Deviant Paradigm: Of The Wolf Within

Who Watches

2009-07-29T23:43:00.003-06:00

Well, I got the Director's Cut of Watchmen today, so I figured I could use this as an excuse to revisit things I wanted to say about the film. So, yeah, this is going to contain MAJOR SPOILERS. You've been forewarned.

I really rather like Watchmen. I saw it twice in theatres, which is rare for me. I have to really like movies to do that (for instance, I saw both Sin City and Taken, which are top contenders for "favorite movie" multiple times). The Director's Cut, while not as significant an improvement as the one for Chronicles of Riddick (the Director's Cut of which transforms a forgettable action/sci-fi movie into a worthy action/sci-fi followup to Pitch Black), is much better than the theatrical version. They add a lot of little details that tie the whole movie together and make it better all around.

Of course, the biggest problem the movie has is one that they don't fix. Of course, I'm referring to the worthless, piss-poor ending they gave it. And it would have been so easy to deal with. I don't even mean the stupid logical fallacy where Dr. Manhattan has to be the villain (even allowing that the world needs a villain to unite it, I have yet to understand why Ozymandias can't be that villain). What I mean is that Ozymandias is a smug, narcissist with no compunctions for murdering millions of people in cold blood with no remorse. Yes, he claims to have remorse, but (and this is the problem and the easy fix) he doesn't bother to show it at all. All they'd need is a scene where he actually bothers to cry about their deaths, show some kind of emotion other than self-satisfaction. It is difficult for me to describe exactly how much I hate Ozymandias. I hate him more than almost any other character I can possibly think of. I truly despise him. What I'd really have liked is for him to have died, his own sacrifice for the utopia he wanted. But of course, I'm denied that too. I'm a bit surprised, considering how well the movie does with comeuppance (it's a movie all about comeuppance; you spend most of the movie learning how the Comedian earned his). But I guess we don't get everything we want.

Dr. Manhattan is also a character I don't care much for. He's an emotionless robot who only does what he's told and is good for exactly two things -- blowing up what he's told to and stating the obvious. For a nuclear physist, he's also incredibly unthinking. He never bothers to think critically about anything throughout the whole movie. It's embarrassing and sad. He's also remarkably without any kind of moral compass at all.

I do, however, love Rorschach. That might be at least partly because he's got a moral compass much like mine. A twisted, exaggerated distortion of my moral compass perhaps, but it's one that stays steady in all things. I have to respect that. Nite Owl's greatest asset is that he's human. He's got the same sort of foibles and failures of morality as any other human. But without him, we'd only have monsters to identify with in the show, and that obviously wouldn't work very well.

All in all, it's a great movie, with a terrible ending. It's not that Rorschach dies (I'm really fine with that, despite him being my favorite character). It's that Adrian Veidt, a completely despicable monster, has his horrible, murderous plan succeed completely without any drawbacks or remorse. He never pays for his crimes. In fact, he apparently profits from them, considering the preponderance of Veidt Industries construction stuff in the end of the film. If they were going to bother with changing the ending so that it'd seem less silly to a movie audience, why not make it more palatable to the audience? It's a remarkably unsatisfying ending to an otherwise terrific film.

-- And also --
Something I've always remarked about Dr. Manhattan is that he needs to grow some balls to go with his big blue dick. He espouses gibberish philosophy that neither makes sense nor do I agree with, and then doesn't bother to act (practically at all) even once he learns the meaning of Christmas. His only damn function is blowing people up, and he doesn't manage to do it to the only person in the whole movie who really deserves it.

Biggest Change

2009-07-10T19:41:00.003-06:00

Well, the biggest single change in my life since I last was posting regularly is my recent acquisition of a motorcycle. I'm the proud owner of a Triumph Street Triple. And honestly, I couldn't be more ecstatic. I love the bike. Everything about her. The way she looks, muscular, with the broad shoulders of the gas tank and the clean lines of the naked frame an engine, the odd pair of headlights. The way she sounds, the throaty purr (which my cousin describes as "very British") with the harmonizing intake and exhaust notes like nothing else on the road. The way she rides, powerful and upright, like I'm a duke of the road itself. And of course, I'm sort of ornery and like to be just a little different, and the Triumph is not a common bike.

Most folks agree that she's a gorgeous machine. My uncle's complaint is that she "doesn't sound like a motorcycle." Which is pretty true -- the inline three cylinder engine doesn't sound anything like the Harleys or Hondas that you're used to. But you can't deny that she's a beautiful, beautiful bike.

The tale of me ending up riding a brand new, unusual, British, naked motorcycle is a bit of an odd and convoluted one. I started out very pointedly not making any sort of decision about what kind of a motorcycle I wanted. I'd never ridden a motorcycle before, and I didn't want to make uneducated decisions and set my heart on something I wouldn't like. So I waited until I took the MSF course, though I had my leanings, based on common sense and aesthetics more than anything. I didn't pass the driving test on my first try. (I'd set the bike down earlier in the day, and lost my nerve. Riding is mostly in your head, and if you can't focus, you really shouldn't be riding.) So I spent the next couple weeks preparing for a retest, riding my cousin's old Yamaha 650 Special, what he calls "the sacrificial bike." I decided I really liked the way that it handled, as a middleweight standard, and started to look more seriously at standard bikes. He dropped the name of the VMAX, Yamaha's huge, heavyweight naked bike, and I looked into it. To this day I'm not sure if the new VMAX is really pretty or just really strange. But the older models are very pretty. It was around then that I got really attached to the naked look. I thought it was attractive, the engines of that sort of motorcycle are all fun (quite powerful, but more focused on lots of torque rather than super-high horsepower), and, most importantly, they rode mostly upright, varying a bit around "standard." I started to look for other naked bikes, especially Ducati's Monster, which was a more managable size than the VMAX and was definitely pretty. When I talked about these with my cousin, he mentioned Triumph, so I started to look into their Speed Triple and Street Triple motorcycles. They were very pretty, and looked pretty impressive on paper. The more I read reviews, the more impressed I was -- everyone said that the Street Triple was the most fun of the middleweight nakeds, and it was almost universally considered the best of the class as well.

I was pretty hooked. So when I went to buy a motorcycle, I started out at the local Triumph dealer. I really didn't intend to buy a new bike. It's my first bike, and I was sure to drop it, at least once. But they didn't have any used ones (nor did the local Ducati dealer), so I finally let them talk me into it. I ordered a flyscreen and a set of frame sliders (for when she inevitably went down), though those parts wouldn't be in for nearly a month after I got her. :(

Sure, she's not really a beginner's bike, but I'm old enough now to be a fairly conservative rider, so I haven't had much trouble with her. I have put her down once. It was a beginner's mistake: I tried to take a turn too fast and couldn't manage it. I realized part way in that I wouldn't make the turn, so I straightened out and went over the median. I was fine until my wheel dropped off the median and the bike went over. Fortunately, God was looking out for me, and we got through it okay. I just got everything fixed up at the 500 mile check up, and we're almost 100% back. She's still got a few scuffs and scratches, but you have to look for them to spot them.

Back to Blogging

2009-07-10T19:30:00.002-06:00

*blows dust off blog*

Wow, it's been quite nearly a year since I last posted. That's awful! Ah, well, I've decided to come back to blogging, at least for a little while. I've had a few posts bouncing around my head for a month or three and I've been meaning to come back for them, so I'm finally going to do it. A lot has changed in the last year, and yet, in many ways, very little has changed. But I'll get to all of that. *grin*

Post Quarter Century

2008-09-02T16:46:00.000-06:00

Well, it seems like I managed to make it through without being mopey at all. Not here anyway. That's, of course, due to me being ridiculously busy. I'm trying to rush through a major rewrite of one of our clients' websites, doing everything I can to improve the thing. I ended up working a batch of overtime at the end of last week (not fun when you're also trying to get ready for a party and your dishwasher has crapped out). Fortunately, my Mom came up to help me with some of the cooking and cleaning. I'm not sure if I'd have gotten it all done without a hand.

The party itself went rather well, despite me catching the barbecue ribs on fire. Seriously -- apparently one needs to be certified to use my brother's charcoal grill. I think I'm through over half my beer, possibly as much as three quarters, so I'm excited. And everybody seemed to like it really well. I'm going to call it all a success, even if I'm still a terribly lonely guy, and throwing this party messed my finances up all to heck (seriously, this thing was super expensive...I had a ton of food). But it was fun, and everybody seemed to enjoy themselves, so I'm happy anyway.

The Oncoming Week

2008-08-25T01:20:00.003-06:00

You'll probably get increasingly mopey posts as this week goes on and I realize how close I'm getting to my birthday. I'm just not quite where I want to be in life. Don't get me wrong, most of the time I don't mind my job, and I'm doing fine financially. It's not that I was hoping to be a hundred-thousand-aire or anything. I wish I had less credit card debt, but I'm reasonably close to on track for my medium term goal of owning a home. It's just...I'd always hoped to have a girl by now. Hell, I'd kinda hoped to be married by now. But I don't even have any prospects. So I'm facing hitting 25, and starting the trek down away from physical prime, and it's just going to get harder from here. It's just another one of those "*sob* *sob* I'm so lonely!" things that you know I sometimes drop into. So bear with me. I'll get back on track eventually.

Preparations, Preparations

2008-08-25T01:06:00.003-06:00

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, it's been crazy busy. Emo got married last weekend. The wedding was surprisingly short -- I'm used to the pastor delivering full sermons or homilies, but their pastor's message was very short and to the point. The wedding reception was unfortunately short, but otherwise awesome. I joke that we almost had as much toast as we did wedding, but it's not much of a joke. Now, let me level -- I find wedding receptions generally to be horribly depressing things. When you're alone, a thing that's almost endless couples dances isn't much fun. But this time there weren't that many couples dances, and the toasts, which are my favorite part, probably because I like to talk, lasted on and on. It was incredible. I hope that when I get married, all my friends will step up like that and say a few words. And these weren't things like "I wish them happiness in their new life." These were full on speeches, poignant and heartfelt, about the couple. I wasn't the only one blown away by it.

I got my cider bottled. I'm doing still cider this time, just because of time constraints. Well, mostly still -- I primed the bottles a little, not to carbonate it, more just to pressurize the bottle. The CO2 will keep the oxygen off the cider, which I think will help it taste better when it's opened. I got much of my grocery shopping for this comming weekend, my grand birthday kegtap, done. Now it's mostly waiting again.

This was our big server migration weekend too, which wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it'd be. Partly by the boss' insistence that I not do some of the things I'd planned (most notably setting our databases to UTF-8 instead of Latin-1). It ended up only being about five hours of unpaid overtime, far less than the ten to fifteen I'd been expecting. Fortunately, there weren't a lot of major hurdles. We did seem to run into some serious DNS problems though. I learned a few things about our DNS configuration that I didn't know, and I discovered that the registrar (Network Solutions, in this case) caches your name server IPs (which makes a lot of sense to me, since I couldn't for the life of me figure out how it associated nameservers to IPs so it could serve names before). Unfortuantely, I don't know how in the world I'm supposed to change that IP address, and their helpfiles explained doing something that there didn't seem to be an option for. I might email on Monday. For the time being I made "new" name servers with the correct IPs, and I think everything's starting to work correctly again.

Sweet God! It BURNS!

2008-08-14T00:09:00.003-06:00

*cough* Whoa. I don't know if I'm going to get my mouth free of feeling like I gargled kerosene and live coals. I just tried the pepper beer to see if its ready to bottle. Honestly, I don't have a clue. After the first instant of taste, I started choking and my entire mouth turned off as my tastebuds began to smoke. Wow. Yeah, it's spicy like nobody's business. Might give it a shot...It ought to be ready to bottle, or at least very very close.

Got the cider fermenting now. I'm hoping it turns out pretty well. I've got to decide if I want to carbonate it or leave it still. I'm not sure...I might do half and half maybe... Anybody got any opinions on the matter?

Finally Bottled the Wheat

2008-08-13T01:10:00.003-06:00

Bottled the boysenberry wheat tonight, and I think the pepper beer is ready too, so I'll try to bottle it tomorrow or so... We'll see what I have time for, since I've definitely got to get the cider going ASAP.

I learned something about boysenberries too. They have all kinds of little bits that really like to clog up the keg tap, making the last eight or so bottles nearly impossible to draw. I ended up doing rather unorthodox things for the last few, so I marked them pretty clearly -- they're probably not going to turn out well, and I'd rather party guests not imbibe them. This whole thing has been a lot of "wait and see." Maybe the pepper beer will actually go well... Though I'm not so secretly terrified of it, since I'll have to taste it to see if it's ready to bottle, and I don't generally care for spicy hot things. *sigh* Oh well. It's for a good cause anyway.

Cut Things Close

2008-08-07T20:46:00.002-06:00

Well, this is disappointing... The Boysenberry wheat isn't anywhere near ready to bottle. It's been three weeks, so I'm a bit concerned. Maybe it'll be better after this weekend. I really hope so, or I won't be able to have the cider ready in time. It's already going to be a little tight. Fortunately, the books claim the cider will ferment in five days. If that's true, then I can wait for a few more days for this beer to be ready to go.

Bottling Time!

2008-08-07T12:22:00.003-06:00

Well, I got the cider in today, so it's time for me to bottle the Boysenberry Wheat, so I can start the cider going tomorrow night. I really hope the Wheat is ready to go. It should be, but I haven't really checked it. There's still stuff floating in it, but I don't know if it's yeast or if it's just bits of boysenberry. I suppose I'll find out tonight. So yeah, the goal is to have the cider going tomorrow night. Since the cider should finish more quickly than the others, there should be no trouble in getting it done before my birthday bash. With luck, the pepper beer will also be ready soon, so it can carbonate fully before the party. I'm really frightened of checking that one though...

In surprising news, the Oatmeal Ale appears to actually be carbonating very well. It might just end up being a particularly sweet ale. I'll have to move it to the fridge for lagering soon, or I'll risk bursting the bottles. *wink*

I'm still trying to decide what I want to bake for the party, but I think I'm going to do ribs, marinaded with the pepper beer (assuming it's ready, and it should be). I'm so excited. I hope I can afford all this... With all the weddings and birthdays, this month is going to be kind of tight.

Pepper Beer Brewing

2008-08-01T12:23:00.002-06:00

I've got my spicy pepper beer in the fermentation tank brewing now. We'll see how it turns out. Hopefully it'll be ready with everything else for my big birthday "kegtap" party at the end of the month.

I got some more bottles today. I was hoping that when they came in, I'd be able to bottle the Boysenberry Wheat, but that doesn't look like it's going to work out as quickly as I hoped. This is the first of my beers light enough for me to look in and see the floating yeast. *grin* So I know it's not quite done. But it might only take a few more days, which would mean that I can bottle when I get the cider in (which, as I noted, actually prefers the temperature of my house, and will brew much faster) and then start the cider the next night. I don't expect the cider and the strawberry blonde stuff to come in until the middle of next week, so there's plenty of time for the wheat to finish up.

Maybe I Should Use the Right OS

2008-07-30T16:26:00.003-06:00

Whoopsie. I've got the distinct pleasure of working with one of the most hideously powerful computers I've ever seen. One of our clients got a dual processor, quad core, 16 GB RAM, monster with six 146 GB 15,000 RPM serial-attached SCSI drives in a RAID-5, and sent it here to be set up. It's an enormous black monolith, capable of uplifting civilizations and converting Jupiter into a star. Seriously, it's huge. It weighs more than 60 lbs. It's sickeningly awesome, especially since it's main duty will be to run Samba and a MySQL server for our inventory control software. Yeah. A system nearly as powerful as FurAffinity's new server, and it's going to have almost nothing to do. I've got permission to install whatever OS I want on it, and, tempted as I am to put Gentoo there, I think I'm going to go with Debian... Not that I like Debian better (I've actually become increasingly frustrated with Debian, and I love Gentoo), it's just a bit friendlier to the novice. My most difficult goal is actually getting MySQL to use the whole system. We're discussing trying to use ndbcluster and setting up a single system cluster, but our first try will be with MySQL 6, to test if Falcon can actually do it. So I go and get an install of MySQL 6, IA64, shiny and new...Which is when I discover I wasn't thinking -- I used the install disc for our mail server...an i386 box. It'll be tough to use 16 GB of RAM, when your OS can only address 4 GB of it. So...It looks like I'm going to start over, and give this thing a try with an IE64 install, like it should have had before. Ooops. Oh well, more fun time with the box. At least I won't make this mistake with the other identical server that a different client is ordering. That one's a rush job -- this one I can take my time and savor.

Setbacks

2008-07-25T10:46:00.002-06:00

The Oatmeal Ale was off... I think that my house might have been too warm and the yeast mostly died. I'd have tried to coaxed it back alive (and was trying, actually), but I discovered last night at 3 AM that the fermentation keg was leaking rather badly. So my choices were to bottle and hope for the best or toss it all out. So I bottled it... It looks like it's actually going to carbonate, so we'll see how it turns out in a couple weeks.

I'm going to hold off on the stout until I can get something to keep the temperature down and stable on it. If this was too warm for the ale yeast, it's way too warm for the stout yeast. So it's time for horrific pepper beer, the beer everybody but me seems to want. I'm thinking I may want to do a cider next while I wait to get a fridge for the fermentation. Cider likes the temperature I keep my house at.

Well...That could have gone better

2008-07-16T23:34:00.003-06:00

I've been complaining I need a new saucepan for beer making for some time now. I've got a two quart, but it's just too small. I've seen the ones I want, but I decided I'd try to save some money and make the Boysenberry Wheat with my little pan. Yeah...I managed to spill the wort all over my counter when I was trying to pour it into the fermentation tank. *sigh* So this particular batch is going to be a little low in alcoholic content. Oh well, hopefully it'll still turn out okay. I'm getting increasingly worried that the temperatures are too high for my fermentation, but I can't afford to buy a fridge just for fermenting the beer yet. Hopefully soon. But after that new pot, darn it!

Hoping to bottle my Oatmeal Ale on Friday or Saturday. I probably won't have the energy for it tomorrow after the open house, or I might see if it's ready then.

Beer and Comics...What more do you need?

2008-07-16T18:59:00.003-06:00

Well, I think I'm going to try to get my next batch of beer started. My Oatmeal Ale isn't bottled yet, but one of my coworkers, Em, happened to have a fermentation tank, and she hadn't used it in forever, so she's let me borrow it. Running two tanks at once is the only way I'm going to be able to get all the beer made that everybody seems to want. One thing's for sure -- I'm going to need a lot more bottles. *grin* Some of the guys at work are talking about brewing now, but honestly, I doubt it'll pan out. They might get one batch done, and then lose interest. (And I kind of suspect it won't turn out well, but maybe that's my jealous desire that they not steal my thunder speaking.)

Sapph finally got himself a new computer, so he won't be looking at the darn thing overheating on him any more. It's a solid enough rig. It won't stay high end forever, but it'll do pretty nicely for a while at least.

I should mention, you'll see in the side bar a new comic. One of my friends from TwoKinds has started up a webcomic with (I presume) her boyfriend (they won't say, but I think it's plainly evident). It's going to be a little "slice-of-life" furry comic. Regardless of whether you think that's a very interesting premise, you should totally Head over to AnaKuro.com and check it out for her spectacular artwork. She's really phenomenal.

Also, Tom, the guy behind TwoKinds has hit kind of a rough patch. His father passed on the fourth, finally giving in to complications due to his lung cancer treatments, I think. I've been meaning to put something somber and respectable here for a while now, but the words just haven't been coming. I just don't know what to say. My father's mountain is not nearly so steep. It will probably claim him in time (especially if he keeps mixing up his insulin dosages), but that day is probably far off. There's be a huge outpouring of support for Tom and his family from the readers of TwoKinds, which is good. I hope he realizes how much we're all behind him. But other than keeping him in our prayers and giving him our condolences, there's not much we can do. It's very frustrating. I hate not being able to do anything. But, if you get the chance, wish him well.

First Tastes

2008-07-14T13:57:00.002-06:00

I cracked open my first bottle of my first batch of beer this Friday to try with my folks. It's now Monday, and I'm down to four of eight bottles left. I've let everybody who wanted some at work try it, and I took it to a family get together, so that's where the four liters went to; I didn't drink it all myself. *grin* I'm planning to do a big "keg tap" party to celebrate, but I don't want to even try to schedule it until after the open house at work this week. So far everybody's said it's very good, though who knows how much of that is to appeal to the angry office furry's feelings. *wink* Anyhow, I was very pleased with it. For not quite following the recipe and messing it up just a bit, it turned out really good for a first try. And it's fun to do, so I think I'm going to stick with it. I'm marking it down, "great success."

Not Quite Bottling the Second Batch

2008-07-10T19:26:00.002-06:00

The folks come down tomorrow, so I'm doing a lot of cleaning to get ready. And I've moved all the bottles from the first batch to the fridge; they should be pretty much all done carbonating, and this'll mean I've got a lot more cold beer on hand. I got my glass bottles today, so I'm ready to bottle the second batch: my first attempt at oatmeal ale. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if the beer tastes quite ready yet... I'll see what it's like this weekend. It's certainly more alcoholic than the first batch. The temperature at my house is a little warm for proper fermenation, and I used a liquid yeast for this batch, so I'm expecting it to take longer than the first one to ferment. So maybe it'll be ready in a few more days. I'm excited to get started with my boysenberry wheat, so hopefully it won't be much longer.

Long Weekend

2008-07-06T18:31:00.006-06:00

Didn't do much for the Fourth this year -- I just couldn't afford it. Maybe next year when my credit card debt isn't quite so crushing. I saw my mom and cousins on the third, and was at a pool party with one of my cousins all day on the fourth, but Dad couldn't make it up (with the wheat harvest, he had to work), so I left the beer at home. Probably for the best -- it'll taste better this weekend when I'll see the folks for sure. I'm thinking I'm going to have the design guys at the building (Play Creative) print me up some decals, if they can, that I'll start putting on my beer bottles. Maybe I'll have Sapph work up the design for me. I'm strongly tempted to call it "Alpha Moon Breweries," but I remain somewhat undecided yet. When I do decide for sure, I'll post up the lovely design. *grin*

I got the DMZ implemented at work this afternoon, and everything looks like it's going to work exactly how I want it to. I'm so excited, since this will pretty much guarantee better network performance all around, keep the people who bother me happy (or at least less unhappy), and let me really test my QoS setup. I'm very proud of it; and I think it's very clever, but I don't actually know how well it's going to work with everyone behind it. At least with the VoIP. I just don't know enough about VoIP. But at least with the DMZ in place, everything's just tweaking numbers now, and we should be looking at having about the best performance that the fiber link is able to provide, so any more performance is going to be gains with the local setup.

Also I just came up with the best idea for Sapph's birthday (it's in a couple months). I've been joking about getting him a furby, because they're creepy as all get out, and you can get one for a song. But I realized that's completely inadequate. I mean, he's turning mid-twenties now. He needs more than something that you can cup in your hands. No, the perfect gift to land him in therapy would be a full-conversion of a bean-bag into a three-foot-tall furby-esque monster. And then, when he's deep asleep, it'll snap open its horrible, staring, grapefruit-sized eyes and bellow "I HUNGER!" Because if you're going for a horrible monster like this, only Sinistar can do it justice for a voice. Imagine waking up to that thing looking at you and flapping its appendage-things as it screams "RUN! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!" in a voice spawned from the very depths of Hell itself. Sapph's going to murder me for thinking this thing up.

Catching Up (Yet Again)

2008-07-02T12:19:00.004-06:00

Sorry that I haven't been posting. I've been busy, and kind of lazy about this sort of thing.

I'm brewing beer now. The folks got me a Mr. Beer and I finally got it out and started using it. My first batch, a pale ale of mostly stock, is carbonating now, and I think I'm going to move at least some of the bottles into the fridge tonight, so that I'll have some beer ready when the folks come down for the holiday. It should be pretty much ready. I've got my first batch of oatmeal ale in the fermenter right now. I consider it something of my life's work, so it'll be interesting to see how it turns out. I don't have high hopes for these first batches, but they should teach me a lot. I'm actually very excited.

Another "exciting" part of my life is that, after a good part of a year in production, I finally released the first part to my epic TwoKinds slashfic. Yeah, I know, it's disturbing that I'm writing slash, and it's caused a lot of people on the forums to give me weird comments about my sexual orientation, but I had to do it anyway. What can I say? I'm an attention whore and this is the sort of thing the forumgoers crave. It's very, very long, and what you might call shockingly detailed. It wasn't easy to write, per se, but it certainly was less difficult than a person would imagine. They want me to write it in smaller chunks from now on, so that it releases more often. I'm trying, but I haven't really felt inspired to write in a while. If you're really desperate to read it, you can find it in PDF and HTML (though it looks like Firefox 3 doesn't like it very much; I'll have to fix it when I have a chance). Again, it's a slashfic, and a fairly explicit one, so reader discretion is advised: it's for mature audiences only. Let me tell you, it's quite the experience writing your own ticket to Hell. By the time this is done, I'll probably be on the express train. *wry grin* I'd link you to the forum thread for the thing in case you wanted to comment, but TwoKinds (and the forums) have been down all day.

We've finally gotten our new fiber optic connection at work, and I've been here every day since last week, even over the weekend, switching us over and trying to get everything work. It's close, but I need to find a way to add a proper DMZ to the setup, and that's one of my big goals. It's driving me insane. But oh, man, the fast Internet...It's so good...

I get to go home tonight to keep at trying to resuscitate Xotz. It bricked last night; causing me to discover that setting the flag for safe mode in the boot.ini file would send Xotz into an endless string of rebooting (the aforementioned "bricked" state). I tried a reinstall and still it remained doing this. I did finally learn how to edit the boot.ini file from the Recovery Console, but now I'm at another "bricked" state -- my reinstall is hanging during the device driver install. So when I get home from work, I get to spend more time in Recovery Console, removing all my drivers so that Windows might reinstall decent-ish ones. Then it's going to take all night to update to SP3 again... *sigh* And that's assuming everything works. Worse-case, I bring my server, Exarch, back home and grab as many of my files off of Xotz as will fit on Exarch's hard drives and do what I should have done with Xotz a long time ago -- a full reformat. But here's hoping I don't have to; because that would seriously, seriously suck.

Rhythm Game Weekend

2008-02-04T20:03:00.000-06:00

Rolled up to see Impresario and OmahaProgrammer this weekend. Well, that and to play DDR at the arcade again. That was very nice. Ran about seven sets, which is pretty good considering how rusty I am. Still was able to squeak by on the Judy Crystal 9 footer on 5th Mix, which is theoretically the most difficult song I can do (it's max difficulty for the machine anyway).

Then it was on to Helloise's birthday party (that's the name of her dwarf in Emo's D&D game). And there I played Rock Band. Several hours of Rock Band. And, much to my delight, I "dinged" in all the instruments except vocals, which I can do on Expert anyway (I love "Dead on Arrival" by Fall Out Boy; I can do it on Expert without looking at the screen). So now I'm on Hard on Guitar and Bass, if only barely, and Medium on Drums. Em reminded me to channel Void on Drums (to apply the Five Rings to the game, which I'd forgotten...). I thought it was funny that she actually used that phrase, "channel Void." Nice to know I'm not the only one who uses the Five Rings on rhythm games. That's what let me finally grasp Medium, but now I have a problem where I forget to blink. :-P

So I had a really excellent Saturday. It's a shame next Saturday's not going to repeat that...

Another One of Those Weeks

2008-01-29T01:53:00.001-06:00

Someday, I'm going to have a really awesome week. I'm going to meet the girl of my dreams, get something awesome accomplished, and maybe have half a chance to relax. Of course, that week wasn't last week and doesn't look like it'll be this week either.

Last week was not really a very good week. Honestly, I don't remember much of it anymore apart from not being able to get up in the mornings, the dog dumping UV-reactive hair gel on the carpet in two distinct places (and even with a carpet cleaner, I'm having troubles getting it out), oh, and getting my first speeding ticket ever. Going to the airport to pick up my coworkers to boot, which I volunteered to do because I'm usually up late anyway. The one bright side of that was seeing a shooting star, which I'm pretty sure was my first. I think it was actually a satellite that they deorbited, honestly, but I wouldn't really know about these things. No luck on the wish being granted, though. So, yeah, I get to go to STOP class and hope my insurance doesn't go through the roof. I'm not exactly excited or pleased.

This week is going to be rough too. The boss just cc'ed me on an email where he made rather grandiose claims about the product I'm working on and promised a mostly working version of it by the end of this week. I'm not sure that he's aware that one of the important features, saving and loading, isn't done yet. Or even started. He came into the webdev office while I was working on it today, trying to come up with a way to coerce the event driven nature of Flash to load images without letting them go out of scope. Of course, he didn't talk to me, or even look over my shoulder. So I'm probably going to get stuck pulling long, late nights at work all week, trying to convince it to come together. And Heaven help me if the network goes down...I can't afford to devote a day to troubleshooting that this week.

It's going to be one long week, and it's just started. *sigh*

Instant Kills are Stupid

2008-01-18T00:05:00.000-06:00

I don't generally complain a lot about the D&D game I'm in; or really any other role-playing game I play in (running one is something different, I complain about that a lot). Usually it's no more than lamenting my absolutely terrible luck (I consistently roll critical failures several times during a session). But that puts me in a unique position, and I'm going to complain bitterly this time. I've learned -- nothing makes a player feel more cheated then taking them out instantly because they botched a single roll. Insta-kills off a single roll are stupid. Overdamage is fair, you usually have to do something stupid to get yourself in a position where you die from a single attack. At least when that happens you get to go "oh, man, if I'd only taken X number of points of damage less..." Heck, now Emo's even giving us a saving throw and letting us stay on our feet when we go negative. But insta-killed by an instant poison effect because I critically failed a single block? My biggest complaint about Emo's game is that I'm a melee fighter in a game designed around magic being the best. It doesn't matter what the problem is -- you just push the magic button. But I've gotten to the point where I generally just deal with that. What I can't take (and it's now happened to me twice), is when you fail a single roll, and you're just done. It's not like I even did something foolish this time (the last time was kind of foolish, but it's hard to predict that the party's going to just abandon you). I was playing to my character's strengths, using my cloak with 90% invisibility and x3 backstab to try to get into a position to hit this evil witch. But of course, that doesn't matter -- she notices me instantly anyway (see why I complain about magic just being a "win" button?). But that's okay, I still get my attacks, all of which are incredibly lackluster. She catches me with a couple counterattacks (the back-and-forth of the combat system is one of its greatest strengths). And I drop a twenty and a one on my defense, a critical success (counterattacking back) and a critical failure. I do thirty-six points of damage to her; and then die instantly when she touches me with a poisoned staff. WHAT? It's not equivalent, it's not even close. Okay, in fairness, she was able to defend herself. But you know what? My maximum damage is only 44 (and that's assuming I can do "evil" damage to someone, which probably isn't true here). There's no possible way for me to instantly kill any enemy of a hit dice number even remotely similar to mine. Okay, in fairness, with backstab, I probably could do it. Not that I ever get to really use backstab, and not that we fight people with hit dice counts remotely close to ours (the witch could have taken me doing a full damage backstab, I'm pretty darn sure). I'm used to suffering sixty or so points of damage because I roll poorly, but you what, that's okay. I have to pull out and heal; it's a problem and an irritation, but it's something I've gotten used to, because I'm incredibly unlucky. But instantaneous death, not because I did something dumb, not because I was already badly wounded, just because I rolled one bad roll. I'd not be so pissed off if I'd gotten to make a save against it -- fail badly twice in a row, and the dice are rolling against you; sometimes that happens. But instant death on what might as well be a fluke roll? It's hard to come away from that with anything but "the GM just wanted to kill you." And "oh, it's not like the party can't just raise you from the dead," doesn't cut it. It's not so much that my character died, it's that they died from something really stupid and random (no glory, nothing redeeming) and now I'm stuck, sitting here, for over an hour, listening to everybody else fight the battle. My evening is now wasted. One bad die roll cost me all the fun in the situation. I do what I can to stay interested, but hell, I thought Emo learned that these sorts of things are stupid the last time it happened to me. I'm sick of that sort of garbage. It's not very hard for me to come up with things I'd rather do than sit there for almost two hours listening to other people have fun.

Yes, I'm bitter. Yes, I'm pissed off. I expect to get a saving throw against instant death effects; it's written on my freaking character sheet. If you're going to try running the game without saving throws, tell your players that. Don't just say, "The thorny staff brushes you and you fall to the ground," and expect them to put together that you just killed them because they failed a single roll. I wasn't eager to play D&D again in the first place, and I'm starting to feel crowded by the number of players that have started playing (we've got a party of nine now, I think). I'll leave. I can come up with better things to do.

When you're GM, and you're playing the antagonists, you get used to the players occasionally getting lucky and one-shotting an NPC. But that's GM'ing. It's distinctly different from playing. All of your fun isn't bound to that one NPC (and if it is, you're GM'ing wrong). A GM can deal with having that one NPC die instantly, often by bringing in guards or something like that, or just letting the players get away with it. They really get a boost from doing something ridiculous like that (mooks don't count; this is only valid for real NPC threats). But when it happens to a player, they feel cheated; and in a lot of ways they are.

I swear, now, in front of all of you, I swear that I will never, never kill any of my player characters instantly because of one unlucky roll, unless it's by sheer overdamage (sometimes the EOD crew cuts the wrong wire; you might live through the explosion...) or they absolutely brought it on themselves (if you're dumb enough to attack a tank with a folding chair, you deserve to take it from the .50 cal coaxial). That is my promise. You'll always get at least one chance to save.

What Kind of Cereal Does Those Boxtops Come From?

2008-01-16T17:24:00.000-06:00

Okay, how many boxtops do I need to save up to get my very own spunky, conservative babe with a decent imagination and a tolerance of the furry fetish? And don't try telling me they don't exist -- I know for a fact they do! I know one. I talk to her regularly. And no, she's not an option, so that suggestion is right out.
(Hell, I'd go for a spunky, moderate babe with a decent imagination and a tolerance of the furry fetish. *grin*)

Because we're getting nowhere on the new comic, Sapph's suggested we try a smaller project first. He's right, of course, but it's hard for me to tell a short story. And the ones he would really like to do are either things that I need to spend some time getting into (a fighting-game-like tournament) or that I've found myself incapable of writing (a zany, fun comedy). Like I told him, I think I'm going to have to get laid before I'm able to write something wacky. At least I need something to pull me out of my depression. Kethra tries, but I don't really like her licking my face, especially when I'm trying to take a nap. She's sweet and all, but she also likes to eat squirrel poop when she gets the chance.

At least I'm busy. Sapph's starting to hate his job again, and so he's not giving me any sympathy. I don't know what to do to help the guy. I've tried to lean on the graphics guys I know, but they're not in any sort of position to be hiring people. My boss has recently gone on a hiring spree, but neither Sapph nor Mal are well suited to anything that we've got to do, so I can't get them work here. I'm stuck. So maybe while I'm looking for the "pretty girlfriend" boxtops, he can start collecting "decent job" boxtops. I'll bet those kinds of cereals would sell like crazy.

Drops in Buckets

2008-01-08T20:22:00.001-06:00

Ugh. I've spent the last two days deep in the bowels of traffic control and shaping theory. Since I've declared myself the Networks and Systems office at work (which is just as well, since I'd have had to do everything anyway), it's my responsibility to make sure that things work right. And so I've been working on putting together the egress shaping for the network. We're down to less than half of what we used to have (about half down and a third up, I think) and twice as many people, so the Internet at work isn't exactly quick on its feet. When your job involves SSH, this becomes painful. So I implemented QoS over the past couple days. (This next part won't make any sense to the nontechnomancers out there, so feel free to stop reading here. If anybody has questions about getting this sort of a configuration to work, let me know, I'll try to answer them as best I can.)

I spent today learning that only the outermost connection (the PPoE one, in our current case) gets filtered, so putting my queueing disciplines on eth0 weren't doing me any good (eth0 being the ethernet jack going to the DSL modem). Once I got everything looking at ppp0 (the DSL PPoE connection itself) it started to actually work. SSH is better, having its packets put in a much higher priority than most of the traffic that flies through the network. I'm still trying to sort out the optimum configuration, but the one I'm using isn't too bad. It's based on hierarchal token buckets (htb), with stochastic fairness queueing (sfq) at the bottom of each bucket making sure the packets are handed out fairly at each priority level. The big question for me is where to put VNC connections, a question that should hopefully be answered tomorrow. It's effectively a six bucket system, where the top bucket is just for overhead packets, hopefully to prevent the entire network from bogging down when things get busy, the second one for low-latency work like SSH, the next for "interactive" traffic; website requests and the like, then non-interactive traffic; UDP and currently where our VNC connections are sitting, then bulk traffic; things like SCP and FTP, and finally a bucket for unrecognized packets and services. There's enough traffic going through that last bucket that I'm concerned -- I'm doing some network profiling to see if I can't figure out what all that traffic is. The heirarchy is processed in that order. Everything looks like it's going more or less smoothy at the moment, so I'm excited.

I'm going back to Flash development tomorrow... In some ways, it's nice to get a break from the low level networking stuff, but I'm not exactly overjoyed to be stuck working on the Flash horror more, even if it does need to be done. *sigh*

And the Sacrifice Begins

2007-12-25T22:16:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas, all, even if you don't necessarily celebrate it yourselves. *grin* Enjoy your time with your loved ones, and if you don't have any of those, well, here's hoping Santa can deliver a few. *wink*

A thought on Christmas occurred to me. We (speaking as "Christians") always speak of the miracle of Jesus' birth, the joyful songs of the angels, the wonder of the shepherds on Christmas. But we've long missed something -- this is the beginning of God's sacrifice for mankind. This was one of the most difficult events to ever transpire -- God had to "empty himself" and be born a human. For Jesus, this was the farthest He had ever been from the Father, since before there was Time. And from God's perspective...This was His Son, His most precious one. And He was giving Him up, sending Him to Earth to save humanity. This Earth is a war zone between good and evil, we are the soldiers, we are the objectives, and we are the casualties. God sent His Son to us, to our joy, but away from Him and into war. And He knew His Son would die fighting for us. I can't understand this feeling. The only people who I think can are those who have done the same. This Christmas, remember the families of our brave soldiers, for they have a glimpse at God's love. A love willing to give their sons and daughters and spouses up to a place of fighting, betrayal, and death, willing to endure the separation from them; all for the sake of others.

Back from Tennesee

2007-12-10T17:30:00.000-06:00

Well, I'm back in town. I think I'm going to start insisting on layovers which are two hours or more for return flight. Once again, my hour-and-a-half layover was turned into me running across the terminal. We had plane troubles -- the anti-skid went out, and since it was snowing in Chicago, they weren't going to fly in a plane with broken anti-skid (can't fault them for that one). Fortunately, I didn't miss my connecting flight entirely, because they were all on ground hold for a while as the worst of the storm blew through. Ah, well, it all worked out. Though I would have been okay with a night in Chicago. At least I would have probably gotten a better hotel than the one I stayed in for the auction.

The auction itself went very smoothly from my perspective (which paved the way for me to go to more of these things; and the next one's in Florida *grin*). After spending a couple hours getting the wireless network up and making myself a nice list of things that I'm going to need to have for the next time (especially my USB drive), everything was pretty much good. I spent the rest of that day and almost the whole auction standing around uselessly (or as I prefer to put it, "supporting the network infrastructure through positive thinking and exuding confidence"). My last day I helped run reports, which at least had me doing something. But everything went smooth, and I got paid quite well. (In fact, it looks like I'm getting paid quite well twice. Tagon would be proud.) I've also got a list of problems to resolve, but I was expecting that and they aren't, right now at least, my responsibility to fix.

My dog was something of a monster for my cousins, though. She tore up their kitchen floor. Fortunately, they'd been planning to replace the floor anyway (they already had the new flooring), and she's devastatingly cute.

One last thing of note -- I had some bread pudding while I was out there. Oh, Lord...It tasted like angels ought to taste. So I've got some recipes that I'm going to try out. It was just amazing, and I'll be quite pleased if I can replicate it.

Business Trip

2007-12-04T17:08:00.000-06:00

I am off on my first real business trip. I'm out in Nashville, helping one of our clients put on an auction.

Heroic Deaths (A Short Analysis)

2007-12-02T01:20:00.000-06:00

I got into a disagreement about the validity of deaths for heroes, and in particular the necessity of deaths in a story with a fellow forumgoer at TwoKinds the other day. I thought I'd use the thought I put into that argument (it was a friendly argument, don't worry) and do a bit of explanation here. Based on my experiences with cinema, there are generally three kinds of "heroic" deaths (note that heroes don't always die heroic deaths, but they're the most common): the Redeeming Death, the Poetic Death, and the Inspiring Death.

The Redeeming Death, while being heroic, isn't actually a death for heroes. The Redeeming Death is almost always reserved for the foil of a story. The reason that this death is important is because of its finality. The foil has spent the whole story, teetering between good and evil. Through their sacrifice, they help the heroes complete some objective, and by dying, they prove that they're good at heart -- they secure their place in Heaven, more or less. The finality is important because it leaves no doubt in anyone's minds where the foil now falls. They can't switch sides back to evil now; they're locked into good.

The Poetic Death is common for a lot of Asian cinema (Hero is a spectacular example). It's the ending for Romeo and Juliet as well, what I call, "everyone dies happily ever after." Dying in your lover's arms, or some other "meaningful" death that really is simply designed to tug at your heart strings. I'm not always in favor of these deaths -- many of them would be more striking to have the character live on with the consequences of their previous actions (as my fellow forumgoer pointed out). However, they make for a nice wrap-up sometimes, and, if properly executed, can leave the audience in tears.

The Inspiring Death is actually something I enjoy. The Inspiring Death is that moment of self-sacrifice where the character dies in saving others. These sorts of deaths challenge the viewer to become something better than themselves. United 93 showcases this sort of death. Due to my worship of heroes, an Inspiring Death almost always leaves me in tears. I can feel that challenge to rise above myself deep in my heart. These deaths are incredibly powerful from a storytelling perspective. The mark of a true master is providing the same effect without the impact of death (see Shindler's List, which does this with an artistic precision I've never seen since).

The Inspiring Death is that which haunts us. We forget the Redeeming Death, the Poetic Death lingers, but only in that it was poetic. But the Inspiring Death? Done right, we will never forget it. We do not forget sacrifice. We should never forget those who stand. And it remains in our hearts, giving us the strength we need to stand in the future. Death is an important part of cinematic storytelling. A story is a life -- just as there is birth, so too must there be death. Not everything can "live happily ever after."

Happy Thanksgiving, Everybody

2007-11-22T01:38:00.000-06:00

It's Thanksgiving here in the 'States, so I hope everyone enjoys their turkey (or fried Turgoosen, as my coworkers will have Friday -- I'm going home so I miss out *sad frown*). I'll be heading home to the family Thanksgiving and then on all the way to the folks' to help with some yard work. Honestly, I'm not sure I can really say anything better than Mark Steyn had to say, so why not bump on over there and check out his commentary on the holiday. If I think of anything exciting, I'll be sure to pop on back over and make note of it.

Unfiltered Entertainment Made Its Big Premiere!

2007-11-19T01:24:00.001-06:00

The other night, my cousin's movie company, Unfiltered Entertainment, Inc., premiered their first feature length film, Declaration of Independents. You can see the trailer here on Youtube, as well as a short, Manna for the Damned, with it's trailer as well. They did pretty well, if I do say so myself. I wish I could point you some where to actually see it, but you'll have to hit the right film festivals, I'm afraid.

I'm no expert in filmmaking, but I've seen enough indie films (mostly vampire flicks) to be frightened by that section of Blockbuster. Usually independent films suffer from what my cousin (rightly) refers to as being too close to the subject matter -- you fall in love with what you have and are unwilling to cut it out. The "fifteen minute" idea, as one of his business partners called it -- "a good idea for a fifteen minute short, stretched a little, then a little more, until you've got ninety minutes." And that's absolutely accurate. Being acutely aware of the weaknesses of their medium, Unfiltered did a good job of avoiding it. Declaration manages not to drag, and while the trailer does highlight many of the funny bits, they actually tend to be the lead-in jokes for the scenes. Unlike so many trailers, the real jokes, the funniest ones, are omitted from the trailer. And I still think the voiceover was fantastic. Manna was also pretty good. It was pretty funny, a good short, though it left off at the end (which, I suppose isn't surprising for a short). It'd be kind of an interesting idea to take all the way out to its conclusion, so I have to hope that we'll see a feature-length take on it, actually. I think we'd end up with something along the lines of Idle Hands, which I really enjoyed, so I'm in favor of it.

So good job, Unfiltered Entertainment, it was a spectacular premiere. I hope the next big one will be the one for my cousin's movie, and that Ambition will be ready for it.

Melancholy

2007-11-19T00:25:00.000-06:00

I've been depressed again lately. I don't know why, just been stuck in the deep dark recently. Loneliness again, at least for the most part. It'd help if my little pup-dog didn't express her love by biting me and barking in my ear. Or tearing up everything she can get her teeth on, particularly if it's expensive and doesn't belong to me. She ate another DVD from Blockbuster yesterday, and this time she actually wrecked the DVD and not just the case. *sigh* A dog is not a very good stand in for a girlfriend, unfortunately. Even a cute one that's mostly sweet like my little girl. And for some reason, I've had really bad heartburn today.

The boss says that we're going to be moving into the new building at the end of the month. There's just a few problems -- the rooms aren't painted yet (the plan is to do that in the next week, especially over Thanksgiving weekend, though I have to go home, so I won't be involved in that) and there's no wiring for the network either. The network cabling falls to me, so that's what I'm up to. I need to talk to the boss and see if I can bill some of these hours. It'd be nice to get something back for the eight hours I spent there today, and the time I'll be spending in the next couple weeks. It's not so bad, but it's slow going, especially by myself. It shouldn't take too long though, I got eighteen cables run today, and we're only doing what's absolutely necessary for the time being. With any luck, we'll be almost ready when we move in. Of course, we probably won't actually have Internet access when we move, which is going to make our work very difficult, so life's going to be interesting for a while.

Finishing

2007-11-12T14:32:00.000-06:00

Well, rather than getting things done yesterday, I finished some outstanding entertainment instead -- I finished reading Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead and beat Bioshock on Medium for the "good" ending.

First, the literature. Speaker for the Dead is a good book. Not as good as Ender's Game, but the xenology of the world is fascinating, if far-fetched, and the story is well told. I also learned one important thing: never, never, NEVER write a book where half the dialogue is in a language your reader doesn't understand. Nothing is more obnoxious than looking at a passage and not being able to work out what the characters just said to each other because it's in Portuguese. Make some signal that they're speaking a different language or translate everything and do it accurately, or make everyone speak the language you're writing the book in. I know it was done for atmosphere, and for that effect, it's nice. But it's also intensely frustrating for the reader and takes them out of the world, out of the story. It's permissible if the main character doesn't understand the language either -- they're as lost as the reader is, so the reader identifies with them and stays in the world of the story. But when everybody but the reader is in on the language, it's distracting. Stories work because the reader is in on details that the characters don't know (the "Look out behind you!" mechanism) or the reader and the main character are equally ignorant (the "I wonder what's going to happen next" mechanism). When the characters know something that the reader doesn't, and flaunts this knowledge to the reader constantly, the reader gets a little irritated by the constant condescension from the story. It's still a good story, and this is just one gripe, it's just one that really leaped out at me.

Now, Bioshock. Also a well told story, very interesting, but with some irritating bits related not to the story, but to the storytelling. There's going to be some minor spoilers here, so if you're holding off on playing the game, you read further at your own risk. If you haven't seen the Zero Punctuation review at the Escapist Magazine,
watch it, I have to agree with most of Yahtzee's commentary (then again, I played, and beat, all of his adventure games before I even knew he had this "column," so I'm inclined to like and agree with the man in the first place). Bioshock is really easy. Seriously, having the magic "come back to life" tanks spread around, used automatically at no cost just took the difficultly out back (what little there was) and shot it. Even barring those from the discussion, the only time you'll be in trouble is fighting the Big Daddies, and those go down pretty easy from ye old shotgun (seriously, don't even try anything else, the shotgun works phenomenally well, especially compared to your plasmids). The story is interestingly told. I was expecting Atlas to betray me for the whole game, so it came as no surprise when it happened. Ryan's last scene was spectacular. It gave me enormous respect for the man. The end was otherwise kind of "meh." It was much easier than the earlier parts of the game (no wonder they mess with your health and plasmids -- otherwise it'd be a cakewalk), especially Hephaestus, since it had much tougher splicers than the previous areas and a reasonably variety of types. The endgame had very little variety, though the splicers did take a reasonable amount of damage to go down. Most of the plasmids aren't as useful as you think they are. Electro-bolt is unquestionably the most useful of the bunch -- you'll be using it and Telekinesis throughout the game. I really enjoyed Insect Swarm, but that's just because I would laugh and shout "Bees!" every time I used it. The research was a nice touch, I approve of it heartily. The game's atmosphere is spectacular. In Fort Frolic, when you first realize the "statues" are spider slicers, it's delicious. One was in a chair, facing a corner. I upgrade my shotgun, turn around, and it's standing right behind me. If I hadn't mastered the reflex of "surprise = shoot the thing in the head with the shotgun," I'd have jumped out of my skin. Fort Frolic was probably my favorite area. It was so varied and actually kept me on edge.

The thing that hobbled the game the most was a disrespect for the intelligence of the players (maybe they were concerned about making it accessible for the XBox Live crowd) and an incredible laziness by the developers. I actually got an unsolvable hacking minigame. It's one thing to make them impossible because you have to flip the first piece, that's just irritating, but if I was a little quicker, I'd get it. But to have one that you can't solve at all? And before you get started -- no it's wasn't maximum difficulty either. The puzzle was around a 30% difficulty, still clearly green but pushing into yellow. How hard is it to work backwards and make sure that your random puzzle HAS a solution? Not very. It's not half as hard as writing a real AI, and they did enough of that. Whoever decided that they didn't need an inventory screen shouldn't be allowed to work in game development ever again. I would have loved to have the ability to figure out how much of the various invention ingredients I had (though that really didn't matter and by the end I had tons of crap and nothing else that I needed to build). But most of all, I wanted a way to easily sort my plasmids without having to visit a gene bank and going through the whole dang thing. That wouldn't be an issue except they resort the plasmid list every single time you get an upgraded plasmid or they jank around with your plasmids (this happens several times at the end alone). So once you finally learn the arbitrary order they put the plasmids in, they just go and reorder them on you. The only reason I had trouble with the last boss fight at all was because I couldn't find the plasmids I wanted (Electro-bolt for the curious), though in retrospect, I should have just ignored the plasmids entirely for that fight. I don't want the ability to switch in and out plasmids and tonics, that's what the gene bank's for. I just want to be able sort the list of plasmids I've got equipped and put the ones I really want to use close to my fingers. The developers also appear to think I'm retarded, because when I go through a hallway, get a thing, and then turn around to find a batch of bodies in the hall and splicers have spent the last third of the game pretending to be dead (it worked the first time), they don't seem to expect that I'm going to start shooting the "bodies" in the head. At least, that's what it says to me when it puts up the "The machine you just damaged was hacked and friendly to you" message when I shoot them. It just doesn't make any sense at all. Like I said, lazy development that has no respect for my intelligence. But apart from that, it's a lot of fun, probably one of the best games to come out this year. Check it out.

Advice for Using Dreamweaver

2007-11-06T18:45:00.000-06:00

At work I'm deeply involved in the redesign of the website for a trendy clothing store, which includes creating a shopping cart. This is not as much fun as it sounds. We're working with a local design company, who are good at what they do, but let's just say that web design isn't their strong suit. (You know how the Internet likes rectangles and only really supports the four fonts that your Typography teacher would fail you for using in class? Yeah, this design completely ignores both of those facts.) What's worse is that it's by far easiest to put the design into Dreamweaver (my coworker Emo's job) and then make it dynamic and stuff (my job). I say that's "worse" because a.) we have an old version of Dreamweaver and b.) the use of Dreamweaver isn't taught properly by anyone in the entire world.

Let me give all you web designers a hint -- use Dreamweaver for design. It's the best WYSIWYG editor on the market, hands down. It generates almost human readable code (it doesn't like carriage returns very much). But only use it for design, and then don't touch it again. You'll be tempted to use advanced Dreamweaver things like layers. DON'T DO THIS! Dreamweaver layers are an atrocity that create unreadable code that's impossible to maintain or change. They shouldn't be taught. Unfortunately, all art classes that cover Dreamweaver seem to love the use of these things. They make me cry myself to sleep at night. The other problem with Dreamweaver (which might be better in a newer Dreamweaver) is that it's obsessed with absolute positioning in CSS. Literally everything on the page is absolutely positioned, which allows it to put things all over the place in the code rather than according to logical flow (making maintenance and changes again, nearly impossible to do). There's also one huge problem with CSS positioning, absolute positioning in particular: Every single browser on the market handles it differently. And since Dreamweaver doesn't check (and neither will 90-or-so-percent of developers) you can tell, in an instant, which browser a developer wrote the code for (i.e. which one they tested). Now, I'll grant, the weirdness in positioning is mitigated by positioning everything, but if you need to make a major change, it's a nightmare. Fortunately, Dreamweaver won't molest your PHP too badly, so it's possible, sometimes, to pull the code back into Dreamweaver to make changes. Sometimes. So the positioning is irritating, but workable. But trust me on the layers. They're a bad plan. Yeah, I can see you tempted to use them. "But Avvy! They make the site react faster and use less bandwidth! Those are good things!" Yes they are, neophytus, but utility must always be balanced with usability and maintainability. Layers are not easy to maintain, and once you start having to do development and testing outside of the Dreamweaver environment, they hobble you and drastically reduce your productivity. They're a nice idea, but they just won't work out well.

Kethra's Fixing Surgery Update

2007-10-08T15:48:00.000-06:00

Just got off the phone with the vet. I'm going to pick Kethra up tomorrow at 4. They said the surgery went really well and she's recovering nicely. Poor little girl; hopefully she'll forgive me for this scary experience. I'm not sure what I'm going to do tonight without her around.

A Few More Days To A New Xotz

2007-10-08T14:19:00.000-06:00

Well, I'm probably going to regret it, but I couldn't pass up the deal I was going to get on Newegg, so I went ahead and picked up a processor and some RAM. With any luck, Xotz will be back to life on Friday, new, improved and ready to rock. 2GB of RAM (more than ever before) and an AMD64 X2 6000+. I'm pretty excited, though I'm still really worried about my little puppy dog, and I can't actually afford the expense at the moment.

Surgery for the Doggie

2007-10-07T16:42:00.000-06:00

Sorry posting's been so seldom. It's pretty busy these days, especially with trying to get the new building up to snuff so that people will be able to see it. I'm concerned that my estimate of our move-in, the end of this month, will prove to be too optimistic (and I've held to that estimate even at the beginning of this project, when we were supposed to be moved in two months ago). But we're getting closer.

Kethra's scheduled to go in to get spayed tomorrow morning. I'm worried; I know it's a fairly routine procedure, but it's still an invasive one. I just don't know what I'd do without the little squirt. She's got the run of the house now, and she usually refrains from destroying too much stuff while I'm away. Still working on the "no pooing on the carpet," but she's getting better about it all the time. I don't think she's going to enjoy this trip to the vet at all...They're going to keep her overnight for observation to make sure she's recovering well, and this'll be the first night she hasn't slept in the same room as me since I got her. I'm sure she'll be fine though, and I took Tuesday afternoon off so that I could hang out with her the whole time. I'm going to make us some bacon. She'll like that.

Clive Owen Makes Carrots Something Badasses Eat

2007-09-20T22:31:00.000-06:00

The title pretty much says it all. I'm talking about "Shoot 'Em Up". This post will have a few spoilers to it, I'm afraid, since I can't otherwise discuss the movie (all the important things are a bit spoilerish).

First off, from an action perspective, it's spectacular. The action sequences are really well done, and the dialogue is pretty snappy. The villain is creepy, intelligent, and infuriating. The carrots make a lovely touch to the movie. Granted, it seems like Clive Owen has been given the power to ignore how inertia should affect his body when he deems it necessary, but we expect some of that in any decent action flick these days. Now, I'm not entirely certain I approve of the subtext. Paradoxically, the movie has a strong "guns are bad" subtext to it. It would be tolerable but for some other strange things about it. For instance the senator in the movie is only cast in a negative light because he sold-out and is working with the evil gun manufacturer. The senator was selling out over a rather fanciful gun control bill that sounded like it'd create British-style gun control in America (i.e. nobody has them). The problem with this (other than it being the usual stupid Hollywood clap-trap) is that the senator was up to honest and truly evil activities himself. He was having women impregnated so he could harvest the babies for bone marrow to help him survive whatever terminal disease he had (I'd guess lymphoma, but I don't remember if the movie actually states it). That's right -- it's not a problem for him to pay women to have his kids just so that he can harvest the bone marrow from the infants, but work with the gun lobby folks to recover the one escaped baby? Now that's an issue. I'll still be adding this one to the collection; I can forgive a single Hollywood dumbass issue for an otherwise badass movie. If you like Clive Owen or Paul Giamatti, it's a must see. It leaves just the right number of loose ends, but ties itself up well. It's satisfying, but needs no sequel to follow it up, in fact, it leaves no real option for one. Instead it does better -- it leaves you ready and waiting on the next movie that Owen or Micheal Davis, the writer and director, puts out, even if it's got a weird subtext to it.

Answers To Angles

2007-09-09T22:28:00.000-06:00

You recall my question posted just before this? "What do I have to offer to someone? How do I fulfill the wants of another?" I think I came up with an answer, and a very good note on this was proposed by one of my friends on Facebook. Let me discuss her addition to the discussion first. She brought up a useful point. We all know what we want, and we generally want very similar things to the people that we want to attract. So that should be played off of. By her words,

A lot of people want someone gorgeous, someone fascinating. Well, if you want it, attract it. Radiate those kinds of qualities.

She's right. That's a useful method -- be what you want. My answer follows from this.

For my answer, it's simple after a fashion. I figured it out as I was going to sleep a few nights ago -- I have nothing to offer but myself. And that's also part of what my friend's words mean. What do we have to give to another beyond simply ourselves?

So to you, whoever you are, I offer my cynicism, that you may show it wrong, for it is yours to do as you will. My sarcasm shall serve your purposes, my sense of humor is yours to laugh at your jokes. My eyes shall see only you, and my voice dedicated to singing your praises. My words, those you do not simply take away, are given to you to. My ears are yours, to hear your words. My fire will burn for you, animate me to be with you. I give to you my loyalty, my dedication, my warmth, and what strength I possess. What I am, I offer to you.

Same Old Problem, Different Angle

2007-09-05T11:43:00.000-06:00

A rather difficult question was posed to me recently, and I really haven't figured out the answer yet. I do a lot of bellyaching about how I'm lonely and I want a girlfriend, and on and on until you're all sick of it and I'm still in the same situation. So I've outlined time and time again what I want. But the question posed is one I'd never considered -- What do I offer? What do I have to give to that someone? I still don't have a good answer, but maybe I'll come up with one and bore you all with it here.

Labor Day Weekend

2007-09-04T15:06:00.000-06:00

Back from the weekend of camping, and let me tell you, this was a much better birthday than last year. It was nice to be out camping again, and going intertubing down the river near my grandparents' place was a lot of fun. And that's even considering that I stepped on a stick in the middle of the river and now my foot's sore and it looks like it's trying to get infected. I'm hoping it's not going to be a problem, since my new health insurance premiums are kinda high and I'd end up paying for everything anyway.

As Steel (and Happy Birthday to Me!)

2007-08-31T11:31:00.000-06:00

We are as steel, born in flame, forged into what we are by the relentless beating of the hammer. It is the fire which makes us stronger, the hard times are when we are reinforced and honed. We are Japanese iron: without nearly unending work in the furnace, we would be worthless and weak. We all tread in shadow at times, and these dark times temper our souls; these rough roads are necessary to travel. We do not become strong in the good times, only in the most intense fire can we be purified and strengthened. We need the good times to refresh us, but even more we need the hard times to fortify us. We are made who we are by the struggles we have in life and the way we deal with them.

Wow, been a long time since I posted. I've been keeping busy with work and Kingdom of Loathing. The new Xotz is still long from completion, so I am not part of the great Bioshock experience just yet. Just doing my best to pay off my debts and stay afloat.

It's my birthday today, and I'm actually in a pretty good mood about it. Leading up to today, though, I was pretty depressed. I just seem to be treading water, spinning my tires. I know what I'm doing (recovering from college and getting on my feet), and I know why it's necessary, but it sure feels like I'm going nowhere. I was hoping everything would be different this year, but instead, everything's the same, only I have more responsibilities, in the form of more apparent debt and a cute little puppy. No luck at all on the girlfriend front, I'm afraid. And that seems to be the real measure in my mind. I don't know what it is, but that's the thing that really hits me. Seriously, I ought to be used to being alone by now, but there are times when it's still just really hard. But even though I'd been getting more and more morose all week, now that today has actually rolled around and I'm actually twenty-four instead of just anticipating it, I'm in a much better mood. Maybe the anticipation was the whole thing -- I wanted to have that one thing I desire (if you can't figure that one out by now, there's no hope for you), and the weight of not having it by my arbitrary deadline was crushing. Now that I no longer have that crutch beneath me, the weight attached to it no longer has its hold either. It's this lonely dark that surrounds me which seems to be my furnace at the moment; this is the fire in which I am forged. And, to (possibly mis-)quote an old Magic: the Gathering card (the Repentant Blacksmith, actually), "And when they put me to the fire, they saw for resistance I was made."

Note to Self: Fire Hot

2007-07-01T22:25:00.000-06:00

Today was an interesting day. It was the family get together for Independence Day. I was a little worried that Kethra would be afraid of all the kids, but I got to be very proud of her. She did very well with everyone, though she was pretty tuckered out by the end of it. My sister-in-law insisted I stop on the way so we could get some fireworks, so I did. Kethra did pretty well with those too. They made her nervous at first, but by the end she was fine. So fine, in fact, that she hung around my ankles while I was trying to light some Morning Glory sparklers for my little cousins (terrible batch of Morning Glories this time though; usually they're the best sparklers ever, but this bunch was awful). Unfortunately, this put in the right position for a flaming chunk of paper wrapper from the sparkler to land right on her back. That's right -- I managed to set my puppy, my little baby, on fire. Poor dog. Fortunately, she's fine, just a little singed so she smells kinda funny. I don't think she even noticed that she was on fire; she didn't whine or anything. I'm pretty sure she just panicked a little because we were panicking. I'm going to have to be more careful with fireworks around her in the future. And since I'm planning to get a shotgun (as soon as I get my correct address on my driver's license to satisfy the ATF), a beautiful Benelli Nova, to go trap shooting on the fourth, I guess I'm going to break her of being gun shy too. Poor little dog.

Ambition: Dunking Game

2007-06-30T23:17:00.000-06:00

Like most previous versions of Flash, CS3 does most of what you want to do in a totally different way than its predecessors. ARGH, it's frustrating. Now I'm relearning all the class stuff, which was obscure, obtuse, and difficult under AS2. It's slightly better under AS3, but it would appear that the Flash dev team never considered that someone might want a custom class to contain another custom class. What a novel concept! *sigh* I'm still trying to figure out the proper way to make that bit work.

One of my friends on the TwoKinds Forum (I suppose I will use the familiar, even though our only point of contact is that forum itself) suggested that I deserve to be the subject of a dunking game for a joke I made (I suggested that Keith and Natani are in the process of demonstrating that it is indeed possible to base a relationship on very little except a pair of lies). So I decided I would attempt to create such a thing, as I could use it to contribute to development on the Ambition Engine and familiarize myself with CS3. Well, it's doing that I suppose; though I'm not getting much development of the game done.

Sort of Like a Neighborhood Cookout

2007-06-27T22:24:00.000-06:00

Just a quick note. Went out to Kobe with a few of the guys tonight, sort of a belated graduation celebration. This is when I discovered that one of my neighbors is a cook there. Now, for those not in the know, Kobe is a Japanese steakhouse, the whole habachi, throwing things around, setting the grill on fire, dinner and a show deal. And this was the best time I've ever had there. Now, I disagree with my friends that it was freakish coincidence that my neighbor cooked for our table -- I consider it freakish coincidence that he was working there the night we went, but I think he purposely asked to work our table. Regardless, it was spectacular. He's been working there for five years, and the experience shows. And he bought us sake bombs (a shot of sake dropped into a glass of Sapporo). Awesome food and a great time. Because he bought us liquor, and we were neighbors, and he honestly was a terrific cook, I wanted to tip bigger than usual (which is already bigger than most tips, because the cook and the waitress share the tip for the table)...I'd put the numbers down before I realized that I'd just tipped 50%. Oh well, it's not like it wasn't well earned, even if it's a big tight on my finances. Yes, this is a very pointless entry, but we had such a spectacular time that I just wanted to put a shout out.

Catching Up (redux)

2007-06-26T16:41:00.000-06:00

Whoa! It's been too long since I've posted. Tons has happened.

First, my brother got married to one of the nicest girls he could find. Seriously, it seems that God placed her on this Earth to make me feel bad for being a bastard. Congratulations to the both of them, and the best wishes for their life together. The wedding was very nice, and my brother made me a groomsman, so I was very pleased. For the record, that's what I wanted -- I'm a firm believer that you should choose a close friend to be best man, there should be no obligation to make family so. And I don't think I could have held it together as well as his best man did. Pretty much without a hitch. The reception was a little hard on me (partly because I seem to have forgotten how to dance, but mostly for the usual reasons), but one of the bride's sisters (how in the world do I refer to my sister-in-law's family?) took pity on me and danced with me a lot.

I got salary at work, which really doesn't affect how much I work very much, it just means that I get paid better and I get all the full-time benefits. It's really nice to have health insurance. I also moved, so I'd be closer to work, and now I've got a nice little two-bedroom duplex. I've even got a teensy little yard of my own for Kethra to play in. I've also got a landlord who's pretty willing to let me do just about whatever I want with the place, so I'm pretty happy.

Unfortunately, Xotz's flashbang powersupply's really caught up with him, and he rather went kaput. I'd been dealing with instability, but this week I became lucky if he'd boot and then every moment he was running was a race to get things done before he crashed. It looks like I don't have much good RAM anymore, and the RAM slots on the motherboard are all suspect. So I pulled Syd out of mothball and I stayed up to install updates on him last night (76 updates for Windows...wow). All the constant crashing took its toll on Xotz's hard drive, and Windows won't boot on him; so I'm going to try to reinstall Windows tonight, running on Syd's systems. I need those files if I'm going to stand a chance to get the new Deviant Paradigm up (even if it's months late) and work on the Ambition Engine. Hopefully that'll go, I'm rather deep in debt to want to be putting together Xotz revision4 at this point (though I've started looking). What's the opinion of my readers on running a 0+1 RAID on 500GB SATA drives? Overkill?

Ah, the Ambition Engine. That's the name I've given the Flash Universal Game Engine that I've been "hired" to write. I've got some good ideas, and a copy of Flash CS3, so I need to get started on it. I'll try to keep you all updated on my progress as much as I can. Also, I'd like to apologize to the Adobe Flash devs. I stand by my statement that Flash is probably from Hell, but most of my complaints about it have been fixed, including dynamically importing PNG files. I didn't understand you fully when you commented, but you were right; you fixed my complaint in Flash 8, and I'm really excited about using CS3.

I promise, I'm going to try to be better about posting here...But you all know how things get.

Welcome to the family, Kethra

2007-05-28T16:37:00.000-06:00

I've been joking lately that since I can't get a girlfried, I'd get a puppy. See, that way I have something that gives me love and affection in exchange for huge amounts of my time and money. Well, so it was that I got my little pup, Kethra. Yes, I did name her after my WoW character. You can all just save your "nerd" and "World of War-crack" comments, I haven't even kicked the game open in a couple months.

I got Kethra on Friday, and we've been getting along. She wakes me up about every two hours through the night, for no real reason as far as I can tell; she rarely needs to go out at night. She's had a few accidents in the apartment. And by "a few" I mean, "every time she gets out of my sight for more than six seconds." She's virtually attached to my ankles, and I don't know how she's going to handle me going to work, as she throws a fit whenever she's left alone. She just cries and cries and howls. She's definitely got a lot of Husky blood in her. She's got a Husky nose, a Husky tail, and Husky color markings. She'll be golden and white when her fur darkens up. The Corgi mix must have been her sire -- she's got the short little legs of that breed. She doesn't bark that much, usually just at me or a toy, but she's got all kinds of other vocalizations when she gets riled up. Which she does several times a day. She just rips around the apartment. She's very cute, but the 6 AM mornings are starting to get to me.

Feast your eyes on perfect cuteness.

It's probably the one floppy ear and one semi-erect ear that really make her adorable.

Reading Materials

2007-05-28T16:25:00.000-06:00

Been doing some blog reading lately again. It's not easy, Keth's always under foot now, and I have to keep an eye on her, since she's not housetrained just yet (the only two places I can trust her not to do her business has been her bed and the couch, which is effectively her other bed).

But to the point: I either need to read more of Bill Whittle's work or less of it. His most recent essay, is, as usual excellent; to the point where I'm nearly in tears reading it (the merest suggestion of true heroism and reminders of where it has been found tends to moisten my eyes). I'd also like to recommend Melanie Phillips's Liberalism vs. Islamism, as it's a clear headed analysis of the current threat to the free world and why this is a threat. Or at least the current threat as far as I and my ilk tend to see it; there's plenty who'd disagree, I'm sure.

Something happens to me when I read great essays. They inspire me. I get fired up. I write things myself. In fact, this blog itself owes its very existance as much to Whittle's "Tribes" essay as to Sapph getting me somewhat inebriated and cajoling me into signing up. Hopefully soon I'll have the chance to get back to some of my actual demagogery and perhaps even explain what my blog title means, and how it could possibly be inspired by "Tribes."

Skillet Again

2007-05-19T19:54:00.000-06:00

Went to another Skillet concert last night with the cousins. The venue was a bit smaller than we expected, and the close walls made the reverb mighty bad (I like to be able to feel my music at a concert, but this was just ridiculous). However, the crowd was awesome; much better than the last concert. And so the band just took off with it. They kept doing things that you'd see in Guitar Hero. The guitarist played with the guitar behind his head, the front man flipped his bass around his body (which worked really well the first time, then sort of failed the second time when he tried to spin it around three revolutions). It was a terrific concert. We missed out on the first opening band, which may or may not have been a good thing. The second opening band, Decyfer Down, was pretty good though. Nice hard rock, but the acoustics of the venue made the singer hard to understand, so I'm hoping the CD turns out much better. Fall Out Boy's playing in our area again soon, and I wish I could make it to their concert, but with my monetary situation the way it is...Let me put it this way: I'm very saddened that I won't be able to hit the local Anime Con (it's the same weekend as my brother's wedding), but I'm relieved that I'll be able to keep the money it would cost to attend.

All Official

2007-05-16T14:06:00.000-06:00

Well, the grades all came in on Monday. I did indeed graduate. In point of fact, I did much better in my math classes than I expected, or even hoped for. B- in both of them -- not bad at all considering that I had about a month-and-a-half's worth of homework not turned in. Now it's just a matter of waiting for them to mail my diploma(s) to me.

I'm terribly excited about getting my dog, so preparing for that takes a lot of time and effort. That said, I finally got Sapph to let me borrow his Ironclaw book, so I'm going to be taking a look at it to decide if I want to use Ironclaw for the rule system for the role-playing game I'm wanting to start up this summer. Conspiracy continues along; I'm taking the characters to Prague, and I'm planning a lot of excitement. But I've got quite a bit of preparation to do before I'll be ready for the session this Monday.

I'm also glad to be back at work. I'm settling down into it, and I'm not missing school at all. We're working on some website and database server migration we want to get accomplished this week. The only thing I wish I wasn't dealing with for work was the horrible gas prices. I about can't afford to go to work. I don't have my salary yet -- I need to talk to the boss about it yet. Hopefully I'll get the chance to do that soon.

I'm spending a lot of time looking for housing. I'd kind of like a house, but so far that's slow going. I'm not looking forward to spending the small fortune that I'm going to have to pay to keep up my apartment until my lease runs out, but I don't really have a choice. Maybe they'll let me sublet though. I've got a cousin who might be interested (she's in the opposite position I am in).

Anyhow, I'd better get back to work. With luck, Sapph'll do well with his final projects this week (I've been staying up to help him with them), so that we can get started on the new comic project. I've got high hopes for it so I'd better get off my backside and get on it. And then there's my own projects I need to work with. Whew! This is going to be some busy times.

Picked Out My Puppy

2007-05-07T12:21:00.000-06:00

Well, I did indeed get to go look at the puppies my Mom heard about. And...I laid claim to one. I'll be coming back home to pick her up around Memorial Day, so I've got to get busy and get everything I'm going to need. I'll have to go in and talk to my landlord about my lease too, since life would be better if I'm in Lincoln. Or at least they need to know that I'm getting a puppy.

I'll put a picture up as soon as I get them. I had to use my phone, so they're not the best (I can't believe I forgot my camera, bugger all). She's a cute little thing, pretty fuzzy right now, and just plump and happy looking. The puppies are a mix, of what we don't really know. The dam was a "husky-looking dog" and the father is either another husky-like dog or a corgi (or both; dogs have that thing where a litter of puppies can have more than one father). The mother was only about knee high, but that could just be short for a husky. The girl I picked is one of the biggest of the bunch (certainly the largest female), and more dominant, but I'm happy with that. What I didn't realize is that they're very white dogs (at least right now), with sandy colors. They're only about four weeks old and just starting on dry(-er) food and water, so they don't have their more permanent coats in yet. Looks like she'll have a really cute sandy-colored mask though. The puppies should end up being medium-sized dogs that look like big dogs and like to run. I'm excited as all get out. I think I'm going to name her Kethra, after my Tauren Warrior in WoW (I may have already mentioned this). They were very sleepy when we went to see them, so they would just nap in your arms, dreaming away.

The woman who took them in isn't a breeder, or official Rescue, or anything like that, but she's sort of an unofficial Rescue; this isn't the first time she's rescued dogs. She's put an enormous amount of effort into these puppies to take care of them right. At two weeks, a puppy not only needs bottle fed, but they actually can't go to the bathroom by themselves either, the mother has to stimulate that. So the poor woman had to do that job too, and now they're half paper-trained already. The woman has another couple dogs, and she thinks she's going to keep the runt of the litter (which is really cute and tiny). That gives the puppies a little more experience with other dogs, something I'm really glad for. She's one of those good people who watch out for the runts, the runaways, and the unwanted. All she wants is for the dogs to go to good homes, and I really hope I can provide that.

-- Update 5:23 PM 5/8/07 --
As promised:

Isn't she just adorable? I can't wait to see what she looks like in a few weeks.

Officially Commenced

2007-05-07T12:18:00.000-06:00

I am now officially commenced, as of this last Friday afternoon. Won't get the diplomas until July, but I'm magna cum laude in both Computer Engineering and Computer Science (assuming I passed my math finals, of course). Senior Thesis darn near killed me, but in the end we had what I hope is a passable set of documentation, and a reasonably well working project. School's now over; at least for a few years. I haven't decided if I'll do a Master's or not, but I'm going to take at least a year off first. The Chair of the CEEN department is still working on me. We'll see.

Puppies and Finals

2007-05-02T14:36:00.000-06:00

Well, I've been through two of my three finals (the last is in two hours). The first one was even easier than I thought it would be. The second one, which was my first horrible math final, wasn't too terribly bad, especially for being a third of my grade. I did the calculations -- if I pass the test, I will pass the class. If I fail the test...well...the class doesn't look good either. I think it'll be the same for my other horrible math test. I've got some studying to do for it though; there are a few topics I've missed, and I have a feeling that they'll come up on the test. But I'm almost through, assuming I can get in gear and get the bloody documentation done for thesis. I will be so glad to be out of this hell. I'm looking forward to work as being relaxing, which says something.

The puppy's not set in stone, but the odds are much better than not. I talked to my parents (as I discuss every major purchase or event with them) and I knew they wouldn't have a problem when my dad's first comment (to my mother, who was the one who told him) was "At least he'd have to wake up in the mornings." Seriously, they're taking this better than when I got my earring, and they were pretty cool with that. I told my brother's fiancee that I was looking at husky puppies at the pet store, but I wasn't sure I needed to spend $900 on a purebred husky. Her reply: "Oh, but you do!" I will have no shortage of people willing to watch my dog for me, that's something I can guarantee.

I can always tell when I've convinced my parents of something. I'm a bit of a meddler, and I got it from them. So when they start meddling on my behalf, I know they're on my side. Sure, when it comes to looking for a girlfriend, they haven't been a whole lot of good; but part of that has to do with my absolute lack of time this last semester. Anyway, back to the puppy -- my mother somehow ended up in a conversation with a woman at the gym and found out that this woman has a litter of miniature huskies. Yes, miniature huskies. I've done some looking -- that could mean just about anything, honestly, since "husky" can refer to a breed (Siberian Husky) or a class (Alaskan Husky), and the Klee Kai is commonly mistaken for a miniature husky (it was originally bred as a sort of miniature Alaskan Husky). They're supposed to get about knee high, which is actually within tolerace (barely) for husky height, and if you were to mix a husky (of either sort) with a smaller dog (say a Shiba Inu, or something similar) you'd end up with "miniature huskies." These pups are going to be a handful -- their dam was killed in a fire when they were two weeks old and this woman saved them and has been bottlefeeding them. They're only about four weeks right now, and you don't generally adopt them out until eight weeks, which is okay, I'll need a few weeks to get ready anyway. Without their mother, I'm concerned that they're going to end up fairly dominant/aggressive; the mother is the first authority in a puppy's life and she generally keeps them in line. Fortunately, I'm the sort of person who could actually deal with a dominant dog. It's just not going to be necessarily easy to socialize them. Then again (since I don't know much about the situation) the woman could be with one of the Rescues, and then she could have a house full of dogs, so they'd actually be better socialized than a pet-store puppy, even without their dam. (I've been thinking about this too much.) Anyhow, my mother hadn't heard of miniature huskies either, so she figured they'd end up expensive, and asked about it. The woman's giving them away -- she just wants them to have good homes. She said she thought the males were all spoken for already, but I wanted a female anyway. Mom got the woman's phone number, and I think we're going to go look at the puppies on Monday. I'm so excited.

It's telling when I'm fairly convinced I can housebreak a puppy, and I'm not even too concerned about teething or barking. The howling...Well, I don't know how to deal with that, so I'll have to come up with something. No, my biggest concern is that I don't know anyone with small children to socialize the puppy with.

Well, it's back to the grind. I've got a test to prepare for.

Darkest

2007-04-27T22:53:00.000-06:00

They say it's always darkest before the dawn. Well, this is shaping up to be one heck of a day if the twilight's this dim.

I've said lately that one of four things is going to need to happen by the end of this:

Get a puppy
Kick a puppy (figuratively -- picking on something naive and weak)
Get laid
Kill myself

Well, the last one's pretty much out (unless I fail to graduate here), since why would I want to deny my classes the pleasure? For the second, I'm too exhausted to do it argumentatively, and not cruel enough to do it any other way, so it's out too. The third one...well, I don't have any prospects (Sapph, Mal, put your hands down -- you're missing a few things and have a few others that disqualify you), so there's not much hope of it. So that leaves the first, I guess.

To that end, Sapph, Alan, and I hit the petstore today to look at puppies. Not sure if I've got the room (right now anyway) or the money for a purebred husky, but I sure met a pretty one. She was just adorable (I'm thinking female for a dog, since I think they'd be easier to paper train) and spunky to boot. She and (I assume) her brother were asleep until they brought her out to play. Then her brother started to wonder where she went. When they put her back, the puppies started roughhousing; but she wouldn't take any of his crap. When Sapph saw her winning the fight regularly he made the comment that she was "just [my] sort of girl." Of course, the parents aren't convinced that I need to spend the money, but since I'm not really considering getting a puppy seriously until after next week, I'm not too concerned.

To Envy the Dead

2007-04-24T11:15:00.000-06:00

Well, I've got to apologize for the dearth of posts lately. I'm not dead, I just wish I was. Don't expect to hear more from me for the next couple weeks either, I'm afraid. It's the end of the semester and I'm really trying to graduate. My classes are really trying to kill me. So I've got a Senior Thesis to finish (it mostly works; just not exactly according to the proposal), two tests tomorrow and three finals next week. And three relatively difficult math projects. And a whole batch of very hard math homework. I've already been up for more than twenty-four hours now, just getting thesis as far as it is.

Erg...What do I get out of life again, anyway? And Sapph, even though I do dearly love the line, and the running joke, "Nothing right now, but eventually the sex will be fantastic," is not a good answer. Guess I've really got to live by my motto this semester. "Or die trying," indeed.

Happy St. Patrick's 2007!

2007-03-18T02:28:00.000-06:00

Wow. Been a long time since I posted anything here. I'll try to actually get something useful up soon. I'd say I'd do more of my ongoing analysis, but, to be honest, Senior Thesis is sucking up all my critical thinking, so the demagogery is currently backburnered. But anyway, Happy Saint Patrick's Day everyone. I'll leave you with this old sketch Sapph made for me once. Yes, I modified the text to be appropriate.

Yet Another "Not My Week"

2007-03-04T00:53:00.000-06:00

Ugh...This has not been my week. Okay, let's start with the fact that what I call The Eternal Grind just keeps going. The Eternal Grind is my Monday/Wednesday classes. Five and quarter, almost straight, hours of class; beginning and ending with difficult math classes. Then we have a terrible snowstorm Thursday. I'm supposed to go to my cousin's wedding (which is roughly five hours away); taking place Saturday. So I try to go home on Friday, but I turn back -- I didn't really want to drive through blizzard conditions on the Interstate. In addition, I manage to pull something in my back trying to help people who've gotten stuck in the snow, which is still bothering me a little. So I try to head out this morning. And I get started late, as usual. Then I manage, on the day when the roads are finally clearing up, to hit a patch of slush and fishtail into a snowbank. So no wedding for me.

Then, just to top things off, both of my math classes have an assignment due and a midterm on Monday. Sweet Lord. All I want to do is pass, that's it. This is going to be a meat grinder.

--- Update 3/4/2007 6:57 PM ---
You know what, never mind. I'm whining about my week, my dad hasn't had a good week in a month. Between accidentally overdosing insulin and almost going into seizures to surgery, to sickness, to hitting the ER today. He's doing fine, but they're keeping him for tonight, since he'd get sick to go home (inner ear inflammation). At least Dad's doing fine. I'm still blessed in some ways.

Stop Abusing My Childhood

2007-02-24T13:52:00.000-06:00

Well, I ordered Balto and Balto 2 from Amazon and they came in the other day. The DVD cover art is atrocious. But that I'll forgive; you don't buy DVDs to look at the cover art anyway. So I finally saw Balto 2. Sapph led me astray. It was nowhere nearly as impressive as he suggested it would be. The writing was physically painful. It bought into a lot of neo-native american philosophy with a bit of eastern philosophy mixed in. And then it beat you with it. Now, I'll grant, I know who I am, so coming-of-age finding-yourself stories aren't my thing any more. But I also am not fond of movies that are just about the journey. Not the experiences of the journey, many movies, including the original Balto (which is a-freaking-mazing), are about the experiences of the journey. Balto 2 is about the fact that they're going on a journey (a spirit quest in this case). So the characters aren't growing because of what they experience on this journey -- they simply reach the end and get magically endowed with enlightenment. Speaking of that -- DON'T PUT MAGIC INTO A STORY WHICH IS ROUGHLY BASED ON REAL CHARACTERS. Balto lives in Nome, Alaska. I don't happen to remember the Inuit ever making totem poles, so why the hell is there one? Please, if you're going to abuse my childhood memories, at least do some research so you can abuse them properly. In Balto, the hardships he faces cause him to come to terms with himself and his heritage, along with proving himself to everyone and heroically saving lives. In Balto 2, all we have are mystical portents, songs, and spontaneous leaps of logic. I'm ashamed by what they did to one of my most beloved movies. This is worse than going from Aladdin to Aladdin 2, mostly because Balto 2 had a moral that they had to get across in every single scene. And finally, I miss Kevin Bacon. David Carradine was well cast, though, he was perfect for his character. Now, if they'd rewrite the movie so that it was good, maybe involve this wolf pack (which also irritates me because they all look like Balto-esque wolf-dogs instead of the very distinctive wolves of Balto) way earlier in the story instead of at the last minute, it could be enjoyable. As it stands, the movie just hurts.

Prepping For Failure

2007-02-19T11:59:00.000-06:00

I've been busy lately. If only I'd been busy doing homework. This week is going to do bad things to my grades -- fortunately, each of these stupid math assignments is worth almost nothing. I did a stupid thing and finally bought a PS2. Yes, that means I'll be reclaiming my copy of Guitar Hero soon. So far, I put eight hours into Okami, a couple into Dynasty Warriors 4 and one into Ghost In The Shell (the new one -- though I should see if I can get farther in the old one than I have). Did I mention I just got the PS2 on Friday? Though I've been thinking, if you were to make a game like Black & White, only in the style of Okami (the games are similar enough as it is), that would make for one awesome multiplayer game. Okami is also gorgeous. Amaterasu makes for a very pretty wolf. Okami is one of very very few times that I'll admit the 3D cell-shading effect not only works, but looks good doing it. Ordinarily I hate the look, but they obviously put a lot of effort into Okami, and it shows. Outside of cursing at the thumbstick because I have to draw circles all the time, I've also evidently been giving Sapph the sort of dreams that seem great until you wake up, and then you realize it was a nightmare.

I went to see Ghost Rider last night, and it was great. How could a movie about a guy with a flaming skull for a head go wrong? Honestly, it was an anti-hero movie (which I like a lot) that was pretty dark in nature, but they kept the jokes fast and strong to keep the attitude from desending into weepy emo-land. It doesn't hurt the cause that I happen to be a Nic Cage fan. Tim Buckley doesn't seem to agree with my assessment of Ghost Rider, but I'm going to suggest that perhaps he is one of those guys who likes Spider-Man and watching Marvel make a complete mockery of science using a character who is a Papa Roach song and a Livejournal account away from wearing black and slitting his wrists. Seriously, I liked '70s era Spider-Man because he was witty. Lately, Spider-Man is mopey. And I don't really like Tobey Maguire. He's a good enough actor, but he's way more soft-spoken than I like my heroes. It's like Harry Potter -- I remember what high school was like, thanks. I hated it, and don't want to have my escapist fantasy trap me inside it again. Making it so that the hero can't approach women either doesn't really help me relate to him. Being as I'm a guy who already accepts responsibilities, the Spider-Man clap-trap isn't so appealing. On the other hand, Ghost Rider is a vengeance story about second chances, and playing the cards you're dealt, even if it's a bad hand, to win the game. Beating the odds; those are the stories that interest me. Oh, that and crushing the forces of evil using a flaming chain as a whip. That's cool too.

Val's Day Plans

2007-02-14T21:16:00.000-06:00

Well, it's Valentine's Day, and in an attempt to prevent myself from lighting myself on fire, I think I'm going to go drinking, then curl up with Balto and drink some more. This is probably the one day where I'm grateful for my soul-crushing whole day worth of classes. I was going to watch Balto 2, but it looks like every freaking copy Blockbuster Online has is cracked clear through on one side. It's like it was systematic. Someone didn't like this movie. Since this is the only movie I've had the slightest problem with from Blockbuster Online, it's got to be something like that. I know they didn't get Kevin Bacon back, but they've still got some A-list voice actors. And "Hey Kids, it's Mark Hamill!"

Av's TwoKinds Resolutions

2007-02-11T23:14:00.000-06:00

I've been wasting more time on the TwoKinds Forum than is probably wise. It's got the camaraderie that I remember from the Imperian Forums, only without all the flaming bile, which is one reason why I don't spend much time there anymore. That and the fact that I haven't played Imperian in a long while. The forum's been a source of great amusement to me, particularly when one user predicted the brain-shattering moment that Februrary ninth's comic featured. I'm still drooling. Apologies to those offended, but I'm a lonely guy with a penchant for wolf-girl furries and a deep respect for Tom's abilities as an artist. I am unabashedly a Natani fanboy. My only complaint is that he waited to update until just after I got to work on Friday, so I couldn't gawk properly until Saturday evening (I went home Friday to get new lenses, and wow, it's nice to be able to see without a peeling scratchcoat rendering everything foggy). I should also mention that one or two of the forumgoers have been here (I linked myself, somewhat embarrassingly, in a discussion on religion) and I received the high praise of having respectable arguments. That's actually not sarcastic at all, I do consider that high praise. I spend a lot of time formulating the reasoning behind what I believe, and to have that respected by someone that I have at least some measure of contact with but doesn't know me personally is really something. One last note before I launch into the point of this post: Keith's nosebleed reminds me -- at some point in Deviant Paradigm, it'll be necessary to mention those. Av being human from something like our Earth doesn't get them like that. So he will undoubtably make a comment like, "Where I come from, our nasal capillaries are a bit more durable. And besides, the blood has other places it would rather be." Yes, I still intend to use my blog a place to make private jokes that no one on the forum (and fewer people on the wide Internet) will actually get. If you don't like it, too bad. Anyhow, without futher ado:

AvWolf's TwoKinds Resolutions
Please note that I may or may not do any of the following things on this list.
I resolve that

I will stop referring to Natani as, "That hot bit of tail that Keith is doing his best to keep out of his pants."
I will stop humming Lords of Acid songs, especially Rover Take Over, whenever any of the pairs of characters are together in a room alone. (Need I mention that those lyrics, like most by LoA, are extremely explicit and NSFW?)
I will stop referring to Eric as, "The Grand Furry Pimp Master."
I will stop shouting "YEAH BABY! HIT THAT!" at the monitor whenever one of the female characters has her backside appearing in a panel.
I will stop drinking shots every ten minutes past when I wake up that it takes Tom to update the webcomic. (This only makes sense when you realize that TwoKinds usually updates around a half hour after I wake up; yet another thing to appreciate about the comic).
I will stop drinking shots every time the webcomic goes up as a form of celebration.
I will stop writing drunken love notes to Tom and/or any of the characters in the comic.
I will stop dancing my absurd happy dance whenever I look at or think about February 9th's comic, especially when I'm in public. (You remember the dance, don't you, Sapph?)
I will quit camping Tom's Deviant Art account, waiting for him to accept commissions again in order to purchase, at lavish expense, a series of images not appropriate for consumption by minors, or really anyone.
I will stop going off on a tangent about TwoKinds in every conversation I hold with anyone.
I will cease writing fanfics that involve Flora and any form of plumbing appliance.
I will stay out of the arguments on the forums concerning exactly how long Flora will remain pregnant beyond "dramatically appropriate."
I will stop checking the forum every five minutes whenever I am near a computer.
I will stop writing blog posts entirely about my lastest furry webcomic obsession that no one will get or care about. <grin>

I think that's about it for this set. Time to get back to work on my Number Theory homework. <shudder>

Sinfully Together (part 1)

2007-02-11T18:07:00.000-06:00

On my last analytical post on human nature (yeah, I have a pretty dim view of it don't I?), Sapph had a good comment, and one he's made before.

..I have a problem with calling things sins when the lack of the sin in that person's life causes emotional trama[sic]. Concidering[sic] homosexuality to be a sin is to say that all homosexuals are required to live lives of celebicy[sic]. That they must give up happiness of a romantic relationship with a person they love. It seems more than cruel that a good and loving god would require that of people in order to follow him. I mean, you know first hand what it's like to see all of the happy couples in the world and the loneliness that not having someone to hold and chrish causes. Imagine what it would be like if you actually met someone that you could be with, and who wanted to be with you. But you had to give up that relationship, that chance to be like everyone, that chance to be happy, all because you were told that your desires are wrong. That they are sinful. Would you believe them? Why would a god who supposedly loves you and only wants what's best for you tell you that you must remain alone when it does nothing but cause you emotional pain so severe that it physically hurts?...

You'll note that I promised to turn my mind to this question, and so I begin. This is, however, a difficult one, especially for me, so it'll probably take a while for me to put together a full analysis. I'm certainly not very qualified, so I'm going to start by consulting the one guy who would have the knowledge to put this together -- King Solomon. There are, as you might know, three books in the Bible attributed to Solomon, and they are each unique. Song of Solomon, or Song of Songs, is a rather stunning writing of romantic love. Proverbs is a bit of analysis of human behavior, so there might be something I can use there, but the question isn't truly one of behavior. So instead of those, I'm going to spend my free time (what there is of it) in the next week reading through Ecclesiasties, the most jaded and cynical book of the Bible. If Solomon came up for an answer for this, it'll be there, so that's where I'm going to start.

But to begin, let us establish my assumptions and the position I'm working from. As a Christian, I believe that all mankind is destined for Hell due to their sinful natures, unless God, in His grace, saves their souls. There is nothing that a human can do by themselves to secure salvation. I believe that the path to grace is through Jesus Christ. Belief in Jesus is necessary and sufficient to secure a place in Heaven. This is independent of anything else that may affect your life, so what you do or how you have lived have no effect on salvation -- even murderers can be saved if they come to faith. These are some of the essential tenets of Christianity, and form the basis of my arguments. I have outlined before that I find human sexuality to be absolutely unique in the world (see my post on Natures). I believe that we have a loving God who cares for us and wants nothing but the best for us in the end. I believe in a rational God, who did the math and when He laid down the universe, so that He can trust that the planets will keep orbiting without His direct intervention so that He can spend His time, infinite though it may be, with his favored creations, humanity.

I believe that Sapph's point is a good one that needs addressed because I do not believe God made us to be alone. It is well and good to be celibate your whole life like Paul, but unlike him, I do not delight in it, nor do I believe that God truly does either. To support this, I put forward Genesis 2:18-24, which is the creation of Eve. If all that we needed in life was God and God alone, He would not, in His infinite wisdom, tried so hard to find a suitable companion for Adam. And when one could not be found among creation, God made one. (Yes, yes, I'm sure someone will find argument with this; I don't care, my point stands even if you make the entire passage allegorical instead of literal.) So if we are not to be alone, how does it work that God allows there to be relationships that truly leave those involved happy, but in a way that He despises? That, as I understand it, is the gist of Sapph's question. I am hardly qualified to find the answer, but since I have seen so few try even looking, perhaps I will be granted the revelation to share. I promise there will be more to come on this as I seek out an answer.

-- Update 02-12-2007 AM --
Fixed a minor error -- I had the number of books for which Solomon is the accepted author incorrect. I had forgotten about Proverbs.

A Werewolf Weekend

2007-02-05T16:38:00.000-06:00

Well, I just got through with what I've been calling "a werewolf weekend," where I tried to watch a werewolf movie every night. So I've seen Cursed and Ginger Snaps, now. Cursed was actually surprisingly good. The werewolf looked decent and the movie was a laugh riot, not because it was terrible, but because it was actually well-written to be so. Between the "How did you know?" conversation (which Sapph called, making me laugh uncontrollably through the whole thing), to the "best part of being a fairy" line, there were parts that you just couldn't help but burst out in laughter at. The end was kind of eh, but I guess not everybody is like Sapph and I, rooting for the happy werewolf family.

Ginger Snaps was a totally different sort of werewolf movie. Much more of a thinker than what I was expecting. And now I have learned a disconcerting amount of information about PMS that I'd hoped to avoid amassing until I had a good reason to do so. (For those of you who haven't been paying attention, that means "until I have a girlfriend and must deal with it first hand.") It wasn't really bad, I mean, how often do you shout "listen to the drug dealer!" during a movie? It was just very different than what I expected to see. And if you wanted a movie where most of the characters seem to be on drugs, this is one for you. Only the father seemed to be a normal human being. The mother was on some sort of crazy concoction, like taking Zoloft™ and meth at the same time or something. She was insane. I will see the sequel out of more than a dedication to the sub-genre, and I might rewatch this one. I'll bet it'll seem way more interesting to me now that I know what to expect.

In other news, I'm way behind in homework (like usual), putting a lot of stress on me for Spycraft this week (again). I'm trying to stat up "the Ninja," a European mercenary who pretty much fights like a huge ninja ("two ninjas taped together to make one big ninja"). Only he's got an invisibility suit and an electrified nine-ring broadsword. He's designed to actually be able to handle my players, most specifically Donovan and Rattlesnake. If all goes well, they'll get a big showdown with him while the others are distracted with other business. But before I can do that, I have to get the ninja ready (including naming him once and for all), and redo a batch of rules, including the Shinobi "turn invisible" power, which is totally broken. I wish SpyCraft 2.0 was solid. It's got some great parts, and it's a quality system, but it's incredibly frustrating for me, because I used SpyCraft 1's frontloaded weirdness for everything. This is almost all missing from SpyCraft 2.0, and what's there tends to be very badly broken. And they can't for the life of them publish any books on time. <sigh>

Finally, I've about got the script reworked for Sapph for the prologue on our new project. I had it done, but it was essentially written in XML, which I found very clear, but he did not, so I'm rewriting it in a more traditional form. I find it more difficult to follow, but I'm a programmer, not an artist, so I'll do what he wants with it. I'm getting worried about my abilities for this project. I mean, I'm pretty good at manipulating reactions, just ask my players. I had them jumping at shadows two missions ago, even doing stuff that I imitated as, "I am Galstaff, hitman of light! I intimidate the darkness!" And they're still freaked out enough to pull their guns when they hear the laughter of children. Good times. So anyway, I can manipulate reactions just fine, but I am significantly less sure of my abilities in manipulating emotions. And if I'm going to be writing this project properly, I have to be able to manipulate the emotions of the readers. Now, don't take that the wrong way, everybody does that, that's part of what makes a good story, the fact that you feel for the characters. I just don't know if I can do it. I guess we'll see.

Displeased

2007-02-05T11:48:00.000-06:00

Well, after the scare with Xotz's power supply, it occurred to me that it had been months since I ran Windows Update. I'm on the full version of IE7 now, and I am not being super impressed. I'm still pissed about the UI changes. Why in hell would I want things that do not have to do with the tabs on the tab bar? It does seem to have a smaller memory footprint than beta1. Not that that helps me much, since it seems unstable as all get out. It's crashed three times on me just this morning, and I haven't had more than eight or nine tabs open. Maybe I've got more bad RAM than I thought. I don't have these sorts of problems when I use it on my laptop, but then again, I don't stress it on the laptop either. I guess I have no choice but to pull RAM sticks and see if that helps.

Things That Shouldn't Go Boom For $500

2007-01-31T23:15:00.000-06:00

Okay, Xotz (my desktop computer and baby) just got through doing a great impression of a SWAT entry team: A flash, a loud bang, and everything seemed broken afterward. The powersupply just fried. Thank God it only took a stick of RAM with it. Now I'm a bit short on RAM, but I don't have to replace his whole system yet (that's for this summer's full time pay), and his harddrives appear to be fine and functional. My nerves are so shot I can hardly type...I need something to drink.

Natures

2007-01-29T01:31:00.001-06:00

It is time for me to write another long winded essay, and it seems this sort of topic weighs heavy on my mind. I would guess that this is partly because I have a few gay friends and I would very much like to see them in the afterlife, and partly I write to seek my own redemption through them. Maybe I'll speak more on that bit in a different post. So in respect to New Jersey's recent (granted, forced) decision to become the third state to provide homosexual civil unions and the World News Daily's rather remarkable inability to do scientific reporting, essentially announcing that red-state, conservative Nebraska's three main exports are beef, corn, and gay; I dedicate this: an essay on God and our natures. As a warning, this post contains subject matter and some language that is inappropriate for the young. And, as usual, if you have something to add, please do so; I read all my comments and enjoy a spirited debate. I'm not right about everything, after all, I just try to be. <grin>

Let's start on the us thing, our nature, with a scientific bit instead of a theological one. This is really a side topic, but I think it's something that should be noted. Most of the analogies between human sexuality and animal sexuality are wrong. This is because of one simple thing – near as I am aware, human sexuality is unique in the entirety of the animal world. I do not have exhaustive knowledge, so if anyone knows differently and can back it up with a link or two (not Wikipedia please, I want something authoritative), please let me know, I welcome the knowledge. By 'unique,' I mean that human beings are the only social animal I am aware of that prefers to form monogamous relationships. Most of the cultures in the world practice serial monogamy. This is not true of all of the animal world that I am aware of, certainly not true of the other primates. It is very popular to bring up the bonobo, or pigmy chimpanzee, in relation to human sexuality. Bonobos are not our closest genetic relative, but they do demonstrate a human-like sexual proclivity, in that they seem to have sex purely for the pleasure of it. Not only that, but they often engage in homosexual activities. This has led a number of people to the conclusion that these things; sexual promiscuity, homosexuality, and having sex just because it feels good, are natural things (that is to say, they are things which happen commonly in nature, and thus following these impulses is good). I would argue that this conclusion is false, simply because the principle is not entirely true. From what I have read, bonobos predominantly use sex as a form of conflict avoidance and resolution, largely unlike humans (excepting the human tendency for couples to have sex after a fight). To wit, bonobos use sex as a way to express “no hard feelings,” the way we humans do with a handshake. Anytime they do, or could, get into a conflict about something, they tend to have sex. Among members of the same sex, this amounts to rubbing each other. If we decide to make this analogous to human sexuality, it's okay for Joe and Ted to jerk each other off after getting into an argument, but most of human homosexual practices are right out. I've never read anything concerning bonobos (or other animals for that matter) engaging in oral or anal sex. Since those seem to be the big draw for homosexuals, bonobos might not be the best representatives from the animal kingdom to champion the human cause.

Just to drive home how unique human sexuality is, let's look at our closest genetic relatives, the common chimpanzees. Humans have this odd thing – females do not enter a visible estrus. In other words, despite the wishes of many of those of the furry persuasion, women don't go into heat (no, I am not speaking of my own personal opinion on this particular matter -- in honesty, I have not formed one). For those of you who have had unspayed dogs or cats, you know why this is probably an advantage for us in the end. This is likely tied into our strange obsession with monogamy, but I do not have the background necessary to do more than speculate. Now, when a chimp goes into heat, all the eligible males in the troop have sex with her. This is for one good reason – this way they cannot identify the father. If the males all have an equal stake in the offspring, that is to say, it has a relatively equal chance of being theirs, they will protect those offspring. Otherwise the males have a tendency to engage in infanticide (which is fairly common among animals), to give their own offspring the best advantages. Note that infanticide among human cultures is based on wholly different reasoning. Humans instead form monogamous relationships to give the males the necessary psychological belief that the children are theirs (among other reasons). This is not something common to other social animals. We humans have a unique sexual nature.

And on that note, let me get to the meat and potatoes of the post. As you all should be aware, I am a Christian by creed, and a Lutheran by denomination. Most Christians believe homosexuality is wrong. Some believe it is evil. Regardless, the majority can agree it is wrong – a sin. But just as you will hear that many homosexuals do not know a time when they were not gay, you hear many Christians disbelieve them, claiming they do not believe that God would “make someone gay” or allow someone to be born gay. My question is “why?” Why do Christians say this? At the risk of having some people misunderstand this analogy, allow me to continue; Why do we Christians believe in a God who is willing to tolerate suffering in this world, even to allowing children to be born with horrifying diseases, but we will not believe in a God that allows children to be born so that they will grow up to have desires for those of their own gender?

I, instead, will argue the opposite. Because we believe in a loving, just, and good God, we must believe in a God who will permit suffering, even that of the innocent, and a God who will permit those to be born with homosexual desires. These things go hand in hand. Please note here that I do not say that God “makes” people suffer or “makes” people into homosexuals any more than he “makes” people into race car drivers, furries, or insipid bloggers with a tendency to prattle on. God permits these things. There is a large difference between permitting something to happen because you feel that it must; and causing it to happen. This is not to say that He cannot make someone into something, it is that He chooses not to. Odd that the greatest stumbling block for atheists to believe (that a good God allows suffering) is the same as the greatest stumbling block for Christians to accept gays (by this I do not mean “accept their lifestyle as good,” I mean, “accept them as fellow human beings, no better or worse than ourselves”). Consider this: God wants us to love him. Love cannot exist without choice; God has no use for human beings who are simply robots. But as my old science teacher used to say, “Choices have consequences.” We have free will so that we can choose God, choose to love him. Without choice, without free will, there is no right or wrong, no good or evil, no justice or injustice. All these things need free will. But some will always choose the wrong path, and introduce suffering to this world. From the Christian perspective, that was done long, long ago, with the very first humans. And even the suffering of the innocent can bring people to God; he is able to use suffering.

Why is there suffering? Why do we make poor choices sometimes? Because, as Paul wrote, “There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God...” (Romans 3:22b-23). Much of Romans deals with this topic. We sin because it is in our nature to do so. We are sinful by our very natures. This is something which every Christian should be able to agree on. The common confession is “we are by nature sinful and unclean, but God, who is faithful and just, will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” God does not express much differentiation in sins, most sins are equal before God. He paints sin with a broad brush. Homosexuality would be lumped in with the rest of sexual immorality, the same as prostitution, adultery, lust, pornography, and fornication. A broad brush indeed. So our sinful natures have a very large palette they can use to express themselves. We can easily note that for some, their natures lead them to lie, for some to steal, for some to rebel against authority (you know, breaking laws; everything from doing drugs to speeding), for some even to kill. So why is it so difficult to imagine that it is simply by the nature of some that they are homosexual? God did not make us sinful. Our natures cause Him enormous pain. But He is left with the choice of allowing us to be sinful and able to love, or perfect but incapable of love. I know that I am sinful by my nature, in many ways, some of them are things I do not even recognize as sins, or care to recognize as sins. But I am glad that God has given me the opportunity to stumble, for without it, I would not be able to stand back up. So I am willing to accept that I have a sinful nature, one that leads me to my own set of temptations and unnatural desires. (Okay, now that makes the sentence sound strange – my nature provokes unnatural things <grin>). I accept this of all people (I have stated before that President Bush and I are in complete agreement on this point). We are all sinful and have fallen short of God's will. That is the way human life is. But obviously, even though we are all sinful, we are not all sinful in exactly the same way (or I would not have the difficulties finding certain things when I look for them). Then it follows logically that all kinds of sin are provoked by the natures of different people. As soon as this is recognized, it becomes evident that some people would simply be homosexual by their nature. For some, this may be flexible, for many others it is not. So trying to “convert” a homosexual into a heterosexual has no guarantee to work (or vice versa) no matter how much some of us would like to believe it. Nothing in their lives necessarily made them gay. Not soy, not being nurtured too much or too little, and not watching the Teletubbies. Some people were born with homosexual proclivities. Just some food for thought, especially the next time you hear someone state that they can't believe that God would let a person be born gay.

"Even a demon would drink tonight"

2007-01-29T00:46:00.000-06:00

I've been renting a lot of bizarre movies lately. The title here is a line that the guitar player sings in Izo. I liked the line. The movie...Well, let's just say it makes your head hurt. It's a mind blasting, terrifying samurai movie. There's no such thing as continuity, the camera changes scenes without warning. Each different scene is usually a different time period, but that doesn't mean much. Izo fights samurai on a busy street, modern riot police in Edo-period Japan, and those Edo-period policemen in modern Tokyo. There is a plot, but finding it and watching the rest almost kills you. And then there's the sex scenes...I don't think they could be more wooden or less believable if one or both of the parties involved were dead. Yes, I am aware that Izo is supposed to be the vengeful spirit of a guy that's killed at the beginning, so technically he is dead. The Guitar Player is one of the few people who appears almost as often as Izo and doesn't get killed. And the movie ends with what I've called "the Japanese ending" (I usually refer to Shadow of the Colossus as having this ending). That is, Izo gets reborn. Then he hyperages to his original age. It's seriously messed up.

Then I rented Forbidden Zone. Well, it was better... Still bizarre as all get out. Then again, it was a vehicle for the Mystical Knights of Oingo Boingo (yes, that Oingo Boingo). Danny Elfman had the distinction of being one of very few characters who wore pants in the whole movie. And then there was the copious nudity. The Princess of the Sixth Dimension was topless for the whole movie. And, like a Mel Brooks film, it was sort of universally demeaning. I can't imagine working on a movie like this. But it was entertaining enough. Especially when Danny Elfman as Satan had one character's head chopped off. Despite this, Squeezit managed to be in the rest of the movie, as a head flying around on chicken wings. While Izo made you feel like you were on drugs (and not very nice drugs), Forbidden Zone was like watching someone else on drugs. But hey, it had a music video for "Private Life" on the DVD too, so that was great, as I do happen to like Oingo Boingo, though I wasn't around for their Mystical Knights period. Someday I need a DP comic where Danny Elfman is called back into action to stop some sort of horrifying monster in a manner only Oingo Boingo could accomplish.

Spending Time

2007-01-21T21:28:00.000-06:00

Okay, while I sit here blogging instead of doing Combinatorics and Number Theory homework (ugh...), let me catch up on things. First off, hello to my cousins Aaron and Sarah. They recently started to read the blog, and they're the ones who gave me the wonderful excuse to visit California by getting married. I'm going to go to a Skillet concert with them and some of Aaron's brothers this Wednesday, which I'm totally stoked for. Skillet's pretty much brought Christian music back into my life. They're spectacular, particularly "Comatose," their latest CD, which I will probably buy at the show. They're a hard rock band with a good male lead, a very nice female backup vocalist, and a terrific sound. If you have the chance, check out "Rebirthing" and "The Last Night," both songs are from "Comatose" and are up on their MySpace page. "The Last Night" is probably my favorite song of theirs.

I've been burning a lot of time on webcomics. I've scripted the prologue for the one Sapph and I are going to try to work on, so that's getting along. For reading, I probably look forward to TwoKinds the most. I love that comic so much, for so many reasons. Tom (the artist) has the fantastic ability to salute the cliches and then move on (I might have mentioned this before). Also, I'm a Natani fanboy. The fact that I can look back to when I started reading, and see the improvement in his art (which was already fantastic), just over the course of these few months, gives me hope about my own pathetic attempts (even with the thing Sapph and I are going to do, I'm not going to give up DP as my own largely gag strip). For something that's different and still very good, I've been reading Hero By Night, which is presented as diary entries by the hero. So it's mostly text, with images as newspaper clippings, photos, sketches, and diagrams. It's a very different way to see a comic portrayed, and I find it to be a much better superhero story than most. But I'm not really a superhero comic guy. I would go into a long tangent here, but I'm probably best off not diluting this post with all that.

I got started reading Outpost Nine. I've just about read everything on the site, and I'll have to move on to Gaijin Smash, the author's other site, which is all about his time as an English teacher in Japan. I really love Az's work, partly because it has a distinct tendency to sound like things I would or have written. Az went a little farther than I did, actually managing to drop the nice guy and become a jerk, which I haven't been able to pull off, but our perspectives on things, especially women, are not terribly different. Maybe my media-born terror about Blacks is totally misplaced, since the only ones I actually know are really cool guys a lot like me and not at all like what television, music, and movies keep trying to tell me Blacks are like. Are all their comments on minorities wrong?

Otherwise, it's all been school and work. Why is it that everything goes wrong at work when I'm in class? Is it because I'm not available that everything has to break? Needless to say, work's been a little frustrating. I've pretty much cemented a hatred of Red Hat and Fedora Core. Nothing like paring the worst package management in the industry (seriously, RPMs and Yum are about as bad as you can get and still call it package management), with a tendency to not load configuration files at boot time. We lost the network at work two separate days because FC (like Red Hat before it) sometimes doesn't load things like our IPTables config file. Not that bad on a standalone machine, but when the computer in question is the router for the office, that's a crippling problem. Then the next day, I learned that it didn't bother to load the rc.local file either, so the dhcp server didn't start up, and when everyone's IP addresses expired, they couldn't get new leases and lost the Internet again. Thanks Red Hat. I can't properly express how frustrating working with your product is. What I wouldn't give to have the chance to put Debian on all our servers instead. Or Gentoo (which is my personal favorite distro, it's just probably not the right one for my workplace).

At least I've still got my webcomics and my endless stream of movies from Blockbuster. *grin*

And for your seating, would you prefer window, aisle, or wingtip?

2007-01-21T21:02:00.000-06:00

Okay, I couldn't pass this up. Looks like we of America can't hog all the heroes (okay, from my perspective, it was largely us and the Aussies, who I am rapidly considering the most steadfast people I have ever heard of -- I'd rather an Aussie than anyone else at my back in a knock-down drag out in any arena the way they're going). The Brit's RAF is out to prove they're still a shining force in this world of increasing shadow.

The reason I couldn't let this go by is two fold -- one, I am a lover of heroic tales. I can spend hours reading about how medal winners earned those honors. And two, the AH-64 Apache is my favorite helicopter of all time, dating back to a childhood of playing LHX, an old helicopter flightsim (the LHX, for Light Helicopter eXperimental, would later be christened the "Commanche"). As anyone passingly familiar with the Apache can tell you, it's a fearsome unit on the battle field, but it isn't exactly good at troop transport. It has a pilot, a wizard (sort of co-pilot), and lots of weapons -- no room for passengers of any kind. So when the RAF Marines hears they've got a fallen Marine in Taliban country, they're pretty much out of time and fuel, they can't do a proper rescue. So they act like the Marines they are and make due. They strap themselves to the outside of a couple of their Apaches and head out to pick this guy up. They are literally tied to the wingstubs of an attack helicopter out on a rescue mission. They hit the ground running, knowing they have a couple minutes to find their comrade before the Taliban catch wind and come out with guns blazing. And they're right. About three minutes after touchdown, the Taliban show up, and the third Apache, which flying around to provide cover, opens up. A 30mm chain gun on a swivel mount can make for a very frightening antipersonnel weapon, I'm sure. The RAF Marines find their fallen buddy, and strap him securely on one Apache, but the Taliban are coming out in full force now, and they have to dust-off immediately. So they skip tying themselves on, and just grab hold and take off. They hold on to the sides of these attack helicopters the whole way back to base. At touch down, there were two minutes of fuel left in the Apache carrying the man.

Sadly, the wounds of the fallen Marine were mortal, and he passed away. But he passed away in the hands of friends; the RAF refused to let him be captured or die alone. This is the mark of heroes. They volunteer to do the craziest things imaginable, because those things are what are right and good. And they don't think they did anything special after everything's said and done. This is one of the most amazing things I've heard about in recent days. The RAF Marines have more than proven themselves in my book, with just this alone. (Hey, I never get to hear about anything they do, since Afghanistan is virtually forgotten by the media, so I know I've missed out on a lot of British heroism. This sort of thing probably isn't so unusual.)

The video of this spectacular feat is on Sky News, the full story is at the Sunday Mirror, and I heard about it at Hot Air.

Dear Santa Claus

2006-12-24T18:42:00.000-06:00

Dear Santa Claus, with Christmas so near;
I thought I would tell you what I want this year.

I am not so foolish to ask for world peace,
But how about some gun jams in the Middle East?
For all of mankind I will ask for good cheer,
If that is too much, we'd settle for decent beer.
Fill up your sack with dreams and laughter,
In this world, such things are much sought after.

Bring to my family nothing but happiness,
Though you can mix in good fortune, I guess.
My friends need a shoulder in hard times;
But don't bring them that -- they can borrow mine.
Instead, give them their secret wishes;
And fun with family and tasty Christmas dishes.

These dour strangers could use some whimsy;
Instead of coal, when you drop down their chimney.
Take joy to the children all over the place;
For Christmas is no time for a frown on one's face.
Love and companionship for all to hold.
I hope that's not too much; they need it though.
Toys are fun that fades, so give friends to the young.
Ones who'll be there when the last song's sung.

Smiles and hugs should be in every stocking,
And doorways with mistletoe to start boots knocking.
Bring all the Christmas parties tasty wine;
And add some magic to make the next morning fine.
Make everyone on your list glad just to be alive;
Get them closer to the things for which they strive.

Pack up some warmth and give it away for free,
It's hard to come and ask for food on your knee.
So for those who would spend the night with hunger,
Leave them what they need to eat and get stronger.
To those in ill heath, the sick and the weak;
Give hope and healing and all the kindness they seek.

For myself I ask that only one thing be:
I find myself a girl 'neath that tree.
I do not need much other stock,
You can even put her in that Christmas sock.

That's all I ask for Santa, though I'll admit,
Even a list like this is quite a bit.
I hope you can fill it all, but if you can't, I understand;
Not all in life goes as we have planned.

Oh, before I forget, there is one thing left to do:
Wish a Merry Christmas to all, and especially to you.

-- BR, December 24, 2006

Catching Up

2006-12-23T22:51:00.000-06:00

Lots to catch up on. Sorry for being gone so long. I haven't even been on Imperian in this last month (which is why I finally am no longer a secretary -- it took weeks of inactivity). I feel kind of bad, but I can't get the energy up to do anything. I need to find some way to really recharge. I know what would do it, and most of you could guess, but it's not something that's possible, so I'll just endure. I've hardly done anything but work and watch movies. Note to self: starting Blockbuster Online Total Access and the endless stream of movies that entails the week before dead week was a bad plan. However, I made it through finals, and in the end, everything worked out better than I was figuring, really, so my grades didn't much suffer and I should still be on track for summa cum laude. Let's hope.

I did get to go to the Faint's latest show in town. It was spectacular, but I think I picked up a cold there. I stayed in the middle of the crowd through the whole thing up until their encore (when I decided hitting the merch booth, and maybe getting some water and air would be wise). It was great to loose myself in the flood again, feeling everything shift and move around you. I was totally soaked by the end of it. And I've never seen so many people crowd surfing before. I had about six different people go over me, helped lift about four people, including catching one guy when we didn't get him all the way up, and lifted two girls up into the crowd on my own. It was a blast.

Those of you reading Sapph's blog are aware that he mentioned a project that we're working on. It's true, I'm writing for this new webcomic that we are, in theory, going to produce. However, I've got a new website to write for it, and I've only written out the prologue. I need to script it, and start writing the rest of the first chapter now. So we've got our work cut out for us, but I'm hopeful. I am looking forward to some of the upcoming stories that we've started to work out, and I can't wait to play around with some of the topics that the comic will address (sure, it's about werewolves fighting zombies and vampires, but that's not all it's about.)

I'm back at home for Christmas, staring deep in the abyss yet again. Let's hope this time isn't so hard. Merry Christmas all, and happy whatever other holidays you care to celebrate.

Your Party has Gained a Member!

2006-11-19T15:58:00.000-06:00

I'd better type this out while it's still fresh news, and before it sinks in and I become worthless.

Congratulations to my brother John and his new fiancee, Lindsey. I just got the call from him today (he's calling everyone), and he opens with "You know how you always wanted a sister?" He finally popped the question (he's been planning on it for a while now), and the answer should be obvious now. *grin* Based on what I've heard from my mother, the wedding should be happening early next year, probably shortly after I manage to graduate (assuming I manage to graduate). No official news on the date though. Congratulations again, you two crazy kids! And welcome to the family, Lindsey!

Hearing the Other Side Calling

2006-11-11T14:51:00.000-06:00

Well, as most of you know, I'm a staunch IE guy. I've used IE7beta1 on my main system since it was released, and I like it an awful lot. There are some things about true IE7 that bother me, which is why I haven't upgraded all the way. But at work I use Firefox, even though the browser tends to make me seethingly angry (especially when it decides to not fetch a new version of a page that I'm working on). I've long said (to the point where Jonathan got after me for endlessly harping on it) that Firefox is superior to IE in one and only one way -- the Javascript Console. Jonathan pointed out another -- Firefox is top-rate in add-ons, and he suggested a few I should take a look at. At first glance, these seem rather nice, actually. If they pan out, I can see how someone could be tempted to use Firefox for their main browser; especially since 2.0 implements a few nice features they were missing, and these add-ons tend to fix things that always irritated me about Firefox. They haven't converted me yet, but the Mozilla folks are trying. And they're doing a far sight better than most of their followers are.

Return from the Grand Adventure

2006-11-10T12:17:00.000-06:00

Whoa, sorry to take so long to get this together and posted up. I did indeed return safely from my trip to California. The wedding was small, but pretty nice. I wish the reception had been longer, but the bride and groom had to be off on their honeymoon. At least I got to make a toast. I'm told it was a very good toast, but I don't remember everything I said (as usual, I made it up as I went along), and it's the one bit of the wedding and reception that I didn't get on tape. Kind of a shame, but that's the way it works sometimes I guess.

I wish I'd gotten a picture of the car I drove. It was a Ford Focus, and really was a pretty nice car (apart from a few generic Ford issues, like not displaying what gear you're in on the dashboard and having the most annoying blinker noise imaginable). Especially the in-dash six CD changer. If I'd known I'd end up in a car that had an MP3 player, I'd have come with much more music that I did. *grin*

So after the wedding, I was off on my own, seeing the sights, and checking out all that exotic Californian cuisine.

I spent some time in Old Sacramento, but the only pictures I have were from the museum. The Sacramento Military Museum was really quite cool, but I didn't get any photos from it. I did get to go to Evangeline's, and see the all the Halloween costumes and decorations (the store is three stories tall, and the top two stories were devoted to Halloween stuff, due to the proximity of the holiday). Then I drove up to Chico, where I met one of my friends going to the University there. Man, that was a boring drive.

People talk about Nebraska being fly-over country. At least we plant trees near the interstate. It was nice to see my friend again, though kind of depressing to discover that she too is engaged, and getting married next year. Nothing like going on vacation to go to a wedding, then finding out a friend there is also getting married (she is, incidentally, two years younger than I am) to really drive the knife in. Especially since I know it's just a matter of time before my brother gets engaged too (and probably not all that long of time either).

But before I could mope much, I decided to road trip to San Francisco. The drive there was way more interesting. I didn't make it to the Golden Gate, but I did get to cross the Bay Bridge.

Now, my recommendation is this -- leave earlier than I did (you need all day, and a lot of SF closes pretty early), and plan ahead of time what you want to do. Admitted, there are advantages to my method, which consisted of finding the nearest Irish pub and getting the recommendation of the bartenders as to what I should do. I ended up at the Chieftan first, and got to try another Irish stout that I've never had before (Murphy's, which is much sweeter than Guinness). Plus, one of the bartenders was from Ireland (she said she came from the same county they brewed Murphy's in, actually). I've never met a real Irishwoman before. Makes my fake accent seem really bad in comparison (surprise,surprise, I know). So, on the recommendation of the bartenders, I walked up to Market Street and took a subway out to see the Golden Gate Park. While I was at the park, I went to see the Japanese Tea Garden.

The tea garden was breathtaking, but it would have been much better with someone else along. I helped a couple of tourists (probably from Europe, since they usually spoke to each other in a language that was not English) by taking a picture of them on their camera. When I got out of the tea garden, I decided I'd try walking up to the Golden Gate Bridge. While my logic was reasonably sound, I didn't realize that the Bridge was over a mile away. That's right, the Golden Gate Park isn't particularly close to the Golden Gate Bridge. So once I ended up north of the park with a batch of SF ahead of me and the sun startting to go down, I decided that wasn't a good plan, and headed back. I leave the park and realize that I have no idea how to get back on the subway and get back to Market Street. Fortunately, I spotted an Irish pub.

I soon found out that I was in the second oldest bar in all of SF. It survived the 1906 earthquake. In fact, there's a clock on the wall that stopped ticking during the earthquake.

At this bar, I was told I should wait at a nearby bus stop and take the bus back, since that way I could see more of the city. Of course, once I'm on the bus, I realize I'd forgotten one of the things I'd meant to do -- visit Haight street. Bugger. Well, that gives me an excuse to go back, I suppose. So I am back on Market Street and it's time to get something to eat. I decide I'll check out the mall, thinking that they might have something interesting. I am incapable of describing the enormity of the mall, Westfield SF Center. Each concourse (there were two) was like eight levels high, connected by escalators. Simply huge. I picked one of the nicer restaurants at random and went in to get something to eat.

Straits is a Singaporan restaurant, which combines the foods of everywhere around it, particularly Chinese, Thai, and Indian. I just asked the waitress for recommendations and went with everything she suggested. Hey, it was my last real meal in California, and I didn't want to waste it. I ended up with these pastry things for an appetizer and then I got my whole bass.

I finished the meal with a coffee (with natural sugar cubes that looked like they made them by evaporating the sugar instead of processing it) and then headed back to my hotel room. I got an hour or two of sleep and then went to the airport, determined to be early enough that I wouldn't miss the flight.

I needn't have worried. The thing that I thought would take the longest, getting my baggage checked and my boarding pass, took two minutes. I think they were just opening up or something. Then I went through security, ending up getting selected for the random check, and still had to wait over an hour before my plane was supposed to be taking off. That's right supposed to be. The flight crew had gotten in late the previous night, so we had to delay so they could rest for the legally required amount of time, and then one of the flight attendants was late on top of that. Once we actually got to Salt Lake City, they had us stay in the air for a while before they let us land. This turned an almost two hour layover into me running to the gate while they called my name over the airport intercom. But I made it back safe and sound.

The trip was pretty fun, but it would have been much better had I actually planned what I wanted to do. Oh well, this was my first solo vacation. I'll do better next time.

Soon to come: Photos from my Halloween parties.

Off on the Grand Adventure

2006-10-13T01:35:00.000-06:00

I probably should have mentioned this sooner. My cousin Aaron is getting married this weekend. His fiancee is from California, so they're having the wedding way out there. It just so happens that this weekend is Fall Break for me, so I decided I'd go out there and attend, since most of our family won't be able to make the trip.

Anyhow, I should have mentioned this sooner because I'm currently blogging from my hotel room in California. Did I mention that this is the first time I've flown on an airplane in twenty years? Or that this is the first time I'm going to really be off on my own in a strange place? (Since, you know, once the wedding is over, I have a couple days to entertain myself.) Or that this is the furthest I've ever been from home? I don't have the slightest clue what I'm going to do while I'm out here.

Sounds like an adventure to me!

Gene Pool of +3 Alcohol Tolerance

2006-10-02T02:29:00.000-06:00

You know, I'm glad my folks don't read this blog. I spent most of this last week drinking. I drank at least a little every day since Tuesday until today, with Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday featuring drinking a lot. There's a history of alcoholism in my family and I can see why now. Even sitting here, I'm tempted to pour myself something...Not good at all. I'm not quite at the point of needing to drink, but I want to drink too much.

It's been really bad lately...I just wanted to be able to not care about it, and drinking sufficiently will do that for me. I even managed to be happy on Thursday. Right up until my car's electric window (driver's window) quit working. Again. Stupid thing. Over at Ryan's, we got him talked into cleaning the hot tub. But did I get to go in it? No. Still never been in that thing, which makes me very sad. Oh well, I'd done too many shots of 99 proof fruit liqueurs for it to be a good idea to get into a hot tub anyway, I guess.

The problem I'm facing now is that I can't see the way out of this. Unless ridiculous coincidence intervenes (as it usually does), I'm stuck. And lately, every time there was a coincidence flare, I've ended up worse at the end of it. I just don't know what I'm going to do anymore.

Oh, as I've noted before, I'm known as the Liquor MacGuyver, a title I'm proud of. Last night, Jason summed up my style of mixing pretty well too. I don't measure anything anymore. I don't even count. I eyeball everything. And unlike a real bartender, I don't have much for recipes; instead I have flavors. Start with a base alcohol (mine tends to be Popov vodka, so the objective is to have as much of this in the drink without being able to taste it), and a base mixer. The mixer decides what alcohols you put in the drink, since you're accenting its flavor. I actually mixed a pretty bad drink last night. I was working off of Alan's Orchard Blend V8 Splash (not a very good base, but I was desperate). And then, thinking I was adding 99 Apples, I added a batch of 99 Bananas. It turned out pretty badly. Then I found my mistake and mixed the drink as I intended and the second drink turned out pretty good. So I may have messed up, but I redeemed myself.

Not to Be

2006-09-27T21:48:00.000-06:00

Well, seems I miscounted the hours. The guild election in Imperian ended in a tie, but I wasn't part of it. So we still don't know who will be GM, but it won't be me. In a way, it's a relief. I wasn't sure if I wanted to win or lose, this whole time. But now...I kinda wish I'd have won. It was one of those things that gave me a focus, something I need right now. This means that things are going to get worse. Not for the guild (necessarily) but probably for me. Well, I'll quit whining now...This'll all pass.

Remembered this

2006-09-27T01:16:00.000-06:00

Just remembered this image I promised to post. This is one of those pictures that Sapph (you can find his blog on the sidebar) made for me. Yeah, I paid for this one. It's the only way to ensure that I get what I want, instead of what he feels like making. Sometimes what he feels like creating is great stuff, like this one, things I wouldn't mind hanging on the walls -- and sometimes it's not. At the very least not for public display, and highly dependent on personal tastes. But that's something else entirely. As I promised, the group picture Sapph crafted for me.

From left to right: Aya, Av, Sapph, and Mal.

"My life never ceases finding new and exciting ways to disappoint."

2006-09-26T14:21:00.000-06:00

Been in kind of a funk lately. You know, as I said, usual thing for the usual reasons. And, in my infinite foolishness, I've just been making it worse. I've been adding more comics to my reading list, and the other day I added a nice little one called TwoKinds. The kid responsible for it is quite skilled (yes, he does mention his age, and while he's not a kid any longer, he's still five years younger than I am). And perhaps more of a testament to him, I identify with the characters really well. It's a nice story with good art to go with it, and it's a pleasant little furry comic, so right up my alley. Except it's a love story at its heart...which twists my own knife bit. Like I said, just makes things a little harder on me.

In other news, I think I'm getting myself into deep water in Imperian. I'm in the running for guildmaster of my guild now...and I have a reasonable chance to win, I think. Based on how the the Imperian Forums are suddenly jabbering about how Lorekeepers are a viable combat class, they must be hoping for a combatant to come out as GM. I think everyone knows which four of us are up for the election, so I'm really confused as to how they think they're going to get a combatant out of it; unless they count "Suicide-charge" Loenar as some sort of warrior. I'm afraid that might be true -- I was allowed to buy credits from the city that are reserved for combatants a few weeks ago. Maybe being able to fight isn't as important as being willing to fight. I guess we'll see how everything turns out in about another day.

Oh, by the way, the title is a quote from the latest Order of the Stick.

Finally Fight Club

2006-09-25T18:46:00.000-06:00

Well, a couple weeks ago I finally saw Fight Club. To be honest, I wasn't nearly as impressed as everyone else. Maybe it's just a case of overblown expectations, but I think there's more to it than that. Oh, don't get me wrong, it was a good movie, but it wasn't a great movie. I'm told it's very quotable, but...Well, I'll get to that in a second.

I think the reason that the movie didn't really get to me is a fundamental difference between my beliefs, the core of my being, and those of the movie. It's not just that the political aspects (support for anarchy, etc...) seems dumb to me. Honestly, I consider anarchy to be the resort of those who have not thought through what they're suggesting yet, or have some fundamental argument against some authority figure and support the concept of anarchy solely because they "don't want to be bossed around anymore," not because they actually understand what anarchy entails beyond never having to follow anyone's directions again. No, my argument with it was something deeper. Let me put it this way: K-PAX resonated with me for all the reasons Fight Club did not. Fight Club espouses an odd view, and almost all of its "quotable" moments fall into this view. Fight Club argues that no one is special -- "You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else." Fundamentally, this bothers me. If you feel like you live a purposeless existance, perhaps this would resonate with you, but not me. I might sometimes feel like I live an existance without hope, but I have never been missing the feeling of purpose. A man makes himself if need be. Sure, you might start out as "not special" so you find an opportunity to make yourself special. Telling everyone that they are not special is as bad as telling everyone that they are. Like respect, this is something you have to earn. And for being someone who occaisionally hears the voice of dissent in his head -- my Wolf is not terribly unlike Tyler Durden -- a lot of the movie seems like so much garbage to me. At its best, it's a good movie, with a strange plot and some interesting bits (along with some very funny ones). At it's worst, it's an annoying bit of claptrap with wacky overtones. Fortunately, Fight Club is far more often at its best than at it worst. Like I said -- it's a good movie. Whether it'll end up in my collection, well, that's something I'm not sure of yet.

Musings of a Technomancer

2006-09-20T17:40:00.000-06:00

Just some idle musing of mine. It is equally valid for men and women, so replace things as appropriate, I write from my point of view. In no particular order:

Yes, I hate fixing other people's computers, particularly because they do such stupid things. No, I am not likely to stop doing so. Partly this is because they pay well. Partly this is because I always hope the next time they'll refer me to the beautiful girl with a technology fetish, some FPS skill, and no boyfriend. Yes, this is unrealistic, but if I am faced with the choice between unrealistic optimism and a lifetime of reading bad Seven-of-Nine Slash Fanfics, I will choose the optimism every time.
No, buying a shirt from ThinkGeek will not impress me. Buying things from ThinkGeek marks you as more of a nerd poseur than buying things from Hot Topic marks you as a goth poseur. I am only guaranteed to laugh at any given technology related joke once. I probably saw whatever witticism which is emblazoned on your chest on the Usenet discussion it originally appeared on. Yes, that means I will not be laughing at your shirt, and may, in fact, be somewhat offended.
If I ever call myself "leet" (or any modification there of, I am fluent in that "language," if only for the purposes of mockery) I am being facetious. I have nothing but contempt for the wannabe's who think poor grammar and incomprehensible character substitution makes them impressive computer users. That said, I do like to spell things the way they do -- such garbage makes for very secure passwords. Nowhere else is this junk permitted.
Yes, people who think leet is cool are very annoying. A normal person might find them irritating. Someone like me finds them insulting. For most people, confronting the stereotype of their group makes them very angry. Nerds are no different. This makes my enjoyment of Megatokyo even more curious, as Piro's parts feel like being an adolescent male watching a soap opera and Largo's parts feel like being an African-American watching a black-face pantomime.
Eventually you get very jaded concerning computer hardware. It becomes like parents do after their third or so child -- very little forms a real emergency any more. The amateurs (or the burned) invest in anti-static mats; people like me tap the case three times and expect that, unless someone switches on a Tesla coil, there will be no further problem with static electricity. You might short boards out on the case, but you won't kill things with static electricity.
If you want to set your computer on fire, so be it, but do not expect me to get greatly impressed. A true master may have overclocked his system, yes, but he realizes that clock speed is not everything, or even anything. It is far more impressive to make a 486 do what it was never meant to do without making it act like a Pentium by generating more BTU's than a space heater than it is to watch you push another hundred megahertz out of your latest generation AMD 64 at the cost of a few degrees on the thermostat and five more bucks to the power company every month.
A true master may well be part of an overclocking forum, but that is only to help those who are not masters do what he has done. He has no interest in bragging about how big of numbers he has achieved. Such things are childish and below him. When pressed, he may speak about overclocking something to 100 MHz, a paltry number, until he reveals that it is a 386 he is talking about.
Do not get involved in a dispute over frames per second unless there is no other recourse. This is nothing but a pathetic pissing contest. It should be enough to simply point out that your computer is currently both the Counterstrike and UT2k4 server, while you yourself play a rousing game of Marathon and listen to music streamed from the Internet.
This is especially true when talking to console people, most of whom do not even know what a "frame" is, and why you want as many of them per second as possible.
Some people may tell you that they prefer to play first-person games with controllers, "because they are better with a controller." That may be true for them, but they are an unusuality in the world, and probably spent most of their time learning FPS's with Halo or something else like that. They will never learn the proper way to play because they will always choose something to play like Counterstrike or UT2k4 and be so totally defeated that they will swear off such games. It does not pass into their mind that the reason their opponents are twice as fast and accurate as they are has more to do with not hamstringing themselves with a terrible interface than it does with skill.
Being the "greatest console FPS" means almost nothing. Notice how strictly the market is controlled? Compare this to the cutthroat nature of the PC market and you can see why "best console FPS" is sort of like claiming the title of "best slingshot for hunting ducks." Okay, that's great, but why am I not using a shotgun?
This is also analogous to being the "best PC sports game."
Software people are mostly liberal and hardware people are mostly conservative. No, I don't know why this is the case, it just is. Like bugs in a browser, it is simply universal truth.
Almost nothing can break us of our preconceived notions. It doesn't matter that Firefox has more exploits and vulnerabilities found in it than IE for almost a year running, many of us will assure you that Firefox is, quite nearly, better than sex, and certainly better than IE. The other part of us will assure you of exactly the opposite.
I have spent most of my life studying computers and technology. Do not think you can lecture me on something. I don't care if you just read it somewhere. Just because it is in Wikipedia, that does not make it right. In fact, that probably makes it wrong.
Wikipedia is a better argument against Randian objectivism than anything else I can imagine.
Nerds are, in their own way, even more elitist than the Indie folks. We have a nose for those who are faking it, and let me tell you, there is little more pathetic than being snubbed by a nerd. Then again, pretending to be a nerd is probably in that "little" to begin with. If you're going to pretend to be something, why not pretend to be something popular? Or at least not something with a significant social stigma attached to it.
Every nerd idolizes Weird Science in a way, even though they may not know it. I myself have not seen the entirety of the movie. But, and it doesn't matter who the nerd is, we all like to imagine that there is a gorgeous babe out there, who will find us and what we do absolutely fascinating. Also, universally, any attempt to become suave to impress those we are attracted to is doomed to fail from the start.
Shiny has more than one meaning. I have heard other people use it exactly the way I do, so I know I am not the only one aware of this. Shiny, as in an object, is desirable. While what specifically is shiny may differ from person to person, we all want shiny objects. Old, eldritch technologies are very shiny. The other form of shiny is related to the computing phrase "bloat." A shiny UI, for instance, while looking very pretty, probably leaks memory like a sieve, and all the useful functionality is jammed beneath layers of fluff. Flash-based websites are often this form of shiny (because the creator hates all humanity). Yahoo's Messenger Y! (especially the Windows 98 port) is this kind of shiny. (Shiny in this context should not be confused with "polished." Polished items are generally nearly opposite that of shiny objects).
No matter what I say, Google is not out to get your soul. They have no use for souls. What they want is your identity, so that they can use it to generate advertisements. The least you can do is be aware of this, and, if you must, accept it. I give great credit to the only Google-drone I know, because he, like me, has a rather cynical view of "privacy" on the Internet, and accepts that he is owned by Google. In that, he is probably wiser than I am.
Google now knows more about you than the NSA ever will, barring actual employment with them. Then there might be a tie. The sad thing is that no one cares about Google collecting all of your information, it's only the NSA we need protected from.
Yes, I do realize the irony of using Blogger to criticize Google.
Web 2.0 is gibberish. Just techno-babble. Even Sir Tim Berners-Lee (who won many points from me with this comment) isn't impressed -- it's just "Web 1.0" wearing a new shirt. Anyone who tells you differently is either selling you something or is one of the drooling supporters of the concept. Honestly, I find their vision of the Internet both frightening and unrealistic. Imagine what "all user contributed collaborative content" will do to Internet pornography.
Sometimes I will say something that makes no sense and then laugh hysterically. I find myself very droll, and am prone to making inside jokes, often ones for which I am the only one on the "inside." It is best to simply grin stupidly and look away. This list is probably one of these things. The next point most certainly is.
If I had one bit of advice to offer a new technomancer neophytus, just getting root for the first time, it would be this: There is more to performance than mere numbers. Never be too impressed with the numbers behind a system. In the end, numbers are just shiny, in both senses of the word. Power and capability are more than Megahertz and Gigabytes. Exploit what you have, push it far enough but not too far, and never forget that you have abilities that others do not. Use them.

There should be a review of Fight Club (yes, it did take me this long to see it) and a discussion of secrets, lies, and government coming soon. Maybe. You know me.

Updated Status

2006-09-14T19:37:00.000-06:00

Sorry for dropping off the edge of the world and leaving everyone hanging. My brother got out of the hospital last Wednesday. I need to call him tomorrow and see how he's doing now, he was still pretty doped up when I spoke with him last week. Thanks to all offering their prayers for him, he's on the road to recovery now.

I got my phone back last Thursday. As it turns out, the officer who found my phone turned it in to the Campus Security Office. Of course, she didn't leave her name or precinct number, so I had no idea where to find it. I was pretty much grasping at straws. Fortunately, one straw was the right one.

I'm hoping to drag myself back to Imperian tonight. I've been gone for two weeks, and there might be a couple people who miss me.

That's really the cause of my latest silence and solitude. I'm feeling a bit depressed, you know, the usual thing. For the usual reason. I'll probably get over it.

So Much For Good Fortune

2006-09-05T14:23:00.000-06:00

Well, it seems my life is rapidly falling apart here. First, my birthday was...okay. Then my folks come up to celebrate with me and my brother immediately ends up in the hospital, so they leave to be with him. Imperian's becoming less fun, so I play it less. Unfortunately, that leaves my responsibilities in the game to just build up on me. Then I lose my phone last night. Someone gave it to the police, evidently, so I'm trying to get it back from them. However, the property room doesn't have it yet, I can't get it directly from any precinct, and the property room is closed tomorrow. That means the earliest I can get my phone back is Thursday. Lovely. And, just to finish out my current run, my watch just stopped and no one will change the batteries in any watch that they didn't sell. This has not been my weekend.

To My Brother

2006-09-05T14:17:00.000-06:00

My brother ended up with ruptured appendix this Labor Day weekend while he was out on a trip with his girlfriend. So he was stuck in an emergency room in South Dakota while my parents tore up there to try to see him before he went into surgery. He is recovering, thank God, but I don't know how long he'll be in the hospital before they let him go.

My prayers are with you, bro, and you know I'd take it for you if I could. Get better soon.

"Hope you like the Shadowlands, Silent Man. You've lost this time!"

2006-09-02T18:08:00.000-06:00

Wednesday we finished up the Haunted House in Spycraft, at long last. There's just one problem: I'm not sure I can top this one. It had so many cinematic moments. Honestly, it was one massive role-play adventure -- there was very little combat in it. But it produced comments like the above one, and I had the characters going insane (literally -- Johnny spent some time mumbling to himself about things not making sense) or scared out of their wits. Then at the end we had that tag line, a banishment ceremony that ended with a "Fifth Element"-esque burst of incredible light, Brick shot a keeper (think zombie) in the face then blew the door open with some primer cord Donovan happened to have, and Johnny ran out, fell to his knees and shouted "The house...is clean," then the house promptly collapsed behind him. Then most of the group just dropped from exhaustion. While I'm worried that the Silent Man was a bit too easy to deal with, he did have pretty constant Willpower 20 saving throws battering the players. Apart from that, it was spectacular. Even better, the mission started to pull the curtain away from the cracks in the Conspiracy, which'll leave the characters ready for the Season Finale. There's one more adventure before we do the season finale, a little romp in the middle of nowhere in Nevada, field-testing some new equipment. I think everybody enjoyed themselves. I just hope I can do as well with the season finale. Especially since I've now got them at the point where they'll draw guns when they hear children laughing. I've got my work cut out for me.

And Thursday I turned 23. So far, not much has changed. I guess we'll see if this year is any different.

On V

2006-08-28T01:09:00.000-06:00

Saw V for Vendetta at Sapph's birthday party -- Happy Birthday, Sapph! (Sorry you still get sick at the thought of the bartender's bread and butter; it just takes time, and until then we can use other liquors. I've been looking for an excuse to get Rumplemintz and Bacardi 151.)

I'm going to reserve judgement on the movie until I've actually watched it in a context where I can analyze it, but from what I saw I found the the premise to be a bit preposterous (okay, I love Snakes on a Plane, so that's not a very valid excuse). Let me be honest, politically themed movies are a hard sell for me. I like to just have to deal with the movie, and if you can hide politics in it for me to discover like a chocolate egg, that's fine. If you write the politics into the forefront, I find it tiresome. I already have a not-so-great opinion of the Wachowski brothers and getting infused with their politics just bothers and annoys me. Visually, V is pretty impressive though. The real thing that bothered be is that (at least this is what I was told) this is supposed to be a "neo-conservatives take over the world" scenario. Now I already don't believe in "the government should be afraid of the people" any more than "the people should be afraid of the government." I'm also a pretty conservative guy. So I'd like to imagine that I can recognize conservatism when I see it. Instead of conservativism as I know it, I saw this twisted-mirror conservatism, a sort of nightmare conservatism that really only exists in the minds of the far Left which they use to demonize conservatives at large. Maybe, maybe if you go out far enough on the fringe of the Right, you'll find some arguments which could lead to the sorts of things you see in V, but they aren't any more valid than people believing that gays are out to destroy the world (to use an example from an earlier post's comments). Both concepts are preposterous. For you to believe that conservatism as we know it leads to a universe like V's implies a very poor grasp of what conservatism is, means, and stands for. Unfortunately, this sort of thing is believed by far too many. As wingnuts like myself and Impresario have been lamenting, the Right tends to view the Left as misguided, and, given sufficent argument, could be convinced to come around. The Left often enough views the Right as Evil which must be stopped. Since the Right is evil and not just wrong, obviously anything that we disagree with in the slightest, were we to assume total power, would be made illegal and people disappeared for it. This is where you lose me. Conservatism is a bastion of classical liberal thought, tempered with a fairly pessimistic view of human nature (which is what separates conservatives from libertarians and makes conservatives oppose things like the legalization of marijuana). In other words, conservatives are more likely to want the government to stay out of their lives. I might give you monitoring (though that might just be because there are more people like me out there who think privacy is just a feel-good illusion any more), but when it comes to actual interference (breaking into your home and arresting you for being different, for instance), conservatives will draw a line. You all remember the Texas sodomy law? Ever met a conservative who wasn't on the fringe and still thought it was a good idea? I never have. And what about the experimentation on people which produced V? You're saying that the people who oppose stem cell research to cure cancer if you have to harvest the stem cells from human embryos are going to, quite suddenly, decide that it is just dandy to do horrific experiments on people who qualify as "undesirables"? See how absurd this is starting to look? And yet, people still believe this drivel.

Maybe I'm all wrong, maybe it all makes sense in V's world and I just missed some important point (hey, there was a party going on, this is easily possible). So I'll give it another watching. But right now, it seems about as believable as the Matrix (2 and 3 to be specific), and you don't want to get me started on that. If the Wachowski brothers know as much about politics as they do about computers, I'm being generous to V, even at my harshest.

Venture Bros

2006-08-27T17:59:00.000-06:00

The thing I miss most from Cable is the Venture Bros. Fortunately, I've got YouTube. And now I'm ever more excited. According to the series, Brock's from here. See what sort of a guy comes out of Nebraska? That's what corn-fed beef produces. Brock Sampson.

Back Online

2006-08-26T12:39:00.000-06:00

Finally got my Internet yesterday. So I'm back online, time for me to make my grand reappearance on Imperian. I'm kind of tiring of the game, largely because taking care of the stupid shop is a lot of work that isn't much fun, and even my character isn't getting paid for it. He's gradually getting more and more poor, right when he needs to have some serious dosh to pay for new armor.

We are rejoining our Spycraft game this upcoming Wednesday, for those that are interested. I am hoping to finish the current episode so that we can get on with things, we've got several more adventures to go through before we hit the season finale.

-- Update while writing the above --
<VENT>
ARGH! Of course, after this, goodness knows how things are going to look. It seems like I'm the only person who gets to massage their own schedule. Half my players have gotten themselves evening jobs and don't seem to have any control over when they work. From the looks of things, I'm going to be losing a player. It's either that or somebody decides they want to do something in order to play. I'm getting really frustrated. Almost enough to pick an arbitrary day that's most convenient for me and just say "Make it work, I don't care." This same thing is what kept us from playing during the summer, nobody has work schedules that work with each other, and nobody cares enough to make the effort to ask for one certain day off every week. I haven't always worked for a "3AM on Sunday is a perfectly okay time to work" startup company; I've done the grind, I know how it works. It's not impossible, or even that hard, to get certain days off. It's not like I'm asking for even a hard day off -- I just want everyone to chose the same arbitrary day, it can be any day of the week, everyone just needs to agree on one. So I'm left with the conclusion that I'm the only member of the group willing to make sacrifices to play. Since this isn't the first time I've come to this conclusion (honestly, getting you guys to play a game you're supposedly excited about is an awful lot like herding catgirls through a sea of shiny objects), my players are going to have to actually do something to prove me wrong. I may not have much better things to do than play with them, but I'm sure I could find something. I could always go drinking instead, or find a girlfriend or something. Since everyone else's lives are more important than our game and heaven forbid they have to give up anything because Avvy'll sacrifice whatever he has to to make sure we can all play. I'm really sick of it. Time and time again I get sidelined. Players show up late (or not at all), nobody is willing to work out a time to play. Enough is e-bloody-nough. Everybody needs to choose their priorities. Most of the time, it seems to me that I'm not one of them. Note that I'm not asking for more than one day, I'm not asking for radical schedule changes, or for anyone to quit their jobs, I'm just asking that a single day be worked out amongst my players and all of them find a way to deal with it. This is not that hard; assuming you work together. I'm tired of being the only one trying to do it. This time they can work it out amongst themselves.
</VENT>

Generating Luck

2006-08-12T21:04:00.000-06:00

Well, I should be really lucky for the next few days. This last Shadowrun blew all of my unluck at once -- I have never seen so many consecutive ones rolled.

Okay, here's the setup, I'm being mind-controlled (a situation I expected to occur going into it, so I'm not upset about that in the least). The rest of the squad has accomplished the objective (I'm leading a riot to provide cover, and some third-party mages are enforcing the riot with area effect mindcontrol). So I decide that it's time to break free of the mind control and join the team. I get to roll to break free and I put Edge into it. I'm rolling ten dice now, and will reroll any sixes. I get no successes (fives or sixes) and about seven ones. That means, not only did I fail, it was a critical failure. I hold a windshield wiper, torn from a squad car, high in the air, and with a William Wallace-like cry, I lead an enraged crowd in a charge at the nearest police barracade. Police with shotguns. Roll Reaction to see if I accidentally dodge any of the shot. That's six dice for me. No successes and a couple of ones, but not enough for a critical failure (I think). Ouch, took the whole shot right on. Roll to resist damage. I'm rolling thirteen dice for this. Another set of no successes and a batch of ones. I critically fail the damage resistance -- instant death. Wow. I mean, these things happen, but it's got massive odds against it. Oh well, not really a big deal (I burned a permanent Edge to survive, albeit with now both brain damage and a missing arm, and it was the last adventure anyway; that campaign is now over and fishmen rule the Earth. Nevermind that last bit.)

So with all of that burned, I ought to be on fire for a while. Maybe I should go gambling.

Impresario's trying to get me to play EVE. We're both well aware that he's going to succeed. I've been avoiding the game because I knew I would be addicted to it, even if it is an online game. But my addition is pushed back at least a week because I'm moving back to Omaha next week and won't really be around to play. No way I'm wasting half of my contiguous 14 day free trial on time when I won't be able to play at all.

Gamery

2006-08-02T01:31:00.000-06:00

I've been tempted to put together a bit of action-heavy RPG goodness set in the world of Deviant Paradigm. Most specifically, set in the Labyrinth and Equilibrium City. Since I don't have anything that fits well, and certainly nothing cinematic enough, I've got to make it up. But I know from experience (Phoenix Blood and Semper Nox) that a total RPG build is currently beyond me. I just don't have time to work out base rules. So I've got to start from somewhere. I think I'm going to start with White Wolf's old WoD system...mostly because it's die pool based (which is a feature I'm pretty fond of) and I have it. Maybe I'll have something ready to goof around with when the Shadowrunning has come to an end. But fear not, my loyal readers, Spycraft: Conspiracy will return as scheduled with the beginning of school. Season one still has about three and a quarter episodes left in it (we have to finish the House, for instance). I'm still trying to decide exactly where the Season Finale will be set, but it's going to be another monster. I should have time for about three more episodes -- I'm still waiting on "World on Fire" before I can convert to Spycraft 2.0, since I need the psionic rules, and we're tentatively planning to go to Spycraft 2.0 at Season Two's Premier.

Also, I'm going to come up to Omaha Thursday afternoon. My new apartment lets me have one wall painted a different color, and I have to pick which color I want. Here's hoping the blue doesn't suck and it goes with my couch.

Lesson Learned

2006-08-01T23:24:00.000-06:00

Learned an important lesson this last weekend -- taxes aren't the only thing I'd rather leave to professionals. Trying to save me some effort, time, and money, my mother purchased a home waxing kit to try on my shoulders. One thing we learned is that these kits do not work quite as intended. Or at least how we intended. It certainly removed hair...Along with a decent patch of the first layer of my skin. Also learned is that my mother is very bad at this sort of thing. I do expect an amount of pain in this procedure, and I've had it done before, so I know I'm right to expect it. But this was ridiculous. I think I'll just go to the spa and get it done by someone who knows what they're doing, has all the proper equipment, and is being paid to inflict pain on me, so they won't shy away from it.

Vampire Movie Weekend

2006-07-22T15:34:00.000-06:00

After Sapph trashed my weekend, the bastard, I had no choice but to seek solace in something always worth the time -- really terrible movies. This time I picked what I hoped to be a really terrible fantasy vampire movie, and a really terrible sci-fi vampire movie. BloodRayne and Vampire Wars: Battle for the Universe.

BloodRayne's plot really wouldn't be so bad (apart from not making sense with the game, something I really liked about House of the Dead, how its plot dovetailed with the game plot), only it's got really stilted and poorly written dialog. Then the actors were coached to deliver it in an even more horrible manner. Especially Micheal Madsen, who I know is a good actor. True, he has a generally deadpan and stilted delivery (which is perfection for his character in Sin City), but this is just remarkable in its horribleness. The sex scene is pretty good, I'll grant, but if one good scene involving nudity was enough to make me buy movies, I would own Darkwolf. At least the nude scene in Darkwolf was longer. Not every movie can support a fifteen minute nude photography session the way Darkwolf does -- if only they made that the main point of the movie and had five minutes with a werewolf at the beginning and the end, it would be a much better movie. But I digress. The movie was not the be all end all of crappy horrible movies. It was not as bad as everyone claims it to be (even granting the lonely guy hormones going which suggest any movie with attractive female nudity has some good points, there have been much worse movies I've seen, Darkwolf, for instance). It was, however, very very bad. Uwe did not disappoint me in that at least.

For Vampire Wars, ignore the IMDB commentator -- he didn't even get the main vampire alien enemies right. The one he mentions is a side note, not the main villains, who are far more traditional vampires. I'm guessing he A.) doesn't like sci-fi in general, B.) doesn't like vampires, and C.) didn't get the surprising social commentary -- or disagrees with it. I was pleasantly surprised with the movie. It delivered what I wanted, a sci-fi romp with people shooting lots of vampires with shotguns, managed to be somewhat better than I expected, and even featured the aforementioned surprising social commentary. It's actually a modern social commentary about the dangers of moral equivalence. You can tell that's what it is because of the language used. I heard the exact same language (the discussion of imperialism and manifest destiny) come out of some people when the Coalition first hit Iraq in Gulf War 2. And it came out of Canada. How about that? I might just buy this one. I think it's a message from the Canadian right wing, saying "Hey, America, we're here, and even though our idiot friends are the loud ones, we're behind you." But maybe I'm just projecting Canada onto the hippies that learn the error of their ways and help the vampire hunters at the end.

RE4 PC Edition

2006-07-18T00:55:00.000-06:00

Fox pointed me at this. He's an RE fanatic and I was hearing about RE4 from him over a year before it was released. Anyhow, it sounds like there's a port of RE4 for the PC. Might be decent. I've got my issues with the game in terms of plot, but it was reasonably solid when I played it (I got it for my brother for his GameCube). Only on a PC I might be able to actually aim accurately. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't that the game makes it necessary to shoot all of your opponents directly in the face. Not helpful but necessary. It's irritating. There's eleventy-billion of these villagers and they can take three bullets to the face. Or roughly half a clip to any other part of their bodies. What kind of gun does Leon have, a .22 Glock? (For the record, yes, I know it's not a .22 Glock.) Give me my Colt 1911 "Proven in film noir to make bad people stop moving" .45 Automatic any day. The big complaint I have is that it suffers from the same problem as every other Resident Evil game ever made. Only, RE4 suffers from it in a new and unique way. What's this problem, you who have never played RE ask (as anyone who has played or seen RE played knows the answer already)? The crummy camera angles. In most RE games, the camera angles are so bad that it is easily possible to be attacked by a zombie when both the zombie and you are off the screen. So you have no idea if the zombie is ten yards away...or six inches and about to bite into your sinuses. RE4 takes this and changes the paradigm. No longer will you be off the screen. Zombies might. They might be right behind you, giving it to you in the backside and you can't see them (sort of like real life, I suppose), but at least you are always in the middle of the screen. Oh, wait, no you're not. And that's RE4's camera problem. It is not placed directly over your shoulder like, say, any other 3rd person non-fixed camera game released in the past eight years. No, it is behind your shoulder and about two steps to the side. For someone who's used to more traditional camera angles, like right behind the player character, or looking through their eyes, this is remarkably frutrating. I can walk into a room in FEAR shoot two helmeted baddies dead, right through the craniums with two bullets (from Phobos and Deimos, my twin AT50's, that's the pistols) and be back in cover before they can regroup. In RE4, it takes three bullets to take down an unarmored alien zombie villager, assuming they are all clustered in the head. Which, since I can't aim based on how I'm holding the gun, is not so easy to do. Fortunately, your pistol has a laser sight. Without it, you'd be screwed. By moving the camera two feet to the side, Capcom turned the laser sight on your semiautomatic version of the Klobb (way to make the gun more worthless Capcom! That's a major achievement!) from a nice feature to an absolute necessesity. Now, if the villagers went down more easily (like say, how anyone who isn't hopped up on enough PCP to really make the dead walk), this wouldn't be so much an issue. Or if, you know, you weren't having to fight your way through the entirety of the village. But near as I can tell, there's no sneaking either. You eventually get spotted, and then everyone and their crazy, chainsaw-wielding, burlap-sack-wearing uncle shows up to tear you apart. Each of them requiring three bullets administered to the brain box to drop. And ammo is kept to "survival horror" levels, meaning that if you don't shoot all of them directly in the face, you are probably not going to have enough.

Now maybe I'm being to harsh. Maybe the port can prove me wrong. Maybe, if I get it, I'll come back with an entirely different opinion. After all, my attempts at Halo (Dear Bungie, thanks for making an entire two maps for multiplayer play. Or at least making sure that people who didn't actually own the game would never know that there were more than two maps.) proved to me that after mastering the superior control mechanism of the mouse and keyboard, I cannot possibly aim properly with a thumbstick (not fine enough grain, it makes me very angry). Or at least I would need a console in order to learn how to do so. Since Playstation generally manages the worst FPS's in history ("007 The World is Not Enough", I'm looking at you) and I'm bound to Sony's product for my DDR and Armored Core and Dark Stalkers, the odds are not so good that I will learn to aim with the thumbstick. Especially since I'm unlikely to buy a console any day soon. I would much rather rebuild my computer, and since I can do that for only slightly more than the PS3 is going to retain for, you can guess what I would rather do with my cash.

That's right...Spend it on Imperian.

Even out of the mouths of politicans

2006-07-17T20:59:00.000-06:00

It's unfreaking believable. Pardon any language in this post, as it will certainly contain some cursing...as a direct quote...of the President of the United States of America.

Something is happening to politicians in the world. They're starting to actually say things that they mean. First off, Bush showed himself to be what we have always known him to be. A Texan. Mincing words has never been the strong suit for Texans. In the President's own words, "[W]hat they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over." There's a video on LGF. Now, I'm not sure I approve of the media's hidden microphones here, but I find it comforting to hear from the President the same sort of words that you'd hear from an ordinary guy. I've always said that that's what I think scares Liberals the most about President Bush -- he comes off like an ordinary guy (albeit from Texas) who accidentally became President.

Then we have the Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, on O'Reilly (yeah, Bill isn't the most interesting guy, is he?). Check Hot Air for the video. He actually says the UN managed to accomplish nothing with Hezbollah (which everyone knows and only wingnuts like me are willing to say), and ends the interview with, "It is incorrect to say all Muslims are terrorists, but it also happens to unfortunately be very true that nearly all terrorists are Muslim." Those words are commonly heard among the far Right of the Blogosphere, but not on television. They're like fighting words. Of course, Israel is fighting right now, and they're fighting almost all Muslims (last I heard, the Christian parts of Lebanon where cheering for Israel to come in guns blazing and cleanse their country of Hezbollah's filth). I'm sure that tends to color one's opinion of folks. I've never met any Muslims I'd call remotely hostile, but I can say the same thing for any religion, really. Even those creepy New Agers.

Oh, and that reminds me (here's the way it works, I think New Age philosophy, What the bleep do we know? comes to mind, puts me on thinking about screwy videos that you'd need to be somewhat deficient to believe, which leads me to this point), I saw Loose Change recently. Okay, I saw Screw Loose Change, but it's similar. The video is actually the complete Loose Change video, with a commentator subtitling over it and inserting comments, pointing out errors, logical fallacies, begging for up to date information, and the like. Loose Change is really kind of interesting in a way, though you'd either have to be insane or mentally deficient to call it "convincing." It suffers from a number of things, most notably what I call, "Wikipedia Syndrome." That is, an odd abhorance of experts, favoring the amateur. This results in a production of a vast amount of trivia, but very little that you can really call trustworthy. I'm sorry, I would rather trust those who have a clue what they're talking about, but maybe I'm just strange that way. I just figure that the best way to prove to people that a building was taken down by controlled demolition would be by, say, interviewing someone who did demolitions. But I digress.

The point is, maybe the world is about to end. I've rarely heard any politician in power be as blatant about what they think as we've heard recently. There could be hope for politics yet. Hey Dems, think we could get Lieberman, or at least someone with a clue and a chance, to run in '08; at least to make it sporting? (That means "do not send Howard Dean"). Much as I'd like to see Hillary vs. Condi, I don't think it'll happen.

--- Update Tuesday, July 18, 3:10 AM ---
Hot Air is calling it Gillermania. Honestly, this guy is amazing. He just gets out there and says what he needs to say. He doesn't hold back, and he's firm and sensible. He doesn't offer excuses. Maybe Gillerman would like to become a governer of some random state. We've had Ventura and Schwartzenegger. Just think of what Massachusetts could be with somebody like Gillerman at the helm. They might even manage to get rid of the Kennedys. (No that's not nice, but it's late and I'm feeling snarky).

"Maybe your taste runs more toward...wolf?"

2006-07-16T16:14:00.000-06:00

I need to buy Balto on DVD. This VHS doesn't have the quality I desire and it is hard to pull screenshots from. That is all.

--- Update Tuesday, July 18, 2:18 AM ---
I still can't get over the voice acting. I don't mean Kevin Bacon, who is freaking awesome as Balto. I mean the fact that I just noticed this last time that Phil Collins is the voices of Muk and Luk. Phil Collins. Phil "In the Air Tonight" Collins. My brain just cannot associate his singing voice with the weird voices of those polar bears.

Also, without exposure to The Collection, Amos identified me as a Furry and claimed it as the reason I like Balto so well. Good thing I've quit denying it, I guess. He claims my choice in wall directions have it away. Funny thing is, my Wolf and Cat Sapph made me fell off the wall earlier this summer and I haven't put it back up yet (since I move in a month, and it'd probably just fall down again), which leaves one single image of Kitty from Underpower and a wolf painting. Though I guess he did see my last commission from Sapph. Yes, yes, I'll post it up here later, just remind me to do it sometime.

Status Update

2006-07-15T16:06:00.000-06:00

It's been a bit since I've written. So let's see where am I? Work has been okay, the long trip to KC at the beginning of the week wasn't really all that much fun, but we did get the customers up and going. So that's a relief anyway. I've been listening to a lot of Panic! At the Disco and Lords of Acid. I'm not sure why, but obscene spoonerisms like "Farstucker", the title of one of LoA's albums, continue to amuse me. I'm thinking that I'm totally boned for this project. Not working on it enough -- so I'm doomed. For those of you who've been wondering about the comic, I have to apologize. I literally can't work on it. I'm missing my scanner driver disc, and without it, I can't scan anything in. I may have to go back to completely computer generated at this rate.

Here's my angry rant for this post: Everyone, I know you find your blog-length away messages amusing, but honestly, if I wanted to read a full page of semi-offensive idealology-soaked text, I could always just do it on your blog. For those of us who don't share your ideology the huge away message, which you continually forget to turn off when you talk to us, is tiresome, especially since, because of that forgetfulness, we have to read it again and again, not just the one time when we mouse over your name to check your status and wonder what you're up to. The away message is not some sort of soap box, that is what these stupid blog posts are for. The away message is there to inform your mildly curious friends what you might be up to so that, if they need you, they can get ahold of you. Thank you.

Oh, and by the way, if you want me to take on your idealology here on my soapbox, I sure will -- just let me go get my hobnails.

Happy US Independence Day

2006-07-04T20:04:00.000-06:00

The United States is celebrating another 4th of July. Thank God we live in such a great country, eh? No fireworks for me this time. (Which is saddening, I usually blow $50-$100 in fireworks. I love fireworks.) However I did get to celebrate the holiday with nice booming noises. Our activities consisted of guns and beer, what my cousin Matthew called a "regular redneck holiday." It was a hell of a lot of fun. We shot .22's at some little targets, which is entertaining, especially since I was in high school the last time I shot a .22. And then we shot trap with 12-gauge shotguns. I have never fired a shotgun in my life. They didn't kick half as bad as everybody says they do. It was a blast. I even managed to hit some of the pidgeons. I have learned that "long range" ammo is much much louder and kicks quite a bit harder than the regular sportshot. I'm thinking I need a shotgun now. Matthew's got this break-action over and under model that fires one barrel then the other. It was probably more accurate, but I think my cousin Andy's gun was more fun (so long as it fed right and actually fired, it was rather old and the firing pin spring was kind of weak). It was a basic pump-action job. But pumping that gun and blowing several shells at the clay was awesome. There's rumblings of doing it more often, something I would be happy to get in on. I hope all you Americans enjoy the holiday with the "rocket's red glare" and "bombs bursting in air." For those of you who aren't American--uh, try to have some fun too. Just like everybody's Irish on Saint Patrick's, everybody's American on the 4th of July.

The Coming Battles

2006-06-30T02:26:00.000-06:00

For those of you who have been paying attention, do you wonder if the NY Times are going to see a court over the SWIFT surveillance? I'm thinking that they are going to want to push this to the SCOTUS and see exactly how far they can go with "freedom of the press." Who loses? Everyone. If this happens, we all lose. Because the Times have gone too far this time, and pushed into the realm of possible treason. So if they win, "freedom of the press" essentially makes the press omnipotent, with no one checking or balancing them. They just get to do whatever they want. I've always suspected that the Media was playing their own side in the ideological war, so this makes sense to me that they'd try for this. But if the NY Times loses, we're going to have popular discontent, because they'll treat it like we're destroying the Constitution because we think it might be handy if they would keep their mouths shut when they hear about legal, well-regulated counter-terrorism operations that they themselves suggested the US undertake.

And the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is heating up. The Palestinians have kidnapped an Israeli soldier (from inside of Israel) during a raid. Now the Israelis are going in, guns blazing, to get him out. The Palestinians, meanwhile, have abducted and murdered other Israelis and now claim to have fired chemical weapons into an Israeli town. I've heard rumors that the Palestinians are also claiming to have a stockpile of biological weapons that they are threatening to use. Now I have already stated that the Palestinians have, on every possible occaision, demonstrated that they are all-time worst people to give self-governance to, but this reaches an absolutely remarkable new level of sheer stupidity. What they are trying to do is give Israel an indisputable casus belli that the rest of the world can't even debate. A strong enough one for Israel to, as I believe Hamas put it, "wipe the map." Hamas is calling what they've recently done "acts of war." Perhaps they would be wise to remember that Israel tends to win its wars in less than a week. And they do things like win wars in a week and double the size of the country. If it wasn't so risky, the situation would go like this: Palestinians fire biological weapons at Israel causing grevious casulties, including among themselves because, hey, it's not a Palestinian rocket unless it kills at least three of their own. Gaza becomes a shiny strip of glass and the "West Bank" is moved inland a few hundred miles, as what we now call the West Bank is now a sea-filled crater. The longer this goes on, the less I am inclined to feel sympathy for the Palestinians in their endless quest for self-destruction via proxy. And I never was a sympathetic man in the first place.

Should be interesting to see how these things end up.

Worrisome Signs

2006-06-27T19:58:00.000-06:00

Perhaps I should talk to my brother about changing majors again. I have to worry about the UNL Psych department when one of their students creates a survey which features a question featuring "Choose A OR B" and (paraphrased slightly):

A. I prefer to have relationships with people who are physically exciting.
B. I would rather date people who share my values.

I love how that suggests that the only people who agree with you are ugly, and, by implication, you are ugly too. It is evidently too much to ask that someone be good looking and not fight with me over every little thing. Best survey question ever. An awful lot of them were sort of like that. You could tell the student was trying ever so hard, but the questions tended to either broadcast things (if that survey wasn't trying to tie drug use to low self-esteem, I'll eat my keyboard) or were just poorly written. Many of the supposedly diametric "A or B" questions ended up written so hypothetically that they really needed a third option for if you had actually experienced it. Like the "I would like to know homosexuals" one which had no option for "I already know some" and would be very awkward to answer for someone who actually was gay. It was a nice source of some hilarity though (the questions read like they were written by a straight-edger or something, I've never considered drinking liquor to be any way to get high, but it was mentioned as such in the same breath as smoking marijuana).

It was nice to have something to laugh at (especially UNL, since I'm UNO and am bound by school regs to mock UNL, just like being CENG and CSCI requires me to make fun of MIS majors. It's right there in the graduation requirements.) I've been stuck trying to make two things work: multiple master MySQL database replication, which is a bit harder than one would imagine, and a VPN. VPN's are the purest black magic technology I have ever seen. It's not like Flash, which is refined and designed to steal away your soul. A VPN is raw, unfiltered black magic. It began to work inexplicably one night. The next morning, it just quit working, also without any sort of explanation. This has been the most frustrating two and a half weeks I have had at work for a long time. Probably since reforging the tables in the Flash monstrosity into spreadsheet-looking things.

Big Time Drunken Debauchery

2006-06-02T16:43:00.000-06:00

My big party is tonight. We'll see if I can manage to throw a decent party and not get the cops called on me. I've got 22 Guinness burgers and who knows how many guests. Most of the office'll be there, and just about everybody from Omaha. I've got so much alcohol now... Tonight, the party will be brought to you by the fine folks at Guinness (like everything I do) and the official beverage of the night will be Jim Beam Bourbon! (I bought a bottle of it, and then remembered that I already had a nearly full bottle.) The party begins soon, so here's hoping it all turns out all right. A full report will be coming.

Cheers!

"I hate voice actresses for no reason."

2006-05-28T11:43:00.000-06:00

Okay, I just finished up Puni Puni Poemy. Now, I knew it was a spin-off from Excel Saga. I didn't realize how much of one (it contains all manner of back references that aren't clear unless you're really familiar with Excel Saga or watching the commentary, you don't have a clue). I watched the first episode and thought it was like being on drugs. Pretty "eh." Funny, but very confusing. The second episode, well the second half of the second episode, was a freaking riot though. The whole bit about Japanese culture and what people want, based on hentai, was one of the funniest things that I've seen in anime. I thought that the show was canceled after two episodes because it was two extreme. I was wrong. There was only meant to be two episodes. Probably for the best. You can only maintain that level of sheer insanity for so long. Good show, though. Lots of fun. Though it's about as appropriate for children as Sin City.

--Update--
Favorite line from the commentary: "The last time I flew through the air naked, somebody shouted, 'Capture the gorilla!'"