greatness

Here's a damn fine article about organized crime in Britain. Great read, most of it concerning the latest heist to hit the country.

Good N Bad

Here's a quick link about Exxon's turtling on one of their so called environmental projects. It's easy to say you've greatly increased your environmental conscious when you haven't had one at all until it became a popular PR move.

On a better front, here's some more information on the electric bus the Dept of Transportation has been testing. It's an electric bus that runs on a zinc oxygen system. Purty cool. I'd analyze it more, but Midday on MPR has a democratic gubernatorial candidate on. Kelly Doran. Haven't made up my mind about him, yet. He's about 50/50 for me. I can't say I want my state ran like a corporation implementing the Six Sigma mumbledegook. He might be a little bit too CEO for me, despite his "We need leaders in the middle" stance...

Morning Jubilees

Damn sneezing. Damnit to hell. Good times. Have an odd sense of accomplishment today. Put in a bid for some stocks this morning. XSun. I doubt it goes through, cause I put a limit of $1.28 on it, even though it's trading at $1.47 right now. It's a difference of 19 shares, which isn't much. Just $19 for every buck the stock fluctuates. I might go higher depending on which way the price goes this week. *shrug*

Before I get any farther, you can Rock with the Ryno over at www.thedrorphyusproject.com. Good times. Death Jazz is the future.

On top of that, great night at BF2 last night. Phil and I had a good server going. We played two rounds on Wake Island before the server booted everyone but us. First round, we ground pounded most of it as Americans. With a shotgun and Anti-tank mines I got 27 kills. That's a record for me. 8 of em came from the mines. I have to relearn to throw grenades after the last patch, cause they fly farther now. A tactic I like to use is to drop a mine just under a tank that's not moving, then hit it with a grenade to take out the tank. Good stuff. Twice I tried it last night and just pissed off the tanker and alerted him to my presence. He killed me, then backed over the tank in an attempt to teabag me with the treads. Take one for the team I guess.

Second round we were Chinese and chopper whored the whole time. We kept the enemy pinned to their damn aircraft carrier for 7/8 of the game. We'd sweep across the deck with guns and hellfire blazing, head back to base, reload and repeat, taking out any stray boats on the way. The other team captured one flag, which we took back and slaughtered everyone, and they finally got two flags in the last minute of the game. We got one back and were in the process of slaughtering the squads at a third flag as the round ended. Nice. Both times I got the gold star and Phil got the silver. Both times it felt like NOBODY else on the team was playing. I'm not kidding, we'd capture a flag, point out a tank rolling in, and I'll be damned if our whole army didn't spawn there as snipers. Oh well, gave the tanker targets while Phil and I did the real work. Never let it be said that there isn't room for a bunch of idiots on a team. hehe.

Brew It

"Every year, BREW 2006 is the place to learn about what's new in wireless data." This is the ONLY informative statement in an email I got about signing up for this convention. The rest of it was flare, purely designed to appeal to my "ooh, pretty" reflex in hopes I'd sign up. FAILED. I'd expect more out of a business convention. Seriously, business types are stupposedly the key people that don't have time to fuck around with an ooh pretty reflex. And certainly don't have time to click the link below for more information. Then there's grammar. If "Every year, BREW 2006 is the place..." that means to me that last year it was called BREW 2006 as well. And the year before. And the year before. How do I know if I went in '04 if it was called '06. *shrug* Silly emails.

Porting Solutions

If the ruckous over Dubai Ports is truly only related to security concerns and not just some xenophobic fear of the Middle East, here are a few ideas I have for solving the problem. The rhetoric is that by managing these services, DPO (I think it's O, might be W) will have easier access to visas, bank accounts, and all that's associated with that in America. Here's a tip, it's easy as pie to open a falsified checking account here. If it wasn't, identity theft wouldn't be such a concern. Regardless, it's my understanding that the company will be managing the labor force on the dock, not actually "controlling" the ports. Customs and the Coast Guard still deal with all security issues, etc, so unless the company were to institute it's own security policy in addition to those matters, I don't see them dealing with that at all. The real danger in international shipping lies at the giving end, not the receiving end. It's easier for a woman to catch an STD than a dude, if you catch my drift. Regardless, here comes the pain.

Work Visa Access Restriction
This one's pretty straight forward, and the precedence for it lies in the office of the President. The Prez, right now, can only be an American born citizen. We don't have to go that extreme, but I don't see a problem requiring that certain job functions with a security risk associated be required to be citizens, not immigrants with work visas. Just make a list of job functions that we don't give work visas for. Other countries do. Hell, for awhile, Australia wouldn't let married women get work visas there, because of the concern that their husband would be taking a job from an Australian man.

Union Visa Restriction
This one's similar to the above, but more restrictive in some fields, less restrictive in others, and has a variety of options. The simplest is to either not issue work visas in a field with an established union, require union membership if an established union is already involved in the industry or some other variant. I don't like this one as much, since it's not as secure, but it does get the other employees in a field involved in the lives of the "new" people that the Congress seems to fear.

Crap. I had a few others, but work got in the way and derailed my brain. Tune in later in case I remember them or ramble on about my theories on who blew up the golden mosque in Iraq.

breathing room

Dubai Ports announced it wouldn't take control of our ports until our gov sorted out its issues. Very smooth on their part. Make the opposition the bad guys on the world scene. That's a first for Bush. lol.

Not a bad idea

Damn I love reading the release from the daily press meeting Scott Mcclelin (spelling is horrible) has over at the White House (you can find it at www.whitehouse.gov, NOT .com). The thing is so damn long, though I rarely get a chance to comment on hit here. Had a lot to say about the Dubai Ports deal yesterday, but couldn't. Regardless, I digress and I haven't even started.

Here's an interesting bit of information from a comment over at futurepundits.com in a discussion about Bush's speach at Johnson Controls in Milwaukee:

"what did we learn from Carter's Synfuel program before it was killed by Reagan?"

It's more a question of what the Saudi's learned from it. They learned that there was a disruptive alternative to oil that was economic at $40/barrel, and that they better keep oil prices below that in order to prevent synfuel gaining economies of scale that would reduce it's breakeven point even lower. Since then they've kept oil prices below $40 very carefully, until they lost control of oil prices very recently.

Of course, the Saudi's lost control of oil prices in the 80's, as new production and conservation increased the margin of supply over demand beyond their margin of swing production. That reduced prices well below the breakeven point for synfuel (even lower than the Saudi's wanted), and it lost out (and gained an undeserved reputation as a boondoggle).

US peak oil around 1970 reduced the world supply margin to a point that they had some power over prices, and they got overconfident in the 70's. The 80's taught them humility. Now, of course, they've lost control over pricing, and even if they get it back they're pretty addicted to the higher revenues. Now they're just hoping to hang on as long as possible before alternatives do them in. At that point I suspect the royal families will just pack up their billions and move to Europe, leaving their populations to poverty.

I found it interesting mainly because I feel that the media tends to represent any evidence of price controls as a new thing, but it's clearly been happening since America started to import oil from abroad. That, and I don't think most Americans consider the Middle East to be a region of much business saavy, which is dumb because that's pretty much where trade began.

Still, that's not even the point of this post! In the same discussion, someone mentioned an idea about getting Oprah involved in saving the planet. With a little research, I found the origins of the plan. Here's what you gotta do. Click on the link, copy the email, and go to Oprah's site to send her the email. Really, it isn't too bad of an idea and doesn't take too much time. Now, I'm not gonna get all super cheery and think Oprah's gonna save our world. I've seen what her damn book club does in the way of generating a ton of excess shipping for book stores, but still. If anyone's got the pull to swing it, Oprah does, right? hehe.

Handcuffed Uterus

South Dakota's legislature passed a bill banning abortion today. In honor of this, I've compiled a list of things that kill babies, all of which I strongly feel should be banned in the United States as well, some of which are, but need stricter penalties. A * indicates I'm willing to go so far as to institute the death penalty for these heinous transgressions.

• Stupidity*
• Drunk Driving*
• Child Abuse (some injuries incured during childhood can cause miscarriages)
• Chemical abuse (alcohol, nicoteine, etc) during pregnancy*
• Chemical abuse (alcohol, nicoteine, etc) before pregnancy (see the child abuse entry)
• Day Care Workers
• Cribs
• Cats
• Small pieces in toys
• Airbags* (kill all those fucking talcum powder things)
• Balloons* (kill them too)
• Fast Food (this is a slow death, generally brought on by heart attack at a later age, but we were all babies once, right?)
• Faulty baby carriages, car seats, etc
• Bad parenting in general
• Poor educaitons (see Fast Food, with the cause of death more than likely being related to mental health concerns, violence of some sort, or a misjudged attempt to bungie jump off of the water tower)
• War
• Various air pollutants from auto emissions
• Rat poison and other toxic substances kept under the sink
• Electricity* (we don't need that shit anyway)
• Claw hammers
• Being dropped from a height of 18", possibly lower

I could continue, but I think I'll start small and gain momentum from there. My plan is to visit the state legislatures in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Tenessee (all of which have similar legislation under construction now) and try to get these ideas pork barrelled into their abortion bills. God would want it that way.

Soylent Green Commies

Soylent Green is people. But the Chinese are going green. Slowly. Does that make them soylent? or people? The Chinese are people, so they must be Soylent Green. Right? Where am I going with this failed circular logic? Here.

See, American Superconductor is a company I've considered investing because of some of their research/production of green alternatives like wind energy components. Turns out, they've got a deal to supply some components to Austrian based Windtec, which is providing wind turbines and what have you to China. Hell, the Chinese even have a special renewables assocation, the Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association, ran by the government. They just want to beat us in everything. Better start learning Chinese.

Seriously, though, they plan on having over 20,000 wind turbines pumping out 20Gw of power by 2020. That's a lot of 20s, and it'd give China the biggest energy economy in the world.

On an investment tangent, around 2000, American Superconductor was trading at around $70/share. Now, there're consistantly around $10-$11. They're 52 week high is 11.99. Right now, they're not a good investment unless you have cash to risk. They've been around long enough that a negative P/E is bad news. Really, a negative P/E is always bad news since it means the company is losing money, but in a newer company working on breakthrough technology, such as XSun or Ballard Power System, it's more of a speculative investment in my mind. Still, with American Superconductor, they should be making money. The business focuses on creating high end technological solutions for lowering the cost of power generation from various sources. I'm sure right now they're heavily into R&D and marketing new solutions to places like China, but at $10 a share, my poor ass wants a company that's already making money or doing R&D on VERY innovative products. (I can invest in RPM Industries, which makes Rust-o-leum and Bondo and shit for $16 a share, be very secure with it, and they pay me $0.64 per share, per year just for trusting them) I'm not saying this company is bad. I'm just saying it isn't for me right now. I'll stick with the other two companies I mentioned. With both of those, the risk is higher, but I can risk less actual capital and stand to quickly gain a higher reward than is possible with American Superconductor.

*Warning* A very simple, but slightly technical and very mathematical explanation of why I'd invest in XSun over American Superconductor resides below. I'm not a professional investor and this is not advice on how to invest, so don't sue me if you lose money. :)
(Say you buy $200 worth of a company. At $10 a share, you get 20 shares. To make $200 MORE than your investment, the stock has to go up $10, which isn't likely going to happen in today's volatile investment world unless the company nails some breakthrough money making thing out of the blue. At $1.50 a share, it's more likely you'll double your money because even at $3 a share some schmuck like you can still buy 100 shares for only a $300 investment. Plus, if you figure a $15 trading fee, you're looking at needing to make $30 off the sale just to break even. With 20 shares, your investment has to go up $1.50/share for that. With 130 shares (roughly what you'd get at $1.50), your investment only has to rise $0.26/share to break even. But again, I must reiterate. Chances are likely that the lower cost investment is MUCH riskier than the higher cost one. Either way, though, we're talking about $200. If you can afford to lose it, go with the risk. If you can't afford to lose it, find a safe money market account and stear clear of stocks for awhile. If it's all you have in your emergency fund, keep it in a savings account that's easy to access, because you should NEVER invest your emergency fund in something that's A)not highly liquid and B)is highly susceptible to market fluctuations. It's recommended your emergency fund be what it takes for you to live at your current level for three months without income. Six months is better. Mine is at one month, which makes my $200 investment even riskier, so I don't recommend following in my footsteps at all. *wink*)

press the mail button

Here's the President's energy speech in Milwaukee on Monday. It's pretty long. The basics are how much we're spending now on government funded research for hybrid cars, hydrogen cells, ethanol from switch grass, etc. Of course, what he doesn't say is how much his budget actually cuts from areas of research, or how much is really needed in the research realm to bring these industries more completely to market. Unfortunately, I don't have enough time to spell that out, either. I'm just throwing the link up for inquisitive minds.

Really, I got nothing today.

Oh yeah.

And this post at Wendy's xanga blog shows you that a little technology is a great way to fill your apartment up with hot chics. That's almost enough to make me pre-order the DVD, which comes out on March 7.....

Howling new sound system

Here's a quick review of Howl's Moving Castle. It rocks. Watch it. If you already have, watch it again. It's especially great on surround sound, even the cheap surround sound system I got yesterday. DVD/CD 5 disc changer, AM/FM radio, surround sound system consisting of 1 central speaker, 5 satellites, and a sub. Progressive Scan capability. Purty solid overall, and it'll work for us until I decide to update to a flat screen HDTV in like 5 years. I might upgrade the speakers or add in a self-powered sub, but we'll see how much we watch TV and whether the thing changes me into a technophile or not. Prolly not, because realistically, there's no need for theater quality sound in our little apartment. It would be wasted on the complaints of the neighbors. Even now I'm paranoid about getting reamed out. The system has a DCL feature, which averages the audio a bit, meaning there isn't such a great difference between voices and explosions, making it much safer to watch Star Wars on it(cause the sub kicks your ass during a space battle. vibrates it if yer on the toilet, too). I think Saturay morning before the LAN party I might throw in some Blackhawk Down and test the thing out. It'll crank to 50+ on the volume control, but 35 is almost too loud. Not a bad way to spend $200, considering I went to replace our crap ass DVD player and the model I WAS going to get was $120 plain and simple. Don't worry, I got a warranty in case cheap is talking about the construction, not just the price....

A Wall to Alex

Here you go. Archaeologists have unearted a wall made around the time of Alexander the Great at the base of Mt. Olympus. Go Greeks.

windy ranchers

Here's some interesting (good) news. A group of farmers and ranchers in Texas is getting together to start their own wind farm on their land to supplement their rural incomes. That's the market at work.....oil prices go higher, green energy starts to be more profitable, and with little infrastructure in place and even less regulation, it's way easier for the little man to put together an energy cooperative to cash in. I could see this type of thing derailed, though, if the government changes or removes the law that requires power companies to buy excess energy back from consumers.....

Before Prejudice

Remember in grade school, when you didn't know what prejudice was? You Jewed people down and all kinds of negative slang that didn't mean a lick to you, because stereotypes were just developing in your mind. In dirtville, where I grew up, if you gave someone something, and then took it back when they misused it or you just didn't like them anymore, it was called Indian Giving. Even now, I wonder why, because it seems to me that's kind of what we did under the guise of reservations for awhile....

Still, in all sarcasm, it's good to see the State Department is keeping the practice alive. Now, I know that there is probably a lot of elbow jostling going on with Hamas that we aren't seeing from a media assortment that's proven it's dislike of the administration in power now. Unfortunately, that means there's a lot of stuff that the rest of the world isn't seeing, too, or possibly that's being misrepresented by an Islamic media tide just polishing the opposite side of the coin. Whatever the case, asking for money back that we gave the Palestinians to help rebuild the Gaza strip isn't a move that's gonna be looked upon favorably by the already fired up Muslims of the area. The only saving grace here is that they gave it back willingly, but that can be used against us, too.

I'll tell you what, though. It's easy for me to sit here and say "Bad move," but I'll have my butt licked if I can figure out any other way for the Admins to deal with the Hamas situation right now. Not a spot I'd like to be leading the nation through. They have my sympathy, just not my support.

Knowledge (Current Events)

Here's a chap that takes current news and turns it into some d20 variants. Good stuff.

links & reviews

First the links. Here are some interesting articles about insurgents in Iraq, thanks to an interesting site Bjorn directed me to.

IED micro-markets
"Open Source" Warfare

On an interesting tangent, the Open Source post gave me a fun idea for a military style campaign. It could be played in a d20 rules base, but might work better with different rules entirely. The basic premise is that the players pick a side in a conflict and the GM runs the opposite side. One side is a structured military with strict command and control. The other is, of course, the open source, cell styled force. The campaign can (and should) run the gambit between planning, role playing, and tactical combat. Could be good times. The easiest set up would have the players running the structured military, possibly with some tables and random rolls on the requisition of supplies front, while the GM ran the OS side, since that's the side that's the most radical (and already fits a lot of the structure inherent in the adventures I tend to make anyway, LOL).

I lost my train of thought, there, though.

I was also gonna review Doom and Zorro 2, but can't remember my thoughts there. I do think Doom's a good MST3K movie, decent action flick, but with poor lines and not too stressful on the brain. Coulda used more nudity maybe. Nothing surprising about it though. Z2 was good. As good as the 1st, I think. Worked for me.

The Colossus of Morrilon

Here's one for Joe. A collective look at some of the nicknames flying around in this year's Winter Olympics. Kind of funny that the German luge guy is the Sausage. Cause he's in a tube of ice and all that....*snicker*

Euro Gun. No I'm not.

Here are the new weapons that'll open up in BF2: Euro Forces. They came with the new patch.

Unlocks:
FNP-90 (a medium range SMG for the anti-tank kit. Mixed reviews in game, as it isn't as badass as it's real life counterpart. The more levelheaded players tend to like it, because it's considerably better than the stock SMGs for the kit and offers a longer range than the jiz worthy DAO-12 shotgun unlock.)
L96a1 (a sniper rifle unlock. I've seen no news on it.)

Euro Weapons
Famas - Looks like an L85 style rifle, with a vertical hand grip, clip mounted behind the grip, but in front of the shoulder block.
HK21 - an assault rifle sans grenade launcher, possibly a medic rifle then...
HK53A3 - SMG, probably the stock Euro anti-tank weapon
L85sa80a2 - A variant of the L85, the BF2 medic unlock. This one's got a grenade launcher attachment, so it's gotta be the assault kit standard.
Beneli-M4 - pump shotgun.

Judging from the tags of "eur" and "gb" before the weapons, it looks like the Euro armies will be the Eurpoean Union forces and the British army. Makes sense. Still no word on maps, though. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say for sure a Turkish map, since that's so easily accessible from the MEC forces. If they wanna be really cool and add snow maps (a man can hope), they could do something in the Finland/Sweden area, if Russia let the Chinese come through, but my guess is they'd save that one for a third booster to enhance the Special Forces expansion pack.

Still, good times, and the new guns are enough to get my $10 sent to EA. I just wish they'd put out patches to fix things and not because a new round of content was coming out. I think 1.03 is the only patch that wasn't content related so far, but that was long before I joined the game. Still, 1.2 has a laundry list of game play fixes, not the least of which makes it safe for me to lay mines (no team punish if my guns run the fucking things over like MORONS) and the ability to actually shoot down helicopters and jets with the damn AA weapons. Drunk pilots beware.

Happy Love Inc Day

Oh boy. Where to start. The romance tonight is going to consist of sushi, plum wine, and Doom. That's right, the Rock, in Doom. Mebbe I'll kill some tonsils with my BFD.

On a couple of more serious notes, here's some interesting tidbits. Looks like BP and Edison International have proposed an electric plant that would seperate Hydrogen and CO2 from petroleum coke (a leftover from refining oil), burn the H for electricity and sell the CO2 to be pumped back into oilfields, increasing their yield, trapping the CO2 and eventually making more oil. The kicker? Petroleum coke is used in making aluminum, the process isn't a very profitable way to make electricity, and the whole deal is likely to drive up the cost of petroleum coke (and thereby aluminum) and electricity in CA. Still, the cost of electricity and everything else is already going up, and while the plant isn't likely to be as effective as an ethanol plant, I'm of the mind that we're better off with a SPAN of energy sources than just one. Options are great.

And onto gaming. Here's an article about the "fifth generation game consoles" and what direction gamers would like to see things go. I read this article about 3 hours ago, and can't remember my points on it though. That means I'm going to revert to the many posts during the day rather than the one big one I was trying here. Let's see.

First, I was in a huff about the graphics presented in the little pic. Mainly the fact that the bump maps on the textures were so exaggerated. Drives me wild. Why? Because it takes that exaggeration to make them noticeable, and many audiences view that as quality, but you don't see that level of rough in many things in real life. Rough isn't so much a visual sensation as it is tactile, so, like many subtle, almost unnoticeable actions and expressions, we see it visually exaggerated in animation so that people know it's there. It's like lead up and follow through in action. If you jump, your knees might cock a few degrees in preparation, but in a lot of animations, the subjects knees almost bend 90 degrees. That's so you notice it as an audience member and it looks realistic. A more realistic knee bend isn't likely to be spotted and the audience will feel the whole thing is stiff. That's because most people aren't that observant.

I can't really get into the content side of things because my opinion is based on a few assumptions that might not be true. The first is that programmers in large companies tend to be in a cubicle farm on a team in a not so dynamic environment. That doesn't breed ingenuity or a desire to excel, so you get the same ole play paradigm in all the games in a specific genre. FPS games tend to be like Doom, Quake and BF2 - different subjects, same play. RTS are the same - build a base, add defenses and factories, pump out units, try to pit your tanks against tanks and machine gun infantry, your machine gun infantry against their anti-tank infantry, and your anti-tank infantry against their tanks, ad nauseum. Role playing games - talk to the natives, get a quest or two, complete the quest, get treasure, gain levels, possibly piece together a mystery and fight a big bad guy. In most cases, missions and quests have replaced the levels and bosses of Nintendo.

I've got a whole rant about whether the 5th gen AI can live up to a storyteller/GM type interaction or not, but I need to take an early lunch; after reading this post, I think it's best I not go much further anyway. I'm not really supporting my opinions at all today.... Truly, it is a rant.

Star Wars:Empire at War Demo

SWEaW comes out on Feb 16. Too late to be a viable gift for VDay, but close enough that many a man will sleep on the couch for skimping on the girl's gift to afford the game... You can DL the demo at the game's website (which I'm too lazy to link to here). There're five sites that Lucas Arts recommends DLing the game from. I'll start there. I found ONE that didn't require a subscription to download the free demo. ONE! Lucas, it's a FREE DEMO. Don't redirect me to a site that expects me to pay a fee to download the FREE DEMO. I don't want pay a monthly fee to somebody so that I can download trials of games. Hell, I refuse to pay a monthly fee to play a MMORPG that I have to pay for in the first place right now. That's why my MMORPG of choice is Guild Wars. Sheesh.

So anyway, the server without a subscription fee did DL at 11okb/sec, which meant it took like an hour and a half to get the file, compared to the 9 fucking hours it took to DL the Battle for Middle Earth II demo I'll be testing tonight. So, props there.

Now, let's review the game. First, I have a tendancy to dislike demos. I have a few theories on this. Especially for strategy games, I'm a man that likes to read the book cover to cover. Most RTS games are either a left or right-click action based system, with a lot of similar commands. Ctrl+# creates a squad of that number, shit like that. Hell, they usually have a customize keyboard option that lets you set up your own controls. Empire at War is just different enough from the last three RTS games I've played to throw me off. Nothing major, though, but I didn't find the tutorials helpful enough to immerse myself in the demo. The problem there is that it seems they took the first five tutorials from the real game and used them in the demo (there are more than 5 because after the fifth you get a message that says the tutorials continue in the full version). Now, that's not a bad idea business-wise, but let's remember one thing. The full version comes with a manual to accent those tutorials.

Playwise, let's see. The Rebles are SLOW. Now, I know that speeder bikes are fast. Speeder bikes can drop a thermal detonator and run away faster than you can shoot em. That's a handy trick, cause I found most of my rebel units couldn't fucking run away from the damn thing in time. Thing is, speeder bikes are fragile as fuck, so it shouldn't have been a problem. I musta had some drunk rebels or something. But I digress.

Tactically, each unit has strengths and weaknesses. I love the space battles. Fighters are good vs. fighters. Ships are good vs. different kinds of ships, etc. Bombers are great, because they can surpass a ship's shields and attack specific hardpoints. Purty sweet to send a flight of fighters to distract the enemy fighters, then have the bombers do a run on the hangars to keep enemy fighters and bombers outta service, then run on the shield generators. Once a ships shields are down, all ships can target hardpoints, but while the shields are up, only bombers can do surgical strikes and ship to ship combat is all a matter of whose got better shields. Tactics are very important than. In one scenario, two star destroyers and four frigates make short work of a BAD ASS space station, no tactics. In the space battle demo level though, good tacts let me destroy two star destroyers and a space station with two blockade runners, two frigates, and a large fleet of Y-wings and X-wings. I used the tactics above and focused on one ship at a time. Wasn't any way my little ships could split up and tackle the star destroyers.

Ground based combat is a whole different ball of wax. The same strengths vs. weakness apply, but it seems to move faster once combat is entered (unlike when you're trying to explore the map with fucking slow ass rebels). I might be missing something, or it might not have been available in the demo, but I didn't see any means of building big structures in battle. You build that shit before on a galactic level. It might be different on defense, but on offense, nope. There are build points you can capture, but you can only build turrets, repair facilities, and sensors on those. Instead, there are reinforcement points you have to capture. Each point gives you more units to bring in from orbit in space (I know on defense there ARE prebuilt facilities that crank out the units). However, at least in the demo, the build points don't necessarily coincide with the reinforcement points. So I found myself with anti-vehicle turrets put up in a perimeter around the map while I struggled to defend a distant reinforcement point. Sidenote: USE THE MINIMAP for quickly navigating the battle. The screen moves to slow otherwise.

Now, a lot of the possibly cool features were also turned off in the demo. One that wasn't was the movie button. During the course of the game, you can switch to a cinematic camera, whereupon your view goes all wide screen and the camera starts to make sweeping angles and replicate movie action. It's pretty cool, but impractical, because I don't think you can issue orders from there. Still, when you're sweeping into the enemy base with victory tied up in a sling, it's fun to switch to that view and watch your TIE bombers come zipping over the ridge and kill everyone... It's ALMOST worth the price of admission for that alone. Other features mentioned, but not in the demo, include the ability to control 16 movie personalities (including Vader) during battle. I know you can hire Boba Fett, but you can't control him. He just does his own thing on the battlefield fucking people up.

So, there is hope for the game, but I found the demo disappointing, as I usually do.

Why We BF2 Fight

I got nothing today. No worthwhile rants, no insightful personal posts, nothing. So, today, you get a BF2 report from last night (as best I can remember).

Phil, Scott and I (waiting on John to join the team) hooked up about 8. I'm starting to think those bastards play without me in an effort to keep their scores ahead of mine (they've been playing twice as long, but I'm fast approaching Scott's score and Phil is struggling to stay 4k ahead of me. Actually, It aint too hard for Phil, as my score is a measely 0.89 per minute, while his is about 0.85. I doubt I catch him before he makes 2nd Leiutenant, let alone Master Sergeant. I don't feel like racing him in time played, so that'll be the deciding factor.

Anyway, we started out on a server ran by the Four Horseman (I think there were 6 of them online that game). I think this one had like 28 players on 64 person maps, which makes for LONG rounds (always nice in my book) and we were having fun. Phil and I were owning in the attack helicopter for awhile. But then, on Kubra Damn, the round started before the admins were ready, so none of the Four Horsemen got into the jets or helicopters. Then the round ended like 8 seconds into the game and the map reset, which was enough for us to say "Fuck that juvenile behavior" and head to a new server.

Scott recommended an EA Official server. In a "The Other Bar" move, I pointed out that those were the servers where the asshats play. I'm talking about the guys that LIVE the game. True to form, our side lost both the rounds we played by 150 points or more. Phil had barely eeked out 8 kills on the best round and Scott and I scored most of our points reviving and healing the seriously wounded and dead. Regularly in those two rounds did the enemy steal our helicopter and do little more than hover over our remaining spawn point and mow us down as we came back from the dead. So we moved on.

I believe next came the OldMenOnline server. I love playing on this server. It's generally fair and well admined. I think we only got a few rounds in before it crashed, though, maybe just one. It was a fun round as Phil was on the opposing team, so Scott and I hunted him relentlessly. At one point, Phil, in a Chinese attack helicopter, was hunting Scott on the ground. I nailed his tail rotor (hur hur hur) with an anti-tank missile fractions of a second before Scott hit him with a 2nd rocket, blowing the chopper out from under Phillio. Good times. Phil and I had quite a few high explosive duals, either with him trying to trick me into his C4 traps or me on the ground as anti-tank and he in some heavy armor. I won those duals more than he, but more than once that was because HE fell into one of my traps, not vice versa.

Somewhere in there we played on Wake Island and had a lot of fun. When we lost, it was because our whole team wasn't working together and Phil and I generally spent too much time in the air. Once we worked out a process wherin we'd fly over a flag and clear out the enemies, then I'd bail out, stand at the flag and capture it while Phil covered me from the air, at which point I'd climb back in the chopper and we'd rinse and repeat, WE owned that map. Not to be outdone, Scott stayed on the ground as Medic and single handedly revived 1/2 the army.

We ended on a different servor on the Strike at Karkand map. This is a US vs. MEC (arabian) map, with the US having one uncapturable base outside a city, and the MEC having like 9 capturable bases with the city. About 3 of those flags are ROYAL CLUSTER FUCKS. Great times. Some jack ass was "bunny hopping" the whole round (that's where you just spam the spacebar to jump all over the place, sometimes going prone in the air (looks dumb) and kill everyone. very annoying exploit). I got into it verbally with him, asking how he'd play or even IF he would after the next patch, when you can no longer jump and shoot at the same time. His reply was "No worries, mate. You're just upset you're getting owned so easily." Then, with prolly 10 seconds left in the round, the God of the Stairs hit, and I had no comeback. The round ended, and the bunny hopper left the server. Later that night I realized I should have said, "Yeah, easy like my wife playing Mortal Kombat with the one button combo... Spacebar, spacebar, spacebar is a lot like square, square, square." Of course, he would have replied, "No worries mate, you're just upset your wife owns you with one button." And left ther server. Either way, it worked out, and the final round was good times.

And that's what I did on my summer vacation.

I got my hand in your pocket

Man. If you're a Republican in the House, how do you deal with the chance Abramoff might say your name in some bribery tials? Why, you put Tom DeLay on the committee overseeing the Justice Department. EEE Gods Man! Do I have to spell everything out for you? Why don't we also put him on the Appropriations committee, so he can honestly fill the seat of Duke Cunningham?! Great idea!

Damn Tapeworm

So this week has been odd where breakfast is concerned. Tuesday I had a bowl of cereal for breakfast, but was still so hungry I had to grab a bagel on the way to work. Same thing today. Cereal at home, had to get a deli breakfast sammich from Subway here at work. Damn hunger. Gets in my way too much.

Boomer Bye-bye

Here's a funny thought that I read in a comment over at futurepundit.com. Perhaps Bush's proposal to freeze spending for the National Institute for Health has some long term thinking behind it. Perhaps he's thinking that less research will equal less ground breaking cures and treatments, which will in turn mean that America's aging population won't live as long, thereby "killing" the demands on entitlement programs such as Medicare....

Then again, he could just be punishing the scientific community for trying to work into stem cell research (in his own mind).

hyrdo energy hawg

Don't drink bottled water.

It's gotten a bit out of hand. If you do have to drink it, because you're incapable of or too lazy to figure out how to work a Brita filter, try to buy a brand that is bottled locally, or as close to locally as you can. DON'T BUY FIJI WATER FROM BARNES & NOBLE, or anywhere other than Fiji for that matter.

use prison adress....

Well, it looks like I might be getting a few things done this week. Yay.

On the Gen Con front, I've bought my ticket, Nick's bought his, and the hotel action will be in the bank tomorrow. Woot. Tis all official now. Later in the year, events open up for registration, so we'll be solid then. It's still up in the air if we'll get tickets to the True Dungeon, but it's more likely since it's just Nick and I. True Dungeon is an actual live dungeon event, complete with traps, monsters, combat, etc. Good times.

On the home front, today I paid off an old credit card. Whoot! Raided the savings to do it, but I figered it was worth it to knock off a payment. I figer that payment will be split between other debt and savings, so no real increase in the quality of life there. That's ok, though, cause I'm relatively satisfied with our quality of life right now. A house would be nice, as would better cars, but both are a bit unrealistic with the possibility of losing Wendy's income in the fall.... So this helps there.

There are some investment opportunities opening up this week, too. Stocks. I love em. I don't expect to make too much cash, cause the volume of the investments are seriously low (hell one is courtesy of Sharebuilder, which is a dollar cost averaging program, so I'll be picking up like 4 shares of one company a month. turtle slow there). Still, there's growth potential in both, especially if the trend toward greener energy continues. Little steps, my friends. Little steps.

All in all, not sure why I'm posting any of this... Just trying to split the juice between the readers that like the more technical analyses and the readers that like the more personal journal style entries. hoohoo. Train kept a rollin, all night long.

a budgetary ruse?

Sometimes I think I might be giving the Prez a little too much credit. Take this budget thing. The budget he's proposed is like 2.77 TRILLION bucks. $440 billion of that is defense. That's 25% of the budget going to the military. On top of that, he wants his tax cuts permanent and he wants to cut or underfund like 140+ programs on the domestic level, in education, cancer research, public health, etc. Let's not talk about Medicare. These are all very dumb moves we say. The media is in an uproar. Special interest groups. Dems. Repubs. All in an election year.

And there's the kicker. This "scandalous" budget gives the Republicans running this year a very large, very public, very BAD THING, to rail against the President with. It gives the guys the Prez needs to support him on other issues something to hold onto in the campaigning ahead.

"No I'm not just going to TOE THE PARTY LINE. You see how I stood up against the horrible budget the President proposed to us? That's not toeing the party line. Leave me with these false accusations based on me voting for Alito, spending cuts on domestic programs in '05 followed by tax cuts to the wealthiest just 16 days later, and I don't even want to go into Medicare part D. There's no evidence that I just toe the party line! I stood up against that horrible budget!" That's what Republicans will say, now.

Bush. Him aint as dumb as we got him figered for sometimes.

Or maybe I'm just overthinking the situation. He still says nucilar, though.

Sure thing Mr. Spacely

Got 3.5 mil? Want a flying car? You can almost get one.

Marketplace has a spiel here.

Here's the news direct from Moller.

And here's the catalog entry in Neiman Marcus. At least, it would be, if I knew the difference between Cut and Paste. :(

Hot stuff

Hot on the heels of yesterday long D&D post, here's one for the Greenies in the audience. I found so much information this morning (not all of it brand new) that I don't even know where to start.

I suppose first we'll start with the old news. Apparently, since 1988, the Federal Transit Authority (FTA) and the Department of Energy (DoE) have been working on a fuel cell bus initiative. Starting way back then, they developed (or funded) three phosphoric acid fuel cell systems, dropped them into three 30' buses and had em scootin around three big universities. The thinking is that since buses run in very controlled environments, they're the perfect testing ground for fuel cell technology, AND they're common sights in most cities, meaning the buses themselves become a tool for acclimating people to the idea of fuel cell technology.

In 1998, they finished up a 40' bus powered by a fuel cell engine from Ballard Power Systems (which I think is in Vancouver. Aside from being the leader in fuel cell technology, right now, powering buses in Canada, the US, and Japan, as well as being the ONLY company that the leader of China visited in his most recent visit to Canada, they also have a sweet deal with Daimler/Chrysler and Ford to provide carbon coated transmission parts that aid fuel efficiency. I consider Ballard (BLDP) to be a pretty solid company, but I digress.) The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority has a one year deal to run this bus on many of its routes. They may have done so already, but the report at the link above uses the present tense.

That's all great news, but I wonder why there's 5 busses on the road in 17 years. I'm sure there are technological reasons on the early end of things, but the Ballard cells have been proven over and over again. If the FTA and DoE think that fuel cells are the way to go in the area of mass transit, how bout some incentives? I'm sure a requirement for any transit systems getting federal money, say all buses be fuel cell buses by 2015, would get the ball rolling. Of course, it's likely there is no federal funding for state ran mass transit systems. In that case, make some. Offer up a couple mil for any state willing to switch to fuel cell technology in its mass transit systems in the next 5 years. Sure, a cool mil won't pay for the transition, but it sweetens the pot along with cleaner air, lower transportation cost, etc. I don't have a feel for local metro transit authority, but I bet money that if such an offer was made PUBLIC, the citizens of the Twin Cities would really pressure the MTA.

Regardless, the FTA is a member of California Fuel Cell Partnership, which has over 30 members, including auto makers, energy companies, and obviously government agencies. What's really cool about the CFCP is that in January of this year (the 26th) they opened their first hydrogen refueling station in Santa Ana, CA. The way it works is that there are 30 Toyota Prius cars that have been reconfigured to be hydrogen fueled internal combustion engines. Five cities in CA will have refueling stations, capable of fueling 10 vehicles per day (with expansion potential). Two of em will even be researching using landfill stock as a means of gaining fuel. The company that's organizing the whole thing has a five year contract with the organization.

That's all good news. What's not good news is that even despite all of this good news, the gov (even NASA apparently) still insists on hiding the extent of greenhouse gases damaging the environment. It's tough to say how much of that is corporate interest in Washington, but I doubt we see a change from it soon. It's sad, because there are ample examples abroad of nations making moves in the right direction. Canada is making an effort to switch to fuel cell buses. Iceland is running three in the capital and is moving to a full bore oil free society, switching all cars to fuel cell and garnering most of it's electricity from geothermal and hydroelectric power. Japan is working on switching to fuel cell buses and gas/electric cars, and Europe is heavily motivated to move to a biodiesel/electric model. Hell, even China is researching hydroelectric options, and it can only be assumed that their recent visit to Ballard means there is some consideration of fuel cell technology.

Even more annoying, though, is that the Department of Defense is looking at fuel cell action, not for vehicles (maybe), but as battery back up power in the field. Ballard has a unit (called the Airsomething) that is basically a portable fuel cell generator. So there's at least THREE agencies making a move toward alternate source. Good stuff, but why isn't any of this being made more public. Seriously, how much would the administration's approval jump if this was all on the national media? What I wanna know is, are they missing the ball on how much easier the public would accept these changes if they seemed to be promoting them seriously, OR is the national media just not reporting any of it in an effort to keep the admins approval rating low during the upcoming elections? Either way, fie on someone.

It's not all doom and gloom and massive energy consumption in the public sector, though. Even Wal-Mart is getting into the green action, deciding it wants ALL of it's energy to come from renewable energy sources, and with XSun now starting to produce it's PowerGlass, Building Integrated Photovoltaics are reaching a point that a building could soon be supplying it's own power (with glass and shingles now power your home, you could be making money by selling electricity your house is making from the sun BACK to the energy companies. Right now, they're legally required to pay YOU for any excess energy your home produces). Honeywell, BP, and even Exxon and the big fuel companies in Europe have made big moves to research renewable energies (although for BP, I think, and the other European energy companies, the EU basically said, "hey, spend some of your large oil income on renewables, or we'll take from you in a special tax and do it ourselves." Better PR this way.)

So, bottom line, things are in motion. A little too slow for my tastes, but rolling. I just wish some of this stuff was more obviously in the mind's eye of the consumers. It wouldn't take much for people to once again consider things like energy requirements and waste product in their purchasing decision. Stop buying so many convenient, throw away items (we stop making that shit, we've just saved literally a TON of energy, specially if it comes from ethanol made from the funny little grass Bush mentioned in the state of the union), buy more energy efficient appliances, shit like that. Then there's turning off the light when you leave the room, clicking down the volume one notch, leaving for work ten minutes sooner... There's as much room for energy savings on an individual basis as there is a need for the stuff that's going on in the corporate and governance side of things. But that's a soapbox, and there's no room for that in this "article." :)

erictile dysfunction

Man. There was a quip about in on the Daily Show last night, and I can't find a damn online news source. I wasn't fast enough to catch what news station reported on it during the blurb either. :(

The deal is, the first try at electing a new Speaker of the House had to be redone yesterday, because there were more ballots that came in than there were Republicans in the House.... hehe.

Then they elected John Boner, who has, in the past, been seen actually passing out checks from Tobacco lobbyists on the House floor. That's class. Reform indeed.

(sung to the tune of Karma Chameleon)
Culture, culture, culture, culture, culture, culture, culture
Of Coooruption.
You take a bribe.
You take a bribe.

Rulin' would be easy
If the people would follow blind.
propaganda.
propaganda.

On and Off

Over at One Angry Polack, there's a post that starts off a little influenced by Steven Colbert and goes on to discuss acting vs. role-playing and includes a little rant about in game rules and the like dealing with social interactions. It's not a bad read (the dude's a bit 'dedicated' to his beliefs), and of course, it got me thinking. Not having much of a gaming life right now, mostly I get to think about our most recent campaign at times like this.*

What seems like EONS ago, there was some party strife, and it was settled with the party bard going super Diplomacy check on two of our characters. At the time, we were pissed. "You can't ROLL character interactions! Just PC to NPC!"

I think we were wrong. The bottom line is that in D&D the rules are in place primarily to let players be something they couldn't be in real life. Wendy herself understands (and is rather outspoken about it) that her improv skills aren't up to playing the character she had at the time, but that's what the Diplomacy skill is for (or even a bardic level check with a charisma bonus, or whatever function you wanna use). Especially considering that while we were in our third or fourth session as a group, and consequently the players didn't know much about everyone else's characters, those characters already had at least a hunnerd miles behind them together. There woulda been small talk, they woulda known little things that we, as players, didn't know. Since none of us were playing an anti-social, sit-in-my-cloak-and-sulk character, there's no reason that a skilled bard in the party couldn't have manipulated the hell out of the other characters, despite our player beliefs. That's not necessarily fair to the more combat intensive characters in the group that sacrificed basic social skills to be well versed in violence, manaphysics (just coined that term), and generally brutalizing the populatoin of the world not fortunate enough to have a solid d20 in their corner, but neither is it fair to take said bard and run him through never ending caves of combat with no other place for him to shine.

In most groups, there's an understood "social contract" that keeps players from using their characters to manipulate the other players/characters. However, there's generally also an understood clause in the contract that one or some of the players won't be obstinate and refuse to progress with the game because of a disagreement. On the other two sides of the square, there's probably a clause about not attacking or threatening fellow party members over petty disagreements (ie, not resorting to violence without some serious levels of character to character AND player to player discussion, and certainly not attacking other party members unless all involved understand it is SOLELY a character action), AND ALSO a clause about not pushing a situation or adventure forward at the cost of half the player's fun. In the above example, we all had different assumptions about which of these clauses applied and how far they carried.

(On a side note, I'd bet in every group there's an understood clause that the DM will first and foremost ensure that everyone in the group has a moment or two to shine each game session (possibly averaged over time). In a year and a half of gaming, Nick and I were both pretty even in that we can count on ONE hand (together, combined. not each of us on one hand, BOTH of us on one hand) how many times we did that. That's not to say our games aren't/weren't fun, funny, and a great way to spend an evening. Just that neither one of us tends to consider the character's abilities in adventure planning or what the players like to do. We try, but neither one of us is really that good at considering other people's feelings to begin with. We're not what you'd call cuddly DMs. Our pixies shoot you in the fucking eye with their sleep arrows and still babies. If there's milk, they tip it over or spooge in it. Hence the inherent need of the players to work in their own moment to shine. Considering the other players in our group.......)

Which brings me to the meat of the post. Yeah, that's a lot of grizzle to gnaw through up there, but here's the juicy part that applies the whole thing to gaming in general, and not just a defunct campaign. Here's my idea for dealing with social interaction in D&D, which accomodates the rollers and the rolers (that extra 'l' is pretty important in some circles), and very specifically wraps up at least one of the assumptions misunderstood above. Roll the appropriate social checks ahead of time. Diplomacy vs. diplomacy, charisma vs. willpower, whatever. Just make the opposed rolls. THEN, role-play that part of the game if it's important (obviously, the rolls are enough to see what you pay at an inn or whatever). That's where the situation can go from dull and lifeless to interesting, and a player that's better at improv or acting in character can actually help someone that isn't. It once more puts the conflict into the dice and makes the players cooperate to achieve a goal and have fun, which is what D&D is meant to be about (although most people break the game's paradigm down into killing things and taking there stuff).

A DM that's having problems getting the players into the predetermined RP event can offer up XP bonuses as appropriate (just make sure you're not penalizing someone that's not good at improv for not trying or over-rewarding the thespian in the group that actually works for the Guthrie part time, UNLESS the non-improv player tends to make up the bonus XP in another area, ie tactics or keeping the other players on task). It's a bit of a switch for most game groups I bet, but it might be better than the alternative; being party strife, DM favorites winning out during intraparty conflict, or an alpha player taking the lead in most, if not all, situations that require anything "in character".

*I should amend this statement. Right now, my gaming life does include a semi-regular campaign in the form of Shadowrun (4th ed), and is mostly consumed by BF2 and a sizeable freelance d20 project (which I'd like to get one or two more of, cause I work better uber stressed and compressed, like elephant shit being squeezed into a diamond). When I say gaming life right now, I mean the part of my life that is spent gaming. I much prefer it when the gaming consumes a part of my life outside of gaming.

What I mean by this is that right now, I would leap a leap to shake the Earth if we removed one member of the SR group. Can't stand her. Tried, failed, gave up. I'm playing the campaign to hang with Nick, because I love SR, and because it's the only outlet I have for that right now. I can't say I spend much time outside of the session developing Aardvark much (hell, we just made 7,500 in cold cash, and I still haven't considered spending it). That's not to say I dislike anything about the Friday night session other than the one player and the fact that Nick prolly spends more time than the GM thinking about the campaign, and everyone else is prolly on par with me. I love it. But it doesn't affect my life much.

Goose and Gander

This makes me happy. I'm not saying this makes me happy because she got yoinked for her shirt. I'm a staunch supporter of our military peeps, especially now that they're led by incompetance at the very top.

No, this makes me happy because it at least some arm of our governance system, at least some portion of the executive branch of the law, is willing to do its job based on the job as written (in this case the rules of the setting), not based on who a person is or who they may know. Rock on. America lives on somewhere.

And poo on Bill Young for raising a stink about it. Thems the rules bud. Might as well invoke a nukular shirt option and strike down the rule.....

Givin it a go

Well, if you read this article, it looks like Hamas is being level headed on more than a few things. It's clear their interests lie in what's best for the Palastenian people. Hope things go smoothly from here, but it's still a tense situation.

No big surprises

No surprises in the speech last night. A lot of initiatives and "bipartisan" councils. I quote bipartisan because I usually see these councils consisting of 13 members, 8 being Republicans, and 5 being Democrats. That's more lopsided than bipartisan in my book. Make the councils evenly split and call it bipartisan.

There is a lot of news coverage on the Dems erupting in applause at not passing the Social Security reform and Bush getting huffy over it. Personally, I view that as a failure of Bush, not a failure of Congress. I mean, it's his reform, so it's his job to get the reform passed through the legislature, and if that requires (*gasp*) negotiations, it falls on him to make some deals. It's the same reason my political career (lol) is thus far a failure in my eyes. Not one of my reformative ideas has been embraced by a legislature on any level. Of course, for me, it's a matter of blogging an idea and leaving it at that. Still, my fault.

I did like the Teach Kids Science and Math Initiative. That cracked me up. Here's the thing, in December of last year, there were major cuts made to financial aid for college. On top of rising tuition costs, us middle class people can now get even less in grants for school. If I remember right (too lazy to double check dates right now), it was in the huge ball of spending cuts that the Repubs waved around as fiscal responsibility.....right before a huge ball of tax cuts went to the wealthiest Americans again. Now they're waving around funding initiatives to increase or aptitude in things that will make us globally competitive. The irony of it is that the countries that have most recently outstripped us in those fields (China, India, South Korea, etc) sent most of their stellar performers here to study. It kind of makes me wonder how much of the initiative is going to benefit citizens.

So, personally, I felt the speech was a poor attempt to gloss over the administration's continued attempts to run the nation with heavy handed tactics, fail to take criticism, and continue to live in a reality that's pretty far from the rest of the world. Looks like another year of the same.

As a quick poll, how many of us have actuall paid less taxes or got a bigger refund since Bush came into office? Not me.