In reference to the comment from yesterday, coincidently enough Thomas Sowell just barely published an article titled "My Platform" (my guess is that the sti was familiar with the column and that's why he posted it). His platform seems to boil down to three points: eliminate all cabinet level positions other than Defense and State (a great idea in my opinion), eliminate government subsides starting with billionarieres and moving down the line until no one who makes more than $100,000/year gets any money from the government, and finally use the money saved to pay congressmen and government officials about ten times as much as they make now. I think the first two suggestions would have dramatic, even revolutionary effects (and you're free to opine that they would be horribly dramatic and disastrously revolutionary), but the third, while not a bad idea, wouldn't quite pack the same punch as the first two. The problem is that people who want to be politicians are the last people we should have as politicians.
I went to the video store last night to rent Something's Gotta Give. My wife had wanted to see it for a long time and I hadn't taken her while it was in the theater, so the day it came out I tried to make up for it by renting it. In addition, I wanted to rent something for me. There are tons of movies I haven't seen, but browsing through the aisles, not a single one really spoke to me. Actually, I came up with a movie I really wanted to see: The Importance of Being Earnest, but of course those philistines down at Blockbuster didn't have it. I ended up renting The Pianist, which I guess should be good, though I takes a certain mood to enjoy a holocaust film...
In any case, Something's Gotta Give was decent, despite the horrible emotional scars I received from seeing a 57-year old Diane Keaton naked... I was only half watching it, so I may have missed some of the witty repartee, but it's hard to go wrong with Jack Nicholson. My kids want to see Home on the Range, but as you can see it hasn't exactly been getting stellar reviews, though I imagine that's hardly going to matter to my children. I can't see them being dissauded if I told them, "Well, Ebert thought that it was 'insipid and pandering,' he said that 'the voice-acting was uneven and the animation uninspiring,' so what do you say we go see Dawn of the Dead?" (actually, Ebert hasn't posted his review yet so I don't know what he thinks).
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Ross
As I'm sure you're all aware, 2004 is an election year. I imagine that most people are already sick of politics and there are still seven months left. Well I come before you today to offer a refreshing alternative (no, not conquering Niulakita and declaring yourself king): third parties. And I'm not talking about Ralph Nader either, though when he says that there's really no difference between Republicans and Democrats, he's got a point. For a more detailed analysis of this there is an excellent article available (the recent Medicare expansion is also a great example of what I'm talking about.)
Getting back to the third party discussion. The most common complaint against third parties is that it's a wasted vote, or perhaps even more damning that it gets the person least similar to your beliefs elected (i.e. Bush v. Gore). Of course, this is only valid if there is some difference between the two major parties (which there isn't though you may not have achieved the wisdom to understand this fact yet). As far as the argument that you're wasting your vote, nothing could be farther from the truth (particularly if you live in a state a non-battleground state, like Utah). For some presidental candidate to really have a mandate, he would have to get at least 50% of the vote and probably closer to 60%, whereas if say, the Libertarians got 5% or 6% of the vote, the press would talk about the libertarian revolution, the major parties would start to lean libertarian, etc. In other words, the net effect of your vote would be ten times as great.
I'm reminded of this topic by a conversation I had on Friday. It turns out that one of my friends is running for congress on the Constitution Party ticket. They have a heavy focus on religion, but other than that, they focus on strict interpretation of the Constitution, much like my favorite third party, the Libertarians. Of course, there is also the Reform Party, the Greens and even the Communists. The point is that there are more than two choices out there and I guarantee that if you take a second to look you're bound to find someone who agrees with you more closely than either of the two major party candidates.
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Ross
First off, my apologies for not posting on Friday. A bunch of stuff happened, mostly bad. After getting kind of a bad start to the weekend, I ended up frittering most of it away playing video games. I managed to beat Hordes of the Underdark on Saturday and I started Knights of the Old Republic on Sunday. By the end of Hordes, having played the full game, and being on the second expansion, I was pretty burned out on that style of game. Another problem was that the third chapter oftentimes more closely resembled a Mario Brothers game than a D&D role playing game. But like I said, I had pretty much run the gauntlet, so my views should be taken with a grain of salt.
I did manage to watch Enemy at the Gate. Like I said, I was playing video games like there was no tomorrow so I didn't follow it as closely as I might have, but it was pretty good; it's based on a true story, which generally means means yes, there was a World War II, and yes there was a battle in Stalingrad, other than that... However if this page is to be believed, there was actually a fair amount of historical accuracy, which surprised me. Lately it seems that when Hollywood says "based on a true story," they mean that in the loosest possible sense. Enough so that I'm reasonable certain that by the time X-Men 3 is released they'll be advertising that it was based on a true story.
I should mention that I am thoroughly enjoying KOTOR. It won GOTY (Game of the Year) in quite a few publications and it already feels that way, but I haven't been able to put my finger on why it's such a good game. One possible theory is that after being assaulted and left for dead by Episodes One and Two of Star Wars (that or left for Episode Three to finish off), it's so refreshing to be back in the SW universe I remember from my youth; to not only be back but able to play the principal protagonist. There's a certain logic to the back story that doesn't seem to exist in the last two movies. But maybe I'm reading too much into it. The game does have good npc's, great cut scenes, awesome items and very cool mini-games, so maybe that's it.
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Ross
Tonight is another episode of The Apprentice. I'm not sure why I like this show so much. Perhaps it should be included as one of my many vices -- I'm not sure. It is nice, however, to see a reality show about something I can actually relate to. I have never been stranded on a desert island, forced to eat intestines, or relocated to a distant city to live with a group of 'stereotypes,' but I have had to deal with conceited idoits in a business setting on numerous occasions, so maybe that's it. If you assumed that (on occasion) I am one of those conceited idiots you would be correct.
Last week was a clip show, which is the bane of TV everywhere, particularly when you have seen the shows they're taking the clips from. On the other hand, if you are trying to get into the show, then reading the synopsis of the clip show (the link above) is a pretty good way to do it. Of course, Omarosa has been fired so the whole apocalyptic battle between pure evil and everyone else no longer takes center stage, but I have high hopes despite this.
In other news, I'm continuing to slog through the Ambrose, Lewis and Clark Biography. I guess slog might not be the right word; I don't want to give the impression that it's not enjoyable, only that it's been slow. Also one of my friends has been bugging me to read The Life of Pi for some time so I went ahead and ordered a used hardback copy from Half.com. At this rate, I may average a half a book a month... I'm pretty excited about that.
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Ross
I work for a laboratory, which also has a donor center. As such, we can donate blood or platelets while on the clock. I generally donate platelets about once a month or so. It takes a little over two hours to donate, so they let you watch a movie (for the curious I watched Anger Management, which I quite enjoyed). Normally it's a pleasant diversion, but today it was quite painful. They started on my left arm and after three really nasty pokes interspersed with phrases like "Oh, looks like I went right through to the other side of that vein..." ending up with a big bubble of blood under the skin, they gave up.
They gave me the choice of stopping right there or switching to the other arm and I was tempted to just call it, but I decided to switch to the other arm, and fortunately the needle went in pretty smoothly. But whereas the first arm was painful at the beginning, the second was painful at the end. For some reason, about an hour and a half in they came and turned the blood pressure cuff up a couple of notches to the point where my arm started cramping up. An hour later, when they finally took the needle out, bending my elbow was simultaneously the most pain and the most relief I had ever experienced. I started to understand why people don't like needles.
I should have been done with this a while ago, but I started watching Nova on PBS, and I was enraptured. It was a two-hour program (and I'm really upset that I missed the first hour) on the voyage of Shackleton to the Antarctic. Holy crap! Like I said, I didn't catch the first hour but the journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia was unbelievable. Checking the TV listings, it looks like it's playing quite a few times over the next week or so. If you get the chance, I definitely recommend it.
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Ross
Well it's time to continue the discussion of whether Pluto is a planet. I came across another article on the subject. This guy is firmly in favor of continuing to maintain Pluto's status as a planet. In fact, his standard for defining whether something is a planet is whether it has sufficient gravity that when it cools it forms into a sphere. Using this criteria there would be probably be nearly a hundred planets. I must confess that it's not a bad standard, but I think he misses one really big thing with his argument...
He points out that a similar standard (fusion energy generation) is used to define what stars are and that there are all sorts of them, from blue giants to main sequences, all the way to the dwarfs. If we were to apply his gravitation standard to planets then, there would be a similar categories: gas giants, terrestrial planes, ice balls, etc. And the point I think he missed is that, yeah, under this fairly broad standard Pluto would certainly be a planet, but it would still fall into a different sub-category than the rest of the planets. In essence, he has only moved the issue one step farther away, but not really resolved it. As his daughter correctly points out, no one is going to memorize a hundred different planets.
In other news Le Tour de France discussion has already started on my otherwise completely dead messageboards. In my defense, it wasn't me that started it. And yeah it is a little bit early in the year, but you've got to believe me when I say that this year's Tour will be one for the ages.
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Ross
While I was getting ready for work, my son asked me if I was going to play my computer game when I got home. My daughter chimed in at that point to say that her teacher had talked about the evil, mind-rotting effects of video games. It's one thing (if people on the far right are to be believed) if my children are being indoctrinated with moral relativism, dependence and communism (not to mention drinking flouridated water), but when you bad mouth video games, you've crossed a line. Things have been said which cannot be unsaid. It's for reasons like this that people end up home-schooling their kids. Of course, that was this morning; now that it's later I'm about to write in my blog about something which started a little over a week ago and I can't get my atrophied mind to decide whether or not I've already written about it. I tried going back and reviewing my entries to see if I could tell, but without the benefit of 3-D graphics I'm having a really hard time maintaining my interest.
In any case, the wellness coordinator where I work came and gave a speech about a week ago (man I have the strongest feeling of deja vu -- damn video games!) and talked about the mathematics of dieting. He mentioned that though exercise is very important, if you really want to lose weight you need to cut out some food. Which can be particularly difficult, since portions are so large. She also mentioned smaller, more frequent meals. In any case, it pricked me to the core and I resolved to start eating less. Basically, my goal was to look at each meal and say how much would I normally eat and then cut something, even if it was a small thing, out. I'm happy to report that I appear to have lost almost 5 lbs already. Of course, I think they say the first five pounds is the easiest, or is it the last five lbs is the hardest? I can never remember.
As you can imagine, it's pretty pathetic to be forced to talk about food and dieting. I imagine that only the weather is more cliched, but maybe not even that. To make up for it here's a link to an article debunking the 1 trillion dollar estimate people have been throwing around when talking about the Mars mission.
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Ross
Well it's Friday and I'm once again short on time. I'm running the family campaign tonight and so if I don't blog right now it won't get done. After fixing the tire on the van, I finally managed to get out and fetch the other car. This will be, I think, the sixth time that I've tried to fix the issue where it dies while I'm in the middle of driving it. This time we replaced the ignition switch, which I guess from what the mechanic said is a failing common to the Nissan. So far the problem hasn't re-appeared, but it's pretty intermittent so I'll probably have to go at least a week without seeing it before I'd be comfortable saying that it's gone. As you might have expected, the mechanic could not reproduce the problem.
There's another LAN party tomorrow, but I'm not entirely sure if I'm going to go. I have just an insane amount of stuff to do at home, so leaving the house at 10 am only to return at 1 am the next morning is probably not the best use of my time. One of the issues that has plagued me for much of my life is what to do with all my books (yes, I know, 'read them' but I'm talking about space). I think all told I have about 5 book shelves of various sizes and 'states of repair' but they seem to barely be able to handle just the role-playing stuff I have. On top of that are probably at least 2000 and probably more other books that should really be on a shelf... One of these days I'll get around to that.... In any case that's all I have time for.
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Ross
First, I have a confession to make: I don't think I'm smart enough to "get" a Tom Stoppard play on the first viewing (though I didn't have any problems with Shakespeare in Love). Maybe I'm not being fair to myself. Maybe there wasn't really anything else to get. Of course, my disappointment at my ignorance was quickly overtaken by rage when I ran over some debris in the road. As could be expected, my first thought was, "I hope that damn debris doesn't cause a flat." If I had engaged in more temperate thoughts maybe I would have been okay. As it was, I obviously got a flat.
I really hate changing tires, probably because it hurts my delicate girlie hands. It was the first time I had occasion to use the spare on my van and I had never realized that it's under the van. In my humble opinion that's a terrible place to put a spare tire. Not only was the tire filthy (remember I'm a delicate flower) but it was nearly as flat as the tire I was replacing. Fortunately I was both close to a gas station and close to home, and I was able to limp to an air hose.
On a completely separate note, I was reading from my Bathroom Reader and there was a little note at the bottom of one of the pages that mentioned a mushroom which was 3.5 miles in diameter. Generally speaking, the Bathroom reader books are fairly accurate, though they have made mistakes in the past, so I started looking for independent confirmation. It turns out to be true, but not as spectacular as I had originally thought. In my imagination, I saw this huge mushroom with a ten story stalk, spreading out as far as the eye could see in an even more enormous cave. You can see why I thought it might be ficticious.
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Ross
One thing I haven't touched on since its discovery at the beginning of the week is Sedna, the Kuiper Belt object nearly the size of Pluto. While any discovery of a new object in the Solar System is interesting, the primary interest for me in this story is whether Sedna will jeopardize Pluto's planetary status. Lots of people seem very much attached to the idea that the Solar System has 9 planets, one of which is Pluto. I grew up with as much fascination about space as anyone (I could recite all 9 planets when I was 5), but somehow it doesn't bother me that Pluto may get demoted. In fact, I'm actually in favor of it.
Currently there isn't a firm defintion of what a planet is, a situation which will obviously be rectified at some point, and when it is you either end up disqualifying Pluto or letting a whole bunch of other similar objects into the club. One point that has always bothered me (but doesn't seem to faze anyone else) is the fact that Pluto is smaller than the Earth's Moon. Now admittedly with the simple rule that a "planet cannot orbit another planet" you get rid of that problem, but then you elimate any possibility of a "Double Planet" which has been a fixture in science fiction for as long as I can remember. Obviously classifying things from strictly the standpoint of size is awkward because Titan and Ganymede are both slightly bigger than Mercury.
Well I have another play tonight. This one is The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard. I haven't seen it before but I really enjoyed Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead so hopefully this one will be equally enjoyable. I stll have a ton of things to do before the play so this is it for now. Tune in again, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.
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Ross
For long-time readers of blog (isn't that an oxymoron), you may recall that I talked about the MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies at some time in the past. Guessing correctly that no one read that, I'll repeat my point. The problem with Star Wars role-playing on any level is that ultimately everyone wants to play a Jedi. Now if you've got a small table-top game, it probably isn't that big of a thing. On the other hand, if you have a server with thousands of people on it, it's a big problem. The reason I'm reminded of this is an excellent three-part series on SW Galaxies, in particular how Jedi nearly destroyed the game.
Obviously that is a topic unto itself, but what I'm interested in is how certain settings don't make good role-playing games. Obviously, Actuaries and Accountants is not going to make the bestseller list anytime soon, but even things which seem natural on closer inspection are discovered to be somewhat tough to play. One of my friends is running a game set in Arthurian England. Seems similar enough to classic D&D that there should be no problem right? Well, so you've got one person who wants to be a Knight of the Round Table; this is fine if that's what everyone wants to be, though it makes it difficult for any one player to feel special. But what if someone doesn't want to be a knight, do you make him a squire? How does that work, does the player with the squire really sit by while the other player bosses him around and gets all the combat and glory?
I'm not saying that it can't be done, just that for everything negative said about D&D, it's very easy to role-play in. It's obviously impossible to compare table-top RPG's and CRPG's but I think that there's a lot that could be learned by the computer guys (especially the MMOG ones) from the table-top games that might be instructive. As a final brief example, they're trying to make a MMORPG out of the Matrix. How do they expect to make that? Being Neo is just like being a Jedi...
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Ross
I'm sitting here watching Bend It Like Beckham, enjoying a great movie (Keira Knightly is a hottie) and suddenly it occurs to me that I hadn't blogged yet. Sometimes it's like that -- you're having a great time, not a care in the world and then you realize that you still have to spread confusion, misinformation, doubt and fear. Actually my writing isn't good enough to spread fear, so I have to settle for the first three. Speaking of spreading confusion, I should clarify the reference from Friday: "Ether Bunny" refers to a series of knock-knock jokes (not the horrible, wish I had never read, urban legend).
Unfortunately, this particular copy of the movie is a rental and has been watched way too many times. It was fine for the first 90 minutes, but now it seems to hang every every 30 seconds. Some people shouldn't be allowed to rent DVDs. Hopefully Blockbuster will give me some kind of refund or credit, though based on past experience they seem to have a corporate soul matched in evil only by Microsoft.
In any case, that's all for tonight. Things are going, albeit a little slowly; hopefully I'll have something to report here pretty quick. I should mention before I leave that no one won the DARPA Grand Challange. In fact, the farthest anyone got on the 142 mile course was seven miles. Kind of disappointing, but it will be held again and I think this is a good start.
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Ross
It doesn't look like I'm going to be able to post much this evening. I have a game which starts in less than an hour and I still need to get there. For those of you sobbing quietly in the corner at this news I have only one thing to say: "Ether Bunny be back next year". Someday you'll understand. Until then check out this article in Wired, with the latest update on the DARPA Grand Challenge
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Ross
After being horribly shamed by the comments on my March 3rd entry, I resolved to do a better job of making time to read. As a consequence, I picked up Undaunted Courage by Stephen E. Ambrose. I've read a few of his books in the past and I always enjoyed them, plus this book is a loaner from my father, so at some point I need to return it, and there would be far less shame involved if I could do it without admitting defeat. The book has taught me a couple of things: the first is that I really don't have any big gaping 'reading spaces' in my schedule (so far I'm only on page 30 after a week), the second is that Meriwether Lewis makes any modern man look a baby that still needs the protection of a crib and diapers.
So far, Lewis has calmly shot a bull that was charging him at the age of eight, saved an entire refugee camp at the age of ten, and explored most of the eastern United States before the age of 16. Normally I use myself as a negative example in whatever point I'm trying to make, but I don't know anyone who would have the calm to face down a charging bull (I personally would need the aforementioned diaper) and kill it with a single shot. And this is at any age, let alone when they were eight. I can only conclude that men were made of sterner stuff back then, and I have to wonder: what's changed?
I think maybe it's opportunity -- what we need are more charging bulls. Imagine if there were hundreds, nay thousands of charging bulls in every city in America. If only through dumb luck eventually some eight year old would shoot one of them. Now countless eight year olds (and lots of additional people for that matter) would die, but isn't that a small price to pay if we could end up with some real heroes like old Meriwether? I'm just asking you to think about it...
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Ross
This strange sort of quasi-flu has been making the rounds at my house. What's unusual about this particular illness is that both my wife and I have contracted it, but it has spared the children. Of course, I may be speaking prematurely. Anyway, as a result, not of my own illness but of taking care of my wife, my own problems didn't start until later. I didn't blog yesterday; not that I had anything to say. Somehow it never occured to me that I had missed the obvious topic... Porn.
It's hard to believe that I've gone nearly a year with an internet blog and never talked about online pornography. As someone with my own (very, very, very tiny) internet business, and who knows quite a few people in the same boat, I've long been aware that the internet porn business is particularly competitive and cutthroat and as a result it's also incredibly cutting edge. There was an article in USA Today covering this very topic.
In any case, it's getting late and I am still under the weather, so I'll wrap it here. I think I've done enough edification for one night.
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Ross
Sometimes (okay most of the time), I struggle to think of something to write about in my blog. It's particularly bad today because I've actually had some pretty good days and so I really don't have anything to whine about. As you can imagine, this eliminates 90% of my traditional material. I could talk about my car's electrical problems, but that would be too boring...
I could talk about the Gay Marriage Amendment, but that's too political. I could mention that it takes 1.8 tons of material to manufacture a desktop PC and monitor, but that's about all there is to the story. I could mention that publishers have refused to pick up the latest book by a writer of "Chaste Mormon Fiction," but that seems like something that would only interest the locals. I could mention the irony of Kerry voting against the 87 billion dollars to fund military operations in Iraq and then complaining that the troops didn't have "enough firepower and support," but if my readership is representative of the country at large, then I could alienate half of them with that one comment.
I could talk about NWN: Hordes of the Underdark, but I really haven't played it enough to opine yet. I could talk about the nightmare I had last night where my wife had died, but I don't really remember much except that it was a lot of work taking care of all of the kids and the idea of dating again filled me with an enormous amount of dread. I could talk about the Tour de France, but it seems premature, even for me. I could talk about nothing, a tactic which has worked with reasonable success in the past... oh wait a second, I already did.
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Ross
I was hoping to get the long-promised third Xenogenic NPC out yesterday, but I ended up taking a (really) long lunch and going to see Starsky & Hutch (capsule review: good, but somewhat overhyped; funny, but no Tommy Boy) which kind of threw off the rest of the day. So rather than blogging yesterday and making, what my friend called, another creative excuse, I decided to skip yesterday and post today, when the NPC was actually ready but...
Ha, got ya, there is no but. Thomas "Sarge" Smith, the 3rd Xenogenic NPC is now ready. As I mention in the description, a human fighter is perhaps the most generic NPC I could have posted but he is generic because the human fighter is everywhere. As such, I can't imagine anyone more useful (actually a mage would be pretty useful, because those are a bear to generate, but he's coming). Have fun with him, and let me know if you notice anything amiss.
Finally, though several years away, it looks like old Peter Jackson is going to make The Hobbit. He even wants Ian Mckellan back as Gandalf. The big problem is that one studio owns the distribution rights and one studio owns the production rights. I would really love to see Peter Jackson's vision of what Smaug looks like.
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Ross
Wow, for a while there I thought no one was reading my blog and then six comments in a single day. Who would have thought that reading would be the subject that would ignite the comment board in a firestorm of criticism. The last comment from my wife was particularly pointed in the way that only the truth can be. Having nothing else in particular that I wanted to write about, I guess reading for pleasure will be our subject for the day, or rather, my lack of reading and its direct relationship to my lack of moral fiber.
I wholeheartedly agree with Wil's suggestion that you read whenever (and wherever you can). In the past, my goal has been to never be without a book, in case the opportunity to read ever presented itself. And you know what happens? That works fine for a little while, but then eventually I get into the book and I read to the exclusion of everything else. I know there are those of you who read my blog who must assume that I am well nigh illiterate, but as you can see, my love of reading is so great that it's a weakness.
If I carry a book around all the time I end up doing nothing but reading, and while I can think of very few ways of spending my life preferable to this, once the money stopped coming in, I think the lifestyle would lose it's sheen. I guess I just need to exercise some moderation when I read. Anyway, before I sign-off I thought I'd post a link to an interesting freedom of press battle going on between a website and the 'developer' of a new game console. It's an interesting read.
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Ross
You know, it's amazing how little it takes before you're getting 500+ e-mails a day. (Admittedly that's spread over two accounts, but still). Much of this is spam (particularly on my work account), and most of the rest is mailing lists I belong to, but even given that, it's still a pain to wade through it every day. That assumes you don't miss a day. Once you start missing days, then you're really in trouble. That's one of the things I'm trying to catch up on with DireKobold, my e-mail. It looks like I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but there's still a lot of stuff I've put off responding to. For example, my mailbox is crammed with "enhancement products" I want to send away for -- that right there is going to take several hours.
I just finished reading the book Holes, by Louis Sachar. I had already seen the movie and the book was delightful as well. I highly recommend both the book and the movie. Both take only about two hours to complete and it's two hours you won't regret. In addition to whatever else I might have gotten out of the book, I realized that I need to read more. I used to be this voracious reader, and in a sense I still am, but with everything else I have to deal with, reading for pleasure has almost disappeared. I say almost, there are occasional surges but what I would really like is to average about two books a month (or even a book a week, but there's no way I could keep that up). Ahh... if only I didn't have to work.
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Ross
Of course the big news today is that Mars was once soaking wet. I had heard yesterday that NASA was going to make a big announcement today; I was kind of hoping that they might have discovered some evidence of life. I realize that's a long shot, but they seemed to be building to a pretty large announcement, which don't get me wrong, this is, but one can still hope. I guess Super Tuesday is today as well, so that could be interesting, but won't. By the end of the day it will be down to Kerry, as much as I would like it to continue to be interesting.
Speaking of the election, I read a great article by Andrew Sullivan in Time magazine about the dangers of success for a wartime president. His primary example is Winston Churchill. I don't think it's fair to Churchill for him to be compared to Bush, but it's a good read regardless. In any case, that's about it for today. I'm still trying to catch up and mindless-blog-blathering(tm) is not going to help.
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Ross
The problem with having something on the side, be it a job or a hobby, is that it's always playing second fiddle to the main course. I already mentioned the horrible problems I had at work on Friday (followed by a Saturday morning spent trying to figure out why my cable modem was dropping 20% of all packets). Today wasn't quite so bad, but neither did it lack for annoyance either. There's a new boss (sort of) in town and since it's a newly created position, he doesn't have nearly enough to do...
As a result, he fills his hours looking over stuff that has already been done and suggesting ways it could have been done better. Which has led to me having to redo a lot of perfectly good material. Compounding the problem is my recent birthday. It's hard to imagine how a birthday could make the situation worse. Well it did, but before I fully engage this topic I would like to make it very clear that I am in no way complaining, or attempting to discourage this thing in the future or claiming that I am picked on or abused because of this.
See, the thing is my family in their infinite kindness gave me three great games for my birthday. Three great games I haven't played. Three great games each of which probably requires 40-60 hours of game play to finish. (For the curious, the games are NWN: Hordes of the Underdark, SW: Knights of the Old Republic and Temple of Elemental Evil). It's hard enough to catch up on DireKobold with all my energy being taken up at work, add three incredible computer games to the mix and I don't have a chance.
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Ross