Sixteen tons and whaddaya get...

Birthday weekend this last weekend - Partied on Saturday, regretted it a little on Sunday, parked my butt on a couch on Monday.

Got Harry Potter on Saturday and read through it in just under 24 calendar hours. Having been lavished with alcohol (overindulged, too, my own damn fault and only the second time I've ever done that...), I didn't read through the night like I'd originally planned to. Book six was good. I'm currently rereading the series again, figure I'll get some new insights while I'm at it.

I will say this for this last year - better than the year before it, but still full of drama. Somewhere in my head, I still hope for getting back to a simple life, but at the same time, I know it'll never _really_ happen. There'll always be something.

All in all, I'm looking forward to next year. I think there're some very good things coming up.

eeyyagh.

Doncha just loooove coming back to something you'd gotten set up a few weeks back and finding out that suddenly the damn thing doesn't seem to work? Seriously.

I walked up to my build server, which I hijacked to test LDAP client stuff, and for reasons yet undetermined, it won't talk to the ldap servers on the LDAP port. Bizarre.

Every other system I've got will talk to it juuust fine. Just not this one. I've no idea what's wrong. Not even quite sure whether it's the client or the server that's borking.

PSP, Constantine, Powerball

( PSP )

( Constantine )

( Powerball )

The Spear of Destiny

There's an effect I'd love to pull off in a story, or in a game. Constantine uses it, the Lord of the Rings uses it, and in some ways, Amber uses it. It's the idea that there is one object, a physical _thing_, manipulatable by mortal man, which is the fulcrum of the world.

The effects in Constantine are relatively simple: the bearer of the object is invulnerable, immovable, unstoppable. Strong enough to do what he needs to do. Additionally, while the object is borne, the power of creatures aligned with the object is greatly increased.

One of the effects that Amber offers is the nauseating sensation of your entire world moving beneath you, the feeling that something is changing and there's nothing you can do to stop it. Like being on a boat in a storm.

The Lord of the Rings gives it a will of its own. I don't necessarily like that, but the idea of the bearer, no matter their petty mortal goals, is fulfilling the higher purpose of the Object.. that, I like.

The idea is powerful, if difficult to pull off without making the story deterministic

Like most of my game ideas, I may never use it. It's a beaut, though.

Why are you so petrified of silence (part bazillion and three)

As the warm glow of Constantine fades away, and I turn off the television and DVD player, a suburban silence settles around my apartment. For a moment, I look around, and am forcefully reminded of just how much goddamned stuff I've collected over the years. The pretenses (damnit, my brain's coming up with words from Alanis Morrisette lyrics) under which I purchased them all suddenly bared and, as they always were, questionable. I'm reminded that I'm very materialistic, very covetous, and that ultimately, not only is stuff pointless, it can't even keep me happy, on its own. The draconic hoarding of objects which contain within them the ability to induce that ephemeral feeling of happiness and satisfaction doesn't mean that I'm surrounded in a constant haze of euphoria... A more accurate metaphor would be that I am an addict surrounded by syringes (vvn, vvn, vvnnnnnn!), knowing that no matter how much I takes, I'll still come down again. these are the days, beautiful days

And then I inhale, and remind myself that the point isn't in the stuff at all, it isn't the having it that keeps me coming back for more... it's the sharing, the connecting with people, intentionally or otherwise, that makes up my _why_, the reason I keep this junk around. The chance that at some point, I might use this or that piece of wood pulp or cheesy plastic or silicon to reduce that gulf that separates people from eachother, even on a small scale.

The old gag about duct tape and the Force comes to mind. It's all just tools. It's all in how we use what we have.

eta: Fuck me gently with chainsaw. I didn't think I could come up with melodramatic crap like this sober.