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The totally epic roadtrip.

katster — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 14:31:27 +0000

Thursday was Jill’s birthday. So, today, we celebrate with the epic roadtrip. From my house near Roseville, we drive to Placerville, and from there to Markleeville in Alpine County, back up to South Lake Tahoe, to Reno via Carson City, and then straight down 80 to home again. (Grabbing caches the whole way, too.)

View Larger Map

Yeah! Epic roadtrip. %) (You might have to adjust the map to see it all.)

Maybe tomorrow, I’ll even have something to say about it. At least it’ll be something different than the usual haze of depression.

So catch y’all when I get home.

It’s hard to take a good photo of a black cat.

katster — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 19:51:00 +0000

I meant to post this for you all a couple days ago, when I took it. This is Ebony-kitty.

Unfortunately, my camera seems to have added a lot of noise to the photo, which is why I’m showing you a smaller picture. That said, it’s still a great photo of her. The startled look is because Mom just tripped behind me, making noise that caught her attention.

Caption at will. ;)

We will never surrender.

katster — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 19:06:45 +0000

This is simply awesome (although my Republican friends might not think so…):

(Hat tip to Steve Benen over at Political Animal for the link.)

this gave me a smile

katster — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 18:19:36 +0000

At work. Trying to work. Somewhat succeeding.

But this gave me a laugh. My gummy worms have faces on them!

Anyway, work is sucking today, big time. So I need as many shiny smilies as possible.

between the motion and the act lies the shadow…

katster — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 19:40:34 +0000

I’ve been running around like crazy the last few weeks between the camping trip and then the trip to Redding to paint grandma’s house, but I wanted to come up for a gasp of air and say, “HEY! I’m alive!” I’ve got some photos I want to post, but they’re with my laptop at home and I’m at work, so…it’ll have to wait. Have some things I want to say about how I spent my solstice, but that’ll have to wait. Got things I want to mutter at the garden too, but that will also have to wait.

Maybe this evening. Rumor is, I don’t have a dinner cooking date.

Anyway, the lament in this xkcd speaks to me. I’ve been playing that game every year, “This is complicated, maybe when things are less complicated.” I think maybe I’m just starting to get it through my thick skull that it will never get less complicated. Took me long enough. :P

Anyway, hopefully there’ll be more from me soon. Y’all are still out there, right?

camping at the nuke station…

katster — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 04:55:50 +0000

Went camping this last weekend. This was Friday night’s sunset. (Don’t worry, the plant is decommissioned!)

Going to Redding on a bit of a “vacation” this coming weekend.

So yeah, I’ve mostly been silent because I’ve been busy. That’s about it. But now I have my laptop back, and might have a chance to type more things.

Or not.

I’m odd like that.

been busy and jeez, some people…

katster — Sun, 02 May 2010 18:58:36 +0000

…yeah. I’m around, just not here and not in a lot of my other haunts. I’ve been out getting fresh air and dealing with a lot of the related crap therapy brings up. No biggie, just if anybody cared why the radio silence, that sums it up.

I’m a little sore right now. You see, there’s something in geocaching called ‘FTF’. That means, First to Find, and it’s — well, kinda like writing ‘first!’ on a blog post, except sometimes people put extra things in their caches to reward those who are first. It’s a bit of fun to discover you’re first, but it’s an added bonus, IMO.

Anyway, yesterday, I went on a geocaching spree, picking up 18 over the course of the day, including one FTF, and when I get home, I’m pretty tired and my dad’s on the computer, so I just go to bed thinking, well, I’ll log my stuff in the morning.

I get it logged this morning. Then I get an email. I’ll leave out the other cacher involved, but here’s the note [this is copied directly out of the original]:

Greetings,

I’m very disappointed in your FTF logging. As FTF logs go its your responsibility to log the FTF in a timely mannor so others can plan their caching day/night.
Up till 8am today May 2nd no log from you or the person after you, both of you logged the paper on the 1st.

I only wish you the best in geocaching and ask you to post on the web site in a timely mannor for the FTF’s.

Thanks in advance for your cooperation and happy future caching.

Meanwhile, he leaves the following note in the cache logs:

Up early this morning and since this cache hadn’t been logged yet I decided to go for it, Only to find it had actually been founf and logged yesterday 1st of May. Its great to cache anytime, but I plan my day on the off beat chance of a FTF when available.

PLEASE all Geocachers, POST your FTF in a timely manner…..

This cache is placed nicely and easy parking nearby, a great cache for the kids. TFTC, TFTH, SL

I notice this, and I sent him a small apology — basically, I got home last night, I was dead tired from being out all day, and the computer was in use so I couldn’t do it immediately. I figured the next morning was timely enough. It’s probably been about 17 hours [I found it about 5 last night, it was probably about 9:30 this morning when I got it logged] since I found it by the time I got it logged, but most of that time, I was sleeping. Besides, I think 24 hours is reasonable. I don’t think I’m in the wrong here — I think somebody’s making too much of a big deal of being the FTF.

(Which, neener neener, I was, so…)

And now that I’ve vented, I’ll try to push this out of the way — my therapist and I are working on remembering what I can and cannot control, and trying to be better about letting go of what I can’t.

funny but sad

katster — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 01:47:52 +0000

While stumbling around geocaching yesterday, I found this in the park I was searching:

I open the floor to y’all.

a few quick thoughts before they all fall out of my head

katster — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 16:35:40 +0000

I won’t be at Baycon this year. It’s not the con membership — I earned that, which is why it’s driving me nuts to have to do this. It’s all the extraneous numbers around going. I might be able to eke out the tank of gas for getting over there and back, but I definitely can’t afford the hotel room nor the costs of feeding myself over four days, so I’m simply declaring that I’m not going. The 2011 Baycon doesn’t look so great either, but that’s a function of too many cons in 2011 (Corflu, Baycon, Westercon, Worldcon — the order is Corflu, Worldcon, Westercon, Baycon in terms of attendance) — and if my finances don’t get squared away soon [read: full-time job], my attendance at any of those is likely to fall through. It’s been a rough few months.
I’m taking an Intro to GPS class as part of my attempts to become a mapmaker. (Yay GIS!) This means that I’ve been issued a GPS unit for the duration of the class. Then I figured out that my cellphone has the right tools to run as a GPS unit. This means that nearly eight years to the day after first signing up for the site, I made my first Geocaching find. You may all proceed to laugh now. That said, it’s been teaching me a bit of patience as the GPS unit will get jumpy when you’re close, and you need to stop and let it settle before you can find what you’re looking for. Also, a bit of serenity, because sometimes, due to whatever reason — cache no longer there, GPS unit being unusually flaky, you not having a clue what you’re looking for, or even just you being a bit impatient — you won’t find what you’re looking for. In those cases, sometimes it’s best to take a deep breath and come back to cache another day.
It’s kinda interesting that the last bit is something my therapist and I are talking about. Maybe the message is starting to sink in about not worrying so much, particularly about the things I can’t control. Even a couple of my coworkers have commented that I seem a little happier.
Of course, happiness would be better served with a better job (or at least a full-time one). So, with that in mind, I’m beginning to poke around, starting with getting my federal job application done and in. We’ll see where it goes from there.
If I owe you an email or need to mail you something, my computer is currently down for the count, and my work computer isn’t exactly set up to handle some of the stuff I need to do. So please be patient while I work on backing up my laptop and shipping it back to IBM to get fixed.

And right now that is all the news that is news across the nation. We now return you to your regularly scheduled life now in progress.

Small and Far Away

katster — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 20:37:23 +0000

I need to sit down and write stuff. All sorts of stuff. Maybe, this weekend, if I get my homework done, such things will be able to happen.

But the point of this post is to point to this: Small and Far Away, a one-shot fanzine created by members of the virtual fanzine lounge at the last Corflu. There’s a link to the PDF on that page. You should read it!

Yours truly, beyond having an article in the issue, is the one who did the layout work.

The next step is getting the first issue of Rhyme & Paradox out. I’ll be calling in favors shortly…