The Last Few Days
Well, it's been a few days since last post. What I've learned since then:
1) If you walk into a meeting with your own easel, a big pad of sticky note paper and a couple of markers, people either think you must know what you are talking about, or that you are very strange.
2) There is a highway 86 on BOTH sides of Int. 40 near Carrboro, and you need to be sure which way you want to go, as "first left after you cross 86" means something entirely different on each side (and the difference between being 1/2 hour early and 15 minutes late).
3) Just because a book is billed as a dystopia doesn't mean that it necessarily is, or is going to be helpful, and finding that out after spending an inordinate amount of time reading it is not fun.
4) The Internet Really IS For Porn, or at least an amazing number of people believe so.
5) I don't think I really want to be a future president of the Woman's Club of Raleigh, even though way too many people think I should do so.
I turned my Final Project Proposal draft into Dr. Wald and Donna Zapf (director of MALS) early Friday, after waking up at 5:15 with ideas on things that needed to be changed -- and spent two hours working on it before sending it. The meeting is Monday at 1 PM, and hopefully they won't feel they have to tear it completely apart and make me start again, as I have a busy week coming up. It has to be in to the decision committee before the end of March, and I hope to get it in within the next two weeks, so that I don't have to think about it anymore.
Have learned quite a bit about Second Life, although still a "NOOB." You really can't play an interactive game on a wireless connection (not ours, anyway). It's not as easy to find "free money" as I thought it would be. It really is necessary to find an SL job, and unlike other games where your avatar may come with the skills for a particular job, in SL you arrive with the skills you actually have in First Life. Not having any background in the scripting leaves out a lot of the skills I have in FL, so I will have to be a shop attendant or a hostess or an "escort" (see #4 above). Their special scripting is easier than coding as their software codes what you write in Linden, but it's still coding and I haven't done that since I took Basic and Cobol in the dark ages of the computer era. So a learning curve is at hand. And never teleport two people at the same time to the same location, or they will end up with two copies of the same body.
So far the "goals" of SL seems to be meeting people, owning land, and having avatar sex. Have only done a little of the first so far. I seem to spend most of my time refining my AV and trying to amass clothing. Interesting -- shopping in SL is just as satisfying as it is in FL, it doesn't cost as much, and you don't have to worry about where you are going to put things when you get home.
Food and wine update: Mostly repeats the past few days -- another bottle of the 2001 Torre Sangiovese Riserva, which left us with one so Jim went to buy another case this morning -- $10.39/bottle by the case and they gave us another 20% off, by mistake he thinks. Last night we had a 2003 Imagery Petite Sirah -- excellent, but of course they are sold out so we can't get more. We really have to drink our club shipments ASAP so that if we want more of something, we might be able to get it! Trouble is, many of them suggest holding them, and then you are taking the chance that they are out when you finally drink them, or you end up with something years later that maybe isn't what you've hoped it would be. We've been very happy with all of their selections though, so we are just going to start drinking them when they arrrive. Dinner last night was bbq at the RBC Center -- not too bad for concession food -- I had a "bowl" with bbq at the bottom, then baked beans, and slaw on top. Interesting. Didn't have the wine WITH the bbq -- had that in the parking lot before we went in, with cheeses. Labatt's with the bbq.
And speaking of the RBC Center, the Canes won last night, only the second game we have seen them win live this year. They just aren't looking too good, too many injuries, the Staal factor, and they traded away too many of their strong (expensive) players at end of last season. They played Pittsburgh, however, so we got to see Sidney Crosby score two goals, and Jordan Staal had an assist, Eric was also credited with an assist. We're not buying the playoff seats this year, though.
1) If you walk into a meeting with your own easel, a big pad of sticky note paper and a couple of markers, people either think you must know what you are talking about, or that you are very strange.
2) There is a highway 86 on BOTH sides of Int. 40 near Carrboro, and you need to be sure which way you want to go, as "first left after you cross 86" means something entirely different on each side (and the difference between being 1/2 hour early and 15 minutes late).
3) Just because a book is billed as a dystopia doesn't mean that it necessarily is, or is going to be helpful, and finding that out after spending an inordinate amount of time reading it is not fun.
4) The Internet Really IS For Porn, or at least an amazing number of people believe so.
5) I don't think I really want to be a future president of the Woman's Club of Raleigh, even though way too many people think I should do so.
I turned my Final Project Proposal draft into Dr. Wald and Donna Zapf (director of MALS) early Friday, after waking up at 5:15 with ideas on things that needed to be changed -- and spent two hours working on it before sending it. The meeting is Monday at 1 PM, and hopefully they won't feel they have to tear it completely apart and make me start again, as I have a busy week coming up. It has to be in to the decision committee before the end of March, and I hope to get it in within the next two weeks, so that I don't have to think about it anymore.
Have learned quite a bit about Second Life, although still a "NOOB." You really can't play an interactive game on a wireless connection (not ours, anyway). It's not as easy to find "free money" as I thought it would be. It really is necessary to find an SL job, and unlike other games where your avatar may come with the skills for a particular job, in SL you arrive with the skills you actually have in First Life. Not having any background in the scripting leaves out a lot of the skills I have in FL, so I will have to be a shop attendant or a hostess or an "escort" (see #4 above). Their special scripting is easier than coding as their software codes what you write in Linden, but it's still coding and I haven't done that since I took Basic and Cobol in the dark ages of the computer era. So a learning curve is at hand. And never teleport two people at the same time to the same location, or they will end up with two copies of the same body.
So far the "goals" of SL seems to be meeting people, owning land, and having avatar sex. Have only done a little of the first so far. I seem to spend most of my time refining my AV and trying to amass clothing. Interesting -- shopping in SL is just as satisfying as it is in FL, it doesn't cost as much, and you don't have to worry about where you are going to put things when you get home.
Food and wine update: Mostly repeats the past few days -- another bottle of the 2001 Torre Sangiovese Riserva, which left us with one so Jim went to buy another case this morning -- $10.39/bottle by the case and they gave us another 20% off, by mistake he thinks. Last night we had a 2003 Imagery Petite Sirah -- excellent, but of course they are sold out so we can't get more. We really have to drink our club shipments ASAP so that if we want more of something, we might be able to get it! Trouble is, many of them suggest holding them, and then you are taking the chance that they are out when you finally drink them, or you end up with something years later that maybe isn't what you've hoped it would be. We've been very happy with all of their selections though, so we are just going to start drinking them when they arrrive. Dinner last night was bbq at the RBC Center -- not too bad for concession food -- I had a "bowl" with bbq at the bottom, then baked beans, and slaw on top. Interesting. Didn't have the wine WITH the bbq -- had that in the parking lot before we went in, with cheeses. Labatt's with the bbq.
And speaking of the RBC Center, the Canes won last night, only the second game we have seen them win live this year. They just aren't looking too good, too many injuries, the Staal factor, and they traded away too many of their strong (expensive) players at end of last season. They played Pittsburgh, however, so we got to see Sidney Crosby score two goals, and Jordan Staal had an assist, Eric was also credited with an assist. We're not buying the playoff seats this year, though.