I know I started one like this before but the board seems to have gone quiet lately and the last one of these threads seemed to draw people out of the woodwork...

So...

What have you been up to lately that means you haven't been here?

Me? Well I locked myself out of the house, have huge amounts of thesis and teaching work to get done and will have two extra dogs for nearly a month, including over christmas... I'm somewhat stressed.

PhD Student: Research information sheet

There once was a man named Bruce
Who liked to sit on a spruce
He ate lots of chowder
And yelled at me louder:
"I'm talking to YOU, Mrs. Hughes!"
--> The Literary Genius: Mowgli

I was beginning to think everybody had dropped in to L-space. I know I haven't been around much this past month but I was enjoying myself with the NaNoWriMo challenge. You know, that self inflicted state of masochism that has you trying to write a 50k word novel in under 30 days.
Twenty one hour days are just the thing for sapping the spirit. I am pleased to say I was not alone. Thanks to mutual cattle-prodding and tons of encouragement shared with Katclal and Randywine, who also underwent the experience, we all managed to cross the winning line in the time allocated.

I have a feeling some members are knee deep in parental duties, but that's not explaining the other absentees.

I want to die peacefully in my sleep, just like grandpa. Not screaming and panicking like his passengers.
Don't drink and drive from The Lancre Tavern

Well. Let's see.... We're moving again! To Berlin!
Before we found out, my daughter was sick for quite some time, including a light pneumonia and a quarantine phase at home so she doesn't catch anything until her lungs have fully recovered. Lots of family stuff, too, on both sides of the family.... But that's more their stories than mine, so I'm not going to publish any details.
Also, I am still trying to find a good home for the two cats I kind of saved... and got engaged in a bit animal welfare, and spent some time on, gasp, a cat message board, for the sake of good advice.
And lots of other things. This was a strange year.

Also, lately I have a feeling Facebook an Email swallowed a lot of private chatter that used to end up here, because people know each other well enough to somehow keep in contact where they used to rely on the board. That includes posted links and stories and whatnot.

I'm sure it'll go as always... this board has been a bit cyclical from the beginning on.

"Hoher Sinn liegt oft im kindischen Spiel." (Friedrich Schiller)

Cool Hsing. Berlin should be interesting. Never been there but apparently its been really rocking since some great big wall fell over

Good luck with the cats.

PhD Student: Research information sheet

There once was a man named Bruce
Who liked to sit on a spruce
He ate lots of chowder
And yelled at me louder:
"I'm talking to YOU, Mrs. Hughes!"
--> The Literary Genius: Mowgli

Now... What's my excuse? Meh. Well, I think it has been prety much summed up by the others: things like Nanowrimo don't help, neither do work or being ill with some mysterious ailment that nobody seems to be able to diagnose (House! Where are you?) and the lures of things like Facebook and Twitter, I must confess to being very quiet (unusual for me, that, must add to list of symptomes) on all boards and sites that I would usually be talking the legs off of. If sites had legs.

Damn Spider pig

*lol* Thanks. What a bit of redecorating can do, hm?
Maybe one day some conference will be hosted there that "they"ll send you to. I have a vague suspicion that crazy beach bars in front of industrial ruins might not be entirely out of place in some parts of the city.

PS: We actually wouldn't need a car anymore when living in Berlin, but we'll keep it for now. Because when we've got pesky relatives on the phone and don't feel like talking anymore, we'll just shout out: "I've got to hang up, our car is burning!". Everyone of them will believe us.

"Hoher Sinn liegt oft im kindischen Spiel." (Friedrich Schiller)

I'm still here. I'm around. Floating, working, stressing all the usual stuff. NaNoWriMo (q.v.), work schedules, Christmas, motorways, sleek black electric guitars, J2ME, Symbian development, distance management, eating shoes (but im pretty sure i dreamt that), pasta stuck to the ceiling, pasta stuck to the dog, sticky pasta in general, all these things and more have conspired to keep me quiet (sort of).

Keep rockin y'all. And why not?

Rand E. Wyne.

Q. How do you write?
A. One word at a time.

I'm around... but time management is getting to me. The scope what I do at work is constantly increasing, largely due to my own inability to stop myself from getting into what people's projects, my maddening perfectionism and ranting, and increasing pressure. Caffeine is no longer working as it should be, serving more as an excuse to sit down and rest beyond the usual scope of breaks than anything else. This, in my case, is accepted behavior by all around me, based on the premise that I get more done when goofing around on the net than most people do when trying to work properly.

That, or they're just afraid I'll start ranting again, and prefer me distracted for a while. Can't quite decide which is the bigger factor.

I've also taken up a more active roleplaying schedule, and am now participating in three more or less stable games in Play-by-Post format. Two are DnD 4e, one is Star Wars Saga. One has a brilliant DM and a great small group of players, another has an over-ambitious DM who may have bitten off more than he can chew with his planned game scope and number of players (the co-DM's largely disappeared before the game started, unreliable sods that they are), and the third... the third's nice, though a bit simplistic. The DM's largely learning how to get things done, it would seem, and the other players are mostly of the the same vein... but they're slowly moving from bland writing and two-dimensional roleplaying to something slightly better.

I also go through several hundred RSS feed articles a day now. All of this takes time, sadly, and I find myself investing less time in the board as a result. That may change once I manage my time better.

Anticipate charity by preventing poverty. - Rabbi Moshe ben-Maimon

Farmville, the Kingdom of Loathing, and Viking Clan, along with several other Facebook time sinks(games), Also it is winter and everything just takes longer.

() ()
( ' ,') "don't eat green potatoes"
(> >) Last words of Mrs. Bertha Sperling
@( )_ )_

Well its good to see that people are still kicking. On top of everything else I also have to move office. You'd be amazed at the amount of stuff I've accumulated and also the stuff I moved last time that has never been touched since...

PhD Student: Research information sheet

There once was a man named Bruce
Who liked to sit on a spruce
He ate lots of chowder
And yelled at me louder:
"I'm talking to YOU, Mrs. Hughes!"
--> The Literary Genius: Mowgli

Trying to recover from the flu. My day is usually: Go to work, come home from work, nap for approx 3 hours, have something to eat...go to bed. I'm so wiped out it's not funny any more.

But on the bright side, I've booked my plane tickets to Chile so I can now definately say that I'm going!

Life happened.

Also, I've been reading less due to the fact that I didn't have 20 minute trainrides twice a day. Besides that I also use the mailing list a lot.

_Light moves faster than sound. That is why some people appear bright, until you hear them speak._

Damn that mailing list.

"If I wanted to read Wuthering Heights, I'd shoot my self."

What mailing list? Why am I not on Tephlon's mailing list? pffft...

PhD Student: Research information sheet

There once was a man named Bruce
Who liked to sit on a spruce
He ate lots of chowder
And yelled at me louder:
"I'm talking to YOU, Mrs. Hughes!"
--> The Literary Genius: Mowgli

Darned secret societies...