Master of my pants

For the first time since June, I am caught up on my flist.

Quick updates:

1. nellorat and supergee are safely back from Ann Arbor. Their flight into JFK was only 70 minutes late, but when you add in the 45-minute wait for baggage, we didn't even leave the airport until 1:00 AM. So . . . very . . . tired.

1A. "Only 70 minutes late" still puts Northwest way, way ahead of US Airways; their return flight which we had originally purchased for nellorat was also cancelled outright, which would have left her stranded in Philadelphia.

1B. My boss--who is a former Naval aviator, and who thus spent much of his earlier life dealing with scheduling aircraft--recommends that one always take the first flight of the day, because they're much less likely to be delayed. (There are three reasons for this. First, the type of thunderstorm which shuts down airports is mostly an afternoon phenomenon. Second, airport delays accumulate during the day. Third, the first flight of the day is probably at the gate hours before the actual flight time, freshly maintained and ready to go.)

2. Despite the delays, we're off to Mythcon in New Britain, Connecticut, today.

3. We knew, in summer 2006, that it was a mistake to get five rats of approximately the same age in a short period--two brothers and three siblings from another litter. One of them died earlier this year, and now (at least three and probably all four of) the others have untreatable cancers. Heavy sigh. And this is on top of the sudden loss of Rosie, who had seemed to be doing so well.

4. Tor.com is addictive. (Particularly good is the comment thread on the aging of Worldcon, but, really, it's all good.) I have already reorganized and trimmed my RSS feeds on Google Reader to leave me more time to read Tor.com. But I still wish it was possible to read with a newsreader instead of a browser. All you clever, clever programmer people, take note.

5. My 500GB hard drive no longer even starts up. I wasn't able to even get a directory listing off it before deciding it was gone daddy gone. So I got another one and am busily recreating my file library. Sometime this year I should probably invest in a RAID--but I really want a 1TB or larger RAID, and they're just more money than I want to shell out right now.

6. 16 months in, we have finally are starting the repairs the retaining wall. You may recall that in March 2007, a 4' section in the middle of a 35' retaining wall on our property collapsed after a heavy rain. It took us three engineers and over $1000 $8,000 in fees and services just to get permission from the city to repair to repair it. This included a complete survey of our property, a full set of architectural plans, and god alone knows how much in outright bribery. The current estimate for the repair itself is much less than we had feared based on how extensive the work ended up becoming--they're tearing down and completely rebuilding over 20' of the wall and doing some additional work on the remaining 15'. Here's hoping that the costs don't balloon.

7. Thanks so much, everyone, for your recommendations for 19th Century literature. It is definitely the case that the first book on the list that I will read as part of that project is Frankenstein, and then probably Pride and Prejudice and A Tale of Two Cities. After that, I will keep you posted.

8. Not related to anything here or elsewhere, but in the Blackstone Audio version of Atlas Shrugged, "This Is John Galt Speaking" runs about four hours. (No, I didn't listen to it.)

Ah, obsessive eccentric brilliancy--where would we be without it?

Iconic photos of the 20th Century recreated in Lego (with links to the originals).

(via Wondermark)

Computer games, the economics thereof, and dickery

I can't remember if I've recommended Shamus Young's writings on computer games here before. Here's his summary of the new Electronic Arts business model:

On the PC, Mass Effect can only be activated three times, after which the game will no longer work. However, the people at EA are not completely heartless to the plight of their customers: They will gladly sell you another copy.

[. . . ]

Punishing earnest customers because you can't afford game development is like beating your dog because you want a raise. You're not solving the problem, you're just being a dick. (Unless of course you're employed as a dog-beater.)

[. . .]

It is nice that we can get this unobstructed view of the EA strategy: To spend a great deal of money very poorly and then punish people for buying its products.

If you missed out on Mass Effect, no need to worry: This scheme is slated to be part of the PC version of Spore as well.

(More about "the rising cost of game development" can be found here. I will say that, as a former computer game developer, I found nothing in this essay that was less than perfect.)

I realize I just summed up using a bulleted list, but let me sum up again, just to make absolutely sure I've driven my point home: You can spend far less to make a game with more value that can offer a better play experience to a larger audience with less pirates.

And now let me sum up my summary, for the benefit of those in marketing: You can spend less money and make more money.

Can we get a re-start on this month?

Because the last week unfolded very differently than we had expected, we decided to defer driving to MythCon until tonight. I ran errands much of the afternoon (checking the rats in at boarding; taking the weekend recycling run; and so forth) and assisted around the house. All was going well.

We were about ten minutes away from leaving when the skies really opened up. I mean, really. I mean, as in, I looked out the window and saw the storm gutters overflowing with a river of water. Which, true to form, meant that five minutes later, we had two inches of water in the basement.

So, we've spent the last three hours swamping things out. I shocked myself twice, neither time severely. Because this has happened before, and because I had a couple of minutes warning to start moving things, we had less stuff close to the ground than in the past--I'm sure we're still going to lose some stuff, but not much.

I blame Still-Preznit Bush and his global-warming enthusiastic fucktardery. Really, I do.