For those just joining us, or those who've known me since before I made this entry... welcome to the unofficial home of Nidoking's brain! This is a place where I dump a lot of information every night that I really don't want to carry around in my head, or maybe I've got a CRAZY notion that it'll entertain someone other than me. *pfft* Like THAT ever happens. Anyway, feel free to take a look around and see what I've been up to recently.

The Audience Participation exercise to end all Audience Participation exercises (except those that come after it):
Respond to this entry with interview questions that you'd like me to answer in my daily posts. Each day, I'll pick a question (if there are any I haven't answered yet) and answer it in my daily post, then respond to the comment here with a link to that entry. So if there are already some comments down there, you should be able to hunt down the answers easily enough and see what I've already said about myself or the random topics these jokers like to post about. (My friends are great, but a little off their rockers at times. I, on the other hand, have never been ON my rocker to begin with, so nobody out-randoms me and gets away with it!)

I may add some links here to favorite entries of my past, but other than the Young Ones/Monty Python crossover I listed in my Memories, I can't think of any right now. Oh well. We'll see what happens as I remember more things.

Having a great time hanging out with Mom... but thinking I should have brought more Doctor Who, because we watched six episodes today and have only the series 1 finale left before we have to turn to either Netflix or one of the two classic serials I brought. Okay, maybe I didn't need to worry about bringing more. I bought a few more manga at Barnes & Noble, perhaps most notably the first book of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, but as usual, I intend to save the full list until I get home. I also got some SNES games that should keep me busy for a while on the Retro Duo and the complete Batfink collection. Anyone remember Batfink? I don't, but that's why I bought the DVDs. They remember him so I don't have to.

Today's Bridge: Not too bad a day. The opponents made their two games, but we set them three tricks in a doubled sacrifice to offset the rubber bonus, and we had a game from an initial 5H - Ken had eight of them and I had two, but I didn't want to raise to slam, and it turned out that we were missing both minor aces, so it just made, leaving us on top by not a whole lot.

Today's Work: There had been hints of giving me a ticket to work on last week, and it finally came in this morning. It was even easier to fix than I'd expected, once I really looked at the problem, although it's only my understanding of the system and my program that says it'll work the way I want it to. I'll head to the lab to test it on Tuesday, which shouldn't take long, and then I have no idea what I'll do for the rest of the day. Maybe get started on learning everything about the system. It's pretty hard to be a task lead when you don't even really know what the system does, aside from the general overview. There are a ton of specifics that I don't know about because I've never worked with the display, either in terms of programming in it or using it. (Well, I've used it a bit to test some of the backend functions, but mostly just to look at the debug printout of messages.)

Meanwhile, it's a long weekend coming up, and I plan to enjoy it thoroughly. Probably won't get to watch Korra until Monday, since it'll probably be airing by the time I get to Mom's and we'll probably eat breakfast first thing, but I rarely manage to keep up with Twitter while I'm there, so I don't think I'll catch any spoilers. Until then, I've got a bit of time before bed and no desire to start a new arc of Doctor Who tonight, so I think I'll see what games I've got handy and play one of those.

Today's Bridge: A very disappointing day. Usually, Dan doesn't go THAT far off the card, but in the first hand, he overcalled 1NT with a void in spades. It's fortunate that I wasn't strong enough to bid, because I would have raised him. We ended similarly, with me opening 1NT with a slightly-too-strong S A-K-J-x H A-Q-3 D J-x-x C A-x-x - I thought it was more meaningful than starting with 1C and jumping in spades. Dan bid the Stayman 2C, then passed my 2S response with S Q-x-x H 10-9-8-7-6 D K-Q-x C K-x. I think either 3H or 2NT was appropriate - 4H and 3NT are both quite makeable contracts, and we can even make 6NT given the defensive holdings if I play it right. The problem in 2S was that Mike had FIVE spades to my left. The opening heart lead picked up the king, and I pulled two rounds of trump to see the split. I immediately cashed the top two clubs and ruffed my last one, then started on the diamonds. When Paul took the ace, he led a heart, which I covered with the ace and Mike ruffed. I ruffed his club return, cashed my last diamond, and traded the final tricks with Mike. We didn't do too badly otherwise, but the auctions really didn't work for us.

I tried to render the next Flight of the Amazon Queen video tonight, but for some reason, MeGUI choked on it. I'll try again tomorrow night, but something's weird. It's no different from any of the other videos I've done so far, so I have no idea what could have gone wrong. It might have to do with something the computer was doing at the time. Sadly, that and the laundry kept me busy until pretty late, and The Sea Devils has one more episode than I thought, so I'm already not paying attention to it. Better watch the ending, at least.

Today's Bridge: I drew the top card and got partnered with New Dan, which led to some auctions as interesting as I'd expected. Some of them were overbid, but I think he underplayed a 3H a bit. Probably not makeable even so. I went for slam with S K-Q-J-x-x-x H K-x D K-x C A-Q-x when Dan supported my spades, but he bid two aces and 10-12 points, so I elected to stick with 5S. He had something like S A-x-x H Q-x-x D A-x-x-x C J-10-9 - the club finesse worked for 6, and Paul held his ace of hearts for two rounds to give me all seven. I actually considered chancing the slam even so, but we had a partscore and I wanted to make sure we finished our game.

Today's Work: The official announcement was made today - I'm going to be taking over the position of software task lead for the project I'm on. That's it. It may or may not sound like as big a deal as I made it out to be, but it's a pretty important job, and I'll have a lot of control over how we do software development. It's also a lot of responsibility, and I've got a lot to learn before I can be effective in the position. It was worth driving all the way to the lab and lugging my laptop up and down stairs again... maybe. At least I think I have the data I've been waiting to collect. It's burned onto two CDs, one of which is pretty scratched. I hope the other survives until I get it to work tomorrow. Speaking of which, time for another dose of nighttime pain meds, then bed. If these things can make me sleep through an alarm, maybe they're doing me some good.

Today's Bridge: We managed to form two tables, so I got to take part in a few interesting hands. The memorable one had me with S x H A-x-x D A-K-Q C A-8-x-x-x-x, which is incredibly powerful. I don't remember how the bidding went, but Keith ended up raising me to 5C with S A-Q-x-x-x-x H J-x D x-x C 10-9-x. It worked out very well. I had to take the opening heart lead, then decided to cash the ace of clubs to ensure that, if an opponent ruffed in while I was working in the side suits, they didn't do it with the low club. (That's a losing play in the event of a 4-0 club split, but I honestly don't think you can plan for that, and I think the only possible winning play would lose in most other cases.) With only the K-Q of trump missing, I cashed the three diamonds, sluffing the heart from the board, then ruffed one of my hearts, cashed the ace of spades, ruffed a low spade, ruffed my other heart, then led a spade to Ken's ruff with the queen. He cashed the king and left me the rest. After we were done, I had the opportunity to look over New Dan's shoulder at a rather interesting hand. He had S K-x-x H K-x D A-x-x C J-6-x-x-x. His partner (Paul) had opened 1C, Kevin overcalled 2H, New Dan and Dan both passed, and Paul bid 2S. Kevin passed that, and New Dan was puzzling over what to do. Having looked at no other hands, I suggested a 3C bid - Paul has indicated strength by bidding again, and while New Dan's hand isn't quite strong enough to bid 3C over Kevin's 2H, I think it's plenty strong enough to bid the club suit given Paul's strength. Paul can rebid his diamonds or his spades if he thinks either is a more viable trump suit (and New Dan will pass either), or he can bid notrump if his hearts are strong enough, although that leaves him with very weak clubs. As it happened, Paul passed with S A-x-x-x H Q-x D K-Q-J-x C Q-10-9, and 3C is a pretty easy contract.

Today's Work: My workload dropped a little bit when I looked at one of the spreadsheets I'm supposed to use to map our existing messaging to a new message set and realized that it was entirely new data that's not in any of our existing messages, or in our system at all. So there's nothing to map. That makes things much easier. I've got a meeting tomorrow where the results of that big decision I made a few weeks ago will be announced, and I can probably tell you about it after that. I'm hoping to avoid bringing my laptop with me, to continue the trend of not lifting anything heavy while my back still hurts. I think the pain was a bit worse today than it was yesterday, but the medicine is still keeping it at bay.

Some of my favorite LPs are ending... it's a bit sad, but it also saves me a bit of time when it comes to keeping up with them all.

Today's Bridge: I drew almost the top card, which was a nice surprise, and then the cards continued to be very kind to Ken and me. The only contract that the opponents declared was a 5C Dbl, off one. I was even thinking about entering the auction, since Ken's power was behind Kevin's, but not at that level. We made a couple of contracts with nice, long trump suits and weren't set at all. That's not to say that any of our hands were particularly easy, but I made a 4S with a 3-0 trump split, guaranteeing the opponents the king, and it was fortunate that all of the other finesses worked. There was also a tricky 1NT with lots of 4-3 suits and almost nothing in clubs. We ended with Ken making a takeout double of Kevin's 1C opener, and between four little hearts and four diamonds to the ace, I bid 1H. I think Ken jumped straight to four with his S K-J-x-x H A-K-J-10-x-x-x C x-x. Kevin had the A-Q-10 of spades, guaranteeing me no more than one loser in the suit no matter how I played it. A rather amazing turn of events, I think. To avoid monopolizing the entire day with my own stories, Ken got an overtrick in a 2NT where I don't think we had much in diamonds.

Today's Work: I'm making headway through the piles of work, and nothing's forcing me to head to the lab, so I don't have to carry my laptop everywhere and can stay on base, getting my work done. My back still hurts a bit, but I think it's gotten to the point where the pain medicine is actually helping. It's manageable now, even when it does hurt. I think if I take it slow and try not to carry heavy things (I made several trips today to bring all of my stuff into the building each time), I should recover soon enough.

I posted a new Flight of the Amazon Queen video, so I'll slap that up on my LP LJ and Twitter, then get on to the rest of my evening. The Sea Devils got off to a pretty interesting start last night, so I'd like to watch more of that.

Considering that it will take some pretty severe pain to keep me home tomorrow...

No significant change in my condition, which isn't great but isn't bad either. I got another Flight of the Amazon Queen video together, but I'm waiting until tomorrow night to post it because I just posted one yesterday. Then I played more FFXIII-2 and finally found a use for all the fragments I've been collecting. After that, I found an optional boss that I wasn't able to beat, but I might be able to pull it off if I play with my Paradigms a bit and focus more on healing. It sort of helps that I've finally found a second Medic monster. I know where I can get a third one (in the same area as the boss, actually), but unless it learns Raise within less than fifteen levels, it won't help me much.

Settling in for a stream with the Two Guys from Andromeda, at least for a bit. Maybe Doctor Who after that.

Well, while I spent most of the day no more productively than any other day this week, I managed to put a few hours into FFXIII-2 and watch this week's Legend of Korra. I watched some of a Space Quest stream that ended early, and some of a Final Fantasy X-2 stream. I also recorded a few more videos' worth of Flight of the Amazon Queen - I know I need to catch up on making videos, but playing was what I've had time to do this week. Maybe I'll do commentary tomorrow to unwind from shopping. The pain's been really low today, but it's spread across my entire lower back again. I hope that's a good sign... no particularly sharp pain in any single area. Maybe another day of mostly rest will have the problem worked out.

I can't remember doing much today - I slept in quite a bit, watched the rest of The Curse of Peladon (including rewatching the part of the second episode that I napped through last time), and got the third Flight of the Amazon Queen video assembled. I think I'll record the gameplay for the fifth one, at least, before doing the commentary for the fourth. I'd like to keep one video ahead so I know what I'll be doing in the next video and can talk about it. I watched a bit of a Mega Man stream and most of Phiggle's LP of Earthworm Jim 2, which I might attempt to finish tonight. Might wait until tomorrow, while posting my own video.

The pain is still sticking to that one area, but it hurts about as often as it did on Tuesday evening. I can't really keep still for five days, nor does that particularly stop the pain. Looks like I'm staying home this weekend to continue resting. That works better with Mom's schedule too, and long weekends are better for travel anyway. Maybe by then, I'll be completely pain-free. I forget what that's like.

My back still ached this morning, so I went ahead with my plan to request the rest of the week off. This is going to hurt my work schedule, since I've got half a dozen things to do Monday, but it's that or carry the laptop back to work against doctor's orders. It hurt just setting it up to check my E-mail. Eventually, most of the pain has faded, but there's one spot on my back that still hurts no matter what I do to it. Also, some parts of my front are hurting now, probably due to all the slouching because I can't straighten my back very easily. You'd think the pain would indicate that I'm doing something I'm not supposed to, and that doing the thing that makes the pain go away is right, but that's obviously not the way my body works. Stupid body. I'm almost finished with the muscle relaxers, and I've been skipping the pain medicine for the most part because the pain is quite manageable now - that one spot hurts when I do anything, but it's not bad enough to stop me from doing most of those things.

I posted the Flight of the Amazon Queen thread and got a few responses so far. More may trickle in over the weekend as more people have time to check out the videos. After that, I spent some time streaming, mostly Blades of Time. I'd forgotten how to play, but it came back eventually. Let's just say that some of those bosses are nearly impossible - even when I found a strategy that seemed to work, it would take a few dozen more tries to make it work long enough to finish the job. I think that was just one boss, though. I also don't remember whether my health always recharged automatically and gave me one free refill, or whether that's only started happening since I lost a billion lives along the way. Hey, I'll take all the help I can get.

I still have the option of returning to work tomorrow if I feel up to it, but even if I don't feel any pain at all (doubtful), I think my best option is to continue staying at home and trying to avoid activities that involve lifting anything heavier than a controller. The pans of food sort of hurt. My keyboard is a risky proposition. And I'm not looking forward to trying to find a comfortable position in bed.

Another night in pain, even though I got a stronger prescription from the hospital this morning as well as a muscle relaxant. I took off work today and expect I'll take off the rest of the week just to rest and avoid lifting heavy things, such as my work laptop. I'll probably have to avoid going anywhere over the weekend as well, but I'll see how I'm feeling in a few days, after the stronger prescriptions have run their courses.

I managed to make some headway on the Flight of the Amazon Queen LP, at least. My back pain didn't hinder my commentary until the very end, so I re-recorded the last bit, and I just need to encode the video tomorrow and make the thread. I even recorded two more episodes' worth of gameplay footage, just to see how long I could go without a pain flare-up before starting the commentary. And before that, I played through the final episode of Telltale's Back to the Future. I'm not entirely sure about the very end, but other than that small final part, the rest of the story was incredibly solid.

Ow. My back just started hurting again like it did a week ago, when this whole thing started, so I'm going to keep this short and get back to bed. The meetings today went pretty well, but the data capture I was trying to get set up didn't work. I'll see whether it's ready on Thursday when I go back out there. Then I got pulled into a discussion as I was trying to leave that lasted over an hour. I guess we got some important things established in the end, but I really didn't want to be having that discussion just then. I wanted to get home. Apparently, for a lot of back pain. Ow.

Today's Bridge: I got the last slot of the top four, but I heard that there were enough people for two tables with new Dan joining us. He was an opponent today, and I hope he learned plenty. Things like "leading an ace into a high-level notrump contract is probably a bad idea". Granted, we had no chance at that one. Ken went for a slam when we barely had what we needed for game, and we were really weak in diamonds. We got a game on the first hand, and the opponents got a game on the last hand.

The only really memorable part of my work day was two calls asking about a driver's safety course on my cell phone. I assume the incorrect listing was fixed quickly, because I only got those two calls close together and then no more. I'm almost sad. It's the most I've heard of my ringtone in months. I did get another call, but it was about business stuff tangentially related to the big decision I made last week. Good news for more than just me, but not necessarily the stuff of interesting entries.

I read the first book of Spice and Wolf this morning and 14 Days in Shonan this morning. Both look very promising and I'm glad I have more of them. Durarara, on the other hand, was just weird. I don't really follow it, and I know that's the point. It's not bad, but it's disconcerting.

Hope all the mothers out there had a happy Mothers' Day. Mine sure did. Curt and I invited her to join us (well, more like Curt invited both of us) for brunch at Scholar's Inn, where I got a seafood salad sandwich that I don't think I'd order again - it was pretty good, but I'm not a big fan of cold seafood in general, I guess. There were lots of varieties of eggs that I could have ordered instead. After that, we all went to watch The Avengers, which was a great movie even though I didn't watch any of the other movies featuring those characters. It was entertaining, and after the cold open, I was never confused about what was happening. There was a lot of humor that worked well, the action was fun and exciting, and I cared about the characters, although probably not as much as I was supposed to because I hadn't watched their other movies. It sort of makes me want to watch some of them, particularly the Iron Man movies. I'm not a "fan" of Robert Downey Jr. as such... not that I dislike him, but there are people who make memes about him, and I don't see the appeal. I understand where they're coming from, but like almost anything else that people love way too much, if I don't think it deserves that adoration, I tend to distance myself from it. (See: Shakespeare, complete works of.) Still, Tony Stark made every scene he was in. On the other hand, I believe Joss Whedon gets most of the credit for how great the movie was, and indeed, he got most of the credits at the end. What I'm saying is that I think everyone should watch The Avengers unless you completely hate fun. It lives up to the praise it's getting.

Still haven't found the time to do commentary for the second Flight of the Amazon Queen video, and I need to rewatch it before I do, but I've got little else to do tonight.

Sometimes, it's fun to spend a day not really doing anything. I've watched a bunch of Donkey Kong 64 videos. I also did the commentary and completed encoding for the first video for the new LP, but I'd rather like to have the first two ready before starting the thread. Then I played Prototype 2 for a few more hours. The discovery that the map shows where the black boxes and field ops are really helped. I even took the time to check out SpaceChem before The Legend of Korra... and then, since I wasn't actually paying attention to the show, I watched it on the DVR later. I gave the hot pack another go on my back, and I think that may have made the problem worse. It really hurts the most when I'm getting out of bed, though. If I move around normally, I can completely forget that my back hurts at all.

Oh, and I did the food shopping today, since I assume tomorrow's plans will interfere with that. I have no idea what those plans are, other than we're supposedly having brunch at Scholar's Inn. I don't know which Scholar's Inn, nor when, nor even whether that actually came together. If I don't get the information tomorrow, I guess I'll have to ask for it. I expect I'll get a call at 9 wondering why I'm not there already. Gee, I wonder.

Today's Bridge: Our opponents bragged about sitting in the seats that got all the good cards yesterday, and the first hand certainly bore that out, although Raymond bid weak support with a hand that I would likely have fudged to strong support - five trump and almost an opening hand, plus a singleton of the suit I'd managed to scrape together a bid for. Ken made a slam on that one, and I'm not convinced that he needed to lose the trick he lost, but I wasn't paying enough attention to be sure. I got a 3D with short trump - I don't remember the exact hand layout, but I think I had S A-x-x-x H K-x D Q-10-9-x-x C K-x and Kevin had S x-x H Q-J-x-x-x D A-x C A-J-x-x. I lost the ace of hearts and a spade early on, then started crossruffing. Ruffing my last spade with the ace left me with Q-10-9 of trump, and I could afford to let the king and jack take tricks, because I was guaranteed the nine at the end. Not many hands where the strategy is to pull NO rounds of trump. Raymond opened the next hand 2D, and Ken jumped to 3H, leaving Raymond nothing to do but pass - I'd have returned to diamonds, but he was understandably confused. Ken only had four hearts to his name, and I had K-J-x-x to Kevin's A-10-x. Those specific holdings are really strong, but neither of us can possibly lead hearts, so if Raymond declares diamonds, I think he's got a chance of sluffing them before we have a chance to take them. As it was, off three. They got into another 3H that I wanted to double, but I also wanted to see whether they'd go for 4H when I had A-J-10-6. They didn't. As it happened, the board had Q-8-7-3 and Ken had the remaining K-9-5-4-2. He played the king on the first trick to pull my ace, then couldn't find an entry to his hand to lead a heart through me, and I had no intention of leading hearts or letting him take a trick in his hand. When he lost count and led the thirteenth spade, that gave me the ruff for the third heart trick and off three. Kevin finished our game with a tricky 3NT, and the opponents ended the rubber but still lost due to the set points.

I got the spreadsheet that I'm supposed to work with at about 3:30. I assume nobody was expecting me to finish that today. The next Doctor Who DVD I have after the Silurians is Day of the Daleks (I've got Terror of the Autons, but I've already watched it), so if I watch that, I'm skipping the rest of the Liz Shaw season and I believe the entire Master arc as well. That's not so bad, really, but once again, I'm aware of a very wide gap in my collection that I want to fill. Meanwhile, I've got two videos for my new LP to add commentary to, which I'd like to get started on tonight.

My back still hurt this morning, and does now a bit, but it's definitely improving. The pain medicine and hot pack didn't seem to have any effect, but if it goes away on its own over time, I'm satisfied with that. I'm glad I elected not to stay home and lie in bed all day, which I did consider. Not that much happened at work, though. The meeting I dragged my laptop out there to attend was a bit more relevant than I thought, because the guy who's been in charge of my efforts to gather some data finally told me that, ultimately, if we don't get some of that data, it's not the end of the world. Good to know. I had to let him know the impact of yesterday's decision on that part of the project, because we've got stuff to do as a result, and the deadline for filling out some paperwork is tighter than I thought. Meanwhile, I made the arrangements to do the rest of that data collection that's suddenly not as high a priority as it was when it looked like I was going to have problems getting it.

I recorded what I hope is usable footage for the first two episodes of Flight of the Amazon Queen tonight. I might even take the time to check it out before watching the final episode of Doctor Who and the Silurians. It was one episode longer than I expected.

Today's Bridge: Ken gave up his seat to give a new player (another Dan) a chance to sit at the table and play a bit. Ken did most of the deciding, but he explained everything he was thinking. I hope it was an instructive experience. As for the actual hands, I don't think there was anything particularly special - I doubled a 5C mainly on the basis of Dan's aggressive bidding, and we set them three with an early ruff and two aces afterward.

It was a painful day - somehow, I think I pulled a back muscle while climbing the stairs at work, and it's been hurting ever since. I tried applying a hot pack when I got home, but it didn't seem to help much - I think I'll have to wait until I can lie down to keep it in place properly. A couple of doses of pain medicine certainly helped take the edge off, but I really think I need to get to the root of the problem.

Today was also the day of the meeting for that big decision I mentioned last week. Technically speaking, nothing has officially happened, but I've made my decision and the outcome of it is inevitable. It's just going to take a while before the results affect anything. I still don't want to say anything about it until at least other people at work know what's going on. Let's just say that it may or may not be a long-term change for me, and if it isn't, it's still going to be for a good while.

I made the pilgrimage to the lab today to be part of a meeting, for which I was asked to prepare a timeline and be prepared to present it, and then I wasn't given the chance to speak aside from answering a few questions. They assumed that I needed more time to spend on the problem, decided to get me more time, and moved on. I had to tell them that I have all the time I need, but other things are keeping me from having things to do in that time. It wasn't even a meeting for that, really... we just took the opportunity to put the problems in front of management. I'm glad I spent the day out there. At least I came home, finished my video encode, and got it uploaded and posted. Hooray! Now I can start working on a new LP that won't be as aggravating.