When It Rains...

My power has back on for a little while now, I've just managed to slip the blogging habit and haven't had the time to pick it back up yet.

It was actually not that bad an experience. One of my neighbors, who works construction, was nice enough to go around the neighborhood with a generator and give people a chance to plug in their appliances for a few half hours at a time. That was good for me because my stove is electric (I know, I know, I wasn't the one who put it in.) so outside of firing up the grill that was the only way I could cook things. Spent a lot of time working on my script which is coming along nicely, thanks.

I lost a few things out of the freezer and it's never fun to throw away food, especially with the way prices keep going up. But the biggest casualty was my computer. I thought my surge protector was on its last legs (There's only so much voltage those things can accept before you're basically just plugging your valuable equipment into the wall.) and, well, it was. I've taken it into the shop and I'm hoping it's just the power supply. A casual inspection didn't reveal any twisted hunks of silicon where important things like the hard drive and video card used to be but we'll find out. The power supply was on its last legs, anyway, and its fan would often stop working so it was probably time for an upgrade. I'm just hoping that my drives are okay since, otherwise, I'd loose everything since my last not frequent enough back-up.

I really should move to storing things online - there are any number of services - instead of in my desktop but then I always worry about everybody out there who could sneak a peak at my data. It's not like I have anything important - just stories and scripts and ideas and a bunch of other miscellaneous junk that's the 21st century equivalent of a bunch of crumpled up papers shoved that I cling to as if they were something valuable. But, you know, it's my stuff.

The fact that someone tried to hack into my Guru accounts over the weekend doesn't make me any less paranoid. I don't use them and I really hope the passwords have been changed by now - the e-mails attached to them certainly haven't - but I honestly haven't checked in years and I wouldn't know the passwords now if I tried. I should be better about it but every so often, I try to change them up and make sure my passwords are as safe as can be. All of them. And it's been several iterations so I have no clue what they would have been.

Anyhow, I've dragged out the old laptop which is slow and clunky and even older than my desktop but it works alright now that I've got power again. We'll see about the old computer. Worse case, I'm without a desktop unit, won't be able to play any real games (Not a problem since I'm All Flash All the Time, these days), and I'll have lost a month or three of ideas that I thought were important enough to jot down. I can live through that.

But don't think I'm coming off of break just yet. You see, We got a call over the weekend from the RCMP or probably just the local law enforcement agency who aren't anywhere near as cool that our family cottage had been broken into. Someone has to head up there and assess the damage and make whatever repairs are needed. One of my cousins was supposed to go up in a week or two to open it up for the summer but he's not free at the moment. The impression is that it's pretty bad so it's something of an emergency, too. And since I'm the most available, I've been volunteered. I actually don't have the time to go up myself since it'll mean missing out on some classes and an interview. Wanted to see if I couldn't attend the Obama rally, too, but of all the family my time's apparently the least valuable. Doesn't surprise me much.

So, I'm just about to head out the door for the long trek up north. Where I'll no doubt spend my time filling out police reports, sweeping up broken glass, and dealing with the soggy wooden mess left by any burst pipes and rotting wood. Oh, the place needs to be painted, too. Just popped in to give an update, answer some comments, and pick up Juju (Short review: Ugh. Slightly less short review: Not quite as good as Phoebe but not completely awful. Juju is alright so long as you accept that to play him well you have to be prepared to play completely lame. But Juju is definitely not the best card around and it has nothing to do with Touch of Doom - the problem is the rest of his bar, in that he doesn't have much of one.) before I get on my way. Might be back by the end of the week, might be longer, might decide to just forget about the blog to concentrate on my script, I don't know at the moment.

Oh, interesting update in the pipeline, too. I'm especially looking at the changes to Andromeda who I really think needs them. Or at least something to help her in the range game. Helene, meh, reality diverging from my expectations again but I don't like changes that make her more like Ashi and less like herself. She's definitely a problem, especially with Valkyrie but I'd rather hit her damage and interrupt proc instead of her speed.