In Exile

I went to the ham radio session this morning. It was more impressive than I'd expected. The emphasis is on being prepared to help in the emergency communications net during disasters, rather than on the hobbyist aspects. It should prove to be quite interesting. We're not required to learn Morse code for the Technician license we'll be testing for, but for the General license I'd like to have, I'll need to know the code. I think that learning it would be fun though. It was weird coming back from the ham class though. My driving was... off. It felt uncomfortable, which is very very unusual for me. I love driving. Maybe I need to cool it a little bit when driving the RX-8. But I don't really think that's the answer. My driving was just kind of jerky and strange. Perhaps I should not listen to radiohead while driving. Wasn't that part of the reason I stopped listening to music while driving? To give myself more attention to focus on the road? Maybe I will save listening to music for long freeway drives down the superslab. At dinner my folks want to watch a video or something. So I suggest Last Exile. "I think you might like it," I say. We watch the first disc over pizza. Afterwards my mom asks "Do you have another disc?" "I have six more," I reply. She giggles. Giggles. ... Well, we ended up watching the first half of the series. I expect that we'll finish it in the next day or so. I forget sometimes that my folks can actually be pretty cool. My dad and I both agree that vanships are pretty sweet, and that we want one. Sounds like a fun summer project, eh? The flight and naval aspects of the show really inspire me. They capture a feeling that I've not seen from any other source. Well, except riding motorcycles. Making a simulationistic flight game drawing on the setting of Last Exile is on my list of "projects I'd like to do someday." It will have to wait until I've got a computer on which to develop software, though. It would be in the vein of X-Wing Alliance, the pinnacle of Star Wars flight sims. It's less simulationy and realistic than something like Falcon or the Jane's series of sims. But much more immersive than the atrocious Rogue Squadron arcade-style games. Tomorrow I have two choices. Go to church with my folks and pimp myself out to look for a job, or go to church with the singles ward and see if I can make a few friends. I'm torn as to which I will do. The singles ward meets several hours later... I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. I don't know that I really want to sleep in. Hmm. Now that I'm thinking about it, I think I'll go with my folks. I hear that I can talk to Rocky Imam (cool name!) who might be able to hook me up with some work at Intellibed. He's the manager of a new franchise that opened, and they might need some custom software to smooth over their processes. Wait. Maybe I could go to both? I don't really want to go to six hours of church though. That's a bit much. I need a job. Morning church it is.