I love and hate Halloween.
One of my ambitions in life is to get to a point where I can make awesome costumes. Darth Vader, a stormtrooper, Iron Man, and Night Owl (with Cody as Silk Spectre) are all on my list. Halloween gives me a great excuse to make these costumes without the expense of having to go to a con to show them off.
Now that Cody and I have a house, I have a place where I could actually make some of these. Unfortunately, we’re not quite settled-in enough yet to start doing that.
This is why I hate Halloween. Every year, I get excited about making costumes. Every year, I end up with a costume I’m disappointed in—if I end up with a costume at all. The last Halloween costume I was somewhat proud of was my Kosh costume—10 years ago (which reminds me, I should put Kosh on the costume list and take a crack at doing it with fiberglass instead of paper-mâché).
Perhaps some day, I’ll start making good on these unfulfilled ambitions. I can only hope that I can provide my kids with awesome costumes so that they never have to feel this perpetual disappointment.
So, yeah. Halloween is not the most uplifting time of year for me.
After bouncing more ideas around, I’ve come up with an alternate spec for a new system. This one is built around the same GPU, but with an Intel i7 driving the system. This deserves some explanation.
More after the jump.
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Plenty of people cover the distinctions between their, they’re, and there, or where, were, and we’re, or too, two, and to. But I have never seen someone point out the proper use of yeah, yea, and yay. So, without further ado:
- Yeah: Pronounced /jɛɑ/ IPA. An informal concurrence (i.e. equivalent to yes). May also show up as “ya”, but this is pronounced /jɑ/ IPA, making it akin to the German ja.
- Yea: Pronounced /jeɪ/ IPA. An affirmative vote, as in “vote yea or nay.” Neither synonymous nor homophonous with the above. Outside of this context, the word has several other definitions as well, though they tend to be archaic.
- Yay: Pronounced /jeɪ/ IPA. An expression of joy, as in “I just aced my final. Yay!” Homophonous with the yea, but synonymous with neither of the above.
You no longer have an excuse to get these wrong.
I’m pretty sure my eyes are getting worse. It’s hard to read my laptop from three feet away at this point. I know for some people, being able to do that much would be astonishing, but my nearsightedness came on very abruptly in high school, coming from 20/20 vision, so I remain acutely (no pun intended) aware of any changes.
That said, I have been wearing the same glasses for far too long. I haven’t had my prescription changed since I was 16 (9 years, for those counting), and I’ve been gradually able to see less and less with my glasses on. Again, it’s not degrading at a rate or to a point that I’m actively impaired even with them on, but I certainly notice it.