Fistful of Thoughts

So I've been rather scatter-brained lately. Having to make a list today of all the things I need to get done over the next few days.

Have to make a trip downtown tomorrow and early at that so given the weather forecasts have to dig out my cold weather clothes since it'll likely be maybe 40 degrees at best tomorrow morning and possibly windy and rainy as well.

My archery blaster impressed someone last night with Fistful of Arrows + Build-Up against a group of Outcasts. Managed to drop all but one in the dozen strong group with that, and finished the last one off with a single shot. Too bady they were all grey con and 4 levels under me, would have been impressive against white cons. Still, liking archery. The inherent accuracy bonus means I haven't bothered to slot accuracy into anything yet and have my damage slotted up instead.

Thinking about re-rolling my sonic/sonic defender into kinetics/sonic. Not really a thematic reason for the change, just me thinking about it from an uber-gamer stand point. Siphon Power ( 20% damage boost ) + Assault ( 18.5% damage boost ) + Sonic Blast ( ~15-20% dam resist debuff ) = better then blaster damage as a defender solo. Honestly, the Sonic Resonance pool doesn't impress me. Bubbles are cool, but I don't have the right mind-set to play a bubbler. I forget pretty fast that I have to re-cast those on my teammates. Kinetics though is an active defender primary so no need for maintenance on it or keeping the active icons extruded from the team display and mucking up my screen.

So I've been pretty displeased with my NaNoWriMo writing this year. Two short story bits I've done so far hasn't had me really happy with either.

The first one is just too short, even at 3500 words. Had a lot more ideas for it and actually may re-work it into a much longer thing later. Big chunks of what I wanted to do with it I just didn't have time for and really would have wandered quite a long ways away from the whole theme of what we've been doing. Actually, I somewhat find the story the character in the story is writing more interesting then the story I wrote.

The second one I just lost interest in part-way through and I couldn't work up the interest to write the ending it was originally going to have so it just sort of dangles off at the end and hopefully someone else will find it interesting enough to do something about. Not sure what killed my interest in it, it originally was going to have the main character prowling around the locale some, noticing a lot more of the locals then it did. Also the 'green demon' reference was originally also intended to refer to absinthe and not just envy and greed.

No idea what I'll do for a third piece yet. Haven't read all of the second round ones yet to see if I find any sparks of inspiration there.

Thanksgiving is a few weeks off, not sure what my plans are for it yet this year. Most years I'll have gotten the slew of invitations and made my plans before Halloween but I just haven't heard much this year and really haven't felt inspired to ask around.

An ex-girlfriend sent me an email trying to get in touch the other day. Have to say it was one of the weirdest emails like that I have ever gotten. Usually they consist of, I don't know, talking about what is going on in one's real life. This one was largely about her Worlds of Warcraft characters and asking me if I am playing that game and if I'd like to hang out with her online if I was. At the very end, almost tacked on as an afterthought, was a one sentence thing about what she was doing for a living now and that she missed talking to me.

Strange as I think about it, I relate better to the people I know online then I do the a lot of the people I know in the 'real world' these days. Maybe it is just a matter of shared interests. Most of my 'real world' friends are people I have known for years, and I wonder at times if we still hang out just because of inertia and because of routine then anything else. I don't even particularly like some of them, and the political / religious / social views of others simply frighten me. Actually, what frightens me is that they'll reproduce and propogate those values onto a new generation. Or it may be just that when I talk to people online we just don't discuss those same issues so I haven't had a chance to be frightened or disturbed yet.

Also amuses me that by percentage, I think more of the people online who I trust as friends know me by my real name then the people I hang out with in the 'real world'. One of my friends commented that he hadn't realized it was me in the hospital because the message he got about it had my real name attached to it and not 'Hythian' which is the name he recognizes me by.

Names are strange things.

So I noticed a few days ago that Warren Ellis, one of my favorite writers, had a bit come across his mailing list talking about how it seems web development, or advancement rather, has 'disappeared up its own arse of late.' Interesting to me as that is something I know myself, and a few other web professionals I talk with, noticed a couple years ago. The big news in web standards of late is talking about technologies that I was working with five years ago and grew rapidly bored with back then. As it is, the existing standards are still not fully or even correctly implemented in the 'mainstream' browsing software. It just feels stagnant. There hasn't been any sort of 'must have' technology release for a while it seems. Nothing that really made anyone I know sit up and say that 'this is the future' or 'this is the next big thing'. So here we are, the future of information exchange, the way people connect all around the world, and we don't seem to be able to come up with any new ideas for how to use it.

Such a strange sad species we are.