Umbral Echoes Blog

…is being bored.  Sure, the splitting headache, stomach ache, hot and cold flashes, and general fatigue and aching all suck.  But what’s worse is that I have to sit in bed, doing nothing other than play around on the laptop from time to time, as the other symptoms will allow.

In other news, Cary is going to be in the ATL on Monday!  I plan to throw a welcoming party for him on Friday (not today (he’s not here today (how do you like those multiple parentheticals, hmm?)), but a week from today) here at the house.  So if any of you reading this can make it, then come on down!

While my dad was visiting this past week, I showed him around the city a bit — took him to the Aquarium, to a few of the malls, and we even visited the UPS corporate headquarters in Sandy Springs.   I apparently used to live just down the road from it; who knew?  That was an… interesting experience.  My dad wanted to just drive there and walk in, to have a look around.  My response was along the lines of, “…Can we do that?  I don’t think we can.  In fact, I’m pretty sure of it.”  “Danny said we could just go to the front gate and I could show my ID, and they’d let me in.”  “With no appointment or anything?  Well… okay.”  (I apologize to the grammar-conscious out there, for not separating all of those quotes into different paragraphs; I thought it best to save precious screen real estate.)

Predictably, that didn’t work out as well as dad hoped.  Surprisingly though, we did get in.  All the men there were in 3-piece suits, all the women in similarly dressy outfits.  I was wearing khaki pants and a business-casual polo, and my dad was wearing… a t-shirt and shorts.  We got many an odd look; in fact, I’d say that a lot of the people there were outright fearful, looking at us as if we were random hobos who wandered in, or perhaps terrorists.  This was reinforced when my dad took a picture of the building from the cafeteria area, and I swear not 30 seconds later, the head of security was walking up to us asking us who we were and what we were doing there.  After a brief explanation, he let us know that normally pictures aren’t allowed, but that since my dad was an employee he’d allow it.  He suggested we have a look at the 3rd and 5th floors, then left us on our merry way.  No doubt to go watch us on security cameras like a hawk.   The rest of the visit was uneventful, though there was a nice open-air garden area on the 5th floor.

I really should update this thing more often.  I’ll blame sickness this time.  But soon, I shall have an interesting post about absinthe for you.

Oh yes, also: Kirstie and I will be visiting home starting Thursday, July 19th through that weekend.  Hide your alcohol and your daughters, Louisville.

Last weekend my friend Clark was getting married in Terre Haute, IN.  For those of you not familiar with Indiana, the things to do include:

1. Grow corn.
2. Watch corn grow.
3. Play basketball.
4. Smoke pot.

The boy really needs to move to Atlanta.  Anyway, the drive up started at 5:30am, which would have been worse had I actually driven any of it myself.  Instead, I got to sleep.

The bachelor party, due to general lack of funds and disease-free or attractive (either one or the other would have sufficed) strippers in Terre Haute, mainly involved drinking, and setting things on fire.  Specifically, a couch.  With gasoline.  And fireworks.

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My friend Cary is going to be moving to Atlanta — he got a gig as a paid programming intern for the World of Darkness MMO.  And if he does well with that for 2-3 months, then he’ll be hired on as  a “real” programmer.  He might possibly be bunking here; such details are yet to be determined.  There shall be a welcoming party with much booze, oh yes.  Yes indeed.

For those who don’t know Mandy, he plays on Criminal Minds, and also the HBO series Dead Like Me. Also, he played Inigo Montaya in The Princess Bride.

Samantha linked me to this video today; it’s the first time I’ve actually laughed out loud from something on the Internet in some time. Enjoy

There was a minor upgrade of WordPress available (that’s the software I use to run my blog on my website), so of course I upgraded. Or at least, I tried to. Copied the files, everything worked fine. Ran the upgrade script… PHP vomit all over the screen. Tried tinkering with things to fix it, but unfortunately my web host was having some issues at the time (read: the server was choking again), so that was an aggravating process. Today I finally got things up and running again, though. So let’s cross our fingers, NOT run the latest version, and hope the next version they create doesn’t break things.

I’ve always said that I was a pretty good kid.  I didn’t do drugs, I didn’t run with the “bad crowd.”  I did extracurricular activities.  Yet my mother and I constantly fought anyway.  Then today I remembered this particular story from childhood, and I realized maybe I was more of a little shit than I give myself credit for.

As a bit of background information, I took years of Spanish.  About 11 years total, though my vocabulary is totally lost these days.  My mother also took a bit of Spanish in school, so she knew a few words.

Okay, so three friends had just spent the night.  Next morning, we were at the table eating breakfast, and I randomly ask, “¿Mama, dónde está tu cabeza?” (Mom, where is your head?)

She looks over and replies, “What, the cheese?  The cheese is in the fridge.”

My friends snickered, and I immediately responded, “Sí, es queso.”  (Yeah, it’s cheese.)  Laughter ensues, as does a confused expression on my mother’s face.

I had another great idea recently. I was going to keep it to myself, but a few friends told me that I should share things such as this with the world. So, I present you my idea:

Master Rogers’ Neighborhood

This show will be like Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, except… not. Master Rogers enters the scene, walking down creaky stairs into a faintly lit dungeon. He’s wearing a leather mask, one of those studded strappy Dom harnesses, a thick belt with floggers and other toys attached,  a leather thong, and a pair of spiked boots. He sits on one sub who is crouched over on elbows and knees, puts his boot onto another which is lying flat on the floor, and unlaces boots. Then unzips the mask, puts it on a spike on the wall, stands (on sub #2), and says, “Good evening, subbies. Today, we’re going to learn about electro-torture. Can you say ‘violet wand’? I thought that you could.”

Seriously, someone should make this show. You know you would watch it.

White Wolf, as most people reading this probably know, is developing an MMORPG.  They’re currently filling positions for programmers and other such things.  One position that they can’t seem to fill is that of female game designer — currently, the design team is all males.  And, wanting the game to be appealing to women too, they want a female designer.  Except they can’t seem to find anyone for the position.  There’s even an article at ComputerWorld.com about the general lack of females in game development.

So come on, ladies.  Job opportunity right here!  Where all the lady game designers at?

My friend Cary came down to apply for a job doing MMORPG programming for the upcoming World of Darkness game, and he picked quite a good weekend to come; partying abounded all weekend long.

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I come home the other day to find this attached to my door.  Warning: text in full-size version is not necessarily work safe.

I love my friends.  🙂