Life is a game of Zork

...or for those of you who never played it, life is like The Mystery of Time and Space. If you find a screwdriver or a piece of string or a plastic knife, you hold on to it, because the universe probably has its reasons for giving it to you.

Case in point: my sister finally brought the computer the other day. Two words: Packard Bell. Yeah. Crushed. It's about half a gigahertz too slow for my pet project, so I might just turn it into a webserver or maybe a legacy system for playing old old old DOS games on or something. So it sat in the living room, where the pigs occasionally nibbled on its cords.

Until Saturday, when I got home and my 21" monitor went kerflooey, as earlier noted. Its occasional usability has degenerated to monochromatic mush. Ordinarily, I would be on the verge of hysteria at the thought of no UT2K4 as I'm in the middle of its training courses and level 51 using the UTRPG mutator (with Regeneration and a +210% damage modifier, thank you very much). But now Bee has graciously donated her monitor and taken the PB monitor, while the 21" now sits in the living room, bird-bait.

The universe gives me Tab A and Slot B. To quote Nimoy, the cosmic ballet...continues.

Arrrr

Boss apologized for the mixup re: not telling me about the shift of duties. He's a good guy. But I still have even more duties than the rest of the gang. I'm cool with that. The important thing is that what I do isn't important (or just flashy) enough for Uberboss to pay attention to, and thus, screw up.

Everybody be sure to wish rewil a big happy b-day, 'cause she's da best. And sorry I didn't get to go to the party. Soon we shall set Crab versus Pipe and see who wins....

Moment of delight, from this week's Book of Ratings entry -- Aspects of Pirates:

Parrots: When you think of the things pirates live for, "treasure" and "violence" top the list, maybe with "hornpipes" coming in a distant third. "Stewardship of colorful avian wildlife" doesn't seem like it belongs there, but somehow pirates attract parrots the way science fiction movies attract snotty weblog reviews. I'd really like to see a wider variety of pirate shoulder pets. You've got the parrots and the odd monkey. What's wrong with the idea of a pirate captain with an armadillo clinging to his shoulder, or a bos'n struggling under the weight of a tapir? It could be a status symbol to have a heavier shoulder pet than anyone else. "We'd best lay off, me boyos! They're hefting llamas!" B