Wandery Wednesday: "The Last Skateboard of Autumn"

Before dinner, I headed out to the abandoned parking lot nearby. The weather's warmish today, but autumn is here, and the chill is coming. So I dragged out the skateboard and had myself the last skate session of the year. Probably. Barring an Indian summer. 

That kind of kicked up my melancholy, though. Last time skateboarding for the year... I love autumn. It's probably my favorite season--very Gothic, very moody and atmospheric. But all the same, my depression seems to flare up a bit when this time of year rolls 'round. I think it's because autumn is a time of endings, of drawing to a close. I start to think about friendships that have slipped away, about missed opportunities, about paths less traveled by. And so on. I'm not bitter. I'm rarely bitter. I'm just...a bit sad. As a wise person once said, "Well yeah, and I'm sad, but at the same time I'm really happy that something could make me feel that sad. It's like, it makes me feel alive, you know? It makes me feel human. And the only way I could feel this sad now is if I felt somethin' really good before. So I have to take the bad with the good, so I guess what I'm feelin' is like a, beautiful sadness..."

Wandery Wednesday: "I Went to My Work Job Today. I Did a Network Configure."

So over the weekend the phone system was upgraded at work. This involved me working Friday night and a chunk of Saturday to get all the phones hooked up. There were some issues, but nothing too major. 10 failures out of 175ish is pretty solid. I got to learn how to configure the phone network ports using command-line interface, which has been...a thing. I'm starting to see green lines of code running vertically down my vision... Think I should see a doctor. Anyway. It was fun. And most of the issues have settled down by this afternoon. Which is a huge relief. That said, could things have been better? Yes. We definitely need to clear out some ports on our server/switch racks. One floor has no ports for new phones. None. No places to plug new phones into. Nada. Which is worrying and will have to be dealt with. 

I spent the early evening trying to get my budget sorted. 401K withholding, grocery budget, allowance for buying video games and cool stuff, tithe to the crushing financial burden that accompanies being an English major, rent payment, lots of fun stuff. So I'm rewarding myself with pizza, rum, and video games.

Speaking of games, I've been playing Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, which is a fun bit of the old FPS genre. First-Person Stabbing, that is. It's a first-person online swordfighting battle simulating sort of jobber. It's actually quite enjoyable. There are bits I dislike (either have weapon/armor skins be purchasable, like in League of Legends, and make the game free OR make the game cost money and have everything be unlockable. I'm not a big fan of developers who go "let's make them pay for the game AND pay for cosmetic stuff!" CS:GO can get away with that. You can't. Also this was a long parenthetical...) but overall I'd say it's well worth the $6 I paid. Heck, I've put 15 hours in already, which is not something I usually do with multiplayer games. As soon as my pizza is finished, I'm going right back to playing. Woo!