BusinessCasual Review: Making the Old Game New

Relatively gentle day at work today. Couple of voicemail messages, couple of installs, some pretty easy emails: no heavy lifting involved. It was the kind of day I could get used to. If I were staying. Speaking of my new job, they require a drug test before the first day of work. All the labs they contract through for that service close at 4 or 4:15 for drug tests. I get off at 4, so I asked to jet 5 minutes early to get that taken care of. I got there JUST as the receptionist was removing the sign in clipboard. She grudgingly let me sign in, but was sure to make her displeasure known. Hey, I know I’m clean, but if I gotta pee in a cup to make the monies, that’s exactly what I’ll do.

I got out just in time to get Clara and head home. I got home about five minutes before D did, so I got the oven warmed up and put dinner in. DeAnn and I watched Clara terrorize the cat and run around the living room, picking up small toys and putting them into her basket. Then she would run to another container and empty what she had into it. Colin asked to go out to play, so we let him run off and set his dinner aside for him when he got back.

After putting Clara down, we settled in for our static night. Our linkshell claimed Fafnir for the second night in a row (go go!), so we were a little late getting started. We still got a decent session in, though. We had a discussion about what to do with our static, since we’d come under fire lately about doing this during events. The general consensus was that we’re getting burned out doing what we’re doing on our current main jobs. In trying to find something new and exciting while at the same time being relevant to the LS needs, we were going to have to invest some time and effort. This time has to come from somewhere, and the only times we have are evening, during events. Hence, in order to keep the game fresh and interesting, some event has to be bypassed temporarily so we can invest that time into development. We might, however, be open to suggestions from leadership on a better night, but as of now, we decided to keep the schedule unchanged.

Tomorrow is Friday, and I’m the one that has to stay the last hour. Dunno what’s planned for tomorrow night, but if nothing is going on, then Keri and I will probably campaign, or she’ll play FF8 while I fish or something. Whatever we decide, it will involve being together and celebrating the coming of the weekend. ^_^/

I Think She’s Turning Japanese

Sorry, I didn’t have much of a chance to write an entry for yesterday. I’m shift lead this week, so when things get crazy, there’s little room to breathe. Several systems and communication circuits went down. Not that there’s much I can do about it, but that doesn’t stop the people from calling in because their interweb isn’t working right.

Tonight was my study night, so after dinner, Clara went down early. As I was getting her dressed for bed, she noticed the kitty cat on her PJs. She carefully grabbed the kitty’s ears on the shirt, held it up to me and stated “Toki-dojo.” I looked at her, confused, and told her that was a kitty on her shirt. She shook her head and held it up to me more insistently, “Toki-DOJO!” When I finally said it with her, she laughed and gave me a hug, laid down and went right to sleep. -.- I think she’s turning Japanese.

I booted up my routers tonight while D danced her workout. My goal was to get the two routers to recognize each other tonight. I can get them to recognize themselves, but I hadn’t been able to establish any kind of connection between them until tonight. Took about an hour, but I finally nailed the configurations on the two serial ports to get packets sent. I think I ended up interrupting D’s exercise when I went upstairs. She’s very self-conscious about her dancing, but she’s doing much better. I’ll try to remember to knock on the wall or something before going upstairs.

Static tomorrow night. We need to have a discussion about possibly reworking our schedule. Captsassypants wants to join the static on his BLU as well, so we’ll finally be 6/6 if he can join us.

Los Textos al Azar de Limbapo Chaco

DeAnn was impossible to sleep with. If she wasn’t groaning or waking up in a panic about the baby, she was snoring loud enough to shake the bed. I got maybe 3 hours of sleep, all in about half-hour chunks. She finally chilled out about 5am, so I thought, ‘Here’s my chance to get a solid hour.’ I should have just stayed awake, because my cell phone alarm didn’t go off. I guess the alarm settings are stored in a way that if the phone loses power, they go buh-bye. She didn’t bring her cell phone upstairs, so her alarm didn’t wake us up. We slept in an hour later than we should have. That made me automatically late. I threw on some clothes just in time to hear the house alarm go off. Normally I disarm the alarm and leave well before he has to let the dog out, but this morning I wasn’t gone yet. That, combined with the sheer panic my exploding wife was causing and knowing he had missed the bus freaked him out. I calmed him down and asked him to bring his pop tart with him in the car. I dropped him off at school to prevent D from being any later than she was already. Turned out she got there right on time. I was about an hour late, but I can make it up. It’s no big deal for me, I just didn’t want her to be late.

I ran head long into a Monday at work. I am shift lead this week, and therefore in charge of desk’s voicemail call backs, the desk’s email account and watching the assignments for the group. And, of course, they were all piled up. Including some things left over from last week. -.- I spent the rest of the morning getting all caught up. To top it off, I had run out of the house before having a chance to get breakfast or lunch. I snagged some cheap pizza from the cafeteria, but we’re really going to need to watch the spending for the month…

I studied tonight while D worked out on DDR. She’s starting to be able to graduate to some basic difficulty songs while in training mode, and her coordination and balance has noticeably improved. I can hear the stomping and its actually in time to the music now. :P I’m going to try to get some DDR in when she does. While I’m in better shape (I get out and walk about a mile everyday), I’m not what you would call a model of heath and fitness. I could do with trimming down a bit.

Finished up with my studying and kids and whatnot around 10. I logged on to FFXI for a little while to fish. The whole LS was at Fafnir, and I got some questions asking why I wasn’t there. I had to explain myself: that I just sat down and wasn’t going to be online for long enough to make a window, much less a claim. I dunno, I think they’re starting to get a little too pushy for attendance after cancelling 4 events last week due to lack of people. I’m not sure I like where SF is headed. I might just be burned out, too. There are so many things I want to do that I don’t have time for with the rigorous schedule we have. Very little self-fulfillment involved anymore, and I’m wondering why I’m paying for this feeling. Not that I'm planning on going anywhere... Maybe I am le tired...

Weekend Intelligence: One Flew Out of the Cuckoo’s Nest

One of Colin’s friends is moving away, so in an attempt to have a last little party, he spent the weekend over at his friends new house. Down one kiddo, and with a new job, DeAnn and I did some celebrating of our own. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights!

House and Home:

I’ve been dealing with some severe stomach aches lately. Breathing fire comes to mind. When I got home, I felt bad for making DeAnn tank the kids, but I needed to lay down for a few. When I got up, I wasn’t feeling much better, but it was getting late and I needed to get the evening started. Neither of us felt like cooking, so I told D to order a pizza. I had said that if I got this job, I was buying some rum. As I was on my way out, I saw Colin and his friend Sammy walk toward me with his dad. I was afraid Colin had done something wrong, but it turned out that their dad wanted to discuss him spending the night at their new house. I conferred with D and we got their information and gave them ours as Colin and Sammy dove to getting things ready. I left to go get the provisions for the night, and didn’t realize until I got back that I had left D to prepare two ADHD 8yr old boys for a sleepover, feed Clara, juggle the dog and deal with the pizza man. -.-; I guess chaos reigned for the solid half hour I was gone getting stuff. The end result was well worth it, though: Colin was out for the night and the baby was on the way down. We stayed up late playing and goofing off.

We were late to rise the next morning. D had a bit too much to drink the night before, but there was still work to do. After breakfast, she started a load of clothes and tanked Clara while lying on the couch. Eventually, she needed to lay down for a nap. I cleaned the kitchen. And I mean cleaned. Scrubbed, wiped, washed, disinfected and polished everything I could get to. When I was done, the house was filled with the stink of clean. ^_^/ I also tore through a few loads of laundry while D was asleep. She woke up feeling quite a bit better, but her stomach had picked up whatever was bothering mine for the past few days. That’s about when Colin called. He had been having an absolute blast, and was wondering if he could stay another night. After making sure this was something parentally sanctioned, we consented to him staying the night again. I’ll take another night off, no need to twist my arm! We got dinner and settled in for Kirin and campaign for the rest of the evening.

We got up kinda late on Sunday, so we missed the 11am service. We ate some pancakes, got baby dressed and made it to the 1pm service. They started out worship with The Foo Fighter’s “The Pretender.” Something that our church has a real gift for is to take edgy things from pop culture - things that will be familiar and appeal to lost and hurting youth, but not necessarily ye olde worship music - and position it in a way that really gives Him glory. They did the same thing with a youth outreach program commercial that had Marilyn Manson’s “Personal Jesus” as the background track. And it worked. Masterfully. It was really cool listen to something meant for deception completely turned on its head for good. Anyway, after the service, we hit Walmart on our way home, just before Colin came home. After a quick nap we went to work on taxes. That took us through the rest of the night, but the good news is we don’t owe anything. ^_^

In-game:

We really didn’t do much in the way of in game stuff this past weekend. We were just too busy, but we did do a few things. Friday night, I tried to lead a group of people after swift belts, but I cancelled that after only 6 people total showed up. No biggie, we’ll do it some other time I’m sure. We also showed up for the midnight Einherjar. I haven’t been the biggest fan of this event, I’ll admit, but it’s sad to see any event get cancelled. I didn’t run out to the Halzam Testing Grounds because I was afraid that was going to happen. Instead I hung out in Nashmau and fished up all sorts of stuff with my shiny new fishing rod. I even got some skill up from it.

Saturday hardly saw any activity at all until Kirin. We popped 2 Kirin. The first one was… interesting. We almost wiped. It was a combination of not killing fast enough and Kirin summoning abnormally fast. I don’t think we had the numbers we really needed, but we were determined to start on time. The second one had more people trickled in, and went considerably smoother. After Kirin, Keri and I went to do some Campaign shenanigans. I’m near another rank up, but they’re starting to get really hard to do one a week with as much time as I have to give them.

Sunday was almost completely devoid of game time. We did taxes and I fished briefly in Qufim to try to get the sliced cod bait out of my inventory. The bite rate on Black Sole is enough to make a grown man cry.

Monday will be interesting. I have to talk to my supervisor on my decision to get another job, follow up with my new boss on the when and where of my first day, and call the guy back who was my initial contact there and thank him for getting my resume in the door and talking with me a little about the company. A little bit of thanks goes a long way, especially when you have a lot to be thankful for.