Literary inclined people will get the title, though Ellsbury’s intelligence is questionable at best often.

So Nanoha is fully operational as of last night, even though Ellsbury dumping the water full of flowers I had bought for Ashlynn for our 3rd anniversary narrowly missed damaging anything in the machine, lucky for him. The Geforce 9800 GTX is a huge-ass video card, takes up two slots for the damn thing, but so far it’s pretty damn good.

The only recent games I’ve played that I took for a spin on the new hardware last night was Borderlands and Portal. Borderlands I pushed all the settings up to high and 2x AA and it ran nicely. Portal I also shoved up everything to high and 2x AA and I’m impressed at how much nicer Portal really looks at high settings, kinda found myself playing a lot longer than I wanted to, including Portal: Prelude. I know this isn’t a top-tier card and there are other games that would look nicer, but I’ve been a mid-tier gamer for many years, so I had to appreciate it at least for a little bit.

Nevertheless it may implore me to go out and try some newer games now that I have the hardware for it, though I dunno what. I am pretty much out of World of Warcraft for the time being, I may try Cataclysm when it comes out, but honestly I just can’t sit through the level grind anymore, and the only way I possibly could would be to dual it and watching NCIS. I kinda want to go through the older Warcraft games actually, as I was sort of interested in the lore and saw some of the videos from the game, but admitingly never played much of the game itself. Probably a backburner thing though, for the moment, going to get back into Borderlands and get to 50, hit the two DLC’s, and be ready for the third that raises the level cap. Shooting things is rather fun.

In other news I’ll be staffing Katsucon this year at the Gaylord, except I’ll be the only one going. Part of my decision to go was because it wasn’t going to cost a whole lot to go, even if Ashlynn was going and I had to get a room, and I don’t get weekends off or something fun to do that often, Katsucon was always my one trip I made each year, so despite Ashlynn not going this year I decided to go anyway. Driving down early Friday and coming home late Sunday. Working Art Show as usual this year and looking forward to some good artwork, maybe something particular good for the new apartment. I don’t plan to spend much in the Dealer’s Room if I can help it, the only confirmed purchases I will make if I see them are 00 Raiser from Gundam 00 and either a Nanoha or Vita figure. I’m going to try like hell not to impulse buy stuff, because that is when it gets terrible, especially in the hentai doujin section. Besides that, I’m also looking forward to hanging out with a couple friends I don’t see often that are going and finding some really good cosplayers to series I like to take pictures of. All in all, it should be a good weekend provided I manage to sleep when I should. I also need to hopefully find time this week to get my tires replaced on that gift card from my father for Xmas, the oil changed, and the air filter changed so my car doesn’t try to die on the way there. It hasn’t seen a long deployment in quite a while, probably since Katsucon 2008 I imagine.

Finally as mentioned about the flowers, last Tuesday was mine and Ashlynn’s third anniversary. I got out of work early around 4, got her flowers and a card, and we went to The Cheesecake Factory in West Hartford for dinner. Food was om nom nom nom as usual, and I tried a Carrot Cake Cheesecake that was terribly delicious, and she did the Blueberry Cheesecake that was also good. We walked around Blue Back Square for a little bit and she bought more of the books in the series she is reading from Barnes and Noble across from The Cheesecake Factory. Most of the shops closed at 8 though, so we weren’t able to go into any, which sucked because she wanted to look at the stuff in Crate and Barrel. We’ll have to go over there some other time, it’s actually about 10-15 minutes from where I work in East Hartford, as I went to the Moe’s there for lunch on Friday. Om nom nom $5 burrito and drink.

Three years though, it’s not a new mark for me, I got to three with my ex-girlfriend, but it ended shortly after that. Sometimes I look back at the last 10 years of my life. High school, college tries, the old gang, the job lawls, and now, and it seems like a long time has passed, and not, at the same time. I have nothing to complain about lately, I have a decent job at a pretty laid-back software company where my president and boss doesn’t take crap from our customers when they get rude at us, a girlfriend that somehow loves me despite how much shit I put her through, a couple friends, and my family. It’s not where I thought I might’ve been 10 years ago, but I can think of a dozen other possibilities right now that could have happened, and really, this is probably one of the better outcomes given what all I have done over the years. People always say I brood too much about the past, I do, but I don’t ever want to live in the past, I’m always looking into the future, and truthfully I often wish that I could have some of those fun times from yesteryear back, but I know that I do not want the drama, the baggage, and the lulz from then to come back with it. Human interaction is hard, which is why I do as little of it as possible sometimes. It’s probably unhealthy, in a number of ways, but I like to think I’ve consolidated my happiness into what I call home.