Dan Among Den

May 15, 2006

Monday’s a Bitch: Touchy Feely

My Friday Five group is pretty much dead, and I missed the regular excuse to blog aimlessly. Well, thanks to Red Tanya, I’ve found a new group: Monday’s a Bitch. Instead of asking a question and expecting five answers, they just ask five related questions.

Here we go...

1. If you could make $100 a day by avoiding physical contact of any kind with another human being, how much money do you think you’d be able to make before you cracked?

   It depends when you caught me. When I go to California, there’s virtually no contact. I’m with coworkers, and I could forego the occasional handshake. It might even come close to covering my hotel bill. But if you caught me in my natural habitat, I’d be doing well to pay for a twelve-pack of Coke.

2. How much do the words "I love you" mean to you? Do you throw the word "love" around a lot? For example, if someone made a hilarious comment, might you exclaim "I love you!" while laughing, or are those words more sacred?

   It’s strange. The word “love” itself isn’t that sacred to me. I love pasta. I love my new widescreen monitor. I even love watching Battlestar Galactica. However, the phrase “I love you,” is harder. I can say it to MAW and my kids without hesitation, but it gets hard beyond that, even (or perhaps especially) when it is truly felt. It’s even much easier to write than to say. It’s just something about rolling those words out of my mouth that’s hard for me. I have no idea why, so insert Freud here.

3. If everyone of your preferred gender suddenly disappeared from the face of the planet, would you prefer to switch teams or become celibate?

   I’d probably switch teams mostly because I’d go nuts without the physical contact. I just wouldn’t be happy about it. Instead, I think I’d spend most of my time checking to see if my preferred gender was perhaps hiding on the ass of the planet.

4. Would you be willing to donate your sperm/eggs for money, or just to help out couples who are unable to conceive? How would the knowledge that you might have offspring somewhere out there effect you?

   I wouldn’t do it in an anonymous way. I have a few genetic abnormalities – nothing earth-shattering – that I would want to tell them about. I also think I’d like to be a part of the kid’s life, but at a minimum, I’d want to make sure that once reaching adulthood, this offspring would have full access to my part of his family medical history.

5. Do you think you could be genuinely happy being single for the rest of your life? (This is assuming that you just never meet/met mr./ms. right, not that something awful happened).

   There are parts of it that might actually be nice. No, I’m not divorcing MAW, not even close. Mostly it’s that I never got to live alone. I went from my parents’ home to the dorm, and then to an apartment with a roommate, and then straight into marriage. I had a total of about three weeks on my own. Heck, I think I had longer than that when MAW went to help her mother move years later. I never got to have my place, just our place. So, yeah, it would nice to have a place of my own. But, I would go nuts without the regular contact, both physical and emotional. So, I only think I could do it if I had a like-minded female neighbor to be single with. Even then, I think it would get old pretty quickly.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 24, 2006

Battlestar Galactica Quiz

MAW took this test after we watched an episode of the new Battlestar Galactica last night. My results suprised her somewhat:

You scored as CPO Galen Tyrol. You never wanted to be a glamorous Viper pilot. You are happy knowing that without you to fix their birds, they cannot fly. You fell in love with the wrong girl, but is that so wrong? Maybe, but you don't really care.

What New Battlestar Galactica character are you?
created with QuizFarm.com

It didn't surprise me. In fact, after seeing the result, I realized I'd taken the quiz before and gotten the same result. Remember, we have all taken this quiz before, and we shall all take it again.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 18, 2005

Things in the room meme

From HappyTester:

1. What is the oldest object in the room with you?

   I’m drinking a Coke right now, and I’m looking at one of the water molecules drifting near the top. That hydrogen atom – no, not that one, the one on the left – has one of the oldest protons in the universe. Serial number 44982892843992. Anything with less than twenty digits is a real collectors’ item, but I just drank it, so you won’t see it on EBay.

2. What is the newest?

   I just formed a methane molecule. Don’t ask.

3. What is your favorite object in the room with you?

   Remember that Coke I mentioned?

4. What is the most valuable object?

   The arrangement of bits on my laptop hard-disk. The company I work for has spent millions upon millions for it.

5. What is the ugliest object?

   That mirror. No, wait… never mind.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (1)

December 17, 2005

Friday Five: Sibling Rivalry Goes to Court

Today’s (Ok… yesterday’s) question comes from Gord:

Imagine a royal court in some medieval period, somewhere in the world: it could be medieval Japan, medieval India, medieval Europe, medieval Persia or the Maghrib, or what have you. You are a relatively minor player in this court, as the youngest of the several children entitled to the throne, and chances are you'll never get that far... unless, of course, you plot carefully enough, get the right people killed, and install yourself there. Which five people in the court would you ply with small gifts, tokens of affection, sexual favors, threats of blackmail, or whatever would get them on your side when the time comes for you to make your move for the throne? Please describe each person in terms of his or her position in the court, usefulness, and how he or she was won over to your side.

This is your Evil Overlord filling in for Dan tonight, and ever there was a Friday Five question written for me, this is it.

• The chef: She was an older woman who had gone almost blind in her later years, but that had not prevented her from running her kitchen as efficiently and well-ordered as the fighting ships that would come centuries later. Alas, she also had a softness for certain spices, and my much-derided merchant friends kept me in steady supply. This allowed me a certain freedom in the kitchen that continued even after my sister’s untimely demise of arsenic poisoning.
• The scribe: He was an intelligent and crafty man, willing to cross certain lines to advance a cause. His position as the chief scribe in charge of the royal accounts gave him just the access I needed, and when I promised him such financial reforms as a central bank and paper currency, he was more than willing to make a few adjustments to the accounts. You know, I always said it was a mistake for my closest brother to be in charge of the local rents and taxes. Just where that money went is still a mystery, but perhaps he’s enjoying it in exile.
• The armorer: He was a master craftsman, but he was also obsessed with improving his skill, to make a blade finer than any that had come before. His knowledge of metallurgy was truly profound, perhaps the best in the kingdom, but not in the world. The promise of folded Damascas steel was just too much for him to resist. It’s a pity, though, that his reputation was so marred when the shield he made for my eldest brother, Father’s favorite, failed so tragically at the jousting tournament.
• The maid: She was such a sweet girl and served my parents eagerly since she was old enough to carry a pitcher, but she was gullible and easily confused. Witchcraft and evil spirits were a particular concern of hers. After all, they were everywhere and could easily take on the forms of anyone around us, even loved and trusted figures. Still, she was a faithful servant of God, and I can only assume it was this purity of hers that allowed her to survive the fire that swept through my parents’ bedchamber, consuming all.
• The lover: Ah yes, my lover, that beguiling commoner who both frustrated my mother and aroused my father, who moved invisibly through the court because she was both scorned and protected. And of course, everyone knew that she slept around, but no one dared tell the young prince who seemed so taken with her. Yes, she was an unconventional choice, but she would have made a fine queen. At least, that was enough of a promise for her to efficiently and anonymously clean up the evidence. You know, those little details like the chef’s unfortunate and fatal fall on the ice, the scribe’s startling death from alcohol poisoning, the armorer’s senseless death in a common robbery, and the maid’s guilt-ridden leap from the tower. Yes, she would have made a fine queen indeed were it not for that truly remarkable and inexplicable girdle-related accident she suffered three days before my coronation. Pity, that… truly a pity.

Other Friday Fivers may be found plotting their siblings’ demise here.

Evil Overlord /Meme by Evil Overlord | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 01, 2005

Don't you remember?

Freely stolen from roninjedi, because he stole it from someone else:

If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, (even if we don't speak often) please post a comment with a COMPLETELY MADE UP AND FICTIONAL memory of you and me. It can be anything you want - good or bad - BUT IT HAS TO BE FAKE. When you're finished, post this little paragraph on your blog and be surprised (or mortified) about what people DON'T ACTUALLY remember about you.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (4)

November 28, 2005

U.S. Citizenship Test

You Passed the US Citizenship Test

Congratulations - you got 10 out of 10 correct!

Apparently, I'm fully prepared to be exiled and then immigrate back.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (2)

November 11, 2005

Friday 5: Recent Reading

Today's question comes from Laura:

What are the last five books you've read and what did you think of them?

• A Talent for War, by Jack McDevitt: This was a pretty good one. Most of McDevitt's tales center around some kind of mystery from the past, often via the mechanism of archaeology, except that it's the past as seen from hundreds or often thousands of years from now. This particular tale surrounded a mystery of a historical nature, of a particularly crucial and popular moment of a defining war that took place a few hundred years before, but it looks like that crucial moment didn't happen the way people think it did. It would be as though today in the US an amateur historian came across evidence that Washington did not cross the Delaware with his troops to attack the Hessian mercenaries working for the British, that something else entirely had happened. So, it's about the mystery itself as well as struggling against everyone who wants to preserve the myth, some because they need its cultural legacy and some to protect the secret of what really happened. Highly recommended
• Post Captain, by Patrick O'Brian: This is the second book in the series that led to the recent Russel Crowe film, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. The story itself is pretty good, but the writing is mediocre at best, IMO. It goes on and on endlessly about the specifics of various sailing issues, and the various bits of dramatic dialog often read more like a laundry list than Shakespeare. And yet, the characters themselves are fairly interesting, and the backdrop and plot and fairly engaging. It's just that it can be a bit painful to read through. As an interesting side note, after reading a couple of these, I am almost positive that this is the origin for David Weber's Honor Harrinton series. The parallels in character and setting are uncanny. I can almost see Weber reading through the first few of these, thinking "Hey, I could do the same thing in SF and make a mint!". At least Weber waited until about book 5 or 6 before the writing quality went south.
• Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk: I suppose I should say something like "the first rule of reading Fight Club is that you do not talk about reading Fight Club," but I won't. This is the same story as the movie, and the book came first. Now, normally when that kind of thing happens everyone says, "Oh, but the book was so much better." In this case, not. The book wasn't bad or anything. In fact, it was very much the same story as the movie, which is very rare considering book movies are often like sausage. Rather, I just thought that the movie was a much better telling of the story.
• Trading in Danger, by Elizabeth Moon: This was billed as a good story for folks who liked the above-mentioned Honor Harrington series. There's some truth to that in that this is also a space opera with a strong, young female lead. Moon delivered on characters, plot, and quality of writing. My only regret in the series is that much like her other SF series (in the Familias universe), the lead character is not an ordinary person. Instead, they are always the son or daughter of privelage, e.g. daughter of a prime minister, or the one who manages the family fortune, etc. Even her swag at the nobody from a backwater planet turns out to be the daughter of one of the ten most important people on her planet. In this book, the lead character is another child of privelage. Her father is the CFO of a major shipping firm, and her uncle is the CEO. It's all family owned, so it's not like they can even be fired. Now, don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed the book, and Moon is an excellent writer, but just once I'd like to see her focus on some scrappy underdog, a penniless nobody who climbs her way up.
• Marque and Reprisal, by Elizabeth Moon: Same series, second book. The plot thickens, and some of the real bad guys emerge, and we get a taste of where this is going in the third book. The family fortune is dashed, but it's still a bunch of rich folk (or formerly rich folk) struggling to regain and enhance the family portfolio.

Other Friday Fivers can be found at the used book store here.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 10, 2005

The Commandments of Coyote

Freely stolen from Bean, who freely stole it from someone else. Keep stealing!

The Commandments of Coyote

I. Thou Shalt Have As Many Gods and Spirits and Personal Trainers and Gurus As You Like Before Me, But You Shalt Not Let Them Block the Exits, and More, You Shall Not Permit Them To Take the Last Beer, For That Beer Is Mine. Seriously. Don't.

II. Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Wife, But Thou Art Totally Welcome To Admire Her Ass When She Walks By, and If It Happens To Come Out That They Are In An Open Relationship, Dude, Tap That Ass As Much As They Are Willing To Allow. Same Goes For the Ladies. Coveting Is Sort Of Stupid, But Sex Is Just Plain Fun, Unless Thou Art Doing It Entirely Wrong.

III. If Thy Neighbor Says 'Hands Off My Wife, Dude', Thou Shalt Listen and Back Off, Because Otherwise, Thy Neighbor Will Be Totally Justified In Hitting You About the Head and Shoulders With Gardening Tools, and Don't Think That I'm Going To Step In There and Stop Him.

IV. Adultery Is Actually Pretty Fun. Commit It All You Like. Just Make Sure Everyone Is Cool With It, Or I Will Not Help You Out Once the Hitting Gets Started.

V. Thou Shalt Not Eat Poisoned Bait. If You Do, Don't Come Whining To Me About It, Because I Am Very Unlikely To Care. Once It Is In Your Mouth, It Is Your Problem, Not Mine.

VI. Of Course Thou Shalt Kill. Carnivores Do That. Also, Swatting Mosquitoes, Sort Of Instinctive. But All Creatures Are Alive Before You Kill Them, and So Thou Shalt Respect Them In Their Lives and In Their Deaths. Thou Shalt Not Kill Without Reason. Thy Neighbor Tapping Thy Wife's Ass? Is Not A Reason. Don't Make Me Set A Plague Upon Thy Ass. Thou Wouldst Not Enjoy It, I Promise.

VII. Thou Shalt Not Hoard. Seriously, Here. If You Have Enough, Share. Only Asshats Bogart Life.

VIII. Thou Shalt Not Be A Martyr. If You Have One Beer, Drink It. Do Not Give It To Me and Then Expect Adoration. Dude, That Was Your Beer, I Did Not Break Your Arm To Get It. Give What You Can Give, and Expect Neither Praise Nor Worship. You Are Not Being Morally Superior, You Are Being A Decent Human Being. There Is A Difference.

IX. Assume This Is It. Maybe There Is Reincarnation; Maybe Not. Not Only Am I Not Saying, Please Consider the Fact That I Probably Get A Say In Whether You Come Back, and If You Are the Sort Of Person Who Doesn't Do Anything With One Life, Why Should I Waste My Time Giving You Another One? Live Like You Get No Second Chances. You Will Have More Fun.

X. Are You Going To Eat That?

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 14, 2005

Friday 5: A Friday of questions

Today's odd little query comes from Marvin:

Should it be a "sack of Hobbits" or a "bag of Hobbits" or a "hole of Hobbits?" Name -- or better yet, invent -- five of your favorite collective nouns.

Oh my, this should be fun:

1. A “brush” of hobbits: Anything that hairy deserves the name.
2. A “colony” of defects: Software bugs are just like the real-world kind. If you see one, you know there are a lot more hiding in the walls.
3. A “quiver” of voice mails/emails/instant messages: Ever go out to lunch and come back to find that something happened, thus generating a lot of fast emails, voice mails, and so on? It’s like coming back to see an entire quiver-full of arrows piercing your chair in a nice cluster pattern.
4. A “keg” of mistakes: Do I need to spell it out?
5. A “Shakespeare” of monkeys: That’s a LOT of monkeys.

The rest of the Friday Fivers can be counted here.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 07, 2005

Friday 5: Ooo, that place sounds interesting...

Today's question comes from Gord:

Tell us about five local places (in your neighborhood, town, or city, or region) that you have never visited, but would like to go to sometime... if you ever get around to it?

Given the number of us Fivers in the Austin area, we just might have to do some group outings based on this question.

1. Sixth Street: I mean, I've been to Sixth Street. I used to drive down it at least once or twice a week, but it was always just to get somewhere. I've been to perhaps one or two clubs on it, but not at night when things were happening. Austin is supposed to be the "Live Music Capital of the World", and I've never been down to the club scene. So, someday, I'd like to do a multi-night club-crawl through the music district.
2. Club Luna: There's an old building near where I live that more than anything looks like an abandoned warehouse. I drive past it all the time, and an old weathered sign reads "Club Luna" or something like that. The parking lot is always empty, and the whole place has the look of somethings that's just waiting for the wrecking crew to come in. But... and here's the weird thing, on two or three occasions I've driven past it late at night and seen the parking lot just packed, and it seems that it was always a full or near-full moon that night. So, while I'm really curious about a night spot that's both run-down and very active sporadically, some crazed voice in the back of my mind is shouting out, "Don't go in there -- it's a werewolf club!! Didn't you pay attention in From Dusk til Dawn??"
3. The Oasis: There's this near restaraut/bar out by one of the lakes here with an open, stepped terrace so that you all get that nice view overlooking the lake. It practically burned down recently, but it's supposed to be repaired and open again.
4. Austin's Strip Clubs: There are perhaps a dozen strip clubs in the Austin area, and I've only been to three. Alas, it's actually kind of boring to go alone.
5. Texas Stadium: I was raised as a Dallas Cowboy's fan, but I have never been to one of their games live, not even been in the stadium, that famous stadium with the hole in the roof. Well, they're building a new stadium, so Texas Stadium's days are numbered. I'd just like to go to a game before the end.

Other Friday Fivers can be found poring over maps here.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 30, 2005

Friday 5: Bad Boys... whatcha gonna do?

This week's question comes from me:

Ever play Monopoly? Remember the "Jet out of jail free" cards? You've just been handed five of them, enabling you to commit five crimes and get away scot-free, without the world ever knowing it was you who did them. How will you spend your crime spree, on the mere petty or the felonious? For those of us who feel constrained more by ethics than law, allow yourself to set the ethics aside for the moment and just be bad.

Wow, I must have been in an odd mood when I posed that questions. I must have been channeling for my alter-ego, the Evil Overlord. Alas, I don't think my "crime spree" is going to hold up to his expectations.

1. Cut in line: I figure one of those cards is good for a full weekend of cutting in line. Movie tickets, grocery checkouts, roller coasters... all mine. But the best of all would be cutting in line in traffic. Drive to the very end of the lane being closed off and cut in to the main traffic right at the front. People have been doing it to me for years, so if I'm getting a day free of ethics, then it's my fucking turn!
2. Genocide: All those plants I'm allergic to, those bugs that give me nasty bites, that spider that sent me to the hospital... all gone, wiped out in a selective biologic catastrophe. Endangered Species Act be damned.
3. Nudity: I'll be sponsoring the "Tour the Capitol Building Naked" event this coming Thursday.
4. Touch the museum exhibit: Actually, I'm applying this one retroactively. Long ago, before it was encased in plastic, before I was old enough to know better, and before I would have been labeled a security risk as a result, I leaned over the velvet rope and touched the Apollo XI command capsule. What made it even cooler was that I was also too young to understand about lunar modules and expendable components, etc., so I thought I was touching something that had actually landed on the moon and returned.
5. Privacy laws/ethics: You (or some object you own) are placed somewhere that I can see, so I'm taking a picture whether I have your permission or not. Photons want to be free!

Attention Police: Other Friday Felons can be found here.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 16, 2005

Friday 5: It's the end of the world as we know it...

This week's question comes from Gord:

During my last trip back to North America, I was somewhat surprised about how this whole fuss about terrorism has come to be one of the focal points for North American anxieties of instability and insecurity. Me, I'm not convinced. I wonder if you could enlighten me as to what are your top five picks for the title of "the biggest threats to our future".

In no particular order:

• Terrorism: Personally, I am convinced. Specifically, there is a meme, a mind set, out there that says that most of the ideals of Western civilization, e.g. freedom, liberty, equal rights for women and minorities, and religious freedom in particular, are all absolutely wrong and must be eliminated at all costs. In that mindset, the destruction of property and the wholesale slaughter of millions are not regrettable costs but are desirable steps down the road to a theocratic state where all differing opinions are crushed. [Note: all comparisons to the Bush administration will be banished to the tinfoil fringe of the reality-challenged community.] So basically, this meme wants to destroy all other memes, and Western civilization's relative tolerance and openness are at the top of its list. I think that in the end it is doomed to failure, but its adherants have the will to make this the bloodiest war this planet has ever seen.
• Asteroid X: Somewhere out there is an asteroid with our name on it. No, not literally... I mean, not unless there's some particularly demented intergalactic vandals out there tagging asteroids with radioactive spray paint, but I digress. Sooner or later, the big rock is going to hit, and if we aren't ready for it, Katrina is going to look like a rainy picnic by comparison. In a nutshell, the dinosaurs went extinct because they didn't have a good space program.
• Energy Depletion: Sooner or later fossil fuels are going to run out. Will we make the switch to other energy sources before then, or will the lights go out? Personally, I think we will, so I'm not that worried on this one, but it's often hard to overestimate the stupidity and shortsightedness of some. (And no, I'm not actually talking about the oil or car companies.)
• The Xaragois Virus: To my knowledge, this Smallpox-infuenza-rhinovirus-Ebola crossbreed pathogen does not yet exist, but when it carves a path of horrific death through our tightly integrated and oft-traveled global economy, just remember that I'm the one who named it.
• Reality TV: You laugh now, but just you wait for our turn on Rigel IV's "Black Hole Deathmatch". We won't last as long as Richard Hatch's underwear.

Now, a few things that I'm not worried about as the "biggest threats to our future":

• Global Warming: In 35 years, climatologists have gone from worrying about the impending ice age to worrying about the out of control warming. In that time, their data collection capability has increased dramatically, but their fundamental understanding of climatological theory has not progressed much beyond, "Golly... chaotic systems are hard to figure out." I'm not completely discounting CO₂ concerns, but my money's on the sunspots -- remember that huge ball of fusing hydrogen outside your window? Its temperature just might not be constant. Time will tell, and hopefully the next sunspot cycle will reverse and give climatologists something else to worry about.
• Globalization and Free Trade: Apart from increasing the rate of epidemic spread, these are good things. They bring economic opportunity to the poorest parts of the world [Note: Gap protesters will be sentenced to farming rice by hand in Malaysia.], lowers costs [Note: protesting union members will immediately have all of their purchases tripled in price], and prevents wars [Note: Perot and Buchannen can go grab a rifle and defend the borders when the next trade war turns ugly.]
• Corporate Greed: Whine all you want, but corporations built this country. Yes, some of the executives have crossed the line, but we have laws, and some of them are getting a new view of them. This is no different from when feudal lords tossed out serfs who could no longer farm the land. No, wait, it is different. They got away with it then.
• Bush and Republicans: You know, some of you... I mean, I can respect an honest difference in policy views, even deeply held differences in philosophy over the role of government, but some of the end-of-the-world rants I see out there... let's just say I hope I never write something that looks that irrational.
• Moral Decay: I see a lot of church-goers point to one "depravity" or another and proclaim that this will surely lead to the end of the world. Hey, I've got news for you, these modern "depravities" don't hold a candle to some of the stuff going on a few thousand years ago, some of which still happen today, just a few thousand miles away. If drugs and sexual liasons/variations are all we have to be worried about, then we're in pretty good shape. Me, I don't even think those are things to be worried about at all.

Other Friday Fivers can be found dodging the falling sky here.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (2)

September 09, 2005

Friday 5: Dating in the Parallel Universe

Today’s question comes from Gord:

Please tell us about five people you liked, or who liked you, but with whom you never became involved. Explain why not.

I'm guessing Gord's never been married, because a lot of those end with "because I was married", but I'll try to go with the more interesting ones here.

1. Her name was Anne-Marie, a fine Scottish lass with lusciously long brown hair. We met via school, back when I was still taking classes, and we had a rocky almost-relationship over the course of several years. I think the biggest road block was that I wasn’t really in touch with my emotions back then, and I guess I had a hard time expressing my feelings. I always thought she would have been receptive, but I never really gave her the chance. Eventually, we grew apart and moved on to other things, but I don’t think I really ended in it in my own mind until I was thirteen.
2. Her name was Jalene, and we met in class my sophomore year of high school. We were very good friends over the next four years, confiding just about everything in one another. In the end, it was just bad timing. When she was available, I was hunting after someone else (a friend of hers, actually), and when I wasn’t, she was dating someone else again. Oddly enough, the last I heard of her was about ten years after I’d last seen her, and apparently she was seriously dating a guy who had been a very good friend of mine back when she and I were also good friends. But it was just two different circles of friendship that did not intersect at all.
3. Her name was Judy. A good number of you will remember Judy, and a good number of you also liked Judy. It was almost a feeding frenzy of Judy. In retrospect, I feel a little badly for her, because as a freshman in college, it was probably a little too much for her to deal with, especially the fallout. She was going to end up disappointing and hurting all but one, and she had to come to grips with that. All in all, I got off very light in the heartache department, but mostly because I chose not to get into the frenzy.
4. Her name was Jolee. She worked for me, not as a direct report, but I was on the board of directors, and she was an employee. She was smart, beautiful, funny, and overwhelmingly competent. I used to think of her like a “fire and forget” missile, in that you could direct her at a problem and that was the last time you needed to think about that problem. It never went anywhere for a long list of reasons, including but not limited to: I was married; she wasn’t attracted to me; she was in a long-term relationship; there was that whole “don’t date in the workplace” thing; and… we probably didn’t really have that many common interests. But she’s still high on my list of people to get stuck in a foxhole with.
5. Her name was Claudia. She was an actress, and a model, and totally hot. I wasn’t so sure about getting into that whole bisexual BDSM scene, but I’d hoped to broaden my horizons. In the end, it was the little things that doomed our relationship, stuff like she had no idea who I was, or the fact that I’d never even met her, or maybe that there were ten thousand other fan-boys (and fan-girls) ahead of me in line, not even counting the ones who’d already been issued their restraining orders. But if we could have just gotten past that stuff, I think it could have worked.

Some others that weren't listed here include some of MAW's friends, lots of ladies at work, some astonishingly attractive cousins, ... oh yeah, and then there was my stalker, but that's another story.

Other Friday Fiver's can be found perusing the Parallel Universe Personal's here.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (3)

August 12, 2005

Friday 5: Cool Colonies

Today’s question comes from me:

You've been sent out to scout for potential colony worlds. It turns out taht Earth-like bodies (whether full planets or moons) are surprisingly common, or at least easy to access given the Super-Ion Warpification Doodad. Plus, terraforming has become remarkably easy given the real success of our own Project Genesis. So, most or all of the practical issues of selecting a world (e.g. nitrogen oxygen atmosphere, water, etc.) have been rendered moot. All that's left is aesthetics. What five things are you looking for in your new colony worlds?

You know, sometimes I see some of my own questions come back to me months later, and I can only ask myself one question: what was I smoking when I thought of that one? Hmmm, the magic eight ball is off satisfying the munchies, so no answer there. Meanwhile, back to the whole planet thingy. While I certainly wouldn’t expect to find all of these in one world, here are few things that would definitely get my attention.

1. Planetary rings: Maybe it’ll be a moon orbiting a Saturn-like gas giant, but it would be even better, I think, to find a terrestrial planet with its own ring system. Physics has probably stacked the deck against me here, but I can always dream.
2. A nebula: I’d like to find something near a big nebula. It would dominate the night sky, well lit by nearby star formation and add an awesome backdrop to the changing of the seasons.
3. Galactic view: If the nebula’s not enough, how about something a few thousand light years above the galactic plane? Summer nights filled with the majesty of Milky Way galaxy spread out before you and the winters looking at the dimmer Magellanic Clouds.
4. Beaches: Preferably, I’d like a wraparound equatorial ocean, cluttered with an archipelago that spanned the globe, from northern to southern tropic lines. Fifty thousand Fiji’s.
5. Warm climate with plenty of ozone: To go along with all of those beaches, I’d want a pleasantly warm climate and a super dense ozone layer to block the UV. Oh, and did I mention the millions of naked beach babes?

Other Friday Fivers can be found picking out their galatic getaways here.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 29, 2005

Friday 5: Secret Signatures

Today's question, allegedly, comes from me, but there's been no confirmation of that.

With the recent unveiling of famed Watergate source "Deep Throat", a great mysterious chapter of journalism has been closed. However, you now have the chance to leak some incredible secrets to a young, new reporter. What would those five secrets be, and what would your code name be for each of them?

1. Lance Armstrong has been secretly receiving injections… of FLU SHOT. That’s right, as someone deep within the billing department of his physician’s office, I can tell you that several months before each of his seven Tour de France victories he was given an injection of the flu vaccine – even though he did not actually have the flu!! If you need more information, call me at the embassy and ask for the “French Tickler”.
2. The 9/11 attacks had nothing to do with the Israeli crackdown on the Palestinian town of Jenin. I know the common wisdom promoted by the likes of Juan Cole lays out a clear trail of cause and effect, but I have used my top secret “calendar” device to determine that the incident in Jenin actually occurred six months after the 9/11 attacks, and furthermore, no time travel was involved! If you need me again, just whisper out for “Clue by Four”.
3. Ted Kennedy is an alcoholic and a drunk driver. Call me “The Lady of the Lake”.
4. All software ships with bugs, but it’s nothing to worry about. It’s going to work fine 99.997% of the time, and when there is a failure, a simple reboot or removal of the offending modules will get things going again. Feel free to contact me: hal9000@discovery.gov.
5. Fast food has intentionally been made in such a way as to make you eat it again and again. They have spent billions in research to achieve a particular series of chemical and neurological reactions that will make you think back on the experience pleasantly. In a sign of their depravity, they refer to this insidious undermining of your free will, “making the food taste better.” I’m going to try to sneak in and get more physical evidence of their duplicity, and then I’ll be in touch again. Surreptitiously yours, Hamburglar.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 22, 2005

Friday 5: Wonderful Words

Today's question comes from Gord:

What are your five favorite words (in any language), and why do you like them so much?,

Ah... I've been remiss here lately, but here's one that at least won't require too much navel gazing.

1. Pants: It works so well in so many little jokes. It's funny just about everywhere. "Have you tried pants?" "I find your lack of pants disturbing." "Use the Pants, Luke."
2. Snorkle: It just sounds too funny to be a real world, like something you say when sneezing in the middle of a hiccup.
3. Grok: It filled such a nice gap in the English language, not just by recognizing the gap, but by creating it.
4. Spoo: A Centauri staple. It's great precisely because we don't know what it is.
5. Sadomasochisticnecrofecalbestiality: This was a word we invented in college. I'll leave its meaning as an exercise for the reader. Mostly though, we used it in a take-off of a classic Mary Poppins song:

   Sadomasochisticnecrofecalbestiality,
   When you stop and think of it, it really is quite nasty!
   Sadomasochisticnecrofecalbestiality!
   Sadomasochisticnecrofecalbestiality!
   Dum diddle diddle diddle dum diddle di,
   Dum diddle diddle diddle dum diddle di!
   ...

Other Friday Fivers can be found perusing their dictionaries here.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 01, 2005

And what do you want to do with me?

Like RoninJedi, I'm waiting on the computer, so I'm posting the same meme he did:

I want anyone and everyone who reads this to post in here something they'd like to do with me someday. Then post this in your journal to find out what I want to do with you.

Now get that evil smile off your face and say something nice. Or naughty. Naughty might be better.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (1)

June 13, 2005

Friday Five: Fixing up 'This Old School'

I’m playing catchup…

Last Friday’s question comes from me…

A train leaves Chicago at 3pm travelling south towards New York at 80 pounds per hour. Meanwhile, a car leaves London on Tuesday, heading towards Los Angeles at 3.5 meters per sterling pound. When the two meet, a hapless high school student will realize he's never going to get into college. Before that happens, suggest five ways in which your local school system could be improved to better prepare students for either college or the real world or both. (Bonus points for someone who can tell me when the train and car will meet.)

Damn… what was I on when I wrote that? I probably had some ideas when I posed the question, but now… well, I’m pretty drained at the moment, so don’t hold me to any of these. They’re quite off the cuff.

1. Increase parental involvement: I don’t know how you make it happen (that’s next week’s question), but this has to be the most important difference in getting a good education vs. getting a bad education. Parents who are willing to get involved in their kids’ education will make sure that they get a good education. I attended one of the richest and best (widely recognized) school systems in the state of Texas, perhaps even in the nation. (We won the national Academic Decathlon something like four or five years in a row, but I digress…) Furthermore, I was on the “honor” track, so in theory I got the cream of the crop in teacher selection. However, and I say this with glowing respect to the teaching profession, most of those teachers didn’t teach me anything, or at least not anything worthwhile. There were exceptions of course (kudos to Shoemaker, Gorman, name-forgotten-Geometry-teacher, Steele, Wolgehegan, Fabian, and Taylor), but for the most part, they shoveled a plate of facts and formulas in front of me and asked that I regurgitate them at appropriate intervals. What really made me learn was the constant driving by my parents, especially my father, to learn that stuff and “get those tickets”. My theory is that the main reason rich districts produce such good students (in general) is because rich parents believe in the importance of education and whip that into their children.
2. Disband the NEA: The NEA (the national teachers’ union – slap my hand if I got the name or acronym wrong) is the biggest roadblock to improving schools. Now, yes, I do believe that teachers should have the same right as anyone else to organize their labor for the purpose of collective bargaining, and yes, I agree that teachers do know a thing or two about what separates good education from bad education. However, the NEA as an organization has tremendous lobbying power and a strong voice in setting national, state, and local education policies, and they have used that power to oppose virtually every recent school reform except for “spend more money”. Now, you might think that spending more money really is the solution, but the NEA’s primary goal is NOT to improve the education of students. It is to increase the salaries and benefits of its members, the teachers. If the real solution to improving education turns out to be in opposition of teachers’ pay, then you can be sure that the NEA will oppose it, claiming to be a body of unbiased experts. So, I suggest blowing it up (not literally, but I wouldn’t mind seeing them go down in a fire of union fraud and bankruptcy) and replacing it with a bunch of local, unrelated teachers’ unions and one or more national professional associations, similar to the IEEE or ACM. Let the local unions deal with local salary/benefit issues, and let the professional association discuss and opine on the best ways to education children. Those two functions are unrelated and should be separate.
3. Don’t spend more money: Well, maybe you do have to spend more money, but I am sick and fucking tired of hearing the old mantra that we just need to spend more money. Hell, we’ve been spending more money for thirty years as we’ve watched the schools get worse. (I assume they’re getting worse – why else all the angst? Either that, or it’s all a hoax, trying to extort more money, but I digress…) I’m also tired of the constant comparisons of dollars per student ratios. “New York schools are better than Texas schools because New York spends the most per student while Texas comes in at 44th.” Whoever thinks that is in much more need of an education than I, a Texas-educated idiot. Did it ever occur to them that it’s just cheaper to live in Texas than in New York? And where it’s cheaper to live, the labor is cheaper. In general, New Yorkers make more than folks in Austin, from the teachers to the cab drivers, the plumbers, the window washers and so on. Does this mean that New York has better cabs or pipes or cleaner windows? No, it just means that labor is more expensive in New York than in Austin. The same goes for comparing Plano and Round Rock to Laredo and San Angelo. Spending more money doesn’t necessarily mean you’re getting a better product. All it really tells you is that you’re paying more. If you’re going to rely on a metric, pick something better.
4. End Zero Tolerance policies and return authority to man-on-the-spot: I know this came as a reaction to some pretty bad situations with drugs and weapons in schools, but these are a ridiculous solution. They aim to please the masses by saying that the problem will go away because we won’t tolerate the problem. Well, the problems haven’t gone away, and all they have done is upped the ante for getting caught breaking the most trivial regulations. [See the War on Drugs and mandatory drug sentencing for a similar “success story”.] Instead, give some authority back to the local administrator to use his judgment to decide which infractions can be ignored and which require harsh punishment. While I am a big fan of the predictability of the rule of law, I’m also a big fan of the independent judges who administer that law.
5. Require results and experiment in the face of failure: In some cases, the public schools deliver. In some cases, they don’t. There are at least a hundred ways to measure this, and I’m not strongly in favor of one vs. the other. Also, I don’t believe in equality of outcome. Some schools are just going to outperform others, but if we have to pay for the education, we should expect results. That doesn’t necessarily means every student must pass a certain test, or that a set percentage of students must graduate. In truth, I think those standards should be set locally since that’s where the money is coming from and where the parents of the children live. And if a school (whether public or private) is failing to deliver those results, we need to be allowed to experiment with other solutions. Maybe that’s charter schools or even the dreaded religious schools [insert hysterical Christian Fascism diatribe here] or maybe just some fundamental changes to the public schools. But don’t just shrug and say, “Well, it’s a complex issue that needs further study… but in the meantime, I know that more money would improve things.”

Well, not my best, but not bad for off the cuff.

Oh, the answer to the bonus question is: On alternate Tuesdays, but only if the price of silver is on the decline. I'll give Adam partial credit for his own surrealism.

Other Friday Fiver’s are running for school board here.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (1)

May 20, 2005

Friday 5: Yanking threads from the Great Tapestry of Life

Today’s question comes from Gord:

In the depths of a dream, a voice speaks unto you:

Little one! Little one!

You're not sure who it is, but it doesn't occur to you to ask. so you just listen.

Listen, I haven't been to earth in a long time, but I have some good data here that suggests unless five species are made extinct, the whole planet will simply shut down within a week. I haven't visited in a long time, and you humans seem the closest thing to sentients on Earth. I need your help. Doesn't matter which species, it's a mathematical problem, not a pragmatic problem! That means any species will do. What can you do without?

Who is this? God? Some other long-lost deity? The Demiurge? Maybe an alien wildlife preserve officer responsible for this corner of the Milky Way? You can't be sure, and this may just be a dream, but just the same, it might be a good idea to make some suggestions. Which five species would you nominate for extinction, for the sake of the rest of all life on Earth? Remember, if you don't answer, it may just be a dream... or you may be refusing to save the majority of life on Earth. And yes, the definition of "species" for this question is more fluid than we might imagine. (I'd include viruses and so on.)

This one is going to be easier than most...

I suspect that the question meant to invoke feelings of tragic loss, of sacrificing a noble few to save the greater whole. I think it was also framed in the world-view of the Great Tapestry, where all life is so carefully interwoven that pulling out a single thread can have disastrous consequences.

Well, bullshit. Not only do I disagree with the Great Tapestry view, but I find it ironic that many who promote it (i.e. liberal eco-protectors) are also against the notion of a supernatural G/god who created everything (i.e. Intelligent Design). The irony here is that the vision of the Great Tapestry, where everything is so delicately interwoven, seems to imply that it got that way through the vision of a designer and any damage is irreparable, spreading towards the destruction of the entire tapestry.

Rather than a Grand Tapestry, I see the biological world as a messy collection of knotted thread, and I see evolution as a blind, insane, insomniac weaver whose overriding drive is to just keep weaving. (Fans of “Finding Nemo” should think of her a bit like Dora: “Just keep weaving... just keep weaving...”) She has no grand design. She just weaves all around the fringes until some bits are too gnarled to continue, and then she picks up somewhere else. As for removing threads, not only does she not care overmuch, but she pulls them out herself all the time. “I need more blue... oh, there’s some blue over there. I’ll just yank it out.” I’m not saying that there are no consequences for pulling out a thread, just that it’s part of the natural order.

So, with no guilt at all, I proceed to my list, in some cases taking broad swaths across several related species:

1. Human-destructive viruses, bacteria, fungi, prions, etc.: I’ll start with Ebola, HIV/AIDS, syphilis, herpes, meningitis, polio, smallpox, flesh eating bacteria, influenza, and then work my way on down to the rhinovirus (common cold). While these may have played a wonderful part in the tapestry towards breeding a human with a better immune system, at this point, their main effect on the ecosystem is to breed a human with access to better health care.
2. Computer viruses: Hey, if we’re going to let the definition be really broad, I’d like to stuff this genie back in the bottle.
3. Annoying niche variants: Here I’m referring to that unique variant of moth, grasshopper, or moss that is found only in this little two hundred acre tract of land and is preventing the construction of the highway, mall, etc., due to EPA regulation. Look, it’s not that this species is so important or special that evolution set aside this specific patch of land for it. Rather, it’s that this species isn’t robust enough to survive and flourish anywhere else. When evolution goes looking for more blue yarn, these guys are where she goes first.
4. Snakes with venom that can kill humans: I’d say all snakes, but I’m not sure I want to see what evolution starts putting in to fill that role. However, I think we can do without the snakes capable of killing creatures fifty times their body mass. Can I toss in scorpions here as well?
5. The panda: Yes, I know they’re cute and adorable, and my favorite stuffed animal as a child was my older brother’s panda teddy bear, but... I figure I should inject a little pain into the list. Besides, any species that has this hard of a time breeding is just blue-yarn-fodder for the weaver anyway.

Other Friday Fivers can be found destroying the ecosystem here.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 08, 2005

Friday 5: I'm not a packrat -- I'm just sentimental

Coming in a little late, but this past Friday's question came from Rob:

What five items do you still posess that you should have dumped long ago and why do you have them?

1. The last remaining key to my first car (a 1972 Chevy Impala hardtop) is still on my keyring. It comes in handy as a cutting edge for tearing through tape on boxes, but the real reason is that I just can bring myself to remove it from the ring.
2. I still have two or three older film cameras. I'm pretty solidly switched over to digital now, but I still have these. Partly it's laziness (that I haven't EBay'd them), but it's also an irritation that I spent a decent chunk on one of them but didn't get around to using in much in the years between its purchase and my switch to digital.
3. I really am going to fit into those pants again someday. Really.
4. I still have stack of sales brochures for the playscape line I have in my backyard. I can only blame this one on laziness of cleaning up my office. There, problem solved. Do I have to remove it from my list now?
5. I have three photos of art pieces that were given to me by an artist named Jamie. I now actually have those pieces in full-size, framed and hanging on my walls. He game me the photos when I placed the order for those pieces, and I just hung onto them. I guess the reason is that this was one of Jamie's last appearances, and he knew it. He was getting out of the whole fan-art scene and was depleting his inventory to make a clean break. I suppose I'm just hanging onto them as one last interaction I had with him before he disappeared.

Ok... maybe I am a packrat.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 29, 2005

Friday 5: Wishing for Wally

This week's question comes from Laura:

Sharing an office with one or more people can be a bit of a strain sometimes. Humour me, name five annoying habits of co-workers you've had to put up with. Or are YOU the one who chews with his mouth open or types aloud?

Me? I'm blameless.

However, I have had to put up with some mild crap earlier in my career. (In truth, the best part of career advancement wasn't the money. It was the privacy.)

1. Snooping on my computer.
2. Not shutting up.
3. Unleashing a silent-but-deadly fart and then leaving the room without warning me.
4. Holding an impromptu meeting with someone who stopped by where there's a conference room right across the hall!
5. Going on and on about how much money we could save on office supplies if we would just buy them from her Amway distributorship.

While writing this, I was struck by several fake answers that I just had to share:

1. Storing gigabytes of pornography on my computer because his didn't have the space. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
2. Complaining endlessly that the office was too hot and ultimately stripping down to a wet cotton thong to stay cool. Oh, and being a 300-pound pasty white guy at the same time.
3. All the candles and pentagrams around my desk to help "contain my negative energies".
4. One sniffle, and it's thirty minutes of free medical advice on how accupuncture will cure my allergies.
5. Being overly sensitive. Always with the "that's disgusting", the "I was drinking that", and the ever-present, "Dude -- you can't masturbate in here!"

Man... some people!

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (1)

April 20, 2005

What's your Pope name?

Because I clearly haven't pissed off Catholics enough yet:

If I am elected, my pope name will be: Pope Outrageous Roy I What's your pope name? Name:

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 15, 2005

Friday 5: VR Descendants...

There’s a little confusion over at Friday 5 Central, so we’re being thrown two questions, both of them from Gord.

First...

You've been approached by VR-Box, a new home entertainment system startup, for the creation of five new videogames for their home system. They're reviewing submissions from several different people, and their offer is that, whoever submits the most 5 ideas deemed most interesting and most profitable, gets a position with them simply hanging around thinking up ideas for video games for some collossal amount of money.

The system is an immersive, virtual reality game. People playing will know they're playing, they won't be at any special risk physically or psychologically. (No more than with a regular computer game, say.) But it will look more "real" (using a helmet which, yes, works on the brain by nerve induction or something) and the system will be of course far more flexible than anything now on the market—able to handle massively online multiplayer interaction, to run marginally complex AI, and so on.

They haven't specifically chosen a market, nor have they given any other limitations: it's apparently up to you to choose the niche you think best works for the first immersive VR-game system in the world. Which five game ideas would you submit?

Careful, Gord, if you think this is going to get you some advanced market research, bear in mind that this question counts as a public release of information.

Hmmm, “most interesting and most profitable”... well, the two aren’t necessarily the same. Yes, you could try to narrow it down to those that maximize the sum of both, but I’d like to take them on one at a time. First, the easy one, profitability.

1. Max Millionaire vs. the Supermodel Stalkers of Lust, part 7: The Oral Avengers: I’ll leave it to your dirty minds to work out the details on this one.
2. Your Life: Sit around, watch TV, clean the house, play on the computer. Hey, it worked for Sims.
3. Caligula: Insult senators, fuck your sister, and get to decide who lives and who dies. Just reset before the knives come out.
4. Office Rampage: Go ahead and go postal, get it out of your system, and kill your coworkers again and again. Not recommended for team play at work.
5. Everquest/D&D/Ultima/Star Wars/ad nauseam: This is your basic stuff, e.g. slay the dragon, rescue the princess, just much more realistic. Personally, I think this one would be a lot of fun, though it’s not terribly interesting.

Now for the interesting ones...

1. Dreamscape: If this thing can be pushing on neurons, maybe it can be reading them too. Explore your innermost psyche through conscious dreaming.
2. Career Day: Get to experience the working life of different careers. It would run you through the high and low points of different jobs. Thinking about become a fireman? See the excitement and danger of a three-alarm fire along with the endless hours of maintaining equipment.
3. Vacation: You know how vacation trips go. There’s one or two short pieces of bliss surrounded by some general fun, some monotony, and some hours of hassle and exhaustion. This packages up those short pieces of bliss: the isolated beach, the mountain pass, the feel of the grass on your bare feet. Instead of a movie tonight, take a ninety-minute vacation to the rainforest of Maui. This one might be a mildly profitable series.
4. Time-travel god: You all know how many time-travel questions we get here on this list, and not all of them from Gord either. Well, let’s do it and find out just what would happen. Either fly-on-the-wall observer or hands-on megalomaniac, you can finally do more than just write about it. (The real profits here come from the toilet paper add-on pack.)
5. Live with yourself: This would be a highly custom product. An observation team (perhaps a computer) will spend time with you collecting real data. They’ll see all the things you do, the things you say, etc. They will build a model of someone who does what you really do, not what you tell yourself you do. Then when you play the game, you get to be someone else in your household and see what it’s really like to live with you. I suspect for some folks, playing this game would be a form of court-mandated punishment.

And then there’s Gord’s second question...

Long dead, you are awakened from your eternal slumber some of your descendants using a Ouija board. It's a little bit annoying, understandably, since you were having a nice sleep in the dark. But your descendants want to ask you something.

Straining to hear them, you make out the question, "Ancestor, ancestor, we live in a perilous age. We humans are capable of great good and also great evil. We need guidance, we need... we need maxims to guide us. Ancestor, wise ancestor, give us five aphorisms or mottos you think worthy of remembering throughout our lives, as we navigate the complexities and dangers of the human, and yes, the posthuman world!

Dagnabbit! I was just in the middle of... well... it’s hard to explain to you living folk, but you’ve just taken me away from something as fun as a Claudia Christian oil wrestling match.

So, you want wisdom? You want maxims? YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE MAXIMS!!!

Sorry, that was just Jack goofing with you. Maxims... well, let’s be quick about it.

1. Don’t do anything you’ll have a hard time explaining to your kids when they’re grown up.
2. Righty tighty, lefty Lucy. That one really comes in handy.
3. The paths to Utopia and Distopia look the same. Sometimes you’re going to make mistakes. Don’t be afraid to go back and pick the other road.
4. Remember that those who came before you were not gods. Yes, they built the world you live in, but they were just average Zho’s and Zhane’s trying to get by. Don’t tie yourself to a bad idea just because it’s always been that way. You have new possibilities that they never dreamed of.
5. Remember that maxims are 90% pithy writing and only 10% wisdom. It's better to rely on your own judgement.

   But I'm pretty sure about the righty-tighty thing.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 08, 2005

Friday 5: My Name is Dan, and I'll be your serial killer today

This week’s question comes from Marvin:

What are the five signs that you, yes you, might be a serial-killing psychopath?

Might be? Might? Heh, how naïve.

1. I know how to dispose of a body so that a) it is likely to never be found, and b) if it isn’t found for at least three weeks, the body would not be identifiable by fingerprints, dental/X-ray records, or DNA testing. But that’s somewhat academic, and the best planned murders don’t leave you to deal with the body anyway.
2. I also know how to dispose of a car with virtually no trace, though you can’t have the body in it when you do so. This is generally useful when the cover story for your murder is that the victim moved off, i.e. got fed up and went for the long drive never to be heard from again, current whereabouts unknown.
3. Some of the best murders don’t look like murders at all, but appear to be simple accidents. See the movie “A Shock to the System” for a flavor of this. My personal favorite, however, is so tricky that I haven’t managed to pull it off yet. It involves a specially prepared and worn-out tire (and three others to match its appearance), a small explosive charge, a rainy night, and a windy road along the side of a steep hill like 2222 in west Austin. Sure, it sounds like a lot of trouble, but I know a couple of people who are worth it. Unfortunately, they don’t live in the Austin area.
4. Cannibalism is over-rated, especially in relation to casual murder. Either you have to share, which raises questions, or you have a lot of leftovers. That’s not exactly what you want in your freezer when the search warrant comes. Kuru is less of a risk than you’d think, provided your victims are not cannibals themselves, but it’s best to avoid the brain on general principle anyway. Mostly, though, human meat is tough and stringy. The parts you would think of as special delicacies are generally either too fatty or too chewy. Young-adult thighs and buttocks are really the only cuts worthwhile, and their owners are the ones most likely to successfully fight off an attack.
5. I tend to give pretty good advice for things I have no reason for knowing. For example, killing someone close to you, say a coworker, neighbor, or family member, is always very tricky, because your connection makes you an immediate suspect, someone to be ruled out if nothing else. Then you get into fabricating an alibi, and it just gets messy from there. Instead, you need to remove yourself from the pool of suspects from the start by making it clear the murderer was an unrelated party, so you make your victim one in a string of serial murders. This can be a little tricky, so let me walk you through the important elements.
   • You’ll need some other victims – three at minimum. However many you choose, your victim should be near the end, but not the last. In general, you want to have enough to establish a pattern, but not so many that details become public knowledge. After all, you don’t want your victim to be suspected as a copy-cat, but recognized as the genuine article. You can’t do yours too early in the sequence or they police won’t recognize it as the pattern – plus, you’ll be on their radar, which makes it difficult to do the follow-up killing(s). You don’t want your victim to be the last either, because the police will have to wonder why the killer stopped with your victim. Timing is also important, since serial killers accelerate their work. A good pattern is: first cover victim, wait three months, second cover victim, wait two months, your primary victim, wait one month, and then your final cover victim.
   • Pick your extra victims randomly to some extent, but don’t do them in the heat of the moment. They need to have some common element with your main victim, e.g. overweight men, blonde women, etc. Do your research. Make sure you have a predictable opportunity to do the deed. Find the time and place where you can work on them without interruption. Be sure to complete all the research for your follow-up victim(s) before you kill your primary victim, since you won’t have the time to do it afterwards while you’re under police scrutiny. Also, this only works if your main victim and cover victims are all local. Coincidental travel dates will raise suspicion.
   • Plan the details of your killing style meticulously. Choose the killing weapon ahead of time. Do something to the body during or afterwards. Ritualistic dismemberment will always be an eye-catcher for the police. Learn your anatomy since you’ll want to be sure you do the same thing to particular organs on each of your victims. Don’t improvise anything. After all, you’re trying to establish a warped mind-set here. Consistent depravity will get their profilers headed in a direction far from your own identity. Also, there will be some details in the papers, but only you will be able to duplicate the minutia that doesn’t get released to the press.
   • Be clean. This is a good idea in just about all murders, but especially in this case. While crime labs aren’t really as good or fast as CSI would lead you to believe, you need to be careful. Select special working clothes for this that are used only for this. Clean yourself meticulously before and afterwards. Use tarps. Wear gloves and a shower cap. This is not Sunday-morning clean. This is clean-room clean.
   • If possible, leave someone else’s DNA or tell-tale signs at the scene. I won’t give too many details here because this one is something of a trade secret. If your victims are female, think about a sperm bank. Failing that, a collection of dead skin cells shoved under fingernails is a good misdirection. The key here, of course, is to use the same DNA at each scene, and make sure it’s not from someone who can be traced back to you. Another trick is to use bite marks from another person. A good dental casting would do, but a real (and refrigerated, thank you very much) human jaw works even better, providing more consistent angles as well as trace DNA. (Note: a separate preparatory murder might be in order here for supplies – remember the victim that just got fed up and drove off?)

Of course, it’s fun to always joke about this kind of thing. It often makes for good, dark humor, and if you’re a writer (as I am), you can use that knowledge in your writing thus making it clear that’s why you know these things. People occasionally get freaked out by your dark imagination, but they laugh it off with a comfortable air. “After all, he’s a nice guy and basically harmless.” Now, you might think this is all meant to scare you, to make you all question just how mentally stable I really am, but then I know you’ll see through that as the lame joke that it is. After all, I’m a nice guy and basically harmless. But if any of you really are freaked out by this, I have the following advice:

• Subcutaneous RFID chips are hard to find if you don’t have the details.


• Always make sure people know where are you going.


• Check your tires.


• Exercise and a low-carb diet ruins the meat.


• Don’t be too predictable in your routines.


• An apology for what you did last February just might save your life.

Anyway, you'll find some other psychopaths wallowing in their blood lust here.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (2)

April 01, 2005

Friday 5: Silly Snacks

Today's question comes from Rob:

Name five snacks that your mind immediately turns to when the need or opportunity arises.

Hmmm, well, I'm a little hungry now, so let's see...

1. "Dokranuts": If you're familiar with the Round Rock donuts based on sweet potatoes rather than flour, you should have an idea what this is about. A Pflugerville-based competitor has introduced okra-based donuts. Look for them in the 1500 block of Pecan St, near the Albertson's.
2. Communion wafers: Sure, you think of them as dry and plastic-like, but have you ever noticed the priests wolfing down all the extras at the end of the service? Plus, thanks to transubstantiation, they're low-carb.¹
3. Jellyfish tentacles: Some folks blanch at jalapenos, but this is the real test of your spice tolerance, 'cause these babies are hot, hot, HOT!!
4. Kitty Litter: Sometimes it's a little dry and crunchy, but every now and then you get a nice moist, chewy bit.
5. Human Flesh: There's nothing quite so satisfying as snacking on a lovely lady's thigh meat, but in a pinch, your own forearm can be pretty tasty, not to mention convenient.

Those with more mundane culinary tastes should take note of today's date.

[1] Wow, I'm really pissing off Catholics for some reason today. No offense meant -- really!

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (2)

March 27, 2005

Friday 5: Fearfest

This week's question comes from me:

What are the 5 scariest moments in your life, the moments when you were most filled with fear?

You know, I almost didn’t submit this question in the first place just because I knew how much I would dread eventually answering it, but while I might dodge someone else’s question, I think it would be bad form for me to dodge my own. It should come as no surprise to fellow parents that the three scariest moments were all about my kids.

5. Summer 2003: Crossing the Richmond Bridge. I’ve written about that bridge before, and I’ll just leave it at that. This one night was the worst it has ever been.
4. June, 1988: I very nearly flunked out of college in my sophomore year. My GPA for the fall semester was 0.6. Yes, you read that right, ZERO point SIX. That brought my overall GPA to below 2.0, and if I’d had just two more credit hours already, I’d have been booted out over Christmas in 1987. However, since I was still just under the wire, I was put on academic probation. I worked pretty hard that spring to get my GPA up, not so much because I loved school, but because I’d met a girl. I was convinced she was the one, and if I flunked out, I’d hardly ever get to see her. So there I sat in June, 1988, holding my grade report from the university in my hands, scared to open it. My future, my marriage, my family, were all in that envelope. I squeaked out a 3.2 which was enough to save me, and yes, that girl was the one and only MAW.
3. May 25, 2001, 2:12am: MAW had been in labor for ten or twelve hours by that point, and it looked like it would be another six or seven, so we were trying to get some sleep in the delivery room. I had fallen asleep around midnight to the sounds of the fetal heart monitor beeping along at about 120/minute. I woke suddenly as the rate started dropping rapidly, first to 100, then to 80, eventually all the way to 60 beats per minute. Little Sammy had shifted his weight onto the umbilical cord. It was all over in a minute or two as we shifted MAW and Sammy to a different position, so everything was fine. But I didn’t sleep another minute until that afternoon.
2. September 26, 2003, late morning: MAW had just given birth to Catherine, and Tommy had taken the opportunity to stretch out in a now roomy womb. As a result, he was no longer head down. Several attempts to reorient him failed, and the OB decided to bring him out feet first. That was pretty scary in itself, but the real scary moment came when he emerged, not red and screaming like his siblings but pale and still. With a quick spank and suctioning, he was doing much better, but for that second, I thought we’d lost him.
1. December 15, 2004: Tommy had just been put into the hospital after months of intermittent vomiting, weight loss, and ultimately dehydration. His veins were in such bad shape that they eventually had to put the IV in his jugular, one stop short of a “main line” into the heart’s neighborhood. I was stuck at home with the other kids, completely out of the loop, and utterly powerless to do anything. I didn’t know if he would survive the night, and every time the phone rang, I feared it was MAW calling with the word of his death. Sufficed to say, there is telemarketer or two who will never call me again.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (1)

March 11, 2005

Friday Five: Dousing Dreams

Today's question comes from me:

What 5 events or things would you like to see in your lifetime but are skeptical that you will?

While I’d like to go into details as to why I want to see these and why I’m skeptical, I’m on a business trip this week which has left me with little free time for such ponderous prose. So, in brief…

1. Permanent colonies on the moon and Mars.
2. Worldwide democracy – not necessarily a world government that’s democratic, but I’m just hoping for every human to be living in a democracy.
3. Another good film from George Lucas.
4. Commercially feasible fusion. I was very optimistic twenty years ago, but now twenty years have passed with very little progress.
5. A hot, steaming three-way with Claudia Christian, Grace Park, and Jolene Blalock. Hmmm, has a week away from MAW left me horny and frustrated? You be the judge.

Other Friday Fivers are giving up their dreams here.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 09, 2005

Random Entry

I'm off in San Francisco this week, or is it San Rafael? San Antonio? San Angelo? San San? Who the fuck cares anyway?

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 04, 2005

Friday Five: Damn, even my evil twin is losing his hair!

Today’s question comes from Rob:

One for the navel gazers: five times you've looked in the mirror and thought “who the bloody hell are you?”

Well, I don’t really have five of those, possibly not even one. I’ve pretty much always had a firm grip on who I am and what I want out of life. It’s not that I haven’t considered the options – I actually do a fair amount of deep-thought evaluation – just that I started pretty much where I wanted to end up. Much like my affinity for Texas despite my frequent travels, I’ve seen a lot of different super-egos and self-models but always thought, “That’s a nice philosophy to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.” Note, this doesn’t mean I have envisioned a static life. Rather, I envisioned a journey through different stages, careers, and lifestyles, and I’m chugging along.

So, I’m left with the more literal look in the mirror.

1. Age 20... when I realized that an adolescence spent on my bicycle (paper-route/etc.) and then climbing 40-50 flights of stairs every day for two years had given me very muscular legs. They had bothered me for a while given they way they would spread out into a lap when I sat down, but then I realized that they were pretty much rock-solid muscle. (I recall that at the time, I could leg-press over 1000 pounds. Even years later, after knee surgery rehab, I could leg press almost five hundred on my good leg.)
2. Age 23... when I grew a beard because I felt I had to make myself look older. I was in a semi-management position, and I looked like a kid. It really did make me look older. Seven years later a more recent hire (an awesome vice president) had reason to go through my employment file and was stunned to discover I was only 30, figuring I was at least ten years older.
3. Age 29... when I was walking through an unfamiliar downtown area. I was approaching a corner, and looking through the windows of the drugstore, I saw this bad-ass character coming down the side street. He had wild, long hair, a trim beard, and was wearing a rather stern raincoat and sunglasses. At first I just saw him out of the corner of my eye, and there was this sudden lurch-in-the-gut as I maneuvered to avoid him. He looked like the kind of guy you definitely wanted to pass behind rather than in front of, but he had suddenly slowed as well. I came to a quick stop, and then he was staring right at me. And then, of course, I realized it was me. A trick of the window angles and a mirror in the store had thrown me off, but the scary guy in the reflection was me.
4. Age 32... damn, when did I get fat?
5. Recently... when standing in a mirrored elevator, a recessed light in the ceiling was shining directly down onto my head, casting stark shadows on my face. A friend once told me I looked like a cross between a serial killer and a Norse god, and the light just then made me see what she’d meant. Someday soon I’m going to have to capture that in a self-portrait.

Other Friday Fivers are gazing into the mirror here.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 02, 2005

Ten things (times four)

Ok, I am now succumbing to peer pressure to do the same “10 Things” list everyone else has done, but I’m not satisfied to be entirely a member of the herd. Instead, I’m doing four lists.

Let's look at the truth table:

	You’ve done	True	False
I've done
True		Prosaic commonalities	Standard “I am unique” bragging
False		Look at my sheltered life	Ok, let’s get weird

10 Things I’ve done and you probably have too:

1. Voted.


2. Read this list.


3. Vomited. (hopefully not in that order)


4. Been treated by a professional doctor with a real education.


5. Met someone on the internet you never would have run into directly.


6. Had a three-day weekend.


7. Had cynical thoughts about a politician.


8. Lit a match.


9. Watched television.


10. Ruined a perfect 100% purity score.

10 Things I’ve done that you probably haven’t:

1. Owned my own company for several years, sold it, and made money on it.


2. Completed over half of a self-paced course in the last week of classes. (After I did this, the EE department changed the rules to prevent this from being attempted again.)


3. Seen every Star Wars film on opening weekend – to my utter shame.


4. Written fiction and been paid to have it published. It wasn’t much, and I kept my day job.


5. Held a long-standing record for most-times-riding-amusement-park-ride-X-in-a-row-without-throwing-up.


6. Lived for three weeks on a 48-hour schedule, i.e. awake for 32 hours (with a one hour nap) and then asleep for 16-hours (with a brief break for a snack). It was interesting, but I don’t recommend it.


7. Had a medical mishap that led to a widespread change in the use of a particular drug.


8. Foreclosed on someone else’s property. (It was investment property, so no, I didn’t put anyone out on the street.)


9. Driven through a major city during a racially-provoked riot.


10. Designed a house and had it built.

10 Things you’ve probably done, but I never have:

1. Commuted more than five miles to work.


2. Been fired or laid off.


3. Been pulled over for a moving violation.


4. Drunk an entire domestic beer.


5. Dumped someone. (I’m not counting the stalker who I never actually met face to face.)


6. Ridden a bus to school.


7. Missed a federal or state or county or school election. (I’d say all elections, except I missed a city council run-off four years ago. In fairness, I was about to move out of the jurisdiction.)


8. Watched the needle go in, even when I was giving myself shots for allergies.


9. Gone out to a party in either high school or college. (I’m not that dull, really, but a combination of my shyness and poor hearing made parties a very bad place for me to socialize.)


10. Sent out my resume. (Instead, I blundered into my first job out of college which turned into a great career path and led directly to my current position via an acquisition.)

10 Things I haven’t done, and you probably haven’t either:

1. Walked on Io.


2. Swam the English Channel, using only the breaststroke.


3. Been burned in effigy.


4. Won the lottery – the big one, none of this $5 crap.


5. Ridden in the Pope-mobile.


6. Fucked a goat. (Please, no one chime in with their own accomplishment here.)


7. Parachuted naked into my university graduation ceremony. (If I’m wrong on this one, send video.)


8. Been secretly replaced by an android.


9. Put a whoopee cushion in Captain Picard’s chair.


10. Drunk Zolo in the timeline which was widely considered to be the prevalent probability wavefront prior to the Great Causality Violation of 2284/1908.

Now, what I'd really like to see is a list of "Ten Truth Tables You Never Want to See Evaluated." But I'm weird that way.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (2)

February 25, 2005

Friday Five: The Five Laws of Dan-otics

Today’s question comes from Tanya:

Due to a highly improbable circumstance, you have the power to create or destroy 5 of the laws where you live. This could be anything from changing a local ordinance to overturning case law to drafting new sections of your constitution. What do you change?

Well, it’s not quite King for a Day, but I’ll take it.

1. Big changes to the drug laws: This is really two laws in one. First, I’d legalize all of the illegal drugs, and I’d give research tax credits to the pharmaceutical industries on finding good uses for these potent molecules. In addition to finding a host of unexpected new therapies, I’d like to think they could create “safer” versions of these drugs that achieve most of the “fun” parts while mostly eliminating the dangerous or addictive parts. Basically, I want to turn drugs into alcohol, which while it still presents problems, is generally seen as socially acceptable. My only real regret here is in present society, criminals are frequently involved in drugs, and law enforcement can use the easily pliable drug-laws as leverage for gaining information. I’d hate to see them lose that edge, but I’d be willing to live with it.

   Second, all of those “all natural” products that get to bypass FDA review would have to have their claims vetted by FDA-approved clinical trials. I strongly suspect that most of that stuff is pure bunk, and I’d like to see them put in their place.

2. Big changes to the prostitution laws: My general feeling is that whatever goes on between consenting adults should be off-limits to government interference. Hence, I’d like to see prostitution legalized. The simple act of legalization would do a great deal to eliminate abusive pimps, since a pimp enforcing his dominance would quickly devolve into a clear-cut case of assault. There might need to be a little extra done on the pimp front, and I’d be willing to go for that. Now, on the flip-side, there is a health issue here, so prostitutes and bordellos should be licensed, complete with health inspections, etc. The licensing could be optional, but I think most customers would want the assurances that the license implies.
3. Big changes in marriage laws: I’d like to see government’s view of marriage to be redefined as a general partnership of more than one sentient, adult entity (as defined by laws that recognize such rights as voting, drinking, citizenship, legal protection, etc.) with rights governing property, taxes, and child guardianship. Basically, I’m in favor of legalizing gay marriage and polygamy. I’ve opined on this before.
4. Changes to the interpretation of the “establishment” clause of the First Amendment: The clause “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” is commonly interpreted as “the government shall allow no sign of religion in public life.” Given that the authors were generally a fairly religious bunch, this is most clearly not their intention. Rather, they wanted to avoid the establishment of a federal church, supported by the government, which could outlaw or marginalize other religions. Now, the ACLU and its allies have taken the position that the mention of an unidentified God or references to the Ten Commandments or town hall nativity scenes are an implicit endorsement of the Judeo-Christian faith by the government. This, in my not so humble opinion, is ludicrous. These references to the Judeo-Christian faith are as ingrained into the cultural heritage of this nation as are the cries of “taxation without representation”, the Boston Tea Party, and Paul Revere’s ride. Acknowledging that heritage is a far cry from placing an extra burden on the unwashed heathen who deny the one true American Church.

   But... I’m willing to compromise on this one, just to keep folks happy. In such matters as the various town hall nativities or the Ten Commandments on the courthouse steps, I would suggest the notion of equal time, or rather, equal space. The sites for such monuments or displays will be leased to the highest bidder for an appropriate term. More than one site should be made available, preferably three or more. A panel will enforce that displays are sufficiently distinct to rule out three copies of the Ten Commandments. If fewer than three sites are available, then no display can have back-to-back leases.

   Initially, many parties would attempt to monopolize it. Some areas might end up with the Ten Commandments, a crucifix, and year-round nativity, while others would have a statue of Darwin, a Buddha, and a monument to the scientific method. Eventually, groups would grow tired of the ongoing lease fees and a mixed rotation would ensue, each unique to its community and representative of the community values. There would be plenty of scandal – “How dare they replace our crucifix with a Koran monument!” – but eventually it would settle down into an understanding. The priest would meet with the imam and say, “I think next year is your turn for the center spot, so we won’t be asking to renew the lease.” He might reply, “No, we’re saving up for a new statue, but I think the University’s biology department has something.” Instead of becoming a fight to keep religion out of the public eye, it would become a celebration of our diversity and our tolerance for others’ beliefs.

5. Changes to the status of Washington D.C.: While allowing D.C. to retain parts of its special status as the independent seat of our government, its residents will take part in federal and state elections as though they were residents of Virginia or Maryland, depending on which side of the Potomac they’re on. I’m sick and tired of listening to these guys whine about wanting statehood. I know their population is greater than North Dakota, but I’m not going to give a city the status of a state.
6. Changes to the laws of enumeration: There is no law number 6.
7. Changes to the interpretation of rights of free speech and press: Anyone who disagrees with me does so on penalty of death. What? I’ve already gone past five? Is it too late to reorder these?

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (2)

February 18, 2005

Friday Five: SF Body Swap

This week’s question comes from Rob:

I've been wondering about discontent lately and how it seems to be something fundamental in the human makeup, like lipstick or eyeshadow. So, to undermine the power of discontent I think we should be able to walk in someone else’s shoes, though bring your odor eaters if you're borrowing mine; hence, name five people you would swap your life with for a day.

Despite the question’s use of the word “swap”, I’m going to ignore what these folks would do with my life for the day. I’ll presume that most of them would take one look at my job, call in sick, and just say, “Hmmm, today’s a good to sleep in and watch TV.” Also, given that this is a classic SF plot, I’m going to stay with that genre. I suspect I'm taking this question in a totally unintended direction, but we can always blame that on Mark Hamill who wanted to be me today.

1. Whoever is currently fucking Claudia Christian. Heck... I’ll just be Claudia. That’ll be a long day naked in front of the mirror, maybe with a girlfriend. And a digital photographer. And one big, midnight email attachment to this humble blogger. [Side note to Claudia: I do recognize you as a talented actress, but you’ve run afoul of the SF-Babe curse. No matter what you do for the rest of your life, you’ll have SF geeks lusting after you, even when you’re seventy. Learn to appreciate it.]
2. William Shatner. I’d show up at Wil Wheaton’s house, unannounced and sans toupee, and do yard work all day. Mow the lawn, trim the hedges, weed the flowerbed, etc. “Must... polish... gnome!” Afterwards, I could hope that Wil would stop calling him William Fucking Shatner and settle for something a little kinder, like William Lawn-boy Shatner.
3. Bruce Boxleitner. He played John Sheridan on Babylon 5, and his real-world wife Melissa Gilbert (of “Little House on the Prairie” fame) had a one-episode guest appearance as his long-missing wife, Anna Sheridan. In that episode, I found one particular part of her performance so chilling that now the mere sight of her freaks me out a little. So, maybe a little aversion therapy or just seeing her as a person instead of an actress would help clear that up. Or maybe I’d return from my little out-of-body experience in an instant cold sweat.
4. Christopher Judge. I would spend the day in character as Teal’c, making little comments in his wonderfully deadpan style, everywhere from the set to the local 7-11. “I caution you, sir. It is not possible to drink it as a ‘big gulp’. I have tried many times.”
5. Claudia Black. “Claudia Christian? Hi, it’s Claudia, from the other night. I’m sitting around in my bathrobe with a photographer... would you like to come over and play?” [Claudia, see note above.]

All kinds of people are temporarily inhabiting the bodies of other Friday Fiver's here.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 11, 2005

Friday Five: Delicious Dining

This week's question comes from Pogo:

Five outstanding places to eat - where & why?

I'll start with some restaurants and see where I end up.

1. Tres Amigos, Austin, 183 & 290: It's just a nice little kid-friendly Tex-Mex restaraunt -- not trendy, just good food.
2. The Boulevard Restaurant, San Francisco: It's a pricey spot down by the waterfront. I had a great steak there once, sitting at the counter and watching the dessert chef use a blow-torch.
3. A little Italian place in south Munich: I've forgotten the name, but it was in the same building as a German software company I was visiting. The food wasn't that outstanding, IMO, but the atmosphere was. Apparently, Munich is the Hollywood of Germany, and this was fairly close to some of the larger studios, and this was a favorite hangout of a lot of the actors, directors, etc. In fact, the only reason we could get in was because that software company owned the building. It was just neat and surreal to be surrounded by some really gorgeous people who were evidently the German versions of Julia Roberts or Sean Connery and be totally oblivious to who they were.
4. Around a campfire: Mediocre food never tasted so good as when you've been outside hiking all day and are settling in for a cool evening around a warm fire.
5. Between the breasts of a woman you love: I'm talking about that nice little cleavage cradle, and I'll let you figure out the why.

Other Friday Fiver's are chowing down here.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 28, 2005

Friday Five: So Much Art, So Little Money

This week’s question comes from me.

Who are your five favorite visual artists? This includes painters, photographers, etc., even video stuff.

If you've ever been to my house or perused my library, you know how much of an art-junkie I am. I was impossible to really pick my favorite five, so I just chose five.

1. Howard Schatz: He is an excellent photographer. It was his book Waterdance that attracted me to him at first, but he’s done some other amazing work since.
2. Luis Royo: He is a dark fantasy artist, sometimes a little too dark, but I love his work.
3. Steven Hanks: He paints simple images of people in familiar settings, but it’s the way he captures light that sets him apart. You can look at his paintings and just feel the sunbeam falling onto your bare feet.
4. Michael Parkes: His art is both surreal and beautiful, but it was the pure chance of a WorldCon side-tour to an art gallery that brought his art to the masses.
5. Norman Rockwell: His various Americana paintings captured the emotional core of his generation, and they are a wonderful reminder of a bygone era that still shows up from time to time.

And many, many honorable mentions that would have made this the Friday Twenty-Five: Olivia, Boris Vallejo (as both artist and photographer), Frank Frazetta, Frank Cho, Keith Parkinson, Craig Morey, Patrick Demarchelier, Uwe Ommer, Joyce Tenneson, Lawrence Williams, Nene Thomas, David Cherry, Denise Gardner, Larry Elmore, J.W. Waterhouse, Maxfield Parish, Sorayama, Don Maitz, Ruth Thompson, and Michael Whelan.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 23, 2005

FEED ME!

Getting sucked into a recommendation game, stolen from Marvin and Tanya:

Recommend to me:

1. a movie
2. a book
3. a musical artist, song, or album
4. a LiveJournal user not on my friends list (or a blogger not on my home page)
5. what I should have for dinner
6. a website
7. a quote

Then put this in your LiveJournal/blog and I'll do the same for you. Really, I'll do it. In my infinite spare time.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (3)

January 21, 2005

Friday Five: If not for the money

This week’s question comes from Laura:

Remind me, what are the five things that make it worthwhile to get up in the morning and go to work, no matter what the weather? (Aside from getting paid, of course.)

We have to come up with five?! Maybe we can rename this the Friday Two or Friday Three for just a week.

Actually for me, it doesn’t require that much motivation to “get up in the morning and go to work” since I work from home and my commute is a weather-free stroll of about twenty steps from the bedroom. However, I still have to find the motivation to actually work once I get there rather than, say.... answer a Friday Five question. So, without further delay, here are the five non-salaried motivations that keep me from blogging all day:

1. I’m actually working on something that benefits society pretty clearly. I am on the surprisingly small and relatively elite development team that creates the leading Computer Aided Design (CAD) package. (If you’re in that game, you know just what I’m talking about.) The results of our work are all around you, especially in the USA and Western Europe. As our CEO once said, “Look at the things in the world around you. Chances are, if God didn’t make it, one of our customers did.” It’s nice knowing that I play a role in building so much, everything from the day-to-day widgets to the grand-scale civil engineering projects.
2. I’m good at what I do, and I enjoy the process of the work. Of course, that’s a far cry from saying I enjoy every project I do or enjoy every phase of those projects, but there’s a big chunk of the work I do that genuinely enjoyable. One leg of my “retirement triad” is to work on projects I enjoy, and I count that one as largely fulfilled already.
3. I love my kids, so don’t read this wrong, but sometimes it’s a great escape to be able to “go to the office” and lock that door with them on the other side of it.
4. Part of my job involves travel (visiting the main and satellite offices), and I enjoy the opportunity to get out. I traveled a lot as a kid (loooong family vacations), and this is about my only venue for much travel right now.
5. I get access to some pretty cool technical toys as well as a fair amount of NDA information from Microsoft about upcoming OS releases. I’m far from the all-knowing uber-geek of the industry, but I’m reasonably “in the know”. That’s a neat feeling.

But let's not kid ourselves here. It's all about the money.

Other Friday Fivers are struggling for motivation here.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (1)

January 14, 2005

Friday Five: And the Neutronium medal for first prize goes to...

Today's question comes from Marvin:

The Pan-Galactic Olympic Committee has drafted you to represent Earth. The rub is that we don't know anything about the games played in the galaxy-at-large, and they don't know anything about ours. Because you're a newbie you're allowed to pick the events -- five, as it happens -- in which you'll compete. You'll have to win at least three of the five in order to save Earth from being turned into a new MacSapients franchise. What do you pick and why?

And just what's wrong with MacSapients? Their Soylent Green patties are to die for!

Marvin should have known better than to ask this. By and large, the Friday 5 group is not terribly energetic unslothlike animate athletic. So, since I figure the Pan-Galactic Olympic Committee won’t know the difference, I’m going to have to make up a few events that I could win.

1. Football Watching: It’s a complex sport (watching, that is), with most points being gained for cursing appropriately, pointing out why that really wasn’t interference, and bitching about the salary-to-performance ratio of particular players. Bonuses are conferred for accurately calling the play, explaining the tuck rule, and saying something word-for-word just before the announcer does and following it up with the riposte “Hell, I could do that job!”
2. Pr0n Retrieval: No, I'm not talking about those yummy big shrimp. I’m talking about good old fashion whacking material. Scores are calculated in terms of megabytes downloaded per keystroke/mouse-action, and bonuses are awarded for finding the more unusual stuff, e.g. WS/GS/Scat, MILF, CFNM, Necro, BDSM, TS/TG, Bukkake, X-BDSM, WAM, Vore, and of course, Muppet porn. (I’d provide links, but then I’d have to admit to having them.)
3. Riding Mower Racing: It’s not just about speed. It’s about getting all the grass in the shortest path and minimizing the sweeps over already-cut grass. I figure most of these guys won’t even progress to the advanced levels with low-lying obstacles, sloped ground, and swing-sets.
4. Star Wars Trivial Pursuit: Hell, even Marvin had a tough time with me.
5. Murder Solving: Of course, to prevent the unpleasant loss of innocent life, the murders will be of the fictional variety, presented in a dramatic form. For standardization purposes, old reruns of Law & Order will be used, specifically the Logan-Briscoe/McCoy-Kincaid years. The first competitor to accurately name the killer (with proof) wins. I predict this will be a short competition. In practice events, I’ve been known to complete a round in under ten seconds.

Honorable Mention... "Name That Star Trek Episode" will be an exhibition event this year.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 07, 2005

Friday Five: I am not in denial on the inaccuracy of these prevarications

Rob is not really asking this question. He says he is, but in truth, we all know he isn't.

Name five things you're in denial about...go on, double dare you.

Normally I'd wait for the triple dog dare in this kind of thing, but I'll cut him some slack.

</denial>

1. The combination of work/kid stress and obesity is putting me on the fast track to a massive coronary. My genetic predisposition towards low cholesterol will only protect me for so long.
2. My technical skills are rotting with each year as I hope they'll carry me through to retirement.
3. My father is losing the will to fight his cancer.
4. My hairline is receding.
5. There were a lot more than five items for this list.

Well, that was nice and depressing. Fuck you, Rob. Fuck you very much.

<denial>

Actually, that's really an exaggeration.

1. My blood pressure, while a little high, isn't all that high.
2. I've traded up-to-the-minute fad skills for a deeper, general understanding of computing. I could switch to any field and be up to speed in a matter of months.
3. He's a tough old bastard and will soldier on far past anyone's expectations.
4. It's really just that I wear my hair back now that it's so long. I'm trying to compare it to the look of the long bangs of my youth.
5. But they were even more exaggerated than these were. I'm sure I'm not as fucked up as everyone else.

Good one, Rob.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 06, 2005

Silly quizzes

I don't know whether to be proud, insulted, or scared.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 05, 2005

Friday 5, The Prequel, Part II

I’m catching up on some questions I missed, including this one from me:

Some folks don't know to quit when they're ahead. As such, there have been some really bad sequels, trilogies, and series installments foisted upon a soon-to-be-disillusioned fan-base. So, which are the worst five cases of N+1 when they should have stopped at N? I'm mostly thinking of books and movies, though some other form would be acceptable. Also, is there anything you would have done to fix the sequel short of erasing it from existence?

1. Alien 3: Just scrap it all and start over. The real story of Ripley is over at the end of Aliens. She, Newt, and Hicks go back to Earth. Ripley marries Hicks, they adopt Newt, and all three live happily ever after. They went through too much in Aliens for anything else. Meanwhile, the Colonial Marines nuke every square kilometer of LV-426. Twice. It becomes an annual event with each branch of the service trying to use bigger bombs, until after seven years, the Navy detonates the local star and vaporizes what little is left. Ninety-four years later, with an entirely new cast, Newt’s granddaughter comes across a colony of these aliens, fully functioning with technology of their own. Then the war begins in earnest.
2. Honor Harrington Series: This series is a set of cement blocks chained to my legs as I plummet into the depths of crap, with neither a bottom nor an editor I sight. It started off very strong, and I suppose the merciful thing would have been to end it after book 4