My thoughts on the recent Top Gear special notwithstanding, it's pretty obvious to me that the next big challenge they'll do is Australia (or it should be at least, since they've hit every other continent). I'd be especially eager to see that one, especially since "everything in Australia wants to kill you."

In other news, all of us here at Tea Garden have machines running OS X, and as such were all able to run GeekBench to compare our machine's performance. Because it's completely laughable (for me included), I'll share the results with you here:

Connal's 2.8 Ghz 17" Unibody MacBook Pro: 3913
Nrasser's 2.3 Ghz 15" MacBook Pro: 3192
Rayna's 2.0 Ghz 13" MacBook: 2490
Sev's HP Netbook running 10.5 on an Atom: 582

And, my PowerBook G3 Pismo 500 Mhz: 259

I could probably bump that up a few numbers if I plugged my machine in.

Nothing is more annoying than having a new episode of Top Gear (and a special event at that) to watch with a group of people, and not being able to watch it because one person of the group doesn't want to. -_-

So I'm sitting at Caribou for $2 Mocha Monday with Cyrus and Wehr, who are currently watching some kind of Monty Python sketch on YouTube. Rather loud, but eh. >.>

Well, I've been looking back on the year, at how much fun I had and how the coming year seems. When once is at a high point it seems like every direction from there is down, and I can't see my life going anywhere but down into the next year. It's not just about the work front, it's about everything, and I guess I'm just pessimistic that after such a fun year of basically screwing around and enjoying myself (for the most part, it wasn't entirely sunshine and roses) that 2010 can't possibly hold a candle to 2009, and psychologically I'm going to look back on this year and wish it could happen all over again.

There's one place I think I can get hired almost for certain, the place Sev works, a company that does phone tech support for iPhones and iPods. I absolutely despise tech support and I hate the iPhone and iPod Touch (their main product support lines), and Sev works asinine hours (2:30-11 pm Th F M and 11:30-8 pm Sa Su) which I know I'll be stuck with something equally lame. They also do shit like making people work on holidays (Christmas, New Year's) while Apple employees get the days off and get paid more altogether.

The one reason that job is pretty much guaranteed is because they have a ridiculous turnover rate. Sev has been there for over six months which is a long commitment for that job. He said I'd probably last a year if I worked there. I guess we'll see what happens.

( 2009 in 12 months, 62 photos, and a lot of memories... )

The short version: 2009 was better than 2008, which was a good year in itself. Most of the reason this year was so awesome had to do with the freedom of not having a job, which led to spending a lot of time with friends and going on adventures. I didn't do as much writing as I did last year, which is something I want to address in 2010.

I definitely want to do more traveling next year - another major road trip to AC, and around there if time will allow. I don't plan to see 2010 through without a real job at some point, but what form that job will take is anyone's guess. I thought 2009 would have a hard time living up to 2008, but it did and then some. I can honestly say I don't see how 2010 will surpass 2009, but I was proven wrong last year.

Plans for 2010: Three conventions (FC, AC and MFF), Ojbiwe Forests Rally, and at least one major road trip in the Weasel. We'll see how it pans out. =)

Yesterday was uneventful until Wehr came over around 2 pm to watch The Living Daylights with me, a Bond film he's never seen (there's not many of that case). I made him a tasty pasta lunch with salad, bread and Sunkist. He seemed to enjoy it. Then around 4:45 we headed out to the furmeet. The roads weren't great, but despite all the melty stuff having frozen overnight, and some noticeably slippery conditions, we didn't have any trouble getting there - some other people we know spun out, but there weren't any accidents that we heard about.

I was going to make a stop at Micro Center for some DVD-DLs to back up videos on since I lost half my storage space with the hard drive that died, but when we pulled into the parking lot the crowds and cars made me say "fuck that" and drive away. I forgot it was the day after christmas, and I wasn't about to deal with a throng of gift-card shoppers and returns just to get DVDs.

Last night's furmeet was nicely tiny. No more than 20 people showed up while I was there, which was until 6:45. I talked to a couple of new furs, saw Eldyran and Mandakatt who never usually come, which was nice. Wehr and I basically sat by ourselves for an hour or so, before being bored enough to go to Caribou. Spent over two hours there, where we were joined by Faver, Brian, Earthshine and a new person who I didn't talk to much at Perkins but got to know a bit better at Caribou, and he seemed like a decent guy. He's into bodybuilding and the muscle-fur thing, which I can't say I relate to, but it's a lot better than some things. Plus, he likes cars, owns a '68 (I think) AMC AMX in nice shape, which of course led me to showing off the Weasel and getting a lot of "Oh, Nauta!" from Wehr. =P

Applebee's went well afterwards, I finished up Celadon City on Pokémon Blue and tried winning a Porygon at the casino, but failed last night. Maybe next time. I really want to get one since I can't catch it anywhere else in the game, but gambling is frustrating. That's why I don't usually do it ever. =)

I still need to do the year-end photo post thing, which I will... eventually. Before the end of the year, for certain! But hell, I have 61 photos to post... XD

Odd story: My dad has an old Casio watch about the same age as the one I bought off eBay. Before buying mine, I thought about asking him if I could have his, but I figured he would just shoot me down and criticize me for being greedy.

So, I showed him the one I bought, and the next thing he said was "You should have asked me for mine, I never wear it anymore. I would have given it to you."

I asked if I could still have it for my collection, and he said "No, you already have one now."

Here's the one he has on the left, with mine on the right:



I like mine more I think, but it would have been neat to have his too.

More like Holiday Bullshit to me.

Yeah, so my dad called me this morning to say "Don't come over if you don't think it's safe, don't do it just because you don't want to disappoint us, etc etc." I said I was coming regardless, the roads didn't sound that bad to me, and the parking lot had been plowed last night.

So, no, the roads weren't bad at all. They were damn near clear, and even my father's side road was fine.

In fact, the worst part of this so-called "blizzard" was Wednesday night, when the snow began, and before crews had time to plow it very much. Driving Thursday was not as bad, and like I said, I could have made the planned dinner had it not been cancelled on me. Today, it was hardly like anything road-wise.

At least I got to have some semblance of a normal Christmas dinner with my father and stepmother. I got $100 from them, cash, which is great. That's a lot of mochas right there.

I also got to take home some turkey, for lunch tomorrow, and some cookies. They're home made little snowflake and snowman sugar cookies, with sprinkles. I absolutely love those. They're much better than the frosted kind like I bought last night at Target.

So last night ended up that Wehr couldn't make it over for dinner or coffee, so I ate by myself and went to coffee, Conor was the only one there. Spent about an hour there before Sev and Rayna showed up, and Sev mentioned he was meeting Earthshine there for seeing Avatar at 10:15 at the MN Zoo Imax.

I had been invited to this previously, but declined because I had plans with Wehr for dinner and coffee night, and he told me he didn't want to see the movie. But, since he wasn't there, I decided to just end up going, despite the weather because I didn't know when I'd get another chance to see the movie with people. Plus, Conor wanted to go, and offered to let me ride with him since the zoo is on the other side of the cities and the weather was pretty bad.

On the way to the theater, we stopped at a McDonald's for some food, because some people hadn't eaten. I didn't have a lot for dinner so I got a happy meal there, just a hamburger and fries, and got a toy with it from Avatar - it was the hammerhead six legged creature, or as I call it the "Hammerhead Hexapod". It has this clear mohawk thing that lights up too, with a color cycling RGB LED.

Tonight since I had nothing else to do, I went and got a pizza at Target and came to Sev's place to have pizza and watch some television. Beats spending the night alone I guess.

I totally could have gone to dinner if my mother hadn't cancelled plans. This Christmas Eve sucks.

Today isn't shaping up to be the best CED ever.

I already knew plans today were out the window. Then, I appear to have woken up with a sore throat and a cold, and found that my 250 GB LaCie Firewire drive will not mount, regardless of what I do. Disk Utility won't even see it, but it's obviously bus aware because my other drive is pass-through from it.

This is not what I needed today. All of my TV shows are on this drive, and I cannot figure out what's wrong. I tried re-plugging it, powering it off and on, making sure it's the only device on the bus, etc. I bought it new about three years ago, and it's a 3.5" external IDE drive in an enclosure.

So yeah, looks like I get to spend my day trying to get it to work, and if I can, copying everything off of it I can... But I have all of 10 gigs free on my other drive, so that might not happen. =/

I'll post about last night when I feel like it.

It was worth paying $17, driving 50 miles in a blizzard and not getting home until after 2 am (read: late for me).

I'll talk about it more tomorrow. Otherwise, fuck this weather.

So this snowfall that's supposed to happen, hasn't happened yet, is already completely fucking up the rest of the week.

When I said last night "I won't drive in bad conditions for holiday travel" I meant just that, if the roads are bad, I won't go. Not, "Two days out I'll preemptively cancel". Which is basically what I got on voice mail this morning from my mother. *shrugs* I may or may not still be having dinner with my father, it depends on how the weather is on Friday. I'm not going to jump the gun and cancel on him more than 24 hours in advance.

And on that note, apparently the weather is also screwing with our plans for weekly coffee tonight, in one of those frustrating but begrudgingly understandable ways that Nrasser's group minus Sev are all booking out to Duluth tonight instead of tomorrow because of the weather predictions (it's a several hour drive north), which means the only people going to coffee tonight would be Wehr, myself, and Sev - who doesn't think he's going now because the snow will be so bad by 7 pm. Which I highly doubt, but whatever.

Fuck, I want a mocha.

Around 3:45 I headed out to Sev's place to collect the fox and drive down to the airport to pick up his girlfriend, Rayna. She asked the previous day if someone could get her (including me) and since Nrasser was the only other person who could, and he worked until 5 usually (her flight landed at 4), I offered to do it.

Well, I said I didn't want to leave his place until I knew her plane would be on time, but since it was nearly landed by the time I arrived there, I told him I was ready to drive down to get her. Except, he had to take a shower right then... -_- So that took, oh, another half hour, while she texted him that her plane had landed, and I had to text back to tell her I was waiting on Sev...

So, 4:30 or so, I've figured out the best route to take to the airport (which is not close by any means), and it's rush hour, so it takes... an HOUR to get there, partly because the route I chose (35 E to 5 West) was fucked all to hell, but no option really would have worked better. I spent 10 minutes just in line to get to the door she was waiting at. =/

Once we had her in the car, we went to Tea Garden, which was tasty as always. It wasn't busy at all once we got there, and apart from stupid drivers, it was a nice time to relax. Faver joined us a little after we got there, and we sat and talked, mostly about how asinine his job (Papa John's delivery) is, making him work until 9 pm on Christmas eve. He's supposed to go to Wisconsin to be with family that night, but it's obviously not going to happen if he has to work, which sucks. =/

Around 8 pm, most of us were hungry, and Rayna spotted Fuji-Ya when we drove to the Tea Garden, it's one of our local authentic Japanese restaurants that serves sushi, tempura, bento, you name it. She wanted to eat there, and I thought she was joking because it's a bit spendy, but it turns out she wasn't. We all decided to go there (hardly need to twist my arm for Japanese cuisine) and Faver left his car on the street so we could all ride together - it wasn't too far from Tea Garden and it was easier to just take my car.

The only parking for the place is this municipal lot owned by the city, which costs money to park in - $1 an hour. Normally this isn't a big deal, but the machines to pay were "CASH ONLY" according to the sign taped over the credit card slot. And only dollar bills, and no change. So I had to bum a dollar off of Rayna, used the one I had, for two hours. I was able to track our time left using my awesome 1988 Casio digital watch, which also finally arrived. I was showing it off to everyone, the neat little LCD segmented circles that fill in and spin and stuff. =P

So, Fuji-Ya was epic as usual, I got chicken tempura (which isn't easy to find, it's usually always shrimp or vegetable), and I ate that up. Sev and Rayna got sushi, Faver got Gyoza (steamed dumplings) with miso soup, and tea he didn't like, but the food was good all around. After seeing my tempura and trying the vegetables it came with, Rayna and Sev had to order some themselves, so they got the shrimp tempura appetizer. We even got to sit in one of those nifty little rooms for ourselves, with the sliding door and the chair-mats you sit on without shoes. I have photos, but they're not from my camera so I have to wait for people to send them to me. =/

Afterwards, we drove back to Faver's car and bid farewell, and then Rayna wanted me to take her to her apartment on the way to Nrasser's place (where she had left her car while out of town for visiting family) because she broke/lost her glasses at a club while traveling and had a spare pair at her apartment. Except, when we got there, she realized her keys were also at Nrasser's house too. Fail. -_- So we just drove to Nrasser's anyway, and hung out there for a while until I went home a bit after midnight.

A lot of driving today, 60+ miles, which kind of sucked but it was worth it for the fun parts. I'm glad the roads weren't worse than they were, especially since we're supposed to get this "snowpocalypse" Wednesday night through Saturday or something. Right over the holidays, when I'm supposed to drive to St. Michael on Thursday for dinner with my mom's small side of the family (which is a 30 mile drive from my place, plus I'm being expected to make a detour to pick up my aunt another 20 miles out of the way). Then on Friday, I'm supposed to drive to Oak Grove (not quite as far, but nearly) for dinner with my dad and stepmom.

If the weather is as bad as they're predicting by Thursday (near-blizzard conditions), I'm not going to risk trying to drive around for the sake of the holidays. I know it's going to piss off my parents but I will just call them and say "Yeah, sorry I'm not going out in this." There's a certain amount of bad weather I'm willing to tolerate in relation to going somewhere, but whiteout blowing snow and freezing rain are not things I would willingly drive substantial distances to have dinner with family over.

I'm just glad I'm done playing taxi for people now that this shit is on the horizon.

I wish I'd done this for every year, but perhaps I can make a point of it from here on out:

( Read more... )

Keep an eye out for a Year In Review™ photo smorgasbord before the end of the year. =)

I'm heading out to my parent's in Michigan, so for the next week or so I will be very slow to answer emails. I will be bringing drawing supplies with me, so if I owe you art I'll probably be emailing you sketches on my return.


Since this probably won't be updated until I get back... have a merry Christmas y'all. Be safe!

( Thursday's activities are best described in photos... )

Friday didn't really get interesting until Wehr came over around 3:30 to study and do homework, and then Winail showed up around 5, and I made a big ass three course dinner for all of us - salad with french dressing, two kinds of pasta with chunky garden style sauce and Italian meatballs, five cheese garlic toast (without the cheese for lactose-phobic hyena), followed up by a fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies which I thought were chocolate filled, but they turned out to be caramel filled. I was initially frustrated with myself for buying the wrong ones, but both Wehr and Winail like caramel (I'm not very fond of it), but luckily I couldn't taste much of it when I tried one.

We spent the evening in, watched Catch Me If You Can and Goldeneye, since both of them are strapped for cash especially after Winail's car got hit by some drunk fucktard in the middle of the night while parked on the street. But, I think they enjoyed themselves, and it didn't cost anything. ^^

Today I think I'll have a hyena over from 4 or so till 9, when he runs off to go clubbing with Faver and some others. I was invited, but I am highly doubtful I would enjoy myself there, and they'd likely just end up drunk and I'd feel awkward around them in that case.

Got this IM tonight, not really sure what I think of it...

kaneofarc666 (10:48): Want to help me with my prank?
Nauta (10:49): Who is this?
kaneofarc666 (10:49): Mew mew, jaceleon, kane, B1FF
Nauta (10:50): Do I know you?
kaneofarc666 (10:50): Yes
Nauta (10:50): How?
Nauta (10:51): I don't recognize the name, I'm afraid.
kaneofarc666 (10:51): We are friends
Nauta (10:51): From... where?
kaneofarc666 (10:51): Pounced I think
Nauta (10:51): Okay, who do you think I am?
kaneofarc666 (10:53): Arent you the truck driver fur I used to know?
Nauta (10:53): Nope.
kaneofarc666 (10:54): Well, hello, my names Kane
Nauta (10:54): Hi... So, how did you get my name then?
kaneofarc666 (10:54): You have been on my list for a long time
Nauta (10:55): That's odd, so who are you on pounced?
kaneofarc666 (10:55): Hold on
kaneofarc666 (10:56): http://www.pounced.org/personals/viewad.php?&hcenc=1&hpad=4419
Nauta (10:56): Yeah, I have no idea who you are. ^^
kaneofarc666 (10:57): Well, im kane
Nauta (10:57): Nice to meet you.
kaneofarc666 (10:58): Right now I am playing a trick on someone
Nauta (10:59): I got that...
kaneofarc666 (11:35): And we pwned the poor prick
Nauta (11:56): Good for you

I still have no clue who this person is, or why they had me on their contact list, but apparently neither do they.

So, I have an Xbox 360 now, for no cost of my own. In my opinion, that's the only way to own one. Thanks, Kadjet! *Hug*

Long story short: I was given a broken one, and sent it in for service, got a refurb back. Unlike what happened to Kellic, Microsoft didn't send me one that was incompatible with the power supply I had. This one works, it has a plastic CD tray instead of metal, but no HDMI port. I don't know if it's one of the newest models without the risk of red ring, or if this one will eventually die on me.

Anyway, I still can't use it - It's useless without a hard drive, so I have to figure out a cheap way to get one. I can't even connect it to Xbox Live because it has no storage space to update itself, and it won't let me log in without updating, so. Plus, the only reason I wanted one, Forza 3, is another $60 on its own, so it'll probably be a while before I go out and buy that.

Still, I saved $200, so I guess I can't complain too much.

Article: GM to discontinue Saab after deal talks collapse

Way to go, GM.

You took a brand with 60+ years of history and killed it. One I rather liked, actually.

But then again, maybe it's for the best, no more cookie-cutter sedans and SUVs which didn't deserve the Saab badge, anyway.

And before you say "But you hate your Saab", while the truth may be that I'm not very fond of my own particular car, I do have a great deal of respect and admiration for what Saab used to be. Before GM bought 50% of it in 1989 and then the rest of it in 2000, which just happens to be the model year of my car.

What I drive is an Opel with Swedish styling built on a GM powertrain. The Saabs I truly love died back in 1994 when the first New Generation 900 came out.

Oh well, two of the four makes I've owned in my life are now history (Oldsmobile and Saab). Let's see how long it takes Chrysler to drive Jeep into the ground. They've already completely ruined what it used to be, in my opinion.