Writing Fiction Is Such a Pain in the Ass

I used to write Science Fiction in high school. I am a big dork, after all. But I got out of it, because I decided I was wasting my time ever trying to write.

Had to buckle down! Go to college! Get my Edumacation-thing! Get a job, make money, etcetera... etcetera... etcetera. No time for fun, there's work to be done!

Well, my job is good. It's tedious and thankless work, but the pay and benefits are right and the coworkers are decent people. But all work and no play is... Exhausting. I'm starting to lose my hair. I needed a hobby to chill me out a bit.

After giving a few other hobbies a whirl (and NEVER having enough people to play paintball... Darn it!), I turned back to my old hobby of writing fiction.

I've been out of it for around seven or so years now, but I had a nice big new idea burning away in my noggin and I figured I'd be able to start cranking out a somewhat decent first draft.

So I sat down at my PC... and sat... and sat... and sat... Played solitaire... and sat.

And for good measure, I sat.

I have the idea, oh yes, I have the idea.

But I am at Point A, and can't figure out how to get to Point B.

Such a pain in the ass, I swear.

So I'll get back to y'all tomorrow... And hopefully I am not bashing my head off my keyboard at that time.

Rock on.

Erie Police, Dedicated to Duty

I meant to write a long post, but before I even knew it it ended up being a quarter to one in the morning. Never a good time for long winded bullshit.

So just a thing of note that came to my attention. The nearby city of Erie, Pennsylvania has fallen on some hard times financially. Lacking the funding, they could not fund the police department enough to put a sufficient number of officers on all shifts.

So many of the good people in Blue of Erie are working overtime.

For free.

Nada. Zip, Zilch, Zero. They will answer the calls, they will put their lives on the line, and they will do it without receiving compensation because if they do not, no one else will.

Ladies and Gentlemen, such simple nobility is what being human is truly about.

A sincere thanks to the Police Officers of Erie and all such honorable officers of the law.

Rock on, kids.

In Mourning for Mourning

As noted by a previous post, I'm a big fan of MMORPGs (that's Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games... Games you play with hundreds of others on a common game server). One I had been looking forward to for well over a year... heck, almost two years, was the oft renamed Mourning. (Was Realms of Torment, then changed to Realms of Krel, then changed to Mourning.)

Anyway, it seems Mourning is now FUBARed. It was supposed to release back in February, but I never heard what happened to it. Looking up the websites reveal nothing but a blank black page. So I turned to everyone's favorite source of information: Wikipedia!

In February, the game was "released." That is to say, those who preordered it received a craptastic buggy Beta version on a CD-R. After that, the game was "searching for new funding." In other words: It's dead, and screwed over some customers on the way out.

I'm rather quite sad. The features it was supposedly going to present would have been mildly revolutionary to MMORPG's, a genre which sadly receives little innovation due to the high risks of presenting such a game.

So basically, I'm in mourning for Mourning. It's quite the bummer.

Rock on, kids.

Do Not Tell Me I Have a Case of the Mondays... Or Else!!!

Someone actually told me today, "Looks like someone has a case of the Mondays!" Of all the hackneyed Office-Space quotes they could use, they tell me that.

I threatened to throw them out the window. That likely just proved their point.

Well, I'm out of things to say, so here's a random picture of Chewbacca groping Princess Leia.



Rock on.

Camping = Cramped Neck

So I'm back from a weekend of camping (and just in time to notice that the item I had posted about me going away for the weekend never made it past "draft," by some evil conspiracy or another), and I must say one thing:

Camping hurts.

The spot we were camping in was rather quite pleasant, except for one minor detail: Very hardly compacted ground. Sleeping without a foam mattress was rather injurious to my neck.

Also, learned something: Putting Grape Jelly in Chili is a valid culinary decision. Adds a unique sweetness to the chili that works quite well. Who would've thunk it?

Second thing learned: Learn first that the owner of the hot sauce you are about to try normally only uses about one tablespoon in an entire pot of chili prior to layering it on your sandwich and chowing down... As opposed to learning that bit of information after about fifteen minutes and five glasses of milk...

For one final bit of randomness, here's an article about Commando Dolphins.

Rock on, kids.

Thunderstorms

Quite a storm out tonight. I used to love thunderstorms when I was a kid. I still like rain, and maybe even a little lightning to a degree, but ever since a big storm knocked over the ninety eight foot maple tree in my front yard a few years back (squishing most of the stuff in my yard and taking out my power for three days), not so fond of storms any more. The lightning and wind also messes with the electric and the phones, which a Net-bound dork like me just no longer appreciates.

So, I'm stuck camping this weekend. I'm an assistant scoutmaster for the local scout troop, and we're the organizing troop of the district's fall campout. And boy, will it suck. Supposed to rain ALL weekend. I haven't really had a good time camping in quite a while. All the older kids (who are sort of supposed to help us keep order a bit, and teach the younger boys) are no longer here. It's all young ones, and I swear they're all hyperactive. It goes from being a Scout troop to being a babysitter sometimes... Oh well.

Won't be blogging due to the fact I'll be getting rained on, so rock on and stay dry.

Region Locked

There is something about the X-Box 360 (as well as the original X-box, I have found, and many DVD-ROMs and DVD players) that seriously bugs me. It's called "Region Locking." Basically, certain DVD players, including those on computers and the various X-boxes, will only play DVD's from certain regions. In other words, if I have a DVD player locked for American DVD's, and I purchase a DVD coded for the Japan region while visiting Tokyo... I will be unable to play it on my DVD player.

Why? Well, I'll bet their excuse is "to prevent piracy," but it seems to me that the reason is because corporations are complete jackasses who love to fuck over their consumer base.

Now, I don't purchase games or DVD's from Japan... But this bugs me. I don't think I'll buy a 360 because of it.

Oh well. Rock on, kids.

Spyware

In one of my moments of "Well, I best mention this for the less technologically inclined that may wander upon my blog:"

If you are ever randomly browsing the web, and are suddenly inundated with popups saying you have spyware and it offers to remove it: don't believe it. The popups are phony. No, really.

Unfortunately, especially if you are suddenly deluged with popups while browsing Wikipedia, they may also be right: You likely do have spyware. The problem is, it's the spyware that's creating the popups! Sort of a wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing hoping the panic of the uninformed will cause them to click "Yes!" and install nasty stuff on their computer.

Don't believe it, and run as many REAL spyware things on your machine as you can. I recommend Ad-Aware for the less advanced. Spybot Search & Destroy is also supposed to be good.

And if you're an advanced user, Bazooka Spyware Scanner is great. It requires manual removal of the spyware, but it will find just about anything.

Also note that "WinAntiVirus Pro! 2005" is a farce. That is the particular product I'm being bombarded by. It is evil. Do not believe it.

Well, that's it for me, I'm off to nuke some spyware. Rock on, kids.

Corporation

No in depth post tonight, kinda busy:

The Corporation. Watch it, if it sounds interesting. I'll likely talk about it a bit tomorrow.

Negligence

In a new height of negligence, CNN has reported that three mice infected with Bubonic Plague have been ...*ahem*... "Misplaced" from the Public Health Research Institute, which is on the campus of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.

They are not sure if the mice escaped, were stolen, were lost in a paperwork error, or were eaten by another lab animal.

However, any way you slice it this is inexcusable.

Bubonic freakin' Plague! Black Death! How could you be THAT careless?

If they escaped, it is probably through indefensible inattentiveness. While the mice will have reportedly died by now, what happens if between then and now they had been bitten by a flea or mosquito? Most prior outbreaks of Bubonic Plague occur with such events!

If they were eaten by another animal, that's just retarded there. What did they do, randomly toss a snake into the mice cage? Stupid.

Lost in a paperwork error? Then FIND the bastards! That's not even funny. Bureaucracy is no excuse for idiocy!

And if they were stolen, that just bodes ill. If it was a particularly stupid animal rights activist that happens to work for the lab, that's one thing. Hopefully, he didn't do anything stupid with them. Find him, and fire the dumbass. But what if the mice were sold to someone with... Less than honorable intentions? Do we really need that kind of grief?

Note also that the school is undergoing investigation for financial corruption in regards to millions of dollars in political donations and politically connected no-bid contracting.

In brief, this is a monumental incident of sheer incompetence! This is just another example of what happens with no-bid "buddy buddy" politically connected contracting! They FUCK UP, because they don't care. They don't care because even if they fuck up, they'll still get paid. It is high time there is some house cleaning! Those responsible need to be sacked, including the politician that awarded the contracts no-bid!

Quarter Century

Twenty five years, and I still haven't figured out what the hell's going on...

Now THAT Was a Contest!

A little bit of Video Game Lore I recently uncovered.

Back in the early 1980's, in the wonderful time before the dreaded Video Game Crash of 1983, Atari had a set of four games (Earthworld, Fireworld, Waterworld, and Airworld) collectively called SwordQuest. Centered around these four games was perhaps the single most awesome contest in Video Game history. (The crash and cancellation of the SwordQuest contest happened before the release of Airworld, so not only was the contest cancelled, all four games weren't even released).

The premise was pretty simple, all things considered. The game came with a comic book that told the story to the game (as Atari games were not known for their in-depth storylines). You went around in the game and solved puzzles. When you found the puzzles, you got a clue telling you where to look in the comic book for a word hidden somewhere in the artwork. If you found all the clues for a particular game, you could combine these words into a sentence, and send that into Atari.

Contestants would be selected from the people who sent in the finished sentence from the game, and they would be invited to play against each other. Whoever got the most clues in 90 minutes won the contest for that game. There were to be five contests altogether, one for each game and a final "Swordquest". The four winners from each individual contest would play against each other in the final.

The most awesome thing about the five Quests were the prizes. No namby pamby money or consumer goods here! No sir! The five prizes were practically British Crown Jewels, man! Gold and gem encrusted artifacts, straight from the game!

Here's a rundown:

The prize for the Earthworld quest was a talisman, representing the "Talisman of Penultimate Truth" from the game. An eighteen karot solid gold amulet, it was encrusted with twelve diamonds and the twelve birthstones of the Zodiac. A white gold sword decoration completed the look.


The prize for the Fireworld was a chalice, representing the game's "Chalice of Light." It is made of gold and platinum, and encrusted with citrines, diamonds, green jade, pearls, rubies, and sapphires.


The Waterworld prize was to be a crown, the "Crown of Life," and it was a gold crown set with aquamarines, diamonds, tourmalines, rubies, and sapphires.


The Airworld prize was to be a "Philosopher's Stone." It was a fist-sized piece of white jade, with a gold cover encrusted with aquamarines, diamonds, tourmalines, rubies, and sapphires. (Shown below with the cover on)


The final prize on the SwordQuest was to be, obviously, a sword. I couldn't find a photograph of the sword, and as far as I can tell, it was never made. It was, however, going to be even more ostentatious than the other prizes. It was to be a sword with a silver blade and a gold hilt, set with diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and sapphires.

Each of the World prizes was valued at $25,000 and the sword was valued at $50,000. Adjusting for inflation from 1983 to now, they would be worth slightly less than twice that today ($47,550 for the four smaller prizes and $95,510 for the sword.)

Alas! Alack! Atari was bought out, and to top it off, the Video Game Crash happened. The video game industry was brought to it's knees, paving the way for the Rise of the Nintendo. The SwordQuest was doomed.

Note my usage of various tenses. I said "Was" for the talisman, "Is" for the chalice, and "Was to be" for the other three... The Chalice is the only item known to still be in existence, nice and safe in the bank of Michael Rideout, the Firequest winner. The talisman was, unfortunately, broken apart and sold so the winner could pay for college. (Gotta do what you gotta do...) The sword was likely never made. And the Philosopher's Stone and Crown were lost. Likely, they grace an executive's office somewhere...

They just don't hold contests like this anymore. It's always for cash or a bike or something. They need to do this again...

(Bethesda Software! You have Elder Scrolls IV coming up! How about it?)

Frightening

The further I delve into politics, the more my faith in humanity is destroyed.

KnightErrant Returns, 9/11, and Tom DeLay.

Well, after a long week of the local Community Fair, I believe I can probably manage a few posts again. I'm an assistant scoutmaster for the local boy scout troop, and we run an archery and BB gun range at the fair every year. Plus, we march in the fair parade.

Well, in return for my volunteering I:

* Got indigestion from the multitude of fried fair foods.
* Was frustrated by the boys misbehaving and not being very Scoutlike.
* Got a cold.
* Almost got shot in the face by an arrow.
* Am still pretty sore.

Oh well.

**********

Anyway, so today (or yesterday, rather... it being past midnight) was the anniversary of September, 11th. I commemorated the event by sleeping in late and not watching television the entire day. I really couldn't have taken the politicians twisting the memory of all those people to their own ends.

Don't get me wrong here: 9/11 was a gut-wrenchingly terrible event... But as one of the seemingly few people in America left that can distinguish between "Patriotism" and "Nationalism," the Poli-ticks doing their spinning makes me want to puke.

Frankly, I think the "Towers of Light" are the best tribute. Something silent and a little bit inescapable. If the families want to read off the names, that's okay too. It gives a bit of perspective. But the next politician to try to gain political capital off this needs to be given an Atomic Wedgie. Seriously.

**********

Moving on (Eventful times, and here I was not blogging it. Stupid fair.)... It's just a footnote in the whole New Orleans catastrophe, but it's still noteworthy. The Huston Chronicle's "DomeBlog" reported this...

(Paraphrasing)Tom DeLay visited the Astrodome to see living conditions there. He talked to three young boys, compared the experience to camping... and asked, "Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?"

"Is this kind of fun?" Is it fun, boys? Was it fun, watching your city be destroyed? Was if fun watching people die horrible deaths? Was it fun living in filth until someone finally decided you should be rescued? Is it fun that you're now a refugee (I don't care if the term is not preferred, that's what they are!)living in a sports arena?

Why do we elect such detached clueless idiots? I don't know.

Buisness Sense

A little something on the business front to mull over.

A Humbling Thought

Just a little reminder that eventually even the greatest nations fall. Stay humble, and remember that even the nations of the present will one day be consigned to a history book of tomorrow.

(The NY Times requires registration. Go to BugMeNot if you don't wish to sign up.)

Research Takes Time

On what was more or less a whim following a discussion on natural disasters, I wrote a seven-page piece on truly cataclysmic events. Things like Supervolcanoes, Hypernovas, and quantum events that rend the fabric of reality itself. Some of them are very likely. Some are so unlikely, it's pointless to dwell on it for anything other than amusement. But all are nasty, and all are kind of interesting. It did, however, take me a long time to research it; hence the lack of recent posts despite all the political outrage I could be venting on.

I posted the piece over on the Cloudstrider Forums. Go on ahead and read it, if you feel like never sleeping soundly again. :)

Rock on.

Okay... Why?

Why would people in New Orleans shoot at helicopters trying to rescue people? No really, Why?!

I know natural disasters make people desperate... Does it also make them stupid?

If you're the praying type, you may want to spare one for the poor bastards still stuck down there...

Life After Oil

An interesting article on our options after we run out of oil...