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My Macbook, which I never fully christened with a name, is officially dead. The battery no longer holds a charge at all, and the backlight is doing some major flickering and will probably die soon. I bought the computer as a refurb from apple a few years ago, and though it never quite worked the way I wanted it to, it was useful at times and I'll miss it. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet. I can remove the monitor and buy a display port adapter with a KVM switch and have a pseudo OSX desktop to switch to, but the computer was never all that fast to begin with and it'd probably just be easier to build a hackentosh.

This is a real shame though because I just discovered Things, an incredibly easy and powerful task organizer that's only for mac. Putting the mac on life support just to get it to run so I can try it out has shown me how useful it would be in my life, but not having it on my main computer kills it's usefulness.

AC always gives me tons of energy I feel I need to channel. I'm going a million miles per minute in all sorts of directions, and if I don't channel that energy into a few tasks it will all disappear and be wasted. I feel the urge to pick up the pencil again and commit horrible atrocities on paper. I feel the urge to pick through the fur in my closet and maybe do something with it. I feel the urge to empty my bank account into the first fursuit maker who has a slot open in time for Rainfurest.

If I can organize myself and get a little bit accomplished at a time, perhaps I can stretch this energy out as long as possible. I hope so. I'm back at work again tomorrow and nothing drains me faster then twelve hour days of intensely hard kitchen work. I love the experience I'm receiving at the Woodland Park Zoo. But it's physically and emotionally draining and I'd hate to see all of this post con energy go to waste there.

With that in mind, I have a few goals to accomplish over the next month.

-Loose more weight. I started the year at 175, went to AC at 150, and now I'm back up around 158. I'd like to get down to 140 by the end of the month and stay there. That means at some point I'm going to have to do stomach crunches every day to get rid of this gut I have hanging off me.

-Start sketching again. I'm horrible at art but I want to learn at least the basics so I can at least put some visual thoughts down on paper.

-Commission a full character sheet for my fursona and start poking around at fursuit makers for quotes.

-Be more social. I've lived in Seattle for four years now and the only friends I have out here are Mono's old friends, my neighbor and Aqui from FFO. All of which I don't see enough of as it is. I've been a shut in and I need to get out and do more.

-Stay off the internet for long periods of time. I dawdle too much.

If I can accomplish these simple tasks it will be enough.

So cross posting isn't working right now. I love betas.

Last Remnant's story is very, very bad so far and very typical of JRPGs. I really hate being forced to play a main character who's entire role is "I'm young and stupid and know nothing of the world around me, and I also let my emotions take charge of any action I do regardless of what the consequence may be. Also I have a mysterious, vaguely defined power that lets me get out of any troubling situation."

Why do JRPG main characters have to be so embarrassing? I should not be lowering my head in disgust every time he opens his mouth. Vaan from FFXII had more maturity then this kid.

The battle system seems fun so far but I don't know if I can stomach the story enough to get further in.

I hope it is my destiny to die gloriously in The Battle of Houston.

(This was going to be an meditation on whether Rock Band is a good stepping stone for learning how to play real drums. As I wrote it it became something different all together. So I'm posting this then I'll get back to the drums part.)

Those of you on my friends list know I have a little obsession with a game called Rock Band. It borders on MMO obsession, but thankfully it doesn't take over my life like FFXI or WoW. The game is made by a great group of folks over at Harmonix, which made such classics as Amplitude and the first two Guitar Hero games. Harmonix is a great company with wonderful people, a few of whom I've had the chance to speak with in person.

Harmonix's mission is simple enough; bring music interaction to the common man. A vast majority of the employees at Harmonix are real musicians, which include members of bands such as Freeze Pop, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, and Bang Camaro. They want people to feel the thrill of playing music.

Rock Band, and it's successor Rock Band 2, is the biggest step forward to this goal in years. It brings the full band experience to the living room. Rock Band nights have replaced Karaoke nights at many bars and night clubs, and with new tracks for the game being released every week, ranging in genres from blues to funk to death metal, there is something for everyone and no chance of the game becoming stale in the next few years.

However, Rock Band also has it's detractors. Many people refuse to play the game decrying that it's a waste of time and people should learn real instruments if they want to play music. While the value of learning to play a real instrument cannot be overstated, many people who cast their gaze downwards at the game ignore the simple fact that Rock Band is not a substitute for playing an instrument; it's an introduction. While one cannot possibly learn anything from playing a fake plastic guitar that can transfer over to a real guitar beyond simple rhythm and time keeping, it does one important thing; it shows right from the start that music can be fun.

We all know the story. Many of us have even experienced this. We decide that we're going to learn an instrument, say guitar or drums, and learn to play our favorite songs. We grab a cheap instrument and maybe a book or two, sit down excitedly and immediately discover this this is hard. Most of us cannot even begin to approach the sound of our favorite musicians. We struggle to learn on our own; sometimes we persevere and make headway, other times we just simply quit. We might decide to pay for lessons; surely a teacher can show us the fun to be had. Instead you spend months focusing on simple rudiments and scales. While these things are extremely important in playing music, one can make the argument that they are not fun enough for beginners to engage them in the craft, which is why many, many people give up early in learning music.

(On that note, I am not saying that learning the basics is not important. It is extremely important. People dedicated to the craft know the importance of these things and even have fun with them. I'm trying to approach this from the layman's point of view, who might not be dedicated enough to realize the importance of the basics.)

Rock Band as a game focuses entirely on the fun of playing music, and goes a step further from past games in that it introduces the fun of playing music with other people. It starts you off simple, but still playing your favorite songs. To play harder songs on higher difficulties, players need to practice their part over and over and learn new techniques. Along the way they can play with other people. By themselves they may not be the best at a song, but together they can work towards making it sound as good as possible. By the time a player is playing competently at expert level, he has learned several things:

-Music is Fun
-Even the simplest sounding song can be hard
-Getting good at an instrument takes practice
-Playing with others is fun, even if you're not the best player in the world

With those things learned, a mind is now more open and better prepared to pick up a real instrument and start learning. They're more open to the idea of practice, and more open to the idea of getting together with a friend to bang out a few rough songs.

So, while Rock Band is not a substitute for playing a real instrument, it can be an important stepping stone in taking the plunge in learning how to play an instrument.

I'm so going to do one of those fandom list things the #ri side of my friends list is doing:

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So before the buzz of the alcohol and the con wear off.

It has been brought to my attention that I am a huge jerk online. I have known this to be true for a while.

I have decided it would be better for me and my life if I wasn't such a huge jerk. Therefore, I am making a drunk/pre con ending promise to be less of a jerk to people online. I guess real life too, but anyone who knows me in real life knows I'm not near as big of a jerk.

Pretty good con through and through. Many things I wished could have happened didn't, but that's largely my fault. Plenty of people I could have met (And that are reading this) I could have met but didn't . I need to work on getting out of this thought that nobody wants to hang out with me unless otherwise stated.

Gonna drive back sometime tomorrow and hopefully start getting my life back on track.

So apparently sometime over my vacation Comcast switched our 6 meg down line to the 15 meg down line.

When usenet downloads are blazing along at around 1500-1600 kBps it is awesome.

Way more later, but this is a pretty accurate for holiday trip 08.

So, last few episodes of The Office.

Is it me, or is it incredibly funny for the gay character to be the straight man in the cast?