THE BLOG HAS MOVED TO DIREKOBOLD.BLOGSPOT.COM. PLEASE UPDATE YOUR BOOKMARKS! :)
Ross
I don't have a lot of time, so I'll put off the big topic I was going to touch on for another day. Over the weekend my wife and I were talking; she brought up a message board thread on Snopes.com where someone was talking about "the most ridiculous thing they'd ever heard." This prompted me to consider "the most ridiculous thing" I had ever heard. It wasn't hard...
Many years ago I was leaving the theater with some friends and we were discussing the possibility of a Star Wars Prequel. I would imagine this was still five or six years before Episode 1 came out. And one of my friends said that the reason for the delay was that Lucas was having problems finding financing for the new Star Wars movies. That was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard. For one, Lucas has more money than many continents, and could easily finance it himself (and I believe he did, in fact).
Secondly, can you think of anyone who, given the opportunity to invest in another Star Wars movie, would turn it down? Even if Lucas offered terms along the lines of give me your money and I'm not going to give it back, there would still be enough people willing to throw their money at the project for it to be made.
Trapped by my own cleverness
Ross
I'm not sure if it's the weather, or job-fatique, or something else, but I've been really enervated all week. I think I'm starting to come out of it, but I'm still moving really slow. Hopefully the weekend will help reinvigorate me, though I probably shouldn't count on it. I generally feel worse after the weekend. Which I guess sort of makes me like the guy on Office Space:
So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that's on the worst day of my life.
I don't think every single day is worse than the day before, but sometimes I fear that every day I'm less motivated than I was the day before.
In any case, I have managed to get some reading done recently. I read "A Tale of Two Cities" for the first time, I'm somewhat embarrassed to say. I also read "Amusing Ourselves to Death." Which, I'm sad to say, was the first book which left me less convinced of its premise after I read it, than before. I also started a new fantasy series, "The Runelords by David Farland. I finished the first book last night. Overall I enjoyed it, though it had plenty of weaknesses, but after reading the first two books I mentioned (and before that, "The Closing of the American Mind") I was in the mood for something pulpy, and this certainly fits the bill.
The premise of the world is that by using magical runes you can transfer one person's attribute to another. So you have Runelords (thus the name of the book) who could have the brawn of 20, the grace of 15, the hearing of 10, the stamina of 20, etc. Of course the people who give these "endowments" are left fairly helpless. Which leads to some interesting reprecussions, situations where it's easier for an enemy to kill a Runelord's "Dedicates" than to kill the Runelord himself. (Most of my complaints about the book stem from the fuzzy math of this process. Basically everyone you meet has at least a half dozen endowments.)
In any case, that's it for today, I had a whole other subject I was going to get into, but I better save it. Content has been scarce recently and I need to husband what I have.
Hoping that the weekend will heal me
Ross
Sorry I haven't posted recently. I still need to figure out what to do about comments, and until I do, my motivation to add new content is at an ebb. Part of the reason for not posting is that there hasn't been much to post about. At least not compared to my sister, who's currently in Austria. Compared to her, my life has been fairly mundane. I did go and see "Enchanted April" at the local theater last week. It was quite good, possibly the best play of the season, though it was a weak season generally, so that's not saying much.
I came across a very interesting short piece by sci fi author Dan Simmons last week. It's a look into the future and it's not very complimentary towards the Muslims. Personally I think that he may be more correct than most people would like to believe, but I'll let you draw your own conclusions. I'll warn you in advance that it's long for an internet piece though short for a story, but you may want to have some time before you pull it up.
Other than that, things... continue. One final link, this one for my wife who is a bona-fide commercial curmudgeon. Century 21 has started running some ads recently. I've only seen the one, but it bugged me. This Slate article explains why? It really is amazing that some company can spend tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars on an ad campaign and have it turn out so poorly.
Lost in a sea of indecision
Ross
I have not forgotten my loyal readers, but March was pretty crazy. Last week I had a friend in town, so I spent all of my free time with him. He's on a car tour of the western US and it turned out that his next stop was Moscow, ID. I have a friend I've known since elementary who lives in Moscow, so I decided to tag along. So that's where I spent the weekend. My commute to work on Monday was pretty brutal. I woke up at 5 am, got a ride to Lewiston, flew from Lewiston to SLC, and had my wife pick me up and drive me to work. Though in retrospect considering that it was only 3.5 hours from waking up to walking into work, that's not that bad.
I'm done with traveling for awhile. Not only is it really tiring, I just miss my family too much. Though I am really looking forward to GenCon. Partly it's that I'm still really anticipating Dreamblade (that links to the Wikipedia article I created for it), but it also stems from hanging out with my friend last week. Normally I only see him at GenCon, and hanging out with him last week reminded me of how fun GenCon is. Anyway, I'm still pretty busy and I had a tough time finishing this, so I better end it now.
Reeling from Daylight Savings Time
Ross