This is an actual fragment of an AIM conversation.

Her: "My true love hath my heart, and I have his."
Me: And together we form Devastator, most powerful of the Decepticons."

I got to see the Dalai Lama speak yesterday. I'm not sure there are good words for describing how supremely cool it was.

If I don't seem myself over the period of time between -5 days from now and 5 days from now, it's because I'm elbow-deep in database replication software for our primary website.

"But Zer," you say, "you're a unix admin, not a DBA."

And, like a Zen master, you cut to the heart of the problem with a simple observation.

Seriously. Stupid, stupid, stupid company decided that a DBA was unnecessary when our last one quit. Now we need replication yesterday. POSTGRES replication. POSTGRES with CUSTOM CONTRIBS replication.

At least Slony seems to be up to the task.

MrsZer's mother's birthday is coming up.
She hasn't had a real birthday cake in years, because she has very severe celiac disease.

I am an excellent baker. I want to make her a cake anyway.

Does such a thing as a good celiac-safe cake recipe exist?

I figure some of you have firsthand experience with this kind of thing, so I'm asking here for recipes you've tried, before I go randomly hunting on google.

So cats can give blood transfusions, did you know that?

It's true! Apparently, cat blood types either can't be tested or don't matter, as the procedure is for a donor cat to give blood directly to the recipient (no such thing as a feline blood bank).

There are fairly stringent criteria for donors--the donor has to be older than two and younger than seven, and in the top half of their healthy weight range, and above 10lbs in general.

So it turns out that of the cats that fit that description in a 10mile radius of the vet hospital MrsZer works at, the only one who's consistently available is my younger cat, Nikolas. Sixteen pounds of pure docile stupidity^W love, he is. http://athertonia.org/czarnikolas.jpg

So he almost gave a transfusion to a kitty dying of lymphoma last night. Alas, the sick kitty was fading too fast, and euthanasia ended up being its fate.

Still, it's weird to think that my cat's now on a list of blood donors. And cool at the same time.

This workaday living is getting me down.

Well, down isn't the right word. I've been down, and it's worse than this. Discontent, perhaps.

Job hunt is going slowly and not very well--the last two places I applied to didn't even bother telling me they'd filled the position and didn't wish to interview me, which I'd thought was pretty much a common courtesy.

With the current job, and MrsZer going to college part-time, the state of the bank account is at a low not seen since *I* was at college part-time and working at a sub shop (Penn State Sub Shop on Beaver Ave., Abm0raz.) for my daily bread (usually with a cheesesteak on it, at least you got free food on your shift).

This makes everything tense. MrsZer's big joy in life is traveling, something we can't afford. Her second big joys in life are movies and new music, and right now it's either movies or health insurance.

Her job is making her crazy too. Her boss is the kind of sublte sexist that drives her up the wall, and having met him, he needs to have his stupid grin kicked repeatedly off his face. Imagine a sordid cross between Adam Sandler and Bill Lundbergh. ("HEY, GIRLS! I'M GONNA NEED ONE OF YOU TO STAY TWO HOURS PAST THE END OF YOUR SHIFT TONIGHT, M'KAY? GREAT!")

So basically, the highlight of my month thus far has been successfully getting a set of Ogygos' Bracelets in Final Fantasy XI (yeah, semi-frivolous expense, but both the wife and I play and so do many of our friends, so we agreed it's the best use of $25ish per month of our meager entertainment budget) the other day.

(for the gamer geeks: getting the bracelets requires you to get to a specific elite monster, who spawns in a set place once every 2-4 hours. Only one person can fight it at once, and it's a race to be the person who claims it. Once you kill the monster, it has a 1 in 16 chance of dropping the bracelets. I got 'em, go me.)

Meh, this is just kinda random. Anyone need a sysadmin in the central PA area? (we're tied here until MrsZer finishes school)

Okay, here's the deal.

My dad and my little brother are running a fantasy football league. They talked me into signing up.

This could be a lot of fun. But I have no idea who any of the players are. Seriously, I watch football for the games, but I don't pay any attention to the stars or the stats.

So here's the question--who in the heck should I be drafting tonight?

Anyone have a sysadmin job they know about?

This is only about 10% serious at the present time, since the wife has to finish college (part-time classes, part-time job)

HOWEVER, the wife also wants to attend grad school in Cincinnatti in a few years.

How kickass would THAT be?

This falls under the "somewhat esoteric" category.

I have a $90 flight-sim quality 8-axis 24-button joystick+throttle.

I haven't used it to fly anything other than Battlefield 1942 stuff in over two years. (since I retired my last Win98 computer and, with it, my ability to play Jane's Fighters Anthology.)

I require a good flight sim. Any suggestions?
Criteria:

1. Must have a realistic, rather than arcade-style, flight and combat model.
2. A decent story-oriented campaign is preferred, as is a random mission generator or some form of extended replayability.

Bonus points if it's not a straight dogfighting sim, and I can play bomber pilot.

Suggestions for sci-fi sims will also be entertained, with criteria 1 obviously not applying.

Good mood due to being married and all that. The honeymoon was short but just what the doctor ordered to get my stress levels down.

So of course, one of my (possibly so-called) friends has chosen this weekend to have a meltdown and start screaming at me over...*drumroll* an argument. In Final Fantasy XI. That I (and the four observers I talked to) thought was just random banter.

Sometimes I wonder what's wrong with people, when they can get all steamed up over a lousy video game.

Apparently the argument was the final straw on a host of other problems. You see, I'd organized (a few months back) what's called a "static party"...which is kinda like when you schedule to meet your friends in Diablo2 at a certain time, and never level those characters with anyone else, except you do it every week. Sounds great, yes?

Well, four out of the six people involved apparently thought so, I haven't heard from one, and the last person (subject of my rant/gripe) has apparently been hating it for a long time, and not bothering to tell anyone despite the existence of a web forum solely for the group.

I fail my comprehension check. Is this "normal" behavior, or am I justified in being confused and hurt over not-being-talked-to over a video game?

I'm getting married in 50hours 15minutes 24seconds as of RIGHT NOW.

I'm a bundle of emotions, most all of them good.

Good news. The fiancee-parents decided it was in their best interests to keep their promises. They have a somewhat stormy relationship with the fiancee anyway, and they're generally good people, so yay #1 is that we can afford to get married again. =P

Yay #2: A good buddy of mine from work has been talked into making my wedding his first-and-a-half (he assisted another wedding shoot a few months back) professional gig. This saves me ~$650 off the cost of a full-time photographer (who wanted $900, Jase will do it for $250 and me promising to be a reference).

Yay #3: From the "we're dorks" department, one of my friends just sent me a wedding gift, that consists of labeled His and Hers copies of Guild Wars. Sol, you'd like it--it's like all the best things about a MMORPG (lots of folks, lots of chatting) and all the best things about Diablo II (play style, only people you wanna play with come into combat zones with you, no monthly fee, etc) in one shiny happy game.

As of today, 29 days until I'm </single>.

Julia's parents promised $1,000 to help with the wedding, unasked-for. I thought, well, this is nice of them. And we planned with that assumption in mind.

Julia called them today, since wedding bills are starting to come due. And her dad told her that, well, he had to discuss it with her mom because they weren't sure about this and that...

Long story short, promise made, we planned around it, poof it's gone.

So where the hell am I gonna get an extra thousand bucks from?

The answer is probably going to be Julia's going-back-to-college fund. Which hurts even more.

I haven't had a free weekend in six weeks.

Damn pager.

Wedding planning hates me.

My baby girl kitty (gah, she's three and a half) got a red sticker on her file at the vet for attacking the doc. (And when little Aleksandra attacks, you KNOW she has tigers in her ancestry. I think Doc Griffiths needs at least one stitch on his nose)

To be fair, I'd attack the doc too, if I was getting Feline Leukemia, Distemper, and Feline AIDs vaccines all in one syringe.

It'll be better in August. It'll be better in August. I'll be MARRIED and not just planning it, Julia will be back in school, the cats will be calm, it'll be warm and sunny for a goddamn change.

At least I have FFXI in the two hours between getting home from work and going to pick up Julia. Anyone else here play it? Or want to? Or want to hear about it?

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=143427&cid=12024464

And thanks to one throwaway comment, I now have the burning desire to register "zeriel2movie.com" and make some cheezy flash trailer.

Any suggestions for the soundtrack? Or the plot, for that matter?

TL, if you wanna be my sidekick (I'm thinking "Windows-Server-Boy") you're welcome. I'm in negotiations with actresses now, and you're a "deal breaker" co-star requirement on 90% of their contracts.

This will hopefully not be an ongoing series, but unfortunately I think it may end up as such.

Smacktard #1: The Lady who has the parking space next to me at my apartment.

Look, lady. I know you're not the problem here. The problems are three-fold:

1. The spaces are tiny, even for semi-compact cars, so we have to park close to each other.
2. The retarded monkeys you apparently drive around. One of them keeps smacking your damn passenger door into the side of my car--I see the dents on my doors AND the dings in the edge of yours.
3. The fact you cannot see said dings when I point them out, and so this can't be your fault, it must be the skateboarder kids.

Smacktard #2: Dumbfuck in an Manual-transmission Elantra

Okay, I'm driving on the crowded North/South main street in the college town nearest me (North Atherton, at the Blue Course Drive intersection) last night. Traffic's thick but bearable. I leave a nice big gap, as always, when we come to the stoplight. Only guy in front of me is some dude in an Elantra. So he stalls out, or turns off his brain, or something. And drifts backwards. Ten feet, with me honking the whole time, into my front bumper (I can't go anywhere, as the semi-smacktard behind me is RIGHT behind me). Then he turns and starts gesturing wildly at me. So I calmly wave him with a "move forward" gesture. The light turns green, and he pulls immediately from the left lane, cuts across the right lane, and makes a hard right onto the side street. Wisely, I kept driving for three reasons:

1. My car was undamaged, it was a very low-impact collision.
2. I don't really give a rat's ass if his car was damaged, it looked fine and frankly I don't need to deal with insurance crap over someone else's malfunction.
3. Had I followed him and he actually pulled over to talk, I would have beat him and his car severely with the coal shovel I keep in my trunk (for digging out of my aforementioned shitty parking space)

That's all I have for the day, kids.