ChrisTalbot.com

Today is my last real day of work of 2004. Tomorrow and all next week are essentially write-offs. Only one more interview to conduct, and then about 500 words to write. Then that's about it. Yay!

Check out the trailer for Sin City. I've never read the graphic novels, but now I think I'd better pick them up before this hits the theatres.

Three days before Christmas, and the slow news days have finally started.

On another note, my Maclean's subscription finally started last week, so now I have no excuse not to keep up with events.

Tom and I share the same view on Christmas. He forwarded this column by Matt Taibbi of the New York Press. I love it. :)

Since I happen to have a copy of Vampire: The Masquerade -- Bloodlines, I've decided I'm going to play it through the holidays. So while I've been working away, I've been installing the game. Maybe I'll start playing it tonight.

Just because I'm curious how a movie based on The Matrix works, I must remember to take a look at There Is No Spoon by Steve Darlington.

UPDATE: Logan pointed out that I wrote "movie" when I should've wrote "roleplaying game." D'oh!

I found the niftiest game at the calendar-and-games store in the Pickering Town Centre on the weekend while Christmas shopping. Mouse Chase is a board game that uses a chess board of sorts and rubber (they may have been plastic) pieces representing blocks of cheese, mama mice, baby mice and cats. It was all done up in a fully-3D board, and it just looked fun. The price, however, is anything but fun. It was fifty-frickin'-bucks. Still, that store seems like it's a holiday store that will close down in January or February. With any luck, they'll still have Mouse Chase when they shut down, and with even more luck, they'll be trying to pawn it off at a reduced price.

I can't find the game listed online. I'll have to double-check the name of the company that makes it next time I'm at the mall and then post a link.

In the technology journalism world, there's a truism that seems to have been forgotten this year. That, of course, is that after about the mid-point of December, the news stories dry up. Looking at my to-do list, I believe that is anything but the case this year. I have a shitload of work to do.

I've been very lazy about reading all the blogs in my links list on the right hand side of this page (i.e. Blogs Canada, Brianstorms, Inkless Wells, Rawlio's World, The Daily Brad and WilWheaton.net -- listed just in case they change in the future and somebody actually happens to read this sometime in the near or far future). With the exception of Rawlio's World and, to a lesser extent, WWDN, I just haven't really cared enough to keep up with blogs lately. Of course, that probably also shows in the fact that I haven't really been doing much updating lately, either.

This is perhaps turning into the lamest blog entry yet. I'm writing about not blogging and not reading blogs. Bah!

This past weekend was my chance to do some Christmas shopping. I got a fair bit accomplished. I think as of Sunday morning, Jacquie and I had maybe finished five to ten percent of our shopping, and as of Sunday evening, we were approaching ninety to ninety-five percent. The credit card is hurting. Christmas would be a lot easier to afford and tolerate if it only came every other year.

Just realized I can't take a single-player character into a multiplayer game. ... Also just realized even in such a community as that of Diablo, there are still griefer jackasses.

The Christmas/holiday/whatever-the-fuck staff party for Jacquie's school last night went off fairly well. Work-related parties in which spouses are invited are always bizarre for the spouses. You always end up sitting there, listening to the shop talk and then looking for someone or anyone that isn't talking shop. In my case, I have to listen to teachers talk about their day-to-day lives, the students they teach and whatever is going on at the school. With Jacquie, she gets stuck listening to me talk to others about company politics, recent technology news, the difficulty of some stories and dealing with those above us who make calls we don't agree with.

Last night was fairly good. I talked geek and games with a couple of guys there, one a supply teacher and the other a full-timer (a music teacher, I believe). The gamer guy is a big online player, but he's not into typical shooters and such. His passion is Diablo -- and what a passion it is. Actually, he talked with so much enthusiasm about it that I came home, dug out Jacquie's copy of the game, installed it on my laptop and played it until about 11:15 or so.

I was never big into Diablo when it came out, but I'm giving it another chance. I've got my warrior up to third level already, and then I'm hoping to bring him online.

Oh yeah, my previous post is what I consider my "fuck you" argument, otherwise known as "keep your nose out of my beliefs and I'll keep my nose out of yours." :P

Rawlio posted this to his blog today: "Again, as stated before, Christmas has transcended from the birth of Jesus to the a celebration of family and friends. I can dig that. Even those atheists can appreciate that. Again, I once knew a guy who loathed secular events, which I find strange. Understandably, it's not logical, but hey, where's the fun in not celebrating?"

Not sure if he was talking about me or someone else, but I do loathe such events. A quick response...

And liking these celebrations is logical? No. I'm an atheist, and I'm all about the logic. I generally find people who believe in some religion to be incapable of grasping logic. I look at Christmas and other celebrations. Logically, there's no reason for these things to exist. Why celebrate mythical events? It's illogical to do so. In fact, it completely defies logic. It's irrational, even.

Besides, if someone needs to set aside a special day each year to be good to their common man, well, then I guess they're just not very good people in general, eh?

It appears that I am going to a work-related Christmas party tonight. ... Not my work, Jacquie's work.

New Year's resolutions are, I find, generally a waste of time and energy. The last one I made was at the beginning of 2004 when I noticed I was way out of shape and had a slowly enlarging mid-section. What was the resolution? To get more exercise. Guess how well that went. That's right. Since starting to work at my current place of employ, my waist has gone from thirty inches to thirty-three, and I'm ever approaching thirty-four.

So for 2005, fuck excercise up its stupid ass. I'm going to vow to sit on my ass even more than I do now. I'll just try starving myself or something. ;)

But seriously, my resolution this year is one I hope to be able to carry out. I've been playing roleplaying games for eighteen years or so, and over that time, I've spent far too much cash on various games. Most of those games have never been played. Some of them haven't even been read. This year, my goal is to run one-shots of these various games about every other month or so. So let's say my aim is to run six games I own but have never bothered to run and/or play. The list is big, so I'll have to narrow it down.

Certain ones have to make it onto the list, though. My Christmas present to myself, All Flesh Must Be Eaten, is at the top of the list. I'd really like to throw Toon on there, as I've only ever really played Toon via email (and even then, it didn't work out and was short-lived). It Came From The Late, Late, Late Show is one I must vow to run at least once. Ditto that on Kobolds Ate My Baby ... and maybe Ninja Burger. I would very much like to put Wraith: The Oblivion and Mage: The Ascension on there, but I don't think either are going to happen -- and nor would I want to just run them as one-shots.

Ah, the gaming life for me.

This story is just too freaky. What kind of scientist grows a rat brain in a petri dish to teach it how to fly a jet?

Over the last few weeks, I've been planning a tabletop RPG campaign using the Horizon: Mechamorphosis rules. Mechamorphosis is based on the old Transformers cartoon I grew up with, and it is actually pretty cool. I've rounded up a small group of four players to create mechamorphs and play in the campaign.

Essentially, I'll be running it like a cartoon TV series. The campaign is being called the "series." Adventures will each take one session, each of which I'm calling an "episode." And for every twelve episodes, I'm calling it a "season." A season is likely to take about a year to complete, as I'm planning on running the game about once a month on Sunday evenings.

Like with my D&D campaign, I'll create a simple Website for the Mechamorphosis campaign. I'll probably do that over the holidays, as it seems like we'll be planning our character creation session for early January.

Yesterday's disaster had to do with some downsizing (to use the euphemism) at the company I work for. While I am still employed, some very good people are now searching for work.

Well, at least I still have a job.

Getting work done. Not sure if disaster has been averted.

Beware the plushie microbes!

Can't really concentrate on work this morning. Bad news is brewing. :(

True Porn Clerk Stories is an interesting, albeit disturbing, read. Y'know, Kevin Smith really should've make his movie Clerks about guys working in a porn shop.

If How to Kill a Mockingbird had really been like this, I might've enjoyed it more.

There's no doubt about it. I must see this film: Inbred Redneck Alien Abduction.

A Japanese McDonald's commercial.

True Dungeon sounds like a lot of fun.

The first real snowfall of the season has left a good couple of inches of white stuff on the ground. I wouldn't even have known if Rawl hadn't emailed me this morning and said something about it. Generally, I don't even bother looking out the windows in the morning. I made a quick trek outside a couple of hours ago to the corner store, and I had to tromp through all that snow. Actually, it wasn't so bad, but I do wish the snow had come in at a lighter pace. We had one, maybe two, sets of flurries, and now this. Ugh.

This Virtual Bartender is too funny. Check it out, and make sure to tell her to "fight like a Jedi."

December, my most hated month, is here. The holiday shopping season is in full swing, the weather is miserable and the stress of Christmas will soon be bearing down on me. The only thing really to look forward to is Dec. 31st, which will mark the end of the month, the end of 2004 and the end of this Christmas bullshit.