I actually walked to Alison’s a couple of times after the one I mentioned, but I haven’t really been excersising. I haven’t really been eating either, but that has a lot to do with not being employed.

I did get my resume posted on a site or two, but no useful bites from that (apparently my resume seems attractive to insurance companies. I’m a programmer, not an insurance salesman. I have neither the skills nor the inclination. I don’t want to sell anything. Especially not something I’m philosophically opposed to, like for-profit insurance.)

My brother came down last weekend for an early birthday celebration (the day proper is the 26th) and a good time was had by all. We did not get the Battle of Ngushevo run, but we came REALLY close to starting it. I’d forgotten how much prep time needs to go into an AT2 battle, and really Ngushevo was worse than many others we’ve run. With over twenty-eight warships and nearly 500 fighters engaged, it took a long time just to make record sheets, especially since the squadron (what, you wanted me to run 23 stars of fighters on a fighter-per-sheet basis? Yeah, right!) record sheets had to be made by hand. Next time I will make a Word document for it. Sheesh.

Getting appropriate counters was a bit of a problem, too, but didn’t take more than an hour. There were other delays, but the thing that blew the whole deal was when I/we/someone forgot all about the Forsaken Empire’s dropships. Oops. I suppose there’s always next time, eh?

Since I’ve been watching the new Macross series (in, I will admit, unlicensed fan-subs. There’s no other way to watch it, unfortunately. I would LIKE to give these guys my money, but the licensing issues are so tangled that I will very likely never get the chance,) I’ve had a serious hankering to play some kind of an Anime Mecha game, but looking over the available games, I couldn’t find one to play. Battletech’s too far away from what I’m looking for, the Palladium games are crap, and Mekton Zeta suffers from both the lack of a setting and me not having the manual.

I got back into Supreme Commander over the weekend, too, after spending several hours trying to get it to work. I finally reinstalled it and I’ve been very carefully dodging its issue with switching between extended (multi-head) desktop and normal. I discovered that I’m very rusty, so I’m playing through the campaigns again to try to knock some rust off. I found that I’m actually building faster this time through (yay!) but that some things are still quite hard. I never have found quite the right trick for the base at the end of Operation Snow Blind. Arnold’s advice seems useless. Especially the bit about “different unit combinations” that they keep repeating up through Operation Metal Shark.

In other news, antivax is scary, organic food is stupid, and life still sucks.

…Okay, so I walked to Alison’s and back this morning. I’m not quite as out of shape as I thought I was, but my general condition is deplorable. Clearly, I will have to do this more often.

Of course, just walking a few blocks every day isn’t going to transform me from obese to fit any time soon. I’m also considering a more intensive regimen. A few sets of pushups, situps, etc. or something. My main limiting factors are a lack of time/attention, a lack of equipment, and no access to a gymnasium.

And, of course, I will have real trouble sticking to a regimen. Any tips on any of this would be greatly appreciated.

Classicbattletech.com was one of my earliest homes on the internet. For the balance of a decade, I’d gone there first when I logged on in the morning and closed that window/tab last when I logged off for the night.

No more. While I remain a die-hard battletech enthusiast, I have decided that my screen-name shall no more grace those forums. The reasons are fairly simple. Back when I started this blog, I had been banned for a month. My latest ban has ratcheted that up to a year, and the next one is permanent. With no response to my appeal from the administrators forthcoming, and an admission from Paul Sjardin (that would be the lead moderator) that I can’t expect fair treatment due to my long history of increasingly minor run-ins with The Rules

In other words, after waiting a year, I would be banned forever at the first occasion for the slightest mis-step (this last time, I said “shut up” rather than the apparently-more-respectful “cease posting.”) I don’t have a great deal of dignity, but submitting to this kind of treatment is firmly beneath it.

I’m still hanging out at btechunits.com, and I’m going to start re-connecting with some of the other peripheral Battletech Community, but I’ll be on  classicbattletech no more. That means the end of a lot of things, and I’m going to miss them all (actually, I already am,) but it’s inevitable anyway. I’m obnoxious and disliked. Nothing to do about that.

So, I don’t have diabetes. Apparently, my blood sugar is good, though my potassium was low and my liver…enzymes(?) were high. I may have a sinus infection (which would certainly explain the headaches,) and my blood pressure is a bit on the high side. I need to lose weight.

Kind of a duh, but I have no really good strategies to do this. Back when my weight was somewhat reasonable, maintaining it depended on a good couple of hours of solid athletic practice. My current lifesyle is not this active, and I have some trouble with self-motivation in this regard.

Also, I have nothing really resembling a planned diet. I just hunt up something to eat whenever I’m hungry, which might be a contributing factor.

I picked up an application for the Round Table Pizza. I’d hate going back to delivering things, but money’s money, and I don’t see a lot else coming along right now. It won’t stop me from continuing to look, right?

In EVE,  I now have the Doomsday (device) Operation skill, which is apparently a Science skill. Does this make me a Mad Scientist?

So I finally went in and got my blood drawn for that blood work I needed done yesterday. For any normal person, and for me until a few (well, probably more than a few now) years ago, this would be no big deal. A little poke, some slight discomfort, and you’re done.

I actually gave blood a time or two. It’s supposed to be healthy for men, and I’m basically a Paladin. I consistently test LG on those dumb internet alignment tests, and I’m fairly civic-minded, if lazy. Giving blood was basically a no-problem way of saving lives. Sure, B+ isn’t in all that much demand, but it has to help something. So I was very down with the idea, and for a few attempts, my Dad and I would go in together to “feed the vampires.”

That was before the time I passed out. I had got off the couch and headed over to collect my cookies and juice (quest reward, anyone?) I was feeling fine, right until I woke up on the floor.

Since then, I’ve had trouble nearly every time I’ve had blood drawn for any reason,  such as when I went into the emergency room back in 2006. Yesterday was a little different. I didn’t actually pass out, but it took three attempts to get any blood, and I nearly fainted twice. The one that actually worked was a hand-draw. It didn’t put me at risk of unconsciousness, but it did hurt like a bitch. Still stings a bit.

And I was feeling ill most of yesterday on account of it. I still feel a little quesy and should be resting. Naturally, I’m bad at it.

I did a couple of fuel-runs in EVE using the alliance jump-bridges for the first time. They really cut down the trip (something like ten or fifteen jumps reduced to two) and all it takes is a little inexpensive fuel. Of course, there’s still the threshold jumps from nullsec to lowsec to worry about. Fortunately, I’m reasonably lucky and have a cloaking device and a microwarp. But I moved over 60k cargo units of tower fuel in less than an hour, for the cost of about 300 units of LO. Not a bad deal.

Country Haven had some kind of a problem with their network yesterday. I’m still not sure quite what happened, but when I went out there, the routing/proxy server was off. Apparently, it had been off for a while, so I don’t know if the network was reconfigured while we weren’t looking or what. Anyway, I booted and rebooted the server a couple of times, and it started working. So I called it good and let it be. I hope to head back with Gerald sometime soon (he’s the network guy, really, and knows more about that particular network, and Linux, than I do) to do a complete check-over of the system and see just what all got screwed up. Unfortunately, Gerald’s been having some trouble with one of his legs, so I don’t know how long that will take.

We found out why Alison’s air conditioning wasn’t working today, and it was my fault. Well, at least partly. It turns out that in her new apartment, the AC is on the same circuit as the baseboard heaters, and I had killed the breaker to those to absolutely preclude any possibility of an accidental automatic activation.

And I hadn’t thought to check if that was the case. Anyway, she should be much cooler now. Maybe now I can actually get an afternoon/morning free for that lab work. Though, now that I think of it, it’s going to have to be Monday. I guess I need to reschedule that appointment again. Sigh.

Or something. Not much to report. Hot as hell in Richland. Finalized resume, more or less. An HTML version appears here (forgive the quick-and-dirty Word export, for those of you who care.)

And yeah. Still looking for work, trying to stay out of the heat. Supposed to get some blood work done today. Did I mention I haven’t been feeling well for a while? Hm. No, probably not. Anyway, I went to talk to a doctor last thursday and…need to reschedule my appointment for this week…and he’s a little worried about diabetes, owing to my weight and family history, so off to the lab I go to get vital fluid removed and analyzed. Fun fun.

Other than that…yeah. Pretty much nothing.