...

Ah, nothing better when you're grumpy then to remember Stalin's immortal words...

Things

Driving is rather boring. I think on Friday I am going to explore alternate routes from Marshfield back to Point. At this rate I'll be done at 1 anyhow. Figured out it's shorter to probably cut along 2nd Avenue (think that's it) then take Maria to get home when I am in Point. Lars would probably laugh that it took me a month to figure that out. What I really need is a way around that stupid incredibly short left turn on green arrow only Central -> Hwy 13 in Marshfield. Going to see if I can find Hwy H in town (I know it passes 13 but that's after that bloody light).

2 hours later :D

Ok, back from Emy Js and enjoying the actually cool evening with Katy. Let's see, what else to talk about. Not much now, lost my train of thought. Blogger seems to be doing weird things to the latest entry. Can't explain it, hopefully they'll fix it.

I forgot to say this earlier I think but Happy B-day to Lars. It was only a few days back. :D

Curious

Didn't expect to hear this from such a paper. I agree totally tho.

Memories

Did your family ever have a game they always played? We have a couple here but I think the favorite is SolarQuest. It's basically monoply in space. Don't think it's been sold since the late 80s but oh well. Our family has so many inside jokes when we place this game it doesn't matter if I get crushed it's still hilarious. If I ever make a musical called "The Rock" you must go and see it!

Also nostalgic is E:FC. Yea I mentioned it last time but I really am missing it after watching that episode last night. Frustrates me that the 1st Season is stuck in limbo for DVD release so the only season that is good may never get out! It's depressing. Stupid CEOs somewhere doing what they do best. Still I realize whenever it gets out it'll be so hyped in my mind it won't be as good as I remembered. Isn't that how things usually end up?

Anywho, that's all for now.

Home...

I guess I haven't written much lately. Anyhow I am home so this will be a brief post. Life is alright. Rather quiet life really unless you want to hear about work. Don't feel like chatting much about that though. What to talk about then? Not quite sure. Watched Evie play volleyball on Thursday. That was fun (even with the 93 degree heat). It's been a long time since I've actually watched people play volleyball despite the large amount of my friends who play. The rules are different from high school so poor Amber had to correct me a bunch. Andy got a kick out of this at work when I told him. Can't say much about softball cause I think I brought them bad luck. Hopefully I won't do that to the volleyball teams either otherwise Evie will probably t-bone me on Division when I'm barely awake some weekday morning :/

So there's a ramble on volleyball.

There really isn't anything else. I'm home. It's nice. Shorter drive from Marshfield to here. Course that's cause I already commuted from Point. Get to go through Pittsville. Shouldn't that really be where Green Bay is? :D

I will try and write more often. Granted, not even sure if anyone reads this anymore. Although readership doesn't equate to my rambling at all.

I wish Earth Final Conflict would come out fully on DVD. The episode I am watching right now started it all for me. I caught it right at this point. Those were good times way back when.

Later!

31 Days Later

...and the total amount of alcohol I have consumed is one glass of scotch.

In more exciting news I actually got to do some programming today. Some easy stuff in the morning and somewhat harder stuff (with a deadline of either tonight or tomorrow early) in the afternoon. Darin and Bob helped me some on the afternoon stuff but I actually managed to get a fair amount on my own. Very happy about that. Not sure how much more programming I will have the next week or so as theoretically tomorrow we are supposed to release PROD. Future releases should start after PROD is out and acceptable.

Other news, well there isn't any... :D

Incidents

I love histories. Probably why I like RPG settings. They design elaborate histories that I can read and wonder about. Plus they generally leave the mind open in an exercise of future possibilities.

As that goes, I am re-reading Jovian Chronicles and all the history in between them. The curious thing about this world is originally Dream Pod 9 released it as an expansion to the Mekton system of TSR. The irony is that some of the original background is laid down in these two supplements that's referenced by the system DP9 later released themselves. So sometimes the reader is left with rather sketchy details to events in the past that shaped the future greatly. It's frustrating because the defining moment in the history of that world (ask the Martians, they got a real black line to designate their equator) is, as far as I can tell, detailed in that first release and only briefly outlined since then.

But it's getting late. Perhaps more later. Perhaps not.

Oy

This week I just feel rather off. Not quite sure why. A little ruder, less polished, unbalanced. :/ Sorry I've been rather quiet. Also not a whole lot to say...

Shaken Bases

So two big things in the news that relate to little ol' me: first Apple is switching over to Intell chips. It'll be a gradual change but it's been in the works since initial OSX as far as I can tell. Anyhow I am not quite sure what to say about this. I am curious to see what will happen but unsure of the outcome. Either Apple will crack into the larger market or the larger market will crush it is the way I see it. This is a make or break situation for them so the next several years will be interesting to watch.

Other change: White Wolf has announced Exalted: 2nd Edition in Feb. 2006. I guess they upheld their promise. It won't come out til 2006. Some worries: GCG is stepping down as dev. as of this book so the man who promised the Revised core wouldn't out-date the other hardcovers is no longer in charge. Mr. Chambers is an unknown quantity so what will happen now is a big unknown. Also the rest of the year's schedule is still up in the air. I think maybe GCG got tired of all the complaints (especially Lunars, talk about beating a dead horse) and finally let the ball pass. It's sad but changes happen. I await to see the compatibility. An interesting 8 months or so.

Final comments: this one is just amusing in a sad way. French President Jacques "I'm a worse human being then anti-Bush people say Bush is!" Chirac talked about the upcoming EU budget. The British apparently get a several billion dollar rebate in the budget. To lessen the EU budget crisis Mr. Chirac suggests that the British cancel this rebate for the good of the EU. While this budget issue appears to be relatively minor (especially in comparison to the all consuming CAP) in the same breath our fair and balanced French leader announced that there would be no debate or cutting back the French CAP subsidies of whom France is the largest benefieciary. Now the CAP makes up something like 2/3rds of EU budget so this reminds me of the Bible story of the slave debtor who owed a massive debt and had it canceled only to throw the minor debtor to him into jail. I love the French, I think the US got our arrogance from them (afterall we take a lot of European traits don't we). That just makes me cheerful how he demands things from other EU countries but in the same breath will make no concessions on anything for the French. It's France first, Europe second to them. No wonder the EU constitution failed...

Horizontal Rain, Tornado Sirens, and in the End Me == Wet

Wow, crazy weather here. At work say about 1:10 I am happily listening to BBC News internet radio in my cubicle. Kurt in the office over is doin' the same. As are the guys around us in the other cubicles. Over my fairly noisy British news commentary I hear a rumble. Now I am thinking someone moved something heavy, full garbage can, multi-function printer (alas noone other then my co-workers will get that) or something along those lines. However there was promptly another rumble so I stand up and peer down over the other cubicles to Jim's window. Very dark and gray. Shortly thereafter we get a couple rumbles so everyone looks up. Now it's starting to rain. Rather quickly the rain does that part in Forrest Gump where it goes sideways. The trees (the one we can barely see at least) do their best to mimic the trees. Every tornado siren in the city goes off. Being good office workers we ignore them and stare out the windows. This goes on for 5 minutes before the office PA announces Operation Black. Now everyone scrambles to find our little emergency booklets to figure out "what the hell is Operation Black?!?" Not surprisingly this turns out to be the tornado procedure. As a result most of us head to the nearest windows or continue what we're doing (ah smart office folk we are). This has something to do with the fact you can almost see clear sky on the horizon. The storm is practically over.

Anyhow I head home shortly after this. It rains hard a couple times but mostly clear skies behind and to the south. Somehow when I get to Shopko it's pouring tho. So I got drenched going in and 100% soaked running out. Oy. Crazy weather.

Busy

That kind of describes things. Actually I think that's just how my weeks will be. Busy week, dull weekend. I suppose that makes sense. I am hoping that the weekends aren't all dull. Have to see though. Not exactly much in the way of news here to report though. Lots of storms have rolled through, lots of rain and lightning. Thankfully no tornados, don't think this place would do well against them.

Anyhow, got my ID card today so I am officially a real person now as far as all the random security devices at work are concerned.

...the exblonde will possibly graduate the same time as me, how is that possible?!?

Alright, this was rather short and useless post, kinda got distracted. Like I said not much newsworthy lately.

Boom

Well Evie hope you appreciate all the thunderstorms. This place was rocking tonight. Tis beautiful in a scary, powerful sort of way. Guess these storms followed me home. Bedtime now, more sometime hopefully, been busy in a non-busy sort of way.

"You don't remember screaming in the plaza about the day of judgement coming?"
"No, did it?"
"Not as far as I know, but I may have missed a staff meeting."

I love B5. Night. If people are in Point this weekend let me know, would rather not be a bum all by myself :/

Lonely Saturdays

While I sort of knew it in an academic sense but boy it's dead here. Everyone seemed to drop off the face of the earth today and it was just lonely. Blah, was hoping on weekends to spend time with people not be even more isolated then in my cubicle at work! :/

Exalted Commentary

So returning from the the Lars/Brent ball game where they did much better then I expected (especially since when I arrived they were losing by several runs) and half-doing the giant stack of dishes (blah!) I'm going to tackle random Exalted news.

Now granted there hasn't been much news. There is a lot of talk about Bastions of the North, according to the White Wolf LJ it is going off to editing but we have no real idea what it's about (aside from the North), how long it is, etc. I will say that I doubt it's a hardcover mainly because hardcovers come out late in the year usually between late October and very early December. To be going to editing now would place this probably late August (after Aspect Book: Wood) to somewhere in September. It's likely the holdover book. Right now we've had 4 softcovers (ABs: Fire & Water, Bone & Ebony, Cult of the Illuminated) and 1 hardcover (Autocthonians). That means we should have 4 more softcovers (one of which is AB: Wood). Reportedly the Scarlet Manual of Proper Bearing is slated for this year (formerly last year) and I'd guess around Christmas barring that it got struck from the rosters. So 2 softcovers. So Bastions should most likely be a softcover leading up to the last hardcover of the year.

Guesses on the hardcover at the moment are: Exalted Revised or Storyteller's Handbook. Personally I am against E:Revised primarily because WW said last that this wasn't going to come out til 2006 at the earliest. Also I think a lot of fans would be unhappy because it might indicate that WW was going to go and re-do (even tho they said they wouldn't) all the core hardcovers again. This is the nasty 3.0->3.5 WotC D&D syndrome also a problem in the old WoD (and incidentally in the upgrade to nWoD as well). People generally don't like that kind of change. So really I think this is pushed more by whiny fans who think "so and so is broken" and whine about it incessantly. You can be assured if they revise Solars ever Lunar fan will expect they revise Lunars and scream murder if they don't. Heck the Lunar fans screamed murder when Cult of the Illuminated came out (a book on a Sidereal run cult worshipping/supporting Solars) and it focused on (surprise!) Sidereals and Solars. Right so my bet is on Storyteller's Handbook/Guide because as far as I know WW usually does on of these for each series and the Storyteller's Companion could use a meatier, thicker, newer replacement.

Now: WW has two secret projects going on for Exalted apparently. I don't believe the comic is one because we've seen stuff on it already on the White Wolf homepage and forums plus Zub has been talking about it a lot. See his LJ for a series of articles on the development of the Exalted comic in fact. I'm not even slightly interested in that. However, Zub works for UDON who happens to do a fair amount of the Exalted art, including the much delayed Exalted: CCG. Zub mentions this obliquely as of late so I think this is one of the secrets. Now that almost all of the nWoD core books are out (Mage comes out in August I think) I suspect they may actually go ahead and release this or re-announce it or something. So that's secret one. That leaves us with a fairly big secret too. What it is I am unsure. Hopefully pretty big. GCG has gotten a partner developer (John Chambers) so the workload may have increased although this might be related to the adding of a CCG and a comic. Anyhow figure all secrets will be out by the end of Con season, probably major announcements will be at either Origins or GenCon so just have to wait til then.

Ok, that was really long but I rather enjoyed typing it. If you want less geeky entries do read below this :D

This is BBC News Stevens Point

Since my iPod is still in need of a tune-up and my computer at work lacks a CD-ROM drive I am left listening to internet radio via Windows Media Player. I've latched onto BBC News as my primary station, only aborting when I need to study the Visual C++ book because I can't listen to people talk and read at the same time. For whatever reason unlike NPR the BBC people don't bore me to death when speaking, most likely related to their British accents. News junkie that I am, I greatly appreciate being plugged in all day long to world events.

Speaking of those events, if you were unaware the Dutch massively shot down the EU constitution Wed 63% (No) -37 (Yes) with a 67% voter turnout. While the Dutch govt handled the defeat better then the French just about everyone admits that solid of a defeat was shock. The general consensus is that the political elites within the various European governments have totally and completely ignored and lost touch with the general populace and now the populace is voicing their unhappiness over it. French President Jacques Chirac is at an all time low approval rating of 24%. That makes Bush's approval rating look heavenly and casts serious doubt on Chirac's tenure in office, although at least from what I understand his coalitation is holding and after he creation of a new Cabinet his position is safe. His chance of re-election are about the same as W's though. I guess he didn't realize that using anti-American stances would only keep his pull numbers up when nothing was going on at home. Perhaps the next person in will focus more on helping France then hating America.

The major curiosity for me is how the political elites are taking this. Rather then admitting defeat and going back to square one they seem to be pressing on. Funny how politicians work isn't it? They can't just say "we were wrong" even when everything says they were. In fact they seem to be attempting to press on even when it seems the people, who they theoretically serve, are giving an obvious, overt dissapproval for such actions.

The EU Constitution is essentally legally dead as all 25 countries need to ratify it. At the moment its record is 10-2 (Latvia's parliment having ratified it today). Britain is leaning more and more towards not voting at all. The Brits were originally expected to be the breakwater that stopped the constitution from making it through. Now, however with the issue in doubt so early there is likely to be very little support to even put the issue up for a referendum in the Euro-skeptic nation. Ironically many of the leaders who supported it are on the way out: Chirac and Gerhardt Schroeder (Germany) are both doing badly in polls and local level elections. Tony Blair says he will step down either at the end of this term or some point in it meaning 3 of the majors head of state who support the constitution will be gone.

Food for thought anyhow.

They raised tutition and cut our UW budget more in another moment of financial brightness by our state government. Seriously, could these Senators balance their own checkbooks? You don't make cuts on one end and charge people more for those reduced services at the same time (and how many years have they done this to us?) It seems more and more that the parties are so set on their own idealogies they aren't even aware of what's good for the people. They just blindly follow their beliefs and are dragging the helpless constituents with them. Next election we should all write in someone who isn't in a party and see how the parties take that!

Well I am off to go attempt to find and watch friends of mine go play base or soft ball (can't remember which). Wish me luck in not getting lost :D