Notebook Anxiety

I have a new notebook.

It is still new despite being purchased six weeks ago. It is new in the sense that I have never written anything in it.

It's very nice, and it cost me 15 dollars. It is about 4 inches wide, 7 inches tall, and it is made of paper that looks like leather. It has an elastic built in to keep it closed, and a ribbon attached to hold my place. It also has a pocket.

I bought it because I liked it. I didn't really have anything in mind for it when I purchased it, and it was not long after that I realized my mistake.

I have another notebook that I keep in my pocket. I use it for grocery lists, notes to myself, and keeping track of my workout routine. It cost me 97 cents. Currently it says 'Milk' and also the dimensions of a picture I am trying to find a nice frame for.

I have no fear of writing in this notebook because it is not nice. It is crumpled and has a tacky bright yellow color. I could replace it without a thought in any drug or stationary store in any city in this country. I believe I have owned a dozen exactly like it.

The other notebook is possibly irreplaceable. It came from a very unusual store in Marda Loop, a fashionable shopping area in Calgary, a city I don't live in.

I have now what I call 'Notebook Anxiety'. I feel somehow that the expensive notebook is more deserving of something profound than the cheap yellow one. The cheap yellow one is for 'Milk'. Possibly the other one was meant for poetry, or a diary. The cheap one I can tear pages out of, but it would be wrong somehow to sully this pretty object with something mundane.

So I don't use it. It sits closed on a shelf, because somehow I don't feel that anything I have to write would be worthy of a notebook I bought. I can't use it, and it's too nice to throw away. So there it sits.

Does that seem right to you?

-iRob

"The things you own end up owning you"
-Tyler Durden

The case of the missing post.

This is most unusual.

When I made my post today about Spaceballs, I noticed that there is no trace of the post I made yesterday. It was about my favorite author, Terry Pratchett, and the new book I picked up.

I can't explain it's absence, and it does not appear in my 'drafts' folder. I hope I didn't delete it by mistake when I tried to edit it.

Regardless, for my next trick I will recreate the post from memory. (Ta-Da!)

My favorite Author has come out with a new book.

Well, that's not exactly true. It would be more accurate to say that a book he wrote some time ago has now come out in softcover.

I decided a while ago that I'm not buying any more books hardcover that are part of a series. (In this case, there are 35 books, and I own around 30 of them.) They take up too much bookshelf real estate, they don't look good next to the others, and they are too darn expensive. They are also very heavy. (I move a lot.)

It's hard to wait that long, but I anticipate it will be worth it. I'll let you know how it turns out, but in the meantime I recommend anything this man has ever written.

-iRob

“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.”
-Barbara W. Tuchman

May the Schwartz be with you.

My memory gets a little fuzzy when I attempt to go back farther than about 3 years, but I'm fairly confident that I may have seen this movie before I saw Star Wars, Alien, or any other movie that it parodies.

Regardless, upon first viewing I didn't 'get it', and it was largely lost on me. I enjoyed the visuals and the more slapstick comedy, but not the references.

Years later, now that those movies have become a large part of my personal influence, I am able to revisit this flick and thoroughly enjoy it.

It hasn't aged particularly poorly, (for 80's comedy) and still makes me smile during certain scenes.

I vaguely remember seeing a teaser poster for a new Spaceballs. It was a parody of the Episode III poster where Anakin's cape is forming the face of Vader against a red background. (Hayden is to the right, Vader to the left.) The new parody poster involved Mel Brooks in the place of Hayden.


I was going to post a picture here of that poster, but exhaustive research has failed to produce Any imagery of it. I have found several old news posts about it, but nowhere have I located this poster.

I hereby issue a challenge: A cookie to the first person who posts a URL where I can find this poster.

-iRob

"Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable."
-Mark Twain

P.S. I get to choose the cookie.

A little light reading

So as previously mentioned, I'm reading again and have chosen a book.

It would be more accurate to say that it chose me. I was still mulling over my options when I reached a time a few days ago where I had 15 minutes to kill. I happened to be standing in front of my bookshelf when I reached out and grabbed the first thing I touched. I'm now 1/4 through it and am not disappointed in my selection.

I knew I wouldn't be, of course. I've read this book twice before. In fact it has a bit of a history.

I first read it years ago right after high school. I wasn't particularly proud of my grades at the time, and thought I could do better. Between being busy with my classes, I visited the library at what used to be called Viscount Bennett, where in Calgary adult upgrading was performed. (I retook Math 30 and English 30, and fared much better)

I found this book on the shelf and was very interested. I had to return the book once I was no longer a student, and was sad because I had enjoyed it, and didn't expect to see it again.

Years later, my lovely Jenn found it for me online where I purchased it fairly cheaply, used but in good condition. I read it again at that time.

The book itself is somewhat dark. It deals with the very real probability that life, Earth, and the universe in itself is a temporary construct. Whether it is the expansion of the Sun, a disaster that befalls the entire planet, or the heat death of the entire universe, the odds are highly in favor that life as we know it will not continue indefinitely.

It is very well written and extremely thoroughly thought out, as was most of Asimov's work. It touches briefly on various religious predictions of the end times, (Ragnarok, Revelations, etc.) and then dives into a thorough classification and exploration of the things that could render human life unrecognizable or nonexistent.

He divides this into several types of catastrophes, and each is given detailed examples. Catastrophes of the first class would render the entire universe uninhabitable, and obviously as residents of such a place we would be among those out of luck. Anything that damages or substantially changes the solar system we inhabit (including the Sun) would constitute a second class catastrophe. The third class deals exclusively with the destruction of the Earth, while the other planets and the sun continue obliviously. The fourth defines situations where the Earth itself as a whole is largely unaffected, though human life in particular is extinguished, and the fifth class deals with the possibility that although humans may continue to exist, society and technology themselves may become so damaged that 'life as we know it' ceases.

It's not a 'scary book' in the sense that it is not frightening. The concepts are certainly not cheerful, but the tone of the book is clinical, with a bit of quiet optimism and acceptance.

My book is showing it's age, both in appearance and content. The science is slightly dated, and more recent scientific findings are not taken into account, but that is of little consequence.

I have always loved this book for the perspective that it offers: My life, the lives of everyone around me, and even the ground I stand on, are temporary. Nothing lasts forever, and that is literally true. Time will erase my most terrible mistakes and my greatest successes. That doesn't free me from the responsibility to do what I think is necessary or right, but it gives me a vague sense that no matter what happens, it all works out the same in the end.

You may not find that liberating, but I do.

-iRob

"Anything that is created must sooner or later die."
-Chogyam Trungpa

Brought to you by the letter 'E'.

It's funny that so many of my friends have posted about what they are reading, or their book club is discussing, or books in the news.

I too will post on this topic. I'm reading again.

I used to be, while not a voracious reader, at least an active one. Seems something dropped off the map in the last few months, and without fully realizing it I stopped reading altogether.

So now for the first time in over half a year, I've read a book. I read 'Life of Pi' by Yann Martel, on loan from Jenn. I highly recommend it.

It's not the best book I ever read, but it did make me think outside myself, and my own limited perspective. (If only for a time.)

Now to balance it out with something fluffy, and then we'll see about something with substance again.

Any suggestions?

-iRob

"Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body."
-Joseph Addison

Ick.

Has anyone else ever done this?

"Hmm.. I'm hungry. I wonder if there is anything good in the fridge."

"Let's see.. Salad.. ..no. Soup.. ..nah. Hey - what's that?"

"Whoah cool! I didn't know they made frosted strawberries!?"

"...Oh... ...these aren't frosted."


I need to clean out my fridge more often.

-iRob

"There is little choice in a barrel of rotten apples."
-William Shakespeare

iPatch

Hey,

We celebrated 'Talk Like a Pirate' day at work last week. In honor of this, there were cheap, black cardboard eyepatches left on every desk by the fun-loving management team.

I didn't think to wear a costume (shame) although many did. However, I took a friends idea and ran with it.

I turned my patch inside out so that it was plain white cardboard. Then I wrote the word 'iPatch' on it in big black block letters. Then I amused myself for 8 hours by watching the reactions of people who read it.

Good times.

-iRob

“The average man will bristle if you say his father was dishonest, but he will brag a little if he discovers that his great-grandfather was a pirate.”
Bern Williams

All Hail The Great D*Con

Behold my illustrious post. BEHOLD IT!!

O.K. so I'm working up the energy to make some sort of post on DragonCon, but it's a bit problematic.. I have the memory retension of wet sand, and it's all congealed into one big giant sludge of imagery and memory.

I'll start with the beginning, and work forwards from there, as that would seem to be the most satisfying, chronology-wise.

The Thursday before leaving was given over entirely to preperations. I took the entire day off of work, to pack, clean, and generally prepare. I'm not really that sure anymore what took so long or required so much energy, but I'm sure it made sense at the time. I have a vague impression of emergency costume repairs and paint fumes, but nothing solid. Oh well.

Long story short, we decided that in order to get to the airport on time, we needed to leave the house at 4:30 am. I wasn't previously aware of the existance of this time, but I assure you that it is there. It hides neatly between bed-time and civilized morning.

So in order to get up at that time, we decided that we needed to be in bed at 10. 8 pm would actually be mathematically correct to get us 8 hours of sleep, but we aren't nine-year olds, (we're grown-ups) and that didn't seem feasable.

So at 12:30 when we finished our packing, panicing, and preparing, (the three horsemen of air travel,) we got precicely 3.5 hours of sleep, and then got up to face the day. I've never woken up screaming before, so that was a first. Very, very painful.

So up we got, and my Father, was waiting downstairs with a couple of large coffees to ferry us to the airport and point us in the right direction. (Thanks Dad!)

The flights themselves were uneventful, which is the best kind of flight. There were five flights and five cities in total: Edmonton, Salt Lake, Memphis, Atlanta, and one other.. (can't even remember anymore.) That's total, not one way. Two flights there, three back.

So we get to Atlanta at 7:00 on the evening of Friday Sept 1st. 3.5 hours of sleep, 7 hours in the air, 11 hours travel time total, and two time zones. Clearly, the only sensible solution is to party into the wee hours, which we did.

Will post more later. Same bat time, same bat channel.

-iRob

"Traveling tends to magnify all human emotions."
-Peter Hoeg

Warning - CPU use approaching 100%

Hey kids.

I've been very much incommunicado lately - My bad. I'm spending a lot of time away from my computer these days, (intentional) and what little time I do use it is looking for jobs. Applied for 10 this week. Blah.

My work is actually more fun and tolerable than ever before, that's becoming less and less the issue. The issue now is the fact that I am paid approximately 42% less than I should be for the duties I perform. (My original Job description was something akin to 'file clerk'. I'm somewhat closer to a 'Junior Human Resources Generalist'.)

That is not my assessment, by the way, but impartial experts. It has also been acnowledged by not only my manager, but my manager's manager's manager. (Seriously.) They know that I'm payed way too low, but they are not sure how to correct it. (Insert mumbo jumbo about 'headcount' and 'pay codes' here.) I'll give them a hint: "More money." They are 'looking into it'. I'm not waiting.

I'm not super comfortable posting the details here, but those of you close to me are free to ask privately.

So not having what we call 'Good Times' lately, but things are looking up for the future. There apparently is a Labor Crisis in general, and HR in particular. (Thanks to M for sending me that news article, it goes a long way towards helping me keep my momentum, and sanity.)

So I have options, and no longer feel trapped where I am. It'll all be O.K. And I'm sorry to those of you I haven't emailed lately, I'll do better.

Cheers,
iRob

“I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”
-Stephan Grellet

EDIT - Yes, yes, D*C info is coming, hold your horse.

User is now operating in Safe Mode.

Yawn. Good morning!

Well, let's see.. I got back 4 days ago, and now it's the weekend. At this rate, by Monday I should be hitting on all cylinders again. (Currently I am running without any unnecessary drivers or programs, to prevent crashes.)

Dragon*Con was an absolute blast - Much more so than I had been anticipating. Everything went off without a hitch (more or less) and much fun was had by all. I took about a bazillion pics to remember everything by, which was what I intended given a) How lousy my memory is, and B) How much I spent on my fancy new camera and accessories.

Speaking of pictures I can't be bothered right now, but the definitive collection is here. Click to your hearts' content.

We arrived without much in the way of firm plans, which I think was wise considering how much there was to do. I did have to spend a lot of time asking the question "Sooo... what are you up to now?" - becoming completely transparent was the fact that I neglected to do my homework, but that's o.k. If I had actually sat down with the program I would have gone insane with all of the things I couldn't do. Choosing any one thing means 9 more I will never see, but would know about. That's hell for a completist.

There is so much to say about the trip that it's hard to get started. So I won't.

Cheers,
-iRob

"A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving."
-Lao Tzu