To the rear-left of me, Jaeger and bouncing sit, each deeply involved in the creation of their projects, as am I. Well, not that deeply, I suppose. But festing, nonetheless.

I face north at the wall next to the front door. Dagobah sits somewhat haphazardly to the left of my desk, situated at a slight angle not quite parallel to the desk. Surrounding it are the usual nest of cables, along with a half full bag of chips and multiple beverage containers at various levels of emptyness, which are themselves nestled among white plastic bags bearing the red labels of competing grocery chains.

In the northwest corner, about four meters to my left, my television -- still fresh with that "new electronics" smell -- rests atop an old printer stand procured from bouncing's room. At this rare moment, it is off.

In front of it, and down on the floor, bouncing's stereo unit sits, my DVD player resting atop it. His speakers are wired about a with about a meter of space on each side.

Continuing to pan, we pass by Jaeger at Ziyal. The music of Enigma, "Return to Innocence", emanates from his PC speakers. Bouncing's television in the southwest corner, and bouncing typing at Festery in what is historically Dagobah's position, but rotated 90 degrees, so bouncing faces east.

Is all this irrelevant detail, which -- given the state of my brain -- would probably only make sense to those who were there anyway, boring everyone to death? Oh well. No soup for you.

Evil light from the outside begins to breach the premises, starting to edge between the closed window blinds, foreshadowing the inevitable tyranny of sunshine, soon to approach. While my own bedroom downstairs is fairly well equipped to ward off this silent invader's photon attacks at any time of the day, this area is not. Hackish, and cheap, but my solution serves me well. I may retreat to it soon. We'll see.

[Bitscape departs for a few minutes to use the restroom. Returns.] A little more information than I needed. Right.

Should I even begin an attempt to enumerate the events of the past 36 hours? I shall.

Well, let's see. Friday afternoon, prior to the relatively long rambling I made about DVD, Lars, and other various stuff, I reached a more fair and equitable agreement with the parental units about covering my share of the living expenses around here for the remainder of my stay. I think after the DVD purchase, they kind of "got" that I'm not exactly hurting for cash. To be honest, I was glad for that. Alleviated a lot of my guilt at being such a moocher.

Friday night, the entire family took a trip to the not-so-long-ago-constructed zone of mass commercialism to the southeast. As always, bouncing and I perused the O'Reilly titles at Barnes and Noble. I ran across and examined the Mastering Algorithms in C book, thinking it might be a good one to read to expand and enhance my knowledge, but decided against purchasing it, on account that I've got more than enough unread material around here to last for months, and buying it now would almost certainly consign it to the same fate. I also seriously considered Cryptonomicon -- it looked really cool, and I've heard nothing but good about it -- but put it back on the shelf for the same reason.

I then wandered over to Circut City, knowing full well long before entering the store which I area I would immediately gravitate toward. Yes, I now count myself among the ranks of the DVD addicted. I make no attempt to justify it against previous statements, actions, or motives. It just is. I still believe the actions of MPAA lawyers to be reprehensible. Good movies are still good movies. I choose what I choose, fully cognizant of the circumstances. I may elaborate more on my thought processes in a future rambling, if and when I'm ready to articulate. Or maybe there's nothing new to say, and everything has either been said already, or it is patently obvious. Let it go right now.

Yes, I made a purchase. Maybe a little bigger than I should have, but I did. Happy bank account depletion card needs to rest for a while now. :)

We returned, and did the full fest setup, positions and room layout quite different than usual, as indicated at the beginning of this rambling. In case it wasn't obvious, the rambling I made yesterday was sarcastic in the extreme. Yeah, we were productive. IF you consider sitting like blobs on the couch and watching Contact in all its grandeur, followed by a bunch of the behind the scenes coolness, to be productive. Ok, bouncing might have gotten a little done toward the end there, but I certainly didn't.

After he went to bed, I watched several scenes with the audio of Jodi Foster's commentary until I was so dead tired that my eyelids would have required propping toothpicks to hold them open. I went to bed.

Upon waking, I got my courage, and decided to finally follow in the footsteps of one of the geek fashion gods of our time (lol... yeah, whatever). My head, the ink sponge. lol. Yep. So it is. I like, and that's what matters. :)

The morning about to turn to afternoon, I proceeded to watch some music video footage. Good stuff. I think my favorite of the bunch is Frozen, although that's debatable. As far as a visual mood setter, it certainly does the trick. I dunno though. They're all really good.

Spent the afternoon basicly lazing around. Watched most of the Jodie Foster commentary on Contact. Most excellent. As if I didn't already love that movie enough, I think my appreciacion was enhanced even more by her insights. Did some surfing too. Took a nap. You know.

In the evening, Jaeger did indeed make it to the fest. After he was setup, and the opening ceremony was complete (led by myself, to the backdrop of the Ray of Light video), bouncing (of all people!) suggested that we watch The Matrix in its entirity. He got no arguments from Jaeger or me, so we did. Would I be repeating myself if I said it was a most outstanding movie again? Ok, I guess it would.

After the viewing was over, I asked bouncing if his appreciation had improved at all. He replied with a negative. He still rates it as one star. I think he must have got some serious brain damage to be able to watch that whole movie through, and not only be less than impressed, but go so far as to rank it at the bottom of the pile. At least he was willing to give it a second try though.

After that, the three of us went to our consoles, where we engaged in our various projects. bouncing, on his mp3 organizer thingee, Jaeger, the database driven version of his web page, and me, the design of my woefully incomplete devel page. I got a little bit of it worked out, but my brain never really got into the coding mode.

I was going to go to bad, and in fact began to do so, but decided to try my hand a a little content before doing so. So here it is. Now that multiple rays of light have egreggiously intruded onto the premises, I shall remove myself from the area, and migrate to my slightly more hospitable habitat. Goodie.

[bitscape]# sleep 18000