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June 5th, 2008
04:29 pm - Goin' Away Get-Together
So!
I will be heading off to the Left Coast next week, and before I do, my lovely wife decided I needed some sort of send-off party thing. To quote the important particulars of her post:
WHERE: Castle N (e-mail for directions, if you need them)
WHEN: Sunday, starting at 6 p.m., going until whenever
WHY: Because you're going to miss him She also said something about bringing something vaguely party-like to prevent me from being a host, but you can ignore that bit.
Anyhow. Feel free to spread the word. I'll be emailing a selection of other Bloomington locals as well, but I'm sure I'll miss folks on that list, and it'd be great to see you all before I take off.
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May 6th, 2008
10:35 am - Bachelorhood Revisited!
Today, I drive ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) swan_tower to the airport. She's off to London for a week, after which she'll be meeting up with me in Rome, where we'll be doing the tourist thing for four days before going on a cruise to Athens, Delos, and Istanbul for another ten days. ...but while she's off in London, I'll be around and about, doing the bachelor thing again before I take off for Europe.
Drop me a line if you're free, in Indiana, and bored as well. :)
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January 11th, 2008
12:04 am - Eulogy for Valeska Niedzwiecki
My journal has been a bit morbid of late, but I am having a hard time avoiding that at the moment. I'll try to make my next one a bit cheerier. That said, I found out yesterday that I was the only member of my family who felt quite able to say anything at her funeral service, so I sat down and wrote something. The first draft (with a few copyedits) was precisely what I ended up saying this morning at the funeral.
( For those interested, this is what I said.... )
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January 7th, 2008
12:59 pm - Family Stories
My grandmother's passing (and notices of such going up on sites like this) got me to thinking a great deal about stories that she told ... and those that have been told about her.
( Somewhat rambling thoughts behind the cut... )
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January 5th, 2008
11:14 am - R. I. P. Valeska Niedzwiecki
Last night, at about 3am, my grandmother passed away. She would have been one hundred years old in April.
When I hear the word "matriarch," I invariably think of her. With her no-nonsense attitude and perpetual sense of humor, she kept her corner of the Niedzwiecki clan together, not with a stern word and an iron fist, but with a chuckle and a well-aimed witticism. She was sharp up until the very end, doing what she wanted how she wanted to do it. We should all be so lucky to live a life as full as hers on our own terms.
Rest in peace, Machute. You will be missed terribly.
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November 18th, 2007
12:28 pm - Mid-November in Texas
So ... the last month has been a rather jam-packed one. A brief update on what I'm doing and where I'm doing it seems in order.
This last week, I've been at the Large Installation System Administration Conference (LISA) in Dallas. I loaded up on tutorials, focusing on Solaris 10 administration and performance tuning, Cfengine, shell scripting practices, and OpenLDAP. By the end of the week, my brain was pouring out my ears, as these classes are very much akin to drinking from an informational firehose. While at the conference, I reintroduced myself to a few people, got to know a large number of very interesting folk, joined the League of Professional Systems Administrators (LOPSA), and got far too little sleep. The vendors also gave me nifty toys, including bar towels from Google, a half dozen T-shirts, a rubik's cube, two bags, and a handful of nick-knacks. All in all, a definite win.
In order to save on lodgings, I stayed with my in-laws, who live only about a half hour away on the DART, and my boss said that it would be acceptable to VPN in to work remotely the first few days of this coming week. Consequently, since my lovely wife and I were intending to spend Thanksgiving with her family, I arrived in Dallas on the 10th, to return to Indiana on the 25th. Apologies to those who weren't aware and had hoped to do something with me during that time.
After a lazy Saturday and a (perhaps excessively) brisk workout this morning, I'm feeling far more human. The conference had started to wear on me, and I hadn't even been drinking that much with the LOPSA folks. ...not that this was any fault of theirs; they made every effort to make it easy for me to do so.
I've also had some stressors of late; good friends of mine have had some really rough times, and there has been some drama surrounding my grandmother being put in a nursing home. ...but I've got my heath, a pretty good job, and a lovely and talented wife. Overall, I really can't complain.
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October 2nd, 2007
04:23 pm - Wedding Diary, Part 1: The Bachelor Party
This is the first in a short-run diary to record more or less what happened this weekend, since ... you know. It's important to me and stuff. It's also an excuse to continue to use my ball and chain icon.
( It all started on Thursday.... )
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September 30th, 2007
11:47 pm - Wedding, Redux
Short form, as I'm exhausted after this weekend: Lots of great people showed up, the weather was beautiful, everyone seemed to have a great time, swan_tower and I got married, and we both appear to be coming down with a cold of some sort.
Thankfully, it started happening after the wedding, so we can't really complain at all.
I'm going to crash now. Perhaps I'll post a longer version later. Thanks to all who sent their well-wishes or came in the flesh; it was much appreciated.
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September 28th, 2007
02:45 am - Drunk!
I am really, really drunk.
I have just returned home from my bachelor party, and I'm rather glad that I'm not worshiping the porcelain god right now. Of course, this may change as the night progresses, but ....
In any case, I hope that everyone reading this had at least a moderately enjoyable evening. I certainly did.
Thankfully, Firefox has a spell-check function. What a wonderful program.
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May 15th, 2007
03:11 pm - Something of an Update
First off, I'm not entirely dead. I've just been moving apartments. I'll be posting swan_tower and my new contact information under a custom friends lock for those I've actually met. If you don't see that post shortly after this one, feel free to comment here to be added to the filter and / or contacted.
Secondly, Jerry Falwell just died. This is quite unexpected to me, actually. I am of the opinion that he was a bigoted hypocrite who sowed more discord than he actually evangelized the teachings of Christ. That said, I hope that those who were close to him find some solace, and I hope that his death was painless. To wish him ill or revel in his death, regardless of my opinions on his politics, wouldn't be very charitable of me.
That said, Sylvester Stallone is quite alive, and he just pled guilty to drug charges in Australia. For an actor whose intelligence I have some respect for, that's just stupid.
Anyhow. I'm not dead, some news is happening, and I'll see if I can post more regularly now that we're moved. Ciao!
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January 16th, 2007
09:45 pm - Life Update
Progress with the car repairs is, apparently, going at least passing well. I received a check from my insurance agency in the mail today, so I suppose that I'm going to be required to write a rather grotesquely large check myself in the near future. That, I suppose, is good, as such things go.
Meanwhile, I've embarked on running what may be the most narcissistic game I have ever conceived. Blessedly, it is a very short-run game, and I shall speak no more of it here.
I have also embarked on Project Get Fit (also known as Project Make Kyle's Gut Less Obtrusive Before The Wedding) by getting a gym membership and being at least reasonably dedicated about going there. Hopefully, I'll be able to maintain my regimen.
Otherwise, I spent far too much time today watching videos of Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry on Youtube. I suppose there are many worse things one could have done. It does, however, make me want to track down some Jeeves and Wooster ... or at least the first season of House, which I've seen none of.
I've also been re-reading parts of Daniel Robinson's An Intellectual History of Psychology, which I'd originally borrowed from jeregenest several years ago as - yes - gaming background research. I had forgotten how good it was. Highly recommended to those who might want to follow the thread of theories of the mind through (Western) intellectual history.
I'll try to post something more interesting in the near future; I appear to have found some sort of work ethic-like thing, though today's release of The Burning Crusade may destroy that shortly. Speaking of which, I have two 10-day guest passes for World of Warcraft (as does everyone who bought TBC today), which I'll happily send to people interested in the game. Of course, you could get the same, plus a DVD of the media at Best Buy for two dollars, but....
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April 18th, 2006
11:43 pm - Friday Evening Through Tonight In 138 Words
Changeling Interlude: lots of scenes, though fewer than I'd hoped. Robot Chicken: Seth Green is my hero. Bloomington Ren Faire: surprisingly good; impressive performances by friends. Sunburn through stupidity. Heather's dinner birthday: lots of cool folks. Easter Dinner with Jen, Ryan, and others: tasty and fun. Zombie-Jesus Movie Marathon: Land of the Dead (Romero's still cool), Undead (Marion's my hero), and Dead Alive (Peter Jackson's nuts, man!). We find out we have a mouse. Monday: The Suck strikes Bloomington (yikes!); long, (hopefully) productive talks. Brenton called me?!? Today: improvements all around, which is hopeful and good. Bringing Up Baby: I forget that swan_tower isn't a fan of screwball romantic comedies; Susan Vance is an annoying character (memories have rose-colored it, clearly). Pile of ratty old jeans destined to transform into a rag rug: nearly fully into their chrysalis.
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February 20th, 2006
09:16 pm - Affianced!
Just about seven years ago, swan_tower and I started dating. In the intervening years, I have thought long and hard about how to go about asking her to marry me. She was, however, somewhat shy of the topic, so she told me that she would indicate to me when she had reached a point where she was ready to discuss the matter.
She indicated as much this past Thursday, February 16, 2006. She did so by ruining all my plans and asking me to marry her.
After a few minutes, I recovered myself enough from laughing in sheer surprise and delight to accept, though I demanded a ring of her. She complied. Thus, we are now engaged to be married.
To head off any such questions, we do not know yet when we will tie the knot, though my money is on some as-yet-unnamed date in 2007. Regardless, this is why I've been in radio silence lately. I've got a fiancée. I love her. She apparently loves me. Go figure.
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January 18th, 2006
05:53 pm - Two Oddities
- Road conditions sucked more this morning than I had anticipated. I hit a patch of black ice on Route 67 just south of Mooresville and spun off into the median. Thankfully, I merely lost $35 to the gentleman who towed me up the embankment and a splashguard, which shattered while going down the embankment in the first place. ...and I was a bit shaken up. The moral of this story: You are never as superlative a driver as you think you are, so be careful, moron.
- Solaris, despite holding a place in my mind as a Sane Operating System (tm), handles Daylight Saving Time changes in a less intelligent fashion than I would have expected. Vixie cron and HP-UX cron both deal with it the way one would hope, whereas Solaris basically says, "It'll either run once, twice, or not at all; deal."
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December 23rd, 2005
01:31 pm - Holiday Cheer
So I'm in Holliston, having returned to my folks' place for the Christmas season, dragging bneuensc along for the ride. As is their wont, my family is promising to be rather possessive, so folks who live in the Boston area might not see us much this trip, unfortunately.
On the flip side, for the first time in nearly a decade, it looks as if the whole Bryant clan (my mother's side of the family) is coming together. All my cousins, aunts and uncle, and grandmother.
On some levels, I feel bad for bneuensc, really.
In any case, if I don't show up online in the near term, I hope everyone out there in LJ-land has a Merry Hannachristmakwanzaa and a Happy New Year. Then again, I may escape to the solace of the Internets to escape the crazy of the family, so I might post a lot more.....
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December 16th, 2005
02:23 pm - Potporri
This week has been too chaotic for full updates. Instead, some vignettes:
Driving home at night with light hail and freezing rain reminded me of previous visions of zooming through star fields, although with a little less Austen and a little more epic fantasy. In fact, it reminded me a little too much of Spelljammer. In particular, I started envisioning state troopers as those conical beholder ships, and how it'd be awfully nice to be able to get home and avoid a death ray.
Carolers, led by saracariad and comprised of too many people to list here, arrived on our doorstep last night while I was baking. They were bedecked in scarves, holiday (and Hogwarts) hats, and sang two delightful carols before wandering off into the night, leaving me in a significantly better mood than I had been earlier in the evening. You know who you are; thank you all.
My coworker Bill apparently has no organizational logic when it comes to bookcases. I spent a good half day organizing all of the old manuals and O'Reilly books that we had in our shared office, and then when we were forced to move offices earlier this week, he grabbed handfulls of books, willy-nilly. He is, needless to say, not allowed near the bookcases any longer.
World of Warcraft ate my brain earlier this week. I simply didn't have the motivation to do anything else, which I attribute to mild seasonal affective disorder and not general sloth. That said, I am feeling a bit more chipper over the last couple days, which is probably due to the fact that I've been getting more light in my office at work.
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December 6th, 2005
03:44 pm - Still Battling the Plague / Update
I've been fighting some sort of flu bug since Thanksgiving, along with just about everyone I know. Word to the wise: don't catch it. It's a pain.
This week has already been rather busy, and things don't look likely to let up.
For what it's worth, I will be in Boston for Christmas, but my family is rather possessive, and my time hanging with friends is almost certain to be limited.
That said, a meme....
( Oh Great Cthulhu! )
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November 30th, 2005
01:19 pm - Life Update
This has been a crazy couple weeks.
( Changeling game ramblings.... )
( ...Thanksgiving thoughts.... )
( ...the weekend.... )
( ...and the week thus far. )
For all that it's been objectively a bad week thus far, I'm reasonably upbeat today, and things could be significantly worse.
I don't have any clever or interesting information or anecdotes for general consumption, save that the Navarro Vinyards grape juice I had over Thanksgiving is worth every cent, and I may very well be purchasing a case.
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October 10th, 2005
04:05 pm - The Two Greatest Words
For your consideration, I present my nomination for the Two Greatest Words Ever (while sitting in the dentist's chair):No cavities. In other news, it's a slow day at work.
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August 31st, 2005
12:54 pm - Oh yeah...
I'll also mention that my girl is awesome.
That's all.
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