Tenth

Roommates looking for Roommate

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 16:41:47 GMT

My roommates are looking to fill my soon-to-be-vacant spot in a spacious and surprisingly affordable Medford/Somerville (Boston) area apartment. If you know anyone looking for a room in the area who doesn't mind cats, please point them at me!

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 03:07:44 GMT

Lo, Saturnalia!

Fun With Nihilism

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:46:48 GMT

The Nietzsche Family Circus really brightened up my day. Although I'm not sure if "brighten" is really the right word to use here.

It's kind of terrifying how well they go together! To be fair, they did have a few things in common to start with: They were both preachy, and extremely creepy, albeit in different ways.

There is a Random Generator page, but you can also combine them by hand to comic-trageditastic effect for treatises on various subjects:

Drugs

Love (also makes a great mother's day card!)

Willpower

Indignancy

Morality

Thoughts And Feelings

Science

Mankind

Hygiene

The Abyss

Religion

Baseball

Professional Billing Disservices

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 21:37:17 GMT

I haven't dealt with Comcast in a while, but they don't disappoint.

While their phone support has been great, both patient and friendly, as well as the requisite "helpful", and their service has been working out very well for me at the new place (especially after the service tech labeled our wires, to discourage any other wandering telecom guys from unplugging our house... You'd be surprised at how often this happens in my neighborhood!) the one thing I remembered the most about previous dealings with them was their billing system.

They hadn't really contacted me much at all since installation, just an email noting that it might take my first bill might "take some time" to arrive. I had also tried to sign up for an account on their website in the hopes of paying or even just seeing my outstanding balance, but you need a special PIN number to do that, which would theoretically be mailed to me.

Which it was... not. But they did send me what I wanted the most, after a month of radio silence: A bill for almost $400, and an friendly yet stern admonishment for my lateness, and my failure to cleverly guess the amount and (somehow?) manage to have already paid it before the bill or Online Account Establishment PIN number arrived.

Thanks, Comcast!

It was cool, though; I still had almost six days to take care of that before they sent a collection agency after me. And they included a brochure encouraging me to sign up for paperless EcoBilling, to avoid crap like this in the future. Which I did! After I called them to get my secret PIN number, which they still hadn't sent me (unless it is somehow secretly Bible Encoded into my statement or one of the many other brochures it came with.)

Another fun note; While I signed up for the account using an email address, they can't email me any of the relevant information. They also can't give me the PIN number over the phone, even though their call system was aware that I had Comcast Digital Voice service and was using it to call them; They had to call me back (via call waiting) on that number before they were convinced. Now... I get that you can spoof caller IDs, but it just seems weird that they can't tell WTF is happening on their own VOIP network. I mean, they are actually my phone company... You would think if anyone knew the score on that one, it would be them.

Anyway, even after signing up for an online account and selecting two more secret awesome PIN numbers, my online paperless EcoBill won't take effect for at least 45 more days (possibly more!), after this current billing period and well into next one. So I ALSO had to fill out all my bank information again in order to make a one-time payment for my current balance (which may take up to three or more days to process... So it may still possibly be "late".) Which came with it's own magical adventures, since the Payment system is designed to encourage you from overpaying; They do grudgingly acknowledge that this is the right thing to do in certain circumstances, such as if you are "paying a printed bill before an auto-payment takes effect", but it also seems to be in-frigging-evitable given how their billing system works.

So if I understand this correctly, I may have to make one (or possibly two?) more "blind" payments, re-entering all of my bank and contact information each time and also clicking through a lot of "Please don't overpay your apparently empty balance!" dialogs before any of this song and dance becomes even vaguely automatic. Hopefully I won't have to move again before that happens.

And I thought my company's own home-grown billing system sucks! (Turns out, it is so far in advance of regular human billing systems as to seem Magical in comparison.)

Branching Out

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 06:25:52 GMT

So, while I try to keep this journal personal and very much separate from anything that might lead back to my job, I do have a vaguely work related question for you guys.

Very work related, I guess, but phrased vaguely.

My company makes business management software, and for a long time, we were specialized to a particular industry. But for a variety of reasons, we've been trying to branch out... The problem is, we're not really sure where to start knocking.

After all, there are a lot of cheapo options out there these days... Quickbooks is probably the best known, and one of the most popular, as it is fairly affordable and covers accounting as well as the basics of inventory management, sales, statistics, and so on.

The thing with us, though, is that we're really good at customization. Thanks to more than ten years of dealing with clients with their own bizarre ways of doing things, we have learned to deal with a lot of different methods of business. Maybe you also manufacture or assemble things, and need to order parts in different ratios based on the demand for your finished products; Maybe you resell things and need to keep track of their value over time. Or maybe the value (or some portion of the value) of your inventory varies over time due to exchange rates or gold prices... Or you might be selling hours of service (at different rates!) by various employees or other sub-contractors as part of, or along with your goods. Or you're interested in having a touchscreen kiosk display in your office that ties into your system, so customers can search through your inventory without bugging your staff to loot through the boxes in the back room.

It also gets interesting when you want a website for your business that ties into all this stuff. With the proper permissions, of course, so your employees can track their accounts and orders, or at least the parts of their accounts that you want them to. Or you might also be interested in tying parts of your business into other websites or online services... Listing items on Amazon or EBay, or tracking events and appointments through Google Calendar. Whatever you got, really, because unlike the business software you can buy at Staples, we wrote it ourselves, and we have a lot of experience with people who need to do things "differently". Oh, and we support MacOS. And Linux. And Windows. All together on the same network, even.

Recently, we've talked to some boutique clothing shops, a high end shoe store, and (I really should have thought of this one earlier), a tattoo parlor.

If you have any other ideas, or you know someone (or some company) who might be interested in our services, please let me know! While we're definitely more expensive than some of our brand name competitors, we're interested in expanding into other fields... And if you can introduce us to the industry of courier services, piercing shops, or alpaca farmers, or whatever, really, we can probably make it worth their while.

Moving Sucks.

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 03:32:09 GMT

Originally, it seemed like an unfortunate waste of money to start moving into a new apartment on February 1st when February at the old place was already paid for. Now, though... I'm not sure how any other schedule could have worked.

And as is the case seemingly every time I move, I am astounded at how much crap I own. You wouldn't necessarily know, because while there's stuff on the desk, and stuff in the bookshelf, the other 100 cubic feet of junk is very efficiently Tetrised into the closet. It never gets old... I try to take everything out of the closet for inspection and packing, and it always boggles my mind that, spread out, it doesn't all fit in my room.

And I always run across some forgotten item or paper that makes me feel nostalgic (or depressed, or old, or all of the above.) Invitations to weddings, old letters from friends, jotted down diagrams and ideas that seemed extremely awesome at the time... And various and sundry other things that probably wouldn't mean anything to anyone else, but that I lose several entire minutes to in a staring contest, when I remember what they are.

(Like that playbill to A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Eastman Theatre in Rochester... It would take a long time to explain, but, wow. Back in the day.)

I guess things are moving along pretty well, considering; All the furniture and heavy stuff (except my home office itself) have been professionally moved to the new place, and everything got there in once piece, and up either the incredibly steep (or 60s-batman-villain-lair-esque half-spiral) staircase into the new place. Well, except for certain pieces of Ikea furniture, but they got up in pieces, and eventually they will be whole again. (And thank you again, IkeaFans.com, for satisfying all my Furniture Assembly Instruction PDF needs.)

But I still feel pretty depressed. I am going to miss having my own bathroom, central air conditioning, a garbage disposal, and the really nice view of the Boston skyline from my bedroom window, which I now wish I had pulled up the blinds on and enjoyed a little more often than I did.

The new place is cheaper, though, and it has more space... Two porches, an attic, and a storage area in the basement. There is the small issue of the utilities (it needs natural gas, oil, and electricity for everything to work), the absence of three prong outlets in the room that was supposed to be my office (whoops) and the moving expenses, setup fees, and other charges, which are starting to add up impressively. But in the long run, I'll be saving money, even if it doesn't really feel like it right now.

But everything considered, it's a lot of progress for four days.

Breast Chaser Galvion

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 05:32:54 GMT

I am not familiar with this model kit, the giant robot it represents, or the manga, anime, or video game it hails from... And yet, I feel that Galvion and I have a lot of interests in common.

Well... At least one, anyway.

Moving On Up (or maybe, down.)

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 19:36:22 GMT

While I have enjoyed a very fancy apartment for almost two years now, circumstances have encouraged me to look for newer, cheaper places to live.

On the one hand, I was pleased to see that there are quite a few apartments in and around the Boston area that are more affordable than my current one. On the other hand, quite a few of them are ass nasty.

Here's a good example of a Pro/Con list I made this weekend for (Address Omitted):

Pros:

Spacious Living Room and dining area
Two Bedrooms, one full bath
Front balcony (with sitting room!)
Rear balcony! (also with sitting room!)
Access to fenced back yard
Funky retro conical lighting fixtures in the stairwells
Less than $1400 / month!

Cons:

Overpowering sickly-sweet/seafood odor throughout (?)
Steady leak of foul smelling water through kitchen light fixture (!!!)
Sputtering, sparking light fixture (from the leak)
Big puddle and warped floor in kitchen (from the leak)
Mysterious, viscous yellow buildup on ceiling (from the leak?!?!)
Cracked windows, torn screens, holes in walls (fixable)
Rusted out front gate, windowsills, and fixtures (less fixable)
Approximately 1.5 miles from any non-defunct businesses

So, yeah. At least I'm feeling retroactively lucky about how lucky I was to land my current apartment and keep it for so long.

I could probably turn this into a fun series of posts... I was going to add something like "baleful, one eyed landlord", but actually she was really nice to us. Though "friendly" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

So, some other things I'd rather not see on my Cons list:

Landlord reserves half of basement storage space for "ritual use"

Neighbors exhibit unusual family resemblance, macrostomia, ichthyoid eyes, and other shared abnormalities

Unpleasant civil war era daguerreotypes to be displayed prominently as per terms of lease (Portraying mass executions, red-hooded figures amidst large tangles of bodies, etc.)

"Cold spots", electrical and magnetic interference, some gravitational lensing, expected background radiation doses between 20 and 50 millisieverts/year

Pulsating, hairy mold formations/cocoons visible along garage baseboards and along rear porch supports

Unusually high incidence of strokes, seizures, xenoglossy, heart failure, and malignant synesthesia among previous tenants

Soundless bursts and flashes of blinding blue (or gray) light from drywall cracks and gaps between walls/floors

Local and wireless phone calls frequently interrupted by hoarse, buzzing, unintelligible voice

Blasted heath, meteorite craters, the presence of a pale, outre colour or blend of colours which I can neither place nor describe

Syrupy black discharge from pipes and conduits leading below ground level

Distant, half-heard, low pitched but ceaseless howling roar from sealed attic space

Flying Polyps

I think that's about it.

Antikythera 3G

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 15:41:54 GMT

Christmas season work sucks.

But I was pleased to find out, as reported on many geeky/tech/history sites, that work has been completed on a functional recreation of the Antikythera Mechanism, the fabled "world's first portable computer".

Sadly, it isn't a difference engine, but (as expected after the first round of x-rays and analysis), more like world's first astronomical calculator. So while "εὕρηκα!" won't be replacing "lol, cuneiform" as the world's first text message (or "Sumerian Cat Is Sumerian" as the first internet meme) it is still an interesting footnote on the evolution of technology.

Yes We Did.

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 07:16:23 GMT

In lieu of a Halloween party, I ended up having a sort of Electoral Party at my place, with halloween cupcakes and Candy Corn and other such post-holiday-discounted badness.

And thankfully, for us all, the Blue States have represented, and it did not turn into a misery fueled Palin-hating cupcake eating contest.

We still aren't Palin fans here at the Bachelor Pad, but it was hilarious to compare the Concession Speech to the Acceptance Speech. While McCain remains my "favorite Republican", and he was a good sport about it, his crowd was booing (and swearing?) in less than classy fashion whenever he mentioned Obama. (And to a certain extent, when he mentioned his Vice Presidential candidate. Ouch.)

I have to say that Obama really impressed me with his speech; We have seen thoughtful, dignified, and well spoken Presidents in the past, but not all at the same time, at least not since I was born. He was very humble about the challenges he's inheriting, and had nothing but nice things to say about McCain (and even Negative Nancy over there), and it was also great to hear his crowd cheer for them right along with him. I have had mixed feelings about voting Democrat, as an alternative to Republicanism rather than a genuine trust in the party, but between the representative crowds on TV (and my own resident poorly informed "I'm not racist but I don't like black people" pro-McCain co-worker), I definitely feel like I have done the right thing, at least as far as our two party electoral college system is concerned.

I am not so idealistic as to believe that our President can be a good enough example to us all, that we can all become better Americans... But even in his acceptance speech, the time when politicians are allowed to whoop and jump up and down a little, he refrained from tooting his own horn. He was humble, and, as CNN even put it, "somber", about the shit we are going to have to go through; He was definitely accepting responsibility, rather than claiming victory. He didn't mention God and Gay people and Republicans in the same sentence, but they all got some positive air time, which I think is awesome.

Because despite all the comments about "real america" still lingering in the air like stale farts, he was respectful and conciliatory, and pointed out that running America is about bringing together an incredibly diverse population of people. (Not just sucking up to the richest, most easily offended ones, apparently.) He took time to reach out to the people who didn't vote for him, and seemed genuinely concerned about winning their trust. It was like one of those Presidents you only see in sci-fi and disaster movies, the kind who genuinely gives a shit about his people and the issues facing his country, and doesn't lose a lot of time choking on pretzels and falling off segways.

And the voting statistics seem to agree... Not only is this the highest voting turnout in American history, but a vast majority of these people signed up for the first time to vote for him, and It's a pretty resounding victory in opinion polls as well. It has certainly restored some of my faith in America; I'm sure there are people who voted Obama for the wrong reasons, but I have to assume that his voters suffered through the same debate and stump-speech footage that I did without being swayed towards "real america" or freaking out about "socialism". (Hey, kids! It turns out that there's actually a Socialist Party, and they don't endorse him.)

It sounds like he's already put a lot of thought into his agenda and staff selection; Some have called that presumptuous, but he may surprise us by putting more work and consideration into his job by the end of the day tomorrow than our current president has done in the last... Fuck, seriously, what has Bush done in 2008? Anything? (Commenting on stuff and endorsing Republican candidates doesn't count.)

It's going to take me a while to adjust to having a president that I actually respect, but I am willing to make that effort if he, in turn, is willing to continue to be the kind of person who actually deserves the position. I am going to miss the snark and the America jokes, but with time, I could probably get used to not despising my executive government.

Lame-O-Ween

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 16:50:18 GMT

It is now official, that I need to do something cool for Halloween next year. Seriously.

My Halloween consisted of me working late, buying a 2 liter of diet coke at the corner store, noting that I had forgotten to put up any of my halloween decorations, and then falling asleep in my chair around 9:30 PM. It was one of those weeks (and having a really nasty cold didn't help).

I did get to see some drunken college kids on the T Saturday night (apparently that's when all the Boston Halloween parties went down), including the "Other Super Friends", a lesser known crime fighting team consisting of (Christian Bale/Dark Knight) Batman, Eminem, and (circa 1989) Flavor Flav.

I also finished reading Stephen King's "Danse Macabre", which was not so much about writing as it was about Steve-o's view on horror novels and movies. I was hoping for more insight on horror psychology and less of a history lesson, but he does make some good points, tells some great Harlan Ellison stories, and reminded me that I am really behind on Robert Bloch and Fritz Leiber. Like, 30+ years. I read a lot (and I mean, a lot) of classic sci fi and horror novels growing up, completely tapped out the Science Fiction and Horror short story compilation directories of three different libraries, and developed the impression that I had made my way through the "classic" stuff and well into the crap strata, but somehow I missed most of Stephen King's personal favorites on the way down. I definitely need to work on that.

Japanese curses are no fun

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 03:19:04 GMT

I haven't really had time to do much for Halloween this year, but I did dig up a classic horror movie on youtube.

Noroi ("The Curse") is sort of the Japanese cousin of the Blair Witch Project. But rather than shaky-cam footage of darkness and bitchy campers, it is presented in "Incomplete Documentary" form, with archival films, home movies, interviews with crazy homeless people, and even clips from cheesy daytime TV shows... Mundane, amateurish, or even tedious in parts, it represents the unedited footage that an investigative reporter left behind before he mysteriously disappeared.

But viewed together, in sequence, a lot of small, very disturbing details start to come together. What initially come across as random clips of bad Japanese television become suggestions of very horrible, unseen, and strangely related events. As it was left incomplete by the (missing) author, there's no overarching narrative, so you're left with the comments he makes "live" during his interviews, and a lot of reading between the lines... Which makes it a little hard to follow at times, but much more disturbing when you start to make the connections.

It's fairly long, and cut up into little chunks on YouTube, but the first couple of parts will give you a good idea of whether it's your kinda party.

Part 1 ... Part 2 ... Part 3 ... Part 4

Part 5 ... Part 6 ... Part 7 ... Part 8

Part 9 ... Part 10 ... Part 11 ... Part 12

There are only a handful of special effects, and they're pretty subtle; Mostly it's about details and sounds, at least until things really start getting weird. And as a lot of the really terrible stuff happens off camera, it's not that disturbing... Unless you have a good imagination, and a talent for filling in blanks and question marks with horrible things, in which case it's pretty awful.

At The Other Mountains Of Madness

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 20:19:58 GMT

Just in time for halloween... Scientists are getting ready to check out what some (Halloween Spirited) news outlets are referring to as the Antarctic Mountain Range that shouldn't be there.

Not to be confused with the fictional Mountains Of Madness described in H.P. Lovecraft's story, which coincidentally are also in Antarctica, and also should not exist.

Now for the real question... While it seems clear that they "Were not meant to be", is it also true that mankind is "Not meant to know" about them? Scientists hope to find out real soon!

un-LOST

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 23:37:48 GMT

I just came back from a week long vacation spent many, many miles off the coast of Maine, and didn't even see a computer for a good six days or so, not counting my cell phone. Which, despite all expectations to the contrary, did kinda work from out there (at least in clear weather, on certain sides of the Island.)

Some of the highlights from my crappy phone camera:

And more on my Flickr stream.

Tricked again... and again.... and....

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 22:59:26 GMT

Um.... Thanks, guys. I guess.

My LiveJournal Trick-or-Treat Haul
tenth goes trick-or-treating, dressed up as Richard Stallman.
alistairenix tricks you! You get a dead frog.
asmenoth tricks you! You get a block of wood.
cyli tricks you! You get a rock.
glyf tricks you! You get a toothbrush.
hesterwild tricks you! You get a dead frog.
hippygoth tricks you! You get a 3.5-inch floppy disc.
ladygwyn tricks you! You get an eraser.
lilin gives you 16 purple orange-flavoured pieces of chewing gum.
mirthness tricks you! You get a clothespin.
murphyzlaw tricks you! You get a wad of paper.
tenth ends up with 16 pieces of candy, a dead frog, a block of wood, a rock, a toothbrush, a dead frog, a 3.5-inch floppy disc, an eraser, a clothespin, and a wad of paper.
Go trick-or-treating! Username:
Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern.

Stop Dying, Please

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:09:11 GMT

First Stan Winston, now George Carlin. Mortality is really being a bitch this week.

4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 00:42:45 GMT

Has it really been four editions? It seems like it wasn't all that long ago that I bought a briefcase full of weird books at a yard sale for like ten bucks... Weird ass books that proclaimed they would let me explore a world of poorly drawn and garishly colored critters and become a legendary hero, at least in my own mind and those of anyone else fortunate(?) enough to attempt to figure out the rules with me.

D&D has come a long way since then, and it's been especially interesting to consider how they'd top 3rd Edition, which was a complete reimagining of almost everything we had grown familar with over the years. Well, it's here... Or it will be, next week. But the first major release of 4th Edition is Adventure H1 (yay for module codes!), more commonly referred to as "Keep On The Shadowfell".

And if this is any indication of what we can expect from 4th Ed products, then it seems that WotC has finally gotten their tabletop RPG act together. In addition to the 80 page glossy color magazine-style adventure book, it also includes a 16 page pamphlet of quick-start 4th Edition rules, five premade adventurer characters, and three large double-sided poster style maps, covering six major areas of the adventure. The maps are notably also glossy and in color, with detailed, painted backgrounds and an overlaid grid with subtle indications of walls, inclines, and difficult terrain. While there are no rules for character advancement, each premade adventurer has annotations for the abilities they gain at second and third level, covering all the levelling that's expected to occur during the module.

Click here for all the glossy colory goodness (on my crappy cell camera)

"Keep on the Shadowfell" is a pretty decent introduction to what we have come to expect from an adventure for character levels 1-3... No dragons, yet, but there are certainly some dungeons, minor but vicious monsters to beat the crap out of, a small town, some NPC villagers, some totally over the top Indiana Jones style traps, a few (not very tricky) puzzles, and of course the big nasty villain from the cover of the box.

The overall presentation is great; The two books and three maps come inside a cardboard sleeve decorated in the style of an (extremely thin) dark, leather bound tome. The books themselves are decorated to match the design on the sleeve, and it looks great together, even after the postal service folded mine in half and jammed it into my tiny mailbox. The cover is a fine piece of artwork, though somewhat of a spoiler for the plot... However, it also portrays some things that don't happen/appear in the adventure, so whatever. It may just be the inflation talking, but 96 pages of gaming stuff, three maps, and enough 4th Edition rules to start playing the "new D&D" seems like a pretty good deal for under $20.

(EDIT: Apparently it has been too long since I actually paid money for a module; The general consensus is that they did an incredibly cheap printing, at least in terms of the paper and binding. I guess I'm dating myself, RPG module-wise, by being impressed that everything was in color. But media quality aside, it does still look nice.)

While the smaller maps and diagrams in the Adventure book are well done, in the same visual style as the poster maps, the other illustrations vary in quality. The Quick Start rules and sample character sheets are limited to pencil sketch style drawings, which, while pretty badass looking, don't entirely match the characters. (The classes and races are appropriate, but in almost all cases they're shown with prominent weapons and equipment that the characters don't actually own, which might confuse and/or disappoint your players.)

The sample characters are short and to the point, with pre-selected extra stuff you gain at levels 2 and 3. Unfortunately, they were designed with later expansion in mind rather than just being easy to read; This means that your players will be confronted with some fairly heavy vocabulary about a "Feat" that leverages the "Class Feature" of "Channel Divinity" to allow you to use a power, with no explaination of any of those terms. It's basically just reference text explaining how the character was created (in case you want to advance him/her after you buy the rulebooks), but it's confusing and meaningless in the context of an introductory game. It should be in italics, or listed after the stuff the player needs to know... or I guess you can just cross it out with a sharpie, but from the viewpoint of a potential DM, it left me flipping back and forth between the two books trying to find out what "Channel Divinity" means.

A few other concepts are similarly elusive (such as what "Concealment" and "Cover" actually do for you), and there are a few pitfalls for players who are familiar with the previous edition of D&D... Concepts like "Standard Actions", and "Flanking", and "Attacks Of Opportunity" are still used in 4th Ed, but work much differently.

The good news is that most of these changes are much-needed streamlining. The "Player" book contains six pages of rules, and the ones that players actually need to know by heart could fit on the back of a character sheet. The Adventure booklet devotes about 9 pages to rules, essentially a more detailed version of the player rules, plus some extra stuff for status effects, and another few pages on how to interpret and use the monster abilities, which are now condensed into little Magic The Gathering style blocks of info. (This allows you to easily put NPCs and critters on notecards, and presumably will also let WotC sell us "decks" of monsters and stuff... I definitely like the first half of that idea.)

I am planning to write a much more detailed view of 4th Edition as a system when the core rulebooks are released (and it is more legally appropriate for me to do so), but there a few interesting changes are notable just from paging through the Player's booklet:

The rules have become simpler, and more consistent. This is especially evident in terms of how Actions work (much, much simpler), and how Attacks Of Opportunity are made (less often, and when clearly prompted to). I think these are all good ideas, and much easier for me to wrap my head around than they were in previous edition.

Skills, Feats, and Powers allow characters to "break" or exceed the basic rules, and it is understood that specific exceptions always beat the general rules. This makes new abilities a lot easier to understand, and they've also done a good job so far of explaining how types of special abilities interact with each other, without the necessity for debates, voting, hanging chads, etc. In some ways, it feels almost like a CCG, where each ability comes with specific instructions about when and how you can use it. Not a big surprise given that it's WotC, and again, I think we can expect them to release actual sets of cards with this info on them... though nothing is stopping me from printing or scrawling them onto 3x5s myself.

All of the character classes have an equal number of abilities can be used at will, once per "scene", and and once per "day". There does still seem to be some flexibility there in terms of abilities you can aquire based on race, class, and via additional feats, but no classes can ever "run out" of special abilities. Even a first level wizard has spells that can be used all day long, and even a Fighter has some crazy moves that need to saved for the best opportunity. Everyone gets to do some resource management, which I think is a great idea. But this also means that Wizards and Priests are no longer privy to entire books full of extra secret magic junk that nobody else gets; This may make you sad and nostaglic for the good old days.

There is a new concept of "Healing Surges" allowed per day, and a "Second Wind" that any character can use to recover some health during combat. This initally sounded like a Bad Idea(TM) to me, but in practice it's much more interesing. While it does mean that all characters can essentially heal themselves a little, and adventuring parties will tend to recover to their full capacity after most battles even without magical help, it's important to note that this also puts a hard limit on how much a person can be healed per day, which is waaay more hardcore than any previous version of the game.

While some people decried Healing Surges and Second Wind as the "death of resource management" in 4th Ed, that's really not the case; It's much more of an end to the monopoly on healing that used to be all about Clerics (and their ubiquitous proxy, the Healing Potion). It also expands the concept of Hit Points; You now measure how much of a beating your character can take before he falls down, as well as the number of times you can expect him to get back up. There's also a concept of being "bloodied" (e.g. below 50% of your total health), which is also a pretty big deal now.

4th Edition puts a much bigger emphasis on "tactical" or minatures-style combat. I expect this to be one of the biggest points of contention for most existing players. To be fair, the 4th Ed tactical rules are a hell of a lot better than their 3rd Ed counterparts, but it's a double edged sword; If you don't play 4th Ed on a map (or at least an eraseable white board), you're going to miss a lot of the new rules, and a fair amount of the subtleties of the new spells and combat abilities.

4th Edition is going to involve a lot of merchandise. It is not a coincidence that you get a dollar sign if you hold down the shift key while typing 4th Ed. In addition to the obvious Ability and Monster cards, the increased focus on tactical combat is already being used as a selling point for WotC maps and miniatures, and for WotC's upcoming subscription based online Gaming Table service, which provides a 3D graphical mapping system for running games over the internet. None of this is required, or even strictly necessary, but some feathers may be ruffled after people drop a lot of money on core rulebooks that encourage them to then buy lots of other stuff to "improve their experience".

4th Edition has some questionable licensing terms. This is going to turn into an additional post/rant at some point, since nothing has carved in stone (and stained with independent gamer blood) just yet, but WotC seems to have rethought the whole Open Gaming License thing, and their legal department is acting on those changes. It's not clear how the new agreement will work, but it's clear that you will NOT be allowed to publish any 4th Ed licensed stuff if you are still publishing any 3rd Ed stuff, and the old "d20" license and logo has been revoked. In short, as someone once told Vin Diesel, you must convert now, or fall forever... as if hardcore D&D players needed any more reason to get really divisive about which rules to use.

Happy Happy Joy Joy

Fri, 16 May 2008 21:15:21 GMT

Having a bad day? Here's a fanciful children's story, narrated by Tom Waits.

That'll... cheer you up. Or something.

Piratey Goodness

Thu, 15 May 2008 19:30:28 GMT

Does anybody on my friends list play Puzzle Pirates on Viridian? I really need to learn how to navigate...

Beyond The Fountains Of Varnoth

Wed, 14 May 2008 03:13:09 GMT

If you are even vaguely familiar with Heavy Metal (the movie, or the publication, or with questionable late 70's early 80's pulp sci fi in general), then you will most likely get some serious lawls from this South Park clip.

It's kind of a long story... The kids have discovered that you can get high from sniffing cat pee (okay, short story) but the resulting hallucination sequence is pretty goddamned classic regardless.

Just Say No

Thu, 08 May 2008 16:52:09 GMT

So, this is really late now; I blame work. And the battle may be lost, but the long, painful war of attrition is just getting started.

You have may have heard that there was some to-do about The ISO recently, particularly about the OOXML standard.

You may have also heard that it's the kind of obscure technical thing that only the most political Open Source geeks would be interested in. And perhaps you caught the article where the ISO appealed to the world at large to stop telling rude jokes about it, a surprisingly sensitive weak-sauce response for an International Standards Organization, especially the ISO itself.

Here's the thing, though... If you do any work with computerized documents at your business/organization/educational institution/library, you should definitely care about what is going down right now.

Lately, there's been a big push for government agencies and educational institutions to adopt "open standards" in for their electronic documents. It's a good idea for any organization that has to store a lot of documents (or other textual information); You want to rest assured that if some lame anticompetitive company stops supporting your document software, unfairly changes your licensing terms, or just plain goes out of business, you'll still have control of your information.

If your document standard is open, then you have all the necessary information to write your own software for working with those documents, or to convert them to a newer format. Even better, nobody can sue you for doing it, or even just for figuring it out yourself, as has been the case with certain other "closed" document formats.

So in short, it's a win-win for users who want their documents to stay readable in perpetuity, but kind of a lose-lose for companies that need to constantly charge you money to survive.

Which brings us to the OOXML issue. That ugly acronym is Microsoft's response to the demand for "open standards", and in their new style of choosing the most generically offical sounding name possible, stands for "Open Office XML". Especially funny when you consider that one of their biggest competitors in the office software arena is called "OpenOffice".

And, inexplicably, the ISO has chosen to approve the OOXML standard, proving that they do not understand the word "open", and also that they seem to have temporarily misplaced the concept of a "standard". There has been a great deal of protest and manly geek-tears shed over this debate, and the internets have not been kind to their decision.

Why all the fuss? Let me break it down for you:

OOXML is not Open: It turns out that just slapping the word "open" on the front doesn't count. Throughout the document, which is, itself "open", there are many references to copyrighted and trademarked technologies which are not included in the document. Thus it is impossible to completely implement the "standard" it describes. Though, that brings us to another important point...

OOXML is not a Standard: The whole point of a standards document is to officially define a concept so that everyone can agree on it. Like, say, health requirements for food storage, or the Unicode character set. More complicated things (for example, the geek-approved ODF or Open Document Format) may end up being a few hundred pages long, in order to describe them in detail. The beef here is that the OOXML standard is over 6000 pages long, while still failing to completely describe a standard. Now, you'd think that some part of that 6000 page tree-killing turd would actually be useful in practice, but if you compare their latest, greatest,XML documents from Office 2007 to the OOXML format, you will find a few errors. Like, 122,000, if you want to get nitpicky... That's more than two errors per page of specification, which is pretty impressive over such a huge file! So nobody, not even Microsoft themselves, is actually implementing this "standard". But the sheer volume is discouraging a lot of people (including the ISO, apparently) from bothering to read the whole thing. Arguably, it's just a marketing ploy; Microsoft wants to check off the "Open Standard" box when organizations are shopping for software, and has no serious intention to maintain a useable standard. Which certainly describes what we're seeing here...

"We Probably Own You": Paranoid linux geeks like myself haven't trusted Microsoft since the early 90s, and for good reason. But what about the rest of us? Since the OOXML format references secret, legally protected things, Microsoft has attempted to sweeten the (shit) pot somewhat with their "Covenant Not To Sue", which is more threatening than reassuring, and also their Open Specification Promise. Specifically:
"Microsoft irrevocably promises not to assert any Microsoft Necessary Claims against you for making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing or distributing any implementation to the extent it conforms to a Covered Specification."
So... If you attempt to do anything with an implementation of this "covered specification", they will not... use fake-ass imaginary legal terms against you? How about, I don't know, hitting you with a cease-and-desist, just plain suing you, or sending Steve Ballmer to your house to throw chairs and scream at your mom? Not only that, but, this whole agreement is carefully worded so that later versions (i.e. Office 2009) might not be covered by these "irrevocable promises"... Not to mention that while the "promise" is "irrevocable", the legal threads that tie it (even to the current OOXML) might not be. Nobody really knows, because they just made up most of this shit on the spot, and it's never been legally tested.

We already have an Open Document Format: It's called ODF, and it's already been approved for a while. It's also literally ten times shorter than the OOXML specification, and there are no hidden/secret/missing pieces, and yet it manages to achieve the same goals that the OOXML aspires (and fails!) to accomplish. It's also really open, in the sense that it is expressly free for anyone to use, and shall continue to be that way, and does not include any shady legal crapola about mega-corporations probably not suing you for using it. How about that! Not to mention that you can download actually open and free software that works with it.

Understandably, this has caused a lot of bad blood between the ISO and people who know what a "standard" is. They have also been mercilessly taunted by open source geeks (and other folks who know what the word "open" means in a software context), especially the poor guys who have to justify the ISO's behavior to the world.

And I really do pity those guys... It's like doing PR for Britney Spears. While there have been widely spread accusations of bribery, corruption, and extremely suspicious behavior in which the ISO voting boards of certain countries magically switched their votes from "No, with comments" to "Yes, without comments" in the bureaucratical wink of an eye, and decisions made by committees that hadn't actually seen the "standard", they don't reflect directly on the ISO organization itself.

Except maybe the part where the ISO is supposed to have some concept of what a "standard" is. You'd really think they'd have that one figured out by now.

So in that sense, I think all the old stale WWII style jokes about France surrendering aren't fair. But if you are going to make a crack like that, likening the individual ISO committees to post-invasion hookers giving it up to the Nazis would probably be more accurate. It's cool, we get called "Unix Beardies" for questioning gross criminal misconduct, so I'm sure they'll take it in good humor.

In short, the OOXML standard is tricksy and false in every sense of the word. If anyone in your organization is discussing it, dare them to read all 6000 busted-ass, legally threatening pages of it before making a decision.

Or just don't even step on that flaming bag of poo on your virtual doorstep at all; Get OpenOffice for free, or even WordPerfect Office if you insist on spending money for your office software. You'll still be able to read and write in MS Office formats, and you can start using an "open standard" that is actually both Open and Standardized.

I have to go with the Grail theory.

Thu, 08 May 2008 14:37:06 GMT

I hate trade shows.

In other news, since I still haven't posted anything else lately, here's a good question for all you grad students, college professors, and recent PhDs on my friends list... And anyone else who saw all three movies and is literally "jonesing" (nyuck, nyuck) for the fourth one:

How did Indiana Jones manage to get tenure?

(Thanks to thedoubleduches for the link!)

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:31:20 GMT

From The Mighty God King comes a list of somewhat lesser known Atari 2600 Games. Who can forget "IT'S FUCKING CHECKERS" and "Old Timey Cop With A Stick"? I almost did, but thankfully this article was around to remind me.

Things have been pretty busy for me lately, and I keep meaning to post about stuff and then not ever getting around to doing it. (Partially because I was pretty sick for a while... But the good news is that I'm better, and it turns out that my health care does actually work. Yay, health care!) Hopefully I will start to get caught up soon.

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 07:47:54 GMT

I kinda wish they followed up with the specific reasons these guys are most compatible with my views... I mean, Obama, obviously, and I suppose Edwards isn't really a surprise either (though I don't really like him, in general). But I'm really pretty sure I'd prefer McCain over Giuliani, so I'm especially curious as to how that particular score works.

(also... Who is Chris Dodd? From the context, I guess he's a politican I should theoretically want to vote for... Why have I never heard of him?)

87% Chris Dodd
85% John Edwards
85% Barack Obama
82% Hillary Clinton
82% Joe Biden
80% Bill Richardson
70% Mike Gravel
66% Dennis Kucinich
44% Rudy Giuliani
41% John McCain
37% Tom Tancredo
34% Mitt Romney
34% Mike Huckabee
24% Fred Thompson
21% Ron Paul

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

TF2 Christmas Party!

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 23:34:52 GMT

Since we can't really get together for a regular office party anymore, my company is going to do a big old Team Fortress 2 game instead, starting around 9:00 AM EST on Monday, December 24th, and running until noon (or whenever we get bored).

Friends of employees are welcome, so if you're on my friends lists and have a copy of TF2, let me know if you're interested. I will be sending out server IP and password info to interested parties this weekend once we figure out hosting.

We will probably be using our company Ventrilo server for general chat (I might be able to get people temporary accounts on there as well), and of course there's always TF2's built in team-chat. Since it's all co-workers and friends of mine, and no anonymous overcompetitive internet asshats, it will actually be worth un-muting for once.)

If you don't have TF2 but are interested in playing, we may be able to fit an extra copy or two into our Office Party Budget. This is heavily dependent on what our Office Party Budget actually is, so who knows.

(Alternately, I can gift you a copy personally and call it a Christmas present, and you can send me cookies or something. ;-)