Jots
- Mini-update to "Tasteful San Antonio": in the window of one of the transient hotels near my office, there is posted a confusing handwritten notice which reads 'YOU WILL BE CRIMINALLY TRESPASSED FOR LOITERING IN THE LOBBY OF THIS BUILDING'.
- I picked up a used copy of Mercenaries for PS2 last week. It looks like it should be fun and all, but I'm pretty sure that the cars aren't supposed to drive around with no wheels. Also I don't think it should actually requre 5MB of space for a save. Or 15 minutes of load time for every new mission. Plus, if the thing were the screen totally freezes up while the soundtrack keeps playing is a feature instead of a glitch, I can't quite figure out what the added value is.
- I'm having another one of those extremely frustrating periods where I'm getting tons and tons of freelance work -- to the extent that I'm getting that overworked two-jobs feeling, and the only exercise I ever get is walking the three blocks from my car to my office because I sit in front of a computer 16 hours a day* -- but there's a major lag between the work I'm doing and the paychecks I'm getting. More and more of my freelance work comes from trade publications these days, and at the moment, I'm owed about four grand for work I've already completed. Not that it's killing me or anything; I have a day job now, and I'm on top of my bills and even have a little savings, but the combination of the holidays and the no-work weather days have left me cash-poor for the week. I'll be fine -- in fact, flush -- once the money comes through, and I've picked up close to $3000 more worth of work in the last week alone; it's just that the last time this happened, I made some rather disastrous choices that basically ruined my life. Not that I think I'll do that again, and not that I need the money as much as I did then: I am merely saying. So, you know. HURRY UP WITH THAT MAYONNAISE, magazines.
- Thanks to Paperback Swap, a book submission, and some other bits of business, I ran out of stamps, so I went to the post office and bought some of those DC superheroes stamps they have now. But they're so awesome, I don't want to actually use them to mail letters. God help me, I've become a complete caricature.
- Here's the audience participation segment of today's LJ ramblings: eagle-eyed readers may remember that I have owned two digital cameras in the last several years. The first one just stopped working for no particular reason, and the second one was stolen from my luggage by a patriotic TSA worker for bomb inspection. My question is, should I buy another digital camera, or should I take this as a sign from the heavens that no one wants to see my incompetent attempts at photography? (A follow-up, if you make the former recommendation: what brand/make/model of digital camera do you have/like/recommend?)
*: Seriously, I am out of control. After being the least fat I've been in decades when I was living in Minnesota, the combination of alcohol abuse, lack of exercise and shitty food are close to putting me at planetoid size these days. I'm joining a gym this week, and fuck saving money -- if I don't get a place with a decent kitchen so I can start eating right again, I'll be dead before I'm 40 anyway. I'm starting to look like Sydney Greenstreet with less muscle mass.
- I picked up a used copy of Mercenaries for PS2 last week. It looks like it should be fun and all, but I'm pretty sure that the cars aren't supposed to drive around with no wheels. Also I don't think it should actually requre 5MB of space for a save. Or 15 minutes of load time for every new mission. Plus, if the thing were the screen totally freezes up while the soundtrack keeps playing is a feature instead of a glitch, I can't quite figure out what the added value is.
- I'm having another one of those extremely frustrating periods where I'm getting tons and tons of freelance work -- to the extent that I'm getting that overworked two-jobs feeling, and the only exercise I ever get is walking the three blocks from my car to my office because I sit in front of a computer 16 hours a day* -- but there's a major lag between the work I'm doing and the paychecks I'm getting. More and more of my freelance work comes from trade publications these days, and at the moment, I'm owed about four grand for work I've already completed. Not that it's killing me or anything; I have a day job now, and I'm on top of my bills and even have a little savings, but the combination of the holidays and the no-work weather days have left me cash-poor for the week. I'll be fine -- in fact, flush -- once the money comes through, and I've picked up close to $3000 more worth of work in the last week alone; it's just that the last time this happened, I made some rather disastrous choices that basically ruined my life. Not that I think I'll do that again, and not that I need the money as much as I did then: I am merely saying. So, you know. HURRY UP WITH THAT MAYONNAISE, magazines.
- Thanks to Paperback Swap, a book submission, and some other bits of business, I ran out of stamps, so I went to the post office and bought some of those DC superheroes stamps they have now. But they're so awesome, I don't want to actually use them to mail letters. God help me, I've become a complete caricature.
- Here's the audience participation segment of today's LJ ramblings: eagle-eyed readers may remember that I have owned two digital cameras in the last several years. The first one just stopped working for no particular reason, and the second one was stolen from my luggage by a patriotic TSA worker for bomb inspection. My question is, should I buy another digital camera, or should I take this as a sign from the heavens that no one wants to see my incompetent attempts at photography? (A follow-up, if you make the former recommendation: what brand/make/model of digital camera do you have/like/recommend?)
*: Seriously, I am out of control. After being the least fat I've been in decades when I was living in Minnesota, the combination of alcohol abuse, lack of exercise and shitty food are close to putting me at planetoid size these days. I'm joining a gym this week, and fuck saving money -- if I don't get a place with a decent kitchen so I can start eating right again, I'll be dead before I'm 40 anyway. I'm starting to look like Sydney Greenstreet with less muscle mass.