For the first time since before I left my job at Hewlett-Packard, I took a Day Off.  This may not sound like much, but when you go for almost nine months without taking a day off, it’s a big deal.  I am hopeful there are more to come.

 

So what did I do on my day off?  A whole lot of nothing.  Well, nothing productive in the real world, anyway.  I specifically avoided leaving the house, because if I went anywhere it would likely have been to do something useful.  I know it sounds silly, but I just wanted a day to not deal with anything even the least bit important.  So it was a nice Nothing Day, even more than today will be.  I have a church Tech Team meeting tonight, so I will be leaving the house for something productive.  I’ll probably go to the store afterward and be extra productive.

 

I received my first directly-deposited paycheck from my new job.  I was hoping it would happen yesterday, but it did not show up in my account until after midnight.  More accurately, the check did not fund my account until after midnight.  I actually saw the transaction online Tuesday evening, but it didn’t post until its official deposit date arrived.  When I was with the contracting agency, my official paydate was Thursdays but the direct deposit always hit on Wednesdays.  Now that I am a full employee, my paycheck is still scheduled to arrive on Thursdays (every other one, actually), but apparently a Thursday payday actually means a Thursday payday.

 

So I was up this morning when the check finally went into my account.  I was hoping to see it happen, because I already had Things In Mind for it.  My child support hasn’t started coming out of it yet, so it was a little high.  This meant I could get a Toy.  Specifically, I got monitor Number Five.  Well, perhaps Four And A Half is more accurate.  I do already have four monitors attached, but one of them is smaller than the others both in terms of physical size and resolution.  The new monitor is physically as big as the three big ones, although the resolution is a little less (1920 x 1080 instead of 1920 x 1200).  However, the price was about a hundred dollars less than what I paid for each of the three bigger monitors and it accepts an HDMI input.  My video cards each have two DVI and one HDMI output.  I thought it would be awhile before I could use the HDMI, as a year ago such monitors in my preferred size (twenty-four inch) cost at least two hundred dollars more than what I paid for the one I ordered this morning.

 

The monitor I ordered is a ViewSonic.  I have three brands of monitors between the six monitors in the house (two are attached to Sam’s computer).  Two Acers, two Samsungs and two ViewSonics.  The ViewSonic monitors are the oldest.  The one ViewSonic attached to my computer is number four, the smaller monitor, and I have had it for a few years.  It’s gotten a little dim, but is still quite operational.  I have even looked up How To guides on how to replace the backlight, something I may attempt after I have six big monitors.  Or if it actually goes out, of course.

 

One of the reasons I chose ViewSonic is kind of an odd one.  The ViewSonic and Samsung monitors I have share a feature I like:  They come on instantly.  The Acer monitors display the Acer logo for a couple of seconds first.  It’s very annoying; I want my display!  Sure, it’s only a couple of seconds, but as the Acer on my computer is the main screen, it bugs me to have to wait at all.  Yes, I know, it’s whiny.  Once upon a time not really so long ago, we only had CRT monitors and those took much longer to turn on.  Ah, well.

 

Meanwhile, in the virtual world, things have gone well.  Last weekend, Sony decided President’s Day was reason enough to run a “double experience” weekend.  Twice the normal experience was given for anything you did in EverQuest.  Friday I did my usual burn and grind and got lots of good advancement.  Saturday wasn’t as good as it was a work day and I had a morning Tech Team meeting, so I didn’t have as much time in game.  Sunday was a work day, but I logged into the game from work as soon as I could and earned about sixty or seventy AA points on Shaka.  That’s huge, by the way.  I was in a group within minutes of getting on and we did nothing but missions for most of my work day.  Monday was the usual burn and grind, and again I made good progress.  I may actually reach a lofty goal I set for Shaka in terms of how far she gets on her Alternate Abilities.

 

Tuesday night our guild leader, Frosty, ran what’s called a CoA orb raid.  This raid mission has several special bosses in it which give a reward called an orb.  The orbs are used in every epic 2.0 quest.  I took Dan along as the third and final orb was up for grabs.  (The first and second had predetermined winners.)  He had only one competitor for it, as it turns out, and he won the roll.  So part of what I did yesterday was run through his epic 2.0 quest.  I started it Tuesday night after the raid, but did not get far.  When I got to the end of the quest, I discovered he had to do something inside the instance used for the CoA raid, so I had to get it again for him.  Anyway, he finished it and now I have four EverQuest characters with their epic 2.0 quest completed.  Shaka and Boom have theirs done (Shaka from when it was still a challenge) and my wizard, Geannax, has completed it as well.

 

So it was a good week in both the real and the virtual world.  Today’s plan involves pizza and a movie in about an hour.  After that I’ll probably burn and grind until it’s time to go to my team meeting.  Tomorrow will probably be mostly a burn and grind, and Saturday…Saturday is the anniversary of Danny’s death.  I will spend all of my EQ time playing Danielf.  He’s got his 2.0 done, but there are other things he can work on and I will do them.  I will likely not raid Saturday night as Dan is not really up to snuff for raiding, but on the other hand the Saturday raid leader is hard to predict and may allow him along.

 

I will be posting my usual poem tomorrow.  I will also have a post on Saturday in honor of my son’s death.  I don’t know what I will say, but I will not let the day pass without a special note.

 

Enough for now.  I’ve rambled on more than long enough.  See you tomorrow.