The Dreamwidth Journal of zdashamber

Guys...

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 02:18:37 GMT

guys

Guys.

Guys listen.

I have the best ide

guys listen

I have the best idea ever

guys

I'll put BULLDOG CLIPS

guys

bulldog clips

I'll put BULLDOG CLIPS
guys listen here

I'll put BULLDOG CLIPS... on my CHARACTER SHEETS.

reference note: this historic LOL which links the original that I'm reworking because I love them both. They are like "This is just to say" for the new millenia.

In other news, if you need some small bulldog clips after slot one at ACNW, I will have some.

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My schedule, ACNW 2011

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 20:40:24 GMT

V. pleased. Have had some interesting emails with co-GMs so far, and looking forward to more enjoyable chatter. Giving my GMs a chance to email before leaping on them from my lair of iniquity, though that might just be that I'm busy yesternight and tonight. Drew has sent mail already, so I need to think up a character in magical monarchical 1947. Whole world at my fingertips!

So looking forward to seeing what is up in Aurellis. About time someone deposed Graeme. The spelling of his name alone. Someday I will figure out how to join up with the online version of the game. Should I do that in these next few weeks?

For so many years I would rewatch "Tombstone" in this month to get in the swing of playing Doc Holliday in Jeremy Z's games... Perhaps I could rewatch it in preparation for _Enoch is Burning_?

---------------

Slot 1: Thursday, November 3, 2011 - 7pm to midnight

Enoch Is Burning -- (GMs) Madeline F, Mike S

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Slot 2: Friday, November 4, 2011 - 9am to 1pm

Aurellis - The First One -- (GMs) Tim H

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Slot 3: Friday, November 4, 2011 - 2pm to 6:30pm

Game of Spies: Tibet '57 -- (GMs) Madeline F

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Slot 4: Friday, November 4, 2011 - 8pm to midnight

OMENOUS -- (GMs) Drew W

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Slot 5: Saturday, November 5, 2011 - 9am to 4:30pm

Homecoming -- (GMs) Jen Z

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Slot 6: Saturday, November 5, 2011 - 7pm to midnight

Sons of Ambarchy -- (GMs) Ogre W

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Slot 7: Sunday, November 6, 2011 - 10am to 4:30pm

The Low Road -- (GMs) Simone C, Nathan B, Madeline F, Mike S

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Ada Lovelace Day: Sydney Kustu

Sat, 08 Oct 2011 21:12:14 GMT

Ada Lovelace Day! When you blog about a woman in Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics who has inspired you. Technically yesterday.

I took some neat classes at Berkeley, since the MCB (Molecular and Cell Biology) path allowed for two free slots every semester. One class that I took for both entertainment and actual MCB credit was a tiny elective about plant genetic engineering; turned out to be two professors and about 18 students in a classroom the size of a normal room. The professors were Sydney Kustu and Mike Freeling; I get the impression they were both kinda having fun. That was the class where I found a lot of my science stories: the guest speaker who is the Most Bitter Scientist I ever met, a guy who worked on the ice minus bacteria; the class where Freeling talked about the interaction between the Novartis money deal and research; the independent study projects where I looked in to terraforming Mars with skunk cabbage (the professors: "...Huh...") and, I believe, pointed out to them the fascinating circumstance that one of our most recent super-useful science techniques, RNA interference, was discovered because the Dutch (through scientists in Oakland!) were trying to genetically engineer petunias of a richer purple.

Kustu was inspiring because she was aware of the social undercurrents in science, and she was willing to speak about them. She talked about how she was one of the few women in the National Academy of Sciences (in 2000, only 6%, according to this post). When she joined science in the early 70s it was still a very macho field. They had to mouth-pipette radioactive things, and people kept an eye out to be sure she was cool enough to join the boy's club.

It's nice to think that, although things aren't super in science these days, they are better. And it makes for a friendlier environment to know that there are scientific trailbreakers who are aware of the politics of gender.

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Reviews of a lot of movies and books!

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 06:05:23 GMT

I've been meaning to write about the books and movies I've come across lately, some for their own sakes, some because it seems fair to toss a bit more info out there into the world. Inspired just now by having just watched "Fast Five", and mentally comparing it to "X-Men: First Class". Upshot: Fast Five was a good movie, while X-Men: First Class was just an alright movie. (Sorry, ebonlock.)

Anyway, ever since "Spiderman 2" (when I noticed that the little kids who were all O__0 at him on his scooter delivering pizzas were black, and it occurred to me that there were black people everywhere in my neighborhood and nowhere in the movies) I can't help but notice race in movies and TV. So Fast Five was refreshing like a mojito. It was your basic heist/action movie with a deep love of cars, but where most media would have a token POC or two, it had everyone. There was maybe a touch of the performing silly blabbermouth black stereotype in one character, but then there were also non-stereotypical black characters in abundance. No one's race got played for laughs. It was just really nice. Also, Sung Kang is so hot. So, so hot. There should be more minority parts just so there can be more chances for him to be on screen.

Anyway, Fast Five had plot holes, but it wasn't really about plot, and they weren't insurmountable, so that was fine. It had people being good to their families in hard situations, and cars barely staying together through turns, and a very nice foot chase, and a lot of people not getting shot or broken when they really ought to have, and people sailing off cliffs into blue pools of water at the last minute. I thought the acting of the bald muscley guys was good; nice to see a lot of shots of wrinkled-up foreheads and nods instead of long blathery conversations. It wasn't a bunch of cockwaving talk. Also nice to see people in fistfists who really look like they could actually take people out with a single punch. Women were slightly shorted in terms of character, and the ones without speaking roles were treated like shiny prize cars, but it wasn't too horrible. I'm not sure that Brazil is really that screwed up; sounds more like whatever the orientalising version of South America is; but it wasn't too necessary for the movie. There was a gay couple (at least, I think that was text, with the one kvetching about the other's cooking?) who were totally non-stereotypical (anarchist muppet!) and a lot of fun. I'd say good movie, worth seeing.

NOW ON TO SPOILERS: Last Saturday I saw X-Men: First Class, which was just ok. I mentioned on Facebook that I felt it missed its own point, by not spending time having characters wrestle with the question of whether and in what way mutants should/should not work with humans and traditional government. That was the spine of your movie, guys! Erik and Charles were the lungs or the legs or the heart and brain or whatever, but without a strong spine, it was just kinda floppy.

So I notice things. I noticed that the early 60s were apparently hella hella white? Despite the whole civil rights movement/pan-africanism thing happening right then? Oy. Anyway, in XMFC we had two black people, and let me just pause here and note that currently at Wednesday night TV night we're watching "I Spy" in which a black dude gets to be a full-on fleshed out hero American government agent, and a lot of other POCs get to be all sorts of things, and it comes from 1965. Anyway, one of the black people in XMFC abandons her new friends and chance at a legit life to go with the murderous Nazi, I guess because she's weak? Because that really made no sense. And the other, hold me Jesus, dies to give the remaining characters, all of whom are white, reason to fight. Oy. (...Oy.)

It annoyed me that Shaw's attack on the CIA... Well, that whole thing annoyed me. I guess it was nice to point out to C&E that if they were going to collect this pile of tasty morsels they had to defend it, too. But really? Gobshites kill a lot of government guys who probably have been reasonably ok to you, in a time when to be anti-government was a big (COMMUNIST) thing, and say "Join us!" and Anyone does? Christ. What? It makes no sense from a in-story perspective, and the sense it makes from a movie perspective would only work if Angel had any sort of character built up at the time so we would feel something about her leaving, which she didn't, or if there was a discussion about what it meant to go vs stay, which there wasn't. The only way to save that scene is to imagine that Angel went along to become a double agent, and then Emma Frost melted her mind.

Anyway, I noticed that Moira was the only protagonist woman. Raven gets to make a nice character choice about embracing her mutantity, but she doesn't get to take action or direct the way the plot goes. She's another woman who gets dealt out by the writers like a pile of poker chips at the end of some awkwardly timed and regrettably unelaborated philosophical contretemps. Emma had a bad actress.

Moira's actress was very good; like (I believe) tersa said, even when she was in her skivvies she made it clear she was doing a job.

Annnnyway. Coulda made the movie tighter by dropping Havok (no point to that guy) and the second scene with the suborned American military guy, and then had space for Erik and Charles to discuss Machiavelli over chess.

...Actually, so thinking about this all and boiling it down, I think what annoyed me was that anyone who joined side evil did it because they were "weak", because side evil never got a chance to make a legitimate case. And that meant that side good also didn't have much of a case. So it was annoying that it was the blacks and women who were weak and evil, but most annoying was the lack of depth in the plot.

---Smaller notes---

ebonlock pointed out that the 60s vibe was cool. It was! Silly-ass chairs that look like cubes, and metal circles as your wall art...! But there could have been so much more... I missed 60s hairstyles, and clothes, and I really, really missed 60s tech. We went to the moon with 60s tech! Woulda been nice to have the submarine look less like "we ran out of money for sets so here's a CGI white box".

Also, bad CGI. I'm thinking that palm trees, when hit by tons of metal at high speeds, do not "bend" so much as "shatter".

It is interesting to look at the evolution of portrayals of Russians. In 2011, Russians get to be kinda decent honorable guys. Cool.

The MC1R gene wasn't found until the early 90s, according to OMIM. Genetics geeking there. :P

I loved the way a lot of the dialogue was in different languages. Excellent! Realistic! Gave a sense of the world!

Sadly, Professor X as a "good" write-capable telepath has a hill to climb for me. Most mutants, they could kill you, sure; but he could destroy you. And this movie started him off as a rich, rich, son of a bitch. Does he understand other people? Is he good enough to not casually break you? By the evidence of the movie, I'd say, .....eeeehh.

It it always nice, though, to see fine-looking telekinetics kill Nazis. Mm-hm.

And the cameo that everyone is so pleased with was in fact pleasing. Both necessary, and sufficient. MNSHO.

SPOILERS LARGELY OVER

So anyway, awhile back the Borders near me went out of business, and I have armfuls, like literally multiple armfuls, of books. There was a book called _The Widow of the South_ by Robert Hicks which I picked up due to a previously unnoted interest in the Civil War. The back made it sound like a love story set in some gruesome battle, and I enjoy getting history from historical romance books, so I added it to the armful. It turned out to be a litfic sort of book, but it did have good history in it. The battle was one I hadn't heard of; the Battle of Franklin, towards the end of the war in late 1864 when it was clear the South was losing and General Hood apparently decided to make World War One even more bitterly ironic by demonstrating what happened when you charged up a hill towards entrenched people with lots of ammo. The spine of the book is, a lady who was completely screwed up from being kinda odd and then having three of her five kids die of childhood diseases, pulls herself together when her house is made into a hospital for the results of this battle. She particularly comes to care for remaking a shellshocked at-loose-ends veteran.

Litfic is not so much my thing; "blah pulls themselves together" is fine, but I like it better when it comes with "meanwhile there is a murder to solve" or especially "while still managing to defeat the invading fleh". The book was engaging when I was reading it, but I put it down about 50 pages from the end and took a week and a half to come back. Still, good descriptions and history bits; good choices of characters to show the range of people in the south at that time. I liked the mention of excavation of indian mounds after the war; so tragic, the archaeological losses! Fine handling of black experiences, so far as I could tell. Nice conveyal of atmosphere that makes it clear where the entire genre of Westerns comes from (a bunch of shellshocked people who know how to shoot and have seen a lot of death probably tend to make frontier places wild).

After the Harry Connolly books I read Harry Turtledove's _Guns of the South_ which I'd heard about as a classic. Basic idea: people from our time show up in early 1864 with AK-47s and supply the Confederate Army with them. It didn't come off as well... Sidenote, a lot of people in California despise the South, which pisses me off. Provincial dolts. But I do despise neo-Confederates, and anything smacking of that has a hard hill to climb. So I thought it was a bit awkward that it turned out that after the South won the Civil War, our viewpoint characters realize that slavery is bad yo, and eventually a law passes that will lead to its evaporation! The whole "we just wanted to chart our own course, of course it would have worked out for the slaves eventually" bit of bullshit is contemptible. Now, having talked about this with ericorange I have decided that Turtledove did try to make it clear that it was only the intervention of the people from the future that made the law pass. But it was a problem throughout that he didn't want to have a book about time travel, he wanted a book about alternate history. The de-emphasis on the time travelling lead to problems like the above, and also, for reals, Lee seems like a clever fellow who would have tried to get spies into the future. Eh. The laying out of research in the book was nice. Character does not seem to be Turtledove's strong point; for one thing, he doesn't convey a sense of paralax. The writings of his that I've read come across as smug because there's no sense of alternate perspectives on the characters, from other characters or from the author. But the surrender of Washington DC was nicely written, Ben Butler the diplomat was amusing, and I loved to see the Battle of the Crater (most horrible cockup EVAR) arrive properly despite their war being won long before it showed up in our timeline. The description of training with AK-47s was great; would be useful bits to read for people thinking about Corwin's troops in Amber. But on the whole, a book where the South wins, it never made it worth the essential tragedy.

I mentioned that between those I'd read Harry Connolly's two books, _Child of Fire_ and _Game of Cages_. rob_donoghue, I believe, recommended them. They were in fact good enough to keep in the house! Sort of candy reading, but in a quick gruesome Elder Gods sort of way. Now, one confusing thing was that there seems to have been a very influential trunk book before them, so it's like reading books 2 and 3 of a series and I checked the internet twice to see if I really had the first book he'd published ever in my hands. The internet continues to say yes. Anyway, the series is about a ex-con who, without full knowledge, bought himself a part in a struggle of jackass mages against worldeating evils. The main character is good: nice to see someone from an honestly troubled background as just a guy being a protagonist. He gets to care for people. He gets to tell people that he has been in and out of jail and will beat their fool ass. It works. He comes up with plans and does shit that affects the plot! The ladies in the books are varied and badass! So, I would certainly read more. Not yet to the point where I'm jonesing for more, but not bad, really.

Let's see, I re-read _Dragon_ by Brust to get a proper book about war with characters and stuff. It was still good. :)

I read _Coronets and Steel_ by Sherwood Smith because I seem to recall she was good in racefail, and *it* promised to be a romance, and it had a great cover with a woman in jeans and a renaissance fair shirt and sunglasses with a rapier. It was temporarily on the keep pile, and then I shifted it over to sell. The writing was fine in that it kept me interested, but I kept thinking of more off notes. It's a story about a lady vacationing in Vienna to try to track down info on her grandmother, who has gone all non-verbal. She is mistaken for a duchess of a tiny slightly magical country in the area nearish Yugoslavia. The duchess is supposed to marry hunky McPrince, but she's gone missing, so our main character plays the role for awhile...

The thing I noticed while reading it: romance books. They need a reason why the two people Destined to be together don't just get together right off. Jane Austen did this well: her people are flawed, and at the start of the book they don't want to be together thanks to totally legitimate reads of the other's character. Jennie Crusie does this well: her people are pretty good catches, but you have totally legitimate reasons to keep away like "one is a cop and one is covering for criminals". Sherwood Smith here has Perfect McDreamyson, so it falls on the protagonist to be the only flawed one, which is offputting; and the external reasons to not get together aren't explained until the last few chapters of the book. Which is another bad point: I do have an expectation that a cosy romance about becoming queen of a tiny European country can and should wrap up in one book. Cliffhanger series are just not cricket. They make you question pacing and wonder why it was that stong interesting protagonists (which she was, loved that she also read Crusie) abandoned their original plot-driving desire to help their grandmothers until 95% of the way though, or couldn't get a ride to learn the plot knowledge despite many cool and daring demonstrations of their guts until 80% of the way through the book... Eh, I guess it was trying to balance the modern conceit that love doesn't develop in a few days with the idea of driving forwards plotwise? There should have been a better way to balance that. Anyway, it is nearly a good enough book, nice descriptions of Parisian accents and escaping weirld old-world stuff during WWII and learning about past family tragedies and all. Secret tunnel!

Oh right, and then several weeks ago I rented "Tokyo Godfathers". It was sweet! And odd! But not too odd. By Satoshi Kon, animated, about three homeless people in Tokyo who find an abandoned baby and set out to find its parents and discover why it was abandoned. I dearly love Miss Hana, the MTF transgendered character. And the other characters: also great. Admirable while still being very very flawed. The story is a series of unlikely events, but it's fun and everything ends up connected and the resulting fairy-tale ambiance is refreshing. Set at Christmastime, in case you need another odd slightly-related-to-Christmas movie after "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang". Very well done animation; backgrounds lovely, character expressions great. I wonder what it means that the Japanese word for "homeless" is apparently "homarisu".

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Browser Tab Meme

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 06:32:54 GMT

Originated by anatsuno:

I'm going to list, and tell you briefly about, ALL THE TABS I HAVE OPEN at this moment in time, without editing (except for work-related or privacy-related reasons, if I had them, but I don't. I just mean, if you do it, obviously, feel free to edit the really crucial stuff - just, it's not in the spirit if the game to edit for guilty pleasure reasons and the like).

From Send Tab URLs (21 links)

I really enjoy Send Tab, the Firefox extension, BTW. It lets me copy this list of tabs and paste it into a mail to myself so I can close them and turn off the computer.

So here's a snapshot of where I was Friday evening, I think, when I encountered this meme and decided to just pass on without dealing with all these:

Boeing’s Multi-Billion Outsourcing Fiasco « naked capitalism
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/02/boeings-multi-billion-outsourcing-fiasco.html

I was meaning to bounce this off prince_corwin, who has been having trouble with contractors not being able to create a widget where tab A fits into slot B.

West Oakland, Oakland, California - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Oakland,_Oakland,_California

For my character in Eric T's new Dresden Files campaign... I'm meaning to read all this and figure out where she's lived. Also interested in it for its own sake. And curious who made it.

Washington: the 'blackest name' in America - Yahoo! News
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110221/ap_on_re_us/us_the_blackest_name

More Shavonne research; I'm meaning to add links to her page on the wiki.

Harold Camping - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Camping

The source of the "Apocalypse Coming" billboards around the Bay Area, remarked on by Natalie M and Mike S on the ski trip weekend before last; turns out I was wrong and it's not some convention, they really do think it's the apocalyspe. So Mike's right to give them props for avoiding deniability. Mean to mail this to them.

Desperately Seeking Search
http://www.creditwritedowns.com/2011/02/desperately-seeking-search.html

Kept this to investigate further into Google alternatives, since as mentioned before, it's sucking this past year.

New Hacking Tools Pose Bigger Threats to Wi-Fi Users - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/technology/personaltech/17basics.html?_r=1&ref=business

Kept this to investigate stuff I should put on to my computer... Should have asked for a long ethernet cable for my birthday, so I can go back to wired.

Recent Changes - Magic By The Bay
http://magicbythebay.wikidot.com/system:recent-changes

The wiki page for Eric's Dresden Files campaign. Poking away there. Actually somewhat amusing, the wiki, that is; less excruciating than usual. I guess because I went and licked my character's page, repurposing the "collapsible" function to put on a pile of notes. And then there's feedback. So it's sort of like a proper conversation.

Eldridge Cleaver interview
http://leeblockman.tripod.com/blackpantherparty/id5.html

This is pretty fascinating, and I'm halfway through. Cleaver was a rapist and a gobshite, but what he has to say isn't all bullshit, and he does have an interesting perspective on history. This is the last of the Black Panther research tabs I had up; interesting binocular vision you can get on the Black Panthers on the web...

Workspace: Madeline F | Ambercon US
http://www.ambercon.com/workspace/80

Ah, yes, I was submitting ACUS games. This can go now.

Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail? | Rolling Stone Politics
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-street-in-jail-20110216?page=6

This is just going to piss me off. My parents can testify that I've been wanting a hell of a lot of prison for a hell of a lot of rich fraudsters since 2008.

Frequently Asked Questions - Handgun Safety Certificate Program - Bureau of Firearms - California Dept. of Justice - Office of the Attorney General
http://ag.ca.gov/firearms/hscfaqs.php

Frequently Asked Questions - Public - Bureau of Firearms - California Dept. of Justice - Office of the Attorney General
http://ag.ca.gov/firearms/pubfaqs.php

ammo cost per bullet - Google Search
http://www.google.com/search?sclient=psy&hl=en&source=hp&q=ammo+cost+per+bullet&btnG=Search

Trigger (firearms) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigger_(firearms)

Smith & Wesson Model 10 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_%26_Wesson_Model_10

What is the most common ammo in the USA? - SpaceBattles.com
http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=98380

The AnarchAngel: So you want to buy a 1911? A basic primer
http://anarchangel.blogspot.com/2008/02/so-you-want-to-buy-1911-basic-primer.html

I was back to thinking about getting a handgun, after reading this news story (incredibly sad and gruesome) about how Gina Gonzales survived the attack of Arizona minutemen/racists who killed her family. Shotgun couldn't have managed that, IMO; handgun seems suddenly less impractical. So, thinking I should pick up a gun with cheap ammo so I could actually practice with it; and looking in to how I could have a light trigger since in my small experience with guns I find it irritating when they pull Windows-like "are you sure you want to fire? how about if you have to pull the trigger back to your teeth, since we can't make you click a button that says 'yes'"... And then I stopped opening new tabs when I found a blog of a gun guy who wasn't completely crazy, because I find reading opinionated people to be the best way to learn. (Too many gun people are too goddamn crazy. Assholes. That's a big downside of the whole range thing.)

roleplayers: Ten dollars, six ill games, one supremely good deed
http://community.livejournal.com/roleplayers/1587614.html

Was thinking about picking this up for the Apocalypse World bit;

roleplayers: What Makes A Good Game Official?
http://community.livejournal.com/roleplayers/1587269.html

Was thinking about responding. 1. People skills: can notice when anyone in room is getting frustrated/bored 2. Time management/fairness (then maybe 3. 10-15% "can make super plot/interesting NPCs/good scene setting") But meh, it's been too long since the question was posed.

New Zealand Red Cross Earthquake Relief - RPG Bundle [BUNDLE] - OneBookShelf, Inc. | RPGNow.com
http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=88713

Was thinking about picking this up... There were a couple interesting things, at least. Looks like Tales of the Floating Vagabond? Looks like it's gone in 9 hours, too, so I'm glad I came to this meme tonight...

zdashamber | Reading
http://zdashamber.dreamwidth.org/read

And the source of the tab meme.

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Ambercon Northwest 2010, so how'd that work out for me?

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 08:21:19 GMT

Pretty well. Awww, who am I kidding, it was great! Like usual.

Anyway, this is how it went down. Getting in Tuesday evening was silly and I won't do that again... It was nice to be able to work a full day Tuesday, but getting in too late to catch the bus, so that I could pay for a hotel room and a fancypants breakfast the next day, was silliness. Live and learn! Also, I didn't have enough time to pack, so I took more clothes than necessary; but it was mostly fine.

As for "schmooze front desk for sink", I chatted a small amount with the night lady at the front desk (same lady for the past decade or more, apparently!), who said that they didn't assign the rooms in the Ambercon block, but all the rooms had big "do not change" tags on them... Turned out the room I had was sinkless, but next year I will make sure to send in money and requests for the room I Dearly Love in time to not miss it. And I trust that whoever had it this year is in a joyous drunken stupor right now and thus busy forgetting the number. ;)

Wednesday I slept in, had a leisurely iPhone/newspaper breakfast, and then walked a mile over to Walmart (the only grocery store or drugstore in the area. Damn shame). I surprised a tiny snake on the back path that leads from the parking lot to the school/playground to the north. It was brown, about 9 inches long, a baby. Long lighter brown racing stripes; probably a garter snake. It wriggled off into the brambles. There was a squished roadkill snake a few paces further along that was probably its brother. Anyway, first wild snake I've seen since leaving Colorado, and I was really pleased.

Picked up some bananas, cream cheese, bagels, whipping cream for coffee; also white long underwear which worked perfectly as hose for the Trafalgar Experiment. Came back and at last connected with people (Murray W, Emma S, Erik F, ?) by the time-honored tradition of Wandering into them while at the Black Rabbit Bar (en route to getting ice to cool Purchased Dairy Things).

Matador pre-con dinner: successfully sat next to cool people and talked to cool people. The drinks were kinda bland, IMO, but turned out to be hella strong. Am reminded by neat post from Felicity of how I was impressed by the way she and her friend Dan were there for the first time knowing noone, and went around brightly meeting people! Dan I got to see again later and was happy to game with; Felicity I did not see again except passing in the hall; she mentions in her post that no one asked about her hair; I do remember seeing it one day when she had it in a Santa Lucia style and I was impressed by that, too.

Retired to stress about games?

Thursday was sleeping in, then breakfast at the bar with John N? Shortly followed by marriage of Seana McG and Louisa McG. V. sweet. Adorable crying with emotion from Louisa. Gorgeous dresses. Bubble wand still with me. :) A bit more game stressing, then. Fleeing to con registration party at 5 for potential volunteering, but other people had that well in hand, so I took the time to get some wine and start chatting. Around 6 off to Power Station to get food to go, with J.P. B; back just in time to eat food and hear announcements. Was great plan. There is completely, utterly ridiculous terrible photo of me doing my part to be groupie of Iron GM Jeremy Z shortly before his Troubles.

Then Ben B's game "When The Bough Breaks"! With Katja C, Keith A, Derrick S, John H, Lee S.

"So basically there is this Psychic Maelstrom and all of you are knocked unconscious as -Fiona- dies in your arms." - Ben B to Sabina (played by Katja)

"No one has told me that anyone else is massacring people aside from Touve...?" - Ben B

"I mean, the blinding, surprising nature of this attack--teleported in, glance, then massacre..." - Ben B

"When you said mayhem, you only meant [killing] people worse than you?" - Sabina to Merrick (played by John)

"Simon is dead." - Sabina
"Simon is dead? You killed him?!" - Florimel
". . . He was killed." - Sabina (with the audible ". . .")

Yeah. So we didn't know that the agent of Benedict we were killing was Fiona. Maaaaan... I was happy that I got a chance to use the effed-up coping strategy I'd built into the character, and massacre a bunch of people in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ben B started off this slot with a series of questions, in a style that Nathan later used in The Long Road: the instant character quiz, a way I haven't seen before of stabbing towards creating character history on the fly. Stuff like "Touve, tell me, who is the leader of the PC's team?" "Ian, how did Kaeso give you that scar?" I liked it, though I'm not yet in lurve with it. Would like to see a list of questions like that, where people are getting these from. Make them up in advance of each game? Interested in possibly turning the crank a bit, trying it out, refining it a bit. Sort of like Pit of Vipers; is the lessened system effect good or bad? Anyway, was entertaining. Touve perhaps character on most upward trajectory at end of game? Also turned out to be first in Warfare which is always entertaining. And nice of Maurice (Derrick S) to lose an arm for her. Name: was trying for something Norwegian since character was influenced in body type by Sister Norway from silly amusing webcomic I recently found; thought of Tove Jansson (I know she's Finnish), found her name was pronounced in a sound file on wikipedia, tried to spell it so that pronunciation would be more likely; failed, but Ben B did pick up pretty quickly on the pronunciation I was trying. Oh, also thanks to Kaeso/Lee S, who arranged that most of the massacring was of people who were arguably deserving of it, and thus pushed us across a Rubicon that lead to interesting things down the road. And it was nice that Ben B let us pull the same plan twice due to realistic confusion after the first time round! Also to put all the game cruft in one place (I didn't throw out the paper, so here it is), the note Touve left in a temporary safehouse that she was pretty sure Benedict would track down: "Prince Benedict:
I have the memory of being your daughter and Oda's. It seems impolite to presume on this. I was raised as an agent of Chaos.
It is my hope that some day there will be a reason for us to converse comfortably. Touve"

On way back to room, passed Lee B, but was not lured to drinking even though he had read my LJ and mentioned the perhaps unnecessarily skewed mentions of booze... Game to run the next morning, yanno.

Right now, though, it is late, and so I need to shower and then write up the rest later. Perhaps I would Benefit my Readers more if I were to actually put in paragraph breaks and arrange my thoughts in something other than stream of consciousness? Even include full sentences? Your Opinions Valued!

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Ambercon Northwest schedule 2010

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 07:19:00 GMT

Soon I will be leaving for Ambercon Northwest for a week! People who might think about coming next year: the Summer Solstice 2011 is the time you need to decide.

Here is my schedule so far:

10:30 PM Tuesday: arrive PDX. Probably take TriMet to the Edgefield. Have single queen room in Main Lodge: hope it has sink. Schmooze front desk for sink. Check times for 77 bus... Dammit, it doesn't run that late. Develop other mode of travel.

Wednesday: free in the day. Find BevMo or Portland equivalent? Check bag so I could bring my own booze? I think maybe check bag. I have two bottles of absinthe and they ain't drinking themselves. Dinner, I am signed up to do the pre-con dinner... I expect I will lurk in the lobby and schmooze a ride.

Thursday: Wedding/Anniversary celebration noonish, I believe. How to get dinner? Always an issue with reception taking up 5-game timeslot. Resolve issue this year! Somehow.

Slot 1: Thursday, November 4, 2010 - 7pm to midnight, When the Bough Breaks, by Ben B; in which I will be playing a gentle/coldviolent Chaos-stolen daughter of Benedict

Friday: will not be at breakfast since I like to get some solid drinking in before running (haha I jest but srsly Absinthe)

Slot 2: Friday, November 5, 2010 - 9am to 1pm, Remind Me Of The Man, by Madeline F; in which I have an awesome player list who have created well-done characters

Slot 3: Friday, November 5, 2010 - 2pm to 6:30pm, The Trafalgar Experiment, by Julian M and Yi-Mei C; I have been inching subtly towards this game since Jules first started talking about it on his LJ this summer, and so far, I think I have a chance of taking it unawares (mum's the word)

Slot 4: Friday, November 5, 2010 - 8pm to midnight, Crimson Dawn III, by Murray W; I have been stalking this game since last year. In, as Murray realized, a very Zen way. Also, I hear the Amberese are writing haikus to each other. Well I suppose we bandits from Chaos will have to engage in ...and I was going to suggest Noh, and then looked it up on Wikipedia:

By tradition, Noh actors and musicians only rehearse together once, a few days before the actual performance. Instead, each actor, musician, and chorus member practises his or her fundamental movements, songs, and dances independently, under the tutelage of a senior member of the school. Thus, the mood of a given performance is not set by any single performer but established by the interactions of all the performers together. In this way, Noh could be seen as exemplifying the medieval Japanese aesthetics of transience, called by Sen no Rikyu "ichi-go ichi-e", "one chance, one meeting".

See? See? That is why that game is so great. It beautifully tweaks the meaning of things that exist already.

Post-game... Drinking? I don't know, I often seem to find that I am awake and willing to party after other people have vanished into their rooms, or the bars have closed.

Saturday: I could show up for breakfast, depending on when I wake up. The thing is, I will likely bring bagels/toaster/instant coffee/hot pot, as in past years, and that breakfast suits me a lot better than the "block of sugar and carbs or maybe protein" that is excellently presented at the Black Rabbit... The stomach is daunted in the morning.

Slot 5: Saturday, November 6, 2010 - 9am to 4:30pm, Tenfold Millennia: Janissaries, by Simone C; in which I play the Duros With No Name or perhaps just no memory. Star Wars! Killing Jedi!

Slot 6: Saturday, November 6, 2010 - 7pm to midnight, Ways of Chaos: the Bridge, by Mike S, and Eric T and Madeline F; in which a lot of prep will come together in a crest of awesome

And then almost certainly drinking, good lord willing and the Creek don't rise

Sunday: breakfast a good possibility, what with the extra time in the morning. Does daylight savings destroy that? Re-centering the light around the nonsense arbitrary point of "noon" in a world set up to happen in the evenings... Let's see, I think we do lose an hour, in addition to losing the light in the times when it would be actually useful to have light, as opposed to the times when you're just trying to sleep, or eating breakfast. Still, probably breakfast.

Slot 7: Sunday, November 7, 2010 - 10am to 4:30pm, The Low Road, by Simone C, and Mike S, and Anneke F, and Nate B; in which I play a restless Holmes/Stringer Bell/Irina Spalko cross itching to blow this popsicle stand

Then the afterparty/dinner, then floating around in the pool, then long talks in the Distillery no doubt

Monday: oozing forth to have breakfast/lunch and chat with people, probably leaving for airport around 12-1.

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Portland next weekend

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 21:36:29 GMT

I'll be up in Portland next weekend for Irene and Edwin's wedding. I have not yet figured out where I'll be staying (may fall back on the Edgefield hostel just from familiarity) so if you have desire for a roommate or know someone who might, sing out!

I decided to take the train up, since this is about the only chance I'll get to try a mode of travel where it doesn't matter if I'm 12-18 hours late. And I'm curious. It can't possibly be worse than the bus, but how much better will it be? On the face of it, it's super convenient: I can leave my car right next to where I work, walk across the street, catch the train from the snazzy Emeryville station Wednesday at 10 PM, and ostensibly take that very train (with the lovely name Coastal Starlight) through pretty territory all the way to Portland arriving 3 PMish Thursday. We Shall See.

And then flying back Monday on Southwest which will be fine as usual. Dear PDX: I really appreciate the free wireless in your airport, and the excellent transit access to aforementioned airport.

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Help with a Mary Gentle book: A Sundial in a Grave: 1610

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 06:16:48 GMT

Alright, so this weekend I started reading a book that I picked up in the supercheap bin at Borders because I thought Mary Stewart's Merlin books were great and I was curious what she was up to lately. And it turns out that Mary Gentle is a totally different person, but you know, historical fantasy romance written by people named Mary... ...right?

Anyway, I need to know if there's someone out there who has read Mary Gentle's book _A Sundial in a Grave: 1610_, because it was humming along very well (musketeers! tormented romance! samurai!) until a point about 60% of the way through, when the protagonist makes a decision that is just so fantastically idiotic that I put the book down and spent the rest of the weekend cleaning my house, occasionally shaking my fists at the ceiling and crying AARRGH!!

The question is, is this idiotic decision something I'd have to suffer through reading about for a couple hundred pages if I continued, or does the protagonist come to his senses within a chapter or so?

So, the only reason I ask is because it was a pretty tasty book before that. She does a good job with making history palpable; there is shit and swords scraping off bones inside people and the considerations of slipping in mud in your fancy boots. The samurai shipwrecked in 1610 England is a fun idea and I'm interested to see where she goes with it. The sex is fine, though BDSM is not my bag; still, nice to see some less vanilla stuff get play.

Trouble is, it's a romance; which I usually enjoy, but there are some pits that romances can fall into. Say boy + girl have gotten past the misunderstanding that had them at odds in the beginning, thanks to talking and working together, and things are going pretty well, yeah? What then? The correct answer is "wrap up the book", but I fear that Gentle has chosen the incorrect answer, "Have one of the participants in the romance stupidly create a new problem to add another couple hundred pages".

So, the stupid, stupid decision: the protagonist is a French duellist, Rochefort, who is the right-hand man of the Duke who is the chief adviser to the King of France. Same kind of guy as Scooter Libby. At the beginning of the book dude gets framed/implicated in the murder of aforementioned King of France and goes on the lam so that he isn't tortured into a confession that will bring down his Duke.

So he goes to England and hangs out there for months, which doesn't actually make any sense in-character since in-character he claims that advancing the Duke's cause is his chief goal in life and he also claims that what the Duke needs is for him to testify that it was the Queen who had the King murdered, which can only happen with him physically in France, and which needs to happen within weeks of the death of the King for it to have any relevance, but there's a flimsy rationale that in France he would get captured... And obviously the book is more of a romance than anything else and so it's necessary that the characters be thrown together in England so la la la no worries.

While in England a guy who proves he can calculate the future tries to force/manipulate our dude into assassinating the English king. Prophetdude has Rochefort beaten, personally kicks him in the balls, causes a lot of deaths, has the other main character raped.

So everyone escapes and is on an unlikely path of history that Prophetdude did not plan for: they are free! And Rochefort goes to the unplanned-for non-dead English king and says, "Say, how about we capture and use this guy who can figure out the specifics of liklihoods of the future? And I suggest this so that you arrange for the Duke to be kept alive in France by passing them Prophetdude's prognostications on that condition."

What?

I mean, what?

Keep the guy alive who has proven that with a few months of time to calculate he can set things up like dominoes to any end possible?

Keep the guy alive who has actually tried to kill the English King who's nodding along here?

Keep the guy alive who has proven he could kill you at any time and the only reason you are alive is that prophetdude needs you to kill the King, which is now supposedly off the table?

And you're doing this so that the Duke can live as a pet enemy of a murdering Medici Queen?

Is that the kind of call that Scooter Libby would make? The whole book we hear about what a murderous badass Rochefort is and now when he has this chance to satisfyingly murder someone who desperately deserves it he's instead planning to put the future of two countries into the hands of a guy they're holding prisoner, who specifically wants the king dead?

Am I making it clear enough how fucking idiotic this "plan" is? They're for one moment riding the tiger, for one moment in a part of the future that prophetdude hasn't explored every angle of, and they're planning to put their heads into the mouth of the tiger.

So, look, the only reason I can see for making this call is an out-of-character need to have the romance not be smooth. And that kind of thing has to be backed up within the text. If Rochefort did in fact care about the Duke more than about Love, he would have gone back to France. If Rochefort cared about Love more than he cared about the Duke, he would murder the guy who hurt both him and his love. A book only gets one flimsy excuse, and this one spent it hundreds of pages before. Gentle went and shattered everything that made sense about the protagonist to try to make him fit into the plot, when he's the only thing carrying the reader through the plot.

Anyway. So I guess the book gets to go to the used store. Pity.

....I can't stand it when characters don't ask the obvious questions! "Why should we believe that this guy will steer us right!" Why would such stupidity show up in a book that had heretofore been pretty darn good about characterization and worldbuilding! It had so much promise! AARRGH!!

...Alright, I'm cool now.

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Primary Election, June 8 2010

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 07:14:12 GMT

So, you should go vote just so that you can vote No on Prop 16, the "Have the Government Enforce PG&E's Monopoly" statute. In case you'd like to see my thoughts on the rest:

Prop 13, fixing your place up so it's earthquake-safe doesn't trigger a property tax update: Yes.

Prop 14, only 2 people from any and all parties advance to the general election: No. Found here:

2. Prop. 14 bans counting write-in votes in November for Congress and state office. Three times, Californians have elected someone to congress in November by write-in votes (1930, 1946, 1982). We do know how to cast write-ins in California. Voters of Long Beach elected a Mayor on write-ins in 2002, and voters of San Diego almost elected Donna Frye Mayor on write-ins in 2004.
3. Prop. 14 changes the requirements for a party to remain ballot-qualified. Now they stay on by polling 2% of the vote for any statewide race in midterm years (they get a free ride in presidential years), but Prop. 14 says parties don't have nominees any longer, so that wouldn't work. The only other way is for parties to have 100,000 registrants. Peace & Freedom, with 58,000, would go off the ballot. . . .
5. Finally, it says that members of unqualified parties can't have their party label on the June ballot. This is because neither the measure nor its implementing legislation amend sec. 8606 of the election code, which defines "party" to be "qualified party."

And:

This primary election for CA governor is a perfect example. The two Republican candidates are pouring tons of their own money into their campaigns to sling mud at each other, while Democratic candidate, Gerry Brown is sitting idly on the sidelines letting the two Republicans duke it out. He doesn't have a contender so he can save his war chest for the general election. Historically, the Republicans are always the ones with the most money in elections so in the end, it will come down to who has the most money wins. Sound famaliar? The system is already based on who has the most money wins. This legislation will excacerbate that even worse.

There's no benefit to this: it's still going to be 1 Republican and 1 Democrat as contenders in November, just with a lot of needless restrictive cruft around it. And even in the cases where there might be 2 Democrats, you can get that today by just voting in the damn primary. Not a Democrat/Republican? There is plenty of time to switch into the appropriate party once you know where the interesting fight is.

Speaking of interesting fights, I'm diverting momentarily: Attorney General. I'm for Pedro Nava. Source:

Assemblyman Pedro Nava, D-Santa Barbara, thinks he would be the best choice for Attorney General in part because he doesn't want to be governor. Ever.
. . .
Nava, who worked as a prosecutor in Fresno and Santa Barbara before going into private practice for 15 years, also touted his environmental credentials (including eight years on the powerful California Coastal Commission), liberal arts education (he majored in sociology), and 100 percent record voting for gay rights, civil rights, women's reproductive rights and consumer affairs. And he spoke about how his own experience as the son of Latino parents whom he recalls being harassed by police has informed his notion of justice.

Chris Kelly is a completely unqualified dumbfuck whose vanity is telling him that he's rich and thus he gets to buy himself a title... Come on, his resume is that he was a legal guy for Facebook? Facebook is to Legal as the Mafia is to Kindly. Might happen, but hardly relevant to the point of the endeavour. Kamala Harris hasn't won over SF. Rocky Delgadillo has too much smell of corruption around him. Alberto Torrico talks about education, but I don't see that as a major function of the AG. Ted Lieu seems fine, but his opposition to early release of prisoners is silly since that's mandated by the feds since our prisons are cruel and unusual from overcrowding.

Pedro Nava seems to me to be closest to the kind of crusading AG that California's been in need of.

Prop 15, public funding of the Secretary of State election: Yes. Sounds worth a shot.
Prop 16, can PG&E's wealth buy it an indulgence: No.
Prop 17, can Mercury Insurance's wealth buy it an indulgence: No.

Lieutenant Governor: Cripes, they all fill me with meh. I think I'll go Eric Korevaar; I'd like to see if it would work to cut all the staff out of the LG office. Gavin Newsom hasn't done a lot in SF and is just out for name recognition; Janice Hahn only talks about who supports her, not what she'd actually do, and she's also just out for name recognition.

Insurance Commissioner: Hector de la Torre. We need a crusader here, and I like his story about how he got jerked around by his health insurance when his baby was on a respirator. Dave Jones, also probably fine, but worse website.

Superior Court Judge, Office #9: Victoria Kolakowski. We need more liberal transgender judges... Like, 1 would be a good start.

State Superintendant of Public Instruction: Larry Aceves. Talks about finding more money in a real-sounding way.

State Board of Equalization, 1st District: ?? I don't know enough about this one to vote.

Member, Board of Education, 1st Trustee Area: Joaquin Rivera. Experienced. Also, his opponent, Lois Corrin, is from Piedmont.

16th Assembly District: I'm writing in Sean Sullivan. Who isn't running, but whatever, I have at least seen him around. Anyone would be preferable to Swanson.

Other unopposed stuff: not voting for anyone running unopposed, except Debra Bowen for Secretary of State, because I still like her for her voting machine stance.

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First lines, 20 songs

Fri, 21 May 2010 03:03:59 GMT

For me, this meme, enduring entertainment. The rules: I put all my music on shuffle, write out the first lines of the first 20 songs that play. You guess them. If the actual title is in the first line, I replace it with "blah blah blah"... NB, the number of blahs does not necessarily correlate to the number of words replaced. Yeah, sorry for song 3 (she says while snickering).

Of course, "first line," I wavered back and forth on whether that was first rhyming couplet or not. So maybe I'll flesh some of these out if they're not obvious. (ETA: added some on many songs)

1. My baby don't care for shows, my baby don't care for clothes
2. Blah blah blah, so why should it be, you and I should get along so awfully
3. Well blah blah blah, no blah blah blah, you can stand me up at the gates of hell
4. It was early morning yesterday, I was up before the dawn
5. Laa laa laaa (Blah blah blah) Well high school, seemed like such a blur; I didn't have much interest in sports or school elections
~~6. I feel a hot wind on my shoulder~~
~~7. This looks familiar, vaguely familiar~~
~~8. I look at all the lonely people~~
~~9. When are you gonna come down, when are you going to learn~~
~~10. Here we stand, blah blah blah hearts broken in two, two, two~~
11. So close, no matter how far
12. Blah blah blah, love can level ranks and therefore, though his lordship's station's mighty
13. I was born in a Dublin street where the loyal drums did beat
~~14. Every night I'm lying in bed, holding you close in my dreams~~
15. High time we made a stand and shook up the views of the common man
~~16. Crack that whip!~~
17. It was down in old Joe's bar room, on the corner by the square
~~18. Look out of any window, any morning, any evening, any day~~
19. Blah blah blah, sing my song, be it right, be it wrong
20. I lived in a place called Okfuskee, and I had a little girl in a holler tree

ETA: IDed songs get struckthrough. Well done serene and elf!

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Drugs! Legal ones!

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 04:03:01 GMT

Head cold today. I broke down and gave DayQuil another shot and it doesn't enormously suck, but man. Well... It might not be a fair shot, since this is the same DayQuil that I tried more than 7 years ago (and decided at the time, "meh"). See, I checked the expiration date, which is in 2003. And then I thought about it for a bit, and decided that having real Pseudoephrine was better than having whatever damn decongestant the War on Drugs has foisted on us the last few years... And so far, no ill effects, so whee!

BTW: Better Living Through Chemistry: what over the counter drugs work for you? I had picked up from my family a protestant "walk it off" attitude of righteous self denial, and all I ever took up until college was Advil (Tylenol didn't do crap for me, aspirin wasn't as good as Advil). Then at some point with a head cold I tried NyQuil, thanks to Denis Leary, and it was a revelation: it sucked the snot out of my nose! I could breathe! And sleep!

Of course, that was before it got nerfed by the DEA. Anyway.

So what else have I been missing all these years? What seemingly obvious drugs really help you out?

Feel free to comment anonymously if you like. Like, gas... Is it something I experience? Who knows? When I discuss medical stuff with people, the metaphors I've come up with in my head to describe what I'm feeling make other people look at me funny. Like, for a long time I tried to describe "eyeaches", where it felt like someone had fit a platic knife through my eye socket into my brain, and was leaning on my eye a bit... Plastic, specifically, because there wasn't the bright conductivity a metal knife would bring. And then eventually I learned to just say "migrane". So when it feels like the connective tissue in my intestines are twisted around wrong, is that cramps? Gas? Who the hell knows? What I'm saying is that even fixes for potentially embarassing medical stuff would be useful to know about.

And, er, I originally stated this post to mention that I will be joining with Anneke to have a garage sale at her place in Albany this Saturday, 9-2. In case you want to come by? Or maybe join in and sell your own stuff?

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Dreamwidth, pretty easy to post both there and here

Sun, 18 Apr 2010 06:20:40 GMT

Livejournal is back at their link-redirecting ways, apparently, and I see one comment that the fix from 6 weeks ago still works. Also, I have Dreamwidth invites! Come on over, the water's much more sane. :)

AH65YR75V7Q9KAAABBEW
KS28Q2VAPX894AAADP7N
D4FKBA73ZWWFYAAADP7P
PWKCFAMY3PZRTAAADP7Q
VHQJBBBP96RK6AAADP7R
7C7KW28CSCYGGAAADWKU
33DKJKQJJZZPYAAAEB22
Z7RMJC6FD2S2CAAAEB23
QTZCQQG8TBW4SAAAEB24
7PWEABFXZZXW2AAAEB25

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Mostly a gratuitous meme post thx windrose

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 06:57:16 GMT

Look like the innocent flower, but be the zdashamber under't.

Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from?

Now that just tickles me. Damn right!

Though my obvious delight in this is a setback in my campaign to convince vito_excalibur that I am not unswervingly devious.

And to further update, I'm in Colorado until evening tomorrow to see my sister, and I really got buried by stuff since Friday but I'm working on ACUS emails, and my dear hope is that when I come back to Oakland I will no longer have to ask, "Is that reappearing mystery puddle on the floor of my bathroom flavored with sewage?"

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Bake sale for someone's life

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:07:49 GMT

Look, I don't know, this whole thing where people are about to run out of health care and die, and there is an auction to help them, it leaves me so pissed off and sad. The latest, denelian, has health care through college, and is still out $300/mo for meds; and because of the pain and inability to sit or stand for more than a half-hour or so, she hasn't been able to finish her degree quick enough and so she's going to lose her scholarship and health care and be unable to pay for meds. She can get a 3-month extension on the health care for $600, if she can get that money (plus a month of meds money) by Friday. And after that? I guess the hope is that the SSDI will come through for her despite having turned her down, aforementioned "turning a person down several times" I believe being the way of the SSDI. I mean seriously has anyone ever needed SSDI and just gotten it. I have not heard of such a thing. And unlike every other government program where you get automatically turned down for the first few attempts and crash on the couch of the creepy guy you don't like, or feed your kids out of dumpsters, or go live in a nursing home and pay so very much more, when you get turned down for SSDI you run out of money and die. So, yeah.

Anyway, I saw denelian around during racefail and have a good impression of her... And there are crocheted ponies and nice wool yarn and other interesting things at the auction community for her. save_liz Might want to check it out.

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Quick note on rooming at ACUS

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 17:12:31 GMT

I'm curious if there's some potential roommates at ACUS, for Thurs-Mon, floating around... I have a line in on a group of 5 that was willing to fit in one room, but with 6 would mitose into two, and so it seems worthwhile to see if I can spare them that. I have a pretty small stuff footprint and I don't snore and I find the couch a comfy sleeping place.

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Gaming news update

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 22:23:55 GMT

An email just went out that ACUS game submissions were due at the end of the week and my thoughts were, "Wait, what, really? You're high." Seems a bit soon after registration opened at all, eh? But oy, I suppose I should put some serious thought into that, since I'm quite likely going.

What do you guys want? Something Firefly? I have an idea that I'd like to run an incredibly depressing game about being part of the failed army of Chaos during the occupation of Thelbane, probably using "Don't Rest Your Head" which already has the axises of Honor vs Fatigue... After ACNW I decided that I should do more "build characters at the start of the slot" games, so maybe another go at the Pit of Vipers auction? With the Volatile uppity steampunk Rebma setting? Eh.

I'm open to broad suggestions a la "I would like to play more two-fisted stuff! I would like stuff with the Elders as antagonists!"

In other gaming/Amber news, Fred Hicks still wants the license to make the RPG. I'm ambivalent. Would it be better to have a well-marketed, potentially inelegant, diced, version of Amber that was a complete break from everything that has happened for the past 20 years? Or would the current wheezing critical illness of the entire sub-subculture be better?

In personal Amber/gaming news, Mike's campaign of early iron-age Amber continues; I'm playing a reluctant king of a tiny bit of the land in Am Baer... Thomas isn't clinically depressed, but he is pretty much sad all the time. Not that he doesn't have reason, in that he's quite lonely and some of the only people he is friends with are running a war of naked aggression to set up one of them, Oberon, as king over all the rest of Am Baer.

My campaign of Werewolf Rockstars came to a reasonably satisfying ending last Saturday... I ran out of energy to fight with the damn system and get everything organized at pretty much the same time half the PCs decided that defense of NASA was the hill they would die on. I mean, it's not like there's an Apollo program these days! NASA could legitimately be viewed as a boondoggle... ;)

cyrano's campaign of Deadlands had a first session where the black guy and the Chinese guy ended up half naked, so that was amusing... Poor Gan Zhi-Hua had to burn 1. his hat 2. his jacket and 3. his shirt to keep the swarms of tiny shadowcrabs away from them all after they had been somehow transported deep into a mine. And Deke, tavella's character, lost his shirt, hat, and duster to a successful attempt to save tersa's character from falling into a crevasse.

ETA: (Copied over from my Facebook) Have another $20 to give to Doctors Without Borders's Haiti efforts? Want a crapton of gaming PDFs with some really good stuff thrown in--like the Serenity RPG? Drivethrurpg has a donation bundle available until Jan. 31. They've raised $120K with it so far.

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Saga of the bus trip

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:41:41 GMT

Various people have asked that I write out how it was to take the bus from Albuquerque (hereafter ABQ, because of all the damn names) to Oakland. Some of you may first be interested in Why someone would do such a thing. Answer: I waited to get plane tickets for Thanksgiving until 6-7 weeks before, and the trip was going to be uber expensive. So I flew in a day before, stayed in a Super 8 for $40, and then joined up with my parents and went to my sister's house for the last year she'll be there teaching on the rez in southern New Mexico. It was a fun damn time... We wandered around and hunted rocks, which is one of my family's great joys.

Anyway, to get back to the Bay Area, the choice was either $300 for a plane ticket, or $90 on Greyhound. I needed to leave ABQ Saturday evening to coordinate with my parents, but I didn't really need to get to the Bay Area until Sunday evening, so I decided to give the bus another try.

My one previous experience on Greyhound was in college, when Silent E and I went down to her parents's place in San Diego for Thanksgiving, and then I think drove back, though I've forgotten how a car came into the picture. On that trip, the bus got stuck in an hours-long traffic jam south of San Jose, and so we missed the connecting bus in LA, and so her parents had to get us at 2 or 3 in the morning at a cold empty station. Also, the lights were broken on the bus, so my plan to spend the trip doing Physics homework was scotched and we instead played 20 questions and everyone on the bus probably hated us. That was also the trip where the Pacific nearly killed me for swimming in November, and I think on the way back we tried to take Highway 1 for the scenicness and learned that it's not scenic through LA and is in fact a street with stopsigns and driveways, so around 8 PM when we finally escaped we took tiny back highways through werewolf territory to I-5 and thence finally home.

Anyway, so this time I brought a LED headlamp, which turned out to be a great tool that I used both on the bus (where the lights were completely inadequate for reading) and the plane (where the lights were crazy glareful). I really recommend you get a LED headlamp that can be turned to point at various angles... It's great to have a flashlight when you travel, and headlamps have a small form factor. I also brought two wool shawls, and snacks.

5:10 PM: at station in ABQ. Clean, not too hard to find, pretty simple. Getting on the bus: turns out you should in fact show up at the station 40 minutes early. The bus boarded at 30 minutes, and actually left 10 minutes early. I headed for open seats, and towards the back found some, piled my stuff in the seat next to me and looked coldly at later passengers and retained 2 seats for myself, one of about 7 people on the bus who managed that.

Also got on the bus at that time: a guy who introduced himself to the person he sat with as "Frank" and said he'd been visiting a monastery. He seemed like he might talk, and he was in a seat catty-corner from mine, and I hoped he wouldn't be all chatting all night. He moved to a different seat in the back. There were a few people coughing, but mostly no one looked really sick. Mostly old and middle-aged people on the bus with about 20% in their 30s; mix of black and hispanic with perhaps about 25% white. (There were maybe a few Asians, and later on on the Phoenix to LA bus there were more.)

The driver, Scott, said as we left that we all knew the drill, and asked us to not swear or crack our gum, and aside from that just be respectful of the other passengers. I was one of two lights on in the bus, reading, which never got me carsick as it usually eventually does in a car; the bus was more massive and less jittery, or I'm older. An hour or so in, someone in the back lit a cigarette for a bit; "We can smell you," someone else in the back said to the air. An hour or so after that, someone in the back lit up some pot.

I was sitting next to what looked like some kind of retrofitted onetime door in the side of the bus, and it was very cold, like outside air was leaking in, though there was cold air coming out of the inside air vents, too. One of the vents over my seat had been stopped up by someone jamming a soda can into it; I stopped up the other by poking a tube of rolled paper into it and folding the end over. I was wearing my neon-camo fleece Andes hat and the headlamp and my big old homeless-looking military surplus coat, and wrapped in both wool shawls, and I was still cold. On the other hand, the getup helped bounce people off from sitting next to me. (Seemed like people would mostly sit next to people of their own race, when faced with a sea of dontsitwithme dontsitwithme faces.) I generally stayed put at the smoking/break stops, since I didn't want to get stuff to drink, or to have to lose my seat.

Coming in to Flagstaff I heard someone mention something about snow. I prop myself up and look; oddly enough, there is a 2-3 inches of frozen crystalline water all over everything. Explains some of the cold.

Frank had a lighter that looked like a marshmallow gun in the brief glances I got. Early 30s normal-looking black guy. He would occasionally say things out loud. He came back to the seat catty-corner to me. "Is that a woman or a man," he once asked someone and I felt like it was about me. "I would never suck a woman's dick!" he announced loudly as we were on the way out of Flagstaff. Uncomfortable laughter. Repeated himself a couple times. There are plenty of schitzo people in the Bay Area and some ride the BART, and I was pretty tired, so it struck me as something regrettable to be endured.

Eventually I noticed, as I lay on my back on the seat trying to sleep, that there wasn't a cold draft coming though the bus any more. We were stopped. There were emergency vehicles going by us. It was lit up like Christmas about 350 feet ahead, every flashing light color except green. What with the bus stopped, eventually I headed forward to ask for more heat in the back, and Scott poked the temperature up to like 78... The front of the bus was much warmer than the back.

We waited. "FUCKING BITCH," announced Frank, his voice like it started pointed at me and ended pointed up towards the front. "Fucking orthodox Christian bitch. Not going to make it to LA." I wasn't looking. Everyone in the back of the bus had that notlooking feeling. We are teflon. We're all just trying to sleep here. "FUCKING BITCH."

After an hour or so, 1-2 in the morning, the driver comes on and lets us know that there's an accident ahead, involving a DPS officer, with semi jackknifed across the highway and a probable fatality. They were saying the highway was going to be closed for 8-10 hours. We wait some more. The bus moves forward slowly for the first time in awhile. More moving. People in the front looking at the accident. We turn a bit; I can see that there are about 9 cop cars and some tow trucks and both sides of the highway are closed, with crime tape across our side, and the semi is in fact on its side across both lanes, its cab and tail on different angles. The bus heads smoothly over the 30 feet of ground between the two sides of the highway, and we head back to Flagstaff.

I head in to the station there. There's a skinny white guy in the front seat with a chihuahua; he's friendly, telling a girl about how he was an army medic, so when the litter was born and this was the runt and it wasn't breathing, they ran to him and he did mouth-to-mouth on it and got it breathing, and so they gave it to him when it was weaned. It does in fact turn out to be an extremely well-trained dog; I'm with it all the way to LA and it never barks or messes or does anything but endure along with the rest of us. Back to my seat. Wait. Frank says "FUCKING BITCH." I look. "You won't make it to the end. You put the evil eye on me," he says to me, then goes back to facing front. I stop looking. He gets off again. I collect my stuff and move seats, to the front of the bus where there are several women with two seats. I figure when they come back I will sit with one of them. An old black lady offers to let me sit next to her. Frank comes back, doesn't notice, though eventually he announces, "Sorry woman, I'm sorry". But not to me because I'm teflon.

Wander into the station to see if I can charge my iPhone. The chihuahua guys says aside to me, "We're waiting for the cops to come and take that guy off the bus." I wander over to the ticket counter to see if there's a more direct bus that will pass through here to Oakland. I see a cop, and I fade back, because Frank is also in the station and I want to be behind a pillar. Scott talks to the cop, motions towards Frank who seems to not notice; the other cop appears. Frank heads back to the bus. I think he gets his stuff and bolts, but maybe the cops get him; either way, that's the last of that bit.

I'm still determined to sit in the front where it's warm. People come back to the bus; an alternate route has been found (guy at the front counter said I should ask at a more major station). I get bounced by a large hispanic lady (she held out nearly to the end, only getting a seat mate when the whole bus was full). Turns out that one of the single people in the front got off, so I get the seat second from the front on the left for the rest of the trip. Lie down, sorta doze; chihuahua guy who I think is named Mike chats with a hispanic lady my age who is sitting with her mom who doesn't speak English; nice low accompaniment to the dozing; they exchange Facebook info before she leaves in Riverside.

Dawn, and I can see palm trees. We had been on I-40... Maybe we went to LA! No. They have palm trees in Phoenix. We get out for a bus cleaning for 30-40 minutes that turns into an hour or so. The Phoenix bus station has a device charging station.

Back on, still with both seats to myself, some more dozing, to Quartzite where we take on people and I'm to a single seat, but I get to choose seatmate as nice quiet lady. Stuck in traffic in California for a couple hours. iPhone has internet, can check possible bus schedules. Talk with an middle-aged hispanic guy who needs to get to San Jose for his job that starts at 5 in the morning; he will be SOL. Talk with a 35ish black guy who travels Riverside to Kentucky and back by bus for the past 3 years; Frank was the only crazy guy he's seen.

Get to LA at 5, too late for 3:45 bus that would have gotten me to Oakland at midnight. (Original bus would have gotten me to Oakland at 6:30.) Marisa is on her way to a birthday party, Ian is at Disneyland, I'm too tired to remember D, so I just hang for 5 hours at the bus station. The LA station is less 3rd world than last time I was there; pretty decent, really. Get a Ray Charles CD and a hamburger, charge iPhone again. Call work and leave messages that I will not be in in the morning and maybe not all day. The line of bags for the 10 PM express bus to the Bay Area is about 40 long by the time I notice and join it. Black lady makes sure that hispanic guy who moved her bag isn't trying to cut her out of the line. Jackass fashion-dressed Australian white college girls in front of me try her words on, "That my bag," and giggle. I keep mouth shut.

Get on bus, one of two, looking at the line I don't know if two will be enough, even with both packed full. Bus is not a Greyhound; the seats and aisles are narrower, too narrow, and there is so little leg room that my knees hurt and I have no idea how anyone taller than me survived. And when it turns on, I see there are TV screens in the corners... But they wouldn't...

This is where the whole thing gets truly hellish.

They play loud DVDs at us.

We can't escape.

I drag my ear plugs out and wrap my head in a scarf. Still hard to sleep. I can't get info on what busses will be available at 5 AM in Oakland; all-nighters not listed on AC Transit page, transit.511.org breaks on iPhone. DVD (Prince Caspian) ends before we stop in Coalinga at 1 in the morning or so for a half-hour break. Someone doesn't get back on the bus; they look for 6 minutes and then leave him. Perhaps that was enough pacification of the masses on this bus, I think hopefully?

No.

They play Cars at us, at 1:40 in the morning.

Then when it is scratched, or maybe I dozed, they put in Transformers.

So it's nice that the ending wasn't spoiled on Cars because I might want to watch it some day, on a screen that I couldn't block out with my thumb. Though I was surprised for a moment that no one had mentioned to me that Optimus Prime had made a cameo in Cars.

"This is Oakland," I start up, rip out earplugs, unwrap scarf. "The station is closed, so if you don't have a ride, you should go on to San Francisco." OH HELL NO. Get me off this thing. Free! Into cool air! Break 20 into 5s for late-30s hispanic guy, then just give him $2 for bus fare (he only takes $1), then when it seems like busses aren't running he decides to go to SF and take BART and gives the $1 back. Find way around station. 4 college students get into only taxi, don't begrudge them. Look at stop for bus info to help out middle-aged hispanic guy; show 20-some south asian guy map on iPhone of how to get to 19th St BART from here. Walk to stop on San Pablo at Grand which has Nextbus lighted sign; next bus in 42 minutes? Fuck that. Start walking.

Walk by Vicky's house, at she is not awake at 4:30 AM. Walk home (2.2 miles, nice temperature). Bad part of town, but no one awake. See more cars than on trip from ABQ to reservation (like, 7). Cross paths with one early-30s black guy who asks for money for BART. Give him some money.

Get home 5:10 AM. Total trip: 36 hours.

Take long, long shower because I was so stanky. Happy that I washed sheets before I left. Go to bed. Wake up 4 PM, see sun for half an hour.

Taking bus: not super great.

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Ambercon Northwest 2009

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 23:24:25 GMT

I never got around to posting up what games I'll be in, and now as I consider figuring out what clothes to bring, seems like a decent time... Oh, and right now I'm going to pause to put my swimsuit in my bag, and I advise you do the same.

I'm getting in to Portland late evening Tuesday, staying at the Edgefield the whole time. (Anything happening there? Looks like nothing of fantastic interest... Though "The Time Traveller's Wife" looks possibly worth seeing.) Wednesday evening I'll be doing the Korean Restaurant Dinner, and aside from that I'm free, though I have a cousin who lives in Portland and perhaps could meet for lunch. Thursday, again free until the evening reception.

Thursday evening I'll be running (along with Mike S) "Sign of the Unicorn and Zombies", which has a full complement of 9 elder PCs.

Friday morning I'll be running "Get Shao-Ji" which has interesting players who have created interesting characters.

Friday afternoon I'll be playing in "The Hooded Men" by evilmagnus. The guy who wrote the system will be playing in the game... Other games I have played in with the author of the game, a short list: Creeks and Crawdads. And the C&C game kicked ass, so, good sign. Other fucking awesome players in the game also. I had also been tempted by Jules's other game, a "you are a spark escaping Durance Vile" Heterodyne-verse game, and now I am tempted to do such a character in this... "They call me mad, a witch! I ask you, is it madness to direct lightning to try to enrich the soil we work with?! ...And I have no idea what happened to those cows."

Friday evening is "Crimson Dawn II" by muri_san. I'm playing another outlaw here; sort of a Huck Finn analogue. Ish.

Saturday day is "Dreadwood" by Drew W. Pregen characters, all I know is that I'm going to be a Chinese railway worker/handywoman... Perhaps she's in drag as a guy?

Saturday evening is "Aurellis" by Tim H, in which our heroine, Jade Fang, applied feng shui practicioner/mao shan/lawyer, will once more make reasonable suggestions and try not to get killed.

Sunday day is "The Illusion of Time" by Ian G; set far in the future of Amber, and who knows what it will be about? Pariil is a synaesthetic Logrus master of dark skin and jordan-almond-colored dreads.

Monday afternoon I fly out.

I'm looking forward to seeing all of you guys.

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Urban gleaning opportunity identification

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 16:52:21 GMT

Seriously, dumpster diving is a lot of fun. You get to apply all sorts of body skills that don't come in handy all that often, there's the thrill of the hunt, the chance of doing good work and getting filthy (come on, you miss that in today's world, right?), the recycling, the imagining other people's lives...

I mentioned this on my Facebook page, but yesterday on the way home from work I passed a choice dumpster... Biking is really good for urban gleaning opportunity identification. You can tell good dumpsters because they have furniture poking out of them that isn't too broken. Sure enough, this one was full of the kind of stuff that had been sitting in a dusty warehouse for 20 years, but was otherwise completely fine. Something looked like a rolling metal cart, there was an obvious working folding table (albeit battered, but what, you're going to use your folding table without a tablecloth? Pssh no)...

I came back with the car, because hey, folding table! Can support things for a garage sale, could be supplementary workbench, otherwise out of the way! It was vertical with large boards loosely piled around it.

This is the fun part: you climb up, perch, and assess where you can stand to get an angle on the thing you want to rescue. Obviously there's the danger of standing on something that will shift or break, or slipping onto broken glass, or getting crushed. Exercise your assessment skills! And then you're one person fighting a 30-pound 6' behemoth out of a crowded 4' hole with no place to stand... Edging it around, wiggling it, shifting things to ease up on the pressure on it, using your legs to hike it up a bit, forecasting vectors...

And every thing you move, you see more stuff that might be interesting. I mean, who the hell throws away perfectly good clothes? I've seen it before, and I still don't really get it. That's what the Goodwill is for! I mean, shoes, with laces? Come on, can't you find a bum? I know they suffer from shoelace theft.

Anyway, success! I get the table out. And after all that time, I'm like, Eh, this table is dusty and heavy and too big for my car. If I still had the Volvo... But I suppose it's good to resist large furniture. And the hunt was entertaining enough. Upper body stuff and mental space assessment stuff, seriously, yay, made my day.

I've gotten some good things out of trash. High-class-looking multiple bits of wood patio lounge chairs... A multi-level pillar lamp... A slab of marble... Oh! Let me tell you this hilarious story I got from my parents. You're probably not surprised that dumpster diving is genetic/cultural: I got it from them. So, one Sunday I'm chatting with them, and Mom is talking about how she left for work in the morning and drove past an ironwork arched grape arbor sitting out with someone's trash, and marked it in her mind. But when she came home, it was gone! And she went to Dad and was all, "Man, it's too bad, there was this great grape arbor up the street, but I missed it..." And Dad is like, "When I left the house after you, I saw it too, and stopped and picked it up!" Hee! It's like the Gift of the Dumpster Diving Magi!

And a couple moves back, I got rid of absolutely everything I didn't want within half an hour by putting it out on the corner with a free sign. I mean, random stuff, like 3" thick cotton batting! And I once pulled a partially piranhized bike out of a trash can, took the bottle holder, and then left the bike out with a post on the free section of Craigslist, and it too was gone in hours.

So, once I was done rescuing 5 mil acetate sheets and examining everything else in the dumpster, I went back and washed up and posted it on Craigslist. And at least one other person was happy and got a free table.

I'm not saying that you need to take part in this level of the economy. It's just always weird to me what gets thrown away.

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Know anything about Chinese names?

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 07:09:05 GMT

I'm creating a Deadlands character who is a guy whose family was associated with a Taoist temple in Guangzhou (Canton), who came to America during the Second Opium War. This has provided me with endless interesting things to research, some of which have already paid off: for instance, our lab is getting a guy from Fujian province whose accent is apparently so bad it's nearly incomprehensible. I was able to flaunt some knowledge I'd picked up about how the hilly geography and multiple waves of immigration into Fujian made it a province where the saying is "Go five miles, a new culture; go ten miles, a new language". I don't know if that's part of the issue of the coming postdoc, but it will be interesting to perhaps learn...

Anyway. I'd like to come up with a harmonious Chinese name, and I'm curious if anyone has appropriate knowledge. For a family name, I'm thinking Yan, since it's one of the few that seems neither cliche (like Chang or Wong) nor liable to run into idiot cowboy punsters (like Chou or Wong). Does Yan fit for a Cantonese guy? (In searching, I find that "Guangzhou is the mandarin pronounciation for kwongchow." Huh! I hadn't thought that they wouldn't use the local pronunciation.)

Personal name is harder. My understanding is that the aesthetic in China is to come up with a name that means something good, and which is unlike everyone else's name. In English, I'm figuring on calling him China Jack. But that could easily be something someone stuck on him because they couldn't pronounce his Chinese name... Or perhaps it was something vaguely like his Chinese name. I like the sounds ng, j-, and ts-, in general... Jixu? There is at least one Chinese guy with that name, but I can't find what it means. Is the "xu" the same xu as in Lin Zexu, the opium-destroying badass bureaucrat who I figure Jack's family idolized? Ah Lung is cliche, but I still like it, but I hear both that it means "big dragon" and that the Ah is something added to names to make diminutives. Is "ah" = "big" a nickname thing like "Big Tony"?

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Looming Rose Festival trip

Sun, 31 May 2009 08:38:09 GMT

Oh my friends in Portland: I will be up there from Tuesday evening until veeery early Monday morning (the 8th). Most of it will be cruising around with my family and hanging out at the Edgefield, but from Saturday evening until aforementioned very early Monday I will be at liberty and I would love to see you. If someone happens to have crash space, that would also be fine, but is not required... This time I will have a car, and I can go anywhere! Muahaaha!

To my friends from TV night: Er. I am sorry that I did not realize that this was coming up so soon. If you want to finish Scrubs and watch Leverage without me, that is ok. I can pick up the Leverage, here or there, somehow. I haf my vays.

To all friends not covered by above pronouncements (and those covered who would like another): Yay you are all great thanks!

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1 hour left to register to vote

Mon, 04 May 2009 23:03:21 GMT

Californians: today is the last day to register to vote for the special election to be held May 19th re: the budget. And the Alameda County Registrar of Voters, at least, isn't planning to stay open late, so probably all over the state, if you moved, or if you suddenly want to be civic, you probably have one hour to physically get to your county's Registrar of Voters office to fill out a form. Godspeed!

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A baby that's just like LJ - only better

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 22:46:12 GMT

For those following this on Dreamwidth:

This entry marks the border between "real" Dreamwidth entries and imported posts.

(fancypants html stolen from elf who also has a good basics-of-Dreamwidth post here)

Perhaps you'd vaguely heard about Dreamwidth? Here's the deal: it's an updated version of the LJ code, run by people who worked with LJ and are now starting this new thing to do it better. I'm planning to switch to DW because

1. LJ seems like its survival is iffy. Sure, it's huge in Russia, but in the US they whacked a chunk of their staff (remember the "back up your journal" thing a few months ago?). LJ is probably going to be a moneysuck what with ad revenue dropping in the depression, and the way it never really made money anyway. Maybe it will survive because it's just a tiny appendix to the main deal over in Russia, but I wouldn't keep a foreign annoying moneysuck going if I were them.

2. I can get in on the ground floor at DW. :)

Also, Dreamwidth seems like it will generally be a better place. The people who run it (until they burn out) are accessible. The architecture makes more sense: you can let people read your protected entries without in return having to read all their stuff, which would really help me in the cases of a bunch of people I like who post too much for me. Anyone can make a feed.

I got an invite by the suggested method of validating an email address using my open id (open id = you can sign on with your LJ info) and winning the random drawing of people who had done that. That method may be closed now, since on Thursday they're going to actually open, and let people buy accounts (either $200 permanent accounts or $3 for a month), and people with accounts will then have invites to hand out so other people can get free accounts. So if you need an invite Thursday/Friday I may well have them.

Immediately I signed on, I set up a feed for $*@#!@*& Three Panel Soul, a brilliant comic that updates incredibly irregularly. Now I won't have to go there! It will come to me oh yesss

Importing my LJ's entries to DW was super simple and quick. That whole "back up your journal" thing... Er, I couldn't be arsed at the time, and now I'm quite pleased that everything is in two different places. Redundancy! Parallelism!

This is my plan: to post over at Dreamwidth, which will crosspost everything to LJ so you can still find me. If you'd like to comment either here or there, it should get through to me (in different color-coded emails because that's how my webmail works!).

The downsides of Dreamwidth: 1. All of the styles they currently offer are ugly and mostly not very readable. I hear it will be very easy to skin them, so I'm looking forward to that. 2. It's all .org addresses, which I'll probably start remembering soon enough, but eh.

So, yay.

In other news, I finally signed up last night for the Southwest Airlines frequent flyer program, Rapid Rewards. I was going to see if the rental car prices they offered were in fact cheaper. I was diverted from this goal, however, by the link "Get credit for past flights." No shit? I thought, and plugged in a past flight. And got credit. OOOOOOOoooo, I thought, and plugged in all of the flights I took on Southwest in the last two years (I save the notifications in a folder in my email so I can find them before a flight, and don't delete them just in case), and got a free flight out of it. OMG YAY. I can't believe how much better Southwest is than every other airline. I mean, that's just decent. Woo!

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