Viva Las Vegas

I'm going to Las Vegas tomorrow for a work conference.  The telephone powers that be are still trying to agree on how to play nice in the data market.  So this is a big deal international conference to talk about it.

While I've stopped in Vegas before, I've never actually left the airport.  So I'm pretty excited to see it.  We're staying in the freaking Bellagio.  I didn't pick it, thats where the conference is.

Thanksgiving was good, but busy.  So busy I had to squeeze my own mom out of our visiting schedule.  But with non-stop stress and drama going on for the last month and in to the foreseeable future (trip and all), I just need the weekend.  With that extra time we actually did a tiny bit of remodeling which I felt really great about.  Then, of course, one of the kids came down with a fever.  But that's family life.

In case you ever wondered, being divorced is amazingly hard.  It never seems to get easier either.  I keep waiting for a "normal" time, but I should know better.  Every interaction is going to be a mine field of past, present and future issues.  Stack that on top of the insane goings on at work and I have this very, very bad brew of stress at work and stress at home.  I don't seem to have a safe haven anywhere.  I constantly worry about doing something wrong or saying something wrong or not doing the right thing at the right time.  Generally the consquences for mistakes result in crippling stress where I can't do anything both at work and at home.  I miss my folks and friends in Nebraska terribly.  But there is no time to visit or get away. 

I think (at the moment) I'm keeping on top of it all.  I'm signing some re-financing this week that will ease the monthly cash flow.  I've had some crucial things fixed around the house and the kid sharing schedule has been finalized somewhat.  So it's not all doom and gloom.  Of course, I'll have to go through legal re-negotiation again this year which will disturb all that again.  Several work projects need to hit (and hit hard) in January.  So I think some of the issue is that I just can't see a time when it won't be crushingly stressful.  Of course nothing can be cut or put on hold, all of it needs to be done now. *sigh*

Even the trip is really more stressful than exciting.  I could use the time at work to complete projects.  Plus, dumping the house on Amy for 3 days is uber hard on her.  Maybe this weekend will be calm!  hehe.  Oy! I just keep buying lottery tickets and the damn numbers just won't hit.  I think it's rigged.

Harry Potter (no spoilers)

Harry Potter was very good.  While all the movies have been well done, this one I think stands out as a really good movie beyond its Harry Potter franchise.  The director spends much less time showing us the wonders of magic (moving stairwells, talking pictures, ghosts, etc) and more time focusing on the characters and the story.  The effects are of course top notch.  I haven't read any of the Potter books myself, but my wife indicates that while this movie doesn't change anything, it does completely gloss over some aspects of the story--emphasizing the adventure over the brooding "it sucks to be Harry" mood.



The action is good and the overall plot is engaging. 

d20 Modern Game Notes - Find the Cure

We got a game in Sunday (Yeah!)



We last we left our Intrepid Heroes they were lost on a mysterious apparently abandoned space station.  They were transported there when Christian activated a relic recovered from an ancient undead infested ruin.



Showing remarkable stamina, the troup slogged through every last room of the outer level facing murderous aliens.  Slowly the team is ground down.  In one climatic battle Ryan is struck down by a mighty blow.  Fortunately the group had recovered a number of plasma pistols that seems most effective on the creatures.  Russ (full vampire now) finds 3 dodecahedrons that all seem to vibrate at a nearly undetectable frequency.



Eventually the group stumbles on to a protected room.  In this more function portion of the ship the team works their way to an observation chamber.  Great windows display a view of the earth with a single robed figure keeping watch.  He stand motionless apparently carved of crystal.  It holds a glowing vial--the Cure.  Ryan takes the cure but decides not to drink immediately.  The crystal statue appears to move, but only when no one observes it.  It seems to be made of animated glass.



When Russ presents the dodecahedrons it touches them on each facet simultaneously and they morph in to more crystal aliens.  Once all are animated they open a passage to the center of the station where there is a fully operational starship.  The ship appears to be constructed by humans for humans.  But how it could remain here undetected in near orbit is a mystery.



The 3 vampires, with no food source on the ship must leave for Earth via one of the 6 shuttles on the Starship.  They land on a night side forest somewhere in euro-asia.  Christian, Atanaska and Jeff remain on the starship which also appears to be well stocked with provisions.

October is Over

October seems like a simple harmless little month, but for the Owings family it is packed 31 days.  Two of our children have birthdays in October.  School activites are in full swing including teacher conferences and field trips.  In addition to the kids, no less than 3 other relatives also have October birthdays.  And then there is the tiny child super-holiday that is Halloween.  Costumes times 3, decorations, parties and planning.



The surprise this month was the mini-van breaking down.  So in the middle of all the above we had to scramble to get a new car while I had to ferry everyone around in my Jetta (five of us).  It wasn't bad, just "one more thing" in already busy month.  But the net results are great.  We got a used 2002 Kia Sedona.  It seems pretty good... it has a new DVD player in it and most of the regular stuff.  It does have pretty high miles... 85,000.  But beggars can't be too choosy.



I've not gamed at all the whole month (aside from WoW).  But I have done relatively well at keeping up with some household chores.  I also adjusted the brakes on two child bicycles--gotta do the man stuff. 



I'm really looking forward to Nov and Dec though.  I love the holiday season... I think I must be sappy, but I could sing Christmas songs for the rest of the year.  Give us some snow and put up some lights!  What's wrong with 3 months of Christmas?  Better than 3 months of tax season! 

Serenity rocked

The Serenity movie was great.  I only saw 1 or 2 of the TV episodes and loved the movie.  Not sure how continuity held up with the series, but i knew enough to follow it and enjoy it.  My wife had not seen any of the series and she liked it too.  It's a throw back to what Star Wars was originally ony a bit more gritty.



Not a good movie for children under 10 in my opinion.

Time is infinite

I've been ponder a few deep thoughts lately.  The basis of most of them is this, "Time is Infinite."  This is both big and small.  There is no smallest measurement of time.  So, perhaps alarmingly, each second contains an infinite amount of divisions.  The measurement of time by us is completely arbitrary.  Our physiology defines what we consider a long and short time.  But what if we could change our perception of it?  And just what is time anyway?



Lets say that I can think 10 thoughts in a second... So to me a second has a definition, I can roughly guess what it is and my lifespan would appear to be something like 80 years.  But what if I could tweak my processor and think 100 thoughts a second?  Would my 80 years suddenly feel like 800?  Time is infinite.  We don't need to extend our "time" we only need learn how to subdivide it.  There is an eternity in every second if we could use it.



What is time?  How exactly do you measure it.  When it come right down to it, we have no means to observe time except by observing a completely unrelated change.  We have to see a stop-watch tic.  What if everything stopped moving.  This would include molecules and chemical changes... your brain would stop of course, but now... is time passing?  With no way to measure and no movement to track it, what has happened?  Did time stop too?  Our standard formula for time is T = distance/rate.  Distance... thats movement.  Oops!  Something has to be moving to measure time.



Just needed to capture these thoughts.



So a little more...  Time is infinite.  So any portion of it measured against the rest of it is infinitely small.  A single day in the span of millions of years is insignificant--unless you're a May Fly of course (they only live one day).  But in the span of billons of years, even a few million years is simularly insignificant.  This makes any portion of time insignificant compared to the rest of infinity.  Soooo, that second you think is completely insignificant to your life is no more or less significant than a million years when compared to the rest of time.  But it certainly appears that you can do more in a million years.  This is an illusion.  Every moment in time has infinite smaller divisions and all moments are about the same when compared to the rest of time.



Step back... way back... okay farther.  Look at the whole of the universe in its entirety.  All time and everything.  Now poke your finger in it somewhere.  You've poked into a space and a time.  Now take your finger out and do it again... another space and another time.  But the universe is pretty big so there is a lot of space and a lot of time.  You could experience the universe this way for, more or less, forever.

The Northwest is great

Spent a week in the Northwest attending a great telecommunications conference and visiting my brother.  The conference was all work, but just driving to it was fun since it was about 2 hours north of Vancouver.  It's always fun to fly to Canada.



After the conference I worked remotely from my brother's house.  But while I was there I was able to walk to the mountain spot where he and his wife were married. (close to the spot above).  My camera phone, of course, does not do it justice.



It was great to visit.  I haven't been to the area in 15 years or more.  My brother comes down regularly so I was glad to be able to get up there.



Work calls...