Blackmoor Vituperative

Something I overheard in a chat room recently:

Harrigan: Hmmm… I need to find out how to go through airport security these days. The last time I flew, I got stopped and was asked what was in the small pouch on my belt. The security guard waved me on when I said it was a Swiss army knife and told me he just wanted to make sure it wasn’t Mace. I think things have changed since then.
Berrianna: Yeah, knives are right out.
Berrianna: As are liquids and gels over five ounces, firearms, jackhammers, hacksaws, dental implants, transplanted kidneys, a sense of personal privacy, any bag over 10 pounds, jackets, underwear with natural fibers, broken glass, scarves, dental floss, dignity, the first and fourth Amendments, and dogs over fifteen pounds.

Heh. Heh heh.

Life is too short to obsess over pennies.
Life is too short to hold grudges.
Life is too short to pay to store things that you don’t use.
Life is too short to anguish over things you can’t change.
Life is too short to demand repayment for ancient debts.

Life is too short to spend it focused on that which is not important.

P.S. While looking for an image of an hourglass, I found this…

Caretake this Moment

Caretake this moment.
Immerse yourself in its particulars.
Respond to this person, this challenge, this deed.

Quit the evasions.
Stop giving yourself needless trouble.
It is time to really live; to fully inhabit the situation you happen to be in now.
You are not some disinterested bystander.
Exert yourself.

Respect your partnership with providence.
Ask yourself often, How may I perform this particular deed
such that it would be consistent with and acceptable to the divine will?
Heed the answer and get to work.

When your doors are shut and your room is dark you are not alone.
The will of nature is within you as your natural genius is within.
Listen to its importunings.
Follow its directives.

As concerns the art of living, the material is your own life.
No great thing is created suddenly.
There must be time.

Give your best and always be kind.

~ Epictetus

When I heard about the newest X-Men movie, my expectations were really low. Roger Corman low. However, although there are a few things I don’t like (I still think giving Emma Frost the ability to turn into diamond, which was done in 2003, is stupid and unnecessary), over all, the trailer looks pretty good. You can definitely see the influence of Watchmen on it.

Okay. So I am staying up late and working on my local game group’s web site, drinking martinis and watching movies. I went through two of them (movies, not martinis — I am currently on my fourth martini) before I found one I could tolerate just to have running in the background.

I started with Adam Sandler’s Eight Crazy Nights. I could stand that for about ten minutes before I had to stop it and find something else. Ye gods. Simply dreadful. No wonder they waited until February to show what is ostensibly a Christmas movie (Christmas, Hanukkah, whatever).

The second movie was an old Dana Carvey movie called Opportunity Knocks (not to be confused with Career Opportunities, which features a young Frank Whaley, and a Jennifer Connelly so young she still has baby fat). I actually like Dana Carvey, and I think it’s too bad that he hasn’t achieved Adam Sandler’s level of post-Saturday Night Live success. As for the movie, it started out okay, but about fifteen minutes into it I decided to brush my teeth, and when I came back, I realized I really did not care enough to rewind and see what I missed. It was just that boring. So it goes.

The third movie was the charm: Women In Trouble, with Carla Gugino (whom I have always liked), and Adrianne Palicki (who I think might be my new favorite). This is a touching film, with humor and pathos and women in their underwear. Seriously: it’s a good movie, well-written and well-acted, and despite the outlandish situations, I really felt for the characters. For example, in the words of a porn star played by Carla Gugino, upon hearing of the death of someone important to her,

“If we don’t tell people how we feel, what are we doing here? … There is no good time, there is no right time, there is only now.”

It made me cry. Screw you if you think less of me for it. Women In Trouble. Look for it.

Oh, and if you do see Women In Trouble, watch the credits all the way to the end. It’s worth it.

This article is worth reading. Most people have no clue about what “security” really means, including most of the people vilifying — or praising — WikiLeaks.

As becomes increasingly obvious with the passage of time, and with the advancement of digital communication (and thus copying) technologies, privacy is security, and secrecy is not.

[…]

Perhaps the most amazing thing about all this noise over the matter is that WikiLeaks is such a vulnerable, unreliable avenue for distributing such leaks. The US government’s campaign targeting WikiLeaks in an attempt to shut it down does not only betray the culture of secrecy in government to the public at large, undermining any claims to value transparency; it also showcases the simple fact that government officials just do not get it. WikiLeaks is not the cause of the “problem” for secretive government officials. It is merely a superficial indicator of much deeper problems — of a deeply flawed security model.

(from The difference between secrecy and privacy as security concepts, TechRepublic)

I am putting this here in case someone else has the same problem. The network adapter in my laptop kept disconnecting (not all the time — once a day, generally). I could not figure out why. These links helped me solve the problem.

• Network stops working @ Windows 7
• Windows 7 x64 Network Adapter Stops working on high load
• Enable/Disable TCP Task Offloading to NIC in Windows | Windows Reference
• IT – Hint: How to disable Windows Scalable Networking Pack Components

I hope this helps someone.

This is pretty huge news. The Egyptian government has shut off the Internet there, in response to civil unrest which may be reach civil war proportions. And Egypt isn’t the only Middle Eastern country having problems.

I am not going to make any pronouncements or try to draw any conclusions from any of this. I will point out a couple of things, though. First, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has been in power for 30 years. I am probably typical (among Amercians, anyway) in thinking that this is too long for one person to hold that much power. Second, although the average Egyptian is poor, the Egyptian economy is in better shape now, and is less centralized, than it was 30 years ago. So would an Egyptian civil war make that better, or worse?

A revolution is a dangerous thing. The revolution which resulted in the creation of the United States of America is almost unique in how little it cost us and in how well it turned out (and it certainly wasn’t bloodless). People in the USA who call for overthrowing or even substantially changing our form of government should keep that in mind.

Be careful what you wish for.

I am tired of people singing with robot voices. I am ready for that fad to go away.

The only time it’s cool to sing with a robot voice is when a machine is the singer. For example, “Still Alive”, sung by GlaDOS from Portal.

I’ve experiments to run.
There is research to be done.
On the people who are still alive.

I am still attempting to watch every DVD we own in more or less alphabetical order (and I am still on “C”), but two DVDs were released recently that I had to tell people about.

The first is Thundarr The Barbarian. This is a show from the early-mid 1980s about an ill-tempered barbarian in a fur teddy, a Wookie Mok named Ookla, and a postmodernly hip, vaguely Asian sorceress in a blue one-piece bathing suit named Ariel (Princess Ariel, actually). I love this show. I even started writing a role-playing game based on it (which I never finished, although it’s playable as-is). I have been waiting for years for Thundarr to come to DVD.

It’s a “made to order” DVD, which means it’s physically on par with a high-quality bootleg. But I don’t care. I think it’s worth it to pay for the genuine article.

The second DVD is released under the aegis of “Roger Corman’s Cult Classics”, although he had almost nothing to do with it: Star Crash, also known as The Adventures Of Stella Star (the sexy space smuggler). This movie is classic. I don’t think any other Star Wars ripoff is even close to being this entertaining (and that includes the last three Star Wars sequels). You have to see this movie. In fact, we will be riffing it at RavenCon this year, on Friday night. Come join the fun!