[89] that was close, nyu!

console

< Seraphim >

"white hair"

Monday - March 5, 2001

Seraphim here again!

I don't mean to start the week off badly for any one, but my Grandmother died last night. She was 95 and slipped peacefully away after a brief illness. She actually played a part in the choosing of my moniker. Her name was Seraphine (pronounced Sarafeen), mine is Sarah, and I suggested Seraphim for MT. I was always glad my parents didn't opt to name me after her - it was such an old fashioned name. My Grandma and I were pretty much dead ringers and I still resemble her when she was my age. Piro got a chance to meet her a few years back and just loved her. She was middle European with an olive complexion and snow-white hair, which the nurses put into a very long ponytail. I have her great skin tone and tan really easily but I really want the pure white hair when I am older. No gray for me. I want to wake up with a full head of shocking white hair one morning. (A 12 hour car drive to the funeral with my older sister and I may just get my wish sooner than later!) I really don't want to get anyone down - she had a long, full life and died with dignity - but go give your Grandparents a call or send a card if you still have them.

The move is complete and Piro even has his new drawing desk. He is no longer drawing over his key board on his lap with the sketchbook resting on MoMo. He is drawing right now and it suits him well. He looks like the mad artist that he is. The 'Moving Violation' strip really happened. After struggling down one flight of stairs he had the brilliant idea of sliding the dresser down on its side. I asked him several times if that was a good idea and was he positive? He assured me that he had the matter under control so I cheerfully let go. The dresser, however, didn't slide straight downstairs - it swayed toward the wall and back towards the banister all the while plunging downward. I have never seen his little legs move so fast as he raced to not get run over. When they reached the bottom he shot me THE LOOK. It was so full of scorn, of contempt, of resentment that, naturally, it made me bust out laughing. I giggled for a week every time I thought back to it. Good times. Shortly after that incident Piro called Two Men and Truck to complete the moving process.

Our movers were Gary and Gary and they did a great job. Gary the younger came strolling from the truck with the sofa on his head. Many cultures carry objects that way - it requires balance but the there is much less energy expended since the weight is carried through the long axis of your body and not through the arms. I was just amazed. I tried carrying a small laundry basket in from the car on my head and I am positive I compressed several vertebrae. Did you know the muscles that cause you to shrug your shoulders are extremely powerful and can even lift a person by shrugging?

After my last rant a hapless reader had the audacity to email Largo asking him to tell Piro that his gf should not be allowed to write the rant and if he wanted to hear from women he would watch 'the View'. For those of you who are not yet in the 21st century - get your head out of your asses. Women are no longer told what to say or when to say it or where they may say it. BTW, what a wuss, going to Largo with his misogynistic, sexist remarks - you got something to say honey, say it to me and be ready to say it to the hundreds of women you will encounter as fellow students, co-workers, bosses, professors, and health care professionals in your life time. In fact, why don't you just wear a sign that says 'Ignorant Sexist Pig' so society will know to shun you. Stop by the webpage for the American Association for University Women to find out more about social equality while your're at it.

[gulp! (runs for cover) - piro]

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< Largo >

"I'm not dead yet"

Saturday - March 3, 2001

[Largo] - 13:52:00 - [link here]

Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

The fine people over at Bioware sent me some goodies such as a sweet Baldur's Gate mouse pad which now takes up permanent space on my desk.

Bioware recently annouced the final chaper in the Child of Bhaal saga with, Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal. Now I'm looking forward to yet another Bioware masterpiece. Now where's thats NDA at....

I love those Bioware guys, my every dealing with them only reaffirms the good things I always thought about them. Now if I can just challenge Trent Oster and his '84 Mazda RX7 to a race.

Alright, enough nice-ness, time to go back to doing what I'm paid to do, which is be Largo. Speaking of which, I get a lot of email asking how close the persona of Largo is to me in real life.

While there isn't an easy answer to that, the best way to explain it is Largo is my id. Understand that everything that I say in these rants, I do sincerely believe. Instead of portraying a character, I just try to turn off my better judgment when I write rants and scripts for MegaTokyo. I prefer to embrace the more spirited side of myself when it comes to my writings, and so - I tend to attract a great deal of flame mail when I throw my ego to the wind. Believe it or not, for all my ravings and misanthropy, I'm an idealist.

First off, for those of you who wrote in asking about my Phantasy Star Online character, I currently have a level 41 Hunter Newearl. Though I keep telling myself I need to stop playing PSO, like any good MMORPG, it's addicting, the leveling, and all that junk. However there always a feeling of 'damn' when I sit down to play the same game over and over again just to get an additional level which doesn't really translate into all that much, besides the wasting of a day of my time. It was this reason I had to stop playing Evercrack so much.

Verant, the makers of Everquest and the largest drug dealer in America, recently pissed me off. On my credit card bill this month I noticed eight charges from Verant to my card, each charge was for $9.89, totaling up to a $79.12 bill. Naturally I called them about this and their explanation was they are doing a audit for the previous year and it turns out they forgot to bill me 8 months of the last 12. So now they are simply just billing me all at once so I can pay them all that back money. Granted, I did check my credit card statements for the last year, and yes they were correct that they were not always billing me. I never gave it much thought in the past, I always figured they were giving me free months to compensate for their crappy game. Oh well, I suppose it would have been nice for them to at least 'tell' me they were going to stick a big charge on my card for this, but knowing Verant's idea of customer service, I'm not surprised.

I was notified that there is a new Erika skin over on the winamp site, found here.

On the comic front, there is a new webcomic up called TrueNuff. The guys over at Comic Ex Machina did a cool strip awhile back that was brought to my attention recently and can be found here. Funny stuff, though by linking it I'm sure I'll be barraged by flame mail.

Over at the shroom there is a interview with us posted here.

I miss broadband, there used to be a time when I could spend hours over at AdCritic being entertained by commercials that didn't suck all that much. Now however, I'm in broadband limbo thanks to the merchants of evil at @home. When I moved to my new place back in November I was saddened to learn I was too far from my phone company's central office to get DSL service.However @home assured me that my area was going to be setup for cable modem service soon, and all I had to do was wait. Waiting is what I've done, patiently waiting each day for the service to be turned on, day after day, and hour after excruciating hour. The kicker to this is the equipment is all already in place. @home assigns a node to each residence before they can provide service. Currently everything is setup for me to get @home service, except they are not allowing me to have it until they 'release my node'. I swear it's this sort of fsck'ing bureaucratic red tape that causes people to go postal.