Can't believe how busy work has been, especially since the only parallels left to draw on how bad things are now for the economy is the Great Depression. So I am distinctly grateful to be Working and humbled by having a Job.
Sadly, companies are quite jittery about their product roll-outs in times such as these, so rather than just sending in their new products to reviewers who will analyze their new gadget in public, they are turning to people like me for more private auditions. Just means I can't talk about anything I'm trying out and testing right now.
Aside from my work, I also keep seeing hopeful signs that perhaps things are not as bad as we have been led to believe.
The Beach hotels booked solid for the MLK Jr. long weekend: With Julian off at his grandparents, we had hoped for a mini vacation at one for a couple of nights. No rooms available, which means that not everyone out there is broke and suffering.
Traffic jams, every weekday morning: If we're all out of work, where the hell are we all going?
Post holiday lines out of the front door at the local Game Spot: people already trading in all of the console games they got over the holidays for new things to play: Someone bought those games, and now they are being used to buy more.
But make no mistake, it's awful out there and probably getting worse before it improves. I just hope the new guy in Washington can come up with some solutions.
In the meantime, a great shift in my Reading List approaches. Anyone who knows me understands that when I find a book I really like, I buy everything that author has ever written before I'm done with the first book. Most recent examples: Richard K. Morgan, author of such geekishly wicked sci-fi delights as Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, Woken Furies, and Thirteen.
William Gibson: (just the last two in the long line of EVERYTHING he has written) Pattern Recognition, and Spook Country.
Current ending cycle (I'm on the last book): Gregory Maguire: (the only three I've read so far) Wicked, the second in the trilogy, called Son of a Witch, and the third, A Lion Among Men. Think the Wizard of Oz, but rated M for Mature Audiences.
Next up (and the reason why it might be the last of the decade) is Neal Stephenson, author of one of my all time top five cyberpunk novels: Snow Crash.
He might help me finish out the decade since he seems to have supplanted Stephen King as the writer of novels that could probably be 300 to 400 pages shorter than they are.
Catching up with Neal Stephenson will require me finishing (and all in wonderful bound hardcover dumbbell-like weights), Cryptonomicon (910 pages), Quicksilver-Volume I of the Baroque Cycle (916 pages), The Confusion-Volume II (815 pages), The System of the World-Volume III, 892 pages, and Anathem, (935 pages). Instead of going to the gym some nights, I could just do leg lifts and bicep curls with them.
When I can, I'm doing the badge grind thing on City of Heroes with my Archery - Fire Manipulation Blaster, Artemis the Archer, (She's up to 352 game badges from the 213 she had when I started to care a few months back. She only has about 250+ to go, which is frankly kind of ridiculous. She's currently working on all of the Invention badges) and leveling up what is easily my favorite villain ever, Nyx of Chaos, a level 41 Electric Melee - Willpower Brute. Aside from her signature powers, Lightning Rod (superior damage) and Thunder Strike (high damage) she doesn't leave you as deep in the hurt locker as some other brutes, but nothing does it with more style and flash.
Lightning Rod teleports you into the middle of a mob, for example, where you suddenly reappear to the flash and sound of thunder and lightning, with the mob you just hit flying in all directions and suffering from three kinds of hurt. So awesome.
And Willpower, IMHO, is the ultimate defense for any melee toon. Last night, three of us were taking on Scrapyard, the Giant Monster on Sharkhead Isle. For several minutes, I was required to stand there and hold him solo while one friend switched toons and another backed off to wait for his return. Scrapyard was unable to hurt me. I could have stood there indefinitely. Most times, he missed because of her accuracy debuffs. When he did connect, for 600 to 700 points damage, she had regenerated her health before he managed to hit her again. Fun times.
This weekend is the year's first double game experience for City of Heroes and City of Villains. I figure to have less time than ever for this, given parental responsibilities and partner responsibilities, but I hope to play Nyx a lot, especially now that she has another great way to do damage: Mu Lightning (high damage).
Bye for now.