almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea

Click to see the graph I made! (it's kinda lame, but hey i tried) Fine print: Please note that this graph should in no way be taken to indicate the actual, expected, or possible levels of my own personal productivity during holiday seasons, which is just as high then as during the rest of the year.

Astute observers (or people who follow me on twitter , or via my twitter rss feed ) saw that I said, back on Monday, that I would be posting a played-once review, that evening, on Pocket Civ. The astute observer would also have noted, I didn't do so! However, it is not because I failed to play... I just haven't finished the game yet! I played for about 30-45 minutes monday evening (my first attempt at the game)... my first few turns were spent flipping back and forth through the rules, and trying to figure out what manner of advancements/actions (very few of which are available at first) would actually progress my civilization (example: my last turn before stopping for the evening, I finally built my first city :-P). I do plan on continuing that game (perhaps tonight), and even after just that bit of time playing, I was starting to get more of a hang of how it was going... my first few turns were all rules-flipping and record-keeping, and not all that fun, but building so

I added a new list to the side-bar, "Games I Distinctly Recall Finishing"... which seems weird, I know, but I NEVER finish video games (that's obviously an exaggeration, or else the list would be blank)... anyway, in an effort to uhh ok I don't know why, I have decided to list the ones I can definitely recall finishing (please note that I do not mean I "completed" it... I might not have gone back to get all the little extra awards, or whatever crap certain games had... I simply made it to the end, and beat it) there are only 2 games in the list right now (HL1 and Halo1), tho I expect to add Lock's Quest (NDS) soon... I always get distracted by some new game, so I never actually finish them... I am working to be better about that, though. If you (by which I mean DP) can recall others that I should have put on the list, please let me know :)

Seriously, you need to go watch this! It's free, but only for a limited time! (Acts 1 & 2 are already up, 3 goes up THIS SATURDAY, and then on SUNDAY, JULY 20th, they come down (at midnight). SO GO WATCH, it's super funny and awesome! (and it's by Joss Whedon, which should really be the only reason you need) GO GO GO NOW NOW WATCH IT!

So I thought up this character this morning... I doubt I'll ever use him in a story (but you never know!), so I wanted him to at least be recorded somewhere. Name: The Engineer (true identity to be determined!) Appearance: A fairly large, well-built man (I see him as looking something like Mr. T, but without all the gold chains). He wears a railroad Conductor's cap (and yet he is called the Engineer! can't you already see the fans getting into huge arguments about why this doesn't match?? :-D ) Age: Probably upper 30s or so. Catchy-slogan-that-he-uses-way-too-often: "Who wants a ticket to the pain train?" I am not sure if he's a "good guy" or a "bad guy" (perhaps he borders the line? I have no idea, it was early in the morning, and I wasn't thinking straight). Anyway, that's it... I just felt like sharing!

So Ficlets is this site where you write tiny little stories, and then everyone can write pre/sequels to them... and I just wrote my first (original) story, so you should go read it, then sign-up and write some yourself! (Bonus: the story involves monkeys!) http://ficlets.com/stories/29641

Confused? Start here: Story: SM-7536: Part 1 (Click the image for full-size!)

this is the pic i made last night, after about 5 minutes setting up the tablet, a couple more to install GIMP (which i somehow didn't already have on here!), and then like THREE MINUTES of actual drawing (pretty much all, if not completely all, was done with the "airbrush" tool in GIMP)

finished this one yesterday, forgot to post it until now. i think it came out much better than my first desk, don't you? (this one is my desk at work... i sketched out the shape/dimensions at work, and made the model at home) the "black" sections are supposed to be a shiny-looking metal, but there was no matching material in SketchUp (even after adding the materials bonus pack)... and since i was neither motivated, nor properly equipped, to attempt to take a picture of the surface of the desk to make at texture with, i cropped out a piece of another picture (the back of a PSP, actually), to use instead

watching a few video tutorials, plus one hour playing with Google SketchUp, gave me this: it was SOOO much simpler than when i tried to learn Blender, and i am very proud of my desk! (yes, that's a model of my actual computer desk!) WOOP! ps: bill, i told you i would try the software! :-D