Cognitive Dissonance: Hobbies

Boating Social Site

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:06:56 GMT

I found a neat site on the net today. It is a social site for boaters, which is cool, but it also has reviews of locations with GPS markers on a map. That way you can find places where others have been, and get their reviews. It is supposed to link into facebook, but that doesn't seem to be active yet.

Check it out: TheBoaters

Parking at Parks

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 05:23:14 GMT

So we had a great little boat trip this weekend, even though we were fighting the weather the whole way. Aside from the general annoyances of owning a boat (maintenance, gas, etc) one of the things you really notice when you are traveling by water are the Landings. In a car you don't really notice, since parking is so common, but with a boat, when you want to stop, you need to have somewhere to do it, you can't just pull, over, since empty areas may be too deep to drop anchor, or empty because they are filled with sharp, hull-eating rocks.

Two of the places that we stopped were Gene Coulon park in Renton, and Luther Burbank park in Mercer island. You couldn't find a bigger difference. Renton has a massive parks budget, and Gene Coulon is well maintained, has two restaurants, a boat launch, and was full of people, even on a cloudy day. The park is kept up well, and a great stop, but it is at the very end of the lake, and out of the way, unless you launched your boat from there.

Luther Burbank is on the North end of Mercer Island, on a busy channel, and when I was young, was the hot city park. The moorage there could hold around 40 boats, and was truly the place to stop. Now the wooden sections of the docks are rotted and removed, only leaving about 10 spots left. The park itself looks good, but much of the old areas have things removed, tables and such, and the old powerhouse on the water looks pretty bad, when it used to sport a snack bar and restrooms.

To think that Renton is doing a better job than Mercer Island at parks maintenance, is a bit surprising.

Nerdgasm - D&D 4 Review

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 18:47:04 GMT

Over at AICN they have more than just nerdy movie reviews, it's a full nerdapolooza. So imagine my excitement to see a D&D review for the 4th edition. Now, I gave up on D&D after High School, because the system of gameplay was so damn complex that it wasn't a game anymore, it was Math Homework. Apparently that has been fixed.

From AICN:

I’ve waited a long time to write this review. And let it be known now that what you’re about to read isn’t from someone who has gotten a hold of a bootleg playtest copy and gave it a quick once over. No. This is a long time coming. I’ve been playtesting 4th edition since late October. Long under an NDA, my excitement for this new edition has been bubbling over into something of a churning froth for the better part of four months now. Every Saturday of those four months (holidays be damned) our group (comprised of three married couples and a single friend) has gotten together to nosh some potato chips, guzzle some coffee and roll some god damned dice.

But my real shame came in reading the review, because as he explained the details, I still understood the issues and complaints. It was like a life time of nerd data rushing back.

That is the single most important change to this system. I don’t care what you’re playing, whether the party’s wizard, its cleric, the fighter or its rogue, you will always have the option of doing something useful. You will never be forced (as long as you’re conscious) to simply sit and watch everyone else play because you’ve run out of spells or don’t have a high enough Spell Penetration or lack a weapon property to get through DR. Those days are done. Clerics don’t just hide behind the fighter waiting to stand them up any more. And you can actually successfully run a party without one now. Oh, and the retarded notion of having to rest for the day because the wizard blew through his spells too quickly (even when the rest of the party is full up)? Over and done with. In redesigning the way the character classes work, they’ve managed to eradicate most of the stupid tropes that we ’ve all just kind of sighed at and tried to ignore in the context of role playing.

Did that make sense to you? It did to me. And it was cool.

I can still remember 6th Grade where we all has plywood boxes to carry the minimum needed, a full set of dice, Lead figures, the DM's Guide, Player's Handbook, and Monster Manual. For I while I carried around the Fiend Folio as well, Apparently my 1st edition that I had is worth a ton of money today. Bummer. We'd camp out at recess and avoid anything even resembling exercise. Then the bigger kids would smack us with the red rubber playground balls in the head and call us geeks. We were social outcasts.

Of course, I (and several of my 6th Grade D&D buddies) work at Microsoft now and the big kids work at Dunkin Donuts. Fuck them.

AICN World Exclusive: Massawyrm Has Played Dungeons And Dragons 4th Edition!! -- Ain't It Cool News: The best in movie, TV, DVD, and comic book news.

Glowing Cats: I want one!

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:44:12 GMT

If this isn't the whole point of science in the 21st Century, I don't know what is: Glowing Cats.

South Korean scientists have cloned cats that glow red when exposed to ultraviolet rays, an achievement that could help develop cures for human genetic diseases, the Science and Technology Ministry said.

Three Turkish Angora cats were born in January and February through cloning with a gene that produces a red fluorescent protein that makes them glow in dark.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20071214/skorea-glowing-cats/

More beer! (cont.)

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 06:21:04 GMT

I have been reluctant to get involved in their business for the most part. Partially because of my lack of football expertise, which I can tell that they both have plenty of as I try to keep up on their statistics, cataloging of players and their histories, and multitude of bets and side bets going on in the game. The other thing making me keep my distance is the feeling that I actually got between these two without a drink in my hand I would get ground down by the sheer animosity between them, like falling between two millstones set to “frappe”.

A commercial came on, and the Doctor wandered over to the Kitchen, stretching his lags and scavenging for nuts and pretzels.

I finally got the nerve to ask, “So if you two are at such odds with each other, how come you always appear here as a pair?”

The Doctor gave me a stern look, bearing down on me for a second with his eyes, trying to get inside my head and biting down on his cigarette holder, knocking ash into my beer as he leaned in towards my face. He then gave a wide toothy grin and started to talk.

“You see,” he rotated the cigarette to the other side of his mouth with his teeth as he spoke. “I’m not too sure. There are several aspects that I think are involved. Dichotomy, Duality, the Divine Comedy of it all.”

His smile grew wider with his impromptu alliteration.

“But mostly I think we are stuck together because it drives him batshit crazy, as if that was a long drive to begin with. And football is where we are an equal match, which makes him insane.” The Doctor smiled again as he pulled the butt out of his cigarette holder, and reached to replace it with a fresh one.

“Maybe this is your punishment, not mine,” Dick muttered back at us, not even bothering to look over his shoulder.

“Silence you goddamn crooked pigfucker!” The Doctor threw a handful of nuts at Dick’s head, peppering him and the TV as well.

The both erupted into a fit of random yelling, which was impossible to follow. Suddenly, Dick grew quiet.

“Here it comes.” Dick was looking around.

What?” yelled the Doctor, then he got quiet as well. “Shit! Better finish this fast!” and he started downing the beer in his hand.

The bottle hit the floor as he vanished, bone dry. Fortunately, Dick had put his Martini down so the glass didn’t break when he vanished. Awfully considerate, I thought. It was just the same as always. I had lost count as to the first time these two appeared and then disappeared during a game, but I was used to it now.

I looked about the place. For two ghosts, these guys were a serious fucking mess.

More beer!

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 03:46:12 GMT

“More beer, damn you!”

The Doctor was yelling over the back of the couch again. We were barely into the first quarter of the game and the bucket that I had laid out on the coffee table was picked dry.

“He wouldn't have to run back and forth so much if you'd just slow down.” Dick was chiding from over in the easy chair. He was trying to focus on the action of the game and didn't like to be distracted from what was happening.

Both of them turned around suddenly, I head bottles hit the floor, “Did you just see that!” one of them yelled.

I completely missed what happened on the game, but it was apparently amazing enough to get them to quit arguing about beer long enough to glue their eyes onto the replay.

The Doctor looked over, “I told you that kid had hands. You don’t see that kind of action from one of your pig-fucking steroid-infested California raised monkeys. That’s natural talent. Natural talent.” He was almost beaming.

“You’re just happy to see someone from Kentucky actually catch a ball for a change.” Dick was angry. He just snapped back because he knew that he was betting against the wrong team that day. The kid was good. And he had just lost $50 on a side bet with that catch. The kid was now on his list.

I had to turn away from the conversation to focus on getting more beer ready. They continued to argue behind my back, and I had no chance of following what they were saying. Both of these guys were utter fanatics about this game, I just watched to see the hits and shots of the cheerleaders. These guys were serious. They knew the numbers and stats for damn near everyone on the field. I just started tuning out that part and enjoyed listening to them bicker. That was the fun part. To stir them up, I yelled from the kitchen. “So, what does that catch make it now?”

The Doctor waved is half-empty beer, “I’m up $500 over this smug bastard!”

“That’s a lie! You still owe me for the side bet from two weeks ago!” Dick was mad.

“You got the tapes on that?” He gave an evil eye over and smiled

Dick scowled back. “Tapes. Fucking tapes.” He stared back into the TV.

The Doctor was giggling to himself like a little girl.

I walked over with another bucket of beer and took the empty one back to the kitchen. I was now in search of more chips to keep the natives from becoming restless. The Doctor immediately grabbed a cold one and tossed his now-empty aside. It barely had rolled into the opposing wall before the new one was open.

Dick waved over, “Any more of this,” swirling his empty martini glass.

I abandoned my search for chips and grabbed the shaker from the counter. I shook up another martini from the Vermouth already in the shaker, only needing to add the Gin, (as I knew it stayed drier that way), and topped him off. Dick’s spirits rose immediately.

Successfully lubricated, they both focused back into the game again. I was unable to follow the game myself. Mostly getting updates from the two of them ass they whooped and hollered from their roosts by the TV, and I ram back and forth in the Kitchen, filling orders. I paused after starting to grill up some chicken wings to listen in to what they were doing. They had both become very quiet, carefully watching what was going on on the screen. I couldn’t figure out what was happening, but it was soon apparent that one of them had a side bet that was about to hit, they were both murmuring to one of the players, one with positive chants, the other with the corresponding negative chant. Just waiting for some event and bam! They were both out of their chairs. The Doctor was holding his head, and yelling at someone on the field while Dick was waving his hands back and forth, egging the player on that the had been both so carefully monitoring only moments before.

These men were insane to watch together. They obviously had nothing in common other than football, and some simmering rivalry that neither wanted to quench, like it would kill some part of themselves in the process.

To Boldy Geek....

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 19:25:05 GMT

Looks like some other group of nerds who can't get laid have been making Star Trek episodes on the web.

Star Trek: New Voyages' producers/crew feel that Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the rest should be treated as "classic" characters like Willy Loman from Death of a Salesman, Gandalf from Lord of the Rings or even Hamlet, Othello or Romeo. Many actors have and can play the roles, each offering a different interpretation of said character. Though the character is the same, the interpretation of the actor is what's in question. We feel that the crew of the Enterprise has more to teach us about life and each other than has been explored to date. We also feel the new actors can add to the legend in a believable and contemporary way. Yes, some may have a problem separating Shatner from Kirk - all we ask is that you give it a try and see whether Kirk and the crew still have something to say to you.

I live for this shit. Nerds.

Star Trek: New Voyages Home Page

Cool Site - Abandoned Stations

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 20:01:32 GMT

I love this page. It gives a series of details about dead subway stations in NYC that is pretty amazing. I'm a pretty big fan of architecture in general, and abandoned architecture is one of the biggest clues that society leaves for future genterations on how and why we did things.

Link to Abandoned Stations

Poker in the rear....

Sun, 29 Jul 2007 16:39:26 GMT

I went out and played poker with the guys last night. I haven't been able to get away for poker recently (the last time I played it snowed), but This was one of my buddies' Tournaments at the Wooly Toad, which is the best place for poker around, so I couldn't miss it. Things started out poorly for me, as I was late and already getting blinded off, but was able to arrive in time to get my chips before they were ll gone.

I was getting just crap for cards. Seriously, total junk. So I was basically hanging on for my life for the first half of the game, pretty much all the way to the Dinner break. At this point I was short stacked against everyone, I had too many chips to be worth a re-buy, but not a full stack either.

Dinner on the other hand went as planned. I had French Onion Soup and a Bucket of Clams. Yum.

The second half of the game went much better. With no more rebuys, some of the more aggressive guys started to get knocked out, but I was still so far behind that I wss really just waiting to get blinded off. Fortunately I started to get some OK cards that I could do something with - Ax, Kx, etc. But with the blinds starting to get high I pretty much had to put in half my stack to see a hand through, or just go all in. But I was hitting my cards. I stayed at the bottom of the stacks, but with enough to keep from being blinded off. This also gave the other bigger players some time to start weakening each other. and as they kept getting knocked out, I ended up on the bubble. Then 2nd and 3rd stacks went after each other, and 3rd lost. Bam! I was in the money, for the first time! Soon, 1st and 2nd went after each other, and 2nd lost, Bam! he went out in 3rd, and I moved up to a badly short-stacked 2nd place.

At this point, the battle was on, and I still expected to get ground down pretty fast, but the chip leader was far too passive, and was easily pushed off his blinds. Once I had his pattern of betting down, I started to chip away at his stack. This took some serious time, but I finally started to get enough chips to make a few moves, and got cards to match. I pushed all in, and doubled up. I kept that up and he kept folding against me after the flop. Finally I push in against him and he took it. Flop gave me a pair of tens and he had a couple of face cards. No match came, and I won the hand. As he counted out, it was pretty apparent that my chipping away at his stack meant that I had him covered. End of game and I took first! That paid out about $600.

Not bad for my first time in tournament money.

HistoryLink.org: The Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History

Tue, 12 Dec 2006 21:58:56 GMT

This is also pretty cool. some historical photos and stories about Washington, and it is searchable!

Link to HistoryLink.org: The Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History

... Fruit flies like a banana

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 02:13:39 GMT

We have goddamn fruit flies in our house.

Sometime earlier this week, something with a whole nest of the fucers got brought into the house, and they bred. Fast. I am finding them everywhere. Currently their two favorite spots are in the kitchen, and in the Master bathroom. This, of course, makes no sense, since I can't find anything that they are eating or breeing in upstairs, and I have sprayed every inch of these rooms with bug killer.

But they keep coming. i looked around the room earlier, and saw nothing, and then I sat a hot pizza on the counter, and while it cooled a swarm of 12 appeared from somewhere. This is fucking maddening.

My plan is to capture one, and once I do, i will superglue him, still living, onto a popsicle stick, then with my finest tweezers, i will hold him in th emiddle of the swarm of other flies, and pull his wings off. just to make an example. Let the other flies watch and all. just so they know what is in store for them.

That'll teach them.

Back at renton park

Fri, 18 Aug 2006 01:52:03 GMT

it is surprisingly empty today, I assume that Thursday is "visit your parole officer" day, so most of the people in Renton are otherwise occupied. Our gallon of mai tai is again the guest of honor, and makes the evening enjoyable. Without the new scum the park is itself quite nice. I think that requiring some form of restrictive entry (such as a 300 lbs weight limit, or having all your teeth) would make this place passable. until then, the Mai tais will have to do.

Falling Behind - Dog Notes

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 20:10:41 GMT

I have told myself that I need to keep up in my writing just to get into the manual practice of puttng words down, but my natural lazyness is keeping me from doing that. I also have noticed that political writing is far too easy, and a lot less interesting to read, largely, if you read our own writing, or the majority of writing o the net, the polotical landscape of writing is reaction and reaction to that reaction. sometimes it's pretty good, but largely it is empty filler.

I have a few good things to say about my new dog. I have always been a cat person, and largely I have disliked dogs due to the bad behaivor of the majority of owners, not the dogs themselves. We have several that roam our neighborhood and spill trash, crap on the lawn, and generally mak themselves lovbed by noone. But, the wifeand daughter cam homw with a Daschund puppy, so I am now a dog person. Now that we have begun training him ( with a clicker) I am really impressed at how smart he is. He is responding to his name after only one day, and starting to understand that the urinal is outside. (#2 is a whole other matter, ugga). Te cats seem to be getting along, he cases them, theyjump up high and watch him.

I think he's pretty cool, and he as been very good for my daughter, she has shown a keen interest in taking care of him.

More later, mahalo

Bellagio fountian with Coke and Mentos

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 17:10:27 GMT

Holy crap! now I'm not really into linking to random videos and stuff, but this is amazing! That is some serious coordination and a lot of hard wor. Now I want to go to Vegas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC0bhZeDU30

new contest - spot the worst bood job

Wed, 05 Jul 2006 23:12:29 GMT

so I assume that the assumption is that no man would ever complain about any boob job should be true, however, this assumes that some level of minimum quality and realism is followed. at the pool here we have begun watching for the worst exampled of boob work as they stroll past, and they seem to break down as follows: - insane size, this is the least of the worst, assumedly we are just seeing strippers on vacation. they need a break too. - asymmetry. )eft and right should be pretty much the same, no more than two cups difference, please. or, maybe she could only afford one at the time. - visible scarring. nothing looks better than scars sticking out from under a far too small bikini top. I expected to see some that still had stiching. or maybe she's a baseball fan and that's the effect she wanted. I will keep watching for the winner. someone has to do it.

Going for 7: Armstrong to ride in Tour de France

Sat, 05 Mar 2005 16:39:02 GMT

Holy Crap! I guess Lance is going for a 7th tour after all. I was 100% convinced that he was done. Well, good for the sport, and good for all the cancer survivors who look up to him. Should be an interesting tour to say the least.

Quote

ESPN.com - OLY - Going for 7: Armstrong to ride in Tour de France

PacificaForum.com Message Board

Fri, 04 Mar 2005 20:48:23 GMT

I finally found a well build forum for my car, the pacifica. Big old family cars just don't get the same amount of web traffic that cool sporty cars get, like my old WRX did. But that's to be expected, I guess.

Also I'm bummed that I can't find a Pacifica toy car yet. I have several WRX toys. Dang.

Quote

PacificaForum.com Message Board - Index