Goddess Grant Me

The power of Water, to accept with ease & grace what I cannot change,
The power of Fire, for the energy & courage to change the things I can,
The power of Air, for the ability to know the difference,
And the power of Earth, for the strength to continue my path.

Yikes

Blogger's new layout is busy, cluttered, and just plain weird. This is going to take some getting used to!

End of an Era

Today, they loaded the space shuttle Discovery onto a 747 and flew it from Kennedy Space Center, around the nation's capital, and landed at Dulles International Airport, where it will soon be on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly VA.

The aircraft flew over my office building, which is directly under the Dulles flight path, three times this morning. The first was a bit unexpected because they were ahead of schedule. We all gathered outside waiting for the second flyover, and the third was their landing maneuver.

It was an awesome sight! I'm really glad I got to witness Discovery in the air, even if not under her own power. This video was shot on my iPod from the top of our tiny office parking garage. It's a little shaky at the beginning.





There are some neat things already at the Udvar-Hazy Center: the Enterprise, the Enola Gay, an SR71 Blackbird. If you ever get a chance to go, it is well worth it. Pack a car full of people because parking is $15 but there is no admission fee to get in the center.

I wonder if they'll remove the Enterprise and put Discovery in her place.

Permanence

I took a moment last night to pull some files from my oldest computer of some of the early stuff I've written. The vast majority of it is in a Word Perfect format, which I don't use anymore, and I'm not sure if that old computer can bring it up anymore either. Some things were missing from my writing files altogether, which leads me to believe they're probably on a 3.5 floppy somewhere. (*GASP!* Who still uses those!) That old computer has the 3.5 drive, of course, it's the only computer of mine that does. I suppose I could always bring it to work too. That tower has a drive as well. But, I have to find the disks! Programs like Open Office should be able to read the .wpds that I do have, but I really want to find the tales that are missing and saved to disk too.

I had a private blog at one point some years ago and a few of those early tales (mostly EverQuest fan fiction) were posted to it. I spent some time this morning pulling them off and putting them on a thumb drive. That's certainly not everything, and one of the longer fanfics is even incomplete on the blog. That's a little disturbing. I started writing that story in 2001, and already lost it once six months later due to a computer crash. That's actually when I stopped saving my files only on the computer and started putting them on floppies. I also had one floppy completely die on me and was thankful that I had the forethought to make a back-up. I then made two more. The disks are out there, I know it! Hopefully my drive can still read them!

But it got me thinking. In this digital age, is anything permanent? A computer crash means your files are gone. Those old disk drives wear out eventually. Would my thumb drive do the same? I haven't had one give up the ghost on me yet, but that doesn't mean it won't happen. Is a hard copy the only way to really save something anymore?

I do have hard copies of some of these. Some of the EQ tales were printed out and put in my EQ notebook. I actually self-published that one that I lost in early 2002 via CafePress, and I think I still have the .pdf manuscript file as well. But there are some fanfics I started and never finished. They're only saved on one of those disks. I don't write that kind of story anymore, but some day I might be inspired to finish them. Or to re-write them entirely to take them out of the EverQuest world and put them in their own (thus making it completely original and something I could publish, not that I'm actually looking into publishing anything, but it's a thought nonetheless).

It makes me sad that some things I've written may already be lost forever. I'm surely not a perfect writer, but I must have thought they were good enough to write them down at one point. And it'd be nice to see how my style has grown and changed. Maybe that early stuff could be revised and refreshed. Alas, at this point, my only hope is to find the disks, and to hope they haven't died of old age yet.

Then I think I might have some serious quality time with my printer.

Important Work

I caught Phantom pawing all over the blanket on the bed last night...

What followed was a bath, but the whole video was too much to send from my iPod through e-mail. Apparently he needed to make the bed just the right space for his bath!

Those Free to Play Games

I've been playing Guild Wars for a few years now. If you don't know, it's an MMORPG, and if you don't know what that is, nothing I say from here will make any sense to you! I came to Guild Wars from EverQuest and EQ2. I loved EverQuest so much I was a member of their volunteer customer service program for something like four years. I left the program because of timing, and because the things they required Guides to do changed, and because it seemed the players weren't really all that interested in those changes. It could have been really great, but I had many days with no takers and that was very discouraging.

So, I left the Guide program and became just a regular player. The problem was I didn't play very often (something happened in my guild and no one was ever around to hunt with me and it was all very annoying and you really can't solo in EQ), so I just wasted that monthly fee more times than not. I eventually cancelled my account. But I am a gamer, and I needed a game. I tried Star Wars Online, which was ok but advancement was very slow to me, and I never saw any of the storyline. I played Earth and Beyond for a time, which was a really awesome game, beautifully rendered, but with an incredibly small player base. I never tried WoW, I hated the art style and animation. Then Fox told me about Guild Wars. It was similar to EverQuest, only without the monthly fee. I started to play and I was totally hooked. And I further loved it because it was ok if life got busy and I didn't play for months at a time - I wasn't wasting money in subscription fees.

And I, like millions of others, am eagerly anticipating Guild Wars 2, but I digress.

In that time, Lord of the Rings Online came out, and Final Fantasy Online. I was told that both of these games were absolutely beautiful, but I was just so happy not paying a monthly fee that I didn't try either. It was like the console games my brother and I would play together (Secret of Mana, one of the BEST Nintendo RPGs ever!); you buy a game and play it when you want it. Sure, I advance slower in the game that way, but at least I'm not wasting money!

Just this month, EverQuest launched a free to play model, where you have limited access to the game for free, or you could subscribe to a couple tiers of membership to get even more access. I heard LOTRO did something like this as well. I would love to knock around EverQuest again, just for all the memories. I actually got an e-mail from SOE stating that with their new free to play model, my account had been "upgraded." I think by upgraded, they meant from inactive to active and free.

Now, the thing with EQ's new F2P offering is that it's limited. You only have the option to play four races (no elves) and four classes (no paladins or bards). This is a bit of a hang-up for me, as my two main characters were an Erudite Paladin and a Wood Elf Bard, even my Guide character was a Half Elf Paladin, and I can't recreate any of them! Booo!!!! I could go on and on about the awesomeness of the EverQuest Bard class, but that would be another digression.

I would like to relive my early EQ memories again, even if I can't do it with the same races and classes that I am used to. I have no desire to start playing that game with any regularity so I can totally save on that monthly fee, but just to see some places and jog some memories might be fun.

I remember watching my brother play EQ the first time (my brother and I have this fairly unique ability to get as much enjoyment out of watching someone play a video game as we do playing it ourselves- remind me to tell you about Resident Evil 2 some time!). He was a Wood Elf, and their starting city is high in the trees. He couldn't figure out how to get down to the forest floor where all the baddies were that you had to kill for experience, so he found another player and asked, "Pardon me, I am new, how does one get down from here?"

And the guy, a Barbarian, if I recall, said, "Jump! ‘Tis not far down!" and then he stood up and ran off the edge of the platform. Then my brother gingerly walked to the edge and looked down and there was our Barbarian friend, dead at the bottom. Needless to say, we did not follow his advice and asked someone else, who took us to the lift.

Yeah, I think I might have to log in and knock around a bit. Maybe tomorrow I'll share my first EQ adventure with you!

I Got Mad Skillz

One of my coworkers, Greg, was complaining to me a few weeks ago that a contact kept calling him Gary in correspondence. And one day they called him George! "Greg" isn't a hard name, but they just weren't getting it right, even though all his e-mails back to him were signed with his actual name.

So, I started calling him by a different name when he got to the office in the morning. He was really surprised! Then he decided he was going to play along too, but instead of just finding other names that begin with E, he was going to go through the alphabet. I kept with the G names.

I've used Gilligan, Giles, Gilderoy, Gilgamesh, Graham, Gulliver, Gomez, Garfield, Geordie, Gustav, Gandalf, Gawain, Galileo, Gabriel, Gershwin, and Gaston. This morning he said he was really impressed that I can find so many G names. It's cuz I got mad skillz! I told him I was sure he would run out of alphabet before I ran out of G names. We are almost to the end of the alphabet, and I still have plenty of names!

It was a fun game!

That Is the Question

My awesome artist friend Rain wanted to play around with the colors of my tattoo image and I completely and totally love what she did with it! So, only one question remains.

To outline





Or not to outline?

(this image is a little 'outside of the lines' that the final image will not be, so don't judge on that, please!)

I'm leaning towards the outline because I worry that the yellow flame tips will get lost against my pale hide. It also makes the gradients look cleaner and gives definition to the knotwork. The not outlined one is very nice and I think will give it a more organic feel, something that just fits with the vaguely fiery theme. As always, I'm happy to hear opinions!

Public Service Announcement

If the e-mail address you have for me is from burninglakearts.com or thesaurusarcanum.com, I'm going to shut down these domains and will no longer be using those addresses. I sent an e-mail to all of my contacts (and they are few: I don’t store a lot of e-mails) for two of the three addresses I currently use from those domains. If you did not get an e-mail and you want my current e-mail address(es), let me know and I'll get them to you!

There are several factors to why I'm shutting down my .coms. The first is that I haven't updated either in some years. Something happened on my host’s end and messed ThesaurusArcanum up big time anyway, like it reverted to a previous save or something and I lost a lot of content. Another reason is that I get calls from marketing companies that contract with my host at least twice a day. As I am not a business and do not need to increase the traffic to my sites, this is really irritating. The last reason is that it's expensive to keep them around just for the e-mails (since I haven't been updating the rest of them). I may revisit the world of designing my own websites for the hellofit in the future as I did find it quite fun, but for now I don't need them.

Also, if there's anything particular you want me to save from either site, or information you want to keep, let me know and I'll get that to you as well! My contract just renewed so it will be a bit before I take them down, but it will happen!

One More Year

Happy Birthday, Bro!