Belegarth

BNB and The Slump

Mon, 24 Oct 2005 21:31:09 GMT

Or whatever people want to call it. That sounds sufficiently like some evil villain the heroes should be going out to beat on to make it go away. Who knows, such a thing might even work, at least for a little while, though it is similar to how people react when they're in Dis.

As for me I really don't have any solid reason why my activity has been a lot lower for the past couple months. I know it doesn't have anything to do with the absence, or presence, of anyone... if I felt the RP desire I'd be finding RP with someone, and with Garth it is quite easy, even now that its less likely he'll be in random places due to being king. Still, he knows almost everyone, and its reasonable to put him anywhere on the planet to RP with almost everyone. Well, villains are a bit harder to just drop in on, but even that has possibilities.

Maybe it is just burnout. It does happen, and this long of the same character with the levels of activity I've had at times it could almost be expected. Some will say I need an alt, that an alt would solve everything, but I still disagree on that. Only one character means I don't have to worry about interaction problems, or concern myself with who should know what or who would know what, and with Garth... well, he knows almost everyone, so it actually could become a problem. Anyway, my alt attempts always seem to end up getting stalled. My current attempt has been going on for months, has 52k worth of traits written, a summary of the rest, a background that isn't too hard to sort out... but the urge to type more just hasn't been there of late. I hope it does... I think she'd be a blast to play, but even worse than not finishing the app would be finishing the app and then not being active.

I'm certain my desire to RP will come back. There are still a lot of things to do with Garth, and probably always will be. Yes, one of those things that I want to do with him is a Cobi-run plot that he suggested, but there are lots of other things as well... I just need to find the energy to do them again. Garth's still in my head, I just need to wake him up and get him active again.

Bleh

Wed, 02 Mar 2005 15:58:04 GMT

Yeah, I know, people who post in their journals only when there's something unpleasant are annoying and all, and I agree... and I'm not sure why I'm putting anything here either. Today is just... bleh. From watching it start snowing this morning to an urge to just find a dark hole to curl up in and vanish for a while its just... bleh.

Hopefully when I next post something (probably months from now, again) it'll be of the not just whining variety.

*pulls the cover closed on his dark little hole and just goes away again... or at least to lunch*

Hmm...

Tue, 14 Dec 2004 12:42:56 GMT

I think its a sign I haven't posted, or looked here in a while when my friends page is completely full of posts I haven't seen, but not really feeling like going through even more proof of slackness, so... if I missed anything anyone said that I should have seen, I apologize.

This morning seemed so lovely... was at work, things were just going together great. Was feeling happy, productive, accomplishing things... and then I woke up. Damn dreams about work. Hate them. Sure it could be a lot worse, like dreaming about being at work while unemployed, but already feel like I've spent half a day here, and its still twenty minutes before the day's supposed to start for me.

Hungry... should have had breakfast, but can never seem to eat within the first hour of getting up, at least any more. Will have to venture next door soon and see about seeking out a muffin from the little food place in the science building.

Must clean up desk, too. Somehow over the last week it looks like a truck full of odd tech stuff exploded all over it. Toys to play with, but no room to play with them, so... time to clean.

Think that's it for now. I'll probably see all of you later elsewhere before I end up checking back here, but never know. :)

yawn

Wed, 20 Oct 2004 18:53:52 GMT

So... sleepy... There's work to do, and all I can think about is curling up somewhere and taking a nap. But since that would be under my desk that really wouldn't go over well. The floor is hard and uncomfortable, and cold.

Bah.

On the good side, there's only an hour and ten minutes left until I go home, and then I can take a nap. Hopefully it doesn't last the three and a half hours that the accidental one last night did. Then I'd miss Smallville, which would suck.

Tue, 19 Oct 2004 11:55:09 GMT

Which OS are You?

Which File Extension are You?

Colds and their evil presence

Thu, 14 Oct 2004 12:03:55 GMT

Colds definitely have to be one of my least favorite things. Would almost rather do whatever I did to my knee all over again than have a cold. Sure, the first made it so walking was pretty much impossible for a month, but at least thinking wasn't a problem.

Anyway, the cold is fading, slowly. Like a wimp, took Tuesday off entirely, and Wednesday afternoon, rather than pretend to work and sneeze all over the place. Today felt alright getting up, but the act of getting ready for work drained all the energy I'd intended to put into work. Still here, though, and will see what can be accomplished today.

Hmm... simple little logging server. Think that's the project for this morning. Listens on a socket, decides what it should do based on what command the data on that socket gives. In theory shouldn't be too hard.

Just another update

Mon, 04 Oct 2004 12:55:08 GMT

Been a few days since I babbled here... lets see...

Thursday was hectic. I hate meeting arbitrary deadlines that are randomly decided upon for the completion of a sample application when I'm not given the hardware for said app until two hours before the deadline... or told when the deadline is until then. Didn't meet it. Got it working about three hours later which in my opinion is still fairly good. Just annoyed with myself that it took that long. Especially since one of the bigger stumbling blocks was caused by an addition/memory error... mine, not the computer's. A line feed, ascii 13, is 0x0D, not 0x0C like I'd been trying to use. Or is that a carriage return... doesn't really matter... I still spent two of the five hours fixing everything around that stupid little error before actually counting on my fingers.

Friday was a big improvement on Thursday. I did very little. Read some stuff, did some much calmer programming. Was almost too boring. After work finally bought the stuff to use my borrowed from work laptop at home wirelessly. Decided to save a bit of money and go with a slightly abnormal way rather than just getting a wireless router or access point, and got a USB wireless adapter instead. Tried a bunch of ways to get it to work, and eventually got it sort of working through the Mac's connection sharing. Worked great... for some stuff. Crashed over and over for anything else.

Saturday, got the wireless thing working by switching it to the Win2k box and doing the same basic thing. Now it happily chugs away without crashing, and was used most of Saturday and Sunday without fail. Had sooo much energy when I woke up it was scary, yet by 3:30 when I decided to have lunch it was gone, to the point where I fell asleep while making lunch and burnt it. The second attempt went better, but still felt slow all day.

Sunday... its kind of scary, but I don't really remember. I woke up. I think. I took a nap, that much I do remember. I overslept on that nap by several hours and missed a scene I was supposed to be on for. Did another scene later. Slept.

And somewhere along the way I did something to my shoulder or neck that brings such a lovely pain if I try to tip my head to the right. Not as bad as it was on Saturday when first noticed, but still annoying.

yawn

Wed, 29 Sep 2004 12:07:55 GMT

Far too early to be awake, but awake I am... staring at the same little screen of a developing application as yesterday. Its almost as if I never left. Well, except I know I sat in a different chair for a while, and I'm pretty sure I didn't sleep on either of them.

*looks away from that app, and starts up the Gimp* There's something different to do... remove the ugly white border caused by the anti-aliasing stuff around some text on a company logo. Mmmm... pixel editing in the morning. Can I describe that as aliasing some text? What a silly thought.

Somewhere in the past few days to a week I misplaced my creativity for RP... whatever it is that makes it easier to come up with things to do for people, or scenes to run for them. If anyone spots it, let me know?

Well, enough babbling for now... time to get back to work. Or start work as the case may be.

An odd night

Sun, 26 Sep 2004 04:05:41 GMT

And perhaps day, for that matter.

Not that anything particularly odd actually happened. Slept in, woke up, watched a couple cartoons, napped, watched X2 on one of the movie channels (finally... hadn't seen it before. Was quite happy I took the time to watch it)

Had been planning to find and do some RP today, but shortly after I sat down at the computer to see who was around the urge to sit there vanished. Not sure where it went, or why it went, but suddenly it was gone. Even sitting here now I don't particularly feel like being here, and in fact mostly just came back in to grab the Empire Strikes Back DVD and a pillow before returning to the living room to curl up and watch. Hmm... popcorn... should make popcorn.

Should likely have done a bit of work for work this afternoon... brought the new toy that arrived there for me to work with yesterday home just incase the urge hit to continue development of the application a little, but it really didn't. Maybe tomorrow will find it there, or maybe the RP urge will really hit and I'll get some of that in.

24 minutes remaining on the verification of the first DVD to go through that new toy from a week ago. Just couldn't decide what I wanted to burn off (despite having a lot that should be, without much question about whether it should). Noir just happened to be the right size (only 31 megs free) to fill one, so it became the guinea pig. And it'll free up some drive space, so two good things in one action.

Anyway, off to watch Empire, or some of it at least, unless there's something on TV I missed that looks interesting. Make popcorn. Would be nice if there was someone to share it and the movie with, but alas, there isn't.

Missing posts from Friends page

Fri, 24 Sep 2004 04:54:48 GMT

This is certainly on the somewhat annoying side of things, but really no idea of the cause. Could just be that I have a free account, and as such don't matter as much, or they're doing evil little things to get me to sign up and pay. Or things are just screwy today and I'm just being impatient.

For some reason the most recent entries in a couple of my friends' journals aren't showing up on my friends page. They aren't locked, hidden, or anything else as far as I can tell... simply not showing up. *prods the server* Hmm... a bit of checking, and those particular posts don't seem to be showing up on the friends page of other friends of theirs either. How odd.

Mmm... pizza...

Fri, 24 Sep 2004 00:26:10 GMT

Though the dough did come out of the machine on the sticky side, again, the pizza itself turned out to be quite good. So, the first round with the pizza stone is going in the success column, and I'm pleased I got the thing.

Except that I burnt my finger.

Stupid finger.

Its morning! Its morning! Its... thud Zzzzz

Thu, 23 Sep 2004 12:08:57 GMT

So, not quite as awake or happy to be awake this morning. Silly me ended up staying up a bit later still than when I said I was heading off, but it was for a good purpose... an adequate purpose... a purpose anyway. I watched more Star Wars. I also can't remember what I watched or where I stopped, so will get to spend a while tonight trying to find the right spot. Was happily impressed by how good it looked, especially considering I was watching it from a couple feet away, sideways, on a laptop while curled up in bed. Once it was prodded enough to put out enough volume it was rather nice... except I kept closing my eyes. A downside to watching while tired, no matter how good the movie.

Smallville's looking like its going to have another interesting season, so I still have one show a week I don't want to miss. Kinda scary that there used to be dozens (or, well, more than four or five, anyway) in a week that I thought I needed to see, and now there's one. Last year there were two, but Everwood just ended up being the same show week after week after week with the same stuff happening, even if occasionally the lines were different.

To anyone who might read this who likes so-called reality tv.... *phbbbbbbt!*

Also figured out (not that I ever tried before) how the delayed timer on the bread machine works, so tonight will be Experiments Into the Use of a Pizza Stone, assuming the bread machine doesn't make an overly gooey mess of the dough again. Still haven't quite perfected finding that spot between too stiff to do anything with, and so sticky that it never comes off your fingers on a regular basis yet.

sigh

Wed, 22 Sep 2004 12:00:09 GMT

Summer officially ends, and what's on the ground upon waking up today? Frost. Gah! My attempts to prolong the nice end of summer weather by simply refusing to notice that it was getting colder have failed. Apparently ignorance isn't a defense against the changes of the seasons.

So, I've pretty much resigned myself to winter being on its way, complete with the months of shovelling snow. Yuck.

On a better note, for a change today I woke up and was happy to be awake and looking forward to the day. That's kind of odd as I'm generally enough beyond not a morning person to be an anti-morning person. They interrupt my sleep, and sleep is good.

May go get the Star Wars DVDs after work today if I can find a place to do so, and possibly a few pieces of networking hardware to finally give the sort of kind of temporarily mine laptop wireless access to my little network. I know its tempting fate, and the moment I do it'll be needed elsewhere, but that's stopped me for two months already. And a pizza stone. Some I've talked to think they're great, some hate them, but I'll never know for myself unless I get one and try it.

Enter the cricket

Tue, 21 Sep 2004 18:11:16 GMT

Now that the heater isn't making noise here at work, something else has started. A cricket. Happily chirping away, continuously, for the last six hours... until the moment someone goes looking for it.

*pause*

Ooo... it stopped. Finally.

The vanquishing of the heater

Tue, 21 Sep 2004 12:57:51 GMT

The switch has been found, and the heater turned off for now. Yay! Its actually bearable here again now.

Hmm... the highlight of my day so far is that the heater can be turned off. That's so pitiful.

Another discovery about the heater

Mon, 20 Sep 2004 18:26:24 GMT

I thought the noise would be the annoying part, and while it is to some extent, worse is the added warmth. *yawn* Its making me sleepy, and curling up on the floor just won't work as well as it seems it would. Bah.

Discoveries at work

Mon, 20 Sep 2004 11:59:03 GMT

For the first time since I've been working here its been cold enough outside that the heat is on. I've had an idea all along what that would be like, but so far my experiences with it leave a little to be desired.

The heat in this case is coming from essentially an industrial sized heater... one of those things that is about four feet across with a big fan in the center to blow the air around what is essentially a garage (former garage converted by the college's engineering school into lab space and cubicles... so I guess it is a garage). Overall not a bad system for the size of the room it needs to heat. It isn't the most pleasant, however, when said heater is located about eight feet away from my head... straight up. Later in the winter I'll likely be happy its there, but right now... its a little warm, and the thing is noisy. Its kinda like driving at about 80km/h with the windows down.

So, I've started pondering the difficulty of setting up active noise cancellation. Its certainly a better choice than driving a broom handle into the fan blades and watching the pretty fireworks as the motor burns out.

Yawn...

Sat, 18 Sep 2004 06:32:33 GMT

3:27am... I should be sleeping, but I'm not. What am I doing instead? Watching Martin Yan talk about rice noodles on TV. I'm not even sure I could buy a rice noodle in this town if I went searching, so anything I remember will only get added to the rest of the useless stuff stuck in my head. Oh well... one of these days the assorted stuff is going to merge together as a wonderfully brilliant idea that I'm astounded I thought of. With my luck it'll either surprise me so much I forget as soon as it appears, or I'll be sleeping. Mmm... sleep... Probably should see if that's possible soon.

Fri, 17 Sep 2004 12:54:23 GMT

My LiveJournal Trick-or-Treat Haul
belegarth goes trick-or-treating, dressed up as devil with a pitchspork.
caffeineferret tricks you! You get a toothbrush.
crwilley gives you 1 dark blue passionfruit-flavoured gummy fruits.
cyriael gives you 6 light orange passionfruit-flavoured wafers.
kaibara gives you 9 blue watermelon-flavoured miniature candy bars.
kairee gives you 4 teal strawberry-flavoured gumdrops.
katpryde tricks you! You get a block of wood.
lithera gives you 18 light orange passionfruit-flavoured wafers.
moose_man tricks you! You get a button.
belegarth ends up with 38 pieces of candy, a toothbrush, a block of wood, and a button.
Go trick-or-treating! Username:
Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern.

So I don't normally do these things, or at least post them, but something about getting a button from the moose just made it worth doing.

And on to better thoughts

Fri, 17 Sep 2004 12:28:02 GMT

Now that my annoyance with Betterbox and SBC is out of the way (ok, yeah, its still there but lets pretend it isn't for now).

Happy thoughts instead!

My company made a sale. Sure, that isn't exactly big news... its what companies do every day all over the world, or there wouldn't be companies, but this is still kind of special. Its a tiny company (two whole employees), and has only existed for four and a half months, and we're still developing what we're really supposed to be doing. Anyway, one company we were talking to had a client who needed a system built for their task and we decided to do it in hopes they'd like it. They did.

It isn't really much money in the grand scale of things, but seeing anything on the positive side of the books (not that I see those, but I can imagine) is a nice thing for us to have already.

Argh, and other sounds of frustration

Fri, 17 Sep 2004 11:57:35 GMT

Somehow, sometime between leaving home and getting to work, betterbox decided to forget it existed, or rather the rest of the network seems to have forgotten it exists. I'm getting really, really tired of this crap. I know in this case it likely isn't their fault, but damn its frustrating when this and other problems seem to happen with them far more often than I've seen on most other mush hosts, including some rather nice and cooperative free hosting places.

*whaps on betterbox with a giant plastic lobster*

Well, I guess I should really direct that towards who seems to be responsible this time.

*whaps SBC Global with a giant plastic lobster*

Round 'n round...

Tue, 08 Jun 2004 23:59:36 GMT

Another bike ride; perhaps getting a bit more used to it, perhaps not. Not quite as tired after this time as I was after the last one, and went on the same route. Just avoided the rain, too, which was nice... riding while getting soggy wasn't in the list of things I wanted to get accomplished tonight. Not that there was really anything out of the ordinary on that list, anyway. Just a few scenes to get done if the opportunity arose.

And, despite my decision at some point to not buy CDs and help fund the record companies in their quest to steal money from everyone, it looks like I'll be buying the latest Corrs CD. Listening to it now, and its rather good... not that that's too surprising. Most of the Corrs stuff has been rather good.

Separation of work and not work...

Mon, 07 Jun 2004 03:08:11 GMT

What is the normal amount of time to spend thinking about work while not at work? Is there a point after which you've spent enough time thinking about work related things that you can claim it as time actually worked (assuming the job is one where that thinking or planning or designing is something that needs to be done for the job)?

Why?

Just discovered that, without really meaning to, I've spent at least a few hours today mentally designing a certain dialog for an application I'm working on, which is something I'd have had to do (and still have more to do on) at work anyway. Does this mean (if I was picky enough to do it) that I could take the equivalent time off sometime later, or is it just a hazard of the job and something I need to see if I can train myself away from doing?

Oh well, it should make that bit of the program easier to implement, look better, and hopefully work better. And, it means I didn't have the time to let my mind wander into worrying, or fretting, or its other seemingly favorite little tasks.

Time on the bike, take two

Mon, 07 Jun 2004 01:07:26 GMT

Ok, so this should have been posted yesterday after the actual ride, but I didn't feel like sitting down at the computer at all so didn't wander in to do it. For a change the weather wasn't out to curtail any attempt at getting time, and it was nice, sunny and warm. Actually, too warm during the day so instead I waited until about 6:30pm to head out when it was much nicer.

This time instead of just going down the hill and then back up I went quite a bit further. Not much good giving actual landmarks travelled past as no one would know where they were, but the entire trip was about 5.5 kilometers, according to the GPS that I had in my pocket (but it lost its lock on the satellites a couple times so that might not be accurate). Maximum speed of about 22km/h, which while slow compared to many wasn't too bad for a second time out in several years.

Once again the up hill sections were... painful. Well, the last one of the hills was, and I ended up walking up it until the relative flat at the top, then pedalled the rest of the way home. After that... well, I think I fell asleep for a while. Spent the rest of the evening watching TV and movies, though can't really remember exactly what I did watch. Must not have been all that attention catching.

Realizations...

Sat, 05 Jun 2004 03:25:07 GMT

So, on Tuesday I went to look in the couple bike shops in town to see if there was anything I especially liked the look of that was in my price range. On Wednesday I returned to one of the shops and bought a bike, helmet, lock, and assorted things so I could have a nice, simple way to get back and forth to work when its nice out, and when the various other forms of transportation aren't available. Brought the bike home the same day after they had time to check it over, adjust things, and add fenders and the like (its a Norco Plateau if anyone happens to care http://www.norco.com/bikes/2004bikes/plateau.htm ).

Wednesday night it started raining. Since I haven't ridden a bike in years I decided that riding in the rain wasn't the best choice, so held off. Went to work Thursday, and it poured all day. So, no riding then. Friday (today) it was absolutely lovely in the morning; sun shining, not much wind. Still that way around lunch, but at 4:45 the sky opened up and it poured, again. At five I went outside, and the sun was shining, it was warm... and still raining. Gotta love sun showers.

I think the weather was conspiring against me.

By about 6:30 though it had cleared up enough, and I'd waited long enough to finally see how I'd do on a bike again, so even with a few sprinkles still falling I took it outside (it had been sitting in the middle of the living room since it came home) and went for a short jaunt. Down the hill went fine, brakes worked. The flat ground at the bottom was equally easy... the bike rolled and pedaled better than anything I've been on before. Then came the other hill, but this one was up. At first things went fine, the gearing made it so easy to pedal and still keep going. Half way up, though, came the realization...

I'm really, really out of shape.

Half a hill and my legs felt like rubber. I ended up walking it up the next quarter of the hill and then rode home, but at this rate commuting to work will be interesting. Even my shoulders and hands are sore from it, though my legs are almost fine again. Hopefully tomorrow goes better...

Belegarth

BNB and The Slump

Bleh

Hmm...

*yawn*

Colds and their evil presence

Just another update

*yawn*

An odd night

Missing posts from Friends page

Mmm... pizza...

Its morning! Its morning! Its... *thud* *Zzzzz*

*sigh*

Enter the cricket

The vanquishing of the heater

Another discovery about the heater

Discoveries at work

Yawn...

And on to better thoughts

Argh, and other sounds of frustration

Round 'n round...

Separation of work and not work...

Time on the bike, take two

Realizations...

yawn

yawn

Its morning! Its morning! Its... thud Zzzzz

sigh