Bought Beds and Bright Red Bulls

Hello everyone. Things are going fairly well. I bought my new bed and discovered that those things are rather more expensive than I had figured on. It used up the majority of my community startup fund as I suspected it might. It felt very comfortable and ought to suite me admirably better than the bed I've been sleeping in here at my parents' house. I'd love to believe that the bed here was a large part of my sleeping trouble. The hard boards and quite soft matress don't work out in my favour. However, I'll doubtless continue to go through periods of insomnia on this new springbox, matress and frame. Just as long as I never have to contend with bedbugs again. I've had quite enough of those horrid creatures to last a lifetime.

Yesterday was pretty interesting. Dad and I spent around an hour setting up the new router. I'm taking the older one with me so my parents needed one for themselves. Dad seemed to find the whole thing fairly stressful but thankfully, the diagrams in the router manual were quite good. It all seemed simple enough to me. During the evening, I went out with Adam for a scrumptious smokehouse burger at Turtle Jack's. Long-standing curiosity got the better of my good sense and I decided to finally see what a Red Bull energy drink tasted like. Not a good move while contending with insomnia. That drink actually does what it claims to do quite well. After being quite alert for around seven hours of gaming, I started to mentally fade as one AM approached. I spend most of last night, or rather, this damned early morning, tired but awake. I can't say the taste of Red Bull was particularly wonderful either. On the positive side, it certainly kept me alert during our lengthy gaming cession. It is rather nice not to commit some stupendous blunder due to losing focus. However, on the whole, the Red Bull was not one of my better beverage choices.

We decided to play something called Hinterland. It's one of these fantasy conquest games which is random every time you play. Quite an enjoyable game. I'd definitely play it again. You really have to weigh the advantages of taking along your followers on adventures where they might be killed against their usefullness to your town. This adds a rare level of attachment and consequence to your choices when it comes to hiring and developing different characters. There's a lot of depth and replay value.

I have nothing major planned today. At some point, I'll be helping dad export his email contacts from Outlook and import them into his new Gmail account. From what he's told me, it seems like it'll be simple enough. I've done my bit in Dragontavern. Things didn't go fantastically. I got poor Eldrex killed twice and once again have a high debt of experience points to repay. Fun city. Due to those unfortunate occurrances, I didn't do a whole lot for my character's available gold. Ah well. Tomorrow is another day.

The ATIA conference has yielded some very welcome news. Thanks to:
www.blindbargains.com
and
www.serotalk.com
I've been able to follow some of the announcements of interest from that venue. More interviews and other coverage is apparently still forthcoming. That'll make for some very interesting reading. The new Blio software from Kurzweil is something I'm very much looking forward to digging into when it emerges some time in February. Also on the way is a long awaited update for my Trekker Breeze. I'll be able to pick out a point of interest in the database and actually have the Breeze calculate a route to get me there rather than just getting a rough direction and distance to it. A clearer voice will also be installed among other enhancements. Apparently, the reception of signal has also been improved. That little gadget is going to open a whole new world to me over this Spring and Summer.

Before that warmer weather makes the outdoors more agreeable, there's the building itself to become familiar with. I believe I can do that without the aid of a mobility instructor. I just have to take some careful notes in my digital recorder as my parents and/or friends show me where things are. The doors and elevators are pretty straight-forward. I'll need to learn and mark my mailbox's location as well as get to the laundry room and recycling area. It'll take a while to fille one of those bins. I don't go through all that many cans these days. However, I definitely plan to do my bit with recycling. Hard to believe that I'll be setting up shop in my new apartment in a week. It's all really coming together.