Saturday, September 02, 2006

Happy B-Day jr0n.

What, now that you are 47 and all, you are offically an old fucker.

Rude: WTF? That is the fugliest Cat I have ever seen. Good old Cliff Y. photos.

Elzar, how can I help. I would love to, although I bet my CSS skillz are as sad as yours. I have not worked with CSS in about three years. What are you looking to do sucka? As far as Sept 14-17 is concerned, I dont think I have anything planned for that weekend. That would be sweet if you were able to drop by for a bit.

What a sweet looking soccor sim that is. What is really great is the size of the ball. Comical, yet cool. Somehow I think those guys have been playing for a while. The game play is very fluid. I bet if we started playing we would look stupid. Fun stuff though.

D>M>
Happy early/late/rightontime Birthday Jon!!! 33, how's it feel baby!?!?
BDAY Cat Pic for you:


Woah what the hell is this thing, I think it's some kind of dinner bat.
HELLO DINNER BAT!!!
Musings, VOL XXVII

- Strategicon is holding another convention this weekend, God love 'em. I'm going to hit it up for a short stint, and see if this time anyone shows up for the ASL at 10am... last time I was left alone at a table maked ASL in a room full of Eurogames. I cried, but it was good. Very cathartic. I will report back any findings.

- I am (foolishly) working on a wiki for The Action Team. If I can get it the way I want it, I think it would be a neat addition to the AT world. We could document EVERYTHING we ever want AT related. Right now I can't really get the blog to work right on the main page, so until I do, it is a no go. I need to re-learn CSS for formatting, not that I really ever learned it the first time, so if anyone wants to help, that would be awesome. (*crickets, crickets*)

- Subbuteo is a rad game! Check out some videos of gameplay!

- We are definitely coming up to Santa Cruz Sept. 14 - 17, maybe 18th, to look at houses, family, etc. Leslie and the boy should be in good hands if I were to abandon them to come up to the Fabulous Bay Area for a meal and a game or two, lemme know what everyone's schedule is up there.

- Awesome Jon!

Friday, September 01, 2006

Beating Guitar Hero on Hard difficulty?

Probably the greatest achievement of my life.

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Hey Ryan, speaking of 1984, Animal Farm, Farenheit 451 and all that Orwellian goodness.. have you seen V for Vendetta yet (or read the graphic novel?) Amazingly good.

As for Michelle.. yeah. It's not been easy. Especially when you find yourself having to demand a full copy of the lab results and tests so you can self-educate yourself on what everything means and do your own educated analysis on what you're looking at.. because the M.D. that your HMO has on staff knows shit-all nothing about anything more exotic than a sore throat. The worst part is that they are the gatekeepers and if they don't green light a diagnosis and/or treatment, then the health insurance company doesn't pay for shit when you are finally forced to go and get the treatment that you know you need, but they won't or can't admit is necessary or at least likely to help. I mean, hell, the last appointment Michelle had with her HMO robot, she called in advance and asked that he read her file history so she could talk to him about some potential causation and/or treatment options (as we had been doing our homework for some time and found some new and very plausible ideas).. when she showed up, he hadn't even glanced at her file, and started talking to her as though this was the first time she had ever had symptoms and spoken to a doctor about it. He wanted to run all the basic, skimming tests that tell you nothing but make him a whole lot of money.. that she's had run a dozen times by other doctors with predictably zero knowledge gained. So, she broke down and started crying at the futility and frustration of it all.. oh.. and so it was suddenly ok to run the three extra tests she was interested in (which all came back borderline POSITIVE, FFS). But, they were all about 1 or 2 % above minimum "acceptable" range, so he dismissed it offhandedly in his review/report we received in the mail. Unbelievable.

Didn't mean to get off on a rant there.. LOL
I only blog every once in a while, but I am one hell of a voyeur!

Art: Hopefully all that shit works out for you and Michelle. I seriously don't know how she lives with that.

Under the heading of, whether you care or not:

I am making the jump from 8th grade English teacher to 9th and 10th grade English teacher this year. It was a difficult decision to make, but overall, it came down to, "What is going to make my life easier in the long run?" I really like coaching water polo once again. Torrance High offered me a schedule that consisted of 4 periods of English plus coaching instead of the 5 periods plus coaching that I was doing at the middle school. Despite the fact I really loved the middle school (no bullshit), if I wanted to keep coaching, I couldn't say no to the high school.

So I went to my classroom last week, and evidently the room formerly belonged to a French teacher because on the back wall was a big-ass mural of everything French! There was a woman dressed in obvious French attire walking a pink poodle, a friggin' huge Eifel (sp?) Tower, The Arch de Triumph, women doing the can-can, the Muolin (sp?) Rouge... you get the idea. And so since I teach nothing French, not an author... not anything, I spent this week painting. I still have another coat to go, but FUCK!

Another thing that I thought was going to be lame, but actually turned out to be cool, is that I have to re-read a lot of novels from high school. Granted, I may have skipped over a lot of them, but I have already re-read All Quiet on the Western Front (which I hated the first time I read it, but is SO GOOD, seriously read this if you have the time- one of the harshest antiwar novels ever), Lord of the Flies (another one that is really good), Animal Farm, and Fahrenheit 451. I am just starting 1984, and I am loving it!

Anyway, that it all for now. I'll update more later, I swear. I have to watch my new kitty chase her tail. Funny. Funnier. I like Aaron’s avitar... a lot.
Medical talk:

Michelle's been battling a mixture of health issues all her life but she'd gotten so used to it all that she's developed a bit of a tolerance to the pain and symptoms.. she puts on a good game face. To make a very long story short, there's a combination of issues going on, including a flora-yeast overgrowth problem in her body likely due to antibiotics killing off the "good" bacteria as well as the bad when she was very ill as a child, and that's most of the "IBS" shit.. bloating, gas, cramps, cravings for sugar (yeast food) and general nutritional deficiencies again due to the yeast. The normal score range for internal yeast count on a given person is about 40-ish, and Michelle's first testing revealed a score upwards of 250. Crazy. After just a week and a half on medication to kill the yeasties, she's already seeing huge changes and a big time drop in symptoms. The other side of the issue is a problem with her nervous system and thyroid (sort of connected). This creates some ugly pain issues when nerves fire off for no good reason, can create severe rheumetoid-arthritis like symptoms, and in the case of both the thyroid and yeasties, they can combine to create a metabolism issue. Michelle has been working out 4-5 times a week and has been on a super low-fat diet for about 5 years and hasn't lost a pound.. which just doesn't jive. So, make a long story short, her appetite is already reduced from the yeastie reduction, and the ultra-low dose thyroid medication she's on (about 5% of a standard dose prescription) should be encouraging her body to resume natural production of certain hormones that have been depleted/exhausted from trying to compensate/fight the other battles.. resulting in chronic fatigue, etc..

Anyway. I know that was all a lot more information than you bargained for, and I've over simplified a lot of it.. but that's the gist of things. She's taking about a dozen different supplements, prescriptions and is going in for periodic IV transfusions that are a mix of immuno-support, nutrition boosters, nerve/thyroid health, pain management, so on and so forth. It's a big cocktail of this and that. But, the most important thing is that a doctor is not only listening to her/us and not telling us "It's all in your head".. but they've got a plan for fixing it that over the last two years shows a 95% success rate. That, combined with the nearly instant improvement we've seen so far, is reason for us to happily pay for the treatment. If it works, and her system is restored to normal in the next 6-8 months, then paying a few thousand dollars for that fix seems insignificant for a lifetime of health.

I dunno about everyone else, but I think I found Aaron's avatar image:
Hope your wife is well, Art....

@Aeryk: I was looking at the GenCon website yesterday and will register before the week is up. I'm fired the fuck up!!!! I'll fly in either late Thursday night or early on Friday.

And yeah, the photos are getting stale. I wanna be Whitey Snakebitey!
A bath? K?

Elzar: I agree the young'n photos are getting a bit stale. We need something fresh. Maybe Art can dig something up for each of us on ratemypoo.com. Or perhaps something he cooks up himself. Although I do like the boob idea too. Maybe Boobs and Wieners tattoos... As for GenCon, I am in like Flynn. I intend to take the Thursday and Friday off of work, so I will fly down Wednesday eve the 15th and return in the eve of the 19th. That's my plan.

O: You just now got that place rented. Uggg! That is brutalitarian. The rental market must be really bad up their. Even if your place is a slum, you can rent a dirt hole in less than a month in SF. What is Michelle's condition? I didn't know she was sick. Or is it the food intolerances she has? I am jealous of your kitchen action in class. Taking a cooking class has always sounded like lots of fun. Some day I might get to that.

Art, you should try having two phones with different battery life cycles. I get 1.5 days with one phone and the other phone gets upwards of 6 days. This leads me to forget to charge them all the time. Stupid work phone.

Rude: Twilight Zone is a sweet show. I still love catching marathons. I donno, it is something about the pacing and the mildly sinister/creepy feel to the show. Almost like a dirty voyeuristic feel. That was always my favorite day time show when I would be 'sick' for classes in high school.

D>M>

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Yeah.. so I was going to call you today. But, my phone was dead. Well.. not my phone, but the new earpiece thingy I've been trying out. What you say? I seem to have found the magicke number of times you can drop a motorola flip phone before the thing starts to not work so well (as in, can't hear shit from the earpiece speaker). So.. enter the earpiece. The interesting dynamic is that now I feel like I'm juggling with the recharge schedule.. gotta recharge one, then the other.. and THEN use them together.

Anyway. Yehaw.

The Tacoma house FINALLY got rented. Sweet tap dancing Jesus on a dumptruck! Another couple of months of no renters was really going to make things interesting.. so I'm glad that got handled. Added bonus (did I already say this?) .. found out our asshole neighbors have been helping themselves to our water and power, so we got a sixty dollar bill on our friggin VACANT HOUSE. Unbelievable. We lodged a complaint with the owner of the house (yeah, like that's going to do anything but shit-all nothing). But, I care a lot less about that 60 bucks now that we've got sweet, sweet renters paying the mortgage again. Nice.

Michelle had her first I.V. transfusion treatment today, made her all stupid for about 4-5 hours afterward, so we're going to have to figure something out about scheduling these things due to my school schedule. This new treatment program is about 95% effective, but is about 20% covered by the insurance company because it's "out of plan". Yay, us! We collectively decided that "Fuck it." was the correct response, because if it really works.. who cares what it costs. A life with no symptoms, pain or suffering? Hard to put a price tag on that.

As for school, I've gone through all my introductory "first classes" except for one more on Thursday night, which is an upper division nutrition class that I'm really looking forward to taking. I was a bit freaked out about my class load this semester, but after getting the basic overview from my professors as to what we'll be doing, and what's expected, I'm a whooooole lot less stressed. This is actually going to be a pretty cool set of classes that won't require rediculous amounts of homework.. so I'm definately down with that. My favorite class is going to be a back of house management and professionalism class that will have us in the UNLV kitchens for about 10 weeks learning under a master executive chef. Kickass! Get my own chef's uniform and everything. Wheeee!

Eric, I need to talk to you boss. If there is a time that works better than others tomorrow, give me a hollah. Being a fellow man with kid, I know that a poorly timed phone call can send me into a fit of anger as I'm 2 seconds away from putting Haylee to bed and the phone rings, waking her up. LOL. If I don't hear from you first, I'll try calling you maybe just before lunch-ish.

~Cap'n O.

P.S. I demand Ryan's snorkel picture be brought back. Plus, a bath for Aaron.
GenCon

- So, I know it is some time away, but does anyone know their schedule and availibility?
Should I get the room? When will everyone be getting into town? Inquiring jerks want to know.

- I think I am getting tired of the old, and incidentally, young, pictures of us on the blog. I was thinking about either a) adding new, fresh pictures b) using pictures of different boobs I find on the internet, or c) using pieces or pictures from our favorite games to represent us.

Eric - A Blood Bowl ball or die.
Enron - A piece from either GOOTMU, or Giganten
Jon - Maybe something from Everway, Planescape, or Warmachine
Denis - Confrontation Bondage Nurse
Johnny - Something from Russian Campaign perhaps?
Ryan - He's a tough one. Maybe just a baseball.
Rudy - Something from Delta Green perhaps?
Art - Awful Green Thing, or some Robo Rally bullshit
Mike - Something from Tikal or LotR.

I don't know, sometimes I get wild hairs. I might happen.

- I am also studying to become a Real Estate Agent. NOT because I want to be an agent, but because I can save SO MUCH MONEY on future real estate transactions if I represent myself for at least one side of the deal! Also, it is the first step to becoming a broker. Then I can have a bunch of Agent Jerks working for me, and as long as I dot my I's and cross my legal T's, I get a piece of their commission for doing nothing! AND, they pay me monthly fees, to work for me! WTF!?!!?

Real estate is just so wrong. So wrong.

- Reading this weird book called Alhazred, which is sort of the autobiography, told in a Lovecraft story past tense format, of The Mad Arab who wrote the Necronomicon. Interesting premise, somewhat interesting writing style, weird story so far, and fairly brutal. Overly grim at times, but not so much it takes away from the story, it actually works to further the story. If I finish it, I'll tell you all about it.

- It took this long to find renters for the Tacoma house? Yikes! Samuel Jackson Beer. Classic. "How's it taste, motherfucker?!? Huh?"
Dave Chapelle is a frigging genius. All his Lil Jon shit kills me, and I think my all time favorite skit is the Samuel Jackson Beer.. but this one with Wayne Brady is sooo funny. LOL. It got put together after Chapelle said on a previous episode that Wayne Brady made Bryant Gumbel look like Malcom X.



Weird, link isn't showing..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1q81rhab9A
RENTERS! WE HAVE RENTERS!

So! Much! Stress! Relieved!

/cptkirk

*sigh*

I just thought I'd share that with the group. On a semi-related note.. the fuckers in the financial aid office screwed up my grant and scholarship distribution for this semester and I had to spend 36 hours straight on the phone with no food, water, or bathroom breaks with these morons to straighten it out. While I emerged on the other end of that phone call with a confirmation of mon-ay in my account.. I left with a shit-filled pair of pajamas and a serious rash.

Not fun. I may send them a dry cleaning bill. Or, just FedEx them the pajamas.

Anyway.. anyone else remember that show "Space: Above & Beyond" on FOX that got canned many years ago because the special effects budget was totally crazy? (Reminds me of the way they handled Firefly a bit).. I was about -><- this close to ordering a copy from some dude on the internet claiming to have a full copy of the entire series.. when we stumbled upon it at the store! Very nicely done.

Also.. Oscuro just released the biggest, baddest game-enhancing modification to a game evar. The thing is over a GIG uncompressed! Wow. Just. Wow. Those of you who have Oblivion for the PC should get thee over to the oblivion forums (or Oscuro's homepage: http://jorgeoscuro.googlepages.com/oscuro'soblivionoverloaddownloads ) and download that shit, STAT.

If you don't have Oblivion... why the hell don't you! I'm officially out of time to play the game anymore with the start of school and all that shiz.. but I think I've gotten close to 200-250 hours of play out of it and I still haven't finished each and every questline. Totally nuts. Now, with Oscuro's humongous overhaul.. there's gotta be another 50-100 hours of play added. I wish I had the time.

Time to go stuff some spaghetti in the kiddo. Can't believe she's gunna be two in October.

Late,

~A.
Fuck the twilight zone, I've watched this clip literally 20 times today. *One Track Lover* I am so getting this shit on dvd. The Mighy Boosh is another fuckin awesome UK comedy. All these guys are in each other's shit. Also the people from the original Office. Why are they all so funny? MIKE? ANSWER ME!

Monday, August 28, 2006

The Twilight Zone rules. I keep hoping to catch a marathon or something.

Check this out. Some seriously impressive modelling work. This is in 1/6 scale.

Sunday, August 27, 2006

Speaking of old black & white shit, I just watched a couple of Twilight Zone's on SciFi. Dudes, I know this is probably a given to say, but that show is STILL pretty bad-ass! The fucking acting was pretty goddamn good! I watched one called 'The Dummy' about a ventriliquist who thinks his dummy is alive. And then the second one wasn't as good, this newlywed couple goes back to the husbands dead mother's house to finally sign the papers to sell it, and the husband kinda reverts to being a kid again and his dead mother comes back. Fucking Rod Sterling was so PIMP! Fuckin' shit!

Before the twilight zone was some weird british comedy/scifi show that I'd never seen before but was FUCKING HILARIOUS! Called "Garth Marenghi's Darkplaces" . Lemme check if it's on youtube ... he doesth! Darkplaces on YouTube! I gotta watch some of these clips now, but the one I saw had a scene where he's singing a song to "Skipper the Eye Child." Fucking insane. (Don't see that clip up there but maybe you guys already know the show - if not try to catch it on SciFi.) Holyshit, watch the intro clip from the show. I had missed that tonight.
Congrats jon! on the promo.

Now just sit at your desk and do 15 min of actual work. It goes far to join on the WOW bandwagon with all your other co-workers. =D

I just read the grapes of wrath. Never bothered reading it in Cooks class and i'm not sure how I passed the Quizzes but whatever that was eons ago. The book was paint-dry boring, pretty stagnant. Like a black and white movie from the 60's. couldn't read it all the way through in one sitting. It's also hard to grasp the emotional aspect since I didn't live through the great depression. It's like trying to associate to the tyranny of the french revolution. I understand the significance, of the event, but honestly, I could care less.

I'm a 21st century digital boy!
I myself think this site is a disgrace.:( Hitler killed everything living thing there was and he would kill these cute cats if he was still here. Thank you.
- Rockell