Some Changes . . .

I've enabled AdSense and Amazon Integration on my blog. Might as well make a little money on this serving Google ads. I will be doing more book / movie / game reviews to take advantage of the links as well as seeing what other ways there are to make some cash here.

I never meta grrl like you . . .

Meta-bloggery while waiting for the movie . . .

1. ISO a decent template for Blogger / Blogspot for this here blog. I thought I found one a bit ago, but is was just fscked. I found a number of blue/white WoW Wrath of the Litch King themes that were both smoking hot and Northrend-ice cool. However, I do NOT want a WoW theme; this blog is about more than WoW. Besides, I like green / yellow (my colors, natch). The "right" theme reminds me of what a former SCOTUS justice once said about pornography: I cannot define porn but I know it when I see it.

I failed my Will save against using an off-color joke: "How's the legal research going on that 1st amendment obscenity case, Mr. Chief Justice . . . ?"

The rest of the joke is left as an exercise for the mind's eye. Bring brain bleach if you need it.

2. I wish I had the mad HTML / graphics skillz to do my own CSS style sheet. I may know someone with those mad-level skillz . . .

3. Playlist: Presented herein is my "Crime" playlist. In the definition I include typical mano-a-man0 violence as well as piracy, roguery, highway robbery, etc. That's why the varous versions of "Whiskey in the Jar" make the list.


Finally, tomorow: I'm supposed to meet Erin somewhere for WoW discussons and planning for the guild. Or something.

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Now playing: The Rolling Stones - Tumbling Dice (Live)

Messing with the template . . .

It's NOT your browser.

Really.

O:M changes coming SOON!

Over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to make some changes to the blog. The subject will be the same: SotR updates, etc and most of the same general stuff I've been posting for the last two years or so (but see below).

Change 1: O:M is going to a new domain soon. www.operationmindfsck.org. Your old links will redirect, so don't panic.

Change 2: I'm looking for a new template. I love the old green one, yes I do. However, we all occasionally crave some change. It's my turn to make some Change happen. This will happen after the domain name switch. O:M.org is not up yet.

Change 3: Some new linkage will appear thereupon. Little things like iPhoto web galleries, iMovie projects, etc to show one and sundry just how awesome iLife'09 really is.

Change 4: I'm going to TRY for a more serious tone. Less haggis-heaving, lolcats and dick jokes. More stream of consciousness life stuff, gadgets, tech, health, gaming, etc. Not to mention using FoxyTunes with songs that I *really* have in iTunes. This does not mean that the haggis-heaving or dick jokes are going to vanish. I'm just not going to post so many.

Change 5: My tag cloud has more oddities than a translation of The DaVinci Code into lolspeak. I'm going to streamline the tag cloud, if Blogger allows.


Update: Domain name change as taken effect

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Listening to: Leslie Fish - The Gods Aren't Crazy
via FoxyTunes

Facebook, like Obama, listens . . .

Facebook suspended its ToS changes after users screamed about it extensive user feedback, pending review.

Impressions of the DNC

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Listening to: Neil Young - Lookin' for a Leader
via FoxyTunes I've been following the Democratic National Convention in Denver via teh innerweb. The national party conventions have been one of two exceptions to my "No teevee" stance / pledge -- the other exception is election night.

Without TV, I get most of my news from the various blogs and from newspaper sites. With little "drama" -- national nominating conventions have been almost drama-free since the 70s (Thank you Chicago 1968!) -- the press have been focusing on such matters as Sen. Clinton's formally releasing her delegates to vote for Sen. Obama, and the diehard Hillary supporters who are holding out inder the PUMA (Party Unity My Ass) banner and the vast congregation of A-list political bloggers covering the convention.

OK, impressions:
1. Senator Ted Kennedy -- a very very sick man with brain cancer and other painful infirmities -- gave a speech, a symbolic "passing of the torch" to a new political generation . . . MY generation. Demographers call us "Generation Jones" -- the late Boomers and early post-Boom GenXers. Born right in the middle of the Cold War, too young for the sociopolitical convulsions of the late 1950s and 1960s (most of us were in short pants), too young for Vietnam / the civil rights movement and too old (many of us) for Iraq and Afghanistan. For us, the seminal political event of our young lives was the Iran Hostage Crisis in 1979-81, an event widely credited with delivering the Presidency to Ronald Reagan.
The Lion of the Senate, the man one of Styx's lyrics called "First of the 80s / and Last of the Sons / First in the Hearts of his Countrymen" roared again. Goddess keep you, good Senator!
2. Michelle Obama -- What a classy, smart, eloquent woman! While First Lady Laura Bush has not been the abject embarrassment her husband continues to be, I continue to be impressed by MichelleO. Comparisons to Jackie Kennedy are already being drawn.
3. Hillary Clinton -- I did not vote for her in the primary. If she ever gets the chance to run again -- say in 8 years -- I just might.
4. Karl Rove -- With respect to his commentary: As they say in the US Marine Corps, "Golf. Foxtrot. Yankee."
5. Internet application taking the political blog world by storm: Twitter.

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Listening to: Neil Young - Lookin' for a Leader
via FoxyTunes

What Would Orwell Blog?

Find out here.

This is facinating stuff . . . .



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Listening to: Trifolkal - The Starbucks of County Down
via FoxyTunes

Assorted asshattery and some hope

Mixed bag of a day, all things considered.

Hope:
In this Tuesday's round of elections, the Republicans lost a congressional special election to the Ds. This didn;t happen in a district the Ds usually win; it was in Mississippi's 1st CD -- a district so nominally pro-R "red" that it isn't funny. Won it by over 10%, not in a squeaker. As in "kicked the elephant in the jimmies." Live by the warmongering moron, die by the warmongering moron.

Asshat:
Speaking of warmongering morons, Shrub gave this little speech to the Israeli Parliament on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel. In it he said something truly extraordinary:

"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history,"

He was referring to, of course, Democrats, as the appeasers.
Why is this extraordinary? Because for the first time, a political figure serving as the American "president" (NEVER will I refer to the faux Texan empty suit warmongering bastard as MY president) using the occasion of a speech in a foreign country for crass domestic politics. Don't "politics stop at the water's edge?"
Further, by invoking Nazis, the Chimp fell victim to Godwin's Law.
Of course, this asshattery may just be a means of gaining the news initiative after that special election and John Edwards' dramatic endorsement of Barack Obama.

Hope:
I overheard one of my colleagues at work literally going off on another coworker about what an absolute dick GWB is. The second colleague is one of those people who is active in church and does not hesitate to invite you along -- repeatedly. Hardcore R. Since Church Guy is an asshole buddy of my manager, I'm not going to complain unless he invites me again. Last year I nearly throated Church Guy because of his utterances in a meeting about Al Gore and his Oscar-winning documentary. Glad to see him get a dose of reality.

Asshat:
Roomie. Say no more.

Boot to the Head: Work edition

"I'll sing to you a little song / About the things that piss us off . . ."

Good day at work so far, but annoying as hell.

1. Pig-ignorant / lazy as hell coworkers. Three cases of these today, all before lunch.
a. Simple, easy steps even a Master of the Obvious should be able to do . . . but NOOOOOOO, they palm the job off on the Next Tech.
b. IDIOTS who refuse to use their empowerment to help customers because it will add a few minutes to their call times. Customer calls back, I spend the time to Put It Right, to ensure the customer is satisfied, and my metrics take it in the neck.
c. People who can name every minor character on The Simpsons and every break in continuity in their favorite comic books since the 70s, but have not a fscking clue who Genghis Khan was or what he really did.

2. Call monitoring. One of the conditions of my job is that my calls are monitored "for quality assurance." I know that any call may be monitored and evaluated, but this does not happen very often -- maybe a couple of times a week. When this happens once a day, I'm not stressed. Over the last week, I've had FIVE, three in one day, all by the same evaluator . . . who happens to be a member of my team on a coaching rotation.

OK, repeat after me: What. The. FSCK?
I run into him on my way out the door yesterday. Guy says this is purely random. Yeahright.
I get my 1 on 1 with my manager this week. Maybe he can answer my question.

WTF does bowling have to do with the ability to lead this nation?

Apparently, Barack Obama went bowling in Pennsylvania the other day as part of a photo op. Apparently, Barack Obama's bowling score of 97 at this photo op was, well, not very good.

The idios on TV teed off on BO for being, well, less than manly for bowling so "poorly," implying that he was not manly enough to be Commander-in-Chief. Chris "tweety" Matthiews actually said that he should have, to be considered man enough to be Commander-in-Chief, bowl at least 150

Sexist assholes!

First a word about bowling.

As someone who spent a good part of his early teens in bowling alleys and was a state individual, league and singles champion in my age bracket (12-13), with weekly league play I carried a 21-week book average in the high 180s. In tournaments I routinely got hot; my best game ever -- 267 -- was rolled in a singles event at a state tournament. My younger brother once 6-7-10 split his last ball and wound up three pins shy of a perfect 300 and also routinely shot 200+ with about the same average as me.
I can say I know a bit about bowling. Even fit adults who don't bowl every week will typically roll right around 90 to 100.

With a few weeks of bowling with his own ball (that makes a big difference) custom drilled in a pro shop and his own shoes on his home alley, Barack Obama could get 150-160 easy. My dad, who bowled leagues in his younger days also bowled 180+ consistently.

Then again, just what does the ability to bowl have to do with leading this great nation? NOTHING! Twisted punditoid games, again. Just reminding the knuckle-draggers that BO is, well, different and, in these troubled times, different is dangerous!

Then these bastards wonder why I refuse to watch them on teevee.

Finally. if I remember correctly, I am voting for a President. One of the President's Constitutional roles, and not his most important one, is Commander-in-Chief of the US military. If I were voting for a high military leader, I'd want to vet his or her grasp of military strategy. The candidate does not have to have been a soldier, sailor or airman -- experience in that role can provide insight, yes it can. But how does BOWLING test for this? If they want to vet candidates for this ability with a game, why not give them a D&D character and run them through a dungeon? D&D is a game of intense strategy and resource management; given the nation's issues, these skills could come in handy and should be better tested here than in a bowling alley.

This could be fun. Maybe I oughta bring BO, HRC and that icky Republican together for a run through one of Miresseia's garden spots like Mid-Thule (think Norway with nasty monsters that give Thor trouble) or Stygia (Sandworms! Orcish Jihadi! Psychoactive drugs! OHMY!).

I'd love to tell Hillary to make a Will saving throw or have McBush kidnapped and imprisoned by Orcs who do not comply with the US Army field manual for interrogations.

Then there's another way to test these abilities: World of Warcraft. Leveling takes strategy, as does doing those dungeons and especially raids.

Make them all roll blood elves; HRC rolls a warlock, BO a hunter and John McLame a paladin. Power level them to 70 and drop them in a 10-man raid dungeon like Karahzan.

Now that would be worth the eewtoobery!

"McCain, L2P ya noob! We wiped form the aggro you pulled on the boss!"



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Listening to: R.E.M. - Final Straw (Live)
via FoxyTunes

Got this from a colleague . . .New MMORPG

I've been outside. It's overrrated.

Traditionally Outside receives extremely high ratings by those who like to see others play it, and these people are in many cases comfortably ensconced Inside themselves. Outside was released many years ago, it was in fact the first massively multiplayer game, and yet it has always managed to avoid the double-edged Retro tag. In its favor, continual user updates have kept Outside current; there are always new things to see and do Outside. Participants are permitted, to some extent, to modify their own areas of Outside, which is a large part of the fun of the game. However it seems that in the end one is modifying Outside largely for the sake of it, and having done it, there is a distinct feeling of "now what?"

In terms of the traditional target age content metrics, Outside is remarkably high in sex, violence and challenges to traditional values, despite the strong child-focussed marketing it receives. Many would go so far as to say that for a child to develop the ability to cope with Outside is essential, as long as the harm incurred is not too debilitating. Children injured playing Outside are usually comforted by parents, and soon encouraged to go Outside again; this leads to the conclusion that somehow Outside has escaped any and all of the usual moralizing that surrounds the videogaming industry. One might say that Outside gets a free pass from the Jack Thompsons of this world.

That aside, how does Outside actually rate? The physics system is note-perfect (often at the expense of playability), the graphics are beyond comparison, the rendering of objects is absolutely beautiful at any distance, and the player's ability to interact with objects is really limited only by other players' tolerance. The real fundamental problem with the game is that there is nothing to do.

In terms of game play the game sets few, if any, goals: the major one is merely "survive". What goals a player sets, are often astonishingly tedious to actually achieve, and power-ups and gear upgrades, let alone extra weapons, are few and far between. Some players choose accumulation of money, one of the many point systems in the game, as a goal, but distribution of this is often randomized and it can be hard to tell what activities will lead to gaining points in advance, and what the risks will be.

Other players choose to focus on accumulation of personal abilities, the variety of which greatly exceeds the capacity of any individual to accumulate; again, the game requires players to engage in years of grinding to achieve any notable standard with a skill or ability. Players are issued abilities and characteristics largely at random, and it is entirely possible for a player to be nerfed beyond any reasonable expectation of being able to play the game, or to be buffed to the point where anything he or she does is markedly easier. Unfortunately over time, player abilities tend to degrade, unless significant effort is made to keep skills up. This reviewer cannot emphasise this enough: Outside requires a huge time investment to build up player abilities, exceeding any other massively multiplayer game on the market by some three orders of magnitude.

Players are encouraged to focus on social interaction, which can be engaged in in a variety of ways. In fact it's extraordinarily difficult to solo anything whatsoever in Outside, apart from basic skill and knowledge accumulation quests. One of the major forms of social interaction in the game is based largely around the addition of new players to Outside, and is both complex and, in comparison to the storyline-driven romance quests of, say, Baldur's Gate or Mass Effect, they are immensely difficult. Dedicated players of Outside, however, report that the romance quests are among the most rewarding the game has to offer.

The game world is immense, perhaps unfeasibly so. The sheer amount of resources that went into development of the Outside environment is staggering to consider. Outside is a world of tremendous size, containing examples of every known real-world terrain type and inhabited by every known real-world animal. On the other hand it is somewhat lacking in the traditionally expected, more interesting, zones where the developers would be given the opportunity to show off their skills in varying the physics and graphics of the game. There are, for instance, no zones where gravity varies to any significant degree.

The respawn rate of objects and players is ridiculously slow. A dead player can expect to wait for years to respawn, and will be set back to zero assets and a tiny, nearly helpless form. Death is hardcore, and resurrection all but impossible. Outside is not a game for the QQers out there!

In terms of the social environment, almost anything goes. Outside has a vast network of guilds, many of its players are active participants in designing the game's social environment, and almost any player will be able to find company to undertake their desired group quests. On the other hand, gold-buying is rife, the outskirts of virtually every city zone in the game are completely overrun by farmers, and the developers have so far proven themselves reluctant to answer petitions, intervene in inter-player disputes, or nerf broken skills and abilities. Indeed this reviewer will go so far as to say that the developers are absent from the game entirely, and have left it to its own devices. Fortunately, server uptime has been 100% from day 1, despite there being only one server for literally billions of players.

On the whole, Outside is overrated, and many gamers will find themselves forced by friends and family to play it against their will, but it still deserves a high rating. I give it 7/10, and look forward to improvements in future patches.

Happy Birfday to Teh Iz

That scraping sound you are hearing . . .

. . . are the deck chairs being rearranged on the SS Titanic

Cheers and Jeers: O:M edition

So sue me, Bill in Portland Maine, over on Daily Kos. Remember who writes your performance reviews . . .

1. Cheers to Blizzard Entertainment. WoW patch 2.4 is out; Blizz dedicated it to the late, great Gary Gygax. Without EGG, WoW and Diablo would not exist. This patch is nowhere as massive in impact as 2.3 was; at least they fixed several annoyances.

1a. Jeers to breaking my damned UI mods, as usual. I guess you can't make an omlet without breaking UI mods . . . bastards.

2. Cheers to Seanan McGuire. Her Bardic Blondeness is coming to town this weekend. I haven't seen her in more than a decade, and I'm looking forward to paying my respects in person to one of my favorite multi-talented artists. She should be your favorite too. Check out her LJ, website and music for reasons why.

3. Cheers to over a century of fearless journalism. My new favorite political magazine is The Nation. I've been on their mailing list since forever, when ex#2 and I used to subscribe to the dead-tree edition of this august journal of liberal opinion. These guys have been around since the 1860s fighting for the abolition of slavery and continue to cover Stuff That Matters (sorry, Slashdot) like elections campaigns and ongoing corruption without accepting a single dime of corporate money.

4. Cheers to filkerTom-foolery: I thought I was hallucinating when I read that Tom Smith, aka the world's fastest filker, is going to be part of the entertainment for Eschacon'08, the lefty blogger con organized by the influential Atrios in Philadelphia this weekend. I'd love to see his set list for his performance . . . .

5. Jeers to sports memes as workplace motivation. Every company seekd competitive advantage through incentivizing its workforce through a variety of means. I have no problems with most of the ways Management motivate us worker bees. I don't even mind those STUPID motivation posters. However, few things this side of the Veil-between-Worlds piss me off more than big time sports. I was raised in a sports-saturated household. There was always sports on TV or the damned radio, and to hell with me if I wanted to watch something mind-streching like Star Trek or listen to music. To this day, I cannot stand sports or TV. This time, it's March Madness, the 63-game marathon men's college basketball tournament. Pick one of the 64 teams (preferably one that stands a chance of winning) as an identity and rank those corporate metrics against them. Frankly, I couldn't care less weather Gonzanga (sounds a stripper's stage name) or UConn or Louisville wins the damned thing. Please. Make Them Stop!

6. Cheers to the Nurses of Kaiser South Sacramento. My wound care issues brings me in contact with a lot of nurses. When I moved south last year I figured I'd have to move my care (which I did) and I worried about continuity and quality of care. Pam, Connie and Valarie, the triumvirate that change the dressings and track the progress of my wounds throughly impress me.

Political This 'n' That

1. Even though I'm a political junkie, I'll be ignoring Shrubby's final State of the Onion speech tonight. My one word SotU: FUBAR. The best thing I can say to him and his henchmen are the words Oliver Cromwell spoke to the Long Parliament:

You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.

2. This is the level to which reporting on certain presidential campaigns has sunk. Sic transit gloria mundi.

3. On the Dem side, interesting shift in momentum toward Barack Obama from his rather big win in the South Carolina primary this weekend. The more I look at Barack Obama, the more I like him. Even more interesting is the sheer vote totals. More people voted there for Obama than for all the Rs combined.

Consider how significant this is to me as a political and history junkie: An African American candidate (not the first one, but the first to have such a high chance of winning a major-party nomination), a man of my generation (he's two years younger than I am . . . our first post-Viernam / late Boomer / ur-GenX candidate in a field full of Cold Warriors and Viernam era 60-something Boomers), won a resounding victory in a Democratic primary in a state notorious for neo-Confederate revanchism -- and the state where the American Civil War started with the shelling of Fort Sumter in 1861.

4. In other Obamania news: The Democratic side of the Kennedy clan has endorsed Obama. Senator Ted and neice Caroline Kennedy have issued ringing endorsements of Obama that invoke the memories of President John Jennedy and Senator Robert Kennedy.

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Listening to: The Elders - Turning Point
via FoxyTunes

Praise Teh Sacred Google!

This. Is. C00l.

The Discordian in me loves this kind of stuff. Eris and Google -- BFF!

Google's High Holy Day is September 14, the anniversary of the date the domain google.com was registered. And, it's just five days before another geek holiday, Talk Like A Pirate Day. A holiday devoted to the discovery of truth and good, not to mention pirates, is a perfect antidote to the annual beating around the head and shoulders with the proverbial bloody shirt every Sept 11.

Of course the Dungeon Master in me beat them to it awhile ago.


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Listening to: Seanan McGuire - Still Catch The Tide
via FoxyTunes

Make Your Own Church Sign

Details here.

Yet another reason I love iTunes

A $25 music card was left on my desk yesterday. I used it to complete my collection of albums from The Elders.

Hard to go wrong with a song about the Irish Brigade in the American Civil War, IMHO.



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Listening to: The Elders - True Believer
via FoxyTunes

Stoopid StarCraft Install Tricks v 1.0

OK, so there I was, at work, installing the copy of StarCraft I got as a prize on my MacBook via Firewire target disk mode (due to the bad optical in this MB) when the evil nasty badness began. My MB was on battery and in the middle of the install it shut down, out of power.

One of the "thall shalt nots" of FireWire Target Disk Mode is "do not forcibly dismount the target volume during data transfer or you will hose the target disk."

Oops.

I restarted my MB, hoped for the best and got the worst. Dreaded apple /gear startup. Disk Utility confirmed that the volume was as hosed as Chicago in 1871.

So, I reformatted the hard drive, reinstalled Leopard from a FWTDM'd workstation and went home.

Once home, I started first time setup and restored from my Time Machine external backup volume.
EVERYTHING is BACK -- all my gaming notes, my bookmarks, email, iLife suite, music, pictures of Her Cuteness, and oh yes World of Warcraft. Only a couple of hours lost in restoring. Had I had a working optical I could have restored while booted from it.

Mac users: if your machine can run Leopard, and you have not installed it yet, your data is at risk...If you've installed Leopard and not gotten an external hard drive for Time Machine, your data is at risk . . .if your machine cannot run Leopard, get one that does. You know you want to, and it is the right thing to do.

If you're not using a Mac, well you need to.

Update 1: Ran software update and it hosed my HD AGAIN! Fortunately, archive and install fixes this crap.

An "anti-endosement"

Mitt Romney takes it in the shorts from the Concord Monitor.



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Listening to: "Weird Al" Yankovic - The Night Santa Went Crazy
via FoxyTunes