Author Archives: Alan V

Life updates

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Life.alanv.org has gotten another update, which brings it up to date to this past weekend.

RPG Get has also gotten its first expansion set. If anyone actually has interest in it, you should playtest it and give me feedback.

Life has been fairly uneventful lately. On Saturday, Charles, Mark, Evan, and I went to the SF MOMA. They were celebrating their 75th anniversary and had free admission.


I will never understand modern art.

At least they had an entire floor of photography (including San Francisco after the earthquake) that was really interesting.

Work this week has been kind of frustrating. A lot of the stuff I’ve been doing hasn’t worked out like I planned. As a result, I had 6 things to deal with today, 4 of which were issues that I thought I’d taken care of but that ended up being an issue anyway. Blah.

Also the bay area is drowning. We’ve gotten so much rain these past few days, and it’s supposed to continue tomorrow. Blah. I walked to work this morning in the worst of it, and it took almost 4 hours for my pants and socks to dry out (despite me not wearing my socks or shoes).

Lalala

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So recently I discovered (or, rather, was introduced to by Sharon) this awesome service called Lala.

Basically, you can “purchase” rights to stream a song as much as you want for $0.10/song. (You can also stream any song in their database once for free.) Signing up gives you credits for 25 songs. And if you like it, you get the $0.10 off the cost of the MP3 download (which is normally $0.89, so already $0.10 cheaper than iTunes).

If it was just that, it would already be kind of awesome, but annoying to use as you’d have to re-buy all of your music (which is the main annoyance of digital distribution). However, Lala also provides a program that can run through your MP3s, match them against their database, and then give you access to them online (either immediately if it’s a song they carry, or by uploading your file if it isn’t).

This basically means that you can upload your entire music library to Lala and listen to it anywhere you have internet access. Convenient.

I’ll make a proper post one of these days, but meh. You should give them a try*. Signing up is free, and you get 25 free songs to stream.

Also, yes, Southwest found my bag. They also gave me $50 for the inconvenience of having to go get it. They should lose my bags more often. :D

*I get 5 free songs to stream if you do. I don’t get paid and I don’t get song downloads. Also, it will automatically make you follow me and make me follow you.

I Hate Flying

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Today has been way too long.
– Woke up too early to a lot of snow and headed to the airport for a long flight (with two layovers) home
– Waited in the terminal with way too many people (due to two flights from the gate being delayed a few hours) and broken wifi
– Had flights, which were actually not too bad except for the fact that I developed a horrible headache during the last leg
– Got to SFO and waited for my bag with a headache… and waited… and waited
– Went to the baggage office to file a missing/delayed bag claim
– Headed to the bus stop and missed it by literally 30 seconds
– Waited another hour and a half for the next bus… headache getting worse
– Caught the bus at 9:20 instead of at 8:00 as I was planning
– Am now sitting at home pondering clothes for tomorrow (most of my good pants were in the bag that is currently missing) and being way too annoyed by kitty mewing in the other room and pondering taking some advil and going to bed

At least I was smart and carried on everything I didn’t want to lose (camera, cables, laptop, batteries). Still, that’s a lot of clothes (and boxes of red velvet cake mix, and Christmas presents) that I’ve potentially lost.

Ugh.

Hate.

My head hurts so much. :(

Happy New Year

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Given that it’s the first day of a new decade, I feel like I should make a post.
It’ll mostly be a dump of random photos from the past couple weeks.


The security line at SFO on my way out was insane. It wrapped around a ton of times before spilling out to the checkin counters area, where it wrapped around a bit to the left before going out to the right, and extending all the way to the end of the terminal. It took me 90 minutes to get through security. Got to the gate just as my flight was boarding. Bleah.


Decorating Christmas cookies is fun. I’m proud of my snowmen. And my snowmen trees. And my vampire tree/star/present.


Frosting!


Apples to Apples.



Snow! ZOMGZ!


A meat pie that I made. Om nom nom nom.


Fruit pies that I made. Om nom nom nom.


Parcheesi.

I’ve had a nice break. Friends are awesome.

Typing “10” for the year is still freaking me out a little. 2000 seems like only yesterday… and to think I was still in middle school at the time, pondering my high school choices. I feel so very old now.