freckles_and_doubt: (Default)
Freckles & Doubt ([personal profile] freckles_and_doubt) wrote2007-02-11 03:09 pm

kill the WABbit

You know, this academic life is actually a rotten swizz. It's this weird multi-personalitied existence where you are supposed to divide your time between teaching, admin and research responsibilities, each of which is sufficiently demanding in itself to require 80-100% of your time and energy. And the lazy academic obscene vacation time thing, about which normally-working friends give me no end of strife? Hah! In my experience the first couple of weeks of vacation time tend to be spent gazing blankly at random objects while not moving much, which is the inevitable result of having spent four months expending 240% of one's energy. The remaining weeks of the vac are spent frantically catching up on research.

I'm trying desperately to finish updating this chapter, but five or six hours of curriculum advice per day for the last week has left me feeling like a piece of chewed string, to the extent where confronting anything remotely resembling feminist theory is making me meep, wibble and engage in frantic work avoidance. On the upside, I made some clothes this weekend, which is fortunate as I threw out approximately 60% of my wardrobe when I moved out of my room, and this five-days-a-week curriculum advice stint is seriously straining my "professional outfit" quotient. I refuse to appear before registering students in an Oblivion T-shirt, or one reading "I talk to cats!" Discipline must be maintained.

But, in mitigation of all of the above, wonderful Cape Town has treated us to three days of rain. Real, sustained, soaking rain, albeit madly unseasonable for February. It's all cool and damp, and I can actually sleep. When the cosmic judges finally come to pass sentence on the iniquities of global warming, it'll be the single point in mitigation.

[identity profile] mac1235.livejournal.com 2007-02-11 02:10 pm (UTC)(link)
Oblivion T-shirt? Photo please!

[identity profile] tngr-spacecadet.livejournal.com 2007-02-11 02:56 pm (UTC)(link)
the bar or the game? my bro has the former

[identity profile] extemporanea.livejournal.com 2007-02-11 03:40 pm (UTC)(link)
The game. My Evil Landlord bought the game, played it obsessively for two months in the evenings while I played it obsessively during the day, and then bought T-shirts for himself and me. Occasionally we accidentally wear them on the same day, rendering our home into something suggestive of a very small, very localised gaming con with lots of staff and only cats for attendees.

[identity profile] bumpycat.livejournal.com 2007-02-11 07:58 pm (UTC)(link)
I lol'd.

Can you *imagine* what cats would be like as con attendees?

[identity profile] extemporanea.livejournal.com 2007-02-11 08:05 pm (UTC)(link)
Not that different from usual con attendees, actually. Self-willed, selectively obsessive and occasionally smelly.

[identity profile] tngr-spacecadet.livejournal.com 2007-02-12 09:49 am (UTC)(link)
hee hee

[identity profile] extemporanea.livejournal.com 2007-02-11 03:42 pm (UTC)(link)
Why on earth?

If you want to see what it looks like, it's this one (http://www.oblivionstore.com/sunriseidcart/pc/viewPrd.asp?idcategory=2&idproduct=95).

[identity profile] mac1235.livejournal.com 2007-02-11 09:31 pm (UTC)(link)
I am somewhat interested in the games, having downloaded the expansion packs and bought a 7600GT to play it with.

[identity profile] tngr-spacecadet.livejournal.com 2007-02-12 09:48 am (UTC)(link)
is that the game that was rude about your computer?

(Anonymous) 2007-02-12 12:17 pm (UTC)(link)
Yes, it said I had medium hardware. I've never been so insulted in my life!

[identity profile] bumpycat.livejournal.com 2007-02-12 02:32 pm (UTC)(link)
Ooh, ouch. It's not the hardware that counts, it's how you use it?

[identity profile] mac1235.livejournal.com 2007-02-12 04:32 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, well I used it to run a DOS emulator and Master of Magic. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Magic) I don't have to take those kind of comments! I'll play Oblivion when I have better hardware...

[identity profile] bumpycat.livejournal.com 2007-02-13 10:28 am (UTC)(link)
Nooooooooes! Now I have to dig out MoM and play it again.

Although, the copy I have always crashes when I use the Werewolves spell, which makes me sad. Werewolves is t3h best spell in t3h game.

[identity profile] extemporanea.livejournal.com 2007-02-13 11:06 am (UTC)(link)
From the description, MoM is basically ShadowMagic without the cutesy graphics. They're similar enough that I can't work out if I've actually played MoM or if I'm remembering ShadowMagic. Now I'm jonesing for ShadowMagic. Bother.

[identity profile] bumpycat.livejournal.com 2007-02-13 11:12 am (UTC)(link)
You have played MoM - I distinctly remember you pwn1ng some sprites which had the temerity to live on a magic node you wanted.

MoM was super crashy, though, so maybe I should look into Shadow Magic instead.

[identity profile] mac1235.livejournal.com 2007-02-13 03:43 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah. There was no patch, but I got a copy from an abandonware site a few years and it gets all the memory it needs under Dosbox: (http://sourceforge.net/projects/dosbox/). No flying invisible demon-summoning galleys yet!
Change terrain is my favorite spell. I only played death once..
Are you in Cape Town, bumpycat?

[identity profile] bumpycat.livejournal.com 2007-02-13 04:01 pm (UTC)(link)
Hmmm, I'll give dosbox a shot. I always went for the eevil Death wizard living in Myrra. So much more fun! And I'm in London, alas.

the name game

[identity profile] maxbarners.livejournal.com 2007-02-13 10:30 am (UTC)(link)
if me and jo had three cats instead of two, that's what we'd call them:
meep, wibble and engage.

word, yo.

Re: the name game

[identity profile] extemporanea.livejournal.com 2007-02-13 11:09 am (UTC)(link)
Surely you mean Meep, Wibble and Wab? the last short for Wabbit...