Unhelpful

After being threatened with a h4xxor attack earlier this evening, I jokingly told the would-be h4xxor that my “RAM DIMMs have jumped out of my computer and fled the room in fear.”

I must thank that would-be h4xxor, because he got me thinking.

Why not roleplay as computer equipment?

I’ll start, I will be SX-Z313-XA64, the video card with inferiority issues due to only having 8 MB of RAM in a 32 MB world.

We can roll die to determine things like transistors, die size, voltage, clock speed, memory, what bus we use, whether we’re SCSI or UDMA, and so on. It will be more fun than anything you’ve ever done before, I swear.

Before you say “That’s stupid,” or “That’s the geekiest thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” just think:

At least you’re not pretending you’re an anthropomorphic animal, a creepy aborted fetus thing, or King Xa’s’sde’ar’ade’aer’ad’a'tra’et’at’a'ytadfkaldf’adf’a'aerjau, the beautiful, immortal elf whose parents were killed by a roving gang of lesbian pirate gypsies.

To call the Mystere stories “child pornography” isn’t just inaccurate, it’s potentially dangerous, whether you agree with Mystere, Verant, or somewhere in between.

But don’t take my word for it, because I’m not a judge or a lawyer…

Justice Byron White is, however. Read more »

web developers = ‘pain in the ass’

It’s one thing to be a slave to the corporate machine, but to put up with the web developers they hire is another story…

Bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch. “Why can’t I load a 2Gb table into memory to do a simple ’search & replace’?”; “What are all these ‘^M’ characters in my HTML?”; “What do you mean I don’t have ‘root’ access on the production server?”. Blah, blah, blah.

Fuck ‘em. If I were doing the hiring they’d have a terminal and a ‘Vi’ session to prove their worth. It seems any ass with a Windoze HTML GUI can get in the doors these days, esp. if they have their green card and a PhD in Environmental Engineering from India.

Yeah, I’m a UNIX bigot - prove me otherwise…

A day in the life of Midwest-Suburbia…

My life is fairly routine and boring, so the most I could come up with for my initial rant was to bitch about my neighbors and where life has rooted me for the time being…

Being a native of the east coast and somewhat outgoing as a teen, I find the fact of living in the burbs outside of St. Louis surprising at times. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to have a new house to call your own but it’s ‘where’ you call home that you have to be concerned about.

I grew up in rural Maryland, so I’m familiar with all the hicks, rednecks, hee-haws and refugees (a West Virginian who managed to find their way across the Potomac) anyone could imagine. But in Missouri (Mizzoraah to the natives), they’ve redefined the term ‘redneck.’ The southerner’s have they’re own thing, but I guess we’re just too close to Arkansas (i.e. West Memphis Three). Even though I live in a middle to upper-class neighborhood, I find myself surrounded by 4X4’s and Union members. A weekend trip to Wal-Mart is definitely better than the circus.

to be continued…

I want a giraffe.
They have those cool knobs on their head.
I like to think they’re antenna.
They use the antenna to keep in contact with the home world.

Idly eating leaves as they patiently await the invasion.

Beginners: To screw yourself, believe everything you read. After all, if someone promises you can…

“Beta-test new monsters , dungeons , and more before the update. Attend special DEV chats to discuss new ideas. Receive valuable discounts at the Game Shop, and more.”

…for nothing, and all you have to do is hand “Turbine” your Microsoft Zone ID and password, that’s a pretty clear-cut way to screw yourself.

Advanced: Run such a site. Then not only can Turbine have grounds to pursue legal action, but so can Microsoft and the FBI. Computer crime’s real, kids, and restitution’s a bitch. Way to go, you’ve screwed yourself real good.

Note: The above site works in Internet Explorer but not Netscape. Somehow I think browser compatibility is going to be the least of their concerns.

Discuss: Comments? [dead link]

It’s 1985. The game is Questron. The machine is a Commodore 64. It’s an FRPG, it’s pretty entertaining, and it introduced me to the concept which I believe will be the key to making a long-term successful MRPG: the sub-game. In fact, it may be what saves the genre. Read more »

Asheron’s Call has a major upgrade in today. So major, in fact, that if Turbine were Verant or Origin, they’d put it in a new box, call it an expansion, and charge you $25 a pop for it. GameCenter’s article about it is worth looking at - be sure to check out the pictures.

A comparison is in order. To make things blindingly obvious, negatives are in red, positives in blue.

Discuss: Comments? I’m sure of it.

You know, funerals would be pretty cool if it weren’t for the whole death thing. It’s just like a party but with really sharp-looking black clothes.

We should have funerals for the living - they’re wasted on the dead.

There’s been a fair amount of interest from the press over my act of political satire. Fortunately, that’s all whom I’ve heard from so far, but as you know, the wheels of justice turn slowly, so if it turns out the Attorney General of Maryland doesn’t have a sense of humor (or is beholden to commercial interests), it’ll take a while to find out.

Ironically, Ralph Nader is being sued for his own bit of political parody.

The best thing that can come out of this is some scruitiny of our two major political parties which are, for all purposes, wholly owned subsidiaries of major corporations.

The worst thing that can come out of this…

Well, let’s not dwell on that.

I believe I made my point.

Someone noticed.

Political satire with edge.

Discuss: Comments? Please send me a carrot cake with a nail file in it. [dead link]

[Note: This update was written as a followup to the previous. By reading the articles without the thread, and without being familiar with the other associated threads, the additional information that is revealed in them is that the person who put his vote on ebay as a form of political protest was me. While I did get a rather alarming amount of attention from the Justice Department, the Federal Election Commission, and the Maryland Attorney General, the event passed without a dramatic outcome, fortunately. This is mostly due to the office of the Maryland Attorney General, who took this incident for exactly what it was: political protest in the form of a farce, rather than a real attempt to actually exchange money for a vote.]

eBay item 410721373 (Ends Aug-25-00 14:23:20 PDT) - Vote of One US Citizen - NO RESERVE!

Democracy has been for sale for all of the 20th century. Be sure to make your dollars count.

(Fairness in Journalism: I posted this on my own domain, too.)

Discuss: Comments? (Free for now) [dead link]

eBay item 410721373 (Ends Aug-25-00 14:23:20 PDT) - Vote of One US Citizen - NO RESERVE!

Democracy has been for sale for all of the 20th century. Be sure to make your dollars count.

There’s nothing I hate more than walking down a forgotten stretch of country road, feeling a gust of wind as a car speeds by, and watching some soulless, cocksucking motherfucker toss a spent cigarette out the window. The butt’s tumbling generally comes to a stop amongst a pile of it’s lipstick-smeared friends.

I hate these people. I’d like to grab one of these fuckers by their collars, shake them silly and scream in their eyes: “HEY DICKHEAD, YOU ARE RUINING SOME CUTE FURRY CREATURE’S HOME. NOW GO PICK IT UP AND NEVER, EVER DO IT AGAIN, OR I WILL FUCK YOUR FACE BLACK AND BLUE.”

As for those who make a habit of tossing away their cigarettes on city streets or playgrounds: COOL, ALRIGHT. May the density of your soles increase with tobacco-matter. No one gives a shit about people anyway.

Got blood desire? Secret Vampires!

In the unlikely circumstance that a mysterious, radioactive meteor impacts on the Earth, reactivates the decaying brains of the recently deceased and invokes some sort of unholy lust for human flesh in the walking dead,

I don’t want to miss out on that shit.