Roaming majestically across the living room

I'm not sure what my upstairs neighbors were doing at 6:30 this morning, but I think it involved herds of wild rocks rolling to and fro across the wilds of their apartment.

Serenity Trailer

http://www.apple.com/trailers/universal/serenity/

Endless Expansion

I'm pretty sure my brain is trying to expand beyond the confines of my head. I'm sure it has it's reasons. Perhaps it's so excited about moving to a new place that it wants a change of its own.

In unrelated news, you will now refer to me as either The Gatling Gun of Patience or Brother Nine Iron of Joy of the Unitarian Jihad. I think that technically I'm only a sympathizer but I'm sure they won't nitpick.

Shipping fun

I'm going to talk about this in as generic terms as a can, in order to protect the innocent. You are warned.

So our last set of auctions ends. I made special arrangements with one person to ship one of the books overseas. Overseas shipping isn't cheap. It turns out that there are two shipping options. One option is about 11 dollars, and arrives at the destination in 4-6 days. The other option is 15.50, and arrives in 4-10 days. The cheaper option does not allow for insurance.

The buyer wanted insurance. Keep in mind, the item cost less than $10.

So, this person paid about 6 extra dollars so the item could be insured and possibly arrive later than if it wasn't insured.

In all fairness I should say that this was my first experience shipping anything overseas, and the price I quoted for shipping was the higher of the two --because I wanted to err on the more expensive side. It was unclear to me from looking at the USPS web site whether shipping would be $11 or $15, because we packaged the book in a small box and not a large envelope. In my defense I would have happily refunded the difference.

But, they wanted insurance.

On another note, I'm happy to say that some of the items I put up last already have bids. I'm taking this as an excellent sign, considering that they'll be up for a week.

Look at the bones!

I was viciously attacked by a bee this morning.

Ok, by viciously I mean "Eunice found it on the bed, and I tried to squish it with a Kleenex, at which point it stung me."

That makes 2 bee attacks on me this year. First in Connecticut, and now here in my own home! I've got to increase security.

We managed to capture the bee in a plastic container and escort it outside.

In other news, according to eBay we've made quite a chunk of money. I put up the next big chunk of books (about 43 in all) a little while ago. And there are more to come! At least 2 more boxes worth! As always, bid early and often.

Kung Fu Hustle

Kung Fu Hustle is awesome. It is the best movie I've seen so far this year, and yes, that includes Sin City.

I can't help but compare KFH to The Matrix. It's better in almost every way. There are no dead spots, and Keanu Reeves isn't in the same league as Stephen Chow.

Now, I must head to NetFlix in search of more Stephen Chow movies!

The Blog-sphere gets a little more crowded

Oh, teh terror. My brother is blogging. Try not to get any on you.

And just like that the search is over

This weekend Eunice and I found a new apartment. We don't have to move until the end of June. We were just sort of looking around to get the lay of the land, and we found an apartment we fell in love with. It's close to a strip-mall type of area with a 7-eleven, CVS, grocery store, a few restaurants, and other stores.

Best of all, the layout is sane. It's a little bigger than what we have now, only it's all rectangles and usable space, as opposed to the weird angles and unusable space our current place has.

I realize I'm not really conveying the very well. We're really, really excited to be moving into a better apartment. Did I mention it's slightly cheaper? I could go on at length with the problems our current apartment has, but frankly that's depressing. I'm just happy to have found a new place to live.

Our first auction on Ebay went pretty well. We cleared a nice sum of money. It'll be nicer when one of the buyers finally pays us of course. I just put up another list of 22 items today. Bid early and often! I have a move to pay for!

Ebay and Exercise

We're still waiting to hear back on 4 of the items we auctioned on ebay last week. In the meantime I'm entering the other items (too slowly for my taste) via ebay's free Turbo Lister application.

The turbo lister has some issues. My biggest one being how long it takes to edit an entry. It takes about 3 seconds to bring up an entry, which feels like 2.5 seconds too long. The spell checking is also strange. It doesn't understand contractions for one. Eunice thinks it might have some sort of crazy custom dictionary.

I can't complain too much, because it is free. If I wanted to lay out some money I could use one of their other two apps, but I don't think I want to do that. I'd really like something that makes a database of stuff and lets me upload it at will, and so far Turbo lister is the only app I can get that will do that, at least on the cheap. I may go ahead and try one of their other applications. You can use them free for 30 days.

In other news Eunice and I took a walk this evening. I'm feeling pretty good right now, but I probably won't be able to move tomorrow. w00t!

Okay, I admit it

I think Wil Wheaton is cool.

Ebay 4tw!

So putting up a few books on ebay went very well. I put up 10 books under Eunice's account. 9 of them sold (one for more than I paid for the book in the first place). The initial foray got us a little over $100.

We're pretty pleased.

Now the real selling begins. I downloaded their "turbolister" program, which lets me add entries and upload them at will. So now all I need to do is add 5 boxes worth of gaming books to a database. Ooof.

Striding boldly out of the 18th century

I lived in Kansas long enough to consider myself a native. I also lived in the only liberal oasis in the state.

My brother (who says that there's not nearly enough of him in this blog) just sent me this link.

I can't say that I'm surprised that Kansas voted to amend their constitution to ban same-sex marriages. I mean, what can you really expect from the same folks that at one time voted to ban the teaching of evolution in school (in all fairness I found one link that says that later Kansas put evolution back into the curriculum, along with cosmology, plate tectonics and the notion that the Earth revolves around the Sun).

It saddens me greatly that same-sex marriage is an issue at all. I think there are better things our government could spend time on. What two consenting adults do on their own shouldn't matter.

But hey, I'm only an alien-human hybrid. What do I know?

Living Will

My mother just sent me this. Knowing the Internet, it's probably all over the place by now, but hey, what's one more right?

I'm inclined to use this as my living will.



Living Will
I,________________________(fill in the blank), being of sound mind and body, do not wish to be kept alive indefinitely by artificial means.

Under no circumstances should my fate be put in the hands of idiot politicians who couldn't pass ninth-grade biology if their lives depended on it.

If a reasonable amount of time passes and I fail to sit up and ask for a die t Dr. Pepper, it should be presumed that I won't ever get better.

When such a determination is reached, I hereby instruct my spouse, children and attending physicians to pull the plug, reel in the tubes and call it a day.

Under no circumstances shall the members of the legislature enact a special law to keep me on life-support machinery. It is my wish that these boneheads mind their own business, and pay attention to the health, education and future of the millions of Americans who aren't in a permanent coma.

Under no circumstances shall any politicians butt into this case. I don't care how many fundamentalist votes they're trying to scrounge for their run for the presidency, it is my wish that they play politics with someone else's life and leave me alone to die in peace.

I couldn't care less if a hundred religious zealots send e-mails to legislators in which they pretend to care about me. I don't know these people, and I certainly haven't authorized them to preach and crusade on my behalf. They should mind their own business, too.

If any of my family goes against my wishes and turns my case into a political cause, I hereby promise to come back from the grave and make his or her existence a living hell.

Signature _________________________________________
Witness __________________________________

Adventures in re-location

The lease is up in two months. It's no secret that Eunice and I don't like our apartment. So, we're looking at moving somewhere else. Preferably cheaper.

To that end I'm selling off some of my roleplaying books. Check it out. It's our first eBay foray.

We also listed a bunch of stuff on both half.com and amazon.com (though at this time amazon hasn't updated my listing --either that or I'm pointing at the wrong place).

Anyway, bid early and often. I have moving expenses to pay for.

Decaffeinated

Eunice needs to cut back on the caffeine.

So, as a sign of solidarity, so will I.

I expect this to be painful. I expect that, for the next few days, I'll be tired, cranky, and have a headache. At least, more than usual.

I've stopped drinking caffeine before. Usually this is brought on by a doctor's visit. The doctor asks how much soda I drink. I tell him "anywhere from 6 to 10 cans a day," and the doctor tells me to cut down. The 6 to 10 can figure includes fountain drinks at lunch, etc.

The hard part is going to be drinking things at work. The tradeoff for me with caffeine has always been sugar. So it was either drink diet soda (with caffeine) or sprite (with sugar). Seeing as how I'm trying to stick to an Atkins diet, the sugar option is right out. Yes, I know that there is decaf, sugar free pop. However, I can't get it out of the pop machine at work.

Anyway, in the spirit of April Fool's day, here is a link to my favorite Chick Tract. On a side note, I did find one tract in a book I bought from Borders.

I could go into a discussion here about why gaming isn't a tool of Satan, etc., but I don't think there is anything to be gained. People that argue this point usually have their minds already made up (and probably aren't readying my blog anyway). I will say that I'm a gamer, and I'm proud of it.

And for the record, this place terrifies me.

And in the spirit of good fun, here are a couple other funny links:
Nodwick!
Typos of Doom!