I'm going to San Diego, the end of this month, to attend a conference for my Dungeon Mastering job.  I hope it's better than the last one I attended, back in, uhm, lemme think.  A while ago.  The last one was in DisneyWorld in Florida, in that huge hotel at which I marveled, as a child, every time the monorail went through it on the title sequence ( Read more... )

According to the optometrist, they do-- and now at close, medium, and for distance.  I went in with the expectation of getting another pair of "plain over reading" bifocals.  Instead, he suggested progressives that are essentially trifocal ( Read more... )

I just spent $35 to get my $60 coat patched up.  The sensible thing to do is probably to throw the coat away and buy a new one, or to get better at sewing.  I should get a different coat for wearing to work anyway-- to go to work, I mean.  To be seen in.

Appearances are important, some places.

You've maybe heard that if you love an activity, and you're having a hard time with it at some point, walk away and take a break, and come back with a fresh view.  Otherwise it'll cease to be a labour of love, and become a chore-- and you'll give up altogether.  I was lamenting aloud, a while ago, how there are times when this just isn't an option ( Read more... )

I think I'm getting the hang of making the LabVIEW talk to the cRIO, and making the cRIO talk to everything else.  So now I can run an anesthesia machine on cheap compressed air (you have to ask them for "breathing air" if you want tanks of it delivered) rather than the expensive fractionally-distilled stuff that you normally get for hospital ( Read more... )

Used to be there were many makes and models of countertop breadmaker, sold almost everywhere.  I guess the latest generation of them didn't sell well enough, because there aren't so many, anymore.  Marketers and manufacturers have awakened to the fact that people don't really like having to measure ingredients into a machine every goddamn day, when ( Read more... )

I don't think of Christmas as actually being a day; rather, the time I'm off work.  IIRC, in the SCA, if one is busy with school, one complains that "the abbot is keeping me occupied."  This year, Christmas starts later this week, with the submission of my Great Big Literature Review.

I've got deadlines for two pieces of fiction--well, three, really ( Read more... )

So I'm doing a literature review in preparation for a research project, about the psychological effect on the participants in a medical simulation in which the patient dies no matter what the participants do.  This is very much a contentious issue in my current line of work, with many opinions and little pursuasive evidence in either direction.

The ( Read more... )

I was at amerald's parents' place last evening, and their TV was tuned to msnbc.  I'd honestly never seen it before.  I knew of its existence, having read quotes from things people supposedly said there.

They were talking about poor old Newt Gingrich being in the lead, in some respect at least, for the Republican nomination, and how terrible that ( Read more... )

So amerald and I set up and staffed the junkfood concession at a neoPagan yuletide craft market held at a community hall out in the west end.  Six hours work has not been so exhausting since the last time I built medium-girder bridge by hand, which was, iirc, back when I spoke a different language.  Seriously.  When we got home, we'd have fallen asleep on ( Read more... )