Val · (the · real · me)

Well friends, I know it's been a REAL long time since I've posted...
Mostly due to the fact that they have blocked LJ at work. It really sucks.
But also because I have been tortured with calculus and children and it's hard for me to find time to post.
Right now, that's what my life consists of. Work, school, children and trying to pay for it all. (Except, I don't pay for work. Nosiree...)
You see, if it took that long to explain it, imagine living it. The only downtime I get is filled with RPGs and Netflix... That's right NetFlix... If you don't have it yet...

*Sound of my palm hitting your face* GET IT NOW!
If you don't have cable (which I don't) and you like to rent movies, GET NETFLIX.
they have a better selection than ANY local rental store and they are generally cheaper.
Think about it: If you go to Blockbuster and rent 3 movies, it'll cost you about $10-$12.
Now if you turned those movies in two nights after and decided to rent 3 more movies again it would cost you $10-$12. Which comes to between $20-$24...
That's all Netflix costs in a month for 3 DVD whenever you get your previous three in to them. the turnover rate is this... Let's say on Monday I get 3 movies... I watch all three and mail them out on Tuesday. They get em and send out my next three on Wednesday and on Thursday I get those in the mail. Technically I could watch all three once more and send THOSE back on Friday and get something on Tuesday (they don't ship on Saturday but if they ship it on Friday you can get it Saturday.) Anyway, that's already much less cash than if you went to Blockbuster 3 times.

Crap, I didn't mean for this to turn into a pitch... I shall move on.

But, on another note, (and I know someone who will REALLY dig this as much as me) they seem too be planning on resurrecting the cold dead ashes of one of our favorite British sci-fi's...

Blake's 7

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/36517

That's right, America: Blake, Avon, Cassie and the rest of the gang that we know and love are coming back (I'm certain it's not the same actors) for a spot of trying to cash in on the older shows being redone. Let's just hope they get a guy with a curly brown afro to play Blake. That'd be really cool.

Wait... I have a curly brown afro... *crosses fingers* Please, please, please, cast me as Blake... I'd be the envy of my friends. It doesn't matter that my acting experience is limited to LARPs and a third grade play where I was Smoky the Bear.

Anyway, how are you? :-)

So.

I will once again tell you of the crap that is my office.

A) The urinal in the men's room doesn't work. It isn't properly attached to the wall and when someone flushes it, Niagara Falls comes from the wall...

B) This wouldn't be so bad if the commode worked properly. It usually works, but sometimes (whenever it rains. I live in Florida... I don't think we get rain. We get Earth Deluges. Seriously, we get rain even if the sun is shining) it backs up and doesn't work. Ditto for the women's room.

C) The sticky stuff used to hold the tiles down in the kitchen seeps through the tile cracks because the office used to hold a print shop and whatever chemicals the print shop used nulls the glue and makes it seep through the cracks. SO, if you don't watch your step, your shoe will suddenly gain a sticky spot and you will have it throughout the remainder of your day.

D) The circuit breaker is so old that you can't run the microwave and coffee pot at the same time... This has distinct drawbacks.

E) Not all of the lights in the office work. They are fluorescent lights that you see in offices the world over. BUT, these were recycled because they were already in the building before they re-constructed the interior to make way for actual office space instead of the electrician school/ print shop that it once was. So instead of dealing with the flickering of the lights right over my head, I've just gone ahead and pulled the bulbs from the lights right above my cubicle.

F) (And this is the kicker) The AC went out today. Did I mention that I live in South Florida where there are three temperatures? OH, ITS FUCKING HOT! Hot. Almost Hot.
Occasionally we get some Cool or Cold, but that's like one or two days out of the year.
Today is Hot. So the inside of the office (with no windows) is very hot.
I have a fan, but when I sit in front of the fan it's like sleeping in front of the fireplace during a REAL winter.
One side is hotter than hell and the other side is cold. That's how I feel.
I feel like a frozen burger that's on the griddle and somebody forgot to turn me over.

On Teusday and Thursday mornings at 9.30 I have class. Pre-Calculus to be exact. But today, my day has been extraordinarily odd.

I woke up this morning and got ready for class, kissed my family goodbye and got into my truck to go to class. I decided that I should just head on to school instead of falling to the temptation of Dunkin Donuts coffee and sugary evils that have a hole in them.

I was at a stop light on the way to school and there is a Public Bus sitting on the side of the road with a County Supervisor behind it and a cop behind him.

Then I see my dad (who drives these buses for a living) come around thefront of the bus so I honk at him to get his attention. He comes over and he says that he nicked the car in front of him lightly while sitting at the stoplight with the bike rack that hangs on the front of the bus so folks can ride their bikes to the bus stops. I tell him that I'm glad it's nothing more than a minor annoyance and continue on my way.

I get to the school about 30 minutes ahead of class time usually I do this so I can study the material but since we're starting something new today, I decide just to sit in an Air Conditioned public area and read my book.

After about 15 minutes of chilling out, all the lights in the place go out.
This particular building has many, many windows so the sun shines very well into this place and the AC takes a while to dissipate so I decided not to leave until class time anyway.

When the time came, I walked over to the building that houses my class and was greeted in the dark hallway by a classmate and she said that we were supposed to evacuate the building. Indeed, the teacher showed up then and started shooing folks out the door.

After we got outside, we waited for the power to come back on and it didn't so class was cancelled. OK, I said, I can just get to work earlier than normal.

I got BACK into my truck and started to leave when I realized that the stop lights all around the campus were out so getting off campus was a beast.

I take two linked highways from school to work, the link between these two highways is a VERY high bridge with two lanes. Somehow they had one whole lane shut down and they had two guys going at the walls with garden hoses...
I'm not kidding. Not pressure washers, but regular, green, garden hoses.

Talk about freaky. I didn't even go into the whole gas-station debacle on my way to said highway.

( This is the worst of it. Those with weak constitutions please do not continue. Seriously. )

So... I was playing around in Google Earth and decided to see what they added since the last time I updated...

First, (before the Cthulu stuff) they now have what they call Google Sky...
IT... FUCKING... RAWKS!!! You can now invert your view and look at the sky. Including (but not limited to) constellations and pictures from the Hubble Telescope of far away galaxies and other near and outer space pictures, etc.
Pretty awesome.

Next I decided if I could find R'lyeh which for those of you who don't know is the city where Cthulu is imprisoned until it rises to the surface again.
And LO! there did I find it. Actually I found about 3 entries as to the exact location.

If you have Google Earth you can turn on different layers and if turn on the layer that allows the Google Earth Community to post stuff you can find these entries in the South Pacific.

Nearby is the supposed "most remote place on the oceans of Earth" stating that this is the furthest place from any land on Earth you will find.

Perhaps, HP Love craft new that and that's why he made R'lyeh be here.

So download Google Earth (it's free) and besides the hours of checking out the entire world in aerial format you can now see where R'lyeh is if you feel like trying to resurrect Cthulu.

Darkness.

I awoke last night to the sound of scraping on the sliding glass doors.
Not the dog barking. It puzzled me.
As I was coming awake though I could hear the sounds of screaming from the neighbors and I wondered what was happening. So I grabbed the steel-headed mace that lies under my bed and I decided to see what was happening.

An explosion went off outside far away as I climbed down the stairs. The quiet and the darkness gave me the heebies but I still continued down the stairs to the back of the house where the glass doors was located.
I slowly wondered where my family was but then I remembered that they were out of town. But not the dog. she stays with the house. And she wasn't barking.

I reached the bottom of the stairs into the darkness of the front room. I stood by the front door and could hear more sounds like screams and car doors slamming. Walking slowly towards the front windows I could tell it was still night time and that I should be sleeping.

I reached the front windows and stuck a couple of fingers through the dark wood blinds to part them so I could see out the window.
My neighbors were throwing suitcases and other things into their cars as if they were leaving in a great hurry. Still, my sleep fogged brain didn't comprehend the panicked looks on their faces.

I shook my head at the craziness of the people that are my neighbors and headed towards the back of the house. Still no sign of the dog.

I walked past the kitchen which was too black to see into and I reached the glass doors which was my destination.
the sounds now sounded less like scraping and more like something wet sliding up and down the glass. Reaching over to the right I found the pole that turns the blinds open so that they can be opened all the way.
It was still pretty dark, but my eyes were adjusting.

As I turned the pole the blinds turned in sync and I could see the night through the glass. On the ground scratching to get in was the dog.
No wonder she wasn't barking. I forgot to let her back in before falling asleep.
I reached through the left side of the blinds to open the door and let her in when I noticed that she was acting hurt or something. So I let her in and the sounds and smells of the night wafted in with her.

The burning and the screams were poignant. Enough to distract me from the dog coming in the door by my feet.

"What the hell's going on?" I ask the dog.
Of course she only replies by wanting to be pet. I oblige.

Her hair is wet and I think that the sprinklers must have come on while she was out there. I decide to step out of the door and into the fenced backyard to see what the hell WAS going on. I couldn't see the street that runs behind my house through the 7 foot tall wooden box fence so I go to the gate and open it.

The dog tags along. Normally, I would tell her to get back into the house so I don't have to chase her down the street, but something tells me not to.

Opening the wooden gate I notice that one of my neighbors house is on fire and that must be where the burning smell is coming from and why the other neighbors are packing there stuff up. Being a townhome complex I could see why they would be somewhat panicked. but I think they were over-reacting.

I step into the yard between the fence and the road and stop dead in my tracks. Less than 1000 yards away where houses and a street and trees should be is a crater.
I cannot see the far side of it, but I can see the orange glow coming from somewhere inside.
I can also see that my townhome complex should have been destroyed. There were others that had fallen. I can see hundreds of people around the crater, but they were walking funny as if they were plagued by a stiffness.

I feel the dog lick my hand and I look down at here thinking she was REAL lucky because she must've been outside when whatever this was occurred.

Kneeling down I give her a hug and think that she smells funny.

That's when the dawning came. It was death. The funny smell. It was coming off of the dog. I leaned back a little to get a good look at her and I realize that she was missing an eye. One of her legs was missing a foot and that was the leg she was using to scratch at the doors to get in.

I realized that she was a zombie. I looked back at the people on the rim of the crater and realized that they were all zombies. I notice the cars that were lying on the sides of the road in heaps of junk, some of their drivers still halfway hanging out of the windows in like forgotten puppets. I also realize the gory remains of someone was not 30 feet from where I kneel in the semi-darkness petting the bloodied fur of my undead dog.

I scream.

PS - OK. I'm not the world's most talented writer, but blogging like the end of the world/zombies is fun. It's probably a bit painful to read, but read it anyway.

So.

As of today, I have worked at my job for 10 years.
You never imagine when you start a new job that you would be working for them 10 years later. You think to yourself that something is probably gonna happen between here there.

When it doesn't you wonder if you missed anything along those 10 years.

*SHRUG*

Not sure if I did, not sure if I didn't. If I did miss something, then I guess it's too late to notice it now anyway.

My company doesn't really so anything for heir employees for tenure of service. But the folks at my office pitched in for some ice cream cake which was cool and since it was a Carvel cake it was good as well. They also bought me lunch, so there you have it.

Maybe 10 years down the line I'll looks back and say, "20 years at the same job? I wonder if I missed anything along the way."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070425/ap_on_sc/habitable_planet

In my mind it's statistically impossible that there would be no other planets near enough to our own to be even theoretically habitable. I just knew that it would take time to find it.

Now, this planet might be a bit different due to the 20ish light year distance from here. But how much is a planet that is probably uninhabited by humans gonna really change in 20 years.

Of course, if there is intelligent life on this planet that is near our own... Well, I feel that any intelligent life that we find in the universe won't be exactly how we imagine it.

My only regret is that we don't have the technology currently available to research this planet much further in my lifetime. Now, if we were to somehow miraculously get the tech, implement it then gather up the funds to send a probe of some sort to this planet within my lifetime that would be pretty cool. (OK, that's not necessarily the most intelligent statement.)

Either way, it's a shame that the governments of the world have a deadlock on most of the research in the field of space propulsion. And this kind of technology is usually based on fundage that can be cut at any time by power hungry bureaucrats.
What we need is a distinct privatization of these kinds of research. Guaranteed, that if there was a way to make money off this, we'd have a better propulsion solution than we do now.

It's the same with this energy crisis. At the risk of sounding like one of those conspiracy nuts, I think one of the best ways to get a new energy solution would be to talk the Big Oil companies into making money on it. They have to know that we are running desperately low on oil supplies. If we don't do something about this now, then the world will be stuck with some crap that the government funded agencies concoct to please their deadlines and not something that would be good in the long run.

For example... Ethanol? Have we lost our minds? Folks I do admit that this does burn cleaner and does reduce the general out put of "greenhouse" gases. But this in my mind is a temporary solution. Very temporary. But knowing our government, we'll get force fed this crap for years because folks have gotten rich off it and then we'll be in the same boat because "Big Corn" (small joke) will have tamped down other discoveries through smear campaigns and just by buying off the creators.

Sorry, I didn't mean to start preaching about this stuff and now that I've gone completely off topic I'll say this in closing. I know that I normally don't go on so about things like this, but it stems from my view of the inability of our government to get off it's collective ass and find us a better propulsion system. In order for that to happen, a better fuel system has to be found, and the current ideas are not the solutions.

So. Once again FPL has pissed me off to the point that I wish to strangle the nearest one.
Monday morning, I woke up in an excellent mood, I didn't forget my lunch, and I was arriving to work early so that I may finish my work early and possibly leave work early.

At least that was the plan.

When I arrived at work the lights were out. This normally isn't that big of a deal since the lights go out around my office all the freakin' time. So when the lights came back on I booted up my computer and went in search of coffee.

I got my coffee and sat at my desk and as I was opening up work, the lights went out again.

This time when the lights came back on, I was mildly peeved, but decided to continue on as if nothing happened.

When I rebooted my computer, I got "The Blue Screen of Death."
I tried everything I know to get that damn thing working, but the Blue Screen kept popping up.

Eventually (about 10ish) I decided that it was time to call in the Cavalry and notify the IT department.

Silly me, they never show their faces until at least 10.30.
So I had to wait. Meanwhile the lights were still going on and off at regular intervals.

Eventually I was able to contact IT and they told me that I fragged my hard drive and consequently had to send the whole tower to Miami where the IT folks are so they could try to get any info off there that they could.

Well, I knew by now that the hard drive had to be replaced and that any info would become MIA. I had a brief moment where the pictures I had of my kids would have fallen to the black hole of Hard Drive crashes, but then I remembered that I burned a CD of them and took them home to my Hard Drive there. Go me.

So, all of Monday was spent pulling out my hair and cursing FPl.

Today I'm on someone else's machine until mine gets a new hard drive and they reinstall all the software I had...

ATTENTION MARINESS!

THERE WILL NOT BE AN ABERRANT GAME TONIGHT DUE TO THE SICKNESS OF THE GM!
IF YOU WISH TO PARTICIPATE IN A HOME-GROWN SCI-FI GAME USING D20 FUTURE RULES, THEN PLEASE FEEL FREE TO STOP BY ANYWAY!

THAT IS ALL!