/var/log/vadept.log

Wow.  I’ve never seen this before, but its really neat.

Basically if you switch a telsa coil on and off at a specific frequency, it creates lightning that ionizes the air at that frequency.  Thereby you can turn telsa coils into gigantic speakers that shoot out lightning that resonates.

After over a year of running the Mutants and Masterminds (MaM) game, our Storyteller Sky has decided that he has had enough.  He wants to play for a change so he put his game up for grabs to whomever wishes to continue it.

Needless to say, after my latest Shadowrun game exploding and collapsing, I was a bit hesitant to take the torch.  However, most of the Shadowrun players (some who play in the MaM game as well) told me that running the MaM game would be an excellent experience for me, so I gave it some serious thought.  After discussing time issues with Tiffany (whom if I was not running MaM, I would be there playing anyways), you are looking at the new Storyteller of the Mutants and Masterminds game.  Uh, yay?

I start in 3-4 weeks.  Melinda wants to try to run the game for 3 weeks as a transitional ST while I get some things prepared, but I think i’m capable of starting as soon as tomorrow night with some preliminary story/tying up loose threads from Sky’s game.  Everyone is keeping their same characters, time will just march on under my compassionate hand instead of Sky’s.

However the million dollar question is that I’ve been handed this running game of ambitious, good natures, fun-loving players who really dig their characters.  A part of me wants to turn the game from less zany/comic-bookish into a darker mood game.  Like turning  Adam West Batman into The Dark Knight movies.  I setup a quick survey on our internal gaming website, a few want a change, but the majority was right in the middle (and not everyone has submitted one yet).

Do I make this game darker, give the players more realistic challenges, more evil villains, and have them actually make planned decisions  as to what course of action they will take?  Or do I keep the same zany, wacky, no-real-fear-of-dying that we have had for the past year.  I can do the scientific way and make the game dark until people start to bitch, then back off 10%.  Not sure if there is a good way to do this that will make everyone happy.

I think I need to take a serious look as to why I like to play in the MaM game and what makes it fun for me.   I think I’m going to start writing about the MaM game more here to document how things panned out.

At 10:00pm on 3/18/09, I went down to the InReach building at 4635 Georgetown Place to move my one lone server out of their colocation area.  I got a call 2 days prior saying that they are shuffling everyone left in the building over to their rack at Pac-West telecom.  They are moving out of that building.  That building that I helped wire, that I helped setup, that I spent more hours there than anywhere.

I got to walk around the vast empty InReach building.  I knew where all of my desks were throughout the almost 10 years I worked there.  Looked at the tiny pieces of CAT-5 jumpers that I wired by hand well over 10 years ago.  My eyes started to tear up to realize that I’ll probably never ever see the inside of that building again.  I spent most of my teenage years confined within that small building working on servers, putting out fires, dealing with shit that now-days I could of never deal with.  Remembering the laughs, the long nights, the sitting at my desk wondering how in the fuck I was going to fix this server (but yet always did), the walks to McDonalds.  A ton of people who read this (or my LJ) worked there and grew up there with me.  That faculity saw the birth and the move of DeadJournal and housed zillions of bytes of data that I could never replace.

I unracked my one server, and followed Mike over to Pac-West.  Considering that over 10 years ago VAdept (this server) started out in the PacWest colo was sorta ironic.  I could still hear the sounds of the Ascend modem boxes heating up the room like huge rackmount hair-dryers.  Visualizing the USR 5+U modem chassis with the HyperDSP cards (that could never work right).  The smell of a real colocation faculity, and how a few times I slept on that cold raised floor hearing the air woosh under it while waiting for an array to rebuild.  Remembering the time Andy formatted a web-server array by accident, then said “See ya!” and left me there to restore from tape (you dick, I still remember that.. ).  It was a very weird and awkward feeling to be there again.  Everything looked exactly how I remembered it to be.

So since I was there, I decided to help Mike rack the gear that he brought over from customers who didn’t care enough to drive down to move their own damn computers.  It was such a weird feeling, that its hard to describe what it was like to be sitting in that colocation again after so many years.  In a way its fitting that my server ended back up to where it was born, with real generator power, real Halon and temperature monitoring, real 24/7 NOC, a “real” facility.

But using the same rackmount screws, the same power cord, and the same piece of cat-5 I’ve used for years and years; I’ve managed to pocket a few handfuls of dirt from the grave of the InReach colo.  Really, my server is its legacy.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gmrZqrq_6H7mQuJkfn7NHIjHz9aQD96ORJ3O1

WASHINGTON (AP) — Reversing an eight-year-old limit on potentially life-saving science, President Barack Obama plans to lift restrictions Monday on taxpayer-funded research using embryonic stem cells. The long-promised move will allow a rush of research aimed at one day better treating, if not curing, ailments from diabetes to paralysis — research that crosses partisan lines, backed by such notables as Nancy Reagan and the late Christopher Reeve. But it stirs intense controversy over whether government crosses a moral line with such research.

Now a ton of people get this confused with “banning stem cell research”.  No, Bush banned taxpayer funded stem cell research.  I think Obama really fucked up by reversing this (surprise surprise).

Think about it; your tax-dollars are now going to be used to fund research that a private company is going to charge you 10.4 zillion dollars for you to recieve benefits from.   Thats right, WE as taxpayers are paying for R&D that a private company is going to profit from.  That sound like a good idea to you?  You think this company that makes something awesome is going to cut us taxpayers a break because they got their research subsidized by the government?  Hell no!

It would be different if the private company used private funds to fund their research.  Then I can see charging an arm and a leg for this stuff, but no, they will be getting a subsidized ride via an already broke government on our broke backs so they can make a zillion dollars.  If we want to socialize the research, then lets socialize their profits too! Its bullshit, and I’m tired of using taxpayer dollars to subsidize things that the private sector should pick up the tab for!  The only way that I will be in favor of this is if all government-funded research gets put into the public domain (ie: not patented) so anyone can use it.

So in 10 years, when we’re still in debt, but a brand new treatment is out for $foo that nobody can afford (and the company is reporting record profits this year!), think of me.

At what point do we, as a society, tell people “produce or get the fuck out”.

Sitting at work today, I wondered why I do it.  Why do I put up with the bullshit? Why do I contribute to a system that just rewards laziness and irresponsibility.  Why don’t I do like everyone does and have my ass wiped for me by the government?

People waltz around without a care in the world fully knowing that the government will provide them with a place to live, food on the table, and their basic needs; a luxury that I do not have.  I stand there, 9 hours a day, serving these people that have contributed NOTHING to the well-being or advancement of society.  They are the hemlock, the blight ; feeding off of us who bust our asses to make ends meet.  I’m at work, they are not.  I bust my ass to do whats right and they just bitch and leech and contribute nothing.  I do everything for them, but what do they do for -me-?  Help thine neighbor is a two way street and all I see are red street reflectors.

They are the proverbial royalty, and we are the serfs who tend to the farmlands so they royalty can eat.  They wake up at 3pm when I’m at work by 9am.  They have no cares in the world other than how they are going to waste away their day living off of their SSI or disability check due to the forms that some quack for an MD that bought their pity-party story signed off on.  Their blight-filled ride is just enhanced by narcotics that WE as taxpayers pay for to treat some “condition” that is a candy-coated rationalization for addiction and abuse.

Sure there are exceptions to this.  People who want to work whom are physically unable to do so.  People with small children that they cannot leave unattended.  There is an exception to every rule, however those people should be as angry as I am because the hemlock above waste they resources that they can use to get into a position of production.  The working class pays to help those who cant, not those who wont.  Why should a man learn to fish when the town provides him with all the fish he can eat?

But no, we rationalize it away that we are ‘helping’ whilst cowering under the heavy stick of political correctness and the squishy “can’t offend anyone” mindset.  We hide in fear of being tagged with stereotypical or racial remarks as the leeches of society grasp at straws to justify their behavior. Race cards get thrown down, feelings get hurt.  People cant take the harsh reality of the situation and would rather just throw money at a problem and pretend it doesn’t exist.  Now the money is running out, and the problem wants their paycheck.

There isn’t an easy solution to this problem, nor am I trying to state one here.  With California nose-diving into the financial ground the boil of society is about to come to a head, and I don’t think we as society are prepared to face the monster that we have created.

I dont know why I keep on giving octomom more air-time on here, but I really do like to point out how utterly stupid she is.

• Octomom’s house is about to be defaulted. Thats right, booted out into the street.  Maybe she can use some of the cash she got from those interviews to pay off her mom’s house.  Wait, that would be planning ahead, HAHAHAHA!
• Octomom was offered $1 million dollars if she would star in one porn movie.  She would also get 1 year of health coverage for her and all of her kids.
• Octomom might not be able to take her kids home until she proves that she is capable of taking care of all of them.

Really, this woman is a distillation of what is wrong in society today.  She obviously does not plan ahead, she fucks up royally, and shes going to come out of this smelling like a rose with more cash than I’ll ever make.

What does that teach you kids?  We reward you to be irresponsible.  However you have to REALLY fuck up before the checks and money start coming in.

Many of you have asked “What is this Mutants and Masterminds game you always tweet about?”

Its a role-playing game that I play every Sunday with a group of people.  Its a game where you play a comic bookish superhero.  The rule books have every single power from every superhero in existence and allows you to pick and choose ones to fit your character.  The rules are quite ambiguous and at times outright confusing, however we make the best of it.

A really dark form of the Mutants and Masterminds genre can be seen on the TV show “Heros” where ordinary people get super-human powers.  Our game is no where near that serious/dark but more slapstick, goofy and funny.  The setting takes place in modern day Stockton, and we are to play ‘ourselves’ but with superhero powers.  Needless to say, this gets quite interesting.

I play ‘Dr Gizmo‘, a pharmacist exposed to a unique mixture of drugs during a pharmacy “incident” which gave him super-human powers.  Dr Gizmo’s power is ‘Gadgets’ meaning that he can create pretty much a gadget or gizmo that does anything.  To keep in the pharmacy paradigm, his gadgets must be explainable in medicinal terms (an injection to allow water breathing, or bandages to heal otherwise lethal wounds).  Yeah, I’m basically Inspector Gadget but a ton cooler.  Did I mention that Dr Gizmo has to wear his underwear on the outside of his pants for his powers to work? Its true, all superheros have their underwear on the outside of their pants.

Dax plays “Apollo”, a half-god of (you guessed it) Apollo.  Dr Gizmo’s theory is that he’s just delusional, and he got his powers not from a “God” but from some silly dental accident involving the x-ray machine.

Brandon plays “Brenden”, an “Alien” that has the ability to self-replicate.  His character is the most zany and absolutely psychotic in the whole game.  We have done everything to a Brenden replicate, cooking, launching, shooting, zapping, experimenting on, etc.  Crazy. Dr Gizmo thinks that he’s just a regular guy with some delusion of being an alien from another planet, although having a crashed space-ship on the moon as a base isn’t jiving with the ‘regular guy’ theory.

Other people play, but I really have no attention span at this moment to list -everyone- and their powers.  Maybe later.

The more and more I hear about the idiot Octomom the more and more furious I get.  You know what the book deals and movie deals and the attention teaches us all?

You will always be rewarded if you fuck up big enough.

People will donate and give her stuff because they “feel sorry for the children” yet isn’t that all this psychotic bitch wants is for people to “love” her, people to “feel sorry for her”.  Have you seen her begging website (I’m not going to link it here because I don’t want to increase her pagerank) that she will probably go and use the money for stuff other than food and diapers for her children?  Its fucking pittiful.  She is preying on the good nature of people to help out those in need and the only reason why people are helping her out is because of the children who have NO SAY and who had NO SAY in this whole ordeal.  Why punish the children when their mom is fucking crazy?

Think how public opinion would be different if she got on the interview and said “Listen, I fucked up.  I really didn’t want all of these kids, I just wanted one more and look what happened.” However she was smug and happy and ‘look at me world’.  Thats why people are pissed.

Oh, and now it comes out that the Octomom has been writing letters to Angelina Jolie.

The woman is a trainwreck.  I stand by my 1 year before she kills herself.

Warning! This post may make me look like an asshole.  Wait, probably because I’m responsible, unlike who I am ranting about.

This post is dedicated to Nadya Suleman AKA Octomom, someone who has to be the stupidest twat on the planet.  This woman, obviously in need of some Haldol or a good swift kick to the face, is more entertaining/sad/train-wreckish than 80 year old people having sex.

Time-line for my own records (so I can look back in 10 years when all of her kids are in prison/foster care):

• Started as a hero for delivering 8 kids.  People were ecstatic and happy for her.
• Public started to turn when they found out she was single
• Things got worse when it was brought out that she had 6 kids already
• It got sad when it was found out she lived with her mom
• Its depressing when it was found out that she is on food stamps
• Had a date with a wood-chipper when revealed that of her 6 non-ICU kids, 1 of them has autism and 2 of them have developmental problems.
  

I don’t even know where to begin.

1. No Job
2. No Money
3. Has 6 children already.  One is autistic – Two have some developmental issues
   
4. She has no way to support herself.
5. During her interview, she uses God to rationalize her decision.  That her unused eggs should have a chance of life.  Wow.. just.. wow….
6. She is using student loans to pay for her children.  Like wtf?
7. Bitch wants to be like Angelina Jolie.  She denies it, but just LOOK AT HER.
   

Take a realistic look at this.  Single mothers have a hard enough time with 1 or 2 children.  How can she have 6 PLUS 8 newborns and actually expect to hold a job that pays enough to support all of them?  Not even looking at the money part, how can she have enough hours in the day to spend with each child so they will grow up to be well balanced and nurtured?  Her parents have disowned her, its just her with 14 kids under the age of 7!

She claims she is not on welfare, but she gets SSI checks for 3 of her 6 non-newborn children because they are disabled.  Yeah, you read that right.  “Special Needs” children + 3 “normal” + 8 newborns.  I’m not even going to bring up food stamps because thats just a drop of piss in the ocean of wtf’ness.

Wait wait, she is going to work to support all of them -and- find the time to spend with all of them.  She could be the inventor of the 40 hour day!  This is assuming all 8 grow up to be healthy and happy.  Since the previous batch of children had some issues, I’d be -very- surprised if they all turned out ‘normal’ (well, as normal as you can be when your mother is fucking psychotic).

During the interview, its obvious that her lips were redone.  Older pictures show her lips to be ‘normal’ and now they are huge.

If that doesnt piss you off enough – Kaiser is asking for MediCal (Calfornia’s Medicaid Program) to pick up the tab for the birth/ICU!

The revelation, brought to light by the Los Angeles Times, stoked concerns that Suleman, 33, will become a heavier drain on public assistance once her six new sons and two new daughters are sent home in a few weeks from Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center, where they were born Jan. 26. They are the U.S.’s oldest surviving octuplets. The newspaper also reported that Kaiser has asked California’s health plan for the poor, which is Medi-Cal, to cover the enormous cost of delivering the babies.

HAHAHAHA! The state that is probably going to give me an IOU as a tax-return is most-likely going to foot the bill for a crazy bitch’s psychotic escapades in baby-making!  I hope California tells Kaiser to fuck themselves.  This is California, of course they wont.   This makes me sick.  Here is a woman who can’t afford the 6 she already has, the country is delving deeper in a recession, California is broke, people are out of work, shes $50k in debt (stated in the interview) does not have enough hours in the day to work + take care of her existing children,  and then she has 8 more kids?  Wow, just…wow..  She has absolutely zero idea what shes up against.  Zero.  Zero zero!  She said that one of her kids had colic for 14 hours a day and it was a handful, yeah, multiply that by 8 now!  She has made a huge problem for herself and is unable to grasp how deep of shit she is in.

If we are looking at the ‘this is sad’ scale, this woman is so far off the chart that she’s circled back around again!  I’m putting a bet that she’ll kill herself within the year.  She will cave due to the pressure of 8 screaming infants + 3 “normal” kids + 3 disabled kids and just off herself.

00:40 <corvus> Bets if octomom will off herself within the year
00:40 <corvus> yay or ney
00:40 <n6ko> hopefully but that kinda crazy seems to live forever like a black hole of refuckintarded

Before you comment here saying how much of an asshole I am (we support OpenID for your LJ/DJ commenting pleasure), remember that -responsible- people are choosing to not have children because they cannot afford them in these economic times or life changes prevent putting that kid first.

Last night I concluded my shadowrun game.  The ending wasn’t as exciting as I imagined it in my head, however my players were tolerant and were really good sports.

I did however, realize how much Shadowrun is a very binary genre.  People either love it, or hate it.  One of my players loved it, 2 of them hated it, and one was meso-meso.  I think it really takes a lot out of/kills a game if the players don’t care about the setting that the game is in.

Shadowrun v4 all-in-all is a very complex system to the point of being annoyingly complex.  Unless everyone is a die-hard cyberpunk fan (and knows the rules to the game inside and out) the game grinds to a halt the moment the stats are involved.  Complex dice rolls for everything, and a lot of things make sense to people who are (in real life) computer literate, but no sense to people who have no idea how the internet/computer work (like certain hacking related rolls are 100% based upon your comlink, no character stats are involved).

It was a fun experiment to do, the backend I wrote (although nobody used it) was a good experience, and short of all the arguing and drama over this game I really had a good time running it.  Of course I say that now rather than last night when I wanted to murder some of my players.