RandomThink.net

So, here I sit, writing this out on my iBook, earplugs firmly in place, soaring over the eastern U.S. on our way to Brussels.

Brussels? Yeah, Brussels.

See, today hasn’t exactly gone so well in terms of travel. The morning was alright. Lisa’s mom dropped us off at the airport at around 3:45am. Our flight was scheduled for 6am, so we were attempting to get there a couple of hours early.

Delta’s counter didn’t open up until 4:30am, so we basically just stood there, first in line, ready to go.

In the process of checking in, we were told that for the larger leg of our flight (Atlanta to Paris) that we wouldn’t be seated together, but rather, one behind the other in the middle of the plane. Not liking that situation, we asked the agent what she recommended. She said we should drop the seats and just check in once we arrived in Atlanta. Based on her advice, we did just that, and headed towards Comida Buena — the only food place open at the hour — and got some croissant sandwiches (you’d think based on the name, there’d be burritos, but no).

The flight from Albuquerque to Atlanta was pretty uneventful. We touched down at around 8:45am MDT (10:45 local time, EDT). We were actually early, and had to wait for another plane to leave the gate before we could taxi up and deplane.

Once in the airport, we found the gate for the flight to Paris, and were told to come back later, once the agents for the flight were there, in order to get a seat. We’d seen a TGI Friday’s on the way to our gate, so we backtracked and had a decent lunch.

Heading back around 1:00pm, I got in line for the flight before there was anyone there, just to make sure I was first. Trying to ensure a seat and all, y’know.

Once an agent showed up, we were informed that there were absolutely no seats. In effect, the agent in Albuquerque had us give up our flight. We were on the list in case something opened up, but that simply wasn’t to be. We sat there until 3:35pm waiting for a seat, only to be told that they’d oversold the flight drastically and there was nothing we could do about it. There was a 5:35pm Paris flight but it was already well oversold as well.

I understand the reasoning behind overselling flights and all, but it really does seem like a bad business practice in a number of ways.

So, we went and stood in line at a ticket counter. It felt like forever until we got someone, and then forever again waiting on him to find us a flight. Eventually, he found us a connection through Brussels, Belgium. The flight out was scheduled to take off at 5:40pm, and we’d be landing at around 8:30am local time (GMT+1, would feel like roughly 12:30am to us). The flight didn’t actually pick up until around 6:00pm, but we’re told we’ve got a nice tailwind and even with the delay, we’ll be landing around 20 minutes earlier than scheduled.

Then, we’ve got about an hour and a half there until we board a flight for Paris.

We’ve got nearly eight hours on this flight — one has passed so far, and since I’ve got the laptop and we have books and such, I imagine the rest of the time won’t be too bad. Drink service has started, after which there’ll be dinner. It actually sounds like dinner may be half decent.

I’m gonna wrap this up for now. The guy sitting in front of me is bouncing in his seat and it’s moving my screen funny. More updates soon!

That phrase is a bit more entertaining when spoken than read. Oh well.

I made that rather stupid joke a time or two in reference to my birthday, since I’m now 28, or two years out from 30, which I worry will feel too old for, well, anything that I enjoy now. Really though, it’s just a dumb joke to mask fears of aging with humor. Anyhow, let’s move on.

My birthday was on February 1st, and while I’ve been good in years past, this year I just, y’know, took forever to come around to talking about it. I basically got a good deal of cash from people, and an awesome Xbox 360 from Lisa. The day itself was otherwise fairly uneventful.

When she originally got the 360 for me, I was somewhat afraid that I’d regret it — I mean, I have a Wii and a PS2 already, plus I spend easily over half of my gaming time on World of Warcraft, so would it really get use? So far, the answer has been an astounding “Yes”. Between the awesomeness that is Tony Hawk’s Project 8 (which is admittedly available for other platforms), content from Xbox Live Arcade (specifically Worms so far, although TMNT Arcade hit today), the ability to download demos, and the impending Guitar Hero II (with ten exclusive tracks and theoretically more eventual downloadable content than any game to date, so they say), I’m enjoying having one a lot more than I’d have even thought.

That Saturday (February 3rd), I had another one of the gaming-type parties that I’ve thrown in the past, using the birthday as an excuse to get people over. However, unlike a couple of the past gaming parties, people actually showed up! At one point, there were like 12 people there, which is easily a record. I am sincerely grateful for everyone who came, because it was an absolute blast. I was gaming basically from around noon to midnight, and it was all with friends, which is truly awesome indeed. I even got to see people I don’t see often, like Adam and Hunter. I’d like to organize another party again soon, because that one was really just that great.

I had thought about doing an overall life catchup, but really, there’s only been a couple of big events, and they really deserve their own posts. I’ll be reading back over things and trying to remember what I missed, but I know for sure I’ll be talking about an event that will appear in newsstands across town soon. More later!

Hello blog!

I am so sorry to have neglected you so much last month. I could argue that it was busy, but honestly I was just being lazy, which is bad. It is now mid-March, and yet, the front page of the site still shows content dating back into December last year. That’s just wrong.

Sometimes I worry about writing stuff up here, because I don’t feel like I have a lot of original thought to share. I shall try to be better to you, blog.

Love and kisses,
Brian

I tend to listen to music at work, as do tons of people the world over who spend their work hours on computers. I also like to listen to a variety of things, and am completely content to put my music on utter and complete random selection, which results in weird shifts at times, but is still fun.

While I still listen to albums straight through once in awhile, I’ve set up a Smart Playlist in iTunes that gives me songs that have never been played at work. I can then play that list randomly, which adjusts itself as each song plays, so not only do I not get repeats, but I know that I’ll hit everything at least once at some point.

My work library currently has 2288 items, and the Never Played list is now coming down to 1242 items. I can’t believe I’ve actually ran almost 1000 different audio files at work (most are songs, some are shorter things like fake ads from YDKJ or the GTA soundtracks).

Anyhow, I mention all of this to mention a neat little gem I ran across today while playing my music at random.

At some point, I managed to get my hands on a CD featuring the New Japan Philharmonic playing a bunch of music from the Super Smash Bros line of games. I believe it comes from a copy of Nintendo Power a few years back. Anyhow, I don’t know that I ever actually listened to that album, but I did rip it, and have ran across pieces from time to time, but never really listened in detail.

Today, a fourteen-minute “Smash Bros. Great Medley” popped up, and it was really awesome to listen to the music. I’m always amused by video game music played on real instruments. On top of that, there’s a variety of games used in the mix, and it threads between them well. It brought me a lot of joy to listen to the song

Listening to music at random can really brighten my day sometimes.

So, I’ve heard of people partaking in a project where one takes at least one picture every day. I’ve heard some people refer to it as Project 365, which seems to also be a general term for any time that someone is trying to do a once-daily-per-year sort of thing (such as how Mark hit over 365 movies viewed last year, although he didn’t call it Project 365). My friend Emma has decided that she’s going to take a picture every day, and will be posting to a special photo journal to document the process.

I won’t be setting up a separate journal, but I’m thinking that weekly, I’ll try to do a summary post, where I gather up some of my favorites from the past week. I’m also saving all pictures to a Flickr set. Click on the below picture to get into my Project 365 photoset.

I’m not exactly the best photographer in the world, but would love to develop the ability, so hopefully this activity will push me in the right direction. I’ve also signed up for a Flickr Pro account, something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time but just couldn’t bring myself to do. I consider it the money I got from my grandpa for Christmas. Thanks grandpa!

As a photo-related aside, here’s a set of pictures I snapped today of the absolutely amazing icicle structures about my house. There’s a particular area that has a weird apron of snow that’s slowly falling off, developing it’s own icy edge. Click to see the set.