Dream of Waking

1. 6am – 8am MWR shift, also known as two hours of reading and apathy.

2. Got some cro-mag fired up on Livejournal. EDIT: I can’t make the “negative” the focus without mentioning the positive. Got tons of compliments on a ridiculous God’s Girls community post I made. (link)

3. Somehow managed to get our pairgains working, delivering piping hot SIPR access to the tankers and field artillery guys.

4. Ate more at lunch than usual. I actually finished my crappy little pizza and more than half of my fries.

5. Had a nice chat with Katie. Plans plans plans. I might elaborate later or I might just save this for a “oh, here’s something I had planned that I did but I didn’t tell anyone until I’ve already done it” entry.

6. Investigated Able troop’s internet access. It’s a line run way too far that barely works but it’s better than nothing and they’re happy with that.

7. Gave a medic a quick class on how to put ends on a CAT-5 cable.

8. Ran the line from the tankers to the field artillery for their SIPR.

7. Ducked out at work exactly at 5:30pm.

8. Swept and picked up my area a little. Dust EVERYWHERE, thanks dust-collecting carpetting and lack of vacuum cleaner.

9. Crappy shower where I found some shampoo. I’m out of shampoo so this was a boon as it was almost entirely full. There might’ve been a reason for that though, it smells like plastic/oil. Like motor oil. It lathered though, so I know it’s actually shampoo and not motor oil. I might keep using it until I can get some real shampoo.

10. Burned an Underworld Evolution vcd that won’t play on my crappy leftover TV/DVD combo. Plays without sound on my computer. Argh. I will find a way around this.

11. Castlevania whooped my monkey ass.

So since I’ve been up since 5:30am, I think I’ll play some Final Fantasy IV Advance until I pass out and start this exciting process over. Since I go on leave in almost two months, I’m preparing a list of topics to train the other people in my shop on so that they’re not totally assed-out while I’m gone. I know this place is going to fall apart without me. Or at least my network will. I’m basically leaving to come back to three weeks of work piled up. No, the others in my shop are totally competant, they’ll get all the minor crap out of the way while I’m gone, they’ll all just learn what it means to be The Hub for three weeks.

I thought I better add this before Katie has an aneurysm and sends me a million IMs/emails asking who Laundry Girl is, as referenced in my new About page.

There’s a girl at the laundry facility. She hits on me. By normal human standards, she’s a 3. By Army standards, she’s a 5. By deployed Army standards, she’s a 6. Not quite passing. Anyway, the day she started this Hice was dropping off laundry with me so of course when we get back to the shop he lets everyone know how the laundry girl was hitting on me and looking at him like he had a dick on his forehead (and not in that erotic manner). It’s been kind of a running gag in the commo shop as Allmon and Hice’s uniforms are pretty screwed up and their collars keep popping up and making them look like Elvis and mine are always nice and flat. It’s the Laundry Girl. She’s pressing my collars for me so I don’t look crazy. Today Wilson asked why my uniform always looks so clean. Laundry Girl. She washes mine seperate so they get cleaner. They’re washed with love. Hice one time said I’m going to start finding her panties in my clean laundry. I don’t know what I’m going to do with those if that happens.

So Laundry Girl joins my AIT girlfriend on my list of post-marriage girlfriends.

The “about” page has been updated. Katie made it for me. I’ve filled out entirely too many of those. It’s smallish though, I might have to add a lame Myspace survey.

EDIT: Added said lame Myspace survey, thanks Sara!

everlong. Now I’d never lump Foo Fighters in with Bush as being a less-than-mediocre band with one moment of musical clarity but “The Colour & The Shape” is their best album and “Everlong” is the best song they’ve ever had. Like “Come Down” it’s just one of those songs I can put on repeat and listen to over and over and over.

I think it’s official; Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow is whooping my monkey ass. I love that phrase. SFC T uses it all the time, usually in the context of, “(Allmon, Johnson), ima whoop yo monkey ass”. I know when he says that that one of those two brain surgeons did something stupid. I know when he says that it’s time to laugh at how dumb my coworkers are.

I LOVE when people try to throw rank at me to get what they want. SGT Criner does this often. He’s E-5, I’m E-4, though he tried this kind of crap when I was an E-3. Usually he wants something dumb so he’ll dress it up as something important, like recently he wanted me to give him some CAT-5 cable so he can get internet in his room so he can “talk to all those other people at the other bases”. He’s in charge of the biggest pieces of crap in my unit, he himself is a pretty big piece of crap, and he thinks he’s super-important. And when I tell him no or tell him to talk to SFC T, he gets all huffy and storms off and then he’ll keep asking me about everytime he sees me. He’ll even go so far as to lie to me in order to make me think someone important wants him to get these things, like he told me he talked to SFC T and he told SGT Criner to talk to me about it. No. SFC T doesn’t want him to have any CAT-5 because he doesn’t want any more people on his network. SGT Criner didn’t talk to him. And now he’s trying to get Wilson to give him some, even though Wilson’s a radio guy and he’d basically have to steal it from me in order to give it to him. Wilson’s not giving him anything. Wilson knows better. He’ll be trying Allmon and the SIGO next, the trick is to remind SIGO that SGT Criner’s full of crap and doesn’t need anything from us. SIGO’s a little loopy sometimes.

In general I love when people try to do some crap behind my back. Someone will come in looking for me to put a connector on a CAT-5 cable, my first question is “what’s this for?” Usually my next question is “where’d you get this cable?” or “who ran that line?” Some of these guys don’t understand; I don’t care what rank you are. I have the crimpers. I have the connectors. I know how to put the two together. You don’t. Basically no network work gets done without my divine (ha!) intervention. They don’t understand that being in charge of the network makes me also in charge of the security of my network. People need reasons for getting network access. I don’t need people adding more users to my already overloaded network behind my back.

This all makes me sound like I’m letting some resemblance of power to go my head. It’s not. This is my job. Make a network, add users, police and maintain my network. I don’t need backseat administrators. I don’t need clever people with a little networking knowledge. They give me headaches and create work for me. This sounds like it goes against my “I don’t need stupid users” rule either but it doesn’t. If someone needs to move to another office and can take their own cable with them from one location to another and plug in, that’s fine. That’s great even. No loss or gain of users, everything’s the same just one person’s in a different location. It’s when people try to hook up their buddies or themselves without the right to. That’s not what I need.

All entries default to “nerd” catagory. It’s faster that way.

Katie sent me cookies and snacks and stuff along with my new DS/GBA games, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, Mega Man Zero 4, and Final Fantasy IV Advance. My unwarranted impressions follow in that order.

Castlevania. The name just screams “Buy me!” unless it’s on a new home console. The last two handheld Castlevania’s have been fantastic. Outstanding examples of how to make a two-dimensional exploration/action game. This one is no different but first the gripes. Why skimp on art? For whatever reason Konami felt the need to replace the typically spectacular cover and instruction art with cheap anime crap. The in-game art is still intact but this cover art doesn’t scream blood dripping horror like the previous Castlevanias. Please compare…

The difference is quite obvious. Awesome, awesome, lame. What in the hell, Konami? Overblow the budget on the game itself so you had to skimp for the first time in YEARS on box art? This might not be as bad as it is if Soma didn’t have goddamn Farah Fawcett hair. Seriously Konami, you’re killing me.

On a much brighter note, Dawn of Sorrow itself is totally awesome. A little harder than Aria of Sorrow. It’s outstanding.

Mega Man Zero 4 is just that. I’ve only finished the introduction level but for the first time in a Mega Man Zero game, I got through the intro without dying AND got an “A” grade. Hopefully this means I haven’t lost my skills gained from those insane days at Fort Polk, Louisiana when I somehow managed to beat Mega Man Zero 2 and Mega Man Zero 3. This Mega Man Zero ditches the shield boomerang and chain rod (useless and useful, in that order) for the Zero Knuckle, which allows you to take an enemies weapon and looks disturbingly like a molestation attempt. Zero reaches out and grabs. It’s so dirty. And since I’m a Z-saber whore I can’t see myself using the Zero Knuckle much at all. I don’t play Mega Man Zero to shoot or molest, I play to dash and slash. I play Mega Man Zero like I play Castlevania. Run up to the bad guy real close and smash the attack button until it dies.

I haven’t started Final Fantasy IV yet. On gameboy I mean. I started it on PSX when I got Final Fantasy Chronicles and that’s why I got it for gameboy. My playstation isn’t portable, my gameboy is, and Final Fantasy IV is the only Final Fantasy I’ve enjoyed enough to WANT to play it.

How can this not be a “nerd” post? It’s impossible with a title like this.

No I didn’t join Special Forces, that’d be insane. I’m playing Freespace 2, despite the fact that I’m crippled without a joystick. At least I have my high resolution mouse. Anyway, there’s a part where the campaign splits off for a side mission or three where you’re working for Special Operations Command and working undercover “deep into enemy territory” with “no logistical support” which means I do one mission where I’m killing my own guys and then a mission where me and another SOC op fight off the guys we’re undercover with and then one where I’m required to fight off six (6) other ships in the same ship as me with no backup. Boy that was a fun mission to do FIVE TIMES because I kept getting my ass kicked. I think my problem is that when I charge head first into a wing of fighters with guns and missiles blazing and end up playing chicken with the lead ship, I never lose and end up smashing nose-first into it at full speed, which usually results in a big explosion or me bouncing off of their hull. Either way I take a ton of damage myself for the dumb stunt.

The space battles in this game are INSANE. Capital ships have beam weapons, flak cannons, AND missile banks. And seeing the ship you’re chasing get hit with an anti-fighter beam is incredible. Getting hit with one yourself sucks though. And getting hit with flak sucks. I’ve learned to take out flak cannons first. If they’re not the most destructive, they’re the most annoying because all the explosions make my reticule go all over the place and it’s hard to hit a moving target when I’m moving in random directions myself.

This game rules. Why can’t they make more space fighters like this?

I wrote an entry. Kind of boring but it was me whining about my day. And wordpress lost it. And that sucks.

EDIT: I suck. It’s there. Not lost.

I hate the damn digital sender. It’s this super-cool little scanner that will scan pages, send them to your computer as PDFs, send them though email to others (without needing a computer’s intervention), send faxes, blah blah blah. Well this damn thing was meant for a static IP network hooked up to a POP3 mail server, both of which we don’t have here. So the stupid thing loses it’s IP address all the time, won’t resolve hostnames, and generally requires bi-weekly maintenance. It sucks. And for the last couple weeks I’ve been in the clear because it was broke. Now it’s back. With a vengeance. And it just keeps sucking.

I’m making entirely too much headway into Symphony of the Night for playing it with a keyboard. I’m way too tired to be typing and watching Star Trek. It’s not even 8pm. Isn’t that horrible? I spent the whole two hours of my MWR shift reading. And I found that diamond in the rough, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, at breakfast this morning. I dig through the cereal bins every morning looking for it.

Since I’ve got my TV/DVD player back (it was a leftover from my last base that I found and brought here) I thought I’d watch some Evil Dead 2. What an outstanding movie. So it’s not a real sequel so much as remake of the original but it’s still good and leads right up to Army of Darkness better than the original. But this dvd player is crap and dies after two hours of use so I missed the last fifteen minutes of the movie because I watched an episode of Star Trek beforehand. Stupid TV/DVD combo!

I did little to nothing today. Talked to Katie on trillian till lunch, somehow got sucked into helping the other two in the shop remove some radio equipment from a couple of destroyed trucks, and then I took off. And I was just told a couple hours ago that I had to work the MWR from 6am – 8am. What a pain. Typically I don’t wake up till 8:30 so now I have to wake up three hours early to sit around and do nothing because no one else who’s awake will be using phones or internet. Oh well. That’s two hours of book reading time that I have every intention of taking advantage of.

Speaking of book reading, that’s exactly what I was about to do before I realized that I haven’t updated yet today and since I’ve run out of stuff to say, I think I’ll go back to it.

Another day of doing next to nothing, really. I’m suffering for some Symphony of the Night so I managed to download a copy and get a playstation emulator working. You don’t want to know how much time I wasted doing this. So now I’m playing Symphony of the Night for the thousandth time except now with a keyboard and it’s kicking my ass. I died fighting the doppleganger. The second boss. That’s horrifying.

So right after christmas we started getting these goodie boxes in the mail. They’re free stuff from something called Operation Appreciation or something like that. Some mildly useful stuff, a pair of socks, a knit cap, some foot powder, some snacks and other things that varied from box to box like a DVD or CD. Well I was out at the med clinic working on one of their computers and I saw a copy of the Lost Highway soundtrack lying on a counter. Now Lost Highway came out before I cared about David Lynch and it’s yet to be properly released on DVD so I haven’t seen the movie but the soundtrack was produced by Trent Reznor and he contributed more than a couple tracks to it. It’s also got some David Bowie and Marilyn Manson (pre-Antichrist Superstar) so I’m borrowing it overnight to rip it. I was shocked. Some lucky bastard got the Lost Highway soundtrack in a free goodie box and didn’t even appreciate it. This was seriously a diamond in the rough, everyone else got crap like CDs from bands you’ve never heard of (Hiroshima?) or bizarre DVDs (claymation Rudolph, I got a movie about Bobby Darin).

So a while ago Katie sent me in a food package some dried apples that I just got around to trying tonight. Let me say I won’t be eating a single dried apple ever again in my life. Maybe it’s because they’ve been in a plastic sealed bag for god knows how long but to say the taste was unpleasant would be a slight understatement. I didn’t vomit but two slices were more than enough for me to seal the bag back up and hide it away for long enough that I don’t feel bad about throwing out an almost full container of perfectly good (if you like plastic) food. So I’m glad my next package, containing my copies of Final Fantasy IV Advance, Mega Man Zero 4, and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (!!!!), will include more snacks and noodles. I’m damn near out again.

That’s what we tell people about our internet satellite dish. It’s for the TV.

And speaking of the TV, I got mine back. It’s useless for things like network television or cable or satellite as we don’t have a receiver but it’s got a built in DVD player so now I can use it to finish off Star Trek and watch the numerous other TV shows I have. OH! And maybe it’ll play Evil Dead 2!

I’m actually rather tired right now. The cement lifting totally wore me out and that was eight hours ago.

So today we (the commo shop) somehow got involved in a detail unloading 130 110lb bags of cement off the back of a truck into a shipping container. We do it, get dusty as hell from all the cement, come back, wipe ourselves down with baby wipes, and go about our business when a guy visiting us comes by and asks why we’re all dirty. When we tell him we’ve been unloading cement he brings up a very important fact that somehow escaped my leadership, “You know there’s silicon dust in concrete right?” So cancer, here I come! Actually I don’t know how bad silicon dust can be, let alone concentrated into an enclosed space such as a shipping container, but we weren’t wearing breathing masks. Hopefully I’ll be okay! Right now my biggest concern is taking an hour long shower to get all this grit off of me.

So I came up with the solution to the car issue. Katie said, perhaps in jest, that she wanted a Vespa. That struck me like a damn brick today. We have a little ATV we use to get around the FOB and I love riding that thing. Now an ATV isn’t a solution to our problem a scooter or small motorcycle is. They’re CHEAP, excellent on gas consumption, cheap to insure, and perfect for getting around Ft. Campbell. I looked into the Vespa and they’re pretty cheap but the fastest the cheapest one goes is 59MPH, which means it’d probably only be used on-post or right outside post and never the freeway but something that small can be moved with the rest of our stuff cheaply so we’d have a vehicle when we move.

Once again, Katie’s sleeping and I can’t bring this up to her now so this is more or less a reminder to myself to bring up this option next time I can talk to her. I wouldn’t have any problems getting a Vespa though. I don’t care how gay it’d make me look. I hardly care what other people think of me anyway.

Katie’s lost it.

She’s making a myspace profile for the dog.

Way past the deep end now, I don’t think she’s ever coming back.

So since I’m out here in Iraq with a healthy dose of free time I thought it’d be a good idea to take up playing Anarchy Online again since I hardly gave it a chance when I first signed up. It’s free as long as you play without the expansions and it’s an MMO. I’m playing a Opifex Fixer, a weird looking hacker-ish guy. It’s still like Everquest in the future but who cares. It’s free and I wasted an hour and a half playing it tonight and I’m still on n00b island. It’s a fantastic way to waste time so far!

So while it’s patching up someone knocks on my door. It’s PFC Dilyard, resident dumbass and official Squadron Whipping Boy. This kid is a cavalry scout who they kicked out of the line companies because he’s so dumb he’d be a danger to the other scouts on their missions. Apparently he’s working in the TOC now, as janitor/errand boy because they sent him to get me to fix something. I asked him what the problem was and he said they didn’t tell him. I’m irritated. How are they going to send someone to get me after I’m done for the night and not tell me how urgent the problem is? So I put on the quickest uniform I have (which is PT short and PT shirt) and head to the TOC expecting the sky to be falling. I get there and the first problem is the SIGO (signal officer, my boss) is still there. He didn’t know they even sent for me, let alone what the problem is. So he goes into the TOC to ask someone because I’m in PTs and in no condition to be seen by the squadron commander or the sergeant major. Apparently the “internet is down”.

You’ve got to be kidding me. Everyone else is up, but one computer which is apparently VITAL enough that they have to send for someone to get me the minute it’s not working right. Well the commander has a briefing in thirty minutes (on an entirely seperate network) and the SIGO wants to show me how to set up his conferencing software, just for future reference. So we run into the commander and he’s all “Hubbard, I never see you anymore, what have you been up to lately?” so I tell him that I avoid the TOC at all costs (truth, I’m cool with the commander so I can get away with not having to make up excuses for why I’m not there checking my stuff all the time. MY stuff works, he knows that) and he’s laughs and tells the SIGO that he’s got thirty minutes to get this conference up (SIGO, however, is kind of on the commander’s shitlist) so we get to work. The conference program is entirely too easy to set up and the commander points this out as the SIGO can make some powerpoint slides for an idiot-proof walkthrough, and then it’s back to the task at hand, the “internet (being) down”.
So I reset the internet connection while the SIGO checks the settings on the computer itself. And the SIGO comes back and tells me that all he had to do on his end was unplug the ethernet cable and plug it back in. OH MY GOD. These people kill me. I got all my crap on and interrupted some very important internet surfing to fix a problem whose solution consisted of one of the MOST BASIC troubleshooting tasks? Now maybe I’m in the minority. Maybe I’m a part of a dying breed. But if I have a tool such as a computer or a radio or a humvee, I’ll be damned if I’m not going to learn how to use it and how to fix it if a subject matter expert isn’t available. These people use computers EVERY DAY and don’t bother going through simple troubleshooting steps to solve problems before they want to wake me up to fix them myself. I swear if I don’t get out of this unit soon these people are going to give me an aneurysm. I can’t deal with the end-user forever. The good news to that is my next promotion is a sure-fire ticket out. Once I get promoted I’m officially overqualified to be in this unit and I’ll either get sent up the organization structure (to brigade level) or I’ll get put in another section of the division (such as G6, where the big wigs dictate computer and radio plans to units such as mine). EITHER WAY, my quality of employment will improve greatly. And Katie and I get to move into nicer housing.

So I’m not trying to stay E-4 forever. In fact I’m hoping to time my E-5 promotion with our redeployment back to the states so Katie and I can move into better housing as soon as I get back.

So before I left Katie and I planned on paying off the laptop, paying off the mattress and dining table, and then saving our money for a downpayment on a new car. The Saturn’s not quite ten years old but the money from the deployment would be a good opportunity to save up the money to get one. Well when we decided that we had planned on moving once I got out of the Army but I hadn’t decided whether I was going to stay in past my six years or not. Well now I decided. Well not now, earlier but I’ve decided that I’m tired of missing Katie because I’m gone all the time and that I’ll be getting out after my six years are up.

So Katie makes the point that it’d be a big waste to buy a NEW new car if we’re going to be moving (relatively) soon anyway. To put this in perspective, we’re planning on moving a long distance. Driving won’t be feasible. We’d just have to sell the car anyway. So in my opinion, the Saturn should be able to make through the next four years and that buying ANY kind of new car would be a waste of money because as soon as we’d get it paid off we’d be selling it (or worse, we’d be trying to sell it even owing money on it).

No, Katie has her heart set on a new car. Even above a better TV (ours isn’t crap but it’s not great), new furniture (the futon couch worked for the first six months but it’s kind of getting old), a bedframe so we’re not sleeping on the floor anymore, any other number of useful things we could be spending our money on that we can take with us, or just saving the money to help cover the cost of the move, she wants a new car. Well by now I’ve heard enough of “I’m going to have it my way and that’s that” from my thickheaded roommate and I’m tired of being bullied and pushed around by someone who thinks they know better than me so I told Katie that she can have her new car because she’s going to have to go get a job and pay for it herself.

And now I can go fuck myself.

So Katie already shot it down but I thought I’d share anyway since I still think it’s awesome.

It’s the Halo of the Sun from Silent Hill 3. Normally it’s in red or blood but it’d look way better as a tattoo in simple black ink. Anyway. I gave my input!

Or won’t be until I can goof around with my account password. I WAS going to write an entry about how Katie and I are having a hard time agreeing on our matching nerd tattoo but since I had my host reset my password to get into my FTP account and that password was sent to my Army email, which I can only access at work right now, I’m assed out and can’t show you what I thought we might be able to agree about. I knew I should’ve forwarded that email to myself.

Anyway. Today started off great, got woke up for no reason an hour before I planned on waking up myself. There was literally no reason for them to wake me up but the night shift gets bored so they wake people up to keep themselves entertained. Or so I imagine is their line of thinking.

More roommate drama, same crappy roommate. His feet stink. STINK. Like rotting skin, if I could imagine what rotting skin smelled like. This stuff is NOT natural. He says he puts foot powder on, obviously he needs a stronger solution. I’m about to go to the medics for him. Get him the prescription strength stuff, not that I believe he’ll use it, just to get the ball rolling on some kind of administrative actions here. When people come into our room and say it smells like asshole and it’s because of his feet, there’s a problem. I’m tired of the smell of fungus and the wave of nausea that follows it. My eyes are literally tearing up here. His feet stink that bad. Worse the Lauri’s!

I never actually went to sleep. I installed FreeSpace 2 (space dogfighting in pretty graphics ashsdfkjhas) and spent an unhealthy amount of time screwing with the enhanced engine for it to make it even prettier but it was so worth it. This game is so freaking gorgeous. And I’m totally crippled without my joystick. That’s what I’m getting when I get home. A better joystick. I have a cheap Saitek that does the job but I want the solid stick AND an independant throttle. I have this dream of having enough money to get a bunch of LCD monitors, top of the line joystick and throttle, solid pedals, and setting up as a mech/space sim the way crazy people do with Microsoft Flight Simulator. Except that MS Flight Sim actually supports a full cockpit view because it’s based in reality. I think I’d have a hard time finding any space or mech game that has a full cockpit view. BUT I CAN DREAM, RIGHT?!

Dear Volition,

Quit making that crappy GTA-ripoff “Saints Row” and quit making crappy sequels to the Half-Life ripoff that is “Red Faction” and please go back to making FreeSpace 3, with full cockpit view.

Love, brian

P.S. I love the word “cockpit”.

Since I’m way too tired to stay up and type out more than one senseless post, here’s one with a bit of everything!

Hostel is a crap movie. It’s a turd. A waste of precious bandwidth, as I pirated it off bittorrent. It starts off like a softcore porn with three college age guys backpacking through Europe and having sex with promiscuous women at every stop and then turns into a crappy suspense TV movie. Ooooh who’s killing these worthless people? Well wonder no more, they show you almost as soon as the first one dies! They then proceed to spell out for you, barney style, why they’re dying. There’s no horror involved. It’s like watching Aliens with all the lights on and every scene shot with full lighting. Everything’s clear as crystal, it’s just a movie about people dying. I guess I can’t complain too much though, it’s not like I paid for it and I’m told it’s an improvement over the director’s last film, Cabin Fever.

Dan Simmons’ “Hyperion”, however, is an outstanding novel that ends entirely too abruptly. I’m not going to try to elaborate on the 500 page novel so to sum it up, seven people from all walks of life are sent on a pilgrimage on the planet Hyperion to pay a visit to the Shrike, a god-like creature both worshipped and feared, and each pilgrim carries their own dark secret and reason for being there. I love the way Simmons’ paces this book. At first there’s references to all kinds of futuristic and foreign things like farcasters and the TechnoCore and the Ousters and with each story the pilgrims tell of their past you learn more about those foreign and strange things. By about three-fourths of the way through, you know exactly what everything is and you’ve got a rather strong grasp on the universe the story takes place in. It’s a sci-fi in a world that’s dark and intriguing and the only thing that mars this book is the fact that once you’ve heard the stories of the ones involved, it ends. The overarching plot, the pilgrimage itself, carries on to “The Fall of Hyperion”, and if I didn’t already have that novel waiting, I’d be pretty pissed at how it ends. Not so much at a cliffhanger persay but more of someone telling you the joke but never getting to the punchline. I assume everything will be cleared up by the end of “The Fall of Hyperion” but that’s another 500 pages away. Though, if “The Fall of Hyperion” is as good as “Hyperion” itself, I doubt I’ll mind.

And now I’ve got to read a chapter or two before I pass out, way before bedtime because people kept barging in last night looking for my roommates to do some dumb radio crap.

1. Start a blog

2. Buy a domain, move blog

3. change blog engines a couple times

4. never update

5. delete blog, make a livejournal

6. make your livejournal friends only

7. never update

8. get tired of the “secrecy”, move blog back to domain

9. change blog engines

10. never update