Root canal number two done.

Had root canal number two yesterday. It was rougher experience than the first time. It stank more as this tooth was bigger and so there was more flesh to cut through. I spent a large portion of the day in pain and in a too-much-ibuprophen induced stupor. It was hard to work, I did do a few things but not a whole lot. I did some things for work, cleaned a little and installed Slackware 11 on my linux box. That was probably not the best idea given the state I was in.

Pooks came over that evening and her mom's dog had gotten sick in her car. I helped her clean the dog and the car. I stayed up reading Harry Potter IV. I could have gone to bed at 9:30 and slept but I didn't want to be up at 4am.

When I did get up though I kept hitting the snooze button and had some weird dreams some Very weird dreams before I actually dragged in to work.

It smells like Christmas.

I've got a small candle that Pooks got me lit. It gives off a faint scent of pine trees. Every Christmas we got a tree from somewhere, and it wasn't always a tree (one year it was a Christmas bush). I have always associated that faint smell of pine with Christmas. It's not like a strong pinesol/air-freshener kind of smell, but like the smell of pine trees when the air is cold and silent, and the wind is gently whispering through the trees.

It's a cold night tonight. Everyone seems to be indoors snuggling away from the cold. I've got my windows cracked and am enjoying the cold. I always prefer it cold and had the windows open all last winter. This year will be interesting since I have to move sometime this winter too.

It's late, I've been up (re)reading Harry Potter vol. 4. I read Books 2 and 3 this weekend. A couple of weekends ago I read Conan the Valorous, one of my more favorite Conan stories. A friend of mine calls books like that, "mind candy". Something light and easy to read, not mentally challenging, but something that moves the mind a little.

Maggie's got the Star Wars Lego game for a while. She gave me Big Brain Academy and complains that I'm not good enough yet. It's a mental stress testing game with different quizzez and things. I'm not as good as her at it yet so when we play against each other she asks incredulously, "Haven't you been practicing?" or "I thought you said you were good at this one?" It's good for my ego to get shown up by a 15 yr old every once in a while... ok, every time we play.

Pooks and I are still house hunting. It's been interesting trying to fit it in around both of our work scheduals. I think we're looking in the right places for us to live.

Just another long and meandering post.

It's Just That Cool!

PictoChat!



Friday night was hectic and a little strange.

Saturday Morning was slightly sick and the afternoon was good with trying to visit houses with Pooks. We found one I would love to have, but it costs more than we wanted to spend... We'll see though, we haven't seen the inside or anything yet. We have others we're looking at though, God give us guidance in where we should live and where you would have us serve.

Sunday took the day off from church. Pooks & Maggie came over and we had breakfast together and watched ".hack Sign" again. Maggie wanted to see more of it. They went driving after a while and I took a shower and took care of some things around the house. We went to target and I got bit by the Nitendo DS bug. Yes I got a DS and the coolest thing about it is the PictoChat. Out of the box it allows you to talk to about 16 other people within 65ft of you wirelessly. It doesn't do anything fancy like letting you save the chats or anything, but for the things close by it is great. I put a picture of it at the top of the posting. Over Dinner Maggie, who also got a DS, and I were chatting up a storm sending little pictures and things to each other. Pooks used them to do some awesome pictues. I realized how much we sucked at drawing. We all had a good time playing with them. I also got the Lego Starwars Game. It's really cool and fun. Not the immediate satisfaction of the pictochat, but definately enticing. After we came home We spent more time looking & talking houses, and after that I did some work.

oh Well...

Didn't get anything done yesterday evening that I'd thought I would. So tonight, is a Doctor Who night. I hope to play some WoW as well...

On an unrelated note, Python the Cat and Toby the Dog, had a meeting several weeks ago. I took pictures of them meeting b/c it was the first time Python had ever seen a dog. I then used a program that came on my mac call "Comic Life" to dress it up a little. The resuls speak for themselves...

Out Sick yesterday, changing seasons...

Felt entirely blah yesterday, stuffy head that just wouldn't quit and a headache. Lots of sinus pressure too. It made for a serious blah day. I WoW'ed for part of the morning before going back to bed and sleeping for several hours. I took Helen out dinner and played WoW for part of the evening. I felt better by the evening but still have a very annoying cough.

I went through the Wailing Caverns in WoW, with the same character but the third new group of ppl. Seems that five minutes into it someone gets upset and takes off for one reason or another. Usually b/c someone else in the group is doing something they don't like. Further in, when the going gets rough, someone usually screws up and someone will take off then too. Usually it's one person or another acting childish. There's something to be said about the world in general here.

I used my healthier afternoon yesterday to finish off the ".hack/Sign" dvd's. It's the story of a girl trapped in a online world while her body is in a coma. An evil entity in the game is trying to use her to awaken a little virtual girl in the game that could open the "key to the twilight" and hence destroy or remake the game world and send the players in to comas. Of the 25 episodes only about 12 were really needed. I vaguely remember that when it came out the .hack series was actually a video game that tied in losely with the anime. The ending was really weak. The girl woke up and the virtual girl woke up and met her real world friends... and that's it. I felt slightly cheated by a boring ending.

One thing it did have was a group of players called the "Crimson Knights" whose self-appointed position was the protectors of good and justice. It was interesting that this was a player group devoted to "protecting" other players, usually by finding player-killers and restricting their in-game movements. Their downfall in the story was that they stopped playing the game and started looking for further control over the game world. Which was denied by the owners of the game, the "C.C. Corporation". I thought it was strange that there were players that felt the need to provide "justice" to other players by forming a group just to do that, and not depending on the creators of the game to do it. In early online games I have seen the creators of the game not expecting that to happen. In one of the early ones I know this was possible b/c it was done to chinese players b/c they were suspected of being gold-farmers. Coming into the scene late myself, I would not expect people to form their own in-game police, espcially given the way I see ppl act in WoW.

Overall it was good, but it needed a little more action and less talk.

I think I'll start on it's sequal tonight, ".hack, Legend of the Twilight Bracelet". Ok, I've seen it before but I'm looking forward to seeing it in-order and not interrupted by commercials. Pooks and Maggie should be over too. Maggie needs essay help. sigh, ok maybe I won't be watching the .hack sequal. :-)

Another week before posting... sorry about that.

So It's been awhiel since I posted last and I've got ppl already asking me about when I'm going to post something. So...

The big thing for this past week is that I've got a analog to digital video (S-video/compostie to firewire) converter. It's a little expensive box to do some video transfers with. I'm gonna convert some of my old VHS tapes to digital form. I could have done the same with a tv card, but this is more portable. Also, since I needed to use it with the laptop, I couldn't really use a tv card. Of course to go wih it I needed a better vcr and so I grabbed a vcr/dvd-recorder. So I'll digitize the movies, do any editing, removing bad bits and what-not and then either burn them from my laptop or use the firewire input on the recorder to burn them to dvd! It's very cool.

I'm working on a bunch video now that me and Pooks took at Dad's. I am gonna try to finish it up today.

Doctor Who got banished from England by Queen Victoria on Friday. It was sad, but he did end up saving her from being eaten by a werewolf.

I finally made it to level 40 in WoW and now have a horsey... A firey horsey... Make me look like one of the horsemen of the apocolypse. Woot!




I've started a couple of characters on various servers, so I can get play time with various friends. Other than ppl from work I'm not sure who else is where. I mainly play horde characters, but have some alliance too. I'm a mostly casual player... except when I'll sit around for hours playing. :-)

Yay Parties and a long day.

We had a great day on Sunday with a Party for Patricia and a brief family conference. Patti turned 27 and while we didn't do cake, we did do sushi.

I posted several of the photos here.

I was finally able to reach Level 40 in WoW! Woot. I would have taken a screen shot, but it was from killing a hyena in a desert so it wasn't a very exciing picture. I'm just stoaked about getting there. I know it's a long way to 60, but it's been an exciting trip so far.

Today was a long day b/c I was up late playing WoW. So it made for an interesting time. I did manage to get a major project done for work though and that makes me happy.

I'm over at Pooks' now helping Maggie write an essay on the fall of the roman empire. It's kinda boring, espcially since they leave out the good gorey stuff about the battles and things. Also Maggie is pretty tired and so it makes it worse. One of the sources given to her seems pretty accusitory of Christianity. It suggests that since the church was in place it was demanding money from the people and state and not putting it back into circulation. Thereby making the state weaker and the church stronger. It seems like an interesting choice of sources too me, but I'm a tin-foil hat wearing conspiracy theorist.