Wookiemonster's Log

Alas, it is the end of another calendar year. A universal measuring stick. I've been somewhat contemplative the past few days, and I have also realized that I do this on the annual day I celebrate my birth onto this ball that circles the sun.

In reality, I guess we're all constantly self-evaluating and self-improving. Even if it's evaluating how much of an asshole we've been in the past year and how much more of an asshole we can be in the next year. Eh, it's all good.

As for me... I just set goals and such. Reading goals, writing goals, financial goals, project goals... A year ago, I was hoping to have a sellable novel by this point. Well, instead, I have improved my writing a little, and I'm giving serious thought to looking up some markets and seeing if I can sell "Christmas Spirit" to a magazine or anthology for Christmas 2014. Not quite was I was originally angling for, but, hey, it's a start. I at least have enough confidence in it to make the effort.

Tonight will likely be a quiet night. My sister and brother-in-law are over for dinner. I have an invite to a party later on, but, I'm not feeling entirely social, so, I think I'm going to skip out on it this year. I can't see feeling lonely out in public when I can be lonely at home, so, yeah. Maybe I'll get a little more reading done.

Speaking of reading...

( Here's what I read in 2013... )

( Comics )
Posted at LiveJournal and Dreamwidth

Well, I got a good five or six hours of sleep, but now, I am not tired enough to overcome the congested feeling and go back to sleep. Oh well. Maybe I can wear myself out with house stuff and take a nap later.

Dance is really iffy tonight. As much as I want to go, I don't want to just sit there because I'm too congested to dance or anything. Then there's the whole contagion issue. Grr, I say, GRR!

Oh, and I still feel like I've been hit by a truck. And my abdominals are making their presence known, what with constantly blowing my nose and evacuating snot from my sinuses.

Fortunately, I don't have much left to get done this weekend.

More later. Maybe.

( Reading Update: Books read so far this year )

Posted at LiveJournal and Dreamwidth

Ugh.

Woke up with a nasty headache and sinus congestion. I blame the weather, the impending heat wave, and everyone cutting their grass over the past few days. Including myself. And tonight, I've had some esophagitis issues and resultant anxiety. I am Not Happy. To round all this out, I had some anxiety this morning, since I had nightmares all last night and woke up several times. So, I didn't sleep well. Despite that, I couldn't seem to sleep for more than an hour at a time during the day. So, in addition to the anxiety, I have a decidedly disconnected feeling today.

Rocky pretty much stayed with me all day, whether I was napping or downstairs watching TV. He, Yoda, Bonnie, and I finished watching Terminator 2: Judgment Day and started watching season two, volume one of the original Transformers. You know, the introduction of Spike's girlfriend, Carlie, has Carlie as a rather strong female character. She's not only a grad student at MIT, but she also manages to hang out with the Autobots and even plants a bomb on Decepticon HQ. And her grasp of particle physics allows her to sabotage Wheeljack's stolen invention - the Immobilizer (which sounds like a knee brace used right after surgery to me). She's just shy of a Mary Sue character, which makes her a welcome addition instead of annoying.

I still say T2 is an awesome movie and not only my favorite Terminator movie, but also one of my all-time favorites. Sadly, it's depressing on how, in the same way no one listens to Sarah Connor, our defense department doesn't listen to many people about programming machines to do our killing for us. Terminators, Cylons... We're screwed because human hubris makes those people think they'll stay in control. Then again, because we can't value other human lives, we're pretty much boned in any event.

To be clear: I'm not against artificial intelligence. In fact, done right, AI can be more human than human intelligence. And when you program a machine to not kill, but rather to protect life, as Asimov does, then we get Data, KITT, and Emergency Medical Holograms. It's creating machines that can learn to kill that bothers me. It's bad enough that we kill, but, and apologies if this seems a bit cavalier, but, have we gotten so lazy that we need machines to kill for us? If that's the case, then maybe we deserve what we've got coming to us.

But then, I lose faith in humanity a little bit every day...

( Books read so far in 2012... )

( Comics )
Posted at LiveJournal and Dreamwidth