terror in a onesie

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

I’m traveling today and tomorrow to Mountain View, so no long posts from me! Instead, gaze upon Airship Ventures, which offers zeppelin tours of the SF bay area. I’ve seen them flying their dirigible previously when I’ve been out here in the Bay area, but I only recently learned that they’ll let you actually fly the zeppelin.

All I need is $3,000 and my pilot license. No sweat!

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

It’s a light posting week for us, seeing as how Misty’s gone to Atlanta to say “Woo!” at U2 in the Georgia Dome. I’m taking care of Eli and Liza, which is fun right up to the point when it isn’t any more. Given that Eli is living up to his reputation of petri dish for diseases of the under-six set and has brought home a cold, I won’t really have time to post.

Of course, having said that, prepare for another Hobbit 419 or something.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

A little over a week ago, we went back to Arkansas to have some time with my family. We stayed on Greers Ferry Lake, one of the several Arkansas lakes brought to you by your local Corps of Engineers and their dams. We visited, swam in the lake, and Andrew and I water-skied. For those of you who haven’t tried water skiing before, you float behind a boat while wearing skis and a life jacket and holding onto a tow rope. The boat leaps forward and, assuming you don’t let the rope be yanked out of your hands, you are suddenly on your feet being dragged at ferocious speeds behind the boat, at least until the fates conspire and you end up somersaulting into the water. It’s a great chance to discover how surface tension works in a very personal and painful way.

We also got to enjoy the local signs, like the one for a nearby flea market.

Then there was the sign for a local housing development.

You, too, can enjoy suburban living in lovely Higden, AR, population 101. Maybe it’s closer to a larger city, though.

Hm, Greers Ferry does have around 950 people, but that hardly seems urban. Let’s try zooming out a bit.

Aha, there’s Heber Springs, population 6,500, within twenty minutes. That must be the urban area.

(I kid, of course. If you drive an hour you can get to Searcy, with nearly 20,000 people.)

So if you want to enjoy some suburban living without the need for an urban population center, have I got a place for you.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

Both my home and work computers decided to go blooey over the weekend, so I’ll be spending my evenings’ spare time trying to resurrect them. So it’ll be light posting from me for the foreseeable future. And no, I’m certainly not spending all of my time playing Bioshock. What a silly idea!

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

Both of my grandfathers were in the military.

Both of Misty’s grandfathers were.

Both of our fathers served.

All lived.

Today, pause and remember those who did not.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

Because, really, everyone knows today is the happiest day of the year. Fellow US residents, now’s your chance to freak out that you waited so long before doing your taxes, or you can be smug about how early you were done.

Sadly, we greatly over-estimated how much we needed to pay and got back huge refunds. Sigh. Math is hard!

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

In the past I’ve been dismissive of April Fools’ Day as practiced on the Internet. After this year, though, I’m taking off my old-man grumpy pants and putting on something newer and hipper. Parachute pants, perhaps. There were a number of funny and inspired jokes yesterday. Among my favorites:

• BugMeNot claiming to require registration to use.
• Wizards of the Coast and Penny Arcade creating an actual player class out of the Witchalock, the totally sweet hermaphroditic androgynite blend of witches and warlocks.
• Tor.com becoming TÖRdötCÖM, the premiere site for SäïPhäï/Phäntysee.
• ThinkGeek’s Squeeze Bacon, a product that really should exist.
• Chris Sims turning the Invincible Super-Blog into a Tarot fan-site and then writing an actual review of the latest Tarot issue.
• Improv Everywhere’s Best Funeral Ever.
• Qualcomm’s wireless conversion involving wolfpigeons (and the accompanying video, which sells the whole thing).
• Google’s CADIE, their accidental answer to Skynet.
• Best of all, The Guardian switching entirely to Twitter, which has the rare distinction of actually getting funnier as it goes.

Sure, there were the normal dead-horse “we’re shutting the site down!” posts, but I saw fewer than in years past. Maybe the tide has turned, and will take my grumpy-pants out with it.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

No post from me today, as my brain is too full of basketball to cope. Instead, why not listen to Tor’s mashup of Sufjan Stevens and Blackalicious?

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

I like my coffee like I like my women: in a plastic cup.

I like my coffee like I like my men: rich, strong, and hot.

I like my coffee like I like my men: tied up on the back of a mule led by Juan Valdez.

I like my coffee like I like my exes: finely ground and dark-roasted.

I like my coffee like I like my emotional crises: bittersweet.

I like my coffee like I like my comedy: black and full-flavored.

I like my coffee like I like my hair: black and in excess.

I like my coffee like I like my workplaces: cold and corporate.

I like my coffee like I like my news: white and bitter.

I like my coffee like I like my first person shooters: covered in bees.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

So, funny story…

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

In 2008 Liza began speaking.

In 2008 my grandfather died.

In 2008 I was a guest at a conference dedicated to internet memes.

In 2008 I saw my friends become the parents I always knew they could be.

In 2008 I flew back from California to go to Misty’s grandfather’s funeral.

In 2008 the U.S. had an historic presidential election.

In 2008 two of our best friends became pregnant again.

In 2008 the world’s economies tanked.

In 2008 Eli played soccer.

In 2008 I was a guest at an SF conference to talk about real science.

In 2008 we didn’t have friends over as often as we used to.

In 2008 I had intense and meaningful conversations with good friends.

In 2008 Misty’s grandmother died.

In 2008 some of our friends got divorced.

In 2008 some of our friends got married.

In 2008 we re-connected with a friend we’d last talked to five years ago.

In 2008 I sang Christmas music with my church’s choir.

In 2008 I got a new nephew.

In 2008 we traveled to Japan with two of our close friends.

In 2008 Israel stepped up rocket attacks on Palestine.

Let’s see what 2009 brings.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

We’re off until some time after the new year for the vacationing and the playing etc. etc. Don’t trash the blog while we’re out.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

Actually, it turns out it’s not the turkey meat responsible for tryptophan and subsequent postprandial napping, it’s the carbohydrates. Still, we’re going to take the weekend off.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

I was surfing randomly through Wikipedia, which is something I do because shut up, I just do, and discovered that it has a list of harvest festivals, the US Thanksgiving included. I’m extremely pleased that in the UK it’s just called a Harvest Festival. No Solung or Chuseok for them.

I wonder what a rebranding of Harvest Festival would be. “Harvest Festival Sponsored by Weetabix Ltd”?

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

We’d been talking for a while that we needed to do some cleaning before Christmas. Specifically in Eli’s room so there’s actually room to bring in some new stuff.

So to show him how Mom and Dad can clean up their stuff too, Stephen started pulling books off of bookshelves and chunking them in a pile to go to the used bookstore. Some 60 books later, we have a bit of space on a few shelves around the house. And a whopping pile to trade for other books!

The office was also a bit of a mess. Stephen still had portal gun bits and pieces strewn around for Liza to impale herself on and I had a corner that just seemed to continually expand when I wasn’t actively beating it back. So we spent about 30 minutes last night and here are the results:

Today, I’m going to try and convince Eli to part with a few things as well. If you hear the moaning, it’s Emo Eli trying to part with his toys.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

I can’t tell you how busy I’ve been here lately. Between work and home and my own projects–

Fine! I admit it! I’ve been spending all of my free time playing Jade Empire and kicking people in the face! But no worries. I can quit any time I want.

As soon as I finish that last fight in the Arena.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

We’re still here, we’re just busy as all get-out. More later when we’re not swamped. In the meantime, what have you been busy with?

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

People often say that war-themed first-person shooters are completely unreasonable. No one person, they point out, could really do what your in-game avatar does.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Major Robert Henry Cain, recipient of the Victoria Cross. His weapon of choice was the Projector, Infantry, Anti Tank (PIAT), an early rocket-propelled grenade launcher. During the Battle of Arnhem, on Tuesday, September 19th, 1944, tanks killed many of his men. After that, he made it his personal mission to destroy as many tanks as possible.

On one occasion, two Tiger tanks approached the South Staffords position, and Cain lay in wait in a slit trench while Lieutenant Ian Meikle of the Light Regiment gave him bearings from a house above him. The first tank fired at the house and killed Meikle, while the chimney collapsed and almost fell on top of Major Cain. He still held his position until it was 100 yards away, whereupon he fired at it. The tank immediately returned fire with its machinegun [sic] and wounded Cain, who took refuge in a nearby shed from where he fired another round, which exploded beneath the tank and disabled it. The crew abandoned the vehicle but all were gunned down as they bailed out. Cain fired at the second tank, but the bomb was faulty and exploded directly in front of him. It blew him off his feet and left him blind with metal fragments in his blackened face. As his men dragged him off, Cain recalls yelling like a hooligan and calling for somebody to get hold of the PIAT and deal with the tank. One of the Light Regiment’s 75mm guns was brought forward and it blew the tank apart.

But it’s okay: half an hour later his sight returned, so he ignored medics’ advice, grabbed a PIAT, and went to town. At one point he found and used an anti-tank gun instead of a PIAT, but its recoil mechanism broke. He fired so many rounds that by Friday his eardrums burst, so he shoved scraps of field dressing in his ears and kept going. When PIAT ammunition ran out, he switched to a two-inch mortar, at times firing it nearly horizontal.

By the end of the week-long battle, he had destroyed or disabled some six tanks, four of which were Tiger tanks, the most feared in the German arsenal. Oh, and he was thirty-five at the time.

Doesn’t that make you feel like a complete slacker?

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

Today starts my month without caffeine. If I’m randomly cranky over the next several days, that’s why.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

When the LASIK tech who had been evaluating me left to get answers to some of my detailed questions, I never saw her again. Instead, one of the senior assistants came in to give answers.