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Christopher 'Vulpine' Kalley,
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Copyright © 1998-2006

"Better Vulpines through Technology."


"Crom! Grant me revenge...if not...to Hell with you!"


Is it the New Year Yet ? Tue Dec 28 18:30:44 CST 2004
Mood: exhausted Music of the Day: Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid on DVD
Two days of work, two days of stress and working my tail off. Not going to go into detail, but it's been...well, not fun. But rather than dwell on the nightmare that work can be, I'll sit here and talk about Chinese food, and watching bad movies from Netflix ( Anacondas: the Hunt for the Blood Orchid aka the movie noone would go see with me in the theater. *wink*) and making egg creams and general not thinking of anything more thought involving than City of Heroes. Hurrah for me.

Boxing Day Mon Dec 27 10:47:54 CST 2004
Mood: Good Music of the Day: Nightwish - Nemo
Well I had a good Boxing Day. (December 26th for those not in the know.) Amythest dropped by, we exchanged a few extra gifts (hey, nothing wrong with spoiling people, or being spoiled) and went to lunch at IHOP. Met up there with The Grim Squeaker. After lunch we watched a little Invader Zim, then went to see House of Flying Daggers. Hurrah for martial arts extravaganzas...with Zhang Ziyi. Yum. It was pretty good. A little slow paced in spots, but not bad. Needed more fighting IMHO. But, I'm an action junkie. After the movie we went our seperate ways, I made soup and played City of Heroes. Made level 20, finally. Went to bed way late...and here I am, at work. So far it's a calm day *knocks on wood*. Lets hope the week is fairly calm.

Well Crap ! Sun Dec 26 00:02:55 CST 2004
Mood: annoyed Music of the Day: Tomb Raider II on DVD
Guess who's getting packet loss out the wazoo again...

No, haven't called Comcast, too late, too tired, too pissed off...I'll end up being one of those customers I hate. It's not terrible, just makes playing City of Heroes a pain. So I think I'm going to watch Lara Croft jiggle and head to bed. Read a book. My usual fun stuff.

Damn cable connection...

Santa did come Sat Dec 25 13:11:35 CST 2004
Mood: excited Music of the Day: The sound of packets not dropping...
And he took my damn packet loss with him.

WOOHOO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*scampers off to play CoH*

Yes, I'm an addict. :)

*poing*

The Rest of the Week. Fri Dec 24 21:59:06 CST 2004
Mood: good Music of the Day: Voyeur.com on DVD
Besides $HOLIDAY loot, the rest of the week has been intresting. Since Wednesday my cable Internet has been flakey, lots of packet loss. Called Comcast, they said they'd send someone out today. Waited for them, got a call from a rather rude person saying 'Yeah, it's line problems. We'll fix it eventually." Still flakey as heck. Feh.

On the more positive side, at work we had the yearly awards ceremony. And guess who was named Tech of the Year ? Yep, happy little me. Seems people have been noticing all the hard work I've been doing this last year. So I had a happy day at work. Plus a 3 day weekend doesn't hurt.

Not alot else going on. Planning on generally being a bum tomorrow, maybe a movie in the evening. I'd like to have my cable back to normal, so I can play City of Heroes and get Steel Weasel up to 20 or so. Somehow though, I doubt it will happen. Damn cable.

Happy $HOLIDAYS Fri Dec 24 21:27:54 CST 2004
Mood: good Music of the Day: Hallows End on DVD
Happy Holidays. I'm sitting here watching horror movies and enjoying the fruits of the holiday season. It's been a pretty good holiday so far. Got quite a bit of loot, alot last weekend. So far I've gotten,

  • Lobscouse & Spotted Dog. It's a cookbook of the various weird foods from the Master and Commander series.
  • A Sea of Words. A more general lexicon of the Master and Commander series.
  • Bloodline of the Holy Grail: another book on the bloodline of Jesus.
  • Darkest of the Hillside Thickets: Cthulhu Strikes Back on CD
  • A gift card for Barnes and Noble. (already used on a book about pirates and the Templars.
  • Several DVD's, including Tomb Raider 2, Voyeur.com, Exit to Eden, King Arthur, and Army of Darkness (Boomstick Edition).
  • La Blue Girl manga (everyone needs tentacle porn for xmas).
  • Total War: Medieval video game.
  • A plush Ebola.
  • Cash.

    And last but definitely not least...from Amythest and Nymaz I got something special. An egg cream kit from Junior's deli in Brooklyn. This is special, not just because I love egg creams, but because Junior's has a history in my family. My mom grew up in New York, and my Grandfather went to Junior's for lunch on a regular basis. So this has cool associations for me, plus the ability to make yummy egg creams. Oh, for those not blessed with the knowledge of these things...an egg cream is a mixture of chocolate syrup, milk and selzer mixed. Think fizzy Yoohoo. Very tasty. It's a must try.

    So, it's been a good season for loot. Hope everyone else has a happy $HOLIDAY.

    • Status of the Fox Report Wed Dec 15 10:50:37 CST 2004
    Mood: Good Music of the Day: Hammerfall - Warriors of Faith
    Long time no read...well not a LONG time. Just haven't felt like posting anything of merit for a bit. And I had a fairly intresting week or so. Friday was a normal day at work, a little hectic but not too bad. Got off work, headed over to Amythest and Nymaz's to decorate the tree and eat pizza and watch TV. A bunch of us showed, tree got decorated in short order. It's one of them lightup fiberoptic trees, and it looks like a very large network switch with alot of traffic in my geeky opinion. ;) High blinky light quotient. We then watched 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' which was very amusing. Been a long time since I watched that. Came home, got a suprise...a box of cookies and stuff from a Livejournal friend of mine, GossamerGull . Including, Cthookies. Yes, cthulhu cookies. Green even. With tentacles. :) Made my day *grin* After that I headed off to bed.

    Saturday I woke up, got motivated and headed out to do...
    The Dreaded $HOLIDAY Shopping !!!

    Actually it went well, started by meeting The Grim Squeaker and SugarFae for lunch, then hitting a few nearby stores. Got most everyone on my list taken care of by 5pm. I was proud. And I mostly stayed in budget too. Then met up D/FW Ufies List for dinner and a movie. We went to see Blade 3, which was exactly what I expected. Action, one liners, explosions and vampires. No heavy thinking, no moral dilemas, just fun. Very good flick IMHO. Headed back to Squeaker and Sugarfae's place, watched TV...got my 2nd $HOLIDAY gift of the year, since Squeaker has issues just holding on to gifts. It was a cookbook, of all the various weird foods mentioned in the various Master and Commander books, things like plum duff, spotted dog, soused hog's face (which is pretty much exactly as it sounds) and weirder things. Funny part, it made me very hungry. *laugh* I won't be trying many of the receipes in it, I'm not much for cooking, and most of them required MAJOR effort. But readng it was fun. Thanks Squeak :) Came home, read the book for a bit and crashed out fairly early. (at least as I recall).

    Sunday I woke up, bummed around for a bit, met up with some old friends for lunch. From there I was planning on going home to do housework and be a responsible adult. Lucky for me I was tempted by a cute redhead to go see "Christmas with the Kranks" (thanks Amythest). It was very funny, not too sappy, and fit my mood of Xmas very much, especially how people act around you if you 'Don't do Xmas'. I also finished up my $HOLIDAY shopping, save for one more thing. Which I think I'll wait til next payday to get. After the movie I dropped Amythest back at her place, headed home for dinner and vegging in front of the TV and computer. Played City of Heroes a bit, working on getting Steel Weasel up to 20th level in the next week or so. Yeah, I'm a bit of an addict, but it's fun. *grin*

    Monday dawned...and I headed to work. The less said about work the better, it wasn't a good day stress wise. Monday night I watched TV and played on the computer. Went to bed early I think (I honestly don't recall much of monday). Tuesday was better, less stress more fixing things. Tuesday night I did laundry and cleaned the cat box, then settled in to get utterly frustrated with CoH. My internet connection is having sporatic packet loss. Not enough for me to notice normally, but when gaming it's very apparent. Especially when I run by the same spot of terrain 4-5 times in a row... then get killed by what was chasing me. ergh...Frustrating. I checked my network, nothing internal causing it to loose packets. Going to try plugging directly into the modem, bypassing the router to see if the router is finally giving up. Otherwise it's Comcast's problem. We'll see. Oh well, back to work for me :)

    Oooh Thu Dec 9 18:48:13 CST 2004
    Mood: Squamous Music of the Day: Stargate SG-1 on TV
    Xmas candy I can sink my teeth into...I love Ebay.

    Weekend Fun Sun Dec 5 19:36:13 CST 2004
    Mood: Good Music of the Day: Mythbusters on TV
    Well it's been a fun weekend. Friday after work I snagged a ride from Techie, and met up with The Grim Squeaker and SugarFae at Steak and Shake for dinner. Dinner was good, I needed the milkshake...ice cream = male prozac. And after this last month, I needed it bad. After dinner, me and Sugarfae went to see Alexander. It was...alright. Not great, but not bad. Lots of epicness, lots of costumes, quite a bit of bloody combat. Lots of bad accents (like why did half the Macadonians sounds Irish ? or Angelina Joile sounding vaguely Russian ?) And of course, the massive amounts of slash fiction inspiration in this movie. *laugh* I thought it was a tad over the top, not bad...just...heavy handed with it. Not enough battle scenes, but what they had was very intense. The history was mostly accurate, as I recall. The biggest downside...it's 3+ hours long, and my butt went numb. But I enjoyed it. From there, Sugarfae dropped me off at home, and I headed to bed.

    Saturday I got up early, and went to my favorite Goodyear to see what they could do about my wheel. Find out that Discount Tire gave me the wrong tire for my warranty. Buy a new tire, get it mounted...it leaks. Crud...the manager takes a big hammer and *wham* *wham* *wham* the dent is gone. Reinflate the tire, no leaks no bubbles. Hurrah for me. Pay the Goodyear people and do some bday shopping for Amythest's bday party that evening. She had a pirate party, so I got a wooden box, and filled it with chocolate coins, a pirate map puzzle and a flag. Go to Nymaz and Amythest's place, did prep work on said party. Then had said party. We watched Sinbad and Pirates of the Caribbean. Had a nice time, came home about Midnight and watched TV and read.

    Sunday dawned, I headed back down to Amythest's. We were going to do some Xmas plotting and pricing for gifts...but neither of us was up to it. So we watched movies and hung around. After that, I came home, been watching Mythbusters and playing City of Heroes (made a new level for Steel Weasel). It's been a good weekend all in all. Hope this next week is pretty good too.

    Work Change Thu Dec 2 17:04:28 CST 2004
    Mood: Better Music of the Day: Work stuff
    Well, some slightly better news from me. Moved offices today, we keep adding new techs on the tech floor, so they banishes my dept (Professional Services) to the sales area to free up some desks, and to give us a little distance so we can concentrate on our tasks, rather than being just higher level techs. My desk is smaller, but it's ok. Getting work done better when I don't have 15 techs asking me questions. Now to train the sales people into using chat software instead of speech, and life will be perfect ;)

    Tire Foo, redux Thu Dec 2 11:42:51 CST 2004
    Mood: down Music of the Day: Work stuff
    Well, got up and took my car in for tire repairs. They couldn't repair/ replace it. They say the wheel is too bent/warped and that's why it was flat. So I'm kinda boned. Going to take it to my favorite Goodyear place on Saturday, see if they can work their magic on my poor car. Otherwise I get to hit junkyards for a wheel. Either way, not alot of driving for me for a while...*sigh* I need this like I need a hole in my head.

    Tired... Wed Dec 1 22:44:57 CST 2004
    Mood: tired Music of the Day: Mail Call on TV
    Argh...after work today I went to visit Amythest and watch TV and have dinner. Was a very nice night, cheered me up lots. Left her place, got a few miles away and noticed a funny noise. Pulled over. Damn it, flat tire. Ok, not a big deal, change tire... crap. The last lugnut doesn't fit my tire iron. Curse alot. Try again, nope...the lugnut is just small enough to slip the iron. Give up, call Amythest...thank gods for close friends. She drove up, we tried her tire iron, didn't work. Curse again...then a helpful soul pulled up to see if we needed help. He had a multi tireiron, the quad one. And sure enough, it fit. Remove last lugnut, change tire, hug redhead, drive home. Get home safe, come in, fall over. Tomorrow I'll be going in late to work so I can get the tire fixed/replaced. Work better understand, I don't trust my spare. *grin* Oh well, it could be worse. Could have been raining.

    Mom update Wed Dec 1 10:40:40 CST 2004
    Mood: stressed Music of the Day: Sounds of work.
    Well Mom called me at work, the doctor finally called her. She didn't break anything when she hurt her back on Friday. She does have artritis of the spine. It's treatable per the doctor, and she's positive about it...but I'm feeling a little wigged out. Hurrah for stress. But at least nothing is broken.