Our Greatest Security Was Our Freedom

3:25am: Our Greatest Security Was Our Freedom
Millions of people risked all for the Liberties we so freely discard.
I recognize my own hypocrisy by knowingly submitting.
I recognize the cowardice of my countrymen, who disgrace the memory of our forefathers and what they fought for, out of fear that terrorists might claim the lives of far fewer than those who already gave their lives, so they can instead die from cancer, auto accidents, old age, etc.

I believed in the United States of America.
I believed that, for all our faults, we would continue to embrace the values of Liberty, Freedom, Justice, and all those other core values, if not in action, at least in rhetoric.
We have abandoned our core values, and now it is just a matter of time.
There is nothing left to do but to Sit back, and watch as our sacred secular institutions dismantle themselves.
This is not the Change I Hoped for, but now seems inevitable.


cow·ard·ice
/ˈkaʊərdɪs/
[kou-er-dis]
–noun
lack of courage to face danger, difficulty, opposition, pain, etc.

6:15pm: Solution looking for a Problem.
Pretend for the moment you had a Robotic Butler, an android with artificial intelligence like you see in the movies, that didn't need to eat, sleep, or have emotions. What sort of tasks would you want it to do for you?
Cooking & cleaning, straightening & organizing. I suppose I could have it walk down to the Harris Teeter around the corner and buy groceries (paying cash, at the automated check-out lines), but that might be a little weird. Other than that, maybe I could get it to do something on the computer or building things which I could use or sell. Make a little cottage industry.

Pretend for the moment you had to build a Robotic Butler, with the robotics available today. Could it accomplish any of the tasks wanted your movie Robotic Butler to do?
Roomba could clean, but it would have trouble with the stairs. Could possibly do something on the computer, or building things which I could use or sell, but I don't know what I would want even if I had a 3D printer. Mostly it could take up space.

Now pretend that rather than having a free standing robot, you instead had a "bot" that "lived" on a personal computer in your home. What applications would you have it run, and what tasks would you have it do for you?
First, I would want a screenscraper, something to download data from the internet.
Second, I would want to teach it to play video games, like Tetris, SimCity, and Fallout 3. Obviously it would be very good at games like FarmVille, but where's the fun in that? The better use for such a program in FarmVille is as a fail-safe. Your puppy needs to be fed, your fields about to whither, let the program stop your losses and harvest/feed/etc for you. Possibly having some interface that allows you to harvest/plow/seed en mass, rather than bit by bit. "Plow this 10x10 area and Plant Soy Beans, then Plow this 6x6 area over here and Plant Peas..."
I would like it to learn how to play Frogger, and then teach me how to look more than 2 lanes of traffic ahead.
I would like to have it vacuum up all the tin cans and empty bottles and other junk laying around the Fallout 3 world, and store them neatly in a locker in my megaton house. Perhaps I could even have it sort through and sell off the real junk, but I think I might prefer to do that myself.

And that's the real crux of it, isn't it? When it comes to robotics and computers, they are tools. The two primary purposes (as I see them) are to automate the processes we don't want to do for ourselves, and the thrill of getting the program to do something.
( more of the same )

1:06pm: Dork Tower

12:52pm: Incumbents made bad revolutionaries
Why I Won't Buy an iPad (And Think You Shouldn't, Either)
Relying on incumbents to produce your revolutions is not a good strategy. They're apt to take all the stuff that makes their products great and try to use technology to charge you extra for it, or prohibit it altogether.

I mean, look at that Marvel app (just look at it). I was a comic-book kid, and I'm a comic-book grownup, and the thing that made comics for me was sharing them. If there was ever a medium that relied on kids swapping their purchases around to build an audience, it was comics. And the used market for comics! It was — and is — huge, and vital. I can't even count how many times I've gone spelunking in the used comic-bins at a great and musty store to find back issues that I'd missed, or sample new titles on the cheap. (It's part of a multigenerational tradition in my family — my mom's father used to take her and her sibs down to Dragon Lady Comics on Queen Street in Toronto every weekend to swap their old comics for credit and get new ones).

So what does Marvel do to "enhance" its comics? They take away the right to give, sell or loan your comics. What an improvement. Way to take the joyous, marvellous sharing and bonding experience of comic reading and turn it into a passive, lonely undertaking that isolates, rather than unites. Nice one, Misney.

From an article by Cory Doctorow (whom you might know from xkcd references.)

6:48pm: On Health Care
At the turn of the 1900s, health insurance was very rare, and mostly covered loss wages due to disability rather than the cost of actual medical care. The first "modern" policy wasn't written until the 1920s. We tend to think of Life Insurance as being around since the 1700s century, but in fact it has been documented as of 5000 BC in China, 4500 BC in Babylon, and throughout Ancient Rome. The Life Insurance of the 1700s came out of the Traders Insurance of the 1600s, of which Antonio could have used in The Merchant of Venice to protect his investment after his ships were lost at sea.

Now, less than 100 years after the first "modern" health insurance policy, it seems inconceivable for a person to live without health insurance - or at least inhumane. Moreover, unlike life insurance which has a rather easy-to-calculate value (estimated cost of burial plus lost wages from the deceased to dependents over reasonable period of time) the true cost of health insurance is variable and more difficult to calculate individually (chance of needing cancer treatment, chance of breaking bones, chance you'd actually go to the doctor if you had a problem, estimated cost of getting insurance now before you develop pre-existing conditions versus cost of getting insurance later after developing pre-existing conditions, etc.)
Another significant difference is the ability to self-insure. With life insurance, as you get older, your rates go up, but your need for life insurance goes down. Your investments should be getting closer to covering the funeral costs, and your dependents should be getting more independent. When I worked in life insurance, I had to explain to quite a few people that our policies expired at age 70, so if you made it to 70 without dying, you won (for both yourself and our company.)
With health insurance, the older you get, the more likely you are to develop problems that require medical attention. Actually, I'm not sure how much of that is getting older, and how much is just living longer. That is, if you have a 1% chance per day, then the odds of hitting that 1% are much higher if you live more days. I believe this is true for some cancers, where the odds are the same (chance per day) if you are 20 or 60, but it is less likely to happen in the two decade period of 10 to 30 than it is in the four decade period of 40 to 80. The longer you live, the greater the odds of contracting cancer at some point in your life, even if the chance for any given day is the same.
Anyway.
So, with life insurance, as you get older, you need it less, the rates go up, and the situation resolves itself one way or another. With health insurance, as you get older, you need it more (having picked up a lifetime's worth of pre-existing conditions), and the rates still go up.

Now, clearly there is a need to do something about health insurance. With life insurance, the people at the greatest risk have the least need, and tend to drop out of the program - this means the people with least risk tend to be grouped together, making it a safe, profitable bet for all parties involved. Life Insurance is a bet where winning means not getting your money back.
With Health insurance, the people with the greatest risk have the greatest need, and tend to stay in the program, well, to put it bluntly - long after they would have otherwise been dead. The people with the least risk have the least need, and tend not to get into the program until they have stable career type jobs, are raising families and children, etc. At which point they tend to say, well, if I'm paying $x per year for this coverage, I need to use at least $x per year in services.
Wups. That's right, if you have life insurance, it is a simple bet. Live or Die, and if you live the company keeps the money. If you have health insurance, you can choose (to a certain extent) how much you use it.

A relative of mine once took advantage of a perfectly legal loophole that allowed him to collect both retirement as well as unemployment for a certain period of time. His unemployment went to pay for a vacation. I thought this was awful, just because the loophole was there doesn't mean that he should use it. The popular opinion at the time was that this was the governments money, so he should get whatever he is due - as if it didn't belong to anybody. I have heard a lot of people refer to their health insurance in the same way, like they were Jackie Brown talking to Max Cherry. Already paid their premiums, might as well get what they are owed. Now, this doesn't seem to be hurting the Health Insurance Industry any, they just keep raising rates to more than compensate. A few billion here, a few billion there, pretty soon you're talking about serious money. Now the people who have the least risk and the least need have a strong disincentive not to get involved, and not to get sick, 'cause health care rates go up as well.

In the mean time, that health insurance boom over the last several decades has also lead to an unprecedented level of quality in modern health care. Or so I am told. There have been major technological advances in pretty much every aspect of our society - even those not generally affected by insurance companies - so I am not sure to what extent Health Insurance was really able to make a positive difference.

So, the idea now is to mandate health insurance, forcing the people with the least risk and least need who also tend to be the people who can least afford it to buy in to health insurance plans. When I sat down to write out my thoughts on Health Care, I intended to go a bit into the history and then make the clear (although not necessarily concise) argument for why we need National Health care. Well, not so much an intention as an expectation. My hypothesis was that despite my political feelings about government mandates, this would be one of those instances where it was truly necessary. Now, I'm not so sure.
Something needs to be done, but more often I am thinking that Health Insurance is the problem, not the solution.

2:04pm: On FarmVille
It has been over a month since I made the switch over to Facebook. The Facebook.
It's horrible. There is a constant stream of people's comments, and every time I post something I feel like I am interrupting & exposing myself. I got myself involved in three of the games, Farmville, Mafia Wars, and Everything. I still play each of them, but the only one I actually enjoy is Farmville.
So, I wanted to take some time to argue the points made in this article* but there is no room. There is no room on my "Wall", nor in the Comments section of my friend's post, and so I must come crawling back to LiveJournal.
( Rebuttal )
Finally, If the French Philosopher's definition of play does not include a game which 73 Million people are playing, then perhaps the flaw is in the definition, not the game.

If the essence of Farmville was as simplistic and dull as the author makes it sound, and the only factors that caused 26 million people to play Farmville every day were the the factors listed by the author, then it would be easily repeatable phenomena and not have more people on it than the Wii. They fail to account for one key important factor in "play", and that is "fun." While leisure is more likely a form of entertainment or sleep, recreation is active for the participant but in a refreshing and diverting manner. Farmville is loosely structured, allowing a tool set from which the individual player can create whatever they like, within certain parameters. I have, for example, considered turning my farm into a hedge maze, something where people can visit and walk their farmer through for fun. If a person likes, they can focus on planting as many peas as humanely possible, in order to maximize coin profits. To this end they could stagger their planting of peas, which take 23hrs to grow, and spend much of that 23rd hour planting & deleting soybeans, in order to achieve maximum XP as well. Doing so could yield over 10k XP per day, letting the player achieve 70th level in 1 to 2 months. Or they could focus on acquiring as many calves as possible, toward the goal of earning 750k coins per day. And there are always special events going on, whether it is acquiring gold for the pot of gold for St Paddy's Day (I'm recently achieved my goal of 5 leprechauns), or planting a combination of yellow poppy (honoring California for some reason) and coffee to imagine themselves a member of some Farmville Drug Cartel.
Early on, one is focused on building their farm, achieving something, and that is far easier to do in-game than in-real-life. It is far easier to gather 1 Million Coins in Farmville than it is to achieve $10,000.00 (1 million pennies) in real life. Once the struggle is over, and people reach a certain stage where they are content, there is still plenty to do. I have some friends who play regularly and don't have a since plowed field anymore - they're focus is on Valentines and Gold Bars and Santa's Reindeer. I achieved 100k XP faster than anyone I know, yet didn't spent a single dollar of real money. I have expanded my farm, and done other things using the in game currency (FV) which one gets from real money, but all of that I acquired by the 5FV you get at the start of the game and the 1FV per level. Currently, I have 20FV just sitting there. I really like the game, so I have been considering paying real money to get an extra 40FV so I could buy an upgrade to the 26x26 farm. However, I feel that might be cheating in the goal I started out with - to catch up to my friend Amanda, who had a 2 month head start.
I have certainly slacked off on that goal lately. I find that particular competition less interesting, and am more intrigued to just play the game. Lately I have achieved Crop Mastery in Asparagus and Wheat - together blowing 7 days worth of crop harvests, or about 20k XP (based on my average XP per day, since I started playing.) Why? Because it was fun. I like the ribbons, I like the signs, I like the little achievements. I am about to pick up 10k XP dropping 1M coins on an Estate, as a symbol of my prominence, and I plan to set aside a larger area of my farm to expand my goat pyramid (something i came up with, you'd have to see my farm to know what I'm talking about.)

This is much more interactive, creative, and interesting than games like Mafia Wars (which is basically click buttons, gain XP & money that are essentially worthless) or Everything (which is basically once a day flip 5 cards, two of which you probably already have, even if you haven't been playing very long.)
I spent more time playing Grand Theft Auto doing freeform missions (driving around, trying to jump a Porsche off a bridge without dying, picking up guns, robbing stores, driving around in vast circuits around the city) just for the fun of it than I ever spent doing scripted missions.
In the 90s video games discovered the importance of sandbox modes and open world environments.

The success of Farmville is not all that different from that of SimCity two decades ago.
It has been more than two decades since SimCity was released, and over a decade since the last good SimCity game (SimCity 3000, in 1999.)

I feel old now.


* http://www.reddyeno5.com/afeeld/notebook/cultivated-play-farmville/

11:42am: Mass Hysteria
The odds of an average person living in the U.S. being struck by lightning in a given year is 1:700,000
In the U.S., between 9-10% of those struck die
In the United States, it is the #2 weather killer (second only to floods).

WHY ISN'T THERE PUBLIC OUTCRY FOR THE GOVERNMENT TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS?

After all, the odds of being struck by lightning are much more likely than being the victim of a terrorist attack, or being a Toyota owner who experiences the runaway auto syndrome, or actually enjoying NBC's Olympic coverage (seriously, the commentators should be blacklisted or something, they're awful.)

WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN???

Speaking of which, if floods are the #1 weather killer, why hasn't the gov't stepped in and done something to encourage flood insurance, discourage flooding.

11:34am: There will be Bunny Cheerleaders at the Puppy Bowl this year.
Suddenly I am very glad that I once again have cable television.

11:48am: Avatar: Take Two
On Saturday morning I met my parents for AVATAR in IMax Digital 3D.
You are probably wondering why, and quite simply, it was my Mom's b-day and I felt that I should give the movie a second chance. Going in knowing exactly what to expect.
The plot, writing, science, physics, and such were still godawful, but I practiced a mantra of "let it go let it go let it go, focus on the graphics."
Almost everything that I found wrong with Real 3D (which, as mentioned, felt like I was watching a Magic Eye Painting) was right with IMax Digital 3D.

I was still disappointed that almost all of the CGI creatures lacked the muscle movements that show up in modern video games, but the quality of the 3D was worth seeing.

So, I am changing my recommendation on Avatar. If you can see it in IMAX 3D or IMAX Digital 3D go to see it, just for the visual stimulation. Do not bother seeing it in regular 3D, Real 3D, or anything with lesser quality than IMAX 3D.

1:27pm: You might think that you're essential. Try inconsequential. It's a small world after all!
It's a great big universe
And we're all really puny
We're just tiny little specks
About the size of Mickey Rooney.
It's big and black and inky
And we are small and dinky
It's a big universe and we're not.

Two nights ago I hooked up the cable.
Last night I hooked up the HD DVR to the cable.
I am going to see Avatar again tomorrow, this time in IMAX 3D.
Afterward, catching a meal with my parents, then to the WMATA Metro to go into DC.
Sunday is recovery & D20 Modern.

Sometime soon I am going to have go seriously get back to work on organizing the house. Marni seems to be going a little batshit crazy lately about the disorganization of our stuff, and Tranquilo, Jefe doesn't seem to be helping. That, or it could be a side affect of being sleep deprived as she tries to stay up as late as I do, yet gets up far earlier. Ah well.

3:19pm: Public Enemies
Last night I watched "Public Enemies" on DVD from Netflix.
I heard that the movie reviewers loved it, but there were so many movies in the theaters at that time, so I waited for the DVD.
I am beginning to wonder if everyone else in the world is seeing different versions of movies than I do. I might have enjoyed it, if it had grabbed my attention or interest, but instead I found it slow, rather dull, and uninteresting. The acting was great, and the writing wasn't half bad (although there were plentiful historical inaccuracies according to wikipedia, I didn't know that until afterward), but the music and cinematography were just bad. It tried to be a docudrama, and many of the scenes felt to me like they were out of a low budget History Channel recreation.

Reviewers loved it, it made good money at the box office, it is very pretty, and has a lot of popular actors and actresses (Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard, Lili Taylor, and many many more) so you may still enjoy it.

update 1: My dad "Also saw it on Netflix. Only gave it 3 stars (a so-so rating for me). It had some suspense, but did not capture my interest as much as it should have."
update 2: After having a rather large flame war with my relatives over the holidays about why I didn't want to go to see Avatar, why I was an idiot for not seeing Avatar, and then why I didn't like Avatar when I did see it, my mother has invited me to go see Avatar again with her on Saturday morning in 3D IMAX.
Oddly enough, I do not find myself saying the obvious "NO OF COURSE NOT!" and I am actually considering it. I don't know if it is curiosity, insanity, or the sneaking suspicion that this is a movie like Batman Begins, which I will have to watch over and over until I finally enjoy watching it. It also worked with the music of Garth Brooks.
Does self-imposed Stockholm Syndrome build character?

In other news:
"It's not the overall degree of human likeness that makes [a robot or animated character] uncanny. It's more a matter of a mismatch. If you have an extremely realistic skin texture, but at the same time cartoonish eyes, or realistic eyes and an unrealistic skin texture, that's very uncanny."

4:08pm: Mawwage is what bwings us twogether twoday
Americans are waiting longer than ever to try matrimony for the first time. Statistics released by the U.S. Census Bureau show the medina age of men who have their first wedding is now 28.1 years old, and for women it’s 25.9. In both cases, the age is the highest it’s ever been since the federal government first began keeping track of the rate in 1890.

Clearly what we need to do is fire people who get married just like they did back in the day.

12:31pm: My Avatar Review
When I first heard about Avatar, many months ago, I had an immediate dislike for it. All I knew about it at the time was that "Avatar" had nothing at all to do with Avatar: The Last Airbender and that live action movie "The Last Airbender" would be coming out some other time.

When I started seeing trailers for Avatar, I said wow, will that suck. As it got closer to the release date, and the big news was whether it was going to be a spectacular success or a spectacular failure, I guessed failure. When most of the East Coast and Midwest got shut down by heavy snow during opening weekend, I cheered gleefully "HA HA YOU FOOLS" until the opening numbers came out. It went on to achieve record box office anyway.

Just after Christmas, all my family and about half my friends went out to see Avatar, and they were amazed. Not for the plot, which was described as either "Dances With Wolves" in Space or "Fern Gully" in Space. The visual affects - particularly the high definition and 3D affects.

On Sunday we made plans with my parents to see Avatar in IMax 3D. We couldn't order the tickets online, but figured with it being the 4th week we'd be able to get some tickets at the theater. Nope, the reason we couldn't order the tickets online a couple days before the showing was because they were already sold out.
Marni & I ordered tickets just for us, for the 7:10pm showing on Thursday (last night).
The gods spoke, and the ~20min drive to that theater from our house took 1hr 45min instead. So, we got there around 7:45, and swapped our tickets for the 8:05pm show in RealD 3D.

( Spoiler Warning: It is worth seeing in the theaters in 3D to see how far 3D has not come. )

11:15am: Locutus of Borg
zumjay's mom is looking for a new computer.
She doesn't need much, something simple, reliable, to do the basic functions of getting online, etc. She has a monitor and keyboard, but is looking for a replacement desktop for an inexpensive price. I think she's also looking for a wireless mouse.

I was thinking about recommending a Windows 7 Home Premium system by Asus, Acer, and Lenovo.

The only places I know of to buy computers are Newegg and Best Buy, and I'm a little hesitant to recommend Best Buy 'cause of their "optimization" bullshit.

Any one else have any recommendations or advice?


BTW. Have you seen the new line of AlienWare computers? They're hideous. It looks like the cheap plastic result of a uncomfortable romp between a Toaster and the back seat of a Snowplow.

1:53pm: "really explore the studio space this time."
"During several months of 2009, Moscow police looked at fake pictures displayed on their monitors instead of what was supposed to be video from the city surveillance cams. The subcontractor providing the cams was paid on the basis of 'the number of working cams,' so he delivered pre-cooked pictures stored on his servers. The camera company CEO has been arrested."

So, considering that Surveillance Cameras have been proven in several countries to be a complete waste of money (most notably in the UK, which is trapped in the absurd loop of "Surveillance Cameras have made no impact on crime." "We need more Surveillance Cameras!" "Um, still no impact." "MORE MORE MORE" "Seriously, no impact" "Guess what?! I got a fever, and the only prescription is more Surveillance Cameras!!!"

There is little evidence that CCTV deters crime; in fact, there is considerable evidence that it does not.
[...]
In London, a Metropolitan Police report showed that in 2008 only one crime was solved per 1000 cameras.
[...]
The most measurable effect of CCTV is not on crime prevention, but on a small number of high media-profile case of detection.

6:22pm: Allergic to WiFi
Recently Marni & I have been shocking the hell out of each other, quite frequently. For example, one of us will be standing jumping moving around playing the wii, while the other sits on the sofa, and when we hand off the controller ZAP!
This, of course, has nothing to do with the Wifi in my apartment.

Maybe we forgot to mention it, but there's absolutely no evidence that suggests Wi-Fi impacts human health, and the science that does exist strongly suggests that those claiming to be suffering from "electromagnetic sensitivity" are simply suffering from psychosomatic disorders, and might be helped by therapy and/or medication.

Two other things they forgot to mention.
1) You will soon be able to harness the power of nearby wifi to recharge your portable devices!
2) No need to go homeless, just build a Faraday Cage in your own home to protect you from the big bad electromagnetic signals. I considered doing this when it thought like the charge in the air was keeping me awake. However, moving the electronics out of my bedroom was good enough.

5:21pm: Water & Power
So, here's something neat I learned today.
The heating system in our townhouse is powered by the hot water heater, so the problems we've been having with the hot water and the heating system are actually user error*.
Heat on at night, cold shower in morning.
Hot shower, cold house.


*PEBKAC ("Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair")

12:50pm: Watch Charlton Heston play a Mexican?
Portland (OR) seems to think white male business owners are a minority group.
Well, I guess they are outnumbered by non-whites, females, and non-business owners in terms of global population.
"The focus for the problem was laid on minority contractors, as opposed to on the system and the system at large," he said. "They never really took it for real that there is outright racism and discrimination."

In other, Better News, M.U.L.E. IS BACK BABY!!!
Probably my 2nd favorite game EVER, I played it as often as I could starting when I was approx three years, 1 month, and 25 days old.
My favorite game of all time was, of course, Sundog: Frozen Legacy.

I can't wait to get home tonight and download M.U.L.E.

5:49pm: Jennifer Gov't: NationStates
All record of my former nation have apparently been eviscerated, and I seem to be unable to contact any sort of tech support.
All hail the my new nation.

That is all.

11:34am: Time Off for Good Behaviour
Tomorrow is Twelfth Night, the last of the 12 days of Christmas, and the day to take down Christmas decorations.
"The Holidays" will officially be over, and we can go back to our normal lives, looking forward to Martin Luther King Jr Day.
Well, except my company's holiday party, which is Saturday the 16th.

Marni & I did New Year's Eve at the Haven, New Year's Afternoon at Michelle & Matt's, New Year's Evening with her dad & step-mom for Everybody's Fine & dinner. While it was a really good film, and really worth seeing for several reasons (including decent writing and for how Robert De Niro and Sam Rockwell play off each other) it is one of those holiday films that pulls the heartstrings and is at times quite depressing. I recommend it, but not for everybody.

On the opposite side of the film spectrum (I imagine) there are two that I want to see in theaters sometime soon. Avatar (IMax Digital 3D over at Hoffman) and Sherlock Holmes. I actually want to see Sherlock Holmes, but I've been on the fence about Avatar for a while now. I don't think I'll actually enjoy it, but much like when I went out to see Beowulf in 3D, I want to see where the technology has gone.
I think I am going to wait for the DVD on the Fantastic Mr. Fox and the Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus.

On Saturday evening Marni & I met up with some friends to see our friend August Shaner perform in "All Lit Up" at the Maryland Ensemble Theater. I would recommend this, but we caught the last performance. Hi-larious. I am hoping to get a digital copy of some of the songs to use on next year's holiday album.

Marni & I have been watching a lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer lately, as we recover our strength on the comfy sofa. We both own all seven seasons on DVD, but I haven't seen most of them. We are currently most of the way through Season Four, having stopped last night after "Goodbye Iowa" (S4 E17).
The Special Features on the Buffy discs, including the "Intro to" certain episodes, are filled with spoilers. There was one "Intro" to a season three episode that not only gave away the entire plot of that episode, but also the episode that followed it, the season finale, and some events from season six.
That is a really incredibly stupid horrible thing to do.
I started reading a graphic novel the other day (lent to me by Marni's dad) and the beginning of it was an introduction, which appeared to be a part of the graphic novel, but was actually written by someone else, and written for readers who had already read the entire series. I was about a third of the way through it when I realized this, and skipped ahead to the actual opening of the story. WTF? Did I miss a memo?
I downloaded a behind the scenes preview of the film Moon and about a minute in Sam Rockwell gives away the entire plot of the movie and explains the whole mystery that I spent a good 45 minutes figuring out while watching it in theaters. I mean, yes, it's still an enjoyable film (i imagine) to watch knowing the plot ahead of time, but there is a lot of enjoyment to be had in figuring it out for yourself the first time.

That said, I cheated on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Since I caught pretty much all of Seasons 1 & 2, and was hit or miss on Seasons 3 through 5, I popped open the wikipedia and read ahead a bit to fill in some of the gaps. That was my choice, and not a SURPRISE (greek what?) found in something mislabeled as an Introduction.

11:30am: Virtual Telekinesis
A buddy of mine got an Emotiv Epoc.
Apparently it was released on December 21 2009.

Emotiv Systems claims the headset will make it possible for games to be controlled and influenced by the player's mind, and facial expressions. It connects wirelessly with the PC, and may in the future work on other game platforms such as consoles.

I had no idea this was available, and if I had known, it may have significantly altered some of my christmas shopping.

11:44am: I am shocked SHOCKED to discover idiots in our government.
I call Bullshit on these idiotic reactions to terrorism, but I've been doing that for years now, so I guess it's time to try something different, and seeing as this is the internet, I guess it's time to make the comparison to Hitler.

Assuming that you were not jewish, homosexual, gypsy, etc do you think would you have felt safer living in Nazi Germany with their fascist protections than you do here in the United States of America today?

12:24pm: We're in the 12 days of Christmas, people.
It is now appropriate to hear Christmas music, not that anyone wants to anymore since it has been playing since before Halloween. Christmas time runs from the evening of December 24th (Christmas Eve) through the evening of of January 5th (Twelfth Night, celebrating the adoration of the Magi) for a total of 13 days of which there are 12 days of Christmas. Lights and Trees should be down by January 7th at the latest.
It is acceptable to get in the "Christmas Spirit" starting the day after Thanksgiving, although Advent starts on the fourth Sunday before December 25.
I would really like to know if anyone has done a study on whether the playing of Winter Holiday Music improves sales, or if it damages sales as people like me walk out of the store.

Inspired by Surviving The World and XKCD, based on information from wikipedia here are some events for Dec 25th.

Births: Isaac Newton, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Clara Barton, Lina Cavalieri, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Hugo Bergmann, Evelyn Nesbit, Conrad Hilton, Robert Ripley, Humphrey Bogart, Cab Calloway, Mike Mazurki, Anwar Sadat, Rod Serling, Al Jackson, Alexandra Helen Elizabeth Olga Christabel, Rick Berman, Jimmy Buffett, Barbara Mandrell, Alia al Hussein, Karl Rove, Annie Lennox, Dean Cameron, Helena Christensen, and Dido.

Coronations: Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor, William the Conqueror as king of England, Baldwin of Boulogne as the first King of Jerusalem, Count Roger II of Sicily as the first King of Sicily, and Prince Hirohito as Emperor Shōwa.

Deaths: Pope Adrian I, Emperor Taishō, W. C. Fields, Charlie Chaplin, Nicolae Ceauşescu, Elena Ceauşescu, Zail Singh, Dean Martin, JonBenet Ramsey, James Brown, and Eartha Kitt.

And in 1776 George Washington and his army crossed the Delaware River to attack the Kingdom of Great Britain's Hessian mercenaries in Trenton, New Jersey. Nearly 1,000 Hessians were captured.
Personally, next year I'm going to try to remember to celebrate the anniversary of The Eggnog Riot. George Washington's eggnog contained not only rum, but also significant amounts of sherry, brandy, and whiskey.

1:03pm: "If you can't do somethin' smart...do somethin' right."
“Clearly, if consumers placed a value on a maximum runway wait time, they would have negotiated it with their airlines already,” said Petra Waterman of the American Enterprise Institute. “Since no airline offers such a contract term, we can assume that consumers place no value on it. Besides, if consumers were not happy with the service they receive from airlines, then a new airline would have already entered the market offering shorter wait times.”

In unrelated news:
I reason to suspect that the National Christmas Tree is a portkey to the Maggianos in Tysons Corner.

Oh, and yes, HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!!

9:16am: Resolved.
I finally resolved the issue with Walmart dot com, they will be refunding my money.
Their customer service on their website was a bad joke, the only responses I got were automated. The website did not include a phone number to contact customer service, but a google search yielded 1-800-925-6278.

It took me a couple of passes, going through their automated menus, to get past the automated messages telling me there was no way to cancel or get a refund, and finally I opted for the selection on reporting fraud - 'cause at this point I was considering contacting the police and reporting them for fraud (I'm pretty sure that taking money for a good and service, then refusing to provide the good, service, refund, nor cancellation is some form of fraud.) That finally got me to a living breathing human being who seemed very nice and is going to be refunding my money.

Jezebel is sitting comfortably on her comfy perch - on top of a pile of boxes there is a pile of pillows and blankets, and on top of that is a pile of plastic bags full of clothing, and on top of that there are a few old pillows I don't care about covered with two blankets that clean up easily. This was put together unintentionally with the idea that Jezebel wouldn't be in this room, but once she got in the room, obviously she didn't want to leave, so I redesigned it so that if she does something Mitzi-esque (Marni assures me she never would, but I am precautious) it won't be a big deal.