Whiskey Kilo Hotel

too many songs describing how long it's been...

2010-05-22T08:21:00.000-05:00

April was not all that fun of a month. Oh, had my birthday and got to go play some paintball, but overall, it was more stressful than it was relaxing. May, not content to leave a record unbroken, has been even more so, and we're not even halfway through the month yet. That bad? Yes, that bad. The list of concerns and stresses in my life is too long for comfort, and a little too personal to share, so just believe me when I say that I'm more than a bit stressed.

One of my stressors I will share with the internet and all negative5 readers I have on this journal, and that is all the whiney bastards that the Guard seems to be full of these days. Remember, my new job as Incentives Manager for the State of Missouri, I deal with the two big money payouts for the Guard - bonuses and the Student Loan Repayment Program. With the current downturn in the economy and rise in the unemployment rate, we have all noticed in Education & Incentives the increase in whiners. Yes, whiners. There has been a noticeable increase in soldiers whining about money they think the government owes them. Like the soldiers who signed bonus contracts that state clearly they are going to do one job for the Army, and if they leave that job, they will lose the bonus, but they think they should be able to change jobs whenever they want and keep the bonus. Or the soldiers who accepted a technician job before or after a Guard-wide mandated cutoff date for them to keep or lose their bonus who are whining that "it's not fair". Or the soldiers who think they should be getting more GI Bill money just for wearing the uniform and not deploying to Iraq or Afghanistan (because it woul interfere with their schooling, of course). The list goes on, but I'm going to leave it there. I have to, my phone is ringing with the next whiner wanting to complain about how put upon they are.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Remember Nirvana's song Breed? How cool it sounded being peformed, but when you actually pay attention to the lyrics, how little sense they make? Here's the lyrics in case you don't have them handy:

I don’t care (x5) Care if I’m old
I don’t mind (x5) Mind, don’t have a mind
Get away (x4) Away, away from your home
I’m afraid (x5) Afraid, afraid of a ghost

Even if you have, Even if you need, I don’t mean to stare, We don’t have to breed, We could plant a house, We could build a tree, I don’t even care, We could have all three
She said (x7)

I don’t care (x5) Care if I’m old
I don’t mind (x5) Mind, I don’t have a mind
Get away (x4) Away, away from your home
I’m afraid (x5) Afraid, afraid of a ghost

Even if you have, Even if you need, I don’t mean to stare, We don’t have to breed, We can plant a house, We can build a tree, I don’t even care, We could have all three
She said (x8)

Even if you have, Even if you need, I don’t mean to stare, We don’t have to breed, We can plant a house, We can build a tree, I don’t even care, We could have all three
She said (x7) She said .. good!

If you remember what the song sounds like, it sounds awesome (and if you don't, please go refresh your memory), with the voice part adding another melody/beat line into the overall mix just nicely. Well, another song created in a similar vein - lyrics mean next to nothing but the lead vocals adding that intertwined melody/beat line to the song - has caught my attention. That song would be Mountain Man by Crash Kings, here's the video, and here's the lyrics:

I'm sittin on top of a mountain.
She's rockin that valley down below
Switch back to the peak with a blindfold
Bombing down at the top of my lungs screaming oh
Straight out on a head wall oooooh
Turned into a free fall.

I'm sipping on some sunshine
I'm gonna leave it for the morning in the afterlife
And she's drunk by the day time
I bet she feels it just the same in the evening

I'm sipping on some sunshine
I'm gonna leave it for the morning in the afterlife
And she's drunk by the day time
I bet she feels it just the same, not anymore

I'm sittin on top of a hillside
There's a one way path that's takin' me home.
climbing up to the peak with a blindfold
Bombing down at the top of my lungs screaming "oh ooh oh"
Straight out on a head wall oooooh
turned into a free fall.

I'm sipping on some sunshine
I'm gonna leave it for the morning in the afterlife
And she's drunk by the day time
I bet she feels it just the same in the evening

I'm sipping on some sunshine
I'm gonna leave it for the morning in the afterlife
And she's drunk by the daytime
I bet she feels it just the same, not anymore

I'm sipping on some sunshine
I'm gonna leave it for the morning in the afterlife
And they're drunk by the day time
I bet they feels it just the same
I bet they feels it just the same yeah
I'm sipping on some sunshine
I'm gonna leave it for the morning in the afterlife
And she's drunk by the day time
I bet she feels it just the same
I bet she feels it just the same yeah (ooooh yeaah)
I bet she feels it just the same
I bet she feels it just the same yeah
I bet she feels it just the same, not anymore

See? Doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you read the words, now does it? But it's a great song that's been stuck in my head for quite a while now.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

This past weekend, the 15th and 16th of May, I finally found the impetus to really start putting up my unnecessary paintball equipment up for sale on the various paintball boards. Within 2 days I have already sold $190 worth of parts and shipped 6 packages to everywhere in the States. And I mean everywhere - Wisconsin, California, Virginia, I'm sending packages all over the place. Thanks to the USPS's Flat Rate boxes (which have a fixed shipping price and the boxes are free as well, the post office will even deliver bundles to your house gratis), I've inexpensively and easily made shipping happen. The sales themself are not too bad, with only one chucklehead trying to lowball me (look, I'm offering it for $40 shipped in the continental US, $30 for the part and $10 towards shipping - don't offer me $30 shipped to Canada, where shipping is $27 so I only get to actually gain $3 off the part!), and one other hiccup where I had two people bidding on the same item, so a refund has already been sent back. All told I have 4 different for sale threads, all 4 existing on M. Carter Brown, 1 on Automags.org, and 3 on PBNation. I thought about posting up on my new paintball chat board, TechPB, but take a look at their BST rules! I understand this is to avoid a lot of the silliness that you see on PBN, but after reading just a few rules, I gave up even thinking about posting there.

What prompted all of this flurry of selling activity, which I've been talking about but not doing for going on 6 months now? Remember me talking about the electroflingers that I was interested in purchasing, the Invert Mini, Dangerous Power G3 Spec R, and the Proto Matrix Rail? Well, 2 new contenders have entered that particular arena, the Planet Eclipse Etek 3 LT and the Infinity Legend. The Etek 3 is the latest model from Planet Eclipse, having hit shelves just a month or so ago, and the Legend has been flying low under my radar for a couple of years now. Which is not a big surprise as I really haven't paid much attention to the higher-end electroflingers until the last year or so. What turned me on to these two were some recent reviews and a deep and serious discussion of the pros and cons of poppit-valved markers vs spool-valve markers. Basically it breaks down like this - spools are quieter and lighter/more compact, and poppits are more efficient and more accurate. As you may have guessed, all of my previous interests (Mini, G3, and PMR) are spool valved markers. Okay, so the Mini is actually a pressure-controlled poppit controlling a spool valve, but for most intents and purposes, it's a spool. Now poppits are very familiar to me as I've owned a bunch of them, namely all those old Toxic Toys Tribals I'm working on selling off. And honestly, I've never found my Tribals to be all that loud, in fact I find them to be the opposite, very quiet markers especially compared to the mechanically-operated beasties I usually tote around. And the weight is also a bit of a null factor as there is literally 9 ounces of difference between the lightweights (like the PMR) and the heaviest of the heavies I'm looking at (the Legend).

So with all this newfound info I started looking for poppit-valved markers that also fit my list of wants ('cocker-threaded barrels, eyes, clamping feednecks, light, compact, and inexpensive) and came up with the Legend and the Etek 3. Both are very light, with the Legend the heavier of the two at 2 pounds, 7 ounces with a barrel and battery in the marker. Both are fairly compact, and both definitely have all the other properties I want. Another discussion about markers with trigger geometry that benefitted semi-only shooting (one pull and one release of the trigger fires one paintball, which is what I always play, none of this "ramping" or "full auto" laziness for me) also pointed me towards the Etek 3 and Legend markers. So when an opportunity to pick up a Legend, admittedly used, for not a lot of money came by recently, I grabbed it up. Hasn't arrived yet, but knowing that a bunch of money flowed out of my bank account to purchase this marker, I immediately began putting stuff up for sale. And I'm happy to say that I'm really close to making back all the money I spent on the incoming marker. Which should be here in the next couple of days. If I was a schoolgirl, I'd be squealing in anticipation, but since I'm just a nasty old Army sergeant, I just sport an evil grin whenever I think of the havoc I'm going to wreak with that bad boy.

Admittedly, the Legend is not your classic poppit electroflinger, instead falling under the heading of FASOR (forward air, spring operated return). Like your classic poppit, it does have a solenoid-controlled ram that is connected to the ram, sealing the paintball into the breech of the barrel at the same moment the ram slams the poppit valve open, releasing air up through the bolt and out the barrel, pushing the paintball ahead of it. At this point, your normal poppit valve design uses a second channel in its 4-way solenoid (2 outputs, 2 exhausts) to push the ram back, resetting the system. The FASOR design does away with this, using a much simpler 2-way solenoid (1 output, 1 exhaust) and a spring. When the ram reaches apogee, it trips open its exhaust to evacuate all of the pressure behind it from the solenoid, and a spring in front of the ram pushes everything back to the starting position, ready for the next cycle. It's not quite as elegant as letting the solenoid push and pull the ram around, but there is something brutally efficient about the process. The marker is still pretty efficient, getting over 1200 shots off a standard 68cui/4500psi tank (if there is one HPA tank that is used more than any other in paintball, it's the 68/4500), which is quite a lot.

Another thing that struck me is how utilitarian the Legend looks. Many of the other markers I'm looking at have lots of swoop in them (take a look - the G3, the PMR, the Mini, and the Etek 3) especially up around the front of the marker, but the Legend is very flat and blocky (the Legend), with only a bare minimum of swoop in the design. It reminds me alot of a 1967 Pontiac GTO - that flat, very abrupt front grill, and the gradual swoop down at the back. And I'm not a MOPAR guy, the only reason I thought of the '67 Goat is that somebody has one as a daily driver where I work, which is the only reason I noticed the similarities in silhouettes.

Last evil thing and I'll stop talking about paintball (for 5 seconds) - they offer the Legend in a pink fade direct from the factory. If this is indeed the one electroflinger Denise and I are going to use, then I am so getting her a pink one, and having it lasered with the Louis Vitton pattern, because every girl needs an expensive pink accessory that just screams Louis Vitton.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Nope, I lied, more paintball stuff! One of the paintball related websites whose content I've come to enjoy perusing and devouring is TechPB, a newcomer to the online paintball scene. They have tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to pull the mainstream "AGG" kids' heads out of their collective 4th points of contact and bring a little bit more maturity to the sport of paintball, and one of the things they are famous for is giving a fair and rigorous testing of any new paintball product that comes their way and then reviewing it on YouTube. And they're pretty good, weighing the markers to show exactly what you're looking at carrying around, tearing them down to show folks how easy it can be, and firing millions of paintballs to find out how efficient each marker is with the gas. Unfortunately, as with any project, some features of that project don't become standard until part way through the project, so there's more than a couple of markers that missed out on the efficiency test or they didn't get weighed properly or what not.

Last night, Denise was feeling ucky and went for a laydown, and Sam was distracted by the best movie in the world, EVAR!!!11!1, so I pulled up TechPB's YouTube channel and gathered up weight and efficiency numbers on the 5 models I've got my eye on, just so I could have a comparison chart. So let's try and do a table in HTML. Won't this be fun?

MARKER	WEIGHT	WEIGHED WITH	EFFICIENCY
Invert Mini	1lb, 13.6oz	battery	N/A
Dangerous Power G3 Spec-R	1lb, 13.4oz	battery, barrel, gauge adapter	5 pods
'07 Proto Matrix Rail	1lb, 14.4oz	battery	N/A
'09 Proto Matrix Rail	2lb, 6oz	battery, barrel	7 pods
Infinity Legend	2lb, 9oz	battery, barrel	8 pods
Etek 3 LT	2lb, 2oz	battery, barrel	8 pods

That's pretty good info to know, with a range of 12 ounces from the lightest to the heaviest, which is not that big of a difference, and with efficiencies ranging from being able to fire 750 paintballs all the way up to 1200 paintballs off of one tank of air, which is a huge difference.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Before I finish this out, some interesting posts from other places (read as: paintball boards):

On the Dingoo A320

For all of you retro gamers out there who grew up on the NES, SNES, Sega Master and Genesis systems, and spent most of their free money at the local arcade, you guys and gals need to check out the Dingoo A320 Retro Pocket Emulator. Ran across mention of a dedicated ROM-playing device in a PC Gamer magazine podcast from 2006, and looked around a bit before finding this little beauty over on ThinkGeek (though you can apparently find them even cheaper if you look further abroad on the net). Basically, it's roughly the size of a GBA Micro, but has 4 GB of internal memory (expandable by Micro SD card) that you can put audio files, video files, text files, but most importantly, ROMS for your old school favorites and play either on the internal screen or on your TV via provided cable.

Now, I've got a ton of ROMs on my home machine that need a good dusting off and some playtime on one of my three machines, so I probably won't be jumping to purchase one of these myself, but if I had a spare $100 or so lying about, I would be definitely grabbing one soon. This may yet go on my wishlist for further down the road, but thought some of you old school gamers out there would like to hear about it, as I hadn't run across them until recently.

On the Curta Calculator

Another blast from the past I ran into recently - the Curta calculator. I'll let you digest the info for a bit and then gush about how cool these are.

Okay, admittedly, I originally ran across these wonderful little machines in William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, which I read not long after it came out, but hadn't thought about them in the roughly 4 years since. Then last night, I'm helping the wife put together a PowerPoint for one of her classes on technology in accounting, and one of the images I come across for old mechanical calculators is a Curta, possibly the most popular mechanical calculator before the advent of electronic calculators in the 1970s. I did watch a cool YouTube video with demonstrations of how they are used, but since I can't access YT from my work computer, here's a search that you should be able to find plenty of info on the Curta (and the folk singing group, Curta Pajama, apparently).

The geek in me loves the idea of a mechanical device that fits into your hand (especially when you compare its size to other calculators of the day), and can quickly do massive sums with the flick of a few sliders and a turn of the crank, without the need for batteries or integrated circuitry. I also like the fact that to fully use a Curta you have to know or teach yourself how the basis of mathematical functions work. Everything in math is based off of addition - subtraction is the addition of a number to the opposite sign (negative or positive) of another number (the Curta uses the Nines' Complement method of addition to reach a correct answer in a subtraction operation); multiplication is repeated addition functions; division is repeated subtraction functions - and you have to know this to use a Curta efficiently. Say for example that you want to multiply 5,678 by 43, you have to first realize that at its core, this mathematical equation is merely adding 5,678 to itself 43 times (or vice versa, but you want to try to limit the number of iterations in this type of operation, so you generally choose how I wrote it out), which on the Curta would nominally mean that you plug 5,678 into the side tumblers and crank the handle 43 times. Or, if you have a good grasp of mathematics, you know that 5,678 x 43 = (5,678 x 50) - (5,678 x 7). So you set the tumbler from 1x to 10x, crank the handle 5 times to get your x50, switch the tumbler back to 1x, pull out the crank for subtraction, and crank the handle 7 times. That's what I really like about this machine - it's doing the big time calculations, but you still have to do a little thinking on your own to arrive at the correct answer.

As I definitely do not have the $600+ (on average, that's what working Curta's go for these days) to spare to purchase a Curta, this isn't even going on my get-it-when-there's-enough-in-bank-account-that-the-wife-can't-bitch wishlist, like that Dingoo A320 I posted about earlier. No, this is going into my won-the-lottery-and-it's-time-to-go-nuts wishlist that we all keep in the back of our heads, right next to all the muscle cars I *drool!* after and the reproduction of Restormel Castle I would so build if I had near-unlimited funds. Okay, maybe owning a Curta is a little more obtainable than those other things, but it's still pretty "pie in the sky" at the moment.

What about the rest of you? Ever heard of the Curta calculators before today? Any geeks in the audience who now (or when you first ran across one years ago) are geeking out about these little mechanical wonders?

On that note, I'm signing off and closing this one out. Sorry it's been so long between posts, but you get what you pay for.

|/|/hiskey ]{ilo ]-[otel

Zombie Jesus and other life calamities

2010-04-12T08:00:00.000-05:00

My father has killed any vestiges of Protestantism I harbored with his recently announced relationship. This really only bothers me when I want to curse, and since most of my traditional curses involve religion, I feel... I don't know, wrong? Weird? Uncomfortable? For example, I wanted to cry to the heavens at what a nasty month this has been, and wanted to start it off with one of my old stand-bys, like "Gods above!" or "Heaven help us!" or the like, but couldn't bring myself to type any of those. I don't even feel comfortable using the Atheists' battle cry (Science!), though I've tried it before in the past. Maybe I'll just have to continue on with my favorites, *feh* and outright vulgarity, like "pole-smoking fashion victim" and "shit maggot".

Anyway, aside from struggling, mentally and emotionally, with this quandary, we have had quite a month. Yes, I last posted up something on or around the 5th of March, and here it is the 22nd and finally getting around to starting up a new post. Sam's been sick off and on, and is now scheduled to get tubes in her ears on the 8th of April. Denise is busy with midterms and other schoolwork, as well as being sick off and on the entire month. I've been busy training up my replacement all while learning my new job at work, and have also been busy dealing with family issues and projects. Not to be left out, I was so sick last week that I had to go home for half of a day, and didn't have any voice the last half of the week. The month has not been a total waste, as both paintball and SCA projects are getting work done on them, slowly but surely, and I've even worked on securing our future by reinvesting the money I'd inherited from Grandpa.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

What I really wanted to type about this month is all the movies we've seen recently - The Hangover, 9, Push, Surrogates, Ninja Assassin, and Boondock Saints II: All Saint's Day. Let's start at the top of the list and just work our way through it, shall we?

The Hangover - a lot of people and reviewers like this movie, and I have to admit that I like this movie more than I hate it, but it worked awfully hard to make me dislike it, especially at the beginning. The soon-to-be-groom, the focal point of this little Las Vegas Bachelor Party Adventure is likeable enough, putting up with his socially inept and dimwitted brother-in-law, but everyone else is almost downright loathesome the first half of the movie. Which is a good thing, as there is so much mental anguish and physical damage these guys endure that you find it enjoyable to watch. The previously mentioned soon to be brother-in-law is the lowest of the low, implying that there are pedophilia charges in his past ("I can't go within 200 yards of a grade school, man") as well as other general stupidity, and of course being the cause for the eponymous hangover that wipes everyone's memory of the night before. The other two friends are not quite as dis-likable - for good reason, how do you compete with a possible pedophile in the hated category? - but still not terribly likable. One consistently bashes his wife, kid, and marriage, and the other is so completely whipped by his significant other (who you completely loathe all through the movie, and get to watch some sweet, sweet revenge happen to at the end of the movie) that even Denise despised him for being a pussy. And then the middle of the movie happens, where we suddenly lose the bachelor (the most likable character), and our three remaining morons run around Vegas like a bunch of hydrocephalics on meth, and hilarity ensues. Suddenly you're not hating the idiots so much as enjoying watching them get their asses kicked, their beautiful loaner vehicle get trashed (mental anguish? yep, tons of it), and their dignities and honors get trampled upon. I suddenly found myself commiserating with the morons, even liking them a little and rooting for them, and that's the dangerous, precarious position the writer and director walk at the beginning of the movie - I don't care how deep and meaningful your characters are, but if the audience can't cheer for anyone, they won't care and the movie will flop. Overall this is an enjoyable movie, but the beginning is pretty painful.

9 - wow, just wow. It's not the hardest of sci-fi out there, and the uplifting ending isn't all that uplifting once you start thinking about it, but still a great movie worth the watching. The computer graphics are fairly well done, definitely not Pixar or Dreamworks level, but well done enough that you believe it without questioning it too much. The world is almost believable, though like I explored with WALL-E, not all good sci-fi stands up to close scrutiny. For something that started out as a student's graduating project, this movie is pretty damn good.

Push - a better version of Jumper, it really is. Dude has weird psychic power and a shadowy, evil government agency hunting him down. Sounds like Jumper, don't it? This one is better, as it has far more likeable main characters (yes, characters, not just 2 slackers with about a puddle's depth of character), a deeper, more intricate plot, and the action sequences were done better. Plus, the weird psychic powers had variety in Push, instead of being merely one-dimensional as in Jumper, which helps out with those plot intricacies and character depths I talked about earlier. Great watch, only wish I could have paid more attention to it, as I missed some of it due to interruptions by the Squirtimus.

Surrogates - a lot of reviewers didn't like this one, as it received a Rotten (under 60% approval rating) Tomato, but I liked it. The world makes more logical sense than other sci-fi movies, which is probably why it didn't so well in the reviews category, but I like hard sci-fi, as I've mentioned before, and this had just enough plot and intrigue and action to keep me coming back for more. Sadly, once the last twist is revealed, the last 15 to 20 minutes of the movie are all-too-predictable, which is a bit of a letdown. Worth a watch if you're looking for something sci-fi-y (we just make up words as we see fit around here) and have an evening to kill.

Ninja Assassin and Boondock Saints II: All Saint's Day - I'm reviewing them both because they're pretty much the same movie. Both of them are action flicks with very little plot or character development, one features more swords and medieval weaponry, and the other is all about the gun porn. You can guess which are which, just by the titles and covers to the DVDs alone. And unless the idea of watching spectacular special effects that involve tons of gore (Ninja Assassin) or are totally in love with the eponymous Saints, there really is no need to see these movies. They were distracting for a little while but all too predictable and ultimately not worth the rental price. Don't bother with these unless you have HBO, they're on, and there is nothing else to watch. Admittedly, the dream sequence involving Rocco (the one who died in the first Saints movie) is very funny and quotable (it wouldn't be a BDS movie without something to quote), but other than that, if you saw the first movie, you've seen this movie.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Not much to say about this past weekend (the 27th and 28th of March) other than I'm glad it's over. Sam was sick all weekend with a new bout of ear infections (she lasted almost an entire week from the end of her last batch of antibiotics) and the new antibiotics made her both vomit often and have diarrhea, and also caused a rash on her tummy in addition to the normal diaper rash babies with diarrhea suffer from.

And another jump in time. It's now a week after I typed the last couple of sentences (Monday, April 5th), and I'm going to admit that I don't have enough free time at work or at home anymore to type on this journal much. I still have tons of things that I have opinions on and would like to share, but with my new position at work (lateral transfer, sadly - more work, just the same salary) I'm honestly overwhelmed in learning the new job (two jobs, really - Bonuses and Student Loan Repayments), keeping up with all the demands of the new job, and cleaning up the mess left me by my predecessors. I know this is going to disappoint the millions of you that log into my journal every week for my wit and wisdom, but real life trumps the needs of what we'd like to be doing.

Until next time, enjoy!

|/|/hiskey ]{ilo ]-[otel

you thought we were dead, didn't you?

2010-03-05T17:22:00.000-06:00

Okay, who did we piss off in the Universe? The reason I haven't written anything lately (I'm typing this on Monday the 1st of March, 2010, and I couldn't tell you when I put up my last journal post at this point) is that in the last couple of weeks both Denise and I have been horribly sick with some nasty 72 hour intestinal bug, Sam has been horribly sick off of a sulphur-based antibiotic which we quickly got changed over to something that is easier on her little system, but which still made her both diarrheatic and vomitous for most of the week due to a conjunction with a couple more immunizations at the beginning of the week. Add into that a trip to lovely Branson (as the Simpsons put it, "Branson is what Las Vegas would be if Ned Flanders ruled the world") for work and not personal pleasure. Sam and Denise managed to tag along (those poor hotel maids, Sam was at the height of her stomach issues at this point) and actually got out and did some fun stuff on Saturday. Beyond that, it's just busy as hell at work as we reorganize under a new directorate, and support half a dozen briefings in the last month and couple of weeks to come, so I have, understandably, not being typing on journal posts as much as I usually do.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

So like I've been saying I would for the past two month and a half, I actually got work done on all of my paintball gear, namely unearthing boxes from inside the garage (too many boxes and too little garage, to be quite honest), hauling them up to the Mancave, and sorting out all the gear for the Grand Purging. Sadly, I got to what I thought was THE last box, a 55-gallon rolling plastic storage tub that has been my main storage for years, and after only getting halfway through it, it became quite obvious that even more boxes needed to be found and brought up. Yes, a 55-gallon storage tub didn't have enough room for all of my paintball gear outside of my main field bags and several other boxes. But the important thing is that the project is moving forward, which is good news. The sad part about it is that many of the projects I've been gathering pieces on for years now are getting more attention as I'm getting them ready to sell them off. Mostly it's the Tribals, getting all the aftermarket parts I'd picked up for them (bolts, ASA high-flow screws, and regulators), though not all of the parts. Brand spanky new valves and microboard chips are also waiting to be installed, but the level of work needed to get those in are too much for me. I'll offer them up for sale with the markers, but tear apart the marker for them? Negative.

In addition to getting stuff ready to sell, I'm rewriting my operations manual for how we will pursue the sport of paintball. Not really writing it out, but in my head I'm basically deciding how I'm changing my paintball hobby. My goals in the recent past with paintball were: to have an entire collection of Tribals, set up in all of their old school glory to impress the goobs at the field; to have an entire collection of Tippmann markers, because I love them so much; to be able to outfit an entire short Battalion of paintball players just out of my gear; and apparently have enough gear to play for an entire week without putting one piece of gear onto the field more than one day. This philosphy is what obviously led to the pile of gear that is quickly overtaking all of the available space in my Mancave, and a new operational document had to be created to fix this problem. As I've talked about in the past, I'm narrowing down our gear to the essentials - for each of us I've got a rock solid Tippmann Model 98 Custom, a high performance electroflinger (a couple of Proto markers right now, but it could end up being an Invert Mini or Dangerous Power G3), and 2 pumps (currently I have 2 Tippmann SL-68's, 1 SL-68 II, and a Trrracer, which could change at any time as better deals are found), along with a couple of nifty markers I'm keeping for mementos (a Tippmann ProCarbine that has all the bells and whistles, and the infamous MicroMag and HalfBlock Jackal 'Cocker projects) of a simpler time in paintball. No, not necessarily better, but definitely simpler. Sounds like a lot (11 markers for 2 people), but when you compare it to the laundry list I've got currently (almost 30), it seems far more reasonable. And it's just enough to fit almost every paintball situation we would see, plus have enough depth that we continue playing even if a marker goes down, plus have some extras if we wish to invite friends and family out to play when they don't have any of their own gear. The markers are not alone in getting the big chop, as I'm whittling down everything across the board - packs, hoppers, tools, tanks, boxes, bins, etc - and I'm going to be supremely disappointed if everything doesn't fit into our two gear bags and maybe one more reasonably-sized storage tub (reasonable being around 20 gallons, not 50+ gallons).

The surprising part is that there is still a small list of items that need to fulfill the current operational needs. Some of the things are stuff I need right now just to get us back onto the field, like replacement lenses for our goggles, and HPA tanks to hydrotesting and back. That stuff is getting picked up or taken care of here shortly (as soon as I recover from my latest impulse buy, one of the 3 markers I want to give a good working over before settling on one for Denise and I to use), but everything else - some more 4500psi HPA tanks, some better hoppers, and various odds and ends - will get picked up as I earn enough extra $$$ from sale of old gear.

*UPDATE* As of last night (Tuesday, the 2nd of March) it's all out of the garage, all out of boxes, and scattered all over the floor of the Mancave. Pictures will start to be taken this week/weekend, as I go through and clean up everything in preparation to be sold or to be played with. Now the fun really begins as the stuff that is getting sold is being taken back to base configurations, as the all the upgrades and accessories are going to be sold off separately (excepting the Tribal upgrades - the stock stuff is such crap I couldn't bring myself to subjecting anyone to it), or saved to be used on other projects (mostly air fittings, drop forwards, and on/off ASAs). What all do I have in the way of accessories? Dear science, it's a lot of stuff - bolts, barrels, drop forwards, ASAs, feednecks, gripframes, tools, boards, chips, hoppers, packs, pods, masks, tubes... the list just goes on and on.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

I think I mentioned it here before, but if I didn't or you missed it, I replaced the titanium wedding bands Denise and I had been wearing since we got married with rings made from tungsten carbide. I had noticed that both of our rings were showing considerable dings and scratches, and as I liked the polished, smooth look that the rings originally had, I searched the internet for a replacement. Much like titanium, tungsten carbide is a very hard material (it's so hard that they use it to make cutting implements to go through very hard substances like stainless steel) but is far denser, and resists scratching. I can attest to all of that, as our carbide rings are noticeably heavier than our tungsten bands, and after wearing my own for a little over three months, it is still just as shiny, clean, and unscratched as it was the day I first put it on. Oh, the polished surface does show smudges from body oils and other stuff all too well, but those are easily cleaned off and my ring still looks damn sexy.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

I had never really thought much of Branson before now. It's always been a bit too *sounds of banjo-playing* for me to want to visit it often. However, my last trip allowed me enough time around town to almost get run over in a WalMart parking lot (no, really) and realize that there are attractions there to suit the tastes of Denise and I. As long as we avoid the shows and stick to the more amusement park oriented attractions - the water parks, the go-kart tracks, and Silver Dollar City - and understand that traffic is going to be horrific, we may actually make it a semi-regular vacation spot. Hey, the Ripley's Believe or Not museum is in Branson, as well as a branch of the Hollywood Wax Museum. Okay, I admit, it's the Wild Woody and Lumberjack go-kart tracks that really has my interest. But the rest wouldn't be all that awful to see in between rides at the track.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Apple has announced its iPad and as everyone predicted, a hundred copycats (okay, not a hundred, but easily into the low double digits) have sprung up, like mushrooms after a rain. What I cannot fathom is that Apple basically grabbed the edges of their iPod/iPhone platform and stretched it out, so calling that product a tablet computer is misleading - it uses a non-desktop/laptop OS and has limited capacity for computer operations (a major turn-off in such a large form factor). Seriously, as much as they're asking for, you'd think they'd at least make it akin to their tiny, lightweight offering, the MacBook Air. Okay, the Mac desktops and portables are admittedly not the major money earners in Apple's stable these past few years, the "i" series of products is (iCan't iBelieve It's iNot iButter!) the major earner, and I can understand why Apple would want to continue to make products tied tightly to their iTunes and App stores. However, what I cannot understand is why all of the copycats I've seen are following suit - using smartphone OS's, like Android and Windows Mobile 7. None of the benefits of using an Apple product and their attendant stores (not that I use any of them, but I can see their attraction for others) comes with any of these other products and their OS's, so why make something that is the relative size of a netbook, the cost of a laptop, but hobbled with the OS of a smartphone? I don't get it.

That's probably the point, however - I am not the consumer this market is pointed at. I don't immediately jump on technological bandwagons, I don't buy technological toys just to have them (though I did splurge with some of the money I got selling off my Skaven army and bought that Kodak Zi8 I've been drooling over for a while now), and I don't relish the idea of giving yet more money to an industry that has shown not to have our interests in mind, much less in heart. I'm sure, however, that the Cult of Mac will justify Jobs's investment in the new hardware development by purchasing enough iPad's to float a city, and those who hate Mac publicly but secretly are merely envious of them and their tech-geek status will buy enough of the competitors' products to justify some of the companies jumping on the bandwagon, but not all.

As a quick update, the Zi8 came in last night (Thursday, the 4th of March), and it is a nice little piece of equipment - it takes 1080p video at 30fps, or 720p at 30 or 60fps, WVGA video, and even 5MP still photos. It has a built-in USB connector, cunningly hidden behind an awesome little door, and is probably one of the best on the market as it's on a flexible little cable attachment to make it easier to attach to your computer. It has HDMI and AV (via RCA, one video and mono audio) outputs, and came with the appropriate cables from Kodak, which means you can play the videos directly from the camera to just about any TV or computer monitor. It also has a much touted microphone jack (3.5mm instaed of the professional 1/4", but you takes what you can get) that is fairly unique in the world of mini digi-cams. It can have up to 32GB of storage in the form of a SDHC card (strongly suggest you get one, as the Zi8's onboard memory is pathetically small), which gives 4 hours for the hi-def formats, and over 8 hours of WVGA time, plus a ton of 5MP pics. Now, it's not all rainbows and kittens here, there are some downsides to this. The still pics are really cheap and grainy looking. It has no optical zoom, just a digital zoom, but one that works while the unit is recording, so I count that as a major down (optical always trumps digital in the zoom world) with a slight up. It also has a rechargeable battery that, while I haven't used the camera enough to verify, probably doesn't last close to four hours.

Having said all that, is the unit worth it? So far, yes. I haven't quite figured out a movie editor (I'm looking into Microsoft's Movie Maker, but can't find an installer for version 2.1 for XP, and the new Live Movie Maker only works with Vista and 7) to use on my future opuses (opii?) nor have I managed to find something real exciting to test out the high-speed, hi-def 720p at 60fps. I went to practice last night hoping to get some fast rattan-swinging action so I could see what it looks like slowed down, but not enough fighters showed up and I only got one of our resident Dukes talking about what he thinks is the basic skill fighters should work on - foot and hip movement, and balance. I hope to rectify that situation later this weekend as I either find Movie Maker for my XP box or install it on the wife's laptop, as well as get over to the unofficial regional fighter practice happening in Columbia and getting some good action clips. Oh, also need to pick up a cheap, lightweight tripod (the Zi8 weighs around 4 ounces, so I definitely don't need anything heavy duty), as that will come all too much in handy for this type of event.

Oh, one last thing before I go. I noticed today that the lens does not protrude directly straight out of the front of the body, it angles up slightly to better match the angle you hold the vidcam at naturally. It's subtle, but once you notice it, it's one of those design details that show the company has seriously worked on this product line. Of course, with all of the other features in this model over the previous two - HiDef upgrade, the anti-shake, the improved USB connector, and the expanded capacity - the angle of the lens is just the icing on the cake.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

I'm going to cut it short there. We got to watch some movies this past week (The Hangover, Push, 9, and Surrogates) that I wanted to share some thoughts on, but I've got too much to do today in preparation for yet another weekend spent working for the Guard, and need to go do those things. Enjoy!

|/|/hiskey ]{ilo ]-[otel

If you had a quarter for every time this is late, think of all the money you'd have.

2010-02-17T05:00:00.000-06:00

As I type this, it is 8am on Monday morning, the First of February. Is it Friday yet? I've already managed to make it to work late, forgotten a towel for my after-PT shower, and dropped my ID card (which also accesses my work computer and all the systems I use for my job) into a snowbank and had to spend 5 minutes trudging around my car to find it. On top of that, it looks like Sam has contracted whatever daycare-plague is currently in vogue and we'll be dragging her to the doctor yet again sometime this week.

Fortunately, the rest of the weekend went fairly well, excepting some cranky baby time on Sunday - managed to get the wife's notebook upgraded to Windows 7 (as well as downgraded it from Office 2003 to 2007 for her school, and yes, 2007 is a downgrade from 2003) and cleaned up the Mancave enough that I can start Operation Paintball Archive & Garage Sale, that I'd meant to get started on back at the end of December. We're slowly getting everything organized around the house (and in our lives) and getting more and more space as time goes by. This weekend was also the weekend for car repairs as both the Spectra and the Corsica were in the shop for various things - easy belt change on the Spectra, and a more involved belt replacement, tire rotation/balance/alignment, and brake pad replacement on the Corsica. Fortunately we're caught on all of our bills (even ahead on some of them) and due a big return from the government in the near future, so while the amount that had to be fixed on the Corsica was more than I had planned on, we are not going to be hurting from it financially.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

I am such a geek. You have read my posts concerning a little game by the name of Dwarf Fortress and if you've been paying any kind of attention the last couple of posts, you're also aware of my recently renewed interest in all things D&D. Recently someone on my favorite paintball chat board brought up DF which got me to looking for new lineage games to read about, and I ran across one by the name of Headshoots, which like many lineage games is usually set up in the worst place possible (in this case, a blasted wasteland full of undead creatures, little vegetation, and tons of demons and other nasty creatures wandering about) and it gets passed from player to player with no overriding goals to guide anybody. Usually hilarity ensues in the players' posts on whatever common chat board they are on. The Headshoots lineage game is not terribly different from any other lineage game (Boatmurdered and Nist Akath being other famous games I've talked about in the past) but is noteworthy in this post as it gave me an idea - how fun would a D&D adventure be if it were set in a failed fortress like Headshoots?

For those of you who are confused as hell, let me explain a little bit about this idea as a whole. When you play DF, your goal is to set up a fortress for dwarves (I know, *d'uh!*, right?) that will be self-sustainable, profitable, and continuing outpost of the dwarven society. As the player, you have very little direct control over said dwarves, merely being able to place jobs and where you want objects placed or what you want made and until one of your digital bearded stunties decides to go and do it, it doesn't get done. The dwarves do pretty much what they want, which, from time to time, means most of them go crazy from being cooped up or not having the right flavor of gemstones to look at. On top of that, the big goal in the game is the mining of the mythical adamantine and making all kinds of stuff with it (no, no Wolverine, sad to say) and all really good veins of adamantine are guarded by demons and other perils of the lower, fiery planes. All of these combine on top of the normal day-to-day variety of struggle for survival activities (like gather food, make booze - alcohol is VERY IMPORTANT to dwarves - and avoid getting killed by goblins/wildlife) to make many games of DF end in tragedy, which results in a failed fortress.

So from a D&D-centric viewpoint, here's this series of above ground and underground works (a "dungeon", as it were) that are infested by various creatures (devils, insane dwarves, wild animals, goblins, marauding elves and humans, giants, undead whatever, even something you might have heard of called "dragons"), traps ("hmmm, what does this lever do?" sounds of burning people drowning in lava), and full of the treasured works the dwarves managed to accomplish before they had to abandon the fortress (or died). It's not the most original idea in the realm of fantasy and fantasy RPGs - both Tolkien's characters in Fellowship of the Ring and Salvatore's characters in Streams of Silver adventure into failed dwarven underground works - but just thinking about what an adventuring party would discover if they were to travel to the remains of Boatmurdered or Headshoots makes me figuratively drool over the possibilities.

My original thought (come up with sometime Thursday or Friday of last week) was to get one of the end savefiles for a game (either by grabbing the common file for a lineage game or playing through a fortress myself) and then creating the adventure entirely by hand - draw out the maps, create all the stats on the monsters, write in the treasures, and of course all the tasty traps and works the dwarves have built into their fortress. This would obviously take a lot of time and effort to produce one adventure that I would probably never use, but would definitley scratch the itch. My new thought, that just came to me, is why don't I automate the process? I mean, DF creates a file that isn't horribly encoded and obfuscated to protect proprietary information, why not just write up a program that you feed a save file from DF, or a series of files, and it extracts the info needed and makes up an adventure for you? Yes, it would take longer to write a program, test it, refine it, and repeat for a couple of cycles, which would admittedly take longer than making one adventure by hand. Even so, the end result would be that I could make a ton of adventures for very little time and effort after the initial investment of time and effort. I would also have a product that shows off my programming skills (I will eventually go back into the computer field, though more likely aim towards networking over programming, but a little cross-discipline skill never hurt anyone's resume') and something to give back to two of the geeky communities I like - tabletop RPG'ers and PC gamers. I like that last idea better, and because I'll probably never follow through on either idea, I hope that when I am a CIS student once again, I remember this little mental exercise and use it as an in-class project. Maybe by the time that finally rolls around, I'll be back around the "geek cycle" to having an interest in both D&D and DF again, and it'll actually get done.

Programming plan would look like this (I told you, I gotta get this idea down somewhere before it walks out of my leaky brain forever and ever) - get the software to translate the basic map to something that could be easily printed off, then step two would be to get the program to translate all of the area data into a descriptive text file, then step three would be to try and get the program to create generic flavor text off of the descriptive text ("There are signs that a still once stood in the corner", "The walls and floors are highly decorated, of note is a masterful engraving of two dwarves beheading a goblin", "Coffins and statues litter the area, denoting the resting place of Gurthuk Chestthumper"), and step four would be to have the program take in not only the final game save for the fortress, but the entire run of saves from beginning to end, and put in monsters and treasure as well, all heuristically. The maps and data on what we call in D&D the "dungeon dressing" are the easy parts, hence why they're early in the plan, and the really hard part in the early stages would be translating where and what info is in a DF save file, which will carry over into the rest of the program's lifecycle. The hard part will be to make the generic descriptions given off by the save file sound like they were handwritten by a human (instead of "in square XY is a staircase that goes up, in square XY+1 is a staircase that goes up", it would read "A functional, broad staircase carved out of the natural granite winds up into the ceiling. The staircase was obviously meant for lots of traffic as it is 10 feet wide and could easily handle two laden dwarves beside each other.") but also make each entry unique enough that the DM is not reading the same thing over and over. It will also be difficult to put in all the monsters and treasures based off the saves - Gurthuk Chestthumper died at point XYZ and is buried at X+50Y-30Z-3, do we put a ghost at XYZ or a zombie/skeleton at X+50Y-30Z-3 or neither? the fortress has been empty for 5 years, who has moved in to take over the space? who was insane and running amok when everyone else abandoned the fort, and what have they been doing since and where are they located at? what grand treasures get left behind and where are they at? - which means not only creating decent flavor text for the encounter or discovery, but also creating, on the fly, stats for both the monsters and the encounters.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Wow. Denise and Sam are both sick this week with ear infections, and I'm still well. So far. *knocks on wood*

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Sorry for yet another multi-week post. Last week I missed a day to stay home with a sick Samantha (another ear infection and run of antibiotics, her 3rd in as many months), and then missed half a day of work on Friday (5th of February) as I had to leave early to beat the weather. This week is a short week as well as I'm taking a day of leave Friday to spend some of my accrued leave time (roughly 60 days at this point) and turning the President's Day 3-day weekend into a 4-day weekend. Had a good weekend this past weekend, as we mainly stuck around the house and worked on stuff. Talked to Tim Friday night about things going on in our lives and plans for paintball gear (I've got his HPA tank to send in for hydro with my lot, which hasn't happened yet, but will soon) and mentioned that I was looking at selling off my Warhammer Fantasy Battles Skaven army, which made him perk up with interest. Since I know he and his lady are good for it, I dropped all my other plans and spent most of Saturday organizing and photograpphing all the various pieces I'm offering up for sale and emailing them to him. The grand total? A metric butt load - 150 Clanrats, 231 Slaves, 52 Plague Monks, 8 Rat Ogres, 30 Stormvermin, 2 Screaming Bells... the list goes on and on. If it was in the last 2 codices before the latest one, I had 2 of them, at the least. Seriously, I took 155 pics of just the WHFB stuff (and about 30 of the Mordheim stuff as well) just to cover everything. I'd forgotten how much GW plastic and pewter figs I had in my possession (the entirety fit into 3 18-gallon plastic tubs, which isn't much compared to some of my stuff, like my SCA and paintball gear), not to mention all the accoutrements that you pick up when you're trying to seriously get into tabletop wargaming. And now I'm looking to sell it all off, which will hopefully happen soon.

We did get a couple of movies for our viewing pleasure, trying to get Zombieland but failing as it proved to be too popular in its first week of DVD release, and we ended up getting Moon, The Hurt Locker, and the oddly spelled Inglourious Basterds. Moon is definitely for all of you in the audience who like a good, hard sci-fi story. It's definitley not an action movie or thriller or any of the other usual tropes that you expect to see under the heading of sci-fi, it is very much the thinking person's hard fact science fiction. Go rent it and watch it, even if you've ruined the plot by reading a spoiler somewhere, it will still grab you and hold you to the end. The Hurt Locker, on the other hand, is more of an action movie than it is an in-depth look at how soldiers are handling the conflict in Iraq, but it is still very much worth the rental. If you've got any PTSD from a deployment, watch it with a friend, as the combat scenes are as realistic as I've seen in a long time. We haven't seen Inglourious Basterds (we have it for a week, so when we ran out of spare time - read that as: we wanted to go to bed earlier than midnight - it got put up on the shelf for later perusal) but I will post up my thoughts when I get to it. A lot of good movies out there on the rental shelves, go get you some.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

I keep unearthing more and more articles relating to 3rd Edition D&D on the Wizards of the Coast website - adventures, maps, NPCs, different settings, expansions and extras for their published books, and a whole host of articles on everything from creating a campaign to being a better GM to identifying and taking care of problem players. WotC was definitely serious about supporting their flagship product, as everyone on that crew is as big of a tabletop RPG'er as those of us who played D&D. As the kids say these days, awesome sauce!

SUBJECT CHANGE.

This past weekend I had really planned on clearing the majority, if not all, of the paintball gear out of the garage into the mancave so I can a) catalog for posterity the ridiculous amount of paintball gear I have (though not the most owned by one person I've ever seen, not by a long shot), b) begin selling off all of the excess gear I've decided needs to go, and c) clear out enough space in the garage that I can start working on my SCA armour and weapons. I've already dragged the easy to grab equipment up to my room, including my 6 HPA tanks and the one HPA tank of Tim's I have awaiting a trip to the hydro-testers. Seeing the tanks got me thinking, and I decided that most of the tanks would be sold off, and I would hang onto only the 2 Nitro Duck Tuff Skin 4500psi tanks I currently have. Noticing that one of my tanks that is going to get the axe - a ND Tuff Skin 68cui 3000psi model - was better than Tim's tank (in both looks, performance, and longevity), I gave the Naked One a call to see if he would be remiss if I sold his tank and replaced it with mine. He agreed that such a swap made sense, and when we got to talking about other things, like we normally do, he asked if I was getting in any use out of my Warhammer army. As you well know, I have yet to set one foot into the local gaming store since the move, and since I've moved away from the friends that I would want to play with (and now have even less time for hobbies with a child, a wife in college, and a job with more time demands on it), I told him I was thinking of selling that as well. Tim tells me that his wife is interested in purchasing some Ratmen of Doom, and I immediately switched gears from gathering up paintball gear to getting all the WHFB and Mordheim stuff organized and photo'd.

Yeah, I'm double posting about that in this update, but it did devour my weekend. Okay, it devoured Saturday. I did get the rat's cage cleaned and put back together on Sunday, but that was about it. Hopefully this week I can get the remainder of the paintball gear up and into the Mancave to be organized, catalogued, and put up for sale. I am delving deep into this stuff this time, too, nothing left unexamined and weighed against future need. Four masks are all I'm saving out of the collection, the best that meets the criteria of fits us best and can still get lenses and straps for. I'm getting rid of all the hoppers I have, saving back two 12V Revvy loaders (for the reliable, mid-range performance) and two non-agitated hoppers (for their utter reliability and the fact that they hold paint). The plan is to pick up 2 DYE Rotors, as well as a couple of Primo hoppers as I've heard really good things about them, and they don't require any batteries.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Okay, it's been an even bigger break in time this time. I typed the last some week or more ago, and I'm typing this on Tuesday, the 16th of February. Why such a large break? Work has been busy as hell, we finally got an answer from Tim on the Skaven, and because that answer was a yes, spent all of last Saturday traveling around and visiting my mom in Blue Springs, Tim and Catherine in St Joe, and Denise's parents in Leavenworth. That netted us brownie points with the famn damily and a cool $500 from Tim, as well as a stomach bug that is making the rounds. Denise was so sick she had to go to Urgent Care yesterday, and today, I'm down with the same thing, having tossed my cookies several times, as well as more than a touch of diarrhea. Fortunately Sam has only shown a touch of diarrhea, and none of the stuff at the other end. We'll see how this goes.

So, since I last typed anything, we finally did get to watch Inglourious Basterds and under intense peer pressure outright bought a copy of Zombieland, and watched that as well. IG is a movie I had some hopes for, not necessarily LotR high hopes, but still higher than average hopes. It disappointed me on several counts. And I'm a fan of Quentin Tarantino's, loving his Kill Bill series and the Grindhouse flicks. But IG? You'd think that bearing that title you would see more of said Basterds (much less find out the reason behind the lovely spelling) than a mere slightly less than half of the movie. Yes, most of the scenes the Basterds's were in had nothing but gratuitous violence, but the rest of the movie tried to tell a touching tale... of someone else entirely. Also, if you're going to indulge in a revenge fantasy and make an alternate history of everything, read some Harry Turtledove and do a better job of it, okay?

Now Zombieland on the other hand, did not disappoint and was well worth the purchase. I had mid-level hopes for the movie and it met or exceeded them, with only a few quibbles. It is, as they say in the making of, most definitely a never aired TV show pilot turned into a movie, but still manages to come off fairly movie-ish in the end. My only quibble is that now they've turned that pilot episode into a full-blown movie, there's not much of a chance of ever getting Z-land as a TV show. Why? Like most modern zombie tales, the focus is rightly not on the zombies, but on the characters. And after watching the movie, I have to admit that a TV series would have to bring in a whole new cast of characters, as the movie pretty well explored everyone. It's a shame, as this would have been a fun TV show. Though all hope is not lost, as rumors have arisen of a popular comic book, The Walking Dead, being turned into a series. Should be interesting.

In other news, I also finally finished up reading all of the Terry Pratchett books I own, a project which began almost a year ago, and I've finally moved on to reading J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series in its entirety. Yes, I had read through book 5, but never finished it, and yes, I realize that Dumbledore (who is quite possibly gay) is dead by the end of the series. But I'd finally acquired a full, matched set of British edition hardcovers, and with time in my reading schedule now opened up, it's time to finish the series once and for all. At least, until they finish making the movies, and I go a-hunting for the spiffy, uber-cool set that has all of the movies plus all the bonus features.

That's it for this week (tri-week? *hmmmm*), have a good one!

|/|/hiskey ]{ilo ]-[otel

And introducing the new iDon'tGiveADamn!!

2010-01-29T18:01:00.000-06:00

What a weekend. Six people from out of town stayed at our place from Friday night to Sunday morning to attend the event in Columbia, and it wasn't too awfully onerous. Denise worked all of Saturday at the event and I babysat the Sam-monster all day at home, except for the one hour we went to site to see and be seen. As usual, it being an A&S-centric event with no fighting, I really didn't mind having an excuse to not be there. The SCA and its participants are far more enjoyable when I can hit them with a stick of rattan. So mostly on Saturday I sat around and watched the kiddo play in her room while I read KoDT comics (more of my recent D&D fixation shining through) and relaxed. Of course, the rest of the weekend was spent babysitting company, taking care of the baby late at night/early in the morning, and helping the wife as much as I could. Not a bad weekend overall, though I could use another 5 hours of sleep this morning. And some breakfast would have been nice.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

So this past weekend, I watched a technological triumph of a movie that showed no human actors on screen, involved a world so well thought out that the audience was drawn entirely in and believed in the world as a wokring whole, and wow'ed audiences. How well thought out was the world? Entire wiki entries have been created to annotate and expand on the information given in the movie, as the movie makers didn't just paste their creatures and plants into settings here on Earth, but created a whole new reality for them to interact in.

So did I go and watch Avatar again? Nope, I watched a movie that I hadn't seen in a long time, Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal. And everything I said in the last paragraph is true, pick it up and watch it again. Definitely do not miss the World of the Dark Crystal special feature, which was amazing that they made something like that back in the late '80's at all, and it's here for us to watch today. Oh, we take those "making of" specials for granted today in the Land of the DVD/BluRay, but back in the Land of the VHS/Beta, such animals were a rare and wondrous sight indeed. But the attention to detail that Jim and the crew lavished on the film is very much apparent, so much so that when you see the making of after watching the movie, you are very much reminded of what James Cameron did with his fictional world of Pandora. Just minus all the ecological agenda undertones (okay, overtones) that are present in Avatar. So if you are like me and haven't watched Dark Crystal in a long while, just like me, then I strongly urge you to purchase or rent a copy and take a gander at it again. Yeah, it's far more oriented to the younger crowd than Avatar, but well worth a look. Or another look, whatever applies to your situation.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Speaking of the D&D, I downloaded a bunch of material for the last major rules update (3rd Edition and the version 3.5 revision, known as 3e and 3.5, for those of you playing at home). How much is "a bunch"? In this instance, 18GB of files, most of them .pdfs. Is that legal? Probably not totally legal, but as none of the products are still in print - all of the companies involved, including Wizards of the Coast that own the D&D IP and manage the Open Gaming License that everyone produces under, have either folded, changed over to a different aspect of the gaming market, or have turned their focus onto products for 4th edition D&D - I feel pretty safe in downloading and enjoying the works for my own benefit (which means I look at 'em on my computer every so often). Eighteen gigs of data, really? That's a lot, do you need all that? Not really, as I already had a lot of material for 3e and 3.5 gathered up, but I felt it was better to gather up all I could and then, as they would have said in certain editions of the Bible, "separate the wheat from the chafe". Which I did this past weekend whenever I had some spare time with one of the many computing devices around the house, sorting through all the various offerings and dividing them into 3e and 3.5 editions by publisher, and further dividing them up into adventures, specific game worlds and brand lines, and so on.

The adventures are easily the most useful thing out of the bunch, as it seems like every game company out there has tried to make the Ultimate Guide to Whatever, and a zillion new classes, races, feats, skills, monsters, items, and whatnot, that there's just too much to incorporate into one gameworld or be used by one gaming group. Ah, I love the feeling of having so much source material I could never possibly run out of it. But the adventures, now, the adventures have some use, and I've even been spending the time to put what levels the adventure pertains to in the filename for ease of reference - need a quick adventuring fix but don't have the next part of your campaign ready to go? Grab an adventure with a cool sounding name and the right level spread for your party, and let them have a little off-campaign fun. I wish when I was a little geeklet back in the late '80's we had access to this wealth of knowledge, as the sheer amount of reference material I have available now compared to what we worked with back in the day is just staggering.

In a quick aside, this looks cool, and one of the most entertaining uses I've seen of touchscreen technology.

Another recent joy is the discovery that Wizards of the Coast (the guys who bought D&D off of TSR back in the mid-to-late 90's) love this stuff as much as we geeks do and have kept all of the archives for all of the 3rd edition related stuff up on their website. The WotC website was a frequent hangout of mine when 3e first came out and my gaming group switched over to it from 2nd edition, as the Wizards crew was bound and determined to inundate us with free extras - short adventures, NPCs, spells, errata, campaing hooks - and I plan on mining it for all it's worth. That, and recycling the 3-inch binder's worth of pages I printed out way back in the day. *sigh* And yes, it was very much a worry that WotC would have gotten rid of all that material when they released the new 4th edition, as 4th seemed more of a pander to the World of Warcraft crowd than it was a needed update to the 3rd edition rules. At least to me it did, as many reviewers out there felt that WotC had gone too far with the Open Gaming License and d20 Standard, and way too much material had been created, requiring a hard reining in. After growing up with 1st edition, Basic and Advanced, 2nd edition, and then 3rd AND 3.5 revised editions of D&D, I was (still am, really) deep in the throes of "update fatigue" and the repeated warnings from the reviewers that "it's dumbed down for the WoW generation" to heart and shunned even looking at 4th edition. Maybe I was wrong and it deserves the chance I never really gave it, but definitely not until such time as I'm actually playing tabletop RPGs once more. Until that day comes, I'm going to be enjoying me some 3rd edition goodness.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

One of the local morons, a college or high school bippy by the looks of her, cut me off a week or so back on my daily commute back to home. I was on the phone with Denise at the time - better than the texting said bippy was engaged in - so I had Denise write down the license plate number. In a fit of peevishness, I posted a Missed Connection on the local Craig's List. Now, the funny part - out of curiosity, I checked the throwaway email address I created to make the post, and I had not one, but five replies to the ad. Can you believe it? Five replies!

Okay, I admit, all of the replies were bots trolling to send me to pay-for-pr0n sites, but it was still pretty damn funny. I wonder if the idiot in question ever read my work? Actually, I wonder if I'll ever see that post in Best of CL.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Spent most of last night doing our taxes and you would think with all my other problems with the American financial system that taxes would be stressful and chock full of the gnashing of teeth, the pulling of hair, and the rending of clothes. How wrong you all are, as years ago I found the True Path to Taxation Nirvana - the US Government likes to have your money so the easiest way to make them happy is to give in and give it to them. No, don't send them all of each and every one of your paychecks, but turn your witholding and exemptions down to zero for both state and federal. What does that do, exactly? It means the government generally owes you big bucks when tax season rolls around, and nothing kills stress faster than seeing that the government is going to send you a couple thousand dollars in return. Oh yeah, you could experiment and find out the best balance between exemptions and withholdings so that you don't have a refund or owe the government anything, and you'll have all of that refund money earlier in the year and be able to earn interest off of it instead of letting the government do it, but let's face it - as a country, we are horrible at saving money. And if we have money in our accounts, we Americans, as it is apparently our "Gawd-given right", we will spend it. Okay, let's be honest - we'll not only spend that money, we'll overspend it.

So just face up to it that the best way to save money is to not have access to it, and when we do have access to it, it's on a regular but infrequent schedule and it comes in one big lump. Hopefully, since it only happens once a year, you can marshall your willpower and do something positive with that big refund - invest in a Roth IRA, put it into a diversified investment portfolio, buy some long-term stocks for your kids' future education needs, something! - but even if you splurge and go buy a new TV with it, at least you're buying it outright with actual money instead of purchasing it on credit you can't afford. Don't do the last, really, start saving for your retirement and your kids' education, because living in America and going to college is just getting more and more expensive. Diversify your stock portfolios so that market crashes don't affect you as harshly as the latest dip did to a lot of people.

We've got a big refund coming this year - Denise didn't work, Sam is our dependent, and I'm not a student that isn't earning all that much working for the government - as well as a bunch of money Grandpa left to me in CD's that all mature in the next 6 months. I have an old Roth IRA that has been ignored the past couple of years, and that needs to get moved to one place along with all of the money from the CDs and the tax refund for ease of tracking. I seem to remember a life insurance policy that my parents had started all these years ago on me, and through some financial wizardry it was earning money as well. I'll have to see if that can't be cashed out as well and added into the mix. The plan as of right now is get Denise her own Roth IRA, and then some mutual funds for both of us to start saving for rainy days to come. And come they will. Before then, however, we're going to make an Edward Jones agent very happy.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

If you haven't been licking the moss off the underside of rocks this past week, then you know that Apple has released their latest fan-favorite, the iPad. No, I'm not going to link to it, there's more than enough linkage aimed at the info for it at this point that I'm surprised the cable leading to those servers haven't burst into flames. So having only read a few of the thousands of articles that have sprung into existence since its actual introduction to the world (and more than 50 articles speculating over it the past couple of months), and all I have to say about it is "that's nice", in a very bored and uninterested tone of voice. Much like everything else in the Apple lineup, it's nothing that I desperately need or fulfill with another item I already own (at a far lower price than one of these, I might add) and since I don't need anything else depleting our bank accounts, this one is going to get ignored by me for as long as possible.

That being said, I fully predict that they will sell out the first two production runs the minute they hit the shelves and be the next big thing to buy so people will think they are cool and popular. And much like everything else Apple is producing, the iPad will be worthy of all the Mac-fanatics praise... right around the 3rd generation of the product. The competition will be thick on the ground, offering everything the iPad has and more (or less), but lacking those two special attributes that make an Apple product shine in the eyes of every reviewer - 1) the Apple name, and 2) the Apple pricepoint. I've seen it I don't know how many times over the past couple of months reading reviews on Wired's website and other places on the 'net - someone comes out with a new smartphone that challenges the iPhone and the reviewer spends all but the last paragraph of the article praising the new device and listing how it's better than an iPhone, but the last paragraph inevitably sounds like this "...but it's not an iPhone. It's a very good try but in this reviewer's opinion, I'm not giving up my beloved Apple device." Case in point - Wired's review of the Motorola Droid. All of the paragraphs in the review, minus the last one, sing to the heavens the praises of the Droid. For example, the second to the last paragraph reads as such:

Overall, Droid makes the iPhone 3G look a little tired, the BlackBerry boring, and the Palm Pre an after-thought. The Droid doesn't have a single "wow" feature. Rather, it's the combination of solid phone, smart user interface, and Verizon's kick-ass network that makes the Droid a cut above most smartphones.

Sounds like the Droid poops ice cream and burps rainbows, doesn't it? But then here comes the very next, and last, paragraph:

If it were 2 ounces lighter and had a better keyboard (or no keyboard at all), it would be hands-down the best smartphone on the market today. As it is, it's a solid contender in a market that has too long been dominated by just one top-quality handset.

What happened to all the sunshine and butterflies from the rest of the review? Two ounces and a crappy optional physical keyboard are the only thing you can find wrong with a first-generation phone and it still doesn't beat out Apple's 3rd generation offering for top spot, which another Wired reviewer found more than 5 paragraphs of problems with the iPhone 3GS and AT&T, but gave out the exact same rating as the Droid, 8 out of 10. (yes, I included the carrier in there on both reviews, as we all know all the high-end, name-brand cellphones these days are reigned tightly to one and only one carrier for their formative years) The Cult of Jobs is strong in the centers of geeky techdom, believe you me.

Okay, look, I know I'm being a little harsh here, and I tend to keep a lid on my anti-Mac sentiments (anti-Mac-fanatic, truth be told - kinda like the bumper sticker says about Christians: I'm okay with God, it's his fan club I can't stand), but the inescapable furor surrounding the announcement of what will turn out to be, for the majority of people who actually pony up the money for it, a toy has been too much to stand. It's like Apple announced that if you have cancer, buying their tablet computer will cure it for you. Admittedly, it looks sexy, but what use do most of us have for it? I don't even have a book reader, a PDA or organizer, or even a GPS and while a majority of America have a lot of those and more, the majority definitely does not have a use for one of these. But where would America be at if we didn't have expensive, needless toys to show off our excess of wealth and coolness?

There, I've vented my spleen... no, wait, got one more nastiness to toss out there and I'm done:

When I saw the headline "Analysis: Apple Bunts on iPad Gaming" on Wired's Game|Life journal, my first thought was "What? No Photoshop for the iPad?"

SUBJECT CHANGE.

And that's it for the week. Hopefully it's a quiet weekend, but I'm not holding my breath. Maybe I'll actually get something done around the house. And monkeys shall spring forth from my sphincter, on wings of silvery down. Enjoy!

|/|/hiskey ]{ilo ]-[otel

um... LOOK! AN ELEPHANT!!

2010-01-22T19:38:00.000-06:00

What a weekend. As a government employee and a college student (but oddly, not the baby under the age of 6 - her daycare was open and so she went), we all had a three-day weekend due to MLK day, and this time we actually got things done around the house. Mostly we got things cleaned up, both upstairs and down, as my mom decided it was a good time to come and visit the grandbaby (oh, and me and Denise as well), what with a 3-day weekend for her, too, and a medical missionary trip to Jamaica (no, Jamaica, not Haiti... really, I checked) coming up at the beginning of February. It was a good visit, as the Sam-monster is definitely feeling better and back to her normal, loud, excitable self and entertained Grandma Lee to no end.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Out of the movie critquing aggregate websites, my favorit is easily Rotten Tomatoes. I've never really checked out MetaCritic, though I've obviously heard of it before, but RT was my first movie aggregator. Do I recommend any other aggregators? Yep, GameRankings, for all of your video game review needs. Anyway, for movie reviews I go straight for RT, usually straight to search, as I avoid most of their articles as there is just too much info. I do really like their Total Recall column (as does Amazon, as I have added untold tens of movies to my wish list based on TR articles), both as it reminds of movies I've forgotten about, as well as let me know about movies I knew nothing about. I also like their annual movie awards, the Golden Tomatoes, which they just posted up the 11th Annual winners. Let's take a look and see who won this. In Wide Release, I'm not too disappointed in the selections as first and second place were taken by movies I'd seen, enjoyed, and even written about this year (Pixar's Up and JJ Abrams's reinvisioned Star Trek, respectively), and the rest of the list is full of movies I've seen and liked (District 9 in 5th and Coraline in 7th) or movies I'd like to see because they look good (Fantastic Mr Fox in 3rd, Inglourious Basterds in 6th, Zombieland in 8th, and Up in the Air in 10th), but there are a couple that I have heard nothing about. Drag Me to Hell? I know who Sam Raimi is, and while I admit I don't follow the new movies as closely as some people I know, I do watch national cable TV fairly regularly, and while I haven't heard one thing about this movie, it made 4th on the list. Very odd. The other odd one is a anime movie, Ponyo, which is not terribly surprising, since I do follow what comes out of Japan, just not as rigorously as I once did.

That was just Wide Release winners, I'm always interested in seeing what's in the SciFi/Fantasy competition. This year, unlike in years past, I was pretty much on top of things, watching 3 out of 5 movies - the aforementioned Star Trek reboot and District 9, as well as the movie I gushed on and on about, Avatar. I missed Sam Rockwell's performance in Moon (hey, I was lucky to catch 2 movies in the theater this year, cut me some slack), and I'm avoiding the latest Harry Potter movie (Halfblood Prince, for those of you at home) until I can catch up on the books (and buy all the movies in one big set, just like I like 'em). But no real surprises in SF/F this year, as they have in years past, and a really decent turnout, unlike the anemic offerings they've scraped together in years past. There's many more SF/F movies out there this year that didn't make the list, as well as films in other genres I really want to see. Have to get rid of my cable and back onto Netflix sooner. That or start visiting my local Blockbuster more often. But that goes back to time and money crunches. *sigh* Too many fun things to do, not enough time or money to do them all.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Yesterday, as I'm typing this, was Dad's birthday. I still can't find it in myself to call him directly and tell him how monumentally disappointed I am in his recent announcement, much less wish him a happy birthday. It strikes too close to home on the age difference question with him and his fiance'. It's terribly complicated, because while I still love Dad (he's my Dad, and put up with a lot of things from me and my sister over the past 3 decades), I'm so very angry with him for taking this utterly, stupid course of action. How angry? I was up for half the night last night because I couldn't sleep, it was bothering me that much. It was a good thing, as I got some quiet time to kill a bunch of monsters in my latest gaming semi-addiction (hey, it's free and I still play UT2k4 more), but did not make me a happy camper going off to work this morning.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Speaking of all things D&D-related, I've stumbled across not one, but two older D&D arcade games that I had never heard of before, even though the first came out near the heyday of my time playing arcade games. Not only that, but I've also run across a whole slew of D&D games, quite a few of them playable on various emulators or are outright adandonware, both of which take the $$$ out of the "too many fun things, too little time and money" equation. Not only that, I've also managed to scrape up even more digital copies of the latest edition of D&D accessories and books.

What's up with all of the interest in D&D lately? I'm not sure why now, other than I've seen a few things online lately that reminded me of some of the better parts of my childhood. And good times they were, with no summoning of demons or anybody killing themselves because their character died, no matter what the retarded religious nutbags say we were doing. (and for those of you keeping score at home, I never use "retarded" for people with mental disabilities - I reserve that term for people who can't claim a mental disability, but still can't think their way out of a wet paper bag) What could be more fun than a bunch of geeks sitting around a table, working out a collaborative fantasy, and enjoying themselves?

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Short post this week, so far, and I hope to have this finished by Friday and up on the 'net no later then Saturday. Speaking of "then", I'm pretty decent on the english language, being able to correctly identify when to use "there", "their", and "they're", as well as other semi-obscure rules that escape most people on the 'net, but one of the few things that has come to my attention is my lack of knowledge about when to use "than" or "then". So I did what every other 'net savvy individual would do, and I Googled it. You only use "than" if you are comparing things (I am taller than you. You are cuter than her. She is a bigger slut than Britney Spears, and can insert entire full-grown Indian elephants into various orifices without touching the sides.), and for everything else, you use "then". That has been your english grammar lesson for the day, enjoy!

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Speaking of older NES and SNES games, how about one of these for only $50? One of my favoritest games of all time is Secret of Mana (which I have played in the past decade as a ROM), and with all of the other fond memories I have of the games for both the SNES and NES, I am sorely tempted to pick one up. Of course I won't, as I already have a metric ton of SNES and NES ROMs (and arcade and Sega Genesis games as well, rounding out the popular gaming systems I played on during my formative years) (and yes, oddly enough, I pretty much skipped right from the SNES and Genesis straight to playing games on the PC... oh, there are a few games I fondly remember from the PlayStation, but I pretty much missed the N64, the GameCube, as well as the 3 editions of the PlayStation and the 2 XBox's) and their emulators, and not enough time to really play those, so it doesn't make a lot of sense to spend money on an admitted frivolous purchase.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

My office at work depends on one particular Army Guard (not even Big Army, but Army Guard only) system on the internet, and all day today it has been utterly and totally down. I have been scrounging for any and all work I can do outside of that one system, and let me tell you - outside of that one system, work is pretty thin on the ground. What kind of busy work have I found? Filling out leave forms for the next 6 months, counting up how many armories we have in the state, and checking soldiers' records for forms from the past 2 decades. *yawn* Boring!

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Yeah, I know a bunch of short subjects in this post, but it's been that kind of year. Between getting the kiddo settled back into the daycare routine and getting Denise into school, it's just been hectic. There are a lot of things going on in the world that I could talk about (health care, the economy, the banking sector of America, Haiti, etc), I just don't really feel like it. Gotta check on the internet connection at home when I got off of work today (Thursday, 21st of January), as it was more than down all of last night. Yes, I paid the bill on time and in full, and the cable service for the TV it is a part of is working just fine. *feh*

Oh, never mind, apparently I wasn't alone in that outage.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

And that's it for the week. We've got quite a few people (anywhere in between 7 and 15) coming in and using our floors as crash space tonight (Friday) and tomorrow night (Saturday) for this weekend's Queen's Prize Tourney here in beautiful Columbia. We've got a huge pot of chili started last night and still cooking today to feed the masses tonight and tomorrow night, and prepping up our big breakfast buffet for Sunday morning. I won't be at the event for much of the weekend - arts and sciences aren't my thing - so I'll be babysitting the Sam-monster for the weekend. Sam and I will go over to site for at least one appearance on Saturday, but other then that, the Squirtimus and I will be chilling around the homestead. I haven't touched her hauberk in a while (almost a month now) and that could definitely stand some attention. As could the other half-a-dozen projects I've currently got going. Lord knows if I'll have any time this weekend to work on any of it, but hope springs eternal. All is not bleak and hopeless, as the massive amounts of Army issued gear that has consumed most of the spare space in the Mancave is starting to get organized and brought down to work. This is a good thing as the next project I've got for that room is to pull out all of my paintball equipment and pare it down, as I've talked about in the recent past.

|/|/hiskey ]{ilo ]-[otel

People who watch soap operas to escape their lives, aren't really paying attention to their lives.

2010-01-16T07:36:00.000-06:00

The title of my last post was not a mistype - I really meant to go see multiple movies last week with Denise, and give a critique of each. If you read last week's post, than you know we went and saw Avatar, but what you do not know is that we were very much planning on seeing the latest Sherlock Holmes movie. We were unable to do so, unfortunately, as Sam became even more sick towards the middle of last week, and we had to pull her out of daycare, which ruined our plans to watch said movie. Unfortunately, with Denise getting into school and not a lot of time for me away from work in the near future, it does not look like we'll be seeing SH in the theaters. *sigh* And it looks really good, too. Guess we'll just have to wait until it hits DVD.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

If you have never worked in a job that involves direct customer service of one flavor or another, let me tell you a little secret about those of us who deal with customers directly: we're all overwhelmed these days. So when you hit up one of us with a bad attitude and lots of yelling and cursing, we are still required to take care of your problem, but with so much other work to take care of, we can easily push your work to the bottom of the stack for a very long time and still accomplish our jobs by taking care of everyone else. We will never run out of of other work to take care of, so go ahead and be an ass over the phone or to my face. Good luck on ever getting what you want taken care of, as we'll be busy taking care of the problems of people who have been far nicer to us than you have.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Last week I let you in on one of my biggest frustrations with this past holiday season, namely that my 61 year old father is engaged to his 22 year old girlfriend. How do I feel about this? Well, let's get some of the history involved out of the way first. My father has lost 3 of his close family - mother, father, and sister - to the ravages of cancer caused most likely by smoking. Part of the reason he and my mother moved to Oklahoma in the early 2000's was that she could be closer to her aging father (who passed away in 2007) and he could be closer to his sister in Texas. Of course, Dad moved out first alone, as Mom was still a year or two away from finishing her RN degree (another Bachelor's degree to hang on her wall next to her first Bachelor's and Master's degrees in secondary education). While Dad was in Oklahoma away from Mom, he apparently began to be infatuated with other women, particularly a young lady in his congregation, one who was supposedly more mature than a girl of her age due to having to take care of a very sick parent. Before we get to the young lady in question, I do have to admit that before Dad had moved from Missouri to Oklahoma, he and Mom had already started growing distant in their relationship, enough so that my sister and I both saw it and talked about it to each other. So yes, it is not entirely my father's fault that he and Mom are divorced, but the way he went about it still sticks in the craw of the family. Add on top of that the fact that Mom's sister had been through a messy divorce (she's still dealing with the aftermath of that one, just ask my cousin who's out on parole from the Texas AND Oklahoma penal systems), and Mom was already edgy about the whole divorce issue, which hasn't helped the situation one iota. How badly? If I didn't know how prudish my mother is, I'd probably call her a man-hating lesbian. She'd never go for it, though, and will more than likely have another relationship with a man.

Back to my father's new fiance. I met this young lady not long after Mom moved out to Oklahoma, on my 2 weeks of leave home from my deployment to Iraq, and even though I was sitting next to my fiance when I met her (and she is over a decade younger than I am and still jailbait at the time), she proceeded to hit on me the entire time we were face to face. How obvious was this? It was so blatant that even I noticed it and Denise wanted to wring her neck. Obviously, she has also earned nothing but contempt for being the barely-legal high school grad that caused my father and mother to divorce. You would think that breaking up the marriage of a minister and his wife of over 30 years would be a warning sign to most women that maybe they need to back off, but apparently destroying my father's calling (of over 35 years) and his marriage (also over 35 years by the time it ended) was even more reason for her to stick around. That's another disturbing fact is that they have been seeing each other for the past 2 and a half years, but Dad wasn't owning up to it until recently. So my sister and I (the last of the family, outside of some very old aunts, that Dad has) were totally kept in the dark about Dad and his girlfriend, which seems like he is very much embarrassed by his relationship.

Then the atom bomb dropped, when Dad brought her up for the Thanksgiving holiday. My sis and I, while not the brightest bulbs in the box, were suspecting that this mysterious girlfriend Dad kept hinting at was indeed the young temptress from before. Not only that, but knowing that women tend to open up and talk to each other like they don't do in mixed company, I managed to slip Dad and Samantha away from Denise and the girl with a walk in the woods out back of our duplex, and like I imagined it would be, she opened up to Denise. Not only does the fiance (the 39-years-younger fiance) find my dad attractive, she still finds me attractive ("all Haworth men are good looking, aren't they?") which worries me that she'll drop Dad the second he is either no longer attractive or something younger and better comes along. Or even continue to go after me (*shudder*). Not only that, but she's about to move out to Tennessee or Kentucky to begin work on her Master's of Divinity, and sometime in the next 10 years, she'd like to start having kids. I'm not even sure where I want to start with that last statement, as both of those hold separate and different terrors for my father's desired relationship. Let's deal with the MDIV part first, and add into the mix that she has declared she would prefer using that degree to become a minister, though she would accept other positions that relate to the ministry. This is problematic for the relation as a whole - you want to be a local figure head for an organization that espouses marriage in the eyes of God ('til death do us part), but were the cause for another minister's own marriage to dissolve, and you want to continue that relationship? On top of that, when you go anywhere to get a ministering job, they not only look at you, they look at your family life as well (trust me, I know this one from past experience), and no church is going to look favorably upon you as a candidate if you're married to the ex-minister who's marriage and career you destroyed, and he's 39 years older than you are. Even though she has proclaimed that she would be fine not being a minister, the feeling I got is that she wants to be a minister, more than any other reason to get an MDIV. This just portends relational friction further down the road when our little miss can't get the thing she wants (to be a minister) because of who she's with (an almost 70 year old ex-minister who left the ministry in disgrace). As for kids, I thought I was a bit old to be having kids at 32, but Dad will be somewhere between 66 and 71 when they start having kids, and that's if he lives that long. The man already has one granddaughter, on top of two kids, and he's willing to go through that again?

The whole deal bothers me. A lot. I didn't really like the young lady when I first met her, and didn't revise my position in a positive direction when I met her the second time this past Thanksgiving. I admit that part of my dislike is that she is the catalyst for my parents' divorce, but I disliked her before that ever occured, so much so that I forgot her name and didn't realize that's who Dad was dating when he would mention her in passing the past couple of years. I dislike that Dad has kept this change in their relationship secret from me and Abby, which to me feels like he was embarrassed or felt guilty about it. This will not end well, for any parties involved. I'm just hoping my father is smart enough not to send my mother an invite to the wedding, and I can keep her out of it. Now my head hurts. *sigh*

SUBJECT CHANGE.

In happier news, we finally got Denise enrolled in college, which begins next week. On the downside, we had to buy books for her, at a whopping $750 total for new and used books for four 3-hour courses. No, colleges in America and the attendant industries aren't there to make money, they're only in it for the students, really. *feh*

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Out of my friends and family, I tend to be pretty high up on the technology food chain. Yet out of everyone, I have one of the least high-speed phones. So why haven't I jumped on the smartphone (or "app phone", as David Pogue of the NY Times calls them) bandwagon along with everyone else? For starters, you all know how much of a cheapskate I am, can any of you honestly see me chucking out $75 to $100 a month for just my phone? Add on top of that how much I like the cell companies due to the way I and many other cell customers have been treated these past couple of decades, and I have even less desire to put that kind of money into their pockets on a monthly basis. Than you have to realize that currently I just don't have that much use for one, though I do have to admit they are coming closer and closer to having all of the features I'd want in an smartphone. But right now, I don't really need to access the internet most places, I don't text, and I don't play games away from my computer enough that I get a lot of use out of my Gameboy Advanced SP. When I finally do get one, I will gleefully use it for the GPS I don't have, an MP3 player/camera/email checker that I carry with me everywhere, an alarm clock/radio at home and at the office, the be-all, end-all address book, and even a portable e-reader (another technology I haven't jumped on, and not likely too, considering how limited they are in focus).

The biggest problem I have with these phones is that every time I see one I like is that each one is its own little universe. I guess I'm just spoiled being a long-time PC user, where almost every piece of hardware and software out there will work on my machine, or I can find something exactly like it from someone else. Not so with any smartphone, as each one has it's own specifications, operating system, benefits, disadvantages, and hardware. Even smartphones that share the same OS can't always use the same set of software, as Google is finding out with its Android OS. Going back to my distaste for cell companies, what I'm mostly afraid of is getting trapped into a profit-making spiral with one of these phones, and then finding out it doesn't do what I want. What do I mean by "profit-making spiral"? Ever wonder why the cell companies make all these exclusive deals with the handset manufacturers? Because it's like going to watch a movie at the theater - once you're through the doors, they can charge you anything they want for anything they're selling. Want to download a song to play from the spiffy MP3 player they included? Right, an exorbitant fee to re-acquire a song you probably already have on another digital player. Add onto that that all of the above change any time you change carrier or phone, and the whole business looks less and less appealing to someone who has been happy on one platform since the mid-'90's (Windows 95, 98, and XP... I'm holding my judgment on 7 until I get a chance to really take it for a test-drive). And let's not talk about the cost of handsets built into contracts, where you get the phone free by paying a little extra each month for 2 years, but that cost never disappears even when you complete the 2-year obligation with them.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Man, I really did not mean to stretch out another post over multiple weeks, but here we are again. I started this on Monday, the 4th of January, 2010, and I'm typing this on Tuesday the 12th of January. Over the last week I've been dealing with a very sick daughter (she's had immunization shots on the 7th of December and the 7th of January, plus attended 2 different daycares the whole time), a stressed out wife (who has been mostly dealing with said sick baby and starting college classes just yesterday), as well as working and doing a drill weekend. I am just tired, beat, and a little sick today. But we have successfully gotten Denise to one day of class, and possibly a second, which I must assume is true as I haven't heard anything from her today. It's going to be a long year.

So what resolutions have I made for the new year? I tend not to write a list of resolutions every year, and avoid the term for whatever reason, but I do generally think about things I'd like to see myself do or see done in my life at the beginning of every new year. Even though I am very much a renaissance soul and have many interests and hobbies, 2010 needs to be the year that I really narrow down the focus to a couple of things (SCA, paintball, PC gaming, book reading), while ridding myself of the excesses, both in my hobbies and pasttimes, and just in all the stuff we have as well (tabletop wargaming, excess paintball and SCA equipment, and all those freaking cables I've been hanging onto for years but haven't used, ever, etc).

In the hobbies themselves, there are some things I'd like to see happen this year. In the SCA, I think it's past time to seriously try and win the First Spear/Fyrd Capatin (whatever they're calling it at the moment) tournament at Lilies. I had a decent shot at it back in 2007 - my armour was good (you know, back before it was all stolen) and had been attending the big (and dangerous) practices at Forgotten Sea, so I was pretty hot stick at the time. And one of the finalists was one of my buds that I fought often at the time, so I had 50% chance of winning that fight outright. So why didn't I win? I threw the fights I had with people I thought would do it better. The douchebag who was sitting on the throne at the time has always rubbed me the wrong way, and I didn't want to serve one minute under him. Which was a wrong decision on my part to make - no matter who is currently sitting on the throne at Lilies, or their successor later in the year, the tenure of the First Spear outlasts both reigns. So this year I'm not throwing any fights. I'm working up my armour so that I'm more mobile and lighter on my feet. I'm practicing as much as I can and fighting the biggest, nastiest fighters I can get my hands on to improve my game. Hopefully, if I do all that, and I make the fight go the way I want, I should be able to make that happen. We'll see, got a lot of things to do, but fortunately a lot of time between now and then to make it happen.

For paintball, I don't have big dreams like in the SCA. Getting our gear "herd" thinned out to the bare necessities will be a big step, and just attending some open play days in the area would be on the other side of awesome. Just flinging paint two or three times in 2010 would be a big improvement over 2009, and if I can get it so that it becomes a regular quarterly event with Denise, the BiL and possibly the sister (paintball ain't her thing, but I could be wrong), and some of my coworkers, that'd be even better. And not only would Denise and I get to exercise some paintball desires, we'd also be getting more excuses to pawn off the Sam-monster on or more of her grandparents, which they would just love.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Ooh, the Wii is now able to stream Netflix movies. If they could include the capability to play Blu-Rays, I'd be all over right now (mostly due to my Zelda fetish). Even without the BR capability, combine a Wii with a new stereo receiver with a built-in Blu-Ray player (like this one), and of course the hi-def, widescreen TV, and I'd pull 3 pieces out of my entertainment rack (DVD, VCR, and old stereo receiver) to be replaced by 2 pieces of new technology (stereo/BR and Wii), and of course changing out the old, standard-def TV for something bigger and sexier.

Am I really worried about changing over to Hi-Def and Blu Ray just in time to change again for the new 3D stuff that's coming out? No, not really, because I don't think 3D is going to work out like all the technology manufacturers think it will, and I'm not alone. Now, Blu Ray is not "all that and a side of hashbrowns", but Hi-Def is, offering widescreen (the best way to watch movies, and like I found out last Sunday, to watch new episodes of The Simpsons on Fox... which was frustrating on my fullscreen-only TV). So why am I going with Blu Ray at all? For some movies (like Avatar), having a BR copy will be worth it, admittedly not many on that list right now, but more in the future will be coming and until then I'll still be able to play DVDs on the system. Gotta love backwards compatibility. And it's not like I haven't gotten use out of the components I've got. The stereo receiver I picked up back in 2003, one TV has been with me since 199-something, and the other I got free off a coworker 3 years ago when he upgraded to Hi-Def. The VCR and CD player both came from when I worked at Radio Shack in 1997, and the DVD player I got off a bud 4 or 5 years back, when he realized he had too many after moving in with the lady he's still with. Definitely got enough usage out of those pieces and am not going to feel any remorse if they get replaced.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

The universe is just too tempting at times. Over on the GeekDad journal, their main contributor and editor, Ken Denmead, is reposting a series he did when he ran across some old D&D modules. Since Wired's site search is so gonky, here's links to posts #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, and the finale, #8. in the series. Yes, that last bunch of links was as much for your benefit as it was my own. Anyway, seeing these adventure modules from what was, for me especially, D&D's glory years and brought back some very fond memories of that time in my life, so much so that I've been lately perusing all the scans of old and new D&D adventure modules that I've gathered from the internet over the years (gotta love Torrents!) and sighing due to the fact that I just don't have the time to get back into that hobby. I'm going to hang onto the physical gaming books I still have (a smattering of 3rd Edition D&D and CP2020 books) as well as hanging onto and keep looking for digital copies of stuff I don't have (1st through 3.5th Edition of D&D, Deadlands, CP2020, Warhammer, Mordheim, and Warhammer Fantasy RPG are all on my list). Why, if I'm not going to play it anytime soon? That's the important phrase in that sentence - anytime soon, which implies nearness in time but leaves open the question of the future, near or far. Some day in the future I may find myself with more time, or unable to pursue my other hobbies, or even find out that Samantha is a geek like her old man and instruct her in the Way of the Tabletop RPG, the Tao of the 20-sider, and the Path to Greater Geeky Enlightenment.

Of course, if Sam ever so much as breathes an interest in pen and paper RPG, I am so whipping out the DnD 3E books, as DnD is definitely the gateway drug in the RPG world. And even though my fondest memories were with the adventures of 1st Edition (called Basic and Advanced D&D), I like the 3rd and 3.5 rules the best out of all of them. Fortunately, even though Wizards of the Coast had learned their lesson from D&D's past when it came to adventure modules - provide some base adventures to get newbies used to RPGs (or old players used to the new rules), then provide theme worlds (Eberron, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, etc) for the players to run rampant in, or just figure on the gaming group coming up with their own world (like almost all of my groups did). I have no intention of creating another world at the moment, contrary to all of the posts to that effect on my old LJ (which I'll get transferred over to this journal one of these days... right after I cure cancer, and capture Osama), so it's great they have a bunch of introductory adventures. Hell, even if I run through all of those, I have a copy of the most ridiculously huge adventure module ever, The World's Largest Dungeon (WLD, just to get around The World's Largest Adventure Title), that is capable of occupying a group of experienced and hardened adventurers for more than a year's worth of regular adventuring.

On a quick off-topic, just to show you how gigantically huge the adventure actually is, check out some of the online journals people have posted just playing it. The podcasts from RPGMP3.com look good, as I'm always on the lookout for new podcast material for the DCDD (Daily Commute Distraction Device... which is the acronym I hope I made up for my podcast MP3 player and transmitter a while back) (yes, sometimes I am a forgetful dumbass, thank you). Not only do they have a 40 part series just on WLD, plus a bunch of other adventure series in D&D and other rules systems. Have to check it out.

Okay, I'm cutting it off there. Been typing on this for one of the National Guard's infamous "12 day weeks" (Monday through Friday of the following week, straight through, no days off). Got a few things going on this weekend, but mostly just cleaning up around the house and working on as many projects as I can get my hands on. That, and taking care of a sick girl and a frazzled wife. *twirls finger* Going to be a fun one, let me tell ya.

|/|/hiskey ]{ilo ]-[otel

obligatory review of the latest movies I've watched

2010-01-03T13:37:00.000-06:00

Ah, it is the week after Christmas, and I have it off. Why? Because I have a disturbingly large amount of leave days built up and I needed to start burning some off or losing it (we call it the "use or lose" limit - 75 days - and I'm at 60 days and earning another 2.5 every month). Many of my co-workers are in the same cramp that I'm in, and I'm not the only one out of the office this week, but since we're between semesters, and students and school administrators are all home for the holiday break, it really is the best time for any of us, much less a few of us, to get out of the office.

What am I planning on doing this week? Taking care of things around the house, like cleaning up the Mancave and getting paintball gear ready to sell, but mostly spending time with Denise. With her starting up school this next semester and my schedule, well, we're just not going to get any "us" time in the foreseeable future, so we're grabbing it while we can. Which brings me to my first...

SUBJECT CHANGE.

...wherein I talk about James Cameron's new movie, Avatar, which the wife and I saw today (Monday, the 28th of December) while the Squirtimus was at daycare. How was it? Well, I could easily point you towards other reviews (162million hits on a simple Google search), but I'm feeling talkative, so let's beat this dead horse some more. Final verdict - go see it. Period. Now for the picking of the nits - while there are a great many things I liked about the movie, there are a few things that I thought were outright wrong or just slightly wrong and could have been fixed. The mineral the corporation is going after is called "unobtainium", but instead of having Giovanni Ribisi's character say it just once in what could have been pawned off as a joke, he says it again later in the film and destroys any chance to make it into a joke and it falls utterly flat as a serious name for the magic mineral. Call it something else (Mineral X or something - be creative!), hell, go all Frank Herbert on them and call it Spice, and then have a character scream "the Spice must FLOW!!", or avoid it all together, and make the one time Ribisi says "unobtainium" into a joking moment and forget to tell the audience what it's actually called. But seriously calling it by a joke name was not the way to go. Minor quibble, I know.

A major nitpick are the intelligent natives of this alien world Pandora, the Na'vi. They've got a mental link with the planet and all of the other native species, plant and animal, which is a standard enough sci-fi trope that I've seen it other places (check out Harry Harrison's Deathworld and Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide novels), as well as largely used by the aboriginal cultures on our own planet. But for all this, the Na'vi just don't fit into their ecology. Why not? Take a look at the land mammals of our own planet - we all have four limbs, usually a tail, all breath/eat/drink/make noise through the same orifice at the front of our face which also includes one pair or light sensing organs, and we all generally have very similar hair/fur. Even the non-mammals - reptiles, avians, and whatnot - follow many of these rules: 4 limbs, tail, eat/breath/drink/make noise from the same orifice on their faces which also include a pair of light-sensing organs. Now let's go to the species from Pandora we're shown in the movie - they have their breathing holes in their chests, have more than one pair of light-sensing organs in their head which also includes the orifice they eat/drink/make noise with, they have tails, some tentacle-thing growing from their heads that allows them to make connections with other creatures and the planet (remember, the planet itself is alive), and they all 3 pairs of limbs with 2 pairs generally grouped up near the front. Besides the fact that they have the weird biological CAT5 cable growing out of a tentacle (and one covered in hair, which exactly NONE of the other creatures on Pandora have - no hair, all leathery skin flaps and bare, lizardy bodies) and a tail, the Na'vi have none of these traits. Why? 'Cause Jimmy Cameron wanted them to look more human - have hair, no 3rd set of limbs, no second pair of eyes, and no breathing holes in the chest area - to make the love-interest of the story more plausible to John Q. Moviewatcher. I understand the reasoning behind it, doesn't mean I have to like it. Would it have been all that jarring to make the Na'vi with 2 pairs of arms and a pair of legs, with 2 pairs of eyes, no hair, and breathing holes on their chests? Possibly, and most of the fanboys wouldn't have had their spank banks filled with all the semi-naked Na'vi breasts not there to ogle, but it would have brought the whole alien ecology seem even more believable than they managed to make it. Which was very believable, I must admit, the world of Pandora has been made very believable by the filmmakers and special effects people.

My last gripe is with the new 3D technology that James Cameron spent so much energy on. Okay, admittedly, he was mostly working up the computer graphics industry to the point where they could make the beautiful, beautiful CG seen in this movie. The 3D is just another addition to the technological buffet that is being offered up, and while have praised 3D as the next coming technology in visual entertainment, but I must disagree - this movie would have been just as fine in traditional 2D. The 3D did not add enough visual stimulation to justify wearing the silly glasses or causing the headache in 10% of the population (Denise had a horrible headache after the movie, though she enjoyed it) and totally unwatchable to anyone who is missing an eye or has total blindness in one eye.

So, was Avatar a horrible movie? By no means, no, it is an almost 3-hour movie that didn't drag at all. Yes, it is a retelling of Dances with Wolves, Fern Gully, and shares similar themes with the story of Pocohontas, but for all that, it is an enjoyable movie to watch. Lots of action (metric tonnes of action, by the container ship load) keeps you glued to the edge of your seat. The visuals are stunning, and the thought and attention to detail put into creating this fictional setting is tremendous. Everything seems to fit into place (except my earlier complaints about the Na'vi) and all of the plants and animals seem related, though I'm pretty sure the little Leonardo da Vinci flying whirl-a-gig lizards have chosen the wrong ecological niche to pursue and aren't long for this ecology. Your escape plan at night is to light up, leap into the air all of 2 feet, and then hover there? Right, dodo-level evolutionary wrong choice, I'd say. I particularly loved the movie because of the time spent on all the flying sequences. Hey, if I had perfect color vision, I would not have rested until the Army put me behind the stick of an Apache, as my dream has long been not to fly fixed-wing aircraft, but rotary wing aircraft (helicopters).

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Recently I've been casting my eyes towards some online video gaming fare, and my BiL Kurt mentioned that he and his buds had taken a break from the popular new Left 4 Dead 2 and have been playing the slightly older, but still popular, Team Fortress 2. While being tempted to pick up L4D and L4D2, I just haven't because I tend to wait quite a while before picking up any game - I'm not the early adopter type, I like to wait for better prices ($50 at release or wait 6 months and get it for half or less), and lately I haven't had the computing power to handle most recent games (since like 2007... I told you I'm cheap). I do have TF2, as my BiL and sis did the awesome thing and bought me The Orange Box compilation for my birthday this year, and so I decided recently to install it on my computer and give it a test drive, as well as try to finally join the new millenium and get voice communications working inside the game.

Results? I am by no means the computer savviest user in the state of Missouri, in fact I am the relative most of my family (and all of my wife's family) calls when their Windows 'chines start talking the gibberish, but I couldn't get the voice option in the game to work and relay my messages to my teammates. Or, if it was working, I couldn't hear myself in game like I could during the mic test, and my teammates were ignoring me, which is worse than malfunctioning equipment - what's the point of playing a game like this where the players HAVE to work together to win if no one is going to work together in an ad hoc game like the ones I've been playing?

As well as giving up on Steam's voice chat (at least for now), I've also uninstalled TF2 as I realized it has the same problem as other games I've given up on in the past - performance boosting achievements. That's right, the longer you play the game, the better you perform in the game. This makes sense in games like World of Warcraft where you don't have to compete directly with other players, but in games like TF2 where there is only multiplayer and player vs player is THE name of the game, things like this sound like a good idea, but drive away many new players. Oh, many players complain about TF2's steep learning curve for newbies, but as a long-time FPS player, I have to say that's horse puckey - the game is a little complicated in figuring out how best to use each character class, but the learning curve isn't that steep. It's difficult for new players to compete because it's an unbalanced game. Case in point, the last confrontation in the game that showed me how unbalanced it was - I'm playing a Scout, and me and a Heavy go up against one opposing Scout. The Heavy is hosing him hard, so I let him have it at pretty close range with 3 or 4 from my shotgun, and he doesn't go down. Oh no, this guy pops me with one shot - ONE SHOT - and I expire even though I have full health. Not only does our experienced opposing Scout take me out, he also takes out my Heavy comrade, and continues on.

It is one thing to be outperformed by someone who is better than you, it is something else entirely to be beaten because your opponent has been merely playing the game longer. This was the exact problem I had about 4 years ago when I gave Urban Dead a whirl when I was stuck in Iraq. For those of you not in the know, UD is a web-based MMO that pits humans vs zombies, wherein the problem is that the zombies are not computer-controlled, they are all controlled by humans. The other big problem (and the same with TF2) is that the world is persistent and doesn't get reset - so if you run into someone from the other team as a newbie, you are guaranteed to automatically lose to them as they are mathematically assured to have been in the world longer and have better skills than you. And because it never gets reset, when you run into THAT GUY (the loser that has played nothing but that one game since it came out), you have as much chance of surviving as a snowball in a thermonuclear explosion. TF2 isn't quite as bad, as there isn't quite that big of a gap in the abilities of the newbie and the person who's fully leveled up, but you can see from my example earlier that it is enough of a performance gap to make most newbies despair and leave the game early.

Oh, admittedly, I could slog through such BS in TF2 (or UD, for that matter), and in a couple of weeks/months I could have all of the spiffy gear of everyone else out there (hey, in a little under 2 hours I've already earned a hat *twirls finger* and 6 out of 362 achievements) but with my VGADD, I'll be uninstalling the game in about 3 weeks anyway, and moving on to something else. Oh yeah, I'm scouring my wish list for video games on Amazon and removing any that are both multiplayer-only and have performance-boosting achievements. I can't think of any off the top of my head, as I tend to aim towards games with great single player experiences. Not only am I too cheap to be an early adopter of the latest and greatest, but I also hate the cesspit that online games are. I would say it's recent, but as I was playing Quake CTF back in the mid to late '90's, I know it's not totally a new phenomenon. With my few forays back into the online gaming scene with UT2k4 of late, it definitely seems worse now than it did before, and there's only so many times I care to hear someone called "teh ghey" just because they drop out of a game before the next round starts. I am not alone in this assessment of online behavior. *huh* Maybe it is a good thing I can't get the voice comms to work, I'd be tempted to tell the little potty mouths what I did to their mothers last night.

I'm just saying.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Speaking of movies with high-powered computer graphics, I believe that Avatar will do for the Blu-Ray format what The Matrix did for the DVD format. Even if you aren't going for a 3D setup (like we are not), an HD setup with a Blu-Ray player will definitely make watching Avatar look as gorgeous as it deserves to be seen. Yeah, so, I'm saving my pennies, not only for a new tower to replace my *counts on fingers* 6-year old desktop and finally get to playing some of the SWEET games I'm missing out on, but also saving up so I can bring the Haworths into the modern age of High Definition television. The computer is going to be bad enough at $600 to $1000 by itself, but going HD is not going to be pretty.

First is the Blu-Ray player, but I'm at least multi-tasking my choice and getting us a BR player AND a gaming system AND something we can stream movies from Netflix onto the gorgeous new HD TV. "Liar!" you cry. "No such thing exists!" It does, and for only $300 brand new - I speak of nothing other than Sony's Playstation 3. I'm definitely more excited in the PS3's usage as a BR player and Netflix streaming agent than I am as a Sony gaming console, but there are some games out there I wouldn't mind getting for myself and the family. The Lego series of games (particularly Star Wars and Indiana Jones) is top of the list, and any sports games I find myself interested in, as that's about the only other game genre that is done better on a console than on a computer. Of course, my interest in sports these days is limited to mixed martial arts, so it does limit the number of sports games considerably.

Next is, obviously, the HD TV, the heart of the system, and the whole reason for the upgrade. Think about it - if I upgraded to Blu-Ray discs and players, but kept watching them on my 10-year old standard-def CRT TVs, what exactly would I be gaining? So an upgrade to hi-def TV, either a LCD or plasma flatscreen with fairly impressive dimensions (40 to 50 inches would be doable, but anything beyond like 55 inches would just be too extravagant... and too weighty on the bank account) is the order of business. Do I have a particular brand or model picked out? No, not really, I'm not even sure what the advantages and disadvantages to all the different formats (just on the Amazon hi-def page you can choose from LCD, Plasma, LED-lit, Projection, and CRT) are and which one I'm going with, so some research will have to be done before the big purchase.

Last on the list are an entertainment center more suited to fit a widescreen TV, and Blu-Ray movies. The sweet part of upgrading to a Blu-Ray player is that almost all BR players are backwards-compatible with DVDs, and so I don't need to immediately replace ALL of my DVDs with Blu-Rays. But some movies are just begging to be bought and viewed in Blu-Ray, most notably Avatar which I gushed about earlier in this post. Pixar's more recent offerings also come immediately to mind, but not many others. It'll mostly be on a case by case basis of special effects for movies as to whether they get purchased in the new format, but as James Cameron's latest opus has opened up the flood gates, I'm pretty sure it won't be long before most everything that comes out will be worthy of the upgrade. I'm not in a big hurry, especially as we have a lot of DVDs already on the shelf.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Before I sign off for the weekend and post this up, I've just got one last thing to talk about - my 61-year old father finally admitted that his 22-year old girlfriend is indeed wearing an engagement ring, and they plan on holding the wedding next summer. I think I'm going to leave it right there, let it percolate through your brain until it (your brain) hurts as badly as mine does before spewing forth all that is wrong about this particular union onto "teh intartubez". For now, try to have a better year in 2010 than you did in 2009. Enjoy.

|/|/hiskey ]{ilo ]-[otel

"I have a dream!" Unfortunately, it involves social rejects and boffer swords...

2009-12-27T14:32:00.002-06:00

You almost lucked out, loyal readers, and got a post this past weekend, almost immediately after my last post. But I got distracted, as you'll read about later on, and so you've had to wait for only a week to read this. I hope, especially considering how many problems and interruptions over the past couple of months in posting on a weekly basis.

What started me almost jumping on the computer and typing up a quick post was a dream I had this past Friday night/Saturday morning (18th and 19th of December, respectively) that was just too enjoyable not to share - I dreamt that I destroyed the fantasy world of a boffer LARP group, in game. For whatever reason, a bunch of fellow SCA members from Calontir decided to take a break from the SCA and join a LARP group (still not sure which one, but probably Darkon, as I'd watched their documentary recently), and I tagged along, switching over to boffer fighting. After a short time, all the SCAdians left the LARP and went back to the SCA, but I stayed behind to enact vendetta on the entire organization. Why? Couldn't tell you why, as I don't remember any one slight from the dream that drove me to this act, and all I can think of is that, honestly, I look down upon boffer LARPers and deride them to no end. Whatever they had done to me, I decided that my only course of action was to destroy their gaming world and kill all of their characters (characters they had spent time, money, and effort on) in one fell swoop. Of course, this was in the dream, as if this were actually happening in real life (going over to the boffer LARP with other SCA folk), I would have just left when they did as while I look down upon the foam-fighters, I don't hate them enough to ruin their game for them.

In the dream, I went to the people running the game and sold them on the idea that I was a mad cultist, bent on destroying the world, and they allowed that I could do it, with the help of my Dark God (remember, game world terms here), by defeating each society's champion in single combat. Which I then proceeded to do, complete with prayers and praises to my Dark God before, during, and after each fight, all to the sounds of foam hitting foam. I worked quickly through all of the lesser champions, felling them easily with my SCA-trained muscles and reflexes, and eventually led to my final opponent, a huge brute of a LARPer. He too fell before my vorpal foam blade (snicker snack!), and I proceeded into the ritual that would undo the fantasy world from beneath our feet... and I woke up. It was, overall, a very satisfying dream. Why do I dislike LARPers so much? Geek hierarchy - they make us SCAdians look good. And when you proclaim yourself to be a Spartan Hoplite, but dress mostly in 14th century high tourney period armour (like the focus of the Darkon documentary does), it shows you have no concept or basic idea of what you're talking about. It also doesn't help that the SCA gets lumped into boffer LARP combat by people who don't know better. I could see it with the light fighters, but not us knuckle-dragging, rattan-swinging heavy fighters.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Windows Vista, why must you make us hate you so? You keep trying to make us like you, with your pretty interface and your upgrade to graphical software technology, but you keep failing on being the most unstable, non-backwards-compatible OS that Microsoft has ever released. Okay, first we tried to get the wife's embroidery machine software to work on her laptop (the only Vista machine we have in the house) and it works with the software, but won't load the USB driver to make the propietary card reader work. It works fine on our XP boxes, which will immediately find and load the driver it needs upon plugging in the card reader, but the Vista machine won't recognize the device. Any help online for the problem? Hell no.

Then the icing on the cake - recently got slightly interested in Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron (more on that further down the post) and went to install it on Denise's laptop. It installed fine, and ran, but slowly. So I start downgrading all of the video settings (it is not a gaming laptop, by any stretch of the imagination) and turn off the DirectX 10 setting. HUGE MISTAKE. Apparently DX 10 is not backwards compatible with DX 9.0c whatsoever, and cannot be turned off or downgraded in Vista at all. So I searched online and the only help I can find is to uninstall it, reinstall it, and try again. No joy there, as even after uninstalling both the game and the download manager (think Steam, except no store and it pretty much just eats up system resources while trying - and, on my XP machine for some odd reason, failing - to download content from further down the road in the background) multiple times, rebooting the computer, and doing everything, the damn program keeps giving the same error code about how "DirectX 9.0c driver not found". And this wasn't more than an hour after the embroidery machine USB device debacle, so at that point I was ready to throw the whole thing through the nearest wall. So I turned it off and walked away. I'll give it another try either tonight or later this week, or at least upgrade it to 7 before the end of the year. We'll see what we need to do to get it to work.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Years ago while I was deployed to Iraq, I was having a problem getting my favorite monthly computer gaming magazine, Computer Gaming World, and had to resort to picking up PC Gamer, as that was all they had in the PX (post exchange... think WalMart, with an Army theme). The January 2006 issue featured an article which pitted the PCG editors against the editors of Official XBox Magazine to decide the hot button topic in modern video gaming: which is better in a first-person shooter, gamepads or the keyboard/mouse combo? The battleground was to be Microsoft's popular Halo on a PC, the PCG editors using the combo of keyboard and mouse, and the OXM editors to use the Xbox controller recently released for the PC. Well, to make a long story even longer, how about I just post up the actual article? Sound like a horrible idea? Great, here we go!

CLASH OF THE CONTROLLERS
Our empirical test proves that console gamepads are no match for the mouse.
(borrowed from PC Gamer Magazine, January 2006 issue, for entertainment purposes only)

Game - Halo (PC) v.1.07
Map - Hang'em High
Mode - Team Slayer, first to 50. Spawn with pistol.
Teams - Team PCG: DJ and Norm (blue) vs Team OXM: Ryan and Fran (red).
Final Score - Team PCG: DJ 25, Norm 25 = 50; Team OXM: Ryan 16, Fran 8 = 24.

One of the biggest arguments for PC gaming over consoles has always been the controls. A mouse and keyboard offer vastly superior accuracy and flexibility, essential for first-person shooters and real-time strategy games in which precision accuracy makes all the difference.

Despite the recent and growing trend of shooters like Halo and Doom 3 appearing on consoles, there has never been any doubt in PC gamers' minds that theirs was the superior setup.

So when a well-known gaming site recently held a shooter competition between a mouse-and-keyboard player and a gamepad player, resulting in an upset win for the gamepad, we didn't buy it for a second. Instead, we recruited Ryan McCaffrey and Fran Reyes from our sister publication, Official Xbox Magazine, for our own experiment. Ryan and Fran brought with them their Xbox 360 gamepads, and set up opposite our own DJ Stapleton and Norman Chan.

Screw making it a scientific test: We were so confident that we gave every advantage to the gamepad players by choosing Halo (PC) as the battleground. With Halo being the definitive console shooter, the OXM crew has logged more playtime with it than any other game, so they knew the maps and the weapons inside-out. We even let them choose the map. After a few practice rounds, we were ready to go.

The results surprised even us. In the first few minutes it seemed like the game could have gone either way, but Team PCG soon pulled ahead after DJ learned the hard way that holding still for Fran's rocket launcher is a poor idea no matter what controller she's using. But without the auto-aim assistance found in console shooters, Team OXM's accuracy gap was made clear to the tune of a 2-to-1 kill ratio in favor of Team PCG.

To be fair, there were some minor problems getting the controller to work properly. Ryan and Fran said that there was a very small sweet spot for moving straight forward or straight back (a problem that doesn't show up on newer games), causing some problems navigating Halo's narrow catwalks. "I'm not trying to make excuses," said Ryan. "You guys still would have had us. But I think it would have been a little bit closer."

Our conclusion: We've confirmed what we knew all along. Gamepads may be indispensable for sports, racing, and fighting games, but for an FPS, the mouse and keyboard rule.

What's so telling about this competition is that at this point, December of 2005 (yes, it's the January issue, but it gets written at least a month out), Halo had been in the hot little hands of Xbox players for over 4 years, and only out on PCs for a little over 2. It was wildly popular on the Xbox, quite possibly THE ONE THING that kept the brand alive and competitive in sales against such pros as Sony and Nintendo. However, on the PC, it was only lukewarm. Can you blame us PC gamers? By the time we got it, it was out of date by 2 years and much more exciting games (in visuals, gameplay, and storytelling) were available to us - nothing off the top of my head, but pretty much any FPS that came out in 2002/2003 was better than Halo when it came to PC (okay, did a search - Unreal 2, Deus Ex 2, and Doom 3 all came out in 2003, and all are pretty much better than Halo) - so we never have played it as much as the Xbox crowd. In the above contest, the crew from PCG gave the opposing team every advantage they could (their favorite game, use of auto-targeting, and choice of maps they were familiar with), and still whooped them up one side and down the other. It makes me happy.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

The same issue that contained the above article, also featured on its cover the soon to be released Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach, which reminded me that I'd been ignoring the ads I'd seen everywhere that Turbine had slightly revamped DDO and was releasing it, free of charge (no cost to download the game, no monthly fee to play, some amount of the content only available to those willing to pay for it) under the title of Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited. Around the same time, I also received the latest book from one of my favorite webcomics, The Order of the Stick, which has all kinds of D&D goodness, and reading large collections like that always get me jonesing for more of the same - what better way to feed the addiction with the officially licensed D&D MMORPG? So this past weekend I began downloading the game and even got to play in the beginner's area for a little bit. If you've been reading my posts from the beginning (bless you, you poor demented fool), than you know that I've been semi-interested in picking up a MMORPG for Denise and I to play around with, off and on, and this fits the bill rather well. At least so far. It all depends on if the pay content is just a few of the races, a few classes, and a few special areas, or if about 5 days from now, they draw a line across the gameplay and say, "if you want to go any further, cough it up". Basically, the minute it starts really demanding the money to keep playing, I'm bailing.

I'm such a cheap bastard, I know, I know. But so far, the game hasn't given me too many problems (outside of the problems with Vist-duh), it even runs passably well on my notoriously underpowered netbook (Mighty Mouse, Destroyer of Boredom!) and fantastically well on my main tower (even though I definitely don't have the graphics pegged to the max on that one). It is engaging, enough to have kept my attention for about 6 hours of playing by this point.

And for the new OotS book, I strongly urge you to read them over the website if you get the chance. Rich Burlew, creator, author, and artist of the series, loves to share why he does what he does with the plot and it is a master level class in creating good plots and believable characters. Reading the webcomic online is very entertaining, but the extras available in the books (especially since the entire contents of 2 of the books did not show up online) make them worth the purchase price.

Okay, last linkage for the week and then I'm going to post this beast to "da Intartubez" - 70-minute Review of the Phantom Menace. It is hilarious and takes a more than a little free time to watch, but be warned it is definitely NSFW due to language. The group who does hate that movie more than I do, hard as that is to believe, and they really stick it to Lucas. Nothing in this Sacred Cow is too sacred not to peel off the corpse and throw on "ye olde outdoore grille". Enjoy!

|/|/hiskey ]{ilo ]-[otel

see, I can post on time if I want to...

2009-12-19T11:06:00.002-06:00

What a disappointing weekend. We had planned on attending the annual Kris Kinder winter market and were even looking forward to it. No real big items on our shopping lists (not that there was any depth to our bank accounts to let us to really purchase anything) but we always like hanging around the fair, talking to friends, perusing the wares, and generally just having fun. This year was disappointing because the site they chose was way too small, had too many people in attendance, and cost too much. Plus, because it was so crowded, poor Samantha was just overwhelmed and in quite a state the whole time we were there. And the shopping was just sub-par. Out of the 15 to 20 merchants that were there, I saw exactly one thing that I would be remotely interested in buying. I had been drooling over some basket hilts shaped after the hilt on the Renaissance-era Schiavona, as it is one of the few basket-hilted swords in period. Most people (including myself) use basket hilts made from heavy gauge wire (like these), and they are very functional but not terribly period looking. Of course, they're easy to make and fairly inexpensive, so they've been around forever, but nowadays people are less worried about just getting onto the field and more concerned with looking authentic, and so a couple of armouries have come out recently with Schiavona-like basket hilts - Windrose and Darkwood Armouries, specifically. I had resisted picking either of these up to this point due to price ($150 for stainless or $100 for mild steel from both) and the fact my baskets still work really well. So this weekend I ran into one of the local armouries that is now offering stainless steel, laser-cut Schiavona-style baskets for $90. I'm still unsure of if I want to pick a matched-pair up, as they are quite large, and I've been looking at getting some smaller baskets to fit my small-ish hands. We'll see, it'll be a while before I save up enough pennies for either option.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

What is it with the ghetto-licious names lately? I have two new troops in the MO Guard, fresh out of AIT, and their first names are Dantoine and Demon. Great, something you can't pronounce (or spell if you only hear it) and a name that when you read it makes you want to call for an exorcism. This is as bad as the kid who was born next door to Samantha, Katana Rayn. Can you say "trailer trash", boys and girls? Knew you could.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

As I type this, James Cameron's new movie, Avatar (no, no linky... you either know about it, or need to pay attention to my posts more closely) is only a day away from wide release. Even with my misgivings about the plot, the more I see of the movies in the trailers, the more excited I am about getting to see this movie... someday. Of particular interest is the Marine commander's stirring speech, of which the opening lines have just appeared in trailers, and strike a chord with everyone in the military - "My job is to keep you alive. I will not succeed, not with all of you." It's a very real military sentiment - any engagement with the enemy has great potential for loss of life on both sides. And it doesn't matter how good you are, how well you've planned, how much you've trained, luck or fate or destiny is going to step in and snuff out the life of one of your troops.

So I'm giddy like a school girl for this movie, but no real chance to see it in a format I keep telling myself I need to see some movies in (IMAX), much less at a normal theater. *sigh* The joys of parenting.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Have you asked yourself lately how it feels to be living on a planet with a great, bloody bullseye painted on it? What, you didn't realize that the Earth has been whacked repeatedly by huge freaking chunks of semi-frozen minerals in the past (and most likely caused the extinction of the dinosaurs) and will most likely see such treatment in the future? Or that the scientists behind the global warming "conspiracy" might actually be right and we won't be able to occupy much of what we do now on the planet's surface in the near future? No? Okay, time to educate yourselves, get thee to thy nearest bookstore and secure a copy of The Science of Discworld and Michael Flynn's Firestar series of sci-fi novels.

Read all of that have you? Really? Wow, you're fast. Now you realize that we (and not just "we Americans", but "we, the Entire Human Race") are, as the old adage goes, "holding all of our eggs in one basket", and if we don't do something, either to hold off or reverse global warming, stave off asteroid impacts, or spread the human genome out to other planets, we are eventually going to go the way of the dodo. What can we do about it? For one thing, whether or not AGW is being blown out of proportion, what would it really hurt to invest a lot of our infrastructure in getting away from traditional, CO2-spewing energy technologies and moving towards renewable, clean resources, like wind and solar? I mean, besides the fact that not burning up the remains of dinosaurs (that never existed, according to the Bible) angers God, what's wrong with doing something to get us off the product Allah has supplied his Islamic infidels so abundantly with?

Okay, okay, enough religious bashing for a moment, and let's get serious here. There is plenty of evidence that we are eventually going to run out of fossil fuels. There's a lot of evidence that the burning of fossil fuels is raising the Earth's temperature and could cause a whole host of problems. Admittedly, these scientists could be wrong, but they have a better explanation and evidence than some opposing theories I've heard (crude oil just squeezes back into existence from the deep reaches of the Earth, didn't you know that?).

Then we have the increase in NEOs in recent years. Okay, that's an inaccurate statement - there has not been an upswing of NEOs, there has been an increase of noticed, tracked, and logged NEOs over the past decade as funding for projects like LINEAR have increased. So it's not that there are suddenly more cosmic curve-balls showing up in our spatial neighborhood; they've always been there and it's taken us this long to finally notice them. What are our options? Right now, not a whole hell of a lot, as about the only plan any government on Earth has (if they have one at all) is try to push it off course or break it up with a nuclear explosion (yes, just like Armageddon and Deep Impact - and of those two movies, DI is far more realistic), which means we've thought about it as much as we've made plans for the coming zombpocalypse. And as fun as it is to brainstorm about what we would do in a zombpocalypse, the asteroid impact is a certainty (not a matter of if we're going to get hit; it's a matter of when) while the other has merely produced a bevy of cheesy movies and internet memes.

In reality, what we need to be doing is increasing our (American "our" in this instance) funding for NASA, get the replacement for the shuttle finalized and in production, expand the International Space Station, and continue to send probes to other planets and out of our solar system. That's what we need to be doing with the technology and knowledge we currently have, but on the pie-in-the-sky dreams side of the house, we need to do nothing less than revitalize America's drive to be the world leader once again in technology, build the first space elevator, as well as establish the first permanent human colony off of this planet. What does any of that have to do with avoiding or diverting an incoming asteroid? If we increase our presence in space, that means we're employing more people and that increased number of people are thinking about space, physics, and how to solve problems like asteroid impacts. You never know where genius will come from, so we have to increase the base population that genius might come from to give ourselves a better chance. The space elevator is a great piece of technology that makes getting off of Earth's surface so much easier, so if any asteroids do come our way, we can mobilize our responses that much easier. And any self-sustaining off-world colony will mean that if some tragedy does happen at home, humanity has at least one chance to survive.

Some of the options we have for diverting asteroids are very exciting - just think, if we can change an asteroid's trajectory so it doesn't impact us, why couldn't we move it so that instead of impacting us, it becomes another satellite of Earth, much like a small moon? If we expanded our collecting parameters so that we were nabbing all impactors AND anything classified as a NEO and wandered close enough, we could have quite the collection of heavenly bodies in a relatively short amount of time. The things we could do with these asteroids is limited only by our needs, technology, and imagination. How about a support structure for intra-solar colony ship? How about we mine them for useful minerals? Turn them into orbiting factories, launch platforms for our extra-terrestrial craft and activities, or a shield to block other incoming asteroids. Just a few things I can come up with on short notice.

Looks like the Japanese are thinking along those lines, so I'm not the only one. Come on folks, let's go back to space! You know, we did all that stuff in the '60's and '70's to "beat those dirty Communists"? Right, let's go back to that again, but without the paranoia and fear.

Okay, that's it for this week. Short week this week, half a day off for our office holiday party. Mom just got out (Friday, 18 December) of surgery for an umbilical hernia, and everything is reported as having gone well. Short week next week, as we have a day off for the annual winter festival (yes, Christmas), and then I'm off from then until the 4th of January. Got a lot planned for the break, and most of it involves sleeping. See ya!

|/|/hiskey ]{ilo ]-[otel

sorry, meant to post this earlier this week, now it's doubly late

2009-12-17T20:05:00.001-06:00

If you haven't figured it out before now, drill weekends used to be an awful experience due to being overworked and under-supported at my last unit. Now drill weekends are awful experiences because it's a chore to just make it through all of the boredom and/or stay awake.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

I've been longing after a motorcycle for a while now, mostly due to their high fuel economy as compared to cars, and also because I've always kind of wanted a bike. Seeing upcoming EVs, like the Chevy Volt, make me want something far more fuel efficient than my current fleet of vehicles for my daily commute, but even with the Volt over a year away from production, there is no way I'm clunking down $30,000+ on one vehicle. I still have all of my hair (at least, all the Army will let me have) and my wife still has sex with me even though we have a kid, so I honestly don't need an ego boosting expensive car. I admit that I wouldn't mind having a 1978 Datsun 280Z or a 1968 Chevrolet Camaro SS/RS in the garage, but until both the wife and I are earning 6-figures a year and the kids' college is taken care of, I'll hold off on purchases of that sort.

What's keeping me from rushing out and buying a motorcycle (like a very nice Kawasaki Ninja 500 for $1200 under KBB price I just ran across on CL - it gets a whopping 51mpg on the highway, and is sexy as all hell) is a couple of things. In the financial sector, we're just beginning to pay off Denise's new fuel-efficient college driver (an '05 Kia Spectra) and incorporating that into our monthly budget; Samantha is just starting off daycare and that will be $200 a week (minus whatever NACCRRA decides to subsidize us for); and Denise is getting everything together to get back into college, which we're getting some help on that from the MyCAA program, but even if all of her tuition and fees are covered, it's still going to mean more money coming out of the budget for books and supplies. In considering just fitting another vehicle into our parking situation, there's a ton of stuff in the garage I have to move around and/or get rid of before there's room for one cycle, much less two (if I get a moto, we need to get one for Denise to ride so we can take rides together on weekends we've pawned the Sam-monster off on one grandparent or another), plus the extra equipment you just know I'll be picking up to work on the beasts. The last area to consider is that while I'm sure I have the ability to drive a motorcycle, I have never done so and am not licensed for one, so I can't even take a prospective ride out for a test drive. Fortunately, much like the NACCRRA and MyCAA programs I mentioned, the military will pay for the local motorcycle safety course, which will net me both experience on a cycle AND the motorcycle addendum to my driver's license.

A lot of things to consider and take care of before I get a bike, and that doesn't really deal with the question of how much to spend on a bike ($2 to $3,000 for a used, or a little over $5,000 for a new Ninja 500, which is the model that currently has my eye) or even all the extra gear (helmet obviously, but also required are a good set of jacket, pants, and gloves - ATGATT - All The Gear, All The Time), and possibly a two-bike trailer. Why a trailer? Your bike is going to crap out on you somewhere on the road, and a trailer is the easiest way to get it back, though now that I think about it, my AAA roadside assistance should cover bikes as well as cars. And yes, I understand how much more dangerous it is to ride a motorcycle compared to a car. I am worried about it, but not to the point that it's going to keep me from doing it. My insurance, both medical and life, are well earned and paid up, and I already have a job that threatens my life on a regular basis (even not deployed, we do fire live ammo annually, as well as a lot of blanks during other training, plus unarmed combatives and phyiscal fitness training), so while I'm worried, I'm still planning on getting a motorcycle, hopefully within the next year.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Speaking of getting rid of things out of my garage, it is far past time that I admit to myself (and you, my loyal readers) that I don't have enough time to do everything I want in paintball and pare the collection down. I had been working up to a full collection of Tippmann markers, and I already have collected a full set of Toxic Toy Tribals but I was working them over to make them utterly modern paintflingers. I just don't have the time to get out and play, much less time (or the extra cash) to be chasing down old and new Tippmann markers (the Tippmann boys are a prolific bunch of manufacturers, let me tell ya) or getting those 5 Tribal warhorses cleaned, upgraded, tuned, and kitted out with drops, barrels, and hoppers. Plus, after moving all of my equipment, it is quite apparent that the collection needs to be pared down to a manageable size, as my back will quickly tell you. I want to drag it all out for a big photo-shoot first, just so I have proof that my obsessive-compulsiveness does sometimes shine through.

So what would I keep? Both Denise and I have 68 Classic Automags, and I also have a micromag-knockoff project, and we'll keep her Classic and my nauga-micro. We also both have Tippmann Model 98 Customs that will stay in the collection, as the ultimate backups. I also have some Tippmann pumps that I'll probably be keeping at least one or two out of to have an open-class pumper available to us. I also have an autococker project that is going to remain in the stable and get finished (one of these days, like around the 4th of I'm Fooling Myself), and I'm keeping, at least for a little while to get some play time with it, that 2005 Proto Matrix I picked up earlier this year on a whim. To our stable I want to add an electroflinger for both of us, preferably a Dangerous Power G3, Proto Matrix Rail, or Invert Mini, like I've talked about these last couple of months. I also would like to add at least one, if not 2, stock-class pumps to the collection. Beyond that, I don't think we'd have much use or need for any more markers than that list - 3 high-end mechanical semi's, 2 low-end, ultra-reliable mechanical semi's, 2 open-class pumps, 2 high-performance electros, and 1 or 2 stock-class pumps. That list right there is enough to keep 2 or more people (hey, Sam will eventually grow old enough to play with us, and so will our other kid(s) we plan on having at some point in the future) (not to mention I seem to be the guy everyone goes to for loaner equipment), and doesn't even cover the rest of the paintball accoutrement - gear bags, paintball pods, pod packs, loaders and hoppers, tools, and of course goggles. I'll be weeding some of that out of the collection as well, but much of it is just too useful to have multiples of these items in case something goes down at the field. Which is why I have a gear bag big enough to carry a body in and it generally weighs over 50lbs whenever I show up to the field.

Speaking of doing a big photo-shoot on all of that mountain of gear I've got, Denise on a baby-free day decided that my mancave needed some serious attention and organized everything to the point that I can actually see the color of the carpet in there, something I haven't really seen since we moved in back in May. This means I can pull every piece of paintball equipment up from the garage and spread it out over the floor to take the pics. I want a record of what I've got, and if I'm going to sell it, I definitely need pics of it to increase my chances of selling it. As an added bonus, it will all be spread out in my mancave so that I can get the minor repairs done on the equipment, and also clean up everything to get the pieces I'm keeping ready for next year's flinging.

Speaking of flinging paint, I finally got around to checking out the field closest to our home in Columbia, Wacky Warriors in Wentzville. I had to give a briefing this past weekend out in St Peters, and since I was on orders for the whole day but the briefing was only about an hour long in the morning, I was able to eat lunch with Abby and Kurt over in St Charles (nice restaurant, guys, but we seriously needed to give our waiter some crack to get him moving), and stopped by WW on the way back to Columbia. I was only there for about 10 minutes, wandering around the protected areas (didn't have a set of goggles with me, so had to stay off the fields), but what I saw impressed me. Even for an outdoor field on a 40 degree day (an admittedly sunny and beautiful 40 degree day), they had about 30 to 50 people out there playing. And the fields that I could see looked entertaining. I didn't get to see their woods fields or castle, but considering how the rest of it looked, I'm sure it'll be fun once we get around to it. What's most frustrating about not having my gear in a place where we can play right now is that they have an annual New Year's Day Big Game, drawing over 250 people on average, which is coming up in a couple of weeks. It's just taunting me, teasing me with promises of epic firefights in the woods, and I can't go this year because my gear is in horrible disarray. I so have to get to work on my gear.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Is it sad or telling that, while I live over 30 miles away (and not 30 miles by surface streets, 30 miles by country highway so barren there are exactly 2 gas stations in between and only 1 town) I still made it in to work this morning (Wednesday, 9 December) while many people who actually live in the Jefferson City area have called in to say they wouldn't make it because the roads are too bad? Admittedly, if I didn't have a week of leave time coming up, I would have probably called in after seeing how wet and cold everything was, and how windy it was on top of it. I made it though, and only had to honk at other drivers to wake up a couple of times. I am so not going to be one of those motorcyclists who will ride in any kind of weather - it looks like it's going to be the least bit bad, and I'm taking the Corsica or the Envoy.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Having seen JJ Abrams's retconned Star Trek and have let it percolate through my subconcious a bit, I must say that overall JJ did a good job with it. I've never been that big of a Trekkie, so it didn't "shatter my world" that someone was bringing back one of the longest running sci-fi series, but I was mildly interested in seeing how they handled bringing back to life the original characters with new adventures. Of course, as it turns out, they fell on one of the mainstays of the Trek universe - time travel. Which is one of my biggest gripes with the series, as most sci-fi screenwriters understand time travel, or the theory thereof, about as well as an ant knows how to drive a motorcycle. They did get it right that if you travel back in time and make changes than you have diverged the time stream and what you are in is now a separate reality from the one you left, with its own new future. Or so quantum theory tells us should happen if someone were to actually make a time travel device a reality. So they got that part right, and explains why we see the same cast of characters from the original series, but this time doing things differently and having different adventures.

That's about all they got right, however. The time travel itself wasn't consistant throughout the movie, which killed it for more than a few of us - at one point in the movie, flying into a black hole means you travel backwards in time, but at another point in the movie, the black hole is used as a weapon against the villain and also a trap the crew has to avoid or be killed themselves. At least they avoided the other Trek trope that just makes me cringe - the Borg. Those guys are sheer laziness on the part of the writing staff and should have gone away after First Contact. Them showing up in the Enterprise series starring Scott Bakula would have killed it for me, if I'd stuck around that long.

How Kirk takes over and becomes, as destiny wills it apparently, captain of the Enterprise is another part of the movie that I had to throw the BS flag at. Here's a military organization with a well defined chain of command, and the rawest officer candidate (he hasn't passed yet, he's still in training) steps up to take command after the actual Captain leaves the ship and then his replacement is found to be unfit for duty? Bullshit. With as many extras as we see rushing about purposefully in the background on the supposed starship, there have to be more officers in the chain of command between Kirk and the captain's chair. Don't believe me? Okay, let me relate a little something about the military pay system. Officers are paid on the "O" scale (O for Officers, E for Enlisted), and a raw recruit like Kirk would be an O-1 or an O-2, no higher. A Captain in the Navy is an O-6 position. Generally in the Army, an O-1 or O-2 would lead a platoon (30 troops), an O-3 would be in charge of a company (120 troops), an O-5 would command a battalion (2 to 5 companies), and an O-6 would be the head of a brigade (2 to 5 battalions, upwards of 3,000 soldiers), there is no way that an O-1 or O-2 can jump that many levels to take over the responsibility for that many people. Now there are stories from the days when the world's navies were powered by the wind (or slaves) where entire chains of command are wiped out by a lucky shot across the command deck, and the lowliest of cabin boy away on an errand suddenly became the Captain, but they didn't show anything of the sort in the movie. Oh, they'd seen some action, but nothing to even hint at entire swaths of the chain of command perishing or being put out of commission.

The last thing that bothered me was JJ Abrams love of using existing structures to shoot futuristic scenes in. The power plant he uses as the shuttle launch facility/docks where the Enterprise is being built wasn't too bad, but pretty much everything else (Coors's fermentation floor for random, low-level worker area in the ship? Fail!) just didn't jive at all with the other interior shots we saw of the Enterprise. And this isn't that groundbreaking, as they did the exact same thing in one of my favorite MST3K movies ever, Space Mutiny. It is just too jarring to go from that gleaming, high tech bridge to a dimly lit warehouse space. The sets for the engineering section from the '90's Next Generation series look better, and, more importantly, they don't jar the viewer out of the fictional world created for the viewer.

After all of that, you'd think that I just utterly hate the movie, but it turns out that I actually like the movie. It was fun, had some great actors just nailing their parts - Eric Bana and Karl Urban particularly knock their roles out of the park, so much so that in Eric Bana's case, I didn't realize who it was under all that makeup and anger until the credits rolled, and Bana is one of my favorite modern actors; Urban does a screamingly convincing "Bones" McCoy, which makes you forget all his glowering, muscleman roles in such fare as Lord of the Rings and Doom - and some really great set pieces (those that weren't actual, modern-day warehouses, that is) and special effects. Overall a very positive experience that can be built upon. Let's see if JJ keeps up the (mostly) good work and doesn't let it fall to pieces (*cough*Lost*cough*).

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Everyone is talking about how newspapers, magazines, and other traditional print periodicals are in trouble these days from internet competition, and I agree with that, but I'm wondering how long until cable and satellite television networks are facing the same problems. Take a look at Abby and Kurt's choice of entertainment venues - they each have their own Netflix account which provides between upwards of 8 DVDs out at a time (I can't remember exactly how many they have, but they both have better than the base 3 at a time package), which also provides downloadable content to their $100 Roku box (they're now around $80) for no extra charge over their Netflix accounts, and they also watch many TV shows for free over Hulu. For about the same amount, possibly less, than a cable TV subscription my sis and BiL get to watch almost anything they want to watch, when they want to watch it, with very little commercial interruptions (none on the Netflix and Roku stuff, very few on Hulu). This system of keeping abreast of current entertainment but staying off the traditional delivery pipes is becoming more and more popular as technology (and the knowledge/ease to use it) expands and improves.

It's such an attractive system that I'm contemplating changing us over to something similar whenever I get enough time to mess with it. We've got tons of DVDs already in the collection (and possibly hundreds more in the future if the family buys out of my Amazon wishlist) and we're notorious downloaders of TV shows from Torrent sites. Plus, as I'm looking at replacing my main tower in the next year (it's 6 years old, for crying out loud!), I could turn my old tower into a PVR station that streams video from Netflix or just splurge for a Roku box. There are so many options out there - Netflix is not alone, Blockbuster has a similar service that drops the streaming movies option but adds in being able to immediately exchange movies at your local Blockbuster; you can also stream Netflix downloads over a multitude of devices, not just the Roku; likewise, Hulu is not the only online streaming site, as there are many direct competitors and many of the stations (traditional broadcast and cable both) now stream videos of their shows over their own websites - that it's not going to be terribly long before the cable and satellite providers will be feeling the pinch.

They are not, however, automatically doomed to the Trash Bin of Technology That Time Forgot, but it will require them to change some of their business practices to make it more attractive to prospective/current consumers, like myself. The biggest problem I have with my cable TV subscription is that I feel like I'm paying too much and that I'm getting a bunch of crap that I don't want or even watch. I wouldn't mind paying what I pay now if I could rid of all the crap channels we don't watch, and, in their place, add in channels we would like to get instead. Like all the religious and home shopping channels, I'd gladly give those up in favor of Versus and the Science Channel, and if you gave me five minutes to scroll through everything, I could come up with a larger list of wants and don't wants. And this is not something that is waiting on a stroke of genius to upgrade the technology or anything, they just need to change their billing practices to make their choices a la carte and personalize each package to the individual home. The boxes we have to rent from the cable and satellite companies are already capable of knowing what we are and are not allowed to watch, and it'd be a quick upgrade to each company's respective website to make it so that individual users could log in at any time, see what they're receiving and how much they're paying for it, as well as changing all of that on the fly. You don't have to make it so that people could change their cable lineup minute to minute, but even allowing us to change each and every channel on a month to month basis would bring a lot of people back into the fold and keep them there.

The cell phone companies, while nowhere near as close to trouble as the cable companies are, could also take this into account and make a lot of us a lot more happy with our service. I don't want texting or data, can I please drop those portions in favor of the service I do use, voice? Is that possible? And I know why you want me to purchase a phone with an MP3 player, camera, GPS, and other such technological wonders, it's so you can nickel and dime me to death charging me to download music (that I already own) to the phone, or download pictures from my phone to computer, or charge me for constantly updated maps, all of which I could do, for free, if they'd just supply a cable for the phone and then my computer could treat it like the USB device it really should be. But then they wouldn't make money, and now you know why I carry the ancient dinosaur of a phone I do. No, it's not quite that bad, but it is still pretty damn old. Until they come up with some more affordable options, I'm just avoiding the whole "smartphone" craze, 'cuase I don't care if anyone else thinks I'm cool or not.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

I don't care who you are, this is pretty damn funny.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

So I heard an interesting suggestion on one of the multitude of podcasts I listen to (the GeekDads) and I think we're going to give it a try this Christmas. Basically, the idea was that instead of having a huge bag of trash after unwrapping presents from all the wrapping paper, ribbons, and bows, and to make your presents feel more personal all at the same time - make your own holiday themed gift-bags out of cloth. The week after Christmas, you scour everywhere that sells cloth by the yard (WalMart, Hobby Lobby, Joann's Fabrics, etc) and pick up a roll of Christmas/holiday-themed fabric that's on deep, deep discount. Like the overly-garish cloth that features tons of decorated pine trees and snowmen that sold before the holidays at like $5 a yard and is now down to $1 a yard or less. Once you get it home, sit down with the whole family and make gift-wrapping bags. The bags don't have to be that fancy, just something that you can slip a present into, and then either seal up, maybe with some velcro strips if you wanted to be really fancy and make the bag look like actual wrapping paper, or make it very sacklike and close the mouth of it with some festive ribbon. They're reuseable, festive, and like the hundreds of cardboard boxes my mother and aunt passed between them over the past 3 decades, very possible for them to take on a family heirloom quality. In addition, it is an excuse for your entire family to sit around, learn a good, basic, home economics skill (sewing) and share a family moment.

Or it'll be a big, huge pain in the ass and you'll vow to each other to never speak of the "incident" ever again. Life is like that, sadly.

I apologize. I meant to get this post done last Friday (11th of December), but I had to leave work early due to a family emergency, and since I type these posts in text document on my work computer, it sat here at work until today (Monday, 14th of December). Hope your weekend went better than mine, and Happy Holidays!

|/|/hiskey ]{ilo ]-[otel

My life is a Demotivational Poster

2009-12-07T17:36:00.000-06:00

Man, that was a restful week off from work. Okay, truth be told, part of it was restful, and the other part of it was filled with visiting family-members. How bad was it? Stayed the night at Denise's parents setting off everyone's cat allergies (Sam's apparently allergic), spent too little time at my mom's the next day and disappointing her (more time is coming for Christmas, so fret not), and then had a very awkward (with a capital "awwwwkwwwarrrrdd") afternoon spent with my 60 year old father and his early 20s girlfriend. Don't get me started on the last one, you'll probably receive both barrels of rant on that one later in this post, or at least a later date. I did get some things done around the house, though nothing on my list of needed SCA armour/weapon repairs. I did manage to turn 110' of 18ga galvanized steel wire into 1600+ links of 3/16" maille for the Sam-monster. If you remember, I had started this project with 18ga aluminum wire, which turned out to be so soft that I could open and close individual links with my bare hands, and Sam herself could pull entire links out of the middle of the weave, just by playing with it. The aluminum won't go wasted, as I'll keep it for decorational stuff, like necklaces and bracelets, but it's definitely too soft for any kind of serious maille project.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Okay pundits and policy makers - we're all tired of hearing how well or poorly the economic recovery is going. When are we going to start hearing reports of punishments for those responsible for our little recession and regulatory mandates to make sure it never happens this way again?

And yes, I said "this way" as I know there is no way that people will not screw up the global economy again with a different method because they think they're so smart and can make money appear out of thin fucking air. All we can do is hope it takes a long time for the next so-called fiscal genius to come along and throw everything into the trash.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

This is an interesting business model, and may be the future of micro-transaction based jobs. The basic idea is that instead of letting anyone put any kind of video up on their website, Demand Media has created algorithms to find out what people are looking for help on and preemptively creating content to fill that need with instructional videos. The micro-transactions come in on the supply side, as Demand pays a small amount of money for its freelancers to create content (written or audio/visual) and edit it. How much is a small amount? $200 to $300 for filmmakers per video, $2 to $3 for copy editors for every article edited, and a similar low amount for writers per article (sorry, couldn't find a number in the available data). Might have to drop an application in myself, may pick up a writer and copy edit slot for now, and a filmmaker slot in the future when I've picked up that digital camcorder I've got in my Amazon Wishlist. eHow has a lot of articles about making chainmail, but I didn't see any videos on it. Lots of paintball videos, not so many SCA combat videos, or armour creation/repair videos. This could be doable, have to keep it in mind when I get Denise into a spot where she's earning the family's bacon, and I'm back in school. Like I always tell the troops I'm briefing, a little extra cash doesn't hurt.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Man, James Cameron's upcoming Avatar movie looks about 50 different kinds of kick ass - the movie has waited for over a decade while effects technology has improved to the point where Jimmie is satisfied with it. The downside, as you may or may not have heard, is that it is basically a re-imagining of the 1990's hippie tree-hugging crapfest, Fern Gully. Without Robin Williams and the only good line in the film ("Gravity works!"). I still want to see it, though, as Avatar has several things that Fern Gully did not - a tie-in video game that looks pretty cool, it's filmed in stereoscopic digital 3D, and one of my all-time movie faves, big stompy combat robots. And lots and lots of cool fight scenes involving said robots as well as giant dinosaur-looking aliens (even flying ones) and futuristic gun ships. I'm just afraid that, like George Lucas and the prequel Star Wars trilogy, Jimmy has focused too much on the effects and the cool-factor of his sci-fi setting, and not enough on the story and character development. We'll see, as it's not even in theaters yet, and I strongly doubt I'll be able to see it anytime before it hits DVD.

Speaking of movies that I've wanted to see, but missed in theaters, both JJ Abraham's re-envisioned Star Trek and the latest entry into the Terminator series are out on DVD. I know, I know, the former was hailed and latter was panned, but I do like me some cheesy, high-tech sci-fi every once in a while, if for nothing else than to make fun of it. Have a pretty quiet Thursday planned, may have to go rent them tonight (Wednesday, 2nd of December).

SUBJECT CHANGE.

I don't know what I've done to my back, but I spent an hour in the wee hours of this morning trying to find any position at all that would not hurt to merely breathe. I finally succumbed and downed 800mg of ibuprofen (ah, Ranger Candy, how we love you so), which relieved the pain enough for me to pass out curled up on the couch. Getting old sucks.

Yes, it still hurts today, though not as bad as last night - I could not merely sit it hurt so bad - and I'm hoping it goes away soon.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

I find it quite funny that the best frequency I've found to broadcast my twice-daily podcasts is 90.1FM, over which you can barely hear a distant Christian radio station. So before and after I play my podcasts, I get to make fun of the fundies on the airwaves. It's blasphelicious! It's even better when I'm drowning them out with one of Kevin Smith's many anti-religion rants.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

So I finally managed to knock one weapon repair off my SCA To Do list yesterday (Thursday, 3rd of December) and that was just fixing my main sword that had become all broomed out on the front striking edge. When rattan goes to pieces like that on a SCA combat sword, your options are to replace the whole weapon outright, wrap the affected area with tape real tight, or excess the broom like so many cancerous cells. I opted for the last option, excising a massive chunk out of the last 5 inches of my sword's leading edge, retaping everything, adding on a thrusting tip I had floating around the bottom of my bits box, and shaved and flipped the grip around so the old trailing edge that was hardly dinged up became the new leading edge. Sadly, getting the pieces I needed to do this found and put up took longer than the actual rattan surgery and retape. And the setup still isn't finished as I need to replace the bolts I attempted to lock down my vice to the workbench with, as the bolts I got were too long. But I got the repair done, and am now the proud user of a very gonky sword. Thankfully I used a fairly stout stick of rattan originally, so the area that was broomed out didn't fall under the critical 1-1/4" diameter after I had excised the "cancer". I even fought with the stick last night at the local practice and it performed to my expectations - a little heavier towards the tip thanks to extra tape in the excised area and the addition of the thrusting tip - I'm not quite as deft with the thrusting tip as I used to be. I used to be an utter surgeon with a thrusting sword, to the point that I was relying on that portion of my skills more than any other, and when I realized that I removed my thrusties from my main swords and have fought that way for several years now. I'm well versed in the ways of the edge of swords, now just have to get back into the groove for the thrusting part.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Companies that make tabletop role-playing games and wargames need to create an industry standard digital document format, something similar to Adobe's .pdf format, and an e-book reader that displays in color and is the only device capable of displaying said format. Where did that particular thought come from? Was reading an article on the Geekdads about how most of us geeks really like literature and technology, but many of us don't have e-book readers, like Amazon's Kindle or Sony's model PRS-505, because we like physical books so much. I definitely fall into this category, as I could probably turn every book I have sideways and increase the insulation in our duplex by pasting them to the walls. I also am not on the road often enough to really warrant the need for a dedicated e-reader, much less warrant the cost of a newer one, especially when my netbook (which cost only a little bit more than a Kindle, by the way) can open all kinds of documents AND play games and surf the web and all the other things a PC can do. But reading this article about the geeky love for physical books, a thought struck me about a use that would make sense for e-readers - as easily totable repositories for all those hundreds of gaming manuals out there. It's not hundreds of manuals for each game, but I easily could fill two backups up with just Cyberpunk 2020 books. It would be far easier for me to turn my collection into .pdfs (or find them online and download them) and carry them around in an electronic device that also displays them and weighs mere ounces and barely takes up the room of one book. I would so be looking for a cheap, used e-reader right now... if I still played any RPGs or wargames on a regular basis, much less at all. *sigh* Too many interests, not enough me to go around.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

I'm going to stop this here, mostly as I don't want to continue typing on this for yet another week, and I just don't feel like typing on stuff right at the moment. Have a good week!

|/|/hiskey ]{ilo ]-[otel

The Unsettling Profession of Gart Fender, Attorney to Clowns

2009-11-20T21:38:00.002-06:00

As Butt-Head (of Beavis & Butt-Head fame) would say, "uh-huh-huh, you're like telepathetic and stuff". Yes indeed, I accurately predicted that I would not get anything done on my own armour and weapons for this upcoming weekend, but did get a lot of work done on a hauberk for Samantha. *sigh* I am so ADD sometimes, I wonder if I'm not a dog from the movie Up. What do I mean by that? Just one word - SQUIRREL!

But the new chainmail is interesting. I'm winding 18ga aluminum around a 3/16" rod and it comes out with a maille density very akin to the 14ga on a 5/16" loop I use for all my actual armour pieces, just in a scale so miniature it really looks like the shirt of mithril worn by Frodo in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. This hauberk for the kiddo is definitely not going to be heavy enough to be considered suitable for combat use (no, not even boffer/nerf combat) as the aluminum is soft enough that I can open and close the links with my bare hands. My biggest fear, now that I'm actually using it, is that the aluminum is too soft and won't hold up under its own weight. Oh well, if it turns out that a full-length hauberk is too much weight, I'll make her coif out of the remains of the aluminum, and remake the hauberk using 18ga steel wire. The remaining 18ga aluminum, whether left over after I've finished the hauberk or recovered from a failed hauberk, can be used to make pretties (decorational maille).

Why yes, I have ensured that I will continue to make and repair maille for many years to come. *sigh* Though that link for a picture of Frodo's maille in LotR is interesting in that the host site, Modar University, belongs to a friend of mine, and one I hadn't looked at in a while. Have to peruse the rest of the Blackmaille articles, as I am in search of period research material to support the stuff I already make. *shrug* Who knows, might get some more awards in the SCA for this stuff. Oh, and the wife is disappointed. Usually when I work with maille in 14ga armour weight, my hands get all rough and callousy, which she really likes when I'm rubbing her down with them, but this stuff is so light I'm getting none of that.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

In a related area, making chainmail this weekend taught me something that mathematicians have probably known for centuries now - the difference between the square of an integer (call it i) and the square of the next integer in sequence (i + 1) is the sum of the two integers (i + (i + 1)). For example, let's take 10 and 11 as our two integers. Their squares are, respectively, 100 and 121, so the difference is easy to see as 21 (121 - 100 = 21). Or, you add 10 to 11 (10 + 11 = 21) to get the same result. Does this work for every number? Sure does. Let's take a couple of bigger numbers and try it out on them. Oh, let's do 83 and 84. The difference of their squares should only be 167 the short way (83 + 84 = 167), now let's prove it the long way. 83 squared is 6,889 and 84 squared is 7,056, giving us a difference (7,056 - 6,889 = 167) of 167, proving the shortcut is true.

How did I figure it out and what in the world does chainmail have to do with it? When I start a chainmail project, especially the large area-coverage pieces that have a lot of straight pattern to them (like hauberks do), I start with a basic square of chainmail and proceed to expand that square one row at time. In other words, the base is a 5x5 square and so I add a row to each side and make it a 6x6, and then a 7x7, and then a 8x8, and so on until I get to the point that I need it to go in one particular direction more than the other, or add a seam, or do something else to it. At some point during this, I was distracting myself from the mind-numbing monotony that is making maille (Chainmail - Do It Once, and Repeat 5 Million Times) by figuring out how many links I had in the piece (484 as of this typing, or 22 squared - 16 November) and stumbled across the little shortcut. Okay, take our 5x5 square, for an example. The first thing I do with it is add another row or column to it, a total of 5 links as whichever side I'm adding to only has that many links along its length. Then I turn the piece 90 degrees and add another row in the other direction, which is now the original 5 and the extra from the last row I just added, for a total of 6 links to that side. See how that works?

How is this useful? Instead of multiplying out the square of a large number long hand, take a square you know in the area, and work up to it. The square of 22 is the square of 20 (400, pretty easy) plus the difference between the square of 20 and 21 (41 more for that leap) and the difference between the square of 21 and 22 (43 more for that leap, making the square of 22 come out to 484 (400 + 41 + 43 as opposed to 22 x 22 or 22 x 20 + 22 x 2).

SUBJECT CHANGE.

We apparently have moved to the hotbed of Calontir. I have had no less than 3 separate groups of people from separate areas of the Kingdom contact me or the wife looking for crash space for the ever-popular annual Toys for Tots event in the Columbia/Jeff City area this weekend. Sad thing is we've had to turn down one of the groups as we'd hit our theoretical limit on space before they contacted us, mostly because my mancave has zero space in it and we just can't fit anyone into it. I really need to spend some time going through it, cleaning it up and organizing it. Just add it to the list of things I need to get done. *sigh*

SUBJECT CHANGE.

One song that's caught my attention of late is Hammerhead by The Offspring because, until today when I went looking for the lyrics in Wikipedia and read a little bit about the song, I thought it was about soldiers in the Army and dealing with having to "Engage and destroy the enemies of the United States of America in close combat" and take the lives of others. Apparently, according to the Wiki entry, it's about a gunman going into a school and shooting the students. Except for the last stanza, I'm right - it sounds more like what's going through the head of a military servicemember engaged in urban combat. Take a look at the lyrics here (sorry, was going to type them out here, but that started to take too long) and you'll see what I'm getting at - sounds awfully like military action to me, and dealing with the PTSD afterwards, except for the very last stanza. As such, it will remain on the MP3 player I use for jogging and keep me running.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Okay, this shit is funny. And, if you get this in time, go see the Amazon listing, as some of the customers have supplied some hilarious images that just help out with the joke.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Attention Fox News - we get it, you have backed the wrong horse since she showed up on the national political scene and brought McCain's presidential campaign down in flames. Do you still have to subsume your entire news organization to her doings every time she does anything? No matter how long you keep trying to polish that turd (which has been proved as feasible by the Mythbusters), she will be shiny but still smell like a stockyard.

So I'm sitting there in the DFAC (that's dining facility to you civilians) and of course the TV that I can see is tuned to the Missouri Guard's favorite news station, Fox. Sarah Palin has apparently written a book (or sneezed or stubbed her toe in the dark) as I'm used to seeing her or her name on the underwire ticker, but today, for the entire 30 minutes I sat in the DFAC eating lunch, Fox was nothing but The Sarah-cast. Should sue them over "truth in advertising" and have them change their name from Fox to the Palin Network. I swear, you have to support your people, but when they fail to do anything but tear your party apart and cost them a major election, it's time to man up and admit your mistakes (and dump the bitch back into Alaska to rot). "Oh, but," you interject, "didn't the Democrats lose out to two Republicans in Democrat-strong states?" Yes, we did, but we lost to moderate Republicans, not the conservative Fox-era Repubs that are driven forward by the braying issuing from the mouths of Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Bill O'Reilly.

Not that I'm bitter... And a funny thing, this week's Newsweek has Mrs Palin on the cover with a title of "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sarah? She's bad news for the GOP -- and for everybody else, too." I'm not the only one!

SUBJECT CHANGE.

So I was wrong and Major Nidal Malik Hasan (you know, the one who is being tried for killing 13 people in Ft Hood 2 weeks ago) was not just suffering from PTSD, but quite possibly following instructions from radical Islamic elements. I still stand by my earlier statement - it is a sad state of affairs when we focus on the fact that someone is Islamic before we have any proof about terrorist ties from said religion. Look at the shooting in Florida a couple of days after the Ft. Hood incident - can't find any references in there about his religion, but considering we aren't told what it is, I'm pretty sure he's not a Muslim. I'm not saying there aren't a lot a terrorists who are Islamic extremists, but not all terrorists are Islamic and not all Muslims are terrorists. We have to, as a country, stop focusing on the idiotic things like this and move on.

Speaking of religious bias, did you hear the one about the Catholic priest and the alter boy?

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Watched the latest Ultimate Fighter episode last night (you did too, right? of course you did...) and wasn't too disappointed as everything came out like I thought it would. Jon Madsen, the short and stocky wrestler, proved that the only skill he has is his wrestling and while it is an impressive skill, the minute someone figures a way to negate that skill, you're useless. And that's exactly what Brendan Schaub did, defending himself well from the Guard the few times he was taken to the mat, and keeping the fight on its feet the rest of the time. I did find it odd that the ref was constantly warning Schaub from hanging onto the fence (a no-no in UFC fighting - you can push against the fence flat-palmed, just can't grab and pull with your fingers), the ref never docked him any points. It would not have mattered in the end, as Schaub caught Madsen standing upright with two vicious jabs to the lower jaw in quick succession and, as they say, "knocked him the eff out", and the fight didn't go to the judges' decision. Welcome to the UFC - it's called Mixed Martial Arts for a reason, so go learn you some striking skills.

And the UFC is really drawing out this Kimbo Slice thing as much as they can. Starting with the episode after he lost his bout to Roy Nelson, every commercial has hinted that this next episode is going to be THE episode that someone drops out of the competition and Kimbo gets back into the competition... and it never is. The story is not too far fetched as one or more of the 16 competitors drops out every season due to either injuries or just don't want to mess with it anymore, so it is plausible that Kimbo will make a comeback, and that's what Dana White and the Zuffa crew is betting on with their TV spots. But it's getting really tiresome, as they keep hinting that this week is the week. I guess they have to do something, as a lot of the previous seasons I've watched of the show have most of their entertainment happen outside of the ring as the competitors tear down the house they live in and beat each other up out of stupid machismo... but not this season, as the competitors have acted like the adults they supposedly are. Even if the fighter who they keep hinting at finally decides to not fight anymore, I doubt it will be Kimbo that gets picked to take his place, as it should be the fighter that the fighter who is thinking of quitting beat out in the last round.

Oh well, only two more episodes to go before the live finale on December the 5th. Oddly, the UFC has compacted the last 4 fights of the season (the last half of the quarter-finals, and both semi-final fights) down into a 2-hour special that it is showing a mere 3 days before the finale. The UFC is smart, however, in that they've placed the final part of their competition completely outside of the show itself, so no one can leak the results online because they haven't happened yet. However, as the focus has been on Kimbo so much there are many leaks regarding the fight card for the finale, and Kimbo is on it, though rumor has it he is not fighting in the final. That's common, though, as they like to bring in anyone from the show who's up for a match with someone else on the show or lower on the UFC ladder, as the undercard fights to flesh out the card.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

As you well know, I haven't been long in this job, but I have met some interesting people in my time here. One in particular is the young ~~bippy~~ lady whose desk I am currently occupying. She was in the E&I office when I started but got shifted over to Officer Branch due to internal politics not long after I got here, and I inherited her desk, though not her job. Anyway, this girl (old enough physically to be called a woman, but has the maturity level of a 15-year old) has been nothing but her own live soap opera the whole time I've known her. Divorced her husband recently as they had nothing in common, which I saw coming. Come on, the first two weeks I know you and all you do is bitch, unceasingly, about how you dislike him and his hobbies, and how you never do anything together anymore, and the answer to the question of "why did you get together in the first place?" is "because he looks good with his shirt off"? Yeah, that relationship is destined for a court settlement, and I was right, she wised up and divorced his ass.

Did the lesson stick? Oh no, even before a lawyer was found, this chick is right back into the bars, and jumping in bed with anything that "looks good with his shirt off". About the time the court finally settled the divorce bit, she decided that she needed liposuction to get rid of her excess weight (which she had a bit of, but not in the morbidly obese realm), and paid $9,000 for a doctor to make her look like she'd lost only 10 pounds 5 months after the surgery. Wait for it, the best part is coming up.

Are you ready? Really? She comes into the office today to let us know she's pregnant. Planned? Hell no, she's not even engaged to the sperm donor she's currently shacked up with and was on birth control up until the doc confirmend what the EPT told her. And she's going to keep it! Why? She lives in stupidly conservative Red Missouri, where even the mere mention of the word "abortion" is ranked right up there with the second coming of Satan, and heaven forfend she give it up for adoption. At first, I found this whole situation just too good to be true - here's this young lady who can barely take care of her dog she's so busy being a social butterfly, and now she's going to be taking care of a kid - but now I'm pissed off because she could have taken care of her problem before she told everyone. Now, however, social pressure from everyone she works with and all of her friends and family are going to mean that whether she wants it (or is even ready for it, emotionally, financially, or otherwise) or not, she's stuck with that kid. And the sperm donor isn't much help, considering he's already got a 7-year old of his own with someone else. He's even suggesting that she get fixed after the kid is born, and not him, even though he doesn't want (or need) any more kids than the 7-year old. *feh* Geniuses.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Remember Jessica Lynch? Here's the real hero of that encounter, Patrick Miller, you can read about his story here. And that's been your Modern American History Lesson for the week. Enjoy!

I'm cutting it off there, too many things going on. We did get Samantha into the day care and have all the paperwork started on getting government funding for that. Got the request in so Denise can start going to school next semester. And working on cleaning up the house and getting little projects done so we can go to Toys for Tots this weekend. We're all sick, of course, and we still have a bunch of people coming in to crash, so it's going to be an interesting weekend, no doubt about it. Oh, I also have all of next week off for Thanksgiving and our wedding anniversary. Looking forward to getting some time around the house so I can get some stuff done. Should be nice.

|/|/hiskey ]{ilo ]-[otel

Just Plain Stupid

2009-11-13T18:50:00.001-06:00

Another week started and another weekend of drill finished. Fortunately this week contains Veterans' Day and Denise and I already have big plans - find a daycare for the Sam-monster. Turns out that licensed daycares can only have 2 kids under the age of 2 at a time, so when I had compiled a list of 8 daycares in the Columbia area with state or federal accreditation I thought we had plenty to choose form, but it turns out only 2 out of 6 have any openings. Why only "out of 6"? Two of the daycares appear to be the same daycare center with multiple names, and another one I haven't been able to get ahold of after calling multiple times, so I'm giving up on them. If you might possibly have the care of my child and I can't get ahold of anything but your answering machine at various times throughout the day, suddenly I'm very wary to begin that process.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

As many of you know, a tragedy occurred last Thursday (5th of November) down at the Army's Fort Hood in Texas, where a Major in the Army, himself a psychiatrist for the Army's Medical Branch, went on a shooting spree at a graduation ceremony, killing upwards of 13 soldiers and civilians, and wounding many others. I am saddened that one of my fellow brothers in foliage green would be pushed to do something like this, and horrified that the media for the first 36 to 48 hours focused on the fact that he is a Muslim. If he was an Islamic terrorist, that would have been noteworthy. The fact that he is a Muslim is just another fact, along with where he graduated school, what his favorite color is, and if his pet dog was housebroken or not - they're just facts and have no impact on the actual story.

I am impressed, however, in the lack of response from the MO Army Guard. I should clarify that - I am impressed from the lack of overreaction from the MOARNG. In a panic, my father-in-law, an ex-Army man himself, called my wife when the news first broke trying to find out if we were on lockdown or something similar. What are we supposed to do? The shooter was in the military, with a valid ID, meaning anyone else suffering from the same stress would still have access to all facilities. We did nothing of the sort, just merely lowered all of our flags to half-staff and took a quiet look at all of our PTSD-suffering soldiers. No panicky closing of gates, no useless paranoia of people performing reasonable, routine business in and around Guard facilities, and no lockdown of facilities or personnel "until the crisis has passed". Of course, now that I think about it more, that's either really smart on someone's part in the higher echelons of the MO Guard... or we're just too slow on the uptake and showed off our inability to react to a crisis in a timely manner. I'm sticking with my first hypothesis and saying we managed to refrain from overreacting intelligently.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

"I don't have Alzheimer's, I suffer from J.P.S."

"What's J.P.S.?"

"Just Plain Stupid."

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Someone recently pointed me towards a game called Massive Action Game, or MAG for short, that is coming out soon on the PS3. It's interesting for the fact that it looks good, it has some pretty engaging gameplay, and, more than anything else, allows up to 256 players compete in an FPS at the same time. Much like the movie Dumb and Dumber, they are advertising the main selling point in the name of the product, and they deliver. Of course, it being a console FPS, I have no direct interest in playing MAG myself, as let's be honest - playing an FPS on a console with a gamepad (or even mouse and keyboard at console speeds) is like masturbating... with a condom on. (side note: found the date for the issue of PC Gamer that proves FPSs should be played on PCs with keyboards and mice, and not on consoles with gamepads, just have to locate and purchase a copy of it... January 2006, for those of you interested, promise I'll post the article here when I get it) It got me to thinking of what comes close on the PC already or what's coming out soon, and found the most likely candidates in the Massively Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter (MMOFPS) genre. Some are old, some are new, and all look good, but most of the old ones still require a monthly fee to play and the new ones all require a better computer to play, as almost all of them are running on the UT3 engine (which I've found my old tower just can't handle). It's just time to bite the bullet and actually figure out how to improve and individualize my 'net connection for all the FPSs I currently have and play. *sigh*

SUBJECT CHANGE.

I need to start a business. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned before an easy way to increase your credit rating, by making a "ring" of credit cards that you initially use to pay off your bills, then pay off each other, and the final card in the ring gets paid off every month. Great idea for the little guy who's got enough gumption to do it every month, but for large groups of people (ie: the majority of Americans too lazy to do anything but sit in their La-Z-Boys and swill Bud Lite while watching NASCAR... not that I'm bitter), I think a business that handles all the details for them is needed. The company tracks down the best cards (by best I mean "easiest to get"), handles the monthly bill payments and credit card transactions, and lives off a percentage of the amount paid to the final card, in addition to a $50 setup fee.

Call it 1% of the final transactions. My bills roughly equal $200 to 300 a month, between my utilities (electric/trash/water, gas, phone, and entertainment), and would net the company $30 a month. We have 2,000 customers (starting small) and so the setup fees net us $100,000 nest egg (which gets invested to support the business long term) and than $6,000 a month to pay the regular bills, like facility rental, website, and of course employee payroll. *hmm* With 2,000 customers and running the business between myself and Denise, we'd have to automate a lot of it, and this is time-sensitive enough you'd want to handle each transaction by hand. Maybe increase the monthly to 5%, and hire in another 4 people. Yeah, that sounds about right, $30,000 gross income per month, and we'd be able to expand the business pretty quickly. Even at 50 customers in the first year, that's $2,500 for the initial payment, and $9,000 for annual income. Not earth-shattering, but enough to purchase more advertising and attract more clients, and start a nest-egg for expansion of facilities and employees.

In addition, as a corporation that feels responsible to help out our customers to the fullest, we'd have the legal resources to not only protect ourselves but offer help for our clients when dealing with banking entities, credit corporations (to include credit reporting agencies), and debt collectors. *hmmm* Maybe I don' t need to start the corporation from scratch, but instead find a like-minded lawyer who is already offering credit cleaning services, and pitch the idea at them.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Because we are such unrelenting Pixar junkies, and especially because the Sam-monster "lurvs" her some computer-graphic goodness, we did something we don't normally do and pre-ordered Up for her birthday. It didn't make it by her actual birthday, but it made it in last night (Thursday, 12th of November), and we watched it as soon as our evening permitted. After just one watching of the movie and all the extra features (minus the director's commentary, which I think will happen tonight, Friday the 13th) (*huh* it is Friday the 13th, isn't it? and the moon is waxing towards full on the 16th, too. oh, how the idiots are going to call in today, should have called in sick), I have to say that it's not my favorite Pixar movie. Is it good? Yes, oh gods yes. The story of Carl and Ellie at the beginning will make you tear up, and they don't stop tugging on those heart strings for most of the movie. But it's not a non-stop tear-jerker either, with many truly "laugh out loud" moments, and quality action. And once again, as unbelievable as most of the movie is, they never pull you out of the Suspension of Disbelief Reverie and you just ride it out. There are some parts I think they could have done better, particularly the ending. Who is Russell's father? They missed their chance to make it the "corporate guy in nice suit" from the beginning of the film to let Carl have some reconciliation with that character, and also explain why Russell hardly ever sees the guy. How about Russell's mom? We see her only briefly, could we have gotten her name at least, and maybe a little more character interaction? And they go for ice cream, which fits the character development revealed earlier in the movie, but that's it? No globe-trotting around the world in the zeppelin? Bit of a let down there, guys, and you were doing so well in keeping us interested. Even with that, it is still another excellent film from the Pixar boys and girls, and I suggest you go at least rent it, if nothing else.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

The amount of people who believe EVERYTHING their recruiters say in the Army just amaze me. A recruiter for any organization is just as worried about keeping their job as the next guy, and will do anything to meet monthly quotas. Or the people that sign and initial Army contracts and don't bother to read them or the policies they fall under, and then get pissed off when we point out these errors to them. Simply amazing.

Okay, going to cut it off there for the week. We did inspect the few daycares that had slots open for little kids, and settled on the more expensive one. Why? The difference in service, staff, program, and kids was worth the extra money. Now to get all the paperwork for them completed, all the paperwork for NACCRRA folks (Operation Military Child Care is going to be our friend) completed, get Sam in for her 12 month checkup and shots, get my AGR extension orders pushed through, and while I'm at it, cure cancer. Not to mention that the annual Toys for Tots tournament is weekend after this one, and if I want to fight, I have to remake my main sword and get the loaner legs belted and strapped for use. I'd also like to add my full gauntlets to that list, but I finally got the wire I ordered to make Samantha her own hauberk, and I can feel my fingers itching to turn the wire into coils, the coils into links, and the links into maille. One thing at a time, Wilhelm, one thing at a time.

|/|/hiskey ]{ilo ]-[otel

I hate deer, how about you?

2009-11-11T19:22:00.000-06:00

*woohoo!* We survived the weekend! And I didn't have to kill any of my relatives or in-laws to make it happen, either, so I'd say we were rather successful. Samantha enjoyed herself so much that she passed out around 7pm last night (Sunday, 1st of November) and didn't wake up 'til 6am this morning, though I'm fairly sure it was just because there were so many people around and her little friend, CJ, came over from Virginia with Denise's sister, Tina. Sam did make out like a bandit, with a pile of toys that was easily 3 times her dimunitive frame. And we've still got Christmas coming up! This kid is going to be up to her ears in toys for the forseeable future, hopefully we can give her a sibling or some cousins over the next couple of years to help spread the attention around from the grandparents and aunts and uncle.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

I loved Mystery Science Theater 3000 when it was on TV, and mourned it's loss. Much like my beloved TechTV, the people behind the magic may not be paying the bills in the jobs I came to know and love them in, but have continued on to find new sources of income from projects very similar to the original MST3K. In a not-unseen division, the earlier crew members (Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu, Josh Weinstein, Frank Conniff, and late-era cast member Mary Jo Pehl) formed a very-MST3K-esque company/show by the name of Cinematic Titanic, and the later crew members (Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett) have created Riff Trax. Cinematic Titanic (henceforth called CT) follows the MST3K formula very closely - find a really bad movie and make fun of it, though they do appear to have gotten rid of the whole background story aspect of the original (no Satellite of Love, no puppets, etc). They have learned from their mistakes, however, and avoided MST3K's major problem by securing movie rights BEFORE they make fun of the movie, but it is a hindrance as they only offer 10 shows currently, and they only have some really unknown titles in their collection. This last isn't a huge problem, as there were very few big names in MST3K's own stable of shows. They do have a live performance that tours the country, which is really neat (and coming to STL in late November) and adds more to the experience as a whole.

Riff Trax, on the other hand, doesn't secure movie rights, and doesn't even go primarily after bad movies, but instead goes after popular, big-money movies, like Transformers and Star Wars. Still very cognizant of the Intellectual Property rights, Mike and company have avoided it by not making any video at all, but instead offering an audio file to purchase that you synch up with your own copy (or a rental) of the movie in question. I've known about Riff Trax for a while now, but haven't wanted to mess with their system too much. Last week, while perusing the 'net in one of the many downtimes I was experiencing on the website we use most here in Education & Incentives, I got to thinking about possible distractions for the family and somehow stumbled back upon the Riff Trax website, where I saw that they had the prequel Star Wars trilogy on sale (found here, if you're lucky and it's still for sale), so I said "what the hell", and bought it thinking that if mine and Denise's family got to the point of not talking to each other, I could distract them with some riffing goodness. It never came down to that, but I did sample the first file on The Phantom Menace, and I have to say that I do like it. The synching process was not as onerous as I'd thought it would be, and I didn't even use their player that automatically synchs the movie and audio file on your computer. The jokes were funny, but noticeably not as dense as what you've come to expect from the old MST3K, yet it was still entertaining. I haven't watched the other 2 episodes yet, maybe I'll get around to it this week.

What really caught my attention was that Riff Trax will host other people's riffs on their site and even sell them. Of note of those who have already posted an iRiff is That Guy with the Glasses (who does 5 Second Movies, one of my recently discovered favorite online distractions) and they already have over 400 available for purchase. Apparently I'm getting to this particular game late in the day, but this looks like too much fun to pass up. Even if I never post an iRiff up for sale, it could still be a fun weekend game - invite a bunch of my witty, sarcastic friends and family members over on a Saturday night, give everyone a pad of paper and plenty of snacks and alcohol, set them all in front of a movie that is riff-worthy, and riff away. For those uninitiated in the audience, to get the best riffs possible, you watch the movie a total of 5 or 6 times - the first time or two you have everyone write down their snarky comments and time tag them. Two or more passes is optimal at this stage, as it allows everyone time to catch things they missed while writing their latest humorous magnum opus.

I just had an idea for a riff-centrix program - take your standard text editor (like Notepad) and add a couple of buttons. One starts a timer, basically you hit this button at the beginning of the movie to synch the timer in the Riffpad (look! I've come up with a name for it! this project is halfway to completion already and I haven't written any code yet) with the time in the movie. Another button pauses the time, in case you need to pause the movie for a break or whatever. Could also have rewind and fast-forward buttons, but as different players do these at different rates, it's probably too much to ask. Maybe just a field where you can manipulate the timer data directly, and synch it manually, you know, by changing hours, minutes, and seconds. Obviously another button to reset the timer to zero. Your final button would be when you have thought up a good riff, you click this button and it automatically puts a time stamp down next to a blank area where the riffer could then type their newly hatched comment on the movie. Laptops and netbooks are common these days, especially in the geeky community of people who like to watch MST3Kesque shows, and this would make any geeky RiffParty easier and more entertaining. *hmmm* Have to do some research. Might be able to do it in Excel, and it would make the individual "riff cells" easy to create.

Anwyay, back to the Riff Party. You run the movie through 2 or 3 times so everyone has a good shot of getting all the riffs in that they want. After that's done, you get a master list of all the riffs and then walk through them with the group. Where there's just one riff for a particular scene, if half the group likes it, you keep that riff. Where there's more than one riff for a scene, the group votes on it or discusses the riffs to possibly combine separate joke elements. Once all the riffs have been decided on (oh, and you have to decide who's going to say them, too... some people have no joke delivery skills at all, while some are far better at it... or some lines are funnier if they come from a man or a woman, no matter who wrote them... generally it's easiest to let the original authors say their own lines) you make several copies of the master list and get ready to riff aplenty. It may help everyone to have access to the movie script (you can generally find them free online) or just add in the pertinent pieces to your riffing master script to keep everyone on track, as it's a little too hard to watch the movie, watch the timer, follow the script and come in with their riffs in a timely manner. Set up some basic recording hardware, even if it's nothing more complicated than a mic plugged into the soundcard of your computer, and you're good to hook. And I would encourage you to record it, even if you don't plan on selling it via iRiff, do it for nothing else than to have an audio file of you and your friends having a raucous good time making fun of a bad movie.

Yes, I would love to post my own iRiff, but I don't have the equipment for it and don't know what movie I'd like to do. Kung Fu Panda comes to mind pretty quickly, but doing a little searching reveals someone has already done one on that animated POS. Nor do I really have the time or energy for it, to be quite honest, but it would be fun to do one with friends and family. I had even thought that you could do a video file of the riffers (you know, the silhouette of the guy and the 2 robots, or whatever you wanted to put) and play that separately on a laptop in conjunction with the movie, but that would be too technically difficult to film them doing the riffs without including the movie, and it's hard enough watching a movie with subtitles, try watching two completely different screens to see if someone on the second screen is doing anything silly.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

What is up with this week? I've had more schedule changes this week than anytime I care to remember. I was going to Indiana and miss Sam's 1st birthday... and then I wasn't and I didn't. I was going to take an APFT this upcoming weekend... and I took it on Wednesday morning instead. Going to shoot weapons qualification on Saturday... now I'm not. Was going to Maryville on Sunday to give a benefits briefing... now that's kaput. I didn't have any briefings or meetings to go to, after the Maryville trip was cancelled... and then I spent all day yesterday (Thursday, 5th of November) in a boring briefing. Too many changes in the schedule, even as sketchy as mine generally is, and I start feeling all out of sorts. This weekend won't be much better, as even though all the hard things have fallen of the schedule for this weekend (APFT, weapons qual, and long trip to the northwest of the state), I'll be sitting at my desk doing busy work for two extra days. *twirls finger* Yippee. Oh well, at least I have a SCA demo on Saturday night to attend. Should be fun, though probably quite painful, if the last two practices are any indication. I so need to finish up my armour. *sigh*

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Yep, I was right - the demo was fun, but I am sore today (Sunday, 8th of November) like a whipping boy. I'll be taking some time off from fighting this week as my main sword is almost completely mushed out at the tip and needs either outright replacement or some repairs that'll make it last at least a little while longer. I also got some other loaner pieces of leg armour from the group in Jefferson City, as no one else was using them and my current set of loaner legs are fairly atrocious. One of the sets I can easily attach to the belt that I will attach the cuisses Denise is working on, so that will get part of that project done while providing me with a better set of leg armour in the short term. If I can even get started on that leg armour project, as well as my gauntlets, I'll feel like I've accomplished something. And if I get my gauntlets finished in time for Wednesday's Jeff City practice, than I won't have to worry about my main sword's problems as I'll be able to fight spear, polearm, and greatsword all night. And I've been meaning to make a non-basket-hilted main sword anyway, so if I get my gauntlets going and find the damage to my current main is too great to salvage, I just may do that and fight full gauntlets for a while, give my half-gauntlets a rest. The edging and binding cord on my oval center-grip is almost worn through, but I've been meaning to pull that off so I can paint the shield itself (a nice blue/green lozengy pattern, with my badge - a yellow paintball-esque splatter - covering the boss and a bit of the surrounding pattern) and make it all pretty. I also need to finish my war heater by putting its edging on... okay, stop there, got a ton of things to do to all of my various SCA fighting projects. Stop writing about them, genius, and get to work!

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Speaking of writing too much, I was awfully tempted to participate in this year's NaNoWriMo - that's National Novel Writing Month, to all you uninitiated - but I did not. Maybe next year. Why, you say? I say, why not?! Well, okay, the "why not?" for this year is I'm freaking busy. Next year, I hope I'm less busy and can actually participate. Be fun while it lasts.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

So I almost ran over a deer this morning (still Sunday, 8th of November) on my very early morning commute from Columbia to Jefferson City. It's drill weekend and first formation on Sundays is 7am, so I tend to leave an hour earlier than I normally do. The roads were generally empty, being as I started out at 5:30 this morning, so I stuck it to 5 miles over the speed limit and rode it hard for JC. About a mile north of Ashland, the tiny ass town halfway between Columbia and JC, a couple of cars coming in the opposite direction make me turn my brights down, and up out of the gloom looms this large deer, right smack dab in the middle of my lane. I immediately swerve to the left in a maneuver taught to me WWAAAYYY back in 1992 by my Driver's Ed teacher - in an emergency at highway speeds, you can go around one car-sized object by first turning the wheel in one direction until your elbows touch, and then all the back the other way until your elbows touch opposite of the first time, and then you straighten the wheel back up. This maneuver will swerve your vehicle violently over one lane and back to the original lane, and if you do it quick enough, shouldn't tip you or roll you as you're not sideways to your line of travel long enough to let wheel friction take control. So I managed to perform the first action and make it into the left-hand lane before striking Nature's Dumbest Animal but didn't immediately turn the wheel back in the other direction, so I got some protest squeels from my front tires and a feeling of about to tip, and then I turned the wheel back the other way and saved it from both a roll and going into the median. Yeah, real exciting. Took about 2 years off of my life with that little burst of unexpected fight-or-flight adrenaline.

So, to sum up - I'm fine. The car, as far as I can tell, is fine. The deer, unfortunately, was still okay when I

|/|/hiskey ]{ilo ]-[otel

if I'm so smart, why ain't I rich?

2009-10-31T08:25:00.004-05:00

Our daughter is a Pixar junkie. This is our fault, as both Denise and I are Pixar junkies ourselves. But Sam is so bad that we turned it over to one of her favorites that have been playing a lot on HBO/Starz/Encore, WALL-E, and from around the corner, she heard two of the characters talking (the Captain and Otto the Auto Pilot, I believe) and came running into the living room to watch it. She's also a big fan of Kung Fu Panda, but I'm not as fond of that one as I am of Pixar's works. Why? Jack Black is just not as funny as he (and his agent) wants everything to think he is. Did he ruin the movie? No, it's a fairly mediocre movie, with some awesome computer graphics (look at Master Oogway, they did the old man shake perfectly), and a bunch of really fun wire-fu fight scenes. The moral of the story is also questionable - if you don't have The Dream, it doesn't matter how hard you work, you'll never be the Chosen One (Dragon Warrior, The One, last of the Jedi, whatever you want to call it) - though it does salve the conscience by letting us know that even the fat people have worth in this world. It's also insulting that Jack Black is the voice of the eponymous panda, while Jackie Chan and Lucy Liu, 2 people who can actually perform kung fu, are relegated to very minor roles with about 10 lines between them. And what happens to Tai Lung after Jack Black's last little attempt at humor ("skidoosh"? seriously? yeah, you're still not that funny, lard ass)? Does he get taken back to prison (which worked oh so well the first time), does he become a better person because of the Almighty Bitch Slap of Gawd he just received and mend his ways, or do they declaw him, defang him, blind him, cut his nose off, and send him to wander the roads of anthropomorphic-China for the rest of his days?

I have to admit, though, that even though KFP had a training montage, I didn't despise it like I have in so many other movies. I didn't know why until recently, when the gents on the Writing Excuses podcast got to talking about themes and conventions of genre and pointed it out to me - your readers expect certain conventions in each and every genre, but if you do them too cookie cutter, they become laughable and banal. If you're going to use a convention and not be laughed at or despised for using it, you have to do something new and different with it. For example, Wanted did absolutely nothing unexpected or new with a training montage in an action movie, and I was bored with it. Other movies have done different things with it - The Empire Strikes Back, for example, put in plot and character development in its training montage, and Team America: World Police made fun of the convention, complete with catchy filk song - and were successful, even popular, but unless you break the mold while appealing to the fans, you're just going to flop.

Now I'm not saying that everything Pixar does is a total grand slam, each and every time, as I have questions about theeir sci-fi opus, the aforementioned WALL-E - why doesn't the Axiom stay closer to home, to respond better to a positive plant identification? Why is it out wandering around the Greater Magellanic Cloud (I'm guessing here, my knowledge of astronomy is horrific)? Do they really just toss all of their garbage out of the airlock? What are they doing to replenish the raw materials that they're just throwing out the side of the ship? Just one cockroach survives to this day? Where's all the other cockroaches, 'cause those little bastards should be thicker than [insert cliche' here] on the ground (especially seeing as they don't even need to pee)? Why doesn't our eponymous protagonist rebuild one of his fellows that just litter the post-apocalyptic landscape, since he's so hard up for company that he'll climb onto a rocket that's about to leave Earth's sweet embrace? How do the survivors sit/lay on their hoverchairs for almost their entire lives without developing horrific bedsores? (*WARNING* that last link has pictures not suitable for those with weak stomachs or who have recently eaten... bedsores are NASTY!) And yet, with all of those questions banging around inside my head, I still really like the movie. Why? Because it never breaks your suspension of disbelief (George, come on, the Force is a fantasy theme in your little sci-fi serial, leave it as such... midichlorians, my ass... *grumblegrumble*) and tells a great story. The awesome computer graphics have something to do with it as well.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

PT did its job this morning (Tuesday, 27th of October) and thoroughly kicked my ass. I've been trying (and mostly failing, due to inclement weather, illness, and Army-directed trips across the state) to, in addition to local fighter practices, keeping to a Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule of long-distance running in the morning and strength training (lifting weights, sit-ups, and push-ups) at night, and then Tuesday/Thursday morning doing fartlek interval runs - jog for a bit, sprint for a bit, jog for a bit, run for a bit, ad nauseum. Almost literally, this morning, it really kicked my ass that well. So why all the rigamarole? The Army's Physical Fitness Training manual, Field Manual (FM) 21-20, it's best if you vary your workouts so that you don't get bored with them and that you not work yourself into a rut.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

We have come technologically full-circle back to the manual typewriter. Okay, let me explain that a bit better. The keyboard you're reading this post across is more than likely a QWERTY keyboard, which was first designed in 1874 to fix the problems in manual typewriters, namely typebar clashes which generally occur when keys near each other are pressed at the same time or in rapid succession. The QWERTY layout helped alleviate this, not by making it physically impossible to press two keys near each other, but by moving the most commonly used keys away from the typist's dominant fingers (the index fingers) to the periphery of the typing area.

I have noticed with my own job that I move faster than either the crappy hardware the government supplies me with, especially on repetitive tasks (which I have a few of), or the websites I'm forced to do my work on, which is the bigger problem as almost 90% of my work is done through one web portal or another. I feel my work slowing down, especially this week as the entire National Guard in this region is experiencing network problems and downtime from fixes and upgrades. I'm on a bloody computer and suffering from "typebar clashes"! WTF?!

The answer, unfortunately, cannot be solved by moving my most used keys further away from each other to slow me down, the answer is that I need the government to cough me up a new computer with better hardware (ha!), the Army and National Guard to upgrade all of their servers (snort), and for the country as a whole to upgrade the network we communicate over (the most possible of the three... still not holding my breath). The QWERTY did its job, to some extent, in slowing up the typist in the late 1800's, but these days, even non-committed speed-typists like myself can maintain 60-90wpm on QWERTY keyboards, we're as slowed down as we're going to get with such trickery. Oh wait, I've got it! To maintain a constant work flow, I need to move away from my work websites while waiting on them to catch up on me by performing non-work tasks, namely surfing the paintball chat boards and typing in this journal. Yeah, yeah, that's the ticket!

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Why do people want to know the gender of their children before they're born? Well, okay, let me rephrase that - why do we put so much emphasis into finding out before they are born? The whole time Denise was pregnant, everyone wanted to know if we were having a boy or a girl and we inevitably replied that we didn't know. Why not?! was the general demand. What's the point of finding out before-hand? Seriously? If you really want a girl and the doc tells you that you're going to have a boy, what can you do about it? Exactly, you can't do anything; that kid is going to come out as a boy or a girl (or both), and you can't change it. And don't give me that BS that you won't know what to buy for them, the kid won't care what gender the toys and clothes are aimed at as long as they're fed, warm, have a clean diaper, and get some attention. By the time the kid does start to care, everyone will know what gender it is, and quite possibly, what their favorite color is.

Look, the only reason most people are worried about the gender of their (or their friends' and family's) unborn children is so they know what color of onesies to buy for the little tyke, and what toys to pick up. And we wonder in our modern society why we have such things as glass ceilings and gender biases, even though we've supposedly advanced beyond such petty things.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

So the wife and I were watching Chopped last night, and that's probably the last time that particular program will grace our TV sets. For those of you not in the know, Chopped is a competition where 4 chefs, successful in their own right, are brought into a fully-stocked and supplied kitchen area and have 30 minutes to prepare an appetizer, of which they have 3 or 4 mystery ingredients that they have to include in the dish. The ingredients are wildly random, items that even these experienced chefs have little to no experience with, and barely any relation to each other. At the end of 30 minutes, the competitors have to have a cooked appetizer, and have plated up 4 servings of it. At this point the dishes are judged by 3 judges on their appearance, inventiveness, inclusion of all the mystery ingredients, and overall taste of the dish. Of the 4 competitors, one is judged to be bottom of the heap and given the "chop", and the remaining 3 go into Round the Second for the main course competition. Same sort of deal - 30 minutes to prepare 4 servings of an entree using 3 to 4 new mystery ingredients. End of this round, yet another competitor is "chopped" by the judges, and the remaining 2 chefs make a dessert with 3 to 4 new mystery ingredients in 30 minutes for the final judging. One last round of judging, one last competitor is asked to leave, and the remaining chef receives a $10,000 prize from Food Network.

Interesting, entertaining, fast-paced - all hallmarks of a long-lasting show that you would probably watch regularly if you were into cooking competition shows, but the show has one fatal flaw that finally up and killed it for me and Denise last night: the bloody judges. They are a little past halfway through their second season and in the last season and a half I've seen the judges show favoritism (they had a competitor who didn't even get his entree plated and ready to be judged, but he didn't get the chop that round, and then the guy did it again the next round!) and generally have wildly unreasonable expectations of the competitors and their dishes. I've seen judges berate competitors for not making all three of their dishes (appetizer, entree, and dessert) go well together, even though no one's dishes go well together because of the random nature of the mystery ingredients. I've ground my teeth while competitors are dragged over the coals for having a messy looking plate or double-dipping with their tasting spoon or a myriad of other sins that I know the judges are themselves culpable of, as all the judges are themselves chefs.

The final straw was last night where one judge out of the three berated a contestant for including raw onions in her appetizer. Because he was allergic? No, because he doesn't like onions, especially raw onions. In round 2, not one but two contestants had raw onions in their dishes, and the judge just loses it, going on and on about how could the chefs even consider putting raw onions in their dishes when he specifically said that he didn't like onions. And I do mean he went "on and on", quite literally, as the asshole whined about the onions for more than 5 minutes. It was at this point that I changed the channel, and vowed never to watch the show again. It is one thing to upbraid a competitor you are judging because the chicken is undercooked and possibly harmful to eat, or the soup they made tastes like so much Elmer's Paste, or everything has been carbonized to the point of being charcoal, but to rant on and on about an ingredient (and a common one like onions, no less) that was just a small portion of the dish, that's taking it too far. And this judge isn't the worst of the offenders, they had one in the first season who was such an unmitigated bitch to all of the contestants that Food Network had to give her a cooking show of her own so they could show she was capable of smiling and acting like a human being. She was so bad that our joke about her was that the contestants on the show needed to make sure they put a Midol on her plate before passing it over.

Seriously, onions? *feh* Congratulations, jackass, you helped kill what could have been a very big money-maker for Food Network because you couldn't just have picked out the onions and set them aside.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

One of the recent podcasts that I've added to my twice-daily lineup is Hip Trax from the guys who write the Geek Dad *ahem* "blog" over on Wired.com (nope, no link, type it in yourself). The podcast is there to introduce geeky parents to geeky music that they and their kids can enjoy together, and even after only listening to the very first episode, I'm already liking the podcast and what they're sharing. In the first episode, they played a song I hadn't listened to yet from Jonathan Coulton by the name of "Stroller Town" that is an awesome filk of a '60's era, Beach Boys car song, but with baby strollers instead of muscle cars. Anyway, they were talking about how successful JC is due to the Web 2.0 renaissance and that he allows his fans to create web content based on his work, and I have to disagree with them. JC is successful because, first and foremost, he is a great musician and artist - he writes great music, both lyrically and musically, he plays it rather well, and is a good sound engineer to boot. The fact that he allows his fans to take their fandom to a whole new level just makes him even more popular, but all of that would amount to nothing if JC wasn't a great artist/musician in the first place. I can put together some music, put it up on a website under a Creative Commons License that lets others legally do fun things with it, but that doesn't automatically make me a successful musician.

In fact, that's a horrible idea, as I know I can't carry a tune in a bucket and I doubt I have any prowess in writing any decent music, mostly because I've never tried and I've never shown any interest in it. Picture it, me, playing and singing my own music. *shudder*

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Drivers in the state of Missouri, listen up! When you are entering onto a divided highway from a surface road, you only have to pay attention to one, and only one, direction at a time. If I see one of you merging into or crossing over traffic and all I can see is the back of your head, you are doing it wrong. If I am in a large, multi-ton military vehicle at the time I see you do it, I will be more than tempted to t-bone your puny civilian vehicle and remove you from the gene pool. Pay attention and quit threatening the lives of all the other drivers out there. That is all.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

An odd thing happened to me last night (Wednesday, 29th of October) at the Jefferson City fighter practice - I was the only right-handed fighter in armour. It was a good evening of fighting, though I have a rather large collection of bruises for my troubles (that I've been showing off to my coworkers, naturally), but admittedly weird to be the only rightie fighting. JC (along with almost every Barony, Canton, and Shire) has a few lefties native to the area, but last night they all showed up and none of my fellow righties managed to make it. Well, I lie, one other rightie showed up, but he's been fighting a cold and wasn't fighting, and one of the three lefties is actually a rightie, but she's got some injury to her right hand and fought all night off-hand single-sword. The night went rather well, and I could tell that I wasn't suffering any maladies like I was at the Regional Fighter Practice a couple of weekends ago. With all of my bruises, it's obvious that I didn't come out on top in every engagement, but I did do rather well against the Duke that was in attendance, and dominated the one Fyrd brother of mine that was there (which I've been doing to this particular fighter for years now).

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Huh, who would guess that not only is Ultima Online still a going concern, but that they're releasing a new expansion in the near future, and have been releasing such expansions regularly over the past 12 years? Doing a little math, if you have been playing UO from the beginning, paying in $10 a month in subscription fees, you've paid them $1,440 over the past 12 years. I don't find a little over a thousand dollars worth of subscription fees astonishing so much that UO is still alive and that they're still charging a $10 monthly fee to play the game. It's also fascinating to find out that the very first client (a client is the part the player sees and uses to interact with the game world) is but one of 3 clients that are currently supported by Mythic, the company that now owns UO. That's right, you can still play the original game, and all of the expansions released since 1997, in the original 2D interface that shipped with the game. This would be awesome, especially for my netbook with its very low hardware capabilities, and I've always been interested in seeing Owen "Lord British" Garriott's MMO magnum opus (and primogenitor for the entire MMO genre in PC gaming), but as little as I would be playing it (I'm on the netbook generally only when I'm on the road for the Army) and as loathe as I am of paying a monthly fee for any game, very doubtful I'll be picking this one up. Far more likely to pick up Guild Wars for me and Denise than I am to pick this up. Still, interesting to see UO a going concern.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

That's it for this week. Got a ton of family coming in tomorrow (Saturday, 31st of October) for Sam's first birthday party. See everyone on the other side, if any of us survive.

|/|/hiskey ]{ilo ]-[otel

running off at the fingertips...

2009-10-26T20:41:00.002-05:00

*gah* What a weekend. Denise was out of town, earning a little extra spending cash at a scrapbooking convention in KC and dealing with her family's various insanities, while I was at home dealing with the munchkin, who has been sick most of the weekend. I didn't escape the carnage and had to spend half of Tuesday home sick myself (Monday was Columbus Day, which meant I got that off as a government employee... your tax dollars at work). Getting ready for the local group's event this upcoming weekend, as Denise got roped into performing duties as the water-bearer for the fighters. The weather promises to be cold, but dry and fairly sunny, so it won't be all bad. Just got a lot of stuff to dig out of the garage and get ready between now and then.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Wow. There's a case of open rectal cavity, insert cranium if I've ever seen one. Whether the litigant was fired for his political leanings or not, the memo was in extremely poor taste and anyone in authority who passed around such should be forced to attend a week's worth of ethics classes - they won't necessarily change anyone's viewpoints, but maybe the week of remembered boredom will keep the idiots from performing the aforementioned rectal-cranial inversion. And the company is in Kansas City and Wichita, no less, which isn't terribly surprising considering how red Missouri and Kansas are, but still, you never expect such stupidity in your own backyard. Maybe I should stop drinking the local tap water.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

As a good friend once told me, you can have everything, just not all at once. And as I have pondered over in the past, there are far too many hobbies, pasttimes, and interests available these days to fully pursue even half of what you are potentially interested in. I am coming to realize that with my new job and the new responsibilities of a father, I just don't have the time to pursue all of the hobbies I want to. Particularly weighing on my mind of late is all the little plastic and metal rats I have for the Warhammer Fantasy wargame. A quote from a recent post by Penny Arcade author Jerry Holkins got me thinking about it. Here's the post, so you don't have to strain through the post yourself:

: I like wargaming, whose nexus of systemic governance and physicality is glazed with piquant asymmetries, but there is no room in my life for their tremendous investment - on any of the axes it demands. I recognize this as a personal failing, and still value the hobby, consuming everything around the games themselves: availing myself of their rich supplements and internalizing the meticulous construction of their worlds.

So why is my WHFB hobby on the chopping block over some of my other odd hobbies? For a variety of reasons, really - I'm been involved in my other hobbies for longer and am therefor loathe to give them up; when I had more free time than I do now (back before I was on the road 6 weeks out of 4 months, and didn't have a child), I participated in my other hobbies more than this one; I got back into the hobby because of a slew of friends, and I have since moved away from all of them; considering that I've recently moved, I would need to find a new place to play (moot point, I have done that already) and make new friends and acquaintances there. I'm definitely torn about the decision, as I've plunked down more than a bit of cash on little metal and plastic ratmen and various accoutrements of the hobby, and both Denise and I have spent more than a little time painting said figures. The upside is that I can recoup most if not all of my investment by selling off figures (and just found a new forum that focuses on the buying and selling of WH figures for said sale) and keep a lot of the extras I bought as material for other projects down the road. Currently I'm leaning towards selling off all the WHFB-specific bits, but keeping a lot of the Mordheim-specific pieces I've also gathered. I'll probably eventually sell that stuff off as well, or leave it collecting dust like the rest of my RPG books, and just grumble about it when I have to cart it to our next domicile.

So why the favoritism shown towards Mordheim over WHFB? Part of it is the scalability - MH usually only requires a 4'x4' area to play on and a handful of miniatures to play, while WHFB usually requires a 4'x8' playing area and, especially for Skaven, a metric ton of units. Part of it is the fact that MH is a done and finished product. Oh, Games Workshop still produces models for the line, but the rules are available free to the public and haven't changed in a while, unlike WHFB which is a "live" product for GW and constantly undergoing changes, like all of their products. On top of this, you feel no real connection, as a gamer, with your fantasy army. You put a bunch of little guys on their movement trays, move them around, throw them into the teeth of the enemy, and have no real feeling one way or the other if Ratling #503 of 8,000 lives or dies. In MH, on the other hand, your warband is comprised of 20 miniatures at the most, and each mini has its own name, history, skills, achievements, and story. Not that it really matters, as that last bit of argument still doesn't take care of my original objections (time spent, lack of friends, etc), but does give me a sop to my guilty conscience - Look, I haven't wasted ALL of my time, money, and effort, I still have the Mordheim stuff!

Whichever way I finally decide to go, it's not something that has to be done tomorrow. My Little Plastic Rats Bent on World Domination habit doesn't take up a ton of room (I have books to take up space in my domicile, thank you very much), and I'm already working towards selling off unnecessaries from my other hobbies, especially a bunch of paintball equipment I no longer need or have a use for. I really need like 3 months straight where I don't have any family get togethers, SCA events, or week-long Army road trips, so I can really dig through all my paintball gear and get the extras sold off, all my SCA projects at least started, and, while I'm dreaming big, cure cancer and solve world hunger.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

I don't like sounding like a rascist, but when your first and middle names are Verkethia Carshawna (and I'm not making this up), it's a pretty safe bet you come from a lower-class family, economically, and your ancestors hailed from Africa before becoming Americans. To VC, I know this isn't your fault, but please learn from your parents' mistakes and at least choose a name you can find on any of the tens of baby name websites out there. Remember - your name does not define who you are, you define what your name means to other people, but until someone gets to know you, your name is like a cover of a book and you are easily judged by it.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

For those of you who haven't figured it out yet, I have yet to find much use for texting. I already have email, and if it's honestly important enough that you need to get a response from me sooner than email or pass along some time-sensitive information, you've already got a phone in your hand, just call me. The one time I've actually sent a text was during a company-level training meeting. One of my sergeants was out in the back of beyond and had zero signal for his phone and had me text him the call-in information, as he had enough signal to send and receive texts. Thinking back on it now, since he couldn't call into the meeting until he had enough signal anyway, he could have waited until then to get the call-in info. What I see too often, however, is texting as an excuse by people to goof off. I don't know how many times I've smoked soldiers for doing the stupid thing and texting while I'm trying to help them with something, and let's not get into how many times I've almost been in a vehicle collision because the other driver is busy texting. Another fun time I got to watch the bippy at my local Sonic stop making the one thing I'd ordered (one measly strawberry shake) so she could instead text for 5 minutes. Add all of those frustrations and logic to the fact that, while it costs us, the consumers, $.10 a pop to send or receive a text message, it costs the phone companies exactly nothing, and you can see why I'm pretty disdainful when anyone mentions texting.

I write this because I did run into an application that makes sense for me to have a texting plan on my phone: temporary, one-time use passwords. I ran into the idea in my favorite weekly publication, Newsweek (the article can be found here), and the article is a really good look at the state of passwords today. I can commiserate with the state of passwords as I have to have access to a small bevy of military/Department of Defense websites, and they all require something different, unique, and totally immemorable... but we're not supposed to write any of them down. And don't get me started on the "security questions" - what's your favorite pet's name? Do you know how many rats I've had over the years? Somewhere in the 20 to 30 range, don't even ask me to decide which one was my favorite. Anyway, one proposal in the article to solve this is you register your phone # with the website and when it comes time to log in, you tell it your user name, they text you a one-time use password to your phone, you type it in, and bingo bango, you're in. I know, I know, I can name quite a few security issues with this model (change phone #'s, the bandwidth you transmit texts in isn't encrypted at all, lose your phone, etc), but it is the most reasonable use of texting that I've ever heard of. I honestly don't have an answer to the Plethora of Passwords Problem (did you like the alliteration? I did), maybe a USB-connected fob of some kind, but even those can be lost or stolen. RFID chip implanted in your arm? But even those signals can be intercepted with the right equipment, read, and copied. Biometrics? As the Newsweek article states, and many other other publications as well, those are fairly easily fooled. A sticky problem, and one we'll have to come up with an answer for eventually.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

So I didn't get this post finished by the time I wanted it to and decided to stretch it out over the weekend. Denise and I attended and worked at the aforementioned event this past weekend, even though we were both still feeling sick and we were outside most of Saturday. Denise is still feeling under the weather, but I felt well enough to get up this morning (19 October) and run 2.5 miles for PT before going in to work. Was a rather enjoyable event, though I didn't feel really great and only fought a couple of times before peeling back out of the armour and calling it a day. Being around friends and acquaintances from the SCA was a good thing, though, as it drove me to actually work on some of the armour projects I've been looking at for over a year now, specifically the chainmail which will eventually cover my rear from the tender ministrations of my former squire brothers. And boy do my hands hurt today! Been a while since I've done any 'mailling, and more to go before I'm done.

More interesting was getting to meet up and coming fighters from around the kingdom, and also some older players who I'd never run into before. That was entertaining, as some of the impressions I had formed about people, second-hand, were either changed drastically or were even further enforced. One of the big things that grabbed my attention was one of the cocky bastards who was recently knighted. Now, I have nothing against folks who find our little hobby, and do nothing but eat, breathe, and sleep it earning awards, but when you treat said recognition as nothing less than what you deserve, I have a problem with that. Especially when the award is supposed to embody the ideals of honor and chivalry, and the awardee in question embodies none of those attributes. Oh, he is a dangerous man with a stick, no doubt about it, but being a Knight, even a fake knight in the SCA, is supposed to be more than just how good you wave a chunk of rattan around.

While I have never wanted much from a knight/squire relationship other than a little focused training, friendship, and a good word now and then in the higher orders' meetings, but meeting this putz in person has given me a new prerequisite before I go get a knight. I have a friend in the SCA who has been passed over, time and again, for higher awards from this Kingdom, and if anyone deserves such recognition, it is him. If the Knights of Calontir can show favoritism to the hot young stick that is tearing everyone up, they can finally deign to give this kind gentle the respect and attention he deserves. If my prospective knight does not agree with me and will not do anything to help this along, than I won't take a red belt from them. I know, that statement has as much effect as a 6 year old stomping his foot to get things his way, but if no one is trying to change things, what's the point? As the Romans might have said, Illegitimi non carborundorum - Don't let the bastards grind you down.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

As many of you know (what, no? well, you do now!), I really like the UFC and especially their reality show, The Ultimate Fighter (or TUF). For the most part I'm watching as I first got interested in Brazilian jiu-jitsu in Army Basic Combat Training, as it's the basis for our Modern Army Combatives program. After returning from deployment in Iraq, I subscribed to the local cable television and started catching UFC contests and episodes of TUF on Spike!, and I see a lot of BJJ being used by the participants in this new-to-me sport of mixed-martial arts. And, surprise surprise, I have a bit of a violent streak about me (come on, look at my job, and 2 favorite physical hobbies), which this sport has in spades. Pretty much anything goes, excepting some very damaging things like no groin strikes, no gouging of the eyes - you know, the kinds of things that would end a highly-trained athletes career, not just the fight. Yes, I watch it because I like it, and because I'm watching to learn to improve my own skills in case I ever need to use it. Doubtful, yes, as I do perform a support role, but not an impossibility.

I do love watching TUF, though, which is rather odd as I have really never liked many reality TV shows. TUF, however, I just love watching - 16 guys living in isolation in a gorgeous house in Las Vegas, who beat the pizzle out of one another every so often to keep their place in the competition. The isolation part of the show makes for some interesting twists in the show, as generally right around halfway through the season (every season), one of the contestants crack from being away from their family, being hounded by camera crews most of the day, or just convinced that they are going to utterly lose and the only way out is to quit before they get into the ring. Whatever it is that drives them to it, at least one person every season brings drama to the show in great heaping amounts by trying to leave before their participation in the show is over with, and then the real fun begins as the head of the UFC has to step in and find someone to replace the pansy.

Oh, and every so often, people interested in fighting actually step into the octagon and compete in a contest of MMA. That part is generally entertaining, as well as educational. Who knew you could twist your opponent's body into so many pretzel-shaped bundles of pain? Apparently the Japanese and their Brazilian descendants do, and they'd be happy to teach you. For a fee, of course, as dojos and health insurance cost money. But watching the show and doing some seriously Googling for phrases you have no idea what they mean - seriously search for "omo plata", "gogo plata", "darce choke", "peruvian necktie", that'll get you some interesting human-shaped pretzels. This season has not been the slouch for drama, though I've been disappointed in about half of the fights. For example, when you are already winning the fight, but feel you have to stoop to the low of striking before you have finished the traditional pre-beatdown-fist-bump, you look pretty damn cheesy. The other fights have been exciting, though, and the rest of the season promises to be rather entertaining.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Have you seen these pocket-sized camcorders that are becoming popular? Flip Video were really the first ones to make these popular - little digital video recorders roughly the size and appearance of a smartphone (so it looks nothing like your typical camcorder), has lower resolution than your typical camcorder, but still has a decent feature set and a much lower price, which makes them very popular. I'd been ogling Flip's Ultra HD until I read a review on Flip's latest model, the MinoHD, which pointed me towards something supposedly better and less expensive by a competitor, the Kodak Zi8.

Why the sudden interest in digital camcorders? Well, it's not so sudden, as I've always liked video cameras, but could never afford one. More honestly, I could never justify the expense of most camcorders, much like the reason the wife and I have always gone with sub-$200 digital pocket-cams and not splurged on any of the $500+ DSLRs - we take quite a few pictures, but don't remember our cameras enough to justify the high price tag. Plus, as little as we do remember to take our camera with us, lugging all the gear of a full on SLR-bodied digital just makes no sense. So why even go for a dedicated video recorder when the pretty decent digital pocket camera we have now takes pretty decent videos, and is a great little camera? Admittedly, this is a lot of the reason why I haven't picked up one of these yet, but on the other hand, the digital video recorders operate better than my Pentax Optio as recorders of audio/visual information. Especially this is Kodak Zi8 I'm drooling over - 720p HD at 60fps or 1080p HD at 30fps, and it includes a jack to hook up a microphone to provide far better sound. Not only that, they have image stabilization, better storage capacity, and a longer battery life.

Just need to save up my pennies for the initial purchase, dust off my home-made steadycam mount, and get ready to really put some videos on YouTube. =D

SUBJECT CHANGE.

I learned recently that my father is most likely seeing on a regular basis the teenager that he cheated on my mother with. I can't begin to describe how conflicted I am with the whole situation. No, I'm not angry with my father for cheating on mom, as even I could see how unhappy they were the last decade of their marriage, I'm mostly angry because I had seen this situation before, with my dad, and warned him away from such a situation. What situation? Dating someone who is notably younger than his own children. My father is the type of guy that is not going to stop until he gets into a long-term relationship (ie: marriage), and there is no way in this world or the next that I'm going to call someone who is half my age "mom". I'm over thirty years old, I have a child of my own, and my own mom, thank you very much. And the word "grandmother" better never escape her lips.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

One of the outcomes of the SCA event of two weekends ago (yes, I started this post 2 weeks ago, and I'm still typing on it... I'll be done with it soon, I promise) is that I've actually worked on my armour, specifically the chainmail "buttflap" I have used on previous incarnations of my armour to keep my tushie protected. I've been making chainmail for a long time now, longer than I've been fighting in the SCA even. Because of this experience, and plethora of used maille laying about from previous projects, I was able to quickly piece together a large rectangle of maille, roughly a square yard in size. How much maille do I have laying about? Well, years ago I had begun a hauberk for myself, but never finished it, and had a lot of it laying about in pieces. Over the course of the last week, I managed to a) find all the pieces (you gotta love living out of boxes in the months following a move), b) separate out the pieces I just cannot use, and c) piece together a small towel's worth of chain. It's honestly more than I will need, but a good place to start. From here I need to cut the leather for the belt that will hold both the buttflap and the cuisses and knees of my leg harness, and attach the chainmail and start adjusting it down to the size I need.

Of course, I need to start winding coils once again, as I have several other outstanding projects that I need to finish up. I owe a bishop's mantle to Ruaidhri, I need more maille to make some chain sabatons for myself, and I have a bunch of stainless steel wire that is just begging to be turned into some really pretty maille, both for myself and for the lovely Denise. I could literally replace all of my current maille with stainless and have a completely stainless rig, but that means I need a lot of maille for the sabatons, camail, and the buttflap, and the stainless wire is expensive. We'll see how it goes after I've used up all I currently have. I have also decided that the Sam-monster (who has been running around the house with bits of chainmail clutched gleefully in her little hands all week long) needs a hauberk of her own, though not in the combat-weight 14ga galvanized steel wire I tend to make all my other maille out of. I think 18ga aluminum will be both small enough and light enough that it won't overbear the little one, though I'm definitely not going for the 7/16" ID loop I use for larger areas, and my preferred 5/16" is probably going to be too big as well. Have to experiment with some smaller winding rods, may even have to pick up some tools to handle the smaller wire better, but I've already found a source for inexpensive wire and have 500' of it on its way to me right now.

In related news, I thought I had purchased all the pieces of professionally-shaped metal I was going to need for this new suit of armour I'm working on, but after catching a couple of blows below my knees (knee and below is not a legal target in SCA combat), I decided it was probably a good idea to invest in some steel greaves. Oh, I had been planning on cutting some greaves out of the heavy leather I'd bought for that and other armour applications, but I don't have a pattern, and really like the look of steel greaves beneath a floating knee cop. Yes, when it comes to medieval fashion, I'm such a fashion whore. We also need to get Denise some better arm and leg armour of her own, and as we've liked Stonekeep Armory's prices, speed in delivering the goods, and the patterns they use, we'll probably be giving them a big chunk of business after the first of the year.

All this output comes with its own cost and that cost is that I still haven't done anything on my gauntlets. Fortunately, this week I go from practices on Monday in Columbia to Thursday night, and still keeping with the practices on Wednesday in Jeff City. That gives me at least 2 evenings that I could possibly get some things done to one or both of the gauntlets. Even if I could just get my left one up and running, than I could add sword and spear to the very short list of options I currently have (sword 'n' board and florentine). We have cleaned up the garage to the extent that I've actually got enough room to maneuver and soon I'll have my bench vise mounted, and can start in on all the various weapon projects I have. The boxes are starting to melt away and leave our possessions in their place, just need to get rid of a bunch of stuff we've tagged as unwanted, clear up even more space around our domicile.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

That is just too many words, and is the result of not finishing this up sooner. Today is just encouraging to both write more and finish this up right here. How? The boffins over in our Information Management section have managed to choke off our internet connection, either through system upgrades, patches, or down servers, to the point where we can't even get to half of the systems we have need of, which makes me look for something outside of work to occupy my time (like writing on this journal). But since the internet is pretty much nonexistant for us at the moment, I can't look up all the spiffy links I like to include in these posts. Quite a predicament, isn't it? I believe I'll leave it at that for this post, bid you all a good week, and start up next weekend's posts, wherein we find our heroes attempting to keep all of the in-laws from tearing out each others' throats at my daughter's first birthday party. Stay tuned!

|/|/hiskey ]{ilo ]-[otel

The Math of Commuting

2009-10-08T18:37:00.006-05:00

Dear Higher Power/All Powerful Force/Ancestors Who Watch Over Us,

I am sore as hell after taking the Army Physical Fitness Test two days ago, and would like to lodge a complaint. In our modern world we have better materials available to us and I demand an upgrade to my chasis - titanium skeleton, carbon fiber sinews, and teflon joints at the very least. I could definitely do with more powerful muscles, a faster brain, and a better designed back. I know my scoliosis isn't as bad as it could be, but with today's structural engineering and physiologic knowledge, surely we can come up with a better system?

Yours in pain,
William K. Haworth

PS: The Army would still get their due out of us - we wouldn't have APFTs any more, just 10,000 mile tune-ups and joint rotations.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

So I'm listening the other day to my two favorite chuckleheads with a podcast, Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier, and they were having a discussion about literature. Please understand that while I greatly appreciate their work - I have almost all of their works on DVD - I don't live, eat, and breathe all things of the View Askew production team. I don't have all of their tchotchkes (though I did buy my then minister father a Buddy Christ for Christmas one year), I don't hang out on their forums, and I don't follow their various Twitter feeds. Oh wait, I don't follow ANYONE on Twitter, but that's beside the point. I like Kev and Scott enough to watch their films and listen to their podcast, but they are not the brightest guys in the world. I'm about 30 to 40 episodes in and they're finally bringing along a computer with a 'net connection with them so they can search Wikipedia when they discuss something they have absolutely no idea about. Which, sadly, is quite often. You want a laugh? Track down and listen to the episode where they talked about Helen Keller. Funny, in that "what an idiot you are!" kind of way.

Anyway, so an episode I'm listening to actually made me stop and ponder something I'd never thought of before - the Biblical story of Noah and the Ark. There are a lot of things wrong with this story that suddenly bug me. I mean, several parts of the story have always bugged me (the boat is how long and they have 2 of every animal aboard? right...), but the new parts that bug me just kind of jumped out to me the other day. For example - Noah built the Ark and only he and his family (plus 2 of every animal, don't forget), as they were God's chosen people to survive the flood, and the only people allowed to live. What, no one else had a boat? None of the other people in the world, sinners great and small, had a boat? This on top of the implication that all of humanity sprang from the loins of God's chosen (first time from Adam & Eve, and this second time from Noah's family), which begs the question to explain our obvious biodiversity when we only come (twice, no less!) from one small gene pool.

Earlier, I had more of a rant planned out about religion, Christianity, faith, and science, but I'm just not feeling it now. Let's just leave it at the fact that the Bible as a historical account is very sketchy, but some of what it teaches in the New Testament is not all bad. If you are a Christian, I urge you to eschew the Jewish/Islamic roots of the Old Testament and hew to the New. Probably the greatest teaching in that particular tome is "do unto others as you would have them do unto you", and the rest can be considered window dressing for the organized church.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

The Hard and Fast Math of My Daily Commute

39.1 miles one way distance travelled, at roughly 45 minutes each way (depending on traffic). 78.2 miles per day (down and back), and an hour and a half on the road, coming to a total of 391 miles and seven and a half hours per week.

One tank of gas costs $25 (with today's gas at 2.199/gallon, call it $28 every tank to get a decent average of gas prices since I've begun the new job) and lasts 300 miles before the next fill up. One oil change costs $30 (I use Valvoline Max Life and an oil stabilizer to help with leaky seals, neither of which are terribly cheap, but they do keep the vehicles happy) and they come every 5,000 miles. Also, the car currently has 189,000 miles on it and will most likely die around the 250K mark (if not sooner... *crosses fingers* please not sooner), requiring another $8,000 investment in another vehicle.

Time I would like to be done with this job: January 1st, 2013. Roughly 167 weeks from the start of next week, minus 4 weeks a year for earned vacation (I have upwards of 8 weeks right now, but I'm not counting those as "fudge factor" - schools, work-related trips, sick days, whatnot) so call it 155 weeks left of commuting.

The equations:
(250,000 minus 189,000) divided by 391 equals 156 weeks (give or take) until the Corsica's engine gives up the fight, so we'll just assume (yes yes, making an "ass" out of "u" and "me") that I don't have to purchase another vehicle (but I'm still saving up for it, because that's too damned close for comfort). (391 times 155) divided by 300 times $28 equals $5,656 in gas purchases over the next 3 years. ((250,000 minus 190,000) divided by 5 plus 1) times $30 equals $390 in 13 oil changes over the next 3 years.

Grand total for my daily commute, $6,046 in fuel and oil costs and 1,162 hours, 30 minutes (or 48 and a little under a half days) spent on the road. That's really not as bad as I thought it'd be, though if I have to replace the Corsica in the next couple of years (always a valid possibility as the engine is not the only thing that can break down and make me replace it), it'll easily get pricey.

On a related note, even though there's no way I'd pick one up, I really like the looks of Honda's new CR-Z, the revamp of their popular CR-X. As a hybrid, no less, but the car still looks damn hot. Kind of like the recent change to the Mitsubishi Lancer, just something about that new front end that I really like. Which is odd for me, as it's been a long time since I've really liked the looks of a car (the 1978 Datsun 280z was about the last production car I really dug both the performance specs AND the looks of). To me, as much money as vehicles cost these days, getting use and reliability out of them are far more important than how cool I think they look or if I like the color they come in. Much to the consternation of my mother.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Damn, the Nintendo Wii is down to $199, brand new. Have to keep an eye out for one after the holidays, as well as a copy of Twilight Princess and Zelda Wii, whenever it comes out.

The PlayStation 3 has also come down in price, and while I wouldn't mind having an inexpensive BluRay player, since it's not backwards compatible with the other PS consoles, I'm just avoiding it. BluRay is spiffy-neato and all, I just don't have any great need to update my A/V components to fully appreciate the upgrade, not to mention updating my movie collection from DVD to BluRay. And the XBox 360 (to be complete in our Console Roundup) - let's just skip past that and pretend that name never came up.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

The Society for Creative Anachronism is in a membership crisis, especially in the realm of armoured combat. Due to economic factors and the glut of hobbies, interests, and entertainment available to folks in the 1st and 2nd World these days, less and less people are joining the fighting ranks of the SCA, which is not a looming problem in the more populated areas of the East and West Coasts of America, but will soon be sharply felt in the less-densely populated Midwest. When I first ran across the SCA, the options for medieval/fantasy-minded people were a few TV shows (generally bad), books (Tolkien was the best, and the rest followed almost lockstep upon his trail), movies (Conan was considered high art, if that tells you anything), and games like Joust and Gauntlet. Oh, and a lot of us were playing Dungeons & Dragons.

Yes, I first ran into the SCA back in the late 1980s, but didn't get into active participation until about a decade later. Still, at a decade later, roughly 1996, there hadn't been many more options to come out. A few more books, a few more movies and TV shows, and a few more video games, but not anything terribly revolutionary. Not only that, but the economy at the time allowed most SCA armourers to offer "get on the field" specials - a basic helm, gorget, elbows, knees, and hand protection for a very low price (I remember $300 being the average). It wasn't fantastic armour, to be sure, but it was enough to, as advertised, get you on the field and fighting. Nowadays, $300 will barely buy you a helmet, and the only basic kit I could find is this, which is still minus the helmet and hand protection. Not only has the rise in prices hurt our recruiting, but the employment crisis has also hurt us. Many of our very active participants in the SCA over the last 40 years haven't been what you would call steadily employed. A decade ago, it was common for most people to seriously consider quitting their job in favor of a large event, even though the same event was going to happen again next year. And many of them chose the SCA over steady employment. Nowadays, no one with any lick of sense would quit their jobs for a mere hobby, especially with the national unemployment rate climbing rapidly towards 20%.

Admittedly, the dip in the economy and high unemployment rate had nothing to do with the SCA. The rise in prices of SCA combat armour, on the other hand, has everything to do with the SCA. Most of the armourers that were around a decade ago are no longer in business. A majority of those that are still here have changed what they offer, diversified to offer items other than armour, or have been gathered up into someone else's business. Why? It turns out that even barely-functional combat armour tends to last for decades of useable service. Look at my first helmet, which was admittedly nasty - it was simple, ugly, way too big for me, but still functional and screamingly cheap at the time (I paid for the metal in it and the rest in elbow-grease) - and realize that if I padded it back up and put a chin strap in it, it would more than pass a field inspection and I could fight in it. Business models that don't gather in enough cash at the sale for product that is rarely going to be replaced tend to not last. Not only are the professional armourers raising their prices due to the lack of repeat business, but also to the rise in cost of metal. This is also hurting the amateur armourers, who, for many of us in the SCA, were the source of our first sets of armour - we'd buy the basic materials (a 4'x8' sheet of 14ga mild steel and a 55-gallon plastic chemical barrel provided more than enough material for a real basic set of armour), provide a lot of "sweat equity", and become another fighter. The cost of metal has almost doubled in the past decade, not to mention tools, and this has shut many of the backyard armourers down as well. Of course, many of said amateurs were hoping to turn armouring in the SCA into a full-time job, and the reality is that that's not very likely, even a decade ago.

Going back to the other options available to medieval/fantasy-minded individuals, 1997 saw the introduction of a new form of what would turn out to be very popular entertainment: the MMORPG. The grandaddy of them all, Ultima Online, comes out in 1997, wasn't nearly as popular as the games that followed (with a mere 250,000 players at its peak), but they opened up the door and let in the like of such monsters as EverQuest (500,000 to 1 million subscribers between EQ and EQ2 and World of Warcraft (10 million subscribers in 2008). {I got my numbers from MMOGCHART.COM, just for reference.} Here's an inexpensive (compared to the cost of a full set of SCA armour, at any rate) form of entertainment that is directly aimed at people who are in the SCA or may become interested in the SCA, and it's a lot easier to sit behind a computer and click a mouse than it is to suit up and fight. In addition to the Empire of WoW, we've gotten a spate of really good medieval/fantasy movies (the Lord of the Rings Trilogy springs immediately to mind) and books (George RR Martin's Fire and Ice saga is a great example), as well as more and more info coming to the internet which makes the finding of good stuff like the aforementioned, gives potential new recruits to the SCA other outlets for their time and money. And that doesn't take into account all of the other entertainments that are out there - tons of tabletop RPGs and wargames, rise of popularity of paintball, 3 major video game consoles, 2 major handheld consoles, computers and the internet, hundreds of channels on cable and satellite, more people writing and publishing books (both physically and electronically) than you could possibly read just the titles of, much less the books themselves, sports to participate in, sports to watch, and the list goes on and on - all of it is fun and interesting, all of it distracts from the SCA, as these other hobbies and interests require time, money, and effort, just like the SCA.

Between this glut of easier entertainment and negative economic pressures, we are going to find it harder and harder to attract fresh blood into SCA fighting. What can we do to fix it? It's obvious - convince the religious right that MMORPGs are Satan's Playgrounds, they'll outlaw MMORPGs, and we'll gain the enmity of millions of people around the world forever. *blinkblink* Wait, that's not the answer. Seriously, the best we can do is to work on making the interested parties that we do get feel even more welcome and their time in the SCA more enjoyable. The biggest thing we can do is to tone down the drama. The other part is that we need to encourage the armour-makers in our midst to open up their shops to the local populace and hold regular armour-making nights, be it once a week, every other week, or even only once a month.

In a related note, here's some good advice on getting started on SCA armour and paintball gear of your own. And with that, I will leave you there for the week.

|/|/hiskey ]{ilo ]-[otel

silly monkeys, stay quadrepedal!

2009-10-03T20:36:00.002-05:00

If you own a business or have any say in its design or layout, do not put your parking lot directly west of your main entrance. Your employees, at least those who are working the daytime hours, will spend all of their time squinting either on their way in from the car in the morning or on the way to their car in the late afternoon. In related news, the Army black beret is still the most useless piece of headgear invented by man (it provides no protection from the elements or the sun, doesn't keep your head warm in the winter, but does make it too hot in the summer, and no two berets look alike, which it's supposed as it's part of a "uniform").

Why yes, I walk directly into the sun going into and away from work, wearing an Army black beret 5 days a week. Who would have guessed?

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Wow, Internet Explorer - jealous much? I noticed (and not recently; I'm not quite that dense) that IE7 has introduced tab browsing to the Micro-masses, much like their main rival Firefox has offered, and been offering for a long time now. And Firefox does it better, hands down. How much better? An analogy of countries putting people on the moon, Firefox is the United States of America and IE7 is France - they have the capabilities to launch things out of Earth's atmosphere, just no drive to put anyone on the moon. In Firefox, anything I click - and I mean ANYTHING - with the mouse wheel immediately pops that link into a new tab. I can click on a link in my bookmarks, a Java-script button, even the forwards and backwards links inherent to my back and forwards buttons and my browsing history. On top of that, every folder inside my bookmarks has the option at the bottom to "open all in tabs", which makes it very easy for those of us who hit certain websites on a regular basis as a group. In IE7, who integrated this technology in after seeing what Firefox could do with it, you can only click on an HTML link inside a webpage and get it to open in a new tab, and no "open in all tabs" option in Favorites. On top of that, when I open a link in a new tab in FF, it feels slick, opens quickly, and I hardly even think about it when I'm doing it. In IE7 it feels gonky, opens like the processor is also calculating moon-shot trajectories, and switching between tabs is a chore as if you click it just slightly wrong, IE7 misinterprets that as a desire to move that tab and keeps you from doing anything else until you take care of that issue. All in all, I feel glad that I use FF at home, and pissed off that I have to use IE7 at work.

And don't get me started on Microsoft Office 2007 that we all had to "upgrade" to in the past year. MS has stumbled big time in the last couple of years, with Office '07, Vista, IE6, and its continued foray into the hardware market. The sad thing is, as a company they're doing really well. Why they feel the need to constantly compete with Apple in every aspect of the market and try to straddle the fence for both console and PC gaming, I have no idea, but they continue to pursue silly things. And make a lot of money off of them. *sigh*

I can't wait until they migrate us all to Vista later this year. Great. All of the machines we work on now chug under XP. This is a super idea, guys, can't wait 'til my workstation is totally and utterly useless, between the so-called upgraded performance I'm receiving from Office '07 and IE7, and then the hardware hog that Vista is. S'gonna be just a little slice o' awesome.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Years ago while I was on deployment in Iraq, I ran across an article in National Geographic about the cost of walking upright, and it was so awesome it stuck with me. Well, something reminded me of it today (29 Sep 09) and after a little Googling, I found it. It even contains the anecdote of a former politician who, not having enough mental storage to remember EVERYONE'S name, simply asks everybody how their back is doing, and four times out of five, that person has back pain. We humans are such odd collections of compromises, physiologically, just to remain upright. Some people use humanity's bipedism as proof of a higher power ("it's obvious there's a God, as who else could have blessed us with being able to walk upright?"), while others use it as proof against a higher power ("if someone were really to design us to walk upright, don't you think they would have designed us better than this?"). While being very anti-organized religion, I have not fully discounted the possibility of a higher power, so I leave it to you to figure out how this information effects your religion. Or not.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

How many days are in August? How many in June? Do you know off-hand, or do you use the "knuckle trick"? Oh, haven't heard of the knuckle trick? Let me show you, via Google-fu!

SUBJECT CHANGE.

With the glut of reasonably-priced, high-performance paintball markers hitting the market in the last couple of years, I've been perusing the sale boards for deals on some of the lighter, more compact models. Why? Eh, why not? I don't want to join the tournament paintball crowd, but having a really light, compact electroflinger in the gear bag as an option is definitely good and in lockstep with my ethos of bringing enough gear to meet any eventuality. Of note, I've been looking at 3 markers for their tiny size, extreme lightness, low price point, and barrel threading (they all use the most common barrel threading of the paintball industry - Autococker). The size, weight, and price point were the must-have features when I was compiling this list, but barrel threading got added to the list when it became apparent that there are a lot of light, compact markers out there at the low end of the cost spectrum. Hey, I've already got a lot of markers in my own collection that are 'cocker threaded (the Tribals, the one 'cocker I currently have, as well as a couple of the 'mags), so I won't have to drop any money into barrels in the event I do actually pick up one of these markers. My want to find decent markers in the tiny'n'light category is not entirely to please my own ascetic taste, but partially an unaltruistic bid to make it easier and more enjoyable for my lovely wife to fling paint. Hey, I'm just following the advice of the experts, it's not entirely my fault.

Other options I've been looking for are almost standard on all electropneumatic markers these days, and I only mention them out of a sense of completeness - break-beam anti-chop eyes and a removable feedneck (stock ones tend to suck, and replacements aren't that expensive and save you a ton of headache). And yes, I did impulse buy a 2005 Proto Matrix recently, and I'm still tinkering with it, but it's not quite as light or compact as the three markers I'm eyeballing. I also freely admit that

Here's the markers I'm keeping a watch for good deals on: the Invert Mini, the Dangerous Power G3, and the Proto Matrix Rail. The Mini is what started this search, as I'd never seen anything so light and compact in a paintball marker before. Admittedly, there are some automags that are nearly the same compactness as a Mini, but nowhere near the lightness, so when I first held one of these tiny featherweights, I started paying more attention to what was going on in the world of electroflingers. The Mini is, to be quite honest, an odd duck in the paintball world - it has a permanently affixed regulator/ASA combo at the bottom of the trigger frame and its electronics and battery lie inside its front grip, where most other markers use a vertical regulator as the front grip and place the electronics and battery in the trigger frame. For me, it's almost perfect - tiny marker, very light, very plain and functional in looks, takes 'cocker barrels, and has very little in the way of upgrades (more in a sec) - but it's the permanently attached regulator that makes me hesitate. It has become the norm in paintball to mount the ASA directly to the grip frame, which I hate. I've long been a fan of drops and angle adapters, so this has gotten me leery. There is a guy on one of my favorite forums who has gathered pre-orders for an adapter, and I've already tossed my hat in that ring, but as I haven't heard anything from the gent in question since April (whereupon he dumped all of the woes of his life ontot me), I doubt I'll ever see said adapter. Hope springs eternal, just not holding my breath.

The Dangerous Power G3 is another newcomer to the scene, a smaller company who has come out with some well-received markers and the G3 is their low price point entry into the market, but with a lot of the features I want - 'cocker threaded barrel, very compact and light, has a feedneck threaded in the popular Matrix threading, takes a standard ASA-threaded inline regulator, and you can even change out the ASA on the bottom of the trigger frame, or throw in a drop or a power angle. There are, however, troubling reports about the quality of the stock regulator and factory-supplied macroline connectors, so those would be almost immediate replacements, which isn't admittedly too hard as I do have an excess MacDev Gladiator floating around my parts bin, and I just need to bite the bullet and invest in a bulk order of straight and 90* elbow macroline connectors for all my various projects.

Last on the hit parade is easily the most recognizable name of the three, the Proto Matrix Rail. To begin with, Proto is DYE's little brother, carrying pretty much everything that DYE has, usually at a lower price point and with fewer "features", and the PMR (as it's known in the world of paintflingers) is pretty much a Proto Matrix with some cheaper materials, most notably a carbon fiber grip frame and a one-piece stock barrel, and also by getting completely rid of the low-pressure regulator assembly and feeding the solenoid off the HPR stream. I'm getting more familiar with the inner workings of the Matrix series via my aforementioned impulse buy, and one thing it does have going for it over the other two is that it uses a microswitch to tell when you pull the trigger and the other two use an optical sensor to see when a little piece of the trigger occludes it. Microswitches are better in this application as there's less "fudge" factor of when the marker fires - it fires when the switch *clicks*. You don't have to worry about your optical sensors getting gunged up, or where exactly your sensors decide they've become occluded, and you get a very satisfying tactile response when the switch closes. Other than that, the PMR does have some downsides as it is easily the least compact and lightweight of the three in this particular throwdown. The removal of the LPR from the Matrix design also makes me a little leery, as most solenoids have a max rating of around 200psi, and most of these markers operate around 150 to 175psi - not a lot of room for error there. Though, now that I look at the designs closer, none of the 3 I've mentioned here have an LPR to regulate the flow into their solenoids. It's a strange new world I've stumbled into, and I didn't even realize I was living it until now.

For those of you interested in more on these markers, I like the following reviews on YouTube (*WARNING* This guy has a foul mouth and these videos are definitely NSFW. You have been warned.*WARNING*) - review for the G3, review for the Mini, and review for the PMR.

All of this is a mental exercise, as I'm definitely not making any big purchases through the end of the year: new car payments, taxes and tags on said new car, our 3rd anniversary, both Samantha and Denise's birthday, and let's not forget Christmas.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

*huh* There may yet be hope for my color-blind ass.

And in zombie-related news, the best way to avoid zombies can be decided by physics. I think I'd still head for the country-side in the event of a zombpocalypse - less complicated structures yes, but the bigger benefit is less people to turn into zombies in the more rural areas.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

And with that, I'm going to close it down for this week. I have drill (and a PT test *bleh*) this weekend, so my week will finally end next week on Thursday (I took Friday off so Denise could get a couple of days away from the kiddo). Have a good weekend and we'll see you all next week!

|/|/hiskey ]{ilo ]-[otel

hmm love that new car smell...

2009-09-25T20:02:00.001-05:00

Today (the 23rd of September, 2009) I'm just beat. Spent most of last night sitting around a local car dealership, as we're trying to buy a second car so that Denise, when she goes back to college next semester, has something more fuel efficient for around town driving than the Envoy she's currently using. We're not trading anything in - I will continue to commute to and from Jefferson City in the Corsica until the wheels fall off and the engine craps out, and the Envoy will mostly sit around waiting for us to go to an event or practice or anything else that requires we take a lot of stuff with us and/or go a long distance (it's easily the most comfortable and has the most amenities) - and we're financing half of it, even though we can pay for it all and still have enough left over for taxes, title, and tags. We don't have the vehicle yet as we didn't get to the dealership early enough in the day and their creditors left before we got to that point. Not a big deal, as they were going to detail it and replace the battery, and we've already put down the half that we weren't financing, so we should be able to finalize the deal tonight.

Why are we financing any of it if we can afford to own it outright? One of the biggest arguments against financing vehicles is that with new vehicles, they automatically lose upwards of $10,000 of value the minute you drive 'em off the lot, which is why you should never purchase a car you can't put half down on - if you need to sell it before you pay it off, you're not going to get your money back on the original loan, and still owe for a vehicle you are no longer driving. This is not in effect as this is definitely not a new car, so whatever value it was going to lose after being sold for new, it's lost it.

The other main argument is that while you are "renting the car from the bank", you have to maintain full coverage insurance on it (required by law) to protect the lien holder's investement. In my wilder youth when my insurance rates were unreasonably high (I had one accident where I bumped another car, which broke the plastic bumper cover, and they doubled my rate because it was a "major" accident - auto insurance is a monopolistic scam, don't let anyone tell you differently) and my various jobs didn't pay enough to afford full coverage insurance, it was easier to adopt basic liability. Nowadays, now that all my accidents and misdemeanors have fallen off my license, my wife has nothing on her license, and we're both married, older than 25, and have a kid, full coverage auto insurance is far more affordable. Incidentally, as poor as the drivers in America are these days, full coverage is what we carry on our vehicles, even though we own them outright. So adding another car is not going to increase our payments drastically.

So there's no real good reason NOT to finance all or part of this new vehicle, but there are some good reasons TO finance a portion of it, and the main one is pretty obvious - build mine and Denise's respective credit ratings. We've applied for a 36 month loan, which we're planning on paying off in about 18 to 20 months - 18+ months of regular payments is what you're shooting for, but no sense in giving the loan company any more interest money than necessary. That'll start us on the road to making our collective credit reports look better. Next step is to acquire some more credit cards and start up paying the monthly bills with the cards and then immediately paying off the cards. You don't accrue interest that way, but the constant churn of load and then payment on the cards improves your credit rating.

*UPDATE* We got the car last night (23 September 2009). Got raped on the interest rate (15.99) and paid an exorbitant amount for a new 3 year warranty, but all for the greater good of building credit. Now to go on the offensive with the credit agencies and Chex Systems. *evil grin*

And while we were in the office with the finance guy, I saw proof of the loss of value of new cars - it was a poster advertising gap insurance. What other proof do you need? Their is such a noticeable gap between the actual value of a vehicle and what you still owe on a loan that a portion of the auto insurance industry has jumped on the bandwagon to make money off of it. Tell me again why I would ever want to buy a new car at today's overinflated prices?

SUBJECT CHANGE.

As you know, I've been listening to the SModcast, Writing Excuses, and the podcast for Computer Gaming World/Games for Windows, which has provided me with some decent variety as well as a decent backlog to work through. The problem that I'm currently looking at is that the backlog is going to dry up, probably before the end of the year, considering how much I listen to every day on my daily commute, not to mention during all those long drives to the various briefings and schools I've been attending of late. Not only that, but the GFW Radio podcast has already stopped making episodes, half a year after the eponymous magazine went the way of the dodo, and the other two are not all that great about putting up episodes on a timely or regular basis. Quite understandably, I've been looking further afield for the day when I find myself sans fresh podcast material on the way to or from work.

In my search I stumbled across the fact that my current computer gaming magazine, PC Gamer, has their own weekly podcast, and I've started listening to them from the beginning so I can get them caught up with GFW Radio, which I've left off at the beginning of 2007. The PCGPodcast isn't nearly as entertaining as GFW is, but they have already had 2 big names in the industry out of their first 4 episodes, so there is value to be gained. Their first guest on the show is game designer Chris Taylor, of Total Annihilation, Dungeon Siege, and Supreme Commander fame, and guess what they asked him about? You guessed it, that wonderful movie I talked about it an earlier post, Uwe Boll's In the Name of the King. Of course, when the interview was performed back in 2005, this was well before the actual movie had come out, and Taylor was under contractual onus, but he had nothing but good things to say about Boll and hopes for the movie. Turns out, the movie was crap and an incredible waste of Boll's money (because he finances all of his movies himself). I don't know where he gets all the cash to do all of these terrible flops, but he needs to send some my way. I can't do much worse than he has. I hope.

But I didn't stop there, as I have been casting further afield for interesting things to listen to. The next runner up, of which I have had little time to actually download and give a try, is the GeekDads podcast, which has a very disappointing archive. GeekDad, as you may or may not already know, is one of the many attendant journals that the online 'zine, Wired.com, maintains. The journal is very enjoyable, constantly pointing out to all of us geeky parents things we can do with our kids (like what you can do to celebrate the birthdays of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins), good shows and books to watch out for, and even reviews of geeky items as it pertains to the kiddos. I believe that once I get around the gonky way they've archived the podcasts, I'll gladly add this one (and its cousin, the GeekDads Hip Trax podcast, that is focused on geeky music for you and your little geeks) to the line up. More information as it becomes available.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Speaking of Wired, the more I read that magazine, the more I can't wait until subscription renewal time comes around and I can ignore it. Seriously guys, love your articles and the website, but you have to stop being so damned artsy AND commercialized (yes, all at the same time) - I understand you need to make money, but either up the price for the huge, annoying ads (some of which are thick cardstock that just ruin the experience of reading from a physical magazine) or drop some of your advertisers. As for the page numbers, is it really too conformist to put them in the same place throughout the entire magazine, instead of randomly putting them wherever your art director says they go? Let's agree that everyone likes to easily identify page numbers, especially when you follow the annoying practice of splitting up your articles (which one of my other magazine faves, Popular Science, does all the bloody time and I don't like it from them, either), so put the bloody page numbers back in the lower corner furthest away from the spine and leave them there. And put a number on all of the pages of the magazine, whether they have an article or an advertisement! *grrr*

And with that, I'm calling it a week. Got family coming in this weekend for Mom's birthday, and just trying to take care of things all over the house. Enjoy yourselves and be good. Notice I said nothing about "behave".

|/|/hiskey ]{ilo ]-[otel

what can I say that you'll believe?

2009-09-22T19:29:00.001-05:00

Am I the only one that is glad that most poor drivers on the roads today (colloquially known as "douchebags") drive cars that easily identify them as such? And did anyone else notice that the Dodge Charger has become the douchebag ride of choice, replacing the Ford Mustang?

The odd things I think about during my daily commute. Don't ask me about the bloody idiot in the expensive Mercedes-Benz SUV that couldn't figure out how to work a cruise control, much less keep a constant speed. Or the idiot in the bright "pull me over, policeman!" red Mazda 3 that thought he could get me to speed up by sitting right on top of my rear bumper. Have you seen my commuting vehicle? It's a '95 Chevy Corsica with 187K on the odometer and looks it. Go ahead, rear-end me; I'm sure your insurance will appreciate having to pay me for that hunk of junk and will express that displeasure by jacking your rates into the stratosphere. Plus, you'll have to pay to repair (and get the "beater car funk" off) of your shiny little commuter. Enjoy.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Denise and I have been playing the hell out of Plants vs Zombies, and let me give you my quickie review: if you have a Steam account, do yourself a favor and spend the $10 to get this game. Now for the long review: wow, you sure get a lot of game for $10 out of this. Your basic gameplay, if you've been hiding underneath a rock and haven't seen anything about the game, is a very simplified version of the recently very popular tower defense genre of games - you have a yard, zombies are trying to come across that yard to eat your brains, and you are planting various offensive and defensive plants in the yard in their path to stop them. Sounds simple, right? And it is simple, but the things they offer up to you in just the basic course of play make this game HIGHLY enjoyable to play through at least a couple of times. Which doesn't count in all the variations of the base gameplay PopCap has included to keep you coming back for more - zombie bowling, invisible zombie invasion, slot machine resources, and even a game where you break open vases and either get plants or zombies. On top of this, you can buy gardens for yourself (regular, night time, and water, as well as a Tree of Knowledge) which you can tend and get more money (sunlight is the basic resource for purchasing plants in-game, but money lets you buy seeds and other useful options from the guy who wears a pot on his head, Crazy Dave). Play enough of the game and they eventually let you play survival mode, where they just continually throw zombies at you in a never-ending stream to see how many waves you can survive.

Bottom line - if you've got a spare $10, go buy this game and play it. It's fun, humorous (they had a Michael-Jackson-in-Thriller-costume zombie before the actual Jacko perished, so it's allowable and still funny), and is really good looking, all while being an incredible value.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Much to my surprise, there are 2 other soldiers in the Missouri Army Guard in the Jefferson City area that are also fighters in the SCA. Also surprising is that both of them are knights. Now, you have to understand that the SCA just isn't my life. Most people who participate in the SCA live, breathe, eat, and exist in the SCA whether they're at an event, practice, or meeting or not. I am not one of those people, nor could I be one of those people in any of my hobbies (paintball, video games, etc), and I'm not belittling those people who are that way. Personally, I don't want to live the SCA, at least not like I used to. I'm perfectly happy with my participation beginning and ending at the edge of the list field, but I'm not alone in this anymore - I have a lovely wife who has been a part of the SCA for most of her life. Hey, she's good enough to me to want to go play paintball (which, after seeing how excited she was to jump out of a plane on her recent vacation, admittedly she might have done without me), I have to return the favor and expand my participation to suit her wants.

In that vein of participating more in the SCA, I've been pondering over which knight I should squire to. I have many friends who wear the white belt or baldric and would generally not have any problem with finding someone who would be amenable to taking me on as a squire, but I've been hesitant to commit as there are a few things I've been looking for in a knight. The biggest thing is that whoever the unlucky bastard ends up being, they have to understand that the Army Guard comes first, my family comes second, and my hobbies (to include the SCA) come a distant fifth. Possibly even sixth. A lot of knights live the SCA, which is why they're knights - they've put in their time and given their blood, sweat, and tears to their hobby. As such, a lot of knights expect of their squires the same thing, so it is paramount that I find someone who understands that I cannot be that person.

Next in line is that I need someone who I'm local to. Because of my new job in the military, I find myself on the road for various support missions more and more, so regular attendance of SCA events is generally out of the question. Regular attendance of practices during the week is also unattainable, but I generally attend far more practices than any other thing, so if I want a knight/squire relationship, I would prefer it be with someone I'm going to see at practices.

Last on the list goes back to the reason for this exercise: whoever I pick has to be amenable to my lady wife and daughter. A lot of the politics and drama in the SCA revolve around the personal interrelations in the SCA. Basically, the drama boils down to who hates and dislikes who. Knights and squires tend to spend a lot of time around each other, both in and out of the SCA, and so I must find someone that not only I can get along with, but also my family can get along with. And not only with the knight and their family, but also the other squires and their families. I don't expect that we'll be all hunky-dory with everyone on that list (no one can get along with everyone else), but as long as we can get along with the knight and his family, and a majority of the other squires and families, then we'll be golden.

Which brings us back to my recent discovery of not one, but two MOARNG knights. I'm not saying that if I'm going to be a squire again it has to be one of those two knights, but it does take care of my big necessity - who else would understand my service to the Guard better than another soldier in the Guard? I'm still observing knights in the area, and all possibles are being researched (ie: I talk to them and hit them with sticks... okay, they hit me with sticks, and I flail about in their general direction), but no planned movement in the near future.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Speaking of videogaming deals, check out a little game with a horribly forgettable name, Depths of Peril (that links to the demo, I'm all about ease of use around here). I'd played the demo a while back, gotten hooked on it, and then forgot about it in the shuffle that is my life. Something reminded me about it recently, and looked up the article that had turned me onto it originally. Turns out it's not only fun, it's also affordable, at about $20 for a new copy. If you liked Diablo and its sequel, you'll like this game. It doesn't have really great graphics, but the new gameplay it features makes it a very engaging game. Good work from an indie developer.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

As I have noted, and others have as well, the National Guard currently has the highest enlistment standards out of the Army triumvirate (Army, Army Reserves, Army National Guard) due to the fact that we are overstrength. For the last couple of years, if you could fog a mirror with your breath, you were eligible for enlistment and also for some hefty incentives ($20K in student loan repayment, $20K in bonuses, and even an extra $350 a month for the GI Bill), which did exactly what it was intended to do - bring the NG's strength up to support overseas operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And I'm all for tightening up the standards, especially some of the bottom-of-the-barrel recruits I saw in my unit when I was still a unit admin clerk. Sadly, I see this as just one part of the rollercoaster - we need people so we overreact to get them in and suddenly we've got too many and need to reduce strength, which we do but we go too far, and we start the process over again. My vote is to tighten the standards (like they currently are) and work harder on retention of decent soldiers at all levels. Why? I'd like to have a decent, intelligent conversation with a majority of my soldiers instead of what I'm getting now from the majority. How bad is it? Let's just say there are reasons the Army puts our names on our shirts.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

In a zombie-related note, I decided to follow a suggestion from Kurt (garnished from the Writing Excuses podcast, just haven't gotten to that episode myself yet), and mined my Gmail account's spam folder for fiction-ready names to give to characters in a story. 300-some odd names out of 400+ spam messages, that's a pretty decent ratio. And everyone says that spam is just a waste of time.

Why is this zombie-related? Stay tuned to find out the details of my nefarious plot.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Someone has combined the Beatles and Metallica, to form the most awesome metal band ever, Beatallica! I can't make this stuff up, seriously. And they have two albums up on YouTube, complete with videos for some of the songs, Masterful Mystery Tour and Sgt Hetfield's Motorbreath Pub Band.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Okay, I tried, I really did. I tried to watch Pineapple Express and I apparently don't do enough mind-altering substances to appreciate this movie. Note that wasn't "fully appreciate", it was merely "appreciate". I got about halfway through the movie before the utter, drug-induced idiocy of Seth Rogen's character (and the other moron who's name I will never remember, 'cause I don't do marijuana) turned me completely off. I just couldn't stand it anymore, and I understand the movie wasn't made for me, but was it terribly necessary to stop the whole movie to show how stupid our protagonists are (especially under the influence of drugs, let's not forget that) multiple times in the first 45 minutes? I generally like Seth Rogen, better than other comedic actors that are popular at the moment, but this movie just fails to hold my interest.

Admittedly, the 10 minutes at the beginning where they showed how Rogen's character, the process server, went about his daily life was interesting, even with the constant drug use. That was funny, but after that it just got painful. Apparently it gets better closer to the end, but I just couldn't stand any more of it, and turned it off before it began to get better. Your mileage may vary.

Speaking of Seth Rogen movies, Observe and Report looks interesting, will probably give that one a try.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

I'm going to end that here and post it as soon as I think about it (hopefully tonight, but we've got a lot of stuff to take care of tonight), start up a new ranting and raving post for next weekend. Enjoy!

|/|/hiskey ]{ilo ]-[otel

Wherein our heroes have become field mice...

2009-09-07T10:27:00.006-05:00

My, what a predicament! How shall our intrepid heroes ever deal with becoming field mice? As long as we don't have to bell the proverbial cat, we should be okay.

Wait, what's that? A tiger?! That's it, I quit!

SUBJECT CHANGE.

So I've finally broken down and succumbed to peer and technological pressure - I've finally purchased a game via Steam. I had been reluctant in the past as while I enjoy digital entertainment, I prefer physical media. Call me old fashioned ("you're old fashioned!" sayeth Mike and the robots), but I trust something I can hold in my hand, and distrust having to trust someone else to remember that I own a game and give me access to it. Which is what you're doing by purchasing games via Steam - you won't receive a game disc, you merely are purchasing the right to, on whatever computer you install and log onto Steam with, download that game and then play it. I have to admit that it works fairly well. I say "fairly well" because the minute you lose 'net connection, you lose the ability to play any of your Steam games. And this goes for your older Valve games, like the original Half-Life - whether you physically own the game or not, you've got to have a network connection to play the game. I will admit that not having internet connection wherever you find yourself these days is harder than in the past, and open wi-fi connections at public businesses are becoming more ubiquitous, but the "needs an internet connection to play" caveat must be clearly stated and understood by all and sundry.

I'd been toying with the idea of a Steam purchase, and finally was presented with a deal I could not pass up, Evil Genius, which was recently on sale for half off. It was already going for $10, and I'd been looking at picking up this game at some point anyway, so a $5 copy was too good a deal to pass up. And it's an interesting game, with a lot in it to learn. Oh, I'd played it's spiritual forebear, Dungeon Keeper, years ago when it came out (and even have it on my Amazon gaming list, I like it so much). And EG is very much in the vein of DK - you play the bad guy in charge of doing evil things to the world, and to accomplish this task, you set up your evil lair, not so much by telling your minions directly what to do, but by setting up tasks that you want to see done, and when one of your minions feels like doing it, they go and do it. Yes, very similar to the much-talked about (at least on this journal) Dwarf Fortress, but the graphics and graphical user interface are better in this one. Doubtful the gameplay is deeper than in DF, but I doubt any games out there can claim that they're deeper than DF.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

So we're - prepare yourself - actually watching the prequel Star Wars trilogy. On purpose. Yes, the "first" 3 movies that came out over a decade after Return of the Jedi. First off, I admit to being one of those fans that was really really excited when The Phantom Menace was announced, and still excited for about 10 seconds after the movie was over. Let me give you this quick test so you can finally admit to yourself what kind of fan you are - when you think of the original trilogy, do you call the movies Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi OR Star Wars: A New Hope (Episode 4), Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back (Episode 5), and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (Episode 6)? Or the third option - you don't even know what I'm talking about? If you chose Option 1 (like I do) - true geek who grew up with the original trilogy and are wondering why we still pay homage to Lucas. Option 2 - you are a younger geek or non-geek who never really was a fan of the original trilogy and are wondering what all the fuss is about. Option 3 - everyone else, who is also wondering what all the fuss is about.

Us Option 1 folks just really don't understand you Option 2 and 3 folks, as I'm sure you don't understand us, but that's okay - we still rule and you still drool. (just kidding, can't we all just get along?) But seriously, if you watch the original trilogy and then follow it up with the newer trilogy (sequel before prequel, kind of thing) and watch them both with a critical eye, you see some parts where Mr. Lucas should have just kept his "artistic side" tied up in his hotel room and made with the good space opera.

I started to type up a laundry list of all the things that Lucas got wrong in the first movie, but stopped myself. You're welcome. I will instead guide your attention to the multitude of other websites out there that have shown no such restraint: here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. And that's not all I found, I merely made 7 copies of the same "anchor" URL tag, and stopped when I filled them all.

I will say this as a military guy (and since the big fight scene at the end of Attack of the Clones is currently playing on my home entertainment center) - we stopped gathering in big groups in the middle of big, open fields, marching towards each other and firing our weapons back in the Civil War for a reason! Automatic and semi-automatic weapons, as well as accurate artillery and fire support from aircraft, make such actions suicide FOR BOTH SIDES! And it only looks moderately cool on the screen. You can get the same volume of fire (which, with the blasters in the series, is what everyone is really watching - all the glowing lights chasing each other back and forth across the screen) going with troops hunkered into cover and shooting from there. Yes, have the robots do the whole "walk towards the enemy, firing madly", they don't value their lives, but everyone else would be flat on the ground, digging a hasty position with their elbows, because everyone else has this bad habit called "breathing" - and they'd like to keep doing it. Having WW1 era dogfights in space is one thing (along with all the sound effects that you hear in a vacuum), but having highly trained soldiers not take cover with modern-acting weapons just breaks my suspension of disbelief. Even in a galaxy, far far away.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

I've been typing on this post for who knows how long, as I haven't had much time at work of late, and not much time at home either. So I'm going to end it here and just say, Enjoy!

|/|/hiskey ]{ilo ]-[otel

The Society for Itinerant and Unrepentant People Who Sing in the Car While Driving

2009-08-30T20:17:00.012-05:00

The job week before last? Not be in the Army. Last week? Be in the Army. This week? Be in the Army... in Arkansas. No, I'm not moving to Arkansas. After dealing with the general populace for about 2 hours today (enough to fill up my car and have 2 meals at fast-food restaurants), if I ever say I'm moving to Arkansas, have me committed. And then shot, stabbed, drowned, and burned at the stake, my ashes to be scattered to the four corners of the Earth as a warning to others. Is it really that bad? *shudder* Worse.

Anyway, so I'm back in Arkansas taking yet another class for my new job - another week away from the family, another week I'm gone from the job (with all its myriad of problems I need to catch up on), and another week away from my home (and all of the projects I could be working on). Oh well, at least I have the netbook (named Mighty Mouse, Destroyer of Boredom) along with me on this trip, and internet access free of charge from my temporary lodgings. It is admittedly a netbook and has all the attendant downfalls of an extremely-small form factor laptop (decided lack of powerful hardware), but I've already been enjoying doing some gaming on it. What, you may ask, is worthy of playing on such a small hardware footprinted 'chine? The original Half-Life for one, Quake Live (id Software's very own Quake 3 in a browser-based, free-to-play beta test) for another, and Battlefield Heroes (yes, THAT Battlefield series of games, and another browser-based, free-to-play beta test FPS) for a third. How are they? Half-Life 1 has been a blast from the past, as has Quake Live. I was never the best FPS player on the 'net (my big claim to fame back in "the day" was that I was playing on such a fast connection, my low-ping to EVERYWHERE in the world did more for my kill count than any actual skills I may or may not have had) so I've been mostly getting my ass handed to me in QL, but I'm slowly getting used to it once again. It doesn't help that the netbook's keyboard is noticeably smaller than a standard desktop keyboard (what I'm used to playing on), but nothing a little time and practice won't fix.

Oh and Battlefield Heroes? I think they need to invest in some more server bandwidth. I've managed to play all 5 minutes of the tutorial only at this point and it chugged through the whole thing! How is it going to handle a ton of players when it chugs when I'm the only one on the bloody map?! *feh* Oh well, it could have been when I was playing it, so I'll give it another try at some point.

Going back to HL1 (because we left that topic just oh so long ago *rolls eyes*), I can see where the basis for HL2 and its expansions comes from, but I think if they ever make a HL-based movie (TV show, serial, or whatnot), they need to rewrite quite a bit of this portion of the series to make it fit in better with the second half... which is decidedly better on the story-side of the equation. Oh, you can see how much more story they were putting into HL1 compared to other popular FPS's of the time, but the story in HL2 and beyond is, well, downright amazing. For any genre of game, much less FPS's in general, which is understandably why they're some of the most well-rated games of the past half-a-decade. Please, let us pray that if Valve ever sells the rights to this franchise, it does not go to Uwe Boll. And yes, I've finally seen one of his movies - let's just say that I would dearly love to make one of the heavyweights in the UFC into a movie critic long enough to challenge him to a match and kill him. Not beat him senseless, flat out murder him in the ring. Is it a personal hate? No, but his bad movie making coupled with his poor attitude deserve nothing less than death.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

So you're probably wondering about the title, huh? Keep wondering.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Just kidding. I got to visit the sis and BiL yesterday (Saturday, 29 August) as I had to drop off the rats with them for next week and they kidnapped me away to the St Louis City Museum for a night of fun and frolicking all over (and under and around and through and...) the place. Anyway, while we were out and about, Abby was playing a lot of songs off ye olde iPod (iPode?) that we all knew and so we sang along with them. Poorly on my part, much better than that on theirs, and thus was born The Society for Itinerant and Unrepentant People Who Sing in the Car While Driving, or at least the idea of it, in my head. I liked it so much I saved it for the title of this post, as I've been fairly disappointed in usual lackadaisical offerings the past few months. Not enough to really change much of anything, but one standout is to be expected every now and then.

And if it you didn't figure it out, the City Museum in St Louis is worth a visit, if you have a spare day to kill in STL and have fully stretched and limbered up before entering the front door. Seriously, check it out.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Because I couldn't leave well enough alone (and it just isn't a really good post unless one of my friends or family is skipping entire parts of my posts out of boredom), I have some more thoughts on my zombpocalypse, the Dread Zed. See? Over a week later, and that's still cool! Anyway, there were a couple of things in my last post I didn't feel like I'd explained well or thoroughly enough, so I'm resurrecting a dead topic (pun intended) and restating some things.

First off, I think making the alien nanites responsible for the zombpocalypse an airborne passable "virus" was a mistake. It makes sense for our non-zombie human to cover up as much as possible when around the undead, but makes for even poor video gaming if ALL of our still alive protagonists hide their faces underneath gas masks all the time. Plus it just makes it too easy for the Dread Zed to get around and too hard to keep it at bay. So the Z Virus is only passable through passage of bodily fluids, namely blood.

Secondly - why do zombies and vamps attack humans, causing immense amounts of damage, only to leave them alone moments later and go after other targets, still mostly alive? Why not devour the human completely? If every human attacked was totally devoured, no new zeds would be produced, and the alien domination of Earth would falter early on. So why cause so much damage and leave a damaged husk for the nanites to "pilot" around? The nanites have to overcome their intended host's natural defenses, and anyone suffering from gross physical trauma, well, let's just say their natural defenses are not going to be quite up to par, dig? Plus, the zed or vamp has to make sure that they have placed enough nanites into the new host's bloodstream that a zed is sure to be the outcome.

Lastly, the whole "active only at night" thing. Why? Turns out that alien nanites are susceptible to Vitamin D, ie: sunlight, when it hits human skin, produces vitamin D in the epidermis. I've never really heard anyone else give a good explanation as to why zeds (and vampires, for that matter) avoid the sun (or even burst into flame when the sun touches them), and if I can have a character ask the scientist character why that happens and he can say "well, these alien nanites didn't expect to encounter Vitamin D, which human bodies produce under sunlight", it at least makes it "Spock plausible" - if the very smart character explains it in a learned voice, and it sounds even vaguely correct, than it's plausible. It's not totally true (a large portion of our daily Vitamin D intake comes from the food we eat, so our zeds and vamps will be encountering the D every time they chomp on somebody or random wildlife) and not going to stand up against hard-core logical thinking, but it should suffice for viewers who want the next scary zombie scene to happen, or the gamer who wants to find the next ammo crate so they can lay some shotgun-therapy on the zombie #4,598,765 (zombies - replacing Nazis in videogames as politically-correct enemies since 1973). Plus, zeds and vamps that spring out of the all-concealing darkness of night is more suspenseful than the same jumping out of the all-concealing light of midafternoon (in the biggest car in the county.... MST3K: the Movie, providing geek jokes for over a decade!). And yet another addendum: it gives the remaining humans something to counteract Virus Z, for at least a little while, if a zombie does manage to infect them while out on a foraging party.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Enough about aliens turning humans into aliens, let's talk now about District 9... where an alien accidentally turns a human into an alien. I can't make this stuff up, I swear. So I went and finally watched D9 this evening (Thursday, 3Sep09), and I have to say that the film earned every "fresh pick" it received on Rotten Tomatoes (unlike Indiana Jones and the Secret of Why We Should Just Let Some Good Things Die While They're Still Good - that was the original title, but they decided it was too wordy... and truthful).

Before I go any further, I have to stop right here. I really liked the movie, but there are some things about the movie that are bugging me, and I'd like to write about them... but they are HUGE spoilers. "Spoiler" tags are not implemented inherently in Blogger, I have to put them specifically into my code, and there's just nothing as elegant as native "spoiler" tags in most bulletin boards, where you merely enclose the text you want hidden by [spoiler] and [/spoiler] tags. *shrug* Oh well, most BBCode is far simpler than the HTML I have to use here (don't get me started on hyperlinks... how simpler can you get than [url=]?), so I'm fairly used to it. 'Sides, I've been hand-jamming HTML code since sometime in '96/'97, so I've got some practice under my belt. Expect a spoiler-ific review of D9 sometime in the near future!

SUBJECT CHANGE.

I'm going to cut it off right there. Why? It's Sunday, everyone is finally back home and I'm tired. Been working on this post for a little over a week now, and it's time to call it a day. Enjoy!

|/|/hiskey ]{ilo ]-[otel

The mission this past week: not be in the Army

2009-08-18T19:10:00.008-05:00

Okay, okay, I'm not getting out of the Army completely, but this past week I did have leave (read that as "paid time off"). So what did I do during my time off? You'd think I'd dig through the mounds of projects and honey-do's I have laying about the house, but mostly I just relaxed and spent time with the wife and kid. You may freely translate that to "sat on my ass and didn't do much of anything". It's been busy since we've moved, and I needed some time away from the office. I did get some things accomplished, just not everything on the list. Next couple of weeks are going to be busy for everyone in the house, but after we all get back from our school or family visits in early to mid-September, we'll be fairly unencumbered with commitments away from the Columbia through the end of the year. At least of the week-long variety, as I still expect to be out and about one weekend every other month or so on Army business.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

I've been thinking of zombies lately. I don't really like watching zombie movies (the characters always do the stupid thing and get killed, and their idiocy pisses me off), but I've watched enough to kind of get the gist of the genre - dead people start rising up out of the ground and attack the living. Some of the movies posit that it is alien intervention, magic, government experiment, or a mutated virus that causes all the undead mishegoss. Some movies show the zombies to be slow, shambling wrecks that couldn't logic their way out of a paper bag, and some movies portray them as fast, sleek killing machines that can actually think circles around some of our protagonists.

So I've been thinking about the undead and how I would write them, either in a movie or a video game. I see our undead antagonists coming about as a viral infection, most likely from an extraterrestrial source. This solves the argument of "if every dead person is coming out of the ground, then why aren't we immediately drowned under a wave of every dead person from our voluminous cemeteries?", as only people who have been bitten by zombies become zombies. Already dead people or people that die from other causes won't rise up against the rest of us. It also solves the problem that some bring up - "only people come back in a zombie apocalypse". If it's a human-specific virus, it only affects humans. That's why we've got swine and avian strains of flu - they're virii that have mutated and jumped the species barrier. So the zombie virus (henceforth in this post known as the Z Virus, Virus Z, or the Dread Zed) is human specific and extraterrestrial in origin. Why extraterrestrial? It gives the story more *oomph* when the watchers/players find out that the zombies are here to wipe out humanity and pave the way for an alien invasion.

Yeah, you read that right - I went to alien invasion. Why? Eh, why not? I like to know there is something out there driving a particular event, not just because. Come on, the guys who wrote 28 Days Later meant for their personal Dread Zed to be a representation of anger in modern society... which the screenwriters and director quickly glossed over and focused on the zombpocalypse, a smart decision that netted them a popular sequel, 28 Weeks Later (and, as I look at its IMDB listing, a third movie, due out in 2011). George Romero, possibly the father of zombpocalypse movies, never reveals what is behind his Dread Zed, but instead focuses on the characters and how it affects them. It's been good enough that he's continuing to make movies for that franchise, and has even had the original trilogy remade in the past two decades by other directors, so I can't really fault him for hiding the origins, but I feel like I need to have a reason behind my Dread Zed. Do I have to explain it to the viewer/player right off the bat? Hell no, let them figure it out for themselves, right along with the characters in the work. Plus, it allows for the inclusion of aliens at some point, and considering I've been playing a lot (A LOT) of Half-Life 2 and its episodes lately, this possibility makes happy.

I also want to include vampires into the mix. Okay, okay, get down off the soapbox and at least keep reading before you judge me. These vampires are not going to sparkle (a la Twilight) nor be dating psychics in the South (True Blood) or a bunch of whiny goth bloodsuckers with bad eastern European accents (ummm, about every other vampire movie out there). No, I noticed that zombies and vampires share an awful lot of similarities - both operate mostly in the dark, both pass on their traits via biting, and both hunger for humans (blood for vampires, flesh for zeds). Now, why do I care? I've always felt that your normal zombpocalpyse is too boring - you get one type of zombie, either Romero-shambling or 28 whatever-speedy, no real variety. Hell, even the folks at Valve agree with me, and have provided 5 special "infected" in their little game, Left 4 Dead, not sure if you've heard of it or not.

So the relationship between zeds and vamps goes like this: the Dread Zed comes to Earth as a couple of vamps in an alien spaceship. I thought about disguising their arrival as an meteor strike, but something that large impacting at orbital velocities tends to be really harsh on the area around the point of impact. The aliens want to infect humanity with Virus Z and wipe them out that way, not through brute-force methods that harm the planet. Plus if you knew how well we scanned the heavens for actual meteors and anything not an ICBM, you'd know how easy it would be to wipe out humanity with just a little concentrated meteor bombardment or slip in your invasion force. Anyway, the original alien vamps show up, in vaguely humanoid form and begin to bite people in outlying areas of major urban centers, allowing the Dread Zed to begin its incubation period (call it 72 hours). The disease, spread by bodily fluids, pests and vermin, and pneumonic (ie: airborne) vectors, quickly infects all of the technologically advanced portions of the planet (thank you, international flights!).

After the incubation period, the Dread Zed virii (actually alien nanomachines) go active and begin converting the tissue of the human into more nanomachines, hence why infected people and zombies look very gaunt and waste, and people eventually die from hypovolemia (loss of blood) or internal organ failure. Once they're dead, the alien nanomachines are fully in control and mostly located, surprise surprise, in the brain where they attached to all of the neural-muscular nerves of the brain, and that person is now a zed. The Dread Zed hungers, as the new zed barely has enough nanomachines to control the now dead husk, and needs more proteins to build more nanomachines and keep its body going and spread the disease further, hence the reason why zombies attack living people (and animals - protein is protein, they just can't infect animals with the Z Virus). The reason they don't attack other zeds? The nanomachines can communicate with each other if they're close enough, at least for simple communications like "I'm a zed", "protein over that way", and the like, so zeds "know" when someone has become successfully infected and stop attacking.

Vampires on the other hand have either come from the aliens with enough "food" already, or zeds that have eaten enough protein (we won't come out and reveal this, otherwise we'd have to show shots of zeds sneaking into soybean fields late at night to devour down the plants, and that's just boring) to build up enough of the Dread Zed nanomachines that they gain a higher level of functionality and a better communication link with the homeworld and other vamps. Vamps are your classic "faster" zombie from such fare as the oft mentioned 28 Days Later - they're faster, smarter, and can guide the underling zeds right to the point of fleshy human buffet. Yes, much like the boss infected in Left 4 Dead.

Oh and I almost forgot about the whole "zeds and vamps only come out at night" thing - solar radiation breaks down the nanomachines. They can operate in daylight for short periods of time, but it's too detrimental to the "virus's" health to do it often. Plus, things jumping out at you, the watcher/player of our little thriller, from the all-concealing darkness is far more heart-pounding than watching a bunch of shambling zombies milling around in the street in broad daylight. Come on, you know what scene I'm talking about - the scene in the remade Dawn of the Dead where everyone is on top of the mall and watching one lone survivor on top of a gun store popping off zombies down in the crowd. Come on, a sea of targets like that, and you're sitting on a store full of ammo? Yep, I'd be picking off zombies at an astonishing rate (hey, he was starving, what was he going to do with the ammo?). Anyway, that scene is terrifying in an "oh my god, there's THOUSANDS of zombies out there!", which is more of a slow, growing horror than the quick jump and scream. You can still achieve the same shot at night (thousands of shambling zeds and speedy vamps, barely visible in the moonlight), and it doesn't look quite so... so... pathetic? Zombies work better at night, s'all I'm saying.

Got all that? Zeds, vamps, and alien nanomachines all trying to wipe out humanity (hey, it beats big flying saucers that can be hacked by the likes of Jeff Goldblum and an Apple laptop) so the aliens can come in from wherever they are and take over our resource rich planet for the next step in their global expansion. And what about humanity? In the early days of the invasion, the majority of humans in the rural areas are mostly untouched by the zeds - they're staying to the major urban centers where most of us humans (ie: prey) are at, feeding on us. Unfortunately, with so many people dying in the urban areas (where the communication hubs are generally located, like phone switchboards, internet hubs, radio and TV stations), not a lot of the information of the zombpocalypse is getting out. Some reports are coming through, just not enough to know what's really going on. Picture the scene in Shaun of the Dead where Shaun is flipping channels and the news reporters are getting everything garbled together and mixed up - just like that. The survivors in the rural areas are aware things have gone screwy at first but some groups learn the hard way what's going on in the urban centers as time goes on (the others become snacks for the zeds).

And that's where we are when the game/movie opens up. Our protagonists are a group of rural-dwelling survivors who have learned some of the basics - people have become zeds, they need to mask up and cover themselves when going into town or catch the Dread Zed, braining zombies is the best option for taking them down, only go into town during daylight hours if at all possible, and hole up in their hillbilly fortress at night. Why do they go into town? Supplies for the most part: medicines, ammo, fuel, food, the usual. We get a quick intro on our band of misfits, some action sequences where we go on a scavenging run a little too close to dark, fend off the zeds and vamp who follow us back to our hillbilly stronghold, and catch a quick breather... just in time to introduce our first plot device: a scientist who knows what is happening and how to stop it (possibly). I know, a little tried, but who knows what hijinx he and the local zed-killers can get up to, just in the social interactions aspect?

Yeah, yeah, okay, I have thought wwwwaaayyy too much about this, but you know how I am - a thought gets stuck in my head for about 3 weeks of hard mental grinding, I spit it out when it's percolated for a while onto here, and move on. Enjoy it while it lasts.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

You have to admit, though, that calling the disease "the Dread Zed" is about as cool as Stephen King nicknaming his disease in The Stand "Captain Trips". I like the rhyming and alliteration in it.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Yeah, I spent an entire week of work not typing anything for the journal, and almost an entire other week off from work not typing anything for the journal. Today's typing is all you get. I'll work on some more stuff this week at work for next weekend's posting. Catch y'all on the flip side, and don't let the zeds get ya!

|/|/hiskey ]{ilo ]-[otel

the usual: I like stuff, I buy stuff, I hate stuff

2009-08-02T18:33:00.001-05:00

The Army just does not like me to have weekends. I did get last weekend home with the family, and got a lot done (gun safe, dining room tables, even put in a nifty ceiling storage system in the garage to store our used cardboard boxes) though some items on the "honey do" list did get skipped over and will have to be addressed as I can get to them this week. And it will have to be this week, after work, as I have drill this weekend and the next weekend is taken up by another Guard function, not to mention I have to spend a day this week in St Louis to give a briefing at a conference of education officials on GI Bill benefits. *sigh* This is why I took a promotion and moved my family halfway across the state. Oh well, it pays more and we're somewhere that Denise can get her degree more easily.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Speaking of being on the road a lot in the upcoming months, I bit the bullet and ordered a new laptop for Denise and a new netbook for myself. Why did I get a netbook and not a full-on laptop? Well, in the first place, I decided to get myself a portable computing device rather than merely borrowing my wife's laptop because I am going to be on the road a lot (A LOT) for this job. I wanted to keep our computing experiences separate and giving her a laptop of her very own that I don't use much lets that happen while making her feel like she owns something solely. It'll be easier for both of us to have our own computing devices - keep our programs, bookmarks, and even desktop setups separate. Plus, if I ever do get around to getting us both on the same online game, like Guild Wars, it'll just be easier for her to keep playing on one computer than switching up constantly. Mostly, it's a good excuse to have my own little portable computing device.

Not too bad of a deal, though, as I was able to order both pieces for a little over $1,000 direct from Dell. The good deal is mostly due to Dell's very decent Federal employee discount, which I get... for some odd reason (the reason I'm gone all the bloody time, that's what!). Sadly, I won't have the laptops in time for the fun this upcoming week (that one day conference in STL and drill this coming weekend), nor next weekend (a 3-day conference in STL), but I should have it in time for the next week long course, coming up at the end of August/beginning of September. I'm already starting to shop around for needed peripherals, especially for the netbook as we have everything for the laptop left over from the last laptop. Mostly what I've been shopping for are speakers, an external DVD/CD ROM/Writer module, a bank of extra USB ports, and a carrying case of some kind, either a messenger bag or backpack style. Beyond that, I really only need an extra mouse that I don't have, and I don't go really fancy with mice. Has it got a laser on the bottom? Good enough for me. I really don't need wireless, or ultra-tiny, just something that moves the pointer when I move the mouse.

Other than that, I've started pondering what software I want installed on the netbook, especially as I'm going to be restricted to a 120GB harddrive. I know, everyone screams about how tiny a HD that is, but considering I built my current tower with an 80GB main drive, I find it a very inviting size for something so small. Still, I'll have to keep a close watch on what I'm putting on and leaving on this HD. My favorite emulators and ROMs will make the cut, as well as productivity software (homework, as well as entertainment, will be the tasking for this little beauty), the entertainment playing software (music and videos) with just the best of the best music files and only the video files I'm going to be needing for the upcoming time away from home, and, of course, some games. Oddly enough, PC Gamer recently ran a set about gaming on netbooks, and of the 8 games they suggested you could still play on your netbook, I already own 6 of them - GTA: Vice City, Diablo II, Darwinia, to name but a few. Once again, being a collector of older PC games pays off, as games never lose being a good game to play, only how good they look compared to everything else.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Speaking of older games, been loving the hell out of Half-Life 2. Once again, I'm only 4 years behind the curve for jumping on the "this game is awesome!" bandwagon. And it is - it's beautiful, it's full of action and suspense, has a really decent and well thought out story (and plot and characters and character development), and it's fun. Okay, spent way too much time in the fanboat running away from threats and not enough time shooting and destroying said threats, but you need a little bit of humbling every so often in a FPS game.

So why didn't I get HL2 years ago? Sticker shock keeps me from buying pretty much every game brand new (why buy it now when I can get it for half that price in 6 months?) but with Valve's little announcement that beginning with HL2 every Valve game from then on would have to be played while connected to Steam via the internet, I was somewhat reticent to buy into this sweeping vision becoming a hard, fast reality. For some odd reason, it wasn't a real smooth release. And everybody wrote about it, which scared me off of Steam, Valve, and related content for a long, long time. Steam these days is very bug free, has not once bogged my system down, and is extremely unintrusive (plus I now have broadband access, 24/7 365). Alongside the performance considerations, Steam appears to be THE source for digital distribution of games for PCs, and everyone rants and raves about how good it is. I can't tell you from direct experience as I have traditionally bought games on CDs (something about physically owning a game instead of digitally owning a game that is a download - susceptible to HD corruption/failure - or lives on a host computer - susceptible to that company going under and the server being shut off forever), though I've been tempted lately with some of the smaller, inexpensive offerings on Steam. In fact, looking at Steam I see a lot of old school FPS's available for very cheap - like Wolfenstein 3d and Hexen, just to name a few from my FPS'ing past - games that I liked enough to remember but not enough to try and track down an actual disc for and purchase. Might have to look into some of Steam's offerings for the new netbook, as it looks promising that I can get things that are cheap and low enough requirements to play well on the netbook.

Which reminds me why I started out this section - while I've had the Half-Life Platinum Collection for several years now, I've never played the original HL for more than 15 minutes (barely enough time to get into the main story mission and out of the beginning background/setup portion), not to mention the other two expansions that give even more background and story to the series. These will definitely be installed on the netbook, as it's past time that I played through HL and its expansions.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Ran across some of the coolest toys from my childhood (toys I never had or could afford, mind you) and had to share: Dino-Riders. Years later, when the Dinotopia books came out, I picked up the first one as it seemed to share many of the same themes - people living with dinosaurs and armouring them up. Sadly, in Dinotopia, the author decides that eating meat is not only wrong but immoral... even if it is done by creatures who have evolved as carnivores. Not only that, anger and violence are the most agregious of sins and anyone or anything that thinks such thoughts or, heaven forfend, performs such acts should immediately be shunned and banished from the community... because shunning and banishing people from your community involves no anger or implied violence whatsoever. *sigh* And the sad thing was, when I first purchased and read the Dinotopia book, I really didn't catch that. It wasn't until the TV miniseries came out in 2002 that I really realized what hippy, tree-hugging claptrap the books really are. Don't get me wrong, the books are beautifully illustrated, but the story leaves something to be desired. Like reality. Peace is to be preferred, just ask any soldier that has seen war, but you can't expect others (especially from any species that has clawed its way to evolutionary stability or even dominance) to utterly forego violent ways.

Dino-Riders, in a similar vein, pits the good guys on herbivores against bad guys on carnivores, but at least here the carnivores are not evil by choice, as the bad guys are forced to ensnare them and slap mind-control helmets on them. Which of course led to how I remember pretty much every episode ending - the good guys would knock the helmet off of the biggest carnivore around, and it would rampage amongst the bad guys ending the battle. They still didn't pussy-foot around and say that all carnivores were evil (even though all the bad guy dinos were carnivores) and we shouldn't eat meat, it was just a way to easily distinguish between good guys and bad guys, and had the slight tinge of education to appease our parents. And let's face it - it was a cartoon in the 1980s, it was a half-hour long commercial for a toyline. Though how much cooler than dinosaurs with armour and laser guns can you really get?

I say "how I remember pretty much every episode ending" but to be honest, I couldn't tell how true a statement that is as I didn't get to watch a lot of Dino-Riders. Now, 20+ years later, I will probably download the entirety of the show from Torrent and see how accurate my memory actually is. Illegal Downloading Technology - reinvigorating your childhood since broadband became widespread.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Seriously, why do we still have fax machines around? Yes, they're slightly quicker than scanning and emailing a document, but only slightly. And we still get spam across the fax machine! How unbelievable is that?

SUBJECT CHANGE.

My brother-in-law is not the only one questioning how popular web-sites are staying financially solvent by giving things away, gratis. Daniel Lyons of Newsweek has a decent article on it in this week's issue, find it here. I love the internet (obviously) and have loved the internet for a long, long time, and in my more callow youth, I believed everything on the internet should be free (otherwise I couldn't afford it). Nowadays, I must admit, that I still visit sites with free content - all of my webcomics I pay nothing for (except for merchandise I buy off the better ones), I have 3 personal email addresses I pay nothing to use, I pay nothing for this journal, all of my dailies that I read (like Kurtharsis.com) I once again pay nothing, and it goes on. I do pay on a couple of my paintball chat boards, but it's not required for either of them (I pay donations to keep them going and on one of them, access the special member area and be able to have more options in my profile to change). Other than that, most of my 'net time is pretty charge free. Would I pay a minimal fee, say a penny or a nickle, to send an email? Yes, I would be agreeable to do that as long as everyone who sends me an email also has to pay, as this would cut down greatly on the amount of spam I'd receive, and I'm all for that. While I'll probably never buy an iPhone (too expensive, too restrictive), I have to admire their iPhone App store for understanding the immense draw a ninety-nine cent application has for people. Yes, said application may or may not be exactly what they want, but at under a buck, who cares? Purchase it and give it a give it a good test drive. Micropurchases can drive and support certain sectors of the economy, mostly technology portions of the economy. Be worth keeping an eye on.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

When renewing my PC Gamer subscription recently, I saw an offer where they tacked a very minor fee and I also got a subscription to Wired for a year. I've been a long-time geek and most of you are probably surprised that I haven't had a Wired subscription since the very beginning. I do admit to liking their website (another website that I have harped on alot could take several cues from Wired) and like articles they offer up. Like Dual Perspectives, where they argue about a topic and not necessarily from opposing viewpoints. So what about the print magazine that is the driving force behind all of this? After receiving and reading through my first issue, my reaction is a resounding *eh*. It's too main-stream fashion conscious to be truly geeky (kind of like GQ with more silicon), worried more about how to look really cool on Facebook than anything else. Half the things they focus on (Facebook, MySpace, iPhones/smart phones, and Twitter) I don't use and could care less about, so I'm very unimpressed. I still like quite a bit of what they provided, but just not enough so far. It is just a first issue, though, so we'll see how another 11 color my perspective.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Remember: Even Pains in the Ass (PITA) have their uses. If there is just one issue at my new job that rises out of the pack and drives me up the wall more than all the others, it's by far the new Chapter 33 Post 9/11 GI Bill. It got voted into existence last year and doesn't even go live until tomorrow (01 August 2009), but already it is driving me up the wall. It is totally unlike every other chapter of GI Bill benefits out there, has new rules that are not even fully written yet, and everyone wants a part of it as they think it pees 7 year Scotch and poops gold.

So one of my soldiers has been a real PITA about the Ch 33 - it's the only GI Bill chapter that you can transfer benefits to a spouse or child(ren) - as he wants to transfer some of his benefits to his wife starting this fall semester. First off, he's way too impatient to get a benefit that is going live for the entire armed forces a mere 2 weeks before his wife is due to start classes. Second off, he has no control over his emotions when he gets frustrated. He wants to see results, NOW, and gets overly bent out of shape on the phone with people, which rubs everyone the wrong way. I've been putting up with his antics (which, as you probably well know, I generally don't put up with that kind of BS for very long) as we've been getting tons of information on what the rules for the new benefit will be, we haven't been getting a lot of instruction on exactly what will be required, in what order, at what time, and thru which source. So I've been using chucklehead as my "mine canary" to sniff out all of the problems that your average soldier will run into and boy is this genius good at it! I've had no less than 6 conversations with him over the past 2 months concerning getting bennies transferred to his wife (she must have the patience of a saint, let me tell ya) and every conversation is a new piece of the eligibility puzzle.

I think with today's conversation that we finally have broken through and have found all of the basic problems that my troops will run into. Oh, I'm sure this isn't a completely fool proof process quite yet (the Army keeps recruiting better fools all the time), and someone will show up with a problem that I'll have to work overtime on, but this guy, who's been driving EVERYONE up the wall, from the VA to DoD to Human Resources Command-St Louis to my office, should be taken care of and good to hook. What a good little bomb sniffer he has been. See? Not all PITAs are useless.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

*huh* The Wachowski Brothers' last Matrix game, The Matrix Online, goes offline today (31 July 2009). It being the official continuation of the Matrix universe, I wonder if anyone compiled the whole story to share with us pogues who didn't play the MMO. Be worth a look around and see what I can find.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

Yeah, my sis and mom love them, but I just had to chuckle when I saw that Crocs were having financial problems.

"...boatlike atrocities that took the world by storm in a candy-colored array of cringe..." *heh*

Okay, done for the week. Got drill this weekend *twirls finger* and a 3-day long event in St Louis next weekend I have to prepare for. Work work work, busy busy busy. Oh well, going to have some extra travel pay by the end of the month, and even more next month. Every little bit helps.

|/|/hiskey ]{ilo ]-[otel

the Army doesn't turn you violent, it just increases your gun envy

2009-07-15T11:06:00.006-05:00

Another boring day of class. Another exam, of which I didn't score a 100%, but a 95%, which brings my average down from 100% to 98%. *twirls finger* Still well into the running for Honor Grad, which isn't much to brag about, considering the lesson before the exam today was so boring that I managed to go through all of my old posts and add tags to them. If I had access to the previously mentioned table of contents I'd started for my LJ, I'm pretty sure I could get it finished by the time this class ends early next week.

That brings up the question of what I plan on doing with said ToC when I get it finished, and it might be that I could integrate it here into this journal. Not each and every post, but at least a linkage page that shows it all. Have to look deeper into that.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

As you would expect from military people, we tend to talk firearms in our downtime. While I'm not nearly as "gun crazy" or "bloodthirsty" as most of my comrade-in-arms, I did join the Army over the Air Force as I'm allowed to play with all the fun toys in the Army, and in the Air Force I'd barely ever get to hold a weapon. I do admit to liking firearms, and I have gathered up quite a collection, mostly by inheriting them from family members with a few purchases.

I've been looking recently for a gun vault, as we do have a very mobile 8-month in the house, and while I will be teaching her how to handle, fire, and clean said firearms, I don't want any of the above to happen for several years yet. I found what will suffice in my price range and plan on installing it into the house when I get back next week. Nothing big or fancy - you could easily drop several thousands of dollars on one that could withstand everything up to thermonuclear warfare, and it would require a forklift to move it, but I have neither the $$$ nor the forklift, nor the room to put it in - just big enough to put in all of the rifles I currently have, with room for a few extra on top of that, small enough to fit in our closet, light enough to be easily transportable, and priced low enough to not break our budget.

After that, a thorough cleaning of all the pieces in the collection, including the collectible pieces from Grandpa Bennett's stint in WW2, is definitely in order. Then comes the time known as "Saving Money to Spend on a Probably Needless Firearm". I know I'd like to add a decent pump shotgun to the collection (while I'm definitely not good at it, I do enjoy trap/skeet shooting), but don't have a particular model or brand in mind. With the problems I'm having with my Mossberg 9200A, though, I'll probably be looking at pumps not bearing the Mossberg brand. Remington 870s are good enough for both law enforcement agencies and the military to use, probably one of those will make it into my collection. One of Denise's many aunts on her mom's side (both of her parents were one of ten or better) has a deadbeat husband who is on the "nut" side of gun collecting, and is having a lot of health problems. Serious, "Mr Smith, I'm sorry but you have x months to live" type of health issues, and to make up for the fact that he hasn't had a job in a long, long time, she's already starting to look for people interested in purchasing pieces from his collection. There's nothing in particular I want from that collection, but I have never been one to pass up a good deal on anything, much less a decent firearm. We'll see what is available, what our finances are like at the time, and what she's asking on said pieces.

However, even as unconcerned as I am about a lot of specifics in my collection, I do have a few wants and desires. My "pie in the sky" want is carbine-length AR-15 with all the furniture: 4-sided picatinny rail grips, foregrip, bipod, combat light/laser, collapsible stock, and a Trijicon ACOG on top. The bipod might be a bit much, but if I was a trigger-puller (read: combat specialty soldier), that would be what I'd hope the US Army is issuing to me. Plus, the AR-15 drivetrain, based on the military M16 with some very minor differences, is one of the most forgiving and gentle drivetrains in the world of assault rifles to shoot. The large buffer spring in the stock absorbs so much of the recoil force that our drill sergeants in Basic training would place the buttstock of a rifle directly on their foreheads and fire off rounds with no ill effects. Compared to the kick of the other popular assault rifle in the world, the AK-47/74, the kick on an M-16/AR-15 is like unto the kiss of a butterfly. Total cost on that project, after just a short while looking around the 'net would cost in the neighborhood of $2-4,000. Pricey, but I do like top of the line optics and lights, and performance in those areas equals money.

Like I said, the rifle is a dream and something I would look to get if money was not an issue (and I had somewhere to shoot more than once a year). On the more realistic side of life, I've been looking at replacing my last handgun that I sold to a friend. Oh, I have two pistols in the house - Grandpa's two WW2 collectibles - but don't want to really shoot either of those too much or even depend on them for home security. Yes, intellectually I understand how unlikely someone would break into our house and how even more unlikely I'd be able to use or need a pistol if I was even home during a break-in, but a pistol purchase could still be used for such. I still have the baton I took to Iraq that I'm far more likely to grab if I fear someone has broken into my home, but I do like the idea of having a pistol to hand.

Anyway, I had been looking at Ruger's offerings, particularly in .45ACP for its stopping power, as I had really liked how my last Ruger handgun shot, and was particularly interested in the Ruger P345, for its polymer frame and picatinny front rail. In the meantime, friends with law enforcement ties had been talking about how much they liked a new pistol from Springfield Armory, the Extreme Duty, or XD. It's a double-action-only pistol made for law enforcement officers, much in the vein of the Glock pistols so popular with said officers these days. I had tried Glock's in the past, and had never really liked them, so I was not very impressed by the comparison. About 6 months ago, a bud of mine (Tim the Naked) picked one up, in .45 ACP no less, and let me shoot it.

Talk about impressed! Here was a lightweight, polymer-framed pistol, chambered in the manstopper .45 ACP, that felt like firing my old 9mm, had a double-digit capacity in a magazine that didn't overwhelm my regular-sized hands, a really sweet trigger pull, and was also fairly affordable. Plus, it had the aforementioned picatinny rail, to which I could attach spiffy light/laser combo packages to, as well as some nice safety features, like a thumb-grip safety. When my next serious gun purchase comes to be, I'll definitely be picking up an XD in matte black with 5" barrel and 13-round capacity, and most likely slapping on one of Surefire's little beauties.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

I wrote all of the above over a week ago. That was when the computer system at BNCOC was still semi-functional and then they decided we weren't paying enough attention in class, and shut off all Java functionality. I couldn't log in to GMail, Hotmail, or Yahoo Mail, definitely couldn't get on to my Dashboard to edit this post and post it, as well as other things. The funny thing is - if we weren't paying enough attention in class, why did we do so good? Top 10 in the class get Honor Grad status. Last cycle, the exam cutoff was 96% to get Honor Grad. This cycle, our class average was 96% and the cutoff was 99%. That's right, if you missed more than one question on 5 exams, you didn't make the cut. Did I make the cut? Nope, missed 3 questions out of 100.

So a few updates - the gun safe I talked about earlier? Bought and installed, with everything that goes "boom" safely locked away from curious hands. Got the overstuffed chair (that matches our couch and loveseat... more on that in a sec) into the garage and took pictures of it to sell it off on Craig's List, but mostly to make room for the new bar-height dining table and chairs set I picked up for fairly cheap but still new. We've also rearranged Denise's sewing room (The Woman Cave) and purchased a not new, but still cheap, futon off of Craig's List.

So, what's so interesting about the chair, couch, and loveseat? Well consider first that we got them for free and the fact that they're a matched set of La-Z-Boys. That's right, we got a matched set of some of the most expensive, long-lasting, name-brand living room furniture available today. What was the catch? My wife has this friend who's daughter kept having kids with someone who didn't have a full set of chromosomes in the first place, and skewed the rest of them with harsh, illegal narcotics. Needless to say, the kids were pretty messed up, one of them having been born with one of the worst cases of excema ever. They pretty much smeared her from head to toe with creams and let her play all over these furniture pieces, naked except for a diaper. Can you say stained? And they weren't terribly clean people to begin with. Even after Denise gave everything thorough cleanings, we bought covers for all of them and rarely let them see the light of day. But now I'm breaking up the trifecta and selling off one of the pieces. *shrug* Just don't have the room for it at the moment, and if we ever do have the room for it, it'll be the impetus to get rid of the other two and buy our own set of expensive, long-lasting living room furniture.

Enjoy!
|/|/hiskey ]{ilo ]-[otel

help, I'm trapped in an Army training machine!

2009-07-14T08:04:00.004-05:00

Yes, the title to today's post is a reference to the joke that is making the rounds in popular media about a worker who is trapped in a fortune cookie factory forced to write fortunes for the cookies, and is writing messages to try and get rescued. I can't really remember where I first saw that at, though The Simpsons and their version of Woody Allen do come to mind, but I've definitely seen it in a variety of shows and mediums.

Anyway, I'm currently at BNCOC Phase I, the Basic Non-Commissioned Officer Course, which is the first of 3 phases for us 42A Human Resource Specialists, and a requirement for me to be promoted to E7/Sergeant First Class. The other requirement (besides being at the top of the Enlisted Promotion System list for E6 42A's) is to have 9 years in service, so I've got a couple of years to finish out the other 2 phases. Seeing how unimpressed I've been with this course so far, and my continued disillusionment with the Army in general, I doubt I'll be signing up for Phases II and III anytime soon.

Why oh why are you so down on the Army, SSG Haworth? My bad experiences with my last unit (lack of support, unreasonable expectations, lack of support, observing firsthand the Good Old Boy network protecting one of their own, and did I mention lack of support?), which I was still experiencing not three months ago, has spilled over into this disorganized, poorly-taught class. I've already had the teacher call me a "dumbass" for something that he got wrong (he couldn't pronounce my name correctly and forgot that I'd spent half the previous day correcting him before just giving up on it), this from a man who pronounced "regularity" as "regulatory" (don't ask me what he said when he attempted "specificity" - it made our English prof about break into tears from the pain), and he has already revealed that this class is so important that the Army has continually dumbed it down over the last 5 years and they're about to turn it into a Distance Learning class. That's right, it's such an important class that in a couple of months, they're going to let NCO's take it online. Nothing says "phoning it in" like an online course in the Army.

Did I mention that I just moved my family halfway across the state not 2 months ago, and started a new job shortly before that? Can you say I've got better things to be doing right now? Right. At least, as of today (Tuesday, the 14th), I've passed both of my tests with a score of 100%. Okay, maybe I'm not THE head of the class, as there's likely about 5 others in here that are also showing the same grade point average right at the moment, but I'm feeling really good about my chances to make Honor Grad this cycle. I know, I know, I like to win, and it nets me exactly nothing - no greater chance for promotion, no increase in pay, nothing - to be a Honor Grad, but it would still be nice, especially as it would verify to my new boss how good of a NCO I am. Or supposedly am. *shrug* I'll let everyone else be the judge of that one.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

As you probably well know, from my many rants and raves about it, my favorite computer game review magazine died an ignoble death last year and became an online only entity, on a crappy website. I figured, since I'm just SSSOOOO busy with classwork (not) that I'd spare a little time and see how they are doing more than a year later. To sum up: some improvement but still not so good.

Oh, you want specifics, huh? Okay try these on for size. How do you honestly expect to make money by getting rid of a magazine (which people have to buy) and replacing it with a website (which people don't have to pay anything to look at)? As my brother-in-law has already discussed, ad-based revenue streams for internet income is not a sustainable business model. Yes, you had to pay a printer to actually print up copies, but you were getting money back, generally more than you were putting into the printing of the magazine. The argument could be made that any modern business needs a good website, and I totally agree with that, but you have to have make the money from the business, not the website. Some would declare that to be a good website would require lots of extra effort from your staff to put information on said website to make it good, and I would counter with, no you don't, take a look at Newsweek.com. They have an informative website, and they get that by a) putting all of the articles in their most recent magazine onto it, b) offering a place to publicly discuss said articles (ie: web forums), and c) extras that expand on those stories that they can't get into the magazine (audio/video, archival links, stuff cut by the editor). See? They've already spent the time and effort to produce the majority of the contents on their website by making the magazine in the first place, and the cost to produce the rest of the content on the website is easily covered by magazine sales and the mere trickle of income from the internet ad revenue stream.

Speaking of placing all of the articles from the magazine onto the website, 1Up.com has nothing of the sort. Oh, you will find previews and reviews of games that have been both previewed and reviewed in Computer Gaming World and Games for Windows... but they aren't the same articles. They are articles written by other staff members (who weren't good enough to make it onto the magazine's editorial staff, I might point out) and as such give different results. Where is all the articles from the magazines? Some, admittedly, can be found on the 1Up.com website, like the popular Tom vs Bruce series. However, even out of those they don't have a large percentage of all of that series up for viewing. You would think that since the magazine has gone the way of the dodo, the least, the very least they could do is to make their website a repository for all of the goodness they had in their physical property. Why? Drive up site traffic and increase those "incredible" ad-based dollars that are coming in.

One of the biggest problems I had when I first learned that GFW's output was only going to be on 1Up.com was that here was a website that advertised itself as THE source for Windows OS-related gaming news and review, but it featured mostly console-related advertising and content. To some extent they've improved, but only in the sense that the advertising I see today in the PC-specific sections is actually PC-centric. However, the content even in the PC-specific sections still has many console-related articles that leak through. Shame, I say, shame on you, 1Up.com!

My other very large complaint is lack of a sensible layout. "Hey," exclaims Johnny Reader, "I really like this article by Jeff Green, and it looks like it's part of a series! Where oh where would I find the rest of the articles in the series?" Where indeed, Johnny? You would think, in a sensible layout, that related articles would have linkage right inside the individual articles to point back to either a central repository or at least the next and last articles in line. You will find nothing of the sort on 1Up.com. You will have to search for everything, guess, and depend on luck to find any particular thing you want. Maybe they're doing it to drive up site traffic numbers, kind of like an advertising income stream related planned obsolence method, but it was annoying when I first noticed it last year and they have yet to implement any changes since then.

*sigh* Oh well, at least they haven't improved to the point that I have to question my decision to buy a subscription to CGW/GFW's main rivals, PC Gamer. I do still miss the staff of Games for Windows and a lot of their article series (Tom vs Bruce, Green Speak, and Scorched Earth, to name a few), but PCG is doing me okay. Oh, and their website, which at one time contained all of their reviews but no longer, as their official website is merely a portal to subscribe to the magazine. I guess if you're not going to do it right, they think you shouldn't even do it at all.

With some further research they do have a podcast website, and own the PC portion of the Games Radar website. After looking around, it suffers from many of the same failings that 1Up.com displays - console-centric advertising in the PC section, console-related content in the same (the Question of the Week, a PC feature, this week? "What was your all-time favorite console?" I can't make this stuff up), and utter lack of sensible layout and linkages. *feh*

More to come as I get bored here at BNCOC.

|/|/hiskey ]{ilo ]-[otel

laptops, netbooks, podcasts, video games, and the SCA

2009-07-10T08:51:00.002-05:00

Going to have to squeeze one of these out with a quickness this week as I'm due to go to Nebraska for even more training for the next two weeks starting this Friday. Yes, more Army training, and I'll be almost completely without 'net connection the whole time as we have yet to replace Denise's laptop and I have yet to pick up a netbook. We've been looking at possible replacements since Denise's last one kicked the bucket about a year ago (it was the one I took with me to Iraq and lasted about 2 years after, so it did give us good service, and it's just time to upgrade hardware). When the laptop first went down, we were expecting the arrival of our first child, and didn't want to dump any cash into it, but lately I have been looking for acceptable replacements, with the usual caveats of it having decent performance (but not top of the line) and with a price low enough to appease our frugal sensibilities. Our biggest stumbling block the last couple of months is that I am totally unenamoured with what I am hearing out of the technical world concerning the new Windows Vista, but none of the major laptop manufacturers are offering laptops with anything but Windows Vista. Replacing it with XP is easy, just another $100 on top of the original purchase price, and just annoying to have to do since they won't offer you a decent OS on a platform you have to buy from somebody as you just can't build a laptop from spare parts like you can with a desktop machine. Annoyance on top of annoyance. I don't like buying name brand computers in the first place, I like building them myself to my own specifications and putting on only the pieces of software I want, but that's just not really feasible with laptops. Oh, a couple of companies have tried coming up with an industry standard bare case laptop that you can purchase specific bits of hardware for, but the amount of available hardware is so low it makes it unfeasible.

Now, while the full form laptops are only really purchaseable with Vista, the netbooks, those tiny newcomers to the portable computing scene, that are being offered out there are almost exclusively coming with XP as their native OS, as they just don't really have the necessary hardware to run Vista. I had looked at these, as they are very affordable (roughly $200 for a decent one) and they would not require an OS upgrade, but they just really wouldn't work for Denise. Oh, they're great little machines that will give you basic functionality in the field for very little in the weight or size categories, but for constant home use (basically we use a laptop at home like it's a desktop we can easily stash out of the way) they just don't have enough horsepower in the hardware, not enough comfort in the keyboard, and not enough screen for comfortable viewing. Now if only I had need for a more portable bit of computing hardware...

Anyway, Microsoft has recently announced the upcoming release of their next OS, Windows 7, which - much like when Windows 98 was inexpertly replaced with the very buggy Windows Millenium Edition, and Microsoft quickly stepped up and released the much better Windows XP - is purportedly a far more stable, friendly, and useable OS than Vista is. Kind of an interesting history in the naming conventions for Microsofts OS's - 1, 2, 3, 95, 98, Millenium Edition, XP, Vista, and now 7 (which, if you can count, is actually Windows version 9, not 7, and doens't even take into account the Windows NT family of server OS's, or Windows CE for mobile usage). With the announcement of Windows 7 this October, and all the good reviews I'm hearing from the technical world on how well the Windows 7 Beta test is going, it made me happy to see that Microsoft is offering up Windows 7 for preorder, with really decent sale prices to entice users to pick it up. I was already looking at having to throw down a $100 for an XP license, but with Windows 7 upgrade license on sale for $50 during the preorder, the new plan on the laptop has become to go ahead and pick up a new laptop for Denise. Yes, it will have Vista on it for a while, but will be officially and legally upgraded to 7 sometime in the fall (3-7 days of shipping after 22 October, if Microsoft is to be believed).

We're definitely buying Denise a laptop, a roughly $600 purchase, but with the new job and all the travelling (a weekend on the road once or twice a month, plus new classes and training scheduled later this year), just to have something to do in the downtime and keep in touch with my lovely wife, we're also contemplating picking up a netbook for my Army-sponsored roadtrips. I have also been encouraged by recent articles about gaming on a netbook in the latest issue of PC Gamer (unfortunately, they don't post their articles online concurrent with the magazine, like Newsweek, which is sad because they were very in-depth about it) or this one I found online. Considering the ever growing library of old games that I have been building up, and the slew of online, browser-driven FPS's (Quake Live, Battlefield Heroes, and Fallen Empire: Legions over on Instant Action to name a few of my faves) available for free, I think I'd be able to occupy my off time quite satisfactorily.

Oh, a thought has struck home! Guild Wars! Couple that with a voice chat, like X-Fire, and the wife and I could be gaming together and communicating all at the same time, while I'm on the road. Just a thought.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

I have been enjoying my morning/afternoon podcast listening time, also known as my commute, but it struck me that with the 2 podcasts I'm listening to, I'm going to quickly run out of episodes. The SModcast is still going strong, but with a total of 80+ episodes in the hopper and me eating one or two up a day, 5 days a week, I'll be caught up within a month or two. And Kevin and Scott aren't really good about sticking to their weekly schedule. GFW Radio is no more, and while they have more podcasts in their archive than the SModcast, there won't be any new ones made, so what I've got is it. I could invite the more mathematically minded members of the viewing audience to predict, given appropriate data, how long until I run out of episodes at my current rate of listening, but even I can see that it won't be too long.

It's not like I haven't been thinking of other things to listen to, and some plans are already starting to form. The obvious answer is "more podcasts", and I've already downloaded a podcast that I had known about but hadn't really paid serious attention to due not being in a position to listen to podcasts. What is this podcast? Why, none other than the Writing Excuses podcast, which features one of my favorite webcomic author/artists, Howard Tayler, as well as some other decent names (like the guy who is going to finish up the Wheel of Time series, Brandon Sanderson). I'm looking forward to listening to this one because of the wide variety of topics they cover, both in the writing and in the selling of your work. If anyone reading this is writing or looking to get into writing, *cough*KURT!*cough* then I suggest you take a look at what they have to offer. Yes, they have a definite fantasy lean to their discussions, but I think getting information about getting into the industry would be beneficial, as book publishing is definitely a strange land. (ADDENDUM: potential writers looking for something to keep track of all their characters and plotlines should check out WikidPad... that is all.)

I'm looking for other podcasts to get into, as 2 that update on an irregular basis (isn't that all podcasts? seriously) are just not enough for what is becoming a voracious appetite. Oh, another thought has struck home - podcasts from TechTV Forever! If you had followed my old LiveJournal, you probably are familiar with my love affair of the old TechTV channel on satellite, but if not, then take a second and look over the wikipedia article. Good? Great. A couple of years back, after a couple of years of being without TechTV, I'd run across the TechTV Forever website and tried to watch the programming on there, as most of their programs are video based instead of audio only podcasts. Well, it was like my problems with listening to podcasts - no real time to sit and watch a show. Now I've got the time and need for podcast entertainment, it's beyond time to go and see which of their podcast shows interest me and start the downloading.

Also in my thought processes are audiobooks. I remember, years ago, an officer in the unit I was in was collecting audiobooks by renting them from Hastings and then ripping them to MP3, at a far lower cost than purchasing them. This may be still an option, as would checking them out from the local public library. There are many options out there, and I shall off to explore them all.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

So with the wipe of my main hard drive comes the reinstall of all my programs. My C: drive (an 80GB drive that was very spacious 5 or 6 years ago, not so much now) is the repository for all of my executables, including all of my games. When I saved files off of it, I managed to save my Dwarf Fortress save and 3 out of 4 of my emulators (I missed grabbing the Genesis emulator and ROM... it'll get downloaded again, sometime in the future), but just let my Unreal Tournament install go away. How could I ever let the game that I've played longer than any other game, ever, in the history of the world, get deleted? I had its sequel waiting to get installed, that's how! And install it I did, I even downloaded the nearly 5GB worth of updates and community packs and installed them, and I have to say that Unreal Tournament 3 is a beauty of a game. So beautiful, in fact, that after playing the game a mere 3 times, I had to uninstall it. The hardware demands are such that even at a fairly low level of graphical resolution, the whole thing still chugs horribly. It looks gorgeous, and will just have to wait until I can get some more hardware underneath the case. Which is going to cost a pretty penny, as I'm going to need new everything instead of just a little more RAM or a slightly better card, this time around due to the technology being WILDLY different from when I built this machine back in 2004. *sigh* It's always about money, isn't it? Oh well, I've made this rig run for 5 years with only one major hiccup, that's pretty good for a Windows OS 'chine, and it'll be a good machine elsewhere in the house.

With much regret, I uninstalled UT3 and turned my attention to Valve's great deal, The Orange Box, which I had heard that its Source engine was very scalable and much more friendly towards older hardware systems, plus the 5 games included inside (Half-Life 2, HL2 Episodes 1 & 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2) are all very well reviewed games and have all been on my list of things to play for surprisingly different reasons - HL2 for its great single-player FPS action, TF2 for its great online multiplayer action, and Portal for its quirky story and physics-based puzzle solving gameplay. I've already started playing HL2, and I've got to say that the gameplay and story, so far mind you, deserves every bit of the high reviews the game has earned over the past 4 years. *blinkblink* Wow, it really did come out 4 years ago, I am WWWAAAYYYY behind the new game curve. *shrug* Oh well, I never liked having to pay that kind of money on hardware and the games themselves to keep up. Maybe if I become independently wealthy I'll give a damn, but until then, not only no, but hell no.

Oh, and for those playing TF2, my Steam userid (I think, I'm new to this) is UsagiTetsu or usagi_tetsu or usagi_tetsu2003. I hope to be playing it a little when I get back from BNCOC later this month.

SUBJECT CHANGE.

I keep coming back around to whether or not I want to stay in the SCA. When we were in St Joe and I was the fighter marshall for Lost Moor, I had more invested in the group and was more willing to beat on people's doors, call them up, entice, cajole, wheedle, and basically do whatever I had to do to get the 3 fighter minimum (myself and 2 others) to show up so we could actually have a practice. Even though I was willing to do it, it grew very tiresome very quickly, so I was looking forward to moving to an area where there were 2 groups within close driving distance (Standing Stones in Columbia, and Wyvern Cliffe in Jefferson City, 30 miles away) that were larger than Lost Moor. Finally, thought I, groups big enough that I won't have to do all of the above to get a weekly practice. You know how many practices I've been to or tried to go to? Three. Do you know how many practices I've actually fought at? One, and they barely had 2 other fighters fighting at it. How many have I looked at and could have made, but didn't even bother when it was obvious that no one was going to show up? About six. Can you say "beyond frustrating", boys and girls? I knew you could.

So I'm bemoaning this fact to one of my ex-squire brothers at the memorial service last Friday night, and he tells me of course there's not much in the way of fighting going on in Standing Stones or Wyvern Cliffe, all the fighters (particularly all of the knights, counts, and dukes in the area, which there are apparently a lot) are going up to Amleth Moor because of an apparent tiff with other people in the Standing Stones group. *sigh* Great. Group politics/drama. As I've harped on so many times before, the reason my participation in the SCA begins and ends at the edge of the list field is the amount of childish bullshit in the SCA. *feh* This is not helping me in the department of whether to stay in or not. First off, my armour gets stolen (for no good reason whatsoever) back in '07 and while I have all of the pieces, I haven't spent the time or energy to get everything up and running. Because that is the least enjoyable part of fighting, and not by a little bit. It is a major pain in the butt to work on this stuff, especially as you know it's going to wear out and need to be repaired/replaced, sooner rather than later. Second on the hit parade is that being a Active Guard Reservist, the Army takes up a lot of my free time, which makes attending both practices and events on a regular basis nigh upon laughable. Third, we have the high drama factor the SCA tends to attract, as evinced by the little tiff talked about above. Fourth, is the damned politics. I've got a good friend who has lived, breathed, ate, slept, and bled Calontir and the SCA for over 20 years now, and one of the most dangerous fighters I've ever faced. Will he ever be knighted? Probably not unless one of his very good friends sits the throne and tells the Chivalry they WILL accept him into the Order, which is a bit of political douchebaggery, but one I will gladly employ if they're ever silly enough to let me win Crown. Why not? Stories abound of things that happened in the past, but whatever reasons the knights in the past have denied him entry have long expired due to any reasonable statute of limitations, and should honestly be discounted. Are they discounting them? Negative.

Why, then, do I put up with all of the above BS and keep plugging away at it? My lovely wife Denise is the largest part of the reason why I'm still in - we met in the SCA, she's been in the SCA since before she was ever born (2nd gen SCA'er), and most of her friends are in the SCA. But it's also great fun. There is no adrenaline rush quite like what you get when your neurons are firing so fast that the world slows down to Matrix-slow (yes, it has happened to me a few times, but I'm still not able to fly, as I am not the One) and no greater look of astonishment on your coworkers' faces when you reveal to them exactly how you got that big honking bruise. Or show them pictures. *evil grin*

So we're staying in the SCA, for now. Sam is showing great propensity for beating stuff with other stuff, and I don't want to deny her the fun that is beating the boys at their own game. Plus Denise wants to get back in shape so she too can go out and wail on some poor unsuspecting sod with a length of rattan. I'll keep playing along, voicing my opinion loudly how I think the aforementioned fighter should be considered for knighthood, and generally staying away from as much of the BS as I can. The nice thing about this portion of the hobby, if someone is pissing you off, you generally get to beat them with a stick. And hey, 3 possible practices a week, all within a 30 minute drive. What more could you possibly want?

I've got more to talk about this week, but I'm going to wrap it up here. Have a good weekend, and I'll see you all in a couople of weeks.

|/|/hiskey ]{ilo ]-[otel