cellio | random bits

We went to

alaricmacconnal's and Elsbeth's yesterday for a New Year's Day party, which meant more gaming. I had fun playing more Dixit (

blackpaladin, which expansions were in there?), and Dani played Constantinopolis, a resource-management game that sounded similar to Puerto Rico but is twice as long (or thereabouts). I haven't played it yet.

2013 was getting off to a great start but then I had to go back to work. Powerball, you have failed me. :-) (Ok, I've never actually bought my own lottery ticket, but when a group is forming at work I always buy in because I'd sure feel stupid if I didn't and half the company won buckets of money and left.)

Resolution? 1280x1024, but maybe I'll get a new monitor this year. (I think it was merle_ who inspired that idea.) Though I'd rather keep the aspect ratio I have now (i.e. I'm not so thrilled with the widescreen monitors that are all the rage these days).

Orlando is currently chasing his tail. I thought that was a dog thing. (He's got one white pixel on the end of it, but I don't think it's that in particular that he's chasing.) More generally, he and Giovanni seem to be settling in, though I still can't pick either up for more than a few seconds and I had only 50% success on last week's vet visit. Giovanni has gained a pound in the last month, so I guess Orlando isn't being as pushy about the food dishes as I thought.

Netflix only gives you about a week's notice when something is going to disappear from their streaming service. Last week I noticed that Farscape, which had been languishing there for a while, was slated to disappear, so I watched the first eight episodes to decide if I want to queue up DVDs. It looked to me like interesting characters and underwhelming plots, but I'm mindful that some good shows (like B5) took a while to settle in. To those who've seen it: does it get better?

Apparently I can't post comments on LJ tonight, so some of you will probably get some belated comments when that changes. Let's see if I can post an entry.

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Powerball has never failed me, but that's because every time someone buys a ticket my net worth goes up slightly. Or it would if I invested in lotto companies. I have yet to cave in for an office pool.

And yeah, I'm the resolution guy. Thanks for remembering! I wouldn't mind widescreen if (a) it didn't screw up the aspect ratio and (b) if the monitors rotated (some used to). When coding or reading I would prefer vertical space over horizontal.

My widescreen monitors at work rotate, so I have one set for portrait and one for landscape. Browsers and text editors on one, Outlook and Excel and other wide applications (including the one we make) on the right, Cygwin shells scattered about. Those monitors are a few years old, so I hadn't realized that being able to rotate isn't a given by now.

Mac monitors seem to rotate. Very few PC ones do. Stupid since the video interfaces are the same but so many PCs have crappy embedded video cards that only do a tiny range of resolutions.

Curiouser and curiouser: I'm talking about a PC. (I only have one monitor on my Mac at home, which for what I do at home is enough.)

But you've reminded me that I should make sure the new PC I just received has a video card at least as good as the one in the machine I'm to vacate. Not being able to rotate that monitor would be a huge problem, and I now remember that I had to wait for a new machine (the current one, 3+ years ago) before I could rotate my second monitor. If necessary, I wonder if I can just move the video card... (Probably not; aren't these integrated into the motherboard these days?)

Yeah, you want non-integrated video. Integrated as far as I can tell does not deal with rotation. You might be able to move the old card, but I'm unfamiliar with the latest buses.

We enjoyed "Farscape" when it was first run and coincidentally have just finished watching the first season of it with Sparky. I hadn't realized it's going away; that's bad, Sparky's really into it.

Complexities mount at the end of the first season, so yeah, it gets more interesting. But I may just be deluding myself so I can watch young Ben Browder some more; I kinda have a thing for him. And it's funny. Whereas on "Stargate" I always wanted to shout "Crichton!" whenever he came on screen, now upon re-watching "Farscape" I keep wanting to shout "new guy!" ;-D

Thanks for the info!

Coincidentally, I just started watching SG-U. (I just finished Atlantis.) Whenever Dr. Rush comes on I want to shout "Mr Gold!". :-)

Farscape does the same as B5 and gets better end of S1 into S2. the story evolves fairly nicely; I just finished watching all of the seasons + the follow-on, The Peacekeeper Wars. You will want to watch that when you are done with the last season! It wraps things up nicely.

Thanks for the information! I didn't know about the follow-on.

That set of Dixit had the basic set, along with the "Journey" and "Odyssey" expansions. I believe "Journey" is the one that includes the 7-12 player pieces.

Constantinopolis is one of those games that gets a lot faster as people get more familiar with it, so if he enjoyed playing it -- which it seemed like he did, since as I recall he was the one who requested the play of it -- definitely keep at it. It's a lot of fun, and I think he'll really get a lot of enjoyment out of trying to figure out how to make the various strategies work.

Thanks. BGG lists several expansions so I wasn't sure which I'd seen.

Dani did enjoy Constantinopolis and I'll try it at some point (it looks a little visually-challenging and I didn't want to slow y'all down).

Our cats chased their tails when they were kittens. They usually grow out of that within the first year, though.

Kendall is just over 3 and still chases his tail (and everyone else's tails). Just a personality quirk I think.

The folks at the shelter estimated Orlando to be five or six, but my vet thinks he's younger. He sure acts like he's three (as best I recall). :-)

Perhaps Orlando is just a slow learner. :-)

Some cats seem more inclined to chase their tails than others. (And some will chase other cats' tails, but the other cats tend not to appreciate this.)

Years ago my parents had an older, very dignified and proper cat who would sometimes chase her tail while on the seat of a bicycle (the bicycle was stored standing up, so the seat made a decent cat-sized place for her to perch where she could see people and be social). The only catch was that we couldn't laugh out loud while this was happening because, as I mentioned, she was a very dignified and proper cat, and she knew that cats were not to be laughed at, and so if she heard us laughing she would stop and leave (with a "harumph" sort of cat body language)... so we all learned to laugh silently, because it was impossible to see her acrobatics and not laugh.

A former housemate of mine had a cat who would sometimes chase her tail around the horizontal part of the arm of a chair (the side edge of the chair back, side edge of the seat, and the horizontal and vertical parts of the arm made a hollow square.) This cat didn't mind being laughed at (or didn't notice, I'm not sure) so silence wasn't required when we watched her. :)

*laugh*! But silently. :-)

The cats may well take a while to become cuddly-er. I think it took Dorian and Greykin two years of holding themselves mostly aloof from that sort of contact before they'd relax next to us. Now, four years after adopting them, they are both very affectionate and cuddly. Most nights in front of the TV, I have Tristy on my lap, Greykin laying longwise next to me, and Dorian curled up on my feet. In bed, I wake up with at least two cats on me/next to me regularly. So even the skittery cats came come around eventually.

That may be the best New Year's resolution I've seen in a while.

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