Category: Home Base

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Home Base

Toasty

Did everyone get online to get their free Dr. Pepper coupon today? If not, click here – you’ve got about 10 hours left. Bear in mind that the server is pretty much swamped. And if you don’t care for Dr. Pepper? Heck, send me the coupon. I’m a stay-at-home dad, I could use some free caffiene. (For those wondering why Dr. Pepper is giving away the farm, the president of the company made a bet that he’d give everyone in America a free Dr. Pepper if Guns ‘n’ Roses actually got their zillion-years-in-the-making album out this year. It was a pretty safe bet, since Axl’s held off on releasing the thing for over a decade now, but lo and behold, Dr. Pepper’s gotta pay the piper. I don’t care a thing about Guns ‘n’ Roses, but thanks for the free soda, guys.

I’ve been ignoring the ads on the right side of my screen on Facebook, but I did see one last night that I had to check out: Squirtshirts.com. Holy cow, I wish I’d known about this place sooner. They do pop culture-themed infant and toddler wear, bibs, diaper bags and so on, sort of like ThinkGeek’s T-shirt section, except for kids; their designs riffing on Lost and Star Wars are fantastic – I love the Dharma Initiative “Changing Station” symbol. 😆 If I had any money right now, I’d spend it there. Well done – this is a case where targeted advertising works (well, aside from the part where I’m broke so there’s no follow-through that actually generates any kind of revenue…)

Still keeping the house toasty, but I’d really like to have the central heat back up and running soon.… Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Home Base

The not-freezing-our-butts-off update

BrrrrrrrThe one guy in the county who will bother to look at our apparently outdated furnace is unavailable until Monday. We’re on our own since then. Borrowed a couple of space heaters from “the fam,” despite my huge, huge, huge reservations about those things (especially in terms of putting one in Evan’s room – I think I finally stopped looking into his room every half hour at around 3am), and we’ve kept the bathroom heaters running full-tilt too. I’ve also been doing a heap of cooking – tuna casserole, chicken, brownies…today’s menu probably includes hamburger helper (with ostrich meat instead of beef – I’m aiming for a minimum of beef usage, or, if you like, keeping it all to a “beef min”) and some teriyaki yumminess. The oven heat vents mostly inside the house (have I ever gotten into how weirdly this house is wired/arranged?), though not all in one place, so there’s a method to the cooking madness.

Evan’s already got a snotty nose, so my race to keep him from getting cold was probably lost on Thursday night when the heat stopped working. He slept warmer last night, though it took him forever to get to sleep with the space heater in his room – it has a blower in it, which made plenty of noise. It was either that or have him sleep in the playpen, which is in the game room – lots of glowy lights generating heat, the Avid making about as much noise as the space heater’s blower…same difference really.

I’ve been trying to do some PDF II work while the Avid’s fired up, but I’m running low on inspiration at the moment. I’m urgently needing a bit of a vacation from the boy, as much as I love him, and you know, working my ass off on the farm on Sunday doesn’t really meet any of the prerequisites of being that vacation. I had to be reminded that yesterday was Friday – the day of the week is pretty meaningless when you’re “on” 24/7 regardless. In that context, weekday or weekend ceases to have any meaning.

Anyway, I’ll stop there before I start getting really grumpy.… Read more

Categories
Home Base

We’ve got a problem

I could use one of these right about nowRemember this whole ordeal a couple of years ago where out heat went out at our house right in the middle of a cold snap? Looks like the rubber band that was installed on that repair has broken – which explains why I was sitting around last night thinking the house was so drafty. I was, in fact, feeling lots of cold air blowing on me, but it wasn’t from some new and mysterious draft that had suddenly popped up since the last cold snap – it was from the central heat & air blower vents. My wife recently got a “temperature taster” thing that can sense air temperature as well as direct readings (forehead, etc.), and I’ve been going around the house zapping the air with it:

Game room (where Evan and I are obviously going to be staying all day with the Avid and rope lights powered up) – 67 degrees
Evan’s room (one of the only tile floors in the house) – 58 degrees
Dining room next to the back door – 52 degrees
Today’s forecast high – 48 degrees

I’ve taken some immediate action, namely Turning Everything On That Generates Heat (including doing some cooking, which I needed to do anyway); it’ll run up the bill, sure, but so does running central heat at an average of 77 degrees. What I don’t know is what in the world we’re doing tonight: a couple of years ago it was “snuggle up with every available cat” but the equation changes ever-so-slightly with a one-year-old baby – it now takes on the dimensions of an emergency. Obviously it’s gonna be a long-sleeve day for him even in the house, but I have no idea what to do tonight. It may be time for a slumber party at the grandparents’ house. (Joy.)… Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Home Base Music Television & Movies

It is broken. We look for things to make it go.

You are smartArgh. For some reason that I can’t figure out and don’t really have the time to screw with much, Scribblings (the original, you might say, at theLogBook.com) is broken. Videos don’t work anymore for no real reason that I’ve been able to fathom, actually getting it to accept new content is hit-or-miss, and it’s just emblematic of the site as a whole – WordPress was supposed to liberate me to some extent, and let me just concentrate on generating content, because I write almost constantly, and don’t want to have to code pages almost constantly. But it’s maintaining the infrastructure that’s killing me. When I upgraded the WordPress that drives the episode guide, it completely wiped out all categories, and I’m still going through those 2,500-odd entries and re-categorizing them (i.e. Star Trek? check. Deep Space Nine? check. Season 4? check.)…I’m up to 1995 now. Which is quite a feat when the thing starts in the ’50s. It really renews my appreciation for just how much ground the site covers, how much written material (and hopefully well-written material) it represents…and makes the back of my brain throb and beg for More Help With The Damn Thing. It’s not WordPress’s fault, but the early days of the toddler era is not a good time for me to be able to find the kind of time it takes to prop up that infrastructure all the time. The news page has also been hit by the same bug, and I just. don’t. have. the. time. I’ve stopped updating the news page. I’ve looked for someone to take it over, but there’s only so much I can offer when the site’s revenue basically covers its own bills (and to be honest, that’d be a misnomer this year – the PDF DVD is what’s paying the site’s bills right now; the site itself – aside from hosting the ordering page for the DVD – hasn’t made a cent this month). Next year is theLogBook’s 20th anniversary, but I’m starting to wonder if it might not be time to start dialing the whole thing down a bit and just doing sporadic updates. When I feel like it. Rather than trying to generate, on a weekly basis, what I would’ve needed to fill the 6-page print fanzine that theLogBook was in the 1990s.

I don’t even know if this entry will post, so before I hit the ‘submit’ button, I’m going to grab the whole thing and copy it to the clipboard. 😆

On the home front, I’ve just finished a bit of marathon data entry for the in-laws, which proved to be an exhausting, round-the-clock-for-several-days exercise that made me want to say “Uh…you guys do realize I have a child to look after…right?” I’m relieved that that’s over.

Today Evan uttered a new word quite clearly while patting Xena on the nose: DOG-GIE! Her tail started wagging so fast that I was afraid she’d start helicoptering and her butt would raise into the air and lift the rest of her away. Evan has also proven quite capable of playing with Oberon with a length of thick string (I think it’s the drawstring from the swim trunks I wore incessantly in 2007 that no longer fit me – even with the drawstring, they’re too big). He’s really picking up on the “animals-are-your-friends” thing at a very early age, and he seems to have a natural tendency to be gentle toward them (aside from occasionally wallowing all over Olivia like she’s an escapee from his stuffed animal collection that jumped out of the crib and somehow attained free will). Hopefully he’ll never outgrow that.

Work is continuing on the CGE DVD project, and after that I think I’m going to take a break of a week or so to just chill out and not edit any video for a bit. I’ve done more editing lately than I’ve done since the first PDF DVD, or maybe even since the TV station days, and it’s worn me out just a little bit. (The data-entry-o-thon sure as hell didn’t help to alleviate that sense of fatigue.)

Listening-wise, I’ve been devouring the last trio of Alan Parsons Project remasters, Ben Folds’ really uneven new album, and some other stuff. Supposedly, tomorrow we’ll have the tracklist for the new Doctor Who soundtrack album due in November, which I’m looking forward to tremendously. There was some fantastic music this season, moreso than in season 3 I thought. As far as watching stuff… I’m so far behind on Heroes that I’ve almost given up on it. It’s going to become one of these things where I’ll just wait until it’s all over and watch it in marathon viewings, the way some folks are doing Lost if they haven’t been in on the joke from day one. (For that matter, I’m beginning to feel that way about Lost too.) I have been watching The Sarah Jane Adventures (cool), as well as meandering through a couple of other short-lived BBC series, Star Cops (very ’80s, but really not bad) and Moonbase 3 (an early ’70s British companion piece to The Starlost…with about the same tone and pacing and bizarrely overdramatic characterization). I recently finished watching the first season of Alien Nation, picking up on all the episodes I missed out on the first time around, and while it too is hopelessly ’80s, it had so much potential that I’m depressed all over again in retrospect. The TV movies were initially a nice consolation prize, but then they became victims of the law of diminishing returns. A lot of this stuff I’ve been watching to add to the episode guide section, and between that and my general state of fatigue, I’ve been doing all of this viewing and listening in a kind of dazed mode. I haven’t picked up any new viewing habits from the new season, and I think it’s just a combination of not having the energy to devote to appointment viewing and the current crop of stuff just not hitting me the right way. Even The Sarah Jane Adventures don’t really qualify as appointment viewing – I download the episodes, burn them to a DVD-RW, and watch them when I have a chance, and then wipe the disc and reuse it when I have both parts of the next story. Suddenly I understand how/why parents can seem like they’re so out of touch: here I am, listening to new releases of old music, playing (or thinking a lot about) old video games, watching (for the most part) old TV shows. I’m clearly way past it.

I should probably hold off on writing anything else until I’m – ha! – less tired.… Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Funny Stuff Gaming Home Base

Numerous random strings of written syllables

I’m in industrial-sized shitheaps of pain right now. Somewhere between Sunday and this morning, I did a number, probably a very large whole number, on my back. Sunday consisted of me working on the farm and doing a lot of lugging-around of the birthday boy and his copious haul of presents; today consisted of me moving at little as possible and repeatedly saying “ow.” I felt like I was just going to fall over ever time I had to pick Evan up today. I’ve taken lots of extra strength Advil just so I can keep moving/functioning enough to keep up with him, and even then, “keeping up with him” has consisted largely of “sitting/laying in the same general area where he’s playing.”

Thank God for the nice haul of nifty new toys; that’s made it possible to keep him concentrated in one area of the house. He got a little electronic basketball goal thing (which, being the little hacker that he is, he’s already figured out how to score infinite points without actually doing anything with the ball), and neato little steering wheel dealie with a little screen on it, which will run through the alphabet, counting 1-10, various songs, or just play a somewhat primitive driving game depending on what he does with the wheel, the horn, etc.; the steering wheel thing is really kinda cool. (I admit it, I played the little driving game while he was messing with the basketball goal today.) He also got a couple of shape-matching toys, new storybooks, and other goodies. His party, such as it was, went well for the most part; he was already tired by the time the birthday cake rolled out, so he was pretty chilled with everything. “Electronic steering wheel thingie? Cool….cool…”

In other news, AtariAge is having its first label contest in some time, for a new Atari 2600 homebrew called Lead. I had to download the latest public beta to see what the heck it was about, and found that it’s a really cool game with a very interesting take on in-game sound. So I’m going to enter my first AA label contest in 4+ years on this one – this would be a cool game to be a part of.

I’ve also entered a much goofier contest on doctorwhoforum.com, in which the rules are to make a funny single-panel “comic” using only action figures – and the only Photoshoppery allowed is to put text on the image. This is my entry, which only works if the “odd figure out” is recognized (it’s a Star Trek: First Contact Borg figure):

Cybermen vs. Borg

I’ll let you know if I win any Adipose. I’m pretty sure that I won’t, because the individual running the contest has made it clear that bonus points can be scored by playing to his interests and quirks, of which I, being mostly a lurker, was largely unaware. *shrug* Oh well. I’ve still got enough fat on board even if I don’t win any Adipose.

Back to gaming for a moment – I’ve actually been getting some gaming in lately, largely in preparation for PDF Level 2, but I’ve also been trying to write reviews for the site as I go. I’ve been on an Intellivision binge lately, so that’s not a bad place to start looking for recent reviews. I’ve even posted the (long overdue) first Aquarius game review. And it is, in fact, as bad a game machine as legend would have it.

Adipose gags aside, if I may say so myself, within the context of still being a short fat bald guy, I thought I was – relatively speaking – lookin’ good for Evan’s birthday party. I got a pair of slacks on that hadn’t fit me in five years, and dug out one of my favorite shirts, which now no longer looks like the buttons are going to burst open, Hulk-style, which is how it’s looked for the past couple or three years. I think I’ve got a good start. Chasing around after a toddler will probably help me lose another 30 pounds by the time he turns two. If I can just get my back straightened out, this whole fatherhood thing is a pretty healthy gig.… Read more

Categories
Gaming Home Base

PDF DVD reviews, and something Captain Kirk never would’ve put up with

Music of the SpheresA glowing review of the PDF DVD over at Flack’s site – maybe it’s just because I slaved over the thing for so long, but I think he liked it better than I did at any point. 😆 There’s also some recent activity in the DP forum thread too. As Quark once said, buy early and buy often! 😛 I’ve burned a few new copies that I just realized put this thing into its third print run. I’m still trying to see if I can get my act together and at least send a few for someone to have on hand at OVGE, but things have backed off enough that we’re in “burn about 5 at a time, and don’t burn any more until those sell” territory, so I’m not sure if I can work a 20-disc run into the budget in time for the 9th. A lot of these DVD orders are winding up paying for baby chow (well, and daddy chow too – or, in today’s case, a new sack-o’-dog-food) so I’m not throwing the money that comes in at burning a huge number of ’em in advance at the moment.

In other news, I finally got the Enterprise plaque hung on the door to my game room again, with an addition that would’ve made James T. Kirk’s head explode. I thought it was kinda funny myself – the other sign was a gag gift from someone and here I go finding a use for it.

There's a child. On my bridge.

Martian ThreatOne last note: I’m apparently never completely out of the gaming scene, because I just discovered that an upcoming repro release of the finished-but-never-released Odyssey2/Videopac game Martian Threat will utilize some artwork I cobbled together just for fun a few years ago. It will debut next month at Eurocon and will get a general (but limited – 100 or so) release afterward, with both PAL and NTSC copies available. The “frame” seen around the artwork here will probably be different, since it will almost certainly be reworked into a more traditional Videopac-style package, but that’s a good thing – there’s a lot of fine detail that would’ve been knocked out by that frame, including the work I did to make the “cockpit” look slimy, organic and alien.

Fun fact: I’ve never actually played Martian Threat before (what with it being a rare unreleased game that I don’t own and all), so I have no idea if the artwork has jack to do with what really happens in the game. 😆 You can expect a review in PDF (the site, not the DVD) late this year after I have gotten to play it.

That’s all for now.… Read more

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Cooking With Code Home Base Television & Movies

Random rumblage

The good news on the spider bite tonight is that it doesn’t seem to be spreading – well, okay, just a little, but not upward. The foot is reddish and tender, and I can see veins pretty clearly, which is really unusual for feet. Or at least my feet. I’m due back at the doctor’s office on Tuesday to see where this is going – though if my follow-up is 48 hours after my initial visit, I’m guessing that there’s Cause For Concern. Either that or they just like taking my money. Probably a little bit of both.

I found and fixed a couple of bugs in “Doctor Who in 35 minutes“, as well as chopping it up into segments about 3 to 3 1/2 minutes long to cut back on the insane load times. This also had a beneficial side-effect of sharply increasing resolution – now you can tell which clips I sourced from crap-o-licious 20+ year old VHS tapes recorded off of AETN and OETA when I was in high school! Yay! 😆

Speaking of video projects, I think I may have mentioned redoing the PDF DVD ordering page as an old fashioned hand-coded HTML page – basically in theLogBook’s old, pre-Wordpress look – so that orders wouldn’t be tripped up by Globat’s endless database server errors. Lo and behold, I’ve had more orders in the past 24 hours than I have just about the entire rest of the month. Can’t ditch Globat soon enough. Incidentally, we’re now coming down the home stretch of the second edition – and that means there are about a hundred of these puppies floating around out there. Guess it’s not over yet after all. The proceeds from this round of DVD sales will go toward getting us moved to a hosting company that can actually keep a site up. If you think I’m overreacting, check this out. Or this. Or this. Or this hosting review page which has apparently accumulated so many complaints that they’ve closed the comments down. 😯 I have a hard time believing that these jokers haven’t gotten some class action lovin’.

I’ll bitch some more later. But you knew that, right?… Read more

Categories
Cooking With Code Home Base Television & Movies

It’s the bite of the spider, it’s the thrill of the fight!

So I’ve had this wickedly itchy thing on the back of my right ankle for about a week now. I’ve soaked it in hot water, wrapped it in cold washcloths that spent a little bit of time in the freezer, I’ve done my level damned best to leave it alone and not scratch it. This morning when I got up, took Evan to his grandparents and got ready to feed horses, it was pure agony trying to put my muck boots on. Then I noticed it was about the size of a half-dollar (for those of you old enough to remember the 50-cent coin, a.k.a. the JFK half-dollar, a currency that I sorely miss) , and varied in color from purple to brown, and did I mention it hurting like hell? It hurt like hell. So after horse feeding time, I went to the doctor, who said he was pretty sure it was some sort of insect bite, and really nasty too. He hesitated to guess as to what kind of insect, but when I went to pick up my prescription and the stuff I’d need to wrap the ankle to keep a pad over the hugely ugly and painful open blister that’s there, the pharmacist basically confirmed that what I had on paper was a pretty stiff cocktail designed for someone who’s waited too long to treat a brown recluse bite that was pretty nasty to begin with. Joy. So I’m pretty much an inside-dweller until cleared: no yard work, definitely no horse feeding, keep it as antiseptic clean as possible until further notice. I’m hoping I’m not staring down the barrel of any lasting damage, but the whole foot is bright red and you can see veins sticking out. Between that and the drugs I’ve been prescribed, I’m just feeling woozy about the whole thing. First various farm injuries, then mutant monkey toes with more joints than a toe should have unless it happens to be a finger, and now this…what gives? Has someone got it in for my right foot?

Oh, and speaking of the doctor, or actually, speaking of the Doctor, here are 45 years of house calls in 35 minutes. If you don’t know your Doctor Who mythology, I’d suggest that sometime in the next week or three might be an outstanding time to catch up. Or so I’ve heard. 😉

For those whose efforts to get a PDF DVD have been frustrated by the constant downtime courtesy of Globat, I have replaced the PDF ordering page with a hand-coded HTML page that doesn’t have to have their SQL database server up and running. Orders for the DVD have taken a nose dive since the beginning of this month…right about the same time these constant server issues cropped up. But now that won’t be an issue any longer, at least for that portion of PDF. Never mind “baby needs a new pair of shoes” – at this rate I’m gonna need a new pair of feet!… Read more