another week of being on-call over with, it always amazes me how much relief i feel even if i never felt like i was under much additional stress/pressure at the start.
roll on the weekend!
Blogging deluge
No posts for like ever and then 3 in the space of 40 minutes. What can I say.
Just wanted to post a few links to stuff I’ve been reading lately and found funny, interesting or worth passing on!
Scott Adams’ blog -> sometimes funny 🙂 But always updated more often than mine.
Best of Craiglist -> what started as a small personal’s website, has grown into a huge windy crazy thing, and the Best of … section is often very humorous. Please note : not suitable for anyone under 18, anyone with no sense of humour, or anyone easily shocked. If you’re an easily shocked under 18 year old with no sense of humour, please retire to bed immediately.
A friend sent this link to me http://www.theatlantic.com/doc
Awesome USB gadget
USB is an excellent technology and there’s loads of gizmo’s that you can use these days, but we particularly liked this one at work. It looks well put together rather then just hacked together in a shed, and actually might prove useable. It’s a USB Fragrance Oil Burner.
Time Marches ever onward
It’s March, I know, I find it hard to believe as well but there you go. Time it seems, refuses to stand still for even one moment. I survived the festive period, I’m sure you’re all glad to hear. I have to go and have another set of blood tests and checkups for the diabetes soon (this week or next) but fitting it in between bouts of apathy is proving difficult. We’ll see if I can break a hole for it in my busy apathy schedule next week.
Work is a bit more optimistic than it’s been for some time, they’ve ‘reorganised’ again back into the structure they had 3-4 years ago when I started which always felt like a better layout than the 2 they reorganised into during that period. I’m hoping it finally makes an impact, it’s moved me into a team which will have work to do even when my present work is offshored which can only be A Good Thing[tm].
I’m actually feeling quite chirpy. I know, I’m confused as well.
I signed up to Google’s AdSense thingy and popped some adverts onto the Gemmell Mania site, it’s eating up more and more bandwidth these days, so I reckon earning $1 dollar a year should help recover some of those costs. I feel a bit of a hypocrit since I refuse to click on web advertising, but it’s unobtrusive and not everyone feels like I do, so we’ll see how that goes. If any of the regulars complain I’ll probably take it off again. You can add AdSense to your blogger site with only about 3 clicks, but really, even I don’t read this site so I can’t imagine it generating any revenue. One blog article every 2 months isn’t really electrifying.
We’ve become addicted to CSI (Vegas, Miami and probably New York if we ever saw any), excellent TV shows, the only thing I try and actually watch each week, and Grete’s just starting getting the DVD box sets which is cool.
Some of the feelings of being happier and more communicative are probably due to the fact that spring is nearly upon us, always a time to feel like doing new things and emerging from a wintery ball of unsociable defense. We’ll see if it lasts.
TNF Progresses
These posts are archives of forum / blog entries I made on my EverQuest guild website. The website won’t be around forever, and I wanted the posts all in one place so I didn’t lose them, this blog seemed like as good a place as any.
It’s nearly a month since Agnarr fell, and the TNF Raid Force hasn’t slowed it’s assault on the Planes of Power.
We took a break the weekend after Agnarr due to server outages and downtime.
The weekend of the 28th January saw TNF take on the Mithaniel Marr line again. A very long but successful raid meant AD, HoH trials 1-3, and Lord Mithaniel Marr fell. We rounded off with Velitorkin (he was lonely).
For the first weekend in February, we focussed our attention on Bertoxxulous and his High Priest. A quick run through the Carprin event, and another successful spanking of Bertox ensued. We also completed the 2 Sol Ro mini’s that TNF hadn’t attempted previously.
And the weekend just gone meant another Tactics run, from a complete and very smooth MB, through our second ever Rallos Zek kill, and then a trouncing of his brothers as well.
All-in-all, an excellent few weeks for TNF, confirming that our first-time-kills of Bertox, Rallos Zek and Lord Marr are repeatable, and getting ever-more people flagged for the Chamber of Solusek Ro. We’ll be revisiting Agnarr, Saryrn and probably Terris over the next few weeks, as well as beating the mini’s in Sol Ro one more time each.
See you all there 🙂
Agnarr the Stormlord – Down
These posts are archives of forum / blog entries I made on my EverQuest guild website. The website won’t be around forever, and I wanted the posts all in one place so I didn’t lose them, this blog seemed like as good a place as any.
Agnarr is a wuss! The kite team did a superb job keeping everything amused while we tidied up, keeping Agnarr busy while we chatted casually about how to kill him and rescue Karana.
Outstanding work from everyone in the TNF Raid Force, and then a quick(ish) clear or three mini’s finished off the flags for that evening.
Congratulations to those in the raid force who are now earth / water / air flagged.
Oops, Agnarr fell over.
Festive Period
It’s our own fault, we live in the middle of the country and our folks live in the north-east (mine) and on the south-coast (hers). So Christmas is often a time spent in the car – staring at other cars full of people staring at other cars. I can’t drive which means poor Grete gets it in the neck and has to do all that herself (donations of driving lessons welcome). Car survived, which is always a full-on bonus. Drive up north was clear, leaving was difficult with about 90 minutes of driving snow and some serious freezing fog. South wasn’t bad, although was very cold in the morning and lots of fog, and then coming back from there it was wet and windy. We got the whole gamut of British Winter Weather (you know, hailing one moment and then clear skies and bright sunshine the next). It was nice to see the family, we haven’t seen most of them for a couple of years through a combination of health, cost and time.
Generally it’s been a good Christmas, certainly more relaxing than previous years and we didn’t get sick just before cooking Christmas dinner and throwing it all away this time, which always helps. We did cook too much food and throw most of it away anyway but that’s not the point.
Hmm, I started this an hour ago, got sidetracked and now I can’t remember what I was going to write, and it’s 3am. So, I’ll go to bed, glad you enjoyed your visit 🙂
And …
And I can’t believe it’s flippin’ December already!
Pickled Onions
So, Grete has had a small cyst on her scalp for a while now, nothing dangerous, but as it was slowly getting larger, it was becomming more uncomfortable for her in many ways. So she was brave enough to arrange for a quick op to have it removed, which we did today. So, a little bit of hair removed, a cyst removed (looked like a small pickled onion, I kid you not!) and she’s all better, and I’m damn proud of her for getting it done. Three stitches which she needs to get taken out next week, and a little bit of care, and everything’s sorted.
The Devil in Green
I’ve been reading again, which is just excellent news as far as I’m concerned. Reading is like a litmus test of my state of mind. No idea how long it will last, but I certainly enjoy reading, so we’ll see. It means less EQ time, but I’m not sure that’s so bad. The main problem will be avoiding the ‘must finish just this chapter even though it’s 3am’ syndrome.
It should probably have a name that syndrome. Perhaps it does, but it should have a single word that describes it. Like ‘lating’ or ‘onreading’ or ‘freading’ or something.
Anyway, I wanted something pretty fast paced, reasonably short and by an author I knew I enjoyed to try and pick up the reading bug again, so I picked out Devil in Green by Mark Chadbourn. It’s the first of his second series of real-world-falls-into-myth books, and I really enjoyed the first three. This is what I thought of the first series (The Age of Misrule). The second series (The Dark Age) promises to be just as entertaining.
Once again, Chadbourn returns to the world after the fall, when the borders between our reality and the other realities are breached, and what was myth has now become truth. The story picks up sometime after the events of the first series, with people attempting to deal with the world as it now stands, and in particular with the Church trying to re-assert itself. With the original 5 Brothers and Sisters of dragons ‘indisposed’, Existence is forced to find another group of would-be-heroes.
What follows is a claustrophobic story based on 3 different locations, with a small cast, and a tight focused story arc. There isn’t as much humour as I recall in the first series giving the first book of this series a very bleak and stark feeling to it. This is underpinned by the arrival of a Gormenghast style Gothic structure, which only adds to the bleak enclosed feeling that I’m sure is an intentional part of the story.
Our heroes are flawed, and carry with them their own ghosts, some of which we uncover, and some of which Chadbourn appears to want to hold back from us until perhaps the next book. Mallory is a sarcastic know-it-all who believes in nothing and finds himself fighting to save everything, Miller an innocent believer who needs the Church, and Sophie a hippie-come-witch with a sense of humour to match anything Mallory can come up with. The supporting cast is rich and varied, and deeply British.
Our heroes face a selection of other-worldly dangers, some benign, some overtly evil, and many with the same alien intellect hinted at in the previous books making it impossible to fathom their intent or their feelings for how the Fragile Creature of man should be handled.
The pace is good, and the slow building tension matches the story well. I did find sections of the last two chapters fragmented, and I stumbled through them rather than following the flow of the previous chapters, but it didn’t detract enough to put me off and I’m sure a re-read would smooth out any confusion I was left with.
Overall it’s a good start to the new series, with a bleak feel but just enough heroism and high points to prevent it pulling the reader down into a deep depression. Worth a read, especially if you enjoy your British mythology. Looking forward to the next one, which since the series has been out a little while, we already have upstairs!