Caught In The Whirlwind
Archive for September, 2010
Er…Oops.
1599 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
My vacation started today. I’m off of work until Wednesday, woo! Unfortunetly it started kinda crappily.
I was cleaning out Mr. Spatula’s fish tank last night…getting the green gunk off of the greek column thingy that’s one of his tank decorations. I put it back in the tank and thought everything was great. Until I came home today from work and noticed that Mr. Spatula wasn’t around. I suddenly realized what must have happened, picked up the decoration and there he was. Crap…Sorry little guy…
Since the tank was already cycled and all that I ended up running over to the store to get a replacement. He looks a lot like Mr. Spatula did mostly because I really like the color combination. I was going to call him Mr. Spatula The Second. But then I called him “Replacement Fish” when I went to put him in the tank and Wassy mentioned “Replacement” would be a good name…so that’s what I went with.
Blargh. Feel bad for killing the fish though. The first fish I’ve actually had an active role in killing since I started my fish keeping hobby.
Looking Forward and Back
0602 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
I’m headed to Boston this weekend to see some friends and catch the Roger Waters concert on the 3rd, so needless to say I’m looking forward to the weekend right now. This stretch over the past few weeks has been pretty bad relatively, so I could definitely use a little mini-vacation right about now.
There’s just one potential problem on the horizon. Both of my roommates have come down with a nasty cold which means there’s almost no possible way I’m going to avoid getting it myself. My throat was bugging me a tad yesterday but that’s mostly gone now and I’ve got a very occasional cough. So I’m hoping this is one of those situations where they get something and I mostly avoid it because it would kinda be awful battling a cold.
This past weekend I went out to Keuka Lake (aka, wine country) in an attempt to get some landscape photos for my photography class. Sadly, it ended up being mostly cloudy all weekend. I went anyway to get out for a while and the only bits of sunlight I got was about 15 minutes when I was going down the Thruway and about 30 seconds here and there. I managed to get some shots that will work out but because of the lighting nothing spectacular. Blargh. And it’s going to be rainy all week which isn’t going to help me get photos for the assignment.
Ah well, just have to do what I can.
Book 25: Red Seas Under Red Skies
0
Title: Red Seas Under Red Skies
Author: Scott Lynch
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 784
Summary
This is book 2 of the Gentelman Bastard’s cycle. Trying not to give anything away from the first book here. Locke Lamora is forced to flee from his home city of Camorr. Thinking that he’s evaded those who have perused him, he starts in on a new scheme to steal from the elite of his new location. But things suddenly become much more complicated than he imagined. Poisoned by a political leader and forced to use his skills of deception for a chance at the antidote, Locke ends up juggling three sperate schemes, one of which on the high seas as a pirate.
Notes (Ending Spoilers are included in the last 2 paragraphs)
This series is quickly becoming one of my favorite fantasy book series ever. The main characters are compelling and complex, the plot is well thought out, the dialog is incredibly witty. Extremely well written.
Judging from the reviews on Amazon, it appears I’m in the minority for enjoying this book just as much (and maybe even a little more) than the first book in the series. I felt that the author’s writing style between the two books has matured and he’s learned to juggle the flashbacks more effectively.
Like I said in my notes from the first book, this book follows the same kind of time jump structure. In fact, the very first chapter has events that occur far in the future. Lynch dumps you right into the middle of a fight scene where some very surprising actions take place (trying to avoid spoilers here as much as possible) and then rewinds the clock back to several months after where the first book left off through all the events leading up to that moment. Interspersed is the events that occurred in those missing 2 months.
The structure is a lot cleaner this time out, although this could just be me being used to his writing style. It’s a lot easier to follow and there’s less flashback-y stuff which makes sense considering the reader should already be familiar with the world.
Spoilers begin ahead (FYI)
What a lot of the amazon reviewers termed the part of the book they hated most, the pirate plot, was actually the part I liked best. It didn’t drag for me like some people indicated, it was actually what caught my attention the most. Locke is usually so confident in the roles that he’s trying to pull off, but seeing him trying to be believable in a role where he has extremely limited knowledge was interesting to me. And I have a soft spot for pirate-y goodness. Also the pirate subplot really helped flesh out Jean’s character.
What I didn’t enjoy was the abrupt ending. As I was edging towards 90% on my kindle while reading I was trying to figure out how the heck Lynch was going to tie everything up. He had the original caper against the leader of the Sinspire, the twist sub plot involving Stragos and the military (and the poison) and the pirate subplot still going strong. But somehow it was all tied up and finished in one chapter. This seemed rushed to me, as if Lynch noticed how many pages he had written and said “oh crap, I need to end this!”. Most surprising to me was how it ended. I thought for sure it was going to turn out OK for the protagonists but, in the end things didn’t quite turn out how they expected them to.
I can’t wait for the third book now.
Next Book
I figure I’ve taken enough of a break from the Wheel of Time that I should get back onto it before I forget what happened. So I’m going to be reading A Crown Of Swords by Robert Jordan next. This is the first book in my re-reading of the series that I have not previously read. So I guess that means I’ve moved from re-reading to actually…reading. Halfway through the series!
[Plinky] Three Songs I Never Get Sick of
2Name three songs you never get sick of.
A Change Of Seasons by Dream Theater
This is one of my favorite Dream Theater songs ever. It’s a roughly 23 minute epic written by ex drummer Mike Portnoy about his experiences with the death of his Mom in a plane crash and how that changed his outlook on life. Powerful song with a strong message. One of my favorite songs ever written.
Stranger In Your Soul by Transatlantic
Plinky was unable to find a picture for this one so that’s why the image size is funky…but I could have listed any of several Transatlantic songs here. But I must have listened to this song at least 40-50 times, if not more and it never gets old. Ever. Transatlantic is one of my favorite bands ever.
Arriving Somewhere But Not Here by Porcupine Tree
My favorite Porcupine Tree song (although Gravity Eyelids is pretty darn close too), it’s just so well constructed. Starts off slow but builds into something totally awesome.
The Blargh Part
2610 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
And now for the second half of the post I wanted to make this morning. Less updating, more personal stuff.
Like I said, I’ve been feeling a bit blargh recently, for a variety of reasons. Some of which would be uninteresting to people who aren’t me, so I won’t get into it. But I want to go into some of the stuff.
A lot of it probably has to do with the situation at work. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that one of my bosses and myself just don’t see eye to eye on stuff and that conflict is gradually increasing over time. Not going to turn this into a big complaint session post or anything, but just in a nutshell, I’m in a situation where he’s given me some fairly complex projects to work on without understanding that they’re as complex as they are and expecting me to finish them faster than I can. So he either gets pissed at me for getting it done on time and not working like it should because the timeframe was unreasonable, or he gets pissed at me when I do it the right way and it takes longer than he thought it would. Or the fun part, when he gets pissed at me when it doesn’t work how he thinks it should work, even though he never told me he wanted it to work like that to begin with.
I’m just detecting over the past several weeks that conversations have started to become more adversarial. Even when I attempted to bring up my concerns with him it got turned around on me somehow. The situation is heading towards some sort of breaking point. I just don’t know when.
So yeah, that’s weighing on my mind. And it’s not like I particularly enjoy working here or anything. What I just mentioned is part of the reason why, plus other things. I’ve been trying to find another job that would either present me a new opportunity in my existing career or let me go back to school on a more full time basis and work towards a graphic design degree. But so far there’s nothing in this area that looks like it might work out. And I’ve been looking.
Which brings me to my second reason for blargh-ness. I’ve got several design related projects I’ve been working on, chiefly a book layout for a friend of mine that’s pretty extensive, and a redesign for my friend Wassy’s website. Lately I’ve been slacking a bit on this stuff due to mostly, City of Heroes Going Rogue expansion. I’ve been trying to get back on top of things though. Trying to would be the operative word. It’s kinda like there’s some sort of disconnect and I just can’t come up with anything that works. It’s getting to be incredibly frustrating at this point.
So those are the big things weighing on me right now. It’ll pass at some point, I know, but right now things are just kinda blargh.
On the bright side though, the photos I posted up earlier this week seem to have gone over well with the professor of the course. Well, the first one anyway. She’s working on commenting on the rest. So it’s not all bad!
House Hunting and Other Activities
0610 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Blargh.
That about sums up my feelings right now. I had kinda a mixed bag weekend, but I’ve decided to split it up into two posts so I’ll get to the second, more personal one later. First the fun recapy stuff.
Saturday and Sunday I went out with my roommates on their quest to find a good house. The first one we saw was simply awesome and if they had the finances ready for the down payment and we didn’t have our lease to consider right now, I think they would have put in an offer right there. Totally updated, more than enough space, great location. Probably the only reason it hasn’t sold is that the bedrooms were a tad small but not insurmountable. The basement more than made up for it with a great almost finished area (all it needs is some kind of flooring) which could work out perfectly for a living area/tv room or something like that.
The second house…had character. The lot was right next to a busy road which didn’t leave the best first impression. Then we got inside. The entry had the lowest ceilings ever. I almost had to duck. The low ceilings continued through about half the house. The other half was really outdated and needed a TON of work, especially with the wiring only a handful of 3 prong outlets in the entire place. My favorite part though, was the two staircases to get upstairs. The first one we came across was off the kitchen when investigating what we thought was the first full bathroom. A door in the back of the bathroom though had stairs which lead up to what I presume was being used for the master bedroom. So any time anybody was using that bathroom you’re either stuck in the bedroom or unable to get to the bedroom from the kitchen. Well…unless you’re real friendly with the occupant of the bathroom. The awfulness continues upstairs with seemingly random placement of power outlets and random room layout. I know it’s an older house, but…geeze.
So that got crossed off the list and we headed home until Sunday when we went out to Ilion to check out a couple of houses there. The first one was pretty good. Good layout, pretty good bedroom sizes for an older house. Nothing that really stuck out as totally awesome but also nothing that was a major negative either. Well, until we tried leaving. It has a shared driveway with the house next door that’s very windy and cramped. When backing out we had several close calls with hitting various objects. If the next door neighbors ever have a party or something that lines their side of the driveway, that would make it even worse. It’s not a good situation for people who have multiple cars.
The second house we went to on Sunday didn’t leave a great first impression. It was a huge older house that needed a TON of work on the exterior. Some of the windows were cracked, the porch was going to need some significant repairs. but the inside was totally awesome. They must have spent all of their money fixing up the interior because it was neat. It was worth the trip just to be able to walk through it. It even had a servants quarters type situation in the loft/attic area, with an intercom system and a servant’s stairway. Big bedrooms, really cool dining area…just perfect. Well, except for the required exterior repairs. The windows were all original too which would be…costly to update if one was trying to make the place as energy efficient as possible. The exterior repairs also made it not eligible for a FHA loan which puts it out of my friends consideration as they can’t really take on a conventional mortgage.
So then onward to the rest of my activities this weekend. I played a lot of Baldur’s Gate. I bought this game back in 1998 when it first came out and never got even halfway through it. I think it was the difficulty level that did me in, but I’ve recently borrowed it from my sister (she got a copy of BG and BG2 on DVD and I think I’m missing a CD at this point from mine…) and installed it. I’m using 2 mods, EasyTutu which basically takes the original game and transplants it into the Baldur’s Gate 2 engine. Same game, better interface and a bunch of other small bug fixes that Bioware never got around to fixing. I’m also using a widescreen mod so I can play the game at 1440×900 instead of the default 640×480 (or 800×600 in BG2). So far so good. I am using a walkthrough because the game is freaking hard and I want to find all the hidden stuff. But it’s brought back a ton of memories of playing though the first part of the game over and over and over again.
I just got into chapter 3 and I’m working through side quests before I head up into the bandit camp to advance the story. It’s further than I thought I was going to get. My other productive plans for this weekend ended up falling through. But I’ll get to that in another post.
Book 24: The Lies of Locke Lamora
0
Title: The Lies of Locke Lamora
Author: Scott Lynch
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 752
Summary
An orphan who was saved from being given to the slavers, Locke Lamora eventually became one of the most feared theives in a town full of them. With the city watch on the take and the nobles looking the other way unless they get targeted, Camorr is a Thief’s wonderland. But Locke, never satisfied with playing by other peoples rules, weaves an intricate scheme with the help of his friends to defraud a noble out of half of his fortune. And from there things get complicated.
Notes
This was a recommendation from my friend Kris and I have to say it was a good one. This is Scott Lynch’s debut novel and it shows he’s going to be somebody to watch out for in the future.
The structure of the book is a little…weird until you get the hang of it. The author jumps around in time fairly frequently which can be disorienting until you learn more about the characters and are able to determine at what point in time things are happening in. Even within the same chapter the timeline can be a little convoluted.
But the effect is great. Reading this book reminded me of a good heist movie. Very Ocean’s 11-esq. The dialog is probably my favorite part of the book, very serious when it had to be and very funny when tension needed to be eased. The plot was great and you really start to care about the characters as time goes on. Lamora is essentially an outlaw, but he’s not a cut throat murderer. Quite the opposite in fact.
Recommended for anybody who likes either fantasy or heist type stories. And if you like both…well…even better!
Next Book
I’m continuing on with the series and I am currently reading Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch, the second book in the Gentleman Bastards series.
[Plinky] My Epic Road Trip
0Describe an epic road trip you’d love to take.
Some day, I’d love to just take like a month off and just head west across the country and see what I could see.
Not sure I’d worry too much about planning or anything (well, except when it came to the less inhabited bits…don’t want to end up in the middle of nowhere without any gas). Just kinda head out, stay off the major interstate highways and see what was out there.
I think it’d be fun. Well, now I do. I’d probably get tired of it about 3 days in..but hey, it’s a nice thought! I do really enjoy road trips though.
A more realistic option is to just set off some saturday morning and just pick a direction and drive. See where I’d end up. It’s a lot easier to find yourself now with GPS and all that. I’ve come to find that there’s way more stuff in their local areas than people might realize if they take the time to look. I know that’s true around here.
Shadow Photography
0617 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
I mentioned briefly that I was taking a photography course this semester. Well, the first assignment has been completed, and my work turned in so I figured I’d post up some of the shots that I turned in over here in an effort to stop this from becoming the weekend recap blog. I’ll probably have some more over the next little bit as some of my shots weren’t exactly based on the topic but I got some good stuff anyway.
The subject was Light and Shadow, capturing how shadows and reflections can create interesting images. So here we go (Click on each image to get to flickr where you can see a larger version)
First up my favorite one I took:
I happened upon this early in the morning at one of the local parks. The shadows from the railing on the gazebo were just awesome. One of the shots I took here that I was praying a morning jogger wasn’t going to run by though. You look a little weird at 8 in the morning, laying flat on your stomach over the steps of a gazebo taking pictures.
Here’s another one from the same park. The assignment also dealt with reflections of light, and I came across this setup with the sun refelcting in the water of the little pond thingy they have, with the hard light shadows on the rocks.
Different park this time (and a different day). This particular town park has a big network of nature trails. This was taken morning as well. The sun at this time shines directly into the entrance of this path making the foliage on the trees kinda glow which looked pretty neat.
This one I didn’t end up submitting, but I kinda liked how it turned out anyway. We’re back at the second park, along the sandy “beach” area. This was another one of those “Please nobody come by” type photos due to how I had to situate myself to get it right.
Jordan Rudess “Speaks”
0620 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
I don’t like just linking to videos, but Jordan Rudess, keyboardist for dream theater posted up this amazing improvisational piano piece as his statement about Mike leaving the band. It’s deeply emotional and heartfelt and I think it deserves to be shared.
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