The Gaming Outpost

Before we get any further, let me observe publicly that today has been eight-nine-ten, and no one mentioned that in my hearing.  Usually people get all excited about odd dates of that sort, but they happen often enough I suppose.

It has been a rough weekend.  As mentioned, I sent my computer out for diagnostics and repairs.  They increased the on-board memory four-fold and upgraded a driver that manages the drives, and it’s still freezing and crashing and restarting, although I’m not certain whether it is doing so less frequently.

Not having a computer, I took the time to put The Time Traveler’s Wife into the player and look for anything I missed–specifically, anything at all that would help me tie Henry’s life to a calendar, or his age to Clare’s, or anything that would cement the timelines in a way that solidified them.  Good in the sense that I’m glad I didn’t miss it, I found it–which is bad in the sense that I had to hand-edit the printout of all twenty-two articles in the series, and then last night when the still-defective computer returned to its proper place on my desk, to make all those changes in the articles themselves so that today I could upload the first, The Time Traveler’s Wife part 1:  a fixed time gem, to the temporal anomalies section of The Examiner.

I got swamped with a heavy load of Monday e-mail, but that would have happened anyway, I think.  It was bad enough that something I really wanted to read (from a friend in the Christian music world) I sent to the printer and will take with me later when I expect to be cooling my heels somewhere.

I have several other projects looming over my head, but at least this one is good to go.  I dropped a dime–actually, closer to two hundred dimes–to buy a copy of Hot Tub Time Machine, the promised promotional copy never having materialized, and wondered whether I’m in the black for my writing at the moment or not.  All the good things I’ve heard about this movie make me hesitant to watch it, and the fact that the big deal with the copy I bought is that it also includes the unrated version does not encourage my expectations, but at least I already have stated that I don’t watch director’s cuts because it is theatrical versions that tell the story that was ultimately told, so I have my defense ready.

I’m sure there’s more, but that’s all that comes to mind at the moment.  Oh, I did read Eric Ashley’s latest installment, Cereal Novel:  Eleventh Bowl, which still determinedly refuses to allow its main character, or the reader, to get oriented to this strange world.  Fascinating, in that way.  I can’t remember a fantasy that didn’t make a valiant effort to connect the reader to the world somehow.  I’ve often thought about running game worlds that were that disorienting, but I seldom actually do, and even then I think I impose a bit more order on them than is really good for a disorienting world.

–M. J. Young