Blergh... I was sick on Sunday, though I have no idea what caused it. I woke up, then 10 minutes later, threw up. I felt horrible for the rest of the day. Today things weren't much better, as everything that could have gone wrong, did.

What a great start to the week! ;)

It wasn't all bad though; I picked up a copy of the new Prodigy album, Always Outnumbered Never Outgunned. I've been waiting for this "next" album since I first got my hands on TFOTL, which equates to nearly seven years, or to put it another way, a third of my life. That's a very long time to wait for an album to be released, but I'm thankful to say that it was worth the wait.

Now for those updates I said I was doing to do.

Doom III: What can I say about this game? It's great! Turn off the lights, put your headphones on and let yourself be drawn in. It's made me jump a few times. I'm a sucker for this genre, the sort of person that actually likes to go and watch movies like The Ring (although people argue that the original Japanese version was better, but that's a discussion for another time). I guess you could say I'm somewhat of an emotion junkie... every time it springs a monster out of nowhere and makes me jump, I smile. They've got some of the quintessential original-Doom tricks, like lowering floors that open into enemy-filled rooms, and monsters springing out of wall panels and shadows when you go to grab some cache of ammo or health. Although a new video card would really boost the performance of the game, it doesn't run too badly on my computer (though I did just recently double the RAM as the files I'm working on in Illustrator have been chugging).

The results of that odd mole came back as "abnormal, but not a melanoma", which is good. The scar is taking a while to heal though and I think it will always have a hard feeling under the skin there, as the depth of the cut could be described as "The China Syndrome".

The Olympics are on again and one has to wonder, has it really been four years? I remember watching the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics with some friends at the Bunya Mountains and it seems like only yesterday Cathy Freeman lit the flame, only to have it not do exactly what it was supposed to do. By contrast, I missed the Athens opening ceremony completely, but I have been watching a lot of the events late at night. I prefer the Winter Olympics though, as the sports appear more dangerous while favouring skill over raw strength.

I think I've talked about this before, but even if I have it merits another mention. The Java Sea Noodle Bar And Café has the best noodle stirfries and soups I've ever tasted. I don't know if they're slipping crack into it, but whatever they're doing, I'm hooked. I think it's time I checked myself into Noodles Anonymous, lest I soon be discovered paralytic in a gutter, overdosed on Malaysian egg noodles, with chicken. *scattered empty noodle boxes, chop sticks sprawled from outstretched hand*

About 40 minutes ago the power went out and still isn't back on (go Ergon) so I figured this would be a good time to write a garbage entry, since it's been quite a while.

The past month has been quite busy, particularly the last two weeks. Several long term projects are culminating to create long days and nights with little time for sleep. That, combined with several out of town and full day meetings, has meant the only thing keeping me awake is medical-like doses of caffeine ;) The flip side to all of this is that I've been very productive, and a few projects that have taken a while to get off the ground are now powering through the sky (though perhaps reminiscent of Mir on re-entry ;)

Yesterday I went to the Middle Schooling Conference, which I wrote the registration system for. The conference was a great test of the system, with about 1000 session registrations being placed. The conference itself, although primarily aimed at teachers, was really interesting; I spent the day listening to Andrew Fuller speak about ways of building resilience and the psychology of behaviour and learning. This sort of stuff has always interested me, so hearing all about it fro ma clinical psychologist was a fascinating and rewarding experience - I'm very happy I was given the opportunity to take part in it.

More to follow.