Category: Uncategorized

Why is it that whenever I think about how I haven’t updated my blog in awhile, my mind immediately goes blank? In lue of any actual topic to post about, I will now spout several random thoughts:

* Right now, I am sucking on a piece of hard Tamarind flavored candy.

* It is relatively difficult to track down the spelling of the phrase “in lue of”.

* Laura has a relatively new blog. I think we’re through pretending that I don’t read it. I like the design of her old blog much better.

* She and I are members of TCUC, the largest unicycle club in the world, and next week we’ll be at a national Unicycling convention. (Wednesday night we unicycled in the Minneapolis Aquatennial’s Torchlight Parade. I didn’t juggle torches because I didn’t think there were enough to go around, but it turns out several people had some extras in their cars.)

* I am currently reading A Brave New World, which I realized recently was sorely lacking from my education. It is both a classic, and science fiction! So far it is damn good, even though there hasn’t been much plot.

* I told Jason on monday that I was going to post about how he is the inspiration for many unattributed links in my blog entries. (He is!)

* Yesterday, for a work “party” I sat in a dunk tank. I also rang the “strong man bell” 5 for 5 (It must have been set on a “whimpy” setting.) I also mentioned to a co-worker this guy I know named Tiny who runs the strong man bell thingy out at ren-fest.

* Last night I fixed a problem with my driver’s side car window where it wouldn’t roll back up. Turns out some bolts had just randomly unbolted themselves.

* My Tamarind candy is now gone.

Last night I saw a guy riding one of these Trikke thingies. This looks almost as fun as riding a segway, and I can find them for only $150 on ebay! (now if only I had some spare cashola.)

Speaking of cashola, I was caller #6 (of 7) this morning for tickets to see the Love Cars this Thursday at the Triple Rock. It burrrrrns, it buuuuurrrrrrrns!!!

And tonight the eels are at 1st ave. Tix are only $15 at the door… I will beg borrow or steal my way into this show. I believe MC Honky will be opening for them.

I sign most all of my emails:

-marty

I don’t know why, but twice in the last day I have almost sent out an email saying:

-kmarty

Earlier today, I wrote an email to a friend with a ton of exclamation marks. I realized that I was getting a little bang-happy, so I signed the correspondence:

-exclamation marty

(In case this is not as obviously funny as I think it should be, the pun is on exclamation mark.)

BTW, for those who care, this is entry number four-hundred-one in this crazy little thing called blog.

I just finished Order of the Phoenix. My sister beat me to it by a day. I guess she was up last night until 3:30 finishing it, and now I’ve been up till 4:30. (I was up till at least 3:00 last night too.) Obviously, it gets compelling at the end.

Actually, there were times in the middle where I felt it was too compelling. I think Rowling has a propensity for suspenseful writing, even when it’s inappropriate, although, with a novel of this size, I guess you probably need suspense wherever you can get it. I just didn’t really appreciate it at times.

I had this revelation looking back on it… It’s probably an idea only suited for novels of this popularity (and I don’t think there have ever been any others), but when a novel is this length, I think it would make sense for the publisher to come out with two versions of the thing, a regular version, and a “authors cut” version. This would work especially well for the H.P. series, because so much of the audience is young, and you could make the shorter version also a “younger” version.

Of course, I realize I would never settle for reading a shortened version, even though, having read the long one, my main complaint was that it could have been about 2/3rds as long and still retained pretty much everything of any importance or significance to plot or character.

I will go to sleep now, and possibly dream of long corridors with mysterious doors at their ends.

Last week I knew I was running my bank account close to empty. So on Tuesday or Wednesday I took the first step towards balancing my checkbook–I checked my balance. It was good! Like 300-some dollars good! So I didn’t need to balance it, the last time I wrote a check more than $100 was ages ago, right?

Well, three weeks. That’s how long it took the car place to cash the $310.82 check for Laura’s new carburetor. So on Wednesday I bounced 2 checks, each less than $30, and on Thursday… guess what!? Another two! These were each less than $10! And how much does my bank charge me for each one? $31 each! Yes sir, that’s a nice big $124 that I guess I didn’t need.

The sad sad part of this is that I’ve been carrying around a check for $110 to deposit. I could have done it last Monday or Tuesday and spared myself all this frustration. (Not to mention $124.)

After getting paid on Friday, (and getting Nate’s third of the mortgage) I had just enough to cover the mortgage and two other bills that I put in the mail on Thursday.

No money for me for at least two weeks. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. No spending cash, no gas money, no lunch at the Ritz.

OK, so on Saturday, I had an appointment to talk with a financial advisor. Just for fun, but I wanted to look into 1) debt consolidation (can we please have 1 credit card payment instead of 4 please?) and 2) a possible refinance of the mortgage, which would probably go toward the new roof we so desperately need. Turns out I only qualify for option 3) none of the above. But my larger financial picture is actually quite good. I’m putting away lots of money into my 401K, (probably too much), and will actually be looking at lessening that amount to free up some more cash for emergencies and the like. Possibly to be put into some kind of money market fund or just a simple savings account.

Anyway, in two weeks, I get my next fatty paycheck, but what, you ask — aside from the bills I didn’t pay this week because I was so poor — will that go towards? Oh yes, the door. I have been meaning to mention this now for awhile. (Particularly this last week.) As it’s a long story, I’ll put it in the “extended entry”. You know what to do.
Continue reading “monetary misery”

In this interview with Andy Clark (The author of Natural-Born Cyborgs), he mentions a about future where we’re so melded with technology that having that technology break or disappear would be the equivalent of having a stroke. The interviewer equates the disaster to more of a lobotomy, which he disagrees with.

But I’d like to explore this possibility that, rather than being lobotomized, such a person (who has lost their technology) would actually just be reduced to the kind of person that we all are today. At that time, such a backward evolution would seem at least as bad, if not worse than, having had a lobotomy. Sure, they would seem normal to you and me, but to the hyper-brained individuals of the future, they would be near useless. I mean, I often think that the work I do will be so trivial in the future that it won’t be handled by humans at all, but rather by software of some sort.

When I say I’d like to explore this possibility, I mean, I’d like to write a novel on the premise. Just today, I feel particularly useless and depressed. My life is meaningless monotony hung precariously on these wires for you to scrape into your eyeballs like thick sludge at the bottom of some electronic barrel. Maybe one of the barrels that Donkey Kong throws at you.

Another of the recurring concepts in the book is that of the mind as it extends into our bodies, and even outside of our bodies. For instance, I’m not only writing this entry in my brain. I’m also using this computer, and my email software too (which does a nice job of spell checking for me). The extra effort I put forth to use these tools is far more than offset by the added value. In fact, without the tools, I couldn’t even begin to comprehend what kind of communication I’m about to put forth. The concepts are just foreign without knowledge of computers and the internet.

And with that, I think I’ll flit into the back-paths of my cerebral hemisphere, and daydream for another half-hour before I kick this meatspace like a bad physical addiction.

So tonight, prompted by riotdorrrk, I’m going to try and fire up a Commodore 64 emulator, and play Wasteland. While I was at it, I downloaded a few more of the C64 games from my list of sci-fi video games I haven’t yet played.

I was surfing around looking at pictures from the con (and new-to-me blogs of people who went to con), and ran into this guy Dan’s website. I used to know Dan back when I called BBSes regularly. Admittedly he was mostly just a friend of a friend, but it was a long time ago, and brought back some hazy nostalgic moments. Anyway, part of his site has this list of old NES games that have hidden (nasty) eastereggs! I wonder if you can do the nude metroid thing with the version you can unlock on the Metroid Prime disk.

Surfing around in someone else’s group of friends/links is a weird deal. I think I probably have serious voyeuristic issues here that need to be worked out.

What is it about looking at other people’s lives from the outside that makes me want to befriend them? On a probably related note, I sent a bunch of old friends emails today. Dan wasn’t even one of them. (Although I’m tempted to write and ask whatever happened to the genesis page he briefly mentions.)

I had a friend send this video to me today. It’s long, but it is an amazing watch. Gave me chills.

It feels like it’s been a month since I was at work… but it’s only been three days that felt like a month.

Friday Laura and I did a parade at like 10 in the morning. Then Friday afternoon we spent about 2 hours or so on the greenway looking at art cars and listening to live music, after which we headed immediately over to the con.

After taking a dip in the pool and hot tub, grabbing our badges, and doing a minimum of walking around, we found ourselves in the hotel room relaxing for a few minutes. Suddenly there were loud booming noises… I thought they were somehow coming from inside the building, but Laura and I quickly realized they were fireworks. From our fifth-floor east-facing room, we had an excellent view of some display (in Edina or wherever the Radison South is located) but we also, amazingly, could see about 6 or 7 other fireworks displays. I’m certain that we could see the one for Minneapolis, and another LONG display that was probably the Mall of America’s. We may have even seen the tail end of the one in St. Paul. Some of them we could only see the tops of their highest explosions, but we sat there for a good half-an-hour watching off into the distance. It was quite the experience, and maybe worth the $99/night just for the fireworks alone.

Anyway, we spent the rest of the night exploring con parties and other fun stuff.

If I hadn’t had a sticker on the back of my badge to remind me, I might have forgotten that I was scheduled Saturday afternoon to take sit in on my first ever panels. Their titles were Can Nintendo make a Video Game without Mario in it?, and Sci-fi narratives in Video Games. The first one generated a lively discussion about sequels versus “new” games, and innovation in the industry in general. The second was the panel that I suggested to the event organizers, and unfortunately, it sort of became less a panel and more a free-for-all discussion, straying quite a bit from the topic–but was nonetheless quite enjoyable. I handed out a printout of marty’s top sci-fi video games list on it. I got a lot of feedback, and have some more titles to add to the list.

Saturday night I watched savage aural hotbed play in the main con ballroom… I’ve seen them play dozens of times over the years, and they are never disappointing. This time was no exception, and they seemed especially happy to be playing for the con, which was cool. I should really get around to buying some of their CDs one of these days.

I also won a “Dystopia 2003” party t-shirt by getting sci-fi video bingo before everyone else in the room. (They were giving one away each hour, and I won on my 4th try.) The back of the shirt reads “Freedom is Slavery”.

Sunday we slept in, packed up, and watched Cowboy Beebop the movie before leaving the con. I’d never seen the series at all, so I don’t know how it compares, but the movie was quite good. I also sat through about half a panel on science fiction films made outside the US, and as a result went on ebay when I got home and picked up Shaolin Soccer, The Legend of Zu, and Legend of the Sacred Stone all for about $10 each!

On a nearly unrelated note: I want one of these chess sets for my back yard.

Well, now that it feels like I’ve been writing this entry for a month… I should get back to work.

Astute readers will notice that I’ve added two heretofore unprecedented changes to this site. First, I have added an image to the main template. Secondly, that image is linked to another offsite page.

What incredible event has transpired that brought this change about? I discovered Howard Dean’s campaign for presidency. Firstly, Dean is only a “contender” in the upcoming political war because of the support of people on the internet. When I first read that he’d raised $7 million dollars in campaign funds, and that most of that money came from individuals, not corporations, and largely through his website, I thought it was some kind of elaborate hoax. I’d never even heard of Howard Dean, even though I realized later that I did see his float in the recent Pride parade downtown Minneapolis.

Blogs are a big part of Dean’s campaign, and (in my opinion) you don’t get much more grassroots than blogs. http://www.blogforamerica.com/ is the main one, and I’ll probably also be following http://www.minnesotafordean.org/ too. (Where I read about the pride parade.)

I more or less agree with Dean on every issue. His state (Vermont) was the one that recently passed the same-sex marriage law. He stood against the war on Iraq, and isn’t afraid to say so. But I’m not going to say anything else. You should read his take “On the Issues” for yourself.