drfreex.com

I really do intend to spend more time writing this year. The fact that it is currently the second week in February notwithstanding.

The strategy here is brevity, apparently. My desktop is littered with quarter-finished blog posts that got too long and were put aside to be “finished later”. My laptop’s power supply went blooie and is currently in a state of semi-repaired traction; that t’ing ain’ goin’ nowhere. Not until I buy a new power brick. So I can’t even write in the rare quiet moments at work anymore.

I attended B-Fest this year, and the getaway came not a moment too soon. I was… seriously… on the verge of some sort of breakdown or explosion at the Hated Job, and four days in the company of my friends was a much-needed balm. I can’t say I arrived at the office after four days of sleep deprivation re-energized or restored, but I was better able to put up with crap for a week or so, until i could finally collapse.

The Bad Movie Gods smiled upon us that week, for though it never got above freezing while we were there, the week after we left, Chicago turned into freakin’ Niflheim. Temperatures are still in the minuses as I write this.

It was really lovely while I was there. I admit I’ve been wondering lately, whenever I see an idyllic winter scene in, say, Victorian England, how those people survived with a mere coat and hat. In twenty-something Chicago, i frequently gadded about with a stocking cap and heavy flannel shirt. Wouldn’t have wanted to spend hours like that, but it was quite revelatory. Yes, as a lifelong Texan, I am used to horrible, humid winters, terrible, bitter things. In Chicago, the humidity stayed on the ground in a thin white layer, and it was brisk and wonderful.

Then the ice weasels came to stay, and I am once more glad that I live in a land where, as they say, “you don’t have to shovel humidity.” Hope things get better for you soon, my icebound brethren.

Dang, that wasn’t brief at all.

February 6, 2007
Categories: Life's Rich Pageant . . Author: drfreex . Comments: 2 Comments

You really want to know what I’ve been doing since the last entry? No, no you don’t. It really is best left to your imagination. That way, I would have been involved in foiling Space Nazi plots in their secret moonbase or working far into the night decoding the fabulous Book of the Vishanti. Alas, what I’ve been doing is far more prosaic.

I’ve been picking colors.

That’s over-simplifying. While still reeling from the dual onslaught of New Air Conditioner and Summer Dentistry, my Home Owner’s Association (speaking of Nazis…) sensed my weakness and swooped in for the kill, demanding that my house be re-sided and re-painted. “But….” said we, “New air conditioner! No money!” “Lien upon your home,” was their reply, and lo, the debt was deepened. Looks like I won’t be giving up dentistry to return to the riskier world of full-time writing anytime soon.

I now sit in a house of two tones, old siding and new siding, while we wait for the Nazis to approve of our color choices, which consist of gray (house), lighter gray (trim) and red (door). These are, I admit, radical choices, which may explain the delay.

Really, one day someone will explain to me why it was a good idea to buy a house. And oh, yeah, my car’s air conditioner died back in June. Sorry old paint, there is no money to repair you, yet. It does make driving back and forth to a job I hate especially…. character-building, I suppose.

Alright, that isn’t all I’ve been doing. For one thing, NC Soft, the publishers of the game that maintains my excapist sanity, City of Heroes (speaking of character-building), asked for volunteers to speak to a reporter, who was writing a story about cross-gender gaming. To put it in simple terms, people who play the opposite gender in role playing games.

Now, amongst my 35 characters, I have 13 males. 15 females, 4 robots and 3 cosmic abominations, and I’m halfway articulate, so I volunteered – the goal being to offer a viewpoint beyond the cliched “Chicks get more free stuff” or “If I’m going to stare at a butt for hours, it might as well be a nice butt.” Very little of that got into the final story, but at least now I can say that an AP photographer has been in my house. Yes, it was an Associated Press article, which meant it appeared on Abc.com, Foxnews.com, Wired News, my local paper, and newspapers across the land. Detroit and Seattle are the only two rags I could track down that used the photo.

Major outcome of this? I discovered the neologism “Cybertrannie”, had it applied to myself, and received a little razzing in-game. So why do I do it, you may ask? The same reason I tend to have an equal number of male and female characters in my stories – I like the balance. Admittedly, that does not make for provocative copy, so I suppose I failed that goal.

That week in August was sort of a banner time for me, as I also turned up at the top of a story in the Baltimore Sun. Though supposedly about Snakes on a Plane, it was felt necessary to tap my expertise on bad movies in general.

Given my generally self-destructive bent, I will point out that in the Snakes article, I tap Glen or Glenda as my favorite Ed Wood movie, and it took mere seconds for my so-called friends to light on the fact that it is a movie about… transvestites.

Speaking of escapism, it’s time to indulge in some. Why doesn’t City of Heroes have an angora option?

August 20, 2006
Categories: Life's Rich Pageant . . Author: drfreex . Comments: 8 Comments

Broadband finally returned late Wednesday night, and good lord, how behind I have gotten. Admittedly, there is stuff I could have been doing, like writing things so they would be ready to upload. Do I do this? No. I do ridiculous, obvious things like cleaning house, watching Star Wars with my son, going to job fairs. You know. Wasting time.

I’ll try to share the stuff I missed with you later. For right now, know: it’s good to be back.

June 9, 2006
Categories: Life's Rich Pageant . . Author: drfreex . Comments: 2 Comments

Yep. gone for a while again. And not by choice.

Almost two weeks ago, my broadband ceased to function. Should I name names? Roadrunner. Only broadband available in my hinterland.

They assured me a technician will be by to assist me. Next Monday. That date was set when the Net went bye bye. Nearly two weeks ago.

At least they’ve credited me for this downtime. I will give them that.

But my world has gotten… very small, of late. Of course, this happened just as I discovered a world of websites dedicated to posting whole albums of long out-of-print and obscure 60’s vinyl; stuff like the legendary Kak album, the live album of H.P. Lovecraft (the band, not the author), Dantelion’s Chariot. Unable to update 50 Foot DVD, which had been pretty regular, of late.

And I’ve not been able to play City of Heroes, the game that was arguably keeping me sane. Well, I am still rather sane, so perhaps that wasn’t the case at all. I have cleaned my home office. Interviewing for a new, hopefully less crazy-making job tomorrow. Could there be a correlation?

But after Monday… dammit I am downloading some acid rock while my tanker busts Freakshow heads. Or there will be hell to pay. Correlations be damned.

June 2, 2006
Categories: Life's Rich Pageant . . Author: drfreex . Comments: 2 Comments

Yeah, I’m still alive. Remember that thing I have about not saying anything if I have nothing to say? Sure, I had a thing or two to say in the recent past, but I also hate whining, and trust me – I would have been whining.

The end of this month should close out a two-month running battle with my local power company – which, of course, began just in time for the Christmas season. This culminated in an evening last week when I came home to a dark house, a pissed-off wife and a dismayed child. When enquiring of the phone drone why I had dropped over a grand in the past month to my energy overlords and still had the result stay the same as if I had kept the money for myself… well, they had managed to misplace one of those payments, but it mysteriously turned up just after the disconnect notice was issued, so I should have power back by 9 o’clock that evening.

For 9 o’clock that evening, please read in 24-48 hours.

All this was exacerbated by a week in which my bank, for reasons unknown even to them, froze my account for a week (a week in which another of these exorbitant payments was to be siphoned out, of course). When confronted about this, the bank officer admitted there was no good reason for it, there was no way to rescind it for another 48 hours, muttered something about the Patriot Act, and shuffled his feet uncomfortably.

I wish I was kidding about the Patriot Act in that last paragraph.

There are some bright spots in there, somewhere. Um. Err…

Uh… the cats managed to drop Max’s Game Boy Advance into water (snickering like Muttley the whole time, I’m sure), rendering it in operable, and I managed to get it running again.

There. That ended everything on a up note, dinnit?

January 29, 2006
Categories: Life's Rich Pageant . . Author: drfreex . Comments: 7 Comments

So exactly where did today go?

Let’s see. Walked the dog. Nothing unusual there. Read news during first cup of coffee. Ditto. Performed routine maintenance on wife’s car “because it’s your day off”…

BINGO!

Not to mention fixing her computer. By which I mean rebooting it and then checking the WLAN monitor, which is all I can do on the scant instruction, “It’s not letting me do anything!”

Replied in an angry fashion to an e-mail from the dinner theater asking me to step in again. Reply was curt: “I quit over a year ago.” Whining is sure to follow, my acquiescence shortly thereafter. Already working a half-day this Saturday. Didn’t need the other half stolen from me in an unseemly fashion.

Took a nap. See previous post about the astounding amount of sleep I need these days.

Cooked dinner. Put together a Gundam model for my son, my arthritic fingers protesting over the manipulation of teensy parts. Evening now.

What didn’t I get done that I wanted to today?

Clean up home office. Can’t find my photo paper, and I need to print some photographs. Can’t find much of anything, really, unless it is in the Ring of Work and Play around my desk.

Write. I am way overdue in updating Attack of the 50 Foot DVD, and this weighs heavily on me. Especially having gotten through the entirety of The Bela Lugosi Collection.

At least I finally watered the front yard. That was becoming a bit of a fire hazard. And, considering all of Houston was up beyond 1AM last night watching the World Series, I didn’t have to drive to work through a pack of narcoleptics nodding off at the wheel.

More bulletins as they occur. I will find you, photo paper.

October 26, 2005
Categories: Life's Rich Pageant . . Author: drfreex . Comments: 2 Comments

Discipline? I was kidding, right?

The return to a 9-5 (rather, 8-6 and beyond) routine has had some interesting results. First, I’m amazed at how much sleep I seem to need. Second, I was stunned when I added up my hours and discovered I was not working a 40 hour week, or more, which I had suspected. No, I have to admit that the combo of most Wednesdays off and a long lunch on Friday (the doc is the secretary of the local Rotary Club), conspired to give me a less than full paycheck.

But a paycheck, nonetheless. The creditors are a bit happier now. I still have electricity and the Internet, so I’m happier, too.

I’m a bit gobsmacked when I think of the folk who talk about surfing the Web at work – there is always something to do at the office, from the managing of appointments to the arguing with insurance companies (and how rich was my life before I became embroiled in that land of conflict) – I think I’ve had the time to be bored once in my tenure thus far.

The dynamic has changed a bit in the home life. Before, I cooked most of the meals, but now, coming home after 6pm, that’s rarely my job anymore.

And to be perfectly honest, my evenings have been taken up by one thing: beta testing the upcoming game City of Villains. Somebody must have me in mind when they were planning out this game, as I finally get to play a mad scientist with laser-armed robot minions. I’ll try to post a picture later.

There was supposed to be a massive beta event tonight, but being beta, it has been a long, drawn-out, buggy process. So here I am, weighing in. I am alive, well, and cursing the name of various HMOs, when I am not cobbling together robot pals. Who, you should know, are named Huey, Dewey, Louie, Tom Servo, and Croooooooooow.

October 22, 2005
Categories: Life's Rich Pageant . . Author: drfreex . Comments: 6 Comments

For some reason, the only thing in my head for the past twenty minutes is StrongBad wheeling by on a unicycle, saying, “Hey! Way to work an eleven hour day!”

I believe I’ve mentioned before that my head can a very interesting place to live.

The office is fairly low-key but grinding (yeah, that’s sort of a dental joke). In at 8 this morning, out at 6:45. An actual day off Wednesday, and seemingly no obligations this weekend. Yet.

I’m hoping that this will give my flabby discipline the wake-up call it needs, now that the yammering bills clustered under my monitor are temporarily cowed. I have several need-to-dos hanging fire, and whereas before I could only say my time was at a premium, it is now the stone truth.

Besides the writing, I have a sound design due toward the end of November, which should provide little intrigue. The real problem gets to be the shows I’ve DVRed and now am uncertain when I’m ever going to watch them – last week’s Surface (just to make sure I really hate it), Threshold (missed because I got another “Help me Obi-Wan, you’re my only hope” call) and the new Night Stalker, for which I do not exactly have high hopes.

And all those damned movies stacked up behind me. Crap. Living by a schedule again – boy, I wish this would somehow make me feel young again, since it really reminds me of the days when I was working video production during the day and doing theater at night.

I’m still amazed that some people have the time to be bored.

I need to shut up now, because I’m rambling. Hi, StrongBad!

October 3, 2005
Categories: Life's Rich Pageant . . Author: drfreex . Comments: 3 Comments

Just so you know: It seems I have a job.

Talk about things falling into your lap – turns out our family dentist needed an office manager. So, for the first time in, what? – twelve years? I find myself working a 9 to 5. Actually, 8 to 6.

This is going to take some adjustment.

September 30, 2005
Categories: Life's Rich Pageant . . Author: drfreex . Comments: 7 Comments