SEEvil Thoughts

2:25pm: Accounting Class
If I get just one answer right on either the last section test or the final, I get a B for the class.

If I get a perfect score on the last section test (and I got perfects on the first two and one wrong on the third), I get an A without taking the final.

This is a quite relaxing position to be in.

2:11am: Okay, Dell is replacing my system.  Make enough noise and they can be reasonable.

3:44pm: Well, the lying bastards at Dell are claiming a liquid spill took out my Mini 9, and thus its failure isn't covered by warranty.

7:19pm: At the time of this post, the book holding the #25 spot on the list of Amazon Bestsellers in Books was published over fifty years ago.

4:11pm: Better today.

5:00pm: Ill.  Tired.  Not happy.

2:56pm: Observation indicates that the amount of gout pain I have can be calculated by the following formula:

Pain = 1/(Total Calories Eaten Previous Day)

I can eat "bad for gout" foods all day and the next day I'll be fine.  I skimp on meals, and I'll be in pain.  The more I skimp, the greater the pain.

This does not bode well for losing weight.

1:35am: Watchmen
Sticking with Robert Redford would have worked better than swapping to Ronald Reagan.

4:53am: I realize you've all probably seen it already . . .
But, well, it's still awesome.

Saturday Morning Watchmen

2:35pm: An eye for both eyes . . .
A man blinds a woman with acid.  The court rules that the woman is entitled to blind him with acid in return . . . but only in one eye, because men are more valuable than women.

12:21pm: Clearly, a male Wiccan is a slau pijeaux.

1:11pm: Nurse practitioner seems to think the pain in my foot is gout.

6:58pm: I get frustrated with people who say things like:  It's time to legalize, or at least decriminalize, drugs.

Look, I am perfectly willing to consider legalizing drugs.  Assuming the end-of-Prohibition model holds out, we'd see an uptick in use, but it would remove the entire business from the hands of criminal enterprises and mark an increase in the product safety of the drugs.

However, decriminalization?  Decriminalization leaves the manufacture and distribution to the black market, which means you still have adulterated drugs sold by warring criminal gangs at inflated prices.  At the same time, eliminating legal pressure on the demand side means an increase in use.  You get the worst of both worlds.

10:26pm: Arrrrrrgh.

I keep having dreams in which I'm arguing with my family.  Mom, Dad, brother, sister, and, for no apparent reason, my aunts.

This is neither restful nor relaxing, and leaves me tense and disagreeable for the rest of the day.

4:39pm: ed is the standard text editor
No, really.  It's so important that it is the kiss of death if your OS doesn't support it.

You have ed on a standard install of Mac OS X.  You have ed in any standard Linux distro.  You have ed's cousin, edlin, under any standard install of Windows Vista or XP.

You do not have ed in a standard install of BeOS 5.  You do not have ed on Mac OS 9.  You only have a DOS version of edlin on OS/2.  You do not have edlin in Windows 98.  All these operating systems are dead, beaten or replaced by operating systems that by default have ed(lin).

Indeed, ed is the standard text editor.

2:06am: Codex
Hmm.  Looks like Mongoose's Classic Play: Book of the Planes is getting put on the Grand OGL Wiki.  There's a lot of interesting stuff in that book . . . and perhaps most usefully for the Codex project, a Deep Ethereal with elemental Border Ethereals.  Hope it makes it into the wiki.

(The existing Open Content declaration on the Book of the Planes is a lot more limited, at least at first glance, than what's apparently getting put into the OGL Wiki.  That's why I avoided the Book of the Planes material as a source.  Since the Grand OGL Wiki was created at Mongoose's initiative, though, I trust anything of theirs that gets on the wiki is fair game.)

12:51am: Codex notes
( Just a bunch of notes )

5:01am: But, of course, I couldn't get a license
I've been reading various "old-school" D&D blogs and fora and whatnot, and I've come to a conclusion — I would like to do AD&D 3rd Edition.

( Further blather )

4:16pm: Codex
It's going to be interesting to see what Obama does on trade.  It will be very tempting to take protectionist measures to help U.S. manufacturing . . . and thus punch the Asian economies hard in the export sector.

2:19pm: One of the major-party presidential candidates opposes gay marriage on religious grounds, but also opposes a U.S. Constitutional amendment banning states from adopting it.

The other major-party presidential candidate opposes gay marriage on cultural grounds, but also opposes a U.S. Constitutional amendment banning states from adopting it.

7:48am: Hope for the 2008 College Football Season
Utah, Boise State, Tulsa, and Ball State to all go undefeated, every other team in Division 1A FBS to have two or more losses.

12:22am: Okay.  Codex of the Infinite Planes is now back on my to-do list.

1:49am: This is set after Foundation's Edge, contemporaneously with Foundation and Earth.  It won't make sense unless you're rather familiar with the former.

( Foundation and Crisis #1 )

3:13pm: "What man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?"

"The psychologist, of course."

2:15am: Assuming, for purposes of estimation, that the average season of Wheel of Fortune in the U.S. daytime run, the UK run, and the original New Zealand run had 195 episodes (which is the average season length of the evening version of the U.S. show), then there are enough unique episodes of English-language Wheel of Fortune to fill over 340 days of 24-hour programming (assuming normal commercial breaks.)

(4,875 episodes of U.S. evening Wheel of Fortune prior to this season, 5,118 total episodes of Australian Wheel of Fortune, estimated 3,120 episodes of U.S. daytime Wheel of Fortune, estimated 2,535 episodes of UK Wheel of Fortune, and an estimated 975 episodes of New Zealand Wheel of Fortune prior to the 2008 revival, total 16,623 estimated total episodes, for 8,311.5 hours with commercial breaks.)

With the U.S. and New Zealand currently making new episodes, we are very quickly approaching the point where one could put together an English-language Wheel of Fortune cable channel that runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, without repeating any episode during the year.