Apostilles and Birmans
Sep. 23rd, 2008 06:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
erastesToday I've been down to the Notary office (again, although different notary as the other one was so useless) to get an Apostille so that I can get my USA Tax number for Transgressions' publisher. I've been told it's going to cost about £150 in all. *sigh* It has to be done, though, and I should have done it several months ago. Of course it would be hugely cheaper if I were able to go down to the US Embassy to do it in person, but that's out of the question. Alex Beecroft did hers that way and it was easy, quick and the guys on the desk were very helpful. But I suppose what with trains and taxis and buying food and parking fees, it won't be that much more expensive to do it the long way around. And that sort of thing is what advances are for, after all.
The great thing was it was done in the notaries house (which made me regret not being a solicitor, because .. OMG...) and she had the most beautiful Birman cat who, as soon as we sat down, jumped up on the (spotless, granite) worksurface and went to sit in the sink and proceeded to stare at me. when I pointed this out, the Notary laughed, jumped up and turned the tap on in a dribble for him, which is what he'd been waiting for! He only drinks hard water as he has kidney problems - and the tap is the only water that isn't softened. It's amusing that he KNOWS this. He also has bottled water, but then - he is a Birman, and had me worshipping him and considering a touch of catnapping. For £150 I think I was entitled.
As you know, I love computer games. I am a console player, in the main because the whole "find a patch" for badly coded games drives me mad, but recently now I have a faster machine I've been catching up on some of the adventure games I missed. The trouble with consoles is that the type of game I love best - the "point and click" is a rare beestie indeed on the console. There's Discword, Broken Sword and a few others like Riven, Myst, Amerzone etc - whereas on the PC they've been at it for years.
Recently I've been playing "The Black Mirror" which was fabulous and the reason I really enjoyed it was that I didn't have to resort to cheating every five minutes. The puzzles weren't the type that make your brain pour out of your ears and there were enough clues to help you along when you thought - "erk! what am I supposed to be do next?" However, after a great week of playing it, wonderful graphics etc, the ending was very disappointing. So now I'm trying "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" and it's bloody infuriating. There's no logic at all to the puzzles, no helpful commentary if you get stuck and you can't even examine things and get your character to describe it, so you are left with your own brain which often isn't very helpful. Grrr.
If you are into these types of games and can recommend something along these lines, I'd be very grateful to hear about it.
And the cats hate me because all there is is biscuit. Ho hum.
The great thing was it was done in the notaries house (which made me regret not being a solicitor, because .. OMG...) and she had the most beautiful Birman cat who, as soon as we sat down, jumped up on the (spotless, granite) worksurface and went to sit in the sink and proceeded to stare at me. when I pointed this out, the Notary laughed, jumped up and turned the tap on in a dribble for him, which is what he'd been waiting for! He only drinks hard water as he has kidney problems - and the tap is the only water that isn't softened. It's amusing that he KNOWS this. He also has bottled water, but then - he is a Birman, and had me worshipping him and considering a touch of catnapping. For £150 I think I was entitled.
As you know, I love computer games. I am a console player, in the main because the whole "find a patch" for badly coded games drives me mad, but recently now I have a faster machine I've been catching up on some of the adventure games I missed. The trouble with consoles is that the type of game I love best - the "point and click" is a rare beestie indeed on the console. There's Discword, Broken Sword and a few others like Riven, Myst, Amerzone etc - whereas on the PC they've been at it for years.
Recently I've been playing "The Black Mirror" which was fabulous and the reason I really enjoyed it was that I didn't have to resort to cheating every five minutes. The puzzles weren't the type that make your brain pour out of your ears and there were enough clues to help you along when you thought - "erk! what am I supposed to be do next?" However, after a great week of playing it, wonderful graphics etc, the ending was very disappointing. So now I'm trying "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" and it's bloody infuriating. There's no logic at all to the puzzles, no helpful commentary if you get stuck and you can't even examine things and get your character to describe it, so you are left with your own brain which often isn't very helpful. Grrr.
If you are into these types of games and can recommend something along these lines, I'd be very grateful to hear about it.
And the cats hate me because all there is is biscuit. Ho hum.
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no subject
Date: 2008-09-23 06:55 pm (UTC)Alas! I do not play games on my computer. I am strictly a console gamer. I think if I did not work on a computer I would play games on it.
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Date: 2008-09-24 08:48 am (UTC)But there's so many more adventure games on the PC. Trouble is most of them now are available on WIN98 which means I have to use my older machine and can only install one at a time or it sulks.
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Date: 2008-09-23 07:10 pm (UTC)Birmans are lovely cats, and from all accounts very intelligent as a rule. Our two were moggies, not Birmans, but they preferred to drink from a dripping tap in the bath, and we got used to hearing the particular miaow that meant "You've turned the bloody tap off, I need a drink!"
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Date: 2008-09-24 08:46 am (UTC)My cats won't drink the fresh water from their bowls they go and drink from puddles which is hugely embarrassing for me. "That woman's poor cats...."
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Date: 2008-09-24 09:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-23 08:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-24 08:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-26 08:29 am (UTC)I'm a PC gamer, but I'm not really into adventure games, mostly because I hate the ones where you end up with five possible paths, all of them blocked by a puzzle you can't figure out, and you have to either find a cheat guide or give up. :P Since I'm not very good at adventure games, most of them end up that way for me. [duck] My favorite computer games, aside from little puzzle games like Sherlock and solitaire and all, are things like The Sims games and Civilization and Tropico and Roller Coaster Tycoon, where you can turn the aggression (if there is any) down or off and just have fun building and doing things. I also like RPGs (the original Might and Magic was the first computer game I ever actually finished) but they're thin on the ground these days.
Of the adventure games I ever finished, the first was an old Infocom text adventure called "Plundered Hearts." :D It was set up like a historical romance and it was great fun, although there wasn't much hero/heroine interaction available. [heavy, theatrical sigh] If you could find a copy of that (and a DOS emulator...?) you might enjoy it; it's really campy.
My favorite graphic adventure game was "Loom," by Brian Moriarty. It was a fun game but not too hard for beginners -- or people like me who don't want to sweat blood playing a game -- and the graphics were gorgeous at the time. (Although this was back when the state of the art was EGA, so take that for whatever it's worth. [grin]) Trying to remember, I'm pretty sure the art was by Mark Ferrari, a fantasy artist who does incredible things with colored pencils, and the music was by The Fat Man (George Sanger) who was like the computer game music guy in the eighties. The magic system was very cool, using short sequences of musical notes. You solved puzzles to add notes and be able to cast more spells. There were different difficulty options, including one for doing it completely by ear. I never tried that one. [grin] But the really cool thing was that there was no way to die in the game, nor to get so messed up that your only option was to quit and restart or even back up to a save. You couldn't get yourself stuck a dead end, and I really liked that.
A close candidate was the first "Hero's Quest" game. I got almost all the way through it, and was having fun, but then it glitched and locked up my computer. :P Corey Cole (one of the designers, with his wife Lori) was actually a friend at the time and I nagged him through e-mail for a while, but he couldn't figure it out either, so I never did finish. Bummer. It was fun up to that point; I think I was like 90% of the way through.
I eventually gave up on adventure games, though, so I'm afraid I don't have any more modern recs. :/
Angie