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One more minute. One more click. One more kill.

Just one more minute. That’s all. Then I’m done. Then I can sleep.

I can’t sleep, I’ll play for one more minute, one more click, one more kill.

I picked up World of Warcraft about three weeks ago. It’s a massive multi-player online role playing game. I like to think of myself as being on the edge of nerdism. I have the capability, and choose to be, to interact with actual people outside of the computer. I try to stay away from video games like this because, well, they start to consume my life. Addiction to a game like World of Warcraft is too easy. But, after both Frank and Kyle started playing, I didn’t want to be left out.

So now I’m in, addicted, just like everyone else.

Courtney has been kind about it. I try to limit my online time to an hour or two and when we have schedule conflicts. I’m waiting for the time she has to pull me away after a 10 hour stint that included 18 Mountain Dews. I’m hoping I give up before then.

To make matters worse, Chad and I started using Skype to communicate while playing. Courtney drew the line with me when I started insisting that we only communicate with Chad through the computer. I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the VOIP service. Last time I attempted to call someone over the internet was circa 1998, when my brother was living in the dorms at Madison and I had a one way cable modem. The service was subpar. Any internet surfing done during our conversation caused the voice communication to breakdown. Chad and I are able to chat away with very little, if any, interruptions. Still, Court will not have anything to do with it.

I started reading A Million Little Pieces to keep me away from the computer as much as possible. It’s a first-hand account of a drug addict’s recovery at Hazelden. I picked it up after 3 separate people all suggested it to me within one week. The only catch, it had just been added to Oprah’s book club. I was assured that I would still enjoy it, even if Oprah enjoyed it too. I’m half way through it, at my typical breaking point. I have a horrible tendency to leave a book half way in if it doesn’t keep my attention. I’m having to fight my way through the rest of this one. The first 100 pages were stunning, almost breathtaking. Frey recounts every minor detail of every situation which allows the reader to become emotionally involved. He shares his addiction with you. His writing style is more of a stream-of-conciousness. He uses no quotation marks and repeats himself, repeatedly. To me it feels like how my brain processes things over and over and over again.

So why am I stuck? I’ve hit a dry spot. Eventually he is bound to turn the corner right? Rehab sucks, treatment sucks, everyone sucks, right? That’s the gist of the book. It’s a 400+ page novel. Around page 140 he flips. Life is no longer hard. Sure, he’s getting rehabilitated which is making his life that much easier. But it also makes it monotonous. That’s part of rehab though. Give people a pattern, a rut they can follow. Give them a path to walk down so they don’t have to think about it. It just makes for some repetitive reading at some point.

Now I’m assured that it picks up again soon. So I’m fighting through the dryspell. I’ll let you know what I think when I finally finish it. Hopefully soon.

Infosnack - The time spent on the computer at work doing things that aren’t work-related.

Ever wanted to see a panoramic of downtown Minneapolis from the sky? This makes me dizzy. Quicktime required.

This weekend was pretty chill. Courtney and I spent some quality time together doing what we do best: getting into trouble and hanging out.

After a long and cheap night of drinking at Lyle’s Court, Chad, Tina and I tried to hop on a plane for Vegas. At 1 AM we thought it would be a good idea to call the airport, get on a plane, and go. Needless to say, it didn’t work out like that at all. Did you know there’s no redeye from Minneapolis to Vegas? Go figure. After regaining sanity we’ve decided to go in January.

Saturday we intended to do some Christmas shopping. It didn’t go so hot. We ended up parking ourselves at Barnes and Noble for an hour or so. We sat in the knitting section for awhile. Side note: if you still don’t know what to get me, Stupid Sock Creatures has been added to my list. Anyways, a very friendly youngerish lady wandered into the section where we were parked on the floor. She greeted us and made some friendly banter. As we grew more comfortable with her she mentioned she was looking for a good starter knitting book as a gift for her niece. Courtney offered her 2 cents about Stitch ‘n’ Bitch being a very useful reference for beginners. To our surprise the lady was taken aback by the title of the book alone. She would not say the title and began to question the instructions contained within. It was an uncomfortable moment. We realised we had accidently hit a nerve with her. Courtney asked if her reluctance to purchase the book was because her niece was young. “No, she’s 22.” Her friend, or mother, or somebody she knew, walked up in the middle of the conversation. Her friend began a rant about what a poor choice of title the book was. We somehow became surrounded by uptight right-wing-anglo-christian-bible-bangers out to dominate the world one knitting book at a time! The indignities continued. The younger woman proclaimed that there was absolutely no way she could possibly give a book of that type in a family setting like Christmas. I didn’t have the balls to tell her we gave it to Court’s mom for last year’s Christmas. We dropped the conversation and they moved on to the christian knitting section. Sometimes I forget that there’s another 49% of the world who actually voted for George Bush.

The rest of the weekend was spent just coolin’ out, running errands, and just enjoying the moment. There’s a laundry list of things we should have done, or could have done, but we didn’t do. I’m fine with that though. I wouldn’t have wanted to spend the weekend any other way.

I’ll admit I’ve been a little slow lately grabbing on to new technology. If I can’t find an immediate benefit to it then I complete forget about it. In the last few days I’ve run across two things that I can’t believe I’ve lived this long without:

Podcasting - Holy cow, it’s talk radio whenever I want it! I can listen to people debate the merits of browser versions all day long. The only downside I discovered was that any tom, dick, or harry can have a podcast. I found very few quality podcasts that I actually would want to hear on a regular basis. The few that I liked:

MPR: Musicheads - The elitist music nuts from The Current give their opinion even when off the air. It’s typically only 10 minutes long and airs once a week.

This Week in Tech - Highly nerdy nerds talk and debate. Their arguments typically end up dwindling down to “Yeah, well, shut up.” At least they talk about technology.

NPR Story of the Day - People always talk about having “driveway” moments when listening to NPR. You get so engrossed in a story that you can’t leave your car until it’s complete. Now I can listen to it later.

I tried to listen to Adam Curry, the self-proclaimed father of podcasting, but I couldn’t tolerate his ego. Maybe he’s a little jaded because he doesn’t feel he got the mad props he should have for being an innovator in the podcasting world. I listened to one show and decided it wasn’t entertaining. A side note - his podcast is called “The Daily Source Code.” Does Curry know how to actually right any code?

Del.icio.us - It’s online bookmarking. That’s it. Plain and simple. Kyle had shown me Del.icio.us a while go but I just couldn’t find a real use for it. Then I was shown how it can be used to categorize and store useful links. w00t! It allows me to label any URL which helps organize and store all the random corners of the web I visit.

Call me slow, call me a technophobe, but I’ve finally found a use for these two things. I’m off to play a bit.

I picked up Neil Diamond’s new album 12 Songs a few days ago. I picked it up after hearing that Rick Rubin produced it. Rubin has the magic touch not only with rap stars but also aging musicians on the brink of extinction. Johnny Cash found a whole new audience with the American recordings with Rubin’s help. 12 Songs doesn’t go out on a limb as much as the Cash albums, but it’s pretty damn good. It’s Neil with an accoustic guitar and very simple backing music. Most songs are slow with a simple and small sound. Topics don’t stretech too far from love and women. The song Hell Yeah is a reflection on his career and past. He makes no apologies for enjoying his life. Delirious Love is very radio friendly and has a catchy beat. Although its Diamond’s first new music in 20-some years it still feels like him and his music. The album has the feeling of an older, wiser musician, much like Cash’s American albums.

Nerd Note: 12 Songs is one of the albums recalled by Sony over the whole XCP rootkit debacle. I was a little fearful to stick the disc into my computer. After doing a little research I discovered that users were presented with a message box prior to installation of XCP. Luckily mine had zero remenants of the botched DRM. I had no problems with the disc and my computer.

Anabelle (2003 - 2005)

Anabelle was a joy of a pup. She was always full of life, love, and friendship. Her eyes were so human-like, you could see straight into her heart. She loved other dogs and the other dogs loved her.

I remember a time I was sitting on the couch enjoying a piece of chocolate. Anabelle got up on the couch and sat next to me. Before my brother could warn me I had a dog nose damn near in my mouth as she lunged for the food. My brother said, “You have to be careful around her.” He was right.

When Drew and Michelle brought Anabelle home she was just a little thing. Her ears were bigger than her entire body. For the first year we would laugh every time she would trip over her own ears.

Anabelle died yesterday in a tragic accident. She finally met a sock she could not eat. She wasn’t nearly 2 years old yet. We will miss you, Anabelle.