Ramblings!

Yeah, I ramble. I'm good at it. Every so often, most any day I'll have some strange thought that I wish I could share with the world, and this is about as close as I'm going to get. If you like reading my ramblings, let me know!

Friday, February 02, 2001

It's been a quick two months. Christmas was just fine, thanks. Though it was uneventful because my sister's family got sick with stomach flu so we didn't end up going over there for breakfast Christmas morning and just stayed home all day. Now I'm working six day weeks and being a little overtired, but I expected that.

Work has been a little bit better now that we're getting close to a milestone ship date. We're getting to the point where every bug has to be decided on by multiple people so not everything that we want to go through will be going through.

In other news, Gidrion is level 28 and Big Ol' Bear is level 26 now. We just need to get more drudge ravener guts to make Gidrion's bow, then we have one of Greg's characters (Kalledore) to make a bow for, though we have enough already to make the stave. It's getting easier for Big Ol' Bear to cast level IV spells and he's making really good arrows and food now.

I finally got Rollercoaster Tycoon back in and have been playing that again, as well as a new game called SimCoaster from Electronic Arts and Bullfrog. It's a semi-sequel to Sim Theme Park, but it has a better interfact, though the game looks almost the same. It has more variables for you to keep track of such as keeping employees happy so they won't strike and making sure they get raises, etc. I like the idea of doing objectives to open up area to build in your parks rather than just only needing to get golden tickets. Some of the challenges are quite hard. It's not quite as good as Rollercoaster Tycoon, but it's better than Sim Theme Park and worth playing if you ask me.
posted by Jeffrey Hitchin 2/2/2001 03:58:43 PM

Thursday, December 07, 2000

I've been eating a lot of Pocky lately. What is Pocky? Pocky is a Japanese snack food made by Glico that consists of a wheat biscuit stick thing that has been dipped in some kind of flavoring, usually chocolate. I recently found that you can buy four flavors of Pocky from Uwajimaya in Seattle, Bellevue, and Beaverton. My personal preference is Men's Pocky as it is made with bittersweet chocolate. The Milk Chocolate flavor is also quite pleasant. Greg likes the Men's Pocky best followed by the Japanese version of Strawberry Pocky (which has dried strawberry bits in the coating, unlike the American version). You can also order some of these flavors off of Japanese Snacks which carries more than just Pocky. I've also tried Meiji Yan Yan and Meiji Apollo, both of which I like. I just tasted Glico Pretz, both Tomato and Garlic flavor and liked the Garlic, wasn't fond of Tomato. I would point you towards Glico's website, but it's in Japanese, and requires a Japanese Language Pack to be able to view it properly, and besides I can't read Japanese at all, so I can't tell you if their site actually has useful content.
posted by Jeffrey Hitchin 12/7/2000 02:46:03 PM

Wednesday, November 22, 2000

I know I've talked about my cat quite a bit in recent postings and as of yet, have not posted a picture of her. Well, all that is changing today!

Here's a picture of Onyx in her favorite morning spot. Yes, like most cats, she's fascinated by water, though she doesn't care to be doused with it. Every morning, when I shower, the cat is sitting patiently outside the tub until I pull the shower curtain back and she leaps inside to check out the final rivulets of water headed towards the drain. She'll sit there for a few minutes, lap up what water she can and then go onto greener pastures for the day.

The only problem we've had with her of late is she's taken to barfing on the carpet due to hairballs so we're going to have to brush her more often. Such fun, you have no idea. She doesn't tend to sit still when we're brushing her, she much prefers to walk in tight circles making odd barking nosies. It sounds like, "mmMMark!" when she does it. It's really an odd noise, especially considering she's a cat. She's also quite good at chasing flies. Greg and I have laughed ourselves sick watching her catch a fly a couple of nights ago. Man, that was hilarious. The fly wandering inside the fan on the floor and the cat sat patiently in front of it, chattering and meowing at it the entire time. It was funny.

In Asheron's Call, Big Ol' Bear is up to level 21 now, Gidrion is still level 25. BOB is getting much better at the higher level food items, and is learning more level IV spells in-game. Gidrion is slowly getting better at bow and become a more viable character. Once we can get his compound bow strung, he'll be a happy archer, I can tell you.
posted by Jeffrey Hitchin 11/22/2000 12:47:29 PM

Wednesday, October 18, 2000

A recent MSN article was just forwarded to me by my boss about the evils of ordering novelty contact lenses on-line. I recently got a pair of Wild-Eyes lenses from an on-line store which is why this came up. Remember, they MUST ask you for a prescription in order for it to be legal. Many times they are not selling these lenses legally. If you've never worn lenses before and you want a pair of funky lenses, please, please, please see your eye-care professional and ask. You could run the risk of some serious trouble if you don't know what you're doing.
posted by Jeffrey Hitchin 10/18/2000 03:32:42 PM

Wednesday, October 11, 2000

I thought I'd give you all an idea of just what it is that I do with my time. As you know, I've been playing Asheron's Call with my husband, Greg, for about six months now and really enjoying it. This is one of the characters I play named Big Ol' Bear, or BOB, or Uncle BOB as some folks call him. He's just discovered the idea behind carving pumpkins and loving it.

Gidrion still isn't 25th level yet, but we took advantage of that to send him to this city where only characters of levels 1 through 25 can go. You can also see the group of folks that are my online "family" at the Blurrians Home Page.
posted by Jeffrey Hitchin 10/11/2000 11:16:17 PM

Monday, September 25, 2000

I spent an enjoyable weekend writing, painting and playing Asheron's Call with my husband. I have a new character who is mostly being used for storage, but she is also a decent unarmed combat fighter and is getting some good experience to help her skills buff up so she can hold more. Big Ol' Bear is doing well. He's halfway to 19th level, and has now make most of the chocolate dishes, except for the ice creams and iced mocha. Finding those magical snowballs will be difficult. I still don't know where the snowman is that sells them. Gidrion is halfway to 25th level and really needs better armor and more experience in his melee defense, but it'll be a while before he can train that.

The cat was being really obnoxious this weekend. Noisy kitty. But she's still much, much better than she was when we first got her in March. I've become attached to her in a big way, even when I get annoyed at waking up to a cat on my chest.
posted by Jeffrey Hitchin 9/25/2000 10:54:38 AM

Sunday, September 17, 2000

Someone forwarded to me a link for the a comedy routing called, "Welcome to the Internet Help Desk." It's very, very true, yet extremely funny at the same time. I won't give away any of the jokes here, but you should go watch or listen to it if you get the chance. You can find it here. Enjoy!
posted by Jeffrey Hitchin 9/17/2000 12:58:45 AM

Sunday, September 10, 2000

The cat actually did the first cat-like thing I've ever seen her do. She had a fly cornered yesterday and was making a lot of noise as it wasn't moving or playing with her. We thought she was in pain or something. I think she finally ate the darn thing.
posted by Jeffrey Hitchin 9/10/2000 10:17:54 PM

Wednesday, August 23, 2000

I've been listening to City of Dreams on scifi.com's Seeing Ear Theatre website. I just finished Episode 5, "Night Calls" and it scared the crap out of me! If you like J. Michael Straczynski's writing, then go hear this as soon as possible. It's great stuff.
posted by Jeffrey Hitchin 8/23/2000 04:48:51 PM

Thursday, August 10, 2000

Boy, it's been a while since I posted anything here. Life just got away from me there for a bit. In recent news, Greg is finishing his contracted job at Microsoft and will now be working for TTCX in Bellevue which will entail him doing a lot of WHQL testing which he enjoys doing. Lot of hardware to play with!

I've gotten my Asheron's Call character Big Ol' Bear to 16th level. He can now use portal magic. He also just bought the new Heavy Grinder and Metal Press in order to make chocolate items. He also figured out how to make a Holtburger! If you're on Thistledown on AC some night, look me up, I'm always happy to help people learn how to cook or be alchemists or fletchers.

The Dark Shadows e-mail game I've been running is up to episode 12, which I'm writing right now. There's still room for one more player character if you're interested!

The cat has been a little trying lately. She still demands attention on her schedule and won't give us any leeway on it. Then again, she is a cat, so there you are.

Work's been going well, and I'm doing more and learning more. I never thought I'd be programming in Visual Basic Script, but I am. I'm on the level of basic document object manipulation and starting in on constant manipulation through mathematical operators. I know, it sounds like Trek-speak.

My mother is still bugging us good-naturedly to visit San Diego. We're thinking of doing a trip to Disneyland and San Diego in January or February. Give us a chance to escape the cold for a bit, take a few days off, relax, ride way too many rides until we throw up (though we're going to try hard to not throw up), and just enjoy ourselves.

And in other news, I've been doing more selling on eBay in trading cards and gaming cards and almost setting up a little business for myself. Once I've sold enough product to buy more, I do so, and sell it off again. It's almost sick. Still, I sold a few cards this week that will allow me to buy a box of Angel trading cards and maybe a box of Charmed.

That's it for now. Sorry I haven't posted in a while. Drop me a line and tell me to update my site if you think I'm slacking, okay?
posted by Jeffrey Hitchin 8/10/2000 01:05:54 PM