Occassional Randomness

Gratuitous Space Battles

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 03:18:24 GMT

That is actually the name of a new game for PC. I think a brief description will tell whether you are likely to enjoy it or not. You take spaceship hulls in one of 3 sizes: Fighter, Frigate or Cruiser. Each hull has a number of module slots, either standard slots which will take modules like crew areas, engines, armor, power generators, shield generators, etc, and hardpoints which can take any of the previous, but which are the only place you can stick weapon systems. Every module has a cost, a weight, and usually a power consumption and a number of crew needed to operate it. You need to have enough power generation to power all your systems and enough crew to man all your systems. If you have a legal design you can name it and save it. There are then scenarios where you have opposing ships and you have a certain number of pilots and a certain cost. Cruisers have high cost but only use one pilot, Fighters are cheap but require a lot of trained pilots to fill out a squadron. There are also sometimes battle conditions that limit your deployment. You put your ships out in your deployment area, give them orders for the fight then click a button and watch the battle unfold. The last thing is that if you win the battle and didn't use all the budget you were allotted those credits get turned into honor points which you can use to unlock new modules, hulls and alien races.

There is a demo with 3 scenarios, enough different modules and hulls to play around with but no ability to unlock new stuff. It's pretty small and fast to download. http://positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/index.html

Anyways, if designing space fleets and pitting them against enemy fleets sounds like your idea of a good time, it is worth checking out.

Gardening

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 19:24:53 GMT

So, when I proved unable to save my chive plants I had an empty pot and an empty windowsill. My friend that I'd originally gotten the plants from had lost hers as well, though she said she had some seeds. After a little reflection I realized that the only thing I knew how to do with chives anyways was put them on sour cream with a baked potato, so I decided I would grow something that I do use, mint. So when running errands I decided to make a stop by the Target Garden center which had one mint plant, a chocolate mint. While I thought this was pretty weird, I'm kind of a fan of weird and mint chocolate is one of my favorite flavor combinations so I decided to take it.

Now my previous mint growing experience had demonstrated two things to me. One was that mint was loved by snails and other leaf eaters, and two that mint's strategy for such predators was apparently to grow at such a prodigious rate their appetites can't keep up. So planting it in a flowerbed would mean a flowerbed dominated by mint plants with half-eaten leaves. I thought this was however a perfect choice to put in my somewhat larger pot and put in the kitchen windowsill where it would be constrained and protected from snailkind. I was a little worried about the limited light there, but so far the mint has been growing like, well, mint, ie fast. It has sent it's tendrils along the window to soak up all the light it can, is sprouting new growth everywhere and I'm anticipating the day when it has enough mature leaves that I can start experimenting with them.

Sadly, I'm guessing that this particular strain is not particularly period, but if I get a chocolate mint cordial out of it, I doubt there will be much complaining.

Back to Brewing

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 09:43:22 GMT

Halved, pitted and peeled some peaches today and set them in a mason jar with some brandy. Hopefully on the road to being a peach cordial and some brandy-soaked peaches. Once I pick up some more vodka and some anise seeds I plan on making a licorice cordial as well. Once I have more vodka I also have at least one other idea for playing with peaches. Perhaps at some point I will also test out my idea for a Mojito cordial, and perhaps test out the repeatability of my Usquebath. Going to either need to find more of my Mason Jars or buy some more, though, if I want to do too much more experimenting. Still even if I only get the two firm planned one done, that at least gives me 4 different things for Taste of Caid at GWW, assuming I have something drinkable by then. Might actually be pinned down to a table this year instead of wandering around with a bottle in my hand. It would be nice to do some actual brewing with yeast, but despite being in a house now, I can't think of any place to put carboys except in the non-temperature stable garage.

Anime thoughts

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 22:58:38 GMT

Sometimes I want to talk about anime things, but my mind gets paralyzed under the amount of things I might have to explain to tell it to a reader who isn't an anime fan.

Regardless, I feel a need to rant a bit about Haruhi. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is an anime that came out in Japan a few years ago and that I caught on fansubs, it became a big sensation and was released on DVD in the US a year or two ago. It was an adaptation of a series of short books that in the US would probably be called novellas. The animation combined some of the stories from the series with character designs that appealed to the anime audience and included a dance in their ending credits that became a big thing for fans to imitate. Go to any anime convention and you can probably find some people doing the dance. But aside from the hype and the superficial qualities, the story was actually a very good speculative fiction story. The anime was released in non-chronogical order, which was interesting but seems to be primarily a way for them to include material from later books into the series while still being able to finish up the season on the climax from the first book where the world gets saved from being completely recreated. I could go into a lot of detail about the plot and such, but I figure people who are reading this either a) have seen the first series already, b) haven't seen it but might want to, in which case why give spoilers or c) haven't seen it and aren't going to, in which case they don't really need any more information than what is required to understand this rant, and can look it up on Wikipedia if they are curious enough.

So, unlike live TV, anime isn't always continuous between seasons. The original season of Haruhi was all that initially got made, and only the great popularity of it called for more to be made. In the meantime, there has been lots of money being made on merchandise and such. But this year, 3 years or so (IIRC) after the broadcast of the original series, the heavily anticipated 2nd season has come out in Japan, and is being fansubbed. The first episode of it was pretty darn good, a time travel episode that shed light on some events that had been eluded to in the series, tied up through some unique methods, and good solid episode. The second episode seemed a bit pointless, but fun, with the whole group getting together to work their way through a list of summer activities in the last 2 weeks of summer vacation and the POV character Kyon, failing to get his summer homework done from being dragged around everywhere. Then the third episode came out. But it seemed like some kind of mistake as it started exactly the same as the second episode, or nearly the same. A relevation is made halfway through the episode though, time is in an infinite loop, and they are repeating the events of the last 2 weeks of August again and again and again. And hey they are doing it through showing an episode that is nearly but not quite the same as the previous episode, that's kind of clever, I guess. Well this storyline was called Infinite Eight. Episode 4 was the same as Episode 3 with a few minor cosmetic changes. 5 was the same. 6 was the same. They went a full 8 episodes, episodes 2-9 of repeating the same events again and again and again! That is more than 2 DVDs worth of episodes, most of the standard 13 episode season. With episode 9 the loop finally gets resolved in the last few minutes of the episode. This last week we finally get episode 10, a new storyline, an end to the endless summer. And we get.... an episode about Haruhi getting the idea about making a student film. A film that we've seen in the first season, which was actually the first episode broadcast, seen the day of its screening already, and well one that we know a lot about already. So episode 10, which seems to be the first of several is basically telling us stuff that we've already guessed from seeing the other episodes. It wouldn't have been that bad an episode as episode 2 of the new season, but to follow up the hell of infinite 8, it is a not particularly funny episode setting up a story that we already know the end of, and brings no new understanding about anything that I can see. The sequel to one of the best anime series of the last few years is a great big dud and doesn't look like it is going to get any better.

So to clear my palate of that, I'm going to talk about a new series in fansubs that I actually do like. In Japanese it is called Bakemonogatari, I don't have the slightest idea what it will be called if it ever comes to the states. Bakemono is the Japanese word for monster and there are strong supernatural elements in the series. It is being done by Shaft the same studio that has released Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei (roughly, Goodbye Despair Teacher) which is strange little black comedy series that has had some of the funniest episodes I've ever seen in an anime. There are definite similarities in presentation with many interesting visual elements, but while Zetsubou is a surrealistic comedy, this is more of a drama with comedic elements. The protagonist is a male high school student who we learn had been turned into a vampire, but been cured of it by another character. He still retains some residual abilities from that experience, notably an ability to heal injuries quickly. He is rather a nosey parker and tends to be determined to help people whether they want his help or not. On one particular day he is climbing a large spiral staircase, and sees a female student falling from a higher floor. He drops his stuff and catches her, only to find that she weighs almost nothing. She is one of his classmates, and later on he asks some questions about her to the class representative while they work on a project (he is assistant representative), she mostly tells him that the girl has changed a lot since her junior high days, but it is enough for him to believe it is some sort of supernatural occurence. He rushes out of the room only to find that the girl in question has overheared him asking questions about her, wants him to mind his own business, and emphasizes this by pulling an exacto knife out of her coat and sticking it in his mouth right next to his cheek. She follows this up by pulling a stapler out of her coat and shoves that into the other side of his mouth threatening to put a staple right into his inner cheek.

OK, I'm going to cease doing a blow by blow of the story here, but suffice it to say that the weightless girl is an often abrasive but quite interesting character, the two of them eventually get on better terms, particularly once he is actually able to help her. His dogged earnestness proves a foil to her conversational style which will go from seductive to homicidal at the drop of a hat without necessarily indicating which if any are meant to be taken seriously. The class representative seems to have her own connection with the protagonist that has been hinted at, and other figures seem to be getting introduced as the season continues. In a way it is taking ordinary teen problems and making them larger and more supernatural. The first storyline is after all about a girl dealing with weightloss issues, and the second one winds up being about problems dealing with family, just for those who touch the supernatural great problems can latch on to small issues. Only 5 episodes have hit the fansubs so far, but I anticipate the next episode of this more than any other at the moment. (Only one close is the second season of Spice and Wolf, but that's another story)

It's the final line that got me

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 22:54:58 GMT

A Girl and Her Fed

I'd want a T-shirt but I'm not sure where I'd want to wear it...

For those code monkeys out there

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:45:25 GMT

From a message board discussion of great comments in source code

// Replaces with spaces the braces in cases where braces in places cause stasis
$str = str_replace(array("\{","\}")," ",$str);

I am in awe!

Michael Silverblatt cracks me up sometimes

Thu, 14 May 2009 22:16:36 GMT

So Michael Silverblatt of Bookworm on KCRW was doing his show today. He had on a guy who wrote a book (or maybe it was several books) that was a reworking of the Fu Manchu character, and looking at the inherent racism of the books, and the movies inspired by that sort of book. The interview was fairly interesting so I left it on.

Then Silverblatt goes into this long question about this certain point at which the freshness of the approach of William Burroughs and Thomas Pynchon when it has been so incorporated into media becomes a banality even in their future works (and believe me I'm leaving a lot of his description out here) and all attempts at originality seems futile, and I can't even paraphrase any more of this rambling disconnected sentence on post-irony or something. But he follows it up with. "Given that you know that, how can you write?" And there is a pause, in which I imagine the author is contemplating and rejecting the answer "What the hell kind of drugs are you on, Michael?", and then he says, "I can't really answer that question, Michael" and goes into some sort of explanation that I'm not sure had anything to do with the actual question, but would hopefully be long-winded enough that everyone will have forgotten the question actually asked. "Given that you know that" indeed...

I also note that his rambling began with something like "There was a point, and I think you and I will know when that point is when I finish talking about it..." I'm tempted to try and get a transcript just for the comedy of this question.

Post-Pentathlon

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:51:07 GMT

It's every kingdom artisans favorite time, the time when Pent is finally over!

This year was the first time I entered individually, though having to drop an entry at the last minute put me under the 5 entry mark, so I was an Arts Fair participant or some such. Since I wasn't going to take the prize anyways, who the heck cares.

I'll let my friends talk about their entries, except to say that there were some truly fabulous ones. My contribution to the team entry wound up being primarily acting in our Gammer Gurton's Needle scene. I think I did well in that, though my chest cold made it so that I couldn't do as much with my voice as I'd hoped, as it had gotten pretty rough and deep at that point.

My personal entries:
Performance - Dramatic Interpretation - Journeyman
I did a monologue from Volpone that I'd chosen years ago as a good thing to have for an audition piece, and never actually got around to learning it well. It is lively and has a bit of a subversive and rude feel to it. Up until getting on stage I hadn't been able to do it right once, forgetting this or that, but my actual performance was better than any of my practices and came out pretty spot on.
Result: 1st Place Journeyman

Compositional - Poetry - Apprentice
I did a Ballade, based on the works of Francois Villon. It is a tricky french form with a lot of rhymes, and I made it more difficult by putting in a 16 letter acrostic. I was able to get it to hang together, though some rhymes were a bit rough and it was in some ways more technically adept than being as full of heart as I would have liked.
Result: 1st Place Journeyman(bumped)

Performance - Instrumental - Apprentice
I performed the Horse's Bransle on my recorder. I had a number of missteps, though much was due to my chest cold which the judges may have taken into account. They asked a number of questions regarding my choice of Arbeau, my background, and the arrangement I chose (pointing out that I was using a repetition that was not in the original, but only the arrangement I'd co-opted). They did compliment me on including a copy of the original notation in the documentation. All in all, though, probably my worst performance of the day. Regardless, it was apparently good enough for Apprentice level.
Result: 1st Place Apprentice

Culinary - Brewing - Medicinal - Apprentice
I was really only going for Apprentice level here, having no real skill in redaction or tons of brewing source books I worked with what I could get. I think the end result was pretty good, reasonably clear, smooth and drinkable, though dominated by cinnamon.
Result: 1st Place Apprentice

So my entries were few, but they all were good enough to win at their level. I think I may have raised my recognition a bit, and I'm happy that the art forms that are nearest and dearest to me, acting and poetry did well at a journeyman level. It would have been nice to have a good displayable craft out there, but I'm not the best at detail handwork, so I guess I need to find an art form that will work better for that. I'll figure out what I think of leatherwork once I finish my shoes. (I'm going to have left over leather, so a pouch to replace my lost one is a definite possibility too)

It is sad that the entries that I sunk the most time and money into, shoes for the group, and gameboard for myself, were not able to be completed for this Pentathlon. (Though I'm remembering that the Danish Oil I picked up and the paints could be used for my bench for war, so I guess I was going to have to buy anyways, though I may want to figure out what went wrong with my gameboard first.)

In any case, I'm happy with how I did, and unlike many of my colleagues, I'm not swearing off doing it again in 2 years. I think you can test your skills and your flexibility without necessarily testing the limits of human endurance as many of them seem to do. I regret that my shoes went the way they did from the point of view of letting the team down, but losing a job and moving the month before Penthathlon wasn't part of the plan either.

What is it about first weekends of the month?!

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 21:03:14 GMT

So this last weekend I was having a conflict between going to one friend's performance, some dances, and working on my projects. Insert some random personal factors into those as well.

But May is shaping up to be even more heavy. On one hand, there is Regency and Victorian Dances, which I enjoy and may afford me the chance to figure out whether I want to ask a certain participant out. On the other hand, those are the exams for some of my friends in the Scottish Dance community who are taking dance teacher classes, and they could really use people to teach to dance. This would be helping friends and helping my dance skills there. On the other other hand, it is also an Alumni weekend on my college, and it might be worth attending this year in case there is someone who knows about job openings. So if I overgeneralize greatly, this means I have a choice between love, friendship and career that weekend! Of course, I could also pick a day for each (since Alumni weekend includes Friday), or even try and squeeze multiples on one day (though combining 2 dance events on the same day could be really tiring) but I have to wonder why I rarely seem to have this problem with the last weekend of the month!

Wrong Number

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 20:56:13 GMT

There is something sad, but fitting about the fact that the vast majority of calls I've gotten to my new cell phone have been wrong numbers.

Moving Status Part 1

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 01:20:34 GMT

As of 6PM on Wednesday, I have 3 6 gallon plastic containers and 3 book boxes ready to go. The book boxes were already packed, the Plastic containers were opened, sorted, some stuff was thrown out (filling up about half of the 12 gallon trash can), and labelled with a list of their primary contents. My wine rack was denuded of wines and mead which were packed in a wine case. It will be nice if I'll be able to devote this much attention to every box that I pack up, though at some point it will cease to be practical. This is mostly necessary because the last move was so hurried many of these bins were simply filled with whatever was around in an effort to clear them out of the house. I'm flagging a bit at the moment, so I'm warming up the oven for some dinner and dealing with other matters for a bit. I think I'm going to need a projects box, or some such as there are many things for Pentathlon and the like that can't get buried or I'm sunk. It is also amazing the number of things that can't actually get packed practically. Banner poles, and my bow and quiver, my hanging plant, ironing board and litter boxes, drums and vacuum cleaner. Then there are the other decisions. How much dishware is worth keeping? Where do I divide between memento and junk. (I suppose that may be part of the appeal of scrapbooking, what fits nice in the book stays, anything else goes in the trash.)

California and Memes

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 21:50:07 GMT

So as part of filing for unemployment I went to register at the CalJobs website which is a requirement. Once I put the information in it asks if you want to make the resume available to prospective employers. I did. So it popped up a summary page with the following on it. "Currently, employers can view your résumé. Click here if you employers to view your résumé." The do not want was a big blue button. If you do not understand why I find this funny, don't worry about it too much...

Be a Man

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 23:00:30 GMT

So at the Anime convention at the beginning of the year, one of the entries used a song listed as Be a Man, and attributed to Donnie Osmond. Most of the people in the theatre seemed to know the song and sung along with it, which was surprising to me as I'd never heard it before. As it turns out, it was a song from Mulan, which was a Disney movie from after the time when I stopped seeing every Disney animated movie when it came out (I think Pocahontas was the actual break point for me), and not one that my sister or niece seem to have ever owned. It is not a bad song, though, and fit very well with the anime it was matched with.

At any rate, I did a youtube search today, and found the actual movie scene for comparison, and found that there were also elements from the animation that found their way into the AMV (Anime Music Video) as well, so I wound up being a little bit more impressed by the AMV at the end of it. (The scene in Mulan itself is kind of your standard martial arts training montage, except with a group of soldiers instead of just one. The song is also rather ironic given the fact that Mulan is, of course, a woman disguised as a man.)

Merry Christmas

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 03:00:18 GMT

So I went to spend Christmas Eve with my mom and family. I worked on making some cookies for the Cu Buidhe party (and got to recall just what a pain they can be to make) and helped out with the preparations until I couldn't stand easily anymore, then I pulled out my laptop for a bit. But the dinner was good, with a ridiculous amount of food for the number of people we have, and my presents were generally well received. I was thankful once again for letting my family know about my Amazon wishlist as I got a copy of Season One of the Tudors and my mom got me a new drum, a Talking Drum from Ghana, which I can't wait to show to my friends. I setup the Karaoke machine that my niece got with some help from my brother-in-law and sang a few christmas carols with my niece before she went to bed.

I've been kind of lazy Christmas day. I was going to head back over to my Mom's place, but I got up late and was feeling tired, so I decided to cancel. I had one near disaster that cat owners can probably sympathize with. The cat box was getting really stinky and upon opening it up there wasn't enough litter untouched to be worth trying to scoop. So I dumped the whole mess into the dumpster, came back, went to the kitty litter canister, and found it was empty. Wait, no kitty litter in a three cat household, on a day when nearly every store is closed!!! I decided to let the cats out for a while since they are indoor-outdoor cats while I searched for someplace to get litter. Finally found some cheap stuff at a liquor store which they can use until I get some replacement litter.

In any case, to my friends out there in LJ land, Merry Christmas!

Ice Capades

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 02:51:51 GMT

Fun with vehicles on ice.

From Portland Oregon, last year

And this year

Happy Agnostica

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 00:12:40 GMT

To any of my friends out there who think that the advancements that science has brought us is just as worth celebrating as these religious events, Happy Agnostica! It's a day late for QM day, but we can call that a margin of error. ;->

Busy Weekend

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 23:10:19 GMT

So Saturday I went to the Autumn Ball. I seem to discuss this every year, and I suppose there is no reason to make an exception this time. Attendance was down a bit this year (About 15% less than usual according to Sue), perhaps because it was so late in the season, perhaps the economy or some other such reason. Several people who I recalled had made it the previous few years didn't this year. Still, there were still plenty of partners to go around and from a dancing point of view it mostly meant that it was easier to fit our dancing in the space than some previous years.

Like previous years, I had some people on my dance card leave before the dance we'd signed up for (the second set often doesn't begin until 11:30 or midnight, and a lot of people don't seem to realize that the dance goes that late), however this year I was able to find new partners pretty easily, though it meant I was a bit uncouth in a Regency sense, as I wound up dancing with the same person 3 times that night, how scandalous! (Luckily, this was not a person that I had any trouble dancing with, though for the first substitution she misinterpreted something that was meant to be a compliment about wanting to dance that dance (a rather complex one) with someone I felt confident in, as I would prefer a different partner, and that had to be refuted quickly.) In a bit of a strange coincidence the person I wound up dancing with so much was the same one that I'd given my contact information to at a previous Autumn Ball so that we could see about carpooling to the monthly dances in Culver City, who wound up never contacting me or showing up at the monthly dances. I wound up giving her my info again Saturday evening, and this time she had dropped me an email on Sunday. I also talked with a guy at dinner who invited me to play with the gaming group. So more networking than usual for me. ;->

The girl I danced Congress of Vienna with had just come back from Africa recently. I didn't recognize her at first, but I think I actually had danced with her before, but I've been doing this for a decade or so now, so it is all a blur sometimes. In any case, she was a fun partner, she had a real joie de vivre (Quote from her: I like these, the guy does all the work, and I get to just twirl). I think I actually had a learning moment in that dance though. My partner didn't have a regency dress, it was more of a modern day dance dress (black, sparkly, knee length but split up the sides a bit). In any case, it had a kind of roll at the edge of the back v, which was covered in rhinestones or the like, and it was frankly uncomfortable on my hand, and couldn't have been a lot more comfortable for her digging in. So I instead adjusted my hand right between her shoulder blades in the center of the V. This brought her a little closer than my partner usually is when waltzing, and cut back a little on my peripheral vision, but it made counter-balancing really easy for turning. Obviously, I can see the physics of it, my arm is actually the only thing that counteract the centripetal force, but if I'm not pressing against the center axle, other forces need to be countered for. I also think that this is one reason that women tend to pull in on their left side. Sadly, my arms are not long enough and most women are not small enough that I'll be able to manage this with every partner, but it teaches me the value that a little adjustment in my technique can bring.

Stayed a bit after the dance to help clean up and wound up arriving home after 3AM. Since I'd arrived early in the Afternoon, gone through an intermediate dance class and 2 sets of dancing (each of which had more dances than we usually get through at the monthly dances), add to that moving tables and chairs in and out for dinner, and stacking chairs and moving equipment after the dance, and I was staggering when I got home without an ounce of alcohol in me.

Sunday, I rested my legs for most of the morning, and then went down to Osd Cu Buidhe in the afternoon for a bardic circle. I arrived near the published start time of 3PM, but I neither expected actual bardic to start then, nor did it. When Pierre, Etiennette and Laura arrived some music started, but the circle itself didn't start until evening once we had all the Buidhe people there who were coming, and a few guests. I got the surprise I was looking for from my recitation of Ludefisk and Yams, Magnus showed up and did some magic tricks, but most of the evening wound up being pretty seasonal. In true Cu Buidhe fashion we probably had more digressions and silly jokes during the circle than actual performances, but it was a whole lot of fun, and with the CD sales there and ones that have been pledged at this point, it looks like we have enough to make our final payment on our pavillion. So.... Yay!

Roommate and Temperature

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 22:56:31 GMT

So my roommate was out of the house last night. He and I get along well enough, but we are opposites in many ways. One way that winds up being a little annoying some times, stems from something that I believe is due to my growing up in Northern New England, and him growing up in Louisiana. Basically, we have highly different comfort levels when it comes to room temperature. He likes it hot enough that he can walk around in his boxers most of the time, all year round. I prefer to let it get a little cool in the winter, and don't consider it worth turning on heat unless I can see my breath. I'm also paranoid about having the heat on while I sleep, it is a fire after all. Of course, he's the one in the room with a draft, and I'm in the one in the room right across from the heater. One night a few weeks back, I actually had to turn all my fans on, and it was still too hot, so I had to open my window. (This is after I turned the heat off) Luckily, my utilities are all included, so it is not my money he is burning.

In any case, this has meant that last night was welcome relief as there was nobody to turn the heater on and I could relax and enjoy a normal temperature.

Probably my sensitivity isn't helped by my time living at Mary's place, since that room had 3 of 4 walls exterior walls, and the 4th was still a long way from the central heater. I had my own heater in the back, but since I didn't want to run it when I slept, and I was rarely all the way back there except when I was going to bed, I was generally more inclined towards other methods. (ie Heavy blankets and my Wool Hood.)

Perhaps it is my dad's thriftiness come down to me, but I don't really understand why anyone would run a heater until you have tried putting on long pants and a sweater first and are still too cold.

Well put bit of advice

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 21:08:13 GMT

So browsing through the Planet Money blog there was a link to an article on Bloomberg. It was advice from one of the columnists to a young Wall Street worker who was looking into a career change. But the advice is more universal.

Job vs. Calling

The distinction is artificial but worth drawing. A job will never satisfy you all by itself, but it will afford you security and the chance to pursue an exciting and fulfilling life outside of your work. A calling is an activity you find so compelling that you wind up organizing your entire self around it -- often to the detriment of your life outside of it. There’s no shame in either. Each has costs and benefits. There is no reason to make a fetish of your career. There are activities other than work in which to find meaning and pleasure and even a sense of self-importance -- you just need to learn how to look. Reading between the lines of your letter I sense that some of your anxiety is caused by your desire for the benefits of each -- job and calling -- without the costs. Perhaps that is what led you to Wall Street in the first place, and why your mind now turns to Hollywood.

from Bloomberg

I've always been someone who works to afford his leisure activities. I don't like to be defined by my job. I enjoy the work environment where I'm at, I don't mind much of the work, but at the end of the day it is not my work that I want to talk about.

Silly Songage

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 21:30:56 GMT

So while I wouldn't blame my coming late to work on this sort of thing it does sometimes make me "later" to work. While taking my morning shower, my mind started going down this line...

...
The Ents go marching 3 by 3 hoor-ah, hoor-ah
The Ents go marching 3 by 3 hoor-ah, hoor-ah,
The Ents go marching 3 by 3,
The youngest one stops to talk to a tree,
And they all go marching down to Osgiliath
To dispose of a reign,
Hoom, Hoom, Hoom...

Actually, I'm still trying to figure out whether it is a bad thing to be late for work because you are in the shower figuring out how you are going to accomplish what you need to for work that day...

Understanding the Economic Crisis

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 01:52:01 GMT

So if you are one of the people out there wondering "Why on earth were so many lousy home loans made?", "Why were the effects so wide-reaching?" and "What the heck is a credit default swap anyways?", there are two special programs on "This American Life" that should answer those questions about as well as anything does. The first one is here and the second one is here. Really, these will probably the most informative shows you will ever listen to about this.

The people who did these shows also do a blog called Planet Money which is part blog and part daily podcast about economic issues. Yeah, it is pretty depressing news in general, but it was both scary and amusing to see a car dealership trying to run a buy one get one free deal on trucks.

Election Webcomics

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 22:28:57 GMT

So here are some of my favorite webcomic takes on the election.

Joy of Tech

Cat and Girl

XKCD

Wow

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:37:44 GMT

How big a win was that for Obama? So big that he could have lost California and he'd still have won handily.

Election

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 22:20:59 GMT

Yeah, what else is anyone talking about today. Went poking around with the electoral map on Yahoo, and looking at the breakdown by poll numbers I'm seeing why McCain has been spending so much time and trying to act so optimistically in Pennsylvania. As it is, if McCain takes all the states where he is ahead in the polls, wins in Florida and Ohio and takes Idaho(which has no poll data but seems likely.) he'll still be 23 votes short of the magic number. He would then need either Maryland and Virginia (to bring him exactly to 270) or Pennsylvania and one of the two to put him over by a decent margin.

So if you are an Obama supporter, if he can win two out of Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, Pennyslvania or Ohio he should be on his way to victory. Florida by itself also could give him the victory. Otherwise, it will depend on races further west.

If you are a McCain supporter, you are in good shape if he can take all of those, bad if you lose two of them, and may still have a chance if you lose any one of them but Florida.

Regardless, even if the race gets called early, if you haven't yet voted don't forget that this isn't the only important thing on the ballots, and heck, do you want to tell people later on that you could have participated in this election and didn't? (And yes, I already voted. Waited an hour or so, but it could have been worse)

Yesterday's Activities

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 19:53:06 GMT

So I wanted to jot down a few notes from yesterday, but I couldn't quite decide on what the theme was, or if I'd be able to stick to one, thus the title.

It was a strange day, all in all. Well, a lot of it was fairly normal, getting up and playing computer games and all. But late afternoon I headed out for a meet-up with the creator of one of the webcomics I read (Something Positive), making sure to throw in some clothes for going Regency dancing later. There was actually one person I knew there, Chaz from the Sci-Fi group and the Anime-LA conventions, though I give no guarantee he knew me. Chaz was there and he was fairly organized. He brought a cooler of sodas for people, he was taking peoples pictures and giving them cards with his website information on it for them to check in with later when he posted them. When I arrived Randy (the webcomic creator) wasn't there yet, and we were speculating about a guy who didn't know the LA bus system taking a bus to Griffith Park on a rainy day and wondering how bad it would be for him. We wound up waiting a good bit longer, but that was actually alright, as it gave people a chance to talk in a decentralized way. And it was amusing as each person came up, and wondered if they'd found the right group until we greeted them. Randy finally came, and he'd apparently gotten enough advice about the LA bus system that he didn't take it. Instead he took a cab. Well the cab took him to Glendale (huh?) instead of Griffith Park, and then he'd had to take another cab back to Griffith Park and they wouldn't even take them all the way in to the place we were meeting, so he had to hike up from that point. From my previous experience with a cab (where I had to give the cab driver directions to the airport) I'm not too surprised, though you'd think the quality would be a little higher when we were talking 4PM instead of 4AM.

So one thing I was thinking about was niceness. There was one girl I wound up having a bit of a rapport with (which is somewhat different than hitting it off with a girl to my thinking) as I offered to walk back to my car and get my Thomas guide when she needed directions to pick up a friend of hers who'd taken a bus in, though a Park ranger was there when we got to the top of the hill and she got a small map of the park and directions from him, so she didn't wind up needing it. Later on I stopped her from throwing a can into the garbage can, since people were collecting the empties next to the cooler, and I was going to take them if Chaz didn't, which apparently also impressed her. One of the people at the meet-up was in a wheelchair, and when Randy arrived and we moved to picnic benches that were further in the park, I wound up helping him over the off-road terrain. None of this anything exceptional, but of all the guys there, I was the one doing it. To paraphrase a recently viewed Heroes episode, and many other sources I'm sure, that's the way I roll. The thing is that it isn't all that selfless, as I enjoy being helpful to people and a little extra exercise, and collecting more cans for the fund aren't bad things either. When it came time for me to leave if I wanted to make dancing that night, I got my sketch and took off, I met Katie (the girl from earlier on the way) and said goodbye, nice meeting you and that was it.

Now depending on whether I overheard something correctly that day, Katie may well have been a lesbian and almost certainly she was a good deal younger than me, so it wasn't like there would have been a huge point to getting her contact information, rapport or not. There is also something in me, though, that says that if you are nice to a girl, and then try and get contact information, she will think that you were being nice just to impress her, and she will downgrade you accordingly. So I wind up being happier with the idea of being nice, never seeing them again, but leaving them with an impression about there being good guys in the world instead. In any case, anytime I get a girls contact information it seems like I screw it up anyways.

At any rate, Regency dancing was fun as usual, though it turned out in my hurry to grab my shoes I wound up with one of my old dance shoes and one of my new ones. Thankfully, they have about the same amount of heel so I could still dance in them. (I really didn't want to dance in my duct taped together sneakers) I danced Congress of Vienna with a new person, but one who had some dance experience and was good at being led, so it was one of the better waltzes I've had for a while. She was also very good at keeping her eyes focused on me, so she didn't seem to get dizzy at all. I often do seem to have it easier with some of the newer girls than the ones who have been doing it longer, the newer ones seem to be able to relax and figure I know what I'm doing easier or something. Of course, other new girls can't counter-balance or watch the backgrounds too much and get dizzy, so not everyone is easy to dance with. I suppose when I'm able to dance this well with any girl, then I'll truly have learned the waltz.