LadyCrimson

@Labadal - in these times, that's great news. Must be a load off the mind. Dear Diary: Today my plan was to be as unproductive as possible...and I was successful. Go me.

Baldur's Gate1. First reaction was "no wai, the play area window wasn't that small, was it?" I could swear on my old CRT things (portraits/buttons too) were smaller and stuff, and I don't mean because the screen was smaller. So I got the mod that let me play in higher resolutions. Don't care about widescreen etc. Just 800x600 was good enough, more like how I "remember". Also...it's a bit like playing Diablo1, in that I keep wanting them to walk faster. But so far, a good nostalgia leap. Just have to grab doomsayer Xan now.

Government barcodes lasered into our arms can't be far away! More seriously...I'm not really seeing a practical application for this, outside of novelty sales. It'd have to do a heck of a lot more than tell me my phone is ringing for me to be even remotely interested in a magnetic tattoo. Also...how would they fare if you needed an MRI scan? ....and Wals, because I like you, I'll be sure to call several times a day.

In the past I gave my cats actual names...simple descriptive or "cute" ones. But always been terrible with naming. The shelter called my two cats Jude and Johnny, and I didn't like those names at all...but I can't be arsed to come up with a permanent name that's better. So Mr. Grey and Mr. Black it became. Or cat. Mostly, just cat. They come running when I make mouth click noises or finger snaps so that's fine. I tried some cheap Sony blu-ray player largely to check out the netflix access in the unit (don't care about the dvd player). After going thru hoops to be able to actually do that, I discovered anything from netflix wouldnt load to play via this unit. Just gets stuck. This was over a wired connection too, not wireless. The interface menus are terrible, even for YouTube stuff (which did work, but very slow). Basically it all confirmed that I should stick to plugging a cheap PC into the television over some unit service. What a piece of crap.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztHAcNbHKF0

They're both neutered. Not a guarantee of not spraying/marking, especially if one waits until after they start the behavior to neuter (vs. before 4 months say). Get the feeling it was done later. Mr. Grey's the hall sprayer...maybe once or twice a week. Mr. Black just pees on the inside walls of the litter box occasionally.

In an effort to not have to give up one of my new cats, I'm trying this: http://petcomfortzone.com/cats.html ....I'm pretty dubious, plus it's expensive. But if it works I suppose I can deal with that. So far Mr. Grey does appear to be more mellowed/less high strung, at least. Don't know about his hallway spraying problem yet. We'll see.

I've decided that perhaps this new info explains why eating a giant bag of beef jerky makes me happy. ...also, Gorth, what exactly is too much work for cooking beef? Versus what? I'll grant it's more work than eating an apple, but not more work than cooking chicken, pork, sausage, etc. At least in general. eg not going for a perfect chef creation, just tossing in a pan, in the oven or on the BBQ.

Ultima7 .... kind of interesting. Graphics are actually tolerable/fine, considering. What I'm having trouble with is feeling like the game alternates between herky jerky and sudden speed ups, as well as mouse-click response delays. I dunno if it's GoG's dos-box usage to get it running on Windows or what, but makes it hard to get into the game that way. :/ So far the voice acting cracks me up. Not because it's bad or annoying, but so much of it seems a bit over the top, in almost a satire kind of way.

I get my daily requirement of sarcasm from my spouse, which makes me laugh, and laughter is the best medicine, right?

If you dislike sports and most anything else that actually requires a lot of sustained physical activity, it's all boring and tedious. I don't think there's ever been a "physical activity" that I found at all entertaining for more than a brief moment or three. It was always a means to an end (bicycling, walking/backpacking to get somewhere cool), not something I enjoyed for the sake of itself. Well, I do like dancing, but I don't like crowds/strangers. Taking nature walks with a camera is nice, but it's not exactly much exercise when I'm stopping every 3 minutes to snap photos for 5. :D

This is why I stopped paying much attention to health "news" or movements and just go with moderation and basic common sense.

Lower or upper back? I almost never have lower but upper back/shoulder is an issue. Adjustable and very high armrests on my chair keeps my shoulders from "slumping" as much, so upper back/neck gets less strain. Side benefit, less wrist stress since elbow/wrist is about level with top of desk/keyboard instead of an angle. But mostly, like the others have said...take lots of short frequent breaks, and stretch a lot during those breaks. Doesn't matter what age you are, it's a good habit to have. Also, imo a chair seat that's relatively flat works best. I don't understand these chairs that seem to be shaped with a bowl-like curve (higher on the sides, sunken in the middle). Maybe it's because I'm a gal, but I find that uncomfortable, both for my butt and for back posture it tends to inspire.

I have a tendency towards "out of sight/hearing out of mind" so something like fish aren't pets I'd do well with. I'd forget to feed them or something. Today updated some drivers, downloaded some games, cursed a particular quirk of my soundcard (need to change it to a different model someday) and browsed for cheap laptops. I can't decide what's a "good" cheap laptop these days, for just web browsing/social and stuff (not a gaming one). The ancient Sony Vaio I've been using can barely handle most script-heavy pages of today now (twitter makes it slow to a crawl). Bah.

Bought some fave city build/sim games from GoG (stronghold, RCT), as well as finally grabbing BG1 for my Win7 machine. But I also bought Ultima7 pack. I've never played it. I hear it's an uber classic or something. ....let's see if I can get past the "omg this is so old..." reaction that I get from looking at screenshots.

I was wondering about more details as well. If "forced" to say awake longer than you generally wanted to, that could induce some feeling of restlessness or boredom, leading to reaching for more snacks. But also depends what you're doing. Obviously, they didn't spend that extra hour 20 minutes running on a treadmill. I dunno...doesn't seem like a very good test. Perhaps people with more "natural" insomnia (rather than forced awakeness because you're trying to study etc) don't have such rises and falls in hormone levels when deprived of sleep.

One day I shall have a mansion with an entire wing and possibly an outdoor building dedicated to all kinds of pets....and a hireling to help me take care of them.

Can't speak for anyone else, but every time my weight bounces upwards it's because I'm bored, or watching too much TV (not gaming/internet, TV/films). Something about those two states of mind make me eat more. But I'm not a stress or depressed eater (I eat less when in those conditions). I've had insomnia off and on for years, and for me personally, it doesn't = gained more weight during insomniac periods. However, it is true that the longer I'm awake, the more time my belly has to tell me "it's been 5-6 hours since you gave me anything to digest, hey" so in a 24 hr. timespan you do tend to eat an extra meal a day, perhaps. Still, that didn't make me gain weight per se, since I was also awake and doing other stuff/burning more calories than I do while just sleeping. So while there may be some chemical stuff going on there re: sleep that may have an effect on some people in a lab, I have the feeling that there's a lot more to moderate-severe weight gain than that.

I still haven't bought another dwarf hamster. Mostly because I keep thinking "I'll never find one w/a similar personality again." I might, but I might not. heh I'd love to try a gerbil, but they're illegal to own as a pet in California. And I think a chinchilla would be too pricey/too much care.

So I see a woman who appears to be in some state of distress, a tentacle coming out of an arm (or at least out of a suit that's around an arm) and someone with a ruined melted face apparently attacking other crew. Then just big open spaces and ships. From my pov of knowing nothing, not exactly a spoiler. If anything, it tells me almost nothing except that it's a threat in space movie that looks to be a bit more cerebral than most. I really wish I could be excited for this movie. I respect/admire Ridley Scott, but I also know he's made (imo) a few pretty big clunkers. eg, no one's perfect. I hope this doesn't become his SW prequel.

Season finale of Walking Dead kicked butt. Reminds me of last season of Breaking Bad, where it was slow and plodding for so long and then suddenly it exploded into awesomeness the last 3-4 episodes. Not quite the B.Bad level of awesome, but still awesome. Went from "meh, might stop watching" to "Can't wait for Season3!"

Never heard of this Beamdog thing. But if it means I have to install yet another 3rd party client to start/run the game....then no. I'm so tired of needing a piece of software (other than the O/S...) to run a single program I may be interested in. If it's something more akin to Steam and potentially useful outside of that one thing, then...maybe. But I doubt it.

It's official. I don't understand the world or the "current generation" on many things anymore. I'm a gonna lock myself in my room now and pretend it's still 1977. :D

Hm. I'm semi-interested, since it could give me the reason/excuse to revisit BG1 after all these years, but it really depends on what they mean by "a re-forged version of the Infinity Engine with a variety of modern improvements." ...I'm not someone who thinks "modern" necessarily=improvement, so a big ? there. **edit: reading the twitter feed, looks like some potential positive things

I wouldn't say I want to play it "badly" but I do wish I could try it out. The videos I saw a while back were quite interesting. But yeah...no PS3 so.. :/ heh