| Wednesday November 27th, 2002 At last I can reveal the secret machinations that went into the surprise 30th birthday party held last Saturday night for my friend GB. We (that is, myself, LA and her cousin who I retrieved from their far-off town for the occasion, my friend TS from the states, and various representatives of his family) congregated at a downtown pub, to which he was led by vile lies espoused from another friend JP. Alright, so the plot was not quite as nefarious as I'm making it out to be - it was very well received by a very surprised GB, and all was well. He did in fact suspect something was up, it turned out, but he had severely underestimated the scale. His eldest sister deserves most of the credit, to be shared jointly with JP - congratulations to them for a job well performed, and to GB for leading the way into the third decade. Now for a six month period in which to fit as many jokes about his age as possible before I join him ... The Xbox is back, and thus my friend are speaking to me again :) I'm now deeply in the throes of video game fever; that desperate feeling that you absolutly must devote all your spare time to achieving a particular level or score, etc. - to be inevitably followed, once achieved, by a period of wondering why I went to all the trouble. Were I to write an ode to video games, I would not fail to mention the fantastic eye-hand coordination it helps develop, and the fine sense of accomplishment that comes with a job well done; and perhaps the lesson they teach that long-term goals are indeed achievable with time and effort. But more rewarding for me than any of those things is the discovery that the latest in video game technology is still not too insanely fast or out of control for me to grasp and excel at, given sufficient time. I'd wondered whether my Atari/Nintendo eyes and reflexes could adapt to the speed of Xbox life, but happily I worried for naught. My grudging thanks to the friend who pointed out that my wonderful web site generates error messages in Internet Explorer. It also has been known to display fonts improperly, alter the spacing of paragraphs and table layout, etc. All I can say is that, web designer by trade or not, I wash my hands of all that stuff where my personal web site is concerned. I'm more than happy sticking to this GUI editor and letting it make as many mistakes as it pleases (see 'Apologetic Note' above). Nonetheless, a reminder now and then is good for ensuring my inner HTML guru's head does not grow too immensely large for his neck - much appreciated! :) |