Category Archives: Site Archives

Passion vs Obsession

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Before I get into the central topic of this thread, I’d just like to give a shout out to my cousin Cortney. Happy Birthday, hope it was a good one!

I’ve been sitting around the house for most of the day, not really doing much of anything. I read some email (not much, though, as I don’t have much lately), and chatted on IRC for a while (in fact I still am, in #applegeeks over on the Aniverse servers). Mostly what I’ve been doing is thinking about what is important to me, and what things no longer are, or at least not AS important. I’ve been thinking about streamlining my life a bit, organizing it, pursuing my personal goals more and worrying about other people’s expectations less. I haven’t come to any concrete conclusions yet, but I think overall it has been helpful.

Now, it’s around 8:50 in the evening, and we’re back from trying another restaurant in the area (sushi, so my choices were a little [self]limited, but I managed alright). I’ve discovered the music channels on the cable service, and have some jazz playing in the background. Now seems to be a good time to reflect.
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“The Normal Life”

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I have never been one that could be called “normal.” I know, I know, normality is a very fuzzy concept, but put aside the “everyone is a unique snowFLAKE” circle-jerk for a moment and realize that there IS something called “normal,” and that a lot of people are just that. Normal. That does not make them sub-par human beings, or without talents, or a unique identity that makes them who they are. It’s just that when you add up all those talents and personality traits and actions and thoughts, it comes out to “normal.”

To claim that I am not normal like other people may seem a little egotistical, what with the current fad of “doing your own thing, just like everybody else.” This is by no means how I mean it. I’m talking about the ever-present sense of alienation from one’s peers, of doing things differently despite yourself, of trying to fit in and be like other people even though a part of you inside is screaming out and rebelling against normality as hard as it can.
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On Halo (and Other Things)

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This past weekend I was inundated with Halo. (For those not familiar, Halo is an extremely popular Xbox first-person-shooter made by Bungie, one of my all-time favorite game companies.) Let me explain what I mean. Early last week, I received an evite inviting me to a Halo LAN Party by my friend Robert. Now, I hadn’t played Halo in about 9 months, and hadn’t played it with ANY degree of regularity even then (I’ve logged less than 12 hours of Halo time, even after this HaloFest), so I dug out my xbox and copy of Halo and played an hour or two (long enough to get comfortable with the controller again), and then headed over to the party. Mickey opted to stay home, sending me first to see what it was like (since she doesn’t play video games, if EVERYONE there was a gamer then she’d be pretty bored). She sent me armed with pie, though, so that’s fine.

Suffice it to say, she probably would have had a ball. There was a nice mixture of gamer and non-gamer, and lots of good conversation was had before we sat down and started playing Halo. (They all loved the pie, too. With a Strawberry and Blackberry pie, how can you go wrong?)
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The Long Rant Goodnight

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First off, Mickey finished working on another image recently, and will likely be posting it later tonight, so do check the visual gallery sometime soon. I’ve seen the image in question already, and I think you’ll be well pleased.

Next: sorry for the lack of posting. Hopefully you’ve all noticed that Mickey at least has been posting regularly on her LiveJournal account. I simply haven’t felt up for posting lately, in the midst of getting everything set up and such. That is not to say that I don’t have a lot I want to say, merely once again making it clear that desire [to speak/write] is not always enough of a motivating factor. What finally got me motivated to post? Frustration.

We ended up going with cable modem instead of DSL, because Qwest was dicking around with us and we got fed up… we’ve been pretty satisfied with the results of that decision, which I’ll talk more about in a second. For now, please bear with me. There is one (1) cable connection in the apartment, which is downstairs by the front door. Rather than pay lots of money to get the house rewired (foolish since we don’t know how long we’ll be here, and it’s not THAT big a deal), I’ve moved the cable modem and my airport base station to that location. While this is good in some ways (I can run wire directly from the router/base station to the hub housing the console connections), it means that I’ve had to find a solution in getting my PC connected adequately upstairs in my office.
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The Long Haul

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Okay, so I’m finally getting around to posting about the trip across the country. The delay in posting about it is purely because I’m a lazy slacker who sleeps away the days in a lackadaisical fashion not dissimilar to a coma patient. That, or I’ve been busy unpacking and generally want to go to bed by the time I have a chance to sit and write a blog.

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

I don’t have it in front of me right now (and don’t feel like trudging outside to the car to get it), but I kept a logbook of the starting mileage at the start of each day of the trip, plus departure time, date, and location. The starting times would probably be more useful if I also wrote down ending times, but c’est la vie (Emerson Lake and Palmer?). I’ll post it sometime later, for the truly curious (or truly bored… some days, there isn’t much difference). [Worth a passing note but not much more: I also keep a running logbook of date, mileage, gas, and location that I filled up at in my car. It’s not that hard a habit to get into, and being able to look back over the past 50,000 miles of your car is pretty damn cool.]
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Back on the Air

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Before I get into a long ramble about the recent not-so-rambling trip across the country Mickey and I took in order to get to our new home in Bellevue, I’d just like to say: No Dad, the title of this post does not mean I’ve been getting on the radio (KB1EKQ, in case any of you other hams are wondering). :)

That out of the way, on to the rest of the post.

So, when I last posted (August 1st), I was waiting for the movers to arrive, it was pouring, and we were wondering when the power would shut off. Just as I began thinking about posting another entry just that damn bored, the electric company shut off the power (as they said they would, and as we asked them to). Yet another reprieve for you poor folk that I’ve managed to cajol into reading the site.

Since there wasn’t much point in waiting for the movers to pack the electronics (since they could no longer verify that they WORKED), we packed up the stereo and the computers, and waited for a while longer. Finally, the movers arrived (not saying they were late: we just wished they’d gotten there sooner), and in a mere two hours of two guys hauling our stuff down the stairs and into a 53′ tractor trailer, we were on our way.
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Rain Rain, Go Away

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Come again some other day.

So, we woke up this morning around 8, ready for the movers to arrive. As I slipped into consciousness, I realized that it was raining, HARD. Mmm, always fun for when you are moving everything you own onto a truck.

I got up and rummaged around for a little bit not sure what to do (antsy, nervous), and then decided to go deposit the check we got for selling Mickey’s desktop ($650, and we had to fight to get that much). The rain really was something else. I was hydroplaning pretty heavily, and lord knows I wasn’t the only one. Apparently in the time it took me to head north into town, and then head back south (maybe 30 minutes, total), there managed to be a really nasty accident on the northbound lane of I-91… requiring not one but THREE ambulances. I couldn’t see the cars though, so I’m not sure what actually happened. I can only speculate that someone hydroplaned into another car, or off the road. Or both.

I got back to the apartment (can’t really call it home anymore, really), and helped with the little futzing things that we were doing to pass the time (packing the phone up now that service is disconnected, things like that), and lugged the things we’re taking with us in the car to the car.

The rain has started to let up, and now we’re just waiting for the movers to arrive. Somehow (we checked to make sure it was on last night when we plugged it into the charger) Mickey’s phone turned itself off in the night, so we’re not sure if the movers called this morning: whoops. We left them a message, so hopefully they’ll either get back to us or just show up.
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Change Things

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I just read Eli’s most recent post, and for someone who generally prefers short posts, he’s got a lot to say. I know I should be working on my essay, but I’m feeling the need to respond.

In his posting, he comments that he feels like he’s no longer in control of his life, that his life has turned itself on its ear through no action of his own. This hit me like a sack of potatos (not quite as heavy or hard as bricks, but heaven forfend if any of the potatos are rotten). I know the feeling, and am nervous as hell about all the changes that are happening. I’m moving across the country to a city where I don’t ACTUALLY know anybody (merely through association), with neither Mickey nor I having even one job lined up, into an area that’s been economically depressed since the tech boom went bust. (This has had a negative effect on the theater scene as well. Who did you THINK helped fund all those theaters?) I’ve been drifting apart from a lot of my friends, through no desire to do so of my own. It’s just the way it’s been.
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If You’ve Been Waiting…

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If you’ve been waiting for me to post more images in my gallery, sorry for the delay. I have a very large writing project I’m in the middle of, and simply don’t have the time right now to post more. Hopefully I’ll post another smattering before I pack everything up and move across the country.

In the meantime, a fellow forumer has a gallery up at his website that is well worth the time to go visit.

Okay, back to the essay! (Yes, it WILL be in the written section of the website once I’m done.)

On Seattle

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Okay, everyone else has finally left, so I’m going to write a quick entry before heading home myself.

I’m back in the Upper Valley after being in Seattle for a week. Seattle was great, full of interesting things, and the weather couldn’t have been better (this all ties into the “visitor curse:” When visiting Seattle, the weather is idyllic and beautiful. When you actually move there, it becomes cold and rainy all the time). As I’ve commented already, we were out apartment hunting, and have managed to find a pretty decent place out in Bellevue, right near access to both I-405 and 520, giving us two of the major arteries for the city. We are still in the screening process for the apartment, but we’re sure that it’ll be fine: despite my being a full time student and Mickey being a freelancer, we do have a pretty rock solid application. The real question will be whether we qualify for the two bedroom or the three bedroom (we’re hoping for the three, so we can have separate offices instead of sharing one).

I was pretty happy to be going home, but I don’t really feel “home” yet. I think it is partially because my mind is already starting to make the connection that we’re moving elsewhere, but it is still pretty strange. I mean, Vermont has ALWAYS been home. To a certain extent it always will be. It just feels a bit more foreign at the moment, while at the same time very familiar.
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