Man… I have to blog again? I think I might be starting to weary of these daily posts. We’ve been doing this for like, what, 73 days now? I think there are three stages to any routine: The beginning, where it’s kind of hard because you’re not used to it, but you’re still motivated — this is where you’re most likely to fail simply because you forget. Then comes the middle, where you’re just coasting because repetition has made the act nearly automatic. If the chore doesn’t require a lot of thinking, you can just zone out while doing it; kinda get into that “driving somewhere very familiar” frame of mind. But then comes the third stage, where you begin to get impatient with the repetition and find yourself dwelling on how many more times you’ll have to do this thing that, by now, has become so utterly mundane to you. Some people are lucky and never get to that third stage. Or they experience it only temporarily. But if you stay there too long, you’ll either quit or start getting a little crazy.

I just came up with that but it sounds fairly true, right? That’s how I see it anyway.

I forgot to mention that I finished Teranesia the night before last. They got into some really interesting stuff towards the end. I’m always so thoroughly satisfied when I can grok at least part of Egan’s science stuff. I never really understood his wormhole mechanics in Diaspora, but I think I figured out the São Paulo gene/molecule in this book. And it’s really brilliant; hard to explain, but it basically rewrites existing creatures’ DNA based on what evolution found to be successful in the animal’s situation in other realities. It’s sort of like the molecule looks into the future, then applies whatever random mutations allowed survivability and reproduction. But it’s not sentient; the whole process is just the product of a quantum computer that solves every problem by brute force. It answers the question: “What if evolution wasn’t constrained by causality?”

The only thing I hated about the book was that it felt like it left me hanging vis-à-vis Prabir’s future (now that he’s had all these revelations and he’s been freed from the the overwhelming duty he felt towards his sister and dead parents), how the world would cope with this new “disease,” and what Prabir would have become had the São Paulo molecule finished its work. There was also this cryptic stuff about Prabir seeming to anticipate the mind-to-software conversion Egan uses in his later books; “Come the revolution” is repeated like a mantra a few times when the main character is frustrated by intolerance, irrationality, physical shortcomings, etc. But unanswered questions aside, it was pretty good.

I wanted to buy another Egan book, but it seems I’ve read everything that’s in print. And all the out-of-print stuff is really expensive, even for very used copies. The cheapest Permutation City I could find, for example, was $29 with shipping. How can people charge that much for a paperback from 1994 with a creased spine? It’s not even signed, for Pete’s sake. Ridiculous.

Last night Jones and I watched Smokin’ Aces. I liked it. Then today we watched Dawn of the Dead (2004). Great movie. The DVD has some really great bonus features; a couple amateurish (but entertaining) short films that follow minor characters from the movie, and a couple videos about makeup, extras, and mechanical gunshot special effects (there’s probably a term for this, but I don’t know it).

Re: TotD: I use Gmail and I love it. My single account consolidates all the messages I receive from about ten different addresses; @hjo3.net, @upsidaisium.com, @wsu.edu, etc. Plus I can send from those addresses through it with a drop-down in the From field. And it’s all accessible via the web or POP3. But most people already know this stuff, right? Does anyone think there’s a better provider than Gmail out there?

BTW, here’s the web site I’ve been working on for that for-sale-by-owner home in Pasco: tricitiescountryliving.com. If you know anyone who might be interested, do feel free to give them that URL. :P

So last night Jones came over from the Tri-Cities and I made corn dogs. The batter consisted of Kruzteaz pancake mix, corn meal, garlic powder, and S&P. Deep fried ‘em in 375° vegetable oil for 3 minutes. Most of them came out great, but a couple had problems with the batter separating from the sausage during frying. The best way to avoid that seems to be dusting the meat with flour prior to covering with batter and placing them in the oil as slowly as possible (chopsticks help with this). Anyway, we ate those whilst watching Mystery Men.

I didn’t have any sticks to put in the corndogs, so I served them in bowls and we ate with our fingers. Afterwards, Jones suggested the use of chopsticks in the dogs. Doh! Great idea. Gotta get a bunch of extras next time we go for Chinese takeout.

We played a lot of Heroscape last night. Our first game was a three-way with 400-point armies. I won that one, but it was very close. Thank goodness the Deathwalker 9000 has 9 defense.

Then we played a couple games of Mario Party 8. It’s pretty fun, but I wish there was a way to skip more of the animations. No one really needs to watch Boo ride a dolphin 20 spaces more than once. Points of hilarity: Toadette being retarded, the announcer’s “Haw haw!”, Birdo’s apparent indigestion. I won game 1, Brett won game 2.

Then Jones and I played a 360-point game of Heroscape (with a new map) while Brett watched Wonder Years. It was crazy — big bloodbath. I wiped out all of Jones’s Tarn Vikings in one turn, then all but one of his Airborne Elite in another using Mimring. But he got me back with some sneaky Krav Maga Agent maneuvering. In the end, it came down to my last samurai and Crixus (a masked gladiator) against his two Agents. Since he was ranged and I wasn’t, it was a pretty hopeless situation. I charged and died. The fact that he maintained position on a +1 to Attack glyph didn’t help things.

In this picture you can also see Jones’s new hairdo. Pretty cool.

Re: TotD: I think Hufflepuff, going from the Wikipeida entry. But I’ve never read the books.

I saw the following lines in someone’s sig on the Heroscapers.com forums:

Katie Couric, while interviewing a Marine sniper, asked: “What do you feel when you shoot a terrorist?”
The Marine shrugged and replied: “Recoil.”

I thought it was amusing, if only because it shows up Couric a little. She’s kind of irritating, right? I mean, she’s easier to watch than Kelly Rippa or Nancy Grace, but that’s not saying much.

I was browsing YouTube yesterday and came across this awesome clip from Square One: The Mathematics of Love. In hindsight, I’m amazed at what decent actors they got for this show; I can’t imagine they had a tremendous amount of funding. The guy playing Cassius seems like a peppier Scott Thompson. Anyway, the song in the video is terrific — jump to the 4m:30s mark if you want to see the whole thing without the skit/Roman numeral lesson buildup.

I watched The Aviator this morning. The DVD’d been sitting on my shelf for ages, but I never got around to seeing it till now (kinda had to as there’s nothing great on the TiVo lately). I loved the quick pacing in the first 45 minutes of the movie, but after that it seemed to get less enjoyable, excepting the scenes with Alan Alda as Senator Brewster. And while I understand Hughes’ OCD/dementia is a big part of his biography, it was pretty boring to watch. Two hours, fifty minutes is way too long for a movie about a guy in a downward spiral.

I also went to the IGA for soda and doughnuts this morning. Remember those great frozen paninis they had at 2 for $4? They’re now priced at $3.84 each. What a rip!

Jones ended up having to cover a Sunday shift for some co-worker with “family issues,” so he’ll be over later today. In anticipation of his arrival, I picked up Mario Party 8 — looks like fun.

Our washing machine broke. It washes, but it won’t drain the water. I called Heritage Realty on Saturday about the problem — the guy that answered was rude and unprofessional. (Really, who answers a business line with “Yeah, what”? A customer/tenant shouldn’t have to ask if they’ve reached the right number.) He said we’d have to wait till Monday and call back then — didn’t even take a message. I can’t even begin to tell you how unpleasant it’s been to work with these people. It’s not like I’m a bad tenant or anything, either; I always pay my rent on time. They’re just really bad at what they do.

TotD:

Tattoos: Interesting form of self-expression or sure sign of a loathsome individual? Why?

I wouldn’t say they’re a sign of a loathsome individual, but I don’t think it’s terribly bright to get them in places that aren’t easily hidden by clothing. Given that most people associate tattoos with negative traits and motivations (e.g. being rebellious, “punk,” slutty, impulsive, in a gang, etc.), what does that say about the people that publicly display them? That they don’t care what others think, that they want to be perceived that way, or that they’ve never thought about the issue. None of these cases reflect well on the individual; each one means they’re tacitly inconsiderate, antagonistic, or careless.

In-your-face forms of self-expression (like a neck tattoo) show a certain lack of respect. Unfortunately, a lot of people from my generation have immersed themselves in a subculture that considers impoliteness funny. I think a lot of them don’t get that passive thoughtlessness itself isn’t offensive — it’s the implied message that bothers people. Like, when someone wears an obscene T-shirt, it’s not usually the content itself that’s really offensive. The vast majority of Americans aren’t actually emotionally affected by the F-word, exposed breasts, whatever. It’s the insinuation that the person displaying it doesn’t care that it might make someone feel uncomfortable that’s so insulting.

Anyway. The high resolution board on 4chan (/hr/) has a great “shipwreck pics” thread going right now. Here are some of the better images I snagged from it:

I’ve noticed certain weird characteristics about the cities around here — Pullman has a lot of butch lesbians in it and Moscow has a lot of people with physical deformities. I have no explanation for the former, but I’ve seen something like the latter elsewhere; Coos Bay (in Oregon) has an unusually high concentration of retarded people. (Seriously. I’ve heard there’s actually some kind of state or county mental health funding condition that makes the area especially supportive of the developmentally disabled.)

Brett and I played a short game of Heroscape last night. 200-point armies — Raelin and Grimnak (the angel and the dino-riding orc) on his side, Agent Carr and Finn (the MiB and the viking) on mine. I won, mostly by luck and the fact that it’s fairly easy to maintain height-advantage on non-flying two-hex units. I like the system.

I’m so tired right now. I’ve been getting up pretty early lately. This morning I woke up at 6:40. Tried to get back to sleep, but I just felt too awake. I think I might take a nap after I finish this post.

I’m about 85% done with Teranesia. I take back anything bad I said about it before; the story really picked up in chapters five and six. Now it’s really focusing on the big genetic regression mystery, occasionally veering off into some interesting subplots concerning Prabir’s various relationships. Egan’s really talented; he does the hard SF/physics stuff very well, of course, but he’s also surprisingly good at the soap opera-y stuff. I guess I never really noticed it that much in his other books because the exotic settings and crunchy bits were so captivating.

TotD:

A giant enemy crab approaches. What do you do? There is only one right answer.

The HackMaster Hacklopedia of Beasts, Volume II: Cats, Small to Efreeti imparts the following on this subject (p. 44):

COMBAT/TACTICS: Crabs, Giant: Always hungry, Giant Crabs sneak up on their prey (-3 to opponent’s surprise roll), catch it in their pincers (2-8 damage), dismember it and eat it. Once they have caught something edible, they will stop to eat it. If attacked while eating, they scuttle back into the water with their prize.

So, obviously, the proper course of action would be to push the most useless party member into the crustacean’s path. Then, once it’s begun devouring the poor clod, you can just throw a rock at it and it’ll flee into the ocean. Problem solved.

Dreamhost was acting kind of flaky yesterday; all my sites (I’m up to seven domains now) went down, came back up, then went down again. Kinda weird symptoms — I couldn’t connect via FTP or proxy but I could ping them. Here’s the response I got to my two support tickets:

Your server needed a reboot, that’s why your sites were down. I checked the server history, and it does seem like it went down a few times this week, so I’m passing it to the admins for investigation.

I got a little worried, so I backed up my database and my modified WordPress PHPs. Still need to backup images and stuff, but that’s not as critical. You know hjo3.net/upsidaisium.com is up to 417 MB now?

I made this shrimp spaghetti a couple days ago. I was still so in awe of that phenomenal alfredo sauce from the chicken/broccoli fettucine that I had to make it again. This time I used green beans, mushrooms, and (obviously) shrimp. There might have been a bit too much pepper in it for most people, but it was just right for me.

And then last night I finally opened the deep fryer my grandma gave me for Christmas and Brett and I made tempura! I was surprised at how easy it was to make. We battered and fried onion petals, carrots, broccoli, shrimp, potatoes, snap peas, and mushrooms. Really tasty, but I felt really lethargic after eating so much of it. Probably won’t make a meal of it in the future, but it’s a great side dish. Sometime this weekend I want to try corndogs — I still have that awesome batter recipe that Bill Cunningham got for me at the Lewiston dog show.

TotD:

What would you do without internet access? A cell phone? Cable television?

The lack of cable and a cell phone would be inconvenient, but I could work around it. BitTorrenting TV shows is a hassle, but it only takes a few minutes to check Next-Episode.net and hunt down the right file. Plus I understand there are ways to automate the whole process, turning your PC into a slightly less-efficient, more-bandwidth-hogging TiVo. And a landline would be okay as long as I had a cordless and an answering machine. But no internet? Ugh. It’d be like being illiterate or something. I’d probably be a very different person without net access. So much of the stuff I enjoy, like particular authors, games, hobbies, etc., I’ve only gotten into because I learned about them online. And I’d probably hardly ever listen to music without MP3s.

Jones is coming over tomorrow. We’re going to play some Heroscape, Mario Kart DS, Mario Party 8, have some corndogs, and watch DVDs. It’ll be awesome.

I saw this picture of Don Mossie on Boing Boing and it got me thinking: Isn’t it weird how a person that’s ugly in many ways is usually still more appealing than someone that’s only ugly in one way? Like, someone that’s fairly attractive except for a big, hawkish nose can seem less attractive than someone with the same nose and a unibrow and baggy eyes. With the otherwise-attractive person, all you can see when you look at them is the obvious imperfection. But with the multiple-defect ugly, it kind of all balances out. I think, in many cases, that “forgettable ugly” is better than “memorable almost-pretty.” I dunno, maybe that’s just me.

I found this cool site for making brackets on the QuadBoard yesterday. Pretty cool. Wish I’d known about it back when I was playing in lots of Magic tournaments.

Also discovered a couple new (good) webcomics this week: Real Life Comics (via Krunk, I think) and Nobody Scores! (via 4chan/co). Real Life Comics is especially cool… they talk about TiVo, Stargate Atlantis, and Illuminati (the SJG card game). Who could ask for more? It’s nice to see a genuinely funny webcomic that’s not about videogames, talking animals, or melodrama. It kind of makes me think of MacHall minus the pretentiousness.

I got Brett and one of his friends to convert to Opera. When he installed it, I noticed some nifty features I didn’t have — and I was only 0.1 versions behind. So I upgraded to 9.2 and suddenly I can make the transfer window work exactly the way I want it to and I can login to my online banking thingy (this was the only site that I had to use IE for back when I ran 9.1). I don’t really see the point of the Speed Dial feature, but it’s easily ignored or disabled. BTW, you would not believe the cajoling it took to get Brett to switch from Firefox. Even though it took him like two whole seconds to switch between open tabs. But once he switched over (and I showed him a couple easy tweaks, like positioning the tab bar on the left and setting up keyword searches) he was much happier.

It’s amazing how attached people get to a particular browser. It’s like a religion. At this point, it might even be bigger than the Mac vs. PC schism.

Re: TotD (favorite cereals): Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds with Frosted Mini-Wheats as a close second. As a kid, I really liked Lucky Charms and Trix. Trix was better when the cereal bits were just colored balls; the new (well, newer) style, with everything molded into fruit shapes, bugs me. It seems like it’s shinier too, which doesn’t make it more appealing, IMHO.