Much turkey was to be had on Thanksgiving, although I didn't notice it as much. Ninety percent of my time was spent on Quincy VII (in preparation for reassignment) and the special project I've been working on for the past week: Quincy XII (the new central command unit).

With a full belly, new computer, and loads of spare parts (no thanks to Black-Friday), Yan Yan and I finally came home yesterday afternoon with the repaired Bismark. The new fuel tank seems to be holding, and the shipyard will inform me of developements in regards to the engine problem noted earlier.

Other than that. . . just a couple of days of relaxation to look forward to. . . as well as an unexpected construction project to oversee. More on that when I get back.

The two LAN parties happened without much fanfare. Both of them had positives and negatives, which resulted in a zero sum game. Hopefully future re-iterations will be much more fulfilling.

As expected, Yan Yan wasn't happy with me going to these events. But I think I successfully juggled the two over the weekend. Though I care not to repeat the experience. . .

Evil Twin has left for home for the next week or two. He'll be back soon though. . . and maybe even permanently.

As I freeze my rear-end off from this ill-anticipated cold front, it makes me want to find a comfortable position on the futon and start thumbing away through a good ol' console RPG. Hmm. . . maybe I should dig Chrono Trigger out of the pile and fire it up again. . .

I relinquished command of the Bismark and was assigned temporary command of the Agammemnon due to some critical failures in the fuel system (thanks goes to dad for making the transfer possible). The Bismark is currently sitting in drydock at the shipyard undergoing repairs. A reliable source has also informed me of a highly possible and highly fatal electrical flaw in the engine compartment, which I will seek clarification from the engineers in the next few days.

My shoulder is back up to 85-90% efficiency. . . there's still a few MASC (Muscular Acceleration Signal Circuitry) issues to be worked out, but I don't forsee any imminent danger.

It seems that I didn't suffer as much damage as I feared, but the right shoulder is only at 60-70% efficiency at the moment. Cumulative observation indicates that I managed to overstrain the muscles in that area, and at worst I might have a hairline crack in the skeletal structure. A couple of trips to the hot tub so far has helped out on the muscular recovery, and hopefully the shoulder will be at 90-95% of operating spec by the end of the week.

While ACC has yet to contact me, Ken at Best Buy is renewing his quest to make me a full-timer. Because of the lack of anything else on my plate right now (other a couple of web projects), it may not be a bad thing (hours aside. . . they can really give out annoying hours). . . guess we'll see.

Evil Twin took goalie position because that's what he was geared for. I took forward position because that's what I was geared for.

The ball hardly ever got that far in our area, so the goalie's position wasn't threatened that much.

Meanwhile, Evil Twin has been down here for the past several days visiting. Much slaughtering has occurred on the online battlefield. And as soon as we're done with dinner tonight we will be deploying to fend of incoming insurgents at Chaparral Ice. Sources say there are belligerent ACM members amongst them. Too bad they chose the wrong side. . .

Quincy VII got a new upgrade this week. The old and reliable GeForce2 GTS 32MB AGP has been swapped out in favor of the GeForceFX 5700 Ultra 128MB AGP. All my tactical simulations look so much better now.

So it ended being that I realized that I bit off more than I could chew with a project of this magnitude, and it turns out that a group of others have already thought of creating something like this, and are nearing completion even as we speak.

From a end-user prospective, they have a heck of a product on their hands (fortunately its GPL, meaning free to use). From a programmer prospective, I have a healthy respect for the amount of time they must've spent on it. Just manhours alone it would've taken me months to get to where they are now.

After a little modifying here and tweaking there, the database is on its feet, and all that remains is for me to input the data.

I dressed up as a wandering Dark Paladin and Yan Yan came along as playful sorceress.

Unforunately, no good pictures were taken, and I did not get to duel with Matthew. It would've been an even match. . . although Will said it best when he stated the chances of surviving a duel like that: 1/3 of the time a person will win (live), 1/3 of the time a person will lose (die), 1/3 of the time both participants will lose (die). Kinda sucks to be in the old days. . .