Bemused musings

When I write a check out to pay for a car repair I always feel grateful, because eight years ago I would have held out my credit card and prayed I could afford the payment next month.

We have a long history of service in my family. In one part that means roughly 1000 years. In one it means pretty much every war the US has fought in up until the 1990s. In my childhood I stood in cemeteries in the pouring rain watching very very elderly men remember their comrades as solemn faced younger men honored them. My father cannot go see his father's grave because even almost 60 yrs later he can't revisit that particular wartime loss.

( Below is a personal family photo taken in the trenches in WWI )

Pro tip: Do not come to your parent meeting reeking of weed. No, really, don't.

I'm at the point in my life where renting seems dumb, so I'm thinking of buying. I've been watching the market and I've got pretty realistic expectations. So I go talk to a banker who says "yes, we will loan you some money" and gives me the name of 2 real estate agents and gets in touch with them FROM HER OFFICE. Neither of them get back to me. This was over a week ago. Today I get a call from an obviously junior colleague of one of them who asks what I am looking for (I sent a VERY detailed email to the original lady regarding the tiny amount of my expectations). I start to talk and she interrupts to basically discourage me and tell me that not much is out there to which I respond that yes, I know, but I have time and that I've been watching the market (I'm looking in a rather specific area). She asks what my expectations are and I explain (good roof and foundation, plumbing, decent wiring, no bug infestations, pref cent heat/air, attached garage, cosmetics not important, 2 bdrms around 1000 sqft, condo/duplex OK) except that she keeps interrupting me to remind me how expensive things are and that it takes a long time and that she likes regular sales better than foreclosures (of course she does, she gets PAID MORE). It was almost like she thought I was holding back on her, that I really could afford more/have more money but that I'm cheap, so she'll try and be both totally pessimistic and try to snow me entirely BOTH AT THE SAME TIME. I got news for you, honey, those two don't work well together. Pick one or the other.

Dude, I am trying to give her money in a lousy real estate market. I know it's not what she made 3 yrs ago, but it's still pretty good cash.

In the end? She said she'd put me on the MLS list and I should call if there was anything I wanted to see. So, you know, I can be my own damn agent and then pay her for it. Look! I think I can see my brains through the back of my eye sockets!

Um, exactly where does a puddle start and the rain begin? cuz I'm not real sure at the moment.
Dear lord it's a typhoon.

Wet wet wet.

So, this is tedious. Apparently someone saw the Dr. Who special and thought it would be fab to set an entire show in the midst of sand dunes. Of course in the Dr. Who special there was actually, you know, stuff happening. Also, the most blantant case of Deus ex Machina I think I've ever seen in a verse that is FULL of deus ex machina. Meanwhile back on the ship, there were droopy and passed out people. The best part of the show is the last line and I'm sure they are really only using that scene as a jumpoff for their central 'ship. Also, more women as nurse and secretary and they've added drunken housewives, oh and the black guy has an anger issue, but is extremely loyal. Why is it that I can see the back of my eye sockets?

Sanctuary was fine, not spectacular but fine. Bets on whether or not not taking the cure will be the solution to the copy situation?

So. Stargate Universe. The writers seems to have dropped their unnumbered script pages and decided to just go with however they were gathered.

OK, no not really, they were clearly trying to do the "how did we get here" thing with interspaced flash-backs but they really really really went overboard and it was highly difficult to follow. Setting and events were really too similar between the "present" story and some of the flashbacks for them to try and do what they did and they tried to shovel in the backstory of too many characters. It wasn't necessary, either. Much of the backstory could have been spread out here and there in later episodes.

Did I like it? I don't know. It doesn't seem to be Stargate: 90210, but it might be Stargate Voyager unfortunately minus Janeway and Chakotay and B'ellana Torres. The only character I actually liked was Everett Young, I just didn't find the rest very compelling.

I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either. I kind of feel meh about it, which is disappointing.

Sanctuary premiers next week, though. Yay!

Admitted and convicted criminal Roman Polanski was arrested this week after escaping justice in 1977 by fleeing to France. Apparently he has been working as a director in Europe while authorities in the US pursued extradition. He is currently in jail in Switzerland awaiting US law enforcement.

Or, you know, how things would have been if Polanski had been a normal criminal. Apparently there are a number of people out there, however, that think because he is good at his job and they like him personally, he shouldn't have to serve his sentence just like every other criminal and, in fact, being good at his job and being liked makes him not really a criminal.

( Warning: Sarcasm and possible triggers )

Oh, networks, you are boring me.

The below is US politics.

( I'm worried about my country )

Please, oh dear people of extensive life experience, please stop using the phrase "hook up with" when you mean "meet up with". It no longer means what you think it does. I do promise that you do not want your daughter to "hook up with" her cousin.

This is a series about a space mission and how the astronauts deal with past failures, past and current relationships, being away from home and their relationships for six yrs.

I caught about half the episodes of the series over the summer and I enjoyed it immensely. It isn't a showy kind of show, it's a bit underplayed IMO, kind of quiet and a bit philosophical. According to rumor they sold it as Grey's Anatomy in space, which is pretty much entirely inaccurate. It has a multi-ethnic cast, the male relationships are strong and positive, the female relationships are strong and positive and everyone talks about stuff other than sex. And they talk about difficult issues.

The last episode was about leadership and followership and the responsibilities to both and one to the other. Part of the series style is that they do training flashbacks so that you can see how everyone got where they are. It's similar to Lost in that way, except that it makes bloody sense. For the last episode they focused on the training for following orders and how it is both necessary and dangerous and I think they handled it with a deft hand. They weren't quite accurate with how the astronauts in training would be, from what I know about the military, but I know why the inaccuracies were there (not everyone comes with pre-built knowledge).

I rec it to those who have patience for something other than explosions and porn and like sci-fi.

Also, is there fic for this somewhere? (non-slash preferably, the male relationships do have tons of subtext, but slash isn't my thing)

I would like to preface this by saying that I am not a sims person. Somewhere I have a copy of the original sims, that came free with a computer I bought long long ago, that is still wrapped in plastic. I never even looked at sims2. That being said, I really like sims3. Really.

Back in the late 80s and 90s I used to play computer games that were turn-based multiple charater fantasy RPGs where you basically had a team that you created and controlled that ran around and saved the world (or solved the quest, or rescued the king, or whatever). I liked these, they were fun. They were also very linear, which I found a bit limitting, and they went out of style some time in the late 90s (there is a newish one on the market called Drakensang which is fun). My favorite was Darklands, which was very non-linear and was set in 14th century Germany. Darklands let you control the story. You could wander around and develop skills, stay in one place and earn money, or quest around and find adventures, so the character stories went in different directions despite the rather primitive graphics and limitations of the day.

But Nic, you say, you can do that in those online games. Well, yes, but you can only control your one character at any time. Also you have to interact with people and I do enough of that during the day, if I'm playing computer games it's because I'm tired and brain-dead.

So, I like free form and I like team based and I like the option of turn based. I also like fantasy, but ya can't have everything. Sims3 does this. You can play up to 8 characters at a time who run around town doing whatever (um, I have no idea if you could kill the NPC sims, it isn't something I'm interested in). The game is exceedingly free form, marginally self controlling so that you can leave one or more of your characters alone, and you can make it stop while you think about what you want to do next so that you have good control over the action as well. You can also create your own goals and story with the characters lives and you have control over their skills development. It's fun, I like it.

Er, yeah, still alive. Brain dead, but still physically moving around. I think the schedule may finally settle down after the district decided to give us 2 more sections of English on Monday. (we had 36 kiddos a class, if they'd just listened to me the first time... ) Anyway, we changed somewhere around 100 schedules between Tuesday and this morning (that would be Thursday) so that all the parents would have the new schedules by this afternoon for parent night tonight (yeah, went and spent three more hours at work this evening. Sorry for the continuing work whine. Will try and be more interesting in the future.

Reason 581 that I don't use my real name on-line. A student at my school found her math teacher's facebook and myspace and has been friending all of that teacher's family. It is creeping the teacher out. (for good reason)

Brain dead from first week of school. Some day might be able to focus again. Today is not that day. Bye.

5 times. 5 times, Nicki has redone the master schedule. Ah. Ah. Ah. (yes you should be hearing the voice of the Count from Sesame Street.)

So, news from the education front of the Budget crisis: We may be losing.

I did not quite beat my head against the wall, but it was a close thing.

Good news- they did hire someone to teach my 70 teacherless 7th graders English. My coworker the-new-mommy-department-head showed up. That is all.

Bad news- I had to redo the schedule again. Time numba 5. We had several teachers decide to retire, move jobs, or go to part time over the summer. The summer was only 7 weeks (for them, I got only 6)! So, yeah, BAH!

My coworker the-new-mommy-department-head has decided to go 80% for child-rearing leave. They are bringing over someone from another school to do her missing day, but it's just going to be disjointed. ARGH! Also, though she showed up today, she will not be in tomorrow, or Wednesday, or Friday. ARGH! ARGH! ARGH!

My Admin were not in, not a one of them. They have some kind of district rah rah retreat. Very hard to consult someone who isn't there. They will not be in tomorrow either. BAH!

OTOH, no one bit me, so it is still better than my former occupation.

So, just some vague thoughts I'm having on online aliases.

There seem to be three categories of online names.

1) Variation on actual name. This is where I am, sort of. My DW is a variation on my name, my other journals include part of my name with a word that has meaning for me. I'm not sure what it says about me that I use my name(ish) as part of my online identity or if there is a universal pattern to the use of a real name as part of an online name. Lack of creativity? Strong central identity? Use of account for discussion of real life stuff? I don't know. There is a danger to it in my case though, if you can put together enough clues I'm probably partially professionally findable and that may be the case for anyone using parts of there real names. (boy that was a lot of ps).

2) A word or name with personal meaning that isn't their own name. I do this ish with my anti-fandom identity and some of my journals (the journals have part of my regular name as well). I suspect this is the most personal way to name one's self online because it involves how a person identifies themselves internally, but it is a self knowledge kind of thing because it probably isn't something that other people online are going to just be able to figure out the meaning of. It is probably also the least problematic way to create an online identity.

3) A fandom specific name. Now I'm not sure how true my thoughts on this might be because I've never had the urge to name myself after a character, even when I really identified with that character, so grain of salt here. I think this is a bit like RPG. The person gets to pretend they are somehow involved in the life/world of the character? Or just proclaim their support of the character maybe in a sports-fan type way? I'm not sure. I think it may be the most problematic way to identify online over the long term, though. What happens if the fandom ends or if you change from liking that character, or you change and the bits of you that identified with that character no longer exist? And then either you end up in a fandom or place on line with a name that is massively out of place, or you have to change your ID, so you lose consistent identification (which might or might not be a problem, IDK).

Anyway, vague musings brought to you by me reading the names of writers who are really really clearly current/former HP fandom people now (also?) writing Star Trek fic.

Dear foreign news person,

Whatever we are doing here in the US with our foreign policy, we are not building an empire. Yes, we are terrible busybodies, we definitely want to muck about with other countries (to varying degrees), but we don't want to keep them. We want to give them back, like as soon as possible. How about now? How about now? How about now? Is now a good time?

You are lacking cultural context.

-Me

Thusly I return from the wilds of the North.

Or, you know, from the north coast which was covered in fog all day and beset by 25 mph winds. The beaches in Oregon are truly lovely, but they are walk-on-them-in-jeans beaches, not swimsuit beaches.