mann gegen hund

identity crisis

2007-12-16T15:34:58Z

lemnwezl @ 2007-11-27T07:47:00

2007-11-27T15:03:23Z

Paris has experienced yet another evening of celebrating diversity. I hope they are enjoying their new neighbors from the south, because I'm sure they will be providing countless more hours of entertainment for them in the future.

giving thanks

2007-11-22T19:03:56Z

This year, I am particularly thankful for the following two things, both amendments to the constitution of the United States of America:

The First Amendment, particularly freedom of speech, because only despots and zealots fear the free exchange of ideas, and the despots and zealots currently in charge are not the kind I would prefer.
The Second Amendment, which is generally interpreted as the right of a citizen to own a firearm, because if next year's Thanksgiving is like this one I will quite likely use one to do myself in.

wtf

2007-11-20T15:16:59Z

Wasn't expecting this, this early in the year.

lemnwezl @ 2007-11-16T19:56:00

2007-11-17T03:09:20Z

I was went biking home tonight and it was foggy. There was light where there shouldn't have been, and I know it's all coming after me now. I shouldn't have thought I could run from it forever, but it is after me now.

I can't see them yet but I can feel it/them, in the fog. I think I am safe in my house for now. I am safe with my teddy bear, at any rate. He has a protective magical field, but I have to keep him safe too, or his magic can't work. My garage door is in line with their plans, but I've managed to overcome it tonight. Not tonight. I maybe can hear them sometimes.

He's all I have. It's just me and him, and I hope his magic holds out heh heh. At least I think I do.

Shaking now. Can't anyone make them stop? Doesn't anyone here it? Can't anyone else feel this?

Can't anyone make this stop?

lemnwezl @ 2007-11-16T06:15:00

2007-11-16T13:17:46Z

lemnwezl @ 2007-11-15T09:10:00

2007-11-15T16:13:19Z

outside temp: 36
inside temp: 54

sometimes I think I could...

2007-11-14T14:23:11Z

Burn.

Just discovered my favorite fast song of all time happens to have made its way onto youtube. I named my first PC after it. It's been edited a bit for MTV; particularly the exchange between the father and mother(F:"Who you out there fuckin'?" M:"Your father." F:"Bitch"). You don't see the shotgun suicide either.

NBK was also my favorite movie for a while, but I can't watch it any more. It was right about a lot of things. The Demon does live. But love does not conquer the demon; if anything it makes the demon stronger. Maybe it's even a part of the demon.

There is no answer, no hope, and no deliverance from suffering. Only temporary reprieves that make the suffering all the more intense when they fade away.

Have a nice day :)

the central struggle of my life

2007-11-13T16:23:07Z

Seems to be how to live without resorting to automobile ownership. It is possible, but it does limit your options in big America significantly. The biggest problem is the social constraints it imposes.

I am steadfastly sticking to my guns on this issue, however. If I have problems, it's because I have not set up the right situation for myself, and I've merely to get myself into a better one. And I intend to do precisely that next year.

And besides, I hate the complexity of modern cars, hate car dealers, hate car repairs, hate car insurance, hate buying gas, and hate driving. So, um, I guess that does tend to boost my ideological stance on the issue somewhat.

Fuck cars.

lemnwezl @ 2007-11-13T06:29:00

2007-11-13T13:57:08Z

this amuses me for some reason:

The credit markets are frozen because of uncertainty and lack of information.
No one knows how much mortgage-backed securities are now worth, and no one wants to sell them to find out.
(...)
Another measure of potential losses is how much Tier 3 capital the banks have - these are risky loans that cannot be valued except by a model because there is no market for them..

From a particularly informative article at BBC News here.

The overall sense I get is that the more layers placed between the source of the actual money for loans, and the end recipient of those loans, the more likely the loan situation is to become unrealistic.

I am also disturbed by how interesting I found this lengthy article on financial markets. I think that means I am now officially old.

my nano

2007-11-12T16:20:55Z

I find it hard to do weight training without fairly loud music, but I live in a townhouse, and don't want to make any noise, especially at 6am. So...

On a completely unrelated note, I am relinquishing my stereo receiver and my 72lb Cerwin-Vega floor speakers. As lovely as they are, we've grown distant over the years, and our lifestyles are no longer compatible. Maybe some day I'll settle down and have a good situation for floor speakers, and when I do they will probably be some sort of mildly arrogant brand of speaker; uncommonly good, but not idiotically expensive.

And they will not have 15" drivers.

complexities

2007-11-09T18:44:34Z

I tend to think of knowledge as a series of rules and attributes.

The more you know, and the more you contemplate, the more you realize how dense and complicated the world's rules are, what a small subset you are aware of, and what an even smaller subset most people are aware of.

This leads me to conclude that almost any sort of political, economic, or social reality can be made to seem ideal, provided that the presenter has carefully chosen the knowledge presented, and has presented it to individuals who lack the same breadth of knowledge.

run 4 ur life lol

2007-11-08T22:26:27Z

I notice lots of colleges now are implementing "emergency notification systems", that I guess you sign up your cell phone with, and presumably they'll text you when the shooting starts.

Hopefully TV news crews will be notified as well, ideally before EMS and Police.

I need a new look

2007-11-07T15:25:08Z

I have been dressing in full-generic garb for eons now. Outside of the fact that I'm generally considered to be wearing clothes inappropriate for cold weather, I am almost invisible in my non-uniqueness.

Clothes always seemed too much trouble to bother with, but I think it would be fun to experiment with now, just to see how people react. I am leaning towards kind of a kinky, lighthearted interpretation of the standard heavy gothic industrial themes; like JC Denton meets Hello Kitty in a Seattle area bondage club.

I don't want to get contact lenses, but I don't like my present glasses either, so I'll need new ones too. My hair... well, it enrages people. I'm not sure how to mitigate that; it does what it wants to do.

the manic phase

2007-11-06T18:15:45Z

God I fucking love the manic phase. Makes life worth living.

Makes me bench press like a fucking animal.

initial impressions of RGTR and Hellgate: London

2007-11-04T14:55:07Z

Did you want another Diablo game, but in full 3D and set in London after a modern demon apocalypse? Then Hellgate: London is for you. I've only played in single player mode so far, but it's already worth the purchase cost. Multiplayer is supposed to be even better.

Or did you want a... hmm... not sure how to describe Tabula Rasa. A game that looks like an MMOFPS but isn't? An online RPG with Quake-like elements? Haven't explored it enough yet to decide whether it's worth the money or not.

I can say that the decision to require port forwarding through a NAT is going to keep a lot of people from being able to even log in. The connecting screen needs a cancel button and probably a NAT test button as well; having to force kill the app from task manager while I was tweaking my router and OS settings was a bit annoying. The voice acting so far has been hilariously over-the-top, but I suppose it's consistent with the rest of the way they've presented the game.

One thing that is clear already is that Blizzard has nothing to fear. I think I understand now what makes WoW so appealing for me. If you take away the crafting, the grinding, and the quests, you still have a very beautiful, magical world to live in. It's hard to describe; mechanically WoW isn't all that special from the standard RPG formula, other than for being a perfect implementation of it. It's the world, and how the players relate to it and each other, that makes it so... comforting, I guess.

it starts with run

2007-11-03T22:32:40Z

I've got a new pair of running shoes :)

Running is the street name for a class of strong, highly addictive anti-depressants whose side effects include weight loss, improved sleep, and euphoria. I do "street" most of the time, but I really love to do "trail" when I get the chance...

Paraphernalia required is minimal and inexpensive. It makes you forget your sorrows; it makes you happy when you have no reason to be. It keeps you from getting too serious into planning your own demise.

It is the only thing that is keeping me going right now.

transgenic supermice

2007-11-02T17:21:40Z

eeep.

I would like to place my pre-order for a Karkian at this time, particularly if they will throw in a Greasel or two...

lemnwezl @ 2007-11-02T07:37:00

2007-11-02T13:39:47Z

It seems the only thing that can consistently make me laugh to the point of tears is the Fashion SWAT series on SA. Here is the latest.

No matter how much life sucks, being able to lol for real takes the sting off of it, at least for a bit. Thank you SA.

favorite WoW Hollow's End commoner quote

2007-10-31T15:12:23Z

"Gaze upon my crazy tentacle-face and despair, Azerothian!" - belf wearing a Draenei mask.

surcease of sorrow

2007-10-30T14:52:40Z

Just bought in to the hype and pre-ordered Tabula Rasa and Hellgate: London. My computer upgrades get here tomorrow, and the games will ideally show up some time next week. I usually wait a few months after release to buy new games, but I'm a bit desperate at the moment. Hopefully they'll work good enough to be fun at release.

I'll be giving offerings to the pagan god of server and network infrastructure for the peeps at NCSoft; if most other people are half as desperate for something different in the MMORPG genre as I am, they'll prolly be sleeping at the office for at least the next month.

Just need some good distractions to last me into the next year, particularly over the dreaded holiday season. Next summer I'm re-rolling IRL.

sooper fun Iraq RTS game

2007-10-29T16:23:22Z

You play the role of Hamid, a local tribal leader of some repute, in some sweltering corner of war-torn Iraq. Mostly you could give a shit about the extreme ideology of the insurgents, foreign or otherwise, and you figure you're little corner of Iraq is probably going to be just as shitty regardless of what the central government is like.

Your goal is to play both sides of the conflict to maximize benefits to your tribe, while minimizing the likelihood that you will be blown up by either a suicide bomber or a laser-guided bomb in your sleep.

Accumulate good weapons and street-cred by staying on good terms with the bomb-belt crowd when possible, as long as they aren't morons who make it obvious they're sniping out of your minnaret. Accumulate vital money and supplies from the coalition troops by occasionally pointing out the locations of clueless or otherwise annoying or disruptive insurgents. This will also make it less likely your village will be leveled should they decide to vent their frustration at being continuously shot at and blown up along your main street.

Both major sides of the conflict have a shitlist a mile long, so as long as you stay near the middle or below of both of them, you can continue to enlarge your little desert fiefdom.

The game ends when you have working utilities and Internet access, so your kids can get on the Internet and become corrupted little deviants just like those in the rest of the civilized world.

still war

2007-10-27T00:24:17Z

I spend an hour or so on fridays watching Iraq and Afghanistan videos on Live Leak. Watching IEDs with EFPs(explosively formed penetrators) explode in front of fuel convoys, the aftermath of suicide bombings, Apache helicopters blowing up VBIEDs, and young insurgents merrily jumping into trucks to go blow themselves up. Just so I don't forget that it's happening.

All over Iraq there are checkpoints, manned by coalition or Iraqi troops, where lots and lots of vehicles slowly roll by every day. Any of them could be filled with explosives. All over Iraq there are vehicle convoys, most lightly or unarmored, which can be ambushed at any time and at almost any place along their route with improvised explosives capable of penetrating heavy armor.

I can throw out reasons and explanations for why this is an unwinnable situation for us, but suffice it to say, we can't even stop the flow of illegal drugs and immigrants across our own border. How does that compare with the flow of weapons and insurgents halfway around the world in an area surrounded by those whose opinions of us range from indifference to hatred?

new recipe

2007-10-26T16:19:14Z

Just discovered something fast, cheap and easy to make, in a single serving, that's also pretty good. Those who know me know that if I am in the mood to cook, I pretty much go with random combinations of anything available, and I lack the patience for anything that requires precision or takes away too much computer time. But sometimes it even tastes good, as in this case.

fry a cup or so of some cooked whole grain rice(some nice assortment of grains that looks good) medium high in a little bit of cooking oil for a few minutes, then add two eggs and cook a few more minutes, then add some cheddar when the eggs are done and just before removing so it gets all melty but not burnt. Serve with Tabasco sauce or green chile, if you happen to be in New Mexico.

The timing of it all works out nicely because cooking, prepping, and cleanup can mostly be done in parallel with minimum inefficiency. Gotta cook the rice ahead of time, but that's really, really easy to do, and the batch is good for several meals of pathetic single existence.

I have a feeling some Basque chorizo would make it perfect...

upgrade time

2007-10-26T15:38:21Z

My computer, vintage 11/2005, is getting it's first(and last) CPU upgrade, from single core Athlon 64 3500+ to a dual core Athlon 64 4200+(Manchester core). It was not an easy decision, but the Socket 939 channel is fast drying up, and it was either go for it now or face a full system upgrade sooner. The price was quite reasonable too.

Also upgrading my video card, after I let the new CPU cook for a few weeks, from a GeForce 6800GT to a GeForce 8600GTS. I suspect this may not be last video card upgrade for this system, as I don't see PCI-E 16x going away any time soon.