A collection of rambling posts about gaming, running, and politics. (and, in 2009, photography.)

Monday, November 13, 2006

Medieval II: Total War

So I've gotten my hands on Medieval II. Let me first say that I picked up Shogun, and I clearly recall telling someone after playing it for a few days that it was easily one of the best computer games I'd ever gotten my hands on. Well six years and three iterations later, its still a rocking awesome game. So if you don't hear from me for awhile, its because I'm having my English Longbowmen direct their fire onto the heads of Godless Scots and the oafish French.

Saturday, November 11, 2006

Lost, lost.

Bleh.



So I caught up on Lost last night. It was the episode in which Freckles (cause I can never remember her name) and Sawyer got it on in the cage. And Jack agree'd to perform surgery on Ben.

I have now jokingly referred to Lost as "As the Island Turns" on a few occasions. And I'm serious. I'm super disappointed. In fact, I might have seen my last episode of Lost (Yes, that's a threat, all of you television producers who are reading this!!!). I liked the tension and mystery of Lost. I like wondering "OMG WHO THE FUCK COULD HAVE PUT A HATCH UNDER THE GROUND?!?!" and such things. I really really enjoyed the wild mystery of Lost, which is still there, in the form of the weird long haired scottish(??) guy who seems to be able to see the future, but I'm so not interested in the focus of the show being the love between characters. The "Which aspects of The Others are true and which are them just misleading us?" is kinda cool, but its just so slow and sometimes silly. Cause here's a gripe I have with some entertainment. They rely on everything happening exactly as they planned.. which they can do when its a script or a book etc. Like when Jack is led through to work on the girl who got shot, and there were some X-Rays on the wall, and they wanted him to notice them, and he did, which was fortunate cause if he hadn't they're whole ruse about the shot girl would have been for naught... rant rant rant. Anyway. Let me insert at the end of my rant: I hate CSI. There. I'm done :)

Friday, November 10, 2006

Gigabit

This is what I did at work today:


file transfer from machine A to machine B, going through a 100meg hub, through a 100 meg fiber link

ftp: 21290704 bytes received in 66.25Seconds 321.37Kbytes/sec.
ftp: 21290704 bytes received in 118.41Seconds 179.81Kbytes/sec.
ftp: 21290704 bytes received in 86.23Seconds 246.89Kbytes/sec.
ftp: 21290704 bytes received in 78.59Seconds 270.89Kbytes/sec.
ftp: 21290704 bytes received in 76.84Seconds 277.06Kbytes/sec.
ftp: 21290704 bytes received in 84.11Seconds 253.13Kbytes/sec.
**************************************************************

file transfer from machine A to machine B, both machines with Gigabit NICs, going through gigabit switches on both ends, with the fiber link upgraded to gigabit.

ftp: 21290704 bytes received in 0.91Seconds 23499.67Kbytes/sec.
ftp: 21290704 bytes received in 0.94Seconds 22697.98Kbytes/sec.
ftp: 21290704 bytes received in 0.89Seconds 23895.29Kbytes/sec.
ftp: 21290704 bytes received in 0.89Seconds 23922.14Kbytes/sec.
ftp: 21290704 bytes received in 1.13Seconds 18925.07Kbytes/sec.

Thursday, November 9, 2006

Slides project

What am I doing?


This

It'll rock if I can finish all of these boxes of slides by Christmas. Instant family gifts!

R'lyeh in the news

"In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming"

see links below:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/11/09/new.island.ap/index.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%27lyeh


PS: You know, the Republicans did warn us about this. Was it Dennis Haster who said "If the democrats win these midterm elections, not only will the terrorists win, but Cthulhu will rise and destroy us!" No.. I'm thinking of Hastur the Unspeakable. Easy mistake. Sorry.

Wednesday, November 8, 2006

Roundup!

In which I post things that other people already posted. Read on!


From
The Democrats have taken the House, and the Senate is pretty close, but looking pretty Democrat. Now, I'm Canadian, so I'm not clear on the details, but here's how I see it - One group of corrupt, shitheaded, money-grubbing politician bastards has had a lot of their power seized by a different bunch of corrupt, shitheaded, money-grubbing politician bastards.

Here's the important bit:

The new bunch of bastard politicians are much less willing to go along with the batshit insane ideas of the civil-liberty-suspending, let's-go-fight-stupid-wars, let's-build-walls-on-our-borders fruitbat that currently holds the Oval Office.

That's good news!

It's not, like, the sweeping return of the constitutional ideas upon which my southern neighbors were founded. That would be a world-shaking event, one that would move me to weep for joy. The Democrat leaders are still, all told, largely a pack of bastards.

But, still, good news.



From
It’s not about victory now. It’s about defeat management. And no one who wants to hold onto power can come out and say it.


From
Q: What do you call a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, a Democratic majority in the Senate and the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld?

A: A start.


From
Well.. okay, its images, but go chex it, its got Rummy-B-Gone and Santorum's crying offspring.


Also, thanks to my friends, as I'm mostly trolling my friends' friends lists for this dirt. =)

fuck yeah!

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/11/08/rumsfeld.ap/index.html

Rumsfeld is gone.

WOOO!

Tuesday, November 7, 2006

This election thing is such bullshit.

I make no secret about my political views. I'm fairly left on alot of issues, but I am not registered as a Democrat.. because I do not want to be. I don't want to go "vote Democrat". See.. we've got two choices really, Republicans and Democrats. Republicans are (usually) the bible-thumping, anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, pro-war, etc etc etc group. Democrats are (usually) the bible-thumping, in-the-middle-on-the-abortion-issue, anti-gay marriage, kinda-undecided-on-this-war-thing, etc etc, group. Firstly, I hate our political system. I dont have any better plans, but that doesnt mean I cant say that it sucks. We have a two party system, oh and the occasional third-guy-in-a-race-who-just-ends-up-taking-votes-away-from-the-guy-who-has-similar-views-and-is-usually-the-democratic -candidate. I am kinda pissed off at the office of the president right now (yes, obviously the man in it, but the office itself as well), because I am not for the stance of the nation being pretty much decided by one guy. We've proven how much of a fiasco that can be.

What I'm really current steamed about is that I don't know who to vote for. Here is the page on dontvote.com for my House of Representatives district. Roger Wicker (R), check, I know who he is. His opposition? Ken Hurt (D). I have no fucking clue who this guy is. Lets check and see what he stands for, what is his take on the issues? Check here. Okay wait, save yourself some time. His handy dandy flash page has an "about ken hurt" link. Guess what you get? Well, okay, go check it out. According to that, he has gotten money for highways, hospitals, ports, small vegetable farmers, and the blind. That's where he stands. So why the fuck do I want to vote for him? Why can't we maybe have an election with cantidates who represent things, or ideas, or opinions? Bleh. The fight in Tennessee between Harold Ford, Jr, and Bob Coker has apparently been a non-stop mud-throwing fest. I've caught a little of it, and it makes me feel like if I wanted to find out what either candidate stood for, I'd need to listen to the other guy's mud-slinging ads. I don't want to vote for the candidate who kills the fewest cute puppies before breakfast.

Also, I live in Mississippi, so I suppose I have to have a certain amount of acceptance for this, but I hate seeing plastered across a potential candidate's web page "BOY I SURE DO LOVE THE BABY JESUS, MAY HE BLESS YOU AND YOUR FAMILY AND LET US WIN THIS ELECTION" or some such (dramatic license taken, but still). For a nation that has a separation of church and state, we sure can't seem to get this puppy out of church.

So, I am terribly sad to say that I am going to go vote this afternoon for the people who's names I do not know, but who have a (D) by their name, because that means that they (probably) didn't kill as many puppies this morning before breakfast. And I'd rather have them in office.. I guess...

Friday, November 3, 2006

A vast gaming desert

That's desert with one "S": the sandy, rocky kind, not the sweet, delicious kind. And that's painting an image of a desert, bereft of both water and any gaming.

I am posting just to complain (for like the thousandth time, I'm sure) about the lack of gaming here.

Memphis has Comics & Collectibles, which is a cool store, that specializes in comics, but is pretty damn kind to RPG gamers. We also have a Hobby Town, that I think has a few D&D books hidden at the bottom of a shelf somewhere, and a Games Workshop place.

Anyway.. I set out to get my hands on For Sale and/or Citadels. Since there are no "Game" stores, aside from C&C, which does not really deal in board games, we tried our local Toys'r'us, since their website lists both games. Krissi was kind enough to spend her lunch break driving out there (since they didn't answer the phone when I called to try to check), and they had......... neither game.

So I've ordered them both from a place called Board & Bits, and you know what, I paid about $30 for them after shipping, which is less than I would have paid, if I had been able to find and buy them at Toys'r'us, which wanted $20 each.

So... I'm both perturbed and pleased.