General

Perhaps because I learned last night of the sad death of Adam Messer, an old friend and coworker from Digital Research (of cancer, which claimed both my parents and will likely claim me), I dreamed (as I have before) that I was back there, in Monterey, working at DRI again. Whenever I return there in my dreams, I wonder what has happened in my life to send me back twenty years. DRI was a great place, a huge family, but we all knew it was doomed. A place of joy and sadness. ...

When Wired ran a story headlined “Apple Plotting an Avon Power Play”, all I could think was, “Damn that Avon! Which side is he ON?”. Of course, he’s always on his side, but then I wondered why they mentioned Blake’s 7 in a “Cult of Mac” article. Turned out they meant the cosmetics company. Ouch. When the Stargate MMO press release came out a few days later, I got wondering about when they were going to make MMOs on the SF series I watched when I was a kid. The blame for these rests, by the way, entirely on my father, who used to watch them on PBS when I was young. It’s his fault I got into SF. My mom’s to blame for giving me the Lord of the Rings boxed set on my 8th birthday. ...

With the news that Sony BMG is dropping DRM from its music and as that final, disgraceful era comes to an end, it’s time to fill out my collection. ` ` David Tudor plays John Cage’s 4'33" in Concert While the end of restrictions on how and where you play the music you purchase digitally is in sight, there’s still a real need to take the last hundred years of so of recorded music and get it into online stores so we can buy it! Some of the most important works of the 20th century still have not gotten the exposure they deserve. ...

Huh. I wonder if I spend too much time gaming? Anyway. Some minor news from my various gaming related interests: EQ2: Finished Tier 2 last night (finally!) as the Overking went down quickly and painlessly. The raid leaders decided not to flag everyone who needed him in one go, instead some of us (including me!) got in this time, and the rest will go the next time. It’s more important to actually win than to try to do it all at once, but lose. We went on to do Leviathon, the hentai tentacle monster in the Chamber of Destiny (which is not that crystal emerald sphere after all, but a different place entirely), to finish Tier 3. I’d have pictures, but I sat out of that raid. Next time! Listening to the fight on guild chat was fun. People turning into fishes to grab things from the beast’s stomach… some of us sitting out did a Vault of the Eternal Sleeper run, and they were still fighting that same guy when we were done. LONG fight. I finally got Dina’s Coat of Imperious Strikes (legendary RoK scout-set bp) from the boss of VoES… I’d though that dropped only in Maiden’s, but apparently not. ...

We all have our little initiatives for this new year. Brandon at Another Here wants to better himself in a new way every month of the year. Me, I just want less stuff to carry around. My perfect life would be to be so free of Stuff that I could toss my laptop and my Orange Teddy into a bag, my clothes into a suitcase, and go live anywhere. I’m a long way from that. But to be without all but the most essential possessions is a dream. ...

The first two chapters of a story set about five years from now in an MMO called The Plaza. Feel free to critique it. I’ll finish it (it’s short) if there’s interest. First chapter before the break and the second after. – Demons of Erayniel by Brenda Holloway Lightning flashed theatrically behind the castle, thunder crashing lazily through the hills. It was always dark here, and nearly always about to rain. The Romanians who sold us this adventure had a macabre sense of humor about their famous little province, from the horrified villagers in a painstakingly recreated medieval Sighisoara, to the thick, damp forest crowding the muddy road, to the suddenly too-near howls of a wolf pack on the hunt. ...

Today, a man who lives in a country where a Senate candidate promised to do BJs for Votes, chose to make a post in his very popular blog, about US politics. Specifically, how our unusual election system (as opposed to one, say, that has paralyzed the government for 150 days as they try to deny French speakers the right to vote for French-speaking representatives), is promoting bad global food policies in order to prop up a broken bio-fuel initiative. ...

`` George Carlin on “Stuff” Ya know, every time I have moved since I left Northern California, I moved into someplace smaller. My current hovel in Connecticut is the smallest place I have lived since college. And I am totally out of place for my stuff. I had a lot more of it. I had hundreds of CDs, thousands of books, furniture, four cupboards of dishes and pans, a whole garage chock-filled… when I moved from my house in Monterey to a three bedroom apartment in San Diego, most of that couldn’t come with me. The books and dishes and magazines I gave away or threw away. Most of my furniture went into the dumpster. I felt bad for all the things I couldn’t bring. ...

Dungeon Siege is my “oh my god, I have no internet connection” game on my laptop. When I saw what looked to be a cheesy generic fantasy flick trailer on the TV this weekend, I had no desire to go (Eragon cured me of that) (and yes, I’ve been told the book was way better). Then it ended with the title: “In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale”. ...

I was surfing around through the Wordpress site, looking for ways to make my blog even yet more awesome, when I followed a link to Technorati, did an ego search on my own blog and had a bit of a WTF moment when I found I had more “authority” than a lot of blogs way more popular than mine. Because of the weird way they calculate this, based on referring links, I realized that I have been a bad neighbor. As a blogger, instead of leaving long comments on other people’s blogs, what I should do is make a small comment, then go into greater detail on my own site while pointing back to the original article on the other blog. ...