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http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/mods/45138//?

Has this been on anybody's radar?  I'm gonna hit the download overnight and see how it plays, but from what I've read so far it looks promising.  Only the first installment is available so far, which looks like it's probably going to mostly be in and around Vault 18.  They're saying the playing area is about the same size as the capital wasteland from Fallout 3.  And conversations will be much more stat driven apparently, so roleplaying should be a bit more immersive.

I thought I'd stop in and say Hi.
I think the last I told anybody, I'd gotten married to my high school sweetheart and landed my high school dream job.

Well, I'm still married, but I quit the job.  It was an eventful two years, what with a little old lady on a harley writing off the van and such, but in the end the pay didn't match the conditions, especially not after that laptop full of cockroaches I was expected to fix.  So I quit, gave my replacement a crash course and applied to do a Bachelor of Education at uni.  Because it's been so long since high school I had to take a STAT test, which I aced.  I got my acceptance within a week of sitting the test, so either they looked at the results really quickly and decided to snap me up or I didn't actually need to do the test.  The latter is slightly more likely.

Anyway, I'm now halfway through my first year of four (five if I go for honours, which I may yet do) and have exams next week.  Every assignment so far has been an A and I'm feeling pretty darn proud of myself.  If I can just solve the problem of perpetual poverty I'll be happy.

I've just ordered parts for my new gaming rig and thought back to the times that other people have started these kinds of threads.  It occurred to me that it's been quite a while, so everybody's probably running completely different things from what they did back then.

My new machine will have a pair of GTX660's in SLI with 16GB of RAM and one of those new i7 3930K processors.  It's been 5 years since I upgraded, and that was to a few steps below the latest then.  I figured it's time for a proper upgrade.

I'm beginning to wonder if there's something sinister at work here.
We've got politicians all over the world making absolutely unbelievable statements with no hint of irony.  We just had an Australian senator (and parliamentary secretary to the opposition leader) state that allowing gay marriage would lead to beastiality becoming acceptable.

I'm sure BC's already pointed it out, but it never stops being true - these people are elected and trusted to pass laws.

What really stinks is that I have absolutely no control over any of it.  I'm in a safe conservative seat with an MP that pretty much flies under the radar as far as outlandish comments goes.  I could campaign locally, get full community support and even get elected and it would not make a bit of difference to the number of out of touch morons who end up in government.  I might as well write amusing limericks on my ballot paper for all the difference it would make.

I'm starting to seriously consider putting together a kickstarter campaign to buy a fertile island nation somewhere.

I'll be off the grid for a week or so on account of a wedding and honeymoon.
Not that you'll really notice since I tend to lurk after hours anyway.  That damn courteous part of my head has stubbornly refused to succumb to alcohol poisoning though.  It's like ivy, I tells ya!

It's a pretty horrible thing to discover that a skill you spent years perfecting has been made completely unneccesary.  This isn't the first time though.  I was studying batch files just in time for windows 98 to do away with DOS.  This one is more concerning than that, though.  I mean, at least batch files still have uses.

I never really thought about it before...that's not to say I didn't notice, but it just never occurred to me what the consequences are...my fiancee doesn't wear bras.  This means that my one-handed bra removal technique will likely never be used again!

I'm practically in mourning, here.  Also it's 1:19 am, so I'm literally in morning.

Just thought you'd all like to know.

Attempting to lift a copier up onto a pallet only to discover the the supplied box is too small, requiring lifting the copier back to the floor to prevent anybody accidentally bumping the copier and having it fall off the pallet and land on them is not advised.

Further correspondence can be directed to World of Pain, care of my lower back.

If I wasn't me I'd want to punch myself in the face for being too damn lucky.

Around the end of September last year I was getting sick of my job.  I was awesome at it but kept being told not to do things that I found easy because nobody else in my department was able to do them and we couldn't, as a business, offer inconsistant service.  I get the feeling somebody got sick of customers always asking for jobs to be booked in for me specifically to do.

My girlfriend at the time also decided she wanted to take a holiday during the January holidays, a period when it was impossible for me to get time off work.  So, with those two things combined I resolved to quit at the end of the year.  Two weeks later a job was advertised in the paper for a computer technician.  It was a business I'd dealt with before, I had a friend that worked there and the manager was one of my regular customers.  That evening said manager came into the store to buy a few things, so I mentioned the ad and discovered that the job was to replace my friend who'd found another job.  I put in an application, had an hour-long interview and started part time the following Monday, working around my shifts in my existing job because I didn't want to leave them in the lurch.  It ended up being four years to the day that I'd been working there.  A pleasing symmetry.  The January holiday was even organised.  Lucky break number one.

Flash forward 6 months.  My girlfriend dumped me, saying I seemed to want the relationship more than she did which is not a very subtle way of saying "I don't want this relationship."  This conversation happened during the week between performance weekends of the play we were both in, too, so we went into the final performances with a fresh breakup that we were keeping secret from the rest of the cast because the last thing you need in the dramatic arts is extra drama.

Lacking a place to live and lacking time to find one, I asked an old friend of mine who I knew had previously had a spare room if I could crash with her for a few weeks.  She was fine with it.  When I say old friend I mean we've known eachother since she was born, we went to high school together (during which I had a bit of a crush on her) and we've basically had eachothers backs whenever things have gone wrong.

A few weeks turned into a couple of months, I forgot all about my ex and the old bit of a crush returned...and before Night Owl starts screaming "friend zone" - I'm now dating my high school crush and and working in the job I wanted when I left high school.  It's only taken me a decade.

Watch and be cheered!
http://www.hongfire.com/cg/data/25/caramelldansen.swf

From the alt text of today's XKCD (http://xkcd.com/903/)

Wikipedia trivia: if you take any article, click on the first link in the article text not in parentheses or italics, and then repeat, you will eventually end up at "Philosophy".

Even nazism comes back to philosophy.  In surprisingly few steps.

So far I've tried dirt, manga, toaster and Godspell.  True for all.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/gaming/virtual-las-vegas-the-fallout-fans-ultimate-road-trip/story-e6frfrt9-1226055488463

Apparently a non-gamer fallout fan decided to take a trip around Vegas to compare real locations to their in-game counterparts.  I had no idea so much of the game was based on reality.  That's not to say I thought it was all completely invented, but I'd thought it was based more on stereotypical mytho-vegas rather than what's actually there.

Well, thanks to that ranty post I was able to get my thoughts in order enough that I could rationally declare the problems I was having and actually got some support out of it.  The producer returned from whatever netherhell they were inhabiting and started keeping an eye on things while I was on stage.  I got people turning up to rehearsals, not by threatening to kick them out of the show (I can't afford to lose any more of them) but by threatening not to let them into the NEXT show.

Which brings us to tonight.  Rehearsals are finished.  In a little over 9 hours we go on stage.  Not everything is ready.  I have half a costume.  The left half.  But I have a plan in mind to deal with that.  One of the scenes, a slapstick scene, isn't flowing at all.  I've called an emergency rehearsal JUST for that scene for the few hours before the show, and plan to cut any gags that fall flat even after that.  Half the lighting gear still hadn't arrived at the last rehearsal, but the guy running the rig knows pretty well what I want, so I'm confident that if the lights are there tonight he'll be able to get something good out of them.

I just wish I had four or five subservient clones so I could oversee everything myself.

Just posting this because I need to vent, so feel free to bypass the post entirely.  It's likely to get into the vicinity of TLDR.

I'm directing a play this year.  A rock panto version of Aladdin.  All good.  It's my first shot at directing.  I'm happy with a challenge.  All's fine.
Unfortunately they didn't tell me when I volunteered to direct that I'd also have to coordinate all the other bits and pieces too.  All the things I thought were the producer's job.  I can't focus on rehearsals because I have to make sure we've got people to do makeup, make sure we've got a band, organise someone to do choreography, basically put the WHOLE FRIGGING SHOW together while the producer...you know, I don't actually know what their job is.

Even all that would be generally manageable though.  Except that now, with a month til showtime, I have to take on one of the roles myself because the person I pulled in to replace the first person to drop out of the role has also dropped out.  So in addition to trying to make sure the scenes look right and the chorus are looking like townspeople instead of bored teenagers I have to stand in the middle of the scene trying to remember my lines.

You know, some people can even direct a show they're also acting in.

So let's throw in some more.  For any given rehearsal I'll be missing up to 5 cast members, often at least two of them being in lead roles.  So, I have to be on stage filling my own part AND reading two other parts, often having a conversation with myself while I wonder why I'm even bothering.

Tonight I got an email from a cast member complaining that too much time was wasted at a singing rehearsal because I spent ages trying to figure out which notes went with which parts of a four part harmony and why they didn't match the demo cd.  I only read music in a very haphazard "every good boy deserves fruit" kind of way.  So why was I the one trying to work the music out?  Because the music director won't work with the chorus and the pianist I had organised sent me a message 30 minutes before rehearsal saying she couldn't make it.

In the email she asks me why I hadn't played through and figured out all the harmonies in advance.  The answer is bloody obvious.  I wasn't meant to be the one that knew how to do it!  I am not the bloody music director!

If I'm lucky, posting this here will let me vent enough bile that I won't explode during rehearsal, or if I do that my thoughts will be in order enough that the tirade can be directed precisely at those that need to be verbally flayed alive and left wishing they'd given me some fucking support when I asked for it.

http://nuka.fbrtech.com/

They even made a bottle of Quantum.

I'm directing the 2010 show for my theatre group!  We've just finished auditions and I had no idea how hard casting would be.

I've got people who fit the role but can't sing, people who can sing but can't seem to get into the emotion of the role, people who could fill a particular role beautifully but they're the only one I've got that can fill another less desirable role...madness.

Still, it looks like it's going to be a fantastic show.  The Adventures of Aladdin: A Rock Panto.  For those that don't know, pantomime is a VERY fun form of theatre.  Lots of slapstick and silliness.  I've already added all kinds of silly jokes to the script and I'm sure the cast will come up with heaps more.  There's just so much room to add things quite aside from how the characters are played.

Also, I have to choreograph a pie fight.  That'll be a real challenge.

Its all so exciting!

Tomorrow is the first performance of my local theatre company's production of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  I'm playing Aslan.  The costume weighs at least 40kg and includes crutches.

My biggest concern is...well, frankly, the biggest one is whether the costume will be finished (I spent the last two hours with the costume ladies trying to make the rear legs stop grinding against the floor) but beyond that my biggest concern is being able to move on stage effectively without having bits of my costume fall apart.  I wore most of the costume for our final dress rehearsal last night and...there we some issues.

On the upside, I've discovered I can sing while hunched over on child-sized crutches and carrying the equivalent of a very hairy supermodel on my back.  I'm sure that'll look good on my resume.

Making this up as I go and I'm loopy on painkillers so this should be...interesting.

With the number of virii making the jump from animal to human lately, I think it's high time we looked at the threat of a computer to human virus transmission.  Here's some signs to watch out for.

The urge to send love letters to all of your friends even though you're likely to sneeze into the envelopes.
A tendency to throw away important paperwork.
Your house is steadily getting messier and more cluttered.
You make groaning noises during relatively routine tasks.
Things you were certain you'd put in a safe place are unaccountably missing.
Naked people start jumping out at you in the street offering you cheap rates to see their friends.
Very official looking people offer to give you a medical checkup in exchange for $15.

I haven't been paying attention to any of the stuff about the X Men Origins movie because frankly I don't give a toss about Wolverine.  Then I saw something on the movie poster.  A card.  An ace of spades.  GAMBIT!

Curiosity piqued, I went to check out some details on the movie.  Discovery number two - DEADPOOL!!!  Not only that, Deadpool played by Ryan Reynolds!!

Those who've been paying attention may already know that Deadpool is my favourite marvel character, followed closely by Gambit.

Excuse me while I go all fanboy here, but holy fucking shit, Deadpool and Gambit in ONE MOVIE!  I HAVE TO FUCKING SEE THIS!

*cough*  Yes, actually going to make time to go to the cinema, with or without the girlfriend (who hasn't seen the first three X Men movies)

The bushfires are worse then they've been other years.  96 dead at last count, the number expected to go up as crews are able to get into affected areas.

Marysville's wiped out, though thankfully almost everybody got out.  http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25024427-2,00.html  I went on a weekend holiday there a year ago.  It was so beautiful there.  A local artist had laid out a huge garden and filled it with sculptures, it was amazing.  All gone.  (http://www.brunosart.com/ to see what used to be there)

There are still fires out of control all over the place.  Here's a map.  http://www.theage.com.au/national/urgent-threats-20090208-80k1.html  I'm near Shepparton, by way of reference.  Varag lives down in Melbourne.  But he'll be out in the middle of those fires somewhere right now.  Hoping he comes out of this ok, and not just physically.

I've just been in a stage musical.  After the second performance I was washing my makeup off in the shower when I slipped and fell through the glass wall of the shower.

Ordinarily this would not be a problem since modern shower walls are made of safety glass which breaks into small and relatively blunt cubes, incapable of cutting very deeply.  Unfortunately I fell onto the frame which still held a number of these small cubes in a configuration not dissimilar to a large saw.  The result was unpleasant.

I now have stitches in a roughly diagonal line down my back from my left shoulder to my right hip.  Thankfully I've discovered I have a high pain tolerance and was able to go on stage for the remaining three performances without needing to tone down my movements much at all.  The stitches come out tomorrow.

Hope you've all been well.  Sorry I haven't been around.