Content-Type: text/glossolalia

Current Mood: pensive

After reading this post by Richard Bartle, I figured I'd do some math...

As of Tuesday, I'm 35 years old. Thirty-five years before I was born:

• Mahatma Gandhi began a hunger strike to protest autocratic rule in India;


• Batman had his first adventure;


• Auckland, New Zealand had its only recorded snowfall;


• The Einstein-Szilárd letter set into motion the atomic bomb program; and


• Nazi Germany invaded Poland.

Bloody 'ell, that's an interesting thing to think about...

Current Mood: distressed

So, I'm home for the weekend from the place I'm house-sitting, and have just discovered that... my little stress-ball dude suffered a blow-out while I wasn't here.

That seems like a bad sign.

Current Location: Minmatar 0.9 space.
Current Mood: tired

Since noone's going to be around to pester me for a couple of weeks, I figured I'd try the EVE Online two week free trial. Around about four.

It's half past midnight. Half past midnight? Yikes.

Current Mood: amused

Verbatim quote from the White Paper for an Enterprise Content Services package I'm doing some research on:

Web Services uses a new HTTP over XML protocol called SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol).

HTTP over XML?

Well, there's your problem.

Current Location: The hottest spot north of Havana...
Current Mood: irritated

Even worse, I feel the urge to sing... Sing... SING!

Eris preserve me, it's even to a Manilow tune...

Her name was Paris, She was an heiress,
With no talent we could see except "no fear of sodomy,"
She would Blackberry, and would make merry,
And while she tried to be a star, she'd get drunk and drive a car...

So, the Canadian "if you click your heels together three times, we might accidentally show some Sci-Fi" channel has started showing the new Battlestar Galactica from the beginning, at a time of the week where I'm actually near a TV. Yay!

I do have one question though, based on the second episode:

Current Mood: okay

The site had gone down when I posted the original message, but here's the supplier's page on the recall, including complete lists of affected cat and dog food products.

Current Mood: worried

Just saw this on the evening news, figured I should spread this as quickly as possible.

Menu Foods has just announced a recall of wet cat food products of multiple brands from a couple of its plants in the US.

Here is how to check Iams & Eukanuba products. I don't have the relevant information for other food brands handy.

Current Mood: angry

Following up on some things mentioned in a potential job listing, I've found myself on the page for a 4GL RAD language/web platform. As per usual for these sorts of things, it advertises a list of benefits nigh-indistinguishable from those you'd get from hiring competent programmers, but (since it's a Trade Sekrit) provides no actual examples of their language/platform.

Then I get to their comparison with other tools. Their benchmark? The Java 2 Enterprise Edition Pet Shop demo. So, what they end up comparing is:

• Developing an application in a general-purpose language/platform (the Java solution);
• Porting an application from one general-purpose language/platform to an equivalent language on a slightly more restricted platform (the .NET solution); and
• Porting an application from a general-purpose language/platform to a single-purpose language/platform (their solution).

Guess which one fared the worst? <rolls eyes>

Current Mood: depressed

Ah, the excitement of the job hunt. Today's schedule:

1. Compose cover letter 1;
2. Send application 1;
3. Compose cover letter 2;
4. Send application 2;
5. Compose cover letter 3;
6. Send application 3; Aborted (I don't care if it's good work, you lied about XHTML 1.0 validation. DIAF.)
7. Compose cover letter 4;
8. Send application 4; Aborted (They appear to have removed the entire careers section of their website over the weekend.)
9. Check first job listings site for appropriate new listings;
10. Check second job listings site for appropriate new listings;
11. Rewrite resume into a sales-accentuating version, to go out looking for a "pay the bills" job tomorrow;
12. Get some work done on one of my secret projects.

Job hunting; 150% the work of employment, for 0% of the pay.

Post Script: Also, I watched Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan last night. I have no idea why, but it still astounds me there are people parochial enough to fall for that. Thankfully, it also amuses me greatly. Also, I want that swimsuit. =)

Post Post Script: While nothing has happened yet in my "put TOON and Nobilis next to each other, and see what sort of bizarre offspring they have" experiment, I don't actually know what the gestation period of RPG books is, so there's still hope.

Current Mood: irritated

So, against the better advice of my peers, I watched the Dungeons & Dragons movie last night. They obviously had my best interests at heart, although to a certain extent the movie does a better job of representing the majority of D&D campaigns then our subculture would like to admit.

However: While watching it, I had the strong suspicion that I'd seen Zoe McLellan (the apprentice wizard) in something else. Except&emdash;I haven't seen anything else that she's been in, according to the IMDb.

Also, I called to set up an appointment for a follow-up job interview with a company (having already made it past their testing), and after asking if I preferred the long or short version of my name, the HR person I spoke to mentioned she'd had a friend with my name in grade five (which, for me, was twenty-two years ago.) After I hung up the phone, I realized that I may actually have known someone with her name back then.

Because, you know, my job search isn't giving me enough stress, so I need to drive myself nuts wondering about things like this.

Current Mood: pensive

The relationship between most software specifications and the resulting software strongly resembles the relationship between the Golden Rule and the Canadian Criminal Code¹.

¹ Formal title "An Act respecting the criminal law, R.S., 1985, c. C-46, as amended", but that musses with the flow of the thought, no?

Current Mood: happy

So, last week I found a really good job offer, for my skill set, at a really good company. After going over the listing with a fine-toothed comb, looking for anything that would disqualify me, I sat down and wrote a cover letter.

Returning to the job site to submit my application, I found that the listing had been removed. A week before applications closed. Unhappiness ensued.

However, I've found the original listing again! On the company's website.

So, I'm searching the on-line job sites, looking for programming¹ jobs, and I find one that appeals to me, and that I have all the requirements for. Behold, the set of steps to apply:

• Find the job listing on the on-line job search site;
• Click the "Apply Now!" button, which sends me to the company in question's website;
• Find the same job listing, on the company's site;
• Click the "Apply Now!" button, which sends me to the company's HR department job list;
• Find, yet again, the same job listing;
• Click the "Apply Now!" button, which (you can probably imagine my shock at this point) began the application process;
• Complete the application process.

Based on my experiences with HR people, I shouldn't find this all that surprising, but I still have to ask, why? You could, just as easily, have put the link to the application process on all three links.

Here's hoping that "tenacity enough to search for the job three times" was actually an intentional filter.

¹ <Waits for standard audience response.> I said programming, not IT. This, of course, is part of the problem.

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: Tori Amos---Winter

I've decided to give up on my Friday night RPG group.

The group in question is one of the ongoing ones at the FLGS. It's been going, with the occasional campaign reset, for close on 15 years. When I joined up, it was a Gardásiyal campaign on Tékumel, run by a GM who had played in Dr. Barker's game. So that was cool.

Sadly, ever since Third Edition D&D came out, the game has been in a slow slide. Having just finished a story arc, the group jumped ship, and started anew in Generic D&Dland without the players, and more importantly, without the DM taking time to learn the system. Especially the "monsters are complex now" bits.

Then the OGL happened, as did Star Wars d20. And the campaign suddenly became Quantum Leap, only more random. Oh, and the GM tried to add the skill trees from Star Wars Galaxies, for no readily apparent reason. And the teamwork mechanics from the GoO Tékumel game, as written, despite the different resolution systems.

Finally, after several years, the game managed to break far enough that it had to be reset. So, we reset into a Forgotten Realms campaign. And it looked like it might work! WotC D&D books only! Everyone needs character back-stories! No random incursions from Greyhawk or Eberron!

Except, since he still hasn't really learned the system, the GM's trying to run combat on a grid of 10' hexes instead of 5' squares, without changing the rules. Oh, and the Dwarves appear to have hit us with some sort of steam-powered deprotagonization ray, since despite it being the last thing my character would do in the situation, he's following the Dwarves on their dragon-killing rampage across the Realms.

Oh, and there's a Mary Sue GMPC. Who is an Aspect of Kord, despite Kord not being a Forgotten Realms god. Who looks like a harpy, what with the wings. And she's carrying the Axe of the Dwarven Lords, despite being only 1/32 Dwarven (and the Dwarves are okay with this). And...

Also, the group is somewhere around ten people, and it shares the space with the final rounds of the Friday Night Magic tournament. So it's a tiring, headache-inspiring session even when everything accidentally works.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: KMFDM

Yoinked from chadu...

Events

455

The Vandals enter Rome, and plunder the city for two weeks.

1897

Mark Twain, responding to rumors that he was dead, is quoted by the New York Journal as saying, "The report of my death was an exaggeration."

1953

Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, the first to be televised.

Births

1740

Marquis de Sade, French author (d. 1814)

1743

Count Alessandro di Cagliostro, Sicilian Occultist (d. 1795)

1941

Charlie Watts, English musician (The Rolling Stones)

Deaths

1941

Lou Gehrig, American baseball player (b. 1903)

1998

Sylvester Ritter ("Junkyard Dog"), American professional wrestler (b. 1953)

2003

Fred Blassie, American professional wrestler (b. 1918)

Observances/Holidays

• The Greek Orthodox Church commemorates Saint Nicephorus' death.
• Italy's Festa della Repubblica (Republic Day), which commemorates the birth of the Repubblica Italiana and the end of the monarchy.
• Xenia name day in Slovakia.

Current Mood: angry

Well, isn't this a lovely story.

The worst part is, I've had the displeasure of meeting the guy in question. I'm about 95% sure I know the girl in question. Even if I'm wrong about the girl, I am still obliterating-planets-with-The-Force-level angry about this.

And not just at him, at the jerk who provided him the tools.

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: Queen---We Are The Champions

I beat Faerûn. The last boss fight is hard.

I did get hosed on the XP, though. I mean, that's an entire universe, Gods and all. And I only got one level? Yeesh.

Current Mood: satisfied

Now that's a mysterious mumbo-jumbo assessment I whole-heartily endorse...

On the other hand...

Current Mood: distressed
Current Music: Self-evident from the content...

I vaguely recall hearing about this a while ago, but I still wasn't quite prepared for it.