Memory Day...

I'm on the phone with Mom on Saturday, and she tells me that she and her sister just got back from taking care of the graves. For Memorial Day we always make sure they are all clean and the flowers are fresh. My grandfather, two uncles they never met, a cousin, and my aunt's first husband. My aunt handles things monthly for them and all the rest of the family there. It's kind of a drive for her, but there's no one closer now. My ex and I took care of it with the kids after Gramma died because we lived there in town. Now that I'm Outside, they both come in and do it together. Probably better anyways. Sometimes they don't talk so much anymore and this makes them take the time and do it. They go have coffee and hash over all the latest gossip and their old memories of people and places. This time it was a little heavier on the current news, I'm afraid. My aunt's cancer has come back and they had to talk about that.

There were ceremonies at the local cemetary today, and a full watch is kept all day and night. We went and watched the changing of the guard and walked among the graves, but it's different when you don't know any of the people that went by those names. The kids were quiet. We had brought flowers to leave at the bank of flagpoles in the center. A lot of people sort of took them to stand for the recent fallen. Most of the ones from around here are up at the veterans cemetary out in Orting where all the big doings are.

Back home, I am both sunburnt and windblown from our first trip to the pool for the summer. Seattle still hasn't decided which season it is yet, so it's playing highlights of both by turns. Dinner is cooking, and the girls are off raising Cain with their friends and the guys are playing video games. This is the strangest sort of crux between the past and the present and the future.

I'm here in the kitchen beating on my laptop's keys and basting the chicken in the oven, but my mind keeps going back and sitting on my grandfather's lap and playing with his watch and asking where he got the scar next to it while he drank a beer and talked to Jack Wilson about their next hunting trip. I remember my Gramma talking about how Gramma Emma would never again sew anything yellow after she sewed those two stars on their service flag. It's dim, though. Except for those few glimpses a five-year old keeps with them, most of these people are grainy black and white pictures and stories told over coffee cups.

My brain's over in the Atlantic, too. My brother-in-law called yesterday and talked to one of the boys for a while. He told my son he might be Jewish-by-marriage here soon. That was news for me; I knew he had been dating her but I hadn't heard he was thinking that direction. It's good he's thinking beyond all this. But I still worry. I don't have a widow's walk on this apartment, but if I did I would be out there with my lantern.

At least I have the stories. And my aunt has those grainy pictures. And my kids have heard how Grandpa Harold's unit had more casualties from frostbite than from fire (they were stationed in the Aleutians) and then in the Interior, and the specific beaches in Normandy where two headstrong Minnesota boys who ran away from home together to sign up died. They know how to properly salute a flag, and why we go and sweep off headstones and arrange those vases.

That is what this day is for me. To spend some time and at least once a year sit back a little, think, and remember. To remember what we had, what was done, what we've lost in the doing. To make sure that the next generation knows those things, too, so they don't have to make those same mistakes again to learn those same bitter truths. And this year, to think a bit about the stakes we're playing for in the things we're doing now. And to pray to anything that will listen that we don't have a specific grave of our own to decorate next year.

Things seem to change as they grow, but not really...

That blindingly huge grin you all know so well is still there, but the meaning changes.

• A three month old baby usually needs to be changed.


• A six month old baby may need to be changed or have it's mouth checked for foriegn objects it picked up off the floor and ate.


• A three-year old just flushed something interesting down the toilet, or ate a bug.


• A six year old just brought a "new pet" into your house, or made his little brother eat the bug.


• A nine year old either lit something on fire or painted his little brother green.


• A thirteen year old just got told that Tommy Johanson really really likes her by someone who promised not to tell, or just found that compact of really tacky eyeshadow you "lost" for her two weeks ago.


• A seventeen year old just got told "Yes" by Tommy's older sister, or he narrowly avoided a traffic accident on the way home with a "cool" maneuver.

In any case, don't bother to wait for the stench, the upchuck, the water in the hall, the scuttling noise behind the couch, or the midnight phone calls. Take appropriate steps.

If you hear a sentence that starts with "Hey, do you know what happens if you..." prepare yourself. About half the time it means that whatever it is has already been tried, and they're trying to find a way to break the news about the damage caused to you without getting in trouble.

Any exclaimation of "COOOLLLLL!" you hear coming out of the bathroom, the kitchen, or the back yard merits immediate investigation. As they get older, check the garage as well.

Make sure to check the "Guest" login of the household computers every so often. Kindegardeners often try out every rude word they've heard to see if you can catch them. And high schoolers, welllllll, you know what to watch for.

Everything old really is new again. You can tell this because all your clothes have magically gravitated to their closet instead of yours. And they're not being used for tying into forts anymore or blotting up messes they don't want you to find out about anymore.

If the package on the liquid eyeliner says that it's "non-irritating", that means they're gonna try to paint stripes on their cornea with it at least once. Oh, and just as an FYI, in one case it was actually right and it didn't sting at all but the stripes didn't stick past the first couple blinks.

Live and learn, I guess. ;)

Photoblogging is KEWWWLLLL!

This is fairly wicked cool! Photoblogging may just get my Mom as many pictures as she wants!

Last winter's Snow Days brought out the Calvin and Hobbes in my eldest son.

happiness is....
My doctor has been after me to go out and find something that makes me happy. She doesn't care how big or how small. I've been looking around, and this is all I've come up with so far for today between me and the kids.

...having two kinds of icecream on your cone.
...finding your skateboard tool(especially when it ISN'T where your mom said it was).
...the best tree-fort on the block.
...a yucky day, a good book, a fire in the fireplace, and the kids in school.
...DSL and time to kill.
...the kids are all asleep.

The Porcelain Police Lineup...

The girls re-arranged their room this weekend so they would have the proper platform for primping all week for Friday's dance. They are so proud of themselves. I haven't had the heart to tell them that their arrangement of a very nice poster of horizonal abstract flowers with really long stems combined with all their dolls ranged in front of it looks remarkably like the Porcelain Police Lineup. They like those fashion dolls, not the baby dolls, so it's kind of like Marshall Dillon shook down Miss Kitty's place in there. The giant stuffed Minnie Mouse and the plastic shark over in the corner do add an interesting touch. The rest of the week is going to be fairy dust, frills, and frantic hair bending. Sigh.

My eldest got through his first week of performances of his school musical and now we get a breather until Wednesday. Last week was insane - they were at school until after 11 every night last week, and they have to be there by 7:15. That's a.m. And after three days of this, VERY VERY a.m. I am upset at the director - she was looking to get some of the props at 11pm the night before opening. Apparently she thinks "plan" is one of those four-letter words we aren't supposed to use. I'm careful not to say anything, though. He handled this, plus all his other responsibilities and his usual social round. He figured out where to cut out the fun because he had to do the work. Welcome to real life, when you have to take time out of things you want to do in order to accomplish stuff you have to do. Everything got done, but about all he got to do was sleep. By Saturday he was frazzled but he felt good about it. I'm proud of him. He's growing up so fast, and not just in a vertical direction.

My younger son is still in a holding pattern. They think they can do what they call a deferred judgement, which is a process very similar to the diversion process they use for midemeanors. If the judge agrees and he jumps through all their hoops, it will be removed from his record completely. Until then, he gets a lot of stern supervision. It's his best chance for coming out of this well. For some reason the prosecutor's office came out loaded for bear on this, and were trying to convict him of everything down to mopery and dopery in the waterways. Personality-wise, we had a bit of fun when we first got back from court but things are stabilizing. The reality of what is going on is sinking in, and it makes it hard for him to keep going. I can understand that, even when I want to smack him silly. I can't give in to it, though, or he will have no chance at all of coming through this. I have to hold the line so he holds it. There are days I get him to bed and I just sit on the couch and weep, though.

As for me, well, don't ask. Then I won't tell. ;)

The View from the Yellow Line...

I live between the white lines of polemic that bind the edges of the road. Though it can be hard to see from the edges, there is a nice yellow line to help point the way. Here are a few of the survey points that keep mine straight.

• The foundation that all my thought stands upon is REALITY. What is, is. There is no amount of wishing or belief that will change that which is plainly there, and there is no amount of dreaming that will keep you from the consequences of not dealing with it in real terms. Open up your eyes and look around you.


• I have faith. That faith is expressed with actions. There is no amount of praying that will feed that homeless man, or get dinner on the table for my kids. Get out there and do. But be careful. Blind faith is as much a menace as no faith. Countless atrocities have been committed based on belief, because there is no limit to what people can believe. Use your brains as well as your heart.


• Responsibility and consequences. I am responsible for my life. I will take the consequences of my decisions, both good and ill. I believe that everyone should do the same. This is freedom distilled to it's essence, and the only kind worth fighting for. Anything else is banner-wrapped slavery with a good PR plan.


• Have a simple, consistent, practical moral framework. You don't need to haul around a manual to know your point of view. You make choices and form opinions from a specific set of beliefs that don't change at the drop of a hat. Be sure there is enough room in there to live and get by.
  
• Be tolerant of other's viewpoints. It doesn't matter what your views are, or what other people's views are. You just need to know that they exist and agree in enough real-world points to allow for safe societal interactions. The fine points can be argued over a beer to your heart's content. That they have a different viewpoint does not excuse them from the real consequences of their actions, though, just as it does not excuse me from mine.


• Take each issue as it comes, on it's own merits. Outside of the simple precepts above, there are no overarching solutions to every problem, and there may be more than one solution to a problem. Question everything. "Why?" should be your watchword, just like a 3 year old.


• Solutions should hold everyone involved accountable for their actions, but no more. For example, if you hit someone's cat with your car, you need to make amends. I don't care that it is black and you had a headlight out, you were responsible. However, that also means the owner who let that black cat out at night has to take some responsibility too. And balancing those two responsibilities lets you come up with a reasonably fair set of consequences that take the real issues into account.


• Look beyond the surface and out to the peripherals to see the whole problem and it's underlying reasons. I'm not saying be a conspiracy theorist, I'm saying that you need to pay attention.

I don't have all the answers. Heck, I'm pretty sure I don't have the right ones, either. But I have enough that I can get through, for now. Beyond that, we'll have to see.

Jim! I'm beginning to think I can cure a rainy day!

I fixed my washing machine today. All by myself. It's been broken for quite some time and I just wasn't able to get things together. Well, I'm quite handy and I figured I was no worse off today if I took it apart to see. I knew what had caused the problem. Somehow, one of the kids managed to run a cardboard box through the full wash cycle, and it had clogged it up to a fare-thee-well.

So, I went online and found a website called Repair Clinic that gave me the layout of the machine so I could find the filter-doo-hickey that was the probable cause of the problem and I just did it (after I cleaned out the mess that always seems to gravitate under there).

The clean up actually took the longest - once I got in there it only took two hose clamps and one screw to get to it. The whole mess was caused by a little wad of cardboard about the size of the end of your thumb. Took that out, put it all back together, and while I still had the thing out in the middle of the floor filled it part way and drained it out. Worked like a charm. Then because I was really paranoid I ran a light load with it out there - no leaks, all was well. So now it's back in the closet with a full load, and we're sitting pretty.

Now I just have about 25 loads of laundry to do. YAAAAYYYYYYY! ;)

CONGRATULATIONS

What a great night. I got my dining room organized finally, I found my Yo-Yo Ma CD I've been missing forever, and I ran into an old friend online and he had some great news.

He has gone and gotten married. Congratuations Yuki and Gordon! May you live as long as you love, and love as long as you live.

The REAL Mom's Cookbook: How to make Kool-aid...

1) The pitcher must be washed. That means you can't get it directly out of the fridge, drink the tail end of whatever was in there, and then turn around and start mixing. This is a very bad idea, especially when the last stuff was green and this stuff was red. It turns an extremely unappetizing brown color and then nobody drinks it. And yes, you must wash the outside as well. Why? Because you just drank out of the top for one thing, for another, because it's entirely possible that the soap from washing the inside just might be on the outside and you should take care of it. You bloody well better have used soap! Plus, it's disgusting and I said so. The lid, too. Nice try.

2) Choose your poison, uhhh, I mean flavor. Only one flavor per pitcher please (see above paragraph). This is not a good area for experimentation, especially with some of these newer "magic twisted freaky" flavors or whatever - you have no idea what so ever what's coming out of that little paper packet.

3) Shake the envelope to put all the powder in one end. Tear open the end you are holding on to, not the end that was out there flapping when you shook it and therefore contains the powder (centrifugal force in action, kids!). Make sure to hold the envelope above the pitcher while opening due to accidents involving inadvertant diagonal tears and incomplete shaking problems. If they're not already there, pour the contents of the envelope into the bottom of the pitcher.

4) Add 1 cup of sugar. Yes, I mean one measuring cup. Not my coffee cup, which is the size of a beer stein. And don't get creative - ladles, spoons, spatulas, etc are not good measuring implements. And whatever you do, DO NOT POUR DIRECTLY OUT OF THE CANNISTER! If you do that you end up with like five pounds of sugar in there and that's too much.

5) Show me the pitcher. And yes, when I say put half of that sugar back I mean it. This is the solution for the mystery of why I have two sugar cannisters - one for regular cooking, and one for the kid's Kool-aid adventures. Come on! You could make rock candy with that.

6) Fill the pitcher up to the handily enscribed line near the top. Above the line is right out - you make water stirred with a color crayon when you do that. Below the line is also right out, except if you then proceed to the line. Otherwise you make fake vampire blood or some sort of strange gelatinous alien ooze (depending on your chosen flavor). Right at the line, gang.

7) Gently but thoroughly stir the contents of the pitcher with a rubber spatula or long-handled wooden spoon. Do 25 laps one way, and 25 the other. That lets you play the swirly-game in the middle there, but doesn't give you enough momentum that it flies out of the pitcher when you do.

8) Don't you dare just start drinking out of the pitcher! Ugh! Get a glass. And unless you're going to consume the entire pitcher, put the lid on it and put it in the fridge when you're done pouring.

Next Time: How to Make Toast

We Have Moved....

The company I work for moved it's offices, and it's been something else. We're a small company of 30 or so employees, but it still felt like an 18th century safari.

You might be able to visualize it this way. Take the ugliest apartment move you've ever imagined (make sure to include two flights of stairs on each end). Then add a full set of caselaw books, a server lab with 50+ boxes and all the dreck to support them, over 100 desktop computers plus all their dreck, and 30+ boxes of accounting files to it.

I can compress two weeks of this experience into one word: AAAARRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

We actually got the server room (and our website) down, moved over here, installed, and then back up in six hours. I was impressed, especially since we didn't have the installs professionally done. We had movers do the actual hauling, but the only things that real techs did on the install was moving the router and the phone system. The rest was done by seven of us, with only two real geeks (I don't count myself in this one - I just beat on keyboards; I don't twiddle around in it's brains unless forced).

It's been an interesting sociological and psychological study, though. It wasn't just a move from one old office park to another. They've joined the big time. We went from old office park sort of trailing off a big company's skirts to full-on Class A office space with all the amenities. I've been in that sort of environment before, but most of my co-workers have not and they are not all that sure what to do with it.

This company is not a dot-commer. It's been around "officially" since 1992, and in another form for sometime before that. It's a small operation, run by a husband and wife as President and CEO, respectively (we all know who's actually in charge, believe me). Five or six of their employees have been with them for more than 14 years. They aren't the go-getter, type-A personalities. They're used to being in their little low-pressure niche. There's a lot of older technology still in daily use, and the people who ride herd on it are quite comfortable there. The last couple years things have just bloomed, though, with several new products just flourishing. I joined the company two years ago, so I've had time to get to know them.

I really like this company, and I actually didn't mind the old space. But it just got too tight. They just couldn't shoe-horn any more into that shell, and now the company has had to go and find a new one. When they looked at the things they needed they realized that it had became important from a customer relations and from an infrastructure standpoint that it be a more robust facility. They did a great job of getting a good deal and I know some people who work in other offices in this building and it gets rave reviews. But the employees here just weren't sure. Most of them have never been involved in a company that has this sort of environment. Watching them go from a warren of tiny dark shared offices and cubes and computers set up in hallways to a space with actual carpet on all the surfaces that need it and with air conditioning and all the amenties has been both funny and fearsome.

There are adjustments being made everywhere. The CEO is exctatic because someone else will clean the bathrooms and have to maintain all the spaces - no more having to buy toilet paper! The President has room for his model airplanes in his office and has gotten some great feedback already from customers about the new space. The guys that were in cubes are happy because the new spaces are much much nicer than the old and laid out really well. Those who had been hunched into those offices are now ensconced in bright new cubicles with sound-blocked walls and are handling that change with varying degrees of success.

You can tell who's done this before. The old hands know when they need to take a conversation elsewhere but they don't whisper in the halls and they know that the sound of breathing doesn't come over the cube walls. It's a sense of proportion - the others are tip-toeing around like they're in a china shop with really small aisles and are afraid to sneeze. The old hands brought headphones with them when they moved in, new ones went out and bought them after the first day. The cube-veterans knew what to take with them and what to take home because it just wouldn't fit so they aren't trying to figure out where to put that life-sized standing Jean-Luc Picard cut-out. And Jean-Luc is far from the silliest thing the others are trying to find a spot for.

They'll figure it out. There are so many bright spots about this new space even some of the most hidebound old bit-wranglers are already starting to find their own good points. It just takes time and some patience with each other.

I just got up and went to the kitchen. On my way back I saw Jean Luc staring sternly at passers-by out the window by the server room door. I think I like him there.

I am such a writing-l00z0 sometimes...

I've been looking in international phone books for names for my character name generator I'm writing. Basically, I want to be able to choose a nationality or genre and a gender and get a list of names to choose from that are valid but random so I don't just borrow some guy's name. This has been interesting in some of these languages because I have no real idea how to tell which gender. On most of these sites I'm lucky to be able to find the Submit button for a search. Arrgghhhhh....

To see a bit of what I mean, take a look at this phonebook from the Netherlands. Just typing the word "telefoon" is fun, though.

Balance (or lack thereof).....

I actually got to go out to lunch with some old friends today. It really brought things into sharp relief, though. It didn’t take long before I realized that I had nothing to talk about but the children. I felt very alien. I finally just stopped talking. All I could say were things the gang doesn’t really care about, other than the fact that they care for me and were glad to see me.

I have two completely different lives. One, sort of internal, is spent with the children, patching up boo-boos and cleaning up, and with the rest of my family and most of my more parasitic, I mean challenging “friends”. The other, external, is spent at work, doing all sorts of very technical things, and also contains all my social life (at least the parts that I want). I don’t know what I should do with the conflicts between them. The children cannot yet be a part of my external life, and I cannot bring that life into step with my internal life and them.

A lot of dreck out there has been written about the conflict between “work” and “family” but at this point, none of it seems to apply, because of the break out of the rest of the facets of my life (most other people apparently hang their social life off of their non-work life, rather than the other way around). To make matters worse, in the situation I am in, if I want to succeed with the one that matters most to me -- the children -- I have to succeed with the other. In order to succeed with that other, I have to take away from the children. I can’t win. And there doesn’t seem to be any room in there at all for me.

Independent/Online Comics Extravaganza....

United Media and their ilk had a stranglehold for a lot of years on the cartoon industry. Unless you could get syndicated, you just flat didn't get the exposure. Now, thanks to our friend the Internet, anyone with a scanner and some artistic pretensions can get their comic out in front of an audience. I personally think this is great for the industry. These guys are an incredible talent-source for both the classic syndicates and the independent comic publishing houses and provide a lot of enjoyment for the casual browser as well. Besides, we'd never get a funny papers big enough to contain them all.

Once you get off the big syndicate sites, these tend to be very very geeky. If you want to have any idea what these guys are talking about, you need some knowledge of general gaming terms, a 'leet speak glossary and anime terms or it's going to be total gibberish. Well, it kinda is anyways.

A great features of these works is that many of them have been around for quite a while. If you are just now getting into the story, you have a treat in store. Some of them have several years of archives available for viewing. Print-wise, there are several of them who do books as well - DorkStorm Press and Image Comics are great sources. Try your local comic's shop or their websites.

PG or PG-13 rated (if Disney can do it...):

Real Life - "It helps if you think of InstallShield as a very long, boring, linear game." I want a t-shirt that says that. This one's been around since 1999 so you have 1175 or so good geek jokes waiting for you.

Full-Frontal Nerdity - No, read the title again. Carefully. Sheesh! ;) Three pen-and-paper D&D geeks, just being themselves. Yes, this is what a session really sounds like. Sad, isn't it?

Nodwick - Another Aaron Williams comic. It's a classic story of a henchman who gets hired by a party, and then gets folded, spindled, mutilated and used as dragonbait, all while carrying Olympian piles of swag. There are also links to some of Aaron's other properties on the site in the "Nods and Ends" section. He also occaisionally breaks into some Star Wars spoofs entitled "Light Side/Dark side". This one brings a smile every time I read it.

The Norm - Just a normal guy, with a daily dose of normal life.

Lethargic Lad - This one's been turning superhero comics on it's ear for 49 issues now, and there are two large paper anthologies available. My favorite character is Blue Green Boy.

Dork Tower - Know someone so geeky they're completely incapacitated by it? Well, then you've got a great feel for what makes this comic great. Oh, and Carson the Muskrat doesn't hurt, either.

Melonpool - An alien geek named Mayberry Melonpool who's hooked on Earth culture crashlands and is stranded on Earth with the crew of his ship. This premise would explain a LOT of the behavior I see around here.

Older Teen-ish (Mom-sense is tingling!):

PvP - Player vs. Player magazine is our setting, and the cast and crew are the usual eclectic collection of freaks and geeks who people these places. Scott Kurtz has been around for a while now, and his art just gets better and better.

Control-Alt-Delete - Three roommates, a grrlgamer neighbor, a computer and an Xbox turned into a robot. I've read this one on and off for quite a while; usually when it's featured somewhere else. I think I work with these guys....

Sluggy Freelance - Gotta love a strip with a demonic robotic vacuum cleaner subdued by the security system of a paranoid bunny-rabbit. With four years of daily archives to catch up on, you're in for a good time.

User Friendly - The staff of an ISP provide the characters for a look long-running look at the toils and tribulations of geekdom. Penguin-friendly and also includes some great customer service stories by real customer service people.

Obligatory House-ape note: I read through all the archives of a new comic they find before I let my gang bookmark it. With no over-arching editor hanging over their heads there can be some more adult concepts addressed. Reading through gives a fairly good indication of the overall themes and is a fairly reliable indicator of the drawing style. Usually they don't just suddenly break into nudity or whatever mid-run.

Manga Extravaganza....

Manga is a graphic art form that is incredibly popular in Japan, and is slowly leeching it's way across the Pacific to here. In Japan, comics aren't just for kids.

There are many types of manga. If it's done as an animated TV show or movie, it's referred to by the more common term "anime". There are a great many titles out there, and it can be confusing trying to figure out which one you might like. Generally, they are categorized by distinguishing between types of content. For example, if the main characters are girls and the story concentrates mostly on girl's issues, it's called "bishoujo". A classic example you may be familiar with is the "Sailor Moon" series. From the guy's side it's called "bishounen", and a familiar example would be "Dragonball Z" (the actual books, not the TV series). If it's from the U.S., it's usually referred to as "Amerimanga", irregardless of topic. There are several places online where you can get some help on anime terms.

Literally anything goes in the pages of these books. There are many manga that are pointed only at children so you don't see stuff that's too interesting, but there are many titles with more adult fare, too. Unless it's aimed directly at kids you can expect to see anything you would see in a rated R film. What we would call an X rated one is actually called by a different name - hentai. Another issue that can be addressed is homosexuality. Since they are categorized by content, this is easy to find or avoid if you wish. If the characters are mostly homosexual males and the story is usually tragic, it's called "yaoi", whereas "shounen ai" merely suggests the issues without blatantly addressing them and may or may not have a happy ending.

A lot of this stuff is available online - particularly the Amerimanga as there really isn't any other good publishing outlet yet (though the independent comic publishing houses are starting to take notice). If you want a selection of some great work all in one place, I recommend WirePop, which collects 18 exclusive webcomics by independent creators under one roof. You can read the current page of each work for free, or if you want to hit their archives you can subscribe. At the bottom of the homepage they have the update schedule for their books, and I usually just click over there once a day to read the new ones. Another great source to dredge around in for something you might like is Keenspace which currently hosts 5,917 different online comics. If you can't find one that interests you in that forest, let me know what you like and we'll find you a particular tree.

If you really must get your hands on the paper, it can get a bit trickier. It's a heck of a lot easier than it used to be, though. Certain titles you can only get through an importer like TokyoPop. Amerimanga is a little easier to get - you can usually order them through the individual websites, or see an independent comic company like Dark Horse or DorkStorm. A great features of the online works is that many of them have been around for quite a while. If you are just now getting into the story, you have a treat in store. Several years of archives are usually available for viewing all at once. You can just click through them and read it all cover to cover.

I have some favorites I usually peruse online. Here's a few:

Older Teen-ish (Mom-sense is tingling!):

Megatokyo - Holy Cow! That's what all that stuff that's killing my budget up on thinkgeek.com comes from! This is a beautifully drawn Amerimanga (sort of bishounen and bishoujo at the same time). All the girls look like Sailor Moon and all the guys look like Ikari Shinji (don't get me started about the robot ninja). Steeped in geekiness, though, so bring along the anime glossary materials linked from above and a 'leet speak glossary. Oh, and all the lines with < and > on either side are supposed to be thought of as being spoken in Japanese. Took me forever to figure that out.

Tsunami Channel - In real life he's a researcher/technician studying the mouse genome which is very cool. But he also draws pretty good bishoujo. Still reading the archives trying to figure out exactly what this is all about.

The Kyrian Chronicles - a very lushly colored totally online bishounen manga with a blend of classic 2d drawing and 3d computer modelling. Each page can be rated and commented on by the users. He's about 30 pages into this one and I'm curious how this is going to go. Also, there is a selection of gorgeous single-shot desktop wallpaper available from this site as well.

Not house-ape friendly (Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!):

Under Power - This is what happens when Mystery Men, George Carlin, The Matrix, The Dunwich Horror, and Everquest get together and have a child and the child takes up cosplay as a hobby. Very strange, very violent, but oozing cool from every pore.

Alpha Shade - This is a straight manga about a war (so far). It's only about 45 pages in so it's hard to get a sense for where it's going. Yes, that's a sentient telepathic kitty, and there are kids in the trenches. Pretty common themes in fantasy manga and anime (see the "Here and Now, Then and There" anime series for another example). The blood took this one out of my kids' hands. The artwork is just beautiful, though.

Target - Shounen ai at it's most impenetrable. This one is a recent find so I have no idea what is going on yet but I will say the linework is just gorgeous. This one flirts around a bit with some sexual themes, which is what got it put on this end of the list.

Saturnalia - dark futuristic story about a cop and his partner in 2999 with a couple interesting detours. The art style has an intriguing angular twist that's a little off the beaten path for manga.

Obligatory House-ape note: I read through all the archives of a new comic they find before I let my gang bookmark it. That gives a fairly good indication of the overall themes and is a fairly reliable indicator of the drawing style. Usually they don't just suddenly break into nudity or whatever mid-run. There are some more adult concepts, and it can be fairly confusing (particularly some of the amerimanga) so be prepared for questions.

Thanks to Nuclear_Cloaca for inspiration up on the Fray, where he made his initial suggestion.

Online Comics/Manga Extravaganzas....
Well, that didn't work out so well. Back to the drawing board on THAT one! Let me try that dance again......

A Weirdness of Geeks....

This world has gotten to be a more complex place recently. My son brought home a new biology textbook from school, and it says that there are now at least 3 kingdoms in the taxonomy of living things. Some people will go as high as seven. After reading that, I got to thinking. There are other things in this world that have become more complex as time goes on and their true place is highlighted. Geeks, for example.

Please understand that this is not about making fun of geeks. Au contraire. Well, maybe a little. The genesis of this study came about from my own particular geekiness. I saw the Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring 14 times in theaters. On one occasion – I believe it was the fifth - I was strongly tempted to correct someone who was singing an obviously originally composed Sindarin love song to his S.O. in line ahead of us while we were waiting to see it down at the Cinerama. The verse wasn’t half bad, but his pronunciation was atrocious to the point that some of the words were intelligible and he was singing it in a key only dogs can hear (think Tiny Tim doing Enya). I didn't say anything but as I stood there with my friends I thought about it, and I realized that I couldn’t tell which of us was worse off - him for singing it, her for obviously being flattered, or me for understanding it and critiquing it. I have always been fascinated by the dynamics of social groups, so I decided to look into the geek condition a little farther.

Geek History
Back in the day, you had one type – the geek. They went by many names (dork, freak, Poindexter, etc), but they were all characterized by non-standard physical appearance, frighteningly good grades, and odd social habits. You simply shunned them in school, and they went their odd way. Immortalized in films like Revenge of the Nerds, War Games, and Lucas, they were a small but very real part of growing up. Now a days, the field has opened up. Being intellectual isn’t nearly the stigma it was once. The distinctions between them and the median population aren’t as sharp and now you get a continuum of geek behavior. It is publicly applied to more situations, and its practitioners are becoming more and more of an economic force. A reassessment of what a geek is and how it applies to our society is necessary.

I live in very rich country for the observation of the native geek in their natural habitat. They are all over the place. And more importantly, this population is in a geographic and cultural place that doesn’t require them to pretend to be normal quite so fiercely. Behaviors you would never see outside of a game shop’s basement in other cities happen on the streets in downtown. This affords a unique opportunity for the study of what precisely makes up a “geek” and to sort and classify them by the various behaviors exhibited.

What is a geek?
First, geeks are people. They do the same things many of us do. They are old and young, all colors, and from all economic strata. The differences between their behavior and that of the median population seems to be in the matter of degree. To make it more complicated, they are such a varied set it can be hard to find similar characteristics. Preliminary work shows these features seem to cross many groups and both genders:

• Hyper-focus: We all pay attention to our favorite TV shows, and can name the characters and what have you. However, if they focus in to the point of being able to tell when they re-painted the walls on the conference room set, that is a dead giveaway. Other markers are knowing the episode number, and knowing the names and functions of individuals involved in the show that are not shown on screen – knowing the name of the set dresser and being able to discuss his work knowledgeably, for example. This applies to whatever they choose as a genre. Medieval geeks can tell a long sword from a broadsword by looking at them, and can date the story of a film by the depiction of the armor.


• Saturation: We all enjoy and identify characters, but a geek will absorb the character into their life. When at a geek event, the ones dressed like characters stand out – pay attention, some of them are as subtle as elf-ears on a person who is otherwise attired fairly normally. They will also take their chosen genre into their daily lives - the lady who wore her Star Fleet uniform for her local Star Trek fan club when serving as a juror at the Whitewater trial is a classic example. Look carefully at anyone who has learned a mythical language (Sindarin & Quenya, Klingon, and Vulcan seem to be popular choices for this). Watch anyone who has learned the music of that culture – singing the poetry of the Galadrim from Lord of the Rings in Sindarin seems to be popular. And don’t get me started about the guys who perform Wagner’s Ring Cycle in Klingon.


• Disregard for social convention: Abbreviation of courtesy rules until they seem rude is a watchword. If you have ever heard the words “optimization of information flow” used as an excuse for overly direct speaking, you know what I am talking about. Level of use of the language can be a factor – using words like “antediluvian” and “tacit” in a conversation may show up. Inappropriate levels of foul language can also be seen, but this can be attributed to other factors and shouldn’t be used by itself. This also shows up in sartorial selection as well. They may also dress wildly out of class, such as wearing a tuxedo to Star Wars at the local multiplex or wearing a t-shirt and jeans to the opera. Ignoring the weather also comes into play – the stories of Peter Jackson wearing shorts and sandals in the snow while filming Lord of the Rings, for example. Hardcore hair (especially facial for guys) can also be an indicator. Often it is a maintenance-free choice rather than something that requires frequent trimming.


• Brainpower: Intelligence another possible connection, but I am still studying it. As a rule, it would require a fair amount of wattage just to exhibit many of the behaviors above. Speaking Sindarin is no joke; Tolkien did his job very well. On the other hand, this might be a function of the population I am studying. In the greater Seattle area intellectual property is king, and the working environments here may provide a selection function towards smarts that is skewing my observations. Also, the prevalence of people in the technical fields and their jargon might be adding to the impression.

How can I find them?
So now you're curious. How do you go about your own observations? The easiest way to get an overview of the group is to go to places that would attract them, like chumming for sharks. There are several ways to go about this:

• Going to movies or entertainment events they like: A “They Might be Giants” concert can be a great start. Movies like Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Spiderman, and Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring all afforded excellent geek-watching. Right now Hellboy is a solid bet. On a surprising note, 3D animated films regardless of topic and first-run Disney flicks are also good hunting grounds - Pixar's newest film "The Incredibles" is coming out soon and the theaters will be half soccer moms with kids and half 30-something geeks. Horror flicks and mindless action flicks can also be good draws – be aware; the population is often heavily infiltrated by more median folks and it can be hard to see your quarry. Go early enough to watch the people who line up hours in advance.


• Conventions: gaming conventions, Star Trek conventions, comic conventions, Renaissance Fairs, you name it - these draw them like flies to honey. The nice thing about these is that they provide you with a pre-sorted group to watch – comic geeks go to comic conventions; Star Trek geeks go to Star Trek conventions. The ones that go to more than one kind of convention can be hard to classify, but they usually show their true colors by showing more enthusiasm for one specific event. A guy may go to the comic convention and enjoy himself, but when the same geek goes to a Star Trek convention dressed as a Klingon High Councilor with his own name and clan history and starts reciting Hamlet in Klingon, well, then you know where his heart is.


• Your local game shop: These provide an easy way to take a look at your local weirdness (a pride of lions, a weirdness of geeks). You will also get to look at the next generation, as the younger set filter into the Dungeons and Dragons section with their Mage Knight figures in hand. Ones that have tables to allow playing with miniatures games are particularly fruitful.


• Supplies: Places that supply their habits are good. Computer stores, electronics stores, video game stores, and used bookstores, for example, can be great places. They too can have a lot of more median people in them, though, so it can take some discernment to see.

I'm still Livin' La Vida Dorka here myself. Never claimed otherwise. I mean, come on. Only a geek would write this. ;)

../

Damn! That didn't work. If I do that at work I get to make a connection to something back at the very beginning - in effect, I get to start over. I'd like to do that.

How to be a REAL villain....

This came from an old email. I have no idea who wrote it. If you know who did, please drop me a line and tell me so I can attribute it properly. -- Thanks

World domination is everyone's dream. It's not a bad
job really. It pays well, there are all sorts of perks
and you can set your own hours. However, every Evil
Villain I've read about in books or seen in movies
invariably gets overthrown and destroyed in the end.
I've noticed that no matter whether they are barbarian
lords, deranged wizards, mad scientists or alien
invaders, they always seem to make the same basic
mistakes every single time. Therefore, I follow these
guidelines while conquering the world:

1. My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear
Plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones.

2. My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl
through.

3. My noble half-brother whose throne I usurped will be
killed, not kept anonymously imprisoned in a forgotten
cell of my dungeon.

4. Shooting is not too good for my enemies.

5. The artifact which is the source of my power will
not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River
of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be
in my safe-deposit box. The same applies to the object
which is my one weakness.

6. I will not gloat over my enemies' predicament before
killing them.

7. When I've captured my adversary and he says, "Look,
before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this
is all about?" I'll say, "No." and shoot him. No, on
second thought I'll shoot him then say "No."

8. After I kidnap the hot girlfriend of the hero, we
will be married immediately in a quiet civil ceremony,
not a lavish spectacle in three weeks' time during
which the final phase of my plan will be carried out.

9. I will not include a self-destruct mechanism unless
absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, it will not
be a large red button labeled "Danger: Do Not Push".
The big red button marked "Do Not Push" will instead
trigger a spray of bullets on anyone stupid enough to
disregard it. Similarly, the ON/OFF switch will not
clearly be labeled as such.

10. I will not interrogate my enemies in the inner
sanctum -- a small hotel well outside my borders will
work just as well.

11. I will be secure in my superiority. Therefore, I
will feel no need to prove it by leaving clues in the
form of riddles or leaving my weaker enemies alive to
show they pose no threat.

12. One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old
child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot
will be corrected before implementation.

13. All slain enemies will be cremated, or at least
have several rounds of ammunition emptied into them,
not left for dead at the bottom of the cliff. The
announcement of their deaths, as well as any
accompanying celebration, will be deferred until after
the aforementioned disposal.

14. The hero is not entitled to a last kiss, a last
cigarette, or any other form of last request.

15. I will never employ any device with a digital
countdown. If I find that such a device is absolutely
unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the counter
reaches 117 and the hero is just putting his plan into
operation.

16. I will never utter the sentence "But before I kill
you, there's just one thing I want to know."

17. When I employ people as advisors, I will
occasionally listen to their advice.

18. I will not have a son. Although his laughably
under-planned attempt to usurp power would easily fail,
it would provide a fatal distraction at a crucial point
in time.

19. I will not have a daughter. She would be as
beautiful as she was evil, but one look at the hero's
rugged countenance and she'd betray her own father.

20. Despite its proven stress-relieving effect, I will
not indulge in maniacal laughter. When so occupied,
it's too easy to miss unexpected developments that a
more attentive individual could adjust to accordingly.

21. I will hire a talented fashion designer to create
original uniforms for my Legions of Terror, as opposed
to some cheap knock-offs that make them look like Nazi
storm troopers, Roman foot soldiers, or savage Mongol
hordes. All were eventually defeated and I want my
troops to have a more positive mind-set.

22. No matter how tempted I am with the prospect of
unlimited power, I will not consume any energy field
bigger than my head.

23. I will keep a special cache of low-tech weapons and
train my troops in their use. That way -- even if the
heroes manage to neutralize my power generator and/or
render the standard-issue energy weapons useless -- my
troops will not be overrun by a handful of savages
armed with spears and rocks.

24. I will maintain a realistic assessment of my
strengths and weaknesses. Even though this takes some
of the fun out of the job, at least I will never utter
the line "No, this cannot be! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!"
(After that, death is usually instantaneous.)

25. No matter how well it would perform, I will never
construct any sort of machinery which is completely
indestructible except for one small and virtually
inaccessible vulnerable spot.

26. No matter how attractive certain members of the
rebellion are, there is probably someone just as
attractive who is not desperate to kill me. Therefore,
I will think twice before ordering a prisoner sent to
my bed chamber.

27. I will never build only one of anything important.
All important systems will have redundant control
panels and power supplies. For the same reason I will
always carry at least two fully loaded weapons at all
times.

28. My pet monster will be kept in a secure cage from
which it cannot escape and into which I could not
accidentally stumble.

29. I will dress in bright and cheery colors, and so
throw my enemies into confusion.

30. All bumbling conjurers, clumsy squires, no-talent
bards, and cowardly thieves in the land will be
preemptively put to death. My foes will surely give up
and abandon their quest if they have no source of comic
relief.

31. All naive, busty tavern wenches in my realm will be
replaced with surly, world-weary waitresses who will
provide no unexpected reinforcement and/or romantic
subplot for the hero or his sidekick.

32. I will not fly into a rage and kill a messenger who
brings me bad news just to illustrate how evil I really
am. Good messengers are hard to come by.

33. I will never employ the use of a major weapon that
takes time to charge up before firing and utterly
destroying the rebel base. Instead I will use weapons
that can do the same thing with a single push of a
button.

34. I will not turn into a snake. It never helps.

35. I will not grow a goatee. In the old days they made
you look diabolic. Now they just make you look like a
disaffected member of Generation X.

36. I will not imprison members of the same party in
the same cell block, let alone the same cell. If they
are important prisoners, I will keep the only key to
the cell door on my person instead of handing out
copies to every bottom-rung guard in the prison.

37. If my trusted lieutenant tells me my Legions of
Terror are losing a battle, I will believe him. After
all, he's my trusted lieutenant.

38. If an enemy I have just killed has a younger
sibling or offspring anywhere, I will find them and
have them killed immediately, instead of waiting for
them to grow up harboring feelings of vengeance towards
me in my old age.

39. If I absolutely must ride into battle, I will
certainly not ride at the forefront of my Legions of
Terror, nor will I seek out my opposite number among
his army.

40. I will be neither chivalrous nor sporting. If I
have an unstoppable super-weapon, I will use it as
early and as often as possible instead of keeping it in
reserve.

41. Once my power is secure, I will destroy all those
pesky time-travel devices.

42. When I capture the hero, I will make sure I also
get his dog, monkey, ferret, or whatever sickeningly
cute little animal capable of untying ropes and
filching keys happens to follow him around.

43. I will maintain a healthy amount of skepticism when
I capture the hot rebel and she claims she is attracted
to my power and good looks and will gladly betray her
companions if I just let him in on my plans.

44. I will only employ bounty hunters who work for
money. Those who work for the pleasure of the hunt tend
to do dumb things like even the odds to give the other
guy a sporting chance.

45. I will make sure I have a clear understanding of
who is responsible for what in my organization. For
example, if my general screws up I will not draw my
weapon, point it at him, say "And here is the price for
failure," then suddenly turn and kill some random
underling.

46. If an advisor says to me "My liege, he is but one
man. What can one man possibly do?", I will reply
"This." and shoot the advisor.

47. If I learn that a callow youth has begun a quest to
destroy me, I will slay him while he is still a callow
youth instead of waiting for him to mature.

48. I will treat any beast which I control through
magic or technology with respect and kindness. Thus if
the control is ever broken, it will not immediately
come after me for revenge.

49. If I learn the whereabouts of the one artifact
which can destroy me, I will not send all my troops out
to seize it. Instead I will send them out to seize
something else and quietly put a Want-Ad in the local
paper.
50. My main computers will have their own special
operating system that will be completely incompatible
with standard IBM and Macintosh Powerbooks.

51. If one of my dungeon guards begins expressing
concern over the conditions in the hot friend of the
hero's cell, I will immediately transfer him to a less
people-oriented position.

52. I will hire a team of board-certified architects
and surveyors to examine my castle and inform me of any
secret passages and abandoned tunnels that I might not
know about.

53. If the hot friends of the hero that I capture says
"I'll never marry you! Never, do you hear me,
NEVER!!!", I will say "Oh well" and kill her.

54. I will not strike a bargain with a demonic being
then attempt to double-cross it simply because I feel
like being contrary.

55. The deformed mutants and odd-ball psychotics will
have their place in my Legions of Terror. However
before I send them out on important covert missions
that require tact and subtlety, I will first see if
there is anyone else equally qualified who would
attract less attention.

56. My Legions of Terror will be trained in basic
marksmanship. Any who cannot learn to hit a man-sized
target at 10 meters will be used for target practice.

57. Before employing any captured artifacts or
machinery, I will carefully read the owner's manual.

58. If it becomes necessary to escape, I will never
stop to pose dramatically and toss off a one-liner.

59. I will never build a sentient computer smarter than
I am.

60. My five-year-old child advisor will also be asked
to decipher any code I am thinking of using. If he
breaks the code in under 30 seconds, it will not be
used. Note: this also applies to passwords.

61. If my advisors ask "Why are you risking everything
on such a mad scheme?", I will not proceed until I have
a response that satisfies them.

62. I will design fortress hallways with no alcoves or
protruding structural supports which intruders could
use for cover in a fire fight.

63. Bulk trash will be disposed of in incinerators, not
compactors. And they will be kept hot, with none of
that nonsense about flames going through accessible
tunnels at predictable intervals.

64. I will see a competent psychiatrist and get cured
of all extremely unusual phobias and bizarre compulsive
habits which could prove to be a disadvantage.

65. If I must have computer systems with publicly
available terminals, the maps they display of my
complex will have a room clearly marked as the Main
Control Room. That room will be the Execution Chamber.
The actual main control room will be marked as Sewage
Overflow Containment.

66. My security keypad will actually be a fingerprint
scanner. Anyone who watches someone press a sequence of
buttons or dusts the pad for fingerprints then
subsequently tries to enter by repeating that sequence
will trigger the alarm system.

67. No matter how many shorts we have in the system, my
guards will be instructed to treat every surveillance
camera malfunction as a full-scale emergency.

68. I will spare someone who saved my life sometime in
the past. This is only reasonable as it encourages
others to do so. However, the offer is good one time
only. If they want me to spare them again, they'd
better save my life again.

69. All midwives will be banned from the realm. All
babies will be delivered at state-approved hospitals.
Orphans will be placed in foster-homes, not abandoned
in the woods to be raised by creatures of the wild.

70. When my guards split up to search for intruders,
they will always travel in groups of at least two. They
will be trained so that if one of them disappears
mysteriously while on patrol, the other will
immediately initiate an alert and call for backup,
instead of quizzically peering around a corner.

71. If I decide to test a lieutenant's loyalty and see
if he/she should be made a trusted lieutenant, I will
have a crack squad of marksmen standing by in case the
answer is no.

72. If all the heroes are standing together around a
strange device and begin to taunt me, I will pull out a
conventional weapon instead of using my unstoppable
super-weapon on them.

73. I will not agree to let the heroes go free if they
win a rigged contest, even though my advisors assure me
it is impossible for them to win.

74. When I create a multimedia presentation of my plan
designed so that my five-year-old advisor can easily
understand the details, I will not label the disk
"Project Overlord" and leave it lying on top of my
desk.

75. I will instruct my Legions of Terror to attack the
hero en masse, instead of standing around waiting while
members break off and attack one or two at a time.

76. If the hero runs up to my roof, I will not run up
after him and struggle with him in an attempt to push
him over the edge. I will also not engage him at the
edge of a cliff. (In the middle of a rope-bridge over a
river of molten lava is not even worth considering.)

77. If I have a fit of temporary insanity and decide to
give the hero the chance to reject a job as my trusted
lieutenant, I will retain enough sanity to wait until
my current trusted lieutenant is out of earshot before
making the offer.

78. I will not tell my Legions of Terror "And he must
be taken alive!" The command will be "And try to take
him alive if it is reasonably practical."

79. If my doomsday device happens to come with a
reverse switch, as soon as it has been employed it will
be melted down and made into limited-edition
commemorative coins.

80. If my weakest troops fail to eliminate a hero, I
will send out my best troops instead of wasting time
with progressively stronger ones as he gets closer and
closer to my fortress.

81. If I am fighting with the hero atop a moving
platform, have disarmed him, and am about to finish him
off and he glances behind me and drops flat, I too will
drop flat instead of quizzically turning around to find
out what he saw.

82. I will not shoot at any of my enemies if they are
standing in front of the crucial support beam to a
heavy, dangerous, unbalanced structure.

83. If I'm eating dinner with the hero, put poison in
his goblet, then have to leave the table for any
reason, I will order new drinks for both of us instead
of trying to decide whether or not to switch with him.

84. I will not have captives of one sex guarded by
members of the opposite sex.

85. I will not use any plan in which the final step is
horribly complicated, e.g. "Align the 12 Stones of
Power on the sacred altar then activate the medallion
at the moment of total eclipse." Instead it will be
more along the lines of "Push the button."

86. I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to
code and properly grounded.

87. My vats of hazardous chemicals will be covered when
not in use. Also, I will not construct walkways above
them.

88. If a group of henchmen fail miserably at a task, I
will not berate them for incompetence then send the
same group out to try the task again.

89. After I capture the hero's super-weapon, I will
not immediately disband my legions and relax my guard
because I believe whoever holds the weapon is
unstoppable. After all, the hero held the weapon and I
took it from him.

90. I will not design my Main Control Room so that
every workstation is facing away from the door.

91. I will not ignore the messenger that stumbles in
exhausted and obviously agitated until my personal
grooming or current entertainment is finished. It might
actually be important.

92. If I ever talk to the hero on the phone, I will not
taunt him. Instead I will say that his dogged
perseverance has given me new insight on the futility
of my evil ways and that if he leaves me alone for a
few months of quiet contemplation I will likely return
to the path of righteousness. (Heroes are incredibly
gullible in this regard.)

93. If I decide to hold a double execution of the hero
and an underling who failed or betrayed me, I will see
to it that the hero is scheduled to go first.

94. When arresting prisoners, my guards will not allow
them to stop and grab a useless trinket of purely
sentimental value.

95. My dungeon will have its own qualified medical
staff complete with bodyguards. That way if a prisoner
becomes sick and his cell-mate tells the guard its an
emergency, the guard will fetch a trauma team instead
of opening up the cell for a look.

96. My door mechanisms will be designed so that
blasting the control panel on the outside seals the
door and blasting the control panel on the inside opens
the door, not vice versa.

97. My dungeon cells will not be furnished with objects
that contain reflective surfaces or anything that can
be unraveled.

98. If an attractive young couple enters my realm, I
will carefully monitor their activities. If I find they
are happy and affectionate, I will ignore them. However
if circumstance have forced them together against their
will and they spend all their time bickering and
criticizing each other except during the intermittent
occasions when they are saving each others' lives at
which point there are hints of sexual tension, I will
immediately order their execution.

99. Any data file of crucial importance will be padded
to 1.45Mb in size.

100. Finally, to keep my subjects permanently locked in
a mindless trance, I will provide each of them with
free unlimited Internet access.

...

I'm having a hard time thinking today. I don't know what to write. I drift in and out of my usual boards as a wisp of lurking mist. I hit reply, but when I try to actually put something down the white box defeats me.

I am a bit beaten up by life today, I think. This morning I had to take my son to court. Hopefully it doesn't do anything but sit there, but if things go as far south as they did we should have some options. But I still feel sick.

Afterwards we went to his doctor's appointment, and they got to wrangle about responsibility and taking it for your actions. That was more than a little intense.

I got home, and just had to go lay down. I just couldn't deal anymore. I still can't. I'm up because it's expected of me and that's it. I wonder if this is what my doctor keeps talking about.

Cool Retro Link...

Did you have a LiteBrite when you were a kid? We had one and my mom hated it because of those )&@$% pegs that were always everywhere. It was just so cool, though!

Well, you can let your kids have the fun, but without the plastic vacuum-fodder. Check out the Online LiteBrite!

Geeky Poetry Slam.....
I've had several good geeky poems sent to me recently, and I've decided to share them with you. Both of them are attributed to anonymous authors (if you know otherwise I'd be glad to properly attribute them - just drop me a line).

Abort, Retry, Ignore
Once upon a midnight dreary, fingers cramped and vision bleary,
System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor,
Longing for the warmth of bed sheets,
Still I sat there, doing spreadsheets:
Having reached the bottom line,
I took a floppy from the drawer.
Typing with a steady hand, I then invoked the SAVE command
But got instead a reprimand: it read "Abort, Retry, Ignore."

Was this some occult illusion? Some maniacal intrusion?
These were choices Solomon himself had never faced before.
Carefully, I weighed my options.
These three seemed to be the top ones.
Clearly, I must now adopt one:
Choose Abort, Retry, Ignore.

With my fingers pale and trembling,
Slowly toward the keyboard bending,
Longing for a happy ending, hoping all would be restored,
Praying for some guarantee
Finally I pressed a key --
But on the screen what did I see?
Again: "Abort, Retry, Ignore."

I tried to catch the chips off-guard --
I pressed again, but twice as hard.
Luck was just not in the cards.
I saw what I had seen before.
Now I typed in desperation
Trying random combinations
Still there came the incantation:
Choose: Abort, Retry, Ignore.

There I sat, distraught, exhausted, by my own machine accosted
Getting up I turned away and paced across the office floor.
And then I saw an awful sight:
A bold and blinding flash of light --
A lightning bolt had cut the night and shook me to my very core. I
saw the screen collapse and die "Oh no -- my database", I cried I
thought I heard a voice reply, "You'll see your data Nevermore."

To this day I do not know
The place to which lost data goes
I bet it goes to heaven where the angels have it stored.
But as for productivity, well
I fear that it goes straight to hell
And that's the tale I have to tell
Your choice: Abort, Retry, Ignore.

Anon



Waka Waka Poem

First, the poem itself (there are many versions, this is just one):

<> ! * ' ' #
^ " ` $ $ -
! * = @ $ _
% * <> ~ # 4
& [ ] . . /
| { , , system halted

In English, this reads:

waka waka bang splat tick tick hash
caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash
bang splat equal at dollar under-score
percent splat waka waka tilda number four
ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash
vertical-bar curly-bracket comma comma crash

How much wood could a Trogdor burninate, if a Trogdor burninated wood?

I'm having a hard time coming up with anything that doesn't come off as snivelling or geeky, so I'm erring on the geeky side today.

The build process at work has gone fins up, so I'm without a testing environment I can trust. Things look pretty good, though. I'll be glad when I can believe that sentance, though.

She's Doing Well

I want to thank those who've wished Gramma well. She had open heart surgery a week ago, and they let her wake up yesterday. She's doing really well. We'll just keep praying it keeps up.

Connection Strings of the Heart.....

My boss and I have been chasing Heisenbugs and other sorts of geeky code foolishness all day. We were getting a bit punchy this afternoon, and we had this great idea that we needed to get Dr. Phil or someone in there who really understood "connections" to figure out this connection string bug. Of course, then it went down hill from there with suggestions about similar topics for Oprah, and an appearance on Jerry Springer for our error-trapping object and the IIS server.

We're tired, and we're geeks. This is as good as it gets, I'm afraid.

She did finally figure it out, and Dr. Phil wasn't necessary after all.

Serenity Prayer for Gramma....

"God, grant me the senility
To forget the people
I never liked anyway,
The good fortune
To run into the ones I do,
And the eyesight to tell the difference. "

Good luck with the surgery, and may you be well soon. There are people out there who still need your sure hand with a shotgun full of rock-salt and your chocolate chip cookies afterward. ;)

A REAL First Lady....

I just don't know what to do with this election.

Maybe what we need for a President is a 65 year old woman who spent a large part of her formative years raising a large brood of kids and running a bar or truck stop.

I want an old battleaxe who can wear heels and fit in like a lady but still peels paint with her language at 50 feet when she feels the need. No drunkards, idiots, or assholes of any gender need apply to her cabinet, and sychophants and hangers-on had better learn a useful skill. She can frog-march an unruly Senator out the door when necessary, and march right back in and put the meeting back on track. She respects expert opinion but has no qualms about calling bullshit on either educated or bureaucratic bloviating.

On the world front, the UN and the rest of those guys had better watch their P's and Q's as her oldest son is in the Army and if they think she's going to put up with their hijinks to put him in harm's way, well, they've got another think coming. "Diplomacy" just got a whole new set of nuances when she names her best friend Francis from down at the DMV as Secretary of State - she's been telling people exactly how to do things they don't want to do in the most blunt way possible for twenty years and only one has ever tried to take a swing at her. And let's just say there's going to be a new skill required of the translators because her level of "rhetoric" is not part of their standard vocabulary.

Domestically, it is a whole new ballgame for all concerned. Her ability to manage the bottom line of her business gives her a unique perspective on the economic front. Her real life experiences dealing with the vagrancies of the social programs her office now oversees will be a wake-up call for the stuffed shirts who've never gone without that had been setting policy.

The "First Gentleman" will be a large guy with a penchant for fishing and worn buffalo-check flannel for when he's not performing his official duties of looking mild yet menacingly supportive behind his wife at social functions. Those traditional "big projects" expected of the President's spouse will be easing load limits to improve interstate commerce, coming up with clear and consistent guidelines for re-introducing corporal punishment in schools, and environmental causes that improve fishing conditions. He will be into saving the whales because any guy who can hook one of those things has his respect and he wants to make sure the next generation gets their chance. His contribution to The China Room will be crocheted covers for all the teapots (done by his Mamma) and a set of diner-grade white stonewear for less formal settings.

The Vice President will be a former jr. high. Vice Principal from the Deep South. Time as a Marine non-com would also be helpful. His abilities in dealing discipline to a never-ending stream of pimpled and attitude-clad youth will hold him in good stead as he leads Congress to a productive session. Or maybe it's just that boat oar with the holes drilled through it he ceremoniously hangs on the wall behind his chair as he is seated at the opening of every working day. He will spend most of his term supporting that amendment to the Department of Education code that the First Gentleman is stumping for him, and stopping all that running in the hallways by the Senate chamber.

I'm only partially joking.

Green Eggs and Politics....

One of my favorite forums is getting soaked with political rhetoric, but I refuse to join in. Why? Because the only thing it seems to do is consume bandwidth with bloat and rhetoric. The ones who started out Republicans are still Republicans, and the Democrats are all still Democrats. Hot air and bad feelings abound on both sides, and there's no point to it, IMHO.

I will not ever Poli-post
I will not even when they're toast
I will not read them when they're mean
I will not read them Nader-green
  I will not post these Poli-threads
  I do not like them, they are dead ends

I will not use my quiet vox
I will not put them in the stocks
I will not look over here or there
I will not post them anywhere
  I will not post these Poli-threads
  I do not like them, they are dead ends

Cosmic gaming coincidence...

goat-rodeo:
Describes a condition of extreme chaos. Have you ever seen a rodeo? Replace the cows with goats. Goats are way faster, smarter and in many cases meaner than cows.

Used:
as an adjective: "This project has been a real goat-rodeo."
or
a noun: "What kind of goat-rodeo are you running here?"

"Goat Rodeo" is my houseape-friendly version of several words that mean the situation is messed up (fubar, Charlie Foxtrot, etc). I use it enough than one day when my son was messing with my cell phone he changed the display name to that.

My original Xbox I bought when they first came out named itself "rodeo". I didn't think anything of this, until I bought my second one and we did our first system link. It's name is "goat". Irony is everywhere.....

PS238

Aaron Williams (of Nodwick fame) has been working on a new comic book for the last year or so but they've never been available online before now. For all of us who know our kids are really special, this comic is definately for us. Think X-men as 1st graders. Some really funny stuff.

At any rate, if you want a taste of the book, you can go to their website and read some specially created background materials. Just look under "School Notes". I think the permission slip says it all...

Real Pie in the Sky...

People are all up in various sorts of arms about the president's plan and all it's finer points. The costs will be truly astronomical, the technologies new and dangerous, and the goal unimaginably distant to the average person. Whatever. Go on and on all you want gang, 'cause we're way ahead of you.

Just as the exploration of the world in the 15th and 16th centuries was started by governments trying to get an edge over each other, so has our conquest of space. But fairly early on those early explorations by governments were eclipsed by the merchants who took on the risks to go to those far off lands. They took to the blazed but unbeaten trails and led the settlers and farmers off into new lands to see what could be made of them. Space travel is shaping up the same way. I truly believe the age of commercial space exploration is just around the corner.

What, you say? Space travel with no political or military axe to grind, no nationalistic visions, and no government or collegiate bureaucracy?! Yep. Just people, willing to spend the time and money and expertise to strap themselves to a not so absurdly expensive machine and see what they can do up there. That's one of the things I love about this country. While others are standing around dithering, someone here will just get up and shuffle off and DO IT!

It can't be done. Nope. Only governments can afford to do it. Not so. There are literally hundreds of companies the world over reaching for the void. Several American companies like XCOR and Scaled Composites, LLC are already testing their craft. XCOR’s White Knight has successfully launched and landed, as has Scaled Composite’s SpaceShipOne. Using private money, these companies are building systems that can develop into completely private commercial ventures into space.

This isn’t just playboys wasting money on really compensatory model rockets. If you think this isn’t serious, you’re wrong. And the FAA agrees with me. After extensive review in a truly labyrinthine process, XCOR was informed back in November that their application for a launch license was sufficiently complete. You can read it in the article but what it means is that they have done their part to prove that this is a feasible program. By the rules of the AST (Administer of Commercial Space Transportation), XCOR is going to get a license to launch within 180 days, or the FAA has to explain why to the powers that be.

Sub orbital flight doesn’t count! Well, I’d ask Alan Shepard about that. His fifteen minutes aboard Freedom 7 were key to the launches that followed. In the case of the two I’ve mentioned, the craft and its launch system have been built, and they’ve been tested in atmosphere. In fact, SpaceShipOne just broke the sound barrier here back in December.

The stakes are fairly high. If they can manage to launch and land, they will win the X Prize. To win they have to design, build, and fly a craft that can achieve sub orbital flight with a crew of three, return to Earth safely and launch the same craft again within two weeks. The 10 million dollar prize is nice, but not the end of the road.

These men and women are convinced that sub orbital flight is in fact commercially viable at the present time. I find it kind of ironic. The same lines that used to be traced on maps to chart the paths of intercontinental ballistic missiles to destroy cities can now be used to move people and goods from one side of the world to the other with another order of magnitude increase in speed. Just as the Pony Express revolutionized the mail system in the Old West, these little rockets are a first step. This is just the beginning, and I can’t wait to see where we go from here.

There are those of us who want to see space not only explored but also lived in. With the crushing disappointments in our national space efforts over the last thirty years, we've stopped waiting on the government or Congress or Oingo-Boingo the Great God of the Congo or whatever is keeping them from getting it together and doing this thing. We are going into space, and we're going to do it ourselves.

So. What flavor pie do you want us to bring back for you?

Never ever think you have got it made....

.....because that is the precise moment when you get completely kicked in the teeth. Looooooooooooooonnnnnnng story.

I've got to get back into working on PostNuke. This thing has more damned opinions on how a website should be run than my pushy Aunt (who I am much smarter than to name here! Sheeesh!). I'm about this close to just writing a frickin' custom module that does exactly what I tell it to rather than this.

A Not Unexpected Guest....

Had our first visit today from the in-home family counselor my younger son's regular counsellor recommended to his case manager as part of his treatment plan. Definately interesting. I can see her being very successful in this line of work. She didn't take any crap, but she still managed to work him around to negotiating some rule changes for the good of both sides without causing a huge fuss. I'm going to be taking lots and lots of notes on these. It reminded me so strongly of having my Gramma over for coffee when she left I went into the bathroom and cried.

She's a lady in her late sixties, and I don't think my kids quite knew what to do with her. We sat around the dining table and sort of got to know each other and hashed out a few smaller issues. I noticed she had four small black dots on her neck and it took me a few minutes but I realized why I recognized them - they were markers for radiation treatment. I asked her if we needed to do any working around her treatment schedule by way of prying, and she looked at me for a second until I gestured to my throat. Her face cleared and she said no, and then she explained that it was metastisized breast cancer but it has been in remission for two years.

I don't have a lot of hope, but I hope she'll help me through the loss of it this time. One of the things she hammered on like a nail on an 80-pound anvil was I could do everything in the world, but if he continued to make those bad choices then I was just going to have to let him face the consequences and hopefully be able to help him turn that to the good. I don't buy into that. At least not yet. He isn't in horrible trouble yet, and he's so much better over the last couple weeks that the treatment seems almost too much.

I have to follow through, though, for his sake. I can't do another year like the last one, and I don't think he can either. We have to nail this down and make sure it's handled for the forseeable future. Time is so short to get him ready to go out into the world and we've got way too much to do without having to struggle through this stuff again.

I've had this running through my head all day and I can't get rid of it. Does anyone know what it belongs to?

Help me if you can I'm going
Back to the House at Pooh Corner by One
You'd be surprised, there's so much to be done
Count all the bees in the hive
Chase all the clouds in the sky
Back to the days of Christopher Robin and Pooh

Pondering-time....

This is the time of year when the tarnished tinsel caught forlornly on the bush outside the window from taking out the tree seems to bring out the urge to take a look at things. To evaluate them. To ponder.

I read the story of the Nativity, and the part that always gets me isn't the "Behold! I bring you tidings of great joy..." part. It's after all that has been said and done and all the various flocks of adoring visitors and what have you have shown up and raised their ruckus and things have quieted down and the baby's asleep and it says, "And Mary pondered these things in her heart." The girl had a lot to think about. Things that have happened. Things that were going to happen. And in the first quiet moments that's what she did. I think we all do that. We get through all the rush of year's ending and at the first chance we get we sit down on the curb in our soul and take a look around a bit.

I've only started the process for this year, so I only have some vague impressions. There are people I wish I'd known better that are gone now. There are people I wish I didn't know. Things I wish I'd done and things I wish I hadn't done. Parts of me aren't all I wish they were. There are moments of happiness that shine out.

I have to be careful. It can all too easily turn into a litany of should-haves and could-haves and would-have-if-onlies that can tie me right into a self-recriminating knot. On the other hand, I don't want to gloss it over so hard I don't get anything real. It's a fine line.

For better or for worse, it's 2004. Can't escape that. I guess most of all today I have that line from an old TV show called "Hill Street Blues" running through my head. When Sargent Esterhaus used to send them all out on their beats at the start of every show, he'd always say the same thing.

"Let's all be careful out there."

And God Bless us, every one...

Last night was the traditional gymkhana. Nothing was calm, but it was pretty bright. Actually, that might be because I think the kids were trying to signal the mothership out in space with the amount of lights they inflicted on that poor little tree. The boys finally started snoring at 3:30 or so. I did actually get everything done and sat down with a cup of tea around 6am or so. The kids showed up at 8am precisely, and entirely too chipper about the whole thing. I got the fire started with our Yule-log from last year, and the semi-controlled frenzy ensued.

Barney is a dinosaur from our refridgerator... The velociraptor-sized bird the boys picked out is in the oven, and will be for the rest of the day. The girls chose asparagus for the veggie so that's all trimmed and ready. I'm making picture slideshow CDs for all the grandmas and picking tinsel out of my hair yet again (I am NEVER buying that stuff again).

The consoles have been rearranged and the kids are running around with several of their friends who came over to compare loot. Lord love her, but my Mom got each of the kids their own digital camera. I'm going to have to get a MUCH bigger hard drive. I never thought I'd ever pine for the days of those loud popping-noise Fisher Price things. The boys are running a head-to-head comparison between Project Gotham 2 and Tokyo Extreme Racing 3 on the big TV by switching between controllers and flipping the inputs back and forth really fast. My living room looks like a power sub-station now with all the cables and blinking lights. The girls are closeted in their bathroom with two of their little buddies tangling their hair and applying substances and giggling (which in the case of one of their friends is so high-pitched it could bend metal).

It is a Happy Holiday.

Nothing says "Hollidays"...

....like a glowing deer with an extension cord in his backside. ;)

This year it seems like there's been an invasion of lighted deer all over the place. Who comes up with these things?

We saw a bunch of them tonight while out getting our tree. I decided that if I ever have a rock band, I'm going to call them "Electric Venison".

HeisenBugs....

This is an abridgement of a bunch of material I found on WardsWiki. I'm adding links to these pages in our testing definitions, both as a light-hearted joke but also as a more precise nomenclature for identifying problems that arise.

Bohr Bug
It's broke, but I know how to fix it.
A BohrBug is just your average, straight-forward bug. Simple like the Bohr model of the atom: A small sphere. You push it, it moves. BohrBugs are reproducible, and hence are easily fixed once discovered. Testers pray for these.

Heisen Bug
A HeisenBug is a bug whose presence is affected by act of observing it.
This is a bug who appears and disappears for what appears to be no reason. Sometimes called "intermittent". They play peekaboo through the lines of code. These are most annoying when coupled with the Programmer Proximity Detector (see below) where not only does the tester affect the bug by hunting it, but once they think they've found it and try to show the programmer, the programmer is faced with a program that seems to function perfectly (unlike the tester).

This has been known to make grown testers cry.

Mandel Bug
A bug that has a single simple cause, but which causes the system to exhibit wildly chaotic and unpredictable behaviour.
In multi-tier applications, particularly web applications this is pretty much a given. Something breaks, and since the whole thing is a house of cards you can get errors in what appears to be competely unrelated code.

Schroedin Bug
A defect that exists neither working nor not working until you look at it, and suddenly it collapses into a state, usually 'that could never have worked'.
This occurs frequently while editing other people's code. Since code is often a reflection of the mental workings of the programmer, you are often faced with code that looks like it could have been scrawled on butcher paper with crayons
for all you know. While working with the code you are likely to introduce values and variables that cause other parts of the code that seem to work fine to cease working because they have related return or attibute data that you were unaware of. Or they were just idiots.

Programmer Proximity Detector
This isn't strictly a bug. It more behaves like a feature that is apparently spontaneously evolving in programs. It allows the program to act differently in the presence of its author.

Typically this involves a user who claims that the program has a bug, but after calling the programmer over to the test facility (usually across the compound, requiring exiting the building and crossing a windswept parking lot in the rain, or taking an elevator 26 stories down to the subbasement), the bug does not manifest - the program works perfectly. The user often serves as the proximity detector. Because the user is carefully showing the programmer how he (is supposed to) use the program, the user may use the program more slowly (thus hiding race condition bugs) or exactly the way the programmer told him to use the program (thus hiding bugs due to slightly different inputs or orders of operations).

They're back....

The gang is back from Snow Camp. They had way too much fun in the snow and now we are cleaning up the damp bags of clothes and they are ALL hitting the shower. The hope is for a quiet and early evening as they have school tomorrow.

As for me, I had a night to myself. I met a friend I had known online for a long time and we went to see Master and Commander (way cool flick - Gamerdad's going to have my review of it). It was nice to get out and talk to someone who speaks the entire English language, who uses consonants in all the words that are supposed to have them, and who thinks "hella" is someplace in Greece. He was a good conversationalist and had some great stories to share. That and it was so good to be able to put a face with a screen name. We're looking at trying to do ROTK next weekend or the weekend after.

It's always a challenge to pick the baggage up again when it's been off. Just as you start to decompress it gets dumped on you again, and you stagger under the load. I have been careful this time to plan ahead for that and to be mindful of the phenomenon so that I don't get frustrated and angry about it.

It's the WHAT of December!?

Okay, who decided to compress the space/time continuum or something and cut at least two weeks out of the month of December this year?!

I'm not ready. Well, I'm never ready, but this year I'm really, really not ready. I wonder how people do this.

It couldn't have happened to a nicer geek....

Wil Wheaton, child-star turned geek and author, has inked a deal with O'Reilly Publishing to carry his currently published book Dancing Barefoot, his in-progress Just a Geek, and a third book not yet announced. They are so amped about Dancing Barefoot they are preparing a printing that will be available before Christmas (see their site here to order).

Last year I found his blog, and was delighted to follow his doings as a grown-up, family man, and nascent geek trying to figure out what to do with his life.

w00t for you, Wil!