Another weekend! Even though this is a purty light week, anyway. lol. Good to have, though…even better that Ruthie is getting back on Sunday. w00t! I do miss her uber fiercely.

So, I’m disassembling my desktop. I think I’m going to stick with a lappy. I’ll still have my server, of course…and I’ll probably get a controller card and put the hard drives into it. The only thing I’m using the desktop for, at this point, is Media Center stuff…but, I could do that with just the server. Since I’m gaming more on the 360, the desktop just seems an unnecessary waste of power.

The bro is coming back around for the weekend. Should be a hoot.

I’ve been playing Call of Duty, which I got for Christmas. Very good game. I had only played the first one up to this point, so it’s a pretty big jump. There’s a pretty good subplot to all of the downing of baddies–not really as “epic” in scale as Halo, but it’s decent.

So, I’ve been in Louisville for the past few days. I’ve been visiting Ruthie and her family–her whole family 🙂 The whole shebang. They’re pretty awesome folks. They certainly made me feel quite welcome. I’m sad to leave; I won’t see Ruthie for another week *sniffle* This makes me quite glum. My phone is dead, too, which makes it even worse because I can’t text her–I had forgotten my AC adapter. D’OH!!!

Anyhoo, Louisville is quite the awesome lil town. It’s almost a mini Chicago in a way–there’s a whole bunch to do here, certainly more than you’d ever hope to find in the rinky-dink lil town that Huntsville is. Very nice part of the country, wonderful town. We went to an art museum the other day which was quite fabulous. They have a Rembrandt here that they’re quite proud of. I think I’ve discovered over the years that I prefer paintings, landscapes at that. They had a number of beautiful such oil paintings there that were quite smashing.

Yesterday, we went to a glass blowing place, which was awesome. I made a really awesome cobalt blue ornament. I think I shall give it to my mom–it’s reminiscent of the days when I was young and I came back home saying “look what I made for you, mom!” lol!

I’m recompiling VLC as we speak–I had trouble with it this morning. Booooo! I hope I can get it going whilst on airport wireless, lest I won’t be able to watch my episodes of Heroes in-flight. D’OH!!! I hate when things break in Linux. hehe.

Anyway, tonight I shall find out whether my fam is going to Atlanta or sticking around Alabama–it all depends on whether or not my bro’s furniture gets into his place or not. He’s lived there about three weeks now, with nothing but an aero-bed. BOOOOOOO!!! I know he found his new apartment before all of that insane midwest weather. They’d best take something off the top for him 😛

Very good stuff. I highly recommend it. The story stuck to the plot of the novel fairly well, save for a couple of key points. It was, by far, much better than The Omega Man. As far as reimaginings go, it was definitely better than Planet of the Apes (the Tim Burton version).

It has its sad moments, and certainly a couple of startling ones, but I would say it’s pretty tame–unfortunately, your loved one will probably not jump in your lap for this one. lol.

Will Smith is just plain awesome. He seems to be a big fan of scifi, for all of the movies in the genre he does. He’s pretty versatile, though.

I had an odd dream last night, but I pretty much forgot what it was as I was waking up. I guess it wasn’t too terribly odd, if I forgot it so easily. lol.

Last day of work until after Christmas. w00t!

startrek.com is shutting down production, effective immediately.

Worth a letter-writing campaign?

So, yup, it was that time again yesterday. It was legendary, as always. You wouldn’t believe the kind of schmack, drivel, song and chant that gets spouted during one of those 🙂 It is absolutely hilarious–probably one of my favorite parts of it all. We played a lil bit of Halo 3 and a lil bit of Gears of War–mind you, about 8 hours worth between the two. Next time, I hope, we’ll all have Call of Duty 4. Aaron was playing a bit of that at the end of the evening, and it looks glorious. It may not be WWII as its predecessors were, but it does look absolutely smashing.

A house burned down the street yesterday 😐 I don’t know if anyone was hurt, but an ambulance was right out front, along with a fire truck and a couple of police cars. I had heard the sirens, but I didn’t realize it had been so close. It’s at the end of the block, on the corner. It appears that the flash point of the blaze was the garage–perhaps they were doing some handyman/woman stuff and things got a bit out of control.

Ruthie’s up in Louisville for the next couple of weeks, chillin’ with the fam there and in Gatlinburg. I’ll be joining her later in the week for a big extended family Christmas party. It should be quite a hoot. I only hope my flight up there isn’t canceled, what with all of this crazy weather going on across the country.

In other news, it looks like the Soviet Union never really died. Now, I know Putin is ex-KGB and all, but daymn. He’s done so much to reverse any semblance of reform from back in the 90s, that they may as well be the Soviet Union–certainly in spirit. Booooooo!!!

It’s 34 frickin’ degrees out there right now. Brrrrrrr!!!

(link)

So, is anyone really all in dire straights about this writer’s strike? It seems that the very idea of it hurts a lot less than it did the last time, back in the late 80s. An end to this strike doesn’t seem to be anywhere in sight. Talks broke down last week, the writer’s are staunch in their position–which is certainly understandable. Internet profits are certainly an untapped resource. Their work is deserving of due compensation, and they aren’t being duly compensated in this arena at this point.

Nevertheless, it’s not the end of the world. I’ll be slightly disappointed that I won’t get to see more Lost for a while, or that the end of Galactica might not happen, or that I won’t see the possible end to Jericho for the next good bit. The disappointment is much slighter these days, though.

TV is not the most important thing on the list right now, nor are movies. The Internet is full of distraction, books are more important to me than when I was as young as I was during the writer’s strike of the 80s.

And the TV studios have it even better…reality shows.

On a brighter note, I’ve gotten Call of Duty to run under Wine in Linux 😀 This makes me happy…it’s my favorite game to play on ye olde computer with the bro.

So, I have some kind of ear infection thing going on, me thinks. I don’t know. I’m headed to the doc later this morning to get it checked out. It feels like there’s cotton in my ear whenever I lay on my right side for an extended period. It almost feels the way my ears felt whenever I was on a family trip and needed to use ear plugs to keep my folks’ snoring at a tolerable noise level. lol. They were the silicon jobs that you put over the opening. When I took them out in the morning, my ears would still feel plugged 😐 It makes me wonder if some of that gunk ever got in here… 😐

If not, if that’s just dire pondering, then perhaps it’s just a crazy little ear infection. It seems like whatever it is that’s causing it started about a week or so ago. It only happens when I lay on my right side for a time. Maybe I should lay on my right side when I am given a room at her office. lol.

Compound this with having awakened at 3am because of it, and I am not one happy camper this morning 😐

So, a bunch of friends and I watched the first part of Tin Man…