An Interesting Way To Awake

It was around 4:00 AM that I woke up with my toes tingling. Isn’t that annoying? I shifted my legs around and gave them a bit of a kick to make sure any clothing or covers weren’t bunched up under my legs and inhibiting circulation.

The toes stopped tingling, but then my fingers began doing it. So I shifted my upper body around but they wouldn’t stop tingling. I even considered stripping nude, which, generally speaking, isn’t an uncommon way to sleep anyway.

Yet the thought crossed my mind that these tingling sensations were a sign of a possible heart attack. I can’t recall now if I’m remembering correctly or where I read this from, but I decided to get out of my little locked bedroom and sit in the other room for awhile instead of going nude.

There was probably nothing to my concern, but the tingling sensation didn’t stop after I had walked into the other room and laid in the recliner.

I thought of how ironic it would be if I had a heart attack now. I’m only 27, and as of a few days or so ago I’ve changed to a much healthier diet. The only meat that I’ve eaten in the last, roughly, four days was some lean white meat turkey. Then there’s all of the tea that I’ve been drinking, the few salads that I’ve eaten, the tons of oat meal… go figure, eh?

At 27 I really should not even be concerned about such a thing, but I’ve had high blood pressure for so long now that it’s become “traditional”. I’ll visit a doc, they’ll do the arm squeechie thing that they always do, eyebrows will raise, they’ll switch arms, go “hmm..”, switch back.. It’s kind of amusing to watch them.

Anyhow, there’s that.

In closing, I would like to mention that I’m not very fond of Lipton teas, black teas, and this tea that I’m trying for the first time is a.) way too strong (my fault), b.) all of the above. :-&

~Mysk

A beautiful day

Today’s weather is quite nice. It hit 70 °F today (about 21 °C) and is still that temp as I type this. The sky is a lovely blue with only a partial covering of white brush strokes of clouds. The wind has been blowing, some times quite a bit, but there’s only a hint of a cool temperature to it.

Nice work out weather, indeed.

I decided to devote more time than usual to the warm up today. The extra time was spent walking slowly to get the blood going and the leg muscles used to moving, and from there I moved into speed walking for a few minutes and then finally (very quickly) jumping rope. The usual routine of transitioning between jumping rope and speed walking was used before doing my stretches.

Working the leg muscles followed the stretches. That was done by doing the ‘ol dojo step/crouch. That is, walking forward in (at least a rough) stance and slowly lowering one’s self down until the back knee touches the floor. Of course, you slowly lift back up into the stance, move forward, and repeat the process for the next leg, and I do that walking both forward and backward.

I gave myself a longer-than-normal cool down time to enjoy the first great day of 2006, and even considered doing push ups outside by plancing my feet up on the porch and pushing up from the back yard’s side walk. I passed on the idea, though. I’m not yet quite that heroic, and face planting into the side walk is not an enjoyable thought. :p

Even better, I finally got around to getting that hair cut that I’ve been wanting. So it was a quick jump in the shower and a ruffle of the’ol hair and I was done. I lub having short hair, it’s so darn… . . functional!

~Mysk, rambling.

Indigo Prophecy Ordered

On the one hand I spent money today that I really should not have spent. On the other, it cost me only $25.03 including “expediated shipping”. Not bad at all. The catch is that it was ordered from Amazon.com’s “Marketplace”, so here’s to hoping that I don’t get ripped off.

Indigo Prophecy has been at the top of my “games to get” list for some time. The demo that I played has incredibly well done voice acting and the setting drew me in very, very well. It seems very intriguing and mentally stimulating, and that’s a lot more than I can say about the majority of games that I’ve played the past year or two.

It’s a shame that it goes all crazy fantasy / sci-fizy. Oddly enough, I think that I would have enjoyed it a great deal more if the script had been a much more down to earth mystery. I really enjoy my fantasy and sci-fi, but I would have cared more about the characters if the setting were was (? I’m thinking about this grammar issue far too much) more “real”.

Anyway, it was an uncalled for splurging of money. Goodness knows that I should have put the money toward new system memory. Such is life, eh? Can’t be bored all the time.

I’m looking forward to receiving my copy mid next week.

Fitness Journal – 02/23/06

Since I have to retype this due to yet another fucking blue screen crash, I’ll just keep this short and sweet.

Soda is permanently removed, still drinking lots of teas. White tea is my fave.
Addressing the diet is next. Sweets will be removed from the diet.

Beautiful weather today. Worked out for half an hour or so. Started with kata. Jumping rope quickly began giving me a headach, AGAIN, so the kata was to give the ibuprofean a chance to kick in.

Shit kicking the computer is bad. BAD. Remember that, self. Kill not thine computer when you don’t have a grand or two to buy a replacement. It came so close to experiencing the Final Death.

~Mysk, simmering.. >.<

SIM’s Tag Cosmos

I just added a tag system, including a tag cosmos, to Shadows In Motion.

I’m moving away from the links to Technorati on SIM and will instead be using the plugin Jerome’s Keywords. This has caused two sets of “tags” to be listed at the bottom of posts because I will not be disabling the old plugin, at least not for quite some time. I’ve simply stopped using that method.

Old posts will not have keywords entered via the plugin that I just installed so that plugin thinks that there aren’t any tags associated with those posts. So if there is any confusion about a list of tags followed by a “Tags: none” at the bottom of each post, that’s why it’s happening.

On the up side, Jereome’s Keywords is supposed to integrate with Technorati. So that functionality shouldn’t be lost.

Creative’s Software

Creative’s software is so awful. This is some of the most frustrating and convoluted multimedia software that I’ve used. Simply put, I hate it.

• it doesn’t save your settings between reboots. after every reboot I have to load the EAX console and set my CMSS 3D settings and speaker balance
• Folders can not be dragged into the play list
• … and therefore if you have a lot of files to play you’ll have to browse to a folder, select all files, drag, browse to another folder, select all files, drag, browse to another folder, select…
• the interface is absolutely horrible. Someone at Creative needs smacked specifically for this travisty of a UI
• the play list window does not stick to the player’s body after it’s been mimized. you have to move the play list window around to reattach it, but what’s the point? it’ll just undock next time anyway
• you’re locked into creative’s software if you want to play music, including MP3s, at the highest audio quality that your hardware supports. nevermind the fact that you paid over $200 for the hardware and its features. choice: not your’s.
• there’s hardly any surface on the software that does not produce some sort of fricking menu when it’s clicked (or if it doesn’t produce a menu then it loads the Creative web site)
• and on, and on, and on…

Yet I’m stuck using it so that my music sounds decent.

/me stabs Creative with a spoon
die die die die die >.<

~Mysk, officially really annoyed

ICQ Fubared

EDIT: Solved

Oddly enough, I doubt that anyone that I know visits this blog of mine. It’s not that I keep it a secret, they simply can’t be arsed. heh heh.

On the off chance that one does, however, I can’t send messages via ICQ. I’m receiving messages and it appears to me that mine are sent. They’re not, however, and I have no idea why this is happening.

I will most likely have to reinstall Trillian. Which means that I don’t know who’s contact information I will lose.

Here’s to hoping that I don’t have to go through that annoyance.

The Positive Sides To ADD (ADHD)

There is so much negative stuff out there about ADD (now ADHD, but ADD is so much easier to type) that it can really get a person down. Both on themselves and about the subject in general.

If you have ADD then you’ll probably enjoy this article called Top 10 Advantages of ADD In A High Tech Career. This is still interesting even if you don’t work in the high tech industry.

As someone who actually has ADD I have to say that I enjoyed this article, and it’s all true! Keep in mind that the article is not supposed to be a balanced point of view. Everyone needs to focus on the positive side of the things in their lives every once in awhile, and that’s the whole point of the article. To point out that it’s not all bad!

~Mysk

sigh, the crashing is insane

My computer’s hardware seems to be about to completely give up the ghost. Listening to music for around fifteen minutes will BSOD the system, and attempting to run a game will typically BSOD in around five.

It’s reaching the point that the computer is becoming unusuable.

This wouldn’t be a problem if Linspire had not fubared the MBR of my drive. That was $63 for a new hard drive. That’s almost enough to buy another (this time decent) 512×2 to replace my existing sticks, and I would no longer be in this mess. Ohhh no, can’t well have that.

*sigh*

It’d put me in a bit of a bind at the moment to splurge near $100 on computer parts. I could probably buy cheaper system memory, but that’s what put me in this spot to begin with.

Damn it, I’m getting tired of the crashes.

360 Degree EQ2 Character Screenshot

I found a post on the EQ2Players forumns that explained how to make a 360 degree screen shot of your character. It’s animated, of course, with the camera spinning around the character.

The result is pretty cool, but I must admit that my screen shot is not as creative as some of those shown in the thread. Still, I like how this one came out. This 360 animation was created by unknowingly combining two rotations into one animated gif.

Once the camera returns to behind the chracter the scene changes and her helmet vanishes. It’s a neat result.

Click here to see the animated gif it’s roughly 3.11 MBs in size.
**EDIT** Smaller size available here (875kb) for those with slower connections. It’s significantly smaller in size. Roughly about the size of a forum avatar.

Click here to read the EQ2Players thread that contains instructions to make your own.

~Mysk