So, I think there might be a problem with my laptop’s battery meter:

EDIT: And about 3 minutes after posting up this image, my laptop died, due to a dead battery.

Same as last year, the days/weeks leading up to the NaNoWriMo event are once again entirely devoid of blog posts. That’s because any spare time I may have had in the the two or three weeks leading up November were mainly taken up by plotting. Same as last year, I’m working on a sci-fi story. This time, though, it’s based on a short story I wrote during the summer. It’s the same underlying concept/problem, but completely different set of characters (one of whom is named after a friend’s newborn kid) and a different resolution.

As opposed to last year, when I spent a lot of time on the concept behind the story and no time at all on actually plotting out the flow, this year I’ve jotted down the summaries of all the scenes, ahead of time. So now all I have to do is allot the required number of days per scene (about 2.5) and the story feels like it’s writing itself. It’s a much less stressful and more enjoyable NaNo experience than last year’s. And hey, I’m already at 10,000 words. I missed a day last week due to excessive alcohol intake (Trivia Tuesday, you understand) but aside from that I’ve been writing regularly, every day, about 1.6 thousand words, the required amount for me to coast through November and have 50 thousand words by December.

Speaking of alcohol intake, I’m considering not having less booze than normal, as I’ve found that writing while intoxicated just doesn’t cut it for me. At that point, I’d rather be listening to Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin or playing GTA: IV. Not exactly a good writing atmosphere.

And speaking of music (yes, this post is taking on a very tangential motif, but what the hell do I care?!), I’ve recently discovered Led Zeppelin and I gotta say: shit, I’ve been missing out! “Ramble On” is one of the best songs I have ever heard. Period. (Have you noticed that it starts out kinda like The Guess Who’s “No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature”? It’s weird, but I constantly think I’m going to hear “no sugar tonight” just as the song breaks into obvious Led Zeppelin.)

Sadly, I don’t expect to be writing much here until way after NaNo is over. This post itself is being written in between lunch and watching “Back to the Future: Part 2″. After that, probably going to head out to a coffee shop to get the day’s allotment of sci-fi written up.

Rockstar’s second episodic download for GTA: IV is coming in just two long weeks, and I anticipate this to be the best experience, probably outdoing The Lost and most certainly the original. This episodic brings with it the content which was, unfortunately, missing from GTA:IV. Coming back is the glitz of Vice City, the super-weapons of San Andreas, the all-purpose tank (re-imagined as a SWAT Tank, or APC), a larger variety of helicopters (including one based on the AH-6 Little Bird from Vice) and the parachutes for those dearly-missed BASE-jumping exercises.

And, if that’s not all, we will now be able to experience Liberty City from yet another perspective. Niko was an OK character, certainly nothing stellar and sometimes just an asshole. Johnny was great, someone I could really enjoy playing as, but his was a dark world. Luis, the protagonist of the new game, will be the body-guard and assistant of the titular character, Anthony “Gay Tony” Prince. Seems like we’ll now be able to experience Liberty from a different vantage point. Some places, a tough biker or an immigrant mobster just can’t get into (at least, not without a fire-fight or an invite from double-crossing politicians).

I’ve hit a semi-boring patch of photos with the NY-NY and MGM casino photos. Nothing interesting to process/post. At least, that’s the reason I’m giving for only uploading 5 photos (and only 1 public photo!). Below is the fish tank from the Rainforest Cafe at the MGM.

In a bit of related news, a few hours ago I got an email from an online guide that is apparently considering using one of my photos on their site. The site is free, I’ll get no money for this, and all I heard is that my photo is being short-listed, but it’s still something. I’ll post here, obviously, if my photo gets picked.

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Currently listening to: Jethro Tull

I’m too tired today. And, frankly, the photos I took of NY-NY were just boring, so I wasn’t in the mood to process too many of them. Did upload a few, then skipped ahead to the MGM lion exhibit photos. Those turned out a bit better. Below is an example.

More of the Flickr project to motivate me. Managed to upload 10 more Vegas photos (8 public) to Flickr. This one wasn’t too bad.

This is the next photo in my daily-upload project. Today I actually managed to upload 14 (only 12 are public, though) Vegas photos. Whoo-hoo!

This week I went to Vegas and brought back some 600 photos. Not as many as the Japan trip, but then again, this was only a 5-day trip. Still, that’s a whole crap-load. So, in view of the relative success I had with the photo-of-the-day project, I’m starting a new set on Flickr and a new challenge: upload a photo every day. The difference between this new challenge and the one from before-last-week is that I don’t need to take a photo every day, I need to upload an existing photo. See, I have a crap-load of photos that I’ve taken over the past two years, and most of them still need to be processed and uploaded. So, I’m going to use this set/project as a motivation to put at least a small dent in the number of photos I haven’t processed yet. Unlike the last Flickr project, I hope this one comes to an end as soon as possible, and hopefully through the simple lack of old photos. But that’s a pipe-dream.

Well, on to the first photo. This one I took on my first day in Vegas, somewhere in Caesar’s Palace.

Here I am [at the time of writing] on a damn airplane (hate the hassle of flyng), stuck in a too-small seat (there’s no fold-down table in front of me, so it’s in the seat, making the already-small seat that much more cramped), sipping a too-cold, too-small coffee that is not sweet enough and doesn’t have nearly enough creamer (and the flight attendants aren’t any help on these matters), munching on some cinnamon-flavored pretzels (don’t like pretzels) while eyeing with envy the real food being served to first class just 4 feet away, sick as usual (it’s now tradition to get sick while on vacation), flying into a veritable shit-storm at work (partners are pissing themselves over some mundane and almost pointless feature that apparently broke and my boss’ boss’ boss wanted to see me about it on Tuesday – I had to reply with "can’t, out of town, go bother someone else")… And yet I’m oddly content, as I once again find myself listening to Pink Floyd’s "Dark Side of the Moon".

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Best. Album. Ever. Even beats out The White Album. I know, I know, how dare I say such blasphemous words? But the truth is not blasphemous. (No matter what some close-minded turds tell you.)