It's a game day - 05 January 2008

So, the universe decided to make me look bad in front of others - I mentioned that I hadn’t really done a whole lot of winning on game days, even though I was having fun, and tonight, I played Pink Godzilla Dev Kit and won, and then tied for first in the Citadel game with aurora77. I guess this is one of the primary rules of my life - if there is a joke to be made, it will be, often at my expense. Which is not always a bad thing. If it involves hot wings that requrie waivers, however, stop the joke before it goes off.

Organic molecules have been detected outside the Sol system, according to analysis of observations made of a dust disc and stars nearly 220 light-years away from us.

In China, videos available over the Internet to watch have been strongly restricted. For companies and websites like YouTube, trying to bring their site within the new guidelines could be a big problem. So while they hope that the Chinese government doesn’t level the ban-stick against them, it’s probably going to be an easier decision that way than to try and sanitize to China’s standards.

On the opinion columns, John Hawkins has ten pet peeves about American politics, and while he writes from the conservative viewpoint, the big points that he makes are true of both sides of the political aisle. Having a system that works would be infinitely preferrable to what we have now, but for each sane and sensible person, there could be one to one hundred wingnuts. Plus, according to John Hockenberry, network television news doesn't understand anything about the modern world, and so the people don’t get the information they want and are stuck listening to crap they don’t want.

Rush Limbaugh resents any comparisons of the current candidate crop to his God, Ronald Reagan. Since Huckabee won Iowa, he took the brunt of Limbaugh’s ire, and tried to explain how he really was a conservative in all the right Republican ways. Fox News was a bit more worried in general about the election results, asking "Did populism win and America lose in Iowa"? The editors there had to have at least discussed it before it went on, right? Following the momentum of this paragraph, Senator Clinton started talking up her experience and leadership after taking a drubbing in Iowa.

Not quite into the pastry realm, but disturbing nonetheless to me is the idea of Taser parties, where the personal shocking devices are shown and sold in a manner much more akin to adult toys and plastic containers.

Time to take some arrow-shots at a not-very smart idea at all, namely Hooters Toddler Wear. Because every toddler boy and girl on the block wants to be a walking corporate billboard for a restaurant with a thinly-veiled advertisement of its major draw. And that’s the “harmless” end of the scale. Female genital mutilation is on the rise in Britain, and a father set fire to his daughter's house, killing her, her unborn child, her 3 year-old son, and her husband, because he didn't approve of her marriage.

Going to damage through electronics, the FAA told Boeing to fix a potential vulnerability in the 787 - because the flight networks and a passenger Internet network can access each other. I’m not sure I understand why anyone would even want control networks and passenger networks to be able to see each other, much less communicate in any sort of way. If Czech hackers can insert a fake mushroom cloud into a weather broadcast, then there’s got to be plenty of people who can hack a passenger Internet feed to do something much more than intended.

Our government representatives are not exempt from being shot full of arrows, either. Introducing House Resolution 888, which will create an “American Religious History Week” in May, as one of its resolved items but which also then goes on to list a litany of "historical" stuff better suited to a Christian revisionist's textbook than the actual history of the country.

WingNutDaily gets it, too, as Dispatches From the Culture Wars raises both eyebrows at a premium publication of WND all about Witches and Witchcraft. I’m going to guess that the factual content of the material there is going to be about as accurate in particulars and contexts as most of the material in H.RES. 888. At some point, I wonder if someone will pirate it, or have it sent to them by a brave soul so that it can be exposed to a critical eye and dissected. But I don’t think too many people would want to spend the money on the publication just to shred it.

Anyway, that’s all I have, and I have to really go to bed. Because, y’know, work tomorrow.

The Yearly Retrospective.

2007 has been a strange year for me. I knew it was going to arrive at some point, and that I was going to have to get through the various challenges and opportunities that it offered, but there's a difference between knowing it's going to happen and actually having it happen. In your head, while you may feel afraid, you're reasonably sure you can get through it all. When something like that actually arrives, you panic a lot more, even if you do pass it all with flying colors.

January brought with it the recognition that my days as a college student were significantly numbered. One semester to go, and six years of university would finally be finished, and the degree to be conferred would be the one I'd use to try and get a job. I was ready to be done, but not entirely sure I wanted to be done. Even at an early stage, the focus of my schoolwork and the complaints therein would be Ruby on Rails. Finally, I was one of the many optimistic throng that thought that with the opposition party in power, there would be progress made toward stopping a runaway conflict.

February's first major event was hanging out with the members of JAMS (who I miss greatly and hope to see as many as possible at Anime Central this year) at the Vice President's house, watching anime and the National Football League Championship game. I skipped completely over Red Day, not having anyone to celebrate it with, and continued to have my assignments haunt much of attempts to have scheduled fun. They didn't stop me, because I needed the fun more than the assignments, but they always tried to nag at me. There was also a Newberry-Award winning book with the word "scrotum" that caught the attention of many.

So, March. After returning from the week-long break at the end of February and the beginnings of March, it was pretty apparent that this graduation thing was going to happen, and that I was going out into The Real World soon. Thus, my stress levels started going up as the day of All Work Complete approached. Forays into material for job applications began, with some completions finished by the end of the month. The wheels were beginning to turn.

April arrived, and the Day of All Work Complete came. There was also interviews for jobs (eventually rejected), but it was an encouraging sign that my applications actually were getting through. I did a little shift of stress focus, going away from the focus of "Must get coursework done!", because it was all complete, and into the focus of "Must find job!" The part where I really start stressing out over a job doesn't start until much later. Finally, in April, I graduated from my alma mater for the second time, with an MSI-LIS. Congratulations to me, huzzah, huzzah, huzzah. (OVERLORD!)

Which brought on May, and when May arrives, it's ACen time! So I packed myself together, decided how much money I'd be bringing, and joined the JAMS caravan, where much merriment was had by all. And most of the money vanished, to be replaced by anime and goods. Such is the life of the American anime fan. Or something. It's not like its Dramacon or anything. My grandfather on dad's side celebrated his 90th birthday at the end of May, a feat that we respect, and we hope we'll get to see him make 100.

By the end of May, the job thing still hadn't happened. It was an enforced period of introspection, and I was beginning to show despair signs (yeah, I know, a whole two months out of university, and I'm despairing that I'll never find a job). Those that have walked the path beforehand gave encouragement that the end result was good. Funny how time gives you perspective on things. It was probably a good thing that I took a couple days off and went camping at the end of May, even if I did overheat myself on a very long hike.

June brought with it my family being free of our high school for the rest of our lives. There was also a trip to the state of Washington to do interviews with one library system near Seattle and one in the middle of the state. Think rainy and desert, respectively. The rejection letter for my first interview beat me back to my mailbox, and the second interview went kind of well, but the job and I weren't really a fit, and I think we both knew it. That was actually encouraging, to some degree. Had they offered me the job, I might have taken it, but we really were mismatched. After that affair, I sort of gave up on finding work on Washington, thinking I had expended my one chance at getting a job in a region I liked. But I did get to see neat stuff in Seattle, and the Needle, so I wasn't going to go away totally empty-handed. The lack of job, combined with the absolute inability of the Democratic Congress to do anything other than give Mr. Bush whatever he wanted, was making for bad times, and it probably started to show in my prose.

July is the month of my naissance. Considering everyone is out of town or looking at other things for my birthday, it's not generally a big celebration. I also snuck out to go see Video Games Live! in Detroit with kaijumaster and his wife, and watch 1867 base ball clubs play nine. Later in the month, the rumblings of what would become the first Strikeout started. Surprisingly, there very little whining about not having a job this month. Must have been enough distractions and interviews. Or anticipation of the ending of my job hunt. Or something.

August arrives, and with it, a grand tour of interviews. Sort of. I go and videoconference in Ann Arbor for a recently-opened set of positions for a library system in the state of Washington, on the South Sound. A glimmer of hope, and it would be remarkably improbable that after the interview failures in June that another Washington job should present itself. While I'm waiting to hear from them, I go to do interviews in New Jersey for an abbreviated week, as the place in Washington calls back and offers me one of the positions! Acceptance, success, ohcrapIhavetomove! By the end of August, no less. So, after packing as much as I can into the back seat and trunk of my vehicle and securing promises that the rest will be forthcoming, m'dear mother and I embarked on a three day drive from the mitten state to the Pacific Northwest. Not soon afterward, I set to the task of procuring an apartment.

There was also a lot of Strikethrough/Boldout/TOS stuff that happened in August, where a lot of people were looking with shiftyeyes at each other, wondering who would be offed next, and all trying to kick down the doors of SixApart's offices to demand W-T-F.

September was rough. Procured apartment, moved in, started job, found people to hang around, did much of the things in my life that were necessary for setting myself up in a new area entirely. Add on to that getting to know all the ins, outs, people, and stories of my job, and it was definitely an infodump of amazing proportions. But we persevered.

October started with running around doing all the things I needed to do to get myself settled in Washington, like finally getting a license changed over, registration, insurances, local telephone number, seeing the doc and the dentist, getting my teeth filled after seeing the dentist, all of that useful stuff. The starting of new routines.

Both October and November was financially difficult, as I took the car in for an oil change and ended up paying for a whole lot more. This, on top of dental visits (yay, insurance!) and buying a futon for my apartment, and the costs of student loans did not put me in a particularly financially happy place, and I cursed myself roundly for letting things get out of hand like that. Thus, the budgeting tools came out to play. I feel a bit better about my paychecks as they are now, and my ability to pay off things, but I'm probably going to feel like it's touch and go for a moment here and there.

December means holidays, and since I was still on probation, I got zero holiday time, so all of my festival celebrations for the VEWPRF were only the days alloted and the weekends around them. No more, no more. Despite this factoid, I had a wonderful time around the holidays, with co-workers inviting me along to meals and attending some very nice parties. It took me this long before a serious incident occurred at work, but it ended well and with everything restored properly. And, as it turned out, it was good for a laugh or two at the end. I joined on with the Fremont Philharmonic, and am now their trombone player, assuming I can find an instrument to play. Przxqgl will loan me one of his until one gets found, so it's not a major problem.

Deecember also saw the sale of LJ from SixApart to SUP, a move that has some cautiously optimistic and others jumping ship, expecting worse than what SixApart has already done.

This year has been a year of change, of new things, and of transition. I suspect there will be much more of that in the year to come, as I walk the path that I've moved onto for a while. It's not a complete "out with the old, in with the new", but this is the first year I'm going to be really on my own, with all the bills to pay, with all the work to be done, walking the rope and seeing if I fall down or not. It's both scary and exciting all at once. I have a really high degree of freedom now, even though I've traded time for money. Of course, that also means I've got more responsibility than before, too. I think that at this time next year, I'll be able to look back and feel good about it.

So come along, reading audience. The ride's going to be fun. Bumpy at times, really fast in others, and sometimes I might not know which side is up, but it's the best experience I get. See you in another year.

And weekend's done. - 06 January 2008

Weekends where I work screw with my weekend sense. When my days off start dividing, it can be a little weird.

For those in Michigan who are unemployed, about to be unemployed, or make under $40,000 per year, No Worker Left Behind will provide up to $5,000 / year for you to pursue an associate's degree in "a high-demand occupation, emerging industry, or entrepreneurship program". This is a one-shot effect, but if it helps someone, yay for college cash, right? You’ll have to check in with a Michigan Works! Service Center to figure out the complete parts of eligibility and to get the ball rolling.

Al-Qaeda messages, coming to cellular telephones near you? For those days when you need a quick burst of inspiration from Osama bin Laden during your day. Or to spread the message in regions where high speed data lines are not easily accessible but everyone has cellular phones.

e_moon60 reminds us why the First Amendment was crafted into the Constitution - to prevent religious denominations from dominating, privileging themselves, fighting with each other, and doing things that would make the young American nation die a horrible, horrible death not too soon after its incorporation.

Amnesty International has released Human Rights Reports for the world again. If you’re curious, here's the report on the United States, chock full of secret detention, torture allegations, awful prison conditions, and the death penalty. To compare, the report on Canada, where there are still some items of concern, like women’s rights and indigenous people’s rights, but comparatively is a much shorter and less destructive report than the United States. I’d like to have a country where the dossier is small-to-nonexistent, and where all the items mentioned on it also have “Legislators are working on fixing this problem at the time of this report.” Is that too hard to ask?

If you don’t have the money, or feel particularly DIY, or didn’t pass a check at your last taser party, you can build a shocking device out of the components of a disposable flash camera. I’m not entirely sure if there’s a regulated current or voltage in that design, or how much current/voltage is passed in that shock. It takes some soldering to put it all together, but it’s a pretty cheap method of doing things, and could potentially be amped up if the flash devices were put together in a circuit and discharged all together. Ouch.

This peanut looks like a duck.

And on that note, we turn it in for the night. Study the fluctuations of The Doctor's anarchist streaks while I’m gone.