Seems like I promised you fine folks a look at my Christmas haul a few days ago and then never followed up on it. Here ’tis.

This is one of the Star Warsiest Christmases of my entire adulthood. We have here the “Rebuild Darth Vader” deluxe action figure, the Trivial Pursuit Star Wars DVD game, and another copy of the Tales Of The Jedi audio dramatization. (I’ll be exchanging that one; I already had a copy and could’ve sworn that my lovely wife knew about it, but then again, I got it just before November sweeps, a dark period where we just didn’t get to see each other, at all.) Also got the first two Planetary hardbacks (thanks Dave!), this year’s Hallmark Star Trek ship ornament (the movie-era Enterprise, still the best looking of the bunch), and some new work boots and gloves. Also, a book written by Apollo 15 astronaut Jim Irwin. I also got a Wal-Mart card, which finally helped me snag We Love Katamari (a.k.a. Katamari Damacy 2) and some blank DVDs, one of which now has the Doctor Who Christmas episode on it (OK, I’ll admit, I’m just showing off there). Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the three gifts my wife gave to me early (the travel Scrabble set and two CDs from the new Chronicles Of Narnia flick: the soundtrack itself and the ‘music inspired by…’ CD) and the complimentary copy of “Confessions Of The Game Doctor,” signed by none other than Bill Kunkel himself. Granted, that last one was so I could do a book review, but it was still darn nice of him to send it.

Anyway, this being the last entry for 2005, I’d like to throw out many thanks to my friends, family, internet cohorts and animals for putting up with me another year. I know it isn’t easy sometimes. Here’s hoping that 2006 is kind to all of us.

For your viewing pleasure (and probably intense amusement), I’ve added a couple of pages to the multimedia section: a selection of rediscovered artwork from 10-11 years ago, and an equally rediscovered (and quite by accident!) video clip for your amusement. This one isn’t cats, horses or tornado damage, I promise.

I’ll see you on the flipside.

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I was blessed with a slow night at work tonight, and so I set about a complete revamp of my work section, WordPress-style, and even added some spots which ran just recently. There’s still a lot to be done - much of the material between 1995-97 remains to be added - but all of the video segments have been converted to Flash (actually, they were converted a long time ago, but I’d never gotten around to making those Flash videos “live”), with over 100 spots viewable as video files (!!), some of which weren’t even viewable in the previous MPEG links.

There’s still some fine-tuning needed to the “look” of that section, but I think it’s kinda dandy. Bit of a trip down memory lane putting it together all over again.

And before anyone asks - I am actually considering allowing folks to register and make comments in the work section. Though that thought may change the next time I change my socks, one never knows. If the “comment” option suddenly vanishes, you’ll know.

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Did you ever have an idea that was so good you just wanted to drop everything else in favor of it? I have - fairly recently too. And the sad thing is, I’ve had several of these ideas, one on top of the other, that are all such good ideas, I want to pursue them all. Which necessitates winning the lottery and quitting my day job. Seriously though, this latest idea is intensely cool, and hopefully you’ll see it on the site before 2006 is out. Because I know, deep down inside, you’ve always wanted to be a fiddygibber. I mean, we all have at one time or another, haven’t we?

As the year winds down, I thought I’d reflect on some of the cool stuff that’s happened this year. In fact, let’s make it a bit of a countdown. Continue Reading »

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Christmas 2005 has come and gone, and I got some neat stuff, a belly full of food, and some good family time out of the deal. But I know you don’t want to hear about that stuff. You wanna hear the latest cat gossip. I took about half an hour to go out to the hay barn, where the Barn Kitties live at my sister-in-law’s place, to catch up with an old friend.

It’s Sampson! Though a bit shy at first, Sammy Cat seemed to remember me after smelling my hands, and he was more than happy to renew our friendship and let me sit in the nice windbreak of hay bales with he and his new family…

Continue Reading »

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So alas, after almost exactly four years, the time has come to part with my Dish Network service. Many factors play into this, but the main one is purely financial: I’m already paying for cable just to get the internet. Simultaneously paying for Dish Network service, especially when we’re paying for a two-receiver package and the second receiver hasn’t even been hooked up to power since we’ve lived at our current house, is just nutty - especially when, in the end, we’re essentually watching channels that we could watch on cable. Our local cable system finally caved in and put Sci-Fi Channel and HGTV on expanded basic. This really just leaves one satellite channel that I’ll really miss…and that’s NASA Select, which really doesn’t merit $60+ a month. I’d rather have the sixth bucks.

That our satellite guy never showed up again after January 2000 to run the cable over to my game room for the second receiver certainly didn’t help. At one point, I even called Dish to let them know that I’d be more than happy to turn over that second receiver to them if it’d save a buck or two. No dice. We were signed up for a two-receiver package, and a two-receiver package was therefore what we were stuck with. Alas.

Got some gaming in today - some Atari vector classics on the PS1: Space Duel, Tempest, and Battlezone. I don’t think anyone’ll be mistaking me for someone who’s any good at the above games anytime soon, though.

I’ve also been reading, as an e-book on my handheld PC, the first Honor Harrington book, On Basilisk Station. It’s a bit better than I expected, though you’re well past the halfway point before things really start cooking. I’ll have a more comprehensive review down the road, but at the moment I can honestly say my biggest problem is pacing. David Weber abruptly hits the pause button in the middle of the book’s most intense space battle to spend several pages explaining the evolution of FTL flight in the Honorverse, and all the while, I’m thinking “That’s great, Weber, but WHAT’S GOING ON WITH THE FIGHT RIGHT NOW FOR GOD’S SAKE?” There are a few times where the exposition/backstory just cuts right into a big moment and I just go arrrrrrgggghh!

Stay tuned - I’m hoping to come back from Christmas with some brand new photos and video of Sampson. My little yellow fuzzy boy’s all grown up now. *sniff*

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I’ve been plagued by a great deal of self-doubt lately about my future. I do know that I don’t want to be doing what I’m doing now, not even some variation on it, for the rest of my life. I’m not talking about the audiovisual work. I’m talking about the news angle of it, and possibly even the broadcast TV angle of it. I’ve been in this business since I was in high school, which means we’ve now officially reached the point where I can say I’ve been in the same business for over half my life, and every instinct of which I’m capable has been telling me lately that It’s Time For A Change. I know I have employable skills, but I’m finding that I’m at a loss for how to use them.

So, in the new year, I’m looking at going back to school, full-time. I’ve resisted that idea in years past, because on some level it just felt a little bit lazy compared to what I’ve been doing (even though I know getting a degree is damned hard work), almost as if I’d be retreating to school and admitting that I’m a failure where work is concerned, and I’ve blown a previous attempt at going to college before, and I don’t want to accumulate the debt. There’s enough debt as it is, says my house, every time I open its door and walk inside. But on a certain level, I feel that my current position at work is untenable in the extreme - I’m rapidly zooming up to a point where I’ll probably have some kind of on-the-job meltdown where they’ll have to get rid of me. Despite some personnel changes, I’m still not off the treadmill yet - there are just different faces keeping me on it. And as good as the company I work for is where benefits are concerned, they clearly show more preference to people who are Climbing The Ladder than people who’d prefer to serve in their current position and be better compensated for it. (I’m not sure why that is, really - you can only climb so far on the ladder before you hit a ceiling and leave the company anyway.)

But at the same time, I recognize that I have limits, and that I’m approaching the limits of my patience and sanity at breakneck speed in my current job. Something’s got to give sooner or later, and I’d rather that happened with an admission that I don’t want to do this anymore than with my doing or saying something that suddenly makes me unemployable. I’m not entertaining any illusions that it’ll be easy starting over again as a college freshman when I’m turning 34, and then having to reboot my career at the age of 38 or 40. But I also find that preferable to turning 40 in the business I’m in right now with no dignity or sanity left to show for it.

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I hadn’t been home from work long before I had to pay a visit to the captain’s chair tonight, and as is often the case when I have most of the house to myself, I left the door open, and again, as usual, Xena parked her big fuzzy butt just outside the bathroom door and laid only her chin on the tile, her eyes big and sleepy.

Shortly after 3:00am, I began hearing a strange noise. At first I thought it was the wind, but we weren’t due for the kind of wind that makes high-pitched shrieks of its own accord tonight. Then I saw Xena perk up and growl toward the east side of the house. And the sounds became louder, and seemed to cross from the east to the west, seemingly just on the other side of the exterior wall facing south. At this point, due in no small part to being in something that could reasonably be described as a vulnerable position, I was getting distinctly unnerved by the whole thing. It was the sound of dogs. A lot of dogs. An awful lot of awfully noisy dogs.

Coyotes!

Needless to say, I didn’t show my face, and I sure as hell didn’t let Xena out the door, which she was practically bucking to do. I have no doubt that my dog would do anything to protect my home, but I value her enough as a companion to rein her in when stuff like this happens. I’ve heard mountain lions screeching before, an equally if not more unnerving auditory experience that sounds somewhat like what I imagine one would hear if a woman was being brutally murdered nearby, and this experience was right up there with that. Ah, life in the country.

The first mountain lion screech of the season can’t be far off…

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Hopefully you’re getting your Christmas shopping wrapped up. The stores are being picked bare! I was listening to some friends recently lamenting the state of the market on the Xbox 360, and the fact that so many of the consoles - which Microsoft doesn’t seem to have made enough of - are winding up in the hands of scalpers. I also mentioned recently that I had gotten back into the Star Wars action-figure-collecting swing of things, and all of this stuff combined reminded me of a really funny and amazingly bold fellow we saw at the first “midnight run” for Phantom Menace toys in May, 1999 in Green Bay. As I’ve mentioned in the past, this event was a circus compared to a similar “midnight run” I experienced in 2002, when the Attack Of The Clones toys hit the shelves; on that occasion, it was about seven fully grown men waiting behind a rope at Wal-Mart to get a look (and yes, I was one of ‘em). But the 1999 midnight run was such a cross-section of every extreme of fandom - including, again, the fellow in Jedi robes who roller-skated through the store, buying nothing and blasting John Williams tunes from his enormous jam box - that I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

There was another slice of fandom in attendance at that event: the Opportunist.

This smartly-dressed fellow - well, as smartly-dressed as one would expect someone in Green Bay to be at midnight on a weeknight - snatched up the rather slim supply of 12-inch Darth Maul dolls very quickly. He then stood between the registers and the store aisles, offering them to anyone within just-above-a-whisper range for $20 a pop.

Understand: he hadn’t bought them. He wasn’t selling them to you for $20. He was asking $20 to let go of them so you could take one and go through the register and actually pay for it there. Unfortunately, having balls the size of the Death Star didn’t prevent this guy from being relieved of his handful of Maul and escorted out of the store. That wasn’t chutzpah. Watto had chutzpah. This was just stupid. Just the fact that he was pitching his wares - which, after all, weren’t even his wares to pitch - at a conspiratorial whisper was just so instantly suspicious and yet uproariously funny. He might as well have been selling death sticks. I half expected him to wave two fingers in the air to convince people to “buy” them.

Hey, little girl, you want a Sith Lord?

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