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elfsAt 2:46am yesterbay morning I was awakened with the residual memory of an explosion. I find the human brain astounding-- not only did I wake up, but my brain found a way to communicate to me the reason it had chosen to activate my conscious self by leaving the very clear impression of an explosion. The explosion was very a specific, bzzOOWT<boom> type explosion: an electrical transformer had blown up somewhere in our subdivision. I glanced over at the clock: we were without power.
A minute later the power came back on. I went back to sleep. At 6:20 I'm awakened again by another explosion, this one a bit closer. The power flickers. At 6:35 another explosion, and the power stays off. The furnace is off, the network is down. Omaha and I sleep in. I call in to work "powerless" rather than sick-- although I've got a bit of a cold, it's not something to slow me down-- with the valid excuse that my alarm clock was off.
Turning on the radio, we learn that the Puget Power substation two miles to the south is on fire. Something about the way mineral oil is used for heat exchange, but now exposed to the atmosphere it's burning merrily away and the fire teams are letting it burn. No estimate from the radio as to when power will be restored. The irony of having three computers up and running, three telephones, and the radio-- but not having heat-- is not lost on anyone. Not even Kouryou-chan, who thought the idea of breakfast by candle-light to be nifty. We continued to hear transformers blowing throughout the morning.
It isn't until almost noon that the power comes on. A soft beep-- the house phone-- and the hum of the refrigerator compressor are my first clues, and with them a curious sense of well-being. We have power; everything is gonna be all right. I learn that my "fixes" to the household router weren't, and it's not rebooting now. It takes me an hour to fix the damn thing, but with a much more secure OS and a stronger firewall I'm a bit happier about it. And it comes up working now; no manual switches to flip.
There's something weirdly ironic about a blackout providing me with enough time to finish Charlie Stross's post-Singularity novel, Singularity Sky. It was pretty good, all things considered. I thought the ending was a bit chatty from a narrative standpoint, a twist on who's-telling-this-story that in context was amusing, but also a bit of a flummox.
Kouryou-chan and I went downtown, first to drop Omaha off at our accountant, and then to the holiday display at Westlake Center. We rode the carousel three times, then went shopping. I bought her a beautiful red dress; I'm a sucker for country-style clothes, and April Cornell, despite the prices, is some of the loveliest stuff I've ever seen. Kouryou-chan was ready to stay in the store without me; she can be a clotheshorse.
A fed her spaghetti from some cheap food court place on the top floor, and finally Omaha caught up with us. We walked back to the car, but Kouryou-chan got sucked into playing with a display of Christmas trains in a department-store window; there were panels where when your hand blocked the light the trains would move. She was utterly delighted, jumping up and down and giggling madly at the whole site.
We drove over to Omaha's friends at the Haunted to pick up some software, and they unloaded on me two games they were done with: Halo and System Shock 2. Great, like there aren't enough timesinks in my life! Thanks, guys. Actually, Halo is quite beautiful, if a bit predictable for a first-person shooter. By the way, Halo isn't set on a ringworld; it's set on an orbital. Orbitals don't have stars at their centers; they're in orbit about stars and use their rotation and inclination to generate day/night cycles.
We drove home while Kouryou-chan played with a beaded necklace she had picked up from Omaha's friends. It had little peace symbols on it and I tried to explain to her what they meant while we waited in a car park for Omaha to return from the supermarket with some groceries. Kouryou-chan had the perfect response for Mr. Rogers: "Some say that it's from an alphabet called semaphore and it stands for nuclear disarmament. Can you say nuclear disarmament?"
"Nope." Smart kid.
A minute later the power came back on. I went back to sleep. At 6:20 I'm awakened again by another explosion, this one a bit closer. The power flickers. At 6:35 another explosion, and the power stays off. The furnace is off, the network is down. Omaha and I sleep in. I call in to work "powerless" rather than sick-- although I've got a bit of a cold, it's not something to slow me down-- with the valid excuse that my alarm clock was off.
Turning on the radio, we learn that the Puget Power substation two miles to the south is on fire. Something about the way mineral oil is used for heat exchange, but now exposed to the atmosphere it's burning merrily away and the fire teams are letting it burn. No estimate from the radio as to when power will be restored. The irony of having three computers up and running, three telephones, and the radio-- but not having heat-- is not lost on anyone. Not even Kouryou-chan, who thought the idea of breakfast by candle-light to be nifty. We continued to hear transformers blowing throughout the morning.
It isn't until almost noon that the power comes on. A soft beep-- the house phone-- and the hum of the refrigerator compressor are my first clues, and with them a curious sense of well-being. We have power; everything is gonna be all right. I learn that my "fixes" to the household router weren't, and it's not rebooting now. It takes me an hour to fix the damn thing, but with a much more secure OS and a stronger firewall I'm a bit happier about it. And it comes up working now; no manual switches to flip.
There's something weirdly ironic about a blackout providing me with enough time to finish Charlie Stross's post-Singularity novel, Singularity Sky. It was pretty good, all things considered. I thought the ending was a bit chatty from a narrative standpoint, a twist on who's-telling-this-story that in context was amusing, but also a bit of a flummox.
Kouryou-chan and I went downtown, first to drop Omaha off at our accountant, and then to the holiday display at Westlake Center. We rode the carousel three times, then went shopping. I bought her a beautiful red dress; I'm a sucker for country-style clothes, and April Cornell, despite the prices, is some of the loveliest stuff I've ever seen. Kouryou-chan was ready to stay in the store without me; she can be a clotheshorse.
A fed her spaghetti from some cheap food court place on the top floor, and finally Omaha caught up with us. We walked back to the car, but Kouryou-chan got sucked into playing with a display of Christmas trains in a department-store window; there were panels where when your hand blocked the light the trains would move. She was utterly delighted, jumping up and down and giggling madly at the whole site.
We drove over to Omaha's friends at the Haunted to pick up some software, and they unloaded on me two games they were done with: Halo and System Shock 2. Great, like there aren't enough timesinks in my life! Thanks, guys. Actually, Halo is quite beautiful, if a bit predictable for a first-person shooter. By the way, Halo isn't set on a ringworld; it's set on an orbital. Orbitals don't have stars at their centers; they're in orbit about stars and use their rotation and inclination to generate day/night cycles.
We drove home while Kouryou-chan played with a beaded necklace she had picked up from Omaha's friends. It had little peace symbols on it and I tried to explain to her what they meant while we waited in a car park for Omaha to return from the supermarket with some groceries. Kouryou-chan had the perfect response for Mr. Rogers: "Some say that it's from an alphabet called semaphore and it stands for nuclear disarmament. Can you say nuclear disarmament?"
"Nope." Smart kid.
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no subject
Date: 2003-12-05 06:53 pm (UTC)And then you meet the Flood. Muah hah hah hah hah.
Shock 2, however, is easily one of the best FPS games ever. Play it with the lights out and either a good 4-position speaker setup or headphones. It's one of the only games ever to truly frighten me on a regular basis.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-05 10:03 pm (UTC)What's wierd to me about Halo, in retrospect, is that it was hyped as the next huge thing in FPS, that it was really going to push the genre forward. Uh... not just not really, but not even a little. Halo stayed so firmly in Half-Life's footsteps that it's rediculous. All it is is prettier. It's not a bad game, by any means (though the way it drags in the middle part is rediculous). But innovative? Perhaps not.
System Shock 2, though.... MmmmmMmmMMMMMm... sweet, sweet System Shock 2. Half-Life got all the hype for breaking new ground in storytelling and scripting in FPSs while System Shock and System Shock 2 actually did it.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-06 02:05 am (UTC)I Don't Know Much, But I Know What I Like
Date: 2003-12-06 05:03 am (UTC)And after Morrowwind, I don't trust anybody to tell me what's pretty. If that game were my dog, I'd put a bag on its head, but advertisementsand reviews both claimed it was beautiful.
Re: I Don't Know Much, But I Know What I Like
Date: 2003-12-06 05:11 pm (UTC)As for your point on pretty, I'll bear that in mind. The next time I'm looking for a really ugly-looking game, I'll know where to go. :)
Re: I Don't Know Much, But I Know What I Like
Date: 2003-12-06 06:54 pm (UTC)Re: I Don't Know Much, But I Know What I Like
Date: 2003-12-06 10:56 pm (UTC)There's different strokes for you. I found the little voice clips to be one of the best things about the game. The first time a grunt broke and ran away from me screaming, 'He's everywhere!', I nearly died laughing. The second time it happend, he screamed, 'He's going to kill us all!' and I nearly died again. The time I stuck a plasma grenade on one of them, an elite tried to run from the grenade but the grunt kept chasing the elite, that is why my funeral is next week.
The controls are amazingly stiff. I'm not sure if that's a legacy of being developed for the XBox primarily or just that it was strongly chugging on the box I had it on, but it had none of the fluditiy of view that I'd expect of an a-list PC FPS.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-06 02:03 am (UTC)Sweetie and I got a serious brownout of the longest sort I've ever seen, and then lost our power very briefly twice...and then no other problems. Weird.