Status Update

Eleven days into a month with no blog posts is close to a record for this blog. Shameful. Even worse, I skipped a Friday Thing-A-Week fiction post with no explanation or even a feeble excuse. Let's catch up, shall we? Karin's been sick with some cough/cold/nastiness for quite a while now. I think I had it last week. That may sound odd but I have this "mild cold" mode where I don't feel particularly bad but my energy level is just the pits and I routinely sleep 12-14 hours a day. That may not sound incredibly strange but my average amount of sleep in a day is closer to six hours, so it's a major behavior change. I can't say for certain my writing avoidance last week wasn't just procrastination but combine it with the sleep marathons and the known presence of nasty germ personas in my household and I think I was sick. Our weekend was also crazy busy. We had folks over for dinner and Rock Band Friday night and then we had tickets to go see Cirque du Soleil (the Kooza show) on Saturday night. Well, that was the plan anyway. Friday night we got all the guitars set up and all, played one song and then the power promptly went out. I had already done the bulk of the cooking, but we had to relocate the food to our guests' place to cook the noodles and have actual light to eat by (sigh). The power was on again when we got home at 11:30 PM but it blipped out again over night, requiring me to get up in the middle of the night to shut off all the computers because the UPS was beeping. I liked the Kooza show a lot, although they had a couple of moments where they shaded over the line from "Wow that's incredibly talented" into "Wow, that's a really fucking stupid and risky thing to do", and then I felt like I was at NASCAR (y'know - just hoping there will be an accident). But a lot of it was beautiful and amazing and only a tiny bit was unbelievably foolish. There was slightly more story than the usual Cirque production and I liked that. So anyway, now I'm still sleeping a tiny bit more than normal but not epic twelve hour sessions. I expect to write this week and have Friday's post as normal. To be honest, while I was tired/sick/procrastinating last week I felt sorry for myself and thought that nobody would really notice or care anyway. But Friday night somebody asked about my post, so I guess that's just the stupid voice, not a real truth.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: , , , , ,

Read more

How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook -- InformationWeek

Having watched the rise and fall of SixDegrees, Friendster, and the many other proto-hominids that make up the evolutionary chain leading to Facebook, MySpace, et al, I'm inclined to think that these systems are subject to a Brook's-law parallel: "Adding more users to a social network increases the probability that it will put you in an awkward social circumstance."
How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook -- Facebook -- InformationWeek A good article by Cory Doctorow about one of the issues facing "social networks". On a very-related note, the upcoming Xbox 360 Fall Update adds additional creepiness to Live by letting friends browse your friends list. I'm increasingly on the fence about Live's creep factor. Sometimes I just want to play a game, and not be available for chats with old co-workers or friends, or worse yet a current co-worker who has some question about something. And it's always telling me that friend X is logged on (likely just to watch a video), or recently that somebody's toddler daughter is just playing with the power button. And yes, you can be on Live and not appear logged on - but I'm contemplating making that my default stance. I don't run my IM client when I'm playing World of Warcraft, why would I do so when playing Assassin's Creed? And the first time somebody I don't really like sends me a friends request because we both know somebody on XBL I'm going to be seriously annoyed. It is possible to opt out of the "Friends of Friends" feature and quite honestly I encourage people to do so. I made the decision to publicize my GamerTag on this blog, but Microsoft has no right to decide to publicize my GamerTag for me. "Friends of Friends" defaults to on, and I don't think it should. I've wished before that XBL had a feature for "introductions" - some way to say "Oh yeah, lemme give you Bob's GamerTag" other than just spelling it out over a chat. (It's more convenient if Bob is online to invite everyone into a quick Arcade game, but that's still a bit obtrusive), but that's not the same as saying "Here, freely browse through my friends list and see if you want to hassle anybody I know." If somebody asks me for somebody else's email address/GamerTag/phone number/address/AIM handle I always check with the third party first. Once I know that Bob wants me to pass on his GamerTag I'd like for XBL to make that automatic, but it needs to be a specific door I open when I choose to do so, not something that is always available for all my friends. I don't feel I have permission to publish all my friend's GamerTags, but apparently Microsoft thinks I do.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: , , , ,

Read more

Weekend Off!

OK, I debated whether or not I should just take the Thanksgiving weekend off and not post fiction this week. That choice has pretty much been taken away from me. Sorry guys, but I just finished up another 10+ hours on the Home Repair Project From Hell(tm) and the room is still not finished. It has a tree in it, but the tree has to move around another couple of times before we can decorate it and be done with it all. The end is in sight and the end result will be great, but there's another two days hard slogging to make it happen. So no fiction post this weekend, and then I'll post next Friday. Promise. And I'll blog more about the Home Repair Project From Hell(tm), but I'm too tired, and too hungry to do so now. Let me just say this: we bought a nailgun today! An electric nailgun. Boo-yah!

Blogged with Flock

Tags: , ,

Read more

Rock Band

The Box

It's here! I took photos of the unboxing and uploaded them to Flickr. So there is some Rock Band porn for you, if that's how you swing. I'm not quite sure what I think yet. The guitar is easily my favorite one yet (although I haven't tried the GH3 controller yet) - it is flatter than the GH2 guitar so I find it slides less. It took some effort for me to adapt from GH1 to GH2, but this felt very comfortable right from the start. Drumming is really difficult, the pedal throws me for a real loop. And yes, if you're observant you might have noticed these pictures are from a new camera - I received my new Canon Digital Rebel XTi yesterday. I'll post more about that soon, but so far I love it!

Blogged with Flock

Tags: , ,

Read more