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archive 4

newer entries...
10-30-99 good deed for the day
10-30-99 not a good thing
10-29-99 dragon my tail
10-28-99 hardhat area
10-25-99 in memory
10-24-99 uh-oh
10-23-99 freedom and truth
10-22-99 my cold-blooded roommates
10-22-99 Reflections
10-20-99 double score!
10-18-99 Total Infatuation
10-17-99 scattered, smothered and covered
10-16-99 where's Gumby?
10-11-99 every silver lining has a cloud
10-07-99 pain in the...
10-06-99 base is under attack
10-05-99 picture this
10-03-99 Nobody expects the Dave Inquisition!
10-01-99 riddle me this
older entries...
 
^ good deed for the day
10-30-99 So rather than writing an angry letter about the reptile segment on Martha Stewart, I registered on marthastewart.com and wrote a helpful, friendly suggestion on their pet forum. Basically, I pointed out that reptiles have very different, non-obvious needs compared to cats or dogs, and that people need to learn what those needs are. I gave 'em the URLs for Melissa Kaplan's and Kingsnake, and also suggested they read books on whatever species they were interested in.

Marc Morrone is active on those forums, and considering that the people writing him nasty letters have been getting form letter replies, his response to my post was very encouraging. It ended with:
At any rate, when you are looking to get a reptile (or any animal for that matter) please be sure to learn as much as possible first. The sources that Dave listed are among the best and I will be sure to include them in any future reptile segments. Sincerely Marc Morrone
I'm less interested in bringing down an "expert" than I am in making sure people (A) take proper care of their pets and (B) do their research, think for themselves, and come to their own conclusions. So I'm satisfied with how this has turned out.

So now I need to do two more good deeds: finishing the object creation stuff for ALAE (so you can make boulders, tables, piles of rotting fruit or whatever) and getting through the rest of this 13-hour shift awake. Daylight Savings kicks in at 2 AM, so I get an extra hour tacked on to what was already a 12. I'm just thrilled.
 
^ not a good thing
10-30-99 On the October 27 episode of Martha Stewart Living, so-called "pet expert" Marc Morrone gave out some bad information about keeping reptiles as pets.

I didn't see the show myself, but this was brought up on the Leopard Gecko Forum at kingsnake.com. At the core of the problem is this statement (from the Martha Stewart website):
"You can mix different species together, but remember to match them closely in size because larger lizards have been known to eat smaller ones. Marc uses leopard geckos, day geckos, dwarf carpet chameleons, Asian gold skinks, and North American anoles."
First of all, those are by no means "closely matched in size," and a healthy adult leopard gecko will make a snack of an anole without a second thought.

Secondly, the chameleons on the show were (according to several viewers) actually young veiled chameleons, which must be kept singly or they'll be dangerously stressed.

Third, there are very few reptile species where you can get away with keeping multiple males in the same enclosure for very long, and leopard geckos are most definitely not one of them. They're territorial.

Fourth, a 20 gallon tank (as shown on the show) is a VERY crowded place for the number of lizards he had: 4-5 chameleons, 3-4 leos, 2-3 skinks and nearly a dozen green anoles. That size enclosure is suitable for one chameleon OR 3-4 leos OR 2-3 skinks OR a few anoles, assuming only one male (or perhaps a few male anoles if they have enough places to get away from each other). As one person posted, it would be like humans "locked in a room with 4 tigers, 3 cougars, and some wolves."

Fifth, the site describes that set of lizards as "tropical" when in fact they're from all over the place. Green anoles are Florida natives, chameleons are from Madagascar and vicinity, "Asian gold" skinks range though Africa and Asia, and leopard geckos are definitely not tropical, hailing from Middle Eastern deserts.

Sixth, there is no mention at all of some very basic and critical needs, such as keeping one side warmer than the other side so they can choose their own temperature, knowing whether or not your particular lizard will drink from a shallow dish or require misting, etc.

Seventh, if you're going to clean the tank out once a week you're going to drive yourself and your lizards insane, and you're going to waste a lot of time, effort and whatever your substrate material is.

It's not a big surprise that any page that short is going to be incomplete and too generalized. But there should be links to sites which do give adequate information. I'm writing to them about that at least.

If you look at the Reptile FAQ on the link for Morrone's site, there are only two questions. The answer to the second one, describing a severe health problem that's actually very common in reptilian pets that aren't well cared for, is incomplete and inaccurate. Most non-nocturnal reptiles need UVB light, or all the calcium supplements in the world aren't going to do them any good.

This is just another example of bad information. I really hope people who saw that show do their homework before they start packing aquariums shoulder-to-shoulder with lizards. I really hope pet shops are giving out care sheets on the critters they sell and that people are reading them, not just trusting an "expert" they saw on TV.

For real expert advice, try Melissa Kaplan. Her site has articles ranging from "So, you think you want a reptile?" to an advanced discussion of how 7-dehydrocholesterol regulates Vitamin D3 in humans and reptiles.

Grrr. Stupidity is excusable, but the propogation of stupidity is just... stupid.

On a separate note, I seem to suffer from Game Rage. Earning that "Belligerent Dave" name that Steph tagged me with. Cursing at the computer when we play Starcraft is one thing, but I get really worked up when I play Unreal Tournament Demo or Half-Life and most of its various mods online. I start to scare myself with how angry I get when things aren't going well. The fact is that some people are just really freaking good at these games and I oscillate day to day between competent and sucky. But when the same guy kills me the 5th time in a row before I can even pick up something more potent than a peashooter, I turn into Mr. Furious and the game stops being any fun at all. I like a challenge, but I guess I just don't like being stomped into the ground without the skill to get a few retaliatory kicks in.
 
^ dragon my tail
10-29-99 I've been seriously considering getting a bearded dragon. They're a notch higher in price and expenses than geckos or swifts, but not that much higher if I do it right. I'm not looking for one of the rarer and more spectacular color morphs such as the Sandfire, just a nice friendly one. I'm also not going to get a huge glass aquarium, but a much lighter and cheaper Reptarium.

There are at least six breeders on my list of possibilities. First I'm checking to see what Tom and Jackie Vandiver have available. Their posts on Kingsnake have always been knowledgeable and interesting, they have tons of cute photos of dragons and other reptiles, and they're just nice people in general. And they're at least more or less local, too.

If that doesn't pan out, Yellow Dragon and WWORP both have orange phase beardies at reasonable prices. Oranges are supposedly the most calm and personable of all of them.

The whole species in general is probably the most tame and handleable of all reptiles. The book I bought explains this in a logical and believeable manner. While geckos and other small lizards run fast and hide in tight spaces to defend themselves, beardies are big, heavy, short-legged tanks. Designer color morphs aside, their first line of defense is camouflage, so when they sense danger they freeze. Being picked up by humans definitely counts as danger, at least until they get used to it. This is why those almost unbelievable stories about being able to pick them up and cuddle them in the wild are true.

The main issue now, of course, is whether I'll name mine Lanival or Sildua. :)

I'm looking at my site statistics now, "Total Transfers by Referrer URL," and trying to figure out some of it. Dencity, HJVault, Per-Bast, Lotusmaiden, Herojourney, and Diarist make sense. But a major one is Slashdot and I'm not sure why. Maybe I included my URL in an anonymous post or something. And whoever at gslis.utexas.edu is linking to me... hi. :)
 
^ hardhat area
10-28-99 I didn't mean to leave y'all hanging on a depressing entry like that. I just didn't have any significant coherent thoughts to write down.

I do now though. My book order from Amazon came in and I devoured the latest Transmetropolitan. I'd have to classify it as worth reading, but not as blunt or as fast or as trippy as the first two books. It does bear out my guess as to the theme though, in a big way.

Also in that order: a book on swifts (sigh) and the first two Blade of the Immortal manga. I was in a manga sort of mood, it was a series I hadn't heard of, and the reviews sounded good, so what the heck. I'm a few pages into the first of them but I paused to play some Half-Life.

Not multiplayer (I've been doing Unreal Tournament Demo for that) and not a beta of Opposing Force, but the original almost-a-year-old-now game. It runs so much better and looks much nicer on the 400 than it did on the 133. While the puzzles are not as nasty the second time, and I've been doing a lot less dying, it's still just as scary as the first time. Maybe more. I'll enter a section of the game and start swearing and sweating 'cause I know it's going to be rough (usually not as bad as I remember, though). What I don't remember is all the places where a headcrab or something jumps out of nowhere at me. Physically I jump out of my chair. In-game I start spraying bullets everywhere, wasting ungodly amounts of ammo. All for something that'd take about 3 full minutes to actually kill my character.

This is, in my view, a good thing. Any game that can scare me like that when I've already played all the way through it is very worthy. As I told Jeff, something I'd love to be able to pull off in Hero's Journey is "areas that scare the living **** out of people."

The folks at Valve have a great feel for drama, immersiveness, and irony, too. I love it when I've just swum through what seems like miles of flooded rooms, to see a little plastic "Caution, Wet Floor" sign. Or to run the gauntlet of choppers, rollers, smashers, conveyor belts, furnaces, and vats of radioactive goo, to see a sign warning me of " hazardous equipment."

Here I am sitting at home, writing this up and starting to doze off (it's 8 AM for crying out loud, why am I still awake?), and I can still hear the yipping of houndeyes, the gurgling "hello?"-like noise of zombies, the crackling "you're toast" noise of Alien Slaves, and the warning beep of sentry guns... and the scariest sound ever to be heard in that game: "ammunition depleted."
 
^ in memory
10-25-99 I can't evade or deny it any more: Emmer died.

The hardest part for me isn't facing up to it. It isn't even wondering whether there was something I did wrong, some need I didn't provide for, that could have killed him in four brief days. (Most likely it was a pre-existing health problem that finally caught up to him.)

It was the horrible moment when the final discovery was made that this was no longer Emmer I was prodding, squirting with water, shaking and trying to dislodge from the screen top, but an inert, unihabited, and actually foul-smelling corpse, and the horrible moments while disposing of it.

I could write more details about that but they wouldn't make anybody feel better, including me, and wouldn't be a fitting memorial. So I won't.

Four days is not long enough to get to know someone, particularly a pet, and even more so a small reptile. It's long enough to form much of an attachment beyond "isn't he cute?" and getting to learn basic behavioral traits and feeling personally responsible for their well- being. I haven't broken down over this and I'm not going to go into a period of mourning or depression. But I do feel pretty bummed about it.

Emmer was a little guy with a big heart. He was a rascal and a rogue, but a likeable one, in stark contrast to Kalila's quiet, well-behaved, withdrawn behavior. As we inevitably say about acquiantances who pass on, I wish I'd gotten to know him better. I had the feeling that he would be far more likely than Kalila to ever be hand-trained.

He wasn't family and he wasn't human, but he was a friend. He's remembered as such in this journal and photo gallery.
 
^ uh-oh
10-24-99 I'm worried. I'm trying not to dwell on it because I have to get some work done today. That's why I changed my mind about not writing this... hopefully it will get it out.

Emmer, who's been in my care for only four days, might be dead. Probably is. I'm hoping he's just a very heavy sleeper, but I don't really believe that.

I was planning on putting the new screen top on, and extracting the Critter Keeper. But he was hanging upside down from the old one last night so I didn't bother him. It didn't concern me at the time because I've seen him doing that before, and the other swift at PetSmart was doing it too.

He was still there in that same place when I got up this afternoon. Didn't bother me then either. "Position four," I mumbled, decided I'd wait until I was ready to go to take care of things, and made plans to squirt him with the sprayer if he didn't let go for any other reason. He doesn't like it, though he's supposed to be misted every week, and I figured that'd get his attention.

So I got myself awake and ready, and took a picture of his upside-down behavior (I don't expect it'll come out though I forgot to bring the camera with me to download it). Then I poked at the screen top. No reaction. Shook the screen top. No reaction. Squirted him. No reaction. Lifted up the top (carefully!) and gave him a little poke. No reaction.

Watched him for breathing motions. Didn't see any. Granted it's not as obvious on a spiny lizard as it is on a gecko, but... I didn't see any.

Uh-oh.

I didn't want to confirm it absolutely. I didn't want to know, because then I would have to deal with it. So I went to work. I'm probably going to have a terrarium to clean out when I get home.

Hopefully work will keep me occupied. I have the object creation part of the ALAE to do now, and I have a design in mind and just need to start setting it up. So without further ado I'm gonna upload this and get busy.

Hopefully this will turn out to be a false alarm.
 
^ freedom and truth
10-23-99
Keep tank securely covered - they are great jumpers if given the chance to get near enough to the top! - Melissa Kaplan, "Spiny Lizards"
I had added velcro strips to Emmer's screen top that kept the lid plenty secure -- when it was closed. But after I delivered a dollop of baby food (which I'm starting to think, based on the couple of care sheets I finally found on swifts, he won't eat anyway) I figured I would try to pick him up, or rather, to see if he'd climb up my arm.

He chose instead to rocket up the climbing branch, jump for the ledge, then from there jump over to the sofa.
[Swifts] are difficult to sneak up upon, are extremely quick, and difficult to dislodge from a crevice once they have scooted within.
I can vouch for the speed and wariness. Luckily for me, he thought hanging on the back of the sofa was the best way to evade me. The tactic served him pretty well for several adrenaline-filled minutes. If he'd had Kalila's mindset, he'd have gone under the sofa or worse. But then he never would have made that kind of jump in the first place if he was a ground lizard.

I was seriously worried I wasn't going to catch him. As it is, it took my flanel shirt (which looked like a good climbing surface to him) and the little plastic Critter Keeper to get him back into his terrarium.

like Chinese boxes...

When I left for work he still hadn't budged from the Critter Keeper, so I just left it inside his terrarium and went on my way. I stopped at PetCo and bought a different type of screen lid though -- one with a small sliding door in the middle, so he won't have such an easy time getting out while I'm reaching in.


Now my beautiful new apartment stinks of wet fur and burning dragon spit, and I think one of the cancers mated with the doormat. It keeps cursing at me in a thick Mexican accent. I may have to have it shot. - Spider Jerusalem, "I Hate It Here", in Transmetropolitan: Lust For Life

Transmetropolitan is a very odd comic. I kind of dislike even calling it a comic, though it is painfully funny most of the time. If you're not easily offended I recommend it highly. It's about a very messed up world of the future, with a lot of ridiculous situations, ridiculous technology and ridiculous ideas, that, taken together, look way too much like the way our world is now that it's scary. It's also about the truth, and about how the reckless pursuit of truth is not necessarily a good thing, and about how the truth cannot be shoved down peoples' throats.

Take, for example, the story about the historical "reservations." Volunteers choose to live in simulations of past cultures -- total simulations, not just historical re-creation or cultural preservation as we know it. The same diseases, same primitive medicine, same ideas. The same doomed cultures, such as the Mayans, are simulated over and over again. "People die to teach us lessons about religion and environment. We keep history close, to make damned sure we learn from it." But they get very few visitors, and they don't seem to catch on that they're repeating history in order to prevent history from being repeated.

Telling the truth is a responsibility that we all share, especially journalists such as Transmet's protagonist. But there are people who don't want to know the truth, don't want to listen, or want to win arguments by force rather than by being right. You can give people the truth but you can't forcefeed it to them.
 
^ my cold-blooded roommates
10-22-99 I got up in the middle of the morning for a drink. As I passed by the terrariums I noticed Emmer hanging upside down from the screen top. Perfect opportunity to try and confirm gender, if emerald swifts happen to be one of the species that have visible differences. But my vision was really fuzzy from a combination of sleep and not wearing my glasses, so I staggered back to bed and figured I'd check when I was officially awake -- when Emmer settles down somewhere he often stays for hours.

No such luck this time. He was in what I've labeled "Emmer Position Two" -- sitting on the "hotward" side of the food dish with his front feet on the rim. "Emmer Position One" is perched on top of his hidey log, trying to become one with it. I've never seen him actually go under it; arboreal lizards have a different idea of hiding than terrestrial ones I guess. Position Three is hanging onto his climbing branch, tilted back about 10 degrees from straight up. And I guess Position Four is now the screen top. He doesn't like sitting on the cage "floor" much, unless it's in Position Two.

But as I've mentioned before, when he moves, he really moves. He skitters and makes a fair amount of noise. He tears up the road. Sometimes that road happens to be straight through his food dish. He's flung mealworms everywhere. Hasn't eaten any of them. I found one floating and bloating in his water dish this morning. The Repti-Crickets seem to be gone though. It's hard to tell, since they're the same color as the bark. If he scattered them instead of eating them, it'd be like finding a needle in a haystack. A cursory search tells me he probably did eat them though. I gave him some more, and bought him some peach baby food to see if he'll like it. Swifts are iguanids, and iguanas like fruit, so maybe he will too. Or maybe he'll just test its aerodynamics.

The contrast with Kalila is interesting. She doesn't disturb her environment in any way, other than occasionally trailing sand into her water dish, or leaving cute little gecko-tracks in the Desert Sand back when I was using that. (Calci-Sand is weird stuff. You can spill water on it, and the water just sits there like a bead of mercury, for hours. Eventually it will ooze its way down, or rather, the Calci-Sand will float to the surface of the water drop. But you can dig the water up again two days later.) She moves quietly and gracefully. She even always uses the same corner of the cage to relieve herself. I almost get the feeling that if I put the two of them in the same terrarium, she would clean up after Emmer. At the very least, she'd chase down the far-flung mealworms.
 
^ Reflections
10-22-99 You must all be subjected to lizard photos. Muahahahaha.
Emmer, the emerald swift

It's not easy getting good photos of lizards in glass terrariums with screen tops, harsh lighting at one end, no lighting at the other end, without being a trained or experienced photographer and without fancy equipment. I shot 20 pictures last night and kept only four. I shot six more today while Emmer was hanging upside down from his climbing branch, trying to capture the bright colors on his belly. You can barely tell it's a lizard in any of them. Even with the screens off and normal lighting, shooting through glass or at glass tends to mess things up. Reflections, you know.

One of the powerups in Wipeout3 is "reflection." The more I play the game the more fun it is, but I still need another memory card so I can get serious.

I've been reading Sherri S. Tepper's "Six Moon Dance" lately, and I reached a point ¾ of the way through where I had to put it down and spend some time reflecting on it. She does it on purpose I'm sure, since the biggest surprises or revelations or wildest ideas in her book always seem to come at that ¾ mark. I don't want to spoil the book, but it made me think about a lot of things I always sort of took for granted.

So I had myself convinced that this was a very interesting and not invalid way to look at the world, though it doesn't quite fit with my own world view. I came back to it and read some more, and the aftershocks came -- including an explanation of why that particular character thought along those lines.

It's been a long time since a book gave my brain that kind of workout... but then, I've been doing a lot of re-reading of stuff. I'm just not buying books in the quantity I used to, and a good portion of them lately have been about Egypt or reptiles. The five I bought at Archon (from Glen Cook, though I didn't realize it until he offered to sign the Black Company book I happened to pick up) have been the first SF/Fantasy ones I've bought in some time.

Tepper's books tend to take characters from different worlds (sometimes literally) who seem to have absolutely nothing to do with each other, then bring them together in a way that actually makes a lot of sense. The point where they come together is one where the reader learns something very important that makes all the disparate parts of the story suddenly seem as if they've been related all along and the poor reader was just too dumb to pick up on it. And knowing that tendency in advance doesn't help... you'll still never figure it out until she wants you to. She's much more a master of her domain than any so-called gamemaster is of their game.

It's one of those things that makes me wish I was more inclined toward writing. I like writing, I just am missing the gumption to actually plot out a novel and write it. Maybe I need to approach it more as a game... setting first, then some back history, then characters, then find out what happens when they interact. Hmmmm.

It's something to reflect on anyway.
 
^ double score!
10-20-99 Kalila has a spiffy new neighbor and I have a spiffy new computer at work.

I went to PetSmart to make my final buying decision. Fate made my decision for me: the prettier of the two gold skinks was gone. I guess there's more than just a couple of reptile fans in Mooville. The other skink's scales are kind of scuzzy looking; not knowing much about the critters it's hard to say if it's disease, shedding time, or he just needs a bath.

So I took another look at the emerald swifts. One was hanging from the screen top, apparently asleep. The other was watching me as closely as I was watching it. Every once in a while he (or she) started jumping around and going crazy, then she (or he) would settle down and watch me again. I chose to interpret that as a "buy me" dance.

So I picked out supplies, signed the paperwork and took him (or her) home. As a wild-caught and somewhat exotic critter, the store folks don't really have much info on them. Little things like gender, age, food preferences, etc. can only be guessed at.

I've named mine Emmer. Could be an Emma or an Emmilou, could be Emerson or Emilio or Emmanuel. I'm going to assume Emmer is a guy, for the time being, unless he... er, she, starts laying eggs, or I find some more info on the critters.

Emmer's glass house (he shouldn't throw stones) is a 10 gallon aquarium, with a thick layer of Repti-Bark, a climbing branch, and a little half-log to hide under (much like Kalila's only lower and wider). It's set up right next to Kalila's, and they had quite a conversation while I was eating dinner:

Kalila: (stands atop hidey log, stretches up as tall as possible, holds head up high, swishes tail like angry cat, bobs head a few times)
Listen up, newbie. I'm in charge here. This is my turf. These worms are mine. This water bowl is mine. This hidey log is mine. This basking spot is mine. Capiche?
 
Emmer: (glances toward Kalila, scratches his head, stretches out)
Did you say something?
 
Kalila: (puffs out neck repeatedly)
I'm a dangerous grrrl! Bow down before Kalila! Fear my giant pulsating throat!
 
Emmer: (turns away)
Yeah, okay, whatever.
 
Kalila: (goes back under hidey log and sulks)
Sheesh. I do this totally badass threat display, and Dave doesn't even snap a picture. What a waste.
 

Anyway. Emmer is about a handspan long, and at least half of that is tail. A bright green spiny lizard, related (distantly) to iguanas, preferring a forest type climate and eating insects. Other than that, I don't know much, and it doesn't seem many others do either.

Emmer has what looks like an old injury just in front of his right hind leg. It's a sort of dark spot where the spines aren't as well defined. I suspect it was from fighting over food or territory when he was younger, which is why I nominally settled on "male" until I get better evidence. He's certainly healthy and very active now, and I see why they're called swifts. When he wants to go somewhere, he just makes a quantum leap into full speed. Kalila can be pretty fast when she's scared or has something to prove, but her usual mode of travel is best described as "mosying."

I got some pictures, thought not of Li's threat display. But I can't download them from the camera yet 'cause when I came in to work there was Jeff setting up my new hardware. 400 MHz Celeron, 128 megs of RAM, 10 gig HD, Viper 770 video card. Compare this to the previous machine, a 133 non-MMX Pentium with 64 megs of RAM, a (full) 2 gig HD and a video card that couldn't even do 1024x768. I'm finding this thing just amazing. It no longer takes half a day to start up Internet Exploder. The downside was having to reinstall most of my stuff (the old drive is still in the machine, but all that registry info is gone and things that expected to be on drive C: are now on D: and thoroughly confused). Once I get done with this update I'm going to buckle down and do some serious game playing.
 
^ Total Infatuation
10-18-99 Or maybe that's Total Deprivation... of sleep that is. Yes folks, I am already addicted to Total Annihilation. The patch fixes the AI's major points of stupidity (though there are still some odd blind spots in its reasoning) and adds lots of new units. And the skirmishes are a lot more challenging if they continue even after the commander dies... though sometimes cleanup can be annoying, for instance if there's one last submarine lurking out there somewhere and you don't have any surviving shipyards. Or if the computer's last floating Metal Maker is, due to a bug that the patch was supposed to have fixed, visible only on radar but not visually unless you happen to pass your cursor over it.

But there's a lot of really cool things about this game that are missing from Starcraft. The full 3D terrain is not just a neat gimmick, but a major tactical consideration. Tanks and artillery that are hull-down are a major thorn in the side; those big, expensive plasma batteries you spend twenty minutes building are never going to be able to hit them. Air units are powerful if you have a combined force of gunships, bombers and fighters, but expensive compared to ground units... and bombers are still very much affected by mountains.

The animations are much cooler than Starcraft's as well, even if the overall look of most of the indivual units (particularly fighters) isn't that great. Some of the units are really cool looking though, such as the Spider tank (which, unless I missed some kind of special ability such as cloaking or amphibious ability, is otherwise a waste of good metal).

Overall the tactical considerations are a lot more complex than in Starcraft. The sheer number of units combined with 3D terrain and very different fog-of-war issues guarantees that. The fog-of-war can be a little on the silly side at times though. You can fly over an enemy base, see the buildings, then when you leave visual range all the building locations are forgotten if they're not on radar. Your map view remembers where metal deposits are, but not whether there's an extractor building sitting on top of them. Since radar is vital it's easy to overlook this quirk, but it's very disconcerting at first.

I dreamt about this game last night, and woke up thinking about strategies. I didn't want to. I wanted some good solid sleep, but it wasn't happening. So when I finally gave up on that, to distract myself a bit I stopped at PetSmart to see what they had in the way of reptiles.

I found that sticky-toed geckos -- which in the pet trade, is most of them aside from leopards and fat-tails -- tend to leave the sides of their aquariums looking rather nasty. With Kalila all I have to clean up regularly is one corner of the terrarium and the food and water dishes. And she's cuter than the others anyway.

However, they have a pair of gold skinks and a pair of emerald swifts, and they're just cool. The skinks are almost definitely wild-caught and the swifts may be as well. I bought the one book they had on skinks, which is very general and 5 years old. That's ancient if it were about leopard geckos since so much designer breeding has happened since then and so much more has been learned about the critters... but internet searches on gold skinks are almost fruitless. They're not popular pets even for a reptile, probably mostly because they don't breed well in captivity.

Emerald swifts are a little more popular though there was even less information on them at the store. They're bright green, spiny and somewhat reminiscent of a bearded dragon, only long and slender instead of short and chubby. Same kind of excited behavior that I've seen in beardies, too.

I want one of each. I'm thinking about going back tonight before the store closes and doing just that. But I'll probably hang around and play TA tonight, go home and read the skink book and then hit the pet store tommorow.

Oh yeah. I did play Wipeout3 a little bit. It's faster than XL was. It's got at least one amazingly cool track. I need another Playstation memory card so I can save though, and until then I won't be getting very far. Meanwhile, I'll be playing TA.

Maybe I'll name the skink Goliath, after the Core superheavy assault tank... no wait, then we'd be David and Goliath and that would just be too much. Besides, I'm not that addicted.

Am I?
 
^ scattered, smothered and covered
10-17-99 Payday - to paraphrase the protagonist of Rocko's Modern Life - is a very dangerous day. It helps that Steph is out of town and we're not spending our simoleons on Outback or Friday's, or even Waffle House or Gingham's. But I found something else to empty my pockets: Homeworld, Wipeout3, and Total Annihilation.

I've already played the Homeworld demo on Steph's or Jeff's machines. Mine isn't up to snuff -- I'm still on a 133MHz non-MMX Pentium here. The upgrade has been ordered though and I'll be on a madly overclocked Celeron soon.

Meanwhile, TA is down to $10 at Best Buy and has very small disk space and CPU requirements compared to most things out there now. So far the single player campaign seems to be pretty dull though, and the single player skirmishes are bizarre. First game, I didn't know I had to built constructor kbots to build the "advanced" facilities, and got crushed. Second game my commander met the computer's in a matter of minutes and they annihilated each other... I guess that's where the name of the game comes from. For some reason it said I was "defeated" even though we were both dead and I had more points. Third game went on a long time, where I had an uber-base that the computer couldn't bust into but I couldn't seem to get up any momentum to break out and wipe him out... but I happened to spot his commander standing a little too close and took him out with a Brawler gunship. Fourth game, commanders met and killed each other again. Fifth game, I had just finished my second fusion reactor and was starting my second Big Bertha when the enemy commander walked right up to my base like the big idiot he is, and went splat. I can see I'm going to have to turn off the "commander death ends game" option if I'm going to play the computer much more. Multiplayer sounds like it could be interesting though.

Wipeout3 is a Playstation game and I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but the soundtrack is all in .WAV files playable by a PC so I've been listening to it. At least half of Wipeout's charm has always been the music, though it really is a cool racing game. Overall I'd have to say the Wipeout XL soundtrack was better... DJ Sasha is just not that interesting. It's mostly the guest tracks (Underworld, Orbital, Paul Van Dyk, Propellerheads and Chemical Brothers) that stand out. Or so I'm guessing... the tracks are simply labeled track01 through track13, but roughly half the tracks are pretty dull and repetitive.

I haven't been playing Final Fantasy VIII since Simucon. Just like with VII, I fell out of the habit and went and played other stuff instead. I'll probably never get past Disc One, and I'll probably buy FFIX when it comes out and do the same thing.

I can't believe this is my fourth day in a row on duty. It's been odd, I've both worked harder and played harder than I have in a while. Time really flew while I was writing the stuff for the auction. I also finished my chunk of the ALAE stuff and I'll have to see what the next piece will be.

ALAE, by the way, is the Architectural and Landscaping Association of Elanthia. Where Platinum players in DragonRealms and GemStone III will be able to build their own areas and populate them with creatures. If it works out and turns out to be a popular thing in those two games, I don't see any reason why we wouldn't set up something similar in Hero's Journey. I'd even guess that it's a simpler system to build in HJ.

One of the two SGI Origin 2000 racks and the SGI Challenge are gone from the data center now. It's much quieter in there. The five chunky Dell servers combined don't quite make as much noise as that Challenge did. If we could get rid of those, it'd be downright silent.
 
^ where's Gumby?
10-16-99 I've been a little pokey with updates lately. My excuse is that I thought people were still unable to reach my site. The transfer went over smoothly apparently, but both Simutronics and Southwestern Bell haven't updated their DNS lookup tables yet, so every time I tried to go to seshat.org at home or at work, it went to the old, dead IP address. I figured this was happening to everybody, until I tested it today.

I'll still be stuck with my temporary email until the DNS's get straightened out. I can actually download the raw mail file via ftp but it's not very readable. :)

By the way, Cedant, my new host, answered my support email today in under two hours. (Possibly less than that if I'd checked my mail sooner.) Brinet, my ex-host, has not yet answered any of the three emails I've sent them including the cancellation one, it's been a week, and I checked the "Please contact me as soon as possible regarding this matter." on two of the three. Hmmmm.

I'm thinking about getting more critters. Maybe p. pictus (called Madagascan big-head geckos, Madagascan ground geckos, panther geckos, ocelot geckos, or simply Pictus geckos... the same critter). Or maybe a bearded dragon. Or maybe sugar gliders. A few people at the office have gotten them and they're terribly cute, but also considerably more expensive and require a lot of attention, and I'm told they smell too. Hmmmm.

Short entry, but I'm actually kind of worn out on writing for now. I made an auction item for DragonRealms... I don't want to spoil it, but I'll just say that I've spent the past two days writing story rather than code. It felt good to make a first-class fluff item for a change, instead of a gadget that does gee-whiz stuff, or changes to 800 different existing programs to add a couple new things, or a 3000 line system, or workarounds for a system I wrote 3 years ago that broke because somebody else fixed something else in another system.

Oh yeah. My web hosting package comes with HTTP-Analyze. It's really cool. I learned there's a lotusmaiden.com, and that I had a couple of badly capitalized filenames in my images directory. That didn't matter with an NT host but it's critical with a Unix host. They're fixed. Have fun.
 
^ every silver lining has a cloud
10-11-99 This weekend has been a complete bummer. I've been generally down, and my ex-internet host (emphasis on ex) has been down too. It's hard to get motivated to write in this thing when I don't have anything cheerful to say and nobody can read it anyway.

I am very, very disappointed with brinet.net. Their own web site, from which they peddle their services, has been up without a hitch all weekend. Starting Wednesday night or Thursday my page was only accessible through my directory on their domain, not through my own. I used their support form to notify them of the trouble. On Friday my page wasn't accessible at all. Later Friday I lost my email access. Since Saturday I've been getting alternating errors telling me my user name was rejected or their email server couldn't be found at all. I didn't expect they'd fix anything on a weekend just because they don't seem to be that kind of operation. I did hope for some kind of progress by Monday, or a note on their website or email at the alternate address I gave them, but nope, nothing.

Sunday night I started seriously looking at other hosts. Tonight I began the process of signing up for one (I have to get my play.net account pointing to a working email address first, and that always takes a couple hours for the change to go through). One thing amazed me though: most of the hosts that sound like a good deal all around, don't allow SMTP (outbound email). Or at best, you have to sign up for one of their more expensive accounts and then contact them and personally request it to be turned on. They figure it's the easiest way to stop spammers.

That won't work for me. My regular ISP is Southwestern Bell, which is just fine but for one quirk: you can't use their email server unless you're logged on through them. Which makes that email pretty much worthless as far as I'm concerned. I know AT&T Worldnet does that too, and I suspect it's more or less a standard thing among the larger ISPs. Possibly for anti-spam purposes as well.

Besides which, if people email dave@seshat.org it looks a lot better to get a reply from dave@seshat.org than it does to get one from dave48172@someisp.net.

At first I was offended. You can't assume that most people are going to be spammers, that's just not a good way to approach your customers. But then I realized that this was the same approach I have in MMORPG design.

There will be people who do whatever the system lets them do, without regard for whether it's rude or wrong. Therefore you have to set the system up with limitations that prevent that kind of behavior in the first place.

Okay. How about setting a limit on the number of messages sent per day? No, then people would just go right up to the max and claim that since it's possible, it must be okay. How about quietly flagging accounts that send too much mail so the staff can monitor? No, then they'd have to pry into the mail, which is questionable in itself, not to mention that's staff time that should be spent doing other things...

Dang. I hate it when they're right.

Anyway. I've been generally less than pleased with brinet pretty much from the first few days when I realized it wasn't as fast as Dencity and didn't give me much control over things. I even had to email them to get them to set up my email. Heh. But I was resistant to moving, so I foolishly hung around for more than the 30 day period that the guarantee covered.

Kalila resists moving too. She really hates it when I clean her terrarium. She's curious about her temporary quarters (a smallish plastic "critter keeper") until they start to move, at which point she wants OUT. She ranges from cautious to terrified when it's time to go back into the tank once I've changed the substrate. She spends about an hour in a state of total paranoia, and very shakily checks out the boundaries of the place. She then holes up for a couple of days and doesn't eat. It makes me feel so guilty, but the alternative is an unpleasant and unhealthy home for both of us.

This time I went from red desert sand to red T-Rex Calci-Sand, which has a very different texture. It floats, which is kind of a pain, since Kalila's favorite pathway is right through the middle of her water dish and food tray. Given a choice I'd probably go back to the desert sand. But not until I have to. Poor thing. I really need to start handling her more so she doesn't freak out at cleaning time.

I went for a walk in downtown St. Charles Sunday afternoon. The historic district is really a neat place and I thought I'd bring my camera and try to capture some of its atmosphere. I failed. I'm not sure even a professional photographer could have accomplished what I set out to do, though they would certainly have had some pretty pictures (which I didn't). It's just one of those things where you have to be there, and in the right mood, to really appreciate it. Otherwise it's just a bunch of brick streets and flowers and touristy shops.
 
^ pain in the...
10-07-99 Challenge for the day: use the words "Pez", "fandango" and "chiaroscuro" in a sentence.

The Airport Freak I mentioned in  Nobody expects the Dave Inquisition!  was there again the day we picked up Kaikyu, and Steph says she's seen him around there before as well. This time he had a bunch of books and was talking to somebody about DNA. I don't want to know.

A few years ago when I was working for Response Management Systems, we had a trade show out in LA. The last night of the trip I was standing on the sofa closing the curtains in the hotel room and fell. I either broke or badly sprained my ankle, and crashed into the glass coffee table. I'm just glad I didn't go through the table or I'd have been in a world of hurt. I was already in a medium-sized third world country of hurt as it is. So of course the next day I completely abused the ankle by running through airports on it.

I never did have it x-rayed or looked at so I was never sure how much damage I did to it. It got better so I didn't worry about it. But every once in a while I'll wake up with what feels like a sprained ankle, and I'm pretty sure I don't sleepwalk or kickbox while unconscious. I wish I could at least predict the weather with it, but it's just a random occasional thing.

I woke up this morning... okay, afternoon... with it. It doesn't do a lot for my mood. And naturally, though nothing much happened last night, the attack on Simu's web server seems to be going on strong today. Every time I have to get up and limp across the office to restart the thing I grit my teeth and think about the bozo who's doing this. Grrrrr.

Speaking of web trouble. As of the time I'm writing this, my site is up if you access it through my directory on my host's domain, but inaccessible through my own domain name. Just in case it makes any difference at all as far as security goes, I'm thinking it's best not to reveal the host and my account name if I can help it. But I'm thinking about finding another host. I'm disappointed with this one's speed, downtime, problems like this one, and some of the weirder aspects of setup and support (you have to email them and wait for them to manually do a lot of things that could be done yourself or automatically). Maybe they're currently upgrading something and will be faster once it's done, but I tell myself that everytime there's a problem. Mumble. I would really rather not move the site again, but I also don't want to settle for a second-rate host either.

More new pics are up in the gallery, if you can get there and wait for them to download. I shot 16 pics of Kalila this morning and kept 3. One of these days I'm going to catch her at feeding time and actually time the shot well. One of the downsides of a digital camera is a few seconds of processing time between shots -- you can't rapid-fire.

I also put up a couple of my sister's pieces. She and I both managed to lose the others, but hopefully she'll do some more scans soon.

New wallpaper images too ( molitor  isn't a typo).
 
^ base is under attack
10-06-99 Danged script kiddies are messing with our web server. Which means that I get to spend the rest of my shift sitting here waiting for it to crash so I can get up and reboot it again. And Russ gets to spend his shift the same way. And one of our programmers has to take time out tommorow from doing important, game-improving stuff to upgrade our server to a version that fixes this loophole.

What is this jerk trying to prove?

you wanna piece a me, boy?

Why does our society have any tolerance at all for destructive hacking, nuisance attacks, denial of service, etc.? How is this any different from physically vandalizing a store and preventing them from serving their customers?

I guess some people still don't realize that the online world is real. It seems to take folks a while to realize that the other people out there online really are people, who they would treat with a lot more respect if they met them in the  real world.  It takes them even longer to realize that the little acts of  harmless  mischief are hurting real businesses which are being run by real people who get real headaches when a real jerk goes and pulls something like this.

So whoever you are out there who's responsible for this attack, I just want to thank you for ruining my day, Russ's day, Andy's day, Bruce's day, whoever has to deal with this tommorow, and everyone who's trying to play our games and can't because of you. I'm sure this is a moment you'll be proud of for the rest of your life, and your grandkids will gaze upon you in awe when you tell them about it.

On to other things.

I should have listened to my mom. I did need to learn to save my money. I'm not any good at it now. Last month I didn't do too badly, and between that and some overtime I was doing great at the beginning of this month. It lasted a whole three days. I paid rent, bought the digital camera, paid for my domain name (the bill finally did come), bought 5 books and two action figures and went out to dinner too many times. That took care of that.

She was right about peanut butter too. I whined often about wanting chunky peanut butter instead of creamy. She said when I grow up and move out on my own, I could buy whatever type of peanut butter I wanted -- but until then she would be the final arbiter of all peanut butter decisions. So of course one of the first things I bought when I moved up here was chunky peanut butter. I didn't like it. I went back to creamy. She was right.
 
^ picture this
10-05-99 That guy Jack is out there nipping people on the face again. One of these days somebody is going to take exception and kick Mr. Frost's butt. I'm just gonna sit here gulping Kahlua Cafe instant coffee for a while myself.

The water in Mootown has been tasting odd lately. In Florida it was an algae thing; they'd dump stuff in the water supply to kill it off and it wound up tasting kind of musty. This is something else entirely, sort of vaguely metallic. Nobody else seems to have noticed it, but I bought myself a water filtration pitcher and there's definitely a difference.

Though this camera is a terrible battery hog, that wasn't related to the flash problem. I exchanged it for a new one. For some reason, they had someone from the photo lab to check the digital camera I was returning. I'd like to see 'em pop the RAM chip and soak it in liquid... uh huh.

Carrying around a camera changes how you look at things. Especially when you know there are no film expenses. You wind up taking a lot of pictures and you stop taking anything for granted. Today we went to the airport to pick up Kaikyu from his Tokyo vacation, and I snapped pictures of such things as carpet, air conditioning vents, etc. There's a method to my madness though. Today's four new wallpaper images over in the Goodies section started as today's photos, whatever they may look like now.

Kaikyu's arrival

In high school I checked out a book about sketching and Zen, and about seeing things as they are (or at least as they appear to our senses) rather than as the classifications we set up in our mind. The opposite of the mindset you get into for object-oriented programming, where you try to categorize and associate as much as possible and see only the parts the matter to your system. The book didn't help my drawing one bit, but I've kept thinking about that theme ever since. It applies just as well, or more so, to music and to people. There are times when abstraction is useful, and times when it blinds you to what's really going on.

And that's all the philosophy I'm going to spout today.
 
^ Nobody expects the Dave Inquisition!
10-03-99 I bought myself a digital camera. Wal-Mart actually had better deals than anything I'd found online. They had four cameras in the neighborhood of $200 and less, including the JamCam. I wound up with the nicest of those four, a Polaroid PDC-700. Quite a spiffy little camera for the price. I'm having a problem with the flash not going off when it should but that may be a case of dead batteries (even though it also doesn't flash when it's plugged in to an outlet). I'm going to try fresh batteries before I exchange it for another one of the same model. I haven't gotten a decent pic of myself yet (I either need to get somebody else to snap one or plug the video out into a TV so I can aim the camera at myself), but I do have a few decent shots of Kalila, Steph and Jeff. I'll set up a gallery page tonight, but for now here's one of Kalila (click the thumbnail for full size):

Kalila, Leopard Gecko of Doom

As promised, I wrote a survey of my own. It's only 20 questions, not 30. Take it or don't. Post it on your website or don't. Email your answers or don't. It's up to you. Here's the questions, and my answers.

1. Are you skeptical?
I was pretty skeptical of the guy who asked me this question. In an airport. Standing behind a table as if it was a podium and he was about to lecture.

Taped to a podium in the lobby of the Henry XIII Hotel during Simucon, where the speaker could read it, was a little piece of paper titled  How to Pray.  I thought about retitling it  Religion For Dummies  but somebody might take that as a serious anti-Christian sentiment rather than a silly comment about the particular piece of  literature  itself. It reminded me of a strange item we saw at Cracker Barrel once: Prayer Jellybeans. I'm not making this up.

I'm kind of skeptical about some things in general, while others I take on faith. But what I told the guy in the airport was  I'm not interested,  like he was some kind of telemarketer. It was one of those regrettable moments where I wish I had come up with something witty to say, but said something lame instead.
 
2. Do you know a good recipe for spaghetti?
This is another question from the Airport Freak. Which told me he was either genuinely nuts, or just a bored guy killing time pretending to be nuts.

I buy the cheapest spaghetti I can find and usually Five Brothers sauce. Anything else would be cooking, and we can't have that, can we?
 
3. Jedi or Ninja?
As cool as it'd be to move without being seen and all, either the Jedi Mind Trick or telekinesis would be more useful in daily life. To get both would just be awesome.
 
4. Alpha Centauri or Call To Power?
Have to go with Sid Meier on this one, and say Alpha Centauri. Besides, I'm tired of people whining about Alpha's learning curve. It's like an MMORPG -- you don't have to know absolutely everything before you start playing, but you'll pick up more and more as you go until you're micromanaging and optimizing everything.
 
5. Greek olives or Spanish olives?
Spanish olives. Lots of them. With pimento.
 
6. Aeris, Quistis, Tifa or Rinoa?
I thought Tifa was pretty hot, but Quistis has displaced her in my heart. I like her style.
 
7. Lara Croft, Rynn, or Kerrigan?
I'm really sick of Lara Croft. The first Tomb Raider was groundbreaking and fun. Since then the games haven't really impressed me. And the hype was kind of fun at first, an American idoru and all... but it's slowly driven me up the wall. Lara this, Lara that. She's not even as good looking as, say, the Queen from Battle Chess.

Rynn is kida cool, and better looking than Lara. But Drakan just didn't grab my attention.

Kerrigan may have become alien scum, but she still has the looks and the attitude. She could have become a living pool of sludge or a big floating bag of gas if she wanted to, but she stayed sort of vaguely humanoid. Gotta give her props for that. Her game and her style are the best of the three. Live for the swarm!
 
8. Robin or Scrappy Doo?
I should have left a  none of the above  option in there. I'd have to say Scrappy Doo. Even though he ruined the show, he's still not a dorky kid in bright yellow tights.
 
9. Play-Doh or Silly Putty?
There were a lot of cool Play-Doh toys. When I was a kid, I wanted the fire engine playset. My Mom failed to translate my kidspeak  Play-Doh Pumpernine  (Pumper Number Nine) though.

On the other hand, Silly Putty didn't need all that fancy plastic hooha to be amusing for hours on end. I thought it was just so cool when air bubbles got trapped in it and made little popping noises as you squished them. Silly Putty gets my vote.
 
10. Whips or chains?
Well, I've already admitted to liking both Quistis and Kerrigan...

But I'm a wuss about pain, so if I had to be personally subjected to one or the other I'd pick the chains.
 
11. Doonesbury or Dilbert?
Doonesbury used to be the greatest thing. Then I got out of both college and the SCA, and politics were just not as important anymore.

I don't want to like Dilbert. I can't help it.
 
12. Drew Carrey or Ellen Degeneres?
Ellen used to be a riot. Then she was funny in that wry sort of way. Then came the whole  is she or isn't she?  thing. Once she came out completely, her show turned into episode after episode of gay jokes (and Xena became the mystery woman).

Drew Carrey on the other hand, is still funny. Plus he's the host of the American version of  Whose Line Is It Anyway?  Go Drew.
 
13. Cake or death?
 Death... I mean cake! 

A question first asked by Eddie Izzard, stand-up comedian and executive transvestite, who is way funnier than either Drew or Ellen.

Actually if it's Death (from the Sandman comics) vs. Cake (the band), I'd have to say Death is way cooler. And I don't have a Cake action figure perched on my subwoofer. Is a Death action figure le petit mort?
 
14. If you could take home one deadly thing from a computer game, would it be (A) a Gluon Gun from Half-Life, (B) an Accelerated Thermal Needler from CyberStorm, (C) Shiva from Final Fantasy VIII, (D) the undead army of Lyras from DragonRealms, (E) a Yamato Cannon from Starcraft?
As much as some people annoy me -- usually on the road -- I don't think I'd really want to turn anybody to smoldering plasma, so the gluon gun is out.

The ATN cannon would be a useful thing to have in case I ever wanted to demolish large buildings. But the recoil is an absolute bitch. And I don't have anyplace to store it.

She's cold as ice, but FFVIII's Shiva is nice to look at. And doesn't have to be physically manifested all the time. I wouldn't have to worry about filling the ice trays, or suffer much during Missouri summers. And she could boost my abilities too. An all around good choice.

An undead army... I suppose I could convince them to wash my car, keep door-to-door salesmen away, and devour the souls of any landscapers who even think about cranking up a gas-powered hedge trimmer at 9 AM... but they smell.

As with the ATN, there aren't really many practical applications that I'd have for a Yamato Cannon. I suppose I could sell it on Ebay, along with my neighbor's kidneys.
 
15. Which sucks most: Quicktime, Realplayer G2, or Windows Media Player?
All of them suck more than a herd of Hoovers, at least on my machine. But the WiMP takes the prize, as the only one that not only doesn't work, it crashes my machine hard while it's still trying to download little parts of itself.
 
16. What is your favorite color, and (if possible) why?
Blue. I like all the  cool  colors (blue, green, purple) as well as dark reds such as burgundy and maroon. But blue is my overall favorite, with darker greens and grey-greens as a close second.

I knew  why?  would be a hard question, but it's tougher than I thought. If I were a painter, I'd use a deep, dark, rich blue for the night sky. So blue that it suggests black, but is more interesting than black. But now you have some idea why I picked the colors I did for my site.
 
17. If you had your choice of being reincarnated as an annoyingly cute computer game animal, would you become: (A) a Chocobo, (B) a Jigglypuff, (C) a Rolton, (D) a Shadowling, (E) a Zergling?
Rather loose definition of  cute,  isn't it?

Roltons are abused regularly. Zerglings die so easily. Jigglypuffs are just not my thing, if I had to be a Pokemon I'd pick Pidgeotto or Pikachu or maybe even Tokepi. Chocobos are glorified chickens. I guess I'd have to be a Shadowling. I'd try to keep the babble to a minimum though.
 
18. Akira, Heavy Metal, or The Secret of NIMH?
Akira was beautiful, but at least in the dubbed version, the ending didn't make any sense at all. Heavy Metal is way too 70's for me, though Taarna was kinda cool, sort of. But NIMH rocked my world, even if it was about talking rodents.
 
19. Dr. Evil or Dark Helmet?
Helmet may have a bigger Schwarz but he didn't go to evil medical school. Evil loses points for the obnoxious Mini-Me but still comes out ahead.
 
20. Do you take surveys?
This is my control question, of course. And the correct answer is no.
 
^ riddle me this
10-01-99 I found this journaller's survey on Pamie's site and figured I'd give it a go...

1. Would you rather look gorgeous and be retarded, or look retarded and be a genius?
That first type is usually more successful and definitely more popular, which really says something about our society. I bet the second type is happier though. All those gorgeous people are just as consumed with jealousy as everybody else, maybe more so.

Or at least that's what I keep telling myself :)
 
2. If you could bitchslap one actor/actress, who would it be?
It's a tough choice between Tom Cruise and Ahmed Best. I'd have to flip a coin.
 
3. If you could bitchslap one musician, who would it be?
Just one? There are so many good candidates I can't decide... okay, Alanis Morrisette.
 
4. If you could bitchslap one relative, who would it be?
While I don't condone cruelty to animals, I'd have to say that the family cat, Jasmine, is the most deserving of this particular honor. She's sweet for maybe three minutes per day, then goes totally psycho. She's bitten my ankle enough times that she counts as a blood relative.
 
5. If you had to make-out with one relative, who would it be?
...!

You're sick, dude.
 
6. You see a spider on your wall, what do you do?
Depends on the spider and how tired, lazy, benevolent, and/or vindictive I'm feeling at the time.
 
7. Washing your privates in the shower: the lean or the fast hand- o’-water transfer?
Questions like this one and number 5 really make me wonder about the freak who wrote them.
 
8. David Blaine or David Copperfield?
Working for Simutronics, I've heard more than my share of jokes about this. Really folks, only 63% of American males and 14% of American females are named David. Is that so hard to swallow?
 
9. You need to do laundry desperately, do you wear dirty underwear or no underwear?
I always run out of towels first, but I guess if for some reason all my clean underwear underwent spontaneous combustion and I was late for work, I'd settle for dirty. But I'd take a lunch break and hit Wal-Mart.
 
10. Julia Roberts: growing more and more beautiful, or more and more odd-looking?
Downright creepy.
 
11. Favorite cussword / phrase?
 ****ing *** of a ****ing *****,  an outburst occasionally emnating from one of our programmer's cubes who ordinarily is such a mild-mannered nice guy. But then I get pretty rowdy myself when I'm playing multiplayer Starcraft and losing.
 
12. Letterman or Leno?
Space Ghost, baby.
 
13. Scientologists: quietly creepy or totally wacko?
Scientologists are fascinating, like a nuclear accident. Actually I kind of feel sorry for anybody that's been taken in by them, except for Tom Cruise.
 
14. Siegfried or Roy?
The tigers. Duh.
 
15. What do you desire sexually that you’re too embarrassed to ever request?
I'm really shy, folks. The  too embarrassed  part is typically the first and only thing that happens.

There was a sort of miscommunication once with this woman in the SCA who thought I wanted to sleep with her, and it wasn't an entirely bad idea except that it wasn't mine and she had an alcoholic husband, and... well, it's always better to leave your audience wondering.

But I'll never listen to Creedence Clearwater Revival in the same way again.
 
16. Maria Conchita Alonso or Rae Dawn Chong?
I had to look them up on the web. I am so media-illiterate. Rae Dawn Chong was apparently in a live action Crying Freeman movie, and I liked the anime, so I'll pick her. And Rae Dawn sounds like a radioactive element, which is a bonus.
 
17. Gayest cartoon character: Mickey Mouse or Christopher Robin?
Mickey is straight, otherwise Disney would fire him. And Christopher Robin is English, not gay -- there's a subtle difference. However, I have it on good authority that Velma from  Scooby Doo  is bi at the very least.

And I hope it doesn't spoil the humor, but one of my pet peeves is the expression  that's so gay!  I guess I shouldn't be too offended though because my sister used it, and she is.
 
18. You’re depressed: do you drink, cover your pain with humor, or take it out on the person closest to you?
Drinking just makes me sleepy... except for one time when I was apparently really entertaining. That was an SCA event but not the one alluded to above (though I won't comment on whether or not I was entertaining on that occasion.

Generally humor brings me right out of a funk (with hysteria somewhere in between), but it has to be somebody else's humor and it has to hit me at just the right angle.

I try not to take it out on other people, except for Steph, and she's a priest so she has to deal with stuff like that. Nyah nyah.
 
19. Favorite Sutherland: Kiefer or Donald?
I've heard of these two actors at least. I can't picture either of them or recall any movies that either of them have been in. They probably connect to Kevin Bacon in an equal number of hops. I'll pick Kiefer because it's such a silly word. Kiefer kiefer kiefer.
 
20. Favorite Corey: Haim, Feldman, or Hart?
Hart. What people don't realize is that  Sunglasses at Night  was actually a parody of the whole American obsession with dark and lonely anti-heroic types. Plus I can't remember who Feldman is and I don't know who Haim is.
 
21. Mary-Kate or Ashley?
I'll just have water, thanks.
 
22. Do you spend a lot of time surfing the Net because you’re scared of people, or because people are scared of you?
Some people told me at Simucon that they thought I'd be scary. Shalnhh can be pretty intimidating -- he's got the blood of reptile just underneath his skin. But on the other hand, I was pretty much scared of some of the players at Simucon, who got the deer-in-the-headlights look as my main response to some of their questions.

But none of that has anything to do with why I surf the net. I think I covered that pretty well in yesterday's entry.
 
23. What do you sing instead of  pompatus of love  in Steve Miller's "The Joker"?
You'd have to hum it for me, I have no idea what you're talking about.
 
24. Best bets in a  death pool  (pick 3): Andy Dick, Robert Downey Jr., Nell Carter, ex-Pogue Shane McGowan, Ronald Reagan, rock group Hanson, Salman Rushdie, Bob Hope, John Popper, Scott Weiland, Mr. T, golfer John Daly, or that girl from Blossom?
Well, I've heard of some of these. I'd pick Hanson, Hanson and Hanson but that would just be wishful thinking.
 
25. It’s 4pm, your husband calls from work to say he’s bringing his boss over for dinner! What do you prepare?
My what?
 
26. Is a dart board really such a bad wedding gift?
Only if it has a relative's picture taped to it. That's pretty tacky.
 
27. Your ass or your elbow?
My ass. I think.
 
28. Favorite Wu-Tang Clansman?
The invisible one that never gets his name in the credits, never appears in any videos and didn't contribute to any of the albums. He's the best of them all.
 
29. Will Billy Idol ever make a successful comeback?
In an ideal world, he would. But it'd take a complete image change, including the name, but not to some unpronounceable symbol so people didn't call him  The Artist Formerly Known as Billy Idol  and snicker. Honestly Mr. Idol did some interesting stuff, but he needs another musician to bounce things off of.

I liked his Cyberpunk album, okay? Except I kept wanting to write a filksong about Kerowyn from Misty Lackey's  By the Sword  to the tune of  Heroin. 
 
30. Let’s just say you’re walking home drunk very late from a bar in Madison Wisconsin last week and you see a hundred dollar bill on the ground so you pick it up. A minute later, a very anxious-looking hippie comes by, searching all over the street for something, muttering about  not being able to pay rent . Are you like totally going to hell if you kept the money, planning to spend it at a titty bar in Vegas this weekend?
Let me get this straight. I'm in Wisconsin and I plan on walking home to St. Louis. If I'm that drunk, there's no guessing what I'd do. At best I'd pick up the money, then completely forget about it in the 60 seconds it takes for the hippie to show up. Or I might figure he was drunk too, if he was wandering around looking at the ground and mumbling to himself.

Sounds like I'm dodging the question? Nah, I never do that. Well, okay. I don't believe in hell in the first place, but let's say I'm trying to avoid being devoured by Ammit (as assumptions go, that's pretty good). Let's see...  I have not committed robbery with violence,  check.  I have not stolen,  check.  I have made none to weep,  check.  I am not a man of deceit,  well, if this hippie happens to ask me if I just picked up the hundred dollar bill that he left lying in the street for safekeeping, I'd tell him the truth, so check.

Seriously though, aside from the fact that it seems like a total setup, I'd just have to do what my gut instinct said to do. One way to look at it is anybody who manages to completely lose a $100 bill in the street and let it get so far away from him that he doesn't notice a drunk guy pick it up and pocket it, truly has lost it.

This is an odd question, considering that at the grocery store a couple days ago there was a dollar bill on the floor. The bagger (I almost wrote beggar) thought it was mine. I knew it wasn't and said so. The cashier knew it wasn't hers, and told me to just keep it. I was inclined to refuse, but it was obvious that nobody else was going to take it either, so I kept it.

That was fun. I'm going to have to write my own survey. Muahahaha.
 
 regulars:
  • moo
  • third
  • chat
  • kimbered
  • logic
  • shades

    on a whim:
  • orisinal
  • bilbanan
  • smurf
  • bang
  • lobster
  • yugop
  • skin
  • wood
  • rhythm