Malicious Bastard's

I didn’t really make a mention of it at the time because there were a lot of other things going on, but about a year ago the Library imploded in a fairly specific way. I’ve mentioned that this has happened in the past, but what was particularly different about this time was that I didn’t have the funds or time to really fix it. The Library was using older parts that were on the high edge of their technological spectrum that all became fairly quickly outdated leading to a domino effect of upgrades if I was going to fix one of the problems.

Since then I’ve had some pretty impressing commitments. My new work schedule doesn’t leave me with days off ( mostly ), and that leaves me little time to focus on things like what had previously been a major contributor to my sanity. You probably see why that’s a problem already. Regardless, the fact was that the Library was condemned due to video card failure. Both of them. You see it was an nVidia SLi setup and both cards decided to fail spectacularly at the same time in different ways.

Long story short because it’s 4:20 in the morning ( not a reference ), I managed to come across a batch of compatible video cards and shoved one in there to fix the problem. It’s a stop-gap solution; the tower is going to need a major overhaul before too long, but at least it’s running again. Still, it took me two days to confirm that because the thing has been powered down for almost a year meaning that it was behind on drivers and Windows updates. In the span of the last 48 hours I have probably been forced to power cycle this machine ten to twelve times because of [expletive] Windows updates.

If it wasn’t for the fact that I’d already had my calm severely damaged by having lost access to the computer in the first place, one might say it was enough to drive a man insane. Instead it just gave me a headache and probably [expletived] with my blood pressure. Needless to say, the last year has been stressful, and it isn’t necessarily that it’s because there has been more stress, just that there has been less of a way to deal with it.

I’ve picked up a few habits to try and help. Despite being seven days a week the new work schedule lets me stick to a sleep schedule that actually works for me, so I’m a lot more rested on a daily basis. I’ve been playing two games of D&D [generalized] a week with some friends. My weekly nights have been extended to include pool on a regular basis when I have the energy to go out in the first place. Also I took up smoking which has had a surprisingly helpful effect on the mountains of stress I’ve been dealing with.

…that last one has had mixed results socially though.

— Vid

Note: Links missing due to 4:30am at the time of publishing. I may or may not fix that later.

As of late I have noticed that my particular brand of creativity seems to be focusing on one very specific target. Normally this would be very good for a writer; it implies focus, dedication, and the ability to string together a project. Unfortunately I have noticed that I have a single character which I solely enjoy writing for these days, and oddly it does not matter the setting. He always has the same back story, there’s always a progression of events that leads to his being somewhere else.

And that somewhere else is where I have been picking up projects.

I have on occasion been involved with a group of people who would consider themselves writers in a free form writing project that some others would consider an absolute waste of talent, but it has opened creative ideas to me that I had not considered before. So I have started enjoying the idea of writing multiple ‘endings’ as it were, for my most popular character of all time, ‘the Operative’. He is a character that is very dear to me, if such a thing can be said about a sociopath.

I truly enjoy writing him in all forms. It gives me an excuse to delve into the ideas of another person, write about what they’re thinking as opposed to what they are doing. Recently I have had a few small writing exercises come together because of NaNoWriMo— a thing that I am certain you are familiar with if you are reading this post –that have made me realize that sometimes the specific actions in an action scene are not always the best part of the scene.

Recently I began playing a very popular cyberpunk RPG with a few friends, and of course I couldn’t help but include ‘the Operative’ as my played character. There are some definite differences to him this time, but we’ll gloss over those for now. It is worth noting that I am a fan of the metagame; playing the game while the game isn’t necessarily being played. So I asked our Runner if there was some stuff that could be done in the mean time to build resources or provide backdrop, any number of things to simulate the rest of the week while we weren’t in active session.

In response, he provided the Dramatic Interlude rules for a different game that could actually blend very well to our campaign. So, because I have a habit of carrying a deck of cards with me everywhere, I figured I would give it a shot.

With such, I present Five Card Draw. This is raw and unedited, for the record, but as I have said before, go look at this thing I wrote.

— Vid

Generally I speak very openly about the things that I’m going through, but this issue would have a relatively high level of redaction, so I’m not going to go too long into it. Every so often it is best to just replace a system instead of trying to spend the time to make it work again. I understand that cost effectiveness is important, but when you spend hours and hours and hours and hours on trying to fix a system, it’s no longer cost effective.

I guess I’m just saying that it’s generally a bad sign when a computer crashes during the Windows Startup Repair.

— Vid