Yet more proof that we are weird

So Angela and I were having some conversation that was perfectly normal for us. It somehow led her to be inspired to draw this.

yeah. Need any more proof?

Abe

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Been busy the last two weeks

School started, the stock market went in the shitter, I played music with my friend Tom and I’ve spent as much time reading, watching and listening to the news as I can in the last two weeeks

First, I found this awesome picture on wikipedia while I was doing some research.

A 500 lb bomb fell through that dome and exploded inside the building. I was researching geodesic domes when I found the picture in the article about monolithic domes.

I’ve been reading this ars technica forum thread about the ongoing “mortgage armageddon” and I’ve found it to be a really interesting read. I particularly enjoyed the following photo. It really tickled my black-humor funny bone.

And then in this thread about the 2008 us presidential election, someone posted this video which made me cry.

Here is the page on youtube where this video lives.

Luckily, I also found http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/ through that thread and I think it is very interesting indeed.

Moving on, there was also posted a link to http://www.moral-politics.com/ which is an interesting idea. It purports to be able to place your moral/political orientation within a matrix of the larger population.

There is my result. Turns out I’m a dirty social democrat. Suddenly I understand why I cant; even talk about politics with my family who are all *very* conservative.

Interestingly, here is the chart showing all of the respondents who live in the US.

And, for comparison, here is the chart for all world respondents.

So yeah. Here’s how the stock market went today.

Good times.

Here’s the chart for the last year.

Abe

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New Dish Washer!

Our land lord bought us a brand new dish washer this weekend! The guys from Sears came over and installed it yesterday.

I took some before pics of our old machine but they seem to have disappeared from the camera

This is a shot mid-removal.

And here are a few shots after it was installed. Oh look the dogs have made cameo appearances in the shots. I’m sure we’re all shocked.

Abe

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Fozzie

Haha. This is a funny little test. I kind of expected to be Miss Piggy. Though the first time I did it, I got Animal. I think that is who I want to be, not who I am. Fozzie bear sounds more like me. Which muppet are you?

You Are Fozzie Bear

“Wocka! Wocka!”You’re the life of the party, and you love making people crack up.If only your routine didn’t always bomb!You may find more groans than laughs, but always keep the jokes coming.

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Rain, rain, come and stay

But please don’t flood us all away.

Holey Shamoley. It is quite the weather here. Thunder and lightning since around 7:30 last night. We heard on the news this morning that south of Seattle somewhere got Hail! The thunder is hitting my work so hard that you can hear the ceiling boards rattle (they are just those crappy foam-like ones, but it is still impressive).  It was raining so hard a minute ago that the entire parking lot was covered in about an inch of water. The thunder last night was so loud I couldn’t sleep. This morning on the news they reported no less than 2500 lightning strikes!

If I were a religious person, I would be afraid the apocolypse was coming.

Which actually got me thinking. What would I want to accomplish before the apocolypse. Well, I would want to get paid for writing a knitting pattern. I would also want to get a story published. Maybe complete a painting (not abstract). If I could, I would also like to travel the world and see it all before it was all destoyed, but that is really expensive. And in some instances dangerous. I guess if it was the dawn of the apocolypse, the dangerous part wouldn’t really matter.

So I plan to work on getting a short story complete and ready to send to critters for critique. I have a few that are half way there. First draft done and maybe a little past but still needing some major revision. After critters, I will see if I can send them to get published somewhere and get one writing some more stories.

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Sink

My co-worker sent me this hilarious video. Check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSdxqIBfEAw

(Abe will have to get this to appear as a video in the post because I have no idea how. Keep telling me the link is bad. Let me try this:

Hmm. Looks like that might work.

So next weekend (for the 4th) Isaac was going to come over to watch all the Harry Potter movies, but he couldn’t get the time off of work, so we will do it one of the two weekends after that.

This weekend, we are going to my cousin Allison’s going away party. I taught her to knit and sent her some needles (with music notes on them) and now her boyfriend John would also like to learn to knit. They are taking a huge train ride in less than a week, so that should be a great time for them to practice knitting. I guess I don’t need to meet other knitters. I will just make other knitters.

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Hide the snitch!

So Angela’s a *huge* Harry Potter fan and she is involved in all sorts of Harry Potter themed knitting and crafting groups on line. One of them, does an internet scavenger hunt every once in a while and we hosted the snitch for the last one. It’s on this page. I spent a good 30 minutes making that page and finding cool videos about cake decorating. It was kinda fun.

I’m getting burned out on mmo’s I think. I haven’t played EQ2 since this past weekend. It just hasn’t interested me. When I think about playing, it feels like thinking about going to a second job that I pay for the privelege of working.

I started replaying Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines last night. I made a Brujah. I’m having a blast so far. My character is a melee machine. She just tears through enemies. In the past I played a Malkavian and I focused on ranged weapons and seduction. My brujah is focused on melee, sneaking and breaking-and-entering. The game is really engrossing. I meant to play for just an hour or so last night and ended up playing for over two hours before I even realized it.

Yesterday I discovered how awesome the myspace music pages are. I spent about an hour and a half browsing and listening to peoples music yesterday and I spent about an hour this mornign doing that. There is an amazing variety of music on there.

And here are a few funny cats to brighten your day.

more cat pictures

Abe

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1930s marital status

Here is mine for wife:

27 As a 1930s wife, I am Poor Take the test!

 But here is mine if I was the husband:

65 As a 1930s husband, I am Superior Take the test!

 I would be a little better husband than Abe! But right now, he does most of the cooking and cleaning, so go figure that I would be a bad 1930s wife. Plus I am really grouchy first thing in the morning.

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Jerk of the Week

This weeks jerk of the week award goes to an eq2 player I had dealings with on wednesday night. We started a group for a dungeon called Stormhold which is a 20s level area. It can be difficult to get a group together in that level range so I was very pleasantly surprised to have 5 people in our group within a few minutes of posting the first notice in 20-29 chat. This is when the drama started.

We have one spot open and the Tool wants us to invite his lvl 55 guardian buddy because “We don’t have a tank.” I explain that one of the people in our group is in fact a Brawler which IS a tank class. The Tool then says “Well we need a REAL tank.” The brawler says “I’m a tank. I can tank SH. I have good gear.” As far as the rest of the group is concerned it’s decided at this point but the Tool persists. “If you aren’t going to invite my friend to tank for us I’m going to leave.” He says. I’m thinking to myself this guys a fucking Tool! He doesn’t want a group he wants his friend to power level him. Some furious whispering happens between me and the people in the group that aren’t the Tool. “It’s pretty hard to get a whole group of level appropriate people together for a dungeon in the 20s. Leave if you want to but I’m happy with a bruiser for a tank.” I say in group chat.

The Tool drops from the group and immediately starts advertising for more people for his new SH group in 20-29 chat. We have a good chuckle about it and start to work our way in to the dungeon.

A few minutes later the Tool sends me a /tell asking me to join his group to heal! I tell him I’m happy with my group and he replies that “You can’t do SH without a plate tank.” I tell him I’d rather fail with a group that’s the right level than waltz through the place with a minor deity tanking for me. At this point he says to me “Fine enjoy dying you stupid bitch.”

I told my group about all this, reported the Tool for being a jerk and put him on ignore. About 20 minutes later we ran in to the Tool and his high level buddy struggling their way through the dungeon with no one to help them. I pointed at him and blew him a kiss

I made an interesting discovery this week. I HATE LCDs for gaming. Yes widescreen resolutions are nice. Yes text is incredibly clear and easy to read. But, if you are playing a FPS a CRT with a decent refresh rate is head and shoulders better than an LCD every day of the week. It’s hard to describe and basically can’t be caught in a movie or I would capture it and show you. Playing Quake 3 or UT 2004 on my CRT is like looking in to a 3d space vs watching a very fast slide show on the LCD.

I’ve rearranged my desk so my LCD is off to the side and my CRT is dead center in front of me. I can’t believe I ever bought in to the whole LCD thing and I’m fearing the day that my CRT dies because I might not be able to find a replacement.

Nisa is really doing well these days. She’s playful and happy in a way I just don’t remember her being in a really long time. Ernies lost about three pounds on his diet in the last few weeks too! I can’t wait for both of our dogs to be happy and healthy again.

And here’s some funny animal pictures.

more cat pictures

I was going to take a movie of the dogs to put up but the batteries in the camera are dead so look forward to that for next week!

Abe

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Happy Tuesday

Yep it’s tuesday. Not a lot happening. I did a bunch of laundry today. And I washed the dishes.

Nisa is returning to her normal self as she starts to feel better. In fact I think she has been feeling crappy for a while because she seems like a different dog in a lot of ways. She’s making different facial expressions and her ears are pointing out at the top rather than straight up. She’s also only peeing like three or four times a day which is TOTALLY awesome. I was getting tired of running up and down the stairs 15 times a day.

Jeez, I probably need to start some kind of exercise now that I’m off the Nisa’s bladder plan.

I don’t have my grades yet but I’m sure that I did very well.

I’ve been playing eq2 lately and I really enjoy it for the most part but it seems like there are fewer people playing it now than I’ve ever seen. Most nights on my server there are only 10-20 people playing that are in the 20-30 level range. I haven’t been able to get a group together for anything at all since I came back two weeks ago. It’s pretty depressing.

I am also getting original EQ for free until august and I started playing that last night. It was amazing how many people were running around in tha game in the lowbie areas let alone how many were talking in chat. I saw more players in 30 minutes in EQ than I’ve seen in the last week in EQ2. That’s just sad.

I’m downloading the 14 day free trial of Dark Age of Camelot because I suspect that I’m just burned out on Norrath. Basically I just need a change of environment. I can’t afford to buy the game if I do like it though. Ah being poor blows.

I was going to say something about Blooms Day but I don’t really have anything. I’ve started to read Ulysses three or four times and I’ve never made it more than about half way through. I really like Joyce’s earlier writing, in Dubliners especially, but Ulysses and Finnegans Wake pretty much just leave me cold.

I much prefer Celine to Joyce. He writes about retards and whores. My kind of guy. Except for the whole Nazi collaboration thing.

Abe

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