Blankshield

Wog. Our call tracking system is down. Apparantly "The database has been corrupted and may take several more hours to fix. Microsoft is currently analyzing dump files to save data."

I hate mornings like this, because it isn't actually a slow morning, it's just a morning that's getting defered to the afternoon. All the problems that happen in the morning are still happening, but I won't hear about them for "several more hours". Wog.

I'm also annoyed at my co-worker/underling. He called in sick today, and I know he's not faking or anything - I sent him home early on Friday because he sounded like crap, and was expelling his lungs through his nose.

However, I will bet the farm that he went out Friday and Saturday nights and probably played volleyball on Sunday, and now I'm holding the bag on Monday. It bugs me. One of the things my Mom ruthlessly enforced when I was a kid - and I've since seen the wisdom of it as an adult - is "if you're too sick to go to school, you're too sick to go play."

Grr.

Woo! Someone, somewhere, has discovered a clue! And I didn't even have to hit them with a cluebat.

My viral warnings are down from 1000+ per 12 hour period to a mere 50 or so. Which says to me "the person who had my address, a fast net connection and the Swen.A virus has gone offline or cleaned their system".

Which is a Good Thing.

In other news, the train show went verra well, I think. A nicely laid out (and big) layout that had a lovely combination of big city stuff, country scenery, industry and Whyte Ave-y goodness with nice transitions/seperations between them, so nothing felt 'wrong'. We also had DCC which is a kind of train thing that involves a very expensive box under the table and kinda expensive handheld radio dealies which results in each train being actively controlled by someone with a handheld dealie. The big advantage of DCC is that each train is controlled independantly, instead of being a dumb box that just goes a set speed according to how much power it's getting. This lets you run multiple trains per loop of track, and do cool things like use passing sidings and spurs and stuff. The big disadvantage is that it opens the door to a thing called "operator error" - which is little things like not paying attention and running your train head-on into the back of one that's waiting for a switch. This is why real railroads have lots of people in charge of (to sum up) keeping trains from hitting each other.

No pictures yet; we're going through and tossing all the crap shots and indexing/cropping/generally making pretty the rest.

I'm starting to rip apart all the stuff we've got built right now, including the big castle. I miss my pool table, and I think I would like to spend this winter with it instead of my Lego, since odds are good that we're going to have to sell the pool table in the next few years anyway. 3 kids, 2 bedrooms, yadda yadda. This doesn't come as a shock; I knew when we got it that we were going to have to sell it someday.

James

Eeg. My psyche is reacting to playing a good mage in Tempest; Brother wants to come out and play.

Sometimes the voices in my head scare me.

Sometimes Brother scares the voices in my head.

James

Grr. I hate having to hunt down people and kill them for the betterment of all humanity. Leaving aside the moral issues, it's hard work.

It's harder work when stupid ISPs don't care about proper header attribution in e-mail, and pass on blatently fraudulent e-mails. It's still harder when trying to track back the actual path of an e-mail received by me is stonewalled by ISPs (not my own) because I am not their paying customer, so they aren't accountable to me.

Hypothetical situation: You are a courier company. You deliver packages for customers in your area, and also pass packages on that are for other areas, usually to another courier company. You have on occaision, had a letter bomb explode in your office, so now you have the best bomb sniffers, and train all your employees to recognize letter bombs so it doesn't happen again. In fact, you have retained a security company to check all of your packages for you.

Now it so happens that one of your customers starts sending out letter bombs. When your truck goes to pick them up, they are addressed things like "Joe in Cleveland, from Bob in Boston" when your client is in fact Doug from LA, and he tells the truck driver "Deliver this to Frank in New York; don't pay any attention to the label."

If you performed as Doug desired - If in fact, you did anything but turn Doug in to the authorities - you would get your ass sued from here to eternity, and spend the next dozen years in a variety of correctional institutes with a variety of interesting life partners. Guys with names like Bubba and Vito and Pasquale "the Knife" Santaria.

Cyberspace is not like real life.

Grr.

Sigh. Someone with my e-mail in their address book has a virus.

Please fix it, or I'll have to hunt you down and kill you, for the betterment of all humanity.

James

Trainshow report: 2 buildings and 1/4 of the landscape left. (note: I did do a building today, but also discovered I can't count.)

Table skirting gets bought tomorrow.

I want my life back. So does Raven.

James

Trainshow report: 2 buildings and 1/2 the landscape left to do. Buy something to skirt the tables with. If I feel really ambitious, build (a) train car(s). The end is nigh. Or at least, not way over there anymore.

And to shamelessly steal a quote from the other James

Mistress? Lego slave? What the hell was I smoking, drain cleaner?

James

Cool...


Morpheus


?? Which Of The Greek Gods Are You ??
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I kinda like the picture, too.

"Mistress, thy name is train show."

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Ya know, a lot of things about my Lego hobby are seen more clearly when I realize that it's a dom/sub thing, and I am my Lego's bitch.

Now I have to go build some more, or I'll feel the whip of Train Show Guilt. Yes, Mistress, another three buildings, Mistress.


James, Lego slave

My day in a nutshell

I have a train show in a week. Yikes!

I have a crapload of things to do! Ack blag panic!

Those of you who've been following my blog will notice a similar theme from before Gencon. Those of you who've lived with me a long time, or were unfortunate enough to be my teachers will sigh and roll your eyes knowingly. I ain't changed a bit.

[sigh]

One of these days I have to stop procrastinating.

An off-hand comment by Scritch last night sparked in my brain a horrible, painful thing to contemplate. And because I'm evil, I'm giving it to you.

Martha Stewart, the RPG: It's a Good Thing.

I am bloody tired. The only useful sleep I got last night was when I fled our sauna and slept on the couch from about 5-ish to 7-30.

Just thought I'd share.

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I've been re-reading the Incarnations of Immortality series (On A Pale Horse, and so forth) again. Piers Anothy is fun and quick to read, but to put it approriately: "High liturature he ain't." Which makes it a nice contrast and brain break from the other thing I'm reading: Phenomenon of Man, by Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit scientist. Ow ow, brain sore.

I'm sure that all of us have gone back and re-read a book to find "Oh cool, I missed that the first time through". Well, I'm reading Phenomenon for the first time, and as I read it, am aware that there are things I am just not getting. I'm a smart guy, but parts of this book are, quite simply, beyond me right now. I think that's the first time that's ever happened to me. And it isn't that Teilhard is a bad writer; on the contrary, he's quite good at communicating complex ideas simply. (Although he does use a substansive volume of prodigious discourse.) It's simply that, to quote Father Dave: "This is why I'm not a Jesuit." I read a dozen or so pages, and have to stop because my brain is full. I have to think about it, and often go back and re-read it before it sinks in enough to let me read more without having my eyes glaze over and my brain turn off in protest.

Now, all that being said, Phenomenon is one of the most interesting books I've ever read, and I highly recommend it to anyone with a brain.