October News

Looks like I skipped over September and most of October.  No matter.  I blog when I want!  Anyhoozle, I've been getting into this whole fantasy football thing and I have to say I am not very good at it.  Either that or I'm not paying close enough attention to stay on top of it.  Nevertheless, I'm ranked last in my league at the moment.  Granted that's the first time I've been in last by myself, but still, I don't like being last.  Not sure what I'm gonna do about it.  Probably nothing.

In other news, our gathering of the Church does these small groups called home teams.  I've wanted to get into one for a long time, but due to work (mostly) or other obligations I've never had the time to do it until recently.  I must say I'm loving it.  We're about to kick off our Trunk or Treat event we do at Halloween every year and I'm pretty pumped about what my home team is doing.  Given that several people in our team are in the praise band, we're naturally doing a music-themed "trunk".  I use that term loosely because I don't know that we have a trunk so much as a stage, band, and dining area, complete with tables and servers.  The characters I know will be in the band include Steven Tyler (myself), Han Solo (one of our guitar players/singers), and Billy Ray Cyrus (our drummer).  Oh, and did I mention the whole event will be taking place inside our new building?  That's right, we are driving cars inside our new building to do the event indoors (before we get it all refinished).  Could be a logistical nightmare, but it's gonna be awesome.  I'll try to get some pictures posted sometime.  They'll probably be all over facebook.

I've also been taking a systematic theology class taught by our lead pastor.  That's been a blast.  There's a lot of information to go over.  I didn't really need more homework, since I don't always get the stuff for school done, but at least this is meaningful.  And I've gotten to know several people at our campus quite a bit better, which is cool.

There, I posted in October.  I make no promises regarding frequency of posts in the near or distant future.  Here's my current desktop background at work:

 

Fan Service

I was determined not to have only one post in the month of August, so I just saved myself.  Basically while I'm waiting for a program to open at work I took the opportunity to drop my fans a line or two.  Just letting you know I'm thinking about you.  *cheezy smile and wink*

 

Do you feel the love?

Secretariat

I had a few thoughts I wanted to post about, but the only one coming to mind right now is the following:  what is the root word of the term "secretary?"  Is is secret?  Is it safe?  -lol-  Is it secrete?  Is it something else I haven't thought of yet?  If it's secret, that seems to be a bit of a dubious title, like secret-keeper.  That would lend credence to the thought that the boss is of an underhanded or double-dealing sort and the secretary is privy to all the inner machinations of his/her plans.  If it's secrete, that's just a disgusting way of saying that the person creates or discharges effort, paperwork, reports, emails, bodily fluids, what have you.  And in both cases the same can be said of the term "secretariat."

On an entirely unrelated note, I think I may add some gifs to my page to animate it a little.  That sounds like a fun time.  I don't know what, though.  I really don't want to trash up the place, which happens when you overdo it.  That doesn't sound like fun at all.  That sounds more like a bout of influenza gets hold of my blog and fires from two settings very undesirable solutions of matter all over it.  I'll say one thing; there won't be a bunch of glittery ponies or vampires or hot mamas.  It's gonna stay nice and nerdy, the way I want it.  Probably old video game sprites or something.  Maybe something else.  Maybe nothing.  It all depends on what I can find.  I need to get my computer and external hard drive back.  Might have something on there I could use.  Ok, lunch break's over.  Back to work.

Realizations

I just realized a few things about my blog.  One is that the last post is really long with the pictures in it.  Another is that I never posted whether or not I enjoyed The Watchmen...which I did.  It seems like there was something else, something other than the fact that some of the links on the side have changed since I was posting regularly, but as it often does, it escapes me.  It's not as though I was holding it captive, though, so I'm not sure why it felt the need to escape.  It's free to come and go as it pleases.  And just like that, I'm back in the groove of posting spontaneous thoughts.  Unfortunately, it is at this time that I have been given another task (finally).  So work before play, which according to the old proverb will make me (or at least Jack) a dull boy.  Such is life.  To war! -- I mean work!

Steampunk Abounds

Today's post is choc ful of pictures and let me preface the post with this statement:  I did not create any of the images or the contents therein.  I was just too lazy and forgetful to include where I found all the images.  You can find them if you do a Google search for steampunk, though.
Anyway, I was aware of a steampunk subculture, but I guess I never really thought about how widespread it was until recently.  I found all kinds of hits when I did my search (I frequently like to Google search random stuff) and thought I'd share some of the ones I found more interesting.

We've got Star Wars cosplay and art.

Here's a Portal piece.

I didn't recognize this one right away, but it's Ghostbusters.

 A different take on Alice in Wonderland.

This Scarecrow seems like steampunk with a little zombie thrown in.

I literally did a double take on this X-Men shot.

Apparently this Iron Man was the Marvel Costume Contest Winner at New York Comic Con 2010 and deservingly so, I say.

Some helmets made by individuals who certainly love steampunk.

 Then we get into the more "practical" applications.  From what I can tell from the sites, all these devices actually work.  The Game Boy appears to be just a standard paint and mod job, but really cool.  The flash drive is even for sale if you want it on Etsy, but the price I saw for the 8GB was $125.  While it's completely waterproof, that's still kinda pricy.

 This iPhone case is also for sale on Ebay with a starting price of $195.  Still neat.

Perhaps one of my favorite discoveries is this guy.  At sillof.com he has loads of reimagined characters in action figure form.  Most of them are Star Wars, but then he has comic book characters as well.  Personally, I love it, but I'm kindof an action figure nut.

Here we have the heroes,

the bounty hunters,

and the villains, all in steampunk form.

 Then there's the Justice League heroes

and villains.

And finally here's the Avengers.

And of course, there are lots of popular steampunk-influenced movies out there like Around the World in 80 Days, Hellboy, Van Helsing, Sherlock Holmes, Howle's Moving Castle, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Illusionist, and of course, possibly the poster child of steampunk movies, Wild Wild West, not to mention tv shows, to my knowledge, most prominently anime, and some video games.

So briefly, I know I'm not discovering anything new; that's not the point of the post or the blog in general.  I just thought the varied and widespread nature of the steampunk movement was rather interesting, especially since the genre itself is so neat, as well as the sister-genres of clockpunk and dieselpunk.  I was not as thrilled by biopunk.  It seems a little gross.

So that's my Google adventure for the day.  Neato torpedo!  Lol, and Trapjaw!

It's Highly Addictive!

I must say I'm enjoying getting up and running again.  I'm liking the layout changes since the last time I posted as well.  Hope you all are enjoying the results.

Spent the weekend in Indianapolis, visiting family for our post facto 4th of July celebration get-together.  That was an enjoyable experience.  Of course, I enjoy any excuse to consume an actual coney from up north.  A Sonic coney is not the real thing.  Coneys aren't just hot dogs.  And this trip I didn't have to play any Pokemon card games with a ten year old who makes up the rules as he goes.  But it was really nice to see everybody again.  Good times.

Today I rediscovered Mountain Dew Baja Blast, thanks to Taco Bell.  Still like it and I can continue to say that I am a fan of every flavor of Mountain Dew I've ever come across.  Before long they're going to have a cola and every other flavor of soda and become a new conglomerate altogether to rival Coke and Pepsi in earnest, which is not to say they don't already rival them.  I don't know of any other soft drink more addictively adhered-to than Mountain Dew.  I always thought Slurm would have tasted basically like Mountain Dew (probably mostly the color) and if you're a Futurama watcher, you know Slurm is highly addictive, especially the super-concentrated batch.

Not surprisingly, in acquiring that image, I encountered several identical opinions of the assumed flavor.  I wonder if that was the intention of the creators.

Gotta go.  I have things to do.  Until next time, blog fans.

Triumphant Return

Aaaaaand three years and change later, I have a new post.  New school, new job, new girlfriend, same old me.  Sorry about the hiatus everyone.  It was not intentional.  But look at the pretty new background!  Isn't that nice?  And I decided to do post titles, at least for now.  I'm mostly on here right now to have something to do and look busy, since I don't really have any tasks going at work at the moment.  Figured it would be a good time to revive the ol' blogaroo.  Nevermind, now I have a task.  Brb.

Ok, since the server connection from our office is so slow, I can probably work on this while my projects are saving or opening or attempting to do anything else.  The main office doesn't think it's that bad, but my office knows otherwise.  And that's mostly because the server is at the main office, so their connection is a LAN.  They just don't get it.

And while I work on my projects, I get to listen to the Halo books via iTunes, which is awesome.  Unfortunately, the one I've been listening to seems to have forgotten where I was, so I have to skip through to find the right spot.  Oh well.  Not a major problem.  Pretty great gig overall, I must say.

On an unrelated note, I got my motorcycle out of the shop recently and am loving riding again.  Thanks to Jesse for getting it up and running great.  If anyone needs a good mechanic, I can help you get in touch with him.

Ok, I think that's sufficient for the time being.  Hopefully I'll be able to post a little more often in the near future.

Later.