October 05, 2005

Same Old

Just an update really. No new news to tell - or at least any interesting news.

My 5 year anniversary came and went at work with nothing said at work. I doubt if anyone even noticed. Meanwhile, I have been told that I am now the Hardware Engineer. I'm sorry, I thought I was the 2nd Line Support Engineer. Now it seems I've been relagated to make sure the infrastructure doesn't crumble. Great.

Scythe's replacement has finally been found. Another South African, by sheer coincidence apparently. I don't believe in coincidences and I told Management that to their faces - they laughed it off but I still wonder.

I'm starting to grind away in World of Warcraft so I can get to level 60. I'm at level 56 at the moment, soon to hit level 57. They say the game opens up at 60 but I'm sure what they mean is, if you have the time... For the first time in a while, Horse, Scythe and Kitten were all on at the same time - which is frankly astounding, given that we now all play at different times. They're all level 53, which gives me a slight advantage to hitting 60 before them.

I am still reading Johnathan Strange & Mr Norrell. It's a good book and the adventure hasn't lessened up in the slightest, although I have, if you know what I mean. I'm not keen on reading huge books so even though I will be disappointed when the story ends, I will be happy to start reading something else.

I'm not too sure what else to read - Engines of Destiny sounds about right. A "What if" story, it asks:

"What would happen if Captain Montgommery Scott (now in the 24th Century [ST:TNG - Relics]) zipped back in time to just before Captain Kirk disappeared into the Nexus [ST:Generations] and beamed him aboard a cloaked ship, thereby saving his life?"

The answer is, of course, a complete disaster. Kirk never disappeared into the Nexus which means he wasn't there to help Picard stop Soran from exploding the Viridian Sun. It also means that Kirk never died in that stupid way.

As you can see I am a Science Fiction fan. The other day, interested by the film Serenity, I went out and bought the entire series (14 episodes) of the original tv series, called Firefly.

Tonight I get to watch the first episode with ElshaUk to see if it was a good choice.

4 comments:

The Num Num said...

Books - do you only read magic/sf?

You could try the neal stephenson stuff. Its complicated, and I might give it another go sometime soon.

Relic/Reliquary are good books too.

Crucifer said...

Occasionally, I will try some other genre (when I notice them in the bookshop or library and I think, 'hey that looks interesting') but normally I stick to Fantasy/SF.

I remember Ninja Was going on about Neal Stephenson a while back but I've noticed that even though he (Ninja Was, not Neal Stephenson) is into fantasy/sf, it's not my fantasy/sf - we seem to be in two completely different spheres of influence there - if that makes sense.


Still, I will give them a go - thanks for the recommendation :)

swisslet said...

I used to read heaps of sf/fantasy stuff - and I still maintain that the first three Raymond E. Feist Riftwar books are pretty damn good. Just as in any other genre, there's good and bad, but the good is extremely good. It's just that people have pretty closed minds and just reckon that this kind of stuff is "rubbish". I still read Terry Pratchett religiously too. If there's another writer who is able to capture mankind's foibles in such glorious detail (even when he's writing about trolls and dwarves), then I have yet to discover them. The man is a genius. "Small Gods" is the best thing I have ever read on religion and the religious. Bar none.

Has that rampant plague on the warcraft servers been brought under control yet?

ST

Crucifer said...

It's amazing how many people don't read Terry Pratchett because his covers look too cartoonish.

The rampant plague is actually a bug in the system (ironically) which is only affecting the US servers and one or two of the European ones.

By the very nature of the game, because players can "hide" infected characters, the plague will never end unless they delete the character lists but Blizzard, the game designers, have created a patch that will limit infection.

If only it was so easy in the real world...