Posted by Kevin Carruth on 2004-12-20 @ 13:31:01
And then I'm off for a week and a half!
As a new employee at UVa, I get 2 days of personal leave that I have to 'use or lose' by Jan 9th. Plus, I get Dec 24th - Jan 2nd off as state holidays. So I'm tacking my FP leave on the start so I can make it up to Manassass for an airsoft game on the 22nd.
While there, I'll be chronographing my Carter Special (but it's too hot to use in games there) and hopefully getting in a little tactical training from some of the active and ex military boys who frequent the place. Fun stuff! Let's see how my fat ass holds up.
Spent this past weekend in NoVA at Adam and Thomas' place. Finally got to try Counter-Strike: Source, and well, I'm re-addicted. Nearly 3 years of no CStrike and I wasn't nearly as rusty as I thought; took me a round or two to start pwning the n00bs, but I was going strong pretty steadily most of the time. Same old crowd of immature little creeps who love to call people fags or n***ers, which disappointed me. And, I actually got booted from a server three times because I kept obliterating an admin and his team round after round. That made me feel at the same time annoyed and good.
The drive home yesterday was interesting. No snow in Alexandria, but I went through a small blizzard in Fredericksburg. Couldn't see the tail lights 3 cars in front of me, and had to go 25-30 mph constantly. Added about 45 mins to my trip time.
So now I'm back at home with my crappy internet. The drive to move out is ever so strong. I think pretty soon I'm going to start researching apartments and hopefully decided on one before the break is done. Current plan is to get an apartment for 6 months to a year, just to get out of the house ASAP, and then take my time finding a more permanent housing solution; one where I'm not just flushing money into the rent toilet.
I really wish I'd gotten on the ball sooner here, so I could have a place by New Years. Not looking likely, though. Such is the price of being an eternal procrastinator!
Posted by Kevin Carruth on 2004-12-13 @ 13:44:44
... and they've gone and screwed it up!
Most people on IMDb's boards are bitching that Jessica Alba is playing Sue Storm, which is a racial change from the comics. These same people complained when Michael Clarke Duncan was cast as Kingpin in "Daredevil" and I think he did a great job. So this, I don't care about.
But Dr Doom, oh how could they? In apparent Hollywood tradition, they go and goof up the bad guy costume. Sometimes, with the elaborate outfits in the comics, I understand. Green Goblin's facemask would have been a pretty hard thing to do. But Doom is metal armor with a green cowl. How hard can this be?
Apparently too hard. Instead, they're giving him what looks like a leather trenchcoat. Yay, Dr Doom is now going Matrix-style!
On the left, we have the comic-book Dr Doom. On the right, the movie bastardization.
/sigh. He's one of my favorites, too. I'm so disappointed.
Posted by Kevin Carruth on 2004-12-06 @ 13:44:07
Yeah, well, I started my new job 2 weeks ago, got my first paid holidays that week, and WoW came out.
The combination of those things has caused my absence from posting here.
So... yeah.
What's new? Not much. Spending most of my time playing World of Warcraft (WoW), sleeping, and working. Missing all my regular TV shows, though I'm going to try to catch SVU this week. Got Spider-Man 2 on DVD but haven't had a chance to watch it yet. Maybe this week...
Picked up a wireless mouse this weekend; it's so nice not to have to yank the cord every half hour or so like I used to. The box claims that the batteries will last for 'up to 6 months' but I think this is BS. Maybe for someone who uses the computer once a week this is true, but for a constant user like me, we'll see. Luckily it uses AA's so finding replacements will be easy.
Now I need to start looking for a place to live. The whole reason I wanted to get a new job was so I knew where I'd be working before I move out. Now, I have the job, gotta move out. I was going to look for a place over thanksgiving break, but never got around to it thanks to an all-nighter or two of WoW. Same for this past weekend. Next weekend I have an airsoft game in Richmond as well, so I don't think anything's gonna happen then either. And with the holidays coming up, I may just hold off and wait till the beginning of next year.
As for the new job, so far it's not bad. A little boring, but then again it's all been orientation. Had a few days of meetings about benefits and such, and now I'm trying to learn my way around the system I'm going to be supporting. Specifically, I'm going to be a programmer for UVa's Toolkit, the online system for faculty and students to post all sorts of course information like grades, reading materials, assignments, etc.
Go figure, the whole thing is on a Unix server with no FTP set up so I'm kinda stuck with using SSH and command-line editors. Bleh! I've been trying to learn emacs some today, might fiddle with vi as well; pico just isn't very good, and if I'm going to be doing a lot of this kind of editing, I'm going to need a good editor.
Really, there's no reason I can't work in this environment. After all, that's how I started with this site. I just miss my UltraEdit syntax highlighting and multi-document editing. (Though emacs claims to be able to do this, it's just not the same as windows tabs!)
I now maintain yet another website, that of my WoW guild. I didn't do the graphic design on this one, but much like the VAF site, I'm the scripter and tech man.
The worst part about doing these kinds of sites is that you put all your effort into making this totally badass,