Look, three pages! They are in the dark and we don't really know what's going on!

So Liz Baillie, minicomics superstar, has just started publishing Freewheel online! I've read the first couple chapters as minicomics, so I can in fact guarantee you that this is a very interesting story and you ought to read it. It gets a bit strange!

Ok one more thing, a little bit of a project I'm working on. I hope to have more of it to show you all sooooon. Byebyebyebye.

 I've been getting pretty flat / luke warm responses to this self portrait. I think in my current mood that's what I want people to think. I think I feel like I want an uncomfortable exposure of self. So here it is, and I'll leave it public and on flickr.

On Saturday the 14th at 4AM UTC/GMT we will be upgrading the operating system of our network load balancers to a newer version, one that will allow us to use both CPUs! Nifty, because multiprocessing is nice.

Since we have 2 load balancers, the plan is to upgrade 1 at a time, and there really should be very little impact to our website. Hopefully you won't notice a thing and I'll get to go back to the hotel and watch some wonderful late night infomercials.

We've got a lot of exciting projects coming up for 2010 and we're hoping that we'll be able to deliver them all to you, that you will find it useful/cool/lovely and then you will use the site even more. Behind-the-scenes work like this will give us the capacity to handle the anticipated traffic, so expect a few more maintenance windows especially in the beginning of next year as we've got some neat ideas to improve performance around here! We had the recent 30-45 minute outage yesterday due to one of our logging databases filling up disk space -- not so great design coupled with my human error in handling the initial problem -- and it looks like we're going to finally have some resources to eliminate stuff like that. I can't wait!

As usual, I will be updating status.livejournal.org before and after, just in case you are not able to reach our main website during the work.

I got a comment about my last comic saying that it condoned smoking, but I don't, that is nonsense! You should also not lasso cats out of trees, if that doesn't go without saying. Historical smoking is another matter, go ahead and have a smoke in the trench, but I advise against lighting three cigarettes at night.

Remembrance Day always makes me ruminative about the place of history in our current consciences, because it is one of the few holidays where we are explicitly told listen you have to remember this thing that happened ok and, one, people pay attention, two, there is nothing jamming the line like bbq's or parties or football games or chocolate eggs or presents. History: You should give a shit, who knew.

Just so we are clear though, I don't really care about Queen Victoria's birthday either so go ahead and slam it back on May 24 weekend, fireworks and the whole bit. Honestly we should all get free corgis on Victoria Day.

Soooo...when I started this job (a goddamned year and a half ago, arr) I found out that my supervisor liked bunnies, and I started drawing her little bunnies when I left her notes about things ("Hi, found six more dead frogs today" *happy waving bunny*). Then, as further means of avoiding real work, I drew mice and rats (and more bunnies) on the carts we use to haul things hither and yon. Then I drew this picture for a coworker...

...who has apparently gone insane, and had it framed, and shown it to all her friends, and, well, I may have mentioned she does agility, and knows a lot of dog people, so, er, about 20 of her friends all want dog portraits now and she wants me to set up a table at the next agility event in December and "Why don't you do this as a business?"

*glances guiltily toward a web site full of furry porn* "Gosh, I don't know...."

Awkward Situation is Awkward O.o

On this day we recognize the sacrifices made...

This post is for:

My father, Charles, United States Marine Corps, died in a helicopter crash while on active duty in 1981.
My step-father, Kevin, United States Marine Corps, retired.
My grandfather (father's side), Morgan, United States Army Air Corps, retired.
My grandfather (step-father's side), Gilbert, United States Marine Corps, retired.
My grandmother (step-father's side), Elsie, United States Marine Corps, retired.
My aunt (sister to my step-father), Mai Lynn, United States Marine Corps, retired.
My uncle (husband to the aunt above), Daniel, United States Marine Corps, retired
My grandfather (mother's side), William, United States Army, drafted and retired.
My friend, Ronnie Epperson, United States Marine Corps, retired.
My friend, cerisewolf, United States Marine Corps, retired
My friend, icecor, United States Navy.
My departed friend, evil_dwagon, United States Navy, retired.
My friend, Annurias Firefoxxie, United States Army.
My friend, robert_fox1, United States Army, retired.
My friend, sabacocoyote, United States Navy, retired.
My friend, fritzie_pup, United States Navy, retired.
My friend, karohardfang, United States Army.
My friend, sympolarbear, United States Navy, retired.
My friend, gen_talon, United States Army.
My friend, kj_roo, United States Air Force, retired.
My friend, renegade_di, United States Army, retired.
My friend, Deja, United States Navy, retired.
My coworkers in United States Marine Corps and United States Navy, as well as those I support in my job.
My angel, iberian_wolf, United States Air Force, retired.

Thank you all for doing what you do. There is no compliment high enough to express the gratitude due you and your kindred.

For simplicity's sake, anyone who is no longer on active duty is listed as retired, regardless of time of service.

You can read the first third of Overqualified here: http://www.shortcovers.com/mixes/Overqualified/book-buH3VXBquUCmH6lc7vTOpw/page1.html

It's formatted pretty terribly on the site, to be honest, but you can get a sense of how the novel differs from the original letters that are online, and the new material. This first section is mostly about my brother Adrian. Anyway, I hope you like it!

Usually when I edit things in photoshop it's either obvious it's been heavily edited - it's in a kind of magazine style or it's obviously not real - or it's a tiny edit - something that might be possible in a dark room with a clever enough manipulator of negatives and prints.

When I say edit in this context I mean changing content - generally masking or clone stamping - things you couldn't immediately do on an enlarger or with film/paper/filter choices and basic darkroom techniques.

But this shot I felt weird about. Here's both versions in one image.

About 10am I started to get the shakes. I couldn't tell if it was anxiety or the neck thing or both. I smoked a cigarette, my first one in 9 or so months. It didn't calm me down at all, and the shakes only got worse. So I got a ride to the doctor (license is still suspended) and got seen.

I told my story, at this point I was stuttering pretty bad and had no ability to hide my arms and hands shaking, my whole body generally uncoordinated. Their office called my old doctor's office to get records and I waited in the little exam room alone. I started to have a panic attack, and for the most part just dealt with that. I'm not going to list symptoms - suffice to say I know what a panic attack is and that's what I was having.

I think my freaking out motivated them to try and help me. They got the records but they were incomplete, I told them about the test that showed real results, the nerve test on my arms, which wasn't in the records that were sent over. It took a very long time to get all the records. They left the door open after I told them I was panicking, but what I wanted to do was escape, and what was hurting most of all was hearing people talking and being near people or fearing they would look at me or come close, so having the door open made it worse. But as time kept dragging on I could hear they were doing some fighting on my behalf. They were told everything was sent and that no upper extremity nerve test was done, but they found in the notes where it was requested. They called someone else at the office and got ahold of the information that billing had gone through for the procedure - forcing the office to then contact the guy who did the test to have him forward another copy of the report that they had apparently lost. All of this had to be done, by the way, because they haven't called me to tell me my records were ready to pick up, which is what they said they would do when I put in a request for them a while ago.

Anyway...

The new doctor read the notes and I was still kind of freaked out and defensive, but he wasn't mean or accusatory. He said there were results consistent with a pinched nerve in the left arm from the nerve study and that the mri showed some bulging of the disk(s?). I asked if the change in curvature caused the pinch or the other way around, he said normally the pinched nerve causes spasms and those spasms change the curve. I asked him if it could really be true that all of this, the whole body symptoms and the dramatic loss of neck curvature - if all six weeks of this crap could be just that pinched nerve to start with. He said yeah. He gave me a note backdated for the last week excusing me from work until January 4th. He said he'd schedule me to see someone for weekly (probably) steroid injections to reduce the disk bulging and that he'd see me after that 8 week process. I asked him about the aflac form and he asked if I had it with me, then teased me for not bringing him anything (like the MRI disk I have). I told him that the last doctor had just looked at me like an idiot when I brought anything in (he had actually told me the mri disk was useless to him - he just needed to read the report that would be sent to him).

So I saw a new doctor - a shoulder specialist not a neck specialist - because I couldn't schedule an appointment with e neck specialist without a referral - and this guy - after obtaining my records - looked at them for maybe 10 minutes.

Now I have a diagnosis that makes sense, a treatment plan, and a forecast of how long I'll need to be out. I was even told to get them the aflac form so he could take care of it. He didn't blatantly say "bring it I will sign it" - he just chastised me for not having it then and there, but if it wasn't for my last doctor making me so freaked out about being dropped and ignored I would infer from what went on today that filling out the form would be a simple matter.

My therapist appointment can't come fast enough. Blind rage, suicidal/homicidal thoughts, then depression, then numb feelings, deeper depression, getting bent out of shape about thinking women, vacant dismissive frustration, full body constant tremor anxiety, a panic attack, then near manic relief. After maybe 45 minutes away from the doctor's office the tremors stopped. then for hours I had forgotten about the pain. Now I feel happy but my neck is sore and stiff as are my shoulders, but that's normal. It's just been way too much emotion - all of those stages of emotions have been playing out over the last 10 days. I don't feel in control of my life.

Maybe in the days to come i can actually finish cleaning my apartment. It's depressing.

here's a puppy.

Requests aren't done, they will be popping up as we go, but honestly I do not need annnyymooreee! I was looking at the Wonder Women that I drew last year and started drawing her again, because she's pretty fun to draw, and surly Wonder Woman here came out. Don't settle for being a tits and tits heroine ladies, be yourself! Poor Nibbles.


Hey Montreal! I'm going to be at Expozine this weekend! You should come.

Store!

a new comic

a new comic

A NEW COMIC

THE NEWEST COMIC

Heard a snippet of an interesting story on NPR going to the store just a few minutes ago. Apparently parts of the Berlin Wall no-man's-land are being turned into strips of wilderness. The story was neat in itself but it also had a great quote: "All walls represent policy failed". I thought that was a great quote for some reason.

Dragon Age: Origins is a game I've been excited about for more than a year. I loved Baldur's Gate II, and its expansion, and I lost more time to Neverwinter Nights than I ought to admit. So a new single player fantasy RPG by this company, billed as the "spiritual heir to baldur's gate" (spiritual because this new one is their own IP, and not a D&D game - though the mechanics are very similar) got me all giddy with anticipation!

And it's great. I've been having a really good time playing it. It isn't without it's flaws, but the overall experience is good enough that I've been all too happy to overlook the frustrating bugs. The onion AV Club gave it an A though, which I'm not sure I agree with entirely. I wrote a big comment on that AV Club review. And here it is!

The bugs in this game are frustrating.

The two big ones are:

- Quests that don't register their completion can leave you running around an area in frustration after fighting, say, the hordes of bad guys in the Redcliffe castle mission, wondering what small thing you haven't yet done. Only looking on the internet led me to the conclusion that something had gone wrong on their end. Reloaded a save game, fought the battle again, and CLICK - cut scene. Also, it didn't help that while I was trying to figure out what was going on, the aggravating fight scene music kept playing! It's great and cinematic when actually fighting, but while running around in empty areas trying to figure out what to do, it sure adds to the frustration!

- cut scenes sometimes screw up, and you'll go through a cut scene, make one of the games (actually pretty interesting) moral choices, and then suddenly be watching the cut scene again. I chose a different choice the second time, and was then moved forward in the game as though I'd only chosen the first. Later, other characters alternated between acting as though I'd chosen A or B. It sort of took the wind out of that choice. This happened to me in the Redcliffe section, as well.


That said, The game has some very good things in its favour, too:

- the moral choices themselves feel more satisfying. I really like the game's system of having the choices affect the world itself, rather than some arbitrary slider of how good or evil you are. You make a choice, and your companions approve or disapprove, sure, but also you'll find that your future options in the game world have changed, too. It really adds to a sense of immersion.

- The combat's good. Not too simple, but not ridiculously complex either, and the tactics reward the learning curve that comes with understanding how they're interpreted by the game. After playing with the tactic programming for a while, I found my party members acting just how I needed, which was useful for adapting to harder fights and made the combat feel genuinely tactical rather than like a mashfest.

- Some of the characterization is great - Morrigan and Shale are both fun and interesting, and I like the way they fit into the game world, and the major events of the game, rather than just having discreet stories of their own. Some of the characterization is sort of lame, too though. (The voice acting also runs from very very good to characters who seem to change voice actors mid-dialogue, again, in the Redcliffe quest, which led me to have most of my doubts about the game. Maybe the people in charge of the Redcliffe quest

- The skill trees feel well balanced, and it's fun to play as a warrior or mage or rogue (except for some rogue dex issues that they've acknowledged and which are being fixed in an upcoming patch) and for the most part the specializations really give a different feel to your class when you get to that stage. And a couple of the specializations are tied to the game world in a fun way. In a lot of these games, specializations just add a couple generic skills. Extra damage, and such. In this, they add skills that tie into the story sometimes. "Blood magic" being a big one, and that sort of detail really adds to the feel that you're a part of the game.

- The game gets its title from a system where you can choose your "origin" - each of which is a different way to start the game. The origins are a couple hours, before merging with the main storyline, but which will affect the game further down the line, too. Every character has to go to the dawrven city to seek aid, for instance, but that visit has a very different tone if you are a dwarf noble who was falsely accused of killing her brother the heir to the throne and then exiled.

I would give it a B, or a B- (with it moving to an A after a bug patch or two for sure.) A lot of care and love went into the game, and despite the couple frustrating bugs above, I've put in a couple dozen hours since it's release and haven't lost interest yet!

Penny Arcade had a pretty funny comic about how they do downloadable content. There are characters you come across IN-GAME, who describe the DLC for you, and the dialogue options say "downloadable content" right on them, which takes you out of the game a bit. ( I have, of course, downloaded them )

Have you played it? What do you think?

I was feeling terribly depressed. I was feeling very "nobody loves me". Friends are easy for me to make. Maybe too easy, I don't know. I've had more friends than I can keep up with since shortly after starting college. But I don't feel like people want me - physically or romantically. Which isn't fair to think, since I have a boyfriend - but what I should say is that the history of my life suggests I'm in the bottom 20% or so of desirability - measured by frequency of coitus and of relationships.

Anyway. I took pictures of dogs and saw my boyfriend for a few hours - didn't sleep the night before visiting and ended up laying on a wood deck in the sunlight napping, listening to music playing from my car. I don't know that I feel better, but I feel dismissive. I feel like I have the power to say fuck it. This is the fuck-it after the storm, so to speak. I feel reckless and dismissive. I feel like I have power.

The unfortunate thing is I feel like that power is to dismiss friends and women and ignore the feelings of other people - to do whatever I want and treat people however I want - and to not give a crap about anyone's feelings - least of all my own.

At any rate, I have pictures of puppies, and more to process later (I have to limit my time in photoshop because it messes with my neck) and I have to find someone to drive me to and from the doctor, since my license is suspended and surrendered, so if I were to get pulled over driving it would be a much bigger deal.

Dear Norton Antivirus:

I pay for an annual subscription to your piece of shit, and sit through its interminable scans and updates, and listen to it grab screen focus from other programs, because I believe, somewhere deep in my twisted heart, that what it is supposed to do is, oh, I don't know, prevent viruses from infecting my computer.

I know that hackers have nothing better to do than fuck up your program, and many of them are aimed directly AT fucking up your program, so sometimes things happen to computers before you get a fix or an update out for it. But, when something does hack my computer, I expect more from you than to find, amidst the huge sea of pop-ups, a triumphant little pop-up from you, Norton, saying that the intrusion of "Antispyware 2009" is "blocked" and that I don't need to worry about it -- nay, that no action whatsoever can be taken about it because you simply do not even offer me such an option. The stupid thing is not blocked; it is throwing windows up from my system tray trying to get me to "install" or "run" "antivirus software" while you're busy telling me it's all under control.

Yes, it's my own damn fault for downloading from a free filesharing site (it's happened before; the thing comes in one of the random ads). It's just icing on the cake to get, along with a computer which now will not even boot, but simply cycles endlessly through blue screens of death, a happy little message from my $60/year program saying "It's all under control!" No, Norton, no it fucking isn't.

More job leads fizzled last week. I'm down to one secretarial interview which likely will not pay enough, and a possible job, which is not really an upgrade but is an option to move sideways in the same job, with an option to maybe, possibly, sort of move upward in five years or so. I...there are not words, really. I am frustrated, offended, and dumbfounded that, after x years of effort, a college degree, and 10 years of experience doing damn near everything at an animal facility, my sole career option seems to be to be able to select a particular flavor of this hideous job.

And it's only 6:30 am! Gonna be a wonderful Monday.

EDIT: You know, I remember when stuff like this did not faze me, and I would just scream, shrug, and go "Ah well, it'll get fixed," and move on with my day. Even though I am not currently chewing on the walls, I can tell I'm getting frustrated with the big things (the job situation) when the little things (this piddling computer problem) bother me so much I need to vent like a bitch on LJ. I miss being happy enough in myself and in my world that minor problems like this one just rolled off me. Someday I'll get there. In the meantime, well, thanks for not laughing and we'll be back to regular programming shortly. :)

I've been asked where our Baby Registry is located; And since this is mainly where Candy points people to for "unlocked" information about our upcoming one, I'm going to list it here;

We've been doing our registry through Amazon.com, mainly due to factors I won't get into. If you go to amazon.com and go into the baby department, and look up my name (Ryan Dewalt) under baby registry, you'll find us there.

This link might actually work.

Please don't take this as solicitation of gifts, well, okay, I guess you can say it is, me posting a pointer to our registry etcetera... But really I've been asked where we're registered, and so I'm putting up a simple "Ah, here it is." post. (And knowing me, since most of my family doesn't know about livejournal, I'll post it on my facebook too, but just the once, I'm no spammy fool.)