The internet connection at work was down all weekend and was spotty today, so I haven't been able to update lately. Sorry about that. I'm just stopping in now to post this short note, then I'm off to the gym. I started going again this weekend and wow, am I sore. That's a good thing, though.

More tomorrow.

I'm very excited because I got a new computer at work. For some reason my old one was REEEEAAAAAALLLLLLYYYY slow when I tried to open and close emails -- taking in the neighborhood of 10 seconds to do either operation. Ugh. That was annoying. Anyway, our IT guy replaced it and now everything is working very, very well. I am happy.

Work went well today, but for having a ton of stuff to do, I don't feel like I got a lot accomplished, although, really, I did. Does that make sense? Mostly I caught up on things that had languished for a bit. Yesterday I even cleaned up my desk in order to give myself some room to work. That was definitely a good thing.

Tonight I'm going out with some friends, but I'm not drinking because I'm still sick. I get to be the driver, so that's good. It will be fun to get out and relax.

Tomorrow is my first day back to the gym in over two weeks. Yikes, I can't believe it's been that long, but I guess with vacation last week and the relapse of my cold this week I didn't really have many options. I'm looking forward to going back.

I'm going to go grab some food and head into Seattle.

See you later!

I'm posting quickly, then heading for some food.

I've finished the articles I was working on, but I have to get them okayed by the people at work. They look good so I'm not worried.

This evening I sat down with Matt to work out the math for one of our new games. It went really well and although we didn't finish it, we came up with some great stuff and we're both very happy with it. I think a few more hours of math and programming and I can start making the pieces for the game.

At my last job in Wisconsin was with some great people, one of the people posts to his site pretty regularly. Today's update was pretty funny. I hope he doesn't mind me posting it here -- and if he does, I'm sure I'll hear from him.

Night!

I'm still plugging away on the article, but it's going pretty well, so I figure I'll have it done in the next couple of nights. Tomorrow night is taken up by my Tuesday game -- which I have to run and have very little prepared for.

Tomorrow during the day I'm going to the doctor to see what's up with my throat. It's very annoying.

Other than that, things are good, but I'm very tired and I may head home to get some sleep now. Eh, I'll think about it, I have some things to do first. I'll post something later if I stick around.

Seeya!

I done good! I haven't finished all of the articles I have to write for the next issue of the magazine, but I finished the first one -- 4,451 words! Hooray! The next one should be a bit shorter and there's not so many game stats, so it will probably be much easier.

I briefly talked with Rob and Seth earlier via ICQ. (That's a program that allows you to send messages back and forth quickly, Mom. Like email that pops up on your screen.) The two of them, John and Lisa were all sitting around eating dinner together and watching the news. I was very jealous of them. I miss those days and I think I'm a long way from doing similar things with people out here. I don't think there are friends like the ones I have back in Madison. I really don't.

Maybe that's conceited or snobby, but I can live with that. All I know, is that whenever anyone new was introduced to our group of friends they always commented on how fun, intelligent, quick-witted and cool we all were. Without sarcasm in their voice. I miss you guys.

I'm done with my writing for the night and I'm still getting used to sleeping at normal times, so I'm really tired. I'm headed home to watch a little more the the second disk of the appendix to The Fellowship of the Ring, then I'm going to bed. Hopefully I'll be over my throat thing in the morning and can go to the gym before I come in to do some more writing. G'night!

If you ask the people I was in Vegas with what I wanted to do the night before my planetrip back, they'll say, "Jon wanted to go to bed and get some sleep." They will. I swear. But instead I was lured out all night by my friends, which meant I stayed up all night and all the next day until about 11:00 pm. Yesterday morning when I woke up for work I had that familiar swelling in my throat, and now it looks like I'm getting whatever the hell I had about a month ago back again. Damnit! I hate it when I get sick. And aside from this trip I've been very careful about taking care of myself when I travel. I called the doctor and his office closed at 1:00 today, so no luck. Then I called the urgent care office and they said they had a 2 hour wait, so I should hurry if I wanted to see anyone today because they were going to stop taking patients soon. Yeah, right. I have zero interest in waiting that long. It looks like I'll really have to be careful until Monday when I can set up an appointment and hopefully get something to make this go away again. Anyway, I'm now paying for all the fun I had in Vegas. Curses!

I've been busy catching up on things at work, but it hasn't been too bad. This weekend I have to spend most of my time working on the articles I didn't finish before the trip for my magazine. Oh, I picked up issue #6 at the show and it's actually pretty darn good. I was happy to see it has a lot of very good articles and previews. Check it out if you see it. The art still needs a lot of work, but at least the content is there.

There was something I was going to post a link to, but now I've forgotten what it was. Hmm, if I think of it I'll pass it along. Now I have to do some writing and, well, that's about it. Talk to you soon.

I'm back from Las Vegas and I'm alive. I say that because I'm dead tired and really need to get some sleep, but I have to stay awake until a bit later, so that I don't wake up at 5 in the morning. I need to get my schedule back under control.

I had a great time at the convention -- did some actual work, even -- and spent most of my time hanging out with a couple of friends that were in Vegas for the show. We played a lot of blackjack and I did very well. Very well. I even returned with extra money -- and believe me, I spent a lot of cash during my stay.

Wow. I'm tired. I have to go now.

Talk to you tomorrow.

John emailed me a couple of days ago and chided me for not posting more often. I believe the quote was, "I check your site far more often than you update it." It's good to be loved. And, man, do I wish I had the time this week to do more updating. I'd been going strong for a while there and the last week it all came crashing down. I'll explain a bit.

We (the design group at work) had a big project dumped on us pretty much out of the blue and it's taken up a lot of our thoughts and time lately. It's also resulted in a lot more meetings this week compared to normal. This combined with the fact that I had some articles to write for the magazine -- while still trying to get to the gym regularly, meant that I didn't get any freetime to do any posting. Oh, and I'm trying to get ahead of the game a little bit because I'm headed to Las Vegas for four days beginning Saturday. And another thing, I have to finish up everything for a new game in the next month. I just found out the deadlines earlier this week, and, yikes. It's very doable, but it's going to be a lot of work, especially because I still have to work with one of the other designers here to write the program that will create the game stats. The rules themself shouldn't be a problem. It's a simple game.

I mentioned I'm going to Vegas, well, since I was, I volunteered to help out at the convention -- but I explained that I planned on making this mostly a mini-vacation, not a work thing. It was cool with my boss, and he said he'd probably pull me into a meeting or two, and get me a badge for the show, but nothing more. Then one of the other people at work asked if I could teach the retailers how to play one of our games after dinner. In this case, the retailers probably number about 400. Anyway, after preparing some things for this presentation, another one of the managers here came over and said, "Hey, since you're doing this presentation, I think it's ridiculous that you should have to pay your own way, so my department wants to cover it." Um, wow. That's cool. So, now I'm going to the show for free and I just received a check for $200 that I didn't know was coming. That rocks. If I'd known this a day or two earlier I might have offered to help Seth pay for a ticket to the show. It'd be fun to see him again.

I was here until 1:30 last night and for some reason I just woke up at 6:45 (I got to sleep at about 2:30). Weird. Anyway, I'm really tired, but I wanted to finish up some work, update here, and now I'm going to work on my articles some more. Tomorrow -- I sleep in, then run some errands before being taken to the airport by a friend around 2:00. I'll return Wednesday sometime and I hope to update you then.

Wish me luck!

The weekend went pretty much as I thought, although Matt and I played a lot more Magic than I'd planned. The upshot of which is that I got a lot less writing done than I thought I would. Luckily, I've finished one of the articles I was working on and can now move onto to one of the next ones. These, hopefully, shouldn't take as long -- they're not as rules-involved as the one I just finished.

Last night I went to see Dave Wakeling at the Ballard Firehouse. The venue is just off NW Market Street and, really, is a pretty cool place. I could definitely see going there again. Heck, if I weren't going to be in Vegas next Saturday I'd go see Eek-A-Mouse there. Anyway, the show was very good. The opening band was The Mercury Four, who played surf music (odd choice considering the acts that followed); Ragamuffin, who were a punk-influenced ska band. They were very good. I enjoyed their set a lot. Lots of energy, good music, and an amazing sense of timing (beautiful starts and stops during songs). Lastly, was Dave Wakeling; he and his band did a great job of playing his many hits from The English Beat and General Public. This was the last night of the tour aparently, but I couldn't tell from the energy and sense of fun he had during the whole show. Good stuff.

I went to the gym yesterday and today, but you probably don't care to hear about that, nor, I imagine, are you surprised to hear it.

That's about all. Now it's time for the grocery store and bed. I'm going to try to get in at a reasonable time tomorrow.

I wonder why so many people wonder if Vin Diesel is gay?

I ask this not completely at random. Y'see, every couple of days Nothing Good gets a hit from someone wondering if Vin Diesel is gay. I'm sure I mentioned him with regards to his movie XXX and have also used the word "gay" somewhere in these pages, but I'm betting Mr. Diesel wouldn't be cool with it if he found out so many people were looking for this information. I mean, let the guy be. If he's gay, and I'm not saying he is, but if he is, isn't that his business? Or, wait, do you think all the people surfing for such information are hoping he is and looking for dates? That might be it. He must be quite a hottie to some of the boys out there. Anyway, if you come to this site trying to find out if Vin Diesel is gay, please go away.

Really, you should be more interested in the fact that he's a gamer and, reportedly, still plays D&D on a regular basis. So, he must be cool.

Now that that nonsense is out of the way. This week has been okay. I'm really, really demotivated for some reason. Maybe it's the aftereffects of the cold still slowing me down. More likely it's that I slowed down a lot while sick and now I'm in the habit of being slow. Yuck. I don't like it. I have more and more work piling up and I was almost caught up.

The weekend after next I'm going to Vegas for a convention. Mostly it's to see some friends that will also be there, but I'll be doing some work, too. I think work is going to cover my hotel -- and maybe I won't have to take time off -- so that will be cool by me.

I finally received a call back from Cyndi today. She said she's just too busy to try dating right now. I'm okay with that, it was the "not knowing" that was a bother. Anyway, we're going to trade some emails. Mainly I want to find out if she's blowing me off and using "I'm too busy" as an excuse, or if she is actually busy. Round and round we go. It's the little dance of getting to the real meaning that makes it fun! Yeah, right.

Anyway, I'd like to see her again. We had fun together.

I've been trying to write all week for the next issue of the magazine and I've gotten woefully little accomplished. This weekend I really have to knuckle down and crank out some words. Although Friday I'm going out to dinner and Saturday night some of us from work are going to The Ballard Firehous to see Dave Wakeling, the lead singer of both General Public and The English Beat. Should be fun. I'm sure I'll be able to get plenty of work done when I'm around during the day this weekend.

Okay, gotta run to the gym and then get to bed. I'm back into the habit of staying up too late and it's bad.

I've done such an amazingly good job of getting nothing done today that I thought I'd continue the streak by posting something here -- not that I consider here "getting nothing done", but this isn't what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm supposed to working on an article for the next issue of the magazine, and while I've gotten some writing done, I haven't gotten nearly enough done. I guess I still have a couple of hours tonight, it's only 11:00. Ugh.

Hmm, I haven't posted since Wednesday, so what's up since then? I'm pretty much over my cold...virus...thing...whatever it was. I finally went back to the gym yesterday and today. I still haven't heard from Cyndi -- which I really don't understand considering how well we got along. I went to see Old School on Saturday with some of the guys from work. It was okay, but not as funny as the people involved could have made it. I'm biased though because I think Will Ferrell is a freakin' genius. Maybe if he'd written the movie instead of Todd Phillips whose previous claim to fame is "Road Trip" and will next do an adaptation of "Starsky and Hutch" for the big screen. No, I'm not kidding.

I finally listed my old car in the paper this week. It appeared today and I got a call from a woman who came to look at it. It was pretty funny because she's from Wisconsin and just moved out here in August from Madison. Weird. Anyway, I hope she buys it, but I'm not holding my breath, she didn't seem taken with it. I just want to get rid of it and not have to do anything more with it.

I don't know about everywhere else, but gas around here is up to $1.799 to $2.019 in most places depending on the type of gas. Annoying, but I've always thought we got off pretty cheap for gas compared to the rest of the world.

Oh, I'm done. I don't really have anything else to say, so I'm going to go write something else. G'night.