Veterans day: OOPS!  I knew there was a logo I was forgetting!  Need to do a dough boy poit logo for that, I suppose.  Hmmm, while I'm at it I think there are SEVERAL dates for veterans day world wide.  LOL, for some reason that reminds me of the comment in the game Bioshock in which the guy's voice log mentions someone setting their lock code to Australia day...which I vaguely remembered anyway because I set up the logos.

Channel your future self: I was pondering how a department head at the university is a nice guy, but he's being overwhelmed by the workload (or more to the point, his inability to let some of it go, unlike his predecessor who sat on his ass all the time.  I though...What would I tell him? The best I could come up with was...try to "channel" your future self.  You can see how the work's (or anything in his life...or YOUR life) making you feel, you can see the direction the changes are going.  Sort of push them to extremes and see what kind of cynical, jaded asshole you'd become in that position and then think of what you'd tell your younger, more idealistic self.  The idealistic you really does have a great attitude and is rather optimistic.  The FUTURE you is probably going to be overworked (in this case), pissed off...and horribly cynical about things.  Perhaps it would be best to salvage some of the happier, more optimistic you (the current one hopefully) but write off some of the tasks/people your future self is obviously going to write off as not worth his/her time.  In doing that, you'll avoid the stresses that those things gave you in the first place and HOPEFULLY *fingers crossed* not turn out quite as bad.

...And channeld your past selfl: Of course, if you're already pissed off at the world, you should probably try to do the opposite.  Think about the way you WERE and try to look at things in that perspective while still being firm on those tough decisions (just without looking at the situation with contempt)

Crysis:  WOW is all I can say.  Sure, the developers haven't nailed humanity yet, but by god they've got nature scenes done right!  Seriously, the nature scenes in the game Crysis are damned near photorealistic (if your card and CPU can actually render them without melting).  In fact, in side-by-side comparisons with nearly identical real-world scenes the main things that give away the game pictures are...the fact that it's not quite as bent up.  Hmmm, perhaps I'll just rip off this comparison picture to demonstrate (I think it's from the developer's website so they won't mind it being used to talk up the game).  Anyway, here's how real-life compares to a Crysis screenshot (or is it screen-shot)...ok, a screen capture)

 So anyway, there you have it...WOW.  Other points of note, shoot many of the trees enough in the same spot and they break off at that point.  Shoot the trunk on either piece in another spot and a smaller chunk will break off there.  Another interesting thing is that leaves and branches of ground cover plants that aren't large enough to stop you completely are pushed aside as you walk or crawl through.  The same is true when you throw things through those plants (or through leaves in taller trees).  Anyway, fantastic engine.  Outdoor scenes look far more realistic than Half-Life2 or Oblivion.  Hmmm, I should see how it runs on the wife's PC (Dual 2.66ghz P4 with an X800 XL graphics card...which just makes you wonder more about Bioshock, if Crysis could work with shader 2, why the heck couldn't Bioshock have shipped with shader 2 support? )