Sev

Can't catch a fucking break.

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 20:07:58 GMT

Wel, while driving to work this morning, my foot slipped off the brake while I was coming to a stop. Then it got hung up under the break. When I finally did jam on the brakes, it was too late, and I wound up rear-ending some guy in a suburban. No one was hurt, damage to his car appeared to be limited to a dent in the bumper. My car, however, took the bumper in the teeth, as it were, so it's significantly more damaged, though not horribly so. Broken headlights, broken marker light, the hood's bent at an obtuse angle, and the frame by the hood needs to be pulled out. Still drives fine, and the radiator's OK. $325 isn't too horrible for such a goddamned stupid mistake on my part. Looks like we won't have to get insurance involved -- we exchanged info, but I doubt he's going to file a claim and I know I'm not gonna.

I took off at 3:00 so I could go down to the body shop and get an estimate. Hopefully, the parts come in on time and it'll be fixed Wednsday morning, but until then, no night driving for me, and I get to look extremely ghetto. Whee.

Well, that was interesting.

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 07:49:57 GMT

So, I went to a party tonight with a bunch of old Forumites and Josh and Danielle. It was weird and difficult at the beginning -- particularly when Noelle, Todd, and some others were off in a seperate circle and were apparently talking about me in hushed tones -- which sets off my paranoia something bad. Flashes of grade-school '..they're laughing at me behind my back, aren't they....' bullshit, whoo.

So I ignored them and hung out with other people, met a cute, interesting girl, and got her phone number. Whoot.

Anyway. Time to sleep.

More car joy

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 04:50:00 GMT

So, I replaced my thermostat and my car still overheated badly. So I replaced the water pump, which started leaking. My car was still overheating. After doing some feeling arounde, I discovered that the inlet pipe to the thermostat was warm to the touch, while the pipes to the radiator were scalding and steam was hissing out. The motherfucking thermostat I bought was DOA, and this has caused at least some minor damage to my engine -- enough to change the tenor of the sound. I confirmed this by ripping the fucking thing out -- now it runs very cool. For the moment, I'll just drive it around like this, and get another thermostat on the weekend.

I will, however, boil that one first to confirm that it actuates.

Car update

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 21:06:28 GMT

I've got the part on order; however, it's not supposed to come in until Monday, so I have no transportation this weekend.

Guess it's time for me to really give those 4th ed books a good read through,

sigh

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 01:44:47 GMT

Well, I went to fix my car and broke it more; while replacing the thermostat I managed to crack the water inlet. Of course, by then, the only auto parts stores open didn't have one.

I blame this on the new-fangled gasket they gave me to use with the thermostat, instead of the prescribed liquid gasket goo.

sigh

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 02:28:26 GMT

Having car problems; I've developed a slight leak in the radiator, and I think my thermostat might be shot. Additionally, I need to adjust one of my spark plugs. Oh well, I'm going to do all that tomorrow. Hopefully this will fix everything, but if it doesn't, I won't be up for any long hauls (or going places where the traffic tends to be jammed) for at least this next week.

Oh god...

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 18:04:47 GMT

I'm melting, melting...

Just got back from the beach

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 23:50:40 GMT

Nothing like being pounded by overly-large waves for an hour to refresh you, though at the moment I'm dead tired from fighting them. Though I think that's part of the appeal.

You never feel quite so clean as you do after the shower you take after getting scoured in the waves. Though I probably still do have a few ounces of sand in my hair. If you see me picking at my head over the next couple days, I don't have lice, it's just leftover beach.

Bored.

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 21:33:51 GMT

I need to figure out what I'm gonna do today. So far, no one I've called has picked up.

Right now I'm watching the first ep of SG-1 -- a series I've always wanted to watch through -- and leafing through the new D&D 4th ed books. About the latter, all I can say is ... wow. The changes are all-encompassing, doing away with many of the standard D&D tropes, while at the same time, keeping many of them as well. It feels like an entirely new game system, albeit one that was influenced by an extant one, and, at the same time, so far, it still feels like D&D.

The standard progressions of spells for wiizards and such are completely altered. You don't roll a die for your HP per level -- the HP are essentially (CON + N) + ((level - 1) * (N + CON modifier)) -- ignore the second part past the * for first level. N = a set number based on your class. A lot of things that were variable are less variable now, while other thigns that should be variable are more variable -- spell effects often vary based on the Arcana check, so a good roll will increase effects, etc.

The basic attack roll if you wanted to stab someone with a spear would be 1/2 level + strength mod + bonuses - other modifiers, versus AC, roll the AC or better. Similarly, there're a lot more attack types -- powers, attacks, and spells often use (ability) versus (defense), where the defense can be AC, reflex, will, etc. And there're a lot of little situational effects to the powers, which will seem to have interesting emergent effects.

Your first level dweeb is no longer such a dweeb, either, and every level you progress, you get something. Every even level you tend to get a utility power, every odd level you tend to get an attack power. Rituals have taken the place of a lot of standard spells, and don't require memorization or have a limit for the number of times you can cast them a day -- you just have to have enough in the way of material components and time for casting, but as far as I can tell, there're no other limits. Everyone has at-will powers, per-encounter powers, and per-day powers. And, I have to say -- I haven't really seen anything really disgusting yet, but there're a lot of things that could really be nasty if set up properly, or that're just cool. For example, warlocks can mark targets with a curse. If the target gets killed or other things happen to it or you, this curse can do neat things. One of them is that if you get damaged while the curse is in effect, the cursed target takes damage. So ... curse, power, duck behind cover, stab yourself for 1 HP damage...;) Anyway, they give a lot of neat tactical options, and make everyone able to contribute in just about every encounter.

There's no more save-or-die stuff, at least not with one failed save. You make a save in order to end recurrent and possibly cumulative effects, or to recover from one. And saves? As far as I can tell, it's straight 10+ on d20, giving a little better than 50% odds.

Death has had some big changes too. When you're below 0 HP, your'e dying. If you get to -(1/2 Max HP) you die. However, you don't lose HP in this condition except to damaging effects; you have to roll a saving throw each turn. < 10, you're closer to death. Fail like this three times before being healed or 'resting' (in this case, I think it's assumed that your party members stablize you) and you die. 19-20 gives no change, and 20 allows you to burn a healing surge to recover.

Oh, yeah, healing surges? Everyone gets 'em, and a halfway decent number of them to boot. Many low-level healing powers allow you to spend them without using an action, but if you're bloodied -- at or below half HP, you can take a 'second wind' standard action to use one.

Well, that's all that I've really read so far, and I need to read a lot more; this is practically a new system. But, y'know, while it does suffer some weaknesses, it seems like a stronger, more manageable system, and information is organized better. But I'll need to play-test some to get a hang of it.

Update

Fri, 16 May 2008 06:40:46 GMT

I'm alive. Work's a drag, and I'd much rather be out living.

I decided to spend a little bit of my economic stimulus check on magnets and two ounces of ferrofluid. I'm also going to pick up some magnet wire. I've got a powerful desire to play with this stuff, and a few ideas I want to explore.

Blargh. I need to get out more.

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 02:44:43 GMT

Y'know, I was reading a box of Cheerios and I noticed the text: "Contains 13 vitamins and minerals!" Is it wrong that I thought: "Y'know, that can't be all the minerals; a handful of dirt has got more than that."

Whee, I have a sinus infection.

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 08:23:17 GMT

At least, I'm pretty sure I do. It's in one of the sinuses behind my right cheek, and when I'm not on my combination of pseudephedrine and asprin, it make it feel like two or three of my teeth have horrible, horrible cavities. That's a neat trick, since one of those teeth is a wisdom tooth, and I don't have it any more, and another one has had a root canal. So, I figured it had to be sinus-related, putting pressure on the nerve that runs down there.

...Then, today, I came up with a symptom highly indicative of a sinus infection, but one I've never run into before: bad breath coming out of my nose. I brushed and flossed like three times, went nuts trying to find the source of the horrible odor in my room, before I realised it was coming out of my nose. Christ, this is nasty.

If it doesn't clear up tomorrow, I'm gonna see if my physican can work me in Friday morning, 'cause I won't be able to take this much longer. Y'know, I wish it was possible for responsible people to just be able to go to the pharmacy and get a course of antibiotics. Going to the doctor for this is like me calling up tech support when my cable modem isn't working; I know what's going on, I know what they're going to tell me to do, and 90% of the time I figured out what the problem is long before they do. I -know- my doctor will prescribe me some generic antibiotics -- it'll be whatever you take when you can't take amoxicillin because of a penicillin allergy. To me, the doctor's visit is just throwing money down the hole and wasting both of our times. Same thing with ear infections; I got them relatively frequently when I was a kid, and when I knew I had one that wasn't gonna just go away, I'd tell my mom we needed to go to the doctor, he'd diagnose an ear infection, I'd get the usual antibiotics, etc.

This is yet another one of those cases where the stupid people ruin it for the rest of us; because they can't be trusted to be responsible, no one can be.

Holy crap.

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 20:18:54 GMT

http://wkbt.com/Global/story.asp?S=7963395

Gary Gygax is dead.

So, I got vermin...

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 08:04:17 GMT

I wound up getting three rats from Mainely Rat Rescue, in Maine, as they were already doing a transport down to Long Island, and it was easy to throw another few rodents on the pile, as it were. Lady's a female PEW (pink-eyed white; your standard 'lab rat') with a standard coat and dumbo ears; Creme Brulee's a female black hooded rex coat with standard ears, and Dominic, Creme's cousin, is a neutered male black berkshire (he's got a white stripe running down his belly) with standard ears and a rex coat. Dominic's coat is definitely more 'rexy' than Creme's, though hers still hasn't grown back all the way from minor surgery to remove some abcesses.

Though they had some problems at first, after a week, I've managed to mostly get them into shape and being good rats.

So, without further ado, here're some pics I snapped a few minutes ago. The cage is a Martin's, the R-695, IIRC; it's 30Wx18Dx36 high, and is quite the monument on my desk.

Dominic looking for treats. Lady and Creme are still in the blue hut.

Dominic's usual position in the hammock.

Lady wakes up. This also shows most of the cage.

Dominic and Lady begging for treats.

Explorin' time. I have a small mostly-rat-proofed area under the shelf that the cage is on where the rats can come out and play. The usual route is out the door, onto the speaker, and then onto the pile of fleece. This picture also shows the rex coat well.

Lady looking out from under her blanket, dubious of the camera.

Creme Brulee showing up, though she didn't much want to participate today. Usually she's one of the first ones out, but I think the camera flash was really bugging her out. ;)

No, I didn't name them; they were the names they came with, and for lack of anything else, I started using them. Then after a day I had them answering by name, so I couldn't really switch gears on them at that point; it'd fry their remarkably agile yet tiny little minds.

The Greater NY Metro Area Has Sorely Disappointed Me.

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 10:30:23 GMT

I've been looking for rats again, lately; I want to get a few. I want to get rats from a good breeder, someone who knows what the hell they're doing and actually does things like keep pedigrees and breeding bad traits out of lines, and socializing the animals from birth.

I can't find a single breeder online within the NY Metro area. Long Island, the City, Westchester -- there's fuck all. I can't even find any rat shows in the area. There're no rat societies or clubs I can find in NY.

...Let me repeat that. I can't find a single active rat society, club, breeder, or show in NYC or on Long Island. In New York City or Long Island, for god's sake. Do you have any idea how hard a time I have wrapping my mind around this? Gah. Ten million people and not one of them's running a rattery and has a web page.

So -- since I can't believe that they don't exist, they probably do exist, and it is simply that I don't know about them. Thus, this post, which I know is a long shot. Anyone know of a rat breeder in my general area -- preferably within two hours of NYC or anywhere on Long Island -- that they can recommend to me? Or even rat shows where I can meet other people who'd know such things?

...A reminder

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 08:43:18 GMT

...to myself, to write about http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0803,thompson,78873,2.html

To let you know...

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 07:17:44 GMT

I'm now working a 2:00-10:30 shift, coaching new hires. This'll be for the next five weeks, so I won't be available in evenings on weekdays.

Still feelin' kinda crappy.

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 22:37:37 GMT

Today's blah. I'm still feeling kinda crapy, though much, much better than I was a few days ago. Waiting for Josh to call if we're going anything tonight. Even so, I don't particularly have any desire to leave the house. Blah.

Blargh 2

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:56:56 GMT

Took off from work early, working only a half-day. You know you're sick when everyone including your manager says something to you along the lines of "You look like crap!"

Also, today is apparently National Depression Day. I think I'll celebrate by hurling myself under a bus.*

* Yes, that's sarcasm. No, I'm not going to throw myself under a bus.**

** I'm much more likely to use high explosives!

Blargh

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 05:20:22 GMT

I called into work today; I've been feeling like something that had been hacked up by a cat or something for most of the day. In fact, I didn't really get out of bed until 10:00. PM, that is. Hooray for fever and intestinal distress! A few hours later, now, I've mostly started feeling human again.

Also: God, I hate the couple of days after I wash my hair. It's all over the goddamned place and poofy, constantly getting in my face. Blargh

US District Court Rules Gitmo Detainees Untermenschen

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 05:16:45 GMT

Actually, not even untermenschen. The DC Circuit court of appeals ruled that the Gitmo detainees aren't 'persons.'

WASHINGTON—On the sixth anniversary of the imprisonment of detainees at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit dismissed Friday an action brought by four former British detainees against Donald Rumsfeld and senior military officers for ordering torture and religious abuse.

The British detainees – Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed and Jamal Al-Harith – spent more than two years in Guantánamo and were repatriated to the U.K. in 2004. In a 43-page opinion, Circuit Judge Karen Lecraft Henderson found that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a statute that applies by its terms to all “persons” did not apply to detainees at Guantánamo, effectively ruling that the detainees are not persons at all for purposes of U.S. law. The Court also dismissed the detainees’ claims under the Alien Tort Statute and the Geneva Conventions, finding defendants immune on the basis that “torture is a foreseeable consequence of the military’s detention of suspected enemy combatants.” Finally, the Court found that, even if torture and religious abuse were illegal, defendants were immune under the Constitution because they could not have reasonably known that detainees at Guantánamo had any constitutional rights.

In a separate concurrence, Judge Janice Rogers Brown agreed with the result but attacked the majority for using a definition of person “at odds with its plain meaning.” She observed, “There is little mystery that a ‘person’ is an individual human being…as distinguished from an animal or thing.” Judge Rogers Brown concluded that the majority’s decision “leaves us with the unfortunate and quite dubious distinction of being the only court to declare those held at Guantánamo are not ‘person[s].’ This is a most regrettable holding in a case where plaintiffs have alleged high-level U.S. government officials treated them as less than human.”

Eric Lewis, a partner in Washington’s Baach Robinson & Lewis who argued the appeal for the detainees, stated, “It is an awful day for the rule of law and common decency when a court finds that torture is all in a days’ work for the Secretary of Defense and senior generals. It violates the President’s stated policy, our treaty obligations, and universal legal norms. It is an awful day for our tradition of respect for religious freedom and for our moral standing in the world when a court finds that these detainees are not ‘persons’ whose rights to observe their religion with dignity and without harassment are worthy of protection.” Lewis stated that his clients intend to petition the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling.

Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, co-counsel on the case, observed, “We are disappointed that the D.C. Circuit has not held Secretary Rumsfeld and the chain of command accountable for torture at Guantánamo. The entire world recognizes that torture and religious humiliation are never permissible tools for a government. We hope that the Supreme Court will make clear that this country does not tolerate torture or abuse by an unfettered executive.”

Plaintiffs have 90 days to petition the Supreme Court.

CCR has led the legal battle over Guantánamo for the last six years – sending the first ever habeas attorney to the base and, just this month, sending the first attorney to meet with a former CIA “ghost detainee.” CCR has been responsible for organizing and coordinating the largest ever coalition of pro-bono lawyers in order to defend the men at Guantánamo, ensuring that nearly all have been represented. 1-11-08

The Opinions are particularly vile little pieces of work. This is corruption in action, folks. This is the government which was 'elected' 'by the people' and which no one has had the balls or simple, basic decency to kick the fuck out of office.

Y'know, once, this country was a shining beacon in the world. Its flame has guttered and died, and now the lighthouse being used as a communal cesspit by the morally diseased, lurching, shit-flinging, gibbering things that run its government. That any judge -- that anyone who has sworn to uphold and protect the constitution -- could make such a ruling -- all respect I have for anyone in the field has been diminished, so gross and egregious is this miscarriage of justice.

So...

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 06:20:45 GMT

New photo. I've decided to try and take at least one halfway decent photo a day; let's see how long this lasts.

Best Disclaimer Evar

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 22:57:21 GMT

Here."

Among other highlights:

"The Preserve does not provide rangers or security personnel. The otherpeople in the preserve, including other visitors, our employees,agents, and guests, and anyone else who might sneak in, may be stupid,reckless, or otherwise dangerous. They may be mentally ill, criminallyinsane, drunk, using illegal drugs and/or armed with deadly weapons andready to use them. We aren't necessarily going to do anything about it.We refuse to take responsibility. "

God, I hate LED Christmas Lights

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 22:37:09 GMT

Sure, they're brighter, give off purer colors, and use less energy than traditional incandescent lights.

But they flicker. They evidently use cheapass converters that either just chop off half of the waveform or don't even bother and just throw it all at the LEDs, resulting in a 60 Hz flash. I can't stand it. And I hate it when I'm driving, and eye-movements turn the lights not into the usual smear of color, but into a series of dashes. This is the same reason I hate LED brake lights on cars; they do the same damned thing.

Seriously...

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 04:02:58 GMT

...What the fuck was Marvel thinking with all of the cross-connecting between series in the '90s? I tried reading the X-Men series that started in 1991, and by the time I got about 16 issues in, I'd already encountered not just references to other series (which are fine,) but entire plotlines that started or finished in other magazine lines. I know from what I've heard that DC was doing about the same thing at the same time -- no fucking wonder that Marvel and DC got into such horrible financial problems in this time-period. To keep up with your favotire story you'd have to buy all these other godamned comics.

...Thank goodness for Bittorrent, but even with that, I'm afraid that I may not be able to stomach reading that particular X-Men series.

Right now I'm reading the Uncanny X-Men, having started with the reboot that happened in issue 96 or so, where the old team was dropped and the new team was formed -- with Wolverine, Colossus, etc. And at this point -- the late 1970s -- Marvel had it right. I don't get the weird, disconnected "what the fuck is going on?" feeling that I've been getting with the 1991 X-Men and even with Ultimate X-Men. Yeah, there're references to things that happen in other series and such, but the core plotline is pretty self-contained, or else you're given a quick rundown of things that're happening in the world. That's the way you do it, folks. Sheesh.

Seriously, this is what's kept me from reading normal superhero comics for all these years -- because when I was interested in these comics, it was the 90s when they were pulling all of this crap. So, not only would I feel the need to get caught up-to-date on the series I'd like to read, but then I'd also have to go out and buy issues from entirely different series in order to actually follow the plots. At the time, this was, frankly, impossible, unless you had thousands of dollars to throw down on back-issues and collections and such. Being po' as I was, yeah, the barrier to entry was entirely too high -- particularly when, for about two to four times the price of a comic, I could get an actual book that would entertain me for far longer than it would take me to consume the contents of your average comic book.

Now, a decade later, with the advent of high-speed internet connections, bittorrent, and a blatant disregard for intellectual property laws, I actually -can- start reading these things. Then again, it's not like I could go out and buy these back-issues, and the compilations from the era are, AFAIK, entirely in black-and-white and greyscale, which has zero appeal for me for a comic which was originally rendered in color.

Companies need to learn the following:

1: You shouldn't make the reader go out and buy more crap just to enjoy the basic experience of a product.
2: You should keep your barriers to entry low, particularly when you're in a market which is largely made up of kids who don't have jobs, or at least was.
3: You should make your past products available in ways that're easy to acquire, won't break the bank, and aren't substantially inferior to the original product, particularly if you're asking me to pay money for it.

See, the latter point is one of the best justifications for 'illegal' file-sharing that there is. There is so much material out there which simply -can't- be purchased for love or money -- well, for lots and lots of money, yes, but I ain't gonna spend the money to get X-Men #1 from 1960-something just so I can read it. No. And I'm not going to spend money for a no-color version of a visual artform which originally included and depended upon color. Once something becomes a 'collector's item' because it is no longer being produced, there's no loss to anyone if you acquire an illegal copy of it. It doesn't lower demand for surviving originals, because true collectors -- the only people who would buy the stuff at the prices it's available for -- will do so anyway. I think that this is one of the core problems with current copyright laws -- they allow stuff to disappear into the dustbin of history, unless people are willing to break the law to distribute it. No, we'll never lose the data on Marvel comics, but what about minor bands and other short-run things that were fantastic -- or at least, that _I_ thought where fantastic, but were originally released in limited amounts and haven't been published for 20 years? This is one of the things that makes it a true bitch to collect old filk music; it's not in publication, and, because of the fucked-up trail of "who owns the rights," some of it probably never -will- be published again. However, if I'm lucky, I may be able to find a copy of whatever-it-is online.

Also, there's the simple issue of a perceived unfairness inherent in charging new-release prices for something that was published before I was alive and has been in perpetual publication since. Pink Floyd's great, but, goddamn, why do their CDs tend to cost more than the average new release? That's simply unfair.

In short, this little screed is just airing my feelings about how the current copyright system just doesn't work in this day and age. I -want- to give money to the people whose works I enjoy, but sometimes it's either impossible, overpriced, or unavailable in unadulterated form.

You want to get money from me? Look at the way people like Tom Smith and Phil Foglio operate. I can read the entire Girl Genius comic online, but I've bought three of the print books that're out and will probably buy the rest next I-CON. I've bought many filk CDs from the artists -- directly, mind you -- when I've already got all of the tracks from the album downloaded to my machine. Sometimes I'll re-rip at better quality than the MP3s I downloaded, but generally I just toss the album into my Bin 'O CDs as insurance against a disk-crash. Look at the Baen Free Library, a fantastic marketing tool that came about as the result of a bet. Basically, you can download a few hundred novels that've been published by various authors -- full text, no DRM, etc. They're often the first (or first few) books in a series, older novels, etc. Who cares? The point is that it gets people to try out an author, and gets them to buy that author's stuff. They've actually tracked increases in sales based on authors releasing works to the BFL, even if the actual works released are no longer in publication.

Why do people 'steal' all of this stuff online? Because the perceived value is lower than the price of the product, by a significant factor. Fix that, and people will 'steal' less.

(Side note: Downloading IP without a license is not theft, damn it, it's copyright infringement. Theft deprives another person of actual property. Copyright infringement may deny them a potential sale, but in reality, the owner of the product isn't out any money or product. I'd argue that most of the time, it hasn't even denied them a sale, since the people who're infringing wouldn't buy the product anyway. College students, for example, are too poor to go out and buy every album they want, so they buy the albums of the bands they truly love, and just DL the rest of the stuff.)

Blargh.

Sev

Can't catch a fucking break.

Well, that was interesting.

More car joy

Car update

*sigh*

*sigh*

Oh god...

Just got back from the beach

Bored.

Update

Whee, I have a sinus infection.

Holy crap.

So, I got vermin...

The Greater NY Metro Area Has Sorely Disappointed Me.

...A reminder

To let you know...

Still feelin' kinda crappy.

Blargh 2

Blargh

US District Court Rules Gitmo Detainees Untermenschen

So...

Best Disclaimer Evar

God, I hate LED Christmas Lights

Seriously...

sigh

sigh