Just Like (a) Human

So, I hear the puppy barking his head off a little earlier, and I was wondering just what the heck he was going at.
I get up, go to the door and ask, “Who is it?” with a hammer in my hand. With no answer, I look out the window, and see the FedEx guy driving off.

So, I pop out the door, and shout, “Hey!”, but it’s too late. He’s gone.

I look on the porch, and there’s a small box.

I see,

From: Draco
To: Xial

… and I end up giggling. dracoemberwing, a good, long time friend of mine, sent me his spare video card, so I can finally get away from the whole “DirectX enabled video card required” warnings of all my games.

I was running an old nVidia Riva TNT2 32 mb card.
Lump of ancient junk, really. Good for a machine that doesn’t need anything special, like a shell box or whatever, but that’s not what I needed.

Draco, thanks very muchly for the card. :3

A long time ago, I had this want. I wanted to write a bunch of stuff — short stories, and what not, put them together, and make a book or two out of it.

I just don’t quite know where I’d start with the whole thing, once I got the material written, or how much it’d cost.

Plus, what would I do with the book, once it was written? Where would I sell it? How would I sell it?

I’m not even sure what I’d put in the book at the moment, either.

Maybe I’d go back and dust off that old series I started years ago, clean it up, and make it into bookworthy material. Then I’d have a reason to finish part two of it, and move on to part three. But then comes the whole ‘finding a publisher’ bit, and paying their costs, and then hoping I could sell enough copies to at least break even.

I guess I’ll chew on this for a bit longer.

I’m sitting here tonight, just listening to random music out of my playlist.
December 4th / Jay-Z + DJ Danger Mouse [The Grey Album] came up while I was working on my blog a little.

It reminded me of Second Life, when I used to enjoy the world. I used to sit there for hours, with my own music playing as I dicked around with a bunch of prims, moving things and trying to build. It reminded me of when I used to be a ‘dancer’ for a club in Second Life. Never did anything really, really dirty, but I would buy something new to change my look each week when I danced, to give people new, interesting things to look at.
I spent a lot of Linden Dollars when I was getting started in SL. Money that I’m trying to make back now, though it’s not working so well, when I can barely get into the world to even build new things.

99 Problems / Jay-Z + DJ Danger Mouse [The Grey Album] reminds me of when our club was griefed for the first time. Someone thought it’d be cute to drop push/particle bombs through our roof onto the dancers, since I was the first furry dancer in that club, I’d wager. Didn’t do much to me, though I learned to turn particles down after this. I was sitting on something, and already had learned how to ‘throw’ my camera very well. I had spotted the guy, and asked the boss if I could give the guy chase, and a taste of his own artillery.
I was the owner of a M72A2 LAW in-world. If you know your weapons… that should tell you what happened.

Dirt Off Your Shoulder / Jay-Z + DJ Danger Mouse [The Grey Album] reminds me of the time just before we closed. We had moved to a new sim, hoping to escape the lag that was generated by being near not only a telehub, but right on the edge of one sim, and cornerwise from Netherbeck, a simulator that had a GIGANTIC mall owned by Anshe Chung gracing its presence. Sadly, that didn’t quite work, and our club was being strangled by some of the bigger players in Second Life.

Eventually, our owner expressed the difficulty that comes with having to foot the bill for large sums of land, losing the Linden bonus for hosting events, and having very little income since no one was shopping as a result of the economy change. She downsized, selling her land off, and closing down the club. I can’t say I blame her at all, given that I am downsizing my own holdings in Second Life.

Moment of Clarity / Jay-Z + DJ Danger Mouse [The Grey Album] defines, in my eyes, how things must come to a close as you figure out what is going on.
From that point, I stopped drifting around. I used to be a heavy events attender, but now, there’s not that much to attend.
I may hold my land in Second Life for a while, unless there were someone I could trust to hold my $8 land tier + $9.95 per month premium fee, but it’s pretty solid: Second Life, with all its changes, really isn’t for me anymore. I don’t have that much I enjoy in-world, save for talking to the few friends I talked into joining when it was fun, when there were events beyond Tringo, Blood 21, and Best Ass contests. I miss things like Primtionary, mostly due to timing constraints — seems that Primtionary events are held when I’m at work to pay for this damn account — and upstarts trying to get something new into the world.

If I could handle being in-world (that is: If I could double my RAM to 2 * 512 MB PC-2100, and get a better Video Card than this Geforce 4 MX 4000 sometime soon, without spending a fortune) for more than 20 minutes, perhaps I would finally try acting on my ‘Iron Chef’ like instincts. When someone held an ‘Iron Chef’ event clone (aptly named Plywood Chef), there was a large turnout. But I have yet to see that event reappear in the events list, which is pretty sad.

I’d love to have my very own ‘Kitchen Stadium’, with three ‘Iron Chefs’ of my own in Second Life. I’d love having lavish outfits designed for me for the weekly show. I’d love to be able to schedule it, guaranteed, for the same time, same day.
Perhaps this music is speaking to me: Allure / Jay-Z + DJ Danger Mouse [The Grey Album].

Then again, that would be awfully expensive for even me to pull off.

A short list of things I wanted to see (more often):
Prim, Lose or Draw (ie: Primtionary (Pictionary; Win, Lose, or Draw)
Jeopardy (The boards seem to all be gone now, and no one holds events pushing ‘em, it seems)
Scavenger hunts (spanning several simulators – Perhaps asking each participant to snap a picture of various landmarks, or seek out a number of landmarks all over the world, and giving them 90 minutes to do so).
Skydiving events. Enough said.

But, I ramble onward.

Some of you like helping people out.

If you’ve got some cash to spare, give this thread some attention.
When a person gets to the point of offering out their skills just to raise donations for their loved pets, it’s worth the attention.

Check it out, okay?

Addendum:
I feel I should mention that there’s a roughly one-half day time difference from myself – I’m on the east coast of the US. Balade is in New Zealand, should my memory serve me properly.

* Second Life now has free basic signups for first time users. Tell your friends about it. Send them through my referral link.
* I’m seeking additional employment or methods to earn funds, as always.
* I am currently disabling my instant messenger access. If you need me, there’s always email.
* I only poll email twice an hour now.
* I’m taking a break from real life, so I can get some of my worries and angsts off my chest. I owe too many bills this month, and with gas prices constantly on the up trend, I really can’t afford all of them. Hence me asking you all to have friends sign up for SL using my referral link. 12 signups, once cashed out is USD$41 or so. I’ll be able to afford my land tier and my account for a few more months if you do this now now now now now.
* I don’t want to worry all of you, nor do I wish to burden you all. This is why all I’m asking of you is to get any of your friends who have yet to ever sign up and play SL to sign up, and sign in at least once. They can hate the game and ditch it thereafter, if they’d like, but it costs $0 to sign up if you’ve never signed up before. They even take PayPal accounts for verification now.

Right. I’m gonna go dork around with my sleep clock.

Sometimes, it’s easier to sum up thoughts about things in one or two sentences per thought.

From the top, shall we?

quoting_mungo, my family loves the commission you mailed me as much as I love it. They actually think I should have that put on a shirt.

n, ’s about time. Why waste money on that project when it’s seriously showing no return?

Jammin’ Java crew, if they’re reading — Hey, sorry I’ve not been in for the past week or so. Tighter budget near the end of the month as I wrap up some of the larger bills. Hope business is going well.

Self-amusement can come from a single line.
(04:59) <Xial> slim to drama^Wnone. is my current source of amusement, especially as it defines much of my thoughts.

Ads are no good because I don’t get enough traffic to warrant them yet.
If I bothered to finish up scripting my Blogathon blog tomorrow, I’d be glad to take pledges for it.
I’m just working out the layout right now, although I may find myself using a canned one, because doing the assembly of code for it is giving me a bit of a headache.

I’d also be able to have a smaller, not very obtrusive ad in place, as well, so I can try to draw enough funds to make a donation myself. Since my blogathon blog is planned to be all about various kinds of pride (be it gay pride, furry pride, team pride, whatever), I’d hope that it would be read and some of the words I say are taken to heart.

Take note, advertisers, because on 6 August 2005, I will be participating in Blogathon, and that would be prime time to get exposure.

I need to harvest six bottles of Bawls, four cans of Rockstar Energy Cola, a couple of smoothies from Xtreme Juice, and a Chai Chiller from Jammin’ Java when this is all over and done with.
I also need lots of vitamins (pair of wheatgrass juice shots), and to dope up on Melatonin on the two nights before Blogathon 2005.

I also better set up Staticize Reloaded before it happens… I don’t need a /. effect downing the server during Blogathon.
Any other users on this server that happen to read my blog, and happen to be participating in Bthon05, please generate static pages for the event!

I wish bthon would NOT host their IRC channel on Eris Free. They’d be better appreciated on things like… DarkMyst, I’d dare say.
Who needs botnets anyway?

I signed up for GameFly recently, and rented “Skies of Arcadia Legends” for my Gamecube.
I’m happy with the service, though I wish the games were shipped in something more substantial than a thin slip of paper, reinforced with whatever is in the envelope.
This makes organized game switching a bitch, because I can’t lose that envelope — I need it so I can mail back the game safely after I’m done.

I need to get back to work on FapChannel.
It could use more improvements, and if I ever learn DOM traversal, it will get those.

I’ve been at my current job just shy of a year. As long as I don’t mess up again, I’ll make it to vacation time.

My body is confused about a lot. I shall end this and begin sleeping, shortly.

I guess I should announce that I’ve written a script for the Greasemonkey extension.

For those of you who follow FChan, you’re probably quite aware that in general, the discussion threads are where you can find all the images, but conversely, that’s where much of the drama is. “Wah wah, do not post, blah blah blah, whatever”. Right.

FapChannel is designed for you to just pop in the thread, and see ONLY the thumbnails of images, which you may click to pass to another tab and look at the image, enhancing the ‘fappability’ of F(ap)Chan.

Have a look in the Spoogemonkey directory to see what’s going on, or install it by right-clicking this link and choosing ‘install user script’.

Easy enough, right?

To turn it off, just click the monkey in your status bar and refresh the page.