cleanup

[jazzfish]

Whee, been a week. Among other excitement: Taranis's wifi card has decided that intermittent faults are the hip new accessory, so I broke down and got an old new laptop. Same model as the one I experimented with last spring. Still not entirely convinced of the need for a new machine but a) I'll need one in the next couple of years for certain, and b) Macbook design is getting worse all the time. (Latest models removed the extraneous Eject/Power button. This wouldn't matter except that now I have nothing to map a proper Delete to, and I require both Backspace and Delete.)

ETA: The Fantastic Ursula K. Le Guin: "She had been mildly cheered up, she added, by following a Twitter feed with the hashtag #BundyEroticFanFic."

Litany, by Billy Collins. There are poems like "After the Pyre" that leave me ripped open and bleeding, and I understand why. Then there's this one. I don't understand in the slightest what it is that it does to me. (I also don't expect it to do that to anyone else; like Among Others, whatever it is feels too intensely personal to possibly affect the rest of the world.)

The Arches of The Little Prince: "Can you build an arch from a pole to the equator? Can you build an arch from the north pole to the south pole?" Which is all fascinating, but the thing that really caught me is the simple and obvious realisation that you can model arches upside-down with hanging chains.

Hipsterism and Cultural Appropriation: "So to make explicit what lies implicit: when hipsters 'ironically' don clothing associated with working class people, when hipsters 'ironically' profess tastes for products associated with working class people, they are communicating 'we all know I couldn't possibly actually like this, because we all know that this is unworthy and beneath us.'"

The Yale Record Does Not Endorse Hillary Clinton: "Because of unambiguous tax law, we do not encourage you to support the most qualified presidential candidate in modern American history, nor do we encourage all citizens to shatter the glass ceiling once and for all by electing Secretary Clinton on November 8."

---

Also, it's been ages since I paid any attention to my 101 in 1001 list.

101 in 1001 update

Completed:
7) Make a pilgrimage to Powell's Books in Portland. 2016-09-18
21) Make a new local 'close friend' (can be a previously existing acquaintance). Erin, 2016-09-27, though she's somewhat less local as of May.
23) Find a mentor/partner for [REDACTED]. 2016-10-03
54) Read or purge one-quarter of the books currently tagged "unread" in LibraryThing (60/60). 2016-10-30. Read and purged End of the World Blues by Jon Courtenay Grimwood. Purged Embassytown and the Miyazaki interviews. Read Beagle's Unicorn Sonata. Read Pinkwater's Neddiad and Yggyssey. Purged a whole bunch of stuff.
75) Start a couch-potato-type investment. 2016-06-01, RRSP deemed sufficient. If it turns out not to be, well, I know where to look.
76) Get some financial advice from a financial advisor. 2016-08-05
90) Reduce physical library to three figures. 2016-10-30
91) Find a better backup solution than "ad-hoc Time Machine". 2016-04-24

In progress:
3) Travel somewhere in Canada I've not been, somewhere further than 50 miles from Vancouver (other than the island). Seems likely this summer.
4) Travel outside North America. Laying plans for Helsinki '17.
24) Write to three dozen new people (2/36).
29) Get my eyes checked, and new glasses if required. Appointment scheduled.
40) Finish, revise, & submit "Blood on Her Hands and a Stone at Her Throat." Plot/climax definitely unstuck.
55) Read or purge the second quarter of the "unread" books (5/60). Purged a whole bunch of stuff, 2016-10-30.
64) Play 50 18xx games (45/50). 1856 and 1846, 2016-04-03. 1835, 2016-04-11. 1846, 2016-04-12. 1846, 2016-04-13. 1862, 2016-04-14. 18OE, 2016-04-15. 18NEB, 2016-04-16. 1862 and 1846, 2016-04-30. 1860, 2016-05-13. 18Dixie and 1860 with new trains, 2016-05-15. 1846, 2016-05-26. 1817, 2016-06-04. 1846, 2016-06-25. 1830, 2016-07-17. 1867, 2016-08-01. 1830, 2016-08-28. 1817, 2016-09-24. 1846, 2016-10-09.
65) Play 20 different 18xx titles/scenarios (16/20). 1856, 2016-04-03. 1835, 2016-04-11. 1862, 2016-04-15. 18OE full game, 2016-04-15. 18Dixie, 2016-05-15.
77) Develop a Five-Year Plan with real numbers in. Planning in progress! Numbers to come in the new year, with the new house.
78) Move to a less frustrating apartment. Differently frustrating apartment located.
99) Resolve the situation around [REDACTED]. Possibly resolved?

Abandoned:
63) Play Fire in the Lake. Replaced by Falling Sky; half credit for actually managing to play that.

Comments

[thanate]

Heh-- Grauwulf finally replaced his despised macbook with some indestructible Dell thing b/c his computers tend to break. (The screen has been peeling off the despised macbook for a while; I have no idea how this happens...) This led to the conversation about next time I need a new computer I can get a some-other-brand thing and just put macOS (or a linux clone of an earlier & less obnoxious version) on it. I am kind of done with the "we know what you want better than you do" thing.

Love the Yale Record statement. :)

[jazzfish]

That might have been a more reasonable approach for me too. Main arguments against: 1) takes time to set up, which I am sorely lacking for the next couple of months at least and probably the foreseeable future; 2) my memories of non-macbook laptops are admittedly years out of date and non-top-of-the-line but I recall hating their keyboards and trackpads.

Honestly I wouldn't have even picked up a new computer at all, except for the wifi flaking out (kind of necessary for the uses I put the computer to) and uilos can in theory get reimbursed for it from work. Rather keep using this one until it dies altogether.

[wohali]

This was great to read! I've also read the Ursula K. Le Guin article and enjoyed it, the hipsterism article and 100% agree (my old CEO used to do this and it annoyed the snot out of me), and my alma mater's tongue-in-cheek endorsement of HRC, which made me smile.

18xx! Have you played 2038? You should. I own a copy. Maybe someday? :)

[jazzfish]

Thanks! :)

I ... dammit, are you /trying/ to make me regret even more that you didn't move out here? I have not played 2038, but it's a favourite of at least one acquaintance of mine (Eric B-- on BGG, who I met a few years ago in Niagara and who taught me much of what little I know of 18xx), and I would be happy to learn. :) And, you know, if you're interested and out this way sometime let me know and I'll see about setting up an 18xx game with you involved.

[wohali]

Thank you, that'd be swell! :)

This isn't 100% up to date but it has everything other than my latest acquisitions (over the past 2 years or so). BGG Link

BTW, nice Icehouse/Pyramid icon. My signed copy of Pyramid Arcade just arrived in the mail! I first played Icehouse in '96 with friends at CMU while I was a grad student. They had one of the original cast resin sets. Nice to finally have a set for myself and reacquaint myself with all the various pyramid games.

Perhaps some other opportunity for me to work and live in Vancouver will still arise. ;)

[jazzfish]

Nice! (Mine)

... because of /course/ you've played Icehouse at CMU. Quite possibly with people I know though most of them would have been, mm, a few years earlier, because the world really is that small. I think Andrew 'Zarf' Plotkin was long gone by that point, but Elliott 'Eeyore' Evans made the original image I cropped the icon from, and I think Dan Efran was at CMU as well.

I got involved with Looney Labs through Fluxx shortly after it came out. From that I went to Origins and hung out with them from 1998 thru 2011, and played in the International Icehouse Tournaments most years. I did /not/ order Pyramid Arcade mostly because I have more pyramids than I know what to do with from the previous runs.

[wohali]

Zarf is a friend, as is ee0r, though I haven't spoken with ee0r since the 90s. Funny that it's he who made the image! My friends lived at HAB-TOWL and we gamed weekly, if that rings any bells. Were you on Zephyr back in the day? Or D&E? I have such great memories of Forum 3000 and am crushed it's not in the Wayback Machine in any sort of complete state, only a few Hall of Fame threads. Actually, I still follow Andrej Bauer from time to time. His Become an Objectivist in Ten Easy Steps is one of my all-time favourite bits of satire.

How were you "involved" with Looney Labs? I'm very curious! I remember getting all excited when Andy was talking about picking up shop and moving to Canada (where I might have been able to work with them!), but that didn't happen in the end.

I'm nowhere near good enough to play in an Icehouse tournament. I've played the game max a handful of times. And not having had pieces since I lost access to my friend, I'm only now able to play it again.

[jazzfish]

*shakes head at the ridiculousness of the world*

The original image. Inspired by the iMac "Think Different" ads.

Ah, I wasn't clear; I was never actually at CMU, I just know a few of the Icehouse-y folks. I went to university at Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg (southwest Virginia).

When I went to Origins in '98 I met Zarf and ee0r (and probably Dan and Becca and some number of other CMU folks), and also Andy and Kristin (and Alison? No, Alison came later, cripes I've known the Looneys for longer than Alison has, that's just ridiculous). I was a huge fan of Fluxx, so in 2000 when Andy decided he wanted a Fluxx tournament at Origins he asked me to run it. I did that through various incarnations of whatever the Looney Labs space at Origins was called up until 2011. uilos helped out in there most years as well, as did a rotating cast of folks from Blacksburg. My folks lived in the DC area so when I went back to visit them I'd often go up to Wunderland for some gaming. (I did /less/ of that after I moved to DC, oddly; I lived on the far side of the Beltway from them.)

I was also super-excited about the potential Canada move! And mildly irritated when it turned out to be just another of Andy's pipe dreams.

The thing about Icehouse tournaments, at least in the early 2000s, is that there are a handful of people who are really good (ee0r, Jake Davenport, probably some others), and then the skill-level drops off precipitously, because nobody's played a lot, and almost nobody's played at all since the last tournament a year ago. So you get in a few practice games beforehand and remind yourself of what you're doing, and then you go and have fun in the tournament. :)

[ckd]

Looking at your 101 in 1001 list: I'd love to see #10 and #11 happen (since I'm planning to attend both), and as for #12 it would be a good excuse for me to return the favor of #27.

[jazzfish]

I may have mentioned before, but the problem with NorWesCon is that it's my ex's home con (as far as i know, anyway) and I am not quite willing to go without sufficient backup. (The definitions of "backup" and "sufficient" are works in progress.)

Fourth Street, tho.

The other problem, at least for 2017, is that most if not all of my vacation time is likely spoken for, making half-cross-country flights a little more awkward. We shall see.

(and, thank you!)