If I’m going to be feeding the wildlife, then I think it’s only fair that I get to eat it. But nay, the ODNR has restricted when and where I can hunt these voracious little creatures which chew through my garden like a clever simile. And when have rabbits ever been in danger of extinction?
To be fair, I wasn’t planning on eating that kale. Yuck. But it was big and green and happy, and they didn’t have to eat the entire plant. Rabbits just don’t respect sustainable resources.
Down to the nubs
In other news, the thyme plant I grew from seed years ago, having lived in a pot and being the only source of fresh thyme to an apartment-dweller, bloomed. I had never seem thyme bloom before. It would seem that the plant had gotten old enough that it finally had the energy reserves needed to procreate.
All it needed was a little thyme
I wonder if thyme can stand up to foot traffic. The stuff seems to endure through the worst environmental conditions that Ohio can throw at it. It sure would make a nice-smelling replacement for grass.
Continuing the series of good photographs (Part 1), captured through chance, and in the spirit of spring, I have some pretty flowers to share:
Dunno what these are, but I was impressed that they were growing in salty sandA weed? Nay! A creature’s bid at immortalityWhat a clusterSakura sakura…actually I think it’s another crabapple
I enjoy the free Xbox Games With Gold system. It allows me to game noncommittally, freed from an obligation had I actually purchased the game. And, I get to dabble with game genres I wouldn’t normally touch, or experiment with a game that just didn’t look very interesting.
Atari?
So it was that I found myself playing Star Trek Online, although not technically an Xbox Games With Gold freebie, since the developer/publisher had long-since released it under a “free to play” model. Turns out it’s been free to play for over 5 years. Technically, it’s an MMO, and again I’ll mention my general lack of interest for that genre, but it’s difficult to find a fun multiplayer cooperative story-mode game, so when my old college friend Joe (of our informal gaming clan Alpha Pwn) found the game, it sounded like cheap entertainment to accompany an evening of bourbon while Liz was out getting a massage.
Game downloaded, we began. First, though: character creation, the nemesis of impatient gamers everywhere. As I was not impressed with any aspects of the game by this point, and having imbibed a sufficient amount of bourbon as would befit a Friday evening, my normally pretentious gaming demeanor had given way to my Mr. Hyde side and I succumbed to vulgarities. The already-irritating customization screen conjured forth adjectives. Pudwhacker–more of a descriptive noun really–a word whose primary meaning had fallen into obscurity over its adapted use, like douchebag. That would make a fitting name for a dumb character in a dumb game. But, I had chosen to play as a Klingon, and that didn’t sound very Klingon-y. Briefly consulting my memory of silver-screen Klingons, I remembered large violent and ugly humanoids, perpetually angry, constantly spouting loud and hard consonant-laden interjections of discontent, like “Kur-pla!” and “Kodak!”. I therefore adapted Klingon language and mannerisms to Klingon-ize the name, and became Kur’P Ud Wakk!
I also had to name my ship. Again I lapsed into thought, ultimately realizing that when Klingons speak, it sounds like they’re hacking up furballs. As a continuation of this theme, I named my ship the Bile Hurk! I shall be Kur’P Ud Wakk of the Bile Hurk! So let it be written.
The theme for the game now having been set, Joe was obliged to follow suit, and so chose the name Hugh Janus. Together, Kur’P Ud Wakk and Hugh Janus shall seek glorious battle!
But first–the agonizingly lengthy tutorial, which we each had to complete on our own. Okay, so glorious team battle would have to wait. Apparently this game had a story.
[SPOILERS]
I’m not sure how accurate these spoilers will be, since I’m writing them from memory, but there’s your courtesy warning.
I began as the second officer of the Bile Hurk, doing menial second officer things apparently, like activating a terminal so I can learn how to push “A”, then going to the holodeck for simulated battle, i.e. pushing the right trigger. A few disruptor shots later and I was apparently very tired, because I was then told to go to sleep…on the cot in the middle of engineering? Okay, sleepy time.
There was a lot of talking to crew members too, presumably to establish the backstory. It wasn’t riveting storytelling so I don’t remember much (also, bourbon). But then, the Bile Hurk fell under attack! Glory! Fortunately, I had just completed that refresher battle training, so I was well-versed in looking at enemies and pressing the right trigger. We were being boarded without a space battle because of some shenanigans on the captain’s part.
Boarding parties eliminated, I booted up the ship defenses or something, which involved me walking up to a terminal and pushing “A”. Then I had to talk to the wounded crew, also by pushing “A”, because wounded Klingons need a little peptalk too. Thankfully, that was the first training I had received on board the Bile Hurk–pushing “A” at that terminal to transfer crew orders. In times of crisis, one should always fall back on their rigorous military education.
But then it was time to call out the captain for his traitorous actions. I went to the bridge, and discovered that he had killed his first officer for some reason along the lines of “she did stuff I didn’t like”. Sometimes I wish I could really be a Klingon. Anyway, because the captain did stuff I didn’t like (namely, letting boarding parties beam aboard and attack us–something generally uncool), I challenged him to glorious single combat in the ancient right. He accepted, and I immediately defeated him by…you guessed it…pressing the right trigger. He dropped from a single disruptor blast, which in hindsight wasn’t very Klingon-y, but it was the weapon I had equipped at the time. I’ll just tell everyone that he died honorably so his family won’t come after me. You know: Klingon code and all.
Finally, I was captain and the master of my own fate, right?
Like the title says: there’s gotta be more to this. A picture’s worth a thousand words I hear, yet some photos need further explanation. Sometimes I dwell on one for too long, and to ease the curse, I have to pass it along. Therefore I will provide photos, suggest an explanation, and let the viewer reach their own conclusion:
For months I pondered this hole in the foundation, overlooking the obvious. Then one day as I was working in my drafty basement office, I noticed the hole perfectly aligns with the support I-beam. Following the beam, I see that its other end rests on the foundation. The beam is supported throughout the length of the basement with 3 adjustable columns, the one in this photo being hidden behind laminate. The product description indicates these are for temporary use. Also, why overkill with an I-beam at all if it’s being supported with columns? My conclusion then, based on the state of supports, the overkill beam, and the resting notch in the foundation; is that the beam was cut after the house was completed–presumably for the stairs–as was not part of the original design. It seems to me that the stairwell could have been located elsewhere, somewhere that doesn’t compromise the main support. I suppose I’ll just have to trust in the inspector, because inspectors never miss things…
On a lighter note, I found this. I wonder what was going through my daughter’s mind at the time. What transgression did this Lego man commit that she felt the need to amputate his hands and chain him by the neck? Is he a heretic? We got some Pit and the Pendulum shit going on right here.
In my college apartment, back when my roommate and I had a collection of (Gasp!) two computers and an Xbox 360, we had the beginnings of a respectable home network. In actuality, this consisted of a single router and a discreet hole punched in the wall between our rooms to allow for an Ethernet run. But it was a wired home network, dammit!
One evening, probably after imbibing too much, we had a discussion about stress-testing the network, for no other reason beyond idle curiosity. And so, we each began a bandwidth test on our computers, while simultaneously transferring a large file between them, and playing an Xbox game. In actuality, this didn’t represent much of a stress test, but it was sufficient to fry the router–a Linksys WRT-something.
The router was my roommate’s, and since he already had it at the time, I felt no need to purchase something better. After the test though, I went to a different brand: D-Link, with whom I’ve stayed since, at least until I have a bad experience. In any case, this utterly pointless test broke an expensive electronic and forced us to be offline for a couple days. What was the lesson? NOT A DAMN THING!
Fast-forward to present. I acquired a 5 terabyte USB HDD, at the time intended as a master backup drive. I encrypted the drive, then manually copied over every file from every computer we owned. I then locked this drive in my desk at work. Clumsily, I had created an off-site data backup. But the process was cumbersome and time-consuming, and the encryption didn’t play nice cross-platform. So when Amazon started offering unlimited cloud storage for a fixed yearly rate, and I found out my NAS could integrate with it and maintain client-side encryption, I really couldn’t think of a reason to continue with the arduous task of manual backups.
But now, I had an unused giant hard drive. What to do with it? My Xbox One, always suffering from a critical shortage of storage, won the prize. I connected the drive, followed the formatting prompts, and subsequently solved all my storage problems for the foreseeable future.
In fact, it was so much storage that I decided to download every free game offering that came with my Xbox Live Gold subscription. Generally, they’re mediocre games that neither I (nor anyone) will ever play. But, I can. So now, every month, I download these games simply because it’s there!
…at least until my ISP finally institutes data caps
