Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to let you all know how it goes :D

*esplodes from the strain of not esploding*

Thank god, now I can stop looking all over the place for them :p

So, ever wondered what you’d get if a PDA and a laptop had a torrid love affair? Meet the EeePC 8g. (Yay for alliteration!)

It’s small, less than 9″ at it’s widest point, and weighing in at 2 lbs, this thing would fit in my shoulder bag (it’s not a purse, dammit!). It’s wifi-enabled, with a webcam and microphone which, if all the reviews are any indication, are great for Skype and other VOIP/webchat features. While the 8g SSD and small screen size wouldn’t be good for gaming, these little machines would be great for portable computing. They ship with a Linux OS, though they’ll can handle XP, and are apparently lightning fast on boot and shutdown. There’s a huge and thriving user community, so how-to’s and hacks are readily available if you don’t mind voiding the warranty.

With a price tag at $500, the new 8G’s are affordable enough that I plan on getting an eeepc (that’s “ee-pee-cee”) even before I replace my failing ipod. Add to this the fact that it’s upgradable to 2Gb RAM from the 1Gb it comes with, and rumors that the SSD may not be soldered to the board (that thus, be upgradable if you have the know-how), and for my purposes, it’s well worth the money. Three usb ports and an SD card reader will make it easy to up the storage capacity, so the actual hard drive space doesn’t bother me.

My only complaints so far? That they’re hard to find anywhere other than Ebay right now, and the release date keeps getting pushed back.

Oh, and that I’m running out of Ghost In the Shell characters to name my toys after :)

Well then.

Eddy and I had planned to start using the fitness center at my complex yesterday, but because of some incredibly dumb decision making, the only access to the gym is inside the “clubhouse,” which is only accessible through the leasing office. So the “brand new fitness center” they’re touting as one of the great reasons to move into the complex is only open 8am-5pm each day. Granted, we could still go use it on the weekends, but honestly? Who the hell wants to work out on the weekends, and only the weekends? Anyone who’s got a regular job (yanno, to pay that pesky rent) won’t be able to use the gym. It must be nice for them, that they never have to go in and clean anything, since nobody can use it. This makes me want to put on my shit-kicker boots and go stomp some sense into these people DX The complex itself is not bad. It’s not fantastic, but it’s not bad, and I really do like my place. But some of the policies and decisions make me wonder if the management has any clue what they’re doing, outside of taking our money.

So, in an attempt to start up some sort of exercise routine, I’m hunting Craigslist Atlanta, and various places online for a recumbent bike. Kelly has been getting great results from hers, and while, granted, I won’t be able to have the same awesome setup as she does (spinning and computer gaming at the same time!) I’ll be able to work out at home, while I’m watching tv or reading. Sounds great to me! I may go out and run a couple miles every now and then once I get back into the groove, but I don’t see that happening often. But I bought the first new pair of tennis shoes I’ve had in like…five or six years, I think? Yeah. I’ve been wearing the ones I had since about a year before I sep’d. I used to do unit runs in these things for cripes’ sake! :p It’s amazing how happy my feet are now now that they have nice springy new kicks. New insoles and everything *bouncybouncy* And New Balance still rocks the casbah. I’ve loved their shoes since I was issued my first pair on boot camp.

FridaySaturday is gaming with the boys (DJ Weasel and Metalepsis) & co. for the first time since December. I definitely think I’m way overdue for some purple-dreadlocked-halfling-ninja goodness, and it’ll be a nice change of pace from the usual Friday “come home from work and veg out on the computer” gig. Went and hung out with them for a bit last Friday. Watched the two Grindhouse movies On Demand. They were…weird. But very fun. Kinda makes me wish I’d gone and seen the double feature when it was in theaters.

And that’s pretty much it. Tweaking is mostly done on the website, though I think I may actually add static info pages for the handful of characters that I mention occasionally *shrugs* It’s my blog, right? Might as well have some junk up here that’s pretty much solely for me :)

Imagine the world recovering from the ravages of zombie apocalypse. The walking dead still exist, but their numbers are small enough that you’re more likely to find them wandering around alone or in pairs. Nobody spends a great deal of time outside anymore, and if they did, they wouldn’t be caught dead without at least a sturdy Lil’ Slugger (ha! or maybe they would).

Throw in an alarm in real-time that wasn’t supposed to go off, and this grim portrait of life-after-Zday morphs into a world where two barbarian kings war against each other, and their sword-wielding race has ancestral memories of an era when mankind ruled the world with machines. Somewhere, someone inadvertently opens a rift into a dimension where Lovecraftian Old One-type creatures dwell, who, of course, take advantage of the opportunity to cross planes and wreak havoc on the world of men. The two kings ally their warriors to defend their world, and somehow this defense involves trying to restart massive machines left behind by their predecesors.

Some time later, while attempting to activate an office-building-sized machine that will deal a coup-de-gras to the creatures, someone (again! you’d think they would’ve learned by now) speaks the name of the other-plane (Zigi-somethingorother), and opening a gargantuan rift right above their heads. And what should emerge, tentacles a-flailing, but the bastard lovechild of Cthulu and a D&D beholder. Battle ensues, and rages on until the creature catches sight of the “main character” (one of the barbarian kings), and focuses its considerable rage on him.

Now, weird setting laid out, the part that really sticks with me even now is what happened next:

In an attempt to draw the creature away from the rest of his people, the barbarian king flees across the sea — in actuality, a vast expanse of water that is only about ankle deep. As he runs, he lifts up off the ground and ascends toward the sky, the creature still in fast persuit. Rising higher and higher, he’s shocked to find that everyone had always thought was the sky, is actually just a thin sheet of blue-white fabric. He cuts through it as he rises, finding a dimly lit layer, above which — about 20-30 storeys up — is another, much thicker, layer of what my dream-brain told me was insulating material. He cuts through this too, only to find another layer about 15-20 feet above his head that consits of a black tarp-like material.

He cuts through this last layer and is nearly blinded by sunlight — real sunlight, much brighter than he’s ever seen before. The barbarian king emerges into the world of his “ancestors,” filled with strangely shaped, semi-futuristic buildings made of blue-black metals and dark glass. Everything looks clean and well-kept, but the world is dead silent, and my sleeping brain realizes two things at once: 1) the barbarians were put in their enclosed “world” to protect them, to keep them alive, and 2) the world is completely and utterly deserted. It looks like mankind has just gotten up in the middle of whatever it was doing, and left. The barbarian continues to fly along, amazed, forgetting for a few minutes that he’s still being persued by Cthulu’s fugly kid brother. It would appear that the oceans are receding, leaving behind a barren expanded shoreline. It took some time to realize what made it so eerie was that there were no waves, and I wonder if that means the oceans in the “real world” are as shallow as the ones where he comes from.

There’s a loud screech from behind him, and the barbarian is jolted back to the present situation. He coasts down along what appears to be some sort of bazaar, landing next to a glass display with various objects that look very old, but wouldn’t be out of place in our day and age. As the creature pounces, having, for some reason suddenly become small enough for the barbarian to catch in his arms, he grabs a pair of black scissors from the display and stabs the flailing creature repeatedly. It makes a gurgling cooing sound and kind of deflates as he attacks it. There’s not really any gore, though the “guts” are not remotely pleasant. And the dream pretty much ends there, kind of half-inside the barbarian king’s thoughts, feeling his relief that his people are safe, and his hope and excitement at the chance to explore this new world.

It was kind of anti-climatic, really. And the part that made the biggest impression on me was the barbarian discovering and cutting through the different layers between his world and the outside, and realizing that they’ve been shut away while the “real world” died. Also, it’s interesting to note that, because of the alarm going off, I can estimate that the second half of this dream sequence lasted about an hour to an hour and a half.

Our shop was introduced to the (slightly belated) Mardi Gras tradition of the New Orleans King Cake. It’s a kind of more a coffee cake, wherein a small plastic baby is hidden, and whoever gets the baby (hopefully before biting into it) buys the cake the next year. Fun and very, very tasty! I think about two thirds of the cake is gone so far, and nobody’s ‘fessed up yet, so I might think twice before having seconds. This pastry goodness is apparently not cheap.

“Then tell me, Joe, how come a man as attractive, intelligent, well-spoken, diffident in the most seductive way, and yet powerful, is all alone in this world?”

*shudders* I need to just go out and buy it already.