Miscellaneous goings-on:

- Work is a joy. I have become accustomed to operating in ongoing semi-crisis mode because something's going wrong at any given time, and I love it. I love seeing the pressures of schedule and interpersonal conflict force my staff to devise innovative new solutions. I love that we keep getting better every week. I did let go another staffer but I managed to do it in the best possible way, a fair outcome that benefits all. I don't have much time for anything but work (except Elder Scrolls!) but it's worth every minute.

- I did the locking-myself-in-my-apartment-all-weekend-to-work-on-the-site thing, since I've spent a lot of time with friends the last few weekends and the site needed attention, but I only got about halfway through one FIN post and reached an stalemate with writer's block. I don't blame players for taking so long to reply when it takes me so long to write a post, but it does depress me that the game lags so much.

- They're painting my apartment building. It appears they painted shut the exhaust vent for the bathroom, because now the vent makes a horrible fan-in-a-vacuum moaning sound when I turn it on. I'm just glad I woke up in time to move my car away from the building.

- King Missile's Psychopathology of Everyday Life sucks. It's whiny and depressing with no sense of fun or enthusiasm, and track after track consist only of swear words strung together. If you're a novelty act and you've been reduced to strings of pointless obscenities, it's time to go gracefully into that good night, no matter how fun you once were.

- Has anybody seen John R. Edwards? The guy who leads the group in FIN? His phone is disconnected and he isn't responding to email. John Gunter? Mike? Aaron? Anybody?

- My stereo gave me eight good years but it's broken for good. It seems to click off spontaneously and stops making noise, but I can see that the display is lit up and the equalizer pulses in tune with the input. As soon as I touch a button on the remote, it begins BLARING REALLY LOUD, and I have to jump up and run across the room to turn it off. That's super-fun at two in the morning. I guess I'll buy a new stereo this weekend.

- If I don't play Elder Scrolls for a few hours, I begin shaking.


Logical Operator

The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »

White Christmas

We're enjoying our winter vacation in central Illinois so far. Tue 12/22 - When you're hitting the road for your vacation right after work is over, every extra minute feels like an hour, which means I did 45 hours of overtime. The drive was easier than we thought, probably because we had days to prepare this time. Go »

The Wedding

Kelly and I wed on March 15, an event that we've been looking forward to for a very long time. Despite keeping the wedding modest and casual, it still involved a great deal of planning and anxiety, occupying my attention for the last few months. (Kelly was in charge of her outfit; I planned everything else, with her approval at each stage.) Go »

Ketchup Packets

I was verbally mugged by a former coworker today, a guy I used to think of as a friend some time ago. I had the displeasure of laying him off last year, and after months of struggling to get by with nothing but condiments in his fridge, he started a blog to vent his frustration at me and a few other coworkers he disliked. The comments are very mean-spirited, from professional criticisms about my managerial competence and decision-making, to personal and apparently very nasty jokes about my weight and appearance. Go »

Modern Music

Sadness is not when one of your favorite bands (Smashing Pumpkins) puts out their final album in MP3 format only and you miss it because you don't want to get into file-sharing. Sadness is five years later, when you happily stumble across a website with the entire thing available for download and you finally learn how heinous and unpublishable the album was all along. Go »

The Ten Best Films of 2010 That I Saw

10) The Other Guys - An offbeat and frequently hilarious comedy seemingly performed by the seats of the actors' pants. Its randomness may turn off some, but the jokes clicked for me. How nice to have a movie so reminiscent of The Naked Gun in the year of Leslie Nielsen's passing. Go »

Captain's Compromise

I think a lot (too much maybe) about morality in storytelling. Anybody keeping up with The MCU Project might be getting tired of my complaints about how little thought the writers of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. put into this important part of their job. Go »