| Gaming with Girls - Episode Two |
[Oct. 6th, 2008|10:58 am] |
Started here: Prologue
Went here: Episode One
And now our story continues.
After visiting Dexter Jexter's (50s diner from Attack of the Clones) diner on Coruscant, Karri (the Mechanic) was approached by Dexter when he spotted the vial on her neck. This vial is key to Karri's subplot. Dex recognized the icon on the vial as a cloning company that recently closed doors. Since the vial seemed important to her, he told her where their last known facility was located (planetoid near Hutt Space).
After he asked if she intended to go there, he asked if she would skip over into Hutt space and pick up some (illegal) spices he uses for some of his daily specials.
Karri convinces the crew to visit a planet near the planetoid where she rents a shuttle to investigate the facility while they continue on to pick up the spices.
 The Captain and the lizard girl (nicknamed the Professor) visit a hostile world within Hutt space where they encounter a snooty spaceport employee Ugnaught in a Tux (with a penchant for 80s Madonna music) who over charges them for docking fees.
After acquiring the spice, they encounter a group of four of the same race as the Professor, who take personal offense to her inter racial mingling (a serious violation of their traditions) and attempt to kidnap her to return her home for re-education. The Captain would have none of it, and a conflict ensues.
The Captain's weapon of choice was stern words and a blaster while the Professor chose logic. In the end, the Professor was unharmed and the Captain-kabob had a souvenir spear lodged in an uncomfortable angle through her midsection. Nappy time for the Captain.
Meanwhile on the abadoned Cloning Facility Karri encounters a very nervous and confused protocol droid who doesn't recall its designation. It gets named Jitters by Karri. Karri discovers that Jitters has been hiding from the savage cannibalistic droids that went crazy after they were abandoned here. Four droids attack Karri and she falls unconscious.
Karri awakes to find Jitters looking rather beaten, but does not see any other droids. Her vessel is repaired and Jitters says the other droids were "helpful" in the repair. Droid parts are evident throughout the battered and jury rigged ship.
Jitters had absorbed some of the programming and skills of the other droids as well as the database stored at this facility. He joins Karri in escaping from the facility.
The team hooks back up, licking their wounds and head back to Coruscant. |
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| a contract with god |
[Oct. 6th, 2008|10:59 am] |
I read this while on vacation. I totally recommend it to anyone. |
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| Miss Spell - Has someone hit on a good idea? |
[Oct. 6th, 2008|07:30 am] |
Someone on Will Wheaton: In Excile's Blog (Look it up, you shameful person!) made the comment about how Misspell sounds like a winner of a Spelling Bee Bueaty Pagent. ... and although it's a joke, part of me is going "What a brilliant idea!"
Look, one of the main contention points with some ladies who have been visited by the boob fairy is that no one respects their intelligence. What better way to show that they are brilliant by holding a spelling bee? Every elimination round, they go back and change. The walk up to the platform where they spell things correctly, and then go back.
And the whole thing is all centered around the Spelling Bee. It just happens to have women dressed in that Mrs. America stuff that people tend to love. It'd be brilliant! I tell you, Brilliant! |
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| We don't need no stinkin' money? |
[Oct. 6th, 2008|10:28 am] |
Fears are mounting that many Wall Street banks and financial firms will refuse to participate in the US government's $700bn bail-out package, leaving global markets and world economies in a perilous state for months to come.
I....wait...what?
'There is a growing feeling that banks ... might instead decide to tough it out,' said Thomas Caldwell, chairman and CEO of Caldwell Financial, a $1bn-plus fund manager.
Wait......WHAT?
One of the least attractive elements is a section designed to curb executive pay at banks that participate in the bail-out package. These include limiting stock-related pay and banning 'golden parachutes' for executives.
'I think this hodge-podge of regulations and rules will be enough to put many [chief executives] off participating,' Caldwell said.
Oh, NOW I see.
Analysts also believe that the mere presence of the government as buyer of last resort will be enough to get credit markets moving again, and that a large number of banks would not need to take part for the legislation to succeed.
I buy this. I also buy that some execs don't want to give up their golden parachutes.
Well, if the market truly has bottomed out and the insurance of this bill is enough to keep things afloat while the bare minimum of institutions actually make use of the bailout...does that mean everyone wins? I dunno. I guess. Yay?
Is it really possible that US politicians actually managed to cobble together a bailout plan that would really only be used where truly needed and not abused?
On the other hand, there's still the question of the 100+ billion dollars worth of pork that got attached to the bill in order for it to pass. Is it too much to ask for a bill, in any country, to deal only with a single issue?
The article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/oct/05/wall.street.bailout
I'm still not clearly for or against this bill. We mortal humans simple haven't been provided with enough data to make an informed decision in either direction. Anyone who says otherwise is lying and/or has an agenda.
Meanwhile, the US situation has had repercussions in Europe, where some banks have failed/needed to merge and some governments (like Germany) has had to guarantee savings accounts to prevent a run on the banks. In Canada, the stock market is down but there's not yet any suggestion that we're going to see bank failures. Here's hoping. |
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| pandora |
[Oct. 6th, 2008|10:09 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | music | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | office | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | mind blown | ] |
| [ | music |
| | the bad plus | ] |
for those of you who don't know, pandora.com is a web radio station that builds you a custom playlist based on songs or bands you tell it you like. in theory it's a really good way to learn about bands you never heard of because you tell it you like "tiny cities made of ashes" by modest mouse or "that song who's title i can never remember" by everclear, and it makes you a playlist. in practice it often ends up picking songs you don't like, or playing the same dozen songs over and over. but it does actually work a lot of the time. you can rate songs it picks thumbs up or thumbs down and it changes what it pulls for you based on that. so you can pick a song by toots and the maytals and by rating songs, end up with a station that plays nothing but school house rock.
anyway, i started a medeski, martin and wood station and it's consistently blowing my mind. this morining i heard "if loving you is wrong i don't wanna be right" by ramsey lewis, which sounds lame but it was a really cool modern jazz song, and right now i'm listening to an incredible jazz version of "smells like teen spirit" by the bad plus. i never heard of the bad plus or ramsey lewis until this morning. both of these songs are blowing my mind. especially the bad plus. |
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| The Economy |
[Oct. 6th, 2008|09:09 am] |
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) nova_starr posted this first. I used to watch this cartoon, and actually remember the episode now that I've seen these bits again.
Pretty sick when a cartoon from the late 80's can explain economics to 8year olds, and yet Washington D.C. doesn't have a clue.
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| Pre-NaNo moritorium |
[Oct. 6th, 2008|10:08 am] |
| [ | music |
| | No Survivors - G.B.H. | ] |
So, as part of my NaNo prep, I've sworn off SF for the month of October, so that I don't get too much genre leakage as I write. Still reading, just trying not to read anything that will subconsciously take up residence in my brain and come out later. I'm already worried that reading Accelerando fudged things up.
Also, I need a beta reader for a piece of Avatar: the Last Airbender fanfic I wrote. It's Aang-centric and has Katara/Aang, but that's not the focus of the plot. |
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[Oct. 6th, 2008|08:24 am] |
The current economic crisis demands that we understand John McCain's attitudes about economic oversight and corporate influence in federal regulation. Nothing illustrates the danger of his approach more clearly than his central role in the savings and loan scandal of the late '80s and early '90s.
John McCain was accused of improperly aiding his political patron, Charles Keating, chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. The bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee launched investigations and formally reprimanded Senator McCain for his role in the scandal -- the first such Senator to receive a major party nomination for president.
At the heart of the scandal was Keating's Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which took advantage of deregulation in the 1980s to make risky investments with its depositors' money. McCain intervened on behalf of Charles Keating with federal regulators tasked with preventing banking fraud, and championed legislation to delay regulation of the savings and loan industry -- actions that allowed Keating to continue his fraud at an incredible cost to taxpayers.
When the savings and loan industry collapsed, Keating's failed company put taxpayers on the hook for $3.4 billion and more than 20,000 Americans lost their savings. John McCain was reprimanded by the bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee, but the ultimate cost of the crisis to American taxpayers reached more than $120 billion.
The Keating scandal is eerily similar to today's credit crisis, where a lack of regulation and cozy relationships between the financial industry and Congress has allowed banks to make risky loans and profit by bending the rules. And in both cases, John McCain's judgment and values have placed him on the wrong side of history. |
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| Tweets for Today |
[Oct. 6th, 2008|08:00 am] |
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Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter |
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| okay, linguistics people, I need your help here |
[Oct. 6th, 2008|12:22 pm] |
Is there a term for the following, and if so, what is it:
Connecting several isolated historical personages, events or phenomena and attributing a particular retrospective contextual identity to them, in the course of which declaration one also (implicitly or explicitly) reinforces a claim of authority for oneself, or for a philosophy or view.
For example: Islam placing Moses, Jesus and Mohammed alike in the category of 'prophets', and also naming Mohammed (PBUH) as the Seal of Prophets, i.e. the last one.
Example 2: Crowley deeming the same persons to be 'Magi' that have 'words' and in that process identifying himself as a Magus with a word of his own.
Example 3: the Golden Dawn identifying various historical luminaries as previous 'secret chiefs'.
Example 4: Identifying various historical events as the work of 'the Illuminati' so that you can identify current events as the work of those same Illuminati.
There has to be a term for this. It's just too prevalent for there not to be. The 'retrospective' part is crucial - the claim of contextual identity is not made by the elements themselves necessarily, but by commentators after the fact, linking diverse historical points together to empower something in the present. |
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| Apple Woes |
[Oct. 6th, 2008|12:10 pm] |
I believe the sound card in my trusty G4 tower has died.
Symptoms: No sound; No devices listen in Sound section of System Preferences; Volume Control keys on keyboard do nothing though oddly the eject key doesn't eject anymore but I can eject discs via iTunes.
The machine is over 6 years old so it is impressive that this the first thing that has gone wrong on it.
So a few Mac related questions:
1) Can anyone recommend a cheap replacement card for a PowerPC G4 Tower running 10.2?
2) Are there any reasons not to buy a new Mac at the moment (e.g. new models about to be announced)?
3) Anyone any thoughts of the performance of the mid-end iMac for web development work and graphics? |
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| Progress Notes |
[Oct. 6th, 2008|04:21 am] |
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Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter |
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| D&D gamer humor |
[Oct. 6th, 2008|02:35 am] |
It's probably a good thing that I have no skill with Photoshop or the like, because I've just found myself tempted to create a series of "lolth-cats"... |
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| Weekend Update |
[Oct. 6th, 2008|12:18 am] |
I feel like it's been a while since I've done one of these, whether or not that's the case. :)
FRIDAY - Game Night at the Os'. Got to meet Julia and Stephanie, two of the prospectives from Warwick. They seemed nice. We all had a lot of fun, and spent most of the night playing games. It was awfully hot in the house, though, even though outside it was cold and misty.
SATURDAY - Caledonia Privy. It lasted a lot longer than we thought it would, but we finally hammered out all the details on the revised orders of knighthood. michelle427 and I missed her sister-in-law's surprise birthday party as a result, though.
SUNDAY - Went with speedball and silverlily81 over to rustedsigns' new house to paint some of their rooms. We had pizza afterwards.
And here I am.
****
Great Western War is a couple of days away, and I'm pretty sure none of the garb I want to bring is clean. I need to get on that. I also need to go to the grocery store and stock up on personal food. I'm camping with the barony this year, which is going to be really weird. Someone in the baronial Court was nice enough to offer to share their food with me, although I've never actually met her in person...I'm going to be wandering around camp on Thursday asking everyone I see if they know (or are) someone named Sadb.
****
I am now officially registered for SDCC. |
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| Not a news flash: Palin is wrong. |
[Oct. 6th, 2008|12:13 am] |
Sarah Palin is trying to associate Barack Obama with old, retired domestic terrorist William Ayers. You know, the guy that was a domestic terrorist when Barack was eight, and doesn't anymore.
That same day it starts, the New York Times came out with an article that the association between Obama and Ayers was extremely weak, as in the associations in Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon have more clout Ayers-Obama. This also drove the point home that she didn't read the Times, even though she needed two swings to answer that at the "what do you read" question.
You'd think she'd either a) back off and apologize, or b) show greater evidence for the association.
Instead, she c) replied "No, you're a towel."
Ms. Palin, you are wrong. You are not "partially right." You are not "speaking through a different perspective." You are not "having an opinion." You are not "correct by alternate rules." You are not "just playing the political game." You are not "so wrong that you're right." You are not "showing off that Alaskan know-how." You are just WRONG.
BTW: Barack Obama was in Legends Ball (2006) (TV) with Kelly Preston, and Kelly Preston was in Death Sentence (2007) with Kevin Bacon.
...yes, I used the Oracle of Bacon, what of it? |
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dnd4e
I can haz elf-burgers?