Caught In The Whirlwind
Posts tagged battletech
International Foods Week
Nov 19th 2009
Man, it’s the second half of november and I’ve only made 3 posts here this month. Well, 4 counting this one. I’m slacking off :-/
Well, really I’m having trouble coming up with stuff to write about as my daily activities have been quite mundane for a while.
As it turns out this week’s food choices have been quite global. We started out we some good ol’ american hamburger helper and then we had Indian last night. Tonight we’re having greek (gyros). Skipping over to saturday we’re having salsa chicken tacos and sunday I’m cooking up some chicken riggies. Those last two choices are only…sorta international, but they still count I think! I’m looking forward to cooking up the riggies as my first attempt revealed some things that need modification, so hopefully I can refine it properly this time around.
Lets see, random news time…work has been pretty rocky the past couple days. Lots of stuff going wrong and I’m finding I’m having increasingly little patience for it. Probably shouldn’t go into that too much, but it’s been pretty un-good recently. And to top it all off, we’re getting new health insurance plans for next year that suck worse than the ones we have now. Increased co-pays (even some co-pays that didn’t exist before, like a $40 X-ray co-pay), the deductible doubled, and the ER visit copay went up from like $50 to $150. All of which the benefits e-mail touted as “features” of the plan. Seems like they were trying to sugar coat it.
I just hope I never have to go to the emergency room.
In relaxation news, I’ve played a couple of games of battletech to ease back into it. I’m playing against myself (which I know is lame), but I dunno if I’ll really be able to do anything different as, like I mentioned, nobody around here really plays at all. It’s just something nice and different that I can do for an hour or so. I’m really more interested in the fiction of the universe at this point than the actual playing.
A (Mostly) Working Weekend
Nov 16th 2009
I was a very productive individual this weekend.
I got a lot done on my final project for my Digital Typography course over the past two days. I can’t recall if I mentioned it but the project involves re-creating a 2 page spread (using Adobe InDesign) from a magazine and the one I picked ended up being quite complicated:
Final Project Article
There’s something like 45 boxes of text on there and about 35 pictures (although the pictures also include things like the orange and yellow boxes and such). All of which had to be measured and recorded. The worst part was trying to identify all of the various fonts used and trying to match those to fonts that I had available. Not to mention cleaning up the graphics and getting rid of all the text (especially overlaying the ad image on the second page) I had that all finished last class and approved by the instructor, so I was able to start the process of putting all the boxes in their proper locations on the computer.
My roommates just picked up the extended ultra mega super edition of The Watchmen, so while that was on in the background I started working. 2 and a half hours later I had finally gotten all the boxes in position. I’m glad I started doing this at home instead of waiting for class as I don’t think I’d have quite enough time in class to finish it off…
The extended edition of Watchmen is really nice, by the way. The missing bits that were added back in really complete the movie and it doesn’t feel like it’s too long. I worry sometimes about directors cuts of movies when they add back in so much footage (Like the extended versions of the Lord of The Rings movies. They just felt like they were a little too long to me). But the stuff that was dropped from Watchmen was all stuff that added to the movie when it was put back in. Two thumbs up for Watchmen.
Sunday was a little more relaxed. I spent some time adjusting images, but I ended up doing a lot of reading otherwise. I had intended to play a game of Battletech as well, but I didn’t quite have all the supplies I needed to get going (missing a couple record sheets I needed) which should be rectified today.
The weekend was capped off by watching the newest episode of Dexter. And wow, what an episode it was…there were parts of it that were so intense I totally forgot it was a TV show I was watching. I don’t want to spoil anything in case somebody out there watches it delayed, but after the slow setup of Season 3, Season 4 is ranking right up there with the first season as far as how much I’m enjoying it. So many twists and turns!
Pretty Quiet
Nov 10th 2009
I haven’t been posting much over the past week because I really haven’t had that much to say. Just been going along…not much in the way of out of the ordinary happenings. I’ve started working on my final project for my Digital Typography course which is going to take up significant chunks of time considering how complex it ended up being. I’ve tried working on my various website design projects that I have going without much real progress to speak of. I feel kinda like I’m in a bit of a rut on that front. Hopefully I can snap out of it.
I’ve been thinking recently about maybe getting back into playing Battletech a bit. For those not in the know (which is probably everybody…not really a hugely popular game) Battletech is a sci-fi tactical pen and paper wargame involving, chiefly, gigantic piloted robots who shoot each other up. I used to play a lot about 10 years ago, but I lost track of the game and the people I played with. I used to hang out on this IRC chat server with a bunch of folks who played the game online since really nobody in my area plays so I’m a bit short on people to actually play with.
But I’ve picked up the novels again and I’ve started feeling the old urge to get back in and play a few games. I’m just glad I never sold off any of my books, maps or playing materials in the years since I last played. I knew I’d get back to it eventually.
Other than that, it’s been all quiet.
QotD: My Vox Name
Nov 2nd 2006
How did you pick your Vox name? Does it mean something?
Submitted by LeendaDLL.
Well, currently it’s my real name. So yes…that’s what it means 
I’m debating changing it to Frost though, which is what I use in the City of Heroes MMO type games I play. It’s a shortened version of my favorite characters name Frost Magus, just to make things simple.
I also go by Derango sometimes in FPS games. That one was kinda random…don’t ask me why I did it or what it means. No, it’s got nothing to do with the car. It has nothing to do with anything. The reason I don’t like going by that anymore is simply due to the car factor. It first came into being when I was trying to find a name for Cyberstrike 2, which was an online mech combat game thing that was pretty fun to play.
Might as well go through all of the names I’ve used in the past if I can remember them…
Before Derango came Avenger. I used that on an online IRC channel (Battlechat) dedicated to the discussion (and online play with the help of a very cool IRC bot) of the pen and paper board game Battletech. I didn’t really like that handle. Too angry sounding. So after getting to know the guys some more, I switched out to my real name.
Before that came my days of AOL. Hey, It’s a rite of passage, isn’t it? Anyway, my screen name there was Otruneal. In order to explain that one, I need to explain the first one I ever used.
Back in the day, Compuserve had an offshoot ISP called Wow! which was my first real ISP that I was on. Soo…buggy. But the best thing about Wow was the community of chat room role players. We had a whole little world set up in there and friends were made all over the place. I took the name Ot’eal for my character which became my login name. Of course I was pretty young when all of this was going on, so I wasn’t the best role player in the world and my characters were kinda odd. I started off as a half dragon thing, and then morphed into a gargoyle (as in the Disney cartoon show that I still absolutely love to this day) Anyway, if you went to the website linked there, you would have noticed that the Wow! service was quite short lived, so we jumped to AOL after. My name was too short for AOL, so I expanded the contracted part and off we went. The RP in the AOL chatrooms was heavily lacking, so after a while I just stopped trying to do it.
Recent Comments