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| | I ve had my new car less than a week. Six days. After my commute home this evening I ll be over 1000 miles already. Madness. No wonder I need to buy a new car every 3 years. I run the poor bastards into the ground. Oh well. I fear this domestic won t stand up to the rigors I heaped upon my imports. My faith in the competence of the American unionized blue collar slob is near non-existent. We ll see. So far the new car has served me well. The big adjustment so far is that it s just so much bigger than my last two.
Things have been pretty busy. Lots of Luper activity this past weekend. That was cool. Got to drive the new car all over Perry County with the Defiler as we scouted a potential event site (added thanks to the Defiling one for his shouts of warning that kept me from wrecking my brand new car).
Had to do some work on Sunday... first time I ve worked on a weekend in a couple years (and only the second time in about 8 years) but on the upside that means I get a four day weekend coming up. The timing is perfect. BloodBowl league starts tomorrow and we ll be doing fireworks on Sunday the 4th. Sweet.
It s been cool having Dan (and occasionally Karri) in the area. Alas our work schedules stand in opposition, but we have been able to utilize our late nights to explore the goodness of Pharo s... Ship s 24 hour truckstop diner... it s no Angies but the coffee is good and the grease laden food is plentiful and cheap! Hard to beat that.
I ll try to be more regular with the updates. My weird work schedule (sweet sweet work from home) has thrown me off kilter a bit.
-bampf | | | For those that know me, you know that I m exceedingly frugal with my money. There aren t many things that I spend money on. Especially when it comes to big purchases. Well, all that sorta changed this week.
I made a huge Circuit City purchase Tuesday. Kent sold me a new monitor. It was ridiculously cheap... allowing me to replace my five year old 17 incher. The controls on it has been in-operative for years due to cat pee (told you I was frugal... I used it cat pee and all for over three years). The new monitor is a 19 incher... which has really become a necessity for me. Working from home means that I connect to work PCs remotely... when they have higher resolutions I need to scroll around constantly just to see the entire desktop... real pain. That s not a problem now.
Along with the monitor I rounded out my new stereo system to go along with the sweet receiver the father-in-law gave me a while back. Hooked everything up last night. It s pretty damn nice. The sound really fills the small space that makes up our basement den. Kent, being well aquainted with my spending ways, was flabergasted.
Keeping up with the big spending trend, I m getting a new car today. My Mitsu is really starting to get up there in miles... 80,000 in almost exactly three years of ownership... that s a lot. The excessive miles meant that I actually lose money on the trade-in, but Chris was able to offer me an amazing deal on an Intripid that I just couldn t resist. It s definitely a significantly larger car than I m used to but it s a sweet ride. It s also a V6... I ve squeezed every ounce of power out of my last two cars (both four cylinders) so I m really looking forward to zipping around in this thing. It s also not red (red wunz go fasta, ya know) but I ll manage. It s kind of a bluish, silverish, gray. Not bad. So I m pretty excited about that.
Speaking of being wanted (in the last couple of posts). I got another job offer today. It s a pretty decent position, for a small company. Would be a decent place to work, but I m gonna reject it. It would be a slight pay cut and no working in my undies... just can t do it. But again, it was nice to be wanted and it gave me some confidence that if things ever do go badly at my current job that I would be able to find something else without too much trouble.
My last item of note... is all about Cold Stone. Sweet sweet blessed Cold Stone! On both my trips to Vegas I was able to partake of the sublime goodness that is Cold Stone... and now there s one in Hbg! Oh yeah! We ve been there two days in a row. Tuesday I had Cake Batter ice cream mixed with honey, yellow cake, black cherries and toasted almonds. For me, its very existence empirically proved the existence of a benevolent God. So damn good. So if you re anywhere near Colonial Park... go... partake of the frozen rock. You won t regret it.
-bampf | | | Getting up early sucks. I don t know how regular people do it. Had to be up before 7 to make the long drive today and it was painful. Had to invoke the Mentat matra to stay awake on the Turnpike. Oh well. It s worth it to work at home the rest of the week (although I ll probably make at least one return trip this week).
Kristyn s Florida trip got canceled so she returned home to me Friday. I don t recall us doing much. Turned into a pretty lazy weekend. Did manage to play some tennis. Rust was shaken off... a bit. Still more to go. Dan and Kristyn have both express an interest in playing so who knows, maybe we ll even get some doubles matches in.
Dan is now seemingly settled in and a full time Shippensburgian! Good luck to him on his first day at the new job. Hope central PA lives up to his expectations.
As part of an unofficial Dan welcoming ceremony I ran a Conan RPG one-off Sunday. Went pretty well for something I threw together the night before. The system differs from standard d20 in just a few ways, but those elements are significant enough to really alter the way combat plays out. Interesting. Might take a little getting used to but it certainly did whet my appetite for my full-blown campaign. Still need to figure out when that s gonna happen. Damn, I am still so incredibly over-booked.
Ah well, it s nice to be wanted.
-bampf | | | After having an uproarious time at Angies with a gaggle of Guild guys last night I realized that I had eaten at Angies five times this week! And I had gone with a different group of people each time (as few as two and as many as six). That s awesome. At one point we were laughing so hard that Scheaf actually started crying and I (in true Chrissy from Three s Company fashion) snorted twice. Now that s quality.
We ll see if we end up there again tonight. That may be a record.
In other news, Kristyn is no longer making a sojourn to Florida so she ll be coming home to me sooner than expected. Excellent. And we ll being hanging with Dan and Karri this weekend as they start their transition into good ole rural livin.
-bampf | | | Back in Philly today. And here I thought moving to the midstate would spell the end of my romance with the PA Turnpike. Foolish, I. Spoke with my VP today and sounds like I won t be switching jobs in the forseeable future. My days in the office has been reduced to the 0-1 per week range... and that pretty much has me sold. Nice.
Anyway, had a great weekend. Much hanging out with friends. Got to go to an sca event and do some fighting for the first time in a while. Felt good to strap the armour on. I broke yet another weapon on an opponent s body. Nice.
I ve got The Defiler and Wangus hopefully hooked on BloodBowl (The Kent is now a stark-raving BloodBowl looney so soon the others must follow). I m also becoming a staple at Angies once again... this is a good thing.
Kristyn and I finally watched a couple Indie films we ve been meaning to see for a long time. First was American Splendor which was absolute genius. A really wonderfully done film. I recommend it to one and all. The second was Lost in Translation, which was one of those Indie films where nothing at all really ever happens (not unlike Buffalo 66) and therefore assumes itself to be deeply profound and introspective when really it is just poop. So don t see it. It s poop.
This coming week is a toilet seat up week, as Kristyn plans to be gallavanting around Philly and then Florida as she helps Dan and Karri with their big move. Hopefully all is going well. I was supposed to be helping today (that was working under the previous assumption that I would be currently unemployed) so I feel bad not being able to lend my brawn. Hopefully they ll love the area.
Rest of the week is being devoted mostly to BloodBowl (with maybe an armour repair or Fantasy Battle interlude here or there). I have demos to run, games to play and a league to prepare for. I shouldn t need to remind the dutiful reader that BloodBowl is life.
So... yeah... after that minor set-back in the big mid-state move, things are better than ever. I am a happy boy. 'Happier en pigs in shit' my mom might say... mmm... sweet sweet proverbial cathartic shit. Mmmm.
-bampf | | | Working from home today. Who needs a workplace that allows shorts and t-shirts when I can sit here topless in my undies? That s a consummation devoutly to be wished.
So anyway, bosses at work have proposed that I stay on forever continuing to work remotely three days a week. Interesting proposal. Working from home is real nice. Driving to Philly a couple times a week not so much. But it could certainly beat the hassle of finding a new employer (that ain t gonna screw me). Plus wages are lower around here. Would be nice to keep my current salary at a company I know I like and I know likes me. Hmmm....
Decisions decisions.
We ll see. I do have some job prospects floating about the ether. If I get an offer around here at a comparable salary it would be hard to say no. At least it s real nice to have options... nice to be wanted and all.
-bampf | | | Before I forget I would be remiss not to mention the passing of Ronald Reagan. Everyone I talked to about him this weekend, all had very similar views. That he was the last (maybe ever) genuinely likable president. Clearly the greatest president of our generation. I have only a vague recollection of Carter (enough to recall him as history s greatest monster) but as a child there was a palpable attachment to Reagan as the leader. A bona fide smiling father figure who d make everything all right even after you stayed up late and got the shite scared out of you by watching The Day After. That s the Reagan I ll always remember. A truly great man.
-b
| | 6/7/2004 10:47:14 AM Worst of Times/Best of Times deal | Add Comment |
| Long overdue for an update again. I have my Dickens inspired entry all ready to go.
I ll start with the season of Darkness, which spawns the epoch of incredulity, that finally gives way to the spring of hope. After that I can transition into the best of times which could be construed as a celebration of an age of foolishness (but damn fun foolishness none the less). OK, enough with the lame ass literary tie-in.
The bad stuff started early last week. Really I shoulda known things were working out way too well, and something had to go awry. Anyway, my 'new company' called to rescind their offer. Ouch. Thanks to a big client contract recently being placed in limbo, they inacted a hiring freeze... including those to whom they had already made an offer (namely me). Ouch. So, they still wanna bring me on board but cannot do so for maybe several months. I ve had several people tell me that I probably have some legal recourse, since I had signed an official offer letter (and had already put my 2 weeks notice in at my current job) but I really didn t want to burn that bridge. So I m kinda in limbo as well. That sucks. So in the intirim, I may be working in Philly for a while longer and am also resuming my central PA job search. The glimmer of hope is that within a day of getting the bad news I was able to arrange two interviews and have another strong lead. We ll see what happens.
On a more upbeat note was have the weekend. We celebrated the Guild s fifth birthday with yet another huge Birthday Bash. Wow. Five years. It s been a wild strange era, but I m certainly glad to have been a part of it. At this point it s impossible for me to imagine what my life would be like if the Guild never came to fruition. If I were to make a list of like my 20 best friends I wouldn t know probably 15 of them if not for the Guild. So, anyway, the event.
For our fourth birthday we tried to move offsite and turn it into a con... our turnout dropped significantly when we did that and made for a somewhat disappointing event. So we were excited to get back to our old ways. I d have to say it was a huge success. The place was packed to capacity for much of Saturday. We had a seemingless endless array of games, tourneys and demos.
I ran Dungeon Crawl most of the day Saturday and had tons of fun slaughtering player characters (the Defiler, Bastius and Darkan had the best showing of the day and we had a blast playing). Kristyn even joined in on the festivities, doing face painting all day and generally vexing the poor socially awkward gamers with her beauty and charisma. Even the legendary Squig-Eating competition made a glorious return after a year s hiatus. All in all, great stuff. Kristyn got to meet and talk with lots of our favorite customers. She seems genuinely interesting in spending more time at the Guild so that s awesome.
Sunday was more subdued and featured much BloodBowl as I ran another three game tournament. My streak of winning tournaments was ended at two as I tied Ed in the Championship game and thereby fell to second place thanks to tie-breaker points. I will point out though, that my orc team, the Punchin Pugilists, have still yet to be beaten. Kent debuted his goblins into tournament play (he s been practicing against me quite a bit of late), and while he finished close to last he had an uproarious time, and attracted a gaggle of spectators to all of his games. Goblins are just plain fun.
So anyway, that s my low and high-lights. Definitely a great weekend, following a kind of a bummer week.
We ll see what happens next.
-bampf | | | Oh, one other detail of note. For those who fruitlessly attempt to contact me (email has been about the only way), Kristyn and I purchased individual cell phone plans from Nextel last week. Our phones arrived today (so I ll get mine tomorrow night). Supposedly they are going to transfer the old cell phone number (the one I used to have, that has been Kristyn s for the past year plus) to this new phone, so my number will be that one, for those needing to contact Kristyn, she ll have a new number that I m not gonna post here on the interweb. Call the old number or email us and we ll pass it along.
So, once my calendar opens up people may even be able to get a hold of me to arrange get togethers. I will point out though, that I still have a deep seated loathing of telephones and speaking to people on the phone, so don t look for me to be calling without good cause... email is still my preferred form of communication.
-b | | | So life has been crazed in Shippensburg. As expected, I ve been horribly over-booked and haven t gotten to do nearly all the things I intended (play tennis, role-play, DVD night etc etc).
Working from home has been good. At one point I was sitting at my home PC, connecting to the office domain via a VPN to VNC into my work PC which is running a VMWare virtual PC... so I m doing work on a PC while being thrice removed from it? Technology really fucking scares me sometimes.
On Thursday I was helping do lawnwork, when Chris tore the tendon from his bicep completely off the bone. I was only a few feet away and heard it happen. Worst sound I ve ever heard. Very similar to the sound made by yanking a fistful of grass out of the ground. Yeah. That bad. I cringe every time I think about it. So needless to say many hospital visits and surgery quickly ensued. That means I get to be the paterfamilias while Chris recovers. D'oh.
The holiday weekend was filled with family events and parties. Three of em to be exact. Dreadful, but necessary. Did I mention I loath social situations? At least the food was good.
Somewhere amongst the rest of the madness I did manage to squeeze a couple of games of BloodBowl in with Kent. That was good. Seems he s found his true calling... Goblins. He actually beat me using the feckless bastards... shameful, really shameful.
In other news, Dan and Karri got an offer for their house, so their Ship plans are coalescing very nicely. They ll be joining us in grand ole cow country in no time flat! Nice.
I put my two weeks notice in today. Hafta see how people react. Should be no surprise. I m already looking forward to the new job. We revamped my work wardrobe over the weekend... bought five pairs of shorts and a T-shirt. It may have been the greatest shopping experience of my life... screw you jeans and khakis!!
With that I leave you.
-bampf |
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