I hate it when you hear a funny line somewhere, something you'd like to use as a sig file or a tag line or something. You try to burn it into your memory but you discover a few days later that it's gone. Or mostly gone.

Stuck in my head right now is a part of one of those lines. I was watching something on the tube and the hero was telling someone that he expected the other shoe to drop just not like this. The line comes out "we'll try to avoid any further falling footwear" but I can't remember it exactly (it seems to me that it was funnier than that). So now I have to try to remember what I was watching, was it TV or one of the numerous DVDs I've been wading through (still in season one of Kung Fu and still alternating with season six of Stargate SG-1).

Okay the one I'm reading now is by Mercedes Lackey (I kind of like that name, Mercedes, not that I'd want it, but it makes a woman sound exotic while not too incomprehensible) called Alta. It's ... well I don't know if it's a series but it continues the story in Joust which was about a slave who becomes a "dragon boy" and then steals his own dragon egg, hatches it, raises it and then escapes his captivity. Very well written.

So it seems that I'm alternating between these crap Dune novels which (for some reason) I feel compelled to read and good books.

Well I finished it. (the book)

While I was at my dad's house over Christmas I finished the book I was reading. I had brought several others but when I looked at them to decide what to read next I realized they were all book 2 or book 3 in sets. So I ended up reading "The Butlerian Jihad" on my axim. It was co-written by Brian Herbert (who isn't the writer his father was) and Kevin Anderson (a hack fan-fic writer who barely writes better than I do). It was alright but was too obviously one in a series. I mean some books are written to be series and that's fine but when the story simply stops going that's poor writing. Why not wait and release them all together rather than making us angry about having to wait. Even "The Empire Strikes Back" finished it's story before an ending that screamed sequel. So when I next had the opportunity to get a book I got (or perhaps already had) "House Atreides". I read that but it shared the same faults as the last one (which was thousands of years ago in the Dune timeline while the "House" books are only 40 years or so before the movie). Some chapters seemed like they were intended to be released separately because all of the sudden, in the middle of the book, the main characters are reintroduced. As if I couldn't remember from the last page who these people where or why they were important/related to each other. And the end simply stopped again. Crap!

However given it was Dune and I've read everything Herbert wrote on it I decided to order all the others that were out. "The Machine Crusade", "House Harkonnen" and "House Corrino". I just finished wading my way through the first one. Again it simply stops and at several points the main characters are re-introduced. As if they were written for teenagers rather than people who read all the other books. And poorly written for teenagers at that.

At the retreat Jack saw I what I was reading and asked about it. I told him it was okay but the writing was lousy. He told me that there will only be so many books I'll be able to read in my life and that I shouldn't waste one of those slots on a bad book.

I considered it and stopped reading for awhile but eventually picked it back up and finished it. Kind of like why I read all twelve of the Thomas Covenant books by Stephen R. Donaldson years ago. The first was very good, the next two or three were okay but after that they got predictable and repetative. But I waded my way through all twelve (or was it sixteen). Never looked back and never read anything else he did.

I guess I'm funny that way.

Well back into Galaxies. May leave off for awhile, not sure. Not very excited about it. Guess it may be time for me to give up a profession and try something new. We'll see.

Well it's over now.

Even more of a downer than we get after GenCon, since all the players were good players, all the games were fantastic and the food was way better. The accomodations weren't the best (kind of like GenCon), only one bathroom for 11 guys for three and a half days, and sleeping arrangements were apparently (upstairs anyway) tight and uncomfortable. Which means we won't be coming back to that particular place but the All-Star Gamer's retreat is definately a permanent fixture. Aaron drove in from Oklahoma and Jeff flew in from Colorado, so now it's "nationwide".

Dinner Thursday was very well received and I was told the next day that it gave everyone heartburn. Strangely that didn't stop Garrett from nearly finishing the leftovers! Aaron's modern crime game was fun. Located in Boonville it was a hoot every time Garrett yelled "Cooper County Sheriff! Open UP!". And only he was killed since he was on the way to becoming some sort of zombie vampire.

Friday was a slow start but we got moving (playing) at noon and Jason ran his "Fourth Age" game. I was the evil-one-trying-to-kill-everyone-else this time. I didn't actually manage to kill any of them (not for lack of trying to come up with a plot) but I did put off our rescue a bit. And then Jay healed me and I wasn't evil anymore. The only one killed this time was Jack when a burning zepplin fell on him. That evening Jeff ran Cthulhu and we were snowboarders making a video. He did his usual phenominal job and we were all "talking rider" the rest of the weekend. "Gnar Pow-Pow, Dude!" I haven't heard how Jay's Cthulhu game went except they all came in around 2:30 and they weren't finished.

Saturday got the same slow start but John made a marvelous breakfast with more buiscits that the British Army could eat, eggs, sausage gravy and potatoes. The kitchen was a whirlwind. That afternoon he ran a d20 Oriental Adventures game. I managed to get myself killed after we uncovered the plot by a poor choice of words when suggested we were trying to "rise above ourselves". A bit better rolling on my part and it might have been closer but I did nearly kill Jack. I haven't heard what happened in Andy's Midnight game but he has promised to run it for Jack, Jason and I since we played in John's game. We might talk him into letting Lorie play since she was one of the Midnight playtesters and is in out Sunday group.

Saturday night we played in Jay's Vampire game. I was wondering how he was going to balance things since Jeff, Garrett and I were playing 800 year old vampires while the other guys were playing ones much younger. It was the Gehenia book (the Vampire End Times) so the balancing worked itself out. I ended up getting killed by Jason with a particularily well thought out and executed plot. Jeff was naturally distraught and killed Jason. Jack had tried to kill us but had a bad roll. At the end of things Andy weaseled his way to salvation while Garrett, Jeff and Aaron were killed. I was (surprisingly) resurrected and some of the rest of them survived. Overall a fun game.

Sunday we packed up, talked about next year and came home. Tired but very happy.

Well only a little while before I leave work. Then running around doing last minute things and some of us meet at my house to drive down there. Aaron is already on the way and should get there before us. Jay, Jason and Andy leave tomorrow morning around 10. The rest come in the afternoon.

Now I'm all pumped about it Aaron, after I've got the food purchased already!

Well I bounced the idea off Brand and he didn't think it was a good one so I'll shelve it for now. Events proceed apace and I did the grocery shopping last night. Man that's a ton of food. I'm used to me and if I fill one basket up half way it's a heavy shopping day and lasts me for several weeks. I admire the women who shop like this for a family every 10 days!

Okay, I don't pay enough attention (kind of ironic for someone who proclaims - loudly sometimes - how blind the rest of the world is) sometimes. I order a book online and then see it in the bookstore and buy it. Now I have two. Great! I even started a spreadsheet (it really should be a database but I didn't know much about them then) to track what books I had so I could check before I ordered to see. I got about 1/3rd of the way through all my books (and even 1/3rd is a big pile o'books).

But anyway I had a second copy of the Crimson Skies (tie in to the Xbox game) novel and was thinking it would be a good "prize" for the retreat. This spawned a series of ideas about how to award prizes (I found an extra DVD and another book and I'm sure there's more) but finally this morning I hit upon the perfect prize idea. I'm going to have a grab bag of goodies and the guys running the games at the retreat can pick one as a thank you for running (instead of playing). I'm really proud of that idea but I don't know if I should announce it to the list before hand or just bring the stuff with me. I'm leaning toward the later but I want to sound the idea out on someone to check it.

Well I remember some of it. Then of course more is added.

I was listening to the radio (BXR) while I got ready this morning and Mo & Lana were talking about some "new science" (as they call it) they read which said that some researchers at the U of I (Go Illini!) had invented a process to turn pig manure into crude oil. The punch line was about invading Iowa and protestors screaming "No blood for pig manure!".

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I talk too much.

That's no revelation to anyone who knows me. But it seems recently that I don't mind being and doing things alone so much. Been that way for awhile now but lately it seems that I save up all the normal amount of conversation during those periods and then unload it at the next opportunity.

About two weeks ago I got ready for our regular Sunday game. I neglected to check my email and find out that Jason couldn't make it (and it was a weekend for his Vampire game). Go I go to Okii Mana's and get my dinner then head over to Andy's. Well Andy, knowing we were playing because he does read his email, had gone to one of the coffee houses to study. So I show up and Kerry is working on some craft projects. But she got unloaded on since I'd spent most of the weekend alone till that point. Discussions about charities and how the collection agencies are as annoying as telemarketers and don't give nearly enough of the money to the organizations. What we like to contribute to and why. It's surprising the woman didn't run screaming into the streets.

Lorie got it last weekend after we went to Casa Nueva for dinner. This time it was about how directors use camera angles to make things look bigger than they really are and how it's understandable that many actors want to eventually try their hand at directing.

And here I thought dumping all those spare brain waves here was sufficient!

Well while I was getting ready this morning I had all kinds of things I wanted to say here but time seems to have slipped away (or I actually had work to do today!) without my getting much of it down.

I do have a draft grocery shopping list for the retreat. Man that's gonna be a lot of food. Perhaps tomorrow I'll get these down if I can remember what they were.

Well I finally got all the data copies over Thursday afternoon. Bryan asked me if I'd tried secure fx to sftp it up. I hadn't, I'd been focused on command line programs since I'm unix-minded mostly anyway.

The first version (the one we have licensed) didn't handle the errors well but when I upgraded to a demo copy of the latest it dropped the files with problems and kept chugging on the rest. It got it all up by the end of the day Thursday so I did the old sas-migration data. That finished by the next morning and by mid-afternoon on Friday I had the DVDs burned. WOO HOO!!

On to the next project, or most likely back to locking down bigbrother. More later.

Well I managed to get about 1.79Gb of the 4.2Gb that's there before it blew up again. It turns out that I was working directly with the AIX node the first two attempts. On the third I worked with an rsynced copy which had removed some of the recursive symlinks (I hoped). This time it got a security error for trying to copy a '.' and a '..' path.

So I talked to Bryan as he was walking by and he had me try SecureFX to SFTP the data down. That blew up on the first try too so I upgraded to the latest version and it seems to be running better. More error checking I'm hoping. Man these kids (cecs students) write bad code and have lots of bad filenames.

On another note I finished watching the first disk of Kung Fu. Then watched the supplemental material. I didn't remember that they had started using slow motion in their fight scenes. The censors had a better time with the violence when it was slower. As David Carradine said "it seemed softer somehow". I wonder when John Woo started using the slow motion stuff in his films? This show was early or mid 1970s.

I really do need to clean the house. Pick things up and either throw them out or find a place for them. Then vacuum everything (though I suspect the cat wouldn't much like that, the dog would find it a hoot). Everything seems so cluttered. But when I get home Galaxies calls to me, or the Kung Fu DVDs, or something. Where is all this self discipline I developed when I went to school at Kemper and kept while I was in the Army. Heck, when I was in the Guard they even called me a "PT nazi" when I was in the guard because I did push up and sit ups before we had lights out. All gone and now I'm an old, fat, broke nerd. Or is it geek? I can never keep those two straight since I'm probably both (for different reasons).

The water company called me twice in the last two weeks to tell me I might have a leak. It seems the first time the meter was moving while the reader was looking at it. Not good since he probaby came while I was at work (unless the cat has learned how to take a bath ... nah!). I wrote a note to the landlord and put it in with my check on Monday. He came over the next night, turned off the water to both toilets and that stopped the spinning. But now I have to turn it back on before I use them. Haven't forgotten yet but it would be bleh if I did. He's supposed to be back over tomorrow evening with parts.

I finally bought my plane ticket to go to Phoenix for Tricia's graduation. She and Jon are finally taking their honeymoon, two kids later, down to Jamaca. I'm staying behind with Dad to watch the kids. He apparently wants to (but he'll say it's for me) go to Disney World while they're gone. Might be interesting but I don't ever recall having a burning desire to go. Time with the kids should be fun though.

Matthew is having problems again though. He's turning into a hateful little boy (okay perhaps not so little since he's got to be 12 now). But what's more alarming is that he won't do his school work and can't apparently be reasoned with (which is my default mode and it seemed to work at least a little with Nicole). I've got no answers. And my suggestions probably won't work since they involve a "taste of the future" and letting him get into some serious trouble to show him what fate has in store for him if he doesn't straighten up. But his problems probably won't allow a situation like that to benefit him. Attention deficit disorder and some sort of anti-authority disorder. The whole thing with him makes me start to doubt (at least a little) my faith in nurture vs. nature. He seems to have gotten some really bad genes from his dad.

We can't seem to get the Star Wars d20 game rolling again. I was ready this week but Erik was sick and Ryan is still moving Grandma out to her new digs. I don't want to be Jay and never finish this thing even if enthusiasm does seem to be flagging. Iron Kingdoms should be finished in a few months. Wonder what we'll play after that. I could run something or we could have someone else. Andy probably won't have time with Law School but I don't know if Lorie has leanings in that direction. Guess I could run something. I want to play Stargate SG-1 but I don't see that happening. Maybe I should run it for them if I can talk them into playing. Perhaps Grimm or Spellslinger.

Well this makes four.

We've still got two of those old IBM sp nodes that we can't seem to get people off of. Well finally the CECS deparment got stuff moved over and they wanted to back up their old data "just in case". Rather than take up what's become precious tape space I suggested we burn it to DVD and volunteered to do it (I should learn that bad things happen when you volunteer - like getting thrown out of airplanes!).

I've been trying to copy this 4Gb of data over to the machine with the DVD burner on it for two days now. This is the fourth attempt. Circular links to old zero length files seem to be the culprit responsible. We nfs mounted the space onto our other main file server and I tried copying the data from there. The winscp program I was using wasn't working well enough so I fell back to a command line program. Two iterations later after having tried the source data again it's still in progress. Of course I halted it, erased the copy and started over.

Let's hope this one is the last try.

Oh, got out of the house yesterday and saw The Ladykillers at the Hollywood 14. Not bad. Mary thinks I should go as "Professor G.H. Dorr, PhD" for halloween. Have to grow the hair out quite a bit and keep my eyes open for a suitable looking suit. Then see it again a few more times (wonder when I'll come out on DVD) to get his manner of speaking down.

It's got possibilities. Wonder how the book is.

Well now I'm rationing.

I've only got season six of Stargate SG-1 left so when I finish all the episodes on one disk I'm moving on to something else. This weekend I watched the premier of "Kung Fu". This week will be the rest of the other side of disk 1. Then back to Stargate next week. Perhaps I'll watch "The Tick" in there somewhere and I still have the "Battlestar Galactica" to watch.

I got the RPG from AEG last week at the Gate. Reading it slowly since no one seems to want to play it.

One of the guys at the CS tournament has proposed some mottos for the C.A.D.D.. Some of them are pretty funny. (the ones I like are in italics)

1. "When all else fails...shoot 'em"
   
2. "Respect: Show it on the ground, teach it in the sky"
   
3. "Real pilots rely on skill"
   
4. "Any crash you fly away from is a good one"
   
5. "Don't fire so you can see the whites of their eyes"
   
6. "A pristine plane is one that hasn't been flown properly"
   
7. "Any goon in a cockpit can pull a trigger...we're not them"
   
8. "We're the reason they call it a dogfight"
   
9. "We'll teach you to fear a plane without ammo" (or"without using ammo")
   
10. "Guns don't do enough damage"
    
11. "Fear our pilots, not our planes"
    
12. "We'll give you a more personal sendoff"
    
13. "Never trust a gun to get the job done"
    
14. "Dents prove character"
    
15. "Surely we could shoot ya down, but what's the sport in that?" (this one sounds particularily southern to my yankee mind)
    
16. "Why waste ammo on commonfolk" or "Waste ammo on commonfolk? Surely you jest!"
    
17. "Gunfire is too uncivilized"
    
18. "We'll still respect you...on the ground"
    

He suggested a ram's head/horns in the logo. Thanks Dave!