Wombat Rampant

( EVE stuff )
Senior controller was busy with the stuff that came from the auditor, so he didn't have me do much for him except fill out some USPS forms and write up ledger entries which I'll probably be entering tomorrow. Which is to say work was kinda slow.

Leg continues to improve; it appears to be drying up since the amount of drainage into the surgical sponges has dropped off a cliff since I started the Omnicef. w00t.

Found enough change in my pants and the quarter cup to do a full laundry run, so I did both baskets and got it over with.
Aside from that, internet spaceships and experimenting with the bread robot (cinnamon-honey oat bread, which for some reason finished with a hole in the middle, wtf?) it was a pretty slow day.
( EVE stuff )
The Frank Miller graphic novels are pretty much what I expected after seeing the movie. I'll have to check the catalog and see if they have more of Sin City in their collection.

( cut to spare those disinterested in EVE )

Whoa. Took the EVE character jamestrainor gave me out for a spin in a tricked-out Armageddon, blew stuff up with the greatest of ease, and am thinking about how I'm going to be able to afford two characters. I suppose I could sell this one, but laser boats are more fun than I thought.

I thought I'd be more tired than I was today, but I wasn't...however, it's finally catching up with me. I think all the brain sweat I spent on bank reconciliations today and the previous post sucked all the energy out of me, leaving just enough to nuke a few hot dogs and get laundry going.

Long chat with jamestrainor last night about family stuff. He surprised the hell out of me by offering me his EVE account, and I still don't know what I'm going to do with it. (I know, I know, x up for ops. :condi:)

I can see now why Goonfleet is so down on assault frigates.
( Cut for those who DGAS about EVE )

Stayed in last night and watched the second volume of Ai Yori Aoshi and was going to sleep after that but I was seized with inspiration and bashed out another page and a half for Blood Red Skies. This morning's breakfast plans failed, since P evidently went home and died after work, so I think I'll get the Kia's oil changed (finally), return my books to the library, and then figure out something to do for the rest of the day. Assemble another bookshelf, maybe. It could happen!

Day started badly - was supposed to be in Rockville at 1300, but didn't wake up at 0930 like I should have (moar like 1145) so was late for that. Fortunately it went well, despite my tardiness.

Afterwards, I was going to drop by the Dunhams and be social since I was in their end of the woods, but unfortunately both Brenda and Dutch were torso-deep in the wetlands combating the amphibians (to say nothing of providing motivation for Young Master Dunham) so there was no joy there. Wound up hanging out with Mr. B and engaging in the usual free-wheeling discussion of books and movies and TV and gaming and all that.We finally broke things off about 2130 after dinner at Five Guys, and I headed home via the Parkway, 295, and the Shirley highway.

No internet spaceships tonight, obviously, except a brief logon to change skills and discover that getting my alt into assault frigates -merely a stepping stone to assault cruisers, mind you- is going to take a couple days longer than planned since he only had Mechanic 3 and needs Mechanic 5. :(

Goonfleet unveiled two more Titans (the lethal butt plugs of space!) today and revealed that all the money we made by selling the drone regions (which we didn't actually hold, but w/e) had gone into buying a Titan blueprint, so now I guess we'll be building a fleet of those bad boys. Booyah. Countdown to CCP getting serious about a second Titan nerf in 3...2....1...

So, yeah, finished the apazine* and got it copied at Staples, where I got talked into signing up for their Rewards program and also wound up buying a bunch of stuff (mechanical pencils, envelopes, scissors...) including a 250GB external drive that's going to replace the one I have hooked up to Cowzilla right now. BTW, Staples' "Metrix" brand mechanical pencils are a dead ringer for the Pentel Quicker Clicker, so much so that I grabbed some 0.7mm by accident, thinking they were 0.5mm. I'll just use 'em for now and keep my eyes open for the right size next time I'm there. Totally forgot to return a bunch of library books today, but I'll deal with that tomorrow.

I'll also find out WTF is up with Kaiser. I figured since PCM was billing me for the last two months' KP premiums that they had been paying them, but apparently this is not the case since my Kaiser account is still suspended. This pisses me off no end. What are they going to do, extend my coverage an extra two months or something? Refinish my floors? In the meantime, I'll probably have to get my prescriptions refilled at Walmart. :argh:

Work is what it is. I've been spending a lot of time over the last couple of days filling out ledgers by hand, and my hand is getting damn tired of it. First chance I get, everything that can be done in Lotus is going to get done in Lotus. I can handle that a lot better than the constant switching between 10-key flogging and scratching away with pencils in the various ledgers, even if I am doing a lot of the 10-keying left handed. Yes, just as with eating, I can run a 10-key calculator/keypad with either hand. ph33r my 1337 acc0un71ng sk1llz! Fortunately, the old half-retired controller will be out of the office for a few days, and I can handle most of the routine stuff without him spastically jumping from one task to the other in no particular order or wasting my time by showing me how to do forms that I could figure out 30 years ago when I was learning the joy of the 1040 long form. It's not like sales tax forms are created by professors at the Harvard Business School to torture MBA candidates, after all; they're created by bureaucrats to extract money from businessmen without causing endless tsuris over unclear instructions and difficult procedures. I know he's trying to be helpful, but God damn, can he give me credit for having some fucking brains to go with the experience on the resume?

Haven't logged onto EVE in a couple of days; one of my alts is training for assault frigates as a stepping-stone for assault cruisers, and that's going to take a couple of weeks. It seems like I have a lot of stuff to take care of in the afternoons, and I don't want to be playing it before I go to bed because it gets me too wired.

So I headed over to Walmart for some infrastructure investment, and blew about $80 on various household supplies including a multimedia shelf and a three-shelf bookshelf (I am weak and can't lift the five-shelf one) which accounted for about 2/3 of the bill. Spent the rest of the afternoon playing EVE and tidying up the kitchen a bit, and am going to go out to haul in the shelves from the Sportage before heading out to Ashburn to do dinner with P and get the copy of Quicksilver that she forgot to bring to breakfast yesterday.

( and now a few words about EVE )

Haven't seen Iron Man yet; I hear mixed reviews about it. Been spending most of my down time rereading John Ringo's first four Posleen War novels and the new David Drake novel, since I'm kind of burned out on A Savage War of Peace and am seriously reconsidering whether I really want to get stuck into The Black Book of Communism.

Surprisingly, I haven't been worrying about the work situation. If he hires me, that'll be good; if he decides to keep me on as a temp, that'll be good too. We'll see what happens tomorrow, I'm sure.

So yesterday I slept in, went to breakfast about 0830, and came back to my room at 0900 only to find the registration line had extended all the way through the courtyard, back into the hotel, and down the hall around the corner back outside into the east parking lot. I growled "Get off my lawn, you rotten otaku!" and went into my room to lose a brand-new Raven to the crappy wifi* while waiting for the line to go down.

It eventually did...at about 2000, after jamestrainor and I had gone off to dinner at the Sprawl with Mike, perennial AD volunteer and Kakkoicon staffer. (We mostly talked about internet spaceships. Big surprise there.) The truly funny part was that when I approached registration, a new security person approached me, asked if I needed to register or pick up my badge, and led me to perhaps the one member of the registration staff who didn't know who I was, LOL. It actually gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling to be treated like an ordinary fan. :)

Too late to see any programming at that point (I did see most of opening ceremonies in the bar, good job guys but you need to work a little more on the closed-circuit thing) so I wandered around with Kris M for a while before ending up in the bar with bam2, Dan, Matt, gohanvox, Carrie, Giff, and the other cool kids until about 0130.

So today I got up later and managed to squeeze in breakfast before Kris' Apocalyptic AMV panel, which inspired me to dash back to my room and scribble down some fragments for BRS. Skipped jariten's cake panel and bought Girl Scout cookies instead; after I finish this I'm going to hit the dealers' room and maybe go to the 4chan panel, mostly to see if we get Rickrolled. Everything seems to be running with serious smoothness, which is doubleplusgood, and I'm looking forward to doing my own maundering a little later on tonight.

*It may be my wireless card dying, since I'm right across the hall from one of the hotel's WAPs, but other people have been complaining about it too. :S

Well, that's not completely true. I wrote a couple of checks for rent and for phone/interbutts service. Going to wait to cut my hair until I get to Minneapolis, I think, unless I have spare time at Dulles - which is quite possible, since I'm going to be dropping off the Kia around 0800 and the flight doesn't take off until 1110.

( In retrospect, the first thing I ought to have done was unplug Cowzilla and strap it up in its bag. )
So now I'm going to go sort out my stuff for tomorrow, pack stuff in my backpack and suitcase, and get to bed two hours after I originally planned to.
But first, I'm going to turn this laptop off and put it away.

I really hadn't intended to do this, but I went out shopping again today, mostly to take advantage of coupons/preferred shopper deals, and I made out like a bandit. I had a 40% off coupon from Barnes & Noble, which allowed me to pick up a copy of the Rolling Stones' Some Girls for about $11, after which I descended on the Harris Teeter in Potomac Yards and took advantage of eVic specials and their BOGO specials. Interestingly, you don't actually have to buy two items to take advantage of HT BOGOs, since their registers are programmed to give you 50% off and don't notice whether you actually have two. SCORE. Three bags of groceries for less than $20? WIN.

Today's loaf of oat bread, on the other hand, didn't turn out quite so well. Add an egg next time? We'll see. I have plenty of oats, flour, yeast, molasses and honey, so I can experiment for quite a while. At least I was able to get the laundry done while the robot was flogging and cooking the loaf, to say nothing of mostly wasting several hours in a largely fruitless fleet op. Got my Raven blown up while trying to crash a gatecamp on the way to the rally point, but on the other hand I may be getting some blueprints to relieve the shortage of ships on the Goon Frontier.

Going to crash early tonight - well, compared to the last couple of nights, when I've been up until 0300-0400 playing internet spaceships.
Good night, Sesfan, wherever you are.

I guess this morning's interview went okay, according to the staffer who called me later in the day to ask me how I thought it went. I had no clue, of course. I never do. One of the people that was supposed to interview me wasn't there and wants to do a telephone interview. WTF? It's ridiculous enough that they're interviewing for a temp-to-perm position in the first place, but a telephone interview? Anyway, the whole deal cost me two hours of work and about ten bucks in Metro fare and parking, and left me grumpy and ill-tempered for the rest of the day since I didn't have time for breakfast on the way in to the interview.

New Goonfleet CEO has laid down the word: "Pack your stuff and get to Delve." That's what I'll be spending the rest of the evening doing. Later, y'all.

I managed to clock a tad less than 32 hours this week, which is pretty good considering that I missed two hours on Wednesday what with Mom being sick. They're looking forward to having me back on Monday, and I'm looking forward to going back.

Word from Kaiser on my compression hose is that I have to take a lymphedema self-care course from them before they'll sign off on some new ones; that's doable. All I have to do is call to make the appointment...and get my money & paperwork in to make sure I stay covered under COBRA. $255/month isn't that much considering the level of care I'm getting. Speaking of paperwork, I apparently forgot to certify to Wells' pension admin people that I wasn't married, so they sent the forms back and had me attend to that. I returned it via Priority Mail, so God and Wells willing, I'll find the pension lump sum distribution in my mailbox when I get back from Detour.

Conformed to the Law of the Fish today but got distracted and never got out of the apartment for the 7:45 Mass. More time in the penalty box :(

Not sure what I'm going to do with myself tomorrow; the Goonmeet at Carpool is directly opposite Anonycon in Crystal City. I missed the last meet at Dr. Dremo's on account of being sick with the pneumonic plague, but I'm not missing this.

Put in 8.5 hours today doing all manner of odd accounting/bookkeeping tasks; will probably do the same tomorrow. I do think I'm going to take the spare trackball in with me tomorrow, along with a water bottle and Kleenex, since the work space I'm occupying doesn't have any of these things.

Ripped Lords of Acid's Lust to the hard drive last night, but had to compact the Music folder on the external drive to get it in. 20GB just doesn't go as far as it used to, I tell you. Not sure the remaining 188 MB is enough to fit Voodoo-U into the drive as well. This would be a shame; it's pretty cool music, though if you're embarrassed by the moaning in White Zombie's "More Human Than Human" you're not going to be comfortable with Lords of Acid at all. It wouldn't surprise me at all to discover that someone's used their music as a soundtrack for pr0n. Also unpacked a couple more boxes last night, shelved some more wargames and books, and removed all the labels from the cans of Chunky soup I've been keeping around for just that purpose.

Right leg continues to improve. Obviously using the Curity antibacterial bandages instead of smearing antibacterial ointment on the wound is working much better. Hooyah.

Finally, I'm working on an epic addition to Goonswarm which I'm discussing with nobody. Well, okay, I did tell jamestrainor, but I swore him to secrecy. It's nothing that'll affect the war with BoB, but I think it's pretty cool.

Praise Jesus, finally one of the agencies came through. I'll be starting a month-long assignment tomorrow for a non-profit in Fairfax; only $14/hour, but it's all money, and two weeks' pay should cover the rent and the truck payment for this month. Interestingly enough, it's for the United Negro College Fund, which makes for a neat segue into my next topic for this post.

Cobb makes a case for not linking Jeremiah Wright's fire & brimstone sermons to Obama's candidacy. This case is grounded in the nature of African-American churches and liberation theology, and while it might have some case to present WRT the press and punditocracy (who are by and large a bunch of ignant yahoos) it is also full of fail.
( Liberation theology. :( )
On a more cheerful note, Cobb also brings us some Fishbone. This is good stuff, and not just because Angelo plays some killer theremin in the video spotlighted. "Fight the Youth" is also pretty scorchin'.

Moving on, Instapundit links to a review of Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism by Jerry Pournelle. Jerry also has some comments on MMORPGs by way of explaining why he's dropping out of Tabula Rasa, which I found interesting in light of my experience with EVE. Yes, I recommended it to him. :)

( Cut to spare those uninterested in EVE )
No work today; one interview with a company expanding into financial staffing. IIRC it's my "apply week" for unemployment, so I won't be getting anything from that either. Tomorrow, the ides of March and a free burrito if I can find the coupon.

No love from Accountemps today, so I filed for unemployment and made an appointment with another agency, Keepers; I'll be heading off to that in a few minutes and catching lunch on the way since I don't have any tuna fish for lunch nor enough cheese.

I also opened a few boxes, found more clothes and linens, and put stuff away as best I could. Jesus, I need more bookshelves.

Amusing thread in the Goonfleet forums today that was almost word-for-word a repeat of the Mittani's SERIOUS BUSINESS announcement last year.
( cut to spare non-EVE people )

I also ripped a bunch of old CDs onto the hard drive, so now I have some Gloria Estefan, Sugar, and Primitive Radio Gods in the Big Playlist. Time to go get a fish sandwich (or maybe some shrimp) and head downtown.

Being an impulsive retard, I had ordered a dozen roses for delivery today with the intention of giving them to someone I've been seeing occasionally these last few months. Unfortunately for me, she was busy with kids tonight, so I was basically stuck with a dozen mixed red & yellow roses.

As it happened, Marketing Girl was in somewhat of a funk this week (I think she got the same uninspiring news everybody in Accounting got: thanks for busting your ass, but no raise of any significance, kthxbye, get back to work) and I noticed nobody had sent her flowers at work. So I gave her mine. Why not? It cheered her up, she thanked me profusely, and it was all good. Otherwise I would have had to take the damn things home and look up how to make rose hip tea on the interbutts.

So tell me, Internets, how exactly do I go about driving a stake through the heart of the White Knight center in my brain?* It's going to get me in trouble again one of these days if I don't, I just know it.

In other news, I took advantage of my state tax refund arriving to pony up for a 90-day EVE card. BoB is collapsing and I want a seat on the r***train.

*I'm also going to cut its head off and burn the sumbitch. This is no time for half measures.