Melek Stonecutter: Casts Fireball
Beholder takes 41 damage

In what is apparently a common problem for those computers with Athlon processors, the random shutdown problem appears to be caused by an overheating motherboard. It's what I suspected, but I hoped against, because it means I either have to sit here with the windows open all the time (and that'll do no good in the summer), or we're going to have to get inside the beast and stick another fan in there...

"...I had what alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity..."

Yesterday, Kev reported that he'd achieved a state of transcendental calmness, completely unintentionally. Accidental Zen, if you will.
Today, I feel something similar. I've had the first uninterrupted, sort-of-full length night of sleep I've had in weeks, and I feel great. 7:45am is usually an alien time for me, but today I'm in a slightly creepy "hello world!" kind of mood. Bizarre.
Also bizarre is our PC's recent behaviour. It is randomly turning itself off. Not shutting down, not warning us in any way. It just switches off. The monitor LED goes from green to standby orange, but the NumLock light on the keyboard, and the laser on the mouse stay on. CtrlAltDel does nothing. Pushing the PC power switch does nothing. Pressing the reset switch restarts everything, but then we get the "Improper Shutdown Detected" sequence. Baffling. Still, I'm in far too good a mood to worry about it now. But if anyone has any idea what's up, I'd love to know!
(As far as comments go, I'd prefer it if you used the comments on the left. I'll leave the others up in case of further comment system breakdowns, though.)

"e ne em ma ni a gi a gi ni mu ma ma dam e ne em am an ki ga a gi a gi..."

Dear God, now my right eye has stopped working. What is working, however, is the comments system. Enjoy.

(Twenty-minutes-later-update: And it seems that BlogExtra is working again, mere minutes after I get a new comments system. Sheesh...Well, I can't be arsed to sort it out right now. I'm off to do something more useful.)

Fear Is The Mind-killer...Well, Lack Of Sleep Will Do It Too

I am somewhat dazed at the moment. I'm not sure whether it's because of my recent lack of sleep, or whether it's because I just watched all sixish hours of Dune. I was warned by Rad not to watch this until I'd read the book, but I'm a complete git and I never listen to anyone. I think I'll still have a go at the novel soon, though I'll tackle it after a full night's sleep methinks.
Six hours of trippy scifi about religion and drug trafficking after a mere three hours' sleep. Yikes.
Could I have used the word "sleep" any more frequently up there? Sleep. Sleep. Sleep.
I enjoyed Dune, by the way, but then again, I enjoyed the much-derided 1984 version too, although I haven't seen it in years.

Things To Do In Denver (or Minnesota) When You're Dead (Tired)

Hmm. Well, BlogExtra say that the comments problem will be sorted out within a day or two, although I'm a little worried that the problem they think is plaguing the comments system is different to the one that's plaguing this here blogger. Oh well.
I'm writing this at 4:40am, my time (not really MY time, I mean I'm not that arrogant) because I'm having another insomniac night. Still, I've got things done. I've had a very interesting chat with this man about a fascinating new small press project which should be fun. I've put together some material for the soon to be new and improved Borderline magazine, which will probably all get rejected due to a change in the magazine's format, but hey, I tried. I've done final sketches for commissioned pictures I'm to do for a couple of people, and I should have at least one of them done by the end of the day. And now I'm going to try and do something with the mess that is my website's links page.

My God, what an exciting life...

Leave Me Behind, I'll Only Slow You Down

Well, the lack of comments would appear to be due to the disappearance of the BlogExtra server. Last time this happened, I added a second comments system which didn't work properly, and then enetation returned the next day anyway. It's been a couple of days now, but I'll wait it out.
Woke up this morning with a screaming pain in my right shoulder. It still twinges now, eight hours later. I literally couldn't move, and was flat on my back for seven hours. Then, magically, at five it went away. Weird.
Or maybe I'm a lazy beggar, and I just made it up to cover the fact that I slept in for no good reason. You decide...

(Except you can't, because I have no comments system! Hahahahaha...)

Kev's blog has apparently moved, no doubt in order to stop me visiting his blog, a plan which failed miserably. I've updated the link on the right (or down at the bottom if you're not reading this in a full-size window).

Er...

Well, my links are back, but now my comments are gone. Willikers.

Winter Wonderland

It's snowing. =D

And The Winner Is...

Hmm...a lot of people seemed to have a very vague idea of the answer to last weekend's Halloween competition question. Most people seemd to know that there was a connection between William Shatner's face and the first Halloween film. The correct answer is that John Carpenter, looking for a suitably scary mask for the killer, had to resort to using a rubber William Shatner mask, painted white for added spookiness.
The following people gave correct answers, and will receive their prizes in due course if I can be bothered to (a) come up with prizes, and (b) send them:
Rad, Paddy, Liam, and Mr James Leahy (BBC script bloke extraordinaire). BiLly was close enough, and no one else entered.

For some reason, my links keep disappearing. I blame Liam, as he seems to have just moved to blogger. Obviously his presence has messed everything up.

William Shatner's Face II

It was bitterly cold tonight, as I found myself escorting a bunch of children I have no blood relation to around American Suburbia (which is exactly as weird as offbeat comedies make it look). I wasn't aware that I was going to be doing this, so I was rather underdressed as the temperature hovered around 2°C. I actually started to get flashbacks to rugby games at school, of being tackled onto hard frozen ground, of having hands so cold that you weren't properly able to get changed afterwards, let alone actually write anything in any subsequent lessons.
A number of people were doing drive-bys. They'd chug around in their Enormous American Vehicles, stopping outside each house to let thousands of kids out to collect sweets, collect the kids, then move on to the next house. At first, I scoffed and mocked these people for quite blatantly not entering into the spirit of things. As ice crystals began to form inside my internal organs, I began to see the advantages of the American Strategem.

Competition Update: Mr Patrick Booth, currently of the borough of Merseyside, formerly of the borough of Chelsea, has been the only one to enter thus far, but he did get the answer right. Come on people!