The thing about time travel to the past is that there's a lot of information you'd want to bring with you, but there's not much point in collecting it until you have some reason to expect you'll be getting to do it. Fortunately, someone has gotten started on that, anyway. :3

[I got to this via a link in cluebyfour's journal]

I think exploring abandoned structures is an interesting pastime, but sometimes you can find things that you regret seeing abandoned. The warehouse this guy gets to describing later in this account pushes that button for me more than anything else I've personally seen.

meme, by way of ceruleanst...

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band. (If it's the entry for a real musician or band, cheating with a reload is probably a good idea.)

2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4. Use your graphics program of choice to throw them together, et voilà.

( buy meh )

I have been picking at this on and off all day, so I figured I should probably pass it on. I dunno if any rice will actually change hands, but I still had fun with the words.

http://www.freerice.com/index.php

I am frequently learning things about myself, and about life, and about my life, and all that is great, I guess. I can say it is at least a more interesting place than where I was just a couple of years ago. The thing that is kind of dismaying is that the main message that comes through everything I learn is that I don't really know much of anything and that I have so much to learn.

It is also usually a reminder that I am forgetful, or easily distracted, or something. It would be a plus if I could keep the things I learn in mind on a day-to-day basis, and not forget what they mean and then have to fight to get them back all the time. And I want a pony.

Oh, and I hope of you that had a Thanksgiving had a great one. I do love my f-list, even if I am not very showy and all. So there.

I took a break from Medieval 2:Total War a couple of weeks ago when my watchtowers to the southeast of Zagreb showed the Mongols just cresting a ridge in some mountain pass in the direction of modern Romania (their generals bristling with command stars). I figured such a development would require more attention (especially with Venice and Denmark hounding me at the same time :/) than real life was going to allow me to devote to it at that time. With the kids freshly off on a trip with their mom for a week, however, I expect I will get back into it shortly.

I have toyed with handing Zagreb off to another country, improving my relations with the unsuspecting beneficiary and buying myself time to build up, but I think that is just delaying the inevitable. And, really, Venice is about the only country that could make good use of a province in that area, and the young Doge hates me entirely too much to accept such an offer. I think my best bet is to send a spy back over that ridge to collect some more information on the Mongol holdings, while rerouting the assassins I have in the area to see if they can winnow down some of the Mongol leadership before we meet on the battlefield. I also need to beat down Venice so they are off my back. I don't really want to get involved in wiping them out completely, but I may have to take at least one more province from them to keep them away from Zagreb and the Italian peninsula while this is going on.

From everything I have heard, the Mongols will be a pita with all those nice mounted archers. They'll do a lot of damage if left alone, and they'll scatter when you charge. That part is pretty much like any archers... except I can't just run them down with my cavalry since they are mounted themselves, the wily so-and-so's. I'll 'speriment with devoting some cavalry to keeping them churning, with catching them between two sets of cavalry, etc., etc. It is going to be messy for a while. ^_^7 I can take a wait-and-see approach to a certain extent, since I don't expect that they will be effective against my cities, but I can't really leave them roving around my provinces... they'll hurt production and force me to keep more forces tied up in defensive positions than I like.

If my spies can identify some of their cities to the east, I'll see if I can get the Pope to call a Crusade on one of them. That might get the nations around me off my back since they would end up at war with the Mongols, as well.

I took a ridiculous fall yesterday while walking to the building of work from the parking lot of same. I think I caught my foot on the curb or something, and the fall was kind of a 2-part thing where I thought I had stopped it after my knees hit and then it somehow went on after a pause. The whole thing was so weird and unprecedented that I still look at it with great detachment.

I shaved off a nice chunk of skin on one knee (with a swell swath of road rash below that) and scraped the knuckles of the opposing hand (which was engaged in the futile effort of holding my laptop). The laptop went sliding off ahead of me but was otherwise unaffected by the incident.

There was a witness and, social convention being what it is, I will not be able to dispatch an assassin to tidy that up. It does make things a bit awkward since I rule by fear and a show of weakness invites challenges, but so it goes.

Vectored via l555l: "Look at your LJ interests list. If you have fewer than 50 interests, pick every fifth one. If you have between 50 and 75, pick every seventh one. If you have more than 75, pick every tenth one. If you have fewer than 10, pick them all. List them on your LJ, and tell everyone exactly what it is about these things that interests you so much."

( I fudged it a bit to favor more specific entries over some generic ones )

We had a very classic snow storm last night. Very windy, pretty cold, and a good deal of kinda sleety snow. Lots of cool snowdrifting, etc. I haven't seen one like that for quite a while.

I've been sort of taking an LJ break for a week or so. I plan to try scrolling back on the friends page to catch up this evening, but I may be 'overwhelmed by events'. If not, maybe I'll have a massive meme post. ;-)

Courtesy of evandorkin... The children's book you know you want to see: We are ZOGG.

I slept but badly last night. Hard to get the ZIGs moving this morning, but a staff meeting awaits.

Vectored via cluebyfour, a quiz that brings back fond memories of past gaming...

( What DnD Character Are You? )

I don't recall playing an elf, but I was definitely happiest as chaotic good.

I saw this Commonly Confused Words test in indigoskynet's LJ. I had a great deal of fun taking it so I'm passing it on for the edification of other English language freaks.

Here is an odd little frash game (thanks to gwalla for pointing it out). You send a bishi flying and the rest of the game is managing his bounces and which other characters he smacks into (different characters produce different types of effects)... the goal being to get him to cover as much distance as possible. There are aerial powerups you can use to modify his flightpath, and sometimes the people you bump into will give you a brief shot at a special powerup. There is also some sort of chaining of special moves that goes on. English translation of the rules would be here, laddie.

AMC is showing The Quiet Man and High Noon tonight! W00t!

I forgot to set my essid on my laptop and ended up associating with some neighbor's wireless which has still got the default settings. I was just getting good and pissed off about how slow my net conx was tonight when I realized what had happened... :-P

On a happier note, from walkerton comes a quiz that I assume has no unfavorable results, so go wild:
( What kind of god are you? )

Since I have a herculean appetite for the diverse and the bizarre, I've been going through my list of odd and entertaining sites. I forgot how great this one is... bow before the Worst Album Cover Gallery!

Quick edit, since I forgot to mention I've gotten bored with my playlist, so it is off to last.fm for some spice (old post about it here). I highly recommend it if you are looking for some variety, but it takes a bit of preparation to make it work well. Go to audioscrobbler.com before you get bored and start feeding your current music to it. Since last.fm uses the same database you will get a more likely set of new stuff.

No work tomorrow!

I watched My Fair Lady again tonight. There are a number of things I really like about that movie, but it spends a lot of time on some stuff that isn't worth that much attention (like the 'get me to the church on time' sequence) while the ending just happens without much fanfare. And, as always, I am mysteriously amazed by the youngness of Jeremy Brett in that movie. I also still laugh out loud at Eliza's description of her aunt's untimely demise.

Here is some accumulated meme-age. First, as seen in a couple of places, but most recently from glych...
( What Gender Is Your Brain? )

Next, from gentlemaitresse...
( What obsolete skill are you? )

I'm not a big birthday celebrator type, but this year is a bit different. For one thing, some of you wished me a happy birthday, so I was reminded that today is, indeed, my birthday. :-P My initial reaction was some near kin of annoyance and I wished I had thought to change it temporarily a couple of days ago. Of course, since that is an odd reaction even for a curmudgeonly fellow, I started wondering why I felt that way. I think it is because I have stuff I need to get done that I haven't been doing. My birthday reminds me of that in a way that New Years never seems to do.

Well, in thinking about it, of course, I realized that it was crazy to be bothered by it. I should either do the things or officially decide I would rather be doing something else. I'm sticking with the former. So, I thank those if you who reminded me of my birthday. It has basically turned into a reminder that I need to kick some ass, and that is a handy thing to have!

For those who missed it during its previous brief window of availability, National Lampoon has provided a temporary home for much of the content of http://www.supermanisadick.com/. On a related note, agentsteel53 may be interested in the story of Batman's Greatest Boner.

Edit: The site has a new, and hopefully permanent, home at superdickery.com.

The redoubtable flarecarrot pointed out an interesting development... domesticated foxes! Just another one of those things that wouldn't have happened if researchers hadn't, by pure chance, spent 45 years breeding them for that.

Meanwhile, indigoskynet passed on information about Google's phone search feature. If you search for your 10-digit number on Google, it may come up with links to a map to your house (as mine did). If you would like to have Google pull that result, you can click on the "Phonebook Results" link and, from there, get to the 'Phonebook Removal Form'. Not that that will get it out of the databases where Google got it in the first place...

Okay... I saw this in walkerton's LJ, and it has been making me laugh every time I go back to it. Time for you to experience it, as well!

http://www.supermanisadick.com/

(Click on the Examples link at the bottom. The site design is kind of annoying since you have to keep scrolling for the "Next" button, too. oh well).
Edit: In fact, I found the frame annoying enough that I just navigated using the "cover frame" instead.
Edit (2/8 evening): hm... problems with the site... access forbidden all over the place. Is it gone already, or is it just a server config screwup?
Edit (2/9 morning): sadness... dns resolves the address to 0.0.0.0 now.
Edit (2/9 afternoon): ah, it had fallen over due to the load (tee hee).
Edit (2/12): Noticed it now has a temporary home at National Lampoon!
Edit (2/17): The site has a new, and hopefully permanent, home at superdickery.com.


I always hated those covers back in the day, but it is funny to see them collected together to make the case. ;-)

I was looking at that thing that lets you see the location of your LJ friends and realized it appears to place me off the coast of africa. There seems to be a process for fixing that, which I may engage in once I am sure the current result won't continue to be amusing to me. One thing I like about this is that it is interesting to see which of my friends are generally in the same area but that don't apparently know each other. Anyway, for people who haven't seen it, here are some form thingies...

LJ username:

LJ username: