So last night I was watching an old Nova program called Mars: Dead or Alive. It originally aired, I believe, on Jan. 5th, but my Tivo is majorly backlogged.

Anyway, it’d been a pretty crappy day at work (big surprise) and I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. Then I learn, from this program, that the programmers working on the Rover AI software didn’t have it finished in time for launch. Instead, they had to finish it up while the vehicle was en route to Mars, and uploaded it via radio signal. Now, the software to handle the flight and landing was all done..this was just ‘on the ground’ stuff. But still, can you imagine the pressure? Knowing that you have to finish this project in the alloted time, and can only test (presumably) on a simulator? If you don’t get you code fixed in time, the mission ends up a failure. Sheesh!

After hearing that, I stopped feeling sorry for myself. Heh.

In other news, I’m at the 95% mark in that infernal Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time game. So close…but the farther I get, the harder it gets. I know reviews have complained the game is too easy, but I’m the first to admit my twitch gaming skills are pretty weak. This has been a real challenge for me.

As for this site, I’m looking at some new blog software that will, I hope, give me more features that I’d like to include. I actually thought about writing something from scratch…then I had a rare moment of honesty with myself and admitted I’d never finish such an undertaking…

Three and a half months since my last post here. Man, the place is dusty…again.

Consistency has never been one of my strengths, but undaunted, I’m ready to try this again.

I suppose my first project should be to get a more robust blogging package. I read other blogs and drool over the cool features. b2, as far as I can tell, isn’t being developed anymore (though in all honesty I haven’t checked lately).

There’s no point in trying to recap the last few months right now. But to bring things up to speed, I’m currently playing Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time on the XBox. I’m intending to play Horizons on the PC, though I never seem to get around to actually logging in. I’m re-reading O’Brian’s Master and Commander after seeing the great film adaptation (and I’m enjoying it much more this time around…I guess I’m getting a bit more patient with age). I’ve been watching A&E’s Hortatio Hornblower movies (bought the collection at Christmas) and…I guess that’s about it.

Very much looking forward to Champions of Norrath on the PS2, btw…

A co-worker is…let me say “enthusiastic” about weather and she sends out a weekend weather report every Friday. Today’s held this snippet of info:

In other news, a strong geomagnetic storm is expected to hit planet Earth today, “with the potential to affect electrical grids and satellite communications,” Associated Press reports. “One of the largest sunspot clusters in years developed over the past three days and produced a coronal mass ejection, similar to a solar flare, at 3 a.m. EDT Wednesday, forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said. The disturbance was expected to produce a geomagnetic storm rated G3. A G5 storm is the strongest.”

“In area, [the sunspot cluster] is 10 times larger than the surface of the Earth,” BBC notes.

So for the past few weeks I’ve been saying to myself “I gotta get the blog going again. I need to write up Middlesex and Final Fantasy Tactics and Lord of the Isles and .. etc etc.” And then it feels like I’m too far behind and I’ll never catch up, so I just say “Ah, I’ll do it later.” and never get any farther.

So as of today, I’m going to just let the past float away and start back in with the here and now. Maybe I’ll find time to back fill a bit, but if not…better to get started than to not blog at all.

In gaming: I finished Brute Force on Sunday. Very entertaining game. Pretty much straight action; no cut scenes to speak of and a very thin storyline. But still fun. Also got back into EverQuest in a semi-serious way. Had a couple of evenings with a good group of friends that was quite fun, but the solo game is still a bit slow for my tastes. Plus physical ailments make long stretches of gaming on the PC painful these days. Lastly, played more EVE: The Second Genesis. That warrants its own post, I think.

In video: Watched the second disc of Saiyuki. This series continues to grow on me; I really enjoy the bold style of the artwork and the ‘camera work’ that bridges the gap between graphic novel panels and film. Sadly, disc 3 won’t be out until the end of July. Also watched a couple of Tivo’d episodes of the new The Twilight Zone series. Kindof a mixed bag so far. I’ll watch a few more before I decide whether it warrants a season pass or not. Oh, and I saw a great episode of Robot Wars, my current guilty pleasure.

So, Memorial Day Weekend ended up being 3 days of pouring rain. Hooya!

Well, on the bright side I had no big plans anyway, and it did give me the chance for some hardcore media viewing. Over the course of the weekend I watched A Beautiful Mind, Donnie Darko, Metropolis (an anime film, not the old classic), The Fellowship of the Ring (extended version, natch) and the anime tv series Dual: Parallel World Adventure. Whew! No wonder my eyes are tired.

In and around that, I went through a compressed MMO cycle with Planetside. I have several phases I go through whenever I get into an MMO. First I obsess about it. During this phase I can think of nothing else and I orient my life around maximum playing time. Once that intial intensity burns out, I go into my mainstream phase where I just play and enjoy the game like a normal person. Lastly, I go into disgruntled phase where I’m no longer truly enjoying the game but I still play out of habit or out of the hope that I’ll have one more grand adventure.

Generally this cycle takes 3-6 months for me to work through. With Planetside it took about a week, most of it compressed into this past rainy weekend. I’m truly hoping that it was just a glitch in the system and that the next game will last me 3-6 months again.

And its still gloomy and rainy. Everything is starting to stink of mildew and damp. And the more it rains, the more I want to go home and pull the covers over my head for a week. Except its too warm for that, isn’t it? Heh. And I have “The Most Boring Conference of All Time” to attend this week (OSCOM: Open Source Content Management). Yippee!

Another weekend on the road coming up. Bad, bad timing…I should be spending this weekend combing the ‘net reading E3 coverage. Oh well, what’s done is done. At least next weekend is a 3-dayer!

I have to go out of town for work for a few days. I’m taking my laptop but not sure what kind of connectivity I’ll find at the hotel. They say there’s a “data port” in every room but I can’t decide if that means modem or ethernet. Just in case, I signed up for a NetZero free dial-up account but didn’t bother checking to see if it actually worked. I’m doubtful of my ability to pu up with dial-up speeds even if it does.

Anyway, we’ll be back to dragon chasing in a few days; have a great weekend everyone!

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Today is actress Julie Benz’s birthday. You probably know her as Darla, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Yes, this is a truly pointless post.