August 15, 2009 at 6:14 pm (Friends, Sim Leagues)
Many forums/fora have systems that reward people for accumulating a higher post count. On The Crane Pool Forum, you get to progress through the historical Mets (ranked from 1-500) finally achieving Tom Seaverhood when you’ve participated enough. On other forums, you progress through a simpler rank system and accumulate stars under your name. But on a couple fora, you get game bonuses.
And that has proven to be a source of grief in my life.
I’m an admin on a team of three admins. Because of a row initiated by someone who is a known complainer, and because one of the admin’s feelings were hurt. one of the boards on that forum is set up to no longer count posts made there toward game bonuses. And because of this, two of my friends won’t post there anymore.
Why do I care?
Well, there are some running games on that board. One that we inherited from The Crane Pool Forum is called “Answer/Ask” and the point of the game is to answer the question that’s up and then ask the next question. And there are other games as well.
And I want to play these games with my friends. Not just because I like them but because I like their style of play. One said, ” just don’t want to spend 8 minutes thinking of a clever answer, then another few minutes finding a good question, and finally formatting it to look nice.” To me that’s a bit bogus. When points did count, they were only worth 1/50th of a bonus.
The other one claims that posting there would be “spamming”. Um, no. The people who were throwing that word around were specifically complaining about guys who racked up postcounts toward bonuses. Since that doesn’t apply, it can’t possibly be spam.
It feels like they’re trying to make me feel bad enough about their not playing that I turn bonuses back on. And I don’t like that for reasons that should be obvious.
I’ve been told not to worry about it. That people on the internet aren’t real anyway. I’m not sure I agree with that, but it’s just a game and if they can walk away, so can I. If it’s not fun anymore, I can stop doing it. And so I shall.
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August 14, 2009 at 3:45 pm (Uncategorized)
I have a new G1 phone. And I am in love. Let me tell you why…
Shopping: I have a wiki at home. Well, not me personally, wikis are intended to be shared. On this wiki I keep my grocery list, my recipe list and stuff like that. The idea is if I want to go shopping, I update the wiki then print out a shopping list.
Not anymore. I create the list and go to the store and use my phone to access it. And people can update the list in case I forgot something. I just need to refresh it to see the new list.
Cooking: I already mentioned I have my recipes on the wiki. This means I don’t need to print out my recipes either. And, if I happen to be shopping and find something on sale, I can see what other ingredients I need to complete a recipe.
Recreation: I play games on my phone. My favorite right now is Coloroid which is a colorblock game. I also have cribbage and klondike solitaire. I also listen to music. Especially when I’m driving or cooking. I love how I can have my phone play music and show me the recipe at the same time.
E-Mail: My phone notifies me when I have e-mail. So instead of keeping tabs open on my browser, I just have my phone sitting near me.
Instant Messaging: I don’t use my phone for IM very much because if I’m away from my computer I’m usually too busy to do IM anyway. But it’s a reasonable interface.
Phone: I mentioned it was a phone, right? Never dropped a call. And texting works great with the keyboard. I like how texts to/from a number are displayed as conversation.
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July 22, 2009 at 6:14 am (Baseball, Writing)
Shakespeare said it and so did a lot of other people in different ways. You need to be true to yourself.
For the last while, about a year, I’ve been trying to expunge or at least contain a part of me that I wasn’t getting a lot of positive feedback about. That’s my baseball versification. I like baseball and I like writing poems and ditties and songs about baseball and ballplayers. I’ve done this on a regular bases since 2002 and most of the people around me tolerated it as an eccentricity and never really talked about about it.
I found the filk community on rec.music.filk to be less than hospitable, though in person, filkers are gracious and will listen to baseball filk, too. But for the most part, I had the impression that I was burdening people when I wanted to share something with them.
Well, all that has changed. On first and third Tuesdays, I attend a writer’s group out here in Katy and we typically share what we’re working on. I had shown a poem of mine to an online friend who said it was very good so I took that and a revision of something I’d done before on Joe Jackson with me to the meeting. I also brought chapters of a book I’m working on. My idea was to let the group decide what to hear and they picked poetry.
I passed around the poetry and read them both and got a shock. No one wanted me to change a rhyme or add something or take something out. Instead, we talked about possible markets and marketing strategies.
I sat there, pretty much speechless, listening to people tell me how good my ditties are. And they wanted more. As part of the two marketing strategies, i should work on more poems about players as well as more of the “voices of baseball” set. I don’t think anyone has ever told me before that I should write *more* baseball stuff. It was a revelation, a confirmation and a validation.
So look out world, I’m about to write more baseball verse.
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July 4, 2009 at 1:27 am (Blood Donation)
I went to the Blood Center on Thursday. Actually it’s the Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center and it’s the donor center in Katy.
I arrived there before my appointment and was taken back to the little room. There they measured my temperature, iron level, pulse and blood pressure. Then I got to answer The Questions. Questions about my sexual history and about my geographical history. My medical history too, including whether I’d gotten a tattoo or piercing in the last 12 months and have I ever been pregnant. Some of the questions make sense, but I’m not sure about the pregnancy one.
Okay, so far so good. They asked me what size t-shirt I wear and gave me a shirt for KKRW’s drive. Then I went into the room where they actually take the blood. They asked me which arm, and I said, “Either,” because the veins in both my arms are good. Instead of an elastic tourniquet, they used a blood pressure cuff inflated to serious tightness.
The phlebotomist marked my arm where she would stick me and had me periodically squeeze a brain-shaped(!) stress ball. She told me to squeeze and hold while she stuck me. Then she walked away for a minute. She came back to check something and it wasn’t right. Now, she didn’t say anything, just got the supervisor. They moved the needle around a bit in my arm but apparently, I’d clotted at the site and so the blood was flowing sluggishly. (They wanted me to keep squeezing and unsqueezing the brain because it made *some* difference–but not enough.)
So they unhooked me, wrapped me up and told me I could try again in 48 hours. Apparently the rules say you can’t stick the other side if one side fails. I’ve donated blood for years now and this is the first time this has happened to me. I have been deferred before though, for not having high enough iron.
I know people who can’t donate blood for one reason or another. One of my friends says he’s scared of the needle. Well, you have to have a heart rate below 100 to be considered fit and if you’re being afraid, your number will probably be higher. I know it’s not too tough to bring my heart rate up at the gym in the morning when I’m hardly awake. If the idea of having a needle in your arm stresses you out, then don’t.
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July 2, 2009 at 2:32 pm (Bring the Heat, Sim Leagues)
Elite Players League. Three words to describe the most incredible online game I’ve ever been a part of. It seems insufficient somehow. For those of you who don’t know about EPL, I’ll try to explain it’s awesomeness. Basically you have a baseball player or two and you role-play them. They are on teams with other players belonging to other people in the league. Most players start in the minors and work their way up, but if you have a good “build” your player might start out on one of the poorer teams. The way you develop your player is by earning upgrade points. One of the ways you can do this is by writing articles about your player. Accounts of games, interviews, blog entries, whatever. These also help with the role-playing aspect. Games are simulated using a simulation engine. Three times each week, league members would gather on AIM while the commish ran the sim and reported the scores for seven days of games.
As I type this, it’s the last day for EPL. The guy who had been commissioner was a victim of the economic times and no longer has a job where he can spend the time it takes to run the league. And there were other things going on, but that’s the major factor. Tonight is the final EPL sim. I don’t care who wins anymore, I just care that it’s over. I’ve been doing it since February of 2006, though the league held it’s inaugural draft nearly four years ago.
But out of the ruins of EPL arises a new league. Bring the Heat. The guy who’s running it is the same guy who is sending EPL off. This will operate the same way as EPL did but it will have minor rules differences and only 8 teams. With 16 teams it became difficult for EPL to keep GMs. Also, members may transfer younger EPL players to the BTH (under 30 as of April 1, 2022 — oh, I should explain that, because the sims are 7 days, we’ve blown by 2009 and gotten way into the future). I have two players who would qualify but one has a “story” that wouldn’t work for being in a new league.
If you’ve never tried something like this and if you like baseball, I encourage you to check it out. It’s different from other kinds of online games in that the community makes it work.
And if you’re a disaffected EPL member, I also urge you to give the league a try. There are bonus upgrade points for recruiting but if you don’t say my name I won’t get them. Don’t say my name. I’d rather have you as a league member than have points.
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June 9, 2009 at 11:57 pm (ApolloCon, Ham Radio, Jonathan, T-Bob)
Well, I passed the test. But somehow I missed the part on the American Radio Relay League site that says, bring your current license to the test. Now, I have my ARRL membership card in my wallet but I never got around to cutting out my license and filing it there.
The VE’s (volunteer examiners) decide I can take the test anyway but that I would need to fax my license to the ARRL volunteer exam coordinator. So we come home (about 25 minutes away) get the license and then go to Jonathan’s office to fax it. Then we head to the ApolloCon meeting (Mark says, “Get a room!” because the more people who book room nights, the more money the con saves on function space) and then home.
Which all means I passed. Jonathan says he was looking over the shoulder of one of the VE’s and that he believes I only got 3 wrong (you’re allowed to miss 9 and still pass). So when I get my new license it will say “General Class” on it.
Now, the reason I didn’t tell anyone before is that I have felt under the weather and it seems I was getting worse as time went on. I don’t want to sound like a whiner but I haven’t even felt like reading. Yesterday I took T-Bob to his friend Pepito’s house in the old neighborhood and I was almost home when I got a call on my cell that he was sick. It’s an hour each way so there went most of yesterday.
In the not-whining department, salsa that “clears your sinuses” really does and I highly recommend it as a home remedy.
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June 6, 2009 at 9:31 am (Ham Radio)
I’ve been reading and studying and taking practice tests for my amateur radio general class license. I’m a technician class now. The cool thing, from my perspective, is that (Morse) code is optional and I’m opting out. Time was you needed to know the code to get the license. I’ll probably learn the code at some point — I’m sure there are good resources for it.
I want to upgrade because I do. Circular logic FTW! No, I met a guy on Facebook who also does radio and who I’d like to talk to. And I just think it’d be cool to not be a rookie anymore.
My call sign is KD5SBI. I’m looking forward to operating in the general bands, once we get the equipment unpacked and set up. I used to have a handheld but it got lost in the move to Katy (I’m sure it’s in a box in the library somewhere).
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June 3, 2009 at 11:03 pm (Andromeda, ApolloCon, Astros, Family, Filk, Household, Money)
I have five children. And two of them have moved out.
Yesterday I shipped four boxes of Andromeda’s stuff. Five if you count the computer. The total was $175.64. I also refilled a prescription (Andromeda’s) and saw my doc for another $100. I have a budget of $1500 for the household for a month. This is to cover groceries, gas, Iker’s instrument, clothes, shoes, pool tags and other miscellaneous stuff. So, because of the above, I’m already a high percentage into June’s money. We also pay allowances and chore money out of it. What we call “board money” because we track the amount owed to or by a child on the whiteboard in the computer room.
I also have a personal budget for fun stuff for me. This month, I’m going to hang onto it and not get the Hunter Pence t-shirt I want because I may need to purchase groceries with it. It is what it is. I promised T-Bob a futon this month. He currently sleeps on a mattress on the floor–thanks to Ike we’re short on two beds because we had a “captain’s bed” bunkbed split between rooms. The two that were damaged.
We’re not poor and I’m not trying to give that impression. It’s just that it is an ongoing struggle And what I’m hoping is, that with Andromeda being gone it will ease the finances a bit. For one thing, her ADD meds have a $60/month copay. That represents a savings. We’ve used up our flexible spending account money on glasses and medication for me and my hospital stay. So from now through December, medical stuff comes out of my household budget. So that $100 is a direct savings if you include the psychiatrist’s copay. Also, dining out with fewer people is cheaper as is any kind of field drip, whether it be an Astros game, ApolloCon or just a movie.
Jonathan and I are expecting that well will have indirect savings. Andromeda did laundry almost every day. The dryer running for an hour times 20-30 days is a real savings every month. We won’t save on board money because Andromeda did not get an allowance, she was only paid for chores and the chores still need to be done. But she had a large footprint in terms of “personal items”. And clothes and all of that stuff. Plus she’s been known to alter the state of the thermostat to more expensive settings–warmer in winter and cooler in summer.
I miss her. I don’t want anyone to think that I don’t love her. But she’s 20 years old and really needs to leave home. So I have two kids grown up and gone. I’m batting .400.
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May 30, 2009 at 3:48 pm (Customer Service, Household, Iker, Jonathan)
We were experiencing problems with our AC and my husband discovered that our electricity provider partnered with some guys named Hallmark. So I discovered they opened at 7am and called them Friday morning at 7:00, 7:03 and 7:06 on my set-to-atomic-time computer clock. The third time was the charm. They agreed to send someone out “between 10 and 2″.
Got a call at 9:24 that they were on their way and they arrived a little before 10. They looked in the attic, in the backyard and at the thermostat and told me the thermostat was bad. They offered to sell me a cheap (excuse me, “basic”) one for $229. Um, no. I called Jonathan to tell him he’d be purchasing and installing a new thermostat. That settled, they went away leaving just a mounting bracket on my hallway wall.
It gets hot in Houston. And in my computer room, where we have 3 servers, a switch and three workstations, it gets hotter. So I went to take Iker to get her last vaccination. Doctors’ offices are usually frigid and I figure we’d be there for awhile.
What I did not figure on was Jonathan coming home early and installing the new thermostat. And calling to tell me the fan wasn’t turning on the AC unit in the back yard. I promised to call when I got home. I called Hallmark and explained the problem. They sent a different someone out. This guy got it done but it cost us a second “diagnostic fee”.
I’ll be talking to them on Monday about getting refunding the first diagnostic fee. The diagnosis was not only wrong, but it cost us the price of a new thermostat as well.
I have yet to mention the excitement. The heat possibly caused our RAID to fail (or maybe it was just coincidence) And that dominoed into other filesystem failures when workstations couldn’t connect to the server for a prolonged period of time.
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May 28, 2009 at 8:03 pm (Astros, Baseball, Filk)
You know how you “know” people on the internet? You know only a bit about them that they choose to share. As a filker, I know some people that all I know about them is that they’re filkers, too, or at least they write songs.
Anyway, this matters because I wrote a song. It’s what I do. I cannot help it, nor do I really want to. Anyway, it’s about baseball, which comes as no surprise to anyone reading this blog. This song is not one I’ve published yet so there’s no link. And because of that, I’m going to be a bit vague as to what it’s about. Especially since that’s not pertinent.
What matters here is that I showed it to someone who is familiar with the work I’m parodying. And he didn’t think it scanned well. Okay, I can accept that. I tried to do something that, I dunno, could be sung to the karaoke version of the song.
But I showed it to one of my music friends who is also somewhat familiar with the original piece and he really liked it and said that his only problem was I had “too many” words … what he calls “optional” words that could be left out and assumed. The two opinions don’t quite fit together. I have a case of trying to do contradictory things and I’m not sure how I’ll resolve it. I think, if I can, I’ll get into a discussion of feet and meters with my friend who isn’t satisfied with the scansion.
I did publish a baseball shanty. It’s here. It’s really about Roy but I don’t want to be the one saying the things that I say.
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