Accursed swamp lands
Despite all efforts to the contrary, we still ended up in another house with water in the basement…
Third-person self-references: 2010+ edition
| Date | Status |
|---|---|
| 2010-01-09 | Curtis Rueden beat a 3800 ranked Dictator today! |
| 2010-01-21 | Curtis Rueden has growing doubts. |
| 2010-01-28 | Curtis Rueden is not sure he can love Sun anymore, after the Oracle acquisition. Even the J2SDK javadocs have the Oracle favicon now… |
| 2010-03-02 | Curtis Rueden is slowly realizing how crazy this month is going to be. |
| 2010-03-09 | Curtis Rueden must eat his pizza, or the pizza ghost is gonna get him. |
| 2010-05-06 | Curtis Rueden thanks everyone for the birthday wishes! |
| 2010-05-24 | Curtis Rueden wonders if anyone else actually watched Lost, and if so, what they thought of the finale. |
| 2010-06-02 | Curtis Rueden keeps getting NaN in his sums. |
| 2010-06-07 | Curtis Rueden is sitting with Anna & Jennifer in a St. Mary’s birthing suite. A week early! |
| 2010-06-08 | Curtis Rueden is recovering with Anna and Emily at the hospital. For the stats geeks: born 6:54am, 8 lbs 6 oz, 20” long. She’s a pretty quiet baby so far, easily calmed, and very hungry. |
| 2010-08-06 | Curtis Rueden is happy that Eclipse 3.6 finally fixes the horrible Welcome screen mystery meat navigation. |
| 2010-09-12 | Curtis Rueden is enjoying the brokenness of the Pathfinder Advanced Players Guide. |
| 2010-09-30 | Curtis Rueden wonders: according to the Barcode Brothers’s song Ambient, 92% of people feel their lives could be better… which implies 8% of people are either completely happy or unsure? What? |
| 2010-10-24 | Curtis Rueden is sad that there is no peanut butter in Europe. Or Mt. Dew. |
| 2011-05-07 | Curtis Rueden has nothing to report. |
| 2011-05-24 | Curtis Rueden is too sick for the final game night. :-( |
| 2011-05-25 | Curtis Rueden wonders: is there any software that converts from IPA text to audio? Or IPA text to pronunciation respelling in ASCII? I thought the entire point of IPA was as an unambiguous phonetic transcription system—so why is it so hard to find a computer program that can read the IPA out loud? |
| 2011-06-01 | Curtis Rueden remembers when it was uber 1337 if your DOS machine could play MODs in a background process. |
Third-person self-references: 2009 edition
| Date | Status |
|---|---|
| 2009-01-05 | Curtis Rueden is frustrated by his own incompetence. |
| 2009-01-06 | Curtis Rueden is feeling better. |
| 2009-01-08 | Curtis Rueden is changing his name to EDGE MAVERICK. |
| 2009-01-27 | Curtis Rueden is destroying his knees, one day at a time. |
| 2009-01-29 | Curtis Rueden is surprised to recognize 88 of the top 90 projects on ohloh |
| 2009-02-02 | Curtis Rueden is consumed with regret over every goddamn thing. |
| 2009-02-03 | Curtis Rueden compiles. |
| 2009-02-04 | Curtis Rueden does not comply. |
| 2009-02-05 | Curtis Rueden can be terrifying to neonates and milquetoasts. |
| 2009-02-07 | Curtis Rueden had an awesome day yesterday. |
| 2009-02-09 | Curtis Rueden believes in a thing called quixotism. |
| 2009-02-12 | Curtis Rueden needs to rent or sell his condo. |
| 2009-02-16 | Curtis Rueden is probably skipping Gen Con this year. :-( |
| 2009-02-26 | Curtis Rueden loves winter thunder. |
| 2009-02-28 | Curtis Rueden has lost all his power. |
| 2009-03-05 | Curtis Rueden wishes Visual Studio would DIAF. |
| 2009-03-25 | Curtis Rueden is finally starting to figure out his iPod classic. But still can’t talk right… |
| 2009-03-31 | Curtis Rueden just found the coolest consumer-grade storage solution he’s ever seen: Drobo. |
| 2009-04-10 | Curtis Rueden was recently reminded that the time is nigh for the birthday movie! |
| 2009-04-14 | Curtis Rueden misses Mountain Dew. |
| 2009-04-20 | Curtis Rueden keeps reading about economics even though it is nightmarishly complex. |
| 2009-04-27 | Curtis Rueden is 0 for 2 on house offers. |
| 2009-04-28 | Curtis Rueden is outraged that you have to create a shell script wrapper just to compensate for the GNOME launcher’s inability to specify a working directory. |
| 2009-05-07 | Curtis Rueden bought a house. |
| 2009-05-08 | Curtis Rueden doesn’t know what’s worth fighting for. |
| 2009-05-11 | Curtis Rueden eats his peas with honey; he’s done so all his life. It makes them taste quite funny, but it keeps them on the knife. |
| 2009-05-14 | Curtis Rueden is feeling very alone in the universe today. |
| 2009-05-26 | Curtis Rueden is drowning in work. |
| 2009-05-27 | Curtis Rueden feels strangely distant from his friends considering how much they have been through together. |
| 2009-06-04 | Curtis Rueden started making one of those “How well do you know me?” quizzes but then Facebook ate it. |
| 2009-06-10 | Curtis Rueden is back in C++ hell. |
| 2009-07-02 | Curtis Rueden was sorting through old gaming notes and was amazed anew at the staggering amount of D&D played. |
| 2009-07-13 | Curtis Rueden is appalled that the RPGA is allowing custom characters for the D&D Championship at Gen Con this year. |
| 2009-07-20 | Curtis Rueden is greatly bothered by the existence of “Science Papa” for some reason. |
| 2009-08-10 | Curtis Rueden just TPKed our level 2 party with an EL 6 encounter. I hope the RPGA is not quite that mean. |
| 2009-08-11 | Curtis Rueden is amused that Amazon thinks I want to buy shoes from them. |
| 2009-08-17 | Curtis Rueden objects to intellect without discipline—to power without constructive purpose. |
| 2009-08-31 | Curtis Rueden watches the world fall apart, piece by piece. |
| 2009-09-05 | Curtis Rueden is popping bubble wrap. |
| 2009-09-21 | Curtis Rueden still hates Eclipse, despite effort to the contrary. |
| 2009-10-01 | Curtis Rueden’s plans will not be undone by such amateur-hour horseshit as absorbing too much power and exploding. |
| 2009-10-13 | Curtis Rueden is tired of working so hard for so little payoff. |
| 2009-10-20 | Curtis Rueden is on a bus in Massachusetts! With Wi-Fi! |
| 2009-10-27 | Curtis Rueden is covered in broken code. |
| 2009-11-16 | Curtis Rueden is excited that VirtualBox 3.0.10 on Mac OS X 10.6 actually has working visual effects on an Ubuntu Karmic Koala guest OS. |
| 2009-11-24 | Curtis Rueden wants to know: who wants a Google Wave invite? :-) |
| 2009-11-26 | Curtis Rueden ˙ǝןƃuɐ ʇuǝɹǝɟɟıp ɐ ɯoɹɟ pןɹoʍ ǝɥʇ ʇɐ ʞooן ɐ ƃuıʞɐʇ sı |
| 2009-12-08 | Curtis Rueden is very thankful for the awesomeness that is Skype. |
| 2009-12-15 | Curtis Rueden can’t believe he ate the whole thing. |
| 2009-12-16 | Curtis Rueden is always screaming inside his head. |
| 2009-12-20 | Curtis Rueden is never satisfied. |
Unfilmability
In some ways, the Watchmen movie was really good. I think it actually improved on the novel in some ways. Unfortunately, as I feared going in, any Watchmen film is fundamentally incapable of delivering what the novel did. James Berardinelli, my favorite film critic, writes a spot-on review, in which he eloquently explains: “A movie, by its nature, moves forward relentlessly, allowing little time for introspection, review, or consideration. These elements are necessary for Watchmen. They give it power and depth. By not being able to study a panel, turn back a page and re-explore something, or pause to consider the moral implications of what’s being stated, too much has been lost.”
Third-person self-references: 2008 edition
| Date | Status |
|---|---|
| 2008-04-14 | Curtis Rueden is at work |
| 2008-04-15 | Curtis Rueden is sick for the first time in over a year |
| 2008-04-19 | Curtis Rueden wants to avoid a cataclysmic chain reaction. |
| 2008-04-29 | Curtis Rueden is fretting about everything and nothing. |
| 2008-08-21 | Curtis Rueden is catching up on Facebook… takes a while, dunnit? |
| 2008-08-24 | Curtis Rueden is playing D&D! ^_^ |
| 2008-08-26 | Curtis Rueden has trouble making life decisions |
| 2008-09-01 | Curtis Rueden keeps trying to play D&D Tiny Adventures, but it’s mostly busticated. |
| 2008-09-02 | Curtis Rueden misses the DDR 4th mix announcer. :-( |
| 2008-09-19 | Curtis Rueden be utterin’ piratical speak today, yo ho! |
| 2008-09-22 | Curtis Rueden is contemplating even more debt just to have a bigger TV… |
| 2008-09-25 | Curtis Rueden is bigger than a bread box. |
| 2008-10-08 | Curtis Rueden hacked his Wii! ^_^ |
| 2008-10-24 | Curtis Rueden enjoyed his glitched (Lil) Green Patch while it lasted. |
| 2008-10-26 | Curtis Rueden loves PHP Shell. |
| 2008-11-03 | Curtis Rueden has failed. |
| 2008-11-06 | Curtis Rueden is excited about VirtualBox. |
| 2008-11-07 | Curtis Rueden is amused when snow falls nearly horizontally. |
| 2008-11-21 | Curtis Rueden hates C++. |
| 2008-11-28 | Curtis Rueden is obsessed with MusicBrainz. |
| 2008-12-02 | Curtis Rueden is very confused by Juno Reactor’s latest album. |
| 2008-12-05 | Curtis Rueden is so happy to have stereo headphones again. |
| 2008-12-10 | Curtis Rueden can’t help but grin when listening to Toy-Box. |
| 2008-12-16 | Curtis Rueden misses his wife. |
| 2008-12-20 | Curtis Rueden can’t wait for 2009. |
Death Magnetic
· 👍 good · ♫ Metallica - Broken, Beat & Scarred
For those who care, Metallica’s new album is streamable from their site in its entirety. People like Metallica for very different reasons so I won’t comment on whether it’s “good”—you’ll have to decide for yourself.
“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt
Computer stuff for sale
· 😐 blah
Anybody want to buy a computer?
- Athlon XP 3000+, ~2.17 GHz
- 512 MB RAM
- 150 GB RAID 0 disk space
- 16x DVD burner
- 3.5” and 5.25” floppy disk drives
- 500 watt Antec power supply
- 17” CRT monitor
- Wireless keyboard and mouse
- Very quiet operation
- $200 (negotiable)
Feel free to comment for more details.
I also have a somewhat noisy (due to one of the fans being off-balance) BFG GeForce 6600GT OC AGP graphics card that I’d sell for $30.
“A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities; an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.”
—President Harry S Truman
Chess + Boxing = Fantastic
· 🎉 excited · ♫ BoA - LONG TIME NO SEE
Slashdot posted a story about the best sport ever today. I am only half kidding—I would love to try it!
“To kill a man in a paroxysm of passion is understandable, but to have him killed by someone else after calm and serious meditation and on the pretext of duty honourably discharged is incomprehensible.”
—The Marquis deSade
James Wyatt on D&D 4E and WoW
· 😑 listless · ♫ Ladytron - Blue Jeans 2.0
For those of you saying D&D 4E is too much like WoW, James Wyatt has written a rebuttal to justify a lot of the choices they made when designing the system: http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1044100
Wyatt’s comments after the post are also worth reading, particularly his comments on character roles—he implies that four clerics is the “best party in the game” in 3E :-)—and product maturity:
You’re comparing the PH of 4e with the mature product line of 3.5. Just with the PH, you can build different fighters with very different feels. When you add Martial Power to the mix, those options will expand dramatically. When you add PH2 and its eight new classes, the game expands greatly again.
“Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”
—Oscar Wilde
“One does not get better but different and older and that is always a pleasure.”
—Gertrude Stein
I love Dragon Warrior
· 😄 amused
On my system the video gets out of sync really quickly, but it’s still pretty awesome. Makes me want to learn to play all those riffs.
Focus!
· 🌀 quixotic · ♫ Nalin & Kane - Beachball (original club mix)
Another incredibly cool thing from Google
· 😮 impressed
- Make sure you have Flash Player 9.
- Click this link.
- Look, it’s Van Vleck.
- Drag the image with the mouse to pan around and check out Van Hise.
- Click the arrows to drive yourself around the roads.
“Anyone attempting to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of course, living in a state of sin.”
—John Von Neumann
Eclipse
· 😒 irritated · ♫ Millencolin - Man or Mouse
Eclipse drives me fucking batty. I could write a big rant about it, but this guy explains it pretty much perfectly (just global replace Emacs with Vim for me).
Apparently IntelliJ is pretty good though; maybe I should try it some time. But it is tailored toward Java (not that Eclipse isn’t), so it’s not exactly generic like Vim.
“Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
—Albert Einstein
Video games + Smash Bros Brawl
· 🌈 optimistic · ♫ Goo Goo Dolls - Cuz You're Gone
You guys like video games, right? I know you do.
Most successful male recording artist
· 😲 surprised · ♫ Joshua Bell - Introduction and Tarantella, Op. 43
I saw a statistic today that Madonna is the most successful (as far as record sales go) female recording artist of all time, according to the Guinness Book of World Records (though some say it’s Celine Dion). This led me to wonder: what about the most successful male recording artist?
Obviously, it’s the Beatles, but they’re not just one guy. So who’s next?
Elvis Presley? Michael Jackson? MC Frontalot?
Nope, none of the above.
Go country…
Nerdcore!
· 😄 amused · ♫ Shael Riley - Down With Bane
For you D&D fans, if you haven’t heard it already, check out Down With Bane by Shael Riley.
“Leaving a trail of destruction is both easier and more effective when your ultimate goal is undisclosed. That way everyone in your way might be your final chance for sport.”
—Resident Evil, “Biohazard (Beast From the East Mix 2)”
Pikmin!
Yay, Pikmin! Yay, Yasunori Mitsuda! It is becoming increasingly clear that I am going to have to take a few days’ Smash holiday from work…
Van Roy’s Law: An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.
Obama on church and state
· 😮 impressed
Barack Obama, keynote address, Call to Renewal’s Building a Covenant for a New America conference, 6/28/06 in Washington, D.C. (bold emphasis is mine):
Can openers
· 🏗️ working · ♫ Sum 41 - No Solution
I went to Famous Dave’s for lunch yesterday. There was one of those massive pickup trucks parked at a strong slant in one of the spots, with their front end about a foot into the next spot. That next spot, though, was the only free one, so I parked there anyway. I squeezed in, and was still able to get through my door. And I was exactly in the center of the spot, where I was supposed to be.
When I came out of the restaurant afterwards, the truck had left and there was a note on my windshield that said, “Next time leave me a fucking can opener.” I almost wish I could have been out there when the dude was getting mad at me for HIS bad parking job, so that I could kick his ass if he tried anything.
This anecdote has been your daily evidence that all individuals who drive gigantic pickup trucks are gigantic assholes.
“People seemed to like this better, but only marginally so—the way one might prefer to be stabbed than shot. Optimally, one isn’t stabbed or shot. Optimally, one eats some cake! But there are times when cake is not available, and instead we are destroyed. This is the deep poetry of the universe.”
—Tycho Brahe, Penny Arcade
No more NetInfo
· 😲 surprised · ♫ Offspring - Long Way Home
Hey, Leopard got rid of NetInfo in favor of XML and LDAP! I am shocked, but titillated. Now if only Windows would ditch the registry. At least there’s PowerShell now.
“XML is a giant step in no direction at all.”
—Erik Naggum