So, there's supposed to be this ginormous update to EVE going into effect as of 90 minutes ago, and in contrast to the usual Tuesday morning update/revision/patch/Mongolian Goat Rope that CCP perpetrates, which only takes down the servers for 1d6 hours, this is going to put the servers out of action for 21 hours. At least. That'll still give me tomorrow night and Thursday to scrape together the last 29 million isk I need to keep playing for another month so I don't need to spend real money on this.

Maybe I should have spent less time on Swarm logistics and fleet actions.

I was supposed to go into the VA today for pre-operation stuff, which I assume means blood tests & such, but the vascular clinic dropped the ball, and so the surgery & prep will be put off until next week. At least it's not going to be on the 8th; aside from it being a Holy Day of Obligation, I'm planning on spending some time with my parents at the Family Plot. Since it's that time of the year again.

On a more cheerful note, I went out and deposited a few checks with the bank. Hopefully the coming month will see more of that. I also cashed in my free rental coupon from Blockbuster and wound up with three movies since they had a ROGO deal going on. This means that I need to find time between now an noon next Tuesday to watch Hancock, Iron Man, and Jarhead. I would rather have seen Starship Troopers 3, which is supposed to be so bad it's actually kind of good, but they didn't have a copy at the Blockbuster I went to. In the same strip mall, there's a Giant which is oddly retro and cute; it's so much smaller than the other stores I usually shop at and yet seems stuffed to the rafters with all manner of foodz. I walked in originally intending to just cash in my free Coke 12-pack coupon and get the Giant club card, but left with some half & half and tea as well. (You can't have enough tea around the place.)

I forgot to mention that over the weekend I stopped in at the library and picked up Juggler of Worlds by Niven and Lerner along with Here Comes Civilization, which is the second volume in the complete William Tenn collection. Neither one of them particularly impressed me.
( Spoilers )

DHS protects America from those infamous scourges of freedom: role-playing games and the traitors who play them.*

In other tales of terrorism, Maziar Bahari reports on how Revolutionary Guards really feel about America: “He hated me and he was jealous of me at the same time because I had been to New Jersey.” While the article is entertaining enough, there are some real prizes in the comments.

The same is true of this smackdown of racist thug Woodrow Wilson; the bus riding comments alone would be worth the price of admission, if they were charging any.

Honduras gives the finger to Hugo Chavez, the OAS, and the 0bama Administration, not necessarily in that order. More commentary and links at Fausta's blog and Babalu.

ESR comments on the whole Global Warmening conspiracy hack: "For those of you who have been stigmatizing AGW skeptics as “deniers” and dismissing their charges that the whole enterprise is fraudulent? Hope you like the taste of crow, because I do believe there’s a buttload of it coming at you. Piping hot."

*EDIT It occurred to me some hours after composing this post that this is literally true of Paranoia players. It's right there in the rules.

Neal Gabler of the L.A. Times warns the media that the more they criticize Sarah Palin and try to diminish her, the stronger she gets with Main Street America. Interesting comparisons to Andrew Jackson and Richard Nixon are made; RTWT. (Hot Air)

The late George Fraser Macdonald was none too pleased with what had become of Britain by the time he sat down to pen Quartered Safe Out Here, his account of the time he spent in the Border Regiment during the Burma Campaign in WW2. He was considerably less kind about it in a piece he penned for the Daily Mail last year, and it would appear that many of the surviving members of Britain's "Greatest Generation" agree with the older, angrier Fraser. RTWT.

Man, I'd pay good money to hear Al Gore, David Suzuki, or one of the other gorbal warmening crazies pop off with that line in public. Wouldn't it be deliciously ironic if the First World's economy, built as it is on cheap energy from coal & petroleum, were saved by a KGBFSB covert op aimed at hacking the databases of the AGW conspirators? Dan Riehl points out that the Russians certainly have an incentive to torpedo this latest environmental stupidity.

While we're on the subject of scientific illiteracy and the climate, may I recommend to you Fallen Angels?

After reading several "standard texts" on sabermetrics over the last few weeks, I have a gut feeling that one of the reasons a lot of professional baseball people don't have a lot of time for sabermetricians is that they waste a lot of time mangling statistics in various inventive ways to answer stupid questions like "Was Honus Wagner a better baseball player than Cal Ripken?" "If Roger Maris played for the Yankees today, would he hit sixty home runs a year?" and "Was Dom DiMaggio really better than his famous brother Joe?" The answer to all of these questions, as far as I'm concerned, is NOBODY CARES. The kind of people who usually get into arguments like this are the kind of folks that don't care about Equivalent Averages, normalized OBP+SLG, and VORP, because those are all damned statistics, as in "Lies, damned lies and statistics." You can find those people in any sports bar or the comments sections of most popular sports blogs, arguing with the guys that insist that defensive stats prove that Adam Dunn is a horrible first baseman and not worth what he's being paid for knocking in 120 guys a year with his ~40 dingers. *facepalm*
( Cut to spare my f-list )

Secular America, it appears that the Church has had enough of your shenanigans. (The Western Confucian via The Marmot's Hole)

One photographer's battle against anorexia in the modeling field.(Probably NSFW) (Ibid.)

Need to pick up the season's hottest political tomes? Look not further than The Other McCain! As a further inducement, the taste Amazon gives Stacy off these sales goes to support independent news reporting of the sort not often done by the lamestream media, and keeps Mrs. McCain happy. Honestly, who could deny a woman like that the pleasure of a jingly tip jar?
"But I already have a glut of books/hate politics/want to get something for my SO!" you say? Well, that's already been covered, with some helpful tips on maintaining a happy marriage supplied along with some tasteful art. (YMMV)

As for me, well, I don't have a wife and six kids, but I wouldn't mind a little traffic through my portal either. Take a look at my bookstore or take advantage of Amazon's Black Friday Deals.

Last but not least, The Dugout gives thanks for Joe Mauer.

Quite the Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. The pot roast, done with garlic, red wine, red potatoes, Vidalia onions, carrots, and garlic, turned out better than either P or I had expected. The mashed potatoes were good; perhaps not as smooth and extruded-looking as some folks' might be, but it was extremely rich and had sizable quantities of garlic. The brie with macadamia nuts in puff pastry didn't turn out quite as well, but that's okay since there was plenty of cheese and garlic bread to nibble on; cornbread stuffing with hot Italian sausage and hazelnuts also fell short of optimum -it was a bit too dry and probably could have used a few hours inside a turkey, but that wasn't an option. Dessert was apple tart done with Macintosh apples, which we almost didn't get into since we were so stuffed from everything else. Neither of us even wanted to think about pie.

Was going to go out and mail stuff to customers, but the coupon I have from Staples is no good until tomorrow, so I think I'll just pass on Black Friday. In my straitened circumstances, I shouldn't be hanging out in stores anyway; I'd just be impeding the efforts of the Retail Support Brigade.

I've been thinking about this for a while, especially in light of all the drama this summer over whether the Nationals would be able to sign stud prospect Steven Strasburg. A lot of the drama revolved around whether Strasburg's agent Scott Boras, the avaricious thug who makes Darsh* look kind and generous by comparison, would allow him to sign with the Nationals or whether he would use Strasburg in his ongoing attempt to destroy the free agent draft and have all prospects sold at auction to the highest bidders. That would be great for Boras and his ilk (to say nothing of his clients), but disastrous to the cause of preserving some remnants of competitive balance in major league baseball.

Recently, Baseball Commissioner Bud (Light) Selig has been talking about bringing foreign players into the draft in order to keep the rich teams from skimming off all the hot prospects from the Dominican and other Caribbean hotbads of baseball, to say nothing of signing veteran players from Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. This, to quote Megan McArdle, is nonsense on stilts. As it is, players can (and have) evaded the constraints of the draft by signing with independent minor league teams such as the St. Paul Saints, and there is every reason to expect that this will only increase if Selig gets his way and is allowed to lock down foreign players in the same way college and high-school players are locked into the current draft system. After all, the major problem with the draft, which is the insane amount of money paid for signing bonuses, won't be eliminated by the international draft. Most of those players don't get the huge. multi-million dollar bonuses anyway; those go to first-round picks like Strasburg.

No, if you want to fix the system, you need to take those bonuses out of the system. The only realistic way to do that is to get the major league teams out of the business of developing talent, and turn the minor leagues loose. Short-season A-league teams and Rookie League teams can't afford to pay million-dollar bonuses to hot prospects; all they can offer is the eventual chance at playing in the major leagues. If we make those leagues the sole entry point into professional baseball for high school and college players, the bonus money vanishes, to be replaced by a share of the money when the SS-A/Rookie teams sell the player's contract up the line to a full-season Class A team, A to AA, AA to AAA, and finally from triple-A to the major leagues. The teams in the Gulf Coast and Arizona Leagues will probably disappear or be kept as taxi squads for the major-league teams, who would be required to release players from those teams at the end of the season as free agents if they didn't keep them on the 40-man roster.

Where the independent leagues would fit into this talent pipeline is a good question. MLB perhaps might restrict itself to dealing only with the AA/AAA leagues (Northern, All-American, Can-Am and Atlantic) or not deal with them at all, leaving the independents in the business of giving undrafted and cast-off players a second look, off to the side of what would no longer be farm teams run from and by the major league teams. There might be some other way to get the stupidly huge signing bonuses out of the game, but aside from just issuing an edict from the Commissioner's office, how else would such a plan work?

*See Jack Vance's The Demon Princes, Volume 2 and read the first volume, too, while you're at it. You'll thank me later.

Don't go out there! It's not safe!
Stay here at the computer and take advantage of these deals instead!

Heading out to P's in a bit, once I've showered and loaded all the stuff into the Kia for the long drive to Ashburn. Hopefully the seat will hold up. This year we're doing pot roast in lieu of the traditional bird, because she's burned out on turkey and I don't care for any of the other poultry options. I roasted mine last night and am pretty sure I committed several of these common mistakes, but it was good nonetheless, and now I have about ten pounds of leftover turkey. :)

Shopping was a pain in the ass last night, which I guess was predictable because 1)I went to Shoppers Food Warehouse and 2) it was the night before Thanksgiving. I finished most of the shopping there, but I really should have gone to the nearby Giant, which was practically deserted but had the hazelnuts (filberts) that neither Harris Teeter (!) nor Shoppers had except in the bulk mixed nut bins. And I wasn't going to root through those for a couple pounds of hazelnuts. I do have to pick up a small roasting pan on the way out to Ashburn, but that's life.

As food for thought on this Thanksgiving, I leave you with the perennial essays from the Wall Street Journal: The Desolate Wilderness and The Fair Land

Spent about half an hour on the phone with Wells Fargo HR and investment people unsnarling the mess made when I didn't get my 1099-Bs from 2007. Not their fault; I was moving from Bloomington to a PO box in Chantilly to the new burrow in Alexandria, and it looks like the forms got forwarded to the PO box after I'd abandoned it. Anyhow, the extra $10K that the IRS thinks I earned are, as I assumed, from the PartnerShares "option" transactions, and the income & taxes for those were all shown on my W-2 for that year. Unfortunately, since I didn't have the 1099-B's from the investments crew, I didn't know to file a Schedule D which would have shown the sale of the $10K in stock for the profit I showed on the W-2s, so the IRS thinks I owe an extra $2500 tax. Sod that. When I get the forms, I'll have to file an amendment to my 2007 returns, but that's okay. Just so long as I don't have to fork over money I don't have to the revenooers.

Got a really late start today because I did something horribly dumb - was tweaking the Kasserine Pass scenario (for Operational Art of War) into more of a Cold War/alt-history Crusader scenario with Americans, Canadians, French and Spanish against Soviet-armed Caliphate types. Took forever to fix proficiency and readiness levels, and I didn't get to bed until 0600. Ugh. Fun scenario, though. Next I'll have to tweak it and add air units and ADA. After that - Sharon of El Alamein? :)

Leave me a comment saying "Resistance is Futile" and I will respond by asking you five questions that satisfy my curiosity. Update your journal with the answers to the questions, including this in the post.

1. What do you think of the state of fandom today -- not just in anime, but all-around?
I think anime fandom may be the only part of fandom that's still growing. TV/media fandom seems to be the same people constantly rushing from one series to the next, and less of it seems to be SF/fantasy-oriented. SF fandom is getting older and crankier and doesn't seem to be able to get enough young folks in the doors to renew itself

2. It's been all about reboots the past couple of years -- see BSG, V, and the new Star Trek film for prime examples of how reboots WORK. What old sci-fi franchise(s) could use the same treatment?
It's been long enough that Space: Above and Beyond could use a reboot. That show had a lot of unrealized potential.

3. What do you watch when you just want to shut the ol' noggin down? -- what do you watch when you want to just see some dumb fun?
4chan and YouTube, definitely. *nodsnods* I don't watch TV very much any more, so that's my closest substitute.

4. You've worked at cons as staff in previous years. Overall, what did you take away from the experience?
It was the most fun I've ever had with my clothes on and the most misery I've ever endured aside from my divorce. Being senior staff (department head/chairman) is an enormous time sink if you do it right but at the same time it's really a major ego boost when people tell you what a great time they had and how they already signed up for next year. You make new friends, and find out quickly what they're worth. I could go on like this for pages...

5. DCAU, or the traditional DC Universe?
Neither. Make Mine Marvel! ;)

My niece Heather had her baby last Wednesday by C-section. Great-niece Jordan was late and big - 9 pounds- which is typical for our lot, and according to her grandpa is a sound sleeper, which is a Good Thing. I didn't find out from him until today because he sent the word out Sunday to my AOL address, which I check about once a month on average. Welp.

Facebook saved me three dollars today, thanks to bam2 who posted a link to one of Amazon.com's Black Friday specials. I am now the proud owner of tracks by The Proclaimers, Sir Mix-a-Lot, and Young MC. These may actually find their way onto the same mix CD, because that's how I roll.

Unusually energetic this morning - fired off the paperwork to the Commonwealth and spent most of the morning firing off resumes in several directions. Hopefully one of them will land on someone's desk and find them in a good mood!

The chili improved after sitting in the fridge for a couple of days, but isn't quite there yet. I suspect the arbol peppers just aren't as hot as the serrano peppers I'm used to using. The turkey has been moved to the fridge and will probably wind up getting roasted a day early, but we'll see how things go. Also baked the acorn squash and nuked a couple of potatoes, because they go well with chili. :)

Papers arrived for the substitute job at Quantico; I think I'll call down and see if Wednesday morning is good for them. If not, I guess it'll be next week.

Not a good day playing internet spaceships. Got a mining barge (and its expensive strip mining modules) blown up under me, and a salvaging osprey likewise. So I was actually down a few million isk by the time I quit the game. :(

Still plodding through Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know About the Game Is Wrong, but am also rereading Ronald Glasser's 365 Days and S. M. Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers.

Honestly, this made me LOL so hard I almost violated the Suiseiseki Sunday icon rule.
( Totally and completely NSFW. )

I'm beginning to understand why, given his druthers, Dad preferred to get up as early as possible and attend the first Mass at the chapel. This ensured that he was able to avoid the kind of cantor I and several hundred of my fellow parishioners were subjected to at the 5 PM Mass today. The kind that has a great vocal range and doesn't get that most people don't. The kind that likes to sing EVERYTHING, in spite of the fact that it's not a High Mass. The kind that picks weird Eucharistic Prayers and makes the speakers howl because she can hit the high notes REAL LOUD. The kind that I want to take to the next death metal concert in the area and duct-tape to the stage right in front of the speaker stacks.

The kind that, as Leo Rosten once quipped, on being told of a death in the congregation, would whip out a tuning fork, strike it, and intone, "Gevaaaaalt!"

I'm sure she's really a nice person and not nearly as egotistical as I'm thinking she is. Still, I'm going to the 0630 Mass next Sunday if it kills me. For somebody whose preferred worship style is closer to the Friendlies than to full-blown High Church Catholicism, all this high-falutin' singing (without an organ, even!) gives me a pain in several parts of my body.

"People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring."

-Rogers Hornsby

Originally ganked from SCSU Scholars.