It's Been Awhile

It's been a while since I made a "post of substance" rather than a link to some political or other story of interest. That's partially due to the fact that my computer at home can now be declared legally deceased (the sparks of life I get from it are more like spasms induced by electrical shocks rather than sustained living), so my blog time is also usually my work time. The reason I can blog tonight is that Liz hasn't come to get me yet.

So anyway, my life isn't a whole lot these days aside from the usual get-up, go-to-work crap. I've had some issues at the office, but I can't really talk about that here because people from work read my blog (although the important ones know about my stuggles anyway, heh). It's mostly just supid personality stuff that really grates on my nerves - the kinds of things we should have resolved on the playground back in first grade, not carried with us all the way to a professional workplace. And it's one person in particular, which makes it even worse, because I have to work with that person on a daily basis, and the problem has, at times, made coming to work something I dread rather than love, and that should not happen at a game company.

Heh, there I went talking about it anyway. On the work front, today was Liz's first day at her new job - they didn't have time to train her to use the phones, but she was in three strategy meetings. I'm looking at that as a good sign and a step up from where she was. I spoke with her a little earlier, and she seemed really excited - and I know she kicks enough ass that she'll have no problem handing this work.

On the personal level, I walked into the office this morning, a feat made even easier with the addition of my new 40 GB iPod. The ultimate yuppie toy it be, but Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ is it cool. I've been keeping an iTunes library on my work computer for over a year, and it took the iPod about 20 minutes to download it all and arrange it. My only complaint - and this is minor - is that the stupid thing scratches too easily. The metallic back was scratched the first day just from sitting on my desk, and the front has a couple of hairline scratches on it now as well just from being in my jeans pocket.

Excercise has always been a matter of boredom for me - my mind usually operates on the "we could be doing so many other worthwhile things right now!" level - and the iPod helped immensely with that. I'm going to see if I can download some eBooks for it, so I can actually spend that time wisely rather than waste it listening to that devil-rock music (AKA Bon Jovi).

In other tech news, I got a new DVD player, the Momitsu v880, one of two DVD players on the market that upconverts to HD (a 1080i signal). Although DVDs aren't mastered in HD, the Momitsu has built-in upconverting software (or, as I like to think of it, 140 million gnomes all using Photoshop at the same time to improve my picture), so it's about as close as you will get to HD-DVD before the format comes out. It improved the picture quality on my TV by, say, 100%. High-quality-mastered DVDs like the Superbit stuff, the Lord of the Rings, and others look fantastic - nearly indistinguishable from the HD TV channels I'm getting (there is a little loss, but you don't notice it unless you're right on top of the TV). Even TV shows like Futurama look eye-poppingly crisp. I now have over 400 DVDs, thanks in no small part to some trades I've done recently, so there's a lot of stuff to watch over again.