Wonders of Technology

So hopefully I've defeated the spam quickly filling up my comment space. Thanks to nobody for telling me I should change my settings. I had to search for it all by myself.

The spam got me thinking though about human nature, and how it's frequently disgusting and banal. Something new comes along, and people's first thought is to how they can make a buck out of it. When this whole blogging thing started to become popular I bet it took someone two seconds to figure out that they could rig up some kind of spambot to litter everyone's comment space with useless advertisements. The saddest thing is, is that people just shrug their shoulders and treat it as a minor annoyance till someone comes up with this word verification thingy. No doubt it will be a few months till some genius figures out a way around that and our comments will be spammed again.

This is definitely not an isolated phenomenon either. Think about the internet and how it was first envisioned as a place where academics could exchange information to help us all. I'm betting they didn't imagine it would become a veritable cornocopia of pron, or a place where middle-aged men could talk to little girls, or even a place where Everyday Joe could come to whine about his problems. Not that I'm against the pron on the internet (that would be really hypocritical), but it's a corruption and an unforseen consequence.

That brings me to the next part where it gets really absurd in my mind. Of course once technology gets out of hand we must turn to other technology to fix what we've created. I saw a comedian live once who was talking about how this. He said the funniest thing he ever saw was a woman get off the elevator at the gym, and go directly to the stairmaster.

So companies spend billions on anti-virus software, spam filters, word verification thingies, and parental controls for the internet that no parent would ever be able to operate better than their children. Wouldn't we better off if we're all working together for once. It's no doubt naive, but it seems such a simple concept to me.

And then of course their comes the rampant commercialism. I remember when there used to be free sites without ads on the internet, and you can tell I'm getting old when I start a sentence with 'I remember when...". Eventually of course people realize that there is money to be made and then you see ads everywhere, and you have to subscribe for everything. There was even a popular blog I read where the writer was talking about charging a membership fee. I'm not sure if it would have been successful anyways, but it's a sad scary thought nonetheless.

Obviously as well once we start down this road there's no turning back. Things in my experience never get simpler or cheaper.

p.s. I loves my Bebe.

Brief Opinions

...and my inevitable slide into lollybloggerdom continues. Oddly the more free time I have the less I blog, trust me it really doesn't make sense to me either. Anyways I thought I'd list in somewhat point form my opinion on various things that I've done over the last week.

- A Feast for Crows - Excellent as expected of course. Some parts seemed out of place, and it was a little weird hearing about major characters getting killed secondhand, but an amazing read still. It sucks that I have to wait a year for the next book. (Note: Please ignore all past instances where I referred to the book as "Feast of Crows". I like the glue a little too much.)

- Conversely, "Crow: Wicked Prayer" was not very good at all. There was a movie to be told somewhere on this subject, but trust me this wasn't it. Also don't ask me why it was rented in the first place, especially as we'd been duly warned away in the strongest terms. I'll take this opportunity to repeat that warning by suggesting that you do not see it.

- Shani's Live Werewolf game - It was a good game made better that Shani used a plot device to keep us all from killing each other (Actually it was pretty much just me that everyone wanted to kill. I'm not sure what's up with people always wanting to kill my character). Lots of stuff happened, and my character is getting reinforcements in the form of more family members. The only problem was that outside = cold, and I was dressed pretty warmly.

- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Very strange. I can't say it was horrible, but Johnny Depp's performance came off in a very creepy, Michael Jacksony way. And the stuff with Willy Wonka's father was very peculiar considering it was never brought up in the book and seemed totally unnecessary.

- Jarhead - A very good movie, but not one that's necessarily easy to watch. There was no real climax in the movie, unless you count the vaguely disturbing scene near the end. It was interesting to see how people were changed by war even when they didn't really experience anything. Kind of makes it the opposite of all those Vietnam movies.

- Stargate Sg1: tabletop game - Please God save me (Note: this is at the point where I haven't even finished making my character).

- Unseasonally warm weather = good in my books. I'm becoming a senior citizen more and more every year. I should just move down to Arizona now and save some time.

Sadly these are the big highlights of my life pretty much in the last week. I'm beginning to think I should just make up an imaginary friend who I can go on amazing adventures with to faraway lands.

Winter is Coming

Wow, have I been a lollblogger or what? I should really work on updating more so I don't have to write so much in one of my overly verbose posts. But like everything else I always end up putting it off till later and then it never gets done. Sadly I guess I'm one of those people who need a fixed routine to get things done.

Anyways my life is not exciting so you really didn't miss much, although I have a few rants that I should work into some posts in the near future.

Last weekend my friends and I had another lan party at my friends place. His geeky event was much larger and better organized than the one that I had at my place. Everyone's computer was much shinier and faster than mine, making me want to go out and spend money right away. The similarity is scary between computer nerds, and hot rod jocks. For both it's all about the speed and power, and showing something completely useless off to your friends. Boys will be boys I guess.

I had a good time playing a bunch of different games, but I had to split in the evening to head to Paradise the live angels game. I left my computer there graciously saying that if someone needed to they could use my computer, but I didn't want it messed with. Trust me this will be important later.

The game was a lot of fun as it was the Infernal's turn to get in a big fight. It was chaotic and messy with the Divine we had brought along refusing to kill humans. It got really scary after we slew the big leader of the gang and an angel showed up. I see now why angels are so scary. With their ability to only be attacked one at a time I was feeling completely helpless, and my character could do nothing as the angel permanently killed one of our group. The fight was fun, and my character ended up being one of the only Infernal still standing at the end of the fight (of course).

Then we had the usual gathering where I've noticed that I've adopted a trend with this character. He's normally pretty calm and cool in his everyday life as humans pose no real challenge to him, and the members of his Murder constantly kowtow to him. But of course at a gathering of other Fallen he's surrounded by those with similar powers who aren't going to be impressed by him easily. And then you have the Divine who can blissfully shrug off anything you say even if it makes perfect sense, and who are as a rule very rude. I think one of the conditions for getting back into Heaven for them should be manners.

Inevitability as well there is tension, and without a means to blow off this tension by the end of the last couple of games Tempest has been ready to explode. Either to run away screaming or to start trying to beat up Divine. This fits in well with his setback which is a kind of psychoses that Fallen develop as they get older and are faced with stuff that balks them. I'm not completely onboard with running around and getting in fights though as I didn't initially envision Tempest as a combat character. Somehow it just happened though, and while I'm probably pretty far from the biggest bruiser in the game I am up there.

After the game I dropped Shani off at my place while I went back to my friend's so I could continue on with the geeking. And of course they had messed around with my computer. It was a complete invasion of my privacy, but I didn't get upset then as I didn't want to make a huge deal with all the people there. It's still on my mind though so I might have to talk with the perpetrator, and express my feelings to him.

Tuesday was the big day though as "Feast of Crows" by George R.R. Martin was finally released after a three year delay. So far it's living up to my expectations as definitely one of the best fantasy series out there. A lot of focus on what has been up till now secondary characters. I suppose that's inevitable when you kill all of the main ones off on a regular basis. What I love about the series is the almost complete lack of villains. There are bad guys, but they have depth and they do what they do because of complex motivations and desires. The same is true of the good guys who are full of human frailities and cruelties.

Obviously I would recommend the series to anyone who loves fantasy, or even if you want to read a really good political thriller. Apparently the wait for the next book won't be so long as he ended up splitting the book he was writing in half so that it wouldn't be so gargantuan. Because he writes each chapter from a different character's point of view he just left half of the characters out for the next book so there's been some favorites of mine missing from this one so far.

Hopefully I won't have to wait another three years.

Moving Day x 2

I thought I should get out here and post before I perish of my infrimity. They say the mind is the first thing to go, and in my case it's true. I just wish my mental capacity had peaked a little later than the fifth grade.

Anyways there hasn't been much exciting to report lately. Adjusting to a very loud life once again as my parents have returned. I spent a couple of afternoons last week assisting my dad as he replaced the struts and tie rod ends in my car. For a while now there has been a strange clunking under the hood of my car whenever I go over a bump, and lately it got much worse. I took it in to the Chrysler dealership, and they very quickly found a few problems with it that would cost some big money. Now while I have that kind of money I don't have a lot of it, and the bank would have ended up broken. We took it to another place that wanted even more money for the repairs so my Dad decided that he would do it with my help.

"Help" here is a very subjective term as what I do is more like stand around as my Dad doesn't let me touch anything. He knows a lot about mechanical stuff though so I think he gets impatient with my complete ignorance. It's unfortunate that he never had the patience to teach me that stuff, and that I neve rhad the inclination to learn because I see how much money you could save just by doing a few things yourself. We fixed it anyways, and it kind of looked like the clanking was caused my something completely different anyways.

I guess the other thing was a smallish halloween party at a friend's place Friday night. I wore my usual standby ninja costume as I remained a long away from inspired. It was nice to chat and hang out with friends, but it wasn't terribly exciting and I was in a grumpy mood.

On Saturday it was time for the usual shenanigans as Shani had to be moved out of the house she was renting early so others could move in I guess. I was kind of glad that she was moving because I've never liked that house. It was in a bad area of town, the carpets were really ugly, it had no shower (there was a large jetted tub which Shani liked), and it necessitated having roommates to share it. The last part was the real problem for her as that place apparently had a revolving door. Quite a few different people lived there, very few of them stable, financially or otherwise. The common factor between them though was that none of them had the slightest notion of cleanliness. Not to air our dirty laundry (literally), but Shani is one of the messiest people I've ever met, which is scary considering she's a woman. I thought girls were supposed to be the clean ones.

There was some confusion with her new job so she didn't end up getting an apartment with them like she expected. So she quickly found a bachelor apartment in another bad part of town in a building that is populated by gamers. Unfortunately she couldn't move in there till the 1st of the month so her solution was to store her stuff at my place till then. We had the room so that wasn't really a problem, it was just the idea if moving her twice across the city that didn't excite me.

Shani had reassured me saying that everything would be organized for the move, but apparently everything fell apart as I was the only one assisting with my car for the most part. Eventually her Dad showed up with his van and four trips later for me we had all of her stuff at my house. At least she had most of her stuff semi-organized and together so I didn't have to wait around while she packed.

I'm going to take this opportunity to speak about moving friends, and family in general. Now don't get me wrong I like to help people, and moving can often be a fun social experience, but I've done it so many times that I'm getting a little sick of it. As I'm practically a professional in the field I thought I'd write out some guidelines for moving.

A. Have your stuff organized and packed before people come to help you. It saves time, and makes it much easier to move your stuff. This way you can also be helping move instead of putting stuff into boxes frantically at the last minute.

(Although this list isn't in any particular order this one is my major pet peeves of moving.)

B. Don't lose your temper or order around the people who are helping you move. Remember these people are probably your friends and are no doubt volunteers. If you can't pull that stuff at work you probably shouldn't be doing it with people that are helping you move.

a. An addendum to this is that you really shouldn't blame your helpers if any of your stuff gets broken.

C. Don't move in the Winter in Edmonton. This one is really self-explanatory, but it's amazing how many people fail to grasp the concept.

D. Don't move at night. That's when it's dark. Take the day off work for the love of God.

E. Don't live in a fourth floor walk up and have lots of heavy antique furniture (you know who you are Maria.)

F. Make sure you have enough people there to help. A large group of people can turn an onerous task into a social occasion.

G. Similar to the above, make sure you have enough transportation to move all of your junk. While it's nice to have lots of friends with trucks it's probably a real hassle for them as people probably ask them every week to help them move. I would personally recommend renting a Uhaul if at all possible.

H. Please make sure your elevators in your building work. There's nothing worse than moving and getting stuck in a elevator, and then having to risk life and limb to escape.

There's undoubtedly many more, but I think this will do for now. Feel free to add your own while I get ready to move Shani into her apartment tonight.