one thing I wouldn't procrastinate on would be panic attacks.

Speaking of panic attacks, never got the promised call from RecruiterLady today. Knew I shouldn't have said anything aloud. Done gone and jinxed m'self. Damn it.

Wifezilla and Girlzookie met me for lunch today. During lunch, Girlzookie pointed out a group of highway patrolmen eating a few tables down from us and told me, "You can't say any bad words, Dad. The cops are here."

I don't care if she plucked puppies from god's ass.

Picked up The Plan today. Just finished watching it (and the extras). Awesome. It's almost like watching a behind-the-scenes flick on the actual plot. Maybe that makes no sense. Lots of fun, though, good story, and very good ending. I'm jonesing for BSG again. May have to binge on the whole series now.

Don't want to jinx myself, but I think the interviews are going well. Getting more excited with every iteration, which is something of a novelty for me. Supposed to schedule the next one on Monday. Woo.

Wifezilla wanted hot wings so we went to Hooters for lunch today. Lunch at Hooters on Halloween is a Very Good Idea.

There was a guy two tables over dressed as Joker from The Dark Knight. This was the most elaborate Joker costume I've ever seen. It was convincing enough that I was hard pressed to even attempt to dissuade Kidzookie from his assertion that he was the real Joker. I tried to get the kids to go over and ask the guy why he was so serious, but they were afraid of him. Asking him if he wanted to see a magic trick was also a no-go. On the way out, however, Joker got up from his table and approached the kids, and gave each of them a playing card upon which the Joker's face had been scrawled over the normal array of diamonds, clubs, hearts, or spades.

Completely. Fucking. Awesome.

The kids are now even more convinced he was the real Joker. Who knew the real Joker ate at Hooters?

I stayed at home to hand out candy while Wifezilla took the kidzookies out trick-or-treating. We ran out of candy, which I figure is the mark of a good Halloween.

Weekend in Review

Grimm called me tonight and we talked for a few hours. Traded short stories, promised to critique them and speak again later this week. Awesome.

Fridge broke. Can't seem to turn off whatever mechanism cools the inside. Fridge side is 20 degrees below freezing. Have to spend money fixing that shit. Sucks.

Had to drink the beer before the cans explode. That can totally happen. Awesome.

Watched Rise of the Lycans this weekend. It wasn't as bad as I'd read, but lacked the style of the first two (by which, yes, I do primarily mean Kate Beckinsale's rubber-clad ass), so it wasn't as fun a romp. Meh.

Wifezilla wanted hot wings so we went to Hooters today. Nom nom nom. Awesome.

Sent Superpowers back to the library. Started out good, but the more I read, the less interested I was. I think I poisoned myself by reading a review before I was done with it. Oh well.

Missed my Thursday night lineup on TV this week because I went to LOL with Enzo. I think the other guy there might be Enzo's new boyfriend, but I didn't ask. If so, he might be the first decent guy Enzo's dated in a long time. The opening act wasn't funny at all... so unfunny, in fact, that I felt sorry for the guy, which is pretty much the opposite direction from fun. The headliner was damn funny, though, so the night was saved overall. Yay.

Beat the main story of Brutal Legend. The single player story is pretty short, which is a bit of a letdown. Great story, though, and it's very fun and funny. The multiplayer mode apparently makes use of the RTS element of the story, which kinda sucks... while that stuff was fun, the console controllers don't lend themselves well to it, so it never really becomes easy or transparent to make people do what you want. Great game but not worth initial retail in the end, I think. Pick it up for sure but maybe wait till it hits the $30 rack. Oh well.

Finishing Lux the Poet now. Love Millar. This is the least good one I've read by him and it's still quite fun. Been too unfocused with my reading lately, and have several books going concurrently. Buckling down and getting that back down to one. Once I get done w/ Lux, I have to finish off the Andy Jack book I got. Win. Sorta.

I think that's more in the plus column than the minus. Calling the weekend a win overall. Yay.

Week in Review

0 new words, but I'm still rather excited. Started out with a readthrough & editing pass as has become my habit, did some light editing, then hit a section that's never quite felt right. It finally hit me last night that I wrote that section backwards. Reordered it, and I am well pleased. Was exhausted, so I called it a night after that. Turned out the light, started drifting, and a title finally popped in my head: The Quickening of Warren Nowlan. Still rolling it around to see if I like it, but it's the first that I've come up with that I'm willing to seriously consider. Thoughts?

One of my aunts and her husband came down to visit dad this weekend. The whole local clan got together for dinner and then to hang out at mom and dad's for the evening. Had a lot of fun... so much so that I lost track of time, and we didn't leave until after 10pm... well after the kiddos' bedtimes. Ah, well, it was a weekend.

Kidzookie woke up at 5am vomiting and having difficulty breathing. When he started bringing up blood we wrapped him in a blanket, gave him a bucket, and took him to the emergency room. Playing the stoic adult isn't fun when your seven-year-old little boy starts crying and saying "I don't wanna die, I haven't beaten Batman: Arkham Asylum yet." By the time he passed through the doors to the ER, he'd settled down and was just coughing a bit. We skipped the assholes at the ER by the house and took him to a real hospital, so he was admitted more or less immediately. Final verdict? Acid reflux. Who the hell knew acid reflux could be so damn scary? I'm happy to report that kiddo was very brave through the entire ordeal, including when they drew blood from his arm with the same needle they use when I donate blood (though his eyes were like dinner plates when they pulled that bad boy out), and he's no worse for wear now.

We spent most of the day recovering from the ordeal and the interruption of our normal sleep schedule. Lots of lying around napping.

Woke up to find that my mac has crapped out. The display is dead, dead, dead. This appears to be a pretty widespread problem with macs built around the time mine was. Apparently nVidia had a run of incredibly shitty graphics chips. So now I have to try to salvage the important data off the thing and then make an appointment with the techs at the Apple store to see what they'll do about it. I've read that they're fixing a lot of these issues for free, but with my luck, they'll try to charge me for it. So we'll see how that goes. Hopefully I'll at least be able to salvage the work I did Thursday and Friday. Sigh.

So ups and downs and all arounds. What a week. Still, the rewrite was awesome. Yay.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

I've been meaning to do this, but work has been rough this week. On the plus side, although it's sucked ass, the end of the day has quickly snuck up on me all week, which is nice. Anyway, Coyote called me out, so here it is.

Fair warning, there's some naughty words down below.

So Baltimore. I made a trip up that way to figure out how I could lure Coyote away from there. It's going to take crabs, I think. I'm not sure how to overcome this obstacle, but it's a problem, and problems can be solved. Maybe if I apply fire. But to what? More study is needed.

I had to use Mapquest to get my directions because Google does not know where Coyote lives. Coyote swears it works for him. Coyote lies. But lying is cool, so I was duly impressed.

Jack and I left early on Saturday morning. Cold, foggy, and almost rainy during the morning, which was actually pretty nice weather to travel in. The route they had me take through Virginia was very rural in some places, and a really great drive. Once the sun came up and burned off the fog, I opened the sunroof to enjoy the pretty weather. And sunburnt my brainpan. Oh well.

I passed one of those historical marker signs that said something about John Wilkes Booth at one point, but didn't stop because every 100 feet for miles there was a forest of signs warning me not to stop under any circumstances, including a cluster right around the marker. So that was odd. "Hey, look here at this interesting point of historical significance. No, don't look. Move along, citizen." Might have been because it was in the middle of a military training center, but I'm working on a theory that involves elder gods, an alien scouting expedition, and spaghetti.

The bridge over the Potomac on 301 is steep as hell. I think they were building a bridge to the moon and chickened out.

Wifezilla told me I needed to take the lady of the house some flowers as a preemptive apology for my behavior over the visit, so as we started to get close, I kept an eye out for a grocery store where I could pick up a moderately priced bouquet. I passed a Food Lion on the left and decided I'd hang on for something on the right. I never saw another grocery store period. I'm sorry for that, Ms. Coyote. I suck.

Jack did really well on the trip. I let him stick his head out of the window a few times as a reward for the excellent behavior.

So we pulled in right about exactly when I thought we would, which is amazing. I wasn't 100% sure of the number of Coyote's place, and Mapquest doesn't actually put the address anywhere on the directions when you print them out (what the hell?) so I had to call Coyote from the parking lot, about 100 feet from where he was standing. My name is Taco. I am retarded. Hear me splay clap. YAYYYYYY.

Gifts were exchanged. I gave Coyote an awesome zombie sock monkey that wifezilla made. Coyote gave me a shitload of awesome books which made my gift look paltry and embarrassing by comparison.

We think that Jack was abused before we took him in, so I had some minor concerns about him warming up to people when we got there. My concerns were largely unfounded. He took to Coyote and the missus pretty quickly, and Coyote now knows how awesome my dog is. Jack even demonstrated his amazing ability to prairie dog for extended periods as he spent the afternoon telling people to get the hell off Coyote's lawn.

We were whisked away to the library, which is amazing. I'm jealous as hell. Wifezilla promised me a while back that I could convert our dining room to a library, and what I have in mind is a lot like the glory I witnessed in upstairs 'Yoteland. While I was there I was treated to a demonstration of a bunch of autographed copies of books (so jealous), and was allowed to rub the armor of Divine Ray (Ray be praised!). I was properly respectful and did not rub too vigorously or on my junk. I may have had my other hand down my pants, though.

Then was the trip into town. We hit a comic book shop, but as you may recall from a few paragraphs ago, I am retarded, and it it didn't occur to me that I'd have Jack with me. So Jack and I walked around and watched a kid learning to play soccer while Coyote picked up some comic book goodness. I think Coyote felt bad, but it was a nice day, and I had fun walking Jack around. Plus he took a big steaming dump in the parking lot, which was pretty funny.

Then we went to get steamed crabs. Jack flipped the hell out over the smell and climbed into the back of the car to get at them. I called him back up front several times, but he kept winding up back there with the crabs every few minutes, so I had to leash him up even though he was in the car. The siren song of the crab was too much for him.

And with good reason. We got back to Coyote's place on Cap'n Mal Lane and Coyote dumped them on the table and sweet Jeebus. The seasoning they put on those things. But I get ahead of myself.

Coyote had to teach me how to eat them, because I'm from North Carolina and we don't have access to such delicacies. Leastwise not like you can get it in Baltimore. So teach me he did. There should be more foods that include the instruction, "Shove the knife up its ass." I'm just sayin'. And yes, I did feel like a moron when I asked where that was and was told, "Well, here's the face so... the other side." :)

Many apologies were given out for the crabs being out of season and small, and, one infers, less delicious than is their ordinary wont. If that was not good, I'm not sure I'm emotionally equipped for what is. The seasoning they cake the damn things in is so good I could have jammed a popsicle stick into a crab and walked around licking it like a lollipop. Hot damn. That shit ain't right. The dog, who was so unable to resist the crabscent in the car, absolutely refused to eat it when I offered him some. Weird.

Apparently the place where Coyote keeps his DVDs is called his "man cave." It sounds dirty and sexy, but apparently it's just a room. I know! You can imagine my disappointment! One wall of the man cave looks exactly like the exterior of my first apartment, so I told the story of how Grimm and I came to refer the style as "Neo-Holland Ghetto." I think I also mentioned how that apartment was briefly located behind a strip club (though I think I referred to it as a "titty bar" since I was a tad buzzed). I forgot to tell the story about the night I got drunk on vodka there, irretrievably lost my clothes, and exposed myself to an elderly woman. Oh well. Maybe next visit.

Down in the man-cave-that-isn't-what-it-sounds-like he hit me with Dark City (which I admit I need to give a fair shake to... the circumstances of my first viewing were not conducive to appreciation) and then chased me across the room with Hot Fuzz. I mean both of those quite literally. I do note with some satisfaction that he did not have a copy of Goonies with which to assault me, which I take as tacit admission of the movie's terribleness.

I chose to finish off my Battlestar Galactica collection the week that BSG season 4.5 and Dollhouse season 1 dropped. (In retrospect, a poor decision: the much anticipated commentary track for the final episode did not provide any explanations to appease my concerns over the poor endings of several important plot threads. Rather, it was several hours of people verbally sucking Ron Moore's dick and telling him how brilliant he is and what a privilege it was to work with him. Bleh.) So we watched the final, unaired episode of Dollhouse season 1. What a shame that never aired. As much as the show picked up steam and got great toward the end of the season, that episode really blew me away. So much want. Fortunately, season 2 starts tomorrow.

His couch is quite frighteningly comfortable. I'm fairly certain that something demonic is going on there, because no naturally occurring couch is that cozy. In fact, that may be the source of the supernaturally opening bathroom door I heard tell of. Whatever malignant spirits prank the house thus did not make an appearance that night. I'm pretty sure Jack kept them at bay. My dog is awesome that way. Now that Jack isn't there to protect them, I suspect there is probably an evil force rebound effect occurring. I'm not sure how you double up on evil door opening. Maybe it's opening windows now, too? Note to self: must investigate this. Anyway, the couch was so comfortable that I spent the entire morning on it. I didn't get off the couch until it was time to leave.

I showed off my beloved journal where I've been working on finishing my story. I even let Coyote flip through it some, which is huge for me, because I'm usually too insecure to let other people see my work. Side note: not a single word written in a little over a week. Need to get back on it before I stall out.

We played Mario Kart, and I got destroyed. Partly because I picked Baby Mario when I meant to pick Mario. But only partly, because I picked Mario in the second series and got destroyed just as badly. Mainly, Coyote was sober this time. When I beat him at Mario Kart, he was drunk off his ass. Great strategy, that one.

After Mario Kart, it was the dreaded time to leave. I asked Jack if he wanted to go for a ride and he started bouncing around so excitedly that he actually jumped ahead in time. So I had to hang around a little bit longer until we caught up to him. I kept the sunroof closed on the way home, so I didn't burn my brainmeats any worse.

Jack's a pretty small dog, with stubby legs, so he eventually took to standing on the arm rest between the front seats, as this raised him enough to see out the windows easily. Dogs aren't good at standing up in cars, though, and he'd take weird tumbles during turns or when I tapped the brake. At one point the guy in front of me slammed on his brakes, so I had to stop rather abruptly, causing the poor dog to do a faceplant on the dashboard. His shoulder caught the gearshift and threw the car into reverse, so it was a rather terrifying and thrilling moment there. Fortunately, I was pretty much stopped when all this occurred, so no harm was done.

Jack did so well on the trip that I was considering taking him to my folks' house for Sunday dinner, but by the time I got back into Raleigh, I was so tired I just wanted to go home and nap. When we pulled back into the neighborhood where the speed limit is low, I opened up Jack's window and let him hang out like dogs like to do. When we got into the driveway and I let him out, the wind had teased his face hair until it looked like his head had exploded.

So all in all, successful trip. I have data for my insidious plot to lure Coyote down here (there's more of us down here than up there, damn it). And I got to shove a knife up crabs' asses. So yay.

On a gathering storm comes a tall, handsome man

Girlzookie starts her second year of preschool this week. After this year, it's public school for her. I'm getting old.

Kidzookie finishes his first quarter of second grade this week. He's finally getting real homework, to my relief and to his chagrin. He's bitchy and whiny about it, but adapting reasonably well.

Disney is buying Marvel. This is wonderful news. Marvel has gone pretty much as far as they can in destroying their own name. Disney can help them take their game to the next level.

Beat the story mode of Batman: Arkham Asylum last night. Great game, fun story. Gotta do all the extra modes it offers now, as well as play back through to pick up all the junk I missed. Whee.

Ran a few instances with my guild this weekend. That's a big deal for me. I'm very instance-phobic, largely because I'm convinced I'll fuck it up for everybody. Didn't go too badly, though, and I had a great time. Signed on for a big cross-guild run that's supposed to happen this weekend. We'll see how that goes. Maybe I'll no longer be such a WoW hermit.

Didn't manage to write any new content last night, but I did go back through and do some more light editing to the last bit I wrote. Happier still with it. More new story tonight hopefully. Steady progress continues, though, and that's good.

Work continues to be insane. The grammar we're supporting is bizarre. Wrote some pretty wild code to support it, gnashing my teeth the entire time and muttering about how much easier support would be if the grammar was in any way related to what they were trying to accomplish. But nobody ever asks me. The team lead chuckled at my pain, then indicated that v2.0 of the grammar is even worse. Fun. On the other hand, I guess if the grammar is so hard to write for, it's that hard to use... and that makes our software a necessity for our users. Reminds me of this Dilbert strip.

Tired Taco is Tired

I've been burning the candle at both ends lately. Passed out last night at 9:30pm. No more gas in the Tacomobile. Even so, I failed to set my alarm clock correctly and overslept this morning, so I was late to help my dad and brother move the last of my sister's stuff to her new apartment. Managed to get out there a mere 40 minutes late (sorry again, guys), and we moved her stuff.

Picked up Batman: Arkham Asylum this week. Hot damn. Great game.

Broke my sunglasses today. Whee. Don't have the spare cash to replace them right now. Dug through some old boxes and found my old sunglasses from high school. Twenty years out of style. I'm calling it "retro." But we all know it's really "Taco gots no style."

Dragged my journal to lunch with me today and write 275 words while the family nommed on cheeseburgers. Would've been more, but I instantly hated the first pass and did a full rewrite of the new bit. I know it's not a ton, but I'm calling it a win. Steady progress to a finished story. I've only ever finished one before, and I'm not thrilled with it. The full rewrite will have to wait until I finish this one.

Couple of guys from my World of Warcraft guild are in the area this week. We're headed off to meet them for dinner tonight. Can't wait.

Kiddo's tracking out of school in a couple weeks, which means the family's going out of town to visit with my father-in-law. I'm desperately hoarding vacation, besides which, it's cheaper when someone stays here so we don't have to board the dog, so I won't be going. To cheer myself up, I talked to Coyote about heading up his way for lunch that Saturday while they're out of town. Can't wait Part 2.

And now it's time to go nap more, because 11 hours last night didn't finish the job.

Various and Sundries Pt. 512

Trying a real post to break my Conversations of the Damned run of late.

Coyote's got me in my pathetic trying to write mode again. Went back through my latest writing attempt. I'm rather fond of it. What's written is, I think, the best stuff I've ever written. Not that that's really saying much. It's about 2/3 of the way through the story. I don't quite know how to proceed from here, though. Trying a rework based on a discussion I had with Coyote. Went through today and set up the new format. Still struggling. Baffling. I know everything that happens, but can't get it down on paper. Partly, I'm intimidated by one concept. Partly, I can't get my head into that place where the words come out. Halp.

Can't take any more Family Guy. Make wifezilla stop. Please.

Emu Final Countdowned me. Rat bastard.

Finally watched Hellboy 2: The Golden Army. Enjoyed it overall, but hated what they did to Tambor's character. Interesting development that happened in the first movie? Never happened, apparently.

Half way through Planet Terror. I know. Way to strike while the iron is hot, Taco. It's my Tarantino aversion. I hate anything that has his stink on it any more. He used to be so great, but for the past decade or so, he hurts me. He cuts me deep.

Speaking of shit I hate that everybody else seems to love, yes. I hate The Goonies. Bite me. You probably like Hayek too, even though her name is onomatopoeic for the noise I make when I eat bad shellfish.

P.S. Work sucks. Fix the fucking economy and get me out. Moping again because my shit got plagiarized. Which brings me back to my first point. It's a vicious circle. Seriously. It bit me, and I had to get shots and everything.

Wherein Taco fakes a real blog post

For the past week or so, I've been fighting off some sort of nasty bug. I'm slowly losing the war to congestion, sore throat, and general malaise. Spent the whole weekend hopped up on Nyquil. That stuff is evil. Whee.

My home network has gone to shit again. The bad behavior started on Friday. At first glance, it looked like the network would just periodically up and quit. After a weekend of playing World of Warcraft with TitanPanel's performance widget turned on, though, it looks like my latency just slowly degrades until my VoIP router can't handle it and craps out. I reorganized the network a few times to isolate the problem, and eventually got it down to my laptop directly connected to the cablemodem, which still exhibited the problem. Said cablemodem is an ancient piece of hardware, and the only piece of network equipment that hasn't been replaced since the Big Lightning Strike of Last Summer, so I reckon that's the culprit. That means I'll have to deal with Time Warner's customer support, though, so that'll be fun.

Blue suggests just calling and asking if I can swap out the old hardware for new. I guess I'll try that first.

Ran into a really old friend recently. We talked a while, and he's so pompous and full of shit that it boggles the mind. I find this absolutely hysterical, because I myself am incredibly pompous and full to overflowing with bullshit.

I went to Barnes & Noble this weekend to pick up the new Chris Moore and the new Dan Simmons. They had neither. Le sad. I picked up a new copy of Watchmen instead. Haven't read it in ages... last time was late high school or early college, I think. It's better than I remember, and that's pretty crazy, because I remember it being goddamned awesome.

While I was at Barnes & Noble, I found a nice leatherbound notebook and pen set tossed into the 50% off table, so I picked that up. A couple of years ago, I started carrying a note pad everywhere I went so that I could jot down ideas I had, and that worked wonders. Lately, I've found that I come up with lines, paragraphs, and even whole passages that I like for stories that I want to write, but can't remember them when I sit down to put them on paper, so maybe this will work as well as the tiny notebooks. It seems to help so far. I've managed to pen a few paragraphs of a short story I've been tossing around my noggin for a while.

I guess that means I'm done sulking about all my friends writing better stuff than I do. I still reserve the right to sulk at any point of my choosing in the future, so neener.

You heard me. Neener.

Blue made some eyeball jewelry. I immediately purchased the awesomeness and gave it to wifezilla for Valentine's Day. Wifezilla is thrilled with it. I wonder sometimes if it should bother me that I do shit like give my wife a necklace of eyeballs for Valentine's Day. Then I space out because of the Nyquil and the next thing I know, it's Monday, I'm at work, and wondering how the hell I got here and where my pants are.

Another whoseywhatsit post

Once again I find myself in a position of having nothing particularly interesting to say, but wanting to maintain the dubious discipline of periodically posting.

1. We got a call from my son's school last week warning us that he may come home with some bruises. Seems that one of the kids in his class decided to take up bullying. So I guess we get to start dealing with that kind of bullshit now. We talked about it with my son at length, and all seems to be well on that front. The school seems to have handled it adequately, which is good, but also robs me of anyone to yell at for now.
2. I've tricked a few of my friends into running a game of Serenity on my website. I've never run a real game before, much less in this format, so it may be a spectacular failure. I'm really excited though. And that reminds me, I need to get off my ass and update them with the latest info. Slack, Taco, slack.
3. My friend Bill came up from my old home town to visit us this weekend, which was awesome. We got him to bring up some peaches from the orchard back home. They're fantastic, but I misjudged how much I'd ordered. I've been giving them away to everyone who gets within arm's reach for a few days. Still... these peaches are dangerously fucking delicious. NOM NOM NOM.
4. I got Bill hooked on WoW battlegrounds while he was visiting. He's already better at it than I am, which I suppose is no great accomplishment considering that my own talent for it seems to run mostly in the vein of being patient enough to grind endlessly until I can have the gear. It's fun having more friends to rip it up with though.
   
5. The dog seems to be settling in somewhat. My daughter annoys him frequently... she loves animals and no amount of scolding will keep her from getting right in his face, pulling his hair, etc. Even so, when Bill was saying his good-byes this weekend and placed a hand on my daughter's head, the dog flipped the fuck out. Had to put the dog out into the back yard while we finished our farewells.
6. Friend of mine got a new job that sounds fucking awesome. No intention of stealing his thunder or any of that, so I'll leave it that vague, but yay!

Guess that's about all I've got. Carry on, citizen.

Taco Spends a Day Off From Work

They turned us loose for Memorial Day. Amazing, really... the rule of thumb where I work is "If you have to ask, you don't get the holiday." Oh well.

What a fucking holiday weekend. Good weekend, just... Taco is le tired.

A buddy of mine got a ridiculously nice television a while back and was looking to unload his old only really awesome television for very little money, so we took him up on it. He had the weekend off so he drove it up here on Friday. I've never been a big TV watcher, but the price was too good to pass up, so we upgraded from our 25" college TV to a 46" high definition monstrosity. I could learn to be a TV guy on a television like this. Well... probably not... but my video games look damn good.

Speaking of which, I've put some miles on Dead Rising now that I have a high def TV (the font doesn't render properly on a regular television, so I've been unable to play it until this weekend). You get to run a bunch of zombies down with a lawn mower in the first 20 minutes or so of the game. I'm not sure there's ever been anything better.

We spent the day shopping. Wifezilla usually meets me for lunch on Mondays, and decided she'd still like to do so... by which she tricked me into hitting the sales. I agreed, somewhat reluctantly. She further bribed me by offering to go to a mediterranean place for lunch, so nom nom nom. Double word score: the store she took me to was having a memorial day sale, and I nabbed a Hurricanes jersey for $20. Not one of the super nice ones, but even so, fuck yeah.

We also hit the thrift store, which is usually just painful, but the book section today contained The Picture of Dorian Gray, Robinson Crusoe, and The Catcher in the Rye. Plus I picked up the latest Weird Tales at Barnes & Noble while we were out that way.

We didn't cook out. Wifezilla is trying to lose some weight, and I could stand to lose a bit myself. We ate turkey and salad instead. The Gods of Summer Holidays will undoubtedly enact punitive measures. I did have beer though, so they might let me by on a technicality. We'll see.

Kidzookie found my copy of Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on the virtual console today and insisted upon playing it. I told him he was too little to play it, and we had an argument over it that ebbed and flowed for a few hours until I finally broke down and let him play under the condition that he not ask me how to do anything. He's gotten farther than I have in the game now. Go figure.

For about 10 years now I've had the Video Game Chair, a blue canvas camping chair that I use whenever I play games. It's lightweight and folds up to a tiny size, so it's easy to place wherever it's most comfortable to play, and easy to get the hell out of the way when I'm not playing so Wifezilla doesn't kill me. It finally died today while Kidzookie was playing Zelda. Truth told, I probably could have fixed the damn thing, but it's on its last leg anyway, and probably would have broken again within a few weeks. So instead, I insisted upon a quest for a new video game chair.

Wifezilla made the mistake of sending us on our own to replace old reliable. I found a kickass canvas chair complete with footrest and cupholder at the store. This chair is a serious contender for most comfortable seating in the house. Kidzookie mentioned that his own usual gaming chair wasn't comfortable any more (and probably isn't very comfortable, given the amount he's grown in the past year), so I bought him one, too. At this very moment, I'm sitting in mine with a beer in the cupholder, and kidzookie is sitting next to me playing
Zelda, a spill-proof cup of chocolate milk in his. Life is good.

And the dirty looks I expected from Wifezilla? Conspicuously absent: while I was taking the garbage out earlier, she snuck a seating on my chair, and upon my return insisted that I buy her one on my way home from work tomorrow :)

Various and Sundry

1. Kidzookie has his first loose tooth. He's excited. I feel old.
2. I've made absolutely zero progress on the second draft of my story. Do I have to kill myself if I fail to deliver on a suicide pact?
3. Now that I'm computing in the mobile world again, I don't use my office much. Kidzookie's almost of an age to use the computer anyway, and once that starts, I want it in a public part of the house. So I've relinquished my office. Wifezilla and I are going through the bonus room, clearing out all the shit I still haven't unpacked since we moved in, and getting ready to redecorate it as a rec room of sorts. That's hard fucking work, but it's been fun. I've found some shit I haven't seen in years. She's letting me have a beer fridge up there, so yay.
4. I got a call the other day from the gummint about an old friend of mine I'd lost touch with. He got laid off from BEA the same time I did, and disappeared off the face of the earth. Evidently, he took a new career path and is getting signed on as a federal agent of some sort now. Guess I can stop worrying about him. Same day I found out my friend suyapi passed the bar and is all but officially a Law Talkin' Guy. So apparently if you know me, good shit's coming your way. Make sure you guys save a little of that good karma for me.
   
5. Mario Kart Wii dropped today. The kidzookies and I have racked up some miles. Between Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and WoW, my marriage may be in danger.