I was talking to a friend in Toronto, Ontario, Canada today and we were discussing our blogs and blogging in general. So I decided that I would post a link to his here: Distinguished Geek.

I was not ready to be back at work today.  Just not up for it.  Today was a long and crappy day.  Just one thing going wrong after another.  One of those “don’t touch anything” days.  Best to just hide under the desk and unplug the phone.  Except somehow I would get electrocuted unplugging the phone.  So I left it plugged in and plugged my ears instead and hummed quietly to myself while rocking back and forth slowly.  (My readers from the United Kingdom will recognize humourous sardonicism here but for my more “American” readers I will add “j/k”.)

If you are impressed by my use of big words I can tell you that I learned to use the word “sardonic” by reading Timothy Zahn novels.  I never knew the word before that but he uses it almost exclusively instead of sarcastic which isn’t totally correct but they are very similar.  I have used it myself ever since.  It is one of the very few words that I can distinctly remember reading several times, wanting to know more about and researching.

I thought that I would escape the office early today – mostly in an attempt to avoid any further disaster – but actually got stuck doing a twelve hour day when we had a server that needed to be addressed during an evening green zone.  Nothing ever goes as planned.

I got home around seven thirty.  We ordered in Nino’s and spent our short evening watching The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.  It is amazing now looking back on what I feel is a “not all that old of a show” and realizing just how old and bizarre it seems now.  And to realize that my cousin Jeremy was just a babe in swaddling when that show first aired and that the cultural references in it are so rooted in the 1980s that much of it just wouldn’t make any sense.  I realize now that most people who enjoy Will Smith in movies think that he was always an actor and don’t realize that FBoBA was a kitschy sit com based on his rapping career in the duo DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince.

Dominica decided today that she is going to try Netflix.  She signed us up for the $8.99 per month plan which includes unlimited DVD rentals (and we believe unlimited BluRay and HD-DVD rentals once we get a player for those but we need to check on the details) plus unlimited play instantly online movies.  Our deal only lets us have one DVD rented at a time but really we only watch so many movies so it should work out pretty well.  And our plan is to have a computer hooked up to a television in the living room which means that we can easily use the unlimited download service to watch movies that when we don’t have a DVD rented.  At $8.99 per month it seems like we can’t go wrong.  It will be so easy for us to save money that it seems like a pretty safe investment.  The only problem is that it will fuel Dominica’s addiction to just watching “whatever is on” since there will always be something on.  Much more so than if we had television.

The really big upside to the Netflix plan, for us, is that it means that Dominica can easily rent tons of movies that she wants to watch once that we don’t think are things that we will want to own and she can watch them on her own and we won’t feel like we have to watch them together all of the time.  That is a problem for us since she always wants to watch for more material than I do.  It should save us a bit of money in the “mediocre movies that we will only watch once” category which we had been buying a bit for a while because it was about the same cost as renting.  But this is so much cheaper and easier that it should work out.  And not having to go out to a video store is a big deal – especially living in Newark.  I wouldn’t even know how to rent a movie here if I had to.

One thing that is unfortunate about the Netflix service is that they require Windows in order to use it.  I did some research and the videos are delivered using Microsoft’s new Silverlight technology.  Although I wonder what creates the Windows requirement then since Silverlight is supposed to be cross platform supporting Mac and Linux quite well.  Perhaps the requirement isn’t as firm as it seems.  I will attempt to find out.  Our plan is to have a Vista workstation in the living room by March and a new Mac Mini in the bedroom around the same time period.

Dominica ordered our first DVD, 28 Weeks Later, which we should have in two days or so.  She is building up a massive queue of movies that she wants to see.  It will take her years to get through what she has already.  We are very excited about the massive collection of classic movies of which we can take advantage quite easily.

Two more Dungeons and Dragons books arrived from eBay purchases today.  We received “The Complete Mage” and “Monsters of Faerun”.  I also won six additional books on eBay today but it will be a week or two until those have a chance to arrive.  We are building quite the D&D and Forgotten Realms library for our game.  I hope that we get lots of opportunity to use all of this stuff.

Ramona was over first. We couldn’t find Kevin and Pam for a while so Ramona and I walked down the stairs to go find them. It was the first time that I have taken the stairs in our building ever. I have never even seen the stairwells. Not that they are exciting or anything. It was a weird feeling, though, to walk all of the way to their apartment. It really helps you realize just how close we all live to each other. It really is just a matter of being several dozen feet away.

Today’s D&D session wasn’t very long. Just two to three hours. Kevin hardly got to actually play any of it because his character, David the Gnome (a bard), got knocked unconscious within the first few minutes and didn’t get revived until the last moment of the our session for the day.

At five thirty I walked over to the NorCrown Bank building and met Susan to help her move some furniture.  The big item was a heavy, old filing cabinet.  That proved to be a bit of work.  While I was there I got a tour of the new New Jersey Symphony Orchestra offices that are now located in the NorCrown Bank building right across the PSE&G Square from our apartment.  They have a nice new office space over there.

The real challenge was moving the filing cabinet up the three flights of very tight stairs from the street to Susan’s top floor apartment in Harrison.  That took quite a bit of work.  But we managed to do it without hitting the walls even once.  That was quite the accomplishment.

We drove back to Newark and picked up Dominica and then drove down to the Seabra Rodizio on Route 21 just north of Raymond.  It is a Spanish restaurant that we have been interested in trying for quite some time but never think of when we are actually looking for a place to go.

Dinner was good.  I ordered a casserole with seafood that I thought would be safe but ended up having a disgusting half lobster in it (an entire lobster just sawed in half) which was incredibly disturbing and almost made the food inedible.  Susan was nice enough to pull most of the meat out of the lobster for me as I just couldn’t eat the meat and have gone inside a dead lobster.  I need to remember that Spanish restaurants are not places where I can even consider getting any type of fish or seafood.  If it isn’t pure vegetarian then it is out of the question.  But all of the food was really good.

We came home and just relaxed.  It was pretty late by the time that we got home and Dominica has to go to work tomorrow.  Oreo got scared while we were gone, it being much later than our usual dinner time, and he had an accident in the hallway so we had to deal with that too.  The night was very short and Dominica pretty much went straight to bed.

We are getting concerned that Oreo has been eating a lot more than usual lately and we are entertaining the idea that he might have worms. We haven’t seen any evidence that he does but he has been eating far more food than it seems would be appropriate and he isn’t putting on any weight that we can see. So we are going to be getting the lab to check him out pretty soon.

Ramona and Winni came by a little after noon with vegetable stew and vegan cornbread (soy milk, bananas instead of eggs, etc.) It was really good. We ate that before getting ready for Dungeons & Dragons today. Our day is going to be pretty short as Winni has to catch a flight to Wisconsin at six thirty out of Newark.

Kevin came over and we played the campaign from about one until five – so four hours of game time. Around three we ordered in some pizza from Nino’s.

Dominica and I just relaxed for the rest of the evening. I did some homework for my Project Management class and we watched the remainder of the first season of What I Like About You. Then it was time for bed.

I am working the early shift this week so I need to get some sleep.

When I wrapped up work it was approaching noon and Dominica and I had a lot that we needed to do before we were going to be ready for people to come over for the D&D game.  We need to clean, take care of Oreo and I have to prep for the game which takes quite a bit of work.  We also wanted to generate Dominica’s character before we started to play and that took almost an hour.

We weren’t able to get as much done as we had hoped that we would but what can you do?  Ramona, Winni and Kevin all came over around three thirty and we set to generating everyone’s characters.  That took several hours as is to be expected at the beginning of a campaign.

Between getting characters set up, Oreo needing to do his routing again and then ordering in dinner from Mi Pequeno Mexico and a sushi place in Newark (who knew) it was around eight thirty at night when we finally got around to getting the game actually moving.  But there is little that can be done.  D&D requires a lot of concentration and it is such an immense task that the initial setup for a campaign just takes a lot of work.

We ended up playing from eight thirty until after one in the morning.  We didn’t get real far into the adventure but, then again, that is under four hours of actual play time.  So it really wasn’t all that bad.  I am thinking about setting up a “campaign blog” to follow the storyline of the campaign.  I think that that would be interesting – to see the adventure unfold a bit more like an adventure’s journal.

We decided to get together again tomorrow and continue the campaign since we didn’t get a lot of actual play time today and everyone is anxious for more.

The real reason that I went to Borders was to get the next book in the series that I am reading, “Exile” by R. A. Salvatore, but it turned out to be the only book of the series that they didn’t have. But then I noticed that they did have the “complete series” in a single book which was only barely more expensive that buying the two remaining books alone. So I just grabbed that – “The Dark Elf Trilogy“. The larger book will be harder to carry to read on the train but getting the books that way is much cheaper and I only have to worry about getting them one third as often.

I stopped at the McDonald’s in Newark Penn Station to surprise Dominica with dinner and then walked home. It was so warm this evening that I had to carry my coat everywhere and even then I was far too warm. My brief time outside between locations wasn’t enough to cool me off at all. I even had my sleeves rolled up! And it is December.

We ate dinner while watching Are You Being Served? in our bedroom and then opened up Dominica’s new D&D packs so that she could see the miniatures and the dice and all of the stuff that she got. She was very excited. We stopped watching television to play through the very short solo adventure that came with the Player’s Kit. It was very silly and incredibly short but it was a good learning tool I guess. We are hoping to get to try the starter adventure that comes with the Basic Game soon. It should have good learning tools in it as well including how to use the miniatures in the game and the dungeon tiles.

Dominica went to bed a bit before me. I stayed up reading “Exile” for quite a while.

I am working from home this morning as the weather is supposed to be really awful and when I work from home Oreo is able to stay home from daycare allowing Dominica to only have to drive about half the distance that she normally has to drive. And I don’t have to walk a long way in the sleet too. That would be crappy.

My job for the day involves getting the house clean for the D&D game that will be here tonight. Everyone is attempting to make it over here around six although the weather might make that a bit difficult. If the weather was good Dominica could be here around five forty but six might be pretty ambitious. I am sure that we will order in dinner tonight.

The snow and sleet started in Newark at a quarter after ten in the morning. Driving is not going to be fun for those stuck out in it.

I got all of the dishes done quite early this morning which was quite the accomplishment. With those done and out of the way I could focus on the real cleaning to be done for the rest of the day. Having so many people over to our apartment recently has really made for a regular regimen of cleaning and it shows. There isn’t so much to be done anymore and what is done is more thorough.

At eleven the snow started and it was so dark outside that I had to turn on some lights in the apartment to be able to see properly. It was a serious snow storm. We are expected to get six to eight inches today. Dad is expected to get ten inches back home near Rochester.

Our new matching chair is supposed to be delivered today but we will see what happens with the weather being as it is. It would be awesome to have that in time for the game tonight but that doesn’t seem possible at all as it needs to be brought up and assembled before we can use it and if we don’t get it finished and cleaned up it would just be a big mess in the way until it was and we don’t have very much time to play as it is.

Another day has passed and the software pirates have not contacted me with the address to their secret lair so that I can ship the computer chassis back to them. So it is looking more and more as if I got a free computer (sans software) out of the deal. Too bad the computer is so beat up. But at least it was free. And it appears to work too. Can’t really complain too much I guess.

My afternoon became horribly busy – partially because of people saving stuff until the end of the day and partially because I was left covering for people attempting to drive home in the bad weather and partially because Kinko-FedEx needed me to stand in the store for forty minutes while they boxes up some stuff for me to send out. I had called ahead to make sure that FedEx could handle doing the boxing for me and they said that that was fine. Then I got over there and thought that I could just drop the stuff off, pay and be on my way in five minutes. Nope. Forty minutes of just standing around waiting for them. Argh.

Dominica had a crappy drive home in the sleet and snow. I wrapped up everything that I could at work (more to come later on though) and quickly showered and continued cleaning as fast as I could. We had originally scheduled tonight at six for a D&D group thinking that that would be plenty of time but now it is a major panic to be ready. It was all that I could do to get the house ready and to get myself ready and to keep up with the after-hours work that was pouring in.

Dominica got home just after six and took Oreo out. I had just fed him his dinner and he wanted to go for a walk although not a long one as he does not enjoy this weather at all.

Ramona arrived around six thirty and Kevin and then Chris arrived a little after seven. So we actually had a bit more time than we had planned but ended up needing it as I had not had time to get a character ready for Kevin since we didn’t know until tonight that he was going to be playing.

We ordered in pizza from Nino’s and we all ate just before starting to play. We played more or less from eight until a little after midnight. About halfway through the game Dominica baked us an apple pie to keep everyone happy. We remarked that it doesn’t get much more American than D&D and Apple Pie.

We were all very tired by the end of the game and were ready to get to bed. Everyone has to be at work tomorrow except for Kevin who is just using up his saved up vacation time.

Andy drove to Canada today. Of all days – worst weather of the entire year so far. Took him nine hours to get up to North Bay, Ontario! At least he has GPS now and an Audible account. He has a ton of driving to do in the next week. He is going to Pittsburgh next week and this will be the most driving that he has done in a single week in years, I am sure.

Tomorrow night Dominica and I are driving to Arnold, Maryland for the Nicklin Christmas Party. We won’t be leaving until seven or eight at the earliest so it will be quite late by the time that we finally arrive. At least the weather is supposed to be good tomorrow.

I got caught up on my Project Management class at RIT. Once again, I am taking a “master’s” class that appears to be nothing more than a simple recap of the same class that I took while doing undergrad at SUNY Empire only the undergrad was quite a bit more thorough and expected more of us. I really don’t feel as if I have gained much through this experience so far. Although that is what I had predicted.

The latest Apple Nerd vs. PC Business Guy (The Girl) commercial. What in the world made Apple think that having the kid who played the “supreme Trekkie nerd” from Galaxy Quest as their mascot was a good idea and then have a series of commercials where they try to show “socially inept” as cool? This is a great series of spoof’s on Mac’s horrible advertising campaign of late: Money, Work, Music. You can check out the original material here from Laurie McGuinnes.

Part of Apple’s mistake was hiring Justin Long who is quoted as saying “I’m very, very computer illiterate… I get the worst of both worlds. I look like a geeky hacker, but I don’t know anything about computers.” – Interview with Fred Topel, June 28, 2007. Apple’s message: Mac’s make you look like a geek but not have a clue. Um, that’s not how “geek chic” works. It is important to note that when selecting their spokesperson Apple went for “nerd” (as in ComicCon) rather than “geek” as in LinuxTag. Apple is more aligned with the “dresses up like comic book characters crowd” rather than the “writes amazing business software in their spare time crowd”. Apparently Apple is hip to the jargon of the industry yet. Or assumes that their customers aren’t.

I worked today until ten.  Dominica spent the morning playing Paper Mario to which she is now completely addicted.  She is about ten percent through the game at this point.  It is funny that I bought this game because I thought that it looked interesting and I haven’t played it more than two minutes but Dominica is completely addicted to it.  Funny how that happens.  It is good that so often we like games that are similar enough that even if one isn’t that interested the other often is.

Ramona came over around eleven thirty.  The original plan had been to play D&D again this morning in an attempt to wrap up the scenario from last night but Chris wasn’t able to make it this morning so Ramona just came over for breakfast.

We all ate breakfast downstairs.  Just something light as we decided to get a pizza lunch in a little while so we didn’t want to fill up too much now.  Ramona’s afternoon plans were canceled and Chris was going to come over in the early afternoon so we decided to try D&D then.

While we waited I did some D&D research while Ramona watched Dominica play Paper Mario for several hours.  I am slowly getting back into the D&D groove as well as learning the new rules for the new version of the game.  They are not too much different but there is some big stuff that has changed and it is throwing me off a bit.

Chris made it over around three and we were able to get a game kicked off around four.  We played for about two hours before people had to leave.  With our overall inexperience we started the game at the beginning of a battle and only got partway through it before our time was up.  It was fun, though, and by the end I was getting more into the swing of the combat rolls.

Dominica spent the evening playing Paper Mario mostly.  She is really enjoying that game.