Bob

Ummm, a way to get there? A passing UFO?

:)

I know I'm not exactly a prime colony candidate, but if I could help build a new world, I would sign up in a heartbeat. Sadly I don't see it happening in my lifetime unless we see some some sort of major breakthru in physics.

I really think the cold last week has finally killed my car.....it blew out a formed metal cooling pipe which was leaking like a sieve. So I got it to a shop to just replace that, amazingly they charged me 40 bucks less than the estimate. How often do you hear that about a mechanic?
I picked it up today and it got half way home before it died and wouldn't restart. It was running ok then just bogged down and temp went up, then quit. Wouldn't re-start even after waiting a good while to cool down and replacing coolant. Looks like it blew thru my my previous head gasket fix. Gonna try some block sealer again tomorrow, but I am really not having great hopes. Think it's dead......

Can't really complain much, the car cost me 650 bucks a year and a half ago. And while it's always been a PITA, it's done me good service over 1.5 years now. But this does hit me at Xmas without any spare money to buy a new beater. So now even the little cush I had til next paycheck is gone in getting the car towed off the highway. Better to have it towed to my place where I can either get it fixed or decide what to do with it than impounded off the highway.

Sigh... Not really worried about a ride to work as the CFO goes right by every day. And he knows what I am worth to the company :) But being without a car in Western WA is almost as bad as being without one in LA. I work 20 miles away from home with no good public transportation. The closest real grocery store is at least a couple mile walk.....

Hehe, kudos to my netbook for finding me a close tow. I know you people with Iphones will laugh, but I got a netbook specifically to be able to access the net whenever I want. And today it helped me. Once I realized it was not gonna go, I booted up my netbook and searched the closest towing company. Rush hour and I got a tow within 20 min :) Hehe, then used it to continue reading Clash of Kings til the truck arrived. Love my netbook.....

Not sure what I am going to do right now, but thinking about hitting up my company for a paycheck advance sufficient to get a decent,reliable vehicle,that I could pay back over time. My company being very small and me being a kind of crucial part in it, they may very well go for it..... Well, that's my hope anyway :)

Otherwise it's riding with Carl for a month or 2..... lol, bet he's tired of me already after the last week that my car has been in the shop.

Anyway, that light that was in the tunnel just hit me.......again. Those damn trains get me every time....

http://fugumble.com/2009/12/otherland-the-future-of-the-internet.php

I don't know what else to call it....I wrote what I think was a particularly fine post for Fugumble tonight and quite literally got a rush when I decided it was done. What an awesome feeling....

I'll post a link tomorrow after it's published :)

Lol, not to mention I'm posting this from my new netbook in bed :)



Just wow......

If you've not seen this site before, it is hysterical......well, to me anyway :)

http://juliasmexicocity.typepad.com/safetygraphics/

I've started posting to a news/opinion blogging site, only have a few things up atm but it just went live this week :) Kinda cool to see my real name next to content. Kind of came about thru a game forum I post on, never been shy about my opinions on current events and such. So the guy who is starting up the site asked me if I'd like to contribute. And there I am :)Pretty cool as I can write about anything that I like.....The editor adds appropriate pics or art to it and slots it into it's proper place. Wasn't sure how much I'd post but it is super easy to do straight from a news story.....so I'm thinking I may be doing a lot of it :)

Check me out at http://www.fugumble.com/index.php

Dunno if you have read the Song of Ice and Fire series but HBO just completed shooting a pilot for a possible series based upon it. There is some fantastic talent involved in this project including Sean Bean as Ned Stark and Peter Dinklage as Tyrion. Not to mention top notch FX and post production. The FX guy did the John Adams series, he did amazing stuff with CGI background in that series. HBO has put a lot of money into this pilot, they'd be insane to not pick this up for at least 2 seasons. This could be to fantasy episodic tv as LoTR was to fantasy films.

Potentially the full series of books could easily accommodate 7-8 seasons in a series..... In a lot of ways, think Lost in a fantasy setting with far more compelling characters........


I am so psyched! Just hope by 1/11 when the series would likely launch, that HBO has embraced IP content delivery. I haven't had cable for 2 years and don't want it, I get all my video just fine over the net, thank you very much :) But I would pay a sub fee to HBO for IP on demand to this series :)

The best place to see all about the series is http://www.winter-is-coming.blogspot.com/

If you haven't read the series yet, I highly recommend it. GRRM may be be slow writing his books but his plots and characters are so compelling.....


Winter is Coming!

:)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPIs-S6zJAg&feature=player_embedded

This is just awesome.....And they couldn't have picked a better bunch of already......mmmm, unique people than at Dragon Con :)

Enjoy :)

http://otherworld.org/index.html

Teresa got a great write up in the Herald yesterday..... here's the linky :)

http://heraldnet.com/article/20090817/BIZ/708179957

I've finally put all my pics up at picasa :)here's my album page

http://picasaweb.google.com/home?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hl=en&tab=wq

Some great kitty pics in there :) The Icicle album is a study I made over a week or so with the icicle on the corner of our roof during our long cold period this winter.....kinda cool to see how it changes.

The new comp album is my new baby.... A couple weeks ago I got home from work and turned on my comp, to have it die within seconds :( My vid card went out but my comp was too old to really replace it......so had to build a new one :)

E8500 C2D cpu @3.16GhZ
4GB Corsair XMS DDR2
GTS 250 GPU w/ 1GB GDDR3
750W Corsair PS w/ a single 12V rail :)
640 GB Sata3 HD
Antec 900 case

Nice machine, this baby is fast :) Helps to be running Win7 tho...

The other albums are just misc stuff I had on my camera, lot of great snow pics.

I hope anyway.... Gonna try giving up tobacco again, had the last of my "own" cigs this morning drive :) I have mixed feelings about this....Yes, I fully understand it is good for me to not smoke, any intelligent person knows that.

I do somewhat resent being somewhat forced to do so because of increasing taxes upon them. Not sure what date it hit, but new taxes here jumped packs almost $1.30. However bad smoking is for me, I would much rather be doing this because I truely wanted to, than having been forced to suddenly quit because of the economics of it....


Anyway, wish me luck all!

Omg! If you've never read the Otherworld series, I highly recommend it. It is right up there with LOTR for me in fave books :)

http://pc.ign.com/articles/915/915261p1.html

Granted this is just a first look and probly looking at 3 more years development...... But it looks promising and the fact that Tad Williams himself is heavily involved gives me hope ! Worth watching anyway :)

Pics of the new Caddy :)

http://picasaweb.google.com/Amsra1/Caddy#

Been some time since I posted about my life lately so here goes.....

Last April a company that I had worked temp for for a couple weeks called my temp agency and asked for me by name, within a month they bought out my temp contract and hired me full time in May. Last week they promoted me to Test Engineer with a healthy 3 buck an hour raise Smile Mind you I have no tech schooling and the position normally requires an AA electronics degree..... So the job is going well,errrr...., ok really well Smile A couple weeks ago my cheapshit car blew the head gasket so I had to buy a new car:( So well no biggie, my ex-wife has been out on medical leave due to an operation on her ankle that had her in bed for 8+ weeks so she graciously let me borrow her car for a couple weeks while I waited for a paycheck and looked for a new car. So last night I bought a new car......Now, I know you all have seen pics of me.....Picture me in a black 2 door Caddy Eldorado Smile Sweet car..... I almost feel decadent driving it Smile It was only 650 bucks and while it has some minor problems, it runs strong and gets surprisingly good gas mileage for a Caddy. The really funny thing about the car is I found it on Craigslist and when I showed up to look at it, discovered I knew the guy, lol. Hehe, Snohomish is truly a small town Smile

Anyway life is looking much better for me lately. 6 months ago I was collecting unemployment and now I have a great job with a very stable company that in it's 20 year history has done nothing but grow and has NEVER had to lay anyone off Smile


Feeling pretty good these days Smile


Edit: I'll take some pics of the car and post em Smile

AKA Pandora..... This is awesome! You just give it 1 band/song and it creates your own station based on similar songs/bands. They have basically broken music down into it's "genes" and do a very good job of playing music you will like :) The music is all commercial free.

check it out http://www.pandora.com

Here's a link to my profile http://www.pandora.com/people/amsra1 , so you can check out what I'm listening to :)

I would say a good time was had by all :) Here's the raw dump from my camera, haven't pruned em yet :)

http://picasaweb.google.com/Amsra1/Wedding

Oh and here is the "official" flickr stream......

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizandtedwedding/

I'll be sending my favorites to flickr once i go thru them :)

And may I say.....just wow :)


Enjoy!

So we have moved again....Teresa's shop down to a place just off the main drag in town. Should be very good with more potential walk in customers. And us personally into a very tiny apartment just a few blocks from her shop. So we have way more stuff than places to put it :) And still struggling to get my router to work with my dsl.....think I am gonna screw it and just put a switch in as opposed to a router. So right now, one of us can be online at a time :( bad for playing VG together. Hopefully a switch will work.....

Finally have my pics uploaded from the Faire, we had a blast :)

http://picasaweb.google.com/Amsra1/RennFaire2007