Piscis’s blog

For no real reason.

A dramatization.

Emmy goes looking for that elusive spell component...and gets distracted by leftovers.  The demon heart is still in the milk jug.

Sung to the tune of Peter's theme from "Peter and the Wolf", preferably in a wavering falsetto.

I hate the Muffin Man

For every other day he tries to

Kill me

Inside of

His house when

I go there

Muffin

JHVH

A new residence just isn't really home until you've been visited by a couple of cheerfully placid individuals trying to pronouce the Tetragrammaton and solicit their way of life.

That's right - I'm officially moved in!

Appreciatively, these few were reasonably un-pushy, and didn't even have to be asked to leave.  Maybe they're finally getting the picture?

Who'd have thought door-to-door religion wouldn't be a good sell...

You know, Anthony, since you're seeing Shrek 3 before us, you have an obligation to tell us if it completely sucks.
Dylan

Shrek 3

So, technically, I suppose I don't have to tell anything at all, because I certainly wouldn't say it sucked...

But, anyway, I went and saw it with my sister on Saturday afternoon.  And while I'll say that it wasn't as good as the second one (it had a decent progression and enough humor, but it just lacked the former installment's somewhat serious/important undertone and dramatic hold of the climax and conclusion), but ignoring the originality factor, it was about on par with the first movie, which isn't too harsh of criticism.

If you're a fan of the series, just don't expect it to raise the bar, and you'll likely enjoy it!

What's in a screen/user name? Tell us how you found yours.
Submitted by Bill.

Never done one of these before, but I've been beckoned forth (Is there supposed to be some way to automatically/template post these?  Everyone does them so perfectly uniform, it seems suspicious!)

Anyway, there've only really been two I've used beside for the occasional specialty.

Novem

Piscis -- This one stems back to the mid '90s and crazy linguistics classes where everyone picked alternate names.  I settled on the Latin word for fish, "Piscis".  Why fish?  It resembled the symbol which I had come to use to represent myself (contrary to various assumptions, completely unrelated to the Christian Ichthys, vesica piscis, or zodiac pisces (the plural of "piscis", for the curious)).  The meaning of the symbol is another story, altogether!  The "Icon" which occassionally prefixes it is just a titular emphasis of its symbolic nature, and in the sense of a username, typically appended when "Piscis" has already been taken.

Dificindian -- The impossible-to-pronounce name of the first real character I ever created, nearly twenty years ago, back in the days of "let's pretend".  The craziness of the name comes from giving it to him at the age of five or so (DIE-fih-KIND-ee-ən).  When I was first exposed to the online world in the early '90s (back when there was a huge perceived difference between AOL! and The Internet!) there weren't nearly as many things for which to need accounts and usernames (and not a whole lot going on, in general).  But when I did need a handle, "Dificindian" was distinct, personal, and of course, always available.  My dad gave me my first e-mail address at the time (something like awalton@micron.net), but I wasn't terribly interested in e-mail (not many even had it then) until I finally gave into peer pressure later on when Juno came out and singed up for dificindian@juno.com, and I used it for a good ten years before finally formally switching to my G-Mail account (though I still use the old one for signing up to various sites and whatnot).  "Dificindian" was never really meant to represent me in the way "Piscis" does, though; it's just a unique name to use when I need/want one.

(I am somewhat bemused that "Piscis" shows up as wrong under the spell-check, but "Dificindian" is passed over as a perfectly normal word...)

Anyway, there you have it; the ever-constant comforting staticity that is me.

I need to update more often.

Anyway, I got my new computer yesterday, crazy dual-core processor, dual-channel memory, PS3 graphic card, and all.  All I've done so far is download, update, patch, and configure the settings and whatnot.  It should get a formal test when I pick up Oblivion today after the dentist (finally get to play it, all right!).  Seems to be pretty nice, though.

I have the next week off from work, which is always a plus.  Hotter weather tends to make it more irritating in there.  And, they're wanting to get rid of the shift I work, which means I'd have to work on Saturday.  So, yeah...no.  Their supposed justification was that there was a one percent less turnover rate for this other shift-set in FAB4 (an R&D area) than in FAB1 (where I work).

Now, there are a few things about that which smell like bullshit.  First of all, there is a much bigger difference between working in FAB4 or FAB1, than there is between working one shift or the other.  They're attributing a difference to a comparitively small variable when there's also a much larger one present.  More importantly, we're in a hiring freeze, because we lost money this last quarter, and we have too many employees.  You don't make a change to improve attrition when you actually need to get rid of people.

Furthermore, this type of change is incredibly likely to cause more employees to leave than it could possibly keep from supposed improved turnover rates.  So, either our management is amazingly stupid, or this is a maliciously underhanded way to make a necessary thinning of the workforce without having to deal with layoffs and severence packages.  Wonderful world out there, isn't it?

Ah, well.  I'm not sure I could take another summer in there, anyway.

In other news...um...dentist time.

O.K., how about a happier entry?

Here you are, Ernie, you and your tagging!  Like Dylan, I've done this or similar on LiveJournal in the past.  But, for all you non-"Elite 'Bloggers", here are some things you may or may not know about me.  You can decide whether or not they're interesting.

• I was born breech (upside down) in an E.R.  Luckily I was only seven pounds, despite being two weeks late.

• I missed my own high school graduation.  I was told it was at 8:00.  Alarm didn't go off, woke up at 9:30 A.M.  Blargh...  Went on with the day.  Got a call at 10:00 P.M. from my friend, asking where I was.  Said I slept through it.  Turns out it was at 8:00 P.M.  ...oops

• My great aunt is Lee Meriwether, the first catwoman and televised Miss America.

• I'm selectively ambidextrous.  I write right-handedly, but can left-handed (I mainly just don't like smearing my hand across what I'm writing).  I do most sports left-handed, especially those involving holding a two-handed thing.  I eat on alternating sides.

• I've never been bitten by a mosquito

There you go.  Nothing too elaborate!  I don't think there's anyone left who hasn't already been tagged...  AnnaPants?  V.K.?

• Offense #1:  Bought a Wii.  This was expected, and wouldn't really have been a problem if not for all of the following at the same time.

• Offense #2:  Splurged on new kitchen stuffs, groceries, and excessive eating out.  My doing; bad timing.

• Offense #3:  Had to buy more memory for my laptop to get it to cooperate with Silence.

• Offense #4:  Car insurance arbitrarily went up.  Went down and took care of that last month, yet I just got billed at the higher rate again.

• Offense #5:  $105 gas bill.  Lame.  Trade-off for single digit temperatures, I suppose.  I hate to think how much it would have been if my sister had been here the whole time blasting the heat.  Glugh.

• Offense #6:  Taxes.  The big one.  I have the exact same filing status on both my W4s and 1040s this year as I did last year, and the one before that, and before that, and so on.  Same job last year as for the most of the previous one.  Historically, the more tax I pay, the bigger refund I get.  Always works out that way.  Sound reasonable?  I made more last year than the one before, enough to bump me into the next bracket, so I knew I'd get less of a percentage back.  Ha-ha.  Actually, somehow it turns out that I FUCKING OWE MONEY this year.  WHAT...!?  In fact, my total income tax literally came to over 1,000% (seriously, let that number sink in for a moment) of what it was the last year.  Good fucking grief.  It irritates me how communist taxes are, really.  I didn't get any more service from the government last year than the one before, yet I'm stuck paying ten times as much.  It'd be more profitable for me to be two different people working half as much.  If they're going to rape my assets, they could at least have the courtesy to deduct the correct amount from my paychecks when I'm not changing my fucking status, so I'm not left with a balance due at the end of the year.  Fucking hell.  I was looking forward to that money.

• Offense #7:  Traffic ticket.  Got one earlier for an expired registration.  Yeah, stupid me; completely forgot to renew it.  The officer said if I went and got the registration and brought it down to the courthouse, they'd waive the fee and let me go.  They didn't, of course.  Why would they?  More money for them.  Another $50+ down the drain.

Other unpleasantries include still having a hell of a time with Silence, picking up around thirty used band-aids and other unidentifiable filth off of my sister's former room's floor and more hair than is on my entire body and a razor cap out of her shower drain, spending fourteen hours a day getting six of sleep, and barely accomplishing shit while not having time to actually enjoy my week off.

Frowny Face

I am not pleased.

...is it over?

...

Oh, yes, why...I suppose it is.

So!  I had a pretty good holiday season.  The days themselves were downers, as I had to work all of them (I didn't see or talk to a single friend or family member on Christmas...just worked, went home and slept for a few hours, then went back to work), but the general time period was very nice.

Even though I was sick all throughout my two weeks off at the beginning of December, I still managed, in the two days I actually felt decent enough, to get, wrap, and send 20+ gifts for Christmas on time for once!  That made me very happy, since I'm almost always late on at least something.  And everything seemed to be pretty well-received, so mission accomplished!

The very gracious gifts I received myself were:

• The new Pride and Prejudice and the old AD&D Unearthed Arcana (classic!) from Matt, via the dOrange white elephant gift exchange
• A lamp from my sister
• A nice set of knives and an external hard drive (which I very much needed!) from my father
• Final Fantasy XII, courtesy of Brian
• A clay Issun figurine to go with my Ammy from Jennie
• And a randomly awesome $200 gift card to Bed, Bath, and Beyond from my mother!

All highly thoughtful and appreciated!  A perfect balance of fun and useful.  (>^-')>

And so we begin another year (I hope the rest of you dOrange-ers had fun at the party!)!  Probably the nicest holiday bonus I got was my sister and her boyfriend moving out a couple days ago.  CLEAN AT LAST...!!!  ...kind of!  I went on a near five hour cleaning spree tonight (my first chance after work), and managed to get the place looking pretty decent again.  Still a bit to do here and there, but it definitely looks a hell of a lot better than it did.  Whew, I can actually use my own living room!  Ah, peace...

Happy New Year, everyone!  Hope it treats you all well!