Monthly Archives: October 2004

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Yeah, I still think it’s funny.

It was pointed out to me today that I haven’t posted in a while. This is true.

So, what have I been up to?

On Wednesday, I fixed my laptop with duct tape. Yes, it still works.

On Thursday, I failed an exam.

On Friday Today, I ate Indian food (covering bland with hot and spicey does not flavorful make), finished making unigene builds work correctly at work (don’t worry- that’s just bioinformatics jargon), told the post office to start forwarding my mail tomorrow (though they may not start for up to a month [what's the point, then?]), and fought with my computers for a while (fixing the chaos Gentoo caused by replacing some /etc files, and upgrading to 2.6.9 [and fiixng the chaos that resulted from that]) until about… now.

Tomorrow, hopefully, I will both start and finish moving into my new apartment.

I won’t have Internet access in the new place until Wednesday, but hopefully I will be able to track down some open wifi points around town until then.

Chris and I just signed a lease for a new apartment, but not the same one that I mentioned yesterday.

This apartment is maybe not so wonderful (in my opinion) as the one we looked at yesterday (it is a similar size, but heat is not included, and everything [including the bathroom, ugh!] has the same drab dorm-style carpeting), but we can move into it without breaking our lease, which is a big plus (it’s run by the same leasing company as where we currently live).

Also, this apartment is significantly closer to work than our current one- it’s only about 2 miles away from the building I work in.

So yeah, the new lease starts on November 1st, so this weekend is going to consist mostly of moving and possibly buying new furniture :)

Unfortunately, now poor Beth will be all alone in the Middle of Nowhere™. At least Elsa will have some more company, now, in the Boonies™.

Chris and I looked at an apartment today, which was sooo much cooler than the one we are currently living in. For one, it was huge in comparison- 2 bedrooms and in total about 3x the size of our current place. In addition, it was clean, and everything in it (appliances, etc.) seemed really rather new. Finally, it would only cost each of us $60 more/month. Oh, and they don’t mind if we have cats, either.

The only potential problem is that we will only want to live there for a year- longer than that would be silly as we are planning to build the house this summer (which may actually happen since Chris now officially owns the property). This is a problem, because this is a college town, and landlords generally want lease periods to match with the start and end of the school year.

Oh well, maybe we’ll get lucky :)

On Saturday, Beth, ctl, and I went to a costume party at a friend’s place, and Beth and I actually wore costumes :)

Beth had costume malfunctions so ended up going with her old standby of the tiger costume she made a while back (though if she ever finishes her other costume, much coolness will ensue). I successfully managed to pull off that ipod silhouette I mentioned a while back (using a mask and an afro wig in addition to black clothes). Beth sais the costume came out really well, no one seemed to get it, even after I tried to explain it:

Them: …. What are you?
Me: I’m an ipod silhouette! *dances*
Them: …. err….
Me: Y’know, like in the commercials?
Them: I don’t watch TV.
Me: Well, it’s on print ads, billboards, and the Internet, too.
Them: I guess I just don’t go to the same places that you do.
Me: :(

I had to have that conversation (practically to the letter) at least 4 times. Oh well, the few people who got it thought it was clever. Unfortunately, I have no pictures, so you will not be able to judge it for yourselves.

In other news, I had a cold yesterday (but I don’t today). While I was moping around the house in my PJs all day, I finished Fable (on the evil path, I had completed it on the good path a few days earlier). My observations upon the completion of the game follow:

• This is not a RPG, no matter what the Halo addicts tell you. It is an adventure game, like Zelda (only not as good).
• It can be fun, for a time, but it gets rather boring rather quickly.
• All that hype about customization is bull- the only things that change are your appearance (on a trivial evil/left/horns->good/right/halo scale) and villagers’ reactions to your presence (they will either applaud or cower upon your approach). Big deal.
• There is really no reason to repeat this game to see what happens when you play on the opposite side of the good/evil scale- there is hardly enough story to support one play-through.
• The story is trite at best and barely existant at worst.

Anyway, yeah. I had such high hopes for this game, it even justified my acquisition of an xbox (and the tarnishing of my own soul that comes thereof). To say I’m disappointed is to say that water is only slightly damp.

If you or someone you know is considering playing Fable, you can help!

1. If Fable is appealing because of the purported character customization, try NWN instead!
2. If Fable is appealing because of the RPG storyline, try (nearly) any Final Fantasy game instead! (esp. FFVI)
3. If Fable is appealing because of the fantasy action, try Zelda instead!

I got this stupid poll from Erin (but you have to be her friend to read her results, so Nyaah!). I say “stupid” because 9 binary questions is hardly a sufficient sample size to make this a meaningful poll, but meh.

Here are my results anyway:

You preferred Bush’s statements 22% of the time You preferred Kerry’s statements 78% of the time Voting purely on the issues you should vote Kerry Who would you vote for if you voted on the issues? Find out now!

‘Ranked-Choice Voting’ Debuts in Calif.:

It’s an experiment being watched by election reformers nationwide, since it also could have the less lofty effect of eliminating the “spoiler” label that has dogged third-party candidates since Ralph Nader, the Green Party’s presidential candidate four years ago, was accused of snatching victory from Democrat Al Gore in Florida.

It wasn’t so long ago that I brought up this very topic (and Rack let me know what it was called).

Since then, someone (mostly likely ctl) tried to convince me why this would be such a bad thing, but I can’t for the life of me remember his reasoning now.

Until I remember (or get told otherwise), I’m just going to say the real reason is that he is a republican and a system like this could only hurt his chosen candidate’s chances of winning ;)

Anyone else notice that part of the new space badge looks a bit familiar?

I have taken this test before, but I saw it today on feministe and figured it’s been long enough that it’s worth taking it again. So I did, and here are my results:

Economic Left/Right: -6.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.08

My views haven’t drastically changed in these past ~18 months (-0.12 left, +0.56 Authoritarian), which may surprise some people as I’ve become much more in touch with my liberal/hippy side since moving to Ithaca. Now maybe they’ll believe me when I say I’ve always felt this way (which is a smaller lie than I thought it would be, actually) :)