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| Mass Effect, $5.
The Complete Sam And Max, $15 (Sadly, not really complete, because it's the complete *NEW* set, not including classics like Sam And Max Hit The Road)
Portal, $5 (and the rest of The Orange Box, $22)
And also some motorcycle game for $2 and a couple of boring choices (Every Doom Game Ever and Devil May Cry) for still way too much.
But the first three are all deals I would jump on in a heartbeat if I didn't already own all three. | |
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| 2009 totalsBike: 47h 52m 23s - 307.36 Mi Run: 218h 06m 10s - 1349.18 Mi Swim: 13h 26m 22s - 39967 Yd Total: ~280 hours Significantly less hours than 2008's 443, but significantly less Ironman training, as well. The reduction was all in biking and swimming, which I barely did at all this year. My big thing this year was running, obviously, where I had slightly higher mileage than last year, despite only training for one thing instead of two. Last year I said: What I'm most pleased about is my increase in pace in all sports, especially running and swimming. In 2007, my average pace for my 923 miles run was 10:46. In 2008, my average pace for my 1328 miles was 9:59. At the beginning of the year, I was averaging in the low 10s, and for the past few months, I've been averaging in the mid 9s.So 2008 was 1328 miles in 222 hours. 2009 was 1349 miles in 218 hours. Yay for getting ever faster! I'm especially pleased because so many of those miles were base miles, run at an easy speed, and many of them run in the middle of Texas summer. My total average pace was 9:40/mile. Project for 2010: Ride faster, while at the very least not getting appreciably slower at swimming and running. | |
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| Ten years ago I was 21 working at FundsXpress.com where I was a founding programmer. Our product was a turn-key online banking system for small to medium banks that wanted to offer online services to their customers but didn't the development resources of the bigger banks. It was 1999 about to be 2000 and everyone was all too concerned with Y2K. Just what was going to happen? Zombie Apocalypse? The end of the world as we know it? As it turns out, no, not so much. In fact the only problem I remember was that my bank's (Liberty Bank SSB, now Prosperity Bank, I don't use them anymore) VISA Check Card didn't work when I tried to buy a bottle of scotch and a colorful array of champagne on my way to a NYE party. The fact that I was going to a NYE party was a point of contention with the then CTO of FundsXpress one Jonathan Harbor. Overall I don't remember much about Jonathan beyond a these points: 1. He believed a servers name should be inclusive of all services that server would run. On the surface this isn't so bad: oracle-db-001, etc. In practice it tended to be more like prod-ora-10g-patch-5-db-backup-002. Naturally as systems evolved over time the hostname changed. 2. If one were to put much weight into the stories told over pints late into the night, one would be under the impression that our CTO was formerly a very successful back-ops political assassin. 3. When it came to weapons, guns, it turned out that he had almost all of his facts wrong in very painful ways. Suggesting that he was not in fact the inspiration for Sam Fisher, Solid Snake or Tom Grisham as he would have had us believe. 4. He and the VP of Development Joyce Konigsburg waged an all out war. The losers were development, operations and our share holders. 5. Finally, Harbor believed that for Y2K we needed the entire senior engineering team, customer service, and a selection of other employees to man the office. You know, just incase Y2K was a big deal. I wasn't there. What would be the point? If the world financial and monetary systems melted under the weight of a few bits, what were we going to do? We provided an online banking service. The most we could have realistically done is taken the site down, replacing our happy holidays logo with something more suggestive of the times. Perhaps an obvious quote from our early days and living example of why you never write this-shouldn't-happen error messages: This shouldn't happen, the aliens have landed, bend over and kiss your ass goodbye. Incidentally that message didn't go over well. I learned in my time at FundsXpress that bankers have a penchant sense of propriety when it comes to public image. Privately they're all about steak, liquor and porn. I'll never again question the efficacy tits and the back-room to the sales process. I probably would have gone, ignoring the futility of the event and my obvious disdain for two executives who would no doubt be at the Y2K event, had it not been deemed a dry event. As FundsXpress grew to ~300 people our collective our social fabric became largely based on an appreciation of scotch, tequila, expensive but horrific smelling cigars and the curious discovery of discarded undergarments late in the evening. Booze and Gossip. During our growth we came to acknowledged certain truths: HR provided free cab ride home vouchers to all employees, replenished as often as you needed. To maximize cliché, work hard play hard, was an unofficial motto. Our employees were important and having them turn up as the example du jour for Mothers Against Drunk Driving just wouldn't do. No doubt, given our conservative and overly paternal HR department a metric to gauge play hard had consequences. FundsXpress would host a NYE part and come midnight there would be a toast with sparkling water and apple cider. Some of us were asked to be in, while others were ordered. Liquor was forbidden. Instead I was paying for an 18y bottle of Macallen and few bottles of forgettable pink champagne in cash because my VISA Check Card couldn't be bothered. It would work just fine Jan 1st 2000, but not Dec 31st 1999. Then off to my Matt and Amy's NYE bash. The champagne was pink because we were supposed to bring colored champagne. It was a small party, I vaguely recall ten or twelve of us and a good fourteen bottles of champagne. Not to mention beer, wine and course that 18yr bottle of Mccallen. We toasted when the hour came. Bottle after bottle the champagne was downed. A few folks left early, those of us that stayed were dedicated to finishing all of the champagne. This isn't the sort of bold contest you begin of sound mind or body nor does it end with such either. There were fireworks, the kind that launch fiery projectiles into the air and into near by trees. Those were best operated by only the most intoxicated. That night close-captioning gave birth to one of my Austin friends longest running in-jokes: roman nun earls and their tendency to write bad checks. Tonight is very different. Tonight @abright and I are having a quiet night at home. Champagne soon, but not in the excess of days past. I miss my Austin friends. Those that went to the FundsXpress party out of obligation or solidarity, those that were at that 1999 NYE Party of Matt & Amy's and those that I'd meet later. Happy New Year Austin, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Cambridge and Somerville. Posted via email from mhat's posterous | |
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| Poll #1505716 The greatest Rock And Roll movie of all time!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 51 The greatest Rock And Roll movie of all time is: The previous question is tickies, not radio buttons, because: WORST Rock And Roll movie that was still mostly awesome: | |
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| Happy new year. May this one be kinder, funnier and more interesting than the last.
Photo by my good friend Brian Wood, who’s away with his family tonight. My family’s asleep, and I’m sitting here with whisky in the glass and Michael Cashmore’s SLEEP ENGLAND on the speakers, brushing the last traces of a brief snow flurry off my shaven head, and thinking about the future. Annual tradition, maybe, or perhaps just something coded into my bones. It’s the only way I know to break the new year in: to sit in the quieter part of the night and think.
This is Warren Ellis dot com, broadcasting into 2010.
(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.) | |
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| Hrm. As I sit down to review my 2009, I find .. I don't really have anything interesting to say. That will hardly stop me from saying things, though.
I accomplished my goal of taking the first half of the year as just a "for fun" time, where I wasn't training seriously for anything in particular, and that was fun, but for me, a little unguided. Even though I know I need downtime sometimes, I enjoy having a schedule and a goal.
My sister's wedding and the Hawaii 70.3 was a nice palate cleanser between "just for fun" training and settling back into marathon training. The wedding was beautiful, Hawaii was beautiful, and I love to see my sister happy. And the triathlon.. was certainly a triathlon. Running in lava fields SOUNDS fun, but it lost its charm quickly in that heat. (Still very glad I did it.)
In June I started training with Team Rogue North, aka the Rogue Roadrunners. We did our base phase, running lots and lots of long, slow miles, culminating in the New Mexico Marathon, my fifth (standalone) marathon, and the first where I've not had a firm time goal. It was nice to have no time goal, and still just eke out a sub-4, a time I never thought I'd be able to accomplish at all.
Then we entered our speed phase, which was tough but significantly less mileage, culminating in the San Antonio half marathon, which.. well.. at least that's over.
And finally we're now on the home stretch coming into our goal race, the Houston Marathon in mid-January. I feel like this program has been good for me. It's been a LOT of running and a lot of speed work and it's been hard and tiring, but I feel like I'm a stronger runner than I've ever been. I'm aiming for a 3:40 again, and maybe second time will be a charm. I would love it if everything came together on the day.. healthy, great weather, feeling strong, but I'm prepared to hold it together even if everything falls apart, as often it does.
On the job front, things have been good this year. On the Matt front, things have been great. His year has had more trials and tribulations than mine, but I've tried to be there for him when he needs me.
So, 2009 was good to me, even though it sounds like most people are happy to see it go. I'm hoping 2010 will be even better.
I kinda stopped doing resolutions a few years ago. I have a few goals, obviously.. the New Orleans 70.3, Ironman Coeur d'Alene in June, supporting Matt in Canada for his second-in-two-months Ironman, the San Diego Comic-Con.. but also some more nebulous goals like getting faster and stronger on the bike. And getting stronger in general.. I'd like to work on building some muscle and core strength, since core and weights are usually the first thing to go for me when I get overwhelmed.
Wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2010. Welcome to the future. Please send flying cars. | |
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| Yep. Despite that huge river flowing in Egypt, it is that time of year again.
Theo says, "Mom! You know what would be great? We should go to Chuck E. Cheese's for your birthday."
I'm staring at him all squinty-eyed when I say, "Why the heck would I want to go there? I can't even EAT CHEESE."
He gives me a smug little grin, which means he deliberately pushed my buttons. The family legacy continues. My kid's ability to tease me is the best present ever. | |
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|  EDIT: ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) affreca has spotted it as Diamond Head Crater, Oahu, Hawaii. | |
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| 2009, it turns out, was not quite done with me. Fell over with a repeat bout of Mongolian Terror Trout Flu a couple of days after Xmas, and am only now back on my feet today. This is what happens when your child constantly brings back disgusting diseases from other children and your immune system never has time to recover. I ought to laminate the little horror and hose her down with boiling water and bleach before she re-enters the house every day.
I read today that auld acquaintance Patrick Stewart is to be knighted this new year for services to drama. This pleases me immensely. Patrick told me many times that Spider Jerusalem is his role model. I trust he won’t be headbutting any members of the royal family or vigorously wiping his arse on the Queen’s skirts during the ceremony.
Messages have piled up while I’ve lain in my pit semi-conscious and re-watching the (original, only) THE PRISONER box set, so, annoyingly, I have a bit of work to do this morning. A question on a film option, a couple of interview requests. I am, technically, Not At Work for a while longer, but not everyone gets the message.
New Year coming. This’ll be the first one in 25+ years where I’ll be asleep shortly after midnight. Roll on 2010. Raise a glass for me, because I’ll be raising one to you, and to a better year for all of us.
See you on the other side.
(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.) | |
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| Why is it that when I do a Google image search on "lace-front wig" the entire first page is nothing but pictures of Tyra Banks, Beyoncé Knowles, and Mary J. Blige?</p> </sarcasm> | |
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|  Toys 'R' Us for the win. | |
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| "Dexter: Early Cuts" - a series of animated web shorts exploring backstory from a bunch of victims mentioned in passing in Season 1. | |
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| Max Payne 1+2 for $2.50 each, Civ IV for $7.50, Left4Dead for $7.50, and CoD5 for $25.
(CivIV Complete Edition, which includes all three expansions, is $13.60.)
If you've never played Max Payne, get it. For $2.50, it's well worth the price even for people who generally dislike shooters and will play it on Easy or with a god-mode code. If you liked 1, get 2 - it's not as good, but it's not *bad*, either.
If you've never played Left4Dead and you like shooting games *at all*, get it. It's not as good a game as L4D2, but it's still amazing fun and groundbreaking, and $7.50. It's only playable[1] if you want to get together with other people and play online, though.
CoD5 is just amazing fun. But, again, gotta love shooters.
And CivIV? Will eat your life. Will eat *months* of your life. But it's cheap!
EDIT:
[1]: You *can* play it singleplayer with 3 bots, or even with just one other person. It's just.... the bots suck, and you're missing out on a lot of the experience. And you'll *never* survive on Expert with a bot, or on Advanced with 2 or more. They're just not capable of the necessary teamwork. | |
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| As always, the post of the month that got the most comments. January:People Are Stupid. A nurse yanks out the IUDs of patients when she examines them, then lectures them about how IUDs cause abortion, then refuses to replace them citing a "conscience clause" that says she doesn't have to do her job if she doesn't want to, as long as she claims bigotry and illiteracy. For bonus points, she went *on the record* to say that she's got a foolproof defense by just claiming it was an accident that she yanked out *every* IUD of *every* patient. Why did it get so many comments: Some people actually thought she was doing something illegal. Nope - the laws in her state make it perfectly legal. She's just being sued. I looked it up, by the way: No progress on the case so far, but no further reports of torn-out IUDs since the nurse and clinic got sued, so it's a start. February:Wherein I shall steal a math problem from XKCD.Sue and Bob take turns rolling a 6-sided die. Once either person rolls a 6, the game is over. Sue rolls first. If she doesn’t roll a 6, Bob rolls the die; if he doesn’t roll a 6, Sue rolls again. They continue taking turns until one of them rolls a 6.
Bob rolls a 6 before Sue.
What is the probability Bob rolled the 6 on his second turn?
Hints: The answer is not 1/6. It is not 5/36. It is not 125/1296. Why did it get so many comments: It's a very nonintuitive problem. Honorable mention: Fuck You, Virgin Mobile - from *2007*. I locked it and banned further comments because it was getting 3-5 spam messages a week, since it's *still* one of the top search hits for a couple of those phrases. March:JOHN Watches The Watchmen, That's Who.Why did it get so many comments: Inviting commentary, from my audience, on a geek topic, gets tons of comments. Especially when I call a lot of Alan Moore's work stupid. Honorable mention: a two-fer with I don't need no stinkin' context. and The answers to the quiz!, wherein I ask questions about copyright law and then answer them. April:"Failed Attempt At Treason To Be Honoured By America's Slow Learners."Why did it get so many comments: The confederate flag is a racist symbol, and the sole defining factor in the decision of the Slavers to rebel was, in their own words, slavery. Anyone who says differently is deluded or not paying attention. Honorable menion: Puppy!May:You know why it's called "alternative medicine"?
Because if it worked, they'd just call it "medicine".Why did it get so many comments: Homeopaths, naturopaths, antivaccinationists, yogis, and other religious idiots don't like being called stupid, even when they're stupid and they're getting people *killed* by their stupidity. Honorable mention: "Children take energy and time! Wouldn't it be an evolutionary advantage to eat them instead? Eating your children would mean you live longer, so the lack of animals doing that disproves evolution! Duh, I eat poop!"June:See this young lady?Why did it get so many comments: Jay would rather spend 50 comments claiming a massive decades-long conpiracy among thousands of people than admit that maybe Dru Blair might be a scary-good airbrusher who makes a living doing scary-good airbrushing. July:A Brief Visual Guide To CultureWhy did it get so many comments: Some people were disgusted. Others didn't believe this was an ongoing trend until examples got trotted out, and sometimes not even then. August:I should never, ever go into bookstores.Why did it get so many comments: A long list of new books, three paragraphs on why I HATE HATE HATE HATE all the characters in Kim Harrison's books and yet bought the rest of the series and spent a couple of weeks reading through them and yelling a lot, and really, a discussion of "books we like" in *this* audience. Honorable mention because it was so close: "Fandom, you have no taste", which got lots of comments because I hate Joss Whedon and consider him and Orson Scott Card to be pimples on the ass of the universe. And this is, inexplicably, a non-universal opinion. September:Humanity: DoomedWhy did it get so many comments: Battleship, The Movie. October:On driving, and warning signs that another driver is going to try to kill you.Why did it get so many comments: Lots of people discussing different crazy-driver warning signs. November:Clarissa Ruins Thanksgiving.Why did it get so many comments: It's Jason Yungbluth, who once drew a clown beating the Pope to death with a baby harp seal while pissing on the Vietnam Memorial, with the original Clarissa comic. It's a rape joke. December:Homosexuality is a sin! No, Corduroy Skirts are a sin!Why did it get so many comments: Apparently there is some uncertainty about whether or not calling for the forceful elimination of homosexuals, as practiced by hateful American bigots, is or is not hateful and bigoted. | |
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| Hi everybody!
You'll notice that Thingpart has a lot less drawing today. That's because Thingpart is, sadly, no more.
I apologize for the abruptness of this announcement, but it was not a decision I made lightly.
As much as I've loved drawing Thingpart for the last four and a half years, I've decided that I'd rather work on some other comics projects. Most notably, "Just So You Know #2" which should be finished in the next couple months (and hopefully, in the not too distant future, expanded to a graphic novel).
So, don't worry, I'm not finished with comics; I'm just changing direction slightly.
And I'm not finished with this blog. I'll be posting different things on it, though. Pages in progress? Sketches? Hastily drawn gag strips? Who knows?
Thanks to all of you who've come here every week to read my silly little comic strip, Thingpart.
Love,
joey alison sayers | |
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| i promised, in the stupidly long post about my old drama teacher, to talk about getting over stage fright. mostly because i was going nuts in parenthetical passages in that entry, not necessarily because i had anything insightful or interesting to say. but i'm not sure, i might find something of value there, so i'm gonna give it a try. i've always been shy. the TMBG song if i wasn't shy has often haunted me---all the things i might do if i were bold! and Jenny Holzer's truism, "TIMIDITY IS LAUGHABLE" makes me cringe. i know, ok! i'm just really unselfconfident. and really that's more about wanting not to overstate abilities than a deep seated belief that i'm inferior or something. but it's enough to keep me from being the braggart or basking in too much pride, which i've always worried about, like Salinger's Zooey. so i chose to blend in, be quiet, unremarkable. i still choose that sometimes. but i think i got over the intense need to be that way by getting up in front of people and being the focus of attention for awhile. i never do excellently. usually i do good, i think, if i can remember to keep my pace at a non-exhausting level (for the audience, that is...not that smart, just talk that fast). but i am not a great public speaker, just moderately entertaining. anyhow i started acting in school plays in 7th grade. i had a small role, but it was primary for a few minutes. i hadn't really thought to be terrified before the show--not realizing that a little embarassment acting in front of the director and my fellow cast members probably didn't bode well. when i was under the lights, i promptly forgot my lines and had to be ad-libbed for by the character i was talking to. oops. but somehow the director gave me credit for some of the ad-libbing and boosted my ego enough that i made it back out the next night and the one after, and it wasn't so bad. or so good. but tolerable. i think i kind of go on autopilot when reciting memorized lines, so that was a good kind of stasis to be in until i could get comfortable actually expressing and living the moment. which happened when i started giving presentations without any notes. i guess i did it some in high school, but never for as long or as focus of so many folks' attention as when i started teaching short topics for the linux users' group at UT that i got involved with in 1995. those smallish workshops (maybe 30 people tops) led to me being an officer in the parent organization and eventually running meetings of hundreds of people. and i never had memorized what i was going to say, just made an outline and worked my way through it. tried to inject humor as i found funny things to share. which was sometimes a lot, and sometimes a little. i wonder how i'd do slightly drunk--i'm much funnier/wittier (i think--feel free to confirm or deny) after a few drinks. but also distractable and probably sloppy. hmm. so i don't really mind the attention of the world these days. and i don't have to retreat to meditative autopiloting as i did in high school. the end. | |
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