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December 25, 2002
Living Medium
once again it's on. life has settled into a decent enough rut to celebrate the mundane. so what am i doing these days between drama? nothing much it seems to me, but then again there's always something on my mind. you see i'm always 2/3rds the way somewhere, like a man with two turntables and no microphone. by the time i get my grip on the mike, one of the tables wobbled and fell down. so i am on approach:
i'm 2/3rds the way through the latest harry potter. he's just been accosted by snape and filch, but saved by mad-eye moody. christopher lloyd should be cast as mad-eye, there's no doubt in my mind.
2/3rds of my children are home. c. is out in nyc with the biomom. those of you who know me know she's a maniac. the rest of you simply have to imagine. he missed his awards ceremony and i will have to get his soccer trophy from the team parent. here, the house is quiet and for once, mom and i aren't outnumbered. it makes a huge difference. so i got a chance to start courtney on her allowance and get her counting money again. she needs lots of practice.
i've been on the job two weeks over at the world's greatest toy company. although i still feel a bit odd wandering those halls with rowling in my hands, there is something comforting about the fact that the corporation is all about making childhood enjoyable and rewarding. but the important thing is that they are flush and i'm getting paid.
the feds still await my latest raft of excuses and paperwork, as does blue cross. such things annoy me. some days i want to live off the grid.
2/3rds of my christmas shopping is done. mom and i are sending you cards and whatnot. it's actually a pretty good picture this year. but some of you don't have real addresses. we're thinking of you anyway.
i've been playing boohab for a few rounds over at nytimes.com. i think i'll leave it at that.
my bro graduated!! yay, he's got his shield, and advanced the family in a new and admirable direction. what kind of black man is an officer for the l.a.p.d., well at least one of them is the best kind of black man, a bowen man. fascinating what he says about pepper spray. it's the worse pain he's ever experienced, something akin to a feral cat and a porcupine battling on your face for an hour. tazers hurt worse, but only for a short time. i think i may have to revise my punch in the nose theory.
auntie is all well and good, thanks to the miracle of modern medicine and a little james brown. she collapsed last week while out to dinner with friends, evidently the result of a huge pothole in blood pressure. so after her brief sojurn at l.a.'s most prestigious hospital, she has returned to us cheney-fied. ten year battery in that pacemaker. she's sore, but back on the good foot.
my lovely neice who has been going through a bit of it herself is in limbo these days. i think the family is keeping me from her. or basically just not asking my advice for her. i don't see why, i've dropped out of more colleges than anyone. anyway, who's going to pay that cell phone bill?
my nt server is nicely working again. i've decided to let it stay on the win2k. i'll get a separate linux box some other day. oddly enough, the main reason i wanted it was for cubegeek.com, but it just may turn out that this userland stuff may obviate the whole point of it. still i'd love to have the solaris for intel to keep up my ksh and perl finger memories.
on the xbox, i am having a ball with fifa world cup 2002. morrowind now leaves me cold. i don't know. i think some of it has to do with me living a bit less hermetically than when i first moved to atlanta. also i think that i like a bit more skill based playing. when i finally got my hands on metal gear solid, the contrast was clear. skill development in morrowind is painstaking and slow. the arsenal is too large. morrowind is very much like life. the range of skills is enormous. i mean clearly, you need to be able to kill the various sentries and guards in order to progress to the level implied in the game, but it would take at least 3 months of game playing to reach that level.
in the middle of playing as a nightblade, basically the equivalent of an auror in the harry potter series - a killer of evil mages, i suddenly got interested in alchemy. so here i'm developing the skills so that i can be a good thief and short swordsman and political being all so that i can get lots of money to buy powerful potions and charms, and i discover that an alchemist, with just a few tools, can go around picking mushrooms and make their own. so i sell all my weapons and go picking flowers and looking for books with recipes. but clearly no matter what i do, i can't get my alchemy skill level up to par.
they do some fairly interesting things with genetic predispositions in morrowind. it's very nicely balanced though. there are obviously many approaches to the same problems but either way, it takes a virtual eternity.
so that's it. merry christmas.
Posted by mbowen at December 25, 2002 05:49 AM
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