Here are the WotLK cake pictures.
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Sunday, January 4, 2009
Saturday, January 3, 2009
One WotLK Cake Coming Up
My attempts to work a normal work day yesterday were subverted because it was my nephew's birthday. He wanted a World of Warcraft, Wrath of the Lich King cake. Nothing like picking a theme that the party store doesn't stock! It's actually a fairly regular request from our nieces and nephews to have something out of the ordinary as the theme for their birthday cake. Karen and I always seem to deliver, though. She's very creative about finding action figures and other little toys to decorate the top of the cake. And I'm there as backup to pull some graphic design magic out of my hat when toys aren't available.
That was the case this time. Wrath of the Lich King toys aren't readily available (if even available at all) so I had to come up with something. Fortunately I happened to have purchased the collector's edition of Wrath when it came out. Fortunate because it just happened to come with a book, "Art of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King." How providential is that? So we had a source for artwork that I could use for the cake. I used a huge picture of the Lich King as the main cake top. Then there were small medallions representing a couple of his armor pieces that I made to go around the side of the cake. I took the basic WoW logo and modified it so that it would say "Happy Birthday" in the WoW fonts. I had found a font that mimicked the WoW logo font, but it was flat. The text in the original logo is very 3-D looking. So I had to do some massaging to make the text look like a reasonable facsimile of the original logo. The whole thing turned out pretty nice, if I do say so myself.
The only stink thing was that it took me all day to make the stuff for the cake. So now I'm working this weekend to make up the time. Oh well. I guess it was worth it. My nephew totally loved the cake. I'll post some pictures once they are off the camera.
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That was the case this time. Wrath of the Lich King toys aren't readily available (if even available at all) so I had to come up with something. Fortunately I happened to have purchased the collector's edition of Wrath when it came out. Fortunate because it just happened to come with a book, "Art of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King." How providential is that? So we had a source for artwork that I could use for the cake. I used a huge picture of the Lich King as the main cake top. Then there were small medallions representing a couple of his armor pieces that I made to go around the side of the cake. I took the basic WoW logo and modified it so that it would say "Happy Birthday" in the WoW fonts. I had found a font that mimicked the WoW logo font, but it was flat. The text in the original logo is very 3-D looking. So I had to do some massaging to make the text look like a reasonable facsimile of the original logo. The whole thing turned out pretty nice, if I do say so myself.
The only stink thing was that it took me all day to make the stuff for the cake. So now I'm working this weekend to make up the time. Oh well. I guess it was worth it. My nephew totally loved the cake. I'll post some pictures once they are off the camera.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Computer Finally Fixed... Mostly
I've been working on a friend's computer for almost a month. The reality is that I spent about three solid days on it and the rest of the time it sat in my office untouched, a victim of my procrastination. It had same weird OS problem that caused it to reboot 60 seconds after Vista launched. I beat my head against the problem but couldn't find out what it was. So I decided it was going to have to be rebuilt.
I went over to the friend's house last night to rebuild it with her present so that she could make certain we didn't forget to save any of her data. It took me six hours to do the rebuild. And at the very end just as I was finishing up the last thing it started throwing a weird error complaining about the battery. ?!?!?! In the end it turned out to be a Sony Vaio component that I installed while waiting for the last thing to finish. It included the VAIO Power Management app and that seemed to be having problems. It was like it couldn't properly interface the battery (probably because I hadn't installed some other VAIO garbage) and was screaming because of it. I promptly uninstalled the last VAIO garbage I installed and it went away. Unfortunately that took an extra half hour to fix. Very frustrating. The computer works completely now with the exception of installing iTunes. I told her I would come back another evening and get that set up for her. It's nice to have the computer out of my office and no longer hanging over my head, however. YAY!!!
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I went over to the friend's house last night to rebuild it with her present so that she could make certain we didn't forget to save any of her data. It took me six hours to do the rebuild. And at the very end just as I was finishing up the last thing it started throwing a weird error complaining about the battery. ?!?!?! In the end it turned out to be a Sony Vaio component that I installed while waiting for the last thing to finish. It included the VAIO Power Management app and that seemed to be having problems. It was like it couldn't properly interface the battery (probably because I hadn't installed some other VAIO garbage) and was screaming because of it. I promptly uninstalled the last VAIO garbage I installed and it went away. Unfortunately that took an extra half hour to fix. Very frustrating. The computer works completely now with the exception of installing iTunes. I told her I would come back another evening and get that set up for her. It's nice to have the computer out of my office and no longer hanging over my head, however. YAY!!!
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Crazy New Year's Eve Night
Okay, we had a truly bizarre night. I stayed up late playing on the computer and came into bed around 2:30 AM. I did my nightly ablutions (sp?) and laid down to read a little. Around 3:00 AM I heard a pounding from downstairs. It was somebody pounding on our door. I hopped up with a "What the heck is that?!?!?!" and threw on some pants and headed downstairs.
The pounding kept getting more and more insistent as I approached the door. I flipped on the porch light and tried to look through the peephole. All I could see was the top of someone's head. I was pretty certain it was a woman, though. I guessed that it must be a friend of our's from around the corner coming because she needed help. I threw open the door and some girl I had never seen before came stumbling in. I assumed it was a drunk girl wandering into the wrong house by mistake and told her that she had the wrong house and I didn't know who she was. She started going into some drunk explanation about how she came from next door and was related to our neighbor. A woman followed almost immediately behind saying that she was our neighbor and that this was her sister who had had too much to drink. Now, I've never met our neighbors. Their daughter has come over to borrow things a couple of times but I have never met the parents. I keep trying to do the friendly-wave thing but it never seems to work out. So when this woman said that she was our neighbor I just had to accept that that was the truth and move on. She said that her sister was really drunk and acting crazy and violent. She said that her parents were on their way to pick the sister up and was it alright if she just stayed here for the moment. We agreed and she said that they were going to be standing out front if we needed something. Karen and I hung out with the drunk girl for a few minutes but she started saying that somebody next door had beat her up. That made me take a step back. If somebody was beating her up then I wasn't going to just let it slide. I immediately moved into I-think-we-should-call-the-police mode. Karen and I did a quiet debate about it with me thinking we should and Karen not certain. I decided that I would step outside and talk to the rest of the family to see if I could get a better handle on what was going on. So I threw on some shoes and a jacket and headed outside. The neighbor lady and her brother (in-law?) and another woman were in front talking. I started talking to them and brought up that the violence claims. They kind of shook their heads and said that nobody had been hitting her. They said that she probably did get banged up as they were trying to restrain her and forcibly remove her from the house, though. They said that the girl had gone bonkers and was yelling and hitting everybody and that they had been trying to calm her down and, when that failed, get her out of there so that they could take her home. That's when she broke free and came running over to our place. I expressed my concerns and we talked it out. In the end I decided (and I hope I was right) that the three calm, lucid people outside were telling me a more reasonable story and that the raving, drunk girl inside was out of her head. They said that she was just really drunk but I think that she was on something else, too. I can't say that I've ever seen a drunk person talking quite that crazy. Whatever the real deal was I don't know. I waited out front with them until the parents arrived. The dad came in to get her but she still wouldn't come. The dad went to get the mom and she came in to talk sense to the girl. They got her to move a little but she had an iron-hold on Karen's shirt and had her head buried in it. As the parents were trying to forcibly drag her away she pulling Karen along with. I got in the middle and got Karen's shirt out of her hands so that at least Karen was free of the mess. In the end they got the girl calmed down enough to get her to walk out under her own power relatively calmly. We closed the door and shared a oh-my-dear-heavens moment as we went back up to bed. We talked for a little bit and everything seemed to be calmed down. So I curled up and started to go to sleep.
I had been asleep for about 30-45 minutes when I heard this terrible banging coming from outside my window. I hopped up with another "what the heck?!?!?!" and immediately thought that the girl was back and had taken to banging on our bedroom window. I was obviously very incoherent and disoriented for a moment because I soon realized that was quite impossible because our bedroom is on the second floor. Unless the chick learned how to fly she wasn't banging on my window. Then I realized that the sound had been more a metal clanging rather than the sound of someone banging on a window. In the end I decided that it must have been somebody letting off firecrackers in a metal pan. That would definitely account for the type of sound I heard. The fact that it was 4:30 in the morning was a bit much, though.
The whole thing had me pretty freaked out, though. I was truly scared to go back to sleep for fear of what might happen to wake me up the next time. I fell asleep pretty quickly, though, and nothing else happened for the rest of the night. It was a very nerve-wracking night, however. I hope this doesn't set the tone for the rest of the year. I don't know that I can handle more of this nonsense.
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The pounding kept getting more and more insistent as I approached the door. I flipped on the porch light and tried to look through the peephole. All I could see was the top of someone's head. I was pretty certain it was a woman, though. I guessed that it must be a friend of our's from around the corner coming because she needed help. I threw open the door and some girl I had never seen before came stumbling in. I assumed it was a drunk girl wandering into the wrong house by mistake and told her that she had the wrong house and I didn't know who she was. She started going into some drunk explanation about how she came from next door and was related to our neighbor. A woman followed almost immediately behind saying that she was our neighbor and that this was her sister who had had too much to drink. Now, I've never met our neighbors. Their daughter has come over to borrow things a couple of times but I have never met the parents. I keep trying to do the friendly-wave thing but it never seems to work out. So when this woman said that she was our neighbor I just had to accept that that was the truth and move on. She said that her sister was really drunk and acting crazy and violent. She said that her parents were on their way to pick the sister up and was it alright if she just stayed here for the moment. We agreed and she said that they were going to be standing out front if we needed something. Karen and I hung out with the drunk girl for a few minutes but she started saying that somebody next door had beat her up. That made me take a step back. If somebody was beating her up then I wasn't going to just let it slide. I immediately moved into I-think-we-should-call-the-police mode. Karen and I did a quiet debate about it with me thinking we should and Karen not certain. I decided that I would step outside and talk to the rest of the family to see if I could get a better handle on what was going on. So I threw on some shoes and a jacket and headed outside. The neighbor lady and her brother (in-law?) and another woman were in front talking. I started talking to them and brought up that the violence claims. They kind of shook their heads and said that nobody had been hitting her. They said that she probably did get banged up as they were trying to restrain her and forcibly remove her from the house, though. They said that the girl had gone bonkers and was yelling and hitting everybody and that they had been trying to calm her down and, when that failed, get her out of there so that they could take her home. That's when she broke free and came running over to our place. I expressed my concerns and we talked it out. In the end I decided (and I hope I was right) that the three calm, lucid people outside were telling me a more reasonable story and that the raving, drunk girl inside was out of her head. They said that she was just really drunk but I think that she was on something else, too. I can't say that I've ever seen a drunk person talking quite that crazy. Whatever the real deal was I don't know. I waited out front with them until the parents arrived. The dad came in to get her but she still wouldn't come. The dad went to get the mom and she came in to talk sense to the girl. They got her to move a little but she had an iron-hold on Karen's shirt and had her head buried in it. As the parents were trying to forcibly drag her away she pulling Karen along with. I got in the middle and got Karen's shirt out of her hands so that at least Karen was free of the mess. In the end they got the girl calmed down enough to get her to walk out under her own power relatively calmly. We closed the door and shared a oh-my-dear-heavens moment as we went back up to bed. We talked for a little bit and everything seemed to be calmed down. So I curled up and started to go to sleep.
I had been asleep for about 30-45 minutes when I heard this terrible banging coming from outside my window. I hopped up with another "what the heck?!?!?!" and immediately thought that the girl was back and had taken to banging on our bedroom window. I was obviously very incoherent and disoriented for a moment because I soon realized that was quite impossible because our bedroom is on the second floor. Unless the chick learned how to fly she wasn't banging on my window. Then I realized that the sound had been more a metal clanging rather than the sound of someone banging on a window. In the end I decided that it must have been somebody letting off firecrackers in a metal pan. That would definitely account for the type of sound I heard. The fact that it was 4:30 in the morning was a bit much, though.
The whole thing had me pretty freaked out, though. I was truly scared to go back to sleep for fear of what might happen to wake me up the next time. I fell asleep pretty quickly, though, and nothing else happened for the rest of the night. It was a very nerve-wracking night, however. I hope this doesn't set the tone for the rest of the year. I don't know that I can handle more of this nonsense.
First Post After a Long Hiatus
I haven't made any posts for a while. I don't know why. I just haven't felt like blogging. I think it's been a mix of a lot of laziness and a lot of depression. My laziness/procrastination is well known and not worth explaining. I've been really depressed for the last few months, however. I haven't felt excited about doing anything and I've been looking for excuses to not do things I normally have no problem doing or even enjoy doing. I'm guessing my depression has to do with my job.
At the end of January I'm going to be out of a job. It's through no fault of my own (except that I moved to Denver) and, if they had their way, my bosses would both like to keep me on. Everybody is happy with my work and happy with the situation but my contract is still ending in a month. It's all due to understandable-but-frustrating business decisions. There are a few if-onlys thrown in for good measure, too. If only the IT management had been okay with me working from Denver as a regular employee instead of as a contractor this wouldn't be coming up. They don't want me to go. If only the IT management would realize that my main boss' team is extremely short-handed and they need more people. If only firm management wasn't so tight on money for staff then they wouldn't mind paying for me as a contractor. Ah well. There is very little I can do about it. A part of me hopes that some magic will happen and that it will all work itself out. I know there's not much of a chance for that, though. It just makes me sad and depressed....
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At the end of January I'm going to be out of a job. It's through no fault of my own (except that I moved to Denver) and, if they had their way, my bosses would both like to keep me on. Everybody is happy with my work and happy with the situation but my contract is still ending in a month. It's all due to understandable-but-frustrating business decisions. There are a few if-onlys thrown in for good measure, too. If only the IT management had been okay with me working from Denver as a regular employee instead of as a contractor this wouldn't be coming up. They don't want me to go. If only the IT management would realize that my main boss' team is extremely short-handed and they need more people. If only firm management wasn't so tight on money for staff then they wouldn't mind paying for me as a contractor. Ah well. There is very little I can do about it. A part of me hopes that some magic will happen and that it will all work itself out. I know there's not much of a chance for that, though. It just makes me sad and depressed....
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Circus Time!!!
Karen and I went to the circus tonight. I never really went to the circus much as a kid (at least that I remember) but Karen likes to go every year. She really likes the elephants. She doesn't quite know why, but she finds them cute. We bought her a stuffed elephant with a pink circus-logo blanket on his back and it now lives on our bed with a couple of her other select stuffed animals. It's pretty funny. Karen wasn't feeling well today and I wondered if we wouldn't wind up canceling. We already had the tickets, though, and I was already skipping the Priesthood session of conference so we figured we should just go ahead and go.The circus this year was a little less fanfare than I have seen in previous years. I had fun, but the acts were rather ho-hum. The big trick attempt for the trapeze guy was to do a triple somersault. ?!?!?! A triple? Really? In previous years I've seen them do four or five rotations. Hmmmm..... The worst was that the guy only did two rotations. I counted them and definitely only counted two. A woman in front of me heard me say something to Karen and turned around with two fingers held up, confirming that he did, indeed, only do a double. It was pretty funny/sad. Other than that it was a fun time, though.
Rudy's Moving Day
Judith's nephew, Rudy, moved into his apartment today. His wife, Jenny, is still in St. George. She's waiting to find a job out here before she comes out. They were only moving into a two-bedroom apartment so there wasn't a ton of stuff. Unfortunately their apartment is up a flight of stairs, however, so we had to haul all of their stuff up stairs. That was a lot of fun. Our legs were dead after just a few trips. We worked for about an hour before Jim and Judith showed up. Jim had apparently thrown out his back so he wasn't able to do a whole lot of heavy lifting. We gave him the job of bringing things to the end of the truck so that we could grab it easier. He sent Judith home to get his moving straps to help with the heavy stuff. Rudy had an organ he was bringing in and none of us looked forward to trying to haul that up the stairs.When Judith came back she brought the straps and the teenage son of one of their friends. It was incredibly nice of him to come and the extra pair of hands was helpful. Jim's moving straps were great, too. I had never used this type before but I'm now convinced that I want to go find some. They are the ones you see advertised on TV that go over your forearms. It apparently took five or six guys to load the organ into the truck, but Jim and Rudy were able to get it up the stairs and into the apartment by themselves. Jim's straps are much better than the ones I use because his leave your hands free. That allows you to stabilize what you're hauling. One of the things I hate moving is mattresses because they are so hard to hold and control. These straps made moving the matress a breeze. We were able to finish up the rest of the moving pretty fast. It only took us three hours, total. My legs were pretty dead for the rest of the day ... and the next day, however.
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